and prosthetics to portray human ancestors. Over 2,000 actors applied to join the series, out of which fourteen were selected. The fourteen actors had to spend five weeks with scientific experts as well as movement and voice coaches to recreate the early hominins. The complicated training programme was deemed to be necessary since an actor acting in the wrong way would easily have broken the illusion of the programme. Using actors presented a challenge since special effects had to be employed to change the look of both their faces and their bodies to match the appearance of the hominins they were portraying. The costumes were created using the best available scientific evidence. A massive amount of prosthetics, well over 1,500 pieces, were created and used during filming alongside other components and animatronics. The makeup effects were created by David White and Sacha Carter (Altered States FX) and the prosthetics were created by numerous artists, including Nik Williams, Matthew Smith (Animated Extras) and Barrie Gower (BGFX). The makeup process for the actors took five hours every morning of filming and some of the costumes made it difficult to perform tasks unrelated to the programme; actors in Paranthropus boisei costumes for instance found it difficult to eat their lunch and drinking was a problem in most of the costumes. Many actors used straws for all drinks. During promotion of the series, the BBC did a publicity photoshoot with the actors David Rubin and Suzanne Cave, who among other roles portrayed elder male and female Homo ergaster, respectively. Like The Giant Claw (2002) and Land of Giants (2003), special episodes of Walking with Dinosaurs, Walking with Cavemen includes a presenter rather than simply a narrator. The series is presented by the British researcher Robert Winston, who had previously hosted other BBC series on humans, such as Your Life in Their Hands (1979–1987), The Human Body (1998) and Child of Our Time (2000–2020). The American version of the programme replaced Winston's narration and appearances and was originally going to be hosted by Nigel Marven, who previously appeared in episodes of Walking with Dinosaurs and in the series Sea Monsters, but the production team eventually instead created a version hosted by the actor Alec Baldwin. Filming Most of the footage of Walking with Cavemen was shot on location. The series was filmed over 41 days. The vast majority of the filming days, 29 days, were