Original subtitles

(dramatic music)

(gentle music)

I'm Christopher Clark

and I'm traveling the world to discover its true treasures:

the UNESCO world heritage sites,

the riches of nature and culture come together in Africa.

This is a continent of mysterious places,

seasoned institutions, and rituals

whose power has survived centuries of turbulence and change.

Great empires rose and fell here,

and what they left behind

is a legacy that belongs to all of us.

Our shared history, the history of humankind,

begins on this continent, Africa.

It borders, like Europe, on the Mediterranean sea.

In that sense, Africa is Europe's geographical neighbor.

But the transformation that took place here in Egypt

5,000 years ago, would have been unthinkable

in the Europe of that era.

With the empire of the Pharaohs,

a sophisticated state emerged with a ruling dynasty,

officials, laws, priests, scholars, and an army.

Egypt became one of the most stable empires

in world history.

The great pyramid of Giza

built by the Pharaoh Cheops 4,500 years ago

is the only one of the seven ancient wonders of the world

that is still completely intact.

As they say in Egypt, everyone fears time,

but time fears the pyramids.

(light rhythmic music)

I'm traveling to East Africa,

which is home to a particularly diverse group

of peoples and cultures.

Egypt with its legacy of the Pharaohs,

Ethiopia with its imperial tradition

and ancient Christian roots,

Kenya and Tanzania with their dazzling landscapes.

But for now, I'm staying in Cairo

with its pyramids on the edge of a desert.

The Pharaohs weren't the only ones who left their mark here.

The Fatimids, later the Mamluks,

the Ottomans, the French and the British.

Only in 1956 did the last British troops leave the country.

And under nearly all of these rulers, Cairo grew.

The city's historic district

has been a UNESCO world heritage site since 1979

and is the largest medieval city

where traditional lifestyles

are still part of everyday life.

When the great Arab scholar, Ibn Khaldun

came to Cairo in the 14th century,

he called the city, "the garden of the universe

and the metropolis of the world."

And its Arabic name, Al-Qahirah, means the glorious one.

For centuries Cairo was the religious and economic center

of an empire that extended from Morocco

deep into the Middle East,

and today with its 20 million inhabitants,

it's the largest city of the African continent,

a sprawling urban beast,

in whose heart you can still see exactly

what Ibn Khaldun must've meant.

Today at the Khan el-Khalili bazaar

you can still feel the many influences

that shaped this city over the course of history:

the Arab, the African and Asian worlds

all left their mark here.

Trade has flourished in Cairo since the 14th century.

And right next door is the Al-Azhar Mosque,

the religious heart of the Islamic old town.

This mosque in the middle of the old city of Cairo

was founded over 1,000 years ago.

The university established here soon after

is the second oldest university in the world.

Many of the most important schools

of contemporary global Islam

come together in this institution

which continues to wield a profound influence

on Islamic thought.

And today worshipers from the adjacent quarters of the city

come to this place for the midday prayer,

just as they did 1,000 years ago.

But Al-Azhar is also a center of Islamic scholarship.

Men have come here to learn for centuries,

and since 1961, so have women.

The theologians and council members here

are involved in important religious

and socio-political decision-making processes.

According to Egyptian law, Al-Azhar is responsible

for protecting and tending to the interest of Muslims.

The hand of Al-Azhar is known as the Grand Imam

and his position is one of the most respected

in Sunni Islam.

Al-Azhar was only the second mosque constructed here.

In later centuries, Cairo would be known

as the City of a Thousand Minarets.

From Cairo I'm sailing up the Nile.

At 6,695 kilometers, it's the longest river in the world.

Neilos was the name the Greeks gave

to the deity that supposedly inhabited this great river.

Even 5,000 years ago,

the Nile was already an important transport route.

Today, it is taking me to Abu Simbel,

to the temples of Ramses II,

built in the 13th century BC in Nubia,

near the border with Sudan.

(dramatic airy music)

Ramses II also known as Ramses the Great,

was the most successful Pharaoh of all time.

His ascension to the throne

marked the beginning of a golden age,

and he reigned for incredible 66 years.

His rule was marked by record harvests and conquests,

and he fathered 100 children.

No wonder he had his own likeness

carved into the rock face four times.

His talent for self-promotion knew no bounds.

The temples of Abu Simbel

are the most important sign of his power.

This was where for the first time in the 13th century

the Pharaoh had himself depicted as a ruler

possessing the dignity of a god.

Here at the entrance he welcomes us.

Inside, he sits as a god among gods.

Twice a year visitors are treated

to an extraordinary spectacle.

(eerie rhythmic music)

Assalamualaikum.

Hello (indistinct).

It's very rarely possible

to visit this magical place alone.

It's usually packed with tourists.

But today I get to experience the full enchantment

of this temple for myself.

It's three enormous halls

lie 63 meters deep in the rock face,

enormous statues stand guard in the entrance hall.

And naturally all of them have the face of Ramses.

On Ramsay's birthday and coronation day every year,

and only then, sun beams fall directly

into the depths of the temple.

For 15 minutes, the sun god Ra, Ramses himself,

and Amun the god of fertility,

are lit up in brilliant sunlight.

Even back in the era of Ramses II,

the Egyptians were gifted astronomers,

and we can assume that this miracle of the sun

was a precisely planned event

to honor the shining sun of Egypt: Ramses himself.

(mystical music)

The reliefs and frescoes in this temple

depict Ramses as a great and brutal general.

In reality, the battle of Kadesh shown here

ended in a draw or possibly even a defeat.

Ramses signed the very first peace treaty

in the history of the world

with his primary enemies, the Hittites.

But in his temples, the ambiguities are edited out.

He appears as the victor and exemplar of Pharaonic prowess.

Two themes above all dominate these scenes:

violence and sacrifice.

Ramses is defeats his enemies.

He punishes and humiliates them.

His foot presses the face of Lybian warrior into the earth.

It's a world in which violence and power

are closely intertwined.

But the power of Ramses is also a bridge

between the human and the divine.

In another scene, he sits among the gods.

As a human king, he renders sacrificed to the gods.

As a god, he accepts sacrifice from himself.

No other Pharaoh built more monuments than Ramses II,

and gigantomania was still in play in the 20th century,

when an enormous project

practically obliterated parts of Egypt

and its cultural heritage.

Abu Simbel was nearly lost

in the floods that submerged large suedes of Nubia.

That was in the 1960s,

when the country's president Gamal Abdel Nasser

commissioned the construction of a dam in Aswan,

the size of which the world had never seen before.

The dam was under construction for 10 years,

nearly as long as it had taken

to construct a medium sized pyramid

thousands of years before.

The reservoir dam was intended to control

the massive volumes of water on the Nile river.

And the turbines were supposed to provide electricity

for the entire country.

The dam created to the enormous lake with entire villages

and countless archeological treasures

still resting beneath its surface.

That temples of Abu Simbel

might also have fallen victim to the floods,

if UNESCO hadn't started a campaign to save them.

The water rose higher and higher

and would eventually have swallowed up

the temple complex entirely.

UNESCO decided to save it, launching a donation campaign

that was unparalleled

at the time collecting funds from over 50 countries

to allow this piece of cultural heritage

to be dismantled and rebuilt in a higher location.

The complex was sawn apart into more than 1,000 blocks

weighing up to 30 tons each.

An international consortium under the direction

of a German construction firm

was charged with the technical realization of the project.

It was a beautiful example of how nations can work together

to save a piece of shared cultural heritage.

Above all, we owe our thanks to the thousands of laborers

who worked here over the course of four years.

Once the entire temple

had been sawn into blocks,

we drilled holes in the individual pieces

and finally put them back together.

It was all really demanding work.

Are you proud of the part

that you played in this great project,

this UNESCO project rescuing Abu Simbel?

Yes. I'm proud to have been part of that.

We had a huge goal to achieve.

Is this...

Yes, that's my name.

Oh, that's you? Abdul Rafur?

Abdul Rafur Ibrahim.

This is my certificate,

but it wasn't just an honor.

Luckily, I also earned money.

(both chuckling)

Okay.

Abdul Rafur regales me with tales of his time

on the construction site for a while longer.

The new location of the temple was 64 meters higher

than the original site and 180 meters further inland.

The most difficult part was rebuilding the temple

in such a way that the miracle of the sun

would still happen twice a year.

But they succeeded.

The second, smaller, temple of Abu Simbel

was also relocated and saved.

It is dedicated to Ramses queen,

and here the Pharaoh shows us his human side.

"Ramses, strong in truth, beloved of Amun,

created this divine abode

for his beloved Royal wife, Nefertari,"

reads one of the inscriptions on a pillar.

(pensive dreamy music)

Originally, every wall inside this temple

was supposed to be decorated just like this one,

but the project was abandoned.

You can still see here the cartoons, the drawings

that show where the workers

were going to engrave into the rock.

And the last cuttings can be seen just here.

This was a work in progress.

The temple is an enormous memorial

to Ramses love and respect for his wife.

And it brings to mind the myth of Isis and Osiris.

Isis was the goddess

who made the Nile the source of all life.

She married her brother King Osiris

whom she loved more than anything else in the world.

When he died, she brought him back to life.

And when he finally disappeared

into the underworld for good,

Isis's tears caused the river to flood.

This process has been repeated every year,

since then bringing fertility to the desert,

through which the Nile flows.

The collective remembering and retelling of stories

is a central feature of all societies,

but especially of those whose culture is preserved

in oral traditions rather than print.

Since the 14th century, the Al-Sirah Al-Hilaliyya epic

has been passed from one generation to the next,

though today only a few Egyptian families

are left to continue to cultivate this tradition.

The epic itself,

together with the music that accompanies it,

is among the traditions recognized by UNESCO

as intangible world cultural heritage.

Across broad expanses of the African continent,

as far as Mali, Niger and the Sahara,

the epic has been known for many centuries.

It tells the story of a Bedouin tribe

that crosses parts of the Arab world.

Honor and revenge are central themes

as are wars and romantic entanglements.

It's a kind of Song of the Nibelungs,

except that this epic plays out on the Nile,

not on the Rhine.

(light rhythmic music)

(man sings in foreign language)

Stories have been passed down in this family

for 10 generations: three generations

are singing and playing together here.

The Al-Hilali epic is their life,

an important part of their identity.

It would take several days

to perform the entire epic in full.

After all, the story is about a long journey

through many countries.

Some of the instruments are among the oldest in the world.

(man sings in foreign language)

So tell me, what is the name of this instrument?

And what's it made of?

Name rababa. Rababa.

This is horse.

This is horse hair?

Yes. Horse.

This is also horse hair?

This, fish.

This is made a fish skin?

Yes, fish.

This, coconuts.

That's a shell of a coconut.

Coconuts.

And could you play something for us?

(pensive string music)

How many people get the chance to play an old rababa,

albeit very badly, with a Hilali family?

With the rhythms of the Egyptian epics

still ringing in my ears,

I continue my journey into the highlands of Ethiopia.

I had no idea how green and fertile it would be.

In this part of the country, gravel roads and farm tracks

lead to scattered villages where a handful of tribes

still live cut off from the outside world,

as small holder farmers, like most Ethiopians.

They provide for themselves with a few cows and goats

and small patches of cultivated land.

(birds chirping) (light ambient music)

Ethiopia, one of the oldest nations in the world,

only came briefly under European control.

And this is one reason why so many of its traditions

have been preserved.

Once racked with crises, Ethiopia has undergone

major structural changes and the economy is growing.

But it remains one of the poorest countries of the world.

And here in the highlands,

things are still pretty archaic in many ways.

Goats are an important commodity.

When a girl marries, her dowry is often paid in goats.

And as in old business deals, the price is negotiable.

If there is one thing

that nearly all Ethiopians have in common,

it is a deep religious faith.

90% of Ethiopians belong to one religious group or another

and nearly half a Christian.

Ethiopia is one of the oldest Christian countries

in the world.

In the mountain village of Lalibela,

2,500 meters above sea level,

we can see how deep these Christian roots really go.

(soft ambient music)

I'm in Jerusalem, but not in Israel or Palestine.

I'm in the highlands of Ethiopia where emperor Lalibela

once planned to create a second Jerusalem.

Christianity came to Ethiopia in the fourth century.

And since then the religion has played

an incredibly important role here.

You can feel its influence everywhere.

There are thousands of churches and monasteries

scattered throughout the country.

And the oldest of them are here in this town,

which is named after the emperor Lalibela.

When Salah ad-Din, the Islamic military commander,

conquered Jerusalem 800 years ago

and blockaded the pilgrimage route into the holy city,

Lalibela decided to create an African Jerusalem.

It became a holy place, its own unique cosmos,

where religion and history flow together

to form an inviolable whole.

You can feel that energy in every moment you spend here.

The churches are Lalibela

built in the 12th and 13th centuries

have been called the eighth wonder of the world,

but can we really say they were built?

They weren't erected from stone

or built from the ground up after all.

In fact, it was the other way around.

They were carved into the rock phase from top to bottom

and then hollered out.

A wonder indeed.

If the sandstone cliffs in this area weren't so soft

and easy to work with, the 11 churches of Lalibela,

now a UNESCO world heritage site, would never have existed.

As you can see, these churches had to be carved

out of the living stone.

Of course, every single detail had to be precisely planned

before the chisel even touch the stone.

Archeologists, say it must have taken

at least 40,000 laborers to complete the churches

in the 24 years in which there were supposedly built.

We'll never know exactly

how these marvels came into existence.

According to legend, king lalibela had a divine vision

in which God told him to construct these rock-hewn churches.

At night, hosts of angels came down

to continue the building.

In Ethiopia, by contrast, with most of the rest of Africa,

the stories and the oldest legends

passed from generation to generation have Christian roots.

Lalibela is the religious heart of Ethiopia,

attracting pilgrims from around the country.

The Sunday service is particularly impressive.

It is five o'clock in the morning

as the congregation gathers.

This Ethiopian Orthodox service

will last more than five hours.

Even up here, the air is heavy with incense.

The church has made an exception for us

and were permitted to attend the service.

We feel as though we've stepped down

into an early Christian world

we thought had disappeared long ago.

The Ethiopian Orthodox church is the largest

of the pre-colonial Christian churches in Africa.

The church counts approximately 35 million faithful

among its members.

These African churches

are among the oldest religious institutions in the world.

The liturgical language is old Ethiopian,

and their books are written in an alphabet

that is over 3,000 years old.

The high point of the service

is the priest's blessing of the congregation.

(group vocalizing)

For the Christians of Africa

and their descendants around the world,

the rock-hewn churches of Ethiopia carry great symbolic

and emotional weight as evidence

of the continent's long religious and cultural history.

Of course, Ethiopia's history isn't just about religion.

Power has also played an important role.

The old imperial city of Gondar on the edge

of the Simien mountains in the northwest of the country

bears witness to that fact.

According to legend, a heavenly messenger

appeared to emperor Fasilides

and commanded him to build a castle.

Fasilides abade making Gondar his residence.

He modestly named this fortified Fasil Ghebbi,

after himself, of course.

For centuries, the Ethiopian emperors traveled the country

with their royal households

and their heavily armed military.

Much like Charlemagne in Europe,

they were emperors on tour.

Appearing in person was the only way for them

to demonstrate their sovereignty.

They lived in enormous tent cities like nomads,

until that is Fasilides I arrived on the scene.

He founded Ethiopia's first capital city here in 1636.

And he wanted to ensure that the power

of the Ethiopian emperors

was finally set in stone, so to speak.

They looked something

like the medieval fortresses of Europe.

Missionaries from Portugal

brought the Baroque elements to Ethiopia.

And over the centuries, these Baroque details

were joined by many others,

from the East, from India and the Arab world.

Here, we can see Ethiopia's cultural diversity

as if through a lens.

The palace recalls

one of the golden ages of Ethiopian history,

an era of stability and sophisticated craftsmanship,

art and literature flourished, libraries were built,

and Gondar became a complex cosmopolitan city

in which people of different ethnicities and religions

got along tolerably well.

When it comes to their festivals and celebrations,

today's Ethiopians are keen to live up to the pump

and circumstance of past eras.

Ethiopian Christians firmly believe

that they are in possession of the Ark of the Covenant

containing the 10 commandments.

And even today, every church in Ethiopia

keeps a replica of the Ark, which has paraded

for the congregation during services.

An early ruler, the legendary Queen of Sheba,

is said to have conceived a child with Solomon,

the King of Israel in Jerusalem.

The child's name was Menelik

and he was the forefather of all Ethiopian kings.

He supposedly captured the Ark and carried it to Ethiopia.

This is the new year's festival of Ethiopian church.

It takes several days, but today is called Kidus Yohannes,

the day of St. John.

It's about John the Baptist,

the man who represents the bridge between the old

and the new covenant, the Old and the New Testament.

It's a very beautiful and dramatic festival.

And it's, one of the most fascinating things about it,

is that these people are not Christian,

because they were converted by Western missionaries

in the 18th and 19th centuries,

this is one of the original Christian churches.

(group sings in foreign language)

Why did Ethiopia become a Christian country early?

The ancient kingdom of Axum

maintained a close trade relationship with the Romans.

In the mid-fourth century, the ruler of Axum at the time,

converted to Christianity,

which had become the established religion in Rome

under Constantine the Great.

But Ethiopia also identified strongly

with the biblical Israel.

They adopted Jewish rituals and certain religious rules

regarding cleanliness and food, which still apply today.

And these ingredients were blended with African traditions,

ancient chants, and a dose of joie de vivre.

Ancient Ethiopia is still alive and well in Gondar,

and it's a visible part of daily life.

The entire region is a UNESCO world heritage site.

I'm on my way to the Debre Birhan Selassie monastery.

It's named means Trinity on the Mountain of Light.

The monastery was consecrated in 1694,

and the paintings in its basilica are world famous.

This church in Gondar, Debre Birhan Selassie,

is a treasury of images, images from the Bible

and from pious legends,

but particularly interesting and fine is this picture here,

which shows, Eyasu I, the emperor of Ethiopia,

the grandson, incidentally, of Fasilides,

who is lying at the foot of the cross

on which Christ is crucified.

And you can see he's placed his crown on the ground

as a sign of his respect,

and particularly striking is the stream of blood th

at you can see passing down the cross

where it touches and awakens a stylized skull.

That is the skull of Adam, the original Adam.

And so what this image is really representing

is the connection, the bridge between the old Adam

and the new Adam, Jesus Christ.

And that is in fact, a feature of Ethiopian Christianity

in general, that that linkage between the old and the new

is always central.

The old covenant is never left in the past.

It's always carried forwards into the present.

(soft dreamy music)

Heads of winged angels look down on visitors

even from the wooden ceiling of the monastery.

The famous wall and ceiling frescos

are among Ethiopia's most valuable cultural treasures.

Gondar with its churches and palaces

is a truly unique ecosystem of traditions

that deserves to be protected.

And thanks to UNESCO, it will be.

This basin was more

than just a swimming pool for the emperors.

Baptisms were also carried out here.

The Ethiopian rulers took a few liberties

with Christian values in other areas there:

as soon as a new ruler ascended the throne,

his brothers and all of his other male relatives

would suddenly disappear behind the bars

in a mountaintop prison for the rest of their lives.

The idea was to prevent anyone from usurping the throne.

It wasn't until it emperor died,

that the next in line to the throne

was released from prison.

The others had to stay put

and usually they ended up dying in confinement.

Ethiopia is more than just a country of mythical emperors

or the birth place of an ancient Christian Church.

It's also home to the reason

why Africa is considered the birthplace of humanity.

Manmade climate change is one of the most burning issues

of the 21st century, but the climate also changed

long before humans ever inhabited the earth.

6 million years ago, climate change gave evolution

a decisive boost.

Here in East Africa, there were once lush rainforests,

and our ancestors who still looked like apes,

swung from tree to tree.

Until suddenly the drought arrived.

Large swathes of vegetation died off,

and our ancestors were forced to travel

the longer distances between trees on the ground.

By necessity they had to learn how to walk upright.

In 1974, fragments of a skeleton

were discovered in Ethiopia.

Scientists estimated that these fragments

dated back 3.2 million years.

They appeared to have belonged to a young woman

of small stature about one meter seven in height.

This is how her skull looked

and it contained a brain that was already bigger

than a chimpanzee's.

That primordial mother of mankind had been found.

And she was an Ethiopian.

Today we know that the ancestors of modern humans

also lived in Kenya and Tanzania.

Kenya is my next destination.

Millions of years ago that climate changed slowly over eons.

Today, that change is happening much more quickly.

And the African continent has not escaped its effects.

How much longer will this delicate place,

where animals roam free, continue to exist?

(pensive rhythmic music)

The number of weather based catastrophes

has multiplied rapidly in the last 25 years.

And yet, here at Amboseli national park,

a UNESCO biosphere reserve, you still feel

as though you are visiting a corner of paradise.

Even if the hyenas are on the lookout

for the next antelope to feast on

and a large family of baboons is challenging another

for the best tree.

The habitat for animals in Africa is changing drastically

as a result of industrialization, population growth,

and climate change.

Even the snow on the summit of Kilimanjaro

has almost completely melted away.

If average global temperatures increased

by just 1.5 degrees Celsius,

Africa could lose 30% of its plant and animal population.

The number of lions in East Africa has dropped by half

since the 1990s, and every time an animal species declines,

nature has to compensate.

Even the numerous hippos living in Amboseli national park

rely on this ecological equilibrium.

They need enough water

to cool their massive bodies during the day.

Amboseli means salty and dusty.

Volcanic ash from Kilimanjaro

made the ground here like that.

But as you can see, there's also a lot of water here

from the rain, of course,

but also from the melt waters of Kilimanjaro itself.

And that's what makes Amboseli national park,

which is a UNESCO biosphere reserve, so unique.

The elephants love the vast amounts of water

in this place, too.

That's why there are so many of them here

in Amboseli national park.

The ancestors of today's elephants,

350 different species of them,

populated the continents of earth

about 55 million years ago,

long before homo sapiens existed.

Researchers at the foot of Kilimanjaro

are systematically studying elephant behavior

and have been for nearly 50 years.

Norah Njiriani knows almost every single animal

in this area, individually.

Her work at the world famous elephant research project

has given her a reputation as a sort of elephant whisper.

Elephant lives as family, just like human beings.

They live in families.

But anyway, talking about family, it's only female who stay

the rest of the life with a family.

But the males, they go independent,

when they are 10 to 15 years, they leave the family.

So the family is consist of a cousin, grandmother, sisters.

They live together the rest of the life.

The elephants here live up to 40 years,

which gives them ample time

to pass their knowledge onto the next generation.

As a result, the elephant herds of Amboseli

are particularly stable.

They are also carefully monitored

and protected from poaches.

Is climate change an important issue for you

and for the elephants in this area?

We get the water from Kilimanjaro underneath

and push up with the soil.

And now, because-

Is it the melt waters from Kilimanjaro?

It's very fresh water from Kilimanjaro, it's very fresh.

But you come up in Amboseli, push this soil.

Now the soil is so salty,

so it's killing the vegetation because it's so salty.

And that puts food sources for all the animals,

including elephants, at risk.

When the last elephant dies,

the earth will wither, thus an ancient saying,

meaning crimes against elephants

are crimes against humanity,

because the world grows poor every time

one of these marvelous witnesses to evolution is lost.

30,000 elephants are killed

by poachers in Africa every year.

Humanity's voracious demand for ivory continues unabated.

At one time, millions of these creatures,

now the largest living land animals

wandered the savannas of this continent.

Today only 400,000 of them remain.

I'm beginning to understand Ernest Hemingway,

who once wrote, "We have not left Africa yet,

but when I would wake in the night,

I would lie listening, homesick for it already."

We are visiting the Maasai people

in their homeland around Kilimanjaro.

The mothers of the young men in this tribe

have gathered in the village.

The most important ceremony of the year is happening today.

They have made a huge exception in allowing us to attend.

After training for 10 years,

their sons have now earned the status of true warriors.

The mothers sprinkle milk on their son's heads

and then shave them completely bald.

For the mothers, this is a day to say farewell.

For the sons it means saying goodbye to their freedom

and adventuring in the Bush.

Now it's time for them to take up their responsibilities

to start a family.

Many of the boys struggle with the transition to manhood.

They fall into a kind of trance

and their bodies seem to fight back.

The natural narcotics they consumed in the Bush

during the previous month seemed to play a role.

At times it can look alarming,

but the parents seem to take it in their stride.

And the boys recover quickly enough.

Once their heads are shaved,

they're rubbed with red pigment -

a sign that the young men

are now fully fledged Maasai warriors.

In the past, new warriors had to kill a lion.

Luckily, this tradition no longer exists.

Initiation festival lasts several days

and ends with this chant.

(men sing in native language)

First steps into a new life.

UNESCO has listed these Maasai rituals

as intangible cultural heritage.

Is it easy to sustain this tradition in the modern world?

Or are the Maasai facing difficulties

in keeping this tradition going?

We are just keeping this tradition to be going on.

We don't want to reduce.

You see, everyone, they like our tradition.

So, we don't like to reduce that.

It's just going still going on and on.

But the Maasai way of life is under threat.

As herders, they used to own the best grazing land

in Kenya and Tanzania.

The expansion of the national parks

and nature reserves has cut back their radius,

and the Maasai don't have a political lobby

to represent their interests and concerns.

Slowly but surely they are being deprived

of their livelihood.

They face an uncertain future.

The savanna with its complex ecosystem of plants and animals

stretches across 40,000 square kilometers of East Africa

from Kenya to Tanzania and into the Serengeti.

The Serengeti has been a UNESCO

world natural heritage site since 1981.

More than 1.6 million herbivores

and thousands of carnivores live here.

(uneasy ambient music)

The indigenous peoples call this region Serengetu,

or endless plains.

It's one of the last ecosystems in the world

that is still largely intact.

The 15,000 square kilometers of national park

are strictly protected.

The Serengeti is one

of the most spectacular UNESCO world heritage sites

in existence today.

The natural world in this part of Africa

doesn't have seasons

like spring, summer, autumn, and winter.

The climate has shaped by alternating dry seasons

and rainy seasons.

When the planes begin to dry out

and fresh grass and water becomes scarce,

everything here begins to move.

The great migration begins.

Twice a year, this place becomes the backdrop

for a natural spectacle unparalleled anywhere in the world.

(dramatic music)

It's one of the largest migrations on the planet.

Every year around 2 million gnus, zebras

and other hoofed animals follow the rain,

traveling thousands of kilometers

from south to north and back again.

And where there's rain, there's also fresh grass.

Predators follow the herbivores on their journey.

It's an eternal cycle of eat and be eaten.

The region is also under threat from climate change

and the population boom.

UNESCO watches over the Serengeti,

so that this paradise will be preserved for its residents

and generations to come.

In this fascinating region,

interactions between human beings

and their natural surroundings

are increasingly fraught with new challenges.

In the last few decades, growing numbers of people

have moved to the fringes of the Serengeti,

particularly the Maasai herdsmen

who graze their animals on the plains of the national park.

Unfortunately, these domesticated herds

compete with the wild animal populations of the Serengeti

for scarce food resources.

And climate change is another threat,

meaning less precipitation, higher temperatures

and longer droughts.

Kenya's incredible diversity

is also on display along the coast of the Indian ocean

on the lamu archipelago,

far from the savanna and the big cities.

Are completely unique Swahili culture

has developed here over the centuries.

(group sings in native language)

In the past hundreds of these dhow boats

would set off from here to ply the Indian ocean trade.

They traded with Arabia, Persia, and India,

and all these influences are still palpable here today.

The historic district of Lamu

is a UNESCO world heritage site.

Gold, ivory, sandalwood, ebony, spices,

the Swahili traded in all these goods

and they traded in human lives as well.

The Swahili, who's named means coastal dwellers,

were formidable slave hunters.

Their language alone, a blend of Bantu and Arabic,

struck fear into the hearts of those

in the interior of the continent.

When the Swahili captured the human prey,

they shipped growing numbers of slaves

across the Indian ocean, but they also kept some

for themselves to use as masons and artisans.

Slaves built the city of Lamu

and they were an important pillar

of the Swahili culture that is so admired today.

For the elites of this region,

the trade in and use of slaves became a kind of addiction.

They simply couldn't manage without it.

And after 1907, when slavery was banned all together,

Lamu entered a period of gradual decline.

Lamu became so powerful that the island declared itself

a city state in the 14th century,

independent of the Kenyan kings of the time.

It all started with traders who settled here.

The Swahili are their descendants.

Arabian traders from Oman

brought more than just goods to the Island.

They also brought Islam.

Today, nearly the entire population of the island is Muslim.

(group sings in native language)

As you wander the labyrinthine alleyways of Lamu

you will still find doors that were carved by slaves.

For thousands of years until the early 20th century,

Lamu was a hub for the slave trade.

Slaves was sent to the orient rather than Europe,

even after the formal abolition of the slave trade

in the 19th century.

The profits were simply too tempting.

Trade in gold and ivory continued as well, of course,

and with it came a lively cultural exchange.

The 18th century palace of a successful merchant

bears witness to this history.

These little palaces looked like something

straight out of a tales of 1001 Nights.

And they tell the story of a glorious past.

Lamu on the east coast of Kenya

was probably the most cosmopolitan place

in the whole of Africa.

The Swahili people who have lived here for over 2000 years

used to salient Indian ocean as traders,

plying wares, such as gold, tortoise shell,

and quotes from the interior of the continent.

But the city's real heyday didn't start

until the 7th century, when here in East Africa,

along this coast, the slave trade began.

At least 15 million people were transported from here

to the Islamic countries, to India and to China.

Globalization did not begin in the modern era.

(soft dramatic music)

This whole is testimony to those interactions

between these people of the East African coast

and their visitors who came to trade with them.

For example, you have traditional timber artifacts,

whose technique is actually borrowed from India.

We have a plaster motifs, most of which can be traced back

to the Arabian peninsula.

You have Chinese porcelain

that was important from China and Chinese pottery.

So it's actually a testimony of that interactions

between the East African coast and the rest of the world

from say, the 14th century.

Lamu feels like a city from another era.

There are no cars on the island and no mass tourism.

(bright music)

When the people hold a festival,

it feels as though a door has opened into the past.

The Swahili dances on display here

have existed for centuries.

No one knows how long the Swahili culture will survive

but the people here are committed to keeping it alive,

and UNESCO support these traditions

as intangible cultural heritage.

(group singing in native language)

Swahili today continues to evolve.

It is picking up a lot (indistinct),

it's picking out of new contributions

to constantly develop and enrich this culture

that has always been known as the Swahili.

So today it is really evolving

and it is picking new attributes

that continue to be fused

and to be part of the Swahili culture.

(group sings in native language)

(dramatic music)

Egypt, Ethiopia and Kenya

are just three of the 54 African states

but they capture something of the profound diversity

and cultural resonance of this continent.

The journey from Egypt through Ethiopia into Kenya

confronts us on the one hand with a tremendous antiquity

and historical depth of African institutions and cultures,

and on the other hand,

with the sublime drama of African nature,

a legacy of great value, not just to Africans,

but to the world.

It's this symphony of history and nature

that makes Africa unique.

The real African miracle is that so much of value

has survived the ravages of European imperialism.

In this capacity to regenerate damaged cultures

and societies, to move forward

without breaking entirely the bond with the past

lies a bright prospect for Africa's future.

Turn your face to the sun

and the shadows will fall behind you.

(dramatic music)