I read an Arthur C Clarke book a few years ago, and it was based around a device that could see anything, anywhere, some sort of microscopic portal I think. One of the characters used it to look back in time following someone’s DNA, so seeing their mother, then their mother’s mother and so on, and eventually saw the intelligence disappear from the distant ancestors eyes. I’m wording it badly, but the idea stuck with me.
I’d love to know when that first spark of intelligence showed up, that separated us from animals, and what our ancestors either side of that divide did differently and similarly. I doubt that there would have been any significant differences at first, but those subtle differences could be fascinating :)
I wonder how much something like that would answer the why too. As an example, if a person threw something across a room and broke it without an obvious reason, could you look at a complete record of their history, and the history of the people around them, and figure out the reason. Would you be able to see signs of anger building through the day and look back to the root cause?