Mankind The Story of All of Us Episode 7 New World FULL EPİSODE

Summary

The episode traces how exploration, warfare, technology, trade, and disease reshaped connections between distant parts of the world.

Viking Voyages and First Contact

Viking longboats allowed Norse sailors to cross difficult waters and establish settlements and connections around northern Europe. The episode recounts a Viking expedition to North America, where it encountered Indigenous people. The encounter became violent, and the explorer identified in the subtitles as Thoral Erikson died. The episode presents this as an early European arrival in the Americas, centuries before later European voyages.

Advanced Societies in the Americas

The documentary emphasizes that the Americas had thriving civilizations long before Europeans arrived. It describes Indigenous communities as skilled hunters and engineers, and highlights the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan as a vast, sophisticated city with monumental architecture, education, laws, and intellectual life.

The episode also depicts Aztec ritual warfare and human sacrifice, explaining that these practices were tied to religious beliefs about sustaining the gods and the universe.

Corn as a Lasting Resource

Early American farmers domesticated corn from a wild plant thousands of years ago. The episode presents it as a highly productive crop and a staple of Aztec life, with lasting importance in diets and food products.

The Fall of Constantinople Changes Trade

In 1453, Ottoman forces led by Sultan Mehmed II besieged Constantinople. The city’s formidable walls were overcome by sustained cannon bombardment, demonstrating the growing power of artillery and weakening the defensive value of stone fortifications.

Ottoman control of important east–west trade routes encouraged Europeans to seek alternative ways to reach the riches of Asia.

A New Sea Route Around Africa

Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias searched for a route to India around Africa. When a storm made coastal navigation dangerous, he turned out into open water, relying on a triangular lateen sail to make progress partly into the wind. Ocean currents then helped carry his ship toward southern Africa.

His voyage established the Cape of Good Hope as a key route for later trade and exploration.

Columbus’s Voyage and the Collision of Worlds

Christopher Columbus sailed west in search of Asia, badly underestimating the distance. After weeks at sea, he reached the Bahamas, which he believed were near Japan. His arrival brought Europeans and the peoples of the Americas into sustained contact after long isolation.

Initial exchanges included gifts, but Columbus’s search for gold helped open the way to wider European expansion. The episode also stresses that Indigenous populations had little immunity to many diseases carried from Europe.

Cortés and the Conquest of the Aztec Empire

Hernán Cortés arrived with a comparatively small force and used political maneuvering, including taking Emperor Moctezuma captive, to gain leverage over the Aztec state. Spanish greed for gold intensified conflict, and Moctezuma was killed amid the revolt. Cortés’s forces later returned and conquered the empire.

The episode argues that smallpox, brought unknowingly by Europeans, was a crucial factor: it killed a large share of the population and weakened the society resisting conquest.

Navigation Method Described

The episode’s account of Dias’s voyage highlights these steps:

1. Avoid the dangerous coast: A storm made it risky to remain near shore, where the ship could be driven onto rocks.
2. Turn toward open water: Dias chose the uncertain open Atlantic rather than continue along the hazardous coastline.
3. Use the lateen sail: Its triangular shape helped the ship make limited progress toward the wind.
4. Steer with the rudder: Steering into the wind converted the sail’s force into forward motion, helping the ship move away from the rocks.
5. Continue despite being out of sight of land: Dias spent days in unfamiliar waters, where his maps offered little help.
6. Benefit from ocean currents: A large circular current carried the vessel toward southern Africa, helping reveal a route around the continent.

Speakers and Sources Featured

• Documentary narrator: Unidentified; provides the main narration.
• Contemporary expert commentators: Unidentified in the subtitles. They discuss Viking travel, Indigenous societies, Aztec culture, artillery, sailing technology, ocean currents, and disease.
• Historical accounts and attributed voices: The episode quotes or paraphrases a Viking account of the North American expedition, Columbus’s account of his encounter with Indigenous people, and an eyewitness account of the Spanish seizure of Aztec gold.
• Historical figures named in the narration: Thoral/Thorvald Erikson, Christopher Columbus, Bartolomeu Dias, Hernán Cortés, Moctezuma, and Sultan Mehmed II. The subtitles do not identify performers or confirm which figures are heard as dramatized speakers.