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For thousands of years,
the Ayoreo tribe have lived
in the forests of South America.
They're still leading much
the same hunter-gatherer lifestyle
as the very first humans on Earth.
But in June 1998, they came
face to face with the 20th century.
KNOCKING
This was a chance encounter
between two worlds,
both equally human
but completely divided by history.
In this series,
I'm going to tell the story
of the adventures and events
that divided them
Thousands of years
of explosive change.
stories that we thought we knew
and others we were never told.
None of us can hope to know
all of the human story
but it does help to have
the big picture
because it's really the story
of who we are now,
our own ancestors' long walk,
the tiny things
that changed the world
EXPLOSION
..nature biting back,
old glories,
winnersand losers,
truth seekers
and astonishing discoveries
GUILLOTINE FALLS
..revolutions in blood
and in iron
EXPLOSION
..modern madness
and the wonders of the digital age.
We have been brilliantly clever
at reshaping the world around us -
almost as clever as we think we are,
though not perhaps as wise.
There will be challenges,
triumphs and surprises,
all the essentials of the story -
except, of course, how it ends.
Africa,
around 70,000 years ago.
These people are fully developed
modern humans, just like us,
*** sapiens -
it means "wise man".
As hunter-gatherers we were
driven by familiar basic needs -
food, water, shelter.
And for over 100,000 years,
we'd been changing, adapting
and struggling to survive.
Climate was a big part of this -
the Earth shivered its way
through ice ages,
the skies were darkened
by vast volcanic eruptions,
the planet grew hotter and drier,
and then colder and wetter again,
and each change challenged mankind
to find new ways to survive.
Those who did survive
emerged tougher, cleverer
and better organised.
And in this particular tribe,
there was someone special.
She was part of one small group
of probably fewer than
a thousand people,
slowly moving towards
the north-east coast of Africa.
For early people,
life really was a journey.
It was an endless trek
after game and fruit and seeds.
Settle down, call anywhere home,
and you would starve to death.
Criss-crossing Africa over
tens of thousands of years,
dealing with the changing climate
and animals rather bigger and faster
than they were,
people learned the essentials
of survival -
language, clothing
and cooked food
..and, above all,
working together to stay alive.
Africa nourished us,
but she was always difficult
and always dangerous.
WIND HOWLS
SHE BREATHES HEAVILY
Over tens of thousands of years,
there's evidence that other tribes
made the same dangerous journey
out of Africa.
But after studying
the evolution of human DNA,
scientists have concluded
that only one tribe lasted
long enough outside Africa
to leave a lasting legacy.
This is the tribe that made it.
HE YELLS
They probably hopped
from island to island,
across what is now the Red Sea,
arriving in today's Arabia
around 65,000 years ago,
and, amazing as it sounds,
almost all of us alive today are
related to one woman in this tribe.
Of course, we don't know her name
but she was a survivor,
and we could call her simply
"Mother",
because there is
a tiny genetic mutation
in every single person alive today
who isn't from Sub-Saharan Africa,
and scientists have tracked it back
to one migration out of Africa,
one tribe, one woman.
WOMAN CRIES OU It seems impossible,
but whether you're from Aberdeen
or Islamabad, Tokyo or New York,
Scandinavia or the Pacific Islands,
she is your universal
African mother.
BABY CRIES
And the journey didn't end in Arabia
because her tribe kept on moving.
Step by step, mile by mile,
generation by generation,
modern humans spread out and slowly
colonised the rest of the planet.
First, we travelled east along the
coast towards India and East Asia.
It's reckoned that some of us
may have reached Australia
The land bridge that then connected
Asia and America wasn't crossed
until around 15,000 years ago,
but then quickly people spread
right down through the Americas
to the far south.
All these journeys were slowed
or accelerated by cold or heat
or climate change.
From the Middle East, another
branch of humans headed north-west,
arriving in Europe
around 45,000 years ago.
By the time we arrived in Europe
we were already deeply tribal,
living and co-operating together in
groups much larger than families,
which was very important
to our success as hunters,
but it had another side.
Our tribal loyalties meant we had an
ingrained hostility to outsiders -
anyone who looked a little
different, spoke differently,
dressed differently or perhaps
even smelt differently.
Truer still of people
who really WERE different
because when we got to Europe, we
discovered that we were not alone.
Another variety of human
had been living here
for an almost unimaginable
period of time
The Neanderthals.
Stocky and tough,
they'd survived ice-age conditions
we can barely comprehend
and now they faced a rather more
dangerous challenge - us.
TWIG SNAPS
SHOUTING
Scientists argue about this
but we probably co-existed
with the Neanderthals in Europe
for between 5,000 and 10,000 years,
and during that time
the Neanderthals went into
rapid decline.
NEANDERTHAL CRIES OU Nobody knows for sure
what happened to them.
They were tough survivors
who had been around
for at least 250,000 years -
rather longer than we've managed.
It's probable that we pushed them
out of their hunting grounds.
It's also possible, I regret to
report, that we liked to eat them.
HE CRIES OU HE YELLS
NEANDERTHAL YELLS
the Neanderthals became extinct,
and modern humans - clever,
clannish and remarkably violent -
were ready to rule the planet.
Except that now
our ruthless determination
came up against something
rather more formidable
than the Neanderthals.
Around 20,000 years ago,
temperatures plunged even further.
We were forced once again
to adapt or die.
Adversity favours the versatile,
and this time a very homely piece
of technology
would make all the difference.
This is a needle, made out of bone.
This is the real thing.
It's about 17,000 years old.
It's got a beautifully made
little eye in it,
very similar to the needles
you may have at home,
and what a needle allows you to do
is to wear not animal skins,
but clothes that actually fit.
The invention of the needle would
help revolutionise human life.
Wearing sewn clothing in layers,
we could huddle and judder our way
through the harsh ice-age winters.
We could be out, tracking animals
further, hunting for longer -
better predators.
We had arrows, yes,
and spears of course,
but the needle was
the great, unexpected
life-or-death breakthrough.
Modern humans were proving to be
one of the most resilient
species on the planet,
something new under the sun.
But it's in the French Pyrenees
we find evidence
that *** sapiens might live up
to the boastful "wise man" label,
and hope for something more
than survival.
We are already trying
to mark ourselves out,
to understand our place
in the world.
Here at the Gargas caves
in the South of France,
we can see our ancestors'
determination to leave a record.
What's down here isn't exactly art
and it's not graffiti.
It's something more personal
and, I think, more emotional.
These marks were made
by people like us
Mouth and hand - it doesn't get
more personal than that.
There is something so common,
so ordinary about
making a hand print -
children in primary schools
all over the world still do it -
that you can't help
but feel oddly connected
to these people
who were standing here at the very
beginning of the human story.
These hand prints are some of the
oldest human markings in the world.
Similar prints have been discovered
in South Africa, Australia,
North America and Argentina.
It's the first example of what
you might call recorded history -
a universal statement saying,
"We are here."
Around 16,000 years ago,
the northern hemisphere
began to warm up.
After tens of thousands of years
living as hunter-gatherers
at the mercy of nature,
this transformation
of the world's climate
helped our ancestors to do
something radically new.
The river Tigris, Eastern Turkey,
in the Fertile Crescent.
Humans can eat
and 32 of them grew here,
compared, for instance,
to just four in America.
Fertile indeed.
This is where
the single biggest change that
humans have ever made to the planet,
even in our age of science
and great cities
The one thing that has changed Earth
more than any other,
started here
in the "land of the rivers".
The people who lived in this
blessed place ate wild plants,
kept a few tame animals, and hunted,
but they were also lazy enough to
not to want to keep walking further
to find more tasty seeds to eat.
Laziness turns out to be
an underestimated force
in human history.
So, if you don't want to go
to find your food,
you can hardly make your food
come to you. Or can you?
These are the great
anonymous inventors,
and it's from this breakthrough
that everything follows.
It's a crucial moment in shifting
the balance between humankind
and the rest of nature.
THEY CONVERSE IN NATIVE LANGUAGE
It's not an obvious thing to do.
You gather the grains -
the food that you're hungry for
and your family is hungry for -
but instead of eating it,
you keep some of it back
..and you take it and you plant it
back into the dirt.
And then you wait.
WIND HOWLS
THUNDER CLAPS
To take a seed and plant it
seems such an obvious idea now
but 13,000 years ago
it really was a gamble.
It shows thinking ahead,
it shows planning,
it shows a certain faith.
But by making that simple change,
foragers who live
throughout the landscape
picking things up all over the place
are starting to become farmers
who have an investment
in ONE piece of earth.
And by choosing
the biggest seeds to grow,
people reshaped the plants, as well.
Bigger seeds and, eventually,
bigger everything.
Later on,
people in China, India
and South America
would invent farming for themselves.
Three grasses triumphed in ancient
times - wheat, rice and corn.
the bedrock of the human diet.
Farming was the great leap forward,
but progress came at a price.
When people settled down to farm,
life got harder.
The archaeologists are clear.
Farmers became smaller and they died
younger than hunter-gatherers.
Labour in the fields led to joints
inflamed by arthritis,
and the diet of sticky porridge
brought tooth decay
for the first time.
So why would people farm when the
world was still teeming with game?
More to the point,
why would they carry on farming?
Well, part of the reason
is that they got trapped
by their own population explosion.
Once people were
settled down with more food,
the numbers in the families grew.
Hunter-gatherers had to limit
the number of children
to those who could be carried
with them, but farmers didn't.
As human numbers rose,
and people started to work together,
farmers began settling down
in larger groups.
Scattered across the plains
of Anatolia in Turkey
are mysterious mounds.
Hidden inside them is the earliest
evidence of that next big step -
towns.
HE CHANTS
a small town of up to 8,000 people,
lived here at Catalhoyuk.
And it's here that we meet
one of the first individuals
to emerge from our early history.
Her skeleton was excavated in 2004.
She was only in her twenties
when she was buried underneath
the floor of her home.
She was found curled up,
tightly holding a skull,
forehead to forehead like this.
The skull had been plastered
and, in fact, it had been plastered
and re-plastered quite a few times,
suggesting that it had been used
for one burial and then another,
buried again and dug up
and used again.
It was almost certainly an ancestor,
somebody who mattered to her family.
What we seem to be seeing here
is ancestor worship -
worship of the ground that you stand
in and the people you come from.
The young woman was buried wearing
a rare leopard-claw necklace.
What's going on here is the opening
up of another human frontier.
As a town, Catalhoyuk is a little
conquest of physical space,
the here and now,
but the leopard lady's grave
is an attempt to take control
of time, too,
to link the dead, the living
and those still to be born.
These were people who, if asked,
"Who do you think you are?"
could give a very clear answer.
Their town was a compact network
of mud-brick houses,
almost like a human beehive,
and not so different from modern
shanty towns in today's world.
People walked across the town
on flat roofs
and they entered their homes
via ladders through the rooftops.
First of all,
it is recognisably a house,
not so different
in the way it's laid out
to innumerable flats and apartments
and homes today.
Through here is, if you like,
the pantry
with great big clay
buckets originally,
where they kept
all kinds of grains and seeds.
Through here there is what was
probably some kind of bedroom.
Five to ten people probably
lived in this place,
so a familiar design.
But the second thing about it
is that the people who lived here
were scrupulously clean
and they couldn't wash the floors
and walls
because they were made of earth
but what they did was
they whitewashed them, endlessly.
Over here you can see
these little lines
and that was layer upon layer
of whitewashing,
and this wall,
archaeologists tell us,
was whitewashed more than 400 times.
So here we are, right
at the beginning of human society,
in a place and surrounded
by the ghosts of people
that we already recognise.
The Leopard Lady grew up in
a well-ordered and stable community
where men and women
were equally well fed
and enjoyed the same social status.
This seems to have been a peaceful
place with no defensive walls
and no signs of social division
or conflict.
There are no temples,
there's no palace,
there are no warriors' areas
or special women's quarters -
just families living alongside
one another and co-operating,
almost like
the modern anarchists' fantasy
of a world without rulers,
a society without bosses,
and the problem, of course,
with that
is that these kinds of arrangements
always fall apart very quickly.
The people of Catalhoyuk could
only manage it for 1,400 years.
SHE TUTS
But this was no Garden of Eden.
Like farming,
living in towns brought new dangers.
Thousands of people
and goats, cows and ducks
living in close quarters
created perfect conditions
for diseases to spread,
and there's evidence that
tuberculosis passed from cattle
to humans at about this time.
THUNDER CLAPS
Most of the worst threats
to human health -
smallpox, measles, flu -
came first from farm animals.
Maybe that's why the Leopard Lady
died an early death,
before being buried
beneath the floor of her home,
like her ancestors.
Farming and town-living
had both brought new dangers
but the trap had closed.
There was no going back.
Across the world, many of
our ancestors were now living
in independent settled communities.
But what would possibly bring them
together into bigger groups?
Again, we have to look to nature -
not simply its opportunities
but also its threats.
All around the world people have
told stories about a great flood,
and it really does seem
that something happened
about 4,000 years ago
which caused devastation
to many of the first civilisations,
including China.
But what makes China different
is that they still tell stories,
part myth
but part, probably, history, too.
In China, it really does
all start with the Flood.
THUNDER
WIND HOWLS
According to the ancient chronicles,
there were nine years of heavy rain,
causing the Yellow River to change
its course with devastating effects.
WIND HOWLS
SHE CRIES OU The Yellow River is also known
as "China's Great Sorrow".
For thousands of years it regularly
burst its banks,
wiping out entire villages,
destroying everything in its path.
THUNDER
SHE CRIES OU The 3,000-mile-long river
flooded an area greater than
the entire United Kingdom.
The old legends say
that one of the clan leaders
appointed a man named Gun
to devise a way to tame the river.
The stakes were rather high.
If Gun succeeded,
he'd be richly rewarded.
If he failed,
he'd pay with his life.
He built huge earth dams.
But time and again, they were
brushed aside by the floodwaters.
Gun was unable to save his people
or himself.
The father's burden would now fall
upon his son, Yu.
After Gun's execution,
the clan leader ordered Yu
to come up with a new idea
about how to control the floods,
and Yu dedicated his life
to the job.
According to old Chinese legends,
he said he wouldn't return
to his pregnant wife
until the river was tamed.
The ancient chronicles say
that Yu decided to begin
by surveying the entire length
of the river.
On this epic trek he came up with
a radically different plan.
No more confrontations with nature,
no more dams.
Instead of trying to confront
the raging waters like his father,
he would divide them.
Yu planned to create
a vast network of channels.
During the flood season,
they would divert the full force
of the river
and reduce its destructive flow,
but that meant a colossal work
of engineering
..and a huge diplomatic challenge -
because in order to succeed,
he'd have to convince
hundreds of rival clans
to set aside centuries of hostility.
We're going back to the old strength
of pre-historic humanity, tribalism,
which was now becoming a weakness,
because only by working together
could the clans possibly solve
the problem of the Yellow River.
Yu's epic engineering project began.
Myth or not, there were major
river-taming projects at this time.
The story goes that
over the next 13 years,
Yu passed his home three times,
but he remained true
to his vow of self-sacrifice
and never went inside.
Finally, his vast
network of channels was complete.
THUNDER
And the rains came again.
Yu's great feat of engineering
would be put to the test.
But the channels calmed the floods.
Yu's story tells us
an important historical truth
about how natural challenges
brought river-dwelling people
together.
Da Yu had united the clans of the
Yellow River for the first time
because only by coming together,
under a single authority,
could they solve this problem.
As a reward,
the clan leader made Yu his heir.
Some people argue he founded
the first Chinese dynasty,
and certainly Chinese history begins
on the banks of the Yellow River.
Yu is known to this day as Da Yu -
the Great Yu -
and it's interesting
that the first Chinese hero
was a civil engineer
and a civil servant.
All around the world,
history is shaped by the desire
to shape nature to suit us.
BABY CRIES
That means working together,
but it's also competitive
and violent.
Each move forward
brings fresh problems.
Farming brings more people,
but it brings more disease,
and in more complex societies,
leaders and priests will emerge.
It's all a shaggy-dog story
of unexpected consequences.
From the sweat and success
of the first farmers,
all the world's hierarchies,
from landlords and popes
to emperors would grow,
and they only thought they were
planting next year's porridge
or trying to keep dry.
Egypt, 3,200 years ago.
The Nile is the longest river
in the world.
It flows from south to north,
but the prevailing winds
go the other way,
making it a wonderful
two-way transport system
and a lush green corridor.
So it's not so surprising
that the world's first great
civilisation started here,
with its temples, writing, priests,
its awesome rulers.
The pharaohs thought that
their stony, river civilisation
would last for eternity,
and, of course, all of this
is only possible
because of the huge numbers of
people planting, and cursing,
and lifting and cutting -
all the workers on whose backs
these great edifices were raised
and you never hear about them.
You never know what
THEY thought of it all.
Well, except sometimes, you do hear.
FAINT SHOUTS
Thanks to one remarkable invention,
we know exactly what life was like
for ordinary Egyptians.
This was once the town
of Set Ma'at, "the Place of Truth".
The stonemasons and carpenters
who built the pharaohs' tombs
in the nearby Valley of the Kings
lived here.
hand prints onto the walls of caves,
our enthusiasm for leaving our marks
on the world
had reached a new level.
Writing had developed in Egypt
around 5,000 years ago,
and at first it would have been
the preserve of specialist scribes
but the people of Set Ma'at
are among the first working people
in the world to learn how to write.
The ordinary villagers
sent letters and messages,
rather as we fire off
texts and e-mails today,
but they wrote them down
on little pieces of limestone
or on broken pieces of pottery.
They're called ostraca.
And they were discovered
in their thousands
where they'd just been chucked away,
so that we can eavesdrop on village
life from more than 3,000 years ago.
SHE SIGHS
SHE SIGHS
One of the voices we hear is
from an old woman called Naunakthe.
As we hear her speak,
a civilisation that seemed
distant and alien
suddenly becomes
surprisingly familiar.
'I have raised eight children
and brought them up well,
'given them everything they need.
'Now look, I have become old
and they don't care for me.
'The ones who put their hands in mine
and looked after me,
'I will leave them my property.
'But as for the others,
they will get nothing.'
The records are packed
with all human life -
children's homework, laundry lists,
a remedy for piles -
green beans, salt,
goose fat and honey
on the backside for four days.
Oh, yes, and the story of Paneb,
a married man
with a son and two daughters.
A builder with a sideline -
because Paneb was also
a tomb raider.
His story is told in the court
records of a scandalous trial.
HE SPEAKS THE LOCAL LANGUAGE
Paneb was the talk of the village.
He was accused of
"plundering the tomb of the Pharaoh
and stealing burial goods".
The judge also charged him with
drunk and disorderly behaviour
HE SPEAKS THE LOCAL LANGUAGE
..and with a violent assault
against his stepfather.
HE YELLS
Bad enough - Paneb, thief
and hooligan - but there was more.
Paneb
He'd slept with the wife
of his fellow builder Kenna,
and, no, it didn't stop there.
To make matters worse,
Paneb then went on to sleep
with Kenna's daughter.
THEY GASP
THEY GIGGLE
It's beginning to sound
like an early draft of EastEnders.
An outbreak
of wild Nile naughtiness.
But what's really interesting
is the court itself.
Each Egyptian community had one.
What's happening here
is another major development
in early human history.
They're trying to impose order
on society.
In villages and towns, the instinct
for fairness is producing law.
This is good news
for human civilisation,
although, on the whole,
pretty bad news for Paneb.
Tough on crime,
tough on the causes of crime.
Life wasn't easy
for ordinary Egyptians,
but order was infinitely better
than disorder.
We all remember the pyramids
and pharaohs,
but advances which were, in
the long term, just as significant
were being made
behind humbler walls.
But it wasn't just ancient Egypt.
All around the Mediterranean,
you start to see people
learning to read and write.
They trade little luxuries.
They eat better food.
They consume spices and herbs.
They drink beer and they drink wine.
And things are just going
to get better and better.
Or maybe not.
Writing helped speed up
the spread of ideas.
Trade accelerated
the growth of towns and cities,
and civilisation was spreading.
But the battle with nature
never stopped.
The Greek island of Crete
sits in an area
prone to volcanic eruptions
and earthquakes
and this was the home
of what's been described
as Europe's first civilisation -
the Minoans'.
So what does that mean,
"civilisation"?
Literally, "people living
in towns and cities"
but it implies more style,
more polish
and few civilisations have
seemed as stylish as the Minoans'.
the Minoans were pioneers
of international trade.
They shipped wine, olive oil
and timber
throughout
the eastern Mediterranean.
At the heart of
the Minoan civilisation
stood their great Palace of Knossos.
In the early 1900s,
Knossos was excavated by the British
archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans.
He discovered a sophisticated city
that had frescos, aqueducts
and even rudimentary plumbing.
The frescos and figures of women
holding snakes up to the sky
suggest that women held a dominant
position in Minoan culture.
Evans was entranced by the Minoans,
and he decided
to reconstruct their city.
There's something interestingly cool
and modern about the Minoan style,
something very 1920s,
and that's because it IS very 1920s.
Reinforced concrete.
The stonework is new and,
as for the world-famous frescos,
well, they're based on fragments
of Minoan art
but they've been
very, very seriously worked up.
The beauties shimmying down
to a beach party
with their flagons of wine
were famously described
by the novelist Evelyn Waugh
as being rather like
the covers of Vogue magazine.
Evans excavated and rebuilt
at a time when Europe was being torn
apart by the First World War,
and he presented the Minoan
civilisation as a peaceful utopia.
Evans imagined the Minoans
ruling over a gentler,
more peaceful Europe,
far from the blood-soaked Europe
of his own time.
The Minoan culture seemed idyllic,
but first impressions
are as dangerous in history
as anywhere else.
In 1979, a darker side
to the Minoans was revealed.
MAN YELLS
And that dark underside was first
uncovered here at a little temple
a few miles inland from Knossos.
It seems a tiny, quiet fragment
of paradise today
but when archaeologists started
digging through the rubble,
they made a satisfyingly
gruesome discovery.
MAN YELLS
SNAKE HISSES
Now, on these stones,
there was some kind of altar
and on that the skeleton of
a young man, about 18 years old,
and across him was lying
a bronze ceremonial dagger.
The bones on the upper part
of his body were white
and on the lower part black,
indicating to archaeologists that
his heart had still been beating
as the blood was draining
from his body.
He'd bled to death.
He was a human sacrifice.
WOMAN CHANTS
Two other bodies were discovered,
here and over here.
One was the body of a woman,
just over five foot high,
of medium build,
and her hands were trying
to protect her face.
Now we know that women had
high status in Minoan society,
and it's possible, even probable,
that she was a priestess.
Minoan society was highly developed,
but they lived in fear of
the natural forces surrounding them,
and their desire to control nature
wasn't matched by their ability.
So they responded with
the ultimate religious ritual
in an attempt to appease the gods
they believed
controlled the natural world.
KNIFE SLASHES
RUMBLING
Around 3,700 years ago,
during this gory sacrifice,
nature struck again.
CRASHING
LOUD RUMBLING
Trying to police nature has always
been the ultimate human challenge.
It still is.
All their attempts to placate
the gods having failed,
the Minoan civilisation
was devastated.
The Minoans will always be
a mysterious people
..and yet they do remind us
of a fundamental truth,
which is that although the journey
from caves to civilisation
had been awesome,
there would be no final victories -
certainly not over nature,
nor over the darker side
of human nature.
THEY YELL RHYTHMICALLY
In the next episode
HE YELLS
..the first great Age of Empire
..bold new ideas in East and West
..and Alexander the Great.
HE YELLS
If you'd like to know a little bit
more about how the past is revealed,
you can order a free booklet
called How Do They Know That?
Just call
Or go to
..and follow the links
to the Open University.