Mankind The Story of All of Us S01E05 Plague

We are strong.

We build.

Innovate.

And opened new frontiers.

But the mankind is under threat

the forces of chaos unleashed.

They'll bring us to the brink of extinction.

A midst the chaos on unforgiving planet

most species will fail.

But for one all the pieces
will fall into the place

and the set of keys will unlock a
path for mankind to triumph.

This is our story,
the story of all of us.

Northern China, 1215 A.D.

The Mongols are coming.

50 000 warriors,

the world's greatest
cavalry army.

Their leader Genghis Khan.

One of the bloodiest
warlords in human history.

His target, Zhongdu,

today's Beijing,
China's capital city.

Cities are key to the
story of mankind.

Center of power,
learning and wealth.

They need protecting.

Zhongdu has 18 miles of
battlement, 40 feet high

and still vulnerable to attack.

Half a million
people live in Zhongdu.

Now, a battle for
the future of mankind

between city dualer
and the nomad.

Genghis Khan, son
of the tribal chief.

His father was murdered,
he was sent to exile.

If you survived a childhood
like Genghis Khan,

you're gonna have a
chip on your shoulder.

You're want prove to
everybody they were wrong.

You're gonna wanna prove,
that you know what are you doing.

You're want to prove, that you're
the baddest guy in the block.

He escapes his captives,

fights his way to the top,
unites the Mongols

and begins a campaign of conquest
that would change the world.

The key to his success:

a horse,

domesticated 5000 years
earlier in Central Asia.

Horses are extended
mankind's frontiers.

The Mongols can cover
up to 300 miles in a day.

Using the horse for warfare
unlocks a new key for mankind.

If we go back to the Mongols
who fighting with the Chinese

we sees the first trip
point in the history that

will eventually bring
us to the tank

and that trip point is horses.

Mongols start on
horseback at age three.

They learned to ride
without using reins.

When they encounter
humans on foot to the Mongols

those humans were a lot like
sheep. You could scare them,

you could bolid
them they run.

They can shoot at full gallop.

It's the first version
of the Blitzkrieg.

It is be able to riding to a place,
do damage and then disappear

before anybody even
knows what hit them.

Mongol warriors have
four horses each.

They can eat and sleep
on the horseback.

No army would travel so far
and so fast until World War II.

They would travel faster than
the news of their arrival.

Climate change is one of the
keys to the human story

and drives the Mongols
to change the world.

93 million miles from Earth

a surge in solar activity.

Blasts of radiation
scorch the planet.

It's the beginning of three
centuries of global warming.

Climatic changes in the ancient
world in the premodern world

directly affected
historical events.

In Mongolia drought turns
pastures into desert.

To survive the Mongols
sweeps South towards China,

the great power in Asia,

home to the biggest
cities in the world.

China is the great price.
If you can conquer China

you conquer the land
of infinite supplies.

Grain, silk, tea. China is the richest
prize the Mongols can possibly take.

Approaching Zhongdu, Genghis
Khan issues an ultimatum,

surrender or die.

Mongol cruelty is legend.

Prisoners decapitated.

Towers of human skulls.

Children slaughtered.

I imagine for someone
seeing in the city,

looking at over the wall and seeing
the massive Mongol horde

is coming in your direction.

You have to immediately
question yourself as

to why I'm still in this city.

I need to leave or
I'm dead.

Genghis Khan rape
so many women

that is many is one in two hundred
people alive today carry his genes.

"The greatest happiness is to
gathering into the bosom your

enemy's wives and daughters."

60 000 women it is
said prefer suicide

to be raped by the Mongols.

Their horses get the
Mongols to the city gates,

but no further.

To take the city they
used China's engineers

and force them to
build battering rams.

Prisoners of war
attacking their own city.

To defend themselves, Zhongdu
soldiers must kill their own people.

If the gate breaks the city falls.

The Mongols overran Zhongdu,

massacre over 100 000 people,
than torched the city.

The Mongols were unbelievably
effective military force.

If they had a target
they want it to take.

No one stood in their way.

An eye-witness reports:

"The earth was greasy of human fat."

In his life time, Genghis Khan is set
to be responsible for the death

about to 40 million people.

As many as Adolf Hitler.

He conquers more land in 25
years than Rome did in 400.

4 and half million square miles, the
largest empire so far in human history.

And the key to his success,
communication.

600 years before the Pony Express
Mongols can send messages by horseback

across an area twice the
size of the United States.

Every 30 miles was relay
post with 400 horses.

Government messengers
carrying an official medallion

can claim food and fresh mount,
the world's first passport.

As the result of Genghis
Khan conquest

for the first time in history one
can safely travel from one end

of the world to
the other end.

Paper, printing and gunpowder

will head from East to West.

All keys to the
future of mankind.

But at the same time
the killer is on the loose

that wiped out up to half
of Europe's population.

Mankind battles with
enduring enemy, disease.

Issyk Kul, a trading post,
midway between Europe and Asia.

Genghis Khan has been dead
for more than a century,

but his empire continues.

Along his trade routes
a deadly traveler,

bacteria.

For three and a half billion years

virtually every corner of
the Earth has been covered

by these microorganisms.

Our own bodies contain more
bacterial cells than human cells.

Most are harmless,
many are essential,

but these have the
power to kill.

At Issyk Kul pandemic begins.

One of the first recording
victims, Kutluk.

Married, Christian, dubbed.

His wife's poke remedies
have no effect.

Imagine your husband comes
back from trading and he has

it a big blue blisters
and feels ill.

Is it from the air? From
the water he drag?

Is it some foreign animal
inside? What's going on?

You are completely confused.

Bacteria rushed through
Kutluk's bloodstream.

They are win his immune
system and spread vilacesly.

The storing and swelling his glands.

His skin erupts in giant paswiled source,

buboes.

Bubonic plague.

Pass it on by an
almost invisible carrier,

the flea.

It staple diet is blood.

When it bites, it famets plague
bacteria into the bloodstream.

Kutlok's wife doesn't know it,

but she too has been bitten.

Within days both
of them will be dead.

In 1337 four people die in Issyk Kul.

Two years later there
are 100 deaths,

but this is just a beginning.

When takes spread,
this infection don't stop.

Improve transportation makes
diseases almost impossible to control.

The fleas they carried
the plague hitch a lift,

from one our closest companions,

the Black rat.

Native to Asia, they spread
to Europe with the Romans.

From a pair of rats 2000
new offspring a year

and every rat can carry eight
plaque infected fleas.

Black rats infest the cargo the travels
along the Mongols trade routes.

Spreading out from Issyk Kul,
the plague sweeps East to China

and West towards Europe.

Kaffa on the Black sea,

the thriving port at the
crossroads East and West.

Controlled by Italian merchants.

One man is credited with
spreading the plague into Europe,

the descendant of Genghis Khan,

Jani Beg.

He murdered his own
brother to seize power.

Now he wants to expand
the Mongol empire westwards.

Kaffa stands on his way.

But he has a terrible
new weapon.

The plague kills his soldiers faster
than they can be replaced.

But that gives Jani Beg an idea.

His dead men become ammunition.

Biological warfare
wasn't entirely new.

In the 6.century B.C. by the Assyrians
and the Greeks used to poison wells,

but in the Kaffa Mongols
took it another stage.

They launched it physically
like a chemical bomb.

Biological weapons are so deadly,
that been outlawed in 165 countries,

including Russia and United States.

But it is thought more
than enough remain,

to wipe out mankind
in the stroke.

No one has ever used biological
weapons like Jani Beg.

One chronicler writes:

"What seems like mountains of
dead would throw into the city.

The rotting corpses
is tainted the air.

Stench was overwhelmed."

There can be no weapon

that is as terrifying as what is
unleashed with biological warfare.

You cannot see germs,
you cannot see disease

and nothing you can do
can make you immune to it.

The inhabitants of Kaffa
try to outrun the plaque

and flee to Europe.

They have no idea they
bringing the disease with them.

The plague run out to the world's
most densely populated continent.

Sienna, Italy.
1348.

A family locks itself in,

hoping to lock the disease out.

The father writes in account

one of the only surviving records

as the invasion of Europe begins.

"It was cruel and horrible thing.

I don't know where to begin,

to tell it's brutal
and pitiless ways."

The battles for the survival
of mankind has begun.

Mankind faces a battle
against the extinction.

Sienna, Italy,

six months after the
plague invades Europe.

Thousands are dead.

Agnolo De Tura,

local businessman,
the town chronicler.

He barricades his
family inside their home.

The killer outside
must not come in.

Agnolo uses fire and
smoke to war after plague.

No one suspects
it's carried by rats.

You don't know what it cause it.
Could be the air, could be the water

and so you have the sensation
around you of something building up

but you don't know what it is.

The plague takes ten
years to cross Asia,

moving slowly from
village to village.

But Europe is the perfect
breeding ground.

Hundreds of cities, 80 million
people living in close course.

These cities have all the
conditions to sustain plague.

Filth, the squalor.

Rodents that was just considered
part of natural life of that point

and nobody considered that
these rodents and their fleas

could potentially be a problem.

And then you had these massive
number of people of pact together

in these small dwellings and this is
exact sort of situation you would want

if you trying to cause
a plague epidemic.

The plague has entered
in Agnelo's home,

infecting his wife Nicoluccia.

If you ever seen bubonic
plague it's very gross.

A huge purple growth takes place
which creates psychological trauma,

havoc and incredible fear.

Agnolo tries anything.
Everything.

"Vomit regularly, especially at
the first sign of any illness."

"Drink glass of your own
urine twice a day."

"Apply an ointment to the bulbo
made from honey, egg yolks

and scorpion oil to
dry out the poison."

"Avoid sex and baths."

Finally the plague doctor.

His hood filled with
herbs for the protection.

His treatment, drain the
disease out from the victim.

Physicians would try any desperate
measure they could work.

Blood leading was tried, leeches
were used but none seem to work.

The smartest thing that doctor could
do is stay away from the patient,

because he's unwittingly we
were taken the bacteria

from one patient to the next.

Hold the wife, the plague
bacteria mutating,

finding new ways to
reproduce and spread.

They no longer need
to be carried by fleas,

they are airborne.

The airborne plague is
fundamentally different because

it now can be transmitted
from human being to human being.

The kill rate was 75 percent,

now nearly 100.

In six months 31 000 people,
60 percent of Sienna wiped out.

More than two every three person
you knew in Sienna were gone.

Families decimated,
clans decimated.

Everybody decimated.

"I, Agnolo di Tura, buried my
children with my own hands.

There was no one who
grieve for any death

for all awaited death.

So many died that all believed
it was the end of the world."

Fear and panic set same.
You asking yourself

what's causing
this, you know?

Did I do something wrong?
Did I forget to go to the Church?

And each symptoms seems
like the Devil is doing it.

The overwhelming theory
was an avenging God.

Somehow this was the anger
of God causing this disease.

Now, disaster tasks
mankind faiths.

Avignon, France.

Home to Pope Clement the sixth.

One of the most powerful
man in the world,

controlling wast armies
and enormous wealth.

When plague hits Avignon the
people expected the Pope to come

to their salvation, to go and
innersee to God to stop the plague.

But Clement the sixth
can't stop the plague.

It devastates Avignon, killing
1300 people in the single day.

Pope Clement buys a field
and buries 11 000 people,

but it is not enough.

He tries a radical solution.

He consecrates the river Rhone

as a floating cemetery.

As bodies floating down the
Rhone river people realized

the Pope can do nothing for
them either God wasn't listening

or worse.

Fear and lost turn to rage.

The mob wants
someone to blame.

All over Europe the hunt is on.

1349, the plague
rages across Europe.

Mankind is at its weakest
and most irrational,

searching for someone to blame.

Strasburg, Germany.

The plague hasn't hit here yet,

but rumors spread faster
than the disease itself

about the diabolic plague.

They said it Jews are
poisoned the drinking water.

This was the Middle ages, this
was before the scientific revolution

and scientific method.

You had a world that was right hood,
superstition, anger, confusion

and unfortunately
that often to prejudice.

Ever since the 6. century B.C.
their homeland was conquered.

Jewish people have created thriving
communities around the planet.

Today, 26. countries have
Jewish populations over 10 000.

When fear grips mankind
minority is an easy target.

The authorities in Strasburg
try to protect them,

posting guards in the streets.

But isolation breeds contempt.

The mob takes the
law into its own hands.

February, 14th.

The Saint Valentine's
day massacre.

Jews of Strasbourg
were given a choice,

convert or die.

One thousand Jews
are burned alive.

But the massacre does
nothing to save the city.

Five months later
the plague arrives

claiming another 16 000 victims.

All over Europe great
cities like deserted.

An eye-witness reports:

"Shops are shed,
people rare.

A deep silence on
almost every place.

Consider what we were
and what we become.

There was a crowd of us,
now we are alone."

Mankind rendered powerless

by tiny bacteria.

Across Asia and Europe the plague
kills over 15 million people in 15 years.

But isolation can protect us.

The Atlantic ocean has stopped
the plague reaching the Americas.

The key to mankind's future
in a hands of visionary leaders.

Two hundred years
after Genghis Khan

young Inca warrior
prepares himself for battle.

Pachacuti.

Courageous, dynamic, inspired.

A vision of the Sun God
drives him into a mighty battle,

it will create the
Empire of the Incas.

Pachacuti had enormous
sense of himself.

The name means World shaker.
He gave himself the name, you know,

I am the conqueror of the world.

The Americas are
home to 90 million people,

living in total isolation
from the rest of mankind.

In this new world,
there are no horses.

They've been hunted to extinction.

No iron tools.

No wheel vehicles.

But the key to life in the Andes
high altitude agriculture.

This is a mountainous people,
a mountainous society

and so if you wanna have available
farmland you have to build terraces

along the mountain slopes. And when
you go through the Andes today,

you see the remains of
terraces everywhere.

Thousands of feet above sea level

they cultivated crops totally
unknown to the rest of the world.

Potatoes, tomatoes, corn.

Sixty years later the Spanish will
bring this super food back to Europe.

A key moment in shaping
the diet of mankind.

But the riches of their land
make the Incas a target.

To keep their territory
they need to defend it.

Pachacuti will have to fight
against the fearsome enemy,

lead by a dead king.

The story of mankind in
shaped by men of destiny.

Pachacuti, leader of the Incas.

His enemy, the Chancas.

Bloodthirsty warriors. They use the
bones of their enemies as trophies.

Their goal, crush Pachacuti

and captured the
Inca capital, Cuzco.

Leading the Chancas
into battle,

Uscovilca.

Powerful, ruthless and dead.

The life initiated the
Chanca reign of terror.

In death he speaks
to his priests.

In the Andes the ancestors are
very much present in people's lives

and so important
people are mummified.

Long before the Egyptians the people of
south America preserved their dead.

Children, adults,
whole families.

The oldest mummies have
survived for 7000 years.

By Uscovilca leading them
Chanca warriors feel invincible.

They outnumbered the Incas
and take no prisoners

but Pachacuti has a plan.

The goal was to try the captured
the mummified body of your enemy.

If you could tapel Uscovilca
then victory was yours.

He believes in something
more powerful than Uscovilca.

Inti, the Sun God,

the most important God
in Inca mythology.

The night before the battle Inti
comes to him in the dream

and promises him
glorious victory.

Pachacuti seizes the idea of
portraying himself as the living

son Inti himself in body
by the power of the Sun.

Pachacuti's father has fled,
his brother has fled.

But he chooses to stay and
lead the Incas to the battle.

You go up proving yourself to
your man by setting example

and say: "You know what?"
"I'm might die today,

but that's okay, because
I was born to do this.

And I guarantee an every true
leader that's ever win the combat

has felt that way."

Pachacuti tongs the Chancas

stoking their anger.

He holds his men back,

maintain the discipline,

until they unlish
of valey of stones.

Every time I winning the combat have
everything to do with the will to win.

That's would wins battles.

Pachacuti makes his move.

Inca legend recall his bravery.

The young Prince prove
himself at the enemy.

He was so agile, fast, he terrified
Uscavilca's bodyguards.

The Chancas vanquished.

The Incas victory over
the Chancas was legendary.

They never stop talking about it,
they never stop celebrating it.

Pachacuti will kick-start the biggest
empire ever seen in the Americas.

Most of modern-day Chile, Bolivia
and Peru, united under Inca rule,

until link their territory a network
of trails stretching 25 000 miles,

over some of the steepest
terrain on Earth.

At the end of the trail,
Machu Picchu,

Pachacuti's palace in the clouds,

unknown to the rest of mankind.

But the isolations of the
Americas is coming to an end.

In Europe survivals of
the plaque will rebuild,

launching a new era of
conquest and exploration,

that will lead to discover
of the New world.

1352, the Sahara.

The largest desert on the planet,

a siry wilderness, the size
of the United States,

the toughest challenge in
the explorer can face.

Ibn Battuta.

He left Morocco at age 21

and vowing never to
travel the same road twice.

He's explored over 40 countries,
but this is his first time in the Sahara.

"We set off into a desert,
took lead avoid the settlements.

There's no rad,
no track, only sand."

But at this time, the Sahara
holds the key to mankind survival.

The plague rages through Asia,
Europe and the Middle East.

It's killed up to a fifth
world's population.

In Damascus, Syria, Ibn Battuta
records 2400 deaths in a single day.

But the Sahara is the
barrier against the pandemic.

With temperatures
up to a 145 degrees

the plague can't survive
the heat of the desert.

Few living things can.

The Sahara is vast, it's a
definition of a horrible place to be.

There is no water, it's incredibly hot,
your eyes are playing tricks on you,

your mind start
playing tricks on you.

It's incredible ordeal.

The body's cooling system
shuts down. Heat stroke.

And you stop sweating because
you have no built to get rid of

fluid to light to cool down.
You stop thinking normally

and you start erratic bizarre
behavior that ultimately leads to death.

Ibn Battuta's life in the hands
of his traveling companions,

the Touareg.

Nomads from North Africa,
they lived in the Sahara

for over a thousand years,
trading something we take

for granted today, but was
once one of the most valuable,

commodities on the planet.

salt. -Salt was everything,
salt was literally the

difference between life and death.

Before of refrigeration salt was
the key to preserving food.

It absorbs water and
stops bacteria from growing.

Salted food can last for
a year without spoil.

Access to salt determine you
would be powerful enough.

I can't send an army across the water
or great distances without provisions

and their provisions are going
bad if they are not salted.

The Touareg have discovered
a rich supply under their feet.

Millions of years ago
the Sahara was a sea.

As the water evaporated and
left behind huge salt deposits.

The salt trade is the Touareg life live.

They mined in Taghaza in
the middle of the Sahara.

Than tracks hundreds
of miles South,

to the markets in the great
cities of the Mali empire,

Djenne, Gao and Timbuktu.

But it is a dangerous
journey in a deadly landscape.

The greatest fear of
every traveler,

the sandstorm.

With dub in seconds by
70 miles per hour winds.

When the sandstorm hits it fills the
air with sand, fills your lungs,

fills your eyes and your
nose, you can't see.

This wind and the sand can
strip the paint off a car.

You have to get
shelter or you die.

"One of our party was
lost in the desert.

After that I never went ahead
or never lack behind again."

After two months in the Sahara
Ibn Battuta's camel train

reaches the destination.

The cities of Mali.

"Travelers have nothing to fear.
They gave me gifts of food

and treated me with
the athmos generosity.

Make God reward that
for their kindness."

Touareg merchants can now
trade their precious cargo.

In Mali salt is so in demand
its trade it for gold.

Today most gold in the world has
to be mined deep underground.

In Mali it flows at the
bedrock of the river Niger.

At this time, as much as
two-thirds of the world's known

gold reserves are in West Africa.

The key returns Mali's rulers into some
of the richest men on the world.

And their cities into
center of learning.

Timbuktu University one of
the oldest in the world,

the first in sub Saharan Africa.

Up to 25 000 people the quarter
of the population students.

Over 300 000 scrolls.

One of the greatest
libraries in the Islamic world.

Scholars from lots a lots of places
went there to study the schools.

It was the world wide web.

There's the place where
information was held.

This is Africa's golden age.

In the South great Zimbabwe,

climing city of stone,

legendary site of King
Solomon's mines.

In the highlands of Ethiopia an
ancient Christian empire

claiming to descend for
the Queen of Shiva.

In on the East coast, Kilwa,

one of Africa's busiest ports.

Ibn Battuta will return to Morocco
and write the oldest surviving

account of Timbuktu
and the wealth of Africa.

The Touareg will carry their
gold back across the Sahara.

Its destination across the
Mediterranean to Europe.

African gold will be key to the
greatest explosion of ideas,

the western world
has ever known.

It will make some men rich
and others reckless.

Venice, 117 mud
islands join together,

become a thriving
center of congress.

Silk from the Middle East,

spices from India

and the key to its wealth,

gold from Africa.

A young Venetian,
Pietro Venier,

hoping to get rich, as a partner
in a bank the Priuli Brothers.

70 years earlier the plague wiped
out half the population of Venice.

But in the story of mankind
disaster creates opportunity.

Venice is the nursery of
modern banking and finance.

This is the cradle of Capitalism.

In the 15th and 16th
centuries it is not place to be.

It's absolutely not place to be.

In Venice African gold
dismantled into Ducats,

an international currency.

Merchants banked their Ducats
with men like Pietro Venier.

Modern banking begins in Italy,

at the benches "the banchi",
where money change his hands.

They would go to banks to
borrow for personal loans

and they would go to banks for
borrow for commercial loans.

Many the same reasons
we go to banks today.

But Venice is a magnet for
disadvantaged, lured by its wealth.

Enrico.

An unemployed migrant,
hungry and tempted.

340 ducats, over two
pounds of gold.

Pietro Venier has no choice,
he must catch him.

When the trust in
your banker disappears,

the banker's future
has disappeared.

His work doesn't
count for anything,

his promises don't count
and if your promises don't count

you are out of business.

The authorities hang Enrico.

There's no mercy for
thieves in Venice.

It's men like Pietro Venier
who will finance the Renaissance.

The greatest flourishing of learning in
culture mankind has ever known.

After the devastation of the
plague our rebirth.

We have works of art, works
of architecture, palaces,

schools, academies. All of the human
arts flourish where banking flourishes.

They were buying
collections for themselves,

but they were meant
for eternity.

5000 miles away China is on
the brink of its own rebirth.

The key a deadly
new invention.

For a century and a half the
Mongols have ruled China,

but the plague has killed millions,
loosening their grip on power.

1356, outside Nanjing,

a gang of three
plots of revolution.

Their leader,
Zhu Yuanzhang.

Born dirt poor,
orphaned by the plague.

Zhu Yuanzhang was a peasant.

He was an ordinary man but
he had extraordinary drive.

His men call themselves
The Red Turbans.

Peasants turned rebels.

People have nothing to eat

and when a rebel leader
comes along and says,

drive out the Mongols that is
an universal enthusiasm.

By his side his young wife Ma.

Daughter of the warlord,
partner in the revolution.

Ma and Zhu were a
match made in heaven

and together they were perfect
partners in this rebellion.

Third member of
the gang, Jiao Yu,

master craftsman,
weapons expert.

Jiao Yu was not just a soldier
but also one of the great

brains behind this operation.

Mongols soldiers were trained
to use a bow and arrow

with deadly accuracy.

Jiao response, a gunpowder.

Invented 300 years earlier by Chinese
monks looking for the elixir of life.

It's a novelty, used mostly in
fireworks until its power

has realized an as explosive.

Jiao designs a weapon he
calls a Human Thunder.

A small stone propelled by explosive
charge, a lethal combination.

The future of warfare rewritten.

Once the gun shows up on the
battlefield everything changes.

Anyone who picks up
a gun is instantly lethal.

Jiao is quick to see the potential.

"With these fire weapons I'll
conquered the empire as easily

as turning the palms of my
hands upside down."

Zhu's confidence will
soon be put to the test

against the deadliest fighting
force on the planet, the Mongols.

A 150 years after Genghis
Khan invades their homeland

Zhu Yuanzhang leads The Red
Turbans at the city of Nanjing.

A peasant army to drive
the Mongols out of China.

The key to their strategy a
weapon that will change mankind,

the gun.

But their guns are crude design
and can't be aimed properly.

The problem of early firearms
is having the pelacly of the gun

and going to direction
don't want to.

It's aimed that matters.

Gun maker Jiao's solution
quantity over quality,

a hell storm of bullets.

To annihilate the enemy you must
waiting until just the right moment.

The fire must be intense.

One firearm makes no difference but a
hundred firearms makes a big difference

and a thousand makes even more.

It must have been incredibly confusing
and incredibly frightening.

It is a game changer. Old school
defenses, old school technology

is no longer effective
against the gun.

Jiao's gun levels the battlefield

and allows a band of rebels take
on the deadliest army in the world.

We no longer use horses on a
battlefield. We still use gunpowder.

That is a lasting change the
battlefield that cannot be ignored.

Over the next 12 years the
Chinese drive out the Mongols.

Nanjing becomes
capital of a free China.

Jiao, a peasant, orphaned by the
plague, becomes the emperor

of a new Chinese dynasty

and his wife Ma the empress,

the most powerful
women on the planet.

When Zhu Yuanzhang founded
his dynasty he calls it

name which means bright.

The Mongols are darkness
and he is the light.

The Ming dynasty lasts
for 300 years.

Its rulers live in forbidden city,

a vast palatial compound.

No one can enter or leave
without the emperor's permission.

It takes up to a million
workers, 14 years to build.

On a borders of China and even
greater engineering project,

the largest defensive
structure in the world,

began by China's first emperor,
completed by the Ming.

Over five and a half
thousand miles long,

20 000 towers,

The Great Wall of China.

Now a technology first
developed in China

will be perfecting in Europe.

It will change the world is
dramatically as gunpowder.

1450, Mainz. Germany.

Johaness Gutenberg,

goldsmith, entrepreneur,
inventor of the printing press.

It's still one of the greatest story
in the history of invention.

You think about the impact that had,
it's really hard to underestimated.

In 15. century Europe books are only
in reach of the clergy and the rich.

Handwritten and labour intensive
it takes it long as three years

to produce one copy of the Bible.

It was like having this
powerful force of knowledge

its lock in these
objects calls books

and almost nobody
has these things.

The Chinese invented woodblock
printing 700 years earlier,

but it was slow complex work.

People knew how to press blocks
of wood, but his innovation

was the turned into
an industrial process.

Manufacture books. No
one ever done that before.

A goldsmith by trade he
carves letters in metal

that can be moved
around and rearranged

and infinite variety of
words and sentences.

To print the text a
modified winepress.

He has been working on his
invention for over a decade,

but now he is
run out of money.

He persuades a wealthy businessmen
to see the press in action

and invest in it,
if it really worthless.

Once you laid up that
type on the page

one person could print off a
dozen pages or thousand pages,

it didn't matter.

The information age begins here.

Every page printed in a last 500 years
owes a debt to Gutenberg's invention.

With the investment
of 800 guilders,

the equivalent of
over a million dollars

is printing press
goes into production.

He prints 180 copies of the Bible,

another 6 billion have
been printed since.

Books can now be produced
2000 times faster than before.

20 million are
printed in 50 years.

As knowledge
begins to spread

it becomes more with an
reach of ordinary people

in ways we had never seen
before in human history.

All these parallels
here to the internet

that's a very good analogy.

Now a book will inspire one man
to strike out across the oceans

and change the
future of mankind.

1476, off the coast of Portugal.

An Italian sailor shipwrecked
and left for dead by pirates.

His name, Christopher Columbus.

a dreamer who will unite
a divided world.

He believes he has been saved
by God for a special purpose.

In certain cases an individual
makes a huge impact

and Columbus is kind of
pure example of that.

He's settles in Lisbon, Portugal.

With the help of his brother Bartolomeo
he begins to pursue his dream.

He was a guy who has a
tremendous personal ambition.

He was really really wanted to
pull the family up from the mud

and become an aristocrat,
become a gentleman.

His dream is
inspired by a book,

written 200 years earlier,
but thanks to the printing press

has become a bestseller,

after the Bible the most
widely read book in Europe,

The Wonders of the World,
by Marco Polo.

The epic story of the Venetian's
merchant and his travel East,

through the Holy Lands,
central Asia

and on to the exotic
timing cities of China.

It is scarcely possible
to sit down and writing

these magnificent of this province.
Here they weave gold tissues,

as well as other kind of silk and cloth.
The city contains merchants

of great wealth and
incalcul belemberd people.

Columbus was a classic example of
someone who really was inspired

by literature and dreamed big.

He's possessed with this some
kind desire win a lottery of life.

He wanted to be the
next Marco Polo.

Columbus's brother
is a map maker.

Together they plot a
revolutionary idea

to head East by traveling West.

Not over land like
Marco Polo, but by sea.

What a great opportunity, what
a wonderful thing to be part of.

When I think on of myself,

you know, a little frison.

Map makers at that time no
nothing about the Americas.

To them this double
continent doesn't exsist.

They believe there's a vast uncrossiable
ocean between Europe and Asia.

Columbus thinks they are wrong,

that the world is
smaller than realized

and it's quite easy to
sail from Europe to China.

When Columbus said:
"Let's sail a west",

you know, they head a picture
of the Earth in your mind and

they said are
you crazy. -No.

For almost a decade Columbus
tries to find finances crazy skin.

He's turned down by the rulers
of Portugal, Venice and Genoa.

But the balance of power
in Europe is changing

with the help of the gun.

It hasn't stay
the Chinese secret.

Almost as soon as the Chinese had
invented the first proper gun

within 40 years that its
spread all the way to Europe.

No invention that ever move this fast
in the entire history of the world.

1486, southern Spain.

130 years after
The Red Turbans

another rebel army
fights for independence

using the latest
in gun technology,

the Arcabus.

Technology is always improving
but there is nothing like a war

to give an outsize advantage to where
ever has that slight technological edge.

The gun improves when arrives
in Europe by traying error.

They want to increase their range.
So what they gonna do?

They gonna increased the link of
the barrel because they know,

bigger powder charge will how that
ball to travel further in distance.

They are going to tighten the talor
sistum increase the accuracy that ball.

They are gonna find the way
so that it becomes a one man

weapon vs. two man weapon.

The real breakthrough came
with the trigger mechanism.

The lever that operate it an armed
that brought this burning match code

down into the prime.

Individual soldiers will now armed
with something quite deadly,

quite accurate and
extremely portable.

What happens here in Spain

will help propel Columbus
to the New world.

The Loja,
southern Spain, 1486.

A Spanish army below the
walls of an Islamic fortress.

The front line in a religious war that
will shape the future of mankind.

For more than 700 years Spain
has been run by the Moors,

Muslims from North Africa.

They create their own cities
with their own architecture,

centers of learning, preserving the
knowledge of the ancient world.

But Spanish army try to reclaim
the country for Christianity.

They forced the Moors to
retreat back to North Africa.

All that remains is the kingdom of
Granada on the southern tip of Spain.

Key to the conquest of Granada
is the fortress of Illora.

If the Spanish are to reclaim their
country they need the captured

this Moorish stronghold.

A Spanish Captain, Gonzalo
Fernandez de Cordoba.

Young, ambitious, known in court
as the Prince of Cavaliers.

Cordoba will become one
of Spain's greatest generals,

a tactical genius and the
champion of the Arcabus.

The gun is deadly,
but only at the close range.

He needs his men to
be near at the enemy.

For four days stay on mat.

Now, he leads a fresh assault.

The noise of the Arcabus is the
equivalent to the jet engine it take off.

Soldiers deafen.

But the Spanish
regroup and fight on.

The closer they get the
more effective their guns.

The victory at the Illora, a turning
point in the reconquest of Spain.

Over the next six years city after
city falls to the Spanish.

January 2th., 1492,

a day that changes the
destiny of mankind.

Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and
Isabella ride victorious into Granada.

Gonzalez de Cordoba helps negotiate
the surrender of the Moors.

A Spanish chronicler calls it:

"The most blessed day
that is ever been."

In the crowd one man
sences an opportunity,

Christopher Columbus.

Everybody is walking around
the chest of doubt

looking a new things to do.

Now do we have our country back we
can start trading with luxury goods

with the Chinese and
than Colombo shows up.

Spain is the
new power in Europe.

Ferdinand and Isabella will
fund Columbus's dream.

They'll sail under
the Spanish flag.

Contact between East and West
once brought death and disease,

but mankind has unlock
the keys to a new future,

harvesting the power of gold,

gunpowder

and the printed word.

History is made by people with ideas
and the spirit of adventure.

People who see opportunity
where others see danger.

A new age is dawning,

that will unite a divided world,

the age of exploration.
BY AUDIO NOTE: RE外