A PBS special that previewed the touring exhibition that chronicled more than 3,000 years of ancient Egyptian History. Learn about the boy king and the mystery surrounding his death.
Today modern archaeology often works with digital technology. Geophysics has allowed thousands of ancient sites to be located — a huge gain for science.
The dig is no longer the be-all and end-all of archeology. We accompany some archeologists on their journey into the virtual past. Geophysics comprises a range of techniques with various geological and military functions. Geomagnetism is used to locate enemy submarines or potential reserves of oil or other minerals. Now, German and Irish archeologists have teamed up to use it to trace prehistoric grave systems. Researchers in western Germany are applying it to locate ancient procession and pilgrimage routes. Shipping archeologists in Bremerhaven are availing of digital technology to create virtual models of shipwrecks and, in Berlin, archeologists and game designers have also embarked on a joint project. As luck would have it, they scanned every millimeter of a temple in the Syrian city of Aleppo, not suspecting that, soon afterwards, the complex would be largely destroyed in the country’s civil war. Their virtual model is evidence that the study of the past can have uses for the present, just as technologies of the present can help us to study the past.
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With more board configurations than there are atoms in the universe, the ancient Chinese game of Go has long been considered a grand challenge for artificial intelligence. On March 9, 2016, the worlds of Go and artificial intelligence collided in South Korea for an extraordinary best-of-five-game competition, coined The DeepMind Challenge Match. Hundreds of millions of people around the world watched as a legendary Go master took on an unproven AI challenger for the first time in history.
Directed by Greg Kohs and with an original score by Academy Award nominee Hauschka, AlphaGo chronicles a journey from the halls of Oxford, through the backstreets of Bordeaux, past the coding terminals of DeepMind in London, and ultimately, to the seven-day tournament in Seoul. As the drama unfolds, more questions emerge: What can artificial intelligence reveal about a 3000-year-old game? What can it teach us about humanity?
In the dusts of Iraq, the ruins of the worlds first civilization lie buried.
This episode, we travel into the extremely distant past to look at the Sumerians. These ancient people invented writing and mathematics, and built some of the largest cities that the world had ever seen. Find out about the mystery of their origins, and learn how they rose from humble beginnings to form the foundation of all our modern societies. With myths, proverbs and even some recreated Sumerian music, travel back to where it all began, and find out how humanitys first civilization fell.
Leonardos famous painting «The Last Supper» hides a secret: only 20 percent of the original work is still visible.
In the style of a thriller, the documentary attempts to reconstruct what it originally looked like. Leonardo da Vinci was the epitome of the Renaissance Man. May 2019 marks the 500th anniversary of his death. The artist created world-famous works such as the fresco «The Last Supper» — perhaps the most famous. It is still in its original setting, on the wall of the dining room of the former Dominican convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan. The painting, which is 4.60 meters high and 8.80 meters wide, has been undergoing restoration for the last 19 years. But the restorers now know that only 20 percent of the original is visible today. So what did something that is the focus of so many legends originally look like? Our investigation also takes us to the small Belgian abbey of Tongerlo, where a mysterious copy of da Vincis work has been discovered. It is a painting on canvas that could have been commissioned from da Vinci’s workshop by the French King Louis XII. It has perhaps brought the researchers a step closer to the truth.
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DW Documentary gives you knowledge beyond the headlines. Watch high-class documentaries from German broadcasters and international production companies. Meet intriguing people, travel to distant lands, get a look behind the complexities of daily life and build a deeper understanding of current affairs and global events. Subscribe and explore the world around you with DW Documentary.
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