Here are a few video clips that might help you understand the rise of farming and the Neolithic Revolution:
Of course, we watched "Guns, Germs and Steel Episode I" - Youtube LINK.
Annenberg has a nice 20 minute video on the Agricultural Revolution here, click on the VOD: Video on Demand link on the left side of the page.
The Olmec Heads by BBC is an excellent look inside these ancient MesoAmerican ancestors.
Meroe's Royal Cemetery
The story of the Black Pharaoh's turns full circle at Meroe's magnificent Royal Cemetery in the shadow of some of Sudan's 300 pyramids - three times as many as were built in Egypt. Meroe's pyramids are a lasting testimony to the glory of Kush, the land of the Black Pharaohs that history forgot. Clip taken from the BBC Timewatch programme The Black Pharaohs.
Engineering an Empire: Egypt
Five thousand years ago--nearly two millennia before the Romans built their first mud huts--ancient Egypt's mighty pharaohs began commissioning and building monumental masterpieces whose scale, beauty, and sophistication still boggle the mind.
Hosted by actor and art historian Peter Weller, the feature-length EGYPT: ENGINEERING AN EMPIRE explores Egypt's awe-inspiring engineering accomplishments through the prism of its pharaohs' indomitable personalities. As Egypt's pharaohs alternately conquered and ceded vast expanses of land, they pushed their royal architects to stretch the boundaries of imagination and human potential, in effect inventing the science of structural engineering. Follow the empire's development from the First Dynasty of 3000 BC through the last days of the reign of Ramses the Great in 1212 BC, from dazzling obelisks to the 700-foot Great Pyramid of Giza.
Engineering an Empire: China
For over 4000 years, the world's greatest empires have come and gone. Only one has survived the test of time: China.
Century after century, China's regal emperors mobilized immense peasant armies to accomplish engineering feats unparalleled in human history.
Among the groundbreaking innovations of the ancient Chinese were the world's longest canal, its most complex and effective irrigation system, and a naval fleet mightier than all those of Europe combined-but, none can compare to the colossal 4,000-mile wall that stands as the most ambitious construction project ever built.
From such heights came spectacular death spirals, as dynasty after dynasty-consumed by vanity and greed-was stripped of power by the people it had ruled.
The Celts: celtic and roman fortifications, vercingetorix, and battle of alesia