To the English historian Robert Wood, the story of Palmyra, the caravan city in the Syrian Desert, and its empty ruins offered an ominous warning to 18th-century Britain.

"Once upon a time..'.' there really was a Sindbad the Sailor, thinks Timothy Severin, who has already proved that medieval Irish monks could have sailed a leather boat from England to Newfoundland.

Gold, as a metal, doesn't tarnish and doesn't rust: one of the reasons coins of gold have a special luster and a special lure for both investors and numismatists around the world.

Using ancient methods and archaic tools, the Bedouin women of the desert struggle to maintain the traditions of a noble craft and to preserve a part of the heritage of the desert.