The Lost Neanderthals

Man’s early ancestors set off to conquer the world, to explore the unknown, to adapt to every environment. And one day, to conquer fire – a discovery that made them invincible. They built shelters. They transformed their environment. But still this did not slake their thirst for more. They sought to fathom Nature’s mysteries. They invented stories to explain the inexplicable. Now, they are Men. Here, for the very first time in television history, is the saga of our origins, told through the story of one single family - an epic journey upon which the latest scientific discoveries shine an exciting new light.

A Muslim ambassador exiled from his homeland joins a group of Vikings, initially offended by their behavior but growing to respect them. As they travel together, they learn of a legendary evil closing in and must unite to confront this formidable force.

Cultural mistrust and false accusations doom a friendship in British colonial India between an Indian doctor, an Englishwoman engaged to marry a city magistrate, and an English educator.

Ancient Caves brings science and adventure together as it follows paleoclimatologist Dr. Gina Moseley on a mission to unlock the secrets of the Earth’s climate in the most unlikely of places: caves. Moseley and her team of cave explorers travel the world exploring vast underground worlds in search of stalagmite samples – geologic “fingerprints” – that reveal clues about the planet’s climate history. Their quest leads them to some of the world’s most remote caves, both above and below the water, in France, Iceland, the Bahamas, the U.S. and Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. Together, they go where very few humans will ever go, revealing the incredible lengths scientists will go to study the unknown.

21 September 2001, 10h17. In the AZF factory, in Toulouse, France, a storage of around 300 tons ammonium nitrate exploded, injuring thousands and killing 31 people. 20 years later, never seen before footage and unpublished interviews show the minute by minute of this industrial disaster, the biggest in French history since WWII.

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.

"The Last Dragon" is a nature mockumentary about a British scientific team that attempts to understand the unique incredible beasts that have fascinated people for ages. CGI is used to create the dragons.

Journey into Amazing Caves is an extraordinary IMAX adventure into the depths of the earth to uncover the secrets to life underground.

The Mandrin Cave in the Rhône Valley is a fascinating excavation site. Archaeologist Ludovic Slimak discovered fossils and flints here, proving that Neanderthals inhabited the cave for over 80,000 years. The first Neanderthal in France for half a century was also unearthed in the cave: He was given the name Thorin.

When his clan, including his wife and baby girl Néa, are massacred, Ao, a desperate Neandertal man, decides to leave the North country where he has been living for the South where he was born. His aim is to join his twin brother, from whom he was separated when he was nine. On his long and adventurous way home, he meets Aki, a Homo Sapiens woman...

Werner Herzog gains exclusive access to film inside the Chauvet caves of Southern France, capturing the oldest known pictorial creations of humankind in their astonishing natural setting.

The extraction of flight feathers from birds of prey, as practiced by Neanderthal man, is revived in the Fumane Cave in Lessinia.

Over 60,000 years ago, the first modern humans left their African homeland and entered Europe, then a bleak and inhospitable continent in the grip of the Ice Age. But when they arrived, they were not alone: the stocky, powerfully built Neanderthals had already been living there for hundreds of thousands of years. So what happened when the first modern humans encountered the Neanderthals? Did they make love or war?

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 1907 Herman Hesse spent a few days mediating and fasting in a cave near Monte Verità. During these days he collected the visions and insights that went on to be very influential in his thinking and shaped some of the most important works of his literary career. The images and sounds of this film were shot there and are a homage to this cave and its possible invocations. Grotta is part of Fieldworks, an ongoing experiment with ambient video and radio frequencies.