1
00:00:16,360 --> 00:00:21,878
So that, unlike them,
he is not a figure in the landscape,

2
00:00:21,960 --> 00:00:24,872
he is the shaper of the landscape.

3
00:00:32,320 --> 00:00:34,629
This is the Pacific Ocean.

4
00:00:36,640 --> 00:00:39,393
The California Indians used to say

5
00:00:39,480 --> 00:00:44,235
that at full moon the fish
came and danced on these beaches.

6
00:00:44,320 --> 00:00:49,235
And it's true that there is a local variety of fish,
the grunion,

7
00:00:49,320 --> 00:00:55,589
that comes up out of the water
and lays its eggs above the high tidemark.

8
00:00:55,680 --> 00:01:00,071
The females bury themselves tail-first
in the sand,

9
00:01:00,160 --> 00:01:05,712
and the males gyrate or dance round them
and fertilise the eggs as they're being laid.

10
00:01:05,800 --> 00:01:12,717
The full moon is important because it gives
nine or ten days between these very high tides

11
00:01:12,800 --> 00:01:17,112
and the next ones
that will wash the hatched fish out to sea again.

12
00:01:23,160 --> 00:01:28,188
Every landscape in the world
is full of these exact and beautiful adaptations,

13
00:01:28,280 --> 00:01:35,038
by which an animals fits into its environment
like one cogwheel into another.

14
00:01:36,680 --> 00:01:45,509
Millions of years of evolution have shaped
the grunion to fit and sit exactly with the tides.

15
00:01:45,600 --> 00:01:51,038
But nature, that is evolution, has not fitted man
to any specific environment.

16
00:01:51,120 --> 00:01:57,753
On the contrary, by comparison with the grunion,
he has a rather crude survival kit.

17
00:01:57,840 --> 00:02:02,356
And yet this is the paradox
of the human condition,

18
00:02:02,440 --> 00:02:06,797
one that fits him to all environments.

19
00:02:07,880 --> 00:02:15,150
His imagination, his reason,
his emotional subtlety and toughness,

20
00:02:15,240 --> 00:02:21,395
make it possible for him, not to accept
the environment, but to change it.

21
00:02:21,480 --> 00:02:29,717
That series of inventions, by which man,
from age to age, has remade his environment,

22
00:02:29,800 --> 00:02:37,195
is a different kind of evolution,
not biological, but cultural evolution.

23
00:02:37,280 --> 00:02:45,358
I call that brilliant sequence of cultural peaks
The Ascent Of Man.

24
00:03:37,760 --> 00:03:41,673
Of course, it's tempting,
very tempting to a scientist,

25
00:03:41,760 --> 00:03:47,392
to hope that the most original achievements
of the mind are also the most recent.

26
00:03:48,440 --> 00:03:52,479
And we do, indeed,
have cause to be proud of some modern work.

27
00:03:52,560 --> 00:03:57,759
Think of the unravelling of the code of heredity
in the DNA spiral.

28
00:03:57,840 --> 00:04:01,719
Or the work going forward
on the special faculties of the human brain.

29
00:04:03,200 --> 00:04:07,876
Think of the philosophic insight
that saw into the theory of relativity.

30
00:04:08,920 --> 00:04:12,469
Or the minute behaviour of matter
on the atomic scale.

31
00:04:13,640 --> 00:04:16,950
Yet human achievement,
and science in particular,

32
00:04:17,040 --> 00:04:20,316
is not a museum of finished constructions.

33
00:04:21,760 --> 00:04:28,757
It's a progress, in which the first experiments
of the alchemists, also have a formative place.

34
00:04:28,840 --> 00:04:34,710
And the sophisticated arithmetic that the Mayan
astronomers of Central America invented

35
00:04:34,800 --> 00:04:37,598
for themselves, independently of the Old World.

36
00:04:46,800 --> 00:04:49,792
The stonework of Machu Picchu in the Andes,

37
00:04:49,880 --> 00:04:52,553
and the geometry of the Alhambra,

38
00:04:52,640 --> 00:04:57,634
are constructions as arresting
and important for their peoples

39
00:04:57,720 --> 00:05:00,188
as the architecture of DNA for us.

40
00:05:01,880 --> 00:05:04,713
In every age there is a turning point,

41
00:05:04,800 --> 00:05:08,918
a new way of seeing and asserting
the coherence of the world.

42
00:05:09,000 --> 00:05:14,757
It's frozen in the statues on Easter Island
that put a stop to time.

43
00:05:17,960 --> 00:05:19,916
And in the Medieval clocks in Europe

44
00:05:20,000 --> 00:05:25,393
that once also seemed to say the last word
about the heavens for ever.

45
00:05:31,400 --> 00:05:34,949
There's nothing in modern chemistry
more unexpected

46
00:05:35,040 --> 00:05:37,952
than putting together alloys
with new properties -

47
00:05:38,560 --> 00:05:42,838
that was discovered
about the birth of Christ in South America

48
00:05:42,920 --> 00:05:45,912
and long before that in Asia.

49
00:05:48,440 --> 00:05:52,228
Splitting and fusing the atom
both derived conceptually

50
00:05:52,320 --> 00:05:55,357
from a discovery made in prehistory,

51
00:05:55,440 --> 00:06:01,231
that stone and all matter has a structure,
along which it can be split and put together

52
00:06:01,320 --> 00:06:03,276
in new arrangements.

53
00:06:04,960 --> 00:06:10,432
And man made biological inventions
almost as early - agriculture.

54
00:06:13,200 --> 00:06:15,714
The domestication of wild wheat, for example,

55
00:06:15,800 --> 00:06:21,272
and the improbable idea
of taming and then riding the horse.

56
00:06:27,080 --> 00:06:32,473
So, these programmes or essays

57
00:06:32,560 --> 00:06:38,112
are a journey through intellectual history,

58
00:06:38,200 --> 00:06:43,832
a personal journey to the high points
of man's achievement,

59
00:06:43,920 --> 00:06:49,517
what the poet Yeats called
"monuments of unaging intellect".

60
00:06:54,440 --> 00:06:56,396
Where should one begin?

61
00:06:56,480 --> 00:07:00,314
With the creation,
with the creation of man himself.

62
00:07:01,360 --> 00:07:03,476
Charles Darwin pointed the way.

63
00:07:03,560 --> 00:07:09,908
It's almost certain now that man first evolved
in Africa near the equator.

64
00:07:10,000 --> 00:07:17,588
This is a possible area, the valley of
the River Omo in Ethiopia, near Lake Rudolf.

65
00:07:19,040 --> 00:07:23,556
The ancient stories used
to put the creation of man into a golden age

66
00:07:23,640 --> 00:07:26,837
and a beautiful legendary landscape.

67
00:07:28,680 --> 00:07:34,391
If I were telling the story of Genesis now,
I should be standing in the Garden of Eden.

68
00:07:34,480 --> 00:07:38,996
But this is manifestly not the Garden of Eden.

69
00:07:40,120 --> 00:07:43,795
And yet I am at the navel of the world,

70
00:07:43,880 --> 00:07:50,638
at the birthplace of man, here in
the East African Rift Valley, near the equator.

71
00:07:52,680 --> 00:07:57,276
And if this ever was a Garden of Eden,
why, it withered millions of years ago.

72
00:07:59,920 --> 00:08:05,790
I've chosen this place
because it has a unique structure.

73
00:08:08,040 --> 00:08:13,592
In this valley was laid down
over the last four million years,

74
00:08:13,680 --> 00:08:20,870
layer upon layer... of volcanic dust.

75
00:08:20,960 --> 00:08:24,509
Four million years ago, three million years ago,

76
00:08:24,600 --> 00:08:29,276
over two million years ago,
somewhat under two million years ago.

77
00:08:30,440 --> 00:08:33,750
And then the Rift Valley buckled it,

78
00:08:33,840 --> 00:08:41,428
so that now it makes a map in time,
which we see stretching into the distance.

79
00:08:42,520 --> 00:08:45,751
These cliffs are the strata on edge.

80
00:08:45,840 --> 00:08:50,072
In the foreground, the bottom level,
four million years old.

81
00:08:50,160 --> 00:08:55,393
And beyond that, the next lowest,
well over three million years old.

82
00:08:56,280 --> 00:09:00,876
The remains of a creature like man
appear beyond that,

83
00:09:00,960 --> 00:09:04,157
and the remains of the animals
that lived at the same time.

84
00:09:04,240 --> 00:09:10,634
The animals are a surprise because it turns out
that they have changed so little.

85
00:09:11,680 --> 00:09:14,319
This is the topi antelope now.

86
00:09:14,400 --> 00:09:20,748
The ancestor of man that hunted its ancestor
two million years ago

87
00:09:20,840 --> 00:09:22,990
would at once recognise the topi today,

88
00:09:24,000 --> 00:09:29,791
but he would not recognise the hunter today,
black or white, as his own descendant.

89
00:09:31,640 --> 00:09:35,030
(Birds cry and caw)

90
00:09:40,640 --> 00:09:44,553
Among the animals, the hunter has changed
as little as the hunted.

91
00:09:45,600 --> 00:09:48,592
The serval cat is still powerful in pursuit

92
00:09:48,680 --> 00:09:52,150
and the oryx is still swift in flight.

93
00:09:52,240 --> 00:09:58,315
Both perpetuate the same relation
between their species, as they did long ago.

94
00:10:01,040 --> 00:10:05,795
Human evolution began
when the African climate changed to drought.

95
00:10:05,880 --> 00:10:10,431
The lakes shrank,
the forests thinned out to savanna.

96
00:10:11,440 --> 00:10:16,992
When animals like Grevy's zebra
were adapted to the dry savanna,

97
00:10:17,080 --> 00:10:20,914
it became a trap in time as well as space.

98
00:10:21,000 --> 00:10:25,278
They stayed where they were
and much as they were.

99
00:10:27,960 --> 00:10:33,830
The most gracefully-adapted of all
these animals is surely Grant's gazelle,

100
00:10:33,920 --> 00:10:39,153
yet that lovely leap never took it
out of the savanna.

101
00:10:50,200 --> 00:10:59,108
In a parched, African landscape like this
at Omo, man first put his foot to the ground.

102
00:11:00,240 --> 00:11:04,313
That seems a pedestrian way
to begin the ascent of man.

103
00:11:05,440 --> 00:11:07,635
And yet it's crucial.

104
00:11:12,000 --> 00:11:18,872
Two million years ago,
the first certain ancestor of man,

105
00:11:20,320 --> 00:11:25,917
walked with a foot which is almost
indistinguishable from the foot of modern man.

106
00:11:26,000 --> 00:11:31,438
The fact is, that when he put his foot
on the ground and walked upright,

107
00:11:31,520 --> 00:11:41,236
man made a commitment to a new integration
of life and, therefore, of the limbs.

108
00:11:44,600 --> 00:11:47,592
The one to concentrate on, of course,
is the head.

109
00:11:48,520 --> 00:11:55,119
This is what it looked like
just over two million years ago.

110
00:11:56,560 --> 00:11:59,233
It's a historic skull.

111
00:12:00,280 --> 00:12:05,274
It wasn't found here at Omo, but south
of the equator at a place called Taung

112
00:12:05,360 --> 00:12:09,876
by an anatomist called Raymond Dart.

113
00:12:11,080 --> 00:12:17,428
It's a baby, five to six years old,
and the skull has been badly twisted,

114
00:12:20,000 --> 00:12:23,993
yet Dart instantly recognised
two extraordinary features.

115
00:12:26,360 --> 00:12:31,593
One is that the foramen magnum -

116
00:12:31,680 --> 00:12:41,237
that's the hole in the skull that the spinal cord
comes up through to the brain - is upright,

117
00:12:41,320 --> 00:12:47,077
so that this was a child that held its head up.

118
00:12:50,120 --> 00:12:52,156
And the other is the teeth.

119
00:12:52,240 --> 00:12:54,595
The teeth are always telltale.

120
00:12:54,680 --> 00:12:57,752
They're small, they're square.

121
00:12:59,040 --> 00:13:01,554
These are still the child's milk teeth.

122
00:13:01,640 --> 00:13:08,273
They are not the great fighting canines
that the apes have.

123
00:13:08,360 --> 00:13:12,558
That means that this was a creature

124
00:13:12,640 --> 00:13:17,031
that was going to forage with its hands
and not its mouth,

125
00:13:18,000 --> 00:13:26,192
that was probably eating raw meat,
and almost certainly making tools,

126
00:13:26,280 --> 00:13:33,152
pebble tools, stone choppers,
to carve it, to hunt.

127
00:13:37,320 --> 00:13:42,599
Dart called this creature Australopithecus.

128
00:13:44,160 --> 00:13:49,234
It's not a name that I like.
It just means "southern ape".

129
00:13:49,320 --> 00:13:55,634
For me, the little Australopithecus baby
has a personal history.

130
00:13:56,920 --> 00:14:02,677
In 1950, when its humanity
was by no means accepted,

131
00:14:02,760 --> 00:14:06,912
I was asked to do a piece of mathematics.

132
00:14:08,040 --> 00:14:13,353
Could I combine a measure
of the size of the teeth with their shape,

133
00:14:13,440 --> 00:14:18,958
so as to discriminate it from the teeth of apes?

134
00:14:20,760 --> 00:14:27,154
I had never held a fossil skull in my hands
and I was by no means an expert on teeth.

135
00:14:28,800 --> 00:14:30,756
But it worked pretty well.

136
00:14:32,160 --> 00:14:39,919
And it transmitted to me a sense of excitement,
which I remember at this instance.

137
00:14:43,000 --> 00:14:47,790
I, at over 40, having spent a lifetime

138
00:14:47,880 --> 00:14:51,953
on doing abstract mathematics
about the shapes of things,

139
00:14:53,600 --> 00:14:57,559
suddenly saw my knowledge reach back
two million years

140
00:14:57,640 --> 00:15:01,428
and shine a searchlight into the history of man.

141
00:15:02,680 --> 00:15:04,636
That was phenomenal.

142
00:15:04,720 --> 00:15:13,196
And from that moment, I was totally committed
to thinking about what makes man what he is

143
00:15:13,280 --> 00:15:16,352
in the scientific work that I've done since then,

144
00:15:16,440 --> 00:15:20,319
the literature that I've written,
and in these programmes.

145
00:15:26,120 --> 00:15:30,272
I don't know how the Taung baby began life,

146
00:15:30,360 --> 00:15:35,673
but to me, it still remains the primordial infant

147
00:15:36,760 --> 00:15:42,437
from which the whole adventure of man began.

148
00:15:45,400 --> 00:15:51,430
The human baby, the human being,
is a mosaic of animal and angel.

149
00:15:52,520 --> 00:15:58,231
For example, the reflex that makes the baby kick
is already there in the womb.

150
00:15:58,320 --> 00:15:59,992
Every mother knows that.

151
00:16:00,080 --> 00:16:02,799
And it's there in all vertebrates.

152
00:16:02,880 --> 00:16:07,431
Here, at 11 months, it urges the baby to crawl.

153
00:16:07,520 --> 00:16:11,559
That brings in new movements
and they then lay down

154
00:16:11,640 --> 00:16:15,952
and consolidate the pathways in the brain,
the cerebellum,

155
00:16:16,040 --> 00:16:20,989
that will form a whole repertoire
of subtle, complex movements

156
00:16:21,080 --> 00:16:24,311
and make them second nature to him.

157
00:16:27,840 --> 00:16:30,400
Now the cerebellum is in control.

158
00:16:30,480 --> 00:16:34,758
All that the conscious mind has to do
is to issue the command,

159
00:16:34,840 --> 00:16:39,277
and at 14 months, the command is, "Stand".

160
00:17:54,760 --> 00:17:59,151
What are the physical gifts
that man must share with the animals?

161
00:17:59,240 --> 00:18:02,152
And what gifts make him different?

162
00:18:02,240 --> 00:18:03,753
(Starter's pistol fires)

163
00:18:03,840 --> 00:18:08,311
The starting response of the runner
is the same as the flight response of the gazelle.

164
00:18:09,360 --> 00:18:11,920
He seems all animal in action.

165
00:18:13,000 --> 00:18:15,992
The heartbeat goes up.

166
00:18:17,560 --> 00:18:21,439
The heart is pumping
five times as much blood as normal

167
00:18:21,520 --> 00:18:25,399
and 90% of it is for the muscles.

168
00:18:26,960 --> 00:18:31,988
He needs 20 gallons of air a minute now
to aerate his blood

169
00:18:32,080 --> 00:18:34,230
that shows up as heat in infrared films.

170
00:18:35,680 --> 00:18:37,716
The blue, or light, zones are hottest,

171
00:18:37,800 --> 00:18:40,519
the red, or dark, zones are cooler.

172
00:18:45,000 --> 00:18:50,028
The main chemical action is to get energy
for the muscles by burning sugar there,

173
00:18:50,120 --> 00:18:53,271
but three-quarters of that is lot as heat.

174
00:18:55,120 --> 00:19:00,911
At this speed, the chemical burn-up
in the muscles is too fast to be complete.

175
00:19:01,000 --> 00:19:04,390
The waste products of incomplete burning
now foul up the blood.

176
00:19:05,480 --> 00:19:09,075
This is what causes fatigue
and blocks the muscle action,

177
00:19:09,160 --> 00:19:12,675
until the blood can be cleaned
with fresh oxygen.

178
00:19:26,960 --> 00:19:31,476
All that, in one way or another,
is the normal metabolism of an animal in flight.

179
00:19:32,520 --> 00:19:35,239
But the runner was not in flight.

180
00:19:35,320 --> 00:19:38,437
The shot that set him off was the starter's pistol,

181
00:19:38,520 --> 00:19:45,039
and what he was experiencing
deliberately was not fear, but exultation.

182
00:19:45,120 --> 00:19:47,953
The runner is like the child at play.

183
00:19:48,040 --> 00:19:50,873
His actions are an adventure in freedom

184
00:19:50,960 --> 00:19:54,555
and the only purpose
of this breathless chemistry

185
00:19:54,640 --> 00:19:57,837
was to explore the limits of his own strength.

186
00:20:00,440 --> 00:20:04,115
There are physical differences between man
and the other animals,

187
00:20:04,200 --> 00:20:06,668
even between man and the apes.

188
00:20:06,760 --> 00:20:15,668
The athlete grasps his pole, for example,
with an exact grip that no ape can quite match.

189
00:20:15,760 --> 00:20:20,709
Yet such differences are secondary,
by comparison with the overriding difference,

190
00:20:20,800 --> 00:20:23,155
which is that the athlete is an adult

191
00:20:23,240 --> 00:20:27,870
whose behaviour is not driven
by his immediate environment.

192
00:20:27,960 --> 00:20:33,034
In themselves,
his actions make no practical sense at all.

193
00:20:33,120 --> 00:20:36,874
They are an exercise
that is not directed to the present.

194
00:20:45,920 --> 00:20:50,198
The athlete's mind is fixed ahead of him,
building up his skill

195
00:20:50,280 --> 00:20:54,034
and he vaults in imagination into the future.

196
00:21:52,600 --> 00:21:56,912
The pole-vaulter is a capsule of human abilities.

197
00:21:57,000 --> 00:22:03,155
The grasp of the hand, the arch of the foot,
the muscles of shoulder and pelvis,

198
00:22:03,240 --> 00:22:12,069
the pole itself, in which energy is stored
and released like a bow firing an arrow.

199
00:22:12,160 --> 00:22:18,998
It's the invention of the pole, the concentration
of the mind, at the moment before leaping,

200
00:22:19,080 --> 00:22:22,277
which gives it the stamp of humanity.

201
00:22:24,600 --> 00:22:29,435
If I am to take the ascent of man
back to its beginnings in the animal,

202
00:22:29,520 --> 00:22:35,038
it's the evolution of the head and skull
that has to be traced.

203
00:22:36,200 --> 00:22:41,911
Unhappily, over the 50 million years or so
to be talked about,

204
00:22:42,000 --> 00:22:46,471
there are only six or seven
essentially distinct skulls.

205
00:22:46,560 --> 00:22:49,518
So that in order to trace the continuity

206
00:22:49,600 --> 00:22:55,072
I'm putting them on a computer,
which will lead from one to the next.

207
00:22:57,240 --> 00:23:06,319
Begin 50 million years ago
with this small, tree-dwelling creature, a lemur,

208
00:23:06,400 --> 00:23:11,030
whose skull is being turned upside-down.

209
00:23:12,600 --> 00:23:17,071
You can see the foramen magnum at the back

210
00:23:17,160 --> 00:23:23,508
This is a creature that hung, not held,
its head on the spine.

211
00:23:24,560 --> 00:23:28,599
And it has the essential marks of the primate.

212
00:23:28,680 --> 00:23:31,114
That is the family of monkey, ape and man.

213
00:23:32,160 --> 00:23:37,553
From the whole skeleton,
we know that it has fingernails, not claws.

214
00:23:37,640 --> 00:23:44,557
It has a thumb that can oppose,
at least in part, the hand,

215
00:23:45,600 --> 00:23:54,156
and it has in the skull the two features
that really mark the beginning of man.

216
00:23:54,240 --> 00:23:59,189
The snout is short,
the eyes are widely-spaced.

217
00:23:59,280 --> 00:24:03,273
That means there has been selection
against the sense of smell

218
00:24:03,360 --> 00:24:07,194
and in favour of the sense of vision.

219
00:24:07,280 --> 00:24:09,874
From that, man begins.

220
00:24:13,000 --> 00:24:15,434
In the next 20 million years,

221
00:24:15,520 --> 00:24:21,914
the line that leads to the monkeys branches
away from the main line to the apes and man.

222
00:24:22,000 --> 00:24:25,356
This creature is on the main line
30 million years ago.

223
00:24:25,440 --> 00:24:29,228
He's large, yet still lives in the trees.

224
00:24:30,280 --> 00:24:36,833
But from now on, the ancestors of the apes
and man spend part of their time on the ground.

225
00:24:38,880 --> 00:24:41,235
This is ten million years on.

226
00:24:41,320 --> 00:24:44,437
A classical find, proconsul.

227
00:24:44,520 --> 00:24:51,312
The brain is markedly larger, the eyes are now
fully forward in stereoscopic vision.

228
00:24:52,360 --> 00:24:56,990
They tell us how the ape
and man line was moving.

229
00:24:57,080 --> 00:25:01,710
But, alas, this creature is on a branch line,
the ape line.

230
00:25:02,840 --> 00:25:06,469
The teeth show us that it is an ape

231
00:25:06,560 --> 00:25:14,558
because the way in which the jaw is locked
by the big canines is not manlike.

232
00:25:16,120 --> 00:25:22,036
It's the change in the teeth that signals
the separation of the line that leads to man.

233
00:25:25,600 --> 00:25:32,153
This creature is 14 million years old
and we only have pieces of the jaw.

234
00:25:34,480 --> 00:25:38,473
But it's clear that the teeth are level
and more human.

235
00:25:40,480 --> 00:25:45,270
There is now a blank in the fossil record
for about ten million years.

236
00:25:45,360 --> 00:25:52,471
Then, perhaps five million years ago,
we come certainly to the relatives of man.

237
00:25:52,560 --> 00:25:56,473
This is a cousin of man,
not in the direct line to us,

238
00:25:56,560 --> 00:26:00,758
a heavily-built Australopithecus
who is a vegetarian.

239
00:26:00,840 --> 00:26:07,837
The teeth that survive are pitted by the fine grit
that he picked up with the roots that he ate.

240
00:26:09,000 --> 00:26:14,438
His cousin on the line to man is lighter,
visibly so in the jaw,

241
00:26:14,520 --> 00:26:17,398
and is probably a meat-eater.

242
00:26:20,040 --> 00:26:24,272
This is the nearest thing to what used
to be called the missing link -

243
00:26:24,360 --> 00:26:27,909
Australopithecus from Africa, a grown female.

244
00:26:29,000 --> 00:26:34,711
The Taung child, with which I began this
programme would have grown up to be like this,

245
00:26:34,800 --> 00:26:40,750
fully erect, walking and with a large brain,
between a pound and a pound and a half.

246
00:26:40,840 --> 00:26:43,559
That's the size of the brain of a big ape now.

247
00:26:43,640 --> 00:26:48,555
But, of course, this was a small creature,
standing only four feet high.

248
00:26:52,200 --> 00:26:55,829
Indeed, recent finds by Richard Leakey suggest

249
00:26:55,920 --> 00:27:00,391
that by two million years ago
the brain was larger even than that.

250
00:27:01,440 --> 00:27:06,639
And with that larger brain,
the ancestors of man made two inventions,

251
00:27:06,720 --> 00:27:12,192
for one of which we have visible evidence,
and for the other inferential evidence.

252
00:27:12,280 --> 00:27:14,589
First the visible invention.

253
00:27:15,760 --> 00:27:20,550
Two million years ago,
Australopithecus made stone tools like this,

254
00:27:20,640 --> 00:27:24,349
where a simple blow has put an edge
on the pebble.

255
00:27:24,440 --> 00:27:31,516
And for the next million years, man in his further
evolution did not change this type of tool.

256
00:27:31,600 --> 00:27:36,958
The ancestors of man had a short thumb,
so they could only hold this tool in a power grip,

257
00:27:37,040 --> 00:27:39,190
and use it like that.

258
00:27:40,360 --> 00:27:42,316
It's a meat eaters' tool.

259
00:27:43,400 --> 00:27:47,029
The other invention is social.

260
00:27:48,920 --> 00:27:53,675
Skulls and skeletons of Australopithecus
that we've found in largish numbers

261
00:27:53,760 --> 00:27:57,514
show that most of them died
before they were 20.

262
00:27:59,360 --> 00:28:02,397
That means that there must have been
many orphans.

263
00:28:03,440 --> 00:28:08,309
And Australopithecus must have had
a long childhood, as all the primates do.

264
00:28:08,400 --> 00:28:10,755
By the age of ten, they were still children.

265
00:28:10,840 --> 00:28:15,914
Therefore there must have been
a social organisation, which adopted them,

266
00:28:16,000 --> 00:28:19,310
made them part of the community,
educated them.

267
00:28:19,400 --> 00:28:23,916
That's a great step towards cultural evolution.

268
00:28:26,120 --> 00:28:32,389
At what point can we say that the precursors
of man become man himself?

269
00:28:34,040 --> 00:28:36,156
That's a delicate question.

270
00:28:36,240 --> 00:28:39,596
Such changes do not take place overnight.

271
00:28:39,680 --> 00:28:44,754
And it would be foolish to try and make them
seem more sudden than they really were

272
00:28:44,840 --> 00:28:46,398
or to argue about names.

273
00:28:47,480 --> 00:28:53,874
Two million years ago, we were not yet men,
but a million years ago we were,

274
00:28:53,960 --> 00:28:59,353
because by then there appears a creature
who can be called Homo -

275
00:28:59,440 --> 00:29:01,590
Homo erectus.

276
00:29:01,680 --> 00:29:04,797
He spread far beyond Africa.

277
00:29:04,880 --> 00:29:11,672
That's Peking man, 400,000 years old,
the first creature that used fire.

278
00:29:13,640 --> 00:29:19,829
The changes in Homo erectus are substantial
over a million years but they seem gradual.

279
00:29:19,920 --> 00:29:26,632
This is Neanderthal man. He already has
a three-pound brain, as large as modern man.

280
00:29:26,720 --> 00:29:30,952
Probably some lines of Neanderthal man
died out,

281
00:29:31,040 --> 00:29:38,037
but it seems likely that a line in the Middle East
went on directly to us - Home sapiens.

282
00:29:40,080 --> 00:29:46,474
Somewhere in the last million years or so,
man made a change in the quality of his tools,

283
00:29:46,560 --> 00:29:51,793
which presumably points
to some biological refinement in the hand,

284
00:29:51,880 --> 00:29:55,793
and especially in the brain
controlling the hand.

285
00:29:56,840 --> 00:30:01,914
He makes tools which require
much finer manipulation in the making,

286
00:30:02,000 --> 00:30:04,673
and, of course, in the use.

287
00:30:07,520 --> 00:30:14,631
The evolution of the brain, of the hand,
of the eyes, of the feet, the whole human frame,

288
00:30:14,720 --> 00:30:18,349
makes a mosaic of special gifts.

289
00:30:20,240 --> 00:30:23,391
Man is not the most majestic of the creatures.

290
00:30:23,480 --> 00:30:27,951
Long before the mammals even,
the dinosaurs were far more splendid.

291
00:30:29,320 --> 00:30:33,359
But he has what no other animal possesses,

292
00:30:33,440 --> 00:30:36,113
a jigsaw of faculties,

293
00:30:36,200 --> 00:30:45,438
which alone over 3,000 million years of life
make him creative.

294
00:30:45,880 --> 00:30:49,509
Every animal leaves traces of what it was.

295
00:30:49,600 --> 00:30:53,070
Man alone leaves traces of what he created.

296
00:31:10,640 --> 00:31:17,159
From the ancestral Australopithecus onwards,
the family of man ate some meat,

297
00:31:17,240 --> 00:31:19,276
small animals at first,

298
00:31:19,360 --> 00:31:21,316
larger ones later.

299
00:31:21,400 --> 00:31:25,029
Meat is a more concentrated protein than plant.

300
00:31:25,120 --> 00:31:30,990
And eating meat cuts down the bulk
and time spent in eating by two-thirds.

301
00:31:32,200 --> 00:31:36,557
But a slow creature like man
can stalk, pursue and corner

302
00:31:36,640 --> 00:31:41,714
a savanna animal,
that is adapted for flight, only by co-operation.

303
00:31:41,800 --> 00:31:45,873
Hunting requires conscious planning
and organisation

304
00:31:45,960 --> 00:31:49,509
by meanss ef anguage,
ass we ass sspec a weapenss

305
00:31:49,600 --> 00:31:52,478
The hunt is a communal undertaking,

306
00:31:52,560 --> 00:31:57,918
of which the climax, but only the climax,
is the kill.

307
00:33:21,000 --> 00:33:25,869
Hunting cannot support
a growing population in one place.

308
00:33:25,960 --> 00:33:31,114
The limit for the savanna was not more
than two people to the square mile.

309
00:33:32,200 --> 00:33:37,149
At that density, the total land surface
of the Earth could only support

310
00:33:37,240 --> 00:33:41,438
the present population of California,
about 20 millions,

311
00:33:41,520 --> 00:33:44,592
and could not support the population
of Great Britain.

312
00:33:45,800 --> 00:33:50,954
The choice for the hunters was brutal -
starve or move.

313
00:33:51,040 --> 00:33:54,316
They moved away over prodigious distances.

314
00:33:56,000 --> 00:33:59,993
By a million years ago,
they were in North Africa.

315
00:34:00,080 --> 00:34:05,996
BY 700,000 yeass age, t ney wee n aa

316
00:34:07,000 --> 00:34:15,192
By 400,000 years ago, they had marched north,
to China in the east and Europe in the west.

317
00:34:16,440 --> 00:34:23,437
These incredible migrations made man
from an early time a widely-dispersed species,

318
00:34:23,520 --> 00:34:27,991
even though his total numbers were quite small,
perhaps one million.

319
00:34:29,080 --> 00:34:34,029
What is even more forbidding
is that man moved into the north

320
00:34:34,120 --> 00:34:38,079
just when the climate there was turning to ice.

321
00:34:49,480 --> 00:34:55,157
In that great cold, the ice, as it were,
grew out of the ground.

322
00:35:06,360 --> 00:35:10,831
The northern climate had been temperate
for immemorial ages,

323
00:35:10,920 --> 00:35:13,639
literally for several hundred million years.

324
00:35:13,720 --> 00:35:18,874
Yet just when Homo erectus settled
in China and Northern Europe,

325
00:35:18,960 --> 00:35:23,078
a sequence of three separate ice ages began.

326
00:35:23,960 --> 00:35:30,593
The first was at its fiercest when Peking man
lived in caves 400,000 years ago.

327
00:35:30,680 --> 00:35:36,118
It's no surprise to find fire used
in those caves for the first time.

328
00:35:42,080 --> 00:35:48,599
The ice moved south and retreated three times
and the land changed each time.

329
00:35:50,360 --> 00:35:54,717
The icecaps, at their largest,
contained so much of the Earth's water

330
00:35:54,800 --> 00:35:58,236
that the level of the sea fell 400ft.

331
00:36:01,840 --> 00:36:05,037
In the second ice age, over 200,000 years ago,

332
00:36:05,120 --> 00:36:08,715
Neanderthal man, with his big brain,
became important.

333
00:36:11,080 --> 00:36:16,279
The cultures of man that we recognise
began to form in the most recent ice age,

334
00:36:16,360 --> 00:36:18,669
within the last 100,000 years.

335
00:36:20,800 --> 00:36:27,319
That is when we find the elaborated tools
that point to sophisticated forms of hunting

336
00:36:27,400 --> 00:36:32,872
the spear thrower, for example,
and the baton that may be a straightening tool,

337
00:36:33,920 --> 00:36:38,198
the fully barbed harpoon and, of course,
the flint master tools

338
00:36:38,280 --> 00:36:40,748
that were needed to make the hunting tools.

339
00:36:41,920 --> 00:36:48,758
Man survived the fierce test of the ice ages
because he had the flexibility of mind

340
00:36:48,840 --> 00:36:54,233
to recognise inventions
and turn them into community property.

341
00:37:01,880 --> 00:37:08,353
Evidently, the ice ages worked a profound
change in the way man could live.

342
00:37:08,440 --> 00:37:13,150
They forced him to depend less on plants
and more on animals.

343
00:37:23,520 --> 00:37:28,913
The rigours of hunting on the edge of the ice
also changed the strategy of hunting.

344
00:37:29,000 --> 00:37:34,632
It became less attractive to stalk single animals,
however large.

345
00:37:35,920 --> 00:37:41,313
The better alternative was to follow herds
of animals and not to lose them,

346
00:37:41,400 --> 00:37:46,394
to learn to anticipate and, in the end,
to adopt their habits,

347
00:37:46,480 --> 00:37:49,756
including their wandering migrations.

348
00:37:51,000 --> 00:37:57,633
This is a peculiar adaptation,
the transhumance mode of life on the move.

349
00:37:59,160 --> 00:38:03,950
The only people that still live in this way
are the Lapps

350
00:38:04,040 --> 00:38:07,828
in the extreme North of Scandinavia,
who follow the reindeer,

351
00:38:07,920 --> 00:38:10,354
as they did during the ice age.

352
00:38:12,200 --> 00:38:17,479
There are 30,000 people and 300,000 reindeer

353
00:38:17,560 --> 00:38:22,839
and their way of life is coming to an end,
even now as we watch it.

354
00:38:30,800 --> 00:38:32,950
The herds go on their own migration

355
00:38:33,040 --> 00:38:38,910
across the fjords,
from one icy pasture of lichen to another,

356
00:38:39,000 --> 00:38:40,911
and the Lapps go with them.

357
00:38:41,000 --> 00:38:43,230
But the Lapps are not herdsmen.

358
00:38:43,320 --> 00:38:48,678
They do not control the reindeer.
They have not domesticated it.

359
00:38:48,760 --> 00:38:51,513
They simply move where the herds move.

360
00:39:10,120 --> 00:39:14,238
The Lapps have some of the traditional
inventions for controlling single animals

361
00:39:14,320 --> 00:39:16,834
that other cultures also discovered.

362
00:39:16,920 --> 00:39:21,675
For example, they make some males
manageable as draught animals,

363
00:39:21,760 --> 00:39:23,478
by castrating them.

364
00:39:52,080 --> 00:39:54,036
It's a strange relation.

365
00:39:54,120 --> 00:39:57,590
The Lapps are entirely dependant
on the reindeer.

366
00:39:57,680 --> 00:39:59,238
They eat the meat,

367
00:39:59,320 --> 00:40:02,073
a pound a head each every day.

368
00:40:02,160 --> 00:40:05,755
They use the sinews and fur and hides
and bones,

369
00:40:05,840 --> 00:40:09,037
they drink the milk, they even use the antlers.

370
00:40:09,120 --> 00:40:12,510
And yet the Lapps are freer than the reindeer

371
00:40:12,600 --> 00:40:18,914
because their mode of life is
a cultural adaptation and not a biological one.

372
00:40:19,000 --> 00:40:22,151
The adaptation that the Lapps have made,

373
00:40:22,240 --> 00:40:25,789
the transhumance life on the move
in a landscape of ice,

374
00:40:25,880 --> 00:40:29,350
is a choice that they can change.

375
00:40:29,440 --> 00:40:33,558
It's not irreversible, as biological mutations are.

376
00:40:36,200 --> 00:40:40,830
Making a shelter from reindeer hides
is an adaptation

377
00:40:40,920 --> 00:40:43,388
that the Lapps can change tomorrow.

378
00:40:43,480 --> 00:40:45,710
Most of them are doing so now.

379
00:40:45,800 --> 00:40:48,758
But you cannot change the colour of your skin.

380
00:40:49,840 --> 00:40:52,308
Why are the Lapps white?

381
00:40:53,400 --> 00:40:55,311
Man began with a dark skin.

382
00:40:56,400 --> 00:40:59,437
The sunlight makes vitamin D in his skin

383
00:40:59,520 --> 00:41:02,830
and if he had been white in Africa,
it would make too much.

384
00:41:02,920 --> 00:41:10,679
But in the north, man needs to let in all
the sunlight there is to make enough vitamin D,

385
00:41:10,760 --> 00:41:15,356
and natural selection therefore favoured those
with whiter skins.

386
00:41:17,800 --> 00:41:23,432
The biological differences between different
communities are on this modest scale.

387
00:41:23,520 --> 00:41:29,072
The Lapps have not lived by biological
adaptation, but by invention,

388
00:41:29,160 --> 00:41:33,438
by the imaginative use of the reindeer's habits
and all its products,

389
00:41:33,520 --> 00:41:37,433
by turning it into a draught animal,

390
00:41:37,520 --> 00:41:39,875
by artefacts and the sledge.

391
00:41:42,400 --> 00:41:46,552
Surviving in the ice did not depend
on skin colour.

392
00:41:46,640 --> 00:41:55,070
The Lapps have survived, man survived
the ice ages by the master invention of all - fire.

393
00:42:09,880 --> 00:42:12,189
Fire is the symbol of the hearth

394
00:42:12,280 --> 00:42:19,516
and from the time Homo sapiens began
to leave the mark of his hand 30,000 years ago,

395
00:42:19,600 --> 00:42:22,433
the hearth was the cave.

396
00:42:37,760 --> 00:42:39,432
For at least a million years,

397
00:42:39,520 --> 00:42:44,310
man, in some recognisable form,
lived as a forager and a hunter.

398
00:42:45,360 --> 00:42:49,672
We have almost no monuments
of that immense period of pre-history

399
00:42:49,760 --> 00:42:53,435
so much longer than any history that we record.

400
00:42:54,480 --> 00:42:59,395
Only at the end of that time,
on the edge of the European ice sheet,

401
00:42:59,480 --> 00:43:06,397
we find, in caves like Altamira here,
and elsewhere in Spain and southern France,

402
00:43:07,440 --> 00:43:12,639
the record of what dominated
the mind of man the hunter.

403
00:43:14,360 --> 00:43:21,596
There we see what made his world
and what preoccupied him.

404
00:43:23,000 --> 00:43:28,870
Knowledge of the animal
that he lived by and stalked.

405
00:44:17,560 --> 00:44:23,396
And yet, when you reflect, what is remarkable
is not that there are such few monuments,

406
00:44:23,480 --> 00:44:25,277
but that there are any at all.

407
00:44:26,320 --> 00:44:31,553
Man is a puny, slow, awkward, unarmed animal.

408
00:44:31,640 --> 00:44:39,069
He had to invent a pebble, a flint,
a knife, a spear.

409
00:44:41,200 --> 00:44:47,275
But why, to these scientific inventions,
which were essential to his survival,

410
00:44:47,360 --> 00:44:53,708
did he from an early time add those arts
that now astonish us?

411
00:44:54,800 --> 00:44:57,030
Decorations with animal shapes.

412
00:44:57,120 --> 00:45:03,355
Why, above all, did he come to caves like this,
live in them

413
00:45:03,440 --> 00:45:07,353
and then make paintings of animals,
not where he lived,

414
00:45:08,640 --> 00:45:14,033
but in places that were dark, secret,

415
00:45:14,120 --> 00:45:19,433
remote, hidden, inaccessible?

416
00:45:32,640 --> 00:45:38,158
The obvious thing to say is that, in these places,
the animal was magical.

417
00:45:39,240 --> 00:45:41,800
But magic is a word which explains nothing.

418
00:45:41,880 --> 00:45:46,829
It says that man believed he had power,
but what power?

419
00:45:47,920 --> 00:45:50,388
Here, I can only give you my personal view.

420
00:45:51,440 --> 00:45:55,592
I think that the power that we see,
expressed here for the first time,

421
00:45:55,680 --> 00:45:59,719
is the power of the forward-looking imagination.

422
00:46:01,880 --> 00:46:09,468
In these paintings, the hunter was made familiar
with dangers which he knew he had to face,

423
00:46:09,560 --> 00:46:11,790
but to which he had not yet come.

424
00:46:12,840 --> 00:46:16,515
When the hunters were brought here
into the secret dark,

425
00:46:16,600 --> 00:46:20,513
and the light was suddenly flashed
on the pictures,

426
00:46:20,600 --> 00:46:24,593
he saw the bison as he would have to face him.

427
00:46:24,680 --> 00:46:28,309
He saw the running deer,

428
00:46:28,400 --> 00:46:30,470
he saw the turning boar.

429
00:46:33,360 --> 00:46:36,033
The moment of fear was made present to him,

430
00:46:40,440 --> 00:46:43,796
his spear arm flexed with an experience,
which he would have

431
00:46:43,880 --> 00:46:47,031
and which he needed not to be afraid of.

432
00:46:50,600 --> 00:46:57,358
We also look here through the telescope
of the imagination.

433
00:46:58,880 --> 00:47:01,553
The imagination is a telescope in time.

434
00:47:01,640 --> 00:47:05,633
We are looking back at the experiences
of the past.

435
00:47:07,520 --> 00:47:11,308
The men who made these paintings,
the men who were present,

436
00:47:11,400 --> 00:47:14,198
looked through that telescope forward.

437
00:47:15,680 --> 00:47:22,597
They looked along the ascent of man
because what we call cultural evolution

438
00:47:22,680 --> 00:47:29,153
is essentially a constant growing and widening
of the human imagination.

439
00:47:32,360 --> 00:47:35,238
The men who made the weapons

440
00:47:35,320 --> 00:47:39,791
and the men who made the paintings
were doing the same thing,

441
00:47:42,000 --> 00:47:47,518
anticipating a future, as only man can do,

442
00:47:47,600 --> 00:47:53,232
inferring what is to come from what is here.

443
00:47:53,320 --> 00:47:58,553
All over these caves,
the print of the hand says that,

444
00:47:58,640 --> 00:48:04,556
"This is my mark, this is man."