The Mum's Line Meet the Izzards

Eddie Izzard, actor,

comedian...

Morning!

Very handy.

..transvestite and marathon runner extraordinaire

is about to embark on a remarkable journey

using his own DNA as the road map.

I've always been fascinated by genetics and the fact it can bring my history right here. Like magic.

Locked within each of us is a genetic history book. It reveals not only our deep ancestry,

but also the journey of mankind across the globe.

This is it. The birthplace of the exodus, the first exodus.

Recent breakthroughs in genetics will allow Eddie to use his own DNA

to unlock the secrets of where he, and we, came from.

Instead of going back to the last couple of hundred years, we're going back a couple of hundred thousand.

This is the epic story of humanity's journey from our shared origins in Africa

10,000 generations ago, all the way to Eddie Izzard.

This is the first time in Britain that an individual has looked at their own DNA

and used that to re-trace their ancestral journey.

My ancestors came across here.

And, finally, he'll bridge the gap between his genetic and family history.

-I believe we are related.

-It's Eddie Izzard! Fancy that!

This programme contains some strong language.

Eddie Izzard is about to become the first person in Britain

to use his own DNA to retrace his ancestors' journey across thousands of miles

and 200,000 years, from the very first modern human in Africa to Eddie.

He's beginning by donating some saliva to science.

-I think I've done it! One spit!

-It seems like an unpromising start

to an exploration of deep ancestry.

Science in action! This is Blue Peter.

But Eddie's spit contains DNA.

DNA is found within our cells.

It's the instruction manual that helps build and run our bodies.

Scientists have also found another remarkable use for it.

Locked within our DNA is a genetic route map

that reveals how our ancestors migrated out of Africa and went on to populate the rest of the world.

It's the tool Eddie will use to help him retrace the human journey.

Whilst Eddie waits for the initial DNA results,

he's going back to his childhood home to visit his dad, John.

He's the inspiration for Eddie's quest.

WHISTLES CASUALLY

DOORBELL RINGS, DOGS BARK

-Crazy dogs. Hello.

-Hi.

-How are you doing?

Hi, Ed. Nice to see you.

'He's 83 now. I kind of thought,'

one can't live forever, but it's nice to give him something before any bad thing happens.

-Are you intrigued by this? I think it'll be intriguing.

-Yes.

Anything that tells us a bit more about ancient history,

-something that I never dreamt of doing before.

-Yeah.

Eddie will undertake two journeys. One will explore his dad's lineage,

but first he'll explore his mum's line.

And this journey will be close to his heart.

His mum died of cancer when Eddie was a young boy.

It would be interesting to find out if something comes from Mum's side and I go, "Yes! That resonates."

I can't see it so clearly because my mother died when I was six.

One thing she said to me before she died was she wouldn't have the pleasure of seeing you grow up.

Yeah.

Well, whatever we find will be fascinating.

This is the first time, apparently, anyone's done it, apart from a scientist checking other people,

-the first time on this journey.

-They've done it with animals.

-But animals are not good chatters on telly.

-They don't say a lot, no.

Not...not that we can make out, anyway.

As part of his journey, Eddie will also discover where traits like his blue eyes came from.

But it's not just what makes us unique individuals that excites him.

I look for connections. That's why I do gigs in French, and German and Russian and Spanish.

To find connections around the world. Here's my dad with the dogs.

He's walked out that door many times. Connections - that's what I'm looking for.

Eddie has come to the genetics lab to find out the results of his DNA test.

Geneticist Dr Jim Wilson is using the latest advances in genetic science to unlock the secrets

of where Eddie's mother and father lines came from.

We took your spit and extracted your DNA from your spit, using a chemical reaction.

We focused in on two pieces of DNA - a piece called the Y Chromosome,

your father's father's father's father's father, all the way back,

-but we're also going to look at your mother line.

-Right.

So how will Jim use Eddie's DNA to first explore his mum's deep ancestry?

The answer lies in genetic changes known as markers.

DNA is passed from generation to generation as an almost exact copy,

but occasionally DNA changes.

These changes, the markers, can indicate the start of another branch in the human family tree.

And it's these markers that Jim will focus on.

He looks for matches to Eddie's markers in people from around the world.

He'll access databases of hundreds of thousands of individuals.

They, like Eddie, have given their saliva for DNA testing over the last decade or so.

Many traditional communities have remained in the same place for thousands of years,

so a match with an Eddie marker can show where his ancestors travelled on their migration route.

So what we're going to do is to take you to re-live the journey

that your female line ancestors made from that origin in Africa,

as they moved out of that continent and moved around eventually to England.

And how we're going to do this is to try to introduce you

to genetic cousins of yours at each point.

Each branch of the human family tree originating from a new marker is known by a letter.

The root of these branches, L, takes every one of us back to Africa.

To one woman.

All modern humans originate from her.

Everyone in the world, wherever they lived, was descended from one woman

-and she lived in Africa, so they called her Eve.

-I've heard of her,

but her name was probably more Gladys or Janine.

-So, basically, everyone in the world is related.

-Yeah.

-So what...

-That "yeah" needs to be bigger than that. There's racists going, "I am so different!"

-Hang on. Everyone's related?

-Yeah, it's an amazing discovery to see that all humans everywhere

-go back to a small group of people in Africa.

-So where do we go first?

You're going to go to southern Africa, to Namibia,

-to the Kalahari Desert or its outskirts...

-Wow.

..to meet some of the San people. They're the first branch of the human family tree.

The point at which they connect into your line is 192,000 years ago, we estimate.

That's amazing. Great. Wow.

This is the start of Eddie's unique experiment in genetic time travel.

Taking him back 10,000 generations to meet his and our most distant ancestral cousins.

To get there he has to travel more than 10,500 kilometres

to the edge of the Kalahari Desert.

This arid bushland is a tough environment and would have been for our ancestors.

The San bushmen who live here

are one of the last remaining peoples to preserve the hunter-gatherer life

our ancestors practised almost 200,000 years ago.

Wow!

Nice landing.

Just how I remember it. Wow.

It's time for Eddie to meet his and our most distant relatives.

He wants to experience what life might have been like for our hunter-gatherer ancestors.

Local bushman Tsaan Max Cique, a ranger with the Namibian Parks Service, will be his guide.

-Kayo!

-Kayo. The hats are crazy. I like the crazy hats.

-Debe.

-Debe.

-Kunda.

-Kunda.

Sede.

Sede. Sede.

'When you get back 10,000 mums, it's such a long line of people that also put their genetics

'into what ended up as Mum, that you can't just say, "That woman looks like Mum!" But intriguing.'

SPEAKS IN DIALECT That means let's go.

Hunting gets all the plaudits, but then as now

gathering would have made up the vast majority of the diet.

Eddie's first task is to gather tubers, roots that retain water.

Their plant stems are easy to identify, but the tubers themselves lie deep underground.

-Just down there, yeah?

-Down there.

The bushmen often use the tubers to quench their thirst and even cook them like potatoes.

How far down do I go?

How do I know when I've reached gold?

I don't know where I'm going now, so I...

Dig it? OK.

Going to the supermarket seems a lot easier.

-There's a whole string of them!

-Now you can pull it up.

Is that OK?

Thank you. That's gathering.

Nails still intact.

Eddie's painted nails, the only outward sign of his cross-dressing, have set tongues wagging.

She's saying that seeing you having paint on your nails is like you want to become a woman.

That is part of what's in me. I have girl and boy in me.

HE TRANSLATES

They are asking if it is possible you can do their nails.

Eddie promises the ladies a manicure before he leaves.

-Do you have the paint with you?

-I do, actually.

The next food source is less taxing on the nails - collecting berries from the False Mopane tree.

I agree with them. They're all saying, "What the fuck, man?"

Now looking for berries. Now on a quest.

Two berries!

Three berries.

I'm beginning to feel at home with my new relatives.

This doesn't feel alien at all.

So 10,000 mums ago, my 10,000th mum was doing this

with women like these women here.

They are happy that you are here.

BEES BUZZING

And they're not pissed off?

They will be in a bit!

Hunting and gathering has been the predominant way of life for the vast majority of human history

and for the first 100,000 years or so of our existence, we practised it solely in Africa.

Wow.

That's nice honey.

This is pollen?

Put pollen on my list.

"A bag of pollen, please. And some for the lady." James Bond!

One of our greatest allies in this hostile environment was fire.

It didn't just keep us warm and allow us to eat more nutritious food. It also protected us

from our animal enemies. Eddie's newly-found relatives teach him how the Izzards made fire

-before the invention of the safety match.

-'I've always wanted to be able to make fire. It's on my list.

'Making fire.

'I thought it would take me, like, a couple of weeks of training,

'but once they give you the right sticks and you work out what to do, it's such an amazing thing.

Blow, blow, blow.

APPLAUSE

My God. My first fire.

Wow!

I just made my first fire.

-He was looking at your nails. He said it looks like a flag.

-Yes, it is.

This is my country and my continent.

When they look at your nails, it's like ladies, not with men.

-I know. Crazy, but a good crazy.

-HE TRANSLATES

That works. Sense of humour. A joke to a family I'm related to 192,000 years ago.

-So we're all related.

-Yeah.

-They are glad that you are related and we are together now.

Now that Eddie has learnt how to make fire, all he has to do is keep it going.

With Tsaan, he wants to experience how his ancestors survived the night.

He'll have only fire to protect them from the predators and elephants that visit the water hole close by.

ANIMAL NOISES

Holy cow! You heard that?

That was... It sounded a bit like a lion, but that is an elephant.

Yeah? An elephant. Just drinking?

Or coughing? He's making a lot of noise.

Elephants are herbivores.

Unless you look like an enormous salad, if you're dressed as a salad, they're not going to go for you.

But they will squash your head if they get you under their big paw.

This is what 10,000th mum, who I'm calling Shirley now, must have done.

She must have sat out round the fire.

It's so black out there, so dark. You've got to keep this fire going. That is your safety.

Do not venture out beyond this flame.

The fire looked a little worryingly low, but...

as long as we keep waking up and putting things on the fire,

there's still enough wood to keep us going until sun up.

You can't hear animals, can't hear elephants.

The mind plays tricks.

OK.

Back to bed. See you later.

SNORING

The following morning, Eddie hasn't been carried off by hungry herbivores.

That was quite a night. I didn't think at all about my ancestors!

I was thinking about me trying to survive the night. I was a little bit anxious

because I thought we might die. If some predator had come,

Tsaan knew what to do, but I didn't. What if they'd got Tsaan?

I thought, "Don't be pathetic and run off. You've got to help."

I kept that stick near me to poke things.

I had these pathetic back-up plans of how to deal with whatever.

It's almost time for Eddie to begin the next leg of his genetic journey.

But not before he fulfils his promise to the ladies.

Good?

'The people here, they don't seem that far away. I thought it would feel very far away.'

Thank you very much. Thank you. It'll be 15 minutes.

-Just...

-HE BLOWS

'It was great to be here and to have met these people

'and to get a little thumbnail sense of what gathering is like.'

I have made fire.

The next leg of Eddie's DNA time travelling will take him forward 140,000 years

to some time before 60,000 years ago.

By then, modern humans had colonised the enormous continent of Africa

in search of more hospitable places to live.

This, despite an estimated total population of no more than 20,000 people.

Scientists have DNA tested traditional communities

and with the results have created a map to show how humans migrated across the world.

Dr Jim Wilson is now using this information to discover where Eddie's maternal line travelled.

Eddie's next key marker gave birth to the L3 branch.

This is seen today particularly in East Africa along the shores of the Red Sea.

About 40% or more of the people there today share this marker with Eddie,

so it seems like his ancestors must have moved through this region at some point in the past,

but what's really interesting is the next marker after that, which produced the N branch.

This is not really seen in Africa today. It actually arose in Arabia.

So we think this points to the place where modern humans first left Africa

at some point before 60,000 years ago.

Eddie's travelling 5,000 kilometres across the continent to the small country of Djibouti.

He wants to reach the place where modern humans probably first left Africa,

a narrowing of the Red Sea known as the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait.

The route passes through some of Africa's harshest terrain.

At 157 metres below sea level, Lake Assal is the lowest place in Africa.

It is also saltier than the Dead Sea.

RUMBLES OF THUNDER

Who the hell comes here?! They dig up salt from here. People live here and work here.

I'd prefer to be in Croydon.

And I was feeling car sick and then fear goes into this... I don't want to be here.

If you lived here, you'd go, "This is Mordor.

"Mordor. My kind of town."

If you don't know Mordor, it's the Lord of the Rings place

where Mr Bad Guy lives, the guy with the one big eye.

You would think that was the gods being angry - or having a bad tummy.

"This is the gods angry. They're angry with YOU, Steve!"

Anyway, I'll probably get hit by lightning.

Despite his fear of getting fried by the gods, Eddie's determined to press on.

Many of the inhabitants of this coastline share the genetic marker

that suggests our ancestors passed through here.

There's evidence these early modern humans were, for the first time, exploiting the marine environment.

Deposits of shellfish from an archaeological site show they were harvesting the fruits of the sea.

But Eddie's quest to reach the place the Izzards left Africa may have been thwarted.

We're in a dust storm and you just can't see anything,

so we don't know what we're going to hit, so we will stop for a while. Have sandwiches. A singsong.

-#

-Ging gang...

-#

It's a reminder of how resilient early modern humans must have been in order to survive.

It's really tough. It's a tough land. It's tough now. We're not sure what the conditions were then,

but it really is tough.

Nicholas, who is driving us, decided to continue.

He's just happy driving into the sand.

We've got military people with us with guns,

so we can shoot invisible sand monsters that come.

After two hours, Eddie emerges from the sandstorm at his destination - the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait.

He's just 35 kilometres from the Arabian country of Yemen

where it's thought modern humans first stepped outside Africa.

Bizarrely, the Yemen is also where Eddie himself was born.

Today, on the African side of the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait,

fishing is still as important as it was to our ancestors.

To explore what life might have been like around 60,000 years ago, Eddie is off to help catch some fish

accompanied by his translator, Fatima.

They are meeting Noria Ahmed Suli. She is one of just three fisherwomen in the whole of Djibouti.

Noria, who is from Djibouti, an Afar woman,

which is very close to the Yemeni people... Yemen is just over there.

And she's the captain. You can see it in her face that she's a "can do" woman.

So how long has she been a fisherwoman?

-20 years.

-20 years? And what was she doing before?

-FATIMA TRANSLATES I have faced so many problems, I became a fisherwoman.

-Oh, right.

I married and I was happy with my family, with my children at my home.

The war happened in Obock. The civil war.

-So civil war happened? And after that she became a fisherwoman?

-Yes.

Where does she sell the fish that she catches?

Only in Yemen?

Here they pay 250. There they pay 1,000 francs.

-OK, so four times as much.

-Yes.

-And when she goes to Yemen, does she go over? That is the route?

-She goes in this boat to Yemen.

-Yes.

Does she speak Arabic?

I speak Arabic well. Somali also.

All I can say is...

How many fish do you think here?

-More than a hundred.

-More than a hundred fish.

You've got to get the fish out of the nets, which is really tricky.

I got one. Where do we throw it?

Every day, Noria follows the same route our ancestors probably took when they left Africa.

The Bab-el-Mandeb is still a highway to Arabia.

Bon voyage!

No one knows for sure why modern humans left Africa,

but our innate curiosity and environmental change may have been two important factors.

It's thought global cooling - an ice age - meant sea levels were lower at this time.

Perhaps the shorter distance made the crossing more attractive.

Some scientists believe only a handful of people made the initial crossing.

Remarkably, it's thought that only two women gave birth to the rest of humanity outside Africa.

One maternal line reached Australia,

but Eddie's took a different route and headed towards Europe.

That's the journey that humanity took,

60,000-70,000 years ago. Maybe just 200 people. Two women.

My mother's line, which is not only mine, but everybody's line,

became European.

So we all have problems whether we're British or we're European.

Or British European as I consider myself. When, in fact, we're all coming from one mother

who came across here and gave birth to nearly everyone in Europe.

Political unrest has prevented Eddie from making the crossing to the Yemen.

Frustratingly, he can't follow directly in the footsteps of modern humans as they left Africa

-or visit his own birthplace.

-My dad and my mum met there. It's very important to us.

Mum working as a nurse for BP, Dad as an accountant.

And so it means a lot. My brother was born there, I was born there. My mum died six years later.

And we have these cine film memories of Mum and Dad there.

It's in here and, bizarrely, just happens to be the place where the exodus of humanity went through.

This is it.

The birthplace of the exodus. The first exodus.

It's time for Eddie to leave his and our shared African roots behind.

This is now the story of those of us who spread out across the rest of the world.

Jim Wilson has been investigating where Eddie's female ancestors went

after this momentous moment in human history.

It means jumping forward another 42,000 years.

Eddie's next significant marker, which gave birth to the T2 branch,

originated about 18,000 years ago.

Today it's most common in populations in the Middle East and Turkey.

So it seems that Eddie's ancestors are likely to have moved north,

probably following the fertile crescent which runs from the Persian Gulf up to Turkey.

It seems like they were still there for one of the most significant turning points in human history -

the birth of agriculture about 10,500 years ago.

'Farming meant an abundance of new foods

'and a more settled lifestyle. In a way, it's the birth of civilisation

'and it's here that something very interesting happened to Eddie's and many of our ancestors' genes.

'The next step on your mother line journey is to go to Turkey.

'You're going to learn more there about how agriculture took hold.

-'You're also going to learn where your blue eyes came from.'

-My blue eyes? That is very interesting.

Thank you very much, Dr Jim.

It'll be good to go to Turkey. My parents went on honeymoon to Turkey, to Istanbul.

To explore his ancestors' roots in agriculture, Eddie's travelling to Turkey's Black Sea coast.

Turkey has some of the earliest archaeological evidence for the domestication of cattle and sheep.

This area is still known for dairy farming.

Some of the people here share Eddie's marker.

Eddie's meeting farmer Fatima Tezcan and her family, who are carrying on the tradition.

-So do I need to hold?

-Yeah, you can hold.

Local guide Buket Sahin joins Eddie to translate.

-How often do they milk the goats?

-Every morning.

Do you make cheese from this milk?

She makes her own home-made yoghurt,

-home-made butter.

-Right.

-All different kind of cheeses.

-From the goat's milk.

-Yes.

Milk is especially useful for Fatima's family.

Her son had a tumour in his brain.

-She thinks goat milk is much healthier, especially for children with diseases.

-Right.

The domestication of animals gave humans a valuable new food source from dairy products,

but there was a hitch.

Adults in many early agricultural communities were intolerant to milk.

Genetics came to the rescue.

-What exactly is this, Fatima?

-Aryan.

And what is it made of?

-Goat milk yoghurt, water and salt.

-I'll just have a bit of this.

Eddie and most Europeans can digest milk due to a genetic change that occurred around this time.

It means we can process dairy products beyond infancy, whereas many people elsewhere can't.

I can taste yoghurty in there. Really nice and fresh. And a salty aftertaste. Thank you.

'When I was a teenager, I used to drink a litre a day. I loved milk. I still do.'

I thought I might be becoming Chalk Boy, the Calcium Kid.

This ability to digest milk wasn't the only genetic change to occur to Eddie's family around this time.

You have blue eyes, I have blue eyes. Do others in your family?

-Her father, all her siblings and both of her children has blue eyes.

-Yeah, cool.

Eddie's guide Buket discusses the most up-to-date theory on the remarkable origin of blue eyes.

-A recent study by a team of genetic researchers in Copenhagen University...

-OK.

..everyone with blue eyes can be traced back to Black Sea coast, 10,000 years ago.

-Everyone with blue eyes can be traced back to Black Sea?

-Yes.

-Wow.

-A single person.

-Very curious.

Blue eyes originating in one person isn't the only surprise.

Both parents need to give blue-eyed genes to their offspring.

So given that even today most of us are brown-eyed, the trait shouldn't survive at all.

-Why doesn't it die out?

-One of the most popular theories is

that it is very attractive and when there was a shortage of men,

as they were hunters at the time, women with blue eyes were more desirable.

So it's the sexual selection and it's very attractive, like the gorgeous eyes you have.

Oh?

I always miss eye colours. Do you notice eye colours? Women tend to notice better than men.

Well, I do. Even if you look at Hollywood, the legendary people like Sinatra,

-Elvis, you know, Paul Newman.

-So blue eyes,

which only turned up about 10,000 years ago, roughly, it's just sexual attraction.

People saying, "Hey, let's shag the man or woman with the blue eyes and have babies."

For whatever reason, blue eyes have persisted. They're doing the rounds.

So where did the milk-drinking Izzards take their blue eyes next?

Their adventure in agriculture led to Europe.

The most likely place they entered was the Bosphorus Straits,

where Asia and Europe are separated by just a narrow stretch of water.

A million and a half people still make this crossing every day.

My ancestors came across here, maybe Hawaii 5-0 style,

maybe with sails. And it was right here.

On the European side, Eddie can't resist staying in the hotel where his parents honeymooned.

-Tuba Atis is a manager at the hotel.

-Really happy to accommodate you.

This is the previous Divan here. And your family stayed here, 904.

-Oh, really?

-Yes.

-How do you know?

-We searched the...

-The records?

-Yes, the records.

-Oh, wow.

-This is the same room you're staying.

-The same room.

-Can I take these pictures back to my dad?

-Of course. This is for you.

Wow.

'I'm in Room 904.'

I don't know if you remember the room, but it was this one.

-'Yeah, that's to get the view. A good view of the Bosphorus.'

-I've got a bit of a view,

but the Hyatt Hotel has come along and built a bloody great hotel in the way.

Also, Mum's actual heritage comes through Istanbul, where you were.

-'Really?'

-So that's just another irony.

-'Are you keeping well?'

Yeah. We were all kind of knackered.

-'All right, mate. Thanks for the call.'

-No problem. Bye.

Around 7,500 years ago, Eddie's mum's line probably moved into Europe

as part of the Agricultural Revolution.

'The spread of farming into Europe is a bit like the scramble for land'

in the Wild West.

With something around 8 million people in the world at the time,

many of them in the Middle East, there was a continuous pressure for new land for agriculture.

It looks like there were two main migration routes into the continent.

One into Central Europe, following the main river valleys,

and another hugging the Mediterranean shore.

Eddie's direct lineage headed north-west into the heart of the continent,

but before he explores where they went, he's first going to check out what happened

to ancestral cousins who entered Europe along its southern fringes.

Over the next 5,000 years, they settled in some very interesting places.

-'Hello?'

-Dr Jim. Where am I off to next?

-'You're going to Pompeii.'

-Pompeii?

'Pompeii in some way is representative of the next stage where great civilisations develop,

'all entirely based on agriculture.'

So we're going there at a time that's before it blew up?

-'Just around 79AD, I think.'

-Oh.

-OK. We're going there the Tuesday before the explosion.

-'Exactly.'

-Right.

'Pompeii will be exciting. I've been intrigued to see Pompeii for years.

'I think I'm quite good at imagining what it would be like to be there as a Roman. Fascinating.'

By 79AD, Pompeii was a flourishing Roman town in southern Italy of 20,000 people.

But its residents were unaware that they were sitting on an active volcano.

Here Eddie won't be hanging out with modern-day descendants of his ancestors.

He'll be meeting genetic cousins who died nearly 2,000 years ago.

His guide is anatomist Professor Maciej Henneberg.

Before Eddie meets his long-dead relatives, Maciej wants to show him one of the delights of lost Pompeii.

So...shagging. This is a house of sex?

-Yes. People came here for entertainment.

-OK.

And they had paintings showing what is happening here.

-This was done on stone.

-That's doggie style there.

Yes. They are showing various sexual positions,

-which is fairly similar to what one can see on the internet today.

-Yes.

-Actually.

-And they are showing some curiosities, like people with double penis, for example.

-Oh, really?

-Is that a medical thing?

-Yes, it is. I'm an anatomist. I study anatomical variations.

-OK.

Both double vagina and double penis happen.

Mm?

OK. That sounds crazy.

-And the beds are telling us how small people were.

-Oh, right.

-Yeah.

-It shows us people were, on average, about 100mm, 10cms, shorter

than we are today.

Then there is a toilet. Romans were much more open about the toilet.

-For example, they had communal toilets.

-A lot of people actually sat right here in this very space,

doing a poo, having a chat and saying, "I'll be right back in for a bit of number four.

"And a bit of that old number two. Two and a bit of four."

-And food is across the road.

-"I'll have a poo, have some sex and then go and get a McDonalds."

Eddie has come to Pompeii's laboratory to meet his relatives.

They couldn't give a spit sample, so their ancient DNA was extracted from their teeth.

This fellow is your genetic cousin.

Sadly, he was born with a congenital problem,

so he had this tilted head, which is called torticollis.

-Torticollis.

-A nerve to his neck muscles was damaged

because somebody helping the baby to be born pulled his head too much.

And therefore we both share something with him. You share his genes and I shared his condition.

-Oh, really?

-Until I was 12, I walked like this.

-Otherwise, he was quite a handsome fellow, as most people sharing your genes are.

-This is what I heard.

Yes!

Eddie's genetic cousin died in 79AD

when a volcanic eruption overwhelmed Pompeii.

Logically, people were leaving. Why did this family stay?

I think we discovered why and here's the answer. She's also your cousin.

A young woman, about 17 years of age.

-She was 17?

-She was 17 at the moment of her death.

-And she carried a baby...

-Right.

-..in her belly.

And the baby was just about to be born. It was the last month of pregnancy.

So the family says, "We have to stay with you." And she was huddled in a corner of the room,

protecting her baby,

holding a bunch of coins to her breast, wearing heavy jewellery that stained her bones -

the shoulder blades, the forearm bones,

and her head is stained, too, so she had some kind of a headdress.

OK, this is all kind of fascinating and tragic at the same time.

Thirteen members of the same extended family died together.

Eddie wants to visit the place where it happened.

This is huge.

The house belonged to Caius Julius Polybius, a former slave and successful politician.

They were lying here in this room.

The old man on the floor

and next to him a teenage boy.

And the boy was holding the father's hand. They must have been already afraid.

And at the feet of the teenage boy a younger boy, a few years old.

And eventually they were covered by more and more of the ash.

And this is the other room where the rest of the family died.

Here was the 17-year-old young woman,

covered in her finery and with the baby in her belly.

That's where she

eventually died.

Not a great way to go.

They found about 20cm of ash in the rooms, which would have blown in.

If you think about how snow works. The ash must have been about here.

They must have been wading through the ash. A baby was going to be born.

And then they died.

Eddie's journey has already covered nearly 200,000 years of human history.

The landscape of towns, streets and houses, of civilisation,

is becoming much more familiar.

'I feel like I've been taken inside

'a real Latin, Roman life

'and that links to my mother's line.

'Just touching the walls is really close.'

Eddie's genetic cousins settled in southern Europe,

but his direct ancestors appear to have followed a more northerly route

through central Europe on their migration to Britain.

Eddie's next key marker shows that this direct maternal line had, by the time of the Pompeii eruption,

moved into northern Europe.

'We're getting to a really exciting stage of the genetic journey.

'As we get closer in space and time to Eddie's family in Britain,

'we can be more specific about the ancestral journey.

'This is because the more recent markers are shared by fewer people.'

Of the 69 markers in Eddie's maternal line DNA,

this next one is the 67th.

This means that we're looking for living people who share an ancestor with Eddie

less than 100 generations ago.

'We've found another marker that seems to originate much further north.

'This marker is only about 2,000 years old

'and the really interesting thing is that this group seems to be focused in Scandinavia.

'Your mother's mother's mother's people were Vikings.'

Oh!

'What you're going to do now is meet people who are directly related to you in Denmark.'

Eddie has come to the ancient Viking capital and port of Roskilde.

He is meeting Lars Lundin and his sister, Anne Persdottir.

Lars recently gave a saliva sample to science.

Jim then found him on the database, one of only ten matches.

-OK, well...

-Cheers.

-Cheers.

He and his sister share a direct maternal ancestor with Eddie from around 2,000 years ago.

That's less than 70 generations.

-We share a mother from... Are there similarities between us?

-Yes.

-Should be interesting.

I love football, mathematics. I did maths up to university level, but then didn't...

Mathematics. That's Lars.

I also studied math. I took a PhD in Applied Math

-and did a post doc afterwards for two years.

-I ran 43 marathons.

-43?!

-In 51 days. About three years ago.

We ran a marathon together. I did a total of 13 marathons, but over a time of 15 years.

Which is an impressive record. I apologise for coming with 43.

-That's all right.

-I think because Izzard is my father's name,

half your genetics is your mother's side so you tend to ignore that and say, "What did the Izzards do?"

I don't know that much about Mum's side. To find I have a Viking link, that is fascinating.

The closest Eddie can get to his mum's Viking roots is to put himself in the place of his ancestors...

Just lean forward and you pull.

..as they prepare to lay waste to a swathe of Britain.

Perfect.

From 793AD, the Vikings began to raid Britain.

Their secret weapon was the longship.

Its shallow keel meant they didn't need harbours. They could row onto the shore.

Not too fast.

A little bit, yeah, like that. Then more power in each stroke.

Rowing is exhausting, so the Vikings used sail power when they could.

What we do is we use our weight, so go forwards and then we pull backwards like that.

-Then you fall onto me.

-OK.

-Then you push it towards the hole so she can take back the slack.

-OK.

-And pull.

-Oops.

-That's too much.

-We will just go...

-Don't I fall on you?

-Not yet.

Down there and push it.

- And one more time. - Careful!

That'll do me.

-Yes?

-Let's go back.

-How many hours would it take?

-To England? With the right wind, it would take them about three days.

Eddie takes over the controls.

-Ah...

-Turn the ship slowly.

-Do you do hand signals?

-You're turning the rudder a little bit too much. Careful!

-A little bit more gently on it. Yes.

-I wanted to do an extreme one so it showed up onscreen.

Yeah, that's much better.

I feel very close to my Viking heritage.

The obviously went over and did a lot of killing and pillaging, which wasn't so good,

but it's fun to have a Viking link.

Despite the reputation for rape and pillage,

Eddie's maternal ancestry suggests Viking families came to Britain

as part of a second wave of immigration.

Maybe they got a boat right here. Maybe someone from my family got on a boat right here

and went across and killed someone who was over there! And said, "Can we steal your house?" Yeah.

Anyway, now I've got to go back to Britain to see where this leads.

It'll be so interesting to find some sort of link through my mum's side of the family coming in.

Jim has been searching the database for matches to Eddie's next significant marker,

which will bring him back to the UK.

He's compared it to the DNA of 12,000 individuals

who submitted to a full exhaustive test of their mother line DNA.

He found four matches and he's arranged for Eddie to meet one.

The match is so recent and so rare that it has yet to be given a name.

You're going to meet two sisters, your nearest genetic cousins on your mother's side.

They're in Northamptonshire. You share an ancestor with them

-at some point in the last 500-1,000 years.

-Oh?

'So probably your ancestor came prior to that, which would fit in rather well with the Viking age.

'So you're really very close genetically.'

-Hello.

-Hi. I'm Jackie.

-Hello. What's your name?

-Hi, I'm Jill.

-Hello, Jill. Apparently, we're related.

-Yes.

-Through genetics and stuff.

-That's pretty interesting.

-Can I come into your house?

-Sure!

The sisters share a common maternal ancestor with Eddie, possibly as few as 20 generations ago.

We are ancestral cousins.

-Yeah, when you think of all these thousands of years, it's amazing.

-Yeah.

We're quite close as relatives. I thought we'd be Anglo-Saxons, being blonde and blue-eyed.

-Right. But you didn't think Viking?

-No, never Viking.

I was excited when they said Viking.

-But they were killers.

-They were actually terrible people.

-I know.

But everybody wants to be a Viking.

My mother died when I was a kid, so it's interesting to have this all opened, the mother's line.

This newly-found link to his mum encourages Eddie to tell the sisters about the impact of her death.

You become this emotionally cut-down person, but you deal with things as you're used to being on your own.

I always think something bad could happen, so you don't get surprised.

-You never go crazy in case something goes the other way.

-That's sad.

-Did you say you've got children?

-I've got 42. No, I haven't got any.

I have no kids,

but I'm going to get some from a shop.

-You are funny.

-On a good day.

-Thanks for doing this. Cheers. Nice to meet you.

-Thanks.

-Thanks for the cup of tea.

-We'll feed you, if you like.

-I think we'll be fine.

'I was looking into their faces to see if I could see myself.

'Not essentially, but they seemed very young at heart and lively. I identify with that.

'It's fascinating to meet people with whom I so recently share ancestry.'

In the lab, Jim has one final surprise for Eddie.

He's been looking for matches to Eddie's most recent marker.

It's actually incredible. We found that you had a marker in your DNA

that no one else I've ever looked at carried. It's probably recent.

-It's unique.

-Yes! One tries to be special.

It could just mean you're an idiot.

-And none of the people had the change that we saw in your DNA, so it was quite exciting.

-Wow.

-We're still working on this, Eddie. We don't know all the answers.

-Unique sounds cool.

-I told you!

I believe that at some stage soon we will find a match to Eddie's unique mother line marker.

We'll discover many more markers in his DNA and in our DNA. This is only the beginning for science.

Five years ago, this ground-breaking journey would not have been possible.

To suddenly have it spelt out like that is amazing.

I knew my mum for six years and then she went and now I know these huge chunks of stuff

going all the way back to Africa, through Turkey, up to Denmark

and her lineage probably came in a thousand years ago.

And the Vikings landed on the seas of Britain in weather like this

and scared the bejesus out of everyone,

but maybe my mum was in the second wave, accountant Vikings saying, "How many swords have you got?"

'To find out now about my father's life. That will be very interesting, to put those two together.

'I'm interested in what goes together in me of my mother and my father, and where he comes from.'

Next time, Eddie discovers how the male Izzards battled with the Ice Age

and slept with an alien species.

-Oh, sorry, mate.

-You can't get much more masculine than that.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd