- 2 days ago
Exploring the powerful influence that geology, geography and climate have had on humankind. Fire has long been a source of energy, it played a crucial role in Britain's industrial revolution, while holding China's development back, Professor Iain Stewart explores man's relationship with fire. Along the way he dives in a mysterious lake in Oregon, climbs a glacier of salt and takes a bath in crude oil.
火的馈赠 The Gift of Fire）概览 :--
核心主题：本集探讨了人类与燃烧及火（作为主要能源）之间的关系。
英国与中国：阐述了独特的地理与地质条件如何使英国得以引发工业革命，同时也制约了中国的发展路径。
木炭与碳：我们的祖先学会了在缺氧环境下燃烧木材来制造木炭，从而获得足以从矿石中熔炼金属的高温。
能源危机：英国等地出现的木材短缺和森林砍伐问题，最终引发了全球首次重大能源危机，迫使人类转向煤炭等化石碳源。
火的馈赠 The Gift of Fire）概览 :--
核心主题：本集探讨了人类与燃烧及火（作为主要能源）之间的关系。
英国与中国：阐述了独特的地理与地质条件如何使英国得以引发工业革命，同时也制约了中国的发展路径。
木炭与碳：我们的祖先学会了在缺氧环境下燃烧木材来制造木炭，从而获得足以从矿石中熔炼金属的高温。
能源危机：英国等地出现的木材短缺和森林砍伐问题，最终引发了全球首次重大能源危机，迫使人类转向煤炭等化石碳源。
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:07Our planet has immense power, and yet that's rarely mentioned in our history books.
00:30This series is looking at four powerful planetary forces that have shaped our history.
00:38The deep earth, that provided the raw materials for our conquest of the planet.
00:49Wind, that has influenced the rise and fall of empires.
00:58Water. Our struggle to control it has defined the character of civilisations.
01:06But this time, fire.
01:12It's deadly, yet it's also the driving force behind human progress.
01:17But our dependence on fire has meant that events deep in the earth's past have changed the course of history.
01:28This is the great untold story of human history.
01:57The vibrate is a low air alarm.
01:59It'll let you know when you're at a quarter of a tank, oxygen.
02:01OK. So when you hear that, you need to get out.
02:04Get out, OK.
02:06This volunteer is about to undergo an experience that most people would find absolutely terrifying.
02:13These stickers are to measure the temperature that reaches inside the suit.
02:17Inside.
02:18These will tell you how hot you're actually getting inside the suit.
02:22Move your head.
02:24And in doing so, he's trusting his life to the very latest in fire suit technology.
02:33His suit is eight layers thick.
02:36Its visor, specially tempered gold-plated glass.
02:40And it's even got its own air supply.
02:44This is what it takes to survive just a few seconds.
02:52It's inside the heart of a fire.
03:09Oh, my gosh.
03:10Beautiful, the flames.
03:15It's only a seven-metre walk through the flames, but the fire is raging at 1,600 degrees Celsius.
03:27Flames are licking around us.
03:29Oh, I'm feeling a bit warm.
03:34For all its danger, fire is compelling, almost hypnotic.
03:39I'm feeling a bit.
03:50I'm in.
03:53nah!!!!
03:57That was scary...
03:59right at the end.
04:01That was scary.
04:13the paradox of fire is that it's lethal and yet we depend on it completely
04:22fire generates our electricity
04:29it drives our machines
04:33we use it
04:34every day
04:41but the history of our relationship with fire
04:45reveals how the earth has exerted enormous power
04:48over the fate of peoples and nations
05:02it's strange to think that for 90 percent of earth's history there simply was no fire
05:12ours was a barren planet of dust and rock there was nothing to burn
05:20not until relatively recently about 400 million years ago did fire first appear
05:31the key to this transformation vegetation
05:38the first land plants had just appeared
05:45and they provided fuel for fire
05:49but plants did something else as well
05:56vegetation supplied a second crucial ingredient for fires
06:00oxygen
06:03historian steven pine has been studying fire all his life
06:09plants create the fuel
06:10the stuff that's going to burn
06:12and they also release oxygen the stuff that will combine with the fuel
06:16to create the chemical reaction
06:22flames cannot burn unless at least 13 percent of the atmosphere
06:26is oxygen
06:29but the earth's early atmosphere had almost none
06:40photosynthesized
06:41photosynthesizing plants use sunlight to convert carbon dioxide into energy
06:47and in the process released oxygen
06:53by around 400 million years ago this process had raised the level of oxygen in the atmosphere to that critical
07:0113 percent
07:09now there was only one more thing needed for fire to start
07:17a spark
07:23starting fire was actually the easy bit
07:26lightning storms have raged on earth for almost its entire history
07:3330,000 bolts of lightning hit the ground every hour
08:00for hundreds of millions of years wild fires were controlled only by the
08:05forces of nature they started spontaneously spread freely
08:20and only stopped when they ran out of fuel or the rains came
08:44around one and a half million years ago early humans learnt how to control fire
08:57well homo sapiens
08:59it's essentially us acquired the ability to make fire
09:03not simply to tend it they could create fire and nurture it as well so they did
09:08at that point they acquire a real fire power and we rise to the top of the food chain
09:19it was the beginning of a relationship that would transform the planet and us
09:33it gave us immense power over our world
09:35it gave us immense power over our world
09:44cooking greatly expanded the range of foods available to us
09:54it gave us warmth and light
09:58and protection against hungry predators
10:03it allowed us to quickly clear large areas of land
10:12fire was the weapon that began our conquest of the planet
10:33fire was so central to our survival perhaps it's no surprise that it was worshiped by some early civilizations
10:43one of the oldest religions in the world Zoroastrianism was based around a worship of fire
10:55fire
10:56Afaga Gatsimova studies the Zoroastrians and their beliefs
11:04the Zoroastrians and their beliefs
11:13for the Zoroastrians the flame itself was sacred
11:25for the Zoroastrians the flame itself was sacred
11:30security
11:43To this day the eternal flame is still a potent symbol for the world's great religions
11:58But the greatest landmark in our use of fire came about 6,000 years ago.
12:07The breakthrough centred on an extraordinary element, carbon.
12:17This is carbon in its purest form, diamond.
12:32But there are other forms of carbon that are far more valuable to us than this.
12:39Because carbon is the basis for all life on Earth.
12:49And it's the key ingredient in fire.
12:59And once again, it depends on photosynthesis.
13:06Plants use the sun's energy to extract carbon from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and use it to create their
13:12living tissue.
13:14It is this carbon that burns in a fire, releasing the energy that originally came from the sun as heat.
13:24The more carbon rich a fuel is, the more heat it produces.
13:34Normal wood fires burn at about 700 degrees Celsius.
13:40But 6,000 years ago, our ancestors discovered the trick of burning wood in a low oxygen environment.
13:48It only partially burns.
13:50But in doing so, it creates a much purer, carbon rich fuel.
13:58Charcoal.
14:02And that can burn at 1,100 degrees Celsius.
14:11Hot enough to melt metal out of rock.
14:17The invention of metal smelting was one of the most critical turning points in human history.
14:25The age of metals had begun.
14:37Our mastery of metal gave us tools.
14:45Money and weapons.
14:50It was the foundation on which human progress was built.
14:55So much so, that by the Middle Ages, the production of charcoal for iron smelting was a major industry.
15:07But there was an inevitable problem.
15:12People began to run out of wood.
15:25People began to run out of wood.
15:27In prehistoric times, Britain had been almost completely covered in forest.
15:33But by the end of the 16th century, 90% of the ancient woodland had gone.
15:40In London, which was growing fast, the shortage of accessible wood meant that the price rocketed.
15:53It was growing fast.
15:54Around the growing cities of Europe and Asia, similar fuel shortages developed.
16:00In fact, the end of the 16th century was the world's first great energy crisis.
16:09In many societies, the demand for energy had reached the limits of what photosynthesis could provide.
16:20A new source of carbon was needed.
16:26And the planet had a solution.
16:35The answer to the energy shortage started out in cold, wet places.
16:42Like here in Oregon, in the western USA.
16:50It looks like a perfectly ordinary lake, but these waters hold a secret.
16:58Melting glaciers keep the water clear.
17:07Ghostly shapes appear in the distance, standing like sentinels.
17:15But this is not their natural home.
17:20These are 3,000-year-old tree trunks.
17:25The remains of a drowned forest.
17:34Well, in some environments, and this is a good example where it's covered by water.
17:40Trees and other organic material will fall in.
17:43The water will protect it.
17:44It won't decompose. It will build up.
17:50Because the trees are under water, there's no oxygen to help rot them away.
17:56And so they're preserved.
18:01In swampy areas like this, trees will get buried.
18:06And over long periods of time, other stuff continues to bury it.
18:10And it will stockpile.
18:14This is the crucial first stage in an extraordinary transformation.
18:21It began 300 million years ago, when trees dominated the planet.
18:31In fact, so many carbon-rich trees were buried during this time,
18:37that this period of the Earth's history is known as the Carboniferous.
18:43The age of carbon.
18:49In the millions of years since, the wood has been squeezed and cooked deep inside the Earth,
18:56turning it into something new and different.
19:03Coal.
19:08Coal was to change our relationship with fire in a fundamental way.
19:16Instead of burning carbon from the present,
19:19coal gave us access to a huge new source of carbon from the Earth's past.
19:26Coal was, in essence, an immense store of fossilised sunshine.
19:34But coal wasn't evenly distributed across the Earth.
19:38And this meant that from the 17th century onwards,
19:42the planet began to play a new and crucial role in human history.
19:48The first place to benefit was a small North European island.
19:54Britain.
19:56Britain was lucky.
19:58It had an abundance of coal,
20:00much of which could be easily collected from the surface.
20:11From the beginning of the 17th century,
20:14burning coal began to replace wood in homes and workshops.
20:20It was the beginning of a transition that would end up changing Britain
20:25and the world.
20:29You can see how in the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire.
20:39It didn't take long for the coal near the surface to be used up,
20:43so the miners were forced to tunnel into the Earth,
20:47chasing the coal seams underground.
20:50But down there, they had a problem.
20:55It was a problem which would ultimately unleash the Industrial Revolution.
21:06The nearest we can get to experiencing the conditions millions of miners had to endure
21:11is in this mine.
21:14It's owned by Robin Morgan,
21:17who's been mining all his life.
21:23Just like miners in the 17th century,
21:26Robin hacks out the coal by hand.
21:30It is a very tiring job.
21:31And, of course, the old men had a lot harder than what I've got it today.
21:35But, back in those days, look,
21:36they would have to cut a groove under there,
21:38about a nine inches or so,
21:39they could just get their arms in
21:40and go underneath as far as they could with a pick.
21:43And if the coal didn't come down from the roof,
21:45they used to drive wedges in over the top
21:46and force it down from the roof.
21:48And, of course, back in those days, look,
21:50the miners only got paid for the amount of coal that they got.
21:54So, to work more efficiently, even children were used.
21:59Two men would work together.
22:00And, of course, they hadn't got any conveyor bars.
22:03They used to have to have little kids dragging sledges
22:05to get the coal to the side of the road.
22:06And those two men had to pay that boy's wages as well.
22:13If getting coal out of the ground wasn't hard enough,
22:17miners in the 17th and 18th centuries faced an additional hardship.
22:22The deeper they tunnelled,
22:24the more likely they were to encounter a huge obstacle.
22:31Water.
22:36For the miners who first followed the coal seams underground 300 years ago,
22:41this was a problem.
22:43And solving this problem was the key to our industrial transformation.
22:53Once the miners got down to the water table,
22:56their tunnels flooded and the coal became inaccessible.
23:01It was impossible to pump the water out by hand.
23:05A technological solution was desperately needed.
23:10And in the early 18th century, engineers came up with one.
23:17The steam engine.
23:19It was designed specifically to pump water out of mines.
23:24But it soon found other uses.
23:31Within decades, the combined power of steam and coal
23:35became the force behind an extraordinary integrated economy.
23:43Coal fuelled the blast furnaces, which smelted steel.
23:50The steel was turned into trains and ships,
23:53powered by steam engines, of course,
23:56which in turn burnt more coal.
24:03Today we know this transformation and our use of fire as the Industrial Revolution.
24:17Britain owes a tremendous amount to that distant geological age
24:22when trees ruled the world.
24:25Think of the Industrial Revolution as the rise of carboniferous capitalism.
24:37But the planet was fickle with its favours.
24:42Britain was given huge reserves of coal and the geography to exploit it.
24:48Not everywhere was so lucky.
24:58There was another country blessed by the planet with huge reserves of coal.
25:04In the 17th century, it too was poised on the edge of an Industrial Revolution.
25:11But its story played out rather differently.
25:17That country was China.
25:22By this time, China had been moulded into a vast empire.
25:27It was rich and technologically advanced.
25:34China seemed perfectly positioned to exploit its coal reserves.
25:42There was one problem.
25:46China's coal reserves may have been massive, but they were a long way from the country's cities on the coast.
25:54However, running straight from the coal fields to the sea was the mighty Yellow River.
26:02So, in theory, transporting the coal to the market should have been possible.
26:14This is Chiku, a beautiful old town on the Yellow River.
26:20It's right in the heart of coal country.
26:27If coal was to be carried downstream to the coast, it would have to pass through here.
26:40Mr Lee is 76 years old, and he's been navigating these waters since he was 11.
26:47His son runs the local river ferry service.
26:51And today, he says the water looks calm.
26:59The Lee family are rowing a traditional flat-bottomed boat, a design used for generations.
27:06This is the route that coal from China's vast coal fields would have had to travel.
27:15The друзья are all blown away from the mountains.
27:19Theoney is 56 years old.
27:24But just downstream of Chiku, there's an obstacle.
27:37Mr. Lee and his friends, who boast an average age of 75,
27:42are the last people who know how to ride these rapids.
27:50Rapids it would be almost impossible to get through
27:53if the boat was laden down with coal.
28:09These rapids were just the start.
28:12Downstream, there are many more.
28:21And just to add to the difficulties,
28:23the only way to get the boat back upriver
28:26is sheer manpower.
28:36So it was possible to transport goods downstream as far as Chicu,
28:40but you could not take them any further.
28:42For cargo boats, these rapids were the end of the line.
28:48The only alternative was to go overland.
28:53But carrying coal overland meant that its price doubled every 40 kilometres,
28:59making it practically impossible to get coal to the marketplace,
29:03over 1,000 kilometres away.
29:07The geography of the Yellow River meant that the Empire was effectively cut off from the vast reserves,
29:13which could have completely transformed it.
29:19The British invented the steam engine to overcome the barrier posed by flooded mines.
29:26But the Chinese failed to find a similar solution to their geographical problems.
29:32It was one of those moments when human factors interacted with the opportunities the planet had to offer.
29:43While Britain was forging an industrial revolution,
29:46the Chinese were building these enormous gardens at Chengdu.
29:53They were designed to celebrate the size and diversity of the Empire.
30:01There was a miniature replica of the Yellow River,
30:05a smaller version of the Great Wall,
30:08and even a copy of the Dalai Lama's palace in Tibet.
30:14These gardens symbolised China's preoccupation with managing its vast territory.
30:22It was such a high priority that rather than focusing on technological innovation,
30:28the brightest minds were sucked into running the Empire.
30:39Not until the middle of the 20th century did China build extensive road and rail systems into its heartland,
30:47and start its own industrial revolution.
30:53Ironically, China is now the biggest user and producer of coal in the world.
31:08China's rulers might not have found ways to solve the fuel crisis 300 years ago,
31:14but its people had a good goal.
31:21As Professor Ken Pomerantz believes,
31:24they came up with a brilliant invention that today is known across the world.
31:32Early Chinese cooking had lots of stews, lots of things you had to boil for hours and hours,
31:40and was reflective of a society in which there were still plenty of forests.
31:45Over time, you get an adaptation to wok cooking,
31:50this very, very thin piece of iron which saves on fuel in the making of the pot.
31:55It's perfectly designed to catch a lot of the flame,
31:59and by cooking with extremely thinly sliced vegetables or meat or whatever,
32:05you can stir fry things very fast.
32:09So in an era of growing wood shortages, the wok was invented.
32:14But let's face it, it didn't really solve the energy crisis.
32:22The story of coal shows how the planet played a crucial role in transforming the fate of nations
32:29at the time of the Industrial Revolution.
32:35It turned fire into the energy that fuelled human progress.
32:41And yet that was only the beginning.
32:45Today, the planet's stores of ancient carbon have an even greater impact on our world.
32:54That impact hinges on another type of buried carbon.
33:02You can see how this ancient carbon was formed in an amazing cave system on an island in southern Iran.
33:20It's an abseil of 50 metres to enter the cave system.
33:27Inside is evidence that reveals where this other store of ancient carbon comes from.
33:34And how it's made.
33:46Deep underground, there is something unusual about these caves.
34:03The geologist Jiri Bruthans has been studying them for 10 years.
34:30The most caves are made from solid rock.
34:35This cavern is different.
34:40If you look closely at these weird stalactites,
34:44you can see they're constructed from tiny crystals which twist and turn.
34:49But what makes them really special is that they're made entirely from salt.
35:10Written in the magnificent striped binding in the roof of this cavern
35:14is a clue as to where the salt which made this cave came from.
35:23The salt that is around us has been planted for more than half a billion years
35:27on the bottom of the sea, which was poured out often
35:30and the species of the salt is about half a kilometer or half a kilometer.
35:35The salt is still very strong.
35:54To create so much salt, you need to evaporate an awful lot of sea water.
36:02Usually this happens in shallow seas, which get cut off from the rest of an ocean.
36:09Seawater then evaporates, leaving behind a thick layer of salt.
36:16But it's not only salt that gets left behind when an ocean evaporates.
36:24Shallow seas are the most biologically productive part of the ocean.
36:29They're teeming with life.
36:32All made from carbon.
36:41When marine creatures die, their skeletons build up on the sea floor.
36:48Over millions of years, these skeletons are transformed into a sludge of carbon
36:53and buried under sediment and layers of salt.
36:59One of the best places to see what that sludge ends up looking like
37:06is in the Republic of Azerbaijan.
37:16Here, they call it naftalan.
37:23It's been used as a health treatment for thousands of years, hailed as a cure for everything from rheumatism to
37:31baldness.
37:364,000 years ago, the Babylonians reputedly mixed this stuff with beer and drank it as a medicine.
37:45But there is another way to enjoy its healing properties.
37:53You can bathe in it.
37:54You can learn something like China.
37:58I know that, in principle, they started with oil anderapy.
38:04In the first place, we have said that the oil has been used to be replaced by oil.
38:10Even oil and naphtalan lead to the oil.
38:19We have heard that before we know the oil has been used to have..
38:22Petroleum. They were bathing in crude oil.
38:39Today we've thought of a few more ways of using oil.
38:44It's the ultimate source of concentrated carbon energy.
38:49It's more energy-rich than coal.
38:53Easier to transport and it's got a million different uses.
39:05The use of oil is the pinnacle of our mastery of fire.
39:14Fittingly, the first country to benefit from the exploitation of oil
39:18was the home of Naftalan, Azerbaijan.
39:27For centuries, this thick, black, oily sludge
39:30was dug out of the ground here by hand on a small-scale basis.
39:36But in the middle of the 19th century, demand for oil really took off.
39:41What had been a cottage industry turned into this.
39:48Within 20 years, these fields were the site of the first great global oil boom.
39:56From across the world, entrepreneurs rushed to Azerbaijan to make their fortune.
40:04Some succeeded so well that their names are almost legendary.
40:08The Shell Oil Company started life here.
40:12And the Nobel Brothers of Nobel Prize fame built their business empire on Azeri oil.
40:22This place oozed money.
40:31By the early 1900s, Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan,
40:36boasted more millionaires than anywhere else on Earth.
40:42But Azerbaijan really owed its sudden wealth to a fluke of geology.
41:01In the land of Naftalan, oil happens to be exceptionally close to the surface.
41:10You can see how close, at an unusual location in the south of the country.
41:23These mounds, or what's bubbling up inside them,
41:27explain why this country was the site of the world's first oil boom.
41:33Katie Roberts is a geologist studying these peculiar structures.
41:40Now we've sliced through the centre of this griffin.
41:43You can see that there's a large chamber that's feeding this small conduit
41:47with all this mud that's flowing into the chamber
41:49and then being forced up and erupting and forming this mud griffin at the surface.
41:54The reason this mud is bubbling is because it's filled with natural gas.
42:00And natural gas is often formed along with oil.
42:09Mud volcanoes are a good indicator that oil is generally below the surface,
42:15especially in Azerbaijan.
42:16Hence where you see all the oil wells kind of drilling close to
42:20or on mud volcanoes in Azerbaijan.
42:26There were few places on Earth where it was easier to extract oil and gas than Azerbaijan.
42:35But by the start of the 20th century, demand for oil was rocketing and new sources had to be found.
42:46Once again, the Earth's distant past would play a decisive role in meeting our needs.
43:01After Azerbaijan faded from prominence, the Middle East became the key oil producing region in the world.
43:09It owes this good fortune to a chain of events that began almost 300 million years ago.
43:24Back then, the two areas that would one day form most of the modern Middle East were separate, but they
43:31were on the move.
43:35Remarkably, as they moved, both areas spent much of the time submerged by shallow seas.
43:44So layer upon layer of dead sea creatures built up on the ocean floor.
43:52And when periodically the seas evaporated, layers of salt were also deposited.
44:03As the modern Middle East came together, these layers were buried deep inside the Earth,
44:08where the heat and pressure turned the dead sea creatures into oil.
44:22But the Earth played one final role in turning this area into the dominant oil producing region in the world.
44:29And to see what it was,
44:32you can visit an unusual mountain range in Iran.
44:41The drifting continents helped form the oil, but in most areas, the oil was buried deep in the Earth.
44:52Too deep to be exploited.
44:55It needed to be brought closer to the surface, which is where salt returns to the story.
45:08Out here under the scorching desert sun is a glacier.
45:14And incredibly, this glacier isn't made from ice.
45:18It's made from salt.
45:26But just like ice glaciers, it's moving.
45:36This whole mountainside is covered in salt that's oozed upwards from deep inside the Earth.
45:46The remains of a long-lost ocean.
45:57On the Earth's surface, the salt flows across the land.
46:01But even more spectacular is the role it played underground in the formation of oil reserves.
46:18As the continents collided to form the Middle East, layers of salt and oil-rich rock strata began to buckle
46:26upwards.
46:27The salt made it much easier for the rock to bend until eventually...
46:35It cracked.
46:37Now the oil could flow upwards until it was trapped in a fold in the rock,
46:42kept in place by an impermeable layer above.
46:48If you take a look at a map of the world's buried salt deposits and overlay the major oil fields,
46:54it's easy to see why geologists searching for oil go looking for salt.
47:04It takes millions of years and some pretty extraordinary geological events to create an oil trap that we can exploit.
47:12So it's not surprising that only a few countries have oil beneath them.
47:17And when they find it, there's almost no limit to what they'll do to get it out of the ground.
47:27Nowhere symbolises this determination more than this town, oily rocks in the former Soviet Union.
47:36At first glance, this looks like a typical Eastern European town.
47:42It's grown steadily since the 1940s.
47:45It's now got a football team and even a mosque.
47:52But what you can't see from down here...
47:58..is that it's built in the middle of the Caspian Sea.
48:0250 kilometres from dry land.
48:11Over the years, more than 600 oil wells have been drilled from these platforms.
48:18Today, oily rocks is still producing oil, but it's past its peak.
48:25And that about sums up our relationship with oil more generally.
48:35Today, we're burning it far faster than the planet can make it.
48:40It would take the Earth three million years to make enough oil...
48:45..for just one year of our consumption.
48:54We've reached a turning point in human history.
49:00Every major advance in human civilisation has been made possible
49:05by our ability to raid the Earth for ever more energy-rich forms of carbon.
49:12But our love affair with burning carbon-based fuel is coming to an end.
49:20Carbon itself has become the problem.
49:24Burning it produces greenhouse gases, which are changing our climate.
49:32Which means that if human civilisation is to continue to advance,
49:37we will have to break the link between progress
49:41and the burning of carbon.
49:52It could be a sensibility in God.
49:53Then, let's go and consider the medicine of biology!
50:04Such as the batsworth.
50:05The BS exactly according to God's climate these two years ago.
50:05We've been funeral.
50:13We've spent this for Sam's knowledge with觀 czar has been produced as a reference to