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The prehistory of humankind is revealed in the footsteps left by a passing group of hominids, two males and a female, recorded in the volcanic ash for us to read and try to comprehend over three-and-a-half million years later.
Curator’s notes
The publicity notes describe the series as 'part adventure, part mystery, part detective story’ and, allowing for the usual hype of these things, this program is remarkably watchable. It does in fact take us on a journey that gradually reveals how humans, of all the various branches of the hominid species, were the ones to thrive and prosper over millions of years. It also challenges notions of racial superiority when it presents recent genetic research that demonstrates that we all originated from the one tribe or family that had its origins in Africa.
The story is told with terrific re-creations and clever depictions of the planet in flux through massive earthquakes, volcanic activity and ice ages. The series was filmed in Africa, Indonesia, France and Jordan with all the dramatic re-creations taking place in Tasmania.
The idea for the program came from a convergence of two minds. Andrew Waterworth had been fronting Beyond 2000 (1999) for some time while researching and developing for this series. Roger Scholes’s fascination for the subject came out of his interest in looking back from today on the footsteps of previous eras of humankind through their tools and home sites and other evidence of their existence.
Roger Scholes is currently living and working in Tasmania. His latest work is a television series for SBS called The Passionate Apprentice (2008), inspired by people like a baker, a knife-maker and a fisherman, passing on their particular passion to others.
