RELIGION AND ART, we were solemnly informed, are the most difficult things
for science to explain. But then science triumphantly did so, at least to the
satisfaction of Steve Leonard, as he presented the final part of
Journey of Life (BBC1, Thursday of last week).
The climax of this canter through evolution was Human Life, an account of
why, considering that we share 99 per cent of our DNA with chimpanzees, we are
so different from them.
In the five million years since we shared a common ancestor, we have made a
number of crucial moves. Choosing to walk upright meant that our hands could
develop a wider range and precision of use. This encouraged our brains to grow
enormously.
About 200,000 years ago, our larynx dropped to its present position, making
complex vocalisations possible; and speech meant that our skills and social
organisation grew exponentially.
This was a direct telling of the story. No confusing alternative theories
aired; no unsettling acknowledgement of the slenderness of some of the
evidence.
Now I’m perfectly happy to accept that Mr Leonard’s account is the best
interpretation of the information currently available to us, but I’d like it
presented to me as if I were an adult capable of making up my own mind. His
jaunty, inappropriately intimate style belongs to the Blue Peter
school of presentation.
The computer simulations and trick photography are the devices of a director
desperate to sex up his material, lest his audience’s attention span be
stretched.
The birth of art and religion was far better served by Nigel Spivey in the
second episode of How Art Made the World (BBC2, Monday of last week).
This series shares the same shortcomings: irritating celebrity narrator, tricky
photography, a conviction that its audience must be tickled and cosseted. Under
all this dross lay good stuff.
The beautiful drawings of animals in prehistoric cave paintings depict the
visions experienced by shamans — the creatures they encountered and became (as
they thought) while in the spirit world.
About 10,000 years ago, cave painting stopped, and, in Turkey, human
creativity turned to building megalithic stone monuments.
The immense concentration of labour necessary for this feat was, it is now
thought, only possible because, for the first time, nomadic hunter-gatherers
began to plant the new grain of wild grasses where they wanted it to grow the
following year, instead of just eating it. Agriculture had arrived, and the
demands of art and religion combined. This literally changed the face of the
world.
The Michaelangelo Code (Channel 4, Saturday) was Waldemar
Januszczak’s attempt to unravel what he sees as the mystery of the Sistine
Chapel frescos.
Their iconography, he believes, illustrates the apocalyptic sermons of Giles
of Viterbo, and the cosmology of Cosmas of Egypt, and is indicative of the same
use — or abuse — of applying biblical prophecies to living people and
contemporary events as those that led to David Koresh’s Branch Davidian sect
and the Waco conflagration.
There is a valuable argument in there somewhere, but his hectoring and
aggrieved tone encouraged us to disagree with him.