Why did the Roman Empire, which dominated Europe and the Mediterranean for five centuries, inexorably weaken until it disappeared? Archaeologists, specialists in ancient pathologies and climate historians are now accumulating clues converging on the same factors: a powerful cooling and pandemics. A disease, whose symptoms described by the Greek physician Galen are reminiscent of those of smallpox, struck Rome in 167, soon devastating its army. At the same time, a sudden climatic disorder that was underway as far as Eurasia caused agricultural yields to plummet and led to the westward migration of the Huns. Plagued by economic and military difficulties, attacked from all sides by barbarian tribes, the Roman edifice gradually cracked.
Guy Debord's analysis of a consumer society.
Et si on levait les yeux ? Une classe face aux écrans
How were the giant stone heads of Rapa Nui – also known as Easter Island – carved and raised, and why? Since Europeans arrived on this remote Pacific island over 300 years ago, controversy has swirled around the iconic ancient statues and the history of the people who created them. Now, a new generation of researchers is overturning old theories, revealing the rich history, innovation, and resilience of the Rapanui people, and uncovering intriguing new evidence about where they – and their practice of monumental stone building – came from.
The sun is the miracle that makes everything possible - but also the greatest danger. For the first time, a feature-length documentary is dedicated to the search for the significance of our home star for mankind, science and nature. Thanks to the researchers from the American space agency NASA, who work at the Canary Islands observatories in the hottest and coldest places on the planet.
Discovered about twenty years ago, the immense masses of water vapor that fly over the Amazon, called "flying rivers", fascinate researchers. Their future could be intimately linked to climate change.
Le mystère Cléopâtre, la dernière reine d'Egypte
Pass the Salt
Thanks to new excavations in Mauritius and Madagascar, as well as archival and museum research in France, Spain, England and Canada, a group of international scholars paint a new portrait of the world of piracy in the Indian Ocean.
It happened more or less by accident; the people who made it happen were amateurs; and for the most part they still are. From his own Silicon Valley garage, author Bob Cringley puts PC bigshots and nerds on the spot, and tells their incredible true stories. Like the industry itself, the series is informative, funny and brash.
De Aracaju a Harvard
Rascar Capac, the sinister creature featured on Hergé's album The Seven Crystal Balls (1948), has left its mark on many generations of readers. To draw it, the Belgian cartoonist was probably inspired by a mummy exhibited in the first pre-Columbian exhibition organized by the Brussels Cinquantenaire Museum in 1923. Two intrepid archaeologists embark on a fascinating journey to reconstruct the story of the mysterious mummy.
Révélations Monumentales: Pétra, la rose du désert
Billions of years ago, Venus may have harbored life-giving habitats similar to those on the early Earth. Today, Earth's twin is a planet knocked upside down and turned inside out. Its burned-out surface is a global fossil of volcanic destruction, shrouded in a dense, toxic atmosphere. Scientists are now unveiling daring new strategies to search for clues from a time when the planet was alive.
Thousands of terracotta warriors guarded the first Chinese emperor's tomb. This is their story, told through archeological evidence and reenactments.
This documentary delves into the mysteries surrounding the Neanderthals and what their fossil record tells us about their lives and disappearance.
Die verschwundene Welt von Honduras
Amazones, femmes guerrières de l'Antiquité
The first American space station Skylab is found in pieces scattered in Western Australia. Putting these pieces back together and re-tracing the Skylab program back to its very conception reveals the cornerstone of human space exploration.
This short documentary depicts the search, discovery and authentication of the only known Norse settlement in North America - Vinland the Good. Mentioned in Icelandic manuscripts and speculated about for over two centuries, Vinland is known as "the place where the wild grapes grow" and was thought to be on the eastern coast between Virginia and Newfoundland. In 1960 a curious group of house mounds was uncovered at l'Anse aux Meadows in northern Newfoundland by Drs. Helge Ingstad and Anne Stine Ingstad of Norway. Added to the United Nations World Heritage List, l'Anse aux Meadows is considered one of the most important archaeological sites in the world.