Dawn of Humanity

Dawn of Humanity is a 2015 American documentary film that was released online on September 10, 2015, and aired nationwide in the United States on September 16, 2015. The PBS NOVA National Geographic film, in one episode of two hours, was directed and produced by Graham Townsley. The film describes the 2013 discovery, and later excavation, of the fossil remains of Homo naledi, an extinct species of hominin assigned to the genus Homo, found within the Dinaledi Chamber of the Rising Star Cave system, located in the Cradle of Humankind, South Africa. Additionally, the National Geographic Society has multiple videos on its website covering different phases of the discovery and excavation of the fossils during a two-year period. As of September 2015, fossils of at least fifteen individuals, amounting to 1550 specimens, have been excavated from the cave.

Participants

The documentary film is narrated by Jay O. Sanders and includes the following participants (alphabetized by last name):

Critical reception

Neil Genzlinger of The New York Times noted, "Documentaries about prehistory and paleoanthropology are usually interesting, sometimes even thought-provoking. But you don't often encounter one that's thrilling. Yet that is a fitting adjective for Dawn of Humanity, a program... that brings an aura of breaking news to a field that can often seem musty." Brooke Cain of The Charlotte Observer reports that the documentary features "exclusive footage of the hair-raising descent deep into a nearly inaccessible cave to retrieve more than 1,500 hominid fossils."

According to archaeologist K. Kris Hirst, Dawn of Humanity provides "a rich context for the discovery [of the fossils of Homo naledi], setting the historical and evolutionary background so that viewers can understand the significance of the discovery.... [Lee] Berger's charming personality and the hordes of other paleontologists in this video make this contextual effort easily and visually accessible to the public." In addition, according to Hirst, the behavior of apes in the "Dawn of Man" sequence of Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, largely influenced by the notions of Raymond Dart and Robert Ardrey, has been proven false since such violent apes have now been shown to be vegetarians instead.

References

External links

• Dawn of Humanity at the PBS WebSite
• Dawn of Humanity at IMDb
• Dawn of Humanity – Complete TEXT of the documentary film
• National Geographic blog of Rising Star Expedition members
• Hominid species
• Exploring the Hominid Fossil Record
  (Center for the Advanced Study of Hominid Paleobiology at The George Washington University)
• Human Timeline (Interactive) – Smithsonian, National Museum of Natural History (August 2016).
• Dawn of Humanity – Trailer(000:30) on YouTube
• Dawn of Humanity – video search on YouTube.
• Dawn of Humanity – video search on Dailymotion.