DISCOVERY CHANNEL
Ancient civilisations
- Published: 20/11/2009 at 12:00 AM
- Newspaper section: Realtime
Secret societies, ritual sacrifice, brutal religious edicts, macabre burials - how are ancient civilisations linked and what does it say about human instinct? A whole new kind of class is in session with the dynamic Dr Kara Cooney.
Out of Egypt spans the globe unravelling common threads of ancient civilisations. The programme premieres on Tue, Nov 24 at 8pm on TrueVisions D50.
Join this UCLA Professor of Egyptian Art and Architecture as she trades the lecture hall for tombs and temples around the world, bringing an exciting perspective to the most fascinating riddles in history in Out of Egypt. The programme premieres on Tue, Nov 24 at 8pm and repeats on Mon at 2am, Wed at 1pm, Sat at 7pm and Sun at 5am and 3pm on Discovery Channel.
Kara uses her understanding of Egyptian customs and practices as a baseline to study how other ancient societies were formed. In Pyramids, she takes a closer look at these iconic monuments. In 2560 BC, the ancient Egyptians built the Giza Pyramid. Nearly 2,700 years later and some 7,700 miles away, the Aztecs erected a similarly imposing structure.
A coincidence? Kara explains that human nature's desire to be close to the gods can be seen in civilisations far from Egypt, from the stepped temples of Mexico to the round pyramids of Sri Lanka.
In Relics, Kara investigates how and why our hallowed dead are preserved and worshipped. A relic could be the finger of a Catholic saint or a mummified ibis bird buried in an ancient Egyptian catacomb. For millennia, people have ascribed meaning and power to these remnants of their dead, but why?
Kara explains that the bodies might be dead, but they remain buried in our current physical world. They are then seen as somehow magical - a bridge from the living on Earth to the dead in the heavens.
To illustrate these beliefs, Kara undergoes a ritual cleansing in Mexico involving human bones, takes part in a Buddhist burning ceremony in Vietnam and pays a special visit to Sri Lanka's most holy shrine - The Temple of the Tooth - to pay respects to what is believed to be the actual tooth of the Buddha.
Throughout history, loved ones, martyrs and political figures all share the appearance of being closer to Gods just by the fact that they are no longer among the living.
Each episode begins in Egypt, where she asks a question that launches her on a quest around the world, As Kara interviews experts and visits sacred sites, she expertly crafts links between the social and religious practices of these ancient cultures. Kara also looks at beliefs that built and destroyed civilisations, traces the origins of the Devil and literally descends into the underworld of ancient burial practices.
As Kara ventures Out of Egypt over continents, she discovers that when faced with the same materials on Earth, the same biological matter and laws of physics, people will come up with very similar strategies independently of one other.
