- 28/06/2025
Documentary, Mankind: The Story of All of Us S01E05 Plague
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00We are strong, we build, innovate, and open new frontiers, but now mankind is under threat.
00:22Forces of chaos, unleashed, they'll bring us to the brink of extinction.
00:48Amidst the chaos of an unforgiving planet, most species will fail, but for one, all the pieces
00:56will fall into place, and a set of keys will unlock a path for mankind to triumph.
01:07This is our story, the story of all of us.
01:19China, 1215 AD.
01:27The Mongols are coming.
01:3250,000 warriors.
01:35The world's greatest cavalry army.
01:41Their leader?
01:43Genghis Khan.
01:48One of the bloodiest warlords in human history.
01:53His target?
01:55Chengdu.
01:57Today's Beijing, China's capital city.
02:03Cities are key to the story of mankind.
02:07Centers of power, learning, and wealth.
02:11They need protecting.
02:12Chengdu has 18 miles of battlements, 40 feet high.
02:22It's still vulnerable to attack.
02:34Half a million people live in Chengdu.
02:39Now, a battle for the future of mankind, between the city-dweller and the nomad.
02:53Genghis Khan, son of a tribal chief.
02:57His father was murdered.
03:00He was sent into exile.
03:03If you survive a childhood like Genghis Khan, you're going to have a chip on your shoulder.
03:09You're going to want to prove to everybody they were wrong.
03:12You're going to want to prove that you know what you're doing.
03:17You're going to want to prove that you're the baddest guy on the block.
03:20He escapes his captives, fights his way to the town.
03:26He unites the Mongols, and begins a campaign of conquest that will change the world.
03:39The key to his success?
03:42The horse.
03:46Domesticated 5,000 years earlier in Central Asia, horses have expanded mankind's frontiers.
03:55The Mongols can cover up to 300 miles in a day.
04:04Using the horse for warfare unlocks a new key for mankind.
04:10If we go back to the Mongols fighting against the Chinese, what we see is the first trip point in a history that will eventually bring us to the tank.
04:19And that trip point is horses.
04:23Mongols start on horseback, age three.
04:29They learn to ride without using reins.
04:32Well, when they encounter humans on foot, to the Mongols, those humans were a lot like sheep.
04:38You could scare them, you could bully them, they'd run.
04:42They can shoot at full gallop.
04:49It's the first version of the Blitzkrieg.
04:51It is being able to ride into a place, do damage, and then disappear before anybody even knows what hit them.
04:59Mongol warriors have four horses each.
05:04They can eat and sleep on horseback.
05:09No army will travel so far and so fast until World War II.
05:17They would travel faster than the news of their arrival.
05:29Climate change is one of the keys to the human story and drives the Mongols to change the world.
05:4593 million miles from Earth.
05:48A surge in solar activity.
05:58Blasts of radiation scorched the planet.
06:02It's the beginning of three centuries of global warming.
06:08The dramatic changes in the ancient world, in the pre-modern world, directly affected historical events.
06:19In Mongolia, drought turns pasture into desert.
06:23To survive, the Mongols sweep south towards China, the great power in Asia, home to the biggest cities in the world.
06:38China is the great prize.
06:41China is the great prize.
06:42If you can conquer China, you conquer the land of infinite supplies, grain of silk, of tea.
06:55China is the richest prize that Mongols can possibly take.
06:59China is the highest footprint.
07:04Approaching Chengdu, Genghis Khan issues an ultimatum.
07:14Surrender or die.
07:20Mongol cruelty is legend.
07:21is legend. Prisoners decapitated. Towers of human skulls. Children slaughtered.
07:41I imagine for someone sitting in a city, looking out over the wall,
07:45and seeing the massive Mongol horde is coming in your direction,
07:52you have to immediately question yourself as to why am I still in this city?
08:00I need to leave or I am dead.
08:03Genghis Khan rapes so many women that as many as one in 200 people alive today carry his genes.
08:16The greatest happiness is to gather into your bosom your enemies' wives and daughters.
08:2360,000 women, it is said, prefer suicide to being raped by the Mongols.
08:3560,000 women, it is said,
08:55their horses get the Mongols to the city gates, but no further.
09:01To take the city, they use Chinese engineers
09:12and force them to build battering ramps.
09:19Prisoners of war, attacking their own city.
09:23To defend themselves, Chengdu's soldiers must kill their own people.
09:41If the gate breaks, the city falls.
09:44,
09:56,
10:08The Mongols overrun Chengdu, massacre over 100,000 people, then torch the city.
10:27The Mongols were an unbelievably effective military force.
10:32If they had a target they wanted to take, no one stood in their way.
10:38An eyewitness reports.
10:41The earth was greasy with human fat.
10:48In his lifetime, Genghis Khan is said to be responsible for the death of up to 40 million people.
10:55As many as Adolf Hitler.
11:02He conquers more land in 25 years than Rome did in 400.
11:08Four and a half million square miles.
11:12The largest empire so far in human history.
11:18And the key to its success, communication.
11:22Six hundred years before the Pony Express, the Mongols can send messages by horseback.
11:37Across an area twice the size of the United States.
11:40Every 30 miles, a relay post with 400 horses.
11:59Government messengers carrying an official medallion can claim food in a fresh mount.
12:02The world's first passport.
12:03As a result of Genghis Khan's conquests, for the first time in history, one can safely travel from one end of the world to the other end.
12:23Paper, printing, and gunpowder will head from east to west.
12:38All keys to the future of mankind.
12:46But at the same time, a killer is on the loose.
12:51That'll wipe out up to half of Europe's population.
12:56Mankind battles. An enduring enemy.
13:07Disease.
13:11Issyk-Kul. A trading post.
13:14Midway between Europe and Asia.
13:15Genghis Khan has been dead for more than a century.
13:20But his empire continues.
13:23Along its trade routes, a deadly traveler.
13:31Bacteria.
13:35For three and a half billion years, virtually every corner of the earth has been covered by these microorganisms.
13:42Our own bodies contain more bacterial cells than human cells.
13:53Most are harmless.
13:55Many are essential.
13:57But these have the power to kill.
14:03At Issyk-Kul, a pandemic begins.
14:06One of the first recorded victims. Cutluck.
14:23Married. Christian. Duped.
14:30His wife's folk remedies have no effect.
14:33Imagine your husband comes back from trading and he has these big blue blisters.
14:39He feels ill. Is it from the air?
14:41Is it from the water he drank?
14:43Is it some foreign animal inside of him?
14:45What's going on?
14:47You're completely confused.
14:53Bacteria rush through Cutluck's bloodstream.
14:56They outwit his immune system and spread relentlessly.
15:06Distorting and swelling his glands.
15:08His skin erupts in giant, pus-filled sores.
15:18Bubos.
15:21Bubonic plague.
15:24Passed on by an almost invisible carrier.
15:37The flea.
15:40Its staple diet.
15:43The flea.
15:44The flea, its staple diet, is blood.
15:58When it bites, it vomits plague bacteria into the bloodstream.
16:10Cutluck's wife doesn't know it, but she too has been bitten.
16:20Within days, both of them will be dead.
16:25In 1337, four people die in Issykul.
16:31Two years later, there are 100 deaths.
16:36But this is just the beginning.
16:40Once they've spread, these infections don't stop.
16:44Improved transportation makes diseases almost impossible to control.
16:51The fleas that carry the plague hitch a lift from one of our closest companions, the Black
17:02Rat.
17:06Native to Asia, they spread to Europe with the Romans.
17:13From a pair of rats, 2,000 new offspring a year.
17:19And every rat can carry eight plague-infected fleas.
17:29Black rats infest the cargo that travels along the Mongol trade routes.
17:39Spreading out from Issykul, the plague sweeps east to China and west towards Europe.
17:58It's a caffa on the Black Sea, a thriving port at the crossroads of east and west, controlled
18:08by Italian merchants.
18:11One man is credited with speeding the plague into Europe, a descendant of Genghis Khan, Jani
18:34Beck.
18:38He murdered his own brother to seize power.
18:46Now he wants to expand the Mongol Empire westwards.
18:51Caffa stands in his way.
18:55But he has a terrible new weapon.
19:01The plague kills his soldiers faster than they can be replaced.
19:09But that gives Jani Beck an idea.
19:24His dead men become ammunition.
19:45Biological warfare wasn't entirely new.
19:50In the 6th century BC, both the Assyrians and the Greeks used to poison wells.
19:56But at Caffa, the Mongols took it another stage.
20:01They launched it physically.
20:04It's like a chemical bomb.
20:11Biological weapons are so deadly, they've been outlawed in 165 countries, including Russia
20:18and the United States, but it is thought more than enough remain to wipe out mankind at a stroke.
20:36No one has ever used biological weapons like Jani Beck.
20:50A miracle arrives.
20:52What seemed like mountains of dead were thrown into the city.
20:58The rotting corpses tainted the air, the stench was overwhelming.
21:15There can be no weapon that is as terrifying as what is unleashed with biological warfare.
21:27You cannot see germs.
21:31You cannot see disease.
21:34And nothing you can do can make you immune to it.
21:40The inhabitants of Caffa try to outrun the plague and flee to Europe.
21:51They have no idea they're bringing the disease with them.
21:57They play en route to the world's most densely populated continent.
22:08Siena, Italy, 1348.
22:15A family locks itself in, hoping to lock the disease out.
22:23The father writes an account.
22:26One of the only surviving records.
22:28As the invasion of Europe begins.
22:35It was a cruel and horrible thing.
22:38I don't know where to begin.
22:39To tell of its brutal and pitiless ways.
22:44The battle for the survival of mankind has begun.
22:50Mankind faces a battle against extinction.
23:01Mankind faces a battle against extinction.
23:01Mankind faces a battle against survivor.
23:03The death of Caffa.
23:04And the group calls the enemy.
23:05Go on.
23:06What is it?
23:07We have a broken heart.
23:08They have broken heart.
23:09We have broken heart.
23:12This is a battle, the death of Caffa.
23:16Anulo de Tura.
23:22Local businessman.
23:24The town chronicler.
23:27He barricades his family inside their home.
23:39The killer outside must not come in.
23:46Anulo uses fire and smoke to ward off the plague.
23:58No one suspects it's carried by rats.
24:04You don't know what the real cause is.
24:06It could be in the air, it could be in the water.
24:08And so you have this sensation around you of something building up, but you don't know what it is.
24:16The plague takes 10 years to cross Asia, moving slowly from village to village.
24:23But Europe is the perfect breeding ground.
24:28Hundreds of cities and 80 million people living in close quarters.
24:34These cities had all the conditions to sustain plague, the filth, the squalor.
24:41The rodents that were just considered part of natural life at that point.
24:49And nobody considered that these rodents and their fleas could potentially be a problem.
24:57And then you had this massive number of people all packed together in these small dwellings.
25:04And it was the exact sort of situation you would want if you were trying to cause a plague epidemic.
25:16The plague has entered Anulo's home, infecting his wife, Nicoluccia.
25:24If you've ever seen a bubonic plague, it's very gross.
25:32A huge purple growth takes place, which creates psychological trauma, havoc, and incredible fear.
25:42Anulo tries anything, everything.
25:51Vomit regularly, especially at the first sign of any illness.
25:55Drink a glass of your own urine twice a day.
25:59Apply an ointment to the bubo made of honey, egg yolks, and scorpion oil to draw out the poison.
26:06Avoid sex and baths.
26:07Finally, the plague doctor.
26:11His hood filled with herbs for protection.
26:16His treatment drained the disease out of the victim.
26:29Physicians would try any desperate measure that could work.
26:32Bloodletting was tried, leeches were used, but none seemed to work.
26:35In fact, the smartest thing a doctor could do is stay away from the patients.
26:39Because inadvertently, we were taking the bacteria from one patient to the next.
26:47All the while, the plague bacteria are mutating, finding new ways to reproduce and spread.
26:54They no longer need to be carried by fleas.
27:06They are airborne.
27:07The airborne plague is fundamentally different because it now can be transmitted from human being to human being.
27:25The kill rate was 75%.
27:28Now, nearly 100%.
27:31In six months, 31,000 people, 60% of Siena, wiped out.
27:47More than two out of every three persons you knew in Siena were gone.
27:59Families decimated.
28:00Clans decimated.
28:03Everybody decimated.
28:05I, Agnolo de Tora, buried my children with my own hands.
28:22There was no one who wept for any death.
28:26For all awaited death.
28:28So many died that all believed it was the end of the world.
28:45Fear and panic sets in.
29:01You're asking yourself, what's causing this?
29:03You know, did I do something wrong?
29:05Did I forget to go to church?
29:07And each symptom seems like the devil is doing it.
29:10The overwhelming theory was an avenging God.
29:13Somehow, this was the anger of God causing this disease.
29:20Now, disaster tests mankind's faith.
29:28Avignon, France.
29:33Home to Pope Clement VI.
29:35One of the most powerful men in the world, controlling vast armies and enormous wealth.
29:48When plague hits Avignon, the people expected the Pope to come to their salvation, to go and intercede to God to stop the plague.
29:57But Clement VI can't stop the plague.
30:03It devastates Avignon.
30:06Killing 1,300 people in a single day.
30:15Pope Clement buys a field and buries 11,000 people.
30:19But it is not enough.
30:25He tries a radical solution.
30:29He consecrates the river Rome.
30:34That's a floating cemetery.
30:36As bodies floated down the Rhone River,
31:05people realized the Pope could do nothing for them.
31:10Either God wasn't listening, or worse.
31:17Fear and loss turn to rage.
31:22They can't rise!
31:23They can't rise!
31:24The mob wants someone to blame.
31:26All over Europe, the hunt is on, for a scapegoat.
31:431349.
31:44The plague rages across Europe.
31:47Mankind is at its weakest and most irrational.
31:57Searching for someone to blame.
32:04Strasbourg, Germany.
32:09The plague hasn't hit here, yet.
32:11But rumors spread faster than the disease itself,
32:16of a diabolical plot.
32:20They say the Jews are poisoning the drinking water.
32:25This was the Middle Ages.
32:27This was before the scientific revolution
32:30and the scientific method.
32:32You had a world that was rife of superstition, anger, confusion,
32:37and unfortunately, that often bubbled off into prejudice.
32:45Ever since the 6th century B.C.,
32:48when their homeland was conquered,
32:52Jewish people have created thriving communities
32:54around the planet.
32:55Today, 26 countries have Jewish populations over 10,000.
33:11When fear grips mankind, minorities are an easy target.
33:20The authorities in Strasbourg try to protect them.
33:25Posting guards in their streets.
33:35But isolation breeds contempt.
33:38To get right! To get right!
33:40To get right!
33:40To get right!
33:40To get right!
33:42To get right!
33:42To get right!
33:43To get right!
33:44To get right!
33:45To get right!
33:52The mob takes the law into its own hands.
33:55To get right!
33:58Take it!
33:59Hurry up!
34:00Hurry up!
34:09To get right!
34:11February 14th.
34:12A St. Valentine's Day massacre.
34:14Valentine's Day a massacre.
34:24The Jews of Strasbourg are given a choice. Convert or die.
34:311,000 Jews are burned alive.
34:46But the massacre does nothing to save the city.
34:50Five months later, the plague arrives, claiming another 16,000 victims.
35:01All over Europe, great cities lie deserted.
35:08An eyewitness reports.
35:11Shops are shut. People rare.
35:16A deep silence in almost every place.
35:20Consider what we were and what we've become.
35:25There was a crowd of us. Now we're alone.
35:30Mankind rendered powerless by tiny bacteria.
35:40Across Asia and Europe, the plague kills over 50 million people in 15 years.
35:49But isolation can protect us.
35:59The Atlantic Ocean has stopped the plague reaching the Americas.
36:03The key to mankind's future in the hands of visionary leaders.
36:18200 years after Genghis Khan, a young Inca warrior prepares himself for battle.
36:27Pachacuti.
36:29Pachacuti.
36:32Pachacuti.
36:33Courageous.
36:34Dynamic.
36:35Inspired.
36:36A vision of the sun god drives him into a mighty battle that will create the empire of the Incas.
36:50Pachacuti.
36:51Pachacuti had an enormous sense of himself.
36:56The name means world shaker.
36:57He gave himself the name of, you know, I am the conqueror of the world.
37:00The Americas are home to 90 million people living in total isolation from the rest of mankind.
37:13In this new world, there are no horses.
37:21They've been hunted to extinction.
37:23No iron tools.
37:26No wheeled vehicles.
37:30But the key to life in the Andes, high altitude agriculture.
37:44This is a mountainous people, a mountainous society.
37:47And so if you want to have available farmland, you have to build terraces along the mountain slopes.
37:53And when you go through the Andes today, you see the remains of terraces everywhere.
37:58Thousands of feet above sea level, they cultivate crops totally unknown to the rest of the world.
38:07Potatoes.
38:10Tomatoes.
38:11Corn.
38:18Sixty years later, the Spanish will bring these superfoods back to Europe.
38:23A key moment in shaping the diet of mankind.
38:34But the riches of their land make the Incas a target.
38:38To keep their territory, they need to defend them.
38:47Pachacuti will have to fight against a fearsome enemy.
38:53No!
38:54No!
38:55No!
38:56No!
38:57No!
38:58No!
38:59No!
39:00No!
39:01No!
39:02No!
39:03No!
39:04No!
39:05No!
39:06No!
39:07No!
39:08No!
39:09No!
39:10No!
39:11No!
39:12No!
39:13No!
39:14No!
39:15No!
39:16No!
39:17No!
39:18No!
39:19No!
39:20No!
39:21No!
39:22Bloodthirsty warriors, they use the bones of their enemies as trophies.
39:29Their goal? Crush Pachacuti.
39:34And capture the Inca captain, Cusco.
39:39Leading the Chancas into battle.
39:43Uscavilca.
39:46Powerful, ruthless, and dead.
39:58In life, he initiated the Chancas reign of terror.
40:03In death, he speaks through his priests.
40:08In the Andes, the ancestors are very much present in people's lives.
40:14And so important people are mummified.
40:22Long before the Egyptians, the people of South America preserved their dead.
40:35Children, adults, whole families.
40:39The oldest mummies have survived for 7,000 years.
40:49With Uscavilca leading them, Chancas warriors feel invincible.
40:58They outnumber the Incas and take no prisoners.
41:01But Pachacuti has a plan.
41:09The goal was to try to capture the mummified body of your enemy.
41:12If you could topple Uscavilca, then victory was yours.
41:16He believes in something more powerful than Uscavilca.
41:30Inti, the sun god.
41:33The most important god in Inca mythology.
41:36The night before the battle, Inti comes to him in a dream.
41:47And promises him a glorious victory.
41:53Pachacuti seizes the idea of portraying himself as the living son, Inti himself.
42:00embodied by the power of the sun.
42:06Pachacuti's father has fled.
42:09His brother has fled.
42:11But he chooses to stay and lead the Incas into battle.
42:21You go about proving yourself to your men by setting the example.
42:27And saying, you know what?
42:29I might die today, but that's okay, because I was born to do this.
42:34And I guarantee it, every true leader that's ever went into combat has felt that way.
42:48Pachacuti taunts the chumpers.
42:53Stoking their anger.
42:54Stoking their anger.
43:07He holds his men back.
43:10Maintains their discipline.
43:14Until they unleash a volley of stones.
43:16Every time I went into combat, it had everything to do with the will to win.
43:33That's what wins battle.
43:39Pachacuti makes his move.
43:40Pachacuti makes his move.
43:46Inca legend recalls his bravery.
43:51The young prince threw himself at the enemy.
43:54He was so agile and fast, he terrified Escavilca's bodyguards.
43:59Pachacuti makes his move.
44:01Inca legend recalls his bravery.
44:03The young prince threw himself at the enemy.
44:06He was so agile and fast, he terrified Escavilca's bodyguards.
44:08The Once-
44:09The Chunkers.
44:13The Chunkers.
44:14Vanquished.
44:16The Incas victory over the Chunkers was legendary.
44:21They never stop talking about it.
44:35They never stop celebrating it.
44:36Stop celebrating it.
44:39Pachacuti will kickstart the biggest empire ever seen in the Americas.
44:49Most of modern day Chile, Bolivia and Peru united under Inca rule.
44:55And to link their territory, a network of trails stretching 25,000 miles over some of the steepest
45:08terrain on earth.
45:14At the end of the trail, Machu Picchu, Pachacuti's palace in the clouds, unknown to the rest of
45:24mankind.
45:29But the isolation of the Americas is coming to an end.
45:39In Europe, survivors of the plague will rebuild, launching a new era of conquest and exploration.
45:52That will lead to the discovery of the new world.
45:57That is the final of our veterans made by the explains the problems at these in τα
46:07theories.
46:08So that is not what happened.
46:09Noverexisch.
46:10My version is not marked as far as the restoration of the Everest.
46:12It is not that big of a war to solve the agriculture�� history.
46:15Do you own luck with Undertale?
46:16I think the entire new world is options.
46:17You do this without any further ado.
46:18I think you also have the right ground ground ground ground ground ground ground ground ground
46:21Geez, they hatched a couple of戦 ground ground ground ground ground ground ground ground ground
46:23and they led to the new work.
Recommended
46:05
|
Up next
46:04
46:03
46:04
46:02
46:04
46:03
46:04
46:03
41:05
46:58