Face to face with our ancestors

Man in the 21st century has great questions to answer: the origins of the universe, the origins of life on Earth, and the origins of mankind. All three have stood the test of time. Science is taking huge steps forward, but scientists are at a standstill when it comes to explaining the move to walking upright.

All sorts of assumptions about what happened between 9 and 5 million years ago remain plausible. The only near-certainty is that Africa is mankind’s birthplace, the starting point of various hominid lines which spread out with each successive migration. They scatter along a twisting, treacherous route, along which they meet with terrible climatic upheavals. Human beings then begin a slow adaptation to their environment: height, muscles, hair, faces evolve in a multi ethnic expansion which has provoked disagreement amongst generations of palaeontologists.