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Explore the hidden secrets of the past, from medieval cities that once boasted skyscrapers to the groundbreaking discoveries at Stonehenge. Dive into a pivotal event that nearly wiped out humanity, leaving only 1,000 survivors.
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00:00Back in the 12th and 13th centuries, Bologna used to look like modern-day Manhattan.
00:05No one knows exactly how many towers resembling skyscrapers it used to have,
00:10but the most likely number is at least 100.
00:13The tallest of them was around the same height as Big Ben.
00:17When the towers were built, Bologna was one of the largest cities in Europe.
00:22Construction projects were massive and ambitious.
00:24Someone built cathedrals and town halls, and the richest noble families also erected towers,
00:31possibly as a symbol of status and wealth.
00:34There was no place in the city center to build grand castles, so they had to go up with the
00:40construction.
00:41They didn't actually live in those towers, but in smaller structures next to them.
00:45The towers served for defensive purposes.
00:49It took between 3 and 10 years of work to build one tower,
00:53and it was a really tedious process.
00:56Each of them had a steady foundation deep underground
00:59and a base made of big blocks of selenite stone.
01:04The rest of the tower was becoming thinner and lighter the higher it went.
01:08In the 13th century, they demolished many of the towers,
01:11and others just collapsed by themselves.
01:14Some of them were later reused as city towers, shops, or residential buildings.
01:18Now you can see only 22 towers still standing in the center of Bologna.
01:24Two of them have become the unofficial symbol of the city, mentioned in every guidebook.
01:30Another historical surprise coming from Italy is that gladiators weren't only male.
01:36Gladiatrix were rare, but they did exist.
01:39There's evidence that several women took part in Rome's public games.
01:44In ancient texts, these women were often called ludia, or mulieris, but not ladies.
01:51Some scholars think it means that it was mostly lower-class women in the arena.
01:56The term gladiatrix wasn't used in ancient times.
01:59It was first coined in the 1800s.
02:02Women who chose to become gladiators seemed to do so for independence, fame, financial rewards, and probably debt remission.
02:11They were most likely honored like male gladiators.
02:15All this was a bit tricky to accept in Roman society at that time, and women's roles in it.
02:20At the beginning of the current era, the Roman Senate passed a law prohibiting free-born women under 20 from
02:27taking part in arena games.
02:29Emperor Septimus Severus banned all women from the arena in the year 200 of the current era.
02:35He was probably afraid that women might want to compete in the Olympic Games.
02:39It would seriously mess up the existing social order.
02:44Pineapples were once the equivalent of designer bags and watches today, a symbol of wealth and status in Britain.
02:51You can still see them at the top of the western towers of St. Paul's Cathedral, one of the most
02:56famous landmarks of London.
02:59Explorers who came back from the Americas described pineapples with so much enthusiasm that everyone was dreaming about trying the
03:07king of fruits, as it was called.
03:09Pineapples need very high temperatures and years to mature.
03:13And despite the cold and rainy climate of England and Scotland, you could see pineapples growing in any wealthy country
03:20house garden by the end of the 18th century.
03:23They even installed special greenhouses, called pineries, with heating systems.
03:28A single pineapple was worth up to 80 pounds, which is about 15,000 bucks today.
03:34Of course, people would hardly eat this expensive beauty, but send it as a gift or display on a dining
03:41table until it would rot.
03:42Folks who couldn't afford to buy a pineapple would sometimes rent one to show off wealth at a party.
03:48The king of fruits became a part of various designs and tableware for the rich.
03:54Stone pineapples on gateposts and the pineapple atop the Wimbledon Trophy are living memories of that time.
04:00Around 1820, there were so many pineapples imported from abroad that they started losing their luxury status.
04:09A hundred million years ago, there were giant crocodiles living in the Sahara Desert.
04:15In the 1990s, paleontologists found fossilized skeletons of primitive crocodiles, including the so-called supercroc.
04:23They discovered several partial skeletons from 110 million years ago.
04:28This prehistoric giant with a head as large as an adult human was about 40 feet long.
04:35That's about two times as tall as a giraffe.
04:38The croc thrived both in water and on land as part of a diverse ecosystem of ancient North Africa.
04:46The expeditions to the Sahara found a whole lost world of ancient crocodiles, with some species that resembled modern animals.
04:54One of them was the dog croc.
04:57With its tall legs and keen sense of smell, it moved through the surroundings, much like a dog.
05:03Another fascinating find was the duck croc, a three-foot-long crocodile with duck-billed platypus-like features.
05:10It was adapted for life on land rather than water.
05:13And then, there was also the rat croc, a small, two-foot-long crocodile.
05:19This species had front teeth, perfect for digging up insects.
05:23These prehistoric creatures were more agile, active, and probably more intelligent than today's crocs, who are passive hunters.
05:32If noise-canceling headphones had been invented in the 19th century, they would have come in really handy.
05:39On the 27th of August, 1883, the island of Krakatoa in Indonesia experienced a catastrophic eruption.
05:47It produced what is believed to be the loudest sound ever recorded.
05:54As Krakatoa collapsed, it triggered tsunamis, with waves reaching 151 feet that traveled as far as South Africa.
06:03Krakatoa was an uninhabited volcanic island that had interrupted for two centuries before this terrible day.
06:10The eruption took the lives of over 30,000 people and caused extreme fluctuations in air pressure, perceived as sound.
06:18A barometer at a gasworks 100 miles from Krakatoa recorded 172 decibels.
06:25An average human can withstand up to 130 decibels of sound without getting in serious trouble.
06:32This intense pressure ruptured the eardrums of sailors on the British ship Norum Castle, which was 40 miles away from
06:39Krakatoa.
06:40The sound weight from it circled the globe, and people could still hear it even 3,000 miles away where
06:46it resembled cannon fire.
06:49The late 1800s were a golden era for grand mustaches.
06:54But there was one problem.
06:56You couldn't enjoy a cup of tea with this kind of facial hairstyle.
06:59The heat from the tea would melt mustache wax and make the ends droop.
07:04Fine gentlemen had to struggle because of it until the invention of the mustache cup.
07:09Harvey Adams, a British potter, likely invented the mustache cup in the 1870s.
07:14He patented a butterfly-shaped ledge inside the cup with a hole to sip through.
07:20Thanks to it, the mustache didn't get wet.
07:22These cups quickly became a hit, first in the UK and then across Europe.
07:27In the United States, they were sold at stores like Sears and Marshall Fields, now part of Macy's.
07:33Mustache cups came in various shapes and sizes.
07:35Some, like farmer's cups, could hold up to a pint of tea.
07:40Others were smaller porcelain pieces shaped like conch shells or decorated with the owner's name.
07:46They often came with matching saucers.
07:51Lord Byron, one of the greatest British poets, kept numerous dogs and cats and a whole bunch of exotic animals.
07:59There was a monkey, a crocodile, a fox, peacocks, a bear, and several badgers.
08:05When Byron attended Trinity College, Cambridge, college rules prohibited keeping dogs on the grounds.
08:11He got really angry and decided to go around the rules.
08:15Byron brought a tame bear as his pet.
08:18The college authorities argued with him, but since the statutes did not specifically mention bears,
08:24they had no legal grounds to remove either the bear or its owner.
08:28Byron walked the bear on a chain, talked to it, and even considered applying for the bear to become a
08:34student at the college.
08:35We still don't know how and where Byron got the bear, but when he left Cambridge, he took the bear
08:41with him to his estate in London.
08:44Recently, scientists made an astonishing discovery that might solve Stonehenge's mystery.
08:50They found something hidden deep within the DNA of Stonehenge's sarsen rods, the huge monolithic ones,
08:57and it might reveal why our Neolithic ancestors designed and built this thing in the first place.
09:04Over the years, scientists have been scratching their heads, trying to figure out where the huge sarsen rocks came from.
09:11For years, they believed they came from a quarry just 15 miles away from the site, known as Marlboro Downs.
09:18At this site, they found similar minerals to the ones that make up the sarsen rocks.
09:23But it turned out there was more to this story than they thought.
09:28The understanding of how Stonehenge was built is always changing.
09:32Scientists need to really travel back in time to uncover its mysteries.
09:37Where did the rocks come from?
09:39How were they carried?
09:40Why was the site built?
09:42You see, the Stonehenge site, located at Salisbury Plain in England, is made up of two main types of stone.
09:50There are the super-heavy sarsens and the lighter and smaller bluestones.
09:55The sarsens each weigh about 25 tons, that's as much as three African elephants stacked together.
10:02The heaviest sarsen stone, called the heel stone, weighs 30 tons all by itself.
10:08Together, the sarsens make that iconic outer ring circle.
10:13Inside that circle, that's where you'll find the bluestones.
10:17The naming might seem a bit misleading, since they're not really blue.
10:21They have a bluish tinge to them when they are freshly broken, hence the name.
10:26These smaller rocks probably came from the Prisely Hills in southwest Wales,
10:31which is about 150 miles away from Stonehenge.
10:34They're a bit lighter than the sarsens, but still pretty heavy.
10:38The altar stone, which is classified as a bluestone, is the heaviest one, weighing around 6 tons.
10:45Its original location still isn't known for sure.
10:50To figure out where a rock came from, scientists first have to study their composition.
10:56This is like checking the rock's DNA.
10:58Then they cross-reference the structure of the rock with minerals in the soil to see if it's a match.
11:05Most of the sarsens we see around southern England are actually made of a type of sandstone known as silcrete.
11:12Think of silcrete as sand that's been hardened by underground water processes over millions of years.
11:18This process mostly happened during a period called the Paleogene, about 65 to 23 million years ago.
11:26These sarsen rocks didn't form in one big slab, but in patches, like nature leaving little rock gardens all over
11:34the place.
11:35Scientists reasoned the sarsens spread out randomly, forming in isolated pockets.
11:41Over time, many were buried under layers of clay and chalk, which helped preserve them.
11:47When ancient builders were on the lookout for materials, these sarsens must have looked perfect for something impressive like Stonehenge.
11:54Actually, sarsens have been used in everything, from Roman villas to medieval churches, and even in things like road curbs
12:03and old field walls.
12:05One could say these rocks were the it material for ancient builders, and continued to be popular even into more
12:11modern times.
12:14This fact made scientists start wondering that maybe not all sarsen stones that were used to build Stonehenge came from
12:21the same place.
12:22They've identified sarsen sites all over the UK, in places such as Oxfordshire and Kent.
12:30After hundreds of years of studying the sarsens, geologists finally had the right type of technology to determine the origin
12:38of the stones.
12:39Now, I wish I could tell you that it was some undisclosed location very far away from the site.
12:45But, as it turned out, the sarsens were originally from Westwoods, the forest near Stonehenge.
12:53A new factor came into play when excavations uncovered empty stone holes,
12:59showing that at least six blue stone pillars were removed from a Presley Hills site called Wan May in prehistory.
13:06They had a stone circle over there, and it's believed that some of Stonehenge's rocks were recycled rocks from this
13:14more ancient circle.
13:15If this is true, it might be that Stonehenge is part of a much larger landscape of ancient science.
13:22If this is the case, then Stonehenge is just the cherry on top of a much larger scale project.
13:29Think of it as the sacred centerpiece of an entire landscape of monuments, mounds, stone circles, and things.
13:37This is why scientists want to find out where the rocks came from so badly.
13:42It could lead to why and how Stonehenge was built.
13:46Now, Stonehenge didn't just pop up overnight.
13:49It was built in several stages over hundreds of years.
13:53It's likely that it wasn't a single unified vision, but more like a big community project that evolved over time.
14:00With each generation, the builders brought in their own ideas, creating a stone structure that would last for ages.
14:09The first age was around 3,100 BCE.
14:14That's when people dug out a circular ditch and likely set up some blue stones, as sort of a starter
14:20ring.
14:21Later, they added the sarsens and even topped some of them with horizontal stones
14:25to form those famous arches you see today, also known as the trilithons.
14:31These ancient builders had some challenges on their hands.
14:35How would they move the rocks?
14:37There's an old theory known as the ice road that suggests that the rocks were moved by natural icy pathways
14:44that formed during the winter.
14:46This way, they could slide the rocks down all the way to Stonehenge.
14:50But hey, if we're talking about a distance of over 100 miles, that's not too realistic.
14:56Anyways, this theory was debunked because it was warmer back then than it is today.
15:01There's also the river theory, which suggests that the rocks were floated along the river from the quarry to the
15:08site.
15:08But if we're talking about sarsen rocks, they're too heavy to float.
15:13So there goes that theory.
15:15What we're saying is no one knows how the rocks were moved.
15:21Another interesting science tidbit came from all the research done in Stonehenge.
15:27A recent laser survey of the stones revealed the different stone working methods used
15:32and has shown that some of the parts of the monument were more carefully finished than others.
15:38In particular, the northeast side and the interfaces of the central trilithons were finely dressed.
15:45FYI, a trilithon is one of Stonehenge's most famous shapes.
15:50It's when two huge monoliths receive a third one on top of them, connecting the two together.
15:57This fancy word is simply Greek for having three stones.
16:02But anyways, the bigger question, and the reason Stonehenge is so famous, is why it was built in the first
16:09place.
16:10Theories are all over the place, and some sound like they're straight out of a sci-fi show.
16:16So here's a rundown of the most popular ideas.
16:20There's, of course, the solar calendar theory.
16:23This one supposes that the stones are aligned with the movements of the sun,
16:27especially during the summer and winter solstices.
16:31During the summer solstice, the sun rises to the left of the heel stone,
16:35that's the lone stone outside the main circle, lighting up the entire monument.
16:40Some say it's the ancient version of a calendar, marking the year's longest and shortest days.
16:47Some archaeologists think Stonehenge might have been an ancient healing center.
16:52Pieces of blue stone have been found chipped away,
16:55possibly by people who believe they had healing powers.
16:59The theory goes that people traveled from all over to come to Stonehenge
17:04in hopes of a cure for whatever was ailing them.
17:08There's also some speculation that Stonehenge was the place to be.
17:13Think of it as an ancient gathering spot.
17:16Some evidence suggests that communities from distant areas traveled to Stonehenge
17:21for gatherings, feasts, and ceremonies.
17:24Studies of bones found near the site show they came from all over Britain,
17:29making it a sort of prehistoric meet-up location.
17:33Can you imagine that all modern humans came from about 1,000 people?
17:38Around 800,000 to 900,000 years ago,
17:41almost all of our ancestors disappeared,
17:45leaving about 1% of the population behind.
17:48So, what the heck happened?
17:50The Earth often goes through glacial cycles, things that we call ice ages.
17:55Back in the past, they were pretty mild and happened regularly,
17:58about every 41,000 years.
18:00The ice ages happened because of the Earth's axis.
18:03Our planet is slightly tilted at an angle,
18:06which is why its axis isn't straight up.
18:08Over thousands of years, this tilt has changed a bit.
18:12This teeny-tiny shift completely changes how much sunlight we receive,
18:16especially at the poles,
18:17and leads to incredibly strong cold or warm periods.
18:21About 2.6 million years ago,
18:24when early humans were settling in on Earth,
18:26the Pleistocene epoch started.
18:28That's the era we traditionally call the Ice Age,
18:31the one from the movies.
18:32Large ice sheets completely covered parts of North America, Europe, and Asia.
18:37It wasn't constant ice everywhere all the time.
18:40These glacial cycles came and went,
18:42and sometimes ice sheets melted for a while.
18:45But overall, things were still much snowier and colder compared to now.
18:49We can still see the evidence of this from back in the day.
18:53Those glaciers carved out valleys
18:54and left behind some awesome things like moraines and fjords.
18:58And since sea levels were super low,
19:00a huge part of the world was land.
19:02This allowed people and animals to travel between continents
19:06and spread everywhere.
19:07It was the time of the megafauna.
19:09You all know about it from the movies.
19:12Woolly mammoths, saber-toothed cats,
19:14giant ground sloths, and mastodons.
19:16Our ancestors had some fun times hunting all those giants.
19:20Now, humans didn't come from one lineage.
19:22It wasn't like monkeys slowly turned into humans.
19:25We also consisted of many species.
19:27Homo erectus, Neanderthals, and so on.
19:30But only one species, Homo sapiens, survived and turned into modern humans.
19:36Harsh conditions forced them to get smarter.
19:38They learned how to make tools, clothing, and shelters to survive.
19:42They became hunter-gatherers and invented fire,
19:45which turned out to be super useful during the Ice Age.
19:48You think?
19:49But they had no idea what horrible change was coming.
19:52Something disastrous happened about 800,000 to 900,000 years ago.
19:58Humans faced a drastic population crash.
20:01Only 1,280 people survived, give or take.
20:05Some 99% of early humans were wiped out.
20:08And this tiny 1% was lucky enough to become our ancestors.
20:11This almost extinction, unsurprisingly, was the climate's fault.
20:16It was the middle Pleistocene transition.
20:19The Earth's orbit around the Sun changed its shape a bit.
20:22Carbon levels dropped.
20:24A lot of stuff was happening, and the Earth's climate was going wild,
20:28becoming incredibly cold and dry.
20:30The seas suddenly got chillier.
20:32And Africa and Eurasia experienced horrible droughts.
20:35Looking for food was almost impossible.
20:39Scientists learned this by taking the DNA of about 300,000 people from all around the world.
20:45They used a new method to help them map the history of human evolution over a million years
20:50and learn more about it.
20:52No wonder we can barely find any fossils from that time.
20:55There was almost no one around.
20:57What's interesting is that before that happened,
20:59most apes had 24 pairs of chromosomes.
21:02But because the population became so small,
21:05two sets got fused together.
21:07And we ended up with 23 pairs.
21:10This was the final straw that separated us from other apes.
21:14Chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans all have 24 pairs.
21:18But our fused one became known as the human chromosome.
21:21Like a ripple effect, this little thing influenced our brain side,
21:25helped us start walking on our twos,
21:27and even form language.
21:28It took humans about 100,000 years to recover from this catastrophe.
21:33Only after all that time, they started spreading around again.
21:37Isn't that insane how we managed to go from 1,000 to 8 billion people?
21:42In any case, the Ice Age finally ended about 11,700 years ago.
21:47The warm period, called the Holocene, began.
21:50As things got warmer, human civilizations finally began to develop.
21:555,000 years ago, it was ancient Egypt,
21:58then the Indus Valley Civilization, ancient China, and others.
22:02And while we've been thriving for a while, there's one catch.
22:05The middle Pleistocene transition changed the length and intensity of glacial cycles.
22:10Before the transition, sure, there was the Ice Age.
22:13But the cold was milder, and the glacial cycles were shorter.
22:17Things got covered in ice sheets about every 41,000 years.
22:21But after the transition, the glacial periods became longer and more severe.
22:26These cycles started following a new pattern.
22:29Although they happened every 100,000 years, they were super intense.
22:33Ice sheets grew large, even extending to the south.
22:36So from now on, Ice Ages, that will continue to happen in the future,
22:41will be a bit different.
22:42The next one should be at least 50,000 years from now, maybe longer.
22:46It's good for us, because it'll occur later.
22:49But at the same time, the consequences will be stronger.
22:53What our ancestors went through is called a population bottleneck.
22:57That's what we call a sudden and huge reduction in the size of a population.
23:01Usually, it happens because of things like earthquakes, floods or droughts, fires,
23:05and even human actions.
23:07Just a few people survive, and only they can pass their genes to future generations.
23:12And we've got plenty of such bottlenecks in history.
23:15Our modern species, Homo sapiens, originally lived in Africa.
23:19Around 60,000 to 80,000 years ago, a small group of them left Africa and spread across the world.
23:26It wasn't on a whim, though.
23:27They had to move somewhere because of the droughts and huge climate problems in Africa at that time.
23:33They had to go look for food and find new places to live.
23:36They traveled through the Middle East, moving into Europe and Asia,
23:40and eventually reaching Australasia and the Americas.
23:43They quickly settled across different continents and started mixing with local human-like species,
23:49like Denisovans and Neanderthals.
23:51But there was a problem.
23:53Originally, the African species were super-genetically diverse.
23:57But since only a small part of them decided to move out,
24:00they carried just a bunch of these diverse genes with them.
24:03Unfortunately, this caused a bottleneck for everyone.
24:07Human-like species from other parts of the world became less genetically diverse.
24:11Since they had a smaller gene pool, they became more vulnerable to all the harmful stuff.
24:16The African population also had a drop in genetic diversity.
24:20But at least humans managed to survive.
24:23Although eventually, non-African populations really dropped.
24:26And there were no Neanderthals or Denisovans left.
24:30Only us, Homo sapiens.
24:32That's why we can say that all modern humans came from Africa.
24:36Early humans sure had it rough.
24:38About 74,000 years ago, they went through yet another disaster.
24:42The Topa catastrophe.
24:44But keep in mind that all these things are just a hypothesis.
24:48It's not certain whether it actually happened.
24:50Now basically, scientists think that there might have been a super-volcanic eruption
24:54at Lake Toba in Sumatra, Indonesia.
24:57This volcano going crazy was an absolute catastrophe for Earth's climate in humans.
25:02The eruption was one of the most powerful volcanic events in the last 2 million years.
25:07It spewed out from 670 to 1,500 cubic miles of lava in volcanic stuff.
25:14Just so you know, there are about 3,100 cubic miles of water in our planet's entire atmosphere.
25:20And this eruption had almost half as much lava.
25:23This horrendous disaster led to the formation of Lake Toba, a massive caldera lake in Sumatra.
25:29It also spewed out tons of ash and sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere.
25:34This caused the so-called volcanic winter.
25:36Which means that, while it's not actually winter, the temperatures drop and the planet is freezing
25:41because all these ash clouds are blocking the sunlight from reaching the Earth.
25:46This event affected climate patterns for years to decades.
25:50This also most likely sped up the arrival of the next glacial cycle.
25:54Luckily, humans are crazy good at surviving.
25:57The global human population was reduced to a few thousand people yet again.
26:01And they still managed to overcome this.
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