HOW THE EARTH CHANGED HISTORY: THE SKIES ABOVE
Premieres Monday, June 21 at 9pm ET/PT
For many thousands of years, the wind has shaped the destiny of people across the globe. Even today, we’re still at the mercy of the wind. Prof. Stewart travels to the Sahara Desert to get a closer look at how the patterns of wind drive the formation of natural barriers like deserts and helped us overcome others, like oceans, which had isolated humans from each other for generations. And we’ll retrace a lesser known discovery of Columbus: previously unknown wind patterns across the Atlantic Ocean that had a profound impact on and paved the way for globalization. Empires have risen and fallen on the tide of changing storm patterns and the turbulent relationship between atmosphere, landscape and oceans.
We’ll learn about the impact of the Himalayas on new wind patterns, then jet over to Australia’s Red Center, where a giant swirl of wind has relentlessly stripped the land of its fertility, forcing its Aboriginal people to survive as hunter-gatherers while civilizations elsewhere developed agriculture. We will uncover how the wind has allowed dynasties to grow powerful, including the most iconic empires of China.
