The Human Spark

I rarely stop to think about how amazing it is that we can do all the things we can do. I spend the majority of my day thinking about how boring it is to be stuck at work or running errands, but in fact it is extraordinary that I can do any of these things. Every part of my day depends on some radical invention that was thought up entirely by the human mind. From the train I take to work, to the skyscraper I work in, to the computer I work on, to even just simple things like indoor plumbing and mass produced products. If you think about how we went from being basically like every other animal, living in caves and hunting our own food, to the creatures we are today it really is astounding. It has all come entirely from the power of our minds, which makes us different from every other animal. They've all existed right along side of us, yet we've evolved by leaps and bounds into something almost unrecognizable as an animal it just a few hundred thousand years. I could spend days thinking about how we've achieved all we have. Working backwards to see where it came from. So I was delighted to find out that there was a mini-series devoted to this very thing. PBS has been airing a show hosted by Alan Alda called The Human Spark. It explores what it is that makes us human and sets us apart from every other living thing. It's shown in three parts: "Becoming Us", "So Human, So Chimp" and "Brain Matters". I highly recommend checking it out.



http://www.pbs.org/wnet/humanspark/