Catalhoyuk an ancient settlement in Anatolia would seem to have been idyllic, without temples or warriors.
So here we are, right at the beginning of human society, in a place and surrounded by the ghosts of people that we already recognise.
The invention of a simple bone needle would prove more revolutionary than anything else in shaping human development. It heralded the arrival of Clothing.
It’s not an obvious thing to do. You gather the grains - the food that you’re hungry for and your family is hungry for - but instead of eating it, you keep some of it back!
Da Yu united the warring clans to construct an epic project to tame the flooding of the mighty Yellow River.
Yu is known to this day as Da Yu - the Great Yu - and it’s interesting that the first Chinese hero was a civil engineer and a civil servant.
Some of the earliest Egyptian writing used ostraca. pieces of limestone or pottery and soon spread around the Mediterranean.
Writing helped speed up the spread of ideas. Trade accelerated the growth of towns and cities, and civilisation was spreading. But the battle with nature never stopped.
Minoan culture seemed idyllic, bur a recent discovery has revealed a darker more blood-thirsty side to the Minoan people.
Now, on these stones, there was some kind of altar and on that the skeleton of a young man, about 18 years old, and across him was lying a bronze ceremonial dagger. He was a human sacrifice.
Mitochondrial DNA allows every modern person to be traced back to one woman in on tribe in Africa. A Mitochondrial Eve.
Criss-crossing Africa over tens of thousands of years, dealing with the changing climate and animals rather bigger and faster than they were, people learned the essentials of survival - language, clothing and cooked food… And, above all, working together to stay alive.
