"as some kind of circus trick for which she's been specially trained." "But not so." "She is doing this entirely on her own initiative." "She has seen others doing it and she's copying." "That ability to imitate as well as to use tools is something which started among monkeys but has been brought to a much greater level among the apes." "Those two talents were ultimately to lead to the transformation of the world." "Camp Leakey in Borneo is home to a special group of orangs who have been rescued from captivity and returned to the wild." "Because they've lived partly in our world as well as theirs, they can give us an insight into what we have in common." "This old lady loves DIY." "So does her son, who was born in the wild." "Even her infant is interested." "It's very striking when you sit as close to an orang-utan as this to see how similar they are to human beings." "We are both, of course, great apes." "But look how human her hand is, the skill with which she picks things up, the way that she can grasp a tool like that." "The way she uses her brain to imitate what she's seen others doing, and oddly enough, the fact that she is clearly left-handed." "Great apes share with human beings a predilection to use either the right hand or the left hand, and she's left-handed." "But the most important thing we share is our big brain." "It's that that has produced so many of the talents and abilities that we have in common." "All apes have a love of one kind of food - fruit." "But collecting fruit in these south-east Asian forests has its problems." "There are powerful predators on the ground, so orangs seldom come down from the trees." "They're by far the heaviest animal to live up in the branches, but they've worked out an ingenious way of exploiting their weight." "They pole-vault." "Even so, getting around can be quite tiring, and as fruiting trees are few and widely scattered, orangs need to take the most direct path between them." "But they seldom take wrong turns." "It seems they have a map of the forest in their minds." "They must also have a mental calendar, for they miraculously appear in a tree at exactly the time its fruit is ready for picking." "It requires a lot of skill to travel around in this way, and youngsters take many years to match their parents' expertise in route-finding and aerial gymnastics." "Mothers keep a close eye on their young, ready when needed to provide a helping hand, or an arm, or a leg." "It takes up to thirteen years for a youngster to match its mother's knowledge of the forest." "This may be why young orangs spend longer with their mothers than any other ape does, except humans." "But eventually, this close tie has to be broken." "Orang-utan, as adults, are famed as loners." "But this doesn't mean that they're necessarily anti-social." "Back at Camp Leaky...it's feeding time." "There's a lot of food, and here a number of orang-utan assemble and show that at heart they're really quite sociable animals." "Scenes like these suggest that it's only the scarcity of food that compels these apes to live apart." "A group as big as this would starve if they tried to live together in the wild." "But just occasionally, the forest creates its own food bonanza." "Every four or five years, many fruit trees ripen simultaneously, producing a brief glut of food which attracts orangs from miles around." "Now they show just how sociable they can be, 20 of them in just one tree." "The fruit will soon be finished, so friends have to make the most of their time together." "But some individuals do cause trouble." "The highly-sexed male clambering eagerly up the tree is not after fruit." "He drives off a female's chosen partner and tries to force himself on her." "A bellowing call announces the arrival of the most powerful orang in the whole forest." "He hasn't visited this area for many years." "The others recognise him instantly." "The mere threat of his presence sends the smaller male into retreat." "He takes up his dominant position in the group and the rest settle down again." "In the same way that we can take up relationships sometimes after years of separation, so orang-utans can slot back quickly into their own social circle." "That requires a brain that is able to keep track of different individuals over long periods of time and distances." "There is one place where interactions happen between orang-utans more frequently than anywhere else, and that has produced some extraordinary examples of their intelligence." "The swamp forests of northern Sumatra." "This is a paradise for orang-utan." "It floods regularly, and the waters bring in a rich supply of nutrients, so there's a great deal of food to be had." "Here orangs can travel and feed together in groups throughout the year." "They eat insects as well as fruit." "Termites are a particular favourite." "Collecting them from a rotten trunk doesn't need much ingenuity." "Extracting something from a hole in a living tree is a different matter, even for a powerful male like this one." "But the orangs here have solved such problems - they make tools." "First they select a twig." "Next they trim it to length." "Then they whittle it into shape... ..and carefully insert it into the tree to reach what they want from inside." "This ingenious male is probing into a bees' nest with a double-ended instrument which enables him to lick honey from one end while collecting more with the other." "Younger members of the group watch and learn." "So a tradition grows that will be passed on to new generations." "If there's an abundance of food, orang-utan can live in high densities and so form a community." "And within a community, if one individual gets a bright idea, others will copy it and so form a culture." "To see an ape culture that's even more complex, we have to go to another continent." "This is Africa, a mangrove-covered island near the mouth of the Congo." "It's home to a remarkable and very revealing community of a different great ape, chimpanzees." "These chimps are orphans." "Their parents were killed for the bush-meat trade, and many were pets kept in very unsuitable conditions." "Now they're part of an unique experiment in which they're taught the skills they'll need in order that they may survive by themselves in the wild." "Several of them, as youngsters, acquired a number of skills by watching humans." "Some know how to crack nuts." "But it takes a chimp a number of years to work out how to place the nut in a socket and then how to wield a hammer." "This chimp, Balinga, is an expert." "His companion, Flo, watches attentively." "Puck is really struggling." "He only started watching nuts being cracked when he was six." "That's two years too late for a chimp to learn new skills." "You really can't teach an old ape new tricks." "What about this?" "Do you want one of these?" "Mind your fingers!" "Of course, there are many different ways of cracking a nut." "And, come to that, there are many different kinds of nuts." "So different groups of chimps have developed different ways of dealing with the problem." "That is the beginning of a culture, and a culture has many things in it, apart from cracking nuts." "These rainforests lie 1,000 miles away east of the Congo, in Uganda." "There are chimps here, too, but they have a very different culture and they have never been filmed before." "Their communities are the biggest known and contain by far the most adult males known anywhere." "As elsewhere, their cultural traditions extend to details of social etiquette." "Here they practice a style of grooming known as the grooming hand-clasp." "Most of the time, life is peaceful." "But the males, although they live alongside one another, are rivals, and occasionally tempers flare." "These displays are ways by which males establish their dominance without physically wounding others who would be needed as comrades-in-arms were the group to be attacked." "After a quarrel, they embrace one another to re-establish their bonds of friendship." "But sometimes rivalries become more serious." "Suddenly, a gang of males will pick on an individual and attack him with frightening violence." "A young male called Grapelli is being ferociously beaten by an unusually large gang of adult males." "Battles between rival groups from neighbouring communities have occasionally been seen elsewhere in Africa, but attacks like this on a single male within the group are very rare indeed." "This is the last that was seen of Grapelli." "He was very seriously wounded and it is almost certain that he died." "His body has not yet been found." "What is happening at Ngogo that causes these savage attacks?" "One theory is that young males find it particularly hard to establish a place within such a large group of powerful adult males, whose lives are regulated by social relationships we have yet to understand." "Even these apparently simple acts of grooming can have great social significance." "Grooming, of course, is important for health." "It's a service that males often perform for their relatives, as these two brothers are doing." "It's also a way of creating and maintaining good social relationships between allies and males in the same peer group." "This young male, Pork Pie, seems to be more successful socially than Grapelli was." "But these males have other things than grooming on their mind." "Their attention has turned to the tree tops." "It's time to hunt." "A large group of like-minded males are assembling." "One of them drums, a signal telling others nearby that the hunt is about to start." "Chimps elsewhere hunt when they see a good opportunity, but here in Ngogo, hunts often start whether or not suitable prey has been spotted." "The males set off through the forest." "They travel for up to four hours at a time, searching for likely victims." "Pork Pie tags along." "He's not yet an accepted member of the hunting group." "This is what they're looking for, a troop of red colobus monkeys." "The hunters take up their positions in the surrounding trees, ready to pounce on any monkeys that try to escape." "They're closing in on the most vulnerable, a female with her young." "The colobus males do their best to fight back, but the chimps are much bigger and stronger." "Some of the infants have been separated from their mothers." "They're now easy prey." "But it's not over yet." "The male colobus fight to defend their families." "But they couldn't save this infant." "The hunters crowd round the kill." "The rest of the group join them." "The males are the first to eat." "They supplement the flesh with a few leaves, just as humans take vegetables with their meat." "Some of the male hunters now share their kill with other members of the group, including the females." "Do they get anything in exchange?" "Sex, for example?" "This male is certainly mating with one of the females." "But then he allows a different female to take some of his meat." "Perhaps the meat is given to those who beg the hardest." "Pork Pie is certainly trying his luck with one hunter after another." "Time after time he's spurned." "Eventually his persistence pays off." "But the Ngogo chimps have another possible motive for meat-sharing." "Males give meat more frequently to their allies than to others." "It seems they're using meat as a way of strengthening such bonds." "The hope of collecting a share of meat may well be a reason for others joining in the hunt in the first place." "Chimpanzees have much in common with humans." "They are, after all, thought to be our closest living relatives." "They're clever, social, political creatures, and apparently they even dream." "Way back in prehistory, the dreams and ambitions of the ape whose descendants would eventually take over the planet must have taken a very different direction." "More discoveries about that creature have been made here at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, than anywhere else in the world." "Perhaps here we can find clues as to why our ancestors took such a different path." "Three and a half million years ago, the volcano behind me was belching out ash which covered the entire landscape, and it was in that ash that the most evocative discovery of all was made." "These are the fossilised tracks of ancient rhino and antelope, here at Laetoli in Tanzania." "Among them are the footprints of an ape, a very remarkable ape." "Scientists maintain that they can deduce from the shape of bones the posture of the living animal, but there will always be arguments." "Here, however, is proof positive that three and a half million years ago mankind's ancestors were walking on two feet, upright." "Here's the dent made by the heel as it hit the ground, the raised instep, and the big toe, instead of pointing outwards from the foot as is needed to climb trees, is aligned forward to give the final push-off." "But the exciting thing about Laetoli is that there is a whole track way of prints and they have fossilised behaviour and revealed family life in a way that is almost disturbingly familiar." "Two individuals, one slightly larger than the other, perhaps male and female, appear to have been walking beside one another, maybe even arm in arm." "The male's footprints are scuffed by a smaller set of prints, perhaps made by a child walking through the newly-fallen volcanic ash and treading in the steps of its father." "The big question is why did they stand upright?" "There have been a number of suggestions." "One is that it was to get a better view of the surroundings, to spot for danger or for prey." "Maybe it was to release the hands to use tools, or pick up food or hold a baby." "And there's a third, rather more controversial suggestion." "Six million years ago, the climate of the earth became very erratic." "The great African forests began to die back." "The blanket of trees became broken by patches of scrub and grassland." "There's some evidence too that slow movements in the earth's crust caused areas of East Africa to flood." "A new habitat had appeared for the apes." "Using their long chimp-like arms, these early creatures were still climbing trees in order to find their food." "But as the forests diminished, so they had to travel farther from one tree to the next, and that involved crossing open spaces covered with grass or even water." "To do that, they travelled upright on two feet, as I am doing." "Suddenly, an image from our remote past comes vividly to light - the time when our distant ancestors, in order to keep up with the changing environment, had to wade and keep their heads above water in order to find food;" "that crucial moment when our far distant ancestors took a step away from being apes and a step towards humanity." "Apes are primarily adapted for a life in the trees, which is why they waddle if they try to walk upright." "It's tiring for them to stand on two feet for any length of time." "But when they wade, the water supports their bodies and takes some of the strain off their leg muscles, so that they can stay upright for much longer." "Maybe a life at the water's edge encouraged anatomical change." "At about this time, the hip bones of these early ape-men altered and our ancestors adopted an upright existence." "There are places in the forest of the Congo which can give us a clue as to the sort of thing that ape-men might have found to eat in the swamps." "These are lowland gorillas." "They're collecting marsh plants." "Our ancestors might have come to such places to feed in a similar way." "We know from other evidence that nutritious roots and tubers were indeed eaten by early humans." "There was another kind of food that our ancestors might have found here." "Gorillas today are exclusively vegetarian, but our ancestors, judging from their teeth, also ate meat, as chimps do." "Although gorillas ignore other animals visiting these swamps, the presence of such creatures might not have gone unnoticed by early ape-men." "But to kill such fast and wary prey, which so easily take to flight and can run faster than any ape, would require the skill to follow their tracks." "Linking marks in the earth with an animal that may have passed hours, if not days before, requires a profound leap of the imagination, and as far as we know, only human beings have ever done that." "But once it's been done, identifying the tracks, in the simplest terms, is not difficult." "Even I know that those are the tracks of an eland." "There are some people who can interpret even the faintest of marks on the ground." "They hunt in silence." "The hand-sign indicates that one of them has found the track of a group of kudu." "These are the San people of the Kalahari Desert, the last tribe on Earth to use what some believe is the most ancient hunting technique of all, the "persistence hunt"." "They run down their prey." "They start to feel the rhythm of the animal's movements from the spacing of the tracks." "The group is not moving fast." "The animals have taken fright." "They will concentrate on the bull." "He will be carrying a heavy set of horns and will tire more quickly." "To do that, they must separate him from the herd so that his tracks won't be confused by those of others." "The sun is directly overhead and the men sense a change in the kudu's pace - he's slowing." "After hours of tracking, they've entered an almost trance-like state of concentration." "At times it's impossible to see any sign of the kudu's tracks, and the hunters must imagine the path it will have taken." "The heat is hard on the hunters, but they're now close enough for the next stage in the hunt, the chase." "This is the signal for it to begin." "Only one man will undertake it, Karohe, the runner." "He must be relentless." "It's now a test of endurance." "Who will collapse first, the man or the animal?" "This was how men hunted before they had weapons, when a hunter had nothing more than his own physical endurance with which to gain his prize." "Running on two feet is more efficient over long distances than running on four." "A man sweats from glands all over his body and so cools himself." "A kudu sweats much less and has to find shade if it's to cool down." "A man has hands with which to carry water, so, during the chase, he can replenish the liquid he loses as sweat." "Hours pass and Karohe is getting closer." "But then the kudu runs into thick cover." "The tracks have disappeared." "Karohe tries to put himself into the mind of the kudu, and re-enacts the moment when it heard him approaching as it tried to rest in the shade." "He deduces the direction in which it must have fled." "It's close by." "The chase has lasted eight hours." "Hunter and hunted are both at the end of their strength." "Neither can go on much longer." "Then the kudu collapses..." "from sheer exhaustion." "It's close to death." "Karohe's spear-throw now is scarcely more than a symbolic gesture." "The hunter pays tribute to his quarry's courage and strength with ceremonial gestures that ensure its spirit returns to the desert sands from which it came." "While it was alive, he lived and breathed with it and felt its every movement in his own body." "At the moment of its death, he shared its pain." "He rubs its saliva into his own legs to relieve the agony of his burning muscles." "He gives thanks for the life he has taken, so that he may sustain the lives of his family waiting for him back in their settlement." "While the men were away, the women have collected tubers and roots." "Now Karohe has brought them the much more nutritious and energy-giving meat." "The dogs are given a share." "Wild dogs must have followed human hunters for scraps since prehistory." "Men selected pups that were the least savage to help with tracking." "The character of their dogs began to change." "Cattle were domesticated by a similar process, choosing the most docile calves and hand-rearing them." "The Fulani people of Mali lay claim to the half-wild herds that roam the savannahs, and mark them accordingly." "But grazing animals, wild or tame, may have to migrate with the seasons to find pasture." "And then the people must follow." "People all over the world have tried to domesticate animals." "In fact, very few species are actually suitable." "To be any good, an animal has, first of all, to be docile." "Secondly, to eat a food that's easily available." "Thirdly, to breed easily in captivity." "Fourthly, to live in packs or herds, groups in which individuals recognise that just one is the dominant animal to which all the rest are submissive." "Then a human being can take over the place of that dominant animal and so control his flocks and herds." "A gunshot drives the cattle forward." "The herds must be guided if they're to survive this, the most challenging part of their long annual journey." "Every year grazing animals, both domesticated and wild, have to risk their lives in treacherous waters to reach food on the other side." "The tamed and subservient cattle, however, are guided and protected by the men." "If the animals don't stay together, they may be swept away by currents." "Herding cattle is by no means the easy option." "Just keeping them alive is full of difficulties." "But in spite of all the problems, human beings have become so good at it that today domesticated cattle far outnumber their wild relatives." "Relying on herds that must migrate in search of pasture makes it impossible for people to settle permanently in one place." "But in more fertile areas, cattle can be confined, and then they can provide not only milk and meat but power." "Once people settle down, they can plant crops." "They can become farmers." "All over the world, woodlands and grasslands began to disappear, to be replaced by fields in which to grow crops of domesticated plants." "People began to select those plants that gave good yields, and so plants also changed, just as animals have done." "In Africa, in Europe, in Asia, people started to settle down in villages." "Hitherto, the population of every species of animal on Earth was limited by the amount of food available to it." "But human beings now changed that." "They'd learned how to increase the supply of food far beyond that which occurred naturally." "It was a crucial moment in the history of this planet." "The number of human beings began to increase." "This strange miniature house wasn't built for occupation by human beings." "Instead it shelters the commodity that is most important in this Dogon village in Mali, West Africa." "It's a granary." "It contains millet." "Millet is the most important thing in Dogon life." "The year revolves around planting it and harvesting it." "There are more houses to contain it in a village than there are houses for human beings." "The first music a baby in Dogonland is likely to hear is the sound of its mother pounding millet." "Now that people were no longer compelled to be permanently on the move in order to find food, they had more time to spend on other things." "Ritual and the arts flourished as never before." "For the Dogon, harvest is finished." "The granaries are full." "It's time to celebrate." "As more food became more easily available, so the human population continued to increase." "Villages grew into towns." "Towns became cities." "This immense low mound may look as though it's covered with gravel, but if you look closely, you'll see it's composed of tiny fragments of pottery." "I'm standing on the site of the oldest city in Africa below the Sahara, and this is the remains of 2,000 years of continuous human occupation." "Even more remarkable, the city itself is still flourishing over there." "This is Djenne." "In its heart stands the mosque, the oldest and largest mud building in the world." "Around it, a market that has been held here since medieval times." "Djenne's growth was closely tied to that of a neighbouring city, the fabulous Timbuktu that lay further up the Niger." "Between them, the two dominated the trade across the Sahara." "Into these markets came traders from North Africa who crossed the Sahara by camel caravan to look for slaves, gold and ivory." "And trade still dominates this city." "Great numbers living together made it possible for some of them to avoid the daily chore of having to produce food." "They could become craftsmen and exchange what they made for food." "So it became possible for technologies to develop, for arts and sciences to flourish and for people to put up huge buildings." "This is Tikal, the capital of the Maya people who built the tallest constructions in the whole of the New World, until skyscrapers were put up in New York at the beginning of the 20th century." "At the height of Tikal's glory, about 1,300 years ago, the city covered a vast area." "It was at least double the size of ancient Rome." "The city centre was filled by thousands of temples and houses, only a fraction of which can be seen today." "The inhabitants excelled at every form of civilised activity." "Not only accomplished builders, they were superb sculptors and painters." "They were expert astronomers and measured the solar cycle with great precision." "They constructed complex calendars to which their religious beliefs were closely tied." "And they devised a system of writing that was, in its time, the most advanced in all the Americas." "Having achieved such skills and knowledge, when and why were their cities abandoned?" "Fortunately, we do have some clues, certainly as to date." "The Maya recorded their history in great detail on stones like this one." "The latest inscription to be found in the ruins of the city can be dated to 869 AD." "After that, the city falls silent, the inhabitants disappear, and classic Maya civilisation is coming to an end." "The explanation of why Tikal and all the other Maya cities collapsed is the subject of hot debate." "But now new evidence has been found." "To see it, you need to get above the city." "From there, you can see hints of occupation that extend far beyond the jungle-covered ruins that survive today." "Cameras in space have revealed aqueducts, canals and a dense network of fields buried under the soil - evidence that by the time the temples were built, the surrounding forest had already been felled and replaced by a great expanse of cultivated fields." "As the population of the city grew, probably to about 60,000, the farmers struggled to produce enough food." "The fertility of the fields was exhausted." "Soon the people were starving." "They drifted away from the city and gradually the jungle returned." "But how is the fate of Tikal relevant to us today?" "When the Maya built their cities, there were only about 50 million people on the entire planet." "But the Maya were unable to sustain their population with the technology that they had developed, sophisticated though it was." "Then, a few centuries later, human beings elsewhere, with newly-developed techniques, began to build on a scale that dwarfed even the skyscrapers of Tikal." "Today, there are not just 50 million, but 6,000 million people on Earth." "Nearly half of that vast number live in cities which are still growing fast." "And all these people need food." "We have long since utilised the most suitable fertile places on the earth to grow our food." "Now we are having to try to do so elsewhere." "In a desert like this one in Arizona, trying to cultivate anything would seem to be futile." "With just a few centimetres of rain a year, there is no use for a thing like this and little enough water for thirsty plants, but appearances can be deceptive." "With the right technology, even the desert can yield edible crops." "These lush fields can only exist because of humanity's unique capacity to innovate and to learn." "Our big brains have enabled us to discover how to add fertiliser to poor soil, to deal with pests with insecticides and even bring rain to the desert." "This "rain" has been pumped along hundreds of miles of pipes from a far distant water supply." "Every year, human beings displace the equivalent of entire rivers in order to water their crops." "In just a few thousand years, the revolution of agriculture has spread to virtually all human societies." "Today, over a third of the surface of the land is devoted to producing food for human beings." "That has changed some landscapes in the most dramatic way." "The rich variety of the world's natural ecosystems has been replaced by uniformity." "Complex communities have been eliminated and changed to monocultures." "The intricate embroideries of nature have been replaced by a geometric landscape of straight lines." "All this was made possible by the technological revolution which started when our hands were freed and we could manipulate our surroundings." "Our ingenuity has now enabled us to utilise the most unlikely and unpromising corners of the earth." "We're even beginning to farm the oceans." "The changes we have wrought on the surface of our planet are so wholesale that they are now visible from space." "As our numbers increase, there is less land for other animals and plants." "But humanity can't expand its numbers indefinitely." "Will our civilisation then crumble, as did that of the Maya?" "This has been the launch pad for humanity's greatest, most complex achievements and highest hopes, from space shuttles to space stations." "It's from here, in 2020, our species may launch its most ambitious project yet - to settle on another planet, to send a mission to Mars." "6 - 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1." " Lift off." "The ape that stood up on its two hind legs now seems to have outgrown its planet." "Now it seeks to travel through space, to look for another." "Could it really add Mars to its empire?" "Conditions there could hardly be more hostile for forms of life that evolved on Earth." "There the energy-giving sunlight is only half as intense, and the temperatures fall to more than 100 degrees below freezing." "Will our technology be able to meet this challenge?" "Colonising another planet might sound like science fiction." "But in fact, work on solving the problems of living on Mars is going on right now, here on Earth." "The first problem for those that seek to settle there will be, as always, to find food." "To do that, they will have to grow plants, the basis of all our food." "On Earth, we're beginning to realise that we may now be over-reliant on the few species of plant which have provided us with food for the past 10,000 years." "We are at last taking steps to conserve the wild species that we have been destroying so carelessly for centuries." "Giant greenhouses like this are astonishing technical achievements, but they are also proof that we have the skill and the knowledge to create artificial environments almost anywhere, even on the surface of Mars." "If we did build such structures on another planet, might we then contemplate spreading our species still further, to other more distant worlds?" "This new era of exploration began when human beings landed on the moon." "Will that be as far as our species will ever reach or should reach?" "Or will our incurable urge to explore, and our still growing numbers," "lead us to print our feet on yet more new worlds?" "..the eagle has landed." "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." "Three and a half million years separate the individual who left these footprints in the sands of Africa form the one who left them on the moon." "A mere blink in the eye of evolution." "Using his burgeoning intelligence, this most successful of all mammals has exploited the environment to produce food for an ever-increasing population." "In spite of disasters when civilisations have over-reached themselves, that process has continued, indeed accelerated, even today." "Now mankind is looking for food, not just on this planet but on others." "Perhaps the time has come to put that process into reverse." "Instead of controlling the environment for the benefit of the population, perhaps it's time we control the population to allow the survival of the environment."