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The Precolombian Maya culture's city states in modern Yucatan (huge Mexican peninsula), Guatemala and Belize left many monumental ruins. However a modern archaeological and anthropological expedition concentrates on the underground cave system beneath too many of the mostly jungle-overtaken cities to be coincidental. They are dependencies of the giant crater made by a huge meteorite which may have wiped out the dinosaurs 4 million years ago. It's the site of some Mayan cultic peculiarities, but their diving technique remains among the unsolved riddles.

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Until the middle of the 20th century, the Sahara was mainly unexplored by (Western) science, despite French or British colonial rule. The last blind spot was the Erdi-Ma region in north eastern Tchad, considered impractical and dangerous on account of political rebels and common bandits. The German geographer and climatic expert Dr. Stefan Kröpelin's pioneering expedition proves however it was actually already explored from Ancient Pharaonic Egypt as a potential source of natural resources.

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For milennia, the Chinese empire and its emperor's rule by divine mandate of heaven seemed unshakable, the sole true civilization, Middle Kingdom means center of the universe, symbolically reflected in the Forbidden City. It all changed quite suddenly since a concubine rose to ruling regent for her husband and the crown prince of the Manchu (last, conquering) dynasty, a perversion of Confucian tradition. She failed to realize the arrival of greedy Europeans, mainly Britain, was the greatest threat since the Mongols. Long before, meticulous protocol overtook pragmatic ...

Constantinople, the second Rome, was capital of the Byzantine empire until its millinery fight to preserve the Roman civilization in the East ended in the Ottoman conquest, then transformed into their capital, Istanbul. Central document is the work of the papal envoy, major medieval theologian, diplomat and scientist Nikolaus von Kues, alias Kusanus. His mission was to bring Constantinople back into the Roman fold, to end the Orthodox 'schisma'. The emperor agreed, against his own court, but it was too late already: the empire's last city fell before reluctant ...

A portrait of the dogal republic Venice, a world class port and capital of Europe's most affluent naval commercial city state which build itself a Mediterranean mini-empire. Central document is the detailed description left by the German painter Albrecht Dürer. He visited in 1494, after fleeing the Black Death in his native Nürnberg, and used his mastery of detail and perspective. The doge was the figurehead of a complex system of balanced political and military institutions, part of an elaborate infrastructure in the service of an extensive, most lucrative commercial...

Neolithic finds in southern Chili's Monte Verde from 1,000 years before the Bering Street was frozen into a passage prove the earliest Americans couldn't wander on foot from Siberia. The new theory is sailing the Pacific. Further finds, anthropology and experiments concur that Indians must have spread north from there along the ice-free coast, by canoe and on foot, plausibly from up to 40,000 years ago.

A German archaeologist's team, which previously found a Scythian princely grave containing a mummy and 9,000 artifacts there, returns to the present Mongolia's Kazachstan-Siberian Altai mountains border region. There nomadic life changed little, still centered on horse-breeding. Russian geophysicists and protected by Mongolian border guards help. A rich tomb is found, but was robbed and ruined for science, yet indicates the Scyths traded as far as the Gobi, a new fact. Then a child's tomb from the third century BC is found, and a rich, blond horseman warrior's. It ...