- 28/06/2025
Documentary, Mankind: The Story of All of Us S01E02 Iron Men
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00:00We innovate and mold the bounty of the planet to our needs, but new resources forge new
00:14struggles, give power to new people, and with them, ideals and ideas transform our
00:29lives.
00:30Amidst the chaos of an unforgiving planet, most species will fail, but for one, all the pieces
00:48will fall into place, and a set of keys will unlock a path for mankind to triumph.
00:58This is our story, the story of all of us.
01:05The Nile Delta of Egypt, 1200 years before Christ.
01:12The Nile Delta of Egypt, 1200 years before Christ.
01:25Mankind's greatest civilizations falling one by one, a new enemy.
01:42egyptians call them the sea people
01:50hungry, violent
01:55their origin a mystery even today
01:58the ships came
02:07our cities burnt
02:09and they brought evil to our country
02:14a thousand years after the age of the pyramids
02:35even mighty egypt faces destruction
02:39around the mediterranean great cities and empires are swept away by peoples on the move
02:49troy the mycenaeans and greece the hittite empire of turkey
02:55the sight of ships on the horizon would have just sent chills down your spine
03:11it would have been the most terrifying thing imaginable
03:17when the sea peoples caused one great state to fall
03:22then that one domino has fallen and then the rest around the mediterranean go
03:27chaos rules
03:39trade dries up
03:42supplies of bronze
03:47the lifeblood of civilization
03:49dwindle to nothing
03:52mankind faces the collapse
03:55of thousands of years of progress
03:58but on an island
04:02in the eastern mediterranean
04:04a group of pioneering metal workers uncovers one of the keys to our future
04:17what they discover
04:19what they discover
04:19will arm new people
04:22give power to new ideas
04:25send mankind across the world
04:29and transform
04:31the planet
04:33the age of iron
04:37an age we still live in today
04:42alexia
05:08cyprus
05:09an island named after its rich resources of copper
05:13but the supply of rare tin
05:17to make bronze from copper
05:19has dried up
05:21faced with ruin
05:25metal workers make a discovery
05:28that will change the future
05:30of mankind
05:32rusty red rocks
05:38found all over the island
05:40they contain one of the most important raw materials in history
05:46iron
05:47born in the heart of an exploding supernova star
05:55iron forms the earth's molten core
06:00larger than the moon
06:02hot as the sun
06:04without it
06:05no atmosphere
06:07no magnetic field
06:09no life
06:11the fourth most common mineral
06:14in the earth's crust
06:16after depending on bronze for so long
06:24iron was a far superior metal
06:27but it took a much higher level of skill to work with it
06:31to forge iron
06:33to forge iron
06:34a superfuel
06:35a superfuel
06:36charcoal
06:38wood
06:39burned in kilns
06:41more carbon
06:44more energy
06:46burns hotter
06:48longer
06:50they needed to smelt it
06:56to get that ore into a position
06:59where it would interact with charcoal
07:01and great groaning bellows
07:05would push air into this fire
07:07the heat would infuse the iron
07:14and it would coagulate
07:17into these chunks
07:19iron is harder
07:25it can hold an edge better
07:27and it's extremely plentiful
07:28those skills must have spread very very quickly
07:32as people realized what a huge advantage iron could give you
07:37iron and charcoal
07:41transform the surface of the planet
07:43in europe alone
07:4670 million acres of trees
07:49an area bigger than oregon
07:51are felled to feed iron foundries
07:54creating the landscape of the world we know today
07:59now on the plains of greece
08:06iron ushers in a new age of warfare
08:10soldiers prepare to defend their small kingdom
08:14sparta
08:16a society dedicated to war
08:20with the richest iron mines in greece
08:23their leader
08:26parthenes
08:27a prince of sparta
08:32acting commander-in-chief
08:34bearing down on them
08:42bearing down on them
08:44the superpower of the day
08:46persia
08:47sparta is just three thousand square miles
08:52the persian empire
08:53the persian empire
08:54more than a million
08:55the battle they face against the odds will shape the story of mankind
09:02sparta
09:05parthenes is holding sparta together
09:10after the death of the king
09:13his uncle
09:14his uncle
09:14they prepare for a final battle
09:21to defend greece
09:23they're the baddest human beings on the planet earth and they want to stay that way
09:29it's really
09:30we're going to breed the ultimate warriors
09:33and they build a whole caste system a whole belief system around this idea
09:39in sparta
09:55from the age of seven
09:57boys are trained as warriors
09:59at eighteen they join sparta's army
10:02the most fearsome
10:04most disciplined fighting force on earth
10:08young men were taken away from their families
10:12and lived a very what we call a spartan life a life without luxury
10:18and a life of deprivation and a life training and testing their courage
10:23the spartan boy is tough as nails to be able to sleep outside when it's raining and even snowing
10:35to have to forage and even steal your own food
10:37spartans are armed with the best weapons of the day
10:42spartans are armed with the best weapons of the day
10:49spartans are armed with the best weapons of the day
10:53spartans are armed with the best weapons of the day
10:56spartans are armed with the best weapons of the day
10:58But Sparta cannot fight Persia alone.
11:10Within Greece, Sparta's rival, Athens, also small, vulnerable, a city of merchants, playwrights, and farmers.
11:21But faced with a powerful enemy, Athens must decide to accept Persia as its master, or try and make common cause with its bitter rival.
11:35The decision will determine the future of the Western world, and the story of all of us.
11:42The Age of Iron gives power to the people.
11:52The small city-state of Athens faces a choice.
11:57Submit to the Persian Empire, or fight for freedom.
12:01An envoy of the Persian Emperor Xerxes offers the people of Athens a chance to surrender and avoid bloodshed.
12:14The cost, their freedom.
12:18Male citizens of Athens gather on a rocky hill called the Pnyx.
12:23Among them, softening, brave, outspoken, an ordinary citizen who will become a military legend.
12:41Citizens of Athens are armed with iron weapons.
12:45They have a duty to defend themselves and their city.
12:57The ability to express yourself freely is so uniquely tied to the ability to defend yourself freely.
13:06The Athenians appreciate and value freedom.
13:09Their ability to be self-expressed, their ability to have a say in their government,
13:14and they're willing to fight for that.
13:21Political decisions in Athens are made not by kings, but by its armed citizens.
13:28Men like Sophanes.
13:33A new political system.
13:35A legacy still shaping civilization today.
13:41Democracy.
13:44It's not everyone.
13:48It's primarily male landholders who can vote.
13:53Women were not part of the process at this point.
13:56Nonetheless, it's a dramatic shift from having strong men and tyrants.
14:03You have the ability for self-determination.
14:06A black stone.
14:12A black stone.
14:13Surrender.
14:21A white stone.
14:25Fight.
14:26Vote yes, and you've committed yourself to risking your life to fight.
14:35Vote no, and you'll be safe, but you'll be ruled by a stranger.
14:42Tough decision, but the point is it's being made by ordinary people.
14:47And that's what's astonishing about what the Greeks introduced to the history of humanity.
15:01An Athenian records the will of the people.
15:04Such is our love of liberty.
15:10We will never surrender.
15:11Yeah!
15:14August 479 B.C.
15:19Near the coast of Greece.
15:35Bitter rivals lay aside their differences to defend their lands against a mighty empire.
15:43The Persians, a hundred thousand conscripted soldiers from across the ancient world.
15:52On the other side, Greek patriots.
15:56Parsanius leads a force of men whose entire lives are dedicated to the art of war.
16:16With the Spartan, citizen warriors from Athens.
16:21Men like Sophonies.
16:22They were putting everything they knew on the line.
16:29I think there is such great gallantry in the idea of going to battle, going to war,
16:36knowing you are severely outnumbered, but believing you have right on your side.
16:42The Persian commander, Mardonius, believes superior numbers will be the key to an easy Persian victory.
16:58The Greeks have halted the Persian advance for more than a week.
17:03Failing!
17:03The Greeks line up to face the enemy head-on.
17:20They're exhausted, outnumbered, exposed.
17:27But now, a new weapon.
17:32A new way of fighting,
17:37decides the future of the Western world.
17:45A new way of fighting,
17:51decides the future of the Western world.
17:56The future of Western civilization is being decided in Greece.
18:19Greek allies have held off a Persian army of 100,000 for more than a week.
18:26They're exhausted, outnumbered three to one.
18:35Spartan leader Parsanius and Athenian militiaman Sophonis prepare to make a last stand.
18:46The Greeks release a new weapon, a tactic that will transform warfare.
18:52The phalanx.
18:57What the phalanx required was soldiers working closely together, both to protect each other and to give that unified, tightly packed force.
19:09Enough power to push forward.
19:14By locking those shields together and then separating just enough to drive the spear into your enemy, you could take one more step.
19:23And you could start to dominate the battlefield by working together as a coordinated team.
19:31The phalanx, a human tank.
19:41The Greeks smashed the Persian advance.
19:44Soldiers scattered.
19:45In the heat of battle, the thing that matters is what you're going to do in that moment.
19:58In the heat of battle, the thing that matters is what you're going to do in that moment.
20:10Survive, kill, and take care of your buddies.
20:21The Persian commander attempts to rally his troops.
20:25But pays the price.
20:37But pays the price.
20:43assum seeing.
20:47Oscar sings.
20:50A Greek historian writes,
20:57In peacetime, sons bury their fathers.
21:03In times of war, fathers bury sons.
21:09Great deeds are wrought from great risk.
21:13Parsanias will be remembered as the Spartan commander who won the war.
21:20Sophonis as the bravest of all Athenians.
21:28With the help of iron weapons, people power has resisted tyranny.
21:37A generation after the war,
21:40Athenians vote to commemorate the victory with a monument.
21:48The Parthenon.
22:00It takes 15 years to build.
22:10A temple to Athena, goddess of wisdom, will become a symbol of democracy.
22:24It's the fairest way to organize a society that anyone in human history has ever conceived and realized.
22:36And we owe all of that indirectly to a small group, a handful of men who lived in a place called Athens, two and a half thousand years ago.
22:49In the west, iron helps city-states fight for freedom.
23:02Five thousand miles to the east, it's one of the building blocks of the world's most enduring empire.
23:09China.
23:10China.
23:19The world's most powerful man is on a journey to find the secret of eternal life.
23:25Xi Huangdi, the first emperor of China.
23:34He's been fighting for his throne since age 13.
23:40He's survived a coup.
23:42Three assassination attempts.
23:44Now aged 49, he's created an empire he believes will last forever.
23:57Crucial to his success, a new type of iron technology.
24:03Cast iron.
24:07By superheating iron in a blast furnace,
24:10Chinese metal workers lay foundations for mankind's industrial future.
24:21Basically, you can pour, you know, iron into a mold and make pretty much whatever you want.
24:26Then you have really a world-beating technology.
24:30The liquid iron is cast into molds to produce identical objects.
24:34By the thousands.
24:42200 years before Christ, the birth of mass production.
24:49A technological revolution driven by one of the greatest game-changers.
24:59War.
25:00A sad but inescapable fact of human history is that war drives technology.
25:07A new kind of weapon will transform the way we fight.
25:12Help unify an empire.
25:15And lay the foundations for a feat of engineering that will change the face of the planet.
25:20China.
25:29200 years before Christ.
25:32The soldiers of China's first emperor changed the face of warfare.
25:37With a new kind of weapon.
25:39The crossbow.
25:41The Chinese crossbow.
25:47The Chinese crossbow draws back nearly 24 inches.
25:50More than five times that of a European crossbow.
25:54So for the same weight of bow, you get five times the power.
26:00Five times the range.
26:02And five times the punch.
26:03The punch.
26:07Bolts with an iron core.
26:09Fired at high velocity.
26:11Nearly a quarter mile.
26:14In the history of mankind, this is really the first time that mass productions became so important as part of state building, empire building.
26:26Easy to use.
26:28With just a few days training.
26:31Foot soldiers become killing machines.
26:41They drilled three man crews.
26:44So that you would have one man bracing it with his feet.
26:48He would then pass it to a man standing who would load it.
26:51Who would pass it to a forward man who would shoot it.
26:56By which time the man on the ground had got round to the front.
27:01And so the army could advance.
27:04With this constant fusillade.
27:08This constant barrage of crossbow arrows.
27:11It really was a most aggressive mechanism for advancing an army.
27:16A new innovation.
27:22Standardized interchangeable parts.
27:32The crossbow is the first modular weapon system basically in history.
27:36So now you have a weapon system where I can have extra spare parts.
27:41Extra strings.
27:43Extra steel.
27:44Extra wood.
27:46You can build it quickly.
27:47You can replace its parts very easily.
27:49You can fix it quickly.
27:53It will be 2,000 years.
27:55Before standardized mass produced parts.
28:01Become common in other weapons.
28:09American gun makers are some of the first pioneers.
28:13Making the 1861 Springfield rifle muster.
28:17A decade later.
28:22The iconic Colt 45.
28:33If I can mass produce a bunch of these things.
28:36I'm going to be able to win a lot of battles very quickly.
28:40Armed with the crossbow.
28:41The armies of the first emperor storm across six warring kingdoms.
28:48In just nine years.
28:50He conquers more than a million square miles.
28:5427 million people.
29:01China's first historian writes.
29:04His armies devour the land like a silk worm eats a mulberry leaf.
29:09Nothing will stop them.
29:11Nothing will stop them.
29:21The first emperor of China put an end to hundreds of years of states warring against one another.
29:32By unifying China, he unified what is, quote unquote, all under heaven.
29:36All under heaven.
29:37All creatures under heaven.
29:41And this victory symbolized the concept of the birth of China.
29:52To defend his new empire.
29:55The first emperor begins perhaps the most ambitious engineering project in the story of mankind.
30:01The great wall of China.
30:04Designed to hold back the nomadic hordes of central Asia.
30:07Designed to hold back the nomadic hordes of central Asia.
30:10And extending over the next 1800 years.
30:19Construction claims a million lines.
30:24Construction claims a million lives.
30:27But after 11 years of rule, on a journey to find a legendary magic
30:57spring, said to hold the secret of eternal life, Shi Huang Di, the most powerful man
31:03in the world, falls ill.
31:17Mercury tablets, prescribed by his doctors to make him immortal, are destroying his brain
31:23and body.
31:27The first emperor's pursuit for immortality stemmed from his maglomania.
31:44He had conquered and created this vast, never-seen-before empire, and he thought he would rule forever.
31:52But he could not cheat death.
31:57Aged 49, Shi Huang Di, China's first emperor, dies.
32:05He's buried in a tomb stretching 20 square miles, but he does not journey to the afterlife alone.
32:22With him go the wives who've failed to bear him children.
32:28Hawly Di, China's first emperor, dies.
32:30Hawly Di, China's first emperor, dies.
32:31Hawly Di, habitats.
32:32Hawly Di, Rica, sounds, to the 다시 me.
32:37Hawly Di, Hu 응.
32:40Hawly Di, Atlas!
32:43Hawly Di,kind, farther over.
32:45Haw hey Di, regardingatsu yeral.
32:46Hawly Di, Hampi!
32:46Hawly Diaries of C High F kaliPaul,
32:47Hawly Di,íssima John, Www.
32:48Hawly Di, verticaledia.
32:50Hawly Di, tamte gra�.
32:51Hawly Di, Scorpio Community in a mother.
32:51Hawly Di, tubes.
32:54Burned to his heart.
32:55Hawly Di, LORD
32:56And hundreds of craftsmen buried alive to keep the secrets of his tomb.
33:13And guarding their emperor, an extraordinary force of 8,000 soldiers.
33:23The Terracotta Army.
33:26Every single one unique, believed by some to be modeled on real people.
33:46While in China, the Age of Iron forges an empire.
33:50Off the coast of Africa, a fleet sails on an expedition that launches mankind's first great age of exploration.
34:01Leading a fleet of 60 ships.
34:04Hanno, King of Carthage.
34:10Adventurer.
34:11Pioneer.
34:12He's on one of the first recorded voyages of discovery.
34:25Pushing into the unknown.
34:31Hanno's people are the Phoenicians.
34:34A maritime trading empire.
34:36With colonies all over the Mediterranean.
34:41It's made them the best shipbuilders in the world.
34:46Their secret?
34:49Iron.
34:49What makes iron better than bronze is it holds an edge better.
34:55If you're ever trying to work with wood, the ability to keep a sharp edge meant that you could make thin planks.
35:01You could shape beams.
35:04You could build better ships.
35:06Iron tools revolutionize shipbuilding and allow mankind to innovate as never before.
35:18A revolutionary invention.
35:23The keel.
35:24Now, ships can remain stable in the roughest waters.
35:34The key to mankind's future at sea.
35:38Hanno has sailed from the Mediterranean into uncharted waters.
35:53The Atlantic Ocean.
35:55With 30,000 colonists, he's looking for new lands.
35:59New opportunities.
36:02For some of these early explorers, all they've been told is, you know,
36:07that the world drops off.
36:10It's a step into the unknown.
36:12It's huge.
36:22Hanno writes an account of his journey.
36:29We saw at night the land covered with fire.
36:32In the middle was a high flame, higher than the others, which seemed to reach the stars.
36:38A high mountain named the Chariot of the Gods.
36:43The first written description of Mount Cameroon, the largest volcano in West Africa.
36:57Recorded using a revolutionary new writing technology.
37:01The alphabet.
37:08The Phoenicians invent 22 symbols or letters that can be combined to represent almost any sound in any language.
37:18Easy to learn, the alphabet puts reading and writing within everyone's reach.
37:24One of the keys to the future of communication.
37:28The invention of the alphabet was one of the biggest steps in the history of writing.
37:37It just simplified dramatically the way the script worked.
37:42Made it so much easier for people to learn how to read and write.
37:45Off the coast of modern-day Gabon, Hanno records another extraordinary encounter.
38:07There was an island full of wild men and women.
38:11They had hairy bodies.
38:17Our interpreters called them guerrillae.
38:20Two and a half thousand years before Darwin.
38:40Phoenician explorers recognized the great apes as our distant cousins.
38:45The Phoenicians create colonies across the Mediterranean world.
38:58Spreading trade and ideas.
39:02To Lebanon, Tunisia, Cyprus, Sicily.
39:06And the island of Ibiza.
39:08As they expand, so does knowledge of the alphabet.
39:13And amongst a group of exiles, in the city of Babylon, it becomes the key to creating a book that will shape the story of mankind.
39:27The Bible.
39:28Babylon, in the Middle East, a great city famed for its hanging gardens.
39:42Here, a spiritual revolution is underway.
39:46The age of iron is an age of new people.
39:56New ideas.
39:59And faiths that still dominate mankind's world today.
40:07Across the world, local religions give way to powerful new beliefs.
40:13Spread by the words, spread by the written word.
40:17World faiths still with us today.
40:23Hinduism unites much of India.
40:26From the foothills of the Himalayas, the words of Buddha spread out across Asia.
40:33And in China, the writings of Confucius will help order the lives of one quarter of the world.
40:40The age of Jesus, and Buddha, and Confucius.
40:45This seems to be a period roughly timed with the emergence of iron technology.
40:52It's as though humankind all around the earth is reaching a level of social and political sophistication that just hadn't been there before.
41:03And they're all doing it about the same time.
41:05In Babylon's library, a group of Jewish exiles used their own alphabet and the language of Hebrew to write down the history and the beliefs of their people.
41:18By the rivers of Babylon, we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion.
41:25Two generations ago, Babylonia conquered Jerusalem, destroyed its temple to the Jewish god, Yahweh, exiled the Jews to Babylon.
41:43Now, captives in a foreign land, the Jews begin what will become the most influential book in the story of mankind, the Bible.
41:57What we now know as the Jewish faith starts, not with Abraham, not with Moses, not really with even the temple of Solomon.
42:09The Jewish faith begins in the Babylonian exile.
42:13Babylon is a city of the future.
42:18Cosmopolitan, multicultural, a city of many different gods.
42:22But in this melting pot, the Jews write into mankind's story, a revolutionary idea, monotheism, all existence created by one god.
42:37Rather than thinking of Yahweh as the highest amongst the gods, just one of many gods, but the god of Israel,
42:45the Jews begin to think that perhaps Yahweh is the sole god.
43:00But for the Jews of Babylon, the word of God is under threat.
43:05The city is besieged by the armies of the Persian Empire.
43:10If it falls, their fragile writings could go up in flames.
43:15Now, one man seizes this moment.
43:20He sees opportunity.
43:22Zerubbabel, exiled prince, descendant of King Solomon and David.
43:38He decides he will lead the Jews out of exile and back to the promised land.
43:45But many don't want to go.
43:49They have lived their entire lives in Babylon, and the journey will be dangerous.
43:54Zerubbabel persuades a hundred families to leave.
44:06Their departure from Babylon will become a new chapter in the story of mankind.
44:12An epic journey of 500 miles back to the sacred city they have never seen.
44:36Jerusalem.
44:38Jerusalem.
44:39Even if you have been banished to the most distant land under the heavens, from there, the Lord your God will gather you and bring you back.
44:51Carrying with them words that will become the Old Testament of the Bible, the most widely read book in the world.
45:05Six billion copies printed over the last 500 years.
45:09I definitely would call the Bible the most influential text ever written.
45:14The Bible was the first bestseller.
45:16It was the first book ever printed on the printing press.
45:19Even today, it's the bestseller.
45:20Iron has opened a new age for mankind, transforming landscapes, forging new connections, changing the way we think.
45:34Now, a new kind of empire will rise.
45:40Rome.
45:42Mankind leaps forward with a new pace of life.
45:46And in a city within Rome's empire, one man's life and death will transform the lives of billions.
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