In Darwin’s Footsteps, a documentary
Against the stark beauty of the Galapagos Islands in the summer of 2002, a team of world renowned scientists embarked on a fascinating and dangerous exploration, retracing for the first time, the exact journey that a young Charles Darwin made 160 years ago.
Darwin was in superb physical condition when he landed in the Galapagos.
He had to
be. When Darwin worked in these lava-strewn islands, his mind was as much
on the problem of survival in the field as it was on collecting and interpreting
evidence that would subsequently make him famous. It is widely thought
that Darwin arrived at his theory of evolution during his visit to the
Galapagos. Contrary to this legend, this expedition team shows that Darwin
was extensively confused by his own creationist assumptions and collecting
methods. Only much later, back in England with ample time for reflection,
and with the substantial help of colleagues, did Darwin revisit the Galapagos
over and over again in his mind. It was these later contemplations, not
his original visit, that hold the key to his transformation from creationist
to evolutionist.
Never before has there been a quest by a team of scholars in evolutionary biology and related sciences to reexamine Darwin’s observations in the Galapagos, as well as the ways he interpreted the revolutionary data he collected there. The team was led by Dr. Frank Sulloway, an award winning science historian and Darwin scholar at the University of California, Berkeley and William H. Durham, an award winning professor of biology and anthropology at Stanford University, and included seven other expedition members. They employed Global Positioning System equipment and measurements to replicate the precise locations of Darwin’s route within the Galapagos Archipelago. Sulloway, Durham, and their expedition colleagues have made a series of discoveries correcting historical inaccuracies about where Darwin went, what he saw, and how he reacted to what he saw. In addition, they describe and illustrate the many ways the Galapagos has changed through human activity in the islands from Darwin’s day to the present.
In Darwin’s Footsteps tells the little-known story of how a great mind was revolutionized not only by the Galapagos that visitors see today, but by the Galapagos that visitors are currently prohibited from seeing. It brings this fascinating detective story to life and shows the particularly human side of a scientific genius, before that genius eventually made the radical conceptual leap that revolutionized the thinking of his age.
In Darwin’s Footsteps also presents an insiders’ view of the Galapagos and will underscore that it is truly a “living laboratory” that has undergone, and that continues to undergo, profound changes.
