In the Kathmandu valley the Newars built one of Asia’s great urban civilizations, masters of the pagoda and the bronze, keepers of a living goddess and a faith both Hindu and Buddhist.

At India’s eastern gate lies Manipur, a valley ringed by blue hills where the Meitei built a kingdom, their own script, a floating lake, the dancing Sangai deer, and one of India’s classical dances.

A people of more than two and a half thousand years, the first nation to adopt Christianity, with an alphabet all their own. The story of the Armenians, Mount Ararat, the genocide of 1915, the global diaspora, and an unbreakable will to endure.

The story of the Evenki, the great forest people of Siberia: a Tungusic people of hunters and reindeer herders scattered across an immense taiga, keepers of a famous shamanic tradition from whose language the very word shaman came to the world.

A journey into the northern taiga to meet the Komi, a Finno-Ugric people of rivers, reindeer, and endless forest in the far northeast of European Russia.

The Cree are Canada’s largest First Nations people, spread from the forests of Quebec to the plains of Alberta, shaped by the fur trade and now leading some of the country’s most significant self-government agreements.

Across a homeland the size of Western Europe live the Kazakhs, a Turkic nomad people of horses, felt yurts and fermented mares milk, whose eagle hunters still ride out across the mountains of China and Central Asia.

They are the largest minority in China, seventeen million strong, yet the world barely knows their name. This is the story of the Zhuang: a Tai people of the karst country, masters of rice and song.

The story of the Russians, the largest people of Russia and one of the great nations of the world: an East Slavic people of the east European plain, heirs to Kievan Rus and Orthodox Christianity, builders of the largest state on earth, and creators of a world-famous tradition of literature, music, and art.

The story of the Avars, the largest mountain people of Dagestan: their Nakh-Daghestanian language, Sunni Islam, the resistance of Imam Shamil, their crafts, food, and code of honor in the high Caucasus.