Plot Synopsis

Using on-location excavations and expert testimonies, EAST MEETS WEST is a four-part series that reveals how the Middle East became a vital link between continents and lead the world's religious, scientific, and cultural enlightenment. More than 12,000 years ago -- between the Middle Eastern rivers of Tigris and Euphrates -- the world's first cities, Ur and Babylon, were built out of mudbrick and grew into vast empires. These ancient societies expanded to Africa, Europe, and ultimately became inexorably linked with the Western world, thanks, in large part, to the conquests of Alexander the Great. Only 1,400 years ago, Muhammed was born in Mecca, which according to Muslim tradition is also the city where the Prophet received God's message and Islam was born. Now, the religion has more than 1.5 billion worshipers, who have become a global power that transformed the Middle East, and the world, forever. While the Islamic Empire was expanding in territory, its people were expanding their minds, as medieval Muslim scholars saved Greek knowledge from oblivion and generated revolutionary scientific ideas of their own. Recent excavations in southern Turkey have recently uncovered evidence of the world's first sacred temples, providing amazing insights into the birth of organized religion, revealing how the pantheon of pagan gods that ruled in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome were ultimately overthrown by a revolutionary idea: monotheism.