What does it mean to be human?

It’s a simple question,

just a few short words, but it unwraps the bundle of
complexity, contradictions, and mystery that is a human
life.

It’s a question we have been asking for thousands of years. Priests and poets,
philosophers and politicians, scientists and artists have all sought to answer
this ultimate puzzle, but all fell short, never able to fully capture the vastness
of the human experience.

Charles Darwin changed thousands of years' of thought at the stroke of a pen. ©

Duncan1890 | Getty

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Some have come closer than others.

Charles Darwin had one of the greatest insights into the human condition that
any of our species has had, changing thousands of years' of thought at the
stroke of a pen, yet he had nothing to say about how we actually experience
being human.

It would be another 50 years before an Austrian doctor began to talk about the
hidden forces of the subconscious mind, but even Sigmund Freud couldn’t
provide an adequate explanation for consciousness. In fact, to date, no-one
has come close to describing the sheer magnificent wonder of being alive.
The electric surge we feel when we kiss a lover, the deep stirring of the soul
when we listen to Mozart’s Requiem, and the full flowing joy of laughing
uncontrollably with our closest friends as we share a joke.
Being Human is a major new season launching on BBC Earth that aims to
take us as closer to understanding who we are. Why do we behave the way
we do? How do we live better? How did we get to now? What is our future?

Over the course of a year, we will take you by the hand and dive into these
questions, exploring all corners of humanity with wide-eyed curiosity. We will
look deep into the mind at what drives our behaviour, meet extraordinary
humans who have unlocked the secrets of a long and healthy life, take a trip
through 2000 years of civilisation, journey into the human body on our path to
adulthood as we go from baby to baby-maker, experience the drama of
extraordinary human rituals that hope to cheat death, and watch happens to
our bodies in the hours, days, and months after we die.

We have brilliant series from world class programme makers coming up, full of
incredible ideas at the leading edge of scientific thought. We want to make
you think, but we also want to make you feel. Being Human will be a
celebration of the human race. We want to make the hairs on the back of the
neck stand up at the improbable good fortune of our own existence. 

So what is our story? Let’s start with the facts. We are one species of primate
that emerged from the dry savannahs of East Africa just over 100,000 years
ago and began a migration that continues to today.

We weren’t the strongest animal, but we had an unusually large brain and
held ourselves upright, giving us a high vantage to scan the distant horizon for
enemies, and the freedom to use our hands for other purposes. Over time we
began to fashion tools. These were primitive, but could tear through skin and
muscle and gave us an advantage as we prowled our wild habitat for prey.

We might have continued our short life of hunting, savagery, and brutishness
right through to today, but for one important development - language. Other
animals could communicate, but we evolved astonishing vocal ability, able to
create sounds that represented not just objects, but also concepts. We
learned how to express ideas. We could speak of danger, hope, and love. We
became storytellers, able to weave together common narratives about who we
are and how we should live. From this point on the pace of change was
electrifying.

Twelve thousand years ago, we learned how to domesticate plants and other
animals for food, and were able to settle in one place. We became a social
animal, building complex communities that become kingdoms, learning to
trade with each other using a concept called money.

By 2500 years ago, a small group of humans in Southern Europe and the
Middle East started to ask big questions about who we were. What is the best
way to live? What is a good life? What does it mean to be human? How we
responded to these questions is how we built our civilisation, art, and
philosophy. Five hundred years ago, the scientific revolution began, allowing
us to harness the resources of our planet to live longer and more productive
lives.
We may be the last of our species to be fully human as bio-technology and artificial
intelligence take over. © Oscar Wong | Getty

When the digital revolution began only 50 years ago, the world shrank. We
became a global village, our hopes and dreams converted into an infinite
stream of ones and zeroes echoing throughout cyberspace. Today, we stand
astride the world as a god, with both the power to destroy our own planet and
to create life.

We may even be the last of our species to be fully human as bio-technology

and artificial intelligence begin to rip apart the very core of who we
are. Indeed, our Being Human campaign is led by Sophia, an incredible lifelike
robot who is developing her own intelligence. She looks human, she sounds
human, but she cannot yet think or feel like a human. How many years until
she is truly one of us? Or we are one of them?

Our story is remarkable. The greatest story ever told. And while it is the story
of astonishing development for our species, it is also the tale of billions of
individual lives echoing down the millennia, all of them full of hope and
promise, fear and disappointment. As we discover more about reality, we
continue our ascent into insignificance, becoming a vanishing footnote in
space and time, a speck of dust in the vastness of the universe. But to be
human is to be at the centre of our own universe, to experience life in all its
colours and all its potential. This is what we want to celebrate with Being
Human - the awe of being alive and the thrill of discovering what it means to
be us, the greatest wonder in the world.