Civilisations - Season 1 Episode 1

Historian Simon Schama claims art is an essential part of civilization in general and each one's identity. A retired Iraqi archaeology director preferring decapitation by ISIS to betraying where he hid unique treasures at Palmyra in Syria. Then he takes us to several early sparks of Ancient civilizations, like the possibly earliest cave paintings in Spain and France. We know the Nabataeans, an Arab desert people, settled to establish the fabulously wealthy city Petra in Jordan, having seized a monopoly on frankincense, and for lack of writings its architecture is nearly all we know of them. Interaction plays a great part in neighboring cultures' development, as Crete's Minoian and Santorini's heritage contributed to the Mycenean prelude of Classical Greece. Sometimes art is all a civilization left, like one in China's Szechuan province, parallel early to the Yellow River cradle of classical China, yet absent from all records, all that remains are magnificent metal divinity masks. Even a civilization as rich and prominent as the Maya city states ends up swallowed by the jungle, including its glorious monuments to pantheon and mighty elite.