All language subtitles for Wild Europe Episode 1 Genesis

Europe... an ancient continent.

Within it's borders lies
an unrivalled richness

of both natural and human wonders...

at it's northern limit's,

europe reaches in to the
icy wastes of the high arctic...

to the south and west,
it-s fringes have been shaped

by the mediterranean
and atlantic ocean...

far to the east it is bounded by the
primeval forests of russia,

rubbing shoulders with asia.

These boundaries enclose
an area just half the size

of north america yet seven hundred

and thirty million people make
europe their home.

It-s hard to find a space unmarked
by human occupation.

The europe that
we see today is the product

of a long and complex history.

Thousands of years of settlement,
invasions,

revolutions and inventions
have allowed us

to re-order nature-s ancient
patterns to suit our needs.

On a human timescale the story

of the changing face
of europe seems immense,

but there is an even more
extraordinary story to be told...

...one that stretches back half
a billion years...

and tells of the events that
have really shaped the continent.

Eight thousand years ago
the skyscrapers

of frankfurt would have
risen over endless...

primeval wildwood...
stretching from lisbon to leningrad.

Over the last two million years

europe had see-sawed between
perishing cold

and stifling heat.

During the ice ages,

amsterdam and london would have
been smothered by huge glaciers...

...and at other times they have
looked more like

africa's serengeti plains.

More than 50 million years ago,
what is now vienna

and paris would have been submerged
beneath rich tropical seas.

And over 100 million years ago

florence and oxford would have
looked more like jurassic park.

Go back 200 million years and
europe rivalled the sahara.

And 300 million years ago,

the world-s first forests
covered the continent.

Berlin would have been part
of a tropical rainforest.

Edinburgh sit's astride
ancient volcanoes

which shook the earth nearly half
a billion years ago.

All of these great
events helped to lay

the foundations for the extraordinary
continent we now call europe.

The northern fringes of
europe are it's wildest country.

Scandinavia a land dominated
by the elements.

In summer it is bathed in the
glow of midnight sun...

and in winter by the ghostly
shadows of the northern lights.

In this coastal labyrinth
of fjords and islands...

...europe's most ancient
history lies hidden.

Norway's lofoten islands
seemingly lifeless.

But they're surrounded
by the richest seas.

Here, atlantic storms pound some

of the most ancient
rocks in the world...

they're nearly
three billion years old...

these granites formed long before
the european continent even existed.

Here in norway there area
also clues to europe's birth.

These fjords and mountains are part
of an ancient range:

The caledonides, stretching
from iceland and scotland,

and up through norway.

Mountains that today help define
the continents western edge.

In the east another ancient range

- the urals-
separates europe from asia.

Both these ranges are evidence
of europe's earliest formation...

the result of a processes that began
half a billion years ago.

Back then europe
was still in pieces.

Scandinavia was in the
southern oceans...

england and the low countries
were near the antarctic circle...

and most of the rest...
sat near the south pole.

All of these isolated fragments
of crust were on the move.

Continental plates are dragged
along by powerful flows

of molten rock deep
in the earth's mantle...

some 80 kilometres underground.

They only move
a few centimetres every year,

but over millions of years
the centimetres add up.

Like a giant jigsaw puzzle,

europe was gradually assembled
piece by piece.

Each impact created
enormous crumple zones.

Rock was bent and buckled
as if caught between

the jaws of a vice and forced...

...up into great mountain
chains along the join.

They created
europe's backbone

which in scale
once rivalled the himalayas.

The formation
of these ancient mountains

was the first act of european union.

Since then europe has traveled
half way across the globe.

300 million years ago
it was straddling the equator.

In this warm,
wet climate the foothills

of europe's oldest mountain
ranges now became the cradle

of the world's first forests.

Paris would have been smothered
in a lush tropical rainforest

which stretched east across
the entire continent.

This was no ordinary forest.

What looked like trees
were in fact giant ferns...

...horse tails and club mosses...

the fossils of
which have been exquisitely

preserved in this scottish park.

They offer a glimpse
of the botanic wonders that

once filled europe's ancient forests.

These club mosses grew
a massive 30 metres tall.

Long before birds appeared
on the planet,

these carboniferous
forests would have echoed

to a very different dawn chorus.

Predatory dragonflies were common...

and some were absolutely huge.

This one, called the meganeura,
was the size of a hawk,

with a wingspan
of over sixty centimetres.

The forest floor
was a bugs world too...

fossil footprints of a millipede show
that it was nearly two metres long!

Over eight hundred species
of cockroach scurried through

this ancient undergrowth.

And these were preyed on by other
giants... like scorpions.

Some were over seventy centimeters
long with a sting to match!

These swampy forests
were also roamed

by the very first
land vertebrates amphibians.

The carboniferous era was the play a
pivotal role in european history.

It's 300 million year old legacy
would eventually revolutionize

the modern world.

This was a time
of great tectonic activity.

As the land repeatedly subsided,

seas flooded
over these great coastal forests.

Ravaged by monsoon storms,

fallen trees became buried
by layers of sand, then mud.

Over millions of years,
the build-up

of sediment compressed this
vegetation into this... coal.

It took a ten metre layer
of fallen rainforest

to make just
a one meter seam of coal.

When you consider the depth
of all the seams

in all the coalfields
worked in europe-

from britain through
northern france and germany,

poland and ukraine...

the immense scale of the
carboniferous forests becomes clear.

Coal fuelled one of the greatest

transformations
that europe has ever seen.

It's presence
all across the continent

was a vital component in making

europe the cradle
of the industrial revolution...

and ultimately turned...

...it into the economic
powerhouse it is today.

The ancient past can
directly shape the present.

Europe is now the most urbanized

and industrialized continent
on the globe...

largely thanks
to it's position on the equator

three hundred million years ago.

When these steaming forests
were at their peak,

other events were already in motion
that would banish them forever.

Europe, still drifting north,
had been rocked

by another series
of monumental collisions.

And the result of the
tectonic pile-up was this...

the super-continent pangea.

Around 230 million year ago europe
was engulfed by a mass of land.

Now, far from the oceans,
rain no longer fell.

Under an unforgiving sun,
the lush,

tropical rainforests disappeared...

and the continent
was swallowed up by sand.

The fossilized remains of these
desert dunes now form much

of the bedrock
of eastern europe.

In the depths
of a russian winter,

it-s hard to imagine how hot
and dry this place once was...

let alone some of the
creatures that roamed here.

Dinosaurs...
a new order on the move...

parts of pangea were periodically
flooded by shallow seas.

But time and again
this water evaporated...

leaving layer upon layer of salt.

Today these massive deposit's
lie buried deep beneath

the netherlands, poland,

northern england
and the austrian alps.

And they've been mined
for millennia.

Salt is a major ingredient
for the chemical industry.

It's also used
albeit controversially

to deice europe's
roads in winter.

Thousands of tons a day.

This particular mine in
krakow in poland is made up

of over three hundred
kilometres of tunnels.

It's so vast that miners
have carved an entire

underground cathedral
out of the salt...

...even the chandeliers!

After tens of millions of years
of baking under the desert sun,

europe changed once again.

This is jura in easter france.

The slopes here are
blessed with fertile,

well-drained soils...

...perfect for vineyards.

And scattered among the vines
are clues to the next waves

of change that began to sweep europe
some two hundred million years ago...

a fossil ammonite...
a marine creature.

And mussels.

Even the ancient
relatives of squid.

This area was once under the sea.

These waters teemed with life...
as well as ammonites,

marine reptiles called
ichthyosaurs were common.

They fed on fish, breathed air
and gave birth to life young.

They were the "dolphins-
of their time.

All these creatures swam where
there are now thousands of vines.

And it is this region of
france that has lent it's name

to one of the most familiar periods
in the earth's history.

The jurassic.

What had once been covered
in dense forest...

then by desert sands...

...had now become a paradise of
tropical seas and coral reefs.

But what was the catalyst for
such dramatic change?

The answer, once again,

lies with the
ever shifting continents.

Just as they can collide,
they can also split apart.

And when this happened to pangaea,
water flooded into the gaps,

creating new coastlines and oceans.

The newly liberated europe still lay
in the sub topics

and the seas surrounding
it were warm,

shallow and clear...
...ideal for corals.

Fossilised reefs show these
seas flooded all across

europe and remained there
for seventy million years.

In these warm waters,

more of europe's foundations
were laid down.

Corals, shells and lime rich mud

were slowly deposited
on to the sea floor.

Millions of years of deposition and
compression resulted in this.

Limestone.

Limestone literally grew
in the sea but was shaped by rain.

Rainwater dissolves limestone,
drip by drip, grain by grain...

a very simple chemical reaction
has sculpted some

of europe's most
breath taking scenery...

...and limestone
is also perfectly suited

to be carved by the hand of man.

This rock and it's derivatives like

marble provide wonderful
building material.

The legacy of the
jurassic seas are some of

europe's most stunning and celebrated
man made and natural monuments.

The dreaming spires
of oxford are built

almost entirely from
jurassic limestone.

Local masons often iced this
architectural cake with flights

of fancy from gods
to gargoyles.

And when this rock was quarried,

it also revealed traces
of real monsters.

The bones of huge dinosaurs.

A hundred and seventy
million years ago

oxford was a real life jurassic park.

Dinosaur fossils have been
found throughout europe.

In rioja in spain, the traces
they've left are not only bones...

hundreds of dinosaur
tracks have been discovered

in this mountainous region...

...some revealing an ancient struggle
between predator and prey.

A deadly drama from the age of the

dinosaurs frozen forever
in a layer of rock!

As reptiles conquered
the skies above ancient europe,

dramatic changes were affecting
the western shores.

Pangaea continued to disintegrate;

europe was tearing it self away
from what is now north america.

This separation
gave birth to one

of the world's great oceans
the atlantic.

As this ocean grew,

pterosaurs were not the only
creatures exploring the air...

...and the most evidence
for that is found

here at solnhofen in bavaria.

This tiny community is famous for the
unique qualities of the local rock.

The limestone quarried
here is extremely fine grained

and can be worked
into thin and very light slabs.

They make perfect roof tiles.

But these tiles occasionally
reveal something extraordinary...

perfect snapshots from a hundred
and fifty million years ago.

Back then solnhofen was part of a
very still and salty tropical lagoon.

No scavengers could survive
in the toxic waters-

and anything that died
was left undisturbed.

One casualty in particular has made
solnhofen world famous...

...archaeopteryx.

Although it had the head
and pelvis of a reptile,

the long forelimbs suggest something
altogether different...

they are covered in feathers...

this was part reptile, part bird.

Archaeopteryx marks one of the

major turning points
in evolutionary history.

From these beginnings,

emerged the nine thousand species of
birds that fill the skies today.

The next great even that
europe experienced took place

a hundred million years ago.

The clues lie hidden in the famous
chalk cliffs of southern england.

Chalk is composed
of the shells and skeletons

of ancient marine plankton...
microscopic creatures...

trillions and trillions of them.

As they died they slowly sank,
setting in layers on the ocean floor.

Through time they
formed these cliffs...

in an ocean that was up to 300 metres
deeper that what we see today.

Just imagine how london might
have looked back then.

All this flooding was triggered
by rising sea floors

and a warming climate...
causing the ice caps to melt.

A cataclysm that resulted in much
of the continent disappearing.

But it wasn't these rising seas
that spelled the end

for the dinosaurs...

it was an event that happened
thirty million years later...

and half a world away.

A giant meteorite crashed
into the gulf of mexico...

the destructive power equaled
five billion hiroshima bombs.

Shock waves swept
across the atlantic.

All across europe,
life struggled to hold on.

The extinction
of the dinosaurs created

opportunities for
new forms of life...

...evidence of which can be found
on the baltic coast of poland.

These fishermen are after a catch
that could change their lives...

...they're not
after fish or crabs,

but something far more precious,
washed up from the seabed.

One lucky dip could net
a small fortune...

...and open a window back more

than fifty million years into
europe's past.

This is amber... it doesn't look much,
until it's polished.

Then it can reveal
all kinds of treasures.

It is the fossilized resin
of ancient pine trees.

And trapped within it are
perfectly preserved souvenirs;

each fragment helping to build
a picture of an ancient world.

This resin has also trapped
something that marks a great

turning point in evolution.

Hair. It's presence indicates the
rise of a new dynasty in europe;

the mammals.

These sub-tropical
forests were home

to a huge variety
of these creatures,

from kangaroo like
carnivores and tapirs,

to anteaters and even
miniature horses.

Fifty million years ago the mammals
were evolving at an astonishing rate.

From just one site
at messel in germany,

dozens of different species of fossil
mammal have been unearthed.

Today, their more
recognisable descendants

occupy virtually every niche
right across europe.

As europe's
new fauna took centre stage,

the continent it'self
was undergoing another

decisive step towards completion.

Signs of this can be found here on
the western fringe of the continent...

along the remote cliffs and islands of
ireland and north west scotland.

These spectacular coasts are built of
compacted volcanic ash and lava.

They are the visible remains
of ancient eruptions that cover

thousands of square kilometres...

...and mark the growing pains
of a young ocean.

Sixty million years ago,

north america and greenland finally
split apart from europe.

As the continental plates separated,
the north atlantic was born.

It's a process that's far from over.

Now five thousand kilometres wide,
this ocean is still expanding...

at the speed that
our fingernails grow.

This is happening all along
the mid atlantic ridge.

Eruptions here are immense.

Volcanoes rise up from the abyss.

Iceland is just the tip
of one such volcano.

It's violent volcanic history is
written all across the island.

New eruptions happen all the time,

adding new territory to this
isolated european outpost.

These are some
of europe's youngest rocks

the events here in iceland reflect
the violent processes

that have helped build europe over the
last five hundred million years.

Despite their violence
and unpredictability,

volcanic foundations
do have advantages.

The icelanders put all
these hot rocks to good use.

A bore hole sunk deep into
the ground taps into all

this heat and uses it to
power much of the island.

And a by-product of this natural
central heating is this...

the blue lagoon...
the biggest hot tub in the world!

As the north atlantic grew,

europe's north west
coast was taking shape.

But in the south the continent was
still missing some key ingredients.

Sixty million years ago
the alps didn't exist

and the mediterranean coastline
looked very different.

One last push was needed
to mould the continent,

and it came from a
neighbour to the south- africa.

The african plate has been drifting
north over millions of years.

And where it pushes against
the european plate,

huge folds of rock have been forced up
and over one another

into great mountain ranges.

Europe's southern mountains...
the pyrenees,

carpathians and the
alps all rose from this collision.

Pieces of primeval ocean
floor have been lifted thousands

of metres up into the sky.

The alps are still rising as
africa continues to push north.

The volcanoes of southern
europe are vivid reminders

of the great tectonic forces
lurking beneath our feet.

Vesuvius in southern italy
is a sleeping giant.

Nearly two thousand years ago
a huge eruption buried pompeii.

Today the city of naples lies
sprawled across it's lower slopes.

Who knows when another nudge from
africa will set it off again?

It isn't just europe's
southern mountains that

owe their existence to the
advancing african plate...

so too does
the mediterranean sea.

This sea is one of the defining
boundaries of the continent.

With it's spectacular coastline
and clear blue waters

it is one of europe's
great natural treasures.

Much of the mediterranean's
extraordinary history hinges

on the narrow seaway
at it's western end.

At the rock of gibraltar
only 14 kilometres

now separate europe from africa.

About six million years ago,
the northward push of africa,

combined with a drop in sea level,
crated a vast dam,

cutting off the mediterranean
from the atlantic.

As the sun beat down,

something like four
thousand cubic kilometres

of water evaporated from the
mediterranean's surface every year.

And with no
atlantic water to replenish it,

the mediterranean dried out.

In just a thousand years,

it became a desert basin
of salt pans and caustic lakes.

The rivers that once fed
the mediterranean cut deeper

and deeper into the rock,

chasing the dropping shoreline and
forming a labyrinth of dramatic gorges.

Just a few million years ago,

france's rhone valley must have
looked more like the grand canyon.

So intense was the heat in the basin

that these waterfalls
evaporated before

they even reached
the old sea floor.

For tens of thousands of years a
natural dam between present day

morocco and the rock
of gibraltar

held the waters
of the atlantic at bay.

The mediterranean basin remained an
almost lifeless expanse of salt,

sand and parched earth.

But as africa pushed and pulled at
europe's southern boundary,

the pressures on the
crust became unbearable.

Rising tides weakened
the land bridge

and then the atlantic burst
it's way over the precipice...

so began the most
gigantic flood ever.

At it's peak, enormous waterfalls
a thousand time grander

than niagara thundered into the basin.

More than one hundred
cubic kilometres

of water gushed
past gibraltar every day.

Despite this enormous flood,
the mediterranean took more

than a century to refill.

But what is more amazing
is that this process

of drying and flooding
has happened not just once,

but possibly ten times.

With this flooding,
five and a half million years ago,

europe's southern borders
had now taken shape.

The final act in the genesis
of the continent.

A chain of incredible events has shaped

europe during it's long
and dynamic history.

It's a history that's written across
the face of this unique continent.

A story that began billions
of years ago south

of the equator and which charts

an incredible journey across
the face of the globe.

The diversity
of europe's landscapes today

reflect the changing conditions
encountered along the way.

Each has left a unique fingerprint
on this small

but incredibly complex continent.

For eons the birth of europe had
been driven by geological events,

but now a new and different force
was destined to shape the land.

Two million years ago,

europe's climate spiraled
out of control.

Temperatures plummeted.

Consumed by glaciers,
the continent would now be plunged

into one of the most extreme eras
in it's history.

The great
ice ages were on their way.