Best YouTube videos on Ancient History
10 videos our team picked as worth your time. Paste any of them into YouTube Collector for the full transcript, a chaptered summary, and search across everything you save.
Ancient Athens: The Rise Of The Most Influential Society In History | Metropolis
How a single city changed the world: this cinematic documentary rebuilds ancient Athens on screen, from the Acropolis and the Parthenon to the birth of democracy, philosophy and theatre, telling the story of the society that still shapes ours. (Published 25 Sep 2022)
The Genius of Ancient Rome's Architecture I SLICE HISTORY | FULL DOCUMENTARY
A cinematic, on-location tour of how Rome's engineers changed the world: the concrete, the aqueducts, the roads and the Colosseum that let a single city rule an empire and still shape how we build today. (Published 27 Apr 2025)
Alexander the Great: How One Man Conquered the Ancient World
From a contested throne in Macedon to the largest empire the world had ever seen: how Alexander out-thought and out-fought every power of his age before dying at 32. (Published 14 Nov 2025)
The Ancient History of Carthage - The Ascent of Civilization - Full Historical Documentary
The rise of Carthage, the great Phoenician trading empire that once rivalled Rome: how a North African city came to dominate the ancient Mediterranean, and the wars that decided the fate of the western world. (Published 4 May 2022)
Egypt's Lost Secrets: The Grand Tour of the Pharaohs
A sweeping 5,000-year journey across ancient Egypt, from the first Step Pyramid to the great temples of the New Kingdom, taking in the pharaohs, gods and monuments that have fascinated the world ever since. (Published 18 Feb 2026)
Mesopotamia - The Sumerians
In the marshland between two rivers the Sumerians built the world's first cities, invented writing, the wheel and kingship, and wrote humanity's oldest story. The cradle of civilisation, told as a film. (Published 5 Dec 2024)
The Indus Civilization: The Discovery That Changes Everything
A vast Bronze Age civilisation of grid-planned cities, indoor plumbing and a script no one can read, and then it vanished. The cinematic story of the Indus, the ancient world's great enigma. (Published 19 Mar 2025)
The Origins Of China: The Ancient Civilization That Birthed A Superpower | Lost Treasures
How a patchwork of warring states became the world's oldest continuous civilisation: the first emperor who unified China, standardised everything from script to roads, and left an army of terracotta soldiers underground. (Published 9 Aug 2023)
The Origins of Maya Civilization (Full Episode) | Rise and Fall of the Maya
Laser mapping under the jungle revealed Aguada Fénix, a vast ceremonial platform begun around 1100 BC, centuries before archaeologists expected. National Geographic follows the dig that is rewriting how Maya civilisation began. (Published 12 Sep 2025)
The Invaders Who Ended the Bronze Age | The Sea Peoples
Around 1200 BC the great civilisations of the Mediterranean collapsed almost at once. This cinematic film follows the mysterious Sea Peoples and the cascade of disasters that toppled the Hittites, the Mycenaeans and more. (Published 18 Apr 2025)