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."

Behind the Scenes with Ron Howard | MARS

Why Stocks are Crashing | The 2022 Stock Market Crash Explained

View All

Building Furniture and Creating a Home in the Wild | Home in the Wild

JIM: (whistles) North! Yeah! HUDSON: Yeah! JIM: We’re goin’ in the canoe! TORI: Come on, in the boat, please. Good boy! Okay, hon, ready? JIM: We’re heading back to camp with the wood we foraged. HUDSON: Yeah! JIM (off screen): All right, perfect…

Channing Tatum Makes Fire | Running Wild With Bear Grylls

CHANNING TATUM: God, all these stones, man. Look at them. They’re just massive boulders. BEAR GRYLLS: Nope, it’s a dead end. So all of this area is endless, like, dead ends. You reach a cliff face or you reach a boulder you can’t get over, you try and go…

Worked example: distance and displacement from position-time graphs | AP Physics 1 | Khan Academy

In other videos, we’ve already talked about the difference between distance and displacement, and we also saw what it meant to plot position versus time. What we’re going to do in this video is use all of those skills. We’re going to look at position vers…

How To Be More Likeable & Charismatic

Imagine walking into a room and feeling the atmosphere shift as all eyes turn toward you, not out of judgment, but pure interest and warmth. This isn’t a rare, unattainable skill reserved for a select few; no, it’s a powerful, accessible tool called likab…

Remembering the Battle of Mogadishu | No Man Left Behind

My role in that battle was a team leader with one of the platoons that went in on the air assault. I went and originally on the helicopters. When you make it out of something where others didn’t, you’re going to spend the rest of your life thanking the pe…

Eutrophication and dead zones | Ecology | Khan Academy

We’re now going to talk about something called UT tropication. UT tropication comes from, or it’s derived from, the Greek for well-nourished, referring to “well,” and then “trophic” or “trophia,” referring to nourished or nourishment. You might think that…

The Power of Transportation | Origins: The Journey of Humankind

More Articles