8. The Sumerians - Fall of the First Cities

In the highlands of the Iranian Plateau, a collection of enormous pillars reach up to the sky...In this episode, we tell the story of the Achaemenid Persian Empire. Find out how this remarkable ancient power sprung up from the rubble of a ruined world to become the most powerful ...  Afficher plus

In the far east of the Eurasian steppe, the sound of hoofbeats is growing...In this episode we travel along the vast grassland corridor of the steppe, to hear one of the most remarkable and unlikely stories from medieval history – the story of the Mongol Empire. Find out how this ...  Afficher plus

Cultures around the world have myths that speak of a mysterious underground kingdom that exists deep within the earth, hidden away from the primitive and violent surface-dwellers: which is us. Picture a society untouched by time, unscathed by war, and unaffected by natural disast ...  Afficher plus

Egypt and Mesopotamia are the most famous civilizations of the ancient world, but at the same time in South Asia - today's Pakistan and India - an even larger and more populous society came into being: the Indus Valley Civilization, whose peak lasted from 2600 to 1900 BC. But ...

For centuries self-assured academics believed Troy was a mythological city -- until, that is, the ruins were discovered. Over the span of history, the human species has lost people, cities and entire civilizations. Occasionally, governments don't want these lost empires to be ...

The arid shoreline between the Andes Mountains and the Pacific seems like an unlikely place to host one of the world's earliest complex societies. But more than 5,000 years ago, the people of the Norte Chico Culture built cities, temples, and monuments that laid the foundation ...