Genius Ancient Tech Explained | Ancient Mysteries (S1) | Full Episode

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[music playing] NARRATOR: Every year, scholars make new discoveries which shatter our vision of our own past. They unearth clues which reveal that ancient people created extraordinary innovations, hundreds, even thousands of years ahead of their time. Did the Chinese invent the fundamental technology for space exploration centuries before Columbus? How did the ancient Egyptians lift stones weighing 200 tons to the top of the Great Pyramid of Giza, a feat which baffles scientists to this day? These blocks weigh 200 tons each. Now, to put that into perspective, 200 tons is roughly equivalent in weight to 500 modern family-sized automobiles. [music playing] NARRATOR: What weapons of modern warfare were conceived by Leonardo da Vinci, one of the world's greatest artists? Is it possible the ancient man harnessed electricity 1,000 years ago? When the archeologists discovered this object, he looked at it and it looked to him like a battery. In fact, it's very difficult to see what else it could be. NARRATOR: Centuries before the birth of Jesus, did the ancient Greeks built a prototype of the world's first analog computer? Was brain surgery practiced in Peru over 1,000 years ago? There have been brain operation where people have had surgery on their skulls done, and we know they survived. NARRATOR: Journey to a remote region of the Pacific where a long-dead civilization fashioned a vast city on scores of islands it built itself. Travel high among the Andes in South America to discover monuments constructed by a vanished people with stones twice the size of those that built the pyramids. What were the lost technological secrets of ancient times? How were they created, then thought to be lost forever? And how would our own world have been transformed if their discoveries had been developed over the centuries and instead of being lost in the shadows of the past? Join us as we explore the innovative genius of ancient man and probe the past to reveal the startling lost secrets of ancient technology. [music playing] In the beginning, he seemed so unlike a god. A vulnerable creature, at first, barely human, naked, alone, afraid. But one who would one day rule the Earth. [music playing] As his humanness emerged, what inner longing, what passion and compelled early man to create, to invent, to utterly transform his world? Perhaps one of his earliest discoveries would help to kindle his imagination. When man found fire, it meant that he could actually put a barrier between himself and his greatest enemy, which is darkness. He could actually have warmth and light around him, which perhaps gave him the opportunity to, think perhaps even to think abstract thoughts. NARRATOR: From fire, to the wheel, to the first forms of writing, ancient technology evolved over tens of thousands of years. We have struggled to give voice to our innate genius for invention. And yet, today, when we look back only 2,000 years, we perceive our ancestors as primitive. But were they? We seem to have this notion that simply because we have obtained the level of sophistication that we-- we have, that in the past, people were somehow intellectually inferior to us. In fact, in a great many cases, the reverse is true. We are, in many ways, considerably less sophisticated than our predecessors. [music playing] NARRATOR: Was the ancient mind more advanced in its thinking than we have ever imagined? Could such supposedly modern breakthroughs as steam power, the computer, the electrical battery, and the submarine have been conceived hundreds, even thousands of years before their time? [music playing] The quest for flight has long been viewed as a 20th century breakthrough. But is this ancient object discovered in a tomb near Saqqara, Egypt evidence that the Egyptians experimented with aerodynamic principles over 2,000 years ago? This is assumed to be a bird by Egyptologists because it has wings, however, the shape of the wings is unlike the shape of any known bird wing. As a matter of fact, the-- the wings are tilted down slightly at a-- that's what's called a dihedral angle. They have an airfoil section like the section of a modern aircraft wing. It has a perfectly upright tail. No bird known to science has such a tail. Actually, what it looks like is a model of an airplane. NARRATOR: Other scientists, however, strongly disagree. TOM CROUCH: It has been suggested that the Saqqara bird represents an early flying machine. Maybe it was a hand-launched glider, or maybe it was even a model, some people have suggested, for a larger aircraft. I don't think that's the case. NARRATOR: Was the Saqqara glider intended to represent an early aircraft? The controversy remains. [music playing] But even the most skeptical scientists now concede that ancient inventors achieved astonishing feats of technology which cannot be equaled today. Damascus steel, first created over 2,000 years ago. DAVID SIM: The making of Damascus steel is still a mystery because we really don't know exactly how it was done. There is a definite recipe for it, but we really are not sure what that recipe is. And although we've been able to reproduce steels that are similar to Damascus steel, we have never been able to reproduce it perfectly. NARRATOR: In the hands of fierce Saracen warriors, swords forged from this high-carbon metal carved a bloody swath through the early crusaders in the Holy Land. [music playing] The strength and cutting power of this tempered steel blade from a technology over 1,000 years old has not been duplicated even in the space age. It is only one of the lost secrets of ancient technology which still baffles scholars to this day. What we have seen in this century is the most incredible explosion and development of technology. But what we have to take into account is that technology is not a linear development. We have technology being invented, rising to a very sophisticated level, and then suddenly, we plunge back down into a dark age where most of it gets lost. [music playing, crowd shouting] NARRATOR: Tragically, throughout history, barbarism has threatened to destroy priceless treasures of human knowledge. [music playing] Perhaps the greatest crime ever committed in the ancient world was the willful destruction of these extraordinary buildings in Alexandria, Egypt. In the legendary library of Alexandria was a treasure trove holding the accumulated secrets of centuries of ancient technology. Starting in the year 48 before the common era, this monument to human inventive genius would be ravaged by a series of disastrous fires, set first by the Roman legions, then by Christian and Muslim conquerors. What priceless secrets went up in smoke, lost to mankind forever? We have a tendency as a-- as a species, to willfully obliterate whole areas of our past to-- to-- to wipe clean the memory banks of mankind, and the Library of Alexandria is an example of this. Who knows what it contained or what it told about the human story. All we really know about the contents of the Library of Alexandria now comes down to us from scholars who studied there, and everything indicates that it was an extraordinary repository of information completely lost to the world. [music playing] NARRATOR: If this ancient reservoir of world knowledge had survived, how would the wisdom it contained have transformed our past, our present, and our future? Only now are scientists finally unearthing the lost secrets of ancient technology, inventions before their time, hidden for hundreds, even thousands of years. The wonders of ancient technology, how were they conceived? Were some created after painstaking years of trial and error, others in a single blinding flash of genius? Surprisingly, modern scholars believe that many early breakthroughs were ignored in their own time. Never pursued or developed, their vast potential was lost for centuries. Only hundreds of years later have these forgotten innovations been unearthed by a twist of fate. [music playing] The shifting desert sands of Iraq near the timeless ancient city of Baghdad. Here, in 1936, Wilhelm Koenig, an Austrian scientist, made a discovery which would explode long-held assumptions about ancient technology. When the archeologists discovered this object, he looked at it, and it looked to him like a battery. In fact, it's very difficult to see what else it could be. It is a-- a small pottery jar with a copper tube hung down the middle and an iron rod suspended in the middle of the copper tube. The artifact was discovered in a site that is pretty clearly to be dated to the first century AD. [music playing] NARRATOR: Was it possible an ancient inventor had constructed an electrical battery? PAUL KEYSER: Now, there has been some controversy about what could they have been using a battery for in the first century AD, and furthermore, there's been some controversy about how on Earth could they have discovered the darn thing. My own view of how people could have managed to discover the principle embodied in the Baghdad battery already in the first century AD is, in fact, very simple. It is that any two dissimilar metals, in this case, copper and iron, when put in a liquid that is acidic will generate a voltage between them. NARRATOR: But what was the battery's purpose? Some scientists have speculated the current from the Baghdad battery might have been used to electroplate silver objects with a patina of gold, but some scholars disagree. The artifact was found in a house that is clearly a magician's house. There were bowls there with magical inscriptions in them. And we know that in Mesopotamia, in ancient Mesopotamia, the people who were in charge of medicine, the doctors, were the magicians. And therefore, my hypothesis is that this magician was, of course, a doctor, and he was using this battering as something medical. [music playing] NARRATOR: But what possible medical purpose might an electrical battery have served two millennia ago? Even in modern times, people use electrical current as a kind of painkiller device. Well, this could have been done in antiquity. NARRATOR: To support his theory, Professor Keyser found an intriguing clue in a bizarre practice of the ancient world. Along the Mediterranean and the Nile River, a rare breed of electrical fish called torpedo was raised for an unusual purpose. When a person suffered from physical pain, he would wade into waters stocked with the fish. Their mild electrical shocks would provide a tingling to help ease the pain. PAUL KEYSER: We have a first century AD Latin text by a man named Scribonius who actually describes how to cure pain in your legs by taking a living electric fish on the beach and standing on it. So the principle that this kind of tingling would have cured pain was well-known, is valid, it's used in modern times, and I think it's not so hard to see why an ancient Mesopotamian doctor magician would have made use of this to alleviate pain. [music playing] NARRATOR: Beyond the debate over the battery's purpose lies an even more provocative question, who was the inventor who created it? In his wildest imaginings, could he have conceived how the magic of electricity would someday transform the world? [music playing] As mysterious as the creation of the Baghdad battery was, why was it suddenly abandoned, not to be reinvented until 1,900 years later? While some lost secrets of ancient technology are buried beneath scorching desert sands, others lie entombed in the uncharted waters of the sea. In 1900, a sponge diver off the Greek island of Antikythera found the wreck of an ancient ship loaded with precious statues and ceramics. It had lain undisturbed for over 2,000 years. Called the first great underwater find of modern archeology, its cargo of priceless marble and bronze statues was recognized at once as a work of Greek artisans from the time of Jesus. But one mysterious object baffled scientists. This seemingly worthless barnacle-encrusted hunk of bronze had split into four fragments, which revealed geared wheels adorned with barely legible inscriptions. The discovery languished forgotten in the basement of a Greek museum for another half century, then, in 1951, an American historian, Professor Derek de Solla Price of Yale became fascinated with the mysterious object. Could it be that something existed in ancient times far more advanced than modern scientists were willing to admit? In 1971, Price received permission from the Greek government to X-ray the device. At last, he gazed at the site he had waited 20 years to see, a sophisticated instrument which Price called an ancient Greek computer. It had been designed to calculate the motions of the Sun, the Moon, and stars, past, present, and future, with amazing accuracy. To achieve its complex astronomical computations, the device relied on an impressive array of differential gears, ingeniously assembled to create the world's first analog computer. [music playing] Some lost secrets of ancient technology are not buried beneath the desert sands or in the depths of the sea. They have vanished simply because the inventor and his society never grasped its potential to transform the world. PAUL KEYSER: The mid-first century AD, an engineer named Hero, or in Greek, Heron, invented a number of very clever devices, one of which has been called the steam engine. He put water in the kettle, he would boil the water, the steam rises up through the tube, goes into the ball, and comes out the two bent tubes and the thing will spin around. In fact, it will spin around very rapidly. Modern models show that it will spin around at about 1,000 to 1,500 rotations per minute. NARRATOR: Had Hero unwittingly invented the first working steam engine? If he had combined its principle with other concepts which he had already developed, Hero might have built the world's first steam locomotive, perhaps even launched the modern industrial age. Professor Keyser has an even more intriguing theory. PAUL KEYSER: My answer is that he wasn't, in fact, building a steam engine. This was not designed to be a power source, but he was showing by having the steam jet out of this thing and having it spin around, you could actually make something move without pushing against anything. What it really was was a demonstration of the principal of the jet or rocket. NARRATOR: Whether Hero had stumbled upon the steam engine or the beginnings of jet propulsion, if he had followed through, he might have launched the Industrial Revolution 1,800 years before its time. But what if these brilliant early inventions had been pursued rather than abandoned? If the Greeks had developed the steam engine, would a European explorer have discovered America centuries before Columbus using steam ships instead of sailing vessels? If the analog computer of Greek times had sparked the continued development of such sophisticated devices, then by the 16th century, would Shakespeare have been writing his plays on a laptop? If the electrical battery invented in ancient Iraq had been refined for generations instead of being forgotten, would our own technology be vastly more advanced than it is today? Perhaps the reason these miracles of ancient technology were never pursued says less about their brilliant inventors than it does about the shortsightedness of those around them. For in ancient time, and in our own, quantum leaps into the future are only possible if the human imagination will expand to accept them. [music playing] Throughout the world, awe-inspiring monuments of stone bear witness to the genius of ancient architects and engineers. And looming as large as these megaliths are the riddles of their construction. The pyramids of Giza, to see them rising out of the desert is to experience wonder. To ask the question of how they were made is to confront one of the most profound mysteries of ancient times. Believed to have been created almost 5,000 years ago, each pyramid is said to have taken 30 years to construct. The pyramids are thought to have been built by the lifelong toil of untold thousands, and yet, as with almost everything regarding these awesome structures, there is controversy. The whole idea of thousands of slaves hauling blocks up ramps to build the pyramids is-- I mean, that-- that's a fine theory, but there's really no evidence from any Egyptian texts or depictions of people building pyramids this way. NARRATOR: The pyramids have been studied perhaps more than any other ancient monument on Earth. Yet, scholars can still not say how the stones were moved to construct them. These blocks weigh 200 tons each. Now, to put that into perspective, 200 tons is roughly equivalent in weight to 500 modern family-sized automobiles. The biggest cranes in the world can lift 200 ton blocks, but it takes six weeks to move those cranes into position for a single lift, and each block would require a relocation of the crane. You're looking at years, dozens, perhaps hundreds of years of work with modern cranes to put those temples into place, and yet, we're told by Egyptologists that they were built purely with manual labor. [music playing] NARRATOR: However the stones were brought to the building site, scholars agree the ancient Egyptians then faced an even more formidable task, for how could these enormous blocks of stone be lifted 20, 30, even 40 storeys above the ground? The question has puzzled scholars since ancient times. DAVID CHILDRESS: A French structural engineer by the name of Joseph Davidovits has a whole theory that the main blocks of say, the Great Pyramid, were actually poured into place, much like concrete. Now, the interior of the Great Pyramid, for instance, is built out of blocks of granite, and these are blocks of stone that would have to be quarried, but the bulk of the pyramid itself is made of this very sort of crumbly conglomerate stone, which he claims is a form of concrete. And therefore, in the building of the pyramids, we have an ingeniously simple technique. NARRATOR: Without possessing modern measuring instruments, how did the builders of the Great Pyramid achieved such an astounding degree of accuracy? GRAHAM HANCOCK: These ancients were looking at the stars and very precisely aligning their monuments to the stars. The characteristic of the Giza site is extreme precision, what we would really call today high-tech precision. The Great Pyramid of Egypt stands more than 450 feet tall. It weighs more than 6 million tons, and it has a footprint in excess of 13 acres. It's perfectly aligned to true north, south, east, and west. To achieve that precision of alignment with a monument on this scale is an extraordinary technological feat. NARRATOR: For thousands of years, we have gazed at them in wonder, and yet, their secrets still remain. [music playing] Even more mysterious than the age old riddle of how the Egyptians might have constructed the pyramids are the technological achievements of ancient civilizations in the new world. For in South America, there exists a feat of ancient technology which rivals the pyramids of Egypt as a testament to ancient engineering genius. While the Egyptian pyramids proclaim their splendor to the world, the very existence of a lost Inca city of Machu Picchu in Peru was deliberately kept secret for centuries to protect it from hostile invaders. [music playing] Machu Picchu's purpose and the secrets of the technology that built it remain a source of controversy to this day. The awesome challenge of construction which the Egyptians set for themselves at sea level, the peoples of the ancient Inca empire somehow had to achieve at the altitude of 9,000 feet. To achieve the formidable feat of constructing Machu Picchu, the Incas had to move stones weighing as much as 200 tons in a seemingly superhuman test of physical stamina in the thin air of the high Andes. What made the creation of Machu Picchu possible? Was it a result of an ingenious technology which we do not yet comprehend? While there is evidence for ramps to bring stones up along the wall and into position, there are many places where there is no room for such ramps because the walls are very close to precipices. So I really don't know how the stones were brought there. NARRATOR: After literally moving the gigantic stones up the steep mountainside, the Incas were somehow capable of cutting and fitting them together precisely without the use of mortar of any kind. But there are a few structures that exhibit incredible stonework, really fantastic. It strikes one by its precision, how stones of irregular shape are fit together with precision that not even a razor blade can be put in between. NARRATOR: As puzzling as the precision of the stonework is the question of why it was created. Scholars speculate that Machu Picchu may have been a summer retreat for the emperor of the Incas and his court. And yet, the mystery of its creation remains. [music playing] In the quest for the lost secrets of the ancient master builders, perhaps the ultimate mystery lies 400 miles to the southeast of Machu Picchu at the altitude of over 12,000 feet in the high Andes. Here, in Bolivia, on a windswept plain, lie the ruins known Tiahuanaco. Almost nothing is known of its mysterious creators, who some believe lived here as early as 14,000 years ago. Even their name is lost in the shadows of time. The monumental Gateway of the Sun is carved from a single massive block of volcanic rock weighing more than 150 tons. Yet, curiously, the quarry from which it was cut is nearly 200 miles away. The biggest blocks at Giza weigh 200 tons. The biggest blocks of Tiahuanaco weigh 400 tons. 400 ton blocks of stone used to create enormous constructions 12,500 feet above sea level in an area where it's almost not possible to grow any food today. The altitude is so high that the crops come out of the ground stunted. You could not support ever a large labor force at that altitude, and no large labor force on Earth would be capable of hauling 400 tons blocks. Again, whether we like it or not, we're looking at the evidence of a technology, and one that we don't understand. NARRATOR: Even more impressive than the weight of stones used in construction was the technology holding them together, for the builders conceived an ingenious invention to lock the stones into place. Pouring molten metal into small molds, they created braces which bear an astonishing resemblance to modern staples. What was the source of the technology which made the monuments of Tiahuanaco possible? Inexplicably, unlike both the Egyptians and the Incas, these master builders left no written records for the ages. But a single enigmatic statue known to the local inhabitants today as the Friar may hold a clue. Oddly enough, for a people who had no form of the written word, the Friar seems to be holding an object in the familiar shape of a book, complete with leather binding and metal latches. Could this be a depiction of a benevolent leader who somehow, in the distant past, imparted secrets of technology to the people of the high Andes? [music playing] From Machu Picchu to Tiahuanaco, and perhaps other lost sites yet undiscovered, vast monuments across the world remain among the most mystifying and the most enduring evidence of the prowess of ancient technology. [music playing] La Pampa Colorado, the red plain of Peru. It has not rained in this remote and hostile desert for over 10,000 years. This is the ancient domain of a mysterious and long forgotten people known as the Nazca Indians. Here, their ancient tombs from the time of Jesus once contained precious pottery, exquisite gold jewelry, elaborate weaving, and the mummified remains of their honored dead. The treasures have been looted by grave robbers, desecrated by the ravages of time. When the Nazca ruled over the land, they were a fierce people, head-hunters who wore the decapitated heads of their slain enemies as trophies. Yet, surprisingly, these warlike people were also pioneers on the frontiers of ancient technology. When modern scientists discovered these skulls, they were forced to reach a startling conclusion. 2,000 years ago, the Nazca people were performing brain surgery. [music playing] I think it's extraordinary that people really did do brain surgery 2,000 years ago, and we know they did because the skulls still exist with the wounds completely healed. [music playing] NARRATOR: Scientists believe the ancient Nazca people performed delicate surgical operations on the brain, not for ritual purposes, but for purely medical reasons. Over 1,000 skulls have been unearthed at Nazca showing unmistakable proof that the Peruvian surgeons used precision instruments for these operations. But as remarkable as these archeological findings is the mystery to be found above ground at Nazca. For here, inscribed on the desert floor, is one of the most baffling and spectacular creations of ancient technology known as the Nazca lines. What you see in Nazca is huge. It's on a-- it's on a vast scale. It's on such a scale that's so large that you can't see it all. Lines at Nazca go actually for hundreds of miles straight through the Andes. You see a vast array of different figures, animal figures, such as birds, and spiders, and killer whales. You see large trapezoid figures intersecting these animal figures. And the more you look at Nazca, the more puzzling it becomes. [music playing] NARRATOR: The Nazca lines have been called the largest work of art on Earth, though their true purpose remains a source of intense controversy. All that is certain is that the Nazca Indians moved millions of stones to create the mysterious lines, which cover an area of 200 square miles. By stripping the top layer of stones to bare the lighter soil beneath, the Nazca created their masterpiece. [music playing] So vast was the technological achievement of the Nazca lines that it was, ironically, lost for centuries, and only was discovered when airplanes began flying over the desert in the 1920s. Since then, the lines have attracted researchers from around the world attempting to decipher their enigmatic riddles. One of the most notable researchers was German scientist Maria Reiche, who first saw the Nazca lines in 1940. You can see the lines are absolutely straight, and people have wondered very often how the ancient people could do these straight lines without any engineering instruments. [music playing] NARRATOR: For the next 50 years, until her death in 1991, Maria Reiche's study of the lines became an obsession. And as she relentlessly probed the timeless mystery, the woman whom the local people called the witch of the lines conceived a provocative theory. Maria Reiche's theories were largely that Nazca was a giant astronomical, astrological observatory. And many of the animal figures would be identified with zodiacal signs, for instance. Similarly, other lines that are intersecting these figures have to do with directions of stars and astronomical alignments, that kind of thing. But there's a lot more to Nazca than that. NARRATOR: The fundamental question remains, why was this enigmatic achievement carved into the desert if it can only be seen from the air? Now, there are certain explanations for that. One is that the gods were to view the lines, and therefore, the people never were able to view them from the air. Another interesting idea is that the lines were made for shamans to view, and that these Peruvian shamans were ingesting hallucinogenic cactus, for instance, and then would be astrally launched spiritually over the plains. NARRATOR: Searching for more down-to-earth answers, archeologists have discovered intriguing clues buried in the dusty soil of the plain, startling artifacts seemingly depicting people in flight in hot air balloons. Mummies wearing garments of exquisite fabric were also exhumed. So sophisticated was the technology of this weaving that the fabrics unique combination of light weight and tensile strength had scarcely been duplicated to this day. Scientists wondered, were these durable textiles and ancient depictions of balloons in flight missing links in the riddle of the lines? Could the ancients have intended that the Nazca lines be viewed from a primitive hot air balloon, fashioned from this light, but resilient fabric. American archeologist named Jim Woodman and his crew built a-- a balloon, a-- a hot air building out of local materials. They made a reed boat. They used some of the Peruvian woven fabrics to create a hot air balloon, and they successfully flew over the Nazca plain. NARRATOR: In the cold dawn of July 6, 1967, Woodman and Julian Nott lifted off in an attempt to recreate the technique of ancient flight. It was perhaps achieved by the Nazca Indians 1,000 years before the first hot air balloon was ever invented in Europe. [music playing] JULIAN NOTT: Indeed, it's perfectly possible that people could have made the lines to be seen by the gods, to be seen by their own ancestors, or maybe even, of course, to have been seen themselves when they finally went to Heaven. There's no question that the people of Nazca 1,000 years ago could have built a hot air balloon and could have flown it. Whether they did, that is still, indeed, a mystery. NARRATOR: Were the lines intended to be viewed from a hot air balloon, or were they created for some mysterious purpose beyond our comprehension? The clues are few, a scrap of fabric, a drawing on a shattered urn, but the colossal labor of the ancient Nazca Indians will forever remain one of the most enduring achievements of ancient technology. [music playing] Europe in the 10th century. It was a world gripped by fear and ignorance, pestilence and illiteracy, superstition and bloody warfare. Between the first millennium after the death of Jesus and the 1300s, Europe was beset by multiple catastrophes. Faster than graves could be dug, victims of the Black Death were buried. In this bleak world, science, medicine, and technology was seen as being in direct conflict with Christianity. Western Europe was mired in the Dark Ages and the haunted landscape of the medieval mind. Yet, half a world away, there was a startlingly different universe. [music playing] ACTOR AS HUIZONG: He who paints in bright colors cannot use his brush here. Creation alone leaves the masterpiece. Emperor Huizong, 1100 of the Common Era. NARRATOR: China, a civilization that reaches back over 3,000 years. Yet, paradoxically, this ancient kingdom would nurture technological achievements which scholars today consider surprisingly modern. While European surgeons were bleeding people to death in the false hope of curing them of the plague, the Chinese had already unlocked the secret of inoculation against disease. But it wasn't only medicine where the Chinese made inventions far ahead of their time. From the fishing pole and the umbrella, to the suspension bridge, the Chinese had solved a myriad of technological problems far before the West. For scholars of ancient technology, the enduring mystery remains, who were these mighty innovators? Why were the Chinese so far ahead of their time? China develop independently of the rest of the world, and that gives us a fascinating comparison point. China is an ancient civilization. Unlike the civilization of ancient Egypt, it never broke down, went away, and collapsed and went through a dark age. So we have got a very long record of continuous Chinese civilization. [gong bonging, people shouting] NARRATOR: If necessity is the mother of invention, perhaps curiosity is its father. 200 years before the birth of Christ, the first Chinese emperor, Shi Huang, became obsessed with discovering the secret of life itself. He believed himself to be a god, and wanted to ensure that he would live forever. He scoured the countryside for wise men and magicians who might unlock the riddle of everlasting life. Shi Huang never found the answer, but his quest for knowledge established a tradition in China which continued for over 1,000 years. What happened was that Chinese alchemists were engaged in a long search for elixirs of immortality, medicines that would make you live forever. And in the course of investigating some of the interesting substances that they had come across, particularly, potassium nitrate, salt peter, they made certain mixtures which they found had very strange properties. One text of the ninth century AD detailed one mixture with sulfur, salt peter, and honey, and says, this is one of a number of recipes that you must never make. [music playing, fire whooshing] NARRATOR: Ironically, alchemists seeking the formula for eternal life found instead a substance destined to kill untold millions of people, for the Chinese alchemists had unwittingly discovered gunpowder. [music playing, weapons firing] Gunpowder was already in use in Chinese armies in the 11th century AD, when people in Europe were still simply hitting one another over the head with clubs and stabbing one another with swords and spears. [music playing] NARRATOR: Using their new discovery, the Chinese developed rudimentary guns, but then, surprisingly, never developed them further. Some scholars believe it was China's isolation from surrounding countries that accounts for this mystery. [music playing, weapons firing] CHRISTOPHER CULLEN: It wasn't until Chinese gunpowder weapons reach Europe during the Middle Ages they began to be put under the kind of pressure for development that you only get when several countries have all got gunpowder weapons, and they're all desperately trying to get the drop on everybody else, whereas in China, the pressure for development of the weapons beyond a certain point of adequacy was not there. NARRATOR: Although the emperor equipped his army with gunpowder weapons, the new invention was used by the Chinese primarily for their own enjoyment. [MUSIC PLAYING, FIREWORKS EXPLODING] During a fireworks festival honoring Emperor Lizong in 1264, one firework misfired. Instead of heading for the stars, it sped directly at the emperor's family. Witnessing this mishap, an ingenious Chinese inventor saw an application that was far removed from entertainment. When arrows were attached to firework's tubes filled with gunpowder, it was found they could travel over 1,000 yards. He had invented the rocket, precursors to the destructive weapons of the Second World War and the fearsome missiles of the nuclear age. [music playing] Incredibly, ancient Chinese technology has taken us to the Moon and back. In this sophisticated court of the emperor's palace, a spoon laid upon a bronze plate had the power to literally change the world. Magicians and conjurers in the emperor's inner circle used the device in the art of geomancy, or feng shui, the supernatural Chinese study of aligning dwellings harmoniously with the magnetic currents of the Earth's surface. A spoon, made of magnetic lodestone, was spun on the plate, and its motions examined closely. The plate was divided into north, south, east, and west. Incredibly, 300 years before the birth of Jesus, the Chinese had invented the compass. It is a mystery to scholars that though the Chinese developed the compass for use in magic, they did not at first use it as a tool of navigation. Meanwhile, in Europe, without the compass, adventurers had launched an age of exploration using only the stars as their guide. In medieval Europe, religion was often at odds with technology. Strangely, in China, religion hastened the development of technology, especially the art of printing. Printing was invented in China and exploited centuries before it was used in the West. In Buddhism, there is an immense store of merit attached to somebody who passes on or copies or freely distributes one of the Buddhist scriptures. NARRATOR: The earliest printed text in the world was a Buddhist charm scroll printed in the year 704. At that time in Europe, the common man was barely literate. By the 10th century, printing had exploded in China, as a variety of books were published in the millions. The generation of printed text in ancient China is immense. It is the land of the book. Whereas in the West, a scholar would have to, before Gutenberg, copy out books if he wanted them. In China, you went to a bookshop and you bought one. NARRATOR: Johannes Gutenberg has long been credited with inventing movable type in Germany in 1458. It had, in fact, been invented over 400 years earlier by the Chinese. CHRISTOPHER CULLEN: In the 17th century, Francis Bacon was writing about the great discoveries that made his world different from the world of the Greeks and Romans, and he named three great inventions, printing, magnetic compass, and gunpowder, the origins of which he said are obscure and inglorious. The thing he didn't know was, in fact, they are all Chinese inventions, and they had all reached Europe during the Middle Ages. [music playing] NARRATOR: Mysteriously, over the centuries, the Chinese themselves became as ignorant as the West of their ancestors' glorious achievements. Why, with all their inventive genius, did they not fully develop many of their greatest discoveries? Perhaps the answer lies in the structure of Chinese society itself. CHRISTOPHER CULLEN: This huge, feudal bureaucratic structure left little room for innovation. It wasn't the sort of structure that welcomed new ideas and change. So in many ways, the-- the underdeveloped and fragmented nature of Europe sometimes gave it a head start in making use of Chinese inventions. [music playing] NARRATOR: From the 17th century onwards, the Chinese became increasingly dazzled by European technological expertise. When the Chinese were shown a mechanical clock by Jesuit missionaries, they were awestruck. The Chinese had forgotten that it was they who had invented mechanical clocks in the first place, thousands of years before. [music playing] Lost in the vast, uncharted oceans of time, some of the most remarkable achievements of ancient technology can be found in some of the most inaccessible places on Earth. Here, overgrown by the vines of a primeval mangrove swamp, lies one of the great enigmas of ancient technology. DAVID CHILDRESS: On a remote Pacific island in Micronesia, about 1,000 miles northeast of New Guinea, an island known as Pohnpei is what is probably the eighth wonder of the world. NARRATOR: The people of the island called this forbidden place Nan Madol, the city of the gods. They are reluctant to set foot here, for they fear the spirits haunting the ominous grandeur which surrounds them. Who could have possibly created it? It's totally uninhabited. The islanders who live on Pohnpei Island are-- are afraid to go to this city, and they believe that if they do go there, they will die. It's-- it's like a city of the dead, and it's reported by people who live near it at night that they see lights moving through the city. NARRATOR: Scholars believe Nan Madol was built over 1,500 years ago. As if the challenge of its construction was not formidable enough, the city was built on a series of 92 man-made islands. To achieve this colossal feat, hundreds of thousands of gigantic stone logs made of basalt were stacked together and then filled with tons of coral rubble. The result, from an estimated 250 million tons of basalt rose a city which covers 11 square miles. [music playing] The Irish seamen who discovered this lost world in 1828 refused to believe it could have been created by the primitive fishermen who had lived there in grass huts on the island of Pohnpei for centuries. Today, scholars theorize that Nan Madol was somehow built by the islanders themselves for an elite dynasty of rulers. The most persistent mystery about Nan Madol, I believe, for me, at least, as an archeologist, is among other things, how they moved the largest stones. Given the small population size of Pohnpei, as the island couldn't have supported a total population of more than 25,000 or 30,000 people, it still created an architectural monument that rivals monuments in early civilizations all over the world. Basalt, which is one of the heaviest stones in the world, some of the stones, they weigh up to 50 tons at Nan Madol are stacked up in walls 40 or 50 feet high. It boggles the mind at how-- how it would have been created. NARRATOR: How could this superhuman feat of engineering have been possible for a population scholars estimate may have only numbered 25,000 people? PAUL KEYSER: The stone is brittle and they're easily cracked or fractured, and yet, they elevated some of these columns up to 8 meters above the tops of walls, and did this thousands of times without breaking very many of them. And that remains one of the real enigmas for me. There's the details of the construction techniques itself. [music playing] NARRATOR: How could this vast city built of stones weighing as much as 50 tons possibly have been created? It is a riddle which haunts the imagination of the islanders as powerfully as it perplexes modern scientists. The islanders absolutely insist that the stones of this city were levitated and magically flown through the air and then put into place. NARRATOR: Other legends among the islanders of Pohnpei relate that a potent drug made from a pepper plant gave their ancestors superhuman strength to lift the stones. Scientists believe that the truth is every bit as surprising. One of the striking things about Nan Madol and Pohnpei is the fact that given a very small population of maybe 25,000 people, they were able to accomplish many of the same things with regard to stone construction and transport of massive stones that we see in the evolving civilizations like Egypt and Meso America. NARRATOR: The creators of Nan Madol had no beasts of burden or wheeled vehicles to help them. Instead, scientists believe that somehow, the stones which built Nan Madol were moved with nothing more than ropes, handmade from hibiscus vines, and tree trunks, used to slide the giant blocks into place. If these theories are true, then perhaps nowhere on Earth have such monumental structures been so ingeniously created with such primitive technology, proof that even when human technology is severely limited, the potential for human creativity is boundless. [music playing] Recently, scientists have proposed an even more startling possibility. Could an underwater city exist near Nan Madol, even more awe-inspiring than the one they built on their man-made islands? WILLIAM AYRES: Pohnpeian oral history, oral traditions do refer to that concept of various kinds of other worlds where people go, for example, when their spirits go, when they die. There are elements of a deep sea world that are reflected in some oral histories, but the reference to an underwater city is unique in its tie just to Nan Madol itself. NARRATOR: Intrigued by tantalizing legends of a lost underwater city at Nan Madol, author and explorer David Childress conducted his own investigation of the site. DAVID CHILDRESS: The islanders did not want us to actually go diving there. They felt that the city itself was kind of a sacred city, a city of the gods. There's also a number of what appear to be columns, coral encrusted columns that are about 80 feet deep in the water now. A number of archeologists have done some studies of this, including the University of Hawaii and the University of Ohio, where they have looked at some of these underwater structures and tried to find alignments to them. For instance, I mean, there-- there appear to be like, standing stones that are moving away from the city. [music playing] NARRATOR: Other scientists, however, dispute Childress' claim. We've done some underwater archeological explor-- exploration of this area and have found a series of large columns of rock-like material that extend up from the coral reef, but these appear to be-- all the ones we've looked at appear to be natural coral growth. NARRATOR: Does an underwater city exist near Nan Madol, or is the legend only an echo of the mystique of Nan Madol itself? The only certainty is that as scientists unlock the secrets of ancient technology, this forbidden city remains one of its most mystifying enigmas. In all of history, no single inventor has rivaled the brilliance of one transcendent genius, Leonardo da Vinci. When we look at Leonardo's mind, what we see is a man who was capable of working in many dimensions. He was one of these men who was good at everything. NARRATOR: The Renaissance painter was renowned as an artist who created some of the most serene images of earthly peace ever conceived. Yet, ironically, the same visionary artist who shaped the Mona Lisa's smile planted the deadly seeds of modern warfare, for he designed countless fearsome weapons centuries before their time. [music playing] The machine gun and would not be introduced into warfare until World War I, when it would see action with devastating effect. [weapons firing] [music playing] By early 1500, Leonardo had already conceived a multi-barreled cannon, a major conceptual breakthrough. Mechanized warfare has proved decisive in modern battles from the Nazi blitzkrieg of World War II, to operation Desert Storm. [music playing] But incredibly, Leonardo had already conceived of the principle of the tank centuries earlier. Of all the awesome weapons of the Space Age, one has been called the jewel in the crown, the submarine, the most technologically complex weapon of modern warfare. Here, in a prophetic sketch, Leonardo envisions his design for the first submarine. Could Leonardo have glimpsed the future and realized the ominous implications of this almost invincible weapon of destruction? His letters reveal the grave misgivings of a man who feared the power of an invention before its time. ACTOR AS LEONARDO DA VINCI: I do not describe my method for remaining underwater for as long a time as I can remain. This I do not publish or divulge on account of the evil nature of men who would practice assassination at the bottom of the seas. Leonardo da Vinci. [music playing] NARRATOR: Housed in the French chateau where he spent his last years, these prototype models capture Leonardo's virtuosity in the arts of war. Ultimately, however, he would decide to abandon his designs for weapons of destruction, for he called war madness. [music playing] Leonardo would now turn his prodigious talents in an awesome series of directions. His vision ranged from civil engineering and hydrodynamics to physiology. The sketchbooks of Leonardo provide a startling insight into the mind of an inventive genius centuries ahead of his time. This technology that he was writing about and drawing designs for had to be kept a secret as well. There was clearly a suppression of science going on. He had to write in his own notebooks in a reverse mirror image just so that the powers that be wouldn't-- wouldn't even know what he was doing with these technological advances. [music playing] NARRATOR: The very technique with which Leonardo recorded his ideas offers a clue to the extraordinary nature of his intelligence. For in his sketchbooks, it appears he wrote backwards with his left hand while sketching in the margins with his right. If Leonardo's days were consumed with the practical realities of innovation, his nights were filled with dreams of flight. [music playing] Obsessed with the possibilities of aviation throughout his life, Leonardo endlessly studied the anatomy of birds, fascinated by the ease with which they soared through the air. In his quest to soar with the birds, Leonardo at first trying to imitate the structure of their wings in his designs. But it was not until he imitated the design of a bat's wings that his breakthrough in aeronautical design was realized. Its innovative engineering has sparked an intriguing question, would it have flown? In my view, they wouldn't work, and they wouldn't work only because at the time he invented them, he didn't have the materials to make them. In today's society, where we have these incredibly strong and very light materials, it's more than possible that his machines or the ideas of his machines would work. [music playing] NARRATOR: Leonardo's experiments with designs for flight went beyond imitating the anatomy of bats and birds. Was this strange craft the first design in history of a helicopter? Was this sketch the spark of inspiration for the parachute? Ironically, it was not until the late 1800s that Leonardo's notebooks were carefully examined. The world would not appreciate his innovative genius until others had made his same discoveries hundreds of years after his death. [music playing] Tragically, a man whose prodigious mind conceived countless technological wonders was doomed to never see them take shape. As if to echo his frustration, Leonardo scrawled in the margins of his notebooks again and again-- ACTOR AS LEONARDO DA VINCI: Tell me if anything is ever done. Leonardo da Vinci. NARRATOR: Perhaps for the visionaries on the frontiers of technology, the quest is never complete. [music playing] In the ancient world, countless inventions were conceived and created only to be lost or forgotten. From the Baghdad battery, to the steam engine, to the innovations of Leonardo da Vinci, many potential breakthroughs were never pursued until centuries later. Why were so many ancient innovations doomed to oblivion? PAUL KEYSER: In our modern world, we have this idea that progress should occur, and therefore, people push it, and that reveals our Industrial Revolution. The ancient people had a different idea in mind about what the goal of life was. They didn't expect progress. They didn't expect that things would always get better, therefore, when they hit upon a new innovation, they didn't always follow it up. [music playing] NARRATOR: In our own time, as in the ancient world, the indifference of society can condemn even the most brilliant inventions to obscurity, for perhaps the greatest enemies of technology throughout history have been those who lacked imagination. Even in modern times, the failure to recognize the vast potential of technology has hindered its advancement. In 1898, the director of the US Patent Office in Washington DC made an announcement, which at the time, may have seemed perfectly reasonable. He had decided to close the office forever. Incredibly, the-- in 1898, director of the US Patent Office proclaimed that there was nothing new to invent. He said everything had been invented. And he was the director of the Patent Office, who-- who else should know but him? Of course, he was horribly wrong. There was so much more to invent. [music playing] NARRATOR: Fortunately, in spite of his suggestion, the Patent Office remained open, and the thousands of inventions patented in recent decades have proved that the potential for innovation is infinite. [music playing] But what is the true purpose of technology? Many believe that, ironically, as technology has mushroomed, it has placed the very future of mankind in jeopardy. [music playing, bombs exploding] GRAHAM HANCOCK: We're here, if you like, to tend and look after the garden of the Earth. We have to function as a spiritual being, and also as a material being, and as material beings, we need to manipulate the physical world around us. We need to be able to realize our potential. It's perhaps unfortunate that our material side becomes dominant in our thinking, and that we devise technologies that are materially-oriented and that don't, in any way, nourish the spiritual aspect of ourselves. NARRATOR: It is no longer a question of what we can accomplish with technology, but of whether we have the wisdom to control its awesome power. For sometimes, it seems as if technology itself has become our most ruthless and implacable enemy. CHRISTOPHER CULLEN: I'm sure that there will be many more things, inconceivable inventions that will come upon us. God knows how we will cope with them. For the last 5,000 years, human beings have been subjecting themselves to an unimaginable routine of rapid technical change. So far, we have survived, but there is absolutely nothing to guarantee that we will in future. [music playing] NARRATOR: Throughout the world, a new wave of technology has evolved, one for which ancient man had no need, inventions to combat the devastating effects of technology itself. [music playing] Los Angeles, California suffers from some of the worst air pollution in the United States, largely, a toxic byproduct of the automobile. And yet, in a state-of-the-art laboratory in Southern California, an inventor named Jack Bitterly and a small staff of engineers have designed a non-polluting energy source for automobiles. A flywheel made of densely packed carbon fibers spins in a vacuum chamber at up to 100,000 revolutions per minute. As the wheel turns, it generates electricity. Will this new technology prove a major breakthrough, or only a dead end, a dream doomed to oblivion? Only one thing is certain, unless our society succeeds in combating the toxic effects of our own technology, the results will be catastrophic. What we're seeing is a cyclical event, and it is more than possible that we are now at the fringes of another dark age, where all our technology is going to get lost, and we will plunge back down for another 1,000 years back down to primitive levels, and then, perhaps, we'll rise again. I don't believe that our technology will continue to advance the way that it is, because I don't think our society will. [music playing] NARRATOR: If, through nuclear war or environmental disaster, we plunge into another dark age, what will future generations know of the achievements of our time? Our understanding of the innovations of the past is just as fragmentary. We have only begun to probe the treasures of ancient technology, expressions of the enduring genius of humanity. The word genius means to me the divine spark in humanity, the thing that is special about us, that distinguishes us from the animals, and we are different. There is something special and very mysterious about mankind. Why do we suddenly become a conscious creature capable of self-examination, wondering about the meaning of our lives? There is something inside us that seems distinct, almost, from ourselves, and that gives meaning to everything around us. And it's from this-- this genius, the spirit, the soul of mankind, if you like, that everything that is special and valuable about mankind comes. [music playing]
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Channel: HISTORY
Views: 2,902,556
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Keywords: history, history channel, history shows, history channel shows, ancient mysteries, history ancient mysteries, ancient mysteries show, ancient mysteries full episodes, ancient mysteries clips, full episodes, ancient technology explained, ancient tech history channel, ancient technology history channel, ancient technology episode ancient mysteries, ancient mysteries history full episodes, ancient mysteries season 1, ancient mysteries full episode season 1
Id: 277M3I1Ttw0
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Length: 89min 10sec (5350 seconds)
Published: Wed Apr 13 2022
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