Tag: documentaries

Hittite fortress

This might be one of the biggest historical discoveries in 100s of years. (is there a list of these?). basically, there was a 4th great empire in the bronze age besides egyptians, assyrians and babylonians: the hittites (note not the biblical hittites). they built a fortress city that is without doubt a wonder of the ancient world, probably in the top 3 fortresses in the world in terms of scale and defensibility. they went on to conquer a vast empire (by bronze age standards, about the size of turkey) but disappeared in 1180 BC without a trace during the bronze age collapse, until they were rediscovered at the beginning of the 20th century.

Cosmos

if you haven’t seen this yet (unlikely, i know), it is free on hulu. it has held up remarkably well in the over 30 years since it was made. it would be amazing if it were updated in the same style. we’d have to cast a new carl sagan.
2013-07-21: the cosmos remake is coming out next year. i hope tyson has as much of a facility with words as sagan did.

2014-01-13: the first episode is on march 9. the original with carl sagan was seen by 750M people, let’s hope this one goes to a couple billion.

2014-03-11: Let’s hope this is the beginning of fighting back against the forces of ignorance. You are watching this, right?