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From Xerxes’ vanished waterway to ships climbing mountains through giant locks, these seven canals hide astonishing stories of ambition, engineering, disaster, and survival. Discover how they reshaped history—and why even today’s canals face dramatic challenges.
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#History #Engineering #Canals
👉 This channel was created in collaboration with https://www.youtube.com/@noelpolotv
0:00 - Seven Canals and a Shared Pattern
2:04 - Xerxes’ Lost Canal at Mount Athos
5:48 - The Long Road to the Corinth Canal
9:50 - The Suez Canal’s Ancient Origins
14:56 - China’s Grand Canal and Its Locks
18:40 - Riquet’s Canal du Midi
21:53 - The Panama Canal’s Deadly First Attempt
Subscribe for more fascinating stories!
Tell us in the comments what you liked most about the video.
#History #Engineering #Canals
👉 This channel was created in collaboration with https://www.youtube.com/@noelpolotv
0:00 - Seven Canals and a Shared Pattern
2:04 - Xerxes’ Lost Canal at Mount Athos
5:48 - The Long Road to the Corinth Canal
9:50 - The Suez Canal’s Ancient Origins
14:56 - China’s Grand Canal and Its Locks
18:40 - Riquet’s Canal du Midi
21:53 - The Panama Canal’s Deadly First Attempt
Category
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TravelTranscript
00:00Between two steep cliffs, there is a narrow waterway that is 24 meters wide, while the
00:07walls on both sides reach up to 90 meters high.
00:12A ship that is 22.5 meters wide can fit here, with just over a meter of space between the
00:18edge of the ship and the rock.
00:20This is the Corinth Canal in Greece.
00:23Excavation began during the time of Emperor Nero, but it was only completed 1826 years
00:30later, and it is far from being the most impressive canal among the seven canals we will see in
00:36this video.
00:37Watch this.
00:39You will see a canal that was ordered to be dug by a Persian king, but eventually all traces
00:45of it disappeared.
00:47So for many centuries, historians thought it was just a myth.
00:51You will also see a canal that resulted in the deportation of five million people, caused
00:58the deaths of many, and affected an entire dynasty.
01:03You will see a canal that was started twice, and during the first attempt, 22,000 workers
01:10were buried and killed.
01:12And finally, you will see a canal that Charlemagne ordered to be dug, but was only opened in 1992.
01:18They have one thing in common, and this will keep appearing throughout the video.
01:25Keep in mind, the person who started digging almost never saw its completion.
01:32None of these canals were finished by the person who first planned or ordered them, except for
01:37one.
01:38And that canal eventually disappeared from sight as if it never existed.
01:43Let's start with the oldest one and one of the most unique because it can no longer be
01:48seen on any modern map.
02:04In 492 BC, the Persian navy was sailing around Mount Athos in northern Greece when it was caught
02:11by a strong storm.
02:13According to the historian Herodotus, 300 ships were destroyed near the peninsula and around
02:1920,000 people died.
02:21The expedition was led by Mardonius.
02:24Twelve years later, King Xerxes was preparing another army for the campaign against Greece.
02:31Again, their route had to pass around Mount Athos.
02:35He decided on something that had never been done before.
02:39Instead of going around the mountain, he ordered the earth and rocks of the peninsula to be dug
02:46out to make a passage for the ships.
02:48About two kilometers of earth and rock had to be dug out.
02:53The project was supervised by two of Xerxes' men, Bubares and Artachayes, while workers from
03:01nearby towns were forcibly sent to work.
03:04They were joined by Egyptian and Phoenician workers.
03:08According to Herodotus, the workers dug in shifts for three years.
03:14He also mentioned a detail that seemed to praise the way the Phoenicians worked.
03:19He said they were the best at digging because they made the upper part of the canal twice
03:26as wide as the bottom.
03:28The canal was about 30 meters wide, so two large warships could pass through at the same
03:34time.
03:36When the project was finished, Xerxes' navy passed through the canal instead of going
03:43around the peninsula, Xerxes got what he wanted, and this is where the mystery begins.
03:49The canal gradually filled with sand and silt.
03:52After a few centuries, almost no trace of it remained.
03:55Many historians no longer believed Herodotus' story.
03:59For them, it seemed unbelievable to dig up an entire peninsula just for a single campaign.
04:06They considered it a fanciful story from the east.
04:10The doubts continued for more than 2,000 years, until modern scientists and researchers
04:16arrived at the site.
04:18A researcher named Iserlin led a team.
04:23They didn't just dig into the ground.
04:26They also used seismic waves and drilled holes underground.
04:32Imagine a core sample from a well, a long column of soil, where, at a depth of about
04:3915 meters, sea sediments suddenly appeared.
04:43And this happened exactly in the place where Herodotus described the canal.
04:48Its size also matched his description.
04:51After many years of drilling, measuring, and analysis, there is almost no doubt.
04:56The canal really existed, and it completely crossed the entire peninsula.
05:01Of course, there are no actual photos of the construction site from that time.
05:06So what you see now is just a reconstruction.
05:09What you can actually see at the site are fields and drilling rigs that were used by the
05:15researchers.
05:16Notice that, among all the leaders associated with these canals, only Xerxes lived to see
05:23the completion of his project and personally witnessed his fleet passing through here.
05:28And his canal is the only one on this list that has completely disappeared.
05:33The man who started digging finally saw the end, but eventually, the land took it back.
05:39If you're wondering how a simple canal managed to deceive historians for thousands of years,
05:46subscribe to the channel.
05:48There are six more stories like this coming.
05:50We've already seen the second canal at the beginning of the video.
05:54Now, let's see how long it took to finish digging just a few kilometers of it.
06:00The Isthmus of Corinth connects the Peloponnesus to the rest of Greece.
06:05At its narrowest point, it's just over six kilometers wide.
06:10A ship sailing from one sea to a gulf had to go all the way around the Peloponnesus.
06:17That means hundreds of kilometers had to be added to the journey.
06:21And because of this, people have long dreamed of having a canal in this place.
06:27In the 6th century BC, the ruler of Corinth, Periander, was the first to think of building a canal.
06:34He studied the project, made calculations, and in the end, backed out.
06:39Instead of a canal, he built a stone pathway over the Isthmus.
06:44Here, ships were pulled out of the water and transferred from one side to the other using rollers.
06:51The remains of this ancient pathway can still be seen today near the modern canal.
06:58And the stones you see on the screen are actual remnants of the ancient pathway.
07:04In 67 AD, the project was attempted again, this time by Emperor Nero.
07:10According to Roman historians, Nero himself was the first to strike the ground with a pickaxe to begin the excavation.
07:18After this, approximately 6,000 people were made to work on the project, most of them prisoners from Judea.
07:27They dug from both sides of the Isthmus towards each other.
07:30They completed about one-tenth of the project, but after just one year, Nero died and the work was completely
07:39stopped.
07:40Stones remained untouched for almost 1,800 years.
07:46No ship passed through that canal.
07:49Excavation resumed in 1881 under the leadership of Hungarian engineers Istvan Thursday and Bela Gerster.
07:57The work lasted another 11 years, and in 1893, finally, the first ship passed through the new canal.
08:06The canal is over 6 kilometers long and almost 25 meters wide at the water's surface.
08:14Its walls reach almost 90 meters high and they are carved almost vertically into the rock.
08:21To give you an idea of how tall that is, imagine a 30-story building standing right next to the
08:29canal.
08:29But there's an interesting paradox.
08:32While the canal was being built, ships kept getting bigger.
08:36And before long, the canal became too narrow for large steamships.
08:41Nowadays, most of the vessels that pass through here are yachts and small boats,
08:47although thousands of vessels still pass through here every year.
08:52In October 2019, a large ship passed through the canal,
08:57the very same ship we saw at the beginning of the video.
09:00There was only a small gap between the side of the ship and the rocks, just over a meter.
09:06It was so close that passengers on the deck could reach out and touch the rocks with their hands.
09:13This footage is real. Try to imagine yourself standing on the deck.
09:18On one side, the rock wall was almost within arm's reach,
09:21while up ahead, the tugboat looked tiny compared to the massive walls surrounding it.
09:27And even in our time, the canal still experienced problems.
09:31A section of the wall collapsed, and the canal was closed for more than two years.
09:36Periander withdrew from his plan.
09:39Nero died.
09:41The Hungarian engineers continued and finished the excavation.
09:46Those who started digging did not see the end.
09:50Many know about the third canal,
09:52but few are aware that the first attempt to dig this canal was made approximately 2,500 years ago.
10:01Around 600 BC,
10:04Vero Necho II ordered the connection of the Nile and the Red Sea.
10:08This was not a direct excavation.
10:12From sea to sea,
10:14the project passed through Wadi Tumilat from the eastern branch of the Nile,
10:18heading east to the Red Sea.
10:21According to Herodotus,
10:23up to 120,000 Egyptians died while the project was being built.
10:29Afterwards,
10:30according to his account,
10:32an oracle told the pharaoh that the canal would only benefit foreigners.
10:38Because of this,
10:40Necho stopped the work.
10:42A century later,
10:44it was continued and,
10:46according to some accounts,
10:47completed by King Darius I of Persia,
10:50who also ruled Egypt at that time.
10:54Darius placed stone steles beside the canal with inscriptions claiming that he was the one who built it.
11:01Some of these steles have been found and can now be seen in museums.
11:06However,
11:09there were other ancient writers,
11:11such as Aristotle,
11:13Strabo,
11:14and Pliny,
11:14who said that Darius' canal was never actually completed.
11:18And up to now,
11:20this difference in the ancient accounts has not been fully resolved.
11:25In the following periods,
11:28the Ptolemies cleaned and reopened the canal.
11:32Afterwards,
11:33it was repaired again during the time of the Roman Emperor Trajan.
11:37It was filled with sand again,
11:39but it was revived several more times.
11:43Its final closure came in
11:46767 AD,
11:47when Caliph Al-Mansur ordered the canal to be filled.
11:52The reason was to prevent rebels in Arabia from using it to get food supplies from Egypt.
11:59And for about 1,100 years,
12:03the area remained buried under the desert.
12:07Then came the Frenchman,
12:09Ferdinand de Lesseps.
12:11After about 10 years of extensive excavation,
12:15the modern canal was completed.
12:17In the early years of the project,
12:19they used forced labor.
12:21Thousands of workers were sent to the construction site by order of the government.
12:25More than 1.5 million people are said to have worked on the project.
12:30The soil was carried using baskets placed on their heads,
12:34while the workers lined up one after another.
12:37You can see this kind of work in old photographs.
12:40But are all these stories true?
12:42And how many really died while building the canal?
12:45Until now, the exact number is still uncertain.
12:50In a famous speech,
12:52Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser mentioned the number 120,000.
12:57According to company records,
13:00fewer than 3 out of every 1,000 workers died each year.
13:04Meanwhile,
13:06modern historians estimate that fewer than 3,000 died in total.
13:10Notice the number 120,000 was mentioned by Nasser.
13:15This is exactly the same number mentioned by Herodotus about the workers of Pharaoh Necho.
13:21It seems like one legend has rewritten another legend.
13:24In 1869, the canal was opened,
13:28stretching 193 kilometers and connecting the two seas without the need for any locks or gates.
13:34And until now, it is still being used.
13:38But we can see how big its impact is all over the world.
13:42In March 2021, the container ship Ever Given was blown by the wind and ran aground sideways in the canal,
13:49getting stuck there for six days.
13:51It is estimated that each day the canal is unusable.
13:55It delays shipments worth approximately $10 billion.
14:00And in the picture of the ship, you can see a small excavator working beside it.
14:05That picture is real.
14:07Pharaoh never saw the canal.
14:10De Lessep saw it.
14:11But his next canal would be the most terrifying on this list.
14:15And will we get there?
14:16Hold on a moment.
14:18Because after this, everything will change.
14:21Look at the canals we've already seen.
14:23Athos, Corinth, and Suez.
14:26All of them were built in almost the same way.
14:29They dug the ground down to sea level and the water itself filled the canal.
14:33The ship enters at sea level and also exits at sea level.
14:38It doesn't need to go higher than the water it came from.
14:42But between the two seas, there are almost always mountains.
14:46And everyone knows that water doesn't flow uphill.
14:50So who came up with a solution?
14:52The next four canals solved that very problem.
14:56They taught ships how to climb mountains.
14:58The fourth canal is the longest in the world.
15:01And it's also one of the oldest in this video, except for the Athos Canal.
15:06Athos.
15:07In 486 BC, the ruler of the kingdom of Wu, Fu Chai, ordered the connection of the Yangtze River and
15:15the Huai River.
15:16It was a military route for transporting soldiers and grain to the north.
15:21They dug it quickly.
15:23After almost a thousand years, Emperor Yang of the Sui dynasty decided to use this route to connect a large
15:30part of the country.
15:32According to records, around 5 million people were sent to work on the project.
15:36This included farmers, soldiers, prisoners, women, and children from different parts of the empire.
15:43The exact number of those who died is unknown.
15:47Estimates by historians vary from hundreds of thousands to 2 million.
15:53The canal was completed in 5 years.
15:56But 13 years later, the Sui dynasty fell.
16:00Emperor Yang was assassinated by his own close associates.
16:04Today, the Grand Canal stretches approximately 1,776 kilometers from Beijing to Hangzhou.
16:14But the most important change happened after this.
16:19In 984, an official named Cao Wei was in charge of a section of the canal where ships had difficulty
16:26because of the difference in water levels.
16:30He thought of a new way.
16:31To put two gates in succession and have a chamber between them.
16:37The ship would enter and the gates would be closed.
16:41Afterwards, the water level inside the chamber would rise until it reached the higher part of the canal.
16:47The other gate would be opened and the ship could go up.
16:50This is how the concept of the lock system used in canals around the world was developed.
16:55In Europe, this kind of system appeared several centuries later.
16:59But there was still a big problem.
17:02In Shandong, one part of the canal rises up to 42 meters above sea level and there wasn't enough water
17:09at the top.
17:11Imagine a coal barge that needs to go up to a height equivalent to a 14-story building.
17:18Without enough water at the top, the locks are useless.
17:22The solution was found in 1411.
17:25Engineer Sunday Lee and local expert Bai Ying dammed the Wen and Guan rivers.
17:31The water from the reservoirs flows into the lakes near the village of Nanwan.
17:37From there, the water was directed to the highest part of the canal from both sides.
17:43The problem of getting boats uphill was solved.
17:47Now, the Grand Canal is a World Heritage Site.
17:50And from Hangzhou to Dongping, some parts of it are still being used for barges that carry cargo, including coal.
17:58This footage is real.
18:00Some parts of this system have existed for about 2,500 years, and even today, the canal is still functioning.
18:09Fu Chai never saw its final form.
18:11Meanwhile, Emperor Yang did see it, but his dynasty fell.
18:17And now, the question is for you.
18:21Which is more important?
18:23Is it the countless workers that Emperor Yang commanded?
18:26Or the idea of an official that allowed ships to be raised to the higher parts of the canal?
18:31Write in the comments what you think.
18:34Fifth, this canal was almost entirely funded by just one person using his own money.
18:40And he is the only one among these seven who almost succeeded in his massive project.
18:45Pierre-Paul Riquet collected taxes in France until the age of 57.
18:49This was a tax on salt.
18:51He was not an engineer.
18:54In 1666, King Louis XIV allowed Pierre-Paul Riquet to connect the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea through a
19:02canal in the south of France.
19:04It's about 240 kilometers from Toulouse to the Mediterranean Sea.
19:09But there's a major obstacle in the middle of the route, the Nauru's watershed, which is 189 meters high.
19:17That was the biggest problem.
19:20Locks can lift the boats.
19:22But the boats also need enough water to reach the canal's highest point.
19:27And there wasn't enough water there.
19:30Riquet found a solution.
19:32He took water from the Black Mountains and brought it to the watershed using a system of canals and dams.
19:39It took five years to build the dam.
19:42It was about 700 meters long and 30 meters high.
19:47At that time, it was one of the largest engineering structures in Europe.
19:52Almost 12,000 people, including women, worked on the project and Riquet paid them even when he was almost out
20:01of money himself.
20:03The project was almost finished when a problem arose at Malpas Hill.
20:08The workers encountered soft and brittle rock, so Minister Colbert ordered the work to stop.
20:15He said he would send royal commissioners to decide whether the project should continue.
20:21Riquet realized that this might be the end of his dream, so he called his master mason, Pascal Denison,
20:28and he secretly ordered the digging of the tunnel to continue while the commissioners were still on their way.
20:33In less than a week, the workers managed to create a passage inside the hill that was just over a
20:40meter wide and almost as tall as a person.
20:43Imagine working with torches in a passage that's only about a meter wide.
20:48While the raw stone was right above your head and there wasn't enough time yet to reinforce the walls.
20:54When the commissioners arrived, they were taken inside.
20:57Inside the tunnel, while holding torches, they crossed the entire hill and saw that his plan was actually possible.
21:05Colbert approved the continuation of the project.
21:08The Malpas Tunnel, which is approximately 170 meters long, became the first navigable canal tunnel in Europe, and to this
21:17day, it still stands.
21:18The construction cost reached over 17 million livers, and about one-fifth of this was paid by Riquet himself out
21:25of his own pocket.
21:27He died, just a year later with a huge debt.
21:30A few months after that, the first ships passed through the canal.
21:34He never saw his canal in operation.
21:37The man who started the digging never saw its completion.
21:42The Canal du Midi was eventually included in the list of World Heritage Sites.
21:47Boats still use it to this day, and the scenes you see are real footage.
21:53Sixth, this canal was started by the same man who built the Suez Canal, but this time, he made a
22:01mistake in his plan.
22:03Ferdinand de Lesseps arrived in Panama in 1881 with the same idea, to dig through the isthmus down to sea
22:11level.
22:12This method worked in Egypt, but Panama was very different.
22:17There were mountains between the two oceans, as well as thick jungles and swamps full of mosquitoes.
22:24Yellow fever and malaria were killing the workers faster than they could be replaced.
22:31Back then, doctors didn't know that mosquitoes carried these diseases.
22:37According to company records, about 22,000 people died.
22:41Some historians believe that the actual number may have been even higher.
22:48Eventually, the company went bankrupt.
22:51Ferdinand de Lesseps died a few years later after being involved in a scandal and facing trial.
22:58Afterwards, the Americans took over the project and used the method that engineers in China had discovered long ago.
23:05They did not dig the entire canal down to sea level.
23:11Instead, they blocked the Chagras River with a dam and raised the water level in Gatun Lake to about 26
23:18meters above sea level.
23:22Imagine a ship that's 300 meters long.
23:25Using the locks, it is raised as high as a nine-story building.
23:32Then, it is carried over the mountains before being lowered again toward the other ocean.
23:37To connect the lake to the Pacific Ocean, they had to dig through the Continental Divide.
23:41This is where the Culebra Cut was formed, which is almost 13 kilometers long.
23:48The excavation was extremely difficult.
23:51The sluices kept moving.
23:53Parts that were just recently excavated kept getting buried by landslides again and again,
23:57so they had to dig them out over and over.
24:00In total, more than 7 million cubic meters of soil and rock were removed.
24:05Just imagine how much that is.
24:07It's like moving an entire mountain from one place to another.
24:12During the American period, around 5,600 more workers died.
24:18Most of them were from the Caribbean islands.
24:21In 1914, at last, the first steamship sailed from one ocean to the other.
24:28The route was about 82 kilometers long.
24:31But here is the important part that was not really noticed back then.
24:35The canal relies on fresh water from Gatun Lake to lift the ships.
24:41Every time a ship passes through, about 200 million liters of fresh water flow out to the sea.
24:47And all that water comes from the rain that fills the lake.
24:52In 2023, the amount of rainfall dropped by about one-third compared to the usual level.
24:59Because of this, the lake level fell to a record low.
25:03By November, they had to reduce the number of ships passing through the canal from 38 per Dalton to 24.
25:18Decide to melt the sea.
25:18On the left with the sea.
25:21And the water, the another sea.
25:22Gudala.
25:22The Colocaust.
25:23The Arabia.