New series shows our ancestors putting the 'human' in 'humanity'

At times during the BBC's new landmark documentary series Human, the evolution of our species sounds like a particularly uncomfortable family wedding.

- Philip Cunnington on Human (BBC2)

Paleoanthropologist Ella Al-Shamahi describes some of the human species our own homo sapiens shared the earth with hundreds of thousands of years ago.

There was homo erectus - the first to leave Africa; Neanderthals, adapted for cold weather and expert hunters; and homo floresiensis, who were about three-and-a-half feet tall and have been tagged as The Hobbit in anthropological circles.

Al-Shamahi evokes The Lord of the Rings, but it is that wedding that comes more readily to mind, one of those 'dos' when you meet distant cousins and great aunts for the first time in decades and wonder how on earth you can be related to them.

But this illuminating series also has resonances with the present day, as Al-Shamahi draws a picture of homo sapiens as a "connected and cooperative species", one which talked with other groups and learned from them.

Looking at the headlines today, you'd be hard pressed to divine where that interconnectedness has gone.