''Monsters We Met'' is a documentary produced by the

BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board ex ...

that later aired as a special on

Animal Planet Animal Planet (stylized in all lowercase since 2018) is an American multinational pay television channel owned by the Warner Bros. Discovery Networks unit of Warner Bros. Discovery. First established on June 1, 1996, the network is primarily dev ...

in 2004 (under the title, ''Land of Lost Monsters'') which also included footage from ''

Walking with Beasts ''Walking with Beasts'', marketed as ''Walking with Prehistoric Beasts'' in North America, is a 2001 six-part nature documentary television miniseries created by Impossible Pictures and produced by the BBC Natural History Unit, the Discovery C ...

'' and ''

Walking with Cavemen ''Walking with Cavemen'' is a 2003 four-part nature documentary television miniseries produced by the BBC Natural History Unit, the Discovery Channel and ProSieben. ''Walking with Cavemen'' explores human evolution, showcasing various extinct Hom ...

'' (both also made by the BBC). The show used

computer-generated imagery Computer-generated imagery (CGI) is the use of computer graphics to create or contribute to images in art, printed media, video games, simulators, and visual effects in films, television programs, shorts, commercials, and videos. The images may ...

to recreate the life of the giant animals that lived during the last ice age and explains how early

humans Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, culture, ...

encountered them. It also features humans as the main reason for the extinction of all great animals.

Episodes

Episode 1: The Eternal Frontier (Montana, United States, North America, 11,000 years ago)

Original air date: April 8, 2003 The episode starts with mammoths living during the

Ice Age An ice age is a long period of reduction in the temperature of Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Earth's climate alternates between ice ages and gree ...

. It also shows how early indigenous Americans became top predators and started hunting them. Early Americans also had to compete with other predators like the Short-faced Bear and the Saber-toothed Cat. They destroyed them by depleting their food supply and making them starve to death. The episode ends with how there were no more extinctions following the Ice Age and that it remained that way until the

European colonization The historical phenomenon of colonization is one that stretches around the globe and across time. Ancient and medieval colonialism was practiced by the Phoenicians, the Greeks, the Turks, and the Arabs. Colonialism in the modern sense began ...

Episode 2: The Burning (Australia, 65,000 years ago)

Original air date: April 15, 2003 It starts by showing how early Aboriginal Australians migrated to Australia. They also hunted the native wildlife, encountering large birds and the giant monitor lizard, megalania. The reptiles kill two humans and they plan on burning the fields to kill the giant lizard. The episode then ends with how the burning of the forests changed the landscape of Australia.

Episode 3: The End of Eden (New Zealand, CE 1280)

Original air date: April 22, 2003 It starts with the

Māori Māori or Maori can refer to: Relating to the Māori people * Māori people of New Zealand, or members of that group * Māori language, the language of the Māori people of New Zealand * Māori culture * Cook Islanders, the Māori people of the C ...

populating New Zealand during the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire a ...

. They encounter the giant moa and start to see that it was harmless. They then discover Haast's eagle, which hunts moas and starts to target them. They then start to steal the moa's giant eggs and go after the adults for food. The program then goes into human evolution and goes over how humans have led to the extinctions of the megafauna and how they are still affecting modern animals. The U.S. version of the program ends with a scene of space and starts to ask the question about the environmental impact of humanity stating "that if we can't live with these monsters, are we monsters ourselves?". The U.K. version ends on the Moai of Easter Island, noting that humans are "capable of such heroic and triumphant achievements" and yet also capable "of inflicting such horror on the natural world."

Reception

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

''s

Virginia Heffernan Virginia Heffernan (born August 8, 1969) is an American journalist and cultural critic. Since 2015, she has been a political columnist at the ''Los Angeles Times'' and a cultural columnist at ''Wired''. From 2003 to 2011, she worked as a staff w ...

praised the show, writing, "The show's supreme naturalism adds polemical heft to its visual hypothesis, (they caught all this stuff on camera, didn't they?), making its account of prehistory seem like much more than a hypothesis. ''Land of the Lost Monsters'' looks like reportage; that's what makes it exciting." The author Michael Klossner wrote, "''Land of Lost Monsters'' benefits from excellent animation of the extinct animals and intelligent reenactments".

References

External links

*
BBC official website (via Wayback Machine

TV Guide
* {{BBC Natural History Unit BBC television documentaries BBC television documentaries about history Documentary films about prehistoric life Animal Planet original programming 2003 British television series debuts 2003 British television series endings Prehistoric people in popular culture