Article: New light on human evolution.(Arts & Entertainment)(Television)

Why us?

That's the question posed by "Dawn of Man," a four-hour program to be shown in two parts at 9 p.m. tomorrow and Monday on the Learning Channel.

More specifically, how did one strain of hominids, Homo sapiens, outlast all of the others?

For most of the 5 million-year history of hominids, or two-legged primates, several branches lived simultaneously, the show explains. But for the last 28,000 years or so, only Homo sapiens - modern humans - have existed on Earth.

The show opens with the 1924 discovery of a child's skull and fossilized brain on the edge of the Kalahari desert in southern African. Its age is estimated at 2.4 ...

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