0:00:04.643,0:00:08.344
Eurasia: the world's largest land mass.

0:00:10.434,0:00:14.579
Some 10,000 kilometers from the Pacific[br]to the Atlantic ocean.

0:00:16.794,0:00:19.729
A formidable distance, [br]even in today's world.

0:00:24.339,0:00:26.806
And yet over that vast distance,

0:00:27.946,0:00:31.855
human beings have pursued[br]one of history's greatest enterprises:

0:00:33.905,0:00:35.464
The Silk Road.

0:00:37.944,0:00:40.964
A tremendously profitable trade route

0:00:41.144,0:00:43.304
and so much more.

0:00:44.134,0:00:45.658
For thousands of years,

0:00:45.709,0:00:47.291
exotic goods,

0:00:48.476,0:00:50.345
new technologies,

0:00:52.385,0:00:54.234
conquering armies,

0:00:56.794,0:00:58.484
and brilliant ideas

0:01:00.772,0:01:02.907
traveled along the Silk Road.

0:01:10.506,0:01:13.729
Silk Road trade helped to build empires

0:01:14.212,0:01:16.553
and to break them.

0:01:17.063,0:01:19.913
It fanned the fires of revolution.

0:01:21.503,0:01:24.233
Drove great explorations,

0:01:25.313,0:01:29.206
and forged powerful bonds[br]between far away peoples.

0:01:31.681,0:01:35.544
The Silk Road made human beings realize

0:01:35.864,0:01:38.896
that there are other people out there,

0:01:38.946,0:01:43.204
and it opened the eyes [br]of the east and the west.

0:01:44.662,0:01:50.003
This is the story of how Silk Road trade [br]made so much more than money.

0:01:53.542,0:01:57.595
It's the epic tale of how the Silk Road[br]helped create a world;

0:01:58.855,0:02:01.531
a world that created us.

0:02:16.375,0:02:20.854
2,000 years ago, the Roman Empire[br]seemed unstoppable.

0:02:25.608,0:02:28.082
Rome had conquered much of Europe

0:02:28.822,0:02:32.745
and was sending its legions beyond[br]the eastern Mediterranean

0:02:32.975,0:02:35.579
to the Middle East

0:02:35.649,0:02:38.237
-- gateway to the riches of Asia.

0:02:41.357,0:02:45.736
But a journey to the east [br]could become a road of blood.

0:02:49.016,0:02:53.995
In 53 BC. near the Mesopotamian[br]town of Carrhae,

0:02:54.161,0:02:58.218
the Parthians — an empire blending[br]Persian and Greek cultures —

0:02:58.348,0:03:00.382
confronted a Roman army.

0:03:06.442,0:03:09.669
The outcome of the battle[br]seemed beyond doubt.

0:03:14.394,0:03:18.918
Some 40,000 Romans[br]faced only 10,000 Parthians.

0:03:20.523,0:03:24.522
And Rome's legions[br]were Europe's finest foot soldiers.

0:03:26.702,0:03:28.661
There was just one problem.

0:03:31.038,0:03:33.913
The Parthian army didn't fight on foot.

0:03:36.373,0:03:38.813
The Parthians, they were cavalry.

0:03:38.910,0:03:41.049
They were horse archers.

0:03:41.119,0:03:43.738
Versatile. Rode like the wind.

0:03:46.452,0:03:49.206
What the Romans did[br]was what the Romans always did.

0:03:49.236,0:03:51.251
They took a fixed position.

0:03:51.834,0:03:55.957
They were ordered into a hollow square[br]defending all sides.

0:03:58.147,0:04:00.823
But that was nothing [br]to the Parthian horse archers

0:04:00.833,0:04:03.501
because they could just ride[br]around them, and they did.

0:04:03.559,0:04:06.531
They galloped around and around [br]and around and around,

0:04:06.546,0:04:08.688
shooting as they went.

0:04:11.945,0:04:16.209
Thousands and thousands of arrows[br]loosed into those Romans.

0:04:20.102,0:04:24.270
What the Romans eventually did [br]was they were ordered to go into testudo.

0:04:24.690,0:04:28.644
That's that Roman formation[br]where they lock their shields together

0:04:28.704,0:04:32.226
and put the next layer[br]of shields to make a roof.

0:04:33.686,0:04:36.527
Testudo is Latin for tortoise.

0:04:39.237,0:04:42.722
But the Parthians [br]had the answer to this tortoise.

0:04:43.782,0:04:46.957
They had a hammer [br]to break open its shell.

0:04:49.827,0:04:52.521
The Parthian hammer was a cataphract,

0:04:53.664,0:04:56.823
a Greek word meaning [br]"clothed in full armor".

0:04:58.273,0:05:01.773
Horse and rider wore heavy coats of mail.

0:05:04.053,0:05:07.748
The cataphract was the ancient world[br]equivalent of a battle tank.

0:05:15.968,0:05:19.945
At Carrhae, charging cataphracts[br]broke open the testudo.

0:05:25.695,0:05:29.314
Exposing the Romans inside[br]to more arrow attacks.

0:05:36.874,0:05:40.438
Some 30,000 Romans [br]were killed or captured.

0:05:45.808,0:05:48.080
Parthian losses were minor.

0:05:49.710,0:05:53.066
It was one of Rome's [br]worst military defeats.

0:05:55.416,0:05:58.819
But it may have been [br]something else as well.

0:06:08.951,0:06:10.693
A Roman historian wrote

0:06:10.723,0:06:13.089
that the Parthians dazzled the Romans

0:06:13.129,0:06:16.098
with banners made of a beautiful fabric:

0:06:16.703,0:06:18.068
silk.

0:06:25.518,0:06:27.565
That may only be a legend.

0:06:29.445,0:06:31.519
But around the time of Carrhae,

0:06:31.529,0:06:34.726
Romans began coveting Chinese silk,

0:06:35.446,0:06:38.299
and China began selling silk to Rome

0:06:38.319,0:06:41.781
in exchange for fine[br]Roman glassware and gold.

0:06:45.891,0:06:49.117
Inspiring the name[br]we give Eurasian trade today:

0:06:51.447,0:06:53.400
the Silk Road.

0:07:00.200,0:07:03.811
But long before Romans and Parthians[br]fought at Carrhae,

0:07:03.871,0:07:08.052
trade between the peoples of Eurasia[br]were shaping lives,

0:07:08.082,0:07:10.465
making new things possible,

0:07:10.782,0:07:13.042
and changing the world.

0:07:18.892,0:07:22.554
At Carrhae, the Parthians [br]won with a style of warfare

0:07:22.634,0:07:25.100
that had evolved centuries earlier

0:07:25.110,0:07:27.858
and thousands of kilometers away.

0:07:31.368,0:07:34.176
On the steppes of Central Asia,

0:07:36.481,0:07:38.829
an ocean of land,

0:07:41.409,0:07:44.188
where victory in battle, and life itself,

0:07:44.188,0:07:47.705
depended on moving [br]very far, very fast.

0:07:53.137,0:07:55.877
Thousands of years [br]before the battle of Carrhae,

0:07:55.937,0:08:00.117
a transportation revolution [br]took place on these vast plains.

0:08:09.727,0:08:14.133
There's good evidence for the existence[br]of domesticated horses

0:08:14.727,0:08:20.143
in what is today Kazakhstan[br]and southern Russia by 3500 BC.

0:08:26.470,0:08:30.419
And we actually think that probably[br]horses were domesticated

0:08:30.419,0:08:35.111
and began to be ridden [br]500 or maybe 1,000 years before that,

0:08:35.271,0:08:37.757
maybe as early as 4500 BC.

0:08:42.067,0:08:44.230
The domestication of the horse

0:08:44.240,0:08:46.986
was the first step[br]towards cavalry warfare.

0:08:50.586,0:08:54.320
But the second step [br]would be a long time coming.

0:08:56.979,0:09:00.912
The first use of horses in warfare [br]was with chariot warfare,

0:09:01.252,0:09:04.803
and we have that well established[br]Tutankhamun's chariot,

0:09:05.064,0:09:08.124
which many people have seen[br]in museum exhibits.

0:09:09.624,0:09:12.979
And we know that people[br]were using chariots in warfare

0:09:12.999,0:09:17.588
starting in the Near East[br]in about 1600, 1700 BC..

0:09:19.952,0:09:23.313
Horses were not used as organized cavalry

0:09:23.403,0:09:26.624
until after about 900 BC,

0:09:26.954,0:09:30.109
almost 1,000 years [br]after chariot warfare began.

0:09:30.699,0:09:36.382
And it's always seemed odd to me[br]that cavalry began after chariotry.

0:09:37.992,0:09:40.508
Chariotry is very difficult to manage.

0:09:40.568,0:09:43.066
You have to train horses to work together.

0:09:43.116,0:09:45.925
They have to pull this clumsy vehicle

0:09:45.925,0:09:49.447
that has two people in it:[br]a driver and a warrior.

0:09:50.817,0:09:54.793
Training the units to work together,[br]very difficult thing to do,

0:09:54.862,0:09:57.616
whereas jumping on the back of a horse[br]is an easy thing.

0:09:59.630,0:10:02.997
So, why did cavalry come after chariotry?

0:10:04.824,0:10:08.295
I think the real reason [br]that cavalry waited

0:10:08.575,0:10:12.873
is that you needed to have[br]really three innovations.

0:10:21.341,0:10:26.049
The earliest evidence for the recurved bow[br]is in Shang Dynasty, China,

0:10:26.099,0:10:29.498
probably dated between 1300 and 1100 BC.

0:10:31.578,0:10:34.587
Shang emperors communicated [br]with their ancestors

0:10:34.617,0:10:38.752
by heating animal bones or turtle shells[br]until they cracked

0:10:38.762,0:10:42.133
and then interpreting[br]the patterns made by the cracks.

0:10:42.903,0:10:45.301
One of these so-called oracle bones

0:10:45.331,0:10:48.599
is carved with the Chinese [br]character for bow

0:10:48.655,0:10:52.172
— the earliest known image[br]of a recurved bow.

0:10:53.322,0:10:55.500
And in the tomb of Lady Fuhao

0:10:55.540,0:10:58.929
— an imperial consort [br]and renowned military commander —

0:10:58.999,0:11:01.749
archaeologists found more evidence.

0:11:03.836,0:11:08.586
It's a thumb cover [br]for drawing bow string

0:11:08.667,0:11:12.117
and there's another piece that went[br]in the middle of a recurved bow,

0:11:12.142,0:11:13.234
a hand grip.

0:11:13.339,0:11:15.268
The bows themselves are not preserved,

0:11:15.268,0:11:19.487
so, it's a difficult thing to identify[br]the origins of the recurved bow.

0:11:21.384,0:11:23.374
The different components of it

0:11:23.414,0:11:26.018
probably came from different places[br]geographically.

0:11:28.178,0:11:31.225
Just how far the recurved bow[br]traveled across Eurasia

0:11:31.225,0:11:36.889
was revealed in 2005 at Yanghai,[br]in China's Xinjiang region.

0:11:38.513,0:11:41.795
Wooden bows rarely survive [br]burial in the ground,

0:11:41.885,0:11:45.548
but Xinjiang's cold, dry climate[br]preserved one

0:11:45.558,0:11:48.081
in a 3,000-year-old tomb.

0:11:49.501,0:11:51.834
Other grave goods [br]and the human remains

0:11:51.834,0:11:53.974
found in the Yanghai tombs

0:11:53.974,0:11:57.360
confirmed that the bow was made[br]by the Scythians,

0:11:57.610,0:12:02.283
a highly sophisticated culture[br]that originated in southern Russia

0:12:02.383,0:12:04.150
and migrated on horseback

0:12:04.160,0:12:07.263
across the length and breadth of Eurasia.

0:12:10.615,0:12:13.780
The true birthplace [br]of the recurved composite bow

0:12:13.780,0:12:16.672
remains an archaeological mystery.

0:12:18.412,0:12:21.393
But there is no doubt [br]that 3,000 years ago

0:12:21.503,0:12:25.771
anyone who fought on horseback[br]would have found it revolutionary.

0:12:26.404,0:12:30.159
A bow is as strong as it is long.

0:12:30.239,0:12:33.587
It derives its strength from its length.

0:12:34.407,0:12:36.891
And the recurved bow [br]packs the same length

0:12:36.911,0:12:40.443
into this very short bow

0:12:40.443,0:12:44.137
that can be swung over the horse's rear [br]and over the horse's neck.

0:12:46.099,0:12:49.542
And it was much, much easier [br]to use on horseback.

0:12:50.278,0:12:54.474
And the recurved bows are[br]technologically quite difficult to make.

0:12:55.274,0:12:59.940
It took a long time to develop[br]the craft of bow making to that point.

0:13:02.532,0:13:07.002
The recurve all these sinewy bends[br]— reflex and deflex —

0:13:07.096,0:13:09.596
that gives it in-built spring.

0:13:09.626,0:13:12.547
But that can only be created[br]with composite materials.

0:13:12.621,0:13:16.009
What we mean by that is[br]it's made of a number of materials.

0:13:16.039,0:13:18.337
The heart of it is wood, usually beech.

0:13:18.337,0:13:22.109
And then you have horn,[br]horn from a water buffalo,

0:13:22.192,0:13:26.339
and then sinew, the tendons of an animal.

0:13:26.499,0:13:29.363
That, when you bash it,

0:13:29.363,0:13:32.628
you can tease apart[br]and get these very fine fibers,

0:13:32.648,0:13:36.706
fibers with tremendous tensile strength.

0:13:36.986,0:13:39.650
That has elasticity and spring,

0:13:39.780,0:13:42.077
and it stops the bow bursting apart.

0:13:42.097,0:13:46.884
These are all materials that enhance[br]the power, the spring of the bow.

0:13:48.482,0:13:52.437
But only if bow makers[br]could solve a very big problem.

0:13:54.867,0:13:57.329
How to keep such a powerful bow

0:13:57.369,0:13:59.635
made from so many different materials

0:13:59.635,0:14:02.934
from breaking up when its own power[br]was pulling it apart?

0:14:07.504,0:14:10.818
Somewhere in Eurasia, sometime long ago,

0:14:10.848,0:14:14.159
some unknown genius discovered the answer.

0:14:15.808,0:14:20.042
This is the swim bladder of a sturgeon[br]— a fish from the Black Sea.

0:14:20.083,0:14:24.378
And if you start to break these up [br]then put it in hot water,

0:14:24.446,0:14:27.322
and you get this wonderful, viscous glue.

0:14:27.452,0:14:32.680
This simple idea of making a glue[br]out of a swim bladder of a fish

0:14:32.710,0:14:37.247
was a technological breakthrough[br]of immense consequences.

0:14:37.887,0:14:41.437
It is what enabled[br]the composite bow to exist.

0:14:42.047,0:14:46.444
And in turn the composite bow[br]was a military revolution

0:14:46.461,0:14:49.593
of far-reaching consequences.

0:14:51.694,0:14:56.156
The composite recurved bow[br]gave birth to a new kind of warrior

0:14:57.135,0:14:59.121
the horse archer.

0:14:59.221,0:15:01.706
The horse archer was able[br]to shoot from the saddle

0:15:01.866,0:15:05.803
in part because of the new technology[br]of the composite bow.

0:15:06.173,0:15:08.906
They were short, compact bows,

0:15:08.906,0:15:11.917
and that meant that you [br]can shoot them from horseback.

0:15:12.017,0:15:14.448
You see I can cross[br]to the other side of the horse,

0:15:14.448,0:15:15.848
I can turn and shoot behind.

0:15:15.888,0:15:18.843
It's much more suitable[br]for shooting on horseback.

0:15:21.783,0:15:24.541
Everyone who fought with Eurasian nomads,

0:15:24.591,0:15:26.735
whether as enemy or friend,

0:15:26.745,0:15:29.542
wanted a recurved composite bow.

0:15:29.662,0:15:31.880
By the early first millennium BC,

0:15:31.900,0:15:35.224
it was in use from east Asia[br]to eastern Europe.

0:15:40.004,0:15:44.618
A recurved bow gave a horse archer[br]unprecedented killing power.

0:15:48.478,0:15:50.635
But it didn't make him a cavalryman.

0:15:53.185,0:15:57.308
Before horse archers could fight[br]as an effective military force,

0:15:58.038,0:16:01.615
they needed a large supply[br]of identical arrows.

0:16:04.055,0:16:06.683
And that didn't exist.

0:16:09.631,0:16:12.515
Arrowheads were a variety [br]of different sizes and weights.

0:16:12.945,0:16:14.727
Some were made of bone.

0:16:14.787,0:16:16.743
Some were made out of flint.

0:16:16.853,0:16:18.541
Some were made out of bronze.

0:16:18.621,0:16:20.775
All of them would be individually made

0:16:20.805,0:16:24.106
and you had to adjust your shot[br]for the weight of different arrows.

0:16:24.662,0:16:27.791
Also a unit of soldiers [br]who were firing at the same time

0:16:27.821,0:16:30.950
would be firing arrows[br]of slightly different weights

0:16:31.030,0:16:33.675
and they might go different distances.

0:16:34.395,0:16:37.927
One of the features of a stone arrowhead[br]is its flattened rear

0:16:38.437,0:16:40.483
But how did it connect [br]with the arrowshaft?

0:16:40.683,0:16:44.066
It can only be tied to the shaft[br]by rope or ox tendons.

0:16:44.126,0:16:45.707
But what about the disadvantages?

0:16:45.707,0:16:49.733
First, the released arrows [br]tend to change direction easily.

0:16:49.773,0:16:52.569
Second, they are likely to fall off,

0:16:57.709,0:16:59.922
One of the technological innovations

0:16:59.932,0:17:03.555
was the invention[br]of the socketed arrowhead.

0:17:04.685,0:17:07.815
They were made of bronze, usually,

0:17:07.875,0:17:11.648
and they were made in a mould [br]and cast in a mould,

0:17:12.138,0:17:17.323
so that an infinite number [br]of socketed arrowheads of the same weight

0:17:17.343,0:17:19.365
could be made from the same mould.

0:17:23.145,0:17:27.736
Making socketed projectile points [br]was actually a big deal.

0:17:30.626,0:17:36.126
You have to have a mould with a core[br]where the socket is going to be

0:17:36.444,0:17:39.348
that you can pour molten metal around

0:17:39.378,0:17:42.600
so that it's the same thickness [br]all the way around.

0:17:48.382,0:17:51.457
Making arrowheads[br]of the same size and weight

0:17:51.457,0:17:55.023
was another Central Asian[br]technological revolution.

0:17:59.083,0:18:02.249
For the first time, mounted warriors[br]could unleash

0:18:02.249,0:18:05.222
coordinated arrow attacks [br]on their enemies.

0:18:07.677,0:18:10.399
With arrowheads of the same weight,

0:18:10.399,0:18:13.844
every time you drew the bow to shoot

0:18:13.844,0:18:16.170
you knew that you were firing an arrow

0:18:16.237,0:18:19.496
that was exactly the same weight[br]as the last arrow that you fired,

0:18:19.568,0:18:23.694
so you could determine[br]the range and the distance well.

0:18:24.124,0:18:28.648
And also all of the archers [br]that were firing

0:18:28.692,0:18:32.726
were firing arrowheads[br]at the same weight at the same time.

0:18:32.966,0:18:36.437
So the distance for all of them [br]would be the same.

0:18:36.740,0:18:39.514
With a socketed arrowhead

0:18:39.714,0:18:44.436
you can directly insert [br]the head into the shaft.

0:18:44.625,0:18:46.690
It look like this.

0:18:47.450,0:18:50.453
So what are the advantages[br]of this type of arrowhead?

0:18:50.453,0:18:52.314
Its improvements greatly enhanced

0:18:52.314,0:18:54.671
the lethality and efficiency[br]of ancient arrows.

0:18:54.722,0:18:58.341
Even in the chaos of war, the shooter [br]could aim t the target easily.

0:18:58.465,0:19:01.835
He wouldn't loose the direction[br]by aiming t the target quickly.

0:19:02.379,0:19:06.048
This ivention is a giant leap [br]in the development of human history.

0:19:07.768,0:19:11.888
Archaeologists believe that sometime[br]in the second millennium BC,

0:19:12.368,0:19:15.494
socketed bronze arrowheads[br]began spreading east

0:19:15.819,0:19:19.879
while the composite [br]recurved bow spread west.

0:19:20.649,0:19:23.004
Sometime around 900 BC,

0:19:23.004,0:19:25.559
socketed arrowheads and recurved bows

0:19:25.589,0:19:28.649
met in the Tarim Basin area [br]of Central Asia,

0:19:31.069,0:19:35.284
brought together by traders,[br]warriors, and migrating nomads.

0:19:38.804,0:19:43.773
After about 700 BC, you begin to see[br]thousands and thousands of arrowheads

0:19:43.813,0:19:47.510
and dozens of arrowheads[br]in a single quiver in a grave.

0:19:47.591,0:19:50.089
It's like they're being mass produced.

0:19:52.259,0:19:56.263
Bronze socketed arrowheads[br]turned central Asia into an arsenal,

0:19:56.643,0:19:59.506
but cavalries still couldn't exist

0:20:00.883,0:20:03.871
until warriors could become soldiers.

0:20:08.057,0:20:10.619
It was really the age of heroic warfare

0:20:10.619,0:20:14.484
— individuals going out [br]and doing great deeds by themselves

0:20:14.534,0:20:16.926
and attracting glory for their own name.

0:20:17.016,0:20:19.714
And this is the kind of warfare[br]that's described

0:20:20.034,0:20:23.878
in the "Iliad", in the "Odyssey," [br]or in the "Rigveda,"

0:20:23.928,0:20:27.955
a religious text that's at the deep roots[br]of modern Hinduism.

0:20:29.201,0:20:32.503
What had to change[br]was a psychological change

0:20:32.503,0:20:35.099
in the nature of the warrior.

0:20:35.759,0:20:39.152
You had to change[br]from individuals to units

0:20:39.262,0:20:42.983
working under the command[br]of a commanding general,

0:20:43.152,0:20:46.468
who would attack and retreat[br]upon command.

0:20:48.305,0:20:52.343
The psychological change [br]from the heroic warrior to the soldier,

0:20:53.735,0:20:57.461
probably is a feature of urban warfare.

0:20:57.891,0:21:00.384
The armies that were associated

0:21:00.384,0:21:04.198
with the great cities [br]of Mesopotamia and Iran.

0:21:06.516,0:21:11.536
That psychology had to spread [br]northward up into the steppes

0:21:12.168,0:21:16.350
and be accepted by warriors[br]in the steppes,

0:21:16.652,0:21:19.336
in the same area [br]where the recurved bows

0:21:19.396,0:21:22.090
and the socketed arrowheads were crossing.

0:21:24.630,0:21:27.214
While recurved bows were spreading west

0:21:27.244,0:21:29.656
and socketed arrowheads[br]were spreading east,

0:21:29.676,0:21:32.922
the concept of military discipline[br]was spreading north.

0:21:36.462,0:21:38.905
Sometime around 900 BC,

0:21:39.085,0:21:42.561
all three combined[br]in the heart of central Asia.

0:21:44.861,0:21:47.169
When those three things came together,

0:21:47.169,0:21:51.922
cavalry became a really deadly form[br]of military force.

0:21:55.182,0:21:59.542
A force that would severely test[br]the ancient world's most powerful armies.

0:22:02.318,0:22:03.836
2,000 years ago,

0:22:03.846,0:22:07.500
as the Romans pushed east [br]to expand their empire,

0:22:08.340,0:22:10.652
China was pushing west.

0:22:13.224,0:22:15.063
And like the Romans,

0:22:15.093,0:22:18.376
the Chinese encountered[br]a formidable enemy on horseback.

0:22:23.008,0:22:26.584
The Xiongnu were nomads[br]from the Central Asian steppes.

0:22:28.044,0:22:30.964
Armed with recurved bows[br]and socketed arrows,

0:22:30.964,0:22:34.660
they fought under commanders [br]as a disciplined military force.

0:22:38.250,0:22:41.093
They raided Chinese villages

0:22:41.483,0:22:44.956
and plundered the growing trade[br]between East and West,

0:22:46.304,0:22:48.915
and no one could stop them.

0:22:49.745,0:22:55.806
The Xiongnu was the migraine[br]of the ancient world for the Chinese.

0:22:56.820,0:23:01.401
They simply just kept coming[br]and they would not stop.

0:23:04.731,0:23:12.270
The Xiongnu wanted the finest[br]material goods produced by the Chinese.

0:23:16.115,0:23:18.742
That is why they raided.

0:23:23.311,0:23:27.025
Imagine you're a villager in China[br]and these men come from nowhere.

0:23:27.055,0:23:29.196
They come from over the hill [br]without warning,

0:23:29.286,0:23:30.919
tearing into your village.

0:23:30.937,0:23:33.294
They shoot the headman, [br]they shoot your husband.

0:23:33.334,0:23:34.822
They chase the women out.

0:23:34.862,0:23:38.426
There is no hiding place[br]and there's a flurry of dust and arrows.

0:23:38.436,0:23:41.649
They're in and they're out [br]and they take the stuff and they go.

0:23:44.788,0:23:47.693
China sent its military might[br]against the Xiongnu.

0:23:49.819,0:23:51.696
The famed Terracotta Warriors

0:23:51.716,0:23:54.504
reveal the size and power[br]of Chinese armies.

0:23:56.543,0:23:59.883
But the Chinese fought on foot[br]and from chariots.

0:24:02.723,0:24:05.683
Not effective against hit-and-run cavalry.

0:24:07.030,0:24:12.857
A Chinese courtier wrote that the Xiongnu[br]moved like a flock of birds over the land,

0:24:13.227,0:24:15.600
impossible to control.

0:24:16.420,0:24:20.101
Once mounted warfare really[br]became deadly and effective,

0:24:20.261,0:24:22.666
it became a real problem.

0:24:22.856,0:24:27.669
If you're a farmer, the nomads know[br]where you're going to be all the time.

0:24:27.729,0:24:31.276
Your house is in the same place[br]12 months of the year,

0:24:31.445,0:24:35.321
and when your crops become ripe,[br]you have to harvest,

0:24:35.548,0:24:39.257
and the nomads know when that season is.

0:24:40.187,0:24:43.152
Whereas when you're trying[br]to strike them back,

0:24:43.172,0:24:45.759
it's impossible to know[br]where they're going to be

0:24:45.799,0:24:47.698
or when they're going to be there.

0:24:47.868,0:24:50.017
You have to search to find them.

0:24:53.188,0:24:58.168
To beat the Xiongnu, the Chinese [br]needed soldiers who could fight like them.

0:25:01.089,0:25:03.077
They needed cavalry.

0:25:06.198,0:25:09.357
There are manuals of warfare[br]that were written

0:25:09.367,0:25:12.638
to instruct Chinese warriors

0:25:12.638,0:25:16.694
on how to counter the tactics[br]and the methods of the Xiongnu.

0:25:17.824,0:25:20.522
Those manuals introduced [br]the idea of cavalry

0:25:20.572,0:25:22.641
to the Chinese military.

0:25:23.151,0:25:26.266
The Chinese military[br]had not really used cavalry

0:25:26.306,0:25:28.801
before about probably 350 BC.

0:25:30.628,0:25:34.009
Chinese military, at first [br]with some resistance

0:25:34.029,0:25:36.750
from the old aristocratic families, said:

0:25:36.870,0:25:39.004
"Well, my father fought on a chariot,

0:25:39.034,0:25:40.871
"and his father fought on a chariot,

0:25:40.891,0:25:44.809
"and I'm gonna fight on a chariot[br]in my long robes like my ancestors."

0:25:46.409,0:25:49.020
But it wasn't long before Chinese warriors

0:25:49.050,0:25:51.742
traded their traditional[br]long, flowing robes

0:25:52.462,0:25:56.665
for shorter tunics that didn't get[br]in the way of fighting on horseback.

0:25:59.165,0:26:05.109
Eventually, the practicalities[br]forced them to get rid of their robes,

0:26:05.162,0:26:07.968
to put on riding trousers,

0:26:08.008,0:26:10.786
to learn to shoot the bow on horseback,

0:26:10.981,0:26:14.655
and they, too, became [br]a mighty horse archer force.

0:26:19.656,0:26:23.613
Chinese cavalry became experts[br]at shooting the recurved composite bow,

0:26:25.623,0:26:30.134
and a lethal Chinese weapon, the crossbow.

0:26:34.132,0:26:36.403
While its cavalry trained,

0:26:36.473,0:26:41.043
China agreed to Xiongnu demands[br]for payments of money and silk

0:26:42.343,0:26:45.283
until the year 133 BC,

0:26:46.103,0:26:49.249
when Emperor Han Wudi refused to pay.

0:26:53.218,0:26:55.696
And sent his army to attack the Xiongnu.

0:27:30.952,0:27:33.645
Chinese cavalry defeated the nomads.

0:27:37.305,0:27:40.802
And China seized[br]new territories in the steppes,

0:27:42.932,0:27:46.654
pacifying trade routes [br]and opening new horizons.

0:27:52.030,0:27:55.019
On one hand, [br]we have this perpetual conflict

0:27:55.119,0:27:59.400
— in Chinese culture would be[br]the Xiongn and the Han Chinese

0:28:00.381,0:28:03.985
that created incessant warfare.

0:28:05.390,0:28:08.557
On the other hand, it is this conflict

0:28:08.567,0:28:11.954
that demolished physical boundaries.

0:28:12.995,0:28:17.054
Even territory boundaries [br]were constantly being pushed farther,

0:28:17.154,0:28:20.144
pushed back between the two forces.

0:28:20.554,0:28:26.029
This was a stimulus for exchanges,

0:28:26.753,0:28:28.876
for political changes,

0:28:28.876,0:28:32.607
for new ideas, for artistic traditions.

0:28:36.057,0:28:38.684
It was also a new era for the Silk Road.

0:28:40.488,0:28:43.677
A fortune in Roman gold [br]traveled east

0:28:43.677,0:28:46.138
in exchange for Chinese silks.

0:28:51.400,0:28:53.940
And the Central Asian kingdom of Kushan

0:28:54.000,0:28:57.355
made its own fortune [br]selling another luxury to China:

0:28:59.565,0:29:00.868
jade.

0:29:03.915,0:29:06.613
Silk Road caravans passed [br]through this border station

0:29:06.613,0:29:08.988
on China's western frontier.

0:29:10.839,0:29:13.380
So many of them carried Kushan jade

0:29:13.430,0:29:16.570
that this station became known [br]as the Jade Gate.

0:29:21.860,0:29:25.450
Chinese aristocrats[br]coveted jade for its beauty

0:29:25.493,0:29:27.414
and something more.

0:29:30.034,0:29:33.659
They believed that jade [br]would keep them alive forever.

0:29:36.789,0:29:39.538
The ruling elite commissioned [br]jade burial suits

0:29:39.558,0:29:42.327
to preserve their bodies in the grave.

0:29:45.617,0:29:48.722
They believed that, upon death,

0:29:48.762,0:29:51.822
all the orifices should be plugged in

0:29:51.842,0:29:56.076
to preserve the spirit inside the person.

0:29:56.966,0:30:00.347
And this notion of jade

0:30:00.347,0:30:05.318
as a material with protective power[br]in the afterlife,

0:30:05.368,0:30:08.348
is further enhanced by the fact

0:30:08.348,0:30:11.062
that they built an armor

0:30:11.062,0:30:16.876
made of thousands[br]of pieces of jade.

0:30:17.916,0:30:20.120
And of course, if you're the emperor,

0:30:20.120,0:30:25.855
your jade armor would be made[br]from the finest jade

0:30:26.997,0:30:29.731
from the western regions.

0:30:30.451,0:30:33.523
During the Roman empire,[br]Silk Road trade flourished

0:30:33.569,0:30:36.522
as Chinese, Persian, and Kushan armies

0:30:36.532,0:30:39.173
kept the trade routes open across Eurasia.

0:30:46.743,0:30:48.568
China had leveled the battlefield

0:30:48.629,0:30:51.282
with nomad raiders from the steppes.

0:30:57.492,0:30:59.757
But Central Asian horse archers

0:30:59.757,0:31:02.717
were about to carve[br]their names on History.

0:31:04.452,0:31:08.912
In the 4th century CE., Europe was invaded[br]by a Central Asian people

0:31:09.042,0:31:12.174
whose name still evokes barbaric cruelty.

0:31:18.664,0:31:22.464
The Huns, who fought their way West,[br]all the way to Rome.

0:31:32.708,0:31:35.214
European peoples[br]like the Goths and Visigoths

0:31:35.268,0:31:37.703
— the so-called barbarians —

0:31:37.713,0:31:39.410
fled before their onslaught,

0:31:39.440,0:31:41.894
and sought refuge in Roman territory.

0:31:43.684,0:31:46.662
When the Huns withdrew[br]from the Roman world,

0:31:46.732,0:31:49.439
those barbarian refugees stayed.

0:31:55.449,0:31:58.197
And the rest is History.

0:32:02.387,0:32:05.882
The western Roman empire [br]was plunged into chaos

0:32:07.766,0:32:10.655
as barbarian tribes, [br]dissatisfied with their lot,

0:32:10.685,0:32:13.835
rebelled against Roman authority,

0:32:14.138,0:32:17.303
and weak Roman emperors [br]failed to crush them.

0:32:21.743,0:32:26.209
As Rome declined, migrating [br]horse archers, called the Avars,

0:32:26.209,0:32:30.436
carved their own country [br]out of eastern Europe,

0:32:30.436,0:32:33.949
bringing with them [br]another Asian military innovation:

0:32:36.739,0:32:38.252
the stirrup.

0:32:41.755,0:32:44.703
This Chinese statue [br]from the fourth century CE,

0:32:44.783,0:32:48.092
is the earliest known[br]depiction of stirrups.

0:32:52.572,0:32:54.788
Some 300 years later,

0:32:54.788,0:32:57.218
an Avar horseman[br]was riding with these stirrups

0:32:57.264,0:32:59.440
across Hungary.

0:33:05.428,0:33:07.277
By the eighth century CE,

0:33:07.287,0:33:11.633
the stirrup had spread[br]from one end of Eurasia to the other

0:33:11.831,0:33:14.997
and mounted warfare[br]was entering a new era.

0:33:18.083,0:33:19.959
The importance of the stirrup

0:33:19.989,0:33:24.087
relates to what kinds of weapons[br]can you use from horseback,

0:33:24.198,0:33:28.682
and it made it possible to use [br]certain kinds of weapons from horseback

0:33:28.682,0:33:31.389
that you couldn't use without stirrups.

0:33:31.409,0:33:33.958
Those weapons are the long sabre.

0:33:34.228,0:33:37.720
You have to lean over and absorb shock,

0:33:38.062,0:33:40.669
if you're going to use[br]a long sabre in battle.

0:33:40.699,0:33:44.998
And the stirrups allow the rider [br]to absorb the shock of contact

0:33:44.998,0:33:47.308
with a stationary target.

0:33:47.788,0:33:50.382
The other big weapon [br]that was possible with stirrups

0:33:50.422,0:33:54.074
was a seated lance held under the arm.

0:33:54.354,0:33:58.796
You could stab somebody with the lance[br]and then remove it,

0:33:58.956,0:34:01.992
riding past them without stirrups.

0:34:02.521,0:34:07.639
But if you seated it under your arm[br]and used the lance as a shock weapon,

0:34:07.814,0:34:10.428
it would knock you[br]off the back of the horse

0:34:10.468,0:34:12.431
if you didn't have stirrups.

0:34:12.441,0:34:16.693
So stirrups made it possible to use[br]long swords and lances

0:34:16.812,0:34:19.598
as shock weapons [br]against stationary targets

0:34:19.608,0:34:21.930
and keep your seat.

0:34:21.936,0:34:27.150
And of course that made it possible[br]to have really heavy mounted warriors.

0:34:28.090,0:34:31.877
Now, the rider becomes [br]a unit with the horse.

0:34:32.237,0:34:35.295
He's so anchored with his stirrups,[br]anchored with this,

0:34:35.295,0:34:37.535
and then with his long lance

0:34:37.585,0:34:41.395
he becomes a single projectile unit.

0:34:43.320,0:34:48.942
Man, horse, saddle, lance, [br]all locked together for the impact charge.

0:34:52.762,0:34:55.753
This was the age of the medieval knight.

0:35:01.108,0:35:02.929
A medieval knight's power

0:35:02.969,0:35:06.744
came from combining the Asian stirrup[br]and the ancient shock tactics

0:35:06.794,0:35:10.868
of the Persian cataphract[br]with a European invention:

0:35:11.431,0:35:13.788
articulated plate armor.

0:35:15.930,0:35:19.354
Strong enough to protect the wearer [br]from sword and lance thrusts

0:35:20.765,0:35:24.918
while light enough to allow him [br]to move freely on horseback

0:35:24.988,0:35:26.769
and on foot.

0:35:29.519,0:35:33.639
Heavy cavalry had never been[br]a more potent weapon of war.

0:35:35.719,0:35:38.954
Medieval mounted warfare [br]could be warfare

0:35:38.984,0:35:42.707
that generated[br]a lot of force on the rider,

0:35:43.089,0:35:45.175
a high impact warfare.

0:35:46.785,0:35:49.517
In that case, the mounted warrior[br]is being used

0:35:49.577,0:35:53.117
really as a shock weapon[br]to strike the enemy.

0:36:00.259,0:36:03.229
But even Europe's [br]formidable mounted knights

0:36:03.239,0:36:06.634
would be outfought[br]by Central Asian cavalry

0:36:08.859,0:36:12.129
that burst out of the steppes [br]and changed the world.

0:36:16.821,0:36:21.677
The largest conquest empire[br]that the Earth has ever seen

0:36:23.647,0:36:27.743
was created by pastoral nomads[br]from Central Asia.

0:36:35.962,0:36:37.929
In the 13th century,

0:36:37.929,0:36:40.632
the Mongols conquered [br]as far West as Poland

0:36:40.656,0:36:43.328
and as far East as the Sea of Japan.

0:36:47.978,0:36:52.019
Mongol armies combined the devastating[br]shock tactics of horse archers

0:36:52.259,0:36:55.445
with a highly sophisticated[br]military organization.

0:36:57.796,0:37:02.794
They could gather quickly[br]and march to distant battlefields.

0:37:04.690,0:37:08.103
Then the cavalry could reach[br]the enemy's battlefield

0:37:08.162,0:37:11.111
before they set up defenses

0:37:11.164,0:37:16.014
which could deter their enemy[br]psychologically and strategically.

0:37:16.864,0:37:21.052
It is said that the cavalry came suddenly

0:37:21.542,0:37:25.241
like something falling fro the sky.

0:37:25.522,0:37:29.485
and disappeared quickly

0:37:29.515,0:37:32.625
leaving no trace at all.

0:37:32.715,0:37:35.633
Western, especially European historians,

0:37:35.663,0:37:41.281
wrote that the Mongols appeared [br]far away like several spots

0:37:41.508,0:37:46.011
but would suddenly gather[br]before you, like dark clouds.

0:37:46.311,0:37:50.284
Unexpected attack was the core

0:37:56.474,0:38:00.091
The Mongols have gone down[br]in History as bloodthirsty killers,

0:38:00.895,0:38:04.359
but they were also sophisticated,[br]open-minded,

0:38:04.359,0:38:06.661
often generous conquerors.

0:38:08.671,0:38:11.237
They pacified the Silk Road.

0:38:16.777,0:38:18.783
Trade between West and East

0:38:18.783,0:38:21.530
flourished under [br]this Mongol-enforced peace,

0:38:21.580,0:38:23.646
the Pax Mongolica.

0:38:26.376,0:38:29.079
Before the age of Pax Mongolica,

0:38:29.129,0:38:33.496
banditry was a very serious[br]problem for traders,

0:38:33.575,0:38:36.039
for caravans, along the Silk Road.

0:38:37.089,0:38:40.561
The reputation of Genghis Khan[br]and his descendants

0:38:41.433,0:38:45.797
created peace and safe passage[br]along the Silk Road

0:38:45.867,0:38:53.773
because bandits were so afraid[br]of the Mongol soldiers.

0:38:54.243,0:38:56.821
The Pax Mongolica,

0:38:57.221,0:39:05.071
the control of trade and exchange

0:39:05.499,0:39:08.389
that was made possible under the Mongols

0:39:08.449,0:39:12.334
connected China with Europe[br]and with the Near East

0:39:12.397,0:39:16.196
in a really close way [br]for the first time in world History

0:39:16.586,0:39:19.423
And that had a profound effect

0:39:19.490,0:39:22.547
on the development[br]of European civilization.

0:39:24.355,0:39:26.479
Protected by the Pax Mongolica,

0:39:26.479,0:39:30.181
and anxious for good relations [br]with the Mongol empire,

0:39:30.245,0:39:34.099
Europeans began traveling East [br]as never before.

0:39:36.243,0:39:38.745
Merchants, missionaries, and diplomats

0:39:38.815,0:39:41.346
flowed East along the trade routes,

0:39:43.386,0:39:46.833
bringing back popular Asian goods[br]like cloth and spices

0:39:48.562,0:39:51.975
and tales of the wealth [br]and wonders of the East,

0:39:52.145,0:39:56.265
some true, some fabulous, [br]but all fascinating.

0:39:57.906,0:39:59.571
From Europe to China,

0:39:59.581,0:40:03.557
Silk Road trade spread [br]new knowledge of far-away lands.

0:40:04.567,0:40:09.079
The Silk Road made human beings realize

0:40:09.229,0:40:12.077
that there are other people out there,

0:40:12.117,0:40:15.975
and it opened the eyes [br]of the East and the West.

0:40:19.672,0:40:23.699
The Italian cities of Venice and Genoa[br]reaped huge rewards.

0:40:27.048,0:40:29.951
Their merchants traveled safely[br]throughout Eurasia

0:40:31.681,0:40:34.102
and founded trading posts on the Black Sea

0:40:34.142,0:40:37.173
to receive and pass on Silk Road goods.

0:40:38.805,0:40:42.831
Their Silk Road profits funded[br]magnificent art and architecture.

0:40:45.404,0:40:49.333
But their competition frequently[br]plunged them into war with one another.

0:40:51.644,0:40:56.149
In one of these wars, Genoa captured[br]a prosperous Venetian merchant

0:40:56.189,0:40:58.101
named Marco Polo.

0:40:59.091,0:41:02.774
Imprisoned by the Genoese, [br]Polo dictated the story

0:41:02.823,0:41:06.257
of his Silk Road journey to China[br]to a fellow prisoner.

0:41:09.170,0:41:13.078
Today, experts debate whether[br]Marco Polo really visited China

0:41:14.308,0:41:16.866
or was simply retelling stories

0:41:16.916,0:41:19.264
he heard from fellow Silk Road travelers.

0:41:23.666,0:41:26.991
But there's no debate [br]that "The Travels of Marco Polo"

0:41:27.051,0:41:31.256
was one of the most influential books[br]in all of human History.

0:41:32.036,0:41:34.241
It tantalized Europe with tales

0:41:34.241,0:41:37.926
of China's immense wealth [br]and advanced civilization.

0:41:45.190,0:41:49.887
And years before Marco Polo was telling[br]those tales in a Genoese prison,

0:41:52.717,0:41:57.556
a Chinese invention was making[br]its way across Eurasia to the West.

0:42:02.566,0:42:05.105
Something created centuries earlier

0:42:05.105,0:42:08.815
when an experiment ended very badly.

0:42:19.455,0:42:23.755
Ancient Chinese alchemists[br]prepared potions of lead or mercury

0:42:23.755,0:42:26.050
for their aristocratic patrons

0:42:26.060,0:42:29.402
who believed that drinking these metals[br]would help them live forever.

0:42:32.748,0:42:36.934
Instead, those concoctions killed them [br]or made them insane.

0:42:38.804,0:42:41.684
Another deadly combination was sulfur

0:42:41.684,0:42:45.634
heated with an organic nitrate[br]found in soil throughout China,

0:42:48.041,0:42:50.750
known today as saltpeter.

0:42:52.950,0:42:55.465
When alchemists experimented[br]with this formula,

0:42:55.525,0:42:57.668
it burst into flame,

0:42:57.678,0:42:59.741
injuring the alchemists,

0:42:59.822,0:43:01.186
(Explosion)

0:43:01.256,0:43:03.923
and burning down their laboratory.

0:43:05.943,0:43:10.536
From that disaster was born [br]a chemical mixture like none other.

0:43:15.036,0:43:18.193
It may have failed[br]as an elixir of immortality,

0:43:18.193,0:43:22.554
but it would prove to be[br]a potent agent of death.

0:43:25.273,0:43:29.427
This Chinese Buddhist scroll [br]dating from around 950 CE,

0:43:29.427,0:43:32.819
depicts demons surrounding[br]a seated Buddha.

0:43:34.259,0:43:39.465
One demon holds what the Chinese called[br]a "huo quiang", or fire lance.

0:43:42.352,0:43:44.886
It's the earliest known image of a weapon

0:43:44.906,0:43:48.328
powered by that deadly mixture [br]of saltpeter and sulfur.

0:43:51.518,0:43:55.739
Known to history as gunpowder.

0:44:01.094,0:44:03.545
In the early 13th century,

0:44:03.545,0:44:06.695
the Mongols attacked China's Jin Dynasty.

0:44:07.205,0:44:11.635
The Jin Dynasty's army fought back [br]with exploding gunpowder bombs.

0:44:15.755,0:44:18.860
But as the Mongols conquered [br]more and more of China,

0:44:18.860,0:44:22.368
Han Chinese artillerymen[br]joined their armies

0:44:22.418,0:44:26.162
and marched West, bringing[br]their gunpowder weapons with them.

0:44:29.142,0:44:32.284
The Mongols attacked [br]Russian and Polish cities

0:44:32.294,0:44:34.720
with exploding fire bombs.

0:44:36.120,0:44:39.973
And Europeans found out the hard way [br]what gunpowder could do.

0:44:44.396,0:44:46.763
By the end of the 13th century,

0:44:46.763,0:44:49.986
the formula for gunpowder [br]was known as far West as England,

0:44:51.754,0:44:55.953
and Europeans were inventing [br]their own versions of the new weapons.

0:44:59.873,0:45:04.479
It wasn't long before this Chinese [br]invention changed European history.

0:45:08.385,0:45:11.051
On 26th August, 1346,

0:45:11.417,0:45:14.332
near the village of Crecy[br]in northern France,

0:45:14.692,0:45:18.407
the armies of France and England[br]prepared to fight.

0:45:26.940,0:45:30.543
Mounted on their war steeds, [br]encased in their armor,

0:45:30.583,0:45:33.959
the flower of French nobility [br]formed their battle line,

0:45:42.728,0:45:46.087
while the English deployed [br]a very different force.

0:45:50.197,0:45:52.966
Thousands of expert archers.

0:45:59.966,0:46:04.555
The French sent their higher Genoese[br]crossbowmen to attack the English

0:46:04.575,0:46:07.650
before French knights annihilated them.

0:46:14.813,0:46:17.429
But the English king, Edward III,

0:46:17.429,0:46:20.537
had spent years training his longbow men.

0:46:24.517,0:46:27.576
And all that training[br]was about to pay off.

0:46:41.426,0:46:46.505
Nothing like this had been seen[br]on a western battlefield up to this time.

0:46:46.685,0:46:51.754
The first time that a volley of arrows [br]was unleashed by the archers at Crecy

0:46:52.214,0:46:55.329
would have represented [br]something completely new

0:46:55.369,0:46:58.513
to many of those[br]in the French army watching it.

0:46:58.553,0:47:01.150
A cloud of arrows descending towards them.

0:47:02.440,0:47:04.713
It would have been frightening,

0:47:04.733,0:47:07.630
and of course the effect[br]was almost immediate.

0:47:11.660,0:47:15.957
Showered by English arrows, [br]the Genoese turned and ran,

0:47:17.318,0:47:19.917
and according to medieval [br]accounts of the battle,

0:47:19.917,0:47:23.136
they were also panicked [br]by another English weapon.

0:47:32.031,0:47:35.156
Giovanni Villani, writing[br]very soon after the battle,

0:47:35.206,0:47:39.563
says in his chronicle that [br]so loud and intimidating

0:47:39.693,0:47:42.235
was the noise created by the guns

0:47:42.355,0:47:45.418
that they thought God was thundering.

0:47:48.997,0:47:51.909
"The English guns cast[br]iron balls by means of fire.

0:47:52.689,0:47:54.950
"They made a noise like thunder

0:47:55.020,0:47:57.625
"and caused much loss[br]in men and horses."

0:48:04.835,0:48:07.373
Noise like that would have been [br]unprecedented

0:48:07.413,0:48:09.911
to the soldiers on the battlefield.

0:48:10.538,0:48:13.668
Nothing in their lives[br]could have prepared them

0:48:13.668,0:48:15.464
for a a bang of that size

0:48:15.464,0:48:19.539
and accompanied by smoke[br]and acrid sulfur smell,

0:48:19.662,0:48:22.219
which would hang in the air.

0:48:22.409,0:48:25.043
The impact of which, of course,[br]they couldn't see

0:48:25.063,0:48:27.387
until men around them dropped.

0:48:29.087,0:48:32.119
Not even professional soldiers [br]like the Genoese

0:48:32.298,0:48:36.039
would have experienced anything [br]like this before in their lives.

0:48:36.189,0:48:38.776
That would have been terrifying,

0:48:38.806,0:48:41.759
and it's no wonder[br]that they scattered and ran.

0:48:44.019,0:48:49.721
They turned and fled into the face[br]of the oncoming French cavalry charge.

0:48:50.100,0:48:53.205
The French cavalry were now[br]coming onto the battlefield

0:48:53.204,0:48:55.310
and they were appalled

0:48:55.310,0:48:59.000
at these people they'd hired[br]running away.

0:49:01.270,0:49:03.830
And they cursed them[br]and they rode into them,

0:49:03.850,0:49:06.675
and as many Genoese fell to French hooves

0:49:06.725,0:49:09.643
as they did to English [br]arrows and gunshots.

0:49:11.813,0:49:14.220
And the French knights, [br]all 12,000 of them,

0:49:14.220,0:49:16.099
double the size of the English army,

0:49:16.101,0:49:18.531
they came charging down onto the English.

0:49:21.911,0:49:26.031
And they, too, fell to the English arrows[br]and the English gunshot,

0:49:27.621,0:49:30.431
and they came again and again and again.

0:49:30.501,0:49:32.846
15, 16 times, they came.

0:49:34.706,0:49:36.716
And their horses were ripped to shreds

0:49:36.716,0:49:39.133
and the men were thrown from their horses.

0:49:39.203,0:49:40.633
And those that weren't thrown,

0:49:40.653,0:49:43.218
they had the opportunity[br]that the dagger men rushed in

0:49:43.218,0:49:45.517
and they brought these knights down.

0:49:50.787,0:49:54.609
This was a moment in History[br]where the world changed.

0:49:54.789,0:49:58.715
It spelled the beginning of the end [br]for the medieval knight.

0:50:01.772,0:50:04.215
The Battle of Crecy[br]has gone down in history

0:50:04.215,0:50:07.413
as one of the earliest uses [br]of gunpowder weapons

0:50:07.563,0:50:10.507
on a European battlefield.

0:50:17.987,0:50:19.945
Some 500 years after,

0:50:19.985,0:50:22.664
it burned down [br]a Chinese alchemist's workshop,

0:50:22.752,0:50:26.081
gunpowder had become [br]destiny's weapon of choice.

0:50:28.566,0:50:31.614
After Crecy, it was only a matter of time

0:50:31.614,0:50:35.276
until the fates of peoples and nations[br]were decided by the gun.

0:50:40.126,0:50:42.367
Within two centuries,

0:50:42.387,0:50:45.307
Europeans would use their powerful [br]gunpowder weapons

0:50:45.347,0:50:47.907
to dominate the world,

0:50:51.747,0:50:55.826
creating empires that would evolve[br]into today's global trading culture,

0:50:59.832,0:51:03.378
which binds people together[br]by commerce instead of the gun.

0:51:10.019,0:51:13.459
But before Europe could embark [br]on its empire-building adventure,

0:51:14.799,0:51:16.529
its medieval social order

0:51:16.529,0:51:19.589
would be shattered[br]by a catastrophic event.

0:51:21.409,0:51:25.184
One that would forge a new Europe[br]in a crucible of horror.

0:51:29.154,0:51:31.631
While guns thundered at Crecy,

0:51:31.643,0:51:34.932
something else was spreading[br]along the Eurasian trade routes.

0:51:39.607,0:51:43.749
Something that would kill[br]tens of millions of Europeans.

0:51:48.509,0:51:51.400
An apocalyptic destruction of human life

0:51:52.350,0:51:55.585
that would lay the foundations[br]of the modern world.

0:52:18.095,0:52:20.920
At the Battle of Crécy in 1346,

0:52:21.261,0:52:24.876
the English won [br]an historic victory over France,

0:52:27.836,0:52:31.299
helped by a Chinese invention[br]that had traveled to Europe.

0:52:40.339,0:52:42.065
Gunpowder.

0:53:18.785,0:53:20.977
And in the same year of 1346,

0:53:21.517,0:53:24.741
some 2,000 kilometres east of Crécy,

0:53:25.241,0:53:29.367
another battle was taking place [br]on the shores of the Black Sea.

0:53:33.677,0:53:38.209
A Mongol army had been laying siege[br]to the Crimean port city of Caffa,

0:53:38.729,0:53:42.730
a Silk Road trading post belonging[br]to the Italian city of Genoa.

0:53:45.514,0:53:48.390
The Mongols were masters [br]of siege warfare.

0:53:51.340,0:53:55.343
But Caffa was still holding out[br]after more than two years.

0:53:58.983,0:54:02.154
Suddenly, the Mongol army was decimated.

0:54:02.954,0:54:06.894
Not by Caffa's defenders, [br]but by an unknown disease.

0:54:10.005,0:54:12.515
The Mongols quickly ended their siege.

0:54:13.125,0:54:14.965
But before they left Caffa,

0:54:14.995,0:54:18.060
they loaded their siege engines [br]with the corpses of their dead

0:54:18.330,0:54:21.131
and flung them over the city's walls,

0:54:21.481,0:54:25.179
believing that the stench of death[br]would kill the defenders.

0:54:29.959,0:54:31.712
Medieval chronicles say

0:54:31.712,0:54:34.724
that Caffa's defenders[br]did die by the thousands,

0:54:35.114,0:54:38.241
but not from the smell of death.

0:54:42.311,0:54:44.908
One year later, in 1347,

0:54:44.958,0:54:48.957
the same disease that had killed[br]the Mongols at Caffa

0:54:49.142,0:54:51.779
was killing people in Constantinople.

0:54:53.429,0:54:58.907
By 1348,it was killing people [br]across Western Europe.

0:55:02.238,0:55:06.807
By 1350, it was killing people[br]as far away as Greenland.

0:55:11.447,0:55:14.362
And terrified Europeans[br]had given it a name.

0:55:16.982,0:55:19.119
The Black Death.

0:55:20.879,0:55:26.485
In just under a decade, [br]from 1347 to 1356,

0:55:27.175,0:55:31.401
the Black Death killed a[br]t least 25 million Europeans.,

0:55:31.511,0:55:34.649
one third of Europe's population.

0:55:38.829,0:55:40.766
Today, most scholars believe

0:55:40.766,0:55:43.880
that the Black Death was [br]an outbreak of bubonic plague.

0:55:44.460,0:55:48.059
that was transmitted to humans[br]by infected fleas living on rats.

0:55:52.006,0:55:54.716
And we believe[br]that it spread across Eurasia

0:55:54.868,0:55:58.348
by hitching a ride with armies,[br]ships, and caravans

0:55:59.228,0:56:02.253
along trade routes [br]that were already ancient

0:56:02.363,0:56:05.030
by the time of the Black Death.

0:56:07.740,0:56:10.460
Micro-organic travelers of all kinds

0:56:10.480,0:56:13.610
have moved across Eurasia[br]for thousands of years.

0:56:15.214,0:56:19.032
A bio-migration that has had [br]as big an impact on history

0:56:19.032,0:56:23.775
as the more famous exchanges[br]of new technologies and luxury goods.

0:56:24.805,0:56:27.352
And as a recent discovery shows,

0:56:27.362,0:56:30.400
tiny living things [br]moving along the Silk Road

0:56:30.440,0:56:33.324
brought life as well as death.

0:56:34.584,0:56:36.989
We were putting together some new methods

0:56:37.057,0:56:39.221
of looking for early agriculture,

0:56:39.251,0:56:42.155
and for that we needed to do a survey

0:56:42.262,0:56:45.459
of all the finds of early crops in Europe.

0:56:47.163,0:56:49.221
When you looked at a map of all of Europe,

0:56:49.231,0:56:52.103
then you could see[br]there were these Chinese crops

0:56:52.135,0:56:55.027
in small numbers very early on in Europe.

0:56:57.017,0:57:00.208
"Very early on" was around 2,000 BC,

0:57:02.485,0:57:05.244
when a Chinese grain[br]called broomcorn millet

0:57:05.326,0:57:09.011
appears in the Eastern European[br]archaeological record.

0:57:10.061,0:57:13.730
The actual crop itself[br]will decay or be eaten,

0:57:14.169,0:57:16.178
but rather fortunately,

0:57:16.218,0:57:19.642
if it's cooked and over-burnt,[br]it turns to carbon.

0:57:19.675,0:57:23.387
That will stay in the archaeological[br]record for a long time.

0:57:27.368,0:57:29.965
In the Chinese province of inner Mongolia,

0:57:30.445,0:57:33.923
archaeologists are studying[br]the origins of broomcorn millet,

0:57:34.631,0:57:37.596
one of the world's oldest domestic crops.

0:57:40.346,0:57:44.293
We are looking at a broomcorn millet field[br]of almost 16 acres

0:57:44.543,0:57:47.342
The cultivation of broomcorn millet[br]in this place

0:57:47.402,0:57:49.834
dates back to nearly 8000 years ago.

0:57:49.949,0:57:53.826
It's the earliest area of human-cultivated[br]broomcorn millet in the world.

0:57:53.896,0:57:56.170
After broomcorn millet's birth[br]in this place,

0:57:56.170,0:57:58.048
it spread to the West from the East.

0:57:58.048,0:58:00.049
It spread to Europe.

0:58:01.499,0:58:04.308
Since it originated from the East[br]and then spread to Europe,

0:58:04.313,0:58:06.637
it can be regarded [br]as an important contribution

0:58:06.637,0:58:09.479
of our Eastern civilization[br]to the Western counterpart.

0:58:11.999,0:58:14.966
But it isn't clear just how and why

0:58:15.136,0:58:19.275
broomcorn millet travelled thousands[br]of kilometres across Eurasia,

0:58:19.806,0:58:22.845
through some of the world's[br]harshest environments,

0:58:22.925,0:58:25.505
all the way to Europe.

0:58:27.185,0:58:31.450
Millet's long journey may have begun[br]simply because it travelled so well.

0:58:35.160,0:58:38.662
Millets are essentially cereals, [br]but they're very small.

0:58:39.482,0:58:41.618
And because they have very small grains,

0:58:41.648,0:58:43.301
they're hardy and they're tough,

0:58:43.301,0:58:45.418
and they can grow quite fast.

0:58:45.448,0:58:47.586
Broomcorn millet, at a push,

0:58:47.906,0:58:50.635
can get from seed to seed in 45 days.

0:58:53.225,0:58:55.290
You can plant a seed in the ground

0:58:55.300,0:58:58.761
and 45 days later, [br]in the right conditions,

0:58:58.801,0:59:00.808
you may have plants.

0:59:00.865,0:59:02.642
That's incredibly fast.

0:59:02.722,0:59:04.996
So, if you're moving around parts of Asia,

0:59:05.050,0:59:07.739
where, on the one hand, [br]there's a long winter,

0:59:07.779,0:59:09.304
a short growing season,

0:59:09.374,0:59:12.378
and you can't particularly r[br]ely on rainfall,

0:59:12.468,0:59:16.087
then something that gets a move on[br]in terms of its growth cycle

0:59:16.115,0:59:18.220
is very valuable.

0:59:21.260,0:59:24.692
There are accounts of communities[br]that are on horseback

0:59:25.172,0:59:28.497
for quite a lot of the time[br]and herding animals and so forth,

0:59:28.497,0:59:32.263
but for that short season of the year

0:59:32.313,0:59:33.879
that millet grows in,

0:59:33.879,0:59:36.738
they can actually [br]sow the millet on horseback,

0:59:36.948,0:59:39.287
trample it in with the horse's feet,

0:59:39.509,0:59:41.599
and then either leave [br]a few teenagers there

0:59:41.599,0:59:44.081
to scare the birds off [br]for a couple of months,

0:59:44.169,0:59:47.539
come back two months later, [br]and harvest the crops.

0:59:51.369,0:59:53.819
Millet was a highly mobile grain,

0:59:53.849,0:59:55.664
but there wasn't any evidence

0:59:55.714,0:59:58.941
of how it might have travelled[br]from its home in northern China.

1:00:02.167,1:00:08.610
Until archaeologists found signs [br]of millet cultivation around 2500 BC

1:00:09.102,1:00:13.224
in the foothills of the Tian Shan[br]Mountains in central Asia.

1:00:16.064,1:00:18.035
At that point we asked ourselves,

1:00:18.045,1:00:20.246
"Well, what is it about these foothills?"

1:00:20.300,1:00:22.133
You know, "Why the foothills?"

1:00:23.333,1:00:25.590
Clearly, it's about water.

1:00:26.630,1:00:29.521
If one travels across the centre of Asia,

1:00:29.605,1:00:32.213
one realizes why water is a key.

1:00:32.323,1:00:35.922
And wherever you are in Asia, [br]it can be very dry, of course.

1:00:36.112,1:00:38.740
But if one goes uphill to those foothills,

1:00:38.740,1:00:40.638
then one has somewhere

1:00:40.748,1:00:44.440
where there will be streams[br]running off the mountains and water.

1:00:47.165,1:00:50.202
Archaeologists found that around 1,000 BC,

1:00:50.212,1:00:53.679
millet farmers left theTian Shan foothills

1:00:53.749,1:00:56.271
and their reliable water supply

1:00:56.291,1:00:59.367
and began moving[br]into much harsher environments.

1:01:00.017,1:01:03.765
We can see the confidence of farmers

1:01:03.905,1:01:06.944
spreading out from where[br]the water is really safe

1:01:07.054,1:01:09.653
to areas where you have to know more

1:01:09.653,1:01:13.143
about the water and the landscape [br]and the geography,

1:01:13.163,1:01:16.882
both into the steppes to the north[br]and to the desert to the south.

1:01:19.573,1:01:23.663
Millet's local migrations[br]may have linked it with the world.

1:01:24.347,1:01:27.057
Migrating millet farmers[br]in search of water

1:01:27.077,1:01:29.227
may have settled near trade routes.

1:01:33.067,1:01:35.657
And long-distance travelers[br]would have chosen routes

1:01:35.657,1:01:38.597
near reliable sources of food and water.

1:01:43.087,1:01:48.935
I think very much [br]those traders are definitely working

1:01:49.076,1:01:51.956
through networks[br]that are already centuries old.

1:01:53.502,1:01:58.702
It's at least a millennium[br]before you see something crystallizing

1:01:58.732,1:02:01.327
that you can start calling the Silk Road.

1:02:04.717,1:02:08.153
Another discovery has revealed [br]that this ancient grain migration

1:02:08.163,1:02:11.319
wasn't only from East to West.

1:02:14.249,1:02:17.755
Wheat was transmitted from West to East,

1:02:17.865,1:02:21.162
arrived in China and was accepted[br]as our main staple.

1:02:21.322,1:02:26.598
This reflects the transaction[br]between Eastern and Western cultures.

1:02:29.528,1:02:32.439
The Eurasian steppe, acting as a route

1:02:32.439,1:02:35.297
for early exchanges between[br]Eastern and Western cultures.

1:02:35.359,1:02:38.686
is the predecessor[br]of the ancient Silk Road.

1:02:38.742,1:02:41.596
Ethnic migration, the fusion of cultures,

1:02:41.746,1:02:44.910
and the flow of trade[br]are ll embedded in this road.

1:02:46.755,1:02:50.092
Trading millet and wheat[br]between China and Europe

1:02:50.162,1:02:52.840
may have done much more than feed people.

1:02:54.590,1:02:58.330
It may also have enabled[br]profound social change.

1:03:02.450,1:03:05.320
Seeds germinate at one time of year

1:03:05.410,1:03:08.070
and are harvested another time of year,

1:03:08.120,1:03:11.230
and that's kind[br]of hardwired into their biology.

1:03:11.290,1:03:13.900
And so farming is a one-season activity,

1:03:13.970,1:03:16.590
and there are things going on[br]at other times of year.

1:03:16.630,1:03:19.235
And during the second millennium BC,

1:03:19.255,1:03:21.262
a number of societies are doing something

1:03:21.262,1:03:23.127
which is quite radically different,

1:03:23.127,1:03:28.173
and that is putting more[br]than one season in a single year.

1:03:29.486,1:03:31.981
Crops like millet [br]are really useful for that,

1:03:32.011,1:03:35.218
in that if you are a western farmer,

1:03:35.278,1:03:37.624
with wheat and barley fields

1:03:37.624,1:03:39.967
reaching maturity during the summer,

1:03:39.987,1:03:41.101
and you think

1:03:41.228,1:03:44.166
"Right, with the same plot of land,[br]"I want to increase production.

1:03:44.696,1:03:48.851
"And so, I want another crop[br]after I've harvested the first crop."

1:03:49.581,1:03:52.465
You can't do a long season, [br]large-grain crop

1:03:52.465,1:03:54.449
like wheat and barley again,

1:03:54.533,1:03:57.166
so, something that's short and sharp[br]like millet

1:03:57.166,1:03:59.269
you can tag on to the end of it

1:03:59.319,1:04:02.237
and catch another season [br]before the winter's set in.

1:04:05.297,1:04:08.586
Interestingly, when you get to China, [br]it's the converse.

1:04:08.606,1:04:11.026
You have this short season crop[br]already there,

1:04:11.036,1:04:13.311
and by rearranging your life,

1:04:13.321,1:04:17.658
you can bring a long season crop[br]such as wheat and barley in at that stage.

1:04:17.722,1:04:20.789
So the implications are, [br]with the same plot of land,

1:04:21.139,1:04:25.285
you could basically get [br]two harvests rather than one.

1:04:25.372,1:04:28.263
So, two sets of calories rather than one.

1:04:31.673,1:04:35.409
It may release some of the community[br]to not farm at all

1:04:36.015,1:04:40.852
and occupy roles within cities,[br]or as craftspeople, or leaders.

1:04:43.152,1:04:45.744
If we look at the second millennium BC,

1:04:45.744,1:04:47.345
what we certainly see

1:04:47.345,1:04:50.621
is at the same time [br]as multi-cropping is there,

1:04:51.241,1:04:54.633
then there are a lot of the community,

1:04:54.706,1:04:57.462
are not farmers, [br]but instead metalworkers,

1:04:57.532,1:05:00.165
or kings, or priests, or something else.

1:05:00.165,1:05:02.038
And so what we see evidence of

1:05:02.038,1:05:07.767
is multi-cropping allows a non-farming[br]sector within the community.

1:05:09.792,1:05:14.370
So, what we have is a small, [br]not very impressive-looking seed,

1:05:14.400,1:05:17.812
but because of the way it grows[br]and because of its biology,

1:05:17.812,1:05:20.279
it has a massive impact

1:05:20.345,1:05:22.466
in changing the productivity

1:05:22.496,1:05:25.287
of the heartlands of western farming.

1:05:27.637,1:05:30.319
So, those western farmlands[br]could, in the same area,

1:05:30.387,1:05:32.753
produce two crops rather than one,

1:05:32.803,1:05:35.343
and that enabled a whole series of things

1:05:35.401,1:05:38.900
that we associate [br]with the word "civilization."

1:05:43.290,1:05:47.770
Finding Chinese millet in Europe[br]and European wheat and barley in China

1:05:47.960,1:05:51.095
suggests that long before the Silk Road,

1:05:51.195,1:05:55.117
East and West were introducing [br]one another to new foods,

1:05:56.277,1:05:58.665
and that the movement of crops

1:05:58.665,1:06:02.239
may have helped create[br]the earliest East-West trade routes.

1:06:05.269,1:06:08.016
And in the deserts of far western China,

1:06:08.066,1:06:10.477
archaeologists[br]have discovered another way

1:06:10.477,1:06:12.889
living organisms[br]could travel the Silk Road.

1:06:15.219,1:06:18.156
This is Xuanquanzhi relay station,

1:06:18.156,1:06:21.635
an archaeological site [br]near the town of Dunhuang,

1:06:21.949,1:06:24.591
a major stopping point on the Silk Road.

1:06:29.011,1:06:31.967
2,000 years ago during the Han dynasty,

1:06:32.017,1:06:36.815
Xuanquanzhi was a very busy[br]and very cosmopolitan place.

1:06:39.535,1:06:43.272
According to records [br]written on bamboo and wood

1:06:43.342,1:06:45.661
unearthed from Xuanquanzhi

1:06:45.817,1:06:49.312
Xuanquanzhi was not only serving[br]as a relay station,

1:06:49.312,1:06:52.807
but also as a place to receive [br]caravans and government officials.

1:06:52.849,1:06:56.008
During the Han Dinasty, [br]the major officials received here

1:06:56.008,1:06:59.248
included the king of Kholan Kingdom[br]from the Western Regions,

1:06:59.279,1:07:02.331
the king of the Wusun, [br]also called the Issedones

1:07:02.331,1:07:05.384
and the king of the Kangu, [br]also called the Sogdians.

1:07:05.564,1:07:08.911
At most, the number of received guests[br]would be over 1000.

1:07:11.921,1:07:16.669
Therefore, this place was filled up[br]with a mixture of people from all regions.

1:07:17.909,1:07:20.118
It would be used for merchants,

1:07:20.118,1:07:22.945
and it would also be used[br]for government business.

1:07:22.975,1:07:24.729
People could travel long distances

1:07:24.729,1:07:27.004
knowing that there was somewhere[br]they could stay

1:07:27.024,1:07:29.315
be refreshed and recover,[br]change their horses,

1:07:29.335,1:07:32.240
and then move on[br]to the next relay station.

1:07:34.120,1:07:37.648
The wonderful thing about[br]the Xuanquanzhi trading post

1:07:37.658,1:07:43.112
was that it's in a part of the country[br]that is not built up now,

1:07:43.179,1:07:47.095
and the environment, very, very dry[br]and often very cold in the winter,

1:07:47.145,1:07:49.813
means that things[br]are preserved there very well.

1:07:49.823,1:07:52.800
So, a lot of the things [br]- inside that trading post -

1:07:52.890,1:07:55.557
have survived instead of decomposing.

1:08:01.119,1:08:04.247
Excavators were especially excited[br]to find something

1:08:04.267,1:08:07.276
that perhaps only[br]an archaeologist could love:

1:08:09.486,1:08:12.921
the 2,000-year-old equivalent [br]of toilet paper.

1:08:14.081,1:08:16.957
In China, they wrote back,[br]in the Han dynasty times,

1:08:16.997,1:08:19.738
how they would have a stick [br]with cloth wrapped on the end

1:08:19.738,1:08:21.424
for people to wipe themselves with.

1:08:21.424,1:08:24.444
There were quite a few [br]of these sticks thrown into the latrine

1:08:24.454,1:08:27.209
as if people discarded them[br]in there when they'd finished.

1:08:27.209,1:08:30.566
These sticks have been found[br]at some other excavations in China as well

1:08:30.566,1:08:32.532
but what's great about this relay station

1:08:32.532,1:08:34.663
is we still have the cloth[br]wrapped on the end

1:08:34.663,1:08:37.318
and we still have the human faeces on.

1:08:38.048,1:08:41.782
So, we scraped off [br]the dried faeces from the cloth

1:08:41.851,1:08:43.664
and took them to the lab.

1:08:43.754,1:08:45.832
We found four different[br]species of parasite

1:08:45.832,1:08:47.910
in those who used this latrine.

1:08:47.989,1:08:51.076
Two of the species are spread by faeces

1:08:51.076,1:08:54.374
contaminating your food[br]or your hands or your drink:

1:08:54.414,1:08:56.688
roundworm and whipworm.

1:08:56.888,1:08:59.802
Another species was a kind of tapeworm

1:08:59.812,1:09:03.859
that they probably acquired[br]by eating raw or undercooked pork.

1:09:04.289,1:09:07.477
And then, we found[br]the really exciting find,

1:09:07.477,1:09:09.606
which was the Chinese liver fluke.

1:09:11.326,1:09:13.978
This is a small flatworm

1:09:13.978,1:09:16.630
that lives in eastern and southern[br]China and in Korea.

1:09:17.326,1:09:20.226
It can only survive in marshy, wet places.

1:09:20.306,1:09:25.384
But here, we found it 1500 kilometres away[br]from anywhere that has it in modern times.

1:09:27.002,1:09:29.780
So, it wasn't what we expected to find.

1:09:29.820,1:09:33.094
It was brilliant that we could find it[br]on the Silk Road.

1:09:33.164,1:09:35.321
The liver fluke requires a lifecycle

1:09:35.321,1:09:37.538
where it passes through freshwater snails,

1:09:37.599,1:09:39.918
and through small fish[br]and then, bigger fish.

1:09:39.938,1:09:43.308
If you cook the fish, [br]then you don't get the liver fluke.

1:09:43.368,1:09:46.498
But if you eat the fish raw, [br]then it hatches out in your stomach,

1:09:46.508,1:09:49.408
migrates through your body, [br]crawls into the liver,

1:09:49.438,1:09:50.893
and then develops there.

1:09:51.483,1:09:54.910
There was no way that people[br]in the area of this relay station

1:09:54.910,1:09:57.289
could have caught it [br]in that particular area

1:09:57.289,1:09:59.303
because it was far too dry.

1:09:59.323,1:10:00.766
There were no lakes.

1:10:00.776,1:10:03.674
There were no freshwater snails[br]and fish for them to infect.

1:10:04.962,1:10:10.296
The discovery of the liver fluke[br]is of great importance.

1:10:12.836,1:10:17.787
It indicates that the caravans [br]or government servants

1:10:17.944,1:10:21.546
brought their excrement,[br]as well as diseases ,here

1:10:21.597,1:10:25.739
over thousands of kilometers[br]of travel to this place, Xuanquan station.

1:10:30.262,1:10:33.328
With state of the art overseas analysis,

1:10:33.410,1:10:36.769
we are comparing it with similar[br]evidence originating in Europe.

1:10:36.839,1:10:39.723
to figure out whether the liver was spread

1:10:39.723,1:10:42.584
from China's eastern [br]coastal area to Europe

1:10:42.614,1:10:45.540
or if it was spread from Europe to China

1:10:45.540,1:10:48.058
or if the disease spread [br]between these two areas.

1:10:48.058,1:10:50.075
We are doing some further research.

1:10:51.725,1:10:54.493
The finds at Xuanquanzhi have shown

1:10:54.503,1:10:58.582
that humans could carry diseases[br]long distances along the Silk Road.

1:11:03.892,1:11:07.379
Another discovery has revealed[br]what could happen when they did.

1:11:13.354,1:11:18.119
In 2009, German scientists began[br]investigating a puzzling discovery

1:11:18.840,1:11:21.713
in the Bavarian town of Aschheim.

1:11:25.684,1:11:31.647
About 20 years ago a graveyard was found [br]which contained more than 400 individuals.

1:11:32.097,1:11:38.153
We dated it back to a period from [br]around the 5th century to the 7th century.

1:11:38.443,1:11:41.395
It was exciting for us [br]that there were a lot of graves

1:11:41.411,1:11:44.365
that contained more than one person

1:11:44.385,1:11:51.192
around 20 graves [br]where 2 to 5 people were buried

1:11:53.142,1:11:56.971
Aschheim looked like any other cemetery

1:11:56.971,1:11:58.885
that we would expect to find here

1:11:58.885,1:12:00.892
except for these multiple burials

1:12:00.912,1:12:05.352
These people were buried together[br]in one grave and that made us curious.

1:12:05.366,1:12:07.148
And we asked ourselves why exactly

1:12:07.148,1:12:09.380
these people were buried[br]together in one grave

1:12:10.880,1:12:14.609
The Aschheim mass burial [br]was an archaeological enigma,

1:12:15.128,1:12:17.447
but there was one crucial clue.

1:12:19.377,1:12:23.316
The bodies had been buried[br]during the 6th century CE.

1:12:29.736,1:12:34.099
In the 6th century, a terrifying illness[br]called the Plague of Justinian

1:12:34.419,1:12:37.115
ravaged the Eastern Roman Empire.

1:12:41.744,1:12:47.786
It killed 30 to 50 million people[br]in Europe, Asia, and Africa,

1:12:49.379,1:12:52.590
nearly half of all the people on Earth.

1:12:52.890,1:12:57.075
Historians tell us that thousands[br]of people were lying on the street

1:12:57.175,1:12:59.218
and that tens of thousands

1:12:59.218,1:13:01.590
were dying at the peak of the plague,

1:13:01.650,1:13:05.118
so many that they could not be buried.

1:13:05.189,1:13:09.882
The corpses were thrown [br]into watchtowers and sealed inside

1:13:09.882,1:13:13.394
because no one knew what to do with them.

1:13:13.484,1:13:17.791
So, this epidemic is quite comparable[br]to the Black Death.

1:13:17.888,1:13:21.014
We asked ourselves what[br]the multiple burials were about

1:13:21.014,1:13:24.975
and chose to screen for plague pathogen

1:13:26.511,1:13:30.522
The Justinian plague arrived[br]in Constantinople on ships from Egypt,

1:13:32.533,1:13:34.677
but what the disease was

1:13:34.677,1:13:37.543
and where it came from [br]remained unknown.

1:13:39.674,1:13:42.304
The team investigating[br]Aschheim's mass burial

1:13:42.334,1:13:45.366
hoped its bones might reveal the answer.

1:13:45.473,1:13:50.290
We tested more than 20 individuals,[br]analysing their DNA

1:13:50.300,1:13:55.116
and found small fragments [br]of plague DNA in four individuals,

1:13:55.517,1:13:58.820
Just on this young woman, [br]on one young woman,

1:13:58.890,1:14:01.483
there was enough DNA[br]to be able to analyse it really well.

1:14:01.483,1:14:03.418
And that is this individual.

1:14:03.438,1:14:06.207
This woman has quite open skull sutures.

1:14:06.227,1:14:09.996
This is how we know [br]that she died quite young.

1:14:10.096,1:14:14.770
We would estimate this individual's age [br]at approximately early 20s.

1:14:14.915,1:14:17.543
In this case, we would see

1:14:17.543,1:14:20.957
if we could find the plague pathogen

1:14:21.007,1:14:24.962
and to do that we prefer to use teeth

1:14:25.013,1:14:28.109
like these teeth here.

1:14:28.429,1:14:30.578
Teeth with a lot of root

1:14:30.848,1:14:34.332
because the root contains DNA

1:14:34.342,1:14:37.006
and because it is embedded in the jaw.

1:14:37.065,1:14:42.035
It is well protected there, [br]and the DNA is preserved there best.

1:14:42.152,1:14:46.234
And then we took this tooth [br]to the laboratory

1:14:46.364,1:14:50.186
to extract and examine the DNA[br]with chemical methods.

1:14:51.118,1:14:54.040
And when we had looked at the DNA [br]of this individual

1:14:54.107,1:14:57.357
we determined that[br]we had actually found Yersini pestis,

1:14:57.377,1:15:01.577
the plague pathogen, the Black Death's.

1:15:01.721,1:15:04.415
What we could also determine

1:15:04.465,1:15:09.785
is that this pathogen did not develop[br]in Europe but evolved in Asia

1:15:11.259,1:15:14.201
Studies like the Aschheim DNA project

1:15:14.211,1:15:17.804
have concluded that 800 years[br]before the Black Death,

1:15:17.917,1:15:21.149
a plague traveled the Silk Road

1:15:21.149,1:15:25.455
and that centuries later,[br]the Black Death followed it in its path.

1:15:29.358,1:15:30.892
Most scholars now agree

1:15:30.892,1:15:34.256
that the Black Death[br]originated in central Asia

1:15:35.785,1:15:37.727
and that it first reached Europe

1:15:37.727,1:15:40.983
on Italian merchant ships [br]returning from the East.

1:15:51.933,1:15:55.106
The Black Death killed [br]with incredible speed.

1:16:00.026,1:16:03.942
Victims had only [br]a week to a few hours to live.

1:16:07.372,1:16:10.330
Entire towns and monasteries [br]were wiped out,

1:16:11.230,1:16:13.794
and no one knew what to do.

1:16:16.554,1:16:19.119
It may have spread about five miles a day,

1:16:19.189,1:16:24.097
which is a lot faster than a lot [br]of modern bubonic plague outbreaks.

1:16:25.703,1:16:29.950
Whether it was because of the rate[br]at which people fled from it

1:16:29.990,1:16:33.138
that spread it faster than it might [br]otherwise have been.

1:16:34.038,1:16:35.620
And it certainly was something

1:16:35.640,1:16:38.302
that had a dramatic effect[br]on people in Europe.

1:16:38.322,1:16:40.864
They all wrote about it,[br]they were all scared of it.

1:17:17.804,1:17:19.921
So, they had some concept of contagion

1:17:19.991,1:17:21.515
and the idea that the disease

1:17:21.545,1:17:23.616
could be spread[br]from one person to another,

1:17:23.616,1:17:25.426
but they didn't know how.

1:17:27.476,1:17:30.060
They had no idea about bacteria

1:17:30.060,1:17:32.762
or the spread of microorganisms[br]at that stage,

1:17:32.792,1:17:35.613
so, they hadn't worked out [br]how a disease was spread.

1:17:35.633,1:17:38.255
But they just realized that one person[br]seemed to be able

1:17:38.255,1:17:40.267
to spread it to the rest of their family,

1:17:40.277,1:17:43.565
so, they realized something[br]must be happening there.

1:17:58.566,1:18:00.742
Baffled physicians consulted the works

1:18:00.742,1:18:03.209
of ancient authorities like Hippocrates,

1:18:03.220,1:18:06.654
who lived four centuries[br]before the birth of Jesus,

1:18:08.904,1:18:12.786
and Galen, who lived [br]two centuries after Jesus' death.

1:18:16.696,1:18:20.317
Hippocrates and Galen believed[br]that illness was a result

1:18:20.377,1:18:23.733
of an imbalance among[br]four so-called humours:

1:18:24.783,1:18:28.646
blood, phlegm, [br]yellow bile, and black bile.

1:18:31.886,1:18:35.821
The theory was that if you had[br]your four humours in balance

1:18:35.891,1:18:39.045
— your blood, your phlegm, [br]your black bile and your yellow bile —

1:18:39.045,1:18:40.410
then you'd be healthy.

1:18:40.416,1:18:41.892
If they came out of balance

1:18:41.892,1:18:44.850
or if you had corruption [br]of one of your humours,

1:18:44.850,1:18:47.439
then that would make you unwell.

1:18:47.569,1:18:49.571
So, the treatments that doctors used

1:18:49.579,1:18:52.660
were largely based on their understanding[br]of humoural theory.

1:18:52.840,1:18:56.237
So, at the beginning, they tried[br]the normal treatments

1:18:56.247,1:19:00.367
of dietary modification[br]and bloodletting and baths and so on,

1:19:00.476,1:19:02.125
but they had no effect.

1:19:04.860,1:19:08.661
They believed that bad vapours [br]were coming up from the ground,

1:19:08.757,1:19:11.766
making people ill, [br]affecting their humours.

1:19:11.786,1:19:15.882
They believed that a strong [br]southerly wind was a bad thing

1:19:15.984,1:19:18.308
that made a lot of people ill,

1:19:19.148,1:19:22.305
that it was a combination [br]of the alignments of the planets,

1:19:22.365,1:19:26.396
because they believed in astrology [br]and its effect on your risk of disease.

1:19:27.766,1:19:31.883
They really didn't have a structured [br]medical approach to how to deal with it.

1:19:31.973,1:19:33.781
It took everyone off guard.

1:19:33.801,1:19:36.311
No one knew how to deal with it.

1:19:38.426,1:19:40.638
The doctors were effectively powerless.

1:19:49.048,1:19:52.129
Some citizens attempted another cure.

1:20:02.419,1:20:05.445
Jews in Europe suffered [br]fewer deaths from plague.

1:20:07.105,1:20:09.908
That may have been because[br]they were socially isolated

1:20:09.948,1:20:13.269
and practiced better hygiene [br]than the general population.

1:20:15.479,1:20:17.950
But surviving the Black Death

1:20:17.950,1:20:21.025
cost thousands [br]of European Jews their lives.

1:20:22.835,1:20:25.088
All across plague-stricken Europe,

1:20:25.108,1:20:28.559
the already age-old Christian[br]prejudice against Jews

1:20:28.899,1:20:31.729
exploded into murderous hatred.

1:20:32.239,1:20:35.400
They believed that people [br]with leprosy or Jewish people

1:20:35.640,1:20:38.980
may have actually exacerbated the plague[br]by poisoning people.

1:20:44.820,1:20:48.525
So, this is a sign of how panicked[br]and how worried everybody was,

1:20:48.575,1:20:52.371
that they were thinking of really [br]quite bizarre kind of interpretations

1:20:52.431,1:20:55.414
as to why everybody was becoming sick.

1:21:05.474,1:21:07.477
While mobs murdered Jews,

1:21:07.737,1:21:10.483
physicians tried to stop the Black Death.