Original subtitles

One day, long ago in the Mediterranean...

men entered a cave.

They painted pictures of their lives on the walls.

Of the animals they hunted.

Of the natural world, which was all they knew.

They left their mark...

and then they went away.

That was 27,000 years ago.

The cave was the Cosquer Cave, deep inside a limestone cliff

near Marseille, in the South of France.

Today, it is almost inaccessible.

Its entrance is deep beneath the sea...

and the sea is the Mediterranean.

The Mediterranean is much more than a stretch of water.

It is the sea that saw the rise of a range of civilisations.

On its shores, humanity made an immense journey.

The peoples of the Mediterranean discovered agriculture.

They invented trade, geometry, writing.

They founded empires and imagined great cities.

They made it the home of philosophy and of the first democracy.

And the home of the Religions of the Book...

Judaism, Christianity and Islam, now the faiths of half the world.

The Mediterranean is home to 427 million people

and 24 countries.

And yet...

And yet today, this common legacy has been eclipsed

by fratricidal wars and bitter tensions between neighbours.

We hear only of religious conflict, economic crisis, and division.

Has the universal heritage of the Mediterranean been forgotten?

Do its peoples no longer remember

how integral the Mediterranean has been to their own history?

Look at these children playing

in a Palestinian neighbourhood of Beirut.

They are a reminder that it was by the Mediterranean

that people learned to live in a community.

Look at these flocks grazing on the plains of Algeria.

They are a reminder of what climate change may bring

to the rest of the world.

Look at Venice, and you may conclude that the modern world

has lost its sense of proportion and perspective.

In a word, take a broader view,

and see the Mediterranean as the centre of a bigger picture.

That is the story we will tell in this journey around the sea

that the Romans called Mare Nostrum, 'our sea'...

a sea for all that we call the Mediterranean.

In the end, the story of one Mediterranean people

is the story of them all.

The Mediterranean peoples are all a little Roman, or Greek.

They are Turkish, Arab or Egyptian before they are French or Moroccan.

They are Jewish, too. Christian and Muslim.

It is a heritage that goes around the world.

But what remains of the Mediterranean heritage today?

When we look at it, we see a family divided by its inheritance.

Colonisation, wars, coups...

Its history is one conflict after another.

And religion is the fault line.

Jews, Christians and Muslims rend each other over a single god.

There is even a security barrier in the holy city,

the city of prayer, Jerusalem.

And the barrier doesn't stop there.

730 kilometres long, it separates Israel from the West Bank.

Officially, it's a security measure,

to protect the Israelis from Palestinian terrorists.

But in reality, the wall separates the Jews and the Muslims.

Each religion claims its martyrs. Thousands of innocents.

Faith and suffering seem linked.

The Christian martyrs gave their names to churches and monasteries,

such as those of Meteora in Greece.

In Catholic Spain, from Barcelona to Seville,

the ceremonies of Holy Week commemorate

Christ's suffering on the Cross and his Resurrection.

For seven days, 60 brotherhoods devoted to the Passion of Christ

go in procession to the cathedral.

They wear penitents' hoods, a legacy of the Middle Ages.

The faithful unite their sufferings with those of Christ.

But why should one have to suffer for one's religion?

From Christian Spain to Muslim Morocco, it is barely 15 kilometres.

From each side, you can see the opposite shore.

But the narrow strait might as well be a gulf.

In Casablanca, on the Moroccan side,

thousands come to the Hassan II Mosque

for the prayers that mark the end of Ramadan.

It's a period of fasting and strict ritual.

The fasting is one of the five pillars of Islam.

Ultimately, the peoples of the Mediterranean

pray to a single universal god, but they pray in different worlds.

The southern shore of the Mediterranean is Muslim,

mostly Sunni - believers who adhere to the sunnah,

the teachings and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad during his lifetime.

The northern shore is Christian, mostly Catholic,

under the authority of the Pope.

In Greece there are also the Orthodox,

heirs to the first, eastern churches.

The only point of contact between the shores is in Istanbul, in Turkey.

Istanbul lies on the banks of another strait, the Bosphorus.

Today it is the economic capital of the Mediterranean.

The Bosphorus is a vital connection

between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea.

Istanbul's bridges join Europe with the East,

via roads to Kazakhstan, China and the Persian Gulf.

Istanbul prospers as a Mediterranean crossroads.

It has always been a centre for every kind of exchange,

economic or religious.

In Antiquity, it was Byzantium a Greek city, the capital of Thrace

and a hub of commerce for the ancient world.

Byzantium became Constantinople,

the first Christian capital of the Roman Empire

and the site of the first great churches.

This is the greatest of them all -

Hagia Sophia, the Church of Holy Wisdom,

later converted to a mosque, and now a museum.

Istanbul, with its Grand Bazaar and 4000 shops,

was the pulsing heart of the Ottoman Empire,

which stretched from the Middle East

to the frontiers of Austria and Hungary.

Istanbul... a legendary city where all roads meet.

Today, Turkey is seeking an identity between moderate Islam

and the secularism laid down by Ataturk,

the father of modern Turkey, in 1929.

Istanbul is knocking at the door of the European Union.

Its streets bear the names of every European city

and the flags of its nations.

It is a cosmopolitan city of 13 million people.

It seems that religious divisions are not inevitable,

that it is possible

for the Mediterranean peoples to live together.

Civilisation is a little like the water

that snakes its way toward the lagoon in Venice.

As it finds its way, it modifies the world around it.

Once, the Mediterranean peoples could build refined cities.

Today, they may barely recognise what they are looking at.

One-third of the world's tourists come to the Mediterranean...

for a brief stop and a quick photo.

The ships they come in overpower the delicate city,

heir to Byzantium in Italy.

They come to the Mediterranean as if on a pilgrimage,

but they are looking for something

that is no longer truly Mediterranean.

On Croatia's Adriatic coast,

Dubrovnik was once the Republic of Ragusa,

a rival to the pre-eminence of Venice.

During the break-up of Yugoslavia, the city was besieged and shelled.

Reconstruction, partly funded by foreign investment,

turned Dubrovnik into an outdoor museum.

In summer, tourists outnumber residents by two to one.

The Mediterranean has become a giant holiday camp.

But does it really have a choice?

Spain's holiday coasts depend on tourist spending.

One-third of the world's tourists means 250 million visitors

to be looked after in the space of a few months.

Thousands of resorts, 700 yacht harbours, miles of beaches...

Much of the Mediterranean is like Spain's Costa Brava,

a transitory community that needs water and sanitation

and adds to the risk of pollution.

Above all, tourism swells a population that is already large.

Coastal areas are running out of room.

The Mediterranean's limits can be seen in Algeria.

The country is immense, but much of it is uninhabitable.

As soon as you cross the Atlas Mountains, the desert begins.

And no one can live in this desert,

except in the rare oases such as Ghardaia.

These Berber cities, founded by the Mozabites,

are the only islands of life in an ocean of rock and sand

that is gradually taking over the Mediterranean's southern shores.

In the Aures Mountains, east of the Atlas Range,

water is scarce, the land, arid.

The mountains, once a refuge for early humans, are now inhospitable.

So, like most of the great cities of the Mediterranean,

Algiers looks to the sea.

It was once known as Algiers the White,

after the whitewashed buildings of the Casbah and the seafront.

Today it deserves its modern nickname - Big Algiers.

With six million people, it is the largest city in northwestern Africa.

The population is young - a third are under the age of 20.

The growth of Algiers is a challenge for education,

health-care and employment...

for everyone seeking a future.

The Mediterranean world today has 427 million people,

most of them squeezed into its major cities.

It will soon be 500 million.

At that rate, the Mediterranean area

could have the highest population density in the world within 30 years.

Towns and cities spring up like mushrooms

all along the Mediterranean coast.

There are some 580 urban areas.

Alexandria, in Egypt,

has 30 kilometres of apartment buildings facing the sea.

The city itself is a sea of concrete.

The Bibliotheca Alexandrina is the modern successor

to the Great Library of Alexandria,

the leading storehouse of knowledge in the ancient world.

Symbolically, its facade faces the sea, as its predecessor's also did.

Before it, lies the Mediterranean,

the source of knowledge and culture then as now.

But when people face the Mediterranean today,

they must be mindful.

The sea is home to other species than man.

The Ebro Delta, in Spain, is a nature reserve,

essential to the breeding and migration of pink flamingos.

But the reserve is not only for the benefit of the birds.

It is to help preserve a priceless heritage...

the Mediterranean's biodiversity.

The Mediterranean's many islands are also havens for wildlife.

Corsica is one where native species are protected.

In the hills, the pine forests are home

to more than 200 animal and plant species that exist nowhere else.

Higher still are the pozzines peat bogs dotted with waterholes.

There are some 25,000 plant species around the Mediterranean.

This natural heritage is a form of life insurance for humanity.

Any decline in that heritage

increases the constraints on our own existence.

The areas in which humanity can live are also fragile.

They are shrinking every year.

On average, 600,000 hectares of forest go up in smoke every year,

like this burnt-out area in the Peloponnese in Greece.

Man burns his own habitat,

either through negligence or by design, for agriculture.

At the height of summer, after weeks of hot, dry air, everything can burn.

Even olive groves.

The olive tree isn't only a plant it's a symbol.

It can live for hundreds of years,

and it has intimate links with human life in the Mediterranean.

It can withstand drought, but not cold or heavy rain.

Above all, it loves the sun.

All this makes it a sentinel for climate change.

Where the olive tree doesn't grow,

we're no longer in the Mediterranean world.

It defines a natural frontier,

which is sometimes very different from human borders.

And that frontier is shifting.

In recent decades, olive trees have flourished in the north

and died of thirst in the south.

The olive branches bear a message for humanity.

They signal profound climate change that we can barely make out as yet.

An average increase of more than two degrees

is forecast for the Mediterranean region.

It would make this part of the world the most exposed to global warming.

Those two little degrees would make Cairo a sweltering megalopolis.

But above all, a climatic shift would threaten Egyptian agriculture.

Already, Egypt has to import 12 million tonnes of wheat per year,

making it the world's biggest wheat importer.

Wheat farming began here,

yet one Egyptian in four can only survive thanks to foreign grain.

In Greece, and elsewhere in southern Europe,

the cereal industry is in a race against time.

Species have to be adapted to a changing climate,

a shortage of rain and depleted soils.

Water is not only an agricultural issue.

It is also a challenge for states that are running short.

60 per cent of the people who are short of water

live in Mediterranean countries.

Among them are 20 million people

who no longer have ready access to safe drinking water.

Much of Israel's water supply is desalinated from the Mediterranean.

Even then it sometimes has to import water

and it is one of the better-off countries

in a region of chronic water shortages.

The spectre of thirst is on the horizon.

Tripoli, the capital of Libya, is also importing water.

The city owes its name to the ancient Roman province of Regio Tripolitana,

or 'region of three cities'.

Today, it has two million people of Arab and Berber descent.

Libya is still emerging from 40 years of dictatorship

under Muammar Gaddafi,

and the years of civil war that followed.

Despite its divisions, the country is trying to define its future.

Tripoli's main market has been relocated.

Symbolically, it now occupies the site

of Gaddafi's former headquarters.

You can find anything here, but little that comes from Libya.

The wheat is imported from Europe, the meat from the Emirates,

the vegetables from Tunisia...

Most of Libya's own land is too arid for agriculture.

Tripoli is surrounded by the vast Libyan desert,

as big as France, Spain and Italy combined.

It is dry as far as the eye can see...

but beneath the sand, there is oil.

Libya's underground oil reserves

are the biggest so far recorded in Africa.

It's easy to extract and provides high-quality crude.

A gift from another geological era,

the oil supports refineries and terminals in the middle of nowhere,

as at Ra's al-Unuf in the Gulf of Sidra.

The heat is so intense

that the installations must be constantly protected from the sun.

There is also something else beneath the sand...

water.

For decades, the Libyans have dug to find it.

They've drilled as deep as 500 metres, dug 1300 wells,

and laid 4000 kilometres of buried pipelines.

It's the biggest artificial river in history.

The biggest storage basin contains 24 million cubic metres of water,

barely enough for three days' consumption

without counting evaporation, which is colossal.

The water is fossil water,

accumulated beneath the desert sands drop by drop

with each rare fall of rain, since the dawn of time.

It may take only a few years to exhaust the fossil aquifer...

but people are thirsty.

And so the great Libyan desert is being drained to the last drop.

What will be left?

The situation is critical.

Over the next decade,

water requirements on the eastern and southern shores of the Mediterranean

will increase four times over.

Four times more water, and it's already scarce.

Will Europe's cities become ghost towns, like those of Libya?

These ghost towns came from attempts to colonise the desert.

Hundreds, even thousands of buildings

whole towns sprang up from the sand.

The site of New Benghazi alone employed 14,000 workers,

all of them Chinese.

These are the world's biggest ghost towns.

The work was abandoned when the dictatorship fell.

But the towns were condemned in any case

through a simple lack of water.

Roads across deserts are often straight.

There is nothing to block their way.

Perhaps they mirror the intrusion of civilisation into the natural world.

Nothing diverts them, nothing really stops them.

Not even the Mediterranean,

as it speaks to its peoples about the future,

when it will be too hot,

when water and resources will be in short supply.

The Mediterranean, the mother to whom no one listens.

Libya's desert roads all lead to one destination -

the Mediterranean.

They are now emigration routes from sub-Saharan Africa.

Every year, tens of thousands flee thirst, famine, war and poverty...

looking for a future across the Mediterranean.

In their eyes, Mare Nostrum is still a giant crossroads

where life can take a new direction.

These men, these women, these children, often come with nothing.

Nothing except hope the hope of the Mediterranean.

Will they be granted a foothold in this same Mediterranean world

that welcomed the first early humans?

Nothing is more uncertain.

27,000 years after the first men entered the Cosquer Cave,

the Mediterranean has changed

and humanity has changed even more.

In pre-history, only a handful of people lived in this whole region.

Today, Marseille alone has more than two million people.

It is crowded, swarming, bustling.

The city is Jewish and Christian and also largely Muslim.

Ever since its founding, Marseille has been a city of immigrants -

Greeks, Turks, Italians, Armenians, Spaniards, Algerians.

These immigrants share a common history and a common home.

In Marseille, as in Barcelona, Algiers, Naples,

Athens, Tunis, Istanbul, Beirut or Cairo,

this mixing of peoples and cultures has gone on for thousands of years.

It was in the Mediterranean

that human beings first learned how to live together.

If we take a broader view,

the Mediterranean experience seems to apply more and more

to the rest of the world to the whole world,

already subject to climate change and a shortage of resources.

A world with an uncertain future,

where tensions rise and frontiers rise with them.

Where more than ever we need to learn how to live together.

But what if, after all,

the Mediterranean has been telling us a story for tomorrow all along?