WEBVTT 00:00:04.643 --> 00:00:08.344 Eurasia: the world's largest land mass. 00:00:10.434 --> 00:00:14.579 Some 10,000 kilometers from the Pacific to the Atlantic ocean. 00:00:16.794 --> 00:00:19.729 A formidable distance, even in today's world. 00:00:24.339 --> 00:00:26.806 And yet over that vast distance, 00:00:27.946 --> 00:00:31.855 human beings have pursued one of history's greatest enterprises: 00:00:33.905 --> 00:00:35.464 The Silk Road. 00:00:37.944 --> 00:00:40.964 A tremendously profitable trade route 00:00:41.144 --> 00:00:43.304 and so much more. 00:00:44.134 --> 00:00:45.658 For thousands of years, 00:00:45.709 --> 00:00:47.291 exotic goods, 00:00:48.476 --> 00:00:50.345 new technologies, 00:00:52.385 --> 00:00:54.234 conquering armies, 00:00:56.794 --> 00:00:58.484 and brilliant ideas 00:01:00.772 --> 00:01:02.907 traveled along the Silk Road. 00:01:10.506 --> 00:01:13.729 Silk Road trade helped to build empires 00:01:14.212 --> 00:01:16.553 and to break them. 00:01:17.063 --> 00:01:19.913 It fanned the fires of revolution. 00:01:21.503 --> 00:01:24.233 Drove great explorations, 00:01:25.313 --> 00:01:29.206 and forged powerful bonds between far away peoples. 00:01:31.681 --> 00:01:35.544 The Silk Road made human beings realize 00:01:35.864 --> 00:01:38.896 that there are other people out there, 00:01:38.946 --> 00:01:43.204 and it opened the eyes of the east and the west. 00:01:44.662 --> 00:01:50.003 This is the story of how Silk Road trade made so much more than money. 00:01:53.542 --> 00:01:57.595 It's the epic tale of how the Silk Road helped create a world; 00:01:58.855 --> 00:02:01.531 a world that created us. 00:02:16.375 --> 00:02:20.854 2,000 years ago, the Roman Empire seemed unstoppable. 00:02:25.608 --> 00:02:28.082 Rome had conquered much of Europe 00:02:28.822 --> 00:02:32.745 and was sending its legions beyond the eastern Mediterranean 00:02:32.975 --> 00:02:35.579 to the Middle East 00:02:35.649 --> 00:02:38.237 -- gateway to the riches of Asia. 00:02:41.357 --> 00:02:45.736 But a journey to the east could become a road of blood. 00:02:49.016 --> 00:02:53.995 In 53 BC. near the Mesopotamian town of Carrhae, 00:02:54.161 --> 00:02:58.218 the Parthians — an empire blending Persian and Greek cultures — 00:02:58.348 --> 00:03:00.382 confronted a Roman army. 00:03:06.442 --> 00:03:09.669 The outcome of the battle seemed beyond doubt. 00:03:14.394 --> 00:03:18.918 Some 40,000 Romans faced only 10,000 Parthians. 00:03:20.523 --> 00:03:24.522 And Rome's legions were Europe's finest foot soldiers. 00:03:26.702 --> 00:03:28.661 There was just one problem. 00:03:31.038 --> 00:03:33.913 The Parthian army didn't fight on foot. 00:03:36.373 --> 00:03:38.813 The Parthians, they were cavalry. 00:03:38.910 --> 00:03:41.049 They were horse archers. 00:03:41.119 --> 00:03:43.738 Versatile. Rode like the wind. 00:03:46.452 --> 00:03:49.206 What the Romans did was what the Romans always did. 00:03:49.236 --> 00:03:51.251 They took a fixed position. 00:03:51.834 --> 00:03:55.957 They were ordered into a hollow square defending all sides. 00:03:58.147 --> 00:04:00.823 But that was nothing to the Parthian horse archers 00:04:00.833 --> 00:04:03.501 because they could just ride around them, and they did. 00:04:03.559 --> 00:04:06.531 They galloped around and around and around and around, 00:04:06.546 --> 00:04:08.688 shooting as they went. 00:04:11.945 --> 00:04:16.209 Thousands and thousands of arrows loosed into those Romans. 00:04:20.102 --> 00:04:24.270 What the Romans eventually did was they were ordered to go into testudo. 00:04:24.690 --> 00:04:28.644 That's that Roman formation where they lock their shields together 00:04:28.704 --> 00:04:32.226 and put the next layer of shields to make a roof. 00:04:33.686 --> 00:04:36.527 Testudo is Latin for tortoise. 00:04:39.237 --> 00:04:42.722 But the Parthians had the answer to this tortoise. 00:04:43.782 --> 00:04:46.957 They had a hammer to break open its shell. 00:04:49.827 --> 00:04:52.521 The Parthian hammer was a cataphract, 00:04:53.664 --> 00:04:56.823 a Greek word meaning "clothed in full armor". 00:04:58.273 --> 00:05:01.773 Horse and rider wore heavy coats of mail. 00:05:04.053 --> 00:05:07.748 The cataphract was the ancient world equivalent of a battle tank. 00:05:15.968 --> 00:05:19.945 At Carrhae, charging cataphracts broke open the testudo. 00:05:25.695 --> 00:05:29.314 Exposing the Romans inside to more arrow attacks. 00:05:36.874 --> 00:05:40.438 Some 30,000 Romans were killed or captured. 00:05:45.808 --> 00:05:48.080 Parthian losses were minor. 00:05:49.710 --> 00:05:53.066 It was one of Rome's worst military defeats. 00:05:55.416 --> 00:05:58.819 But it may have been something else as well. 00:06:08.951 --> 00:06:10.693 A Roman historian wrote 00:06:10.723 --> 00:06:13.089 that the Parthians dazzled the Romans 00:06:13.129 --> 00:06:16.098 with banners made of a beautiful fabric: 00:06:16.703 --> 00:06:18.068 silk. 00:06:25.518 --> 00:06:27.565 That may only be a legend. 00:06:29.445 --> 00:06:31.519 But around the time of Carrhae, 00:06:31.529 --> 00:06:34.726 Romans began coveting Chinese silk, 00:06:35.446 --> 00:06:38.299 and China began selling silk to Rome 00:06:38.319 --> 00:06:41.781 in exchange for fine Roman glassware and gold. 00:06:45.891 --> 00:06:49.117 Inspiring the name we give Eurasian trade today: NOTE Paragraph 00:06:51.447 --> 00:06:53.400 the Silk Road. 00:07:00.200 --> 00:07:03.811 But long before Romans and Parthians fought at Carrhae, 00:07:03.871 --> 00:07:08.052 trade between the peoples of Eurasia were shaping lives, 00:07:08.082 --> 00:07:10.465 making new things possible, 00:07:10.782 --> 00:07:13.042 and changing the world. 00:07:18.892 --> 00:07:22.554 At Carrhae, the Parthians won with a style of warfare 00:07:22.634 --> 00:07:25.100 that had evolved centuries earlier 00:07:25.110 --> 00:07:27.858 and thousands of kilometers away. 00:07:31.368 --> 00:07:34.176 On the steppes of Central Asia, 00:07:36.481 --> 00:07:38.829 an ocean of land, 00:07:41.409 --> 00:07:44.188 where victory in battle, and life itself, 00:07:44.188 --> 00:07:47.705 depended on moving very far, very fast. 00:07:53.137 --> 00:07:55.877 Thousands of years before the battle of Carrhae, 00:07:55.937 --> 00:08:00.117 a transportation revolution took place on these vast plains. 00:08:09.727 --> 00:08:14.133 There's good evidence for the existence of domesticated horses 00:08:14.727 --> 00:08:20.143 in what is today Kazakhstan and southern Russia by 3500 BC. 00:08:26.470 --> 00:08:30.419 And we actually think that probably horses were domesticated 00:08:30.419 --> 00:08:35.111 and began to be ridden 500 or maybe 1,000 years before that, 00:08:35.271 --> 00:08:37.757 maybe as early as 4500 BC. 00:08:42.067 --> 00:08:44.230 The domestication of the horse 00:08:44.240 --> 00:08:46.986 was the first step towards cavalry warfare. 00:08:50.586 --> 00:08:54.320 But the second step would be a long time coming. 00:08:56.979 --> 00:09:00.912 The first use of horses in warfare was with chariot warfare, 00:09:01.252 --> 00:09:04.803 and we have that well established Tutankhamun's chariot, 00:09:05.064 --> 00:09:08.124 which many people have seen in museum exhibits. 00:09:09.624 --> 00:09:12.979 And we know that people were using chariots in warfare 00:09:12.999 --> 00:09:17.588 starting in the Near East in about 1600, 1700 BC.. 00:09:19.952 --> 00:09:23.313 Horses were not used as organized cavalry 00:09:23.403 --> 00:09:26.624 until after about 900 BC, 00:09:26.954 --> 00:09:30.109 almost 1,000 years after chariot warfare began. 00:09:30.699 --> 00:09:36.382 And it's always seemed odd to me that cavalry began after chariotry. 00:09:37.992 --> 00:09:40.508 Chariotry is very difficult to manage. 00:09:40.568 --> 00:09:43.066 You have to train horses to work together. 00:09:43.116 --> 00:09:45.925 They have to pull this clumsy vehicle 00:09:45.925 --> 00:09:49.447 that has two people in it: a driver and a warrior. 00:09:50.817 --> 00:09:54.793 Training the units to work together, very difficult thing to do, 00:09:54.862 --> 00:09:57.616 whereas jumping on the back of a horse is an easy thing. 00:09:59.630 --> 00:10:02.997 So, why did cavalry come after chariotry? 00:10:04.824 --> 00:10:08.295 I think the real reason that cavalry waited 00:10:08.575 --> 00:10:12.873 is that you needed to have really three innovations. 00:10:21.341 --> 00:10:26.049 The earliest evidence for the recurved bow is in Shang Dynasty, China, 00:10:26.099 --> 00:10:29.498 probably dated between 1300 and 1100 BC. 00:10:31.578 --> 00:10:34.587 Shang emperors communicated with their ancestors 00:10:34.617 --> 00:10:38.752 by heating animal bones or turtle shells until they cracked 00:10:38.762 --> 00:10:42.133 and then interpreting the patterns made by the cracks. 00:10:42.903 --> 00:10:45.301 One of these so-called oracle bones 00:10:45.331 --> 00:10:48.599 is carved with the Chinese character for bow 00:10:48.655 --> 00:10:52.172 — the earliest known image of a recurved bow. 00:10:53.322 --> 00:10:55.500 And in the tomb of Lady Fuhao 00:10:55.540 --> 00:10:58.929 — an imperial consort and renowned military commander — 00:10:58.999 --> 00:11:01.749 archaeologists found more evidence. 00:11:03.836 --> 00:11:08.586 It's a thumb cover for drawing bow string 00:11:08.667 --> 00:11:12.117 and there's another piece that went in the middle of a recurved bow, 00:11:12.142 --> 00:11:13.234 a hand grip. 00:11:13.339 --> 00:11:15.268 The bows themselves are not preserved, 00:11:15.268 --> 00:11:19.487 so, it's a difficult thing to identify the origins of the recurved bow. 00:11:21.384 --> 00:11:23.374 The different components of it 00:11:23.414 --> 00:11:26.018 probably came from different places geographically. 00:11:28.178 --> 00:11:31.225 Just how far the recurved bow traveled across Eurasia 00:11:31.225 --> 00:11:36.889 was revealed in 2005 at Yanghai, in China's Xinjiang region. 00:11:38.513 --> 00:11:41.795 Wooden bows rarely survive burial in the ground, 00:11:41.885 --> 00:11:45.548 but Xinjiang's cold, dry climate preserved one 00:11:45.558 --> 00:11:48.081 in a 3,000-year-old tomb. 00:11:49.501 --> 00:11:51.834 Other grave goods and the human remains 00:11:51.834 --> 00:11:53.974 found in the Yanghai tombs 00:11:53.974 --> 00:11:57.360 confirmed that the bow was made by the Scythians, 00:11:57.610 --> 00:12:02.283 a highly sophisticated culture that originated in southern Russia 00:12:02.383 --> 00:12:04.150 and migrated on horseback 00:12:04.160 --> 00:12:07.263 across the length and breadth of Eurasia. 00:12:10.615 --> 00:12:13.780 The true birthplace of the recurved composite bow 00:12:13.780 --> 00:12:16.672 remains an archaeological mystery. 00:12:18.412 --> 00:12:21.393 But there is no doubt that 3,000 years ago 00:12:21.503 --> 00:12:25.771 anyone who fought on horseback would have found it revolutionary. 00:12:26.404 --> 00:12:30.159 A bow is as strong as it is long. 00:12:30.239 --> 00:12:33.587 It derives its strength from its length. 00:12:34.407 --> 00:12:36.891 And the recurved bow packs the same length 00:12:36.911 --> 00:12:40.443 into this very short bow 00:12:40.443 --> 00:12:44.137 that can be swung over the horse's rear and over the horse's neck. 00:12:46.099 --> 00:12:49.542 And it was much, much easier to use on horseback. 00:12:50.278 --> 00:12:54.474 And the recurved bows are technologically quite difficult to make. 00:12:55.274 --> 00:12:59.940 It took a long time to develop the craft of bow making to that point. 00:13:02.532 --> 00:13:07.002 The recurve all these sinewy bends — reflex and deflex — 00:13:07.096 --> 00:13:09.596 that gives it in-built spring. 00:13:09.626 --> 00:13:12.547 But that can only be created with composite materials. 00:13:12.621 --> 00:13:16.009 What we mean by that is it's made of a number of materials. 00:13:16.039 --> 00:13:18.337 The heart of it is wood, usually beech. 00:13:18.337 --> 00:13:22.109 And then you have horn, horn from a water buffalo, 00:13:22.192 --> 00:13:26.339 and then sinew, the tendons of an animal. 00:13:26.499 --> 00:13:29.363 That, when you bash it, 00:13:29.363 --> 00:13:32.628 you can tease apart and get these very fine fibers, 00:13:32.648 --> 00:13:36.706 fibers with tremendous tensile strength. 00:13:36.986 --> 00:13:39.650 That has elasticity and spring, 00:13:39.780 --> 00:13:42.077 and it stops the bow bursting apart. 00:13:42.097 --> 00:13:46.884 These are all materials that enhance the power, the spring of the bow. 00:13:48.482 --> 00:13:52.437 But only if bow makers could solve a very big problem. 00:13:54.867 --> 00:13:57.329 How to keep such a powerful bow 00:13:57.369 --> 00:13:59.635 made from so many different materials 00:13:59.635 --> 00:14:02.934 from breaking up when its own power was pulling it apart? 00:14:07.504 --> 00:14:10.818 Somewhere in Eurasia, sometime long ago, 00:14:10.848 --> 00:14:14.159 some unknown genius discovered the answer. 00:14:15.808 --> 00:14:20.042 This is the swim bladder of a sturgeon — a fish from the Black Sea. 00:14:20.083 --> 00:14:24.378 And if you start to break these up then put it in hot water, 00:14:24.446 --> 00:14:27.322 and you get this wonderful, viscous glue. 00:14:27.452 --> 00:14:32.680 This simple idea of making a glue out of a swim bladder of a fish 00:14:32.710 --> 00:14:37.247 was a technological breakthrough of immense consequences. 00:14:37.887 --> 00:14:41.437 It is what enabled the composite bow to exist. 00:14:42.047 --> 00:14:46.444 And in turn the composite bow was a military revolution 00:14:46.461 --> 00:14:49.593 of far-reaching consequences. 00:14:51.694 --> 00:14:56.156 The composite recurved bow gave birth to a new kind of warrior 00:14:57.135 --> 00:14:59.121 the horse archer. 00:14:59.221 --> 00:15:01.706 The horse archer was able to shoot from the saddle 00:15:01.866 --> 00:15:05.803 in part because of the new technology of the composite bow. 00:15:06.173 --> 00:15:08.906 They were short, compact bows, 00:15:08.906 --> 00:15:11.917 and that meant that you can shoot them from horseback. 00:15:12.017 --> 00:15:14.448 You see I can cross to the other side of the horse, 00:15:14.448 --> 00:15:15.848 I can turn and shoot behind. 00:15:15.888 --> 00:15:18.843 It's much more suitable for shooting on horseback. 00:15:21.783 --> 00:15:24.541 Everyone who fought with Eurasian nomads, 00:15:24.591 --> 00:15:26.735 whether as enemy or friend, 00:15:26.745 --> 00:15:29.542 wanted a recurved composite bow. 00:15:29.662 --> 00:15:31.880 By the early first millennium BC, 00:15:31.900 --> 00:15:35.224 it was in use from east Asia to eastern Europe. 00:15:40.004 --> 00:15:44.618 A recurved bow gave a horse archer unprecedented killing power. 00:15:48.478 --> 00:15:50.635 But it didn't make him a cavalryman. 00:15:53.185 --> 00:15:57.308 Before horse archers could fight as an effective military force, 00:15:58.038 --> 00:16:01.615 they needed a large supply of identical arrows. 00:16:04.055 --> 00:16:06.683 And that didn't exist. 00:16:09.631 --> 00:16:12.515 Arrowheads were a variety of different sizes and weights. 00:16:12.945 --> 00:16:14.727 Some were made of bone. 00:16:14.787 --> 00:16:16.743 Some were made out of flint. 00:16:16.853 --> 00:16:18.541 Some were made out of bronze. 00:16:18.621 --> 00:16:20.775 All of them would be individually made 00:16:20.805 --> 00:16:24.106 and you had to adjust your shot for the weight of different arrows. 00:16:24.662 --> 00:16:27.791 Also a unit of soldiers who were firing at the same time 00:16:27.821 --> 00:16:30.950 would be firing arrows of slightly different weights 00:16:31.030 --> 00:16:33.675 and they might go different distances. 00:16:34.395 --> 00:16:37.927 One of the features of a stone arrowhead is its flattened rear 00:16:38.437 --> 00:16:40.483 But how did it connect with the arrowshaft? 00:16:40.683 --> 00:16:44.066 It can only be tied to the shaft by rope or ox tendons. 00:16:44.126 --> 00:16:45.707 But what about the disadvantages? 00:16:45.707 --> 00:16:49.733 First, the released arrows tend to change direction easily. 00:16:49.773 --> 00:16:52.569 Second, they are likely to fall off, 00:16:57.709 --> 00:16:59.922 One of the technological innovations 00:16:59.932 --> 00:17:03.555 was the invention of the socketed arrowhead. 00:17:04.685 --> 00:17:07.815 They were made of bronze, usually, 00:17:07.875 --> 00:17:11.648 and they were made in a mould and cast in a mould, 00:17:12.138 --> 00:17:17.323 so that an infinite number of socketed arrowheads of the same weight 00:17:17.343 --> 00:17:19.365 could be made from the same mould. 00:17:23.145 --> 00:17:27.736 Making socketed projectile points was actually a big deal. 00:17:30.626 --> 00:17:36.126 You have to have a mould with a core where the socket is going to be 00:17:36.444 --> 00:17:39.348 that you can pour molten metal around 00:17:39.378 --> 00:17:42.600 so that it's the same thickness all the way around. 00:17:48.382 --> 00:17:51.457 Making arrowheads of the same size and weight 00:17:51.457 --> 00:17:55.023 was another Central Asian technological revolution. 00:17:59.083 --> 00:18:02.249 For the first time, mounted warriors could unleash 00:18:02.249 --> 00:18:05.222 coordinated arrow attacks on their enemies. 00:18:07.677 --> 00:18:10.399 With arrowheads of the same weight, 00:18:10.399 --> 00:18:13.844 every time you drew the bow to shoot 00:18:13.844 --> 00:18:16.170 you knew that you were firing an arrow 00:18:16.237 --> 00:18:19.496 that was exactly the same weight as the last arrow that you fired, 00:18:19.568 --> 00:18:23.694 so you could determine the range and the distance well. 00:18:24.124 --> 00:18:28.648 And also all of the archers that were firing 00:18:28.692 --> 00:18:32.726 were firing arrowheads at the same weight at the same time. 00:18:32.966 --> 00:18:36.437 So the distance for all of them would be the same. 00:18:36.740 --> 00:18:39.514 With a socketed arrowhead 00:18:39.714 --> 00:18:44.436 you can directly insert the head into the shaft. 00:18:44.625 --> 00:18:46.690 It look like this. 00:18:47.450 --> 00:18:50.453 So what are the advantages of this type of arrowhead? 00:18:50.453 --> 00:18:52.314 Its improvements greatly enhanced 00:18:52.314 --> 00:18:54.671 the lethality and efficiency of ancient arrows. 00:18:54.722 --> 00:18:58.341 Even in the chaos of war, the shooter could aim t the target easily. 00:18:58.465 --> 00:19:01.835 He wouldn't loose the direction by aiming t the target quickly. 00:19:02.379 --> 00:19:06.048 This ivention is a giant leap in the development of human history. 00:19:07.768 --> 00:19:11.888 Archaeologists believe that sometime in the second millennium BC, 00:19:12.368 --> 00:19:15.494 socketed bronze arrowheads began spreading east 00:19:15.819 --> 00:19:19.879 while the composite recurved bow spread west. 00:19:20.649 --> 00:19:23.004 Sometime around 900 BC, 00:19:23.004 --> 00:19:25.559 socketed arrowheads and recurved bows 00:19:25.589 --> 00:19:28.649 met in the Tarim Basin area of Central Asia, 00:19:31.069 --> 00:19:35.284 brought together by traders, warriors, and migrating nomads. 00:19:38.804 --> 00:19:43.773 After about 700 BC, you begin to see thousands and thousands of arrowheads 00:19:43.813 --> 00:19:47.510 and dozens of arrowheads in a single quiver in a grave. 00:19:47.591 --> 00:19:50.089 It's like they're being mass produced. 00:19:52.259 --> 00:19:56.263 Bronze socketed arrowheads turned central Asia into an arsenal, 00:19:56.643 --> 00:19:59.506 but cavalries still couldn't exist 00:20:00.883 --> 00:20:03.871 until warriors could become soldiers. 00:20:08.057 --> 00:20:10.619 It was really the age of heroic warfare 00:20:10.619 --> 00:20:14.484 — individuals going out and doing great deeds by themselves 00:20:14.534 --> 00:20:16.926 and attracting glory for their own name. 00:20:17.016 --> 00:20:19.714 And this is the kind of warfare that's described 00:20:20.034 --> 00:20:23.878 in the "Iliad", in the "Odyssey," or in the "Rigveda," 00:20:23.928 --> 00:20:27.955 a religious text that's at the deep roots of modern Hinduism. 00:20:29.201 --> 00:20:32.503 What had to change was a psychological change 00:20:32.503 --> 00:20:35.099 in the nature of the warrior. 00:20:35.759 --> 00:20:39.152 You had to change from individuals to units NOTE Paragraph 00:20:39.262 --> 00:20:42.983 working under the command of a commanding general, 00:20:43.152 --> 00:20:46.468 who would attack and retreat upon command. 00:20:48.305 --> 00:20:52.343 The psychological change from the heroic warrior to the soldier, 00:20:53.735 --> 00:20:57.461 probably is a feature of urban warfare. 00:20:57.891 --> 00:21:00.384 The armies that were associated 00:21:00.384 --> 00:21:04.198 with the great cities of Mesopotamia and Iran. 00:21:06.516 --> 00:21:11.536 That psychology had to spread northward up into the steppes 00:21:12.168 --> 00:21:16.350 and be accepted by warriors in the steppes, 00:21:16.652 --> 00:21:19.336 in the same area where the recurved bows 00:21:19.396 --> 00:21:22.090 and the socketed arrowheads were crossing. 00:21:24.630 --> 00:21:27.214 While recurved bows were spreading west 00:21:27.244 --> 00:21:29.656 and socketed arrowheads were spreading east, 00:21:29.676 --> 00:21:32.922 the concept of military discipline was spreading north. 00:21:36.462 --> 00:21:38.905 Sometime around 900 BC, 00:21:39.085 --> 00:21:42.561 all three combined in the heart of central Asia. 00:21:44.861 --> 00:21:47.169 When those three things came together, 00:21:47.169 --> 00:21:51.922 cavalry became a really deadly form of military force. 00:21:55.182 --> 00:21:59.542 A force that would severely test the ancient world's most powerful armies. 00:22:02.318 --> 00:22:03.836 2,000 years ago, 00:22:03.846 --> 00:22:07.500 as the Romans pushed east to expand their empire, 00:22:08.340 --> 00:22:10.652 China was pushing west. 00:22:13.224 --> 00:22:15.063 And like the Romans, 00:22:15.093 --> 00:22:18.376 the Chinese encountered a formidable enemy on horseback. 00:22:23.008 --> 00:22:26.584 The Xiongnu were nomads from the Central Asian steppes. 00:22:28.044 --> 00:22:30.964 Armed with recurved bows and socketed arrows, 00:22:30.964 --> 00:22:34.660 they fought under commanders as a disciplined military force. 00:22:38.250 --> 00:22:41.093 They raided Chinese villages 00:22:41.483 --> 00:22:44.956 and plundered the growing trade between East and West, 00:22:46.304 --> 00:22:48.915 and no one could stop them. 00:22:49.745 --> 00:22:55.806 The Xiongnu was the migraine of the ancient world for the Chinese. 00:22:56.820 --> 00:23:01.401 They simply just kept coming and they would not stop. 00:23:04.731 --> 00:23:12.270 The Xiongnu wanted the finest material goods produced by the Chinese. 00:23:16.115 --> 00:23:18.742 That is why they raided. 00:23:23.311 --> 00:23:27.025 Imagine you're a villager in China and these men come from nowhere. 00:23:27.055 --> 00:23:29.196 They come from over the hill without warning, 00:23:29.286 --> 00:23:30.919 tearing into your village. 00:23:30.937 --> 00:23:33.294 They shoot the headman, they shoot your husband. 00:23:33.334 --> 00:23:34.822 They chase the women out. 00:23:34.862 --> 00:23:38.426 There is no hiding place and there's a flurry of dust and arrows. 00:23:38.436 --> 00:23:41.649 They're in and they're out and they take the stuff and they go. 00:23:44.788 --> 00:23:47.693 China sent its military might against the Xiongnu. 00:23:49.819 --> 00:23:51.696 The famed Terracotta Warriors 00:23:51.716 --> 00:23:54.504 reveal the size and power of Chinese armies. 00:23:56.543 --> 00:23:59.883 But the Chinese fought on foot and from chariots. 00:24:02.723 --> 00:24:05.683 Not effective against hit-and-run cavalry. 00:24:07.030 --> 00:24:12.857 A Chinese courtier wrote that the Xiongnu moved like a flock of birds over the land, 00:24:13.227 --> 00:24:15.600 impossible to control. 00:24:16.420 --> 00:24:20.101 Once mounted warfare really became deadly and effective, 00:24:20.261 --> 00:24:22.666 it became a real problem. 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. 00:24:27.729 --> 00:24:31.276 Your house is in the same place 12 months of the year, 00:24:31.445 --> 00:24:35.321 and when your crops become ripe, you have to harvest, 00:24:35.548 --> 00:24:39.257 and the nomads know when that season is. 00:24:40.187 --> 00:24:43.152 Whereas when you're trying to strike them back, 00:24:43.172 --> 00:24:45.759 it's impossible to know where they're going to be 00:24:45.799 --> 00:24:47.698 or when they're going to be there. 00:24:47.868 --> 00:24:50.017 You have to search to find them. NOTE Paragraph 00:24:53.188 --> 00:24:58.168 To beat the Xiongnu, the Chinese needed soldiers who could fight like them. 00:25:01.089 --> 00:25:03.077 They needed cavalry. 00:25:06.198 --> 00:25:09.357 There are manuals of warfare that were written 00:25:09.367 --> 00:25:12.638 to instruct Chinese warriors 00:25:12.638 --> 00:25:16.694 on how to counter the tactics and the methods of the Xiongnu. 00:25:17.824 --> 00:25:20.522 Those manuals introduced the idea of cavalry 00:25:20.572 --> 00:25:22.641 to the Chinese military. 00:25:23.151 --> 00:25:26.266 The Chinese military had not really used cavalry 00:25:26.306 --> 00:25:28.801 before about probably 350 BC. 00:25:30.628 --> 00:25:34.009 Chinese military, at first with some resistance 00:25:34.029 --> 00:25:36.750 from the old aristocratic families, said: 00:25:36.870 --> 00:25:39.004 "Well, my father fought on a chariot, NOTE Paragraph 00:25:39.034 --> 00:25:40.871 "and his father fought on a chariot, 00:25:40.891 --> 00:25:44.809 "and I'm gonna fight on a chariot in my long robes like my ancestors." 00:25:46.409 --> 00:25:49.020 But it wasn't long before Chinese warriors 00:25:49.050 --> 00:25:51.742 traded their traditional long, flowing robes 00:25:52.462 --> 00:25:56.665 for shorter tunics that didn't get in the way of fighting on horseback. 00:25:59.165 --> 00:26:05.109 Eventually, the practicalities forced them to get rid of their robes, 00:26:05.162 --> 00:26:07.968 to put on riding trousers, 00:26:08.008 --> 00:26:10.786 to learn to shoot the bow on horseback, 00:26:10.981 --> 00:26:14.655 and they, too, became a mighty horse archer force. 00:26:19.656 --> 00:26:23.613 Chinese cavalry became experts at shooting the recurved composite bow, 00:26:25.623 --> 00:26:30.134 and a lethal Chinese weapon, the crossbow. 00:26:34.132 --> 00:26:36.403 While its cavalry trained, 00:26:36.473 --> 00:26:41.043 China agreed to Xiongnu demands for payments of money and silk 00:26:42.343 --> 00:26:45.283 until the year 133 BC, 00:26:46.103 --> 00:26:49.249 when Emperor Han Wudi refused to pay. 00:26:53.218 --> 00:26:55.696 And sent his army to attack the Xiongnu. 00:27:30.952 --> 00:27:33.645 Chinese cavalry defeated the nomads. 00:27:37.305 --> 00:27:40.802 And China seized new territories in the steppes, 00:27:42.932 --> 00:27:46.654 pacifying trade routes and opening new horizons. 00:27:52.030 --> 00:27:55.019 On one hand, we have this perpetual conflict 00:27:55.119 --> 00:27:59.400 — in Chinese culture would be the Xiongn and the Han Chinese 00:28:00.381 --> 00:28:03.985 that created incessant warfare. 00:28:05.390 --> 00:28:08.557 On the other hand, it is this conflict 00:28:08.567 --> 00:28:11.954 that demolished physical boundaries. 00:28:12.995 --> 00:28:17.054 Even territory boundaries were constantly being pushed farther, 00:28:17.154 --> 00:28:20.144 pushed back between the two forces. 00:28:20.554 --> 00:28:26.029 This was a stimulus for exchanges, 00:28:26.753 --> 00:28:28.876 for political changes, 00:28:28.876 --> 00:28:32.607 for new ideas, for artistic traditions. 00:28:36.057 --> 00:28:38.684 It was also a new era for the Silk Road. 00:28:40.488 --> 00:28:43.677 A fortune in Roman gold traveled east 00:28:43.677 --> 00:28:46.138 in exchange for Chinese silks. 00:28:51.400 --> 00:28:53.940 And the Central Asian kingdom of Kushan 00:28:54.000 --> 00:28:57.355 made its own fortune selling another luxury to China: 00:28:59.565 --> 00:29:00.868 jade. 00:29:03.915 --> 00:29:06.613 Silk Road caravans passed through this border station 00:29:06.613 --> 00:29:08.988 on China's western frontier. 00:29:10.839 --> 00:29:13.380 So many of them carried Kushan jade 00:29:13.430 --> 00:29:16.570 that this station became known as the Jade Gate. 00:29:21.860 --> 00:29:25.450 Chinese aristocrats coveted jade for its beauty 00:29:25.493 --> 00:29:27.414 and something more. 00:29:30.034 --> 00:29:33.659 They believed that jade would keep them alive forever. 00:29:36.789 --> 00:29:39.538 The ruling elite commissioned jade burial suits 00:29:39.558 --> 00:29:42.327 to preserve their bodies in the grave. 00:29:45.617 --> 00:29:48.722 They believed that, upon death, 00:29:48.762 --> 00:29:51.822 all the orifices should be plugged in 00:29:51.842 --> 00:29:56.076 to preserve the spirit inside the person. 00:29:56.966 --> 00:30:00.347 And this notion of jade 00:30:00.347 --> 00:30:05.318 as a material with protective power in the afterlife, 00:30:05.368 --> 00:30:08.348 is further enhanced by the fact 00:30:08.348 --> 00:30:11.062 that they built an armor 00:30:11.062 --> 00:30:16.876 made of thousands of pieces of jade. 00:30:17.916 --> 00:30:20.120 And of course, if you're the emperor, 00:30:20.120 --> 00:30:25.855 your jade armor would be made from the finest jade 00:30:26.997 --> 00:30:29.731 from the western regions. 00:30:30.451 --> 00:30:33.523 During the Roman empire, Silk Road trade flourished 00:30:33.569 --> 00:30:36.522 as Chinese, Persian, and Kushan armies 00:30:36.532 --> 00:30:39.173 kept the trade routes open across Eurasia. 00:30:46.743 --> 00:30:48.568 China had leveled the battlefield 00:30:48.629 --> 00:30:51.282 with nomad raiders from the steppes. 00:30:57.492 --> 00:30:59.757 But Central Asian horse archers 00:30:59.757 --> 00:31:02.717 were about to carve their names on History. 00:31:04.452 --> 00:31:08.912 In the 4th century CE., Europe was invaded by a Central Asian people 00:31:09.042 --> 00:31:12.174 whose name still evokes barbaric cruelty. 00:31:18.664 --> 00:31:22.464 The Huns, who fought their way West, all the way to Rome. 00:31:32.708 --> 00:31:35.214 European peoples like the Goths and Visigoths 00:31:35.268 --> 00:31:37.703 — the so-called barbarians — 00:31:37.713 --> 00:31:39.410 fled before their onslaught, 00:31:39.440 --> 00:31:41.894 and sought refuge in Roman territory. 00:31:43.684 --> 00:31:46.662 When the Huns withdrew from the Roman world, 00:31:46.732 --> 00:31:49.439 those barbarian refugees stayed. 00:31:55.449 --> 00:31:58.197 And the rest is History. 00:32:02.387 --> 00:32:05.882 The western Roman empire was plunged into chaos 00:32:07.766 --> 00:32:10.655 as barbarian tribes, dissatisfied with their lot, 00:32:10.685 --> 00:32:13.835 rebelled against Roman authority, 00:32:14.138 --> 00:32:17.303 and weak Roman emperors failed to crush them. 00:32:21.743 --> 00:32:26.209 As Rome declined, migrating horse archers, called the Avars, 00:32:26.209 --> 00:32:30.436 carved their own country out of eastern Europe, 00:32:30.436 --> 00:32:33.949 bringing with them another Asian military innovation: 00:32:36.739 --> 00:32:38.252 the stirrup. 00:32:41.755 --> 00:32:44.703 This Chinese statue from the fourth century CE, 00:32:44.783 --> 00:32:48.092 is the earliest known depiction of stirrups. 00:32:52.572 --> 00:32:54.788 Some 300 years later, 00:32:54.788 --> 00:32:57.218 an Avar horseman was riding with these stirrups 00:32:57.264 --> 00:32:59.440 across Hungary. 00:33:05.428 --> 00:33:07.277 By the eighth century CE, 00:33:07.287 --> 00:33:11.633 the stirrup had spread from one end of Eurasia to the other 00:33:11.831 --> 00:33:14.997 and mounted warfare was entering a new era. NOTE Paragraph 00:33:18.083 --> 00:33:19.959 The importance of the stirrup 00:33:19.989 --> 00:33:24.087 relates to what kinds of weapons can you use from horseback, 00:33:24.198 --> 00:33:28.682 and it made it possible to use certain kinds of weapons from horseback 00:33:28.682 --> 00:33:31.389 that you couldn't use without stirrups. 00:33:31.409 --> 00:33:33.958 Those weapons are the long sabre. 00:33:34.228 --> 00:33:37.720 You have to lean over and absorb shock, 00:33:38.062 --> 00:33:40.669 if you're going to use a long sabre in battle. 00:33:40.699 --> 00:33:44.998 And the stirrups allow the rider to absorb the shock of contact 00:33:44.998 --> 00:33:47.308 with a stationary target. 00:33:47.788 --> 00:33:50.382 The other big weapon that was possible with stirrups 00:33:50.422 --> 00:33:54.074 was a seated lance held under the arm. 00:33:54.354 --> 00:33:58.796 You could stab somebody with the lance and then remove it, 00:33:58.956 --> 00:34:01.992 riding past them without stirrups. 00:34:02.521 --> 00:34:07.639 But if you seated it under your arm and used the lance as a shock weapon, 00:34:07.814 --> 00:34:10.428 it would knock you off the back of the horse 00:34:10.468 --> 00:34:12.431 if you didn't have stirrups. 00:34:12.441 --> 00:34:16.693 So stirrups made it possible to use long swords and lances 00:34:16.812 --> 00:34:19.598 as shock weapons against stationary targets 00:34:19.608 --> 00:34:21.930 and keep your seat. 00:34:21.936 --> 00:34:27.150 And of course that made it possible to have really heavy mounted warriors. 00:34:28.090 --> 00:34:31.877 Now, the rider becomes a unit with the horse. 00:34:32.237 --> 00:34:35.295 He's so anchored with his stirrups, anchored with this, 00:34:35.295 --> 00:34:37.535 and then with his long lance 00:34:37.585 --> 00:34:41.395 he becomes a single projectile unit. 00:34:43.320 --> 00:34:48.942 Man, horse, saddle, lance, all locked together for the impact charge. 00:34:52.762 --> 00:34:55.753 This was the age of the medieval knight. 00:35:01.108 --> 00:35:02.929 A medieval knight's power 00:35:02.969 --> 00:35:06.744 came from combining the Asian stirrup and the ancient shock tactics 00:35:06.794 --> 00:35:10.868 of the Persian cataphract with a European invention: 00:35:11.431 --> 00:35:13.788 articulated plate armor. 00:35:15.930 --> 00:35:19.354 Strong enough to protect the wearer from sword and lance thrusts 00:35:20.765 --> 00:35:24.918 while light enough to allow him to move freely on horseback 00:35:24.988 --> 00:35:26.769 and on foot. 00:35:29.519 --> 00:35:33.639 Heavy cavalry had never been a more potent weapon of war. 00:35:35.719 --> 00:35:38.954 Medieval mounted warfare could be warfare 00:35:38.984 --> 00:35:42.707 that generated a lot of force on the rider, 00:35:43.089 --> 00:35:45.175 a high impact warfare. 00:35:46.785 --> 00:35:49.517 In that case, the mounted warrior is being used 00:35:49.577 --> 00:35:53.117 really as a shock weapon to strike the enemy. 00:36:00.259 --> 00:36:03.229 But even Europe's formidable mounted knights 00:36:03.239 --> 00:36:06.634 would be outfought by Central Asian cavalry NOTE Paragraph 00:36:08.859 --> 00:36:12.129 that burst out of the steppes and changed the world. 00:36:16.821 --> 00:36:21.677 The largest conquest empire that the Earth has ever seen 00:36:23.647 --> 00:36:27.743 was created by pastoral nomads from Central Asia. 00:36:35.962 --> 00:36:37.929 In the 13th century, 00:36:37.929 --> 00:36:40.632 the Mongols conquered as far West as Poland 00:36:40.656 --> 00:36:43.328 and as far East as the Sea of Japan. 00:36:47.978 --> 00:36:52.019 Mongol armies combined the devastating shock tactics of horse archers 00:36:52.259 --> 00:36:55.445 with a highly sophisticated military organization. 00:36:57.796 --> 00:37:02.794 They could gather quickly and march to distant battlefields. 00:37:04.690 --> 00:37:08.103 Then the cavalry could reach the enemy's battlefield NOTE Paragraph 00:37:08.162 --> 00:37:11.111 before they set up defenses 00:37:11.164 --> 00:37:16.014 which could deter their enemy psychologically and strategically. 00:37:16.864 --> 00:37:21.052 It is said that the cavalry came suddenly 00:37:21.542 --> 00:37:25.241 like something falling fro the sky. 00:37:25.522 --> 00:37:29.485 and disappeared quickly 00:37:29.515 --> 00:37:32.625 leaving no trace at all. 00:37:32.715 --> 00:37:35.633 Western, especially European historians, 00:37:35.663 --> 00:37:41.281 wrote that the Mongols appeared far away like several spots 00:37:41.508 --> 00:37:46.011 but would suddenly gather before you, like dark clouds. 00:37:46.311 --> 00:37:50.284 Unexpected attack was the core 00:37:56.474 --> 00:38:00.091 The Mongols have gone down in History as bloodthirsty killers, 00:38:00.895 --> 00:38:04.359 but they were also sophisticated, open-minded, 00:38:04.359 --> 00:38:06.661 often generous conquerors. 00:38:08.671 --> 00:38:11.237 They pacified the Silk Road. 00:38:16.777 --> 00:38:18.783 Trade between West and East 00:38:18.783 --> 00:38:21.530 flourished under this Mongol-enforced peace, 00:38:21.580 --> 00:38:23.646 the Pax Mongolica. 00:38:26.376 --> 00:38:29.079 Before the age of Pax Mongolica, 00:38:29.129 --> 00:38:33.496 banditry was a very serious problem for traders, 00:38:33.575 --> 00:38:36.039 for caravans, along the Silk Road. 00:38:37.089 --> 00:38:40.561 The reputation of Genghis Khan and his descendants 00:38:41.433 --> 00:38:45.797 created peace and safe passage along the Silk Road 00:38:45.867 --> 00:38:53.773 because bandits were so afraid of the Mongol soldiers. 00:38:54.243 --> 00:38:56.821 The Pax Mongolica, 00:38:57.221 --> 00:39:05.071 the control of trade and exchange 00:39:05.499 --> 00:39:08.389 that was made possible under the Mongols 00:39:08.449 --> 00:39:12.334 connected China with Europe and with the Near East 00:39:12.397 --> 00:39:16.196 in a really close way for the first time in world History 00:39:16.586 --> 00:39:19.423 And that had a profound effect 00:39:19.490 --> 00:39:22.547 on the development of European civilization. 00:39:24.355 --> 00:39:26.479 Protected by the Pax Mongolica, 00:39:26.479 --> 00:39:30.181 and anxious for good relations with the Mongol empire, 00:39:30.245 --> 00:39:34.099 Europeans began traveling East as never before. 00:39:36.243 --> 00:39:38.745 Merchants, missionaries, and diplomats 00:39:38.815 --> 00:39:41.346 flowed East along the trade routes, 00:39:43.386 --> 00:39:46.833 bringing back popular Asian goods like cloth and spices 00:39:48.562 --> 00:39:51.975 and tales of the wealth and wonders of the East, 00:39:52.145 --> 00:39:56.265 some true, some fabulous, but all fascinating. 00:39:57.906 --> 00:39:59.571 From Europe to China, 00:39:59.581 --> 00:40:03.557 Silk Road trade spread new knowledge of far-away lands. 00:40:04.567 --> 00:40:09.079 The Silk Road made human beings realize 00:40:09.229 --> 00:40:12.077 that there are other people out there, 00:40:12.117 --> 00:40:15.975 and it opened the eyes of the East and the West. 00:40:19.672 --> 00:40:23.699 The Italian cities of Venice and Genoa reaped huge rewards. 00:40:27.048 --> 00:40:29.951 Their merchants traveled safely throughout Eurasia 00:40:31.681 --> 00:40:34.102 and founded trading posts on the Black Sea 00:40:34.142 --> 00:40:37.173 to receive and pass on Silk Road goods. 00:40:38.805 --> 00:40:42.831 Their Silk Road profits funded magnificent art and architecture. 00:40:45.404 --> 00:40:49.333 But their competition frequently plunged them into war with one another. 00:40:51.644 --> 00:40:56.149 In one of these wars, Genoa captured a prosperous Venetian merchant 00:40:56.189 --> 00:40:58.101 named Marco Polo. 00:40:59.091 --> 00:41:02.774 Imprisoned by the Genoese, Polo dictated the story 00:41:02.823 --> 00:41:06.257 of his Silk Road journey to China to a fellow prisoner. 00:41:09.170 --> 00:41:13.078 Today, experts debate whether Marco Polo really visited China 00:41:14.308 --> 00:41:16.866 or was simply retelling stories 00:41:16.916 --> 00:41:19.264 he heard from fellow Silk Road travelers. 00:41:23.666 --> 00:41:26.991 But there's no debate that "The Travels of Marco Polo" 00:41:27.051 --> 00:41:31.256 was one of the most influential books in all of human History. 00:41:32.036 --> 00:41:34.241 It tantalized Europe with tales 00:41:34.241 --> 00:41:37.926 of China's immense wealth and advanced civilization. 00:41:45.190 --> 00:41:49.887 And years before Marco Polo was telling those tales in a Genoese prison, 00:41:52.717 --> 00:41:57.556 a Chinese invention was making its way across Eurasia to the West. 00:42:02.566 --> 00:42:05.105 Something created centuries earlier 00:42:05.105 --> 00:42:08.815 when an experiment ended very badly. 00:42:19.455 --> 00:42:23.755 Ancient Chinese alchemists prepared potions of lead or mercury 00:42:23.755 --> 00:42:26.050 for their aristocratic patrons 00:42:26.060 --> 00:42:29.402 who believed that drinking these metals would help them live forever. 00:42:32.748 --> 00:42:36.934 Instead, those concoctions killed them or made them insane. 00:42:38.804 --> 00:42:41.684 Another deadly combination was sulfur 00:42:41.684 --> 00:42:45.634 heated with an organic nitrate found in soil throughout China, 00:42:48.041 --> 00:42:50.750 known today as saltpeter. 00:42:52.950 --> 00:42:55.465 When alchemists experimented with this formula, 00:42:55.525 --> 00:42:57.668 it burst into flame, 00:42:57.678 --> 00:42:59.741 injuring the alchemists, 00:42:59.822 --> 00:43:01.186 (Explosion) 00:43:01.256 --> 00:43:03.923 and burning down their laboratory. 00:43:05.943 --> 00:43:10.536 From that disaster was born a chemical mixture like none other. 00:43:15.036 --> 00:43:18.193 It may have failed as an elixir of immortality, 00:43:18.193 --> 00:43:22.554 but it would prove to be a potent agent of death. 00:43:25.273 --> 00:43:29.427 This Chinese Buddhist scroll dating from around 950 CE, 00:43:29.427 --> 00:43:32.819 depicts demons surrounding a seated Buddha. 00:43:34.259 --> 00:43:39.465 One demon holds what the Chinese called a "huo quiang", or fire lance. 00:43:42.352 --> 00:43:44.886 It's the earliest known image of a weapon 00:43:44.906 --> 00:43:48.328 powered by that deadly mixture of saltpeter and sulfur. 00:43:51.518 --> 00:43:55.739 Known to history as gunpowder. 00:44:01.094 --> 00:44:03.545 In the early 13th century, 00:44:03.545 --> 00:44:06.695 the Mongols attacked China's Jin Dynasty. 00:44:07.205 --> 00:44:11.635 The Jin Dynasty's army fought back with exploding gunpowder bombs. 00:44:15.755 --> 00:44:18.860 But as the Mongols conquered more and more of China, 00:44:18.860 --> 00:44:22.368 Han Chinese artillerymen joined their armies 00:44:22.418 --> 00:44:26.162 and marched West, bringing their gunpowder weapons with them. 00:44:29.142 --> 00:44:32.284 The Mongols attacked Russian and Polish cities 00:44:32.294 --> 00:44:34.720 with exploding fire bombs. 00:44:36.120 --> 00:44:39.973 And Europeans found out the hard way what gunpowder could do. 00:44:44.396 --> 00:44:46.763 By the end of the 13th century, 00:44:46.763 --> 00:44:49.986 the formula for gunpowder was known as far West as England, 00:44:51.754 --> 00:44:55.953 and Europeans were inventing their own versions of the new weapons. 00:44:59.873 --> 00:45:04.479 It wasn't long before this Chinese invention changed European history. 00:45:08.385 --> 00:45:11.051 On 26th August, 1346, 00:45:11.417 --> 00:45:14.332 near the village of Crecy in northern France, 00:45:14.692 --> 00:45:18.407 the armies of France and England prepared to fight. 00:45:26.940 --> 00:45:30.543 Mounted on their war steeds, encased in their armor, 00:45:30.583 --> 00:45:33.959 the flower of French nobility formed their battle line, 00:45:42.728 --> 00:45:46.087 while the English deployed a very different force. 00:45:50.197 --> 00:45:52.966 Thousands of expert archers. 00:45:59.966 --> 00:46:04.555 The French sent their higher Genoese crossbowmen to attack the English 00:46:04.575 --> 00:46:07.650 before French knights annihilated them. 00:46:14.813 --> 00:46:17.429 But the English king, Edward III, 00:46:17.429 --> 00:46:20.537 had spent years training his longbow men. 00:46:24.517 --> 00:46:27.576 And all that training was about to pay off. NOTE Paragraph 00:46:41.426 --> 00:46:46.505 Nothing like this had been seen on a western battlefield up to this time. 00:46:46.685 --> 00:46:51.754 The first time that a volley of arrows was unleashed by the archers at Crecy 00:46:52.214 --> 00:46:55.329 would have represented something completely new 00:46:55.369 --> 00:46:58.513 to many of those in the French army watching it. 00:46:58.553 --> 00:47:01.150 A cloud of arrows descending towards them. 00:47:02.440 --> 00:47:04.713 It would have been frightening, 00:47:04.733 --> 00:47:07.630 and of course the effect was almost immediate. 00:47:11.660 --> 00:47:15.957 Showered by English arrows, the Genoese turned and ran, 00:47:17.318 --> 00:47:19.917 and according to medieval accounts of the battle, 00:47:19.917 --> 00:47:23.136 they were also panicked by another English weapon. 00:47:32.031 --> 00:47:35.156 Giovanni Villani, writing very soon after the battle, 00:47:35.206 --> 00:47:39.563 says in his chronicle that so loud and intimidating 00:47:39.693 --> 00:47:42.235 was the noise created by the guns 00:47:42.355 --> 00:47:45.418 that they thought God was thundering. 00:47:48.997 --> 00:47:51.909 "The English guns cast iron balls by means of fire. 00:47:52.689 --> 00:47:54.950 "They made a noise like thunder NOTE Paragraph 00:47:55.020 --> 00:47:57.625 "and caused much loss in men and horses." 00:48:04.835 --> 00:48:07.373 Noise like that would have been unprecedented 00:48:07.413 --> 00:48:09.911 to the soldiers on the battlefield. 00:48:10.538 --> 00:48:13.668 Nothing in their lives could have prepared them 00:48:13.668 --> 00:48:15.464 for a a bang of that size 00:48:15.464 --> 00:48:19.539 and accompanied by smoke and acrid sulfur smell, 00:48:19.662 --> 00:48:22.219 which would hang in the air. 00:48:22.409 --> 00:48:25.043 The impact of which, of course, they couldn't see 00:48:25.063 --> 00:48:27.387 until men around them dropped. 00:48:29.087 --> 00:48:32.119 Not even professional soldiers like the Genoese 00:48:32.298 --> 00:48:36.039 would have experienced anything like this before in their lives. 00:48:36.189 --> 00:48:38.776 That would have been terrifying, 00:48:38.806 --> 00:48:41.759 and it's no wonder that they scattered and ran. 00:48:44.019 --> 00:48:49.721 They turned and fled into the face of the oncoming French cavalry charge. 00:48:50.100 --> 00:48:53.205 The French cavalry were now coming onto the battlefield 00:48:53.204 --> 00:48:55.310 and they were appalled 00:48:55.310 --> 00:48:59.000 at these people they'd hired running away. 00:49:01.270 --> 00:49:03.830 And they cursed them and they rode into them, 00:49:03.850 --> 00:49:06.675 and as many Genoese fell to French hooves 00:49:06.725 --> 00:49:09.643 as they did to English arrows and gunshots. 00:49:11.813 --> 00:49:14.220 And the French knights, all 12,000 of them, 00:49:14.220 --> 00:49:16.099 double the size of the English army, 00:49:16.101 --> 00:49:18.531 they came charging down onto the English. 00:49:21.911 --> 00:49:26.031 And they, too, fell to the English arrows and the English gunshot, 00:49:27.621 --> 00:49:30.431 and they came again and again and again. 00:49:30.501 --> 00:49:32.846 15, 16 times, they came. 00:49:34.706 --> 00:49:36.716 And their horses were ripped to shreds 00:49:36.716 --> 00:49:39.133 and the men were thrown from their horses. 00:49:39.203 --> 00:49:40.633 And those that weren't thrown, 00:49:40.653 --> 00:49:43.218 they had the opportunity that the dagger men rushed in 00:49:43.218 --> 00:49:45.517 and they brought these knights down. 00:49:50.787 --> 00:49:54.609 This was a moment in History where the world changed. 00:49:54.789 --> 00:49:58.715 It spelled the beginning of the end for the medieval knight. 00:50:01.772 --> 00:50:04.215 The Battle of Crecy has gone down in history 00:50:04.215 --> 00:50:07.413 as one of the earliest uses of gunpowder weapons 00:50:07.563 --> 00:50:10.507 on a European battlefield. 00:50:17.987 --> 00:50:19.945 Some 500 years after, 00:50:19.985 --> 00:50:22.664 it burned down a Chinese alchemist's workshop, 00:50:22.752 --> 00:50:26.081 gunpowder had become destiny's weapon of choice. 00:50:28.566 --> 00:50:31.614 After Crecy, it was only a matter of time 00:50:31.614 --> 00:50:35.276 until the fates of peoples and nations were decided by the gun. 00:50:40.126 --> 00:50:42.367 Within two centuries, 00:50:42.387 --> 00:50:45.307 Europeans would use their powerful gunpowder weapons 00:50:45.347 --> 00:50:47.907 to dominate the world, 00:50:51.747 --> 00:50:55.826 creating empires that would evolve into today's global trading culture, 00:50:59.832 --> 00:51:03.378 which binds people together by commerce instead of the gun. 00:51:10.019 --> 00:51:13.459 But before Europe could embark on its empire-building adventure, 00:51:14.799 --> 00:51:16.529 its medieval social order 00:51:16.529 --> 00:51:19.589 would be shattered by a catastrophic event. 00:51:21.409 --> 00:51:25.184 One that would forge a new Europe in a crucible of horror. 00:51:29.154 --> 00:51:31.631 While guns thundered at Crecy, 00:51:31.643 --> 00:51:34.932 something else was spreading along the Eurasian trade routes. 00:51:39.607 --> 00:51:43.749 Something that would kill tens of millions of Europeans. 00:51:48.509 --> 00:51:51.400 An apocalyptic destruction of human life 00:51:52.350 --> 00:51:55.585 that would lay the foundations of the modern world. 00:52:18.095 --> 00:52:20.920 At the Battle of Crécy in 1346, 00:52:21.261 --> 00:52:24.876 the English won an historic victory over France, 00:52:27.836 --> 00:52:31.299 helped by a Chinese invention that had traveled to Europe. 00:52:40.339 --> 00:52:42.065 Gunpowder. 00:53:18.785 --> 00:53:20.977 And in the same year of 1346, 00:53:21.517 --> 00:53:24.741 some 2,000 kilometres east of Crécy, 00:53:25.241 --> 00:53:29.367 another battle was taking place on the shores of the Black Sea. 00:53:33.677 --> 00:53:38.209 A Mongol army had been laying siege to the Crimean port city of Caffa, 00:53:38.729 --> 00:53:42.730 a Silk Road trading post belonging to the Italian city of Genoa. 00:53:45.514 --> 00:53:48.390 The Mongols were masters of siege warfare. 00:53:51.340 --> 00:53:55.343 But Caffa was still holding out after more than two years. 00:53:58.983 --> 00:54:02.154 Suddenly, the Mongol army was decimated. 00:54:02.954 --> 00:54:06.894 Not by Caffa's defenders, but by an unknown disease. 00:54:10.005 --> 00:54:12.515 The Mongols quickly ended their siege. 00:54:13.125 --> 00:54:14.965 But before they left Caffa, 00:54:14.995 --> 00:54:18.060 they loaded their siege engines with the corpses of their dead 00:54:18.330 --> 00:54:21.131 and flung them over the city's walls, 00:54:21.481 --> 00:54:25.179 believing that the stench of death would kill the defenders. 00:54:29.959 --> 00:54:31.712 Medieval chronicles say 00:54:31.712 --> 00:54:34.724 that Caffa's defenders did die by the thousands, 00:54:35.114 --> 00:54:38.241 but not from the smell of death. 00:54:42.311 --> 00:54:44.908 One year later, in 1347, 00:54:44.958 --> 00:54:48.957 the same disease that had killed the Mongols at Caffa 00:54:49.142 --> 00:54:51.779 was killing people in Constantinople. 00:54:53.429 --> 00:54:58.907 By 1348,it was killing people across Western Europe. 00:55:02.238 --> 00:55:06.807 By 1350, it was killing people as far away as Greenland. 00:55:11.447 --> 00:55:14.362 And terrified Europeans had given it a name. 00:55:16.982 --> 00:55:19.119 The Black Death. 00:55:20.879 --> 00:55:26.485 In just under a decade, from 1347 to 1356, 00:55:27.175 --> 00:55:31.401 the Black Death killed a t least 25 million Europeans., 00:55:31.511 --> 00:55:34.649 one third of Europe's population. 00:55:38.829 --> 00:55:40.766 Today, most scholars believe 00:55:40.766 --> 00:55:43.880 that the Black Death was an outbreak of bubonic plague. 00:55:44.460 --> 00:55:48.059 that was transmitted to humans by infected fleas living on rats. 00:55:52.006 --> 00:55:54.716 And we believe that it spread across Eurasia 00:55:54.868 --> 00:55:58.348 by hitching a ride with armies, ships, and caravans 00:55:59.228 --> 00:56:02.253 along trade routes that were already ancient 00:56:02.363 --> 00:56:05.030 by the time of the Black Death. 00:56:07.740 --> 00:56:10.460 Micro-organic travelers of all kinds 00:56:10.480 --> 00:56:13.610 have moved across Eurasia for thousands of years. 00:56:15.214 --> 00:56:19.032 A bio-migration that has had as big an impact on history 00:56:19.032 --> 00:56:23.775 as the more famous exchanges of new technologies and luxury goods. 00:56:24.805 --> 00:56:27.352 And as a recent discovery shows, 00:56:27.362 --> 00:56:30.400 tiny living things moving along the Silk Road 00:56:30.440 --> 00:56:33.324 brought life as well as death. 00:56:34.584 --> 00:56:36.989 We were putting together some new methods 00:56:37.057 --> 00:56:39.221 of looking for early agriculture, 00:56:39.251 --> 00:56:42.155 and for that we needed to do a survey 00:56:42.262 --> 00:56:45.459 of all the finds of early crops in Europe. 00:56:47.163 --> 00:56:49.221 When you looked at a map of all of Europe, 00:56:49.231 --> 00:56:52.103 then you could see there were these Chinese crops 00:56:52.135 --> 00:56:55.027 in small numbers very early on in Europe. 00:56:57.017 --> 00:57:00.208 "Very early on" was around 2,000 BC, 00:57:02.485 --> 00:57:05.244 when a Chinese grain called broomcorn millet 00:57:05.326 --> 00:57:09.011 appears in the Eastern European archaeological record. 00:57:10.061 --> 00:57:13.730 The actual crop itself will decay or be eaten, 00:57:14.169 --> 00:57:16.178 but rather fortunately, 00:57:16.218 --> 00:57:19.642 if it's cooked and over-burnt, it turns to carbon. 00:57:19.675 --> 00:57:23.387 That will stay in the archaeological record for a long time. 00:57:27.368 --> 00:57:29.965 In the Chinese province of inner Mongolia, 00:57:30.445 --> 00:57:33.923 archaeologists are studying the origins of broomcorn millet, 00:57:34.631 --> 00:57:37.596 one of the world's oldest domestic crops. 00:57:40.346 --> 00:57:44.293 We are looking at a broomcorn millet field of almost 16 acres 00:57:44.543 --> 00:57:47.342 The cultivation of broomcorn millet in this place 00:57:47.402 --> 00:57:49.834 dates back to nearly 8000 years ago. 00:57:49.949 --> 00:57:53.826 It's the earliest area of human-cultivated broomcorn millet in the world. 00:57:53.896 --> 00:57:56.170 After broomcorn millet's birth in this place, 00:57:56.170 --> 00:57:58.048 it spread to the West from the East. 00:57:58.048 --> 00:58:00.049 It spread to Europe. 00:58:01.499 --> 00:58:04.308 Since it originated from the East and then spread to Europe, 00:58:04.313 --> 00:58:06.637 it can be regarded as an important contribution 00:58:06.637 --> 00:58:09.479 of our Eastern civilization to the Western counterpart. 00:58:11.999 --> 00:58:14.966 But it isn't clear just how and why 00:58:15.136 --> 00:58:19.275 broomcorn millet travelled thousands of kilometres across Eurasia, 00:58:19.806 --> 00:58:22.845 through some of the world's harshest environments, 00:58:22.925 --> 00:58:25.505 all the way to Europe. 00:58:27.185 --> 00:58:31.450 Millet's long journey may have begun simply because it travelled so well. 00:58:35.160 --> 00:58:38.662 Millets are essentially cereals, but they're very small. 00:58:39.482 --> 00:58:41.618 And because they have very small grains, 00:58:41.648 --> 00:58:43.301 they're hardy and they're tough, 00:58:43.301 --> 00:58:45.418 and they can grow quite fast. 00:58:45.448 --> 00:58:47.586 Broomcorn millet, at a push, 00:58:47.906 --> 00:58:50.635 can get from seed to seed in 45 days. 00:58:53.225 --> 00:58:55.290 You can plant a seed in the ground 00:58:55.300 --> 00:58:58.761 and 45 days later, in the right conditions, 00:58:58.801 --> 00:59:00.808 you may have plants. 00:59:00.865 --> 00:59:02.642 That's incredibly fast. 00:59:02.722 --> 00:59:04.996 So, if you're moving around parts of Asia, 00:59:05.050 --> 00:59:07.739 where, on the one hand, there's a long winter, 00:59:07.779 --> 00:59:09.304 a short growing season, 00:59:09.374 --> 00:59:12.378 and you can't particularly r ely on rainfall, 00:59:12.468 --> 00:59:16.087 then something that gets a move on in terms of its growth cycle 00:59:16.115 --> 00:59:18.220 is very valuable. 00:59:21.260 --> 00:59:24.692 There are accounts of communities that are on horseback 00:59:25.172 --> 00:59:28.497 for quite a lot of the time and herding animals and so forth, 00:59:28.497 --> 00:59:32.263 but for that short season of the year 00:59:32.313 --> 00:59:33.879 that millet grows in, 00:59:33.879 --> 00:59:36.738 they can actually sow the millet on horseback, 00:59:36.948 --> 00:59:39.287 trample it in with the horse's feet, 00:59:39.509 --> 00:59:41.599 and then either leave a few teenagers there 00:59:41.599 --> 00:59:44.081 to scare the birds off for a couple of months, 00:59:44.169 --> 00:59:47.539 come back two months later, and harvest the crops. 00:59:51.369 --> 00:59:53.819 Millet was a highly mobile grain, 00:59:53.849 --> 00:59:55.664 but there wasn't any evidence 00:59:55.714 --> 00:59:58.941 of how it might have travelled from its home in northern China.