"Why do human beings exist?" This film takes a look at the precise mechanisms involved in evolution, in order to find the exact moment our ancestors started on the path from ape to something-more-than-ape. What was it that propelled them on this path? Is evolution a completely random process, or are there signs that Nature intended it that way? These questions, subject of many best-selling books by Stephen J. Gould and many others, are tackled in the film by some of today's most influential scholars working on research into prehistoric man. Among them: Kamoya Kimeu, the world's foremost fossil collector; Maeve Leakey, the paleontologist responsible for some of the most significant finds to do with our prehistoric origins; Christophe Boesch, a Swiss biologist doing research on chimpanzees; and Elisabeth Vrba, professor of paleontology, who, in Botswana, conducted studies into the habitat of our earliest ancestors. Each brings to vivid life (Vrba especially) the story of our own pre-history.