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00:03In early 2015 in Yorkshire, the remains of a body were discovered in an unmarked grave.
00:10They belonged to a man who had died in his early 20s.
00:15Beside him lay a large sword and the heads of five spears.
00:20It was an Iron Age ritual burial.
00:25Graves like this have been discovered throughout Europe
00:28and we now know that this man once shared a common culture that stretched from Turkey to Portugal.
00:36We know this because he was one of our prehistoric ancestors.
00:43A Celt.
00:49In Britain, we're never far from our Celtic past.
00:53The Celts seem to belong to a shadowy, wilder, more primal time.
00:58Than anything in more recent history.
01:03But much about their origins, beliefs and ultimate fate remains a mystery.
01:13But a story etched in vivid colour
01:17is how these powerful tribal people battled for survival
01:22against their archenemy, the Roman Empire.
01:26From the first Celtic raiding parties that rampaged through ancient Italy
01:31to Julius Caesar's campaign in Gaul
01:34and the Celts' last stand under the warrior queen, Boudicca.
01:40One of the greatest cultural conflicts that still defines our world today
01:46and reveals Europe's most enigmatic ancient people.
02:23Rome, once the heart of Europe's greatest empire.
02:27For hundreds of years, this city ruled over lands stretching from Syria to Britain.
02:35Rome's power was forged on its military strength, enshrined in its laws, economy and monuments.
02:44But even before this empire spread across Europe, it would be challenged by powerful barbarian forces from lands north of
02:54the Alps.
02:55Warrior tribes that would fire the imagination of Romans for centuries to come.
03:02The Celts.
03:10This is the Roman image of the Celt.
03:14It's called the Dying Gaul.
03:19He's completely naked.
03:21He has tousled and unkempt hair, a moustache.
03:25And around his neck, he's wearing a torque, which is the ultimate status symbol of the elite Celtic warrior.
03:33In Roman eyes, this is the quintessential naked savage.
03:37And more importantly, it's a naked savage who has been subdued and defeated.
03:43Here in his side, he's bleeding from a mortal wound.
03:46And in his agony, he's dropped his sword to the ground and then slumped alongside it, awaiting death.
03:53It's a beautiful and very powerful and moving work of art, but it's also propaganda.
04:00This is how Rome wanted its citizens to see, to perceive the Celtic opponent.
04:08As noble, yes, but essentially a savage.
04:14A powerful, potent image to set against the idea of Rome as a disciplined, ordered, civilizing presence.
04:35For 400 years, the Romans and Celts would struggle for supremacy in Europe.
04:41A conflict that, in the end, would define them both.
04:46But while Rome would celebrate its victories in monumental architecture,
04:50the Celts would gradually fade from history.
04:56One big difference between the Celts and the Romans
04:59is that the Celts left us no written records of their own.
05:03Theirs was an oral tradition, not a written one.
05:07Unlike the Romans, who documented almost every detail of their lives
05:12in their writings, in their sculptures and in their monuments.
05:16But the Celts aren't entirely invisible to us.
05:20The world that they left behind is there to be discovered beneath our feet.
05:28Throughout Europe, archaeologists are unearthing the world of the ancient Celts.
05:34I'm in central France in Champagne country, and here on the outskirts of Boucher in April 2013,
05:42a team of archaeologists found something very exciting indeed.
05:47They were investigating this area simply because this is going to be the site of a large new warehouse.
05:57And what they stumbled across was a burial site.
06:02They discovered the graves of 27 men and women, and they'd been buried here in the 4th century BC.
06:18This was an Iron Age cemetery. The people buried here were Celts.
06:26Finds like Boucher give us direct insight into who the Celts really were.
06:33This is one of the skeletons from those graves at Boucher.
06:37And in fact, this is one of the most complete skeletons that were found
06:41because some of the bones are in a very bad state of repair indeed.
06:48Now, I've looked really carefully at these bones, and I can't see any signs of injury or disease on them.
06:55But in fact, there are some marks, or perhaps I should say stains, just here on the left forearm bones.
07:02Now, this isn't a disease. This is where something made of copper or copper alloy
07:07has lain very close to these bones in the grave.
07:10And in fact, with all these skeletons, with all these graves at Boucher,
07:15it's not the human remains themselves that are the most interesting.
07:19It's what was buried with them.
07:24The bodies were accompanied into the afterlife by their possessions,
07:28and they reveal a surprisingly sophisticated culture.
07:32We've got some fibuli, some brooches here, some bracelets, some little pins just there,
07:40and a couple of necklaces as well.
07:43The fibuli are gorgeous.
07:48This fibula is a pièce de résistance.
07:51It has a repeating pattern running along the body of interwoven spirals,
07:56and then this strange white button just here is actually made of coral.
08:02So that would have come from the Mediterranean.
08:05This is a fairly classic Celtic talk.
08:10The thing which characterises them is this opening at the bottom
08:13with these two terminals,
08:15and the whole neck ring would have been twisted open
08:18in order to place it around somebody's neck.
08:21And it's got this nice decoration stamped onto the shaft.
08:26A few of the graves contained weaponry.
08:30And these swords are absolutely beautiful.
08:33They are still in their scabbards,
08:35and the degradation of the iron has meant that it's sprung apart.
08:39So you can actually probably see the sword sitting inside there.
08:45Now, the length of these swords is interesting.
08:47They're not quite as long as the slashing swords
08:51that would have been carried by the cavalrymen amongst the Celts.
08:55So these are designed to be carried by warriors on foot.
09:01And here this iron band is decorated.
09:04We've got these strange circles just here,
09:06but if you look at them really carefully, you realise what they are.
09:09These circles, which are made of coral,
09:12are the eyes of two dragons.
09:20So we've got this lovely symmetrical pattern on this scabbard,
09:24which is actually very different from this one.
09:28Both these styles are typical of the period,
09:31but they're very individual at the same time.
09:34And you can imagine that these swords would have been
09:37very prized personal items.
09:41The picture emerging is that the Celts were a people
09:45with individual style and technical skill,
09:48who took pride in their appearance and weaponry.
09:52It's a far cry from the naked savage depicted by Rome.
10:09Over two and a half thousand years ago,
10:12the Celts and Romans were destined to meet,
10:15as Celtic influence spread south of the Alps into northern Italy.
10:21And we know that some Celts must have come through here,
10:24the Alpine Pass of Valcomonica.
10:33Carved, etched into the rocks hereabouts,
10:36are markings that some archaeologists believe
10:38could be the very earliest depictions of Celts.
10:42As they came through these high Alpine passes,
10:46they encountered a mountain people called the Kamuni.
10:48And it may well be the case that it was those Kamuni
10:51who made these marks in the rocks
10:53and so created the very first indelible record
10:56of what the Celts looked like and what they had.
11:00And what you've got on here is something really quite remarkable.
11:04Most obvious, perhaps, is a depiction of a four-wheeled vehicle, a chariot.
11:11Elsewhere, there's a couple of warriors,
11:14or at least figures who seem to be armed with spears and shields.
11:19But it's a fabulous, unforgettable snapshot
11:22of what someone saw when a new people arrived.
11:29What is clear is that the Celts you ventured south
11:33were ready to fight.
11:38This whole area is just peppered,
11:41littered with the rock carvings
11:42so that you've even got to look underneath the leaf mould
11:45in case you're missing something.
11:49Clear it away.
11:51And look there, right away.
11:53That's fantastic.
11:55See that figure there, look?
11:57A man, his head, two legs,
11:59he's got shoes on and he's holding a spear
12:02and then in his left.
12:04Well, that's either a small kind of buckler-type shield
12:07or it could be a trophy.
12:09It could be a man's severed head.
12:10Who knows?
12:11And so it goes on.
12:13Just got to keep revealing the canvas.
12:15There's more.
12:16There's a crowd of them there,
12:18armed with spears and shields and swords.
12:21More of them.
12:23They're fantastic.
12:25Everything about it seems to be either warlike and aggressive
12:29or jubilant.
12:30You know, the figures are either threatening combat
12:33or they're celebrating victory,
12:35but they're very much alive.
12:39Whoever saw them and decided to commit their image to the rock
12:42had been impressed and wanted to make sure
12:45that some aspect of their arrival was remembered.
12:49The Celtic tribes were migrating,
12:52taking new lands and moving south towards central Italy.
12:57The ordered, structured world of Rome had a storm coming.
13:10To find out what happened when the Romans first met the Celts,
13:14we have to rely on this, Livy's history of Rome.
13:18Now, bear in mind that Livy, Titus Livius, was a Roman,
13:23so he's likely to be partisan
13:25and he was writing 300 years after the event.
13:30He tells us that that first meeting between the Romans and the Celts
13:34took place in 387 BC in Clusium,
13:39a town in what's now Tuscany,
13:41a hundred miles north of Rome.
13:49It's hard to believe,
13:50strolling around this peaceful Tuscan hill town today,
13:54but events that unfolded here
13:55would set and train centuries of conflict.
13:58conflict and bloodshed.
14:21Livy writes that,
14:23outlandish warriors in their thousands,
14:26armed with strange weapons,
14:28marched to Clusium
14:30in search of new lands to conquer
14:32and riches to plunder.
14:34They were led by a Celtic tribal leader and warlord
14:38called Brennus.
14:51While the Celtic horde descended upon Clusium,
14:54the town's officials sent word to Rome asking for armed protection.
15:05But the request was denied.
15:08Instead, Rome sent three of her ambassadors to negotiate a peaceful settlement.
15:20It would be the first time Rome would come face to face with her greatest adversary.
15:25And so begin centuries of struggle for the heart and soul of Europe.
15:33As negotiations started,
15:36the Celts demanded land.
15:38And with vastly superior numbers,
15:41they were in no mood for compromise.
16:01There was a fierce argument,
16:02and in the heat of the moment,
16:03a Roman ambassador stabbed his spear through a Celtic chieftain's heart,
16:07killing him instantly.
16:24In a single stroke, the oath of neutrality,
16:27one of Rome's own accepted customs, was broken.
16:29The Celts demanded that the Roman in question be handed over to them
16:33for suitable punishment.
16:34The demand was ignored.
16:36Big mistake.
16:38Big mistake.
16:41Livy wrote.
16:43The Celts flamed into uncontrollable anger
16:46and set forward with terrible speed,
16:49covering miles of ground.
16:54The cry went up.
16:56To Rome.
16:58To Rome.
17:11The Romans came face to face with the Celts in 387 BC.
17:17But from modern archaeology,
17:19we know that Celtic culture goes back much further than that.
17:27Some of the earliest evidence comes from a tiny village south east of Salzburg in Austria,
17:33called Hallstatt.
17:37It's a place that has given its name to an entire Celtic period,
17:41and has become synonymous with early Celtic culture.
17:49This is Hallstatt, tucked away in a fold of the Austrian Alps.
17:53It's a quiet town with an even quieter population.
17:56And yet it's one of the most famous names in archaeology,
18:00and the ideal starting point for any investigation of the Celts.
18:03Because it's here that we catch the very first glimpses of Celtic material culture,
18:09by which I mean identifiable things left behind by Celts.
18:13Hallstatt culture.
18:15I had it drummed into my head when I was an archaeology student.
18:18And now, 30 years after I first heard the term, I'm finally here.
18:33Starting in 1846, archaeologists at Hallstatt gradually unearthed over a thousand graves,
18:40out of perhaps 5,000 scattered across the upper valley,
18:45an entire city of the dead.
18:48Within the graves were over 20,000 artefacts dating back as far as 800 BC.
18:56Intricate brooches, gold bracelets, vessels made of sheet bronze, iron daggers and axes.
19:06This was the earliest evidence of a long-forgotten prehistoric culture.
19:11A culture we now recognise as Celtic.
19:17Archaeologist Hans Restreiter has worked here for over 25 years.
19:23What was special about the graves that were found here?
19:26The number of the graves, we have more than 5,000 of them.
19:30And also the grave goods we found within the graves.
19:33We have a lot of jewellery and other luxury products in the graves.
19:37Here in Hallstatt, more than 60% of the graves are with a lot of grave goods.
19:42Ah, right, so the majority of people who died and were buried in these graves
19:45were rich enough to take stuff with them.
19:48Yes, that's it.
19:48How do you know this wasn't a graveyard for the wealthy?
19:51How do you know the poor weren't buried somewhere else?
19:53No, the traces on the skeletons, the musculmarks, show that also the people in the rich graves
19:59have worked their whole life wrong.
20:01And these musculmarks show traces of heavy workload.
20:05So what kind of activity creates that kind of build-up of wear and tear on the bones?
20:13For the women, for example, we see that they have a heavy workload on one shoulder.
20:18It seems they have carried heavy loads on one shoulder.
20:21Right.
20:21For the men, we have no muscles on the legs.
20:26Right.
20:27But we have a lot of muscles here on the shoulders.
20:29Right.
20:30So whatever it was they were doing required upper body strength.
20:33Yes.
20:33But not a lot of moving around.
20:34No.
20:35Right.
20:39What made Hallstatt unique can still be found buried deep inside these mountains.
20:44A valuable commodity that made the ancient people who lived here rich and Hallstatt famous.
21:04To the right, we have the first prehistoric site.
21:09We are entering here.
21:10Take care, it's slippery.
21:27Right.
21:28Now this tunnel is a little bit different than the one we walked up.
21:31Oh yeah, it is.
21:32Here we see the remains of one of these huge prehistoric tunnels.
21:37So you've re-excavated a space that was originally made 3,000 years ago.
21:43Wow.
21:44And the shining's a crystalline sand.
21:47That's the salt.
21:48That's the salt, yes.
21:49That's poor rock salt.
21:50This is the salt the prehistoric miners were looking for.
21:54And this salt is heading in this direction so the prehistoric miners followed the direction of the salt.
22:01Salt was highly prized as a vital preservative in the ancient world and the Celts of Hallstatt mined it on
22:08a massive scale.
22:09This mountain is riddled with huge excavated galleries up to 200 metres long and 20 metres high.
22:18Everything the miners left behind is preserved perfectly.
22:22Here you see thousands of burnt down tapers to illuminate the light.
22:26Oh, it tapers from the end of flaming torches.
22:30Yes, yes.
22:32And this is everything that the wealth of Hallstatt society, Hallstatt culture was all built on.
22:40It's this.
22:40So that explains the marks on the skeletons in the graves.
22:45It's the labour in here.
22:46Oh, yes, it is.
22:48The tool handles we find in here.
22:50This is the handles of the bronze pigs to break this huge plate of salt.
22:55And the work of those pigs explains the marks on the male skeletons.
23:02And we think that the marks on the female skeletons are from carrying these huge plates of salt.
23:08So they bear the marks of a lifetime of labour on the skeletons.
23:13Oh, yes.
23:14So people, it wasn't supposed to be alive, it was supposed to be a surrounding.
23:17It was quite normal.
23:18They were subterranean.
23:19Yeah.
23:19Oh, yeah.
23:21Within this ancient mine are also very personal reminders of the people that worked here.
23:27So am I right in thinking that that there is proof of a life?
23:32Oh, yeah.
23:32This is a prehistoric excrement.
23:35I'll be honest with you Hans, I never expected to catch this intimate glimpse of a Celtic salt miner.
23:41Yeah.
23:42I feel a strange sense of communion and brotherhood.
23:45Oh, yeah.
23:46And in this excrement, we also find the eggs of parasites.
23:50So we have to prove that nearly all the miners had parasites in their stomach.
23:55So it was not a nice time one or two thousand years ago.
23:59And if it gets wet, it still smells.
24:01Oh, no, that is unbelievable.
24:05The Iron Age is alive and well down here.
24:08Yeah.
24:08It's preserved because of the salt in here.
24:11It's my first salted poo.
24:15The salt from this mountain was of such high quality, it became a prized commodity traded throughout the region.
24:22The people of Hallstatt grew rich from this white gold at a time when another commodity was starting to transform
24:31prehistoric society.
24:33Iron.
24:38The secrets of iron production had spread from Asia Minor through the Eastern Mediterranean into Central Europe.
24:47People had long been able to extract copper and tin to make bronze.
24:52Iron ore was more plentiful, but iron was harder to extract and to work.
24:59Repeated heating and hammering yielded a metal hardened, durable and perfect for weaponry.
25:06The Celts became masters at it.
25:11The extraordinary finds at Hallstatt revealed the Celts as wealthy, industrious and technologically sophisticated.
25:19It was the birth of a new and very distinctive culture, one that would grow, influence and ultimately dominate Europe.
25:28Hallstatt would become famous as the birthplace of a new culture that thrived and spread across great swathes of Europe.
25:37By 500 BC, the Celts had arrived in northern Italy.
25:42And by 387 BC, having been wronged by Roman ambassadors at Clusium, the Celtic chieftain Brennus and his men were
25:51marching south to Rome, hungry for revenge.
25:57The Roman army, having received word of the approaching Celtic horde, marched north to meet them, led by General Quintus
26:06Sulpicius.
26:08Sulpicius had six legions under his command, approximately 24,000 soldiers.
26:16Just 11 miles from Rome, he encountered his enemy on a plain next to the river Alia.
26:24This is by no means the most atmospheric place.
26:27Right behind me, there's a high speed rail track.
26:29The whole area is crisscrossed with overhead power lines.
26:33But we believe that thousands of people died here.
26:36This is the battlefield of Alia, where the Roman army came face to face with the Celts for the very
26:41first time in pitched battle.
26:43And it's worth remembering too that the Roman commander, Sulpicius, had next to no knowledge of his foe.
26:49He knew nothing about their tactics or their weaponry.
26:52And furthermore, he'd been caught on the hop with hardly any time to prepare for what he could now see
26:57was ahead of him and coming his way.
27:02Mike Lodes, an expert in ancient military tactics, has been piecing together what happened on the battlefield nearly two and
27:10a half thousand years ago.
27:12Hey Neil.
27:13How are you?
27:14Good to see you.
27:15You too.
27:15You too.
27:17It doesn't really have the feel of a battlefield.
27:19No, well it's not the prettiest, is it?
27:21It's not.
27:21It's a reminder that history happens under our feet, where we live our everyday lives.
27:26I kind of like the ordinariness of it.
27:28What about the topography would have appealed to a commander?
27:31Well, you've got to remember that this is not the Roman army of later years.
27:36We're talking 387 BC.
27:38This is a fledgling Rome.
27:40It's a small force and they're fighting in a phalanx.
27:45That's 10, 15 rows deep, shoulder to shoulder.
27:49You've got that rigid, static, entrenched Roman attitude to fighting.
27:54You hold your ground.
27:55You take your position.
27:56What I think Sulpicius was trying to do was force a pitched battle on this plain.
28:03That's where he set his phalanx, expecting that Brennus would bring his hordes on to engage them.
28:10And on that hill, which probably didn't have all those trees on back then, Sulpicius would have put his cavalry,
28:17the equites, the elite Roman soldiers.
28:20I think Sulpicius was planning to either sweep down on a flanking manoeuvre or come round behind the Celts.
28:30So what did go wrong for Sulpicius and his Romans?
28:34Well, the first thing is, Brennus didn't do what Sulpicius thought he was supposed to do.
28:40He didn't play the game.
28:46He didn't let his undisciplined hordes rush forward.
28:50He had control of them.
28:53And they went streaming up that hill and they drove that elite Roman cavalry off the battlefield.
29:14The Celts were much more imaginative, swirling and using the landscape.
29:20And it would hit and run and flew it. It's just a different way of commanding the battlefield.
29:26It sounds as if the analogy is that the Celt is the flowing stream and the Roman is the rock
29:34in the river.
29:36With the elite cavalry dealt with, the Celtic warriors turned their attention to the Roman phalanxes on the plain.
29:45Lance!
29:50There's a lot of people who have worked very closely to him!
29:53No!
29:54No!
29:59No!
30:22Overrun and outmanoeuvred, the Roman legionaries fled in panic, terrified by the Celtic charge.
30:36Many were cut down in the rout, others drowned in the Alia weighed down by their heavy bronze armour.
31:04The Romans would later claim they lost 20,000 men that day.
31:09The city of Rome was left to its fate.
31:14The Romans may have thought their enemy had come out of nowhere, but the Celts had had connections with the
31:20Mediterranean world for years.
31:24Hill forts are iconic features of Celtic Europe, Iron Age castles that were the homes of chiefs and great centres
31:34of power.
31:37Hoeneberg, built in the 6th century BC, lies nearly 250 miles west of Hallstatt in southern Germany.
31:47This is Hoeneberg, and in 600 BC this whole place would have been covered in Iron Age buildings.
31:56And archaeologists are arguing that we shouldn't just view this as a hill fort, but that this was a city,
32:02perhaps the first city north of the Alps.
32:08The Celtic city of Hoeneberg is estimated to have had a population of 5,000, and its construction was on
32:15a grand scale.
32:19A 5 metre high white wall surrounded the entire citadel, punctuated by huge defensive towers, which were further protected by
32:28a large earthen ditch 6 metres deep.
32:33This was architecture designed to be impregnable and to impress.
32:40Dirk Krause is the head of archaeology at Hoeneberg.
32:46These walls, these are pretty magnificent, aren't they?
32:49They're much more magnificent than I expected, I think, for an Iron Age forge.
32:54Yeah, because they are unique and they are very extraordinary.
32:58Normally they built with timber and stone and earth, but here they used limestone foundation and above they built with
33:06mud bricks.
33:08And this painting is necessary for the protection of the mud bricks because we have bad weather here north of
33:13the Alps.
33:14It's also for demonstration of power because these walls were seen from miles away.
33:22So everyone who came here knew this is a mighty site.
33:28Oh, so this is what the walls are like underneath all that white paint?
33:32Yeah, these are the mud bricks.
33:34They're not baked clay bricks, but they are dried in the sun or in the air.
33:40So just how unusual is this style of building for the Iron Age?
33:43It's extraordinary.
33:45They didn't build with mud bricks north of the Alps.
33:48Never.
33:48Never before and never afterwards.
33:52Where has this idea come from?
33:53Yeah, for a long time it was a mystery where this idea came from.
33:58But the combination of mud bricks and of towers which were built in the citadel wall here, you find it
34:06only in the Phoenician culture.
34:08In, for example, in the Levante or in Sicily or in the Iberian Peninsula.
34:12So maybe an architect came here who learned to build in a Phoenician context.
34:21It's an example of this Mediterranean influence.
34:24I think centuries before you think Mediterranean influence really takes off with the Roman Empire.
34:33When you get up on the top of the Hoeneberg, you realise just why it was such an important site.
34:41It dominates the landscape, but it's also extremely well connected within this landscape.
34:47That down there is the Danube, which of course carries on and flows east to the Black Sea.
34:53And to the south of the Hoeneberg, the Rhine rises.
34:57These are really important river routes, but there are also important overland routes nearby as well.
35:04The Autobahns of the Iron Age.
35:10Silver from Iberia.
35:12Amber from the Baltic.
35:13Wine and pottery from Italy and Greece.
35:16This crisscrossed the continent, east to west, south to north.
35:21Its links to the wider world made Hoeneberg a vital hub for trade and industry.
35:28And helped to build the foundations of a powerful civilisation.
35:32The enormous wealth from this trade transformed early Celtic leaders into more than chiefs.
35:38It created an elite class.
35:41The oligarchs of the Iron Age.
35:46Some can even be regarded as royalty.
35:51This burial mound protected the grave of a man who died around 530 BC.
35:59He's become known as the Hochdorf Prince.
36:02Because dispatched with him into the afterlife were some of the most remarkable finds of the early Celtic world.
36:09Now housed in the depository of the Stuttgart Museum.
36:18This is fantastic. Just look at this.
36:21This is the couch that the Hochdorf Prince was laid to rest on in his tomb.
36:27And it's made entirely out of sheet bronze, riveted together.
36:32We've got this wonderful hammered pattern, stylised warriors fighting in single combat.
36:39And then at each end we've got the representation of a four-wheeled chariot,
36:44pulled by two stallions with a warrior holding a shield and a spear.
36:58I suppose you've got to remember that when it was put in the grave it would have been a beautiful
37:03shiny bronze object
37:05and not this green, verdigreed appearance that we see now.
37:11And you can see that this bronze couch is at the moment resting on these steel legs which of course
37:16are not original.
37:17This is what it originally stood on.
37:21So this is one of the eight legs of this couch and you can see that it's a little bronze
37:27figurine.
37:28So this is a woman bearing a pot on her head and she's drilled all over and would have been
37:34inlaid with coral.
37:36And she's standing astride a wheel, so she's a miniature unicyclist.
37:41So this couch would have been on casters.
37:45Also discovered in the tomb were drinking horns, bronze plates and a vast cauldron decorated with three lions
37:52that would have contained up to 500 litres of honey mead.
37:59This is the cauldron.
38:01It is enormous.
38:03The size of it is incredibly impressive.
38:08And cauldrons really are emblematic of something which was pretty fundamental in Celtic society
38:15and that of course was feasting.
38:17This was the way that chieftains showed their power and their wealth
38:22and kept their allies close to them.
38:25Just based on the size of his cauldron, the Hochdorf prince must have been a fairly important person.
38:31But the greatest luxuries of all were found on the prince himself.
38:37Our Hochdorf prince was wrapped in layers and layers of cloth.
38:41And not only that, he was adorned with all of this gold.
38:46And it is stunning.
38:48He was wearing this beautiful golden neck ring.
38:51When you look at it really, really closely, you realise that what appears at first glance to be an abstract
38:56pattern
38:57is in fact a little repeating stamp of a tiny rider on a horse.
39:03And then there are these two golden fibulae or brooches and you can see that the pins have been deliberately
39:09bent.
39:10So this is part of the strange ritual of his funeral.
39:15He was buried with these brooches but they're not to be used again by a living person.
39:19And then other objects like a bronze dagger which has been encased in gold.
39:25Again, with a hammered pattern all over it.
39:30But I think what is most extraordinary about this entire collection are his shoes.
39:35Now of course they say shoes but the shoes themselves have long since rotted away.
39:40But what we have left are these wonderful gold plaques going round the top of the shoe here and right
39:47up and over the toe.
39:50So having lived in luxury, he took luxury to the grave with him.
39:56And he also took everything he needed to carry on feasting right into the afterlife.
40:08From the tiny alpine village of Hallstatt had grown one of Europe's great ancient cultures.
40:16The Celts may not have fitted the classical model but they were a rich, complex and structured society.
40:24A telling contrast to the Roman image of a naked warrior, the wild barbarian of the dying Gaul.
40:46I learnt the accepted theory as an archaeology student.
40:50But brand new research is suggesting that Celtic origins might be far more complex and intriguing.
41:05If we're trying to track down the Celts and find out how and where it all started, there are a
41:13number of lines of evidence that we can follow.
41:15There's archaeology so we can look for their material culture, their swords and shields and jewellery and look at how
41:21that spreads across Europe.
41:22But we can also look at language because we believe that these Iron Age tribes spoke very similar languages and
41:29that we have surviving Celtic languages in the west of Europe.
41:34In Wales, in Scotland, Ireland, Cornwall and Brittany.
41:38But it's not to any of those places that I've come in search of ancient Celtic language.
41:43It is to the Algarve, to south-west Portugal.
41:50John Cook is a philologist, the study of literary text, and he's behind a new theory of Celtic origins that
41:58starts with a very old source.
42:01The ancient Greek historian Herodotus.
42:06John, I must say that I didn't expect to come to Portugal in search of the Celts but you think
42:12that they were here.
42:13Oh, I have no doubt that the Celts were here.
42:17As well as saying that the Celts lived near the source of the Danube.
42:23Herodotus, in our first good references to the Celts, writing in the 5th century BC, says that they also lived
42:30beyond the Pillar of Hercules, that's the Straits of Gibraltar.
42:33And next to a people he calls the Cunetes, and the Cunetes seems to be a Celtic name as well.
42:40So we have Celts in name and Celts linguistically.
42:44So how do we square that, what Herodotus is telling us, with this idea that the Celts come from Central
42:53Europe, that is their homeland, and then they spread out and that Western Europe is very much a kind of
42:58afterthought?
42:59Well, I think we need to look at that differently. We need to re-examine that whole idea. It simply
43:05doesn't work.
43:06For John, what doesn't work is the absence of archaeological evidence linking the Celts here to the Celts of Central
43:14Europe.
43:16But there is evidence linking the Iberian Celts to Britain, Ireland and the Atlantic coastline.
43:25The clues are etched into ancient stone tablets that date to the 7th century BC, the same period as the
43:34Hallstatt Celts.
43:37So John, what have we got here? What is this stone? Is it a gravestone?
43:41Well, this was found in the far southwest of the peninsula, a place called Fonteberia, which was a necropolis, a
43:50burial ground of the early Iron Age.
43:52And can you read it, John?
43:54This bit, Logobo, the first word, looks very much like dedications that we have in northwestern Spain of Lugubo.
44:04And these are dedications to the Celtic god Lug.
44:08Nerebo probably means something like to the chief men.
44:13So we have to the gods Lug and to the chief men is the opening of this inscription.
44:20Logon, I think up here, I think this might be the word for burial because we've got a very similar
44:25word in northern Italy in a Celtic inscription about probably about 500 years later.
44:30So this looks like a Celtic word written in stone?
44:33It looks like a Celtic, I mean, it's a Celtic name and it looks like it has a Celtic inflected
44:37ending on it.
44:38So it's grammatically Celtic and it's etymologically Celtic.
44:41And it still has links to extant Celtic languages, to Celtic languages spoken by living people.
44:47Oh, yeah, that's how we know. I mean, that's sort of, by definition, this is how we decide something is
44:55Celtic.
44:56John thinks that this is an ancient language written down using the alphabet of the Phoenicians,
45:04Mediterranean seafarers who reached the Iberian Peninsula as long ago as 900 BC.
45:11But although this language has been written using that alphabet, it's not Phoenician.
45:18It's Celtic.
45:23This early Celtic has clear links to later Celtic languages spoken in Britain and Ireland, such as Gaelic, Welsh and
45:32Cornish.
45:33And John believes that Bronze Age traders and seafarers used this proto-Celtic as they traded silver, copper and tin
45:41up and down the Atlantic coastline,
45:44from Portugal to northern Spain, Brittany to Ireland and the West Country.
45:51And for me, this is really exciting, because this is new.
45:54This idea is turning what we think about the Celts totally on its head.
45:59Instead of thinking about a migration out of Central Europe,
46:02we've got something really interesting happening on this Atlantic fringe,
46:06something that could actually be the origin of the Celts.
46:11This new theory suggests that rather than being invaded by Iron Age Celts,
46:17our Celtic heritage arrived in Britain during the Bronze Age, using a very different mechanism.
46:24So, my Celticness might have much more to do with the exchange of oars and ingots than with the blood
46:31and gore of a raiding party.
46:32And if that's true, then Britain and the far west of Europe may have had much more influence on the
46:38spread of Celtic culture in Central Europe than was previously imagined.
46:42And there's a fascinating piece of evidence to support all of that.
46:55This is a Gundlingen sword, an early Celtic sword.
46:59It has this elegant leaf shape, and it sweeps back into a big, broad pommel.
47:04It's typically Celtic.
47:06Now, a generation ago, swords like this were cited as evidence of the spread of the Celts into the West
47:12from Central Europe.
47:14So, you'd find them made of iron all over Central Germany and France.
47:18But recently, archaeologists have been finding lots of swords like this in Britain, made of bronze, just like this one.
47:26They're from the early 8th century.
47:28They're before Hallstatt.
47:30It suggests that it may have been swords made in Britain from bronze that influenced the weapons technology of the
47:40early Iron Age, spreading from west to east, from Britain to Central Europe, and not the other way round.
47:46So, when it comes to the case of a Celtic warlord like Brennus and his men, they may have been
47:51carrying weapons that were shaped by a technology that had its foundations in Britain.
48:19In 387 BC, for the first time, the Celtic and Roman worlds had clashed.
48:26They were forced at the Battle of Alia.
48:29According to the Roman historian Livy, 20,000 legionaries had lost their lives that day, leaving the city of Rome
48:37at the mercy of the Celtic army, under the command of Chief Brennus.
48:51Livy wrote the following, as there was no hope of defending the city, the decision was taken to withdraw all
48:58men capable of bearing arms together with the women and children and able-bodied senators into the fortress on the
49:04capital.
49:04From that stronghold, properly armed and provisioned, it was their intention to make a last stand for themselves, for their
49:11gods and for the Roman name.
49:14The fortress was up there on the Capitoline hill, one of the seven hills upon which Rome was built.
49:19The city, which had never been defeated, was about to face the fury of its greatest foe.
49:42Livy wrote, then news came that the Gauls were at the gates, and all too soon cries like the howling
49:49of wolves and barbaric songs could be heard.
49:59That howling of wolves and barbaric din might have come from a Carnyx, a Celtic war trumpet.
50:08The Celts carried hundreds of them into battle.
50:11Today, however, there is only one Carnyx player in the world.
50:17Musician John Kenny.
50:44The Carnyx clearly was used to strike fear into enemies in battles.
50:51The sound is made in the same way that we activate a modern trumpet, trombone, French horn, tuba.
50:58You vibrate your lips.
51:05But with this instrument, the sound is entrapped in a bronze skull.
51:10And the skull works exactly like our skull, because our vocal cords are amplified by all of the nasal passages
51:19and the shape, form of our skull.
51:24That's why we can make a sound without opening our mouths.
51:28It's exactly the same with this instrument.
51:30So the sound isn't projected forward, it's radial.
51:34And that's extremely unusual in the world of musical instruments.
51:40The sound of these trumpets, accompanied by howls and shouts, is thought to have been a deliberate part of the
51:46Celtic battle plan, designed to terrify the enemy.
51:53The world at that time was a much quieter place.
51:56These instruments can out-shout human beings and play as loud as thunder and loud as the sea.
52:03Furthermore, when they're played upright, they're 12 feet high and they have a head.
52:07So if you see 12 or so of these coming out of the mist in the morning, screaming like mad,
52:12it's quite possible to imagine you're being attacked by a race of giants.
52:21So there we are.
52:26By the time the Celts entered the city of Rome, its citizens had either retreated to the Capitoline Hill or
52:33fled.
52:33The streets were empty.
52:43Livy tells us that the Celts came across a mansion belonging to Roman nobility and found the doors open.
52:58Suspecting a trap, they entered cautiously.
53:05But the only thing waiting for them was a group of elderly Romans sitting motionless in an act of silent
53:13defiance.
53:20The Celtic warriors stood entranced by the spectacle.
53:33On an impulse, a Celtic warrior reached out with his hand and touched the beard of one of the seated
53:39figures.
53:45The Roman lashed out and hit him over the head with his ivory staff.
53:49The Roman lashed out and hit him over the head with his ivory staff.
53:49It was the moment that sealed the city's fate.
54:02Enraged, the Celtic warriors butchered the old men where they sat and looted and burned the imperial city to the
54:09ground.
54:10Time out and hit him over.
54:11He said he were one of the few deaths.
54:13Time out and hit him over the head and hit him over the head with his ivory staff.
54:14No!
54:16No!
54:18No!
54:32Eventually, faced with the prospect of starvation or slaughter,
54:36the Romans trapped on the Capitoline hill had no choice but to surrender,
54:41agreeing to pay the Celts a ransom in gold.
54:46The commander, Quintus Sulpicius, who had led the army to defeat at the Battle of Alia,
54:52agreed to negotiate a settlement with the Celtic warlord, Brennus.
55:01They agreed the sum of £1,000 in weight in gold,
55:05a colossal ransom for a city already ravaged.
55:28In fact, it was always a wasteful amount of money after everybody was looking like a cluster.
55:51Just to add insult to injury, Brennus used weights that were heavier than normal to weigh the gold.
55:58It was the second time he had outwitted Sulpicius.
56:07When the Roman commander objected, Brennus flung his sword onto the scales, shouting,
56:12Vi victus, woe to the vanquished.
56:27Vi victus.
56:32It was a dramatic reminder that the Romans were totally at the mercy of the Celts.
56:38The Romans had learned the hard way that the Celts were far from the wild savages portrayed.
56:44During the course of four centuries, they had developed a complex and powerful tribal network.
56:50Theirs was a warrior culture with a shared language and extensive trading links.
56:55They had expanded across central Europe, through the Alps and south into Italy, where they had defeated the emergent Roman
57:03Empire.
57:05In the years that followed, Rome was rebuilt and defended by a new impregnable barrier, the Servian Wall.
57:14It was a permanent reminder to its citizens of their defeat at the hands of the Celts.
57:20They were resolved never to let their city fall again.
57:25For Rome, it was a new beginning.
57:28And over the next few hundred years, the Romans would collide again with the Celts and battle for survival, for
57:35land, for the very heart and soul of Europe.
57:40Next time, 300 years later, we discover the Golden Age of the Celts and their expansion to the furthest reaches
57:49of Europe and beyond.
57:53In France, Rome's greatest military general, Julius Caesar, is challenged by a warrior king, commanding an army of a quarter
58:01of a million men.
58:03At stake is the survival of the Celtic heartland of Gaul.
58:10United book number 38, 1942.
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58:22www. Lolz testedwar.org
58:22A Viking number 38, 1942.
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