All language subtitles for America Before Columbus - The Secret Continent Full History Documentary - Part 1

[narrator] Summer, 1492.

After three months at sea,

the Santa Maria, the Pinta
and the Niña anchor off the Bahamas.

Europe has discovered the Americas.

What happens next?

Conquest and colonization by settlers

who remake America in their image.

They advanced, and destroyed.

But there is another story,

about the animals and plants
they brought here.

[rumbling]

And what they found here.

And how the Americas
were completely transformed.

It all began 500 years ago.

[narrator] Christopher Columbus
left his home in Italy

to fight for his vision.

He aimed to sail west,
to the riches of Asia.

This is an era of discovery
and lust for expansion,

and it all began
with the ambition of a queen.

[knocking on door]

In Europe, the nobles have grown wealthy
by trading with the East.

Spices and gold, gemstones and silk
are the most lucrative goods.

But Europeans have lost the Silk Road
to the Turks,

and foreign trade is in decline.

The wealth of kings is in danger.

Isabella, queen of Spain, is desperate
to find new routes to India.

And she has a plan.

-[speaking Spanish]
-[interpreter] Let him in!

[narrator] This is the most
powerful woman in Europe.

A continent of expanding horizons,

filled with competitive
and inventive souls.

For 500 years, they have been building:
castles, palaces, centres of trade.

Kings and popes have raised armies
to fight each other

and their enemies on Europe's borders.

Nowhere else are rivalries so intense,
gold fever so widespread,

religious fervour and business expertise
as tightly wound,

as in Europe in 1491.

Ideas are advancing.

Curiosity and the thirst for power
push Europe's limits.

[wind whistling]

They're seeking riches and land,

heading towards the frontiers
of their world.

But no one can guess
that far beyond the end of that world,

lies another, of which they know nothing.

The Amazon is a crowded place.

The Andes cradle a vast empire
ruled by powerful god kings.

Mesoamerica may be the most densely
populated place on Earth,

home to the most imposing civilizations
on the continent.

And the Atlantic coast
is filled with villages and fields.

Along the rivers, great cities are built
around monumental plazas

and giant earthen mounds.

It is an ancient world,
inhabited by hunters and gatherers,

fishermen and farmers,
kings, slaves and soldiers.

Down amongst the trees,

where the Missouri, Illinois
and Mississippi rivers merge,

in what is today the state of Illinois,

lies one of the most fertile zones
of North America.

It's home to one of the largest
civilizations in the continent.

The Mississippians: mound builders
from the Great Lakes to Florida.

Flourishing in the year 1150.

The first explorers thought
these great mounds were natural,

carved by retreating glaciers.

Now we know that they were
the centrepieces of cities.

Cities like Cahokia.

Busy trading posts of earth and wood,
with populations of thousands of people.

No one knows what they called themselves
or what language they spoke.

But we do know why they were successful.

The Mississippians are farmers.

Their staple crop is fuel
for the ever-growing population.

It is a plant native to the Americas,
unknown to the rest of the world.

[rustling]

Once they learned to grow it,
they could stay in one place.

This simple diet translated straight
into the energy to build a civilization.

But corn is not a blessing from nature,
nor a gift of the gods.

This crop is the outcome of man's
first feat of selective breeding.

Scientists realized relatively recently

that the ability to grow corn

is a key to high cultures
in the Americas.

[man] The staple crop in North America
was corn.

Six thousand years ago, ears of corn were
only about as long as a person's thumb

and they were barely edible.

It took thousands of years to develop
a more nourishing and larger hybrid,

and also a hybrid that could grow in
cooler climates outside of Mesoamerica.

And it wasn't until about 1,100 years ago

that corn reached
the Mississippi River Valley.

[narrator] Corn is the result
of the domestication

of the wild teosinte grass.

Early Americans started
with this spindly stalk...

and over the centuries they developed it
into today's giant cob.

Archaeologists and biologists
are still debating

how corn was achieved
out of a tiny Mexican wild grass.

Corn is one of the keys to understanding
American civilization.

Wherever it flourishes,
so do great cultures.

Yet the greatest American empire
of them all

is found where corn cannot grow:

high in the Andes.

The Inca Empire stretches
nearly 2,500 miles

down the west coast of South America.

Incas build palaces, storehouses
and castles in the towering mountains.

In their realm of six million people,

they rely on manpower
to transport stones.

They have neither beasts of burden
nor the wheel.

And the energy for that is provided
by another amazing foodstuff.

Incas are famed for their gold,

but their true treasure
is less glamorous.

A tuber native to America
and unknown in Europe.

Cultivated here 8,000 years ago,

in the region around Lake Titicaca,

in today's Peru and Bolivia,

at an altitude of 4,000 meters.

What is now a staple food in Europe

was a South American invention.

By the year 1491,
the Inca grow hundreds of varieties,

domesticated from wild ancestors.

Some poisonous, some even carnivorous.

A thousand years ago, in one city alone,

30,000 tons of potatoes
were produced every year.

They preserved the tubers

by mashing them into a substance
called "chuño."

After harvest,
potatoes are spread on straw

and left out to freeze at night.

During the day they are
exposed to the sun.

[speaking Quechuan]

Trampling them eliminates water
and allows them to dry.

Chuño can be stored for ten years,

an excellent insurance
against possible crop failures.

The Inca carved step-like terraces
into the mountainsides

to stop the soil eroding
and create a flat surface for their crops.

Terraces absorb more sunlight
than steep slopes,

so potatoes can grow
at the highest altitudes.

And all this is achieved
by manpower alone,

using wooden tools.

In North and South America in 1491,

farmers grow corn and potatoes
for a hundred million people.

[speaking Quechuan]

There's another continent across the ocean

where a hundred million
more people survive,

growing very different food
in a very different way.

In this same year of 1491,

Europeans have to grow food
for a similar number of people

in one-tenth of the space.

Europe is a busy and crowded continent.
People here lack land.

And what they work on is not even theirs.

[farmer muttering]

[narrator] Most of them are farmers.

Europe is filled with fields
owned by the nobles or the church,

tilled by peasants.

[farmer muttering]

[narrator] Their main diet
is bread and porridge,

both made from grains.

They plant rye or wheat in winter,

oats or barley in the spring.

And every third year,
the field lies fallow to regenerate.

They know how to use
wind and water for power.

It is heavier work,
with higher yields in a smaller space.

It is an agricultural revolution

and it allows
the European population to thrive.

[blades creaking]

And for that,
one more element is essential.

[man speaking German]

[speaking German]

[interpreter] You see,
old European agriculture

was based on grains: wheat, rye;

while old American agriculture
was based on corn.

But another difference
is even more important.

European agriculture originated

in a combination of farming
and raising livestock.

That was not the case in America.

That gave European agriculture
a great advantage.

First, the fertility of the soil
was renewed through cow dung,

and secondly,
the livestock needed pastures

and that protected ecological reserves.

[narrator] Domesticated animals.

They make all the difference.

[bellows]

America has no cattle, no horses or pigs,

no sheep, mules, goats or hens.

European horses are beasts of burden.

They can pull ploughs.

And cattle provide meat, fur and hides.

The domestic pig is a chief source
of meat and leather.

[sniffs]

Like the sheep,

that needs no stable
and finds its own food.

Even a mule can pull a cart.

And cows give them milk,
butter and cheese.

Europeans are breeding
ever more productive animals.

But it's not only people
that domesticate animals.

By 1491, the big five-- horses, cattle,
goats, pigs and sheep--

have domesticated the European landscape.

They are essential to Europe's prosperity.

And none of these are known
to North or South America.

For Inca farmers in the Andes,

their chief source of transport
and meat is the llama.

This is the biggest domestic mammal
in the Americas.

The llamas also offer dung for the soil
and hides for clothes.

But you can't milk or ride them,
and the animals can't pull a plough.

So they are no good
for fighting or for traveling.

-[llama braying]
-But their wool is one of the best gifts.

It's warmer and lighter than sheep's wool

and produces a greater yield.

[llama braying]

[speaking Quechuan]

They use bronze knifes to shear them.

The second principal domesticated animal
of the Americas is even smaller.

For the Aztecs, in today's Mexico
and Guatemala,

the turkey is so important

that they dedicated
two religious festivals to it.

[chirping]

Native Americans have so few
domesticated animals

because the biggest native mammals
in the Americas have long since died out.

At the end of the last Ice Age,
the megafauna in the Americas,

the giant bison and the mastodons,
went extinct,

and the reasons for that
are probably two-fold.

First of all, as the Ice Age was ending,
the climate became much hotter and drier,

and this killed the vegetation
that these very large animals depended on.

Secondly, the arrival of hunters
into North America

crossed over the Bering Strait
land bridge from Asia

coincided with the extinction
of these animals,

and very likely these hunters
went after these large animals

who were slow and had a lot of meat.

What this left in North America were
animals such as bison, deer and antelope

that are not suited to domestication.

[narrator] The animals that remain
have one thing in abundance.

Space.

From the glaciers of the Arctic north

to the great plains of today's Midwest,

gigantic herds thunder across
North America in search of food.

There is room for antelopes...

and for caribou.

And there is room for bison.

Room for the giant grizzly.

And in the sky above, for flocks of birds
that block out the sun.

Billions of passenger pigeons,
ducks, and geese

from horizon to horizon.

In 1491, they are hunted.

By hundreds of Native American tribes.

Village dwellers in the forests of
the northeast, and nomads on the Plains.

These civilizations develop new methods
to guarantee their meat supply.

They can't domesticate these animals,

so they find a way of making
their prey come to them.

When they notice that grass grows better
after being burnt by lightning strikes,

they start to burn the prairies
themselves.

Many tribes such as the Sioux, Cheyenne,
Comanche, Shoshone or Blackfoot

burn the Central Plains and the prairies

to increase their spread.

[fire bow squeaking]

Burning the undergrowth in the fall

keeps the forest open and park-like

and makes hunting easier.

Burning the prairie
creates lush grassland.

And the prairies cover
20 million square kilometres.

The new, rich pastures

will lure and increase
the numbers of herbivores,

as well as the predators
that feed on them.

America in 1492
was not a pristine wilderness.

That's a romantic myth.
It was in many ways a managed landscape.

Natives regularly burned the forests
and the prairie in order to attract game.

[bison grunts]

[narrator] With this technique,
nomadic Central Plains Indians

even lure the biggest mammal
in the Americas.

They domesticate the land

in order to attract wild animals.

Wherever they roam, bison are
the chief source of food and clothing

and of tools made from their bones.

[grunting]

The bison thrive.

By 1491, North America
is home to perhaps 30 million.

They reign on the prairies
from Montana to Texas,

pushed east by Native Americans
along a path of fire,

opening up forest into virgin land.

The bison have gained a new habitat,

far beyond their original range.

[birds chirping]

Native Americans
have neither guns nor horses.

They have to hunt on foot.

They dress in hides,

and they hunt
with the bow and arrow or the spear,

all made of wood and leather,
bone and stone.

[bison grunts]

The bison hunt is essential
for their survival.

Over in Europe,
hunting is not about survival.

They hunt if they are noblemen,

for sport, for pleasure and prestige.

[panting]

They have guns, but hunting is a ritual,

carried out with the weapons of a knight.

[boar squeals]

And only the nobles are allowed to hunt.

If ever they catch a peasant,

he will be punished for poaching.

Unlike in America, there's no room here
for an abundance of wildlife,

for endless herds.

Wild animals are retreating into forests.

In Europe the land is man-made.

Agriculture and cities
push the wildlife back.

[cattle mooing]

Untamed land is now a rarity.

But they have one other major food supply.

Fish should be a cheap and abundant diet
for every social class in Europe.

Christianity, the common religion
all over Europe in 1491,

approves of fish.

Eating meat is banned
on more than a hundred days a year.

The demand for fish is huge.

But there is a problem.

Intensive agriculture
is damaging the fish supplies.

[thunder crashing]

Europe's once-unlimited supplies
are dwindling fast.

What happened
to the fish stocks in Europe?

[man] As people started to grow crops
and cut back the wild woods,

this released huge amounts of sediment
into the water courses,

which changed them from being fast,
clear-flowing rivers and streams

into slow, turbid rivers and streams,

and the freshwater fish
found a problem with this.

Particularly migratory species

that came up from the sea
to spawn in rivers,

animals like salmon and sturgeon.

There was another factor

which also cut down the supplies
of these migratory fish

and that was that people started
to build dams along rivers,

and when that happened,
the migration runs were blocked

and the populations declined.

[narrator] Once they had emptied
and polluted their lakes and rivers,

they turned to the sea.

For the first time,
they started intensive sea fishing.

They found abundance
on a scale never seen before.

And they exploited it.

Cod and herring from the North Sea
were the first to be fished.

Every five years, catches doubled.

By 1300, thousands of tons of dried fish

were exported from Norway
to Britain alone.

In the Middle Ages, the seas of Europe
were very little exploited

until around the 11th century,
when freshwater supplies declined,

and people went to the sea
for the first time and they discovered

very large populations of fish,

animals like cod and skates
and halibut and turbot.

And they were able to catch
as much fish, really, as they wanted.

For hundreds of years after that,

all the way through
to the 18th and 19th century,

supplies of marine fish
seemed inexhaustible within Europe

and we were able to obtain what we needed.

But later on, towards the end
of the 19th century,

industrialised fishing began
and we saw supplies begin to be depleted.

[narrator] But this is 1491.

Europe's lakes and rivers
are now empty and dirty.

In the Americas,
fishing is not an industry.

They don't need it.
Fish are for the taking.

Their rivers are not used for power
and are not affected by farming.

Native Americans transport their fish

far away from the coasts and waterways,

into the interior,
high up into the mountains.

The Incas, high in the Andes,
enjoy fish from the Pacific.

The Mississippians trade with communities

as far away as the Great Lakes
to the north

and the Gulf Coast to the south.

They even eat fish and seafood
from the Atlantic.

Here, too, there is space for abundance.

The waters teem with fish

and with whales,
dolphins and manatees.

[whale calling]

Wherever Native Americans
trawl their nets,

they find a bounty
of thousands of different species.

Menhaden, channel catfish, and sheephead.

They never have to take more
than nature can replace.

North and South America
look like a primitive paradise.

But it's not that simple.

The greatest numbers of fish
live in the Amazon,

the largest river in the Americas
and the most voluminous in the world.

To our eyes the Amazon rainforest
is an almost untouched Garden of Eden.

But it was once a very different place
from what we know today.

When the jungle was cleared
in the 20th century for agriculture,

they found the remains
of a sophisticated civilization

that once tamed this landscape.

In 1491, this area is home
to thousands of people.

They tend orchards
with all kinds of fruits:

papaya, mango, cocoa,
with nuts and palms.

They speak many different languages

and live in many different social systems.

Their tightly-packed settlements
cover an area

of 120,000 square kilometres.

They are linked by raised causeways,
bridges, and canals.

Much of this is natural savanna,
created by annual flooding.

But they have expanded the grasslands,

regularly setting huge areas on fire.

By 1491, they have created
an ecosystem

of plant species adapted by fire

that cannot exist in nature.

Eventually, the jungle will reclaim it.

Further north, in what is now New Mexico,

it looks like no humans
could ever have lived here.

Today it is one of the most
arid zones on the continent.

The Chaco Canyon.

There is no vegetation, no water,

and there are no animals to be seen.

And it was already like this in 1491.

But once, this area
looked completely different.

This is the story of a civilization
that developed as far as it could,

used its resources as well as it could,
and still declined.

More than 500 years ago,

the Chaco Canyon
was covered with lush vegetation

and forests of pine and juniper.

This fertile area was home to the Anasazi.

From the year 700 on,

the Anasazi built the highest
and largest buildings in North America.

One is several stories high
and has 800 rooms

that overlook the majestic canyon.

A thousand people lived here.

They had no beasts of burden
to transport materials.

Thousands of felled trees were dragged
down to the Chaco Canyon

on men's bare backs.

There is no account of their lives
or of their disappearance.

But environmental historians
can tell us what happened...

by counting tree rings
and analysing rat nests.

[coyote howling]

Nathan English,
of the University of Arizona,

spends much time in the canyon

looking for traces of the ancient nests.

[English] Our interest in Chaco Canyon

is to learn more about
how the ancestral Puebloans lived.

There's a number of ways we can do that:

through traditional archaeology,
where we dig up ruins and sites,

or we can also look
at what the environment was like

around the ancestral Puebloans.

And the way we do that
is by looking at packrat middens.

And each packrat midden
is like a little snapshot in time

of the area around the midden itself.

So you could think of it like a picture.

And the middens can be
up to 40,000 years old in some places.

And what the midden is,
is the packrat makes a nest

and it poops in that nest,

and then it only gets its water
from eating plant vegetation,

so its urine is very thick and viscous.

That urine seeps
into the pile of poop, essentially

and solidifies, almost like amber.

In the meantime,
the packrat is also collecting things:

the plants around it, also pot shards,

sometimes even corn
or seeds of squash,

and those macrofossils
are incorporated into the midden.

So we go out, we collect the midden,

and then we examine the macrofossils
in that midden

to look at what the ecology
around that midden was like at that time.

[narrator] Not only do rat middens
hold information, trees do too.

Dendrochronologists
count the rings of ancient logs

to give the exact date

when the very last tree
was cut down for construction.

The Anasazi used juniper and pine
for their timber,

and to make fire.

Too much of it, some think.

With the trees goes the soil.
The forest cannot recover.

Because of erosion, water drains down,
creating gullies on the way.

Irrigation and agriculture
are no longer possible.

This large population
cannot feed itself anymore.

But did they destroy the forests
or did the forests leave them?

Other scientists who've worked here

have a couple of ideas
of what happened to the woodlands

that were around here

while the ancestral Puebloans
were living here.

The first is that natural climate change,

uh, caused the margin of the woodland
to move further north and off site.

The second idea is that there were
a lot of people living here

and they over-harvested the wood.

We are on the edge
of this pinion juniper woodland,

and so it's really possible
that natural climate change

would have caused it to move back,

but also we know that the people were
harvesting wood for fuel and for timber,

and so it's likely that a combination
of the two things

are what led to the loss
of forests in this area.

[narrator] The year 1130 rolls around.

It's one of the driest of years.

The Anasazi have
survived previous droughts,

but the population has increased greatly.

And there is no suitable territory
to expand into.

Without rain, it's impossible
to grow enough to support the population.

No agriculture means no culture.

The Chaco Canyon is abandoned.

These ancient Americans
cut down the last tree and moved on.

Using stone-age tools, they helped destroy
the ecological balance of a whole region.

It's a myth that native Americans
always lived in harmony with nature.

Over in Europe
they're cutting down the forests, too.

But it's different for them.

[crackling]

Their growing population needs more food
and more space to grow it

and they badly need the wood.

They have the tools...

they have the transport...

[lumberman yells]

-[narrator] And they have the energy.
-[whistles]

But they're beginning to run out of space.

And time.

Only wood can help them move forward.

Wood has a special meaning in 1491.

[Radkau speaking German]

[interpreter] The Middle Ages
were the era of wood.

You find it wherever you look.

Wood was the most important material
for building,

for making tools and furniture,
and for burning.

It was the only fuel.
There was hardly any coal.

[narrator] It is an era of competition,

and wars use up forests, too.

Whole armies are equipped
with bows of yew wood.

The yew tree is almost
exterminated in Europe.

Armies need iron weapons,

and smelting ovens burn
day and night, fuelled with wood.

[soldiers shouting]

[narrator] At the same time,
whole forests are used

to satisfy another
of their European cravings.

For the great buildings of the age.

[bangs]

[narrator] The cathedrals in the cities
are made of stone,

yet they absorb millions of logs
for their bases and frames.

Larches are needed for roof supports.

Solid logs of oak, alder and elm

are sunk into the ground
to create foundations.

Wood is indispensable

for pillars and ceilings,
posts and roof panels,

axe handles and cart wheels.

European castles, cathedrals, monasteries
and churches consume entire forests

in Germany, France, Italy,
Spain and England.

But who owns the European forests?

And who is making money with them?

[Radkau speaking German]

[interpreter] Who the forests belong to
wasn't clear in the Middle Ages.

No wonder that all the great social
and economic struggles of those times

were fought in the forests,
around the forests and about the forests.

The nobles were mainly interested
in the forests as hunting grounds.

But for the peasants,
the forests were vitally important.

They couldn't live without them.

They needed them to graze their cattle
and as wood for fuel.

[narrator] In this competition for timber,

those who have money make the rules.

And the money is now in the cities.

The richest city of all is Venice.

It's built on wood, literally.

Piles sunk into the mud

to create the platform on which
the great stone facades can float.

But behind all this is banking,
interest, and capitalism.

The goods that are bought and sold
are transported in wooden galleons.

Venice has denuded
the forests roundabout

to build its fleet.

The city's demand is insatiable.

And they start to deplete the Alps.

Spruce for masts, larch for planking,
elm for capstans,

walnut for rudders,
and, most importantly, oak for hulls.

When that is not enough,
they cut a swathe across Europe,

all the way
from the Adriatic to the Baltic.

The Europeans have exploited
their natural resources,

leaving a continent where
there are no fish in their rivers

and less and less timber in their forests.

Their continent is crowded with people
and they don't know what to do with them.

Nowhere else in the world are rivalries
between princes and kings as intense,

curiosity and greed as widespread,

and religious fervour
and business expertise as tightly wound

as in Europe in 1491.

And for the first time, the common people
have a hunger for new ideas.

The printing press is invented;
books take hold and literacy spreads.

But where do they go from here?

[warriors shouting]

Where can all this raw energy
be channelled?

This is the time
when European kings and queens

send explorers beyond the horizon

to expand and enhance their power.

Some explorers go around Africa
to find the sea route to Asia.

One has the vision to sail west,
to arrive in the East.

He is a seaman from Genoa,
a fervent amateur

who has the crazy idea of sailing
into the unknown, to reach India.

Christopher Columbus has spent five years

trying to persuade the one person
who can finance his voyage.

Isabella, queen of Spain, finally agrees.

What does the Spanish crown have to lose?

It doesn't cost much
to finance three ships.

Spain has so much to gain
from a shortcut to India:

treasures, trade and land.

At first, no one wants to board his ship.

Finally he drags together
a motley crew of 87 men,

illiterates, petty criminals,
even murderers,

who choose probable death at sea
in preference to the gallows.

Many are soldiers with nothing to do

since Spain expelled the Moors
just months before.

Now, they are soldiers of fortune.

With his band of desperados,

Christopher Columbus sets sail
from the port of Seville.

It is the summer of 1492.

He has promised the queen and his crew

that they will be in India in six weeks.

Columbus is the one who discovers America.

But it is the people who come after him,

and what they bring with them,

that will transform the New World.