8pm AFRICA'S GREAT CIVILIZATIONS - History - In his new six-hour series, Africa's Great Civilizations, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. takes a new look at the history of Africa, from the birth of humankind to the dawn of the 20th century.
THE CROSS AND THE CRESCENT
The second hour of "Africa's Great Civilizations" charts the emergence of two powerful forces of global change, Christianity and Islam. Viewers will learn how pervasively "the Cross and the Crescent" reshaped the landscape and people of Africa between the first and 12th centuries A.D. — and for centuries to come. Gates takes us through the early trade routes, where frankincense was as valuable as gold; speculation on the construction methods used by builders of African civilizations; and the history of Christianity and the spread of Islam in sub-Saharan Africa. See the burial cave of St. Anthony and the birth of monasticism. There is also extensive footage of early churches in Lalibela, Ethiopia. These 12 cross-shaped churches were carved out of solid rock and combine to become a symbolic Jerusalem on African soil.
9pm FINDING YOUR ROOTS - History - Noted Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. has unearthed the family histories of influential people helping shape our national identity. Professor Gates utilizes a team of genealogists to reconstruct the paper trail left behind by our ancestors and the world’s leading geneticists to decode our DNA and help us travel thousands of years into the past to discover the origins of our earliest forebears.
OUR AMERICAN STORYTELLERS - Three iconic American storytellers who have spent their lives chronicling the lives of others all the while knowing almost nothing about their own family history: Ken Burns confronts the reality of his southern ancestors’ role in the Civil War, including Confederate soldiers who were held captive and a slave-owning Virginian; Anderson Cooper, the scion of one of America’s most storied families, the Vanderbilts, longs to know more about his father’s Southern roots, including the story of an ancestor murdered by one his slaves; and Anna Deavere Smith learns the epic story of her great-grandfather, Basil Biggs, a free black man and former conductor on the Underground Railroad. All three guests’ ancestors intersect at the most pivotal moments of American history.
