Meet the Ancestors (1998) s02e04 Episode Script

In a distant corner of the British Isles, a barley field is about to give up its secrets - an ancient underground tomb, untouched for 5000 years.
Last June, I drove over 700 miles from my home to Orkney, one of the most northerly outposts of the British Isles.
Orkney's unlike anywhere else.
It's rugged and virtually treeless.
Orkney may not have many trees but it has got a lot of stone.
It has the best prehistoric sites in northern Europe.
They've now got a new one - a tomb.
I HOPE I'm going to find out what's inside it.
The tomb was discovered at Crantit Dairy on the outskirts of Kirkwall.
A tractor dislodged a roof slab.
'Glasgow University archaeologist Beverley Ballin-Smith is in charge of the excavation.
'She hasn't seen inside yet as the hole was quickly covered over.
' This must be pretty exciting for you? It is.
Although there are lots of tombs on Orkney of the same date, possibly of the same size, dimension, none of them have had the roof surviving.
None of them have had a roof intact.
Beverley and her team have just six weeks to carry out the excavation.
First, they had to clear the soil from the tomb.
As well as archaeologists, the team had some unusual members! Two of the Strathclyde police forensic team - photographer David, and pathologist Jeanette - had brought some unusual equipment.
Is that all right? Lovely! What's the tent for?! We use this type of tent at outdoor crime scenes.
It protects the body from the elements.
I think it'll be important to protect the tomb when it's open.
'With the tent in place, 'we could take the covers off the tomb.
' Don't know.
Could we lean it? 'But this wasn't going to go smoothly.
' Whoops! OH NO! 'An archaeologist's worst nightmare - 'modern soil and water contaminating the once-sealed chamber.
'It would take ingenuity to see past the blockage, 'but I'd come prepared.
' 'As I manoeuvred the camera into the tomb, 'the others watched closely.
' Soil down, that's the thing.
'This tomb has laid undisturbed since it was sealed 5000 years ago.
' .
.
deposits there that look clean.
Oh! There's a bone! 'There was more than one bone, 'and that evening, Beverley showed us what had excited her.
' We've got one skull here.
It's got a little dent in the top! And the brow ridges The second skull seems to be lying on its side, because there's an eye socket, a nose bone.
It looks to be in good condition but we can't tell whether it's a male or female No.
.
.
skeleton.
Not from here.
It doesn't lie as a skeleton.
No! Or two.
It's a collection of bones.
'The camera revealed more than just bones.
'We now knew the tomb was circular, 'and divided into three compartments.
'One had bones in, one was empty, 'and the third, full of soil from the collapse, was an unknown quantity.
'On the hillside above the tomb, 'series illustrator, Jane Brayne, had settled in.
'She reconstructs the landscape as it was in neolithic times.
'She starts with the modern landscape and then uses archaeological clues.
'I hoped Orkney expert Colin Richards could help her.
' I'm just trying to get to grips with the landscape, the topography, the atmosphere of the place.
What would I see of the tomb from here? Not much? Probably not! When you look at it now, you simply don't know it's there.
It would be newly constructed.
You'd see the clay.
It wouldn't have stood right out, no.
Would a settlement have been that close? And if so, where? We've done some work the other side of Kirkwall, where there's two chamber tombs on either side of the valley.
In both cases, there's a settlement which looks out through the passage, downsloping to the right.
We could have a settlement here, if we had one at all.
'Now Jane knew WHERE to put a village, 'she needed to know what it would have looked like.
'Usually, the answer is an educated guess.
Here, we had evidence.
'Because Orkney doesn't have many trees, everything's built of stone - 'fine, hard stone that splits into slabs and can be laid without mortar 'to make lasting walls.
Some have lasted over 5000 years.
' 'In the north of the island lies Skara Brae - 'a whole neolithic village buried under sand dunes for thousands of years.
' Not only can you see the whole structure but also the hearth, the bed, and the whole layout.
You get a sense of how it must have felt, don't you? A sense of how cosy the houses were, and a feeling for how they lived.
I'll get my drawing board and get started! See you! 'I'm trying to get the position of the houses, 'just drawing these circles where the houses stand, 'so that I can get the overall shape of the village.
'The houses would be roofed in the village we'll reconstruct.
'It doesn't look very much yet, but it means something to me.
' 'I went into the warren of passages, 'that linked the houses.
'One house was roofed and gave a feeling of prehistoric life.
'Even the furniture is made of stone.
'This dresser is the ideal place 'to display precious possessions - 'and mysterious ones.
' The houses look fantastic from the outside, but there's nothing like being IN a house that's 5000 years old - the sort of house that people from the tomb would have lived in.
It's dark, smoky and probably smelly but it's cosy! I'm really warm although it's cold outside.
Being inside this building, it makes you feel closer to those people.
'The archaeologists aren't having much luck.
Caught on a home video camera, 'the roof starts to collapse.
' Don't stand there! 'If this roof slab falls in, any bones underneath will be crushed.
Got it! 'The tomb needs urgent shoring to prevent any further collapse.
'Fortunately, one of the diggers is also a builder.
' So, we might not be able to tell from them.
It's a wonderful wooden tape! What's it doing?! It's insurance.
If it decides to collapse, we'll catch it before it goes onto the you know, our primary deposit, the skulls in the bottom.
'The new hole gave David the opportunity to photograph the hidden recesses of the tomb.
' Are the bones in the downslope bit? Downhill from where we are? That's correct, yes.
That's a good one! 'His photos were printed and he had a surprise for us.
' Another skull! And long bones! 'The new skull and bones 'were in the first chamber, positioned where the camera couldn't see.
'Perhaps these people were related.
'By now, it was time to get those precious bones out.
'These suits don't just keep clothes clean.
They prevent contamination.
' 'A touch from an ungloved finger or one unmasked breath 'could ruin chances of recovering DNA from the bones.
'At last, Beverley was ready to climb down into the ancient tomb.
' 'The newly-discovered skull was the first to come out.
' This is the moment we've all been waiting for.
We're getting our first glimpse of the bones.
It has to be said that they're not in very good condition.
'As each fragment emerged, it was carefully examined, 'recorded, 'and wrapped by bone specialist Julie Roberts.
' 'Inside, things were getting worse.
' This is just likesponge cake! In fact it's worse! It's worse than sponge cake! 'The bones were falling apart.
' 'At the other end of the chamber, 'the skulls that lay together were so soft 'that Beverley had to slide them onto something flat.
'Parts of the skull were missing 'but perhaps enough bones could be found to rebuild a face.
' 'How do you feel now they're out?' 'I'm keen to find out more.
' It would seem that the skulls were put on top of the bones, or here, slightly to one side.
But why choose skulls and what appears to be one set of bones? I don't know.
'I hoped Julie, the bone specialist, might have some answers.
'I went to her laboratory to find out.
The tomb contained four skulls.
'The fourth had been found crushed 'in the soil-filled chamber.
'The two skulls on the bone piles were in bad condition.
'But some fragments were recognisable.
' We have some teeth.
We have two developing first and second molars.
We can tell they're developing crowns, and not just teeth, as the crown surface hasn't developed yet.
And this gives us an age of between four and six years.
Four to six! Yeah.
We've also got here This is a wisdom tooth.
This is likely to go with the other individual, giving it an age of probably around 15.
'It was the third individual that intrigued me.
' Judging from the bit of skull here, the top and the forehead looks quite female in shape.
It's got this peculiar bossed bit on the back.
Yeah.
What is that? It's just supposed to be a developmental abnormality.
It's not a disease.
It's more of a growth phenomenon.
Strange! I've never seen that before.
'Julie had identified more of this person's bones - an odd selection.
' We've got the left hand and foot, left kneecap, right leg, left pelvis and right arm.
We've got bits from the whole body.
'No facial bones survived.
We'll never how this person looked.
'But my curiosity was aroused.
I wanted to know more.
' We also have part of the pelvis.
'The pelvis fragment confirmed it was a woman.
'Some teeth suggested her age.
' We've got some teeth but they're in poor condition.
There's heavy wear on the bottom.
This suggests that she was probably aged over 30.
So in the one chamber, you've got an adult woman, an adolescent child, and a child of about four to six years old.
That seems to be it.
You wonder if it's her children? It's a possibility.
They're buried in the same chamber.
If the DNA analysis is successful, we may find out.
'Unfortunately, the bones were too decayed for any DNA to survive.
'Were there once more bones or had they rotted away? 'Here, science could help us.
'John Duncan had started analysing tiny samples of soil 'from the tomb floor.
'Some were from under the bone piles, 'and some from the empty chamber.
'What WAS he looking for?' Nice range of colours! These samples are from Crantit, are they? Yes, from the soil.
I've been looking at the chemical composition.
What do the different shades mean? The dark blue has more phosphorus.
Bone contains a lot of phosphate.
If there's high phosphate in the soil, there's been a big bone there.
As expected, the dark colour indicates a lot of phosphate which comes from beneath where we found the bone during the excavation.
The light blue - not much bone.
So you'd expect the higher levels to be where the bone was? We expected that and that's what we found.
And the rest of the tomb - has it told you what's going on there? We analysed a few samples.
There was one anomaly, this one from the north chamber.
This suggests that there was bone there which has decayed.
It's totally gone? Yes.
None left? What about the back chamber where there weren't any bones? From the samples, there were no bones.
So that was an empty chamber.
Yes.
Yeah, it's really interesting.
And where the soil collapsed? The floor of the tomb still showed the two placements of bone.
There was no other bone.
So they are restricted to those two side chambers.
Yes.
Nothing in the passage, nothing in the middle or the back? 'So the tomb never contained more than our four people, 'and our results couldn't account for the missing bones.
'Maybe Colin had some answers.
Were we dealing with grave robbers?!' There's more to it than that! For instance, in some tombs where you do have a better level of preservation there's still discrepancy between certain bones.
In some cases, there's a large number of skulls.
In other cases, there's fewer skulls than the rest of the body and so on.
One example of this is Tomb of the Eagles, Isbister.
Here's one of the side cells.
And in this case, what's happened is you have a number of skulls and few other bones so what you're seeing is after the flesh has decomposed, they've gone in to move the body parts and put them in other places.
So do you think this was what went on at our tomb? To some degree.
It's quite clear from the deposits in Crantit that there's been a removal of bones - a movement of bones - after the flesh has decayed.
So does that mean that bones that started out in a tomb like Crantit could have ended up somewhere like the Tomb of the Eagles? Almost certainly.
That's the case.
'The Tomb of the Eagles is on a spectacular part of the coast.
'It was discovered and excavated by farmer Ronnie.
' 'When he first crawled down the narrow entrance passage, he found a stone-built room, 'much bigger than our tomb.
'On either side lay tiny chambers, 'packed with the bones of over 300 people.
' 'But nothing surpasses Maes Howe.
'Its huge mound contains a beautifully built chamber but no bones.
'The Vikings looted its ancestral remains 'over 1,000 years ago.
' 'Tankerness Museum is full of bones from Orkney tombs, skulls of people who may have known our woman.
'But none of these are quite such a strange shape.
' I'm intrigued by the bump on the woman's skull.
I think I've tracked down another example - at the Museum of London.
'Bone specialist Bill White has worked with London's past inhabitants for 20 years.
'The 17th century skull he showed me had just been on display.
'At first glance, it looked similar to the one from Orkney.
' Here's a photograph as the skull's too fragile to bring.
Is it the same? Very familiar indeed.
The condition - bathrocrany or "stepped skull" - the "step" being from the back of the skull to this protuberance, this "bump".
How common is it? In that period, the 17th century, a lot of Londoners had it - about 10%.
That seems a lot.
What causes it? Frankly, no idea! There are some ideas, it could be environmental, something in diet, or surroundings.
Alternatively, it could be genetic in origin.
To account for the high number, it may be immigration from the country, and we haven't yet found which county they came from.
Or possibly from abroad.
It was common in Germany at a different historical period, too late to relate to this.
Oh! Are there any methods you can use to find out what caused it? We've tried takingX-rays.
Here's a conventional X-ray.
Shows up the bump but nothing unusual.
And the xeroradiograph, with its detail like blood vessels and root canals.
Nothing abnormal there.
Would the face have looked different because of the bump? No, but people think that when they first find these things, and it was thought that as the skull was long, the face would be.
But you can see It's perfectly normal.
Would we see this in people today? We believe it's rare today but since the exhibition, we've had people either phoning or saying they have the same bump.
You see people standing feeling the backs of their heads?! Yes! They ask us to touch their heads.
But we've found no proper examples! 'Jane has put the finishing touches to the landscape around the tomb.
' I HOPE I've finished! Do you want to have a look? I'd like to! I hope there won't be any changes! Where's the tomb? It's here, look.
Right! Looking from this direction, it would have been an insubstantial mound on the hillside.
This is all grass and heather? Yes.
These are heather flowers here.
This would have been good grazing.
What's all this area? The dark green? This is the area of Salix Carr, this swampy area, with these tiny willow trees all growing in the water.
If those are the only trees, where do they get wood for their roofs? They used driftwood.
The driftwood came from North America.
America?! It's astonishing! From the virgin forests on the east coast.
This to me brings over some of the bleakness of the Orkney landscape, but it's also a magical landscape.
I think so! To be able to see the places where they lived, and the places they placed the dead in such close proximity.
To think of all the standing stones and tombs, it's quite a magical landscape.
A very sacred place, I think.
'In Orkney, land and sky, and rocks and sea 'combine to make special places.
'Places that the prehistoric people commemorated with temples of stone.
'From these stones, the heavens were observed, and at mid-winter, 'the entrance to Maes Howe was lit up by the rising sun.
'But a new discovery at our tomb is something even rarer.
'The first clue is a notch above the entrance.
'We believe that with the roof in place, as this reconstruction shows 'it would have made a window.
' Is that not just an irregular stone they've used? COLIN: No, no.
If you think how well it was built, the masonry is really sophisticated so this stands out a mile! It was instantly seen.
And we suddenly realised that we had the possibility of seeing something called a light box, or something which lets light in other than the entrance passage.
But presumably it wasn't meant to be seen from inside.
To appreciate light in the tomb, you'd have to be IN it, and surely there are only dead people inside? That's true.
You have to think, what's going on? The sun's shining through here, twice a year, February and November, and at those specific times, the inside is illuminated.
The ANCESTORS are illuminated.
'How did Colin know WHEN the sun lined up with the slit? 'Well, because an astronomer told him! 'Frank Zabriskie can use the sun's position today to calculate its path in ancient times.
'Using the mathematics first developed by Isaac Newton, 'he worked out that the rising sun would have shone in twice a year - in November and February.
'It was time to test the theory.
We had to put a roof on the tomb.
' JULIAN GROANS ENGINE STARTS OK? Switching on Oh! Ha ha! I hate to admit that you're right, Colin! Oh no! It's brilliant! It's right at the top at the back of the chamber.
'Colin showed me how the light from the rising sun 'slowly moved down the back wall of the tomb 'until it reached the resting place of the ancestral bones.
' It's fantastic! I don't suppose anyone ALIVE ever experienced this - this shaft of light coming through and simulating the sunrise.
It's an incredible feeling.
It really makes you feel closer to those who buried their dead here.
The story of our woman from the tomb is always going to be a mystery.
But we did learn something - something so intimate that it was only known to those close to her.
Her strangely shaped head.
But why has she remained such a mystery? When she went to join the ancestors, she went somewhere the dead were NOT left in peace.
Some of her bones may have started a journey around the islands, while some lay hidden in the tomb illuminated twice a year by the rising sun until she was forgotten by people and by time.