First Peoples Americas airs on WSKG TV on January 4, 2017 at 11pm.
FIRST PEOPLES tells the story of how early Homo sapiens moved around the globe and became the dominant human species. Each episode of the five-part series focuses on a different continent and meets the earliest Homo sapiens on that continent – the Americas, Africa, Asia, Australia and Europe. Where did they come from? How did they get there? What role did art, culture and technology play in their lives? Whom did they meet along the way? It used to be thought our ancestors kept a distance from other types of humans. But now DNA reveals they mated with them and interbred. As a result, our species is a patchwork of modern and ancient humans – we are all hybrids.As early humans spread out across the world, their toughest challenge was colonizing the Americas because a huge ice sheet blocked the route. It has long been thought that the first Americans were Clovis people, who arrived 13,000 years ago. But an underwater discovery in Mexico suggests people arrived earlier — coming by boat, not on foot. How closely related were these early Americans to today’s Native Americans? It’s an emotive issue, involving one of the most controversial fossils in the world, Kennewick Man.