Documentary films & series
Our analyses and companions to the great documentaries on prehistory and antiquity: what science actually says, with sources.
Hisarlik, Turkey: for 150 years, archaeologists have been excavating the site believed to be Homer's ancient Troy. Between myth and reality, science and controversy, a fascinating inquiry into Antiquity's most famous city.
Watch the documentary →Through the Dame du Cavillon, the burials of Dolni Vestonice, Sungir and the Cussac cave, this ARTE documentary (2021) reveals the unsuspected complexity of Upper Palaeolithic hunter-gatherer societies.
Watch the documentary →Thirty-seven metres underwater near Marseille, Cosquer cave hides 27,000 years of prehistoric art: horses, aurochs and great auks painted by Homo sapiens deeply connected to the coastal world. This documentary explores the maritime roots of our species, from the shell-adorned Lady of Cavillon to the whales of prehistoric Atlantic Europe, and asks what the rising seas have swallowed of our past.
Watch the documentary →35,000 years ago, humans anatomically identical to us ventured into the darkness of caves to paint masterpieces. Who were the Cro-Magnons, and what were they expressing on the walls of Font-de-Gaume, Altamira, and Lascaux?
Watch the documentary →Its entrance is 37 metres below the sea. Its paintings are 27,000 years old. Cosquer Cave, discovered by a diver in 1985 in the Marseille calanques, is the only known decorated cave in the world whose access is submerged, a masterpiece that rising seas threaten to engulf for ever.
Watch the documentary →Between 50,000 and 35,000 years ago, Neanderthals vanished as Homo sapiens produced the first artworks and built the first social networks. Seven filmed lectures from the Collège de France dissect this pivotal turning point in human history.
Watch the documentary →Where the North Sea now lies, hunter-gatherers lived 10,000 years ago. Doggerland, a vast plain linking Britain to the continent, was slowly drowned, then swept by a tsunami.
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