Legacy: The Origins of Civilization

Michael Woods, British archaeologist, presents a journey through Iraq before the first Gulf War of 1991, visiting the sites of the first cities and civilization of ancient Sumer. Wandering through the blasted ruins of Uruk, Eridu, Ninevah, and the still-inhabited sites of Erbil and Mosul, he talks about the conditions that led to the rise of the first city-states, and their ultimate destruction under the pressure of overpopulation, outside conquest, and over-irrigation of the sensitive soils of southern Iraq. He relates the stories and myths of ancient Sumer to later stories of the Creation, the Garden of Eden, the Flood, the Tower of Babel, and the dispersal of peoples following the fall of Sumerian civilization. He also talks about Mesopotamia as the cradle of some of the world's great religions -- Judaism, Christianity, Sufism, and Islam. The film is beautifully photographed, and the soundtrack is outstanding. I wish this could be reissued on DVD!

Michael Wood is one of those people who can draw you into History by the sheer passion he has for it. His historical interests are far-ranging, and his presentation is fervent and involved, infused with tension and an urgency that shows that he desperately wants to tell, to anyone who will listen, what incredible events he's found which have informed our past, evidenced not only by his breathless narration while striding along an ancient track, once traveled perhaps by monumental historical figures or nameless, doomed victims of a nearly forgotten cruelty, but also his reverent, hushed intonations while standing before an ancient manuscript or in the nave of a cathedral where a man became crowned king; in either case, through his ability to make you feel the depth of injustice done these victims of ancient wrongs, intense pangs of loss upon hearing of the destruction of an item whose value he brings you to feel is immeasurable, awe at the largess and grandeur in which some lived their entire lives, or the irony found by some at the end of their days, Michael Wood brings these scenes to life and presents them in a way that makes you see that the moments in time being related are authentic - hidden merely behind a veil, which you may transcend for an intimate look around if you disengage your attachment to the trappings of reality surrounding you, and, instead, engage your imagination and allow yourself to be drawn into them.

Michael Wood knows how to tell a story, and, perhaps, has done for the telling of historical tales through his documentaries what Peter Jackson did in bringing The Lord of the Rings to the big-screen: taken fascinating stories from an ancient world and given them to us to watch.