Summary The elements of fire, water and air formed the earth for billions of years - until humans changed the planet in a very short time. Scientists today speak of the Anthropocene, the human age. From around 10,000 BC, people began to work on the landscape available to them, no longer content with what nature throws off anyway. They dig around the soil, they plant, they understand what makes a soil more fertile. They divert water and dig wells to bring it up from the depths. And they use the power of fire to make their lives more comfortable. All this changed the three elements in a very short period of time, as we know today, unfortunately rarely in a positive sense. Presenter Dirk Steffens takes the audience on a journey through a history of mankind. Rise and fall of empires, migrations or inventions - all of them are examined for their effects on the state of the nature of the earth. With surprising findings, the most serious of which is this: times of crisis in human civilization, such as ongoing phases of war or declines in population growth, were always times when nature recovered. But the conclusion that human progress and the environment simply do not go together would have been drawn too soon. View more details

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