This is not our place.

I'm Roman Mars.

The ocean is not our place.

The ocean is not our place. We can't breathe under there. We can't really see. We can learn to swim, but it doesn't come naturally.

Aeps don't swim. They want nothing to do with putting their bodies into water. It's only

humankind's incessant need to explore that drives us into such an unwelcoming

environment. And since our bodies aren't built for it, we must design things that allow us to explore this foreign place.

And we have. That's our own Katie Mingle.

Alexander the Great is said to have descended into the ocean

more than 2,000 years ago in a glass barrel.

There are various paintings of this event.

In one, the Great is being lowered into the ocean by a couple of men in a wooden boat.

He's hunched inside his little barrel still wearing his crown and robe. The guys in the

boat look to me like they are used to humoring his every whim.

In some versions of the story, Alexander the Great was not in a barrel, but in a diving bell.

Diving bells have been around for a long time.

Aristotle wrote about them around 300 BC.

And they were often actual bells, like from churches. To understand how one uses such a thing to aid in an ocean dive,

try this quick experiment.

Fill up your sink with water and push a cup open and down into the water.

You'll notice that the cup doesn't fill up all the way.

There will be a pocket of breathable air on the inside.

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