| Genre: | Documentary |
| Developer: | David Attenborough |
| Director: | Adrian Malone, Dick Gilling, Mick Jackson, David Caird Paterson and David John Kennard |
| Presenter: | Jacob Bronowski |
| Country: | United Kingdom |
| Language: | English |
| Num Episodes: | 13 |
| Producer: | Adrian Malone and Dick Gilling |
| Location: | Worldwide (27 countries) |
| Runtime: | 676 minutes (52 minutes per episode) |
The Ascent of Man is a 13-part British documentary television series produced by the BBC and Time-Life Films first broadcast in 1973. It was written and presented by Polish-British mathematician and historian of science Jacob Bronowski, who also authored a book adaptation. Intended as a series of "personal view" documentaries in the manner of Kenneth Clark's 1969 series Civilisation, the series received acclaim for Bronowski's highly informed but eloquently simple analysis, his long, elegant monologues, and its extensive location shoots. The programme began broadcasting on BBC2 at 9pm on Saturday, 5 May 1973[1] and was released in the US 7 January 1975.[2] To celebrate its 50th anniversary, the documentary was again broadcast on BBC4 in the Summer of 2023.
The title alludes to The Descent of Man (1871), Charles Darwin's second book on evolution. Over the series' 13 episodes, Jacob Bronowski travels around the world in order to trace the development of human society through its understanding of science. It was commissioned specifically to complement Kenneth Clark's Civilisation (1969), in which Clark argued that art reflected and was informed by the major driving forces in cultural evolution. Bronowski had written in his 1951 book The Commonsense of Science: "It has been one of the most destructive modern prejudices that art and science are different and somehow incompatible interests".[3] Both series were commissioned by David Attenborough, then controller of BBC Two, whose colleague Aubrey Singer had been astonished by Attenborough prioritising an arts series (i.e. Civilisation) given his science background.[4]
Bronowski's book adaptation of the series, The Ascent of Man (1973), is an almost word-for-word transcript from the television episodes, diverging from the original narration only where the lack of images might make its meaning unclear. A few details of the film version were omitted from the book, notably from episode 11, "Knowledge or Certainty".
The 13-part series was shot on 16 mm film. Executive producer was Adrian Malone; film directors were Dick Gilling, Mick Jackson, David Kennard, and David Paterson. Quotations were read by actors Roy Dotrice and Joss Ackland. Series music was by Dudley Simpson with Brian Hodgson and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Additional music includes work by Pink Floyd and the Moody Blues, among others. Apart from Bronowski, the only other named people appearing are the sculptor Henry Moore, and an elderly Polish man, Stefan Borgrajewicz. In Episode 11, Borgrajewicz's face is explored in different ways as a means of testing the limits of knowledge; via different wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum, a set of paintings by Feliks Topolski, and by the descriptions of a blind woman feeling his face at the beginning of the programme. Her description of his face as having "lines of possible agony" is clarified at the very end of the episode, which reveals him to have been a survivor of Auschwitz.
The complete series was digitally remastered and released on DVD in 2007 by Ambrose Video Publishing, Inc.