Rebecca West - Mankind: The Story of All of Us TV - Suzanne Collins - Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Edgar Allan Poe - Michael Crichton - Bertolt Brecht - Meryl Streep - Scott Westerfeld - Eric Hoffer - Dean Koontz - Desmond Morris - Felix Dzerzinski - Gloria Steinham - William J Cromie - Michael Crichton - The Human Spark TV - Albert Camus - R D Laing - Gwen Adshead - Jorge Luis Borges - John Stuart Mill - Richard Feynman - Donalyn Miller - Frank Drake - James Joyce - 4,000 Year Old Cold Case TV - Lucian Freud - Sheila Fell - L S Lowry - Genesis 6:4 - Why I Am No Longer A Christian - Spiral s2e2 TV - The Ladykillers 1955 - Star Trek TV - Star Trek: The Next Generation TV - Star Trek: Deep Space Nine TV - Star Trek: Voyager TV - Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps 2010 - Richard Belzer - Haile Selassie - James Burke TV - Ashley Montagu - The Elephant Man 1980 - Brian Cox TV - James Woods TV - John Sulston - Human Swarm TV - Lost Horizon 1937 - W E F Hagel - More Than Human: Breakthrough TV - Samuel Adams - Morgan Freeman TV - The Secret History of Humans TV - Tom Shakespeare - Gore Vidal - Chris Packham TV - The UnBelievable with Dan Aykroyd TV -
If the whole human race lay in one grave, the epitaph on the headstone might well be: It seemed a good idea at the time. Rebecca West
A species born to survive in a world full of danger. Strengthened by hardship. Inspired by impossible dreams. Conflict shapes our destiny. Mankind: The Story of All of Us I, History 2012
A unique species is born – Mankind. Now on the grasslands of east Africa we begin our struggle to survive. ibid.
We’ll spend the next hundred millennia perfecting weapons that kill at a distance. ibid.
Better nutrition boosts the human brain. ibid.
Now an acre of land can feed a hundred times as many people as hunting and gathering. A new crop conquers the globe – wheat. ibid.
We become less healthy and shorter. ibid.
Developed five-thousand years ago in the Middle East, writing is an extension of the human brain. ibid.
Trade and industry are forging new connections around the world. ibid.
Transform the planet: the age of iron – an age we still live in today. Mankind: The Story of All of Us II
The fourth most common element in the Earth’s crust. ibid.
A super-fuel – charcoal. ibid.
Iron ushers in a new age of warfare: Sparta v Greece. ibid.
A new type of technology – cast-iron. ibid.
In pursuit of power mankind builds new empires. New connections. Now one man’s life and death will touch the lives of millions. It will transform the destiny of an empire, and change the story of all of us. Mankind: The Story of All of Us III
Jerusalem: 33 A.D. A provincial city under Roman rule. Occupied for a hundred years. ibid.
It can take three days to die on a cross: blood-loss, shock, dehydration, suffocation. ibid.
The imperial capital: Rome. The largest city on Earth. Population 1,000,000. ibid.
The State provides hand-outs to the poor. ibid.
The aqueduct is powered by gravity: it needs to drop one foot in every three hundred. ibid.
Rome’s aqueducts will deliver almost a billion litres of water a day. ibid.
Rome is the most advanced city in the world. Apartment blocks up to six stories high. ibid.
A police force, a fire brigade and a postal service. ibid.
For twenty years Britons have waged a guerrilla war against an occupation. ibid.
Leading the resistance, a mystical sect of priests – the Druids. They worshipped the sun, the moon and the forest. Druid means ‘man of oak’. ibid.
Mankind’s first full-time professional army. Each soldier is armed with a gladius. ibid.
Paulinus has been a commander for twenty years ... His men kill as many as 80,000 people … The Druids annihilated. ibid.
The first priority for Rome is a network of roads. ibid.
The Roman road – seven metres across, wide enough for an army to march six abreast. Roman roads connect new Roman towns, and conquered people become citizens of an empire. ibid.
Admission to the games is free. ibid.
Silk: it’s a secret China has guarded for over a thousand years ... China still remains the world’s biggest silk producer … the Silk Road. ibid.
Across the empire eight million people are slaves with no rights in Roman law. ibid.
Thousands of Christians are executed and become celebrated as martyrs. ibid.
A new Christian capital rises in the east of the empire: Constantinople. Today: Istanbul … the Church of the Holy Wisdom. ibid.
A world connected like never before. Christianity – the lasting legacy of the Roman empire. ibid.
Rome: 455 A.D. At the gates of the imperial palace Genseric. Known as the Spear King. Chief of a tribe of Germanic warriors – the Vandals. Mankind: The Story of All of Us IV
Barbarian tribes seize their opportunity. Angles and Saxons push into Britain. ibid.
All the gold ever mined comes from outer space ... All the gold ever mined would fill just three Olympic swimming pools. ibid.
In twenty years Islam unites the warring tribes of Arabia. ibid.
The Arabs leapt forward in astronomy, engineering, medicine. They create algebra and simple mathematics. ibid.
On Easter Island, entirely alone, they’ll create a unique civilisation – surrounded by statues of their ancestral gods. ibid.
A Christian knight on a mission from God in the Holy Land waging war on Islam. ibid.
The Pope calls on Christians to take up arms. ibid.
The Crusades will continue for two centuries and will cost more than a million lives. ibid.
The Mongols are coming: fifty thousand warriors – the world’s greatest cavalry army. Their leader – Genghis Khan. Mankind: The Story of All of Us V
Genghis Khan rapes so many women that as many as one in two hundred people alive today carry his genes. ibid.
In his lifetime Genghis Khan is said to be responsible for the death of up to forty million people. ibid.
Mankind faces a battle against extinction. ibid.
The Atlantic Ocean prevents the plague reaching the Americas. ibid.
Most of modern-day Chile, Bolivia and Peru united under Inca rule. ibid.
The isolation of the Americas is coming to an end. ibid.
1352: the Sahara: the largest desert on the planet … Ibn Battuta: He left Morocco at age 21 vowing never to travel the same road twice. He has explored over 40 countries but this is his first time in the Sahara … The plague raging through Asia, Europe and the Middle East; it’s killed up to a fifth of the world’s population … but the Sahara is a barrier against the Pandemic. Mankind: The Story of All of Us VI: Survivors
After the plague a rebirth … 5,000 miles away China is on the verge of its own rebirth … A peasant army to drive the Mongols out of China. The key to their strategy: a weapon that will change mankind – the gun. ibid.
For more than 700 years Spain has been run by the Moors, the Muslims of north Africa … Spain is the new power in Europe. ibid.
Risking all for a new world … Guided by Thor, God of Thunder, the Vikings set out across the world. Mankind: The Story of All of Us VII: New World
Ninety million Native Americans – a fifth of the planet’s population – cut off from the rest of the world. Until now. ibid.
In the Americas there are no iron tools or horses. No wheeled vehicles. Yet America’s people engineer great monuments. ibid.
The Aztecs believe they owe a debt of blood to their gods. ibid.
The Aztecs have created one of the most sophisticated civilisations on the planet. ibid.