Hadrian’s Wall: The Mysterious 38th Parallel for Roman Legionaries and British Barbarians

this video is brought to you by surf shark safety and security online are critically important and you can protect yourself online with surfshark get 83 off and three months for free through the link in the description [Music] below [Music] while the title of great wall quite rightly belongs to the 21 196 kilometers worth of stone strung across china it is rather modern compared to what we're talking about today while the earliest sections of the great wall date from the 7th century a.d much of the most recognizable parts were built from the 14th century onwards but in this video we're diving all the way back to a wall that was started in 122 a.d at the very limits of the mighty roman empire hadrian's wall runs for 117.5 kilometers that's 73 miles from the river tine on the east coast of england to the solway firth on the irish sea today it is little more than a small wall often no more than waist height but in its day it must have been a forbidding sight for the wild tribes to the north that the romans had attempted to effectively shut out this was by no means the first major wall of the ancient world the walls of jericho predate hadrian's wall by over 8 000 years while the theopetra cave wall in thirsally in greece dates from an astonishing 23 000 years ago but when hadrian's war was constructed it was entirely unique in that it didn't defend a single city as many roman walls did at the time but rather acted as a lengthy border wall the romans never built anything else quite like it with one possible exception you see hadrian's wall was not the only wall that the romans built across britain there was another smaller a little known wall and i'll tell you all about it a little later in this video but let's get into it [Music] the romans arrived in britain in 43 a.d we certainly know they didn't come for the weather or the food but rather for good old-fashioned roman conquest by that time the roman empire had enveloped almost all of modern western europe the fearsome germanic tribes had managed to hold off the roman legions with much of present-day germany still outside of the empire france or gaul as it called itself back then had been overrun and now the legendary roman army stood on the coast of france eying i'll just assume it was a clear day and you could see england from france for poetic value their next target britannia but this was not the first time that the romans had sailed across the english channel and it would not be the first time that the roman legions had locked horns with the britons julius caesar had invaded britannia in both 55 and 54 bc and installed his own king a man by the name of man de brasius along with a series of client kingdoms which were tribes that were aligned with rome but the romans themselves withdrew back across the channel and into mainland europe things then remained relatively calm until 43 a.d when roman emperor claudius instructed his legionaries to cross the channel this time for good the main forces that had been assembled to defend britain were soon routed by the well-trained roman army who soon turned their attention to what is modern-day wales things were not as straightforward here and the welsh put up a fearsome resistance but eventually it too was pacified but not for long with her fiery red hair billowing behind her as she rode her chariot defiantly at the roman lines queen boudicca is a name that has gone down in history as a true british folk hero the wife of a recently deceased celtic king buddha was cheated out of her late husband's will as the romans forcibly removed her and her children from the land after flogging the queen and having her daughters raped her response well that was to lead a thunderous revolt against the romans perhaps caught off guard the romans were overwhelmed at what has come to be known as the massacre of the knights legion it's thought that as many as 80 percent of roman foot soldiers died in the battle after which bodica's army swarmed across londinium now london verulamium saint albans and camulodonum colchester killing 70 to 80 000 people in the process it was unbridled savagery but it has done little to dampen boudicca's heroic image buddhicure and her army were eventually defeated with the queen taking her own life either through poison or her own weapon we're not sure the rebellion was ruthlessly crushed but the romans had been given a painful lesson of just how problematic the british tribes could be it would however be a group further north that would cause the biggest problem of all anybody's ever seen braveheart will know that the scots are a formidable foe when crossed combine that with the beautiful yet incredibly harsh landscape of the highlands and you begin to understand the difficulties of completely conquering an area like this one by the end of the first century a.d the romans had pushed up into modern day scotland with a series of defensive positions now occupying the scottish lowlands a series of military engagements which unfortunately we don't know much about occurred in 105 a.d as the local tribe known as the picts fought back ferociously against roman rule it appears that the romans made a tactical withdrawal at this point by moving further south and establishing a new frontier at staingate an important roman road that ran across the country roughly at the point of the modern border between england and scotland in 120 a.d hadrian the new roman emperor set out to tour his great dominion and upon arrival in northern britannia he ordered a great wall be constructed at the point of the stengate road now you can't build a massive roman wall around your computer but that doesn't mean you can't protect yourself online and that's where today's sponsor surfshark comes in do you use the internet well of course you do do you have personal information that you'd rather remain personal well who doesn't the internet is all kinds of weird there are people out there who want to ruin your 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time for the empire with rebellions in egypt judea libya and mauritania were all a world away from the windswept north of britain but no doubt the romans were fearful of mass uprisings another theory is that it was built to control migration more than anything but again that's a lot of work and a lot of stone for a glorified border it was also very different to other areas around the empire where fixed boundaries were rare or perhaps it was to do with taxation a way of charging people to cross back and forth which certainly did happen in other parts of the empire the truth is that we just aren't exactly sure why the romans decided to build their only major large-scale wall project which didn't protect a particular city in the north of england we believe that construction started on hadrian's wall in 122 a.d and was completed at a fairly brisk pace in just six years the wall was built from east to west with all of the roman legions in the country taking part slightly to the south was the staingate road which had been constructed 30 years prior and almost certainly played a key role in the logistical support for the whole project along the road lay several forts which would have protected those constructing the wall it seems that initially the idea was to have 80 small gated mile castle fortlets every roman mile that's 1.5 kilometers or about 0.9 miles today this would be interspersed with pairs of evenly spaced intermediate turrets used for observation if we want to be pedantic the portlets which would have likely housed a few dozen soldiers in each were often over or under the designated distance apart most likely down to landscape features or where signaling would have been obscured the majority of these mar castles were built from wood and earth though the turrets were made of stone these turrets lay roughly 493 metres apart and had an internal area of 14 square meters slightly smaller than your average parking space there's also an interesting quirk and that they weren't all uniformly the same three different roman legions took part in the construction the second augusta the sixth vickstrix and the 20th valeria legions and we believe that this resulted in slightly different designs and inscriptions these were not enormous differences and much of them centered on the orientation of the doors but also the thickness of the walls the north-facing wall was always the thickest but archaeologists have found two separate measurements for the width of the remaining walls either 0.76 meters or 1.1 meters why was this well we have absolutely no idea much of hadrian's wool was built using local limestone except for the stretch west of the river earthing where turf was originally used before being replaced by sandstone at a later date this was most likely down to a lack of materials which does sound a little strange considering the power of the roman empire but this theory is supported by the fact that the wall narrowed considerably after the north tyne river from 3 meters to 2.5 metres with certain parts as narrow as 1.8 meters this has led historians to refer to the two sections as the broad wall and the narrow wall the foundations had however been constructed to the broad wall specifications so the wall must have had a slightly wonky look to it the main wall itself was around 4.6 meters high and was initially constructed with a clay bonded rubble core and mortared dressed rubble-facing stones which is a technique still used today to give the impression of an old worn stone wall but it seems that this technique made it vulnerable to collapse and it was frequently repaired with a mortared core another interesting aspect from the area comes not from something that was constructed but rather excavated standing to the south of where the wall ran it's impossible to miss the extensive ditch that follows the wall line in both directions known as the van this earth rampart stretches practically from coast to coast hugging hadrian's wall all the way though exact distances vary from directly next to it to as much as 700 meters away the purpose was almost certainly an extra line of defense though intriguingly it again remained completely unique throughout the roman empire and along its borders the ditch is roughly six meters wide and three meters deep with a flat bottom on either side are two mounds about six meters wide and two meters high around nine meters from the ditch itself it's generally accepted that there would have been certain crossing points probably close to forts where bridges would have been placed across the balum [Music] it seems the romans were not against the odd change of plan along the way not long after construction had ended around 128 a.d it was decided that 14 large-scale forts would be added along the wall each of which would house between 500 and a thousand auxiliary troops however it seems that a number of them were built directly over some of the mile castles or turrets whether this was down to a misjudgment in the defensive needs or simply a reorganization again we just don't know very little remains of these sports today with a few exceptions one built around 124 a.d lies close to present-day barden mill in northumberland and has been associated with a variety of names over the years it was also close to a small civil settlement where the ruins are still visible today including the so-called murder house where two skeletons were discovered beneath the floor laid well after the construction of the building another of the better preserved forts is salernum located within the ground of the 18th century country house chesters this was a particularly important fort as it housed one of the roman cavalry units as well as guarding a bridge across the north tyne river today you can still walk through what was once the baths the barracks the officers quarters as well as the outposts a church nearby includes four columns that look remarkably roman-like and sadly this is often what became of hadrian's wall and its forts much of the stonework from the wall itself was used for roads during the 18th century and the salernum was even purposefully covered up during the same period for landscaping and design purposes before a descendant reversed the decisions and the fort was revealed once more lastly is the fort at vindellander again near present-day bardum mill which remains in not only remarkably good condition but was also the site of one of the most exciting discoveries in roman britain roughly around the size of a postcard the vinderlander tablets are a set of wooden leaf tablets discovered in 1973 on the grounds of the vindalanda ford at the time they represented the oldest surviving handwritten documents in britain and covered a huge variety of topics from the construction of new forts to an invitation to a birthday party held in 100 a.d emperor hadrian died in 123 a.d and was replaced by antonius pires who apparently wasn't satisfied with the current wall arrangement he ordered that a second wall be constructed 160 kilometers to the north which became the ant-nine wall the 63-kilometer wall ran from old kilpatrick in west dunbartonshire on the firth of clyde to carriden near bonas on the first or fourth this was a turf wall built upon stone foundations that roughly measured three metres high and five meters wide it came with sixteen forts built along it as well as the curious arthur's own believed to be a roman temple in the shape of a beehive which is sadly no longer standing the reasons behind the antonine wall are a little mysterious we can presume that it was constructed to help placate the tribes further north but it's clear that it provided far less protection than the much better built hadrian's wall to the south the antenna wall took 12 years to construct and was abandoned just eight years after its completion this will garners far less attention than hadrian's wool probably for the simple fact that there's not much of it left but it was still quite an achievement [Music] if emperor antonius had planned on pacifying the northern tribes he failed the next emperor marcus arulus abandons the antonine wall and spent considerable time strengthening hadrian's wall instead over the next few centuries there was little change no doubt on several occasions roman legions marched north to flax their marshals but it seems that this line more or less remained the extremity of the roman empire for around 400 years that is until 410 a.d when the romans departed britain the causes of this were wide ranging from barbarian invasions to military coups as well as a general economic downturn the empire was in complete disarray and rome itself was sacked in 410 a.d over the next century it would split in two and by the end of the fifth century the mighty roman empire was but a shadow of its former dominant self as i said at the start of this video hadrian's wall struggles to match the great wall of china we don't see the hugely impressive towers or the huge almost intact walls that wind through the hilly landscape padrian's wall requires much more of an imagination some of it still remains but you need to stretch your mind to see it in its full glory this wasn't the first ancient wall to be constructed but it was the first of its kind to run for such a length the fact that nearly 2 000 years later you can still walk beside it from coast to coast is a testament to the extraordinary building work done by the romans standing beside it on a windswept chilly day you can imagine the roman legionnaires who did exactly the same thing nearly 2 000 years before staring north into the great unknown and wondering if the fearsome picts naked and with blue paint covering their bodies would appear so i really hope you found that video interesting if you did please do hit that thumbs up button below don't forget to subscribe this video brought to you of course by our friends at surfsharkvpn there is a link below with a special deal and thank you for watching [Music] you

Channel: Megaprojects

Views: 482,796

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Id: 5xgkjoHRgEc

Length: 17min 38sec (1058 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 01 2021