Toumai, the New Ancestor
In July 2001, Michel Brunet announced the discovery of a 7-million-year-old skull in Chad's Djurab desert. This documentary retraces the scientific adventure that redefined the origins of humanity.
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Our analyses and companions to the great documentaries on prehistory and antiquity: what science actually says, with sources.
As the last Ice Age waned, small mobile bands pushed into an unknown continent with no pack animals to carry their gear. A study of nearly 500 ston…
Watch the documentary →At the foot of Teti's pyramid, Zahi Hawass's team uncovers 52 shafts and more than fifty New Kingdom coffins, the temple of an unknown queen and a …
Watch the documentary →In the Dampier Archipelago of Western Australia, close to one million petroglyphs engraved over 50,000 years form the world's largest ensemble of e…
Watch the documentary →In Brazil, within 25,000-year-old layers at Serra da Capivara, archaeologist Eric Boeda examines strange quartzite pebbles. Dating, microscopic ana…
Watch the documentary →In July 2001, Michel Brunet announced the discovery of a 7-million-year-old skull in Chad's Djurab desert. This documentary retraces the scientific adventure that redefined the origins of humanity.
Watch the documentary →Between January and February 2026, Jean-Jacques Hublin, professor at the Collège de France, delivered six lectures on the fundamental question: how and why did <em>Homo sapiens</em> replace all other human species? Available in full on YouTube, they are an exceptional resource for understanding our own evolutionary history.
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 →From the Fertile Crescent to the first cities of Mari and Ebla, from Palmyra to Damascus: beneath Syria's sands lie the roots of civilization. A documentary, from the Neolithic revolution to living heritage.
Watch the documentary →Lascaux, Altamira, reindeer-antler harpoons and sculptures of extraordinary refinement: at the close of the Ice Age, Magdalenian hunters brought Palaeolithic art to its peak. A documentary on the carved face of these artists.
Watch the documentary →Around 1350 BCE, pharaoh Akhenaten overturned Egyptian religion, imposed the cult of the solar disc Aten, founded Amarna and reinvented art. An ARTE documentary on a monotheistic revolution with no future.
Watch the documentary →Grid cities, covered drains, engraved seals and an undeciphered script: a dive into the vastest and most mysterious of the Bronze Age civilizations, with the imineo documentary.
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 →From the semi-buried pit houses of the early Basketmakers to the great houses of Chaco Canyon and the cliff villages of Mesa Verde, the Ancestral Puebloan culture shaped the Four Corners landscape for nearly three millennia. A look back at a farming, sky-watching, city-building civilization whose heirs still live in the Hopi and Zuni pueblos.
Watch the documentary →At Saqqara, archaeologists unearth an Old Kingdom vizier's tomb, untouched for 4,000 years. Who was this all-powerful man? What does his tomb reveal about the secret organisation of pharaonic power?
Watch the documentary →Second part: the climatic aridification around 2200 BCE dries up the Nile floods, starves populations and precipitates civil wars. The Ipuwer Papyrus testifies to a world turned upside down.
Watch the documentary →How did the most powerful empire of the ancient world collapse in less than a century? This Arte documentary retraces the political disintegration of the Egyptian Old Kingdom.
Watch the documentary →Nota Bonus hosts Franck Monnier, associate researcher at the CNRS, for an hour-long interview on ancient Egyptian building techniques. Pyramids, ramps, quarrymen, site organisation: science has answered far more questions than most people realise.
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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