Twenty-five hundred years before the reign of Julius Caesar, the ancient Egyptians were deftly harnessing the power of engineering on an unprecedented scale. Egyptian temples, fortresses, pyramids and palaces forever redefined the limits of architectural possibility. They also served as a warning to all of Egypt's enemies-that the world's most advanced civilization could accomplish anything. This two-hour special uses cinematic recreations and cutting-edge CGI to profile the greatest engineering achievements of ancient Egypt, and the pharaohs and architects who were behind them. Includes Djoser's Step Pyramid at Saqqara, Senusret's Nubian Superfortresses, Hatshepsut's Mortuary Temple at Dier el-Bahari, Akhenaten's city at Amarna, and the temples of Ramesses the Great at Abu Simbel.

Egypt: Engineering an Empire

Beginning with Rome's fall in the fifth century, tis History Channel presentation sheds light on the Dark Ages, covering the continent-wide chaos, including raids by Vikings Vandals, and Visigoths, bubonic plague, famine, civil unrest and more.  The program takes viewers from the darkest of times to the dawn of a new beginning as the turmoil besieging Europe gives rise to the Crusades, the Enlightenment, and the Renaissance.

The Dark Ages

It was an epic battle of brains versus brawn that determined the course of human history. Witness our prehistoric ancestors as they clash with a completely different species of humans, the Neanderthals, some 30,000 years ago in Ice Age Europe. Neanderthals, stocky, powerful and able to tolerate intense pain versus their foes, the Cro-Magnons, weaker and more fragile but with a superior brain. Cutting-edge archaeological and anthropological research, including data from the ongoing Neanderthal genome mapping project at Germany's Max Planck Institute, lends up-to-the-minute realism and accuracy to this cataclysmic fight to the finish.