Season 6 2006

NR

The first episode of Ulisse will take a great journey through the civilizations of the past and their enigmas, exploring one of the most extraordinary archaeological sites located in the heart of the Pacific Ocean: Easter Island. We will tell the story of this civilization, trying to find out where the first inhabitants arrived from, considering that the island is located almost 4000 km from any coast or inhabited island.

Ulisse will deal with another important theme: that of gravity. Above all, we will try to understand what are the consequences and effects of the force of gravity on the earth and how we are continually forced to challenge its laws and fight them. In the episode many curiosities that will show us the various ways to face and overcome the effects of the force of gravity in the various sports disciplines, in the construction of skyscrapers, in space. Alberto Angela will explain all this to us and will also climb the Tower of Pisa to retrace the experiment carried out by Galileo Galilei to study the phenomena of gravity.

Ulisse will discover one of the most spectacular and grandiose scenarios on our planet: the Andes mountain range. This imposing mountain system winds along the entire west coast of South America, from the Caribbean coasts of Venezuela and Colombia, to the ice of Tierra del Fuego, at the extreme southern tip of Chile. We will explore this outsized landscape to discover what hides. It will be a journey between glaciers, naturalistic paradises, deserts, volcanoes, buried deposits and even lost civilizations, which have left us ghost cities, mummies and extraordinary treasures. Together with Alberto Angela we will visit the Quelat National Park, a true naturalistic oasis, with forests, lakes and waterfalls and the Atacama Salar, one of the driest and most arid places on the planet which contains many types of salts and minerals. We will again see the Chuquicamata copper mine in Chile, which is extremely important from an economic point of view.

Alberto Angela will tell us again the story of Charles Darwin, the famous English naturalist, who with his observations developed the theory of evolution, which is the basis of modern scientific knowledge. We will visit the house where he lived and, above all, we will follow him on his extraordinary journey aboard the brig Beagle: a journey that lasted 5 years in the intact environments of the South American continent among volcanoes, glaciers, wild islands and tropical forests, which led him to reflect on the reasons and on the origin of the thousands of plant and animal species.

This episode retraces the dramatic shipwreck of the largest and most elegant of our transatlantic liners, the Andrea Doria. A story that sixty years later still arouses great emotion throughout Italy. The Andrea Doria was a jewel of our navy, a very luxury ship, considered unsinkable due to the technical innovations with which she had been built. And in these days an exhibition is also inaugurated at the Galata Museo del Mare in Genoa which tells the story of this beautiful and unfortunate ship.

Namibia: over seven thousand kilometers from Italy, towards the southernmost tip of Africa. This episode will certainly take us very far from home but also very far into the past. In fact this episode will be dedicated to the fight for the survival of man and therefore we will go in search of primitive groups and populations trying to discover their strategies, their survival techniques, in very different environments, sometimes truly impossible environments.

Another stage of the journey will concern the symbol par excellence of the Middle Ages: the Castle. How was it possible to conquer a castle and all the territory it controlled and its populations? In this regard, Ulysses will tell the true story of an assault on a castle that took place in France during the famous Hundred Years' War.

Ulisse will go to explore the sea, that immensity of water that allowed life to be born and evolve on our planet. An event that will not simply be dedicated to the sea, but above all to the relationship between man and the sea, which began at the beginning of the adventure of Homo Sapiens, and has never been interrupted. So Alberto Angela will be in Genoa, the maritime city par excellence, between the Galata Museum of the Sea, the very rich Aquarium and much more, to retrace the stages of this very long and fascinating human adventure, in its historical and scientific implications. A journey that will develop in two directions: horizontally, exploring the surface of the sea, to learn about the forces that animate it within, the titanic energies capable of moving immense masses of water. And then vertically, into the blue vastness of the sea to get to know the infinite variety of species that populate the oceans, going further and further down, until reaching the bottom of the abyss.