1 00:00:02,000 --> 00:00:04,080 Here at Cerney Wick, in southern England, 2 00:00:04,080 --> 00:00:06,120 just north of Swindon, 3 00:00:06,120 --> 00:00:09,400 the remains of Ice Age mammoths 4 00:00:09,400 --> 00:00:11,040 have just been discovered. 5 00:00:13,920 --> 00:00:17,480 These beasts were found not by professional scientists, 6 00:00:17,480 --> 00:00:22,520 but by two amateur fossil hunters digging in their spare time. 7 00:00:22,520 --> 00:00:25,680 It's like a time travel through the gravel. 8 00:00:25,680 --> 00:00:28,360 What they've found is sensational. 9 00:00:28,360 --> 00:00:31,080 Even I can see that's a tusk. 10 00:00:31,080 --> 00:00:33,400 It's one of the oldest mammoth graveyards 11 00:00:33,400 --> 00:00:36,120 ever uncovered in Britain 12 00:00:36,120 --> 00:00:41,200 and could hold secrets about several extinct species. 13 00:00:41,200 --> 00:00:43,240 Must've been rather enchanting. 14 00:00:45,720 --> 00:00:49,160 But why and how did these mammoths die here? 15 00:00:51,440 --> 00:00:54,320 To find out, a team of archaeologists 16 00:00:54,320 --> 00:00:56,360 and palaeontologists is carrying out 17 00:00:56,360 --> 00:00:59,400 a forensic investigation of the site. 18 00:00:59,400 --> 00:01:02,360 It's like a really big whodunnit, isn't it? 19 00:01:02,360 --> 00:01:06,960 Hidden in this gravel pit are clues that reveal an Ice Age world... 20 00:01:09,040 --> 00:01:11,160 Really beautiful, actually. 21 00:01:11,160 --> 00:01:13,680 ..a period about which we know very little, 22 00:01:13,680 --> 00:01:18,240 when prehistoric people lived alongside Ice Age animals. 23 00:01:18,240 --> 00:01:21,960 This is very typical of early Neanderthals. 24 00:01:21,960 --> 00:01:23,840 This excavation could open 25 00:01:23,840 --> 00:01:28,120 a new window onto ancient Britain 26 00:01:28,120 --> 00:01:32,600 and help us understand the lives of the humans who once lived here. 27 00:01:55,840 --> 00:01:58,080 You might expect to have to travel 28 00:01:58,080 --> 00:02:03,680 to remote parts of Siberia to uncover bones of Ice Age beasts, 29 00:02:03,680 --> 00:02:06,080 but, just outside Swindon, 30 00:02:06,080 --> 00:02:08,960 less than two hours from my home in Surrey, 31 00:02:08,960 --> 00:02:13,040 two of Britain's most prolific amateur fossil hunters have made 32 00:02:13,040 --> 00:02:17,000 the discovery of a lifetime. 33 00:02:17,000 --> 00:02:20,160 I've come to meet Sally and Neville Hollingworth. 34 00:02:20,160 --> 00:02:22,800 Hello. Hello. 35 00:02:22,800 --> 00:02:24,960 Nice to meet you. Lovely to meet you. 36 00:02:24,960 --> 00:02:27,680 Absolute pleasure to meet you. Come on in. 37 00:02:27,680 --> 00:02:30,320 This is our humble home. 38 00:02:30,320 --> 00:02:32,360 Gosh. 39 00:02:33,680 --> 00:02:37,160 Sally and Neville both have office jobs, 40 00:02:37,160 --> 00:02:40,120 but they spend their weekends hunting for fossils. 41 00:02:42,600 --> 00:02:46,440 Like me, they have a passion for doing so, 42 00:02:46,440 --> 00:02:50,000 but theirs went rather farther. 43 00:02:50,000 --> 00:02:53,080 When we went on fossil hunts, and Nev would invite me, 44 00:02:53,080 --> 00:02:57,960 and he passed me half a vertebrae, 45 00:02:57,960 --> 00:03:00,920 it's Jurassic, it's marine reptile. Yeah. 46 00:03:00,920 --> 00:03:04,160 A couple of weeks later, he texted me to say, 47 00:03:04,160 --> 00:03:06,800 I think I might've found find the other half of that vertebrae. 48 00:03:06,800 --> 00:03:08,360 Do you fancy meeting for a drink 49 00:03:08,360 --> 00:03:10,560 and we'll see if they join together? 50 00:03:10,560 --> 00:03:12,160 It's a good line, isn't it? 51 00:03:12,160 --> 00:03:14,480 This is true. Well, of course. 52 00:03:14,480 --> 00:03:17,240 So we met for a drink and... 53 00:03:17,240 --> 00:03:19,360 They joined together. ..they joined together. 54 00:03:19,360 --> 00:03:21,680 I thought there we go, it's a match made in heaven. 55 00:03:21,680 --> 00:03:23,640 Not a dry eye in the house. 56 00:03:23,640 --> 00:03:25,040 No, no, not at all. No. 57 00:03:28,400 --> 00:03:29,880 We've got some in the kitchen. 58 00:03:29,880 --> 00:03:32,120 More fossils? More finds. 59 00:03:32,120 --> 00:03:34,840 I thought for a moment it was going to be sandwiches. 60 00:03:34,840 --> 00:03:38,480 These are the finds I've come to see. 61 00:03:38,480 --> 00:03:40,400 Mammoth bones. 62 00:03:40,400 --> 00:03:42,880 Wow. Gosh. 63 00:03:42,880 --> 00:03:45,640 This is our kitchen-dino. 64 00:03:47,600 --> 00:03:50,880 Yes. Well, I know it's leg bone, isn't it? 65 00:03:50,880 --> 00:03:52,440 Yes. Where was it? 66 00:03:52,440 --> 00:03:55,760 It was, actually, literally just sticking out of some gravel 67 00:03:55,760 --> 00:03:57,560 on the floor of a working quarry. 68 00:03:57,560 --> 00:03:59,520 Which end? This end. 69 00:03:59,520 --> 00:04:00,920 So that bit was all you could see? 70 00:04:00,920 --> 00:04:03,080 That's all you could see. Probably only that bit. 71 00:04:03,080 --> 00:04:04,880 We thought there might be a bit more of it. 72 00:04:04,880 --> 00:04:07,840 So we started to excavate and, as we started digging, 73 00:04:07,840 --> 00:04:11,560 we found that it was actually a complete humerus of a mammoth. 74 00:04:11,560 --> 00:04:14,720 This pelvis bone has actually gone through 75 00:04:14,720 --> 00:04:16,200 the processing plant 76 00:04:16,200 --> 00:04:20,160 and it dropped out in the reject pile yard of the quarry. 77 00:04:22,080 --> 00:04:23,400 Two years ago, 78 00:04:23,400 --> 00:04:25,920 Neville and Sally asked for permission to look 79 00:04:25,920 --> 00:04:29,440 for fossils in a freshly dug quarry. 80 00:04:29,440 --> 00:04:34,200 They never expected to find pieces of bones of several mammoths. 81 00:04:34,200 --> 00:04:37,320 A cup of tea for you, David. Thank you very much. There we are. 82 00:04:37,320 --> 00:04:40,080 Oh, hang on, mammoth cake. 83 00:04:40,080 --> 00:04:42,920 Yeah, so, mammoth cupcakes. 84 00:04:42,920 --> 00:04:44,320 Aren't you having one? 85 00:04:44,320 --> 00:04:45,440 Yes, how is it? 86 00:04:46,760 --> 00:04:48,080 I'm gonna have a chocolate one. 87 00:04:48,080 --> 00:04:51,440 But there's one find that raises intriguing questions 88 00:04:51,440 --> 00:04:54,080 about how the mammoths died, 89 00:04:54,080 --> 00:04:59,360 a stone tool, a hand-axe, made by an ancient human. 90 00:04:59,360 --> 00:05:01,000 There was a small glint. And I thought, 91 00:05:01,000 --> 00:05:03,480 "Well, that looks a bit interesting, a bit different." 92 00:05:03,480 --> 00:05:04,520 You saw this? 93 00:05:04,520 --> 00:05:06,200 Yes. 94 00:05:06,200 --> 00:05:09,400 Well, the main thing is that it was made by man. 95 00:05:09,400 --> 00:05:13,640 Yes. Yeah. And it was that feeling that I was the first human 96 00:05:13,640 --> 00:05:19,920 to touch this stone tool in hundreds of thousands of years. 97 00:05:19,920 --> 00:05:21,280 It's a great thrill, isn't it? 98 00:05:21,280 --> 00:05:24,200 It is. Yes. The whole of this business. 99 00:05:24,200 --> 00:05:28,840 Finding a stone tool near mammoth bones is extremely rare, 100 00:05:28,840 --> 00:05:31,920 but we don't yet know if it was left by humans 101 00:05:31,920 --> 00:05:34,480 from a more recent time in prehistory. 102 00:05:35,880 --> 00:05:39,400 Well, you could certainly cut things with that, I'm sure. 103 00:05:39,400 --> 00:05:40,640 Yeah, we did. 104 00:05:40,640 --> 00:05:42,240 We did. You did? 105 00:05:42,240 --> 00:05:44,400 We cut our wedding cake with it. 106 00:05:46,560 --> 00:05:49,440 You cut your wedding cake? Yes. 107 00:05:49,440 --> 00:05:51,640 Yeah. Really? 108 00:05:51,640 --> 00:05:53,960 There we are. 109 00:05:53,960 --> 00:05:58,080 We cut our wedding cake, got married and had... 110 00:05:58,080 --> 00:05:59,440 And had a mammoth meal. 111 00:05:59,440 --> 00:06:02,560 And had a mammoth meal, had a mammoth event. Yeah. 112 00:06:02,560 --> 00:06:03,600 Yeah. Yeah. 113 00:06:16,720 --> 00:06:21,360 Mammoths once roamed the open landscape of ancient Britain. 114 00:06:22,640 --> 00:06:25,560 These extinct cousins of elephants 115 00:06:25,560 --> 00:06:29,320 had huge curving tusks and thrived during the Ice Age. 116 00:06:31,080 --> 00:06:36,560 Their remains are usually tens of thousands of years old, 117 00:06:36,560 --> 00:06:40,080 but Sally and Neville's finds could be far older. 118 00:06:41,920 --> 00:06:46,880 They could offer an extremely rare glimpse of life deep in the Ice Age, 119 00:06:46,880 --> 00:06:48,920 a time we know little about, 120 00:06:48,920 --> 00:06:52,840 when early humans lived alongside mammoths. 121 00:06:56,200 --> 00:06:58,440 But how did these mammoths die? 122 00:07:00,560 --> 00:07:03,600 Was it from natural causes? 123 00:07:03,600 --> 00:07:06,200 Or could they have been hunted? 124 00:07:08,280 --> 00:07:12,120 The quarry where Sally and Neville made their discovery 125 00:07:12,120 --> 00:07:15,400 lies just ten miles north of their home in Swindon, 126 00:07:15,400 --> 00:07:17,720 near the village of Cerney Wick. 127 00:07:20,080 --> 00:07:23,960 Groundwater was deliberately allowed to flood the site, 128 00:07:23,960 --> 00:07:27,800 to prevent any bones in the ground from drying out. 129 00:07:31,520 --> 00:07:35,000 Now, two years after they made their first find, 130 00:07:35,000 --> 00:07:38,640 that water is being pumped out 131 00:07:38,640 --> 00:07:42,360 ready for a team to begin investigating. 132 00:07:47,080 --> 00:07:50,720 Leading the dig is another husband-and-wife duo, 133 00:07:50,720 --> 00:07:54,360 Brendon Wilkins and Lisa Westcott Wilkins. 134 00:07:54,360 --> 00:07:56,480 Those ducks must hate us. 135 00:07:56,480 --> 00:08:00,400 They had this place filled with water and now they've got nothing. 136 00:08:00,400 --> 00:08:03,680 The team starts by mapping the site from the air. 137 00:08:13,480 --> 00:08:16,960 It's so important to record this from the instant that we're doing anything, 138 00:08:16,960 --> 00:08:19,680 so that we can build that exact picture 139 00:08:19,680 --> 00:08:22,240 of how it was before we came along and disturbed it. 140 00:08:24,360 --> 00:08:28,760 The drone images provide a detailed map of the site 141 00:08:28,760 --> 00:08:33,200 so that the exact location of each find can be plotted. 142 00:08:36,240 --> 00:08:40,040 The team searches for fragments of bone. 143 00:08:40,040 --> 00:08:44,360 Biologist Ben Garrod has been helping co-ordinate the dig. 144 00:08:44,360 --> 00:08:46,760 That, we think, is mammoth bone, cos it's so thick. 145 00:08:46,760 --> 00:08:49,520 Yeah. It's definitely mammoth. 146 00:08:49,520 --> 00:08:53,040 Ben was the first on the team to hear about the site 147 00:08:53,040 --> 00:08:55,800 and quickly realised its significance. 148 00:08:55,800 --> 00:08:58,160 Sally and Neville got in touch. And I'd never met them. 149 00:08:58,160 --> 00:09:00,440 And they said, Ben, we found some fossils that 150 00:09:00,440 --> 00:09:02,280 I think you might be interested in. I said, 151 00:09:02,280 --> 00:09:04,400 yeah, that's great, send some photos across. 152 00:09:04,400 --> 00:09:06,800 And they did. And I was here the next day. 153 00:09:08,280 --> 00:09:11,040 I jumped on the train and dropped everything 154 00:09:11,040 --> 00:09:12,120 and came to the site 155 00:09:12,120 --> 00:09:14,080 and it was like someone had sprinkled 156 00:09:14,080 --> 00:09:16,240 mammoth bones everywhere, which I'd never seen. 157 00:09:16,240 --> 00:09:19,960 I thought I had to go to Siberia to see that. 158 00:09:19,960 --> 00:09:22,800 By looking at this in a forensic level of detail, 159 00:09:22,800 --> 00:09:25,840 that'll give us this really in-depth understanding 160 00:09:25,840 --> 00:09:28,160 of what was going on here whilst these animals 161 00:09:28,160 --> 00:09:30,120 and these people were walking around. 162 00:09:31,240 --> 00:09:33,680 What intrigues Ben, and me, 163 00:09:33,680 --> 00:09:37,000 is why there are so many mammoth bones here, 164 00:09:37,000 --> 00:09:39,120 from at least four different animals. 165 00:09:41,600 --> 00:09:45,760 And the tantalising mystery of who left that stone tool. 166 00:09:53,880 --> 00:09:58,040 So, what did the landscape look like when the mammoths were here? 167 00:10:01,960 --> 00:10:03,800 OK, up. 168 00:10:03,800 --> 00:10:08,880 To find out, geo-archaeologist Keith Wilkinson extracts samples 169 00:10:08,880 --> 00:10:11,200 of the underlying sediment. 170 00:10:11,200 --> 00:10:14,080 So, at the very bottom we've got these blue sands. 171 00:10:14,080 --> 00:10:19,480 So they are probably the layer with the mammoth fossils in. 172 00:10:19,480 --> 00:10:22,040 We've got these river gravels 173 00:10:22,040 --> 00:10:24,680 and then these silts and sands at the top 174 00:10:24,680 --> 00:10:26,720 are of the same ancient river channel. 175 00:10:29,480 --> 00:10:32,120 The layers of sediment beneath the surface 176 00:10:32,120 --> 00:10:34,840 reveal the bed of a prehistoric river. 177 00:10:36,400 --> 00:10:40,360 This is probably the ancient route of the River Thames, 178 00:10:40,360 --> 00:10:43,840 which, today, lies nearly two miles away. 179 00:10:43,840 --> 00:10:46,760 Could the mammoths have died further upstream 180 00:10:46,760 --> 00:10:49,840 and their bones have been washed here when the river flooded? 181 00:10:52,480 --> 00:10:57,800 To find out, the team plots target areas for excavation... 182 00:11:01,320 --> 00:11:03,800 ..and the digging begins. 183 00:11:11,080 --> 00:11:13,480 They sieve every shovel-full of soil 184 00:11:13,480 --> 00:11:17,240 in their search for fragments of bone or stone tools. 185 00:11:24,800 --> 00:11:28,240 When the trenches start to reveal new finds, 186 00:11:28,240 --> 00:11:31,400 I can't resist stopping by to see how they're doing. 187 00:11:34,760 --> 00:11:37,240 Welcome. Thank you very much. 188 00:11:37,240 --> 00:11:38,640 What do you think? 189 00:11:38,640 --> 00:11:41,360 I haven't seen it yet. 190 00:11:41,360 --> 00:11:44,040 Even I can see that's a tusk. 191 00:11:44,040 --> 00:11:46,560 Let me get it right. Where was the head? 192 00:11:46,560 --> 00:11:49,080 So, this is the proximal end. 193 00:11:49,080 --> 00:11:50,920 And that's the tip of the tusk. 194 00:11:50,920 --> 00:11:53,680 So coming round the tip here. So it's curving backwards. 195 00:11:53,680 --> 00:11:55,280 Yes, exactly. Yes. 196 00:11:55,280 --> 00:11:59,200 This is possibly a bit of a mandible, this was just found. 197 00:11:59,200 --> 00:12:00,800 So it's a left mandible? 198 00:12:00,800 --> 00:12:04,040 Well, yes. And because we think that might be a left tusk, 199 00:12:04,040 --> 00:12:07,240 you know, it's possible that these belonged to the same animal. 200 00:12:07,240 --> 00:12:10,680 You can see bones running into the section there 201 00:12:10,680 --> 00:12:13,440 and here 202 00:12:13,440 --> 00:12:16,280 and you can also see a rib bone here. Yeah. 203 00:12:16,280 --> 00:12:19,720 One of the things we wondered with so many of these tusks around, 204 00:12:19,720 --> 00:12:22,320 could it have been that they all fall into the river somewhere 205 00:12:22,320 --> 00:12:24,360 and then get washed down in one big event? 206 00:12:24,360 --> 00:12:26,760 But what we're looking at is not a high energy environment. 207 00:12:26,760 --> 00:12:30,120 If it was a wash-out, you would expect to see more debris 208 00:12:30,120 --> 00:12:33,200 in the channel, more debris in the sediment around the tusks. 209 00:12:33,200 --> 00:12:36,360 But this is basically lying in where it fell. 210 00:12:36,360 --> 00:12:39,160 And the same with the tusk over there. So, we think, you know, 211 00:12:39,160 --> 00:12:41,320 they could have just died and fallen. 212 00:12:41,320 --> 00:12:43,320 But it's a bit of a coincidence, really. 213 00:12:47,960 --> 00:12:52,440 This pit has been dug out by excavators 214 00:12:52,440 --> 00:12:56,880 because, until just recently, it was full of gravel, 215 00:12:56,880 --> 00:13:00,000 down to about this level. 216 00:13:00,000 --> 00:13:03,040 But here is much more solid. 217 00:13:03,040 --> 00:13:07,400 It's not gravel. It's mud - sticky mud at that, 218 00:13:07,400 --> 00:13:10,200 and it's in this undisturbed mud 219 00:13:10,200 --> 00:13:14,360 that these bones are now being discovered. 220 00:13:14,360 --> 00:13:17,760 And, because it's been undisturbed, 221 00:13:17,760 --> 00:13:22,240 very careful excavation can reveal a lot of details about 222 00:13:22,240 --> 00:13:26,400 the circumstances in which these animals got here 223 00:13:26,400 --> 00:13:28,400 and left their bones. 224 00:13:30,280 --> 00:13:35,240 The most complete bones seem to be lying in the riverbed. 225 00:13:35,240 --> 00:13:39,480 And they've been covered by the fine sediments of slow-moving water, 226 00:13:39,480 --> 00:13:42,480 not pounded by fast-moving flood water. 227 00:13:43,880 --> 00:13:48,160 So, perhaps the mammoths died where the bones are lying now. 228 00:13:51,040 --> 00:13:53,160 Could their remains give us clues 229 00:13:53,160 --> 00:13:55,320 about what the mammoths looked like? 230 00:13:58,000 --> 00:14:02,040 Conservator Nigel Larkin has come to remove the tusk 231 00:14:02,040 --> 00:14:03,960 in the centre of the trench. 232 00:14:05,360 --> 00:14:06,960 All right? 233 00:14:06,960 --> 00:14:10,920 Hi. Oh, my goodness. You've been plastered. 234 00:14:10,920 --> 00:14:14,560 OK, Sal, you smiling? Yes. Good, great. 235 00:14:14,560 --> 00:14:17,760 With a heavy plaster casing in place, 236 00:14:17,760 --> 00:14:20,920 the fragile tusk is ready to be lifted. 237 00:14:20,920 --> 00:14:22,760 Do we need an extra person? I think we do. 238 00:14:22,760 --> 00:14:24,840 OK. So if you get in there. 239 00:14:24,840 --> 00:14:27,040 We're gonna lift up to sort of waist height. 240 00:14:27,040 --> 00:14:32,360 You need to get your hands underneath, OK. 241 00:14:32,360 --> 00:14:33,520 On my knees. 242 00:14:37,840 --> 00:14:39,880 Go that way, that's better. 243 00:14:39,880 --> 00:14:41,440 Do we need a rest? 244 00:14:41,440 --> 00:14:42,840 Up to you. 245 00:14:42,840 --> 00:14:44,760 I'm good. My back's about to give out. 246 00:14:48,880 --> 00:14:49,920 Go up a bit. 247 00:14:52,840 --> 00:14:54,120 Just rest it there. 248 00:14:55,560 --> 00:14:57,440 OK. Stop there. 249 00:14:57,440 --> 00:15:00,560 Is it in? Yeah. Well done, guys! We'll just shove it over a bit. 250 00:15:00,560 --> 00:15:02,160 Woo-hoo! 251 00:15:02,160 --> 00:15:04,760 Yeah! Well done. 252 00:15:04,760 --> 00:15:07,720 Thank you. Well done. Well done, well done. 253 00:15:07,720 --> 00:15:09,520 It's a heavy old beast. The question is, 254 00:15:09,520 --> 00:15:11,960 how are you going to get out the other end? 255 00:15:11,960 --> 00:15:13,400 I'll get the wife to help me. 256 00:15:34,200 --> 00:15:37,440 This ancient tusk will be carefully preserved 257 00:15:37,440 --> 00:15:40,040 and prepared for future examination. 258 00:15:41,520 --> 00:15:45,440 Spectacular fossils like this have always fascinated people. 259 00:15:47,360 --> 00:15:48,760 Hundreds of years ago, 260 00:15:48,760 --> 00:15:52,880 it was thought mammoth tusks belonged to mythical beasts. 261 00:15:54,880 --> 00:15:56,200 In Siberia, 262 00:15:56,200 --> 00:15:57,880 mammoth remains were once thought 263 00:15:57,880 --> 00:16:01,080 to be from huge underground burrowing creatures. 264 00:16:03,040 --> 00:16:04,920 In 17th century Europe, 265 00:16:04,920 --> 00:16:08,520 mammoth bones were said to be those of giants or unicorns. 266 00:16:11,800 --> 00:16:16,720 By the 19th century, mammoths were described as prehistoric animals, 267 00:16:16,720 --> 00:16:19,960 but they were thought to have existed long before humans. 268 00:16:22,080 --> 00:16:25,560 Then, in 1864 in France, 269 00:16:25,560 --> 00:16:30,040 a piece of mammoth ivory was found with an engraving so accurate 270 00:16:30,040 --> 00:16:33,440 it was clear the artist had seen a living mammoth. 271 00:16:36,840 --> 00:16:39,640 The engraving shows a woolly mammoth, 272 00:16:39,640 --> 00:16:43,320 the most recent species on the mammoth family tree. 273 00:16:45,560 --> 00:16:49,720 We now know that early mammoths first evolved in Africa 274 00:16:49,720 --> 00:16:52,000 around five million years ago 275 00:16:52,000 --> 00:16:54,480 and then spread into Europe and Asia. 276 00:16:57,120 --> 00:16:59,440 Around 1.7 million years ago, 277 00:16:59,440 --> 00:17:04,280 steppe mammoths evolved that grazed the grassy plains. 278 00:17:04,280 --> 00:17:07,880 They then moved into Europe and North America 279 00:17:07,880 --> 00:17:10,760 where Columbian mammoths later appeared. 280 00:17:11,960 --> 00:17:16,600 The famous woolly mammoths developed around 700,000 years ago, 281 00:17:16,600 --> 00:17:18,880 adapted for colder climates, 282 00:17:18,880 --> 00:17:21,520 and they eventually spread first into Europe 283 00:17:21,520 --> 00:17:23,520 and then North America. 284 00:17:25,040 --> 00:17:30,200 So, which kind of mammoth lived in Britain at our site? 285 00:17:34,560 --> 00:17:38,560 To find out, mammoth evolution expert Steven Zhang 286 00:17:38,560 --> 00:17:42,440 is examining the remains found at the site. 287 00:17:42,440 --> 00:17:46,840 The teeth have given him a crucial clue. 288 00:17:46,840 --> 00:17:49,360 Looking at a mammoth tooth is like looking into 289 00:17:49,360 --> 00:17:51,640 a barcode for the mammoth itself. 290 00:17:51,640 --> 00:17:54,560 We start by counting the number of enamel ridges, 291 00:17:54,560 --> 00:17:58,480 so this one has about 18, 292 00:17:58,480 --> 00:18:02,200 which is a very typical number for a steppe mammoth. 293 00:18:03,400 --> 00:18:04,960 Looking at this piece of tooth, 294 00:18:04,960 --> 00:18:09,120 we know that it's a last molar or a wisdom tooth. 295 00:18:09,120 --> 00:18:11,720 So we know this was a fully-grown adult. 296 00:18:11,720 --> 00:18:15,920 Except, this is one of the smallest steppe mammoth teeth 297 00:18:15,920 --> 00:18:18,240 there probably is in existence. 298 00:18:18,240 --> 00:18:22,320 It's like finding a German Shepherd the size of a Westie. 299 00:18:24,600 --> 00:18:26,360 These teeth appear to be from 300 00:18:26,360 --> 00:18:29,960 a population of small steppe mammoths. 301 00:18:29,960 --> 00:18:33,000 Their reduced size could be a consequence of food 302 00:18:33,000 --> 00:18:36,000 becoming less abundant. 303 00:18:36,000 --> 00:18:39,000 If a steppe mammoth was here now, 304 00:18:39,000 --> 00:18:42,200 you would see that it wasn't particularly hairy. 305 00:18:42,200 --> 00:18:45,720 A sign that the climate must have been quite temperate. 306 00:18:45,720 --> 00:18:47,560 And as for size, well, 307 00:18:47,560 --> 00:18:50,560 the female was about my size, 308 00:18:50,560 --> 00:18:52,360 male a bit bigger 309 00:18:52,360 --> 00:18:53,720 and the baby, 310 00:18:53,720 --> 00:18:56,120 well, I guess, like that. 311 00:18:56,120 --> 00:18:58,640 Must've been rather enchanting. 312 00:19:04,160 --> 00:19:08,600 There are also remains of another type of mammoth. 313 00:19:08,600 --> 00:19:13,000 Over here, I would say this is a typical woolly mammoth. 314 00:19:13,000 --> 00:19:15,960 So these two different kind of beasts 315 00:19:15,960 --> 00:19:18,360 were occurring at the same site. 316 00:19:18,360 --> 00:19:23,040 One possibility was that this site was a habitat 317 00:19:23,040 --> 00:19:27,280 shared by both steppe and woolly mammoths, 318 00:19:27,280 --> 00:19:31,720 or, as woolly mammoths migrated westwards from Siberia 319 00:19:31,720 --> 00:19:33,240 into Europe, 320 00:19:33,240 --> 00:19:37,120 they started to mingle with local steppe mammoths. 321 00:19:37,120 --> 00:19:41,160 This is interesting because not often do we see 322 00:19:41,160 --> 00:19:43,240 a snapshot like this. 323 00:19:43,240 --> 00:19:44,880 It's exciting. 324 00:19:46,400 --> 00:19:51,400 Our site could be rare evidence of a transitional stage, 325 00:19:51,400 --> 00:19:55,880 when woolly mammoths are taking over from steppe mammoths. 326 00:19:55,880 --> 00:19:58,560 These bones could have belonged to some of 327 00:19:58,560 --> 00:20:01,640 the last surviving steppe mammoths in Britain. 328 00:20:07,880 --> 00:20:09,360 Back at the dig, 329 00:20:09,360 --> 00:20:11,840 Sally and Neville have ringside seats 330 00:20:11,840 --> 00:20:15,240 as the professionals continue their meticulous search. 331 00:20:18,200 --> 00:20:22,640 There is almost a forensic examination of the sediment 332 00:20:22,640 --> 00:20:24,400 and everything else. 333 00:20:24,400 --> 00:20:27,240 But that's, that's good, though. So they don't miss anything. 334 00:20:27,240 --> 00:20:30,480 It's like a time travel through the gravel. 335 00:20:35,920 --> 00:20:38,680 I'd like them to solve the story. 336 00:20:38,680 --> 00:20:40,680 Was it hunted? 337 00:20:40,680 --> 00:20:42,480 That's the big question, isn't it? 338 00:20:42,480 --> 00:20:45,880 Yeah. One of the questions. What was the climate like? 339 00:20:45,880 --> 00:20:48,960 Yeah. What was the vegetation like? 340 00:20:48,960 --> 00:20:51,360 And, also, what else was here? 341 00:20:51,360 --> 00:20:54,520 Not just mammoths, but were there early humans, 342 00:20:54,520 --> 00:20:56,920 hominids wandering about? 343 00:20:56,920 --> 00:21:00,160 Well, yes, they were, because we know there's a hand-axe. 344 00:21:02,320 --> 00:21:07,960 You have established that there were mammoths here 345 00:21:07,960 --> 00:21:10,800 and there were human beings alongside them. 346 00:21:10,800 --> 00:21:13,120 A human being wielding that axe. 347 00:21:13,120 --> 00:21:16,920 I can say, at this particular site, there were definitely mammoths. 348 00:21:16,920 --> 00:21:20,320 There were definitely human beings, early human beings, admittedly, 349 00:21:20,320 --> 00:21:23,880 but I don't know yet if they were here at the exact same time. 350 00:21:23,880 --> 00:21:26,160 Now, the issue is, it could be like you or I walking on 351 00:21:26,160 --> 00:21:28,360 a Viking settlement and dropping a crisp packet. 352 00:21:28,360 --> 00:21:30,600 That's not from the same time period, obviously. 353 00:21:30,600 --> 00:21:34,040 Now, that might have happened here. I'll let you know in a few months. 354 00:21:38,480 --> 00:21:41,480 Ben's "few months" becomes two years 355 00:21:41,480 --> 00:21:45,400 as Covid lockdowns keep the team away from the site. 356 00:21:49,360 --> 00:21:53,680 But, in 2021, they pick up where they left off, 357 00:21:53,680 --> 00:21:56,760 this time with some mechanical help. 358 00:22:03,080 --> 00:22:04,920 If only we'd had this last time, 359 00:22:04,920 --> 00:22:07,000 it would have just made it so much easier. 360 00:22:09,360 --> 00:22:13,320 The idea at the moment is just to plane down to that level 361 00:22:13,320 --> 00:22:17,200 where we've got material that hasn't been disturbed. 362 00:22:17,200 --> 00:22:19,880 They clear down to the undisturbed layers 363 00:22:19,880 --> 00:22:22,000 and dig new trenches. 364 00:22:24,160 --> 00:22:27,840 Mammoth bones soon begin to appear. 365 00:22:27,840 --> 00:22:32,600 Oh, wow. That looks good, doesn't it? 366 00:22:32,600 --> 00:22:34,080 Look at that. 367 00:22:36,960 --> 00:22:41,160 Wow, we've got this wonderful little tusk here. 368 00:22:41,160 --> 00:22:43,600 It's beautiful, isn't it? 369 00:22:43,600 --> 00:22:47,040 To determine the age of these finds, 370 00:22:47,040 --> 00:22:51,400 they send sediment samples from the trenches to a specialist lab. 371 00:22:54,760 --> 00:22:56,760 In darkroom conditions, 372 00:22:56,760 --> 00:23:00,440 grains of quartz from deep within the sediment are placed in 373 00:23:00,440 --> 00:23:04,200 a machine that records tiny levels of radiation. 374 00:23:09,120 --> 00:23:12,080 The amount of radiation emitted by the grains 375 00:23:12,080 --> 00:23:15,680 reveals when they were last exposed to sunlight 376 00:23:15,680 --> 00:23:17,200 and allows the team to estimate 377 00:23:17,200 --> 00:23:19,360 the age of the ancient river channel. 378 00:23:22,120 --> 00:23:26,400 So here we've got our distribution of age within our sample. 379 00:23:26,400 --> 00:23:29,120 So, these three age estimates indicate that the channel 380 00:23:29,120 --> 00:23:31,280 was formed about 215,000 years ago. 381 00:23:35,080 --> 00:23:39,840 Our site dates to a period deep in the Ice Age. 382 00:23:39,840 --> 00:23:43,480 But the Ice Age wasn't always icy. 383 00:23:43,480 --> 00:23:47,560 Over the last two and a half million years, 384 00:23:47,560 --> 00:23:51,320 huge ice sheets travelled down from the north 385 00:23:51,320 --> 00:23:54,440 and then retreated during warmer spells. 386 00:23:58,440 --> 00:24:02,160 The advancing and retreating ice changed the sea level 387 00:24:02,160 --> 00:24:07,160 and the coastlines, but, for most of this period, 388 00:24:07,160 --> 00:24:11,520 Britain was connected to mainland Europe. 389 00:24:11,520 --> 00:24:14,240 215,000 years ago, 390 00:24:14,240 --> 00:24:16,400 when the mammoths were living at our site, 391 00:24:16,400 --> 00:24:21,360 conditions were only slightly cooler than today, 392 00:24:21,360 --> 00:24:25,480 ideal for a variety of animals, 393 00:24:25,480 --> 00:24:29,120 and our site is providing evidence for what they were. 394 00:24:33,080 --> 00:24:37,160 So we've got some lovely vertebrae here from steppe bison. 395 00:24:37,160 --> 00:24:39,400 So these were very, very large, 396 00:24:39,400 --> 00:24:43,240 up to two metres at the shoulders, big cow-like animals, 397 00:24:43,240 --> 00:24:46,880 that were again on the steppes, on these plains, 398 00:24:46,880 --> 00:24:49,280 herbivores, they would equally have been hunted. 399 00:24:49,280 --> 00:24:51,440 We also have.... 400 00:24:51,440 --> 00:24:54,880 ..this, which is wonderful. 401 00:24:54,880 --> 00:24:58,880 That's part of a lower jaw from a brown bear. 402 00:24:58,880 --> 00:25:01,200 A bear. Yeah. So we know that... 403 00:25:01,200 --> 00:25:02,640 That's the socket of the teeth. 404 00:25:02,640 --> 00:25:04,680 That's it, yeah. And that... 405 00:25:04,680 --> 00:25:06,600 Little canal for the nerves and blood vessels. 406 00:25:06,600 --> 00:25:08,080 And this is the hinge. 407 00:25:08,080 --> 00:25:09,760 It would have been sitting at the back. 408 00:25:09,760 --> 00:25:12,040 So you've got this lower jaw sitting there, 409 00:25:12,040 --> 00:25:13,920 the big tearing teeth, shearing teeth, 410 00:25:13,920 --> 00:25:15,400 doing exactly that process here. 411 00:25:15,400 --> 00:25:18,240 So we're starting to build up a picture of what this environment 412 00:25:18,240 --> 00:25:20,280 would have been like. This isn't Arctic tundra 413 00:25:20,280 --> 00:25:21,880 where there was nothing available. 414 00:25:21,880 --> 00:25:24,080 This would have been a good place to live. 415 00:25:30,280 --> 00:25:33,600 The bison and bear bones give us clues about 416 00:25:33,600 --> 00:25:35,680 the Ice Age landscape of the site. 417 00:25:37,840 --> 00:25:41,200 But there are also the remains of far smaller creatures 418 00:25:41,200 --> 00:25:43,720 that enable us to piece together a picture 419 00:25:43,720 --> 00:25:46,880 of what was growing on this land back then. 420 00:25:48,680 --> 00:25:52,720 There's loads of small shell fragments throughout this. 421 00:25:54,800 --> 00:25:57,360 We've got this little snail in here. 422 00:26:00,800 --> 00:26:05,920 Environmental archaeologist Matt Law carefully identifies samples 423 00:26:05,920 --> 00:26:10,240 of tiny, but perfectly preserved shells. 424 00:26:10,240 --> 00:26:13,000 We have one land snail in there, 425 00:26:13,000 --> 00:26:17,400 so that's a very common species of short grassland snail 426 00:26:17,400 --> 00:26:22,160 and the rest are looking like they're coming from 427 00:26:22,160 --> 00:26:23,560 a river-type setting. 428 00:26:23,560 --> 00:26:26,600 Well-vegetated, well-oxygenated water, 429 00:26:26,600 --> 00:26:28,640 but not too much flow either. 430 00:26:28,640 --> 00:26:31,840 What's really remarkable is the level of preservation, 431 00:26:31,840 --> 00:26:35,480 not just the snails, but things like beetle remains, 432 00:26:35,480 --> 00:26:38,200 seeds and bits of wood that we don't often see 433 00:26:38,200 --> 00:26:42,000 with the level of detail that they are here. 434 00:26:42,000 --> 00:26:44,680 The discovery of these species of animals 435 00:26:44,680 --> 00:26:48,040 and plants enables us to get a quite detailed picture 436 00:26:48,040 --> 00:26:50,000 of what the landscape here was like 437 00:26:50,000 --> 00:26:53,360 when the mammoths were roaming around. 438 00:26:53,360 --> 00:26:56,920 This stretch of the ancient Thames was flowing through an open, 439 00:26:56,920 --> 00:27:01,560 grassy landscape, a perfect place for large herbivores 440 00:27:01,560 --> 00:27:03,360 to feed and find water. 441 00:27:07,400 --> 00:27:08,960 Back at the site, 442 00:27:08,960 --> 00:27:11,600 after weeks of searching for more hand-axes 443 00:27:11,600 --> 00:27:14,840 or stone tools among the mammoth bones, 444 00:27:14,840 --> 00:27:17,240 there's been a breakthrough. 445 00:27:17,240 --> 00:27:20,440 The telltale signs of humans. 446 00:27:20,440 --> 00:27:24,200 I think this may be a flint artefact. 447 00:27:25,440 --> 00:27:27,960 Ben is eager to see the new finds. 448 00:27:27,960 --> 00:27:31,000 It's really over in this area where we're starting 449 00:27:31,000 --> 00:27:33,520 to find the really exciting stuff. 450 00:27:36,080 --> 00:27:38,360 Hiding in this sand we have 451 00:27:38,360 --> 00:27:41,680 a relatively large piece of mammoth bone 452 00:27:41,680 --> 00:27:43,440 sticking from the surface. 453 00:27:43,440 --> 00:27:46,360 And, just in the last few days, we've started to pick out 454 00:27:46,360 --> 00:27:47,720 just a couple of flints, 455 00:27:47,720 --> 00:27:49,200 so little bits of stone 456 00:27:49,200 --> 00:27:51,440 which are being worked by humans. 457 00:27:51,440 --> 00:27:54,480 And they're next door, just 50 centimetres away 458 00:27:54,480 --> 00:28:00,640 from this lovely bit of what looks to be a leg bone of a mammoth. 459 00:28:00,640 --> 00:28:04,600 You can see they've been taking little chips out of the edge 460 00:28:04,600 --> 00:28:07,000 to create a sharp cutting surface, 461 00:28:07,000 --> 00:28:11,200 which they could scrape along bones or along hides to remove fat. 462 00:28:11,200 --> 00:28:15,320 Something as simple as this starts to connect those dots, 463 00:28:15,320 --> 00:28:18,400 starts to bring the human story together with the mammoths, 464 00:28:18,400 --> 00:28:21,640 and that's really quite special. 465 00:28:29,200 --> 00:28:31,880 The presence of these tiny fragments alongside 466 00:28:31,880 --> 00:28:34,640 the bone suggests people were here 467 00:28:34,640 --> 00:28:37,880 at the same time as the mammoths. 468 00:28:37,880 --> 00:28:40,320 The tool Sally and Neville found 469 00:28:40,320 --> 00:28:43,480 could also have been made by the same people. 470 00:28:46,520 --> 00:28:50,600 To find out how these early tools were made, 471 00:28:50,600 --> 00:28:56,200 Ben and I arrange to meet Karl Lee, an expert flint-knapper. 472 00:28:56,200 --> 00:28:57,520 So here we go. 473 00:29:04,440 --> 00:29:06,720 He uses a rounded stone 474 00:29:06,720 --> 00:29:09,600 and then a piece of antler as a hammer, 475 00:29:09,600 --> 00:29:11,880 just as the early humans did. 476 00:29:21,200 --> 00:29:22,400 There we go. 477 00:29:25,240 --> 00:29:30,160 That is amazing. 478 00:29:30,160 --> 00:29:31,680 Thank you very much. 479 00:29:31,680 --> 00:29:33,040 What do you reckon, David, 480 00:29:33,040 --> 00:29:35,000 could you take down a mammoth with one of those? 481 00:29:35,000 --> 00:29:36,680 I should certainly cut up a deer, 482 00:29:36,680 --> 00:29:38,360 they're around here. Yes. 483 00:29:38,360 --> 00:29:40,760 If you killed it with a spear, 484 00:29:40,760 --> 00:29:43,520 that's for the butcher 485 00:29:43,520 --> 00:29:46,680 and you'd butcher it in half an hour. 486 00:29:46,680 --> 00:29:49,720 So I have, completely normally, 487 00:29:49,720 --> 00:29:52,880 brought a piece of meat on the bone. 488 00:29:56,640 --> 00:29:57,680 Gosh. 489 00:30:00,720 --> 00:30:02,080 Mind your fingers. 490 00:30:02,080 --> 00:30:03,280 Yes. Mind your fingers. 491 00:30:03,280 --> 00:30:05,360 Thanks, David. 492 00:30:05,360 --> 00:30:08,160 Oh, yeah. That's gone straight through. 493 00:30:14,160 --> 00:30:15,680 No problem at all. 494 00:30:17,400 --> 00:30:20,320 I think you should keep it for a cookery show, David. Yeah. 495 00:30:22,120 --> 00:30:25,440 So it seems that the hand-axe Sally discovered 496 00:30:25,440 --> 00:30:28,920 could well have been used to butcher mammoth meat. 497 00:30:30,280 --> 00:30:34,720 Karl also shows us a second method of making stone tools, 498 00:30:34,720 --> 00:30:37,240 in which thin shards of flint, 499 00:30:37,240 --> 00:30:40,000 known as Levallois flakes, 500 00:30:40,000 --> 00:30:44,040 are knocked away from a large flint core. 501 00:30:47,000 --> 00:30:54,200 I have to prepare a platform at the base of the core 502 00:30:54,200 --> 00:30:58,800 and then try and take a nice flake. 503 00:30:58,800 --> 00:31:01,000 Using this method, 504 00:31:01,000 --> 00:31:03,440 they're actually planning exactly what that flake's 505 00:31:03,440 --> 00:31:06,960 going to look like. So I'm going to be striking right at the base of 506 00:31:06,960 --> 00:31:12,640 the core here and the flake will hopefully come off on the underside. 507 00:31:12,640 --> 00:31:14,240 That's a brave thing to say. 508 00:31:20,280 --> 00:31:23,600 That is a Levallois flake. 509 00:31:23,600 --> 00:31:28,160 Now, do watch your fingers on that one because it's going to be sharp. 510 00:31:32,960 --> 00:31:34,440 Yes, it's razor sharp. 511 00:31:34,440 --> 00:31:36,640 Yeah. Razor sharp. 512 00:31:36,640 --> 00:31:39,960 Where the edge is so thin it's translucent, 513 00:31:39,960 --> 00:31:44,360 it looks as though it's all got a halo all around it. 514 00:31:44,360 --> 00:31:47,400 Really beautiful, actually. 515 00:31:47,400 --> 00:31:50,200 This is a very versatile technology, 516 00:31:50,200 --> 00:31:53,400 it's portable, very lightweight, 517 00:31:53,400 --> 00:31:55,680 rather than carrying around something 518 00:31:55,680 --> 00:31:57,440 four or five times the weight. 519 00:31:57,440 --> 00:31:59,160 I can't imagine you teaching me this 520 00:31:59,160 --> 00:32:02,160 without a really good grasp of language. 521 00:32:02,160 --> 00:32:06,160 Teaching this without language would be, 522 00:32:06,160 --> 00:32:08,120 in my opinion, impossible. 523 00:32:08,120 --> 00:32:10,920 And my guess would be that children, 524 00:32:10,920 --> 00:32:14,680 just as they mimic their parents today, 525 00:32:14,680 --> 00:32:17,720 would have been mimicking their parents back then, as well. 526 00:32:20,480 --> 00:32:23,640 So, try and catch it about two millimetres 527 00:32:23,640 --> 00:32:25,200 back from the edge... 528 00:32:25,200 --> 00:32:27,920 Oh, I've got you, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 529 00:32:27,920 --> 00:32:29,840 That's it. You're away. 530 00:32:32,320 --> 00:32:34,920 For hundreds of thousands of years, 531 00:32:34,920 --> 00:32:38,480 human beings have passed on that sort of skill, 532 00:32:38,480 --> 00:32:40,400 that sort of insight into 533 00:32:40,400 --> 00:32:42,840 the materials that lay around them. 534 00:32:46,240 --> 00:32:48,040 Of course, 535 00:32:48,040 --> 00:32:52,400 they had to be fortunate to find such marvellous material as flint, 536 00:32:52,400 --> 00:32:54,720 but, once they did, 537 00:32:54,720 --> 00:32:57,680 what fabulous things they created with it. 538 00:33:00,160 --> 00:33:03,800 So who were the flint-workers at Cerney Wick? 539 00:33:05,880 --> 00:33:08,640 We know very little about prehistoric people. 540 00:33:10,240 --> 00:33:13,440 Most evidence of their existence has decomposed 541 00:33:13,440 --> 00:33:15,280 and disappeared long ago, 542 00:33:15,280 --> 00:33:17,400 but their stone tools remain. 543 00:33:19,360 --> 00:33:23,040 They reveal the remarkable story of early species 544 00:33:23,040 --> 00:33:25,120 of humans spreading from Africa 545 00:33:25,120 --> 00:33:27,120 throughout Northern Europe. 546 00:33:28,920 --> 00:33:32,720 To find out which type of human was living at Cerney Wick, 547 00:33:32,720 --> 00:33:35,480 I've come to a secure facility in London. 548 00:33:37,080 --> 00:33:39,440 It holds one of the largest collections 549 00:33:39,440 --> 00:33:43,640 of prehistoric artefacts in the world. 550 00:33:43,640 --> 00:33:49,160 Curator Nick Ashton is a renowned expert on these ancient tools. 551 00:33:49,160 --> 00:33:53,640 He begins by showing me simple flint tools found near Happisburgh 552 00:33:53,640 --> 00:33:56,320 on the east coast of England. 553 00:33:56,320 --> 00:33:59,680 We know that in Africa they've been making these tools for some 554 00:33:59,680 --> 00:34:01,240 two to three million years. 555 00:34:01,240 --> 00:34:04,160 But this is the earliest evidence that we have in northern Europe 556 00:34:04,160 --> 00:34:06,520 of humans reaching this far north. 557 00:34:06,520 --> 00:34:09,640 Dates to an astonishing 900,000 years ago. 558 00:34:09,640 --> 00:34:10,920 How much? 559 00:34:10,920 --> 00:34:12,440 900,000 years ago. 560 00:34:12,440 --> 00:34:15,320 Really? So it's the earliest evidence for humans 561 00:34:15,320 --> 00:34:16,640 in northern Europe. 562 00:34:18,160 --> 00:34:20,480 In 2013, 563 00:34:20,480 --> 00:34:23,800 Nick's team made a truly extraordinary discovery 564 00:34:23,800 --> 00:34:25,560 at Happisburgh. 565 00:34:25,560 --> 00:34:28,440 A storm washed away sand on a beach 566 00:34:28,440 --> 00:34:32,800 and revealed ancient footprints, set in hardened mud. 567 00:34:32,800 --> 00:34:35,040 They were the oldest human footprints 568 00:34:35,040 --> 00:34:37,960 ever documented outside of Africa 569 00:34:37,960 --> 00:34:41,480 but, within two weeks, they had vanished, 570 00:34:41,480 --> 00:34:44,080 washed away by incoming tides. 571 00:34:46,360 --> 00:34:49,880 It's thought that early humans spread out from Africa 572 00:34:49,880 --> 00:34:52,880 around two million years ago. 573 00:34:52,880 --> 00:34:54,560 A million years later, 574 00:34:54,560 --> 00:34:57,120 some of their descendants reached Britain. 575 00:34:58,680 --> 00:35:02,000 What sort of people was it who did this? 576 00:35:02,000 --> 00:35:04,560 Did they have clothes of any kind 577 00:35:04,560 --> 00:35:06,400 or were they covered in hair? 578 00:35:06,400 --> 00:35:08,400 Do we know what they look like? 579 00:35:08,400 --> 00:35:10,000 We actually know very little, 580 00:35:10,000 --> 00:35:14,800 but the species of human in Europe at that time was Homo Antecessor. 581 00:35:14,800 --> 00:35:16,880 They would have looked very similar to ourselves. 582 00:35:16,880 --> 00:35:18,520 Apart from slight different facially. 583 00:35:18,520 --> 00:35:20,480 But it's a guess whether they were hairy or not? 584 00:35:20,480 --> 00:35:23,840 It's a guess as to whether they were hairy or had extra body fat to cope 585 00:35:23,840 --> 00:35:26,480 with these cold winters. Yeah, yeah. 586 00:35:26,480 --> 00:35:31,040 By 500,000 years ago, humans in Britain were capable 587 00:35:31,040 --> 00:35:36,040 of crafting hand-axes like the one found at Cerney Wick. 588 00:35:36,040 --> 00:35:38,440 We know that they're hunting by this point, 589 00:35:38,440 --> 00:35:41,080 and they're certainly butchering a range of different deer 590 00:35:41,080 --> 00:35:43,080 and probably larger animals as well. 591 00:35:43,080 --> 00:35:45,520 And one of the important things is, if you're a hunter, 592 00:35:45,520 --> 00:35:48,440 you get to the carcass first. The hide is intact. 593 00:35:48,440 --> 00:35:50,600 It hasn't been chewed to bits by the hyenas 594 00:35:50,600 --> 00:35:53,520 or the other carnivores or the big cats. 595 00:35:53,520 --> 00:35:56,720 And that hide, you would almost certainly use 596 00:35:56,720 --> 00:35:58,680 for either clothing or shelter 597 00:35:58,680 --> 00:36:02,440 to help you cope with those cold winters. 598 00:36:04,920 --> 00:36:08,400 Humans first used fire in Africa 599 00:36:08,400 --> 00:36:11,200 and, by 400,000 years ago, 600 00:36:11,200 --> 00:36:14,280 they were using it in Northern Europe as well. 601 00:36:17,000 --> 00:36:21,880 This is burnt flint. It's a block of flint that shattered under heat. 602 00:36:21,880 --> 00:36:25,200 What we think we're dealing with is a small campfire 603 00:36:25,200 --> 00:36:27,480 which has all kinds of benefits. 604 00:36:27,480 --> 00:36:31,400 It's not just warmth, it's not just keeping away the big cats. 605 00:36:35,280 --> 00:36:38,200 It's also a hub for social life. 606 00:36:38,200 --> 00:36:41,520 It extends your daylight hours into the night. 607 00:36:44,440 --> 00:36:47,280 It means you begin to tell stories. 608 00:36:47,280 --> 00:36:49,880 It's all part of the development of language 609 00:36:49,880 --> 00:36:53,120 and those all-important social bonds that make us human. 610 00:37:01,520 --> 00:37:04,760 You paint a very, very convincing picture, actually, 611 00:37:04,760 --> 00:37:09,560 and anyone who has sat by a fire knows how hypnotic it can be. 612 00:37:09,560 --> 00:37:11,920 Yes. Just sitting there watching the flames. 613 00:37:11,920 --> 00:37:14,600 Yeah...yeah. That's a very exciting picture. 614 00:37:21,160 --> 00:37:24,600 By 250,000 years ago, 615 00:37:24,600 --> 00:37:30,200 Levallois flakes appear like the ones that Karl had showed us. 616 00:37:30,200 --> 00:37:33,720 Here we have these carefully crafted points. 617 00:37:33,720 --> 00:37:36,640 And this is a massive step forward in terms of technology. 618 00:37:39,680 --> 00:37:42,120 So where does our site fit in? 619 00:37:45,520 --> 00:37:48,520 I've brought Sally and Neville's stone tool. 620 00:37:50,640 --> 00:37:52,040 Now this, 621 00:37:52,040 --> 00:37:55,000 which I know you haven't seen before, 622 00:37:55,000 --> 00:38:00,520 was found alongside this mammoth which we have been excavating. 623 00:38:00,520 --> 00:38:04,920 What does that tell you about dating or indeed anything else? 624 00:38:04,920 --> 00:38:07,480 Well, it's undoubtedly a hand-axe 625 00:38:07,480 --> 00:38:10,400 and very typical of early Neanderthals, 626 00:38:10,400 --> 00:38:12,280 quite similar to some of these. 627 00:38:12,280 --> 00:38:13,600 I gather that the site dates 628 00:38:13,600 --> 00:38:16,000 to roughly about 200,000 years ago. 629 00:38:16,000 --> 00:38:18,360 So it would actually be contemporary 630 00:38:18,360 --> 00:38:20,520 with these Levallois points. 631 00:38:20,520 --> 00:38:21,960 But it's very different. 632 00:38:21,960 --> 00:38:25,000 Here we have a traditional hand-axe. 633 00:38:25,000 --> 00:38:26,960 So what's going on? 634 00:38:26,960 --> 00:38:30,400 One idea is that you've got different populations coming in 635 00:38:30,400 --> 00:38:33,920 from different parts of Europe with different technologies. 636 00:38:33,920 --> 00:38:36,160 Another idea might be that maybe you've got 637 00:38:36,160 --> 00:38:39,160 a residual population in Britain, in western Britain, 638 00:38:39,160 --> 00:38:41,200 who are still making hand-axes. 639 00:38:41,200 --> 00:38:43,200 We're still talking about Neanderthals? 640 00:38:43,200 --> 00:38:45,320 We're still talking about Neanderthals. 641 00:38:49,840 --> 00:38:54,480 Stone tools like these reveal in detail 642 00:38:54,480 --> 00:38:59,800 the history of the occupation of these islands by human ancestors. 643 00:39:01,000 --> 00:39:06,760 At least four different kinds of human beings occupy them. 644 00:39:06,760 --> 00:39:11,120 The stone tools and the dating of our site both suggest 645 00:39:11,120 --> 00:39:16,640 that the humans who were living there were, in fact, Neanderthals. 646 00:39:16,640 --> 00:39:18,480 To find out more about them, 647 00:39:18,480 --> 00:39:23,040 Ben is meeting anthropologist Ella Al-Shamahi. 648 00:39:23,040 --> 00:39:26,880 So our ancestors and the ancestors of Neanderthals were in Africa 649 00:39:26,880 --> 00:39:29,720 and, then, at some point, a group of them left 650 00:39:29,720 --> 00:39:31,840 and we don't know where and we don't know when. 651 00:39:31,840 --> 00:39:33,320 But they became Neanderthals. 652 00:39:33,320 --> 00:39:36,360 We have sites all the way as far as Siberia 653 00:39:36,360 --> 00:39:39,200 and then we have a whole pile of sites in Europe, 654 00:39:39,200 --> 00:39:41,480 doesn't mean that they're a European species, 655 00:39:41,480 --> 00:39:43,880 it just means that a lot of the archaeologists 656 00:39:43,880 --> 00:39:46,880 are actually in Europe and were digging in their own backyards. 657 00:39:46,880 --> 00:39:50,280 We've got this massive array, actually, of Neanderthals 658 00:39:50,280 --> 00:39:51,600 in this whole region. 659 00:39:51,600 --> 00:39:53,000 And if you look at that region, 660 00:39:53,000 --> 00:39:55,120 that's a number of different environments 661 00:39:55,120 --> 00:39:57,480 and a number of different climates, as well. 662 00:39:57,480 --> 00:39:59,520 And do we know what they looked like? 663 00:39:59,520 --> 00:40:02,680 Yeah. So Neanderthals were very similar to us, 664 00:40:02,680 --> 00:40:04,600 but there were crucial differences. 665 00:40:04,600 --> 00:40:07,800 So, for example, we know that Neanderthals, on average, were, 666 00:40:07,800 --> 00:40:09,120 well, they were shorter. 667 00:40:09,120 --> 00:40:12,000 So male Neanderthals would have come in at about five-foot four 668 00:40:12,000 --> 00:40:15,560 or five-foot five. They were also really stocky. 669 00:40:15,560 --> 00:40:18,280 So we know that our site at Cerney Wick 670 00:40:18,280 --> 00:40:20,320 is about 200,000 years old. 671 00:40:20,320 --> 00:40:23,120 How much do we know what life would have been like for those people? 672 00:40:23,120 --> 00:40:24,440 It would have been hard. 673 00:40:24,440 --> 00:40:26,680 The interesting thing is the date of that, 674 00:40:26,680 --> 00:40:30,160 because we know that, pretty soon after, you're looking at 675 00:40:30,160 --> 00:40:34,240 a massive ice age that comes in, a really, really cold spell, 676 00:40:34,240 --> 00:40:39,200 and Neanderthals pretty much disappear from the map in Britain 677 00:40:39,200 --> 00:40:42,320 for well over 100,000 years. 678 00:40:42,320 --> 00:40:44,320 So, potentially, what you're looking at there 679 00:40:44,320 --> 00:40:48,560 with your site is some of the last Neanderthals in Britain 680 00:40:48,560 --> 00:40:50,840 before that really cold phase. 681 00:40:50,840 --> 00:40:52,960 It's not going to be good for them. 682 00:40:59,320 --> 00:41:00,960 Back at the site, 683 00:41:00,960 --> 00:41:04,840 the team is finding that nearly all the tusks and bones 684 00:41:04,840 --> 00:41:07,720 are lying in a single layer of sediment, 685 00:41:07,720 --> 00:41:12,400 suggesting the mammoths all died around the same time. 686 00:41:12,400 --> 00:41:16,760 What could have killed a group of mammoths in such a short period? 687 00:41:18,280 --> 00:41:20,840 We can trace this line pretty much all the way round to 688 00:41:20,840 --> 00:41:25,640 the tusk on the far right now. So they're all... 689 00:41:25,640 --> 00:41:27,400 ..it's all formed at the same time. 690 00:41:27,400 --> 00:41:29,160 And we can't see flooding? 691 00:41:29,160 --> 00:41:32,000 I'm trying to think what is forcable enough to move a tusk. 692 00:41:32,000 --> 00:41:33,480 No. There's nothing. 693 00:41:33,480 --> 00:41:35,080 This is weird, it really is. 694 00:41:35,080 --> 00:41:37,760 There's not enough mud. There's not enough... There's no flood. 695 00:41:37,760 --> 00:41:41,360 No. They just died in this area for some reason. Yeah. 696 00:41:41,360 --> 00:41:45,080 Ben is doubtful that the mammoths got stuck in the mud. 697 00:41:45,080 --> 00:41:50,200 The mud's deep, but it's not up to a mammoth's armpits deep. 698 00:41:50,200 --> 00:41:54,080 Disease? I mean, there's nothing really in terms of modern relatives, 699 00:41:54,080 --> 00:41:57,560 the elephants, that would kill a whole group that quickly 700 00:41:57,560 --> 00:41:59,480 in one site at one time to explain this. 701 00:41:59,480 --> 00:42:01,520 And we've got adults and juveniles as well. 702 00:42:01,520 --> 00:42:03,880 So it's not the classic elephant graveyard 703 00:42:03,880 --> 00:42:05,960 all being left in one site either. 704 00:42:05,960 --> 00:42:07,520 And it leaves this idea, 705 00:42:07,520 --> 00:42:10,040 this possibility that it was people. 706 00:42:10,040 --> 00:42:11,600 So were they chasing them in? 707 00:42:11,600 --> 00:42:13,640 Were they corralling them somehow? 708 00:42:13,640 --> 00:42:16,440 Were they...? I don't know. 709 00:42:16,440 --> 00:42:18,360 But that's almost weirder 710 00:42:18,360 --> 00:42:22,240 because I can't imagine quite early Neanderthal people 711 00:42:22,240 --> 00:42:24,160 bringing down a bunch of mammoths 712 00:42:24,160 --> 00:42:28,920 cos these things were tonnes of anger and intelligence. 713 00:42:44,600 --> 00:42:47,720 Evidence suggesting that Neanderthals 714 00:42:47,720 --> 00:42:51,880 could successfully hunt mammoths is extremely rare. 715 00:42:51,880 --> 00:42:54,920 But this is the Island of Jersey 716 00:42:54,920 --> 00:42:58,440 and, here at La Cotte de St Brelade, 717 00:42:58,440 --> 00:43:00,520 piles of mammoth bones have been 718 00:43:00,520 --> 00:43:03,960 found that suggest that Neanderthals may indeed 719 00:43:03,960 --> 00:43:05,760 have been killing mammoths here. 720 00:43:07,360 --> 00:43:11,440 Archaeologist Matt Pope has been studying the site for years. 721 00:43:13,240 --> 00:43:17,760 Our first glimpse of La Cotte de St Brelade towering up above us. 722 00:43:17,760 --> 00:43:18,800 Oh, wow. 723 00:43:18,800 --> 00:43:22,640 It's like this huge cathedral fortress, isn't it? It's beautiful. 724 00:43:28,280 --> 00:43:29,920 We can see a lot of the site from here. 725 00:43:29,920 --> 00:43:31,560 The main granite structure. 726 00:43:31,560 --> 00:43:34,280 The arch that takes you through to the north ravine 727 00:43:34,280 --> 00:43:35,360 and in front of us 728 00:43:35,360 --> 00:43:38,560 the west ravine, the main open space. 729 00:43:40,920 --> 00:43:43,920 The site has been investigated since 1881. 730 00:43:45,560 --> 00:43:50,280 And, over the years, archaeologists excavated down into the ravine. 731 00:43:51,760 --> 00:43:54,840 At two levels, they discovered heaps of bones 732 00:43:54,840 --> 00:43:56,440 of butchered mammoths. 733 00:43:58,280 --> 00:44:01,000 The mystery is how these bones got there. 734 00:44:03,320 --> 00:44:05,560 An original explanation, and a very good one, 735 00:44:05,560 --> 00:44:09,840 was that the mammoth were all herded together by Neanderthal hunters 736 00:44:09,840 --> 00:44:12,560 and driven over the cliffs to their death. So you imagine... 737 00:44:12,560 --> 00:44:14,680 From right up there? Right up there. 738 00:44:14,680 --> 00:44:16,800 That's quite a thought to think of, 739 00:44:16,800 --> 00:44:18,320 a whole herd of mammoths coming 740 00:44:18,320 --> 00:44:20,120 cascading over the edge right there. 741 00:44:20,120 --> 00:44:21,440 It's a good theory 742 00:44:21,440 --> 00:44:24,840 but it's not a very good headland for actually concentrating a herd. 743 00:44:24,840 --> 00:44:27,920 There is simply no way you could funnel 744 00:44:27,920 --> 00:44:29,240 the mammoth into this ravine, 745 00:44:29,240 --> 00:44:32,040 they'd be splitting off into all different directions. 746 00:44:32,040 --> 00:44:35,120 We've been recently relooking at those bone heaps 747 00:44:35,120 --> 00:44:36,440 and looking at the evidence 748 00:44:36,440 --> 00:44:39,160 and we put forward an alternative idea. 749 00:44:39,160 --> 00:44:42,840 And that idea is that these bone heaps didn't form 750 00:44:42,840 --> 00:44:45,000 in one go, in mass kills. 751 00:44:45,000 --> 00:44:47,400 Actually, they formed over a long period of time. 752 00:44:47,400 --> 00:44:51,560 The hunting was taking place out here on the surrounding landscapes. 753 00:44:51,560 --> 00:44:54,000 They were bringing the bones back. 754 00:44:54,000 --> 00:44:57,640 And, then, over time, they put these heaps of bone together. 755 00:44:57,640 --> 00:44:59,480 And this whole area, as we look out now, 756 00:44:59,480 --> 00:45:01,720 is this beautiful coastline that stretches out to 757 00:45:01,720 --> 00:45:03,120 the Channel here. 758 00:45:03,120 --> 00:45:05,680 But this would have all been one big grassy plain. 759 00:45:05,680 --> 00:45:09,240 We've got the seabed landscape mapped. 760 00:45:09,240 --> 00:45:12,520 And that's an amazing landscape for intercepting game. 761 00:45:12,520 --> 00:45:14,840 There's little cul-de-sacs where you get dead ends 762 00:45:14,840 --> 00:45:16,360 and you could control game. 763 00:45:16,360 --> 00:45:17,480 And we know from other 764 00:45:17,480 --> 00:45:19,720 Neanderthal sites where hunting is taking place, 765 00:45:19,720 --> 00:45:22,720 they love landscapes in which they control game. 766 00:45:22,720 --> 00:45:23,760 Probably the whole 767 00:45:23,760 --> 00:45:26,200 Neanderthal community would be involved in hunting - 768 00:45:26,200 --> 00:45:29,680 corralling, controlling, moving, 769 00:45:29,680 --> 00:45:32,840 isolating particular members of a herd. 770 00:45:35,800 --> 00:45:38,360 Most archaeologists now think that 771 00:45:38,360 --> 00:45:40,400 the Neanderthals were capable 772 00:45:40,400 --> 00:45:43,280 of hunting large prey like mammoths, as they seem 773 00:45:43,280 --> 00:45:45,680 to have done in Jersey. 774 00:45:45,680 --> 00:45:47,920 But it would be much harder to trap them on 775 00:45:47,920 --> 00:45:50,800 the flat grasslands of Cerney Wick. 776 00:45:50,800 --> 00:45:55,400 Perhaps the river might have slowed the mammoths down. 777 00:45:55,400 --> 00:45:59,160 But how would the Neanderthals have killed them? 778 00:45:59,160 --> 00:46:01,680 Wooden spears may well have been used. 779 00:46:02,960 --> 00:46:05,200 Wood, of course, rots away quickly, 780 00:46:05,200 --> 00:46:10,280 so we're very unlikely to find one. But there are some. 781 00:46:13,280 --> 00:46:16,000 In 1911, in Essex, 782 00:46:16,000 --> 00:46:19,520 a wooden spear tip was found in waterlogged soil. 783 00:46:21,040 --> 00:46:23,000 And, in 1948, 784 00:46:23,000 --> 00:46:26,440 stronger evidence of spear hunting was uncovered - 785 00:46:26,440 --> 00:46:29,880 a spear was found within the fossilised ribs of 786 00:46:29,880 --> 00:46:31,680 a straight-tusked elephant. 787 00:46:33,480 --> 00:46:38,840 Then, in 1995, at a mine in Schoningen in Germany, 788 00:46:38,840 --> 00:46:43,640 ten miraculously well-preserved Neanderthal spears were found lying 789 00:46:43,640 --> 00:46:47,440 among the skeletons of around 50 horses - 790 00:46:47,440 --> 00:46:53,160 the oldest complete prehistoric hunting weapons ever found. 791 00:46:53,160 --> 00:46:55,080 Archaeologists had assumed these 792 00:46:55,080 --> 00:46:57,520 early hunters thrust their spears into 793 00:46:57,520 --> 00:46:59,960 the flanks of prey at close range. 794 00:47:01,440 --> 00:47:03,840 But is it possible that Neanderthals at 795 00:47:03,840 --> 00:47:08,280 Cerney Wick threw their spears long distances at dangerous animals, 796 00:47:08,280 --> 00:47:09,320 like mammoths? 797 00:47:10,760 --> 00:47:11,800 To find out, 798 00:47:11,800 --> 00:47:14,800 we asked a wood carver to make exact replicas of 799 00:47:14,800 --> 00:47:18,840 the Schoningen spears from spruce - the same shape, 800 00:47:18,840 --> 00:47:22,960 weight and type of wood as the ancient spears. 801 00:47:22,960 --> 00:47:24,800 Hi, guys. 802 00:47:24,800 --> 00:47:26,600 We've brought you some spears. 803 00:47:26,600 --> 00:47:27,920 Annemieke Milks is 804 00:47:27,920 --> 00:47:31,280 an investigator of Neanderthal hunting methods. 805 00:47:31,280 --> 00:47:33,720 She wants to see how well these replica 806 00:47:33,720 --> 00:47:35,880 Neanderthal spears will perform in 807 00:47:35,880 --> 00:47:38,760 the hands of Bekah Walton and Harry Hughes - 808 00:47:38,760 --> 00:47:41,760 two of Britain's leading javelin throwers. 809 00:47:41,760 --> 00:47:44,200 I'm really curious to see what 810 00:47:44,200 --> 00:47:46,960 an experienced thrower makes of how they feel. 811 00:47:46,960 --> 00:47:49,800 They are the right length compared to like a normal spear. 812 00:47:49,800 --> 00:47:52,720 Yeah, the balance is really good. They're surprisingly similar to 813 00:47:52,720 --> 00:47:54,320 a normal javelin, actually. 814 00:47:59,360 --> 00:48:02,560 Yeah, really surprised at how far they're flying! 815 00:48:02,560 --> 00:48:03,960 I won't be that far! 816 00:48:09,640 --> 00:48:10,680 Fantastic. 817 00:48:13,200 --> 00:48:15,240 The spears fly well. 818 00:48:16,800 --> 00:48:20,360 So Annemieke now wants to test if they can be used 819 00:48:20,360 --> 00:48:23,600 with real accuracy, to hit a target. 820 00:48:23,600 --> 00:48:24,640 We want to know - 821 00:48:24,640 --> 00:48:28,360 can you two kill that mammoth silhouette for us, please? 822 00:48:28,360 --> 00:48:30,680 Shall we give it a go? Let's go. 823 00:48:33,880 --> 00:48:35,840 Oh! 824 00:48:35,840 --> 00:48:36,880 First time. 825 00:48:40,360 --> 00:48:43,160 These spears are flying true. 826 00:48:43,160 --> 00:48:45,120 They're hitting it every single time. 827 00:48:45,120 --> 00:48:46,160 On a mammoth, 828 00:48:46,160 --> 00:48:48,160 that target zone would be much larger. 829 00:49:06,080 --> 00:49:08,760 Up until fairly recently, 830 00:49:08,760 --> 00:49:12,360 most people were arguing that Neanderthals were only capable 831 00:49:12,360 --> 00:49:15,080 of hunting at immediate distances. 832 00:49:15,080 --> 00:49:20,440 And this shows that their technology was capable of distance hunting. 833 00:49:29,120 --> 00:49:30,160 Oh! 834 00:49:30,160 --> 00:49:31,200 Brilliant. 835 00:49:33,520 --> 00:49:35,840 OK, big question of the day. 836 00:49:35,840 --> 00:49:37,800 At our site, is there any chance that our 837 00:49:37,800 --> 00:49:40,360 Neanderthals could have been hunting mammoths, do you think? 838 00:49:40,360 --> 00:49:42,000 Given the fact that we have 839 00:49:42,000 --> 00:49:43,520 a whole load of evidence that 840 00:49:43,520 --> 00:49:46,120 the spears are functional weapons, 841 00:49:46,120 --> 00:49:49,440 both as thrusting weapons and as throwing weapons, 842 00:49:49,440 --> 00:49:53,080 and that we see this evidence of exploitation 843 00:49:53,080 --> 00:49:55,440 of mammoth, I think it's very much in 844 00:49:55,440 --> 00:49:57,440 the realm of possibility that 845 00:49:57,440 --> 00:49:58,800 mammoths were being hunted by 846 00:49:58,800 --> 00:50:00,760 Neanderthals with spears like these. 847 00:50:16,600 --> 00:50:20,080 So Neanderthals could possibly have hunted mammoths at 848 00:50:20,080 --> 00:50:23,440 Cerney Wick over 200,000 years ago. 849 00:50:27,680 --> 00:50:30,000 But, in the millennia that followed, 850 00:50:30,000 --> 00:50:34,000 both the Neanderthals and the steppe mammoths disappeared. 851 00:50:36,680 --> 00:50:41,080 Neanderthals resettled in Britain around 60,000 years ago. 852 00:50:41,080 --> 00:50:42,680 But our own species, 853 00:50:42,680 --> 00:50:46,000 Homo sapiens, arrives soon after that. 854 00:50:46,000 --> 00:50:47,040 And evidence of 855 00:50:47,040 --> 00:50:50,880 the presence of Neanderthals vanishes. 856 00:50:50,880 --> 00:50:53,880 It might be that we out-competed them, 857 00:50:53,880 --> 00:50:57,600 right, we were just better at using the landscape 858 00:50:57,600 --> 00:50:59,000 and resources. 859 00:50:59,000 --> 00:51:02,640 One of the things that we know is that they lived in small, 860 00:51:02,640 --> 00:51:04,000 isolated populations. 861 00:51:04,000 --> 00:51:07,400 That is not going to do your gene pool any good at all. 862 00:51:07,400 --> 00:51:09,320 There's even an argument that they're still 863 00:51:09,320 --> 00:51:10,440 with us today. 864 00:51:10,440 --> 00:51:14,320 Me and you will have about 2% Neanderthal DNA in us. 865 00:51:14,320 --> 00:51:17,400 And that's because our ancestors, multiple times, 866 00:51:17,400 --> 00:51:20,040 it seems, interbred with Neanderthals. 867 00:51:20,040 --> 00:51:23,520 So, actually, the end of the story isn't completely tragic 868 00:51:23,520 --> 00:51:25,680 because it turns out there's a little bit of them... 869 00:51:25,680 --> 00:51:26,920 Still here. In us, yeah. 870 00:51:30,880 --> 00:51:32,800 Back at the site at Cerney Wick, 871 00:51:32,800 --> 00:51:37,560 there's excitement as they assess their haul of flint tools. 872 00:51:37,560 --> 00:51:39,880 Are you OK? Breathe. 873 00:51:39,880 --> 00:51:41,480 Wow. I think you forgot to breathe. 874 00:51:41,480 --> 00:51:42,720 This lovely little flake. 875 00:51:42,720 --> 00:51:45,960 So you can see it's got a little point where they hit it 876 00:51:45,960 --> 00:51:48,280 with a stone hammer to remove it. 877 00:51:48,280 --> 00:51:49,440 It's perfect. 878 00:51:49,440 --> 00:51:52,040 And that was the first hint that you found? That's the first one. 879 00:51:52,040 --> 00:51:54,280 Yeah. So there was a party straight after that? 880 00:51:54,280 --> 00:51:56,560 And then the next one we found... Oh, my goodness. 881 00:51:56,560 --> 00:52:00,760 ..is this beautiful scraper edge. Typically, we think, you know, 882 00:52:00,760 --> 00:52:03,360 you would have held it like this, they would have pulled 883 00:52:03,360 --> 00:52:07,640 the fat off of the hide. It's really quite impressive. 884 00:52:07,640 --> 00:52:10,800 We've got these five flint tools all from the same area, 885 00:52:10,800 --> 00:52:13,360 all finely worked, all really, really clear. 886 00:52:13,360 --> 00:52:15,520 And that's quite exciting and quite rare. 887 00:52:15,520 --> 00:52:18,080 I mean, it's really easy to say, "Oh, five things. 888 00:52:18,080 --> 00:52:19,560 "That's not many." But, actually, 889 00:52:19,560 --> 00:52:22,360 when we're talking about 200,000 years ago, 890 00:52:22,360 --> 00:52:24,240 we might only be finding one or two things in 891 00:52:24,240 --> 00:52:28,160 a site which has been excavated for decades. 892 00:52:28,160 --> 00:52:31,200 On the mammoth leg bone they found next to the flints, 893 00:52:31,200 --> 00:52:36,280 they've seen scratch marks that could provide evidence of butchery. 894 00:52:36,280 --> 00:52:39,840 We see little marks and nicks in the top. 895 00:52:39,840 --> 00:52:42,720 Two lovely parallel lines. There's one slightly longer. 896 00:52:42,720 --> 00:52:45,280 There's another one, just a short one, just in beside it. 897 00:52:45,280 --> 00:52:48,160 And it's really tempting to call them cut marks, 898 00:52:48,160 --> 00:52:51,480 but we'll have to get it back into the lab to actually determine. 899 00:52:51,480 --> 00:52:53,520 It's like a really big whodunnit, isn't it? 900 00:52:53,520 --> 00:52:55,520 So did they all die of a disease? 901 00:52:55,520 --> 00:52:59,360 Was there a massive flood that came in, or were we hunting them? 902 00:52:59,360 --> 00:53:01,080 Having worked with elephants in the wild, 903 00:53:01,080 --> 00:53:03,400 I think possibly a juvenile, very, 904 00:53:03,400 --> 00:53:05,480 very young one might have just got stuck in the mud. 905 00:53:05,480 --> 00:53:08,880 It panicked the group. Things went really badly, 906 00:53:08,880 --> 00:53:10,840 really quickly. And we came along as scavengers 907 00:53:10,840 --> 00:53:13,520 and possibly found the world's biggest buffet lying there for us. 908 00:53:13,520 --> 00:53:16,520 We were just opportunists. I think we were opportunists. 909 00:53:16,520 --> 00:53:19,120 Well, I just love the idea that the, you know, 910 00:53:19,120 --> 00:53:23,680 Neanderthals are sitting on the ridge over the far end, 911 00:53:23,680 --> 00:53:25,720 hiding amongst the tall grass. 912 00:53:25,720 --> 00:53:28,320 And then mammoths are coming down to the water 913 00:53:28,320 --> 00:53:29,920 and they're panicking them. 914 00:53:29,920 --> 00:53:31,120 The Neanderthals come in 915 00:53:31,120 --> 00:53:33,720 and they take advantage of the mammoths, 916 00:53:33,720 --> 00:53:35,680 they sort of start butchering them 917 00:53:35,680 --> 00:53:38,680 and taking away their nice meat for meals. 918 00:53:40,440 --> 00:53:41,800 Isn't it wonderful to think that 919 00:53:41,800 --> 00:53:45,240 the last time someone sat exactly on this spot in 920 00:53:45,240 --> 00:53:46,280 a little group 921 00:53:46,280 --> 00:53:49,760 with that stone tool in their hands was 200,000 years ago 922 00:53:49,760 --> 00:53:52,080 as a mammoth's lying just over there? Wow. 923 00:53:52,080 --> 00:53:54,960 And here we are talking about it... They were about to have their lunch. 924 00:53:54,960 --> 00:53:56,640 ..hundreds of thousands of years later. 925 00:53:56,640 --> 00:53:59,560 It's quite poignant, isn't it? Absolutely. It really is. 926 00:54:04,360 --> 00:54:06,800 As the excavation comes to an end... 927 00:54:08,080 --> 00:54:09,240 ..Ben and I survey 928 00:54:09,240 --> 00:54:12,200 the whole collection of flint tools. 929 00:54:14,480 --> 00:54:15,600 Some of these, 930 00:54:15,600 --> 00:54:19,280 the one you've got in the far corner there, are scrapers. 931 00:54:19,280 --> 00:54:22,040 Well, hang on, let me have a look at that. 932 00:54:22,040 --> 00:54:25,080 That someone's very delicately taken the edge off. 933 00:54:25,080 --> 00:54:26,360 Yes. You can see? 934 00:54:26,360 --> 00:54:27,920 Yes, yes, you can. 935 00:54:27,920 --> 00:54:30,400 Now, these would have been used for cleaning skins, 936 00:54:30,400 --> 00:54:32,680 taking fat off skin in order to preserve the skin, 937 00:54:32,680 --> 00:54:36,040 but also taking little bits of meat from the bone as well. 938 00:54:36,040 --> 00:54:37,840 Yeah. 939 00:54:37,840 --> 00:54:40,240 So what we have as well, if you've got your hand lens. 940 00:54:40,240 --> 00:54:42,200 Yeah. There are tiny, well, 941 00:54:42,200 --> 00:54:46,560 quite indistinct little marks along this bone here, 942 00:54:46,560 --> 00:54:47,880 if you can see just there. 943 00:54:50,480 --> 00:54:52,800 Oh, there, yes, absolutely. 944 00:54:52,800 --> 00:54:55,000 There's definite, well, 945 00:54:55,000 --> 00:54:56,640 there's strong evidence that there is 946 00:54:56,640 --> 00:54:59,760 a cut-mark series along here. This is, we think, 947 00:54:59,760 --> 00:55:03,360 evidence of people accessing the animals in this area 948 00:55:03,360 --> 00:55:07,480 and using them for their own food, for fuel, for warmth. 949 00:55:07,480 --> 00:55:11,560 Does that make you think that this site was a camp? 950 00:55:11,560 --> 00:55:13,440 I would find it very, very difficult 951 00:55:13,440 --> 00:55:16,040 to believe that these animals that weighed tonnes and tonnes 952 00:55:16,040 --> 00:55:19,400 and tonnes wouldn't have offered this wonderful opportunity to camp 953 00:55:19,400 --> 00:55:21,600 there for at least weeks or months. 954 00:55:21,600 --> 00:55:23,720 It's really bringing this site to life. 955 00:55:23,720 --> 00:55:25,640 This isn't a table of bones. 956 00:55:25,640 --> 00:55:29,080 This is a point in history where something happened. 957 00:55:32,720 --> 00:55:36,000 Peering back 200,000 years, it's hard 958 00:55:36,000 --> 00:55:39,320 to know exactly what happened at our site. 959 00:55:39,320 --> 00:55:42,640 But the evidence that has now been uncovered paints 960 00:55:42,640 --> 00:55:45,520 a tantalising picture of Ice Age Britain. 961 00:55:47,080 --> 00:55:51,520 An ancient River Thames flowing through grassland. 962 00:55:51,520 --> 00:55:55,600 A group of some of the last steppe mammoths in Britain. 963 00:55:55,600 --> 00:56:01,040 And Neanderthals using flint tools to butcher mammoth meat. 964 00:56:02,560 --> 00:56:04,240 Whether or not they hunted 965 00:56:04,240 --> 00:56:06,440 the mammoths requires more evidence, 966 00:56:06,440 --> 00:56:08,320 but, at this site, it certainly looks 967 00:56:08,320 --> 00:56:11,960 as if something extraordinary happened - 968 00:56:11,960 --> 00:56:17,120 Neanderthals feasting on mammoth on the banks of the River Thames. 969 00:56:18,960 --> 00:56:20,280 At the end of the dig 970 00:56:20,280 --> 00:56:22,800 and before the area is flooded again, 971 00:56:22,800 --> 00:56:26,040 we invite Sally and Neville to return to the site 972 00:56:26,040 --> 00:56:27,560 so that we can show them what 973 00:56:27,560 --> 00:56:30,200 the scene might once have looked like. 974 00:56:30,200 --> 00:56:34,560 We've prepared something where you don't have 975 00:56:34,560 --> 00:56:37,840 to use your imagination to visualise this area. 976 00:56:37,840 --> 00:56:40,880 If I give these to you. Thank you! Put them on. 977 00:56:40,880 --> 00:56:43,960 Make sure they're comfy. And enjoy. 978 00:56:43,960 --> 00:56:45,000 Righty-ho. 979 00:56:52,280 --> 00:56:53,560 Ee! Mammoth! 980 00:56:58,600 --> 00:57:00,360 Oh, that is just incredible! 981 00:57:03,840 --> 00:57:06,000 Oh, my God, that's amazing! 982 00:57:08,800 --> 00:57:13,040 The finds at this remarkable site have given us 983 00:57:13,040 --> 00:57:15,840 a rare glimpse of early Britain... 984 00:57:18,400 --> 00:57:22,360 ..a time when humans were fully immersed in the wild, 985 00:57:22,360 --> 00:57:24,520 living as part of nature. 986 00:57:27,920 --> 00:57:29,800 It's thought that Neanderthals may 987 00:57:29,800 --> 00:57:33,280 have been around for some 400,000 years. 988 00:57:35,200 --> 00:57:38,200 Their survival relied on their understanding of 989 00:57:38,200 --> 00:57:39,520 the natural world. 990 00:57:42,600 --> 00:57:47,440 Whether our own species can thrive for quite as long 991 00:57:47,440 --> 00:57:49,320 remains to be seen.