Original subtitles

[dramatic music]

male narrator: A colossal statue,

the biggest of the ancient world.

- It was so large that you couldn't even

wrap your arms around the thumb.

narrator: The stadium where people were dying to win.

- 500,000 people murdered

in the name of entertainment.

narrator: The jungle temples bigger than New York.

- Larger than anything built

by the Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians.

It was massive.

narrator: The world's first skyscraper.

♪ ♪

- The ancient Egyptians' engineering prowess

was just astonishing.

narrator: And an epic construction project

that cost a million lives.

- It's taken more time, material, and labor

than any other construction on Earth.

narrator: Where will they be ranked

on the only top-ten list

thousands of years in the making?

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

Some of the greatest monuments were built in ancient times.

Secrets and legends surround them.

Their ingenuity leaves us in awe,

creating a fascination that never dies.

This week's "Ancient Top 10":

the "Greatest Ancient Monuments,"

ranked by experts, according to which is the greatest in scale.

Coming in at number ten in our countdown,

the mysterious land of a thousand faces.

♪ ♪

The statues of Easter Island.

- This is a monumental landscape

that deserves to be in any top ten.

narrator: Just 14 miles long and 7 miles wide,

Easter Island lies

in the middle of the Pacific Ocean,

over 2,000 miles off the coast of Chile.

It's one of the most remote places on Earth.

The island is covered

with these huge, curious statues known as moai.

- These things are amazing.

They are as much as 13 feet high,

they weigh as much as 14 tons,

and there are more than 800 of them spread across the island.

narrator: It's thought they were built

by Polynesian sailors

who arrived here around 1,000 years ago.

They quarried light volcanic rock

to create nearly 900 figures with overlarge heads.

- The moai represented deceased ancestors,

and some were constructed on stone bases.

Others just look like heads.

But even they have full bodies beneath the ground.

- They're like icebergs.

There is as much buried beneath the soil

as you can see above.

Imagine them standing silhouetted across the sunlight.

They must have been awe-inspiring.

narrator: These faces allowed the sacred spirits

of the most important moai to live on forever.

It took a team of five to six men

around a year to carve each one.

Then they were transported from the quarry

and placed around the island

so their sacred spirits could watch over the people.

[lively percussive music]

It was a momentous task.

[man yells]

- In order to move these stone monoliths

from one part of the island to another,

they cut down all their trees for transport

and then were left with no wood to make boats or tools,

and they ended up dying on the island.

♪ ♪

You can't help but feel saddened at such a short-sighted loss.

- There was massive deforestation,

which meant people probably couldn't grow enough food

and they were hungry.

And we see this kind of phenomena represented

in these monumental statues, the moai.

Early on, they're thin and athletic.

Later on, towards the period of deforestation,

we see their big, fat bellies.

So is this a representation

of something that they just couldn't have?

narrator: The islanders had sacrificed everything

to honor their ancestors.

When they ran out of resources,

they rejected their idols and started killing each other.

- Suddenly, stone spear points appear in the archaeology,

a good sign of sudden warfare.

And we've got evidence of human remains

that show trauma and cannibalism.

So at a peak population of 20,000,

by the time the Europeans arrived,

there were only hundreds of people on Easter Island.

[dramatic music]

narrator: Today the moai gaze on a paradise far removed

from the violent cannibal wasteland it once was.

- Easter Island.

It's one of the most iconic sites in the world,

and just 'cause of the size of those sculptures

and the sheer numbers, it had to be in our top ten.

♪ ♪

narrator: Thousands of years earlier,

in ancient Britain,

an even greater stone monument was built.

At number nine...

[dramatic music]

Stonehenge.

- To appreciate Stonehenge,

you really have to understand that it's unique,

it's mysterious, it's powerful, it's enormous,

and it's also 4,500 years old.

narrator: Stonehenge was built during the Bronze Age

after Britain had adopted an agricultural society.

The switch from a hunter-gatherer way of life

freed up time,

and it was the start of an era of monument-building.

The greatest was Stonehenge, in southern England.

♪ ♪

Work began around 3000 BC,

making it older than the pyramids of Egypt.

- Experts estimate that it took over 30 million man-hours

to construct Stonehenge over a 1,500-year period.

I mean, that's one monumental building project.

♪ ♪

narrator: The stones are set in a circle.

Two main types are used, sarsens and bluestones.

- The largest stones in the Stonehenge monument

weigh 25 tons.

And they are still standing today.

It is absolutely incredible.

narrator: There are different theories

to how they got there.

The larger sarsen stones are thought to have been brought

from Salisbury Plain, 20 miles away,

on logs greased with animal fat

and the smaller bluestones transported from much further,

from Preseli, Wales.

It's possible they were moved by boat.

- Some of the stones they used to build Stonehenge

were actually transported over 140 miles,

and given the primitive technology they had at the time,

that is an amazing achievement.

♪ ♪

narrator: One of the biggest mysteries of Stonehenge

is why it was built.

Some think it was to honor the dead

or for use in a midwinter festival.

But the alignment of the stones to the sunset

suggests a religious purpose.

- Stonehenge is an incredible solar temple,

and it's perfectly aligned for the sunset

on both the shortest and the longest days of the year.

narrator: There was nothing more important than the Sun,

the giver of life.

- If you're in a civilization that worships the Sun,

what better way in marking your relationship with the deity

than to have the sun shine on a particular day

on your monument?

- Stonehenge is still a riddle.

Each time we look at it, we should just imagine

the sheer willpower and ingenuity

of those men and women

who built this wonder of the prehistoric world.

narrator: A source of fascination and speculation,

it remains a true wonder.

♪ ♪

Our next monument

was the greatest statue of the ancient world,

destroyed in seconds, but what caused its downfall?

At number eight...

[dramatic music]

The Colossus of Rhodes.

- The Colossus of Rhodes

was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

Just to make it into that list,

it must have been deeply, deeply awe-inspiring.

♪ ♪

narrator: This giant statue

guarded the Greek harbor of Rhodes,

in the eastern Mediterranean.

Standing 110 feet high,

it was the tallest statue in the world at the time.

But the Colossus was born from another massive structure.

In 305 BC, Rhodes was under attack from the Macedonians.

♪ ♪

They had built a huge mobile siege tower,

which became known as the helepolis.

- When the people of Rhodes saw this huge siege engine,

the helepolis, rolling towards them,

all they had were simple weapons to try and defeat it.

♪ ♪

narrator: But defeat it they did.

The huge tower was stopped dead

thanks to hidden holes in the ground in front of it.

The Macedonians were forced to retreat,

abandoning the helepolis.

narrator: This is the countdown

of the world's greatest ancient monuments,

ranked by size according to our experts.

We're at number eight and the huge Colossus of Rhodes.

On the Greek island of Rhodes,

a mighty siege tower called the helepolis

had been left abandoned by its army

after a failed siege of the city.

- The helepolis was so massive that when the battle was over,

the victorious defenders were able to rip it apart

and use its scrap material to build

one of the seven wonders of the ancient world,

the Colossus of Rhodes.

narrator: It was modeled on their patron,

the sun god Helios.

Bronze from discarded weapons was melted down into plates

and used for the exterior,

bolted over an iron framework.

The siege tower was used as supporting scaffolding.

The entire structure weighed 100 tons.

It was a giant.

Historians believe it wore a spiked crown

like images of Helios found on contemporary Rhodian coins.

- The Colossus of Rhodes is often depicted

as standing astride the harbor of Rhodes.

In fact, it probably stood in the harbor or in a hill nearby.

Wherever it stood, it must have dominated the city.

narrator: The Colossus of Rhodes

was a monument to freedom and independence,

a triumph for a small maritime republic.

But, sadly, its glory was short-lived.

- The Colossus of Rhodes wowed the ancient world for 54 years,

but then a huge earthquake struck,

snapping the Colossus at the knees,

bringing the statue crashing down.

narrator: The Rhodians believed it was destroyed

because they had offended the sun god.

- Although its remains were broken on the ground,

people travelled from great distances

to see those remains, and it's said it was so large

that you couldn't even wrap your arms around the thumb.

narrator: The Colossus might be gone,

but its legacy lives on.

It's thought to have inspired the Statue of Liberty.

♪ ♪

Next on our countdown

is a monument built on human sacrifice and blood,

the greatest temple of a people who revered death.

At number seven...

[dramatic music]

The serpent pyramid of Chichen Itza.

- Ten square miles.

Tens of thousands of inhabitants.

Chichen Itza was a massive ancient city

and its history bloody.

narrator: At its peak over 1,000 years ago,

the ancient civilization of the Maya

dominated the jungles of Mexico and Central America.

They left behind 10,000 pyramids.

The greatest?

The 80-foot-high temple at Chichen Itza

dedicated to the feathered serpent god, Kukulkan.

♪ ♪

- The ancient Maya

were great scientists, warriors, and artists,

and the serpent temple at Chichen Itza

in the Yucatan of Mexico

is definitely one of the greatest monuments

in the history of the world.

♪ ♪

narrator: In the spring,

the shadow of a snake moves down the pyramid

to represent the god Kukulkan coming down to Earth.

♪ ♪

And in the autumn, the snake shadow moves back up.

There's 365 steps,

one for every day of the year.

The Maya saw these as the sacred route to heaven.

Only priests were allowed to the top--

and their sacrificial offerings to the gods.

- For the ancient Maya, human sacrifice was a way of life.

It was central to their religious practices

for over 1,000 years.

The total number of people sacrificed?

No one knows.

- Can you imagine standing at the base

of the great temple pyramid of the serpent,

looking up as a priest takes out his flint knife,

removes the heart of a sacrificial victim,

takes off his head,

and then throws the body down the great staircase,

where the body just lands at your feet

in a grisly display of power?

♪ ♪

narrator: If it were a particularly courageous warrior

who had been sacrificed,

the corpse would be cut up and eaten.

[people yelling]

Death wasn't just for the Maya's enemies.

In this playing field, a ball game took place

with the highest stakes,

the captain of the losing team beheaded.

♪ ♪

And close by, two large sinkholes

where, in times of drought, local women and children

were thrown in as sacrifices to the rain god.

The Maya eventually abandoned Chichen Itza.

But what has since been found there

has revealed their blood-thirsty, brutal ways.

[dramatic music]

From the jungle to the desert.

Carved from solid rock, our next monument was made

by the billionaires of the ancient world.

Number six in our countdown is...

[dramatic music]

The Treasury building at Petra.

- As an architect, I consider Petra to be

one of the most atmospheric and awe-inspiring achievements

of the ancient world.

narrator: In the middle of the Jordanian desert,

a narrow pass runs for just under a mile

through a deep cliff.

♪ ♪

Concealed at the end is a miracle of the ancient world

that lay undiscovered for centuries,

an extraordinary monument

carved straight into the rock face.

- The fantastic thing about the Treasury of Petra

is that it was carved out of the mountainside

like Mount Rushmore,

but, incredibly, it was twice as high.

narrator: The Treasury is 128 feet tall.

Mount Rushmore is just under 60 feet.

And while Mount Rushmore was made using explosives

and all kinds of modern machinery,

the Treasury was carved completely by hand.

narrator: We're counting down

the ancient world's greatest monuments,

and we've reached number six.

We're at Petra in the desert of Jordan

and the extraordinary Treasury building

carved into the mountainside.

[dramatic music]

The Treasury's name comes from a legend about this stone urn.

It was said to store valuables

and is riddled with bullet marks

from attempts to break it open.

But there was no treasure.

Instead, secret chambers

discovered underneath the building

show a family of skeletons.

It was built as a mausoleum for the city.

- It was surrounded by a buzzing metropolis

made up of 30,000 people, all living in the desert.

narrator: They were the Arab Nabateans

from the 1st century AD.

- Ancient writers called the Nabateans

the richest people on Earth.

They were the Rockefellers of the ancient world.

narrator: The source of their wealth?

Spices.

- Petra was built right on the spice superhighway,

which meant that it profited massively

from all the camel trains that passed through.

It made it one of the richest trading posts

in the ancient world.

narrator: Every year, 10,000 loads of spices

passed through the city.

Every transaction was taxed.

The profits were immense.

And with the proceeds,

the Nabateans built their incredible rocky monuments.

- At Petra, they cut tombs and temples into the living rock.

And it seems they did this by building steps up into the rock,

then carving out a platform

and then from there building a scaffold

and then working their way down,

with rubble accumulating below and making a ramp

so they never had to work at a very great height.

This is simple but ingenious.

narrator: All the houses were supplied with plumbing.

From mountain springs, water was channeled through the rock.

Nearly 200 cisterns have been discovered,

with a total capacity of 11 million gallons of water.

- Research has shown that every building

was connected by underground pipes.

Every citizen would receive over two gallons of water a day.

And when you look at the site today

and the desert-like conditions,

that kind of water would have been a luxury.

- Petra was a caravan city in the middle of the desert.

But somehow, through ingenious high-tech,

they created a water management system

to bring life to the city.

It became, basically,

the Las Vegas of the ancient world.

narrator: An oasis in the desert.

And there is still much more to be discovered.

- Incredibly, only 15% of Petra has been excavated and explored.

Just imagine what else lies under those desert sands.

narrator: There may be treasure after all.

For those seeking both fame and fortune,

our next monument was the perfect place,

home to the gladiator.

At number five,

it's the killing zone of ancient Rome...

[dramatic music]

The Colosseum.

[rock music]

- The Colosseum, the arena of death.

A million animals slaughtered,

500,000 people murdered

in the name of entertainment.

narrator: In amphitheaters all over the Roman Empire,

thousands died every year.

For Romans, death was a popular spectator sport.

- The leaders of the Roman Empire knew

that to keep their citizens on side,

they needed to keep them well fed and well entertained,

give them bread and circuses.

And the Colosseum is the ultimate entertainment venue.

narrator: It was built between 72 and 80 AD.

150 feet high, over 600 feet long,

with a central area equivalent to a modern football field.

It was the biggest building of its kind in the Roman Empire.

- When people went to the Colosseum,

they were expecting to see blood.

♪ ♪

In the morning, it was the gladiators called bestiarii

fighting against wild beasts.

At noontime, you could go off and have a meal,

or you could stick around and you could watch

the execution of criminals in gruesome ways.

♪ ♪

In the afternoon, it was the main event,

and that's when you had man against man,

gladiator against gladiator, fighting to the death.

♪ ♪

narrator: The Colosseum was a brutal arena of death.

So many hippos were slaughtered,

they became extinct on the River Nile,

the North African elephant wiped out for the same reason.

[light music]

- It's speculated that the Colosseum could hold

up to 80,000 people, but what's even more remarkable

is that the fantastic design of the Romans

allowed for each and every one of them

to have a clear view of what was happening on the arena.

- The Colosseum isn't just a fancy facade.

It's fantastically engineered throughout the whole structure.

Gladiators and animals could be raised in lifts

directly into the arena.

narrator: And for one event, four million gallons of water

were diverted from the city's immense aqueduct system.

- They actually flooded the arena floor

for naval battles

and the next day had it all drained out

and the stage back in place.

narrator: It was a technical achievement

way ahead of its time.

And there's more.

The Colosseum had its own climate control system,

a retractable roof.

It was a sunshade

that could be controlled from a system of pulleys.

It would move to shade the crowd from the sun.

- It's just like a modern sporting arena.

The center court of Wimbledon

only got its retractable roof in 2009.

narrator: That's 2,000 years behind the Romans.

♪ ♪

The Colosseum is a grisly but awe-inspiring monument

to Roman entertainment.

narrator: This is the "Ancient Top 10"'s list

of the greatest ancient monuments

ranked according to size.

Now it's time for number four,

an ancient forest of stone in Egypt...

[dramatic music]

[rock music]

The temple complex of Karnak.

♪ ♪

- Karnak was built over 1,500 years--

30 pharaohs, each generation trying to outdo the last

and to build something even more magnificent.

And what we have left

is one of the marvels of the ancient world.

♪ ♪

narrator: For thousands of years,

Egyptian civilization blossomed

along the fertile valley of the River Nile,

ruled by pharaohs

who built incredible palaces and monuments

and this, the extraordinary Karnak,

a complex covering more than 247 acres.

- Karnak is absolutely massive.

It was the largest religious complex in the ancient world.

Just the precinct of the god Amun

was big enough to hold ten cathedrals.

narrator: One of its great rooms

is a staggering 54,000 square feet.

- The pillared hall at Karnak is a vast forest

of 134 towering columns,

some as tall as a seven-story building.

- It's so vast, you could fit Notre Dame cathedral inside it.

And in fact, still today, it's the largest room discovered

in any religious building in the world.

narrator: Each pillar is so broad,

it takes ten men to encircle it.

The lintels on the pillar tops?

70 tons each.

It also once had a roof.

But how on Earth did they build it?

- The Karnak pillars weren't built

using cranes and scaffolding like we have today.

Instead, the ancient Egyptians used mud ramps

to build layer upon layer upon layer.

It really was an incredible feat of ancient engineering.

narrator: As the mud built up,

the giant stones could be slid into place.

At its peak, 80,000 workers toiled here.

- The temple of Karnak

is one of the largest religious sites

in the entire history of the world.

The pillared hall alone used 7,000 tons of sandstone.

That's equal to the weight of the entire Eiffel Tower.

narrator: When the mud was removed,

the temple's full glory was revealed.

The most ambitious builder of Karnak's pharaohs

was Ramesses II,

who reigned for over 60 years in the 13th century BC.

- Ramesses II had every reason

to create these enormous statues of himself,

because he had the ego to match.

All rulers built monuments, but Ramesses II outbuilt them all.

narrator: With each pharaoh's bid to outdo their ancestors,

Karnak became one of the most incredible sights

of the ancient world.

But even Karnak can't compete

with number three in our countdown,

a mysterious monument hidden in the jungle,

only to re-emerge centuries later.

[dramatic music]

The city of temples, Angkor Wat.

- The temple is larger than anything built

by the Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians.

It was massive.

narrator: In 1860, a French naturalist, Henri Mouhot,

stumbled across some ruins in Cambodia.

They became famous as the lost world

of a mysterious ancient people.

- When you explore Angkor Wat,

it is pretty hard not to feel like an adventurer,

because these amazing stone buildings

just emerge from the jungle.

♪ ♪

This was the biggest religious complex in the world,

and there is still more of it being discovered.

narrator: This is "Ancient Top 10"'s countdown

of the most magnificent ancient monuments,

ranked in order of size.

[dramatic percussive music]

We're at number three

in Cambodia's temple city, Angkor Wat.

[dramatic music]

Built in the 12th century,

Angkor Wat was originally a Hindu temple

in the capital city of the Khmer people,

a civilization in Southeast Asia.

At over 400 acres, it's one of the largest

religious monuments ever constructed.

- The main temple at Angkor Wat is made up

of around 10 million sandstone blocks,

and we think that would've taken about 40 years to build.

Much of it is still standing today,

and that is just testament

to the sheer genius of its engineering.

narrator: The carved relief around the perimeter

is half a mile long, making it

the longest continuous bas-relief in the world.

- The stonework at Angkor Wat was exquisite and precise.

You couldn't even fit a razor blade

in between the blocks.

You would need modern computers and lasers

to achieve that today.

narrator: How was this achieved 1,000 years ago?

This re-enactment shows

how the blocks were suspended above one another.

Wooden handles were inserted

and used to grind down the block faces.

The stones themselves sanded each other down

to achieve a perfect fit.

- The ancient Cambodian building techniques

created something ten times larger than any cathedral.

The religious complex is actually part of

one of the greatest cities of the ancient world.

- What impresses me about Angkor Wat is its sheer size.

In the same period, cities like London

had populations of less than 30,000 people.

At Angkor Wat, we think about a million people lived there.

- Angkor Wat was a massive, buzzing, humming complex.

Today New York City covers about 305 square miles,

but back then in its heyday,

Angkor Wat covered 400.

I mean, that is enormous.

narrator: The vast urban population was sustained

by clever water management.

There were two reservoirs, each five miles long.

But like on Easter Island,

the city's epic engineering success in one area

caused the failure of another.

[soft vocal music]

Deforestation and soil erosion blocked the water supply.

Famine led to the temple being abandoned.

But its discovery in the jungle hundreds of years later

brought this magnificent monument

back to life once more.

From one that was hidden to one you cannot miss.

We move to the tallest structure

of the ancient world.

Fit for a king, it was made not for this life but the next.

We're back where else but in Egypt.

Coming in at number two...

[dramatic music]

The Great Pyramid, built by Pharaoh Khufu.

- The pyramid of Khufu weighs in

at a staggering six million tons.

It is, without doubt,

one of the most amazing feats of engineering on this Earth.

narrator: The Egyptians built more than 118 pyramids

across their kingdom,

but this dwarfs all others.

It was constructed around 2600 BC

as the pharaoh's burial chamber.

At 480 feet high,

it was the tallest man-made structure in the world

for nearly 4,000 years.

- It took up to 40,000 workers at least ten years

to build the Great Pyramid of Khufu.

This means that blocks

that weighed anything from 2 1/2 to 80 tons

were being put in place every 2 1/2 minutes.

That's just staggering.

narrator: 2.3 million limestone blocks

were hauled up using muscle power alone.

- The Great Pyramid was so precisely built

that all of the sides are equal to each other

down to a matter of inches.

For a monument that size, that's just amazing.

- The entire base of the Great Pyramid

is almost perfectly level.

It's an astonishing feat of construction.

narrator: The pyramid was originally covered

with bright, polished limestone and capped with gold.

Four sides of the casing met at 90-degree angles.

They were so perfectly aligned,

the angles were accurate to within 1/100th of an inch.

Some experts say the very slight curvature

built into the faces of the pyramid

exactly matches the curvature of the Earth.

Inside the Great Pyramid

lies the now empty burial chamber of Pharaoh Khufu.

But there are many other legends

that suggest the pyramid and those around it

were more than just a tomb.

- What where they used for?

Did they actually contain the body of the king?

Or were they ritual devices for projecting the pharaoh's soul

into the constellation of Orion?

We're not entirely sure.

- The organization, the logistics,

the alignment with the stars--

the ancient Egyptians' engineering prowess

was just astonishing and way ahead of its time.

narrator: The Great Pyramid is the last

of the seven wonders of the ancient world

still standing.

Gold and riches are said to be hidden inside.

But as the oldest and largest of Egypt's pyramids,

the real treasure is the pyramid itself.

narrator: This is "Ancient Top 10"'s countdown

of the greatest ancient monuments,

ranked according their size.

At number ten, the ghostly world of Easter Island.

Number nine, the ring of mystery at Stonehenge.

Number eight, a giant amongst men,

the Colossus of Rhodes.

And number seven, Maya pyramid perfection at Chichen Itza.

Number six, the incredible carved Treasury of Petra.

And number five, the Roman killing ground, the Colosseum.

Number four, the massive temple on the Nile, Karnak.

And number three, the temples of Angkor Wat.

Number two was Egypt's finest, the Great Pyramid of Khufu.

But there's one monument that is so super-sized,

it beats all others by a long, long way.

At number one...

[triumphant music]

The Great Wall of China.

- It's taken more time, material, and labor

than any other construction on Earth.

It's defied mountain ranges, time, and all-out war.

This is number one, the greatest monument on Earth.

[dramatic music]

narrator: The Great Wall of China is by far

the largest engineering project the world has ever seen.

It's over 13,000 miles long.

That's five times the width of the United States

and further than the distance

from the North to the South Pole.

♪ ♪

- If you put it in a straight line,

it would reach halfway around the circumference

of Planet Earth.

And to walk end to end,

it would take a staggering 18 months.

♪ ♪

- It's so long that when it was manned,

the guards at one end would see the sunrise

two hours before the guards at the other.

narrator: The Great Wall was built over centuries.

Generation after generation added to it.

- There's not just one wall.

There are many walls.

It should be called the Great Walls of China.

In fact, there are at least 16 separate lengths of wall.

narrator: Altogether, they run from the Gobi Desert

through the mountains north of Beijing

to the Yellow Sea.

Work began on the Great Wall

perhaps as early as the 7th century BC.

It was needed to protect China from being raided

by nomadic tribes in the north.

The first part of the wall built

was 3,000 miles long.

It took 20 years and hundreds of thousands of people.

They used simple materials like sun-baked mud bricks.

The wall was then continuously added to and improved upon.

But its effectiveness would really be put to the test

when a terrifying new enemy appeared

in the 12th century AD.

- The Mongols are coming.

A frightening prospect.

They are unparalleled in their ferocity.

The Mongols will let nothing stand in their way.

[army yelling]

narrator: In 1209,

the Mongol army under Genghis Khan

outflanked the wall and conquered China.

[dramatic music]

The Chinese eventually regained control

and set about turning their empire

into an impregnable fortress.

♪ ♪

The Great Wall was made longer and stronger than ever

using bricks and stone-- 3.8 billion bricks, that is.

- Building the wall across just one valley

required 60 brick kilns

making half a million bricks a month.

That's a total of 44 White Houses every month.

- One third of the male population of China

was conscripted to build it.

I mean, that is staggering.

narrator: The total material used

would be enough to build 120 Great Pyramids.

The equivalent of nearly $400 billion was spent on it.

But it also cost lives.

- Some call it the longest cemetery in the world.

Over a million people died during its construction,

and some of them are buried in the walls.

narrator: The dedication of the Chinese people produced

one of the most impressive structures ever built.

The finished wall ranged from 16 to 42 feet high.

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On some sections, a whole army could march along the top.

It's more than a Great Wall.

It's a lasting monument to the efforts of man.

- It is the greatest man-made structure ever undertaken

in the history of this planet.

narrator: There is no doubt;

the Great Wall of China is our number one ancient monument.

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The civilizations of the ancient world

made their mark

with the great monuments they left behind--

colossal structures

more magnificent than any of today's

and built without modern machinery.

These incredible achievements stand as reminders to us all

of the engineering genius and limitless ambition of mankind.