strengths of the series are the way the information is brought to life in a fun and interesting way for both the old and the young alike. the program looks at each species in turn giving us a visual idea of what our ancestors may of looked like.

however, you must be aware of weaknesses such as the way we are shown the hominid, these are in fact people in costumes so features of us such as height and length of arm might show through. the program also skips over certain species which they believe were not in our ancestory chain and only follows one theroy into how we evolved.

overall, i think walking with cavemen is an interesting way to show us how we evolved as long as we don't treat the video as fact it is after all impossible to know exactly how we evolved and this is just one theroy.A good watch for those interested in our ancestory path.

Walking into the past as it COULD haved been...
Review date: 2004-02-08 Rating: 10 out of 10

I am a fan of Professor Robert Winston and his "Walking with..." series of documentaries. This is in the process of being shown on TV at this moment in the UK and all I can say it is better than I expected. Using real actors and actresses, amazing make-up and special effects, Professor Winston takes us through the lives and times of our remote caveman ancestors, starting with "Lucy" who was more ape than human and ending at a pathway that would eventually lead to us, Homo Sapiens.

It is a fascinating insight to what might have been. Of course a lot of what you will see on this DVD is supposition, mixed in with fact, fiction and a healthy dose of imagination. We will never really know the whole truth of our Caveman ancestors as we only have bones, and cave paintings to rely on but to a certain extent this is enough and Professor Winston does try to give a plausible explanation as to how and why the human race left the trees and evolved into the people we are today.

There are four episodes, First Ancestors, Blood Brothers, Savage Family and finally, The Survivors and each half hour includes a "time-lapse" so that we can rush through pre-history to the next journey of our evolving ancestors.

Professor Winston is a pragmatic narrator who is able to put across a point without being condescending to the watcher, his humour is subtle and his understanding of the human mind is quite staggering. Roll on the next "Walking with..." series; I wonder what it will be called? "Walking with Astronauts?"

A disgrace
Review date: 2003-12-14 Rating: 2 out of 10

Overview:

This series was an utter disgrace and devoid of almost any accurate information, and so the DVD is the same. The reviews giving this 5 stars have to be by people who had no prior knowledge of the subject matter, and this programme has 'educated' them with totally inaccurate and sensationalist theories. Robert Winston is totally out of his field in tackling the issue of human evolution, and as a result, he looks like a fool. I watched every episode of this series purely to gasp at the false theories it proposed. Aside from the terrible accuracy of the programmes, the presentation and representation of the extinct species it covers is terrible. Avoid at all costs

General review:

The DVD series covers human evolution from the Australopithecines (3 million years ago) up to anatomically modern humans. The coverage of australopithecus is poor, with the species' posture and behaviour being false or incredibly speculative. This species was relatively small and its entire behaviour practically unknown, any concept of a family unit as is seen in western europe today is surely incorrect and simply applying modern living to our view of the past. It gets worse as the DVD progresses to cover Homo habilis and Homo erectus, with them appear sometimes without genitals and looking like scruffy savages. When was the last time you saw a healthy chimp or human look as dirty or cliched as is presented in this series? Never. Their behaviour is again total speculation, false speculation at that, which has been totally discredited by modern studies. Their tool use and technology is vaguely accurate, but it portrays most of them as hunters when they in fact likely scavenged from carcasses around waterholes, initially simply smashing bones open to get marrow and much later competing for meet from the carcass. Overall, our ancestors are portrayed in a glorious way in an attempt to lead up to the 'wonder' that the programme tries to make out we are....this emotive stance totally betrays the present view of our evolution

The series also proposes reasons why humans became bipedal (walking on 2 legs like we do) which are absolutely laughable and sensationalised for the television audience. Let me asure you that humans didn't become bipedal because of 'sex' like the programme insists, with the argument that walking on 2 legs saves enough energy so our ancestors could have even more sex being absolutely false, hence why almost every other savannah animal (including primates like the baboon) is still quadrupedal. Truth is that many reasons are thought to have lead to bipedalism, with noone really knowing which were more influential. They include minimising the area expose to the sun (head and shoulders instead of entire back), to free up hands for tool use, change in foraging, for infant carrying (since we lost body hair for them to cling to)...and a few others.

So to sum up, if you buy this DVD you will be buying a work of fiction (except for the time scale and species names), with every 30 minutes of footage perhaps containing 1 or 2 points that evolutionary scientists would agree with. Believing the contents of this programme will be to have learnt things that are not true, and will be a waste of your money. David Attenborough's programmes on mammals and primates are infinitely more entertaining, accurate and worth your time

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