Original subtitles

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.