The First Spears

Why did Emperor Constantine abandon Rome to build a spectacular new capital from scratch? In the year 312 a bloody civil war and a miraculous heavenly vision changed the Roman world forever.Tristan Hughes and Professor Judith Herrin uncover the epic origins of Constantinople. Dis ...  Show more

It's one of history’s most compelling cold cases. What happened to the Ninth Legion, a crack unit of 5,000 Roman soldiers who vanished from the historical record without a trace?Tristan Hughes is joined by Roman historian Dr Simon Elliott to investigate the fate of the legion tha ...  Show more

Let us put some flesh on the bones of our prehistoric hominin story, and discover what our ancestors created to get carved flesh from the bones of animals. We investigate the technological advances from over three million years ago up to the last million years. 

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 describes an object that dates from the earliest settlement of North Americ ...  Show more

HUMAN ANCESTORS (1) - In this episode we will be going right back to the very beginning, looking into the first upright walkers, then the australopithecines, homo habilis, homo erectus, hand tool construction, fire production and homo heidelbergensis.