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
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
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
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
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
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 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
The Great Wall of China, it's been studied for decades but now new technology is revealing its secrets like never before. In this National Geographic special we see archaeologist Allan Maca, an expert in ancient civilizations, set out to investigate China's distant past from a whole new perspective as he leads a team of intrepid experts on an epic adventure to solve mysteries, explore secrets and
For centuries, Jews have lamented the destruction of their holy city Jerusalem and their temple by the Romans, which they believed was the beginning of their long 2000 years of exile. Exile is not only a religious Jewish belief but for millions of Jewish and non Jewish alike it is a historical fact. But what has been considered as fact for centuries is now being challenged by archeological evidenc