The best history documentaries. Traveling from the Middle ages to the industrial revolutions, to understand the past that shaped today's world.
A glimpse into the great ancient Western and Eastern civilizations, America's
history before and after Columbus, Indian and Chinese kingdoms and empires.
In the third episode of the series, the program examines the heyday of
the Celts, the La Tene era. It was tribal, and women were often the
leaders: warriors, bards, druids, artists and craftsmen. Their little
known settlements as well as their massive hill forts tell of
inhabitants who traded within and beyond Europe. But then the Celts
clashed with the Romans and highly developed culture fell apart.
The
Celts were the first European people north of the Alps to rise from
anonymity. This program looks at who the Celts were, where they came
from and what made their culture so distinctive.
This short films exposes the ancients as the fathers of modern medicine,
treatments and procedures were lost in the dark ages and only
reinvented by modern man.
History Documentary: Silk Road, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan
Kyrgyzstan's recorded history spans over 2,000 years, encompassing a variety of cultures and empires. Although geographically isolated by its highly mountainous terrain – which has helped preserve its ancient culture – Kyrgyzstan has historically been at the crossroads of several great civilizations, namely as part of the Silk Road and other commercial and cultural routes. Though long inhabited by a succession of independent tribes and clans, Kyrgyzstan has periodically come under foreign domination and attained sovereignty as a nation-state only after the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Once part of the Turkic Khaganate and later Timurid Empires, the region that today includes the Republic of Uzbekistan was conquered in the early 16th century by Eastern Turkic-speaking nomads. The area was gradually incorporated into the Russian Empire
during the 19th century, and in 1924 what is now Uzbekistan became a
bordered constituent republic of the Soviet Union, known as the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic (Uzbek SSR). Following the breakup of the Soviet Union, it declared independence as the Republic of Uzbekistan. Credits: Wikipedia
Commanding shoguns and fierce samurai warriors, exotic geisha and
exquisite artisans - all were part of a Japanese renaissance between the
16th and 19th centuries when Japan went from chaos and violence to a
land of ritual refinement and peace.
But stability came at a
price: for nearly 250 years, Japan was a land closed to the Western
world, ruled by the shogun under his absolute power and control. Japan:
Memoirs of a Secret Empire brings to life the unknown story of a
mysterious empire, its relationship with the West, and the forging of a
nation that would emerge as one of the most important countries in the
world.
Art historian Gus Casely-Hayford explores the history of the Lost
Kingdoms of West Africa, with particular attention to the 16th-century
bronzes from the kingdom of Benin.
The Saxons (Latin: Saxones, Old English: Seaxe, Old Saxon:
Sahson, Low German: Sassen, German: Sachsen, Dutch: Saksen) were a group of
Germanic tribes first mentioned as living near the North Sea coast of what is
now Germany (Old Saxony), in late Roman times. They were soon mentioned as
raiding and settling in many North Sea areas, as well as pushing south inland
towards the Franks. Significant numbers settled in large parts of Great Britain
in the early Middle Ages and formed part of the merged group of Anglo-Saxons
who eventually organised the first united Kingdom of England. Many Saxons
however remained in Germania, where they resisted the expanding Frankish Empire
through the leadership of the semi-legendary Saxon hero, Widukind.
The Saxons' earliest area of settlement is believed to have
been Northern Albingia, an area approximately that of modern Holstein. This
general area also included the probable homeland of the Angles. Saxons, along
with the Angles and other continental Germanic tribes, participated in the
Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain during and after the 5th century. The
British-Celtic inhabitants of the isles tended to refer to all these groups
collectively as Saxons. It is unknown how many Saxons migrated from the
continent to Britain, though estimates for the total number of Anglo-Saxon
settlers are around 200,000. During the Middle Ages, because of international
Hanseatic trading routes and contingent migration, Saxons mixed with and had
strong influences upon the languages and cultures of the Baltic peoples, Finnic
peoples, and Polabian Slavs and Pomeranians, both West Slavic peoples, as well
as influencing the North Germanic languages.
