Monsters We Met

At first I had expected this to be a documentary about the prehistoric giant animals that people actually met during their evolution. In part, this is exactly what it was about, each episode describing the strange fauna encountered by small groups of human explorers. The first one was the Americas, the second episode described the human colonization of Australia and in the end New Zeeland.

But even from the first episode, one could see the animals for a short bit, then humans would cause their extinction, through over hunting either them or their prey. Soon after each human infestation of a new place, weird and wonderful animals disappeared completely, whether we are talking of the giant lizard Megalania 15 thousand years ago or the Haas eagle, in the 13th century.

In the end, a thing that had become clear only through watching, without the narrator hinting to it one bit, was made obvious: humans spread like a bacterial disease, uncontrolled, destroying everything natural in their path, their destiny, repeated again and again, being to remain out of resources, fight each other and either learn to moderate their consumption or perish completely, like was the case of the Easter Island civilization: the only Polynesian civilization to produce writing, transforming their island in a barren land, unfit for life, then collapsing into brutal wars and cannibalism.

Bottom line: even if a bit slow at times, it made for excellent watching. It shows a pattern of human behavior that is not described in any history book and spans too much time to be learned from experience. What was funny is that both Amerindian and Maui cultures reached a point in which they respected the land and nature and did not hunt or overuse resources indiscriminately, after wreaking havoc on their lands. Then the Europeans came. How are we going to end up?