User Reviews

How convenient it is that a title that says" history of the world", it leaves out one of the most important civilizations of the world that is referred to as, "India". You talked about the Arabic numerals, but forgot to mention the country that discovered geometry, you mentioned the pyramids and failed to mention the "Taj Mahal", and more importantly the cave paintings of France were mentioned, but the "Ajanta and Ellora", was forgotten, you talked about the Chinese traders, but failed to even mention and devote even a minute on the richest country in the ancient world. The spice trade, Indus valley civilization, Architectural wonders of "Khajurao", and "Ellora", built over nearly 3000 years found no mention in one of the most biased documentaries i have honestly ever seen. And by the way the Arabic numerals you were talking about were actually derived from the country which discovered "zero", guess what it again is "India".

Nothing really happens in this program before 30 minutes have passed. The Narrator talks with this sensationalist voice, one would think it was the truth about the Kennedy assassination. He talks and talks about gases, big bangs, elements, and particles. We have again and again a future reference to famous buildings or building projects, for illustration. This eats up a lot of time. A lot of time! We have a lot of Scientists and other nerds talking about the subject in such enthusiastic manner, you think the episode was made for young aspiring scientists only. 30 minutes have passed before any creatures pops up in the story. But before that we are constantly bombarded with future references by clips of people through the ages, and their behavior. The fact that most is computer made, makes it more annoying. This is probably a very good story for some, but amazingly boring for other.

I found this program on DVD from my public library. It is a "2-hour program" I suppose with commercials but the actual running time is about 87 minutes.

This is a very good presentation, however bible fundamentalists who believe the world we know can only be a few thousand years old cannot watch this without risking a cranial explosion. Because it starts with the (theoretical) Big Bang billions of years ago. While the Big Bang remains only a theory, and not one that all experts buy into, there are enough sources of scientific evidence that show our universe is indeed many billions of years old.

So this program starts with the Big Bang theory and concludes in present time. Along the way it explains how early gravity worked on energy and matter to form masses that eventually with enough pressure and heat ignited into stars. Eventually some of those stars exploded sending hydrogen, helium, and select heavier elements into space. After enough billions of years some of that resulted in our Earth in orbit around our Sun.

Of course almost everything we think we know about the development of the Earth, accumulation of water and oxygen, evolution of various animal and plant species are based on analysis of artifacts that have been found over the years, and there can be no doubt that some of it is incorrect. But science overall is pretty good and I'd bet most of what is in this program is pretty close to what actually happened.

The program includes input of quite a number of experts and we see short snippets of what they contribute. It traces some of the extinctions, like the big one that caused the dinosaurs to disappear, the rise of the primates, and the rise of the alpha primate, the Human species. Plus how we spread all over the Earth as tectonic plates and land masses moved, oceans swelled and receded.

But my own summary, as I watched this highly accelerated view of the History of the World, we the Human species are not good stewards of the world we inherited. We are on a fast track to extinction, moving as fast as we can towards new technology and new ways to entertain ourselves, but also figuring out newer and better ways of going to war and killing our opposition.

A bit sobering. But a good program.