All language subtitles for Big.History.S01E15.H2O.720p.BluRay.DD5.1.x264-NTb.EN HOH

[ Man Narrating ] Cryptic images mark
the world's most famous currency.

But the dollar has other mysteries-

hidden links that connect countries
on four continents...

their dollars and a symbol
that signifies wealth around the world.

Ifs a secret born billions of years ago...

and revealed...

on big history.

We think of history as a timeline...

a series of events stretching
a few thousand years into the past.

It's time to think bigger.

Instead of a line,
imagine a web of infinite connections...

interacting over billions of years...

linked together to create
everything we've ever known-

our universe, our planet...

and us.

History as we know it
is about to get big.

[ Narrator]
Gold gets all the glory.

It's the metal of the gods.

And as traditional history tells us...

it's a prize
that millions have rushed to claim.

But while we go for the gold,
first isn't always best.

Big history reveals the power
of our second-place metal.

Silver is shinier...

harder...

and stronger than gold.

And silver has an unusual property-

it kills germs.

When American families
were crossing the wilderness...

they often invested
in one good silver coin...

which they would plop
into their milk jug...

and that actually prevented
the milk from spoiling...

on their journey
through the wilderness.

[ Narrator]
Silver can do so much.

But gold has always
been more valuable...

because it's so much harder to find.

There's over 10 times more silver
on Earth than gold.

Why is there more silver than gold?

Big history looks to the stars.

This star, several times
more massive than our sun...

is an element factory.

Inside the star, gravity and heat
crush and restructure atoms...

forming elements, including metals
like aluminum and iron...

that will spread out into the cosmos...

when the star collapses
and explodes as a supernova.

The supernova's energy
transforms more atoms.

In this process, all of these other
elements are cooked up, if you like...

including silver.

[ Narrator]
But supernovas don't make gold.

These do.

The ruins of two supernovas-

each half a million times more dense
than the Earth.

They're called neutron stars.

And when they collide...

they release more energy
than our sun releases in its lifetime...

creating elements heavier than silver,
including gold.

But these collisions are rare.

There are far more supernovas...

which is why there's
more silver than gold...

in the universe and on Earth.

[ Narrator] Intense heat
helps create silver in the cosmos...

and steers silver and other metals
around the Earth.

Underground volcanoes
spread them through the crust...

along a highway
of superheated lava.

[ Man ] That melting process,
amongst other things...

tends to concentrate
different minerals together.

Veins of silver appear.

And, of course, then it plays
a huge role in human society.

[ Narrator]
So deposits of metals like silver...

appear in places
where there's been high volcanic activity-

from the Pacific Ring of Fire...

to the Mediterranean.

Big history connects
the chemistry of the cosmos...

to geology and the precious metal
that will unite the world.

We are now in ancient Greece
on the eve of an epic invasion.

Persia is on the march.

It's the mightiest ancient empire...

with the largest army and navy
the world has ever seen.

The Greeks will be no match-..

For an invasion force
of over 1,200 ships...

without a secret weapon.

Three years earlier,
as the Persians prepare for war...

the Greeks discover
a buried treasure.

History's second-ranked metal
is about to make a power play.

[ Narrator] The world's first coins
are made of gold.

But gold is so rare,
the supply can't keep up with demand.

Silver is the solution.

Gold is a strategic resource.

But silver is more common than gold,
so you can have it in circulation more.

[ Narrator] Silver becomes the currency
of choice in the Mediterranean.

And that's good news for the Greeks.

They were mining for silver,
which was a valuable currency...

and they hit
a particularly rich vein of it.

[ Narrator] Greece sits
on a hot spot of volcanic activity.

The mines of Laurium near Athens...

contain more silver
than anywhere else in the ancient world.

The Greeks mint it into coins...

to pay men...

to build warships...

to face the Persians and win.

Victory means that Greek ideas survive.

So, basically, western democracy
was saved by a silver mine.

[ Benjamin ] These loads of silver
allowed classical Greek civilization...

to pass many of the great ideas
and philosophies onto the Roman world...

and eventually onto Europe.

So silver effectively allowed
Greek civilization to become embedded...

at the heart of western civilization
even today.

And this is the sort of perspective
that big history can bring.

[ Narrator] Silver is the unsung hero
that saves democracy-

the second-place metal
with first-class impact...

that decodes a powerful secret...

hidden in the most famous money
in the world.

Big history uses science
to change the way we see the world.

It reveals that silver's second-place rank
among metals...

links to the birth of the elements
in exploding stars.

Supernovas that create so much silver...

we consider it less valuable than gold
but more useful for everyday money.

A cosmic connection
that's encoded in the U. S. dollar.

Traditional history speculates
about these mysterious symbols.

The strange pyramid
with the all-seeing eye.

But big history links to geology...

to reveal the origins of the dollar.

A Central European valley...

in what is now the Czech Republic.

Here, prehistoric volcanoes...

have left behind some
of the richest silver stashes on Earth.

In the 16th century...

silver coins minted here
stimulate trade.

They spread all over Europe.

The coins are called thalers...

because they come
from a silver-rich valley...

and the German word
for “valley” is thal.

Soon, the word is used
for any silver coin.

And in English,
“thaler” becomes “dollar. ”

The dollar becomes
the official currency of the U.S. in 1785.

But at the time,
there's no U.S. mint.

America can't make its own coins.

So the first American dollars
are actually Spanish pesos.

These coins are almost
a hundred percent pure silver.

And so they become
like standard units of value.

[ Narrator] The peso is a temporary fix
that leaves a permanent mark.

This image of columns
draped by royal banners...

is believed to be
the origin of the dollar sign-

a symbol used by countries
around the world.

So how does a simple Spanish coin
get so much power?

Big history connects the spread of money
to another silver hot spot-

the Andes Mountains,
along the Ring of Fire.

In the 16th century...

Spanish conquistadores
arrive in the New World...

with one thing on their mind-gold.

But as we've seen,
the stars have given us far less gold...

and far more silver...

concentrated in places
where volcanoes have moved metals...

like the Andes Mountains.

The Spaniards
stumbled across a mountain...

that is as close to a mountain
of pure silver as geology allows.

[ Narrator] This is Potosi...

a 13,000-foot-high treasure chest.

But the Earth
has this treasure on lockdown...

because the same heat
that brought the silver here...

bonds its atoms
with other less valuable metals, like lead.

[ Benjamin ]
The geology component of big history...

shows us that this unique chemical bonding
takes place between silver and lead...

and it's quite difficult to separate-

much more difficult than just mining
and using gold, for example.

[ Narrator] The key to unlocking the silver
is another element...

that can draw its atoms
away from the lead.

Big history zooms in.

Mercury atoms and silver atoms
are attracted to each other...

and they will kind of
glom on to each other.

Mercury is also a liquid...

so it's good at getting
in nooks and crevices inside minerals...

and kind of scouring
for every last silver atom...

and you can separate out and get
the silver out through another process.

[ Narrator] Bu! releasing a
mountain is worth of silver. -.

Will take twice as much mercury. -.

And big history reveals the key...

because the same volcanoes
that create Potosi...

also build a mountain of mercury
less than 800 miles away.

And from, as they said,
the marriage of these two mountains...

came this absolute river of silver.

[ Narrator] The Spanish
come to the New World for gold...

but find almost' .90 times more silver.

In just 150 years,
they export' 16,000 tons...

worth seven billion dollars today.

A river of silver that connects
the world like never before-

linking the silver-rich West...

with the silver-hungry East...

and feeding a growing demand in one
of the most powerful empires on Earth-

China.

[ Benjamin ] The silver was coming across in
huge treasure galleons across the Pacific...

to Manila in the Philippines.

From there it was being brought to the
great port cities of southern China...

where the Chinese
were demanding silver as payment...

for highly valuable Chinese exports.

[ Narrator] China has long been isolated
from the West.

But the river of silver...

begins to shift the balance of power
in the world.

[ Mann ] In that moment
is the beginning of globalization.

Most people my age
just kind of think of globalization...

as something that's been around
for the last 15 or 20 years.

But, in fact, we've been living in a fairly
globalized world for 400 years or more.

And big history perspective
helps you understand that.

[ Narrator] But as so much silver
falls into the hands of one empire...

this treasure...

becomes a ticking time bomb.

[ Narrator] Big history
is a new way to see the world...

revealing how volcanic activity
builds mountains of silver...

that turned the second-place metal...

into the first metal
to unite the world.

But what happens
when the silver runs out?

Big history connects back...

to 1839.

The mountain of silver called Potosi,
once the world's treasure chest...

has shrunk a thousand feet...

after almost 300 years
of nonstop mining.

The river of silver is drying up.

And a shortage...

turns into a crisis.

Traditional history
calls it the Opium War.

But big history reveals
it's silver that sparks the fight.

The British Empire spans the globe...

its far-flung colonies
linked through trade.

China trades with Britain.

But while it sells items like tea...

it buys almost nothing.

China only wants
one thing from the West-

payment in silver.

So when the global shortage
causes Britain's silver to run low...

the British must find something else
to trade for tea.

[ Benjamin ] And the English government
came up with this unique idea...

of replacing silver with opium...

and began to force Chinese exporters to take
large chests of opium instead of silver.

[ Narrator] Four million Chinese
are already addicted to British opium.

China's government doesn't want
more people getting hooked.

Eventually the Chinese reacted,
tried to destroy the opium chests.

[ Narrator]
The British respond with force.

Their superior weapons
oven/vhetrn the Chinese...

and China, weakened,
can no longer resist.

[ Benjamin ]
For much of the past 5,000 years...

China has been undoubtedly the wealthiest,
most powerful state on this planet.

The balance of power
has now utterly shifted...

and this is staggering news
to the Chinese at the time.

They were really not prepared for this.

[ Narrator] The British and other
western powers flood into Asia.

They claim colonies and riches.

The big history perspective
reveals how a brutal war over silver...

and the century of upheaval that follows...

has an important legacy.

It tears down the divide
between East and West...

and leads to a globalized future.

While the historic quest for gold
first draws us across oceans...

big history reveals how silver...

our second-place metal,
gets a chance to shine...

as atoms changed in supernovas...

change our world.

But the story of silver
is just the beginning.

There's a much bigger puzzle
hidden in big history.

Each episode unlocks a clue.

Everyday things like salt...

gold...

and horses...

hold the key.

Watch them all, and you'll see
this grand mystery revealed.

This big history of time, of space...

the big history of us.