Lost Worlds: The Story of Archaeology
This six-part series presents the definitive history of archaeology, a 250-year worldwide odyssey that began with the unearthing of the ruins of Pompeii buried beneath the ash of Mt. Vesuvius. In a short time, archaeologists started pursuing very different objectives: some were treasure-seekers hoping to plunder antiquities of the ancient world; others sought to prove theories about the origins of civilization or the historical accuracy of Homer or the Bible; still others focused on humans themselves, trying to determine the age of the species. The series also looks at how archaeology has been misused as an instrument of foreign policy and where the study is going in the future with new technologies and methods.
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Cast
Seasons
- Ep 1
1.Stones and Bones
06-04-2000The Birth of Archaeology In the last 250 years, archaeologists have changed the basic understanding of time and human existence. This program looks at the birth of modern archaeolo...
- Ep 2
2.Treasure Seekers
13-04-2000Archaeology Turns from Passion to Plunder Archaeology was born of treasure-seeking, but it became the stimulus for rampant pillaging of antiquities in the 18th and 19th centuries....
- Ep 3
3.Looking for the One Beginning
20-04-2000The Fallacy of Diffusionism When explorers examined the remains of an advanced Mexican culture, they concluded that a superior race must have come from elsewhere to build the palac...
- Ep 4
4.Digging by the Book
27-04-2000Program Archaeology While most read Homer’s Iliad as an entertaining epic, one man believed it was more than a story and could actually be used as a literary map to find ancient Tr...
- Ep 5
5.At the Service of the State
04-05-2000Archaeology as Political Tool In 1940, Hitler’s archaeologists excavated sites in Poland to try to prove that Germans had lived there before the Poles—an anthropological justificat...
- Ep 6
6.The Future of the Past
11-05-2000What are the concerns of archaeology today? How will improved methods and scientific technology shift perspective on the past? The last episode of this series looks at the shift fr...
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