How water shaped us

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Journalist Alok Jha argues that if humans are to survive and thrive for the rest of the 21st Century we must urgently transform our relationship with water. To change that relationship, we first need to understand how the relationship evolved. Alok looks at cultural history to understand how water shaped our deepest psychology. Alok finds that our relationship with water – always struggling for a balance between too much and not enough – fundamentally influenced the religious and spiritual worldviews of early civilisations. And we still feel the effects of this in our attitudes towards water today. Alok uncovers a dark and compelling story of child sacrifice in 15th-Century Peru, hears how the water landscapes of Mesopotamia and Scandinavia shaped very different religious beliefs, and learns that many Islamic teachings about water have been echoed by modern science hundreds of years later. (Photo: Waterfall in a rainforest near Palenque, Mexico. Credit: Getty Images)