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1-43 of 43
- Voyage back in time to the world of six ancient peoples whose contributions to art, culture, and literature had a great effect on civilization. These are the Minoans, the Mycenaeans, Ancient Arabia, the Phoenicians, and the inhabitants of Thera and Troy. Discover their legendary past from the Minotaur and the Labyrinth, to the Trojan War, and to the lost continent of Atlantis.
- Voyage back in time to the Age of Antiquity and the most important and leading nations in the ancient world whose contributions to art, culture, and literature had a great effect on civilization.
- 1993–199626mTV Episode
- 1993–199626mTV Episode
- 1993–199626mTV Episode
- 1993–199626mTV Episode
- 1993–199626mTV Episode
- 1993–199626mTV Episode
- 1993–199626mTV Episode
- 1993–199626mTV Episode
- 1993–199626mTV Episode
- 1993–199626mTV Episode
- 1993–199626mTV Episode
- 1993–199626mTV Episode
- 1993–199626mTV Episode
- 1993–199626mTV Episode
- 1993–199626mTV Episode
- 1993–199626mTV Episode
- 1993–199627mTV Episode
- 1993–199626mTV Episode
- 1993–199626mTV Episode
- 1993–199626mTV Episode
- 1993–199626mTV Episode
- 1993–199626mTV Episode
- 1993–199626mTV Episode
- 1993–199626mTV Episode
- 1993–199626mTV Episode
- 1993–1996TV Episode
- 1993–1996TV Episode
- 1993–199626mTV Episode
- 1993–199626mTV Episode
- 1993–199626mTV Episode
- 1993–199626mTV Episode
- 1993–199626mTV Episode
- 1993–199626mTV Episode
- 1993–199626mTV Episode
- 1993–199626mTV Episode
- One of the most powerful myths handed down by the ancient Greeks tells of the fabled King Minos, who ordered the construction of a vast, mazelike building called the labyrinth. Within this structure, he imprisoned the monster known as the Minotaur, a creature with the head of a bull and the body of a man that was fed on human sacrifice.For centuries this tale remained no more than legend. And then in the 1890s an archaeologist named Arthur Evans began uncovering, on the island of Crete, the remains of a civilization that flourished between 2500 and 1350 BC. To Evans's surprise, he found the ruins of a great palace with hundreds of interconnected rooms and hallways - a building so complex that it could easily have impressed visitors as having been as bewildering as a maze. Not only that, the sacred animal of the people who lived there was a bull. Evans called these people "Minoans," after the legendary monarch, and today, thanks to the studies of Evans and others, we know a great deal about them.For centuries, the Minoans had a thriving maritime trade as their ships controlled the sea lanes between Greece, Syria, and Egypt. Their crafts workers were experts in pottery, ivory, metal, and gemstones;their artists painted colorful frescoes;and their architects built great palaces, such as the one discovered by Evans at Knossos. The Minoan civilization disappeared rather suddenly for reasons that are still unclear. Some experts believe they may have been the victims of a gigantic tidal wave that was unleashed by the explosion of a volcano on an island nearby.
- There were many interesting and important civilizations in the Mediterranean region in ancient times, but the Mycenaeans were especially fortunate in one way.Their legends and deeds became the subjects of the finest works of literature to be handed down from antiquity - Homer's Iliad and Odyssey and the dramas of the great Greek playwrights.In addition, archaeologists have unearthed the remains of the great fortified cities of the Mycenaeans.Together, these sources, both literary and archaeological, have allowed us to get an unusually intimate look at this impressive culture.What we see is an age of powerful military dynasties that ruled large areas of land, conducted trade, and established industries. Their influence reached as far as Egypt and Sicily.And although their civilization, like so many others, eventually crumbled, their legends lived on to form the cornerstone of the literature of the Western world.
- If you look at a map of Greece, you will see that nearly a quarter of its territory consists of dozens and dozens of islands in the Aegean Sea. In ancient times, one of these islands was Thera. It would not be especially notable - except for one thing. This island was the site of one of the most massive volcanic eruptions in history. After it happened, Thera was no longer one island, but three - one of which is today known as Santorini. When the eruption occurred in about 1500 BC, a civilization was wiped out. It was a sophisticated culture much influenced by the Minoan civilization on Crete some 60 miles away. Thera's artists painted colorful frescoes of animals, sport, and war, its women had a passion for jewelry and bright clothes and its engineers constructed a remarkable system of running water piped into each dwelling. Yet although volcanoes destroy, they also preserve. The eruption on Thera buried an entire city under a layer of ash and pumice, and when that city was rediscovered in the 1960s, it proved to be almost perfectly preserved, thus giving archaeologists a fabulous window into life in ancient times.
- Archaeological evidence has shown that the Phoenician civilization began to develop around 3000 BC and that it was trading with the Egyptians shortly after that. But it wasn't until about 1200 BC that the Phoenicians began to establish the great commercial empire that has made them celebrated. Their ships, equipped for both commerce and war, dominated the Mediterranean, some say that they sailed as far as Britain and may have even voyaged all the way around Africa. Two of the most important products they traded were a purple dye made from the murex, a type of shellfish, and the timber of cedar trees. The Egyptians used the cedars of Lebanon for coffins, ships, and other artifacts, and King Solomon used them to build the Great Temple in Jerusalem. Originally the Phoenicians ruled from several city-states located in what is now Lebanon, but they went on to establish colonies in the western Mediterranean. Their most illustrious colony was the city of Carthage in North Africa, which waged war against Rome until being defeated in 146 BC. The Phoenicians' greatest contribution to civilization was the refinement of a standardized phonetic alphabet that they passed along to the Greeks. The Greeks introduced it to Europe, where it became the basis for the alphabet we use today.
- Located at the southern end of the Arabian peninsula, the countries of Yemen and Oman sit at a strategic crossroads. The Horn of Africa lies just a few miles across the southern end of the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf is off to the East, and the Arabian Sea, an arm of the Indian Ocean, gives ships easy passage to India and points east. In ancient times, this advantageous location gave the area, then known as Saba, access to wealth and power. Today, it is easy to think that ancient societies were, because of their technological limitations, relatively isolated from other parts of the world. But the study of ancient Arabia proves otherwise. The Sabaeans received goods from distant China and India and shipped them to the Mediterranean and beyond. They also produced their own luxury goods that were highly prized in other lands. Their wealth enabled them to build imposing cities, the ruins of which are treasured archaeological sites.
- Though it is today a region of Turkey, the coastal area of Anatolia, or Asia Minor, was a thriving center of Greek culture in ancient times. Two cities there especially stand out - one for its connection to a work of literature, one for its connection to a work of art. The fabled city of Troy and its legendary ten-year siege by forces from mainland Greece became the subject of one of the cornerstones of western literature, Homer's Iliad. The frieze of the Great Altar of the city of Pergamum, now in a museum in Berlin, is one of the finest surviving examples of Hellenistic sculpture. These cities flourished many centuries apart, but their combined legacies give us today a remarkable glimpse into ancient Anatolian civilization.