Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.
With its origins dating back some 40,000 years, the small ivory sculpture known as ‘The Lion Man’ for its melding of human and animal forms is the oldest known image of a creature sprung from human imagination. Created for the exhibition ‘Living With Gods’ (2017-18) at the British Museum in London, this animation traces the fascinating archeological history of the iconic object, as well as what its preternatural character tells us about our prehistoric ancestors – and, indeed, humanity itself.
Video by BBC Radio 4 and The British Museum
Animator: Cribble
video
Art
A young Rockefeller collects art on a fateful journey to New Guinea
7 minutes
video
Anthropology
Margaret Mead explains why the family was entering a brave new world in this 1959 film
29 minutes
video
Archaeology
At a prehistoric pigment mine, researchers glimpse our earliest moments in the Americas
25 minutes
video
History
Hags, seductresses, feminist icons – how gender dynamics manifest in witches
13 minutes
video
Art
Background music was the radical invention of a trailblazing composer
17 minutes
video
Anthropology
For an Amazonian female shaman, ayahuasca ceremonies are a rite and a business
30 minutes
video
Metaphysics
What do past, present and future mean to a philosopher of time?
55 minutes
video
Art
Radical doodles – how ‘exquisite corpse’ games embodied the Surrealist movement
15 minutes
video
Archaeology
What’s an ancient Greek brick doing in a Sumerian city? An archeological investigation
16 minutes