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00:03Stonehenge, England. The most famous prehistoric monument in the world.
00:09For centuries, historians have wondered why and how it was built.
00:14The skill and the engineering and the ingenuity of the people who built it is just broader.
00:20Now, new technologies are unlocking Stonehenge's deepest and darkest secrets.
00:27And archaeologists are rewriting the history of this ancient wonder.
00:32This is going to revolutionize our understanding of the origins of Stonehenge.
00:38What they're finding is shocking.
00:40This blow suggests that this person was properly executed.
00:44Is the story of Stonehenge stranger and more complex than we ever imagined?
00:50The only way to find out is to uproot the stones themselves, unearthing buried skeletons, concealed carvings, and the celestial
01:02secrets hidden at the heart of this Stonehenge masterpiece.
01:16Four and a half thousand years ago, in an age before metal, before the wheel, Stone Age Britons raised up
01:26165 colossal stones on a featureless English plane.
01:31To famously celebrate sunrise on the longest day of the year and sunset on the shortest.
01:39But was all this built for just two days of the year?
01:45Pioneering technologies and gruesome discoveries are now revealing what really happened here.
01:52To tell the full story of Stonehenge.
01:55This was the New York of its time.
01:58It was the London of its time, the Paris.
02:01Stonehenge was the place to be.
02:06Today, the Henge appears ruined, but there's order in the chaos and clues to this ancient site's former glory.
02:15Five colossal arches stand at the heart of the Henge, arranged in a horseshoe, and made from 20-foot-tall
02:22stones known as sarsens.
02:25Around them, circles of a different rock, known as bluestone, each weighing as much as an SUV.
02:33Another ring of sarsens encircles the bluestones, perfectly aligned with the winter solstice sunset and summer solstice sunrise.
02:53Although Stonehenge is famous as a celestial temple, archaeologists suspect a monument this big must have attracted other uses.
03:03But what?
03:08Modern forensic techniques are revealing the surprising answer.
03:13Because some of the people who came here never left.
03:18We know there are three to four hundred burials in the general region.
03:22Archaeological bone expert Jackie McKinley suspects many of these people came to Stonehenge for more than just two days a
03:29year.
03:30They came to live and work, and she believes their bones can prove her theory.
03:37A lot of the time the dead are buried in certain positions, postures, with certain materials with them.
03:43So there's a whole variety of things that I go to look for, because that can tell me something about
03:48their life, but also about Stonehenge itself.
04:00Buried beneath the stones lay human remains.
04:05Four skeletons, one decapitated, another with fatal arrow wounds and the arrowheads that killed him.
04:16They're clues to the ancient people that came here four and a half thousand years ago.
04:22But these skeletons are not alone.
04:26Within a ring of fifty-six pits that surround the stones, lie the cremated remains of dozens of people, and
04:34many more are buried outside this ring.
04:36What can these remains tell us about how Stonehenge was really used?
04:45Today, Jackie's examining one of the most complete skeletons found in the area.
04:51From the skeleton I can see that this was a young adult male, probably in his mid-twenties.
04:58Dying young wasn't unusual in prehistoric Britain, but the objects buried with this man were anything but ordinary.
05:06Jackie believes they're a clue to his occupation.
05:11This is a pair of gold ornaments that were found rolled together inside the mouth.
05:18You see they're tucked against the right-hand side of the inner jaw.
05:22Which means they were either placed in the mouth at the time of death, or certainly before burial.
05:30And these really are very rare. There are only about eight pairs known from the country.
05:33Ancient people often buried their dead, with possessions that hint at their owner's profession.
05:41Did this man trade in fine jewellery?
05:45We're at the very early stages of metalworking.
05:48These are very finely worked items.
05:51And to be able to have the, not just the technology, but the skill to have learnt how to change
05:58something which was essentially a lump of rock,
06:01into something that delicate and that beautifully worked, would really have been seen as something quite magical.
06:08Jackie thinks this magic may have been worked by the man buried next to him.
06:14There were two graves that were within three meters of each other.
06:19The second older man was buried with the same rare gold ornaments, together with simple metalworking tools.
06:27I think he was the person who worked the magic.
06:32I think he was the person who could make those changes from pieces of rock, to items of beauty, and
06:39items of utility.
06:44Jackie is convinced both men were metalworkers, who came to Stonehenge to make and sell their precious metal goods.
06:53To her, Stonehenge was more than a monument.
06:56It was a thriving hub for craft and trade.
07:00But Jackie's discovered something even more extraordinary.
07:04These ancient craftsmen had come a long way to set up shop at Stonehenge.
07:10There are certain chemical signatures which are taken up from the ground water, which can get fixed in the dental
07:17enamel as it's developing in the growing child.
07:20By looking at those signatures and relating them to the geology, different geologies across Europe,
07:27we can more or less work out the regions that people came from.
07:31Prehistoric Britons hadn't yet discovered the wheel, so investigators assumed they lived and died in one place.
07:39But the evidence from the older man shatters this belief.
07:43The signal that we got from him suggests he may have been from Central Europe, from the area of what
07:50we now know as Germany.
07:52That's a 700-mile hike from Stonehenge.
07:57The younger man's results are equally astonishing.
08:00He was born at Stonehenge, but spent his teens in Central Europe.
08:06The fact that we've been able to demonstrate that people might have moved several times in their lifetime between quite
08:13long distances is absolutely fascinating.
08:16What you've got is a connection between people over a large geographic area.
08:24And whether they kept that connection because of trade or because of family, or probably a combination of the two.
08:31That is just, it is just, it's so modern in many ways.
08:35It really is very similar to what we would be doing now.
08:39This discovery rewrites our understanding of the ancient world.
08:45Four thousand years ago, these two men traveled vast distances over land and sea.
08:52They were part of a complex web of connections, perhaps with the marketplace of Stonehenge at its core.
09:00And they weren't the only foreign travelers to make their way to this corner of southwest England.
09:08Evidence from hundreds of graves shows Stonehenge was a multinational melting pot.
09:13The graves are filled with items from distant lands.
09:18A green jade axe head from Italy.
09:21An amber necklace from Denmark.
09:24And blue beads from Greece.
09:29One dagger combines whale bone from as far away as Scandinavia,
09:33with bronze made from Cornish tin and Welsh copper.
09:41The graves of Stonehenge are rewriting our understanding of how Stone Age people lived.
09:49But why did this remote, hard to reach spot become the Manhattan of its age?
09:55A controversial new theory suggests the stones themselves provided a unique draw.
10:02Did the traders come to Stonehenge in search of magic?
10:22Four and a half thousand years ago, people traveled to Stonehenge from across Europe.
10:29To make and trade precious goods.
10:34But what drew them here?
10:37A new and controversial idea suggests it wasn't the massive sarsen stones, but their smaller, less conspicuous neighbors.
10:46In a sense, the blue stones are the secret to Stonehenge.
10:52Today, Stonehenge looks dull and weathered.
10:56But strip away the layers of lichen and moss, and the monument appears in its former glory.
11:03Shining white sarsens, made from a local sandstone.
11:07And the smaller blue stones were even more beautiful.
11:10And the smaller blue stones were even more beautiful.
11:12They're a type of volcanic rock called dolarite that's not found locally.
11:22Originally, there were 80 of these blue stones, protected by two rings of giant sarsens.
11:31The blue stones are central to Stonehenge, but they play little part in the summer or winter solstice.
11:41So what were they for?
11:43What did they mean to the people who visited Stonehenge?
11:48Archaeologist Tim Darville thinks the blue stones had a unique and powerful attraction.
11:55Because it seems the builders of Stonehenge went to extraordinary lengths to obtain them.
12:01And this is it. Look at that.
12:02It's the stone right in front.
12:04Tim and his team are in the Perselli Hills in Wales.
12:08They're 140 miles from Stonehenge.
12:11I think it's a good place to put it down there.
12:12But incredibly, many historians believe this is where the blue stones were quarried.
12:17Wow, that was a walk.
12:21Tim wants to prove the stones came from these hills.
12:25By using groundbreaking new x-ray technology
12:29to pinpoint the exact location where each stone was quarried.
12:36Well, at the moment, I'm analyzing the chemistry of this particular dollarite.
12:40And the machine itself is firing high-energy x-rays into the rock.
12:43And the energy that's being reflected back is telling us what atoms, what elements, are actually in the rock itself.
12:51Once the team has scanned the local rocks, they compare the results to readings previously taken at Stonehenge.
12:58Each colored line represents the unique composition of an individual blue stone at Stonehenge.
13:07Tim overlays today's readings.
13:09The results are striking.
13:13One reading seems a perfect hit, and another tantalizingly close.
13:19In some ways, the samples that we've taken today are indistinguishable from those compositions from Stonehenge.
13:25Yes, there's a good group there.
13:27Tim's initial findings show at least two of the Stonehenge bluestones come from this rocky outcrop.
13:35It's an extraordinary discovery.
13:38But without metal tools or even wheels, how did the Stone Age builders extract and transport these huge stones all
13:47the way to Stonehenge?
13:55Archaeologists think the stonemasons drove wooden wedges into cracks in the rock.
14:01When these got wet, they expanded, breaking off huge slabs.
14:07Eighty slabs, weighing up to five tons, were moved to Stonehenge.
14:12They could have been dragged on sleds along rollers.
14:18Or wrapped in protective wicker branches.
14:21And rolled across country.
14:25They could even have been carried by raft.
14:29Floated along the coast and up river.
14:31Until they reached their chosen site 140 miles from the quarry.
14:39Tim and his team are piecing together the puzzles of where the stones came from, and how they were transported
14:45to Stonehenge.
14:48But the biggest question of all is why.
14:51Why did the ancient builders carry the stones 140 miles to Stonehenge?
14:58Tim thinks the answer lies in these hills, and their reputation for magic.
15:05The springs all along the Priscilla hills are well known for their magical properties.
15:10And many of them are still visited by people who believe that they've got curative powers.
15:16The importance of this water is the fact that it has seeped through the bluestones.
15:20And that's what gives these things their magical powers.
15:23Tim believes the bluestones magical properties brought the builders of Stonehenge to this distant hillside.
15:31And then brought people to Stonehenge itself.
15:34That's why they wanted to be there. They wanted to be associated with it.
15:37To touch, to fear, to take a little bit away.
15:44The Welsh bluestones made Stonehenge famous in the ancient world.
15:49But why did the Britons frame these legendary blocks with the much larger sarsen stones?
15:55Could new technology lift the lid on the ancient world's most mysterious ritual?
16:03And do the stone circles hide an even darker secret as the site of a showpiece killing?
16:11It's quite bloody. It's quite horrible.
16:13We know that one of the modes of execution was decapitation.
16:27Stonehenge in England, the most famous prehistoric monument in the world.
16:34Archaeologists are uncovering evidence that ancient Britons used this monument all year long
16:39for trading and making goods and for burying their dead.
16:44But what ceremonies went on here during the two key days in the ancient calendar for which the Henge was
16:50designed?
16:51The winter and summer solstices.
16:55We don't have that much evidence about exactly what kind of rituals took place here in prehistory.
17:00So, we have to kind of look at the stones themselves.
17:05Some archaeologists believe clues to the ritual secrets of Stonehenge may lie hidden in the way ancient stonemasons
17:13The two rings of massive sarsen stones.
17:21These stones are a miracle of ancient engineering.
17:26On their tops lie carved joints.
17:31Perfectly shaped to slot inside the lintel balanced on top.
17:37These joints keep the whole monument steady.
17:41The balancing lintels also have tongues and grooves.
17:45That interlock.
17:47To secure the circle.
17:52The ancient craftsmen left nothing to chance.
17:56Every part of the design was carefully considered and expertly executed.
18:05Stonehenge is unique because it's the only linteled stone circle in the world.
18:08It's the only one with these horizontal stones that connect the others together.
18:12And it's also the only one where we've got this evidence of joints and the stones being shaped in such
18:15a unique way.
18:18Today, archaeologist Susan Greene uses laser technology to look for tiny indentations on the surface of the giant sarsens.
18:29She hopes marks carved by ancient stonemasons four and a half thousand years ago could reveal what type of rituals
18:36the stone circles were designed to accommodate.
18:41The way that the stones were shaped was using sarsen hammer stones and molds.
18:45So literally each bash of the stone just results in a little kind of dimple.
18:49And so the detail of that you just wouldn't be able to pick up with the naked eye.
18:54The laser scanner sends out tiny pulses of invisible light.
18:59The light bounces back to the scanner to create a 3D image that's accurate to the tiniest fraction of an
19:06inch.
19:08It can shape how the stones were worked and shaped in prehistory.
19:11And this is actually something that's not really been looked at in masses of detail before.
19:17Susan carefully examines the sarsen stones.
19:21She hopes to discover which surfaces the ancient masons spent the most effort carving.
19:28Because these could point towards the most sacred spots on the site.
19:32Perhaps where holy men would once have stood.
19:36Yeah, we're going to need, I mean this side will come out very nicely here, but to get the top
19:40of it over there we'll need a look at it.
19:42On one of the fallen stones, Susan spots a small but significant detail.
19:47These ridges?
19:48Yeah, so the ridges that you can see here on the stone are the remnants of how they've been working
19:53and shaping this particular stone.
19:58Can you download the data and have a little preview of what we've scanned?
20:01We can have a look at it, yes, yes certainly.
20:05Scans of the standing sarsens reveal more of these rough work marks, but only on one side.
20:12The interior surfaces have been hammered smooth, a process known as dressing.
20:19And the best dressed stones were used to frame the rising sun on the summer solstice.
20:26The laser scanning has shown us that the stones that were the most finely dressed make the movement of the
20:31sun really obvious.
20:33And it shows which bits of the site were important in prehistory.
20:39Susan's work shows that only a small area inside the central horseshoe was optimized to give the perfect view of
20:46the rising sun.
20:51And because the inner circle is small, this tells her something important about how Stonehenge was used.
20:57It wasn't designed as a prehistoric cathedral for a vast congregation.
21:03It was an exclusive temple for a tiny elite.
21:13Susan's research, combined with evidence from other nearby prehistoric sites, allows us to paint a picture of how this elite
21:21may have used Stonehenge.
21:24These chosen few may have arrived by boat, and then walked along a processional avenue to the entrance of the
21:32Henge.
21:34On the longest day of the year, they would have stood along the central axis of the stone circle,
21:41surrounded by the smooth faces of the inner sarsens, and witnessed a spectacular event.
21:48As the summer sun rose directly above the heel stone.
22:00Archaeologists are slowly unraveling the mysteries of how the world's most famous ancient monument was used.
22:07But why did ancient Britons decide to transport these stones 140 miles to this featureless plain?
22:15What was so special about this place?
22:19Now, a bizarre cache of bones unearthed at Stonehenge may finally provide the answer.
22:39Archaeologists are finally piecing together the ancient world's greatest puzzle.
22:44To understand why Stonehenge was built, and how it was used.
22:50But there's one major piece missing.
22:53A really big question, but still remains in the landscape, why is Stonehenge where it is?
23:01Archaeologists have uncovered evidence that may solve this mystery.
23:05If they're right, it will finally explain why the ancient builders went to such extraordinary lengths to bring the bluestones
23:14to this seemingly ordinary place.
23:22Buried beneath the stones, archaeologists have unearthed thousands of animal bones.
23:30Shards of bones from wolves, ravens, dogs, foxes and pigs.
23:38Skulls from cattle and horns from bison.
23:42In the ditches surrounding the stones, there are hundreds of deer antlers.
23:47And at the monument's southern exit, two huge jawbones that appear to belong to a now extinct breed of wild
23:55cow, called an auroch.
23:58The strange bones were carefully placed in a symbolic position.
24:03But why?
24:10David Jakes believes ancient aurochs could be the key to understanding why Stonehenge was built where it was.
24:20Aurochs captivated the Stone Age imagination, appearing in cave paintings across Europe.
24:27There would have been huge mega-cows, about two meters high, running speeds about 35 miles an hour, enormous hauls.
24:35This would have been a really ferocious animal.
24:38In a sense, you get the feeling that the artist is worshipping them.
24:42There would have been enormous respect for these wild animals.
24:46But why bury their bones at Stonehenge?
24:50David thinks he's found the answer, at a site he's been excavating just a mile and a half from the
24:55stones.
24:57It's a site to its east, which I've been exploring since 2005.
25:03It's known as Blickmead.
25:05And here is where the earliest people who were living in this landscape lived.
25:10And they lived here for a really long time.
25:13At Blickmead, David has found fragments of butchered and cooked auroch bone.
25:20And today, he's travelling to one of the world's leading radiocarbon dating laboratories to get his most recent find dated.
25:29He hopes this could solve the mystery of Stonehenge's location.
25:33There are thousands of these bones there.
25:36It looks to us as though this landscape is really heavily populated by aurochs.
25:43Like the buffalo that roamed the Great Plains of America, David believes vast herds of aurochs dominated the plain where
25:51Stonehenge stands today.
25:54But early hunters were waiting, ready to herd the beasts through a natural channel in the landscape, up towards what
26:01would one day become Stonehenge.
26:04We think that the hunters are tracking aurochs from the springs, up over Salisbury Plain, in the direction of the
26:12Stonehenge Knoll.
26:13The area around the Stonehenge Knoll is a kill zone.
26:16It's a terrific place to take these animals down.
26:21David's convinced that long before Stonehenge was built, hundreds of hunters from all over Britain gathered at the site for
26:28annual auroch hunts.
26:30These events would have been so special.
26:33It's like the Super Bowl.
26:34It's like the Pope speaking.
26:37This is sport.
26:39This is religion.
26:41This is feasting.
26:42It would have been an exhilarating course with serious streak of danger in it.
26:46But if you got one of those animals down, you might well be remembered way outside of your lifetime.
26:54These hunts made this landscape famous.
26:59David believes the hunters marked this legendary hunting ground by building the first monument here.
27:06800 feet northwest of Stonehenge, beneath what is now an access road to the stones.
27:14Archaeologists have found evidence of three huge wooden totem poles erected 5,000 years before Stonehenge was built.
27:24It's got the earliest monuments in Europe being put up on the same knoll where Stonehenge later got built.
27:29So it's been a special sacred spot for thousands of years, actually over 10,000 years.
27:375,000 years after the three poles were erected, Stonehenge began to take shape nearby, with a ditch, wooden poles,
27:46and bluestone circle.
27:49Next came the giant sarsen stones, to create the iconic stone circle we see today.
27:59Two monuments, just a short walk apart.
28:03David believes this can't be a coincidence.
28:05To him, there's a connection between the stone circle and the timber posts erected by the hunters in honor of
28:12the great hunts.
28:16The auroch bones found beneath Stonehenge suggest he's right.
28:21But there's a problem.
28:22So far, there's little evidence that the hunters ever came into contact with the people who built Stonehenge, 5,000
28:29years later.
28:31David hopes this auroch tooth, found in a prehistoric house at Blickmead, could provide a link between the two groups.
28:41He's convinced the hunters were still around when the builders first arrived in the area.
28:46And these last hunters taught the builders about the landscape's glorious past.
28:55Other finds from Blickmead suggest his theory could be right.
28:58Will the tooth provide yet more ammunition for this radical idea?
29:03I just wanted to check which one you thought would be best for sampling.
29:08I've got some aurochs teeth fragments.
29:12So they're just there, look.
29:15And also some charcoal.
29:17So these are from the fire from within the house.
29:22But radiocarbon-dating scientist Elaine Dunbar has spotted a problem.
29:27Because this has got tooth enamel on it, we couldn't be sure that the actual carbon that's in this tooth
29:32enamel isn't full of contamination from the soil.
29:36Which can give dates that are actually older or younger from the contamination.
29:40Oh, it's a real pity.
29:43But Elaine is confident she can get an accurate date from the charcoal fragments found with the tooth.
29:48That were most likely used to cook the auroch meat.
29:53Elaine begins the complex process.
29:56To determine when this mighty beast lived.
30:03It takes four weeks to process the results.
30:06Okay Elaine, go on, give me the worst.
30:08I'm absolutely, the whole team to be honest, we're on ten ducks for this date.
30:13If the date is close to 4000 BC, it means hunters were still here after the builders of Stonehenge had
30:20arrived.
30:27It's 4200 to 4040 BC.
30:31Oh my, oh my god, I mean that is, that is a fabulous date, I mean that is a dream
30:36date for us.
30:38I mean basically, this is going to revolutionize our understanding of the establishment of the origins of the Stonehenge landscape.
30:46It doesn't get bigger than that, it's a completely new revelation about why Stonehenge is where it is.
30:55For David, it's proof that the hunters could have passed on their beliefs to the builders of Stonehenge.
31:01And that means the monument we see today is part of a much longer tradition that began not 5000, but
31:0910,000 years ago.
31:10With the hunting of giant aurochs on this windswept plateau.
31:22The stones are giving up their secrets, revealing how this ancient wonder was really used.
31:30Now, archaeologists are discovering these stones guard another secret that's been hidden in plain sight for thousands of years.
31:40Mysterious symbols carved on the stones themselves.
31:55Archaeologists are piecing together the full story of Stonehenge.
31:59They're revealing how this monument was really used.
32:03To make and trade goods.
32:05And to bring good fortune.
32:08Now, new evidence points to perhaps the strangest use of all.
32:16Beneath the lichen and moss, archaeologists have discovered strange carvings carefully etched into the sarsen stones.
32:29These can't be original features of the henge.
32:32They're too detailed to have been made with stone tools.
32:35They must have been made later, with metal.
32:40Why did these later people carve these strange shapes onto the stones?
32:47What do the shapes represent?
32:50And what purpose did they serve?
32:59Actually, you can just about make out one here. It's quite a large one.
33:03Archaeologist Susan Greeney hopes laser scanning technology can find the answers.
33:08So we're concentrating on this particular stone, because this is where some of the carvings were added to the stones.
33:14They're really difficult to see, because there's a lichen cover, because they've weathered.
33:18But you can actually just make them out. There's one just here, quite a large one.
33:21Oh, yes.
33:21Yeah?
33:22Oh, there's maybe...
33:23Yeah, possibly, yeah. So hopefully they'll show up really clearly in the scan.
33:29Today, Susan wants to identify more of these strange carvings.
33:33She wants to find out if these marks are simply random graffiti, or if they contain a hidden message.
33:39The carvings were added to the stones, we think, in about 1800, 1700 BC.
33:45So that's about six or seven hundred years after the stones have been put up.
33:49So it's almost like adding graffiti to an old church or something.
33:52The monument's already old when they're added.
33:56Susan thinks these shapes represent axe heads.
34:02Symbolizing ancient Britain's most treasured possession.
34:06So the axe is a kind of mushroom shape, really.
34:08They're shown upright, and they're shown without any kind of handle.
34:11So it's the actual metal part of the axe that's being carved onto the stones.
34:16One symbol, carved over and again.
34:19This must have been done for a reason.
34:22But what?
34:24400 miles north of Stonehenge, archaeologists think they've found a clue.
34:31At an ancient Scottish burial site, beneath the lid of a stone-lined grave,
34:38archaeologists discovered similar axe head carvings.
34:43For prehistoric people, metal axes were a vital and valuable possession.
34:49Objects so precious, it seems they wanted to take a reminder to their grave.
34:55At Stonehenge, one man was even buried with his axe.
35:00The evidence suggests there was a close association between the dead and their axes.
35:07So do the symbols on the stones represent bodies in the ground?
35:17At the time that these carvings are being put onto the stones at Stonehenge, the whole landscape around here is
35:21being used for burials.
35:23So it's possible that people were coming here burying their dead in this landscape.
35:26And perhaps the mourners or the family were adding an axe to Stonehenge at that time.
35:32If Susan's right, these carvings are memorials.
35:36People came here to commemorate their dead, carving each axe in honour of the deceased, turning Stonehenge into a prehistoric
35:45wall of remembrance.
35:49This is a major discovery, made possible by new technology.
35:54We have about 140 axes on the site, across about four or five of the sarsen stones.
35:59So it's really exciting to have all of this new data, when we wouldn't be able to see it with
36:03the naked eye.
36:06Now archaeologists are discovering shocking new evidence.
36:11That the stones did more than record deaths.
36:15They witnessed them.
36:18Was Stonehenge the site of a brutal murder?
36:32For four and a half thousand years, people have flocked to Stonehenge.
36:38Today, a million people visit every year, never knowing they could be looking at a crime scene.
36:49Osteoarchaeologist Joe Buckbury is using the latest forensic technology to reopen an ancient cold case.
36:57The body of a man, dumped in a shallow grave in the middle of Stonehenge.
37:04Could this man's bones reveal a sinister, previously unknown use for the famous stone circle?
37:11This is the fourth cervical vertebra, so the fourth bone down from in the neck.
37:17And there's actually a cut mark in here, at the back of the vertebra.
37:21So this blow is coming in from behind, through that vertebra, and it indicates that he was actually decapitated.
37:34This is a really brutal form of execution.
37:37It'd be quite bloody, it's quite horrible.
37:38I think it's interesting that the people who did this chose a really iconic location to do this at Stonehenge.
37:47Joe's discovered chilling new evidence that the choice of location for this brutal killing wasn't unique.
37:55Two hundred miles from Stonehenge, at another prehistoric pagan site, archaeologists have found more victims, murdered with the same grisly
38:05MO.
38:07Most of the individuals at the site don't actually have a head, and we actually have a series of heads
38:12buried at different positions across the site as well.
38:14Ten headless bodies, eleven skulls, seven without jaws.
38:23Joe and her team have unearthed shocking evidence of multiple decapitated bodies, all seemingly killed at iconic prehistoric landmarks across
38:33Britain.
38:34Is this the work of a deranged ancient serial killer?
38:38We took a few radiocarbon dates, and this is one of the sampling holes from that.
38:43The three dates that we have are from middle of the 7th century through to about 1060, so that's the
38:51middle to late Anglo-Saxon period, a few centuries after the Roman period.
38:58The killings occurred over hundreds of years, so these men couldn't have been murdered by a single killer.
39:07But they date from a time when Britons were Christians, and that gives Joe a clue to why the man
39:14was buried at pagan Stonehenge.
39:19In this period, most people were buried in a churchyard cemetery, so burying these individuals in an earlier site that's
39:28got associations with paganism perhaps, actually really excludes these individuals from the Christian cemeteries that are in the Anglo-Saxon
39:36settlements.
39:37These men were condemned to spend eternity beyond the reach of their Christian god, and left to rot with the
39:45heathens.
39:46Why?
39:48Joe thinks the answer lies in the brutal nature of their deaths.
39:52For the later Anglo-Saxon period, there are a number of different Anglo-Saxon laws where somebody could be punished
39:58for a crime by execution, and we know that one of the modes of execution was decapitation.
40:05It seems these men and the man at Stonehenge were criminals executed for their crimes.
40:11So this actually helps place into context the Stonehenge individual who was decapitated in the 7th century.
40:19Clearly, they've deliberately chosen to execute and bury this individual at Stonehenge, because it is so iconic, it's so dramatic.
40:29By choosing Stonehenge, they're really saying something about their own power, and the power that the place also holds.
40:38The executioners harnessed the power of Stonehenge to send a clear message that crimes would be punished and the guilty
40:46banished in this life and the next.
40:51What was once a temple for the elite had become a dumping ground for outcasts.
40:59Over five millennia, this monument has had many uses.
41:04Celestial temple, trading post, healing center, memorial wall, and body dump.
41:14But its power has remained unchanged.
41:18Today, four and a half thousand years after it was built, Stonehenge continues to fascinate and inspire.
41:27And its magic remains as strong as ever.
41:49Since the size of a temple is steel into the city, the world's right.
41:51Using the Core of the Dead or the as�.
41:57Once a temple is built,與 the world's right.
41:57But use your own power as well as the mighty stableما monk to make a stronghold.
41:58The power of the sword, all the power of the rupt.
42:00The power of the sword for the sword.
42:01The power of the sword.
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