The Ascent of Man

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History, Science, Paleoanthropology Documentary hosted by Jacob Bronowski and published by BBC in 1973 - English narration

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An American Film Festival Award winner, this 13 volume series attempts a massive survey of science, from flint tools to the theory of relativity. The series, a co-production of the BBC and Time-Life Films was made as a science counterpart to "Civilization". It is given superb technical support, with two crews using innovative filming techniques, shooting in 27 countries. Dr. Jacob Bronowski makes for an unorthodox narrator, his non-scripted delivery ranging from hushed awe to trembling passion. He uses the crawling infant, the performing athlete, the development of the hunt and the discovery of fire to illustrate the most distinctive feature of man: imagination. His Scientific-Humanism is often spectacular, always provocative.

Written and narrated by Jacob Bronowski

Directed by Dick Gilling, Mick Jackson and David Kennard

Produced by Adrian Malone & Dick Gilling

Edited by Roy Fry

Quotations read by Roy Dotrice and Joss Ackland

Music by Dudley Simpson & Brian Hodgson

49 minutes per part, English audio, 1973

[edit] Lower Than The Angels

This first episode deals with human evolution from Australopithecus to Homo Sapiens. Bronowski visits the Omo Valley in Ethiopia, where ancient soap suds, err, remains of the earliest humans were found. He also visits Spain and some cave paintings. This episode includes some state of the art computer graphics, 1973-style.

[edit] Harvest of the Seasons

This instalment covers the change from a nomadic to an agricultural lifestyle. The good Doctor visits the ancient city of Jericho, and we see footage of the Bakhtiari tribe in Iran and an ancient horseback game in Afghanistan. The cultivation of wheat, which led to the domestication of animals, is observed in detail.

[edit] The Grain in the Stone

One of the great leaps in the ascent of man was the shaping of the environment into living spaces. Bronowski travels to Arizona, Machu Picchu, Segovia and Rheims to look at the development of architecture.

[edit] The Hidden Structure

Fire was used to transform metals into tools. The problem of the softness of copper was overcome by making the alloy bronze, and chemistry helped develop even more useful metals. We witness the creation of a Japanese sword. Chemistry also helped revolutionise medicine through the work of Paracelsus.

[edit] The Music of the Spheres

Pythagoras discovered that harmony in music was governed by exact ratios. The same applied to all matter, thought the Greeks. Bronowski traces the relationship between ratios and design through the tiled walls of the Alhambra in Spain, and through the discovery of perspective.

[edit] The Starry Messenger

This episode looks at astronomy, and in depth at the trials of Galileo. Our host travels to Easter Island and the ruins of the Mayan civilisation, before taking us into the Vatican's archive to view the file on Galileo.

[edit] The Majestic Clockwork

Until Newton's time, physics and metaphysics were indistinguishable. It took this antisocial English genius to turn physics into the dispassionate science that we recognise today. However his view that space was absolute was not universally accepted, and was exploded by the discoveries of a patents clerk named Albert Einstein. Special effects are used to demonstrate how travelling near the speed of light would affect the observer and the observed.

[edit] The Drive For Power

Power in terms of politics was a matter for revolutions in the 18th century, but here Bronowski concentrates more on the revolutions as an agent of social change. In particular, the Industrial Revolution in England which improved the standard of living for many. The steam engine led to the development of the railway and helped make England the mercantile capital of the world in the following century.

[edit] The Ladder of Creation

Until the 19th century it was believed that many creatures were created spontaneously, like bluebottles in old meat. It took two men years of observation and a flash of illumination to come to the same conclusion: the theory of evolution. These two men were Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace. We also see two experiments which suggest that the building blocks of life could have been created on Earth in boiling heat or in ice.

[edit] World Within World

From Mendeleev to Bohr, the history of modern physics has led to great achievement and great destruction. The examination of crystals led to the development of the concept of the structure of the atom.

[edit] Knowledge or Certainty

While a group of academics were making considerable discoveries in the world of physics and chemistry at the University of Göttingen, the world outside was slipping into the barbarism of World War II. Leo Szilard made crucial discoveries that led to the atomic bomb, but then tried to prevent its use against people. This episode ends with Bronowski outside the camp at Auschwitz, where many of his relatives perished.

[edit] Generation Upon Generation

Beginning with the discoveries of the monk Gregor Mendel, Bronowski traces the science of genetics and the development of the double-helix model of DNA.

[edit] The Long Childhood

This episode is a summing up of the various strands of thought that have been developed during the series, and much of the filming takes place in Bronowski's own home.