That's Ancient History
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Alexander the Great in Egypt
History Hit's Tristan Hughes travels to Egypt to explore its extraordinary links to one of the most famous names from antiquity, Alexander the Great. Of all the lands in the Eastern Mediterranean, it is Egypt that has the most fascinating - and enduring - connection to this ancient conqueror.
I...
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The Rollright Stones: Mind, Myre and Magic
The Rollright Stones are some of Britain’s most remarkable and mysterious ancient monuments. They consist of three separate sites - a looming funerary monument built to contain dismembered corpses, a venerated stone circle, and a single monolith with an innominate purpose. Alice Loxton traces six...
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Building the Wall
Tristan Hughes looks into the construction of Hadrian's Wall and the many mysteries that still abound. Featuring Frances McIntosh, curator at Hadrian's Wall.
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Vindolanda Unearthed
Situated roughly one mile south of Hadrian’s Wall is one of the great jewels of Roman and early medieval archaeology: Vindolanda. Over the past 50 years, annual excavations at this site have revealed incredible amounts of new information. Information that has not only shone more light on the site...
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Gladiators: History's Greatest Fighters
Gladiators, from Spartacus to Ridley Scott’s Maximus Decimus Meridius, we’ve been fascinated by them for hundreds of years. Dan Snow is on the hunt to find out why we’re still so obsessed with the men who controlled the Roman arena from the ground up!
Dan joins experts in Italy and England to in...
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The Emperor Justinian
Peter Heather, Professor of Medieval History at KCL, tackles the big questions about the Roman Emperor Justinian.
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An Indigenous History of Australia
To date, there are over 500 different aboriginal 'nations' in Australia, all with distinctive cultures, beliefs, languages and unique histories. Since the arrival of Captain James Cook and the subsequent colonisation of the continent, many of these indigenous populations were, and continue to be ...
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The World of Stonehenge Revealed: Decoding the Find of the Century
Described as the "most important piece of prehistoric art to be found in Britain in the last 100 years", an elaborately decorated 5000 year-old chalk cylinder, discovered buried with 3 child skeletons in Yorkshire and as old as the first phase of Stonehenge, is going on display at the British Mus...
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Decoding the Roman Dead
Colchester Museums have been working with archaeologists and specialists to ‘decode’ the hidden stories of 40 of Colchester’s earliest inhabitants.
Through new scientific research techniques, they have reconstructed the identity and lives of these people: where they came from in the empire, wha...
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Fortress Britain: Ardoch Roman Fort
Join Tristan Hughes in this short documentary as he explores the fascinating history of Ardoch Roman Fort in Scotland. Featuring historians Rebecca Jones and Andrew Tibbs.
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Tutankhamun: Treasures of the Golden Pharaoh
Tutankhamun, 'The Boy King' of Ancient Egypt, is one of history's most famous names. Though his short reign proved fairly-insignificant, his legacy lives on thanks to Howard Carter's discovery of his magnificent tomb in 1922. Now, as the centenary of Carter's discovery creeps ever nearer, many of...
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Greatest Discoveries: Lost Lives of Pompeii
The story of Pompeii’s destruction is renowned across the world. In 79 AD, this prosperous Roman town was destroyed by a massive, volcanic eruption. Pompeii became frozen in time, only to be rediscovered c.1500 years later.
Warning: contains very strong language and sexual content.
Vesuvius’ er...
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Imagining the Divine
Dr Janina Ramirez takes an exclusive tour of 'Imagining the Divine', the new exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. With the exhibition's co-curator, Jas Eslner, Janina discovers how the art of the 5 major world religions spread across the globe in the first Millennium AD, and takes a fasc...
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Greatest Discoveries: Last Days of Pompeii
Tristan Hughes explores the destruction of Pompeii, using extraordinary eyewitness testimony and the revelations of archaeology to understand what really happened here nearly 2000 years ago.
In 79 AD, one of the greatest natural disasters in Roman history occurred in southern Italy, when Mount V...
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How Christianity Shapes Our Morality
Tom Holland sits down with Dan to talk about the history of Christianity, and how the religion has shaped morality in Western civilisation to this day.
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The Ninth Legion: The Mystery
In the second and final episode of this series, Tristan Hughes explores the numerous theories regarding the eventual fate of the Ninth Legion. Was it lost on the northern frontier of Britain, by the Rhine, or massacred in the East? Featuring Dr Miles Russell, Dr Rebecca Jones, Dr Simon Elliott, L...
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🎧 Confucius with Roel Sterckx
Dan and Roel Sterckz sit down to talk about all things Confucius, the ancient Chinese philosopher and politician. They discuss his influence in the trajectory of intellectual history and what we know about the historical Confucius. Producer: Oliver Nelken
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The Road to Rome
The Roman Empire was one of the greatest in history. At its height it stretched from northern Britain to the Persian Gulf, its might epitomised by the effectiveness of its core military unit: the Roman legion. The aqueduct, sanitation, irrigation, medicine, education, wine, public baths – all thi...
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Paestum: A Tale of Three Cities
The story of ancient Italy is so much more than just Rome. Tristan Hughes visits the extraordinary site of Paestum in southern Italy, home to some of the greatest ancient Greek temples from anywhere in the world.
From majestic temples to pristine wall paintings more that 2,500 years old, he exp...
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A Tour of Fishbourne Palace
In 1960, a man was laying a waterpipe underneath the quaint village of Fishbourne near Chichester, West Sussex, when he uncovered what looked like Roman remains. After he duly reported the discover, the archaeologists were called in and they quickly unearthed more and more prestigious finds. They...
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Ancient Britain with Ray Mears: Flint and Footprints
Britain is an island where history is well and truly part of the landscape and an island where human feet have walked for a million years. We are constantly making groundbreaking archaeological discoveries that are helping us to better understand the way in which our distant ancestors lived.
Joi...
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Stonehenge
Dan Snow visits one of the most recognisable historical sites on Earth. Stonehenge. Timed with the recent solving of the sarsen stones origin mystery, this documentary takes an in-depth look at what we know, and what we don't know, about this iconic Neolithic monument.