The movie follows Dr. Spencer Wells as he travels the world to find out how humans came to take over the earth.
The oldest human fossils pointed him to Africa. There he met the San tribe, also called Bushmen, the oldest African tribe in existence. Wells hypothesized that the early humans that left Africa were part of the San tribe.
You can see from the picture that the San tribe has many facial features that are similar to other ethnic groups around the world. The nose and lips are African, the eyes are Asian, the chin and cheek bones are Caucasian.
Wells believed that a group of San Bushmen left their tribe and left Africa through the Middle East. There, a group split and followed the coast, moving through India, and the Indonesian Islands until they reached Australia. The direct descendants of the people that first migrated to Africa are the Aboriginal tribes. (Although there is scientific evidence to back up the theory that the Aboriginal people came from Africa, the tribesmen staunchly believe in their own creation and refuse to consider anyone else's. Just thought you'd like to know in case you meet one of them someday.)
In order to prove that the future Aussies followed the Asian coastline, Wells' next stop was a town in South India (I couldn't catch the name, sorry). There, he analyzed the DNA from local villagers and attempted to find similarities between the Australian Aboriginals and the San Bushmen. Lo and behold he found it all right. (I mean, the documentary wouldn't exist if he hadn't.)
So he established how people came about in India, the Asian Islands, and Australia. Next he followed, the second branch of people that left Africa and traced them to Kazakhstan. There, he met the man who was a direct descendant from the group that later split in three ways, Europeans, Northern Asians (and later Native Americans), and Indians.
Wells then went north into the furthest and coldest part of Russia to meet the Chukchi people. These were Nomadic people that live near the Bering Strait. During the Ice Age, these people would have been able to cross the Arctic Ocean into Alaska and go down into North America and later South America.
Wells concluded his journey in Arizona, where he discussed his findings with some Navajo Indians that lived on the reservation.
He went around the world, starting from Africa, going into India, Australia, Europe, Asia, and the Americas, following the trail that our ancestors left.
Pretty dramatic, huh? That's exactly how the documentary seemed. But overall it was pretty cool.
Until next time.
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