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Would you do me a favor? I'd like to stop talking for a minute,
and when I do ... take a look at the room you're in, and above
all at the man made objects in that room that
surround you ... the television set, the lights, the phone
and so on and ask yourself what those objects do to
your life just because they're there.
Go ahead.
Well, that is what this series is going to be all about.
It's about the things that surround you in the modern world and
just because they're *there* shape the way you think and behave,
and why they exist in the form they do.
And who, or what, was responsible for them existing at all.
The search for those clues will take us all over the world
and 12,000 years into the past.
Because it's in those strange places and in those long gone centuries .
that the secret of the modern world lies.
And you'd never believe the extraordinary things that led to us being the way we are
today.
Things like, for instance, Why a 16ᵗʰ century doctor at the court
of Queen Elizabeth did something that made it possible for you to watch this
screen now.
Or, the fact that because 18ᵗʰ century merchants were worried about ships' bottoms
you have nylon to wear.
Or why a group of French monks and their involvement with sheep rearing,
helped to give the modern world the computer.
Or what medieval Europeans did with their fire in winter
that led to motorcar manufacture.
The story of the events and the people who over centuries
came together to bring us in from the cold and to wrap us in a warm blanket of technology
is a matter of vital importance! Since more and more of that technology infiltrates
every aspect of our lives.
It's become a life support system without which we can't survive.
And yet, how much of it do we understand? Do I bother myself with the reality of what
happens when I get into a big steel box press a button, and rise into the sky?
Of course I don't! I take going up in the world like that for
granted.
We all do.
And as the years of the 20ᵗʰ century have gone by
the things we take for granted have multiplied way beyond the ability of any individual to
understand in a lifetime.
The things around us the man-made inventions we provide ourselves
with are like a vast network, each part of which
is interdependent with all the others.
I mean ... cross the road, whether or not a car coming around the corner
knocks you down may have something to do with a person you've
never met fitting the brakes correctly.
Change anything in that network and the effects spread like ripples on a pond.
And all the things in that network have become so specialized
that only the people involved in making them understand them
I don't mean use them. Anybody can use them.
Down there is one of the biggest, most complex cities
in the world full of people using things *as if* they understood them.
And sometimes not even knowing they're doing it!
New York City, like all the other major high density population centers scattered across
the earth is a technology island.
It can neither feed, nor clothe, nor house, nor warm its inhabitants without supplies
from outside.
Without those supplies,
the entire massive structureand the teeming millions it encloses
would die.
And yet, in cities *everywhere*
we act as if that were not so.
We have no choice.
The pace of life in New York is setby the pace of the technology that serves it.
You just have to hope it will stay that way.
I'd like you to meet a few peoplewho were in,
or near New York Cityon a November evening over a decade ago.
And the reason I'd like you to meet themis because they all have one thing in common.
They were all brought to a sudden and catastrophicrealization of how vulnerable they were ...
how dependent on one aspect ofthat technological network I was talking about.
Because of what this did to their lives.
Now, until I was told what this is, I was no more able to recognize what it isthan
you are now.
But watch what it did to those people.
And if you look very carefully, you'll see evidence of what this does
in every second of what follows ... now.
It's one minute past 5:00 in the evening.
Rush-hour in downtown Manhattan.
Eight hundred thousand people crowd onto subways looking forward to home; to the end of this
journey.
For most of them,the technology carrying them doesn't exist.
They take it for granted.
Two minutes past 5:00.
Kennedy Airport.
The usual evening departure rate.
Passengers with appointments inNew Delhi, London, Tokyo.
Appointments they expect to keep.
And 200 planes due to arrivein the next 5 hours.
No delays expected.
Three minutes past 5:00.
At the energy control center, downtown,nothing special is happening.
It's the standard rush-hour conditionin the main control room.
The time of day when power consumptionstarts to come up to a maximum
as people head for home, and meals get cooked.
It's cool outside.
After a high of 58°the temperature's falling to an expected low of 39°
with a predicted wind chill factor of 5 degrees.
The energy levels are more than enough to cope,even on a chilly November evening.
Ten past 5:00, Mt. Sinai Hospital The patient, Mrs. Marconna, is expecting twins.
[Speaker: "Thank you Mr. Chairman ..."] [Speaker: "may I first say to my distinguishedcolleague,
the ambassador from the U.S.S.R ...] 12 minutes past 5:00 the UN General Assembly
in session The speaker is President Roosevelt's son.
In their boxes, the interpreters ... The invisible support structure of the debatewhatever
the language.
At the U.N., that's taken for granted.
In the subway, Herbert Friedman, a lawyer,reads his paper on his way home to suburban Jamaica.
Al Haydock works for a publisher on 5ᵗʰ AveHe passes the time doing a crossword.
Marjorie O'Shaughnessy also works for a publisherlooking forward to spending a quiet evening at home.
Steve Boetty, late. Been to a movie.
Bruce Singer, works in Greenwich Village.
Bill Palmer is a student. Just been playing basketball.
And Hans Kramer: Insurance broker.
All these people take the subwayevery evening.
They expect to get home.
They always do.
5:15, Kennedy Airport.
At one of the international terminals on the boardScandinavian Airlines 911.
Scandinavian 911 is on its way into Kennedy.
The pilot is veteran captain Carl (Laustit?).
[Co-Pilot communicates with ground control] A clear, moonlit night.The flight-manifest
lists 89 passengers.
The descent into Kennedy is, so far, uneventful.
It's now 15 minutes and 30 seconds past 5:00.
[Flight Attendant: Please fasten your seat belts]
[Co-Pilot: "Runway lights at uh ... two o'clock"] [Pilot: "Okay, I see them"]
[Doctor: "With the next contraction dear, you'lltake a deep breath and push real hard,
okay?"] [Doctor: "I think one is about to start,take
a deep breath, and push real hard."] At Mount Sinai hospital, Mrs. Marconna is
in labor.
[Doctor: "okay, I think we can put her to sleep now"]
The anesthetic being used at the time is a mixtureof of gasses including one called "Cyclopropane"
It's potentially explosive ... but everybody knows that.
[Doctor: tech talk] [Nurse: "alright well, she's starting contraction
now"] [Doctor: tech talk]
[Sound: baby crying] [Doctor: "Okay, we got a baby!"]
It's now exactly 16 minutes and 10 seconds past 5.
One second later, Several hundred miles north-west of New York
City, This did what it was built to do:
With disastrous consequences.
You may have already guessed what kind oftechnological network this is part of,
It's a bit of a power station.
The power station known as "Adam-Beck 2", here at Niagara,
where electricity is is generated by the*tremendous* power of falling water.
The water turns turbine blades that make a shaft spin.
At the top of the shaft are magnets, and they spin inside a cylinder up there,
that has copper-wire coils on its inner wall.
The interaction between the spinning magnetsand the copper coils
makes electricity.
That's where this comes in.
It's a relay, and its job is to detect changes in power,going
onto a transmission line.
These up here.
Power flows north along these lines, and on the particular evening in question,
this relay: Detected an increase in power onone of those
lines that was above a preset limit.
When that happened, magnets set around thismetal cup caused it to rotate,
and that brought this arm, to make a contact like this:
That contact that made, on the evening of November the 9ᵗʰ, 1965
at 16 minutes and 11 seconds past 5, The effect was to cascade power, off the overloaded
line, and onto another.
Which overloaded and tripped the next until all 5 lines going north had tripped
out, dumping their entire load onto lines going
south.
Within 7 seconds, the tremendous overload began to take out generating stations
*all over* north-eastern America from Boston to New York,
as the network fell apart.
As each area went it overloaded the next
within 10 seconds the only major system left was the great energy island of New York.
As the network fell apart, links between one energy center and another broke.
Instead of 300,000 kilowatts coming into New York to help meet demand
one and a half *million* kilowatts were draining out of the city,
to supply areas now cut-off from the network, but still connected, like leeches to the New
York generators As the overload hit the New York generators
they too began to trip-out.
[Engineers: "we've got a major power failure"] As the life-blood of the city drained, it
went into spasm! At the UN: chaos.
The power to keep the lights on also served the interpreters
And without interpreters, trapped in their darkened boxes
deprived of access to the ears of the delegates, the united nations was suddenly, and totally
*disunited*, as completely as if at war.
The city's elevators stopped.
Perhaps the subways were the only technology that people *expected* to fail
Eight hundred thousand people were now deep in the ground, under New York,
caught in a technology trap most of them had never thought twice about
As light went, so did the one in Mrs. Marconna's operating theater.
[chatter: "what the hell's going on!"] It was now only 10 minutes since the crisis
had been triggered by the relay at Niagara More than 500 miles away.
The generators continued to trip-out.
And at Kennedy airport the radar screens .
went black.
And flight 911 was in trouble.
[Pilots: frantic attempts to contact Kennedy A.T.C.]
[Engineers: disorganized back-and-forth] By 5:28, the time had come to protect the
system by *deliberately* switching what was left ...
Off.
[Engineers: quickly deciding what to shut down]
Over an area of 18 million square miles 30 million people were now in darkness.
[Engineers: "try to put the chairman on the phone"]
Isolated from each other in small groups, millions of people were still unaware of the
extent of the blackout.
In the subway especially.
[Voiceover Male 1: "People started chatting and but] for the most part, no one really
got into it yet »] [« because we thought that it was just another]
typical rush-hour delay »] [« but it was dark and that was kind of unsettling
»] to be in such a crowd »] [« but not to be able to see anybody »]
[« ... um, so one of the women had candles in her bag »]
[Female 1: "You know I have some candles maybe we could light them?"]
This abnormal business of actually talking to anybody on the subway caught on briefly
all over New York.
[Female 1: "... put some light on the situation lt's my birthday anyway, anybody feel like
singing?"] [Laughter ...]
[Female 1: "... make a happy situation out of a terrible one"]
[Group singing: "Happy Birthday"] But while this journey had taken on a meaning
nobody expected, so too, at the hospital had Mrs. Marconna's
delivery of twins.
Thanks to the anesthetic.
[Voiceover Doctor: "there was then a general scurry around to find flashlights »]
[Voiceover Doctor: « (someone)... commandeered one so she could be able to have one »]
[Voiceover Doctor: « one of the nurses, and I shall never forget walked into the room
with a lighted candle »] [Doctor: "Put the candle out! Get out of here!"]
[Nurse at door: "What's going on?"] [Doctor: "Get out of here!"]
[Voiceover Doctor: "... scared out of my mind that (inaudible) I had visions of all of us
»] [Voiceover Doctor: « ... the whole place
just blowing up in one great ... conflagration "]
The phone system was the only thing working, if you could get a number.
[Translator: speaking French on telephone ...]
And Captain (Laustit?) was learning the full extent of his predicament.
I-L-S, the landing aid that guided him in, wasn't *there* anymore.
[Pilots: Frantic back and forth] [Female 2: "I've got some wine here ..."]
The extraordinary thing in the subways, was that a full hour into the crisis, nobody
was trying to escape from the trap! [Female 3: "now what we need is a knife"]
[Chatter: how to solve the knife/corkscrew/cups dilemma]
[Female: "What's the wish?"] [Female: "The wish is that we get home tonight!"]
[Chatter: proposing toast to "birthday girl"] [Voiceover Male 2: "I just assumed that something
went wrong with the particular train that I was riding on"]
[Voiceover Male 3: "There was a feeling of ... it's being something we all just had to
wait-out together »] [« there was nothing anybody could do about
it »] no one knew anything about anything"] [Chatter: disorganized, happy]
Put yourself in this position. Would you do any different?
Here they were, one hour into a major disaster, and still trying to laugh their way out of
it! [Chatter: disorganized, happy]
[Chatter Male 2: "How about singing a song?"] [Group singing ...]
[laughter ...] [Group singing ...] [Voiceover Female 4: "People began to be very
jovial »] [« and ... um ... began to sing »]
[« Show Me The Way To Go Home and anything people could think of ... »]
[« that related to our ... plight"] [Doctor: "let's just keep on going, alright?"]
At the hospital, darkness made no difference.
[Doctors: tech talk] [Voiceover Dr: "the baby was delivered without
the lights because you didn't need the lights for the delivery »]
[« that was manipulative, remember you're reaching out into the uterus »]
[« grabbing a foot which is strictly by feel »]
[« you rupture the membranes and you bring the foot down »]
[« The second baby was vigorous and uh, we repaired the (inaudible)"]
Captain (Laustit?) had only a few seconds left to make his decision.
He was at two thousand feet past the airport and heading straight for
Manhattan in the darkness.
There was only one thing he could do.
(Laustit?) and 200 other jets that night, landed with the help of radio, working on
planes sitting on the ground.
In the subway, people were still coping.
[Voiceover Male: "About after an hour, hour and a half people became very restless »]
[« it was not pleasant. It was not very congenial, but everybody felt scared."]
[Woman 1: "I've never been this late before"] [Woman 2: "... let you sit here and wonder
and wonder and send nobody down to help us"] [Woman 3: "Somebody knock on the window. See
if you can attract his attention."] [Voiceover Female: "After about an hour and
a half of this »] [« train employees would pass outside but
not look at us »] [« and not answer us when people banged on
the windows and called out »] [« they just ignored us."]
[Man: "I think he's the conductor from the train, but I'm not sure"]
[Man: "Maybe he's gone for help? I don't know"] Gradually ...finally ...
People began to realize where they were.
Lost under the ground.
Helpless.
Unless help came.
[Conductor: "We have a major power black out at least it's the entire city"]
[« Let's all relax, we'll be trying to get you off as soon as possible."]
[Confused Chatter] [Conductor: "I don't know how long this will
take, it's Con Edison and it affects the entire city »]
[« We have people coming by evacuating the trains, now please relax"]
Mrs. Marconna found out what had happened to her
though, not the way she expected.
[Mrs. Marconna Voiceover: "When I woke up and saw all the candles around the room I
thought I was dead »] [« and there was a priest standing nearby
»] [« and for a minute there, I thought he had
come to give me my last rights »] [« and I was afraid that all my family knew
that I was dead and they came to light candles for me."]
[Priest: "Don't be frightened, hon, you're gonna be okay."]
And finally, as in all good fairy stories, it was over.
[Voiceover Male: "Exactly 5 hours after the train stopped, about 10:30 »]
[« the train began to empty by having all the passengers walk out singly upon the catwalk."]
A few days later, people were back at their daily routine as
if it had *never* happened.
The night New York became a trap: Forgotten.
This is one of the more perfect examples of the kind of technological trap that we set
for ourselves: The lift, the elevator.
I mean, what is it? It's a steel box with some buttons in it
and, maybe, a trap door for emergencies. But who ever looks that close?
Except when this happens.
Where is it? And even in this situation,
closed in, with an escape route that we can't handle.
We behave like many of those New Yorkers did.
We ☼ strike a light. ☼ And we look around to see how badly things
are.
And if we find, in this case, an emergency button ...
Absolutely great! we sit back and we wait for help to come. We wait for *technology*
... to come back and save our lives.
Because it's inconceivable that it won't! Isn't it?
I mean, if you admit *that*, you've got to admit
that every single day of your life in some form or other you, unconsciously,
walk yourself into a technology trap.
Because that's the only way to live in the modern world.
So you don't admit it. You say: "Oh well, in this situation, we'll cope."
But what happens ... when the effects become widespread? Irreversible?
Devastating? What happens when what little resources you
have to help you cope ... give up?
Then what? Well, in all the disaster scenarios you read
what happens is that without power technologically based civilization cracks
up rapidly.
Without enough auxiliary power - and most major cities don't have it -
organization is impossible.
It's *every man* for himself! Looting and arson follow
and in a city not prepared to be a fortress supplies run out - fast.
And, however frightening the thought of leaving your technological womb,
sooner or later there's nowhere to go, but out.
Away from the danger.
The minute you decide to move You're on your own.
In a way that no modern 20ᵗʰ century city dweller has ever been in his life.
And then the traps begin to close.
To start with, do you even know where to go in order to survive?
Did you manage to get a map before you left? And if you did, how do you get out? Walk?
Drive until you run out of fuel? Are you ahead of the
millions of other people pouring down these roads trying to do just what you're trying
to do? And if they catch up with you ...
have you got something they need? And if you have,
can you protect yourself? Did you bring enough food and drink to last
as long as necessary? And if you didn't, where will you get it?
Steal? How far out will you have to push on
until you're *far enough* out to be safe?
And, can you be sure that's far enough? And even if, by some miracle, you finally
make it.
Do you know enough to recognize a place to stop when you see it? I mean what does ...
survival without technology look like? There'll be no signs up.
So, let's say that finally somewhere far out into the country you come across a place that
looks right.
And let's say you've had the good sense and good luck to look for a farm.
Because that's where food comes from, doesn't it?
Okay, so its a farm so you decide to stop.
Has anybody got there first? Or - are the owners still here?
Because you're going to need shelter, and people don't give their homes away.
They barricade themselves in.
So, sooner or later, exhausted and desperate, you may have to make
the decision to give up and die.
Or ... to make somebody else give up and die because
they won't accept you in their home voluntarily.
And *what* in your *comfortable urban life* has ever
prepared you for that decision? Okay, lets say by some miracle the place is
empty and it's all yours ... Is there enough food in the house? How long
will it last? How will you cook it?
Wood fires? Are you fit enough to chop all the wood you'll
need before winter comes? If you're lucky, you've got livestock on the
farm.
Great! Meat.
But can you slaughter and bleed and butcher an animal?
Okay, supposing you've managed that.
You've got enough meat to eat until you've eaten all the cows.
But at least you could start running your farm.
But it's a modern farm, remember? It's mechanized.
There's a gasoline pump But it's empty.
So you can't use ... the tractor.
What you need is a horse and cart.
But when did you last see a horse and cart on a modern farm?
And everything else here: • The saw
• The power drills • The light
• The sterilizer • The water supply
• The sewerage system • The hoist
• The milking parlor • The pumps
... and everything on this control panel demands the one thing
you don't have: Electric power.
Everything on this farm that you found doesn't work.
The place is a trap.
But there's nowhere else to go.
The only way you're going to survive is if you find the one thing you need
to keep on providing the food you've gotta have.
And you don't the a mechanized version of that thing.
You need .
the kind people haven't used in a hundred years
Ah! You need THAT kind of plow.
You're saved! Or are you?
Because what it comes down to at this point is this:
Can you use a plow? It's taken a series of miracles just to get
you this far.
And here you are with the biggest miracle of all: A plow and animals to pull it.
So, maybe after a few days of fumbling around with the harnesses
and the bits and pieces you manage to yoke up the oxen
and plow the land.
And then *and only then* can you say that you have successfully escaped
the wreckage of technological civilization and lived off the land, and survived.
If you know how to use the furrow you plow! I mean, can you tell the difference between
an ear of corn and a geranium seed? Do you know when to sow whatever it is you
think it is? Do you know when to harvest it and eat the
bit that you think isn't poisonous? I mean, it's no accident
that the chain of events triggered off by that relay in power station
back there in Niagara Falls ends here with the plow.
The relay itself doesn't matter.
I mean, any one of a million things could fail and cause our complex civilization to
collapse for an hour, for a day ...
however long.
Because that's when you find out the extent to which you are reliant on technology and
don't even know it.
That's when you see that ...
it's *so interdependent* you take one thing away and the whole thing
falls down and leaves you with nothing.
Unless you can plow and survive
and start the whole process off again from scratch.
And it's no accident that to do that you have to have a plow.
Because it was the plow that triggered *everything* off
a long way back in the past.
After a different set of people also found out that their comfortable life ...
was falling apart.
In a world where events came to a point where a *fundamentally new* way of life
had to be found.
That's exactly what happened about 12,000 years ago in maybe 4 places on the earth.
• Northern India • Syria
• Egypt • Central America
It stopped raining and got very hot.
The result of that change in the weather was to lead to an invention
that would *trigger* the development of a civilization
that ends with us in the modern world.
Let me explain that: You see the high grasslands started to dry
out, became like this place.
And the plants and the animals that had sustained the wandering tribes
started to disappear.
People began to die.
There was only one thing the survivors could do:
Head for water.
And so, down they came, into the great "river valleys".
Here in Egypt that river was the Nile And the Nile was an extraordinary river.
It rose in 2 places.
From one it brought rotting vegetation, and from the other, potash.
And any gardener will tell you what that means.
When it flooded, every year it dumped compost and fertilizer onto the
land.
And the land bloomed.
Too well.
With easy food the population grew to where not even the Nile could support it without
help.
Faced with starvation, the river dwellers tried planting grain by hand.
Not enough.
What solved their problem was an invention that triggered off a series of events which
ends with us.
In our modern technology trap.
Because that invention was to trigger
the beginnings of civilization.
[♪ dramatic, operatic (tenor), drums, horns, ♪]
[♫ ♫ ...] This is the first great man-made trigger of
change: The plow.
Because with it, you *know* how much harvest you're going to get next year.
And because of that, You know you're going to *be here* next year.
And because of that, you can plan for the future.
And after a while, when you can produce surplus food,
then that's when things *really* start to move,
in the tiny settlements.
With regular food supplies, the population explodes.
The village expands.
There are more buildings and they're bigger for bigger families.
And they're more permanent.
You domesticate animals for their milk and their meat and their skin,
because they're not there to hunt anymore.
And ... Basket weaving and the twisting of grass to
do it, teaches you how to spin flax.
And that makes linen.
But it's the grain that causes the fundamental change.
Because with it, you bake the bread that is a staple diet on which everybody lives.
And, you learn about ovens, and about the effects of heat on mud, and
brick.
But above all, you have to have somewhere to *store* the grain surplus.
In pots.
But there's so much surplus by now, you need the pots to be made faster
and and you need them to last longer.
So, the potter's wheel ... happens Then comes the problem of "who does it belong
to?" And the only answer to that,
Is this:
Writing.
And the very first writing takes that form: A name, and a symbol for what's inside,
this pot, or a lot of pots,
or an entire village granary.
And so, the little villages grew with their huts and their granaries.
And then ... almost out of nowhere it seems, that happened:
[♪ dramatic, orchestral, horns, cymbals ♪]
The oldest stone building in the world: The step pyramid of King Djoser, at Sakara
(سقارة), near Cairo (القاهرة) Built around 2700 bc.
Instant, *sophisticated* architecture from mud huts
in ONE jump! How did they do it?
Because of what they'd had to do to feed themselves: Irrigate.
Because the river flooded every year and destroyed landmarks,
and then retreated leaving the soil to dry out,
they had to do two things: 1. Find a way of measuring the land so the
farmer got his own fields back and ... 2. A way of channeling the water away for
use after the flood had gone.
The kind of measurement you need to do those things,
involves Geometry, and the type of Mathematics a civil engineer uses.
And building canals teaches you to work stone.
If you know stonework and Geometry and Mathematics, you can build pyramids.
Especially for strong central government that was developed
to *run* the irrigation schemes in the first place
tells you to.
If the Pharaoh said he wanted a pointed stone monument,
that's what he got.
[♪ powerful, orchestral, horns, drums ♪] Funny thing is, the same drought that brought
everybody down to the Nile also preserved the things they built - like
their tombs - for thousands of years.
The stuff on the walls in this tomb for example, is 4500 years old.
A kind of cartoon-view of the civilization the plow created.
I mean look: Here's irrigation: there are these people
carrying water pots. you see them? And the carry them across and they pour the
water into a garden that has a wall 'round it.
And then over here, look: ha! there's a fellow doing a bit of weeding.
There's the plow.
They domesticated oxen.
They tried to domesticate any animal that they could get their hands on!
I mean, take a look at this: Animal flat on its back,
tie its back legs, hang onto its front legs,
stuff food down its throat and hope it'll learn to love you.
Didn't get to far with that one! It was a Hyena!
Well, you've got a growing community and plenty of spare food and you'll need to protect yourself,
so, making weapons becomes very important.
And here on this wall, there's a whole thing about handling metals.
Look: Here are the weights-and-measures people checking
on how much metal is going to be used.
Next to them, the furnacemen ... You see the way they're raising the temperature?
They're blowing on these tubes to create a draft in the furnace to get the
temperature high.
Next to them here's the molten metal being poured ...
into a mold.
And here ... the fellows beating it flat.
Okay you get yourself a Kingdom, you get what you deserve: You get bureaucrats.
Here they are: The scribes, writing *everything* down.
See the pens behind their ears? In this case
they're noting taxes: Here are the people coming in to pay their taxes,
led, persuasively, by the local police: Here's a policeman with a ... "rod of office".
More policemen.
Here's an Egyptian scruff on the neck, he obviously doesn't want to pay.
If you end up not paying, they get out their whips,
and they tie you to a pole, and that's you get for not coming up with
the money.
So you have a busy, sophisticated society, you have to have people in the top; in charge.
This is the tomb of one of them: He was a kind of Egyptian Chancellor, responsible
directly to the King.
There he is: His name was Mereruka.
[♪ powerful, base-drums ♪] By sometime around 3200 bc. the entire 700
mile length of the Nile - from the Mediterranean to Assuan (أسوان)
- was united and administered by officials like
Mereruka, each one running what was called a "water
province"; A section of the irrigation network, and of
the river under his command.
What held it all together, was the King's "magic" ability (as a "God")
to come up year after year with an inundation of the Nile.
And to *know* exactly how high the waters would go.
Of course it wasn't magic, it was his astronomers.
They observed that one particular star: "Sirius" Rises just before dawn on *one* particular
day - the 17ᵗʰ of July -
every year.
And that day is one day before the flood begins.
They also saw that, on average, the flood itself came
once every 365 days.
Now you put those two facts together: 1. The star before dawn ...
2. and the flood And you've got yourself a calendar.
And with a calendar, you can organize people. You can give them a *date* to do something
on.
And as for the King's ability to predict how high the water would go well ...
you record the level of the flood every year with a scratch on the wall.
And after a while you're experience will tell you,
early on how high the water's going to be later.
Now, in Egypt where water is life, that kind of knowledge, and ability to control,
gives you the power to build empires.
[♪ somber, french horns ♪] [♪ triumphant, violins, trombones ♪]
these are the great, ancient temples of Karnak (معبد الكرنك).
On the edge of Nile, about 450 miles south of Cairo (القاهرة).
They were the center of Egyptian religion, built in the Imperial city of Thebes (طيبة),
when the Egyptian empire was at its height.
The greatest power in the world.
This: Was the "New York" of the time.
The temples were built over a period of about two thousand years,
each Pharaoh adding his bit; Leaving his name in stone ...
to last forever.
Inside the temple domain, there were sixty five towns.
Four hundred and thirty three gardens and orchards,
four *hundred* thousand animals, and it took took eighty thousand people just
to run the place.
Small wonder that centuries afterwards the Greeks and the Romans came in here
and Gawked like peasants at a civilization that made their efforts look like ...
☺ well-dressed mud huts. ☺ It still has that effect today.
You come here, from the great modern cities,
full of the immense power of modern technology, at your finger tips,
press a button, turn a switch, and *this* place ...
Stops you dead! [♪ ominous, magical ♪]
And then, just when you think you've got the measure of Karnak, you come here,
at dawn to the hall of columns.
One of the most massive structures *ever built* and anything I was going to say isn't enough.
Look at it! [♪ powerful, marching drums, horns, violins
♪] [♫ ♫ ...]
The Egyptians built an empire, and ran it with a handful of technology ...
• The wheel • Irrigation canals
• The loom • A calendar
• Pen and ink • Some cutting tools
• Simple metallurgy And the plow,
the invention that triggered it all off.
And yet look how complex and sophisticated their civilization was,
and how *soon* it happened after that first man-made harvest.
The Egyptian plow, and those of the few other civilizations that
sprang up around the world at the same time, gave us control over nature,
and at the same time, tied us for good
to the things that we invent so that tomorrow will be better than today.
The Egyptians knew that, that's why they had Gods:
To make sure that their systems didn't fail.
Karnak was the first great statement of what technology could do, with unlimited manpower,
and the approval of the Gods.
Ironically, the modern equivalent lies *again*, in the desert.
This time, the nomads also settled by a river, A river of oil.
But what took the Pharaohs 4000 years to build, took the Kuwaitis 4000 *days*.
What's happened in Kuwait; The change from the nomadic existence to being
able to buy and use *everything* modern technology has to offer
has come in *much less* than one generation.
Kuwait represents the immense power of technology used in a way most of us have never experienced.
Because we've lived with the kind of change it can bring for more than 100 years.
Here, it's been focused.
Change has been instant ... and *total*.
Kuwait has suddenly become *like* New York, or any other of the great urban islands of
technology: Totally dependent on that technology.
Like them, without it, Kuwait would return to the desert.
[In English: "Hello Jill? hi how are you? »]
[« hey listen. I'm coming to spend my Christmas in New York okay?"]
You see how, increasingly, the only way we, in the advanced industrial nations, with our
bewildering technology-network, can survive, is by selling bewilderment and dependence
on technology to the rest of the world.
Or is it *not* bewilderment and dependence, but a healthier, wealthier ...
better way of living than the old way? And yet whether or not you dress-up technology
to *look* local, the technology-network is the same.
And as it spreads, will it spread the ability to use machines, as *we* do:
Without understanding them? Somebody said, a few years ago,
about the way our modern world affects us all:
"If you understand something today," "that means it must already be obsolete."
Or to put it another way: Never have so many people understood so little
... about so much.
So why are we in this position? Why is our modern industrialized world the way it is?
And not some different way, with *different* technology, doing *different* things to us?
Well that's what the rest of this series is going to look at.
You saw, just now that the plow and irrigation kicked us all off.
And that an invention acts rather like a trigger, because once it's there,
it changes the way things are, and *that change* stimulates production of
another invention, which in turn causes change, and so on.
Why those inventions happened, between 6000 years ago and now,
where they happened and when they happened is a fascinating blend of ...
accident, genius,
craftsmanship, geography,
religion, war, money, ambition ...
above all, at some point, *everybody* is involved in the business of
change.
Not just the so-called "great men".
Given what they knew at the time and a moderate amount of what's up here,
I hope to show you that, *you or I* could have done just what they
did, or come close to it.
Because at no time did an invention come out of thin air in somebody's
head, like that:
You just had to put a number of bits and pieces that were already there,
together, in the right way.
Following the trail of events from some point in the past to a piece of
modern technology is rather like a detective story,
with you as the detective, knowing only as much as the people in the
past knew.
And, like them, having to *guess* at what was likely to happen next.
So ... The trigger that sets off the first of those
detective stories ... is that:
And I'd like to leave you with one question, before next time
Why does a modern invention that fundamentally affects the lives of every
single human being on this planet, begin 2600 years ago ...
with somebody doing this?