Attenborough and the Mammoth Graveyard (2021) - full transcript

Here at Cerney Wick,

in southern England,

just north of Swindon,

the remains of Ice Age mammoths

have just been discovered.

These beasts were found

not by professional scientists,

but by two amateur fossil hunters

digging in their spare time.

It's like a time travel

through the gravel.

What they've found is sensational.

Even I can see that's a tusk.

It's one of the oldest

mammoth graveyards

ever uncovered in Britain

and could hold secrets about

several extinct species.

Must've been rather enchanting.

But why and how did these mammoths

die here?

To find out,

a team of archaeologists

and palaeontologists

is carrying out

a forensic investigation

of the site.

It's like a really big whodunnit,

isn't it?

Hidden in this gravel pit are clues

that reveal an Ice Age world...

Really beautiful, actually.

..a period about which

we know very little,

when prehistoric people

lived alongside Ice Age animals.

This is very typical

of early Neanderthals.

This excavation could open

a new window onto ancient Britain

and help us understand the lives of

the humans who once lived here.

You might expect to have to travel

to remote parts of Siberia

to uncover bones of Ice Age beasts,

but, just outside Swindon,

less than two hours from my home

in Surrey,

two of Britain's most prolific

amateur fossil hunters have made

the discovery of a lifetime.

I've come to meet Sally

and Neville Hollingworth.

Hello. Hello.

Nice to meet you.

Lovely to meet you.

Absolute pleasure to meet you.

Come on in.

This is our humble home.

Gosh.

Sally and Neville both have

office jobs,

but they spend their weekends

hunting for fossils.

Like me,

they have a passion for doing so,

but theirs went rather farther.

When we went on fossil hunts,

and Nev would invite me,

and he passed me half

a vertebrae,

it's Jurassic,

it's marine reptile. Yeah.

A couple of weeks later,

he texted me to say,

I think I might've found find

the other half of that vertebrae.

Do you fancy meeting for a drink

and we'll see if they

join together?

It's a good line, isn't it?

This is true.

Well, of course.

So we met for a drink

and...

They joined together. ..they joined

together.

I thought there we go,

it's a match made in heaven.

Not a dry eye in the house.

No, no, not at all. No.

We've got some in the kitchen.

More fossils? More finds.

I thought for a moment

it was going to be sandwiches.

These are the finds

I've come to see.

Mammoth bones.

Wow. Gosh.

This is our kitchen-dino.

THEY CHUCKLE

Yes. Well, I know it's leg bone,

isn't it?

Yes. Where was it?

It was, actually, literally

just sticking out of some gravel

on the floor of a working quarry.

Which end? This end.

So that bit was all you could see?

That's all you could see.

Probably only that bit.

We thought there might be

a bit more of it.

So we started to excavate

and, as we started digging,

we found that it was actually

a complete humerus of a mammoth.

This pelvis bone has actually

gone through

the processing plant

and it dropped out in

the reject pile yard of the quarry.

Two years ago,

Neville and Sally asked

for permission to look

for fossils in a freshly

dug quarry.

They never expected to find pieces

of bones of several mammoths.

A cup of tea for you, David.

Thank you very much. There we are.

Oh, hang on, mammoth cake.

Yeah, so, mammoth cupcakes.

Aren't you having one?

Yes, how is it?

MUMBLES WITH MOUTH FULL

I'm gonna have a chocolate one.

But there's one find that raises

intriguing questions

about how the mammoths died,

a stone tool, a hand-axe,

made by an ancient human.

There was a small glint.

And I thought,

"Well, that looks a bit interesting,

a bit different."

You saw this?

Yes.

Well, the main thing is that it was

made by man.

Yes. Yeah. And it was that feeling

that I was the first human

to touch this stone tool in hundreds

of thousands of years.

It's a great thrill, isn't it?

It is. Yes.

The whole of this business.

Finding a stone tool near

mammoth bones is extremely rare,

but we don't yet know if it was left

by humans

from a more recent time

in prehistory.

Well, you could certainly cut things

with that, I'm sure.

Yeah, we did.

We did. You did?

We cut our wedding cake with it.

You cut your wedding cake? Yes.

Yeah. Really?

There we are.

We cut our wedding cake,

got married and had...

And had a mammoth meal.

And had a mammoth meal,

had a mammoth event. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Mammoths once roamed the open

landscape of ancient Britain.

These extinct cousins

of elephants

had huge curving tusks

and thrived during the Ice Age.

Their remains are usually

tens of thousands of years old,

but Sally and Neville's finds

could be far older.

They could offer an extremely rare

glimpse of life deep in the Ice Age,

a time we know little about,

when early humans lived

alongside mammoths.

But how did these mammoths die?

Was it from natural causes?

Or could they have been hunted?

The quarry where Sally and Neville

made their discovery

lies just ten miles north

of their home in Swindon,

near the village of Cerney Wick.

Groundwater was deliberately

allowed to flood the site,

to prevent any bones in the ground

from drying out.

Now, two years after they made

their first find,

that water is being pumped out

ready for a team

to begin investigating.

Leading the dig is another

husband-and-wife duo,

Brendon Wilkins

and Lisa Westcott Wilkins.

Those ducks must hate us.

They had this place filled with

water and now they've got nothing.

The team starts by mapping

the site from the air.

It's so important to record this

from the instant that we're doing

anything,

so that we can build that exact

picture

of how it was before we came along

and disturbed it.

The drone images provide

a detailed map of the site

so that the exact location

of each find can be plotted.

The team searches

for fragments of bone.

Biologist Ben Garrod has been

helping co-ordinate the dig.

That, we think, is mammoth bone,

cos it's so thick.

Yeah.

It's definitely mammoth.

Ben was the first on the team

to hear about the site

and quickly realised

its significance.

Sally and Neville got in touch.

And I'd never met them.

And they said, Ben,

we found some fossils that

I think you might be interested in.

I said,

yeah, that's great,

send some photos across.

And they did.

And I was here the next day.

I jumped on the train

and dropped everything

and came to the site

and it was like someone

had sprinkled

mammoth bones everywhere,

which I'd never seen.

I thought I had to go to Siberia

to see that.

By looking at this in

a forensic level of detail,

that'll give us this really

in-depth understanding

of what was going on here

whilst these animals

and these people

were walking around.

What intrigues Ben, and me,

is why there are

so many mammoth bones here,

from at least four different

animals.

And the tantalising mystery

of who left that stone tool.

So, what did the landscape look like

when the mammoths were here?

OK, up.

To find out, geo-archaeologist

Keith Wilkinson extracts samples

of the underlying sediment.

So, at the very bottom

we've got these blue sands.

So they are probably the layer

with the mammoth fossils in.

We've got these river gravels

and then these silts

and sands at the top

are of the

same ancient river channel.

The layers of sediment beneath

the surface

reveal the bed

of a prehistoric river.

This is probably the ancient route

of the River Thames,

which, today,

lies nearly two miles away.

Could the mammoths have died

further upstream

and their bones have been washed

here when the river flooded?

To find out, the team plots target

areas for excavation...

..and the digging begins.

They sieve every shovel-full

of soil

in their search for fragments of

bone or stone tools.

When the trenches start

to reveal new finds,

I can't resist stopping by

to see how they're doing.

Welcome.

Thank you very much.

What do you think?

I haven't seen it yet.

Even I can see that's a tusk.

Let me get it right.

Where was the head?

So, this is the proximal end.

And that's the tip of the tusk.

So coming round the tip here.

So it's curving backwards.

Yes, exactly. Yes.

This is possibly a bit of

a mandible, this was just found.

So it's a left mandible?

Well, yes. And because we think that

might be a left tusk,

you know, it's possible that these

belonged to the same animal.

You can see bones running into

the section there

and here

and you can also see

a rib bone here. Yeah.

One of the things we wondered with

so many of these tusks around,

could it have been that they all

fall into the river somewhere

and then get washed down

in one big event?

But what we're looking at is not

a high energy environment.

If it was a wash-out, you would

expect to see more debris

in the channel, more debris in

the sediment around the tusks.

But this is basically lying in

where it fell.

And the same with the tusk over

there. So, we think, you know,

they could have just died

and fallen.

But it's a bit of a coincidence,

really.

This pit has been dug out

by excavators

because, until just recently,

it was full of gravel,

down to about this level.

But here is much more solid.

It's not gravel. It's mud -

sticky mud at that,

and it's in this undisturbed mud

that these bones are now being

discovered.

And, because it's been undisturbed,

very careful excavation can reveal

a lot of details about

the circumstances in which these

animals got here

and left their bones.

The most complete bones seem

to be lying in the riverbed.

And they've been covered by the fine

sediments of slow-moving water,

not pounded by fast-moving

flood water.

So, perhaps the mammoths died where

the bones are lying now.

Could their remains give us clues

about what the mammoths

looked like?

Conservator Nigel Larkin has come

to remove the tusk

in the centre of the trench.

All right?

Hi. Oh, my goodness.

You've been plastered.

OK, Sal, you smiling? Yes.

Good, great.

With a heavy plaster casing

in place,

the fragile tusk is ready

to be lifted.

Do we need an extra person?

I think we do.

OK. So if you get in there.

We're gonna lift up to sort of

waist height.

You need to get your hands

underneath, OK.

On my knees.

Go that way, that's better.

Do we need a rest?

Up to you.

I'm good.

My back's about to give out.

Go up a bit.

Just rest it there.

OK. Stop there.

Is it in? Yeah. Well done, guys!

We'll just shove it over a bit.

Woo-hoo!

Yeah! Well done.

Thank you.

Well done. Well done, well done.

It's a heavy old beast.

The question is,

how are you going to get out

the other end?

I'll get the wife to help me.

THEY LAUGH

This ancient tusk will be

carefully preserved

and prepared for future examination.

Spectacular fossils like this have

always fascinated people.

Hundreds of years ago,

it was thought mammoth tusks

belonged to mythical beasts.

In Siberia,

mammoth remains were once thought

to be from huge underground

burrowing creatures.

In 17th century Europe,

mammoth bones were said

to be those of giants or unicorns.

By the 19th century, mammoths were

described as prehistoric animals,

but they were thought

to have existed long before humans.

Then, in 1864 in France,

a piece of mammoth ivory was found

with an engraving so accurate

it was clear the artist had seen

a living mammoth.

The engraving shows

a woolly mammoth,

the most recent species on

the mammoth family tree.

We now know that early mammoths

first evolved in Africa

around five million years ago

and then spread into Europe

and Asia.

Around 1.7 million years ago,

steppe mammoths evolved

that grazed the grassy plains.

They then moved into Europe

and North America

where Columbian mammoths

later appeared.

The famous woolly mammoths

developed around 700,000 years ago,

adapted for colder climates,

and they eventually spread

first into Europe

and then North America.

So, which kind of mammoth lived in

Britain at our site?

To find out, mammoth evolution

expert Steven Zhang

is examining the remains

found at the site.

The teeth have given him

a crucial clue.

Looking at a mammoth tooth

is like looking into

a barcode for the mammoth itself.

We start by counting

the number of enamel ridges,

so this one has about 18,

which is a very typical number

for a steppe mammoth.

Looking at this piece of tooth,

we know that it's

a last molar or a wisdom tooth.

So we know this was

a fully-grown adult.

Except, this is one of

the smallest steppe mammoth teeth

there probably is in existence.

It's like finding a German Shepherd

the size of a Westie.

These teeth appear to be from

a population of small

steppe mammoths.

Their reduced size could be

a consequence of food

becoming less abundant.

If a steppe mammoth was here now,

you would see that it wasn't

particularly hairy.

A sign that the climate must

have been quite temperate.

And as for size, well,

the female was about my size,

male a bit bigger

and the baby,

well, I guess, like that.

Must've been rather enchanting.

There are also remains

of another type of mammoth.

Over here, I would say this is

a typical woolly mammoth.

So these two different kind

of beasts

were occurring at the same site.

One possibility was that this site

was a habitat

shared by both steppe

and woolly mammoths,

or, as woolly mammoths migrated

westwards from Siberia

into Europe,

they started to mingle

with local steppe mammoths.

This is interesting

because not often do we see

a snapshot like this.

It's exciting.

Our site could be rare evidence

of a transitional stage,

when woolly mammoths are taking over

from steppe mammoths.

These bones could have belonged

to some of

the last surviving steppe mammoths

in Britain.

Back at the dig,

Sally and Neville

have ringside seats

as the professionals continue

their meticulous search.

There is almost a forensic

examination of the sediment

and everything else.

But that's, that's good, though.

So they don't miss anything.

It's like a time travel

through the gravel.

I'd like them to solve the story.

Was it hunted?

That's the big question, isn't it?

Yeah. One of the questions.

What was the climate like?

Yeah. What was the vegetation like?

And, also, what else was here?

Not just mammoths, but were there

early humans,

hominids wandering about?

Well, yes, they were, because

we know there's a hand-axe.

You have established that there were

mammoths here

and there were human beings

alongside them.

A human being wielding that axe.

I can say, at this particular site,

there were definitely mammoths.

There were definitely human beings,

early human beings, admittedly,

but I don't know yet if they were

here at the exact same time.

Now, the issue is, it could be like

you or I walking on

a Viking settlement

and dropping a crisp packet.

That's not from the same time

period, obviously.

Now, that might have happened here.

I'll let you know in a few months.

Ben's "few months" becomes two years

as Covid lockdowns keep

the team away from the site.

But, in 2021, they pick up

where they left off,

this time with some mechanical help.

If only we'd had this last time,

it would have just made it

so much easier.

The idea at the moment is just

to plane down to that level

where we've got material

that hasn't been disturbed.

They clear down

to the undisturbed layers

and dig new trenches.

Mammoth bones soon begin to appear.

Oh, wow. That looks good,

doesn't it?

Look at that.

Wow, we've got this wonderful

little tusk here.

It's beautiful, isn't it?

To determine the age of these finds,

they send sediment samples from

the trenches to a specialist lab.

In darkroom conditions,

grains of quartz from deep within

the sediment are placed in

a machine that records tiny levels

of radiation.

The amount of radiation emitted

by the grains

reveals when they were

last exposed to sunlight

and allows the team to estimate

the age of the ancient

river channel.

So here we've got our distribution

of age within our sample.

So, these three age estimates

indicate that the channel

was formed about 215,000 years ago.

Our site dates to

a period deep in the Ice Age.

But the Ice Age wasn't always icy.

Over the last

two and a half million years,

huge ice sheets travelled down

from the north

and then retreated during

warmer spells.

The advancing and retreating ice

changed the sea level

and the coastlines,

but, for most of this period,

Britain was connected

to mainland Europe.

215,000 years ago,

when the mammoths were living

at our site,

conditions were only slightly cooler

than today,

ideal for a variety of animals,

and our site is providing evidence

for what they were.

So we've got some lovely vertebrae

here from steppe bison.

So these were very, very large,

up to two metres at

the shoulders, big cow-like animals,

that were again on the steppes,

on these plains,

herbivores, they would equally

have been hunted.

We also have....

..this, which is wonderful.

That's part of a lower jaw

from a brown bear.

A bear.

Yeah. So we know that...

That's the socket of the teeth.

That's it, yeah. And that...

Little canal for the nerves

and blood vessels.

And this is the hinge.

It would have been sitting

at the back.

So you've got this lower jaw

sitting there,

the big tearing teeth,

shearing teeth,

doing exactly that process here.

So we're starting to build up

a picture of what this environment

would have been like.

This isn't Arctic tundra

where there was nothing available.

This would have been

a good place to live.

The bison and bear bones give us

clues about

the Ice Age landscape of the site.

But there are also the remains of

far smaller creatures

that enable us to piece together

a picture

of what was growing on this land

back then.

There's loads of small shell

fragments throughout this.

We've got this little snail

in here.

Environmental archaeologist Matt Law

carefully identifies samples

of tiny,

but perfectly preserved shells.

We have one land snail in there,

so that's a very common species

of short grassland snail

and the rest are looking like

they're coming from

a river-type setting.

Well-vegetated,

well-oxygenated water,

but not too much flow either.

What's really remarkable

is the level of preservation,

not just the snails,

but things like beetle remains,

seeds and bits of wood

that we don't often see

with the level of detail

that they are here.

The discovery of these species

of animals

and plants enables us to get

a quite detailed picture

of what the landscape here was like

when the mammoths

were roaming around.

This stretch of the ancient Thames

was flowing through an open,

grassy landscape,

a perfect place for large herbivores

to feed and find water.

Back at the site,

after weeks of searching

for more hand-axes

or stone tools among

the mammoth bones,

there's been a breakthrough.

The telltale signs of humans.

I think this may be

a flint artefact.

Ben is eager to see the new finds.

It's really over in this area

where we're starting

to find the really exciting stuff.

Hiding in this sand we have

a relatively large piece

of mammoth bone

sticking from the surface.

And, just in the last few days,

we've started to pick out

just a couple of flints,

so little bits of stone

which are being worked by humans.

And they're next door,

just 50 centimetres away

from this lovely bit of what looks

to be a leg bone of a mammoth.

You can see they've been taking

little chips out of the edge

to create a sharp cutting surface,

which they could scrape along bones

or along hides to remove fat.

Something as simple as this

starts to connect those dots,

starts to bring the human story

together with the mammoths,

and that's really quite special.

The presence of these

tiny fragments alongside

the bone suggests people were here

at the same time as the mammoths.

The tool Sally and Neville found

could also have been made

by the same people.

To find out how these early tools

were made,

Ben and I arrange to meet Karl Lee,

an expert flint-knapper.

So here we go.

He uses a rounded stone

and then a piece of antler

as a hammer,

just as the early humans did.

There we go.

That is amazing.

Thank you very much.

What do you reckon, David,

could you take down a mammoth

with one of those?

I should certainly cut up a deer,

they're around here. Yes.

If you killed it with a spear,

that's for the butcher

and you'd butcher it

in half an hour.

So I have, completely normally,

brought a piece of meat

on the bone.

OK.

Gosh.

Mind your fingers.

Yes. Mind your fingers.

Thanks, David.

Oh, yeah.

That's gone straight through.

No problem at all.

I think you should keep it for

a cookery show, David. Yeah.

So it seems that the hand-axe

Sally discovered

could well have been used

to butcher mammoth meat.

Karl also shows us a second method

of making stone tools,

in which thin shards of flint,

known as Levallois flakes,

are knocked away

from a large flint core.

I have to prepare a platform

at the base of the core

and then try and take

a nice flake.

Using this method,

they're actually planning exactly

what that flake's

going to look like. So I'm going to

be striking right at the base of

the core here and the flake will

hopefully come off on the underside.

That's a brave thing to say.

That is a Levallois flake.

Now, do watch your fingers on that

one because it's going to be sharp.

Yes, it's razor sharp.

Yeah. Razor sharp.

Where the edge is so thin

it's translucent,

it looks as though it's all got

a halo all around it.

Really beautiful, actually.

This is a very versatile technology,

it's portable, very lightweight,

rather than carrying around

something

four or five times the weight.

I can't imagine you teaching me

this

without a really good grasp

of language.

Teaching this without language

would be,

in my opinion, impossible.

And my guess would be that children,

just as they mimic their parents

today,

would have been mimicking

their parents back then, as well.

So, try and catch it

about two millimetres

back from the edge...

Oh, I've got you, yeah, yeah,

yeah, yeah.

That's it. You're away.

For hundreds of thousands of years,

human beings have passed on

that sort of skill,

that sort of insight into

the materials that lay around them.

Of course,

they had to be fortunate to find

such marvellous material as flint,

but, once they did,

what fabulous things

they created with it.

So who were the flint-workers

at Cerney Wick?

We know very little

about prehistoric people.

Most evidence of their existence

has decomposed

and disappeared long ago,

but their stone tools remain.

They reveal the remarkable story

of early species

of humans spreading from Africa

throughout Northern Europe.

To find out which type of human

was living at Cerney Wick,

I've come to a secure facility

in London.

It holds one of

the largest collections

of prehistoric artefacts

in the world.

Curator Nick Ashton is a renowned

expert on these ancient tools.

He begins by showing me simple

flint tools found near Happisburgh

on the east coast of England.

We know that in Africa they've been

making these tools for some

two to three million years.

But this is the earliest evidence

that we have in northern Europe

of humans reaching this far north.

Dates to an astonishing

900,000 years ago.

How much?

900,000 years ago.

Really? So it's the earliest

evidence for humans

in northern Europe.

In 2013,

Nick's team made a truly

extraordinary discovery

at Happisburgh.

A storm washed away sand on a beach

and revealed ancient footprints,

set in hardened mud.

They were the oldest

human footprints

ever documented outside of Africa

but, within two weeks,

they had vanished,

washed away by incoming tides.

It's thought that early humans

spread out from Africa

around two million years ago.

A million years later,

some of their descendants

reached Britain.

What sort of people was it

who did this?

Did they have clothes of any kind

or were they covered in hair?

Do we know what they look like?

We actually know very little,

but the species of human in Europe

at that time was Homo Antecessor.

They would have looked very similar

to ourselves.

Apart from slight different

facially.

But it's a guess

whether they were hairy or not?

It's a guess as to whether they were

hairy or had extra body fat to cope

with these cold winters.

Yeah, yeah.

By 500,000 years ago,

humans in Britain were capable

of crafting hand-axes like

the one found at Cerney Wick.

We know that they're hunting

by this point,

and they're certainly butchering

a range of different deer

and probably larger animals as well.

And one of the important things is,

if you're a hunter,

you get to the carcass first.

The hide is intact.

It hasn't been chewed to bits

by the hyenas

or the other carnivores

or the big cats.

And that hide, you would almost

certainly use

for either clothing or shelter

to help you cope

with those cold winters.

Humans first used fire in Africa

and, by 400,000 years ago,

they were using it in

Northern Europe as well.

This is burnt flint. It's a block of

flint that shattered under heat.

What we think we're dealing with

is a small campfire

which has all kinds of benefits.

It's not just warmth, it's not just

keeping away the big cats.

It's also a hub for social life.

It extends your daylight hours

into the night.

It means you begin to tell stories.

It's all part of

the development of language

and those all-important social bonds

that make us human.

You paint a very, very convincing

picture, actually,

and anyone who has sat by a fire

knows how hypnotic it can be.

Yes. Just sitting there watching

the flames.

Yeah... yeah.

That's a very exciting picture.

By 250,000 years ago,

Levallois flakes appear like

the ones that Karl had showed us.

Here we have these carefully

crafted points.

And this is a massive step forward

in terms of technology.

So where does our site fit in?

I've brought Sally

and Neville's stone tool.

Now this,

which I know you haven't

seen before,

was found alongside this mammoth

which we have been excavating.

What does that tell you about dating

or indeed anything else?

Well, it's undoubtedly a hand-axe

and very typical

of early Neanderthals,

quite similar to some of these.

I gather that the site dates

to roughly about 200,000 years ago.

So it would actually be contemporary

with these Levallois points.

But it's very different.

Here we have a traditional hand-axe.

So what's going on?

One idea is that you've got

different populations coming in

from different parts of Europe

with different technologies.

Another idea might be that maybe

you've got

a residual population in Britain,

in western Britain,

who are still making hand-axes.

We're still talking

about Neanderthals?

We're still talking

about Neanderthals.

Stone tools like these

reveal in detail

the history of the occupation of

these islands by human ancestors.

At least four different kinds

of human beings occupy them.

The stone tools and the dating of

our site both suggest

that the humans who were living

there were, in fact, Neanderthals.

To find out more about them,

Ben is meeting anthropologist

Ella Al-Shamahi.

So our ancestors and the ancestors

of Neanderthals were in Africa

and, then, at some point,

a group of them left

and we don't know where

and we don't know when.

But they became Neanderthals.

We have sites all the way

as far as Siberia

and then we have a whole pile

of sites in Europe,

doesn't mean that

they're a European species,

it just means that a lot

of the archaeologists

are actually in Europe and were

digging in their own backyards.

We've got this massive array,

actually, of Neanderthals

in this whole region.

And if you look at that region,

that's a number

of different environments

and a number of different climates,

as well.

And do we know what they

looked like?

Yeah. So Neanderthals

were very similar to us,

but there were

crucial differences.

So, for example, we know that

Neanderthals, on average, were,

well, they were shorter.

So male Neanderthals would have come

in at about five-foot four

or five-foot five.

They were also really stocky.

So we know that our site

at Cerney Wick

is about 200,000 years old.

How much do we know what life would

have been like for those people?

It would have been hard.

The interesting thing is

the date of that,

because we know that, pretty soon

after, you're looking at

a massive ice age that comes in,

a really, really cold spell,

and Neanderthals pretty much

disappear from the map in Britain

for well over 100,000 years.

So, potentially, what you're looking

at there

with your site is some of the last

Neanderthals in Britain

before that really cold phase.

It's not going to be good for them.

Back at the site,

the team is finding that nearly

all the tusks and bones

are lying in a single layer

of sediment,

suggesting the mammoths all died

around the same time.

What could have killed a group of

mammoths in such a short period?

We can trace this line pretty much

all the way round to

the tusk on the far right now.

So they're all...

..it's all formed at the same time.

And we can't see flooding?

I'm trying to think what is forcable

enough to move a tusk.

No. There's nothing.

This is weird, it really is.

There's not enough mud. There's not

enough... There's no flood.

No. They just died in this area

for some reason. Yeah.

Ben is doubtful that

the mammoths got stuck in the mud.

The mud's deep, but it's not up to

a mammoth's armpits deep.

Disease? I mean, there's nothing

really in terms of modern relatives,

the elephants, that would kill

a whole group that quickly

in one site at one time

to explain this.

And we've got adults

and juveniles as well.

So it's not the classic

elephant graveyard

all being left in one site either.

And it leaves this idea,

this possibility that it was people.

So were they chasing them in?

Were they corralling them somehow?

Were they...?

I don't know.

But that's almost weirder

because I can't imagine quite early

Neanderthal people

bringing down a bunch of mammoths

cos these things were tonnes

of anger and intelligence.

Evidence suggesting that

Neanderthals

could successfully hunt mammoths is

extremely rare.

But this is the Island of Jersey

and, here at La Cotte de St. Brelade,

piles of mammoth bones have been

found that suggest that Neanderthals

may indeed

have been killing mammoths here.

Archaeologist Matt Pope has been

studying the site for years.

Our first glimpse of La Cotte de St.

Brelade towering up above us.

Oh, wow.

It's like this huge cathedral

fortress, isn't it? It's beautiful.

We can see a lot of the site

from here.

The main granite structure.

The arch that takes you through to

the north ravine

and in front of us

the west ravine,

the main open space.

The site has been investigated

since 1881.

And, over the years, archaeologists

excavated down into the ravine.

At two levels, they discovered

heaps of bones

of butchered mammoths.

The mystery is how these bones

got there.

An original explanation,

and a very good one,

was that the mammoth were all herded

together by Neanderthal hunters

and driven over the cliffs

to their death. So you imagine...

From right up there?

Right up there.

That's quite a thought to think of,

a whole herd of mammoths coming

cascading over the edge

right there.

It's a good theory

but it's not a very good headland

for actually concentrating a herd.

There is simply no way

you could funnel

the mammoth into this ravine,

they'd be splitting off into

all different directions.

We've been recently relooking

at those bone heaps

and looking at the evidence

and we put forward

an alternative idea.

And that idea is that these

bone heaps didn't form

in one go, in mass kills.

Actually, they formed over

a long period of time.

The hunting was taking place out

here on the surrounding landscapes.

They were bringing

the bones back.

And, then, over time, they put these

heaps of bone together.

And this whole area,

as we look out now,

is this beautiful coastline

that stretches out to

the Channel here.

But this would have all been one

big grassy plain.

We've got the seabed

landscape mapped.

And that's an amazing landscape

for intercepting game.

There's little cul-de-sacs

where you get dead ends

and you could control game.

And we know from other

Neanderthal sites where

hunting is taking place,

they love landscapes in which

they control game.

Probably the whole

Neanderthal community would be

involved in hunting -

corralling, controlling, moving,

isolating particular members

of a herd.

Most archaeologists now think that

the Neanderthals were capable

of hunting large prey like mammoths,

as they seem

to have done in Jersey.

But it would be much harder

to trap them on

the flat grasslands of Cerney Wick.

Perhaps the river might have

slowed the mammoths down.

But how would the Neanderthals

have killed them?

Wooden spears may well

have been used.

Wood, of course, rots away quickly,

so we're very unlikely

to find one. But there are some.

In 1911, in Essex,

a wooden spear tip was found in

waterlogged soil.

And, in 1948,

stronger evidence

of spear hunting was uncovered -

a spear was found within

the fossilised ribs of

a straight-tusked elephant.

Then, in 1995,

at a mine in Schoningen in Germany,

ten miraculously well-preserved

Neanderthal spears were found lying

among the skeletons

of around 50 horses -

the oldest complete prehistoric

hunting weapons ever found.

Archaeologists had assumed these

early hunters thrust

their spears into

the flanks of prey at close range.

But is it possible that

Neanderthals at

Cerney Wick threw their spears long

distances at dangerous animals,

like mammoths?

To find out,

we asked a wood carver

to make exact replicas of

the Schoningen spears from

spruce - the same shape,

weight and type of wood

as the ancient spears.

Hi, guys.

We've brought you some spears.

Annemieke Milks is

an investigator

of Neanderthal hunting methods.

She wants to see how well

these replica

Neanderthal spears will perform in

the hands of Bekah Walton

and Harry Hughes -

two of Britain's

leading javelin throwers.

I'm really curious to see what

an experienced thrower

makes of how they feel.

They are the right length compared

to like a normal spear.

Yeah, the balance is really good.

They're surprisingly similar to

a normal javelin, actually.

Yeah, really surprised

at how far they're flying!

I won't be that far!

Fantastic.

The spears fly well.

So Annemieke now wants

to test if they can be used

with real accuracy, to hit a target.

We want to know -

can you two kill that mammoth

silhouette for us, please?

Shall we give it a go? Let's go.

Oh!

HE LAUGHS

First time.

These spears are flying true.

They're hitting it

every single time.

On a mammoth,

that target zone

would be much larger.

Up until fairly recently,

most people were arguing that

Neanderthals were only capable

of hunting at immediate distances.

And this shows that their technology

was capable of distance hunting.

Oh!

HE LAUGHS

Brilliant.

OK, big question of the day.

At our site, is there

any chance that our

Neanderthals could have been

hunting mammoths, do you think?

Given the fact that we have

a whole load of evidence that

the spears are functional weapons,

both as thrusting weapons

and as throwing weapons,

and that we see this evidence

of exploitation

of mammoth, I think

it's very much in

the realm of possibility that

mammoths were being hunted by

Neanderthals with spears like these.

So Neanderthals could possibly

have hunted mammoths at

Cerney Wick over 200,000 years ago.

But, in the millennia that followed,

both the Neanderthals and

the steppe mammoths disappeared.

Neanderthals resettled in Britain

around 60,000 years ago.

But our own species,

Homo sapiens,

arrives soon after that.

And evidence of

the presence of

Neanderthals vanishes.

It might be that

we out-competed them,

right, we were just better

at using the landscape

and resources.

One of the things that we know

is that they lived in small,

isolated populations.

That is not going to do your

gene pool any good at all.

There's even an argument

that they're still

with us today.

Me and you will have about

2% Neanderthal DNA in us.

And that's because our

ancestors, multiple times,

it seems,

interbred with Neanderthals.

So, actually, the end of the story

isn't completely tragic

because it turns out

there's a little bit of them...

Still here. In us, yeah.

Back at the site at Cerney Wick,

there's excitement as they assess

their haul of flint tools.

SHE LAUGHS

Are you OK? Breathe.

Wow. I think you forgot to breathe.

This lovely little flake.

So you can see it's got

a little point where they hit it

with a stone hammer to remove it.

It's perfect.

And that was the first hint that

you found? That's the first one.

Yeah. So there was

a party straight after that?

And then the next one we found...

Oh, my goodness.

..is this beautiful scraper edge.

Typically, we think, you know,

you would have held it like this,

they would have pulled

the fat off of the hide.

It's really quite impressive.

We've got these five flint tools

all from the same area,

all finely worked,

all really, really clear.

And that's quite exciting

and quite rare.

I mean, it's really easy

to say, "Oh, five things.

"That's not many." But, actually,

when we're talking about

200,000 years ago,

we might only be finding

one or two things in

a site which has been

excavated for decades.

On the mammoth leg bone

they found next to the flints,

they've seen scratch marks that

could provide evidence of butchery.

We see little marks

and nicks in the top.

Two lovely parallel lines.

There's one slightly longer.

There's another one,

just a short one, just in beside it.

And it's really tempting

to call them cut marks,

but we'll have to get it back into

the lab to actually determine.

It's like a really big whodunnit,

isn't it?

So did they all die of a disease?

Was there a massive flood that

came in, or were we hunting them?

Having worked with elephants

in the wild,

I think possibly a juvenile, very,

very young one might have

just got stuck in the mud.

It panicked the group.

Things went really badly,

really quickly.

And we came along as scavengers

and possibly found the world's

biggest buffet lying there for us.

We were just opportunists.

I think we were opportunists.

Well, I just love the idea

that the, you know,

Neanderthals are sitting

on the ridge over the far end,

hiding amongst the tall grass.

And then mammoths are coming down

to the water

and they're panicking them.

The Neanderthals come in

and they take advantage

of the mammoths,

they sort of start butchering them

and taking away

their nice meat for meals.

Isn't it wonderful to think that

the last time someone sat

exactly on this spot in

a little group

with that stone tool in their hands

was 200,000 years ago

as a mammoth's lying just

over there? Wow.

And here we are talking about it...

They were about to have their lunch.

..hundreds of thousands

of years later.

It's quite poignant, isn't it?

Absolutely. It really is.

As the excavation comes to an end...

..Ben and I survey

the whole collection of flint tools.

Some of these,

the one you've got in

the far corner there, are scrapers.

Well, hang on,

let me have a look at that.

That someone's very delicately

taken the edge off.

Yes. You can see?

Yes, yes, you can.

Now, these would have been

used for cleaning skins,

taking fat off skin in order

to preserve the skin,

but also taking little bits of meat

from the bone as well.

Yeah.

So what we have as well,

if you've got your hand lens.

Yeah. There are tiny, well,

quite indistinct little marks

along this bone here,

if you can see just there.

Oh, there, yes, absolutely.

There's definite, well,

there's strong evidence

that there is

a cut-mark series along here.

This is, we think,

evidence of people accessing

the animals in this area

and using them for their own food,

for fuel, for warmth.

Does that make you think

that this site was a camp?

I would find it very, very difficult

to believe that these animals

that weighed tonnes and tonnes

and tonnes wouldn't have offered

this wonderful opportunity to camp

there for at least weeks or months.

It's really bringing

this site to life.

This isn't a table of bones.

This is a point in history

where something happened.

Peering back 200,000 years,

it's hard

to know exactly

what happened at our site.

But the evidence that has

now been uncovered paints

a tantalising picture

of Ice Age Britain.

An ancient River Thames

flowing through grassland.

A group of some of the last

steppe mammoths in Britain.

And Neanderthals using flint tools

to butcher mammoth meat.

Whether or not they hunted

the mammoths requires more evidence,

but, at this site,

it certainly looks

as if something extraordinary

happened -

Neanderthals feasting on mammoth

on the banks of the River Thames.

At the end of the dig

and before the area

is flooded again,

we invite Sally and Neville

to return to the site

so that we can show them what

the scene might once

have looked like.

We've prepared something

where you don't have

to use your imagination

to visualise this area.

If I give these to you.

Thank you! Put them on.

Make sure they're comfy. And enjoy.

Righty-ho.

Ee! Mammoth!

THEY LAUGH

Oh, that is just incredible!

Oh, my God, that's amazing!

The finds at this remarkable

site have given us

a rare glimpse of early Britain...

..a time when humans

were fully immersed in the wild,

living as part of nature.

It's thought that Neanderthals may

have been around

for some 400,000 years.

Their survival relied on

their understanding of

the natural world.

Whether our own species can thrive

for quite as long

remains to be seen.