as far as we know it's the only home to life in the universe why what is it that makes our planet

so special the answers are hidden deep in the Earth's past to find them we must travel back in
time to see the first humans walk the earth to ride continents on a collision course face killer
dinosaurs dive into oceans full of bizarre life-forms feel the bitter chill of global ice ages and
experience the fury of cosmic missile attacks we must travel back in time until we reach the birth
of the earth itself then we can piece together our planets incredible story and discover why all of
this all of us are here our journey starts almost 5 billion years ago but this can't be right there's no
sign of our beautiful blue planet just a newborn star our Sun surrounded by all this dust we've
arrived too early before the earth has even formed speed up time and we can see gravity pull the
dust into tiny rocks it hardly seems possible but something as complex as a planet is made from
nothing more than dust and rocks over millions of years gravity pulls these rocks together to
form the earth one of at least a hundred planets circling the Sun but 4.5 4 billion years ago our
planet looks more like hell than home up close the temperature is over 1,200 degrees Celsius
there's no air just carbon dioxide nitrogen and water vapor it's so hot so toxic that if we got any
closer we'd be incinerated and suffocated in seconds the newborn planet is a boiling born there
are virtually no solid surfaces just an endless ocean of lava a young planet called Theia is
heading straight for us it's the size of Mars and it's traveling at nearly 15 kilometers a second 20
times faster than a bullet the intruders gravity is distorting the Earth's surface the blastwave races
out around the planet it's as though both young planets turn to liquid trillions of tons of debris
blast out into space but over the course of just a thousand years gravity works its magic can turns
the rubble into a ring of red-hot dust and rock that circles the earth and now from this ring of all
forest over 3,000 kilometers wide we're watching the birth of our Moon it's much closer than the
moon we recognize just 22,000 kilometers away instead of about 400,000 kilometers the Sun
rises over a cool in Earth and since just three hours after advisors the impact has set the earth
spinning so fast that an entire day lasts just six hours the days may pass quickly but the earth
changes slowly to understand the making of our planet we need to fast forward through millions
of years a hail of meteors 3.9 billion years ago and we're under attack from debris left over from
the solar system's formation look at these strange crystals inside the meteors they look like grains
of salt the same salt you'd put on your french fries and inside these minut droplets of water it
seems these deadly missiles could contain the vital ingredient for life on earth there's only a
small amount of water inside each meteorite but as they bombard the earth for over 20 million
years pools of water grown the water collects on solid ground the Earth's core remains molten
but its surface is cooled to around 70 or 80 degrees just enough to form a crust in the future we
could swallow this water when we take a drink every sip every puddle every drop of water in
every ocean is billions of years old and it may have traveled millions of kilometres to reach us
carried inside a media the earth looks more familiar but this is still a dangerous place this wind is
as fast perhaps faster than the most destructive hurricane it's a mega storm ripped up by the
planets rapid rotation the moon is so close to Earth that it's gravity is overwhelming it creates
huge tides that race across the planet's surfacebut over time the moon moves away the waves
calm and the planet spins slower 700 million years after the planets birth life-giving water and
covers its surface but not just water there's something else out there tiny islands they seem to
have appeared from nowhere until molten rock bursts through the Earth's crust and rises up
through the ocean over time the lava cools and forms a volcanic island this is how these islands
formed in the future they will join together to form the first continents the infant earth has water
and land it's beginning to look like the planet we call home but the atmosphere is toxic and the
temperature is scorching nothing could live here meteors they've been raining down since the
planets formation but now 3.8 billion years ago the assault has entered a violent new phase

something has disturbed the orbits of these meteorites they already brought the litter to the planet
but they're carrying something else too as the meteorites dissolved they release their minerals and
transport carbon and primitive proteins amino acids from outer space to the bottom of the ocean
it's dark the sun's rays can't reach beyond 300 meters and it's close to freezing this must be a
mirage a city of underwater chimneys it's not smoke it's some kind of hot liquid see water has
seeped down into the earth through cracks in the crust getting hotter collecting minerals and
gases on the way it's this potent mixture that's spewing back out into the ocean building these
towers add to this all those minerals and chemicals from the meteorites and the water has become
a chemical soup it's impossible to know how or when but somehow these chemicals have come
together to create life the water is now full of microscopic organisms these single-celled bacteria
are the earliest forms of life on Earth bliss is a defining moment in the making of the planet
microscopic life is underway

but then for hundreds of millions of years nothing changes there's no progress no evolutionary
step forward the only living things are single-celled bacteria to find more complex life we need
to travel forwards through time to 3.5 billion years ago and a shallow ocean these look like rocks
or even plants they seem to grow out of the seabed each is a mountain of living bacteria the
colony called stromatoliteas if by magic these bacteria turns sunlight into food this process called
photosynthesis uses the power of sunlight to transform carbon dioxide and water into glucose a
simple form of sugar and similar to the stuff we put in our coffee and this magical transformation
releases a byproduct a gas called oxygen underwater the stromatolites slowly fill the oceans with
oxygen the oxygen turns traces of iron in the water into rust this falls to the ocean floor to form
deposits of iron rich rock one day we'll use this mineral to build bridges ships and skyscrapers
above the waves the oxygen transforms the atmosphere these stromatolites are creating the single
most important

element for life on Earth without them virtually every living thing wouldn't exist when we take
our next breath we're doing it thanks to these colonies of ancient bacteria over the next two
billion years oxygen levels continue to rise and as the planet spins slows the days get longer now
they last at least 16 hours we're discovering it takes a long time to make a planet 1.5 billion years
ago 3 billion years after the planets birth and there's no complex life no plants no dinosaurs no
humans but the earth has something that no other planet has a force with the power to change
everything our planet a beautiful blue ball dotted with volcanic islands one and a half billion
years ago it's home to primitive life over millions of years we can see something is rearranging
the islands hidden beneath the ocean the Earth's crust has broken into vast plates deeper still the
Earth's core is at work it's hotter than the surface of the Sun so hot it generates movement in the
rock beneath the crust these movements push and pull the plates around the globe and carry the
oceans and the islands with them millions of years raced by seeing it like this our planet seems
active changing alive over 400 million years a vast new supercontinent takes shape called
Rodinia in the shallow waters around Virginia stromatolites have been working their magic for
over two billion years pumping oxygen into the atmosphere the temperature is 30 degrees
Celsius and the days are 18 hours long but this looks more like Mars than earth to find life here
we need to move on through time the state of Washington 750 million years ago some force from
deep inside the planet itself is whipping the crust to pieces it's as though the world is tearing
apart and there's only one force powerful enough to do this heat it escapes from the Earth's
molten core stretching and weakening the crus a centimeter by centimeter here by year the great
supercontinent is splitting in two the intense geological activity has spawned a mass of volcanoes
these pump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere there's smoke and gas everywhere all that carbon
dioxide mixes with water to make acid rain the rocks absorb the acid rain including its carbon
dioxide and there are a lot of rocks on the earth right now exposed when the continent tore apart
so many that vast quantities of carbon dioxide are absorbed out of the atmosphere and locked up
in the Earth's rocks there's not enough carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to trap the sun's heat
around the planet in just a few thousand years the temperature plants to around minus 50 degrees
this frozen wasteland is southern Australia 650 million years ago it's the start of what some
scientists call snowball earth a period they believed to be the longest coldest ice age ever to grip
the planet a vast wall of ice thousands of meters high

the ice is unstoppable the more ice there is the more sunlight it reflects away from the planet and
the faster the ice spreads and there's a second ice sheet just as high the two sheets spread away
from the poles towards each other to meet at the equator an ice sheet up to three kilometers thick
in Tunes the entire planet first the planet was a molten ball of fire now it's a frozen ball of ice
virtually all the sun's light and warmth reflects back into space but it can't last forever something
must release the earth from this frozen prison and when it does who knows whether life will have
survived beneat the ice the surface is frozen but the core is still hotter than the sun's surface
volcanoes have been erupting since the world began to freeze but up until now even their heat
and power made no impact on the ice volcanoes pump out billions of tons of carbon dioxide
before the big freeze the Earth's rocks absorb most of the co2 but now with the rocks smothered
in ice there's nothing to absorb the gas so it fills the atmosphere like a blanket it traps the sun's
warmth around the planet temperatures rise until now after 15 million years the ice begins to
melt it's thought that during snowball earth the ice pushed the cross down now as it melts the
cross bow season this creates fissures and weak spots and more and more volcanoes these
volcanoes release more carbon dioxide and push the temperature up even higher the melt gathers
momentum oxygen levels rocket through a series of chemical reactions the ice has created
oxygen while the planet was frozen the sun's ultraviolet rays reacted with water molecules in the
ice to produce a chemical rich in oxygen hydrogen peroxide the same chemical that bleaches
now as the ice melts the hydrogen peroxide breaks down and releases massive amounts of
oxygen the earth is waking upand it's a very different place now 600 million years ago the
atmosphere is warmer it feels like a summers day and the days are about 22 hours long add all
this water and it's the perfect recipe for life before snowball earth primitive bacteria had emerged
in the oceans but surely they couldn't have survived an ice age 75 times longer than the entire
span of human history if something has survived then our best

chance of finding it is where we last saw life in the ocean now 540 million years ago in an ocean
full of oxygen those primitive bacteria have evolved a handful must have clung on for the big
freeze there are plants everywhere and something else it looks like some kind of armored snug
it's called we whack SIA it's one of a new generation of complex multi-celled organisms we're
entering one of the most dynamic periods in the earth story the Cambrian explosion increased
oxygen levels allow creatures to grow larger and develop bony skeletons there are worms
sponges and these they're trilobite distant relatives of insects lobsters even scorpions life in the
oceans is blossoming from microscopic bacteria to a monster like this this is anomalocaris it's
about sixty centimeters long look at its large eyes its razor-sharp teeth and grasping limbs all
anomalocaris has to do is take its book the trilobite guard right itself it's soft belly is exposed
these a pacaya they're just five or so centimeters long but they've got what may be the first ever
spine over millions of years this simple structure will evolve into the spine that keeps us standing
erect we dived into the ocean expecting to find life in ruins instead we've entered a world full of
life we're trial abide scavenge

and most us proud and creatures are beginning to take on familiar forms beneath the waves there
are already tens of thousands of plant and animal species the advance of life seems unstoppable
we're looking for life on land 460 million years ago and the plates have moved again below lies a
new continent Gondwana it's a warm 30 degrees Celsius oxygen levels are close to those in
which we live the land should be covered with plants crawling with creatures but there's not
much here beside a few patches of algae there's only one explanation the son it lasts the surface
with deadly

radiation the complex life we've seen in the ocean doesn't stand a chance on land but 50
kilometers our weather rays enter the Earth's atmosphere something strange is happening when
oxygen meets the sun's radiation the oxygen turns into another kind of gas called ozone this gas
forms a blanket around the planet this ozone layer absorbs the lethal radiation over 120 million
years the ozone layer gets thicker and stops more and more radiation from reaching the Earth's
surface without this layer life on land simply wouldn't exist now shielded from radiation life
blossoms those small mossy lumps are the first land plants and they're pumping out even more
oxygen levels soul 375 million years ago there's something down there in the water it's moving
swimming it's a strange fish called a Tiktaalik it's neck allows it to raise itself up it uses its fins
as if their legs and moves out of the water where Clarke life is exploding over 15 million years
these creatures call tetrapods

evolve they grow stronger limbs they spend more time out of the water until 360 million years
ago they made the land their home it's from a creature like this that all four-legged vertebrates
will evolve dinosaurs birds mammals and eventually you need everywhere we look there are
mosses and ferns some at least 30 meters tall it's a seed carried on the wind until now plants we
produced using spores single-celled particles that need plenty of water to survive and grow but
this seed is kilometers from water this embryonic plant has its own onboard food and water
supply unlike a Spore this seed can survive far from water for months even years the humble
seed spreads life across the planet and all these trees and plants pump out even more oxygen we
could stand here and take a breath we could live here right now we've come a long way from a
lump of burning rock and dust to a Bluegreen planet bursting of life there are still no humans but
there are fish plants and this it's a dragon flying a dragon fly the size of an eagle this giant is
called meganula what were once legs have evolved into wings extending the dragonflies hunting
territory over a vast area there are millipedes spiders all sorts of bugs down there these creatures
called arthropods were among the very first to set foot on land they've already been around for
hundreds of millions of years they look almost identical to the bugs that invade our homes today
except for one big difference like mega Nura they're monsters we've stumbled into a lost world
of giants where millipedes are two meters long and scorpions the size of wolves all the oxygen in
the atmosphere allows their respiratory systems to be more efficient and frees up space for their
bodies to grow a lizard-like creature called anonymous the creatures we've seen so far laid their
eggs in the water but these eggs contain all the water and nutrients the developing Heil anima
Snead's the babies are growing in their own self-contained pond the egg is a major evolutionary
breakthrough now animals can leave the water behind and conquer the land this baby hi Lana
mas will lead the advance it's a new kind of creature a red tile inevitably his life comes death
there's so much dead plant matter it builds up and decays into dense soggy layers over hundreds
of millions of years rocks will cover these layers heat from the Earth's core and pressure from the
overlying rocks will transform the layers of dead plants into seams of coal each lump of coal we
burn today to warm our homes and fire our power stations is made of plaster died 300 million
years ago amidst the decay hidden from sight life history Tsun seeds will germinate plants will
grow and this wasteland will live again life seems to have conquered the planet a herd of
creatures graze the Siberian Plains they're not dinosaurs they won't set foot on earth for at least
another 20 million years but their big evolution has taken a huge leap forwards the small lizards
we saw earlier and now giant reptiles these are scooter soars the distant relatives of turtles their
plant eaters and if the plant eaters looked this tough the carnivores must be seriously me it's a
Gorgon awesome a perfectly engineered prehistoric killing machine the gorgonopsids saber teeth
have wounded the SCOOTER school the predator is watching as its prey grows weak from blood
loss until its backing off something strange is happening the ground is getting hot there must be
enormous pressure beneath the surface there's lava but this isn't one single volcano the entire
landscape is erupting it's a flood basalt eruption a massive plume of mantle is rising up from
deep inside the earth pushing molten rock out through fissures in the Earth's crust the lush
paradise is now a lifeless hell the scooter soars and the gorgonopsids a debt they're the first
casualties in the greatest mass extinction the world has ever seen the Permian extinction on the
other side of the continent of Gondwana it's as if nothing happened snow but the temperature is
about 20 degrees Celsius it's not snow it's ash fallout from the eruption some 16,000 kilometers
away the ash burns suffocates and kills animals around the world the atmosphere is full of sulfur
dioxide from the eruptions as it rains the gas turns to sulfuric acid and burns everything it falls on
at first it seemed like this was a local disaster but now it's gone global the Siberian eruptions
increase the Earth's carbon dioxide levels the atmosphere gets hotter water evaporates the
vegetation dies we saw what life had finally found a football now it looks like we were wrong
there are no signs of life on land but in the oceans this can't be right the oceans are turning pink
and the plants the trilobite the Predators everything's gone everything except for this pink algae
the new hotter atmosphere must have heated the oceans and stripped them of oxygen now
nothing except algae can survive in the stagnant water the Siberian eruptions are transforming
the entire planet nothing not even the deepest ocean floor is beyond their reach look bubbles but
it's not oxygen it's methane escaping from vast pockets of methane gas beneath the seabed
methane is a greenhouse gas at least 20 times deadlier than carbon dioxide until now the gas has
been frozen but as the sea temperature rises the gas begins to melt released into the atmosphere
this powerful gas pushes up temperatures even further up to almost 40 degrees six degrees hotter
than before the Siberian eruptions now even the creatures that have made it this far are doomed
it's 500,000 years since the eruptions first began and all this time for half a million years the lava
has been pouring out by now it covers an area the size of the United States with a layer of molten
rock nearly six kilometers deep 95% of all life is wiped out a handful of creatures survive by
burrowing underground and eating anything but everything else is dead 250 million years ago
we're back where we started on a lifeless planet almost it's 50 million years since virtually all life
on Earth was wiped out and the planet has been transformed it's now 200 million years ago

and there's just one supercontinent called Pangea stretching from pole to pole after the trauma of
the mass extinction the planet is healing temperatures are stabilizing the acid rain is neutralizing
and vegetation returning and with 95% of all life on Earth wiped out the field is open for a new
species to emerge one that will dominate the planet like no other before or since the dinosaurs
these dinosaurs are called Amazon's like all dinosaurs they've evolved from the handful of
reptiles that survived the Permian extinction at four and a half meters tall their size makes them
slow and vulnerable add a loaf asaurus two of them they're small and fast the AMA Soros is too
big a meal for one Dilophosaurus but not for too the dinosaurs have repopulated the earth but no
species contain this Restless volatile planet the Earth's crust is thinning here it's releasing lava
shaking with earthquakes as though it's been stretched by some unseen force and the same thing
is happening all the way down what will be North America's eastern seaboard the Earth's plates
are on the move again 190 million years ago the great supercontinent of Pangaea breaks up a vast
slab of land has broken away he creates a chasm and this fills with a new ocean called the Texas
over what will one day be the Middle East currents are pushing nutrients up into the coastal
waters running along what will be Saudi Arabia Iraq and Iran and the nutrients attract fish in
their Millions

and with so much life also comes death dead fish and plankton carpet the ocean floor over the
next 10 million years layers of rock will bury and heat the dead creatures ancient fish and
plankton will become oil every litre of fuel in our cars every piece of plastic on the planet the
paint on our walls the carpet under our feet even the soapy wash with almost all originated in this
way 180 million years ago and further west the North American plate is still moving away from
the European and Asian plate it happens slowly at about two and a half centimeters each year the
same speed as our fingernails grow but hit fast forward and a new ocean forms right beneath us
and new continents Montreal moves away from Marrakesh New York from West Africa the
world as we know it is taking shape the chasm between the two continents fills to create a vast
ocean the Atlantic they're in the middle of volcano we've seen plates move before we know it's
caused by currents deep beneath the earth's crust this process is happening down there right now
the entire seafloor has been torn in two and pushed up into a ridge of mountains and volcanoes
it's growing higher than the Himalayas and longer than the Rockies the waters hot here molten
lava is forcing its way out from the deep inside the earth as the lava cools it's creating a new
range of volcanic mountains and new ocean floor this is what's pushing the plates and Pangaea
apart and rearranging our world it's this geological activity that makes the earth Restless creative
unique and every time the planet reinvents itself the things that live on it must adapt and evolve
things like these the ichthyosaurs they're reptile ancestors lived on land but as the planet changed
so did they they grew fins and moved into the newly formed Atlantic Ocean this one is six
meters long and fast it travels at about forty kilometres an hour it's the oceans fastest creature the
most efficient predator and it's ruled the Earth's oceans for 50 million years but now there's a new
contender for the crown applies longer than Abbas as heavy as a truck its jaws are immense over
eight times more powerful than a great white sharks and its teeth are 30 centimeters long the
earth and the creatures that live on it has changed beyond recognition this was once solid ground
now it's the Atlantic Ocean it was on this very spot that we stood and watched Amazon's graze
and I'll office or stalk their prey the dinosaurs world may be different but there is dominant as
ever they appear invincible it's a shrew-like mammal and it's evolved from the small number of
mammals that survived the mass extinction 185 million years ago it's also prey for the dinosaurs
this is why most mammals are live in the trees or underground and venture out at night mammals
are no threat to the dinosaurs nothing on earth can challenge their dominance nothing it's a lump
of space rock a large one this asteroid is about ten kilometers across bigger than Mount Everest
and it's traveling at over 70,000 kilometers an hour straight towards the earth it's heading for the
Gulf of Mexico just off the Yucatan Peninsula it travels so fast blink and we'd miss the impact
unless we slow down time it's a split-second that will change the world forever at the moment of
impact the asteroids back edge is still at nearly 11,000 meters the same height as a commercial
aircraft flies the asteroid strikes with such immense force it destroys everything it hits even the
asteroid itself instantly vaporizes the impact unleashes the energy of millions of nuclear weapons
nowhere is safe not even way up here some of these boulders are as big as entire city blocks the
blastwave races out from the impact zone like shrapnel from an exploding bomb and minutes
after impact thousands of kilometers from where the asteroid struck the earth is under attack
from every direction boulders rain down earthquakes shake the ground and tsunamis batter the
coasts but the onslaught has only just begun the plume of molten rock and dust spreads out and
engulfs the planet the entire sky is acting like a giant sunlit the Earth's surface heats up to 275
degrees vegetation begins to spontaneously ignite even months after the impact smoke and ash
still block out the sun's rays with less sunlight plants died and the animals that eat them starve
against this onslaught it's hard to see how anything can survive sixty-five million years ago the
impact is blasted and stoned and burned the dinosaurs the dinosaurs a hundred and sixty-five
million year reign is over but the dinosaurs demise is an opportunity for another species
mammals by living underground they've avoided the heat in the fires and by eating anything and
everything they thrive while more selective eaters die these are the unlikely inheritors of the
dinosaurs crowd and as one story ends another begins with the dinosaurs out of the way this
could be our ancestors chance the dinosaurs are long dead the planet is peaceful in this new
world our mammal ancestors are evolving this lake 47 million years ago in what will one day be
Germany should be the perfect place to spot them this isn't like the mammals we saw earlier its
eyes and brain are bigger this is Darwinian Smasher lei or EDA she looks nothing like us but
fossil evidence from our own time tells us these creatures could evolve into monkeys apes and
eventually humans we're looking back through 47 million years of evolution to what may be one
of our earliest known ancestors the lake sits on a volcanic crater it belches out noxious gas now
the lake that killed her will preserve her in its oxygen-depleted deaths one day when the water
has gone and Eder is fossilized in stone we will discover them and recognize in this primitive
primate what could be the very beginning of our own story the story of human life we're closer to
understanding how everything we've seen promotion bacteria through walking fish and
subterranean rodents leads to us and to understanding how our planet was made 47 million years
ago and the atmosphere is much like our own the temperature is 24 degrees Celsiusand a day
lasts just under 24 hours the earth we're looking at now is almost identical to the planet we call
home almost the Earth's plates have been on the move again with the continents on their backs
India moves north towards Asia the Indian and Asian plates are locked in a titanic struggle
neither plate is winning both plates begin to buckle what was once a ssin floor contorts upwards
along a two and a half thousand kilometer line a vast mountain range rises up 1500 meters 4,500
meters now over 8,000 meters these are the Himalayas and there it is the highest mountain of all
Mount Everest it's summit reaches up into the Earth's Jetstream at the same altitude as airliners
fly when the snow on the peaks melts it feeds great rivers the Ganges Indus Yangtze and here the
rivers the Himalayas are like a vast water town one day their rivers will supply water for almost
half the world's population 20 million years ago this is our planet with every continent every
ocean just as we know except there's one thing missing us the human race for humans to evolve
something somewhere down there has to change along Africa's East Coast between the plates
that make up the Earth's crust a great rift opens up the roof stretches nearly 6,000 kilometers
along its edge mountains grow there it looks like a name not a human it might stay in these trees
forever but its world is changing the growing mountains act like a wall they stop moisture from
the Indian Ocean passing over the land it's getting hotter and drier the lush rainforest is becoming
arid savanna the new hotter climate destroys the creatures habitat it forces them to search further
afieldfor food to stop dragging their knuckles on the floor like Apes to stand and walk on two
feet it's the most important step in the human story this mountain range along Africa's East Coast
could be the reason we walk on two feet it seems incredible the random movement of two plates
may have kick-started a chain of events that will lead to the first humans a man and child it could
be a scene from our own time but it's one and a half million years ago these are an early species
of human called Homo erectus and these are the first footprints like our own civilizations past
and present everyone that's ever lived the greatest inventions the most brilliant ideas human
history in all its complexity and splendour begins here and now the climate changes again 70,000
years ago sea levels fall the gap between Africa and Arabia shrinks down to just 13 kilometers
the Red Sea is narrow and shallow enough for this small group to cross out of Africa they're
another later species of human called Homo sapiens they've made it across scientists believe
every man woman and child outside of Africa is descended from these 200 or so individuals

over time our ancestors multiply and spread out to India on to Asia and into. Europe but while
humans head north a giant wall of ice travels south the Europe 40,000 years ago our Homo
sapiens ancestors are arriving only to find a world that's changing fast it's getting colder it should
be the height of summer but the plants are frostbitten the rivers are frozen natural changes in the
Earth's orbit at co2 levels and the flow of warm water around the planet conspire to lower the
earth's temperature the earth and its inhabitants enter an ice age Glacia is as high as skyscrapers
creep over the northern hemisphere at 30 centimeters a day slow and powerful they sculpt the
landscape as they move over it gouging out great depressions the planet will never look the same
again now around 20,000 years ago they grind to a halt much of the Northern Hemisphere is
covered by ice sheets up to two and a half kilometers thick with trillions of gallons of water
locked up as ice sea levels fall twenty thousand years ago a strip of land emerges from the ocean
between Siberia and Alaska it's a bridge between two vast continents a gateway that takes
humans from Asia to a new world America it's the last great continent to be colonized the last
great human migration and somewhere down there other first Americans now 14,000 years ago
the changes that triggered the ice age go into reverse as the ice retreats it reveals a very different
northern hemisphere the glaciers gouged out huge depressions now they fill with water to
become North America's Great Lakes 6,000 years ago the ice retreats back to the poles to the
Arctic and Antarctic after a four and a half billion years early we've made it we're back home this
is our world our time now for the first time we can piece together our planets incredible story we
can understand how and why everything we see around us is here today from the skies above us
to water the essential ingredient for life the ground beneath our feet and finally life the
spectacular result of a chain of catastrophes and coincidences each trials each disaster is a step on
the trail that leads to here to each and every one of us right now the earth story doesn't end here a
lot has happened but there's more to come the earth will live for at least another four and a half
billion years everything we've seen on our journey is only half the story just imagine what
wonders what terrors what strange creatures lie ahead for our Restless creative planet the next
chapter of Earth's story is still to be written