First Civilizations

2018 Ended PBS

Travel History

Having lived as mobile foragers for 99 percent of our time on Earth, why did humans set out on the road to civilization? How did they create villages, towns, cities and states, and establish the blueprint for the modern world? This series identifies four cornerstones of civilization - war, religion, cities and trade - and explores each in the context of a different location. Criss-crossing the globe, camera crews travel to Mexico, Guatemala, Iraq, Turkey, Egypt, India, Pakistan, Oman, Morocco, France, Germany, Japan, the U.K. and the U.S. They record the latest archeological discoveries, test new theories and uncover original information. Drama reconstructions and computer graphics are used to visualize the lost world of the first civilizations. In each episode, the ancient story is also complemented by a modern-day analog, with an expert interviewee connecting the dots between past and present. The idea is to show how our ancestors were motivated by the same impulses that persist today: the inevitability of war, a need for religion, the lure of the city, a love of trade. Their story is our story.