Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life is a documentary about Charles Darwin and his revolutionary theory of evolution by natural selection, produced by the BBC to commemorate the bicentenary of Darwin. David Attenborough asks three key questions: how and why they came to Darwin with his theory of evolution? Why do we think was right? Why is more important now than ever?
David begins his journey at the home of Darwin at Down House in Kent, where Darwin was troubled and puzzled by the origins of life. David returns to his roots in Leicestershire, where he hunted fossils as a child, and where another student discovered a significant finding in the 1950′s. He returned to Cambridge University, where he and Darwin studied and where many years after the double helix of DNA was discovered, laying the foundations of genetics.
At the end of their journey at the Natural History Museum in London, David concludes that Darwin’s great vision revolutionized the way we view the world. Now we understand why there are so many different species, and why are distributed in the way they are. But above all, Darwin has shown us that we are not separate from the natural world, and has no control over it. We are subject to its laws and processes as well as all other animals on earth so that, in fact, they are related.
