In a 90-minute special presentation, NOVA reveals the secrets of how the ancient pyramids were built by actually building one. A noted Egyptologist, Mark Lehner, and a professional stonemason, Roger Hopkins (from This Old House), join forces in the shadow of the Great Pyramid of Giza to put clever and sometimes bizarre pyramid construction theories to the test.
THIS OLD PYRAMID relates the history and development of pyramid building techniques and puts those techniques to use right on camera. The suspense builds as an overworked crew of masons races against time to complete a small pyramid as quickly as ancient builders erected the Great Pyramid.
In 1974 Don Johanson, noted anthropologist, found a skeleton of our oldest ancestor, known around the world as `Lucy', and turned the academic world on its ear with the a bold new theory of how homo-sapiens evolved from the ape. IN SEARCH OF HUMAN ORIGINS joins Johanson on a new quest to solve mysteries surrounding the origins of the family, the development of intelligence, and the emergence of culture.
Episode One: The Story of Lucy: Johanson recounts his discovery and the important information it continues to generate. He returns to Ethiopia and makes an exciting new find that hints at the birth of the nuclear family.
Episode Two: Surviving in Africa: Johanson sets out to disprove the long-cherished view that early man's larger brain and reliance on technology are the by-products of the ability to hunt. He embarks on a journey across the Serengeti in search of
food- not by hunting, but by scavenging off the leftovers of lions and leopards.
Episode Three: The Creative Revolution: Fifty thousand generations ago, the hunter-gatherers of Africa began to paint, carve, talk, bury their dead, travel and trade. Why this transformation took place is at the heart of heated debates today. Johanson retraces the steps of our ancestors across Africa to get to the bottom of the mystery.
Each minute, all over the world, a baby is born. An everyday occurrence, yet each birth is the culmination of one of nature's most complex, mysterious, and seemingly miraculous processes.
A dramatic breakthrough in science and cinematography, THE MIRACLE OF LIFE takes you on an incredible voyage through the human body as a new life begins. With magnification of up to half a million times the actual size, you can see the entire birth process, from the moment of conception, through the development of a single cell into an embryo, and finally birth. Produced by Swedish Television in association with WGBH Boston, THE MIRACLE OF LIFE won an Emmy Award as a program in the highly acclaimed NOVA series on PBS.
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