"Narrator:" "We are survivors." "[yelling]" "Mankind brought low by disease, war, devastation," "but now, we harness new riches and new powers." "We look beyond the world we know," "[music] and together, rise again." "[music]" "Amidst the chaos of a 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 try." "This is our story, the Story of All of Us." "Narrator: 1352." "The Sahara, the largest desert on the planet, a searing wilderness the size of the United States, the toughest challenge an explorer can face." "Ibn Battuta" "He left Morocco at age 21, vowing never to travel the same road twice." "He's explored over 40 countries, but this is his first time in the Sahara." "Ibn Battuta:" "We set off into a desert, totally devoid of settlements." "There's no road, no track, only sand." "Narrator:" "But, at this time, the Sahara holds the key to mankind's survival." "[flashes, rodents eating]" "Narrator:" "The Plague rages through Asia, Europe, and the Middle East." "It's killed up to a fifth of the world's population." "In the Damascus Syria, Ibn Battuta records 2,400 deaths in a single day," "but the Sahara is a barrier against the pandemic." "With temperatures up to 135 degrees, the Plague can't survive the heat of the desert." "[drums sounds]" "Few living things can." "Sheridan:" "The Sahara is vast." "It's the definition of a horrible place to be." "There's no water, it's incredibly hot, your eyes are playing tricks on you, your mind starts playing tricks on you." "It's an incredible ordeal." "Narrator:" "The body's cooling system shuts down: heat stroke." "Oz:" "Then you stop sweating because you have no ability to get rid of fluid to allow you to cool down." "You stop thinking normally, and it's that erratic, bizarre behavior that ultimately leads to death." "Narrator:" "Ibn Battuta's life, in the hands of his traveling companions, the Tuareg." "[voices] [waterdrops]" "Nomads from North Africa, they've lived in the Sahara for over a thousand years, trading something we take for granted today, but what was once one of the most valuable commodities on the planet:" "salt." "Bourdain:" "Salt was everything." "Salt was literally the difference between life and death." "Narrator:" "Before refrigeration, salt was the key to preserving food." "It absorbs water and stops bacteria from growing." "Salted food can last for a year without spoiling." "Bourdain:" "Access to salt determined whether you were powerful enough." "I can't send an army across the water or a great distances without provisions, and their provisions are going to go bad if they are not salted." "Narrator:" "The Tuareg have discovered a rich supply, under their feet." "Millions of years ago, the Sahara was a sea." "As the water evaporated, it left behind huge salt deposits." "The salt trade is the Tuareg's livelihood." "They mine it at Taghaza in the middle of the Sahara, then trek hundreds of miles south to the markets in the great cities of the Mali Empire:" "Jenne, Gao, and Timbuktu." "But it is a dangerous journey in a deadly landscape." "[wind]" "The greatest fear of every traveler:" "the sandstorm, [music, yelling] whipped up in seconds, by 70 miles per hour winds." "Sheridan:" "When a sandstorm hits, it fills the air with sand, fills your lungs, fills your eyes and your nose." "You can't see." "[voices]" "This wind and this sand can strip the paint off a car." "You have to get shelter or you die." "[wind, camel groaning]" "[yelling]" "Buttata:" "One of our party was lost in the desert." "After that, I never went ahead or never lagged behind again." "Narrator:" "After two months in the Sahara, Ibn Battuta's camel train reaches its destination, the cities of Mali." "[voices]" "Battuta:" "Travelers have nothing to fear." "They gave me gifts of food and treated me with the utmost generosity." "May God reward them for their kindness." "Narrator:" "Tuareg merchants can now trade their precious cargo." "ein Mali, salt is so in demand; it's traded for gold." "Today, most gold in the world has to be mined deep underground." "In Mali, it flows out of the bedrock of the River Niger." "[water]" "At this time, as much as two-thirds of the world's known gold preserves are in West Africa, the key that turns Mali's rulers into some of the richest men in the world, and their cities into centers of learning." "[voices]" "Timbuktu University, one of the oldest in the world, the first in sub-Saharan Africa, up to 25,000 people, a quarter of the population, students," "over 300,000 scrolls," "one of the greatest libraries in the Islamic world." "Gates:" "Scholars from lots and lots of places went there to study the scrolls." "It was the World-Wide Web." "It was the place where information was known." "Narrator:" "This is Africa's Golden Age." "In the south, great Zimbabwe, gleaming city of stone, legendary site of King Solomon's mines." "In the highlands of Ethiopia, an ancient Christian empire, claiming to descend from the Queen of Sheba," "and on the east coast, Kilwa, one of Africa's busiest ports." "Ibn Battuta will return to Morocco and write the oldest surviving account of Timbuktu and the wealth of Africa." "The Tuareg will carry their gold back across the Sahara, its destination, across the Mediterranean to Europe." "African gold will be key to the greatest explosion of ideas the Western World has ever known." "It will make some men rich and others, reckless." "Venice, 117 mud islands joined together become a thriving center of commerce." "Silk from the Middle East spices from India," "and the key to its wealth:" "gold from Africa." "A young Venetian, Pietro Venier," "hoping to get rich as a partner in a bank, the Priuli Brothers." "70 years earlier, the Plague wiped out half the population of Venice," "but in the story of mankind, disaster creates opportunity." "Hejeebu:" "Venice is the nursery of modern banking and finance." "It is the cradle of capitalism." "In the 15th and 16th centuries, it is the place to be." "It's absolutely the place to be." "Narrator:" "In Venice, African gold is minted into ducats, an international currency." "Merchants bank their ducats with men like Pierre Trogannier." "[voices, laughing]" "Modern banking begins in Italy, at the benches, the banca, where money changes hands." "Hejeebu:" "They would go to banks to borrow for personal loans, and they would go to banks to borrow for commercial loans, many of the same reasons we go to banks today." "Narrator:" "But Venice is a magnet for the disadvantaged, lured by its wealth." "Enrico," "an unemployed migrant, hungry and tempted." "[yelling]" "340 ducats, over two pounds of gold" "Pietro Veniere has no choice." "He must capture him." "[music]" "Hejeebu:" "When the trust in your banker disappears, the banker's future has disappeared." "His word doesn't count for anything." "His promises don't count, and if your promises don't count, you're out of business." "[yelling in the background]" "[groans]" "Narrator:" "The authorities hang Enrico." "There's no mercy for thieves in Venice." "It's men like Pietro Veniere, who will finance the Renaissance," "the greatest flourishing of learning and culture mankind has ever known." "[music]" "After the devastation of the Plague, a rebirth." "Hejeebu:" "We have works of art, works of architecture, palaces, schools, academies." "All of the human arts flourish where banking flourishes." "They were buying collections for themselves, but they were meant for eternity." "Narrator: 5,000 miles away, China is on the brink of its own rebirth, the key, a deadly new invention." "[gunshots]" "For a century and a half, the Mongols have ruled China." "[fighting] but the Plague has killed millions, loosening their grip on power." "[yelling, sword strikes] 1356, outside Nanjing," "a gang of three plots a revolution." "Their leader, Zhu Yuanzhang," "born dirt poor, orphaned by the Plague." "Agnes Hsu:" "Zhu Yuanzhang was a peasant." "He was a ordinary man, but he had extraordinary drive." "[sounds of voices]" "Narrator:" "His men called themselves, the Red Turbans, [sounds of men training] peasants turned rebels." "Brook:" "People have nothing to eat, and when a rebel leader comes along and says, amp;quot;" "Drive out the Mongols,amp;quot; there's universal enthusiasm." "Narrator:" "By his side, his young wife, Ma," "daughter of a warlord, partner in the revolution." "Agnes Hsu:" "Ma and Zhu were a match made in heaven, and together, they were perfect partners in this rebellion." "Narrator:" "Third member of the gang, Jiao Yu." "Master craftsman, weapons expert." "Agnes Hsu:" "Jiao Yu was not just a soldier, but also one of the great brains behind this operation." "[horses galloping]" "Narrator:" "Mongols soldiers are trained to use a bow and arrow, with deadly accuracy." "[sound of bow being shot]" "Jiao's response: gunpowder." "Invented 300 years earlier by Chinese monks looking for the elixir of life, it's a novelty used mostly in fireworks, until its power is realized as an explosive." "Jiao designs a weapon he calls human thunder," "a small stone, propelled by an explosive charge, a lethal combination," "the future of warfare rewritten." "Power will transform his world." "[gunshots]" "Machowicz:" "Once the gun shows up on the battlefied, everything changes." "[gunshots]" "Anyone who picks up a gun is instantly lethal." "Narrator:" "Zhu is quick to see the potential." "Zhu speaking:" "With these fire weapons, I will conquer the Empire, as easily as turning the palms of my hands upside down." "[swords swiping]" "Narrator:" "Zhu's confidence will soon be put to the test against the deadliest fighting force on the planet, the Mongols." "[gunshots and yelling]" "150 years after Genghis Khan invades their homeland," "Zhu Yuanzhang leads the Red Turbans at the city of Nanjing, a peasant army to drive the Mongols out of China." "The key to their strategy, a weapon that will change mankind," "the gun," "but their guns are a crude design and can't be aimed properly." "Brook:" "The problem of early firearms is having the pellets leave the gun and go in the direction you want them to." "Its aim that matters." "Narrator:" "Gunmaker Jiao's solution: quantity over quality, a hailstorm of bullets." "Jiao speaking:" "To annihilate the enemy, you must wait until just the right moment." "The fire must be intense." "[shooting]" "Brook:" "One firearm makes no difference, but 100 firearms makes a big difference, and 1,000 makes even more." "Wunderlich:" "It must have been incredibly confusing and incredibly frightening." "[shots and yelling]" "Machowicz:" "It is a game-changer." "Old school defenses, old school technology is no longer effective against the gun." "[yelling]" "Narrator:" "Jiao's gun levels the battlefied." "and allows a band of rebels to take on the deadliest army in the world." "[fighting, yelling] [sword strikes]" "Wunderlich:" "We no longer use horses on the battlefield; we still use gunpowder." "That is a lasting change in the battlefield that cannot be ignored." "Narrator:" "Over the next 12 years, the Chinese drive out the Mongols." "Nanjing becomes capital of a free China." "Zhu, a peasant orphaned by the Plague, becomes the Emperor of a new Chinese Dynasty," "and his wife, Ma, the Empress, the most powerful woman on the planet." "Brook:" "When Zhu Yuanzhang founds his dynasty, he calls it, Ming, which means bright." "The Mongols are darkness, and he is light." "Narrator:" "The Ming dynasty lasts for 300 years." "Its rulers live in the forbidden city, a vast palatial compound." "No one can enter or leave without the Emperor's permission." "It takes up to a million workers 14 years to build." "On the borders of China, an even greater engineering project, the largest defensive structure in the world, begun by China's first Emperor, completed by the Ming." "Over five and a half thousand miles long, 20,000 towers, the Great Wall of China." "Now, a technology first developed in China will be perfected in Europe." "It will change the world as dramatically as gunpowder." "1450." "Mainz, Germany." "Johannes Gutenberg" "goldsmith, entrepreneur, inventor of the printing press" "Meigs:" "It's still the one of the greatest stories in the history of invention." "You'd think about the impact that had, it's really hard to underestimate it." "Narrator:" "In 15th Century Europe, books are only in reach of the clergy and the rich." "Hand-written and labor-intensive, it takes as long as three years to produce one copy of the Bible." "Gates:" "It was like having this powerful force, knowledge, that's locked in these objects called books, and almost nobody has these things." "Narrator:" "The Chinese invented wood block printing 700 years earlier, but it was slow, complex work." "Meigs:" "People knew how to press blocks of wood, but his innovation was to turn it into an industrial process." "Manufacture books?" "No one had ever done that before." "Narrator:" "A goldsmith by trade, he carves letters in metal that can be moved around and rearranged, an infinite variety of words and sentences." "To print the text, a modified wine press." "He's been working on his invention for over a decade, but now, he has run out of money." "He persuades a wealthy businessman to see the press in action and invest in it, if it really works." "[cranking]" "Meigs:" "Once you lined up that type on that page, one person can print off a dozen pages or a thousand pages, it didn't matter." "Narrator:" "The Information Age begins here." "[music]" "Every page printed in the last 500 years owes a debt to Gutenberg's invention." "[machinery printing]" "With an investment of 800 guilders, the equivalent of over $1,000,000, his printing press goes into production." "He prints 180 copies of the Bible." "Another 6 billion have been printed since." "Books can now be produced 2,000x faster than before." "20 million are printed in 50 years." "Meigs:" "As knowledge begins to spread, it becomes more within reach of ordinary people in ways that we have never seen before in human history." "All these parallels you hear to the internet, that's a very good analogy." "Narrator:" "Now, a book will inspire one man to strike out across the oceans, and change the future of mankind." "1476, off the coast of Portugal, an Italian sailor shipwrecked and left for dead by pirates." "His name, Christopher Columbus," "a dreamer, who will unite a divided world." "He believes that he has been saved by God for a special purpose." "Sheridan:" "In certain cases, an individual makes a huge, a huge impact, and Columbus is kind of a pure example of that." "Narrator:" "He settles in Lisbon, Portugal." "With the help of his brother, Bartholomew, he begins to pursue a dream." "[si, si]" "Mann:" "He was a guy, who had this tremendous personal ambition." "He really, really wanted to pull his family up from the muck and become an aristocrat, become a gentleman." "Narrator:" "His dream is inspired by a book, written 200 years earlier, but thanks to the printing press has become a bestseller, after the Bible, the most widely read book in Europe:" "The Wonders of the World by Marco Polo." "The epic story of a Venetian merchant and his travels East, through the Holy Lands, Central Asia, and on to the exotic teeming cities of China." "Polo speaking:" "It is scarcely possible to set down in writing the magnificence of this province." "Here, they weave gold tissues, as well as every other kind of silk and cloth." "The city contains merchants of great wealth and an incalculable number of people." "[music]" "Meigs:" "Columbus was a classic example of someone who really was inspired by literature and dreamed big." "He's possessed with this, you know, kind of desire to win the lottery of life." "He wanted to be the next Marco Polo." "Narrator:" "Columbus's brother is a mapmaker." "Together, they plot a revolutionary idea," "to head east by traveling west." "Not over land like Marco Polo, but by sea." "Sheridan:" "What a great opportunity, what a wonderful thing to be part of!" "When I think of it for myself, it's like ooof!" "You get a little frisson!" "Narrator:" "Mapmakers at the time know nothing about the Americas." "To them, this double continent doesn't exist." "They believe there is a vast, uncrossable ocean between Europe and Asia." "Columbus thinks they're wrong, that the world is smaller than they realize, and it's quite easy to sail from Europe to China." "Mann:" "When Columbus said, amp;quot;" "Let's sail west,amp;quot; you know, they had a picture of the Earth in their mind, they said, "Are you crazy?" "No!"" "Narrator:" "For almost a decade, Columbus tries to finance his crazy scheme." "He's turned down by the rulers of Portugal, Venice, and Genoa, but the balance of power in Europe is changing," "[Jose!" "]" "[gunshot] with the help of the gun." "It hasn't stayed a Chinese secret." "Morris:" "Almost as soon as the Chinese had invented the first proper gun, within 40 years, it has spread all way to Europe." "[gunshot]" "No invention had ever moved as fast in the entire history of the world." "[gunshots]" "Narrator: 1486." "[people yelling]" "Southern Spain 130 years after the Red Turbans, another rebel army fights for independence." "[voices, gunshots, yelling]" "Using the latest in gun technology," "the arquebuse." "Meigs:" "Technology is always improving, but there is nothing like war to give an outsize advantage to whoever has that slight technological edge." "[voices]" "Machowicz:" "The gun improves when it arrives in Europe by trial and error." "They want to increase their range, so what are they going to do?" "They are going to increase the length of the barrel, because they know a bigger powder charge will allow that ball to travel further in distance." "They're going to tighten the tolerances to increase the accuracy of that ball." "They are going to find a way so that it becomes a one-man weapon versus a two-man weapon." "[gunshots]" "Loades:" "The real breakthrough came with a trigger mechanism, a lever that operated an arm that brought this burning match cord down into the priming." "[explosion]" "Individual soldiers were now armed with something quite deadly, quite accurate, and extremely portable." "[gunshot]" "Narrator:" "What happens here in Spain will help propel Columbus to the New World." "[fighting]" "Narrator:" "Elora, southern Spain." "1486." "A Spanish army below the walls of an Islamic fortress." "[voices]" "The front line of a religious war that will shape the future of mankind." "For more than 700 years, Spain has been run by the Moors, Muslims from North Africa." "They create their own cities, with their own architecture, centers of learning, preserving the knowledge of the ancient world," "[music] but Spanish armies try to reclaim the country for Christianity." "They force the Moors to retreat back to North Africa." "All that remains is the kingdom of Granada, on the southern tip of Spain." "Key to the conquest of Granada, the fortress of Elora." "If the Spanish are to reclaim their country, they need to capture this Moorish stronghold." "[voices, gunshot]" "A Spanish captain, Gonzalo Fernandez de Cordoba," "young, ambitious, known in court as the Prince of Cavaliers." "Cordoba will become one of Spain's greatest generals, a tactical genius and champion of the arquebuse." "The gun is deadly, but only at close range." "He needs his men to be nearer the enemy." "[voice yelling]" "For four days, stalemate." "Now, he leads a fresh assault." "[yelling, shooting, music]" "The noise of the arquebus is the equivalent to a jet engine at takeoff." "[yelling]" "Soldiers deafened, [continued yelling, gunshots] but the Spanish regroup and fight on." "[music, yelling] [weapons, gunshots]" "The closer they get, the more effective their guns." "[shot]" "The victory at Elora, a turning point in the reconquest of Spain." "Over the next six years, city after city falls to the Spanish." "[clapping, cheering]" "January 2nd, 1492, a day that changes the destiny of mankind." "Spanish monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, ride victorious into Granada." "Gonzales de Cordoba helps negotiate the surrender of the Moors." "A Spanish chronicler calls it:" "Chronicler speaking:" "The most blessed day there has ever been." "Narrator:" "In the crowd, one man senses an opportunity," "Christopher Columbus." "[horses cantering through]" "Mann:" "Everybody is walking around with their chests puffed out, looking for new things to do." "Now that we have our own country back, we can start trading for luxury goods with the Chinese, and lo and behold, Columbus shows up." "Narrator:" "Spain is the new power in Europe." "Ferdinand and Isabella will fund Columbus's dream." "He'll sail under a Spanish flag." "Contact between East and West once brought death and disease, but mankind has unlocked the keys to a new future, harnessing the power of gold, gunpowder, and the printed word." "History is made by people with ideas and the spirit of adventure." "People who see opportunity, where others see danger." "A new age is dawning that will unite a divided world:" "The Age of Exploration."