The First Eden: The Mediterranean World and Man

Five and a half million years ago, the waters of the Atlantic flooded across an isthmus joining Morocco and Spain and into a vast trench in the earth's crust.

The resulting cataract plunged for a century or so over a cliff many miles long and fifty times higher than Niagara, until at last the basin was filled and the Mediterranean Sea had been born. No other sea, or indeed any large-scale feature on the face of the earth, could have had such a dramatic beginning.

In The First Eden, David Attenborough's latest excursion into the field of natural history, he explores the history and current state of this fascinating region, which became the cradle of civilization.

Some three million years after the Sea had been formed, when human beings first arrived on its shores, they found rich forests teeming with game. For thousands of years thereafter, these early humans lived as wandering hunters tied to the habitats and migrations of their quarry.

Then, ten thousand years ago, tribes living at the eastern end of the Sea discovered ways of taming cattle and cultivating plants and, in so doing, began a process that was to transform the whole area and ultimately the entire world.