Original subtitles

(dramatic 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.

Welcome to the Rhine River Floodplain, of the Eocene Age.

It is 10 million years after a comet impact

has devastated our planet.

And Europe has migrated farther north.

In the sub-tropical climate, mammals have come

to dominate the scene.

Here, where later the Riesling grape will grow,

we now find a lush, primeval rainforest.

Half of all known modern day mammalian groups

are already in existence here.

Birds, fish, and insects too.

The entire animal kingdom is almost the same

as the present day edition.

Not the European one, however.

Nowadays, many of the Eocene inhabitants

live in the tropical regions of South America and Asia.

It's thanks to a volcano that we know

exactly which animals lived here back then.

When the volcano erupted 48 million years ago,

a 300 meter deep crater lake was formed.

(chainsaw running)

Plants and animals were swept down deep into the depths.

But instead of being destroyed,

they were preserved intact, in oil shale.

The Messel pit, near the city of Darmstadt in Germany.

Here, layer for layer, a snapshot of a major event

and geological history is being excavated.

The fossil record tells of life

and death at the crater lake.

Most likely, poisonous gases bubbling up from below

had escaped the water, causing animals

to asphyxiate, fall into the lake, and drown.

Many fossilized bats have been found.

They must have swooped down too close

to the water's surface.

Today, the Messel pit is a UNESCO World Heritage Site,

and a unique gateway to prehistoric Europe.

The oldest extant hand of a primate was found here.

The fossil finds in Messel are astonishingly

true to life imprints of the animals.

Shadows of skin, as well as hair, and plumage are depicted.

Sometimes the stomach contents have even been preserved.

The most spectacular find to date

was made back in the 1980s.

A 60 centimeter long monkey like animal,

with a very long tail.

The creature had most likely fallen prey

to the same poisonous gases as the other animals

discovered in the shale.

(tense music)

47 million years later, the little lady primate

caused quite a stir.

Now known as Ida, she was long billed

as the progenitor of the human race.

Although no definitive evidence for this

was ever produced, her body does display

one of evolution's greatest innovations.

Gripping hands with opposable thumbs.

The tropical Eocene forest too was eventually

buried beneath the layers of time.

Now, whenever we scratch the surface,

a glimpse of prehistory is revealed.

Here, where the diggers now scoop the last lignite

out of the ground, virgin forests

once lined a long coast line.

Slumbering beneath the lignite are tons of amber.

Frozen in time within it, the life of the ancient forests.

Much of western Europe was now being covered over

with a fresh layer of ice.

Coming down from Scandinavia, the glaciers pushed

all the way to London.

Coming from the Alps, they made it

to the Chiemsee in Bavaria.

The glaciers formed and displaced earth and rock,

and bound so much water that vast areas

of the North Sea were drained.

The Quaternary, the most recent geological period,

was a time of upheaval.

There were repeated glacier thaws,

with the meltwater runoff cutting

deep gullets into the land.

As the cold retreated northwards,

the animals of the cold periods disappeared.

Forest spread out again.

Hippopotamus, elephants, and rhinoceros

migrated from the south to the once again green habitats.

Roe deer lived in the immediate vicinity

of the elephants, and the tributaries

of the original Rhine.

Forest elephants now lived where mammoth

had previously grazed, and roe deer and wild boar

came along to take the place of reindeer.

The animals migrated,

in accordance with the changing climate.

But something significant had changed.

The animals were no longer alone.

(birds chirping)

In October 1907, laborer Daniel Hagmann

made an astonishing find.

My friends, today I done found Adam.

Just days later, an anthropologist

visited the sand pit.

For 20 years, the researcher had been paying

the workers to excavate bones for him.

His patience, and his investment, had finally paid off.

Where exactly did you find him?

Over yonder in the steep vase.

Hmm.

So did you thoroughly search a spot?

Uh-huh.

And did you find any more of them?

This here.

That, that, that, and this.

Uh-huh.

The mandible belonged

to a precursor of the neanderthal.

It was given the name Homo heidelbergensis.

The age of man had begun.

Long before the first human being appeared in Europe,

the Middle Rhine was formed.

The Alps applied pressure from the south,

creating the central German uplands.

Then, 25 million years ago, the ocean retreated

from the rising mountain range,

leaving the Middle Rhine behind.

It didn't hook up with the Upper Rhine

until 10 million years later.

Much later still, human beings came along

to make their unrelenting mark on the landscape.

During the century of industrialization,

the Rhine, as many other European rivers,

was straightened along its entire length,

reshaping entire regions.

The Romans brought the art of wine making

along with them to the south of France,

to Germany, to Italy, and to Spain.

They laid the foundation for the triumph of Riesling,

Merlot, and Carbone.

Although the landscape along the Rhine doesn't suggest it,

people here live closer to

the Earth's blowholes than they know.

On the river island Namedyer Werth,

a water sprout shoots up to heights of up to 60 meters,

the highest cold water geyser on Earth.

Not far from the geyser lies an old crater lake,

the Lachar See.

In the middle ages, an order of Benedictine monks

retreated to the seclusion of the lake.

They built a monastery, and called it Maria Laach.

But the monks didn't suspect that

they were living closer to the brink of hell than to heaven.

The extinguished fire mountains

in the Eifel region of Germany can reignite at any moment,

as can the super volcanoes of Italy.

No one can say if it will be in 10,000 years,

or next Tuesday.

(explosions)

The last time the Maria Laach volcano erupted,

the result was destruction of unimaginable proportions.

The ash spread as far as

southern Sweden, and northern Italy.

For several days, avalanches of hot lava and ash

barreled through the valleys,

creating an almost 30 meter high wall,

that dammed up the Rhine and Moselle rivers

for weeks on end.

When the dam finally burst, a gigantic torrent

of floodwater went crashing downstream,

all the way to the Netherlands,

laying waste to everything in its path.

(crashing water)

Long before this devastation, an ancestor

of today's human beings had lived

throughout a large part of Europe and the Middle East.

Homo neanderthalensis, the neanderthal.

(tense music)

(animal cries)

(war cries)

More than 200,000 years ago,

this species of human had already developed in Europe.

In the coldest periods, the advancing glaciers

had forced the neanderthal to up sticks and move on.

Finally, however, the species succeeded

in adapting to the cold.

The neanderthal was long assumed to have been

inferior to modern man in almost every way.

Not so.

Neanderthals knew how to find the safest hideouts,

and the best hunting grounds.

They were skillful craftsmen.

They tanned hides, and fashioned clothing

out of leather and fur.

The neanderthals lived in small clans,

scattered across a large area.

But even in the forests of the warmer periods,

survival wasn't easy.

The dense woods were home not only to deer,

rhinoceros, and forest elephants,

but to lions and hyenas as well.

As the climate changed, so too did the habitat.

But the neanderthals continued to adapt, and survive.

Nothing is known about their language,

but the anatomy of their throat reveals

they would certainly have been able to communicate vocally.

(chatter)

Their hunting implements were already

far more advanced than those of Homo heidelbergensis.

They used a sort of glue made of birch tar

to fasten their knife sharp flint blades to their spears,

a brilliant invention.

Evidence shows that neanderthals cared for their sick

and buried their dead.

There is still much speculation over

why they eventually vanished from the face

of the Earth 30,000 years ago.

We were long thought to descend

from the victors over these primitives,

but apparently not all encounters

between the two were hostile.

The fact is, we do share a portion,

albeit a small one, of our genetic material with them.

The neanderthal lives on within us.

For the last time to date, a great cold period

had northern Europe in its grip.

Now the wolves, and the large grazers:

mammoth, musk oxen, and reindeer,

wandered in their millions over the wide open spaces.

At the foot of the glaciers, a constant wind

swept across the land.

It was the northern most outpost of life.

When the cold here got too severe,

the herds had to move on.

The wolves were always hot on their heels.

And they weren't the only ones following the herds.

In the midst of the cold period,

human beings immigrated from the African savanna

to what is now central Europe.

For days on end, the hunter roamed the ice desert,

searching for fresh meat for his clan.

Wolves were among the first wild animals

that humans not only hunted, but domesticated as well.

The life of the hunters was dictated

by the migration of the herds.

As the animals changed feeding grounds,

the human predators too repeatedly moved camp

along the great migration routes.

In the summertime, the open step

was a fruitful hunting ground,

but it was almost impossible to track animals in winter,

when the snow and wind covered their trail,

and they disappeared against the white backdrop.

(tense music)

Every year the hunters waited for their prey

to pass by on migration.

But the great herds slowly began to disappear,

never to return again.

Some species went completely extinct.

Others left the land of the ice age hunters.

For a long time, human beings took the rap

for the disappearance of the mammoth and the megalosaurus,

but the handful of hunters can't be

responsible for the extinction of these species.

Rising temperatures seem the more plausible answer

for the animals' demise.

The end of the ice age was the start

of a geological restart process.

Because only after the glaciers melted

could northern Europe begin to become the place

we know today.

The scope and character of the north sea changed radically.

And advanced farther and farther to the south,

flooding the vast plains of the former glacier regions.

A completely new habitat was born.

The Wadden Sea.

(inspiring music)

Fine grain sand.

Gray brown mud.

And turbid water as far as the eye can see.

That's about all the North Sea has to offer.

And yet, the ice desert of yore has become

a richly diverse habitat.

Twice a day, the tides flood the Wadden Sea,

with a nutrient rich brew.

The mud offers both protection and food.

Beneath the surface of the mud flats,

there is an abundance of life.

This is the nursery for many fish

that will grow up to live in the North Sea.

The lumpfish too spawns here.

The male goes all out to protect the spawn.

After all, it's not his survival,

but that of his offspring that will secure

the survival of the species.

After the eggs have hatched, the larvae remain

for some time in the safety of the shallow waters

before they swim out to sea.

The cadavers of the father fish, dead of exhaustion,

often wash ashore.

In the spring and fall, millions of migratory birds

make a rest stop at the Wadden Sea.

The area has the largest bird population in Central Europe.

The ice age created an island of life.

Far offshore, the North Sea becomes quite rough.

Amidst blustering waves, the island of Heligoland

rises up from the sea.

Around 250 million years ago, the red island

was still part of a desert.

It's the only port of caw far and wide

for passing air travelers in need of a rest.

Once a year, the cliffs of Heligoland offer

countless visiting seabirds a perfect place

to rear their young.

In the winter, long after the migratory birds

have left the island, gray seals appear on the beach.

The bulls compete aggressively for the best spots,

trying to conquer the section of beach

where the sea cows gather,

to await the birth of their young.

Soon after the young are born,

the gray seal mating season begins.

One after the other, the bulls come ashore,

vying for ascendancy in the fight for procreation.

In the winter, winds churn the sea.

Sharp tongues of surf lash away

at the cliffs and the beach, carrying off rock and sand,

and depositing it elsewhere.

The work of human hands attempts to stem the process.

Along the Baltic seacoast, things are much quieter.

Here where the ice age has scooped out a basin,

and filled it with its meltwater,

to create the Baltic Sea.

A broad belt of reed marshes and sand flats has developed.

Neither land nor water.

Free of human intervention, large parts

of the Baltic Sea shoreline are sanctuaries

for coastal wildlife.

The broad belts of marshland are the preserve

of the marsh harrier that broods and rears

its young on the ground.

The Chalk Cliffs of Rugen are also

the product of the glacial ice,

which pushed the island up from the depths

of the Baltic Sea.

The chalk was formed in the dinosaur age,

from the tiny lime shells of plankton.

Under the pressure of the glaciers,

this material grew to become the distinctive Chalk Cliffs.

The warm period covered the chalk

with a thin layer of plant matter.

The roots of the plants cling to the soft substratum.

Without this protective covering,

the surf and rainfall would have long since

washed the island away.

After the end of the last ice age,

the climate warmed up very quickly.

The forest returned, and along with it,

the animals we still know today.

The people, who up until this time

had been nomadic hunter gatherers,

now began to settle and shape their environment.

But as human civilization took its baby steps,

entirely new conflicts arose.

(speaking in foreign language)

Wildlife was no longer just a food source.

For a farmer tending her fields at the dawn of agriculture,

deer were pests to be driven off.

For the hunters, the farmers and their fields

were alien intruders.

They chopped down the forests,

and disrupted the hunting grounds.

Agriculture, however, won through in the end.

With what is known as the neolithic revolution,

mankind began a targeted campaign

of adapting nature to its own needs.

Villages, and later cities, were built,

and the population grew apace,

because people were no longer dependent

on what they could hunt and gather.

But could now produce their own nutrition.

The wildlife avoided human settlements,

retreating ever deeper into the forests.

Today's broad, open marshland habitat,

on the other hand, offers little protection.

But it is here that migratory birds gather each year

to start their journey south.

The flat, almost treeless land provides

a good view for predatory birds,

such as the marsh harrier, who aim to take

full advantage of the situation

before the summer guests move on.

When temperatures have dropped

and the migratory birds have flown off on their way,

things go quiet on the North Sea coast.

The world's largest marshland area.

The place seems as remote and uninhabited

as it was 2,000 years ago.

Vast forests now cover the majority of western Europe,

but along the Rhine, modern civilization advanced

all the way up to the north.

After conquering part of a Germanic settlement areas,

the Romans right away began building

a supply and road network.

The division, surveying, and administration

of Germania began.

Thanks to a sophisticated measurement technique,

the Roman roads cut across the landscape

in perfectly straight lines.

These roads connected the Roman camps

that later developed into cities,

including Cologne, Metz, and Koblenz.

Off the beaten track first laid down by the Romans,

modern day Germany is thinly populated.

If the forest were still left to its own devices today,

it would cover almost the whole of Europe.

But where human beings live and intervene,

fruit orchards, fields, and pastures

have supplanted quite a bit of forest area.

New habitats have been created.

Here, sheep, cattle, and agricultural machinery

prevent the forest from reclaiming the land.

The stork likes to be in

close proximity to human settlements,

and is the beneficiary of a regularly occurring massacre.

Picking tasty tidbits from the field in the aftermath.

(tense music)

(grunting)

Mankind repeatedly carves out a place

for itself in nature.

Until the early 19th century, wood was the most

commonly used material, and practically

the only heating material.

Entire regions were deforested.

By this time, the bears were almost all gone.

Since the middle ages, the forest had

been used as a grazing pasture,

and the leaves blanketing the forest floor

were cleared to use as straw in the stalls of livestock.

Wood and charcoal supplied the energy

to fire the ovens of the salt, iron, and glass industries.

More and more charcoal burners and piles were set up,

to produce wood charcoal.

Huge amounts of which was needed

to feed the booming mason industries.

Where wood supplies ran low, communities and cities

passed laws to protect the forests.

Nobility too took action against the deforestation.

The landed gentry laid claim to huge forest areas,

and took measures for forest and wildlife conservancy.

But not from ecological conviction.

The hunting classes wanted to save

their stately game reserves from destruction.

Without the sport hunting of entitled toffs,

the German countryside would look a lot different today.

(barking)

For millennia, the hunt was an existential

necessity for human existence.

But, in the early middle ages, it became a privilege.

Nobility passed an edict over its forests.

The farmers were not only prohibited from hunting,

they were not even allowed to kill the game

when it was caught plundering the harvest in the fields.

At that time, there was a law

that revoked the land rights of the peasantry

as soon as the trees and shrubs on it

grew high enough to reach a rider's spurs.

Nowadays, the hunt not only serves

to control the game population,

it's also a popular recreational activity.

A certain forest in eastern Germany

does not owe its existence to nobility.

Legend has it that the Spree Forest,

with its tangle of countless waterways,

is a work of the devil.

In fact, this labyrinth of water and woods

is a legacy of the ice age glaciers.

Here, concealed in the maze of streams,

the black storks raise their young.

They live on little fish and frogs,

that they have to share with the snakes.

(tense music)

The Spree Forest alder tree no longer grows

in the natural way alone.

The seeds that fall into the water courses

are fished from the surface,

and then planted in the ground.

The Spree Forest of today no longer

bears any resemblance to its primeval forerunner.

Man reshapes landscape that had developed

over millions of years.

100 million years ago exotic animals

lived in the narrow estuary of what

is now the border of Germany and the Czech Republic.

Their chalk shells and skeletons sunk to the riverbed,

collecting there, layer by layer, millimeter by millimeter.

This chalk, as well as the sand and stone

deposited here by the wind and waters

piled up to create mighty sandstone cliffs.

When the ocean retreated,

erosion took to the sandstone banks,

and turned them into the jagged Elbe Sandstone Mountains.

Diving down between the cliffs,

along the various rock strata, is like time traveling

through the geological eras of the European continent.

And construction is ongoing, as streams

and waterfalls continuously change the rock face.

As far back as the 11th century,

people began mining sandstone.

Later, with the development of shipping on the river,

quarries sprung up along the Elbe.

The quarrying widened the narrow

Elba Valley at several points.

Rock for rock, the stone was broken

and blasted from the walls.

Shipped along the Elbe, the stone blocks arrived

to build the walls of many magnificent,

sacred, and stately buildings throughout the world.

Elbe sandstone is still quarried today,

and shipped to customers around the globe.

(explosion)

Dresden's master builders, old and new,

have eroded the Elbe cliffs.

For the reconstruction of the historic Facchoncacha,

they returned once again to the old sandstone quarries.

The Hamburg town hall is built of Elbe sandstone,

as are many other buildings in this urban landscape.

The falcons brood here, as they do in the cliffs

of the Elbe Sandstone Mountains.

The animals have long since made themselves at home

in the manmade habitat.

Today's major cities are anything but hostile to life.

They often offer a greater diversity of habitats

than the surrounding countryside.

The iconic cathedral and Rhine bridges

are unmistakable landmarks of the Cologne cityscape.

Tourists, floods of people, concrete, and heavy traffic.

You don't think of animals here.

But the urban centers don't just attract human beings.

Animal immigrants from across the globe

have made a new home for themselves in the metropolis,

adding color and variety to the scene.

Our contemporary cities bring Europe's

long journey of transformation to a conclusion for now.

(shouts and animal cries)

Our journey is over.

But Europe will travel on for a long time to come.

We'll never know what direction it will take in the future.

Whether it will one far off day

come to rest at the North Pole,

or under the equatorial sun.

We won't be there to see if it gets clamped

between two continents and lifted way up high,

torn in pieces that sink into the sea.

Or covered by a kilometer thick armor of ice.

But one things is certain: it will be

an utterly different Europe than the one we know today.

(inspiring music)