Episodes

For 1000 years, the Anasazi — as the ancient Pueblo people are commonly called — flourished in what is now New Mexico. Yet around 1200 A.D., something brought their utopia to a sudden and mysterious end. What brought an end to this once-prosperous culture?

Why did the great airship Hindenburg explode? The accident that put an end to the golden age of airships is widely believed to have been caused by the ignition of nitrogen gas used for lift, but scientists set out to prove the Hindenburg's real flaw was only skin deep.

Civilization of legend and lore, the Vikings of Greenland left no clues to their sudden and mysterious disappearance. Or did they? On a desolate coast of Greenland, an international team of archeologists, forensic anthropologists, entomologists, and botanists sets out to investigate minute clues in a complex chain of events that may have led to the demise of a Viking colony.

For nearly a century, humans forgot their glorious past and huddled in a state of ignorance and fear. Scientists now believe that the early Dark Ages may have been triggered by an actual event that occurred around 535 A.D. At the center of a stunningly complex chain of events seems to be “a loud bang” – a volcanic explosion equal to “two thousand million Hiroshima size bombs.”

Could a violent volcanic eruption of Krakatoa be responsible for the climatic cataclysm that hit Earth in 535 A.D., causing two years of darkness, famine, drought and disease, and did this lead to emergence of new nations and religions?