8pm AFRICA'S GREAT CIVILIZATIONS: EMPIRES OF GOLD - History - 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.
This episode marks an era of great commercial and manufacturing growth throughout several regions on the continent. It begins with the revolutionary transformation of North and West Africa. On the shores of the Sahara Desert, farmers, traders, warriors and nomads turned this region into the crossroads of some of history's most advanced, and wealthiest, civilizations. Intricate networks of long distance trade would link up productive commercial centers established by rulers of empires and kingdoms.
9pm FINDING YOUR ROOTS: The Melting Pot - Genealogy - 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.
Three celebrity chefs who cook the food of their ancestors discover family members who have shaped their lives–and America’s cuisine. Top Chef’s Tom Colicchio learns the hardships his family endured living in a tiny town in Northern Italy and celebrates the courage of his original immigrant ancestor, a man who crossed the Atlantic multiple times to bring the Colicchios to the United States; Ming Tsai, the child of immigrants who fled Mao’s Cultural Revolution, was raised to believe that his family’s Chinese past was obliterated by the Communists but finds instead that his roots can be traced back over 2000 years, yielding the largest family tree we’ve ever seen; and Aarón Sánchez discovers that his family’s treasured Mexican roots include people who were Spaniards, Africans, and Native Americans. Taken together, the stories of these guests show how the U.S.’s great diversity has given rise to three of our greatest cuisines and indeed infuses every aspect of American life.
