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In this episode, evidence that the Ancient Egyptians used high level technology to construct pyramids and temples is shown. Scientists discuss the source of this power and its application in the ancient world. Our science is just beginning to grasp what the ancients clearly understood.
S1E2 • The Pyramid Code • 2010 • History
After finding strands of human hair buried in Greenland's permafrost, scientists are attempting the impossible: to be the first to reconstruct the identity of a Stone Age human being through nothing but his ancient locks. From scraps of DNA an ancient face appears. Further discoveries in the genetic code threaten to overturn long-held beliefs of how humans populated the earth. How much does your hair say about you? Scratch that. How much will your hair say about you, in say, 4,000 years? After finding tufts of human hair buried in Greenlands permafrost, scientists will assemble a remarkable human blueprint that details the life of one early human down to the color of his eyes, the shape of his teeth...even his receding hairline. But as the research team, lead by evolutionary biologist Eske Willerslev, break into this genetic code, they find far more than they bargained for, and the discovery threatens to turn our long held concept of how humans populated the earth on its head. In the ultimate cold case, National Geographic will obtain exclusive access to the international team of genetic scientists, archaeologists and paleo- artists who are breathing life into a man dead for 4,000 years, learning everything about him and even the way he and his people lived... through his hair.
Alastair Sooke follows in the footsteps of Rome's mad, bad and dangerous emperors in the second part of his celebration of Roman art. He dons a wetsuit to explore the underwater remains of the Emperor Claudius's pleasure palace and ventures into the cave where Tiberius held wild parties. He finds their taste in art chimes perfectly with their obsession with sex and violence. The other side of the coin was the bombastic art the Romans are best remembered for - monumental arches and columns that boast about their conquests. Trajan's Column in Rome reads like the storyboard of a modern-day propaganda film. Sooke concludes with the remarkable legacy of the Emperor Hadrian. He gave the world the magnificent Pantheon in Rome - the eternal image of his lover Antinous, the most beautiful boy in the history of art - and a villa in Tivoli where he created one of the most ambitious art collections ever created.
S1E2 • The Treasures of Ancient Rome • 2012 • History
It is 1918 and the end of WWI. Millions have died, and the world is exhausted by war. But soon a new horror is sweeping the world, a terrifying virus that will kill more than fifty million people - the Spanish flu. Using dramatic reconstruction and eyewitness testimony from doctors, soldiers, civilians and politicians, this one-off special brings to life the onslaught of the disease, the horrors of those who lived through it and the efforts of the pioneering scientists desperately looking for the cure. The film also asks whether, a century later, the lessons learnt in 1918 might help us fight a future global flu pandemic.
2018 • History
Tracing the origins of Egypt's unique visual style, he treks across the Sahara and travels the Nile to find the rarely-seen art of its earliest peoples. Exploring how this civilisation's art reflected its religion, he looks anew at the Great Pyramid, and the statuary and painting of the Old Kingdom. Sooke is amazed by the technical prowess of ancient artists whose skills confound contemporary craftsmen.
S1E1 • Treasures of Ancient Egypt • 2014 • History
Since December 1941, a vicious war against Japan was being waged in the Pacific. The Japanese were driven back across the ocean, island by island, in savage hand to hand fighting. American dominance at sea was finally established in "The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot", when radar gave the US Navy advance warning of a huge Japanese attack and the last vestiges of Japanese naval air power were destroyed. But this film also looks at the war in the jungles, in places like Burma, where new specialist fighting units - like Orde Wingate's Chindits - slowly pushed back the Japanese despite horrific conditions.
11/13 • World War II In HD Colour • 2009 • History