The point is still that many of these ecosystems had humans in them--living sustainably or not. Humans were well-established across 6 continents by the LGM (given the climates and species depicted in the doc, almost all scenes are presumably in ecosystems that would have had humans for >20-300 kyr

Just like...every documentary about wildlife ever made by BBC, Nat Geo, etc. I say as someone who watches nature docs constantly

Humans (Homo) existed for the entire Pleistocene, with human-driven extinctions likely only in the final 1% of that time. Even for Homo sapiens specifically, the oldest plausible human-driven extinctions are about ~30 kyr, the final 10% of the timeline of our existence.

Which is also a problem, though! All those Planet Earth documentaries about the Amazon ignoring the Indigenous people just off camera (or who were forcibly removed to film...), who planted those fruit trees in those "natural" landscapes in the first place

Teaching students that humans can be a healthy part of ecosystems and CAN live sustainably is so, so much harder than teaching skeptics that evolution and climate change are real.

Defining humanity based on 500 years of bad behavior by one weird civilization seems a bit unfair to everyone else on Earth

Case in point: humans entered N. America >21 ka. No extinctions. Land practices changes (foraging, fire) + climate shifts: mass extinctions at 13 ka. Then again, a 12,000 year period of sustainable Indigenous land practices and almost no extinctions...and then Columbus and the present crisis.

This is all I teach. It's just very important to point out that most extinctions are caused by either 1. Changes in land practices after initial settlement of continents, combined with climate change, or, 2. A single culture that uses env. destruction as genocide (the West in the age of coloziation)

The whole "humans are the virus" narrative is probably the most dangerous trope I have to teach students to break free from--2.8 million years of human history (and 300,000 years of Homo sapiens history) say differently...being defined solely by a few millenia of extinctions is degrading to humans

100% agree! It felt like Planet Earth I, with all of the good and all of the bad. I was transported back to 2006 becoming inspired as a kid by Planet Earth (something I'm hopeful this doc will do too), but my adult self is uneasy with the very real humans just outside the camera shot in both docs

2.8/5

Overall, I was really anticipating this as a game-changing documentary on Cenozoic paleoecology, and it did NOT hold up. But it was nice to see some cool fossil animals, so I'll rate it a solid 2.8 stars.

Well you inspired me to binge the whole show on my day off. Mini-rant posted.

For the record: the art, anatomy, and behaviors are all fantastic. But the whole documentary has the vibe of a series on the Amazon that never pauses to mention that humans planted all those fruit trees 2,000 years ago.

Ah so it's the pristine nature, untouched by humans trope. That's somehow worse than what I thought the worst case scenario would be (aggressive "Man the Hunter" vibes)

I do

How are the humans/hominins featured? 👀