Original subtitles

(gentle music)

(active music)

I'm Christopher Clark and I'm traveling Latin America

in search of its UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

The face of this continent

has been shaped by ancient cultures

and by European conquest.

There's also spectacular natural heritage

to be discovered here,

the Galapagos Islands, for example,

where you can experience evolution firsthand.

And in Cuba, I look forward to discovering

the country's turbulent history,

as well as its residents' special attitude to life.

In Latin America, the past is wrapped in mystery.

Ancient cities built and inhabited by unknown peoples

and abandoned centuries ago

for reasons we still puzzle over.

Under every temple under every church,

there's something older,

a coming and going of peoples,

a cultural diversity and sophistication

unsurpassed anywhere in the world.

And on top of these many layers,

superimposed a European culture

which took possession of this continent with violence,

religious zeal, and administration.

The tensions buried in this history can still be felt today.

And that explains the turmoil,

but also the creativity of this continent.

In Ecuador, I plan to examine the cultural legacy

of the colonial era.

From there, I'll sail 1,000 miles across the sea

to the Galapagos Islands,

a UNESCO World Natural Heritage Site.

I'll visit the historic district of Havana

and learn more about the legacy of slavery in Cuba.

But, first, I'm in Mexico,

exploring the ancient worlds of the Maya and the Aztecs.

In the middle of the Mexican jungle

lie the ruins of the Mayan city of Palenque.

The city is said to have covered 20 square kilometers

during its golden age in the 7th and 8th centuries AD,

and at its heart is this temple,

commissioned by Pakal the 1st

to stand for eternity as his own tomb.

In its heyday, the temple was painted blood red.

Inside, a winding passageway

leads down into the burial chamber of King Pakal

who ascended the throne when he was 12 years old

and still ruled his powerful empire

at the grand old age of 80.

The dead king lay resplendent in his tomb

wearing costly jewelry and a jade mask.

His resting place was discovered only decades ago.

In all that time, amazingly,

it had never been disturbed by grave robbers.

Only the elite among the Maya

were permitted to wear jade jewelry.

This valuable stone was also a symbol of power.

The skeletons of five other people

were found near the grave.

They were probably sacrificed

so that they could accompany Pakal

on his journey to the afterlife.

In keeping with their beliefs, the Mayans constructed a path

to allow their dead king to reach the underworld.

The tunnel travels deep into the earth

and was filled with water.

The idea was that the soul of their ruler

would be swept along with the current

down to the roots of the tree of life.

The Christian Old Testament, or the Mosaic Bible,

also describes a tree of life

next to the tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden.

It symbolizes immortality.

And it's extraordinary

that when it comes to matters of religious belief,

even very different cultures

touch each other in unexpected ways.

Archeologists only recently discovered

a spring and a canal system under the tomb.

So the spirit of the Mayan king

will have easily found its way down into the underworld.

The Mayan holy book, the Popol Vuh,

says that when the gods created the world,

they first tried to make people out of clay,

and then out of wood.

Both attempts failed.

It wasn't until they used maize that they finally succeeded

in creating the first human beings.

And that's why even today,

the Mayans still call themselves people of corn.

(pleasant music)

The Maya settled in Mexico and Central America

about 4,000 years ago.

But the classical era of the Maya civilization

lasted from about 400 to 900 AD.

The Aztecs' sphere of influence was Central Mexico,

but that came later between the 14th and the 16th centuries.

Some descendants of the ancient Maya live around Palenque.

They are known as the Lacandon.

K'in Garcia Garcia speaks only the Lacandon language.

His son translates into Spanish for us.

Do you still consider Palenque

to be the center of the universe?

Yes, it is a holy place for us.

We believe in the gods of our ancestors.

And our religion is unique.

Its roots are here, even though our ancestors

sometimes had to leave their cities

when resources grew scarce.

Otherwise, they were very advanced.

There's mathematicians, physicists, astronomers.

We, the Lacandon, are still guided by the stars.

They show us the way in the jungle.

We also inherited the seeds of plants

that we still cultivate today.

Seeds are the fruit of life

given to us by our god, Hachakyum,

just like the eternal protection we enjoy.

We only have that here in the Chiapas province.

That's why we're still here.

The legacy of the ancestors

is still very visible today.

Here in Palenque,

the Maya carefully trace the paths of the heavenly bodies.

They calculated their planting and harvest times.

Today, the buildings need constant restoration

because part of the structure

is always on the verge of collapse.

Nature is trying to win back lost ground

and the humid rainforest climate

eats away at the structures.

Mexican archeologists and UNESCO are working together,

fighting to preserve these buildings.

It's a truly Sisyphean task.

But it's about more than just the bricks and mortar,

they're trying to save a culture

that has not yet been fully explored.

These places are rich in subtle hints

at how the Maya lived when their culture was in full bloom.

And the archeologists are finding out

how Maya architects built and decorated in the 7th century.

And is the work today done

using the same materials as the Maya?

Yes.

Thanks to the archeological studies

that have been carried out.

For the last 100 years,

we've known that lime was the material

that they used to strengthen not just buildings,

but also plaster,

and sometimes stucco decorations in sculptures.

So based on the information that we have,

we use the same materials that the Maya used.

That's why we can better preserve them.

And they look more authentic with the original materials.

And there are some stunning reliefs.

Here, we see King Pakal's mother

handing the crown to her son.

It may well be that the Maya sacrificed humans to their gods

more often than we used to think.

And the nobler the blood of the victim,

the happier the gods would be.

How were the human sacrifices carried out?

We found informative depictions

in several different Maya ruins,

on wooden tablets, in paintings,

(mumbles) stucco molding.

There were images of people being grabbed by the hair

then having their heads chopped off with an ax.

This was one way people were sacrificed.

Other sacrificial victims would lie down like this

and allow themselves to be stabbed.

And their bodies would be opened up here at the breastbone

and their hearts were torn out.

There are even commemorative stones

with the names of royal prisoners.

These names are from some of the most

famous families of that time.

But what happened to others who weren't of royal blood?

Unfortunately, there are no commemorative stones for them

because they were not of noble blood.

They're often soldiers from an enemy city

that had been taken captive, forced into slavery,

and then sacrificed.

The Maya most often sacrificed people

during droughts and famines

and before they went off to war.

And among the Aztecs, some time later,

the custom of human sacrifice

came to play an even more important role.

I'm traveling from Palenque to Mexico City

where the former Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan

was once located.

Little remains of this capital,

of the elaborate system of canals

built by the Aztec centuries ago,

scarcely a trace is left.

Tenochtitlan was constructed across

several islands in Lake Texcoco,

connected to the mainland by five dams.

The brick dams and the canals served as transport routes.

It was a perfectly organized metropolis,

a hub of trade and a center of education.

The square in front of the Templo Mayor, the Grand Temple,

was the heart of the city.

On the ruins of the Aztec temple,

destroyed by the Spaniards,

the conquerors built an enormous cathedral.

They also drained the city of its water.

The original rulers of the city

conducted human sacrifices to their gods on this exact spot

on a grand scale.

Hundreds of people were killed

on the top level of the Templo Mayor.

Once dead,

they were beheaded and their skulls stacked up into towers.

Most of the sacrificial victims

were between 25 and 35 years old.

They died for Huitzilopochtli, the god of war.

The Aztecs believed that these constant sacrifices

were necessary to keep the world turning.

The gory rituals of the Aztecs involved

cutting out the hearts of their victims,

and not just their opponents on the battlefield,

but women and children as well.

But the Aztecs were not a godless people

of butchers and cannibals,

as the Spanish Conquistadors unfairly described them.

They weren't motivated by cruelty.

In their eyes, their victims were sacrifices

owed to their gods.

We don't know exactly who was killed here.

Were the sacrificial victims just captured enemies,

or did the Aztecs' own people also faced this ordeal?

What we do know is that the sacrificial cult

was one of the cornerstones of Aztec religion.

These sacrifices were meant to ensure

that the sun would rise again in the morning

and that the world wouldn't simply descend into darkness.

The Aztecs firmly believed that they had to give their gods

what they called precious water, chalchiuh-atl.

And this precious water was nothing less than human blood

offered up to the gods in the still beating hearts

of the Aztecs' human sacrifices.

The victims died, but their blood nourished new life.

And this is how the Aztecs themselves depicted it.

They removed the victim's heart

and held it up to the heavens.

There are still so many mysteries in the ancient Maya

and Aztec cultures.

The National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City

contains the world's largest collection

of ancient Mexican art.

The stone sculptures dedicated to their gods

remind us of the importance of mythology

to the ancient cultures in this part of the world.

It was the key to the meaning of life

and of the world that lay beyond death.

But the most breathtaking exhibit of all

is the giant sun stone.

It was discovered in the 18th century,

buried under the Zocalo, the central square of Mexico City,

where once the Templo Mayor, the Great Temple, stood.

Many people think that this stone is a calendar.

What was it really?

Well, it is a monument dedicated to the cult of the sun

for the Aztecs.

Sun worship was the most important thing to them.

It doesn't record the passage of time,

so we can't consider it a calendar.

However, what the Aztecs depicted in this stone

are the ideas that they had about time,

the passage of time.

The center represents the four eras or suns

before the fifth sun.

The fifth sun is the sun of the Aztecs,

which is in the center of the stone.

Surrounding it in the first ring are the days.

The years are next,

and, finally, there are two big fire serpents,

which represent the place where the sun moves.

They are carrying the sun across the sky.

(mystifying music)

Teotihuacan, 30 miles from Mexico City,

was one of the largest ancient cities in the Americas.

It was built and experienced its golden age

long before the Aztecs arrived here.

What a site must have greeted the Aztecs

when they discovered this city in the 15th century.

700 years earlier, it had been abandoned

by a culture that remains unidentified today.

We still don't know for sure who lived there.

The Aztecs were convinced that the pyramids and temples

must have been built by giants and gods.

So they named the city Teotihuacan.

Roughly translated, that means

the place where people became gods.

Nearly 200,000 people had lived here.

Back then, Teotihuacan had been

the biggest city on the continent,

the heart of Central America,

comparable only with ancient Rome.

The Aztecs could've settled in the abandoned city,

but they were too much in awe of its mysteries.

Instead, they turned Teotihuacan

into an enormous shrine to their gods

who they believed had created the world here.

It was the Aztecs who named the main street

Avenue of the Dead

and the two great temples here after the sun and the moon.

The city was sacred to them

and they copied its architectural style

for their own building projects.

The Aztec Empire was the last

of the great Mesoamerican cultures,

highly developed socially, intellectually, and artistically.

In their moral and ethical reasoning,

the Aztecs were pragmatists.

There's an old Aztec proverb that says,

"The earth of this world is slippery."

What they meant by that was that even a good person

can slip into ill.

And what that means in turn

is that the important question is not,

are you a good or a bad person,

but how do you handle and manage

the consequences of your errors?

(puzzling music)

Alone here in the early morning,

you can feel the magic of this lost world.

The urge to be in constant exchange with the gods

can be found in many Mesoamerican cultures.

Among the Central American peoples,

it was the king who was the world's link to the divine.

He held the cosmos together

and he commanded that rituals and sacrifices

be performed for the gods.

He was responsible for preventing crises,

such as failed harvests.

And time played a crucial role in these cultures.

The Central American peoples distinguish between

ritual time and solar time.

In other words, between sacred and worldly time.

There was a calendar for each,

and the two species of time were integrated with each other,

allowing events from the past or from the world of the gods

to be embedded in the experience of living humans.

Teotihuacan has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site

since 1987.

It has not been fully excavated yet,

only a fraction of the city is actually visible.

Everything was planned with perfect symmetry,

like a chess board.

The heart of the complex is the Temple of Quetzalcoatl,

the god depicted as a feathered snake

found in many Mesoamerican religions.

According to legend,

the white-skinned Quetzalcoatl was overthrown as god king

and he fled from these lands.

But one day it was said he would return from across the sea

and reclaim his former empire.

And according to the Aztec calendar,

that was to be the exact year that Spanish Conquistador

Hernan Cortes landed on the coast of Mexico.

Moctezuma II firmly believed

that Cortes must be a descendant of the banished god.

His credulity, along with many other factors,

sealed the Aztecs' fate.

Some believe that the Spanish exploited the myth

of the return of Quetzalcoatl's descendant

to justify the overthrow of the Aztec Empire.

In any case, from that moment onwards,

for better or for worse,

Europe would remain an integral part

of this continent's history.

(engaging music)

In no way can you see more clearly

than in this little city of Cholula

with what confidence and arrogance

the Spaniards took control of this country.

This used to be the location

of the largest pyramid in Central America,

perhaps in the entire world.

It was dedicated to the god, Quetzalcoatl,

and it was built by Central American nations

whose identities are still not known.

In the 16th century,

the Spaniards built right on the top of that a cathedral,

Nuestra Senora de los Remedios.

What an act of domination.

(engaging music)

Alongside countless churches,

the Spaniards also built two new cities

around the old pyramid in the 16th century,

imposing on the local nations

the architecture they had brought with them from Europe.

The city of Puebla, a UNESCO World Heritage Site,

is a particularly well-preserved

example of this architecture.

(lively music)

But the colonial rulers never managed

to destroy the Native Mexicans' culinary heritage.

Instead, there was an immediate fusion of cuisines.

The Spanish brought their livestock.

Pigs and cows were particularly popular

with the indigenous people

who updated their recipes accordingly.

The local women in charge of the cooking

became the facilitators of cultural exchange.

It was a meeting of cultures through palettes and stomachs.

And the culinary tradition they created

still survives today.

According to a Mexican saying,

a dinner without chili is like love without kisses.

That tells us something

about this country's love of good food.

And, of course, the people here are proud of the fact

that Mexican traditional cuisine

has been recognized by UNESCO as a piece of

immaterial global heritage.

For centuries, the monasteries in this country

were the hubs of Mexico's gastronomic culture.

It's here that the recipes of the indigenous women

who cooked for monks and bishops

were preserved like priceless relics.

And every monastery had its own version, for example,

of the famous mole sauce, a specialty here in Puebla.

(festive music)

There's no shortage of festive occasions in Mexico.

At traditional weddings,

the post ceremony banquet plays an important role.

And in Puebla, no wedding meal is complete

without mole poblano.

First, the customary tortillas are prepared.

They are part of every main course in Mexico.

The tortilla, made of blue corn in this case,

is one of the oldest foods.

Even the Aztecs enjoyed this popular flatbread.

What are the ingredients of a mole sauce?

Well, we use cinnamon,

sesame,

peanuts,

plantains and almonds,

raisins, and mulatto peppers.

This recipe has been passed down

within this family for eight generations.

And three generations are here in the kitchen today.

The friendly ladies teach me their cooking tricks.

Not only am I allowed to look over their shoulders,

they even let me lend a hand.

What really strikes me about cooking in this kitchen

is how calm and tranquil the whole process is.

In a European kitchen, there's often quite a lot of,

how shall I put it, tension and hurry.

But, here, there seems to be a very

relaxed and slow rhythm of cooking,

which is extremely pleasant to experience.

This is where ancient Aztec cuisine

fuses with elements from Europe,

and from Spain in particular.

It used to be that the nuns in the convents

would work in the kitchen

until they dropped from exhaustion.

Milling the corn to make corn meal for tortillas

was the most strenuous work.

And we also get the name of this dish, mole,

from the verb mo-le-a, which means to mill.

Mexican cuisine has been listed

as UNESCO intangible cultural heritage since 2010.

This is how the church dignitaries must have felt

as they enjoyed the finest meals

from the convent kitchens on Mexico's many holidays.

Here in Mexico, we don't use cutlery.

Try it.

Look, you make a triangle like this.

And now, it's time for me to say

goodbye to Mexico,

to the city of Puebla and its local volcano, Popocatepetl,

which is active and still erupts from time to time.

(rhythmic music)

My journey takes me now to Cuba

with its capital city of Havana

and the Valle de Vinales, the Mecca of tobacco.

In October 1492, when Christopher Columbus landed on Cuba,

he thought he had discovered China.

He called this island the most beautiful ever seen

by human eyes.

And he immediately claimed it for Spain.

This city has experienced so much

in its more than 500 years of history.

I want to take a closer look, so I dive straight in,

enjoying a tour of the historic streets in a vintage car.

I look at what has changed since the death of Fidel Castro,

and I can't shake the impression, on the one hand,

that the Habaneros are dreaming of a new beginning,

and on the other, that they'll do just fine

if it doesn't materialize.

Here, you can really feel

how the turbulent chapters of Cuba's history

have shaped this city,

Spanish colonialism,

African slavery,

rebellion and resistance,

the golden age of the sugar barons.

In the 1920s,

this place was a playground for the American mafia.

And then came the victory of the Cuban Revolution

under Fidel Castro,

and 60 years of socialist rule.

And throughout all of these challenges, the Habaneros,

as the inhabitants of this Caribbean Babylon are known,

have retained their indomitable

(speaks in foreign language).

Cuba has always been a place of synthesis,

where disparate influences,

African, Caribbean, Spanish, American, and French,

came together in a process that continuously produce

new forms of expression.

Cuban anthropologist, Fernando Ortiz,

called this process transculturation.

In Old Havana, a UNESCO World Heritage Site,

this process is visible all around us.

The old town has so far only partly been refurbished.

There's just not enough money.

Revolution and a unique music

are still the old dominant elements

of street life in Havana.

I'm visiting a rumba group,

considered among the best in the country.

Rumba has been recognized as intangible cultural heritage.

(upbeat music)

It's a mix of music and dance, singing, gesture,

and intense interaction between men and women.

And rumba tells the story of the island.

Rumba is typically Cuban with African influences

because the Black people from Africa

who were transported to Cuba as slaves

sang as a form of protest.

As an expression of their protest,

they sang about their country,

their homesickness, law, mistreatment.

And the songs were passed on

from generation to generation in this way.

They were Mulattoes and Whites,

but mostly Black people who adopted rumba

as a form of expression,

as a means of liberation.

These experiences memorialized in music

must've left their mark on the landscape as well.

It's said that the best tobacco in the world is grown here

in the Vinales Valley.

I'm looking for the masters who can roll a real Cuban cigar

because this is where famous brands such as Cohiba,

Montecristo, and Romeo y Julieta come from.

A cigar made of tobacco leaves is known as puro, or pure.

A puro consists of three parts,

tobacco leaves without stems for the filling,

and a (indistinct) leaf,

which are then pressed and wrapped

in a particularly fine leaf called the capa.

The tobacco leaves are naturally fermented.

Even Columbus marveled

at the peculiar cigarettes smoked by the indigenas,

the indigenous peoples.

But it wasn't until the 18th century that the Europeans

who had always preferred chewing tobacco, or snuff,

developed a taste for smoking,

and tobacco production spiked.

Unfortunately, tobacco farming

wasn't the only industry in Cuba fueled by slave labor.

Slaves also worked on the coffee and sugar cane plantations.

The Caribbean became the theater

of a competition among the European colonial powers.

There was a growing appetite

for products from the Caribbean,

and in the process,

human beings became the most desirable merchandise of all.

No other product is as closely intertwined

with the exploitation of human beings in this region

as sugar.

Tobacco may be the symbol of Cuba,

but sugar was the true driver of its modern history.

By the middle of the 19th century,

the island could boast a state-of-the-art,

high-tech sugar industry

with factories larger than the cotton mills of Manchester,

all dependent on the labor of slaves.

There can be no glossing over of the horrors of slavery

or the suffering of the enslaved.

The colonial rulers, our ancestors,

lined their own pockets at the slaves' expense.

It's difficult to imagine the atrocity

as this peaceful valley

and this entire continent have seen over the centuries.

Of course, there have always been wars and conflict

here as everywhere else,

but the Spanish conquest of Latin America and the Caribbean

marked a new departure.

In some places, entire populations were wiped out.

Oppression and enslavement followed.

All of these countries witnessed

courageous movements of resistance,

emancipation, and independence,

but the original sin of European conquest

continued to shape their history.

Terrible as this saga of violence and destruction is,

it's hard to explain the diversity and creativity

of this part of the world

without that traumatic background.

It's a contradiction that continues to animate culture here,

and it helps to explain the unique charisma

of these societies.

My journey now takes me into the Andes,

to Quito, the capital of Ecuador.

It's nearly 3,000 meters above sea level.

Quito is nestled amongst volcanoes,

and it was the first city ever to be placed on UNESCO's list

of World Heritage Sites in 1978.

The high snow-capped peaks,

the active volcanoes and earthquakes,

the vegetation, and the customs of the people

make this region one of the most interesting in the world.

This is how the German naturalist, Alexander Von Humboldt,

described the country of Ecuador in 1802.

He cataloged 6,200 plant species here.

And this was his starting point

for summiting the highest known peak at the time,

Chimborazo, just on there.

And you can see that he's

recorded his findings from this region

schematically in this map here.

Even after more than 200 years,

Humboldt is revered beyond all measure in Latin America.

He's considered the second and true discoverer of America

because unlike Columbus or even Hernan Cortes,

he came to the continent with peaceful, friendly intentions,

and was interested in the local people,

as well as the flora and fauna.

It's one of the many reasons why Alexander Von Humboldt

numbers among my favorite Germans.

In 1534, the Spanish conquered the ancient Inca Empire

in the Andes.

The Incan temples were forced to make way

for colonial architecture.

Today, Quito possesses one of the most extensive

and best preserved historic centers of Spanish America.

Professor Sofia Luzuriaga Jaramillo

is conducting research into Quito's turbulent history.

The city brings together indigenous

and European architectural and artistic traditions.

It's an area like this

that is located in the wide valley of Guayllabamba.

What was Quito like at this time?

It was a Quito that was moving.

It was a Quito with a lot of interaction.

So for example, let's talk briefly about Ilalo,

which is part of what would become the area of Quito,

Ilalo with its obsidian workshops.

So we'll go back a little in time

and then forward again in time,

carrying on to Cotocollao.

There, you've got planes with ridges.

These were dips and slopes

which were used for agricultural cultivation,

or take Yun-mi-pam-pa to the north of the city,

where there was a strong human settlement

that had to be abandoned

because of the constant volcanic eruptions.

So you've got an area at different stages

that I want to emphasize was a dynamic area,

with exchanges,

exchanges of knowledge, products, and skills.

That also was an area to which you had to adapt,

not just to the altitude of 2800 meters,

but also to all the slopes

with their distinct tiers of ecosystems,

especially because the societies before the 16th century

in these Andean areas

moved constantly between the different altitudes.

The colonial Baroque style that arose here

combined Italian, Flemish, Morisco, and local influences.

For evidence of this style, we need look no further

than the Iglesia de la Compania de Jesus, the Jesuit church.

The modest gray volcanic rock facade

belies an opulent golden interior.

It's said to have required nearly seven tons of gold leaf.

One of the really fascinating things about this place,

about this church,

is how different cultures are brought together here.

So you can see in the vaulting over the nave,

Moorish, Arabic looking inscriptions and decorations

by the Moorish artisans

who came with the Spaniards during the conquest of Ecuador.

And behind me, of course,

all the pomp and glory of the European Baroque.

And above me in this beautiful dome,

a reference to the sun.

And, thus, a coded reference to the sun god

of the conquered Incas.

The local people, the indigenous of Ecuador,

was supposed to feel spiritually

at home in this church as well.

And this is something perhaps that almost

all these places of global cultural patrimony

have in common.

They're places where despite all the history of destruction,

transition, and subordination,

pieces, different broken pieces of humanity,

are brought back together.

The Jesuits who built this church

were able to afford all this gold leaf

because they were also businessmen

who commissioned the cultivation of sugar cane

on enormous swathes of land,

laboriously planted and harvested

by the descendants of the Incas and by African slaves.

This was how they financed

the construction of churches like this one.

But Ecuador would soon cast off

Iberian Spanish colonial rule.

The great revolutionary, Simon Bolivar,

fought to liberate several countries.

And in 1822, Ecuador gained independence.

The country incidentally gets its name from the equator,

which run straight through it.

Here in Quito in Ecuador,

a few years ago, they used GPS to draw,

with military precision,

the equator as a line in the ground.

And that means I have a choice standing here.

I can place myself in the Southern Hemisphere,

which is where I come from, where I was born,

or I can place myself in the Northern Hemisphere

where I've been living and working for decades.

It's a difficult choice.

And I think I'll simply stand

with one foot in each hemisphere

and offer myself as a bridge.

Just below the equator are the Galapagos Islands,

one of the last true corners of paradise on this planet.

In 1835, British naturalist, Charles Darwin,

set course for the 19-island archipelago

onboard the Beagle, a British Navy survey vessel.

Darwin was 24 years old at the time.

He'd abandoned his medical studies

and thrown himself headlong into studying the natural world.

He was fascinated by the flora and fauna of the Galapagos.

And he soon realized that different species

of marine iguanas, tortoises, thrushes, and finches

lived on the different islands.

From these and other observations,

he gradually developed the theory

that the plants and animals had adapted over time

to their respective environments.

The islands became a national park back in 1959,

and they've been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1978.

It's believed that the Galapagos

were created approximately 350 million years ago

through seismic and volcanic activity on the ocean floor.

As they were never connected to the mainland,

unique species of plants and animals

were able to develop there.

Here on the Galapagos islands,

we can take a close-up look at the process of evolution

as it occurred everywhere on the planet.

Why here exactly?

Well, interestingly enough, these islands

are completely isolated from one another.

Each one stands alone,

and the mainland is 1,000 kilometers away.

This allowed the various species on the islands

to develop independently,

undisturbed by external influences.

And the environment is a challenging one

for the organisms living here.

Freshwater is scarce, UV radiation is intense,

and there are extreme droughts.

Plants and animals that were carried onto the islands

on the wind or on driftwood

had to adapt and change radically in order to survive.

If they didn't, extinction loomed.

The result was that the same species

developed in different directions on the different islands.

And this observation was an important building block

for Charles Darwin's theory of evolution,

which came to him later after his trip to the islands

on the Beagle.

It was impossible to get any proper work done on the Beagle.

Darwin suffered terribly from seasickness.

(light music)

Unlike the rest of the world,

the Galapagos Islands are dominated by reptiles,

not by mammals.

The giant tortoises that lend the archipelago its name

must be around here somewhere.

Galapagos means saddle in old Spanish,

and the shells on these primordial giants

really do look like saddles.

Darwin said that he rode on the backs of the tortoises,

but it was difficult to keep his balance.

Reptiles can survive for a long time without drinking water,

but how their ancestors made their way to the islands

from the far off mainland long ago

is still completely unknown.

What a fantastic primeval creature.

This one, apparently, was born during the First World War.

At least that's the estimate.

It's an extraordinary thing, and yet, of course,

one wonders if he couldn't make a little bit more of his

120-year life.

It seems a somewhat structureless existence,

munching on grass for 130 years.

But, still, magnificent all the same.

These creatures have developed some very special abilities

in order to adapt to the uncertainties of their environment.

When the male fertilize the female,

the female have an (indistinct) sac,

And the female can preserve the sperm of the male

for more than three years.

Yes, if any time during this three years,

the seasons, the rainy season is good,

the female will fertilize the eggs.

That take couple weeks to increase the size of the eggs

and then lay the eggs.

Female tortoises have a very high degree

of reproductive self-control.

Not only that but also the female

can delay the develop of the egg.

The reason, they guess, the tortoises can keep the sperm

and eggs for about five years.

And the female can escape bad seasons.

What's special about this species?

Why does it get so old?

Why do tortoises reach such an extraordinary age?

Well, that is a good question. (laughs)

But we start to research this in 1965.

And so in a very short time, in a very short period of time.

But one of the very important evidence that we have

is from Steve Irwin, the guy from Australia.

When Charles Darwin came here in 1835,

he brought out many species from Galapagos.

And the group of the species that he brought from here

were the tortoises as well.

For any reason, one of the tortoises,

that they named Harry in the beginning,

but they discover was a female,

and they changed to Harriet.

This is Harriet who was in Melbourne Zoo.

Exactly.

Steve report that tortoise died after 170 years.

That is the only real evidence

that we have about their life span.

But for scientists, that is a record of life

because we put on a very tough, tough, very strong animal,

living in captivity with a bed, with foods.

Probably we can help--

It's pretty privileged existence.

Exactly.

The larger islands with lusher vegetation

and lots of grass are home to species with domed shells.

Their relatives on the smaller rockier islands,

on the other hand, developed very different shells.

And they needed to be able to stretch their necks up

much higher to reach sources of food.

Darwin noticed this,

and the many different species of finches on the islands

also gave him food for thought.

It wasn't until after his journey to the Galapagos Islands

that Darwin began to work his observations

of the Galapagos finch species

into some kind of theoretical structure.

And, today, some of these birds are still named after him.

The finches, he argued,

had evolved independently of each other

on the different islands.

And each type of finch had a very different beak.

Some of their beaks were short

and thick to help them crack nuts.

Others had longer, thinner beaks

that were ideal for catching insects.

The finches, in other words,

had evolved into distinct species,

adapting to the food available

on the islands where they live.

Changing from generation to generation

was the only way they could survive.

Darwin would later call this natural selection.

His theory on the origin of species

was nothing short of revolutionary.

It demolished old certainties

and turned contemporary understandings of natural history

on their heads.

And the first place in which Darwin captured this thinking

on the history of species is in his notebooks,

the notebooks he made when he got back

from the Galapagos Islands.

And you can see how he's drawn a diagram

in which the species diverge like branches.

And Darwin called this diagram the tree of life.

The different species of scalesia plants

are a botanical parallel to the Darwin finches.

They too vary from island to island.

On Santa Cruz, they form thick forests.

On the other islands, they don't.

On my expeditions to the various islands,

I meet rangers who are looking after a species of birds

that are nearly extinct.

Today, one of the very rare Galapagos petrels

is scheduled to be marked.

They're endemic here,

so they can only be found in the Galapagos Islands,

and are on the list of critically endangered animal species.

They nest in burrows in the ground

to protect their eggs and chicks from predators like rats,

which arrived on the islands along with humans.

The rangers' goal is to mark and observe

every individual fledgling.

Protecting this unique species is also their duty

to this UNESCO World Natural Heritage Site,

say the rangers.

Back on the coast, I meet up with Maria Jose Barragan,

scientific director of the Darwin Research Station

on the Galapagos Islands.

How does she view the future of the archipelago?

I am optimistic, and that's why I'm here.

Simply because I believe in the new generations.

And I truly believe Galapagos is a very special place.

And I believe the local population,

as any other in the mainland,

is more aware and more sensible on how special this place is

and how the commitment of this local community,

especially the young members of the community,

could be and could become the challenge,

but also the active agents into the change.

So I trust in the future of Galapagos.

I invite all the people living here,

me and all the members of this community,

to take a reflective position and an approach

into how it means and what does it imply

to live here in Galapagos.

For the moment, the people here live in symbiosis

with the animals and the natural world.

And yet the question remains

as to whether the dangers of tourism for these islands

have been fully recognized.

Tourism desperately needs to be restricted

if this place is to be preserved.

The archipelago is battling growing levels of pollution,

and climate change is not helping things.

But above all,

the many endangered species of plants and animals

need to be protected from human beings and their actions.

This place really brings it home to you

just what is at stake.

A fragile ecosystem that has functioned smoothly

for hundreds of thousands of years is in danger,

extreme weather conditions are occurring

more and more frequently,

sea levels are rising,

and plastic waste from Asia and South America

is washing up on the beaches,

posing a threat to local wildlife.

The imminent collapse of our planetary biosphere

is the foremost problem and challenge of our time.

We will only master it if we stop thinking of ourselves

just as Europeans, Chinese, Americans, or whatever,

and begin to see ourselves as inhabitants of a shared space.

Humans, after all, are also a species

that will have to evolve if it hopes to survive.

(misty music)