The Real Impact of the Silk Road | Extra Long Historical Documentary

The Silk Road stands as one of humanity’s most transformative endeavors, connecting East and West across Eurasia for thousands of years. This documentary series examines its profound impact on history, shaping empires, spreading ideas, and revolutionizing civilizations. Today's extra long history documentary explores how the Silk Road influenced conflicts, from cavalry tactics to the invention of gunpowder. It then reveals how the route became a conduit for both life and disease, reshaping societies. Finally, it uncovers the pivotal role of Silk Road trade in driving the Age of Revolutions and shaping the modern world.

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Eurasia: the world's largest land mass.

Some 10,000 kilometers from the Pacific
to the Atlantic ocean.

A formidable distance,
even in today's world.

And yet over that vast distance,

human beings have pursued
one of history's greatest enterprises:

The Silk Road.

A tremendously profitable trade route

and so much more.

For thousands of years,

exotic goods,

new technologies,

conquering armies,

and brilliant ideas

traveled along the Silk Road.

Silk Road trade helped to build empires

and to break them.

It fanned the fires of revolution.

Drove great explorations,

and forged powerful bonds
between far away peoples.

The Silk Road made human beings realize

that there are other people out there,

and it opened the eyes
of the east and the west.

This is the story of how Silk Road trade
made so much more than money.

It's the epic tale of how the Silk Road
helped create a world;

a world that created us.

2,000 years ago, the Roman Empire
seemed unstoppable.

Rome had conquered much of Europe

and was sending its legions beyond
the eastern Mediterranean

to the Middle East

-- gateway to the riches of Asia.

But a journey to the east
could become a road of blood.

In 53 BC. near the Mesopotamian
town of Carrhae,

the Parthians — an empire blending
Persian and Greek cultures —

confronted a Roman army.

The outcome of the battle
seemed beyond doubt.

Some 40,000 Romans
faced only 10,000 Parthians.

And Rome's legions
were Europe's finest foot soldiers.

There was just one problem.

The Parthian army didn't fight on foot.

The Parthians, they were cavalry.

They were horse archers.

Versatile. Rode like the wind.

What the Romans did
was what the Romans always did.

They took a fixed position.

They were ordered into a hollow square
defending all sides.

But that was nothing
to the Parthian horse archers

because they could just ride
around them, and they did.

They galloped around and around
and around and around,

shooting as they went.

Thousands and thousands of arrows
loosed into those Romans.

What the Romans eventually did
was they were ordered to go into testudo.

That's that Roman formation
where they lock their shields together

and put the next layer
of shields to make a roof.

Testudo is Latin for tortoise.

But the Parthians
had the answer to this tortoise.

They had a hammer
to break open its shell.

The Parthian hammer was a cataphract,

a Greek word meaning
"clothed in full armor".

Horse and rider wore heavy coats of mail.

The cataphract was the ancient world
equivalent of a battle tank.

At Carrhae, charging cataphracts
broke open the testudo.

Exposing the Romans inside
to more arrow attacks.

Some 30,000 Romans
were killed or captured.

Parthian losses were minor.

It was one of Rome's
worst military defeats.

But it may have been
something else as well.

A Roman historian wrote

that the Parthians dazzled the Romans

with banners made of a beautiful fabric:

silk.

That may only be a legend.

But around the time of Carrhae,

Romans began coveting Chinese silk,

and China began selling silk to Rome

in exchange for fine
Roman glassware and gold.

Inspiring the name
we give Eurasian trade today:

the Silk Road.

But long before Romans and Parthians
fought at Carrhae,

trade between the peoples of Eurasia
were shaping lives,

making new things possible,

and changing the world.

At Carrhae, the Parthians
won with a style of warfare

that had evolved centuries earlier

and thousands of kilometers away.

On the steppes of Central Asia,

an ocean of land,

where victory in battle, and life itself,

depended on moving
very far, very fast.

Thousands of years
before the battle of Carrhae,

a transportation revolution
took place on these vast plains.

There's good evidence for the existence
of domesticated horses

in what is today Kazakhstan
and southern Russia by 3500 BC.

And we actually think that probably
horses were domesticated

and began to be ridden
500 or maybe 1,000 years before that,

maybe as early as 4500 BC.

The domestication of the horse

was the first step
towards cavalry warfare.

But the second step
would be a long time coming.

The first use of horses in warfare
was with chariot warfare,

and we have that well established
Tutankhamun's chariot,

which many people have seen
in museum exhibits.

And we know that people
were using chariots in warfare

starting in the Near East
in about 1600, 1700 BC..

Horses were not used as organized cavalry

until after about 900 BC,

almost 1,000 years
after chariot warfare began.

And it's always seemed odd to me
that cavalry began after chariotry.

Chariotry is very difficult to manage.

You have to train horses to work together.

They have to pull this clumsy vehicle

that has two people in it:
a driver and a warrior.

Training the units to work together,
very difficult thing to do,

whereas jumping on the back of a horse
is an easy thing.

So, why did cavalry come after chariotry?

I think the real reason
that cavalry waited

is that you needed to have
really three innovations.

The earliest evidence for the recurved bow
is in Shang Dynasty, China,

probably dated between 1300 and 1100 BC.

Shang emperors communicated
with their ancestors

by heating animal bones or turtle shells
until they cracked

and then interpreting
the patterns made by the cracks.

One of these so-called oracle bones

is carved with the Chinese
character for bow

— the earliest known image
of a recurved bow.

And in the tomb of Lady Fuhao

— an imperial consort
and renowned military commander —

archaeologists found more evidence.

It's a thumb cover
for drawing bow string

and there's another piece that went
in the middle of a recurved bow,

a hand grip.

The bows themselves are not preserved,

so, it's a difficult thing to identify
the origins of the recurved bow.

The different components of it

probably came from different places
geographically.

Just how far the recurved bow
traveled across Eurasia

was revealed in 2005 at Yanghai,
in China's Xinjiang region.

Wooden bows rarely survive
burial in the ground,

but Xinjiang's cold, dry climate
preserved one

in a 3,000-year-old tomb.

Other grave goods
and the human remains

found in the Yanghai tombs

confirmed that the bow was made
by the Scythians,

a highly sophisticated culture
that originated in southern Russia

and migrated on horseback

across the length and breadth of Eurasia.

The true birthplace
of the recurved composite bow

remains an archaeological mystery.

But there is no doubt
that 3,000 years ago

anyone who fought on horseback
would have found it revolutionary.

A bow is as strong as it is long.

It derives its strength from its length.

And the recurved bow
packs the same length

into this very short bow

that can be swung over the horse's rear
and over the horse's neck.

And it was much, much easier
to use on horseback.

And the recurved bows are
technologically quite difficult to make.

It took a long time to develop
the craft of bow making to that point.

The recurve all these sinewy bends
— reflex and deflex —

that gives it in-built spring.

But that can only be created
with composite materials.

What we mean by that is
it's made of a number of materials.

The heart of it is wood, usually beech.

And then you have horn,
horn from a water buffalo,

and then sinew, the tendons of an animal.

That, when you bash it,

you can tease apart
and get these very fine fibers,

fibers with tremendous tensile strength.

That has elasticity and spring,

and it stops the bow bursting apart.

These are all materials that enhance
the power, the spring of the bow.

But only if bow makers
could solve a very big problem.

How to keep such a powerful bow

made from so many different materials

from breaking up when its own power
was pulling it apart?

Somewhere in Eurasia, sometime long ago,

some unknown genius discovered the answer.

This is the swim bladder of a sturgeon
— a fish from the Black Sea.

And if you start to break these up
then put it in hot water,

and you get this wonderful, viscous glue.

This simple idea of making a glue
out of a swim bladder of a fish

was a technological breakthrough
of immense consequences.

It is what enabled
the composite bow to exist.

And in turn the composite bow
was a military revolution

of far-reaching consequences.

The composite recurved bow
gave birth to a new kind of warrior

the horse archer.

The horse archer was able
to shoot from the saddle

in part because of the new technology
of the composite bow.

They were short, compact bows,

and that meant that you
can shoot them from horseback.

You see I can cross
to the other side of the horse,

I can turn and shoot behind.

It's much more suitable
for shooting on horseback.

Everyone who fought with Eurasian nomads,

whether as enemy or friend,

wanted a recurved composite bow.

By the early first millennium BC,

it was in use from east Asia
to eastern Europe.

A recurved bow gave a horse archer
unprecedented killing power.

But it didn't make him a cavalryman.

Before horse archers could fight
as an effective military force,

they needed a large supply
of identical arrows.

And that didn't exist.

Arrowheads were a variety
of different sizes and weights.

Some were made of bone.

Some were made out of flint.

Some were made out of bronze.

All of them would be individually made

and you had to adjust your shot
for the weight of different arrows.

Also a unit of soldiers
who were firing at the same time

would be firing arrows
of slightly different weights

and they might go different distances.

One of the features of a stone arrowhead
is its flattened rear

But how did it connect
with the arrowshaft?

It can only be tied to the shaft
by rope or ox tendons.

But what about the disadvantages?

First, the released arrows
tend to change direction easily.

Second, they are likely to fall off,

One of the technological innovations

was the invention
of the socketed arrowhead.

They were made of bronze, usually,

and they were made in a mould
and cast in a mould,

so that an infinite number
of socketed arrowheads of the same weight

could be made from the same mould.

Making socketed projectile points
was actually a big deal.

You have to have a mould with a core
where the socket is going to be

that you can pour molten metal around

so that it's the same thickness
all the way around.

Making arrowheads
of the same size and weight

was another Central Asian
technological revolution.

For the first time, mounted warriors
could unleash

coordinated arrow attacks
on their enemies.

With arrowheads of the same weight,

every time you drew the bow to shoot

you knew that you were firing an arrow

that was exactly the same weight
as the last arrow that you fired,

so you could determine
the range and the distance well.

And also all of the archers
that were firing

were firing arrowheads
at the same weight at the same time.

So the distance for all of them
would be the same.

With a socketed arrowhead

you can directly insert
the head into the shaft.

It look like this.

So what are the advantages
of this type of arrowhead?

Its improvements greatly enhanced

the lethality and efficiency
of ancient arrows.

Even in the chaos of war, the shooter
could aim t the target easily.

He wouldn't loose the direction
by aiming t the target quickly.

This ivention is a giant leap
in the development of human history.

Archaeologists believe that sometime
in the second millennium BC,

socketed bronze arrowheads
began spreading east

while the composite
recurved bow spread west.

Sometime around 900 BC,

socketed arrowheads and recurved bows

met in the Tarim Basin area
of Central Asia,

brought together by traders,
warriors, and migrating nomads.

After about 700 BC, you begin to see
thousands and thousands of arrowheads

and dozens of arrowheads
in a single quiver in a grave.

It's like they're being mass produced.

Bronze socketed arrowheads
turned central Asia into an arsenal,

but cavalries still couldn't exist

until warriors could become soldiers.

It was really the age of heroic warfare

— individuals going out
and doing great deeds by themselves

and attracting glory for their own name.

And this is the kind of warfare
that's described

in the "Iliad", in the "Odyssey,"
or in the "Rigveda,"

a religious text that's at the deep roots
of modern Hinduism.

What had to change
was a psychological change

in the nature of the warrior.

You had to change
from individuals to units

working under the command
of a commanding general,

who would attack and retreat
upon command.

The psychological change
from the heroic warrior to the soldier,

probably is a feature of urban warfare.

The armies that were associated

with the great cities
of Mesopotamia and Iran.

That psychology had to spread
northward up into the steppes

and be accepted by warriors
in the steppes,

in the same area
where the recurved bows

and the socketed arrowheads were crossing.

While recurved bows were spreading west

and socketed arrowheads
were spreading east,

the concept of military discipline
was spreading north.

Sometime around 900 BC,

all three combined
in the heart of central Asia.

When those three things came together,

cavalry became a really deadly form
of military force.

A force that would severely test
the ancient world's most powerful armies.

2,000 years ago,

as the Romans pushed east
to expand their empire,

China was pushing west.

And like the Romans,

the Chinese encountered
a formidable enemy on horseback.

The Xiongnu were nomads
from the Central Asian steppes.

Armed with recurved bows
and socketed arrows,

they fought under commanders
as a disciplined military force.

They raided Chinese villages

and plundered the growing trade
between East and West,

and no one could stop them.

The Xiongnu was the migraine
of the ancient world for the Chinese.

They simply just kept coming
and they would not stop.

The Xiongnu wanted the finest
material goods produced by the Chinese.

That is why they raided.

Imagine you're a villager in China
and these men come from nowhere.

They come from over the hill
without warning,

tearing into your village.

They shoot the headman,
they shoot your husband.

They chase the women out.

There is no hiding place
and there's a flurry of dust and arrows.

They're in and they're out
and they take the stuff and they go.

China sent its military might
against the Xiongnu.

The famed Terracotta Warriors

reveal the size and power
of Chinese armies.

But the Chinese fought on foot
and from chariots.

Not effective against hit-and-run cavalry.

A Chinese courtier wrote that the Xiongnu
moved like a flock of birds over the land,

impossible to control.

Once mounted warfare really
became deadly and effective,

it became a real problem.

If you're a farmer, the nomads know
where you're going to be all the time.

Your house is in the same place
12 months of the year,

and when your crops become ripe,
you have to harvest,

and the nomads know when that season is.

Whereas when you're trying
to strike them back,

it's impossible to know
where they're going to be

or when they're going to be there.

You have to search to find them.

To beat the Xiongnu, the Chinese
needed soldiers who could fight like them.

They needed cavalry.

There are manuals of warfare
that were written

to instruct Chinese warriors

on how to counter the tactics
and the methods of the Xiongnu.

Those manuals introduced
the idea of cavalry

to the Chinese military.

The Chinese military
had not really used cavalry

before about probably 350 BC.

Chinese military, at first
with some resistance

from the old aristocratic families, said:

"Well, my father fought on a chariot,

"and his father fought on a chariot,

"and I'm gonna fight on a chariot
in my long robes like my ancestors."

But it wasn't long before Chinese warriors

traded their traditional
long, flowing robes

for shorter tunics that didn't get
in the way of fighting on horseback.

Eventually, the practicalities
forced them to get rid of their robes,

to put on riding trousers,

to learn to shoot the bow on horseback,

and they, too, became
a mighty horse archer force.

Chinese cavalry became experts
at shooting the recurved composite bow,

and a lethal Chinese weapon, the crossbow.

While its cavalry trained,

China agreed to Xiongnu demands
for payments of money and silk

until the year 133 BC,

when Emperor Han Wudi refused to pay.

And sent his army to attack the Xiongnu.

Chinese cavalry defeated the nomads.

And China seized
new territories in the steppes,

pacifying trade routes
and opening new horizons.

On one hand,
we have this perpetual conflict

— in Chinese culture would be
the Xiongn and the Han Chinese

that created incessant warfare.

On the other hand, it is this conflict

that demolished physical boundaries.

Even territory boundaries
were constantly being pushed farther,

pushed back between the two forces.

This was a stimulus for exchanges,

for political changes,

for new ideas, for artistic traditions.

It was also a new era for the Silk Road.

A fortune in Roman gold
traveled east

in exchange for Chinese silks.

And the Central Asian kingdom of Kushan

made its own fortune
selling another luxury to China:

jade.

Silk Road caravans passed
through this border station

on China's western frontier.

So many of them carried Kushan jade

that this station became known
as the Jade Gate.

Chinese aristocrats
coveted jade for its beauty

and something more.

They believed that jade
would keep them alive forever.

The ruling elite commissioned
jade burial suits

to preserve their bodies in the grave.

They believed that, upon death,

all the orifices should be plugged in

to preserve the spirit inside the person.

And this notion of jade

as a material with protective power
in the afterlife,

is further enhanced by the fact

that they built an armor

made of thousands
of pieces of jade.

And of course, if you're the emperor,

your jade armor would be made
from the finest jade

from the western regions.

During the Roman empire,
Silk Road trade flourished

as Chinese, Persian, and Kushan armies

kept the trade routes open across Eurasia.

China had leveled the battlefield

with nomad raiders from the steppes.

But Central Asian horse archers

were about to carve
their names on History.

In the 4th century CE., Europe was invaded
by a Central Asian people

whose name still evokes barbaric cruelty.

The Huns, who fought their way West,
all the way to Rome.

European peoples
like the Goths and Visigoths

— the so-called barbarians —

fled before their onslaught,

and sought refuge in Roman territory.

When the Huns withdrew
from the Roman world,

those barbarian refugees stayed.

And the rest is History.

The western Roman empire
was plunged into chaos

as barbarian tribes,
dissatisfied with their lot,

rebelled against Roman authority,

and weak Roman emperors
failed to crush them.

As Rome declined, migrating
horse archers, called the Avars,

carved their own country
out of eastern Europe,

bringing with them
another Asian military innovation:

the stirrup.

This Chinese statue
from the fourth century CE,

is the earliest known
depiction of stirrups.

Some 300 years later,

an Avar horseman
was riding with these stirrups

across Hungary.

By the eighth century CE,

the stirrup had spread
from one end of Eurasia to the other

and mounted warfare
was entering a new era.

The importance of the stirrup

relates to what kinds of weapons
can you use from horseback,

and it made it possible to use
certain kinds of weapons from horseback

that you couldn't use without stirrups.

Those weapons are the long sabre.

You have to lean over and absorb shock,

if you're going to use
a long sabre in battle.

And the stirrups allow the rider
to absorb the shock of contact

with a stationary target.

The other big weapon
that was possible with stirrups

was a seated lance held under the arm.

You could stab somebody with the lance
and then remove it,

riding past them without stirrups.

But if you seated it under your arm
and used the lance as a shock weapon,

it would knock you
off the back of the horse

if you didn't have stirrups.

So stirrups made it possible to use
long swords and lances

as shock weapons
against stationary targets

and keep your seat.

And of course that made it possible
to have really heavy mounted warriors.

Now, the rider becomes
a unit with the horse.

He's so anchored with his stirrups,
anchored with this,

and then with his long lance

he becomes a single projectile unit.

Man, horse, saddle, lance,
all locked together for the impact charge.

This was the age of the medieval knight.

A medieval knight's power

came from combining the Asian stirrup
and the ancient shock tactics

of the Persian cataphract
with a European invention:

articulated plate armor.

Strong enough to protect the wearer
from sword and lance thrusts

while light enough to allow him
to move freely on horseback

and on foot.

Heavy cavalry had never been
a more potent weapon of war.

Medieval mounted warfare
could be warfare

that generated
a lot of force on the rider,

a high impact warfare.

In that case, the mounted warrior
is being used

really as a shock weapon
to strike the enemy.

But even Europe's
formidable mounted knights

would be outfought
by Central Asian cavalry

that burst out of the steppes
and changed the world.

The largest conquest empire
that the Earth has ever seen

was created by pastoral nomads
from Central Asia.

In the 13th century,

the Mongols conquered
as far West as Poland

and as far East as the Sea of Japan.

Mongol armies combined the devastating
shock tactics of horse archers

with a highly sophisticated
military organization.

They could gather quickly
and march to distant battlefields.

Then the cavalry could reach
the enemy's battlefield

before they set up defenses

which could deter their enemy
psychologically and strategically.

It is said that the cavalry came suddenly

like something falling fro the sky.

and disappeared quickly

leaving no trace at all.

Western, especially European historians,

wrote that the Mongols appeared
far away like several spots

but would suddenly gather
before you, like dark clouds.

Unexpected attack was the core

The Mongols have gone down
in History as bloodthirsty killers,

but they were also sophisticated,
open-minded,

often generous conquerors.

They pacified the Silk Road.

Trade between West and East

flourished under
this Mongol-enforced peace,

the Pax Mongolica.

Before the age of Pax Mongolica,

banditry was a very serious
problem for traders,

for caravans, along the Silk Road.

The reputation of Genghis Khan
and his descendants

created peace and safe passage
along the Silk Road

because bandits were so afraid
of the Mongol soldiers.

The Pax Mongolica,

the control of trade and exchange

that was made possible under the Mongols

connected China with Europe
and with the Near East

in a really close way
for the first time in world History

And that had a profound effect

on the development
of European civilization.

Protected by the Pax Mongolica,

and anxious for good relations
with the Mongol empire,

Europeans began traveling East
as never before.

Merchants, missionaries, and diplomats

flowed East along the trade routes,

bringing back popular Asian goods
like cloth and spices

and tales of the wealth
and wonders of the East,

some true, some fabulous,
but all fascinating.

From Europe to China,

Silk Road trade spread
new knowledge of far-away lands.

The Silk Road made human beings realize

that there are other people out there,

and it opened the eyes
of the East and the West.

The Italian cities of Venice and Genoa
reaped huge rewards.

Their merchants traveled safely
throughout Eurasia

and founded trading posts on the Black Sea

to receive and pass on Silk Road goods.

Their Silk Road profits funded
magnificent art and architecture.

But their competition frequently
plunged them into war with one another.

In one of these wars, Genoa captured
a prosperous Venetian merchant

named Marco Polo.

Imprisoned by the Genoese,
Polo dictated the story

of his Silk Road journey to China
to a fellow prisoner.

Today, experts debate whether
Marco Polo really visited China

or was simply retelling stories

he heard from fellow Silk Road travelers.

But there's no debate
that "The Travels of Marco Polo"

was one of the most influential books
in all of human History.

It tantalized Europe with tales

of China's immense wealth
and advanced civilization.

And years before Marco Polo was telling
those tales in a Genoese prison,

a Chinese invention was making
its way across Eurasia to the West.

Something created centuries earlier

when an experiment ended very badly.

Ancient Chinese alchemists
prepared potions of lead or mercury

for their aristocratic patrons

who believed that drinking these metals
would help them live forever.

Instead, those concoctions killed them
or made them insane.

Another deadly combination was sulfur

heated with an organic nitrate
found in soil throughout China,

known today as saltpeter.

When alchemists experimented
with this formula,

it burst into flame,

injuring the alchemists,

(Explosion)

and burning down their laboratory.

From that disaster was born
a chemical mixture like none other.

It may have failed
as an elixir of immortality,

but it would prove to be
a potent agent of death.

This Chinese Buddhist scroll
dating from around 950 CE,

depicts demons surrounding
a seated Buddha.

One demon holds what the Chinese called
a "huo quiang", or fire lance.

It's the earliest known image of a weapon

powered by that deadly mixture
of saltpeter and sulfur.

Known to history as gunpowder.

In the early 13th century,

the Mongols attacked China's Jin Dynasty.

The Jin Dynasty's army fought back
with exploding gunpowder bombs.

But as the Mongols conquered
more and more of China,

Han Chinese artillerymen
joined their armies

and marched West, bringing
their gunpowder weapons with them.

The Mongols attacked
Russian and Polish cities

with exploding fire bombs.

And Europeans found out the hard way
what gunpowder could do.

By the end of the 13th century,

the formula for gunpowder
was known as far West as England,

and Europeans were inventing
their own versions of the new weapons.

It wasn't long before this Chinese
invention changed European history.

On 26th August, 1346,

near the village of Crecy
in northern France,

the armies of France and England
prepared to fight.

Mounted on their war steeds,
encased in their armor,

the flower of French nobility
formed their battle line,

while the English deployed
a very different force.

Thousands of expert archers.

The French sent their higher Genoese
crossbowmen to attack the English

before French knights annihilated them.

But the English king, Edward III,

had spent years training his longbow men.

And all that training
was about to pay off.

Nothing like this had been seen
on a western battlefield up to this time.

The first time that a volley of arrows
was unleashed by the archers at Crecy

would have represented
something completely new

to many of those
in the French army watching it.

A cloud of arrows descending towards them.

It would have been frightening,

and of course the effect
was almost immediate.

Showered by English arrows,
the Genoese turned and ran,

and according to medieval
accounts of the battle,

they were also panicked
by another English weapon.

Giovanni Villani, writing
very soon after the battle,

says in his chronicle that
so loud and intimidating

was the noise created by the guns

that they thought God was thundering.

"The English guns cast
iron balls by means of fire.

"They made a noise like thunder

"and caused much loss
in men and horses."

Noise like that would have been
unprecedented

to the soldiers on the battlefield.

Nothing in their lives
could have prepared them

for a a bang of that size

and accompanied by smoke
and acrid sulfur smell,

which would hang in the air.

The impact of which, of course,
they couldn't see

until men around them dropped.

Not even professional soldiers
like the Genoese

would have experienced anything
like this before in their lives.

That would have been terrifying,

and it's no wonder
that they scattered and ran.

They turned and fled into the face
of the oncoming French cavalry charge.

The French cavalry were now
coming onto the battlefield

and they were appalled

at these people they'd hired
running away.

And they cursed them
and they rode into them,

and as many Genoese fell to French hooves

as they did to English
arrows and gunshots.

And the French knights,
all 12,000 of them,

double the size of the English army,

they came charging down onto the English.

And they, too, fell to the English arrows
and the English gunshot,

and they came again and again and again.

15, 16 times, they came.

And their horses were ripped to shreds

and the men were thrown from their horses.

And those that weren't thrown,

they had the opportunity
that the dagger men rushed in

and they brought these knights down.

This was a moment in History
where the world changed.

It spelled the beginning of the end
for the medieval knight.

The Battle of Crecy
has gone down in history

as one of the earliest uses
of gunpowder weapons

on a European battlefield.

Some 500 years after,

it burned down
a Chinese alchemist's workshop,

gunpowder had become
destiny's weapon of choice.

After Crecy, it was only a matter of time

until the fates of peoples and nations
were decided by the gun.

Within two centuries,

Europeans would use their powerful
gunpowder weapons

to dominate the world,

creating empires that would evolve
into today's global trading culture,

which binds people together
by commerce instead of the gun.

But before Europe could embark
on its empire-building adventure,

its medieval social order

would be shattered
by a catastrophic event.

One that would forge a new Europe
in a crucible of horror.

While guns thundered at Crecy,

something else was spreading
along the Eurasian trade routes.

Something that would kill
tens of millions of Europeans.

An apocalyptic destruction of human life

that would lay the foundations
of the modern world.

At the Battle of Crécy in 1346,

the English won
an historic victory over France,

helped by a Chinese invention
that had traveled to Europe.

Gunpowder.

And in the same year of 1346,

some 2,000 kilometres east of Crécy,

another battle was taking place
on the shores of the Black Sea.

A Mongol army had been laying siege
to the Crimean port city of Caffa,

a Silk Road trading post belonging
to the Italian city of Genoa.

The Mongols were masters
of siege warfare.

But Caffa was still holding out
after more than two years.

Suddenly, the Mongol army was decimated.

Not by Caffa's defenders,
but by an unknown disease.

The Mongols quickly ended their siege.

But before they left Caffa,

they loaded their siege engines
with the corpses of their dead

and flung them over the city's walls,

believing that the stench of death
would kill the defenders.

Medieval chronicles say

that Caffa's defenders
did die by the thousands,

but not from the smell of death.

One year later, in 1347,

the same disease that had killed
the Mongols at Caffa

was killing people in Constantinople.

By 1348,it was killing people
across Western Europe.

By 1350, it was killing people
as far away as Greenland.

And terrified Europeans
had given it a name.

The Black Death.

In just under a decade,
from 1347 to 1356,

the Black Death killed a
t least 25 million Europeans.,

one third of Europe's population.

Today, most scholars believe

that the Black Death was
an outbreak of bubonic plague.

that was transmitted to humans
by infected fleas living on rats.

And we believe
that it spread across Eurasia

by hitching a ride with armies,
ships, and caravans

along trade routes
that were already ancient

by the time of the Black Death.

Micro-organic travelers of all kinds

have moved across Eurasia
for thousands of years.

A bio-migration that has had
as big an impact on history

as the more famous exchanges
of new technologies and luxury goods.

And as a recent discovery shows,

tiny living things
moving along the Silk Road

brought life as well as death.

We were putting together some new methods

of looking for early agriculture,

and for that we needed to do a survey

of all the finds of early crops in Europe.

When you looked at a map of all of Europe,

then you could see
there were these Chinese crops

in small numbers very early on in Europe.

"Very early on" was around 2,000 BC,

when a Chinese grain
called broomcorn millet

appears in the Eastern European
archaeological record.

The actual crop itself
will decay or be eaten,

but rather fortunately,

if it's cooked and over-burnt,
it turns to carbon.

That will stay in the archaeological
record for a long time.

In the Chinese province of inner Mongolia,

archaeologists are studying
the origins of broomcorn millet,

one of the world's oldest domestic crops.

We are looking at a broomcorn millet field
of almost 16 acres

The cultivation of broomcorn millet
in this place

dates back to nearly 8000 years ago.

It's the earliest area of human-cultivated
broomcorn millet in the world.

After broomcorn millet's birth
in this place,

it spread to the West from the East.

It spread to Europe.

Since it originated from the East
and then spread to Europe,

it can be regarded
as an important contribution

of our Eastern civilization
to the Western counterpart.

But it isn't clear just how and why

broomcorn millet travelled thousands
of kilometres across Eurasia,

through some of the world's
harshest environments,

all the way to Europe.

Millet's long journey may have begun
simply because it travelled so well.

Millets are essentially cereals,
but they're very small.

And because they have very small grains,

they're hardy and they're tough,

and they can grow quite fast.

Broomcorn millet, at a push,

can get from seed to seed in 45 days.

You can plant a seed in the ground

and 45 days later,
in the right conditions,

you may have plants.

That's incredibly fast.

So, if you're moving around parts of Asia,

where, on the one hand,
there's a long winter,

a short growing season,

and you can't particularly r
ely on rainfall,

then something that gets a move on
in terms of its growth cycle

is very valuable.

There are accounts of communities
that are on horseback

for quite a lot of the time
and herding animals and so forth,

but for that short season of the year

that millet grows in,

they can actually
sow the millet on horseback,

trample it in with the horse's feet,

and then either leave
a few teenagers there

to scare the birds off
for a couple of months,

come back two months later,
and harvest the crops.

Millet was a highly mobile grain,

but there wasn't any evidence

of how it might have travelled
from its home in northern China.

Until archaeologists found signs
of millet cultivation around 2500 BC

in the foothills of the Tian Shan
Mountains in central Asia.

At that point we asked ourselves,

"Well, what is it about these foothills?"

You know, "Why the foothills?"

Clearly, it's about water.

If one travels across the centre of Asia,

one realizes why water is a key.

And wherever you are in Asia,
it can be very dry, of course.

But if one goes uphill to those foothills,

then one has somewhere

where there will be streams
running off the mountains and water.

Archaeologists found that around 1,000 BC,

millet farmers left theTian Shan foothills

and their reliable water supply

and began moving
into much harsher environments.

We can see the confidence of farmers

spreading out from where
the water is really safe

to areas where you have to know more

about the water and the landscape
and the geography,

both into the steppes to the north
and to the desert to the south.

Millet's local migrations
may have linked it with the world.

Migrating millet farmers
in search of water

may have settled near trade routes.

And long-distance travelers
would have chosen routes

near reliable sources of food and water.

I think very much
those traders are definitely working

through networks
that are already centuries old.

It's at least a millennium
before you see something crystallizing

that you can start calling the Silk Road.

Another discovery has revealed
that this ancient grain migration

wasn't only from East to West.

Wheat was transmitted from West to East,

arrived in China and was accepted
as our main staple.

This reflects the transaction
between Eastern and Western cultures.

The Eurasian steppe, acting as a route

for early exchanges between
Eastern and Western cultures.

is the predecessor
of the ancient Silk Road.

Ethnic migration, the fusion of cultures,

and the flow of trade
are ll embedded in this road.

Trading millet and wheat
between China and Europe

may have done much more than feed people.

It may also have enabled
profound social change.

Seeds germinate at one time of year

and are harvested another time of year,

and that's kind
of hardwired into their biology.

And so farming is a one-season activity,

and there are things going on
at other times of year.

And during the second millennium BC,

a number of societies are doing something

which is quite radically different,

and that is putting more
than one season in a single year.

Crops like millet
are really useful for that,

in that if you are a western farmer,

with wheat and barley fields

reaching maturity during the summer,

and you think

"Right, with the same plot of land,
"I want to increase production.

"And so, I want another crop
after I've harvested the first crop."

You can't do a long season,
large-grain crop

like wheat and barley again,

so, something that's short and sharp
like millet

you can tag on to the end of it

and catch another season
before the winter's set in.

Interestingly, when you get to China,
it's the converse.

You have this short season crop
already there,

and by rearranging your life,

you can bring a long season crop
such as wheat and barley in at that stage.

So the implications are,
with the same plot of land,

you could basically get
two harvests rather than one.

So, two sets of calories rather than one.

It may release some of the community
to not farm at all

and occupy roles within cities,
or as craftspeople, or leaders.

If we look at the second millennium BC,

what we certainly see

is at the same time
as multi-cropping is there,

then there are a lot of the community,

are not farmers,
but instead metalworkers,

or kings, or priests, or something else.

And so what we see evidence of

is multi-cropping allows a non-farming
sector within the community.

So, what we have is a small,
not very impressive-looking seed,

but because of the way it grows
and because of its biology,

it has a massive impact

in changing the productivity

of the heartlands of western farming.

So, those western farmlands
could, in the same area,

produce two crops rather than one,

and that enabled a whole series of things

that we associate
with the word "civilization."

Finding Chinese millet in Europe
and European wheat and barley in China

suggests that long before the Silk Road,

East and West were introducing
one another to new foods,

and that the movement of crops

may have helped create
the earliest East-West trade routes.

And in the deserts of far western China,

archaeologists
have discovered another way

living organisms
could travel the Silk Road.

This is Xuanquanzhi relay station,

an archaeological site
near the town of Dunhuang,

a major stopping point on the Silk Road.

2,000 years ago during the Han dynasty,

Xuanquanzhi was a very busy
and very cosmopolitan place.

According to records
written on bamboo and wood

unearthed from Xuanquanzhi

Xuanquanzhi was not only serving
as a relay station,

but also as a place to receive
caravans and government officials.

During the Han Dinasty,
the major officials received here

included the king of Kholan Kingdom
from the Western Regions,

the king of the Wusun,
also called the Issedones

and the king of the Kangu,
also called the Sogdians.

At most, the number of received guests
would be over 1000.

Therefore, this place was filled up
with a mixture of people from all regions.

It would be used for merchants,

and it would also be used
for government business.

People could travel long distances

knowing that there was somewhere
they could stay

be refreshed and recover,
change their horses,

and then move on
to the next relay station.

The wonderful thing about
the Xuanquanzhi trading post

was that it's in a part of the country
that is not built up now,

and the environment, very, very dry
and often very cold in the winter,

means that things
are preserved there very well.

So, a lot of the things
- inside that trading post -

have survived instead of decomposing.

Excavators were especially excited
to find something

that perhaps only
an archaeologist could love:

the 2,000-year-old equivalent
of toilet paper.

In China, they wrote back,
in the Han dynasty times,

how they would have a stick
with cloth wrapped on the end

for people to wipe themselves with.

There were quite a few
of these sticks thrown into the latrine

as if people discarded them
in there when they'd finished.

These sticks have been found
at some other excavations in China as well

but what's great about this relay station

is we still have the cloth
wrapped on the end

and we still have the human faeces on.

So, we scraped off
the dried faeces from the cloth

and took them to the lab.

We found four different
species of parasite

in those who used this latrine.

Two of the species are spread by faeces

contaminating your food
or your hands or your drink:

roundworm and whipworm.

Another species was a kind of tapeworm

that they probably acquired
by eating raw or undercooked pork.

And then, we found
the really exciting find,

which was the Chinese liver fluke.

This is a small flatworm

that lives in eastern and southern
China and in Korea.

It can only survive in marshy, wet places.

But here, we found it 1500 kilometres away
from anywhere that has it in modern times.

So, it wasn't what we expected to find.

It was brilliant that we could find it
on the Silk Road.

The liver fluke requires a lifecycle

where it passes through freshwater snails,

and through small fish
and then, bigger fish.

If you cook the fish,
then you don't get the liver fluke.

But if you eat the fish raw,
then it hatches out in your stomach,

migrates through your body,
crawls into the liver,

and then develops there.

There was no way that people
in the area of this relay station

could have caught it
in that particular area

because it was far too dry.

There were no lakes.

There were no freshwater snails
and fish for them to infect.

The discovery of the liver fluke
is of great importance.

It indicates that the caravans
or government servants

brought their excrement,
as well as diseases ,here

over thousands of kilometers
of travel to this place, Xuanquan station.

With state of the art overseas analysis,

we are comparing it with similar
evidence originating in Europe.

to figure out whether the liver was spread

from China's eastern
coastal area to Europe

or if it was spread from Europe to China

or if the disease spread
between these two areas.

We are doing some further research.

The finds at Xuanquanzhi have shown

that humans could carry diseases
long distances along the Silk Road.

Another discovery has revealed
what could happen when they did.