Secrets of the Neanderthals • 2024

10:05

Humans. We have been around for a while now. When we think about our past we think about ancient civilizations, the pyramids, stuff like that. But this is only a tiny, tiny part of our history.

In a Nutshell • 2016 • History

74:87

This first programme in a two-part series investigates what Neanderthals looked like and how they lived in their Ice Age world. It turns out that almost everything we thought we knew about them is wrong. They weren't hunched, grunting, knuckle-dragging ape-men at all. In reality they were faster, smarter, better looking - and much more like us than we ever thought. Our guide is Ella Al-Shamahi, a young, British, rising star in Neanderthal research, with an unusual side-line as a stand-up comic She enlists the skills of Andy Serkis, the global movie star and master of performance capture, best known as Gollum in the Lord of the Rings and Caesar in Planet of the Apes

S1E1 • Neanderthals: Meet Your Ancestors • 2018 • History

59:01

'Revolution', Michael Wood observes, 'has been a fact of life in Chinese history'. Between 1850 and 1950, three cataclysmic revolutions shook China to the core, but out of them, today's China emerged.

S1E6 • The Story of China • 2016 • History

21:52

Tools and machines have allowed us to overcome our physical limitations, and become the most successful species on Earth. But tools are also transforming what it means to be human.

5/12 • Mankind Decoded • 2013 • History

67:16

A new Russian leader emerges, and the republics seek independence. As the Soviet Union dissolves, several powers sign a landmark treaty on nuclear arms.

S1E7 • Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War • 2024 • History

58:59

Richard Miles explores the power and the paradox of the 'Greek Thing' - a blossoming in art, philosophy and science that went hand in hand with political discord, social injustice and endless war. He paints a fascinating picture of the internal and external pressures that fuelled this unique political and social experiment, one that would pioneer many of the political systems that we still live with today, from oligarchy to tyranny, from totalitarianism to democracy.

S1E3 • Ancient Worlds • 2010 • History