We are pioneers.
We explore,
discover,
question.
Now mankind unlocks mysteries of the natural world.
New powers unleashed,
[yelling]
transforming
all we are.
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.
Narrator: The planet is a battle ground. Ancient people and beliefs crash head on into a new age of science and commerce.
In North America, what will become a land of cities and highways, lies under a blanket of forests.
Now pioneers push into the unknown.
New England, 1676
Two generations after the Mayflower, 150,000 settlers cling to the edge of a vast wilderness,
among them, the Lewis family.
Puritans from England, they have been here for 30 years.
The Wabanaki have been here 12,000.
In the 17th century, there are around 55 million hunter gathers,
living across almost 1/3 of the planet,
a way of life dating back to the dawn of mankind, now under threat
as newcomers move onto their lands.
[screaming]
In the New World, Native Americans outnumber settlers by nearly six to one.
It's war.
[screams]
The Wabanaki kill nine of the Lewis family,
[fighting, yelling out]
but some of the children survive,
[screaming]
including a three year old girl, Mercy Lewis,
16 years later, a witness in a trial that marks the passing of an era.
1692
Salem, Massachusetts,
a community in meltdown.
65 year old Martha Corey,
devout Christian and church-goer, on trial for her life.
Sheridan: The Puritans of that time were, you know, lived on the lip of the wilderness.
They were terrified of the wilderness and wildness, of wild men and the Indians, so that kind of fear allows for a witch trial to kinda take hold and a hysteria to take over.
Narrator: Mercy Lewis and nine women and girls claim Corey is a witch,
haunting their dreams, hurting them without touching them.
[screams]
Mercy testifies: I believe in my heart that Martha Corey is a most dreadful witch, biting, pinching, and choking me.
Narrator; All considered evidence of witchcraft.
The people of Salem are Puritans. They live by the Bible,
in fear of the devil, blaming him for famine, disease and conflict.
Shea: The fascinating thing about the Salem Witch Trials is they occur at a crucial tipping point in the history of America.
Supernatural explanations are first and foremost in their mind.
Van Alst: They see the Devil alive with the Indians, so if you could imagine sitting in your little living room,
with your tiny tallow candle, and your Indian windows cracked a little bit for the breeze,
every snap of branch you hear, every rustle of a leaf you hear is either the Devil or the Indians.
This is their nightly experience.
Narrator: For 300 hundred years, the West has been gripped by a witch hunting frenzy.
[scream]
45,000 put to death, 80% women.
The Puritans take their belief in witchcraft to the New World.
Five people in Salem have already been accused.
Now it's Martha Corey's word against her teenage accusers.
Teen accuser: I have often seen the operation of Martha Coery, and she very often afflicted me by her acts of witchcraft.
Judge: Martha Corey, tell me why you hurt these persons.
Narrator: Martha's only hope
is that the judge will see through the girls' hysteria.
[man speaking: the Devil coming to rule]
[screams]
Martha: I know nothing. I am a Gospel woman.
[screaming, crying]
Martha: I am a Gospel woman.
GIrl: You are a Gospel witch!
[sounds of a wagon]
Narrator: In Salem, over 100 hundred people are accused of witchcraft,
among them a four year old girl.
20 executions.
Fourteen years later, one teenager withdraws her testimony, claiming to have been deceived by Satan.
[voice: It's time.]
[music]
Narrator: Mercy Lewis never speaks of it again.
Salem is among the last of the mass witch hunts.
The era of fear and superstition is ending.
Now, the hunt for profit is opening up the wilderness, beckoning a new breed of pioneer,
in search of the earth's natural resources:
hunters, frontiersmen.
Dolin: Much like explorers and adventurers of today, they had a certain mettle to them, but they were also driven by the desire to make money.
Profit is a amazing motivator.
Narrator: Half a world away from New England, one of the most inhospitable place on the planet,
Siberia,
one and a half times the size of the USA, covering 10% of the Earth's land.
Semyon Dezhnev
hunter, explorer
2,000 miles away from home,
in search of a commodity that will reshape the world:
fur,
worth four times more than gold.
The world is in the grip of a mini ice age.
Ash from volcanic eruptions blocks out the sun, cooling the earth,
the coldest conditions in 10,000 years.
Dolin: People wanted to wear furs because they kept them warm, especially in cold climates,
but they also wanted furs because they were a beautiful statement of their place in society.
Narrator: Dezhnev's hunting party needs 6,000 calories a day to survive.
They'll eat anything, tree bark, even reindeer feces.
Dezhnev: I suffered all kinds of want and destitution. I ate larch and pine bark and accepted filth.
Narrator: But this is also the home of the Evenki,
[screams]
hunter gathers living in near isolation,
until now.
Wunderlich: The fact is they are not empty wildernesses; there are people living there,
and these people oftentimes get in the way of the progress of the seeking out of commodity.
Narrator: Early journals record the Evenki mindset.
Evenki man speaking: We own the land here. We do not wish to become slaves.
Narrator: The Evenki are swift and silent hunters,
arrow tips made from reindeer antlers that can pierce a human skull,
[swiping sounds]
but no match for a weapon that shapes the future of mankind.
Across the planet, pioneers clash with ancient cultures, conquer new lands.
What gives them the edge?
the gun
Invented in China,
developed in Europe,
now being mass produced using cast iron.
Production skyrockets 10,000%.
Machowicz: It is a game changer. There is always going to be somebody who wants to improve on the idea; make it bigger, faster, stronger, more lethal.
[gunshots]
Muzzle velocity 700 miles per hour, seven times faster than an arrow.
[music]
Dezhnev records the battle in his diary:
I killed some of their best men in that fight, and we wounded many others.
Narrator: The wilderness is being tamed,
hunter gatherers being displaced,
a conflict playing out across the planet.
Dezhnev makes it home a rich man.
The trade in fur opens up two continents.
Russia seizes control of Siberia and Alaska and quadruples in size.
In North America, the fur trade opens up the wilderness.
Dutch traders establish a court to shift fur to Europe,
80,000 pelts a year, worth $48 million today, creating a new commercial capital:
New York.
Wuderlich: It is almost inconceivable of us to think back to two superpowers, Russia and America,
and both of them were given their real economic starts on the back of small free animals.
Narrator: The resources of the natural world drive a new age of commerce:
Fur, sugar, coffee, tea, and tobacco.
but transporting them is a deadly job,
through uncharted seas.
One in five journeys ends in disaster.
The world's oceans are graveyards.
Meigs: The great challenge in navigating the seas was knowing where you are so you don't crash into stuff and die,
and ships were doing that all the time.
Sheridan: These guys were sailing into a horror movie. They have no idea what is happening,
and they are moving into mystery.
It's got to have been terrifying.
Narrator: Sailors navigate by measuring the angles between the moon and the stars
and comparing with star charts, but these charts are basic and inaccurate.
Sheridan: In those days, celestial navigation and being accurate, you know, meant the difference
between life and death. There was a real element of "
"we're gonna sorta fuddle along and roll the dice and hope that we more or less end up where we are going,"
and that's dangerous.
Narrator: Now, one man will transform navigation,
astronomer to the English King, John Flamsteed.
He'll unlock the keys to global trade and exploration
by building his mural arc.
Sheridan: Flamsteed's arc changed our understanding of the night sky in a way that kind of like
the Hubble telescope, you know, has revealed so much more of the universe to us.
Narrator: Superstition is giving way to science.
Gates: The universe is not a place of arbitrariness; there are laws, and the universe itself is a kind of mechanism.
Narrator: Mankind enters a new era,
discovering single-celled organisms,
and the secrets of the beating heart.
For the first time, we understand gravity.
and prove that the earth orbits around the sun,
Meigs: After fire, the written word, agriculture,
the scientific method is probably mankind's greatest gift to the future.
Narrator: For 14 months, Flamsteed has been building his mural arc,
a telescope moved by a precision-gearing system that measures the angle of the stars in the night sky.
[45, 46]
The king invests in the project, but the money runs out.
Flamsteed spends his life savings to bring his dream alive,
a quarter of a million dollars in today's money.
[cirius]
[cirius crossing]
[Now!}
Flamsteed gives each star a unique marker,
28,000 measurements recording their exact position, tripling the number the known starts to nearly 3,000,
the greatest breakthrough in navigation since the compass.
[7]
Star charts, 15x more accurate than before,
saving money and lives.
Sheridan: Flamsteed's a hero. He changed the world irrevocably by creating these accurate measurements.
It's like these sailors went from having a rough, you know, hand-drawn map to having a satellite,
photograph, beautiful, GPS-inspired image.
Narrator: New measurements that, one day, will help guide men to the moon.
Meigs: So often, we think about the progress of science. We think about that a-ha moment, that flash of insight,
we don't recognize that so much of science is dogged, hard work, and Flamsteed was the ultimate grinder.
Narrator: Science opens a new age of exploration.
Captain James Cook,
mankind's greatest explorer.
Cook speaking: I had ambition, but only to go farther than anyone had been had before,
but as far as it was possible for men to go.
Sheridan: Cook's journey depended upon the observations of Flamsteed,
and he could have never done what he did without them.
Narrator: A third of the world unmapped until now.
On three journeys, Cook will reach some of the most remote corners of the planet,
and open up a new continent.
Meigs: Cook's voyages really showed us what the world looked like. No longer were there
vast areas on the map, where you might just say, "There be dragons."
Narrator: Onboard the Endeavor, a crew of 74, living on decks less than four feet high,
an era when half of all sailors die from disease,
they cross an uncharted ocean that covers a third of the planet,
the Pacific.
Now, after 20 months at sea, Cook and his crew step onto a mysterious new continent,
Australia.
[water, waves]
Australia's Aboriginal people settled the continent 50,000 years ago,
[waves]
the oldest living culture in the world,
250 languages
600 dialects.
They invent sharpened axes 15,000 years before Europeans.
Cook speaking: Tell them we mean them no harm.
[voice in Polynesian language]
Cook's Polynesian translator, Tupaia, tries to negotiate the first encounter.
[angry voice]
Cook: Neither us nor Tupaia could understand one word they said.
[voices]
They again came to oppose us. I fired a musket between the two.
[gunshot]
Cook will claim their land for the British Empire.
Hyland: When Cook found the Australian Aborigines, he had no idea whatsoever of what their culture was about.
This is the one most sophisticated, complex cultural traditions in the world. It's one of the most ancient.
Cook missed all that. He just thought that these were kind of a shy people, he thought they were inferior, he had no idea what he was encountering.
Narrator: But what Cook and his crew discover is an ecosystem like no other,
the biggest island on earth,
a continent with its own unique evolution,
85% of its mammals found nowhere else on Earth.
To record, a man who will become one of the world's leading botanists,
Joseph Banks,
young, ambitious, on an adventure of a lifetime.
The new science of botany that he pioneers unlocks secrets of the natural world that still aid mankind today.
Meigs: Joseph Banks was like a rock star of science in his day. He was a huge celebrity,
and he lived this glamorous life, sailing around the oceans, cataloging native people,
interesting species, discoveries, and when he came home to England, he gave lectures that were as popular as a rock concert today.
Narrator: On the expedition, Banks collects over 30,000 plants,
25% more plant species now known to science,
more specimens in his lifetime than any other botanist.
Meigs: He made these explorations for pure discovery, not really for financial gain,
and he really popularize the idea in Europe that science was an end of itself,
it didn't always have to serve commerce to be important.
Narrator: After one week in Australia, the Endeavor sets sail for Britain, carrying an irreplaceable cargo.
animals and plants unknown to science.
Ahead, a 20,000 mile journey.
11pm: Five weeks into the voyage.
[items topple over]
24 miles from the coast, the Endeavor hits a reef.
[voices - run aground]
[Going down!]
Banks records the terror on board:
[voices yelling]
Fear of death now stared us in the face. Probably the most of us must be drowned. I prepared myself for the worst.
Off the coast of Australia mankind's greatest explorer fights to save his stricken ship.
If Cook can't refloat it the reef will tear the hull apart.
Few sailors can swim. This was a alarming and terrible circumstance. It threatened the immediate destruction of the ship.
Sam Sheridan: Its horrendous, there is a shock. There is chaos, the ship is grinding on the rocks. Time is of the essence if they don't get the ship floating soon their going to die.
To lighten the ship and refloat her, they throw overboard personnel possessions, canons, casks and ballast. Even fresh drinking water.
Only the precious scientific samples are saved.
[voices]
There is no rescue coming, you are completely alone, completely isolated.
For us it would be like if we were on Mars and our space ship is breaking apart. Our chances of survival are terrible. Its a terrifying event.
23 hours later, a rising tide helps the ship lift free.
We are free men.
Below them a 1,400 hundred mile long maze. The Great Barrier Reef. One of the wonders of the natural world.
The largest living structure on Earth. The only organism visible from space.
Over three epic voyages, Cook maps Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific Ocean and the Americas.
More of the world than any other explorer.
[waves]
[lighting]
As Cook opens up the planet, on the other side of the world and American inventor is playing with fire.
Bringing the scientific revolution to America. Benjamin Franklin, innovator, entrepreneur,and Americas first storm chaser.
Using a child's toy to unlock one of the keys to the future.
Brian Williams; I think his role as a scientist is as important as is his role as a statesman and a founder.
He was the first American to make science palpable, tangible to the American people. Because of how he spoke and wrote about it.
Since the dawn of mankind humanity has lived in fear of the most destructive forces in nature. Lighting
World wide 16 million lighting storms a year kill 24,000 people. Each strike wields the power of a ton of TNT.
With a temperature of 50,000 degrees fahrenheit five times hotter than the sun.
As a journalist Franklin knows the devastation lighting can cause.
[screams]
Grain stores, houses and churches destroyed.
Only 60 years after the Salem witch trials, many still believe its the wrath of God.
But Franklin will challenge this to prove that lighting is a form of electricity.
And help unlock one of the keys to man kinds future.
Franklin: I was never before engaged in any study that so totally engrossed my attention and time.
Surely the thunder of heaven is no more supernatural than the rain, hell or sunshine of heaven.
The battle between superstition and science that defines the age.
Prof. H.W. Brands: Franklin was very much part of the enlightenment. The enlightenment was based on the idea that there are natural explanations for the phenom of nature.
Mark Frauenfelder: I think Franklin was finally pounding the nails into the coffin of superstition. This was a time when lighting was still considered by many people to be Gods vengeance.
To test his theory a especially adapted kite. With a metal wire at the top, and a metal key at the base.
[voices]
[lighting]
An experiment that could unlock the secrets of the skies. Or electrocute them.
[lighting]
Mankind, driven by a new curiosity to explain the unknown.
Benjamin Franklin in search in the secrets of lighting, helping unlock the keys to our electric world.
From clouds, static electricity.
You will find it streams out plentifully from the key at the approach of your knuckle.
The first proof that lighting is electricity.
Mark Frauenfelder: He looked at the world differently he wanted explanations that were rational and made sense and couldn't be attributed to supernatural forces.
[voices]
Franklin turns his discovery into a practical invention.
The worlds first lighting rod. Its life saving design virtually unchanged to this day.
From a stream of electrified air. To identifying positive and negative charges. An experiment that helps unlock a power that will transform our lives.
The birth of the electric world.
Light bulbs, television, air conditioning, computers.
[phone ringing]
Every aspect of human life, transformed.
George Wunderlich: Just a little over 200 hundred years ago we've gone from that spot where electricity was the great unknown.
To a time where we can't imagine something as simple as the batteries in our cell phone. This is a relative short period of time in the history of humanity. Yet look what it has brought us.
Those positive and negative symbols you see on the terminals you see are because of Franklins discoveries. Amazing!
Twenty years after Franklins experiment, another kind of revolution rocks America.
An isolated rebellion in a New England lumber yard will erupt into war.
That drive for self determination, that drive to control their own destiny. That drive to control their own economy, overcame all fear.
New Hampshire 1772, millionaire Ebenezer Mudgett. Determined, rebellious, a self made tycoon.
He has made his fortune from mankind's first and oldest first resource, wood.
The key to our lives since the dawn of man.
The vast forests that was once haunted the dreams of America's settlers. Are now there greatest source of profit.
950 million acres, over 50 billion trees. And the King of England believes the best belong to him.
A third of all British ships are built in New England. One warship uses 6,000 trees and cost the equivalent of a modern aircraft carrier.
Prof. Al Camarillo: You are going to maintain that kind of maritime trade and exploration and acquisition of new colonies. You better have the resources to keep the Navy in tact.
In Boston there is on British redcoat for every four citizens.
A city under occupation. Goods from the new world are worth over four billion dollars a year to Britain.
[screams]
But colonists protest against heavy taxes.
[gun shots]
A face of with British soldiers, kills five civilians. The Boston Massacre.
Two years later Ebenezer Mudgett, is at the center of a conflict over American timber.
The biggest trees are set aside for British ships, by law. The best wood in America, off limits to the colonists.
That is where we see in America the chaffing between the government in London and the goverend here. That chaffing why can't I as the local control my commodity.
On property I want to control, who gives the King the right to do that?
But Mudgett resists.
The battle lines are drawn. County sheriff and British loyalist, Benjamin Whiting has been tipped off.
Mudgett has kept the best wood to sell to the colonies.
He is charged with stealing form the King of England.
Across America the spirit of rebellion is about to trans form the future of mankind.
[screams]
An age of knew knowledge sparks a struggle for freedom.
New Hampshire lumber merchant Ebenezer Mudgett sends a message to the King of England and his agents.
In his sights Sheriff Whiting and Deputy Quigley.
[voices]
The punishment one strike for every tree he is charged with stealing.
It is called the pine tree riot.
[music]
Rebellion is spreading across the colonies.
Brian Williams: When their time arrives the ordinary become extraordinary. The Mudgetts of the world are those who have had enough and decide I am going to bet all that I have and all that I am on something else.
A year later, in Boston rebels destroy one million dollars worth of tea.
One of the most famous acts of resistance in American history.
1775 Lexington, ordinary Americans patriots, prepare to defend themselves against the most powerful army in the world.
The British are under orders to arrest rebel leaders, and seize their weapons.
The future of 13 colonies hangs in the balance.
[gun shots]
[music]
The war of independence has begun.
Mudgett will be on the front line.
Richard Machowicz: When mankind truly taste freedom, they develop an appetite for freedom. And the want to be to use that freedom to build their own lives.
A year later, July 4th 1776, Philadelphia Pennsylvania the second Continental Congress votes to adopt a radical document.
The Declaration of Independence, edited by scientist turned politician Benjamin Franklin.
Proclaiming the 13 colonies free and independent from Great Britain.
We hold these truths to be self evident. That all men are created equal. That they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights.
Among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
George Wunderlich: When he put his finger under that key, he was in charge of his own destiny.
And when he sat there with congress to write the Declaration of Independence, to sign it, to think about it, to act upon it he was making exactly the same statement.
I we should declare our own destiny, we're in charge, not someone else. He challenged the old way.
In less than two centuries mankind has opened up the wilderness and mapped the planet, prospering from its natural resources.
The scientific revolution has given rise to the modern world.
James Meigs: You have to remember that during this period of the enlightenment, when these scientific ideas were coming to the fore.
The church was the ultimate authority and the crown was the ultimate authority about how the world worked and what you should believe.
And what was so revolutionary about the scientific method, is it was essentially democratic.
It said that no power, no person, no organization, no ruler can tell you what reality is.
Narrator: Fear and superstition replaced by reason.
Liberated by a new way of thinking.
Launching a new age, that will change the lives of everyone on the planet.
The age of industry.