Good morning we are working on documentaries about the ancient world. This time I found a documentary on the Stone Age on a German Documentary YouTube Channel. BBC does fantastic documentaries and now let’s see what German television to do. This documentary is called The Secrets of the Stone Age and the run time for this episode is 42:25. There is English narration in this documentary and anything in German is translated with narration.
About 12,000 years ago, early humans transitioned from nomads to settlers. Early humans lived a nomadic lifestyle where they hunted and gathered their food. However, that gave way to a more sedentary lifestyle that included farming and settlement building. This documentary looks at the structures that the early settlers built. They left behind large stone structures all around the world. These structures are evidence of these people. This documentary kicks off with the discovery of the Göbekli Tepe settlement which was an important discovery. The Göbekli Tepe complex sheds light on the hunter and gatherer period. It was built before humans settled down. Decorated on the stones were animal motifs. The people who feared the animals lived parallel to a supernatural world. There were beetles and snakes, symbols of that supernatural world, featured on the carvings. The lines between the real world and the supernatural world were blurred. It seems this blurring between the worlds was short-lived and the site was eventually buried. Excavations continue on the site, perhaps there are more secrets to be revealed at Göbekli Tepe. The next stop in this documentary is at a national museum. Here a wall with 4,000 axe heads was featured. These axes were used to clear forest lands for farms and to make walls. I found the discussion on the transition from the hunter-gatherer lifestyle to the farming lifestyle interesting because of how diets and lifestyle changes. Then there is a short discussion on archeology and how archeologists study the past. The only thing missing from this section was a Phil Harding voice-over, I kid of course. Then the skeletons are brought out. The graves reveal who the people were and if they were buried properly. Graves also reveal if animals got to the bones. It is the bones that show the condition of the person who was buried. Specialists talk about how you can see nutritional deficiencies in the bones. Then there is a discussion on DNA, both DNA of humans and DNA of animals. There have been some interesting findings as a result of DNA testing, but you will have to watch the documentary to learn about those results. This would be a good section to show to a science class. Then there was a discussion on populations and why people moved. One historian talks about how people did not move because it was overcrowded in their homeland but moved out of simple curiosity. People would also move on water using boats. This seems to lend credence to the theory that people moved around out of curiosity. The documentary uses Malta and its nearby island of Gozo from Sicily as an example of people moving to a new place. So what did these people build when they get to Malta? What other changes did a farming lifestyle bring? What sort of rituals did these people have? What can we learn from these people? Tune into the rest of this episode to find out more. I am pleasantly surprised by this documentary because I was nervous about what to expect from it. I look forward to doing part two of this documentary. I rarely do documentaries on the DW Channel, so this documentary was a very nice change. There was something old-school about the narration in this documentary. It was not over the top or dramatic, the narration was on an even keel. The animations were very well done as well. I wish the documentary was divided into chapters because then science teachers can pull out what they need to show to a classroom. Anyway, that said this documentary was high quality and very well done and I would not hesitate to show this to a history class and I would show this to a science class as well.
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The purpose of this blog is to share information on what can be used in a classroom, private school, or home school setting as well as serve as a portfolio of my personal and professional work. The reviews are my opinions and should be treated as such. I just want to provide a tool for teachers to select documentaries for their classrooms. |