A beautiful and utterly fascinating TV special, Homo Naledi: Dawn of Humanity, is coming to the National Geographic Channel (DStv 181) on Sunday 7 February at 20:05, going behind the scenes of the groundbreaking discovery and excavation of the extinct hominin species at the Dinaledi cave system at the Cradle of Humankind.
Homo naledi: Dawn of Humanity follows the elaborate excavation process and uses special effects to illustrate where homo naledi fits into paleoanthropology.
The great documentary special directed and produced by Graham Townsley, tells the tale of how cave explorers found the bones and then alerted the paleoanthropologist Lee Berger of the University of the Witwatersrand who realised that he needed to act immediately after seeing the first photos of what was found in the almost inaccessible Dinaledi Chamber of the Rising Star cave system.
Assembling a special team of experts, so far over 1 500 bones have been found, helping with a greater understanding of mankind's origins and development over millions of years.
The provocative TV special narrated by Jay O. Sanders takes viewers deep inside the treacherous descent of the cave, shows all the enigmatic finds, and uses wonderful graphics to explain what it all means and how it all fits together.
Homo naledi: Dawn of Humanity was filmed as the discoveries were made and the special shows how the ancient bones from so long ago could help to fill in a mysterious million year gap in the fossil record of mankind's evolution - while revealing clues about what makes us human.
