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BBC Atlas of the Natural World: Western Hemisphere and Antarctica
Starring: Sir David Attenborough
Directed by: Alastair Fothergill
Produced by: Ned Kelly , Steve Nicholls
From the BBC's internationally renowned, award-winning Natural History unit comes the first release in this extraordinarily ambitious undertaking.
Item Number: 13896
- Format:
- DVD Widescreen
- Region:
- 1 - More Details
- Run time:
- About 17 1/2 hours
- Number of Discs:
- 6
- Closed Captions:
- Y
- Special Features:
Enhanced Content Mode: Each series in this collection may be viewed in Enhanced Content Mode, in which pop-up windows will periodically appear during the program featuring added factual content
English and Spanish language tracks
Land of the Eagle
The story of how North America was discovered and tamed is told through two sets of eyes: the Native Amreicans and the European newcomers. The series, which received a Finalist Certificate at the New York Festival, is a magnificent ensemble of paints, photographs, old songs played on period instruments, contemporary Native Americans voicing the words of their ancestors, and gorgeous wildlife filming, revealing the shifting balance between man and nature.
Spirits of the Jaguar
In Central America and the Carribbean, everything is vibrant and colorful – from tropical rainforests teeming with wildlife, to the paradise islands and rich coral reefs, to the top of smoking volcanoes. The area boasts more species of spectacular plants and animals than anywhere else on the globe, many of them unique. Here the Maya Taino and Aztecs once roamed free, enjoying the natural riches all around them, and appeasing their bloodthirsty gods. This series reveals the dramatic relationships that exist here between the native inhabitants, the wildlife and the environment.
Wild South America
This spectacular; award-winning series explores the rich and unique wildlife that inhabits the diverse landscapes of the vast South American continent. It is a land of great extremes, stretching from the Antarctic to the Equator. It has the planet’s greatest river system, longest mountain chain, biggest and richest rainforest and driest desert. Using new camera techniques, including infrared night vision cameras, rarely seen animals are revealed, while a specialist aerial cameraman soars over the continent, revealing an entirely new perspective on its varied and romantic landscape.
Life in the Freezer
Antarctica is the wildest, coldest, most isolated continent on Earth. Encrusted in 90% of the world’s ice, its 5.4 million square miles are doubled each winter by the freezing of the seas. The average temperature at the South Pole is –56 degrees, dropping to –90 degrees and below in mid-winter. Yet this inhospitable landscape is home to a surprisingly rich variety of wildlife, much of it unique to the region.
David Attenborough and his camera team spent three years braving mountainous seas, blizzards with 100 mph winds, plummeting temperatures and glaciers the size of cathedrals to capture the majesty of Antarctica both on land and underwater. In this starkly beautiful landscape, they discover penguins by the millions, whales by the thousands, half the world’s seal population and seabirds galore.
The story of how North America was discovered and tamed is told through two sets of eyes: the Native Amreicans and the European newcomers. The series, which received a Finalist Certificate at the New York Festival, is a magnificent ensemble of paints, photographs, old songs played on period instruments, contemporary Native Americans voicing the words of their ancestors, and gorgeous wildlife filming, revealing the shifting balance between man and nature.
Spirits of the Jaguar
In Central America and the Carribbean, everything is vibrant and colorful – from tropical rainforests teeming with wildlife, to the paradise islands and rich coral reefs, to the top of smoking volcanoes. The area boasts more species of spectacular plants and animals than anywhere else on the globe, many of them unique. Here the Maya Taino and Aztecs once roamed free, enjoying the natural riches all around them, and appeasing their bloodthirsty gods. This series reveals the dramatic relationships that exist here between the native inhabitants, the wildlife and the environment.
Wild South America
This spectacular; award-winning series explores the rich and unique wildlife that inhabits the diverse landscapes of the vast South American continent. It is a land of great extremes, stretching from the Antarctic to the Equator. It has the planet’s greatest river system, longest mountain chain, biggest and richest rainforest and driest desert. Using new camera techniques, including infrared night vision cameras, rarely seen animals are revealed, while a specialist aerial cameraman soars over the continent, revealing an entirely new perspective on its varied and romantic landscape.
Life in the Freezer
Antarctica is the wildest, coldest, most isolated continent on Earth. Encrusted in 90% of the world’s ice, its 5.4 million square miles are doubled each winter by the freezing of the seas. The average temperature at the South Pole is –56 degrees, dropping to –90 degrees and below in mid-winter. Yet this inhospitable landscape is home to a surprisingly rich variety of wildlife, much of it unique to the region.
David Attenborough and his camera team spent three years braving mountainous seas, blizzards with 100 mph winds, plummeting temperatures and glaciers the size of cathedrals to capture the majesty of Antarctica both on land and underwater. In this starkly beautiful landscape, they discover penguins by the millions, whales by the thousands, half the world’s seal population and seabirds galore.
Land of the Eagle
The Great Encounter - From Chesapeake Bay, the largest and most prolific estuary in North America, to the seemingly endless deciduous woods of the Appalachian Mountains, lay a rich tapestry of natural habitats, unparalleled in Europe.Yet many of the colonists starved to death.
Confronting The Wilderness - Trade Rivalries eventually pushed the French south. Following the great Mississippi River, they lay claim to a land on behalf of their king - Louisiana Conquering the Swamps The vast Spanish territory of Florida once stretched as far as the Mississippi.The wealth of this land was its wildlife, which thrived in sub - tropical swamps.
Across The Sea Of Grass - Beyond the Mississippi, the explorers found the trees giving way to immense grasslands: the rolling prairies ablaze with a mass of flowers.
Into The Shining Mountains - The explorers searching for a safe trail through the Rocky Mountains found themselves locked in a maze of steep wooded valleys, rushing torrents and harsh climates threatening storm and avalanche.
Living On The Edge - The Southwest of the continent is mostly desert - harsh, hot, inhospitable landscapes where plants and animals have developed very special means of survival.
The First and Last Frontier - Alaska, the northernmost mainland of America was gateway for the native peoples that 10,000 years ago came from Asia to the New World.
Searching For Paradise - California's plant and animal communities were unrivalled elsewhere on the North American continent. But Americans soon began to realise the province’s natural resources were not inexhaustible...
Wild South America
Lost Worlds - From the hard struggle for existence on the icy peaks of the Andes to the sheer abundance of life in the Amazon Basin, Lost Worlds is a grand introduction to South America. It explores how and why such an odd collection of wildlife oddities have come to live on the same continent. A combination of unique creatures and strange behaviour, filmed amongst stunning scenery, introduces this wild continent of extremes.
Mighty Amazon - The Amazon basin is vast. From its mouth pours a fifth of all the river-water on Earth and 1000 miles upstream the river is still seven miles wide. The rivers and tributaries of the Amazon support an incredible diversity of fish life – in fact ten times the number found in the whole of Europe. This is the story of how wildlife has adapted to this watery world, and in particular to the incredible seasonal changes in river level which at high water, floods the neighbouring forest up to a height of ten metres.
The Great Plains - Brazil’s great plains are home to some of South America’s most extraordinary yet least known animals. From macaws to maned wolves, anacondas to jaguars, all must cope with the extremes of drought and flood that have shaped this land of extremes. With armour plated armadillos, crab eating foxes, bush dogs, flocks of crested screamers and giant anteaters, the savannahs are home to some of the continent’s most extraordinary sights and sounds.
The Andes - The Andes is the world’s longest mountain chain, stretching from the tropics to sub-Antarctica. Its icy power dominates the lives of the hardy animals that dare to call it home, making living here one of nature’s greatest challenges. From tropical cloud forests to high desert salt lakes to the massive Patagonian Ice Sheet, the Andes mountains host an incredible variety of different and fascinating life stories.
Amazon Jungle - Amazonia is the world’s largest area of tropical rainforest, and here the tree canopy has fabulously bright birds and more monkey species than any other jungle: marmosets, tamarins, howlers, capuchins, sakis, uakaris, spider and owl monkeys. In the canopy, they are joined by macaws, toucans, iridescent hummingbirds, blue morpho butterflies and the weird prehensile-tailed porcupine. But it’s not only full of variety and colour, it’s a dangerous place too.
Penguin Shores - We follow the cold, rich waters of the continent, from their genesis in the stormy southern oceans via the mighty Humboldt Current all the way to the Equator. In their journey, they transform one of the most inhospitable habitats on Earth into one of the richest marine eco-systems known, with the highest densities of seabirds ever seen. Sharing in the current’s riches are penguins, killer whales, sea lions, fur seals, albatrosses, cormorants, pelicans, boobies and the world’s only marine lizard – a series of wildlife spectacles that only South America can boast. Spirits of the Jaguar
The Forging of a New World - One hundred and thirty million years ago, the Caribbean and Central America were born. Submarine explosions threw out house-sized rocks, and lava vaporised the sea-water. Strange as it may seem, the islands were born not in the tranquil tropical waters of the Caribbean, but over 1,000 kilometres out in the Pacific. From here the raw islands grew and moved eastwards, brushing against the continents of North and South America.
While they were ‘docked’, they picked up plant and animal stowaways. The islands then ‘sailed’ on into the Caribbean Sea, taking their passengers with them. Spirits of the Jaguar takes this `Caribbean cruise’ using computer simulations to chart the islands’ stately progress. Once the Caribbean islands had settled down, new settlers arrived - giant iguanas, tiny hummingbirds and vicious crocodiles.
For the first time, Spirits of the Jaguar has filmed the wildlife of Cuba. Cuba is the largest and least known of the Caribbean islands, and its wildlife is a revelation. The bee hummingbird is the smallest hummingbird in the world - its body is no bigger than a penny coin, and it weighs considerably less. The female is so small that she risks getting trapped in spider’s webs when collecting silk for her nest.
Series producer Paul Reddish says: “The Cuban crocodile is the most fearsome beast I have come across in all my travels. At the merest hint of food, it will leap straight out of the water, over two metres into the air.”
As the Caribbean islands were taking on board their passengers, another set of islands emerged from the Pacific. These islands also travelled eastwards, but became jammed between the two continents to form Central America. Along this volcanic isthmus travelled the animals of North and South America. Anteaters and armadillos, jaguars and tapirs, fish-eating marsupials and turtle-stealing coatimundis all entered this new world. Some just crossed over into the other continent but most stayed to make Central America one of the most dazzling places on Earth. The resplendent quetzal is the most beautiful bird in the world, and would have a powerful influence on the cultures that evolved in this tropical paradise.
The last to arrive were the people. They came from North America as hunters of giant mammals such as mammoths, and settled as fishers and farmers of maize, a crop domesticated in Mexico. These people were to form the civilisations of the region, the Maya of the tropical forests, the mysterious Taino of the Caribbean, and the warlike Aztec of the Mexican highlands.
Paul Reddish adds, “How do you film a mammoth hunt? Well, director Martin Hughes-Games used a combination of live action filmed in Mexico and animatronics, plus many days of hi-tech computer editing to achieve startling results that convey the danger and excitement of events 10,000 years ago.”
Forests of the Maya - Shrouded in mist, hidden deep in the rainforests of southern Mexico and Guatemala, are the temples of the Americas’ greatest civilisation, the Maya. Forests of the Maya traces the growth of the Maya from simple hunters and farmers to their peak and mysterious demise, 1,100 years ago. At the height of their culture, the Maya were great astronomers, mathematicians and timekeepers. They looked to the forest for more than just food, taking their spiritual inspiration from giant trees and creatures such as the jaguar. This peerless predator came to represent the power and regal nature of rulers. It hunted the dense forest both day and night and was accorded a god-like status. The ceiba tree, the tallest in the forest, was at the centre of the Maya world and its roots entered the underworld, the place of the dead. Its trunk bridged the land of the living and stretched up into the sky where flew the largest raptor in the world, the god-like harpy eagle.
The Maya temples reached up towards the heavens. Like the ceiba tree, the buildings linked the three layers of the world. The land of the Maya is one that has always suffered from seasons of rain and drought, and the Maya became adept at predicting the coming of Chac, the rain god. They perfectly aligned their ceremonial buildings so that on the equinoxes a giant shadow of a 'serpent’ fell on the temple steps.
Episode Producer Mark Jacobs says: “The Maya lived in a magical world ruled by animal spirits. Their ruins have been with us for 1,000 years, but only recently have we come to understand just how deeply the natural world influenced their lives. Using time-lapse cameras, drama and special effects we have created an impression of the jungle as seen through the eyes of this remarkable ancient civilisation.”
The Maya studied the movement of the planets to calculate the passage of huge spans of time, with their calendars setting out time in cycles of over 5,000 years. They also developed a complex form of writing to record the reigns of their rulers. Jacobs adds: “In the story of the Maya we see an extraordinary civilisation, one that studied the stars and ate specially bred dogs; one that revered the jaguar and called on its rulers to pierce their tongues and penises to repay the debt of blood to the gods.”
Then within a few decades the Maya were gone, their civilisation lost for ever. As their society grew ever more sophisticated, so the burden of scribes and priests, aristocrats and rulers needed to carry out the endless round of ceremonies weighed down the peasant class. The forests were chopped down, soil was washed away. The jaguar, the symbol of the rulers, edged towards extinction.
Hunters of the Caribbean Sea - About 2,000 years ago a small band of intrepid pioneers paddled out into the Caribbean in dug-out canoes. These mysterious Taino people settled in a world very different from the dense forests of South America that they left behind. Here there were no jaguars to fear and revere, no deer or monkeys to hunt. In place of the endless forest, was a tropical paradise. These idyllic islands with white coral sands and turquoise seas held their own curious wildlife - dazzling hummingbirds and parrots, reef fishes and giant marine turtles, sinister snakes and flying frogs.
With little food to be found on the islands the Taino turned to the sea. They hunted manatees and tuna, and collected conch, huge sea snails. It was the conch that would supply their protein as the Taino evolved into a culture dependent on the sea.
The Taino moved north up the island chain that is now regarded as a tropical paradise - St Lucia, Dominica and Martinique. They settled eventually on the larger Caribbean islands of Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Hispaniola and Cuba. As there was always another island just over the horizon, the Taino had no need to defend their land and never developed the art of warfare. Instead they became a spiritual people communicating with their gods and the forces that controlled nature through their ‘idols’ or cemis. Their shamen entered the womb of the world, the cave, and used hallucinogenic drugs to travel to the world of the spirits. These caves are still home to millions of bats, the messengers of the dead, and boas feed on the bats each evening as they leave the cave.
Producer Paul Reddish says: “To hear the fluttering of millions of bats in the pitch dark of a cave, to watch a leatherback turtle haul ashore, lay her eggs and return within the hour to the depths of the starlit ocean; this is to join with the spirits of the Taino in wonder at the grandeur of nature.”
The Taino had the dubious honour of being the first people to greet Columbus. Within 50 years they were gone, destroyed by slavery, torture, abject cruelty and overwork. These most peaceful of people left a legacy of words, ‘tobacco, canoe, hurricane, hammock’, and more importantly, a model of another way of living. Paul Reddish concludes: “Even after 500 years, the Taino come across as a wonderful and gentle people. Isolated on the Caribbean islands they developed a remarkable culture that valued harmony and spirituality above material gain. They stood no chance against the onslaught of rapacious mediaeval Europe.”
The Fifth World of the Aztecs - The Aztecs are renowned for their bloodthirsty culture. They sacrificed thousands of victims at the inauguration of a temple. The victims’ hearts, still beating, were ripped from their chests. This film tells their story from their humble beginnings to the height of their empire. The gods had created worlds before, but their final attempt was to be this fifth world, the world of the Aztecs. The violent nature of these intelligent and cultured people stems from their origins in the harsh deserts of Mexico.
The Aztecs believed their ancestral home was a lake called Aztlan, in the deserts of northern Mexico. In the year 1111, their gods told them to leave the lake. They would not settle again for some 200 years. The years spent wandering the deserts and feeding off rattlesnakes and spiny cactus fruit had a powerful effect on their view of the world. The desert is a harsh and unpredictable place, where nothing can be taken for granted. The Aztecs had a prophecy - where the eagle alighted on a cactus they would build their city. Finally, in the year 1325, the Aztecs settled. Their home was a swampy island nobody else wanted in the middle of a giant lake in the valley of Mexico. Here they built their city Tenochtitlan, today known as Mexico City. By this time, the Aztecs were also known as the Mexica, the origin of the name Mexico. Producer Mark Jacobs says: “Standing in the middle of Mexico City, stung by pollution and surrounded by traffic, it is hard to believe that this is a metropolis built on top of a giant lake.
Once this city was the ‘Venice of the Americas’, choked not by cars but by small boats.” The valley of Mexico is very fertile compared to the desert, but there are still great unpredictable events, earthquakes, volcanic explosions and floods. Nearby, were also the ruins of former civilisations, giant empty pyramids which haunted the Aztecs. Perhaps with good reason the Aztecs feared the imminent end of their empire. All these natural uncertainties led to a kind of cosmic neurosis. The Aztecs believed the sun would not rise unless they sacrificed human victims. This was to repay the blood debt of the gods who had sacrificed themselves to create the sun at the dawn of the fifth world, the world of the Aztecs. The jaguar and the eagle entered the flames with the gods; the jaguar to gain his spots, the eagle his black-tipped feathers. The elite of the Aztec warriors were named after these fearless predators. The Eagle and Jaguar Knights were the storm troops that captured victims for the sacrifices that kept the sun rising on the Aztec Empire.
But the Aztec empire came to an end in 1521, as foretold by visions and comets, with the arrival of Hernan Cortes. His victory owed more to superior weapons and European diseases such as smallpox, than to Aztec prophecies. With the destruction of the Aztec Empire, the world of Spirits of the Jaguar comes to an end. It covers a period when civilisations and beliefs sprang from nature, and the special powers of animals such as the jaguar.
The Great Encounter - From Chesapeake Bay, the largest and most prolific estuary in North America, to the seemingly endless deciduous woods of the Appalachian Mountains, lay a rich tapestry of natural habitats, unparalleled in Europe.Yet many of the colonists starved to death.
Confronting The Wilderness - Trade Rivalries eventually pushed the French south. Following the great Mississippi River, they lay claim to a land on behalf of their king - Louisiana Conquering the Swamps The vast Spanish territory of Florida once stretched as far as the Mississippi.The wealth of this land was its wildlife, which thrived in sub - tropical swamps.
Across The Sea Of Grass - Beyond the Mississippi, the explorers found the trees giving way to immense grasslands: the rolling prairies ablaze with a mass of flowers.
Into The Shining Mountains - The explorers searching for a safe trail through the Rocky Mountains found themselves locked in a maze of steep wooded valleys, rushing torrents and harsh climates threatening storm and avalanche.
Living On The Edge - The Southwest of the continent is mostly desert - harsh, hot, inhospitable landscapes where plants and animals have developed very special means of survival.
The First and Last Frontier - Alaska, the northernmost mainland of America was gateway for the native peoples that 10,000 years ago came from Asia to the New World.
Searching For Paradise - California's plant and animal communities were unrivalled elsewhere on the North American continent. But Americans soon began to realise the province’s natural resources were not inexhaustible...
Wild South America
Lost Worlds - From the hard struggle for existence on the icy peaks of the Andes to the sheer abundance of life in the Amazon Basin, Lost Worlds is a grand introduction to South America. It explores how and why such an odd collection of wildlife oddities have come to live on the same continent. A combination of unique creatures and strange behaviour, filmed amongst stunning scenery, introduces this wild continent of extremes.
Mighty Amazon - The Amazon basin is vast. From its mouth pours a fifth of all the river-water on Earth and 1000 miles upstream the river is still seven miles wide. The rivers and tributaries of the Amazon support an incredible diversity of fish life – in fact ten times the number found in the whole of Europe. This is the story of how wildlife has adapted to this watery world, and in particular to the incredible seasonal changes in river level which at high water, floods the neighbouring forest up to a height of ten metres.
The Great Plains - Brazil’s great plains are home to some of South America’s most extraordinary yet least known animals. From macaws to maned wolves, anacondas to jaguars, all must cope with the extremes of drought and flood that have shaped this land of extremes. With armour plated armadillos, crab eating foxes, bush dogs, flocks of crested screamers and giant anteaters, the savannahs are home to some of the continent’s most extraordinary sights and sounds.
The Andes - The Andes is the world’s longest mountain chain, stretching from the tropics to sub-Antarctica. Its icy power dominates the lives of the hardy animals that dare to call it home, making living here one of nature’s greatest challenges. From tropical cloud forests to high desert salt lakes to the massive Patagonian Ice Sheet, the Andes mountains host an incredible variety of different and fascinating life stories.
Amazon Jungle - Amazonia is the world’s largest area of tropical rainforest, and here the tree canopy has fabulously bright birds and more monkey species than any other jungle: marmosets, tamarins, howlers, capuchins, sakis, uakaris, spider and owl monkeys. In the canopy, they are joined by macaws, toucans, iridescent hummingbirds, blue morpho butterflies and the weird prehensile-tailed porcupine. But it’s not only full of variety and colour, it’s a dangerous place too.
Penguin Shores - We follow the cold, rich waters of the continent, from their genesis in the stormy southern oceans via the mighty Humboldt Current all the way to the Equator. In their journey, they transform one of the most inhospitable habitats on Earth into one of the richest marine eco-systems known, with the highest densities of seabirds ever seen. Sharing in the current’s riches are penguins, killer whales, sea lions, fur seals, albatrosses, cormorants, pelicans, boobies and the world’s only marine lizard – a series of wildlife spectacles that only South America can boast. Spirits of the Jaguar
The Forging of a New World - One hundred and thirty million years ago, the Caribbean and Central America were born. Submarine explosions threw out house-sized rocks, and lava vaporised the sea-water. Strange as it may seem, the islands were born not in the tranquil tropical waters of the Caribbean, but over 1,000 kilometres out in the Pacific. From here the raw islands grew and moved eastwards, brushing against the continents of North and South America.
While they were ‘docked’, they picked up plant and animal stowaways. The islands then ‘sailed’ on into the Caribbean Sea, taking their passengers with them. Spirits of the Jaguar takes this `Caribbean cruise’ using computer simulations to chart the islands’ stately progress. Once the Caribbean islands had settled down, new settlers arrived - giant iguanas, tiny hummingbirds and vicious crocodiles.
For the first time, Spirits of the Jaguar has filmed the wildlife of Cuba. Cuba is the largest and least known of the Caribbean islands, and its wildlife is a revelation. The bee hummingbird is the smallest hummingbird in the world - its body is no bigger than a penny coin, and it weighs considerably less. The female is so small that she risks getting trapped in spider’s webs when collecting silk for her nest.
Series producer Paul Reddish says: “The Cuban crocodile is the most fearsome beast I have come across in all my travels. At the merest hint of food, it will leap straight out of the water, over two metres into the air.”
As the Caribbean islands were taking on board their passengers, another set of islands emerged from the Pacific. These islands also travelled eastwards, but became jammed between the two continents to form Central America. Along this volcanic isthmus travelled the animals of North and South America. Anteaters and armadillos, jaguars and tapirs, fish-eating marsupials and turtle-stealing coatimundis all entered this new world. Some just crossed over into the other continent but most stayed to make Central America one of the most dazzling places on Earth. The resplendent quetzal is the most beautiful bird in the world, and would have a powerful influence on the cultures that evolved in this tropical paradise.
The last to arrive were the people. They came from North America as hunters of giant mammals such as mammoths, and settled as fishers and farmers of maize, a crop domesticated in Mexico. These people were to form the civilisations of the region, the Maya of the tropical forests, the mysterious Taino of the Caribbean, and the warlike Aztec of the Mexican highlands.
Paul Reddish adds, “How do you film a mammoth hunt? Well, director Martin Hughes-Games used a combination of live action filmed in Mexico and animatronics, plus many days of hi-tech computer editing to achieve startling results that convey the danger and excitement of events 10,000 years ago.”
Forests of the Maya - Shrouded in mist, hidden deep in the rainforests of southern Mexico and Guatemala, are the temples of the Americas’ greatest civilisation, the Maya. Forests of the Maya traces the growth of the Maya from simple hunters and farmers to their peak and mysterious demise, 1,100 years ago. At the height of their culture, the Maya were great astronomers, mathematicians and timekeepers. They looked to the forest for more than just food, taking their spiritual inspiration from giant trees and creatures such as the jaguar. This peerless predator came to represent the power and regal nature of rulers. It hunted the dense forest both day and night and was accorded a god-like status. The ceiba tree, the tallest in the forest, was at the centre of the Maya world and its roots entered the underworld, the place of the dead. Its trunk bridged the land of the living and stretched up into the sky where flew the largest raptor in the world, the god-like harpy eagle.
The Maya temples reached up towards the heavens. Like the ceiba tree, the buildings linked the three layers of the world. The land of the Maya is one that has always suffered from seasons of rain and drought, and the Maya became adept at predicting the coming of Chac, the rain god. They perfectly aligned their ceremonial buildings so that on the equinoxes a giant shadow of a 'serpent’ fell on the temple steps.
Episode Producer Mark Jacobs says: “The Maya lived in a magical world ruled by animal spirits. Their ruins have been with us for 1,000 years, but only recently have we come to understand just how deeply the natural world influenced their lives. Using time-lapse cameras, drama and special effects we have created an impression of the jungle as seen through the eyes of this remarkable ancient civilisation.”
The Maya studied the movement of the planets to calculate the passage of huge spans of time, with their calendars setting out time in cycles of over 5,000 years. They also developed a complex form of writing to record the reigns of their rulers. Jacobs adds: “In the story of the Maya we see an extraordinary civilisation, one that studied the stars and ate specially bred dogs; one that revered the jaguar and called on its rulers to pierce their tongues and penises to repay the debt of blood to the gods.”
Then within a few decades the Maya were gone, their civilisation lost for ever. As their society grew ever more sophisticated, so the burden of scribes and priests, aristocrats and rulers needed to carry out the endless round of ceremonies weighed down the peasant class. The forests were chopped down, soil was washed away. The jaguar, the symbol of the rulers, edged towards extinction.
Hunters of the Caribbean Sea - About 2,000 years ago a small band of intrepid pioneers paddled out into the Caribbean in dug-out canoes. These mysterious Taino people settled in a world very different from the dense forests of South America that they left behind. Here there were no jaguars to fear and revere, no deer or monkeys to hunt. In place of the endless forest, was a tropical paradise. These idyllic islands with white coral sands and turquoise seas held their own curious wildlife - dazzling hummingbirds and parrots, reef fishes and giant marine turtles, sinister snakes and flying frogs.
With little food to be found on the islands the Taino turned to the sea. They hunted manatees and tuna, and collected conch, huge sea snails. It was the conch that would supply their protein as the Taino evolved into a culture dependent on the sea.
The Taino moved north up the island chain that is now regarded as a tropical paradise - St Lucia, Dominica and Martinique. They settled eventually on the larger Caribbean islands of Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Hispaniola and Cuba. As there was always another island just over the horizon, the Taino had no need to defend their land and never developed the art of warfare. Instead they became a spiritual people communicating with their gods and the forces that controlled nature through their ‘idols’ or cemis. Their shamen entered the womb of the world, the cave, and used hallucinogenic drugs to travel to the world of the spirits. These caves are still home to millions of bats, the messengers of the dead, and boas feed on the bats each evening as they leave the cave.
Producer Paul Reddish says: “To hear the fluttering of millions of bats in the pitch dark of a cave, to watch a leatherback turtle haul ashore, lay her eggs and return within the hour to the depths of the starlit ocean; this is to join with the spirits of the Taino in wonder at the grandeur of nature.”
The Taino had the dubious honour of being the first people to greet Columbus. Within 50 years they were gone, destroyed by slavery, torture, abject cruelty and overwork. These most peaceful of people left a legacy of words, ‘tobacco, canoe, hurricane, hammock’, and more importantly, a model of another way of living. Paul Reddish concludes: “Even after 500 years, the Taino come across as a wonderful and gentle people. Isolated on the Caribbean islands they developed a remarkable culture that valued harmony and spirituality above material gain. They stood no chance against the onslaught of rapacious mediaeval Europe.”
The Fifth World of the Aztecs - The Aztecs are renowned for their bloodthirsty culture. They sacrificed thousands of victims at the inauguration of a temple. The victims’ hearts, still beating, were ripped from their chests. This film tells their story from their humble beginnings to the height of their empire. The gods had created worlds before, but their final attempt was to be this fifth world, the world of the Aztecs. The violent nature of these intelligent and cultured people stems from their origins in the harsh deserts of Mexico.
The Aztecs believed their ancestral home was a lake called Aztlan, in the deserts of northern Mexico. In the year 1111, their gods told them to leave the lake. They would not settle again for some 200 years. The years spent wandering the deserts and feeding off rattlesnakes and spiny cactus fruit had a powerful effect on their view of the world. The desert is a harsh and unpredictable place, where nothing can be taken for granted. The Aztecs had a prophecy - where the eagle alighted on a cactus they would build their city. Finally, in the year 1325, the Aztecs settled. Their home was a swampy island nobody else wanted in the middle of a giant lake in the valley of Mexico. Here they built their city Tenochtitlan, today known as Mexico City. By this time, the Aztecs were also known as the Mexica, the origin of the name Mexico. Producer Mark Jacobs says: “Standing in the middle of Mexico City, stung by pollution and surrounded by traffic, it is hard to believe that this is a metropolis built on top of a giant lake.
Once this city was the ‘Venice of the Americas’, choked not by cars but by small boats.” The valley of Mexico is very fertile compared to the desert, but there are still great unpredictable events, earthquakes, volcanic explosions and floods. Nearby, were also the ruins of former civilisations, giant empty pyramids which haunted the Aztecs. Perhaps with good reason the Aztecs feared the imminent end of their empire. All these natural uncertainties led to a kind of cosmic neurosis. The Aztecs believed the sun would not rise unless they sacrificed human victims. This was to repay the blood debt of the gods who had sacrificed themselves to create the sun at the dawn of the fifth world, the world of the Aztecs. The jaguar and the eagle entered the flames with the gods; the jaguar to gain his spots, the eagle his black-tipped feathers. The elite of the Aztec warriors were named after these fearless predators. The Eagle and Jaguar Knights were the storm troops that captured victims for the sacrifices that kept the sun rising on the Aztec Empire.
But the Aztec empire came to an end in 1521, as foretold by visions and comets, with the arrival of Hernan Cortes. His victory owed more to superior weapons and European diseases such as smallpox, than to Aztec prophecies. With the destruction of the Aztec Empire, the world of Spirits of the Jaguar comes to an end. It covers a period when civilisations and beliefs sprang from nature, and the special powers of animals such as the jaguar.
"...stylish ... enjoyable..."-The Times
"The film-makers behind this colourful look at the creatures of the Caribbean spent two years on islands like Jamaica and Cuba recording this absorbing documentary ... the result is some remarkable photography with the most frightening animal on show being the Cuban crocodile which can leap six feet out of the water for a snack. With dramatic reconstructions conveying the mysteries of ancient civilisations this ambitious four-parter looks as though it might be worth all that time in the sunshine." - Sun
"The star of the first programme in the Spirits Of The Jaguar series was certainly the Caribbean crocodile. This horror has been hidden from us till now. It can leap six feet in the air, standing upright on its tail, and pluck its trembling prey from a tree. It not only can, it did." - Guardian
"...startling photography..."- Herald
"Spirits of the Jaguar ... combines dramatic reconstructions, wondrous wildlife, ingenious special effects and glorious scenery to present the full splendor of Central America and the Caribbean, from its fiery origins to the growth and demise of the great civilizations of the Maya and Aztec that sprang from its fertile soils."- Austin American-Statesman
"...impressive..."- Buffalo News
"...beautifully realised BBC series about the great lost civilisations of Central America and the Caribbean." -Sunday Herald Sun
"Couldn’t be late for the start of the top rating Spirits of the Jaguar ... a visually superb BBC documentary series." -Adelaide Advertiser
"Is there anything worth watching on local television? Try Spirits Of The Jaguar."- The Australian
"This is one for budding geologists, with something thrown in for archeologists and naturalists as well ... Tonight sets the scene for what will no doubt prove to be an interesting series on the intricacies of the mighty civilisations of old." -Sydney Morning Herald
“...contains some of the most stunning natural history footage ever aired.”- Guardian
“A spectacular six-part series...” -Time Out
“This documentary about the diverse landscape and wildlife of South America boasts consistently awe-inspiring footage, much of it filmed by pilot Bob Fulton, travelling the entire continent over the period of a year. Peaks, plains, jungle, desert, ocean and lots of wildlife. And this is only the first of the series.”- Guardian
“The flora, fauna and physical features of South America come into vivid focus – courtesy of BBC Bristol's highly regarded Natural History Unit – in a new six-part series narrated by Fergal Keane. Aside from the extraordinary array of creatures and plants on display, the most remarkable images in this opening film are aerial views of contrasting wilderness vistas, from the serrated glaciers of Patagonia to the seemingly endless Amazon rainforest and basin, and the forbidding Atacama desert.”- Sunday Times
“...required viewing, guaranteed to stimulate the imagination of all ages.”- Observer
“Fantastic footage of everything from giant otters to piranha, electric eels and floating fire ants makes this both beautiful and fascinating.” -Sunday Times, Perth
“A wonderful postcard of a unique and precious habitat.” Sunday Herald Sun, Melbourne “This superbly filmed documentary series keeps us slack-jawed with facts, figures and photography on territory that might have seemed already well covered.” -Sun-Herald, Sydney
"The film-makers behind this colourful look at the creatures of the Caribbean spent two years on islands like Jamaica and Cuba recording this absorbing documentary ... the result is some remarkable photography with the most frightening animal on show being the Cuban crocodile which can leap six feet out of the water for a snack. With dramatic reconstructions conveying the mysteries of ancient civilisations this ambitious four-parter looks as though it might be worth all that time in the sunshine." - Sun
"The star of the first programme in the Spirits Of The Jaguar series was certainly the Caribbean crocodile. This horror has been hidden from us till now. It can leap six feet in the air, standing upright on its tail, and pluck its trembling prey from a tree. It not only can, it did." - Guardian
"...startling photography..."- Herald
"Spirits of the Jaguar ... combines dramatic reconstructions, wondrous wildlife, ingenious special effects and glorious scenery to present the full splendor of Central America and the Caribbean, from its fiery origins to the growth and demise of the great civilizations of the Maya and Aztec that sprang from its fertile soils."- Austin American-Statesman
"...impressive..."- Buffalo News
"...beautifully realised BBC series about the great lost civilisations of Central America and the Caribbean." -Sunday Herald Sun
"Couldn’t be late for the start of the top rating Spirits of the Jaguar ... a visually superb BBC documentary series." -Adelaide Advertiser
"Is there anything worth watching on local television? Try Spirits Of The Jaguar."- The Australian
"This is one for budding geologists, with something thrown in for archeologists and naturalists as well ... Tonight sets the scene for what will no doubt prove to be an interesting series on the intricacies of the mighty civilisations of old." -Sydney Morning Herald
“...contains some of the most stunning natural history footage ever aired.”- Guardian
“A spectacular six-part series...” -Time Out
“This documentary about the diverse landscape and wildlife of South America boasts consistently awe-inspiring footage, much of it filmed by pilot Bob Fulton, travelling the entire continent over the period of a year. Peaks, plains, jungle, desert, ocean and lots of wildlife. And this is only the first of the series.”- Guardian
“The flora, fauna and physical features of South America come into vivid focus – courtesy of BBC Bristol's highly regarded Natural History Unit – in a new six-part series narrated by Fergal Keane. Aside from the extraordinary array of creatures and plants on display, the most remarkable images in this opening film are aerial views of contrasting wilderness vistas, from the serrated glaciers of Patagonia to the seemingly endless Amazon rainforest and basin, and the forbidding Atacama desert.”- Sunday Times
“...required viewing, guaranteed to stimulate the imagination of all ages.”- Observer
“Fantastic footage of everything from giant otters to piranha, electric eels and floating fire ants makes this both beautiful and fascinating.” -Sunday Times, Perth
“A wonderful postcard of a unique and precious habitat.” Sunday Herald Sun, Melbourne “This superbly filmed documentary series keeps us slack-jawed with facts, figures and photography on territory that might have seemed already well covered.” -Sun-Herald, Sydney
From the BBC's internationally renowned, award-winning Natural History unit comes the first release in an extraordinarily ambitious undertaking, BBC Atlas of the Natural World, a unique survey of life on Earth in all its remarkable richness and beauty.
This six-disc set brings together four landmark BBC series that combine to give one of the most comprehensive portraits of the Western Hemisphere and Antarctica ever assembled. From the teeming wildlife and rich geography of the Americas to the inhospitably frozen landscape at the bottom of the world, from the spectacular rainforests of South America to the remarkable variety of plant and animal species in Central America and the Carribbean, from the songs of the Native Americans to the migration of the Emperor Penguin, these programs offer remarkable insight into the complex relationship between humans, wildlife, and nature on these three continents and in the waters that surround them.
The 4 programs included in this set are:
Land of the Eagle, Spirits of the Jaguar, Wild South America and Life in the Freezer.
This six-disc set brings together four landmark BBC series that combine to give one of the most comprehensive portraits of the Western Hemisphere and Antarctica ever assembled. From the teeming wildlife and rich geography of the Americas to the inhospitably frozen landscape at the bottom of the world, from the spectacular rainforests of South America to the remarkable variety of plant and animal species in Central America and the Carribbean, from the songs of the Native Americans to the migration of the Emperor Penguin, these programs offer remarkable insight into the complex relationship between humans, wildlife, and nature on these three continents and in the waters that surround them.
The 4 programs included in this set are:
Land of the Eagle, Spirits of the Jaguar, Wild South America and Life in the Freezer.
