:13:05
This great crack
in the Earth's crust
:13:07
extends for 4,000 miles,
from Mozambique in the south
:13:12
to Lebanon in the north.
:13:15
Where the continent fractured
some 20 million years ago
:13:18
an escarpment plunges 2,000 feet
to the sunken rift floor.
:13:25
The remains of great volcanoes
dominate the Rift Valley
:13:29
eroding monuments to
the continent-splitting forces
:13:33
still at work beneath.
:13:38
On the floor of the Rift Valley
:13:40
roam remnats of the great
animal herds of Africa.
:13:44
They run where valley floor
did not yet exist
:13:47
ten million years ago...
:13:49
where a sea may exist
in ten million more...
:13:52
or a great ocean
in a hundred million.
:14:02
And here, in the eroded gorges
of the rift floor
:14:06
in the exposed sediments
of three million years
:14:09
we have unearthed
the clearest record
:14:12
of the genesis of man.
:14:15
For here,
anthropologist have discovered
:14:17
the oldest fossil remains
spanning human evolution.
:14:36
Life has been profoundly shaped
:14:39
by the movement and separation
of the continents.
:14:43
Had not the continents been
continuouly raised and renewed
:14:47
life would never have adcanced
from the sea.
:14:51
Had not the continents separated
:14:53
Life would not have been
isolated in separate preserves
:14:57
to proliferate
in a thousand directions
:14:59
which evolution explored.