Wild Europe | Taming the Wild (Ep 3)

Early man had mainly adapted to his environment, but civilization meant technology and demography enabling him to reshape it, deliberately and accidentally. The Roman empire widely introduced roads, imported crops etcetera, but also depleted the wild predators populations for circus games in every garrison town. Land kept being claimed for agriculture during the Middle Ages, also by monasteries, until the Black Death more then halved the human population, allowing wildlife to recover for about 250 years. The building of wooden fleets resulted in unprecedented deforestation. yet industrialization was the worst European nature ever experienced. Victorian romantic nature loving flourished just in time to help protect the last wild tracts.