Digging for Britain (2010) s02e04 Episode Script
Ice and Stone
1
We might be a small island,
but we've got a big history.
Everywhere you stand, there
are worlds beneath your feet.
And so, every year, hundreds
of archeologists across Britain
go looking for more
clues into our story.
Who lived here, when, and how?
So there's a
blade wound here, here.
So he's being attacked
from all angles.
Archeology is a
complex jigsaw puzzle
drawing everything together,
from skeletons to swords,
temples to treasure.
He's biting his shield.
Biting his shield, yeah.
From Orkney to Devon, we're
joining this year's quest
on sea, land and air.
We share all of the questions
and find some of the answers,
as we join the
teams in the field
"Digging for Britain."
These islands that we
call the British Isles
have been inhabited, on and off,
for hundreds of
thousands of years.
And for most of that time,
the early communities here
were living through what we
now know as the Stone Age.
But who were these people?
What were their
lives really like?
And when did the foundations
of our modern society emerge?
With no written
records to draw on,
it is only through archeology
that we can hope
to gain an insight
into the lives of our
ancient ancestors.
Tonight, I'll be coming
come face to face
with Stone Age people on Orkney.
The wealth of secrets that
we could learn from this
is quite incredible.
Learning some disturbing truths
about Britain's Ice Age hunters.
We have clear proof of
cannibalism in this site.
And visiting the Channel Islands
on the trail of some
misunderstood early humans.
Nature just doesn't allow
a creature that isn't perfectly
fitted to its environment
to thrive and exist.
We'll be traveling
backwards in time
on a journey spanning 100,000
years of human pre-history
to uncover the changing story
of the first
inhabitants of Britain.
Last summer I visited a dig
at the Links of Noltland,
on the small Orkney
island of Westray.
On a windswept beach,
archeologists were uncovering
a Neolithic farmstead
and what has been described
as our earliest
domestic goddess,
The Westray Wifie.
This year, I'm back on Orkney
to visit another Neolithic site
that is revealing
more important clues
about these early farmers,
and their complex beliefs.
This is Banks Farm on the
Island of South Ronaldsay
where just last year
some construction work
up by the farmhouse revealed
a previously undisturbed
Neolithic tomb.
This wasn't the first time
an important Neolithic tomb
had been found on Orkney.
In 1958 a local farmer uncovered
the, now world famous,
Tomb of The Eagles.
Inside it were 16,000 human
bones as well as 725 bird bones,
many of which were from
white-tailed sea eagles.
The unearthing of another
Neolithic tomb on Orkney
is enormously significant, a
once in a generation event.
Hamish Mowatt made a
startling discovery
right outside his front door.
There's a hole, size of my fist,
so, went and got the
torch and shine in,
you could see the rock face.
Well, at that point you're
looking into something
that hasn't seen
the light of day
for thousands of
years, I expect,
so, old heart starts
to pound a bit then,
and you think, well you must,
you can't leave
it at that point.
And then when I shined the torch
at this eerie white
object with two holes,
was sort of looking
back in at me.
So I sort of sat back.
I looked again, and yes,
that's definitely a skull.
What a remarkable thing to find,
I mean it's just meters
away from your house.
Well, yes, it's really,
basically ten meters
outside the door.
Yeah.
The discovery by Hamish
that this mysterious mound
right on his doorstep
contained human remains
gave archeologists
the opportunity
to excavate undisturbed chambers
inside a neolithic tomb.
And I'm off now to
meet the archeologist
who led the excavations.
Did you have to move in
and dig it really quickly
because it had been opened up
to the elements, effectively?
Yeah, well as
soon as we realized
there were human remains
in the cell here,
obviously this was, the whole
thing was full of water.
It became apparent that we
had to move fairly quickly
because we weren't quite sure
how the conditions had
changed within the tomb.
Because part of the tomb
had been unwittingly damaged
by previous building work,
water was now seeping in,
and the team faced
a race against time
to rescue the archeology
hidden inside.
Dan kept a unique video
diary of the unfolding dig.
Day Two of the
excavations at Banks.
We haven't had the
weather on our side today.
It's been pretty rainy,
we've had gale force winds.
So we're hoping to
carry on tomorrow
with the idea of removing the
top slab of one of the cells,
with the idea of excavating
the human remains
that may be in there.
The team soon realized
that this was a sizable tomb,
consisting of a
central passageway
with five separate cells,
or chambers, leading off it.
We've been digging our section
into the passage here.
This is the east cell,
with very restricted
access into here,
and there's a skull sitting
just there in the top,
so we're trying to get
access to that through here.
Once the team had removed
the layers of mud and clay
they were able to
access the chambers,
and the human
remains inside them.
There's a skull
just straight back.
The team's first impression
was that the skulls
had been placed as
a closing offering
when the tomb was
finally sealed.
It's a captivating glimpse of
these people's burial rituals
going back some 5,000 years.
As well as the skulls,
there were hundreds of other
human bones in the chambers,
all mixed together
in a jumbled mass.
Excavating them was a
slow and delicate process.
Each precious
fragment was cataloged
and carefully removed
for further study.
Can we actually get down
and have a look inside
- the tomb itself?
- Yeah, yeah, let's do that.
And we can open this chamber?
Yeah, we could have a look in.
This is pretty
similar to how it was
when we first looked in here.
Where, sort of, the bits
of skull were tucked in
in amongst these stones as
a sort of final offering,
before this doorway
was sealed up
and the tomb was
sealed off for good.
Dan, how amazing
to have the opportunity to
excavate something like this,
where you know that it's
absolutely pristine.
Yeah, it's quite an
amazing, amazing experience.
I mean, I worked in
this cell myself,
and as you remove that bone
you're sort of doing
that in reverse,
and in that sense, you
kind of get the sense
of how that person put that
bone there in the first place,
sort of 5,000 years ago.
The wealth of secrets that
we could learn from this
is quite incredible.
The construction work
has completely changed
the environment of this tomb.
It's had it's entire
roof taken off,
so it's now exposed
to the elements,
in a way that for
the last 5,000 years
it never has been before.
And this means that the
archeology is under threat.
The human remains in
here, are under threat.
If the archeologists
don't act fast
then there may be very
little left to excavate.
Having recovered the
bones the team moved them
to their lab in Kirkwall
to begin the analysis.
They would also be able to
compare this new discovery
with the famous
Tomb of the Eagles.
It lies a little over
a mile from Banks Tomb,
and has revealed some
disturbing truths
about Neolithic society.
Recent research has shown
that around a
quarter of the skulls
from the Tomb of the Eagles
show clear signs of violence.
Dan and the team want to
answer two key questions.
What can they can learn
about burial rituals
from these bones?
And does comparing Banks Tomb
with the Tomb of the Eagles
tell us anything new?
Have you got an idea
of how many individuals
might be represented?
So far it's about 14.
You know, we are looking
at quite a number of bones,
and if you imagine
there's five cells there
you could times that by,
well very roughly, by five.
So this could be a
communal burial place
for a whole community.
I'm really surprised at how
well preserved the bones are.
And there's this
damage on this one but,
you know, still the actual
skull is pretty much intact.
It is, yeah, and that's
quite an interesting skull
in itself, because
that was placed
as a sort of closing
offering into the east cell
before the passageway
was finally sealed off.
So this would've been
one of the last people
to be buried in the tomb.
I think skulls are amazing
'cause you are looking
at somebody's face, aren't you?
It's only early days, but the
team are starting to build up
a picture of these
communal burial rituals.
At this stage in the analysis,
do you have any idea
of whether these bones
were placed in the
grave as bones.
Were they de-fleshed, were
they just a jumble of bones,
or do you think whole
bodies were placed in there?
You know, are we
looking at bodies
being taken in and
perhaps, maybe,
put into the central
chamber or the passage,
and being allowed to decompose
and then at some point
they're then moved
into various cells
at certain times?
And then they
become intermingled
by later activity and become
this sort of mass of bones,
this mass of the ancestors.
Yeah.
Got any evidence of
violence for instance?
I mean, Tomb of the Eagles,
as recent research has shown,
that there is quite
a lot of evidence
for this sort of thing.
There's less so here
at Banks so far,
but we haven't actually got
that many cranium fragments.
Oo and that looks
like it might have been
a little fracture there,
there's a definite dent in the
top of that person's skull,
but it, just turning
it very carefully,
yeah, there's no evidence
of it penetrating through
to the inner surface
of the skull there.
Do you think the
Tomb of the Eagles
is an interesting comparison?
Is it contemporary?
I would say that they're
probably broadly contemporary
and, obviously, we
await radiocarbon dates.
It's certainly
looking at, perhaps,
communities in that area over
several hundreds of years,
expressing their sort
of identity in death
through these monuments.
The preliminary work here
has thrown up some
fascinating questions.
Did something occur in
this Neolithic society
that made them abandon one
tomb and construct a new one?
Or, were there two
rival populations here,
each with their own
competing ancestor culture?
Dan and his team are
in the first year
of what promises to be the
most thorough examination
of a British Neolithic
tomb ever undertaken.
We're getting an amazingly
detailed picture emerging,
of rituals and beliefs that seem
very alien to us
today, very strange.
Just imagine how different
it was back then,
when you would have been
laying your dead to rest
in a communal tomb, and probably
pushing aside the bones,
even the rotting bodies,
of more distant ancestors.
It seems very odd indeed,
I think, to us today,
and it's a ritual,
it's a belief system
which has disappeared
from memory,
was never recorded in history,
and the only chance we have
of trying to understand it
is through archeological
investigation.
The community
buried at Banks Tomb
were amongst the first
farmers in Britain,
and they've left permanent
evidence of their lives behind.
But moving back
beyond the Neolithic,
our ancestors lived a more
mobile, nomadic existence,
during what's known
as the Mesolithic.
Now, finding evidence
of the transition
from the Mesolithic
to the Neolithic
has proved very elusive.
But, a community archeology
group in Scotland
may have discovered a site
which could shed light
on this gap in our knowledge.
Over the past 20 years,
a dedicated group of
volunteer archeologists
have been excavating sites
around the Daer
Valley in Scotland.
They're looking for evidence
of a missing link in archeology.
The Daer Valley sits
in an area of land
between the Rivers
Clyde and Tweed.
Hidden in this remote valley
are clues about a huge leap
in our ancestors'
technology and lifestyles.
Okay, how're we
doing, everybody okay?
Leading the
research is Tam Ward.
The reason that
we're on this site
is because the hill
has been plowed up
for new forest and
when that happens
the plow exposes the
archeological sites for us,
so all we really need to do
is walk up and down the
furrows and, literally,
find what's lying about.
Dense scatters of flint
are churned up by
the forestry plows.
These flints provide clues
that archeology is
lurking beneath the peat.
If we found one of these
bags in an entire site
we would think we were lucky,
and we are finding masses and
masses of material in here.
It's so exciting.
Just below the peat
is the original ground level,
which is covered in evidence
of our ancestors' lives.
The style of tools suggests
that this is a Mesolithic site,
and so Tam and his team
are the first people
to touch these flints
in over 6,000 years.
Put that in the bag.
The volunteers
give up their weekends
to unearth fragments of their
ancient ancestors' lives.
Been doing this for
a number of years now,
and it sort of becomes a bit
of an addiction after a while.
We'll dig anywhere, anything,
any opportunity.
Well, what always strikes me
is this is such an
unremarkable valley.
You would drive past it and
never give it a second thought
and yet there's 10,000
years of history here,
that just is still waiting
for somebody to come along
and ruin their knees and
their back digging it up.
Tam and his team have found
over 250 archeological sites
in this one valley alone,
and there could be many
more waiting to be explored.
Today, the team has
exposed a large area
and they work inwards
from the outer edges,
digging down just a few inches.
The sheer volume
of flint suggests
that this was a camp site,
an incredibly rare
thing to find.
Tam has been finding typically
Mesolithic styles of tools.
We have a microlith.
This is what they were
manufacturing most of the time.
Microliths were part
of a distinctive
Mesolithic technology.
These tiny flint
blades were embedded
into the shafts of
arrows and harpoons
to increase their effectiveness.
They date to an era
when people relied
on hunting and gathering.
They hadn't yet begun
to farm the land
or to husband animals.
Here in the Daer
Valley, Tam and his team
think they've made a
significant discovery.
Because they've
found both Mesolithic
and later Neolithic
technologies on the same site.
We've began to find
Neolithic evidence,
and this is in the
form of this pottery.
Now, this is the earliest
pottery to be used
anywhere in Europe and these
pots were quite large pots
and these indicate people
are settled in the landscape
as opposed to
traveling through it,
because these pots
do not travel.
That can only mean one thing,
the very first farmers.
Now the most interesting
thing about that is,
are these the same people who
were former hunter-gathers?
The use of pottery
signifies a radical change
in people's lifestyles.
It goes hand in hand
with settlement.
Tam has also found these
distinctive smaller Mesolithic
and larger Neolithic
scrapers at the same sites,
in the same levels.
As farming became more important
even simple tools like
these were changing.
And beautiful Neolithic
arrowheads, like this,
begin to replace the
Mesolithic microliths,
the tools of the hunt
were also changing.
We think this is the transition
between the two
earliest cultures,
the Mesolithic
and the Neolithic,
and if that's correct then
that's a really major discovery.
This valley is yielding clues
about a crucial transition
in human history.
It marked the end
of a nomadic culture
that had been around
for millennia,
and saw the birth of
a structured society
that we would recognize today.
But traveling backwards to the
beginning of the Mesolithic,
another site is yielding
extraordinary evidence
of life going back
some 11,000 years.
At the tail end of the Ice Age,
Britain was thawing out and
the climate was warming up
and people were beginning
to change the way they lived
in this newly
hospitable landscape.
They were making the transition
from being nomadic
hunter-gatherers
to becoming more settled.
The most important Mesolithic
site in Britain was discovered
just after the Second World War,
at Star Carr in North Yorkshire.
This remarkable site is
still re-shaping our view
of people at this time.
Since 2004, York and
Manchester universities
have been digging there.
I've come to the York
University to meet a team
who've been working on
Star Carr for over a decade
and to find out
why all is not well
at Britain's most
famous Mesolithic site.
Over the last 60 years, tens
of thousands of artifacts
have been found at Star Carr.
And because of the lack
of oxygen in the peat,
the preservation was remarkable.
What emerged were not just stone
tools, but organic remains.
Leading the post excavation
work is Dr. Nicky Milner.
So these are some of your most
recent finds from Star Carr?
That's right, yeah.
This is a digging stick,
it's actually made of wood.
And it looks a bit like
a normal branch of a tree
but actually when
you look at it,
it has actually been
carefully carved.
And you've got this
amazing point at the end
which would have been
used for digging.
But it's incredible
when you think
that it's actually
about 10,000 years old.
It's fantastic,
'cause you can really
start to build up a picture
of how these people lived,
how they survived,
what they were doing.
I mean, we've never found
anything like this before.
Somebody was
actually holding this
and digging for their food.
It's amazing
to have something
like this surviving,
but this wasn't the
only remarkable thing
the team discovered.
The really exciting thing
about our recent finds
is the structure that was found.
It had a big hollow
in the ground
and it had post holes around it
and this is the earliest
kind of structure,
bit like a house, I suppose,
that we know of in Britain.
These small holes
are a hugely
significant discovery,
it's the earliest
evidence that these people
weren't just living
in temporary camps
but were settling
down and building
more permanent structures,
and not just houses.
And then as well as
that we also have evidence
of a platform, made
out of worked planks,
which goes out into the lake.
So a jetty?
Like a jetty but it
goes about 30 meters
across the edge of the lake.
Really?
Oh, wow!
Really important 'cause
it's the earliest evidence
of carpentry we have in Europe.
Preserved in the peat
for over 10,000 years
is the first evidence of our
ancestors working in wood
on a massive scale.
If they're building
structures like that
they're staying in that place
for a while, aren't they?
They're not just
passing through.
It seems to be overturning
all our expectations
of what people were
like at this time.
I think we've probably,
we have to accept
that they're a lot
more sophisticated
than we thought they were.
The unique
preservation at Star Carr
provides an astonishing
wealth of detail
about our ancestors'
everyday lives.
What about these,
these are lovely?
These are called barbed points,
and if you look at them
carefully they've been carved
to have these little
harpoon-like points.
What are they made of?
They're made of red deer antler.
There're really
beautifully made, aren't they?
They are,
- they're very delicate.
- Quite evil looking actually,
those little barbs.
It's so lovely to have a site
where you've got organic
remains preserved,
'cause you start to
see more of the culture
and more of the technology,
you're not just relying
on the stone tools,
you're seeing wooden tools,
you're seeing antler,
antler little harpoons,
they're lovely.
There's a whole lost world
trapped beneath the peat,
and clear evidence of people
settling in their environment
in way that hasn't
been seen before.
Ben Elliott, one of
the team here at York,
has been using some of
finds to discover more
about the skills of
these Mesolithic people.
You're not just
looking at artifacts
which have been dug up, are you?
No, no, as part of my kind
of own personal research
I've been conducting some
experimental archeology
and sort of having
a go at recreating
some of the types of artifacts
we find at Star Carr.
So can we have a go?
Yes, we can do, yes.
The first thing that people
are doing at Star Carr
are making these kind
of longways grooves
and they use their flint blades
to sort of slowly incise.
And you can see the material
starts to come away,
especially when it's wet,
as a kind of soggy sawdust.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Can I have a go?
- Yeah, of course you can.
- Get a feel for just
how soft it is.
Mm-hm.
And they say this is exactly
what they would have
been doing is it,
using flint tools like this?
I have to say I am
getting to the point
where I just want a power tool!
After just a few minutes,
I'm really getting a sense
of how Ben's research
is unlocking the
skill and artistry
represented in the
Star Carr tools.
Here, it is coming off.
Once you have two
parallel grooves
defined along the
length of the antler
you then have this
kind of strip.
So what are they
doing with these strips
once they've removed them?
- Once a strip is removed.
- Starting to carve them?
Yeah, they start to carve
them using flint tools.
And this is, you
can see, is, again,
it's quite a gradual
process, but you can sort of,
using your flint flakes you
can gradually sharpen off
and create quite a sort of
sharp point to the tips,
so a pretty formidable
weapon, really.
- Do you mind if I have a go?
- Yeah, of course you can.
Is it all right?
- Yeah.
- Thank you.
Just want to get an idea of how.
You have to hold
the blade in a certain way
so you can get
the right kind of.
That's the stuff.
- There we go.
- It makes a nice sound,
as well, when you get it right.
- Yeah.
- There you go.
So doing this
experimental archeology,
is that helping you
to then interpret.
- Oh yeah.
- The material that
- you're finding on site?
- Absolutely.
Doing these experiments has
given us, well, given me,
a sense of the
kind of experience
of what life might've
been like at the site.
Nearly 200 of these
barbed antler points
have been found at Star Carr,
97% of those found in
the whole of Britain.
Star Carr is one of the most
important Stone Age sites
in Britain, and it's
given archeologists
an amazing opportunity
to try to understand
what was happening
here in the Mesolithic.
But when they were
excavating recently
they started to make
finds which were worrying,
not because of the deep past,
but because of what might happen
at Star Carr in the future.
Something drastic has happened
and it's threatening
the very existence
of this incredibly
important site.
So although things were
preserved in the ground
for 10,000 years, over
the last 60 years or so
it's taken a turn for the worse.
So this is actually something
that was excavated in 1985.
And what is it?
It's the skull of
a large animal?
Yeah, so the base of
the skull is here,
it's been completely, well,
almost pancaked, yeah.
So, this was excavated
about 25 years ago,
but in the last few years
we've got some really
serious problems.
These we excavated in 2007.
So, that's some antler
from the original
excavations on the site.
That's right, yeah.
So when would
that have been excavated?
So sort of 60 years on.
It's just like leather.
- Oh, my goodness.
- It has actually
been conserved, but it's.
Isn't that strange.
It's like an old
leathery banana skin.
And in fact we have very
little anther and bone
compared with the 1950s.
I can show you what
those look like,
I think you're gonna
be quite shocked.
- And, this is actually.
- Oh, my goodness,
it's completely soft.
It's like a piece of rubber.
- And this is a.
- That is so strange.
Another piece here.
So this is bone,
that's almost jelly, isn't it?
- Yeah.
- I mean, this is bone
that has been completely
demineralized.
It was when we found
this that we started
doing all the tests and realized
that it's extremely acidic,
it's basically, we've been
told by our specialists
it's a bit like
car battery acid.
So why is it so acidic?
I mean, that's worse than
it just being a peat bog.
It's basically
because the water table
has fallen dramatically.
That's let oxygen
into the deposits,
and that's created
a chemical reaction
and created sulfuric acid.
So what does the future
hold for this site?
Well, luckily we have
got five more years funding
from the European Research
Council so we will be going back.
I was quite taken aback to
see the state of preservation
of that bone and antler
from the recent
excavations at Star Carr.
And if that level of
deterioration continues at the site
then much of the
precious evidence there
will be lost forever.
So that means it's
fantastic news
that the archeologists
have secured funding
to go back and excavate
and rescue this archeology
from one of Britain's most
important Mesolithic sites.
Stepping back even
further in time,
whilst Britain was still
in the grip of the Ice Age,
we arrive in the Paleolithic,
or Old Stone Age.
Around 14,000 years ago,
as Britain began to thaw,
modern humans
started to colonize
this newly hospitable landscape.
Our Paleolithic ancestors
left only very subtle traces
of their lives behind.
They didn't live in houses.
So what we're trying to spot
is evidence of their campsites,
imagine trying to find a camp
that's thousands of years old.
It takes a keen eye, and a
fair bit of detective work.
At the end of the Ice Age,
the expanse of land
between Britain and France
was a vast and rich
hunting ground,
known as the La Manche Plain.
As the ice melted away
and the sea level rose
the English Channel
swallowed up this land,
but there are a few areas
of this lost landscape
still with us,
and the Channel Island
of Jersey is one of them.
I'm on my way to a
site, that is so new,
that you won't find
any mention of it
in archeological
textbooks or journals.
It's been called Les Varines
after the road that leads there.
This discovery was made
by local man Peter Bohea.
Peter, you found this site,
how on earth did
you come across it?
Well, it was purely
an accidental find,
I was running through
this field one evening,
fortunately the field
had just been lifted
of its Jersey new potatoes so
it was all nice fresh soil,
and lying on the surface
I just found a flint core.
So did you know what it was,
or did you just think.
"Well, that looks
"like it might be prehistoric,
"and it looks like a,
perhaps, a stone tool?"
I knew it was prehistoric,
I know what a piece of
worked flint looks like,
and I got home and
spoke to my wife
who is a curator of archeology,
she confirmed it
was a flint core.
Very useful to have
an archeologist at home
when you find
things out running!
Oh, it certainly is.
Last year, following
up on Peter's discovery,
a team of archeologists
excavated a few small test pits,
which seemed to
indicate that this might
be an ancient Paleolithic site.
Many other famous
sites from this era
have been found in caves,
but this is an open field,
so it is an
incredibly rare find.
These people certainly
weren't the caricature cavemen
of popular culture.
Leading the dig
here at Les Varines
is Dr. Chantal Conneller.
What we've got here
is a campsite that dates
to about 14,000 years ago.
We don't know the
scale of it yet.
There seems to be huge
amounts of material
coming out from the plow soil,
so it may be people who live
by hunting and gathering,
who moved across
quite large areas,
but camped here
in this very spot.
A Paleolithic site
looks very different
from later archeology,
where there are walls
and other features to follow.
This means Chantal
and her students
need to meticulously plot every
stone tool that they find.
And the soil here is rock
hard, so the going is tough.
So have you found
anything of interest yet,
or is this very early stages?
We've been going for
nearly two weeks now,
but now we're getting
quite dense scatters,
so all these little flags
show a single bit of flint,
and we're also getting
quite a few tools.
So, this little
piece of flint here
we think is part
of a scraping tool,
probably for working hide,
but sometimes they're used
for working wood as well.
So we have, maybe,
people gearing up for hunting expeditions
or repairing their weapons,
but also other activities
going on as well
involving the processing
of animal remains.
Last year, I visited
a site of a similar age
at Creswell Crags.
Here other Ice Age hunters
were making beautiful art.
It's clear from this
site that these people
weren't just cavemen,
perhaps they're better
described as tent people.
They might have used
caves for art and ritual,
but above all, they
were nomadic hunters
ranging over large areas.
The tools found at Les Varines
are the real treasure
of the Stone Age,
and they're all the
archeologists have to go on.
From these simple bits of flint,
they can build a
compelling picture
of life here 14,000 years ago.
So shall I wash that?
Yes.
Very technologically
advanced washing equipment.
Hm, that's very nice.
What is it?
This is actually
a little tool called a burin,
or an engraver.
You see this
triangular point here?
Yeah.
And these were used
for working bone and antler.
So for kind of digging
in, for making an incision
- into those materials?
- Yes, yes.
Those little indentations,
each of those represents
an act of re-sharpening.
So people are obviously using
this tool for quite a time.
So they used it, it became blunt
and then they re-sharpened it.
So they're taking off
little slivers of flint.
Yeah.
And what's this larger
one that you washed?
This is part of a blade.
If you feel that edge,
there, is very sharp,
so it would easily have cut
through reindeer hide
or reindeer skin.
These stone tools are very
different from those found
at later sites like Star
Carr and the Daer Valley.
This Paleolithic
technology was designed
for the specialized hunting
of migrating animals,
like reindeer or horse.
I think when you start
actually understanding
how all these little
tiny bits of stone
might have been used,
you're looking at quite a
sophisticated technology,
and you start to
think, "Well, actually
"these people were
very much like us."
But also they seem to
have a very different
world view from us,
so the way they treat their
dead as at Gough's Cave,
the way they decorate caves
and some of their tools
with these animals obviously
have great meaning to them.
So, though in some
ways they seem like us,
in other ways I think they
would have seemed very alien.
It's amazing to be finding
these little traces
of them, isn't it?
It's very exciting
just 'cause it's so old,
and it's really nice to be the
first person for 14,000 years
to be touching these tools.
This is an incredibly
exciting site
because it seems that
underneath the plow soil
we have intact archeology
and the remains of a
hunter-gatherer camp
from the very end
of the Ice Age.
This is such an
ephemeral thing to find,
something that is much
more likely to disappear
than be preserved.
So we have the opportunity here
to gain some precious
insights into the world
of those pioneering
hunter-gathers
who were re-colonizing
Northern Europe
after the ice sheets receded.
But as well as finding clues
about these Ice Age
hunters' everyday lives,
archeologists have
also uncovered evidence
that shows that these people
were very different from us.
Finds from a cave
in Cheddar Gorge
are now held in London's
Natural History Museum.
Rescue excavations at Gough's
Cave between 1987 and 1992
revealed evidence of
hunter-gatherers using the cave,
and human remains.
Last year, a team of experts
from the Natural History Museum
re-examined some of those bones.
And what they found
was truly gruesome.
20 years ago, clues emerged
that seemed to be
evidence for cannibalism.
The new analysis
strengthens this theory.
This jaw bone has been
deliberately broken
to extract bone marrow.
These people were
eating their own kind.
And a closer
inspection of the bones
has revealed something
new and extraordinary.
We had the vault of
the skull of three skulls
which was absolutely
perfectly preserved.
And there was a sort of,
why they were saving it?
We have clear proof of
cannibalism in this site,
so if they were going
to modify the skull
it was probably
to extract brain,
but the way they modified it
is not just to extract brain
because they would have break it
in much easier
way to extract it.
But here we observe
a very clear process
of complete defleshing.
I mean, you can almost imagine
somebody peeling
off the tissues,
and then cutting
down underneath.
Exactly, it's a
classic example of scalping.
You're peeling like this and
then cut, cut, cut, cut, cut.
All across.
When we analyzed the
face and other parts
they are clear signs
that they were going
much more in detail.
So they were cutting the eyes,
they were cutting the cheek,
they were cutting the lips.
Why would they want to that?
We think that was
to produce a container
and I think that
the simple movement
of anatomical position
to put it upside down
it just tells you want
it was, and it was a cup.
Even as an anatomist,
as someone who has
dissected human cadavers,
I find it extraordinary the
lengths they were going to
to scrupulously clean up a skull
to transform it into a cup.
And this new research shows
us how they were doing it,
but why is another
question entirely.
Were they driven by hunger,
or by their beliefs?
Was this just an
elaborate funerary ritual?
And whom were they eating?
Their enemies, or their
friends and relatives?
It seems strange to our
modern sensibilities
that our ancient ancestors
would make such macabre objects.
And as is so often the case,
archeology can provide
us with the evidence,
but not the reasons why.
Before we modern humans
arrived on these shores,
there were other,
different, humans
who roamed the British Isles.
And there is evidence
of their lives, here,
on the Channel Island of Jersey.
During colder periods
of the Ice Age,
the sea levels around Britain
would have been significantly
lower than today.
The English Channel, and
much of the North Sea,
would have been dry land,
and the Channel Islands
would have stood out
as areas of high ground
in a flat landscape.
I'm here to meet a
team of archeologists
who are hoping to shed light
on a much-maligned human
species, the Neanderthals.
Neanderthals survived
and thrived in Europe
for hundreds of
thousands of years,
through periods of
major climate change
as glaciations repeatedly
brought ice sheets
down over northern Europe.
And they were here long
before we modern humans
arrived on the scene.
The Neanderthals were a
distinct and separate branch
of the human evolutionary tree.
I've arranged to
meet Dr. Matt Pope
of University College London,
who's one of the co-directors
of the project here.
Hello, Alice.
Hello.
- I'm Matt.
- Matt, hello,
- nice to meet you.
- Hello.
This is Kevin, our guide.
So we're
gonna go and have a look
at La Cotte from the sea?
So we've got a beautiful
bay, lovely blue sky,
and round the corner there's
some good archeology.
What a fantastic
way to do archeology!
I could get used to this.
La Cotte de St Brelade is of
international significance
because it's one
of the few places
that Neanderthal remains
have been discovered
in North West Atlantic Europe.
This is a fantastic way
to view, from the sea.
I mean, most people when
they look at La Cotte,
they're looking at it
either from the site
or from the headland above.
We're trying to give a
different perspective here.
What we're able to do here,
looking at these stacks,
these bit of granite
sticking out,
they're the remains of
an entire valley system.
And it's within
these valley systems
that the Neanderthals were
almost certainly hunting
and moving, following
herds of mammoth,
rhinoceros and other animals.
We're actually
paddling over the top
of a submerged
Ice Age landscape,
and the sea is
fairly calm today,
but just occasionally we get
hit by the bow wave of a ferry.
And then you have
to be really careful
about being close to reefs
as white water starts
breaking over them.
Matt is using kayaks
to map every part
of the Jersey coastline,
looking for new caves, and
with them, new archeology.
So La Cotte really is
just the beginning?
I don't think
we'll equal the size
and the importance of La Cotte,
but what we can do is
start to fill in the gaps,
and try and create
an entire history
of occupation and
periods of abandonment,
this side of the
English Channel river
for the past half million years.
Sorry, Matt!
Traveling around
the coast by kayak
is a fantastic way to survey
it, you can get really close.
And it's great to
go along with Matt
and see that he's
not just looking
at the modern landscape of today
but imagining in his mind's
eye the ancient coastline.
La Cotte is such a famous site,
but there maybe other
important archeological sites
as yet undiscovered
around this coast,
but for now I want to get over
there and see it up close.
La Cotte has provided us
with a wealth of information
about the lives of Neanderthals.
Archeologists have been digging
here for over 100 years.
And in the 1960s,
even Prince Charles
took part in the excavations.
Matt and his team
suspected that La Cotte
might have more to reveal,
so this year they're
trying to establish
if there's any untouched
archeology here.
They're clearing
away backfill debris
from previous excavations to
expose the original sediments.
Because of the tides,
they can only work here
for a few hours at a time,
and it's a dangerous environment,
hence the hard hats.
Hello!
What an amazing site!
Yeah, it's great, isn't it?
Now, how much of this
is original archeology,
and how much of it
is the back fill
from previous excavations?
Well, when we first came here,
we were under the
impression that most of this
was material left over
from previous excavations.
The picture that we're
starting to build up,
and from Martin Bate's
excavations here,
is in fact large
parts of this site
remain unexcavated and intact.
It's really exciting
that there is pristine
archeology here.
And a few tantalizing fragments
have even been emerging
from the exploratory dig.
So, Beccy, these are
some of the finds
which have been
coming out today?
Yeah, there's a couple of bits
Bully's just pulled
out, flakes here.
Oh, that's nice.
Is that flint?
It is, it is,
they're both flint.
They're quite heavily damaged
around these edges, here.
Oh, so that's not,
that's not something that No.
Somebody's done to them?
No, if it was freshly struck
you'd expect to see a
really sharp feather edge.
It must be incredibly exciting
to realize that you
have actually got
in situ pristine
archeology here?
Fantastic, especially
when we had no idea
that there was this much here.
There's never a time
you walk up here
where it doesn't strike
you, it's always exciting.
This site is so
iconic and famous,
but I think in some
ways that distracts
from its real importance,
which is that the Neanderthals
were coming back
here to this cave
over tens of thousands of years.
It holds out the promise
of really understanding
how Neanderthals adapted
to this changing climate
in Europe during the Ice Age.
But back to the
present and the tide
is rising really rapidly,
so if we don't get out of
here we're gonna get stuck.
Over 250,000
individual stone tools
have been found at La Cotte,
more than all the
other Neanderthal sites
in Britain combined.
Becky and Matt have arranged
for some of the best
to be brought down to the beach.
They can demonstrate
just how sophisticated
the Neanderthals really were.
You've got artifacts here from
a very long period of time,
what do they tell us
about the Neanderthals?
What's interesting about
this collection as a whole
is there's a lot of flint in it,
which these artifacts are here,
and there's no
flint on the island.
The nearest source of flint
is perhaps 20 kilometers away.
So they're probably
following animals here
and they're arriving in a place
where there's not brilliant
stone for making stone tools,
so they're having to bring
that in from elsewhere.
There is flint around here,
it is in the beaches,
but it's useless.
They're discriminating,
they're not touching that.
They know where the good
raw material sources are.
The Neanderthals
certainly weren't
primitive brutes.
These tools show real
sophistication and intelligence.
This one is
particularly beautiful.
Yeah, this actually part
of a much bigger piece,
but I don't recognize
the raw material at all
so this is something
very exotic.
I mean, that's beautiful,
it's been really
carefully manufactured.
What's also interesting
about this piece
is it comes from the
very early excavations
that took place in the
upper part of the cave,
and these may have been some
of the last Neanderthals
in this landscape.
So what that,
to me, suggests somebody
who is not only good
at making something
that's very functional,
but they've got an eye
for beauty as well.
It doesn't look like a
technology of people on the edge.
And that's another thing
we need to really focus on.
Neanderthals, if they,
compared to humans,
lacked ability, if they lacked
the ability to make tools,
lacked the ability to think,
they would have been extinct
before they'd even started.
Nature just doesn't
allow a creature
that isn't perfectly
fitted to its environment
to thrive and exist.
My 100,000-year long
journey ends here,
with these surprising truths
about the sophistication,
and achievements,
of the Neanderthals.
Along the way, I've seen
so much fresh evidence
of ingenuity and invention.
I've also seen exciting
new discoveries being made
and tiny clues uncovered
that are all adding to
the complex jigsaw puzzle
that is ancient Britain.
In many ways the Stone Age
seems unimaginably
distant from us,
and the voices of
our ancient ancestors
have long since
faded into silence.
But archeology helps us to
piece their stories together,
revealing how they lived,
how they viewed their world,
and showing us how
the foundations
of our modern society emerged.
And so, with many
questions still unanswered,
the digging continues.
We might be a small island,
but we've got a big history.
Everywhere you stand, there
are worlds beneath your feet.
And so, every year, hundreds
of archeologists across Britain
go looking for more
clues into our story.
Who lived here, when, and how?
So there's a
blade wound here, here.
So he's being attacked
from all angles.
Archeology is a
complex jigsaw puzzle
drawing everything together,
from skeletons to swords,
temples to treasure.
He's biting his shield.
Biting his shield, yeah.
From Orkney to Devon, we're
joining this year's quest
on sea, land and air.
We share all of the questions
and find some of the answers,
as we join the
teams in the field
"Digging for Britain."
These islands that we
call the British Isles
have been inhabited, on and off,
for hundreds of
thousands of years.
And for most of that time,
the early communities here
were living through what we
now know as the Stone Age.
But who were these people?
What were their
lives really like?
And when did the foundations
of our modern society emerge?
With no written
records to draw on,
it is only through archeology
that we can hope
to gain an insight
into the lives of our
ancient ancestors.
Tonight, I'll be coming
come face to face
with Stone Age people on Orkney.
The wealth of secrets that
we could learn from this
is quite incredible.
Learning some disturbing truths
about Britain's Ice Age hunters.
We have clear proof of
cannibalism in this site.
And visiting the Channel Islands
on the trail of some
misunderstood early humans.
Nature just doesn't allow
a creature that isn't perfectly
fitted to its environment
to thrive and exist.
We'll be traveling
backwards in time
on a journey spanning 100,000
years of human pre-history
to uncover the changing story
of the first
inhabitants of Britain.
Last summer I visited a dig
at the Links of Noltland,
on the small Orkney
island of Westray.
On a windswept beach,
archeologists were uncovering
a Neolithic farmstead
and what has been described
as our earliest
domestic goddess,
The Westray Wifie.
This year, I'm back on Orkney
to visit another Neolithic site
that is revealing
more important clues
about these early farmers,
and their complex beliefs.
This is Banks Farm on the
Island of South Ronaldsay
where just last year
some construction work
up by the farmhouse revealed
a previously undisturbed
Neolithic tomb.
This wasn't the first time
an important Neolithic tomb
had been found on Orkney.
In 1958 a local farmer uncovered
the, now world famous,
Tomb of The Eagles.
Inside it were 16,000 human
bones as well as 725 bird bones,
many of which were from
white-tailed sea eagles.
The unearthing of another
Neolithic tomb on Orkney
is enormously significant, a
once in a generation event.
Hamish Mowatt made a
startling discovery
right outside his front door.
There's a hole, size of my fist,
so, went and got the
torch and shine in,
you could see the rock face.
Well, at that point you're
looking into something
that hasn't seen
the light of day
for thousands of
years, I expect,
so, old heart starts
to pound a bit then,
and you think, well you must,
you can't leave
it at that point.
And then when I shined the torch
at this eerie white
object with two holes,
was sort of looking
back in at me.
So I sort of sat back.
I looked again, and yes,
that's definitely a skull.
What a remarkable thing to find,
I mean it's just meters
away from your house.
Well, yes, it's really,
basically ten meters
outside the door.
Yeah.
The discovery by Hamish
that this mysterious mound
right on his doorstep
contained human remains
gave archeologists
the opportunity
to excavate undisturbed chambers
inside a neolithic tomb.
And I'm off now to
meet the archeologist
who led the excavations.
Did you have to move in
and dig it really quickly
because it had been opened up
to the elements, effectively?
Yeah, well as
soon as we realized
there were human remains
in the cell here,
obviously this was, the whole
thing was full of water.
It became apparent that we
had to move fairly quickly
because we weren't quite sure
how the conditions had
changed within the tomb.
Because part of the tomb
had been unwittingly damaged
by previous building work,
water was now seeping in,
and the team faced
a race against time
to rescue the archeology
hidden inside.
Dan kept a unique video
diary of the unfolding dig.
Day Two of the
excavations at Banks.
We haven't had the
weather on our side today.
It's been pretty rainy,
we've had gale force winds.
So we're hoping to
carry on tomorrow
with the idea of removing the
top slab of one of the cells,
with the idea of excavating
the human remains
that may be in there.
The team soon realized
that this was a sizable tomb,
consisting of a
central passageway
with five separate cells,
or chambers, leading off it.
We've been digging our section
into the passage here.
This is the east cell,
with very restricted
access into here,
and there's a skull sitting
just there in the top,
so we're trying to get
access to that through here.
Once the team had removed
the layers of mud and clay
they were able to
access the chambers,
and the human
remains inside them.
There's a skull
just straight back.
The team's first impression
was that the skulls
had been placed as
a closing offering
when the tomb was
finally sealed.
It's a captivating glimpse of
these people's burial rituals
going back some 5,000 years.
As well as the skulls,
there were hundreds of other
human bones in the chambers,
all mixed together
in a jumbled mass.
Excavating them was a
slow and delicate process.
Each precious
fragment was cataloged
and carefully removed
for further study.
Can we actually get down
and have a look inside
- the tomb itself?
- Yeah, yeah, let's do that.
And we can open this chamber?
Yeah, we could have a look in.
This is pretty
similar to how it was
when we first looked in here.
Where, sort of, the bits
of skull were tucked in
in amongst these stones as
a sort of final offering,
before this doorway
was sealed up
and the tomb was
sealed off for good.
Dan, how amazing
to have the opportunity to
excavate something like this,
where you know that it's
absolutely pristine.
Yeah, it's quite an
amazing, amazing experience.
I mean, I worked in
this cell myself,
and as you remove that bone
you're sort of doing
that in reverse,
and in that sense, you
kind of get the sense
of how that person put that
bone there in the first place,
sort of 5,000 years ago.
The wealth of secrets that
we could learn from this
is quite incredible.
The construction work
has completely changed
the environment of this tomb.
It's had it's entire
roof taken off,
so it's now exposed
to the elements,
in a way that for
the last 5,000 years
it never has been before.
And this means that the
archeology is under threat.
The human remains in
here, are under threat.
If the archeologists
don't act fast
then there may be very
little left to excavate.
Having recovered the
bones the team moved them
to their lab in Kirkwall
to begin the analysis.
They would also be able to
compare this new discovery
with the famous
Tomb of the Eagles.
It lies a little over
a mile from Banks Tomb,
and has revealed some
disturbing truths
about Neolithic society.
Recent research has shown
that around a
quarter of the skulls
from the Tomb of the Eagles
show clear signs of violence.
Dan and the team want to
answer two key questions.
What can they can learn
about burial rituals
from these bones?
And does comparing Banks Tomb
with the Tomb of the Eagles
tell us anything new?
Have you got an idea
of how many individuals
might be represented?
So far it's about 14.
You know, we are looking
at quite a number of bones,
and if you imagine
there's five cells there
you could times that by,
well very roughly, by five.
So this could be a
communal burial place
for a whole community.
I'm really surprised at how
well preserved the bones are.
And there's this
damage on this one but,
you know, still the actual
skull is pretty much intact.
It is, yeah, and that's
quite an interesting skull
in itself, because
that was placed
as a sort of closing
offering into the east cell
before the passageway
was finally sealed off.
So this would've been
one of the last people
to be buried in the tomb.
I think skulls are amazing
'cause you are looking
at somebody's face, aren't you?
It's only early days, but the
team are starting to build up
a picture of these
communal burial rituals.
At this stage in the analysis,
do you have any idea
of whether these bones
were placed in the
grave as bones.
Were they de-fleshed, were
they just a jumble of bones,
or do you think whole
bodies were placed in there?
You know, are we
looking at bodies
being taken in and
perhaps, maybe,
put into the central
chamber or the passage,
and being allowed to decompose
and then at some point
they're then moved
into various cells
at certain times?
And then they
become intermingled
by later activity and become
this sort of mass of bones,
this mass of the ancestors.
Yeah.
Got any evidence of
violence for instance?
I mean, Tomb of the Eagles,
as recent research has shown,
that there is quite
a lot of evidence
for this sort of thing.
There's less so here
at Banks so far,
but we haven't actually got
that many cranium fragments.
Oo and that looks
like it might have been
a little fracture there,
there's a definite dent in the
top of that person's skull,
but it, just turning
it very carefully,
yeah, there's no evidence
of it penetrating through
to the inner surface
of the skull there.
Do you think the
Tomb of the Eagles
is an interesting comparison?
Is it contemporary?
I would say that they're
probably broadly contemporary
and, obviously, we
await radiocarbon dates.
It's certainly
looking at, perhaps,
communities in that area over
several hundreds of years,
expressing their sort
of identity in death
through these monuments.
The preliminary work here
has thrown up some
fascinating questions.
Did something occur in
this Neolithic society
that made them abandon one
tomb and construct a new one?
Or, were there two
rival populations here,
each with their own
competing ancestor culture?
Dan and his team are
in the first year
of what promises to be the
most thorough examination
of a British Neolithic
tomb ever undertaken.
We're getting an amazingly
detailed picture emerging,
of rituals and beliefs that seem
very alien to us
today, very strange.
Just imagine how different
it was back then,
when you would have been
laying your dead to rest
in a communal tomb, and probably
pushing aside the bones,
even the rotting bodies,
of more distant ancestors.
It seems very odd indeed,
I think, to us today,
and it's a ritual,
it's a belief system
which has disappeared
from memory,
was never recorded in history,
and the only chance we have
of trying to understand it
is through archeological
investigation.
The community
buried at Banks Tomb
were amongst the first
farmers in Britain,
and they've left permanent
evidence of their lives behind.
But moving back
beyond the Neolithic,
our ancestors lived a more
mobile, nomadic existence,
during what's known
as the Mesolithic.
Now, finding evidence
of the transition
from the Mesolithic
to the Neolithic
has proved very elusive.
But, a community archeology
group in Scotland
may have discovered a site
which could shed light
on this gap in our knowledge.
Over the past 20 years,
a dedicated group of
volunteer archeologists
have been excavating sites
around the Daer
Valley in Scotland.
They're looking for evidence
of a missing link in archeology.
The Daer Valley sits
in an area of land
between the Rivers
Clyde and Tweed.
Hidden in this remote valley
are clues about a huge leap
in our ancestors'
technology and lifestyles.
Okay, how're we
doing, everybody okay?
Leading the
research is Tam Ward.
The reason that
we're on this site
is because the hill
has been plowed up
for new forest and
when that happens
the plow exposes the
archeological sites for us,
so all we really need to do
is walk up and down the
furrows and, literally,
find what's lying about.
Dense scatters of flint
are churned up by
the forestry plows.
These flints provide clues
that archeology is
lurking beneath the peat.
If we found one of these
bags in an entire site
we would think we were lucky,
and we are finding masses and
masses of material in here.
It's so exciting.
Just below the peat
is the original ground level,
which is covered in evidence
of our ancestors' lives.
The style of tools suggests
that this is a Mesolithic site,
and so Tam and his team
are the first people
to touch these flints
in over 6,000 years.
Put that in the bag.
The volunteers
give up their weekends
to unearth fragments of their
ancient ancestors' lives.
Been doing this for
a number of years now,
and it sort of becomes a bit
of an addiction after a while.
We'll dig anywhere, anything,
any opportunity.
Well, what always strikes me
is this is such an
unremarkable valley.
You would drive past it and
never give it a second thought
and yet there's 10,000
years of history here,
that just is still waiting
for somebody to come along
and ruin their knees and
their back digging it up.
Tam and his team have found
over 250 archeological sites
in this one valley alone,
and there could be many
more waiting to be explored.
Today, the team has
exposed a large area
and they work inwards
from the outer edges,
digging down just a few inches.
The sheer volume
of flint suggests
that this was a camp site,
an incredibly rare
thing to find.
Tam has been finding typically
Mesolithic styles of tools.
We have a microlith.
This is what they were
manufacturing most of the time.
Microliths were part
of a distinctive
Mesolithic technology.
These tiny flint
blades were embedded
into the shafts of
arrows and harpoons
to increase their effectiveness.
They date to an era
when people relied
on hunting and gathering.
They hadn't yet begun
to farm the land
or to husband animals.
Here in the Daer
Valley, Tam and his team
think they've made a
significant discovery.
Because they've
found both Mesolithic
and later Neolithic
technologies on the same site.
We've began to find
Neolithic evidence,
and this is in the
form of this pottery.
Now, this is the earliest
pottery to be used
anywhere in Europe and these
pots were quite large pots
and these indicate people
are settled in the landscape
as opposed to
traveling through it,
because these pots
do not travel.
That can only mean one thing,
the very first farmers.
Now the most interesting
thing about that is,
are these the same people who
were former hunter-gathers?
The use of pottery
signifies a radical change
in people's lifestyles.
It goes hand in hand
with settlement.
Tam has also found these
distinctive smaller Mesolithic
and larger Neolithic
scrapers at the same sites,
in the same levels.
As farming became more important
even simple tools like
these were changing.
And beautiful Neolithic
arrowheads, like this,
begin to replace the
Mesolithic microliths,
the tools of the hunt
were also changing.
We think this is the transition
between the two
earliest cultures,
the Mesolithic
and the Neolithic,
and if that's correct then
that's a really major discovery.
This valley is yielding clues
about a crucial transition
in human history.
It marked the end
of a nomadic culture
that had been around
for millennia,
and saw the birth of
a structured society
that we would recognize today.
But traveling backwards to the
beginning of the Mesolithic,
another site is yielding
extraordinary evidence
of life going back
some 11,000 years.
At the tail end of the Ice Age,
Britain was thawing out and
the climate was warming up
and people were beginning
to change the way they lived
in this newly
hospitable landscape.
They were making the transition
from being nomadic
hunter-gatherers
to becoming more settled.
The most important Mesolithic
site in Britain was discovered
just after the Second World War,
at Star Carr in North Yorkshire.
This remarkable site is
still re-shaping our view
of people at this time.
Since 2004, York and
Manchester universities
have been digging there.
I've come to the York
University to meet a team
who've been working on
Star Carr for over a decade
and to find out
why all is not well
at Britain's most
famous Mesolithic site.
Over the last 60 years, tens
of thousands of artifacts
have been found at Star Carr.
And because of the lack
of oxygen in the peat,
the preservation was remarkable.
What emerged were not just stone
tools, but organic remains.
Leading the post excavation
work is Dr. Nicky Milner.
So these are some of your most
recent finds from Star Carr?
That's right, yeah.
This is a digging stick,
it's actually made of wood.
And it looks a bit like
a normal branch of a tree
but actually when
you look at it,
it has actually been
carefully carved.
And you've got this
amazing point at the end
which would have been
used for digging.
But it's incredible
when you think
that it's actually
about 10,000 years old.
It's fantastic,
'cause you can really
start to build up a picture
of how these people lived,
how they survived,
what they were doing.
I mean, we've never found
anything like this before.
Somebody was
actually holding this
and digging for their food.
It's amazing
to have something
like this surviving,
but this wasn't the
only remarkable thing
the team discovered.
The really exciting thing
about our recent finds
is the structure that was found.
It had a big hollow
in the ground
and it had post holes around it
and this is the earliest
kind of structure,
bit like a house, I suppose,
that we know of in Britain.
These small holes
are a hugely
significant discovery,
it's the earliest
evidence that these people
weren't just living
in temporary camps
but were settling
down and building
more permanent structures,
and not just houses.
And then as well as
that we also have evidence
of a platform, made
out of worked planks,
which goes out into the lake.
So a jetty?
Like a jetty but it
goes about 30 meters
across the edge of the lake.
Really?
Oh, wow!
Really important 'cause
it's the earliest evidence
of carpentry we have in Europe.
Preserved in the peat
for over 10,000 years
is the first evidence of our
ancestors working in wood
on a massive scale.
If they're building
structures like that
they're staying in that place
for a while, aren't they?
They're not just
passing through.
It seems to be overturning
all our expectations
of what people were
like at this time.
I think we've probably,
we have to accept
that they're a lot
more sophisticated
than we thought they were.
The unique
preservation at Star Carr
provides an astonishing
wealth of detail
about our ancestors'
everyday lives.
What about these,
these are lovely?
These are called barbed points,
and if you look at them
carefully they've been carved
to have these little
harpoon-like points.
What are they made of?
They're made of red deer antler.
There're really
beautifully made, aren't they?
They are,
- they're very delicate.
- Quite evil looking actually,
those little barbs.
It's so lovely to have a site
where you've got organic
remains preserved,
'cause you start to
see more of the culture
and more of the technology,
you're not just relying
on the stone tools,
you're seeing wooden tools,
you're seeing antler,
antler little harpoons,
they're lovely.
There's a whole lost world
trapped beneath the peat,
and clear evidence of people
settling in their environment
in way that hasn't
been seen before.
Ben Elliott, one of
the team here at York,
has been using some of
finds to discover more
about the skills of
these Mesolithic people.
You're not just
looking at artifacts
which have been dug up, are you?
No, no, as part of my kind
of own personal research
I've been conducting some
experimental archeology
and sort of having
a go at recreating
some of the types of artifacts
we find at Star Carr.
So can we have a go?
Yes, we can do, yes.
The first thing that people
are doing at Star Carr
are making these kind
of longways grooves
and they use their flint blades
to sort of slowly incise.
And you can see the material
starts to come away,
especially when it's wet,
as a kind of soggy sawdust.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Can I have a go?
- Yeah, of course you can.
- Get a feel for just
how soft it is.
Mm-hm.
And they say this is exactly
what they would have
been doing is it,
using flint tools like this?
I have to say I am
getting to the point
where I just want a power tool!
After just a few minutes,
I'm really getting a sense
of how Ben's research
is unlocking the
skill and artistry
represented in the
Star Carr tools.
Here, it is coming off.
Once you have two
parallel grooves
defined along the
length of the antler
you then have this
kind of strip.
So what are they
doing with these strips
once they've removed them?
- Once a strip is removed.
- Starting to carve them?
Yeah, they start to carve
them using flint tools.
And this is, you
can see, is, again,
it's quite a gradual
process, but you can sort of,
using your flint flakes you
can gradually sharpen off
and create quite a sort of
sharp point to the tips,
so a pretty formidable
weapon, really.
- Do you mind if I have a go?
- Yeah, of course you can.
Is it all right?
- Yeah.
- Thank you.
Just want to get an idea of how.
You have to hold
the blade in a certain way
so you can get
the right kind of.
That's the stuff.
- There we go.
- It makes a nice sound,
as well, when you get it right.
- Yeah.
- There you go.
So doing this
experimental archeology,
is that helping you
to then interpret.
- Oh yeah.
- The material that
- you're finding on site?
- Absolutely.
Doing these experiments has
given us, well, given me,
a sense of the
kind of experience
of what life might've
been like at the site.
Nearly 200 of these
barbed antler points
have been found at Star Carr,
97% of those found in
the whole of Britain.
Star Carr is one of the most
important Stone Age sites
in Britain, and it's
given archeologists
an amazing opportunity
to try to understand
what was happening
here in the Mesolithic.
But when they were
excavating recently
they started to make
finds which were worrying,
not because of the deep past,
but because of what might happen
at Star Carr in the future.
Something drastic has happened
and it's threatening
the very existence
of this incredibly
important site.
So although things were
preserved in the ground
for 10,000 years, over
the last 60 years or so
it's taken a turn for the worse.
So this is actually something
that was excavated in 1985.
And what is it?
It's the skull of
a large animal?
Yeah, so the base of
the skull is here,
it's been completely, well,
almost pancaked, yeah.
So, this was excavated
about 25 years ago,
but in the last few years
we've got some really
serious problems.
These we excavated in 2007.
So, that's some antler
from the original
excavations on the site.
That's right, yeah.
So when would
that have been excavated?
So sort of 60 years on.
It's just like leather.
- Oh, my goodness.
- It has actually
been conserved, but it's.
Isn't that strange.
It's like an old
leathery banana skin.
And in fact we have very
little anther and bone
compared with the 1950s.
I can show you what
those look like,
I think you're gonna
be quite shocked.
- And, this is actually.
- Oh, my goodness,
it's completely soft.
It's like a piece of rubber.
- And this is a.
- That is so strange.
Another piece here.
So this is bone,
that's almost jelly, isn't it?
- Yeah.
- I mean, this is bone
that has been completely
demineralized.
It was when we found
this that we started
doing all the tests and realized
that it's extremely acidic,
it's basically, we've been
told by our specialists
it's a bit like
car battery acid.
So why is it so acidic?
I mean, that's worse than
it just being a peat bog.
It's basically
because the water table
has fallen dramatically.
That's let oxygen
into the deposits,
and that's created
a chemical reaction
and created sulfuric acid.
So what does the future
hold for this site?
Well, luckily we have
got five more years funding
from the European Research
Council so we will be going back.
I was quite taken aback to
see the state of preservation
of that bone and antler
from the recent
excavations at Star Carr.
And if that level of
deterioration continues at the site
then much of the
precious evidence there
will be lost forever.
So that means it's
fantastic news
that the archeologists
have secured funding
to go back and excavate
and rescue this archeology
from one of Britain's most
important Mesolithic sites.
Stepping back even
further in time,
whilst Britain was still
in the grip of the Ice Age,
we arrive in the Paleolithic,
or Old Stone Age.
Around 14,000 years ago,
as Britain began to thaw,
modern humans
started to colonize
this newly hospitable landscape.
Our Paleolithic ancestors
left only very subtle traces
of their lives behind.
They didn't live in houses.
So what we're trying to spot
is evidence of their campsites,
imagine trying to find a camp
that's thousands of years old.
It takes a keen eye, and a
fair bit of detective work.
At the end of the Ice Age,
the expanse of land
between Britain and France
was a vast and rich
hunting ground,
known as the La Manche Plain.
As the ice melted away
and the sea level rose
the English Channel
swallowed up this land,
but there are a few areas
of this lost landscape
still with us,
and the Channel Island
of Jersey is one of them.
I'm on my way to a
site, that is so new,
that you won't find
any mention of it
in archeological
textbooks or journals.
It's been called Les Varines
after the road that leads there.
This discovery was made
by local man Peter Bohea.
Peter, you found this site,
how on earth did
you come across it?
Well, it was purely
an accidental find,
I was running through
this field one evening,
fortunately the field
had just been lifted
of its Jersey new potatoes so
it was all nice fresh soil,
and lying on the surface
I just found a flint core.
So did you know what it was,
or did you just think.
"Well, that looks
"like it might be prehistoric,
"and it looks like a,
perhaps, a stone tool?"
I knew it was prehistoric,
I know what a piece of
worked flint looks like,
and I got home and
spoke to my wife
who is a curator of archeology,
she confirmed it
was a flint core.
Very useful to have
an archeologist at home
when you find
things out running!
Oh, it certainly is.
Last year, following
up on Peter's discovery,
a team of archeologists
excavated a few small test pits,
which seemed to
indicate that this might
be an ancient Paleolithic site.
Many other famous
sites from this era
have been found in caves,
but this is an open field,
so it is an
incredibly rare find.
These people certainly
weren't the caricature cavemen
of popular culture.
Leading the dig
here at Les Varines
is Dr. Chantal Conneller.
What we've got here
is a campsite that dates
to about 14,000 years ago.
We don't know the
scale of it yet.
There seems to be huge
amounts of material
coming out from the plow soil,
so it may be people who live
by hunting and gathering,
who moved across
quite large areas,
but camped here
in this very spot.
A Paleolithic site
looks very different
from later archeology,
where there are walls
and other features to follow.
This means Chantal
and her students
need to meticulously plot every
stone tool that they find.
And the soil here is rock
hard, so the going is tough.
So have you found
anything of interest yet,
or is this very early stages?
We've been going for
nearly two weeks now,
but now we're getting
quite dense scatters,
so all these little flags
show a single bit of flint,
and we're also getting
quite a few tools.
So, this little
piece of flint here
we think is part
of a scraping tool,
probably for working hide,
but sometimes they're used
for working wood as well.
So we have, maybe,
people gearing up for hunting expeditions
or repairing their weapons,
but also other activities
going on as well
involving the processing
of animal remains.
Last year, I visited
a site of a similar age
at Creswell Crags.
Here other Ice Age hunters
were making beautiful art.
It's clear from this
site that these people
weren't just cavemen,
perhaps they're better
described as tent people.
They might have used
caves for art and ritual,
but above all, they
were nomadic hunters
ranging over large areas.
The tools found at Les Varines
are the real treasure
of the Stone Age,
and they're all the
archeologists have to go on.
From these simple bits of flint,
they can build a
compelling picture
of life here 14,000 years ago.
So shall I wash that?
Yes.
Very technologically
advanced washing equipment.
Hm, that's very nice.
What is it?
This is actually
a little tool called a burin,
or an engraver.
You see this
triangular point here?
Yeah.
And these were used
for working bone and antler.
So for kind of digging
in, for making an incision
- into those materials?
- Yes, yes.
Those little indentations,
each of those represents
an act of re-sharpening.
So people are obviously using
this tool for quite a time.
So they used it, it became blunt
and then they re-sharpened it.
So they're taking off
little slivers of flint.
Yeah.
And what's this larger
one that you washed?
This is part of a blade.
If you feel that edge,
there, is very sharp,
so it would easily have cut
through reindeer hide
or reindeer skin.
These stone tools are very
different from those found
at later sites like Star
Carr and the Daer Valley.
This Paleolithic
technology was designed
for the specialized hunting
of migrating animals,
like reindeer or horse.
I think when you start
actually understanding
how all these little
tiny bits of stone
might have been used,
you're looking at quite a
sophisticated technology,
and you start to
think, "Well, actually
"these people were
very much like us."
But also they seem to
have a very different
world view from us,
so the way they treat their
dead as at Gough's Cave,
the way they decorate caves
and some of their tools
with these animals obviously
have great meaning to them.
So, though in some
ways they seem like us,
in other ways I think they
would have seemed very alien.
It's amazing to be finding
these little traces
of them, isn't it?
It's very exciting
just 'cause it's so old,
and it's really nice to be the
first person for 14,000 years
to be touching these tools.
This is an incredibly
exciting site
because it seems that
underneath the plow soil
we have intact archeology
and the remains of a
hunter-gatherer camp
from the very end
of the Ice Age.
This is such an
ephemeral thing to find,
something that is much
more likely to disappear
than be preserved.
So we have the opportunity here
to gain some precious
insights into the world
of those pioneering
hunter-gathers
who were re-colonizing
Northern Europe
after the ice sheets receded.
But as well as finding clues
about these Ice Age
hunters' everyday lives,
archeologists have
also uncovered evidence
that shows that these people
were very different from us.
Finds from a cave
in Cheddar Gorge
are now held in London's
Natural History Museum.
Rescue excavations at Gough's
Cave between 1987 and 1992
revealed evidence of
hunter-gatherers using the cave,
and human remains.
Last year, a team of experts
from the Natural History Museum
re-examined some of those bones.
And what they found
was truly gruesome.
20 years ago, clues emerged
that seemed to be
evidence for cannibalism.
The new analysis
strengthens this theory.
This jaw bone has been
deliberately broken
to extract bone marrow.
These people were
eating their own kind.
And a closer
inspection of the bones
has revealed something
new and extraordinary.
We had the vault of
the skull of three skulls
which was absolutely
perfectly preserved.
And there was a sort of,
why they were saving it?
We have clear proof of
cannibalism in this site,
so if they were going
to modify the skull
it was probably
to extract brain,
but the way they modified it
is not just to extract brain
because they would have break it
in much easier
way to extract it.
But here we observe
a very clear process
of complete defleshing.
I mean, you can almost imagine
somebody peeling
off the tissues,
and then cutting
down underneath.
Exactly, it's a
classic example of scalping.
You're peeling like this and
then cut, cut, cut, cut, cut.
All across.
When we analyzed the
face and other parts
they are clear signs
that they were going
much more in detail.
So they were cutting the eyes,
they were cutting the cheek,
they were cutting the lips.
Why would they want to that?
We think that was
to produce a container
and I think that
the simple movement
of anatomical position
to put it upside down
it just tells you want
it was, and it was a cup.
Even as an anatomist,
as someone who has
dissected human cadavers,
I find it extraordinary the
lengths they were going to
to scrupulously clean up a skull
to transform it into a cup.
And this new research shows
us how they were doing it,
but why is another
question entirely.
Were they driven by hunger,
or by their beliefs?
Was this just an
elaborate funerary ritual?
And whom were they eating?
Their enemies, or their
friends and relatives?
It seems strange to our
modern sensibilities
that our ancient ancestors
would make such macabre objects.
And as is so often the case,
archeology can provide
us with the evidence,
but not the reasons why.
Before we modern humans
arrived on these shores,
there were other,
different, humans
who roamed the British Isles.
And there is evidence
of their lives, here,
on the Channel Island of Jersey.
During colder periods
of the Ice Age,
the sea levels around Britain
would have been significantly
lower than today.
The English Channel, and
much of the North Sea,
would have been dry land,
and the Channel Islands
would have stood out
as areas of high ground
in a flat landscape.
I'm here to meet a
team of archeologists
who are hoping to shed light
on a much-maligned human
species, the Neanderthals.
Neanderthals survived
and thrived in Europe
for hundreds of
thousands of years,
through periods of
major climate change
as glaciations repeatedly
brought ice sheets
down over northern Europe.
And they were here long
before we modern humans
arrived on the scene.
The Neanderthals were a
distinct and separate branch
of the human evolutionary tree.
I've arranged to
meet Dr. Matt Pope
of University College London,
who's one of the co-directors
of the project here.
Hello, Alice.
Hello.
- I'm Matt.
- Matt, hello,
- nice to meet you.
- Hello.
This is Kevin, our guide.
So we're
gonna go and have a look
at La Cotte from the sea?
So we've got a beautiful
bay, lovely blue sky,
and round the corner there's
some good archeology.
What a fantastic
way to do archeology!
I could get used to this.
La Cotte de St Brelade is of
international significance
because it's one
of the few places
that Neanderthal remains
have been discovered
in North West Atlantic Europe.
This is a fantastic way
to view, from the sea.
I mean, most people when
they look at La Cotte,
they're looking at it
either from the site
or from the headland above.
We're trying to give a
different perspective here.
What we're able to do here,
looking at these stacks,
these bit of granite
sticking out,
they're the remains of
an entire valley system.
And it's within
these valley systems
that the Neanderthals were
almost certainly hunting
and moving, following
herds of mammoth,
rhinoceros and other animals.
We're actually
paddling over the top
of a submerged
Ice Age landscape,
and the sea is
fairly calm today,
but just occasionally we get
hit by the bow wave of a ferry.
And then you have
to be really careful
about being close to reefs
as white water starts
breaking over them.
Matt is using kayaks
to map every part
of the Jersey coastline,
looking for new caves, and
with them, new archeology.
So La Cotte really is
just the beginning?
I don't think
we'll equal the size
and the importance of La Cotte,
but what we can do is
start to fill in the gaps,
and try and create
an entire history
of occupation and
periods of abandonment,
this side of the
English Channel river
for the past half million years.
Sorry, Matt!
Traveling around
the coast by kayak
is a fantastic way to survey
it, you can get really close.
And it's great to
go along with Matt
and see that he's
not just looking
at the modern landscape of today
but imagining in his mind's
eye the ancient coastline.
La Cotte is such a famous site,
but there maybe other
important archeological sites
as yet undiscovered
around this coast,
but for now I want to get over
there and see it up close.
La Cotte has provided us
with a wealth of information
about the lives of Neanderthals.
Archeologists have been digging
here for over 100 years.
And in the 1960s,
even Prince Charles
took part in the excavations.
Matt and his team
suspected that La Cotte
might have more to reveal,
so this year they're
trying to establish
if there's any untouched
archeology here.
They're clearing
away backfill debris
from previous excavations to
expose the original sediments.
Because of the tides,
they can only work here
for a few hours at a time,
and it's a dangerous environment,
hence the hard hats.
Hello!
What an amazing site!
Yeah, it's great, isn't it?
Now, how much of this
is original archeology,
and how much of it
is the back fill
from previous excavations?
Well, when we first came here,
we were under the
impression that most of this
was material left over
from previous excavations.
The picture that we're
starting to build up,
and from Martin Bate's
excavations here,
is in fact large
parts of this site
remain unexcavated and intact.
It's really exciting
that there is pristine
archeology here.
And a few tantalizing fragments
have even been emerging
from the exploratory dig.
So, Beccy, these are
some of the finds
which have been
coming out today?
Yeah, there's a couple of bits
Bully's just pulled
out, flakes here.
Oh, that's nice.
Is that flint?
It is, it is,
they're both flint.
They're quite heavily damaged
around these edges, here.
Oh, so that's not,
that's not something that No.
Somebody's done to them?
No, if it was freshly struck
you'd expect to see a
really sharp feather edge.
It must be incredibly exciting
to realize that you
have actually got
in situ pristine
archeology here?
Fantastic, especially
when we had no idea
that there was this much here.
There's never a time
you walk up here
where it doesn't strike
you, it's always exciting.
This site is so
iconic and famous,
but I think in some
ways that distracts
from its real importance,
which is that the Neanderthals
were coming back
here to this cave
over tens of thousands of years.
It holds out the promise
of really understanding
how Neanderthals adapted
to this changing climate
in Europe during the Ice Age.
But back to the
present and the tide
is rising really rapidly,
so if we don't get out of
here we're gonna get stuck.
Over 250,000
individual stone tools
have been found at La Cotte,
more than all the
other Neanderthal sites
in Britain combined.
Becky and Matt have arranged
for some of the best
to be brought down to the beach.
They can demonstrate
just how sophisticated
the Neanderthals really were.
You've got artifacts here from
a very long period of time,
what do they tell us
about the Neanderthals?
What's interesting about
this collection as a whole
is there's a lot of flint in it,
which these artifacts are here,
and there's no
flint on the island.
The nearest source of flint
is perhaps 20 kilometers away.
So they're probably
following animals here
and they're arriving in a place
where there's not brilliant
stone for making stone tools,
so they're having to bring
that in from elsewhere.
There is flint around here,
it is in the beaches,
but it's useless.
They're discriminating,
they're not touching that.
They know where the good
raw material sources are.
The Neanderthals
certainly weren't
primitive brutes.
These tools show real
sophistication and intelligence.
This one is
particularly beautiful.
Yeah, this actually part
of a much bigger piece,
but I don't recognize
the raw material at all
so this is something
very exotic.
I mean, that's beautiful,
it's been really
carefully manufactured.
What's also interesting
about this piece
is it comes from the
very early excavations
that took place in the
upper part of the cave,
and these may have been some
of the last Neanderthals
in this landscape.
So what that,
to me, suggests somebody
who is not only good
at making something
that's very functional,
but they've got an eye
for beauty as well.
It doesn't look like a
technology of people on the edge.
And that's another thing
we need to really focus on.
Neanderthals, if they,
compared to humans,
lacked ability, if they lacked
the ability to make tools,
lacked the ability to think,
they would have been extinct
before they'd even started.
Nature just doesn't
allow a creature
that isn't perfectly
fitted to its environment
to thrive and exist.
My 100,000-year long
journey ends here,
with these surprising truths
about the sophistication,
and achievements,
of the Neanderthals.
Along the way, I've seen
so much fresh evidence
of ingenuity and invention.
I've also seen exciting
new discoveries being made
and tiny clues uncovered
that are all adding to
the complex jigsaw puzzle
that is ancient Britain.
In many ways the Stone Age
seems unimaginably
distant from us,
and the voices of
our ancient ancestors
have long since
faded into silence.
But archeology helps us to
piece their stories together,
revealing how they lived,
how they viewed their world,
and showing us how
the foundations
of our modern society emerged.
And so, with many
questions still unanswered,
the digging continues.