From SPS to RHIC: Breaking the Barrier to the Quark-Gluon Plasma

After 15 years of heavy-ion collision experiments at the AGS and SPS, the recent turn-on of RHIC has initiated a new stage of quark-gluon plasma studies. I review the evidence for deconfined quark-gluon matter at SPS energies and the recent confirmation of some of the key ideas by the new RHIC data. Measurements of the elliptic flow at RHIC provide strong evidence for efficient thermalization during the very early partonic collision stage, resulting in a well-developed quark-gluon plasma with almost ideal fluid-dynamical collective behaviour and a lifetime of several fm/c.