LEGACY OF ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS

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SUMMARY:
Voyage back in time to the world of six ancient peoples whose contributions to art, culture, and literature had a great effect on civilization. These are the Minoans, the Mycenaeans, Ancient Arabia, the Phoenicians, and the inhabitants of Thera and Troy. Discover their legendary past from the Minotaur and the Labyrinth, to the Trojan War, and to the lost continent of Atlantis.

PRODUCED BY: Istituto Geografico de Agostini S.p.a.
DOCUMENTARY, 6 x 1/2 hr, 2001

DVD SPECIAL FEATURES :
• Available in English

DETAILED SYNOPSIS:
TROY AND PERGAMUM
Though it is today a region of Turkey, the coastal area of Anatolia, or Asia Minor, was a thriving center of Greek culture in ancient times. Two cities there especially stand out -- one for its connection to a work of literature, one for its connection to a work of art. The fabled city of Troy and its legendary ten-year siege by forces from mainland Greece became the subject of one of the cornerstones of western literature, Homer's Iliad. The frieze of the Great Altar of the city of Pergamum, now in a museum in Berlin, is one of the finest surviving examples of Hellenistic sculpture. These cities flourished many centuries apart, but their combined legacies give us today a remarkable glimpse into ancient Anatolian civilization.

THERA/SANTORINI
If you look at a map of Greece, you will see that nearly a quarter of its territory consists of dozens and dozens of islands in the Aegean Sea. In ancient times, one of these islands was Thera. It would not be especially notable -- except for one thing. This island was the site of one of the most massive volcanic eruptions in history. After it happened, Thera was no longer one island, but three -- one of which is today known as Santorini. When the eruption occurred in about 1500 BC, a civilization was wiped out. It was a sophisticated culture much influenced by the Minoan civilization on Crete some 60 miles away. Thera's artists painted colorful frescoes of animals, sport, and war; its women had a passion for jewelry and bright clothes; and its engineers constructed a remarkable system of running water piped into each dwelling. Yet although volcanoes destroy, they also preserve. The eruption on Thera buried an entire city under a layer of ash and pumice, and when that city was rediscovered in the 1960s, it proved to be almost perfectly preserved, thus giving archaeologists a fabulous window into life in ancient times.

CARTHAGE AND THE PHOENICIANS
Archaeological evidence has shown that the Phoenician civilization began to develop around 3000 BC and that it was trading with the Egyptians shortly after that. But it wasn't until about 1200 BC that the Phoenicians began to establish the great commercial empire that has made them celebrated. Their ships, equipped for both commerce and war, dominated the Mediterranean; some say that they sailed as far as Britain and may have even voyaged all the way around Africa. Two of the most important products they traded were a purple dye made from the murex, a type of shellfish, and the timber of cedar trees. The Egyptians used the cedars of Lebanon for coffins, ships, and other artifacts, and King Solomon used them to build the Great Temple in Jerusalem. Originally the Phoenicians ruled from several city-states located in what is now Lebanon, but they went on to establish colonies in the western Mediterranean. Their most illustrious colony was the city of Carthage in North Africa, which waged war against Rome until being defeated in 146 BC. The Phoenicians' greatest contribution to civilization was the refinement of a standardized phonetic alphabet that they passed along to the Greeks. The Greeks introduced it to Europe, where it became the basis for the alphabet we use today.

ANCIENT ARABIA
Located at the southern end of the Arabian peninsula, the countries of Yemen and Oman sit at a strategic crossroads. The Horn of Africa lies just a few miles across the southern end of the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf is off to the East, and the Arabian Sea, an arm of the Indian Ocean, gives ships easy passage to India and points east. In ancient times, this advantageous location gave the area, then known as Saba, access to wealth and power. Today, it is easy to think that ancient societies were, because of their technological limitations, relatively isolated from other parts of the world. But the study of ancient Arabia proves otherwise. The Sabaeans received goods from distant China and India and shipped them to the Mediterranean and beyond. They also produced their own luxury goods that were highly prized in other lands. Their wealth enabled them to build imposing cities, the ruins of which are treasured archaeological sites.

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