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 explosion 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 explosion 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 killing 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 war.
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-gang 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.