Lost Cities Revealed with Albert Lin (2023) s01e04 Episode Script
The Barbarian Kingdom
1
Which way, that way?
Yeah, towards that headland.
As long as
I can remember,
I've wanted to be an explorer.
But as a kid, I thought all the
best stuff had been discovered.
That it, right there?
Yeah, this is it here.
I was wrong.
Our ancient history is full
of incredible stories,
lost to time.
That's incredible.
Wow.
Forgotten civilizations,
as important as any
that have ever stood.
Alright, I'm going to get
the grappling hook.
They're the stories
I want to tell.
One.
Woo!
That's a great shot!
Wow. Look at this place.
It's just so rugged.
Yeah, if you could just keep
a little tension on this line.
Yeah.
Be careful.
It's really crumbly.
Whew.
Rock!
LINDSEY Agh!
-You good?
-Yep. Good.
I find myself drawn
to stories of struggle.
Rock!
You alright? You had better hide
behind that big one.
Yep.
I'm inspired
by the human ability
to overcome any obstacle.
Almost to the top.
And the story of the people
who lived here
is the definition of that.
Ooh.
Wow!
Look at this place.
It's incredible.
Almost 2,000 years ago,
this sea stack was home
to one of Scotland's
oldest civilizations,
the Picts.
A mysterious tribe
of small communities
scattered across
a wild landscape.
These tribes found themselves
caught in the crosshairs
of the most powerful army
in the world
the Romans.
At the end of
the first century AD,
the mighty Roman Empire dominates
much of Europe and North Africa.
In Britain, what is now known
as England and Wales
have been conquered.
Next the Roman war machine
turns its attention north
to Scotland.
Over the next 300 years
the Romans attempted
to conquer Scotland.
But somehow the northern tribes
fought them off
and established
their own kingdom,
the kingdom of the Picts.
How's it going?
Give me a minute.
But nobody is certain
how they did it.
You got it?
That's why I'm here.
To discover how these
mysterious people
defeated the mighty Romans.
There you go.
Oh, my goodness.
This sea stack
is the site
of the earliest Pictish
settlement ever discovered.
Dr. Lindsey Büster is an expert
on the period.
I mean, what would
have told people
that this was a Pict site?
It's just so barren and remote.
Well, in the mid 1800s
they actually found
a number of stones with these
really interesting carvings
on them up here.
They are what we call
Pictish symbol stones.
Symbol stones?
So.
Okay.
Whoa!
Those are
Pictish symbol stones.
Ah, that's incredible.
You've got some kind
of mysterious triangle
with what looks like
water or fire.
Is this a fish?
What is the story behind these?
Look at this.
There's these crescents.
What are they?
What do they mean?
We don't have
the equivalent
of a kind of Rosetta Stone
to interpret them.
They've never been deciphered.
Maybe if I get the LiDAR
gear over here,
we can strip away
some of this grass
and get a better sense
of what is here.
Joe, Duncan.
Hey, good to see you guys.
You certainly
pick the spots, Albert.
There's no way my LiDAR
team can haul 500 pounds
of delicate technology
up this sea stack.
I've got a plan, but the guys
might not like it.
Look, did you guys bring
the, uh, the heavy lift?
We've got the M300, yeah.
I've put a little
spool of guideline
in one of the Peli cases.
If you guys can
fly it over here,
we'll create a pully system.
It's gonna work, promise.
We trust you, mate.
Let's do it, okay.
The wind's not
in our favor.
No.
Okay, coming over.
Tighten it, tighten it,
tighten it.
The cord.
Here it comes.
More towards me.
Hold, hold!
Okay, good to go up.
Woo hoo!
Okay, we can pull
this line across.
We've got the end
of the rope now. Okay?
Yes, perfect.
Right, we're
clipping in now.
Harness is
adjusted proper, Joe.
Yeah, Joe. Ready to go.
Our LiDAR system uses lasers
projected from air and land
to create an incredibly
accurate 3D model.
It's a hell of a way
to get to work, huh?
Ah.
Yeah!
Yes!
Yooh!
We did it!
I'm hoping you guys can rebuild
what was once here.
If you want to start
doing the scans.
Let's go.
Starting props.
Pushing off!
There she goes.
I think we're ready.
Perfect, let's get
the data coming in.
So, we can see
what the drone is seeing?
Yeah, you'll also be able
to see the LiDAR live.
Boom.
There's the stack.
Yes! There we go.
-Oh, my goodness.
-There we go.
See it in 3D as well.
That's fantastic. Wow!
The LiDAR has modeled
what remains of this site
to within a few inches
of accuracy.
Do you have any survey data from
the digs that were done here?
By adding pre-existing data,
gathered by Lindsey's colleagues
at the University of Aberdeen,
we can recreate
the 2,000-year-old Pictish site.
Basically,
in all of these trenches
they found archaeology.
If we can take this
and place it on that,
we can build this out
as a reconstruction
of what stood here before.
Yeah, that's started.
Coming up.
Here we go.
These are homes?
These are little homes?
Yeah, we're sat
right in the middle
of a Pictish village.
If this site reveals
what their world looked like
when the Romans
arrived in Scotland,
it's a miracle that
they weren't wiped out.
Because of erosion,
the original settlement
might have opened up into
a slightly larger area.
But it would never have been,
you know, a huge site.
We are talking kind of
tens of people here.
Tiny.
This is quite typical
for a Pictish settlement.
This is quite often
where we find them.
They're always
quite small scale,
dotted about the landscape.
So, the style
of Pictish life
was to live in these
tiny little villages?
Think about what
they were up against.
It was a scale order difference.
We have, you know,
small domestic communities
up against thousands of soldiers
just over the horizon.
So where were
the Roman forts?
Can you pull 'em up?
The team have already scanned
known Roman sites in the area.
Look at that right there.
Wow, look at that.
Look how big that is.
What are those long buildings
right there?
Each of these is
a barracks block,
and each barracks block
is holding 100 soldiers.
We're definitely looking
at more than 1,000 soldiers.
This is actually one
of the smaller forts.
There's bigger ones?
Let's see 'em.
Wow.
That just screams dominance.
We're looking at
kind of ten times the size
of the previous forts
we just looked at.
It just really
gets you to realize
just what the Picts
were up against.
It was
a military machine.
It feels like a David
and Goliath sort of moment.
Could you imagine
just the sort of sound
of their marching
across this hill?
You would have heard their armor
beating against their shields
all night long in the hills
surrounding you.
With your back against the wall,
surrounded by a sophisticated
brutal force,
taking their lands,
killing their people,
it'd be terrifying.
It's a terrible choice:
fight or run.
Rope!
Scotland, the third century AD.
Elite Roman soldiers, advancing
from their strongholds
in the south, are hunting the
native tribes from their homes.
If you felt that force
coming at you
and you were a Pictish village,
I would personally be
taking my family,
taking my things that I could
bring, and I'd be fleeing north.
It's a story I've seen
time and again.
A civilization overwhelmed;
people forced
from their homelands.
But somehow, they survived.
How did they overcome
such terrible odds?
I'm following the Picts'
ancient route north,
where the hunted tribespeople
could use their superior
knowledge of the coastline
to hide from the Roman Army.
Just head
for this beach here.
Yeah,
I'm gonna pull in.
This beach has kind of
an eerie feeling.
Okay.
It's getting cold.
Yeah,
I'm pretty cold and wet.
Should we make a fire?
The Roman writer Eumenius
was the first to record
the term "Picts,"
Latin for "the painted people."
Everything we know about them is
based on accounts from people
that were trying
to destroy them.
The Romans paint them
as these kind of
naked barbarians.
Whoa!
This is a depiction
drawing on those Roman sources.
Whoa!
We can imagine
there's a bit
of artistic license involved.
Wow.
Look at that.
They certainly
scared the Romans enough
to describe them
as very ferocious
and savage painted people.
So, these are tattoos?
They were either
tattoos or maybe body paint.
I don't want to be
influenced by Roman propaganda.
The problem is the Picts
didn't write down
their version of events.
Theirs is a hidden history.
If you want to feel
like they felt,
you've got to see it
as they saw it, right?
Exactly.
Woo!
♪
Look at this!
Wow!
Look at this entrance.
In almost every culture
that I've encountered,
caves represent some kind of
window into the spirit world.
Wow.
There's carvings everywhere.
Layer upon layer
of people
who've left their messages
on the walls for us.
It almost feels like
we've stepped through time.
Is this?
What's that?
Kinda looks like
It's so hard to make out
in the dark here.
When you move the torch from
side to side, you kinda,
you kind of make out a little
bit more of the shadows.
I feel like the Picts
are calling to us.
But what are they saying?
So little is known
about the Picts.
Searching for their lost kingdom
means I must follow every lead.
And there's something
on the walls of this cave
that's drawing me in.
I'm gonna start the scan, okay?
Yep.
My handheld LiDAR
technology allows me
to scan the walls
and process the data
to separate the ancient markings
from the modern.
Right.
There's so many small,
subtle details here.
Look at that!
Boom!
Oh, wow!
Look at that!
And then
Look at that.
Yeah, that's it!
Wow.
Is that what I think it is?
It looks like that
crescent shape
that you showed me
on that symbol stone.
That's amazing.
It is a Pictish symbol
right there!
-Wow!
-That's wonderful.
It's like finding
new chapters of a lost story.
They're trying
to tell us something.
It's some kind
of writing system.
These intricate
stone carvings
tell me the Picts were
far more sophisticated
than the wild barbarians
the Romans described.
There's got to be so many of
these all through this cave, no?
There's definitely
more of them.
Are you getting this?
As we scan the walls,
we discover even more
ancient clues.
And there's
another symbol
just to the left of that one.
Each one, a direct link
to the Pictish people
who touched these very walls,
nearly 2,000 years ago.
I can almost feel the presence
of the person who carved them.
It's not just an image,
or a piece of ancient art,
it's a window into the mind
of the person who made them.
I've found something.
Look. There's something
up there.
And this rectangle.
What is that?
You know, if you think
of caves as, you know,
gateways between worlds,
it could be a doorway
from one world to the next.
If it's a gateway
to the other world,
what's it doing here?
I think they're
memorializing the dead.
-The dead?
-Yeah.
When the first excavator
visited the cave
to have a look at the carvings
in the late 1920s,
she found the floor of the cave
strewn with human bones.
This was a graveyard?
Amongst those bones
were nine vertebrae
from the neck.
And those nine vertebrae
from the neck had evidence
for cut marks, cut marks
made by a bladed weapon,
probably a sword.
Up to nine individuals,
including two teenagers, were
Kids?
Essentially children, yes.
were decapitated right here,
right at the time
when the activity is
happening at Dunnicaer.
That must have been
a family, right?
Nine people. Kids. Adults.
And that downward strike
of an axe or a sword,
that's a classic Roman
execution style.
So, we know that
it wasn't bodiless heads
or headless bodies that
were entering the cave, but
It's impossible to know
exactly who killed the people
in this cave.
But what is clear is that
these traumatizing events
demonstrate the level of threat
the native tribes faced.
What a place to be.
There was kids there.
Kids that lost their lives
in that very cave.
Of the Picts, of the warriors
that would fight back,
these underdogs that would
stand up for themselves.
-Hi!
-Hey!
I miss you guys so much.
I miss you too, baba.
Ahhh.
What have you
been doing?
I was just in a cave
I'm starting to feel
connected to the Picts.
I know their people were hunted;
I know that they suffered.
Now, I need to find the place
where they began to fight back.
What happened
in that cave back there,
thousands of years ago,
it was tragic.
But the Picts fought back.
So somewhere out there,
there's a story of redemption,
and I'm gonna find it.
210 AD.
Emperor Septimius Severus
orders a bloody campaign
against the northern tribes,
so brutally effective,
archaeologists compare it
to a genocide.
The Roman army squeezed
the remaining tribes
further and further north,
forcing them together,
to deliver the final blow.
♪
But it never came.
Somewhere out here, they begin
to unite and fight back.
Most known Pictish sites
feel too small.
But one location
grabs my attention
Burghead.
♪
Look at this.
Looks like a rampart
or something.
Looks big.
I'm gonna scan this.
A modern town presents
a different kind
of scanning challenge.
But if the Picts did
establish a base here,
it could prove what
they became capable of.
Yooh!
Look at this place.
Yeah.
What do you
think this is?
'Cause look how big
these walls are.
Arriving here
at this massive site,
you can see that
there's something
just beneath the grass.
But what could it be?
We've got a good view
of it here, Albert.
Here we go.
Look at that.
You see these walls?
Look at those walls.
Yeah.
It almost feels like
a fort or something.
And look at that.
The city's built on top of it.
Look at that.
It just kind of stops there.
We only were able to see
part of the site.
The rest of the site's been
covered by this modern town.
It's an incomplete story.
I want to know what's
under those streets.
Our LiDAR technology
is state of the art,
but it can't see
through pavement.
What do you think?
Ground penetrating radar?
Yeah, it's got to
give us a good chance.
It's the only way.
It's the only way.
I'm deploying
GPR technology.
It may look like a lawn mower,
but the radio signals
that it produces
penetrate through the ground,
revealing evidence
of what's buried below.
Can you guys look up any
past digs, any past data?
Yeah, absolutely.
I'm also using findings
from recent excavations
and have brought one
of the archaeologists
who conducted those digs to
help us interpret our results.
Hey, James.
Are you Albert?
Yeah, good
to meet you, man.
How's it going?
Thanks for coming,
I really appreciate it.
So, we did a ground penetrating
radar survey of the city here.
And we don't quite know
what it is,
but here, can you fly in
just down under the ground?
So, here's the GPR data.
But look at that right there.
Look at that bump.
Oh, wow! Look at that!
Look at that! It's clear as day.
Bank, ditch, bank, ditch.
Maybe a third bank there.
What is that?
This is almost
certainly a rampart
which has been completely
covered over by the town.
A rampart,
like a defensive wall,
like that kind of thing?
So, like this.
Is that what you're thinking?
Exactly.
Yeah!
They're massive.
Okay, let's layer in
the modern town.
That's super.
That's amazing.
They are huge, aren't they?
They could be eight meters high.
They're obviously defending
against an actual threat.
I want to see the city
as it once was.
Can we combine this
with their survey data?
Yeah. Let me see
what I can spin up here.
Oh, yeah, right?
That's super, isn't it?
It's so tangible, too.
Wow.
This is on a scale bigger than
anything we've seen so far.
This can't be Pictish, can it?
Well, we have a lot
of carbon dates from the site,
and we're absolutely certain
it is Pictish.
This is Pictish?
All the other Pictish sites
we've gone to are small,
they're tiny little villages
on the top of sea stacks,
but this is
completely different.
This is not a little village.
Those disparate people
set throughout the landscape
are coming together
to build these forts.
This symbolizes
an event happening.
You know, like a momentum shift.
People coming together.
It feels like,
it feels like unification.
Burghead confirms the Picts
did re-establish themselves.
But a site of this size couldn't
defend Scotland on its own.
There is more to this story,
and I'll need to go
right into the heart
of the Roman battleground
to find it.
I've been
through jungles
which I thought were dense,
but this is rough.
Scotland, the fifth century AD.
The Roman Empire is
beginning to crumble.
And the Picts
take full advantage.
Banding together
in greater numbers
and using their intimate
knowledge of the landscape
to gain the upper hand.
I've left the northeast coast,
heading inland to a Pictish
archaeological site
called Rhynie.
My route takes me deep into the
same forests that the Picts used
in their battles
against the Romans.
The Romans had to
get through this?
With all their equipment.
Archaeologist
Kelly Kilpatrick has spent
more than two decades
exploring Pictish culture.
The enemy would use
these woods to their advantage.
At one point, Agricola
were looking into the woods
in horror,
because the brave beasts
would descend upon them
and ambush the Romans.
So, the Picts
are the brave beasts?
Yeah, they're
the brave beasts.
Looks like it might be
a little bit of a swim.
Imagine, if you were
a Roman soldier,
you'd see hints
of Pictish warriors
hidden in the forest beyond.
And now you've got
to cross this.
Let's aim to that tree
and see if we can make our way
towards the bank.
Alright, swimming!
You good?
Keep swimming.
Yep.
There we go.
This is the wild land
that protected the Picts
from their enemies,
the large, powerful Roman Army
weighed down by sophisticated
weapons and armor.
The underdog was biting back.
You good?
Yep. I'm good.
Ugh, thank you.
Aaagh! Ha ha!
Made it.
Ahh, we did it!
Woo!
We're in the heart
of Pictish territory now.
♪
Rhynie is home to
one of the largest
Pictish symbol stones
in Scotland.
What I see right here
is the fish.
Yep. You can even see
the little fins on the bottom.
And then
Beneath that is a symbol
that's called a Pictish beast.
What's it doing here?
What are they trying to say?
Well, there's quite
a few theories out there
about what these mean.
But we don't know,
is the answer.
It is humbling
that with all our technology
and knowledge,
we may never know exactly
what these symbols mean.
But instinctively
I know their presence
marks this place as significant.
I feel I'm getting closer
to understanding
the power of the Picts.
This must have been
an important site.
One of
the leading theories
is that this
Pictish symbol stone
is actually a stamp
of ownership on the land,
a sign that people
would have recognized
as they were entering
this place.
Was it somebody's home?
Well, a few years ago,
there were some
excavations up here,
and they discovered
that this symbol stone
actually marks the entrance
into a royal center.
A Pictish royal site.
Wow.
You're standing where
Pictish kings have walked.
Wow.
This is some, uh
hallowed grounds here.
In the David and Goliath story
of the Picts versus the Romans,
Rhynie represents the moment
the underdog is crowned king.
I don't quite get it, though,
because a king
would be surrounded
by all of the community;
where's the community?
Well, yeah, exactly,
you're not a king of nothing,
you're a king of people,
you're a king of a nation.
Where's the nation?
If this is the center
of a lost Pictish kingdom,
there must be a city
large enough to defend it.
Look at that mountain.
Look at that.
I think we should go there.
♪
It's like walking
on sponge, isn't it?
Kelly and I want to scan
the top of this hill
to see if it's connected
to the royal site at Rhynie
in the valley below us.
The moment we summit,
its strategic significance
becomes obvious.
Woo!
Look at this.
What a view.
From up here,
the Picts can see everything:
the royal site at Rhynie
and any approaching enemy.
You can see the entire landscape
in every direction.
It's beautiful.
It is amazing.
We got to get that tech
in here, scan this whole place.
It's the moment of truth.
Our powerful
laser scanning technology
can peel back the layers of time
on this hill
and hopefully reveal the ancient
Pictish world beneath our feet.
You guys found a way up.
We took the hard way.
This is Kelly.
-Nice to meet you, Kelly.
-Hi, nice to meet you.
Let's get the drones up
right away. A lot to scan.
It's a big old space.
Yeah,
let's get started.
Mapping the hill with
our laser-equipped drones,
the 3D data is beamed live
into our field lab.
Let's go back to the LiDAR view.
Professor Gordon Noble
is the leading expert
on Pictish Scotland.
Gordon. Good to see you.
This is Albert.
Albert.
So nice to meet you.
Yeah, heard a lot
about you.
He knows Tap O'Noth is
an important Pictish site.
It'll be interesting to
see what turns up in your scans.
I'm hoping we can reveal
just how important.
So, this is the,
this is all the data
that just came in off the drone?
Yeah, this is
all the LiDAR now.
The heather bushes
themselves that can be,
you know, a good foot,
foot and a half thick,
so that's really masking
all the archaeology there.
Are we able to get
through any of it
with the LiDAR?
I've still got
to process it.
Let's get rid
of those bushes.
This is gonna take
a little bit more rigging,
but we should be able to do it.
Right, Joe.
Let's see what you've
got on that drone.
-Ooh, wow.
-Nice. You see that?
-Oh, look!
-Look at that!
Lovely, yeah.
That's fantastic.
Can you look at those?
Can you see those? Going
What are they?
Look, there's more.
You can see these little divots
into the hill there.
Here. You can see they've just,
they've leveled out
big, long terraces.
Yeah. There's another one
of these terraces.
Yeah, amazing.
-It looks like, uh,
like the dimples of a golf ball,
doesn't it?
-Yeah.
-Yeah.
There's hundreds there.
So, these are platforms?
Is that what you think?
Yeah, yeah.
That's where they've built
structures there,
in the Pictish period.
Homes?
Were those all homes?
Yes!
Oh, wow!
Look at that!
We've done some
excavations here,
and there are actually houses.
Wow!
It's cool.
They're just everywhere,
aren't they?
How many people
is that?
So, if you think that,
you know,
maybe five people per house,
multiply that by 800,
you're dealing with
4,000 or more.
Wow!
This doesn't feel
like a village,
this doesn't feel like a town,
this looks like
a hilltop city to me.
It's, it's quite
something, isn't it? Yeah.
It's cool.
It does look like a city,
doesn't it?
The Picts are no longer
living in small groups;
they have unified.
An interconnected society
on a grand scale.
Instead of crushing the Picts,
Romans have united them.
The greatest army in the world
had created their own
worst enemy.
Feels like we're at the end
of this massive snowball.
As it's being pushed along
by the Romans,
they're picking up groups,
picking up groups,
building and building
until you end up with these,
these worlds on top of hills.
Well, I think this is
what happens, you know,
if you have a empire
on your doorstep,
you need to come together.
You need to create these bigger
communities in order to resist.
Our scan has revealed
the largest Pictish settlement
ever discovered in Scotland.
But as I look out
at the horizon,
it dawns on me that this is
only the tip of the iceberg.
Everything in the landscape
now looks like
it could be a hilltop fortress.
Yeah, they're
all over the place. Yeah.
They're all over!
Once you begin
to get your eye in,
and you begin to see
this network of sites
coming together.
I can almost
imagine each hill
covered in a fiery glow
of homes.
An impenetrable mesh
all connected together.
Yeah. Exactly.
This is how
they built the world
that could resist
the Roman Army.
-Yep. Yeah.
-Yeah.
When I first
showed up in Scotland,
I found a story
of a people in peril.
But all along this journey,
it's been about growth.
It been about the creation
of something bigger.
We've found a lost city at the
center of a forgotten kingdom,
the nation of Pictland.
A place forged from unity, and
a belief that even when faced
with the most powerful army
in the world,
you can always fight back.
Sites like this one must have
existed all over Pictland,
people living and
fighting together;
an interconnected kingdom
that held off the Romans
and reclaimed their homeland.
An inspirational victory
for the underdog.
By the middle of
the fifth century,
the Romans finally gave up their
attempts to conquer the north,
and with their empire crumbling,
withdrew from Scotland forever.
By the eighth century
the Picts began to fade
from the pages of history,
absorbed by larger groups.
But the Pictish spirit lives on,
in the people of the land
they helped to create,
Scotland.
♪
♪
Captioned by
Side Door Media Services
Which way, that way?
Yeah, towards that headland.
As long as
I can remember,
I've wanted to be an explorer.
But as a kid, I thought all the
best stuff had been discovered.
That it, right there?
Yeah, this is it here.
I was wrong.
Our ancient history is full
of incredible stories,
lost to time.
That's incredible.
Wow.
Forgotten civilizations,
as important as any
that have ever stood.
Alright, I'm going to get
the grappling hook.
They're the stories
I want to tell.
One.
Woo!
That's a great shot!
Wow. Look at this place.
It's just so rugged.
Yeah, if you could just keep
a little tension on this line.
Yeah.
Be careful.
It's really crumbly.
Whew.
Rock!
LINDSEY Agh!
-You good?
-Yep. Good.
I find myself drawn
to stories of struggle.
Rock!
You alright? You had better hide
behind that big one.
Yep.
I'm inspired
by the human ability
to overcome any obstacle.
Almost to the top.
And the story of the people
who lived here
is the definition of that.
Ooh.
Wow!
Look at this place.
It's incredible.
Almost 2,000 years ago,
this sea stack was home
to one of Scotland's
oldest civilizations,
the Picts.
A mysterious tribe
of small communities
scattered across
a wild landscape.
These tribes found themselves
caught in the crosshairs
of the most powerful army
in the world
the Romans.
At the end of
the first century AD,
the mighty Roman Empire dominates
much of Europe and North Africa.
In Britain, what is now known
as England and Wales
have been conquered.
Next the Roman war machine
turns its attention north
to Scotland.
Over the next 300 years
the Romans attempted
to conquer Scotland.
But somehow the northern tribes
fought them off
and established
their own kingdom,
the kingdom of the Picts.
How's it going?
Give me a minute.
But nobody is certain
how they did it.
You got it?
That's why I'm here.
To discover how these
mysterious people
defeated the mighty Romans.
There you go.
Oh, my goodness.
This sea stack
is the site
of the earliest Pictish
settlement ever discovered.
Dr. Lindsey Büster is an expert
on the period.
I mean, what would
have told people
that this was a Pict site?
It's just so barren and remote.
Well, in the mid 1800s
they actually found
a number of stones with these
really interesting carvings
on them up here.
They are what we call
Pictish symbol stones.
Symbol stones?
So.
Okay.
Whoa!
Those are
Pictish symbol stones.
Ah, that's incredible.
You've got some kind
of mysterious triangle
with what looks like
water or fire.
Is this a fish?
What is the story behind these?
Look at this.
There's these crescents.
What are they?
What do they mean?
We don't have
the equivalent
of a kind of Rosetta Stone
to interpret them.
They've never been deciphered.
Maybe if I get the LiDAR
gear over here,
we can strip away
some of this grass
and get a better sense
of what is here.
Joe, Duncan.
Hey, good to see you guys.
You certainly
pick the spots, Albert.
There's no way my LiDAR
team can haul 500 pounds
of delicate technology
up this sea stack.
I've got a plan, but the guys
might not like it.
Look, did you guys bring
the, uh, the heavy lift?
We've got the M300, yeah.
I've put a little
spool of guideline
in one of the Peli cases.
If you guys can
fly it over here,
we'll create a pully system.
It's gonna work, promise.
We trust you, mate.
Let's do it, okay.
The wind's not
in our favor.
No.
Okay, coming over.
Tighten it, tighten it,
tighten it.
The cord.
Here it comes.
More towards me.
Hold, hold!
Okay, good to go up.
Woo hoo!
Okay, we can pull
this line across.
We've got the end
of the rope now. Okay?
Yes, perfect.
Right, we're
clipping in now.
Harness is
adjusted proper, Joe.
Yeah, Joe. Ready to go.
Our LiDAR system uses lasers
projected from air and land
to create an incredibly
accurate 3D model.
It's a hell of a way
to get to work, huh?
Ah.
Yeah!
Yes!
Yooh!
We did it!
I'm hoping you guys can rebuild
what was once here.
If you want to start
doing the scans.
Let's go.
Starting props.
Pushing off!
There she goes.
I think we're ready.
Perfect, let's get
the data coming in.
So, we can see
what the drone is seeing?
Yeah, you'll also be able
to see the LiDAR live.
Boom.
There's the stack.
Yes! There we go.
-Oh, my goodness.
-There we go.
See it in 3D as well.
That's fantastic. Wow!
The LiDAR has modeled
what remains of this site
to within a few inches
of accuracy.
Do you have any survey data from
the digs that were done here?
By adding pre-existing data,
gathered by Lindsey's colleagues
at the University of Aberdeen,
we can recreate
the 2,000-year-old Pictish site.
Basically,
in all of these trenches
they found archaeology.
If we can take this
and place it on that,
we can build this out
as a reconstruction
of what stood here before.
Yeah, that's started.
Coming up.
Here we go.
These are homes?
These are little homes?
Yeah, we're sat
right in the middle
of a Pictish village.
If this site reveals
what their world looked like
when the Romans
arrived in Scotland,
it's a miracle that
they weren't wiped out.
Because of erosion,
the original settlement
might have opened up into
a slightly larger area.
But it would never have been,
you know, a huge site.
We are talking kind of
tens of people here.
Tiny.
This is quite typical
for a Pictish settlement.
This is quite often
where we find them.
They're always
quite small scale,
dotted about the landscape.
So, the style
of Pictish life
was to live in these
tiny little villages?
Think about what
they were up against.
It was a scale order difference.
We have, you know,
small domestic communities
up against thousands of soldiers
just over the horizon.
So where were
the Roman forts?
Can you pull 'em up?
The team have already scanned
known Roman sites in the area.
Look at that right there.
Wow, look at that.
Look how big that is.
What are those long buildings
right there?
Each of these is
a barracks block,
and each barracks block
is holding 100 soldiers.
We're definitely looking
at more than 1,000 soldiers.
This is actually one
of the smaller forts.
There's bigger ones?
Let's see 'em.
Wow.
That just screams dominance.
We're looking at
kind of ten times the size
of the previous forts
we just looked at.
It just really
gets you to realize
just what the Picts
were up against.
It was
a military machine.
It feels like a David
and Goliath sort of moment.
Could you imagine
just the sort of sound
of their marching
across this hill?
You would have heard their armor
beating against their shields
all night long in the hills
surrounding you.
With your back against the wall,
surrounded by a sophisticated
brutal force,
taking their lands,
killing their people,
it'd be terrifying.
It's a terrible choice:
fight or run.
Rope!
Scotland, the third century AD.
Elite Roman soldiers, advancing
from their strongholds
in the south, are hunting the
native tribes from their homes.
If you felt that force
coming at you
and you were a Pictish village,
I would personally be
taking my family,
taking my things that I could
bring, and I'd be fleeing north.
It's a story I've seen
time and again.
A civilization overwhelmed;
people forced
from their homelands.
But somehow, they survived.
How did they overcome
such terrible odds?
I'm following the Picts'
ancient route north,
where the hunted tribespeople
could use their superior
knowledge of the coastline
to hide from the Roman Army.
Just head
for this beach here.
Yeah,
I'm gonna pull in.
This beach has kind of
an eerie feeling.
Okay.
It's getting cold.
Yeah,
I'm pretty cold and wet.
Should we make a fire?
The Roman writer Eumenius
was the first to record
the term "Picts,"
Latin for "the painted people."
Everything we know about them is
based on accounts from people
that were trying
to destroy them.
The Romans paint them
as these kind of
naked barbarians.
Whoa!
This is a depiction
drawing on those Roman sources.
Whoa!
We can imagine
there's a bit
of artistic license involved.
Wow.
Look at that.
They certainly
scared the Romans enough
to describe them
as very ferocious
and savage painted people.
So, these are tattoos?
They were either
tattoos or maybe body paint.
I don't want to be
influenced by Roman propaganda.
The problem is the Picts
didn't write down
their version of events.
Theirs is a hidden history.
If you want to feel
like they felt,
you've got to see it
as they saw it, right?
Exactly.
Woo!
♪
Look at this!
Wow!
Look at this entrance.
In almost every culture
that I've encountered,
caves represent some kind of
window into the spirit world.
Wow.
There's carvings everywhere.
Layer upon layer
of people
who've left their messages
on the walls for us.
It almost feels like
we've stepped through time.
Is this?
What's that?
Kinda looks like
It's so hard to make out
in the dark here.
When you move the torch from
side to side, you kinda,
you kind of make out a little
bit more of the shadows.
I feel like the Picts
are calling to us.
But what are they saying?
So little is known
about the Picts.
Searching for their lost kingdom
means I must follow every lead.
And there's something
on the walls of this cave
that's drawing me in.
I'm gonna start the scan, okay?
Yep.
My handheld LiDAR
technology allows me
to scan the walls
and process the data
to separate the ancient markings
from the modern.
Right.
There's so many small,
subtle details here.
Look at that!
Boom!
Oh, wow!
Look at that!
And then
Look at that.
Yeah, that's it!
Wow.
Is that what I think it is?
It looks like that
crescent shape
that you showed me
on that symbol stone.
That's amazing.
It is a Pictish symbol
right there!
-Wow!
-That's wonderful.
It's like finding
new chapters of a lost story.
They're trying
to tell us something.
It's some kind
of writing system.
These intricate
stone carvings
tell me the Picts were
far more sophisticated
than the wild barbarians
the Romans described.
There's got to be so many of
these all through this cave, no?
There's definitely
more of them.
Are you getting this?
As we scan the walls,
we discover even more
ancient clues.
And there's
another symbol
just to the left of that one.
Each one, a direct link
to the Pictish people
who touched these very walls,
nearly 2,000 years ago.
I can almost feel the presence
of the person who carved them.
It's not just an image,
or a piece of ancient art,
it's a window into the mind
of the person who made them.
I've found something.
Look. There's something
up there.
And this rectangle.
What is that?
You know, if you think
of caves as, you know,
gateways between worlds,
it could be a doorway
from one world to the next.
If it's a gateway
to the other world,
what's it doing here?
I think they're
memorializing the dead.
-The dead?
-Yeah.
When the first excavator
visited the cave
to have a look at the carvings
in the late 1920s,
she found the floor of the cave
strewn with human bones.
This was a graveyard?
Amongst those bones
were nine vertebrae
from the neck.
And those nine vertebrae
from the neck had evidence
for cut marks, cut marks
made by a bladed weapon,
probably a sword.
Up to nine individuals,
including two teenagers, were
Kids?
Essentially children, yes.
were decapitated right here,
right at the time
when the activity is
happening at Dunnicaer.
That must have been
a family, right?
Nine people. Kids. Adults.
And that downward strike
of an axe or a sword,
that's a classic Roman
execution style.
So, we know that
it wasn't bodiless heads
or headless bodies that
were entering the cave, but
It's impossible to know
exactly who killed the people
in this cave.
But what is clear is that
these traumatizing events
demonstrate the level of threat
the native tribes faced.
What a place to be.
There was kids there.
Kids that lost their lives
in that very cave.
Of the Picts, of the warriors
that would fight back,
these underdogs that would
stand up for themselves.
-Hi!
-Hey!
I miss you guys so much.
I miss you too, baba.
Ahhh.
What have you
been doing?
I was just in a cave
I'm starting to feel
connected to the Picts.
I know their people were hunted;
I know that they suffered.
Now, I need to find the place
where they began to fight back.
What happened
in that cave back there,
thousands of years ago,
it was tragic.
But the Picts fought back.
So somewhere out there,
there's a story of redemption,
and I'm gonna find it.
210 AD.
Emperor Septimius Severus
orders a bloody campaign
against the northern tribes,
so brutally effective,
archaeologists compare it
to a genocide.
The Roman army squeezed
the remaining tribes
further and further north,
forcing them together,
to deliver the final blow.
♪
But it never came.
Somewhere out here, they begin
to unite and fight back.
Most known Pictish sites
feel too small.
But one location
grabs my attention
Burghead.
♪
Look at this.
Looks like a rampart
or something.
Looks big.
I'm gonna scan this.
A modern town presents
a different kind
of scanning challenge.
But if the Picts did
establish a base here,
it could prove what
they became capable of.
Yooh!
Look at this place.
Yeah.
What do you
think this is?
'Cause look how big
these walls are.
Arriving here
at this massive site,
you can see that
there's something
just beneath the grass.
But what could it be?
We've got a good view
of it here, Albert.
Here we go.
Look at that.
You see these walls?
Look at those walls.
Yeah.
It almost feels like
a fort or something.
And look at that.
The city's built on top of it.
Look at that.
It just kind of stops there.
We only were able to see
part of the site.
The rest of the site's been
covered by this modern town.
It's an incomplete story.
I want to know what's
under those streets.
Our LiDAR technology
is state of the art,
but it can't see
through pavement.
What do you think?
Ground penetrating radar?
Yeah, it's got to
give us a good chance.
It's the only way.
It's the only way.
I'm deploying
GPR technology.
It may look like a lawn mower,
but the radio signals
that it produces
penetrate through the ground,
revealing evidence
of what's buried below.
Can you guys look up any
past digs, any past data?
Yeah, absolutely.
I'm also using findings
from recent excavations
and have brought one
of the archaeologists
who conducted those digs to
help us interpret our results.
Hey, James.
Are you Albert?
Yeah, good
to meet you, man.
How's it going?
Thanks for coming,
I really appreciate it.
So, we did a ground penetrating
radar survey of the city here.
And we don't quite know
what it is,
but here, can you fly in
just down under the ground?
So, here's the GPR data.
But look at that right there.
Look at that bump.
Oh, wow! Look at that!
Look at that! It's clear as day.
Bank, ditch, bank, ditch.
Maybe a third bank there.
What is that?
This is almost
certainly a rampart
which has been completely
covered over by the town.
A rampart,
like a defensive wall,
like that kind of thing?
So, like this.
Is that what you're thinking?
Exactly.
Yeah!
They're massive.
Okay, let's layer in
the modern town.
That's super.
That's amazing.
They are huge, aren't they?
They could be eight meters high.
They're obviously defending
against an actual threat.
I want to see the city
as it once was.
Can we combine this
with their survey data?
Yeah. Let me see
what I can spin up here.
Oh, yeah, right?
That's super, isn't it?
It's so tangible, too.
Wow.
This is on a scale bigger than
anything we've seen so far.
This can't be Pictish, can it?
Well, we have a lot
of carbon dates from the site,
and we're absolutely certain
it is Pictish.
This is Pictish?
All the other Pictish sites
we've gone to are small,
they're tiny little villages
on the top of sea stacks,
but this is
completely different.
This is not a little village.
Those disparate people
set throughout the landscape
are coming together
to build these forts.
This symbolizes
an event happening.
You know, like a momentum shift.
People coming together.
It feels like,
it feels like unification.
Burghead confirms the Picts
did re-establish themselves.
But a site of this size couldn't
defend Scotland on its own.
There is more to this story,
and I'll need to go
right into the heart
of the Roman battleground
to find it.
I've been
through jungles
which I thought were dense,
but this is rough.
Scotland, the fifth century AD.
The Roman Empire is
beginning to crumble.
And the Picts
take full advantage.
Banding together
in greater numbers
and using their intimate
knowledge of the landscape
to gain the upper hand.
I've left the northeast coast,
heading inland to a Pictish
archaeological site
called Rhynie.
My route takes me deep into the
same forests that the Picts used
in their battles
against the Romans.
The Romans had to
get through this?
With all their equipment.
Archaeologist
Kelly Kilpatrick has spent
more than two decades
exploring Pictish culture.
The enemy would use
these woods to their advantage.
At one point, Agricola
were looking into the woods
in horror,
because the brave beasts
would descend upon them
and ambush the Romans.
So, the Picts
are the brave beasts?
Yeah, they're
the brave beasts.
Looks like it might be
a little bit of a swim.
Imagine, if you were
a Roman soldier,
you'd see hints
of Pictish warriors
hidden in the forest beyond.
And now you've got
to cross this.
Let's aim to that tree
and see if we can make our way
towards the bank.
Alright, swimming!
You good?
Keep swimming.
Yep.
There we go.
This is the wild land
that protected the Picts
from their enemies,
the large, powerful Roman Army
weighed down by sophisticated
weapons and armor.
The underdog was biting back.
You good?
Yep. I'm good.
Ugh, thank you.
Aaagh! Ha ha!
Made it.
Ahh, we did it!
Woo!
We're in the heart
of Pictish territory now.
♪
Rhynie is home to
one of the largest
Pictish symbol stones
in Scotland.
What I see right here
is the fish.
Yep. You can even see
the little fins on the bottom.
And then
Beneath that is a symbol
that's called a Pictish beast.
What's it doing here?
What are they trying to say?
Well, there's quite
a few theories out there
about what these mean.
But we don't know,
is the answer.
It is humbling
that with all our technology
and knowledge,
we may never know exactly
what these symbols mean.
But instinctively
I know their presence
marks this place as significant.
I feel I'm getting closer
to understanding
the power of the Picts.
This must have been
an important site.
One of
the leading theories
is that this
Pictish symbol stone
is actually a stamp
of ownership on the land,
a sign that people
would have recognized
as they were entering
this place.
Was it somebody's home?
Well, a few years ago,
there were some
excavations up here,
and they discovered
that this symbol stone
actually marks the entrance
into a royal center.
A Pictish royal site.
Wow.
You're standing where
Pictish kings have walked.
Wow.
This is some, uh
hallowed grounds here.
In the David and Goliath story
of the Picts versus the Romans,
Rhynie represents the moment
the underdog is crowned king.
I don't quite get it, though,
because a king
would be surrounded
by all of the community;
where's the community?
Well, yeah, exactly,
you're not a king of nothing,
you're a king of people,
you're a king of a nation.
Where's the nation?
If this is the center
of a lost Pictish kingdom,
there must be a city
large enough to defend it.
Look at that mountain.
Look at that.
I think we should go there.
♪
It's like walking
on sponge, isn't it?
Kelly and I want to scan
the top of this hill
to see if it's connected
to the royal site at Rhynie
in the valley below us.
The moment we summit,
its strategic significance
becomes obvious.
Woo!
Look at this.
What a view.
From up here,
the Picts can see everything:
the royal site at Rhynie
and any approaching enemy.
You can see the entire landscape
in every direction.
It's beautiful.
It is amazing.
We got to get that tech
in here, scan this whole place.
It's the moment of truth.
Our powerful
laser scanning technology
can peel back the layers of time
on this hill
and hopefully reveal the ancient
Pictish world beneath our feet.
You guys found a way up.
We took the hard way.
This is Kelly.
-Nice to meet you, Kelly.
-Hi, nice to meet you.
Let's get the drones up
right away. A lot to scan.
It's a big old space.
Yeah,
let's get started.
Mapping the hill with
our laser-equipped drones,
the 3D data is beamed live
into our field lab.
Let's go back to the LiDAR view.
Professor Gordon Noble
is the leading expert
on Pictish Scotland.
Gordon. Good to see you.
This is Albert.
Albert.
So nice to meet you.
Yeah, heard a lot
about you.
He knows Tap O'Noth is
an important Pictish site.
It'll be interesting to
see what turns up in your scans.
I'm hoping we can reveal
just how important.
So, this is the,
this is all the data
that just came in off the drone?
Yeah, this is
all the LiDAR now.
The heather bushes
themselves that can be,
you know, a good foot,
foot and a half thick,
so that's really masking
all the archaeology there.
Are we able to get
through any of it
with the LiDAR?
I've still got
to process it.
Let's get rid
of those bushes.
This is gonna take
a little bit more rigging,
but we should be able to do it.
Right, Joe.
Let's see what you've
got on that drone.
-Ooh, wow.
-Nice. You see that?
-Oh, look!
-Look at that!
Lovely, yeah.
That's fantastic.
Can you look at those?
Can you see those? Going
What are they?
Look, there's more.
You can see these little divots
into the hill there.
Here. You can see they've just,
they've leveled out
big, long terraces.
Yeah. There's another one
of these terraces.
Yeah, amazing.
-It looks like, uh,
like the dimples of a golf ball,
doesn't it?
-Yeah.
-Yeah.
There's hundreds there.
So, these are platforms?
Is that what you think?
Yeah, yeah.
That's where they've built
structures there,
in the Pictish period.
Homes?
Were those all homes?
Yes!
Oh, wow!
Look at that!
We've done some
excavations here,
and there are actually houses.
Wow!
It's cool.
They're just everywhere,
aren't they?
How many people
is that?
So, if you think that,
you know,
maybe five people per house,
multiply that by 800,
you're dealing with
4,000 or more.
Wow!
This doesn't feel
like a village,
this doesn't feel like a town,
this looks like
a hilltop city to me.
It's, it's quite
something, isn't it? Yeah.
It's cool.
It does look like a city,
doesn't it?
The Picts are no longer
living in small groups;
they have unified.
An interconnected society
on a grand scale.
Instead of crushing the Picts,
Romans have united them.
The greatest army in the world
had created their own
worst enemy.
Feels like we're at the end
of this massive snowball.
As it's being pushed along
by the Romans,
they're picking up groups,
picking up groups,
building and building
until you end up with these,
these worlds on top of hills.
Well, I think this is
what happens, you know,
if you have a empire
on your doorstep,
you need to come together.
You need to create these bigger
communities in order to resist.
Our scan has revealed
the largest Pictish settlement
ever discovered in Scotland.
But as I look out
at the horizon,
it dawns on me that this is
only the tip of the iceberg.
Everything in the landscape
now looks like
it could be a hilltop fortress.
Yeah, they're
all over the place. Yeah.
They're all over!
Once you begin
to get your eye in,
and you begin to see
this network of sites
coming together.
I can almost
imagine each hill
covered in a fiery glow
of homes.
An impenetrable mesh
all connected together.
Yeah. Exactly.
This is how
they built the world
that could resist
the Roman Army.
-Yep. Yeah.
-Yeah.
When I first
showed up in Scotland,
I found a story
of a people in peril.
But all along this journey,
it's been about growth.
It been about the creation
of something bigger.
We've found a lost city at the
center of a forgotten kingdom,
the nation of Pictland.
A place forged from unity, and
a belief that even when faced
with the most powerful army
in the world,
you can always fight back.
Sites like this one must have
existed all over Pictland,
people living and
fighting together;
an interconnected kingdom
that held off the Romans
and reclaimed their homeland.
An inspirational victory
for the underdog.
By the middle of
the fifth century,
the Romans finally gave up their
attempts to conquer the north,
and with their empire crumbling,
withdrew from Scotland forever.
By the eighth century
the Picts began to fade
from the pages of history,
absorbed by larger groups.
But the Pictish spirit lives on,
in the people of the land
they helped to create,
Scotland.
♪
♪
Captioned by
Side Door Media Services