"Our planet is full of incredible natural wonders." "Look at that!" "Whoo!" "It has immense power... that's rarely mentioned in our history books." "I'm here to change that." "I'm looking at four ways the power of the planet has shaped our history." "The power of fire..." "Oh that fuelled great technological breakthroughs." "Wind that has influenced the rise and fall of empires." "Water our struggle to control it has directed human progress." "I'm looking inside the Earth itself." "hot and extreme. but at a price." "This is the great untold story of human history. extraordinary geological forces are at work." "Hi." "Gracias." "Forces that have shaped our history." "I've got to go deep into the Earth itself." "This is the Naica mine in northern Mexico - the starting point for a journey to one of the most spectacular and extreme places on or in the planet." "I'm really starting to feel it now." "the deeper in I go." "This heat is just a taste of what lies ahead." "I arrive at what they call "Base Camp"." "so oppressive all of these control systems and all of this kit over here just to get there." "It's going to be like visiting another planet." "Beyond here is a chamber that reveals the power of the inner Earth to influence human affairs. they.ve had to develop some pretty esoteric equipment." "Get this." "It's like a chain mail of ice cubes." "isn't it?" "The special refrigerated suit will keep me cool." "What a palaver!" " This brings down my core temperature?" " Yes." "feels very cold suddenly." "That's very odd." "But it's not the heat alone that's potentially lethal." "This is what?" "This is the oxygen?" "it's fresh air." " It's fresh air." " Yes." "You'll need it." "The heat is combined with nearly 100% humidity. moisture would begin to condense inside my lungs." "I'd start to suffocate." " You're ready." " I'm ready?" "I don't feel ready." "OK." "I could die. but inside there is one of the geological wonders of the world." "That is unbelievable." "This is just mad!" "isn't it?" "This is la Cueva de los Cristales - the most spectacular cave of crystals discovered anywhere in the world." "I've travelled around the world but this place - this place just tops it all." "Look at it." "It really looks perfect." "they're so translucent." "And there's different types." "You can see these ones that are like roses building up these pillars - absolutely magnificent." "no-one knew this chamber existed." "It was uncovered when miners broke through by chance." "these extraordinary crystals are made up almost entirely of a pretty ordinary mineral - gypsum - but it's the sheer scale of them that astounds you." "This strange world is shaped by forces that have had a profound impact on human civilisation." "this heat..." "This heat's just too much." "It's unbearable." "the heat - that's what it's all about." "That's the whole point." "It's this cauldron that's the reason that these crystals are here." "It's so hot because only about 5km below the cavern is an area of the Earth's crust that is super-heated molten rock." "which dissolves minerals from the surrounding rock." "Phenomenal pressure forces this mineral-rich water up through cracks in the rock and filled this giant cavern." "the conditions were perfect for the minerals to slowly crystallise back out of the water. so the gypsum crystals just kept growing until the miners broke through and the cave was drained." "But the hot inner Earth has done far more than create these crystals." "This incredible hot world hidden just beneath the surface is a driving force for powerful geological events that have shaped the fate of peoples throughout history." "This is the Timna Valley in Israel's Negev Desert." "Today it's pretty well deserted. this place witnessed one of the world's first great scientific breakthroughs. humans had made all their tools from stuff just lying around - that they could get their hands on. our ancestors made an extraordinary imaginative leap." "They realised that the rock here contained a secret." "These green bands are called malachite." "And it was these malachite seams 500 years ago were at the centre of that incredible leap of human ingenuity. these bands of malachite formed when hot fluids rose from deep inside the planet and leaked into these rocks. when malachite is heated up..." "...it does something special." "It releases a metal." "Copper. this copper axe head would have been the pinnacle of technology." "it's weighty." "it would leave a dent." "it's hard enough to take an edge." "you just sharpen it up." "You can still see evidence of the ancient smelting pits at Timna." "But the copper workers left behind a more striking memorial to their work." "all carved by hand." "This was the first large-scale mining anywhere on the planet." "Those early copper miners smashing their way through the rock and hauling their pails of copper-laced ore back to the surface." "the copper revolution changed our relationship with the planet in a really profound way. we were transforming what the Earth offered us and in the process creating entirely new resources." "And copper was just the start of things to come." "tin was added to copper more durable metal alloy - bronze." "refinements to the smelting process meant iron could be smelted out of rock." "Metal tools became the foundation for human civilisation." "So it's clear we owe a huge debt to those first copper miners at Timna." "But we also owe a debt to the deep Earth." "The key to Tina's role in early history is its location." "The Earth's crust is divided into huge pieces called plates." "Where they meet are cracks known as fault lines." "Timna is next to the Dead Sea fault which separates Africa from Arabia." "hot interior of the Earth." "It's this hot interior that is ultimately the source of all the metals that have so radically changed our history." "Fault lines allow them to rise to the surface just as they did at the crystal cave in Mexico." "But fault lines began affecting human history even before the discovery of metals." "we.ve been strangely drawn to these boundary zones ever since the dawn of civilisation." "And you can see why in the barren wilderness of the Lut Desert in Iran." "The landscape is covered in hundreds of holes arranged in rows." "These holes in the desert can help explain our ancient attraction to fault lines." "But that involves me going down one - something the locals seem a little bemused by." "Hi." "So this is it?" "That's tiny!" "I don't think I'll really fit." "How deep is it?" "God!" "Apparently it's 50 metres." "That's over 150 feet." "huh?" "So we go down? the method for going down is unconventional at best." "like a pulley?" "I guess." "So do I go on this?" "I bet you!" "I've never gone on a rope with a metal tripod pulled by a tractor before." "So..." "I think we should just do this before I change my mind." "OK." "What could possibly go wrong now?" "Blooming heck." "It really is deep." "this isn't natural." "I'm getting lowered down into the bowels of the Earth here." "I wasn't sure if I was claustrophobic but now I realise I think I am." "It's so far up!" "Look at that." "dear." "I don't want to do this too many times. local people have been digging shafts like this - by hand." "And I get the sense I'm about to find out why." "here we go." "Hey hey!" "Ooh!" "Oof!" "I misjudged it." "Look at this!" "This is the answer." "The essential ingredient of every civilisation on Earth." "fresh drinking water." "This is what made this remote corner of the Lut Desert one of the few places in the region that could sustain towns and cities." "And I'll tell you... this is so nice to have." "Right." "I'm off to explore a bit." "I want to find where the water's coming from." "This tunnel leading off the shaft is called a qanat. hacked out of solid rock to capture ground water that's stored deep below the desert." "I feel as if I'm in an underground rain shower." "a couple of hundred metres now and it seems to be getting smaller and smaller." "It's a bit narrow here." "this is it." "This is the source of all this water." "It's just pouring in from here." "Underground water exists beneath most deserts. there's no practical way of getting at it." "here there's a fault line." "The fault is full of thick clay produced by the grinding of the surrounding rocks as they rub along the fault line." "This forms a clay dam which water can't penetrate." "Water flowing down from the mountains creating an underground reservoir through which a qanat is dug to channel the water." "Gravity does the rest. unable to penetrate through the clay-rich barrier. breaching the barrier and releasing the water." "It was a simple but brilliant piece of engineering." "OK." "Qanats were an ingenious early example of a mains water supply." "The shaft is simply a way so it can be repaired." "the qanats still carry water from underneath the Lut Desert as well as irrigating the date orchards for which this area is famous." "it's so good to see blue sky." "Oh!" "thank you." "But this place isn't a one-off. water and the growth of some of the first cities." "Petra in Jordan was the most important trade hub in the Middle East." "It was built along a branch of the Dead Sea fault and was entirely dependent on natural springs which rose along the fault and fed its irrigation system." "said to be the oldest city in the world." "000 years ago because deep ground water rose along fault lines to create fertile pastures in the desert." "More unusual is the ancient Roman city of Hierapolis." "It was built next to these terraces of white rock." "it wasn't just water that was important - minerals carried in the water were thought to have revitalising powers." "So Hierapolis became an important healing centre in the Roman Empire. ancient civilisations were repeatedly drawn to the resources that fault lines brought up from the deep Earth." "It's a connection which lead 11 of the 13 most important civilisations of the ancient world unknowingly to build their cities close to a plate boundary. so the relationship between fault lines and human history became more sophisticated." "They even played a role in the establishment of the most advanced early civilisation of all. the island of Crete was home to the Minoans." "Their showpiece was the palace of Knossos." "You can see by the sheer scale and sophistication of Knossos that the Minoans weren't just another early civilisation." "was the beginning of modern society." "this was a place that you and I would have felt reasonably at home." "a sewage system and large stores of food and wine." "It all allowed the Minoans to create a new kind of society." "all this is a moment in history that is much under appreciated." "What the Minoans represent is a great pivotal point when life switched from being dictated by the grim realities of survival into something that we could actually enjoy." "What the Minoans invented was the day off." "And the Minoans took their pioneering responsibilities in this area very seriously. this is where the paraphernalia of the Minoan leisure society really took off because this is one of world's first sports stadiums." "500 spectators would cram in here bull-leaping. you grab hold of the horns and flip yourself over the top." "How do you practise that? but this bizarre sport was a forerunner to bull-fighting." "But the real legacy of the Minoans was how they made their wealth." "This was the Bronze Age." "you need two metals - copper and tin." "The problem was finding them. thanks to the fault line beneath it." "Tin was trickier. so it's much rarer." "The hunts for tin led to distant lands that were at the edge of the then-known world." "One such place was so full of tin that it was called the Cassiterides - "the tin islands"." "Today we know it as Britain." "But the centres of Bronze-Age civilisation 000km away." "Tin was also found in other far-flung locations" "Central Europe and even Iran... Crete was perfectly positioned." "The Minoans exploited their position at the crossroads of many different trading routes to become the world's first maritime superpower. with the mineral-rich heartlands the Middle East and North Africa all around." "it wasn't so much about owning the raw materials how to put them together." "They built an empire because they'd worked out how to exploit the geology that their neighbours had on their doorsteps. fault lines had been a crucial factor in the success of many early civilisations." "But the Earth extracted a price for these riches." "It was a price paid in full by the Minoans." "At the heart of the story was a small archipelago 100km north of Crete. famous for its pretty white houses and rugged coastline. the key to their trading empire. a centre of industry that helped fuel what was at the time" "the most advanced civilisation on the planet." "But Santorini held a deadly secret. it sat above one of the Earth's major plate boundaries." "Santorini formed when the African plate started sliding below the European plate. molten rock rose back to the surface to create what is actually a volcano. this volcano did what volcanoes tend to do - it blew up. 000 years." "Today you can still trace why the eruption was so devastating in the cliffs around Santorini." "This cliff is made entirely of ash and rock spat out by the volcano. each of which are from different stages of the eruption." "this rock face is a timeline of events." "Climbing this cliff helps understand the disaster that was unlike anything anyone had ever seen before." "This level here was the start of the eruption." "I'm kind of standing on the Minoan land surface. the eruptions threw out an enormous mushroom cloud of debris." "It just rained down ash after ash after ash." "This stuff is just like a silica glass." "It gets into your lungs and it just lacerates your lungs." "You just choke on it." "This innocent-looking gravel was from the second and most lethal stage of the eruption." "and that mix of water with molten lava produced a series of incredibly violent eruptions that punched a jet of superheated gas and debris high into the atmosphere. they engulfed the outer edges of the island." "Ay!" "the worst was still to come. producing the most enormous blast. there was one last catastrophic flourish." "The centre of the volcano crashed into the sea." "That sudden collapse created a gigantic tsunami which quickly spread out across the Aegean towards Crete. the tsunami would have been devastating. and any boats in them would have been smashed into matchsticks." "So perhaps it's not that surprising that not a single boat from the vast Minoan fleet has ever been found." "This was a catastrophe from which the Minoans would never recover." "A long chalk-and-ash cloud and a giant tsunami meant that this maritime power was on its knees." "their population decimated the Minoans went downhill fast. this once-great civilisation was finished." "The eruption of Santorini was an extreme event." "But ancient history is littered with tales of cities destroyed along plate boundaries." "And it's not just volcanoes that do the damage." "Fault lines are also home to another deadly force of nature." "Earthquakes. many cities first established to take advantage of fault lines have been flattened. was destroyed by a giant earthquake in AD 60. has been hit over 15 times by large earthquakes." "Some believe it was this that famously brought its walls "tumbling down"." "Petra was abandoned after an earthquake demolished its irrigation system in AD 360." "And it continues to this day. was devastated by a massive earthquake" "000 people." "much of human history has centred on a bargain between us and the inner Earth." "Plate boundaries provide access to resources from deep inside the planet." "and every now and then you take a hit." "But even the most advanced of our ancestors had no way of explaining this strange coincidence." "it's only in the last 50 years that scientists have finally understood the bargain that was inadvertently struck all those years ago." "You can see the theory in action in the middle of the Pacific Ocean." "This is Kilauea on Hawaii's Big Island." "It's one of the most active volcanoes on the planet because it's fed by a chamber of magma deep inside the Earth called a hot spot." "The hot spot has effectively punched a hole in the Pacific plate - the piece of the Earth's crust on which Hawaii sits." "But remove the ocean around Hawaii and something strange is revealed - a chain of mountains stretching along the sea bed" "000km." "This line of extinct volcanoes is explained when you realise that the Pacific plate is continually on the move. the moving plate pulls the volcano away from the hot spot." "forming a new island." "but it hasn't got long to go." "it will drift away from the hot spot and eventually disappear beneath the waves." "The Hawaiian islands chain is a beautiful demonstration of a big idea that explains why plate boundaries bring us extraordinary benefits and terrible hazards in equal measure." "It's called plate tectonics." "The key is that all the plates which divide the Earth's surface are continually on the move." "they crumple the land like the Himalayas. oceans form in the gap." "The friction of this continual movement means that plate boundaries become melting zones where minerals are concentrated and are able to rise towards the surface." "But the flip side is that huge amounts of energy are concentrated along the plate boundaries." "volcanoes form. the jolt causes devastating earthquakes." "So we now know that plate boundaries are so rich in resources for exactly the reasons they.re so dangerous." "Yet the strange thing is this groundbreaking discovery has made little difference to where we live. it's clear that many cities are located close by." "10 of the 20 largest cities in the world are next to dangerous fault lines." "So why are we still building next to these danger zones?" "In the rugged hills of central California is part of the answer." "I'm heading into the skies." "I hope I am." "This is the dinkiest helicopter I've ever been in." "It'll be nice when it's finished." "I'm going to see perhaps the most famous geological feature on the planet." "And this is the best way to find it." "this is it." "This looks fantastic." "It's this beautiful funnel cut right through these hills here." "That's amazing." "This line of hills with a trench cut through the middle is the San Andreas Fault." "This fault is a boundary between the North American Plate to the east and the Pacific Plate to the west." "they.ve been grinding past each other to create the largest earthquake fault in North America. then slices down through 700 miles through here down to the border with Mexico." "it cuts through cities and towns aqueducts and fibreoptic cables." "If ever there was a fault line then it's this one." "But a good reason why over 20 million people carry on living so close to this danger zone is that this plate boundary has made California rich." "It began with the Californian gold rush. but the gold originally rose in hot mineral-rich fluids forced up between the plates." "almost everything that makes California wealthy is at least partly related to the San Andreas Fault." "the scenery." "It was the colliding plates that forced up mountains along the Californian coast. who spend an estimated $2 billion on sightseeing alone." "Then there's the wine." "That's partly down to the San Andreas too." "California is mostly desert it rises to form rain that irrigates this otherwise arid landscape." "It's a microclimate that has made this one of the most productive farming regions in America." "But the ultimate gift of the San Andreas is this." "Oil." "Black gold. just like a natural spring." "Except this is black and gooey." "Look at that. even the most witless prospector realised that places like this were a good place to drill." "And drill they did." "000 wells have been sunk here." "Most people probably think of Texas as America's oil state 000 barrels of crude oil out of the ground every day." "deep inside the Earth." "But it was the San Andreas Fault which split the rock and brought it close enough to the surface to be exploited." "So it seems that the San Andreas Fault has brought California some serious economic benefits. for wine and even for tourism." "But how much is that really worth?" "The money men have done the sums." "They reckon this state earns around $100 billion every year because of the San Andreas Fault." "California's geology is a licence to print money." "Earthquake geologists like me know that California gets struck by a big seismic shake every 100 to 150 years." "And those major quakes are hugely destructive." "That doesn't seem to dampen the spirits of the number-crunchers that are in these skyscrapers. a major earthquake will cause up to $250 billion worth of damage." "that is a huge sum." "you're still in profit. versus a one-off hit of $250 billion." "That's a gain of 40 to 1." "Any economist will tell you that's a pretty decent return." "000 years the benefits of living along a fault line are as potent as ever. even when it's one of the most active in the world." "But the problem that I have with that equation is that life's not just about money." "the only city in the world to straddle Asia and Europe." "This location at the crossroads of two continents has made it a trading hub for centuries." "That's why I find it so exciting." "cosmopolitan place." "But Istanbul's location also brings with it great danger. one of the most seismically active plate boundaries on the planet." "Scientists reckon a major earthquake is due here any time." "Istanbul will be struck by a big earthquake." "It's a strange feeling that this city that I love could be destroyed in my lifetime." "But it doesn't have to be." "they.re starting to rewrite the terms of our ancient bargain with fault lines." "The aim is to enjoy the benefits of living along this plate boundary without having to pay a price in human life. is a clue to the solution." "this is such an eerie feeling." "I'm 35m below the level of the Bosporus and I'm walking parallel to one of the most active earthquake zones in the world. and yet that's exactly where the Turkish authorities decided to build an underground train line. is the deepest tunnel of its kind on Earth" "and yet it runs alongside one of the most dangerous earthquake faults in the world." "These engineers are supremely confident they've got the risks covered. the whole tunnel's designed to absorb the vibrations of even the largest of earthquakes. is confronting the earthquake threat head-on. but it shows we can." "this tunnel is only half the story. but the reality is that most people who'll die in the next earthquake will die because the buildings that they live and work in collapse." "Istanbul is completely unprepared. it might bring down a quarter of the city. because we have the technical know-how to keep buildings standing." "The irony is Istanbul already has a building that has survived earthquakes for centuries." "This magnificent building is the Hagia Sophia." "It's got to be my favourite place in the city. this is a fitting symbol of Istanbul's reputation as a crossroads of different civilisations." "it's been a church and a mosque and now a museum. without the benefit of modern technology." "monumental scale that even the biggest earthquakes never managed to knock it down. the two things that'll probably survive are one of the oldest buildings in the city and one of the newest." "And that's because they're both structures that we've decided are worthy of looking after." "we have the technology to protect every building - factories or offices if we choose to. we've lived with the benefits and the dangers of fault lines." "it's clear that people are going to continue to live along fault lines " "000 years." "But now we have two clear options - stick with the old regime and take our chances or embrace the new and take some kind of control." "that choice is ours." "wind. the wind has shaped the destiny of people across the planet." "It's made fortunes and brought ruin." "we.re still at its mercy."