Mankind decoded. Eat it, drink it, smoke it. Season 1, Episode 5

Description

EPISODE FIVE: EAT IT, DRINK IT, SMOKE IT Man uses plants to feed, heal, and clothe himself, to build his world and even to alter how he feels. Plants are such an important part of our lives that they play a central role in our evolution. Around 12,000 years ago humans discover farming. It allows people to establish settled communities. It's the beginning of civilization. But it has a price. We shrink, we go to war, and become addicted to narcotics. Our wars in the Old World eventually lead us to the New World where Europeans discover corn, the Aztec's own genetically modified crop. Hundreds of years later, when America suffers the Midwest Dustbowl, farmers blend four strains of corn into a super-strong hybrid, making a new drought-proof crop. In the New World a new crop helps to fund its colonization: tobacco. The British bring it to China in a new cocktail - they mix it with Opium. The crippling drug leads to the Opium War - a significant turning point in the shift of power from East to West. Later, in America, a new initiative to crack down on intoxicants sees the introduction of Prohibition - spearheading a new culture of hooch-brewing and organized crime. Plants have been a unifying resource before: under British rule America's best pine trees were snapped up by colonial leaders, the resulting Pine Tree riots were the first skirmishes in the American revolution - the same conflict which saw valuable barrels of British tea thrown into the sea. But one Englishman pioneers a new way to speed up production of a particular commodity and clothe millions of people at an all-time low price: Richard Arkwright's new, industrial machine, spun one of nature's most useful commodities: cotton.

Runtime

23 minutes

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Subjects

Genre

Database

Alexander Street

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