How The Earth Changed History is that rarest of documentaries: it has an actual, profound thesis at its center, and it doesn’t seem to be the slightest bit aware of it. Ostensibly, this is a series about how geographic features and natural phenomena influenced social migrations and technological innovations, but at its core, it has something very sharp to say about the way that people interact with the world around them. The moments where this comes out, unfortunately, are few and far between, and the significance itself is almost lost in a work that comes across largely as anecdotal rather than penetrating.
History is broken up into five different hour long chapters, each with a focus on a different natural element, and all of them are hosted by Iain Stewart, whose cheerful and inviting demeanor keeps them from ever treading into dull, staid territory (though the belaboring of points and occasional lapses into irrelevant activities might be just as alienating to some viewers). ‘Water’, perhaps the most precise of the five, concerns the way that water influenced the where and how civilization formed (specifically, how they needed to be near water for farming and transporting of goods). ‘Wind” is primarily about the way that wind currents allowed for sailors to crisscross the Atlantic, and for subsequent trade routes (such as those supporting the triangle trade) to be formed. ‘Deep Earth’ focuses on the testy relationship that we as a species have with fault lines: how we both depend on them for providing previous minerals and are decimated by them when they produce earthquakes. ‘Fire’ focuses mainly on how fire allowed to mankind to work with metals and to create industries out of coal and oil (though the degree that this changed history is debatable; somebody would have inevitably figured out how fire worked at some point).
It is not until ‘Human Planet’, the final episode, that History really starts to engage its subject, and addresses some of the conclusions that it probably knows that we’ve already come to. The ‘human planet’, as the series refers to it, is the whole of industry acting as a natural force, starting with the very first farms. The burning of farmland, not to mention the raising of livestock produced so much more carbon dioxide that the Earth was already producing that a whole other ice age was prevented. Knowing that its rather callous treatment of global warming (or at least its juxtaposition of vast oil fields with thousands of mile of untouched land) would probably earn it some enmity, the series wisely points out that the collision of India with Eurasia created the Himalayas, and thus alleviated many of the effects of the warming. While the scope of this chapter helps to bring into focus some of the immense forces at work in shaping the landscape of the Earth itself, it’s not fully satisfying in light of everything that the series has thus far introduced.
The major ‘x’ factor in this situation, of course, is energy, most specifically the natural resources of oil and coal. History acknowledges the effects of these influences in largely superficial ways, mentioning the environmental effects and economies that sprouted up over their use, but it never addresses the way that competition over these resources has defined relationships between cultures and sparked eons of warfare, it never addresses the way that control of these resources built and broke entire empires, and it only barely addresses the way that technological advancements fueled the way that one civilization took over from another. Succinctly, it never really really provides a compelling argument as to how any of these things changed history.
But, truth be told, History probably never wanted to be that ambitious, and would settle for being a pretty good nature documentary, which it is. The photography is clear and generous, and the scope of the series is ample enough that you never feel that you never feel confined by too much, well, focus. So even if History doesn’t have as much on its mind as you might hope, or even think, it seems reductive to criticize something for not doing something that it clearly had no intention of doing otherwise, even if the title says otherwise.
Bonus Features
The second disc also features three short segments: “The Crystal Caves,” “Walking Through Fire,” and “Paragliding,” in which Stewart discusses the filming of some of the more difficult sequences. They’re all interesting enough, but they seem to be there mostly for people who wanted to spend more time with Stewart.
"How The Earth Changed History" is on sale June 29, 2010 and is not rated. Documentary. Directed by Annabel Gillings, Charles Colville, Matthew Dyas, Matthew Gyves, Nigel Walk. Starring Iain Stewart.
