Original subtitles

(lively instrumental music)

This is a journey

across a magnificent continent.

It's a journey through space and time.

Along the way, we discover the traces of ancient oceans

and unearth the remains of tropical rainforests

way up high in the mountains.

Dinosaurs join us as traveling companions.

We meet up with Neanderthals

and are on hand to witness a cosmic accident

that came close to obliterating everything.

We encounter hunters and the hunted

and join Europe on its long journey around our planet.

(lively instrumental music)

(soft instrumental music)

A hundred years ago, people were already aware

of certain mysterious ancient animals.

Again and again,

evidence of a much earlier Germany surfaced,

a place inhabited by strange creatures.

This was just such a find from those prehistoric times,

bone from a legendary animal.

The age of the dinosaur had dawned.

They would now call the shots

for the next 150 million years.

(tense instrumental music)

Compared to its later relations,

the Plateosaurus was a featherweight,

yet this herbivore was still too heavy

for the damp muddy ground of the swamplands

that had spread over the area bit by bit.

(dinosaur groaning) (tense instrumental music)

The thick, gooey silt

swallowed them up like quicksand.

(tense instrumental music)

In modern times, so many of the long necks

were unearthed here

that they were nicknamed Swabian lindworms

after the local region.

These creatures mark the beginning

of the story of the dinosaurs.

The bone was only the tip of the iceberg.

But let's first take a big step back.

The young Earth was still a glowing ball of fire.

No sign yet of our blue planet.

Little by little, the red-hot Earth cooled down.

Rivers, lakes, and oceans appeared.

At the time, the primeval precursor of Europe was rising up

from the sea.

The continent lay thousands of kilometers farther south,

at the equator.

Nowadays, this distant era

is known as the Carbon or Coal Age.

Back then, there was a strange atmosphere in the forest.

Birds did not yet exist.

(gentle instrumental music)

The climate was hot and humid.

There was a surplus of oxygen.

Higher, further, longer.

The fern trees grew to heights up to 20 meters.

Prehistoric giant centipedes could reach lengths

of up to two meters.

(gentle instrumental music)

Chordates were the first vertebraes

to set foot on terra firma.

Within just a few million years,

these amphibians had developed legs and lungs.

(foreboding instrumental music)

And for the first time, animals took to the air.

Giant dragonflies patrolled from above

with four individually controllable wings.

Like their modern ancestors,

they were high-precision hunters.

The ancient tropical forests

produced enormous amounts of oxygen.

One thunderclap was enough

to cause the explosive air mixture to combust.

At this stage, Europe was situated at the intersection

of two vast land masses.

The collision of the two gave rise to a mountain range

that could have been as high as the modern day Alps

if it hadn't begun to crumble as soon as it had formed.

The forest swamplands

were buried beneath the debris of the mountains.

Forests repeatedly grew up,

only to be flooded once again by the ocean waters

and covered with sand and rocky debris,

a process that took millions of years.

Cut off from oxygen, the plants didn't rot.

First, they became peat, than lignite or brown coal,

and finally black coal.

The run-up to modern coal mining began 700 years ago

in England, on the surface at first,

then in pursuit of the deeper layers,

operations went underground.

The energy originally stored in the plants

was once again brought to light.

The great hunger for energy

literally undermined the coal mining towns.

The ground below was soon crisscrossed

with mine shafts and passageways.

(gentle instrumental music)

Meanwhile, above ground, coal-fired power plants

were being built.

These installations convert fossil combustibles into energy,

the stuff that growth and progress is made of.

(gentle instrumental music)

On the coalmine slag heaps,

the primeval forests from down below

once again becomes visible.

Its remains can be seen in the fine outlines

that the giant specimens have left behind

in the coal strata.

The huge fern trees have been immortalized in stone,

as well as giant centipedes.

(gentle instrumental music)

The trunks of 40 meter tall Sigillaria trees

have also made their mark.

So too the dragonflies

which apart from their huge size are hardly distinguishable

from today's version.

(gentle instrumental music)

The blueprint of the magnificent dragonfly

has hardly changed in millions of years.

During growth, the young insect repeatedly casts off

its extremely lightweight yet durable chitinous exoskeleton.

Beneath this disposable armor,

its body is divided into soft segments.

After the last shedding, it finally spreads its wings.

The dragonfly has reached maturity.

(gentle instrumental music)

The descendants of the chordate

have not reinvented themselves either.

They still spend their childhood in the water

breathing through gills.

Later on, they grow legs and lungs.

Only then can they go on land.

It's almost like watching evolution in fast motion.

(gentle instrumental music)

In prehistoric central Europe,

a massive mountain range once stood here

where now only dwarves remain.

Erosion has worn the Coal Age mountain range

down to the ground.

As the peaks eroded, their debris filled the valleys.

What remains are the low mountain ranges

of southern, eastern, and western Europe

the Sudetes, the Rhenish Massif, and the Ardennes.

Water often collected

in the clay containing watertight strata

of the valley floors, creating lakes.

Looking at the green landscape of today,

it's hard to imagine that a primordial ocean

once sloshed here.

(soft instrumental music)

The Zechstein Sea covered a large part

of the European continent from today's Baltic states

across Poland, and all the way to the Netherlands.

There was still no sign that a disaster

of incomparable proportions would occur

in the post-Carbon Age era.

Temperatures on land were scorching.

Though they were left high and dry,

the amphibians didn't go extinct.

Those that escaped the arid land into the water

lived on and continued to adapt.

Rain clouds that developed out at sea

rarely reached the interior of the landmass.

Without rain, vast desert regions came in to being.

With skin and eggs that are resistant to evaporation,

the reptiles now had a decisive advantage

in the hot desert climate.

(anxious instrumental music)

Over a period of 150 million years,

mountain ranges were ground down, flooded by the ocean,

then left to dry out again.

What remained was a landscape of dusty valleys

cut through with deep rivers and streams.

Mud skippers found their own ingenious way

of gaining solid ground.

Instead of lungs,

they developed gill chambers,

which they fill with water,

that they repeatedly enrich with oxygen by gasping for air.

(anxious instrumental music)

Mudskippers are not the link between fish

and the four-legged creatures on land.

Rather they are proof that for almost every challenge,

there are several solutions.

(anxious instrumental music)

It can take hundreds of millions of years for a given animal

to make the transition from water to land.

Crabs have also made the leap.

At low tide, they search the sand for food.

As diverse and ingenious

as plant and animal adaptations may be,

nature is nevertheless repeatedly sent back

to the drawing board.

(ominous instrumental music)

By the end of the Permian period,

80% of all animal species on land and in the sea

had gone extinct.

It is highly probable

that a series of volcanic eruptions triggered their demise.

(ominous instrumental music)

The climate descended into chaos.

Algae blooms and oxygen eating bacteria

created death zones in the oceans,

poisoning all marine life.

Throughout the Earth's history,

mass die-offs of this kind have repeatedly led to the loss

of entire animal groups.

(ominous instrumental music)

Even today, evidence of the prehistoric deserts

is still omnipresent.

(ominous instrumental music)

In the Palatinate forest on the Franco-German border,

sand and clay deposits have piled up

to form 400 meter thick layers.

Once, the colorful sandstone also filled all the valleys,

covering the entire Palatinate forest,

but wind and water have since eroded a major portion

of the highly porous sedimentary stone,

creating bizarre rock formations.

(ominous instrumental music)

And the Palatinate forest

isn't the only one in Europe that's changed.

Across the continent, the giant fern trees

have been replaced by other species:

spruce, beech, oak, and pine.

At first glance, this sea of trees seems empty and monotone,

yet it's actually full of life and surprises.

(gentle instrumental music)

In the south of the continent,

Mediterranean pine forests carpet the land.

In central and eastern Europe, its beech.

And in the north, the Taiga takes over.

(inspiring instrumental music)

But though these forests might seem untouched,

they ceased being real wilderness a very long time ago.

Here, forestry and modern hunting shaped the face of nature.

White stork is one of the original inhabitants

of the alluvial forests.

Initially a tree breeder,

the birds first took to the rooftops and chimneys

when human beings began to shape the landscape.

(gentle instrumental music)

And yet since time immemorial,

the forest has remained an enchanted place,

shrouded in mystery.

The deep dark woods are a primary source

of legends and fairy tales.

At night, we can still feel the spirit

of the primeval forest.

(gentle instrumental music)

In some places however, the dream of the ancient forest

has become a nightmare.

For centuries, the prehistoric carbon

stored in the carbon age forests

has been rising into the atmosphere

from smokestacks and chimneys,

fueling climate change as well as industry,

but rows of spruce have also been planted at some spots,

creating fragile forest plantations.

(dramatic instrumental music)

A powerful winter storm however sweeping through here

and pulling up trees by the roots

can often devastate whole woodland areas.

When such natural disasters strike,

we can only look on helplessly

as years of reforestation efforts are toppled.

(tense instrumental music)

In the Bavarian Forest National Park,

they have established what are called forest cells,

designated areas where fallen trees are left untouched.

The forest is purposely left to its own devices.

Here, it's open season for pests.

The voracious bark beetle

can go about its destructive work undisturbed.

The beetles lay their eggs in the wood

and when they hatch, the gluttony begins.

Like a biblical plague,

the insects ravage the spruce forest.

(gentle instrumental music)

But every ending bears the seeds of a new beginning,

however unintentionally.

The pernicious past actually helps give birth

to a new wilder and more colorful world.

(playful instrumental music)

Fungi contribute by decomposing the dying timber

to create the virgin forests of the future.

(playful instrumental music)

With the naked eye,

we can't even see the growth of mushrooms

that shoot up from the ground virtually overnight.

(playful instrumental music)

So it is all the more difficult to comprehend the slow pace

at which life turns to stone.

What looks like a standstill

is in fact a state of constant change.

Entire continents migrate.

Animal and plant species vanish and new ones appear.

But in our perception, the time spans are so enormous

that we can only guess at the extent of the changes.

(gentle instrumental music)

The events of millennia can be compressed

into just a few centimeters of stone.

(gentle instrumental music)

At a rock quarry in Bavaria,

evidence of prehistory is revealed.

As the layers are excavated,

silent witnesses from a bygone age repeatedly come forward.

Back then, the region rested at the edge of a sea

with flat lagoons along the shoreline.

Underwater, coral reefs lined the coast

but above the waterline, things were getting restless.

(tense instrumental music)

Welcome to Europe's Jurassic Park.

In the Jurassic period,

the dinosaurs had the run of the planet.

Skillful fliers, quick hunters, and armored giants,

they conquered almost every niche, every habitat,

(tense instrumental music)

On the islands, which are mountains today,

lived speedy predatory dinos like this Compsognathus

who liked to eat his smaller relations.

(tense instrumental music)

This savage age gave birth to a strange creature

with clawed fingers and a long bony tail, Archaeopteryx.

The first evidence of Archaeopteryx was discovered in 1860

in a chalk quarry

in the little Bavarian town of Solnhofen, a feather.

Soon, the first fossilized skeleton was found,

a feathered dinosaur, a bird.

The finds gave rise to new questions.

Charles Darwin had just published his

Theory on The Origin of Species.

Soon, the fossil was caught in an evolutionary tug-of-war.

One camp saw it as evidence that birds came from dinosaurs.

For others, it was an exotic anomaly,

but definitely not a link between species.

They were wrong.

Every layer of Solnhofen limestone

could bring a new fossil to light

and cause a new stir.

(gentle instrumental music)

A discovery no one had reckoned with,

Archaeopteryx wasn't the first dino to wear feathers,

but if the little predatory dinosaur's plumage

wasn't air worthy, why did they have it?

Nowadays, reptiles are cold-blooded.

They sunbathe to store up warmth.

Dinosaurs were believed to do the same,

but the Jurassic creatures

left nothing more than stone to go by.

(gentle instrumental music)

But the stone has tales to tell

if you know how to extract them.

Sometimes, very fine structures

are preserved deep within the fossils.

(gentle instrumental music)

At one university,

researchers are looking at these micro structures.

In the bones of the big herbivore dinosaurs,

the scientists have discovered growth rings

similar to those of trees.

(gentle instrumental music)

The core samples from the bones

show that in many dinosaurs,

the rings are spaced at large intervals.

They must have grown quickly

as only warm-blooded creatures do.

And so history must now once again be rewritten.

At least several species of dinosaur had little in common

with modern reptiles.

Feathered, two-legged dinos

that warm their eggs with their bodies

and feed their young.

The similarity is no coincidence.

(gentle instrumental music)

The Golden Eagle, here on the lookout for prey,

is a descendant of the dinosaur.

Likewise, blackbird and sparrow.

(gentle instrumental music)

The eagle's habitat looks wizened, weather-beaten,

full of wrinkles, as old as can be.

The appearance is deceptive.

The Alps are a relatively young mountain range

that a mere 200 million years ago was still underwater.

Today, traces of the former ocean

are still encased in the Alpine Zechstein limestone.

The mysterious imprints in the Zechstein Massif

long posed puzzling questions.

These are the descendants of the inhabitants of a warm ocean

from which the Alps had yet to rise up.

Back then, much of the Alpine region still looked

like a tropical underwater seascape.

In the south, a deep trench

separated the African and European continents.

The sea filled this divide and the beaches

were lined with reefs up to a thousand meters tall

(playful instrumental music)

The smaller inhabitants of this scene

had to beware of marine dinosaurs.

Even in the dark, the Alpine Reef was not a safe place.

(playful instrumental music)

Nowadays, that sea lies above the clouds.

The seabed crumpled up into a mountain range.

Once 1,000 kilometers across, it was pushed together

like a concertina and is now just 100 kilometers wide.

The craggy mountain landscape is the result

of a collision of the two continents.

Here, Africa pressed from the south against Europe.

Unbelievably slowly, the Earth's crust splintered,

crumbled, and piled up in layers.

And so from the bottom of an ancient ocean,

the chalk Alps grew to great heights.

(gentle instrumental music)

The ancient seabed has turned to rock cliff

from which water comes crashing down in free fall.

(gentle instrumental music)

The constant force of the water

wears the mountain away again bit by bit.

Daddy longlegs or harvestman have survived

for millions of years and are eyewitnesses to these changes.

Now, many species are under threat.

Human beings are encroaching on their habitats.

(gentle instrumental music)

The underwater world of the Alpine lakes

is no less mysterious than the prehistoric oceans.

Here, too, evolution has come up

with a highly inventive survival strategy.

(gentle instrumental music)

These clear but nutrient poor lakes

are home to the bladderwort.

This ancient aquatic plant has a special way

of meeting its dietary needs.

To get enough nitrogen,

the bladderwort supplements its diet

with little crabs and worms.

The tiny animals are trapped and then slowly digested

in the bladder of the carnivorous plant.

In the dinosaur age, the prehistoric precursor of the pike

could also be found chasing through the waters.

(gentle instrumental music)

600 meters above today's sea level lies the Konigsee.

Here, the pike and the bladderwort hunt along the remains

of coral banks and reefs that were lifted up to altitudes

far above the timberline.

(gentle instrumental music)

In just a few million years,

the habitat has been transformed

and with it the animal and plant kingdoms.

Living at an altitude of 1,000 meters,

the marmot is perfectly adapted for the Alpine climate.

Unlike some other mammals,

marmots are unable to pant to cool their bodies down.

In a warmer climate, they would not survive

the rigors of the constant turf wars.

But how do species develop?

How does evolution get down to business?

While the Alps slowly rose up,

a new and colorful revolution began.

Flowering plants came to be and with them insects,

some of them specially adapted to a single type of flower.

If one did not exist, the other could not survive.

The insects are attracted to the nutrition

and by pollinating the buds,

they in turn ensure the creation

of the next generation of flowering plants.

(gentle instrumental music)

No one yet knows exactly how this interplay

of mutual adaptation all began.

(majestic instrumental music)

It's a rugged world up here.

The high mountain habitat is particularly harsh.

With every meter of altitude, the temperature drops

and the diversity of plant life decreases,

but the plants that do manage to survive up here

despite extremes of cold, sun, and aridity

are true specialists.

In this inhospitable realm

where almost no tree species can exist today,

the Swiss pine thrives.

They take their time growing

and can live for up to 1,000 years.

With their sinuous trunks and tough wood,

they defy the storms and icy winds

that often haunt these heights.

The fate of the nutcracker is inextricably linked

to that of the pines.

Year for year, this little feathered descendant

of the dinosaur painstakingly gathers pine cones.

(lively instrumental music)

In the fall, a single bird stows his stash

in up to 6,000 hiding places.

(gentle instrumental music)

When winter comes, it returns to its storehouses.

It can remember where most of them are, but not all.

Many of the seeds in the forgotten caches sprout in spring,

allowing new trees to grow.

So the nutcracker doesn't just feed at the bountiful table

of the Swiss pine,

it also ensures the species' continued existence,

a delicate balance of nature

at the edge of the timberline.

(playful instrumental music)

What was once the ocean floor

is now the preserve of acrobats.

Under the watchful eye of the eagle,

the young chamois blaze new trails,

but as skillful as they are at climbing,

falling rock and avalanches repeatedly take their toll,

especially on the kids.

The eagles are immediately on the scene.

Ibex and chamois risk their daredevil stunts

on the precipitous rocky mountain sides

in search of an essential substance: salt.

On the journey of the continent northwards from the equator

the sun dried out the shallow seas,

turning them to salt deserts.

The Permian period oceans also left their traces here

in the far south of Germany.

Today, those salt strata

traverse the rock of the Berchtesgaden Alps.

The salt rock veins

extend kilometers deep into the mountains

and at some spots are up to 1,000 meters thick.

As the Alps began to elevate, the salt deposits too

were lifted out of the depths,

becoming deformed as they were displaced.

Their patterns clearly delineate the uplift

of the mountain range.

Salt has been extracted in Berchtesgaden

for almost 500 years.

The drills follow the salt veins in the mountain.

From the tunnels, mine shafts extend deep down

into the salt rock.

The mountain water itself does the actual extraction,

washing the salt out of the stone.

(gentle instrumental music)

The brine is almost as salty as the water of the Dead Sea.

The ancient cycle repeats itself.

Water evaporates and precious salt remains.

(majestic instrumental music)

Hundreds of millions of years have left their mark

in the rocks, giving Europe its ever changing appearance.

During this time, the Alps have grown

to become a massive mountain range.

Their peaks are the highest point of today's Europe

and the Alpine Massif still continues to push upwards.

But where there is a mountain range,

there will also be constant assaults

by frost, wind, and water.

If it weren't for erosion,

the Alps would be 30 kilometers high by now.

Every trickle carries the mountaintop down to the valley

pebble by pebble.

(majestic instrumental music)

The precursor to the Mediterranean

once covered vast areas of the Earth.

It was from this early ocean that the Alps arose,

creating a river that now flows

through six European countries, the Rhine.

Its story begins 50 million years ago.

Its source is in Switzerland, high above sea level.

On the descent, winding its way through valleys,

the Rhine makes an enormous drop in altitude.

(gentle instrumental music)

The Alpine Rhine carries along with it sand and detritus,

the rubble of the eroding mountain range,

several million tons of it each year.

It's all deposited little by little in Lake Constance.

The river is thus filling a depression left behind

by Ice Age glaciers.

Lake Constance itself was cut into the land

by glacial ice string tongues.

When they retreated,

they left behind the large meltwater lake

surrounded by high walls of rocky rubble.

When the dams burst, the Alpine Rhine made its way westwards

to join the still young Upper Rhine.

(majestic instrumental music)

At the Rhine Falls near Schaffhausen, Switzerland,

the second largest waterfall in Europe,

up to 700 cubic meters of water a second come crashing down.

For the river's fish, the upstream journey ends here,

except for the eel.

Its roots go back millions of years.

From the evolutionary perspective, the eel is an old model

but one that is by no means outdated.

It can leave its element to get past the Rhine Falls

via the land route.

(gentle instrumental music)

It's thought that the reign of the dinosaurs

came to an abrupt end 65 million years ago

with a meteorite strike,

but that wasn't really the end of their story.

Its claws are only faintly reminiscent

to the predatory dinosaurs

of the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods,

yet the dipper is one of their living descendants.

In fact, all birds are distant relations

of speedy little predatory dinosaurs,

some of which even wore feathers themselves.

(playful instrumental music)

The gray wagtail is a deft little insect hunter,

but its forebears will hardly have suddenly morphed

into aerial acrobats from one generation to the next.

As everything in the development of life,

this transformation too was likely a process

peppered with intermediate forms and transitions.

(gentle instrumental music)

Just past Schaffhausen, the Rhine flows on into Germany

along the edge of the Black Forest,

woodlands famed far beyond the national borders.

The shade of the mountain conifer is home turf

for the wood grouse.

The male is no flying ace,

but he does boast impressive plumage.

This shows the female that her suitor

would be a healthy partner.

The offspring of these animals will be a tiny bit different

from their parents.

Those who pass on their characteristics

to the next generation will define conditions

in their environment,

the way of the world for four billion years now.

It worked.

The females are all aflutter now.

(gentle instrumental music)

Some members of the plant kingdom

have also survived the Earth's major mass die-offs.

The first conifers appeared way back

in the Carbon Age coal forests.

The silver fir is one of their ancestors.

Up to 65 meters tall, they grow in the hilly regions

of central and southern Europe.

These trees are a living example of tricks

that evolution has employed to great success

since time immemorial.

The generation of protected nutrient-rich seeds

and airworthy pollen, and all on one tree.

(majestic instrumental music)

The source of the Wutach River

is in the south of the Black Forest.

Over millions of years, the tireless power of the water

has slowly exposed the rock strata.

The river cuts through the history of Europe

right down to the foundation stone

of the Carbon Age mountain range.

The environment is ever changing.

The view from above the Black Forest

down into the Rhine Valley

is like a window on the Earth's interior.

Here, a continent was divided.

To the west, the Rhine Graben or trench opened up

as a branch of the ocean cut across Germany.

50 million years ago, when southern central Europe

was pushed up by the pressure of the Alps,

the ocean retreated, leaving behind the Upper Rhine.

The river chose an unsettled bed.

The Earth's crust is especially thin here.

Magma repeatedly made its way to the surface.

Millennia of erosion

have sanded down the prehistoric volcanic craters.

What remains are the sun-drenched terraced slopes

of the Kaiserstuhl,

a little bit of Tuscany on the Upper Rhine.

(gentle instrumental music)

The extinct volcanoes are a fertile ground

for many lifeforms.

(gentle instrumental music)

A jungle of grasses and flowers provide good camouflage

for an unusual hunter, the praying mantis.

It's mating season, and the female is hungry.

(foreign language music)

The lizard is completely unfazed by the deadly rendezvous

unlike its ancestors millions of years ago.

This collision put an end to the age of the dinosaurs.

The crash hurled huge amounts of dust

into the Earth's atmosphere.

The sun was hidden for months on end.

Temperatures dropped significantly.

More than half of all species were wiped out.

Scientific debate over whether the meteorite strike alone

caused the dinosaurs' demise

will most likely rage on and on,

but one thing is certain.

The time for the mammals had come.

In the shadow of the dinosaurs, the first mammals appeared.

Little, unassuming creatures.

With the giant reptiles out of the picture,

the way was now clear for them.

(eerie instrumental music)

(majestic instrumental music)