Ice Age Columbus

Today on Far Future Horizons we explore a contentious question - Did western Europeans begin the settlement of the New World 17,000 years before Columbus was even born? And, present for your viewing pleasure a controversial docudrama titled Ice Age Columbus - Who Were the First Americans?

Firmly rooted in the latest scientific discoveries, this fascinating docudrama explores the premise that Europeans came to America much earlier than previously thought. Anyone interested in the “Solutrean Hypothesis” should make it a point to watch this program.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

The Solutrean hypothesis proposes that stone tool technology of the Solutrean culture in prehistoric Europe may have later influenced the development of the Clovis tool-making culture in the Americas, and that peoples from Europe may have been among the earliest settlers in the Americas. It was first proposed in 1998. Its key proponents include Dennis Stanford, of the Smithsonian Institution, and Bruce Bradley, of the University of Exeter.

In this hypothesis, peoples associated with the Solutrean culture migrated from Ice Age Europe to North America, bringing their methods of making stone tools with them and providing the basis for later Clovis technology found throughout North America. The hypothesis rests upon particular similarities in Solutrean and Clovis technology that have no known counterparts in Eastern Asia, Siberia or Beringia, areas from which or through which early Americans are known to have migrated.

Who Really Discovered America?

Today on Far Future Horizons we commemorate the five hundred and twenty-third anniversary of the discovery of America by exploring the question - Who Really Discovered America?

This documentary explores the possibility that a number of explorers discovered the New World long before Christopher Columbus staked his claim in 1492. 

Shackleton’s Antarctic Adventure

Today on Far Future Horizons we explore the frigid wastes of Antarctica with Sir Ernest Shackleton and the intrepid crew of Endurance.

Shackleton’s Antarctic Adventure is a documentary film that tells the extraordinary true story of polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton’s now-legendary 1914-1916 British Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. While never accomplishing its goal of the first crossing of the Antarctic continent, this expedition has become a larger-than-life testament to heroism and human endurance, with all 28 men surviving nearly two years in the barren, frigid Antarctic when their ship, Endurance, was caught in pack ice and eventually crushed.

Lost in the Amazon - Colonel Percy Fawcett

Today on Far Future Horizons we present the acclaimed PBS documentary ‘Secrets of the Dead’ and go in search of the British explorer Colonel Percy Fawcett and fabulous lost City of Z.

In 1925 the British explorer Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett plunged into the Amazon forest in search of a lost civilization he had named the City of Z. He and the rest of his entourage were never seen again. 

The Discoverers

Today on Far Future Horizons we present  the IMAX film “The Discoverers”. This motion picture takes its inspiration from the book by Daniel J. Boorstin.  So join us as we take you on a voyage through time and space on a grand adventure of intellectual discovery.

The Man Who Walked Across the World

Today on Far Future Horizons for those of you who have a yearning to explore exotic locales we present the astonishing story of the thirty year odyssey of the greatest explorer of the Islamic World - Ibn Battuta.

In this wonderful three part documentary travelogue, Tim Mackintosh Smith follows in the footsteps of Fourteenth Century Moroccan scholar Ibn Battuta.

In June 1325, when he was twenty one years old, Ibn Battuta set off from his hometown of Tangier on a hajj (pilgrimage) to Mecca, a journey that would take sixteen months. Yet, Ibn Battutah would not see Morocco again for twenty four years.

The full extent of Ibn Battuta’s adventure would involve a seventy five thousand mile trek across the entirety of the known Islamic world and beyond. During the course of which, he visited forty countries and three continents in a thirty year odyssey.

1421: The Year When China Nearly Discovered America and the World

History tells us that the America continent was discovered by Christopher Columbus on October 12, 1492. But, a nascent naval power had the ability to discover and colonize this new world some seventy years before.

The year 1421 could have been a pivotal year in world history and would make a magnificent point of divergence in many an alternate history novel. 1421 could have been the year when Ming dynasty China could have set into motion a series of events that would have led the Chinese to discovery the Americas some seventy years before Christopher Columbus, circumnavigate the globe and transform Imperial China from merely a regional power into a major naval superpower of global extent on which the Sun would never have set. Instead China chose to abrogate its appointment with destiny and retreated into a long period of isolationism. The conquest of the world and control of the oceans were left to the countries of a Europe just awaking from a long period of intellectual slumber. Eventually the new emerging maritime powers of Europe found their way to the shores of the Dragon’s lair and were in due course to carve the carcass of this impotent giant between themselves.

Longitude

Today on Far Future Horizons we are proud to present a docudrama starring Michael Gambon (as John Harrison)  and Jeremy Irons (as Rupert Gould) based on Dava Sobel's best selling book – Longitude.   

In the early 18th century, John Harrison struggles to build a practical marine chronometer for determining longitude (east/west position) at sea. 

Ancient Discoveries - Chinese Super Ships

Today on Far Future Horizons we present another exciting episode of the History Channel’s acclaimed documentary series “Ancient Discoveries” where we will meet the master shipbuilders of Imperial China.


These master shipbuilders of the Far East created the most deadly warships of ancient times in their quest for supremacy of the seas.

This installment of Ancient Discoveries uncovers the extraordinary ingenuity of the ancient engineers whose innovations would take shipbuilding to new heights and create some of the largest and most fearsome navies of the ancient world. Could this very same ancient Chinese naval technology have transformed China into a nascent naval power with the ability to discover and colonize the new world some seventy years before Christopher Columbus set sail into the unknown and discovered America?

Chinese Treasure Fleet: The Adventures of Zheng He

Admiral Zheng He

Today on Far Future Horizons we present a fascinating documentary concerning China’s legendary Ming dynasty admiral – Zheng He and his magnificent Treasure Fleet.