- 5/24/2025
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00:00Our planet was created from fragments of the universe. Then, life was born.
00:16It would grow, expand, and survive, often being sustained by the planet itself.
00:31Life kept expanding its frontiers, but most would branch away and fade into extinction.
00:43Until finally, one would survive to look out upon the universe and wonder what role it would play in the race for life, on the miracle planet.
01:01DINOSAURS
01:13Fifty-five million years ago, dinosaurs had vanished into extinction. The world was left to mammals.
01:21It was still a restless Earth. Forces deep within were at work.
01:25In 2003, scientists from the University of Oslo discovered strange formations on the bottom of the sea, off the coast of Greenland.
01:37They found some 800 holes, almost as if they had been drilled.
01:42They were about two and a half miles deep, and they had been dated to 55 million years ago.
01:49CONTINENTS
01:53The continents were still being shunted across the globe. Slowly and steadily, powerful forces were at work under the Earth's crust.
02:02The continent of Europe began to break away from what is now Greenland.
02:07Deep within the sediment of the seafloor, vast reserves of methane hydrate, a highly flammable gas, lay frozen.
02:14When warmed, the gas breaks from its bond with oxygen, and gushes to the surface.
02:24DINOSAURS
02:45When exposed to air, methane spontaneously ignites. Flames thousands of feet high blasted into the sky.
02:54It's a very efficient greenhouse gas, and the world went into another phase of warming.
03:04This period lasted about five million years, and once again the planet was transformed.
03:15STONE
03:19Here in Oregon, in the United States, one of the changes brought on by the warming is plain to see.
03:27For Dr. Robert Sussman of Washington University in St. Louis, this is a place of fascination.
03:33Embedded here in stone is the first angiosperm, the broad-leafed flowering trees so common on Earth today, the oaks and maples and alders.
03:44This is a katsura tree that lived probably 44 million years ago, and it's about 25 meters tall and had a wide canopy.
03:52What we assume is that once the dinosaurs disappeared, that the angiosperms were very low and very small.
03:59And then, because of global warming, they became larger and larger. And this made an ideal environment for primates to evolve.
04:07Our ancestors, the primates, which grew to become monkeys, apes, and humans, still lived in the shelter and safety of trees.
04:17The branches of these new flowering trees grow out and across each other as they compete for sunlight.
04:24The primates now had new surroundings to live in. Food resources became more plentiful.
04:31Many primates still live in the broad-leaf forests of the world.
04:36They could take advantage of all of the resources, mainly the fruit and the leaves.
04:41And also, they didn't have to worry about the terrestrial predators, find places to sleep and basically live in the trees.
04:48It developed a whole new environment for them.
04:51But living in tall trees does require good eyesight.
04:53But living in tall trees does require good eyesight.
04:57Our primitive ancestor, Carpolestes, lived in the short trees of early forests.
05:02As the new broad-leaf forests grew, another primate appeared.
05:07This one, Shoshonas, had radically different eyes, now facing forward.
05:12While the planet stayed warm and humid, the broad-leaf forests were able to spread into higher latitudes.
05:19As they expanded their range, so too did the early primates.
05:31But the expansion was to be short-lived.
05:34Forces were still at work to make the climate change yet again.
05:37Forces were still at work to make the climate change yet again.
05:41This time, from the south.
05:45Today, Antarctica is a frozen continent covered by ice and glaciers.
05:57When Greenland and Europe were wrenched apart, the result was global warming.
06:03When the change came from the south, it was to be cold.
06:08Antarctica was part of the large continent Gondwana, joined to South America and Australia.
06:14Then, it had a temperate climate.
06:18The continent was warmed by currents that flowed down from the equator,
06:22much as the Gulf Stream warms parts of the north today.
06:33Antarctica became isolated as Gondwana was torn apart.
06:38Australia and South America drifted north,
06:42and the circumpolar current encompassed Antarctica, locking in the frigid air.
06:49Antarctica froze, and the world changed.
06:55Temperatures, which had been kept high because of the methane released from under the sea, now plummeted.
07:05The broadleaf forests retreated, producing ice and glaciers.
07:10Primates were left stranded in pockets of forest before they, too, vanished.
07:26This area of the Sahara to the west of Egypt was more than a century old.
07:31The ice and glaciers had melted.
07:35This area of the Sahara to the west of Egypt was once forest.
07:40Then it became a remnant patch, before it turned to desert.
07:48Dr. Yousri Atiyah of the Egyptian Geological Museum
07:52searches for the remains of the primates that once lived here.
07:56And they are all around.
07:59So far, over 22 different species have been identified from the remnants of their jaws or skulls.
08:11One of the early primates that lived here is an ancestor called Caterpithecus.
08:16When its skull was found in 1992, it stood out as being unique.
08:20The eyes are completely different to those of other primates of the same period.
08:28When the two skulls are compared, the eye sockets of one have no backing,
08:33while those of Caterpithecus do.
08:37The bone behind the sockets is called the post-orbital septum.
08:42While it may seem unimportant, it was a crucial step in the evolution of primates.
08:46This feature is shared by many modern primates.
08:50Gibbons have it, so do chimps, and so do we.
08:54But how would this be important for primates?
08:58To find the answers, you need to study the eyes,
09:02something that Dr. Callum Ross of the University of Chicago has been doing for years.
09:07He is an expert in primate eyesight, a speciality of the University of Chicago.
09:12He has studied the eyes of primates for over a century.
09:16He has studied the eyes of primates for over a century.
09:20He has studied the eyes of primates for over a century.
09:23He is an expert in primate eyesight,
09:27especially the significance of the post-orbital septum.
09:31The post-orbital septum evolved because of some unusual changes in the eye,
09:36and so when you look inside the eye, you find a clue about why the post-orbital septum might have evolved.
09:41This long-tailed macaque found in Asia has a post-orbital septum,
09:45while the more primitive, Galago from Africa, does not.
09:48The macaque's eye on the right has a circular black spot.
09:53The macaque's eye on the right has a circular black spot.
09:58The Galago has not.
10:01This is called a fovea, made up of many small specks, which are the photoreceptor cells.
10:06These detected light.
10:09The fovea is a part of the retina where the photoreceptor cells are concentrated
10:14and is critical for sharp vision.
10:17A primate without a post-orbital septum has fewer photoreceptor cells,
10:22which tend to be widely scattered.
10:25Modern primates have far more.
10:36The sharpest eyesight is crucial for a tree-dwelling primate.
10:41On a computer, Dr. Ross simulates the differences.
10:46The image is not as good as this.
10:49The image that they see with their eyes is blurry in comparison with what we see.
10:55So they're not as good at seeing fine details as we are.
10:59Whereas in contrast, an animal with a fovea,
11:02so what you see here is the image around the periphery of the visual field is quite blurred.
11:07When we visualize objects,
11:10we see the light reflected from them focused onto the retina.
11:16The more condensed the photoreceptor cells, the sharper the image.
11:23But even with a fovea, if the eyeball is wobbling in the skull,
11:27the image will be blurred.
11:31The important thing is that the image is not blurred.
11:35The importance of the postorbital septum is that it holds the eyeballs firmly in place,
11:40so images are focused even when moving along branches.
11:45Vital for a tree-dwelling primate.
11:49So when you find a postorbital septum in the fossil record,
11:53that suggests that those animals had a fovea,
11:56and it suggests they had high visual acuity,
11:58perhaps the visual acuity of the degree that you see in living monkeys today.
12:02There was another crucial component that eyesight would bring to a primate.
12:21As the climate cooled and the forests diminished,
12:25our distant ancestors would have needed good eyesight more than ever.
12:31Food would be getting harder to find.
12:34Competition would be stiffer.
12:40Early primates still visualized the world in two colors.
12:52Eyes have different types of receptors.
12:55Each is sensitive to one or more wavelengths of light.
13:01More advanced primates developed the ability to see in three colors.
13:09The forest turned green,
13:11a crucial advantage for finding food.
13:27As the forests retreated,
13:28fruits became scarce and many primates turned to eating leaves.
13:33Trees tried to stop this by adding toxins.
13:42Fresh new leaves were there for the taking,
13:45so long as you could pick them out.
13:48These red leaves are the fresh ones, tender and juicy.
13:53Seeing color has its advantages.
13:59Then, eyesight moved evolution along another step,
14:03but in a way which was unexpected.
14:11Gorillas, chimps, proboscis monkeys and others
14:14belong to a group called the arthropods.
14:17Like us, they have muscles which allow them to make facial expressions.
14:21Strangely, this was to push the evolution of primates
14:24even further along the path to Earth.
14:27With good eyesight, primates like chimps
14:30can detect slight variations in expressions,
14:33something which is important when you start to live in social groups.
14:46A chimp must be able to recognize other chimps from a distance,
14:50and they can do this because they can see in detail.
14:53At the Primate Research Center in Kyoto, Japan,
14:56experiments are carried out with chimps
14:59to ascertain how many facial expressions they can recognize.
15:06This is a greeting expression with rounded lips
15:09and the accompanying ʻūt.
15:12This is a greeting expression with rounded lips
15:15and the accompanying ʻūt.
15:18This is a greeting expression with rounded lips
15:20and the accompanying ʻūt.
15:26This one is happy, as he's just had a tasty snack.
15:30And this expression is fear.
15:38In the experiment, the chimp sits in front of a monitor
15:41where two different facial expressions are shown,
15:44along with a related call.
15:47When the correct expression is pressed to correspond with the call,
15:50it tells the chimp he's got it right.
16:01They get it right most of the time.
16:12With developed eyesight, primates could read emotions
16:16and build social bonds.
16:20This is part of the journey towards becoming human
16:26on the Miracle Planet.
16:33If the oceans were the cradle for early life,
16:36then Africa is the cradle for humanity.
16:43Climate change has had a huge impact on our evolution.
16:51As the continent of Gondwana broke up,
16:54India began to move north faster than the other land masses.
16:59It collided with the Asian continent,
17:02forcing up the mountains of the Himalayas.
17:14By seven million years ago,
17:17they had reached around 5,000 meters, 16,000 feet.
17:23This was when hominids began to appear
17:26in the fossil records of Africa.
17:29In summer, a strong up-current of dry, warm air
17:32rises into the sky over the Himalayas.
17:36The dry air blows down to Africa.
17:41From being wet and rainy all year,
17:43Africa began to have distinct seasons.
17:51The Sahara Desert started to encroach on the forests.
17:54As the forests vanished still further,
17:57grasslands opened up,
18:00and early humans were faced with extinction.
18:03To survive, they were forced to alter their lifestyle.
18:06Two million years ago,
18:09there were at least two species of hominid living side by side.
18:11That evidence was found
18:14in the southern tip of the African continent.
18:17Fossils from four million years ago to recent times
18:20are buried in lairs.
18:23This area has been recognized
18:26as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
18:29Sometimes it's called the Cradle of Humankind.
18:32Dr. Francis Thackeray of the Transvaal Museum
18:35is an expert on early human evolution.
18:37We have remarkable deposits
18:40which are between 1.7 and 1.5 million years old.
18:43And in these deposits, we have two species.
18:46We have Paranthropus robustus, an ape-man,
18:49and early Homo, living side by side.
18:52It was always thought
18:55that there was only one hominid species at this time.
18:58To find that there were two came as a shock.
19:01That was the first time
19:04That was the time period of global cooling
19:07as well as drying.
19:10And eventually, the tropical forest
19:13would have contracted and retreated
19:16northwards towards the equator.
19:19That was a time period
19:22when Australopithecus africanus evolved
19:25into other forms, potentially.
19:28That's one model.
19:30Australopithecus africanus could be considered
19:33a distant ancestor,
19:36certainly a distant relative of these two forms.
19:39The two different hominids,
19:42robustus and early Homo,
19:45began to go their different paths.
19:48They chose different diets.
19:51Robustus seems to have mainly been eating
19:54tubers and vegetables,
19:57like this one that Dr. Thackeray is digging for.
20:01It's very clear that
20:04robustus would have been eating
20:07plant food such as this,
20:10these underground sources of food.
20:13There is a lot of carbohydrate in here
20:16and a lot of good nutritious food.
20:19In robustus, in addition to the very large molars,
20:22we also have the very large temporalis muscles
20:25that went down to the lower jaw.
20:27We can say that that was likely to be an adaptation
20:30for eating coarse, fibrous food.
20:33There are other hints to the diet of robustus.
20:36Examination of fossil teeth show many rough patches,
20:39perhaps from grit,
20:43while the teeth of hominid fossils are smooth.
20:49The divergence in diet had a major impact
20:52on human evolution.
20:54Early Homo chose to eat meat.
21:08Dr. Henry Bunn of the University of Wisconsin
21:11studies modern hunter-gatherer societies
21:14to get a glimpse of the past.
21:19Recent bones with cuts from modern hunters
21:21when compared to marks made on fossil bone
21:24two million years ago are remarkably similar,
21:27showing us that both were cutting meat from bone.
21:31The other kind of modern study
21:34that provides invaluable insight
21:37for understanding the patterns that we see
21:40at ancient archaeological sites
21:43involves the study of modern hunter-gatherers
21:46or foragers, as they're called, such as the Hadza.
21:48The Hadza society provides a particularly relevant example
21:51in that they live in a rift valley,
21:54lake basin environment
21:57that's not that different
22:00from what seems to have characterized
22:03parts of eastern Africa two and a half million years ago.
22:06The Hadza people of Tanzania
22:09have not moved with the modern world.
22:12They still live the simple life
22:15they have for generations.
22:19This group, which is studied by Dr. Bunn,
22:22has about 15 people living together in three families.
22:27As with most hunter-gatherer societies,
22:30the women collect the roots
22:33and other vegetables and fruits.
22:36The tubers being dug out
22:39are probably no different from those dug by Robustus
22:42nearly two million years ago.
22:49The men are the hunters,
22:52but they will often track carnivores
22:55like lions or leopards who have made a kill.
22:58They either scavenge for the carcass
23:01or, acting in a group,
23:04drive the cat away to steal its prey.
23:09When the meat is cut from the bones,
23:12the Hadza use knives,
23:15where early Homo would have used flints.
23:18It's the same.
23:21Meat is the preferred diet now as it was then.
23:30Two and a half million years ago,
23:33there's food out there.
23:36There's high-quality food out there, and we want it.
23:39And one of the inventions that occurred at that point
23:42was the means to cut it off of a carcass
23:45or cut it off of a bone
23:48simply because the Hominins didn't have
23:51the physical size
23:54or the intellectual ability
23:57to really get into meat-eating in a big way.
24:00The reason being, the challenge being,
24:03that meat is a very hot item.
24:08Competition for meat would have been fierce.
24:13Over seven million years of human evolution,
24:15there have been at least 20 different species.
24:18Except for one, they have all died out.
24:45Forces deep within the planet
24:48were soon to impose change upon our early ancestors.
24:51The Great Rift Valley of eastern Africa
24:54stretches 6,000 kilometers,
24:57over 3,500 miles.
25:00It's where Africa is still being torn apart today
25:03by tectonic forces.
25:06The planet itself has been destroyed
25:09by a massive earthquake
25:11and in more recent times
25:14upon the evolution of the human race.
25:17Inside the Earth,
25:20the temperatures are as hot as the sun.
25:23Sometimes the mantle rises closer
25:26to the Earth's crust.
25:29This is a recent temperature profile
25:32of the Earth's interior.
25:35It shows a powerful thrust
25:37is still rising under the African continent.
25:40But a few million years ago,
25:43the surge was even more powerful.
25:46Then the mantle lifted part of the continent
25:49and began to rip it apart,
25:52forming the Great Rift Valley.
25:55The regions near the rift became dry highlands
25:58and the eruptions along the length of it
26:01created mountain ranges
26:04of 6,500 feet in height.
26:07The eruption of the rift
26:10changed the vast grasslands
26:13into a variety of habitats.
26:20Dr. Elizabeth Vibra of Yale University
26:23thinks that these changes
26:26altered the lives of our more recent ancestors.
26:29This, she believes, was caused
26:32by the change in the grassland animals.
26:34And an increase in the number of predators.
26:52Especially at these times,
26:55when the Earth was cooling,
26:58the African environments were becoming
27:01more seasonal and more open
27:04and sometimes there was a huge
27:07influx of new species of carnivores.
27:10And there were far more carnivores around
27:13with our unfortunate early ancestors
27:16than there are around with us today.
27:30There is ample evidence that early Homo,
27:32as well as eating meat, became meat.
27:44Moving onto the grasslands
27:47was probably forced upon early humans,
27:50but they began to gain the upper hand.
27:53The brain started to grow.
27:58This small brain belonged to an early plant eater.
28:02In contrast, this early meat eater
28:05grew nearly twice as big,
28:08while the extinct plant eater, Robustus,
28:11remained small.
28:14The human brain consumes more energy
28:17than any other part of the body.
28:20Perhaps the high protein content of meat
28:23helped it to grow.
28:28Certainly early humans needed their brain
28:30to help them survive and to live cooperatively.
28:37Meat eating and brain expansion
28:40go hand in hand.
28:43One supports the other.
28:46If some hominin lineages had not begun to eat meat
28:49in a more significant way,
28:52then we could perhaps use the example
28:55of the robust Australopithecines
28:57as an explanation for where that might have led.
29:00They became extinct by a million years ago.
29:03So, in a real sense, I think you could say,
29:06with some qualifications,
29:09meat is what made us human.
29:12Other human species continue to appear
29:15and disappear in Africa,
29:18and each time their brains grew even larger.
29:21One of our immediate ancestors, Homo erectus,
29:24had a brain larger than its predecessor.
29:28Homo erectus migrated out of Africa
29:31and spread to various parts of Asia.
29:34Their descendants traveled to Indonesia
29:37to become Java man.
29:40Then they reached China and became the Peking man.
29:43But both became extinct.
29:50Homo sapiens appeared about 200,000 years ago.
29:54And finally, we made our first appearance
29:57on the family tree.
30:00Our brain had grown the largest of all surviving humans.
30:03It wasn't just acquiring a large brain
30:06which allowed us to survive.
30:09Another species had an equally large brain,
30:12the Neanderthals.
30:15They appeared about 300,000 years ago.
30:18Their brain size was exactly the same as ours.
30:20In body height, they were also about the same,
30:23but slightly more robust.
30:40Neanderthals migrated to Europe
30:43in the middle of the Ice Age.
30:46They were a hardy race as well as being good hunters.
30:48But they are now gone from the miracle planet.
30:51And we remain.
30:56From archaeological evidence,
30:59it seems that both Neanderthal and Homo sapiens
31:02shared very similar abilities.
31:05In this part of southwestern France,
31:08there are many Neanderthal sites.
31:14The Réjourdoux prehistoric site was discovered by chance
31:16while the landowner was digging in his garden.
31:20There are Neanderthal remains here
31:23from 70,000 years ago.
31:26Dr. Jean-Michel Genest has researched this site.
31:29He knows that the Neanderthals
31:32had the technical ability to make and use tools.
31:46The data we have on the tools of the Neanderthals
31:49show that there were tools that were very specialized
31:52and that were only used to scrape the skin.
31:55And besides that, they had tools to do a little bit of everything,
31:58depending on the moment.
32:01And they were used to cut tendons, to make butchery,
32:04to scrape the skin and, why not, to cut a stick to make a spade.
32:07So they had a range of tools very suitable for their needs.
32:17They hunted the large bison
32:20that roamed Europe during the Ice Age.
32:23Their sites are found all across the continent.
32:26Their population may have reached half a million.
32:29Everything seemed set for success.
32:32Dr. Genest even believes
32:35that they were capable of thoughts similar to ours.
32:38The Neanderthals had the ability
32:41to make and use tools.
32:43Dr. Genest even believes
32:46that they were capable of thoughts similar to ours.
32:53The skeleton of this Neanderthal
32:56is exactly as it was found.
32:59Perhaps evidence that they had thoughts of some afterlife
33:02and buried their dead.
33:05The two different species of humans
33:08seemed so similar.
33:11But what gave us the edge?
33:19There's an intriguing theory
33:22that might provide an answer.
33:25Dr. Jeffrey Leitman
33:28of New York's Mount Sinai School of Medicine
33:31compared the two skulls
33:34and then noticed a minor difference in the shape.
33:52It was at the base of the skull.
33:56With Neanderthals,
33:59the central part of the base is flat.
34:01But in the modern human skull,
34:04it is rounded.
34:07The difference corresponded to the upper side of the throat
34:10where the larynx or voice box is situated.
34:13The two species had their larynx
34:16at different levels.
34:21The Neanderthal is on the left,
34:24modern humans on the right.
34:27The flatness of their skull base
34:30tells us their larynx would be up much higher
34:33and that their overall vocal tract
34:36would be very different than that which you find
34:39in living human beings.
34:42This tells us that Neanderthals
34:45could not speak the way we speak today.
34:48When the larynx is in a high position,
34:51the distance from the mouth to the vocal tract is short.
34:53We let our voices resonate
34:56in the vocal tract.
34:59With a short vocal tract,
35:02Neanderthals would be limited.
35:05The general ambience would be different.
35:08According to some linguists,
35:11they probably couldn't make certain of what we call
35:14the quantal vowel sounds,
35:17the ones we call in English,
35:20the sounds in boot, father or feet.
35:23And with the same speed that we do.
35:26The hallmark of our kind
35:29is our ability to have fully articulate speech.
35:32This is what sets us apart
35:35from all other animals.
35:38And this is what set us apart from Neanderthals.
35:45Modern science now has the technology
35:48to investigate down to the molecular level.
35:51Dr. Simon Fisher and Cecilia Lye
35:54of the Wellcome Trust Center in England
35:57have identified a gene that is involved with speech.
36:00It's called FOXP2
36:03and is attached to the human chromosome number 7.
36:09They think this gene evolved more recently than 200,000 years,
36:13which would suggest that FOXP2
36:16appeared after we had evolved.
36:19It might have improved brain functions
36:22that are used for language skills,
36:25but we don't know as yet.
36:32We think that FOXP2 is a very exciting discovery
36:35because it clearly has had a dramatic impact
36:38on human speech and language abilities.
36:41But it's important to realize
36:44that this is just one piece of a bigger puzzle.
36:46But the great thing is that we now have a tool
36:49we can use FOXP2 to find other elements
36:52of the pathway and of the puzzle.
36:5640,000 years ago, Europe was experiencing
36:59the last peak of an ice age.
37:02In the north, the glaciers expanded
37:05and covered that part of the continent.
37:08In those conditions, perhaps it was language skills
37:11which gave us the edge over the Neanderthals.
37:16We would have been able to share information
37:19about the large migrating herds
37:22so we could plan ahead for the hunts
37:25and would be able to record the information we had gathered.
37:28It's thought that the marks on this bone
37:31might be a calendar of sorts.
37:34It was made by modern humans 35,000 years ago.
37:37But we don't know for sure.
37:40We don't know for sure
37:42what it was like 30,000 years ago.
37:54We had started on a path
37:57that no other species had followed.
38:00These paintings on the walls of a cave in France
38:03show our ability to picture the world around us.
38:06We not only spoke a complex language,
38:09we began to transmit knowledge to future generations.
38:12We began to transmit knowledge to future generations.
38:36Indeed, we have come a long way from those fires
38:39our distant ancestors lit in the African night.
38:42our distant ancestors lit in the African night.
38:47Dr. Ian Tattersall of the American Museum of Natural History
38:50Dr. Ian Tattersall of the American Museum of Natural History
38:53believes it was complex language
38:56that allowed the development of symbolic thought,
38:59the communication of ideas and beliefs.
39:02Language is more or less nowadays inextricable
39:05from our symbolic mental processes
39:08that allow us to understand the world in unprecedented ways
39:10and ask questions like, you know, what if?
39:13We can pose questions like that
39:16and experiment with ways of dealing with the world
39:19and of exploiting the world in a more efficient way.
39:22And that is what I think sort of made Homo sapiens
39:25a unbeatable competitor when they came on the scene
39:28and what ultimately led to the demise of the Neanderthals.
39:3130,000 years ago, the fate of the two human species,
39:35Homo sapiens and Neanderthals, came to a crossroads.
39:39Complex verbal communication allowed Homo sapiens
39:42to share thoughts and ideas,
39:45to cooperate in the search for food
39:48and the struggle for existence.
39:51It was a struggle that the Neanderthals would lose
39:54and there would be only one species left
39:57on the miracle planet.
40:01In a rural area in southwestern France
40:04lies one of the last Neanderthal sites.
40:06Immediately above the Neanderthal remains
40:09are those of Homo sapiens.
40:12Perhaps Neanderthals were driven away from their former habitat
40:16by the more capable modern humans.
40:19Or perhaps the Neanderthals quietly left on their own.
40:23Whatever.
40:2530,000 years ago, they died out.
40:28We became the last survivors.
40:31For the past 4 billion years, the pace seems to have picked up.
40:35Perhaps our mastery of language is taking us
40:38toward a new and faster process of evolution.
40:41I think it is a fascinating point
40:44that language is a kind of second genetics.
40:47Genetics itself lasted for the first 4 billion years
40:50of life's history and then quite suddenly
40:53Darwinian evolution, genetic evolution,
40:56gave rise to creatures with big brains
40:58which developed a second kind of genetics
41:01which is language and the transmission
41:04of linguistic information down through generations.
41:07That gave rise to a second kind of evolution
41:10which is called cultural evolution
41:13which looks like genetic evolution in a superficial sense
41:16but it's enormously faster.
41:19And our lives have become faster.
41:22We live in an age when technology moves
41:25at a pace that perhaps we cannot stop.
41:28It has transcended the message we are trying to send.
41:31What took decades now can be achieved in less than a year.
41:35And as each year passes, the pace increases.
41:38As a species, we now can influence the climate
41:42just as microbes did in the early history of the earth.
41:58We must learn the history of our planet
42:01which has nurtured life for billions of years.
42:04Dr. Noam Chomsky knows that the choice for the future
42:07is ultimately ours.
42:10This is a question of history, not evolution.
42:13And it's a question of culture and intelligence
42:17and the evolution of life.
42:20It's a question of evolution.
42:23It's a question of evolution.
42:25It's a question of culture and intelligence
42:28and sympathy and mutual understanding
42:31and mutual aid and support and so on.
42:34Those are capacities that we have.
42:37We know from our own history and experience
42:40that those capacities can be overwhelmed
42:43by other, more destructive,
42:46savage and cruel capacities that we also have.
42:51And the balance of these will determine
42:53whether the species survives in any decent form.
42:57And that's a matter of will and choice.
43:00There are no natural laws about this.
43:03As a species, we are still held captive
43:07by the only planet we know that can support life.
43:14Science shows us that life was nurtured
43:17in the oceans of this planet soon after its birth
43:20and that it matured through long ages of change.
43:23And that it flourished.
43:29Finally, it spread out across the world.
43:32It diversified into myriad forms,
43:35most of which would fade away to become only a memory.
43:41After millions of years, a single species
43:44was to be the pervading force.
43:47But that could change in the blink of an eye.
43:54If we have learnt anything at all from our history,
43:57it must be that in the end, life prevails
44:00and ultimately will be the victor on the miracle planet.
44:23Transcription by ESO. Translation by —
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