Richard Rudgley goes in search of evidence of the barbarians of the dark ages, people whose names have for 1500 years been bywords for mindless brutality. The real truth about the barbarians who marched across Europe during the Dark Ages is more shocking than what you may know. Where did they come from? Who are their descendants? Are any of their techniques and inventions still used? Richard discovers the secrets of forgotten empires, and of mighty clashes throughout Europe. The art, society and cultural legacy of the barbarians are shown to have shaped and moulded the destiny of Europe even more than the Roman Empire. In the first part of the journey through the Dark Ages we will be tracing the legacies of the Huns, Vandals and Goths, to ask whether the 'dark ages' represent a resurfacing of much older tribal lines. Sites in Austria show how sophisticated pre-Roman communities had become with evidence of stunning craftsmanship and sophisticated farming techniques which defy the image of a mindless rabble we have come to accept without challenge.
This documentary series charting the visual appeal and historical meaning of maps. The Hereford Mappa Mundi, the largest intact Medieval wall map in the world, its ambition to picture all of human knowledge in a single image is breathtaking. The work of a team of artists, the world it portrays is overflowing with life, featuring Classical and Biblical history, contemporary buildings and events, animals and plants from across the globe, and the infamous 'monstrous races' which were believed to inhabit the remotest corners of the Earth.
25 million years ago the biggest land mammals of all time, the indricotheres, stalked the Earth. Up to seven metres tall and weighing 15 tonnes, adults were too big to be eaten by any predator of the time. Only in the first few years of its life was indricotheres vulnerable. The programme follows the fate of a calf from his traumatic birth to see whether it can survive droughts, killer hogs and hyaenodon - a predator the size of a rhino with jaws that could crush a rock.
From dinosaurs to mammoths, when our ancient ancestors encountered the fossil bones of extinct prehistoric creatures, what did they think they were? Just like us, ancient peoples were fascinated by the giant bones they found in the ground. Historian Tom Holland goes on a journey of discovery to explore the fascinating ways in which our ancestors sought to explain the remains of dinosaurs and other giant prehistoric creatures, and how bones and fossils have shaped and affected human culture. In Classical Greece, petrified bones were exhibited in temples as the remains of a long-lost race of colossal heroes. Chinese tales of dragons may well have had their origins in the great fossil beds of the Gobi desert. In the Middle Ages, Christians believed that mysterious bones found in rock were the remains of giants drowned in Noah's Flood. Tom encounters a medieval sculpture that is the first known reconstruction of a monster from a fossil, and learns about the Native Americans stories, told for generations, which contained clues that led bone hunters to some of the greatest dinosaur finds of the nineteenth century.
Gaby Roslin and Amir Khan present a program in which they apply the latest science to some of the worst sleepers. They include an extreme snorer, a man who suffers from night terrors, a woman who has restless leg syndrome, and a man with chronic insomnia for 20 years. The film also shows a sleep deprivation experiment to test for risky behaviour, pain resistance and emotional control. When the subjects reach the final hours of the challenge, the experiment begins to take its toll as the participants' emotions go into overdrive, with one threatening to quit altogether.
The third episode follows tigers, harpy eagles, chimpanzees, army ants and other predators as they rise to the challenge of hunting within the forest - a dense, confusing, three-dimensional world, one in which even finding prey is a maddening task. The prize for succeeding at nature's great game of hide-and-seek is one worth winning. Forests cover one third of the land surface, and concealed within are over half of the species on Earth.
In the first part of the journey through the Dark Ages we will be tracing the legacies of the Huns, Vandals and Goths, to ask whether the 'dark ages' represent a resurfacing of much older tribal lines. Sites in Austria show how sophisticated pre-Roman communities had become with evidence of stunning craftsmanship and sophisticated farming techniques which defy the image of a mindless rabble we have come to accept without challenge.