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Uncovering the Ancient History of Stonehenge (Full Episode) | Lost Cities with Albert Lin — Transcript

by National Geographic · 5,309 words · 883 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

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0:11you travel through life knowing knowing
0:15that somehow you're connected to a
0:16deeper story to a longer human
0:18Journey a journey that would find its
0:21way
0:22here thousands of years ago at the dawn
0:25of
0:27civilization Stonehenge represents a
0:29crowning achievement for our ancient
0:31ancestors but why did they build it here
0:35why choose this
0:37place I'm here to uncover the
0:41[Music]
0:45answer my name is Albert
0:48Lynn and I look at the world in a unique
0:51way I use 21st Century Technologies to
0:55look back into our past check that out I
0:59can actually fly through the secret
1:00ancient
1:02world lasers that scan
1:05deserts strip away dense jungle canopy
1:09and scour the oceans to uncover the
1:12Hidden Worlds
1:15beneath we're waiting into uncharted
1:19waters now I have the military helping
1:21me find lost cities new discoveries in
1:24the most awe inspiring places on Earth
1:28that's where pixels become reality
1:30that fill the gaps in our story who we
1:34are where we came from and the Wonders
1:37we can
1:39achieve here we are in the 13th
1:43century this is carved out of the earth
1:45huh this is the new Golden Age of
1:51Exploration we know their secrets
2:15I'm a
2:16scientist but some places can only be
2:19described as magical
2:22[Music]
2:30it's so
2:31beautiful I've dreamed of being
2:34here there's very few places in the
2:37world that make you
2:41feel so
2:43[Music]
2:46humbled these rocks
2:49these these crazy
2:52[Music]
2:57rocks they tell a story of us
3:00[Music]
3:02you know doesn't matter where you came
3:04from what time you were born
3:07in they represent something so deep
3:09inside us
3:12imagination
3:15belief they
3:16symbolize what it
3:19means to be a
3:21[Music]
3:23human 5,000 years ago deep in the heart
3:26of Southern England settlers from
3:29Mainland Europe Built This Magnificent
3:31[Music]
3:34structure building this Monument cost
3:36time labor probably
3:39[Music]
3:41lives but what was it about this place
3:44that made it so
3:46[Music]
3:53special my Hunt For answers begins just
3:56a mile or two
3:58away where there are secrets that long
4:00predate Stone hinge to be found in the
4:02shadows of an Old
4:06[Music]
4:18Forest this place is called Blick me and
4:21it's full of ancient history there's a
4:24sight of a thousand-year-old Abbey just
4:26over there and up this hill there's the
4:29remains of of a 2 to 3,000 year old Hill
4:32Fortress but the really ancient secrets
4:35are right over
4:36here this Springfed Lagoon stays at a
4:39pretty constant temperature of 52° even
4:43in winter when the weather is below
4:45freezing it could easily function as a
4:48reliable Watering Hole throughout the
4:52year but 8,000 years ago people in
4:56Britain lived as hunter gatherers
5:00Nomads who lived in small family
5:04groups always on the Move foraging for
5:08food all good stories start at the
5:12beginning I'm on the hunt for evidence
5:14that people did visit this area 3,000
5:17years before Stonehenge was
5:20built uncovering secrets from the
5:23prehistoric is almost
5:25impossible but archaeologist David Jake
5:28has made it his life work to do just
5:32that what is this well this is an axe
5:35probably used for clearing Woodland I
5:38mean this is a real Prestige thing this
5:40would be like a series 7 BMW this and
5:43acts like that really high status plus
5:46ergonomically it's lovely it's for a
5:47right-handed person are you right-handed
5:49I am yeah right well just put that in
5:51your hands oh look at that perfectly
5:54designed it is it's like an ergonomic
5:56dream and it's got real friction point
5:58at the base to help you give a really
6:01strong piece of
6:03purchase it's not just the tools that
6:05are remarkable it's the number that
6:08theyve found we have got tens of
6:10thousands of stone tools from a period
6:12of time where you hardly find five or
6:14six tens of thousands right well some of
6:16them are tiny some of them are big like
6:18these ones the numbers that we've got
6:20here are the biggest by far in Western
6:22Europe in terms of the amount of tools
6:24in terms of the density they're the
6:26biggest densities for the whole of
6:27Europe
6:33what we have here is thousands and
6:36thousands of tools all in a tiny little
6:38area that means that they they they came
6:40here for some reason could this have
6:43been the blueprint of one of the very
6:45first
6:46cities I got to find out
6:49[Music]
6:50more prehistoric settlements were nearly
6:53always built next to
6:56water it's a source of life so if you
6:59follow the water you find the life the
7:03river here it feels too small to sustain
7:05an entire hun gatherer City but this is
7:08where technology can help a satellite
7:11image of Blick Me shows an area dense
7:13with
7:15[Music]
7:18trees using an image created by lar
7:22sensors which shoot up to 1 million
7:25Precision laser beams per
7:27second can reveal what lies
7:31underneath here is where the river
7:33currently is the liar data shows it sits
7:37within a huge flood
7:39plane this is awesome it looks like
7:42based off of this data that there should
7:44have been a huge river that would have
7:45run right next to Blick
7:52me we know hunter gatherers used boats
7:54for
7:55transportation Rivers were like their
7:57highways
8:04to get the full picture of what was
8:05going on here we really need more
8:07evidence just stone
8:10tools if there was a lost city at Blick
8:12me it would have been built with Timber
8:14that roted away long
8:17ago but if we follow the path of that
8:20ancient huge River far enough it could
8:23be a different story
8:29the journey takes me 30 miles South and
8:32across what is now a shallow
8:36sea this is the is of white a small
8:39island just beyond the main shores of
8:41England but I've come here for a very
8:44specific reason there's a incredible
8:47sight just in the
8:49waters beneath these
8:52[Music]
8:55Cliffs Maritime archaeologist Gary
8:57momber has been exploring the these
8:59waters for 20
9:01[Music]
9:11years the English Channel is a
9:14notoriously difficult place to
9:16dive meticulous preparations are
9:24vital visibility isn't great so be
9:27careful we'll buddy up together and I'll
9:30take you to the bottom of the shot line
9:32see the seabed and then I'll take you to
9:34the
9:39side
9:41go
9:45go
9:48go
9:52away with powerful tides and cold water
9:56conditions are treacherous
9:59but at the bottom of this line lies a
10:01treasure Trove from another
10:09age wow it's so murky down
10:13here you can hardly see more than a few
10:16feet
10:19[Music]
10:33is that a
10:34tree there's a tree down here
10:39wow 8,000 years ago sea levels were
10:42lower and the seabed was dry
10:47land the wood has survived underwater
10:50for
10:51Millennia this is incredible down
10:55here the trees are all part of a
10:57preserved hunter gatherer land
11:05landscape it's a struggle against the
11:07current to get to the main
11:11site
11:20wow maybe some kind of
11:24structure oh
11:26man it looks like RS of wood just poking
11:30it out of the
11:32[Music]
11:35salt it feels like uh like you're
11:37sitting in an ancient ghost town but
11:43underwat we take some samples to get a
11:45better idea of what this is back on the
11:54[Music]
11:57boat that was incredible
12:01looks like there's a whole platform down
12:03there it's layered one piece on top of
12:06the other almost like almost like a
12:11dock
12:17unbelievable oh it's cold down there and
12:21murky you ah but it's incredible you
12:26know you descend down this line and out
12:29of the darkness comes the ancient
12:34past you can see
12:37here how this piece of wood could be
12:39locked in time in the ocean how does
12:41that happen where it doesn't Decay well
12:44what's happened with this is that as the
12:45sea level's risen above it it's covered
12:47in it with this silt and it's taken away
12:49with the oxygen and it's just preserved
12:51it in this sort of anerobic oxygen free
12:53environment and it would have stayed
12:55there for many more thousand years but
12:57recently the old Landscapes eroding away
13:00which is how we found this what and what
13:03is that that this little piece yeah what
13:05is that that little piece that stretch
13:06the back it was a little bit broken
13:08there and it there's a peg that comes
13:09back over the next piece it looks like
13:11it's just sort of helped fix the thing
13:12in place there composite structures like
13:14this it is of international significance
13:16it's 8,000 years old you don't just get
13:18those every day can you describe to me
13:20the scene that this would have existed
13:22within this was next to a stream and we
13:25know it's a bit of a wetland so it could
13:27have been a nice support could have been
13:29been a platform could have been a
13:30pontoon we don't know yet we don't know
13:33because there's nothing else like it in
13:35the country wow and it was somewhere
13:37where we found what we believed to be
13:40the oldest boat building site in the
13:41world where they would have built a
13:43canoe a log booat so that's what they
13:45would have
13:46sailed and from here they could have
13:49sailed up the hunter gather Highway all
13:51the way to Blick me
14:02[Music]
14:10so I'm looking for the lost city of
14:12Stonehenge and I know now that Boats
14:15were incredibly important to hunter
14:17gatherers they used them for
14:18transportation and this spring it was
14:21right on the banks of a a huge River at
14:23one point could have been a key
14:26destination in a sort of a hunter gather
14:28Highway
14:30[Music]
14:32David Jake has uncovered something that
14:35will tell us more what is this that's a
14:38dog tooth it's around 6,000 years old
14:41this is a 6,000 year old dog yeah 6 to
14:447,000 year old I should say and this is
14:46a domestic dog so it's been bred as a
14:49domestic dog to be people's pets it
14:51would have looked like an Alan so it's
14:53quite wolflike quite
14:55big yeah I know you kidding me this dog
14:58came a hell of a way to get to this area
15:01so how can you tell where this came from
15:03well the enamel on the tooth is the
15:05thing that gives us all the clues cuz it
15:07shows where this dog was drinking water
15:09when it was a puppy and so we know that
15:12it was drinking water in a place that
15:13was quite a bit colder than where we are
15:15now and the sort of places that that
15:18corresponds with maybe places quite a
15:20distance to the north maybe 300 mil
15:23North possibly Eastern England as well
15:25so it's come a really long distance hun
15:29gatherers and their dogs traveled
15:31hundreds of miles to come here that
15:33suggests that Blick me was a place of
15:35great importance for thousands of years
15:38before Stonehenge was even
15:41built but it doesn't tell us
15:44why to get actual answers about any
15:46connection to Stonehenge we're going to
15:48have to get to the ground truth so this
15:50team of archaeologists they're going to
15:52excavate but first they need to know
15:55where to look and that's where the tech
15:56comes in
16:03[Music]
16:04so far most of the Flint tools have been
16:07found in boggy ground near the
16:09spring ground penetrating radar or GPR
16:13gives us a clear picture of where to dig
16:15next pull it up here look at that this
16:18is really exciting so what we've got
16:21here is some sort of a surface but look
16:24it's going off either end of the charts
16:28that's that's 30 ft long and still going
16:32on either
16:33side the GPR data suggest a surface a
16:36long flat structure from thousands of
16:39years ago could be hidden deep
16:41underground this is some kind of
16:43different material placed here is what
16:45you're thinking yes yes and it's giving
16:46a very high resistance signal so it' be
16:48something like Stone you're seeing a
16:51ghost of an important structure here
16:53that you know potentially people haven't
16:54seen with their eyes for thousands of
16:56years now if this is
16:59a stone surface and if it's a hunter
17:01gatherer surface that would make it
17:03unique for the whole of
17:10Europe the team get to
17:16work this is right where the GPR was
17:18showing that signal isn't it bang on
17:20absolutely bang on the Dig has uncovered
17:24a small section from a carpet of stones
17:26stretching out across 30 ft
17:29David believes that each one of these
17:31Stones was carefully and painstakingly
17:33placed here by hand thousands of years
17:36ago but this is clearly a laid surface
17:39if you looking at the size of the stones
17:41these have been sorted and selected and
17:43chosen so these have been put in
17:46deliberately it's like a dream come true
17:48to pick up on something like this I mean
17:50as an archaeologist you see something
17:51like this this would be normally like a
17:53medieval street but in fact we've got
17:55Hunter gather of material all over it
18:02look at this yeah I this is this is
18:04actually a blade isn't it it is would
18:05you like
18:06to really carefully trust you very very
18:10very delicately to see what it looks
18:12like on the other side oh yes look
18:14that's a little that's a lovely little
18:15knife blade wow look at that so you are
18:18the first person that will have held
18:20that in possibly 8,000 years run your
18:23finger along the edge it's still razor
18:26sharp it's not moved this was created by
18:29another human being yeah there's a
18:31person behind that someone who made
18:34that and it's not just this one blade
18:37hidden amongst the stones are hundreds
18:40of Flint
18:41tools what happened here
18:43M why would they lay all of these little
18:46bits of Flint down here like this well
18:49it's a a great question I mean why are
18:51you putting completely good brand new
18:53tools along with other Stones so these
18:56have been put in deliberately
18:58[Music]
18:59I don't think it's all about the
19:00Practical that surface if it if it was
19:03we'd expect it to be maybe made of
19:04something like wood which would be
19:06quicked or access faster to lay down and
19:09I think that the surface is a focal
19:11point for worship if he's right nothing
19:14like this has ever been discovered from
19:16the time of hunter gatherers a sacred
19:18surface that predates Stonehenge by
19:202,000
19:22[Music]
19:24years and significantly the stones were
19:27placed to run along alongside the
19:29water's
19:33edge the hunter
19:36gathers might have thought this was a
19:38sacred place you know I mean even the
19:43Rocks seem magical I pulled this Flint
19:47out of the water earlier and look what
19:49happened when it
19:50dried turned
19:54pink it's a natural phenomenon caused by
19:57a rare species of Al that likes the
19:59constant temperature of the
20:02spring the sacred surface and pink
20:05flints may have given this place a
20:07mystical quality perhaps one that people
20:10would travel hundreds of miles to get
20:14[Music]
20:18to to make sense of what we found I'm
20:21headed north to a land where the Sun
20:24never sleeps
20:33[Music]
20:45[Music]
20:50I'm in finmark in Northern
20:52Norway deep in the Arctic
20:55Circle the hunter gatherers who lived
20:57here traveled by by
21:02boat and what they left behind was far
21:05more than Flint
21:18tools this landscape is littered with
21:21traces of our shared human
21:24story but you have to know where to look
21:32I'm on the trail of something that could
21:34unlock the mystery of the sacred stone
21:37surface found at Blick it's past
21:41midnight but I'm so far north that this
21:44time of year the sun literally never
21:47sets I'm here in the middle of the night
21:50for a reason
22:01carved into the Rock by ancient artists
22:04is an intimate record of hunter gatherer
22:11life this is
22:19incredible at any other time of day
22:22these carvings are almost invisible but
22:24under the low midnight sun they come to
22:27life
22:31[Music]
22:38experts have carefully colored some of
22:40the carvings to make them easier to
22:43[Music]
22:48interpret if you look at this you can
22:51actually see it as a landscape you could
22:53you could try to envisage the whole
22:55thing as their lived world
23:00archaeologist Yan Magna has spent 10
23:03years decoding this ancient
23:07Enigma Recent research shows that some
23:09of these panels have so many uh
23:13references to what could be geographical
23:15fixed points like real points in the
23:18landscape so when you then look at the
23:19whole panel in one it looks like this
23:22could be sort of like a stone age Google
23:24Maps for the people living here
23:30what are these dots the dots are Bear
23:32Tracks so you can actually yeah yeah
23:34yeah yeah yeah that's awesome the bear
23:37comes out of the den in springtime and
23:39you could follow it over to this area
23:41here where they're actually hunting the
23:44bear and this is a bear mother with two
23:47Cubs this is the coolest thing I've ever
23:49seen it
23:51[Music]
23:55is these 7,000 Yee old carvings help us
23:59understand the spiritual significance of
24:01animals to our ancient
24:03[Music]
24:05ancestors they didn't separate the real
24:08from the imaginary they didn't separate
24:10the functional from the religious or the
24:13spiritual it was all intertwined in one
24:16if you look at these two reindeers you
24:17can actually see reindeers here these
24:19right here yeah the reindeer here you
24:20can actually see the reindeers running
24:22and then turning into a human person
24:24flying over the landscape changing and
24:27shaping a little bit differently and
24:29here you actually see how it's been shot
24:32by by a hunter there so it shoots the
24:35human then it falls over and dies here
24:38becoming small again turning into a
24:40reindeer you kidding
24:44me this is their religion basically yeah
24:48somehow it looks like we are all animals
24:50and it looks like the origin of us is
24:52animal and I don't think they they
24:54separated much between human and animal
24:58when it comes to the the worldview and
25:00the life of hunter gatherers like this
25:03because they they're all intertwined we
25:05take the shape of a bear we take the
25:07shape of a reindeer you have people
25:09transforming into different bears and
25:11they become the
25:14animal it's
25:16incredible where I'm standing right now
25:19if you close your eyes you can almost
25:21imagine a Time 7,000 years ago where you
25:23would have seen Hunter gather
25:24settlements all around
25:30and the amount of rock art found just
25:32around here is
25:38staggering and what you see on those
25:41rocks is is a window into how these
25:44people lived even what they
25:48believed and at the heart of it all are
25:51the reindeer they hunted and held
25:55sacred but were animals also sacred to
25:58the people of Blick
26:01[Music]
26:08[Music]
26:14me the rock art in Norway shows that
26:17reindeer were Central to the hunter
26:19gatherer spiritual beliefs this is
26:25incredible but a discovery made it Blick
26:27me suggest that in Britain animals also
26:30played a vital
26:35role look at this so we got some bones
26:37here actually they're from pretty much
26:40where we're standing about 2 M below
26:42where we're standing and these are from
26:44these super sized cows called
26:47orox they're about three times the size
26:51of a domestic cow now look at this yeah
26:54and these things are running about 35
26:57mph
26:59ferocious you know super bright they can
27:02take you out like that if you're trying
27:04to hunt them you have to be really
27:05clever to get them so the group of
27:07people are living here are real smart
27:09operators we know that one of these
27:11things male bull would have fed 300
27:14people is this a cut mark from this is
27:16something else is it no you got it
27:18that's a cut Mark and people have
27:19snapped the bone over like that you
27:21kidding me this is actually from the
27:22hunter gatherers yeah yeah yeah and
27:24they've got the marrow out there and
27:25they may have just drunk that marrow
27:27back first
27:36[Music]
27:41I want to find out more about the
27:43orox you know they would have been right
27:46at the heart of the lives of the people
27:48at Blick
27:52[Music]
27:56me look at the big all right in the
28:02front I don't want to get too close cuz
28:04I don't know how aggressive they
28:08are orox are extinct but these are the
28:12next best thing heck cattle they were
28:16bred in an attempt to bring back the
28:18orox and like them they're wild
28:21unpredictable and
28:25dangerous these are Mighty creatures
28:29but true Oro were much
28:32larger the biggest of them would have
28:34weighed as much as 3,000 lb that's
28:37nearly twice as much as a
28:39bison to bring one down hunter gatherers
28:42would have had to use every trick in the
28:44book
28:59D pomsta has devoted decades to studying
29:02and living the hunter gather way of
29:08life he knows that when it comes to
29:10hunting orox their weapon of choice was
29:13not made of stone but wood this is
29:16Elmwood it's Elmwood yeah you built this
29:19I made this with stone tools yeah wow
29:21look at that this bow is based off of
29:24your understanding of what the hunter GA
29:26might have used but I still can't
29:28imagine something like this taking down
29:31an orox I mean they're huge right so um
29:34I think we have fa little chance of
29:36killing one with one
29:37shot the hunting techniques of hunter
29:40gatherers may have been lost in the
29:42midsts of time but their art is full of
29:47Clues people were waiting shot in the
29:50chest first they started running shot
29:51from the side shots from the back again
29:53so get as many arrows into an animal as
29:55you can increasing of course blood lost
29:58hammer and the animal dying pretty
30:00quickly that was the plan and if they
30:01didn't die then you should Trail them
30:04find them and shoot again we know that H
30:07gatherers killed orox so their weapons
30:09must have been
30:11formidable making an arrow shows just
30:14how sophisticated these prehistoric
30:16people
30:17were first you have to find straight
30:19pieces of wood of the right size Hazel's
30:23pretty hard wood and it likes to grow
30:26straight then you have to scrap off the
30:28bark straighten and dry it chew some
30:32dried senu to make a kind of sticky
30:34string
30:36all and then the really important
30:40bit and that's really sharp I bet it
30:42will shave look at that A Shard of Flint
30:45for an
30:46arrowhead this is a razor it's a razor
30:49blade
30:50yeah Flint blades like this have edges
30:53so thin that they're hundreds of times
30:55sharper than a steel scalp
30:58back then it's goose feathers for the
31:00arrow
31:01flights and finally a neat
31:04trick sometimes they placed extra Flint
31:07blades along the shaft of the
31:10arrow these are
31:13orox this is ballistic gel they use it
31:15for testing
31:20ammunition ballistic gel is designed to
31:23simulate animal muscle it's the most
31:26reliable way to test if our Arrow Arrow
31:28could penetrate deep enough to down an
31:32[Music]
31:33orox yeah good
31:35shot that's
31:37awesome it's a devastating blow easily
31:41deep enough to hit a vital
31:43organ and the Flint blades on the side
31:45of the arrow they've done their work too
31:49that's incredible yeah it's slices all
31:52the way through yeah that would be the
31:54microni on the
31:55side that must do a lot of damage image
31:58is that I guess how they would cut
32:00through the arteries right yeah yeah
32:01yeah just caused massive bleeding I
32:07think the hunter gatherers in Norway had
32:11reindeer in Britain they had
32:15orox was there something unique about
32:17the landscape around Stonehenge that
32:20brought them here
32:32every little chip on this Flint was made
32:35with intention by another human being
32:38some 7,000 years
32:40ago rooted in these Stones is this deep
32:43ancestral story of ours our Collective
32:46story you know people came here from all
32:50over this area to this Watering
32:52Hole to exchange
32:55ideas to Feast together
32:58together to build things
33:01together and from that spawned the world
33:04that we know
33:07today the excavation team have found
33:10hundreds of orox bones at Blick
33:13me this suggests that orox lived here in
33:16large
33:17numbers but what's puzzling is orox were
33:20grazing animals who needed Open
33:23Fields And in the time of the hunter
33:24gathers England was covered in forest
33:29maybe there's something different about
33:31the landscape at
33:33Stonehenge this is a mystery that
33:35technology can
33:36solve but first there's grunt work to be
33:39done screen tap it in there we go one 2
33:463 and he goes all the way that's it keep
33:50going and now we rotate it this is
33:52harder than it looks but it's worth it
33:56because we're literally going back in
33:58time that's
34:04it
34:06okay okay oh look at that land gets
34:10covered over year after year that's the
34:12way so a sample from 30 in down should
34:15be around 8,000 years
34:23old a microscope will uncover any clues
34:26this sample might contain
34:29in most parts of the country we find
34:31dense Woodland Professor Tony Brown is
34:34an expert at deciphering these
34:38samples he's looking for traces of
34:42pollen if this was Woodland we'd expect
34:45to find tree pollen but that's not what
34:47Tony sees so this is ancient pollen yeah
34:50so this is that pollen that grain there
34:52is around about 8,000 years old and it's
34:55a dandelion all right and and as you'll
34:58know dandelion don't grow in Woodlands
35:00they grow in open areas normally today
35:03in areas that were
35:04grazed and then Tony finds something
35:07even more compelling what we have here
35:09are spores from fungi so these are
35:13mushrooms that grow on the dung of
35:15animals and in particular on the dung of
35:18large herbivores and we only have one
35:20type of herbivore here that's large
35:22enough to have these spores on it and
35:24that's the
35:26orox so so orox did live here along with
35:30the hunter gathers who feasted on them
35:32and held them
35:37sacred it's clear now that Blick me was
35:41an important place for the early humans
35:43at roamed Europe you know maybe even one
35:46of the first manifestations of a human
35:49City makes sense a river for transport
35:53for fish a landscape perfect for hunting
35:55big game but it's still eluding me is a
35:59connection to the people that would
36:00later build
36:04Stonehedge in the 1920s archaeologists
36:08dug up a giant circular ditch that
36:10surround
36:12Stonehenge and what they found could be
36:15the link I've been looking
36:17for Stonehenge has been about 50%
36:20excavated but from excavations about a
36:23100 years ago now actually in the ditch
36:25that goes around the outside of the
36:26stone circle animal bones refined and
36:29some of those have been identified as
36:31orox really and some of them are
36:33actually placed deliberately in the
36:35ditch and we think that might have been
36:36symbolic to the people that dug them
36:39augmented reality technology can help us
36:41visualize what this might have looked
36:43like look at that right
36:47[Music]
36:51there buried right here it was an orox
36:55sko it's incredible
37:02you followed around a Jawbone right
37:05there the orox bones placed on either
37:08side of the Southern entrance to Stone
37:09hinge seemed to form a sacred
37:16Gateway it's clear the orox was an
37:21important symbol
37:23here these massive ancient beasts could
37:27be the link I've been searching for
37:29between Stonehenge and Blick
37:36me orox were sacred to the people who
37:39built
37:40Stonehenge and to the people of Blick me
37:43who preceded them by 3,000
37:49years I thought Blick me had given up
37:51all of its Secrets but the Dig has
37:54revealed something extraordinary
37:57the archaeologists have painstakingly
38:00removed a section of the stone surface
38:02and underneath was something never seen
38:06before okay here we go
38:11Albert wow look at
38:13that those are Earth prints they are I
38:17mean and this is from a massive orox all
38:20the down here too these the huge power
38:24the weight of these
38:25things David beli Le the hand laid Stone
38:28surface was used to protect and preserve
38:31these 8,000 year-old hoofprints it might
38:33well be that this is the equivalent of
38:35let's say A Relic in a medieval
38:37Cathedral you put a relic of a saint in
38:39a cathedral it actually literally gave
38:41the cathedral the quality of the Saints
38:44these things might be giving the whole
38:46surface the qual it is of an orox
38:48certainly as well as being the most
38:49powerful animals in the landscape they
38:52may well have been religious totems so
38:54it feels to me as though what we've got
38:57here is a sort of Relic that people have
38:59been conscious of and they've
39:01deliberately put the surface over
39:05it this is the first time this unique
39:08find has ever been seen
39:12publicly it's clear that the people of
39:15Blick me like those that built
39:17Stonehenge held the orox sacred but
39:21there's one last puzzle to
39:24solve we know hunter gatherers came here
39:27in large
39:29numbers but what we haven't found is
39:32evidence that these nomadic people
39:33settle
39:34down I'm back in Northern Norway to hunt
39:38for the missing
39:40link up here in the Arctic Circle the
39:44weather can change on a dime it's one of
39:47the most extreme climates in the
39:49world doesn't seem like the kind of
39:51place a lot of people would
39:54live but the amount of incredible Rock
39:57tells a different
40:00story hunter gatherers must have lived
40:03here in large
40:07numbers the harsh climate has kept this
40:10landscape
40:12undisturbed preserving traces of a
40:14hunter gather life
40:28this this what I was looking
40:32for it may not look like much but this
40:36tip in the
40:37ground it's actually really
40:46important I've brought a 3D scanner to
40:49reveal what's going on
40:53here the area colored blue is the
40:56foundation of the Hunter together pit
40:58house from around 8,000 years
41:02ago based on the work of leading
41:05archaeologists it could have looked
41:06something like
41:08this above the excavated pit floor would
41:10have sat a super structure of wood
41:12covered in a thick layer of
41:18turf the scans reveal another one right
41:21next
41:22door as I process more data it appears
41:26as at least two maybe more to survey a
41:29bigger area I need a different
41:32[Music]
41:48perspective you see I can combine the
41:52aerial view with the 3D model that's
41:54created with the lar scanner
41:58and we can actually accentuate out just
42:01a little
42:02bit the signature of those ancient
42:06homes it's almost like a
42:08neighborhood house after house after
42:10house hunter gatherers did build houses
42:14and they built them next to each
42:18other it's likely that the people at
42:21Blick me built similar dwellings
42:24[Music]
42:29look at
42:38that I've put together another augmented
42:41reality model using the Norway pit
42:43houses as a
42:44[Music]
42:50template based on the sheer number of
42:53Flint tools found there could have been
42:55hundreds of houses here perhaps Blick me
42:58was one of Europe's first
43:00[Music]
43:03cities I understand now why this place
43:06became so important a perfect
43:08combination of resources encouraged
43:11generations to call this place home the
43:13landscape provided hunter gatherers
43:15Flint to build tools magical pink Stones
43:19as well as a reliable watering hole and
43:21a natural grazing area for the animals
43:24they probably held sacred orox
43:28when people from across the sea arrived
43:30and built Stonehedge they may have been
43:33inspired by the same sacred
43:36landscape but what we know for sure is
43:38that people lived here near Stonehenge
43:41thousands of years before the place was
43:43built and what I've
43:45realized is just how much we share with
43:48them in our deepest instincts you know
43:51to provide for our families to protect
43:54our loved ones to leave our mark
43:57and the one truth to all of that is that
43:59no matter how many thousands of years
44:01separating
44:03us we are all part of the human story
44:12[Music]

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