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Transcript

What is the Human Animal?

An Exploration of Anthropos
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Some call this age, our age, the Anthropocene. It means that in this age, human activity is exerting the dominant influence on Earth. Humans have changed everything from the carbon cycle to the water cycle, and have completely disrupted the Earth’s systems and functions. We have transformed every ecological niche on earth, and in most cases, not for the better.

No one can deny that humans have had an outsized role in the terraforming, manufacturing, standardizing, and domination of the world. This fact — that humans have had the ability to transform and leverage so much of the environment for our uses, has led us to have a subtle but pernicious understanding of ourselves: that we are separate from nature somehow, like demi-gods on Earth with the power to transcend our limits, exceeding beyond any other creature. But as Lewis Mumford wrote, “man is nevertheless no god.”

So, what is this… anthropos? What are humans, really? What are the key qualities that make us — this animal that has so much potential for creation and destruction? That is what we explore in this film, laying down a conceptual and philosophical framework that will inform the rest of our work in upcoming episodes of Death in The Garden.

Thank you for being a paid supporter of Death in The Garden. Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll prepare an exclusive behind-the-scenes video to show you all how we made this video, as well as our script (with relevant references), and a book list.

Note about the credits: if your name is incorrect or missing (most likely because I couldn’t tell what your name was from your email address, or because it’s surprisingly hard to navigate aspects of Substack’s dashboard), please let me know and we’ll fix it for the YouTube release. We really want to credit anyone who has ever donated to the project, because we couldn’t have done it without you. Alternatively, if you’d like your name removed from the credits, also let us know.

Director, Writer, Cinematographer, Editor: Jake Marquez

Assistant Director, Writer, Producer: Maren Morgan

Executive Producers: James Connolly, Jake Marquez, & Maren Morgan

Motion Graphics: Jake Marquez

Additional Prop Design: Christian Morgan

Featuring: Maren Morgan, Jake Marquez, Kelly Burningham, Parker Burningham, Emilee Yaakola, Erik Rudd, Dallin Robinson, Dhane Taylor, Elisha Garrett, Koda Sol

Featured Assets:

Google Earth Timelapse (Google, Landsat, Copernicus)

The First Humans: Human Origins and History to 10,000 B.C. (Illustrated History of Humankind, Vol. 1), American Museum of Natural History

The People of the Stone Age: Early Hunter-Gatherers and Farmers (Illustrated History of Humankind, Vol. 2), American Museum of Natural History

Old World Civilizations: The Rise of Cities and States (Illustrated History of Humankind, Vol. 3), American Museum of Natural History

The How and Why Wonder Book of Basic Inventions, Leonard Vosburgh


Disclaimer: Although there have been incredible advances in archaeology and the scientific study of prehistory, by the ultimately uncertain nature of trying to decode the past, much of the field is up to interpretation, reinterpretation, and speculation. There is tremendous disagreement around the theories of human evolution that go well beyond the scope of this video. This reality led us to writing a rather watered-down version of human evolution from a purely scientific accuracy standpoint. Since the theme of this film is less about the “how” of human evolution, and more about the “what,” we feel that any inaccuracies, while potentially erroneous, don’t necessarily detract from the greater question of “what” the human animal is on a fundamental level. Even still, this video is by no means an exhaustive accounting of “what” we are - rather it’s the groundwork for a philosophical framework that will color the rest of our work. Many details, particularly around human civilization, have been intentionally left out and will be included in later episodes. 

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