Life and Death In the Paleolithic

Roughly 3.5 million years ago, Lucy Oralopythecus apherenis, one of the most important fossils ever found, roamed the African savannah. Today, using the latest scientific research, we're going to reconstruct her life and her death as much as we possibly can. From the terrible danger she would have faced to her greatest moments and perhaps [music] even the first glimpses of what makes us truly human, this is life and death 3 million years ago. Lucy's life began in the same way as all life does, with a bang.

She was born into a world that was in many ways familiar to ours, but in some ways vastly different. Millions of years before our species had scarred the planet. This was a wild world, [music] absolutely teeming with life. Some we would recognize as the ancestors of modern animals.

Others would be quite different, like therapycus broomy, a relative of the galada, but twice the size, weighing up to 50 kg. Likely, it preferred to eat plants, but you wouldn't catch me getting in the way of one. Megantarion, saber-tooth cats, built like a leopard on steroids with huge teeth and strong jaws to bring down the largest of prey, perhaps most dangerous of all, crocodiles. Many more species than we have now, lurking hidden in the water.

[music] For a young Oralopythecus like Lucy, life was far from guaranteed. And the archaeological record is full of examples of our ancient ancestors falling prey to these beasts. A paranthropus aka robust oropythecus with two puncture marks in the skull, [music] probably caused by a leopard dragged across the savannah by your skull. Horrible way to go.

The bones of thirsty oustralopiths peppered with the puncture marks of crocodile teeth, no doubt caught off guard as they went for a drink, ripped from the water's edge by a crocodile lying in weight. [screaming] Saddest of all, perhaps, the [music] small tongue child, a roughly 3-year-old oustralopythecus africanis that lived around 2.8 million years ago. Judging by the marks on the insides of their eye sockets, seemingly [music] plucked from the savannah by a predatory bird, probably an African crowned eagle, and carried away to a grizzly end. Lucy, however, survived these challenges, possibly by spending a lot of time still in the trees.

Although we're confident Lucy was bipedal from her short and wide hip, a fully extendable knee, and many ...