We call them o-rang-u-tans, which literally means "forest persons" in the Malay and Indonesian languages. They are the only great apes native to Asia. Of all the apes, they are the closest to man in genetic makeup. And they face extinction. Two years in the making, the film is an intimate portrayal of the world of orangutans, the threats to their survival and the people committed to help them thrive. The film focuses on a recent discovery that orangutans do not rely on animal instinct for survival, but instead have a culture that they have preserved from generation to generation.
Woolly Mammoth: Secrets from the Ice is a documentary presented by English anatomist Dr. Alice Roberts that reveals some of the secrets of one of the most widely known extinct animals ever. Humans have been transfixed by the Wolly Mammoth since the end of the last ice age when there were still herds of them roaming the continents of Asia and Europe. Despite many people knowing about the great Woolly Mammoth until recently very little was known about them despite ancient humans living along side them for so long; few documented accounts exist.
Cave paintings and lunar calendars exist in the caves and remains of prehistoric hunters studied recently. What if Prehistoric Man were clever enough to develop in depth scientific knowledge? As unlikely as it may seem, new data tend to prove that Prehistoric Man actually invented Astronomy!
This documentary delves into the mysteries surrounding the Neanderthals and what their fossil record tells us about their lives and disappearance.
In the docudrama "Les Derniers Secrets de l'humanité" (The Last Secrets of Humanity), author and director Jacques Malaterre and paleoanthropologist and professor at the Collège de France Yves Coppens reveal the incredible adventure of Asian prehistory. How does science help to reconstruct these bygone times in images? Thanks to discoveries made at excavation sites and in analysis and genetics laboratories, researchers are now revealing this distant, vanished past.
The story of Dian Fossey, a scientist who came to Africa to study the vanishing mountain gorillas, and later fought to protect them.
This series incorporates the latest animated 3D films to explore recent discoveries about human history, especially in Asia.
This movie was created to highlight the overwhelming amount of scientific information pointing to human extinction in the very near future.
In 1921, in the Danish town of Egtved, on the Jutland peninsula, was discovered one of the most important Bronze Age burial sites: the tomb of a girl who lived around 1370 BCE. Who was that girl and what was her daily life like?
A grim world is blessed by pre-modern man's wrath and it's beautiful light succumbs to the dark abyss of the neolithic reign of mother natures new conquerors, the Homo-Sapiens and their predecessors. Detailed thematic depictions of man's effects on earth and their ascent to dominance presented in short stop-motion animated segments fantasizing about the human race's beginnings and eventual domination of our world.
Werner Herzog gains exclusive access to film inside the Chauvet caves of Southern France, capturing the oldest known pictorial creations of humankind in their astonishing natural setting.
When his clan, including his wife and baby girl Néa, are massacred, Ao, a desperate Neandertal man, decides to leave the North country where he has been living for the South where he was born. His aim is to join his twin brother, from whom he was separated when he was nine. On his long and adventurous way home, he meets Aki, a Homo Sapiens woman...
Sir David Attenborough investigates the discovery of a lifetime: the giant skull of a prehistoric sea monster, known as a pliosaur – the Tyrannosaurus rex of the seas!
Endangered Hawaiʻi produced by American Bird Conservancy (ABC) with funding by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, and narrated by actor Richard Chamberlain. The film explores the on-going bird extinction crisis in Hawaiʻi that has led to about 70 percent of all native bird species in the state becoming extinct. With beautiful footage of many of Hawaiʻi’s stunning birds and their habitats, the film showcases the unique biodiversity of our 50th state and explains the environmental crisis that has caused Hawaiʻi to become known as the “Bird Extinction Capital of the World.” It describes the nature of the crisis, its causes, and current efforts to implement solutions for species on the brink.
Gary Owens needs more dinosaurs and sends Eric Boardman on the ultimate dinosaur safari to find them. Join the hunt for a living dinosaur in the jungles of Africa, separate the facts from fiction in dinosaur movies, visit Dinosaur National Monuent and much more. There's no bone unturned in this award winning program
One of the most significant cases in European archaeology is the grave of the shaman woman of Bad Dürrenberg, a key finding of the last hunter-gatherer groups. From a time when there were no written records, this site was first researched by the Nazis, who saw a physically strong male warrior from an ‘original Aryan race’ in the buried person. It was, in fact, the most powerful woman of her time. The latest research shows that she was dark-skinned, had physical deformities, and was a spiritual leader. The documentary – using high-end CGI and motion capture – compares the researchers of the Nazi era, who misrepresented and instrumentalised their findings, to today’s researchers, who meticulously compile findings and evidence, and use cross- disciplinary methods to examine and evaluate them. It also substantiates the theory of the powerful roles women played in prehistoric times. The story of this woman, buried with a baby in her arms, still fascinates us 9,000 years after her death.
The cutting edge group known as transhumanists see a beautiful future brought about by artificial intelligence, life extension, and cybernetics. What one must realize before getting carried away with such utopian dreams is that transhumanism was born out of the elitist pseudo-science eugenics. This documentary provides vital information on the history of eugenics and its new cutting edge transformation.
A closer look at the science of Human evolution, and how much early humans might've contributed to the extinction of large mammals during the Ice Age.
A documentary examining what the Tyrannosaurus Rex was really like - both appearance and behaviour - using the recent palaeontological and zoological research.
NOVA's groundbreaking investigation explores how new discoveries are transforming views of our earliest ancestors. Becoming Human explores the origins of us -where modern humans and our capacities for art, invention, and survival came from, and how our social history led to 3-5% of our genetic heritage being Neanderthal. Featuring interviews with world-renowned scientists, footage shot in the trenches as fossils were unearthed, and stunning computer-generated animation, Becoming Human brings early hominids to life, examining how they lived and how we became the creative and adaptable modern humans of today. In gripping forensic detail, we meet: Selam, the amazingly complete remains of a 3 million year-old child, packed with clues to why we split from the apes, came down from the trees, and started walking upright; Turkana Boy -a tantalizing fossil of Homo erectus, the first ancestor to leave Africa and colonize the globe. What led to this first great African exodus?