Once Upon a Time... Man (French: Il était une fois... l'homme) is an educational animated television series created and directed by Albert Barillé.

It explains human history in a format adapted for children, with the action focused around one group of characters which appear in every episode dealing with the problems of the period depicted.

The series was produced by French studio Procidis in co-production with France Régions (FR3, France), Société Radio-Canada and ACCESS Alberta (Canada), Radiotelevisione italiana (RAI, Italy), the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SSR, Switzerland), Radiodiffusion-Télévision Belge and Belgische Radio en Televisie (RTBF and BRT, Belgium), Katholieke Radio Omroep (KRO, Netherlands), Norsk rikskringkasting (NRK, Norway), Sveriges Radio (SR, Sweden), Televisión Española (TVE, Spain), and Tatsunoko Production (Japan) who was the one who made the animation.

[1] The series' opening and ending title sequences famously used Johann Sebastian Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor as the main theme music.

The version in Spanish uses a pop song based on the third movement of Ludwig van Beethoven's Septet, adapted by Rafael Trabucchelli and Agustín Serrano, with Spanish lyrics by Marisol Perales and José Luis Perales, and performed by the children's group Caramelos.

On the Late Middle Ages, including the Black Death, the Western Schism, and the Hundred Years' War.

A DVD boxed set of all the episodes of the series was produced by the French production company Procidis, and distributed locally by various distributors.

The DVD series was produced in French, English (not sold in the UK or US), Finnish, German, Dutch, Hebrew, Norwegian, Spanish, Swedish, and Polish.