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This stop-motion animation captures the complex history of the sugar trade, and how it was connected to the slave trade. The video shows the evolution of modern capitalism from the sugar and slave trades.

This stop-motion animation illustrates the history of the modern state, explaining how it was shaped by political, philosophical and scientific processes happening as early as the 17th century.

In 1900 the first ancient marine wreck was discovered in the Mediterranean. It took a century to understand that the most interesting and unique find was a series of small bronze barnacle encrusted fragments. When investigated with sophisticated technology, they turned out to be from an analogue mechanical computer, built about 70 BCE and capable of predicting planetary positions and eclipses of the Sun and the Moon both in the past and the future. Its sophistication is centuries earlier than any mechanism that even began to emulate such a device. How did it work and who could have designed and built it? This double lecture will offer answers to these absorbing questions.

This course will trace the roots of Western medicine from the ancient world to the subsequent landmarks in contemporary thought which formed the foundations of modern medicine. It will trace western medicine from its origins in the priest/physicians of ancient Egypt and the revolutionary concepts of Hippocrates in ancient Greece, to the beginnings of scientific discovery in the Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment, culminating in the explosion of advances in the last decades of the twentieth century. Each lecture, illustrated by contemporary objects, manuscripts, drawings, engravings and paintings, will place this evolution in thought in the context of society at the time. LECTURE TITLES: *1. The ancient world – Egypt, Greece and Rome: 3000 BCE–500 CE; *2. Darkness to the first rays of light: 500–1450 CE (podcast not available); *3. The Age of Enlightenment and the birth of science: 1450–1800 CE;* 4. The nineteenth century: squalor and progress; *5. The twentieth century and beyond: breaking barriers

For anyone interested in learning more about the interpretation and translation of Homer's epic in a South African context. A lecture series by Emeritus Professor Richard Whitaker, translator, writer, freelance travel writer. Homer’s epic poem, the Iliad, which tells the tale of Troy, has been continuously loved, read and translated for two and a half thousand years. This course will explain why the poem has achieved classic status, and then will explore the poem in a South African context. After an introduction to the archaic Greek world of Homer and the epic, it will look at the plot and major themes of the Iliad, analysing aspects such as the nature of the hero, heroic values and the representation of women. Translation is a vital part of the Iliad’s history, as most readers have always read the epic in translation. The course will compare selected passages in English translations by Alexander Pope (1720), Christopher Logue (War Music, 1959–2005) and the lecturer’s recent southern African version (2012) to show that every translation is an interpretation. Using the lecturer’s own translation, the course will demonstrate how the Iliad can be understood in the light of South Africa’s present and past. Similarities will be drawn between the world of the epic and aspects of South African society, such as the assessment of bride-price in cattle and poetic praise singing as a central way in which a person’s identity survives into the future in an oral culture. LECTURE TITLES: 1. Homer and the Iliad: Where? When? How?; 2. ‘Muse sing the anger of Achilles’: the plot of the Iliad; 3. Major themes of the epic: gods and heroes, life and death; 4. The Iliad in English: translation as interpretation; 5. Understanding the Iliad in a southern African context. Recommended reading: * Griffin, J. 1980. Homer on Life and Death. Oxford: Clarendon Press. * Steiner, G. 1996. Homer in English. London: Penguin. * Whitaker, R. 2012. The Iliad of Homer: a Southern African Translation. Cape Town: New Voices.

by Emeritus Professor David Wolfe, University of New Mexico and visiting lecturer, Physics Department, UCT. Professor Wolfe explores the foundations of astronomy, beginning with the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Babylonians, to the early modern period and the works of Brahe, Kepler, Copernicus and Newton in condifying the mathematical and theoretical models that underpin modern astronomy.

by Dr Shadreck Chirikure, Department of Archaeology, University of Cape Town. This audio lecture explores the famous Southern African archaeological site Great Zimbabwe. This resource is useful for anyone interested in learning more about Great Zimbabwe.