CIVILISATIONS BBC NEW SERIES

tomatoman Mar 2, 2018 11:08:03

You may or may not like Simon Scharma, but his first episode of this series broadcast last night gave a way-overdue reboot of the origins of human art. This and Mary Beard's second episode are available on iPlayer now.

tjj Mar 2, 2018 15:25:30

Replying to tomatoman

tomatoman wrote:

I started watching this on iplayer at lunchtime today, the day interrupted me so will have to go back to it later. I do like Simon Scharma (what's not to like) and I can say the opening episode starts with Scharma paying tribute to Maamoun Abdulkarim the 82 year old archaeologist, who was beheaded by isis rather than say where hidden ancient artefacts were. Which sort of brings it up to date from the original Kenneth Clark 1969 programme.

Scharma then goes on to talk about Cave Art, starting with a 77,000 year old South African cave. Inspiring stuff ... and all in the first 15 minutes. Will watch in its entirety later this evening.

moss Mar 3, 2018 07:15:19

Replying to tomatoman

tomatoman wrote:

It was excellent, made me go back and find this poem by Snyder which manages to capture the mystery of how creative we are, especially in death. All those beautiful cave paintings come from the mind, ritual seems unimportant when faced with the human need to express itself......

Under the Hills near the Moravia River

She lay there midst
Mammoth, reindeer, and wolf bones;
Diadem of fox teeth round her brow
Ocher under her hips
26,640 plus or minus 110 years before "now".
Burnt reindeer-pelvis bone bits
in her mouth,
Bones of two men lying by her side,
one each side.

And then there is this - Werner Herzog's film - Cave of forgotten Dreams..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIlEfNbcz7g