(bicycle wheels rattling) (upbeat music) - It's the ocean versus the Dutch. That's the battle that's
going on right now. (ticking) It's been going on for hundreds of years and you know, who's winning, the Dutch. (upbeat music) See all that water, it's super ingenious the
way they designed it. Can you tell the engineering marvel? - If I hear one more
thing about the water. (upbeat music) - Look at this map of Holland in 1300, compare this to a map of Holland today. The country has gained land. Yes, thousands and thousands
of square kilometers of land has been won back from the ocean. (ticking) The story of this battle
between the ocean and the Dutch explains why Holland is good at cheese, why Amsterdam has canals, Why Dutch people ride bikes. (upbeat music) - And for those who are confused, the Dutch, Netherlands and
Holland are all the same thing and they all have different reasons and I'm not gonna go into them. You can like, look at Wikipedia. This is just when I use those words, it all has to do with the same
thing, which is this country, okay? (upbeat music) So the Netherlands or Holland
or whatever you wanna call it is a country that is sinking. It's actually... the majority of it is under sea level or right at sea level. (upbeat music) I mean, if you look at the map of Holland, you see that a lot of it is just these little strips of land that are right up in the North sea and the ocean and the wind just kind of eat away at
this land year after year. Instead of fleeing these
coastal communities that were slowly sinking into the water, about 500 years ago, the
Dutch started to fight back. (upbeat music) Now, let's just be clear about one thing, which is, fighting the ocean, the incessant, timeless
powerhouse, the ocean, is a very difficult thing. Where are we going? - Texel - What? (upbeat music) Texel? - Texel. (upbeat music) - We made it. - We made it. (upbeat music) - This battle between the
Netherlands and the ocean is now much more real for me, and this wind and these waves are so crazy and consistent. They're just eating this land alive and yet the Netherlands
have decided to fight back and they're doing a pretty darn good job. (upbeat music) - Holland is up for this task. They've developed a whole system, a whole science behind
hydrological engineering that has allowed them to combat the effects and the erosion of the ocean. - My favorite is the Curry ketchup, and Johnny loves the (indistinct) and they actually go really well together. Like us. (laughs) (upbeat music) - Okay, so how do they actually do this? This is where it gets really interesting. (upbeat music) There are a few techniques
that the Dutch use for their wizardry over the water. The first one has to do
with them building a wall around a body of water that
they want to turn into land. Build a wall around it and
then they, back in the day, would build a windmill next to those walls and they would use the windmill to spin, and as the windmill would spin, that would spin a pump that
would pump the water out of that land. (upbeat music) They'll plant on it, and they will do whatever they need to do to actually make it a
firm, dry, habitable land and then they'll build entire cities on. (upbeat music) And then in 1932, Holland had a huge win. (upbeat music) There's this giant part of the country that was a part of the sea. And they finally built this huge wall. (upbeat music) Building this giant
wall, created a barrier between the saltwater sea and
made this huge body of water into a fresh water lake. (upbeat music) After they built this wall, they then started to
section off little pieces of this newly created Lake, and to start to turn
those into land as well. So this is all of the land
that they have created since 1932, when they built
a wall to make this Lake. I mean, it's totally crazy. (dramatic music) The Netherlands,
actually, a few years ago, got a new province, like a
new state in their country, not because of any administrative reform, but because they literally
reclaimed a giant piece of land that used to be under the sea. (dramatic music) So much of the Dutch
coastline looks like this, just super fortified with asphalt and a million other building materials that they have come to for hundreds and hundreds
of years of experimentation. It seems simple, it's like a wall, but in this wall lies the big secret to Holland not sinking, and they don't always work. There have been times
when these walls break, but for the most part, this
has been a success story, (soft uplifting music) But it's not just
creating land out of water it's also just how they manage water in every one of their cities. (cheerful upbeat music) Amsterdam used to just be, I mean, you can hear it in the name, a dam on the Amstel river. (cheerful upbeat music) They then built it up and they created this series of canals, a very intentional design, as you can see, and in doing so, they made this city a
very accessible boat city, which was a very lucrative thing to do back in like the 1500's and 1600's. Amsterdam became an economic hub in Europe and developed a very quickly. A population boom contributed
to the golden age of Holland. And even today, Amsterdam is a giant economic and global hub, which you can attribute to how the Dutch have just mastered water and learned how to intentionally
design their cities and their country around water management. (cheerful upbeat music) A lot of the things we think
of as quintessential of Dutch come from this culture
of water management. And it now that sounds like the
wonkiest thing in the world, but listen to me here, see the bikes, the bikes are a product of this low land because when you have flat land, it's relatively close together because as most of the
land is waterlogged, then bikes become a really efficient, viable transportation means. You also have some of the most
fertile grounds in the world for growing grass, which then becomes
fertile pastures for cows, which produce amazing dairy products, which is why Dutch cheese is
such wonderful, amazing cheese. And then of course there are windmills. Windmills are a huge Dutch thing. Windmills come from this
history of pumping water from lakes and the ocean to
create new pieces of land. For a long time windmills
were the technology, which is why Poland is full of windmills. Finally, you have these tulips. Tulips are another huge Dutch thing. The reason for this is that tulips grow in this special clay-sand-soil mixture and a lot of that exact soil
is right here in Holland because of the fact
that a lot of this land was under water before they reclaimed it, and so it's perfect for growing tulips. So a lot of Dutch culture could be attributed to water management and conquering the water. (upbeat music) I hope you now understand
why Amsterdam has canals and the marvel of Dutch water management. So much more to learn. I wanna thank Skillshare
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more in-depth explainers, which kind of take a lot of time, but I hope you learned a lot and I'll see you in the next one. (upbeat music)
“How the Dutch beat the ocean” Not if global warming has anything to say about it 😂😅