[peaceful music playing]
[woman] This is our planet. Planet Earth.
It's a planet I'm literally on right now.
And unless you're watching this on a long-haul flight
or while falling off a building,
chances are, you are too.
This is the incredible story of how humankind transformed our world
from being a load of pointless nature like this
to full of modern things like this,
and how it did it using nothing more than its hands
and its imagination, and also tools, and electricity, and the Internet.
It's a journey that will take me to every corner of the globe
money and pandemic travel restrictions would allow.
Getting up close to some of our species' most stunning achievements.
And I'll be asking questions…
Who are you?
…to leading academics, clevernauts and expertists
who will help me unlock the mystery of human civilization.
Why do they say it's a mystery how the pyramids were built
when it's obviously just big bricks in a triangle?
This is not just the story of the planet we live in.
This is the story of the world we live on. Or both.
So join me, Philomena Cunk,
for a landmark look at the world we built together.
This is Cunk on Earth!
[epic music playing]
For billions of years, there was no civilization on Earth.
Just animals, plants and gases getting on and mingling.
Must have been beautiful, but also boring.
Until along came a creature that would change all that: human man.
Was early man similar to us?
I mean, was he made out of the same sort of meat that we are?
You know, was it… Did it have a brand name like beef or pork?
Far as we can tell, they were made out of the same stuff as us.
All we have is bones, of course. And they're exactly the same as our bones.
We can only assume that the bones were encased in flesh, something like ours.
But I'm not aware of any kind of brand name that they would have had.
-So it would have just been flesh? -Just flesh, I think, yes.
It would be hard to come up with a brand name for human flesh, wouldn't it?
Horfe?
We often assume early men were stupid
because they had big eyebrows and said "ugg."
But in fact, they were pioneering inventerers.
They were the first men to use tools,
which is something most men have forgotten how to do today,
which is why they have to get someone in, a real man.
How did early man make tools whilst walking on all fours?
Well, we don't think that they walked on all fours for too long.
We're pretty sure they were walking upright
for at least the last two million years.
So did they make the tools with their front legs or their hind legs?
I don't think humans have ever been good at making things with their feet.
So, yes, it would have been the front legs they used for making tools.
Right. So in leg terms, it would have been their top legs.
Yes, I think they would certainly have used the "top legs" for making tools,
or arms and hands, as we call them today.
One thing they did invent was fire,
which allowed them to see at night and kept them warm,
tragically prolonging their already tedious lives.
But they had to invent something to do during the long, boring evenings.
And that something was art.
I'm entering a cave, not by mistake or because I'm a wolf,
but because I've been specifically asked to come here by the producers,
to look at cave art.
Cave paintings like these
are one of the first examples of civilization on Earth.
Don't worry, it gets better.
Early cave artists started out painting whatever was close to hand,
like their hands.
Then they branched out into stories.
Initially, just boring stories about cows standing still.
But soon they began creating white-knuckle fight scenes like this:
Humans Versus Cows 2D.
To a caveman, this was the thrilling equivalent of Fast and Furious Part 7.
Have any of the cave paintings been adapted into films?
Suppose they couldn't get the rights anyway, though, could they?
Filmmaking obviously arose much, much later than the end of the cave paintings.
So there hasn't been a cave wall that's been like,
"Oh my God, that's an incredible story."
"We need to get Steven Spielberg to make this."
It would be hard to come up with a story that would last an hour and a half
based on just one panel in a cave.
Some believe these violent images were painted as a religious act
intended to bring good luck in upcoming battles.
We don't know why humankind was at war with the cows,
and tragically, we never will.
In fact, we'll probably never even know the name of the artist or these cows,
because whoever painted this is almost certainly dead now.
Hunting animals every day was a pain in the arse
until someone came up with the idea of also eating plants,
which were easier to catch because they couldn't run away.
This simple act of laziness led to the invention of farming,
a huge leap forwards, which was now more dangerous
because you might land on one of the farming implements
that were suddenly lying around.
The early farmers grew wheat and learnt to bake bread.
They also grew barley, peas and lentils
so they could have made a passable vegan burger to put inside the bread.
But luckily they didn't have to.
Because they'd also invented this, the fence,
a high-tech wooden machine for containing animals.
Humans quickly enslaved sheep, chickens, goats
and their number-one enemies, the cows.
Farms became a lot like zoos, except, of course, in a zoo,
you can't pick out an animal you like the look of and kill it and eat it.
Unless perhaps the zoo itself is struggling financially
and the owner's lost all hope.
Humans turned animals they couldn't eat or ride
into pets if they were pretty enough.
Early man domesticated dogs for companionship.
And cats, for whatever we have cats for.
This was the first time in history life could be described as cozy.
People lived in proper houses, which soon grew to become cities.
It's hard to believe I'm walking through the ruins of the first ever city,
because I'm not.
That's in Iraq, which is miles away and fucking dangerous.
But the remains of it look pretty much like this,
so you'd never know I wasn't actually there
if I wasn't telling you now by accident.
Today it's just a dismal load of bricks and dust.
But if you use a modern computer to simulate what it used to look like,
the results are nothing short of breathtaking.
Civilization had begun.
Who invented civilization?
Civilization wasn't something that was invented
or something that started abruptly.
We talk about civilization once humans started agriculture,
once they started building cities and creating laws.
That was something that happened gradually
in different parts of the world rather than just being invented suddenly.
Yeah, so it wasn't just one man who wanted to remain anonymous.
No.
'Cause that would be something we shouldn't go along with if it was.
Do you mean we shouldn't go along…
If it's one man who wants to remain anonymous,
there's something a bit shifty about that, isn't there?
So civilization was invented in Mesopotamia
by person or persons unknown.
But whoever they were, they were way ahead of their time.
Did the Mesopotamians have any of the same things that we have today?
-Yes. -Like what?
Weapons, jewelry, temples, animals.
Oh, right. No, I meant like feet and eyebrows and that sort of thing.
-Yes. -They did?
They had the whole set of organs, holes, bits that work together
and bits on the outside, bits on the inside.
So they had the same number of holes and everything.
As far as science is in a position to reassure you, yes.
One of their most significant killer apps was something we still use to this day:
the circle.
Wheels might look complicated to the likes of you,
but the way they work is actually simple.
The circle bit here revolves around a sort of sticky-out bit in the middle,
and then as the wheel skin here pushes against the ground,
the pressure rolls the entire planet back and away from you,
giving you the impression that you're moving forward,
which, incredibly, you actually are.
The wheel allowed people to travel around trading things,
but first they needed to count how many things they owned.
And that led to the tragic invention of maths.
Let's talk maths and numbers.
Were numbers worth less back in ancient times
or did they have the same value as now, only bigger?
Numbers had the same value as they do now in ancient times, yeah.
People still needed to count things.
And did they have the same number of numbers as we do?
You know, from 1 to 700, with 700 being the biggest number?
700 has never been the biggest number. You can count to as many as you like.
No, no, I saw a thing on YouTube. After 700, numbers repeat.
They just give them different names so you think they're still going up.
Do you want me to send it to you?
With numbers going as high, but no higher than, 700,
people needed something to help them count.
That's where this came in. It's called "a-bacus."
Using "a-bacus," our ancestors could count how many possessions they owned.
It was a short step from this
to the invention of money, in the form of cash.
Ancient people invented currency to make life on Earth easier,
but in doing so, they inadvertently invented capitalism,
which is gonna kill everyone.
Sorry, that's not a question. It's just something I read on Twitter.
Having conquered numbers,
humankind moved on to something even more boring by inventing writing.
Was the invention of writing a significant development
or more of a flash in the pan, like rap metal?
I think once writing was thought up, once it appeared in the world,
it was unstoppable.
So it was much, much bigger than rap metal then?
-Yes, much bigger. -What about acid jazz?
Um… hmm…
I still would put writing ahead of it.
No, I just wondered what you thought of acid jazz.
What's this?
[Finkel] It's a cast. It's not the real thing.
It purports to stand in for a Mesopotamian clay tablet written in cuneiform writing,
the first kind of writing that appeared in the world, writing on clay tablets.
As books go, I have to say it's quite a boring cover, isn't it?
It doesn't even look like it opens properly.
Are you one of the people that judges a book by the cover?
-Yeah, I am. -Well, that's a sad and misguided view.
If someone shouted this aloud,
would that have been the first audio book?
No.
Writing changed the world.
Suddenly ideas didn't have to disappear
just because the person whose head they were trapped in had died.
Instead, you could convert your ideas into writing,
and then anyone else could come along
and upload those ideas into their own brain
by wirelessly importing them through their eyes.
Incredibly, despite being invented thousands of years ago,
writing still exists today,
underneath video clips that we watch online.
It's here you'll also find another kind of handmade language that still endures:
emoji.
Or as the ancient Egyptians who invented them called them, hieroglyphics.
They told whole stories in hieroglyphic code.
It's like a more coherent Marvel comic.
Rather than being put up in public where living people could enjoy them,
these Egyptian comic strips were painted on the walls of tombs
to entertain dead people.
And those tombs lay beneath some of the most recognizable,
not to mention pointiest, buildings in history.
I'm talking about the pyramids.
Looking at the pyramids today,
it's impossible not to be struck by the thought
that they're basically big triangles with a sort of square arse.
There's probably a word for that shape, but no one knows what it might be.
It's one of the many timeless mysteries of the pyramids.
Why are pyramids that shape?
Is it to stop homeless people sleeping on them?
I don't think they had many homeless people in ancient Egypt.
Did they not?
No, no, people looked after each other, I think, and helped each other.
Right. I suppose it's good with rain as well,
because it'll just roll off.
How did Egyptians build the pyramids?
Did they start at the top and work down or start at the bottom and work up?
They had to start at the bottom and work up because
it would be impossible to start at the top and work down.
The Egyptians believed
the most significant thing you could do in your life was die.
And the more important you were, the more complicated your death had to be.
Egyptian kings were known as pharaohs,
and when they died, they'd get turned into mummies of Scooby-Doo fame.
The ancient Egyptians were obsessed with dead people, weren't they?
But they're all dead themselves now. So do you think they still feel that way?
The ancient Egyptians weren't obsessed with dead people,
but actually they were obsessed with life.
They wanted to be alive,
and they wanted to make sure that when they died, they came alive again.
And that's why they did mummification.
So how did they mummify people? Talk me through the process.
Uh, you'd get your dead body and you'd lay it out on a table
and then you'd wash it,
and then you'd start by removing the brain.
And then they would cut open down the middle of the body
and they would take out anything that they thought would rot.
And then they would cover it in salt and dry it out,
and then they would wrap it in bandages, and then that would be a mummy.
So the kind of spa treatment that Gwyneth Paltrow has on a weekly basis.
Has a mummy ever ridden a bicycle?
Not that I know of, no.
But the ancient Egyptians didn't have bicycles.
-Right. -They didn't even have roads.
So they couldn't have a bicycle because they couldn't ride a bicycle.
I don't know why I asked that.
I just couldn't think of anything else to say.
While the pharaohs of Egypt left a legacy of temples and tombs,
across the water,
an even more impressive empire was appearing.
Greece, the country, not the musical,
was where the birth of civilization was born.
The ancient Greeks invented lots of things we still have today,
like medicine and olives,
and lots of things that have died out, like democracy and pillars.
As well as these impressive ruins, the ancient Greeks also developed culture
in the form of yoghurt and theatre in all its tedious forms.
The Greeks were into tragedies.
In a tragedy, sad things happen like people dying or killing themselves.
But the ancient Greek tragedies happened ages ago.
Are the things that happened in them still sad?
They are still sad
because what the tragedies tell are stories about humans,
who we can relate to in some cases.
But it was so long ago. Why should I care?
Well, again, tragedy is often about human situations.
Even today, if you found out that by accident
you'd killed your own father and married your mother, you'd be quite upset,
um, just as Oedipus was.
Maybe I'm cold, but I just don't give a shit about people in ancient Greece.
That's a shame.
-Do you? -I do care quite a lot. Yeah, it's my job.
My mate Paul wrote a story about a man who got a new potato stuck up himself
following an ill-advised sex game.
And he wrote that in the form of a limerick.
No one died, but it sounds horrendous.
Is that a tragedy,
or would the potato have to take root and kill him for it to qualify?
It sounds like a very unfortunate incident.
I'm not sure it has a more timeless relevance
that might make it a tragedy.
Paul said it really happened as well.
Honestly, he's had such a time of it lately.
He really needs a holiday.
The Greeks also created a kind of theatre for stupid people, known as sport.
They started the Olympic Games without inviting other countries
to ensure Greece would win.
The contenders at these early Olympics took part completely naked,
partly because an athletic physique was considered a virtue,
but mainly because Lycra wasn't available.
I heard that at the early Olympics, athletes had to compete in the nude.
So they did compete naked.
And there are writings about this being quite an erotic sight in some cases.
With wrestling, with all that wriggling about,
they'd have seen right up their bumholes and everything.
Couldn't they censor it for people watching it in the auditorium,
modesty patches or something,
or ask people to close their eyes each time someone bends over?
I think that probably wouldn't have worked.
But you'd have seen right up their bumholes.
In some cases people might have done.
Did Zeus really approve of that?
But perhaps the most famous form of wrestling the Greeks invented
was mental wrestling.
Philosophy is basically thinking about thinking,
which sounds like a waste of time because it is,
although a philosopher might argue that that time they've wasted
never existed in the first place,
at which point you'd probably give up talking to them
and open a packet of biscuits.
These are the ancient Greek philosophers.
Not the actual ones, they'd be a load of dust and bones now.
Maybe some teeth if you're lucky.
These are just clever simulations made of rock.
The Greek philosophers came up with bold new theories about life on Earth.
That's why we still know their names today,
even though they haven't put out any new material in ages.
Socrates,
Pythagoras,
this one,
him.
And this is Plato.
As you can see, even now, centuries after his death, he's still deep in thought,
concocting clever theories in his head.
If only we could hold a microphone to the side of his brain
and hear them for ourselves, but we can't.
And even if we could, they'd be in Greek,
which no one on our production team can speak.
Plato handed his wisdom on to a student
who would become one of the most influential thinkers of all time:
Aristotle.
Aristotle said a lot of clever things, didn't he?
My favorite is, "You've got to dance like nobody's watching."
It's so true, and you can apply it to anything.
Because my confidence is quite brittle at times,
and I know I come across as quite confident,
but sometimes when I'm talking to experts,
I worry that, you know, I might come across as a bit stupid.
And when I think of "dance like no one's watching,"
that really helps me, you know?
It's like a gift.
What made Aristotle think of that?
I'm not aware that Aristotle said that particular thing
about dancing when no one's watching.
-I don't think he said that. -He did, didn't he?
If he did, I don't know and I don't know why,
but I don't think he did.
Is there something similar that he might have said,
um… about-- something about one's confidence?
Um…
-I don't think so. -Right.
Okay.
Experts may disagree over what they actually said,
but there's no doubt these Greek pioneers changed the way we think.
Did a philosopher ever think of an idea so big it split their head open?
Not that I'm aware of.
You know how the human brain is full of pipes? Philosophers--
-I'm not. -You didn't know about that?
-I didn't know about that. -Okay, well, the brain's full of pipes.
You know how philosophers have these thoughts,
and they try and push these thoughts through these pipes?
When you're having a big idea,
is it best to break it up into lots of little thoughts, about the size of peas,
and squeeze them through in quick succession,
or just bite the bullet and force it through your mind pipe in one huge clod,
like gritting your teeth and thinking for dear life?
Well, that's a very interesting way of describing
two general tendencies in philosophy.
One, the more analytic style,
which means cutting problems up into bite-sized portions…
Peas.
…and the other a more synthetic approach
which takes on a larger perspective.
So your characterization is, in fact,
a rather intriguing delineation
of two major strands in current philosophy.
-Is that good? -Excellent.
Great.
Meanwhile, ancient Greece was being spread across the globe by this man,
Alexander the Great.
Alexander the Great became a king at 20,
conducted a military campaign throughout the Middle East,
and had an empire stretching all the way from Greece to India
by the time he was 30.
What did his hair look like?
I don't know.
And Alexander wasn't the only megastar with his own empire.
Huge swathes of China had been unified by Qin Shi Huang,
the first cartoon character to found his own empire
and build the Great Wall of China.
They say the Great Wall of China is the only landmark audible from space.
Yeah, you can't… you can't hear it.
And they say that you can see it from space, but it's not true.
-They've tried. -So you can't see it from space.
Chinese astronauts have tried to see the Great Wall and they can't.
They can't see it. So it's invisible. It's an invisible wall, like a forcefield.
It's only invisible from space. On the ground you can certainly see it.
That's so weird, isn't it? Is that one of the great mysteries?
And do we know if China has a roof? Is there a great roof of China?
No, no great roof.
The Chinese empire was a powerhouse of intense creativity
and philosophical thought,
captured in historical documents produced centuries
before the release of unrelated Belgian techno anthem "Pump Up the Jam."
[techno music playing]
♪ Pump up the jam, pump it up ♪
♪ While your feet are stomping ♪
♪ And the jam is pumping ♪
♪ Look ahead, the crowd is jumping ♪
♪ Pump it up a little more ♪
♪ Get the party going On the dance floor ♪
♪ See, 'cause that's Where the party's at ♪
♪ And you'll find out if you do that ♪
♪ I want a place to stay Get your booty-- ♪
The Greeks had an empire and the Chinese had an empire.
But when most of us think of the word "empire," we think of the big one,
Star Wars… or Rome.
And this is history, so it's Rome, I'm afraid.
Its empire rose to supremacy under the leadership of Julius Caesar,
the most notorious Roman until Polanski.
One of the reasons we still know a lot about the Romans today is Wikipedia.
And the reason Wikipedia knows a lot about the Romans
is because of what happened in Pompeii.
Pompeii was so advanced, it had its own volcano,
which is Latin for "angry hill."
For years, humans and the volcano lived in harmony,
until one fateful day they fell out and the volcano went off,
burying Pompeii beneath a thick layer of ash.
Everyday life was frozen in its tracks
as though someone had magically stopped the hands of time
and then shat dust everywhere.
It was deadly at the time, but on the bright side,
it gave archaeologists a treasure trove of information about how the Romans lived.
Thanks to the volcano, we know everyday Romans had grey skin, were totally bald,
and spent their time lying around inside their shockingly dusty houses.
But it also preserved glimpses of how sophisticated Roman life was,
with creature comforts like indoor plumbing and cunnilingus.
The Roman Empire was years ahead of its time.
People think the Romans invented loads of things,
but often they only perfected things that other people had made.
I'll say some things and you tell me if the Romans invented them
or just perfected them.
Right? Invented or perfected.
Test me.
-Underfloor heating. -Invented.
Ding!
-The calendar. -Perfected.
[imitates buzzer]
You wallied. That means you can't answer the next one.
Roads.
Well, the roads were invented by Persians and plenty of people knew about roads.
You wallied anyway, you can't answer that one.
-Oh, right. -Concrete.
Invented.
Ding!
The alphabet.
Definitely did not invent it, and probably didn't really perfect it either.
I mean, that's sort of…
-Gotta pick one. -Have I?
Yeah.
Um… I mean, perfected is wrong--
Ding! Anal bleaching.
-What? -Anal bleaching.
[softly] Anal bleaching?
Um…
-I've no idea what they would have done. -Go on, give it a go.
-I don't know what it is. -It's when they bleach your arse.
-Really? -Yeah. Lighten it up.
Not around my way, they don't. But anyway, I've no idea with that. Pass.
Invented or perfected, you can't pass.
-Bleaching? -Yep. Bleaching the arsehole.
Um… okay. Well, I'll say they invented it, but…
[imitates buzzer]
[epic music playing]
Just a few hundred thousand years ago,
humans had been living in caves like animals.
Now, following a series of technological and cultural breakthroughs,
we were living in cities, like people.
Looking around ancient Rome, our ancestors could have been forgiven
for feeling almost as smug as James Corden.
But little did the Roman Empire know
it was about to come up against its biggest challenge:
a man of peace, Jesus Christ Almighty, street name: son of God.
Next time, we look at religion and how it spread.
Like memes, but with a whole lifestyle and clothing line attached.
And we'll be looking at two of the most important books in history:
the Bible and the Koran,
and finally answering the question, which is best?