The Greeks (PBS Docu-Series Season One)

They rose from nothing.

And changed everything.

The ancient greeks changed the world in about

1,000 years flat.

This was a time and a place when there

Was a collision of ideas and inspiration that resulted in a

Truly extraordinary culture.

But of all the many great civilizations

In the ancient world, what made this one so special?

People talk about the greatness of greece.

Why them, why there?

That's the question.

And why are we, millennia later,

So intimately linked to the radical revolution

That took place here?

Ancient greece and our

Modern society are connected.

We cannot possibly understand our society if we do not

Understand how it was born and how it developed.

It's a story for the ages and for today.

Of attaining greatness and losing it.

How long did ancient greece last,

Was it forever?

No, it was fleeting.

It was the beginning of a beautiful

New era of civilization.

"The greeks."

Right now on this national geographic special.

It's been nearly 2,500 years since

Workers put the finishing touches on

The western world's most iconic structure.

100,000 tons of the finest marble.

More than 70,000 individual segments.

Exquisite sculptures all came together in majestic

Symmetry on this high rocky outcrop to proclaim the

Supremacy of athens, a civilization at its peak.

To stand there i got a little chill,

Y'know, the hairs stood up on the back of my neck.

I would say almost a spiritual moment for me.

These beautiful statues and

Monuments declare to the world that they have achieved

Extraordinary levels of civilization.

Two and half millennia later,

Workers are racing to rescue the parthenon from

The ravages of time.

Centuries of wars, earthquakes, looting,

Plundering, have taken their toll.

Yet, it still stands,

A proud reminder of human achievement.

One that continues to inspire,

Even through the most trying of times.

Not just in greece,

But wherever people strive for democracy.

When navigating the present,

The answers often lie in the past.

The greek writer herodotus, the world's first historian,

Taught us that.

There is a great deal of continuity

From ancient greece to modern society.

They are part of the same cultural continuum.

The people who raised these columns certainly

Had their share of challenges:

Tyranny and famine,

Economic and environmental collapse, endless wars,

An abysmal human rights record.

Yet somehow they invented everything from science and

Philosophy to drama and democracy.

Greece, not egypt, not persia, not rome,

Became the cornerstone of western civilization.

The question is, how?

If we don't ask them how they did it and

Why they did it, then we are not even attempting to

Understand the world as a whole.

It turns out the greeks themselves were seeking

To understand their extraordinary rise long

Before we were.

Greek myths tell us they were born out of chaos,

Quite literally, "chaos" being the greek word for

Chasm or void.

From the void at the dawn of the universe arose gods like:

Gaia, earth, uranus, sky;

Tartarus, the underworld;

And eros, love.

Through a violent succession of infanticide and patricide,

Jealousy, deceit and revenge, this first generation of

Divinities, gave rise to the gods of olympus:

Zeus, poseidon, hades, athena and all the others.

And ultimately, that god-Forsaken mortal species,

Humans, to toil away on earth.

Yet the myths also tell of one figure who took pity

On us humans, rescued us from oblivion and paid

The price for it.

The greek playwright aeschylus wrote of this hero's travails

At the height of greece's golden age more than

2,500 years ago.

His name was prometheus.

Prometheus bound.

Tonight, nearly 6,000 people file into a theater as old as

Drama itself, the epidaurus, to experience it just as their

Ancestors would have.

Tasos nousias plays the leading role.

Prometheus is a titan, he is a god.

Zeus had decided to eradicate mankind.

Prometheus is the one who stands up for the people.

Without him, mankind would be lost.

So he actually steals fire from olympus.

Humans haven't got it, they are still living in horrible

Caves, they've got no heat, they've got no light,

They can't make anything new, they can't cook.

And he gives them fire, and of course that is the precise,

Inflammatory moment when the human race takes off,

And they start inventing everything.

With fire, the rebellious prometheus endows

Mortals with all the elements of civilization.

There was farming.

They had no sign of winter, or flowery spring,

Or fruitful summer, until i taught them to note

The risings and settings of the stars.

Science.

Yes, and numbers, the basis of science,

I invented for them.

Language.

And the combining of letters,

Mother of the muses' arts,

With which to hold all things in memory.

Literature, philosophy, democracy, drama.

When this play first debuted, they were all just making

Their grand entrances onto the world stage.

Prometheus of course suffers terribly and

Zeus attaches him to a mountain and he has an eagle

To chew at his liver in posterity.

But inside every ancient greek head was the idea that

If somebody was trying to deprive you of something

That would help you, you could go get it,

So that is this rebellious

Spirit of the ancient greeks incarnate in an

Ancient titan god.

What the author aeschylus is telling us

Is that humans should use their wits and their wisdom

And their will to try to make their own lives better.

Of course, this play came at the peak of

Greece's golden age.

By then, even the ancients knew that their many

Achievements weren't simply gifts from the gods;

They were hard earned over generations.

The true story behind their dramatic rise lies beyond the

Myths and begins many thousands of years earlier,

When, as prometheus tells us...

They had no knowledge of houses built of

Bricks, nor how to work in wood,

But lived underground like swarming ants

In sunless caves.

Classical greece didn't just

Come out of nowhere.

If you really want to understand where the greece of

Athens, the greece of the acropolis came from,

You need to look way back in the past.

You need to look several thousand years back in the

Past at places like this.

This is alepotrypa cave on southern greece's

Mani peninsula, a cave used by some of the earliest

Farmers in europe.

It is very important site.

It is the richest cave in greece and one of the

Richest in europe.

Some have suggested it was the mythical

Gateway to hades,

The greek underworld, and it's easy to see why.

In various pockets all around this nearly

1,000-Foot long cavern, scientists have exhumed

More than 150 bodies.

Archaeologists anastasia papathanasiou and

Bill parkinson continue to find more.

From 8,000 years ago until about

5,000 years ago, agricultural villagers,

Farmers, some of the first farmers in europe

Buried their dead in here.

They carried out ritual activities here and these are

The people who eventually laid the foundation for

What became classical greece.

Compared to other ancient civilizations it seems

The people here in greece never had it easy.

The cave provides a window into a key period in

Human history, the neolithic.

When by around 10,000 years ago,

Humans first started to give up hunting and gathering,

And began settling down.

It is the first time period in human

Life that the people, they start living in a way like us.

They are agriculturalists.

They base their diet mostly on grains like us today.

Depending on where you lived and what resources

You had access to, some societies during the neolithic

Were much more primed for greatness than others.

The egyptians had their nile,

Its predictable floods became

The lifeblood of the fertile crescent,

As did the tigris and euphrates to the north.

Here fertile plains fed booming populations,

Allowing expansive mesopotamian civilizations