National Geographic: Adventures in Time (2006)

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Time...

That relentless force that transports us

from what was to what will be.

Though no one can say exactly

what time is

we do know what time it is.

For Millennium, this is a landmark

a special moment in time.

But far from all the commotion

millions of others count their years

very differently.

For Buddhists

the year 2000 came and went more

than five hundred years ago.

In the Muslim world

it was only the year 1420.

While for many Jews

it's the year the date was 5760.

Nevertheless the observance

of this year 2000

is a singular opportunity...

to listen to the heartbeat

of the planet.

The National Geographic Society has long

been capturing time:

making it stop, slowing it down,

and speeding it up...

All to better comprehend the relentless

flow from what was to what will be.

We invite you now to see the world

through our eyes

as we explore the epic adventure of life

through time.

For Time is the measure of our universe...

and only over time can we understand

the natural world.

And it is our unique grasp of Time

that helped give rise to science

and culture... to civilization itself.

Take time, add exploration and

the quest for knowledge

and you have the human story.

A story of constant

and accelerating change.

But now perhaps

we are at a most critical point

on the verge of controlling nature

and on the brink of destroying it.

What kind of world will we leave

to our children?

Only Time will tell.

In a single, ferocious instant

an expl*si*n of heat and light

Time, as we know it, began.

It was the big bang.

Some thirteen billion years later

the cosmos defines our sense of wonder...

strewn with things unimaginable

like black holes

and towering nebulae trillions

of miles high spawning countless stars.

About two-thirds of the way through

the history of time

our own solar system was born.

A handful of planets

and assorted debris orbiting

an unremarkable star.

In this immense universe

our own planet is like an insignificant

blue ornament tenuously protected

by a paper thin atmosphere.

But a closer look reveals that there's

something wonderful going on here

something rare perhaps or even unique.

Something called Life.

To see the origin of life

we need only look beneath the waves.

Here, hundreds of millions of years ago

the sea was a living soup

of tiny organisms.

In this vast incubator life slowly

evolved from the simple to the complex.

Then, about 540 million years ago

there was an expl*si*n of innovation.

Quite suddenly, entirely new forms

of life began to emerge.

In the millions of years

that followed armor plate

and prickly spines appeared to protect

creatures from a new threat:

predators.

In time, deadly jaws appeared...

and sinewy creatures who

muscled their way into the arms race.

Some animals have changed very little

over millions of years.

Among these living fossils are sharks:

part time machine, part k*lling machine.

We still are trying to understand

the elusive ways of

these remarkably well-adapted predators.

On the windswept Farallon Islands

off the coast of California

researchers have spent years following

the hunting patterns

of individual great white sharks.

...this bite looks like it could

be a seal or a sea lion, you know...

"Over seven years up to forty great

whites have been identified.

Some are observed in one season

and then never seen again.

While others come back every year.

One of these is a massive eighteen-foot

female named Stumpy -

so called because the tip

of her tail fin is missing."

"We don't know where Stumpy is during

most of the year,

but we do know that she shows up here

every Autumn at the Farallons."

...so pretty consistent.

She's almost always in the same area."

"What's more she appears to come

each year to the same spot to hunt.

How do you know Stumpy is here?

You set the board out...

and she lets you know...

This is how a great white kills

an elephant seal in the first hit...

In one precise torpedo-like blow

the shark hits the prey from below.

The stunning impact of the first lightning

strike may incapacitate the seal.

This strategy saves energy

and may minimize the rise

of injury to the shark."

This surprising sequence of attack

retreat and feast has served

the shark well for a very long time.

But Nature was not content to have

only the seas populated with living things.

After hundreds of millions of years

of preparation out of the water crept life.

It took countless generations for gills

to become lungs

and flippers to evolve into wings or feet.

Eventually, a profusion of crawling

flying and running creatures claimed

the land for their own.

Reptiles began a one hundred

and fifty million year

sovereignty over the planet.

It was the age of the dinosaurs.

They were the biggest creatures ever

to walk the earth.

Gone now some 65 million years...

they live on in our collective

imagination.

Among the departed was one of

the strangest dinosaurs that ever lived.

It was called Ovirapto

and it was swift, smart and lethal.

This expedition is traveling

to a remote part of Mongolia

to uncover the secrets

of the Oviraptor's world.

Michael Novacek and Mark Norell of the

American Museum of Natural History

come to this desolate place to piece

together a puzzle

of evolution and extinction.

"One, two, three, four, five, six, seven

eight, nine..."

"...and then three over there... twelve.

Twelve eggs... All right."

You know this is really a great

fossil find

because it's one of the rare instances

where we can capture a little bit

of behavior

that's 80 million years old.

Here we have a- a sort of a day

in the life or

or the death of a- of a creature

of a dinosaur

in association with something

it did during its life.

This one was fossilized where it dropped

and it happened to drop right on top

of its own nest.

"She didn't just drop there.

The good mother oviraptor was sitting

on the nest.

They probably brought food

to their nest as birds do.

And the good mother tended her eggs.

Like a bird,

she prodded them into a circle.

The fearsome carnivore

of the Gobi was parenting."

Then, with remarkable swiftness the age

of dinosaurs was over.

What happened exactly remains a mystery.

Many scientists believe an asteroid

perhaps six miles wide slammed into Earth

and helped snuff out the masters

of the world.

"From our perspective, of course,

this mass extinction event

is not a big problem

because we're part

of the group that survived...

and started evolving into bats and

and large hoofed animals

and lions and tigers and bears."

With the great reptiles gone, smaller

but more adaptable creatures took over.

Each learned to succeed in its own way.

Some rely on speed and powerful jaws.

Others, strength and a thick skin.

But no matter how adaptable a species

may be - in the savage struggle

between life and death,

there is but one simple rule:

Those who survive pass their traits

to their young.

Those who die do not.

Every creature is a history book

of genetic code.

These living ghosts are the product

of all the life

and death moments endured

by all the generations before them.

"An ancient species related

to both antelopes and pigs

the water chevrotain has been feeding

on flowers

fruit and fungi here

for over twenty million years.

All that time predator and prey

have been evolving together

Honing skills and strategies

that make them well-matched

in the game of survival...

Under sharp-eyed surveillance

the chevrotain submerges again.

She is completely at home here.

She doesn't swim but simply walks

on the bottom

just like a little hippo.

Her huge eyes are open wide

but she sees rather poorly - probably

much as a human does underwater...

Keeping her belly close to the ground

to avoid being lifted by the flow

she simply walks away from danger...

four feet below the surface."

In the most extreme environments

we find the most astonishing adaptations.

Forbidding deserts call for new tools

for survival.

Out-maneuvered by a hungry coyote

this creature seems ready

to accept its fate.

But the horned lizard

has evolved a surprising solution

to a desperate dilemma.

"The swelling below his eye is not a wound

it's the lizard's last defense.

Squirted from a specialized tear duct

a stream of blood is aimed

at the coyote's face.

The blood is laced with substances

that are so distasteful the coyote

wants nothing more to do with the lizard."

Here on the barren ice floes of the Arctic

it's hard to imagine any creature -

much less a thousand pound brute -

finding sustenance.

But the polar bear is a resourceful

predator with infinite patience.

"The seal is safe for the moment

but each new trip to the surface

to breathe could end in another ambush.

It's an over-sized game of cat and mouse."

Mammals thrive by capitalizing

on a key innovation

rarely found in reptiles: parental care.

They are capable of bonding

mother to child, parent to parent

to herd, pod or pack.

But as youth gives way to maturity

animals demonstrate other important

capabilities as well...

Many of these battles are to seize

the most critical moment in animal time:

the moment their genes are passed to

the next generation.

The next chapter in the Book of Life

began with creatures that could grasp

- not only branches

- but complex ideas as well.

It is here, among the primates,

that we begin to see ourselves.

"We know that the earliest stage

of human evolution happened in a habitat

just like this, East African woodland

that's got open areas...

onto which our ancestors eventually

moved and adapted to.

So to be able to study hunting here

is the best way to give us some kind of

window onto the earliest origins of

meat eating in our own ancestors four

or more million years ago.

As colobus monkeys are pursued

by a band of chimpanzees

we witness the terrifying tenacity of

both predator and prey.

"As the chimps climb up the colobus

retreat to the highest branches,

too slender to bear the chimps' weight.

The male colobus stand their ground

against chimps up to four times their size.

They will even take the offensive

momentarily driving the chimps back.

Holding his tail out of the chimp's reach

this male buys precious time for

the escape of the females and young.

With chimps climbing everywhere

one monkey leaps into the arms of death.

Even a rear attack by the defending

colobus cannot save him."

Resourceful, sociable, intelligent

the chimpanzee has been content to

remain in the forest for millions of years.

Only occasionally do they wander out

into open areas.

But one related species -

the ancestors of early humans -

left the forest for good...

and the world was changed forever.

Genetically, all humans, no matter

what their heritage are 99.9% identical.

It is not what we are, but who we are,

what we learn, believe and create

that determines our group identity.

And that identity often determines

our relationship with time.

In many places, time seems

to have accelerated at a maddening pace.

In other societies, though time is like

an easy traveling companion,

as one moves through life

in the eternal "now".

In the highlands of Papua New Guinea,

lives a remote society with their own

understanding of time.

"For thousands of years,

this Stone Age group had been hidden

from the outside world.

As time and exposure worked their changes

on most other peoples

Hagahai culture remained more

or less the same.

A living secret deep in the highlands

of Papua New Guinea.

Possibly the last unknown group on earth."

Carol Jenkins, a medical anthropologist,

began working with the Hagahai

helping them cope with malaria

and other diseases

that threatened their very existence.

She found their concept

of time fascinating.

"Their sense of time is much more like

what people say

of the Australian aborigine time

the dreaming that is it's always the same

it goes over and over again

it's a connection

in an almost mystical sense

between the ancestors and today.

Much of human culture is anchored

in our traditions

and often, these traditions are linked

to our sense of time.

Everywhere, we commemorate rights

of passage

and shared beliefs that

mark our voyage through life...

and we celebrate them

in the language of music and dance.

Like it or not,

much of our precious time

on this planet is consumed by work.

The sheer diversity of labor

reflects the vast scale

and scope of the human experience.

On the Indian subcontinent

much work is still done by hand.

Here north of Mumbai

mostly barefoot workers disassemble

giant steel ships,

reducing them to scrap.

The work is dangerous

the rewards are meager

but to make a living they persist.

But all work in India

is not this punishing.

In sheer numbers

India has the world's largest middle class.

The country's railways are a lifeline

for all of India's one billion people

crossing not only vast distances

but bridging diverse cultures.

Over one and a half million workers

keep the trains running on schedule.

In many ways, the railway has become

the country's grand

and reliable time keeper.

"At Borivli Station fifteen men

have been meeting up for ten years.

They call themselves the '8:54 Group'

and every morning they stake out

strategic spots along the platform.

With speed and luck

they can claim a few seats that

they'll share between them.

They have only thirty seconds

before the train pulls out again

and consider their daily ritual

like a workout at the gym."

Very few of us choose to risk our lives

on a regular basis.

For those who take up hazardous

occupations the excitement, danger

and rush of adrenaline can be addicting.

"When does a job become a mission?

A career become a quest?

How do you face each day at work

when you know it could be your last?"

"Who was Al? Al was our friend.

And I'm gonna miss him a hell of a lot."

The way we live our lives is often shaped

by our attitude towards death.

But few embrace the dead

as wholeheartedly as the Ngaju Dayaks

of central Borneo.

Anthropologist Anne Schiller has spent

almost 15 years studying the death rites

of the Dayak peoples.

She takes part in a ceremony called

Tiwah during which the villagers dig up

the bones of their dead parents

spouses and children.

They do this so the spirit of

their loved ones might go

in the afterlife to

what they call the prosperous village.

"If the head of a family

hasn't been able to hold a Tiwah

he is very troubled and unsettled

in his mind.

He asks himself,

how can I save my parents

so they can go to the

prosperous village?"

"This is all about taking care of

their parents

I mean what these people are doing is

they're- they're giving life to

their parents in the way their parents

gave life to them...

so they're caring for them the way

you care for a child.

You- you're washing it...

and you're nurturing it and

you're making sure it's comfortable."

Now that the bones have been exhumed

the Tiwah progresses

to the ritual blood sacrifice.

"Blood protects you from illness

it protects you

from evil supernatural beings

that might bother you

and so sacrifices are held

because you need that blood of the chicken

or the pig or the cow or the water

buffalo in order to anoint people

and to anoint things to make sure

that the people and the things remain safe.

From a culture that honors death

to the death of cultures themselves...

All over the world unique societies

are under threat

their cultures as vulnerable as

endangered plants or animals.

According to some estimates nearly half

of the world's six thousand languages

will disappear in the next century.

The realities of an emerging global

culture and economy

often provide little incentive

for preserving them.

"Good morning, sir."

"Good morning children.

How do you do?"

"How do you do? Thank you."

"Sit down."

"Thank you, sir."

How does a people hold on

to its own identity

its own traditions and still remain

open to the outside world?

Disappearing cultures

have much to tell us.

If only we can take the time to listen.

Long before maps and compasses

those who ventured into unknown places

would leave a sign for those

who followed that said "We were here".

The idea of being first

of leaving one's mark in time and space

inspires modern explorers as well.

They helped to define

and describe our world.

The exploits of 20th century adventurers

continue to fascinate and inspire.

Many indeed have achieved a measure of

immortality.

Among them, Admiral Robert Peary and

pioneering African-American

explorer Matthew Henson -

considered to be the first men

to reach the top of the world.

Admiral Richard Byrd

was credited as being the first

to fly over both poles.

Hiram Bingham discovered

the fabled lost city of Machu Picchu.

While William Beebe and Otis Barton

were the first to probe the deep ocean.

In our own era, Jacques Cousteau

allowed us all to be explorers

of a wonderful new realm

and championed our need to preserve it.

Today,

being first is the passion of many.

But the goal is often not a place

on the map.

For these brave souls

it's not so much where they're going

as how they get there.

Mount Everest, first conquered in 1953

has been climbed by the hundreds.

Still for every seven that reach

the summit one climber will die.

"It's a mountain that you regard with

considerable respect."

"I don't know anybody who has a feeling

of affection uh, for the mountain."

"You could climb it...

three times, five times, a hundred times

you don't conquer it, you survive it."

"If there is a cold day

it's not twenty below, it's forty below.

Forty-five, fifty below say of Celsius...

and this is hard for human beings.

If there is a storm coming

it's much stronger

because you're much higher up."

"Windy... very cold. Strong.

Really cold.

Is difficult."

"It's really very difficult to do anything.

All you wanna do is lie down and even

that's hard work."

"Physically I experienced an awful

lot of problems.

I had a- an ulcerated toe with the bone...

showing, an intestinal parasite

I lost thirty-five pounds in five days

going to the summit."

"I'm nearly at the summit.

Just a few more steps... not far now."

"But this overwhelming feeling...

incredible difficulty, pain, suffering

is suddenly over."

"Well I'm on top! I've made it!"

"It's difficult to really understand

how important it is to be there.

And I know instinctively

I really wanted to stand...

on the highest point of earth

as I think most climbers do."

"I'm on the summit."

"You're both great heroes.

We're absolutely proud to death."

If the roof of the world

is becoming a little crowded

much of the deep ocean remains a mystery

to scientists like Dr. Robert Ballard.

His early expeditions

included the first exploration of

the mid-Atlantic ridge and

the discovery in the eastern Pacific

of hot water vents surrounded

by incredible new life forms.

But Ballard is perhaps best known

for exploring the most storied shipwreck

of the 20th century.

And since Titanic he's been probing

further and further back in time.

"We're sitting right now in- in ruins

that are on the island of Sicily.

To travel from civilization

to civilization here in the Mediterranean

you must cross the Mediterranean

and many of those ships didn't make it.

Many of those ships went to the bottom

and many of them went into the deep sea.

Between ancient Carthage and Rome

it's twelve thousand feet deep."

Using the remotely operated vehicle

Jason, and a U.S. Navy nuclear submarine

Ballard has led a team of archeologists

to the largest concentration

of ancient shipwrecks ever found

in the deep sea.

Almost a half a mile below

an ancient trade route

thousands of artifacts from eight ships

were found strewn all over the sea bed.

Later they returned to the site

and recovered Roman clay jars

that once contained ancient trade goods

like olive oil and wine.

There's glass. I-I'm just...

Among the bounty were glass cups traded

by Arab merchants

who sailed these same waters

fifteen hundred years later.

What has surprised me the most is that uh

we thought this was one event

that this was a fleet of ships

a group of ships that sank together

and it's not at all.

We have... ships spanning over

one thousand five hundred years of history.

"I feel very good, I-I feel that

this really is a historic expedition.

This is the first major deep sea

archeological expedition."

The Age of Exploration is still

far from over.

Ian Baker and Ken Storm are in search of

a hidden waterfall that others claimed

to have glimpsed from afar

but none have ever mapped or measured.

They follow footsteps from the past.

"In 1924, British botanist

Frank Kingdon- Ward, led an expedition

to Tibet searching for a waterfall

as grand as Africa's Victoria Falls.

He pushed his way through much of

the wild and forbidding Tsangpo gorges

but never found what he was seeking.

On this expedition Ken and Ian

are determined to finish

Kingdon-Ward's journey."

"It's a place that gives life

but it's a place also of enormous danger

that can take life at any moment."

The Tsangpo gorge can plunge

over sixteen thousand feet

three times deeper than the Grand Canyon.

A single misstep could send a traveler

a thousand feet to his death.

It was near here that Kingdon-Ward's

exhausted guides insisted on turning back.

And sure enough

this modern team had doubts as well.

"I think we all reached a point

where we were suddenly questioning

whether it was really going to

be possible at all."

Despite seventeen days

of difficult trekking

the expedition decides to press on.

Finally, they punch their way

through a clearing.

"Oh, all of the Tsangpo is...

pouring into that energy.

Can you imagine?!"

"Incredible!"

"Every drop...

from the Kailas Mountain

all the way past Mount Everest

all the way to this point!"

After a century of speculation

the great falls has finally been placed

on the map.

Named Hidden Falls of Dorje Phagmo

it measures between a hundred

and a hundred fifteen feet

with an enormous volume of water

that makes it so extraordinary.

"To actually come upon something new

and undiscovered late in the 20th century

is remarkable."

Even in places that are mapped

there are new worlds to explore

like the lush rain forest canopy.

"I realized at that moment

that first rope climb

I knew where I was goin' for the rest

of my life.

I was going up to the canopy."

"It takes hard work and courage to

conquer this new world.

But when they climb

Nalini and other canopy researchers

are also returning to a very old world."

"We really felt like pioneers.

We felt like we were frontiersmen going

to where no human had ever gone before

and everything we picked up

was something new and something different

- new species, new interactions."

For aerialist Philippe Petit

a life in balance is a challenge in itself.

Here he undertakes a daring walk

over three hundred feet

above the medieval Swiss village

of Saillon.

"I am discovering, conquering uh

a new world

a world that is actually no-man's land.

It is dangerous - yes -

if I miss the wire I am not here anymore

but it's so simple, so beautifully simple

the left or right, the center, the balance.

It's the essence of life...

What I do is seemingly useless

but actually is an inspiration.

Looking up is, is flying your own way.

People who don't have wing

they can fly by looking up."

The earth is some four and

a half billion years old

yet little time remains to undo the damage

that we've wrought in our own brief moment

on the planet.

The oil fields of Kuwait

but destructive w*r.

The fires have now raged for months.

The damage to the environment

is nothing short of catastrophic.

But much sooner than anyone expected

an international team

of workers snuffed out the flames

one by one.

Many of these people had never

done such work before.

"We have proved so many things that we-

nobody took a chance before to do it.

Nobody was daring before to do it.

We proved that yes, we can do it.

Once you have the will,

you can do anything you'd like to do

and we were given a chance

to prove this and we did prove it."

All over the globe concerned citizens

have mobilized to preserve

and protect endangered species

and habitats.

The power of such dedicated people is

proved today by the continued existence

of creatures once nearly annihilated

by man:

the great whales.

Today, they are known and loved with

such passion that the survival

of most species of whales seems assured.

But for other creatures

time is running out.

In central China, Professor Pan Wenshi

dedicates his life

to the imperiled population

of giant pandas remaining in the wild.

"My friends in Beijing always ask

why do you continue to work

in the field year after year?

When will it end?

Your work has been published

why don't you stop?

I tell them my goal is

to protect the panda

and to establish a refuge

for them in the wild.

That is my mission

but it will be difficult.

Achieving this goal may take

my entire lifetime

and even that may not be enough."

In suburban Atlanta

Sue Barnard tries to overcome popular fears

about a creature valuable to the ecosystem.

"We're gonna see some bats, okay?

Are you ready?"

"Yeah..."

"Are you ready? All right.

"The children, the children are our future

and they're marvelous.

They're open to learning.

They see and they form their own opinions

by what they're seeing.

The bat's got friends but

the bat's got to have more friends."

From the suburbs to the inner city,

conservationists are often

where you least expect to find them.

Arthur Bonner, ex-g*ng member

spent seven years in juvenile detention

and prison.

"Good morning.

My name is uh, Arthur and uh you guys

are out here to help us out

to save an endangered species.

It's called a Palos

Verdes..."

When Arthur got out of jail

he joined the LA Conservation Corps.

His life was soon turned around

by a tiny 6-legged companion

called the Palos Verdes Blue butterfly...

Arthur is one of just three people who

are permitted to gather the butterflies...

"I'm very dedicated to coming down here.

I love to do what I'm doing

I love my work."

"He uses all his powers of persuasion to

help his captives reproduce."

"Okay girls, which one of you

laid some eggs for me today?"

"The uh, 5 females I collected out

in the wild.

I bring them in I have to watch them

lay their eggs..."

"There you go, you gave me one..."

The butterfly only has

a five day life span...

and it's up to me to keep her baby alive.

"For ten years the Palos Verdes Blue

butterfly was thought to be extinct.

It is still considered one of

the rarest butterflies in the world."

"Those are my girls.

I love them all.

They actually kept me from being extinct

as much as I'm saving them

from being extinct.

They're saving me and I'm saving them."

"It's very easy to dismiss...

the bugs and the weeds of the world

but science is revealing every year...

just how important are

these little things on which

we and other larger organisms depend.

They cleanse the water

they create the soil,

they generate the very air we breathe."

The case for protecting all life forms

has been made powerfully

by Dr. Jane Goodall.

She now speaks to the next generation

for it is our children

who must carry the message forward.

"It's terribly important I think

that children should grow up

not having this incredibly arrogant view

that the world was made for us humans.

We all matter

we all have a place in the world.

Each species whether it's human or

non human has been evolved over

countless thousands and thousands of

years into a perfect organism

and we should respect that."

Our growing understanding and respect

for all life

is the key to a sustainable future

for planet earth.

For it inevitably means

that the human animal like all others

must respect certain limits.

If we make the planet safe

for every creature

it will be safe for us.

Then, only the searing fire

of a dying sun can put an end to us

and that's not for billions of years.

If we make the planet safe

for every creature

there will be plenty of time.