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1-50 of 52
- Historians and scientists search for insights into the origins and significance of some of the most enigmatic relics and mysteries known to man.
- On November 26, 1922, Howard Carter made one of the greatest discoveries ever; the tomb of the Egyptian boy king Tutankhamun. The news was spread all over the world. But when people who had entered the chamber began to die, stories of the "curse of the pharaoh" spread. Were the deaths a coincidence or stories to sell newspapers? Can modern science explain the truth behind the legend?
- Monty Don travels the Islamic world and beyond from Morocco to India in search of Paradise Gardens celebrated in the Koran and uncovers the influence they've had back home.
- This documentary explores some of the psychological behaviors regarding the world's most infamous celebrities in the ancient world, while utilizing modern scientific techniques to explain their actions.
- A captivating examination of the primate origins of human social dynamics, highlighting the 98% genetic similarity and instinctual parallels that connect us to our closest ape relatives.
- Experts examine a theory that treasures from Tutankhamun's tomb were meant to prepare him for an epic afterlife battle.
- The chilling story of how a warrior tribe was brutally murdered by their rivals in a power struggle which would eventually lead to the rise of the Vikings.
- Experts examine the underground world and political intrigues in the Roman city of Pompeii before it was buried in ash by Mount Vesuvius.
- Ancient records marked a modest Tunisian coastal town as the location of a one-time thriving Roman metropolis called Neapolis, but for centuries there was little archaeological evidence to support such a claim. That all changed when a massive storm exposed the ruins of ancient streets and buildings beneath in the Mediterranean Sea.
- The discovery of an executed man in Northern Italy reveals the truth behind the Roman practice of crucifixion.
- A massive volcanic eruption in 44 B.C. may have hastened the end of the ancient Egyptian empire.
- Monty Don explores paradise gardens in grand Spanish palaces and secret Moroccan courtyards. And in the Iranian desert, Monty unravels the mystery to their creation.
- Having mastered their basic building blocks in Spain, Morocco and Iran, Monty Don sets out to explore the wide variety of gardens offering a slightly different vision of paradise.
- The fall of the Roman Empire - Historians from the time paint a picture of the Empire's military might crumbling under unrelenting and ferocious attacks from savage Barbarian hordes.
- A three-decade-long investigation reveals one of Ancient Egypt's greatest lost cities - The Lost City of Canopus. The site of a temple to the Egyptian god Serapis, it lies on the outskirts of modern-day Alexandria.
- A shocking new discovery reveals just how ruthless the Roman army could be in pursuit of absolute power.
- A spectacular discovery unveils the origins of the rituals and motives that culminated in the building of the ancient world's greatest and most mysterious monument - Stonehenge.
- The breath-taking discovery of a treasure-laden grave offers a unique insight into how ancient Greek civilization sprang into life and destroyed another even more ancient, culture.
- A gruesome new discovery reveals a little-known period of Ancient Egypt's history, when the country was fighting for its very survival.
- Experts find out what the Vinland map - allegedly drawn in the 15th century - reveals about settlements in America prior to Christopher Columbus's arrival,
- Archeologists search for and interpret tiny clues to determine the origin of the Sphinx and who it represents.
- Unlocking the mysteries of the most recognizable statues on earth. How were the thousand giant stone heads of Easter Island made, and why? Why did the Islanders topple all of them, except one?
- Off the coast of North Carolina, nautical archaeologists, historians and scientists study the artifacts of a 300 year old shipwreck. Positively identified as Blackbeard's flagship, our investigators set about to uncover what the ship's remains can tell us about history's most notorious pirate.
- In a search that spans four countries and 20 centuries, we investigate the legend of the Spear of Destiny. First mentioned in the New Testament, the spear is said to have pierced the side of Jesus. Believed to have special powers, kings and conquerors from Charlemagne to Hitler tried to possess it.
- For centuries Troy was believed to be a mythical city. Now, a leading team of American archaeologists have discovered an ancient thriving city, and evidence of a real Trojan War.
- Armed with a four and a half thousand year old diary, and a radical new approach. Engineer Peter James and leading archaeologist Mark Lehner set out to solve Ancient Egypt's greatest mystery. How was the Great Pyramid built?
- Experts analyze cryptic writing etched on the Turin Shroud - a piece of medieval linen cloth bearing the image of a crucified man - in an attempt to verify its origins.
- Experts hope to unlock the secrets of the golden city of El Dorado by examining a 10in-long statue that may hold the key to the lost Amazonian civilisation.
- A tiny fragment of papyrus that refers to the wife of Jesus stirs immediate controversy. This program describes the efforts to validate the document.
- The extraordinary story behind one of the most famous images from the ancient world. Who was Queen Nefertiti? Who made the blue-crowned bust which turned her into a modern icon? Could the Nefertiti bust be a fake?
- The hunt for the truth about the most famous lost treasure of them all. Did the Ark of the Covenant really exist? What it did look like? What was the power that it was said to hold? And what happened to it? Where is it now?
- The Great Wall of China is more than just a part of history, it's part of the world's geography, a sprawling, massive edifice of mud, reeds, and billions of bricks. But why did the Chinese go to such lengths to build it? And what secrets have enabled it to survive for over 2,000 years? We unravel its mysteries and rewrite its complex history through groundbreaking science and pioneering drone technology. This is how the wall was built, what its real purpose was, how it has survived multiple earthquakes and attacks, and how long it really runs.
- Archaeologist Danny Harman retraces the footsteps of the original 1952 expedition and visits the very cave where the heavily oxidized scroll was discovered. Rare archive footage reveals the tense moment scientists opened the fragile scroll for the first time in 2,000 years and Professor Lawrence Schiffman, an expert in ancient Hebrew guides us through the text which lists 64 hiding places of vast quantities of treasure - and he reveals why the original translation might not have been as accurate as originally thought.
- Inside the legendary city of Babylon in modern-day Iraq lie the remains of a vast structure, which ancient records suggest was the Tower of Babel. Is it possible that this biblical stairway to heaven actually existed? Experts think it did, and thanks to satellite technology and new discoveries, they have pinpointed exactly where the legendary tower once stood, and what it looked like. Join us as we revisit the inspiration for one of the strangest stories in the Bible, and then recreate the spectacular skyscraper in all its glory.
- The ancient city of Petra, hidden in the barren desert of southern Jordan, has captured the global imagination. Its breath-taking ruins spread over one square mile with temples, a great theatre and hundreds of tombs half built and half sculpted straight from the desert's rocky cliffs. But Petra also holds a mystery that has long puzzled historians: What could have led such a grand and elaborate city to be abandoned?
- Stonehenge is a 5,000 year-old mystery. Despite years of investigation, archaeologists can't agree about why or how this stunning and mysterious monument was built. Some argue the world famous monument, with its careful alignment to the midwinter solstice, was a giant calendar or observatory. Others insist it was cathedral to some unknown gods. One widely held theory is that Stonehenge had spiritual significance for healing sick pilgrims. But now the discovery and dating of an ancient mass-grave at the Stonehenge site is overturning all of these assumptions and suggesting that this iconic site began as a Neolithic graveyard.
- It was one of grizzliest finds in Roman archaeology. The decapitated remains of over 80 battle scarred skeletons, all buried in the same plot, in the same ritualistic manner nearly two thousand years ago. So who were these people? The macabre discovery took place in 2004 when archaeologists were excavating a plot of land in the Historic city of York in North East England. Within days of unearthing the first skeleton, the body count had reached double figures - and kept rising.
- In 1950, three Danish farmers came across a grizzly find - a body, buried in a peat bog. It was a murder, but the police will never catch the killers. This crime took place more than 2000 years ago. The victim was named "Tollund Man", and he is a so-called "Bog Body" - a naturally mummified corpse buried in a peat bog during Europe's Iron Age. From Ireland to Russia, hundreds of Bog Bodies have been discovered in these soggy environments on the margins of civilization.
- The story of how Adam and Eve came to be thrown out of their paradise is one of the most famous in the world. For many the story is considered an allegory; a moral lesson not based in fact. But for others, the possibility of God's Paradise on Earth being a real place remains, fuelled by the Bible's intriguingly specific description of its location somewhere in the modern Middle East. Now the discovery of a huge complex of ancient stone monuments in southern Turkey, between the headwaters of the Biblical river of the Tigris and Euphrates, has sparked the interest of those in search of a physical Eden. Just like the story of Adam and Eve's fall from grace, the monument records the moment of humanity's conversion from a nomadic hunter-gatherer existence to its eventual settlement in agricultural communities - from a life in harmony with nature to a life of hard toil in the fields.
- The ten plagues in the Bible's book of Exodus is one of the greatest and strangest stories ever told. A tyrannical pharaoh holds an army of Israelites captive. God orders Moses to warn that ten plagues will sweep across Egypt unless the slaves are released. But pharaoh refuses. So Moses turns the River Nile into a torrent of blood, sends frogs and flies into the Egyptians' houses, blights the livestock with disease and the people with boils; hail, fire, locusts and darkness descend upon Egypt. And still pharaoh refuses to release the captives. Until the final, cruelest plague of all: the death of all first born. Finally, Pharaoh relents, releasing the captives and triggering the exodus of the Israelites to the Promised Land.
- They're macabre curios that captured the imagination of intrepid nineteenth century explorers and collectors: decapitated human heads shrunk to a fraction their original size. Displayed in museums and locked away in private collections, there are thousands of these shrunken heads around the world.
- Over a thousand years ago a great civilisation built a thriving metropolis in the heart of North America. It was larger than Paris, London and Rome at the time and was known as Cahokia. This vast city is one of the best kept secrets of western archaeology, but using cutting edge technologies like LIDAR Secrets: World's Greatest Pyramid can finally unravel its mysteries. Our investigators trace the rise and fall of this mighty civilisation which exploded into existence in 900 AD but vanished less than four hundred years later. Archaeologists John Kelly and Tim Pauketat explore the artifacts decades of excavations have unearthed at the site and what they teaches us about the culture and beliefs of the people here.
- Ramesse II was one of the greatest pharaohs to rule Egypt. His reign, beginning in 1279 BC, saw stability, military success and a building programme unmatched since the construction of the Pyramids a thousand years before. But for Egyptologists, one great mystery hung over his reign. His capital city, Pi-Ramesses, the 'House of Ramesses', was known to be a large and magnificent city. But over the passage of time, it seemed to have completely vanished from history.
- In 1922, in Egypt's Valley of the Kings, the final resting place of Ancient Pharaohs for almost 500 years, Howard Carter made the most momentous discovery in the history of archaeology: the tomb of King Tutankhamun.
- In 2014 historian Margarita Torres discovered two Arabic parchments hidden in an Egyptian library. The documents record "The Cup of the Messiah" travelling from Jerusalem to Spain in the year 1055 as a gift to King Ferdinand of Leon. Examining an ornate chalice in Leon that once belonged to King Ferdinand's daughter, archaeologist Julian Henderson reveals that hidden behind the medieval gold embellishment is a simple onyx cup. Margarita Torres argues that this onyx cup is the one held by Jesus. Torres finds evidence to support her theory in a medieval painting of the Last Supper commissioned by King Ferdinand's daughter. The Arabic parchment contains a tantalizing description; it says that the cup arrived in Spain with a piece missing.
- The fabled island that vanished beneath the waves is one of the greatest enigmas of the ancient world. Described by Plato, Atlantis was initially thought to be just myth and legend. But could the lost civilization be real? For decades archaeologists searched for evidence, then on the Greek island of Santorini they found a remarkable city that was buried 3500 years ago by a major volcanic eruption. Architectural Historian Clairy Palyvou walks us through the excavations, revealing an incredibly advanced civilisation; just as Plato describes. But what exactly happened to bury this ancient city?
- A tomb inside a Sunni mosque called the Mosque of the Prophet Yunus, which is Arabic for Jonah, in Mosul site is said to be the burial place of the prophet Jonah, who was swallowed by a whale or great fish in the Islamic and Judeo-Christian traditions. Biblical scholars are divided on whether the tomb in Mosul actually belonged to Jonah. In the Jewish tradition, he returns to his hometown of Gath-Hepher after his mission to Nineveh. And some modern scholars say the Jonah story is more myth than history. But others believe that Jonah actually existed.
- Archaeologists have discovered a new tomb, a 3000-year-old mummy of an unknown Egyptian princess, in the Valley of the Kings.
- What finally defeated the seemingly invincible Viking nation? A new remarkable discovery reveals the last days of the Vikings. Golden riches, a missing body, and a grave created for a warrior's horse expose how a new overwhelming force engulfed and finally replaced the old pagan world of the Vikings.
- One of the most remarkable finds in modern archaeology was the discovery of a giant statue of a pharaoh, buried in the suburbs of Cairo. This was a pharaoh about whom little was known - until now. He was a leader who brought a new golden era to ancient Egypt and left a legacy that shaped western civilisation for millenia.