Early methods of airborne attack; medieval kite bomb; bouncing bombs terrorize shipping in Turkey in 1453; Chinese commanders use whistling arrows to direct battles; Chinese rockets; the earliest known successful parachute.
Ancient prototypes of the modern gun; an ancient manuscript has a recipe for tracer fire; mega-mortar; the bizarre "wind of the cannonball" phenomenon.
Investigating history's most impregnable fortresses; the castle that helped create Great Britain; Cappadocia's invisible underground defensive systems; Mayan killer bee castle defenses; the Roman siege of Alesia in Gaul.
Ancient secret agents; fire beacons, horses and pigeons are used to transmit messages over thousands of miles; ancient spies use invisible ink made from human sperm and write messages inside raw eggs; Japanese ninjas use explosives.
Leeches, an ancient medical cure; taking a reading from a torpedo fish in Spain; Incan trepanning; Roman battlefield surgery; using snake venom as medicine; England's Prince Henry V undergoes brain surgery to extract an arrow.
Ski commandos battle through storms and snow drifts; a tiny army in the Egyptian desert defeats a major invasion force; the Bayeux tapestry; the Naftun.
Ancient Roman navy SEAL technique of capturing enemy ships from underwater; Roman war dog units; the Mastiff; the samurai sword; the Horro is designed to protect cavalryman from arrow fire.
Martial artists wield six-foot-long steel swords in India; camels as weapons of war; armor made from paper were designed to stop arrows; 2000-year-old unmanned weapon.
Building a replica of a 2000-year-old jet engine; a weapon that can shoot around corners; a gun that is made from fruit; beating the ancient world's land-speed record.
A team of divers builds and tests a deep-sea diving suit; a time-traveling ghost ship; 16th-century war fleet.
The mummified crocodiles of Kom Ombo; using an X-ray on an ancient mummy; China's terra-cotta army; scientists solve a year-old murder using 15th-century forensics; virtual-reality techniques afford investigation of crucifixion.
Explorers use a sacred ancient Mayan temple code to search for an occult underworld engineered in Mexico; investigators in Britain discover the secret technology behind a life-size statue of Jesus Christ that came to life.
Comparison test between a shotgun and a staff, the oldest known weapon; the deadly Chinese "ermei" underwater attack weapon; examining whether Chi warriors can really kill a man with a single touch; ancient Chinese crossbows.
Citizens of ancient Tyre use fire ships against Alexander the Great's besieging fleet; Roman Emperor Nero builds a death yacht to kill his own mother; a 15th-century weapon designed to pierce enemy hulls; ancient paddle-wheel boat.
Asian battle elephants and Europe's medieval knights in armor demonstrate people in the past understood the modern tank's principles combining protection, speed and firepower; ancient antitank weapon.
Revealing the terrifying truth behind torture; ancient inventors go to great lengths to develop precision devices to exact pain; the rack; burning at the stake; Vlad the Impaler.
Unique technologies of ancient miners, including a Roman hydraulic system, sappers who could undermine castle walls and the 1689 origination of gunpowder mining in England.
Investigating Bible stories to find if they have basis in scientific fact; determining Goliath's size and considering the technology of the sling David used to fell him; Tower of Babel; levitating a replica of the Ark of the Covenant.
Cutting-edge technology reveals exciting archaeological discoveries at the bottom of the ocean.
Experts investigate antiquity's legendary naval inventions, including high-explosive grenades, covert underwater attack equipment and biological warfare.
Modern forensic techniques help firearms experts reveal the accuracy, power and range of ancient bullets, rockets and bombs.
Many of today's lethal military weapons owe their origins to inventors of the ancient world who created siege machines, land mines, flamethrowers and more.
China's master shipbuilders create some of the most powerful warships and greatest fleets of the ancient world.
Analyzing a site in Turkey, believed to be the location of Troy, through modern technology, archeology and engineering.
The team tries to figure out how successfully ancient peoples traveled overland.
Ships from the ancient world and the societies that created them.
A discovery spotlights two limestone coffins that date back 3000 years.
The weapons and wars of ancient Egypt.
Exploring how modern military innovations stem from ancient Chinese inventions like gunpowder and automated crossbows.
The robotic inventions found in the mythical texts and how they compare with machines known in the ancient world.
Mesopotamian engineer Al-Jazari invents many devices.