Ancient Worlds

Incredibly poor I'm afraid. In the effort to popularize these big topics the programmes are as misleading as fiction. Describing Ptolemy as Alexander's "boyhood friend and food taster" and "Mr Fix-it" is incredibly glib and merely pulls out a couple of facts to present a character portrait. Alexander's burning of Persepolis is "an act of contempt" - one interpretation, other theories as to what happened and why are not even mentioned.

Likewise treatment of 500 years of Roman history and the rise of Christianity means that matters are taken out of order, events described in misleading simplicity.

There are sometimes interesting snippets, but the programs took on far too much and makes sweeping generalizations based on modern perceptions. Very disappointing.

I've visited some of the more popular sites in this series without having an appreciation for the backing history and how such a place fits into the overall human civilization theme. I like to watch this series every now and then to bring back the memories of my trips and learn how it all ties together. There are so many more places I'd love to visit each time I watch.

I'm not one for dramatized acting documentaries and just prefer to hear a more human account of took place. Given the span of sites visited, the differing civilisations discussed and overall timeline covered, the factual non dramatized format worked really well for me.

I wish I could find more content like this.

I went into this series with high hopes. So much work is being done especially in fresh views on ancient and classical near eastern and historiography But this series is a big let down for anyone with a decent background in history. It is chock full of generalizations, patronizing views, projecting of modern morality, and frankly biases. It is an impressionistic set of distortions.

The ancient Assyrians are essentially painted as a massive rapacious war machine when the evidence of Assyrian art and culture, and relative behavior of other empires or expanding states, are left out of the equation.

The ancient Greeks get a real drubbing, in an episode that is absurdity piled on absurdity to the point of near hate speech. The presenter, Miles, treatment of Solon is snarky, not based on fact, and simply idiotic.

The reliance on biblical texts, which we now rightly see as highly prejudicial to Judea's competitors, is strange in modern historiography. Miles goes on about supposed child sacrifice by Phoenicians and Ba'al worshipers when most historians now see that as propaganda and the supposed sites are now seen as likely simply child burial grounds.

I would stick with Woods work or another new BBC series "BBC Bible's Buried Secrets" for more sober, less judgmental and more factual documentary treatment of ancient hisotry of the region.

It took me a while to absorb this series - but I think it's an excellent overview of the Mesopotamian pastoralist to end-of-roman-empire journey. I particularly love his brush over the Marc Anthony-Cleopatra sideshow, and the concentration on the clear personalities - such as at Ugarit - and his clear-sightedness on the achievements of the Hellenistic "greats". To achieve such clarity - in spite of the timelines & complexity - must surely place Prof Miles in the top tier of our historians/presenters. (His programme on the history of archaeology is excellent) Call out to the composer/sound dept. - amazing fall with descending brass hits my spine. My holiday reading is on Ptolemy - down to this.

I felt compelled to write a review after reading the other two on this site.

So, to begin, the series tackles the mammoth task of explaining, briefly, the history of human civilization from the rise of cities in Mesopotamia through the dissolution of the Roman Empire. As such, generalizations are mandatory, and there is nothing strange about them, because every historical synthesis has to resort to them, which renders the other two reviews on this site useless.

The most fascinating aspect of the series is the amount of individual footage, it is just amazing. Unlike most documentaries, who tend to dwell on one particular piece of footage in order to cut the costs, this one fits as much of different things from different countries as possible.

All in all, this is a great series for those interested in the ancient history, it works as a sort of illustrated history of the ancient world that is both useful for the general public and the experts alike.