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[THEME MUSIC]

GREGG BRADEN: My name's Gregg Braden.

And I'd like to welcome you to this very special presentation

of "Missing Links", the deep truth of our origin, history,

destiny, and fate.

In the last episode, I shared with you

the science based experiments that not only confirm

that we are deeply connected to our world,

but they go beyond that, showing that this connection is

so deep, in fact, that it begins at the very core

of our existence, with our DNA, where we interact with life,

and even reality itself.

Well, today we're going to zero in

on what it is about our DNA that sets us apart

from all other life and gives us the extraordinary ability

to influence our lives and our world on such

a deep and intimate level.

And it all begins with where we come from, our origins.

While scientists are scrambling to unlock

the mystery of our beginning, they're

also confining themselves to a limited belief system that

says the mystery has already been solved

and that evolution is our story.

Well, I want to say right now that there

is a huge difference between forcing the evidence that we

discover, such as bones, teeth and fossils of ancient forms

of life, into a preconceived idea of how, or even if, they

relate to us.

It's a huge difference between doing that and allowing

these discoveries, wherever they are, to lead where they will

and tell whatever story it is they hold.

Today, we're going to discover why scientists have now

come to a dead end when it comes to explaining

the mystery of our past and why the new evidence no

longer supports the conventional story when

it comes to us and our origin.

And it all begins with a book.

It's a book that was published in 1859,

and the beliefs of the man that wrote the book, Charles Darwin.

Charles Darwin released his book,

titled "The Origin of Species" in 1859.

And prior to that time, the big questions

of life, when we asked those questions of ourselves,

where does life come from, how does it work,

what do we do to make things better in our world, the answer

to those kinds of questions, those answers

came from religious organizations,

from the church primarily.

And Darwin said, he said, I would like

to establish a stepping stone.

Let's make the first step away from using faith

to describe where it is that we come from and who we are.

Let's do this based in science.

And it's for that reason that in 1859,

when Darwin released his first work, that it

was widely accepted.

It was quickly embraced.

It wasn't questioned very much, because he was a scientist.

He was a geologist.

And when he released this information,

it quickly became ingrained into mainstream thinking.

I want to go back a little bit.

I want to share with you a little bit

about Darwin, my feelings about Darwin,

where I think he may have strayed from the deepest truths

of our existence, and why.

And I want to begin that conversation, first

just by sharing with you the full title of the book that you

rarely get to see.

When Darwin's book was published,

in the early part of the 20th century,

the main title was on the front of the book,

"The Origin of Species".

The rest of the title was taken off of the front of the book.

It was relegated to the inside covers,

because of the implications of what he was saying.

So let me read to you precisely what this lengthy title was,

and then we can talk about what it means from his perspective.

And that will lead us right in to what the new discoveries are

showing us.

The original tile, "Origin of a Species",

was this, "The Origin of Species by Means

of Natural Selection"--

that's the title.

The subtitle began with the word "or".

And it says, "Or the Preservation of Favored Races

in the Struggle for Life".

That title tells us a lot about Darwin, about his thinking.

Number one, he believed that there were favored races,

that there were some that were favored over others in nature.

And he believed that life was a struggle to begin with.

And it's through this lens, through this perspective

of struggle that Darwin interpreted everything

that he saw in his studies and in his world.

Well, I'd like to begin, before we get into the theory itself,

with a little bit about my experience with Darwin's work.

I'm a geologist.

I'm a degreed geologist.

And so I relate to much of Darwin's mechanism

of exploration, his thinking.

Darwin was a scientist.

And I think he was a good scientist.

He could not possibly have known in his day what we now

know in ours.

He couldn't have known about DNA.

He couldn't have known the deep secrets of biology.

In the 1850s, scientists weren't even sure what cells were.

So, just to invite you to think about that a little bit.

I think Darwin's observations were good, in my opinion.

And I'm deviating from the science a little bit.

This is a personal perspective.

Here's where I think Darwin went wrong.

Darwin went into nature to observe nature.

And he believed that what he saw happening in one place,

in one moment of time, in one part of the world,

in the natural world.

If he saw birds behaving a certain way or ants behaving

a certain way, he believed that what he saw in that moment

was a little example that represented a principle,

or a rule of nature that applied to the big world and all life

everywhere, including us.

But we all know that there's no one size that fits

all when it comes to nature.

It doesn't work that way.

But this is the assumption that Darwin made.

So having said that, I also want to say to you

that Darwin was very clear, when he wrote his book, about why

he was writing it.

When I researched his book for my writings,

I took the time to go back and read Darwin's own words, not

the interpretation through an academic professor or somewhere

from a university or a philosopher.

I wanted to see what Darwin was thinking.

And it's not an easy read.

He had very complex language, very flowery kind of adjectives

that he was using, almost like a philosopher.

But I want to share this with you.

And I want to share this in Darwin's own words.

Because even Darwin knew that his theory would probably fall.

And I want you to know that he was OK with his theory falling.

Darwin was perfectly OK with his theory falling.

It's mainstream academia today that's

having a problem letting go of Darwin's theory.

Listen to Darwin's own word.

Here's what he said.

This is a quote.

He said, "if it could be demonstrated

that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly

have been formed by numerous successive slight

modifications", he said, "my theory would absolutely

break down."

My theory would absolutely break down.

All right.

So what's Darwin saying to us?

He's saying that in this theory of evolution of organs

and attributes developing slowly, gradually

over long periods of time, he's saying

if we could ever find even one example,

if we found one example where that theory didn't apply,

the whole theory would fall apart.

Well, not only found one, we found many examples.

The human eye is a perfect example.

The way the proteins come together

to create the clotting mechanism in our blood

is a perfect example.

The way cells work is a perfect example.

Every cell has to have a way of taking in,

of eating nutrients, of excreting those nutrients,

of reproducing.

And evolution says that those kinds of attributes

should come slowly, gradually over long periods of time.

But if you think about it, it can't.

They all have to be there at once for the cell to function.

If a cell is able to eat but not excrete,

that's not going to work.

If a cell can live but not produce,

you're not going to see many more cells.

So a cell is a perfect example of where

all of these attributes have to be in place all at once

for the organism to live.

They cannot be gradually created or gradually developed

in response to nature over a long period of time.

So what I'd like to do--

I'm talking about evolution--

and I'd like to define evolution.

Let's go on a little journey.

Let's go on a 58-second journey of evolution and what it is

and what it says to us.

So if you look at your screen, this

is a beautiful graphic example of exactly how evolution works.

Darwin believed that in the beginning, life formed.

And he said himself, he didn't know how life began.

So he didn't try to explain how life began in the first place.

He said, after life was here, in a primitive form,

as a single cell, what happened?

He said that cell began to grow and become

more complex over time in response to what

the environment, to what nature was showing that cell.

When the life form needed to stay warmer,

or when it needed to adapt to a different kind of food,

or when it needed to sense differently in its environment,

those kinds of things would trigger a mechanism

within the organism and new attributes would develop,

slowly, gradually, over long periods of time,

the organism became more and more complex

until it reached the point where we are

today, with humankind being the pinnacle,

at this point, of what evolution is saying to us.

So since 1859, this mechanism that I've just shared with you

has been the thinking underlying biology

and human origins, where we come from and how we got here.

Since 1859, the thinking has been

that those organisms, as they grew and developed

new attributes over long periods of time,

that when they would die, they would leave a fossilized record

of that moment, a snapshot of that moment in evolution,

and that we should be able to find those in the world.

And when we do, they will begin to give us

what's called the evolutionary family

tree that leads from those primitive organisms

to where we are today.

So the question has always been, how

do we get from there to here?

How do we get from those organisms

to where we are today?

And the thinking that this gradual transition must

be available to us in the fossil record

is at the very foundation, it's at the root of human biology

and the way we think about our evolutionary past today.

But I also want to say to you that when Darwin

put his theory together, even he had questions as to why

we don't see more of the kind of evidence that he said

should be available if we, in fact, are

the result of this long, slow, gradual evolution.

He said, we ought to find these fossils everywhere.

I want you to see, once again, Darwin's own language, so

that in your mind, you're beginning to have an insight

and beginning to think the way that Darwin was thinking.

What Darwin said is this.

He said-- and this is a quote--

he said "the number of intermediate varieties,

which have formerly existed, must be truly enormous."

So he's saying there's obviously been a lot of life

in the world in the past.

Here's his question.

He said, "why then is not every geological formation

and every geologic stratum full of such intermediate links?

Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely gradated

organic chain.

And this, perhaps, is the most obvious and serious objection

which can be urged against my theory."

So Darwin is saying, he's admitting, he's saying,

you know, I've got this--

I'm paraphrasing-- he's saying, I've got this theory.

And even I, as a geologist, am a little amazed

that we're not finding more evidence to support my theory.

So this is kind of the backdrop that has been conveniently

forgotten in the modern world, in academics and teaching,

that you won't hear high school, college professors sharing

these kinds of doubts.

And I think it's important that we

be honest with ourselves and our young people in school today.

I think it's important to be honest, truthful and factual.

And I'm about to share with you the evidence, the very

unpopular evidence that does not support Darwin's theory.

And I also want to be clear.

I'm not suggesting that we throw out

all of the theories of evolution and stop

teaching them in our schools.

I believe that we owe it to our young people

to honor them with all the information,

show them everything, show them the idea of Darwin's theory,

show them the new evidence.

And here's why that's important.

Young people love to know if they are living in a world

where the mysteries have yet to be solved,

because it means maybe they're the ones that

can solve the mystery.

And that's much more exciting to study

than to study a rigid academic theory,

where we say it's all buttoned down

and we already know everything there is to know.

That's not the case.

So the thinking has been that as we

find these primitive forms of life--

and I know you've seen these before.

I grew up in the '50s, '60s.

And it was a very exciting time in anthropology.

Louis Leakey, the Leakey Foundation, the Olduvai gorge

in Africa, where they kept finding

older and older examples, fossilized examples

of these primitive beings.

And the magazines, the flashy magazines on the newsstands

would have these big titles, The Age of Human Ancestors,

would push back again and again and again.

And we all heard things like Australopithecus.

It was better known as Lucy or Homo habilis.

It was called the handyman, or Neanderthal.

And these are the examples that were

given as being evidence that was discovered that was believed

to support Darwin's theory.

Well, this is what I want to share with you right now.

The problem is that the evidence doesn't support the theory.

The evidence does not support the theory.

If you look at a traditional tree of human evolution,

it's called the human evolutionary tree,

we see human at the top of the tree and leading up to us

are all of what are believed to be these intermediate species,

and we're all connected by these lines from one

to another and another up to us.

Here's the thing.

Look closely the next time you observe one of these,

or look at the one that's on your screen right now.

And if you look at the legend, the little box that

describes everything that's happening,

those lines generally are dotted lines.

And the reason they are dotted is

because they are called inferred or speculative relationships.

Inferred, or speculative.

That means the scientists suspect they exist,

but they have yet to find the proof

to actually nail down their existence of this relationship.

They're believed to be true, and they

have been believed since 1859, when

Darwin proposed the theory.

I don't know about you, my thinking,

since 1859 until where we are right now,

it's about 150 years, we have had the best minds in academia,

the best scientists, we've had the most sophisticated

equipment, we've had the greatest universities,

we've had the most funding, the most money,

all directed toward solving this mystery of our origin.

And I think that if we were on the right track,

we'd be further along than we are right now.

We would have some of those dotted lines be solid lines.

But they are not.

They are not.

And the scientists keep saying-- and I have friends in academia

who are teaching this in universities right now--

they're saying we just haven't looked in the right place.

We just haven't found the right fossil.

We just haven't looked in the right part of the world

and found this evidence yet.

Well, that physical evidence is only a part of the key.

Because now we have new evidence that's

taking us light years farther and it's

telling us why the physical evidence may not

be supporting this story.

So you've all heard of missing links, and the missing links

when it comes to human evolution.

The truth is that the missing links are still missing,

and I think they always will be, because the evidence suggests

that they probably do not exist.

Let me tell you why.

Human DNA is beginning to tell a new story.

And it's an exciting story.

This sounds like science fiction, CSI kinds of stuff.

But we are actually able to cull the DNA

from a human out of the bone marrow

from their fossils that are thousands and thousands

and thousands of years old in a way

that we have not been able to do in the past.

That's the state of the DNA right now.

So I'm just going to begin with a story.

In 1987, northern Europe.

We've all heard of Neanderthal.

We've been taught that Neanderthal

is one of our ancestors.

Well, 1987, the body of a Neanderthal infant, a baby

girl, was discovered in a rare state of preservation

that we have never seen before and never seen since.

She was carbon dated to about 30,000 years old.

And she's supposed to be one of our ancestors.

So all of a sudden now, we have the DNA

of a being that's supposed to be our ancestor

that we can compare to our DNA today

to see how much overlap there really is.

They were able to pull the DNA out of the bone marrow

from one of her toes that was preserved so very

well, the bone of one of her toes

that was preserved so very well.

I'm going to cut to the chase.

I'm going to go to the very last sentence of the very

last paragraph in the very prestigious journal "Nature",

from the study that was released in the year 2000,

the conclusion of what this DNA investigation showed.

You remember, the discovery is made in 1987.

The results were only released in the year 2000.

Here's what they said.

The last sentence says, "the results

suggest that modern human was not, in fact,

descended from Neanderthals."

Modern human was not descended from Neanderthals.

That is from the journal "Nature", volume 404,

March 30th in the year 2000.

So now we know who we're not.

We're not descended from Neanderthals.

And as a matter of fact, since that time,

additional evidence has shown that we shared the Earth

with the Neanderthal, which means we could not

have descended from them.

All right.

So now we know who we are not.

Fast forward to another DNA discovery.

You've probably heard of Cro-Magnon.

That is a term that was used when I was in school, back

in the '60s and '70s.

And it's still being used in some places today.

But the term has been replaced.

It's no longer used now.

And the word, the words that have replaced Cro-Magnon

are self-explanatory.

Cro-Magnon is now replaced with an acronym that is A-M-H,

the letters A-M-H. They stand for anatomically modern human.

And that tells the whole story.

Anatomically modern humans, used to be Cro-Magnon.

We showed up.

They showed up 200,000 years ago on the earth.

And they have not changed since that time.

That means they are us, or we are them.

The DNA of the anatomically modern humans that showed up

200,000 years ago and our DNA is essentially the same DNA.

If you were to take the skeleton of an anatomically modern human

and put it next to mine right now, except for their legs

being maybe a little thicker, their bones, because they were

running and walking probably much more than I do,

you can't tell us apart.

We are them.

They are us.

We showed up on this earth as fully realized, fully enabled,

fully capacitated, anatomically modern humans 200,000 years

ago, and we haven't changed.

Now we're going to get into what this means,

but I want to tell you, that's not Darwin's idea of evolution.

And this is where the problem comes in.

I want to read to you just a couple of quotes from one

of the research magazines, so there's

no doubt in your mind about what it is that they're saying.

This is from the journal "Advances in Anthropology".

In 2012, scientists claimed that Cro-Magnon, is

what they're calling it, the DNA is fully modern and unchanged.

They actually have DNA now that goes back

over 28,000 years from these beings.

They haven't gone all the way back to the 200,000 year point

yet.

But they haven't changed.

And it says, "this means that Cro-Magnon

was a fully modern individual who

perhaps had even a larger brain capacity than we have today."

Let me just talk to you a little about the brain capacity.

They may have had a larger brain capacity, because it gave them

more surface area.

Our brains are a little smaller, but they're more efficient.

Because now we have more folds in our brains.

That gives us more surface area.

So what are we saying here?

What's the bottom line to all this?

What we're finding is that we need a new evolutionary family

tree.

The old family tree that has us at the top, that

can no longer be the tree.

Because the evidence is not supporting what

that tree has said.

The new family tree probably looks more like a bush.

It does not have a long succession

of evolving life forms that lead up to us It shows, boom,

we showed up 200,000 years ago in a form

that still exists today.

We don't know how or why.

We're going to begin talking about that.

But when it comes to how we appeared, this is the mystery,

we haven't changed in those 200,000 years.

So now that we know humans showed up 200,000 years ago,

two questions.

Two questions arise immediately.

Why did it happen?

Why did we show up as we have?

And how?

What is it that triggered it?

What caused this to happen?

So I'd like to take just a moment

and look a little closer at what these DNA

studies between modern humans and Neanderthal

are really telling us.

I know you've heard about them before.

I'd like for you to see them with your own eyes,

so you know exactly what it is that scientists are looking at,

you know what is matching, what's not matching,

and you know why that overlap is not occurring the way that

has been believed in the past.

So let me orient you to what you're seeing here.

This is a graphic image of the 23 chromosomes

that are both human and Neanderthal.

We both have 23, 23 chromosomes.

And you're seeing them overlaying one another,

so that we can see where there is a match

and where there is not a match.

The blue is Neanderthal.

The red is human.

And if you look closely, and they are few and far between,

there are orange bars that you will see above each chromosome.

The orange bar tells us where we have data in common.

So if you look at chromosome number one,

for example, what you're seeing, all

of the places above the actual blue and the red graph,

every once in awhile-- and I'm highlighting them

on the screen for you-- you see a little orange bar.

That orange bar tells you where the DNA

between Neanderthal and human is common, where it's overlapping.

And I'm going to share with you, with these circles,

I'm going to highlight them here.

You don't see very many.

There are some.

Because we obviously are sharing DNA.

But we share DNA with all forms of life.

We share DNA with a fruit fly.

We share DNA with a cow.

We share DNA with our pets, our dogs and our cats and our fish.

So it's not surprising that we would share DNA.

The question is, to what degree is there

an overlap between their DNA and ours?

And this graph is showing you why the scientists are making

the conclusion that there is such little overlap that they

are not our ancestors.

We are not descended from the DNA.

And this image is actually from a peer review journal.

It's again from the journal "Nature", volume 444, July,

2006.

So scientists have known about this for a while.

Yet you are not seeing this in mainstream textbooks.

You're not seeing it in the classrooms.

Our young people are not seeing this.

And we're not seeing it on the television documentaries

and the specials.

It does not support the traditional mainstream story

of us, our origins, where we came from

and who our ancestors are.

So Darwin knew that there were problems with his theory.

And Darwin, as I mentioned earlier,

never claimed that his theory would be the theory

to end all theories.

It was a bridge.

It was intended as a stepping stone

to get us started, to get us from where

we had been on a path of a new way of thinking.

And I'd like to share with you one more time Darwin's own very

complex language, where he is expressing, in his own book,

his doubts of how his theory might not

support very complex organs within the body or organisms

themselves.

So I'm going to read directly from his quote,

so that I get every word just right.

When Darwin was talking about the improbability

of very complex organs just happening

through evolution alone and how improbable

that actually sounds--

I just want you to hear his words--

he said, "to suppose that the eye, for example,

with all its inimitable contrivances

for adjusting the focus to different distances,

for admitting different amounts of light,

and for the correction of spherical and chromatic

aberration, could have been formed

by natural selection seems, I freely

confess, absurd in the highest possible degree."

End of quote.

These are Darwin's own words.

So he's saying very honestly, as a scientist, he's saying,

I know this sounds outrageous.

He said, and I even think it sounds outrageous,

but this is the best that we have for right now.

So when it comes to the way we are thinking about ourselves

and one another, I wanted to give you some insights

into the most controversial facets of Darwin's work

and what it means.

For me, one of the problems that scientists are finding today,

it's all about context.

It's all about the bigger picture

of where the little discoveries actually fit.

Let me just give you an example of I mean by that.

If you and I are walking through a field somewhere

and we look on the ground and we find a key, a car key, and we

pick it up.

From that car key, unless you know more

about a bigger context, you don't really

know much about that key.

You may not be able to tell what kind of a car it goes to,

what year or make or model that car is.

You don't know how long that key has been there.

And you'll never know only by looking at this key.

This is a principle that comes up again and again

and again in science.

We find it in the archaeological sites

and the out of place artifacts that we talked

about earlier in this series.

If we look only at the civilization itself,

if you look only at the walls of an ancient temple,

if you read only the hieroglyphs that are there,

and you expect to see from that the big picture of who

created them and where they came from

and why they were there, without knowing what was happening

in the cosmos, what was happening

in the climate, what's happening on the Earth,

it's probably not going to tell you the story.

The same principle applies to human origins.

If we are looking only at fossils in Olduvai Gorge,

or if we are looking only at Darwin's theory

and trying to apply that to everything that we find,

and if we're trying to take every discovery that we find

and force it into a preconceived idea of this tree,

we're probably not going to find the answers

that we're looking for.

It's not going to lead us to the place of our origin.

To do that, we've got to look at the bigger picture.

We've got to look at the context.

That's where human DNA comes in.

In the next episode, we'll explore what the latest DNA

studies are now revealing when it comes to our origin.

And while some of our questions are going to be answered,

I have to tell you right now, we'll

also find that the answers that we do receive

are going to open up the door to an even deeper mystery

and forbidden territory when it comes

to modern science and the human story.

Thank you for joining me for this program today, and be sure

and tune in for our next all new episode of "Missing Links",

the deep truth of our origin, history, destiny, and fate.