It shouldn’t have happened that Homo sapiens, our species, managed to survive and overcome the odd which have been against us for over 200,000 years. We are not indestructible and there are many evolutionary dead ends but our ancestors managed to not only survive, but also to spread into every corner of the globe.
It was only our ancestors who managed to spread and colonise some of the most difficult terrain known, even places forbidding to any other form of life, somehow they found a way. How was it we acquired the skills, technology and talent to thrive in every environment on earth?
In this film we follow anthropologist Dr. Niobe Thompson, as he travels the globe retracing our remarkable Human Odyssey, discovering how our prehistoric forebears were able to leave the cradle of Africa by crossing the Sahara on foot and later took on the other elements mother Earth threw our way.
Homo Sapiens are an anomaly; freaks of nature. Our brains have developed beyond what we can handle. Most species adapt to their environment and it’s survival depends on supply and demand, environmental conditions and over population.
Human beings have not only figured out how not to die, but how to control our own environment to the point where the environment has become severely impacted enough to where it cannot sustain them. 7 billion and growing, these numbers will eventually be our downfall.
Inner peace, happiness and joy, perhaps a natural state for most species, is very difficult for most of us to realize. Our brains are so complex, there is much to surmount to get there. For me, that has been the most interesting “science” I have ever undertaken!
Yes, you’re perceiving the world much as I am. For me, getting old has meant arriving at few conclusions regarding homo sapiens, but rather just more questions. And I stumble over the numbers, such as the population of seven billion you mentioned, but what astounds me are the lengths of time, the thousands and thousands of years we humans have been stumbling around this planet…. for what, to arrive at a consumer society wrapped in throwaway plastic? Hundreds of thousands of years of evolution… to bring us to what? And after creating thousands of gods and goddesses men are still trying to convince us that the latest incarnation is a ‘real’ god….. So where has this god been for all those thousands of years of suffering? Just imagine the suffering…. it’s impossible to imagine really, isn’t it? The Bible mentions (2 Kings 6:29) the two Samarian women who decided to eat their children during a famine, and you can just imagine how many famines there must have been throughout those thousands of years. Just imagine all that pain and suffering……. it staggers the mind.