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Dinosaurs, Myths And Monsters
''Dinosaurs, Myths and Monsters'' is a 2011 British documentary film produced by the BBC. The film premiered on BBC Four on 14 September 2011, and is presented and written by popular historian Tom Holland. Jamie Muir served as the programme's director and producer. The duration of the film is an hour. In the spirit of Adrienne Mayor's ground-breaking studies of 2000 and 2005, the documentary explores how fossils may have influenced the mythologies of different cultures, including the Native Americans and the ancient Greeks. Mayor speculated that fossils could have led to mythological depictions of the thunderbird, the giant bird of Native American mythology, and the Cyclopes, the one-eyed giants of Greek and Roman mythology. The concept of the Cyclopes may have been derived from Greek encounters with elephant skulls. The Greeks, unfamiliar with living elephants, could have misinterpreted the skull's nose cavity as a single eye socket. The film was produced alongside three oth ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tom Holland (author)
Thomas Holland (born 5 January 1968) is an English author who has published best-selling books on topics including classical and medieval history and the origins of Islam. He has worked with the BBC to create and host historical television documentaries, and presents the radio series ''Making History''. Early life and education Holland was born in Oxfordshire and brought up in the village of Broad Chalke near Salisbury, Wiltshire, England, the elder of two sons. His younger brother James Holland is also an author whose focus is World War II. He has said that his two passions as a child were dinosaurs and ancient civilizations: "I had the classic small boy's fascination with dinosaurs – because they're glamorous, dangerous and extinct – and essentially the appeal of the empires of antiquity is much the same. There's a splendour and a terror about them that appealed to me – and that kind of emotional attachment is something that stays with you." Holland attended Chafy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
BBC Four
BBC Four is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It was launched on 2 March 2002"Culture, controversy and cutting edge documentary: BBC FOUR prepares to launch" BBC Press Office, 14 February 2002. Retrieved 2 April 2010. and shows a wide variety of programmes including arts, documentaries, music, international film and drama, and current affairs. It is required by its licence to air at least 100 hours of new arts and music programmes, 110 hours of new factual programmes, and to premiere twenty foreign films each year. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Popular History
Popular history is a broad genre of historiography that takes a popular approach, aims at a wide readership, and usually emphasizes narrative, personality and vivid detail over scholarly analysis. The term is used in contradistinction to professional academic or scholarly history writing which is usually more specialized and technical and, thus, less accessible to the general reader. Conceptualizations It is proposed that popular history is a "moral science" in the sense that recreates the past not only for its own sake but also to underscore how history could facilitate an ethically responsible present. Some view it as history produced by authors who are better interlocutors capable of translating the language of scientificity to ordinary everyday language. Some scholars partly attributed the development of popular history to the increase of writers-turned-historians such as Benson Lossing, David Pae, and Mary Botham Howitt, who wrote historical events "in good style" and, th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Adrienne Mayor
Adrienne Mayor (born 1946) is a historian of ancient science and a classical folklorist. Mayor specializes in ancient history and the study of "folk science", or how pre-scientific cultures interpreted data about the natural world, and how these interpretations form the basis of many ancient myths, folklore and popular beliefs. Her work in pre-scientific fossil discoveries and traditional interpretations of paleontological remains has opened up a new field within the emerging discipline of geomythology and classical folklore. Mayor's book, ''Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, & the Scorpion Bombs'', on the origins of biological and chemical warfare revealed the ancient roots of poison weaponry and tactics. Life From 1980 to 1996, she worked as a copy editor, and printmaker. Since 2006, Mayor has been a research scholar in the Classics Department and the History and Philosophy of Science Program at Stanford University. Mayor has published books and articles on the history of automatons, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Indigenous Peoples Of The Americas
The Indigenous peoples of the Americas are the inhabitants of the Americas before the arrival of the European settlers in the 15th century, and the ethnic groups who now identify themselves with those peoples. Many Indigenous peoples of the Americas were traditionally hunter-gatherers and many, especially in the Amazon basin, still are, but many groups practiced aquaculture and agriculture. While some societies depended heavily on agriculture, others practiced a mix of farming, hunting, and gathering. In some regions, the Indigenous peoples created monumental architecture, large-scale organized cities, city-states, chiefdoms, states, kingdoms, republics, confederacies, and empires. Some had varying degrees of knowledge of engineering, architecture, mathematics, astronomy, writing, physics, medicine, planting and irrigation, geology, mining, metallurgy, sculpture, and gold smithing. Many parts of the Americas are still populated by Indigenous peoples; some countries have ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece ( el, Ἑλλάς, Hellás) was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity ( AD 600), that comprised a loose collection of culturally and linguistically related city-states and other territories. Most of these regions were officially unified only once, for 13 years, under Alexander the Great's empire from 336 to 323 BC (though this excludes a number of Greek city-states free from Alexander's jurisdiction in the western Mediterranean, around the Black Sea, Cyprus, and Cyrenaica). In Western history, the era of classical antiquity was immediately followed by the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine period. Roughly three centuries after the Late Bronze Age collapse of Mycenaean Greece, Greek urban poleis began to form in the 8th century BC, ushering in the Archaic period and the colonization of the Mediterranean Basin. This was followed by the age of Classical G ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
New Statesman
The ''New Statesman'' is a British political and cultural magazine published in London. Founded as a weekly review of politics and literature on 12 April 1913, it was at first connected with Sidney and Beatrice Webb and other leading members of the socialist Fabian Society, such as George Bernard Shaw, who was a founding director. Today, the magazine is a print–digital hybrid. According to its present self-description, it has a liberal and progressive political position. Jason Cowley, the magazine's editor, has described the ''New Statesman'' as a publication "of the left, for the left" but also as "a political and literary magazine" with "sceptical" politics. The magazine was founded by members of the Fabian Society as a weekly review of politics and literature. The longest-serving editor was Kingsley Martin (1930–1960), and the current editor is Jason Cowley, who assumed the post in 2008. The magazine has recognised and published new writers and critics, as well as e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thunderbird (mythology)
The thunderbird is a legendary creature in certain North American indigenous peoples' history and culture. It is considered a supernatural being of power and strength. It is especially important, and frequently depicted, in the art, songs and oral histories of many Pacific Northwest Coast cultures, but is also found in various forms among some peoples of the American Southwest, East Coast of the United States, Great Lakes, and Great Plains. In modern times it has achieved notoriety as a purported cryptid, similar to creatures such as Bigfoot, and the Loch Ness Monster. General description The thunderbird is said to create thunder by flapping its wings (Algonquian), and lightning by flashing its eyes (Algonquian, Iroquois). Algonquian The thunderbird myth and motif is prevalent among Algonquian peoples in the "Northeast", i.e., Eastern Canada (Ontario, Quebec, and eastward) and Northeastern United States, and the Iroquois peoples (surrounding the Great Lakes). The dis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cyclops
In Greek mythology and later Roman mythology, the Cyclopes ( ; el, Κύκλωπες, ''Kýklōpes'', "Circle-eyes" or "Round-eyes"; singular Cyclops ; , ''Kýklōps'') are giant one-eyed creatures. Three groups of Cyclopes can be distinguished. In Hesiod's ''Theogony'', the Cyclopes are the three brothers Brontes, Steropes, and Arges (Cyclops), Arges, who made for Zeus his weapon the thunderbolt. In Homer's ''Odyssey'', they are an uncivilized group of shepherds, the brethren of Polyphemus encountered by Odysseus. Cyclopes were also famous as the builders of the Cyclopean masonry, Cyclopean walls of Mycenae and Tiryns. In ''Cyclops (play), Cyclops'', the fifth-century BC play by Euripides, a satyr play, chorus of satyrs offers comic relief based on the encounter of Odysseus and Polyphemus. The third-century BC poet Callimachus makes the Hesiodic Cyclopes the assistants of smith-god Hephaestus; as does Virgil in the Latin epic ''Aeneid'', where he seems to equate the Hesiodic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elephant
Elephants are the largest existing land animals. Three living species are currently recognised: the African bush elephant, the African forest elephant, and the Asian elephant. They are the only surviving members of the family Elephantidae and the order Proboscidea. The order was formerly much more diverse during the Pleistocene, but most species became extinct during the Late Pleistocene epoch. Distinctive features of elephants include a long proboscis called a trunk, tusks, large ear flaps, pillar-like legs, and tough but sensitive skin. The trunk is used for breathing, bringing food and water to the mouth, and grasping objects. Tusks, which are derived from the incisor teeth, serve both as weapons and as tools for moving objects and digging. The large ear flaps assist in maintaining a constant body temperature as well as in communication. African elephants have larger ears and concave backs, whereas Asian elephants have smaller ears, and convex or level backs. Elephants ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Planet Dinosaur
''Planet Dinosaur'', is a six-part documentary television series created by Nigel Paterson and Phil Dobree, produced by the BBC, and narrated by John Hurt. It first aired in the United Kingdom in 2011, with VFX studio Jellyfish Pictures as its producer. It was the first major dinosaur-related series for BBC One since ''Walking with Dinosaurs''. There are more than 50 different prehistoric species featured, and they and their environments were created entirely as computer-generated images, for around a third of the production cost that was needed a decade earlier for ''Walking with Dinosaurs''. Much of the series' plot is based on scientific discoveries made since ''Walking with Dinosaurs'', with episodes frequently stopping the action to show fossil evidence and the assumptions based on them. The companion book to ''Planet Dinosaur'' was released on 8 September 2011, and the DVD and Blu-ray were released on 24 October 2011. Planet Dinosaur is highly praised for its stunnin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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