millennium

Around the turn of the millennium, luxury titan Bernard Arnault entered the picture.

These layers of ice, compacted over centuries, perhaps millennia, form an archive of climate indicators, yielding data on past snowfall, temperatures, atmosphere and dust.

For millennia, sensational accounts like these were all that was known about these bygone backwaters of the ancient world.

Pieces of pottery and other evidence found inside the sprawling underground tomb revealed that it belonged to Thutmose II, a young pharaoh who died an untimely death more than three millennia ago.

The early millennia of our species’ history — hundreds of thousands of years — is the subject of “Human,” an exhilarating five-part BBC series premiering Wednesday as part of the PBS series “Nova.”