Odyssey (1980)

The earliest inhabitants of the New World came across the Bering Sea land bridge that opened as a result of glaciation, which lowered the level of the sea and connected the continents of Asia and America. The question of when these people walked from Siberia is still debated by archaeologists. In 1932, a site excavated near Clovis, New Mexico, yielded the bones of extinct animals in association with man-made, skillfully fluted stone points. With the development of radiocarbon dating in the late 1940s, it was determined that "Clovis man" had lived between 12,000 and 11,000 years ago. Finely flaked Clovis stone tools have been discovered throughout North America, suggesting an extraordinarily rapid spread - either of ideas and technology, or of people. Presumably Clovis men and women moved across the land, hunting large animals (mammoth, bison, saber-toothed tiger) with stone points hafted to spears, and collecting wild fruits, thistle leaves, yucca pods, roots, and nuts.

This film provides a broad overview of Ju/'hoan life, both past and present, and an intimate portrait of N!ai, a Ju/'hoan woman who in 1978 was in her mid-thirties. N!ai tells her own story, and in so doing, the story of Ju/'hoan life over a thirty year period.

A portrait of "the father of American anthropology," this film intercuts archival photographs and motion pictures, including work by photographer Edward Curtis and film footage shot by Boas himself, with recent film from the Pacific Northwest. It was in the Pacific Northwest that Boas made repeated field trips at the turn of the century, to work among the Kwakiut'l. Reflections and anecdotes by scholars, former students of Boas, and the Kwakiut'l themselves are interwoven with Boas' own words, taken from journals, letters, and other writings, to tell the story of this remarkable man.

Father Michael Keaveney, Derry Sub-Aqua Club, discusses the remains from the shipwreck, La Trinidad Valencera of the Spanish Armada, which they found in 1971. He discusses the ship, its purpose, and the reason for the wreck.

In just 100 years the Incas created an empire that stretched over some of the world's highest mountains. This remarkable 16th century South American civilization, in less than 100 years had unified several cultures spread over 350,000 square miles of some of the worlds highest mountains without the benefit of written communication or the wheel.

Ongka is a 'bigman,' a leader of a Kwelka tribe in New Guinea where a man's authority and prestige are are derived in large part by his ability to organize a lavish 'moka,' or gift-giving. The moka is an elaborate system of gifts which forges alliances and maintains peace among the tribes.

Although written documents record more than 350 years of events in North America, they reveal little about what everyday life was like. The three segments of this magazine-format film explore the current work of historical archaeologists at three sites across the United States. Details of peoples' lives are revealed in excavations at slave quarters on St. Simon Island, slag heaps in northern California mining towns occupied between 1859-1902, and subway construction sites in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where urban archaeologists devise new methods to discover artifacts in land still used.

The Maasai, a prosperous society of animal herders whose sustenence and wealth is their cattle, live primarily in the Rift Valley between Kenya and Tanzania. Women tend the cattle, bring up the children, clean mud from the village when it rains, and belong to a man's estate. This film highlights the Maasai female's rights of passage from childhood to old age, and her lot in life as she is tied to the fortunes of not only husbands but sons as well.

In 1849, a U.S. Army expedition in New Mexico came upon the first monumental stone ruins ever discovered in North America. By the 1920s, excavations had revealed the remains of a remarkable community, constructed entirely of mortarless masonry, which flourished nine hundred years ago in the Chaco Canyon. The community, Pueblo Bonito, was in fact a township, which included 800 living and storage rooms, as well as several large kiva: underground, circular ceremonial chambers. Archaeologists have traced the growth of Pueblo Bonito, on the basis of masonry techniques, pottery designs, and tree-ring dates, and have concluded that the settlement grew rapidly within a few hundred years.

Shows the conflict produced by the James Bay development scheme between a hunting culture of Cree Indians and the dominant white culture that has come to rely heavily on large-scale technology.

Until a lieutenant in Napoleon's army discovered the Rosetta stone in 1799, little was known about the mysterious markings on Egyptian monuments. This program follows the efforts of Jean-Francois Champollion, the man who eventually decoded the mystery.

A look at an Indonesian tribe whose existence centers on a spiritual harmony with the souls of their ancestors and their jungle environment. Based on anthropologist Reimer Schefold's 12 years research with the Sakuddei people of Siberut. Contains original footage from the Granada Television production with Reimer Schefold.