1 00:00:00,500 --> 00:00:04,400 Here at Cerney Wick, in southern England, 2 00:00:04,400 --> 00:00:06,500 just north of Swindon, 3 00:00:06,500 --> 00:00:09,800 the remains of Ice Age mammoths 4 00:00:09,800 --> 00:00:11,360 have just been discovered. 5 00:00:14,240 --> 00:00:17,880 These beasts were found not by professional scientists, 6 00:00:17,880 --> 00:00:22,400 but by two amateur fossil hunters digging in their spare time. 7 00:00:22,400 --> 00:00:26,000 It's like a time travel through the gravel. 8 00:00:26,000 --> 00:00:28,680 What they've found is sensational. 9 00:00:28,680 --> 00:00:31,440 Even I can see that's a tusk. 10 00:00:31,440 --> 00:00:33,720 It's one of the oldest mammoth graveyards 11 00:00:33,720 --> 00:00:36,480 ever uncovered in Britain 12 00:00:36,480 --> 00:00:41,520 and could hold secrets about several extinct species. 13 00:00:41,520 --> 00:00:43,560 Must've been rather enchanting. 14 00:00:46,080 --> 00:00:49,520 But why and how did these mammoths die here? 15 00:00:51,800 --> 00:00:54,680 To find out, a team of archaeologists 16 00:00:54,680 --> 00:00:56,720 and palaeontologists is carrying out 17 00:00:56,720 --> 00:00:59,800 a forensic investigation of the site. 18 00:00:59,800 --> 00:01:02,760 It's like a really big whodunnit, isn't it? 19 00:01:02,760 --> 00:01:07,280 Hidden in this gravel pit are clues that reveal an Ice Age world... 20 00:01:09,360 --> 00:01:11,480 Really beautiful, actually. 21 00:01:11,480 --> 00:01:14,040 ..a period about which we know very little, 22 00:01:14,040 --> 00:01:18,600 when prehistoric people lived alongside Ice Age animals. 23 00:01:18,600 --> 00:01:22,240 This is very typical of early Neanderthals. 24 00:01:22,240 --> 00:01:24,160 This excavation could open 25 00:01:24,160 --> 00:01:28,480 a new window onto ancient Britain 26 00:01:28,480 --> 00:01:32,880 and help us understand the lives of the humans who once lived here. 27 00:01:56,120 --> 00:01:58,400 You might expect to have to travel 28 00:01:58,400 --> 00:02:03,960 to remote parts of Siberia to uncover bones of Ice Age beasts, 29 00:02:03,960 --> 00:02:06,440 but, just outside Swindon, 30 00:02:06,440 --> 00:02:09,360 less than two hours from my home in Surrey, 31 00:02:09,360 --> 00:02:13,360 two of Britain's most prolific amateur fossil hunters have made 32 00:02:13,360 --> 00:02:17,360 the discovery of a lifetime. 33 00:02:17,360 --> 00:02:20,480 I've come to meet Sally and Neville Hollingworth. 34 00:02:20,480 --> 00:02:23,160 Hello. Hello. 35 00:02:23,160 --> 00:02:25,320 Nice to meet you. Lovely to meet you. 36 00:02:25,320 --> 00:02:28,000 Absolute pleasure to meet you. Come on in. 37 00:02:28,000 --> 00:02:30,640 This is our humble home. 38 00:02:30,640 --> 00:02:32,680 Gosh. 39 00:02:34,040 --> 00:02:37,520 Sally and Neville both have office jobs, 40 00:02:37,520 --> 00:02:40,440 but they spend their weekends hunting for fossils. 41 00:02:42,960 --> 00:02:46,760 Like me, they have a passion for doing so, 42 00:02:46,760 --> 00:02:50,360 but theirs went rather farther. 43 00:02:50,360 --> 00:02:53,440 When we went on fossil hunts, and Nev would invite me, 44 00:02:53,440 --> 00:02:58,320 and he passed me half a vertebrae, 45 00:02:58,320 --> 00:03:01,280 it's Jurassic, it's marine reptile. Yeah. 46 00:03:01,280 --> 00:03:04,520 A couple of weeks later, he texted me to say, 47 00:03:04,520 --> 00:03:07,080 I think I might've found find the other half of that vertebrae. 48 00:03:07,080 --> 00:03:08,680 Do you fancy meeting for a drink 49 00:03:08,680 --> 00:03:10,840 and we'll see if they join together? 50 00:03:10,840 --> 00:03:12,520 It's a good line, isn't it? 51 00:03:12,520 --> 00:03:14,840 This is true. Well, of course. 52 00:03:14,840 --> 00:03:17,640 So we met for a drink and... 53 00:03:17,640 --> 00:03:19,720 They joined together. ..they joined together. 54 00:03:19,720 --> 00:03:21,960 I thought there we go, it's a match made in heaven. 55 00:03:21,960 --> 00:03:23,920 Not a dry eye in the house. 56 00:03:23,920 --> 00:03:25,360 No, no, not at all. No. 57 00:03:28,680 --> 00:03:30,200 We've got some in the kitchen. 58 00:03:30,200 --> 00:03:32,480 More fossils? More finds. 59 00:03:32,480 --> 00:03:35,200 I thought for a moment it was going to be sandwiches. 60 00:03:35,200 --> 00:03:38,760 These are the finds I've come to see. 61 00:03:38,760 --> 00:03:40,720 Mammoth bones. 62 00:03:40,720 --> 00:03:43,240 Wow. Gosh. 63 00:03:43,240 --> 00:03:45,960 This is our kitchen-dino. 64 00:03:45,960 --> 00:03:47,960 THEY CHUCKLE 65 00:03:47,960 --> 00:03:51,160 Yes. Well, I know it's leg bone, isn't it? 66 00:03:51,160 --> 00:03:52,800 Yes. Where was it? 67 00:03:52,800 --> 00:03:56,080 It was, actually, literally just sticking out of some gravel 68 00:03:56,080 --> 00:03:57,840 on the floor of a working quarry. 69 00:03:57,840 --> 00:03:59,840 Which end? This end. 70 00:03:59,840 --> 00:04:01,320 So that bit was all you could see? 71 00:04:01,320 --> 00:04:03,440 That's all you could see. Probably only that bit. 72 00:04:03,440 --> 00:04:05,240 We thought there might be a bit more of it. 73 00:04:05,240 --> 00:04:08,200 So we started to excavate and, as we started digging, 74 00:04:08,200 --> 00:04:11,960 we found that it was actually a complete humerus of a mammoth. 75 00:04:11,960 --> 00:04:15,000 This pelvis bone has actually gone through 76 00:04:15,000 --> 00:04:16,560 the processing plant 77 00:04:16,560 --> 00:04:20,480 and it dropped out in the reject pile yard of the quarry. 78 00:04:22,440 --> 00:04:23,760 Two years ago, 79 00:04:23,760 --> 00:04:26,320 Neville and Sally asked for permission to look 80 00:04:26,320 --> 00:04:29,800 for fossils in a freshly dug quarry. 81 00:04:29,800 --> 00:04:34,560 They never expected to find pieces of bones of several mammoths. 82 00:04:34,560 --> 00:04:37,640 A cup of tea for you, David. Thank you very much. There we are. 83 00:04:37,640 --> 00:04:40,400 Oh, hang on, mammoth cake. 84 00:04:40,400 --> 00:04:43,240 Yeah, so, mammoth cupcakes. 85 00:04:43,240 --> 00:04:44,600 Aren't you having one? 86 00:04:44,600 --> 00:04:45,800 Yes, how is it? 87 00:04:45,800 --> 00:04:47,040 MUMBLES WITH MOUTH FULL 88 00:04:47,040 --> 00:04:48,440 I'm gonna have a chocolate one. 89 00:04:48,440 --> 00:04:51,720 But there's one find that raises intriguing questions 90 00:04:51,720 --> 00:04:54,480 about how the mammoths died, 91 00:04:54,480 --> 00:04:59,760 a stone tool, a hand-axe, made by an ancient human. 92 00:04:59,760 --> 00:05:01,400 There was a small glint. And I thought, 93 00:05:01,400 --> 00:05:03,840 "Well, that looks a bit interesting, a bit different." 94 00:05:03,840 --> 00:05:04,840 You saw this? 95 00:05:04,840 --> 00:05:06,560 Yes. 96 00:05:06,560 --> 00:05:09,760 Well, the main thing is that it was made by man. 97 00:05:09,760 --> 00:05:14,040 Yes. Yeah. And it was that feeling that I was the first human 98 00:05:14,040 --> 00:05:20,240 to touch this stone tool in hundreds of thousands of years. 99 00:05:20,240 --> 00:05:21,680 It's a great thrill, isn't it? 100 00:05:21,680 --> 00:05:24,600 It is. Yes. The whole of this business. 101 00:05:24,600 --> 00:05:29,240 Finding a stone tool near mammoth bones is extremely rare, 102 00:05:29,240 --> 00:05:32,320 but we don't yet know if it was left by humans 103 00:05:32,320 --> 00:05:34,720 from a more recent time in prehistory. 104 00:05:36,240 --> 00:05:39,720 Well, you could certainly cut things with that, I'm sure. 105 00:05:39,720 --> 00:05:40,960 Yeah, we did. 106 00:05:40,960 --> 00:05:42,520 We did. You did? 107 00:05:42,520 --> 00:05:44,680 We cut our wedding cake with it. 108 00:05:46,920 --> 00:05:49,760 You cut your wedding cake? Yes. 109 00:05:49,760 --> 00:05:51,920 Yeah. Really? 110 00:05:51,920 --> 00:05:54,320 There we are. 111 00:05:54,320 --> 00:05:58,400 We cut our wedding cake, got married and had... 112 00:05:58,400 --> 00:05:59,800 And had a mammoth meal. 113 00:05:59,800 --> 00:06:02,840 And had a mammoth meal, had a mammoth event. Yeah. 114 00:06:02,840 --> 00:06:03,920 Yeah. Yeah. 115 00:06:17,080 --> 00:06:21,680 Mammoths once roamed the open landscape of ancient Britain. 116 00:06:23,040 --> 00:06:25,920 These extinct cousins of elephants 117 00:06:25,920 --> 00:06:29,640 had huge curving tusks and thrived during the Ice Age. 118 00:06:31,440 --> 00:06:36,960 Their remains are usually tens of thousands of years old, 119 00:06:36,960 --> 00:06:40,360 but Sally and Neville's finds could be far older. 120 00:06:42,280 --> 00:06:47,240 They could offer an extremely rare glimpse of life deep in the Ice Age, 121 00:06:47,240 --> 00:06:49,280 a time we know little about, 122 00:06:49,280 --> 00:06:53,160 when early humans lived alongside mammoths. 123 00:06:56,520 --> 00:06:58,760 But how did these mammoths die? 124 00:07:00,880 --> 00:07:03,920 Was it from natural causes? 125 00:07:03,920 --> 00:07:06,520 Or could they have been hunted? 126 00:07:08,640 --> 00:07:12,440 The quarry where Sally and Neville made their discovery 127 00:07:12,440 --> 00:07:15,680 lies just ten miles north of their home in Swindon, 128 00:07:15,680 --> 00:07:18,000 near the village of Cerney Wick. 129 00:07:20,440 --> 00:07:24,360 Groundwater was deliberately allowed to flood the site, 130 00:07:24,360 --> 00:07:28,080 to prevent any bones in the ground from drying out. 131 00:07:31,920 --> 00:07:35,320 Now, two years after they made their first find, 132 00:07:35,320 --> 00:07:39,040 that water is being pumped out 133 00:07:39,040 --> 00:07:42,720 ready for a team to begin investigating. 134 00:07:47,480 --> 00:07:51,080 Leading the dig is another husband-and-wife duo, 135 00:07:51,080 --> 00:07:54,640 Brendon Wilkins and Lisa Westcott Wilkins. 136 00:07:54,640 --> 00:07:56,880 Those ducks must hate us. 137 00:07:56,880 --> 00:08:00,760 They had this place filled with water and now they've got nothing. 138 00:08:00,760 --> 00:08:04,000 The team starts by mapping the site from the air. 139 00:08:13,840 --> 00:08:17,320 It's so important to record this from the instant that we're doing anything, 140 00:08:17,320 --> 00:08:20,080 so that we can build that exact picture 141 00:08:20,080 --> 00:08:22,520 of how it was before we came along and disturbed it. 142 00:08:24,720 --> 00:08:29,120 The drone images provide a detailed map of the site 143 00:08:29,120 --> 00:08:33,480 so that the exact location of each find can be plotted. 144 00:08:36,640 --> 00:08:40,440 The team searches for fragments of bone. 145 00:08:40,440 --> 00:08:44,720 Biologist Ben Garrod has been helping co-ordinate the dig. 146 00:08:44,720 --> 00:08:47,120 That, we think, is mammoth bone, cos it's so thick. 147 00:08:47,120 --> 00:08:49,920 Yeah. It's definitely mammoth. 148 00:08:49,920 --> 00:08:53,400 Ben was the first on the team to hear about the site 149 00:08:53,400 --> 00:08:56,160 and quickly realised its significance. 150 00:08:56,160 --> 00:08:58,520 Sally and Neville got in touch. And I'd never met them. 151 00:08:58,520 --> 00:09:00,800 And they said, Ben, we found some fossils that 152 00:09:00,800 --> 00:09:02,640 I think you might be interested in. I said, 153 00:09:02,640 --> 00:09:04,800 yeah, that's great, send some photos across. 154 00:09:04,800 --> 00:09:07,120 And they did. And I was here the next day. 155 00:09:08,640 --> 00:09:11,320 I jumped on the train and dropped everything 156 00:09:11,320 --> 00:09:12,480 and came to the site 157 00:09:12,480 --> 00:09:14,440 and it was like someone had sprinkled 158 00:09:14,440 --> 00:09:16,560 mammoth bones everywhere, which I'd never seen. 159 00:09:16,560 --> 00:09:20,320 I thought I had to go to Siberia to see that. 160 00:09:20,320 --> 00:09:23,160 By looking at this in a forensic level of detail, 161 00:09:23,160 --> 00:09:26,240 that'll give us this really in-depth understanding 162 00:09:26,240 --> 00:09:28,520 of what was going on here whilst these animals 163 00:09:28,520 --> 00:09:30,440 and these people were walking around. 164 00:09:31,560 --> 00:09:34,040 What intrigues Ben, and me, 165 00:09:34,040 --> 00:09:37,360 is why there are so many mammoth bones here, 166 00:09:37,360 --> 00:09:39,440 from at least four different animals. 167 00:09:42,000 --> 00:09:46,040 And the tantalising mystery of who left that stone tool. 168 00:09:54,240 --> 00:09:58,360 So, what did the landscape look like when the mammoths were here? 169 00:10:02,240 --> 00:10:04,160 OK, up. 170 00:10:04,160 --> 00:10:09,160 To find out, geo-archaeologist Keith Wilkinson extracts samples 171 00:10:09,160 --> 00:10:11,560 of the underlying sediment. 172 00:10:11,560 --> 00:10:14,440 So, at the very bottom we've got these blue sands. 173 00:10:14,440 --> 00:10:19,800 So they are probably the layer with the mammoth fossils in. 174 00:10:19,800 --> 00:10:22,400 We've got these river gravels 175 00:10:22,400 --> 00:10:25,000 and then these silts and sands at the top 176 00:10:25,000 --> 00:10:27,040 are of the same ancient river channel. 177 00:10:29,880 --> 00:10:32,480 The layers of sediment beneath the surface 178 00:10:32,480 --> 00:10:35,160 reveal the bed of a prehistoric river. 179 00:10:36,800 --> 00:10:40,720 This is probably the ancient route of the River Thames, 180 00:10:40,720 --> 00:10:44,200 which, today, lies nearly two miles away. 181 00:10:44,200 --> 00:10:47,120 Could the mammoths have died further upstream 182 00:10:47,120 --> 00:10:50,200 and their bones have been washed here when the river flooded? 183 00:10:52,840 --> 00:10:58,120 To find out, the team plots target areas for excavation... 184 00:11:01,600 --> 00:11:04,080 ..and the digging begins. 185 00:11:11,440 --> 00:11:13,800 They sieve every shovel-full of soil 186 00:11:13,800 --> 00:11:17,600 in their search for fragments of bone or stone tools. 187 00:11:25,160 --> 00:11:28,600 When the trenches start to reveal new finds, 188 00:11:28,600 --> 00:11:31,720 I can't resist stopping by to see how they're doing. 189 00:11:35,120 --> 00:11:37,520 Welcome. Thank you very much. 190 00:11:37,520 --> 00:11:38,960 What do you think? 191 00:11:38,960 --> 00:11:41,680 I haven't seen it yet. 192 00:11:41,680 --> 00:11:44,400 Even I can see that's a tusk. 193 00:11:44,400 --> 00:11:46,880 Let me get it right. Where was the head? 194 00:11:46,880 --> 00:11:49,360 So, this is the proximal end. 195 00:11:49,360 --> 00:11:51,240 And that's the tip of the tusk. 196 00:11:51,240 --> 00:11:54,000 So coming round the tip here. So it's curving backwards. 197 00:11:54,000 --> 00:11:55,640 Yes, exactly. Yes. 198 00:11:55,640 --> 00:11:59,520 This is possibly a bit of a mandible, this was just found. 199 00:11:59,520 --> 00:12:01,160 So it's a left mandible? 200 00:12:01,160 --> 00:12:04,360 Well, yes. And because we think that might be a left tusk, 201 00:12:04,360 --> 00:12:07,600 you know, it's possible that these belonged to the same animal. 202 00:12:07,600 --> 00:12:10,960 You can see bones running into the section there 203 00:12:10,960 --> 00:12:13,840 and here 204 00:12:13,840 --> 00:12:16,640 and you can also see a rib bone here. Yeah. 205 00:12:16,640 --> 00:12:20,120 One of the things we wondered with so many of these tusks around, 206 00:12:20,120 --> 00:12:22,680 could it have been that they all fall into the river somewhere 207 00:12:22,680 --> 00:12:24,720 and then get washed down in one big event? 208 00:12:24,720 --> 00:12:27,080 But what we're looking at is not a high energy environment. 209 00:12:27,080 --> 00:12:30,440 If it was a wash-out, you would expect to see more debris 210 00:12:30,440 --> 00:12:33,600 in the channel, more debris in the sediment around the tusks. 211 00:12:33,600 --> 00:12:36,720 But this is basically lying in where it fell. 212 00:12:36,720 --> 00:12:39,520 And the same with the tusk over there. So, we think, you know, 213 00:12:39,520 --> 00:12:41,720 they could have just died and fallen. 214 00:12:41,720 --> 00:12:43,680 But it's a bit of a coincidence, really. 215 00:12:48,320 --> 00:12:52,800 This pit has been dug out by excavators 216 00:12:52,800 --> 00:12:57,160 because, until just recently, it was full of gravel, 217 00:12:57,160 --> 00:13:00,320 down to about this level. 218 00:13:00,320 --> 00:13:03,440 But here is much more solid. 219 00:13:03,440 --> 00:13:07,720 It's not gravel. It's mud - sticky mud at that, 220 00:13:07,720 --> 00:13:10,560 and it's in this undisturbed mud 221 00:13:10,560 --> 00:13:14,640 that these bones are now being discovered. 222 00:13:14,640 --> 00:13:18,120 And, because it's been undisturbed, 223 00:13:18,120 --> 00:13:22,640 very careful excavation can reveal a lot of details about 224 00:13:22,640 --> 00:13:26,720 the circumstances in which these animals got here 225 00:13:26,720 --> 00:13:28,680 and left their bones. 226 00:13:30,680 --> 00:13:35,600 The most complete bones seem to be lying in the riverbed. 227 00:13:35,600 --> 00:13:39,840 And they've been covered by the fine sediments of slow-moving water, 228 00:13:39,840 --> 00:13:42,840 not pounded by fast-moving flood water. 229 00:13:44,280 --> 00:13:48,480 So, perhaps the mammoths died where the bones are lying now. 230 00:13:51,360 --> 00:13:53,520 Could their remains give us clues 231 00:13:53,520 --> 00:13:55,640 about what the mammoths looked like? 232 00:13:58,360 --> 00:14:02,360 Conservator Nigel Larkin has come to remove the tusk 233 00:14:02,360 --> 00:14:04,240 in the centre of the trench. 234 00:14:05,680 --> 00:14:07,360 All right? 235 00:14:07,360 --> 00:14:11,280 Hi. Oh, my goodness. You've been plastered. 236 00:14:11,280 --> 00:14:14,920 OK, Sal, you smiling? Yes. Good, great. 237 00:14:14,920 --> 00:14:18,160 With a heavy plaster casing in place, 238 00:14:18,160 --> 00:14:21,240 the fragile tusk is ready to be lifted. 239 00:14:21,240 --> 00:14:23,080 Do we need an extra person? I think we do. 240 00:14:23,080 --> 00:14:25,200 OK. So if you get in there. 241 00:14:25,200 --> 00:14:27,400 We're gonna lift up to sort of waist height. 242 00:14:27,400 --> 00:14:32,640 You need to get your hands underneath, OK. 243 00:14:32,640 --> 00:14:33,840 On my knees. 244 00:14:38,160 --> 00:14:40,160 Go that way, that's better. 245 00:14:40,160 --> 00:14:41,760 Do we need a rest? 246 00:14:41,760 --> 00:14:43,200 Up to you. 247 00:14:43,200 --> 00:14:45,040 I'm good. My back's about to give out. 248 00:14:49,200 --> 00:14:50,240 Go up a bit. 249 00:14:53,160 --> 00:14:54,440 Just rest it there. 250 00:14:55,880 --> 00:14:57,840 OK. Stop there. 251 00:14:57,840 --> 00:15:00,840 Is it in? Yeah. Well done, guys! We'll just shove it over a bit. 252 00:15:00,840 --> 00:15:02,480 Woo-hoo! 253 00:15:02,480 --> 00:15:05,120 Yeah! Well done. 254 00:15:05,120 --> 00:15:08,080 Thank you. Well done. Well done, well done. 255 00:15:08,080 --> 00:15:09,880 It's a heavy old beast. The question is, 256 00:15:09,880 --> 00:15:12,280 how are you going to get out the other end? 257 00:15:12,280 --> 00:15:13,640 I'll get the wife to help me. 258 00:15:13,640 --> 00:15:16,240 THEY LAUGH 259 00:15:34,560 --> 00:15:37,760 This ancient tusk will be carefully preserved 260 00:15:37,760 --> 00:15:40,360 and prepared for future examination. 261 00:15:41,880 --> 00:15:45,760 Spectacular fossils like this have always fascinated people. 262 00:15:47,640 --> 00:15:49,120 Hundreds of years ago, 263 00:15:49,120 --> 00:15:53,200 it was thought mammoth tusks belonged to mythical beasts. 264 00:15:55,200 --> 00:15:56,520 In Siberia, 265 00:15:56,520 --> 00:15:58,200 mammoth remains were once thought 266 00:15:58,200 --> 00:16:01,400 to be from huge underground burrowing creatures. 267 00:16:03,360 --> 00:16:05,280 In 17th century Europe, 268 00:16:05,280 --> 00:16:08,840 mammoth bones were said to be those of giants or unicorns. 269 00:16:12,160 --> 00:16:17,040 By the 19th century, mammoths were described as prehistoric animals, 270 00:16:17,040 --> 00:16:20,280 but they were thought to have existed long before humans. 271 00:16:22,360 --> 00:16:25,960 Then, in 1864 in France, 272 00:16:25,960 --> 00:16:30,400 a piece of mammoth ivory was found with an engraving so accurate 273 00:16:30,400 --> 00:16:33,680 it was clear the artist had seen a living mammoth. 274 00:16:37,200 --> 00:16:40,000 The engraving shows a woolly mammoth, 275 00:16:40,000 --> 00:16:43,640 the most recent species on the mammoth family tree. 276 00:16:45,920 --> 00:16:50,040 We now know that early mammoths first evolved in Africa 277 00:16:50,040 --> 00:16:52,360 around five million years ago 278 00:16:52,360 --> 00:16:54,800 and then spread into Europe and Asia. 279 00:16:57,440 --> 00:16:59,800 Around 1.7 million years ago, 280 00:16:59,800 --> 00:17:04,640 steppe mammoths evolved that grazed the grassy plains. 281 00:17:04,640 --> 00:17:08,240 They then moved into Europe and North America 282 00:17:08,240 --> 00:17:11,040 where Columbian mammoths later appeared. 283 00:17:12,360 --> 00:17:16,920 The famous woolly mammoths developed around 700,000 years ago, 284 00:17:16,920 --> 00:17:19,280 adapted for colder climates, 285 00:17:19,280 --> 00:17:21,800 and they eventually spread first into Europe 286 00:17:21,800 --> 00:17:23,840 and then North America. 287 00:17:25,400 --> 00:17:30,520 So, which kind of mammoth lived in Britain at our site? 288 00:17:34,920 --> 00:17:38,920 To find out, mammoth evolution expert Steven Zhang 289 00:17:38,920 --> 00:17:42,800 is examining the remains found at the site. 290 00:17:42,800 --> 00:17:47,240 The teeth have given him a crucial clue. 291 00:17:47,240 --> 00:17:49,640 Looking at a mammoth tooth is like looking into 292 00:17:49,640 --> 00:17:52,000 a barcode for the mammoth itself. 293 00:17:52,000 --> 00:17:54,840 We start by counting the number of enamel ridges, 294 00:17:54,840 --> 00:17:58,840 so this one has about 18, 295 00:17:58,840 --> 00:18:02,480 which is a very typical number for a steppe mammoth. 296 00:18:03,680 --> 00:18:05,320 Looking at this piece of tooth, 297 00:18:05,320 --> 00:18:09,520 we know that it's a last molar or a wisdom tooth. 298 00:18:09,520 --> 00:18:12,040 So we know this was a fully-grown adult. 299 00:18:12,040 --> 00:18:16,240 Except, this is one of the smallest steppe mammoth teeth 300 00:18:16,240 --> 00:18:18,600 there probably is in existence. 301 00:18:18,600 --> 00:18:22,600 It's like finding a German Shepherd the size of a Westie. 302 00:18:24,920 --> 00:18:26,720 These teeth appear to be from 303 00:18:26,720 --> 00:18:30,280 a population of small steppe mammoths. 304 00:18:30,280 --> 00:18:33,320 Their reduced size could be a consequence of food 305 00:18:33,320 --> 00:18:36,320 becoming less abundant. 306 00:18:36,320 --> 00:18:39,360 If a steppe mammoth was here now, 307 00:18:39,360 --> 00:18:42,600 you would see that it wasn't particularly hairy. 308 00:18:42,600 --> 00:18:46,040 A sign that the climate must have been quite temperate. 309 00:18:46,040 --> 00:18:47,840 And as for size, well, 310 00:18:47,840 --> 00:18:50,840 the female was about my size, 311 00:18:50,840 --> 00:18:52,640 male a bit bigger 312 00:18:52,640 --> 00:18:54,040 and the baby, 313 00:18:54,040 --> 00:18:56,400 well, I guess, like that. 314 00:18:56,400 --> 00:18:58,960 Must've been rather enchanting. 315 00:19:04,480 --> 00:19:09,000 There are also remains of another type of mammoth. 316 00:19:09,000 --> 00:19:13,360 Over here, I would say this is a typical woolly mammoth. 317 00:19:13,360 --> 00:19:16,280 So these two different kind of beasts 318 00:19:16,280 --> 00:19:18,720 were occurring at the same site. 319 00:19:18,720 --> 00:19:23,440 One possibility was that this site was a habitat 320 00:19:23,440 --> 00:19:27,600 shared by both steppe and woolly mammoths, 321 00:19:27,600 --> 00:19:32,040 or, as woolly mammoths migrated westwards from Siberia 322 00:19:32,040 --> 00:19:33,640 into Europe, 323 00:19:33,640 --> 00:19:37,520 they started to mingle with local steppe mammoths. 324 00:19:37,520 --> 00:19:41,440 This is interesting because not often do we see 325 00:19:41,440 --> 00:19:43,560 a snapshot like this. 326 00:19:43,560 --> 00:19:45,200 It's exciting. 327 00:19:46,760 --> 00:19:51,720 Our site could be rare evidence of a transitional stage, 328 00:19:51,720 --> 00:19:56,200 when woolly mammoths are taking over from steppe mammoths. 329 00:19:56,200 --> 00:19:58,960 These bones could have belonged to some of 330 00:19:58,960 --> 00:20:01,920 the last surviving steppe mammoths in Britain. 331 00:20:08,200 --> 00:20:09,760 Back at the dig, 332 00:20:09,760 --> 00:20:12,240 Sally and Neville have ringside seats 333 00:20:12,240 --> 00:20:15,520 as the professionals continue their meticulous search. 334 00:20:18,560 --> 00:20:22,920 There is almost a forensic examination of the sediment 335 00:20:22,920 --> 00:20:24,800 and everything else. 336 00:20:24,800 --> 00:20:27,600 But that's, that's good, though. So they don't miss anything. 337 00:20:27,600 --> 00:20:30,800 It's like a time travel through the gravel. 338 00:20:36,240 --> 00:20:39,000 I'd like them to solve the story. 339 00:20:39,000 --> 00:20:40,960 Was it hunted? 340 00:20:40,960 --> 00:20:42,840 That's the big question, isn't it? 341 00:20:42,840 --> 00:20:46,200 Yeah. One of the questions. What was the climate like? 342 00:20:46,200 --> 00:20:49,240 Yeah. What was the vegetation like? 343 00:20:49,240 --> 00:20:51,720 And, also, what else was here? 344 00:20:51,720 --> 00:20:54,840 Not just mammoths, but were there early humans, 345 00:20:54,840 --> 00:20:57,280 hominids wandering about? 346 00:20:57,280 --> 00:21:00,480 Well, yes, they were, because we know there's a hand-axe. 347 00:21:02,680 --> 00:21:08,320 You have established that there were mammoths here 348 00:21:08,320 --> 00:21:11,160 and there were human beings alongside them. 349 00:21:11,160 --> 00:21:13,480 A human being wielding that axe. 350 00:21:13,480 --> 00:21:17,280 I can say, at this particular site, there were definitely mammoths. 351 00:21:17,280 --> 00:21:20,680 There were definitely human beings, early human beings, admittedly, 352 00:21:20,680 --> 00:21:24,200 but I don't know yet if they were here at the exact same time. 353 00:21:24,200 --> 00:21:26,520 Now, the issue is, it could be like you or I walking on 354 00:21:26,520 --> 00:21:28,720 a Viking settlement and dropping a crisp packet. 355 00:21:28,720 --> 00:21:30,960 That's not from the same time period, obviously. 356 00:21:30,960 --> 00:21:34,320 Now, that might have happened here. I'll let you know in a few months. 357 00:21:38,800 --> 00:21:41,840 Ben's "few months" becomes two years 358 00:21:41,840 --> 00:21:45,680 as Covid lockdowns keep the team away from the site. 359 00:21:49,760 --> 00:21:53,960 But, in 2021, they pick up where they left off, 360 00:21:53,960 --> 00:21:57,080 this time with some mechanical help. 361 00:22:03,360 --> 00:22:05,320 If only we'd had this last time, 362 00:22:05,320 --> 00:22:07,320 it would have just made it so much easier. 363 00:22:09,760 --> 00:22:13,680 The idea at the moment is just to plane down to that level 364 00:22:13,680 --> 00:22:17,560 where we've got material that hasn't been disturbed. 365 00:22:17,560 --> 00:22:20,200 They clear down to the undisturbed layers 366 00:22:20,200 --> 00:22:22,280 and dig new trenches. 367 00:22:24,480 --> 00:22:28,200 Mammoth bones soon begin to appear. 368 00:22:28,200 --> 00:22:32,920 Oh, wow. That looks good, doesn't it? 369 00:22:32,920 --> 00:22:34,400 Look at that. 370 00:22:37,280 --> 00:22:41,480 Wow, we've got this wonderful little tusk here. 371 00:22:41,480 --> 00:22:43,920 It's beautiful, isn't it? 372 00:22:43,920 --> 00:22:47,440 To determine the age of these finds, 373 00:22:47,440 --> 00:22:51,720 they send sediment samples from the trenches to a specialist lab. 374 00:22:55,040 --> 00:22:57,160 In darkroom conditions, 375 00:22:57,160 --> 00:23:00,840 grains of quartz from deep within the sediment are placed in 376 00:23:00,840 --> 00:23:04,520 a machine that records tiny levels of radiation. 377 00:23:09,520 --> 00:23:12,440 The amount of radiation emitted by the grains 378 00:23:12,440 --> 00:23:16,000 reveals when they were last exposed to sunlight 379 00:23:16,000 --> 00:23:17,560 and allows the team to estimate 380 00:23:17,560 --> 00:23:19,680 the age of the ancient river channel. 381 00:23:22,480 --> 00:23:26,760 So here we've got our distribution of age within our sample. 382 00:23:26,760 --> 00:23:29,400 So, these three age estimates indicate that the channel 383 00:23:29,400 --> 00:23:31,600 was formed about 215,000 years ago. 384 00:23:35,440 --> 00:23:40,160 Our site dates to a period deep in the Ice Age. 385 00:23:40,160 --> 00:23:43,880 But the Ice Age wasn't always icy. 386 00:23:43,880 --> 00:23:47,960 Over the last two and a half million years, 387 00:23:47,960 --> 00:23:51,640 huge ice sheets travelled down from the north 388 00:23:51,640 --> 00:23:54,720 and then retreated during warmer spells. 389 00:23:58,800 --> 00:24:02,520 The advancing and retreating ice changed the sea level 390 00:24:02,520 --> 00:24:07,480 and the coastlines, but, for most of this period, 391 00:24:07,480 --> 00:24:11,840 Britain was connected to mainland Europe. 392 00:24:11,840 --> 00:24:14,600 215,000 years ago, 393 00:24:14,600 --> 00:24:16,760 when the mammoths were living at our site, 394 00:24:16,760 --> 00:24:21,680 conditions were only slightly cooler than today, 395 00:24:21,680 --> 00:24:25,880 ideal for a variety of animals, 396 00:24:25,880 --> 00:24:29,400 and our site is providing evidence for what they were. 397 00:24:33,480 --> 00:24:37,520 So we've got some lovely vertebrae here from steppe bison. 398 00:24:37,520 --> 00:24:39,760 So these were very, very large, 399 00:24:39,760 --> 00:24:43,600 up to two metres at the shoulders, big cow-like animals, 400 00:24:43,600 --> 00:24:47,240 that were again on the steppes, on these plains, 401 00:24:47,240 --> 00:24:49,600 herbivores, they would equally have been hunted. 402 00:24:49,600 --> 00:24:51,760 We also have.... 403 00:24:51,760 --> 00:24:55,200 ..this, which is wonderful. 404 00:24:55,200 --> 00:24:59,280 That's part of a lower jaw from a brown bear. 405 00:24:59,280 --> 00:25:01,520 A bear. Yeah. So we know that... 406 00:25:01,520 --> 00:25:02,920 That's the socket of the teeth. 407 00:25:02,920 --> 00:25:05,040 That's it, yeah. And that... 408 00:25:05,040 --> 00:25:06,960 Little canal for the nerves and blood vessels. 409 00:25:06,960 --> 00:25:08,400 And this is the hinge. 410 00:25:08,400 --> 00:25:10,120 It would have been sitting at the back. 411 00:25:10,120 --> 00:25:12,440 So you've got this lower jaw sitting there, 412 00:25:12,440 --> 00:25:14,240 the big tearing teeth, shearing teeth, 413 00:25:14,240 --> 00:25:15,760 doing exactly that process here. 414 00:25:15,760 --> 00:25:18,560 So we're starting to build up a picture of what this environment 415 00:25:18,560 --> 00:25:20,600 would have been like. This isn't Arctic tundra 416 00:25:20,600 --> 00:25:22,240 where there was nothing available. 417 00:25:22,240 --> 00:25:24,360 This would have been a good place to live. 418 00:25:30,640 --> 00:25:33,880 The bison and bear bones give us clues about 419 00:25:33,880 --> 00:25:36,000 the Ice Age landscape of the site. 420 00:25:38,240 --> 00:25:41,560 But there are also the remains of far smaller creatures 421 00:25:41,560 --> 00:25:44,120 that enable us to piece together a picture 422 00:25:44,120 --> 00:25:47,200 of what was growing on this land back then. 423 00:25:49,040 --> 00:25:53,000 There's loads of small shell fragments throughout this. 424 00:25:55,160 --> 00:25:57,680 We've got this little snail in here. 425 00:26:01,160 --> 00:26:06,320 Environmental archaeologist Matt Law carefully identifies samples 426 00:26:06,320 --> 00:26:10,560 of tiny, but perfectly preserved shells. 427 00:26:10,560 --> 00:26:13,360 We have one land snail in there, 428 00:26:13,360 --> 00:26:17,720 so that's a very common species of short grassland snail 429 00:26:17,720 --> 00:26:22,440 and the rest are looking like they're coming from 430 00:26:22,440 --> 00:26:23,920 a river-type setting. 431 00:26:23,920 --> 00:26:26,960 Well-vegetated, well-oxygenated water, 432 00:26:26,960 --> 00:26:29,000 but not too much flow either. 433 00:26:29,000 --> 00:26:32,240 What's really remarkable is the level of preservation, 434 00:26:32,240 --> 00:26:35,840 not just the snails, but things like beetle remains, 435 00:26:35,840 --> 00:26:38,600 seeds and bits of wood that we don't often see 436 00:26:38,600 --> 00:26:42,360 with the level of detail that they are here. 437 00:26:42,360 --> 00:26:45,080 The discovery of these species of animals 438 00:26:45,080 --> 00:26:48,360 and plants enables us to get a quite detailed picture 439 00:26:48,360 --> 00:26:50,360 of what the landscape here was like 440 00:26:50,360 --> 00:26:53,720 when the mammoths were roaming around. 441 00:26:53,720 --> 00:26:57,280 This stretch of the ancient Thames was flowing through an open, 442 00:26:57,280 --> 00:27:01,880 grassy landscape, a perfect place for large herbivores 443 00:27:01,880 --> 00:27:03,680 to feed and find water. 444 00:27:07,720 --> 00:27:09,320 Back at the site, 445 00:27:09,320 --> 00:27:11,920 after weeks of searching for more hand-axes 446 00:27:11,920 --> 00:27:15,160 or stone tools among the mammoth bones, 447 00:27:15,160 --> 00:27:17,560 there's been a breakthrough. 448 00:27:17,560 --> 00:27:20,800 The telltale signs of humans. 449 00:27:20,800 --> 00:27:24,520 I think this may be a flint artefact. 450 00:27:25,720 --> 00:27:28,320 Ben is eager to see the new finds. 451 00:27:28,320 --> 00:27:31,280 It's really over in this area where we're starting 452 00:27:31,280 --> 00:27:33,800 to find the really exciting stuff. 453 00:27:36,360 --> 00:27:38,720 Hiding in this sand we have 454 00:27:38,720 --> 00:27:42,040 a relatively large piece of mammoth bone 455 00:27:42,040 --> 00:27:43,800 sticking from the surface. 456 00:27:43,800 --> 00:27:46,640 And, just in the last few days, we've started to pick out 457 00:27:46,640 --> 00:27:48,040 just a couple of flints, 458 00:27:48,040 --> 00:27:49,480 so little bits of stone 459 00:27:49,480 --> 00:27:51,800 which are being worked by humans. 460 00:27:51,800 --> 00:27:54,840 And they're next door, just 50 centimetres away 461 00:27:54,840 --> 00:28:01,040 from this lovely bit of what looks to be a leg bone of a mammoth. 462 00:28:01,040 --> 00:28:04,920 You can see they've been taking little chips out of the edge 463 00:28:04,920 --> 00:28:07,400 to create a sharp cutting surface, 464 00:28:07,400 --> 00:28:11,600 which they could scrape along bones or along hides to remove fat. 465 00:28:11,600 --> 00:28:15,720 Something as simple as this starts to connect those dots, 466 00:28:15,720 --> 00:28:18,720 starts to bring the human story together with the mammoths, 467 00:28:18,720 --> 00:28:21,960 and that's really quite special. 468 00:28:29,560 --> 00:28:32,160 The presence of these tiny fragments alongside 469 00:28:32,160 --> 00:28:34,960 the bone suggests people were here 470 00:28:34,960 --> 00:28:38,240 at the same time as the mammoths. 471 00:28:38,240 --> 00:28:40,680 The tool Sally and Neville found 472 00:28:40,680 --> 00:28:43,800 could also have been made by the same people. 473 00:28:46,840 --> 00:28:51,000 To find out how these early tools were made, 474 00:28:51,000 --> 00:28:56,520 Ben and I arrange to meet Karl Lee, an expert flint-knapper. 475 00:28:56,520 --> 00:28:57,840 So here we go. 476 00:29:04,720 --> 00:29:07,080 He uses a rounded stone 477 00:29:07,080 --> 00:29:09,880 and then a piece of antler as a hammer, 478 00:29:09,880 --> 00:29:12,160 just as the early humans did. 479 00:29:21,520 --> 00:29:22,720 There we go. 480 00:29:25,560 --> 00:29:30,440 That is amazing. 481 00:29:30,440 --> 00:29:32,000 Thank you very much. 482 00:29:32,000 --> 00:29:33,400 What do you reckon, David, 483 00:29:33,400 --> 00:29:35,320 could you take down a mammoth with one of those? 484 00:29:35,320 --> 00:29:37,000 I should certainly cut up a deer, 485 00:29:37,000 --> 00:29:38,680 they're around here. Yes. 486 00:29:38,680 --> 00:29:41,000 If you killed it with a spear, 487 00:29:41,000 --> 00:29:43,840 that's for the butcher 488 00:29:43,840 --> 00:29:47,000 and you'd butcher it in half an hour. 489 00:29:47,000 --> 00:29:50,120 So I have, completely normally, 490 00:29:50,120 --> 00:29:53,200 brought a piece of meat on the bone. 491 00:29:53,200 --> 00:29:54,640 OK. 492 00:29:56,960 --> 00:29:58,000 Gosh. 493 00:30:01,000 --> 00:30:02,360 Mind your fingers. 494 00:30:02,360 --> 00:30:03,560 Yes. Mind your fingers. 495 00:30:03,560 --> 00:30:05,760 Thanks, David. 496 00:30:05,760 --> 00:30:08,480 Oh, yeah. That's gone straight through. 497 00:30:14,480 --> 00:30:16,000 No problem at all. 498 00:30:17,760 --> 00:30:20,640 I think you should keep it for a cookery show, David. Yeah. 499 00:30:22,440 --> 00:30:25,800 So it seems that the hand-axe Sally discovered 500 00:30:25,800 --> 00:30:29,240 could well have been used to butcher mammoth meat. 501 00:30:30,680 --> 00:30:35,040 Karl also shows us a second method of making stone tools, 502 00:30:35,040 --> 00:30:37,560 in which thin shards of flint, 503 00:30:37,560 --> 00:30:40,360 known as Levallois flakes, 504 00:30:40,360 --> 00:30:44,360 are knocked away from a large flint core. 505 00:30:47,400 --> 00:30:54,560 I have to prepare a platform at the base of the core 506 00:30:54,560 --> 00:30:59,080 and then try and take a nice flake. 507 00:30:59,080 --> 00:31:01,360 Using this method, 508 00:31:01,360 --> 00:31:03,800 they're actually planning exactly what that flake's 509 00:31:03,800 --> 00:31:07,360 going to look like. So I'm going to be striking right at the base of 510 00:31:07,360 --> 00:31:12,960 the core here and the flake will hopefully come off on the underside. 511 00:31:12,960 --> 00:31:14,560 That's a brave thing to say. 512 00:31:20,600 --> 00:31:24,000 That is a Levallois flake. 513 00:31:24,000 --> 00:31:28,480 Now, do watch your fingers on that one because it's going to be sharp. 514 00:31:33,280 --> 00:31:34,760 Yes, it's razor sharp. 515 00:31:34,760 --> 00:31:37,000 Yeah. Razor sharp. 516 00:31:37,000 --> 00:31:40,320 Where the edge is so thin it's translucent, 517 00:31:40,320 --> 00:31:44,680 it looks as though it's all got a halo all around it. 518 00:31:44,680 --> 00:31:47,720 Really beautiful, actually. 519 00:31:47,720 --> 00:31:50,480 This is a very versatile technology, 520 00:31:50,480 --> 00:31:53,760 it's portable, very lightweight, 521 00:31:53,760 --> 00:31:55,920 rather than carrying around something 522 00:31:55,920 --> 00:31:57,800 four or five times the weight. 523 00:31:57,800 --> 00:31:59,560 I can't imagine you teaching me this 524 00:31:59,560 --> 00:32:02,560 without a really good grasp of language. 525 00:32:02,560 --> 00:32:06,480 Teaching this without language would be, 526 00:32:06,480 --> 00:32:08,440 in my opinion, impossible. 527 00:32:08,440 --> 00:32:11,280 And my guess would be that children, 528 00:32:11,280 --> 00:32:15,040 just as they mimic their parents today, 529 00:32:15,040 --> 00:32:18,040 would have been mimicking their parents back then, as well. 530 00:32:20,880 --> 00:32:23,960 So, try and catch it about two millimetres 531 00:32:23,960 --> 00:32:25,560 back from the edge... 532 00:32:25,560 --> 00:32:28,200 Oh, I've got you, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 533 00:32:28,200 --> 00:32:30,200 That's it. You're away. 534 00:32:32,600 --> 00:32:35,280 For hundreds of thousands of years, 535 00:32:35,280 --> 00:32:38,760 human beings have passed on that sort of skill, 536 00:32:38,760 --> 00:32:40,760 that sort of insight into 537 00:32:40,760 --> 00:32:43,200 the materials that lay around them. 538 00:32:46,520 --> 00:32:48,440 Of course, 539 00:32:48,440 --> 00:32:52,720 they had to be fortunate to find such marvellous material as flint, 540 00:32:52,720 --> 00:32:55,080 but, once they did, 541 00:32:55,080 --> 00:32:58,000 what fabulous things they created with it. 542 00:33:00,480 --> 00:33:04,160 So who were the flint-workers at Cerney Wick? 543 00:33:06,280 --> 00:33:08,960 We know very little about prehistoric people. 544 00:33:10,640 --> 00:33:13,720 Most evidence of their existence has decomposed 545 00:33:13,720 --> 00:33:15,600 and disappeared long ago, 546 00:33:15,600 --> 00:33:17,720 but their stone tools remain. 547 00:33:19,720 --> 00:33:23,360 They reveal the remarkable story of early species 548 00:33:23,360 --> 00:33:25,480 of humans spreading from Africa 549 00:33:25,480 --> 00:33:27,440 throughout Northern Europe. 550 00:33:29,280 --> 00:33:33,120 To find out which type of human was living at Cerney Wick, 551 00:33:33,120 --> 00:33:35,800 I've come to a secure facility in London. 552 00:33:37,440 --> 00:33:39,840 It holds one of the largest collections 553 00:33:39,840 --> 00:33:43,960 of prehistoric artefacts in the world. 554 00:33:43,960 --> 00:33:49,560 Curator Nick Ashton is a renowned expert on these ancient tools. 555 00:33:49,560 --> 00:33:53,960 He begins by showing me simple flint tools found near Happisburgh 556 00:33:53,960 --> 00:33:56,720 on the east coast of England. 557 00:33:56,720 --> 00:34:00,000 We know that in Africa they've been making these tools for some 558 00:34:00,000 --> 00:34:01,640 two to three million years. 559 00:34:01,640 --> 00:34:04,480 But this is the earliest evidence that we have in northern Europe 560 00:34:04,480 --> 00:34:06,880 of humans reaching this far north. 561 00:34:06,880 --> 00:34:09,960 Dates to an astonishing 900,000 years ago. 562 00:34:09,960 --> 00:34:11,240 How much? 563 00:34:11,240 --> 00:34:12,800 900,000 years ago. 564 00:34:12,800 --> 00:34:15,640 Really? So it's the earliest evidence for humans 565 00:34:15,640 --> 00:34:16,920 in northern Europe. 566 00:34:18,480 --> 00:34:20,840 In 2013, 567 00:34:20,840 --> 00:34:24,120 Nick's team made a truly extraordinary discovery 568 00:34:24,120 --> 00:34:25,880 at Happisburgh. 569 00:34:25,880 --> 00:34:28,800 A storm washed away sand on a beach 570 00:34:28,800 --> 00:34:33,200 and revealed ancient footprints, set in hardened mud. 571 00:34:33,200 --> 00:34:35,360 They were the oldest human footprints 572 00:34:35,360 --> 00:34:38,360 ever documented outside of Africa 573 00:34:38,360 --> 00:34:41,840 but, within two weeks, they had vanished, 574 00:34:41,840 --> 00:34:44,400 washed away by incoming tides. 575 00:34:46,720 --> 00:34:50,160 It's thought that early humans spread out from Africa 576 00:34:50,160 --> 00:34:53,200 around two million years ago. 577 00:34:53,200 --> 00:34:54,920 A million years later, 578 00:34:54,920 --> 00:34:57,440 some of their descendants reached Britain. 579 00:34:59,040 --> 00:35:02,360 What sort of people was it who did this? 580 00:35:02,360 --> 00:35:04,840 Did they have clothes of any kind 581 00:35:04,840 --> 00:35:06,720 or were they covered in hair? 582 00:35:06,720 --> 00:35:08,640 Do we know what they look like? 583 00:35:08,640 --> 00:35:10,320 We actually know very little, 584 00:35:10,320 --> 00:35:15,160 but the species of human in Europe at that time was Homo Antecessor. 585 00:35:15,160 --> 00:35:17,240 They would have looked very similar to ourselves. 586 00:35:17,240 --> 00:35:18,880 Apart from slight different facially. 587 00:35:18,880 --> 00:35:20,840 But it's a guess whether they were hairy or not? 588 00:35:20,840 --> 00:35:24,240 It's a guess as to whether they were hairy or had extra body fat to cope 589 00:35:24,240 --> 00:35:26,800 with these cold winters. Yeah, yeah. 590 00:35:26,800 --> 00:35:31,440 By 500,000 years ago, humans in Britain were capable 591 00:35:31,440 --> 00:35:36,480 of crafting hand-axes like the one found at Cerney Wick. 592 00:35:36,480 --> 00:35:38,760 We know that they're hunting by this point, 593 00:35:38,760 --> 00:35:41,400 and they're certainly butchering a range of different deer 594 00:35:41,400 --> 00:35:43,400 and probably larger animals as well. 595 00:35:43,400 --> 00:35:45,920 And one of the important things is, if you're a hunter, 596 00:35:45,920 --> 00:35:48,800 you get to the carcass first. The hide is intact. 597 00:35:48,800 --> 00:35:50,920 It hasn't been chewed to bits by the hyenas 598 00:35:50,920 --> 00:35:53,920 or the other carnivores or the big cats. 599 00:35:53,920 --> 00:35:57,040 And that hide, you would almost certainly use 600 00:35:57,040 --> 00:35:59,040 for either clothing or shelter 601 00:35:59,040 --> 00:36:02,720 to help you cope with those cold winters. 602 00:36:05,240 --> 00:36:08,720 Humans first used fire in Africa 603 00:36:08,720 --> 00:36:11,600 and, by 400,000 years ago, 604 00:36:11,600 --> 00:36:14,600 they were using it in Northern Europe as well. 605 00:36:17,320 --> 00:36:22,240 This is burnt flint. It's a block of flint that shattered under heat. 606 00:36:22,240 --> 00:36:25,520 What we think we're dealing with is a small campfire 607 00:36:25,520 --> 00:36:27,880 which has all kinds of benefits. 608 00:36:27,880 --> 00:36:31,680 It's not just warmth, it's not just keeping away the big cats. 609 00:36:35,600 --> 00:36:38,560 It's also a hub for social life. 610 00:36:38,560 --> 00:36:41,840 It extends your daylight hours into the night. 611 00:36:44,720 --> 00:36:47,600 It means you begin to tell stories. 612 00:36:47,600 --> 00:36:50,240 It's all part of the development of language 613 00:36:50,240 --> 00:36:53,440 and those all-important social bonds that make us human. 614 00:37:01,880 --> 00:37:05,080 You paint a very, very convincing picture, actually, 615 00:37:05,080 --> 00:37:09,920 and anyone who has sat by a fire knows how hypnotic it can be. 616 00:37:09,920 --> 00:37:12,280 Yes. Just sitting there watching the flames. 617 00:37:12,280 --> 00:37:14,920 Yeah...yeah. That's a very exciting picture. 618 00:37:21,480 --> 00:37:24,960 By 250,000 years ago, 619 00:37:24,960 --> 00:37:30,600 Levallois flakes appear like the ones that Karl had showed us. 620 00:37:30,600 --> 00:37:34,080 Here we have these carefully crafted points. 621 00:37:34,080 --> 00:37:36,960 And this is a massive step forward in terms of technology. 622 00:37:40,000 --> 00:37:42,440 So where does our site fit in? 623 00:37:45,880 --> 00:37:48,840 I've brought Sally and Neville's stone tool. 624 00:37:50,960 --> 00:37:52,400 Now this, 625 00:37:52,400 --> 00:37:55,360 which I know you haven't seen before, 626 00:37:55,360 --> 00:38:00,880 was found alongside this mammoth which we have been excavating. 627 00:38:00,880 --> 00:38:05,240 What does that tell you about dating or indeed anything else? 628 00:38:05,240 --> 00:38:07,840 Well, it's undoubtedly a hand-axe 629 00:38:07,840 --> 00:38:10,720 and very typical of early Neanderthals, 630 00:38:10,720 --> 00:38:12,560 quite similar to some of these. 631 00:38:12,560 --> 00:38:13,920 I gather that the site dates 632 00:38:13,920 --> 00:38:16,360 to roughly about 200,000 years ago. 633 00:38:16,360 --> 00:38:18,720 So it would actually be contemporary 634 00:38:18,720 --> 00:38:20,800 with these Levallois points. 635 00:38:20,800 --> 00:38:22,240 But it's very different. 636 00:38:22,240 --> 00:38:25,320 Here we have a traditional hand-axe. 637 00:38:25,320 --> 00:38:27,320 So what's going on? 638 00:38:27,320 --> 00:38:30,800 One idea is that you've got different populations coming in 639 00:38:30,800 --> 00:38:34,280 from different parts of Europe with different technologies. 640 00:38:34,280 --> 00:38:36,480 Another idea might be that maybe you've got 641 00:38:36,480 --> 00:38:39,480 a residual population in Britain, in western Britain, 642 00:38:39,480 --> 00:38:41,560 who are still making hand-axes. 643 00:38:41,560 --> 00:38:43,560 We're still talking about Neanderthals? 644 00:38:43,560 --> 00:38:45,600 We're still talking about Neanderthals. 645 00:38:50,240 --> 00:38:54,840 Stone tools like these reveal in detail 646 00:38:54,840 --> 00:39:00,080 the history of the occupation of these islands by human ancestors. 647 00:39:01,360 --> 00:39:07,160 At least four different kinds of human beings occupy them. 648 00:39:07,160 --> 00:39:11,480 The stone tools and the dating of our site both suggest 649 00:39:11,480 --> 00:39:16,960 that the humans who were living there were, in fact, Neanderthals. 650 00:39:16,960 --> 00:39:18,880 To find out more about them, 651 00:39:18,880 --> 00:39:23,400 Ben is meeting anthropologist Ella Al-Shamahi. 652 00:39:23,400 --> 00:39:27,240 So our ancestors and the ancestors of Neanderthals were in Africa 653 00:39:27,240 --> 00:39:30,080 and, then, at some point, a group of them left 654 00:39:30,080 --> 00:39:32,160 and we don't know where and we don't know when. 655 00:39:32,160 --> 00:39:33,720 But they became Neanderthals. 656 00:39:33,720 --> 00:39:36,720 We have sites all the way as far as Siberia 657 00:39:36,720 --> 00:39:39,560 and then we have a whole pile of sites in Europe, 658 00:39:39,560 --> 00:39:41,880 doesn't mean that they're a European species, 659 00:39:41,880 --> 00:39:44,200 it just means that a lot of the archaeologists 660 00:39:44,200 --> 00:39:47,240 are actually in Europe and were digging in their own backyards. 661 00:39:47,240 --> 00:39:50,600 We've got this massive array, actually, of Neanderthals 662 00:39:50,600 --> 00:39:51,960 in this whole region. 663 00:39:51,960 --> 00:39:53,360 And if you look at that region, 664 00:39:53,360 --> 00:39:55,480 that's a number of different environments 665 00:39:55,480 --> 00:39:57,840 and a number of different climates, as well. 666 00:39:57,840 --> 00:39:59,880 And do we know what they looked like? 667 00:39:59,880 --> 00:40:03,080 Yeah. So Neanderthals were very similar to us, 668 00:40:03,080 --> 00:40:05,000 but there were crucial differences. 669 00:40:05,000 --> 00:40:08,080 So, for example, we know that Neanderthals, on average, were, 670 00:40:08,080 --> 00:40:09,520 well, they were shorter. 671 00:40:09,520 --> 00:40:12,320 So male Neanderthals would have come in at about five-foot four 672 00:40:12,320 --> 00:40:15,920 or five-foot five. They were also really stocky. 673 00:40:15,920 --> 00:40:18,600 So we know that our site at Cerney Wick 674 00:40:18,600 --> 00:40:20,680 is about 200,000 years old. 675 00:40:20,680 --> 00:40:23,400 How much do we know what life would have been like for those people? 676 00:40:23,400 --> 00:40:24,800 It would have been hard. 677 00:40:24,800 --> 00:40:27,000 The interesting thing is the date of that, 678 00:40:27,000 --> 00:40:30,520 because we know that, pretty soon after, you're looking at 679 00:40:30,520 --> 00:40:34,600 a massive ice age that comes in, a really, really cold spell, 680 00:40:34,600 --> 00:40:39,520 and Neanderthals pretty much disappear from the map in Britain 681 00:40:39,520 --> 00:40:42,680 for well over 100,000 years. 682 00:40:42,680 --> 00:40:44,680 So, potentially, what you're looking at there 683 00:40:44,680 --> 00:40:48,840 with your site is some of the last Neanderthals in Britain 684 00:40:48,840 --> 00:40:51,120 before that really cold phase. 685 00:40:51,120 --> 00:40:53,280 It's not going to be good for them. 686 00:40:59,640 --> 00:41:01,320 Back at the site, 687 00:41:01,320 --> 00:41:05,200 the team is finding that nearly all the tusks and bones 688 00:41:05,200 --> 00:41:08,080 are lying in a single layer of sediment, 689 00:41:08,080 --> 00:41:12,800 suggesting the mammoths all died around the same time. 690 00:41:12,800 --> 00:41:17,080 What could have killed a group of mammoths in such a short period? 691 00:41:18,640 --> 00:41:21,200 We can trace this line pretty much all the way round to 692 00:41:21,200 --> 00:41:25,960 the tusk on the far right now. So they're all... 693 00:41:25,960 --> 00:41:27,680 ..it's all formed at the same time. 694 00:41:27,680 --> 00:41:29,520 And we can't see flooding? 695 00:41:29,520 --> 00:41:32,320 I'm trying to think what is forcable enough to move a tusk. 696 00:41:32,320 --> 00:41:33,800 No. There's nothing. 697 00:41:33,800 --> 00:41:35,400 This is weird, it really is. 698 00:41:35,400 --> 00:41:38,120 There's not enough mud. There's not enough... There's no flood. 699 00:41:38,120 --> 00:41:41,720 No. They just died in this area for some reason. Yeah. 700 00:41:41,720 --> 00:41:45,440 Ben is doubtful that the mammoths got stuck in the mud. 701 00:41:45,440 --> 00:41:50,600 The mud's deep, but it's not up to a mammoth's armpits deep. 702 00:41:50,600 --> 00:41:54,440 Disease? I mean, there's nothing really in terms of modern relatives, 703 00:41:54,440 --> 00:41:57,960 the elephants, that would kill a whole group that quickly 704 00:41:57,960 --> 00:41:59,840 in one site at one time to explain this. 705 00:41:59,840 --> 00:42:01,880 And we've got adults and juveniles as well. 706 00:42:01,880 --> 00:42:04,160 So it's not the classic elephant graveyard 707 00:42:04,160 --> 00:42:06,280 all being left in one site either. 708 00:42:06,280 --> 00:42:07,840 And it leaves this idea, 709 00:42:07,840 --> 00:42:10,360 this possibility that it was people. 710 00:42:10,360 --> 00:42:11,960 So were they chasing them in? 711 00:42:11,960 --> 00:42:14,000 Were they corralling them somehow? 712 00:42:14,000 --> 00:42:16,760 Were they...? I don't know. 713 00:42:16,760 --> 00:42:18,720 But that's almost weirder 714 00:42:18,720 --> 00:42:22,560 because I can't imagine quite early Neanderthal people 715 00:42:22,560 --> 00:42:24,520 bringing down a bunch of mammoths 716 00:42:24,520 --> 00:42:29,240 cos these things were tonnes of anger and intelligence. 717 00:42:44,960 --> 00:42:48,080 Evidence suggesting that Neanderthals 718 00:42:48,080 --> 00:42:52,200 could successfully hunt mammoths is extremely rare. 719 00:42:52,200 --> 00:42:55,240 But this is the Island of Jersey 720 00:42:55,240 --> 00:42:58,720 and, here at La Cotte de St Brelade, 721 00:42:58,720 --> 00:43:00,880 piles of mammoth bones have been 722 00:43:00,880 --> 00:43:04,240 found that suggest that Neanderthals may indeed 723 00:43:04,240 --> 00:43:06,080 have been killing mammoths here. 724 00:43:07,720 --> 00:43:11,720 Archaeologist Matt Pope has been studying the site for years. 725 00:43:13,560 --> 00:43:18,040 Our first glimpse of La Cotte de St Brelade towering up above us. 726 00:43:18,040 --> 00:43:19,160 Oh, wow. 727 00:43:19,160 --> 00:43:22,960 It's like this huge cathedral fortress, isn't it? It's beautiful. 728 00:43:28,640 --> 00:43:30,200 We can see a lot of the site from here. 729 00:43:30,200 --> 00:43:31,960 The main granite structure. 730 00:43:31,960 --> 00:43:34,600 The arch that takes you through to the north ravine 731 00:43:34,600 --> 00:43:35,760 and in front of us 732 00:43:35,760 --> 00:43:38,880 the west ravine, the main open space. 733 00:43:41,320 --> 00:43:44,200 The site has been investigated since 1881. 734 00:43:45,960 --> 00:43:50,600 And, over the years, archaeologists excavated down into the ravine. 735 00:43:52,120 --> 00:43:55,160 At two levels, they discovered heaps of bones 736 00:43:55,160 --> 00:43:56,760 of butchered mammoths. 737 00:43:58,640 --> 00:44:01,320 The mystery is how these bones got there. 738 00:44:03,680 --> 00:44:05,960 An original explanation, and a very good one, 739 00:44:05,960 --> 00:44:10,200 was that the mammoth were all herded together by Neanderthal hunters 740 00:44:10,200 --> 00:44:12,920 and driven over the cliffs to their death. So you imagine... 741 00:44:12,920 --> 00:44:15,000 From right up there? Right up there. 742 00:44:15,000 --> 00:44:17,120 That's quite a thought to think of, 743 00:44:17,120 --> 00:44:18,720 a whole herd of mammoths coming 744 00:44:18,720 --> 00:44:20,440 cascading over the edge right there. 745 00:44:20,440 --> 00:44:21,800 It's a good theory 746 00:44:21,800 --> 00:44:25,240 but it's not a very good headland for actually concentrating a herd. 747 00:44:25,240 --> 00:44:28,280 There is simply no way you could funnel 748 00:44:28,280 --> 00:44:29,600 the mammoth into this ravine, 749 00:44:29,600 --> 00:44:32,400 they'd be splitting off into all different directions. 750 00:44:32,400 --> 00:44:35,440 We've been recently relooking at those bone heaps 751 00:44:35,440 --> 00:44:36,800 and looking at the evidence 752 00:44:36,800 --> 00:44:39,520 and we put forward an alternative idea. 753 00:44:39,520 --> 00:44:43,120 And that idea is that these bone heaps didn't form 754 00:44:43,120 --> 00:44:45,320 in one go, in mass kills. 755 00:44:45,320 --> 00:44:47,760 Actually, they formed over a long period of time. 756 00:44:47,760 --> 00:44:51,960 The hunting was taking place out here on the surrounding landscapes. 757 00:44:51,960 --> 00:44:54,400 They were bringing the bones back. 758 00:44:54,400 --> 00:44:58,000 And, then, over time, they put these heaps of bone together. 759 00:44:58,000 --> 00:44:59,840 And this whole area, as we look out now, 760 00:44:59,840 --> 00:45:02,000 is this beautiful coastline that stretches out to 761 00:45:02,000 --> 00:45:03,440 the Channel here. 762 00:45:03,440 --> 00:45:06,040 But this would have all been one big grassy plain. 763 00:45:06,040 --> 00:45:09,640 We've got the seabed landscape mapped. 764 00:45:09,640 --> 00:45:12,880 And that's an amazing landscape for intercepting game. 765 00:45:12,880 --> 00:45:15,200 There's little cul-de-sacs where you get dead ends 766 00:45:15,200 --> 00:45:16,680 and you could control game. 767 00:45:16,680 --> 00:45:17,840 And we know from other 768 00:45:17,840 --> 00:45:20,080 Neanderthal sites where hunting is taking place, 769 00:45:20,080 --> 00:45:23,000 they love landscapes in which they control game. 770 00:45:23,000 --> 00:45:24,120 Probably the whole 771 00:45:24,120 --> 00:45:26,520 Neanderthal community would be involved in hunting - 772 00:45:26,520 --> 00:45:30,040 corralling, controlling, moving, 773 00:45:30,040 --> 00:45:33,160 isolating particular members of a herd. 774 00:45:36,120 --> 00:45:38,680 Most archaeologists now think that 775 00:45:38,680 --> 00:45:40,760 the Neanderthals were capable 776 00:45:40,760 --> 00:45:43,560 of hunting large prey like mammoths, as they seem 777 00:45:43,560 --> 00:45:46,040 to have done in Jersey. 778 00:45:46,040 --> 00:45:48,280 But it would be much harder to trap them on 779 00:45:48,280 --> 00:45:51,160 the flat grasslands of Cerney Wick. 780 00:45:51,160 --> 00:45:55,760 Perhaps the river might have slowed the mammoths down. 781 00:45:55,760 --> 00:45:59,480 But how would the Neanderthals have killed them? 782 00:45:59,480 --> 00:46:02,000 Wooden spears may well have been used. 783 00:46:03,280 --> 00:46:05,560 Wood, of course, rots away quickly, 784 00:46:05,560 --> 00:46:10,560 so we're very unlikely to find one. But there are some. 785 00:46:13,560 --> 00:46:16,360 In 1911, in Essex, 786 00:46:16,360 --> 00:46:19,800 a wooden spear tip was found in waterlogged soil. 787 00:46:21,360 --> 00:46:23,360 And, in 1948, 788 00:46:23,360 --> 00:46:26,800 stronger evidence of spear hunting was uncovered - 789 00:46:26,800 --> 00:46:30,200 a spear was found within the fossilised ribs of 790 00:46:30,200 --> 00:46:32,000 a straight-tusked elephant. 791 00:46:33,880 --> 00:46:39,200 Then, in 1995, at a mine in Schoningen in Germany, 792 00:46:39,200 --> 00:46:44,000 ten miraculously well-preserved Neanderthal spears were found lying 793 00:46:44,000 --> 00:46:47,800 among the skeletons of around 50 horses - 794 00:46:47,800 --> 00:46:53,520 the oldest complete prehistoric hunting weapons ever found. 795 00:46:53,520 --> 00:46:55,440 Archaeologists had assumed these 796 00:46:55,440 --> 00:46:57,800 early hunters thrust their spears into 797 00:46:57,800 --> 00:47:00,240 the flanks of prey at close range. 798 00:47:01,840 --> 00:47:04,200 But is it possible that Neanderthals at 799 00:47:04,200 --> 00:47:08,560 Cerney Wick threw their spears long distances at dangerous animals, 800 00:47:08,560 --> 00:47:09,640 like mammoths? 801 00:47:11,080 --> 00:47:12,160 To find out, 802 00:47:12,160 --> 00:47:15,200 we asked a wood carver to make exact replicas of 803 00:47:15,200 --> 00:47:19,200 the Schoningen spears from spruce - the same shape, 804 00:47:19,200 --> 00:47:23,280 weight and type of wood as the ancient spears. 805 00:47:23,280 --> 00:47:25,120 Hi, guys. 806 00:47:25,120 --> 00:47:26,880 We've brought you some spears. 807 00:47:26,880 --> 00:47:28,320 Annemieke Milks is 808 00:47:28,320 --> 00:47:31,640 an investigator of Neanderthal hunting methods. 809 00:47:31,640 --> 00:47:34,040 She wants to see how well these replica 810 00:47:34,040 --> 00:47:36,240 Neanderthal spears will perform in 811 00:47:36,240 --> 00:47:39,120 the hands of Bekah Walton and Harry Hughes - 812 00:47:39,120 --> 00:47:42,040 two of Britain's leading javelin throwers. 813 00:47:42,040 --> 00:47:44,560 I'm really curious to see what 814 00:47:44,560 --> 00:47:47,360 an experienced thrower makes of how they feel. 815 00:47:47,360 --> 00:47:50,200 They are the right length compared to like a normal spear. 816 00:47:50,200 --> 00:47:53,040 Yeah, the balance is really good. They're surprisingly similar to 817 00:47:53,040 --> 00:47:54,640 a normal javelin, actually. 818 00:47:59,720 --> 00:48:02,920 Yeah, really surprised at how far they're flying! 819 00:48:02,920 --> 00:48:04,280 I won't be that far! 820 00:48:09,920 --> 00:48:11,040 Fantastic. 821 00:48:13,560 --> 00:48:15,560 The spears fly well. 822 00:48:17,160 --> 00:48:20,680 So Annemieke now wants to test if they can be used 823 00:48:20,680 --> 00:48:23,920 with real accuracy, to hit a target. 824 00:48:23,920 --> 00:48:25,000 We want to know - 825 00:48:25,000 --> 00:48:28,640 can you two kill that mammoth silhouette for us, please? 826 00:48:28,640 --> 00:48:31,000 Shall we give it a go? Let's go. 827 00:48:34,280 --> 00:48:36,160 Oh! HE LAUGHS 828 00:48:36,160 --> 00:48:37,200 First time. 829 00:48:40,680 --> 00:48:43,520 These spears are flying true. 830 00:48:43,520 --> 00:48:45,440 They're hitting it every single time. 831 00:48:45,440 --> 00:48:46,520 On a mammoth, 832 00:48:46,520 --> 00:48:48,480 that target zone would be much larger. 833 00:49:06,360 --> 00:49:09,120 Up until fairly recently, 834 00:49:09,120 --> 00:49:12,640 most people were arguing that Neanderthals were only capable 835 00:49:12,640 --> 00:49:15,480 of hunting at immediate distances. 836 00:49:15,480 --> 00:49:20,720 And this shows that their technology was capable of distance hunting. 837 00:49:29,520 --> 00:49:30,440 Oh! HE LAUGHS 838 00:49:30,440 --> 00:49:31,560 Brilliant. 839 00:49:33,840 --> 00:49:36,200 OK, big question of the day. 840 00:49:36,200 --> 00:49:38,200 At our site, is there any chance that our 841 00:49:38,200 --> 00:49:40,680 Neanderthals could have been hunting mammoths, do you think? 842 00:49:40,680 --> 00:49:42,320 Given the fact that we have 843 00:49:42,320 --> 00:49:43,840 a whole load of evidence that 844 00:49:43,840 --> 00:49:46,520 the spears are functional weapons, 845 00:49:46,520 --> 00:49:49,840 both as thrusting weapons and as throwing weapons, 846 00:49:49,840 --> 00:49:53,480 and that we see this evidence of exploitation 847 00:49:53,480 --> 00:49:55,720 of mammoth, I think it's very much in 848 00:49:55,720 --> 00:49:57,760 the realm of possibility that 849 00:49:57,760 --> 00:49:59,120 mammoths were being hunted by 850 00:49:59,120 --> 00:50:01,040 Neanderthals with spears like these. 851 00:50:17,000 --> 00:50:20,400 So Neanderthals could possibly have hunted mammoths at 852 00:50:20,400 --> 00:50:23,760 Cerney Wick over 200,000 years ago. 853 00:50:28,000 --> 00:50:30,360 But, in the millennia that followed, 854 00:50:30,360 --> 00:50:34,320 both the Neanderthals and the steppe mammoths disappeared. 855 00:50:37,080 --> 00:50:41,400 Neanderthals resettled in Britain around 60,000 years ago. 856 00:50:41,400 --> 00:50:43,040 But our own species, 857 00:50:43,040 --> 00:50:46,280 Homo sapiens, arrives soon after that. 858 00:50:46,280 --> 00:50:47,400 And evidence of 859 00:50:47,400 --> 00:50:51,200 the presence of Neanderthals vanishes. 860 00:50:51,200 --> 00:50:54,280 It might be that we out-competed them, 861 00:50:54,280 --> 00:50:57,880 right, we were just better at using the landscape 862 00:50:57,880 --> 00:50:59,320 and resources. 863 00:50:59,320 --> 00:51:02,960 One of the things that we know is that they lived in small, 864 00:51:02,960 --> 00:51:04,360 isolated populations. 865 00:51:04,360 --> 00:51:07,800 That is not going to do your gene pool any good at all. 866 00:51:07,800 --> 00:51:09,640 There's even an argument that they're still 867 00:51:09,640 --> 00:51:10,800 with us today. 868 00:51:10,800 --> 00:51:14,680 Me and you will have about 2% Neanderthal DNA in us. 869 00:51:14,680 --> 00:51:17,800 And that's because our ancestors, multiple times, 870 00:51:17,800 --> 00:51:20,440 it seems, interbred with Neanderthals. 871 00:51:20,440 --> 00:51:23,880 So, actually, the end of the story isn't completely tragic 872 00:51:23,880 --> 00:51:26,040 because it turns out there's a little bit of them... 873 00:51:26,040 --> 00:51:27,240 Still here. In us, yeah. 874 00:51:31,200 --> 00:51:33,200 Back at the site at Cerney Wick, 875 00:51:33,200 --> 00:51:37,880 there's excitement as they assess their haul of flint tools. 876 00:51:37,880 --> 00:51:40,160 SHE LAUGHS Are you OK? Breathe. 877 00:51:40,160 --> 00:51:41,800 Wow. I think you forgot to breathe. 878 00:51:41,800 --> 00:51:43,080 This lovely little flake. 879 00:51:43,080 --> 00:51:46,240 So you can see it's got a little point where they hit it 880 00:51:46,240 --> 00:51:48,600 with a stone hammer to remove it. 881 00:51:48,600 --> 00:51:49,840 It's perfect. 882 00:51:49,840 --> 00:51:52,400 And that was the first hint that you found? That's the first one. 883 00:51:52,400 --> 00:51:54,640 Yeah. So there was a party straight after that? 884 00:51:54,640 --> 00:51:56,920 And then the next one we found... Oh, my goodness. 885 00:51:56,920 --> 00:52:01,120 ..is this beautiful scraper edge. Typically, we think, you know, 886 00:52:01,120 --> 00:52:03,760 you would have held it like this, they would have pulled 887 00:52:03,760 --> 00:52:08,000 the fat off of the hide. It's really quite impressive. 888 00:52:08,000 --> 00:52:11,200 We've got these five flint tools all from the same area, 889 00:52:11,200 --> 00:52:13,760 all finely worked, all really, really clear. 890 00:52:13,760 --> 00:52:15,880 And that's quite exciting and quite rare. 891 00:52:15,880 --> 00:52:18,400 I mean, it's really easy to say, "Oh, five things. 892 00:52:18,400 --> 00:52:19,920 "That's not many." But, actually, 893 00:52:19,920 --> 00:52:22,720 when we're talking about 200,000 years ago, 894 00:52:22,720 --> 00:52:24,600 we might only be finding one or two things in 895 00:52:24,600 --> 00:52:28,520 a site which has been excavated for decades. 896 00:52:28,520 --> 00:52:31,520 On the mammoth leg bone they found next to the flints, 897 00:52:31,520 --> 00:52:36,600 they've seen scratch marks that could provide evidence of butchery. 898 00:52:36,600 --> 00:52:40,200 We see little marks and nicks in the top. 899 00:52:40,200 --> 00:52:43,120 Two lovely parallel lines. There's one slightly longer. 900 00:52:43,120 --> 00:52:45,640 There's another one, just a short one, just in beside it. 901 00:52:45,640 --> 00:52:48,520 And it's really tempting to call them cut marks, 902 00:52:48,520 --> 00:52:51,840 but we'll have to get it back into the lab to actually determine. 903 00:52:51,840 --> 00:52:53,840 It's like a really big whodunnit, isn't it? 904 00:52:53,840 --> 00:52:55,880 So did they all die of a disease? 905 00:52:55,880 --> 00:52:59,760 Was there a massive flood that came in, or were we hunting them? 906 00:52:59,760 --> 00:53:01,360 Having worked with elephants in the wild, 907 00:53:01,360 --> 00:53:03,760 I think possibly a juvenile, very, 908 00:53:03,760 --> 00:53:05,880 very young one might have just got stuck in the mud. 909 00:53:05,880 --> 00:53:09,280 It panicked the group. Things went really badly, 910 00:53:09,280 --> 00:53:11,160 really quickly. And we came along as scavengers 911 00:53:11,160 --> 00:53:13,880 and possibly found the world's biggest buffet lying there for us. 912 00:53:13,880 --> 00:53:16,840 We were just opportunists. I think we were opportunists. 913 00:53:16,840 --> 00:53:19,480 Well, I just love the idea that the, you know, 914 00:53:19,480 --> 00:53:23,960 Neanderthals are sitting on the ridge over the far end, 915 00:53:23,960 --> 00:53:26,120 hiding amongst the tall grass. 916 00:53:26,120 --> 00:53:28,640 And then mammoths are coming down to the water 917 00:53:28,640 --> 00:53:30,240 and they're panicking them. 918 00:53:30,240 --> 00:53:31,480 The Neanderthals come in 919 00:53:31,480 --> 00:53:34,040 and they take advantage of the mammoths, 920 00:53:34,040 --> 00:53:36,080 they sort of start butchering them 921 00:53:36,080 --> 00:53:38,960 and taking away their nice meat for meals. 922 00:53:40,760 --> 00:53:42,160 Isn't it wonderful to think that 923 00:53:42,160 --> 00:53:45,560 the last time someone sat exactly on this spot in 924 00:53:45,560 --> 00:53:46,680 a little group 925 00:53:46,680 --> 00:53:50,120 with that stone tool in their hands was 200,000 years ago 926 00:53:50,120 --> 00:53:52,440 as a mammoth's lying just over there? Wow. 927 00:53:52,440 --> 00:53:55,360 And here we are talking about it... They were about to have their lunch. 928 00:53:55,360 --> 00:53:57,040 ..hundreds of thousands of years later. 929 00:53:57,040 --> 00:53:59,880 It's quite poignant, isn't it? Absolutely. It really is. 930 00:54:04,680 --> 00:54:07,120 As the excavation comes to an end... 931 00:54:08,400 --> 00:54:09,560 ..Ben and I survey 932 00:54:09,560 --> 00:54:12,520 the whole collection of flint tools. 933 00:54:14,840 --> 00:54:15,920 Some of these, 934 00:54:15,920 --> 00:54:19,640 the one you've got in the far corner there, are scrapers. 935 00:54:19,640 --> 00:54:22,400 Well, hang on, let me have a look at that. 936 00:54:22,400 --> 00:54:25,400 That someone's very delicately taken the edge off. 937 00:54:25,400 --> 00:54:26,680 Yes. You can see? 938 00:54:26,680 --> 00:54:28,320 Yes, yes, you can. 939 00:54:28,320 --> 00:54:30,760 Now, these would have been used for cleaning skins, 940 00:54:30,760 --> 00:54:33,040 taking fat off skin in order to preserve the skin, 941 00:54:33,040 --> 00:54:36,360 but also taking little bits of meat from the bone as well. 942 00:54:36,360 --> 00:54:38,200 Yeah. 943 00:54:38,200 --> 00:54:40,560 So what we have as well, if you've got your hand lens. 944 00:54:40,560 --> 00:54:42,560 Yeah. There are tiny, well, 945 00:54:42,560 --> 00:54:46,880 quite indistinct little marks along this bone here, 946 00:54:46,880 --> 00:54:48,200 if you can see just there. 947 00:54:50,800 --> 00:54:53,080 Oh, there, yes, absolutely. 948 00:54:53,080 --> 00:54:55,320 There's definite, well, 949 00:54:55,320 --> 00:54:56,960 there's strong evidence that there is 950 00:54:56,960 --> 00:55:00,120 a cut-mark series along here. This is, we think, 951 00:55:00,120 --> 00:55:03,720 evidence of people accessing the animals in this area 952 00:55:03,720 --> 00:55:07,880 and using them for their own food, for fuel, for warmth. 953 00:55:07,880 --> 00:55:11,880 Does that make you think that this site was a camp? 954 00:55:11,880 --> 00:55:13,800 I would find it very, very difficult 955 00:55:13,800 --> 00:55:16,440 to believe that these animals that weighed tonnes and tonnes 956 00:55:16,440 --> 00:55:19,720 and tonnes wouldn't have offered this wonderful opportunity to camp 957 00:55:19,720 --> 00:55:22,000 there for at least weeks or months. 958 00:55:22,000 --> 00:55:24,000 It's really bringing this site to life. 959 00:55:24,000 --> 00:55:26,000 This isn't a table of bones. 960 00:55:26,000 --> 00:55:29,400 This is a point in history where something happened. 961 00:55:33,120 --> 00:55:36,400 Peering back 200,000 years, it's hard 962 00:55:36,400 --> 00:55:39,680 to know exactly what happened at our site. 963 00:55:39,680 --> 00:55:43,040 But the evidence that has now been uncovered paints 964 00:55:43,040 --> 00:55:45,840 a tantalising picture of Ice Age Britain. 965 00:55:47,480 --> 00:55:51,880 An ancient River Thames flowing through grassland. 966 00:55:51,880 --> 00:55:55,960 A group of some of the last steppe mammoths in Britain. 967 00:55:55,960 --> 00:56:01,360 And Neanderthals using flint tools to butcher mammoth meat. 968 00:56:02,880 --> 00:56:04,560 Whether or not they hunted 969 00:56:04,560 --> 00:56:06,840 the mammoths requires more evidence, 970 00:56:06,840 --> 00:56:08,680 but, at this site, it certainly looks 971 00:56:08,680 --> 00:56:12,320 as if something extraordinary happened - 972 00:56:12,320 --> 00:56:17,440 Neanderthals feasting on mammoth on the banks of the River Thames. 973 00:56:19,240 --> 00:56:20,640 At the end of the dig 974 00:56:20,640 --> 00:56:23,200 and before the area is flooded again, 975 00:56:23,200 --> 00:56:26,360 we invite Sally and Neville to return to the site 976 00:56:26,360 --> 00:56:27,960 so that we can show them what 977 00:56:27,960 --> 00:56:30,600 the scene might once have looked like. 978 00:56:30,600 --> 00:56:34,920 We've prepared something where you don't have 979 00:56:34,920 --> 00:56:38,200 to use your imagination to visualise this area. 980 00:56:38,200 --> 00:56:41,160 If I give these to you. Thank you! Put them on. 981 00:56:41,160 --> 00:56:44,240 Make sure they're comfy. And enjoy. 982 00:56:44,240 --> 00:56:45,320 Righty-ho. 983 00:56:52,560 --> 00:56:53,880 Ee! Mammoth! 984 00:56:53,880 --> 00:56:55,440 THEY LAUGH 985 00:56:58,920 --> 00:57:00,680 Oh, that is just incredible! 986 00:57:04,160 --> 00:57:06,360 Oh, my God, that's amazing! 987 00:57:09,200 --> 00:57:13,320 The finds at this remarkable site have given us 988 00:57:13,320 --> 00:57:16,080 a rare glimpse of early Britain... 989 00:57:18,760 --> 00:57:22,680 ..a time when humans were fully immersed in the wild, 990 00:57:22,680 --> 00:57:24,840 living as part of nature. 991 00:57:28,240 --> 00:57:30,120 It's thought that Neanderthals may 992 00:57:30,120 --> 00:57:33,600 have been around for some 400,000 years. 993 00:57:35,600 --> 00:57:38,520 Their survival relied on their understanding of 994 00:57:38,520 --> 00:57:39,840 the natural world. 995 00:57:42,960 --> 00:57:47,800 Whether our own species can thrive for quite as long 996 00:57:47,800 --> 00:57:49,600 remains to be seen.