Customer Reviews

Time Life's Lost Civilizations [4 DVDs]

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Being a homeschool mom I am always looking for the most interesting, hold your attention type ways of teaching history. I have watched several tapes on ancient history that were dry & rather dull. "Lost Civilizations" is anything but dull. My 9 yr. old loves it, and even my 6 yr. old will sit for 45 minutes at a time and watch it. It covers Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt & the Aegean on Vol.1. Greece, China & Rome on Vol.2. The Maya's and The Inca's on Vol. 3. Africa and Tibet on Vol.4. The scenery is breath-taking! We watch the tapes every year as a review. And if you can believe it, my kids put it in sometimes for fun. I highly recommend this set!

If you are someone who would think nothing of spending $25 on a 50 minute PBS documentary, this might not be the ideal set for you. It's appeal to me was its value. It covered a huge amount of material in an acceptable, if not always outstanding, manner.

A previous reviewer complained about the amount of Biblical references in the first episode on Mesopotamia. To me the approach of the series was quite understandable. The Bible is one of the most ancient and reliable sources of information in addition to being a cultural reference point that many viewers would naturally reflect upon.

But by no means is the series an unscientific propaganda piece for religous groups. Religion is not the focus of the series. Consider, for example, that several episodes do not hesitate to make a comment on the sexual practices of the culture under discussion when relevant.

The series does not confine its self to "Lost" civilizations, so I suspect the title was more a product of the marketing department. But the episode on the Agean Sea culture (Atlantis?) was quite interesting. The episode on the lost history of Africa is something one does not hear much about. The sheer breadth and variety of cultures discussed makes this a valuable general introductory tool.

I teach high school ancient history and these DVD's are pure gold - don't pass them by! The DVD's on Tibet, Egypt, Classical Greece, Minoans, Rome, the Inca, the Maya, & China are great. The DVD on Africa is a bunch of P.C.ism - it is the only bad one in the bunch. I only wish they would've done a DVD on India &/or the Aztec instead of the Africa DVD.

This is a warning for some potential buyers, and perhaps a selling point for others. The DVD has heavy Christian overtones. The first words of the first segment, which is supposed to be about the civilization of Mesopotamia, are: "The Garden of Eden..." It goes on to indicate it is inspired by an investigation into proving the stories of the Bible are true. I watched further and discovered the theme to be sustained enough to make it not useful for my purposes. The narrator, for instance, refers to time periods according to their proximity to, "...the time of Jesus..."

In a Christian school, or for Christians home-schooling, this would probably be good material for a social studies class, but it doesn't work in a secular school with students representing the full array of the world's faiths and cultures.

I was the producer and director of two of these shows (Egypt and Mesopotamia) and I appreciate all the kind words. The reason there are so many biblical references is that this was a commercial project (Time Life/NBC) and many people are interested in the bible. This series also represents the end of an era, in that very few historical or cultural documentaries are made with budgets as large as these (close to a million dollars each). They are commercial shows, however, so they have a greater emphasis on entertainment than on ideas or complex history (which explains all the biblical references), but for that reason they were quite popular. A tremendous amount of travel was done for this series and there are (by contemporary standards) very high production values at each location. Cranes and steadicams were used to keep the camera moving in many locations, for instance and the crews were generally quite large. The executive at Time Life who originated the series left in the middle of production and the new executive, appalled at the cost, tried at first to cancel the project and then, having determined that too much money had already been spent to make that sensible, tried to slash the budgets. The project went on to win a prime-time Emmy.

I encourage you to buy the series, but sadly, I won't be making any money from the sale.

When I first saw the name Time-Life I was anticipating a cesspool of political correct hodgepodge. As a public school teacher I was thrilled to find the straight forward format for this production. National Geographic could take some lessons from Time-Life's Lost Civilizations. The viewer will walk away with a ton of well researched info that is very professionally produced. An expansion into India, China, Australia, Russia, and Japan would be super. Keep up the good work.

I purchased these as instructional DVDs for my World History Class. So far, I have not been able to use them. In my opinion, although the information is interesting and I enjoyed them, the information is not presented in a format designed for the modern classroom. In fairness to the videos, they were produced before the National Standards were implemented, and as such don't really follow the curriculum. I've watched Mesopotamia and Egypt since receiving the videos. Mesopotamia dealt primarily with the concept of Eden and relied heavily on the Bible, and Egypt focused almost exclusively on archaeology in the 1800s, mummies, and had a 20 second scene with a topless woman, whose purpose I still haven't deduced. I'm disappointed because I had hoped these would be great visual aids for the classroom, but I won't be able to use them. Teachers beware.

I made the mistake of buying this collection for my middle school based on the favorable reviews here. What a terrible waste of money. The Mesopotamia DVD is not about Mesopotamia, rather it's a feeble attempt to prove the stories of the Christian bible. Not at all suitable for public school, and not a good source of information. The Egyptian DVD has very little to tell the viewer about Ancient Egypt's lost civilization, but instead uses tired stock footage black and white film clips to tell the stories of tomb robbers of the 19th and 20th centuries. The movies sent my students and I to sleep, and I am very sorry that I wasted my money on this junk. I recommend instead the excellent "Engineering an Empire" from the History Channel, which is very informative, well made and interesting to both students and teachers.

This is a good documentary on ancient civilizations. I bought it with the assumption that it would cover the general history of each civilization but it shows more of the way of life of these peoples instead of chronologically ordered history. If you are want to learn about history then I would advise a different documentary.

This DVD set is truly a great treasure a world history class. I really wanted a DVD set which covered all the ancient civilizations and this set does that superbly. The only ancient civilization it doesn't cover is Ancient Japan. Each 50 minute segment covers the culture, history and religion of an area but with a specific investigative perspective. This DVD set is very informative and interesting.