I'm not educated but I'm not slow.

December 15, 2009 4:26 PM

I'd like to watch a good educational film about the development of early man.

I ask because I was trying to watch a documentary on PBS last night (tracing genetic markers that track human migrations over the last 50,000 years) and I had to turn it off because It spent so much time repeating the same snippet of information over and over. Like a lot of science shows, it stretched the info so thinly over it's running time, covering the same ground so many times that I ended up shouting at the set. So I'd like to avoid this kind of show and also the sort that plays the same 10 seconds of awkward 3D animation over and over.

My science education is limited (art school diploma) but since I was little, I've been fascinated by anything to do with the early evolution of mankind. Are there any entertaining video documentaries on this subject that might be on a first year college course level? Recommendations of any particularly good, comprehensive books would be welcome as well.

posted by bonobothegreat to Science & Nature (9 answers total)

Best answer: Nova broadcast a three part series called Becoming Human. I've seen the first two parts and thought they were pretty good. If that's the one you saw and didn't like, please disregard.
posted by thirteenkiller at 4:40 PM on December 15, 2009

Best answer: It's almost certainly very out of date by now, but the first episodes of Bronowski's The Ascent of Man (1973) might work for you. Here's the first. The series is an acknowledged classic in the UK.
posted by WPW at 4:42 PM on December 15, 2009

Best answer: I was was pleasantly surprised that the recent Discovering Ardi documentary on the Discovery Channel (though now on DVD, I think) was so well done (I actually found the Nova series to be not-so-great; sorry, thirteenkiller!) -- plenty of information discussed at a level that felt appropriate for an intelligent layperson.
posted by scody at 4:43 PM on December 15, 2009

I could have written this question. I definitely want to know if Becoming Human or Discovering Ardi was the "stretched thin" one.
posted by DU at 5:35 PM on December 15, 2009

Response by poster: Thanks! I don't watch a lot of TV, so I'm feeling a bit out of the loop and surprised that Becoming Human and Discovering Ardi look promising. I'll give them a shot. The Ascent of Man actually looks great, too. I think I saw some of it on Ontario public TV when I was a lad.

It was National Geographic's "The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey" that had me so worked up last night. I felt that the information would have been fascinating if it had been just laid out there in an hour program but it was padded out the wazoo with faux drama and uncomfortable footage of the host trying not to act condescendingly to backcountry tribespeople.
posted by bonobothegreat at 6:59 PM on December 15, 2009 [1 favorite]

I also watched Becoming Human and thought, all things considered, it was pretty damn good. I definitely recommend it!
posted by Lutoslawski at 7:59 PM on December 15, 2009

The episode titled The Mind's Big Bang from PBS's series Evolution is excellent.
posted by Chanther at 8:48 PM on December 15, 2009

I'm not sure how to get a hold of it, but last year I watched an episode of The Nature of Things with David Suzuki, called "The Hobbit Enigma", which was about a early human/hobbit fossil found in Indonesia that was only 12,000 years old. This fossil has apparently caused huge divisions among anthropologists and raised doubts about our current understandings of the origins of man. It was utterly fascinating and I highly recommend it if you can find it.
posted by just_ducky at 10:22 PM on December 15, 2009

Just today Kevin Kelly reviewed a newly-restored DVD version of The Ascent of Man on his True Films site.
posted by mbrubeck at 10:42 AM on December 17, 2009