All language subtitles for History Channel Mankind- The Story of All of Us S01E01

We are born to survive

In a world full of danger.

Hardship makes us stronger.

We dream impossible dreams and make them real.

But we are not one.

Mankind's struggles shape our destiny.

And in those struggles,

New worlds and new futures are born.

Amidst the chaos of an unforgiving planet,

Most species will fail.

But for one, all the pieces will fall into place,

And a set of keys will unlock a path

For mankind to triumph.

This is our story,

The story of all of us.

At the dawn of time...

...the universe explodes into being.

With it, every atom in our bodies.

Countless galaxies, innumerable stars.

Countless galaxies, innumerable stars.

And around one of them, a blue planet,

Our earth.

No other known planet has both an atmosphere and liquid water.

The conditions needed for life.

13 billion years after the universe begins,

A unique species is born.

Mankind.

Now, in the grasslands of east africa,

We begin our struggle against the odds.

A band of brothers.

Their leader, the genetic ancestor of all mankind.

Every man alive today shares a portion of his dna.

Two inches taller than a modern american,

A natural athlete, a born hunter.

This is his home.

The rift valley of east africa.

A fertile laboratory for life.

In his sights, a thousand pounds of meat.

Enough to feed his family of six for a month.

Soon there will be seven,

The woman he shares his life with

Is expecting their first child.

Stereoscopic vision to accurately judge distance.

Dexterous hands.

Speed on two legs.

But he has none of the natural weapons

Of africa's other predators.

He can't outrun a cheetah.

Nowhere near the strength of a lion.

Or the bone-crushing jaws of a hyena.

So he invents.

Tools make me better.

Weapons make me more powerful.

You have to be on two feet.

You have to free up your hands.

And freeing up your hands to work with tools

changes the game.

And there's no other species on this planet

that committed to weapon use and tool use like us.

Man's ability to project power,

And if you blow it, you're dead.

The key to controlling our world.

We'll spend the next 100 millennia

Perfecting weapons that kill at a distance.

There's a window that's closing.

You've got a half a second

and that's the kind of moment where,

if you can explode and do the right thing,

you will eat, you'll survive.

And if you blow it, you're dead.

To prepare the kill,

The greatest key to our survival:

At 300 degrees, a spark.

Fire.

Our planet is the only known place in the universe

With the right conditions for fire to burn.

It's the element that makes us who we are.

Cooking our food gives us a second stomach,

outside of our body.

Now we begin to digest the fats,

the carbohydrates, the proteins

before we chew the food,

making it easier for us to digest it,

which means we get a smaller stomach,

and therefore, a bigger brain.

Better nutrition boosts the human brain.

Over 2 million years, it more than doubles in size,

With trillions of connections.

The most complex structure in the universe,

Letting us think,

Communicate

And love.

It could be argued that society,

any kind of society,

began with the cooking of meat over flame.

But man is not always the hunter.

Fire protects them from other predators,

But this couple will be lucky to live to 30.

Their unborn child has only a 50% chance

Of surviving to adulthood.

There are, perhaps, only 10,000 humans on the planet,

Fewer people than are born in a single hour today.

Scattered in small, isolated groups,

Always on the brink of extinction.

But around 70,000 years ago,

A few hundred pioneers wander out of africa.

The beginning of an extraordinary adventure.

Everyone is related

to those first pioneers

who dared to venture away

out of their homeland and look beyond.

We are a restless bunch, we humans.

We're always looking over there,

and over there may mean oceans

or mountains or continents away.

This is our hardwiring, our DNA.

Over 50,000 years,

Mankind settles the middle east, asia, australia and europe.

As we spread out, a slight shift of the earth's axis

Away from the sun cools the planet.

Average temperatures drop up to 14 degrees.

A third of the planet under ice.

Mile-high glaciers advance across northern asia and europe.

And now hardship makes us who we are.

Just a few hundred miles from the glacier wall,

In what will become modern-day france...

...A family survives in the harshest climate

Mankind has known.

Extreme cold is like a living thing,

it sort of sneaks around and finds you where you're weakest.

It's gonna seep up from the floor,

it's gonna come in from all angles and just crush you.

We devise new technologies to help keep us alive.

But our world is as treacherous as ever.

Nature's perfect killing machine.

35 miles per hour.

Their jaws bite with 1500 lbs of force per square inch.

Enough to shatter bone.

Wolves are ruthlessly efficient pack hunters.

Just like us.

In this frozen world, mankind makes a great leap forward.

Fire turns caves into homes.

We sharpen animal bones into the first needles,

And make tailored clothes for the first time.

Clothing for us is fashion,

but for a man in the Ice Age, you have to keep your skin warm,

you have to maintain a microclimate against your skin.

And if you don't, you start to fall apart.

On the walls of the cave,

The most uniquely human invention of all.

Images of our lives and our world.

Some of the first works of art.

They're saying, "I lived.

"I have a sense of my own identity. I am somebody."

That's really the beginning of humans

moving farther away from our animal roots

into a new kind of creature.

It might have been the first example of individuality.

We know we survived that period.

But it's good see tangible physical evidence of that.

A few wolves have genes that make them tamer than the rest.

The ancestors of all the dogs alive today.

The first initial contact was probably made by wolves

who were looking to exploit a new food source,

who were able to stand being near people long enough

to eat what was being thrown on the scrap heap behind the cave.

Our ice age enemy becomes man's best friend.

He can hunt at night, he can hunt by sound,

he can hunt by smell,

he can hear the reindeer over the horizon

hours before you'll even become aware of their presence.

It's an unbeatable combination,

humans and dogs together, nothing can stop them.

As ice grips the planet, mankind pushes onward.

Against all odds, we flourish.

Then, the planet starts to warm again.

By 10,000 bc, the human population reaches a million.

Snow turns to rain.

Four hundred generations ago, in the middle east,

A woman whose name we'll never know,

Nurtures into life the future of humanity.

Scientists call her: our farming mother.

What she invents changes the pace of the human story,

Gives rise to cities,

New technology, science and empires.

But also crime, poverty, disease...and war.

10,000 years ago, in the fertile hills of the middle east,

An idea gives birth to the world we live in today.

Ice age snow turns to summer rain.

Earth is the only known planet

Where water exists in liquid form,

Covering more than 70% of the globe

And essential for life.

While men hunt, women gather wild grains.

Nearly half a ton of seeds from one acre of grass.

Every calorie spent gathering yields 50 in return.

People settle around rich sources of food,

Now in groups of sixty or more.

And 10,000 years ago, one woman makes a breakthrough.

The foundation of our modern world.

Discarded seeds take root in the garbage.

It gives her an idea.

She plants her best seeds in a fertile patch of land.

Planting the first seed is the first step towards civilization.

They can take the landscape and use it to their advantage.

And more of a guarantee

that they and their children will survive.

She tends the seeds, weeds and waters them.

The world's first farmer.

Now, an acre of land can feed 100 times as many people

As hunting and gathering.

Farming is a game-changer, it's the difference between

there being only a few million humans on the planet

and there being billions of humans on the planet.

A new crop conquers the globe: wheat.

From a single 60-lb bushel, 70 loaves of bread.

By 3000 bc, farming reaches southern england,

Creating a blueprint for the future:

The village.

Mankind's first settled communities.

And a new figure: the leader.

Smart, outspoken, charismatic.

The first farm animals: pigs, sheep, goats, cattle.

It's a turning point.

Within a thousand years,

Most domesticated animals we have today

Have been tamed for human use.

Taming and breeding other animals is the key

To the growth of our population.

But farming also opens up a new battlefront...

...against mankind's most enduring enemy:

Disease.

So many of the common diseases we fear the most,

syphilis, tuberculosis,

smallpox, bubonic plague,

they came because of our living in proximity with animals.

With hard work and a restricted diet,

We become less healthy and shorter.

The average man is only 5 foot 3 inches tall,

Women only 5 feet.

And owning land gives birth to a new enemy:

Each other.

In the neighboring village, crops have failed.

I don't know if you've ever been hungry,

but when you get hungry,

it takes over your mind in an incredible way.

You start having, you know, olfactory hallucinations.

You start smelling things that aren't there.

You can't think of anything else,

you can't talk about anything else.

You'll get together with your friends

and talk for four hours about the next meal.

Eventually you get to cannibalism.

You'll eat your friends. I mean, it will take over.

It comes down to yours versus mine.

"That's my land. "I worked hard for that land.

"I put my time, my effort my energy into that land.

"I've learned how to cultivate it

"I've learned how to manage it through the seasons.

"If you come in here to try and steal it from me,

"To take it from me, especially without my consent,

"I have to do something about it, or I'm dead!"

The birth of warfare.

One in ten skeletons from early farming folk

Show signs of violence.

A farmer can expect to die

Five years before our hunter-gatherer ancestors.

With farming life comes another leap for mankind:

New ways of mourning and the beginnings of organized religion.

On a plain in southern england,

A monument to those we have lost:

Stonehenge.

Belief in the afterlife

Inspires some of mankind's greatest engineering projects.

And at the same time as stonehenge, 2200 miles away,

Another extraordinary monument to the dead takes shape.

The greatest building on earth for another 4,000 years.

On the banks of the river nile in africa,

Mankind builds one of the first great civilizations.

Its greatest engineering feat:

A vast pyramid tomb for the pharaoh khufu,

God-king of egypt.

It's gonna feel that that monument represents something

that is bigger than human,

it must be built by a God.

The tallest man-made structure for the next 4,000 years.

35,000 workers.

No iron tools, no wheeled vehicles.

Just soft copper chisels and saws.

Entire towns built for the workforce.

These aren't slaves.

Many are skilled craftsmen, paid in grain and beer.

In charge of construction: hemiunu,

Prince of egypt, prime minister,

And one of the first and greatest engineers

In the story of mankind.

A logistical challenge, made possible by a single invention,

The key to most of the achievements of mankind:

Writing.

Imagine that you're trying to organize

20 to 30,000 men,

the only way to do that is to write stuff down.

Developed 5,000 years ago in the middle east,

Writing is an extension of the human brain.

We can speak to each other over distance and across time.

Hemiunu's vision brings together a workforce never seen before.

You had to quarry move and place a block

every two to three minutes to complete that structure

in a 10-hour work day, it's insane!

It takes 20 years and two million blocks of stone,

Each weighing more than a pickup truck,

Lifted four hundred feet above the ground.

Workers organized into competing gangs.

People are smart,

they understand that we have competitive natures,

and they separated these people up into groups and said,

"Okay, you guys drag these stones,

"You guys drag these stones, who can do it faster?"

In cemeteries around the pyramid,

1 in 5 skeletons of workers shows evidence

Of serious injury from accidents.

It takes 20 years and two million blocks to complete.

Covered in polished limestone.

Capped with gold.

And deep inside, a burial chamber.

The pyramid is a resurrection machine,

Where the pharaoh khufu will live on among the gods.

Across the middle east, the first cities rise,

A revolution in human life.

Kanesh, today in modern turkey.

Part of the rise of the city is so farmers can live together,

and not just farmers

but the people who make the tools for the farmers.

The city gives birth to two new keys to human progress:

Trade and industry.

And a new kind of man: the entrepreneur.

Imdi ilum, one of the first traders we know about

In the story of mankind.

He trades in one of the rarest

And most valuable materials of his day: tin.

Tin is the key to a new industry.

Added to copper, it produces bronze.

Strong, sharp,

The metal that changes the face of warfare

For the next 2,000 years.

But tin is one of the ancient world's rarest metals,

Found in only a few distant places.

Amur is imdi's son.

A partner in his father's business.

On a trade mission that widens the horizons of mankind.

Hundreds of miles from home, he's carrying a cargo of tin

Mined in the mountains of iran and afghanistan.

Here you start to see the rise

of literally international trade.

Almost 4,000 years ago,

Traders like imdi turn writing into something new.

They literally make history.

Hundreds of imdi's letters on clay tablets survive.

In one letter, to a business partner,

He writes about his son:

"Amur is only interested in food and beer.

"He needs to learn to do what he's told.

"He needs to become a man."

The great value of the invention of the act of writing,

was leaving all of us

a track record, a trail,

what we now know as our history as human beings.

But amur's manhood is about to be tested.

People would transport the tin across these vast distances.

They could make an enormous return,

but it was extremely risky.

Half a ton of tin that will sell for 100% profit.

But this is bandit country.

Trade and industry are forging new connections

Across the world.

Amur transports a valuable cargo through bandit country.

The people who made the world

are the people who were the risk takers,

the people who didn't play it safe,

the people who can see opportunity

where others see only risk.

Trade opens new frontiers,

Connecting the world like never before.

You start to see the very beginnings

of the trade and specialization

that Adam Smith would talk about

thousands of years later

in "The Wealth of Nations",

where different groups have different abilities.

Right there in bronze,

you start to see the beginnings of the modern economy.

Traders spread civilization across the world,

Connecting the middle east to india, europe and beyond.

But the trade in bronze and the struggle to control it

Now lead to the birth of modern warfare.

Megiddo, in modern-day israel.

April 16th, 1457bc.

Egypt's new pharaoh, tutmoses iii.

Young. Ambitious. Untested.

Middle eastern warlords have seized control

Of the city of megiddo,

The key to the trade networks of the ancient world.

He's been groomed for this,

and when he finally becomes pharaoh,

they challenge him.

When you're looking at Megiddo, you have to realize

that is the life's blood of that civilization,

that's the trade routes.

And he's like, "Okay, I'm gonna show you what I can do."

12,000 troops.

Officers, regiments, platoons.

A new kind of army.

Most are conscripts,

Farmers called up to arms.

But also trained professionals.

Fierce nubian soldiers from modern-day sudan.

All await the god-king's orders.

There's nothing like seeing your leader in the front.

Whether it's a pharaoh or General Patton,

men seeing their leaders going into the fray,

risking their lives,

you just wanna step up and prove to your boss

you've got what it takes to win.

This is the first recorded battle in the story of mankind.

"His Majesty issued forth at the head of his army,

"In a gilded chariot of fine gold

"Adorned with the instruments of war."

In the bible, megiddo will give its name to armageddon.

The egyptian chariot with a top speed of 25 miles per hour.

The chariot is more like a helicopter gunship.

The chariot archer is the warrior here.

They ride in, shooting as they go in.

It would be unnerving,

it would be chaotic over an area of miles,

this great dust cloud of confusion.

That alone must have struck terror

into the enemy standing there.

into the enemy standing there.

The age of mass warfare has begun.

Mankind's struggle for resources

Creates the world's first great empires.

Egypt's pharaoh tutmoses iii

Leads an army of twelve thousand

Into battle for control of the city of megiddo.

He's untested, he's young, he's inexperienced,

his men really don't know what to expect from him

so what he has to do is he has to get out

and lead from the front

and show his men that yeah I am in charge,

I am the leader, I'm going to set the example.

Let the first arrow be cast at me.

You would hold your manhood in question

if you could not step up like your god king.

Egyptian scribes record the turning point.

The enemy...

Fled headlong to megiddo in fear...

and he was able to do it through wit and bravery and balls

He was able to wipe out

an incredibly powerful coalition of forces

An egyptian poet records the fate of the common soldier:

Young men called up for war,

A child snatched from his mother's bosom.

When he reaches manhood: his bones, shattered.

The rebel warlords hand over their children as hostages.

Taken back to egypt,

If the pharaoh's new subjects ever rebel again,

They will be killed.

Tutmoses iii expands the egyptian empire

To its greatest size ever -

400,000 square miles.

'I have extended the dominion of Egypt

as far as the circuit of the sun.'

From a species struggling to survive,

Mankind has unlocked the keys to controlling our destiny:

Fire, farming,

Communication,

Building cities, pioneering trade

And the art of war.

One man can now control the lives of millions.

Man with the power of a god.

But the era of the god-like king is coming to an end.

A new material dug from the earth's crust

Will transform our future.

New technologies,

New people.

And new ideas.

The age of iron.