How Earth Made Us

[stonemaybe]

Watched the first of this series of documentaries on BBC last night - and wow! was it fascinating!

For those of you in the UK, here's the link to BBC's iPlayer...
www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00qbvyc/ ... eep_Earth/

For those of you elsewhere, if you get BBC via cable, I suggest you keep an eye out for this series.

It looks at how geology has shaped civilisation. This first one is called 'Deep Earth' (next one focuses on water, then there's a wind one too). It shows how the abundance of resources available around fault-lines make them perfect for civilisations to grow up around, except of couse you then have to contend with volcanoes and earthquakes etc. Apparently ten of the largest twenty cities on Earth are built on faultlines! It suggested that the San Andreas fault is worth (let me try and rememember the correct figures!) $10billion a year to California, but may cause $25billion damage every 100 years. So profit:cost works out at 40:1.