AllMovie

"Search for the First Humans" explores whether 6-million-year-old bones unearthed in Kenya in 2000 represent what narrator Liev Schreiber calls "the base of the human evolutionary tree." The find, called "Orrorin" ("original man" in the local language) is almost twice as old as "Lucy," the oldest hominid previously found, but Martin Pickford and Brigitte Senut of the French National Museum of Natural History think Orrorin is more directly related to humans. First, though, it must be determined that Orrorin walked upright, and no kneebone was found. But evidence of bipedalism can be found in the neckbone.