Customer Reviews

Becoming Human [Blu-ray]

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4 star:		(4)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Becoming Human: Unearthing Our Earliest Ancestors collects thee episodes of the acclaimed documentary series NOVA exploring what the latest scientific discoveries tell us about the earliest human ancestors - and what makes us human today. The first episode, "Selam", shows how clues from the remains of a 3 million year-old child suggest why and how humanity first came down from the trees and started walking upright. The second episode applies forensics to the mystery of "Turkana Boy", a fossil of Home erectus, the first human ancestor to leave Africa and begin colonization of the globe. What caused this African exodus? The final episode, "Becoming Human", examines how human capacities for art, invention, and survival developed, and the mystery of humanity's interaction with the early Neanderthals. Did humans interbreed with Neanderthals, or cause their extermination? Why did "we" survive when other ancestral cousins died out? An extraordinary collection, and a choice pick especially for public library DVD collections and the libraries of anyone curious about the origins of humanity in prehistoric times. 3 hours, widescreen, closed captioned. Also highly recommended is the NOVA documentary "What Are Dreams? Inside the Sleeping Brain" (56 min., widescreen, closed captioned).

I love this DVD. Great visuals, great narration and fairly up-to-date. It's the sort of documentary one can watch many times.

I highly recommend "Becomming Human". Nova does great work and this is one of their best, in my view. This is a brilliant overview of the human story and as humans we should all know that story!

In addition to "Becoming Human," I also recommend the following DVDs:

Walking With Cavemen

Evolution Boxed Set

National Geographic - Search for the Ultimate Survivor



--Guy P. Harrison, author of "Race and Reality: What Everyone Should Know About Our Biological Diversity" and "50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God" (a skeptical analysis of common justifications for religious belief)

NOVA does a great job of explaining to its audience how Homo Sapiens ultimately became the "winner-take-all" hominoid species. On location photography, interviews with renowned experts, and computer-generated animation allow viewers to better understand how Homo Sapiens became the final (read current) outcome of a long evolution spread over millions of years. Viewers should not be surprised that this investigation of our ancestors will be the subject of an updated documentary. For example, the researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology recently revised their initial conclusions that there was no interbreeding at all between Homo Sapiens and Homo Neanderthalis based on their further study of their respective ADN. In summary, NOVA makes a noteworthy contribution to vulgarizing the science of evolutionary anthropology to the attention of a wide audience.

I thought this was a great video with great information and computer animations. I've seen many PBS/NOVA documentaries and this is the only one that I considered buying. I don't understand some of the negative reviews here. They material is presented with the science and doesn't try too hard to entertain (although it does).

An outstanding choice for anyone who is curious who we are and where we come from. This is a very well presented documentary that presents the overwhelming evidence of our origins. They do a really good job of showing how they test hypotheses with empirical evidence and laboratory procedures. In this outstanding presentation they show how (DNA) genetic conservation also very strongly supports the theory of our origins. Becoming Human [Blu-ray]

So much has been learned since the days of Professor's Leakey's investigation of human origins, and this series of films takes us on a journey back 4 million years to the earliest forms of primates that walked on two legs. According to the series, there were quite a few different species of such early hominids - close to the missing link - until 1.5 million years ago when rapid climate fluctuations required the primates to adapt or die..and that meant "bigger brains."

For anyone interested in paleoanthropology - this series is a MUST SEE. It provides new information since the considerably older "In Search of Human Origins" series on Nova. Highly recommended.

I almost turned this off after all of the terrible CGI on the first episode, but I decided to at least finish one episode, which in turn lead me to watch the last two. Once you get past the low production values and bad CGI, this show is actually pretty informative and highly interesting (with the later two episodes being better than the first). Its amazing just how adaptable and destructive we are. Highly recommended.

This three part documentary series should not be missed if you're interested in human origins. It covers all of the phases of the human evolutionary model starting with the australopithocines moving through the neadertal and ending with us (homo sapiens). The narration, supportive evidence and the music fits perfectly into the film. It covers quite a lot of detail about the fosil finds but at the same time is not difficult to understand without having a background in anthropology. The only thing I would change about this documentary is some of the animations of the early hominids. It kept repeating a particular sequence of a young hominid walking up to an older one and making a little sound as if he was begging for food. It was rather annoying to me. On the other hand, I think the only reason they put that in there is to keep some peoples attention, otherwise some would just get bored and stop watching.

I use this series to introduce both what we know about the somewhat winding roads of human evolution but also the processes by which we study human evolution to a college Evolution class (I think it is more than clear enough to use with younger students, however). I especially like the segment on Homo floresiensis, which emphasizes that we continue to discover and wrestle with mysterious species and what they tell us about the arc of evolution. I emphasize multidisciplinary thinking in my classes and this series makes it clear that what we know about human evolution comes from a variety of fields, from classic paleontologists digging bones in Africa to cultural anthropologists making inferences from ancient burial sites to molecular geneticists extracting ancient DNA from Neanderthals. Along those lines, they present a very nice introduction to molecular clocks that they use throughout the three videos. As with any video of this nature, there is a bit more story-telling than I wish there were - particularly the story about Turkana boy that strays quite far from the narrative about the evidence - but overall, it represents the best and most up-to-date and modern understanding of human origins available at this point in time.

I have to admit, I only made it about 2/3 of the way through episode #1, but to be honest, it was terrible. I suppose if you are a fifth grade science teacher trying to keep your class quiet for an hour it might be OK, but:

1) they had about 30 seconds of animated ape/human that they reused a half a dozen times or more (especially annoying was a quick shot of the ape/human's legs as it jumped down out of a tree and started walking).

2) lots of teasers about questions they would "answer" later in the show, but two thirds of the way through I got tired of waiting for some substance.

3) lots of "drama" about the guy who found the skull of a 3-year-old similar to Lucy, but darn few facts, and darn little about how we became human.

I guess they originally had one show and the executive producers ordered them to make it into three episodes, so we get a lot of fluff and hype. Really disappointing for a Nova documentary.

The BBC documentary on Charles Darwin is head and shoulders better than this.