NARRATOR: 5,000 years ago,
before the Egyptians built the pyramids, a
mysterious people created some of the greatest
monuments of the ancient world. They were the pagan
tribes of ancient Britain. And across 30 centuries,
until the coming of the Roman legions, they built
villages of sea stone like Skara Brae, massive
tombs like Maeshowe, mountains of chalk
and earth, including the mysterious Silbury
Hill, and the most famous ancient monument in
Europe, Stonehenge. They found ingenious ways to
transport huge stone blocks hundreds of miles. They devised
specialized techniques to mark the passing
of the seasons with astonishing accuracy. The pagan tribes lived in
a world without writing, so few clues remain
as to how they built such extraordinary structures. Yet 50 centuries on,
evidence of their achievement is still written on the land. Now, a team of
experts will attempt to decode the riddle of
these ancient monuments, and see them as they looked
when they were built, thousands of years ago. Getting into this
tomb is difficult, dirty, uncomfortable. You have to crawl, you have
to bow your heads in humility, and enter a different world. NARRATOR: Using state of the
art animation and the latest research, the lost
world of pagan Britain will be brought back to life. [theme music] Off the far northern
tip of Scotland, where the Atlantic Ocean
and the North Sea meet, lie the Orkney Islands,
as inhospitable as they are remote. Yet despite this, people
have lived on these islands since the dawn of time. And they left behind some of
the best examples of Stone Age construction found
anywhere in the world. Wandering hunter-gatherers
settled here 6,000 years ago. They cultivated the
land and became farmers. We know little of
their day-to-day lives, but clues to their world can
be found in ruins that still remain today. There are stone circles that
measure the changing cycles of the solar year,
tombs designed to bring the living
into direct contact with the world of the dead. The people who built these
structures we now call pagans. What they called themselves,
we may never know. All that we do know for sure
is that their beliefs drove the pagans of Orkney
to extraordinary feats of construction, long before
the great buildings of Greece and Rome were erected. What these ancient
pagan monuments looked like in their heyday
has long been a riddle. For centuries, all
trace of these people was lost or hidden. Then, in the winter
of 1850, a freak storm hit the Orkney coastline. In a place called Skara
Brae, the wind and high seas stripped the grass from
a mound by the seashore. And when the storm had
passed, the local people found ruins emerging
from the sand. They were the remains of a
Neolithic or Stone Age pagan village. For Erika Guttmann,
an archaeologist, Skara Brae is more than a ruin. It's a gateway to a lost world. It's absolutely astounding,
because archaeologists are used to dealing with
really ephemeral remains from the past. So we're scrabbling around
after a very faint traces of archeology. And here we've got
this whole village. Not just the individual
standing structures, but a whole Neolithic village. NARRATOR: Tests have
dated this settlement as being around 5,000 years
old, making it hundreds of years older than the
Egyptian pyramids. Most Neolithic homes
were made of wood, and have long since rotted away. But the Orkney Islands are
almost entirely treeless. Out of necessity, these
houses were built from stone. What I'm standing on
is the Orkney flagstones. And this is a sedimentary
rock, so it means it was all laid down in thin layers. This was all created underwater. And what that means
is that it cracks into these nice little
building blocks. So all around them, they have
this natural building material. And it makes sense that
they would have used this, rather than use up
their precious firewood. NARRATOR: The village is made
up of 10 circular houses. The walls are built of natural
beach stones, held together without mortar. ERIKA GUTTMANN: The dry
stone walling technique is really effective, and you
can see that it's quite solid, because the building's still
here after 5,000 years. And you can't say that
about most of the buildings that we're putting up today. NARRATOR: All the
homes of Skara Brae are built to the
same basic design. The focal point of this house
was the hearth, or fire. Built into the far wall is
what archaeologists assume was storage space,
while on each side wall are structures believed
to have once housed beds. Archaeologists don't know for
certain how many people lived in this house at any one time,
but believe that it was home to a large, extended family,
living in close, rather cramped conditions by modern standards. This was clearly a
close-knit community, and the buildings bound
the people together. The houses were actually linked
by low, narrow passageways covered with stone. It was possible to move from one
to another without ever setting foot outside. Historian Ronald Hutton stoops
low to enter the village, and discover why its
inhabitants built this way. RONALD HUTTON: There are two
really good reasons for having long, narrow, low passages
like this approaching Neolithic houses. One is that if you're a,
guest it impresses on you you're approaching somebody
else's personal space. Alternatively, if
you're an attacker, it's pretty forbidding to
have to crawl down here with your head
stuck out, knowing there are people
waiting to behead you or club you at the other end. NARRATOR: The most extraordinary
thing about these buildings is their location. On first inspection,
they appear to have been dug into the ground. But this isn't the case. In fact, the entire village was
made by burrowing into what's called a midden heap,
a mound of garbage left by previous settlers. Midden is basically
prehistoric garbage, and that includes all the
waste from the hearth, the ash and charcoal, and all
the kitchen waste. And what's important to
remember is that they divided up the garbage. So all the muckier stuff
is out on the edge of town. That's where they've got the
animal dung, and human poo, and everything. And then here in the
middle of the town, they've got the cleaner
sorts of material. NARRATOR: This extreme
form of recycling had huge practical benefits. ERIKA GUTTMANN: The reason
they used midden material to build their structures is it
has good insulation properties. And it also, they
mix it with clay so it helps the
structural integrity, it helps hold the
building together. NARRATOR: These buildings are so
well-preserved that they offer clues to how the
pagans of Orkney originally put them together. But we can see that the wall
is coming in like this, they're building it up more
and more narrowly. So it might have come to a
sort of dome shape on top. But we think it's more likely
that there were timber roof struts, perhaps, or
maybe whale bone. And then they would've
had a turf roof perhaps. NARRATOR: We can now
reveal what the houses of these mysterious pagans
looked like when they were built 5,000 years ago. Each follows the
same basic design-- one room of around
400 square feet. That's around half the size
of an average, modern New York apartment. A stone dresser lies
opposite the doorway, with a bed either side,
and a large fireplace at the center of the room. The walls rise inwards to
meet roofing joists covered with turf. Built into a midden
heap, and connected by covered passageways
from the outside, the village would have appeared
as a low mound, broken only by the turf covered
roofs of the houses. The pagans who lived
in these houses almost certainly helped build
one of the greatest and most baffling prehistoric monuments
of Orkney, the Ring of Brodgar. An enormous stone circle seven
miles south of Skara Brae, Brodgar belongs to a special
class of stone circles known as henges-- a ring of stones enclosed
within a ditch and earth bank. This is one of the largest
henges in the world. To me, the obvious use of
a great open space like this is you can put lots
of people in it, and they can see
what's going on. So almost certainly
it was a center where lots and lots
of people met up at certain times the year,
the great seasonal festivals, in order to exchange ideas,
celebrate religious rituals, trade things, have dating
services with each other, so they could find marry
partners and mates, and generally get
together to do all the things that large
numbers of people need to do. NARRATOR: But how
these ancient people managed to build something as
large as the Ring of Brodgar without modern tools or lifting
equipment is astounding. Just to dig the ditch
surrounding it meant excavating 11,000 tons of rock-- enough to fill two
Olympic-sized swimming pools. Such a construction
project must have involved every
able-bodied islander over a long period of time. But even more perplexing
is why they built it, and what this
circle represented. RONALD HUTTON: The fact that
this is a circle of stones is incredibly significant. Because around about
5,000 years ago, the people of the British
Isles became fascinated by round shapes. Possibly simply that by then
they could see the horizon. Because the horizon is a natural
circle, if you look around. And these monuments could
be matching the horizon, mirroring the land around. NARRATOR: The Ring of Brodgar
may have been built as a model of the Orkney landscape. The stones were brought from
sites all over the island, and it's possible that each
small community erected their own stone to
represent their village. Today, only 27 remain. But experts believe it
once looked like this-- 60 large standing stones were
surrounded by a deep ditch. Beyond the ditch rose a
10 foot high earthen bank that enclosed the whole site. The Ring of Brodgar would have
sent a powerful message down through the generations, that
this land belonged forever to the builders and
their descendants. And evidence suggests
the pagans of Orkney had a very close
connection to their dead. The tombs they built
were entranceways to a forgotten underworld. [music playing] [clicking] 50 years ago, a farmer on
Scotland's Orkney Island of South Ronaldsay was digging
in a mound close to cliff tops when he uncovered an entrance
into a dark, subterranean chamber. What he found staring back
at him was 30 human skulls. When the tomb was excavated,
the remains of a staggering 342 people were found. But not one of them was a
single, complete skeleton. Someone or some thing
had scattered the remains around the tomb. Trying to figure out
what, Ronald Hutton enters the burial chamber. Getting into this tomb
is difficult, dirty, and uncomfortable, and that's
the way it was designed. You have to crawl, you have
to bow your head in humility, and enter a different world. NARRATOR: Once inside, the tomb
opens out into a narrow room, with a large chamber at each
end, and smaller side chambers down at floor level. Piles of assorted bones and
rows of skulls were found here. Ronald believes it's evidence
that the pagans often returned to handle the
bones of their ancestors. RONALD HUTTON: Probably people
would have brought a light, but it seems that they might not
have done, that have collided with the dead in the dark. And at best, they'd have had
this eerie glow revealing one skull, one long
bone after another. And you're making contact
with the dead very intimately, very physically. Like, almost literally your
nose is being rubbed in death. NARRATOR: But why
would the local people feel such a compelling need
to be close to their dead? The answer appears to lie
in the young age at which so many died. Studies of the bones have
revealed that very few of the dead were over 25. RONALD HUTTON: Most of the
people in this population would be children
and adolescents. They'd be desperately reliant
upon oral tradition, whispers, tales of what had
happened before, to have any sense of continuity. Because actual
experience, lived history for the people in this tomb
is very, very short, indeed. Which means the power of
the dead is all the greater. NARRATOR: The lack
of complete bodies means that the skeletons
may have been broken apart and stripped of their
flesh before being brought into the tomb. Clues to how this
might have been done lie among the human remains-- sea eagle skulls, and talons. It seems likely that eagles
were an integral part of the pagan death rituals
that took place here. RONALD HUTTON: Now this could be
that when the bodies were laid out after death, they
were picked clean by these huge birds. Certainly the bones
were clean when they were brought into the tomb. And this is so that the
bones can be handled, can be used in
ceremonies, in rituals. Or it could even be
the eagle is the symbol of the entire community. Down here on this island, they
are the people of the eagle. NARRATOR: Today,
this burial place is known as the
Tomb of the Eagles. But when it was
built, it was probably as much a temple as a grave. RONALD HUTTON: One
of our problems is studying the Neolithic is
what we call these places. We call them tombs. But in the modern sense, that
has to be wrong, because they are the temples of the time. They are the holy places. And it could be that the dead
themselves were transmitters. So you use their bones
rather like mobile phones to contact the
goddesses and the gods. And only through
the dead can you gain access to the other world. NARRATOR: We can now rebuild
the Tomb of the Eagles as it was when pagan
tribesmen came here to commune with their dead. Divided into three sections
by upright flagstones built into the walls, at
either end of the tomb were compartments, one of
which was full of human bones. The chambers in the
Western end of the tomb held dozens of skulls, and
still more lined the walls beside piles of bones. And placed among
the human remains were the bones and
skulls of sea eagles. The only way in
or out of the tomb was through the long,
narrow entranceway. Back to the world of the
living, and it's so bright. NARRATOR: But the
Tomb of the Eagles is not the only example of a
pagan burial site in the Orkney islands. 20 miles north is a place
which holds yet more secrets about the death rites
and religion of the pagan islanders. The magnificent sandstone
tomb of Maeshowe. Archaeologist Erika
Guttmann investigates. ERIKA GUTTMANN: This
place is amazing. And one of the things that
really strikes me to begin with is just how fine the masonry is. Remember at Skara Brae,
it was quite coarse. It was just little slabs of
stone straight off the beach. You know, some of them were
even rounded beach pebbles. But here, here it's all carved. You can see the masonry marks,
where they're actually carving this into a nice, neat block. NARRATOR: Maeshowe is how is
the largest tomb on Orkney. Built some 5,000 years ago, it's
made of huge Orkney flagstones, some weighing an
incredible 30 tons. Approximately 15 feet square,
with smaller side chambers in the middle of the walls
to the left, right, and rear of the tomb, its floor
plan mirrors the houses of Skara Brae. This is about a similar
sort of size and shape to the houses at Skara Brae. And not only that, but when
you walk into the tomb here, there is a focal
point here, right where the dresser would
have been in the house. Also, you've got these
chambers to either side in the same place as the
bed has been in the house at Skara Brae. Of course, the one thing that's
missing is the fireplace. NARRATOR: The similarities
between the tomb of Maeshowe and the houses of Skara
Brae are further evidence that the pagans of Orkney
believed in a special closeness between the world of the dead
and the world of the living. Another central aspect
of pagan religion was the cycle of the seasons. Pagan means "country
dweller," and their dependence on the land meant that pagans
were very aware of their place in the natural world. They attributed special
significance to turning points in the seasons. They attached great importance
to the summer and winter solstices, when the longest
and shortest days of the year occur, as well as to the
spring and fall equinoxes-- the two days of the year
when day and night are of equal length. Evidence of this can be seen
in the tomb at Maeshowe. It is deliberately
designed to mark one of these key seasonal events. ERIKA GUTTMANN: On midwinter
day, which is the winter solstice, the sunlight comes
straight down this passageway, and it shines on the
back of the tomb. The Neolithic engineers
designed this on purpose, in order to capture the
moment of the winter solstice. And that's because
in pagan thinking, the solstices are
very important. NARRATOR: For the
pagans, midwinter was the time of the dead, the
season when fields were barren, and no crops grew. The winter solstice
marks the end of winter. By bringing its
light into the tomb, the pagans were seeking
the help of the ancestors, hoping to ensure the
return of spring. But to capture the light
of the midwinter sun, the builders of Maeshowe needed
to perfectly align the entrance tunnel of the tomb. The four large pillars at
the corners of the chamber hold a clue. The pillars are an enigma. They offer no structural
support to the tomb, suggesting their purpose may
lie in their close resemblance to standing stones. Local archaeologist
Martin Carruthers believes that the
four stones could be part of a ring
of standing stones that once stood
outside the tomb. It may well be that
there's a series, or have been a series of stones
here, present as a circle, prior to the
construction of the tomb. And it may even be that
those pillar stones you saw inside the chamber
originated out here in a stone circle, and were
then incorporated into the later tomb. NARRATOR: Around the
outside of Maeshowe, archaeologists have discovered
holes that probably once housed standing stones. It seems likely that the four
stones now inside the tomb were once at the center of
a circle of standing stones, and lined up the ring
with the winter solstice. The tomb was then built around
the four stones, the entrance tunnel perfectly aligned with
the last rays of the setting sun. Over time, the ring
of stones disappeared, and all that remained
was the tomb itself. It's clear that
communing with the dead was an essential
part of pagan life. And their death rituals are the
basis for a striking new theory about the lost world of the
most mystifying of all pagan monuments, Stonehenge. Stonehenge, in southern England. One of the most famous pagan
monuments in the world. But what it was
actually used for has perplexed generations of
researchers and sightseers. Now, a team of experts will
reveal what Stonehenge looked like at its height, and
investigate a new theory of why it was built. They
want to find out if Stonehenge was
part of a much larger, now-forgotten ceremonial
complex that formed a gateway to the land of the dead. Archaeologist Erika Guttmann
has uncovered a first clue, evidence that death rituals
were being performed on the site of Stonehenge
5,000 years ago, long before the stones arrived. ERIKA GUTTMANN: When you
first come to Stonehenge, the first thing
you see, obviously, are this magnificent
set of stones. But in fact, the
earliest feature here, the very first
thing to be built was this little
low bank and ditch. And it seems to have a
ritual sort of usage. And we know this because
in the ends of the ditches, we find important little caches
of things like whole cattle skulls, or whole
pots and things. NARRATOR: Many archaeologists
believe that the pagans associated cattle skulls-- like those found in the ditch-- with death. And excavations at Stonehenge
have showed that the site was being used for
cremation ceremonies before the stones were raised. The first stones to arrive
were the blue stones, brought from the Preseli Hills
in Wales, more than 200 miles away-- a place which archaeologist
Mike Pitts believes held special significance
for the pagans. This is really one
of the great wonders of the ancient world. I mean, they don't
look very big, but there is nowhere,
anywhere in the world, where people with this level of
technology, and this long ago, have gone so far to bring
rocks to a ritual site. We have to imagine that there
was something about the place these stones came
from that gave them a magic power, a significance at
this ritual religious location. Now, one of the things that
obviously comes to mind is if we look that direction,
which is where they came from, which is where Wales
is, we're also looking towards the setting sun. So it may be that there's
a symbolism involved with the dead ancestors, and
we're looking in the direction of where the ancestors lived,
where the sun goes at night. NARRATOR: Bringing the
blue stones from Wales provided Stonehenge
with a symbolic link to the world of the dead. And then, 200 years
after they arrived, something
extraordinary happened. Stonehenge went through a
vast rebuilding program. The blue stones were
rearranged, and surrounded by a protective circle of
massive stones called sarsens. Meanwhile, just a few miles
away, a near-identical henge was being built to the
same plan, out of timber. There were now two henges-- one of stone, the other of wood. The original Woodhenge has
long since rotted away. But the precise location
of its 168 timber posts is now marked by stout
pillars of concrete. MIKE PITTS: You've got well
over 100 posts, great, tall oak stumps. It would almost feel like
an artificial forest. The posts themselves
are important. So maybe some of them had
bark on, maybe some of them were carved, some of them
were painted, decorated. They might have had
things hanging from them. NARRATOR: Using data
archaeologists have gathered from the site, it is now
possible to recreate Woodhenge as it would have looked to
the pagans who worshipped here over 4,000 years ago. The pattern of posts and the
size of the circle at Woodhenge bears close resemblance
to Stonehenge, and the site is also surrounded
by a ditch and a bank. But a major clue to
Woodhenge's significance is that the entrance way is
aligned with the midsummer sunrise. It's essential, I think,
to imagine that there's some symbolic meaning in that. And we have the cattle
skull, death associated with the megaliths. And so perhaps the wooden
posts are more to do with life. And wood is living,
and stone is dead. NARRATOR: For the
pagans, wood was living and warm, like
the flesh-covered body. Stone was cold and hard,
like the cold, hard bones of the long dead. It seems likely that Woodhenge
stood for life, Stonehenge for death. A ceremonial way links
Woodhenge to Stonehenge, and historian Ronald
Hutton believes it may once have been used for
elaborate funeral processions. The pagans would have set off
from Woodhenge in the direction of the rising sun, and then
traveled along the nearby River Avon en route to Stonehenge. Water, like the
River Avon here, was really important
to Neolithic monuments. It's found around
so many of them. Perhaps because it's
such a strange element. It connects people,
and it separates them. It preserves life,
and it takes it away. It creates and destroys. And perhaps this essence
of death and life is exactly what these
monuments were about. NARRATOR: The procession
followed the river until it reached the avenue, a
ceremonial roadway that runs up to Stonehenge. Very little of the
avenue survives today, but Ronald believes it may once
have been lined by standing stones. RONALD HUTTON: We
don't know exactly what the processional avenue leading
to Stonehenge looked like. It was plowed out too long ago. But it's just possible it
may have looked like this one not far away at Avebury. However it did
appear, it would have had the function of
any processional way in any religion-- to enable human beings to
pass from a world mostly concerned with human beings,
to one mostly concerned with the supernatural. NARRATOR: Before
reaching its destination, the avenue turns
sharply to the west, deliberately approaching
Stonehenge in the direction of the setting sun. Having started at
Woodhenge at sunrise, it seems likely the funeral
procession was timed to reach Stonehenge at sunset. And here, the pagan Britons
would have celebrated the passing of the newly
dead into the world of the ancestors. Work at the site of Stonehenge
stretched over millennia. But its stone circle was built
in only a few short years. Over the centuries,
many of the stones have fallen or been removed. But we can now
rebuild Stonehenge as it would have looked to
the pagans who likely used it for their death
rituals millennia ago. At the center of the ring
was a horseshoe of five trilithons, two large stones
with a lintel atop them. They surrounded 19
small blue stones, and were in turn surrounded
by the famous circle of massive sarsen stones, topped
by a continuous ring of gently curved lintel stones. Stonehenge and
Woodhenge together would have dominated
the local landscape. But only a few
miles to the north is another pagan
monument that has long defied all explanation. A vast artificial hill
that archaeologists estimate took 18 million
man hours to construct-- Silbury Hill. A few miles to the
north of Stonehenge is Silbury Hill, the largest
prehistoric mound in Europe. Created by pagan Britons
nearly four and and half thousand years ago, it
rises to over 120 feet, and is older and higher than
some of the Egyptian pyramids. But like the pyramids, does
it contain a secret within? RONALD HUTTON: One of the things
that people always associate with big old mounds
is buried treasure, and people have looked for
treasure in Silbury Hill for hundreds of years. But that's the twist. There have been so many tunnels
dug into hill by now that have found not a scrap of
anything you could call treasure. NARRATOR: Despite
centuries of digging, no burials or treasure
have ever been found. Silbury Hill seems to be just a
solid mound of chalk and earth. The mystery of why it was
built remains unsolved. But how it was built
may offer clues. This would have been an
incredible technological achievement for the people
of the Neolithic period. They had no metals to work
with, so all of their digging was done with antler picks,
and the scapulas, the shoulder blades of cows that
they used for shovels. NARRATOR:
Archaeologists calculate it would have taken 700 men
10 years to excavate, dump, and shape the nine million
cubic feet of earth and chalk that make up the hill. It was probably
built in two phases. When this was first built,
it was only about 18 feet high. But then in the second
phase of building, they built it up to 120 feet. So it's absolutely massive. And the slope is really
steep, so it stands out in sharp contrast to the low,
rolling hills all around it. NARRATOR: But making a
hill is no small challenge. ERIKA GUTTMANN: You couldn't
actually build a structure like this by just piling
up soil and rubble, because it would just
erode down the slope. So it's very
carefully engineered in order to retain this
particular conical shape. NARRATOR: Silbury Hill
may not be truly circular, but could have been built as
a polygon, possibly of nine sides. Outer walls of chalk leant
inwards at an angle of 60 degrees for maximum stability. They were joined by
radial walls, built out from the center of the mound. The gaps between were
filled with chalk rubble. It's possible that the
mound was built as a series of stepped platforms. But the latest
archaeological surveys suggest a different
method of construction. Another thing
that occurs to me is that it may have
been built as a spiral. Now, there's some archaeological
evidence for the construction of this mound in a spiral,
and it certainly strikes me as I'm walking up, that that
might have been the easiest way to build it. Because certainly it is
easier to bring material, construction material,
up a ramp than up steps. NARRATOR: A spiral
shape may also have had religious significance. The spirals are one of
the great artistic symbols of the age. And so people taking a spiral
path to the top of Silbury would be literally
walking a spiral. NARRATOR: A spiral pathway would
have made the hill both easier to build and more suitable
for religious processions. But there may also be
a link between Silbury and the surrounding
landscape which could explain why the
structure was built so tall. Nearby is the largest stone
circle in the world, Avebury. Silbury Hill is also close to
two other key pagan sites-- West Kennet Long Barrow
and the Sanctuary. Historian Ronald Hutton wants
to investigate a new theory-- that Silbury Hill
could have been used as a signaling
platform to coordinate simultaneous ceremonies at
all the different sites. It's an idea that's
never been tested-- until now. Right, the theory is that from
every major part of the Avebury landscape, you should be able
to see the top of Silbury Hill. NARRATOR: To put the theory
to the test archaeologist, Erika Guttmann travels to
West Kennet Long Barrow. The barrow once contained the
remains of around 50 people, and is one of the best-preserved
burial mounds in the British Isles. It's also one of the largest. It's as long, and half as
wide as a football field. Well, here we are at
West Kennet Long Barrow. Now let's see if
we can see Ronald. Yep, there he is. You can see him keeping
the red flag flying. NARRATOR: Next stop is the
Sanctuary, probably once a forest of wooden posts,
the Sanctuary was not so much a structure as a ritual site,
where newly felled trees were ceremonially planted
into the ground. Well, here we are
at the Sanctuary, and I can just make out Ronald
silhouetted against the sky. And that's kind of interesting,
because if Silbury Hill were just a little bit lower, he'd
be lost against the hills and the background. But as it is, we can
see him quite clearly. NARRATOR: The last stop is
Avebury, the largest stone circle in the world. A giant ring of 98 huge stones
enclosing two smaller circles, it's likely to have been
the most important ritual site in the area. For the theory to work,
the flag on Silbury Hill should be visible. But inside the ring, it isn't. Only when Erika climbs the
circle's high outer bank does all become clear. From the top of the bank here,
I can see him quite clearly. And in fact, he's silhouetted
against the sky again. And you can see, Silbury
Hill is standing up against the skyline, higher than
the level of the surrounding hills. So Ronald's theory
really does work. Maybe it could be a
signaling platform. NARRATOR: Because Silbury
Hill is visible from all three locations, it suggests that
during certain times of year, it could have been the
central point of a series of simultaneous ceremonies. Avebury, West Kennet,
and the Sanctuary could each have taken their
cue from what was going on at Silbury. What happened during those
ceremonies remains a mystery. But Ronald Hutton believes there
is one more piece of evidence that lends weight to the theory. RONALD HUTTON: OK,
what I'd love is to have another idea in that. And that's is they didn't
cover the chalk rock of Silbury with anything. And so it's a shining mountain
of light, a glowing hill under sun and under moonlight,
so you could see it for miles. NARRATOR: If this
theory is correct, during the time of the
pagans, Silbury Hill wasn't overgrown with
grass as it is today, but was a shining, man-made
mountain of white chalk with a spiral pathway. Anyone on it would have
been visible for miles. The magnificent
mound of Silbury Hill survives as one of the greatest
monuments of pagan Britain. But it came from a world
that would be lost forever. On the south coast of
England lay another hill, the spectacular Maiden Castle. In centuries to come it, would
fall to the invading army of Rome, and witness the
end of the ancient world of pagan Britain. Maiden Castle in
southern England is the largest hill
fort in Europe. In Manhattan, it would
cover 10 city blocks. The defenses of this
massive pagan stronghold seemed impregnable. But they were no match
for the greatest fighting force in the ancient world-- the Roman army. Today, only the eroded
earthen ramparts remain. But for thousands of
years, Maiden Castle was a military prize fought
over by warring pagan tribes from the time of Stonehenge
until the end of the Iron Age, when it fell
under the rule of Rome. These earthworks are
absolutely massive. We've got a great rampart there,
coming down to a deep ditch, coming up to another
huge rampart here. And this is actually
standing about 75 feet over the height of the ditch. So it's an immense
amount of effort would have gone into
building this thing. And it would have taken an
immense amount of effort to actually charge up this slope
if you were attacking the hill fort. NARRATOR: Normally the weakest
point of any stronghold is the entrance,
but Maiden Castle was designed with a surprise
in store for any invaders. We're looking here at the
Western entrance to the hill fort. And if it looks like a
confusing jumble of mounds, well, it would have been even
more confusing to any attackers who were approaching the fort. And the idea is that
people are led around in this confusing sort of maze. It makes it more difficult
for them to attack. NARRATOR: We can now bring the
defenses of Maiden Castle back to life, and discover why it
was considered the greatest hill fort in pagan Britain. Three concentric rings
of ditches and banks surrounded Maiden Castle. On top of the final
bank of chalk and earth stood a wooden palisade. A walkway along the
top of the palisade allowed warriors to
keep watch, and served as a platform for the
hill fort's main defense-- the stone slingers. Two watchtowers stood
either side of the entrances as added protection
against enemies attempting to storm the gate. When the Romans invaded
in 43AD, Maiden Castle was occupied by the
Durotriges tribe, who were overlords of much
of southwestern England. Miners and iron workers, they
were a powerful confederation of tribes, and even
issued their own coins. But they now faced the most
highly trained and fearsome army of the age, an
army which possessed a huge technological advantage. They used a type of
crossbow called a ballista. The nearby Dorset County
Museum contains evidence of its effectiveness in the
remains of two pagan warriors found at the site. ERIKA GUTTMANN: There were a
number of graves of Iron Age warriors, and about
10 of these people had had sword cuts to the
head, severe cuts and blows, all on the skulls. And one of them actually
had a ballista bolt through the spine. NARRATOR: But to reach the
defenders of Maiden Castle, the bolt must have traveled
over three huge ramparts. To understand the
ballista's range, historian Ronald Hutton is
looking at a working replica. How many of these machines
would a Roman legion have packed? Each legion had 60
pieces of artillery. So there would have been 60 of
these ranged around the hill fort. NARRATOR: Until the
end of the Middle Ages, the ballista was the most
complicated weapon ever built. In basic terms, the
weapon's bow string is pulled back using
a pair of winches, and a tooth mechanism
called a ratchet, giving it many times more
power than simple human muscle. A bolt is then
loaded and released. A ballista bolt could travel
at over 110 miles per hour, and had a range of up
to a quarter of a mile. Good grief. That bolt went faster
than my eye could see. - NARRATOR: The ballista
allowed the Roman invaders to launch volleys of bolts
into Maiden Castle from far out of range of the pagan
defender's slingshots. When you're throwing
slings stones, there's only a certain
range you can manage. The Roman ballistas were able
to far out-distance the slings that people were
used to warring with. So all of these ramparts,
this great distance in height, it wasn't enough to
fight the Romans. NARRATOR: Even from the
top of the palisade, the defenders would not have
had a clear view of the Roman encampment. And with a range
of only 200 yards, their stone slings
wouldn't even reach halfway to the Roman ballistas. The ballista was more than
capable of sending a projectile over the ramparts
and wooden palisade into the very heart
of Maiden Castle. Death for a defender would
have arrived literally, as a bolt from the blue. By the middle of the
first century AD, most of the remaining
50 or so hill forts had been conquered by the
invading Roman legions. The lives of the pagan Britons
were transformed completely by an influx of people and ideas
from all over the Roman Empire. Yet even before
the Roman conquest, many of pagan Britain's
monuments and settlements were long forgotten memories,
because the people who'd built them, had themselves changed. The Stone Age village
of Skara Brea, the great Ring of Brodgar,
and the Tomb of the Eagles had already been abandoned
for many generations. The construction skills that
created the summer and winter alignments at
Maeshowe and Woodhenge had been lost as
religions had evolved. Even Stonehenge, the greatest
of all ancient pagan monuments, would become a traveler's
curiosity, an enigma that would enchant and confuse
scholars from the Middle Ages on. While the mysterious Silbury
Hill and the great hill fort of Maiden Castle would be
used by the Romans themselves, for their own temples
and settlements. As these sites slowly fell
into ruin, knowledge of them, and what they
represented, vanished. We are only now,
many centuries later, rediscovering these lost worlds. [music playing]
