"These are the waters of the lowest lake in the world." "They lie over a thousand feet below the level of the oceans." "but salt." "This is the Dead Sea. dry up before they get as far as this. having dissolved it from the rocks and soils over which they flowed." "Briny springs also bubble up from the bottom of the lake. they become so concentrated that the salt crystallises out. was happening in the basin of the Mediterranean." "Africa was an island lying well to the south of Europe and Asia." "it moved slowly northwards Africa touched Spain." "The imprisoned sea now began to evaporate." "Even the water flowing into it from the great rivers like the Rhóne and the Nile couldn't save it. dried out. the Atlantic Ocean broke through." "The falls were probably about 50 times higher than Niagara today. the flow over them was around a thousand times greater." "some 40 cubic miles of water cascaded down into the huge trench beneath." "the waters poured in and slowly the great basin filled." "The waters rose up around the coasts. and the Mediterranean we know today was born." "The evidence for the extraordinary fact that is direct and incontrovertible." "It comes from rock like this. full of salt." "Salt which extends downwards for a further mile or more." "which from its chemical composition and distribution could only have been laid down if the Mediterranean had evaporated. must surely have been the most sudden and dramatic birth for any sea on earth." "fish and other animals from the Atlantic swam in through the Straits of Gibraltar to recolonise this newborn sea." "four different species of dolphin and they often travel together." "there are both striped and common dolphins. call in each year during their global cruises." "Seals took up residence here so long ago the Mediterranean monk seal. browsing on jellyfish and molluscs." "000 mile length of the sea breeding on beaches in Turkey and Greece." "in huge numbers." "are still only visitors." "They found the small new sea a suitable haven for spawning." "then swim back to the Atlantic Ocean." "But with them came vast numbers of other fish species that quickly adopted the sea as their permanent home." "Some mountains that had once stood on the floor of the dry basin were volcanoes." "The forces deep in the earth's crust that had dragged the continents across the globe building up great peaks around the vents. and little more than steam rises from their craters." "But some are still very active indeed." "the biggest of all." "Its huge cone has been built up over many millennia 000 feet high." "The mountain rumbles and blows cinders into the air almost continuously." "it becomes catastrophically violent and rivers of molten lava pour down its flanks." "Not all the islands were volcanoes." "Some were composed of limestone that had formed and had been pushed up like rucks in a carpet as Africa and Europe moved together." "This is one of them ..." "Malta." "Each of these islands had living on it its own community of animals and plants. they began evolving in their own strange way." "There are caves in the rocks of Malta. streams trickled through the rocks and eventually dissolved away great caverns like this one." "They also carried with them the remains of animals that lived on the island at the time." "were smashed." "and from teeth found here we know that hippopotamus and elephant lived here." "But they were not like those that are living today." "is the back grinding molar of a modern elephant." "of one of those ancient Maltese elephants." "The mud and the rubble under here is full of bones of one kind or another." "it produced literally including this one." "The back tooth of a Maltese elephant ... it was a pygmy." "and the rest of its bones that it was no bigger than a small pony." "there are teeth of hippo." "was a dwarf. so enormous growth wasn't easy to achieve. which is probably the reason that elephants on the mainland are so gigantic." "Such tiny hippos and elephants evolved on the large island and on several Greek islands to the east." "there were not only dwarf deer and tiny monkeys." "Minorca and Ibiza." "were interconnected and it too had its own unique fauna. has yielded fossils showing that it once possessed a shrew almost as big as a rabbit gnawing teeth like a rat." "is now extinct. has just been discovered alive." "high in the mountains. reached them ..." "like here. with the same habit that gives that toad its name. and regularly goes for a swim to prevent them from drying out." "to be classified as a separate and unique species. it has changed in certain ways." "the poison glands which serve its mainland relative as a defence." "And its tadpoles have also changed slightly." "There's some in the pool behind me." "It's not so much their shape that is unusual but their numbers." "The female Majorca midwife produces many fewer eggs than the females on the mainland." "It had no need to produce great numbers because there were no snakes that would eat a large proportion of the tadpoles." "the little Majorca midwife and only survives today which snakes haven't reached ... yet." "These strange creatures started evolving on these islands some 5½ million years ago. thick forests were widespread." "They grew not only on the islands but all around the mainland shores of the sea." "They were much the same in character on both the north shore and the south." "hawthorn and yew; they've died out. these forests still survive." "They may look European in character but in them lives a very African animal." "Barbary macaques." "scrambling through the branches collecting the tender leaves of the cedars and the oaks. and catching millipedes and earthworms." "Macaques like these once lived in the forests as well as here in Africa. as their fossilised bones prove." "The monkeys that live today on the Rock of Gibraltar may in fact be a relic of that ancient European population." "But during recent centuries their numbers have been boosted many times with importations of animals caught in these cedar forests in Morocco." "The young are strikingly different in colour from the adults. and the baby is most carefully looked after by its parents. so allowing the females to go and gather food unencumbered by an unruly baby. that they take on passengers" "whether the baby belongs to them or not." "the skies above these North African forests suddenly fill with birds." "White storks by the hundred." "kites and eagles." "columns of warm air and which can lift them thousands of feet into the sky so that they have enough height to glide right across the sea to the northern European shore. far into northern Europe." "Why should these birds make such long and arduous journeys?" "The reason seems clear enough. there's a great deal to eat ... far more than can deal with by themselves." "So that's the place to build a nest and rear your young." "But how did these birds discover that all those hundreds of miles away there were such rich feeding grounds?" "the answer to that seems to be that they weren't always so far away. the earth cooled and fell into the grip of an ice age. and glaciers slowly ground their way southwards." "Southern Europe became a treeless wasteland ... tundra." "frogs and many African birds began to make the short trip across the sea to feed and nest there." "the ice began to retreat and the spring feeding grounds moved northwards with it." "the birds had to make longer journeys." "so the Sahara Desert began to form." "the journeys the spring breeders had to make became formidable indeed." "It seems almost unbelievable that such for there is little or no food for it on the way. they must continually beat their wings." "there is nothing to alight on except the hot sand." "Some are so exhausted that they no longer have and die where they landed." "where a spring bubbling up from underground are invaluable staging posts. and building up their strength that still lie ahead." "Waders can't eat at all until they get to the shore of the Mediterranean for they feed only on small creatures that live in mud. feeding almost continuously." "And the lagoons along the coast in spring providing nonstop meals for travelers from all parts." "The curlew sandpiper may have come from the shores of and be on its way to Siberia." "The spoonbills were probably feeding only a week ago in the mangrove swamps of West Africa." "spring has come." "The plants created this rapid transformation in several different ways." "Poppies and crown daisies are annuals." "Their seeds were scattered last summer and lay dormant throughout the winter." "the warm spring rains have bought them to sudden life. having condensed their entire active life into a few short weeks." "Others use a different technique. have kept the surplus food they made last year stored underground in bulbs and swollen roots. even before they sprouted leaves. insects are hatching. advertised by the flowers as inducements to transport pollen." "This is the banquet that the birds have come to feed on." "Kenya or Mozambique. are demanding throughout the day. crickets and large grasshoppers. dragonflies and antlions." "The bee-eaters may also have come from Eastern Africa. beating them against the perch to discharge the stings." "But they also gladly accept less hazardous meals are catching dragonflies." "They have dug long tunnels in a sandy bank in which to nest. habitually nest in colonies. kicking the loosened sand behind them as they go." "The trouble with tunnels as narrow as this one is that there's no room to turn round." "and are finding the food they need in the warm shallow lagoons of the Coto Doñana in Spain." "claiming the same nest sites that they have used each season for decades." "The exultant rituals with which the pair greet one another as does the act of adding further bits and pieces to the nest itself. clearly demands the most careful consideration. that it's coming." "And then they get their fish. are also adventurous and determined travelers." "They've come north across the sea from the southern shores to spend the summer in southern Spain." "or on the lagoons around the mouth of the Rhóne in the Camargue." "they are at the northernmost extent of their range seem to be in two minds as to whether to breed or not." "They will only start their courtship displays if a sizeable flock of them have made the trip." "they may still suddenly change their minds and forget about the whole business." "the young quickly leave the nests wading manfully through the shallows on their short legs. supplying them with a soup of microscopic creatures as well as trickles of water pumped up from their stomachs. and have enough strength to accompany their parents on the long flight back to Africa." "The blazing summer sun brings great danger to plants." "It threatens to rob them of their precious water by evaporation through the pores in their leaves." "Mediterranean plants have several different ways of dealing with that." "is now dead." "its leaves withered and it survives only as a bulb deep in the ground. and which also produce a fragrant oil which covers the leaf in a film and so reduces evaporation. and so goats don't browse the sage." "in winter is a mass of green leaves." "it's lost those leaves and grown instead these small summer leaves here." "with this mass of spines." "The caper remains green by generating enormous suction which collects the last vestiges of moisture." "It even flowers at this time and prevents its blossoms from shriveling by producing them at night. attracting bees with their powerful scent." "But by midday they are dead." "The buds of these short-lived flowers along the length of its shoot." "One for each night of the flowering season. it's the easy time of the year." "draw their body heat directly from the sun. and they actively hunt for insects and other small creatures throughout the hot summer months." "sandy northern shores. and one or two that are quite impressive." "This in front of me is one of the biggest of them... though not lethally so." "This is a Montpelier snake." "It's one of the biggest of the snakes in the western Mediterranean." "that's a couple of metres long." "its poisons are in fact restricted to the fangs at the back of its mouth." "The teeth in the front have no poison in them. on a human being." "the poison it has it would just put me in bed feeling pretty uncomfortable for a couple of days." "is not human beings." "Its prey are other small creatures which it finds around these sand dunes." "Prominent among its targets are lizards. and the woods of pine and olive the cicada." "It produces this insistent invitation to mate by vibrating a membrane in chambers that open on the underside of its abdomen." "crickets and grasshoppers are searching for their last meals. to hatch next spring." "The hunters in this grassroot jungle scorpions and centipedes. to last them through the coming winter famine." "So they are rounding up the last survivors of the herds of grasshoppers and other plant-eating insects." "Drought is now the enemy of all." "Snails climb up the stems of bushes and seal the entrance to their shells with mucus no matter how hot it gets." "Many butterflies and moths have now died." "But one species manages to live in vast numbers right through these hot months. a million Jersey tiger moths have assembled." "a freshwater crab gathers any moths that settle within reach. if one of them accidentally flutters into the water." "but live entirely on the fuel reserves that they built up during the winter." "or make any sudden gesture and so use up a bit more of that valuable fuel when they can lay their eggs. the sudden call of a bird or the fall of a leaf and maybe the need to flutter up into the air" "and find a place and a little darker." "These conditions are almost African. slowly spread around the eastern end of the sea to colonise the islands and the northern shores of the Mediterranean." "the chameleon." "and in southern Spain." "it finds plenty to eat." "Even chameleons aren't always 100% successful." "Tortoises are really animals of the tropics and have little resistance to cold." "they will have to take refuge below ground in order not to be killed by the frosts." "The hot dry summers of the northern Mediterranean would suit many African mammals." "wet winters that keep the majority of them away." "one or two species have managed to come north and live permanently here." "is the home of one of the more surprising of them." "It's a fruit bat the size of a squirrel." "Fruit bats don't have the sophisticated echolocation technique which enable them to navigate in black caves and so escape by hibernating there. by drawing back its lips and squeaking out of the side of its mouth." "It's nowhere near as accurate a system as the but it is good enough to enable the Rousette bat to roost in caves like this and so survive the winter." "of all fruit bats in the world. ... the porcupine." "survives the chills of winter in dens and burrows. though these European colonists seldom get quite as big as the African ones." "as big as a large spaniel." "it's found only in Sicily and Italy." "and one that makes it likely that the animal was actually taken across the Mediterranean" "000 years ago." "porcupines are still though they're not often seen since they only come out of their dens at night. may be the next African mammal to reach Europe if the climate gets any warmer. through Egypt and into Israel and the Middle East." "And that was one of the routes taken around a million years ago by the most influential mammal ever to come out of Africa to Europe. including this one in eastern Spain." "the cave was full of soil." "But as they dug they discovered evidence of a change in this creature's activities that was to be of the greatest significance." "For every foot of soil they removed they went back in time some thousand years. they reached the bottom. like this." "man." "the flint tools they produced but of their developing imaginations. as elsewhere they're found on cave walls." "a deer." "From the remains they left strewn in the cave after their meals and what lived with them in the lands around the Mediterranean." "Bears were certainly numerous. and much of southern Europe was still tundra. farther north in the Arctic berries and leaves." "which today still live in considerable numbers were also common." "munching water plants in pockets of coniferous forests that were now beginning to spread across southern Europe as the glaciers retreated northwards." "were abundant." "Herds of them wandered as the climate warmed moved into the spreading forests." "They survived in the wild until the early years of this (20th) century. and in the Caucasus." "There were also ibex." "It's a kind of wild goat that lives and squabbles in the mountains." "and around this time it became the first animal to be tamed be man." "It seems likely that people regularly reared recruited them as hunting assistants." "The wolf helped the men to track with its super-sensitive nose and used its sharp teeth to help bring down the quarry." "it took a share of the meat of the kill and a place in the warmth beside the campfire at night. forests spread right across Spain." "This valley would then have been unrecognisable beneath a thick cover of oaks and elms and hazels." "there were still people living in caves in these valleys." "their habits had changed." "They no longer painted on cave walls. like this one." "there's a frieze of deer." "with its ears pricked in alarm." "head lowered in a charge." "An ibex." "probably the most dangerous animal in the whole forest." "And these artists also portrayed themselves. which lie prostrate in front of him. wounded with a spear or an arrow in its belly." "Two men set off on a hunt. with angry insects flying out of it. the people remained primarily hunters." "And that meant they had to spend most of their lives wandering in search of their prey. people were learning new ways of living;" "ways that ultimately were to transform these lands around the Mediterranean;" "their First Eden."