THE ATLANTIC AGE

THURSDAY, MARCH 2 @ 7:00PM & 11:00PM

The series’ fifth hour examines the tremendous changes wrought in Africa by the opening of the Atlantic World between the 15^th and 18^th centuries. For centuries, Eastern Africa, West Africa and Northern Africa had all been tied deeply into long-distance commercial networks linking across the Eastern Hemisphere. However, the encounter between West African kingdoms and, first, Portuguese mariners travelling farther and farther south along Africa’s Atlantic coast, and then the European colonization of the New World, transformed those relations. Across the continent kingdoms and empires would rise and fall, with some 12.5 million Africans suffering enslavement in the crosshairs.

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A NATURE MINISERIES

MEET THE SPIES

SATURDAY, JULY 18  @ 8:00PM & 12:00AM

The final episode explains how the concept of the Spy Creatures evolved at John Downer Productions from the original Bouldercam to the Penguincams that inspired the next-generation “spycams” featured in this series. It shows the painstaking work that goes into building the lifelike models and how the team deploys and operates the robotic cameras on location all over the world.

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EMPIRES OF GOLD/CITIES

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 1 @ 7:00PM & 12:00AM

The third hour in the series marks an era of great commercial and manufacturing growth throughout several regions on the continent. It begins with the revolutionary transformation of North and West Africa. On the shores of the Sahara Desert, farmers, traders, warriors and nomads turned this region into the crossroads of some of history’s most advanced, and wealthiest, civilizations. Intricate networks of long distance trade would link up productive commercial centers established by rulers of empires and kingdoms.

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ORIGINS/THE CROSS AND THE CRESCENT

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 27 @ 7:00PM & 11:00PM

In his six-hour series, AFRICA’S GREAT CIVILIZATIONS, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. takes a look at the history of Africa, from the birth of humankind to the dawn of the 20th century. This is a breathtaking and personal journey through two hundred thousand years of history, from the origins, on the African continent, of art, writing and civilization itself, through the millennia in which Africa and Africans shaped not only their own rich civilizations, but also the wider world.

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