The Barren Wilderness Left Behind By The Silk Road

[@fnqoz]

I’ve watched David’s doc’s over and over, I hope he continues to make documentaries and returns to Afghanistan where he was treated with the same respect he gives to others.

[@brianvittachi6869]

Documentaries such as these are invaluable. They ought to be shown in schools. It will make history come alive for students who find it boring having to read words on a page. This is show and tell and will hopefully fill them with a sense of wonder. Thanks for the upload.

[@jasonnacci4091]

Ought to be shown in schools, yes.

[@singingbowlmuseum]

This is very interesting rare glimpse into these ancient cultures. I'm amazed that fragments of these cultures still exist not only there in Afghanistan, but the silk roads continued all the way to Nepal. With the antique singing bowls, we found a direct connection between ancient bowls made in Persia and Khorasan to the antique singing bowls made in Nepal. The technology would have traveled exactly through this region on the silk roads. It's a very interesting and mostly forgotten time in human history, when some of the most beautiful handicrafts were ever made and traded from China all the way to Europe, and including Nepal and current day Afghanistan as we see here!

[@sandrabarnett1499]

Great documentary I love Davi Admas work

[@rickybuhl3176]

As a Dane born and raised not many miles from Ole Olufsen's hometown, my grandfather would tell me stories and read his (Ole's) books to me as a child. Never expected to see him mentioned here - kinda thought of him as 'our little secret' as it were, or rather the insignificant foreigner to the English speaking world - which had so many of their own.. Feeling as much pride as is allowed of a Dane, ngl.

[@rohitrajr9829]

David Adams , my favorite documentary maker. This is how a story should be told :)

[@timjames6190]

Absolutely fantastic stuff I’m totally addicted to David Adam’s documentaries keep making these please I have felt so educated thank you David .

[@keith6371]

One thing few western historians mentioned was many Greek city states existed in Central Asia prior to Alexander as Persia had a policy of relocating conquered greek cities. So many Greeks were already living in Central Asia by the time Alexander came around.

[@anotheryoutubechannel4809]

yes

[@GloryDaze73]

I had no idea this happened.

[@JS-jh4cy]

That partly because the during economic hardship the 10,000 Greek merchant army travel to Central Asia to be hired out for battle, this was about 300 years before Alexander... the 10,000 never bothered to come back, so they settled down throughout the region

[@marcknight4568]

This is the best filming of this enigmatic landscape that I have been waiting for....ar3al coffee table piece

[@shazza160]

But a naff Australian narration.

[@yvesklein5414]

really wish film producers would stop with the moaning sopranos, wailing choruses, and recurring gypsy violin themes. When I can hear David over the orchestra, I really enjoyed it.

[@cuunthaandlethis]

Really wish I had a unicorn that farted rainbows 🌈

[@FrithonaHrududu02127]

Just think of all the gypsy fiddlers that will be out of work not to mention the choruses and the dudes that sing I'n Arabic(I think its Arabic at least)...what kind of monster are you?

[@drhyshek]

@@wmanad8479I doubt he can re-edit the film for you now since it was filmed and produced 20 years ago.

[@carolebner2091]

I disagree,the music I feel is fantastic love it...just saying!!

[@5teffi3]

what an adventure, awesome, thank you for bringing this to us

[@SaidAlSeveres]

Freaking amazing documentary.

[@jeffyoung60]

Alexander chose not to journey further due east into what is today, Xinjiang, formerly Sinkiang, or otherwise known to the historic Chinese as, Xiyu, the Western Regions. But even to get to that distant, desert western part of China, he would have to cross the length and breadth of Central Asia. Somewhere along the way, Alexander turned south into the fabulous realms of jeweled early India, probably on the information of local peoples, merchants, mercenaries, travelers, et al. Rich, sophisticated Indian kingdoms lie directly south in a vast continent. Alexander and his experienced, but exhausted and homesick Macedonians, Greeks, allies, and subject Persian soldiers would soon win a costly Pyrrhic battle against a local, powerful Indian maharajah and his huge army just across the frontier into India. Though ultimately victorious, the fighting was extremely hard contested and bloody. Alexander's army were on the verge of panic. Another Pyrrhic victory like that would be the end of them all. Only their steadfast, years-long, personal devotion to Alexander kept them from mutinying on the spot. Even then that loyalty was wavering on the edge of a blade. Perhaps in the end, Alexander loved his men enough to break off his India campaign - a smart decision in hindsight - begin the long march back west, which he would not live to complete.

[@Hakimo-UK-Babeker]

David's documentaries very interesting, thank you David

[@KDOERAK]

great landscapes and interesting history👍👍

[@bizzybee852]

I enjoyed seeing the rugged stark wilderness amidst the grandeur of the dizzying heights of the mountains of Afghanistan. It was breathtakingly beautiful. And the modulated narration by David Adams made the historic events that took place almost come to life. I could imagine the troops of Alexander the Great marching in a line miles long along the edges of the craggy mountain cliffs. And I could envision caravans of traders, with camels, yaks, horses, and men, trekking through steep winding paths covered in snow. I am not sure they even used, or had, camels, but in my minds eye I imagined the double humped camels in the caravans. Maybe I envisioned the caravans using camels because of the story of the birth of Jesus, the story of the Magi, the wise men from the Far East rode on camels when they brought gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, at the birth of Jesus Christ. Whatever the reason, the history narration and beautiful cinematography brought the region and its history to life and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I love learning about and seeing the beautiful world that God created for us. And I enjoy learning about people from all over the world, especially the more isolated peoples. The one thing that always strikes me about different races, tribes, and ethnicities, is that people are people. We may be different in many ways, but we are all fundamentally the same in many ways too. The most important being that we are all created by God, and we are all God's children. And God loves all people and we should all love one another. We all basically want and need the same things. We all love our families, and want to be able to feed and care for them. We all need shelter, a home, and good food. May God bless us all, every nation, creed, and color of people. And may we all turn to God and accept His gift of salvation and everlasting last through the death and resurrection of His son, Jesus Christ. Who came to earth to be born as a man, so he could live a sinless life, so that as a spotless lamb he could die to pay the wages of sin, which is death, for us. So that if we believed on Him, that he died by being nailed to a cross to pay the debt for our sins, and that He rose again on the third day, and now sits at the right hand of the Father in Heaven. And just by believing in Him, we can be born again, that all our sins will be washed away by the blood Jesus shed for us on that cross, he paid the debt for our sins. So that we can have eternal life with God the Father in Heaven. The Bible says this is all you have to do to be saved: Romans 10:9 if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. John 3:15: "That whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life" John 11:25-26: "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die" Mark 16:16: "Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned" John 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. John 3:36 Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him. God bless everyone who made it this far in this comment turned novel, I am praying for you, and your family. And I am praying for you to get to know Jesus and to saved. God loves you!! So much He sent His only son to die a horrible painful death to pay the debt for your sin.

[@scoon2117]

These people are gorgeous, wether they descend from Alexander or not. I love their blue eyes.

[@bluJ-76]

this was AWESOME!

[@KevinDoyle-r1w]

Love the children in this docu

[@Kat-oy7kg]

Where soldiers go, genes will flow. 😊

[@khizar8286]

Amazing documentary. Chilling

[@majidumarov3602]

Very interesting video, Thanks🎉🎉🎉

[@webuyhouse8917]

I love history so much if only there was money to be made my learning it

[@baitalik]

😮A mention should have been made about Captain John Wood of British East India Company who was the first explorer to search for the source of Oxus in 1838. He concluded that the source is a lake in Pamir mountains in present day Tajikistan. Maybe he is not fully correct but still deserves credit for his exemplary adventure.😮

[@jetta5267]

Great documentary!

[@mohammadjaveed7404]

Among best documentries

[@RigoLecler]

Tremendo documental,sin desperdicio me encanto

[@charlesyoungblood1402]

Excellent documentary 👏

[@louisduplessis2075]

Amazing landscape.

[@bold810]

Chuck-a-Goat sounds exciting to watch.

[@cincyjohn69]

Such an interesting video

[@markharris1223]

Splendid as usual, but the sound editing needs some attention.

[@tara0735]

Very interesting.

[@lrayvick]

I kept wondering how much this private expedition cost. Also if there was any evidence of how different the landscape was in Alexander's time - You would think all than commerce would have the effect of denuding the mountains and valleys for quite a distance from the "road". I wonder how much the dna of the locals indicate Greek ancestry. All in all quite an amazing vid.

[@asumdai4894]

Wow interesting..thank you 4 it

[@y09297]

"I'd love it to be true" - took me right out of the magic of the film, sorry to say. Grew up in the "west" so yes my initial perspective is the same as the speaker [male, white, privileged], it sounds romantic almost. However when you think about soldiers traveling through a remote area and meeting people they'd likely consider less civilized.. we can all guess how 'civilized' they would've been towards the local women. Still, it's a great docu., and wouldn't be fair to be impose modern sensibilities on an earlier time. Kudos to the creators and all involved 🙏

[@marcknight4568]

That landscape probably used to have full shrubs like Colorado or the south west Appalachians.

[@spocksdaughter9641]

Agreed from the UK

[@jimbob-robob]

This was good... 👍🖖✊️

[@arminhanik7229]

Music MUCH too loud. Makes it unwatchable.

[@richardmartyn7865]

Can't understand why people don't see the link between open grazing and desertification..Talk about wilful blindness.

[@Holy.HannaH]

...are you suggesting this entire landscape is barren due to open grazing? That would indeed be willful ignorance.

[@harveyquirke6376]

The. Perfect. Middilcal. Kit. A. Light. Bulb. And. A. Bit. Of. Cloth.

[@Glenn-F-Rice]

12:51 Thats a scary looking tunnel

[@marcknight4568]

Sheep naturally start in the highlands and are exchanged to people's of the lower lands😊😊🎉

[@jeffyoung60]

On the map shown in the video, Alexander was marching inexorably closer to the far western reaches of the Taklamakan Desert and likely the furthest western outposts of the early Han Empire. Surrounding the Taklamakan Desert on its northern and southern boundaries were a number of oasis cities and large towns, some of which were prosperous and wealthy, even possessing military capability. At this time in history, water was still in larger supply in the now, long since dried up shallow rivers and streams that fed the prosperity of some of these long since ghost towns. Of course Alexander had no way of knowing that. He would have to continue marching further due east but he chose not to. That part of eastern Central Asia was not firmly under Han rule. The territories belonged to the local rulers of the oasis cities, some more powerful than others. Many had chosen alliance in the way of tributary diplomatic relationship with Han China and thus represented Han sovereignty even though the same local rulers still exercised complete local autonomy as they originally possessed.

[@MohamedNaeem39]

Nowadays it's a lot easier to travel to Wakhan

[@dubemccready7438]

I have a sense this video has a different looking David Adams, he is alot older hair alot longer and his clothes are toally different. Why I write this is because I have the original video that he made way back not sure of date but most certainly different. Off course I could be wrong. Originals are awesome to watch again as I have done over time.

[@scoon2117]

That land is mythical

[@simonjones3863]

This landscape was never a lush forest. The land was barren before the Silk Road, during the Silk Road, and after the Silk Road.

[@msg4vickky]

I think the journalist didnt hear abt khandar king who supported Alexander in war against porus..

[@AbleLawrence]

The Silk Road went from North to South towards the poets in Gujarat and from there by sea. Basically Silk Road was from China to India and intermittent.

[@outcastoffoolgara]

Thank you David. I see today that the highway through the Wakhan pass to China is virtually complete. The Belt and Road has joined up via the old route leading from China to Persia bringing prosperity and connectedness instead or war and evil colonial machinations from across the seas.

[@adachou]

Informative & beautiful film

[@marcknight4568]

Those thistles are evidence of a much greener shrub landscape maybe 5k y.ag9

[@jollyandwaylo]

With global warming, these rivers may stop flowing in a hundred years or so. People talk about sea level rise being a problem but rivers all over the world drying up in the summer is far worse.

[@andrewharris1837]

Interesting to embellish school studies

[@thejeffinvade]

I do see the family resemblance with the ox.😂

[@ericastier1646]

Are you Norwegian, Finish, North Afrikan or Australian ?

[@AloysiusHettiarachchi]

Hello, you are wrong, my friend. The Ionians were in South Asia as far back as the 9th century BC. There had been a Greek settlement in the ancient city of Anuradhapura. Some items used by them have been found 6m deep. The ruins in that place like drainage systems, ponds, and others have no parallels elsewhere in the region. The first time I visited there with my family, I sat infrom and wondered that those could not have been done by those remaining in that city. Now I know they are in other parts of the country. The Brits have tried their best to erase it. It's being revealed that our ruling clans have descended from an Indian king by the name Porus and a Greek princess. So, perhaps Alexander the Great knew exactly where he was heading to!.

[@azizsadeghi5731]

notre peuple de Wakhan Walley 💙💙

[@anotheryoutubechannel4809]

Was it really made of silk?

[@shazza160]

Stop being an egg

[@Phoenix-ug1ru]

liiiitle bit of a misleading title, implying that the silk road somehow caused the barren-ness that was already there, but never elaborating on that

[@QkAhmadzai]

Amazing documentary plz make one documentary on the life of Alexander in Afghanistan because as we know no foreigner force able to control Afghanistan what’s about Alexander story. and buskashi is Afghanistan national game 😂enjoy

[@tightlines106]

Real life Indiana jones

[@Eris123451]

Everyone misquotes this the full stanza actually reads quite differently; Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat; But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth, When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!

[@Jakez408]

First error 0:40 - Macedonians were not Greeks. Macedonia meant 'Land of the tall ones' and as we know Greeks are short.

[@carlosdelsol76]

they were a greek polis, what is more greek than that? Spartans were greek allthough not athenians, greeks are short xDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

[@mitcheltownsend1492]

Alexander and his army were Macedonian, not a Greek (6.24 mark). His father Phillip conquered the Greeks in 338 BC the Battle of Chaeronea. This "documentary" is full of Inaccuracies.

[@brushbros]

Odd spoonerism "Pakistanis" and "Stack-of-Panties. I am not sure that I appreciate the full depth of this brilliant video.

[@gayprepperz6862]

I don't think the idea of Alexander's soldiers fathering children along the way of their conquest's as fantasy. This has been common place throughout antiquity - why would it be different in this case? I'll bet you DNA sampling will bring some very surprising results, especially among the nay-sayers.

[@spocksdaughter9641]

Esp if camped over a long period unexpectedly

[@Keyhan-c8c]

he said the sport is called bushkazi, but it's buzkashi 😄

[@briseboy]

Rumi means Greek in some relevant languages. Expect some paternality in those surnamed that. Genes, however, due to dilution and other variations in selection results, can completely exclude real genetic relationship with ancestors even half that far back in time. Culture is inherited through behavioral modeling, and infants are equipped with extraordinarily connected neurons, the connective activity exceeding the pruning of unused connections, through about age 5 in humans ( other species with shorter life histories must develop faster, and become poorer at imitation in specific unexercised cognitive and other possibilities.) But imitation, culture, persists, quite oppositely to gene replication in individuals over generations. Evolution is selected by advantageous response to an individual organism's environment, as the specific individuals possessing advantageous responses tend to reproduce, even if only SLIGHTLY more often than the adversely responsive. You will have to explore statistics to understand just how slight such an advantageous response is required to change or maintain a trait. All traits are dependent upon slight protein variations produced, ALL behaviors result from differential chemical response, vry much in neurons, as those cells express by far the most proteins of any cell's six foot length of DNA. So, it is the behaviors of individuals that induce culture. No other factor is as determinant.

[@jeraldbaxter3532]

Playing the game of "What if...?" is pointless, but so seductive, so here goes... What if Alexander's soldiers had not refused to go on, and instead Alexander went on to India proper? Of course, he would have avoided his fate at Babylon, but he could have finally fallen in battle,...or he could have gone on to conquer, if not all India, then atleast a large part. If this had happened, how would our world be different?

[@wmanad8479]

That is what happened- he had one victory over a maharaja at very high cost & decided he'd had enough - that is where he turned back. He probably realized he could never conquer and control all the kingdoms in the Indian subcontinent.

[@nealpeterson3113]

The musical soundtrack is repulsive. Sorry to the creators. I had to turn the video off because of the noise and overly dramatic sounds.

[@patchiappangovindaraju1563]

Bharat ( India) was always protected from the invaders , Alexander, Arabs & British etc.They plundered Bharat for hundreds of yearr but could not conquer her! This is the lsnd of the yogis, sidhars, mahatmas & enlightened gtreat souls. As such Bharat is ever protected. 🤔

[@aunch3]

The original Indians were Caucasian hence the indo European language and caucasians in the North

[@zs5002]

The more likely truth is that Europeans descend from these people. I thought that was general knowledge hence why were called Indo Europeans

[@marcknight4568]

All Caucasian people came from the ancient silk roads regions

[@EresirThe1st]

Nonsense, we came from Europe. The Iranian people moved from Europe to Central Asia

[@aunch3]

Not originally. Red haired Caucasian mummies were found in China recently. It seems Caucasians migrated from the The Russian Steppes around the Caucasus hence the name

[@kaoskronostyche9939]

WHY Why why WHY do you drown out the narration with the booming NOISE. booooo!

[@jamesellis2784]

FLAX. Armor, Kool sooooo, FAR,

[@Sean85Laney]

Land of tartars

[@wolfgang757]

Doesn't deliver.

[@mariemoller9901]

Interesting - but you sure like to show footage of yourself.... thanks anyway

[@illumencouk]

Adams film crew of five plus their equipment required 20 additional men and 16 pack horses. Alexandra is alleged to have led 20,000 plus their equipment. This already has me doubting about the plausibility of such a venture.

[@Kiyoone]

they had a way of establishing outposts along the way you know? It is not like all the 20000 men marched at once, at the same time to the same destination. Have you ever seen how ant colonies work? Humans are pretty much the same. What I mean is : they have clever ways to do that. It is the modern digital hombre that forgot about things and how to do it.

[@kaoskronostyche9939]

you see one documentary and now you are a Historian and Logistical Expert who knows better than all of History that Alexander did not do what he did. Who are you and what qualifications do you have to make such a bizarrre declaration based, apparently, on one documentary?

[@illumencouk]

@@kaoskronostyche9939 Do you know of any material that explains how tens of thousands of marching feet and hooves failed to leave a track in their wake. South American Indians adapted their metabolism over many generations to live at high altitudes. Are Macedonian's physically blessed likewise?

[@illumencouk]

@@Kiyoone You can stagger their numbers and marching order as much as you wish - to this day there still isn't a discernable track to speak of. Sorry my friend but based on the lack of supporting evidence, I am sticking with my initial impression.

[@illumencouk]

My not believing the explanation Academia teaches, shouldn't, and doesn't deny Alexander's invasion. How they got from A to B needs addressing. Sailing works, walking doesn't.