Synopsis

The journey we invite you to take this evening is perhaps the most beautiful one. Let's go in search of our most ancient origins. The starting point for our journey is the discovery of a new important hominid that has been added to our family tree. If we had been in Ethiopia about four and a half million years ago, perhaps we might have come across an Ardipithecus ramidus. He is the most ancient ancestor of man; scientists have called him Ardi. She was probably a female and lived in the same region of East Africa where over a million years later another very famous creature of antiquity, Lucy, would roam. Until Ardi's arrival, Lucy's remains were considered the oldest hominid skeleton in our possession. Alberto Angela tells the long history of our species, which starting from very primitive beings led to modern man. An exciting journey in two episodes, a new look at our past, told through what research allows us, albeit incompletely, to reconstruct.

Synopsis

A story created not only with finds and exploration of the sites, but also with accurate reconstructions of the hominids who followed one another over the course of five million years: Austrolopithecines, Homo habilis, Homo erectus, Neanderthal, Cro-magnon, etc. The entire gallery of our distant ancestors is visualized thanks to fiction and computer processing. The scenes with actors were filmed in the African savannahs, in the same places where human evolution took place: under the guidance of experts, in particular prof. Yves Coppens of Paris, one of the most authoritative researchers in human paleontology, the appearance of these primitive hominids and also scenes of their life were reconstructed, just as it is possible today to reconstruct them based on all the studies done. For the Austrolopithecines, a complex technique was used, superimposing computer graphics on the basic movements performed by actors.

Synopsis

For the opening episode of the ten years of Ulisse we chose to visit a place rich in history in Rome. A Palace that all Italians know, but no one has ever really been able to visit: the Quirinale. It is an extraordinary palace. Its structure, its architecture, even its splendid gardens, faithfully reflect the history of Italy. Every era has left its mark on it. Ulisse obtained special permits from the Presidency of the Republic with the collaboration of Rai Quirinale. He had the invaluable advice of the staff of scholars, directed by Prof. Louis Godart, advisor to the President for the conservation of the artistic heritage and the collaboration of all the staff of the great institutional machine which is today the seat of the Presidency of the Italian Republic. Alberto Angela takes us on a journey to discover the various aspects of the Quirinale.

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This episode is dedicated to the world of twins. We will investigate the unique relationship between them. We will discover that each twin is a person with their own distinct personality. We will show you a sensational film on twin pregnancies, from the first ultrasounds to the birth. We will listen to a series of real-life testimonies from pairs of twins of all ages and from all over the world. Alberto Angela tells us the extraordinary story of the Dionne twins, Canadian quintuplets born prematurely in 1934 in a small village in Ontario. They were identical and so small that each of them could be held in the palm of the hand. Until that day, around thirty cases of quintuplets had been recorded in America but no newborn had ever managed to survive beyond the fifth day. Even in Italy we have witnessed multiple births like that of the famous Giannini twins in the 1980s.

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This episode takes us into a particular dimension of the world in which we live, that of large concentrations of life and living beings: animals, men, and even cells. Let's see when and why they aggregate, act, but, above all, move en masse. With spectacular images from the BBC we enter the formidable world of small insects, birds, fish up to the large mammals of the savannah. In nature, the winning strategy for escaping predators seems to be that of the group. And this was exactly the secret of the Roman legions. The barbarians were used to fighting individually, even though they moved en masse. In front, however, there were soldiers fighting in groups, well aligned, with the various units of the legions moving as if in a game of chess. We will explain to you the secrets of the Roman war machine. We follow the flocks of birds in their periodic migrations.

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Ulysses dedicates this episode to diaries and memory. We follow the moving notes of the young Jewish Anne Frank's diary. These are the pages written by the girl while she was hiding with her family and acquaintances in Amsterdam. Published after her death in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945, it has been translated into more than 55 languages, making it famous throughout the world. There will be no shortage of memories of ordinary people in this episode. Let's go and discover, in a small town in Tuscany, a museum dedicated to the collection of private diaries, full of memories and testimonies of real life. We will meet a gentleman who has summarized every day of his life in a diary since his sixteenth birthday. And now that he is over eighty years old, his collection of diaries is truly impressive, and one of a kind.

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In this episode we tell you stories of men who put their lives at risk to save other people. Let's talk about the civil courage to carry out risky actions to save people in danger. Out of generosity. Because you feel the duty to intervene, even taking risks, because in that moment it is not possible to remain indifferent or turn the other way. We will see very different cases of this type of courage: some famous, others unknown. We tell you the story of Giorgio Perlasca. The incredible rescue of 5 thousand Jews during the Second World War, reconstructed by the protagonist in an unpublished interview and with the testimonies of the survivors. The courage of the four rescuers who died in an avalanche while trying to save two tourists. A recent case that has caused a lot of discussion. The reconstruction of the facts carried out by Ulisse.

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In this episode we take a journey into the medieval world of Richard the Lionheart and his attempts to reconquer Jerusalem. We tell stories of valiant and ruthless knights, powerful orders of chivalry. Brave heroes who act in the name of great ideals of faith, honor and loyalty. But what were the real motivations that pushed them to those distant lands? Why did thousands of men, not just knights, cross the Mediterranean for two centuries to reach the Holy Land? The adventures of the crusaders against the infidels are intertwined with other previous myths and span the centuries: Parsifal, Merlin, Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, Orlando Furioso, Robin Hood, up to Walter Scott with his Saxon noble Ivanhoe disinherited by his father who left with Richard for the third crusade. Discovering who the ferocious Saldino, sultan of Egypt and supreme commander of the Muslim forces, really was. It wasn't just knights and religious people who left for the Crusades.

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This episode is dedicated to our four-legged best friends: dogs and cats. We will see how their destiny intersected with the history of man starting from prehistory. Let's discover how and why the dog has transformed over the centuries and how its extraordinary qualities have made it the animal most faithful to man. We show you the work of guide dog trainers for the blind. Alberto Angela tells us the odyssey of Laika, the cosmonaut dog, the first living being to reach space. From archaeological findings in Egypt, it has been discovered that the cat was considered a deity and mummified after death as was done for nobles and Pharaohs. Superstitions and ancient beliefs have spared neither dogs nor cats. In fact, cats, especially black ones, have often been considered evil creatures in the West, and therefore persecuted. And they weren't the only ones: owls, owls and other nocturnal birds suffered the same fate.

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Who built the first house? We will never know. One of the oldest known houses dates back 380 thousand years. It was a hut, built by homo erectus not far from the sea, in the area in the South of France now called the "Côte d'Azur". The history of humanity is also the history of the shells that man has built for himself to live better: from huts to imperial palaces, from igloos to skyscrapers. A story full of surprises and curiosities; from the first huts to today's megacities. Let's take a brief history of the habitations of our planet. We then follow the construction of one of the most beautiful castles in the world, that of Versailles in France, commissioned by Louis XIV, the Sun King. We will see how we lived in our homes until a few decades ago. Alberto Angela takes us 'behind the scenes' of one of the tallest skyscrapers in the world. Rome with its most famous monuments is an emblematic case of use and reuse of spaces and materials over the centuries.

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This episode is dedicated to the sea and its stories. We will present the largest and most majestic ships ever built. We will tell the adventures of men and sailors who challenged the unknown on the water. From the ships of the first Polynesian migrants to the fast Phoenician boats. We will reveal who pirates, corsairs and freebooters were, legendary protagonists of the oceans for almost three centuries. Alberto Angela tells us the little-known story of the Graffspee, a powerful German battleship in the South Seas of the world. Man overboard! One of the most common and dangerous accidents that can happen to sailors. How can we save ourselves? The emotional story of a survivor. We also analyze the causes of the most famous sea tragedy in history: the sinking of the Titanic. Thanks to the collaboration of the Italian Navy we participated in the rescue exercises of a submarine in difficulty.

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In this episode we take a journey around the Sun. With the help of spectacular images we will discover the secrets of this star of ours; how it influences life and our existence, how the Solar System was formed. There would be no life on Earth without the Sun: we understand why. We see how tiny variations in the Earth's motion affect how the Sun warms us, causing drastic changes in the climate. We need light, also to maintain a good mood. We go to a small Austrian village willing to do anything to have a little sunshine. There are many Moons in the Solar System: let's see how ours was born, and what tricks we should adopt to live on it. Human beings have always been intrigued by the Sun. To the point of transforming it into a deity and worshiping it in Sun cults. Alberto Angela takes us to Peru to visit one of the most spectacular archaeological sites in the world which is part of the heritage. of humanity: Machu Picchu.

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Most of the things that surround you, or that you use every day, have a history of inventors behind them. It is thanks to the creativity and intelligence of these men that today the telephone, the ballpoint pen, the electric light bulb, but also paper, steel, plastic, and of course the television exist. It is to these men that this episode is dedicated, many are known and some celebrated, such as Edison, Watt, Meucci and Marconi. We don't even know the names of others. In these two thousand years an endless number of inventions, small and large, have gradually changed the life of humanity, building the world we know today.

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In this episode we are going to explore a very small area of the planet, no bigger than a square, but which has had a fundamental importance in the history of Man: the Forum of Rome. It was the heart of the most important civilization of antiquity, the one from which our culture derives, our way of speaking, thinking, writing and applying the laws. Never in prime time has an entire program been dedicated to the Roman Forum. This is what we are trying to do now, with the help, among other things, of spectacular virtual reconstructions that show us what the Roman Forum looked like at the moment of its maximum splendor. We reconstruct the events that are linked to the Forum and that have marked our history, from Cicero's speeches to the assassination of Caesar. In fact, emperors, senators and the greats of the past walked on those marbles, but we will discover that the Forum was also a place much loved and frequented by common people.

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