BBC Documentary Films

Britain BC: Life in Britain and Ireland Before the Romans
Traditionally, British history has been regarded as starting with the Roman Conquest. Yet this is to ignore half a million years of prehistory that still exert a profound influence on British and Irish life today. In Britain BC, Francis Pryor sets the record straight. Aided in recent years by aerial photography and coastal erosion (which has helped expose such sites as Seahenge), and by advances in scientific techniques such as radiocarbon dating and wood analysis, archaeologists have discovered compelling evidence for a much more sophisticated life among the Ancient Britons than has been previously supposed.

2001. A clandestine meeting of leading Israeli archaeologists are shown a remarkable artefact. It's a stone tablet, apparently from 1,000BC. The writing on its face describes repairs to the temple of King Solomon. It is the first archaeological evidence ever found of this legendary building.

The relic caused a sensation. But this was only just the start.

Griff Rhys Jones learns about the army of West Africans his father served alongside.

For your consideration:

1. Palestinian Jews had been living in this area of the world since before the destruction of the second temple and Roman sack of Jerusalem. The compelling question thus arises; should Palestine originally Judæa therefore be thought of as the Arab Palestinian homeland excluding in such definition Jews living here as other than Palestinian? It must be said that the term Palestine was imposed on the region as an insult following the Bar Kokhba revolt (132--136 CE).

2. Ottoman Turks governed Palestine from 1516. 400 years later in 1917 the British Empire wrestled Palestine from this hegemony.

Collection of documentaries exploring the ancient world's most mysterious secrets, monuments and myths. Featuring digital recontructions and dramatisations, as well as expert interviews and testimony.

Collection of documentaries exploring the ancient world's most mysterious secrets, monuments and myths. Featuring digital recontructions and dramatisations, as well as expert interviews and testimony.

Collection of documentaries exploring the ancient world's most mysterious secrets, monuments and myths. Featuring digital recontructions and dramatisations, as well as expert interviews and testimony.

Collection of documentaries exploring the ancient world's most mysterious secrets, monuments and myths. Featuring digital recontructions and dramatisations, as well as expert interviews and testimony.

Collection of documentaries exploring the ancient world's most mysterious secrets, monuments and myths. Featuring digital recontructions and dramatisations, as well as expert interviews and testimony.

Collection of documentaries exploring the ancient world's most mysterious secrets, monuments and myths. Featuring digital recontructions and dramatisations, as well as expert interviews and testimony.

Collection of documentaries exploring the ancient world's most mysterious secrets, monuments and myths. Featuring digital recontructions and dramatisations, as well as expert interviews and testimony.

Collection of documentaries exploring the ancient world's most mysterious secrets, monuments and myths. Featuring digital recontructions and dramatisations, as well as expert interviews and testimony.

Collection of documentaries exploring the ancient world's most mysterious secrets, monuments and myths. Featuring digital recontructions and dramatisations, as well as expert interviews and testimony.

Collection of documentaries exploring the ancient world's most mysterious secrets, monuments and myths. Featuring digital recontructions and dramatisations, as well as expert interviews and testimony.

BBC documentary about the history of the Monarchy

A monarchy is a form of government in which sovereignty is actually or nominally embodied in a single individual (the monarch).
Forms of monarchy differ widely based on the level of legal autonomy the monarch holds in governance, the method of selection of the monarch, and any predetermined limits on the length of their tenure. When the monarch has no or few legal restraints in state and political matters, it is called an absolute monarchy and is a form of autocracy.

Deep in the Bolivian Andes at the height of 13,000ft stands Tiwanaku, the awe-inspiring ruins of a monolithic temple city. Built by a civilisation who dominated a vast swathe of South America, it was abandoned 1,000 years ago. For centuries it has been a mystery - how did a civilisation flourish at such an altitude and why did it vanish? Jago Cooper journeys through Bolivia's spectacular landscape to investigate the origins of Tiwanaku and finds evidence of an ancient people with amazing understanding of their environment, whose religion was based on collective effort and ritual beer drinking. 

In the final episode of the series we go back 30,000 years to the middle of an ice age. The landscape is dominated by the mighty mammoths, living side by side with woolly rhinos, giant deer and two separate species of human. This programme follows the fate of a herd of mammoths in their annual struggle against the harsh ice age conditions. They spend every summer on the grassy plains of what will one day become the bottom of the North Sea.

One million years ago, South America was a continent of exotic oversized creatures found nowhere else on earth; nine foot terror birds, giant ground sloths and spiky-tailed relatives of the armadillo as big as cars. But the deadliest animal of them all was Smilodon, the largest of all the sabre tooth cats, with canines like carving knives. This programme follows the fortunes of an individual male - Half Tooth. Ousted from his clan by a pair of rival males, his life suddenly becomes a struggle to survive in this alien world.