Nova examines the ancestors of man by attempting to to reconstruct what they look like, what tools they used, and how they lived. Special focus is given to Homo erectus.
In the remote northern reaches of Zimbabwe, an African wild dog, Violet, has had a puppy. But she's young and inexperienced, and most of her previous litters haven't survived. Now is the time for her to learn from her previous mistakes.
Homo Erectus was the first "hairless", dark-skinned, sweaty, bipedal primate. All these features characterize the homo genus enabling them to be effective persistence hunters.
Evolutionary changes happen for a single reason, survival of the species. So how did loosing our hair give humans a survival advantage. Biologists have several hypotheses.
