ALAN ALDA Between the ability to use tools and language, and the ability to cooperate with others, our brains have evolved into something truly unique in the animal world.

ALAN ALDA And literally at the center of our brains – and at the center of our humanity – is the special insight we have into the minds of our fellow humans, even our future selves. And along with that is the imagination to see how things might be different from the way they are. Insight and imagination – both seem to be right at the heart of the Human Spark. Insight not only into the minds of others, but also insight into the unseen forces that make our world work. And imagination to create from what nature gives us a place like this ¬– and not just for ourselves but for generations to come. And it’s insight and imagination that set us apart from our relatives, both living and extinct.

ALAN ALDA (NARRATION) While our extinct cousins the Neanderthals were still making axes much as their predecessors had for over a million years, our ancestors had the insight to see in a stick and stone and string a powerful weapon… and the imagination to devise new ways of hunting. Unlike the Neanderthals, the people who would become us had the insight to see how a stone with a hole could become a bead, and the imagination to see that bead as a symbol for conveying status and forging a sense of community.

Although we share much with our living cousins the chimpanzees, our greater insight into unseen forces like gravity gives us powers beyond the reach of apes… while our greater insight into each others’ minds takes us beyond pure competition and into the collaborative venture that is teaching. That insight also gives us the ability to cooperate on enterprises both great and small that we call civilization.

ALAN ALDA Finally of course there is the precious link of language, the uniquely human ability to build from a few sounds an infinite range of meaning so that the insight and imagination of each of us can be shared among all of us.

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