The human race has been building huge stone structures for ages but what are the origins of these structures? What were these circular constructions used for?Many of these structures were sealed up thousands of years ago by the people who had built them, but in some cases it was the wind and waves that wore down their protective covering over time. These structures are known as megaliths but
Historians have long speculated that thousands of wooden ships plied a Maritime Silk Route from the Middle East to China, braving long distances on white-capped seas, but time and the deep ocean have destroyed any evidence . . . until now.In 1998 German engineer Tilman Walterfang found a shipwreck from the 9th Century blanketed by intact gold, silver and ceramic items. As we uncover clues and
The Ancient World is a seven part documentary series presented by historian Bettany Hughes, it was originally aired by British TV station Channel 4 over the course of an 8 year period. Hughes, takes us on a wonderful journey through the ancient world and at each stop on this journey providing us with extensive insight into what it would have been like to be alive at this period in time and how the
250 million years ago, long before dinosaurs roamed the Earth, the land and oceans teemed with life. This was the Permian, a golden era of biodiversity that was about to come to a crashing end. Within just a few thousand years, 95% of the lifeforms on the planet would be wiped out, in the biggest mass extinction Earth has ever known. What natural disaster could kill on such a massive scale? It is
Understanding of humans' earliest past often comes from studying fossils. They tell us much of what we know about the people who lived before us. There is one thing fossils cannot tell us; at what point did we stop living day-to-day and start to think symbolically, to represent ideas about our environment and how we could change it? At a dig in South Africa the discovery of a small piece of ochre
The roots of the human race are shrouded in mystery, lost to the depths of prehistoric time. Although every school kid knows that we evolved from the apes the reality is that almost nothing is known about our earliest ancestors beginnings. In October 2000, in a remote corner of Kenya, Africa, a team of French and Kenyan scientists, led by Martin Pickford and Brigitte Senut made an extraordinary
It shouldn't have happened that Homo sapiens, our species, managed to survive and overcome the odd which have been against us for over 200,000 years. We are not indestructible and there are many evolutionary dead ends but our ancestors managed to not only survive, but also to spread into every corner of the globe.It was only our ancestors who managed to spread and colonise some of the most diffi
Unearthed from the single largest burial site on Earth comes a whole new tale which has the potential with rewrite history as we know it, revealing for the very first time the true origins of one of the most powerful nations: China.In this special we see historian Dan Snow, physical anthropologist Dr Alice Roberts and scientist and explorer Dr Albert Lin set their sights on a series of grou
Constructed and established in the 3rd century BC, The Royal Library of Alexandria located in Alexandria, Egypt was one of the largest and most significant libraries of the ancient world. It was dedicated to the nine goddesses of the arts known as the Muses.Throughout the patronage of the Ptolemaic dynasty the ancient library flourished and became a major center of scholarship and