Films 2011

Director: Axel Wagner
Produced by: SWR
Year: 2010
Country: Germany
Length: 29 min.

Where do we come from? How did the human body develop from a single cell organism into a full grown mammal? In this programme, a team of ambitious scientists successfully decodes some of the mysteries surrounding the origins of human life and make some spectacular findings: our bodies still contain evolution’s ancient blueprints and we have more in common with worms, fishes and jellyfish than we can imagine. The journey through the human body takes us automatically to the very beginning of its nowadays existence: in embryos we can observe millions of years of evolution in just 9 months. The shared roots with fish and other animals can be traced in every step of an embryos development, as all life forms on this planet started out in the water. In the billions of years of evolution, life has always been able to adapt itself to the changing environment on this planet and has come up with an optimised form of physical appearance depending on the habitat of each creature. Humankind, as the so-called ‘end product’ on the evolutionary ladder, can therefore wonder: how much animal is there really inside of me?