AllMovie

Alan Alda's investigation into what differentiates humans from other species begins in France's Dordogne region, where humans made spectacular cave paintings and carvings some 30,000 years ago. He compares those humans to Neanderthal, who had lived for hundreds of thousands of years yet had little art and no evolving technology to show for it. Alda ponders when and where the human spark first ignited -- whether in the Dordogne caves or even earlier, on a different continent.