All language subtitles for L.T.o.t.B.S01E02.WEB.H264-RBB

[narrator] Deep in the remote
desert of Southern Iraq,

a team of archaeologists

hunts for traces
of an ancient catastrophe.

Once I dig a small bit

we can find fossils here.

This is telling us that water was there.

[narrator]
Their cutting-edge aerial investigation

reveals an enormous canal network,

spreading almost 80 square miles.

One of the earliest ever discovered.

We have more than 4,000 canals.

[narrator] Clues in this landscape
could reveal the truth

behind one of the Bible's
greatest mysteries...

Noah and the Great Flood.

[♪ intense theme playing]

[narrator] The stories in the Bible
are famous across the world.

They tell of great battles
between good and evil,

earth-shaking catastrophes,
and heroic characters.

Now, new archaeological discoveries buried
in the Middle East for thousands of years

are shedding fascinating
light on real events

that may have given rise to these legends.

Today, multi-national teams
of archaeologists

are tracing the origins
of the famous story of Noah's Great Flood,

an epic inundation
which wiped the Earth clean.

These texts suggest that there was a flood
thousands of years before the Bible story.

[narrator]
The Bible says that the flood happened

in an ancient land called Shinar,
today, Southern Iraq.

Why did the Bible place this story here?

What evidence is there
that this catastrophic event

really happened?

One hundred and fifty miles south
of Iraq's capital, Baghdad,

lies the remote ancient site of Uruk.

Known as Erech in the Old Testament,

the Bible claims it was one
of the first cities founded

after the flood.

Geo-archaeologist Jaafar Jotheri
has spent over a decade exploring

this ancient metropolis
and others in the region.

The thing that I actually
enjoy most in my work

is discovering the landscape archeology.

You know, whenever I work,
I discover a new thing.

[narrator]
Jaafar grew up on a farm nearby

and feels a close link
with Iraq's ancient peoples.

Maybe we don't have a direct
connection with people who lived here

but, you know, we share the same place.

We are representatives of these people

and it's a great pleasure,
of course, a great honor.

[narrator]
The city of Uruk was founded

more than 5,000 years ago
in around 3,500 BCE.

Jaafar wants to find out
if an all-consuming flood

could really have happened here

before Uruk became a city,
as the Bible says.

His first mission is to explore
what Uruk looked like at this time.

It's hard to get a sense
of these crumbling ruins from the ground.

They have disappeared
beneath the desert sands

after thousands of years of erosion.

So, Jaafar turns to aerial
archeology for answers.

He sends up a drone-mounted
high-definition camera.

The drone can pick out
the shape of many buildings

scattered across the landscape.

We can see lots of temples,
houses and city walls here.

[narrator] At the city's heart

lies the remains of one of its
most impressive structures...

an enormous man-made mound,

a ziggurat.

We can see a ziggurat.

A beautiful ziggurat.

Everything is well-preserved.

[narrator] Ziggurats are similar
to huge, stepped pyramids.

Some towered over 100 feet high.

The oldest predate those
in Egypt by several centuries.

Egypt's pyramids are
giant tombs for the dead,

but these ziggurats were
monuments topped with temples

dedicated to the gods.

Uruk belonged to a people
called the Sumerians,

one of the world's first
urbanized civilizations.

The Sumerians built large cities
with a social hierarchy

and an organized administration
at a time when most people lived

in small agricultural settlements.

This led them to create some of humanity's

greatest inventions
in writing, law, and science.

The full drone survey
reveals the scale of Uruk.

You can see here, it's a large city.
A very large city.

One of the largest cities
in Southern Mesopotamia.

[narrator]
In its heyday, around 5,000 years ago,

Uruk was the largest city on Earth
with a population of at least 40,000.

It must've needed a huge supply of food

and, crucially, water.

But today,
Uruk's ruins are dry and lifeless,

so where did the city get its water?

The Euphrates was running
for a long time here.

This is the only source of water.

We don't have, let's say,
groundwater or springs.

That's why people actually
use the river to live.

[narrator] The mighty river Euphrates
is the longest in Western Asia.

It runs north to south through Iraq,
along with the river Tigris.

Together, they were so important,
the whole region was named after them:

Mesopotamia,
"the land between two rivers."

Today, the Euphrates runs
12 miles to the west of Uruk,

but Jaafar believes that
over thousands of years,

it changed course.

In ancient times,
it ran right by the city.

In its prime, Uruk was
an enormous metropolis.

By 2,900 BCE,
it stretched over two square miles.

Holy priests worshipped
at the city's main temple

on top of the ziggurat,
the center of religious life.

Surrounding the city, a network of canals

brought fresh water
from the river Euphrates,

irrigating vast areas of farmland
to feed the citizens.

This ancient megacity relied on water.

Was there some catastrophe here,
linked to the river,

that sheds light on the biblical story?

When you visit the city now

you can't imagine this city
was a Garden of Eden, right?

But it was for more than a thousand years.

[narrator] Jaafar hunts for signs

that the river Euphrates
could be responsible

for an immense flood,
thousands of years ago.

♪♪

Ancient writing expert Lara Bampfield
investigates long-lost texts

which tell of world-changing floods
in the region's distant past.

Mesopotamia, as a whole,
is definitely a source of inspiration

for a lot of biblical stories:

the Garden of Eden, Abraham,
the Tower of Babel.

They all stem from Mesopotamia.

[narrator]
The Biblical story of the Great Flood

centers on a man called Noah,

who it says was 600 years old
when the rains came.

♪♪

The Bible's Book of Genesis
tells how God warns Noah

that a flood will soon cleanse the earth
of all the wicked people.

Noah builds a gigantic ark,

and fills it with pairs
of every animal on Earth.

Hunkered in the ark,
Noah and his family endure

the deluge for 40 days and 40 nights.

Finally, the waters recede,

and Noah's ark comes to rest
on a mountaintop,

ready to create new life on Earth.

Biblical historians
believe that Noah's story

is set around
the mid-third millennium BCE,

but Genesis is not the only ancient text
to record a flood story.

There are actually earlier
stories that also talk

about a man, and a boat,
and a great flood.

[narrator]
Lara uses her expertise

to decode an ancient clay tablet
found in Mesopotamia.

The language is written in cuneiform,

the world's earliest
known form of writing.

It dates to the 7th century BCE,

a few hundred years
before the Old Testament

is believed to have been written.

This tablet is a portion
of the "Epic of Gilgamesh."

It is a story about a king
who is from Uruk,

who goes on a great journey
to try and find immortality.

[narrator] The legendary Sumerian,
King Gilgamesh,

is believed to have ruled the city of Uruk
in around 2,700 BCE.

In the epic,

Gilgamesh meets an immortal
man called Utnapishtim,

who tells him of a great flood
which occurred in his youth.

It's a surprisingly
similar story to the Bible.

[Lara Bampfield] "All the windstorms
and gales rose together.

And the flood swept over."

[narrator]
In this version of the flood story,

the gods also decide the whole human race
must be wiped from the earth.

[indistinct shouting]

♪♪

Utnapishtim is the chosen man
who has a similar visitation from a god,

warning him of the flood
and telling him to build a boat.

[thundering]

A fierce storm rages.

The air is thick with rain,

and the south wind drives
violent waves across the land.

Finally, the storm abates.

The boat runs aground on a mountain top
and humanity is reborn.

The name of the central
character is different,

and the flood lasts
for six days instead of 40,

but this tale has much in
common with the Bible story.

The tablet which details the flood
in the "Epic of Gilgamesh"

is thought to derive
from a version of the story

at least a thousand years earlier.

And it's not the only
Mesopotamian text of this time

to detail a cataclysmic flood.

There's actually a corpus
of many different myths

talking about a great flood.

[narrator] At least two
other known stories exist

from the early second millennium BCE.

This suggests that flooding
was a big preoccupation

for early Mesopotamians.

Our biggest question is,
therefore, are they all

describing the same flood event?

[narrator] In Oman,

1,000 miles to the southeast of Uruk,

is the village of Qantab.

Here, maritime archaeologist
Alessandro Ghidoni

runs a unique specialist
research boatyard.

He uses tools and techniques
from thousands of years ago

to investigate how ancient civilizations
built their vessels.

Experimental archeology

brings you closer
to the people of the past.

It forces you just to put
yourself in the mind of people

and try to solve problems
that they actually have faced.

[narrator]
Alessandro wants to understand

how the ancient Sumerians
built their boats

and whether they could've built one

to survive a flood
of Biblical proportions.

He investigates an amazing find,

a cuneiform tablet dating
to around 1,700 BCE.

This tablet is an incredible discovery.

It's a list of steps

to build

the Ark.

[narrator] This text is an
ancient construction manual,

the first of its kind ever found.

And what's more,
it's for a gigantic boat an acre in size.

It seems to be a blueprint
for the Sumerian ark

described in stories like
the "Epic of Gilgamesh."

It gives you, first of all,
information about

the materials used, the techniques.

It's an incredibly valuable
archaeological find.

[narrator]
The tablet describes how the ark

had a hull made of twisted fiber ropes
attached to a wooden frame.

Alessandro wants to put this
ancient design to the test

to find out if it's a seaworthy craft,
or a purely mythical invention.

The ark outlined
on the tablet is enormous,

so he plans to make a sample section of it
1,800 times smaller.

This will help him study

the materials and techniques described.

Every material has a limit.

I immediately wonder is it
possible to build something

to escape the flood, to survive the flood.

[narrator] Alessandro
and his colleague Ayaz Al-Zadjali

set out to gather wild reeds,

a likely candidate
for the twisted fiber ropes,

to put this 3,700-year-old
blueprint to the test.

At Uruk, in Southern Iraq...

Jaafar is trying to find out
what archaeological evidence there is

for the Sumerian
and Biblical flood stories.

In the 1920s and '30s,

archaeologists excavated many
ancient Sumerian cities.

At several of the sites, including Uruk,
they found a thick layer of red clay.

This distinctive clay is ancient mud
caused by river flooding.

They took lots of photos

and whenever excavation teams
in Southern Iraq

found a thick bed of red clay

they think it is the Great Flood.

[narrator] This supposed proof
of the Biblical flood

made headlines around the world.

But Jaafar believes
there's more to the story.

He turns to evidence from a nearby quarry,

where thousands of years
worth of sediment layers

are on show.

In this quarry, we can see
a succession of different sediments

different in color,
of course, and in thickness.

Each color represents
a different sedimentary environment.

So here, for example, we have the red clay

which is the flood.

[narrator]
This distinctive red clay layer

is evidence that the Euphrates
flooded this area

almost 7,000 years ago.

But the quarry also shows
something else intriguing.

We don't have one flood,
one major flood in Southern Mesopotamia.

What we do have in Southern Mesopotamia

are multi-layers of floods.
And we can see them clearly.

[narrator] This discovery is turning
the 1930's theory on its head.

The origins of the Biblical
and Sumerian flood stories

could lie not in a single
catastrophic flood,

but in many.

Jaafar wants to find out
how bad these floods were

and how ancient people coped with them.

But here at Uruk, remains
left by later civilizations

make exact dating challenging,

and the continuous movement
of the river Euphrates

has covered the land in sediment,

so evidence on the ground
is hard to untangle.

He heads over two hours' drive south

to an even more remote site
that has remained unoccupied

for over 2,500 years.

♪♪

[narrator] Ancient writing expert

Lara Bampfield examines cuneiform texts
for any more records of great floods.

She wants to find out
if the "Epic of Gilgamesh" flood story

was based on a real event.

She investigates one of Mesopotamia's
most famous ancient artifacts.

This is a replica of a clay prism
that was made in around 1,800 BCE.

[narrator]
Each of the prism's four sides

is covered with tiny cuneiform writing.

[Bampfield]
This prism is really important.

It tells us a succession of kings

that ruled Southern Mesopotamia
and also the cities.

[narrator]
Rather than recording a story,

this text was written
as a historical account.

While some of the reigns
are unfeasibly long,

many of the kings it mentions
can be verified

from other archaeological sources.

Lara spots a familiar name.

[Bampfield]
Up here, we can see Uruk,

but further down, we can see one
of the kings of Uruk, Gilgamesh.

[narrator]
This is an exciting piece to the puzzle.

It suggests that the legendary
king was a real person.

Could the Great Flood, which appears

in the "Epic of Gilgamesh,"
have happened too?

Lara searches the cuneiform
for any mention of a flood event.

[Bampfield]
"Ejer a-ma-ru ba-ur3-ra-ta.

Kish-ki nam-lugal-la."

And that means,
"After the flood had swept over the land,

Kish became the seat of kingship."

[narrator]
This is an incredible piece of evidence.

The Sumerian king's list

records the Great Flood
as historical fact.

This echoes the Bible's claim
that it took place

before the foundation of cities like Uruk.

The people who created
this document in 1,800 BCE

describe a great flood
in their ancient past,

a civilization-defining event.

How did this catastrophe unfold?

Back in Qantab on the coast of Oman...

Alessandro and Ayaz

have found a good supply
of reeds for their test ark.

But working in this area
is not for the faint-hearted.

There's many animals here?

Yes.

Really? Snakes?

Snakes, yes.

Scorpions?

Yes. Scorpions.

Oh.

[narrator] Thin reeds like this

may not seem like the obvious
choice for boat-building,

but they have some
unique structural properties.

The good thing about reeds
is first of all the flexibility

and the strength of this material.

While it's easy to bend,
it's quite difficult to break,

which is a good thing
when you want to build a boat.

You want to use
something that is resistant

which is strong enough
sailing in rough sea.

[narrator]
The team takes the reeds

back to the boatyard

to begin construction
of their sample section

of the Sumerian vessel.

The ancient instruction manual
that they are following

describes how the ark builders
made the reeds into rope-like bundles,

twisted and lashed together
with date palm fiber.

Alessandro wants to test

if such bundles could create
an effective waterproof hull.

He uses archaeological evidence
of ancient Mesopotamian reed boats,

together with his knowledge
of modern versions,

to prepare the reeds.

We have evidence
for the use of these ropes

in the Bronze Age
and also in the Neolithic.

They are handmade

and it's a long process to make them.

So, we're talking about a lot of work,

and probably the involvement
of a big community.

[narrator] The pair's next task

is to attach these bundles
to a wooden frame,

like the Ark tablet describes.

They have constructed
a section of the hull

from locally-grown cedar wood,

also available in the ancient Middle East.

Alessandro and Ayaz
bind the bundles tightly to each other

and to the frame
to prevent water seeping through the gaps.

But as they work,
Alessandro spots a problem.

Basically, what we notice is that

there's these interstitial
spaces between the bundles.

Some of them you can fit one finger.

So, you want to avoid that
because it's a hole

in the hull of a boat.

[narrator]
It's likely the ancient boat-builders

faced this same problem.

Alessandro and Ayaz draw
on their own experience

to figure out how the Sumerians
might've plugged the holes.

We came up with this solution
by putting some crushed reeds

in these gaps between the bundles

to close these holes and at the same time
to create an even surface.

[narrator] Within just a few hours,
the sample structure starts to take shape.

This speed of assembly
would've been an advantage

for an ark builder
working under the pressure

of an impending flood.

I feel quite good about this experiment.

People don't really think
reeds are a strong material,

but actually when it's lashed together

and also lashed onto frames,

it becomes a very solid,
very strong layer.

You can walk on it if you want.

[narrator] The experiment reveals
that reeds can form a hull

that's both strong and hole-free.

But could an ancient ark built this way
survive for 40 days and 40 nights

on the ocean waves?

[narrator] Jaafar arrives at the remote
ancient Sumerian city of Eridu.

It lies 40 miles south of Uruk
and appears in another version

of the Sumerian flood story,
the Eridu Genesis.

One of the oldest-known cities
in Mesopotamia...

Eridu has been unoccupied
since the 5th century BCE.

At its heart, lies a mound made of bricks,
another ziggurat.

Jaafar wants to explore
this untouched landscape

to find out how the ancient
floods unfolded

thousands of years ago.

First, he scours the desert
for traces of ancient water.

Once I dig a small bit,
I can see the sand here.

We can find some fossils.

This was actually a river or a riverbed.

[narrator] Jaafar launches the drone
to get a clearer view of the river.

Immediately, hidden features
in this ancient landscape

become visible to his expert eye.

We can see the ancient
Euphrates so clearly here.

You can see meandering lines.

[narrator] And close by,
Jaafar spots another clue,

this time, straight lines.

They can only be man-made.

You can see some irrigation canals.

We call it a herringbone
irrigation system.

[narrator]
These canals are known as herringbone

for their branching shape.

The Sumerians pioneered
this clever channel system

to divert water to farmers' fields
when the river was high.

Jaafar and his team have been documenting
Eridu's canals for the past five years.

They use satellite imagery

to identify potential man-made waterways,

and check this against
evidence on the ground.

Now, they can finally
combine their thousands

of GPS coordinates and ground measurements

to build a picture
of Eridu's canal network.

The result is breathtaking.

It reveals a maze of ancient canals

connecting Eridu's farmland
with the river Euphrates.

It covers almost 80 square miles.

In total in the Eridu region

we have more than 200 large, main canals.

And then we have 4,000 small
or branching canals.

[narrator] Some of these canals date from
the fifth millennium BCE,

making this the oldest-known
preserved irrigation network in the world.

It is evidence that people here

harnessed the power of the Euphrates river
much earlier than previously believed

to develop some of
the world's first agriculture.

Next, Jaafar surveys the landscape
for evidence of flooding.

He spots distinctive markings
near the riverbed.

In this section here, it is so clear.

We have a crevasse splay.

[narrator]
Crevasse splays occur when river water

breaks through weak points
in the riverbank.

In other parts of the world,
rivers flow through valleys,

but in Southern Mesopotamia,
they move across the top of the flat land,

bound by small banks of sediment.

The number and size of the splays here

suggests water often burst
through the riverbanks,

spreading for miles across the floodplain.

To a Sumerian, this may have
looked like a massive ocean.

Flooding is the most
disastrous thing here.

We don't have earthquakes,

but we have, unfortunately, flooding.

[narrator] Jaafar thinks that the origins
of the flood stories

could stem from the devastation

caused to farmers' fields
when the riverbanks broke,

often in the spring
when the river swelled.

Flooding actually is
a continuous tragedy for them.

People spend the year
taking care of their farm

and then, suddenly, we have
flooding that destroys their farm.

[narrator] These devastating,
if relatively localized, floods

are one explanation
for the origins of the flood myth.

But why do both the Bible
and Sumerian tablets

tell of a single great deluge?

Was one flood greater than all the others?

At University College London,

Mark Altaweel, a colleague of Jaafar's,

prepares to analyze some
important sediment samples.

[Professor Mark Altaweel]
We got some samples from Uruk.

[Dr. Anke Marsh]
Well, it's really good stuff.

-Wow. This is the best.
-Fried earth.

Yeah, fried earth.

[narrator] Mark's team
took these core samples

from just outside Uruk.

They come from layers deep in the ground,
corresponding to around 4,000 BCE,

just before the city was founded.

The Biblical and Sumerian stories

both say the flood occurred
before Uruk became a city.

Mark and his colleague Anke Marsh

hope the samples might reveal

if this was a period
of continuous flooding

or a series of smaller isolated events.

[Professor Altaweel]
The question is, of course,

is, is Southern Mesopotamia
a kind of environment

where a flood story could develop?

A place where, where you
can see extensive flooding,

you can see why people would have to flee,
perhaps, away from this kind of place.

[narrator] They want to isolate
tiny plant fossils called phytoliths,

which could allow them to reconstruct

what type of plants existed
around Uruk in 4,000 BCE.

[Dr. Marsh]
Phytolith translates as "plant rock."

And it is actually that.

It is silica that has been taken up
from the soils by the plants.

It's hardened within their cells.

And when the plant dies, the plant rocks
are deposited into the sediment

and then preserved over time.

[narrator]
Anke uses a centrifuge

to spin the samples
at 800 revolutions per minute.

This separates out the phytoliths
from the rest of the sediment.

She then records the proportions

of each type of plant cell
visible in the sample.

[Dr. Marsh] Mark, do you wanna come here?
I'll show you something.

[Professor Altaweel] What do you got?

[Dr. Marsh]
This is a really interesting slide.

There are a lot of sponge spicules.

These are parts of sponges
that live in ponds or lakes.

And if you look here, we have a diatom.

[Professor Altaweel] Oh, right.

[narrator] This diatom is a micro-algae,
which lives in marshes.

Looks quite convincing.

We're in this freshwater environment
in the early phases of Uruk basically.

Yeah. Pretty excited about this one.

Yeah, definitely. It's good results.

[narrator] The sample shows
that around 4,000 BCE,

just before Uruk's foundation,

people weren't only dealing
with occasional floods.

They were surrounded by marshy wetland,

proof that the whole environment
was much wetter than today.

There's a lot more
standing water in this area,

which is something that you
wouldn't really associate with

when you think about Iraq.

[narrator] Mark and Anke want to know
how this wet period

affected the founders of the first cities

and their descendants who would go on
to compose the flood stories.

[narrator] In Oman,

Alessandro and Ayaz prepare
to put ancient Sumerian

waterproofing techniques to the test.

The instructions on the clay tablet

describe a natural sealant,
known as bitumen.

Bitumen is basically like

a petroleum product that you can

find naturally in some areas
of the Middle East.

[narrator] Mesopotamia
is one of the world's

richest regions for oil and bitumen.

The ancient Sumerians
realized its potential

and used it as a water-repellent layer
for buildings and roads.

This is the kind of bitumen
that was used in Mesopotamia

during that time.

Rock hard bitumen.

[narrator] The ancient Sumerians

would've collected bitumen
from seeps on the surface

and melted these lumps down
over a fire to a pliable liquid.

You have to be careful
when you do this process

because you heat the bitumen and you reach

temperatures over 100 degrees.

It then becomes quite dangerous

because if you spill it on your skin

it sticks on your skin and it burns.

It's dangerous.

You have to be very careful.

All right, so it's time
to add the fish oil.

[narrator] Alessandro has studied

the chemical composition
of ancient bitumen

and knows that other
ingredients were often

added to improve its natural properties.

Fish oil to make the bitumen
flexible when dry,

sand for strength,

and plant material
to bind it all together.

We know that they used crushed reeds

in a process that just reminds
me a bit of fiberglass,

like prehistoric fiberglass.

I think it's good. I think it's ready.

[narrator] Once the bitumen has cooled,
the team can apply the black liquid

to the outer surface of the boat.

This is a wooden roller
that helps the application

of the bitumen on the hull.

It was used until very recently in
Southern Iraq for the same purpose.

It's a very simple,
but very effective tool.

[narrator]
They add a final coat of sand

to protect the bitumen from the sun.

[Dr. Alessandro Ghidoni] Yes, that's nice.

[narrator] After working for hours
in the searing heat,

they finally test the sample

to see if it's waterproof.

Yes, it's perfect.

[narrator] The bitumen has held true
and waterproofed the reeds.

Good job.

[narrator]
Could this technology have been

scaled up to waterproof
a huge ark described

in the 3,700-year-old text?

Alessandro follows
the instructions laid out

on the clay tablet

to sketch out a design
for the Sumerian ark.

One line of cuneiform
reveals something surprising.

It reads,

"Draw out the boat that you will make
on a circular plan."

This is no traditional boat design.

The Sumerian ark is round.

It doesn't look like the ark
in the popular imagination at all.

It looks like a kind of boat
which was very common in Iraq

until relatively recently.

It's a coracle
and it's called Kufa in Arabic.

It's basically a basket
coated with bitumen

and used to carry people
and goods and animals

across the river.

[narrator]
All these cuneiform clues

finally reveal the full design
of this mighty ship.

The Sumerian ark described
in the tablet is monstrous.

A vast round vessel...

with a massive wooden skeleton...

bound tightly with reed bundles...

and sealed with hot bitumen.

Alessandro's tests show it
would be tough and watertight.

With walls two stories high,

and a deck half the size
of a soccer field,

this ark was designed
not to sail, but to survive.

Floating like a gigantic
basket in the floodwaters,

it was intended to preserve
life within its buoyant walls.

It's spacious, it's large.

You can carry a lot of people.

It's incredible.

[narrator] An ark of such epic proportions
would take hundreds of people to build,

a monumental undertaking
for the ancient Sumerians.

What evidence is there
that the boat described

on the Ark tablet was ever actually built?

Mark is on a mission
to discover the impact

of the wet and marshy climate
on the early people of Uruk.

Their experience could help
to explain the origin

of the Biblical
and Sumerian flood stories.

He turns to an unusual
source of information,

stalagmites from a cave in Northern Iraq.

[Professor Altaweel]
Stalagmites are basically

rocks that grow from cave drips.

So, imagine a cave is dripping water, uh,

and it grows this rock over time.

And it sort of forms these
nice, kind of, conical shapes,

which we can then sample
to study the paleoclimate,

specifically ancient rainfall.

[narrator] He can use
these rare time capsules

to build a detailed picture
of the ancient climate in Northern Iraq,

nearer the source of the Euphrates river.

[Professor Altaweel] This is a stalagmite
that we had sampled.

It's about three meters in height.

So, it had grown for about 10,000 years.

And it also has annual layers,
like a tree ring.

[narrator]
Mark studies the chemical composition

of each annual layer.

He looks for those with
the highest magnesium levels,

a marker of high rainfall.

[Professor Altaweel]
You see this nice spike?

This is, literally,
the wettest century in Iraq's history

for the last 10,000 years.

And it exactly occurs around 3,500 BC.

[narrator] 3,500 BCE is around the time
when Uruk becomes a city.

Mark believes this is
more than a coincidence

that Uruk is founded
during the rainfall deluge.

The two events are closely linked,
and mark a turning point in human history.

The immense rainfall in Northern Iraq
swelled the Euphrates river

and turned areas of Southern Mesopotamia
into lush and fertile wetlands.

Settlements like Uruk
now had a surplus of agricultural goods,

which allowed them to trade.

The Sumerians exported these products
to remote lands in one of the world's

first large-scale trading networks,

and they imported stone, metal, and wood.

This allowed them to grow their cities.

The need to administer
the goods coming into the city

opened up new job opportunities for people
and writing flourished.

Rather than forcing them to flee,

this influx of water gave
the Sumerians a reason

to stay exactly where
they were and prosper.

But the Bible refers to the flood

as a catastrophe
from which humanity recovered,

so what was this traumatic event?

[narrator] In Oman,
Alessandro wants to know

if the giant Sumerian vessel
described on the Ark tablet

was ever actually built.

He knows from past experiments
that bitumen can behave differently

when it's submerged in water.

It will harden because
the water cools it down.

It will become brittle and it
could crack because of

the difference between the flexibility of

the hull made of reeds

and the bitumen which is much harder.

[narrator] This might not matter
to a small river craft,

which could easily
come to shore for repair,

but a colossal ark
with greater pressures across the hull,

floating far from land,
would be in huge trouble.

The water will apply extraordinary force

pushing the bitumen into any

even small hole or gap

causing leakage.

[narrator] In a 40-day flood,
this version of the ark would surely sink.

If the massive ark described
on the tablet is not viable,

why do these detailed instructions exist?

The size is definitely very exaggerated.

But everything else makes sense,

materials make sense,
processes make sense,

and proportions also make sense.

[narrator] This leads
Alessandro to one conclusion.

I think it could have been
a mathematical exercise

to educate students
on maths and proportions.

And, perhaps, using something
like the flood myth

just to kind of spark their interest.

[narrator]
The fact that ancient math students

may have been using the Sumerian Ark
for their studies

suggests this story captivated people then

just as much as today.

What were the roots of this legend?

In London, Mark delves deeper into
the Iraqi stalagmite data.

He's interested in the climate
when the Sumerian flood stories

were first written down
in the third millennium BCE.

[Professor Altaweel]
What we're seeing here is this

big spike around 3,500 BC.

Also, we see a kind of--
a somewhat sharp decline,

actually, later around
3,200 into 3,000, uh, BC,

which is probably telling us
it's getting drier.

[narrator]
This is an exciting discovery.

It shows that the wet period
in which civilization

began to flourish was short-lived.

Mark wants to know how
these urban-dwellers

met the challenge of a drying world.

To find out,
he turns from the ground samples

to the air,
to decipher satellite imagery,

another valuable source of information

on Iraq's past environment.

[Professor Altaweel]
CORONA satellite systems

were basically spy satellites
from the 1960s and '70s

that were used by the United States

to look at regions
related to the Cold War.

[narrator] This satellite imagery
is a unique resource.

It shows Iraq when it
was much less developed

than it is today.

And studying it reveals ancient secrets
lying just beneath the sand.

[Professor Altaweel]
You can actually make out nicely

these canals.

So, you have the city of Uruk here,

the ancient site,
uh, and then these canals

that would've gone into
and out of the town itself.

[narrator] By dating structures
found alongside the canals,

Mark has discovered that
there was an intensification

of canal-building after 3,000 BCE,

when the climate had become drier.

Ancient texts record that many
of the region's major canals

were funded by the Sumerian kings.

[Professor Altaweel] Think of it as people
who have vested interest in power.

If you're interested in maintaining
that power, what do you do?

Well, you have to invest
again into your cities.

You have to develop ways
in which you can sustain those cities

and-and irrigation water channels
are gonna be critical to this.

[narrator] The kings built large canals
that drew water from the Euphrates

to irrigate the city's
now dry gardens and fields.

They developed more and more complex ways
to manage the precious water.

Dams waterproofed with bitumen

regulated the flow
from rivers into canals...

while systems of weirs,
distributors, and reservoirs

controlled and captured water,
sending it to where it was most needed.

While the land around them dried up,

the kings kept the cities
going and growing.

Their awe-inspiring ability
to control nature

and provide food for their people
gave the kings power and status.

Mark believes that the catastrophe
which prompted the first flood stories

could actually have been this drier time.

This is a time of great change.

It's not just the environment
that was changing,

but also, people were changing.

[narrator] The burgeoning Sumerian cities
had to learn to cope

with two opposite extremes in climate.

Occasional floods were still an issue,
but now, there were also regular droughts.

This fragility was ingrained
in the minds of the Mesopotamians

because they saw the nature
being quite fragile

and quite volatile.

And life, in a way,
was, was like that as well.

They-- Their fortunes
can change overnight.

[narrator] The Sumerian flood stories
could perhaps have been a metaphor

for the vulnerability
of early civilization.

Why has this particular myth
survived over thousands of years,

retold from the Bible
by hundreds of generations

across the world?

Lara thinks the key could lie
in how cuneiform writing itself developed.

[Bampfield]
This is a very old tablet,

dated about 3,000 BCE.

Each image or sign represents an object.

So, we can see very clearly
a representation of barley.

And that is exactly what it means, barley.

[narrator] Over just a few centuries,

the characters in this early
cuneiform script changed.

They move from just
showing a particular object

to try and express more
of a sound or a syllable.

[narrator]
This was a huge transformation.

Now, symbols could be put
together to make longer words

to express more abstract,
complex thoughts.

A change Lara believes
was driven by the Sumerians'

growing interest in their own origins.

[Bampfield] They were almost obsessed
with trying to find out

what came before them
and how they came to being.

[narrator]
This sophisticated cuneiform writing,

the Sumerians' greatest invention,
spread across Mesopotamia

in the centuries that followed.

Each civilization embellished
the flood story

and made it their own.

And when Jewish writers compiled

the Bible's Old Testament
in the first millennium BCE,

after years of living in this region,

they included the flood story
as they sought to understand

their own place in the universe.

♪♪

The teams' new discoveries
of repeated inundations,

and dramatic climate changes
shed new light on the real events

that inspired the flood stories.

The Mesopotamians' volatile relationship
with the river Euphrates

is a story so powerful
it endures with us to this day

as the story of Noah,
the Ark, and the Great Flood.