10 Ancient Pandemics That Wiped Out Civilizations

This documentary explores ten catastrophic pandemics that fundamentally transformed human civilization across two thousand four hundred years of history. Beginning with the Plague of Athens in 430 BC that shattered Greek democracy, through the Black Death that killed half of Europe and ended the medieval era, to the Cocoliztli Epidemic that nearly extinguished Mesoamerican civilization, each outbreak reveals humanity's vulnerability to microscopic threats.
Witness how the Antonine and Justinianic Plagues fractured the Roman and Byzantine Empires, how smallpox reshaped Japanese culture, and how plague outbreaks in London and Marseille proved that even enlightened societies remained helpless. The documentary concludes with the Third Plague Pandemic, a global catastrophe lasting from 1894 to 1960 that demonstrated how modern connectivity accelerated disease spread. These pandemics didn't just kill millions—they destroyed empires, erased knowledge, and permanently redirected human history.

Timestamps:
00:00:00 The Plague of Athens
00:02:01 The Antonine Plague
00:04:01 The Plague of Cyprian
00:06:01 The Justinianic Plague
00:08:07 The Japanese Smallpox Epidemic
00:10:13 The Black Death
00:12:19 The Cocoliztli Epidemic
00:14:16 The Great Plague of London
00:16:18 The Marseille Plague
00:18:38The Third Plague Pandemic