The fifth story in the River Apes series takes you back one and a half million years ago to search for the ancestors of the human race. We meet three types of hominid, each of which were well qualified to be our ancestors.

There were the seasiders, who had spent the previous two and a half million years living on a tropical island paradise. They had become well adapted to diving and looked almost human. 

They could sing but not talk as we would know it. Then there were the Riversiders - still living by the River Awash where the first River Apes had evolved. They were ominously war-like and had evolved complex verbal communication skills. They were almost talking. Finally there were the Firemakers. Forced away from East Africa by volcanoes and the violence of the riversiders, they had expanded out across much of the world. They made beautiful stone tools and clothing and discovered fire.

When hominids from the different types met the consequences would change the world forever.