I've been watching and enjoying this thing for the last several weeks. Despite the lack of hip young presenter dude with an earring who clearly has no clue what the words he's saying mean, and ADD-inspired graphics to make the presentation all edgy and relevant to me.
Observation. Each episode begins: "Here is a bunch of unfortunate savages who have hardly gotten beyond beating two rocks together. And here is an historical near-miss, where a civilization almost got it but didn't quite. And now I come to the topic of this week's presentation..." This on the BBC no less. I wonder as I watch, how did we, in 40 years, go from this to the savage noble/white mans is bads-fest we would have today? Even the concept of one culture being better than another (Aztecs and Stalin would have understood each other, I think), or there being better and worse places to be (Japan, and later China, adopting the innovations of the Industrial Revolution, with not a little pain, as Europe had in its time adopted innovations from the East) as a society.
2 comments:
I remember this from the early 70's, still a great presentation.
Waiting for the last sentence of the last installment where he reaches out and....
Buck in Arizona
I've been watching and enjoying this thing for the last several weeks. Despite the lack of hip young presenter dude with an earring who clearly has no clue what the words he's saying mean, and ADD-inspired graphics to make the presentation all edgy and relevant to me.
Observation. Each episode begins: "Here is a bunch of unfortunate savages who have hardly gotten beyond beating two rocks together. And here is an historical near-miss, where a civilization almost got it but didn't quite. And now I come to the topic of this week's presentation..." This on the BBC no less. I wonder as I watch, how did we, in 40 years, go from this to the savage noble/white mans is bads-fest we would have today? Even the concept of one culture being better than another (Aztecs and Stalin would have understood each other, I think), or there being better and worse places to be (Japan, and later China, adopting the innovations of the Industrial Revolution, with not a little pain, as Europe had in its time adopted innovations from the East) as a society.
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