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Documentaries Are the Only Reason We Are Alive Today

Humans have been documenting things since the start of their existence. Though, they likely didn’t realize it. A man dusting an image of his hand on a cave wall was probably done to simply claim it as his own. However, this is still a document, as it showed others who would see it later that he was once there. You could even call it an “artistic representation of actuality”, as John Greirson defines it. That’s just one of the first instances of human documentation. We would go on to make so much more, from the first documentations of danger, time, recipes, and language, to more modern things like Twitter.

The documentation of what could possibly kill you may be one of the most important developments of all humankind. I mean, certainly not many of us would be alive without it. If I didn’t know any better I’d eat loads of mistletoe berries, especially with the fear of starvation guiding me. It also looks delicious, but that’s besides the point. The point is, if someone hadn’t documented their findings of mistletoe being entirely poisonous, many would have fallen ill to it, or many similar plants. This is likely where a lot of the earliest documents started. The earliest humans would see others die from eating/drinking certain things, and avoid it themselves by taking note of the area/plant with some sort of sign. Perhaps a collection of oddly shaped sticks. As in ancient times, they didn’t always have written language that everyone could understand. Spoken word, sure, but writing didn’t come for a while. At least not on paper, and not with words. So, they used markings. These served as documentation of danger, a water source, a food source, or the way home. Everything essential for survival. It’s communication without directly speaking to another person, which is needed in order to survive for a long time.

Regardless of the type of document; the idea of information being recorded, archived, and shared is by far one of the most essential steps in how humans have evolved from ancient times. The ability to learn and retain information and to pass it on from generation to generation is truly what sets humans apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. From sticks on the ground to indicate danger to the formation of language and verbal communication, documentation has come a long way and has kept the human race alive and moving forward so that we can be here today, eating our McDonald’s and sitting on our soft beds, reading a Tumblr post about documentaries. Beginning with the first forms of writing, information such as maps, pictograms and cave paintings have helped people understand each other and the world they lived in. Furthermore the sharing of information and the formation of language gave humans the ability to learn, invent, and explore ideas that had been untouched until then. This would go on to inspire more thought and provide the building blocks to the modern world. As a friend of mine said, the only thing he thought may be more important than documentation would be, “the ability to obtain substance and maintain bodily functions”. Although a majority of the documents from the past no longer exist today, from what remains it’s easy to see the key role they played in the survival and development of the human race. Even now, documents protect us without us even realizing it. Our GPS location is updated and documented all the time on our cell phones. Without that, people may not know where we are when we need them to. Documents were able to keep our ancestors alive and are one of the key reasons we’re here today. They acted as markings and told time, they were shared and used to create a better understanding of the world. Without documents humans wouldn’t be here.

#documentaries #history #world history #survival #writing