All language subtitles for East to West 1of7 Between Two Rivers

(MIDDLE EASTERN MUSIC)

This is the untold story

of the making of the modern world.

A fresh perspective,

charting the spread of civilisation
across the globe.

From the dawn of mankind

and the first cities and empires

to the belief in one God.

(Sings call to prayer)

We follow the flow of civilisation

from the Middle East,

an extraordinary place
that has been a vital link

between the continents of Asia,
Africa and Europe for millennia.

An economic, scientific
and cultural centre of the world.

(DRAMATIC MUSIC)

It will be an epic journey
of discovery,

from the East...

to the West.

(INSPIRING MUSIC)

(SOFT WOODWIND MUSIC)

Mount Nemrut in modern Turkey

overlooks
the ancient river Euphrates.

From here is a spectacular view
of Mesopotamia.

At the dawn of mankind this land

between the river
Euphrates and Tigris

was the cradle of civilisation.

At the top of Nemrut, hidden beneath
a huge man-made tumulus,

is the 2000-year-old tomb of a King -
Antiochus.

Antiochus was of Greek
and Persian descent.

In homage to this mixed ancestry,

he flanked his tomb with huge statues
of Greek and Persian gods:

the Greek gods, Zeus and Heracles

facing west to Greece...

and the Persian gods
Oromasdes and Vahagn

facing east to Persia.

Antiochus' great monument symbolises

the meeting of Eastern
and Western culture.

Its position,
overlooking Mesopotamia,

is a powerful reminder that
civilisation, as we largely know it,

was born in this land
between two rivers.

(PULSATING MUSIC)

Before the birth of civilisation,

humans were nomads.

Tribes, scouring the landscape
for shelter and food.

(PULSING PERCUSSIVE MUSIC)

They lived by foraging and hunting.

(MUSIC CRESTS)

But extraordinary new discoveries
show

that something dramatic happened
around 12,000 years ago.

Hunter-gatherers roaming
what is now southern Turkey

did something remarkable.

Excavations in Turkey,
at Gébekli Tepe

show they stopped their wandering.

For the first time ever

humans began to build

on a monumental scale.

Changing the landscape.

All these earth mounds we see here
are artificial.

They're not done by nature

and they contain other monuments,

monuments like that one
we excavated here.

And these earthen mounds are sitting
on top of a huge limestone ridge

on its highest point,
dominating the landscape here.

Inside these mounds,
Professor Klaus Schmidt and his team

are excavating
enormous carved stone pillars -

the first man-made monuments
ever discovered.

Yeah, the pillars here in C
are quite monumental ones.

Unfortunately the two central ones
had been destroyed in ancient times.

The upper part is missing

but we know the original height
had been about five metres.

The stone pillars reveal
that Stone Age man

had a surprisingly high level
of artistic sophistication

This one we have a very fine example

of the art of the Stone Age,

with a high relief
depicting a predator,

maybe a leopard
showing its teeth here,

and the body of the animal, and
below, a flat relief of a wild boar.

So we have three levels of art here,

the cubic pillars,
the T-shaped pillar,

the high relief
and the flat relief.

All together in one stone.

(RHYTHMICAL BEAT)

The discoveries at Gébekli Tepe

have completely revolutionised
our understanding of early man.

Long before they began to farm,

hunter-gatherers paused to make
their mark on their landscape.

The people who did it
still had been hunter-gatherers -

but they are meeting here, they are
making festivals, feastings here,

and now they have
the manpower

to produce the monolithic pillars,

to transport them and to erect
them here in these stone circles.

The building of Gébekli Tepe,

the organisation of labour
and resources,

the skilled workmanship involved,

are proof of an extremely complex
society

2000 years before man
settled permanently to farm.

It has radically changed
our understanding

of the birth of civilisation.

This kind of work
is not a work done by everyone,

it's a work for specialists.

Also to produce the pillars
is a work for specialists,

tor transportation,
they had engineers tor such works.

So it means
the hunter-gatherer society

was much more developed
than we expected before.

(LIVELY MUSIC)

This previously unknown first chapter
in man's long journey to civilisation

was discovered here
in the Middle East.

The next chapter of this story
saw permanent settlements -

taking control of natural resources.

There's a key moment
in the human experience

where mankind no longer
is just living hand to mouth -

when men and women aren't just
running after the natural world

and begging it for succour.

Instead when men and women
settle down,

when they start to have
fixed communities,

they are for the first time really

in charge of the world around them

and this gives them
an extraordinary footing

from which civilisation itself
can grow.

This next vital step
in mankind's journey

also happened in this region.

Humans began to settle permanently

and build houses and communities -

starting over 10,000 years ago .

Evidence of this vital change

has also been discovered
in Southern Turkey,

at Qatalhöyük.

Qatalhöyük was on a river.

It was a source oi water and another
vital component of life here -

mud for building.

These ancient mud walls
might look humble

but they represent a key stage
in civilisation -

the ability to build settlements.

Over 9000 years ago

Qatalhöyük looked like this -

houses with ovens
and rooftop entrances.

It's a story that's been
pieced together by archaeology.

So what we've got here
are a series of mud brick houses.

There's a house here
and a house here,

there's another one behind
and one behind me here.

The houses were built
out of mud bricks

that was collected off-site

and they were generally sun-dried.

Here you can see a line of bricks -

they're very long bricks but here
you can also see the mortar.

The river by Qatalhöyük
didn't only provide mud for building.

It had another gift.

The rich soils proved very fertile.

People here had taken
another revolutionary step -

farming.

In the storage areas we find
a series of clay-walled bins

and here's the wall
of one bin.

Within these bins we've found nuts,

we've found pistachio nuts,
almond nuts,

we've found peas, wheat.

From there we can learn about

what they were growing out
in their environment,

what they were farming.

(DRAMATIC MUSIC)

The evidence is
that the earliest crops

and the domestication of animals

began in Southern Turkey
over 10,000 years ago

and gradually spread
through the Fertile Crescent

east to Mesopotamia

and west to the Mediterranean.

Farming and the settled communities
that worked the land

expanded through Europe

and by 7000 years ago
had arrived at its western edge.

The Eastern idea of agriculture
transformed societies everywhere.

Agriculture produced a revolution
in technology too.

This was the Neolithic Era,

the New Stone Age.

Archaeologists have discovered
the tell-tale signs

of its highly effective technology.

On site we also find
some of the tools

that they would have been using.

So we find stone grinding tools

that they may have crushed
the wheat seeds up

to make a kind of flour

or crushed it up for a gruel.

And we also find obsidian tools -

obsidian is a volcanic glass -

which may have been
part of a sickle.

And... something like this

may have been a hunting tool.

With agriculture
and permanent settlement

came more sophisticated technology -

first pottery, tor storing
and transporting produce,

then metal and metalworking
tor tools and utensils.

Farming was responsible
for a revolution in society too.

It saw the careful organisation
of communal projects

like irrigation and harvesting,

and it needed rules for the division,

maintenance and inheritance of land.

The essence of the Neolithic
is about domesticating environment

and settling down in one place.

The Neolithic is the beginnings
of our journey

to where we are today.

An organised food supply
could sustain a growing population.

People came together
in ever-larger groups

and man began to form the beginnings

of what we now know as civilisation.

(DRAMATIC MUSIC)

And it was in the rich
and fertile lands

along the great rivers of the East

where civilisation was born.

(SLOW ORIENTAL MUSIC)

Rivers were the lifeline
of civilisation -

from the Indus and Ganges in India

to the Nile in Egypt.

Around 6000 years ago,

between the two great Middle Eastern
rivers - the Tigris and Euphrates -

the world's first cities
began to emerge.

One of the earliest cities

was built on the western edge
of Mesopotamia.

Mari, in modern-day Syria,

was re-discovered in 1933.

Mari was a purpose-built city
sited on the banks of the Euphrates.

The city was circular

and was supplied with water
by a central channel.

Mari was strategically placed
to profit from trade routes

between Mesopotamia
and more distant sources of wealth.

Mari grew rich through trade
and agriculture.

But the wealth
wasn't shared equally.

Instead a social hierarchy
developed

and at its head
there was a king.

(WHISPERING VOICES)

In Mari, the past
can speak directly to us.

(WHISPERING VOICES)

Archaeologists discovered evidence

of one of civilisation's
greatest inventions...

writing.

Thousands of inscribed tablets
were found

using text invented in Mesopotamia

around 5000 years ago.

It is perhaps in some ways

the most momentous achievement

which Homo Sapiens has come up with,

the idea that you can make
a set of signs on a surface

which other people would recognise

and from that, get the words
of their language.

It's a momentous
and most wonderful invention,

the results of which
are still crucial to us today.

Scribes used a cut reed

pressing it into the surface
of wet clay.

The reed made a line
with a wedge at the end.

The scholars who deciphered
the Sumerian texts

gave it a Latin name -
calling it cuneiform

after the Latin cuneus,
meaning “wedge...

it's fairly clear that
the process of writing

first got off the ground
for administrative reasons...

where there was too much
to keep control of in any other way.

The very earliest signs
are what we call pictographs

where you have a linear,
rather infantile sketch

of a given thing like a bird

which looks like a bird
and it means “bird...

But what happened in Mesopotamia
and uniquely there,

is that the early people
who were experimenting with writing

had the idea in their minds
that you could draw a symbol -

not for what it looked like
but for what it sounded like.

And once this crucial step
had taken place

they very rapidly developed
a whole range of signs

which they could use to spell out
the sound of their language.

It's impossible to overestimate
the impact

of the invention of writing.

It soon spread across the Middle East,

quickly replacing pictograms
and hieroglyphs.

And then it spread beyond
to much of the rest of the world.

My Lord must pay close attention
to this tablet.

The cuneiform tablets
discovered at Mari

reveal the scope
of organisation required

in the first cities of civilisation.

How to lay siege to...

These administrative tablets
show us

that the society
was really organised,

it was not just a simple village.

It has to handle a whole city

and the hinterland also.

So we know a lot about this society

and specifically about those
who were on top of this society,

so the king, the priests
and all this administration.

The tablets give us a great insight
into their world.

But it isn't only writing that allows
us to look back at this civilisation.

One of the greatest treasures
of Sumerian civilisation

is housed today
in the British Museum -

it's known as The Standard of Ur.

This object
from Southern Iraq

is just astonishingly
beautiful.

It was made over 4500 years ago

and although we don't know exactly
what it was used for

there is no doubting
how precious it was.

Because if you just look
at the materials that were used -

there is lapis lazuli stone here,

and red limestone
and precious shells.

It clearly tells us a story.

And what I think this is, is
this is a society that is working,

everything is very ordered.

You have the men labouring
in the fields at the bottom,

then you have a procession
oi fat animals being brought in -

probably for some kind
of religious sacrifice -

there are goats and handfuls of fish
and even cattle.

And then up at the top here
is the court -

there are men sitting
toasting the king

and clearly he is in control
of the people beneath him.

It's actually a very peaceful
and cultured scene.

But ii you go round
the other side of this

you find that reality
is a little different.

Because here we have
a terrible scene of war.

Here at the bottom you have men who
are being trampled by charging horses

as they pull their chariots.

You have naked men being brought in
grovelling to the king

who is standing with his staff.

So it's a cogent
and visceral reminder

that when you create
a great civilisation,

this is a jewel
that attracts thieves

and there are always going to be
others who want what you've got.

(DRAMATIC MUSIC)

Civilisation brought rivalry
and competition

to the city kingdoms
of Mesopotamia...

and that would lead to war
and conquest.

A new age of Empire was beginning.

Mari was a rich target

and was destroyed twice
by rival powers.

First, over 4000 years ago,
by the Akkadians,

who created the world's first empire
in Mesopotamia.

Then finally the Akkadians'
imperial successors, the Babylonians,

put Mari to the flame.

(DRAMATIC MUSIC)

Mari and Sumerian civilisation
were destroyed...

but civilisation itself survived

and spread
from its Mesopotamian beginnings.

(DRUMBEAT)

From their mountain home in Anatolia,

the Hittites created
a 600-year-long civilisation

in a hostile landscape that had
none of the natural advantages

of the rich and fertile
river valleys of Mesopotamia.

Here they built one of the largest
empires of the ancient world.

Their historical achievement is

that they were able
to out-balance

natural geographical obstacles

by an enormous amount of control,

social organisation and discipline.

They were able to build up
an empire,

controlling the majority
of Anatolia,

present-day Turkey,

but also large regions of Syria,

the Lebanon, the northern part
of Lebanon -

so in that time they were one
of the global players

in the Eastern Mediterranean.

The huge Hittite capital Hattusa

housed a population oi 50,000 people.

It was surrounded
by massive outer walls

with elaborately decorated
lion gateways.

On the highest point
in the landscape,

the Hittites built an enormous
monument to their achievement.

(THUNDER)

Visible from 2O kilometres away,

it wasn't a defensive rampart

but was built simply to house
a ceremonial route.

The 3500-year-old structure

is a testament to how far the people
of the ancient world had come

in their journey
from hunter-gatherer to civilisation.

This enormous artificial structure
of Yerkapi

is one of the most impressive
buildings in Hattusa.

The whole building is, at the end,
a massive statement,

a stony statement of Hittite...

power, influence, civilisation of

what they are think
they are themselves.

At its peak, the Hittite Empire

rivalled Egypt for control
of the Middle East.

But in the West a new power
was emerging.

(DRAMATIC MUSIC)

At the end of the second millennium,

traders from Greece
began to establish colonies

along the coast of Asia Minor.

One place where these ancient Greeks
ventured

was the city of Troy.

The city rising above these plains
was mythologised as a place

where East met West
in brutal conflict.

The Greek poet Homer
immortalised it

in the epic stories
the Iliad and the Odyssey.

Although we may think of the stories
of the Trojan Wars

as just a legend or a myth,

archaeologists have found Troy.

This is one of the most ancient
entrances into the city.

We know that the Greeks
really thought

the Trojan War did happen here.

Homer's tale of the Trojan War
reflects the real moment in history

when the ancient Greeks
began to expand

to the older, more established
civilisations to the east.

In the next centuries
the city-states of ancient Greece

grew in power and cultural influence.

Today, in the West,
Ancient Greece is usually considered

to be the home of civilisation -

where classical ideas
and ideals of natural philosophy,

literature and art were born.

(SOARING MUSIC)

But the place accorded to Greece
in the history of civilisation

has obscured the East's contribution

to the making of the modern world.

Although they share
a long history of civilisation,

East and West are more often
characterised as rivals.

When you look at the history of the
relationship between East and West,

it could seem just like a catalogue

of retribution
and counter-retribution.

But actually the whole time

these civilisations were
learning from one another

and their fates
were inextricably linked.

Someone who rediscovered
this Eastern legacy

was a leader
who was to change history...

Alexander the Great.

He came to Troy in 334 BC

at the head of a Greek Army,
heading east.

When Alexander the Great
lands at Troy

we're told that he slept
with a dagger

and a copy of Homer's Iliad
under his pillow.

This was a man who was a new Greek

going to conquer Eastern lands

just as the heroes
of the Trojan wars had before.

According to the Greek historians,

Alexander made a special visit
to Troy's temple of Athena.

(UPLIFTING MUSIC)

When Alexander came here there would
have been a temple to Athena here.

We have to use our imaginations
a little bit

because only some foundations
remain.

The stories tell us that one of the
things that he found in the temple

were objects and relics that

were said to date back
to the Trojan war.

So one of the things
that Alexander does

in a symbolic gesture,

is he takes off his own armour,

takes some of this old Trojan war
armour - possibly of Achilles -

and puts it on instead.

And in doing so he's making
a connection to the people

that he thought were his ancestors.

Inspired by his visit to Troy,

Alexander began his campaign
of conquest in earnest.

He was intent on conquering
the Persian Empire.

Forged 200 years
before Alexander's time,

it had grown to be the largest empire
in the ancient world,

spanning Asia, Africa and Europe.

Alexander won his first encounter
with the Persians

at the Battle of the Granicus River.

But the further he went

the more he was to encounter
the legacy owed to the East.

Miletus was typical of the mixed
Eastern and Western influences

Alexander discovered.

Miletus was in the Persian empire,

but it was populated by Greeks

who had lived on the coast
of Asia Minor for centuries.

Extraordinary new discoveries here

have thrown sharp new light
on how East and West mixed.

Excavations are showing how
Eastern ideas influenced the West.

Aphrodite was one of the greatest
Greek goddesses.

In her sanctuary here

archaeologists have discovered
beautiful figurines

given as offerings to the goddess.

From these,
they have pieced together evidence

showing the remarkable degree
to which the Greeks in Miletus

absorbed Eastern ideas...

even in their gods.

This is a very early piece,

showing Aphrodite
as a mighty goddess of vegetation.

And this is another one showing her

as the mistress of animals.

These are all old,
Near Eastern symbols.

The Aphrodite figurines
discovered in Miletus

are nearly all Eastern
rather than Greek in style.

It seems clear that the Miletians'
idea of Aphrodite came from the East.

The Aphrodite is of oriental origin

and she came in this naked shape
to the Greeks.

So they were taking up

all these oriental influences.

Careful examination has shown

that the Greeks of Miletus
also learnt

how to make their goddess figurines

from Eastern teachers.

These figurines
are flat on the back.

These come from a mould, a negative,

put the clay into it
and wait until it dried.

They took it out and worked it over
with a stick like this,

doing the details of which we are...
it didn't come from the mould

and then it was fired
and it came out like this.

Making figurines in a mould
is an Eastern technique.

The Greeks of Miletus combined it
with their own technique

of making figurines
on a potter's wheel.

So we have a very neat idea

of influences coming from the East

and how they were adapted
to their own,

to their own tradition
of the Greeks.

Greek colonies in Asia Minor
like Miletus

had a crucial role in transporting
Eastern ideas to the West via Greece.

Alexander himself would find in his
campaign against the Persian Empire,

that East and West
were inextricably mixed

and what Alexander proudly took
to be his own Greek civilisation

in reality sprang
from an Eastern source.

After capturing the Greek cities
of western Asia Minor

Alexander struck East-

defeating the Persians once more
at the Battle of lssus.

Then he turned south,
capturing Syria and Egypt,

before venturing to Mesopotamia

and finally defeating the Persians
at the Battle of Gaugamela.

Now Alexander readied himself to
capture the ancient city of Babylon...

the jewel in the Eastern crown.

Taking Babylon was key to Alexander's
dream of a world empire.

(PERCUSSIVE MUSIC)

Once in a fertile landscape,

Babylon lies 85 kilometres
south of Baghdad in Iraq.

(HAUNTING FLUTE MUSIC)

Some reconstruction of Babylon
began in 1983.

The ancient city
had an illustrious history.

One of the first cities
of civilisation,

it had been a dominant power
in Mesopotamia

and had been the capital
of the great Babylonian Empire.

The largest city on earth with a
population of nearly 200,000 people,

Babylon was a place of great wealth
and architectural splendour.

Stories circulated
throughout the ancient world

about the glory of ancient Babylon

but the reality must have been
five times as impressive.

This was a city that was surrounded
by a high wall,

glazed with beautiful blue tiles.

Alexander entered Babylon
through a ceremonial gate

decorated with reliefs
of aurochs and dragons,

dedicated to the goddess Ishtar.

(BRIGHT ORIENTAL MUSIC)

From here a 180-metre
ceremonial processional way,

adorned with lions sacred to Ishtar,

led into the city.

Nothing in Alexander's experience

could have prepared him
for the wonder of Babylon.

Reassembled from hundreds
of thousands of fragments

excavated at Babylon,

the Ishtar Gate and processional way

now stand in Berlin's
Pergamon Museum.

(MUSIC SWELLS)

Ishtar would have been familiar
to Alexander.

He would have recognised
in her the characteristics

of his Greek goddess
of love and war, Aphrodite.

Well, Ishtar was the most important
goddess of the Babylonians.

We can get a feeling for her from
the ancient sources in Mesopotamia.

And you look
at the goddess Aphrodite,

you might put them in the same
category, they have the same status,

they're always shown
to be beautiful themselves

and you could say
that Aphrodite was as it were,

the counterpart in Greek culture

to Ishtar in Babylonian culture.

Ishtar had a starring role

in one of the first and greatest
stories of Mesopotamian literature -

the Epic of Gilgamesh.

This piece of clay
from the Library of Assyria

is one of the bits
of the story of the Epic' of Gilgamesh

and the Epic of Gilgamesh
is a classic example

of what you might call
a Hollywood story.

You have a hero,
he has his adventures,

there are monsters,
there are beautiful women,

there's treachery,
there's friendship,

there's adventure,
there's the flood

and everything all mixed up
in one great narrative.

Ishtar decides
she wants to seduce Gilgamesh

and in this rather lively
and funny description,

Gilgamesh spurns her.

And here he lists in a wholes series
of incriminating paragraphs

the disastrous fate
of her earlier lovers.

(MAN HEADS IN SUMERIAN)

Gilgamesh's point is “If I give in
what are you going to turn me into?

“I'll have nothing to do with it."
She gets very angry.

And you have to imagine Ishtar
slamming the door

at the end of this conversation
and walking out in a huff,

exactly like in a movie.

The Epic of Gilgamesh is one of the
earliest known works of literature -

dating back 1400 years before Homer.

The idea of a real person
like Gilgamesh,

mythologised in a cycle of stories,

would have been very familiar
to Alexander the Great.

The whole idea of the Homeric
sources that people know so well

measure up
in a very intriguing way

with this Babylonian example
behind them.

You can see it's the same kind
of literature in the same function.

They set us on the road
of literacy and literature

from really a very remote...

5000 years ago
it was already on the way.

People stopped writing
in cuneiform script 2000 years ago

and knowledge of it
was lost to the world.

(VOCAL MUSIC)

It was only in the 19th century, after
the rediscovery of cuneiform tablets,

that scholars deciphered
the ancient texts.

As soon as we started to translate
these cuneiform texts, we realised

this was a rich and wonderful
and sophisticated world -

a world where there were
great cultures,

where belief systems
were incredibly nuanced and various.

And in a way it's our fault

that we don't understand
the riches of the Eastern past.

It is all there for the taking -

but for years we didn't know
how to access it.

This was at a period in which
the origins of Western civilisation

were thought to begin
with the Greeks and Romans.

And the thought of having
to rethink ancient history

and really double the length
of human civilisation

from beginning in about 500 BC
with the Greeks,

to beginning in 3000 BC,

was just too much to contemplate.

And it's taken us 150 years or more

really just to assimilate
the doubling of human history

into our own self identities.

Once cuneiform was translated,

a whole new world
of ancient Mesopotamian culture

was opened up to Western scholars.

The fact is, of course, that Greek
ideas did not come out of nowhere,

and we can show nowadays, there's
much more understanding of it,

that certain portions of Greek,
mathematics, astronomy,

medicine and other disciplines,

in fact embody traditions
which were current in Babylonia.

(FAST-PACED PERCUSSIVE MUSIC)

Discoveries in Babylon also reveal

that the ancient Greeks
knew how to read cuneiform

and had no difficulties
in appreciating and assimilating

the ancient learning
of the East.

A cuneiform tablet
found in the ruins of Babylon

is remarkable evidence
of the efforts of one Greek scholar

to learn Babylonian.

What you have is your Babylonian
school exercise on the one side,

and then on the back you have
a transcription into Greek letters

of those signs.

So for example, we've got one
which has words for “canal“,

“big canal", “small canal",
“ditch", “irrigation" -

Babylonian words
in cuneiform writing.

And on the back the Greek person

who probably can never remember
these signs

and got fed up with trying
to remember them

has transliterated them
to Greek letters on the back.

The very words in Sumerian
and Babylonian

are spelled out in Greek letters
on the back as a crib.

(LIVELY LYRICAL MUSIC)

It wasn't just Babylonian literature
that the Greeks studied.

One of the East's greatest
contributions to civilisation

was in the study of science.

One Greek familiar
with Babylonian learning

was Thales of Miletus.

Thales accurately predicted
a solar eclipse.

It occurred on May 28, 585 BC.

Thales could only have calculated
this eclipse

by relying on the records
of Babylonian astronomers.

Babylonian astronomers
kept precise lists

of eclipses, equinoxes and solstices

from 747 BC...

200 years before Thales
predicted an eclipse.

They were driven by a compulsion
to understand portents and omens

and assuage their gods.

So all of these get recorded
systematically

night after night,
month after month,

year after year
for over 600 years.

By Alexander's time all the omens
had been collected together

into an enormous series
of observations and predictions.

And this tablet,
which is the 21st chapter

of the 70-chapter series,

is all about solar eclipses.

And it was gradually through very
long periods of observing the skies

that scholars noticed that
these events were not random at all

and were not just
the whims of the gods

but were very sophisticated
mathematical patterns,

often very complex
and often very long in duration.

And so by about
the sixth or fifth century BC

the Babylonians had changed
their understanding

of how the heavens worked.

It wasn't just the arbitrary
messages from the gods

but it really was a signal
that gods had created

a very deeply mathematical world.

Babylon's astronomers
systematically observed their world,

recorded their data and applied logic
to what they found.

Their spirit of enquiry
had already enthused Greek thinkers

like Thales of Miletus

but Alexanders arrival in Babylon

accelerated the process
of Greek absorption

of ancient Eastern learning.

Alexander was fascinated
by Babylonian astronomy.

And he had his historian,
his reporter on the ground,

translate as much of the Babylonian
astronomical observations

into Greek as he could,
and to send them back to Macedon.

So, from the 4th century onwards
we can point

to many, many,
very specific examples

where we can be absolutely confident

that individual Greek scholars
had access

to the writings of individual, named,
Babylonian scholars,

and that's really very exciting.

Babylonian enquiry and Greek logic
formed a scientific method

that transformed the world.

Greeks like Plato, Aristotle
and Ptolemy

are commemorated for their role
in this process

but the astronomers of Babylon
also deserve their place

amongst the forefathers of science.

Every time we look at our watches
we're doing something Babylonian,

every time you read the horoscopes
in the newspapers

we're doing something Babylonian,

every time we measure an angle
we're doing something Babylonian.

There are some very fundamental
everyday practices that we all do

which are, we owe to ancient
Middle-Eastern civilisations

that we really
just don't think about.

The Babylonians were brilliant
mathematicians -

they were the first to use angles,
degrees, fractions, and equations.

They didn't count in our
decimal system using 10 as a base -

but used 60 instead -

a method known
as the sexagesimal system.

When you're a child and someone
teaches you how to read the time,

if you're an inquisitive kind
oi person you ask yourself

why on earth
is there 60 seconds and 60 minutes,

where does this 60 come from?

This 60 comes from Babylonia.

From very early on
in the third millennium,

all calculations
in ancient Mesopotamia

were done on a sexagesimal system.

They never, like us,
took ten fingers

and used that
tor their mathematical basis,

they used the sexagesimal system.

(CLOCKS TICK AND RING)

60 is a more versatile number than 10
to base a numeric system on -

as it is divisible by 2 and 5,
but also by 3.

It's more flexible for complex
astronomical calculations.

The 60-base system
gave the Babylonians

60 seconds in a minute,
60 minutes in an hour,

360 days in a year,
and 360 degrees in a circle.

One brilliant Babylonian idea

was that the sky was a sphere

that could be measured
in 360 degrees.

The Royal Observatory in Greenwich,
London, was founded in 1675.

Astronomers here
tracked the movement of the stars

and collected data
to allow ships' navigators

to calculate their position at sea

Well, I think you can see traces
of what was done way back then

in the kinds of astronomy
that was done at the observatory

when it was first founded
in the 17th century.

Like in Babylon
thousands of years before,

astronomers here divided the world
into 360 degrees

but put the Royal Observatory
on the line of zero degrees.

It's known as the prime meridian.

Astronomers still use,
and were using then, 360 degrees,

dividing that
into minutes and seconds

to get more and more
precise divisions in the sky.

And then also taking
time measurements

as the stars cross round the heavens

to get a position of where they are.

The first Astronomer Royal
at Greenwich, John Flamsteed,

mapped the skies
and catalogued the stars

just like the Babylonians,
3500 years before him.

And we can see inside this book,
which is his Historia Coelestis,

this is his life's work essentially

from all the observations
that he did.

We can see the list of the stars,
the planets, the moon,

and their positions
as he observed them over many years.

Flamsteed inherited
a tradition of observation

that goes back
through his predecessors,

through the Renaissance,
through Arabic scholars,

back through the Romans, the Greeks,

ultimately going back
to the Babylonians as well.

The Babylonian numerical system

also created the 12 signs
of the zodiac.

They sub-divided those 360 degrees

into 12 sections of 30 degrees

and this chart here
shows it very clearly.

Here we can see the triangles
into those 30-degree segments,

and each of the 30-degree segments
is associated

with a particular constellation
that's appears near its middle.

So we have Scorpio, Libra,
Virgo, Leo

Cancer and so on around here.

Extraordinarily, the symbols
and names we still use for the stars

go all the way back
to the Babylonian astronomers

of ancient times.

We have them, the names
of the zodiacal signs

written on hundreds
and if not thousands of tablets

but this little one here
is particularly interesting to us.

Each line has a different zodiacal
sign, all the way down here.

So this is the eighth,
this is “Scorpio” written along here,

there's scorpion,

and then on the other side,
here are the last tour

and then a line underneath to show
that's the end of the series,

there are no more than 12.

So all the names of the zodiac
are originally Babylonian.

Taurus the bull, it's called
“the bull of heaven" in Babylonian.

Leo is the lion.

The Babylonian zodiac was one
of mankind's first attempts

to find order and meaning

in our apparently
incomprehensible world.

And still now,
everyone knows their star sign

and we pretend we don't believe it

but we all read our horoscopes
sneakily anyway.

So the very idea that our fate
is determined by the skies

is something that has very, very
deep roots in Babylonian thought.

Alexander the Great died
at the age of 32.

By the time of his death

he had become enthralled
by his Eastern lands

and his dying wish was
for the people of his new empire -

East and West -
to unite and live as one.

Alexander's empire didn't last

but the flow of knowledge continued.

One of Alexander's successors
was King Antiochus,

who built the tomb
at the summit of Mt Nemrut,

looking both east and west.

Hidden away being conserved

is an extraordinary reminder
of ancient Eastern knowledge.

Well, you know,
something very special

that was found on Nemrut

which is the oldest

astrological calendar in the world.

And when we look at it

we can see a relief of a lion

and some stars on it.

And we estimated
that the exact date from the stars

was 17 of July,

62 BC,

and the time,
the exact time is 16.48.

And this is very special...

The Greek and Persian gods
that flank the tomb

are a symbol of Antiochus' mixed
Greek and Persian ancestry.

Once again -
it is a remarkable reminder

of the synthesis
of East and West

achieved after the conquest
of Alexander.

And how in the centuries
after his death

the West soaked up
the rich and ancient cultures

that flowed like a river
from the East.

(DRAMATIC MUSIC)

Subtitles © SBS Australia 2012