Human: Season 1, Episode 4

1 - 4: Discovering the Americas

 During the height of the Ice Age, one of the coldest times humanity has ever known, Homo sapiens steps into the last habitable continent on the planet: the Americas.Ella Al-Shamahi discovers how humans were confronted by ferocious 10-foot tall prehistoric bears in this new land and explores the daredevil hunting techniques used to take them down. Deeper into the interior of the North American continent, Ella traces fossilised footprints, possibly of a mother and her child, who were among the first to set foot in North America.She learns how the humans who lived here hunted vast herds of Ice Age mammoths and giant sloths, until a changing climate and innovative hunting techniques combined to push them to extinction. Forced to adapt, humanity's ancestors pioneered new ways to control nature as farming emerged to shape the world.