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00:00What if an alien biologist from outer space visited Earth?
00:25Imagine he was looking for the most intelligent of our planets
00:29tens of millions of species.
00:36He'd probably start with the apes.
00:41They all seem pretty smart.
00:44A chimpanzee can do most of the things a two-and-a-half-year-old human child can.
01:00If he compared their DNA, our alien investigator would discover they're almost identical.
01:16Biologically, he wouldn't hesitate to classify we humans as just another kind of chimp.
01:22But if he'd stayed and watched the way humans live and behave, he'd soon have seen a huge gulf between our capabilities and those of all the other apes.
01:39He'd have seen billions and billions of us dominating the Earth.
01:44How did that happen? How did we, homo sapiens, become so different?
01:55Ours is perhaps the strangest journey of all.
01:58This is the story of our evolution.
02:00In this programme, we're going to take a five-million-year journey from chimpanzees to modern man.
02:18I'm going to meet our closest living relatives and discover how we used our hands to get ahead.
02:35By following in our ancestors' footsteps, I'm going to see how we came up against some very serious design flaws.
02:42Why giving birth is so hard.
02:52Why, for so many years, we could do little more than groat.
03:01And how talking is worth dying for.
03:05A risk that means that when we open our mouths to speak, there's a chance we can choke.
03:10We can choke.
03:23I'll find out how the human race almost became extinct.
03:29And what it was that saved us.
03:40And I'll be looking into the future, when we may be able to create perfect humans.
03:49And even defy the aging process.
03:54Finally, I'll ask where evolution, whether for good or bad, may lead us next.
03:59Homo sapiens, both man and animal. The hairless ape.
04:09Yet we're so different from all other animals on the planet.
04:13So where did we come from?
04:20For thousands of years, we turned to the supernatural for the answer.
04:27But there is another explanation, that we slowly but surely evolved, just like all other living things.
04:41Science can explain everything that makes a human being.
04:46Science can explain everything that makes a human being.
04:50Our behavior, our intelligence, even our culture.
04:54By the gradual course of evolution over millions of years.
04:57The big clues to our past, come from these chimpanzees, our closest living relatives.
05:13Until 50 years ago, we wrote them off as dumb animals.
05:17But since then, we've had to change our tune.
05:19What do you want beautiful?
05:23The more we study them, the more we realize just how much we have in common.
05:28There we go.
05:30And the resemblance isn't just skin deep.
05:37Bit of avocado and monkey nut.
05:40Bit of pineapple, anyone? Anyone?
05:44The evidence that we really are descended from a chimp-like ancestor
05:47is deep within the workings of our bodies, in our genes.
05:55I still love you.
06:01Amazingly, we're more genetically similar to chimps than Indian elephants are to African elephants.
06:0799% of our key genes are exactly the same.
06:12That's just 1% different.
06:17So what's the story in that 1% that's taken us from ape to man?
06:25I'd like to think that we at least behave a little differently.
06:29My table manners are marginally better than this.
06:32What are you doing?
06:36But my life is so much more complicated.
06:38I flew to get here, I drive a car, I watch TV, I use a mobile phone, a laptop.
06:45All these guys have to do is eat, groom and play.
06:50Something amazing must have happened to our ancestors to let us dominate the world.
06:56What triggered that transformation into the super intelligent beings we are today?
07:03What are you doing? What are you doing?
07:07Surprisingly, it was nothing to do with our brains.
07:11Between 4 and 5 million years ago, our ancestors started to spend more time on the ground.
07:17And two different strategies emerged.
07:22Chimps evolved walking on their knuckles as a way to get around.
07:26But we took a more radical approach.
07:31And since then, we've never looked back.
07:34The first step in our journey was just that.
07:37We stood up on two legs.
07:42We became what is known as bipedal.
07:47Over the years, there have been many theories as to what turned us into bipedal apes.
07:53The current thinking is that walking upright evolved in the forest
07:57and then became a more efficient way of travelling between patches of trees.
08:02It was a very, very gradual process.
08:07And at this point, we were no more intelligent than chimps.
08:21Our brain wasn't as big as it is today.
08:24Five million years ago, it was much smaller.
08:27The same size as a chimpanzee's.
08:32So why was walking upright such a crucial step?
08:37Well, by putting all our weight on our feet, we freed up our hands to do other things.
08:51If you look at the adult chimps in this reserve in Cameroon, you soon see how amazing human hands are.
08:56All these chimps have been rescued from the bush meat trade.
09:08They're now looked after by Doudana here, who has a very special relationship with them.
09:12The chimps have been playing with Doudana's shoelaces for years.
09:28There seems to be an element of competition here.
09:43The chimps never give up.
09:44They tie themselves in knots, trying to get it right.
09:47But however hard they practice, for however many years, they can't compete.
10:04As you probably remember from being a kid, learning to tie your shoelace is more complicated than it looks.
10:18And chimps just don't have what it takes.
10:29So why do we beat chimps at tying shoelaces hands down?
10:32We can control our hands with more precision than any other creature can.
10:57No, you're spelling it wrong.
11:09That's it.
11:11Probably not.
11:18It's because of our thumbs.
11:20My thumb compared to a chimps is really long and very mobile.
11:27If you look at Gorant, he can't actually move his thumb and this knuckle here more than this.
11:33Whereas I can move mine right across here.
11:36So whereas he can just do this and this on the side of his finger, I can go one, two, three, four.
11:42Making my hand an expert tool for handling small and delicate objects.
11:51It was this precise touch that was crucial in making us what we are today.
11:57We couldn't do any of this if we were still using our hands for walking.
12:02But our ancestors didn't evolve this new anatomy just overnight.
12:17It took hundreds of thousands of years and it also took an important change in the climate to make this evolutionary leap away from the chimps.
12:37It was then that we parted company.
12:42The chimps stayed in the trees.
12:48We walked out onto the newly formed African savannah.
12:51The climate change suited our ancestors very well.
13:15Over the next few million years, it got drier and drier.
13:19Completely transforming the landscape from thick forest into savannah.
13:34A new world to explore.
13:37And a world in which we made our next big breakthrough.
13:40As our ancestors used their hands less for climbing and more for holding things,
13:57they would have got much better at manipulating basic tools.
14:02Some of the earliest tools thought to have been used by man have been found in caves just like this.
14:13All these tools were very simple.
14:17And also very similar.
14:19This was state of the art technology two and a half million years ago.
14:29This old bit of rock was actually a kind of eight man pen knife.
14:33Hard to believe, but it would have worked.
14:35This cutting edge almost matches steel.
14:39To be honest, it is very, very basic.
14:41But even more surprising is that no one came up with much in the way of improvements.
14:47This remained the state of the art tool for a million years.
14:52Think how much modern technology, like the mobile phone, has moved on in just the last ten years.
15:07Yet this stone tool didn't change for a million years.
15:11But that didn't mean the tool users were standing still.
15:13In all the time that this type of tool was in use, something was changing.
15:23The bodies of those ape men.
15:28And most importantly, their brain.
15:31It was slowly getting bigger.
15:33Much bigger.
15:35A new brainier ape man was evolving and he would be able to do much more than a chimp.
15:43But why did our brain start growing bigger than those of the other apes?
15:50Well, once we'd left the trees for the plains, we had a new challenge to face.
15:55We weren't alone.
16:04You can see the problem even today, when you get out of the vehicle and you go on safari on foot.
16:13Taking a walk on the savannah on your own is asking for trouble.
16:15And it gets more dangerous, the darker it becomes.
16:28Because this is the domain of the big cats.
16:31At night, baboons try to find a hiding place.
16:41They stick close together and if they can, take refuge in a tree.
16:45But when they hear a leopard coming, they still panic because they can't see well at night.
17:04The leopard tries to terrorize the troop and force them into breaking ranks.
17:07Once separated from the rest, a baboon's a sitting duck.
17:21Imagine what it would have been like for our ancestors out here, 24 hours a day, trying to keep their families safe from wild animals, with the only thing to defend themselves being stones to throw at them.
17:39And without a torch.
17:46This is no place for a soft, defenseless human to be out late on his own.
17:51With big predators around, you feel incredibly vulnerable.
18:09Dumball.
18:11Obviously, I'm not here on my own.
18:12I've got Michael here as well.
18:14And he's carrying what is considerably more than an ape-man's pen-knoth.
18:18OK, Michael, shall we go?
18:20What was that last sound?
18:21Because I...
18:22It's been difficult for Dumball.
18:24Right, I'm not here.
18:28And there's solid evidence to show we humans really were under attack.
18:32Again, the answers lie deep in ancient caves.
18:43Ape-man skulls have been found with holes in them that exactly match the teeth of leopard, hyena and sabre-toothed tiger.
18:51One cave contained the remains of over 300 baboons and 150 ape-men.
18:57Between one and three million years ago, our ancestors were being torn apart and eaten by big cats.
19:16Even by day, life here is no walk in the park.
19:20But like us, at least baboons can see much better in the light.
19:23They live in large troops, which means many pairs of eyes to spot a threat.
19:35And more combined force to fight off a predator.
19:53Safety in numbers gives baboons surprising confidence.
20:06In fact, they're downright cocky.
20:09For our ancestors too, sticking together was the best chance of avoiding ending up as cat food.
20:27The communal life created new challenges and forced us to really start using our brains.
20:33Living together brings a whole new element, a social life.
20:44And the bigger your group, the bigger your social problems can be.
20:47You need a bigger brain to cope.
20:58In a group, working at friendships and alliances is crucial.
21:05You need to remember who's who and what's what.
21:08You need to be a diplomat, so you don't get on the wrong side of those with more powerful weapons than you.
21:24A single social gap can be disastrous.
21:28Yeah, that's the only thing.
21:33There's no human being on the wrong side of the planet, so that's my mind.
21:37There's no human being on the right side of the planet.
21:40I'm thinking about having a clear vision of the ''The
21:53Oh, my God.
22:23Just like baboons, as we began to live in larger groups for safety, so our brains evolved
22:37to cope.
22:40Our social skills became increasingly important, and our brains continued to get bigger, almost
22:46four times bigger, so our skulls had to get larger too.
22:52So, one and a half million years ago, in steps giant-brained homo sapien, and world domination.
23:12No, not yet, because being the two-legged brain boxes of the savannah now gave us a problem
23:20our four-legged friends didn't have.
23:23Take wildebeest.
23:24Because the female wildebeest walks on all fours, she can afford to have wide hips.
23:32And that makes giving birth quick and easy, which is important with so many predators around.
23:38Although the baby wildebeest is big, its brain and its skull are quite small in relation to
23:52its body size, so it can slip out easily.
23:59That's true for most land mammals, but for humans, birth is where we pay the price for our
24:20big brain.
24:27If we look at the physique of modern woman, we can see why.
24:41The best design for walking upright is a slender body with narrow hips.
24:50But narrow hips are the worst possible design for a big-brained human.
24:58This was perhaps the biggest stumbling block we humans faced in our whole journey of life.
25:03We were stuck.
25:19But evolution came up with a surprising solution.
25:22Unlike almost all other mammals, our skull isn't fully formed at birth.
25:27A human baby's head is soft and squishy, allowing it to pass down the narrow birth canal.
25:45During the first 12 months of life, the bony skull plates gradually fuse together to protect it.
25:51In effect, we're all born premature.
26:00So, for the first few months, a human baby is extremely vulnerable, requiring constant care.
26:07But the payoff, a giant brain, far outweighs the risk.
26:11It seems this is the only way that we can have a large-brained baby and hang on to the narrow hips we need for walking upright.
26:22Biological problem solved.
26:24Big-brained man, homo sapien, finally bursts out onto the scene, somewhere here in East Africa, around 300,000 years ago.
26:33And with this clever, complex brain, he was able to develop new technology that early eight-man never had.
26:42OK, admittedly, they're still just little lumps of rock, but it's what they were doing with them that's really cunning.
26:49This hasn't been made by accident. It's been designed. This part here has been crafted specifically to attach to a handle.
26:59Plonk this on a stick, and what have you got? A spear. The perfect weapon for hunting.
27:04So, man started developing a more sophisticated toolkit. As well as weapons, he designed a variety of scrapers and cutters for butchering meat.
27:20But then, there was this. A bit of crumbly rock.
27:30Well, believe it or not, this led to the great masterpieces of the future. This led to the Mona Lisa. Watch.
27:37Watch.
27:46It was the first paint.
27:50It's ochre. Crumbly iron oxide.
27:54This piece was found in Blombos Cave near Cape Town in South Africa, and is at least 70,000 years old.
28:00What's amazing is that it's engraved. This abstract etching is the first recorded work of art.
28:09It marks the roots of what we now call culture, or civilization.
28:14And this old pig jawbone might even offer a clue to when religion first began.
28:20It was discovered in the same grave as an early human, and it's dated at more than 100,000 years old.
28:29It's the earliest evidence of ritual burial.
28:33The very act of carefully burying a body with other objects suggests that those people believed that death wasn't the end.
28:41That the spirit lived on.
28:51Now, for the first time, we can say that these weren't ape men.
28:56They were people who thought like you and me.
29:00It led to human civilization.
29:20It was an windowsill complex of an unknown big crisis.
29:23For the first time that it's been flesh 1,000% of the crisis in North Africa,
29:25that we had an opportunity to do not understand what was going to happen.
29:31It was the birth of a dead man, now.
29:36They had unos 2,000 years old in the middle 1996.
29:40So we had six tIndobour Pourquoi?
29:42Those early people had an understanding of the past and of the future.
29:47They recognised their own mortality.
29:49Art and religion set us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom.
29:55They're the most difficult things for scientists to explain.
30:04This is when some believe that only a divine spark could have made us truly human.
30:11But is there another way to explain these sudden breakthroughs?
30:15And they had a big procession through here.
30:18Palms were difficult to get in medieval times and so they often used branches from the...
30:22Many scientists believe that the trigger was something that we all take for granted.
30:26Because this is where the main... Language.
30:31From the fossil skulls of our ancestors,
30:34scientists know that their voice box, or larynx, was much higher up than it is today.
30:39It's still in this position in the chimps and other apes.
30:46If this was still the same for us, apart from the odd grunt or two, we wouldn't have the power of speech.
31:03The main Palm Sunday procession took place.
31:07But around 200,000 years ago, our larynx dropped to where it is today,
31:12allowing us to make more complex sounds.
31:16This is when we started to talk.
31:19And now we're going to look at the ploysters. Would you like to follow me this way?
31:21But why is talking so important to the story of the human race?
31:30You can get a clue by going back to West Africa.
31:47These chimps are collecting nuts to eat.
31:49Children also gather nuts, for not to eat, to play with.
32:06Remember collecting conkers?
32:07Chimps have to use a rock or stick to crack open the nuts.
32:18They pick up these skills by copying.
32:20The young ones watch their mothers closely, and receive an odd tidbit to keep them concentrating on the job.
32:32Five!
32:44That's a big one, isn't it?
32:45I've got three, and I've got three as well.
32:48Like the chimps, the younger children learn by copying the older ones,
32:52handing down skills across the generations.
32:54Watch out!
32:55Watch out!
32:56Watch out!
32:57Watch out!
32:58Yes!
32:59The difference is that it can take a young chimp six years to perfect its nut-cracking technique.
33:19We humans, on the other hand, can use a shortcut.
33:26We can teach even very young children simply by talking to them.
33:32That's a nice little conker.
33:33Don't eat it, Dave.
33:34Go and put it in the pile.
33:36So they can learn a new technique for opening the conkers instantly.
33:45Are you opening them with your heels?
33:47Yeah.
33:48Are you?
33:49It's much easier to do it like that, isn't it?
33:51Oh, bye-bye.
33:53Don't eat loads, because otherwise you won't.
33:57Oh, they're already conker in there.
33:59What takes chimps years to learn, modern-day children can pick up in minutes.
34:04And with language, we continue to learn new things all our lives.
34:12By 100,000 years ago, we were solving problems by talking together.
34:17We were using our big brains to communicate with each other as never before.
34:29So, we were hugely brainy.
34:32We could talk.
34:33We were perfect.
34:35No, not so.
34:37Talking gave us another big biological problem.
34:40And this one still hasn't been solved.
34:49Let's look at the adult chimps in Cameroon again.
34:51Chimps breathe mostly through their noses, and hardly ever through their mouths.
35:03They use their mouths almost entirely for feeding.
35:06So air goes down one way, food another.
35:10But for humans, it's a different story.
35:17That's good.
35:18Come on, Nicola.
35:19Come on.
35:21For us, it's more complicated.
35:27Remember as a child you were told not to talk with your mouth full?
35:30Well, there's a very good reason for this.
35:37To talk, we have to breathe through our mouths as well.
35:40So we use the same opening for talking, eating, drinking and breathing.
35:45Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you.
35:53Most of the time, this works out fine.
35:56But sometimes, things go down the wrong way with tragic results.
36:00Normally, when we swallow, a flap of cartilage covers the windpipe,
36:11so the food goes straight down to the stomach.
36:17But with our larynx now in its lower position,
36:20just occasionally food falls in and down the windpipe,
36:24where it blocks the airway to the lungs, making us choke.
36:30Every year in Britain alone, around 200 people choke to death.
36:40Talking has been so critical to our evolution
36:43that it's even worth the risk of dying for.
36:55Well, we could talk, but one thing's for sure,
36:59we hadn't evolved into biological supermen.
37:05At this point in our journey,
37:06it had been four million years since we'd split from the other apes.
37:10So let's recap what had happened to us during that time.
37:13Well, biological evolution, that is the physical changes to our bodies,
37:25has worked some slow but crucial changes in us.
37:30First, around four to five million years ago,
37:33we stood up on two legs and walked.
37:37But then it was another three million years before we started getting clever with our hands.
37:46It wasn't until over a million years later that our brains got as big as they are today.
37:51And for all this time, our only form of conversation was probably just grunting.
38:07It wasn't until very recently, around 200,000 years ago,
38:10that our larynx began to drop, which led to modern language.
38:16Are you all right?
38:17I'm not sure that you're in Jessie.
38:22But now that we could talk...
38:25..our cultural evolution could go...
38:29..into warp speed.
38:32Cultural evolution was a brand-new trend.
38:35It isn't based on genes like biological evolution.
38:38it's about the sharing of ideas talking allowed ideas and knowledge to be passed
38:48around so quickly that it was one of the greatest revolutions in the journey of
38:52life a breakthrough that set us on the path to world dominance
39:08but the story isn't over yet
39:2375,000 years ago modern talking humans were thriving here in
39:38Africa
39:45they had the anatomy which allowed them to speak and they were sharing ideas
39:50modern man with a modern brain us
39:57but at that precise moment when they had so much to look forward to disaster struck
40:08a volcano called Toba in northern Sumatra erupted
40:15this would have been the loudest noise ever heard by man
40:22it blasted vast clouds of ash and sulfur dioxide right across the planet blocking out the sun
40:29it triggered a six-year global winter that would have blighted the entire world
40:36it triggered a six-year global
40:43a six-year global winter that would have blighted the entire world
40:50in Africa
40:574,000 miles away drought and famine would have followed
41:05millions of animals would have died the animals we humans depended on for meat
41:12the animals we humans depended on for meat
41:19the animals we humans depended on for meat
41:265,000 miles
41:42Those early Homo sapiens, too, must have been decimated.
41:48Because of one freak act of nature, our ancestors nearly became extinct.
41:55DNA evidence suggests that perhaps as few as a thousand people were left.
42:02Which could mean that all six billion of us alive on Earth today
42:06are descended from those 1,000 survivors in Africa.
42:12This mega-catastrophe must have pushed man to his limits.
42:33So how did he survive?
42:43Scientists now believe what really may have saved us from extinction
42:47was working together, sharing information.
42:52To get some idea of what it must have been like after Toba blew its top,
42:56you can go to the Kalahari Desert today.
42:59It's one of the harshest places anywhere in the world.
43:02But even here, there is water and food, if you know where to look.
43:03The Jun people of northern Namibia are mainly hunter-gatherers.
43:05How do they cope with living in such heat and drought?
43:06The Jun people of northern Namibia are mainly hunter-gatherers.
43:07How do they cope with living in such heat and drought?
43:08The Jun people of northern Namibia are mainly hunter-gatherers.
43:09How do they cope with living in such heat and drought?
43:10The Jun people of northern Namibia are mainly hunter-gatherers.
43:15How do they cope with living in such heat and drought?
43:16The Jun people of northern Namibia are mainly hunter-gatherers.
43:29How do they cope with living in such heat and drought?
43:32Most importantly, they never remain isolated as a single group for long.
43:45They regularly walk for two to three days across the desert to visit different family groups.
43:51It may have been months since they last saw each other.
43:56How do they cope with living in such heat and drought?
44:16How do they cope with living in such heat and drought?
44:21How do they cope with living in such heat and drought?
44:28Once here, the highlight of the visit is swapping gifts.
44:40They do it not only to cement the bonds of friendship,
44:43but also to secure cooperation and the sharing of ideas.
44:48And out here, what your neighbours choose to tell you could well save your life.
44:53They may know where the best water sources are,
44:57or good fruiting trees, or the new hunting grounds.
45:01And of course, they can tell you the gossip.
45:04Without this regular exchange of knowledge,
45:07different villages could become isolated,
45:10and without outside help, even die out.
45:13It's now thought that it was our ability to talk and help each other in a hostile world
45:19that saved us from extinction after Toba erupted.
45:28It's encouraging to think that the very existence of the human race
45:32may owe more to cooperation than to conflict.
45:36In the meantime, the world has indicated that the world changed itself.
45:39But this is now the only thing that is ...
45:41the most important thing is to think that the human race in the world
45:43has now lived by the nature of the world.
45:46Gradually, the world recovered.
45:47And small bands of pioneering humans started to leave Africa
45:50and travel to the far corners of the Earth.
45:53By now, we humans weren't just talking and sharing ideas,
45:57By now, we humans weren't just talking and sharing ideas,
46:02we were working together as never before.
46:05And cultural evolution was spreading around the globe.
46:14But the communication skills of this cooperative modern man
46:18were still quite limited.
46:20After all, the only way he had of sharing ideas was by talking.
46:27Do either of you know where the Natural History Library is?
46:30Although telling other people what you know through speech
46:33is still vital to man today...
46:35No, no.
46:36The Natural History Library?
46:37No.
46:38..there's only so much knowledge any individual can store in his memory.
46:43You don't know where the Natural History Library is, do you?
46:45The library library?
46:46Yeah, the Natural History one. Have you heard of it?
46:50And no one person can know everything.
46:53Hi, mate. Sorry, I'm lost. I'm looking for the library.
46:56The library, yeah. Round here, up Park Street...
46:59If someone dies without passing on their ideas and culture,
47:03those ideas are lost forever.
47:10Unless, of course, they've been written down.
47:13The answer was for us to start preserving our ideas and knowledge in books.
47:26And it was only with the advent of recorded information that our new cultural evolution could accelerate again.
47:39And it was also for us to learn how to make a space rocket.
47:40Writing was an enormous breakthrough.
47:49It stopped culture being lost and meant successive generations could begin to build on what had gone before.
47:56No one could remember how to make a space rocket, but once it's written down, that information is accessible to multitudes.
48:06For two and a half thousand years, we saved our precious culture in our books.
48:17But the amount of knowledge accessible through a computer adds up to all the books in all the libraries in all the world.
48:24We might have left this guy behind five million years ago, but it's only been in the last few decades that our big brains have made this quantum leap forward in information transfer.
48:37In the age of the internet, anyone, anywhere on earth can tap into this massive central fund.
48:46Back at the forest reserve in Cameroon,
48:49Geodonic can search the web and get hold of all the same stuff as I can.
49:02And it's fast.
49:04If I download a picture into the computer, I can send it halfway around the world in seconds.
49:15Never before have ideas spread so widely, so quickly.
49:20Whether for business, education or purely for pleasure.
49:34Computers are now the core of modern culture.
49:42But without writing, and without this power to store knowledge, where would we be?
49:53The answer is here, still in the Stone Age.
49:55If you could use a time machine to bring a Stone Age baby from 35,000 years ago, and educate it here in our modern world, it could do anything.
50:11Become an airline pilot, doctor, even president.
50:13Even president.
50:14By the Stone Age, people were just as intelligent as us.
50:19And if a 21st century baby was sent back 35,000 years, it would be no more advanced than the people who lived then.
50:34Strip away our technology, and underneath, we're all still cavemen.
50:38That's because our genes haven't changed since the Stone Age.
50:44These two babies would have the same genetic makeup.
50:48But just suppose both babies were unlucky, and were born with a serious genetic disease.
50:55In the past, this baby would have died.
50:58His defective gene would not have been passed on.
51:00It was, after all, survival of the fittest.
51:11Today, though, modern medicine is so advanced that many of us can live on despite our problem genes.
51:23Whereas in the past, we wouldn't have survived.
51:30And that is affecting our evolution.
51:36Now, without the force of natural selection, those problem genes will become more and more widespread within us.
51:50But fortunately, our most important evolutionary trait, our big brain, may have come up with a solution.
51:57We are embarking on a revolution.
52:02Genetic engineering.
52:04In as little as 10 years from now, we may be able to alter our children's genes before they're born.
52:12We now know which genes are involved in some 5,000 illnesses.
52:17Scientists believe they'll soon be able to manipulate these genes in a fertilised embryo.
52:27So, for the first time in the history of man, our children, and their children, could be free of genetic illness and disease.
52:41That's just what scientists know today.
52:42And remember, cultural evolution works faster, faster, and faster.
52:59Once scientists have the power to cure these illnesses, what else may they do with that knowledge in years to come?
53:12Imagine a world where the same technology could enhance our children's looks.
53:16As you make your choices for your daughter, I can click them into my computer.
53:21Could we soon be ordering up designer babies?
53:25So, the first thing to think about, have you thought about what kind of skin colour you'd like?
53:29Could we choose the perfect features for our child?
53:32A little bit like that? Yeah.
53:33Does that look okay? Yeah.
53:34Every detail.
53:35From skin tone, to eye colour.
53:39Can we have blue?
53:41And, um, have you thought about to really see the features of the face?
53:46No more nose jobs, and no more plastic surgery.
53:51Four lips, I think.
53:55That's great.
53:56Yeah, happy with that?
53:57Oh, that's fantastic.
53:58We could design and create the perfect child.
54:06And what about their brain power?
54:09Our offspring could become much more intelligent than us, much younger.
54:17Are you winning?
54:19Yes.
54:20Child geniuses could soon become the norm.
54:22Our children could be academically successful at a much earlier age.
54:32And make modern technology look like child's play.
54:41Some scientists even predict that by 2020, we'll be able to manipulate the genes that control ageing.
54:52While we age normally over our lifetimes, our children could reach 200 years old and yet keep their youthful good looks.
55:11We've come a long way from the chimps.
55:14Amazing considering there's only that crucial 1% difference in our genes.
55:19Our journey of life has certainly been a rocky ride.
55:31Until now, our evolution was a game of chance.
55:35That we survived at all is something of a miracle.
55:38Of course, no one can really know for sure how much further away from chimps we'll go.
55:52The difference is that now the choice is ours.
55:55So what might that space age biologist find if he came back to Earth in the future?
56:14If he visited the apes again, he might get quite a surprise.
56:18Before, he was comparing we humans with the chimps.
56:29But if he now looked at the chimps,
56:36and then at me, the unmodified man of today,
56:47then at the new super homo sapiens of the future,
56:51he might well see a greater difference between me and the superhuman
56:56than he saw before between me and the chimps.
56:59He might think we were three equally different kinds of ape.
57:04No one can really predict what path we'll take in the future.
57:09But one thing is for certain.
57:11For the first time in the history of life, we can control our own evolution.
57:17Whether we choose to or not, we now have the knowledge and power
57:21to determine our biological future, our own journey of life.
57:25ORCHESTRAL MUSIC
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