Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. takes a fresh look at the history of Africa, from the birth of humankind to the dawn of the 20th century.

In his six-hour series, AFRICA'S GREAT CIVILIZATIONS, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. takes a look at the history of Africa, from the birth of humankind to the dawn of the 20th century. This is a breathtaking and personal journey through two hundred thousand years of history, from the origins, on the African continent, of art, writing and civilization itself, through the millennia in which Africa and Africans shaped not only their own rich civilizations, but also the wider world.

Africa. The cradle of the human race. For so long, this continent has been thought of as isolated from the world, but not so. In this series, Henry Louis Gates embarks on an odyssey across Africa, discovering ancient cultures and pivotal events that not only shaped the history of Africa, but that of the wider world.—Tom Daly