The Power of Transportation | Origins: The Journey of Humankind

less than 1m read

·Nov 11, 2024

[music playing] [motor revving]

JASON SILVA: What does it take to power a global civilization to connect billions of people across continents? It takes the power of transportation. From the beginning, speed and strength were paramount in the hunt, on the battlefield, for holding together far-flung empires. We sought new forms of power, harnessing the forces of nature to drive us forward—the horse, the wheel, steam power, jet engine. Every new innovation powered our next great leap.

Transportation has become our exoskeleton allowing us to transcend our biology. [music playing] Faster than sound, farther than the moon, our inventions give us a level of power we never imagined. With our machines we carved through solid rock, tunneled beneath the sea floor, connecting the world, mixing distant cultures. Freedom of movement has given us freedom of mind.

The flow of people and materials exposes us to new ideas and new understanding. This is the story of how transportation turned society inside out, how engines and animals powered the rise of civilization, and how the innovations that drive humanity forward made us modern. This is "Origins."

Dividing polynomials of degree one | Algebra 1 (TX TEKS) | Khan Academy

15 RULES of CHANGE

View All

Why Suffering is Beautiful | Emil Cioran’s Dark Philosophy

Romanian philosopher Emil Cioran observed that we live in a society that’s too afraid to confront the dark sides of existence. For example, we prefer to hide illness behind the thick walls of hospitals, and we avoid discussing death, as we see it as somet…

Discovering Gravitational Waves | StarTalk

[Music] 30 million years ago, in a distant galaxy, 30 million light years away, two black holes collided. Each black hole is itself a significant disturbance in the fabric of space and time. When they collide, it creates an even greater ripple that gets …

Polynomial division introduction | Algebra 2 | Khan Academy

We’re already familiar with the idea of a polynomial, and we’ve spent some time adding polynomials, subtracting polynomials, multiplying polynomials, and factoring polynomials. What we’re going to think about in this video, and really start to think abou…

Photographing the Beauty of Life in the Shadow of War | Nat Geo Live

I was working in New York City as a photo editor sitting at my computer all day looking at stories coming in. And I always dreamed of becoming a foreign correspondent. And I got the courage to quit my job and move to the Czech Republic, where I got a job …

The Constitutional Convention | Period 3: 1754-1800 | AP US History | Khan Academy

In the United States today, we know our system of government so well that it hardly bears thinking about. We know that there’s a president who’s the head of the executive branch. There’s Congress, which is made up of the House of Representatives and the S…

What Is Something?

The simple questions are the hardest ones to answer. What is a thing? Why do things happen? And why do they happen the way they do? Let’s try to approach this step-by-step. What are you made of? You are matter which is made of molecules which are made of…

The Power of Transportation | Origins: The Journey of Humankind

More Articles