Long before oil, steel, or concrete, there was an indispensable resource for building cities, crossing oceans, maintaining mines, manufacturing weapons, and expanding empires: wood. For thousands of years, forests were one of civilizations' great strategic reserves, and their availability could determine everything from the price of a house to a power's ability to maintain a war fleet.

In this documentary, we explore the history of wood from the earliest agricultural societies to the Industrial Revolution. We will discover how Egyptians, Phoenicians, Greeks, and Romans relied on different types of wood to erect buildings, manufacture tools, and construct the ships that connected the Mediterranean.