- The DNA analysis said that this is a female head, not a male. - [Narrator] It's a shocking revelation. Genuine ceremonial shrunken
heads are always male because the Shuar shrank
heads to stop the soul of a slain warrior from taking revenge, and in Shuar society
women were never warriors. At 1:00 PM on August 24th, 79 AD, after centuries of inactivity, Mount Vesuvius erupts. (eruption rumbling) Volcanologist Dougal Jerram believes the residents
of Pompeii had no idea of the potential danger they were in. - Prior to this volcano
actually coming to life again, many of the people on the
ground might not have known exactly what the mountain was. It started at one o'clock in the afternoon with this big plinian cloud
rising high in the sky. - [Narrator] As hot ash
rained down on Pompeii, the city fell into total chaos. In the Pompeii suburb of Oplontis a wealthy family took refuge
in a basement storeroom. Knowing thieves were everywhere, they took all their
movable wealth with them but were killed by the eruption. Experts now suspect shortly
after the first group died a second group found their
bodies in the basement and took their valuables because Pompeii wasn't destroyed
in the blink of an eye. - For me, the real key to understanding this cataclysmic eruption is that it didn't take
place in an instant. We can go and look at the
layers that formed the deposit from that eruption episode. - [Narrator] By examining
the sediment layers in the ash deposits, Dougal can read the different
stages of the eruption. - People think that the whole eruption happened almost instantaneously, but actually this white pumice built up to about this
point over seven hours. - [Narrator] Then, at 8:00 in the evening, the volcano entered its
second stage of eruption. - A different type of magma started coming out of the volcano, so the volcano was plumbing
the depths of its roots at this stage, but it's
still this very light pumice just falling out of the sky. - [Narrator] At seven
o'clock the next morning, the volcano entered its
final devastating phase. - As we move up, you can see that there's
a sharp transition. You go from this gravelly
layered gray pumice horizon, about 10 hours maybe or so
of deposit within there, and then it becomes a sharp change. The size of the particles
is much more varied. There's a lot of small particles in there. And you can actually see layers within it that show me as a volcanologist that there was current, there was turbulent currents
depositing this material. - [Narrator] This distinct
layer of solidified ash is evidence of a high speed current of heated gas and volcanic debris. Known as a pyroclastic flow, it devastated everything in its path. The history and fate of Neapolis has intrigued archeologists
for hundreds of years, because ancient documents
reveal next to nothing on how this once thriving Roman
city gained its importance. For the past 15 years,
archeologist Dr. Mounir Fantar has attempted to solve this mystery. (Dr. Fantar speaking foreign language) The few records of Neapolis that do exist mention the city had a commercial port, but Fantar had failed to
find any evidence of it in the site's archeology (Dr. Fantar speaking foreign language) It took a massive storm to
finally give Fantar his answer. (lightning cracks) In 2013, heavy winds hit
the Southern Mediterranean, ravaging the seabed off
the coast of Nabeul. Days later, strange stone
shapes began to emerge from the sea floor, shapes that appeared unnaturally straight. Further investigations
revealed something startling. They were the remains
of a Roman settlement, stone blocks, columns, and foundations. Could these remains be the missing harbor front of Neapolis
Fantar had been searching for? To find out he and his team took their investigation to the sky. Using drone imagery, they
built up a full view from above of the ruins on land and underwater. And it revealed something astounding. The remains in the sea lined
up with those on the shore. For Fantar, this could
only mean one thing. They must have belonged to
the same Roman settlement. It was a discovery that
stunned archeologists. Now, after years of
underwater investigation, Fantar's team has mapped
out a complex of buildings, streets, and a large industrial site. The remains of Neapolis have
grown from a suburban community to a vast urban layout, and these newly discovered submerged ruins could finally unlock the
mystery of Neapolis's importance because they seem to include what Fantar had spent years searching for: ruins of a harbor, just as the historical records suggested, large enough to make it a major
hub for international trade. (Dr. Fantar speaking foreign language) On land and underwater, the ruins of Neapolis now bear all the hallmarks of a major Roman port. But what was the secret
of the city's success? And what ultimately destroyed it? The remains of Pompeii
don't just capture scenes of everyday Roman life 2,000 years ago, they preserve evidence
of a city living in fear. And with no police force to
keep the population safe, it would fall to the citizens to dish out their own form of justice. Evidence from the remains
of the legendary city suggest that in the years
leading up to the volcano crime in Pompeii was rife. - So, theft is a problem
because goods are portable. It's easy to walk off with them. And especially if you think about the fact that there are no banks and there'd be no way to get it back. - If you think that you want
to live in the Roman period, I don't think you'd want to be a slave. I don't think you'd want to be a freedman. I don't think you'd want
to be a poor person. Ordinary people had a difficult life, had a short life, lived
a much more violent life. - [Narrator] Historical records tell us that for the poor in Roman society breaking the law was often
their only chance of survival, but it was a risk worth taking because for a sophisticated civilization the Roman empire was surprisingly lawless. In the commercial heart of Pompeii there are still the faint
traces of how everyday Romans took the law into their own hands. Rebecca Benefiel is an expert
in decipher ancient messages written on countless walls
across the Roman world. On the side of a former tavern, Rebecca has spotted faint
outline of an ancient message. Having meticulously mapped
out the inscription, it reveals thieves once
roamed these streets. - The inscription was right here next to the entrance to the tavern. It said, "A bronze vessel has
gone missing from this shop." And then it said, "If
someone will bring it back," and then in much larger letters it said, "they will be given a
reward of 65 sesterce." 65 sesterces was a lot of money. - [Narrator] It offers a bonus reward in exchange for the thief. In a country with no police
force and little state justice residents were dishing
out their own punishment. If apprehended, the thief
who stole the bronze vessel could have faced untold suffering, because for many Roman citizens justice came in the form
of vigilante punishment. (whip cracks)
(man screams) And evidence from the layout of a middle-class home
in Pompeii provides clues as to who residents would rely on to meet out their rough justice. - This room would be occupied
by one of the trusted slaves, and what he would do is
control access into the house. And we can think of some slaves as very frightening characters. Think of the gladiators, for example, doing the master's bidding. And they could be prone to violence. - [Narrator] Just like
the mafioso families that were to come, in Pompeii gangs of citizens
could be called upon to dish out the punishment. In a wealthy suburb of Pompeii, experts are trying to solve a
2,000 year old murder mystery. They're investigating if a
group of super rich citizens were targeted by thieves
as Mount Vesuvius erupted, burying everyone under volcanic ash. Because there is evidence
throughout Pompeii that the population were
doing all they could to protect their valuables from robbers. - It really is interesting
that we have so much evidence that people were very
concerned about the safety, the welfare of their houses. - [Narrator] The most
impressive example of this fear of violent theft was
found at the warehouse where the two groups of
bodies were discovered. - At Oplontis archeologists
found a very large, strong box that they think belonged to the owner of this large commercial area. And it's possible that that person was found in room 10 as
one of the skeletons. - [Narrator] This ornate
strong box was the Roman answer to a state-of-the-art
home security system. It's a clear indication
of the lengths to which the wealthy would go to
protect their valuables. Following a painstaking restoration, the exquisite detailing
of the ancient safe can at last be revealed. The highly prized item featured a four stage locking mechanism to protect any riches inside. The strong box was so well-made it took a full scale natural disaster to breach its defenses. And evidence from elsewhere in Pompeii suggests in the lead up to
the devastating eruption crime was rampant across the city. Roman historian Kevin Dicus
is examining a tragic remnant of one of Pompeii's most
popular security measures: a guard dog that died
protecting its master's home. - Most of the people that
come here look at this and they see their family pet. We see something different here. He's contorted, he's on his back, and the story is he was
chained to his post. (eruption rumbling) - [Narrator] When Vesuvius
erupted, this guard dog, like hundreds of Pompeii's residents, was encased in layers of pumice and ash. The void left when the body decayed allowed experts to create a perfect plaster cast of the animal. - So it's entirely possible
that the dog was left behind specifically to guard the
house as the owners fled to protect the home from looters. - [Narrator] Swedish
archeologists are trying to solve a 1,500 year old murder mystery. At the ancient ringfort of Sandby borg dozens of pre-Viking
warriors were brutally killed and left to rot where they fell. The death toll is shocking. But what could have
provoked the perpetrators to wipe out so many people? One theory is this was not a
military attack, but a robbery. But the team suspects a different story, because it wasn't just the victims' bodies that were left behind, but exquisite hordes of
gold and fine jewelry. Dr. Helena Victor has been studying the Norse valuables found at the site, the most precious of which
are gilded silver brooches with intricate mythical designs. - All of the brooches are unique and some of them include parts of what we think are old
Norse sagas or mythology. - [Narrator] The late fifth
century style of these brooches has led experts to date the
massacre to around 480 AD. Each one of these prized pieces would have been the sacred
keepsake of the ruling family of a local tribe, passed on
from generation to generation. - These brooches were worn by high born, petty queen possibly, and
they were made to be seen. It's like a crown. Everyone knew your status
when you were wearing this. - [Narrator] This makes the
number of brooches found particularly astonishing. In total, the team has uncovered seven. - We have never found
this many in one place. Usually find one. It was mind-boggling. - [Narrator] But what could explain so many brooches in one place? For Dr. Helena Victor, it suggests the highest ranking members
of a number of tribes may have come together at Sandby borg for what would be a fateful gathering. - Maybe they were meeting
to form an alliance or negotiate for peace. Maybe they were there to
celebrate their wedding. We don't really know, but we do know that they
probably never left. - [Narrator] For the archeologists, the presence of so many
riches at the murder scene suggests the violent attack at Sandby borg can't have been motivated
by the lure of treasure. Even the ringfort itself
would have been invaluable to anyone seizing it. Sat on the very edge of the Baltic Sea, it could have controlled
valuable trade routes for hundreds of miles,
but there is no evidence that anyone ever lived
here after the massacre. But if the motive behind the
mass murder at Sandy borg wasn't military or a robbery, what was it? It's unlike any post-mortem
ritual they've ever seen in Norse tradition. The wealth of King Solomon is legendary, and now archeologists may
have discovered a source for Solomon's celebrated fortune: a network of mines in
Timnath, Southern Israel. Erez Ben-Yosef has
determined that production on this vast site was booming at the time of Solomon's
reign 3,000 years ago. But these aren't gold or silver mines. The clue is in the
telltale streaks of green still visible in the rocks. These mines were once full of copper. And further proof is
scattered all over the site in the residue from copper production. - All of this black material is slag. It's the waste from the furnaces. And this is a very important evidence for the ancient copper
production in Timnath. - [Narrator] Today, copper
is a common commodity, but in ancient times
it was one of the most sought after metals on earth. - Popular in this
particular time in history. It was the most important
economic resource. This was the most lucrative industry. - Copper was very precious. Comparing with our days, you can compare copper ores to crude oil, 'cause you cannot do without oil, and at that time you
couldn't do without copper. - [Narrator] Copper was at the heart of a radical turning
point in human history. For the first time ever, people were extracting metals from rock and turning them into tools and weapons. - Humans made the quantum leap and they started to produce
their own materials, to add to nature. - [Narrator] Dr. Mohammad
Najjar has been studying ancient copper production techniques. It was a laborious process. Once mined, the metal was separated from its natural ore in the rock in a process called smelting. - For copper smelting we need the fire, of course a bowl, made of clay. We need to put some charcoals inside, and then we need some crushed copper ore. - [Narrator] The ore had to be heated to an incredible 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. To achieve such scorching heat, the smelter had to blow
continuously on the flames, adding oxygen to the fire
so it would burn hotter. - This is the most primitive technology. Usually it takes many, many hours. - [Narrator] The end result
was copper in its pure form. - It's metal revolution, and this is how humans were acting almost like gods, if you want. - [Narrator] In
Fregerslev, central Denmark archeologists have opened
a fascinating gateway into the late Viking age and the life of an elite warrior. But one shock discovery
then stop the in its tracks. They could find no evidence
of a body in his grave. - We were, of course,
hoping there would be some remnant, parts of
the body in some way that could prove to us
that this man was here. - [Narrator] The team suspected
that some of the bones may have dissolved in the acidic soil, but they had expected to
find at least some evidence of the most durable
part of the human body. - I did hope for teeth, of course, because there's more calcium
in teeth, but no, no teeth. - [Narrator] All they eventually found was one tiny artifact: a brooch, discovered where
the body should have lain. - This is the small brooch that was placed on what we suppose is
the deceased's chest. It's actually silver. - [Narrator] There was a chance that after 1,000 years in the ground the Viking's corpse had
completely decomposed, but there was also another
alternative explanation. - One of the possibilities is certainly that the man himself was
taken from the grave. - [Narrator] But why would his body have been taken from his grave? There may be a clue from another
high-profile Viking tomb. Because experts had already discovered another elite Viking grave
that had its body removed, and that grave belonged to the illustrious King Gorm the Old. The discovery was made when
19th century archeologists set out to exhume the king
from his lavish royal burial, but came back empty handed. - When, in 1861, they
failed to find a burial, they had a problem, because where was then King Gorm? In 1941, a new attempt was
made to uncover a burial and it failed yet again. - [Narrator] The riddle
of the missing royal body endured for decades until
a major find in 1978 turned the story of King
Gorm's fate on its head. Archeologists investigating the origins of a church next to the mound discovered the wooden foundations of a much earlier structure
from the mid 10th century and the grave of a man aged around 50. - There's no doubt that
we have two graves, one beneath the church and
the other in the mound. - [Narrator] But what really
struck the archeologists were the similarities between the two. - The two graves are from
roughly the same time. Both burials contain items of high quality in the jelling style closely linked, so we must say that the
two burials were made by the same family. - [Narrator] But were they
made for the same man? - The bones beneath the
church were disarticulated, indicating that perhaps it had been moved from a burial somewhere else. So, suddenly we have an
interpretation that says that the deceased in the mound
is brought into the church. - [Narrator] Could this
have also been the fate of the missing Fregerslev Viking? The world's oldest
monumental stone structure. The ornately carved complex of enclosures at Gobekli Tepe seems
to have been the focus for huge congregations of stone
age hunter-gatherer tribes assembling for ritual purposes. It may represent the first step towards an organized religion, shattering the theory
that religious behavior came out of later settled societies. For those who believe the
teachings of the Old Testament retell a version of human history, the discoveries that go Gobekli Tepe are an exciting development. For Adam and Eve, the next step
was expulsion from paradise to a life in the fields. Now, researchers believe
the ritual celebrated by the people of Gobekli Tepe
may have been the trigger for a revolution in their way of living. Dr. Reinder Neef is a
specialist in ancient plants. His analysis of the remains
preserved at Gobekli Tepe suggests it was the perfect cradle for a seismic shift in human history: the transition to crop farming. Some of the most common plants
extracted from the samples were the grass species, or cereals. - We have some wild cereals, like wild einkorn and wild barley. And the interesting thing, of course, is that they belong to the first cereals cultivated ever by a human being. - [Narrator] Cultivation simply means seeds are collected and planted. It's a key step towards farming. But einkorn is known to be one of the first species
ever domesticated, cultivated often enough to become totally dependent on people. Plant geneticists have matched the domesticated einkorn
grown by modern farmers to wild species growing just
20 miles from Gobekli Tepe. It means scientists can be confident the original domestication of einkorn happened somewhere nearby. Compared with modern samples
under the microscope, ancient einkorn from Gobekli Tepe still shows the shape of wild varieties, but Dr. Neef believes the
process of domestication had already begun. - They were probably experimenting with cultivation of cereals, and that is something which you can expect from people who are building
such incredible monuments. They were experimenting, and not only with stone, but also with plant material. - [Narrator] Scientists think Gobekli Tepe was blessed with the perfect
grassland environment to begin humanity's experiment
with plant cultivation Southeast Turkey, 1994. A local farmer's plow had
uncovered a set of carved rocks protruding from the ground on the crest of a mound
called Gobekli Tepe near today's war torn border with Syria. But the most breathtaking discovery was not the size of the complex, it was its age. It was once thought Britain was home to the world's oldest stone circles, but Gobekli Tepe blows
Stonehenge out of the water. The most ancient organic material found in the fabric of the stonework was radiocarbon dated to before 9,000 BC, more than 11,000 years ago, 6,000 years before construction
at Stonehenge even began. - We today actually are closer to the builders of Stonehenge than the people building
Stonehenge were to Gobekli Tepe. - [Narrator] Gobekli Tepe represents the oldest monumental
structure ever built. Carved, moved, and erected without anything more sophisticated than manpower and stone tools. - We're talking about a period here which has not seen metal tools and even the wheel was not invented yet, so these monuments were
put together by hand. - [Narrator] The art and
architecture at Gobekli Tepe is rewriting prehistoric archeology. But it was the identity of the architects that would cause the greatest shock. Archeologists found the
clues not in the stonework, but in the trash. Joris Peters has spent
more than two decades examining 11,000 year old animal remains from the landscape around Gobekli Tepe, but it's the animal bones
discovered within the enclosures which were the most revealing. Most had been shattered, a clear sign they'd been
butchered to extract bone marrow. But the key clue was in the
type of bones discovered: only the richest cuts. - Normally, when you have domestic animals living in a place, when you slaughtered them you will find all the
elements of the body. The head, the spine, the
lower legs, it's all there. But for Gobekli Tepe the
picture is totally different. Most of the bones we found are the ones that carry a lot of meat. - [Narrator] The animals
hadn't been butchered on site. They'd been carved up
wherever they'd been killed, and the meatiest joints
brought up the hill. For archeologists, it was evidence that these animals were wild. And for the builders of
Gobekli Tepe, they were prey. - The focus on meat bearing parts points to hunter-gatherers. - [Narrator] It goes against everything archeologists thought they knew about the lives of stone age hunters. Ancient hunter-gatherers
lived off the land, roaming across vast distances, following prey and
collecting edible plants. The idea that they might've
stayed in one place long enough to build giant
monuments in stone defied belief. The discovery of Gobekli Tepe threw anthropologists' theories about life in the stone age into chaos, and rumor quickly spread
of a monument to nature in an ancient land of plenty. Could Gobekli Tepe hold
the secret to the location of the Bible's garden of Eden? A family of farmers are digging
for peat in a remote bog. - One of the diggers hit something hard and was a bit annoyed about it, but his wife said, "No, no, no. "Take care. "It might be something interesting." - Hey, stop, stop, stop. - [Narrator] The object they
strike is a human corpse. It appears to be male, and apart from a cap and
leather belt he is stark naked. Shockingly, he also has
a noose around his neck. - The body was well preserved, made to believe that this
was a reasonably dead person, and so they called the police. The police came, and they
looked at him and said, "Well, this may be a murder
case, but it's a very cold one, "so you need an archeologist,
not the police." - [Narrator] The dead man is shipped to the capital, Copenhagen. Investigators at the
National Museum of Denmark confirm he was indeed murdered, but there's no chance
of catching the killers. This crime took place
more than 2,400 years ago, because this is a bog
body, a natural mummy preserved by the peat
bogs of Northern Europe. - A bog body is a human
corpse of some sort that was submerged within the
bog or a wetland environment and has become preserved within the environmental context
that's found there. - [Narrator] The cold
acidic conditions of the bog have effectively frozen
this man's body in time, but incredibly, he's not unique. Dozens of similar corpses have been found, offering an exceptional
glimpse into the past. - I think bog bodies are fascinating because you get up really
close and personal to somebody who's 2,000 years old. Normally we're dealing with
burials that have skeletons, and these are the only bodies in Europe where you've got the entire body. You've got the innards,
you've got the brain, but most important for me is you've got their facial expressions and they've got real identities. - [Narrator] Bog bodies have been emerging across a swathe of Northern
Europe for centuries, and investigations have revealed almost all were killed violently. Now, forensic techniques borrowed straight from police crime labs have brought archeologists
a giant step closer to cracking these ancient cold cases. On a mission to reveal the
secrets of shrunken heads, anthropologist Dr. Tobias Houlton has come to Cuenca, Ecuador. He's investigating the
science behind head shrinking. Shuar tribal elder Nawak Ensakaya Pedro is one of the few people alive today who know how to make a ceremonial tsantsa. For Houlton, this meeting
is a unique opportunity to discover the secrets of
the tsantsa at firsthand. Houlton's trip to Ecuador has given him step by step instructions
on how to shrink a head. Now, he must put this newfound
knowledge into practice. His goal: to create a shrunken head. With smooth, relatively hairless skin a pig's head provides the
closest analogy to a human head. - So, I'm just taking
dimensions across the face, and this will acts the means of comparison following head shrinking to get a general idea of
how much the head's reduced. - [Narrator] Using the
techniques learned in Ecuador, Houlton begins the gruesome process. First, he removes the one
thing that won't shrink: the skull. - What most people don't realize is that the Shuar had to remove the skull in order to make shrinkage possible. So, that's the reason for
removing the skin from the head. This is pretty much what
the Shuar would have done when shrinking a head. - [Narrator] Next, three wooden
pins seal the mouth shut. - Amongst the Shuar it was essential that the mouth was well
and truly fastened, because that was believed
to be the central orifice that the enemy spirit would escape from. - [Narrator] He uses thick
twine to sew the eyes shut. - So, the significance of
stitching the eyelids shut was that it was a means of trapping the enemy spirit within the head. - [Narrator] With the
mouth and eyes sealed, Houlton places the head into boiling water and leaves it for an hour. Like human skin, the pig skin
is made up of collagen fibers, and when these fibers are
exposed to temperatures above 145 degrees they contract, causing the skin to shrink. To dry the skin and shrink
the head even further, Houlton fills it with
hot pebbles and sand. This absorbs any remaining moisture. Finally, he irons the skin. - This is essentially the final touches of the head shrinking process. What I'm doing is taking a hot flat pebble and ironing the outer face with it. And what this is doing is
helping me mold the skin and and dry it out
entirely from the outside. - [Narrator] By the end of the process, the pig's head is significantly smaller. Now he's seen firsthand
how the shrinking process changes a head, Houlton can embark on the final part of his quest. - The next stage is to
take all the information that I've got so far and
actually go through the process of reconstructing the
face of a shrunken head to revive the warrior that once existed. - [Narrator] Using cutting
computer modeling technology, Houlton will attempt something that's never been done before: to reverse the head shrinking process and discover the man
behind the shrunken head. In the mid 19th century,
the Amazon's rubber trees and mineral riches
brought traders, miners, and missionaries to the region. Settlements sprung up in
or near Shuar territory. The fake head suggests some
of these colonial settlers wanted a piece of the lucrative
trade in shrunken heads, making a fast buck selling fake heads to eager traders and explorers. - A lot of collectors were being duped and paying a lot of money for essentially what was a fake shrunken
head at this time. And they were being sold, you know, incredible stories that were
attached to these objects to go along with them. - [Narrator] Another hand
in the museum's collection came with exactly this kind of tall tale. Could this be another fake head? The head was acquired
by the museum in 1915. The information that they gave us was that it was a male shaman who was trying to cure a
child of one of his tribesmen, but since he couldn't do it the father of the child killed
the shaman and took his head. That's what we thought
during a very long time. - [Narrator] In 2016, the
museum analyzed the head's DNA. The analysis revealed this
is not made of animal skin. It's a real human head,
but something was wrong. - The DNA analysis said that this is a female head, not a male. - [Narrator] It's a shocking revelation. Genuine ceremonials shrunken
heads are always male because the Shuar shrank
heads to stop the soul of a slain warrior from taking revenge, and in Shuar society
women were never warriors. So, the only reason to
shrink a woman's head would be to satisfy the Victorian
demand for morbid curios. She wasn't a victim of tribal conflict, but of cold blooded murder. - The killing started to increase in order to supply for the demand. So, it was most probably
an innocent female. - [Narrator] This woman's death had nothing to do with ceremony and everything to do with money. This is a commercial shrunken head. The grim discovery of a mass
grave in Northern Britain containing dozens of
young males skeletons. The remains suggest the men
were all of fighting age, but they're not soldiers. Many of them are decapitated, their skulls buried alongside them. The archeologists are
now beginning to form a new, groundbreaking theory. This could be a cemetery of
battle hardened gladiators. If they're correct, it will rewrite the history
of the Romans in Britain. With the bodies exhumed from their graves, the team begins to investigate the remains for evidence that may support that theory. The skeletons revealed that
these were, without doubt, men who experienced hard
and ferocious combat. The cleanly sliced bones provide evidence that these men were decapitated with heavy blows from sharp
weapons, a sword or an ax. There is one final
overwhelming piece of evidence. The burial ground may be unlike any other Roman cemetery in Britain, but it is almost identical to one 2,000 miles away in Turkey. This is Ephesus. Once a regional capital of ancient Rome, its centerpiece was a theater that could accommodate 25,000 people. In 1993, just yards from the arena, archeologists discovered a cemetery. Just like York, the bodies were
violent men of fighting age, and they too had been savagely executed, but in Ephesus there is no
doubt about who these men were. Ancient tombstones reveal
that they were gladiators. The similarity between the two cemeteries is too great to be a coincidence. - What we're looking at is a population that could be compared with the Ephesus. I favor the gladiatorial explanation because that fits in with the population and the lifestyle that we're dealing with. We've got something that
would really only apply to a particular group of
people who fought in the arena. (men grunting) - [Narrator] The gladiatorial games. - The gladiators
extraordinary human beings. Going into an arena, facing death, performing for the benefit
of the general public, these guys were like living legends. - [Narrator] It's estimated
that over 700,000 gladiators were killed fighting in the Colosseum. - You were going in there as a spectator and expecting to see blood spilled. Somebody disemboweled, somebody's getting an arm chopped off, somebody's head swiped off. I mean really, really, really sick stuff. - [Narrator] Today, gladiators
may have the reputation as being the superstars, the
elite of the Roman empire, but further analysis of the
teeth of the York skeletons reveals astonishing new insights into the harsh lives they lived. - There's a lot of teeth
that have got enamel defects, basically horizontal
lines across the teeth. And you can see it, a good
example on this canine tooth. Horizontal lines indicating that this person was stressed
when they were growing up, when their teeth were developing. Not the most ideal
situation for that person when they were a child, something going on in their
lives that led to those defects. - [Narrator] These lines
were found on the teeth of many of the men. It's a sign of infant malnourishment. But while these individuals
may have starved as children, their teeth show that as adults this group ate unusually well. The evidence of the teeth suggests poor men were selected from
across the Roman empire and then beefed up to make
them literally fighting fit. - These were the lowest of the low, but something was seen in them and they were purchased
by a manager, the lanista, who then trained them, and
fed them, and housed them, hoping to recoup their investment. - [Narrator] It's at gladiator school that these men were fed a
high protein athlete's diet, purposefully bulking them up for combat before taking center stage in the arena. - These men would have had massive bodies. These rippling muscular bodies absolutely stood out in society. - [Narrator] The four and a
half thousand year history of Stonehenge is being reshaped after the discovery of
a vast stone age village just two miles away. Archeologists have found this
settlement hosted the builders of the great monument at Stonehenge, a group of people who
came from all over Britain to erect the stones and celebrate the winter
solstice with epic feasts. - Stonehenge wasn't
simply a local monument for local people. This was something that involved people from miles and miles away. - [Narrator] Now,
scientists may hold the key to the mystery of why a
remote part of Britain was chosen for such a massive project, thanks to the exhumation
of half a million fragments of ancient human bone just
yards from the stones. - I think most people don't even realize that Stonehenge was a place
where people were buried. What we've discovered is it's actually the biggest cemetery that
we have anywhere in Britain throughout the whole of
the third millennium BC. - [Narrator] The earliest bones
were buried around 3,000 BC. That's 500 years before Stonehenge as we know it today was even erected. - These results, not only did they rewrite what we knew about Stonehenge, but they rewrote what we
knew about neolithic Britain. - [Narrator] Could these burials be the very reason Stonehenge exists? Was this vast cemetery the motivation for the construction of the monument? To find out, archeologists
need to understand the nature of the burial ground. Who was buried here and why? Neolithic burials often show the scars of stone age existence, a life spent under the constant threat of violence and disease. - Given this many cremated remains, I would have expected to see
at least one form of evidence that there was some kind
of a violent conflict, evidence of arrowheads and of spears having passed through the
body, hitting the bones, deflecting off the bones. There is just no evidence of any kind of violence on these bones. Looking at the examples
of bones we have here, the majority of bones
are actually quite big, but we also have incredibly small bones. Even the most minute bone
was picked up for burial, so this tells us something about how they honored their dead. - [Narrator] Each burnt fragment of bone buried at Stonehenge had
been meticulously collected and treated with the greatest care. It suggested what linked
the burials was the status and respect these people
commanded in life. (pensive music)
