The Unbroken Thread (feat. Attenborough)

[David Attenborough]

All life is related

And it enables us to construct with confidence

The complex tree that represents the history of life

Our planet, the Earth, is as far as we know

Unique in the universe; it contains life

Here plants and animals proliferate in such numbers

That we still have not even named all the different species

Darwin's great insight revolutionized the way in which we see the world

We now understand why there are so many different species

[Carl Sagan]

Every cell is a triumph of natural selection

And we're made of trillions of cells (Within us is a little universe)

Those are some of the things that molecules do

Given four billions years of evolution (We are, each of us, a multitude)

Now how did the molecules of life arise?

[Attenborough]

It began in the sea

Some 3 thousand million years ago

Complex chemical molecules began to clump together

These were the "seeds"

From which the tree of life developed

They were able to split, replicating themselves

As bacteria do

[Sagan]

The secrets of evolution

Are time and death

There's an unbroken thread that stretches

From those first cells to us

(refrain)

[Jane Goodall]

There isn't a sharp line dividing humans

from the rest of the animal kingdom

It's a very wuzzie line

It's a very wuzzie line,

and it's getting wuzzier

All the time

We find animals doing things that we,

In our arrogance,

Used to think was "just human"

(refrain)

[Attenborough]

Its continued survival now rests in our hands