Iceman Murder Mystery
A new forensic investigation of a 5,000-year-old mummy reconstructs his death and reveals an ancient way of life.
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Iceman Murder Mystery
He’s been dead for more than 5,000 years and poked, prodded, and probed by scientists for the last 20. Yet Ötzi the Iceman, the famous mummified corpse pulled from a glacier in the Italian Alps, continues to keep many secrets. Now, through an autopsy like none other, scientists will attempt to unravel mysteries about this ancient mummy, revealing not only the details of Ötzi’s death but also an entire way of life. How did people live during Ötzi’s time, the Copper Age? What did they eat? What diseases did they cope with? Join NOVA as we defrost the ultimate time capsule—the 5,000-year-old man.
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Quest for Solomon's Mines
Countless treasure-seekers have set off in search of King Solomon's mines, trekking through burning deserts and scaling the forbidding mountains of Africa and the Levant, inspired by the Bible's account of splendid temples and palaces adorned in glittering gold and copper. Yet to date, the evidence that has claimed to support the existence of Solomon and other early kings in the Bible has been highly controversial. In fact, so little physical evidence of the kings who ruled Israel and Edom has been found that many contend that they are no more real than King Arthur. In the summer of 2010, NOVA and National Geographic embarked on two cutting-edge field investigations that illuminate the legend of Solomon and reveal the source of the great wealth that powered the first mighty biblical kingdoms. These groundbreaking expeditions expose important new clues buried in the pockmarked desert of Jordan, including ancient remnants of an industrial-scale copper mine and a 3,000-year-old message with the words "slave," "king," and "judge."
Quest for Solomon's Mines
Archeologists seek the truth about the Bible’s most famous king and his legendary riches.
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Secrets of Stonehenge
Dated to the late Stone Age, Stonehenge may be the best-known and most mysterious relic of prehistory. Every year, a million visitors are drawn to England to gaze upon the famous circle of stones, but the monument's meaning has continued to elude us. Now investigations inside and around Stonehenge have kicked off a dramatic new era of discovery and debate over who built Stonehenge and for what purpose.
Secrets of Stonehenge
New archeological finds shed light on the most misunderstood monument of the ancient world.
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Building the Great Cathedrals
Take a dazzling architectural journey inside those majestic marvels of Gothic architecture, the great cathedrals of Chartres, Beauvais and other European cities. Carved from 100 million pounds of stone, some cathedrals now teeter on the brink of catastrophic collapse. To save them, a team of engineers, architects, art historians, and computer scientists searches the naves, bays, and bell-towers for clues. NOVA investigates the architectural secrets that the cathedral builders used to erect their towering, glass-filled walls and reveals the hidden formulas drawn from the Bible that drove medieval builders ever upward.
Building the Great Cathedrals
How did medieval engineers construct magnificent skyscrapers of glass and stone?
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Ghosts of Machu Picchu
Perched atop a mountain crest, mysteriously abandoned more than four centuries ago, Machu Picchu is the most famous archeological ruin in the Western Hemisphere and an iconic symbol of the power and engineering prowess of the Inca. In the years since Machu Picchu was discovered by Hiram Bingham in 1911, there have been countless theories about this "Lost City of the Incas," yet it remains an enigma. Why did the Incas build it on such an inaccessible site? Who lived among its stone buildings, farmed its emerald green terraces, and drank from its sophisticated aqueduct system? NOVA joins a new generation of archeologists as they probe areas of Machu Picchu that haven't been touched since the time of the Incas. See what they discover when they unearth burials of the people who built the sacred site.
Ghosts of Machu Picchu
Why did the Incas abandon their city in the clouds?
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Riddles of the Sphinx
For 45 centuries, the Great Sphinx has cast its enigmatic gaze over Egypt's Giza Plateau. The biggest and oldest statue in a land of colossal ancient monuments, its scale is staggering: The mighty head towers as tall as the White House, while its body is nearly the length of a football field. This strange half-human, half-lion image has inspired countless fantastic theories about its origins. How was it built, and who or what does it represent?
Riddles of the Sphinx
A marvel of ancient Egyptian engineering is threatened. Can it be saved?
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- 53:22
Building Pharaoh's Ship
A magnificent trading vessel embarks on a royal expedition to a mysterious, treasure-laden land called Punt. Is this journey, intricately depicted on the wall of one of Egypt's most impressive temples, mere myth—or was it a reality? NOVA travels to the legendary temple, built some 3,500 years ago for the celebrated female pharaoh Hatshepsut, in search of answers to this tantalizing archeological mystery. Did Punt exist and, if so, where was it? Did the ancient Egyptians, who built elaborate barges to sail down the Nile, also have the expertise to embark on a long sea voyage? NOVA follows a team of archeologists and boat builders as they reconstruct the mighty vessel shown on the mysterious carving and then finally launch it on the Red Sea on a unique voyage of discovery.
Building Pharaoh's Ship
Can the legendary trading vessel of an Egyptian queen sail again?
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The Bible's Buried Secrets
In this landmark two-hour special, NOVA takes viewers on a scientific journey that began 3,000 years ago and continues today. The film presents the latest archeological scholarship from the Holy Land to explore the beginnings of modern religion and the origins of the Hebrew Bible, also known as the Old Testament. This archeological detective story tackles some of the biggest questions in biblical studies: Where did the ancient Israelites come from? Who wrote the Bible, when, and why? How did the worship of one God—the foundation of modern Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—emerge?
The Bible's Buried Secrets
An archeological detective story traces the origins of the Hebrew Bible.
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Profile: Pardis Sabeti
By day, Pardis Sabeti is a Harvard evolutionary geneticist who is using an algorithm she developed to try to understand how the malaria parasite develops resistance to the drugs we use to fight it. By night, Sabeti and her band Thousand Days play the clubs around greater Boston. In this NOVA scienceNOW segment, meet the Iranian-born Sabeti in both of her very different worlds.
Profile: Pardis Sabeti
By night she's a rocker. By day, she's a Harvard geneticist tracking the evolution of the human genome.
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- 52:40
Cracking the Maya Code
The ancient Maya civilization of Central America left behind an intricate and mysterious hieroglyphic script, carved on monuments, painted on pottery, and drawn in handmade bark-paper books. For centuries, scholars considered it too complex ever to understand—until recently, when an ingenious series of breakthroughs finally cracked the code and unleashed a torrent of new insights into the Mayas' turbulent past. For the first time, NOVA presents the epic inside story of how the decoding was done—traveling to the remote jungles of southern Mexico and Central America to investigate how the code was broken and what Maya writings now reveal.
Cracking the Maya Code
The story behind the centuries-long decipherment of ancient Maya hieroglyphs
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Secrets of the Parthenon
For 25 centuries the Parthenon has been shot at, set on fire, rocked by earthquakes, looted for its sculptures, almost destroyed by explosion, and disfigured by well-meaning renovations. It has gone from temple, to church, to mosque, to munitions dump. What could be next? How about a scientific search for the secrets of its incomparable beauty and astonishingly rapid construction? With unprecedented access, NOVA unravels the architectural and engineering mysteries of this celebrated ancient temple.
Secrets of the Parthenon
How did the ancient Athenians build this near-flawless icon of Greece's Golden Age?
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- 09:22
Profile: Julie Schablitsky
Historical archeologist Julie Schablitsky is rewriting legendary tales of the American frontier. She has found evidence that members of the Donner family did everything but resort to cannibalism during their ill-fated California trek with a group of settlers in the 1840s (some of whom did turn to forbidden flesh). Schablitsky is also shedding light on one of the most poorly documented aspects of life on the frontier: the history of Chinese laborers who built America’s railroads and did other backbreaking work.
Schablitsky fills in the gaps of American history by analyzing the objects that pioneers left behind. She is one of the first archeologists to recover historic-period human DNA from an artifact—a medical syringe that had several users. While she's comfortable getting dirty in the archeological trenches, Schablitsky enjoys getting spruced up as what she calls "a lipstick archeologist."
Profile: Julie Schablitsky
Meet an archeologist who is helping to rewrite the history of the Donner Party and the Old West.
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