Stream now with KPBS+ / Watch Wednesday, May 27, 2026 at 9 p.m. on KPBS TV + Encore Sunday, May 31 at 9 p.m. on KPBS 2
Sir David Attenborough drops in for tea at the modest suburban home of Neville and Sally Hollingworth, both amateur fossil hunters in southern England. He’s there to look at some of the unusual objects that decorate their living room, including giant tusks and massive molars that belonged to extinct mammoths and a hand-axe shaped by Neanderthals.
Neville and Sally spotted these remains lying in a nearby gravel quarry, which led a team of paleontologists and archaeologists to undertake a major excavation. They soon discovered that the site preserved exceptional traces of the extinct beasts and the humans that populated Britain over 200,000 years ago, during the Ice Age.
What skills did the early humans have to help them survive the frigid climate? Did they have the tools and talent to hunt giant beasts like mammoths? Featuring hands-on experiments with replicas of Neanderthal-era spears and stone tools, NOVA brings the world of prehistoric Britain vividly to life.
Related Articles:
- Mammoth Discovery Could Revise Earliest Date of Humans in the Americas by Evan Hadingham
- Neanderthals Could Be the World's Oldest Artists by Samia Bouzid
- Reconstructed Rib Cage Offers Clues to How Neanderthals Breathed and Moved by Katherine J. Wu
- With new DNA analysis, the Neanderthal story gets even more complex by Katherine J. Wu
- Woolly Mammoths Probably Died Off By Themselves, Alone On An Isolated Arctic Island by Allison Eck
- Like Neanderthals, early modern humans used their teeth as tools by Katherine J. Wu
- Watch: Neanderthal Superglue
- Watch A Neanderthal Burial
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