(upbeat music)
- The first thing I think
of when you say Amazon
is blue tape and too
much bubble wrap.
- You say Amazon, I think Prime.
- Tall, beautiful women,
then Jeff Bezos,
then the forest.
- [Narrator] Long
before Jeff Bezos,
bubble wrap and porch pirates,
there was, and is,
another Amazon.
The real Amazon.
- The Amazon is a
place of statistics
that are so extraordinary that
they're scarcely believable.
- There are obviously
other rainforests,
but this is by far the largest.
It's larger than the next
two rainforests combined.
There are something like
400 billion trees there.
- [Narrator] It's also a
place of legendary riches.
- It's about finding the
golden city, the golden king.
- [Narrator] And
innumberable dangers.
- It's just millions
of years of evolution
where everything either
wants to be a predator
or doesn't want to be prey.
- [Narrator] For centuries, it
has attracted fortune seekers
and adventurers from
all over the world.
From gold hungry
Spanish conquerors,
to audacious ex presidents,
to wine guzzling long
distance swimmers.
This is the extraordinary
story of the Amazon,
revealed through numbers.
How we've used it,
how we've abused it
and 200 billion reasons
why we have to save it.
- Understanding
the Amazon is key
to understanding our
survival as a species.
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] It's
nearly impossible
to exaggerate the sheer size
of the Amazon rainforest.
- You can fly over
it hour after hour
and see nothing but rain
forest from the horizon on.
It's just stunning.
- The Amazon is the
greatest expanse
of tropical forest
on the planet.
It's a universe unto itself.
- [Narrator] But the forest
isn't the only
number one around.
It also happens to
have the world's
most powerful river
running through it.
- It's the second largest
river in the world,
second only to the Nile,
and, in terms of volume,
it's the largest.
- [Narrator] The
mighty Amazon River
is more than 4,000 miles long
and channels 20% of the
world's total fresh water.
Starting from the
Andes mountains
and ending in the
Atlantic Ocean.
- [Male] Wowza!
- [Narrator] The surrounding
Amazon rainforest
is a whopping 3.2
million square miles.
- It's this immense
physical space
in which you could put pretty
much all of the United States.
If the Amazon River
began in California,
it would come out in New York.
It's that big.
(gentle music)
- [Narrator] But, for all
its size and strength,
the Amazon is shrinking fast.
In the last 50 years,
we've lost about 18%
of the Amazon to deforestation.
(chainsaw buzzing)
- Timber!
- [Narrator] An area
larger than France.
- [Male] Sacre Bleu!
- [Narrator] In 2020 alone,
some five million
acres were cut down.
That's an area the
size of Israel.
- [Male] Oy vey!
- As we see accelerating
deforestation in the Amazon,
that's a huge loss for
the ecology of the planet.
- If you clear too much forest,
you can get an
ecological collapse.
And we're closer to that tipping
point than we would like.
(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] How did the
Amazon become so important?
Let's start with the
powerhouse Amazon River,
fed by more than
1100 tributaries.
Every second, the river blasts
more than 700,000 cubic feet
of water into the
Atlantic Ocean.
That's over three million
gallons every minute,
or the equivalent of 5,500
Olympic sized swimming pools.
(whistle blowing)
- That's a lot of laps.
- The amount of water that
flows into the Atlantic
every second would
allow about 500 people
to have a bath a week
for 325 million years.
- [Narrator] The immense outflow
blossoms into the Amazon plume,
a massive expanse
of the Atlantic
dominated by the river's
freshwater discharge.
- Water flowing into the
Atlantic from the mouth
of the Amazon can be drunk
150 kilometers off shore.
- [Narrator] The
Amazon rainforest
has been around for
about 10 million years.
The forest straddles
the equator.
Here, the sun hits the
Earth from directly above
at a 90 degree angle.
The intense solar energy
evaporates moisture
trapped in the
lush jungle growth,
which falls again as rain,
as much as 10 feet per year.
The native soil in the Amazon
isn't all that fertile.
- The soil in rainforests
actually tends to
be fairly poor.
It's a very thin soil,
most of the nutrients
are leaching out
of it continuously
from the movements of water.
- [Narrator] But the
forest has a secret weapon.
Each year, Atlantic winds blow
182 million tons of dust
from here, the Sahara Desert,
towards South America.
27.7 million tons of it
settle over the Amazon,
enough to fill two
million dump trucks.
The dust delivers 22,000 tons
of fertilizing phosphorus
to the Amazon soil.
And the result is
an expl*si*n of life
unlike anywhere else on Earth.
(gentle music)
- [Wade] There's just a
thousand shades of green,
a kind of infinitude of
form, shape and texture.
- [Narrator] 10% Of the over
1.7 million known species
live here, making it the most
biodiverse region on Earth.
- It's almost as if you
have to close your eyes
and just listen to the hum
of biological activity.
- [Narrator] The
wonder of the Amazon
wasn't lost on its
first inhabitants,
who tagged an eight mile
stretch of cliffs in Columbia
depicting the rich
life around them.
- [Male] A little more red.
- [Narrator] The
cliff murals date back
from about 12,500 BCE.
- We're able to
date this rock art
because of what's
being depicted in it.
We see paintings of
mastodons and giant sloth,
species that went extinct before
the end of the Pleistocene.
- [Narrator] It's an
astonishing history
of the prehistoric
Amazon in red pigment.
- This area of cliffs
has been called
the Sistine Chapel
of the Amazon.
- [Male] I've never heard
of this Michelangelo.
(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] Today, in the
Brazilian Amazon alone,
scientists discover about one
new species every other day.
- The diversity of
plant, animal, insect,
fungi, and birds is what
is so extraordinary.
- There's been expedition
after expedition
to try to document
stuff, but it remains,
still, a place of
enigmas and ciphers.
- [Narrator] Insects are
the undisputed kings here,
making up 90% of all
species in the Amazon.
Just one square mile can have
more than 50,000 insect species.
It's estimated the
Amazon region is home
to around 2.5 million in total,
although only around 8,000
have been identified.
- You lie down and your body
practically is lifted up
and carried away by ants.
- Are you saying that I
could lay down in the Amazon
and not have to walk?
Cause that's not bad.
The ant thing?
Oh.
- The thoughts of
being covered in bugs,
unless I'm winning
$50,000 on "Fear Factor",
it makes absolutely
no sense to me.
- [Narrator] The Amazon River
is also brimming with life.
Some of it can give
people nightmares.
The black caiman can grow
to as big as 16.5 feet long.
From 2000 to 2016,
23 fatal attacks
by the black caiman were
recorded in the Amazon.
The electric eel can generate
a pulse of 860 volts,
enough to cause cardiac
arrest in humans.
The toothy red bellied
piranha packs a powerful bite.
(yelping)
Strong enough to cut
through a human finger bone
like a pair of bolt cutters.
And then there's the candiru.
- It's one of only
two species on Earth
that survive solely on blood,
the other being the vampire bat.
Usually what it does
is it swims through
the gill chamber of a fish,
gets what it needs and
then it swims on out.
On rare occasions, it can
swim inside of a human.
It goes into any orifice.
- What?
(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] In 1897, George
Boulenger, a Belgian zoologist,
presents a candiru to the
Zoological Society of London.
- [Male] Here you go.
- [Male] Oh what a
cute little fishy.
- [Narrator] He also
describes the extreme lengths
some Amazon men will go to
rid themselves of a candiru.
They believe that the
only way to stop it
from reaching the bladder,
where it causes inflammation
and ultimately death, is to
immediately amputate the p*nis.
(screaming)
- Not my willy.
- Did you just tell me a fish
can fly up someone's pee-hole?
- Would I go swimming
in the Amazon River?
Hell no.
- There's piranhas,
weird things, you
can't see the bottom.
No.
- That stuff only
thrills white people.
Why am I inside a
piranha's living room?
(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] The Amazon River
is filled with scary creatures
but that doesn't stop
people from swimming in it.
In 2007, one man decides
to swim the whole thing.
His name is Martin Strel, an
eccentric Slovenian swimmer
who rose to fame after
completing massive distances
on some of the world's
longest rivers.
In 2000, Strel swam the
Danube in central Europe.
Two years later, he conquered
the much longer Mississippi.
Two years after that, he
upped the ante once again
by swimming the
Yangtze River in China.
- [Male] Phew, that's
a lot of swimming.
(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] But
the Amazon is unlike
anything Strel has
attempted before.
- I'm gonna guess Martin Strel
is the kind of person that,
once he sets his
mind to something,
he could not be dissuaded
because there are
many, many reasons
why he should not have attempted
to swim the entire Amazon.
- [Narrator] Besides things
like sharks and piranha,
there's a whole universe
of microbial life
that can enter the body
and do serious harm.
- [Male] Oh my God he's crazy.
- [Narrator] To protect
himself, Strel wears a wet suit
coated with lanolin
and gasoline.
- [Male] Lube me up fellas.
- [Narrator] On
February 1st, 2007,
(upbeat music)
52 year old Strel
plunges into the Amazon's
headwaters in Peru
and begins front crawling
his way towards the Atlantic.
- [Sarah] He had his
teammates pouring blood
on other sides of the river-
- [Male] Ew.
- [Sarah] To try to
lure away piranhas.
- [Male] Here fishy, fishy.
- And yet still ended
up getting bitten.
- [Male] The gasoline,
it does nothing.
- [Narrator] Strel swims an
exhausting 10 hours a day,
burning 10,000 to 12,000
calories in that time.
The average man
burns 2,500 daily.
- Alcohol is not
generally considered
a performance enhancer,
but Strel says
that he was drinking
his local Slovenian wine
and that was a magic
elixir for him.
- [Male] Bottoms up.
- Up to two bottles a day
to help him going forward.
- [Narrator] Despite
the extra fortification,
he ends up sick and delirious
from the microbes
he also swallows.
(retching)
66 days and 3,273 miles later,
Martin Strel enters
the Atlantic Ocean.
He's conquered the Amazon,
but at a heavy price.
- By the time Strel
reached the finish line,
he was not in good condition.
- [Male] I'm so tired.
- He was dehydrated and
famished, he was bitten up,
he was infected with parasites.
He needed to go to the hospital.
- [Narrator] Thankfully
he does recover.
(crowd cheering)
(gentle music)
Martin Strel had a rough
ride through the Amazon.
Compared to others
though, he got off easy.
Case in point, Teddy Roosevelt.
Bison hunter.
(g*n firing)
w*r hero.
26th President of
the United States
who took a b*llet in the chest
and lived to tell the tale.
December, 1913,
Roosevelt has just lost
the 1912 presidential election.
So, like any 55 year
old in a midlife crisis,
he decides to do something
really, really reckless.
- Theodore Roosevelt had
a pattern in his life.
So again and again, when he
would face tragedy or loss,
he would throw
himself into these
very, very difficult and
dangerous situations.
- [Narrator] Accompanied by
his 23 year old son Kermit
and a veteran Brazilian explorer
named Colonel Candido Rondon,
Roosevelt sets out to map
a newly discovered
Amazon tributary
and name it after himself.
Easy enough, right?
Well, the problems start
with their dugout canoes.
- They're going down
basically class four rapids
in these hollowed
out tree trunks.
(screaming)
- Oh my god!
- Help!
- These canoes suck.
- They would get to points where
it was impossible
to get them through
and so then, then
they would have to
haul them through
the rainforest.
- [Male] It's early honey.
- [Narrator] The delays put a
huge strain on their supplies.
- My my that's a big g*n.
- [Narrator] And forced them
to hunt and forage for food.
- [Male] I'll take
mine medium rare.
But this is just a
taste of what's to come.
(dramatic music)
One night, as they're clearing
a spot on the riverbank to camp,
Roosevelt comes face
to face, or toe to toe,
with one of the deadliest
creatures in the Amazon.
(hissing)
- He steps on a coral snake
that reaches out and bites him.
And there was no cure for
a bite from a coral snake.
If someone were poisoned by one,
they would just wait
for them to die.
And it was a really
terrible death.
Roosevelt was very, very lucky
because he was wearing
thick leather boots
and the venom went into
the heel of the boot
instead of into him.
- [Narrator] As they
continue down river,
Roosevelt and his team are
pursued by the Cinta Larga,
a local indigenous tribe.
- [Male] Anyone get the
feeling we're being watched?
- [Candice] At one point,
Rondon and his dog
were walking ahead.
- [Male] Come on boy.
- And Rondon's dog
went in front of him
and they k*lled the dog.
And Rondon realized that
it could have been him.
The Conta Larga had every
reason to k*ll them,
they were obviously
a potential threat,
and, if they had
decided to attack,
it's very, very, very
likely that Roosevelt
and all of his men,
everyone on the expedition
would have been k*lled.
- [Narrator] As the expedition
inches its way toward
the finish line,
Teddy Roosevelt is
nearly at death's door.
- One day, Roosevelt
cuts his leg on a rock,
this gash and you're
in the Amazon,
there are all kinds of ways
that it can get infected
and it did and he got
horribly, horribly sick
and he was delirious
and he was mumbling.
- [Narrator]
Roosevelt had brought
a lethal dose of
morphine just in case.
And he decides it's
time to take it.
He doesn't want to be a danger
to other men on the trip.
- Only reason he didn't take
that lethal dose of morphine
was because his son was with him
and he realized that the
best way to save his son
was to let his son save him.
Let his son find
a way to get him,
Theodore Roosevelt, out
of the Amazon alive.
- [Male] Let's go home boy.
- [Narrator] On
April 26th, 1914,
the battered expedition finally
emerges from the jungle.
Of the 22 men who started
the journey, 19 survive,
including Teddy Roosevelt.
But the Amazon isn't
finished with him yet.
- By the time Roosevelt emerged
from the Amazon rainforest,
he was just a shell
of his former self.
He had lost 50 pounds and
he was incredibly weak
and he never would
fully recover.
And he lived only
another five years.
- [Narrator] But hey, at
least he got his river.
Roosevelt wasn't
the first outsider
to slap a name tag
on an unmarked river.
Let's rewind the
tape four centuries
to see how the
Amazon got its name.
The man responsible?
Spanish conquistador,
Francisco de Orellana
We'll just call him Frank.
- He was actually a
cousin of Pizarro,
who was the conqueror of Peru
and the Pizarro family
were frantic conquistadors,
bloodthirsty and goldthirsty.
- [Narrator] In 1541, he
leads a massive expedition
to find and conquer the mythical
city of gold, El Dorado.
- De Orellana didn't
go into the Amazon
with the intention of having
any positive interactions
with local peoples.
He was there to
extract resources.
- [Narrator] The
243 man expedition
doesn't exactly pack light.
They take over 200 horses,
over 2000 pigs,
2000 dogs,
and more than 4,000
indigenous people
as porters and servants.
Along the way, Frank stumbles
upon indigenous villages.
They are not made of
gold but he is not picky.
The Conquistadores gotta
conquer apparently.
The locals have other ideas,
they fight back hard.
- In a particular conflict
with local villagers,
he came across some
female warriors
who were particularly
ferocious and,
understandably,
didn't want him there.
- [Narrator] Outmatched,
Frank calls the retreat.
- They left enough
of a mark on him
to remind him of the Amazonian
warriors of Greek mythology
and he named the
area after them.
- [Narrator] That's how
the Amazon got its name.
But, as bizarre as
the Amazon women
must have looked to Frank,
imagine how weird
he looked to them.
- Seeing people in armor
probably made them think
that these strange people
look kind of like insects.
(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] Big
Frank scuttles away,
heading east along the newly
christened Amazon River.
It's the beginning of
a 3,100 mile odyssey
that will carry him
through the heart
of an ancient
rainforest civilization.
(upbeat music)
- What they describe
is an inhabited world.
He didn't see a sort
of forest primeval.
It was very heavily populated.
- [Narrator] Massive
cities along the riverbank
stretching as far as 15 miles.
Inhabited areas that
take a full two days
and two nights to pass through.
- We have an idea that the
Amazon is this pristine jungle
and that there's very
few human touches to it,
but that's not accurate at all.
There's been a million plus
people living in the area
for thousands of years.
- [Narrator] When
Frank passes through,
there are anywhere
between six and 20 million
indigenous people
living in the region.
Incredibly, more than 100
of these ancient cultures
still exist today.
Pretty much unchanged
for hundreds of years.
- The Amazon is one of
just two places on Earth,
where there are still
groups of people
who have had no contact
with the outside world.
- I think it's actually
cool that there are people
in the Amazon who have
never used Amazon.
- I can't go a day
without my cell phone.
- It'd be such a
bummer to be cut off
from the outside world.
And then it's like, hey,
we're happy to meet you.
We're burning the
planet to the ground,
you got 10 years left.
- [Narrator] The vast
cultural gulf with outsiders
often makes contact more
than a little awkward.
(gentle music)
In 1955, five
American missionaries.
- [Male] Hey fellas, let's
go save us some souls.
- [Narrator] Set out
to spread Christianity
to the Huaorani people of
the jungles of Ecuador.
- This story, in its essence,
it's repeated so many times,
essentially it
involves evangelicals
who see an indigenous group,
want to save them from the hell
they feel like they
would inevitably face.
(screaming)
(chuckling)
- [Narrator] So they set up
camp near Huaorani territory
and start airdropping
gifts for them.
- [Male] Who wants presents?
- [Narrator] They fly around
in tight circles with the gifts
in a canvas bucket at the
end of a 1,500 foot rope.
The first drop
contains a kettle,
some buttons and rock salt.
- They drop this stuff down,
the indigenous population
takes it and you know,
doesn't seem to be
particularly aggressive.
- Then they start expecting to
have gifts given back to them
and they think it's a good sign
when other things
are left in exchange.
- [Male] They like
us, praise the Lord.
- [Narrator] The
missionaries want to meet
the Huaorani face-to-face
and come up with a plan
that they think will
ease everybody into it.
- [Male] Got to
get my good side.
- [Narrator] They
drop eight by 10
glossy photos of themselves,
hoping the Huaorani people
will recognize them in person
and go, ah, these
must be the nice guys
that are sending
us the presents.
But it doesn't go as planned.
Two Huaorani, a young
man and a young woman,
pluck up the courage to
visit the missionaries.
- They tried to be friendly,
they take the young
man on an airplane ride
to show him his
village from above.
- [Male] That's where you live.
- It's also a bit of
showing off I imagine.
And they hope that this
is going to put them
on a positive standing to make
further contact
with the community.
- [Narrator] What the
missionaries don't know
is that the young woman's family
is furious she visited them.
To deflect attention,
the young man
claims the missionaries
had attacked them.
Two days later, a pair
of Huaorani women appear
near the missionary camp.
- The evangelicals think
wow, it's so great,
they're coming out, they're
going to talk to us.
And then someone says, "Hello,
it's so nice to see you."
- [Narrator] That's when the
Huaorani spring their trap
and spear the five men to death.
(dramatic music)
- It may seem like
the missionaries
are the victims here
because they're the ones
that ended up m*rder*d.
But we have to question
why they were there
in the first place.
They went into this community
to try to convert them
and to say that your
religious experience is wrong,
let us show you the right way.
- [Narrator] Historically
indigenous people
have had by far the most to fear
from contact with outsiders.
Today, the Amazon region is home
to more than 30 million people,
but only about nine percent,
or 2.7 million of the
population, is indigenous.
- It's important to realize
that the interaction
between white people and
indigenous populations
has a deep history of,
not only loss of life,
but loss of worlds.
- [Narrator] The
Spanish and Portuguese
first arrived in the region
around the year 1500.
- [Male] Land h*!
- [Narrator] They brought g*ns
and other weapons used to
k*ll many indigenous people.
But they brought something
even more dangerous.
- The disease was
much more deadly.
Largely smallpox,
tuberculosis, influenza.
They certainly died in vast
numbers over a period of years.
- [Narrator] Less than 100
years after Europeans arrived,
the Amazon's indigenous
population was reduced by 90%.
(gentle music)
Many of these dangers
still exist today.
(speaking foreign language)
Almir Surui is Chief of
the Paiter Surui tribe,
who have traditionally occupied
a 957 square mile tract
of Amazonian rainforest
in Western Brazil.
(speaking foreign language)
- [Narrator] Losing
indigenous lives
also means losing the incredible
cultures and innovations
they have refined
over millennia.
(upbeat music)
Most of us think of
the Amazon jungle
as wild and overgrown,
the opposite of farmland,
but recent studies have found
that that's not the case.
- [Male] Really?
- What's interesting
in the Amazon,
we've actually discovered
areas that have
very good fertile soil and
that's unusual in a rainforest.
And we now recognize
that this was
intentional human terraforming.
They were actively
managing the soil there
to make it better
for agriculture.
- [Narrator] It turns
out that about 12%
of the Amazon's dry
forests have been farmed
by indigenous communities
for 5,000 years.
- [Male] Well
that's a long time.
- [Narrator] And their
approach to agriculture
is radically different from what
most of the world
practices today.
- Modern agriculture is a
monocultural agriculture.
You basically take
this complex world
and reduce it to a
couple of species.
Indigenous agriculture is rooted
in poly culture
and agroforestry.
So you don't just have
one of your trees growing
and one of your root crops,
but that you have both
the mixturing of the
wild and the tame.
(speaking foreign language)
- [Narrator] Conventional
agriculture plants crops
that are harvested
every one to three years
and requires huge swaths
of forest to be cut down.
- [Male] Like,
that's bad, right?
- [Narrator] Indigenous
Amazonians plant crops
that can keep
producing for 20 years
and grow in harmony
with the forest.
(speaking foreign language)
- [Narrator] But, over the
years, outsiders have been
more than happy to tear the
Amazon apart to make big bucks.
(upbeat music)
The Amazon is incredibly
rich in natural resources,
which has been both a
blessing and a curse.
- There's just an
unbelievable variety.
But, wherever there's
an opportunity,
it's immediately exploited.
- [Narrator] One of
the first resources
to attract greedy outsiders?
Number 79 on the periodic
table of elements,
gold.
- [Male] Ooh shiny.
(gentle music)
- Myths about gold in the Amazon
have been around for as
long as we've had contact
with people in the Amazon.
- [Narrator] The Amazon gold
rush is the longest in history.
It lasts two centuries
from the late 1600s
to the late 1800s.
- In Brazil, you have one of
the largest extractions of gold
that occurs until the
late 20th century.
- [Narrator] Today, demand for
Amazon gold is on the rebound
and has been rising steadily
since the early 2000s.
The result?
Some 500,000 small, mostly
ill*gal, mining operations.
They are responsible
for up to 10%
of deforestation in the region.
- It's terrible for the
local environment and people.
This environmental exploitation
is not something in the past,
it's happening right now.
- The idea that we're
doing this for gold,
what do we do with gold?
We take gold out of the
ground to smelt it into blocks
that we then put back into
the ground in bank vaults.
That's something indigenous
people just do not understand.
- [Narrator] Gold
isn't the only resource
to ignite a global frenzy
for a piece of the Amazon.
For one of the most
coveted of all,
look no further
than these trees.
(upbeat music)
- There are three species of
trees that yield a white latex
that became the source
of caucho, of rubber.
- Rubber is kind of
an amazing material.
Though it's something
that we get from plants,
it's elastic, it's flexible,
you can do so many
things with it.
So when rubber as a compound
was discovered in the Amazon,
it was very high value.
- [Narrator] The arrival
of the automobile
sends the Amazon rubber
industry into overdrive.
(upbeat music)
- 1908, Henry Ford
would be making
the first of 15
million Model T's
and every one of
them needed rubber.
And the only source
was in the Amazon.
- [Narrator] By
1910, rubber makes up
over 40% of all
Brazil's exports.
Harvesting it is a
massive undertaking.
- In order to get to
the trees worth tapping,
you had to mobilize
labor by the thousands.
- [Narrator] The vast
majority of those tappers
are the indigenous people who
know where the best trees are.
- [Male] Over here!
- The horrific, barbaric
treatment of rubber tappers
unleashed by barons
defies imagining.
A priest once said that,
"The best that could be said
of a white man is he didn't
k*ll his Indians for sport."
- [Narrator] By the
end of the boom,
for every ton of
rubber produced,
10 indigenous people would die.
To speed up production,
Amazon rubber barons
start growing trees
in plantations.
But the seeds of the
boom's destruction
have already been sown.
Let's wind the clock
back to the 1870s.
- The Brazilian government
worked very hard
to maintain control over
the supply chain of rubber.
But the British worked quite
hard to get control of it.
- It had been trying to get
seeds out of Brazil for ever,
but the rubber seed
has a lot of oil
and it rots very quickly.
- [Narrator] That
all changes in 1876,
when a man named Henry
Wickham pulls off
the heist of the century.
- Wickham was able
to actually smuggle
rubber seeds out of Brazil,
the Brazilian government had
an embargo on exporting them,
but he found a way to sneak
some of these out of the country
quick enough for the
seeds to survive.
- [Narrator] Wickham
smuggles 70,000 seeds
from Brazil to the U.K.
They get planted inside the
hot houses of Kew Gardens,
where 2,700 of them sprout.
- Once the seedlings
were established,
they were shipped,
destined for Singapore.
- Because of this act
of industrial espionage,
Britain was able to
become a huge player
in the world rubber market.
- [Narrator] It's
a devastating blow
to the Brazilian producers,
whose fate is all
but sealed in 1933,
when the Amazon's
rubber plantations
are consumed by a leaf blight.
- It was as if God
had a blowtorch.
The south American leaf blight
just ravaged the
entire investment.
- [Narrator] By 1940, 95%
of the world's rubber supply
is being grown in British owned
plantations in Southeast Asia.
But in 1941, one seismic event
will bounce the rubber industry
right back into
the Amazon court.
- On December 7th, 1941,
when the Japanese
attacked Pearl Harbor,
and within six weeks, the
Japanese had taken control
of 97% of the world's
rubber supply.
It was the biggest
crisis of World w*r II.
- [Narrator] A
single Sherman tank
requires a half ton of rubber,
a heavy b*mber, a full ton.
Some warships contain as
many as 20,000 rubber parts.
- [Male] Don't want any leaks.
- It was an extraordinary crisis
upon almost the entire
fate of the Allied cause
and, indeed, the fate of
civilization literally hinged.
- [Narrator] The Allies
desperately need rubber.
They have no choice but to
turn to the original source.
- [Male] Hey guys,
no hard feelings?
- [Narrator] The U.S. offers
Brazil $100 per tapper
in return for restarting the
Amazon's rubber industry.
Brazil quickly recruits
more than 55,000 people
to tap rubber trees
deep in the jungle.
They become known as
the rubber soldiers.
- We see a lot of child
labor at this time.
Children, as young
as five being sent
into the forest
to gather rubber.
- [Narrator] The
average tapper's
workday starts before dawn.
They're given only a
kerosene lamp for the gloom
and a machete for bushwhacking.
Lucky recruits get a
r*fle for protection.
- The rubber tappers
would be working
for the Allied and
the w*r effort.
And it was seen, not as the
oppression of young men,
but rather about young
patriotic men saving the country
through their labors
in the tropical forest.
The day to day was not
nearly as illustrious.
- [Narrator] Tappers
spend their morning
scouring the forest for
rubber trees to tap.
- [Male] There's one.
- [Narrator] In the afternoon,
they retrace their
steps to collect the sap
and haul it back to
camp in the dark.
Even then, the fun is
only getting started.
Back at the camp, they have
to cure the day's rubber haul
on a paddle over a smokey fire.
Once that's done, it's
finally time to eat.
- [Male] I'm so hungry!
- [Narrator] However,
the Brazilian government
isn't serving up any rations.
So dinner is whatever
they managed to bag
in between tapping trees,
no matter how unappetizing.
(gentle music)
- People were worked so hard
and in dangerous conditions
that they were
heavily exploited.
- 25,000 Brazilian troops
serve on the front lines
in the Second World w*r.
457 lose their lives.
But vastly more Brazilians
die on the homefront
thanks to the demand for rubber.
30,000 rubber soldiers
make the supreme sacrifice,
a staggering 55%
of those recruited.
(upbeat music)
The Amazon rainforest
helped save the free world
from fascism in the 1940s.
Now we need it again to save
the entire human
race from extinction.
By means of a 200 gigaton
secret locked in its leaves.
(upbeat music)
- Is the Amazon dangerous?
- Yes.
So-so dangerous yes.
Everything, everything
is dangerous.
- Anywhere where
there is something
that is trying to eat me
is immediately a problem.
- [Narrator] It's no
secret that the Amazon
has many ways to k*ll us.
What's less known
is that it may have
infinitely more ways to save us.
It's a story that starts
with the Amazon's most
dangerous creature.
- The most dangerous
creature in the Amazon.
There are so many
options to choose from.
- Well, aside from the p*nis
fish, maybe an anaconda.
- It's probably some mushroom
that you accidentally step on
and then you just explode.
Or your skin falls off.
Or both.
(gentle music)
(hissing)
- There's lots of scary and
dangerous animals in the Amazon
but probably the most
deadly is the mosquito.
- [Male] You wanna piece of me?
- [Narrator] How
dangerous is the mosquito?
Well, sharks k*ll around
six people every year.
Venomous snakes, they
k*ll an estimated 50,000.
But even they are nothing
compared to the deadly mosquito.
According to the World
Health Organization, in 2019,
there were 229 million
cases of malaria worldwide,
resulting in 409,000 deaths.
- Malaria is a parasite
carried inside mosquitoes,
and it's still one
of the major causes
of death in the world today.
- Most of the mortality
occurs in children.
So control of this
is very important.
It's also preventable
and treatable.
- [Narrator] Where did the first
malaria treatment come from?
The Amazon of course.
(upbeat music)
The story goes that, in 1631,
the Spanish Countess
of Cinchona,
who was married to
the Viceroy of Peru,
got sick with terrible chills.
- [Male] Oh so cold.
- [Narrator] And a
dangerously high fever,
textbook malaria symptoms.
The count turns to his doctors,
who are Jesuit
priests, for help.
- [Male] What're we gonna do?
- The Jesuits acted
as if they just had
some brilliant
inside information.
- [Male] Don't worry,
we've got just the thing.
- Jesuits, in general, were
very interested in medicine.
They kept medicinal
gardens in Europe.
- [Narrator] The
Jesuits rush off
and get a cinnamon colored bark,
which they grind up
into a fine powder.
- [Male] That'll do just fine.
- [Narrator] They
mix that into a drink
and then hurry back
to the countess.
- [Male] Down the hatch.
- It was a very bitter,
disgusting thing to drink.
- [Narrator] But
it does the trick.
The countess is
cured of malaria.
- [Male] Well, that's a relief.
- [Narrator] And the
Jesuits look like geniuses.
Except it might not
have happened that way.
- What they didn't reveal was
where they got that information,
which rather unsurprisingly
came from local
indigenous people
who have known for hundreds
of years how to treat malaria.
- [Narrator] Today, the tree
that grows that miraculous bark
is known as the Cinchona
tree, after the countess.
- Cinchona is in the
Rubiaceae family,
the coffee family, and
the bark yields quinine,
which is a naturally
occurring antimalarial agent.
- [Narrator] By the 1640s,
the Jesuits are
exporting Cinchona from
Peru back to Europe,
where it becomes known
as Jesuit's Powder,
the wonder cure for malaria.
- [Male] Step right
up, step right up.
Get your malaria cure here.
- [Narrator] But the Jesuits
knew where it really came from.
It's the first recorded
treatment for the deadly illness
and its importance
can't be overstated.
- Quinine was one of the
major medical discoveries.
You can kind of think
of it as equal to
the discovery of penicillin
in that it really handled
a global scourge extremely well
when nothing else
seemed to work.
- The Amazon is the
largest natural pharmacy
and much of the
flora has yielded
some of our more
important drugs.
- In the 1940s,
one man's efforts
will unlock the Amazon's
enormous curative potential,
(upbeat music)
Harvard biologist
Richard Evans Schultes.
In fact, it's the World
w*r II rubber crisis
that lands Schultes a
ticket to the jungle.
- Schultes was sent
into the Amazon
to find a way to break
the Asian monopoly,
to find a way to grow rubber
in plantations in the Americas.
- [Narrator] While looking for
disease resistant rubber trees,
Schultes collects and
catalogs as many different
plant species as he can find.
- [Male] I'll take one of
those and one of those.
Oh this one is good too.
- [Narrator] But, of course
he doesn't do it on his own.
- Schultes comes
to these societies
who have never seen an
outsider coming to them humbly,
not as a master,
but as a student,
revering them as the teacher.
He was the first
to draw attention
to the extraordinary
knowledge of those
who know the forest best,
the indigenous people.
He showed that they were
true natural philosophers.
- [Narrator] Guided
by indigenous people,
Schultes then puts his own
extraordinary skills to work.
- Most of us, when we
see a tropical forest,
we see a series of
shades of green,
but Schultes could
detect diversity
just by holding a
blossom to the light.
Schultes collected roughly
30,000 individual collections.
- [Male] That's also a lot.
- [Wade] But with
each collection,
there could have been as many as
a hundred individual specimens.
Each thought to
be a new species.
- [Narrator] During his
12 years in the Amazon,
Schultes collects 2000 plants.
Which later turned out to have
previously unknown
medicinal properties.
Today, 25% of all
medicinal drugs
are derived from
rainforest plants.
The U.S. National
Cancer Institute
has identified about 3000 plants
with anti-cancer properties.
70% of them are found
in the rainforest.
But a growing worldwide
obsession with one animal
threatens to destroy
this vital resource.
The cow or, more
specifically, its meat.
The world loves beef.
Each year, we produce about
67 million tons of it.
But all that tasty meat
comes at a steep
environmental cost.
- If you look at the
carbon footprint of cattle,
it's one of the worst
things you could grow.
It requires so much
forest to be cut down
in order to produce
so little beef.
- [Narrator] Brazil
is the number two
beef producing
nation in the world,
raising about 215 million
head of cattle per year.
And that production has
hit the Amazon hard.
- You might assume it's logging,
but actually 80% of
deforestation in the Amazon
is because of cattle production.
To increase the amount
of grazing land,
they have to burn down the
Amazon forest to create space.
- [Narrator] By some estimates,
200 square feet of
rainforest is destroyed
for every pound
of beef produced.
That's the size of an
extra large parking space.
The average head of cattle
produces 490 pounds of beef.
- [Male] Holy cow.
- [Narrator] That's about
one Manhattan block per cow.
- By burning down these
trees, you're immediately
introducing carbon dioxide
into the environment
and then the cattle moving in
are a major contributor
to methane production.
So we're seeing multiple
greenhouse gases
being produced through
cattle raising.
- [Narrator] Remember the
miracle cure for malaria?
Our insatiable appetite
for beef is robbing us
of an untold number
of future medicines.
Maybe I'll stick with tofu.
(gentle music)
- Every time you destroy
an acre of forest,
the level of biological
knowledge that is put at risk,
it's like burning
down a library.
It's not just that
we're transforming
this priceless
treasure of nature.
We cut it down to create meat.
Do we really need more meat?
- Stop eating beef,
find a cure for cancer.
- I would stop, it'd be hard.
I love meat.
- I really like steak.
Can we like figure out the
whole cancer cure thing
and then go back to the steak
or is it one or the other?
- [Narrator] If
that isn't enough,
the rainforest contains
200 billion other reasons
to stop cutting it down now.
The Amazon represents about 54%
of the total rain
forest on Earth,
and it plays a vital role in
maintaining a stable climate.
- The Amazon is often described
as the lungs of the planet.
So, as we see accelerating
deforestation in the Amazon,
that's fewer trees to
uptake carbon dioxide.
- [Narrator] In its trees
and soils, the Amazon stores
the equivalent of four
to five years worth
of human made carbon emissions,
up to 200 gigatons or 200
billion tons of carbon.
- [Male] That sure is
a whole lot of zeros.
(speaking foreign language)
- [Narrator] The Amazon
is the unique product
of millions of years
of Earth's evolution
and it's irreplaceable.
- It's something that's
absolutely unique to our world.
And the idea that we
would just let it burn up
or dismiss it in any
way is just a tragedy.
- If we can't figure out
how to save the Amazon,
we don't have much hope
for the future of humanity.
- [Narrator] But
there's still time
for us to flip the script.
(gentle music)
- I think it's
easy to get really
discouraged about the
future of the Amazon
but there also are
positive stories too.
There are a number of species
that were on the brink
of extinction that,
through active interventions,
have been saved.
Like the golden lion
tamarins for instance.
- Mercifully, the Amazon
remains a big place.
We have an initiative right now
called the Path of the
Anaconda where we're trying to
create a single protected
area that will go
from the Andes to the Atlantic
across the entire northern
reaches of the Amazon.
(speaking foreign language)
- There are reasons
to be hopeful.
We just really need to
be actively involved
in protecting this
part of the world.
- I honestly didn't
realize that the Amazon
was so important to our planet.
But, if it goes, I'm guessing
we're going to be next.
- I'm pretty positive
we'll be screwed.
- Completely screwed.
- It's not even like a question,
we would die without the Amazon
and so now I'm
getting super nervous.
- It's the end of the
movie, credits are rolling,
we're all going home.
To our maker.
- We don't want that.
Give a damn.
Welcome to our World! Where we serve you cookies to ensure you get the best viewing experience on our site.
Did you know that you can remove censorship board-wide, use our advanced search functions, be notified when new content is posted, join our memberships, set episodes to show in any order you want & more if you are logged into your account?
Register or sign in here: ucp.php?mode=register
Did you know that you can remove censorship board-wide, use our advanced search functions, be notified when new content is posted, join our memberships, set episodes to show in any order you want & more if you are logged into your account?
Register or sign in here: ucp.php?mode=register
01x12 - The Amazon
Watch/Buy Amazon
This series is loaded with mind-blowing factoids and stats, entertaining expert interviews, and infographics injected with cheeky humor.
This series is loaded with mind-blowing factoids and stats, entertaining expert interviews, and infographics injected with cheeky humor.