History Channel Mankind The Story of All of Us

We innovate and mould the bounty of the planet

To our needs.

But new resources forge new struggles,

Give power to new peoples,

And with them, ideals and ideas that transform our lives.

Amidst the chaos of an unforgiving planet,

Most species will fail.

But for one, all the pieces will fall into place,

And a set of keys will unlock a path for mankind to triumph.

This is our story, the story of all of us.

This is our story, the story of all of us.

The nile delta of egypt,

Twelve hundred years before christ.

Mankind's greatest civilizations falling one by one.

A new enemy.

Egyptians call them the sea people.

Hungry, violent,

Their origin a mystery even today.

"Their ships came, our cities burnt,

"And they brought evil to our country."

A thousand years after the age of the pyramids,

Even mighty egypt faces destruction.

Around the mediterranean,

Great cities and empires are swept away

By peoples on the move.

Troy, the mycenaeans in greece,

The hittite empire of turkey.

The sight of ships on the horizon

would have just sent chills down your spine.

It would have been the most terrifying thing imaginable.

When the sea peoples cause one great state to fall,

then that one domino has fallen,

and then the rest around the Mediterranean go.

Chaos rules.

Trade dries up.

Supplies of bronze,

The lifeblood of civilization, dwindle to nothing.

Mankind faces the collapse of thousands of years of progress.

But on an island in the eastern mediterranean

A group of pioneering metal workers

Uncovers one of the keys to our future.

What they discover will arm new peoples,

Give power to new ideas,

Send mankind across the world,

And transform the planet.

The age of iron.

An age we still live in today.

An age we still live in today.

Alashiya, cyprus.

An island named after its rich resources of copper.

But the supply of rare tin to make bronze from copper

Has dried up.

Faced with ruin, metalworkers make a discovery

That will change the future of mankind.

Rusty red rocks, found all over the island.

They contain one of the most important raw materials

In history: iron.

Born in the heart of an exploding supernova star,

Iron forms the earth's molten core,

Larger than the moon, hot as the sun.

Without it, no atmosphere, no magnetic field,

No life.

The fourth most common mineral in the earth's crust.

After depending on bronze for so long,

iron was a far superior metal,

but it took a much higher level of skill to work with it.

To forge iron, a super-fuel:

Charcoal, wood burned in kilns,

More carbon, more energy,

Burns hotter, longer.

They needed to smelt it,

to get that ore into a position

where it would interact with charcoal,

and great groaning bellows would push air into this fire.

The heat would infuse the iron,

and it would coagulate into these chunks.

Iron is harder, it can hold an edge better

and it's extremely plentiful.

Those skills must have spread very, very quickly,

as people realized what a huge advantage iron could give you.

Iron and charcoal transform the surface of the planet.

In europe alone,

70 million acres of trees, an area bigger than oregon,

Are felled to feed iron foundries,

Creating the landscape of the world we know today.

Now, on the plains of greece,

Iron ushers in a new age of warfare.

Soldiers prepare to defend their small kingdom.

Sparta.

A society dedicated to war.

With the richest iron mines in greece.

Their leader: pausanias.

A prince of sparta, acting commander-in-chief.

Bearing down on them, the superpower of the day:

Persia.

Sparta is just 3000 square miles.

The persian empire, more than a million.

The battle they face against the odds

Will shape the story of mankind.

Pausanias is holding sparta together

After the death of the king, his uncle.

They prepare for a final battle to defend greece.

They're the baddest human beings on the planet Earth

and they wanna stay that way.

It's really "We're gonna breed the ultimate warriors."

And they build a whole caste system,

a whole belief system, around this idea.

a whole belief system, around this idea.

In sparta, from the age of seven,

Boys are trained as warriors.

At 18, they join sparta's army,

The most fearsome,

Most disciplined fighting force on earth.

Young men were taken away from their families

and lived a very what we call a Spartan life,

a life without luxury

and a life of deprivation

and a life training and testing their courage.

The Spartan boy is tough as nails,

he has to be able to sleep outside

when it's raining and even snowing,

to have to forage and even steal your own food.

Spartans are armed with the best weapons of the day,

Spears and swords of iron.

But sparta cannot fight persia alone.

Within greece, sparta's rival: athens.

Also small, vulnerable,

A city of merchants, playwrights, and farmers.

But faced with a powerful enemy,

Athens must decide to accept persia as its master

Or try and make common cause with its bitter rival.

The decision will determine the future of the western world

And the story of all of us.

S power to the people.

The small city-state of athens faces a choice:

Submit to the persian empire or fight for freedom.

An envoy of the persian emperor xerxes

Offers the people of athens a chance

To surrender and avoid bloodshed.

Their freedom.

Male citizens of athens gather on a rocky hill called the pnyx.

Among them: sophanes.

Brave, outspoken,

An ordinary citizen who will become a military legend.

Citizens of athens are armed with iron weapons.

They have a duty to defend themselves and their city.

The ability to express yourself freely

is so uniquely tied

to the ability to defend yourself freely.

The Athenians appreciate and value freedom.

Their ability to be self-expressed,

their ability to have a say in their government.

And they're willing to fight for that.

Political decisions in athens are made not by kings,

But by its armed citizens, men like sophanes.

A new political system,

A legacy still shaping civilization today:

Democracy.

It's not everyone,

it's primarily male land-holders who can vote.

Women were not part of the process, at this point.

Nonetheless, it's a dramatic shift

from having strong men and tyrants.

You have the ability for self-determination.

A black stone: surrender.

A white stone:

Fight.

Vote 'yes' and you've committed yourself

to risking your life to fight.

Vote 'no' and you'll be safe

but you'll be ruled by a stranger.

Tough decision, but the point is,

it's being made by ordinary people,

and that's what's astonishing

about what the Greeks introduced to the history of humanity.

An athenian records the will of the people:

"Such is our love of liberty, we will never surrender."

August, 479 bc,

Near the coast of greece.

Bitter rivals lay aside their differences

To defend their lands against a mighty empire.

The persians: 100,000 conscripted soldiers

From across the ancient world.

On the other side, greek patriots.

Pausanias leads a force of men

Whose entire lives are dedicated to the art of war.

With the spartans, citizen-warriors from athens.

Men like sophanes.

They were putting everything they knew

on the line.

I think there is such great gallantry

in the idea of going to battle, going to war,

knowing you are severely outnumbered,

but believing you have right on your side.

The persian commander, mardonius,

Believes superior numbers will be the key

To an easy persian victory.

The greeks have halted the persian advance

For more than a week.

Phalanx!