The explosion of a gigantic star thousands of years ago is the subject of this special astronomy program. In the 1950s radio astronomers picked up a mysterious radio source in the constellation Vela, which they dubbed Vela X. It is now known that they detected a supernova, a star which exploded 6,000 years ago, and is believed to have been recorded by the ancient Sumerians. This program explores the possibility that the event may have prompted the Sumerians' original efforts in writing, mathematics and astronomy, and thus created the beginning of civilisation. Filmed over one year in Australia, the USA, Ireland, England, Russia and at the South Pole.