“This landscape shows up today on calendars, on postcards, in the design of golf courses and public parks, and in gold framed pictures that hang in living rooms from New York to New Zealand. A landscape that just happens to be similar to the Pleistocene savannas where we evolved. It’s a kind of Hudson River School landscape featuring open spaces of low grasses interspersed with copses of trees. The trees, by the way, are often preferred if they fork near the ground. That is to say, if they’re trees you could scramble up, if you were in a tight fix. The landscape shows the presence of water directly in view, or evidence of water in a bluish distant, indications of animal or bird life, as well as diverse greenery, and finally, get this, a path. Perhaps a riverbank or a shoreline that extends into the distance, almost inviting you to follow it. This landscape type is regarded as beautiful even by people in countries that don’t have it. The ideal savanna landscape is one of the clearest examples, for human beings everywhere find beauty in similar visual experience.” -Denis Dutton
Listen to the NPR Ted Radio Hour version of this Ted Talk