User Reviews

I've always been fascinated by ancient civilisations so after watching nearly all of what Netflix and Prime had to offer me during the numerous lockdowns, this was a joy to find. I agree the narration completely lets it down. The pronunciation of some words by the narrator isn't an issue. The problem is the speed of the narration which I don't think is down to the narrator herself as it started off fine but then suddenly in parts turns into 500 words a minute, which sounds like it had been speeded up in editing possibly to shorten the length of the film. This also makes it sound toneless and as if the narrator is reading from a script which unfortunately for her will not do her career any favours. So I had to resort to turning on the subtitles and changed the volume to enhance the music so the narration wasn't so distracting and it then turned into a great documentary. I recommend doing the same rather than give up on the film as it is well worth a watch.

I enjoyed this film immensely even though it aggregates a lot of information presented before elsewhere. It was new to me and really interesting.

A lot of reviewers on both this site and Amazon complain about the narrator, whose native language is clearly not English. Her mispronunciation of many English words is a bit grating and I had to rewind frequently to decipher something said. Those speed bumps are no reason to skip this movie though.

Beyond that distraction, the film pixelates badly on a 4K screen. Clearly not upscaled.

The first 10 minutes or so was a bit slow and the film lacked a clear exit strategy, IMHO mailing in the last few minutes. The two hours in between though was absolutely fascinating and I spent the rest of the morning on Wiki checking out the theories advanced. I will definitely be reading and watching more and have recommended this to my father-in-law, who is an actual engineer and a literal genius, for his take.

In the barren wasteland that is post-COVID video streaming (meaning I've watched almost everything worth watching), this flick is worth a few hours on a Sunday morning.

Amazing content but the narration is way too fast, it's hard to keep up at times.

The production demonstrates that ancient man displayed a far superior mind and technology than is innately present in modern man's grasp. It likewise is a testimony to the ancients' persistence and focus of purpose as contrasted to those of us today who are so easily distracted and seek mere entertainment. Some of the reviewers cited here reinforce that reality by their seeking a production that is spoon fed to their lazy minds. Complaints about the narrators accent shows that they expect everyone who speaks English or has learned English as a second language will pronounce every word precisely as an American would. Try watching any British production. Many of the words which are claimed to be mispronounced are accurately pronounced outside the USA. I suggest turning on your closed captioning. And as far as the rapidity of her speech, the production was 2 hours and 18 minutes as it stands.. Think how long it would have had to have been if she slowed down. Yes, there is a lot of information but worth the effort if we could have the patience of our ancient ancestors in assimilating it.

I enjoyed this. I'm quite sceptical but I do love the mental gymnastics!

Firstly a big thank you! A lot of trouble taken to aggregate various ideas published elsewhere.

The director also assumes you are familiar with most ideas already online and hence won't go explaining these. While this good for some of us and not so for others. There are so many,many bits of info - you really needed a mini- series. That would also give time to the narrator to take time to narrate it rather than read it at speed at times! I found no problem with the accent at all - we live in the universal world and if you're having trouble, Lord...use subtitles! One reviewer switched off after 10 minutes - this subject really isn't for you,sweetheart! It is meant for those curious about the level of intelligence seen in the past ages and our own origins and trying to find a more plausible reason. No one expects the answers here - not suddenly after thousands of years on a dvd! It is only meant to stimulate your thoughts.

Will certainly watch for other projects in the future from this team. Make a mini-series and this time take your time. Anyways thanks guys!

I too like the new theories and the film certainly gives you food for thought.

Unfortunately the narrator, Alika Del Sol, nearly drove me to insanity with her constant mispronunciations like "one point six hunnert eighteen". Now, not only is the number incorrectly spoken as it should be "one point six one eight" but "hunnert"? I realise she's a non-native English speaker being French but surely you would think the director or editor would pick up on it.

I can only assume these people who whine on so petulantly and childishly about the narrator have never set foot out of their own country (or village) or even had a conversation with someone for whom English is a 2nd or 3rd language. She speaks a too quickly sometimes and they definitely should have edited the narration down so she could have taken her time - especially with some of the many mind-blowing revelations contained in this film, so the info could be absorbed and understood by the audience clearly. But she speaks English, quite frankly, better than many Americans; she's clear and articulate but occasionally mispronounces a word. Big deal. English is a difficult language to learn and people, such as her, who learn it to a nearly fully fluent level should be applauded and she did her job well - not as perfectly as one would wish - but she did well. This is a fascinating film, full of very important information on our history (not what we were told at school) and is beautifully filmed and well presented. My biggest complaint was the background music which often felt it had been lifted from a 1970s western movie. Loud, dramatic and bombastic which did not fit the tone of the documentary at all. If you are interested in ancient tech and architecture, lost civilisations, seeming impossible geometry and measurement, how we developed from hunter-gatherers, strong connections between cultures thousands of years apart and across vast distances and a good portion of intriguing mystery and possibility, then see this film. It could've been better, sure, but its still very good indeed.

The narrator gets 7/10 for impersonating an incomprehensible AI bot.

Names, places and words are either blurred into one, incorrectly shortened or just pronounced wrong making it unintelligible.

I was looking forward to this, but unfortunately the fast talking monotonous speaker gave me too much anxiety and I had to stop.

Just watched the current (April 2023) Amazon Prime version of this film and the narration (UK English) is notably excellent. Sounds like the producers may have heeded the voice-over criticism here and released an update. It now sounds great with nice quality production, tastefully edited, ok graphics and well paced and presented - an easy watch if you're interested in this sort of thing. Plenty of well balanced information, new and secondhand, - no aliens etc. - just observation, deduction and plausible conclusions. The original footage and quantity of info contained in the film would justify a rewatch.

I am so disappointed with the person narrating......it's seems she is reading it off a page much to fast with terrible pronunciation making it impossible to follow at times. And why rush?calm down,ease us into the information and build tension.

It's ruined that's all i can say....such a shame.

The scientific findings about the ancient structures are really mind blowing, turning everything you learned in school about the evolution of civilization upside down like Darwin did with the theory of evolution.

But where with Darwin the headwind came mainly from the church, here it is the classical archaeologists who resist because all their assumptions and explanations are contradicted by the facts.

Unlike the classical archaeologists, the documentary makers do not draw conclusions, but demonstrate with facts that both the knowledge and the techniques used by the ancient builders were much more advanced than generally assumed.

Like most people who have watched it I was becoming demented after 10 mins because of the fast speaking. So I obtained a copy of the documentary as an MP4 (tor) file and played it back through a video player (VLC) on my laptop(which was connected to my TV and was able to slow the speed of the audio down by as much as wanted ..harmony at last.

This film is a fantastic aggregation of material some may already be familiar with, interwoven with the film makers' own research. It's wonderfully revelatory in that it asks questions that we didn't know beforehand were valid.

Because most of the salient points are not repeated several times to the viewer, like in, say, a tedious Dan Brown novel or any American documentary; and because the narration is purposefully fast so as to excite us, one needs to be of a certain, yet moderate, intelligence to be able to keep up. Those viewers who only speak English and haven't yet indulged in learning one or more foreign languages might find the narrator's mis-pronunciations somewhat indecipherable. I barely noticed them.

There was one element I found to be missing and that was when to expect the next Dryas period, which I felt the documentary was leading up to but never quite crossed the line on.

Well done to the film makers on their achievement.

After 10 minutes of the 100mph and intonation-less voice over, I just had to turn it off. I love docos like this, but you need the viewer to be able to hear clearly, digest and contemplate the information you're passing on. You can hear in the editing the gaps for breaths have been closed up.

It just makes for a really unbearable audio experience. Shame...

I found the documentary very interesting, I first thought they would come up with this alien theory that aliens would have build all these unexplainable buildings and places we have in our world that we can not explain today, but nop they have an other more interesting theory to explain history. The alternative explanation they gave from where these buildings like pyramids could may come from is a pretty fascinating theory, I admit I haven't thought about this before. I like it how they try to explain their theory with new scientific findings and studies instead of just making assumptions out of nowhere. I find this theory in this documentary actually more logic and plausible than the current theories we have today to explain all these mysterious buildings and places around the world.

I leaned things in this movie that I've not known about in decades of study of archeology. The evidence shown here knocks the entire framework of archeological science onto its ass. Proves beyond reasonable doubt that some ancient megalithic civilisation was working stone in ways we can't still manage, right across the globe. The narration is, in fairness, fairly poor. I think t's the Director herself. Laying down a different narration would elevate this to the top rank of documentary movies. Definitely worth seeing though.

Like this, the narration isn't a problem not sure why others found it so difficult to understand. I'm a English and she sounds like English speaker speaking at normal cadence.

Yes, her pronunciation is a bit weird, but understandable.

The film brings together alsorts of interesting bits of info together, some which is new to me, some not.

It gets a bit bogged down at times, and goes a bit circular. It could have been better edited perhaps, but it doesn't detract from the theme, which is that our ancestors had knowledge to pass on. Are we missing them trying to tell us what that is?

This film doesn't try to convince us that science or aesthetics has the answers, early asks a few questions and notes a few interesting facts that seem to have been missed by others.

Often quite simple facts.

Potentially great documentary, totally ruined by the narrator. Do not see the need to rush and spoil such potential by running through a script a million miles per hour.

Awful awful narration by non English speaker with terrible pronunciation mistakes.

I liked the look of this documentary but the narrator is unfortunately a very poor choice.

The content, imagery, facts look great, but, I found it impossible to watch due to the atrocious English spoken by the narrator.

No problem if you insist on an indigenous narrator; just expect the film not to reach 90% of the people who would want to watch it.

Redo the narration, and I may well have given 9 stars, but sorry, I could not bear to watch more than 5 minutes, thus my 3 stars.

The script has obviously been really badly translated into English from a foreign language (French?) and to make matters worse the narration is done by a woman who English pronunciation is almost impossible to follow. Just one example of this is the way she pronounces the word quarry as "kwerry". It's just too much like hard work to follow. Just do yourself a favour and give this a miss. Might be worth a watch if they bother to run the script past somebody whose first language is English and the narration is re-done by someone whose English is better.

Shame as this looked like a really good documentary. However it was so difficult to understand the narrator I missed what most of it was about.