In the first brilliant instalment of this soon-to-be award-winning series,
I showed you, for the first time and better than anyone else,
how humankind dragged itself out of caveman times,
invented farming, thinking and sand triangles,
and eventually founded the brand-new city of ancient Rome.
But that wasn't the end of the story, obviously,
because it was only episode one.
There was no denying man had come an incredible distance.
But could he come even further? Or was he spent and in need of a lie down?
To reach the next level, humanoid kind would need to believe
in something bigger than man himself, bigger even than elephant itself.
In this episode, I'll see how humankind found religion,
and we'll settle an argument that has raged for centuries.
Which is better, the Bible or the "Korran"?
-The Koran. -So that one.
It all happened right here,
on the only planet still worth fighting for.
This is Cunk on Earth.
[epic music playing]
[peaceful music playing]
[birds singing]
The time is half past Rome o'clock B.C.
The Romanite Empire is at its most biggest.
But despite the fancy columns and mosaics,
there was an emptiness at the heart of Roman culture.
Holding endless wine-fueled orgies in cramped vomitoriums is all very well.
But eventually you need something more. And also a mop.
Humans craved enlighteningment.
To find it, they'd need a spiritual role model, an icon,
an almost Christ-like figure.
And as luck would have it,
someone fitting that bill was about to arrive.
None other than Mr. Jesus Christ.
He was born in a humble stable,
which, ironically, isn't a stable environment for a baby,
unless it's a baby donkey,
which, if records are to be believed, Jesus wasn't.
In fact, as this actual painting makes clear,
when Christ was born, he had a magic flaming circle on his head
which would have set fire to all the hay and pubes as he came out.
Don't worry, I'm doing Islam later.
Jesus was born Jewish, but soon converted to carpentry
as he followed his dad into the primitive chair-and-table industry.
What's ironic about Jesus Christ becoming a carpenter
was he was actually named after the two words you're most likely to shout
after hitting your thumb with a hammer.
Scholars believe he was a real historical figure,
like Justin Timberlake or Garfield.
Whether or not they think he was the actual son of God
who performed miracles
like walking on wine or helping a deaf man see…
they all agree he preached tolerance and forgiveness,
a message so important his most ardent followers
would eventually start killing anyone who didn't want to hear it.
Little wonder this radicalized wood smith scared the Roman authorities.
They considered Jesus so dangerous they had him crucified.
And not just a little, but all the way to death.
Just imagine Christ's conflicted emotions.
He'd been sent to Earth to save mankind, and yet here he was,
enduring the physical agony of being nailed to a cross,
while also knowing what a great logo it would make for his long-term campaign.
Jesus was killed because people didn't like what he was saying.
So could you call him the first celebrity victim of cancel culture?
I think cancel culture would sort of require
the idea that people
really saw Jesus as standing for something and they were sure they knew what it was.
No, sorry. That wasn't a question.
I'm literally asking if you could call him
the first celebrity victim of cancel culture for our show.
Down that lens there.
Just, you know, it's for a credit sequence with punchy soundbites in it.
Off you go. Down that lens.
-Okay, down this lens? -Yeah.
You might even say Jesus was the first celebrity victim of cancel culture.
Brilliant. Thank you.
But incredibly, just when it seemed the life of Christ was over,
he respawned, danced up a hill and leapt all the way up into heaven,
breaking all world records for a standing jump in the process.
During his lifetime, Jesus only had 12 followers,
fewer even than my Uncle Steve's uninspiring Instagram account.
But that all changed once his teachings began to spread
in the form of the written word.
After he died, Jesus came back to Earth in the form of a book, didn't he?
Why do Christians call that special book the "Bibbel"?
-The Bible? -Is that how it's pronounced?
I've literally never heard anyone say it before. How'd you say it?
-Bible. -So why is it spelt "Bibbel"?
Because I've seen it written down. B-I-B-L-E.
-Yeah, Bible. -Bibbel.
Christ's message was spread far and wide by the Apostles
almost 2,000 years before the release
of Belgian techno anthem "Pump Up the Jam."
[techno music playing]
♪ Pump up the jam, pump it up ♪
♪ While your feet are stomping ♪
♪ And the jam is pumping ♪
♪ Look ahead, the crowd is jumping ♪
♪ Pump it up a little more ♪
♪ Get the party going On the dance floor ♪
♪ See, 'cause that's Where the party's at ♪
♪ And you'll find out if you do that ♪
♪ I want a place to stay ♪
♪ Get your booty On the floor tonight ♪
♪ Make my day ♪
♪ I want a place to stay ♪
♪ Get your booty on the floor-- ♪
But not everyone appreciated the swinging sound of Christianity,
especially in Rome, where Christians were persecuted,
which is Latin for "shat on."
And if you were a Christian back then, perhaps the worst place to find yourself
was the Colosseum, an area of misery on a par with Birmingham.
It was here the Romans first threw Christians to the lions,
possibly to see if their pacifist message would rub off on the beasts
and make them less angry and bitey.
If a Christian won, right, and ate a lion,
would they then go forward to the next round?
You know, and would they have to eat something else,
like a whole horse or something?
There's not a lot of evidence that they threw very many Christians to the lions.
Just for this, can you pretend that loads of Christians were thrown to the lions?
Really? But that's wrong.
Do you think the Christians would forgive the lions for eating them
while it was happening?
They probably didn't blame the lions.
I mean, a lion was only doing what lions naturally do.
Do we know how the lions felt about only ever being given one thing to eat?
Can't have been fun, can it? You know.
Imagine if every day your lunch was just screaming and wouldn't stop.
That's going to have an impact on your mental health.
-The mental health of lions. -Yeah.
Hmm.
Incredibly, within a few hundred years,
the Romans had become Christians themselves.
But why?
Tragically, none of the people involved in ancient Rome are still alive today.
So to find out why that happened, we have to sift through ancient texts,
like you do at the end of a relationship.
Thanks to the modern science of reading,
we now know the Roman Emperor Constantine,
whose name means constant or unchanging,
one day unexpectedly changed to Christianity.
Soon, all the Romans had converted to Christianity,
and shortly after that,
they stopped throwing Christians to the lions altogether.
No one knows why.
The Romans had found God almost overnight.
What is it about religion that can win us over so unexpectedly?
Why do humans need to believe in something bigger than ourselves?
Is it so we don't feel quite so fat?
Well, I think the sense of purpose and value
constitutes a very important element of a happy life.
But it must help.
If you think how big the world is,
suddenly you feel a lot slimmer.
Quite possibly.
Some people have a sudden religious conversion, don't they?
My mate Paul was driving to Winchester when a lorry jack-knifed in front of him
and he was hurtling towards it and everything went slo-mo.
And Paul, who's never been religious, spoke to Jesus and said,
"I promise if I survive this, I'll believe in you."
And he did survive, but he fractured his skull and broke both his legs.
Why did Jesus do that to him?
Well, you've raised a very significant question about the nature of providence.
-Have I? -You have, indeed.
If we believe in a good God,
why is there so much evil in the world?
-Now, your friend… -Paul.
…Paul, his accident,
uh, you know, to what extent can one blame God for that?
See, Paul never forgave him.
He said, "If I ever see Christ again, he's a dead man."
Right.
Rome had become a beacon of Christian faith.
But disaster was just around the corner,
because the Romans had converted to a religion of peace
just in time to have their arse handed to them
by some people who mainly believed in hammers and smashing.
They were the Vandals,
an ancient group notorious for their appetite for destruction,
like Guns N' Roses.
[horn honks]
Right now I'm standing on, and also in, modern Rome,
which, by an incredible coincidence, is on the same site as the ancient one.
And it's here the Vandals' terrifying assault on the city took place.
The Vandal hordes would have swept through there,
past the coffee shop with the rude staff, all the way down here,
killing, looting and burning as they went.
We also know that traffic intersection wouldn't have been there at that time,
so they could have safely ignored
any associated road signals during their invasion.
Also, that pizza place wouldn't have been open
because they think the rampage happened on a Sunday.
And according to TripAdvisor, it closes over the weekend
and isn't suitable for large groups anyway.
But everything else you see around here would have been completely destroyed.
By the time the Vandals rolled out of this part of the city
and into the next one,
they'd left nothing but destruction and horseshit in their wake.
Rome had been sacked, destroyed, properly fucked to bits.
And once Rome fell, the entire Roman Empire went kaput.
The grim period that followed became known as the "Darkages."
Ow, shit!
"Darkages" sort of sounds like a symptom, doesn't it?
You know, maybe like a plague thing.
-Do you mean the Dark Ages? -Oh, right, is that what it is?
If you mean an old-fashioned term for the early Middle Ages.
-Right. -Except we don't use that term anymore.
Oh, do we not?
Well, it has very negative connotations
of being a dark and ignorant and benighted time, and, um…
-Which it was. -Not really.
It had fantastic thinkers and historians and artists and authors.
But it was a bit shit.
The Dark Ages was a depressing era
during which the whole of Europe fumbled about in the dark,
banging its shins on stuff and getting all diseases up its bum.
It must have properly done people's heads in.
Whenever you see medieval times,
there's this sort of annoying "hey nonny no" music playing constantly.
-Yeah, pretty much. -You know, that music, that sort of…
[imitating nasal-sounding woodwind]
Yeah.
Yep. There's a lot of that.
Where's that sound coming from? Couldn't they switch it off?
The Dark Ages were a tragedy for human progress
that put back the rollout of 5G by hundreds of years.
So we've had the Dark Ages. Has there been a Light Ages?
Well, the claim was made by people in the early modern period,
the so-called Renaissance, that theirs was the age of light.
And then, of course, we have a whole era later
that people called the Enlightenment.
Is that in this episode or will that come up later?
Well, I'm guessing it will come up later.
Which episode are we in now?
Um, I… Probably something about the Middle Ages.
Yeah, but is it, like, episode three or episode four?
-I'm afraid I'm not sure. -We're both just lost here, aren't we?
This is fucking awful.
But luckily, Europe wasn't the only country
having a history back then.
Boffins now believe other countries, such as South America and Asia,
were having their own histories too.
And they were keeping civilization going
in their own funny, exotic, foreign little ways.
This is the city of Chichen Itza,
built by the Mayan people in what is now Mexico.
And this is its centerpiece, the Temple of Kukulkan.
If you were brought here a thousand years ago,
chances are you were about to be sacrificed to appease Chaac,
the Mayan god of rain.
Today, you're perhaps more likely to be dropping by as part of a pleasant day trip
out from the nearby holiday resort of Tulum.
That's where I'm staying,
at the five-star Casa de Lujo Hotel and Spa.
This all-inclusive resort,
nestling on the picture-perfect Tulum coastline,
really is the last word in luxury.
All the rooms are en suite, and with this stunning ocean view,
it's hard to think of a reason to get out of bed.
Apart, of course, from the beautiful beach and constant sunshine
right here on your doorstep.
If the sunny skies get too much, there are three pools to cool off in,
including one for adults only.
There's plenty for the little ones too, with the Turtle Club giving them
the holiday of their allegedly important little lives so far.
And with five onsite restaurants to choose from,
you'll never get bored of the food.
If all that wasn't enough, the stunning Inspiration Spa
offers world-class wellness options, from toenail filing to vigorous rubbing.
And when the sun goes down, the nightlife begins.
With local spirits, wines and beers all included,
there's no reason to hold back.
With sunshine all day and partying all night, you won't want to go home.
[announcer] Philomena stayed five nights at the Casa de Lujo Hotel and Spa.
All-inclusive prices start at £200 per person per night
based on two sharing.
VAT not included. Terms and conditions apply.
[peaceful music playing]
[Philomena] While the Mayans worshiped their gods,
thousands of miles away in Arabia,
a prophet named Muhammad was founding another religion, Islam.
Apparently, Islam can be a sensitive topic,
and the producers say
if I don't follow this script to the letter,
there's a chance I'll cause a serious international incident.
That's quite a blow, to be honest. It's all right, I'll busk it.
So, what can we say about Islam? Well, for one thing--
[easy-listening music playing]
I, for one, don't think any of that is controversial at all.
Islam represented a radical break from previous religions
because the buildings it happened inside were a slightly different shape.
It expanded across the globe
almost as quickly as Fox News thinks it still does today.
It was an apparently irresistible spread, like Nutella.
[crunching]
[mouth full] The Koran says accumulating knowledge is a worthy act.
So Islamic mega nerds created the first universities and libraries…
[crunching] …containing all the world's knowledge,
which, at that point, could probably fit into one pamphlet, to be fair.
Mm.
Because they needed more knowledge to fill their libraries,
Muslim boffins got into maths.
Calculus, geometry, and of course the most Islamic-sounding one, al-gebra.
Not to be outdone, Christianity was also expanding, thanks to missionaries.
The missionaries were known for their position,
which was that the big man, God, was on top
and the rest of us had to lie back and take it.
Sent by the Pope, missionaries took the Bible and the cross
and set out from here, painstakingly making their way right across the map.
And eventually ending up all the way over here in Ireland,
where they spread the word by reading aloud from the…
Hold on, I forgot the book.
Travel in those days was exceptionally perilous and grueling,
so the early missionaries wouldn't have wanted to undertake their journey twice
any more than I do.
But once they arrived at their destination,
what they brought would change the world forever.
The Bible and the…
Who moved the cross?
Christianity was the fidget spinner of medieval times,
a huge craze that would last forever.
It led to a boom in religious iconography.
Images of Jesus were everywhere you looked.
In medieval times, there were lots of paintings of Jesus.
How did he find the time to pose for the artists?
What was his availability like?
Well, he was everywhere, always…
-Hmm. -…figuratively speaking.
So they're painting him from memory,
like someone describing an intruder to a police sketch artist,
but an intruder who's the son of God.
In old paintings of Jesus, he comes in two modes, doesn't he?
He's either a baby or he's being crucified.
Are there any paintings where he is being crucified as a baby?
No. No.
Right. They missed an opportunity there, didn't they, to play the sympathy card.
Did Jesus ever paint himself?
Uh…
I don't believe so.
Certainly there's no record of that happening.
Can we be sure?
You know, he might not have signed it. He was quite modest, wasn't he?
He… Well, he was modest in parts. He did also say he was the son of God.
-Yeah. He could have kept that quiet. -Then he wouldn't have been killed.
Yeah. What an idiot.
Of course, Jesus wasn't the only deity to inspire art.
There are lots of paintings of Muhammad too.
But our producer had to sign a form, promising not to show them.
By the 11th century, most European countries had converted to Christianity,
but it didn't stop them constantly going to war with each other.
Then in 1095, Pope Urban II persuaded them to stop fighting,
come together in harmony and attack the Muslims instead.
The European kings agreed and launched a sort of armed charity drive
to forcibly provide the Islamic world with crucifixes.
They called it "cruce-aid."
Soon, armies from Europe headed east,
hoping to dish out a righteous international kicking.
So, during the Crusades, the crusaders went all the way to Jerusalem in armor.
That sounds really uncomfortable. Was it sponsored?
It was sponsored by the church, you could say.
-Yeah. -Um…
Because these expeditions had to be funded.
Yeah.
My mate Paul did a 30-mile sponsored walk to Harrogate dressed as Spider-Man
for Help for Heroes.
And on the day he had terrible diarrhea, but he soldiered on.
And it was one of the most noble but disgusting things I've ever seen.
Eventually, the organizers had to intervene,
but he raised £368.
You know, the Crusaders never did that, did they?
No.
In 1099, the Christians captured Jerusalem,
but then they made a tactical mistake.
They went home without it.
So the Muslims, under their leader Saladin,
crusaded right back, retaking Jerusalem in the process.
By now, everyone was really into the Crusades.
So they started holding them regularly, fighting back and forth
to see which side would win Jerusalem this year.
The Crusades sound very violent.
Why can't the religions all learn to live together in peace like they do in Ireland?
I think if you find someone who knows the answer to that question,
then you should definitely, um,
publicize it as soon as possible.
Right, yeah. Okay.
But while Christians and Muslims came to blows,
one man miles away decided he'd show them what proper warmongering looked like.
That man was the leader of the Mongols, Genghis Khan.
In Mongol, "khan" means king, and "Genghis" means… something else.
These days, Genghis Khan comes up in conversation
less often than Dennis Quaid,
but back then he was the most feared man on Earth.
Genghis and his Mongols went Mongoling free
across much of Europe and Asia.
Millions of thousands of people were mercilessly slaughtered.
Many of them got their heads chopped off.
Others had their legs hacked off first, then an arm or something.
Then maybe their face, which was probably still screaming as it flew across the hut,
or wherever they lived.
Then the invaders might have taken the carcasses and hacked them up
and boiled them into soup
and carved all the discarded pelvis bones into big ladles to drink it with,
and then sat around the fireplace slurping their gory soup
and laughing and blowing off.
Honestly, it was seriously out of order.
How much blood in terms of pints
was spilt because of Genghis Khan?
Well, you'd have to somehow know the number of people killed.
Right.
There were stories of a few hundred Mongol soldiers
dispatching perhaps up to a million people.
How many pints are in a person?
-I think eight. -So minimum eight million pints.
Yes.
And they didn't have blood banks back then, did they?
What a waste.
With all that going on on the doorstep,
is it any wonder people in Europe took to building fortified homes?
The answer is no.
Standing here now in whatever castle this is,
I can't help but wonder what life must have been like in medieval times.
Because medieval times aren't happening anymore, so wondering is my only option.
But just imagine it.
Here in the central atrium, the table's laid out for a feast.
[guests clamoring]
People are bashing tankards together and laughing.
The table is bedecked with haunches of venison, blackbird pie,
roast goose inside a pig,
the full works, little bowl of plums there.
Think that's a side dish.
Over here, peasants are toing and froing in their finery.
-[metal clanking] -A knight clanking by in his armor.
In this corner, someone's playing medieval flute music.
[flutes playing]
And in front of that, a jester jumping up and down in his little bells.
[bells jingling]
There's a big sort of ogre thing watching…
[ogre snarling]
…enjoying the sight of that.
Then up at this end, the king sitting on his throne next to the queen,
a bishop and a rook.
They're watching Merlin getting his head chopped off,
which rolls all the way across the floor to there,
where some wild boar gobble it up.
-[boar grunting] -Oh! Eww!
That is disgusting. You're lucky you can't see that.
Suddenly the gaiety is interrupted when the glass in a window shatters
and an arrow flies into the room.
It thuds into this wall,
right in the middle of the Bayeux Tapestry.
Gasps ring out and give way to whispers,
as Thomas à Becket, that's me, pulls the arrow from the wall.
[grunting]
Hold on.
Christ.
The arrow has a message on it.
Thomas carefully takes the message off, discards the arrow…
-[courtier] Oh, fuck! -Sorry.
…unfurls the message and reads it aloud.
-It's from Robin Hood. -[guests gasp]
Threatening revenge on the entire Round Table for what they did to Gandalf.
Another gasp. The jester faints.
[body thuds]
Worried murmurs fill the air and get louder and turn to screams.
It's chaos.
The flute goes mental.
A dancing bear howls in anguish.
Someone starts loading pigs into a catapult.
A space invader floats across the room
shitting a harpsichord made of glass horses onto the floor.
[horse whinnies, glass shatters]
Finally, up at this end,
the king stands up, bashing his gavel.
[gavel raps]
He shouts, "Order! Order!"
But in a deep man's voice with a medieval accent.
[clamor stops]
The castle falls silent.
-You can hear a pin drop… -[pin drops]
…but not literally.
"Off with his head!" shouts the king.
And that breaks the ice. Everything's okay again.
The jester's back up on his feet. The music's up and running.
Everyone's merrily knocking back the mead.
Life in the castle is back to normal.
Just in time for everyone to suddenly drop dead from plague.
[groans, bodies thudding]
Anyway, that's what life was like in my castle.
Have you ever really thought about yours?
But humans couldn't simply cower behind thick walls
while holy wars waged outside forever.
Religion was supposed to unite humankind in harmony and bland smiling.
But it had mainly succeeded in tearing it apart like a bear in a maternity ward.
But little did this church and others like it know that a challenger
was just around the corner.
Next time, we'll see how a new generation of artists and brainiacs arose
and challenged God to a fight
during what historians are already calling the Renaissance.
So is this painting actually good
or is it one of those things that we only think is good
because we're told it's good, like seafood?