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Documentary, BBC Operation Stonehenge What Lies Beneath 2of2
#OperationStonehenge #Documentary #Stonehenge
#OperationStonehenge #Documentary #Stonehenge
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00:00:00The megaliths of Stonehenge are Britain's most investigated ancient monument.
00:00:16Yet despite centuries of scrutiny,
00:00:20excavations,
00:00:23and theories,
00:00:26the big questions remain.
00:00:30What were its origins?
00:00:32How did it evolve over thousands of years?
00:00:37And which forces of nature and humanity inspired its creators?
00:00:46Now a group of experts have taken a high-tech approach to unlocking Stonehenge's secrets.
00:00:51The site like Stonehenge can only be understood by looking at the monuments around it and how that landscape's evolved.
00:01:05It's the first time we're not just seeing little islands of activity, but we get to see the big picture.
00:01:13The new data, supported by wider archaeological evidence, has thrown fresh light on 10,000 years of human progress.
00:01:23It's quite an achievement when you think that people excavating this were using stone and bone tools.
00:01:30Its ancient people were meticulous planners.
00:01:32This is really quite a big feature. It's clearly man-made.
00:01:38Profound believers.
00:01:40They had very peculiar rituals.
00:01:43Defleshment, cutting off heads.
00:01:48And fearless warriors.
00:01:49When things come to a boiling point, the violence that does break out could be very brutal.
00:01:56Just kill everything in front of you.
00:02:03In just five years, 21st century archaeology has achieved what conventional excavation would have taken a lifetime to complete.
00:02:14Revealing a picture of Stonehenge.
00:02:16Revealing a picture of Stonehenge.
00:02:20And its people.
00:02:23As never before.
00:02:46Recent times have seen intense levels of activity around the world's most famous prehistoric site.
00:03:01To solve the mysteries of the monument, the scientists have been using a novel strategy.
00:03:07Not just focusing on the iconic stones.
00:03:12They also investigated the wider landscape in which they sit.
00:03:18The thing with Stonehenge is if you visit it, you don't always get the sense of the enormity of the landscape.
00:03:24It's only when you get above or you get away from it that you can really get a sense of how everything sort of fits together.
00:03:34And really that's at the heart of the whole project.
00:03:37We're trying to look at the wider picture.
00:03:41To understand Stonehenge, we have to look at the entire landscape, both spatially but also through time.
00:03:46The most ambitious of these new studies is the Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project.
00:04:02Led by experts from Birmingham University and the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute in Austria.
00:04:08As people walk over the Stonehenge landscape, they're aware of Stonehenge, they may be aware of some of the larger monuments.
00:04:18But they don't appreciate that thousands of years of human occupancy in this landscape produces features that we simply do not know about.
00:04:29The project is using remote sensing technology to try and map that, to discover it and display it for the first time.
00:04:39With state-of-the-art remote sensing equipment, the team have mapped every structure, both visible and invisible, across ten square kilometres of the sacred site.
00:04:52We can do a virtual dig of this landscape and see what is hidden beneath the surface.
00:04:59With machines like this, we can come up with a picture which has a resolution of tens of centimetres.
00:05:05And this is something absolutely new.
00:05:16With all the scan data collated, the team have produced a multi-layered digital map that showed how the landscape developed over thousands of years.
00:05:25In order to understand Stonehenge, we have to look at the periods up to that construction, so going back a thousand years or more beforehand.
00:05:35And then only by doing that, and understanding how the landscape evolves, do we get a sense of why Stonehenge is where it is.
00:05:41The Hidden Landscapes Project's unprecedented big picture has revealed a remarkable world of hidden monuments.
00:05:52It was really quite exciting when we looked at this data for the first time.
00:05:55The team who was looking at it said, that looks like a henge, and that is important.
00:06:04As they analysed their data even further, they found new information about how the other monuments interconnect with Stonehenge.
00:06:12The architecture of Stonehenge doesn't exist in isolation.
00:06:17There is a form of connectivity in the landscape here that we had not realised before.
00:06:22The discoveries made by the Hidden Landscapes Project are backed by new finds from other research projects.
00:06:29Together, they are telling the full story of Stonehenge.
00:06:34The first signs of human activity in the Stonehenge area date back 10,000 years, to a period known as the Mesolithic.
00:07:01Around that time, three large totem-like poles were erected, 250 metres from where Stonehenge now stands.
00:07:14Their meaning and purpose has baffled experts since their discovery in 1966.
00:07:20Recently, at a site only two kilometres to the south-east, archaeologists have unearthed the first traces of people living in the same period.
00:07:39It's a find that may finally answer why Stonehenge is located where it is.
00:07:44Here's a section through one of the most interesting trenches dug in modern history.
00:07:55And, in fact, we have all of modern history in it.
00:07:58We've got a soil profile here which captures the very modern.
00:08:02This chalk layer is from the 1960s, dumped from the road that goes to Stonehenge.
00:08:05Underneath that, we have a cobbled platform surface which is post-medieval.
00:08:12We've got some soil build-up here.
00:08:14But it's this lower bit that's really fascinating and interesting.
00:08:18It's sealed by a cobbled surface, almost certainly put in by man sometime in prehistory.
00:08:24And that's brilliant because it's capped 14 centimetres of intact Mesolithic archaeology.
00:08:33Full of Mesolithic flint work and bone.
00:08:36And I actually can see there's a nice small piece here.
00:08:40Ah, yeah, that's a very nice piece.
00:08:43I think it's a little blade.
00:08:45The big question is, what is so special about this place that people are settling here, living here for a long time?
00:08:52The rich array of artefacts excavated from the site are striking clues as to what compelled these ancient people to camp here.
00:09:13This is just a sample of the amazing finds that we've got from this site.
00:09:18We've got quite domestic-looking tools.
00:09:19This type of thing would probably have been used to pierce holes in animal skin.
00:09:25We've also found much bigger tools.
00:09:27This is an absolutely brilliant tranchette axe.
00:09:31These things are the Porsche of the Mesolithic.
00:09:34Really top-quality flint used for making boats and chopping down trees.
00:09:38It's not just about stone and flint tools, though.
00:09:41We've got about 700 animal bones.
00:09:43And they're really big.
00:09:46These are from aurochs.
00:09:52These are three times the size of a normal cow.
00:09:56We have at least six aurochs in our assemblage.
00:09:59They must have been local.
00:10:02They're so big, it would have taken a big effort to have transported them a long way.
00:10:07So, these animals are probably around Amesbury and Stonehenge.
00:10:11Perhaps the people living all around where we are now are seeing these animals move across the landscape and getting opportunities to hunt them.
00:10:27The existence of a large clearing in otherwise dense forest made this a natural and bountiful hunting ground.
00:10:44One of the reasons why it was an open plain, perhaps, was because aurochs are such voracious eaters.
00:10:54They're like nature's vacuum cleaners.
00:10:57Any woodland or bush growth wouldn't have stood much of a chance if you had a large herd of animals moving through a place like this.
00:11:05As we move down in this landscape, we begin to be part of a funnel.
00:11:11It would be a brilliant place for hunter-gatherers to hide and observe the movement of these huge animals.
00:11:25Topographical scans have revealed the contours of this ancient landscape, features that Mesolithic hunter-gatherers could exploit.
00:11:45Where this side valley is steep, it's very likely that the animals will mass together and then panic and then bond.
00:11:55A clever, intelligent hunter-gatherer would almost certainly have had a strategy to position themselves at points where they knew these animals would come through the landscape.
00:12:10At that point, that is exactly the best place to take one down.
00:12:13At that point, that is exactly the best place to take one down.
00:12:17So we're starting to consider that in this bowl-like landscape, where you have this arrangement of small hillocks and side valleys, you may well have got a brilliant place to hunt.
00:12:45For David Jakes, the site held qualities that made it more than just a rich hunting ground.
00:13:01We're in a really extraordinary place here. I mean, this is almost like a time capsule.
00:13:25There's very little landscape change, extraordinarily, from the Mesolithic.
00:13:32So it's a special place.
00:13:36The unexpected discovery of a rare natural phenomenon may also explain the beginning of Stonehenge's mystical reputation.
00:13:54Well, something that's really interesting about this site is it appears that it's not all about the practical.
00:14:01We've noticed a really strange phenomenon with the flint.
00:14:08We've got a chemical reaction going on here.
00:14:11The flint is turning brown because there's traces of iron in the spring water.
00:14:16Now, that's typical in a lot of places on the edges of freshwater ponds and lakes and rivers.
00:14:23But there's something peculiar happening here.
00:14:26When a stone like this is pulled out of the water and it's kept out of the water for about two to three hours,
00:14:33something extraordinary happens.
00:14:37It turns into a really bright, almost sort of violent magenta pink.
00:14:46The remarkable change is triggered by rare algae in the spring water.
00:14:51But Mesolithic hunter-gatherers had no rational explanation for this vivid change in the flint.
00:15:10It would have been the most extraordinary, magical thing in the Mesolithic to see a transformation like this.
00:15:16They're living at a time where the colour palette is dominated by green and brown and black and white.
00:15:25Something as flamboyant as this would have given this particular area a real local signature.
00:15:33Something that would have meant this place to people.
00:15:37This is the place where memories and traditions start.
00:15:41Stonehenge isn't just a new build, it's in response to something.
00:15:46The magical pink flint and an abundant supply of meat may have inspired the hunter-gatherers to mark out the area with the totem pole-like monuments.
00:16:03An act that Jakes believes may have been the start of this landscape's mythical status.
00:16:08There'd be memories attached to that, stories attached to that, almost certainly the people involved are getting mythologised.
00:16:19Does that mean, down the line, these ideas are getting monumentalised and later take shape in structures like the one we can see behind us at Stonehenge?
00:16:28The evidence from the Mesolithic encampment, combined with the mysterious posts, establishes a compelling starting point for the Stonehenge story.
00:16:46Then, around 8,200 years ago, climate change had a dramatic impact on the destiny of the Stonehenge landscape.
00:16:56As the last ice age thawed, rising meltwaters engulfed the territory known as Doggerland, and Britain became an island.
00:17:11Cut off from continental influence, life in Mesolithic Britain changed little.
00:17:18For the next 2,000 years, no new monuments appeared in the Stonehenge area.
00:17:29A clue to the resumption of monument building was found in a field two kilometres to the east of Stonehenge.
00:17:38These enigmatic lines are the faint traces of an ancient building.
00:17:43Surveied by the Hidden Landscape Project's high-resolution scanners, their true significance was revealed.
00:18:01We try now to set out points of the monument that we actually detected in our magnetic data.
00:18:09Professor Wolfgang Neubauer and Eamonn Baldwin staked out the find.
00:18:19So that's the east side of the façade?
00:18:24Yeah, let's see.
00:18:26One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine...
00:18:32The structure was far more advanced than anything that had previously been built in the region.
00:18:46Based on similar discoveries in continental Europe, Professor Neubauer identified it as a communal burial tomb known as a long barrow.
00:18:5533 metres, that's the normal length of a continental long barrow.
00:18:5833 metres, that's the normal length of a continental long barrow.
00:19:03These are really huge buildings.
00:19:05And that we actually get this in this landscape is just amazing.
00:19:10The data showed the monument's original layout consisted of wooden pillars and timber walls.
00:19:25The presence of long barrows marks a major shift in the cultural life of this ancient world.
00:19:30Around 9,000 years ago, mainland Europe underwent a social and technological revolution.
00:19:44The Neolithic era.
00:19:47Characterized by farming and permanent settlement, the new culture and its ideas slowly expanded west.
00:19:53Before they finally crossed into Britain, about 4,000 BCE.
00:20:04Along with the development of agriculture, the Neolithic age heralded the emergence of long barrow burial tombs.
00:20:14Like the one exposed by the hidden landscapes project.
00:20:17Well, now we've packed out the whole thing, this monument starts to become a sense.
00:20:35You see this forecourt with a palisade wall.
00:20:40And this was the place where they prepared the dead for burial.
00:20:44Bones from excavated long barrows tell of the new funeral practices the Neolithic arrivals brought with them.
00:21:07They had very peculiar rituals for burials.
00:21:14They had defleshment.
00:21:19They had cutting off of heads.
00:21:25Heads were actually treated completely different than the other parts of the body.
00:21:30There was preparing of the bones to be put into this large tomb, which was a tomb for the whole community.
00:21:47The remains of up to 50 people, men, women and children, were laid to rest in these mass graves before they were finally sealed.
00:21:55In the end, the whole building was covered with a huge amount of earth dug out from big pits to build this long barrow as a house for the dead people.
00:22:11With other nearby long barrows added to the map, this is how the area looked 6,000 years ago.
00:22:29The arrival of the Neolithic culture from Europe reaffirmed the landscape's sacred status.
00:22:47Stonehenge is a unique landscape.
00:22:53It encapsulates how early societies related to the landscape.
00:22:59Their belief systems pervaded everyday life.
00:23:04How ritual and religion was so important to them.
00:23:07We see it in Stonehenge in a rather extreme manner, but nonetheless, it demonstrates to us just how important the position earlier communities had with the landscape around them.
00:23:21As well as the long barrows, another typical Neolithic structure known as a causewayed enclosure appeared for the first time in the Stonehenge area 5,600 years ago.
00:23:38Four and a half kilometres to the northwest, faint scars on the grassland hinted its original shape.
00:23:47This is Robin Hood's bull, he zipped beautifully from this side.
00:23:50This is one of the earlier Neolithic monuments built in this landscape.
00:24:01It consists of rings of circular ditches with gaps in them.
00:24:05These gaps are the causeways, hence the name causewayed enclosure.
00:24:16Structures like Robin Hood's bull brought with them the Neolithic concept of dividing up the land.
00:24:22These monuments represent the first types of enclosure we're finding in prehistory.
00:24:27So the first time people are actually enclosing a particular space for a particular purpose.
00:24:31In the evolution of Stonehenge, causewayed camps and their demarcation of territory heralded a period of conflict between competing groups.
00:24:42On some of these sites where they've been excavated, they start to give an indication of warfare, people killing each other, essentially some sort of tension in society.
00:24:52Evidence suggested that, with the onset of conflict, all major developments in the Stonehenge landscape stopped for 300 years.
00:25:04In total, over 70 structures similar to Robin Hood's bull were built across Britain.
00:25:09Their distribution has led some to suggest they form a border between different groups across the country.
00:25:19At one of these sites, Crickley Hill, past excavations have discovered what may be Britain's first major battle.
00:25:26Crickley Hill gives us a completely new picture of the scale of violence in prehistoric Britain.
00:25:44It's really the first time that we see evidence for warfare between separate communities, or even groups of communities, on a completely different scale to what went on previously.
00:25:56There's a sense that this was a planned event, possibly the preparations went on for months beforehand, and this was a very committed action.
00:26:04The defenders included men, women, children.
00:26:11The attackers, however, were probably mostly adult male.
00:26:19Studies of tribal warfare give some idea why the neighbouring clans fought each other.
00:26:25There may be a series of perceived injustices that build up over generations sometimes.
00:26:31And when things come to a boiling point, the violence that does break out can take the form of trying to actually exterminate a neighbouring community.
00:26:40You would then be able to take over their resources, to take over their land, their cattle, perhaps even their women.
00:26:46400 flint arrowheads found at Crickley Hill revealed how the conflict played out.
00:26:53The distribution of arrowheads, it does look like the attackers have successfully overwhelmed the defence.
00:27:14Once you're inside, you're in much closer proximity to people, and fighting at that point would have become hand-to-hand.
00:27:20Crickley Hill was just one of a number of violent clashes in southern Britain.
00:27:29It was a period of instability that seems to have brought monument building in these areas to a standstill.
00:27:36Excavated skulls from the period provide an insight into the savagery of the fighting.
00:27:45We have these individual examples of people that had died violently.
00:27:54The original point of impact on this individual was from the side, perhaps even slightly behind, coming in from this direction.
00:28:05This was a very sharp, strong blow.
00:28:08This is a rounded fracture arc.
00:28:12There's no question that an injury of this severity penetrating the cranium, driving the bone fragments into the brain, would be instantly lethal.
00:28:25Research shows no one was spared from the bloodshed.
00:28:29This is an adult female skull.
00:28:39In Neolithic societies, it seems possible to think that women were not always just innocent bystanders.
00:28:48They may have actually been involved in the conflict and indeed fighting themselves.
00:28:52You don't know who is armed.
00:28:55There are no uniforms to know who's a combatant and who's a non-combatant.
00:28:59In this case, we have adhering bone that's slightly depressed.
00:29:03And that indicates to me that there was a degree of elasticity in the bone that's typical of the bone being still fresh.
00:29:09In other words, that was a lethal injury.
00:29:11Five and a half thousand years ago,
00:29:24Causewayed camps like Crickley Hill and Robin Hood's Ball were abandoned.
00:29:32Their decline signalled the end of large-scale hostilities in ancient Britain.
00:29:36In the relative peace that followed,
00:29:44Monument construction in the Stonehenge landscape began once more.
00:29:51With the digging of huge oval ditches.
00:29:55The largest of which is the Greater Cursus.
00:30:06The largest monument in this landscape is undoubtedly the Greater Cursus.
00:30:16Interpreting the Cursus has been very, very difficult.
00:30:20It's only when you start finding more detail about the architecture that you start to get a better understanding of what is essentially a very, very big, long bank and ditch.
00:30:30Over two and a half kilometres long, the Cursus represented a new scale of ambition for ancient engineering.
00:30:43It required a huge area to be cleared before 20,000 tonnes of chalk were excavated to form its immense ditch.
00:30:50To meet these new ambitions, the builders needed tools on a previously unheard of scale.
00:30:59In particular, flint axes.
00:31:00There's certainly an increase in the amount of effort people are willing to put into constructing monuments.
00:31:13270 kilometres away in Norfolk, evidence of a prehistoric mining operation shows the extraordinary efforts the Neolithic people made to meet the demand for high-grade flint tools.
00:31:25Well, here we are at Grimes Graves in Norfolk and we're standing in the middle of an extremely pockmarked, cratered landscape.
00:31:33We're around about 450 of these distinctive hollows.
00:31:38Each one of these represents a Neolithic flint mine.
00:31:42The quality of flint found in the area made it a highly prized commodity and linked it directly to Stonehenge.
00:31:51When you go to Stonehenge, a number of the barrows and monuments around there have the Grimes Graves flint in with them and we're finding complete artefacts finished to a very high quality and then they're being buried in significant places, possibly as a ritual offering to the gods.
00:32:08It's estimated around 18,000 tonnes of flint were removed from Grimes Graves.
00:32:15Enough to make millions of axes.
00:32:20You can get a real sense of the mining endeavour when you look across this whole field, but to get an idea of the engineering achievement you need to go down into one of the shafts.
00:32:38Now this particular one has been excavated out in the 19th century, so we got an opportunity to go down there and to experience the same kind of environment that the Neolithic miners had.
00:33:08So here we are at the bottom of one of the shafts.
00:33:19It's a lot darker than it would have been in the Neolithic because at the moment there's a modern concrete cover just to protect the archaeology.
00:33:26Originally that would have been open to the sky, so the sun would be coming in and the walls all around us, the white chalk, would have been reflecting that light, bouncing off the walls and then extending out into all the excavation spaces beyond.
00:33:40Each one of the 450 shafts that you can see on the surface would have been like this.
00:33:46This particular one descending 12 and a half metres down through the solid chalk.
00:33:50Quite an achievement when you think that the people excavating this were using stone and bone tools.
00:33:57This would have taken months to excavate out down.
00:34:05Once the miners reached the floor stone flint, they dug horizontal galleries following the rich seams.
00:34:13The galleries are extremely restricted in size, so I think we're probably seeing some of the younger, slighter elements of society who had engaged in the actual extraction process.
00:34:29This is one of the larger gallery spaces down here in the mines. A lot of them are far more restricted than this.
00:34:48Because the preservation is so incredible, we've still got a whole series of their antler picks, the tools that they were using down here to chip away at the chalk.
00:34:58They are using the end sometimes to batter away blocks.
00:35:06And also to lever the flint up.
00:35:13The high grade flint found at these depths motivated the prehistoric miners.
00:35:18This is some of the floor stone flint they're looking for and you can see it's jet black colour. It fractures beautifully and it's still razor sharp.
00:35:39Russell also believes the mines served an important ritualistic role.
00:35:42Moving towards adulthood, you need a rite of passage. You need to be doing something that's actually quite extreme.
00:35:56And coming down here into the mine, crawling into the galleries, into the unknown, into the mysterious, digging out the flint and bringing it back up into the surface, could move you from childhood to adult, especially if there's an audience up there waiting for you to emerge with your flint in hand.
00:36:11Excavated human bones from another Neolithic flint mine highlighted the dangers miners faced.
00:36:21When they looked at the skeletons that were found down in the lower levels of the mine, one was actually covered by rubble, all this material just behind me here.
00:36:32The body was lying stretched out in the gallery as if going towards the flint.
00:36:36When they looked at the bones, they realised that it was the skeleton of a young woman.
00:36:50I think it's easily plausible that this young woman was a miner and that she did come to an unfortunate, untimely end.
00:36:56Down in the galleries when the roof collapsed on her, her colleagues perhaps feeling that she'd been claimed by the earth, didn't go back and recover her.
00:37:09The astonishing size of the mining complex at Grimes Graves reveals a people capable of planning and executing large-scale projects.
00:37:29The astonishing size of the mining complex at Grimes Graves reveals a people capable of planning and executing large scale projects.
00:37:37Attributes that were harnessed in the Stonehenge landscape to create the vast Greater Cursus Monument.
00:37:57But while the function of the mines is proven, the role of the Cursus remains a mystery.
00:38:03We still don't know why such a huge amount of effort was put into constructing such a big monument as the Cursus.
00:38:14At the heart of the Stonehenge question, you know, what is Stonehenge, is the Cursus.
00:38:20And if we can't understand how that fits together, we can't understand the landscape.
00:38:23We can't understand the landscape.
00:38:34To solve the puzzle of the Cursus, the Hidden Landscapes project focused their survey on every centimetre of the enormous monument.
00:38:41After weeks of analysis, the team detected a series of previously unknown breaks in the perimeter.
00:38:55When we surveyed the Cursus, there were a number of features which were quite surprising for us.
00:39:01The first was that there were a number of small entrances into the enclosure itself.
00:39:07It wasn't a single cohesive unit. There were gaps through it.
00:39:11So it wasn't simply enclosed. There were ways of going in and out of it.
00:39:22The discovery of entrance and exit points supported the theory that the Cursus was a processional route.
00:39:28But the gaps were only the first clues the survey team uncovered.
00:39:36The data also revealed two previously unknown pits inside the Cursus.
00:39:45I'm standing at the centre of the pit in the west end of the Cursus.
00:39:49This is really quite a big feature. It's about five metres across and one to one and a half metres deep at least.
00:39:56It has a pair at the other end of the Cursus.
00:39:59These are clearly man-made. They're not natural features.
00:40:02Their depth, the way they're cut, their position within the Cursus.
00:40:07These are clearly significant archaeological structures.
00:40:15When the positions of the pits were computer-modelled against the movement of the sun,
00:40:21their true importance became clear.
00:40:23The calculations showed that on midsummer's day,
00:40:28the eastern pits alignment with the sunrise
00:40:31and the western pits alignment with the sunset
00:40:35intersect at the location of where Stonehenge would be built
00:40:39some 400 years later.
00:40:44Accurate solar alignment on this scale provided proof of a day-long ceremony
00:40:48held to celebrate the passage of the sun at the summer solstice.
00:40:55The linkage of these pits with the Cursus, which is sometimes regarded as a processional route
00:41:02to mark the passage of the sun, actually links the Cursus itself with the position of Stonehenge
00:41:07because that's the point which we presume observations were taking place.
00:41:12So, at the point that the Cursus is built, Stonehenge is acquiring significance as well.
00:41:17The revelations about the Cursus suggested that the site of Stonehenge had a ritual significance at least four centuries earlier than originally thought.
00:41:33It's possible that the pits predate Stonehenge and they relate to the phase of activity before Stonehenge was built associated with the Cursus.
00:41:48This creates a very new and exciting aspect to the Stonehenge landscape, which we've not recognised previously.
00:42:03The precision and scale of the Greater Cursus design indicates a technically advanced and knowledgeable people.
00:42:09But the sophistication of Neolithic culture wasn't only expressed in its monument building.
00:42:27I've got three skulls on the table here, all of which come from graves in the vicinity of Stonehenge.
00:42:32But the other thing they have in common, as well as where they come from, is that they've all had surgery to the skull.
00:42:43The idea of having surgical intervention so far back in time sounds incredibly sophisticated, and in many ways it is.
00:42:52The reason for undertaking surgery of this type was if somebody had a blunt weapon trauma to the skull.
00:43:00They can see there's been some kind of damage to the skull, bits of bone sticking into the brain, and they've got to be excised, otherwise it's going to kill that individual.
00:43:15The technique, known as trepanning, followed similar methods to those used by modern surgery.
00:43:23But without the luxury of scalpels and anaesthetics.
00:43:26Probably the worst bit was actually having the skin flap cut.
00:43:38To expose the skull itself.
00:43:43As in modern surgery, you would cut a flap of the scalp and you would fold it back.
00:43:49The forensic analysis revealed an unexpectedly advanced grasp of human anatomy.
00:43:58So as you're cutting through the outer plate, you can feel it because it's hard.
00:44:06Slightly less hard when you get to the middle part, and then you know when you're at the inner plate, so you know where you have got to be careful because you do not want to start to hit the brain.
00:44:15So you've got control over this.
00:44:20You would be cutting from a wider outside circumference.
00:44:26And you would cut carefully, and you would bevel in as you cut round, and then you would change direction, and you would cut from the other side.
00:44:37And then when you get to where you want to be, you cut out and lift out very carefully the bits of bone you don't want in there.
00:44:50Despite the crude nature of the surgical instruments, signs of healing around the holes showed how adept these early surgeons were at performing delicate operations.
00:45:06They knew how to do it, they knew it worked.
00:45:14And they were very successful at this, because they nearly all heal.
00:45:19Evidence of surgery, industrial scale flint mining, and a new understanding of the cursus, has revealed a people capable of complex reasoning and planning,
00:45:35who expressed their ceremonial beliefs in precise, solar-aligned monuments.
00:45:46This spiritual ambition and mastery of nature would be fundamental to the creation of Stonehenge.
00:45:52This is clearly the best view you can ever have a Stonehenge, from above.
00:46:03You can see the other parts of the monument, things like the ditch, which runs round it, which is from about 3000 BC.
00:46:10It's kind of the beginning of what becomes Stonehenge.
00:46:13Radiocarbon dating indicates that around 400 years after the ditch was dug, the stone circle was raised.
00:46:30But while experts have a good idea of the order in which Stonehenge was built,
00:46:35the monument's seclusion has never been fully explained.
00:46:40The usual sense has been that Stonehenge sits in splendid isolation within this broader landscape.
00:46:57It's given rise to the idea that a sacred landscape developed around Stonehenge during the Neolithic,
00:47:03within which very few other activities took place.
00:47:05The work that we've been doing approaches this landscape in a radically different way.
00:47:10The intention is to see it as a seamless survey, not of just what's on the top of the surface, but what is below the surface.
00:47:20In doing this, we're able to put Stonehenge in its landscape context in a much richer, a much more detailed way.
00:47:26The challenge of discovering lost monuments in the vacant space around the stone circle was one of the Hidden Landscapes Project's core objectives.
00:47:37Sector after sector were scanned, but nothing was detected.
00:47:42Finally, less than a kilometre to the north-west, the archaeologists picked up signals of something unexpected.
00:47:56I'm standing on a small mound about 900 metres away from Stonehenge. It's called Amesbury 50.
00:48:10It's been known for quite a long time. It's one of several hundred mounds in the immediate vicinity of Stonehenge.
00:48:17But the Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project has been able to use new technologies in a way that gives us new insights into this mound and the structures that lie beneath it.
00:48:31The high-resolution equipment detected far more detail hidden beneath the mound.
00:48:36It was really quite exciting when we looked at this data for the first time. First of all, you just saw the ditches around the mound.
00:48:46But it was only after a minute that we started to realise that inside the ditches there were a whole series of large pits or postholes, and they were completely unexpected.
00:48:58The moment we saw them, the team who was looking at it said, that looks like a henge, and that is important.
00:49:15Henge monuments, like the one located by the survey, consist of a ditch and bank.
00:49:20What made the discovery of this henge so exciting was its location.
00:49:37We were particularly interested in this site because it's actually a very short distance from Stonehenge.
00:49:42At the time we were doing this work, there was a presumption that the area around Stonehenge was reserved for Stonehenge itself, and that there may well have been little activity around it.
00:49:57For the first time, there was proof that other monuments existed within the immediate sacred area of Stonehenge.
00:50:05The scanning continued, and more structures began to appear.
00:50:09As we started expanding the survey, your eye becomes more tuned into just slightly weird things.
00:50:18So you start exploring the monuments you can see to try and find something a bit unusual, and quite frequently you find it.
00:50:26As even more data flowed into the Hidden Landscapes project, the number of identified monuments increased dramatically.
00:50:33As we began to surveying much larger areas of the landscape around Stonehenge, we began to see a number of other similar late near-earthic ceremonial monuments, which were hitherto unknown.
00:50:45This monument, Amesbury 41, just to the northeast of Stonehenge, long thought to have been a simple early Bronze Age burial monument, we can now see is something completely different.
00:50:56It is an elongated enclosure with slightly angular sides with an entrance, oriented due west.
00:51:04In the same frame, we can see another small monument, a little mini shrine, a small henge-form monument very close to Stonehenge.
00:51:13To the northeast, this horseshoe-shaped arrangement of pits within which we must assume that people gather together to undertake rituals and ceremonies.
00:51:22In a separate study, archaeologists from English heritage re-examined old survey data taken just 200 metres from the stone circle.
00:51:34They too saw what appeared to be another henge monument.
00:51:39Altogether, we found about 20 new late Neolithic ceremonial monuments within the wider landscape around Stonehenge.
00:51:48The discovery of so many shrines in areas once thought deserted showed beyond all doubt that Stonehenge was not alone and never had been.
00:52:03Rather than seeing Stonehenge standing uniquely in the plain, we now start to see that there are a series of similar monuments.
00:52:11They may have acted as shrines, as the equivalent of a modern rural chapel where families, groups would come to visit at certain times.
00:52:22It begins to give us an insight into how the wider landscape was used at the time that Stonehenge was developing into the monument you see today.
00:52:31Like many of the ceremonial shrines located by the Hidden Landscapes Project, Stonehenge also began its life as a ditch and bank.
00:52:46To be transformed into the iconic monument we know today required the addition of giant standing stones.
00:52:52The tradition of building stone monuments in prehistoric Europe dates back about 7,000 years.
00:53:09In the centuries that followed, megaliths appeared across the continent following the spread of Neolithic culture.
00:53:20One of the most impressive displays of ancient standing stones can be seen near the French town of Carnac.
00:53:28Where 10,000 menhirs, most of which predate Stonehenge by many centuries, stretch over 6 kilometers.
00:53:44The average weight of stones here is between 2 and 4 tons.
00:53:50Bigger blocks like this one can reach 20 tons.
00:53:53Archaeologist Serge Cassin has investigated the significance of megaliths to prehistoric peoples.
00:54:09You can commemorate an ancestor's tomb with a standing stone.
00:54:14You can also use them to show a person's change of status and that person's ability to mobilize a large labor force to raise the stones.
00:54:24And the stones could be used to safeguard a person's future.
00:54:28For example, the stone is used to offer protection over a field of crops.
00:54:34These three functions of standing stones can co-exist on an enormous site like Carnac.
00:54:41And it's this symbolic use of standing stones that characterizes the Neolithic age, 5,000 to 6,000 years ago.
00:54:57When the Neolithic age reached Britain, over 1,000 stone monuments were built, from the Orkneys to Cornwall.
00:55:05In the Stonehenge region, one of the earliest examples of the ceremonial use of stone is the West Kennet burial chamber.
00:55:18We see a whole host of changes accompanying the shift from hunter-gatherers in the Mesolithic to farmers in the Neolithic.
00:55:39And that involved communal building projects like Stonehenge, ultimately, but before that, projects like West Kennet.
00:55:48The stones had to be brought from some distance. They're very large stones.
00:55:52And so these were important communal burial places that brought the community together.
00:55:57The monumental nature of these stones symbolized a new level of collective endeavor and cultural ambition.
00:56:15An ambition that would develop into the ultimate expression of prehistoric building prowess.
00:56:25Stonehenge.
00:56:34The discoveries of the Hidden Landscapes project,
00:56:37in conjunction with other archaeological evidence,
00:56:42have allowed the first 6,000 years of the Stonehenge story
00:56:46to be told with more accuracy than ever before.
00:56:52They've charted the area's evolution from its origins as a mystical hunting ground
00:57:00into a sacred site of unprecedented scale.
00:57:03Revealed is a fast-developing civilization driven to exploit the region's natural and spiritual wealth,
00:57:15with increasing sophistication.
00:57:20Now the next chapter of the Stonehenge story can be told.
00:57:24The ideas, ambition, and technological prowess that created Stonehenge itself.
00:57:30A monument unique in the ancient world.
00:57:40Next time.
00:57:4221st century archaeology would unlock the intricate puzzle of the Stone Circle's construction.
00:57:49You couldn't build something like Stonehenge without a plan.
00:57:52Lay bare its bloody rituals.
00:57:54To be buried in that ditch at Stonehenge suggests we have a sacrificial victim.
00:58:04Show where its people lived.
00:58:07When I first saw it, it was of course, wow!
00:58:11Now we have a settlement, what we have been looking for all the time.
00:58:14Display the extraordinary craftsmanship of Stonehenge's golden age.
00:58:17And reveal the stunning truth of how the monument appeared at its zenith.
00:58:27Who said penguins couldn't fly on this flight?
00:58:35They've got seatbelts.
00:58:37Penguins on a plane next on BBC Two.
00:58:39While Simon Sharma reveals how the liberal politics of the British Empire in the 19th century unraveled.
00:58:44That's on BBC Four in 15 minutes.
00:58:46The megaliths of Stonehenge are Britain's most investigated ancient monument.
00:59:07Yet despite centuries of scrutiny, excavations, and theories, the big questions remain.
00:59:27What were its origins?
00:59:29How did it evolve over thousands of years?
00:59:31And which forces of nature and humanity inspired its creators?
00:59:43Now a group of experts have taken a high-tech approach to unlocking Stonehenge's secrets.
00:59:54A site like Stonehenge can only be understood by looking at the monuments around it
00:59:59and how that landscape's evolved.
01:00:04For the first time, we're not just seeing little islands of activity, but we get to see the big picture.
01:00:11The new data, supported by wider archaeological evidence,
01:00:16has thrown fresh light on 10,000 years of human progress.
01:00:21It's quite an achievement when you think that people excavating this were using stone and bone tools.
01:00:26It's ancient people were meticulous planners.
01:00:31This is really quite a big feature. It's clearly man-made.
01:00:35Profound believers.
01:00:37They had very peculiar rituals.
01:00:40Defleshment, cutting off heads.
01:00:44And fearless warriors.
01:00:46When things come to a boiling point, the violence that does break out could be very brutal.
01:00:52You just kill everything in front of you.
01:00:57In just five years, 21st century archaeology has achieved what conventional excavation would have taken a lifetime to complete.
01:01:07Revealing a picture of Stonehenge and its people as never before.
01:01:20Revealing a picture of Stonehenge and its people as never before.
01:01:44Recent times have seen intense levels of activity around the world's most famous previews.
01:01:48Prehistoric site.
01:01:51To solve the mysteries of the monument, the scientists have been using a novel strategy.
01:02:04Not just focusing on the iconic stones, they also investigated the wider landscape in which they sit.
01:02:11The thing with Stonehenge is if you visit it, you don't always get the sense of the enormity of the landscape.
01:02:22It's only when you get above or you get away from it that you can really get a sense of how everything fits together.
01:02:29And really that's at the heart of the whole project.
01:02:33We're trying to look at the wider picture.
01:02:36To understand Stonehenge, we have to look at the entire landscape, both spatially but also through time.
01:02:43The most ambitious of these new studies is the Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project.
01:02:58Led by experts from Birmingham University and the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute in Austria.
01:03:04As people walk over the Stonehenge landscape, they're aware of Stonehenge, they may be aware of some of the larger monuments.
01:03:14But they don't appreciate that thousands of years of human occupancy in this landscape produces features that we simply do not know about.
01:03:22The project is using remote sensing technology to try and map that, to discover it and display it for the first time.
01:03:35With state-of-the-art remote sensing equipment, the team have mapped every structure, both visible and invisible, across ten square kilometers of the sacred site.
01:03:45We can do a virtual dig of this landscape and see what is hidden beneath the surface.
01:03:54With machines like this, we can come up with a picture which has a resolution of tens of centimeters.
01:04:02This is something absolutely new.
01:04:04With all the scan data collated, the team have produced a multi-layered digital map that showed how the landscape developed over thousands of years.
01:04:22In order to understand Stonehenge, we have to look at the periods up to that construction.
01:04:28So going back a thousand years or more beforehand, and then only by doing that and understanding how the landscape evolves,
01:04:34do we get a sense of why Stonehenge is where it is.
01:04:39The Hidden Landscapes Project's unprecedented big picture has revealed a remarkable world of hidden monuments.
01:04:48It was really quite exciting when we looked at this data for the first time.
01:04:51The team who was looking at it said, that looks like a henge, and that is important.
01:05:01As they analyzed their data even further, they found new information about how the other monuments interconnect with Stonehenge.
01:05:10The architecture of Stonehenge doesn't exist in isolation.
01:05:14There is a form of connectivity in the landscape here that we had not realized before.
01:05:18The discoveries made by the Hidden Landscapes Project are backed by new finds from other research projects.
01:05:27Together, they are telling the full story of Stonehenge.
01:05:48The first signs of human activity in the Stonehenge area date back 10,000 years, to a period known as the Mesolithic.
01:05:58Around that time, three large totem-like poles were erected, 250 metres from where Stonehenge now stands.
01:06:08Their meaning and purpose has baffled experts since their discovery in 1966.
01:06:17Recently, at a site only two kilometres to the south-east, archaeologists have unearthed the first traces of people living in the same period.
01:06:30It's a find that may finally answer why Stonehenge is located where it is.
01:06:41Here's a section through one of the most interesting trenches dug in modern history.
01:06:49And, in fact, we have all of modern history in it.
01:06:54We've got a soil profile here, which captures the very modern.
01:06:58This chalk layer is from the 1960s, dumped from the road that goes to Stonehenge.
01:07:03Underneath that, we have a cobbled platform surface, which is post-medieval.
01:07:08We've got some soil build-up here.
01:07:10But it's this lower bit that's really fascinating and interesting.
01:07:15It's sealed by a cobbled surface, almost certainly put in by man sometime in prehistory.
01:07:22And that's brilliant, because it's capped 14 centimetres of intact Mesolithic archaeology.
01:07:29Full of Mesolithic flint work and bone.
01:07:32And I actually can see there's a nice small piece here.
01:07:36Ah, yeah, that's a very nice piece.
01:07:38I think it's a little blade.
01:07:42The big question is, what is so special about this place
01:07:45that people are settling here, living here for a long time?
01:07:59The rich array of artefacts excavated from the site
01:08:03are striking clues as to what compelled these ancient people to camp here.
01:08:09This is just a sample of the amazing finds that we've got from this site.
01:08:14We've got quite domestic-looking tools.
01:08:16This type of thing would probably have been used to pierce holes in animal skin.
01:08:21We've also found much bigger tools.
01:08:23This is an absolutely brilliant tranchette axe.
01:08:26These things are the Porsche of the Mesolithic, really top-quality flint, used for making boats and chopping down trees.
01:08:35It's not just about stone and flint tools, though.
01:08:38We've got about 700 animal bones, and they're really big.
01:08:42These are from aurochs.
01:08:48These are three times the size of a normal cow.
01:08:52We have at least six aurochs in our assemblage.
01:08:56They must have been local.
01:08:59They're so big, it would have taken a big effort to have transported them a long way.
01:09:04So, these animals are probably around Amesbury and Stonehenge.
01:09:08Perhaps the people living all around where we are now are seeing these animals move across the landscape and getting opportunities to hunt.
01:09:24The existence of a large clearing in otherwise dense forest made this a natural and bountiful hunting ground.
01:09:44One of the reasons why it was an open plain, perhaps, was because aurochs are such voracious eaters.
01:09:50They're like nature's vacuum cleaners.
01:09:53Any woodland or bush growth wouldn't have stood much of a chance if you had a large herd of animals moving through a place like this.
01:10:03As we move down in this landscape, we begin to be part of a funnel.
01:10:08It would be a brilliant place for hunter-gatherers to hide and observe the movement of these huge animals.
01:10:22Topographical scans have revealed the contours of this ancient landscape.
01:10:39Features that Mesolithic hunter-gatherers could exploit.
01:10:42Where this side valley is steep, it's very likely that the animals will mass together and then panic and then bond.
01:10:51A clever, intelligent hunter-gatherer would almost certainly have had a strategy to position themselves at points where they knew these animals would come through the landscape.
01:11:06At that point, that is exactly the best place to take one down.
01:11:12So we're starting to consider that in this bowl-like landscape, where you have this arrangement of small hillocks and side valleys, you may well have got a brilliant place to hunt.
01:11:41For David Jakes, the site held qualities that made it more than just a rich hunting ground.
01:11:57We're in a really extraordinary place here. I mean, this is almost like a time capsule.
01:12:21There's very little landscape change extraordinarily from the Mesolithic.
01:12:28So it's a special place.
01:12:32The unexpected discovery of a rare natural phenomenon may also explain the beginning of Stonehenge's mystical reputation.
01:12:51Well, something that's really interesting about this site is it appears that it's not all about the practical.
01:13:02We've noticed a really strange phenomenon with the flint.
01:13:05We've got a chemical reaction going on here. The flint is turning brown because there's traces of iron in the spring water.
01:13:14Now, that's typical in a lot of places on the edges of freshwater ponds and lakes and rivers.
01:13:20But there's something peculiar happening here.
01:13:23When a stone like this is pulled out of the water and it's kept out of the water for about two to three hours, something extraordinary happens.
01:13:33It turns into a really bright, almost sort of violent magenta pink.
01:13:40The remarkable change is triggered by rare algae in the spring water.
01:13:57But Mesolithic hunter-gatherers had no rational explanation for this vivid change in the flint.
01:14:03It would have been the most extraordinary magical thing in the Mesolithic to see a transformation like this.
01:14:12They're living at a time where the colour palette is dominated by green and brown and black and white.
01:14:19Something as flamboyant as this would have given this particular area a real local signature.
01:14:27Something that would have meant this place to people.
01:14:32This is the place where memories and traditions start.
01:14:37Stonehenge isn't just a new build, it's in response to something.
01:14:47The magical pink flint and an abundant supply of meat may have inspired the hunter-gatherers to mark out the area with the totem pole-like monuments.
01:14:57An act that Jakes believes may have been the start of this landscape's mythical status.
01:15:08There'd be memories attached to that, stories attached to that.
01:15:11Almost certainly the people involved are getting mythologised.
01:15:14Does that mean, down the line, these ideas are getting monumentalised and later take shape in structures like the one we can see behind us at Stonehenge?
01:15:27The evidence from the Mesolithic encampment, combined with the mysterious posts, establishes a compelling starting point for the Stonehenge story.
01:15:44Then, around 8,200 years ago, climate change had a dramatic impact on the destiny of the Stonehenge landscape.
01:15:53As the last ice age thawed, rising meltwaters engulfed the territory known as Doggerland.
01:16:03And Britain became an island.
01:16:06Cut off from continental influence, life in Mesolithic Britain changed little.
01:16:15For the next 2,000 years, no new monuments appeared in the Stonehenge area.
01:16:22A clue to the resumption of monument building was found in a field two kilometres to the east of Stonehenge.
01:16:32These enigmatic lines are the faint traces of an ancient building.
01:16:39Surveyed by the Hidden Landscape Project's high-resolution scanners, their true significance was revealed.
01:16:47We try now to set out points of the monument that we actually detected in our magnetic data.
01:17:06Okay, that's that one.
01:17:08Professor Wolfgang Neubauer and Eamonn Baldwin staked out the find.
01:17:15So that's the east side of the facade?
01:17:21Yeah, let's see.
01:17:22One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine...
01:17:30The structure was far more advanced than anything that had previously been built in the region.
01:17:35Based on similar discoveries in continental Europe, Professor Neubauer identified it as a communal burial tomb known as a long barrow.
01:17:5233 metres, that's the normal length of a continental long barrow.
01:17:59These are really huge buildings.
01:18:01And that we actually get this in this landscape is just amazing.
01:18:06It's just amazing.
01:18:13The data showed the monument's original layout consisted of wooden pillars and timber walls.
01:18:22The presence of long barrows marks a major shift in the cultural life of this ancient world.
01:18:27Around 9,000 years ago, mainland Europe underwent a social and technological revolution, the Neolithic era.
01:18:42Characterized by farming and permanent settlement, the new culture and its ideas slowly expanded west,
01:18:49before they finally crossed into Britain, about 4,000 BCE.
01:19:01Along with the development of agriculture,
01:19:04the Neolithic age heralded the emergence of long barrow burial tombs,
01:19:08like the one exposed by the Hidden Landscapes project.
01:19:26Well, now we've packed out the whole thing, this monument starts to become a sense.
01:19:30So you see this forecourt with a palisade wall,
01:19:36and this was the place where they prepared the dead for burial.
01:19:40Bones from excavated long barrows tell of the new funeral practices the Neolithic arrivals brought with them.
01:20:04They had very peculiar rituals for burials.
01:20:11They had defleshment.
01:20:16They had cutting off of heads.
01:20:22Heads were actually treated completely different than the other parts of the body.
01:20:27There was preparing of the bones to be put into this large tomb,
01:20:38which was a tomb for the whole community.
01:20:43The remains of up to 50 people, men, women and children,
01:20:48were laid to rest in these mass graves before they were finally sealed.
01:20:52In the end, the whole building was covered with a huge amount of earth dug out from big pits
01:21:04to build this long barrow as a house for the dead people.
01:21:08With other nearby long barrows added to the map,
01:21:32this is how the area looked 6,000 years ago.
01:21:36The arrival of the Neolithic culture from Europe reaffirmed the landscape's sacred status.
01:21:47Stonehenge is a unique landscape.
01:21:50It encapsulates how early societies related to the landscape.
01:21:56Their belief systems pervaded everyday life.
01:22:00How ritual and religion were so important to them.
01:22:05We see it in Stonehenge in a rather extreme manner,
01:22:09but nonetheless it demonstrates to us just how important the position earlier communities had with the landscape around them.
01:22:18As well as the long barrows, another typical Neolithic structure known as a causewayed enclosure,
01:22:29appeared for the first time in the Stonehenge area 5,600 years ago.
01:22:34Four and a half kilometres to the north west, faint scars on the grassland hinted its original shape.
01:22:42This is Robin Hood's ball, he zipped beautifully from this side.
01:22:47This is one of the earlier Neolithic monuments built in this landscape.
01:22:51It consists of rings of circular ditches with gaps in them.
01:23:03These gaps are the causeways, hence the name causewayed enclosure.
01:23:09Structures like Robin Hood's ball brought with them the Neolithic concept of dividing up the land.
01:23:19These monuments represent the first types of enclosure we're finding in free history.
01:23:23So the first time people are actually enclosing a particular space for a particular purpose.
01:23:30In the evolution of Stonehenge, causewayed camps and their demarcation of territory
01:23:34heralded a period of conflict between competing groups.
01:23:40On some of these sites, where they've been excavated,
01:23:43they start to give an indication of warfare, people killing each other,
01:23:47potentially some sort of tension in society.
01:23:50Evidence suggested that with the onset of conflict,
01:23:54all major developments in the Stonehenge landscape stopped for 300 years.
01:23:58In total, over 70 structures similar to Robin Hood's ball were built across Britain.
01:24:07Their distribution has led some to suggest,
01:24:10they form a border between different groups across the country.
01:24:13for one country.
01:24:1513
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