The rise of man

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The ascent of man (The Ascent of Man) in 1973 is one in collaboration with Time Life resulting film, documentary series of the BBC , by Jacob Bronowski was written and presented. The series, divided into thirteen episodes, was shot on 16mm film. Production manager was Adrian Malone, while Dick Gilling, Mick Jackson, David Kennard and David Paterson were in charge of directing.

The title is a reference to Charles Darwin's book The Descent of Man . In the course of the thirteen episodes Bronowski travels around the world in order to follow the development of human society not through art, but through the respective understanding of time in science. Although The Ascent of Man was not specifically written as an opposing position to Kenneth Clark's documentary Civilization: A Personal View , in which Clark identified art as the greater engine of cultural evolution, the series can nonetheless be seen as a dialogue between these two fundamentally different philosophies. Both series were commissioned by David Attenborough , who was BBC2's supervisor at the time. The series was soon shown on German and Swiss television and made available for school lessons.

The book Der Aufstieg des Menschen - Stages of our development history (The Ascent of Man: A personal view) by Bronowski is almost a word-for-word adaptation of the series, which only differs from the original because of the lack of some film images. The richly illustrated book is one of the most successful popular depictions of human evolution and has been reprinted several times in Germany.

Just a little over a year after the series aired, Bronowski died.

The series is available on DVD in the UK .

Episode overview

  1. "Not like the angels" (Lower than the Angels)
  2. "The Harvest of the Seasons"
  3. "The Grain in the Stone"
  4. "The Hidden Structure"
  5. "Music of the Spheres"
  6. "The News from the Stars" (The Starry Messenger)
  7. "The Majestic Clockwork"
  8. "The Drive for Power"
  9. "The Ladder of Creation"
  10. "Worlds within Worlds"
  11. "Knowledge or Certainty"
  12. "From Generation to Generation" (Generation upon Generation)
  13. "The Long Childhood"

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