Evolution, according to the dictionary, implies “a gradual development to a more complex form”. If we indeed are more intelligent than any other species on Earth, the obvious conundrum must be: why is our planet in such a mess? All the more relevant in the wake of the World Summit on Sustainable Development, it’s crucial that we find and implement solutions to pressing environmental issues. Perhaps if we’re more informed about the consequences of our actions, then we might behave somewhat differently.
Enter Tobias’s Bodies; a six-part television series produced by multi-award-winning Curious Pictures (Soul City, Ordinary People, Love Stories) that starts this week on SABC2. Presented and narrated by Phillip Tobias, thrice nominated for a Nobel Prize and one of the most respected palaeontologists in the world, the series succeeds in making science accessible without being patronising. Each stand-alone episode explores a different theme around genetics, anatomy and primatology, such as Why Are Men Violent? and Are We All Africans? Only after watching Are We as Clever as We Think? can I claim to truly understand evolution. Tobias leads us clearly, with the help of guests, through a fascinating journey of how hominids became thinking beings. Punctuated with the discoveries and research that precede such theories, one comes away with a sense of genuine understanding and indispensable truths.
“We have the ability to scale the heights of genius or the depths of depravity,” muses Tobias poetically in response to my query as to why we desecrate the planet that sustains us. Meeting Tobias and Jane Goodall, who has been in Jo’burg to raise awareness for her Roots and Shoots project, is, needless to say, a mite intimidating. The two friends met in the late 1950s when staying at the same hotel in then Tanganyika. Their mutual respect is evident and Tobias refers often to the ground-breaking discovery that put Goodall on the map: that chimps are actually tool-making creatures. Her more than 40-year study of chimpanzees in the Gombe nature reserve in Tanzania filled in many of the gaps between our hairy ancestors and us. “Jane was the first to observe them in their natural environment,” he explains. Together the two are immeasurably devoted to spreading information and knowledge about humans, nature and the earth we share.
A cheery spirit, cheeky smile and sharp mind belie Tobias’s 78 years — all of which enabled him to traipse all over the world shooting the series, which takes us to, among others, Oldevai Gorge in Tanzania and other parts of Africa. “We consider ourselves to be superior due to our brain power,” beams Tobias. Destruction of the environment is a recent phenomenon. “For eight to 10 million years we were in harmony with the environment,” he says sadly.
“In the last 15 000 years we’ve dominated our environment and bent it to our will. Since the agrarian, urban and industrial revolution we’ve got out of step. It’s worsened in the last few hundred years,” Tobias warns. The World Summit is about turning us back to a modicum of harmony. But is this possible?
“Our brains have been capable of the most remarkable technological advances. I think with people like Jane Goodall around, we can bring compassion and understanding back into our relations with our environment,” he believes. Popularising science through educational programming is one way to get the message across.
More contained, Goodall is reserved but no less passionate. Pauses truncate her speech as she stops, her eyes following the birds around us. On the question of our messy world, Goodall answers wearily, “Consumer culture is extreme. This standard of living is not sustainable. People want beyond what they need,” she says in clipped tones. “Population has grown so hugely and in some places it’s more than what the land can support. It’s a spiral towards disaster,” she adds. “We’re selfish — this planet is home to other creatures besides ourselves.” She believes that our ethics haven’t caught up with our “clever-clever know-how”. Mass pollution of sea, land and air has contributed to the present bleak state of the Earth.
“It’s ironic that the environment shaped the evolution of the species and now it suffers at our hands and brains,” Tobias says.
Ultimately, we might be clever, but are we just arrogant? Will we use our brains wisely and stop destroying the environment? This will be the true test of intelligence, for otherwise we may find ourselves just another extinct species. Common to both experts is an ineffable sense of hope for the future — “Nature is forgiving, the human spirit is indomitable and young people are empowered to act,” says Goodall.
The series contains stunning camerawork, is compelling to watch and is seamlessly edited. Harriet Gavshon, co-producer together with David Jammy, says that it was a five-year struggle to get it made and it was eventually made possible with the support of the Department of Arts, Science, Culture and Technology and the SABC’s education department.
South Africa is regarded as a palaeo-anthropological hotspot and should be celebrated. “Africa is the mother and father of us all,” says Tobias with his usual eloquence.
It’s not possible to just grow a conscience overnight about littering or using plastic bags, but, in the words of Goodall, “Only if we understand can we care, only if we care will we help, only if we help, will we be saved.” Let’s hope that Tobias’s Bodies ushers in an era of more valuable, quality programming.
The details
Tobias’s Bodies starts onSABC2 onThursday September 26 at 9.30pm