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Narrator: We struggle for new lands, new opportunities.
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[fighting, yelling]
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We fight for wealth,
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and power,
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but now, mankind embarks on a new journey,
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risking all,
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for a new world.
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Amidst the chaos of an unforgiving planet, most species will fail,
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but for one, all the pieces will fall into place, and a set of keys will unlock a path for mankind to triumph.
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This is our story: The Story of All of Us.
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[lightning, thunder]
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Guided by Thor, God of Thunder,
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the Vikings set out across the world.
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Their longboats are fast, rugged, designed to navigate the most treacherous waters on earth.
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Sheridan: The longboats are almost like an all-terrain water vehicle, that allows these Vikings to go further, deeper, and almost anywhere on the planet.
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Narrator: From Scandinavia, warriors storm through Europe, raiding, settling, founding new cities, connecting the northern world.
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Now, they head west across the Atlantic Ocean,
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mankind on a new journey that will connect a divided planet,
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the first Europeans known to land in the Americas.
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Thorvald Eriksson,
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legendary explorer,
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a hero, whose exploits are remembered in Viking legend.
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Shipmate speaking: They brought the ship to where they could moor her, and Thorvald walked ashore with his crew.
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"This is a fine place," he said. "I should like to make it my home."
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Narrator: Since human beings first walked out of Africa 70,000 years ago, mankind seeks new resources and opportunities,
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new frontiers to explore and conquer.
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Williams: There are always resources and wide open spaces beyond the next mountain range,
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beyond the next ocean. We're never quite satisfied nor is our curiosity ever quite satisfied. We want to know what's over there.
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Narrator: But this land belongs to the Inuit,
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descendants of the first pioneers, who came in to America 19,000 years before.
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90 million Native Americans, a third of the planet's population, cut off from the rest of the world.
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until now.
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Lindbergh: It's like aliens coming from outer space, who land on your beach. They were strangers; they looked pale and grizzly.
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Narrator: The Inuit are expert hunters,
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armed with stone-tipped arrows,
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swift, silent, deadly.
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Loades: The Inuit people who hunted, they hunted caribou and moose and bear.
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If they could drop a great moose with their arrows, they could certainly drop a Viking.
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[yelling]
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[fighting]
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Narrator: The Viking weapon of choice: the iron broad axe,
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designed to split a skull in a single blow.
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Loades: Viking culture was a warrior culture.
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[screaming]
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The man's greatest wish was to die in battle, doing a heroic deed.
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That ensured his seat in Valhalla.
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[fighting]
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Narrator: The Viking histories record:
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Viking speaking: They killed eight Inuit. Exhausted, they made camp.
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[fire crackling]
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[ocean waves]
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[dog barking]
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Suddenly, they were startled by the sound of a cry above them.
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[dog howling]
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[yelling]
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[fighting]
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Narrator: Thorvald Erickson, the first European to die on American soil.
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[continued fighting and yelliing]
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It would be 500 years before another European sets foot in the New World.
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In the Americas, no iron tools or horses,
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no wheeled vehicles,
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yet America's people engineered great monuments thousands of years before the Egyptians.
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They mapped the stars with as much accuracy as any astronomer in Europe,
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and high on a mountain lake in Mexico, they build one of the greatest cities on the planet,
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Tenochtitlan, capitol of the Aztec Empire,
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larger than London, Paris, or Rome.
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At its heart, a stone temple 100 feet high,
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where sky, earth, and underworld meet,
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the center of a civilization dedicated to human blood.
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[music]
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100 miles from the city,
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[yelling]
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Aztec warriors are on a hunt.
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Their prey, not animal but human.
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[yelling]
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They chase down the leader of an enemy tribe.
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[music]
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The aim is not to kill,
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they need to take him alive.
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[screaming]
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To keep the universe in balance, the Aztecs believe they owe a debt of blood to their gods.
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Today, a special offering.
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Tlahuicole
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skilled warrior,
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bitter rival,
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the Aztecs' greatest prize,
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fighting for his life.
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[yelling]
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[crowd noise, chanting]
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Aztec men are trained to fight from puberty.
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The fiercest become Jaguar Knights,
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their weapons, not metal
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but obsidian, volcanic glass,
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so sharp, some surgeons today favor it over steel.
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Loades: It is the most superior cutting material known to man, perfectly capable of cutting a man in two.
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Narrator: Tlahuicole's weapon: a club decorated with feathers.
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[chanting continues]
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Machowicz: Not only is it terrifying if you were to imagine yourself in that position,
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it's also the opportunity to find out what you're made of.
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Narrator: A fight to the death that will become Aztec legend.
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[music]
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Tenochtitlan, Mexico
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capital of the Aztec Empire.
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[fighting, yelling]
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A captive warrior fights for his life.
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Elite Jaguar Knights slice at his flesh to wear him down.
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The Aztecs have created one of the most sophisticated civilizations on the planet,
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a great city with laws against drunkenness, theft, and adultery,
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compulsory education, three and a half centuries before the United States,
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a city of philosophers, poets, mathematicians.
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Hyland: They valued art, literature. They were a very, very great civilized society.
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[continued fighting, yelling]
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Narrator: But the Aztecs believed their gods need human blood.
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Eight men down, and Tlahuicole is still standing,
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[yelling]
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[yelling]
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but his strength is fading.
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[yelling]
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[groan]
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The warrior who cuts him down will get to wear his flayed skin for 20 days.
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His family will eat his flesh, giving them the status of gods.
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Aztec priests sacrificed thousands of men, women, and children a year,
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up to 20,000 in one of their most important ceremonies,
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one of the greatest acts of human sacrifice in history.
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Hyland: The Aztecs are very philosophical about death. Death is what gives meaning to life,
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and that by having the idea of death, it makes the here and now sweeter and more beautiful.
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[chanting, yelling continues]
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Tlahuicole's beating heart, offered to the God of Sun and War, Huitzilopochtli, guardian of the universe.
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In return, the Aztecs believe his blood will guarantee a bountiful harvest,
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a crop that will become key to mankind's future,
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corn.
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6,000 years ago, early farmers in the Americas turn a weed into a cereal that produces more calories per acre than any other,
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with almost twice as many genes as a human being,
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found in a quarter of all supermarket products we buy today.
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[chanting, yelling]
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Corn is the staple of Aztec life.
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But while Aztec power reaches its height,
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events 7,000 miles away are about to change their world forever.
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Constantinople,
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the Eastern capitol of the Christian world,
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founded by Rome's first Christian emperor, Constantine.
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At the city's heart, an icon of Christian faith,
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Hagia Sophia, the largest cathedral of its day.
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[voices]
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The year is 1453.
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An epic battle is looming that will shift the balance of power between East and West,
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and change the story of mankind.
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Wunderlich: Constantinople is going to change the entire picture of the world that we have with the discovery of new continents.
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The two events are inextricably linked.
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Narrator: Constantinople is under siege
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by the Ottoman Turks, an Islamic army 70,000 strong.
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Leading the attack, Sultan Memet the 2nd,
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scholar, warrior, obsessed.
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Conquering this city has been his dream since the age of 13.
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Like the Mongol hordes of Genghis Khan, the Turks were once nomads from central Asia.
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[yelling]
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If Memet can take Constantinople,
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he'll control the key trade routes between East and West,
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and the city's vast trade and spices.
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Wunderlich: They want to take Constantinople. It's rich. It's the center of a vast trade of spices and other things flowing into Europe.
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Narrator: One dried berry makes up as much as two-thirds of the spice trade into Europe,
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pepper,
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a spice that changes the story of mankind.
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1,000 tons
-
shipped from southern India every year.
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The sultan wants Constantinople as the jewel of a new Islamic empire.
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Memet speaking: There must only be one empire, one faith, and one sovereignty in the world.
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Narrator: But the city has the greatest defensive walls in Europe.
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Four miles long.
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Up to 100 feet high.
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[voices]
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Loads: Memet's big challenge was to bring down the walls of Constantinople.
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No one had ever defeated the walls of Constantinople.
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[voice]
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Narrator: Now, a devastating new use of weapons: non-stop artillery bombardment, the key to the future of war.
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Machowicz: Artillery becomes the king of battle,
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and it's proven at Constantinople.
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[explosions, screaming]
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Narrator: The fate of Constantinople will change lives in every corner of the planet.
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Mankind's destiny can turn on a single battle.
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If the walls of Constantinople fall under bombardment by the Turks, the world will never be the same again.
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Sixty-nine canons.
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Dedicated teams working in shifts.
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Cool, clean, reload, fire.
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Each canon packed with up to ten stone balls.
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[explosions, screaming]
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Bodette: Those people in Constantinople, they never experienced anything like a canon bombardment.
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I have been rocketed, I have been mortared before, and it ain't no fun.
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You know, you never know. You don't know where it's going to land.
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Narrator: Pounding the city around the clock, for 53 days.
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Mike Loades: The great canon balls flew over the walls and crashed through the houses of the city, and then as they struck the ground, the stone shattered,
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and they burst in a shrapnel hail of jagged little splinters that killed and maimed and lacerated for hundreds of yards around.
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Narrator: Defenders rebuild,
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but Mehmet breaks through.
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A new era of warfare. Stonewalls will no longer protect us.
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Oz: Constantinople had managed to hold out for a century, until my namesake, Mehmet the Conqueror, brought his Turkish tribes and was able to invade Constantinople,
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and in that one very sleek move, tilted the axis of human history. Took an entire part of the planet that had preserved Christianity and made it Islamic.
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Narrator: Christian Constantinople becomes Islamic Istanbul.
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The great cathedral, Hagia Sophia, becomes the largest mosque in the world.
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The world's most important trade routes now in the hands of a new empire hostile to the West,
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forcing Europeans to search for a new route to the riches of the East.
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[thunder]
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Thirty years after Constantinople, a ship heads into a storm off the coast of southern Africa
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on a journey that will open a new era of exploration.
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In command, Portugese explorer Bartolomeu Dias,
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wealthy nobleman, expert seaman, risk taker.
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Dias is heading into unchartered waters,
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searching for a new route to India, around the southern tip of Africa.
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Meigs: These boats were hard to navigate, and yet people got in ships and sailed across oceans.
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It's really extraordinary how many of those ships never came back.
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Narrator: Dias has been using the coast to navigate, but as the storm gets worse, his guide becomes his enemy.
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Sheridan: You don't want to be near the shore because you don't want to get driven up on the rocks.
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You are getting blue water over the deck, and things are breaking, and you know, all hell's breaking loose.
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You are terrified. You are sure this is it. I mean, you are making peace with God and hoping for the best.
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Narrator: Now, Dias faces a choice that will determine the future for all of us: head out into uncharted waters or risk death on the rocks.
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[rain, thunder, yelling]
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A pioneer on a journey that will change the shape of the world,
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caught in a storm off the coast of Africa,
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searching for a new sea route to the East.
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Bartolomeu Dias has two options: risk death on the rocks or head out into the Atlantic Ocean and the unknown.
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He lowers the ship's square sails and puts his faith in an ancient Roman technology that will become the key to a new age of exploration,
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the triangular lateen sail.
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Meigs: The sail acts like a wing almost. It actually develops lift much like an airplane's wing,
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and if you have a strong rudder able to steer that ship towards the wind, it transmits all that energy into forward motion.
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Sheridan: If you can at least make a tiny bit of upwind headway, maybe you can claw your way off those rocks
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and not wreck and smash and destroy your boat.
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Narrator: Dias turns his ship and heads into the uncharted waters of the South Atlantic,
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risking everything if he can't find his way back to shore.
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Out of sight of land for 13 days,
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no idea what lies ahead.
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His maps are useless.
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Lost at sea.
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His fate now turns on a powerful force of nature, beneath the waves,
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an ocean gyre, a vast circular current caused by prevailing winds working against the rotation of the Earth,
-
creating a conveyor belt of water, 4,000x more powerful than the Mississippi River,
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Sheridan: So, if you are sitting in the calm of an ocean gyre, it feels like you're, you know,
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a painted ship on a painted ocean; nothing's happening,
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but what's really going on is you're covering ground, but the whole sea is moving in this arc.
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Narrator: The discovery of ocean gyres will revolutionize seafaring.
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Dias has no idea of the forces that slingshot his ship,
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from an empty ocean toward the southern tip of Africa.
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Sheridan: He really had everything going for him. He had the prevailing winds with him,
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he had the current with him, and he was on a ride that he may not have fully understood.
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[waves crashing]
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Dias claims the land in the name of God and country.
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It will become known as the Cape of Good Hope.
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[voices]
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The key to a new sea route to the East, bypassing Constantinople,
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a direct passage to India.
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Within 50 years, it becomes one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world.
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44,000 tons of goods shipped around the Cape each year,
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building new empires, new connections, and a new future.
-
The race to profit from the riches of the East is on.
-
October 12th, 1492.
-
a date seared on to the hard drive of humanity.
-
Spanish sailors discover land, leading them an Italian, Christopher Columbus.
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maverick, hustler,
-
with his own dream to find a shortcut to the East.
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His plan, to sail west to China.
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He calculates the journey from Spain will take him just 21 days.
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He underestimates the distance by 7,000 miles.
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Mann: What was striking about this is that any educated person at the time would know that Columbus was wrong.
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Narrator: Undaunted, convinced he's right, Columbus has been all over Europe, begging for support for his journey.
-
Spanish monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, throw some money his way.
-
[clapping]
-
barely enough to fund the expedition.
-
Mann: It's kinda the way that a wealthy person might bet a hundred bucks on poker,
-
you know, without much expectation, but you could afford it.
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[music]
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[waves]
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[wind]
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Narrator: After five weeks at sea, close to starvation, thousands of miles from his target, he reaches land,
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which he believes is Japan. In fact, it's the Bahamas
-
off the coast of a vast new world:
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the Americas.
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Two worlds isolated from each other for 10,000 years.
-
Mann: It's not only a huge event in history, but it's a huge event in the history of life.
-
[voice]
-
Narrator: The Bahamas are home to the Taino people.
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Mann: He sees these people, for the most part by European standards,
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very tall, very healthy, very good-looking,
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you know, living in a state of abundance.
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Narrator: Columbus records their first encounter.
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Columbus: The people kept calling to us and giving thanks to God, as if we'd come from Heaven.
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I presented them with some red caps, some beads.
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They were much delighted and became wonderfully attached to us.
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Narrator: Living in a different ecosystem for thousands of years, the people of the Americas have no immunity to a deadly threat,
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disease.
-
Mann: Europeans are sort of swimming in this bacterial and viral soup, that was utterly unlike anything over there.
-
Narrator: First contact with an invisible killer that will one day change the destiny of the New World,
-
but Columbus is on a search for treasure.
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Columbus: I kept my eyes open and tried to find if there was any gold.
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Then, I saw some of them had a little piece hanging from a hole in their nose.
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I gathered that by, going further, I'd find a king, who possessed in great quantities of gold.
-
Columbus returned to Spain a hero. His journeys opened the floodgates.
-
[voices calling]
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[Heave!]
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All of Europe wants a piece of the Americas.
-
The Old World and the New
-
are on a collision course.
-
[fighting, gunshot]
-
Tenochtitlan, Mexico,
-
heart of the Aztec Empire.
-
28 years after Columbus, the lust for gold is about the change the destiny of the New World,
-
through the ambitions of one man,
-
Hernan Cortes,
-
devious, charming, and ruthless,
-
leading a band of just 500 European adventurers.
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Camarillo: Cortes was quite a manipulator and quite savvy.
-
He knows how to motivate the people, and the objective is gold, and that's what of course was the prime motivation.
-
Narrator: Aztec Emperor Montezuma,
-
the richest, most powerful man in the Americas,
-
ruler of 25 million people.
-
He's welcomed Cortes and his men into his palace,
-
a mistake that will change the fate of a continent.
-
Camarillo: Their numbers were small. How could they constitute a threat when you have an army
-
that's 1000x, 10,000x, larger than the few hundred souls that they brought, right?
-
Narrator: Cortes's plan: kidnap the Emperor.
-
Camarillo: Part of his calculation was, if we can show that we can take over at this level,
-
you know, incarcerate the head of the Empire, maybe the rest of the dominoes will fall.
-
Narrator: Montezuma's treasuries are filled with gold. The Spanish lust for plunder astonishes the Aztecs.
-
An eyewitness reports: They snatched up the gold like monkeys. They were swollen with greed.
-
They hungered for that gold like wild pigs.
-
Narrator: The people dubbed their captive Emperor, Cortes's Whore,
-
and revolt.
-
[fighting]
-
[swords, screaming]
-
Trapped inside the palace, Cortes receives word from his men:
-
We are in eminent danger. We'll all perish unless Montezuma commands the hostilities to stop.
-
[Cortes speaking Spanish]
-
[crowd yelling and chanting]
-
[yelling to the crowd]
-
Montezuma: These strangers are my guests. Lay down your arms.
-
[crowd continues to yell]
-
Narrator: The most powerful ruler in the Americas murdered by his own people.
-
[fighting continues]
-
Fighting for their lives, Cortes and his men barely escape with a fortune in Aztec gold and silver
-
and leave behind a lethal time bomb.
-
Oz: The conquistadors are going to war with the Aztecs,
-
but their biggest weapons aren't the ones they're carrying in their hands; it's the virus in their bodies,
-
smallpox. Unbeknownst to them, they bring it to battle.
-
Narrator: Six months later, half the city is dead from smallpox.
-
Eleven months after his escape, Cortes returns,
-
his victory complete.
-
He's hijacked the mighty Aztec Empire,
-
an empire of 25 million, brought down by just 500 men.
-
The quest for luxuries and power sends pioneers across oceans
-
in search of opportunity.
-
Now, a new world brings new beginnings.
-
The riches of a continent flood out across the planet,
-
changing lives in every corner of the globe.