Sealgairean Spòrsail/History Hunters

Travel back to Viking times with Calum, Kerry Anne and the History Hunters. The series brings history to life with fun facts, animations and experiments which show how inventions from ancient times helped shape our everyday lives.

The Vikings sailed from Scandinavia to just about every corner of the known world. Their boats were sleek enough to travel quickly across vast oceans, strong enough to withstand rough seas and had shallow bottoms which made it easier to land on beaches. The History Hunters' first challenge is to use Viking techniques to create an oared longship from a milk carton. They were known as fearless pirates, but the Vikings also had a much softer side - they were well-groomed and loved bling. Learn how to construct a solar-powered compass to help search for Viking treasure and find out if the Vikings really wore horned helmets!

Travel back to the age of the Celts as Calum, Kerry Anne and the History Hunters continue to bring history to life with fun facts, animations and child-led experiments which show how inventions and discoveries from ancient times helped shape our everyday lives.

The Celts were clans who popped up in Scotland, England, Ireland, Wales and all over Europe, defending their land from Roman armies. They were brave, barbaric and smart - drilling holes long before modern machinery.

The History Hunters' first challenge is to follow in ancient footsteps, boring holes into wood without the help of a tool kit. After that, watch them overhaul their wardrobe - Celtic style - using coloured fruit and veg as clothes dye.

In the studio, Calum and Kerry Anne model a Celtic look with a punk-like hairstyle, blue facepaint and a fancy necklace called a torque, and they show us how to make yarn the Celtic way.

Revisit the great Roman Empire as Calum, Kerry Anne and the History Hunters continue to bring history to life with fun facts, animations and experiments which show how inventions and discoveries from ancient times helped shape our everyday lives. The Romans were skilled engineers who used waterwheels, channels and giant aqueducts for waterpower and to feed magnificent communal baths. In this episode, the History Hunters take on the challenge of lifting a rubber duck off the ground using Roman-inspired waterwheel technology to power their experiment.

They also use a homemade groma to try and replicate the Roman practice of going to great lengths to build straight roads without modern machinery. Back in the studio, Calum and Kerry Anne figure out how to tie a toga from a sheet, create a Roman arch from cheese and peanut butter, and make a wax tablet and stylus like the ones used by Roman schoolboys.

Travel back to Ancient Greece as Calum, Kerry Anne and the History Hunters continue to bring history to life with fun facts, animations and experiments which show how inventions and discoveries from ancient times helped shape our everyday lives.

The marathon, the Olympics, the alphabet; you name it and the Ancient Greeks had a hand in it. The stars of the Greek world were philosophers and mathematicians like Aristotle and Pythagoras. The History Hunters' first challenge today is to recreate Greek inventor Heron's self-powered water pump and make a fountain from plastic bottles and tubes.

We also have the Greeks to thank for drama. But how did papier-mache masks feature in Greek actors' amphitheatre performances? Back in the studio, Calum and Kerry Anne investigate a pulley invented by Archimedes which was then used in theatres, allowing actors to fly above the stage.

Explore one of the oldest living civilisations - the Australian Aboriginal people - as Calum, Kerry Anne and the History Hunters continue to bring history to life with fun facts, animations and experiments.

Aboriginal people had clever ways of finding drinking water in a climate without much rain. After a downpour, they searched trees, plants and underground for places where water collected. Today, our History Hunters investigate how to find water in their garden without a tap, and make a homemade grass sponge to save every drop.

With no alphabet or written words, Indigenous Australians used symbols to communicate. Can the History Hunters follow their lead with sand picture messages and dot paintings on bark? Meanwhile, Calum and Kerry Anne look at traditional instruments like the didgeridoo, clap sticks and leaves, which Aboriginal people used alongside singing and dancing to tell stories of their ancestors.

Calum, Kerry Anne and the History Hunters bring history to life in the Polynesian Islands of the Pacific Ocean.

Polynesia is the largest of three major cultural areas in the Pacific. The word means 'many islands', and each has its own customs and traditions. Historically, Pacific Islanders travelled between islands in canoes made from available materials like hollowed-out trees. The History Hunters don't have access to tree trunks but set about making their own Pacific-style canoe, complete with an
outrigger for balance.

Woven palm-leaf placemats were used in ceremonies and as special gifts, so the Hunters replicate traditional Pacific weaving patterns to make a recycled-paper placemat - a super present for mum.

In the studio, Calum and Kerry Anne look at two Polynesian greetings - the honi and a Hawaiian welcome garland called a lei.

Travel back to ancient Arabia as Calum, Kerry Anne and the History Hunters continue to bring history to life with fun facts, animations and experiments which show how inventions and discoveries from ancient times helped shape our everyday lives.

A millennium ago the Middle East was known as Persia or Arabia, an empire stretching from Europe to Africa and Asia. It was a golden age of storytelling and inventions, like the camera. With a modern camera for reference, the Hunters make a camera obscura using a blacked out room, a small hole and a screen.

In ancient Arabia, water and the sun were used to tell the time. To read the time Arabian style, we learn how to build a sundial and water clock from plastic bottles and tubing, and they work to the minute! In the studio Calum and Kerry Anne look at Arabian inventions like the clamshell grab, homemade perfume and a shadow theatre, and they have plenty to eat!

Travel back to ancient India as Calum, Kerry Anne and the History Hunters continue to bring history to life with fun facts, animations and experiments which show how inventions and discoveries from ancient times helped shape our everyday lives.

A millennium ago the Middle East was known as Persia or Arabia, an empire stretching from Europe to Africa and Asia. It was a golden age of storytelling and inventions, like the camera. With a modern camera for reference, the Hunters make a camera obscura using a blacked out room, a small hole and a screen.

India had great kings called the Moghuls who created magnificent buildings, such as the Taj Mahal, and managed to keep them cool long before air conditioning. Today, the History Hunters use similar cooling principles to lower the temperature in their cardboard playhouse. Want to print a perfect pattern on fabric the Indian way? Watch the Hunters as they follow the block printing technique used by Indian textile designers to repeat a symbol on cloth.

In the studio, Calum and Kerry Anne discover the first ever pyjamas. They test spices and curries that became famous worldwide and tuck into Indian sweets. Who first made sweets? The ancient Indians of course!

Travel back to Aztec civilisation as Calum, Kerry Anne and the History Hunters continue to bring history to life with fun facts, animations and experiments which show how inventions and discoveries from ancient times helped shape our everyday lives.

The Aztecs, a famous and fierce civilisation from Central America, built massive pyramids without pointed tops, designed two different calendars, created hieroglyphic writing and founded a great city that still stands today.

The History Hunters' first challenge this week is to make a ceremonial shield fit for an Aztec king. They choose cardboard and woven palm leaves for the shields, then decorate them Aztec-style. The Hunters also play ancient Aztec ball game, tlachtli. Played on a stone court with a stone goal in the centre, scoring was so difficult that it's believed the game was over when the first team got the ball through the hoop.

And in the studio, Calum and Kerry Anne are playing patoli, the most popular board game of the time.

Travel back to Maya civilisation as Calum, Kerry Anne and the History Hunters continue to bring history to life with fun facts, animations and experiments which show how inventions and discoveries from ancient times helped shape our everyday lives.

Deep in the rainforests of Central America, in countries like Mexico, Guatemala and Belize lived a tribe called the Maya. They created a sophisticated alphabet, had manuscripts called codices and clever ways to count; even inventing the zero.

The Maya had a complete writing system - picture symbols called hieroglyphs. Today, our History Hunters are on a mission to create a Mayan-style coded message that will tell their friends how to find their cubby house.

The Maya were also famous for their pottery. They didn't have modern technology and relied on basic tools and the History Hunters have to use similar methods to create their own pots.

In the studio, Calum and Kerry Anne make Maya music from vegetables and turn beans into a treat we still love today.

Travel back to Ancient Egypt as Calum, Kerry Anne and the History Hunters continue to bring history to life with fun facts, animations and experiments which show how inventions and discoveries from ancient times helped shape our everyday lives.

It wouldn't be Egypt without pyramids, papyrus paper and perfectly engineered tombs. The Egyptians were skilled morticians who mummified bodies to preserve them. But how did mummification work for such a long time? In search of an answer, the History Hunters mummify a chicken named Cluckopatra.

In the dusty Egyptian heat, farmers needed a mechanism to help irrigate their crops so a lever called a shaduf was used to lift river water into irrigation channels. Today, our Hunters create their own shaduf from a bucket, broom and sandbag - getting soaked in the process.

Back in the studio, Calum and Kerry Anne make toothpaste the original Egyptian way using mint and some very strange ingredients.

Come history hunting in Africa with Calum, Kerry Anne and the History Hunters as the series continues to bring history to life with fun facts, animations and experiments. Africa is a massive continent with more than 50 countries and hundreds of unique tribes, each with their own customs. Today, the History Hunters must complete two African inspired challenges: discover how nomadic tribes left messages for each other using egg-notes and chalk made from eggshells, and when their dog runs off during a walk in the park, the hunters must think like the San bushmen and use the natural environment and their senses to track him down. Back in the studio, Calum and Kerry Anne work out which clothes are cooler in the hot African desert, black or white, and they discover masks designed to tell a story without words.

Travel back to prehistoric times as Calum Macdonald and Kerry Anne Macleod continue to bring history to life with fun facts, animations and experiments which show how inventions and discoveries from ancient times helped shape our everyday lives. Fossils are the remains of animals and plants that lived long ago - bones, teeth, shells, even footprints. And with fossils in mind, the History Hunters are on a mission to preserve a banana in a way that will stop it rotting. They also want to create a cave art masterpiece, leaving clues about their lives for friends who might stumble into their cave in the future. They'll use an old sheet as a canvas, with charcoal and red clay as paint and have a go at finger painting as lots of cave-art was created that way. In the studio, Calum and Kerry Anne make jewellery from shells and think about how pictures were painted in hard to reach places.

Travel back to Ancient China as Calum Macdonald and Kerry Anne Macleod continue to bring history to life with fun facts, animations and experiments which show how inventions and discoveries from ancient times helped shape our everyday lives.

For thousands of years China was completely cut off from the rest of the world by vast mountains and deserts. The people didn't know the rest of the world existed and got on with inventing all sorts of things to make their lives easier, like the wheelbarrow and an earthquake detector.

Today's first History Hunters challenge is to build a mini wall, whilst looking to the Great Wall of China for inspiration. The Ancient Chinese made paper with bamboo plants so our History Hunters have a go at producing their own paper. For a modern twist, they'll be making recycled paper and adding bark to the mix.

In the studio, Calum and Kerry Anne try to figure out how an abacus works.

Travel back to medieval times as Calum Macdonald and Kerry Anne Macleod continue to bring history to life with fun facts, animations and experiments which show how inventions and discoveries from ancient times helped shape our everyday lives.

Medieval comes from the Latin word for middle and describes a time just after the Romans and directly before the Renaissance. That's why it's sometimes called the Middle Ages.

In today's programme, the History Hunters prepare for a medieval party by making special wax seals to keep their party invitations safe from prying eyes. The Hunters also investigate how wind was used to harness power in the Middle Ages. To do this they use a milk carton windmill with a cork and string winch.

Back in the studio, Calum and Kerry Anne look at how the stained glass windows of the time were made and why they were used and tell us all about medieval punishments!

Travel back in time to the Renaissance as the series continues to bring history to life with fun facts, animations and experiments. After the knights of the Middle Ages came the Renaissance - an explosion of art, culture and thinking across Europe.

Four hundred years before planes first flew, Leonardo da Vinci was dreaming up ways to get humans into the skies, with mechanical devices that copied the flight of birds. Radical for their time, it's unlikely the ideas ever went beyond the drawing board. Today the History Hunters' first challenge is to make a Renaissance inspired flying machine. They'll also be printing party invitations using a Renaissance inspired printing press to speed up production.

Back in the studio, Calum and Kerry Anne create their own version of the Mona Lisa, and investigate how springs made it easier for us to tell the time today.

Calum, Kerry Anne and the History Hunters go undercover looking at the gadgets and tactics used by spies. At work, in sport, amongst friends and even family, people have spied on each other since time began. During war and peacetime, spies had clever methods of finding out and hiding secrets.

Join the History Hunters on two undercover missions. They start sleuthing by spying on their little sister. She's talking about them on the phone but to whom, and what is she saying? A homemade periscope may help them see her but they'll need another invention to be able to hear her.

Next, they have to create a secret spy note using invisible ink to draw a map pointing Agent X, and him alone, to the location of some secret spy chocolate. In the studio, Calum and Kerry Anne use everyday items to make spy gadgets like a book safe and a note hidden in an olive. They also learn to write and break codes using a Roman-inspired Caesar cipher code strip.

Calum Macdonald, Kerry Anne Macleod and the History Hunters focus on communication through the ages. Find out how things work, check out retro gadgets and hear about inventors who had a big impact on communication techniques we still use today.

Since early cave drawings, humans have dreamt up all sorts of interesting ways to communicate over distances. They've used animals, electricity and even invisible radio waves. From typewriters to pens, radios, televisions and computers, we love to keep in touch.

In this episode, the History Hunters have a go at creating their own telephone. They are then tasked with making radio waves using wire and a battery, before finding out how to block them!

In the studio, Calum and Kerry Anne investigate smoke messages and Morse code and look back to times when writing meant a feather and ink, not a phone or a keyboard, and find out how typewriters work.

It started with the wheel, and just kept rolling. Bicycles, horse drawn carts, cars, buses and boats, all of these have their place in the story of transport through the ages; a story which is brought to us today by Calum Macdonald, Kerry Anne Macleod and the History Hunters. It's thought the first wheels appeared in the Bronze Age although they weren't made of bronze, but of stone. Over time, thanks to spokes, wheels got lighter, stronger and more useful.

In their first transport-related challenge today, the History Hunters experiment with wheels and an axle, and use wind to propel a car uphill. The next task is to employ tissue paper, glue and patience to launch a replica hot air balloon up, up and away.

Gears used a force called torque to control the speed and stability of early bikes and all sorts of transport since and in the studio, Calum and Kerry Anne demonstrate how gears work - using vegetables! Then, they make a Leonardo Da Vinci-inspired elastic band-powered helicopter.

Today's focus is on outer space. Find out how things work and discover the history of developments invented for space travel which we still use today, like cordless power tools and freeze dried food.

The History Hunters make their own rocket using the principles of aerodynamics to make sure it's the best shape to fly through the air. First, they'll need some plastic piping, paper and cardboard. The second challenge examines how microgravity works in space.

Back in the studio, Calum and Kerry Anne get dressed up in space gear and use a balloon wrapped in foil to work out what a black hole is.

Travel back to the age of exploration with Calum Macdonald, Kerry Anne Macleod and the History Hunters, an age when European explorers set sail for Asia in search of faster routes to bring back exotic wares and foods that would make them rich. They invented gadgets like telescopes, developed sailing skills to measure speed and distance, stumbled across places and people they didn't know existed and mapped the world.

The early explorers worked out where they were in the world based on how fast they were travelling. In today's first mission, the History Hunters measure how fast a boat is moving using a rope, a bucket and some knots. The second mission involves making a homemade telescope to track down friends who are hiding in the garden.

Back in the studio, Calum and Kerry Anne examine how maps were made. They investigate tastes, sights and smells that went global thanks to explorers, and find out why lemons could be a lifesaving food for sailors.

Explore what it was like to be a pirate on the high seas with Calum Macdonald, Kerry Anne Macleod and the History Hunters. Pirates plundered treasure, had strict pirate code rules and were known to fly a flag called the Jolly Roger to frighten other ships. Today, the History Hunters find out how to read maps, measure the depth of water by making a sounding weight and bake pirate rations - salty supplies called hard tack.

For their pirate-themed sleepover, the Hunters need hammocks for their friends to sleep in. They use rope and old sheets and experiment with the best knot and tying method to make sure the crew get a good night's sleep. In the studio, Calum and Kerry Anne learn why some sailors turned pirate, and get the opportunity to study the pirate code.

Hold onto your hats, as Calum Macdonald, Kerry Anne Macleod and the History Hunters hit the trail with the cowboys and early pioneers who forged America's western frontier. Find out about life as a cool cowboy, wrangling cattle, lassos and dressing to impress!

To haul all their worldly goods way out west, the pioneers needed something bigger than a horse could carry: a wagon. But how did wagons survive miles of desert sun, rain and deep river crossings? The History Hunters experiment to find out, making a wagon to withstand the weather out west. Cowboys used whip cracking sounds to herd cattle and, in their second mission, the History Hunters have go at making their own whip. Can they crack it?

Back in the studio, Calum and Kerry Anne investigate the honda knot that controls a lasso noose, before trying it out on their stunt bull. They also learn how the pioneer families preserved food in the hot desert sun.

Join Calum Macdonald, Kerry Anne Macleod and the History Hunters as they find out about Native American history and culture. Today the History Hunters learn about hundreds of tribes with names like Sioux, Apache and Cherokee who hunted bison, built tents called tipis and used totem poles to tell stories. Inspired by what they hear, the Hunters use poles and a sheet to create their own tipi in the back garden, and make a modern day version of a totem pole to reflect stories from their family.

Back in the studio, Calum and Kerry Anne look at some of the sign language that Native Americans used to communicate with people from tribes who spoke different languages.

Join Calum, Kerry Anne and the History Hunters in hot pursuit of criminals who captivated history - outlaws. From medieval men in tights, to Wild West gunslingers and Robin Hood, every era had its outlaws.

In their first challenge, the History Hunters investigate camouflage and decoys in an attempt to get at some chocolate which dad is guarding. In the case of the missing lunchbox, the Hunters employ investigation techniques such as fingerprinting, checking soil samples and footprints to track down the culprit.

And in the studio, Calum and Kerry Anne find out why prisoners were sent from Britain to Australia in the late 18th century and they show us a type of clothing called the 'magpie'.

Join Calum Macdonald, Kerry Anne Macleod and the History Hunters to learn about the history of the Californian gold rush. In 1848, an American called James Marshall found gold in a Californian river and this sparked the Californian gold rush. Today, the History Hunters dig the dirt on this mesmerising mineral in the garden, mining for gold 1850s style using original techniques such as fossicking.

Their second mission involves an experiment to test the density and magnetic field of mum's chain to discover whether it's fool's gold or the real deal.

Back in the studio, Calum and Kerry Anne build a windlass, a winch which came in pretty handy for gold prospectors, from cans, straws and paperclips. But can they work out their how much their weight is worth in gold?