Wonders of the Universe

TO THE DAWN OF TIME

When filming a series like Wonders of the Universe, the locations are chosen to be visually spectacular, but they must also have a narrative that enhances the explanation of the scientific ideas we want to convey. Occasionally, the locations deliver more. There is a resonance, a symbiosis between science and place that serves to amplify the facts and generates something deeper and more profound on screen. For me, the Great Rift Valley was such a place.

We arrived in Tanzania on 10 May 2010 for the first day of filming. After a brief overnight stay close to the airport at Kilimanjaro, we were driven out into the Serengeti in vintage dark green Toyota Land Cruisers, complete with exaggerated front cattle bars and shovels tied to the rear doors. The landscape is unmistakably African; the warm, damp light still wet from the rains illumines plains seemingly too vast to fit on our planet. The horizon, darkened by scattered thunderclouds stark against the early summer skies, is simply more distant than it should be. The rains have brought with them journeys, and as you drive you experience first-hand the thousand-mile migration of the Serengeti wildebeest. The relentless advance of these herds creates ruts in the drying savannah along the precise and ancient roads that always seem to run at right angles to your direction of travel, shaking the Land Cruisers to the edge of their design tolerance. Zebras, giraffe and Grant’s gazelles graze, unconcerned, as our intrepid film crew rattles by.

The Great Rift Valley is not just an extraordinary geological feature…there is more to this place because the echoes of the history of humanity ring louder across these plains than anywhere else on the planet.

The Great Rift Valley, Tanzania, is one of the most spectacular geological locations on Earth. The summer skies were darkened by rainclouds, but these soon departed to reveal dusty, unmistakably African landscapes and breathtaking vistas.

The Great Rift Valley, Tanzania, is one of the most spectacular geological locations on Earth. The summer skies were darkened by rainclouds, but these soon departed to reveal dusty, unmistakably African landscapes and breathtaking vistas.

Our camp is idyllic by the strictest definition of the word. Khaki tents nestle beneath acacia trees in the shadow of a giant copper-striped rock populated by a tribe of itinerant baboons intent on stealing our tape stock. Fortunately, we are guarded by the Masai, who, all cliché aside, are as tough as hell and scare not only the baboons but also the Serengeti lions and the BBC in equal amount.

So much for the visuals; the reason for the resonance of this place lies in the deep past of this dramatic landscape of life. The Great Rift Valley is not just an extraordinary geological feature that stretches 6,000 kilometres (3,700 miles) from Syria to Mozambique; there is more to this place because the echoes of the history of humanity ring louder across these plains than anywhere else on the planet. To walk this earth is to walk in the footsteps of the true ancients. Ancestors like Lucy, one of the most important fossils ever discovered, a skeleton uncovered in the Ethiopian section of the valley in 1974 by Donald Johanson. Lucy is 3.2 million years old; the remains of an Australopithecus, an extinct hominid species many anthropologists believe links directly to our own heritage. Further down the rift, in Tanzania, more closely related human ancestors have been discovered. In the early 1960s, Mary and Louis Leakey unearthed the remains of the earliest known species of our genus, Homo. Homo habilis is thought to have been a direct descendant of Australopithecus, and may be the first of our ancestors to have made tools. It’s all in the mind, I suppose, but sitting around a fire on a cool evening in the Serengeti I felt as if I had returned to the place where I had been born after many years away. There is something about geographic origins that resonates, over a lifetime or a hundred thousand lifetimes