Keyword Prhistoire

The great follow-up to 'Walking with Dinosaurs' and 'Walking with Beasts', presented by Professor Robert Winston, explains the story of human evolution.

One of the most significant cases in European archaeology is the grave of the shaman woman of Bad Dürrenberg, a key finding of the last hunter-gatherer groups. From a time when there were no written records, this site was first researched by the Nazis, who saw a physically strong male warrior from an ‘original Aryan race’ in the buried person. It was, in fact, the most powerful woman of her time. The latest research shows that she was dark-skinned, had physical deformities, and was a spiritual leader. The documentary – using high-end CGI and motion capture – compares the researchers of the Nazi era, who misrepresented and instrumentalised their findings, to today’s researchers, who meticulously compile findings and evidence, and use cross- disciplinary methods to examine and evaluate them. It also substantiates the theory of the powerful roles women played in prehistoric times. The story of this woman, buried with a baby in her arms, still fascinates us 9,000 years after her death.

A documentary examining what the Tyrannosaurus Rex was really like - both appearance and behaviour - using the recent palaeontological and zoological research.

A short distance from Marseille, at Cape Morgiou, in the depths of the Calanques massif, lies the Cosquer cave, discovered only about thirty years ago by a diver, Henri Cosquer. With its bestiary of hundreds of paintings and engravings - horses, bison, jellyfish, penguins - the only underwater decorated cave in the world allows us to learn a little more about Mediterranean societies 30,000 years ago. Today, threatened by rising water levels accelerated by global warming, this jewel of the Upper Paleolithic is in danger of being swallowed up. To save the cave from disappearing, the Ministry of Culture has chosen to digitize it. From this virtual duplicate, a replica has been made on the surface to offer the public a reconstruction that allows them to admire these masterpieces.

In 1872, in the cave of Cavillon in Monaco, archaeologist Émile Rivière (1835-1922) unearthed an apparently very old human skeleton, at least 24,000 years old, a discovery that changed the modern image of prehistoric men and women.

In Morocco, new excavations on the site of Jebel Irhoud upset the generally accepted view of the dating of the appearance of man.

A three-part British documentary film series about life in the Paleozoic, bringing to life extinct arthropods, fish, amphibians, synapsids, and reptiles. Narrated by Kenneth Branagh and using state-of-the-art visual effects, this prequel to Walking with Dinosaurs shows nearly 300 million years of Paleozoic history, from the Cambrian Period (530 million years ago) to the Early Triassic Period (248 million years ago).

A Walking with Dinosaurs Special - broadcast in North America as Chased by Dinosaurs - is a two-part British documentary film series featuring Nigel Marven and his "team of fellow explorers" as time-travellers who encounter dinosaurs in the wild. Most of the creatures were not featured in the original Walking with Dinosaurs series.