A man in a space suit floats above the International Space Station. Clooney? On honeymooney? With ’er indoors waiting inside … ’fraid not. Don’t worry though – it’s the world’s second sexiest man, Prof Brian Cox. Have they really sent him up there, to the firmament? How much did that cost? No wonder they’re closing down BBC3 … Oh, a diver swims past, making bubbles, it’s not space at all, this is an underwater space station, in a big swimming pool, at a cosmonaut training centre outside Moscow.
It’s not even primarily a space programme, or even physics. This is Human Universe (BBC2), and Brian is taking a giant leap, towards mankind, and questions such as: who are we, and what are we doing here? It’s just that, for him, the fact that we are the only ones who’ve made it out of our world, defines what it is to be human. (He is conveniently forgetting that we were actually beaten to it by primates, albeit unwitting space monkeys, dispatched there by us).
To Ethiopia then, to meet some primates who weren’t sent to space, and will almost certainly never get there. Geladas, distant ancestors of ours, once one of Africa’s most successful primates, now found in one remote place above the Rift Valley. They live in big groups, and have a range of vocalisations. But it’s hardly space travel is it? Or even language. Duh, dumb-ass geladas.
So how did it happen, that the geladas were left sulking in a corner of Africa, while we went on to colonise the world, and beyond? It’s a story and a journey that continues in Ethiopia, where, more than 250,000 years ago, early humans first made tools that might look simple now, but required collaborative working and the passing on of information and language, in the same way as the International Space Station does …
Whoa, that’s too big a leap, that’s the end of the story. And first Brian goes back further still, to the big bang 13.8bn years ago, because, to be honest, all his stories begin there, and he needs to get some really big numbers in, which you just don’t find in the human story. 100bn galaxies – there you go. 200bn stars – now you’re talking. And the dawn of consciousness on a tiny part of that cosmos, here on Earth. I think I remember that from one of his previous programmes.
Accelerating then, through our ancestors, with bigger and bigger brains – increases that coincided with periods when the Earth’s orbit was at its most elliptical and the climate most volatile. Ah, you see it’s impossible to separate us from the cosmos, we’re all tied up together and it all comes down to physics in the end. He does manage to find a very big number, too, in his own head, and yours: 80bn neurons in our brains.
So we’re up and running, ahead of those geladas. Fishing, agriculture, civilisation, building, Petra, peppercorns (very expensive), writing, literature, science, engineering … space travel! And to Kazakhstan, where the latest three humans to leave our world, for a six-month stint in orbit, are coming home, and Brian’s there to welcome them.
It’s a breathless journey, that leaves you reeling. The really amazing thing for me – and something I don’t often find with Coxy’s shows – is that I kind of get it. Not just parts of it, but the whole thing. Is it recent climate change, that’s incrementally increased the size of my brain? Maybe it’s a kind of narcissism; this is not just about distant rocks, it’s my story, so I’m paying more attention. Perhaps it’s just the way Brian tells it.
He does tell it very well. There are a few Coxisms – those look-at-my-massive-numbers moments; a bit of staring off over the Rift Valley or wherever, contemplating mankind, the universe, everything, backlit by the sun (not really his fault); an infuriating and incessant orchestral score (likewise). But he also tells it more lyrically, more humanly than normal, maybe because there are people involved, not just those distant rocks and very big numbers. So writing “freed the acquisition of knowledge from the limits of the human memory”, he says. It “created a cultural ratchet, an exponentiation of the known which ultimately led us to the stars”.
Or how about this, on why he loves Ethiopia: “It’s impossible to sit here and not catch a glimpse, out of your peripheral vision, of a line of ghosts stretching back 10,000 generations because we’re all related to someone from here.” Those aren’t the words of someone who can only deal in big numbers, rocks, atoms etc. It’s beautiful.
