Vol 1 Ep 5 - Lower paleolithic stone too...

3500 BCE - 1600 CE - Uncover the ancient earthworks of North America’s Pre-Columbian Mound Builders—exploring ritual, trade, astronomy, and society from the Adena to the Mississippians, in this immersive historical journey. 

700 BCE - 1497 CE - Long before European contact, North America was home to vibrant civilisations. From the Ancestral Puebloans, Hohokam, and Mogollon in the Southwest to the Adena, Hopewell, and Mississippian cultures of the Eastern Woodlands, these societies thrived. In the Arc ... Show More

1325 - 1521 - The powerful Mesoamerican civilisation known for advanced city-building, military strength, religious rituals, and human sacrifices before their downfall to Spanish conquistadors led by Hernán Cortés. 

What do we know about the earliest hominins to exist? With a story spanning one million years and counting, we're discovering more about how we came to be every day. In this episode of The Ancients, we're on location in the Natural History Museum in London as Tristan covers a hug ... Show More

The Director of the British Museum, Neil MacGregor, retells the history of human development from the first stone axe to the credit card, using 100 selected objects from the Museum. In this programme, Neil goes back two million years to the Rift Valley in Tanzania, where a simple ... Show More

Where do humans come from? Or, perhaps more interestingly, who did humans evolve from? A question once posed by the likes of Charles Darwin and other early naturalists, the answer has changed throughout history. But now, thanks to advancements in archaeology and developments in g ... Show More

Today we’re going back to the beginning – no Romans, Celts, Egyptians or Macedonians in sight. We’re going much further back, covering billions of years of prehistory as we look at the emergence of life on Earth. From the rise of the earliest microscopic membranes to the arrival ... Show More

For millions of years, Australopithecus thrived in Africa's vast landscapes, laying the groundwork for the emergence of the Homo genus. Later, alongside early members of the Homo genus, Australopithecus played a crucial role in shaping human evolution and our present-day existenc ... Show More

Over 45,000 years ago, Ice Age Britain was undergoing a transformation.  The first modern humans, Homo sapiens, were arriving and beginning to settle in the British Isles. Their evolutionary predecessors, the Neanderthals, were on their way to extinction. Until now we have known ... Show More

Stonehenge. The most iconic prehistoric monument in the world. And yet its story is still so enigmatic. In this episode, host Tristan Hughes is joined by Dr Sue Greaney to shine a light on Stonehenge’s prehistoric story. Together they explore this monument's creation and early ev ... Show More

Uncovered a decade ago in the Rising Star Cave system in South Africa, Homo Naledi's discovery has impacted paleoanthropology in ways nobody could expect. Upon first discovery, it was assumed this small brained hominid lived millions of years ago - yet when dating of the fossil's ... Show More

On 15 August 2008, nine-year-old Matt Berger tripped over a fossil that would lead to one of the most important discoveries in the history of human evolution.The young adventurer had been exploring the Cradle of Humankind, in South Africa, with his father Lee, a paleoanthropologi ... Show More

Cheddar Man is the oldest almost complete skeleton of a Homo sapien ever found in Britain and, for this fantastic episode, Tristan spoke to the scientist who has drilled a (very small) hole in him. Dr Selina Brace is a biologist who works with ancient and degraded DNA. At the Nat ... Show More