×ÖÄ» We innovate and mould the bounty of the planet
×ÖÄ» To our needs.
×ÖÄ» But new resources forge new struggles,
×ÖÄ» Give power to new peoples,
×ÖÄ» And with them, ideals and ideas that transform our lives.
×ÖÄ» Amidst the chaos of an unforgiving planet,
×ÖÄ» Most species will fail.
×ÖÄ» But for one, all the pieces will fall into place,
×ÖÄ» And a set of keys will unlock a path for mankind to triumph.
×ÖÄ» This is our story, the story of all of us.
×ÖÄ» The nile delta of egypt,
×ÖÄ» Twelve hundred years before christ.
×ÖÄ» Mankind's greatest civilizations falling one by one.
×ÖÄ» A new enemy.
×ÖÄ» Egyptians call them the sea people.
×ÖÄ» Hungry, violent,
×ÖÄ» Their origin a mystery even today.
×ÖÄ» "Their ships came, our cities burnt,
×ÖÄ» "And they brought evil to our country."
×ÖÄ» A thousand years after the age of the Pyramids,
×ÖÄ» Even mighty Egypt faces destruction.
×ÖÄ» Around the Mediterranean,
×ÖÄ» Great cities and empires are swept away
×ÖÄ» By peoples on the move.
×ÖÄ» Troy, the Mycenaeans in Greece,
×ÖÄ» The hittite empire of Turkey.
×ÖÄ» The sight of ships on the horizon
×ÖÄ» would have just sent chills down your spine.
×ÖÄ» It would have been the most terrifying thing imaginable.
×ÖÄ» When the sea peoples cause one great state to fall,
×ÖÄ» then that one domino has fallen,
×ÖÄ» and then the rest around the Mediterranean go.
×ÖÄ» Chaos rules.
×ÖÄ» Trade dries up.
×ÖÄ» Supplies of bronze,
×ÖÄ» The lifeblood of civilization, dwindle to nothing.
×ÖÄ» Mankind faces the collapse of thousands of years of progress.
×ÖÄ» But on an island in the eastern Mediterranean
×ÖÄ» A group of pioneering metal workers
×ÖÄ» Uncovers one of the keys to our future.
×ÖÄ» What they discover will arm new peoples,
×ÖÄ» Give power to new ideas,
×ÖÄ» Send mankind across the world,
×ÖÄ» And transform the planet.
×ÖÄ» The Age of Iron.
×ÖÄ» An age we still live in today.
×ÖÄ» Alashiya, Cyprus.
×ÖÄ» An island named after its rich resources of copper.
×ÖÄ» But the supply of rare tin to make bronze from copper
×ÖÄ» Has dried up.
×ÖÄ» Faced with ruin, metalworkers make a discovery
×ÖÄ» That will change the future of mankind.
×ÖÄ» Rusty red rocks, found all over the island.
×ÖÄ» They contain one of the most important raw materials
×ÖÄ» In history: iron.
×ÖÄ» Born in the heart of an exploding supernova star,
×ÖÄ» Iron forms the earth's molten core,
×ÖÄ» Larger than the moon, hot as the sun.
×ÖÄ» Without it, no atmosphere, no magnetic field,
×ÖÄ» No life.
×ÖÄ» The fourth most common mineral in the earth's crust.
×ÖÄ» After depending on bronze for so long,
×ÖÄ» iron was a far superior metal,
×ÖÄ» but it took a much higher level of skill to work with it.
×ÖÄ» To forge iron, a super-fuel:
×ÖÄ» Charcoal, wood burned in kilns,
×ÖÄ» More carbon, more energy,
×ÖÄ» Burns hotter, longer.
×ÖÄ» They needed to smelt it,
×ÖÄ» to get that ore into a position
×ÖÄ» where it would interact with charcoal,
×ÖÄ» and great groaning bellows would push air into this fire.
×ÖÄ» The heat would infuse the iron,
×ÖÄ» and it would coagulate into these chunks.
×ÖÄ» Iron is harder, it can hold an edge better
×ÖÄ» and it's extremely plentiful.
×ÖÄ» Those skills must have spread very, very quickly,
×ÖÄ» as people realized what a huge advantage iron could give you.
×ÖÄ» Iron and charcoal transform the surface of the planet.
×ÖÄ» In europe alone,
×ÖÄ» 70 million acres of trees, an area bigger than oregon,
×ÖÄ» Are felled to feed iron foundries,
×ÖÄ» Creating the landscape of the world we know today.
×ÖÄ» Now, on the plains of greece,
×ÖÄ» Iron ushers in a new age of warfare.
×ÖÄ» Soldiers prepare to defend their small kingdom.
×ÖÄ» Sparta.
×ÖÄ» A society dedicated to war.
×ÖÄ» With the richest iron mines in greece.
×ÖÄ» Their leader: pausanias.
×ÖÄ» A prince of sparta, acting commander-in-chief.
×ÖÄ» Bearing down on them, the superpower of the day:
×ÖÄ» Persia.
×ÖÄ» Sparta is just 3000 square miles.
×ÖÄ» The persian empire, more than a million.
×ÖÄ» The battle they face against the odds
×ÖÄ» Will shape the story of mankind.
×ÖÄ» Pausanias is holding sparta together
×ÖÄ» After the death of the king, his uncle.
×ÖÄ» They prepare for a final battle to defend greece.
×ÖÄ» They're the baddest human beings on the planet Earth
×ÖÄ» and they wanna stay that way.
×ÖÄ» It's really "We're gonna breed the ultimate warriors."
×ÖÄ» And they build a whole caste system,
×ÖÄ» a whole belief system, around this idea.
×ÖÄ» In sparta, from the age of seven,
×ÖÄ» Boys are trained as warriors.
×ÖÄ» At 18, they join sparta's army,
×ÖÄ» The most fearsome,
×ÖÄ» Most disciplined fighting force on earth.
×ÖÄ» Young men were taken away from their families
×ÖÄ» and lived a very what we call a Spartan life,
×ÖÄ» a life without luxury
×ÖÄ» and a life of deprivation
×ÖÄ» and a life training and testing their courage.
×ÖÄ» The Spartan boy is tough as nails,
×ÖÄ» he has to be able to sleep outside
×ÖÄ» when it's raining and even snowing,
×ÖÄ» to have to forage and even steal your own food.
×ÖÄ» Spartans are armed with the best weapons of the day,
×ÖÄ» Spears and swords of iron.
×ÖÄ» But sparta cannot fight persia alone.
×ÖÄ» Within greece, sparta's rival: athens.
×ÖÄ» Also small, vulnerable,
×ÖÄ» A city of merchants, playwrights, and farmers.
×ÖÄ» But faced with a powerful enemy,
×ÖÄ» Athens must decide to accept persia as its master
×ÖÄ» Or try and make common cause with its bitter rival.
×ÖÄ» The decision will determine the future of the western world
×ÖÄ» And the story of all of us.
×ÖÄ» S power to the people.
×ÖÄ» The small city-state of athens faces a choice:
×ÖÄ» Submit to the persian empire or fight for freedom.
×ÖÄ» An envoy of the persian emperor xerxes
×ÖÄ» Offers the people of athens a chance
×ÖÄ» To surrender and avoid bloodshed.
×ÖÄ» Their freedom.
×ÖÄ» Male citizens of athens gather on a rocky hill called the pnyx.
×ÖÄ» Among them: sophanes.
×ÖÄ» Brave, outspoken,
×ÖÄ» An ordinary citizen who will become a military legend.
×ÖÄ» Citizens of athens are armed with iron weapons.
×ÖÄ» They have a duty to defend themselves and their city.
×ÖÄ» The ability to express yourself freely
×ÖÄ» is so uniquely tied
×ÖÄ» to the ability to defend yourself freely.
×ÖÄ» The Athenians appreciate and value freedom.
×ÖÄ» Their ability to be self-expressed,
×ÖÄ» their ability to have a say in their government.
×ÖÄ» And they're willing to fight for that.
×ÖÄ» Political decisions in athens are made not by kings,
×ÖÄ» But by its armed citizens, men like sophanes.
×ÖÄ» A new political system,
×ÖÄ» A legacy still shaping civilization today:
×ÖÄ» Democracy.
×ÖÄ» It's not everyone,
×ÖÄ» it's primarily male land-holders who can vote.
×ÖÄ» Women were not part of the process, at this point.
×ÖÄ» Nonetheless, it's a dramatic shift
×ÖÄ» from having strong men and tyrants.
×ÖÄ» You have the ability for self-determination.
×ÖÄ» A black stone: surrender.
×ÖÄ» A white stone:
×ÖÄ» Fight.
×ÖÄ» Vote 'yes' and you've committed yourself
×ÖÄ» to risking your life to fight.
×ÖÄ» Vote 'no' and you'll be safe
×ÖÄ» but you'll be ruled by a stranger.
×ÖÄ» Tough decision, but the point is,
×ÖÄ» it's being made by ordinary people,
×ÖÄ» and that's what's astonishing
×ÖÄ» about what the Greeks introduced to the history of humanity.
×ÖÄ» An athenian records the will of the people:
×ÖÄ» "Such is our love of liberty, we will never surrender."
×ÖÄ» August, 479 bc,
×ÖÄ» Near the coast of greece.
×ÖÄ» Bitter rivals lay aside their differences
×ÖÄ» To defend their lands against a mighty empire.
×ÖÄ» The persians: 100,000 conscripted soldiers
×ÖÄ» From across the ancient world.
×ÖÄ» On the other side, greek patriots.
×ÖÄ» Pausanias leads a force of men
×ÖÄ» Whose entire lives are dedicated to the art of war.
×ÖÄ» With the spartans, citizen-warriors from athens.
×ÖÄ» Men like sophanes.
×ÖÄ» They were putting everything they knew
×ÖÄ» on the line.
×ÖÄ» I think there is such great gallantry
×ÖÄ» in the idea of going to battle, going to war,
×ÖÄ» knowing you are severely outnumbered,
×ÖÄ» but believing you have right on your side.
×ÖÄ» The persian commander, mardonius,
×ÖÄ» Believes superior numbers will be the key
×ÖÄ» To an easy persian victory.
×ÖÄ» The greeks have halted the persian advance
×ÖÄ» For more than a week.
×ÖÄ» Phalanx!
×ÖÄ» The greeks line up to face the enemy head-on.
×ÖÄ» They're exhausted, outnumbered, exposed.
×ÖÄ» But now a new weapon...
×ÖÄ» ...A new way of fighting...
×ÖÄ» ...that decides the future of the western world.
×ÖÄ» The future of western civilization
×ÖÄ» Is being decided in greece.
×ÖÄ» Greek allies have held off a persian army of 100,000
×ÖÄ» For more than a week.
×ÖÄ» They're exhausted, outnumbered 3 to 1.
×ÖÄ» Spartan leader pausanias and athenian militiaman sophanes
×ÖÄ» Prepare to make a last stand.
×ÖÄ» The greeks unleash a new weapon,
×ÖÄ» A tactic that will transform warfare.
×ÖÄ» The phalanx.
×ÖÄ» What the phalanx required
×ÖÄ» was soldiers working closely together
×ÖÄ» both to protect each other
×ÖÄ» and give that unified, tightly-packed force,
×ÖÄ» enough power to push forward.
×ÖÄ» By blocking those shields together
×ÖÄ» and then separating just enough
×ÖÄ» to drive the spear into your enemy,
×ÖÄ» you could take one more step,
×ÖÄ» and you could start to dominate the battlefield
×ÖÄ» by working together as a coordinated team.
×ÖÄ» The phalanx - a human tank.
×ÖÄ» The greeks smash the persian advance.
×ÖÄ» Soldiers scatter.
×ÖÄ» In the heat of battle, the thing that matters
×ÖÄ» is what you're going to do in that moment.
×ÖÄ» Survive, kill, and take care of your buddies.
×ÖÄ» The persian commander attempts to rally his troops.
×ÖÄ» But pays the price.
×ÖÄ» A greek historian writes:
×ÖÄ» "In peacetime, sons bury their fathers.
×ÖÄ» "In times of war, fathers bury sons.
×ÖÄ» "Great deeds are wrought from great risk."
×ÖÄ» Pausanias will be remembered as the spartan commander
×ÖÄ» Who won the war.
×ÖÄ» Sophanes, as the bravest of all athenians.
×ÖÄ» With the help of iron weapons,
×ÖÄ» People power has resisted tyranny.
×ÖÄ» A generation after the war,
×ÖÄ» Athenians vote to commemorate the victory with a monument:
×ÖÄ» The parthenon.
×ÖÄ» It takes 15 years to build.
×ÖÄ» A temple to athena, goddess of wisdom,
×ÖÄ» It will become a symbol of democracy.
×ÖÄ» It's the fairest way to organize a society
×ÖÄ» that anyone in human history
×ÖÄ» has ever conceived and realized.
×ÖÄ» And we owe all of that indirectly
×ÖÄ» to a small group, a handful of men,
×ÖÄ» who lived in a place called Athens
×ÖÄ» two and a half thousand years ago.
×ÖÄ» In the west, iron helps city-states fight for freedom.
×ÖÄ» Five thousand miles to the east, it's one of the building blocks
×ÖÄ» Of the world's most enduring empire: china.
×ÖÄ» The world's most powerful man is on a journey
×ÖÄ» To find the secret of eternal life.
×ÖÄ» Shi huang di, the first emperor of china.
×ÖÄ» He's been fighting for his throne since age 13.
×ÖÄ» He's survived a coup,
×ÖÄ» Three assassination attempts.
×ÖÄ» Now aged 49,
×ÖÄ» He's created an empire he believes will last forever.
×ÖÄ» Crucial to his success, a new type of technology:
×ÖÄ» Cast iron.
×ÖÄ» By superheating iron in a blast furnace,
×ÖÄ» Chinese metalworkers lay foundations
×ÖÄ» For mankind's industrial future.
×ÖÄ» Basically you can pour iron into a mould
×ÖÄ» and make pretty much whatever you want.
×ÖÄ» Then you have really a world-beating technology.
×ÖÄ» The liquid iron is cast into moulds
×ÖÄ» To produce identical objects,
×ÖÄ» By the thousands.
×ÖÄ» 200 years before christ, the birth of mass production.
×ÖÄ» A technological revolution
×ÖÄ» Driven by one of the greatest game-changers:
×ÖÄ» War.
×ÖÄ» A sad but inescapable fact of human history
×ÖÄ» is that war drives technology.
×ÖÄ» A new kind of weapon will transform the way we fight,
×ÖÄ» Help unify an empire,
×ÖÄ» And lay the foundations for a feat of engineering
×ÖÄ» That will change the face of the planet.
×ÖÄ» A new kind of weapon will transform the way we fight,
×ÖÄ» China, 200 years before christ.
×ÖÄ» The soldiers of china's first emperor
×ÖÄ» Change the face of warfare with a new kind of weapon:
×ÖÄ» The crossbow.
×ÖÄ» The Chinese crossbow draws back nearly 24 inches,
×ÖÄ» more than five times that of a European crossbow,
×ÖÄ» so, for the same weight of bow, you get five times the power,
×ÖÄ» five times the range and five times the punch.
×ÖÄ» Bolts with an iron core,
×ÖÄ» Fired at high velocity, nearly a quarter mile.
×ÖÄ» In the history of mankind,
×ÖÄ» this was really the first time that mass productions
×ÖÄ» became so important as part of state building,
×ÖÄ» empire building.
×ÖÄ» Easy to use, with just a few days' training,
×ÖÄ» Foot soldiers become killing machines.
×ÖÄ» They drilled three-man crews,
×ÖÄ» so that you would have one man bracing it with his feet.
×ÖÄ» He would then pass it to a man standing who would load it,
×ÖÄ» who would pass it to a forward man who would shoot it,
×ÖÄ» by which time the man on the ground
×ÖÄ» had got round to the front,
×ÖÄ» and so the army could advance with this constant fusillade,
×ÖÄ» this constant barrage of crossbow arrows.
×ÖÄ» It really was the most aggressive mechanism
×ÖÄ» for advancing an army.
×ÖÄ» A new innovation: standardized, interchangeable parts.
×ÖÄ» The crossbow is the first modular weapon system
×ÖÄ» basically in history.
×ÖÄ» So now you have a weapon system
×ÖÄ» where I can have extra spare parts,
×ÖÄ» extra strings, extra steel, extra wood.
×ÖÄ» You can build it quickly,
×ÖÄ» you can replace its parts very easily,
×ÖÄ» you can fix it quickly.
×ÖÄ» It will be 2000 years...
×ÖÄ» Before standardized mass-produced parts
×ÖÄ» Become common in other weapons.
×ÖÄ» American gun-makers are some of the first pioneers,
×ÖÄ» Making the 1861 "Springfield" Rifle musket.
×ÖÄ» A decade later, the iconic colt .45.
×ÖÄ» If I can mass produce a bunch of these things,
×ÖÄ» I'm going to be able to win a lot of battles very quickly.
×ÖÄ» Armed with the crossbow,
×ÖÄ» The armies of the first emperor storm across 6 warring kingdoms.
×ÖÄ» In just 9 years he conquers more than a million square miles.
×ÖÄ» 27 million people.
×ÖÄ» China's first historian writes:
×ÖÄ» "His armies devour the land
×ÖÄ» "Like a silk worm eats a mulberry leaf.
×ÖÄ» "Nothing will stop them."
×ÖÄ» The first emperor of China put an end
×ÖÄ» to hundreds of years of states warring against one another.
×ÖÄ» By unifying China, he unified what is, quote/unquote,
×ÖÄ» all under heaven, all creatures under heaven.
×ÖÄ» And this victory symbolized
×ÖÄ» the concept of the birth of China.
×ÖÄ» To defend his new empire, the first emperor begins
×ÖÄ» Perhaps the most ambitious engineering project
×ÖÄ» In the story of mankind:
×ÖÄ» The great wall of china.
×ÖÄ» Designed to hold back the nomadic hordes of central asia,
×ÖÄ» And extended over the next 1800 years.
×ÖÄ» Construction claims a million lives.
×ÖÄ» But after 11 years of rule,
×ÖÄ» On a journey to find a legendary magical spring
×ÖÄ» Said to hold the secret of eternal life,
×ÖÄ» Shi huang di, the most powerful man in the world,
×ÖÄ» Falls ill.
×ÖÄ» Mercury tablets prescribed by his doctors to make him immortal
×ÖÄ» Are destroying his brain and body.
×ÖÄ» The first emperor's pursuit for immortality
×ÖÄ» stemmed from his megalomania.
×ÖÄ» He had conquered and created
×ÖÄ» this vast, never-seen-before empire,
×ÖÄ» and he thought he would rule forever.
×ÖÄ» But he could not cheat death.
×ÖÄ» Aged 49, shi huang di,
×ÖÄ» China's first emperor, dies.
×ÖÄ» He's buried in a tomb stretching 20 square miles,
×ÖÄ» But he does not journey to the afterlife alone.
×ÖÄ» With him go the wives who failed to bear him children.
×ÖÄ» And hundreds of craftsmen,
×ÖÄ» Buried alive to keep the secrets of his tomb.
×ÖÄ» And guarding their emperor,
×ÖÄ» An extraordinary force of 8000 soldiers.
×ÖÄ» The terracotta army.
×ÖÄ» Every single one unique,
×ÖÄ» Believed by some to be modeled on real people.
×ÖÄ» While in china the age of iron forges an empire,
×ÖÄ» Off the coast of africa a fleet sails on an expedition
×ÖÄ» That launches mankind's first great age of exploration.
×ÖÄ» Leading a fleet of 60 ships,
×ÖÄ» Hanno, king of carthage.
×ÖÄ» Adventurer, pioneer.
×ÖÄ» He's on one of the first recorded voyages of discovery,
×ÖÄ» Pushing into the unknown.
×ÖÄ» Hanno's people are the phoenicians,
×ÖÄ» A maritime trading empire
×ÖÄ» With colonies all over the mediterranean.
×ÖÄ» It's made them the best shipbuilders in the world.
×ÖÄ» Their secret: iron.
×ÖÄ» What makes iron better than bronze
×ÖÄ» is it holds an edge better.
×ÖÄ» If you're trying to work with wood,
×ÖÄ» the ability to keep a sharp edge meant
×ÖÄ» you could make thin planks,
×ÖÄ» you could shape beams, you could build better ships.
×ÖÄ» Iron tools revolutionize shipbuilding
×ÖÄ» And allow mankind to innovate as never before.
×ÖÄ» A revolutionary invention:
×ÖÄ» The keel.
×ÖÄ» Now ships can remain stable in the roughest waters,
×ÖÄ» The key to mankind's future at sea.
×ÖÄ» Hanno has sailed from the mediterranean
×ÖÄ» Into uncharted waters: the atlantic ocean.
×ÖÄ» With 30,000 colonists,
×ÖÄ» He's looking for new lands, new opportunities.
×ÖÄ» For some of these early explorers,
×ÖÄ» all they've been told
×ÖÄ» is that the world drops off.
×ÖÄ» It's a step into the unknown, it's huge.
×ÖÄ» Hanno writes an account of his journey:
×ÖÄ» "We saw at night the land covered with fire.
×ÖÄ» "In the middle was a high flame, higher than the others,
×ÖÄ» "Which seemed to reach the stars.
×ÖÄ» "A high mountain, named the Chariot of the Gods."
×ÖÄ» The first written description of mount cameroon,
×ÖÄ» The largest volcano in west africa.
×ÖÄ» Recorded using a revolutionary new writing technology:
×ÖÄ» The alphabet.
×ÖÄ» The phoenicians invent 22 symbols or letters
×ÖÄ» That can be combined to represent almost any sound
×ÖÄ» In any language.
×ÖÄ» Easy to learn, the alphabet puts reading and writing
×ÖÄ» Within everyone's reach.
×ÖÄ» One of the keys to the future of communication.
×ÖÄ» The invention of the alphabet was one of the biggest steps
×ÖÄ» in the history of writing.
×ÖÄ» It just simplified dramatically the way the script worked,
×ÖÄ» and made it so much easier for people to learn
×ÖÄ» how to read and write.
×ÖÄ» Off the coast of modern-day gabon,
×ÖÄ» Hanno records another extraordinary encounter:
×ÖÄ» "There was an island full of wild men and women.
×ÖÄ» "They had hairy bodies.
×ÖÄ» "Our interpreters called them 'Gorillae'."
×ÖÄ» Two and a half thousand years before darwin,
×ÖÄ» Phoenician explorers recognize the great apes
×ÖÄ» As our distant cousins.
×ÖÄ» The phoenicians create colonies across the mediterranean world,
×ÖÄ» Spreading trade and ideas
×ÖÄ» To lebanon, tunisia, cyprus, sicily,
×ÖÄ» And the island of ibiza.
×ÖÄ» As they expand, so does knowledge of the alphabet.
×ÖÄ» And amongst a group of exiles in the city of babylon,
×ÖÄ» It becomes the key to creating a book
×ÖÄ» That will shape the story of mankind:
×ÖÄ» The bible.
×ÖÄ» And the island of ibiza.
×ÖÄ» Babylon in the middle east,
×ÖÄ» A great city famed for its hanging gardens.
×ÖÄ» Here, a spiritual revolution is underway.
×ÖÄ» The age of iron is an age of new people,
×ÖÄ» New ideas,
×ÖÄ» And faiths that still dominate mankind's world today.
×ÖÄ» Across the world, local religions give way
×ÖÄ» To powerful new beliefs,
×ÖÄ» Spread by the written word.
×ÖÄ» World faiths still with us today.
×ÖÄ» Hinduism unites much of india.
×ÖÄ» From the foothills of the himalayas,
×ÖÄ» The words of buddha spread out across asia.
×ÖÄ» And in china, the writings of confucius
×ÖÄ» Will help order the lives of one quarter of the world.
×ÖÄ» The age of Jesus and Buddha and Confucius,
×ÖÄ» there seems to be a period
×ÖÄ» roughly timed with the emergence of iron technology.
×ÖÄ» It's as though humankind all around the earth
×ÖÄ» is reaching a level of social and political sophistication
×ÖÄ» that just hadn't been there before,
×ÖÄ» and they're all doing it about the same time.
×ÖÄ» In babylon's libraries,
×ÖÄ» A group of jewish exiles use their own alphabet,
×ÖÄ» In the language of hebrew,
×ÖÄ» To write down the history and the beliefs of their people.
×ÖÄ» "By the rivers of Babylon, we sat down and wept,
×ÖÄ» "When we remembered Zion."
×ÖÄ» Two generations ago, babylonia conquered jerusalem.
×ÖÄ» Destroyed its temple to the jewish god yahweh,
×ÖÄ» Exiled the jews to babylon.
×ÖÄ» Now, captives in a foreign land,
×ÖÄ» The jews begin what will become the most influential book
×ÖÄ» In the story of mankind:
×ÖÄ» The bible.
×ÖÄ» What we now know as the Jewish faith
×ÖÄ» starts not with Abraham, not with Moses,
×ÖÄ» not really with even the temple of Solomon.
×ÖÄ» The Jewish faith begins in the Babylonian exile.
×ÖÄ» Babylon is a city of the future.
×ÖÄ» Cosmopolitan, multi-cultural, a city of many different gods.
×ÖÄ» But in this melting pot,
×ÖÄ» The jews write into mankind's story a revolutionary idea:
×ÖÄ» Monotheism.
×ÖÄ» All existence created by one god.
×ÖÄ» Rather than thinking of Yahweh as the highest amongst the gods,
×ÖÄ» just one of many gods, but the god of Israel.
×ÖÄ» The Jews begin to think that perhaps Yahweh is the sole god.
×ÖÄ» But for the jews of babylon, the word of god is under threat.
×ÖÄ» The city is besieged by the armies of the persian empire.
×ÖÄ» If it falls, their fragile writings could go up in flames.
×ÖÄ» Now one man seizes this moment.
×ÖÄ» He sees opportunity.
×ÖÄ» Zerubbabel...
×ÖÄ» Exiled prince, descendant of kings solomon and david.
×ÖÄ» He decides he will lead the jews out of exile
×ÖÄ» And back to the promised land.
×ÖÄ» But many don't want to go,
×ÖÄ» They have lived their entire lives in babylon,
×ÖÄ» And the journey will be dangerous.
×ÖÄ» Zerubbabel persuades a hundred families to leave.
×ÖÄ» Their departure from babylon will become a new chapter
×ÖÄ» In the story of mankind:
×ÖÄ» "Go out from Babylon, flee from the Babylonians.
×ÖÄ» "Declare this with a shout of joy,
×ÖÄ» "Proclaim it, send it out to the end of the earth:
×ÖÄ» "Say, 'The Lord has redeemed his servant.'"
×ÖÄ» An epic journey of 500 miles
×ÖÄ» Back to the sacred city they have never seen:
×ÖÄ» Jerusalem.
×ÖÄ» "Even if you have been banished
×ÖÄ» "To the most distant land under the heavens,
×ÖÄ» "From there The Lord your God will gather you
×ÖÄ» "And bring you back."
×ÖÄ» Carrying with them words that will become
×ÖÄ» The old testament of the bible,
×ÖÄ» The most widely read book in the world.
×ÖÄ» Six billion copies printed over the last 500 years.
×ÖÄ» I'd definitely call the Bible
×ÖÄ» the most influential text ever written.
×ÖÄ» The Bible was the first bestseller,
×ÖÄ» it was the first book ever printed on the printing press.
×ÖÄ» Even today, it's the bestseller.
×ÖÄ» Iron has opened a new age for mankind,
×ÖÄ» Transforming landscapes, forging new connections,
×ÖÄ» Changing the way we think.
×ÖÄ» Now a new kind of empire will rise:
×ÖÄ» Rome.
×ÖÄ» Mankind leaps forward with a new pace of life.
×ÖÄ» And in a city within rome's empire,
×ÖÄ» One man's life and death will transform the lives of billions.