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4 Episodes 2000 - 2000
Episode 1
Wed, May 9, 2001 57 mins
"Fall of the Aztecs" (Part 1 of four). Host Michael Wood follows the route taken by Hernan Cortes (a lawyer by training, not a military man) in his 1519-21 conquest of Mexico. Accompanied at first by just 500 men and a slave woman named Malinche, who spoke both the Aztec and Mayan languages, Cortes first encountered Montezuma's ambassador on Easter Sunday 1519. He was, says Wood, "singlehandedly to destroy a civilization."
Episode 2
Wed, May 9, 2001 57 mins
Part 2 of four: Michael Wood follows ancient footpaths through the Andes as he recalls "The Conquest of the Incas" by the Pizarro brothers in 1532-33. The empire they conquered, which stretched for 1000 miles from Ecuador to Chile, was "unknown to the whole world" until Francisco Pizarro first visited it in 1527. Five years later he returned with horses and guns. What followed, as Wood quotes one conquistador as recalling, "was the most despicable thing we ever did in the Americas."
Episode 3
Wed, May 16, 2001 57 mins
Part 3 of four: Historian Michael Wood takes up "The Search for El Dorado" as he traces (at times by foot and raft) the first journey by Europeans down the Amazon in 1541-42. That journey ("less of a journey, more of a miracle," one survivor wrote) was led by Gonzalo Pizzaro and Francisco de Orellana, and it began in Quito, Ecuador, on the other side of the Andes. They were searching for a mystical gold-filled kingdom and offered the natives they encountered their diseases in return.
Episode 4
Wed, May 16, 2001 57 mins
Conclusion. Conquistador Alvar Nunez de Cabeza de Vaca finds that "All the World Is Human" (and ceases being a conquistador) as he crosses North America without an army between 1528 and '36. Historian Michael Wood traces that journey, from Florida to Mexico's west coast, in which he encountered natives continually and lived with them frequently. Some treated him well, some didn't. "He learned what it was to be a native person," says Wood. "And they taught him what it was to be human."