1 00:00:04,643 --> 00:00:08,344 Eurasia: the world's largest land mass. 2 00:00:10,434 --> 00:00:14,579 Some 10,000 kilometers from the Pacific to the Atlantic ocean. 3 00:00:16,794 --> 00:00:19,729 A formidable distance, even in today's world. 4 00:00:24,339 --> 00:00:26,806 And yet over that vast distance, 5 00:00:27,946 --> 00:00:31,855 human beings have pursued one of history's greatest enterprises: 6 00:00:33,905 --> 00:00:35,464 The Silk Road. 7 00:00:37,944 --> 00:00:40,964 A tremendously profitable trade route 8 00:00:41,144 --> 00:00:43,304 and so much more. 9 00:00:44,134 --> 00:00:45,658 For thousands of years, 10 00:00:45,709 --> 00:00:47,291 exotic goods, 11 00:00:48,476 --> 00:00:50,345 new technologies, 12 00:00:52,385 --> 00:00:54,234 conquering armies, 13 00:00:56,794 --> 00:00:58,484 and brilliant ideas 14 00:01:00,772 --> 00:01:02,907 traveled along the Silk Road. 15 00:01:10,506 --> 00:01:13,729 Silk Road trade helped to build empires 16 00:01:14,212 --> 00:01:16,553 and to break them. 17 00:01:17,063 --> 00:01:19,913 It fanned the fires of revolution. 18 00:01:21,503 --> 00:01:24,233 Drove great explorations, 19 00:01:25,313 --> 00:01:29,206 and forged powerful bonds between far away peoples. 20 00:01:31,681 --> 00:01:35,544 The Silk Road made human beings realize 21 00:01:35,864 --> 00:01:38,896 that there are other people out there, 22 00:01:38,946 --> 00:01:43,204 and it opened the eyes of the east and the west. 23 00:01:44,662 --> 00:01:50,003 This is the story of how Silk Road trade made so much more than money. 24 00:01:53,542 --> 00:01:57,595 It's the epic tale of how the Silk Road helped create a world; 25 00:01:58,855 --> 00:02:01,531 a world that created us. 26 00:02:16,375 --> 00:02:20,854 2,000 years ago, the Roman Empire seemed unstoppable. 27 00:02:25,608 --> 00:02:28,082 Rome had conquered much of Europe 28 00:02:28,822 --> 00:02:32,745 and was sending its legions beyond the eastern Mediterranean 29 00:02:32,975 --> 00:02:35,579 to the Middle East 30 00:02:35,649 --> 00:02:38,237 -- gateway to the riches of Asia. 31 00:02:41,357 --> 00:02:45,736 But a journey to the east could become a road of blood. 32 00:02:49,016 --> 00:02:53,995 In 53 BC. near the Mesopotamian town of Carrhae, 33 00:02:54,161 --> 00:02:58,218 the Parthians — an empire blending Persian and Greek cultures — 34 00:02:58,348 --> 00:03:00,382 confronted a Roman army. 35 00:03:06,442 --> 00:03:09,669 The outcome of the battle seemed beyond doubt. 36 00:03:14,394 --> 00:03:18,918 Some 40,000 Romans faced only 10,000 Parthians. 37 00:03:20,523 --> 00:03:24,522 And Rome's legions were Europe's finest foot soldiers. 38 00:03:26,702 --> 00:03:28,661 There was just one problem. 39 00:03:31,038 --> 00:03:33,913 The Parthian army didn't fight on foot. 40 00:03:36,373 --> 00:03:38,813 The Parthians, they were cavalry. 41 00:03:38,910 --> 00:03:41,049 They were horse archers. 42 00:03:41,119 --> 00:03:43,738 Versatile. Rode like the wind. 43 00:03:46,452 --> 00:03:49,206 What the Romans did was what the Romans always did. 44 00:03:49,236 --> 00:03:51,251 They took a fixed position. 45 00:03:51,834 --> 00:03:55,957 They were ordered into a hollow square defending all sides. 46 00:03:58,147 --> 00:04:00,823 But that was nothing to the Parthian horse archers 47 00:04:00,833 --> 00:04:03,501 because they could just ride around them, and they did. 48 00:04:03,559 --> 00:04:06,531 They galloped around and around and around and around, 49 00:04:06,546 --> 00:04:08,688 shooting as they went. 50 00:04:11,945 --> 00:04:16,209 Thousands and thousands of arrows loosed into those Romans. 51 00:04:20,102 --> 00:04:24,270 What the Romans eventually did was they were ordered to go into testudo. 52 00:04:24,690 --> 00:04:28,644 That's that Roman formation where they lock their shields together 53 00:04:28,704 --> 00:04:32,226 and put the next layer of shields to make a roof. 54 00:04:33,686 --> 00:04:36,527 Testudo is Latin for tortoise. 55 00:04:39,237 --> 00:04:42,722 But the Parthians had the answer to this tortoise. 56 00:04:43,782 --> 00:04:46,957 They had a hammer to break open its shell. 57 00:04:49,827 --> 00:04:52,521 The Parthian hammer was a cataphract, 58 00:04:53,664 --> 00:04:56,823 a Greek word meaning "clothed in full armor". 59 00:04:58,273 --> 00:05:01,773 Horse and rider wore heavy coats of mail. 60 00:05:04,053 --> 00:05:07,748 The cataphract was the ancient world equivalent of a battle tank. 61 00:05:15,968 --> 00:05:19,945 At Carrhae, charging cataphracts broke open the testudo. 62 00:05:25,695 --> 00:05:29,314 Exposing the Romans inside to more arrow attacks. 63 00:05:36,874 --> 00:05:40,438 Some 30,000 Romans were killed or captured. 64 00:05:45,808 --> 00:05:48,080 Parthian losses were minor. 65 00:05:49,710 --> 00:05:53,066 It was one of Rome's worst military defeats. 66 00:05:55,416 --> 00:05:58,819 But it may have been something else as well. 67 00:06:08,951 --> 00:06:10,693 A Roman historian wrote 68 00:06:10,723 --> 00:06:13,089 that the Parthians dazzled the Romans 69 00:06:13,129 --> 00:06:16,098 with banners made of a beautiful fabric: 70 00:06:16,703 --> 00:06:18,068 silk. 71 00:06:25,518 --> 00:06:27,565 That may only be a legend. 72 00:06:29,445 --> 00:06:31,519 But around the time of Carrhae, 73 00:06:31,529 --> 00:06:34,726 Romans began coveting Chinese silk, 74 00:06:35,446 --> 00:06:38,299 and China began selling silk to Rome 75 00:06:38,319 --> 00:06:41,781 in exchange for fine Roman glassware and gold. 76 00:06:45,891 --> 00:06:49,117 Inspiring the name we give Eurasian trade today: 77 00:06:51,447 --> 00:06:53,400 the Silk Road. 78 00:07:00,200 --> 00:07:03,811 But long before Romans and Parthians fought at Carrhae, 79 00:07:03,871 --> 00:07:08,052 trade between the peoples of Eurasia were shaping lives, 80 00:07:08,082 --> 00:07:10,465 making new things possible, 81 00:07:10,782 --> 00:07:13,042 and changing the world. 82 00:07:18,892 --> 00:07:22,554 At Carrhae, the Parthians won with a style of warfare 83 00:07:22,634 --> 00:07:25,100 that had evolved centuries earlier 84 00:07:25,110 --> 00:07:27,858 and thousands of kilometers away. 85 00:07:31,368 --> 00:07:34,176 On the steppes of Central Asia, 86 00:07:36,481 --> 00:07:38,829 an ocean of land, 87 00:07:41,409 --> 00:07:44,188 where victory in battle, and life itself, 88 00:07:44,188 --> 00:07:47,705 depended on moving very far, very fast. 89 00:07:53,137 --> 00:07:55,877 Thousands of years before the battle of Carrhae, 90 00:07:55,937 --> 00:08:00,117 a transportation revolution took place on these vast plains. 91 00:08:09,727 --> 00:08:14,133 There's good evidence for the existence of domesticated horses 92 00:08:14,727 --> 00:08:20,143 in what is today Kazakhstan and southern Russia by 3500 BC. 93 00:08:26,470 --> 00:08:30,419 And we actually think that probably horses were domesticated 94 00:08:30,419 --> 00:08:35,111 and began to be ridden 500 or maybe 1,000 years before that, 95 00:08:35,271 --> 00:08:37,757 maybe as early as 4500 BC. 96 00:08:42,067 --> 00:08:44,230 The domestication of the horse 97 00:08:44,240 --> 00:08:46,986 was the first step towards cavalry warfare. 98 00:08:50,586 --> 00:08:54,320 But the second step would be a long time coming. 99 00:08:56,979 --> 00:09:00,912 The first use of horses in warfare was with chariot warfare, 100 00:09:01,252 --> 00:09:04,803 and we have that well established Tutankhamun's chariot, 101 00:09:05,064 --> 00:09:08,124 which many people have seen in museum exhibits. 102 00:09:09,624 --> 00:09:12,979 And we know that people were using chariots in warfare 103 00:09:12,999 --> 00:09:17,588 starting in the Near East in about 1600, 1700 BC.. 104 00:09:19,952 --> 00:09:23,313 Horses were not used as organized cavalry 105 00:09:23,403 --> 00:09:26,624 until after about 900 BC, 106 00:09:26,954 --> 00:09:30,109 almost 1,000 years after chariot warfare began. 107 00:09:30,699 --> 00:09:36,382 And it's always seemed odd to me that cavalry began after chariotry. 108 00:09:37,992 --> 00:09:40,508 Chariotry is very difficult to manage. 109 00:09:40,568 --> 00:09:43,066 You have to train horses to work together. 110 00:09:43,116 --> 00:09:45,925 They have to pull this clumsy vehicle 111 00:09:45,925 --> 00:09:49,447 that has two people in it: a driver and a warrior. 112 00:09:50,817 --> 00:09:54,793 Training the units to work together, very difficult thing to do, 113 00:09:54,862 --> 00:09:57,616 whereas jumping on the back of a horse is an easy thing. 114 00:09:59,630 --> 00:10:02,997 So, why did cavalry come after chariotry? 115 00:10:04,824 --> 00:10:08,295 I think the real reason that cavalry waited 116 00:10:08,575 --> 00:10:12,873 is that you needed to have really three innovations. 117 00:10:21,341 --> 00:10:26,049 The earliest evidence for the recurved bow is in Shang Dynasty, China, 118 00:10:26,099 --> 00:10:29,498 probably dated between 1300 and 1100 BC. 119 00:10:31,578 --> 00:10:34,587 Shang emperors communicated with their ancestors 120 00:10:34,617 --> 00:10:38,752 by heating animal bones or turtle shells until they cracked 121 00:10:38,762 --> 00:10:42,133 and then interpreting the patterns made by the cracks. 122 00:10:42,903 --> 00:10:45,301 One of these so-called oracle bones 123 00:10:45,331 --> 00:10:48,599 is carved with the Chinese character for bow 124 00:10:48,655 --> 00:10:52,172 — the earliest known image of a recurved bow. 125 00:10:53,322 --> 00:10:55,500 And in the tomb of Lady Fuhao 126 00:10:55,540 --> 00:10:58,929 — an imperial consort and renowned military commander — 127 00:10:58,999 --> 00:11:01,749 archaeologists found more evidence. 128 00:11:03,836 --> 00:11:08,586 It's a thumb cover for drawing bow string 129 00:11:08,667 --> 00:11:12,117 and there's another piece that went in the middle of a recurved bow, 130 00:11:12,142 --> 00:11:13,234 a hand grip. 131 00:11:13,339 --> 00:11:15,268 The bows themselves are not preserved, 132 00:11:15,268 --> 00:11:19,487 so, it's a difficult thing to identify the origins of the recurved bow. 133 00:11:21,384 --> 00:11:23,374 The different components of it 134 00:11:23,414 --> 00:11:26,018 probably came from different places geographically. 135 00:11:28,178 --> 00:11:31,225 Just how far the recurved bow traveled across Eurasia 136 00:11:31,225 --> 00:11:36,889 was revealed in 2005 at Yanghai, in China's Xinjiang region. 137 00:11:38,513 --> 00:11:41,795 Wooden bows rarely survive burial in the ground, 138 00:11:41,885 --> 00:11:45,548 but Xinjiang's cold, dry climate preserved one 139 00:11:45,558 --> 00:11:48,081 in a 3,000-year-old tomb. 140 00:11:49,501 --> 00:11:51,834 Other grave goods and the human remains 141 00:11:51,834 --> 00:11:53,974 found in the Yanghai tombs 142 00:11:53,974 --> 00:11:57,360 confirmed that the bow was made by the Scythians, 143 00:11:57,610 --> 00:12:02,283 a highly sophisticated culture that originated in southern Russia 144 00:12:02,383 --> 00:12:04,150 and migrated on horseback 145 00:12:04,160 --> 00:12:07,263 across the length and breadth of Eurasia. 146 00:12:10,615 --> 00:12:13,780 The true birthplace of the recurved composite bow 147 00:12:13,780 --> 00:12:16,672 remains an archaeological mystery. 148 00:12:18,412 --> 00:12:21,393 But there is no doubt that 3,000 years ago 149 00:12:21,503 --> 00:12:25,771 anyone who fought on horseback would have found it revolutionary. 150 00:12:26,404 --> 00:12:30,159 A bow is as strong as it is long. 151 00:12:30,239 --> 00:12:33,587 It derives its strength from its length. 152 00:12:34,407 --> 00:12:36,891 And the recurved bow packs the same length 153 00:12:36,911 --> 00:12:40,443 into this very short bow 154 00:12:40,443 --> 00:12:44,137 that can be swung over the horse's rear and over the horse's neck. 155 00:12:46,099 --> 00:12:49,542 And it was much, much easier to use on horseback. 156 00:12:50,278 --> 00:12:54,474 And the recurved bows are technologically quite difficult to make. 157 00:12:55,274 --> 00:12:59,940 It took a long time to develop the craft of bow making to that point. 158 00:13:02,532 --> 00:13:07,002 The recurve all these sinewy bends — reflex and deflex — 159 00:13:07,096 --> 00:13:09,596 that gives it in-built spring. 160 00:13:09,626 --> 00:13:12,547 But that can only be created with composite materials. 161 00:13:12,621 --> 00:13:16,009 What we mean by that is it's made of a number of materials. 162 00:13:16,039 --> 00:13:18,337 The heart of it is wood, usually beech. 163 00:13:18,337 --> 00:13:22,109 And then you have horn, horn from a water buffalo, 164 00:13:22,192 --> 00:13:26,339 and then sinew, the tendons of an animal. 165 00:13:26,499 --> 00:13:29,363 That, when you bash it, 166 00:13:29,363 --> 00:13:32,628 you can tease apart and get these very fine fibers, 167 00:13:32,648 --> 00:13:36,706 fibers with tremendous tensile strength. 168 00:13:36,986 --> 00:13:39,650 That has elasticity and spring, 169 00:13:39,780 --> 00:13:42,077 and it stops the bow bursting apart. 170 00:13:42,097 --> 00:13:46,884 These are all materials that enhance the power, the spring of the bow. 171 00:13:48,482 --> 00:13:52,437 But only if bow makers could solve a very big problem. 172 00:13:54,867 --> 00:13:57,329 How to keep such a powerful bow 173 00:13:57,369 --> 00:13:59,635 made from so many different materials 174 00:13:59,635 --> 00:14:02,934 from breaking up when its own power was pulling it apart? 175 00:14:07,504 --> 00:14:10,818 Somewhere in Eurasia, sometime long ago, 176 00:14:10,848 --> 00:14:14,159 some unknown genius discovered the answer. 177 00:14:15,808 --> 00:14:20,042 This is the swim bladder of a sturgeon — a fish from the Black Sea. 178 00:14:20,083 --> 00:14:24,378 And if you start to break these up then put it in hot water, 179 00:14:24,446 --> 00:14:27,322 and you get this wonderful, viscous glue. 180 00:14:27,452 --> 00:14:32,680 This simple idea of making a glue out of a swim bladder of a fish 181 00:14:32,710 --> 00:14:37,247 was a technological breakthrough of immense consequences. 182 00:14:37,887 --> 00:14:41,437 It is what enabled the composite bow to exist. 183 00:14:42,047 --> 00:14:46,444 And in turn the composite bow was a military revolution 184 00:14:46,461 --> 00:14:49,593 of far-reaching consequences. 185 00:14:51,694 --> 00:14:56,156 The composite recurved bow gave birth to a new kind of warrior 186 00:14:57,135 --> 00:14:59,121 the horse archer. 187 00:14:59,221 --> 00:15:01,706 The horse archer was able to shoot from the saddle 188 00:15:01,866 --> 00:15:05,803 in part because of the new technology of the composite bow. 189 00:15:06,173 --> 00:15:08,906 They were short, compact bows, 190 00:15:08,906 --> 00:15:11,917 and that meant that you can shoot them from horseback. 191 00:15:12,017 --> 00:15:14,448 You see I can cross to the other side of the horse, 192 00:15:14,448 --> 00:15:15,848 I can turn and shoot behind. 193 00:15:15,888 --> 00:15:18,843 It's much more suitable for shooting on horseback. 194 00:15:21,783 --> 00:15:24,541 Everyone who fought with Eurasian nomads, 195 00:15:24,591 --> 00:15:26,735 whether as enemy or friend, 196 00:15:26,745 --> 00:15:29,542 wanted a recurved composite bow. 197 00:15:29,662 --> 00:15:31,880 By the early first millennium BC, 198 00:15:31,900 --> 00:15:35,224 it was in use from east Asia to eastern Europe. 199 00:15:40,004 --> 00:15:44,618 A recurved bow gave a horse archer unprecedented killing power. 200 00:15:48,478 --> 00:15:50,635 But it didn't make him a cavalryman. 201 00:15:53,185 --> 00:15:57,308 Before horse archers could fight as an effective military force, 202 00:15:58,038 --> 00:16:01,615 they needed a large supply of identical arrows. 203 00:16:04,055 --> 00:16:06,683 And that didn't exist. 204 00:16:09,631 --> 00:16:12,515 Arrowheads were a variety of different sizes and weights. 205 00:16:12,945 --> 00:16:14,727 Some were made of bone. 206 00:16:14,787 --> 00:16:16,743 Some were made out of flint. 207 00:16:16,853 --> 00:16:18,541 Some were made out of bronze. 208 00:16:18,621 --> 00:16:20,775 All of them would be individually made 209 00:16:20,805 --> 00:16:24,106 and you had to adjust your shot for the weight of different arrows. 210 00:16:24,662 --> 00:16:27,791 Also a unit of soldiers who were firing at the same time 211 00:16:27,821 --> 00:16:30,950 would be firing arrows of slightly different weights 212 00:16:31,030 --> 00:16:33,675 and they might go different distances. 213 00:16:34,395 --> 00:16:37,927 One of the features of a stone arrowhead is its flattened rear 214 00:16:38,437 --> 00:16:40,483 But how did it connect with the arrowshaft? 215 00:16:40,683 --> 00:16:44,066 It can only be tied to the shaft by rope or ox tendons. 216 00:16:44,126 --> 00:16:45,707 But what about the disadvantages? 217 00:16:45,707 --> 00:16:49,733 First, the released arrows tend to change direction easily. 218 00:16:49,773 --> 00:16:52,569 Second, they are likely to fall off, 219 00:16:57,709 --> 00:16:59,922 One of the technological innovations 220 00:16:59,932 --> 00:17:03,555 was the invention of the socketed arrowhead. 221 00:17:04,685 --> 00:17:07,815 They were made of bronze, usually, 222 00:17:07,875 --> 00:17:11,648 and they were made in a mould and cast in a mould, 223 00:17:12,138 --> 00:17:17,323 so that an infinite number of socketed arrowheads of the same weight 224 00:17:17,343 --> 00:17:19,365 could be made from the same mould. 225 00:17:23,145 --> 00:17:27,736 Making socketed projectile points was actually a big deal. 226 00:17:30,626 --> 00:17:36,126 You have to have a mould with a core where the socket is going to be 227 00:17:36,444 --> 00:17:39,348 that you can pour molten metal around 228 00:17:39,378 --> 00:17:42,600 so that it's the same thickness all the way around. 229 00:17:48,382 --> 00:17:51,457 Making arrowheads of the same size and weight 230 00:17:51,457 --> 00:17:55,023 was another Central Asian technological revolution. 231 00:17:59,083 --> 00:18:02,249 For the first time, mounted warriors could unleash 232 00:18:02,249 --> 00:18:05,222 coordinated arrow attacks on their enemies. 233 00:18:07,677 --> 00:18:10,399 With arrowheads of the same weight, 234 00:18:10,399 --> 00:18:13,844 every time you drew the bow to shoot 235 00:18:13,844 --> 00:18:16,170 you knew that you were firing an arrow 236 00:18:16,237 --> 00:18:19,496 that was exactly the same weight as the last arrow that you fired, 237 00:18:19,568 --> 00:18:23,694 so you could determine the range and the distance well. 238 00:18:24,124 --> 00:18:28,648 And also all of the archers that were firing 239 00:18:28,692 --> 00:18:32,726 were firing arrowheads at the same weight at the same time. 240 00:18:32,966 --> 00:18:36,437 So the distance for all of them would be the same. 241 00:18:36,740 --> 00:18:39,514 With a socketed arrowhead 242 00:18:39,714 --> 00:18:44,436 you can directly insert the head into the shaft. 243 00:18:44,625 --> 00:18:46,690 It look like this. 244 00:18:47,450 --> 00:18:50,453 So what are the advantages of this type of arrowhead? 245 00:18:50,453 --> 00:18:52,314 Its improvements greatly enhanced 246 00:18:52,314 --> 00:18:54,671 the lethality and efficiency of ancient arrows. 247 00:18:54,722 --> 00:18:58,341 Even in the chaos of war, the shooter could aim t the target easily. 248 00:18:58,465 --> 00:19:01,835 He wouldn't loose the direction by aiming t the target quickly. 249 00:19:02,379 --> 00:19:06,048 This ivention is a giant leap in the development of human history. 250 00:19:07,768 --> 00:19:11,888 Archaeologists believe that sometime in the second millennium BC, 251 00:19:12,368 --> 00:19:15,494 socketed bronze arrowheads began spreading east 252 00:19:15,819 --> 00:19:19,879 while the composite recurved bow spread west. 253 00:19:20,649 --> 00:19:23,004 Sometime around 900 BC, 254 00:19:23,004 --> 00:19:25,559 socketed arrowheads and recurved bows 255 00:19:25,589 --> 00:19:28,649 met in the Tarim Basin area of Central Asia, 256 00:19:31,069 --> 00:19:35,284 brought together by traders, warriors, and migrating nomads. 257 00:19:38,804 --> 00:19:43,773 After about 700 BC, you begin to see thousands and thousands of arrowheads 258 00:19:43,813 --> 00:19:47,510 and dozens of arrowheads in a single quiver in a grave. 259 00:19:47,591 --> 00:19:50,089 It's like they're being mass produced. 260 00:19:52,259 --> 00:19:56,263 Bronze socketed arrowheads turned central Asia into an arsenal, 261 00:19:56,643 --> 00:19:59,506 but cavalries still couldn't exist 262 00:20:00,883 --> 00:20:03,871 until warriors could become soldiers. 263 00:20:08,057 --> 00:20:10,619 It was really the age of heroic warfare 264 00:20:10,619 --> 00:20:14,484 — individuals going out and doing great deeds by themselves 265 00:20:14,534 --> 00:20:16,926 and attracting glory for their own name. 266 00:20:17,016 --> 00:20:19,714 And this is the kind of warfare that's described 267 00:20:20,034 --> 00:20:23,878 in the "Iliad", in the "Odyssey," or in the "Rigveda," 268 00:20:23,928 --> 00:20:27,955 a religious text that's at the deep roots of modern Hinduism. 269 00:20:29,201 --> 00:20:32,503 What had to change was a psychological change 270 00:20:32,503 --> 00:20:35,099 in the nature of the warrior. 271 00:20:35,759 --> 00:20:39,152 You had to change from individuals to units 272 00:20:39,262 --> 00:20:42,983 working under the command of a commanding general, 273 00:20:43,152 --> 00:20:46,468 who would attack and retreat upon command. 274 00:20:48,305 --> 00:20:52,343 The psychological change from the heroic warrior to the soldier, 275 00:20:53,735 --> 00:20:57,461 probably is a feature of urban warfare. 276 00:20:57,891 --> 00:21:00,384 The armies that were associated 277 00:21:00,384 --> 00:21:04,198 with the great cities of Mesopotamia and Iran. 278 00:21:06,516 --> 00:21:11,536 That psychology had to spread northward up into the steppes 279 00:21:12,168 --> 00:21:16,350 and be accepted by warriors in the steppes, 280 00:21:16,652 --> 00:21:19,336 in the same area where the recurved bows 281 00:21:19,396 --> 00:21:22,090 and the socketed arrowheads were crossing. 282 00:21:24,630 --> 00:21:27,214 While recurved bows were spreading west 283 00:21:27,244 --> 00:21:29,656 and socketed arrowheads were spreading east, 284 00:21:29,676 --> 00:21:32,922 the concept of military discipline was spreading north. 285 00:21:36,462 --> 00:21:38,905 Sometime around 900 BC, 286 00:21:39,085 --> 00:21:42,561 all three combined in the heart of central Asia. 287 00:21:44,861 --> 00:21:47,169 When those three things came together, 288 00:21:47,169 --> 00:21:51,922 cavalry became a really deadly form of military force. 289 00:21:55,182 --> 00:21:59,542 A force that would severely test the ancient world's most powerful armies. 290 00:22:02,318 --> 00:22:03,836 2,000 years ago, 291 00:22:03,846 --> 00:22:07,500 as the Romans pushed east to expand their empire, 292 00:22:08,340 --> 00:22:10,652 China was pushing west. 293 00:22:13,224 --> 00:22:15,063 And like the Romans, 294 00:22:15,093 --> 00:22:18,376 the Chinese encountered a formidable enemy on horseback. 295 00:22:23,008 --> 00:22:26,584 The Xiongnu were nomads from the Central Asian steppes. 296 00:22:28,044 --> 00:22:30,964 Armed with recurved bows and socketed arrows, 297 00:22:30,964 --> 00:22:34,660 they fought under commanders as a disciplined military force. 298 00:22:38,250 --> 00:22:41,093 They raided Chinese villages 299 00:22:41,483 --> 00:22:44,956 and plundered the growing trade between East and West, 300 00:22:46,304 --> 00:22:48,915 and no one could stop them. 301 00:22:49,745 --> 00:22:55,806 The Xiongnu was the migraine of the ancient world for the Chinese. 302 00:22:56,820 --> 00:23:01,401 They simply just kept coming and they would not stop. 303 00:23:04,731 --> 00:23:12,270 The Xiongnu wanted the finest material goods produced by the Chinese. 304 00:23:16,115 --> 00:23:18,742 That is why they raided. 305 00:23:23,311 --> 00:23:27,025 Imagine you're a villager in China and these men come from nowhere. 306 00:23:27,055 --> 00:23:29,196 They come from over the hill without warning, 307 00:23:29,286 --> 00:23:30,919 tearing into your village. 308 00:23:30,937 --> 00:23:33,294 They shoot the headman, they shoot your husband. 309 00:23:33,334 --> 00:23:34,822 They chase the women out. 310 00:23:34,862 --> 00:23:38,426 There is no hiding place and there's a flurry of dust and arrows. 311 00:23:38,436 --> 00:23:41,649 They're in and they're out and they take the stuff and they go. 312 00:23:44,788 --> 00:23:47,693 China sent its military might against the Xiongnu. 313 00:23:49,819 --> 00:23:51,696 The famed Terracotta Warriors 314 00:23:51,716 --> 00:23:54,504 reveal the size and power of Chinese armies. 315 00:23:56,543 --> 00:23:59,883 But the Chinese fought on foot and from chariots. 316 00:24:02,723 --> 00:24:05,683 Not effective against hit-and-run cavalry. 317 00:24:07,030 --> 00:24:12,857 A Chinese courtier wrote that the Xiongnu moved like a flock of birds over the land, 318 00:24:13,227 --> 00:24:15,600 impossible to control. 319 00:24:16,420 --> 00:24:20,101 Once mounted warfare really became deadly and effective, 320 00:24:20,261 --> 00:24:22,666 it became a real problem. 321 00:24:22,856 --> 00:24:27,669 If you're a farmer, the nomads know where you're going to be all the time. 322 00:24:27,729 --> 00:24:31,276 Your house is in the same place 12 months of the year, 323 00:24:31,445 --> 00:24:35,321 and when your crops become ripe, you have to harvest, 324 00:24:35,548 --> 00:24:39,257 and the nomads know when that season is. 325 00:24:40,187 --> 00:24:43,152 Whereas when you're trying to strike them back, 326 00:24:43,172 --> 00:24:45,759 it's impossible to know where they're going to be 327 00:24:45,799 --> 00:24:47,698 or when they're going to be there. 328 00:24:47,868 --> 00:24:50,017 You have to search to find them. 329 00:24:53,188 --> 00:24:58,168 To beat the Xiongnu, the Chinese needed soldiers who could fight like them. 330 00:25:01,089 --> 00:25:03,077 They needed cavalry. 331 00:25:06,198 --> 00:25:09,357 There are manuals of warfare that were written 332 00:25:09,367 --> 00:25:12,638 to instruct Chinese warriors 333 00:25:12,638 --> 00:25:16,694 on how to counter the tactics and the methods of the Xiongnu. 334 00:25:17,824 --> 00:25:20,522 Those manuals introduced the idea of cavalry 335 00:25:20,572 --> 00:25:22,641 to the Chinese military. 336 00:25:23,151 --> 00:25:26,266 The Chinese military had not really used cavalry 337 00:25:26,306 --> 00:25:28,801 before about probably 350 BC. 338 00:25:30,628 --> 00:25:34,009 Chinese military, at first with some resistance 339 00:25:34,029 --> 00:25:36,750 from the old aristocratic families, said: 340 00:25:36,870 --> 00:25:39,004 "Well, my father fought on a chariot, 341 00:25:39,034 --> 00:25:40,871 "and his father fought on a chariot, 342 00:25:40,891 --> 00:25:44,809 "and I'm gonna fight on a chariot in my long robes like my ancestors." 343 00:25:46,409 --> 00:25:49,020 But it wasn't long before Chinese warriors 344 00:25:49,050 --> 00:25:51,742 traded their traditional long, flowing robes 345 00:25:52,462 --> 00:25:56,665 for shorter tunics that didn't get in the way of fighting on horseback. 346 00:25:59,165 --> 00:26:05,109 Eventually, the practicalities forced them to get rid of their robes, 347 00:26:05,162 --> 00:26:07,968 to put on riding trousers, 348 00:26:08,008 --> 00:26:10,786 to learn to shoot the bow on horseback, 349 00:26:10,981 --> 00:26:14,655 and they, too, became a mighty horse archer force. 350 00:26:19,656 --> 00:26:23,613 Chinese cavalry became experts at shooting the recurved composite bow, 351 00:26:25,623 --> 00:26:30,134 and a lethal Chinese weapon, the crossbow. 352 00:26:34,132 --> 00:26:36,403 While its cavalry trained, 353 00:26:36,473 --> 00:26:41,043 China agreed to Xiongnu demands for payments of money and silk 354 00:26:42,343 --> 00:26:45,283 until the year 133 BC, 355 00:26:46,103 --> 00:26:49,249 when Emperor Han Wudi refused to pay. 356 00:26:53,218 --> 00:26:55,696 And sent his army to attack the Xiongnu. 357 00:27:30,952 --> 00:27:33,645 Chinese cavalry defeated the nomads. 358 00:27:37,305 --> 00:27:40,802 And China seized new territories in the steppes, 359 00:27:42,932 --> 00:27:46,654 pacifying trade routes and opening new horizons. 360 00:27:52,030 --> 00:27:55,019 On one hand, we have this perpetual conflict 361 00:27:55,119 --> 00:27:59,400 — in Chinese culture would be the Xiongn and the Han Chinese 362 00:28:00,381 --> 00:28:03,985 that created incessant warfare. 363 00:28:05,390 --> 00:28:08,557 On the other hand, it is this conflict 364 00:28:08,567 --> 00:28:11,954 that demolished physical boundaries. 365 00:28:12,995 --> 00:28:17,054 Even territory boundaries were constantly being pushed farther, 366 00:28:17,154 --> 00:28:20,144 pushed back between the two forces. 367 00:28:20,554 --> 00:28:26,029 This was a stimulus for exchanges, 368 00:28:26,753 --> 00:28:28,876 for political changes, 369 00:28:28,876 --> 00:28:32,607 for new ideas, for artistic traditions. 370 00:28:36,057 --> 00:28:38,684 It was also a new era for the Silk Road. 371 00:28:40,488 --> 00:28:43,677 A fortune in Roman gold traveled east 372 00:28:43,677 --> 00:28:46,138 in exchange for Chinese silks. 373 00:28:51,400 --> 00:28:53,940 And the Central Asian kingdom of Kushan 374 00:28:54,000 --> 00:28:57,355 made its own fortune selling another luxury to China: 375 00:28:59,565 --> 00:29:00,868 jade. 376 00:29:03,915 --> 00:29:06,613 Silk Road caravans passed through this border station 377 00:29:06,613 --> 00:29:08,988 on China's western frontier. 378 00:29:10,839 --> 00:29:13,380 So many of them carried Kushan jade 379 00:29:13,430 --> 00:29:16,570 that this station became known as the Jade Gate. 380 00:29:21,860 --> 00:29:25,450 Chinese aristocrats coveted jade for its beauty 381 00:29:25,493 --> 00:29:27,414 and something more. 382 00:29:30,034 --> 00:29:33,659 They believed that jade would keep them alive forever. 383 00:29:36,789 --> 00:29:39,538 The ruling elite commissioned jade burial suits 384 00:29:39,558 --> 00:29:42,327 to preserve their bodies in the grave. 385 00:29:45,617 --> 00:29:48,722 They believed that, upon death, 386 00:29:48,762 --> 00:29:51,822 all the orifices should be plugged in 387 00:29:51,842 --> 00:29:56,076 to preserve the spirit inside the person. 388 00:29:56,966 --> 00:30:00,347 And this notion of jade 389 00:30:00,347 --> 00:30:05,318 as a material with protective power in the afterlife, 390 00:30:05,368 --> 00:30:08,348 is further enhanced by the fact 391 00:30:08,348 --> 00:30:11,062 that they built an armor 392 00:30:11,062 --> 00:30:16,876 made of thousands of pieces of jade. 393 00:30:17,916 --> 00:30:20,120 And of course, if you're the emperor, 394 00:30:20,120 --> 00:30:25,855 your jade armor would be made from the finest jade 395 00:30:26,997 --> 00:30:29,731 from the western regions. 396 00:30:30,451 --> 00:30:33,523 During the Roman empire, Silk Road trade flourished 397 00:30:33,569 --> 00:30:36,522 as Chinese, Persian, and Kushan armies 398 00:30:36,532 --> 00:30:39,173 kept the trade routes open across Eurasia. 399 00:30:46,743 --> 00:30:48,568 China had leveled the battlefield 400 00:30:48,629 --> 00:30:51,282 with nomad raiders from the steppes. 401 00:30:57,492 --> 00:30:59,757 But Central Asian horse archers 402 00:30:59,757 --> 00:31:02,717 were about to carve their names on History. 403 00:31:04,452 --> 00:31:08,912 In the 4th century CE., Europe was invaded by a Central Asian people 404 00:31:09,042 --> 00:31:12,174 whose name still evokes barbaric cruelty. 405 00:31:18,664 --> 00:31:22,464 The Huns, who fought their way West, all the way to Rome. 406 00:31:32,708 --> 00:31:35,214 European peoples like the Goths and Visigoths 407 00:31:35,268 --> 00:31:37,703 — the so-called barbarians — 408 00:31:37,713 --> 00:31:39,410 fled before their onslaught, 409 00:31:39,440 --> 00:31:41,894 and sought refuge in Roman territory. 410 00:31:43,684 --> 00:31:46,662 When the Huns withdrew from the Roman world, 411 00:31:46,732 --> 00:31:49,439 those barbarian refugees stayed. 412 00:31:55,449 --> 00:31:58,197 And the rest is History. 413 00:32:02,387 --> 00:32:05,882 The western Roman empire was plunged into chaos 414 00:32:07,766 --> 00:32:10,655 as barbarian tribes, dissatisfied with their lot, 415 00:32:10,685 --> 00:32:13,835 rebelled against Roman authority, 416 00:32:14,138 --> 00:32:17,303 and weak Roman emperors failed to crush them. 417 00:32:21,743 --> 00:32:26,209 As Rome declined, migrating horse archers, called the Avars, 418 00:32:26,209 --> 00:32:30,436 carved their own country out of eastern Europe, 419 00:32:30,436 --> 00:32:33,949 bringing with them another Asian military innovation: 420 00:32:36,739 --> 00:32:38,252 the stirrup. 421 00:32:41,755 --> 00:32:44,703 This Chinese statue from the fourth century CE, 422 00:32:44,783 --> 00:32:48,092 is the earliest known depiction of stirrups. 423 00:32:52,572 --> 00:32:54,788 Some 300 years later, 424 00:32:54,788 --> 00:32:57,218 an Avar horseman was riding with these stirrups 425 00:32:57,264 --> 00:32:59,440 across Hungary. 426 00:33:05,428 --> 00:33:07,277 By the eighth century CE, 427 00:33:07,287 --> 00:33:11,633 the stirrup had spread from one end of Eurasia to the other 428 00:33:11,831 --> 00:33:14,997 and mounted warfare was entering a new era. 429 00:33:18,083 --> 00:33:19,959 The importance of the stirrup 430 00:33:19,989 --> 00:33:24,087 relates to what kinds of weapons can you use from horseback, 431 00:33:24,198 --> 00:33:28,682 and it made it possible to use certain kinds of weapons from horseback 432 00:33:28,682 --> 00:33:31,389 that you couldn't use without stirrups. 433 00:33:31,409 --> 00:33:33,958 Those weapons are the long sabre. 434 00:33:34,228 --> 00:33:37,720 You have to lean over and absorb shock, 435 00:33:38,062 --> 00:33:40,669 if you're going to use a long sabre in battle. 436 00:33:40,699 --> 00:33:44,998 And the stirrups allow the rider to absorb the shock of contact 437 00:33:44,998 --> 00:33:47,308 with a stationary target. 438 00:33:47,788 --> 00:33:50,382 The other big weapon that was possible with stirrups 439 00:33:50,422 --> 00:33:54,074 was a seated lance held under the arm. 440 00:33:54,354 --> 00:33:58,796 You could stab somebody with the lance and then remove it, 441 00:33:58,956 --> 00:34:01,992 riding past them without stirrups. 442 00:34:02,521 --> 00:34:07,639 But if you seated it under your arm and used the lance as a shock weapon, 443 00:34:07,814 --> 00:34:10,428 it would knock you off the back of the horse 444 00:34:10,468 --> 00:34:12,431 if you didn't have stirrups. 445 00:34:12,441 --> 00:34:16,693 So stirrups made it possible to use long swords and lances 446 00:34:16,812 --> 00:34:19,598 as shock weapons against stationary targets 447 00:34:19,608 --> 00:34:21,930 and keep your seat. 448 00:34:21,936 --> 00:34:27,150 And of course that made it possible to have really heavy mounted warriors. 449 00:34:28,090 --> 00:34:31,877 Now, the rider becomes a unit with the horse. 450 00:34:32,237 --> 00:34:35,295 He's so anchored with his stirrups, anchored with this, 451 00:34:35,295 --> 00:34:37,535 and then with his long lance 452 00:34:37,585 --> 00:34:41,395 he becomes a single projectile unit. 453 00:34:43,320 --> 00:34:48,942 Man, horse, saddle, lance, all locked together for the impact charge. 454 00:34:52,762 --> 00:34:55,753 This was the age of the medieval knight. 455 00:35:01,108 --> 00:35:02,929 A medieval knight's power 456 00:35:02,969 --> 00:35:06,744 came from combining the Asian stirrup and the ancient shock tactics 457 00:35:06,794 --> 00:35:10,868 of the Persian cataphract with a European invention: 458 00:35:11,431 --> 00:35:13,788 articulated plate armor. 459 00:35:15,930 --> 00:35:19,354 Strong enough to protect the wearer from sword and lance thrusts 460 00:35:20,765 --> 00:35:24,918 while light enough to allow him to move freely on horseback 461 00:35:24,988 --> 00:35:26,769 and on foot. 462 00:35:29,519 --> 00:35:33,639 Heavy cavalry had never been a more potent weapon of war. 463 00:35:35,719 --> 00:35:38,954 Medieval mounted warfare could be warfare 464 00:35:38,984 --> 00:35:42,707 that generated a lot of force on the rider, 465 00:35:43,089 --> 00:35:45,175 a high impact warfare. 466 00:35:46,785 --> 00:35:49,517 In that case, the mounted warrior is being used 467 00:35:49,577 --> 00:35:53,117 really as a shock weapon to strike the enemy. 468 00:36:00,259 --> 00:36:03,229 But even Europe's formidable mounted knights 469 00:36:03,239 --> 00:36:06,634 would be outfought by Central Asian cavalry 470 00:36:08,859 --> 00:36:12,129 that burst out of the steppes and changed the world. 471 00:36:16,821 --> 00:36:21,677 The largest conquest empire that the Earth has ever seen 472 00:36:23,647 --> 00:36:27,743 was created by pastoral nomads from Central Asia. 473 00:36:35,962 --> 00:36:37,929 In the 13th century, 474 00:36:37,929 --> 00:36:40,632 the Mongols conquered as far West as Poland 475 00:36:40,656 --> 00:36:43,328 and as far East as the Sea of Japan. 476 00:36:47,978 --> 00:36:52,019 Mongol armies combined the devastating shock tactics of horse archers 477 00:36:52,259 --> 00:36:55,445 with a highly sophisticated military organization. 478 00:36:57,796 --> 00:37:02,794 They could gather quickly and march to distant battlefields. 479 00:37:04,690 --> 00:37:08,103 Then the cavalry could reach the enemy's battlefield 480 00:37:08,162 --> 00:37:11,111 before they set up defenses 481 00:37:11,164 --> 00:37:16,014 which could deter their enemy psychologically and strategically. 482 00:37:16,864 --> 00:37:21,052 It is said that the cavalry came suddenly 483 00:37:21,542 --> 00:37:25,241 like something falling fro the sky. 484 00:37:25,522 --> 00:37:29,485 and disappeared quickly 485 00:37:29,515 --> 00:37:32,625 leaving no trace at all. 486 00:37:32,715 --> 00:37:35,633 Western, especially European historians, 487 00:37:35,663 --> 00:37:41,281 wrote that the Mongols appeared far away like several spots 488 00:37:41,508 --> 00:37:46,011 but would suddenly gather before you, like dark clouds. 489 00:37:46,311 --> 00:37:50,284 Unexpected attack was the core 490 00:37:56,474 --> 00:38:00,091 The Mongols have gone down in History as bloodthirsty killers, 491 00:38:00,895 --> 00:38:04,359 but they were also sophisticated, open-minded, 492 00:38:04,359 --> 00:38:06,661 often generous conquerors. 493 00:38:08,671 --> 00:38:11,237 They pacified the Silk Road. 494 00:38:16,777 --> 00:38:18,783 Trade between West and East 495 00:38:18,783 --> 00:38:21,530 flourished under this Mongol-enforced peace, 496 00:38:21,580 --> 00:38:23,646 the Pax Mongolica. 497 00:38:26,376 --> 00:38:29,079 Before the age of Pax Mongolica, 498 00:38:29,129 --> 00:38:33,496 banditry was a very serious problem for traders, 499 00:38:33,575 --> 00:38:36,039 for caravans, along the Silk Road. 500 00:38:37,089 --> 00:38:40,561 The reputation of Genghis Khan and his descendants 501 00:38:41,433 --> 00:38:45,797 created peace and safe passage along the Silk Road 502 00:38:45,867 --> 00:38:53,773 because bandits were so afraid of the Mongol soldiers. 503 00:38:54,243 --> 00:38:56,821 The Pax Mongolica, 504 00:38:57,221 --> 00:39:05,071 the control of trade and exchange 505 00:39:05,499 --> 00:39:08,389 that was made possible under the Mongols 506 00:39:08,449 --> 00:39:12,334 connected China with Europe and with the Near East 507 00:39:12,397 --> 00:39:16,196 in a really close way for the first time in world History 508 00:39:16,586 --> 00:39:19,423 And that had a profound effect 509 00:39:19,490 --> 00:39:22,547 on the development of European civilization. 510 00:39:24,355 --> 00:39:26,479 Protected by the Pax Mongolica, 511 00:39:26,479 --> 00:39:30,181 and anxious for good relations with the Mongol empire, 512 00:39:30,245 --> 00:39:34,099 Europeans began traveling East as never before. 513 00:39:36,243 --> 00:39:38,745 Merchants, missionaries, and diplomats 514 00:39:38,815 --> 00:39:41,346 flowed East along the trade routes, 515 00:39:43,386 --> 00:39:46,833 bringing back popular Asian goods like cloth and spices 516 00:39:48,562 --> 00:39:51,975 and tales of the wealth and wonders of the East, 517 00:39:52,145 --> 00:39:56,265 some true, some fabulous, but all fascinating. 518 00:39:57,906 --> 00:39:59,571 From Europe to China, 519 00:39:59,581 --> 00:40:03,557 Silk Road trade spread new knowledge of far-away lands. 520 00:40:04,567 --> 00:40:09,079 The Silk Road made human beings realize 521 00:40:09,229 --> 00:40:12,077 that there are other people out there, 522 00:40:12,117 --> 00:40:15,975 and it opened the eyes of the East and the West. 523 00:40:19,672 --> 00:40:23,699 The Italian cities of Venice and Genoa reaped huge rewards. 524 00:40:27,048 --> 00:40:29,951 Their merchants traveled safely throughout Eurasia 525 00:40:31,681 --> 00:40:34,102 and founded trading posts on the Black Sea 526 00:40:34,142 --> 00:40:37,173 to receive and pass on Silk Road goods. 527 00:40:38,805 --> 00:40:42,831 Their Silk Road profits funded magnificent art and architecture. 528 00:40:45,404 --> 00:40:49,333 But their competition frequently plunged them into war with one another. 529 00:40:51,644 --> 00:40:56,149 In one of these wars, Genoa captured a prosperous Venetian merchant 530 00:40:56,189 --> 00:40:58,101 named Marco Polo. 531 00:40:59,091 --> 00:41:02,774 Imprisoned by the Genoese, Polo dictated the story 532 00:41:02,823 --> 00:41:06,257 of his Silk Road journey to China to a fellow prisoner. 533 00:41:09,170 --> 00:41:13,078 Today, experts debate whether Marco Polo really visited China 534 00:41:14,308 --> 00:41:16,866 or was simply retelling stories 535 00:41:16,916 --> 00:41:19,264 he heard from fellow Silk Road travelers. 536 00:41:23,666 --> 00:41:26,991 But there's no debate that "The Travels of Marco Polo" 537 00:41:27,051 --> 00:41:31,256 was one of the most influential books in all of human History. 538 00:41:32,036 --> 00:41:34,241 It tantalized Europe with tales 539 00:41:34,241 --> 00:41:37,926 of China's immense wealth and advanced civilization. 540 00:41:45,190 --> 00:41:49,887 And years before Marco Polo was telling those tales in a Genoese prison, 541 00:41:52,717 --> 00:41:57,556 a Chinese invention was making its way across Eurasia to the West. 542 00:42:02,566 --> 00:42:05,105 Something created centuries earlier 543 00:42:05,105 --> 00:42:08,815 when an experiment ended very badly. 544 00:42:19,455 --> 00:42:23,755 Ancient Chinese alchemists prepared potions of lead or mercury 545 00:42:23,755 --> 00:42:26,050 for their aristocratic patrons 546 00:42:26,060 --> 00:42:29,402 who believed that drinking these metals would help them live forever. 547 00:42:32,748 --> 00:42:36,934 Instead, those concoctions killed them or made them insane. 548 00:42:38,804 --> 00:42:41,684 Another deadly combination was sulfur 549 00:42:41,684 --> 00:42:45,634 heated with an organic nitrate found in soil throughout China, 550 00:42:48,041 --> 00:42:50,750 known today as saltpeter. 551 00:42:52,950 --> 00:42:55,465 When alchemists experimented with this formula, 552 00:42:55,525 --> 00:42:57,668 it burst into flame, 553 00:42:57,678 --> 00:42:59,741 injuring the alchemists, 554 00:42:59,822 --> 00:43:01,186 (Explosion) 555 00:43:01,256 --> 00:43:03,923 and burning down their laboratory. 556 00:43:05,943 --> 00:43:10,536 From that disaster was born a chemical mixture like none other. 557 00:43:15,036 --> 00:43:18,193 It may have failed as an elixir of immortality, 558 00:43:18,193 --> 00:43:22,554 but it would prove to be a potent agent of death. 559 00:43:25,273 --> 00:43:29,427 This Chinese Buddhist scroll dating from around 950 CE, 560 00:43:29,427 --> 00:43:32,819 depicts demons surrounding a seated Buddha. 561 00:43:34,259 --> 00:43:39,465 One demon holds what the Chinese called a "huo quiang", or fire lance. 562 00:43:42,352 --> 00:43:44,886 It's the earliest known image of a weapon 563 00:43:44,906 --> 00:43:48,328 powered by that deadly mixture of saltpeter and sulfur. 564 00:43:51,518 --> 00:43:55,739 Known to history as gunpowder. 565 00:44:01,094 --> 00:44:03,545 In the early 13th century, 566 00:44:03,545 --> 00:44:06,695 the Mongols attacked China's Jin Dynasty. 567 00:44:07,205 --> 00:44:11,635 The Jin Dynasty's army fought back with exploding gunpowder bombs. 568 00:44:15,755 --> 00:44:18,860 But as the Mongols conquered more and more of China, 569 00:44:18,860 --> 00:44:22,368 Han Chinese artillerymen joined their armies 570 00:44:22,418 --> 00:44:26,162 and marched West, bringing their gunpowder weapons with them. 571 00:44:29,142 --> 00:44:32,284 The Mongols attacked Russian and Polish cities 572 00:44:32,294 --> 00:44:34,720 with exploding fire bombs. 573 00:44:36,120 --> 00:44:39,973 And Europeans found out the hard way what gunpowder could do. 574 00:44:44,396 --> 00:44:46,763 By the end of the 13th century, 575 00:44:46,763 --> 00:44:49,986 the formula for gunpowder was known as far West as England, 576 00:44:51,754 --> 00:44:55,953 and Europeans were inventing their own versions of the new weapons. 577 00:44:59,873 --> 00:45:04,479 It wasn't long before this Chinese invention changed European history. 578 00:45:08,385 --> 00:45:11,051 On 26th August, 1346, 579 00:45:11,417 --> 00:45:14,332 near the village of Crecy in northern France, 580 00:45:14,692 --> 00:45:18,407 the armies of France and England prepared to fight. 581 00:45:26,940 --> 00:45:30,543 Mounted on their war steeds, encased in their armor, 582 00:45:30,583 --> 00:45:33,959 the flower of French nobility formed their battle line, 583 00:45:42,728 --> 00:45:46,087 while the English deployed a very different force. 584 00:45:50,197 --> 00:45:52,966 Thousands of expert archers. 585 00:45:59,966 --> 00:46:04,555 The French sent their higher Genoese crossbowmen to attack the English 586 00:46:04,575 --> 00:46:07,650 before French knights annihilated them. 587 00:46:14,813 --> 00:46:17,429 But the English king, Edward III, 588 00:46:17,429 --> 00:46:20,537 had spent years training his longbow men. 589 00:46:24,517 --> 00:46:27,576 And all that training was about to pay off. 590 00:46:41,426 --> 00:46:46,505 Nothing like this had been seen on a western battlefield up to this time. 591 00:46:46,685 --> 00:46:51,754 The first time that a volley of arrows was unleashed by the archers at Crecy 592 00:46:52,214 --> 00:46:55,329 would have represented something completely new 593 00:46:55,369 --> 00:46:58,513 to many of those in the French army watching it. 594 00:46:58,553 --> 00:47:01,150 A cloud of arrows descending towards them. 595 00:47:02,440 --> 00:47:04,713 It would have been frightening, 596 00:47:04,733 --> 00:47:07,630 and of course the effect was almost immediate. 597 00:47:11,660 --> 00:47:15,957 Showered by English arrows, the Genoese turned and ran, 598 00:47:17,318 --> 00:47:19,917 and according to medieval accounts of the battle, 599 00:47:19,917 --> 00:47:23,136 they were also panicked by another English weapon. 600 00:47:32,031 --> 00:47:35,156 Giovanni Villani, writing very soon after the battle, 601 00:47:35,206 --> 00:47:39,563 says in his chronicle that so loud and intimidating 602 00:47:39,693 --> 00:47:42,235 was the noise created by the guns 603 00:47:42,355 --> 00:47:45,418 that they thought God was thundering. 604 00:47:48,997 --> 00:47:51,909 "The English guns cast iron balls by means of fire. 605 00:47:52,689 --> 00:47:54,950 "They made a noise like thunder 606 00:47:55,020 --> 00:47:57,625 "and caused much loss in men and horses." 607 00:48:04,835 --> 00:48:07,373 Noise like that would have been unprecedented 608 00:48:07,413 --> 00:48:09,911 to the soldiers on the battlefield. 609 00:48:10,538 --> 00:48:13,668 Nothing in their lives could have prepared them 610 00:48:13,668 --> 00:48:15,464 for a a bang of that size 611 00:48:15,464 --> 00:48:19,539 and accompanied by smoke and acrid sulfur smell, 612 00:48:19,662 --> 00:48:22,219 which would hang in the air. 613 00:48:22,409 --> 00:48:25,043 The impact of which, of course, they couldn't see 614 00:48:25,063 --> 00:48:27,387 until men around them dropped. 615 00:48:29,087 --> 00:48:32,119 Not even professional soldiers like the Genoese 616 00:48:32,298 --> 00:48:36,039 would have experienced anything like this before in their lives. 617 00:48:36,189 --> 00:48:38,776 That would have been terrifying, 618 00:48:38,806 --> 00:48:41,759 and it's no wonder that they scattered and ran. 619 00:48:44,019 --> 00:48:49,721 They turned and fled into the face of the oncoming French cavalry charge. 620 00:48:50,100 --> 00:48:53,205 The French cavalry were now coming onto the battlefield 621 00:48:53,204 --> 00:48:55,310 and they were appalled 622 00:48:55,310 --> 00:48:59,000 at these people they'd hired running away. 623 00:49:01,270 --> 00:49:03,830 And they cursed them and they rode into them, 624 00:49:03,850 --> 00:49:06,675 and as many Genoese fell to French hooves 625 00:49:06,725 --> 00:49:09,643 as they did to English arrows and gunshots. 626 00:49:11,813 --> 00:49:14,220 And the French knights, all 12,000 of them, 627 00:49:14,220 --> 00:49:16,099 double the size of the English army, 628 00:49:16,101 --> 00:49:18,531 they came charging down onto the English. 629 00:49:21,911 --> 00:49:26,031 And they, too, fell to the English arrows and the English gunshot, 630 00:49:27,621 --> 00:49:30,431 and they came again and again and again. 631 00:49:30,501 --> 00:49:32,846 15, 16 times, they came. 632 00:49:34,706 --> 00:49:36,716 And their horses were ripped to shreds 633 00:49:36,716 --> 00:49:39,133 and the men were thrown from their horses. 634 00:49:39,203 --> 00:49:40,633 And those that weren't thrown, 635 00:49:40,653 --> 00:49:43,218 they had the opportunity that the dagger men rushed in 636 00:49:43,218 --> 00:49:45,517 and they brought these knights down. 637 00:49:50,787 --> 00:49:54,609 This was a moment in History where the world changed. 638 00:49:54,789 --> 00:49:58,715 It spelled the beginning of the end for the medieval knight. 639 00:50:01,772 --> 00:50:04,215 The Battle of Crecy has gone down in history 640 00:50:04,215 --> 00:50:07,413 as one of the earliest uses of gunpowder weapons 641 00:50:07,563 --> 00:50:10,507 on a European battlefield. 642 00:50:17,987 --> 00:50:19,945 Some 500 years after, 643 00:50:19,985 --> 00:50:22,664 it burned down a Chinese alchemist's workshop, 644 00:50:22,752 --> 00:50:26,081 gunpowder had become destiny's weapon of choice. 645 00:50:28,566 --> 00:50:31,614 After Crecy, it was only a matter of time 646 00:50:31,614 --> 00:50:35,276 until the fates of peoples and nations were decided by the gun. 647 00:50:40,126 --> 00:50:42,367 Within two centuries, 648 00:50:42,387 --> 00:50:45,307 Europeans would use their powerful gunpowder weapons 649 00:50:45,347 --> 00:50:47,907 to dominate the world, 650 00:50:51,747 --> 00:50:55,826 creating empires that would evolve into today's global trading culture, 651 00:50:59,832 --> 00:51:03,378 which binds people together by commerce instead of the gun. 652 00:51:10,019 --> 00:51:13,459 But before Europe could embark on its empire-building adventure, 653 00:51:14,799 --> 00:51:16,529 its medieval social order 654 00:51:16,529 --> 00:51:19,589 would be shattered by a catastrophic event. 655 00:51:21,409 --> 00:51:25,184 One that would forge a new Europe in a crucible of horror. 656 00:51:29,154 --> 00:51:31,631 While guns thundered at Crecy, 657 00:51:31,643 --> 00:51:34,932 something else was spreading along the Eurasian trade routes. 658 00:51:39,607 --> 00:51:43,749 Something that would kill tens of millions of Europeans. 659 00:51:48,509 --> 00:51:51,400 An apocalyptic destruction of human life 660 00:51:52,350 --> 00:51:55,585 that would lay the foundations of the modern world. 661 00:52:18,095 --> 00:52:20,920 At the Battle of Crécy in 1346, 662 00:52:21,261 --> 00:52:24,876 the English won an historic victory over France, 663 00:52:27,836 --> 00:52:31,299 helped by a Chinese invention that had traveled to Europe. 664 00:52:40,339 --> 00:52:42,065 Gunpowder. 665 00:53:18,785 --> 00:53:20,977 And in the same year of 1346, 666 00:53:21,517 --> 00:53:24,741 some 2,000 kilometres east of Crécy, 667 00:53:25,241 --> 00:53:29,367 another battle was taking place on the shores of the Black Sea. 668 00:53:33,677 --> 00:53:38,209 A Mongol army had been laying siege to the Crimean port city of Caffa, 669 00:53:38,729 --> 00:53:42,730 a Silk Road trading post belonging to the Italian city of Genoa. 670 00:53:45,514 --> 00:53:48,390 The Mongols were masters of siege warfare. 671 00:53:51,340 --> 00:53:55,343 But Caffa was still holding out after more than two years. 672 00:53:58,983 --> 00:54:02,154 Suddenly, the Mongol army was decimated. 673 00:54:02,954 --> 00:54:06,894 Not by Caffa's defenders, but by an unknown disease. 674 00:54:10,005 --> 00:54:12,515 The Mongols quickly ended their siege. 675 00:54:13,125 --> 00:54:14,965 But before they left Caffa, 676 00:54:14,995 --> 00:54:18,060 they loaded their siege engines with the corpses of their dead 677 00:54:18,330 --> 00:54:21,131 and flung them over the city's walls, 678 00:54:21,481 --> 00:54:25,179 believing that the stench of death would kill the defenders. 679 00:54:29,959 --> 00:54:31,712 Medieval chronicles say 680 00:54:31,712 --> 00:54:34,724 that Caffa's defenders did die by the thousands, 681 00:54:35,114 --> 00:54:38,241 but not from the smell of death. 682 00:54:42,311 --> 00:54:44,908 One year later, in 1347, 683 00:54:44,958 --> 00:54:48,957 the same disease that had killed the Mongols at Caffa 684 00:54:49,142 --> 00:54:51,779 was killing people in Constantinople. 685 00:54:53,429 --> 00:54:58,907 By 1348,it was killing people across Western Europe. 686 00:55:02,238 --> 00:55:06,807 By 1350, it was killing people as far away as Greenland. 687 00:55:11,447 --> 00:55:14,362 And terrified Europeans had given it a name. 688 00:55:16,982 --> 00:55:19,119 The Black Death. 689 00:55:20,879 --> 00:55:26,485 In just under a decade, from 1347 to 1356, 690 00:55:27,175 --> 00:55:31,401 the Black Death killed a t least 25 million Europeans., 691 00:55:31,511 --> 00:55:34,649 one third of Europe's population. 692 00:55:38,829 --> 00:55:40,766 Today, most scholars believe 693 00:55:40,766 --> 00:55:43,880 that the Black Death was an outbreak of bubonic plague. 694 00:55:44,460 --> 00:55:48,059 that was transmitted to humans by infected fleas living on rats. 695 00:55:52,006 --> 00:55:54,716 And we believe that it spread across Eurasia 696 00:55:54,868 --> 00:55:58,348 by hitching a ride with armies, ships, and caravans 697 00:55:59,228 --> 00:56:02,253 along trade routes that were already ancient 698 00:56:02,363 --> 00:56:05,030 by the time of the Black Death. 699 00:56:07,740 --> 00:56:10,460 Micro-organic travelers of all kinds 700 00:56:10,480 --> 00:56:13,610 have moved across Eurasia for thousands of years. 701 00:56:15,214 --> 00:56:19,032 A bio-migration that has had as big an impact on history 702 00:56:19,032 --> 00:56:23,775 as the more famous exchanges of new technologies and luxury goods. 703 00:56:24,805 --> 00:56:27,352 And as a recent discovery shows, 704 00:56:27,362 --> 00:56:30,400 tiny living things moving along the Silk Road 705 00:56:30,440 --> 00:56:33,324 brought life as well as death. 706 00:56:34,584 --> 00:56:36,989 We were putting together some new methods 707 00:56:37,057 --> 00:56:39,221 of looking for early agriculture, 708 00:56:39,251 --> 00:56:42,155 and for that we needed to do a survey 709 00:56:42,262 --> 00:56:45,459 of all the finds of early crops in Europe. 710 00:56:47,163 --> 00:56:49,221 When you looked at a map of all of Europe, 711 00:56:49,231 --> 00:56:52,103 then you could see there were these Chinese crops 712 00:56:52,135 --> 00:56:55,027 in small numbers very early on in Europe. 713 00:56:57,017 --> 00:57:00,208 "Very early on" was around 2,000 BC, 714 00:57:02,485 --> 00:57:05,244 when a Chinese grain called broomcorn millet 715 00:57:05,326 --> 00:57:09,011 appears in the Eastern European archaeological record. 716 00:57:10,061 --> 00:57:13,730 The actual crop itself will decay or be eaten, 717 00:57:14,169 --> 00:57:16,178 but rather fortunately, 718 00:57:16,218 --> 00:57:19,642 if it's cooked and over-burnt, it turns to carbon. 719 00:57:19,675 --> 00:57:23,387 That will stay in the archaeological record for a long time. 720 00:57:27,368 --> 00:57:29,965 In the Chinese province of inner Mongolia, 721 00:57:30,445 --> 00:57:33,923 archaeologists are studying the origins of broomcorn millet, 722 00:57:34,631 --> 00:57:37,596 one of the world's oldest domestic crops. 723 00:57:40,346 --> 00:57:44,293 We are looking at a broomcorn millet field of almost 16 acres 724 00:57:44,543 --> 00:57:47,342 The cultivation of broomcorn millet in this place 725 00:57:47,402 --> 00:57:49,834 dates back to nearly 8000 years ago. 726 00:57:49,949 --> 00:57:53,826 It's the earliest area of human-cultivated broomcorn millet in the world. 727 00:57:53,896 --> 00:57:56,170 After broomcorn millet's birth in this place, 728 00:57:56,170 --> 00:57:58,048 it spread to the West from the East. 729 00:57:58,048 --> 00:58:00,049 It spread to Europe. 730 00:58:01,499 --> 00:58:04,308 Since it originated from the East and then spread to Europe, 731 00:58:04,313 --> 00:58:06,637 it can be regarded as an important contribution 732 00:58:06,637 --> 00:58:09,479 of our Eastern civilization to the Western counterpart. 733 00:58:11,999 --> 00:58:14,966 But it isn't clear just how and why 734 00:58:15,136 --> 00:58:19,275 broomcorn millet travelled thousands of kilometres across Eurasia, 735 00:58:19,806 --> 00:58:22,845 through some of the world's harshest environments, 736 00:58:22,925 --> 00:58:25,505 all the way to Europe. 737 00:58:27,185 --> 00:58:31,450 Millet's long journey may have begun simply because it travelled so well. 738 00:58:35,160 --> 00:58:38,662 Millets are essentially cereals, but they're very small. 739 00:58:39,482 --> 00:58:41,618 And because they have very small grains, 740 00:58:41,648 --> 00:58:43,301 they're hardy and they're tough, 741 00:58:43,301 --> 00:58:45,418 and they can grow quite fast. 742 00:58:45,448 --> 00:58:47,586 Broomcorn millet, at a push, 743 00:58:47,906 --> 00:58:50,635 can get from seed to seed in 45 days. 744 00:58:53,225 --> 00:58:55,290 You can plant a seed in the ground 745 00:58:55,300 --> 00:58:58,761 and 45 days later, in the right conditions, 746 00:58:58,801 --> 00:59:00,808 you may have plants. 747 00:59:00,865 --> 00:59:02,642 That's incredibly fast. 748 00:59:02,722 --> 00:59:04,996 So, if you're moving around parts of Asia, 749 00:59:05,050 --> 00:59:07,739 where, on the one hand, there's a long winter, 750 00:59:07,779 --> 00:59:09,304 a short growing season, 751 00:59:09,374 --> 00:59:12,378 and you can't particularly r ely on rainfall, 752 00:59:12,468 --> 00:59:16,087 then something that gets a move on in terms of its growth cycle 753 00:59:16,115 --> 00:59:18,220 is very valuable. 754 00:59:21,260 --> 00:59:24,692 There are accounts of communities that are on horseback 755 00:59:25,172 --> 00:59:28,497 for quite a lot of the time and herding animals and so forth, 756 00:59:28,497 --> 00:59:32,263 but for that short season of the year 757 00:59:32,313 --> 00:59:33,879 that millet grows in, 758 00:59:33,879 --> 00:59:36,738 they can actually sow the millet on horseback, 759 00:59:36,948 --> 00:59:39,287 trample it in with the horse's feet, 760 00:59:39,509 --> 00:59:41,599 and then either leave a few teenagers there 761 00:59:41,599 --> 00:59:44,081 to scare the birds off for a couple of months, 762 00:59:44,169 --> 00:59:47,539 come back two months later, and harvest the crops. 763 00:59:51,369 --> 00:59:53,819 Millet was a highly mobile grain, 764 00:59:53,849 --> 00:59:55,664 but there wasn't any evidence 765 00:59:55,714 --> 00:59:58,941 of how it might have travelled from its home in northern China.