12 March 2013

History of the World HD

I was unable to find any shows on the history channel actually related to history, with the exception of a TV show about the Vikings that had no documentary like aspects about it as far as I could see.  So I turned my attention to documentaries that the channel has previously run and came across one that attempts to tell the entire history of the world in just two hours, from the Big Bang to the present day.  As the documentary puts it in the opening monologue, the program talks about how the earth "prepared for the rise of man, how the Stone Age lead to the steam engine, how the first seeds sprouted into cities and civilization."  In the early part of the documentary, the program uses a variety of emotion altering music, digital recreations, reconstruction and reenactments of events that occurred before film footage would have been available.  Later file footage of events from the part 100 years or so replace the reenactments.  These scenes are all accompanied by either dramatic music or narration.  there are occasional scene changes to professors and historians sitting behind desks, explaining what happened and how they personally feel about it, with the scene occasionally switching beck to a reenactment of what the historian is talking about, while they are still speaking about it.

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