Source Of Civilization: Who Created The World's Ancient Cities? | Alexander's Lost World | Odyssey

foreign [Music] s and war-torn plains of Central Asia lie tantalizing traces of the ancient world here 2 300 years ago Alexander the Great became the first European to the east in an epic campaign the ancient Greeks crushed the Persian Empire it was a turning point in human history along the banks of the mighty oxus River Alexander discovered a highly developed Eastern civilization my name is David Adams I'm a photojournalist and I want to explore the footprints of this ancient world today almost entirely erased this is my quest for Alexander's Lost World [Music] Far Eastern Afghanistan one of the most remote and extreme Landscapes on Earth when Alexander marched East along age-old mountain passes he was securing his route to India he ventured into a realm of Lost Cities and forgotten tribes for the final stretch of my journey I want to Trek up to the ox's headwaters to meet the people that call themselves The Children of Alexander [Music] here lies the trail of great European explorers that came to find the source of the riveroxas [Music] well this is it the source of the auctions it's absolutely bone chilling but the sauce really isn't the issue what the issue is is the amazing civilizations that this River has given birth to there's a connection between this ancient river and the story of our earliest beginnings the source of civilization [Music] in a series of historic victories over more than four years of battle Alexander defeated his Persian enemy now his Empire stretched from Greece in the west to the kingdom of bactria in the east all that stood in his way were the mountain passes that led to the Ultimate Prize India [Music] these inhospitable and remote ranges are the same today as they were in Alexander's time so far we've driven all the way from the oxos river valley we're now venturing into the wakan corridor a 300 kilometer long strip of immense Peaks the meeting place of the pamir and Hindu Kush mountains ported by Tajikistan to the north Pakistan to the South [Music] surviving Greek records reveal little about Alexander's route through the Maze of ancient highways that follow these mountain valleys but what's certain is back then Alexander and his army had nothing like our four-wheel drives I've only ever seen battery and camels in the zoo so to see them here right on the auxis is just incredible they're just left out here to Rome and then obviously when they're needed they use this pack animals and they're taken up higher into the Panera it's just exciting Alexander was inspired to campaign from bactria to India by the story of one of his Heroes the god Dionysus this ancient Mosaic shows the triumphant return of Dionysus from India Alexander believed that to do the same would make him immortal we're heading for a village called sahad the age-old Terminus for Central Asian Caravans that brought people ideas and goods between East and West well as my dear old dad used to say when you come to the end stop this is as far as the road goes this is sahad from now on we walk and there's something very special about sahad [Music] it's the home of your lucky and they've lived here almost forever they believe they are the living descendants of Alexander himself it's been over 2 300 years since the Greeks marched through these Highlands but today the legend of Alexander still lives large since the earliest of times the origin of the wacky has been a mystery subsistence Farmers they cultivate crops in the spring and move up the valley to higher pasture in the summer [Music] it's said that the Blood of Alexander the Great runs through their veins [Music] you know I have a feeling that these guys actually haven't had the photo taken before or actually seen the image on a camera thank you if you look at the Children's faces it's easy to see where the idea came from they have distinctly different features to the Afghans we've met so far in the lowlands and some have striking blue green colored eyes did Alexander and his soldiers father children in these villages I'd love it to be true but it seems no more than a romantic idea one of Alexander's biographers courteous tells us that in 327 BC Alexander met a mountain tribe like the Waki in a neighboring Valley just as his army was about to lay Siege to their small town Alexander stopped his attack and declared the community to be the children of his hero the god Dionysus yeah Mountain tribes like the Waki were already here when the Greeks arrived so if not the children of Alexander who are The Wacky descended from [Music] their cultural traditions and language suggest their lineage stretches back long before the time of the Greeks new genome research has revealed that their Village sahad sits upon a major route in man's evolutionary path [Music] thirty thousand years ago a primordial people lived here as the climate changed over thousands of years their descendants were forced to move down to warmer climes in Europe and Asia [Music] by 6000 BC they'd settled along the fertile river system of the oxus [Music] others reached the Indus Valley in India their belief Systems and Technology spread and by 2000 BC the first Great River Cities dominated the Bronze Age world setting the course of history [Music] I'm convinced tribes like a lucky are the descendants of the first settlers in these high pastures to dig deeper into their story I want to find out exactly where the river oxes begins Milwaukee are going to guide me higher up into the mountains to explore their ancient Homeland search for the source of the oxas [Music] it's going to take a month to get up and back there are no roads no places to resupply we have to carry everything in with us well Roger Kipling famously wrote that the East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet but here in sarhad they actually do meet because the great Caravans used to come here those coming over from China used to unload here and those then taking it to the office and book and all the way to Europe used to take the loads on there would have been hundreds of Caravans just like this heading off into the panes and going the other way so what we're doing is actually a time-honored tradition of packing up animals and heading into the wilderness thank you it's summer [Music] but Alexander in his 22 000 men scaled the passes into India depths of winter this was a dangerous Gamble in these vicious conditions the Bush by hostile Hill tribes but in temperatures as low as -40 Alexander's Army would have paid a heavy price and they didn't have anything like the kit we're using well you're probably wondering why one Ferengi has got so many horses and Men we've actually got 16 horses 16 handlers four Porters and then there's our party of five but traveling like this is exponential when you have things like where you do generators medical kits you need more and more horses therefore you need more and more men so the Caravan gets longer and longer hence we've got a lot of horses and Men our Caravan is nothing compared to Alexander's vast baggage trains keeping his regiments supplied and moving forward in this terrain was an extraordinary feat he was unbeaten in battle [Music] but it was the frontier tribesman who now threatened to bring an end to his winning streak Alexander's Army survived the precipitous valleys for six Bleak and grueling months without control of these passes Alexander could never secure his burgeoning Empire this was a strategic region worth fighting for and even dying for [Music] it's time to set up camp for the night but no tense for the wacky unlike me they're hardened to the elements the great grandfathers very likely accompanied an ambitious Danish explorer who came here just over a hundred years ago in 1898 [Music] his name was Olay Olufsen and he was tracking The elusive source of the riveroxis Olufsen was convinced that its Headwaters had given rise to the waki's ancient ancestors [Music] [Music] we're heading up towards 4 000 meters for me it's a step-by-step existence [Applause] oh I must say that I'd half expected to actually be following the river and I hadn't expected so many Hills like this they call this the snake as it winds up and it definitely it's a good climb [Music] the wacky know every twist and turn each year they bring their sheep to graze in these Highlands and trade with nomadic tribes [Music] nowadays it's slim pickings but it hasn't always been this way [Music] after a couple of days of arduous climbing we make it to the high plains of Lange [Music] in the time of the waki's ancient ancestors the climate here was different scientists suggest it was as much as five degrees warmer in these ranges ancient Terrace fields and irrigation canals have been found judged to be thousands of years old it's evidence of sustained cultivation [Music] Olufsen believed that people lived here even before the development of the Region's oldest religion Zoroastrianism [Music] he got some of his ideas from the avesta the zoroastrian Holly book gribes a mythical mountain called Mount Hara and a mighty river that ran beside it trekking through here Olufsen saw the parallels with the pamia mountains and the oxus river Plains he was in no doubt that this was what the zoroastrians called The Garden of our first parents meaning the Garden of Eden seeing this amazing land for the first time I can't help but think he was on to something as we climb higher it's like entering a completely different Realm the bami Dunya the roof of the world there are a series of graves here [Music] it doesn't seem like they're Muslim Graves it's hard to tell if the bodies were facing macro or not because they've been Disturbed but really they seem to be a lot older this place is absolutely intriguing there are a number of things that happened here the graves and possibly the shrine are from one period maybe Chinese these flags are Islamic the horns actually hark back to a much earlier period when people worship goats or horned animals [Music] like these reveal a mix of religious influences seems like a remote wild corner of Afghanistan but for thousands of years it was an ancient Highway [Music] in 327 BC when Alexander crossed these mountains this Valley would have been a busy thoroughfare full of Traders and Caravans they were heading to and from the cities of batria in the oxus lowlands these were prosperous centers [Music] with elaborate zoroastrian temples [Music] well established in the Bronze Age still thriving when the Greeks arrived the network of trade routes stretched right across battery as well as people in technology it carried Goods like gold spices and opium cities of the Indus Valley in India to Babylon in Mesopotamia [Music] Egypt and all the way to Athens in Greece [Music] by using these vital communication links the Greeks began to build their empire in the east today not many Goods War Travelers come through these passes the trade in opium though is booming the majority of the world's opium traffic comes from Afghanistan it smuggled into Tajikistan and then on to the West but a good deal stays in these mountains these locals trade over a hundred of their sheep every year to feed their opium addiction all right [Applause] late in the afternoon we make it into jazz gauze an encampment belonging to the nomadic cookies that have made the roof of the world their home [Music] this is as far as the wacky can take us payday same the world over their earnings are worked out by how heavy the loads were and how many hours are spent away from home and everyone comes up with his own grand total our guide Shafi has to sort it all out and distribute our tips without offending anybody [Music] eventually happy with their lot the wacky head for home [Music] and I start to get acquainted with my new hosts family of local tribal leader [ __ ] Postman the cookies migrated along trade routes from the north only 200 years ago long after the original settlers left these high pastures though they live in a very similar way in felt years with a few modern tweaks [Music] it's July but a dusting of snow on the mountains is a chilling reminder that the long months of winter are not far away this is one of the toughest climates on Earth these kyrgys families Survive by herding and breeding Yaks and goats there's a limited choice of food up here so tonight I'm cooking dinner so what I'm trying to make hopefully is spaghetti Pescatore which if my memory serves me is spaghetti with fish because we have some lovely fresh tuna um I don't know if it's going to be quite the same color in the can very tasty onions and a few herbs and things so um we'll see how we go I'm betting that this is the first tuna ever to make it up here [Music] but I'm not so sure what the locals think of my signature dish [Music] when Alexander and his troops journeyed through mountain passes in winter food was extremely scarce [Music] the streams and grazing ground for their pack animals and horses were frozen facing starvation and hypothermia they fended off hit and run assaults by hostile local tribes to the Greeks the craggy strongholds seemed impenetrable takes too sheer for their catapults Alexander's archers scaled the cliffsides and were repelled time and time again twice wounded just a valley or two south of here it was the battles Alexander fought with the hearty men of these mountains that were the toughest of all I've been given the chance to find out just how demanding doing battle at these extreme altitudes must have been today the kyrgiers are gathering to play a traditional war game called bushkazi it's been invited to take part this is amazing this must be 50 60 Horsemen have just coming in from all different parts of the valley [Music] they've come across the passes from Tajikistan and Pakistan to celebrate a marriage [Music] what did you think [Music] and no Cookie's wedding is complete without a wild bout of bushkazi it's game on this is as close as I will ever get to taking part in an ancient battle and on one of the highest playing fields in the world it's hard for me to breathe up here let alone ride we're in a frenzied tug of war with the carcass of a goat Riders charge as fast as they can around a Peg and back to the center of the pitch [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] I finally get the hang of it [Music] it's a high adrenaline game and the altitude takes the fight out of me as I retire exhausted [ __ ] gives me the Champions coat well I think I've been given some great honor by having this but I certainly haven't earned it considering the way that these guys ride one good game was about all I had in me at the moment these guys can play Forever it's incredible the stamina of these guys are gone and the horses the power it's just fantastic you would never think that you could get this much out of a horse at 4 200 meters horses give fear of just what Alexander's Cavalry endured after months of battle Alexander eventually subdued the mountain tribes he had seized tenuous control of some of the most ancient human highways on Earth and the prize still lay ahead now Alexander marched to The Plains of India next morning it's time for us to move on I want to find the source of the auxis the cradle of civilization in Central Asia to find the river's source I have to find its longest tributary is [ __ ] has been riding these passes for 40 years he knows every stream and Valley are they equal or is this River smaller right when olufson came here we followed a stream called the burger but in here is there it's over 30 kilometers east of here towards the border with China over 1200 years ago these Borderlands were part of the Tibetan Empire then the Chinese began to encroach on their territory [Music] and this little Shrine is a terrific example the locals around here consider this an Islamic site so The Story Goes a holy man once passed this way and they erected this temple in his honor but we know differently because when the Chinese had defeated the Tibetans they came back through here and they noted that this Temple was already here now that was 747 so that means this is very old probably Buddhist it just shows you how the stories change over time there's so little recorded history about these isolated ranges it's hard to separate the hearsay and the folklore from the facts try to work out the names of geographical features like valleys tributaries and rivers is even harder ollison was meticulous in his search he measured the length and flow of the burget and declared it to be the source but he missed a vital link the burger runs down from the mountains joins the wakan river and flows into the axis Olufsen noted Another River East of the burger and it flowed until the Chuck Mateen but he didn't explore it it's called The River challenge today and it's far more important than Olufsen realized one of its branches flows into the lake then runs in a great Arc to the north and eventually joins the auxis remarkably these Rivers all come from the same Source the chalop [Music] well this is the beautiful Lake Chuck Martin now the local kozig's also call it challah Blake the same as the river and it's a real Contender as the source of the oxus because the water comes way up in the tajik Border down the chalop into the lake and then through a series of lakes it forms the aksu river which then bends right around becomes the maghreb river and then flows into the axis so the method of now Madness in trekking along here is to go and measure the water coming out at the end of the lake because now in August is the biggest time of melt off the glaciers so it's ideal to see the real flow [Music] I'm measuring the outflow from the lake to determine whether it's strong enough to be the source of the oxas get out of the water I know this looks pretty basic but actually it's quite scientific [Laughter] all right now in case you're wondering what I'm trying to achieve here I'm trying to measure the velocity of this River and I'm going to drop this bottle and then time how long it takes to cover the distance and that will give me velocity of the river and hopefully I'm faster than the bottle so here we go Mad Dog's an Englishman I think they say bad dogs in Australians okay so that took 48 seconds 48.37 seconds [Music] I'm sure these guys think I'm absolutely stock driving mad doing this but there is a reason now what I'm doing here is measuring the width of the flow and then I measure with these marks which are a foot each of how deep this is it's flowing at a heck of a rate now we need to know its length by my calculations it's 442 kilometers from the source of olufsen's burgite to the Confluence with Deoxys but the chalap is 534 kilometers from its source to the confluence [Music] seems that Olufsen got it wrong it's not the burger but this River the Chalet that is the longest problem is in 1911 an earthquake measuring eight or nine on the Richter Scale caused a landslide that completely damned its root that means the Chalet was the source of the auxis in ancient times but today there has to be a new source there's only one alternative it flows down from the icy of the little Premiere and it's called The wajir River well I think I've got my figures right but they actually don't mean much until we get up into the wajir and actually compare the two systems and that's four days away [Music] we're heading along the ancient passes that lead East towards China [Music] this is one of the last great wildernesses in the world [Applause] [Music] nothing has changed in this breathtaking landscape for thousands of years [Music] strategic buffer zone since the time of Alexander [Music] down through the centuries successive armies have passed through these Borderlands [Music] and there are signs here of the most recent incursion this line of barbed wire is All That Remains of the secret missile base built by the Soviet Union soon after they invaded Afghanistan in 1979 Soviet interest in controlling Central Asian territory and trade routes had been building for a century or more and no one was more aware of the Soviet threat in these parts than celebrated British Explorer George Curzon [Music] politician and an aristocrat he too believed the occis was a great parent stream of humanity kurz on track to the wajia river valley in 1894 and concluded it was the source but he was wrong it's not as long as the chalop though it may be the longest tributary still flowing today foreign Yaks are like badly designed carpets these really are the most marvelous animals this is the hornless variety of yak and I'm just wondering if you can see that sort of family resemblance here what do you think you think from the same family hello good boy [Music] since we set off from sahad to find the source of the oxas we've been trekking for more than two weeks under the rain and sleet the [Music] going is getting tough and we've had to leave the rest of the Caravan behind in the valley we make our final Camp before the push-up towards 5000 meters and the end of the wajio river valley we're now just two kilometers away from the border with China there's not a soul to be seen but there is a Haven in this freezing Terrain [Music] it's actually quite roomy in here the name of this place is costrebat which means two houses these are very old Caravan Saras the Caravans used to come down from China all the way through to Afghanistan in the middle of winter and they needed a place to stay [Music] it's clear that in ancient times these rudimentary shelters were built for travelers along this inhospitable ancient Valley [Music] finally our destination is Within Reach the source of the wajia flows from somewhere up ahead beneath a massive glacier [Music] thank you [Music] ah fantastic isn't it amazing thank you oh well this is it there's actually two caves you can see it goes a bit further but there's also another one over there and what we're going to have to do is get into the river and test the water see how fast it's flowing and how much water is coming out but just to give you an idea how high we are here you're living at sea level and you walk outside it looks straight up four and a half kilometers that's where we're standing now coming out of this cave is an absolute full blast of cold air it's absolutely bone chilling [Music] the flow is about as strong as the Chalet now I want to work out its length [Music] it's 459 kilometers from the ice cave back to the Confluence with the oxas it is the longest tributary still flowing which makes the wajia the true Source today our epic Trek at sahad and followed the auxis up to Lake Chuck Martin then up into the glacial Valley of the wajir [Music] This Magnificent River begins at the roof of the world it flows for over two and a half thousand kilometers [Music] I followed in the footsteps of some of the most formidable explorers in history to solve the mystery of this Ancient Waterway after all this time and all this debate The Source really isn't the issue what the issue is is the amazing civilizations that this River has given birth to [Music] for thousands of years the auctions has carried people and ideas through Central Asia and onwards to both the East and the West I feel I've come a step closer to understanding Alexander's grueling campaign through these mountain passes over 2 300 years ago he laid claim to the pathways that lead back to our earliest beginnings this matchless landscape is all but deserted today the mains are the mountain refuges and memorials to the lives claimed along the way [Music] it's the end of my six-month journey I began as Alexander did in Greece and I've traveled almost 7 000 kilometers to the Eastern borders of Afghanistan Alexander would fail in his final Conquest unlike the Victorious God Dionysus [Music] vastness of India defeated him [Music] over time much of the world he conquered has been lost to climate change and War [Music] but today intriguing traces of ruined fortresses and age-old temples still survive evidence of this spectacular cities and trading posts that flourished along the river oxes in no Bronze Age [Music] Alexander's achievements made him a legend his greatest Legacy is his discovery of the extraordinary civilization that once thrived in this forsaken land it formed a decisive part of our history and shaped the world we know today [Music]

Channel: Odyssey - Ancient History Documentaries

Views: 31,042

Keywords: Odyssey - Ancient History Documentaries, ancient artifacts, ancient empires, ancient heritage, ancient origins, ancient settlements, ancient texts exploration, ancient wisdom, archaeological adventures, archaeology series, civilization development, documentary series, exploration, exploration journey, forgotten tribes, historical expeditions, historical mysteries, history exploration

Id: UIe4CzU4Bzw

Length: 49min 22sec (2962 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 26 2024