In these extraordinary times, there is one thing that can offer solace to everyone – the wonder of the natural world. In the most extreme of environments, from the hottest deserts to the freezing poles, from the highest mountains to underwater kingdoms, animals overcome adversity to survive and thrive, offering a message of hope to humanity. To raise our spirits, David Attenborough, Hans Zimmer and Dave unite for a special Natural History event – Planet Earth: A Celebration. The special one-hour programme brings together eight of the most extraordinary sequences from Planet Earth II and Blue Planet II including racer snakes vs iguana, surfing bottlenose dolphins and rare footage of the Himalayan snow leopard.
An Ice Age relic found in a mysterious cave is evidence of prehistoric humans' connection to the supernatural. Using cutting-edge tech, experts investigate this 40,000-year-old treasure to reveal why it was made and the long-lost myths it represents. In the summer of 1939, a team of explorers unearthed hundred of mammoth ivory fragments within a cave in Germany. Due to the start of World War II, the explorers were forced to abandon their findings, and the fragments laid forgotten in a museum. Decades later, as archeologists began piecing the fragments together, an extraordinary artifact emerged -- a figure with both animal and human features, now known as the 'Lion man.'
Episode 3 delves into how life began on a roiling, violent Earth and explores the story behind Victor Goldschmidt, the man who found the first clues to life's beginnings on our planet. Neil deGrasse Tyson takes viewers on a journey through space and time to witness the tenacity and creativity of life on Earth and the prospects of life throughout the universe.
Episode 7 focuses specifically on first contact and the search for intelligent life in the vastness of the cosmos. Are humans ready to make first contact with other intelligent beings? Is our technology even sophisticated enough to detect communication signals from another world? Who are we to search for alien intelligence when we can't even recognize or respect the consciousness all around us, or even beneath our feet. Neil deGrasse Tyson reveals the hidden underground network that is a collaboration of four kingdoms of life, and a true first contact story between humans and beings who communicate in a symbolic language and have maintained a representative democracy for many tens of millions of years.
Five times, the Earth has faced apocalyptic events. Cataclysms that have swept away all life forms, or almost. Each time, a handful of species has survived, establishing a new world. What did these prehistoric worlds look like? What catastrophes led to their disappearance? How did our distant ancestors manage to survive the five mass extinctions that the Earth has suffered, finally giving rise to the world we know today? Combining CGI of ancient animal and plant life, VFX and filming, 'Prehistoric Worlds' looks back at the five mass extinctions of life on Earth that allowed the advent of the human race. On the brink of a sixth mass extinction that the scientific community considers imminent – this time caused by mankind – this film gives us an interesting and powerful look at Man's existence on the scale of the history of our planet.
At 11 o'clock on New Year's Eve of the Cosmic Calendar, Homo erectus stood up for the first time, freeing its hands and earning the species its name. They began to move around, to explore, daring to risk everything to get to unknown places. Our Neanderthal relatives lived much as we did and did many of the things we consider to be 'human.' More restless than their cousins the Neanderthals and Denisovans, our Homo sapiens ancestors crossed seas and unforgiving landscapes, changing the land, ocean and atmosphere, leading to mass extinction. The scientific community gave our age a new name, 'Anthropocene.' Since the first civilizations we've wondered if there's something about human nature that contains the seeds of our destruction. Syukuro Manabe was born in rural Japan and took an intense interest in Earth's average global temperature. In the 1960's, he would assemble the evidence he needed to predict the increase of Earth's temperature due to greenhouse gases until it becomes an uninhabitable and toxic environment, leading to our extinction. 'This doesn't have to be,' says Neil deGrasse Tyson, 'it's not too late. There's another hallway, another future we can still have; we'll find a way.'
To raise our spirits, David Attenborough, Hans Zimmer and Dave unite for a special Natural History event – Planet Earth: A Celebration. The special one-hour programme brings together eight of the most extraordinary sequences from Planet Earth II and Blue Planet II including racer snakes vs iguana, surfing bottlenose dolphins and rare footage of the Himalayan snow leopard.