A History of Ancient Britain (2011–…): Season 1, Episode 2 - Age of Ancestors - full transcript

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This is the story
of how Britain came to be,

of how our land and its people

were forged over thousands of years
of ancient history.

This Britain is a strange
and alien world,

a world that contains the hidden story
of our distant, prehistoric past.

The occupation of Britain
began with hunters

battling for survival
through the Ice Age.

It's fantastic, after 14,000 years,

to get a glimpse of the way
at least one individual was thinking.

And continued into a new age
that came after the ice.



Instead of hunting
mammoth and reindeer in the snow,

he hunted red deer in the wild wood.

Now, the journey continues,

with the next chapter in our epic story.

Nothing like this
had ever been seen before in Britain.

The invention of farming,

and the massive social revolution
that came with it.

A brave, new world that shaped our land
and the way we lived,

forever.

I'm going back 10,000 years
to a wild and untamed Britain.

The Ice Age was over
and a new Britain had emerged,

blanketed with trees.
Birch, alder, hazel and, finally, oak.

Across the whole of our land,

perhaps no more than a few thousand
nomadic hunters lived



by drawing everything they needed
from that landscape.

They had flint for tools,
red deer provided meat,

antler for picks and harpoons
and needles,

hides for shelters and clothes.

These people
didn't just live close to nature,

they were part of nature.

Ten thousand years ago,

Britain was still attached
to mainland Europe

as it had been throughout the Ice Age.

Now, though, sea levels were rising
and a new Britain was emerging.

Gradually, Britain
was becoming an island.

Much of the land that had been home

to nomadic hunters
for thousands of years

was disappearing beneath the waves.

Here on the south coast,
just off the Isle of Wight,

is a relic of the ancient world,

evidence of people who lived here
just as all this was becoming sea.

Ten thousand years ago,
there was no Isle of Wight.

It was part of the English mainland
to the north,

and still joined to northern Europe
and France to the south.

And all of that out there,
The Solent, was dry land.

Which should mean,

out there, underneath the water
are the relics of a lost world,

and of the people who lived on it.

It's a world that's being explored
by archaeologist Garry Momber,

and I'm going to join him.

I'm about to go back to a time when

rising sea levels
were turning land into tidal marsh,

when Britain was an island
in the making.

The site is 8,000 years old,

a time archaeologists
call the Mesolithic,

or Middle Stone Age.

It's really opening a picture
of Mesolithic Period

that we're not getting
from sites on land.

So, when the sea level's lower
further back in time,

and we're finding
the well-preserved remains.

So, it's actually the sea that's
going to make it awkward for us,

is what has preserved
what we're gonna see.

If it wasn't for the sea,
uh, it wouldn't be there.

We're doing a final diver check!

Everything okay?

Divers ready for the water.

Once, this was home to a coastal
community of hunter-gatherers,

living a way of life that had barely
changed for thousands of years.

What's been discovered here
is more than an ancient hunting camp.

It's the oldest boat-building yard
in the world.

And it contains fragile evidence

of the sophistication of the people
who once lived here.

- That was fantastic!
- It was.

I can stay down there for hours
when it's like that.

So, this piece of timber is how old?
I mean, since it was worked.

It's over 8,000 years old.

It's come up in association
with other bits and pieces,

and one piece of timber in particular,
which we believe,

may be part of a log boat.

- See those grooves?
Uh-huh.

How clearly defined they are?

So, that's wood-working,
that's not natural erosion?

No, that's wood-working.

That's obviously part of something,
with the grooves either side.

- Someone, 8,000 years ago...
- We'll get more evidence.

Was working with a stone tool
to create these grooves.

As a general rule,

you just don't see organic material
coming out of Mesolithic sites.

You get the stone tools

but to see what those stone tools
were being used for,

it's the other half of the equation.

It's pretty unique and very special.

The log boat
is an extraordinary insight

into the lives of the hunters
who once lived here.

Mesolithic life might have been nomadic,
but it was largely carried out

around the shore lines
of Britain's coasts and rivers.

The forested land of the interior
was a dangerous, forbidding world.

But all that was about to change.

And all because of these
tiny grains of barley.

Like The Solent boat builders,
these are around 8,000 years old.

But these aren't from the Isle of Wight.

These are from more than 2,000 miles
away to the southeast,

what's now Syria.

This is evidence of a new way of living.
A world not of hunting, but of farming.

When this technology arrived in Britain,

it would nudge us
towards a whole new era in our history,

what we call the Neolithic,
the New Stone Age.

By producing food,

farming communities
could provide for bigger families,

more children.

And that meant better chances
of survival for the whole group.

Instead of hunting the wild herds,

now, farmers had new,
domesticated breeds of cattle and sheep.

Instead of gathering
wild nuts and berries,

farmers could grow
most of what they needed from seed.

The Neolithic revolution

was to utterly change the way we thought
about food and survival

but it was much, much more than that.

It was also to profoundly alter
our sense of ourselves as human beings,

as part of the natural world.

In a sense,
as well as domesticating livestock

we were also domesticating ourselves.

This revolution,
when it finally reached our shores,

would change everything.

It would change the land,
the things we ate,

it would change
our relationship with time.

It would change our beliefs,

and the way we understand
our place in the universe.

This change, the jump to farming,

was the single greatest
social revolution there's ever been.

To try and understand what happened

when the radical,
new world of agriculture

collided with the ancient world
of the hunter,

I'm leaving England behind,
and crossing the Channel to France.

By 5,000 BC, Neolithic culture
was spreading into western Europe.

For the hunting communities
of northern France,

the new ways
must have been completely baffling.

In Brittany,
there's a unique set of monuments,

line upon line
of ancient standing stones.

These weren't erected
by Neolithic farmers,

but by Mesolithic hunters,

just as the first farmers
started appearing on their doorstep.

This place is just extraordinary.

I've known about it for years,

I've seen photographs of it
countless times,

but this is my first visit,

and the impact of the stones
is just breathtaking.

Everywhere you look,
there's more of them.

They're in every direction,
line after line of them.

And you look at any one of them,
they weigh at least tens of tons.

Some of them look
as if they weigh even more!

They completely dominate the landscape
everywhere you look.

We use "extraordinary"
to describe a lot of things

but a place like this
really deserves the word.

What we're looking at
is the result of a collision,

not just of cultures,

but of two completely different
belief systems.

All of this might be the result

of a monumental tipping point
in human history.

The hunters hauled the stones into place
to demonstrate their strength

in the face of people
they didn't understand.

But theirs was the old world.

In just a few hundred years,
Neolithic culture took over,

and many of these great standing stones

became building material
for something new,

Neolithic stone tombs.

Archaeologist Serge Cassen
has studied them for over 20 years.

Is there a connection between

the change from lines of stones
to tombs like this,

and the change to farming?

Yes, it is probably linked
with this new process,

this new economy, this full Neolithic,

where life of animals, life of plants

are very important
inside this life cycle.

Inside one tomb,
excavated by Serge,

this decisive fork in history is marked
by some remarkable rock art.

So, these... These are the
old-style, Mesolithic hunting weapons?

Almost like a primitive boomerang...

- Yes.
- To kill birds.

- Exactly.
- Okay.

So, this is the old world.
Very male, very phallic.

Yes, exactly.

One carving in particular
brings it all home.

We can observe, now, carvings.

- So it's another throwing stick.
- Yes, the same shape,

the same weapon, the same representation
and under,

we have the Polish axe

from the Neolithic period
with this handle.

- So, this triangular shape...
- Yes.

- That's the Neolithic axe.
- Exactly, exactly.

So, you've got
the new technology of the axe...

Mmm-hmm.

On top of, and even cutting into

the old world of the throw stick.

Yes. Yes.

So, this is almost the moment...
Or it's depicting the moment

when the old world
and the new world collide,

and, after that collision,
the new world is dominant over the old.

Exactly.

We may never fully understand
a site like Carnac.

We might never hear

what those hunters
were trying to say with the stones.

But to me, apart from anything else,
they are a statement of defiance.

They're saying to the farmers,

"Come in. Bring your crops,
bring your animals

"but be aware that we are here.
That we've always been here.

"We're part of this landscape
and we belong to it."

They're saying,
"We may not last forever,

"our way of life may not last forever,

"but we will be remembered.
Not just for now but for all time."

The age of the Mesolithic
was coming to an end.

By 4,500 BC,

the Neolithic revolution
had conquered almost all of Europe,

but, around here,
it came to a halt because of that.

Farming might have swept across
the land mass of Europe,

but the last few watery miles
presented a different challenge.

It would take hundreds of years,

but that final leap across the Channel
and into Britain was inevitable.

Exactly how the New Stone Age
came to Britain,

and what the local hunters made of it,

remains one of the greatest mysteries
in all of our prehistory.

The first farmers
must have come to Britain by boat,

bringing their families,
domestic cattle and grain.

These were pioneers
undertaking a perilous journey

to a new and unknown land.

And direct evidence
of some of those first farmers

can be found here in Kent.

Wait till you see what's up here.

Nothing like this
had ever been seen before in Britain.

This is one of the very earliest
stone tombs.

This is Neolithic behaviour.

The people who built this

were amongst the first
to come and farm our land.

And we're talking about 6,000 years ago.

Today, the rich soil of Kent
is still prime farming land.

And, together with its proximity
to mainland Europe,

you can see the attraction
for the earliest farmers coming over.

Of course, you have to remember
that 6,000 years ago,

when the first people arrived
with the intention of farming here,

all of that would have been woodland.

So, first of all,
they had to clear the trees.

Cut them down, burn them down,

and then they had to build
their homesteads.

I can only imagine
what the local hunters thought.

Unlike the Mesolithic hunters,

who hugged the coast line
and river valleys,

the first farmers began to break
into the interior of Britain,

and what they found
was a wild and wooded place.

For thousands of years,
forests of oak and birch had grown,

blanketing the landscape in green.

This was home to red deer and elk,

in the undergrowth, bears and wild pig.

But this wild and ancient Britain
was about to be transformed,

forever.

The new farmers were technologists.

This wasn't living off the land,
like the Mesolithic hunters,

but shaping it, adapting it,
making it work for them.

These people weren't simply
fitting into the world alongside nature,

they were going to rule over it.

Incredibly, some of those pioneers,

the very mothers and fathers
of this brave new world, have survived.

Around 17 individuals were interred
in that Neolithic tomb in Kent,

and these are the bones
of just a few of them.

There's a whole age range
represented amongst the dead.

These pelvis bones here, this is a baby,
and an older child,

through to older people.

And old people in Neolithic times
is somebody my age.

Somebody in their 40s
would be pensionable.

And we often talk
about the Neolithic revolution,

and the farming revolution

and the effect it had on Britain
and on the landscape.

But what you also see here,
and you have to remember all the time,

are real people.

This is part of a man's skull.

These individuals are part
of the most profoundly affecting

living experiment
that's ever been attempted.

They trust their future

to planting a few seeds in the spring
in the hope of a harvest,

in the autumn.

They keep some animals
in the hope that that meat will be

enough to sustain them
and their families.

It's a gamble.

So, whatever else you might want
to imagine about this man,

he was certainly brave.

It's traditionally been thought

that farming gradually spread
north and west,

from its first foothold
in the southeast.

But new evidence
suggests this could be wrong.

This is a piece of a bone
from a domesticated cow.

A classic Neolithic indicator.

What makes this one unique, however,

is that it wasn't found
in the southeast of England,

but in the deep southwest of Ireland,

and it may date
from as early as 4,300 years BC.

That's hundreds of years

before the first trace
of the Neolithic lifestyle in Kent.

And, so far, no one has been
able to explain what it's doing there.

And the unexplained cow bone
isn't the only evidence

that's challenging the accepted story

of how Neolithic culture
spread through Britain.

As far north as Orkney,
there's also evidence of early farmers,

in the shape of prehistoric voles.

So, here's a group of skulls.

You can see characteristic skull shapes.

This guy here is the field vole.

This is the vole that's found
most commonly in the UK mainland.

This guy here
is actually much more interesting.

This is the vole that's found in Orkney

but is not found, importantly,
in the UK and Ireland.

Microtus arvalis,
the Orkney vole,

only lives on a few islands
off the north-east tip of Scotland.

The evidence of ancient vole bones

shows that they first appeared at least
five and a half thousand years ago.

The question is, "How did they arrive?"

The closest relatives
that we have, genetically,

to the Orkney vole population
are from the Rhine Valley in Germany,

and maybe, uh, in Brittany.

It's clear the voles aren't swimming
from Europe to Orkney on their own,

which means that humans are involved.

It's thought the voles came
amongst grain carried by early farmers.

Not from the British mainland,
but direct from France.

It seems that the early settlers in Kent
might represent only one route

Neolithic culture took from Europe.

There are also
those earlier Neolithic expeditions

to south-west Ireland,

and the mysterious
vole-carrying voyages direct to Orkney.

What's emerging is something
much more complex and subtle

than the traditional view
of the Neolithic revolution.

Many people would have continued
with a nomadic or semi-nomadic lifestyle

supported by a few domesticated animals.

And that way of life
would have continued

for hundreds of years at least.

And then, there were the settled farmers
themselves.

They would have continued to hunt
to supplement their diet.

However people took up the new ways,

it's now thought
that Neolithic culture, in some form,

swept across the whole of Britain
in just a few generations.

But, with just a few fragments
of evidence from 6,000 years ago,

exactly how it all began
might forever remain a mystery.

What's more,
across the whole of Britain,

there's precious little evidence of how
those early farmers actually lived.

Which is why
I'm leaving our shores yet again,

headed this time for Ireland.

Welcome to the west of Ireland,

one of the wildest, most spectacular
landscapes I've ever seen.

In Britain,
archaeologists have only discovered

fragments of early farming.

But here, something's been preserved
on a truly massive scale.

What's special about this place
is the ground.

This landscape is blanketed in peat bog,

slowly-decaying vegetation
that builds up layer upon layer.

It takes thousands of years.

But what's drawn me here
isn't the bog itself,

but what's hidden beneath it,

as much as four metres beneath my feet.

You just drive it in.

Oh, it's like a knife through butter.

Archaeologist Seamus Caulfield
has been probing this bog

with simple metal rods
for over 40 years.

Just about here
and put it in straight. Vertical.

Yeah.

He's using them
to mark ancient stone walls

made by the Neolithic farmers
who once lived here.

So that's the old ground surface
coming on and then...

- Starting to come up a little bit...
- And you're hitting stone

and you can hear
that you're hitting stone now.

- Yeah.
- Yes, it's beginning to look like it.

- That's amazing.
- Listen to that again. Give it...

Yeah.

Knock, knock. Yes.

Five and a half thousand years ago,
someone lifted the stone in place

and now we're hearing it
for the first time.

So, how much have you found?
How extensive is the wall?

Something over 100 linear kilometres,
at this stage.

A hundred kilometres?

- Yeah, yeah.
- You're joking.

That is... That is jaw dropping.
The scale of that.

- Five and a half thousand years ago.
- The scale of it is, yes.

It's just sitting there
under the bog, as it was.

By probing
every inch of this land,

Seamus and his teams of helpers

have revealed far more
than some buried walls.

What they've found
is the biggest Neolithic field system

in the entire world.

Cattle enclosures that stretch
almost as far as the eye can see.

What are the fields for?

It's a dairying economy.

They have to wean the calves
from the milk cows.

They have to separate the dry stock
from the milking animals.

Uh, there's... Herd management
is what's involved in these...

So, they need lots of separate areas
to keep bull calves and milking cows,

- and all the rest of them.
- Yes.

Typically in Ireland,
the weather turns foul.

But I'm determined to uncover
some of this wall for myself.

And here on the bog,
there is only one way to do it

Clean the blade.

Is this all just used locally, Seamus?

- Is this just for folk to burn and...
- Yeah.

That's 90% water at the moment,
but it dries out,

and that's the fuel we use all the time.

- So it's all for fuel?
- Yeah.

All I can say is,
"Don't give up the day job."

You're right!

And look, there it is. Look at that!

That is the wall. That's amazing.

Look, come here. Look at this. Look.

That's the top of a wall
that's about a metre high,

extends down about a metre
beneath my feet.

Now, the sun has risen and set

two million times since these stones
last saw the light of day.

The last hands

to touch these before mine,

were those of a Neolithic farmer
five and a half thousand years ago.

Now, even on a foul day like today,
and this is truly foul,

the sight of these, the touch of these,
makes it worthwhile.

- Doesn't it? Just about.
- It does.

It does. Yes, it still does.

Amazing.

The C?ide Fields structures
are a hidden wonder of the world.

But the walls aren't the only secret.

Because the peat itself can reveal

just what this world was like
five and a half thousand years ago.

And even what was being farmed.

- I think you've got the top of the bog.
- Yeah.

The peat is preserving the record

of human activity, vegetation,
et cetera, through time.

So, it is this... It is like
a history book of thousands of years.

By studying pollen grains
preserved in the peat,

Michael O'Connell can identify what
was growing in the ancient landscape.

This particular pollen grain
comes from pine

and pine was the dominant tree
in the C?ide Fields before farmers came.

At the early part of the Neolithic,

the pollen totally changed from being

tree-pollen dominated
to being herb and grass dominated.

The change to grassland pollen

shows that the trees were cut down
and replaced with pasture

for grazing cattle.

But in amongst the grassland pollen,

Michael has made
an even more startling discovery.

We were really excited
about these results.

This particular sample has quite
a number of cereal pollen,

and, of course, this is really important

because it shows wheat
and maybe also barley were grown.

So, this was a really interesting
and significant find.

Cereals and domestic animals
transformed society.

But there was also
a third Neolithic invention,

pottery.

Together, all three created
a completely new diet.

A feature of Neolithic life
studied by Jacqui Wood.

This is actually just wheat.

- It's just boiled.
- All right.

Another new thing
for the Neolithic.

- Some bread.
- A flat bread.

- It's just about right.
- It's very... That's so flavoursome.

Now, this is a bit
of prehistoric stew.

So it's slow cooking is Neolithic.

Slow cooking, yeah, absolutely.

Butter was a big thing in the Neolithic.

Bread and butter. What could be more
quintessentially British?

I'll tell you what.
Absolutely everything is so substantial.

You wouldn't need much of anything,
would you, really?

No.

Sticks to your ribs and everything else.

The new food
might have seemed good,

but human remains show evidence
of farmers being less healthy

than hunters with their diet
of fresh fish and red deer.

No more, I beg of you.

And there was another price to pay.

- This is actually a real quern.
- Mmm-hmm.

A Neolithic quern.

So, this is the genuine article,
not a...

This is the genuine article.
So, if you put some grain on first.

- So, this is some 1,000 years old.
- That's right.

So, what's the action? Just...

Spread, up and down like that.

But that sound is the sound
of the Stone Age, basically.

I'm doing this for a minute.

But you were put to work like this,
you know, on a daily basis,

what kind of physical toll do you think
this kind of work had on people?

We can actually see
that it did have a toll

because in the archaeology,
they actually find some skeletons

where the actual parts of the vertebrae
are actually quite worn

because of repeatedly
doing this, grinding.

But you need to grind
for a good hour every day

to make enough bread for a family.

Every day.

- The daily grind, basically.
- The daily grind.

Despite all the individual
hardships it brought,

it was the sheer productivity of farming

that made it irresistible
as a survival strategy.

This is where our working lives began,

invented by the first farmers
of the Neolithic.

This was a point of no return.

Farming was productive.

So, people could have more children
and open up more land.

The population increased.

There quickly came a day
when they couldn't go back to hunting

even if they wanted to,

because there were simply
too many people around.

And it wasn't just the daily grind.

This new age would usher in the idea
of land ownership

and conflict.

The Neolithic would completely change
how we thought about ourselves

in this life, and the next

The Neolithic revolution
changed our mind set.

Not only towards work,

but the idea of the land
and our relationship to it

It changed our beliefs.

And evidence of these new beliefs
can be found in massive stone tombs,

some of which mark our countryside
even today.

One of the most impressive
is in Wiltshire.

This great, long mound
was created by digging

thousands of tons of chalk rubble
from ditches on either side.

Some of the stones weigh 40 tons,

and they were hauled here
from as much as a mile away.

This is the work of a whole community,
not just one family,

and its people for whom
the creation of this mattered

as much or more than anything else
they were doing.

And these were busy farmers.

This isn't just a tomb.

This isn't simply about
remembering a loved one.

This is about creating an entire world,

one built by the community of the living
for the community of the dead.

And wait till you see what's inside.

About 40 people were buried in here
around 3,600 BC,

over a period
of maybe just 25 years or so.

What we think happened
was when someone died,

if it was deemed appropriate
that they become part of this place,

then their body would be laid out,

maybe nearby, maybe even in here
in the passageway.

And, then, the natural process
of decomposition would begin

and animals and birds would remove
the flesh over a period of time.

And, then, once there was little
remaining but the skeleton,

the bones,

they would be gathered up
and placed in the chambers.

Now, there was a particular logic
to this place.

Old people and young people

in separate chambers,
on either side of the passageway.

And, then, further in,
maybe adult males and females,

again separated on either side
of the passageway.

And, then, all the way at the back,

just the remains of adult males.

They weren't laid out as individuals,
as intact skeletons.

You'd have a pile of skulls,

then a separate neat pile of vertebrae
and another pile of long bones.

And that was important,
because what's going on

is a process by which the loved ones
cease to be just individuals,

members of the community.

They become part
of one collective presence,

the ancestors.

Strangely though,
tombs like this weren't sealed,

but left open.

In some ways,
they were more akin to temples,

which you could enter to commune
with the spirits of the dead.

And imagine what that felt like

for people who truly believed

that their loved ones,
as well as the ancient dead,

were somehow in here.

That their will was in here.

And that they were watching them
and that they were aware.

So, you would come in here,
with great reverence and great respect,

with the hairs going up
on the back of your neck,

and all over your body,
as you wondered what would happen next.

But these great structures
also had an earthly fu nc tion.

All around us,
is rich and fertile farmland,

highly valued.

By building this here,
the people are laying claim to it.

This long barrow forged a permanent link
between the community, their ancestors,

and the fields
they had farmed for generations.

This is about the arrival
of something new in our history,

the concept of ownership.

But the notion of ownership,
the idea that a place, a territory,

belonged to the tribe
and their ancestors,

was to have consequences.

Up on top of this hill,

is the site
of one of the earliest examples

of a great watershed in British history,

armed conflict.

Look at that for a view.

That's the Severn Valley down there.

Over there, ghostly in the mist,
the Malvern Hills.

Over in that direction,
the Forest of Dean.

Beyond that, the Black Mountains,
and onwards into Wales.

That's modern-day Gloucester down there.

But, of course,
five and a half thousand years ago,

that landscape would've been
predominantly woodland,

with the occasional farmstead
and cleared field.

And, in a sense,
whoever controlled this high-ground,

controlled the landscape below.

So, if you wanted to lay claim
to all that valuable land,

you had to take this,
the top of Crickley Hill.

And what's been found up here,
is testament to that.

Look at these.

These are half a dozen flint arrowheads.

And they're from a collection of around
450 complete arrowheads or fragments

that were found scattered,
all across the top of Crickley Hill.

To my eye,

these are just the most
beautiful things.

They're so symmetrical,
so beautifully shaped.

Look at the...

Look at the profile of that.
Look how fine it is,

how much effort has gone into taking off
infinite numbers of tiny flakes

to produce that tear-shape arrowhead.

But as well as appreciating
the beauty of them...

And some of these could be jewellery.

As well as appreciating all of that,

you have to appreciate that this is also
evidence of the cruel intention to kill.

5,000 years ago,

the long-bow
was state-of-the-art technology.

So, what we've got here
is a Neolithic long-bow.

This particular piece of wood is ash.

It was cut down a year ago.

So, therefore,
it's not carrying too much moisture.

That makes it nice and springy.

Now, we've made a fairly heavy bow here.

If it bends and it works,

I hope your guy, Neil,
has got some strength behind him,

because this...

Is no kid's bow.

Pine resin makes a strong
Neolithic glue to fix the arrowheads.

And for the flights, crows'feathers.

So, that is ready to go.

In the attack on Crickley Hill,
the Neolithic bow proved decisive.

Right here,
five and a half thousand years ago,

the defenders were routed.

I'll show you how to use it and then
we'll see what you're like as an archer.

'Cause we're always looking
for good archers on English territory.

Not Scots, surely? You don't want that.

- Oh! Dead centre.
- So...

Right, I'll do the Robin Hood shot now.

- Let's see how you go.
- I'll split that shaft.

All right,
I think I'll go for three fingers.

- Righto.
- Okay.

Put some shoulder behind it.

Give me another arrow.

You go for it. I'm sure
there's a lucky one in here for you.

That looks more like it.
It's clearly the arrow that was wrong.

- Yeah.
- As opposed to my technique.

Oh.

Yes.

Even in the hands of a beginner,
this weapon is lethal.

An arrow fired from 30 metres
would've gone straight through

any medium-sized animal

Or human.

Right, Will. What's the damage?

Well, as I think you're going to see...

See, check that out,
right the way through.

And that's flesh and bones.

So, that's what these things
are capable of.

And, of course,
up here on Crickley Hill,

it was being used
against more than sides of pork.

Human beings were the prey that day.

You wouldn't want it in your leg,
would you?

I would not.

Back at the Natural History Museum,

there's direct evidence
of this violent world.

Look at this poor chap.

The condition of his teeth
suggests that he died

probably in his mid-twenties.
No older than that.

And he died because someone

smashed his skull in
with a blunt object.

Maybe a stone axe or a stone hammer.

And the wound was inflicted
with such force,

that it caused this fracture line

to radiate right round
to the other side of his skull.

He would've been killed instantly.

And the violence, at that time,
wasn't limited to the men.

This is a woman's skull,

and there's a wound here
towards the front.

And, then, much easier to see,

there's another dimpled wound
to the back of her head.

But she survived the attack
that caused these wounds.

We know she survived
because she lived long enough

for the wounds to heal over,

and she also lived long enough
to have lost all of her teeth

by the time
she finally gave up the ghost.

What we can say about this
is really quite shocking.

It means that if you lived in those
first centuries of the Neolithic,

at least between 4,000 and 3,000 BC,

people would've known about,
they would've witnessed

and they might even have experienced
extreme physical violence.

There was a lot of it about.

In just a few hundred years,
the population of Britain exploded,

from just a few thousand hunters
to perhaps 100,000 farmers.

As contact between groups
became more freguent,

people needed to find new ways
of coming to terms with it

without always killing one another.

They also had to lay the foundations
of a kind of local politics as well.

It was as if they were saying,

"It's not enough just to change
the way we live, the way we work.

"We'll have to invent society as well."

This need to cooperate, to get along,

gave birth to monuments
on a truly grand scale.

The very act of hundreds,

or even thousands
of people collaborating,

would've bound
Neolithic communities together.

The earthworks they created are so vast,

they remain etched into our landscape
even today,

despite the ravages of thousands
of years of wind and rain.

One of those giant monuments
can be found here, in Wiltshire.

The trouble is, it's so big,

that up close, you can't even see it.

I'm right in the middle of something
archaeologists call a "cursus".

This one is three kilometres long
and one hundred and fifty metres wide.

Some are even bigger.

To be honest, you could be forgiven
for walking right past it

without even noticing.

Down here, is the remains of a ditch.
It's very shallow now.

But it stretches
almost as far as the eye can see.

It's barely perceptible.

But in its original form,
it would've been quite distinct.

Chalky white soil
against the green of the grass.

And it would've marked out the interior
as a very long, thin, lozenge shape.

These were originally called cursuses

because they were thought to have been
the remains of Roman race tracks.

But, of course, we now know
that they're much, much older.

This thing was built
by Neolithic farmers, 3,500 BC.

Today, the only way
to really get a sense

of the shape of monuments like this,
is from the air.

Even from up here,
it's not that easy to see.

But after a while, you get your eye in
and you begin to see

what it is you're supposed
to be looking at.

From one end, the cursus can be seen
cutting through a bank of trees,

almost like a gigantic runway,

disappearing off into the distance.

What you're struck with, though,
more than anything,

is the scale of the thing.

And what hits you, is the level
of effort that was involved,

not to mention the sheer determination.

Of course, the big question
is what does the shape symbolise?

Is it a boundary?
Is it a processional way?

Is it even a narrow vessel
designed to contain the dead?

Perhaps, it's a bit
of all of those things.

But the simple truth is

we don't know.

But there are other monuments
we do know more about.

Massive earthworks,
known as causewayed enclosures.

And there's one!

Three concentric circles,
like three necklaces,

looped around the hill

Right down there.

These monuments are meeting points,
where people came for large gatherings,

perhaps at special times of the year.

For archaeologist Alasdair Whittle,

they reveal the beginning
of Stone Age society.

Causewayed enclosures
are very exciting places.

And all sorts of things go on at them.

So, they could, I don't know,
settle disputes

or meet husbands and wives,
and marry people off?

I think all of these things
would've gone on.

And do we have the artefacts?
Do we have the things left behind?

We have lots of artefacts.

That's one of the big things
about these sites,

that they're rich in material
and we have lots of artefacts.

So, here we've got

the top of the skull
and the horn course,

front level, as it's called,

of a domesticated cow or ox.

So, how old is that skull?

A little over
five and a half thousand years.

That's a hugely significant find
for me to see something like that.

You know, that's...
That's so early in the story of farming.

The thought that that beast
was walking the ground here

when this was a shining white monument,
looking out over woodland

- five and a half thousand years ago.
- Yes. And then it met its fate.

Perhaps it was sacrificed,
it was probably eaten.

Then we can look at this pot here.

And again, is this of a comparable age
to the ox bone?

This is the same age.

So, we're looking at about
five and a half thousand years old.

I mean,
it's so redolent of everything

that the Neolithic is about.

You know, the domesticated animals,
the new ceramic,

the new foods that were made possible
because of this.

I keep thinking of a time capsule.

Is this a conscious effort
for people to remember

where they came from,
how far they've come?

I think it is.
I think memory's very important.

In coming to terms with a huge change.

Coming to terms
with a really big change in existence,

which is being played out over these
opening centuries of the Neolithic.

The early monuments
of the New Stone Age

are about people coming to terms
with a whole new world.

Not only with each other,
but the land itself,

and their place within it

This place encapsulates
what these people, who lived in Britain,

these early farmers,
were trying to work out

and to understand.

And discoveries made here,
go some way towards summing it all up.

Look at this.

This is the ankle bone
of a domesticated cow.

It was found buried within the ditch

that encircles the topmost,
innermost part of this hill.

That's where all the pottery
was found as well, incidentally.

What it represents is the world

that the farmers were trying to create.

A safe, domesticated,
controllable world.

By contrast, look at this one.

This is the ankle bone of a wild cow,

an undomesticated animal.

You can see right away
how much bigger it is

than the bone from the domesticated cow.

Now, this wasn't found up here.

Instead, this was buried
right at the base of the hill.

Down there, out there,
is the dangerous world,

the wild world, the uncontrolled,
undomesticated world.

And to me, there's something
a little bit sad about that,

because it's the wild world

that the old way of life of the hunters
was so in tune with.

And yet, it was that world

that the farmers
were trying to be separate from,

to cut themselves off from.

Here, around 3,800 years BC,

the farmers were trying
to make sense of all of that

in their own minds.

Just where was the boundary
between the wild and the domestic?

Where had the brave, new world
that they'd created

actually brought them?

It's as though

they realised
that now they had made their bed,

and that they would have to lie in it.

And, to some extent, so must we.

Next time, my journey continues.

Of course, what everybody's
waiting for, is the sunrise.

As I discover a whole new age...

- Which one can I have?
- Take them all.

A time of elite travellers...

- To actually feel it working.
- Feel it.

I wanted to hear it,
I wanted to feel it.

Now, that's a bit good.

Vast, cosmic constructions...

I see why you don't have this place
open to the public, George.

Yeah.

And the very invention
of heaven itself.

When some people died,
they were to be sent to a new place,

a different place.

Not down into the earth,

but up into the sky.

Ripped By mstoll