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Professor Mary Beard broaches the controversial, sometimes dangerous, topic of religion and art. For millennia, art has inspired religion as much as religion has inspired art.
4/10 • Civilisations • 2018 • History
Humans have depended on fire for millennia, but do we fully understand the impact it has had on our diet? When our hunter-gatherer ancestors learned to harness this tool, it ignited a culinary and cerebral revolution believed to be one of the most important factors in our evolution.
1/5 • The History of Food • 2018 • History
Up to one million gladiators are thought to have died in arenas across the Roman Empire. Seventy-five were recently found in a single cemetery in York. Two thousand years ago, York was a Roman stronghold, a staging ground for the push against the Scots. Apart from ancient Italy, Roman Britain had the highest density of gladiatorial arenas in Europe. As part of a routine building inspection in the outskirts of York, archaeologists discover an ancient Roman burial site. It soon became apparent the find was anything but routine. Of total 80, 75 of the skeletons were men, a much higher majority than would be expected in a family grave site. The height, build and signs of musculature made the men much bigger than that of the average Roman man. A closer inspection of the bones also revealed a number of cut marks and fractures, evidence the men were no strangers to violence. Most disturbing of all most of the men had been brutally decapitated. Could the men be gladiators?
2010 • History
The first two hours of NEW YORK: A DOCUMENTARY FILM chronicle New York's beginnings -- from its earliest days as a Dutch trading post to the 17th century construction of the Erie Canal, which made New York City a vital conduit to the mainland of a growing America.
1/8 • New York: A Documentary Film • 1999 • History
It seems an odd thing to crow about given the cultural wealth of Edo, at the time the largest city in the world, but this pride in the city's water system wasn't misplaced. Cool, pure water carried by pipes to the city's remotest corners was indeed a byword for the quality of life in Edo as well as being the lifeblood of the city's prosperity.
1/2 • Roots of Tokyo • 2018 • History
[3 episodes] How the invention of writing gave humanity a history. From hieroglyphs to emojis, an exploration of the way in which the technology of writing has shaped the world we live in.
2020 • History