Social & External
Unknown Role
Chaco Canyon, located in northwest New Mexico, is perhaps the only site in the world constructed in an elaborate pattern that mirrors the yearly cycle of the sun and the 19-year cycle of the moon. How did an ancient civilization, with no known written language, arrange its buildings into a virtual celestial calendar, spanning an area roughly the size of Ireland?
We immerse ourselves in a quest for the origins of Art, among the very first modern humans. The prehistoric works, of incredible richness and diversity, tell a story of beauty and the species. Researchers, including archaeologists, but also art historians, philosophers and contemporary artists, enrich our view of prehistoric art with their different, but also complementary, points of view on the subject.
Cave paintings and lunar calendars exist in the caves and remains of prehistoric hunters studied recently. What if Prehistoric Man were clever enough to develop in depth scientific knowledge? As unlikely as it may seem, new data tend to prove that Prehistoric Man actually invented Astronomy!
Woolly Mammoth: Secrets from the Ice is a documentary presented by English anatomist Dr. Alice Roberts that reveals some of the secrets of one of the most widely known extinct animals ever. Humans have been transfixed by the Wolly Mammoth since the end of the last ice age when there were still herds of them roaming the continents of Asia and Europe. Despite many people knowing about the great Woolly Mammoth until recently very little was known about them despite ancient humans living along side them for so long; few documented accounts exist.
Ancient pharaoh Akhenaten was almost lost to history. Canadian archaeologist Donald Redford, who uncovered the foundation of one of the pharaoh’s many temples, attempts to finally piece together this great Egyptian ruler’s enigmatic story.
The Scythians, skilled horsemen and nomadic conquerors, built a feared empire in the vast Eurasian steppe between the 9th and 3rd centuries B.C. All that remains are their graves: the Kourganes. In April 1999, a 2400 year-old Scythian tomb was discovered in Kazakhstan. It contained, among other treasures, twelve horses completely harnessed in gold, suggesting high social status.
Thanks to new excavations in Mauritius and Madagascar, as well as archival and museum research in France, Spain, England and Canada, a group of international scholars paint a new portrait of the world of piracy in the Indian Ocean.
This documentary delves into the mysteries surrounding the Neanderthals and what their fossil record tells us about their lives and disappearance.
Drama documentary based on the latest discovery of a 16th Century sailing shipwreck found close to Malta by an underwater research team led by maritime archaeologist Timmy Gambin.
Gary Owens needs more dinosaurs and sends Eric Boardman on the ultimate dinosaur safari to find them. Join the hunt for a living dinosaur in the jungles of Africa, separate the facts from fiction in dinosaur movies, visit Dinosaur National Monuent and much more. There's no bone unturned in this award winning program
Shows students and archaeologists unearthing the remains of an ancient Indian culture in southwestern Illinois.
A documentary examining what the Tyrannosaurus Rex was really like - both appearance and behaviour - using the recent palaeontological and zoological research.
Focused on the 2018-2020 excavation of Todos los Santos Church on Heping Island, Taiwan, this film delves into maritime exploration and colonisation of Taiwan. The director combines archaeological findings with a cross-disciplinary musical performance, capturing the delicate excavation process. Furthermore, the film traces a creative journey from the site to historical events in Asia.
Professional, native and antiquarian researchers combine to investigate the archaeological history and modern legacy of Eastern Native civilization near Turners Falls, Massachusetts. They uncover possible evidence of a vast astronomical construct that covered a large area of what is now the northeastern United States.
In the docudrama "Les Derniers Secrets de l'humanité" (The Last Secrets of Humanity), author and director Jacques Malaterre and paleoanthropologist and professor at the Collège de France Yves Coppens reveal the incredible adventure of Asian prehistory. How does science help to reconstruct these bygone times in images? Thanks to discoveries made at excavation sites and in analysis and genetics laboratories, researchers are now revealing this distant, vanished past.
Neandertal man disappeared abruptly 30,000 years ago. Who was that "other" man and what is the most plausible hypothesis leading to his extinction? An investigation using all current knowledge available tries to answer these questions.
One of the most significant cases in European archaeology is the grave of the shaman woman of Bad Dürrenberg, a key finding of the last hunter-gatherer groups. From a time when there were no written records, this site was first researched by the Nazis, who saw a physically strong male warrior from an ‘original Aryan race’ in the buried person. It was, in fact, the most powerful woman of her time. The latest research shows that she was dark-skinned, had physical deformities, and was a spiritual leader. The documentary – using high-end CGI and motion capture – compares the researchers of the Nazi era, who misrepresented and instrumentalised their findings, to today’s researchers, who meticulously compile findings and evidence, and use cross- disciplinary methods to examine and evaluate them. It also substantiates the theory of the powerful roles women played in prehistoric times. The story of this woman, buried with a baby in her arms, still fascinates us 9,000 years after her death.