Documentary AreaSimply the best Documentaries

On the second part of his journey through the dark ages Richard Rudgley continues into the age of the wandering peoples, the Volkerwanderung. These Northern people enjoyed a golden age unaffected by Rome and just 30 years after the Romans relinquished Britain, the 'Anglo-Saxons' made their move. The bedraggled legions are in retreat. Walls are pulled down. Mosaics shattered. And yet there never was a people called Anglo-Saxon. We look at the lasting influence of Saxon leaders like Alfred the Great, and his blue print for social justice.

The archaeological world is fooled for nearly half a century when an ape-like skull that's claimed as solid evidence for Darwin's theory of human evolution is proven fake. Using new research, experts investigate and uncover the identity of the forger.
Locked away in a store room at London Science Museum is a genuine 19th century miracle machine, a 180-year-old mechanical engine that solves complex mathematical equations, more than 100 years before the first electronic computer.

A Japanese playing card company called Nintendo enters gaming. To stay competitive in a modernizing Japan, their portfolio expanded to include toys and into the arcade. And the company hit it big with Donkey Kong and Super Mario, then later takes over home gaming with the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Astronomers make an extraordinary discovery out in deep space when they uncover a cosmic mega-structure that's one billion light-years long. Now, investigators race to decode the hidden forces that shape the most massive and mysterious structure known in the Universe.
We dive into this space great wall's fiery birth and hunt for the weird cosmic glue that holds it together to reveal how this megastructure rewrites our understanding of the universe on an epic scale.

Chris Lintott and Maggie Aderin-Pocock report on the reaction to the dramatic announcement of the discovery of phosphine gas in the clouds of Venus, a gas that could be a sign of life. Venus remains an inhospitable and unlikely host. But if not Venus, where in the solar system is the best place to look for alien life? Chris and Maggie investigate the latest missions to Mars and the icy moons of Jupiter and Saturn. Away from the search for life, Pete Lawrencepreviews the best meteor showers of the year.

In the heart of southern France, the Mandrin Cave has drawn archaeologists for over three decades, its soils preserving an extraordinary archive of human life stretching back tens of thousands of years. Within its layers lie traces of fire, tools, and bones that tell the story of survival in a harsh prehistoric world. In 2015, the remarkable discovery of a Neanderthal individual—nicknamed Thorin—revealed that these ancient humans once lived side by side with the first Homo sapiens to arrive in the region.
Following an international team of scientists, the investigation uncovers fragile relics of the Palaeolithic era that are rewriting our understanding of how two human species encountered one another. With every excavation, new details emerge about resilience, adaptation, and coexistence, offering a powerful re-examination of what it meant to be human 50,000 years ago. This is not only the story of the Neanderthals’ fate, but also of the deep roots of our own identity.