The Celts - BBC Series, Episode 1 - In the Beginning - Full Episode

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] the Magnificent but mysterious Stonehenge [Music] great chromeless [Music] the Stonehenge of the north Kalen ish standing stones of antiquity associated with the Celts people's can find to the western edge of Europe all part of a fanciful but mistaken identity [Music] the cradle of the Celts lies far far away from the lands they now inhabit explorers from the civilized world of the Mediterranean recognized them here in Central Europe a distinctive people whom the greeks called Kel toy but what made them distinctive a cave in the cast Mountains of Bohemia has clues [Music] the discoveries made here record a grisly tale [Music] this was a cult center dating back 2600 years at the scene of ritual sacrifice [Music] [Applause] [Music] severed human limbs were found mutilated skulls in all 40 bodies mostly women had been sacrificed horses to were slaughtered [Music] [Music] the rituals of the scene are matters for the imagination [Music] archeologists believe that this was a burial service of a powerful Celtic chief accompanied on his way to the other world by his wives and slaves [Music] he was buried too with gifts and mementos the bronze figurine of a bull a [Music] gold armlet and a necklace of precious Amber's one skull was used as a drinking cup this some say the skull of the chief himself everywhere evidence of human sacrifice the cave rituals of Bohemia are matched by this piece from Austria a large bowl supported by a goddess with her entourage at the head - warriors hold on to the antlers of a stag there are naked women [Music] Warriors with conical caps many argue it depicts a scene of ritual sacrifice to a Celtic goddess of fertility the son was worshipped and is here pulled through the skies by a mystical horse this animal was to take a prominent place in the story of the Celts about 3,000 years ago momentous changes were happening to the east on the Russian steppes they were caused by alterations in climate it was getting drier crops were failing pastures withering the people of the steppes moved westwards they and their horses known to early Greek writers as the Sumerians son move south to Anatolia others west to the Hungarian plain and the Danube Valley the horse of course had been domesticated in Europe hundreds of years earlier but now it is not just a track animal these people had mastered the skill of horse riding for the counts the horse became essential in peace in war and in religion other profound changes came in technology Europe was gradually moving from the bronze age to a new age man had discovered iron [Music] I earn cut down forests and cut down men it became an inexorable part of Celtic life [Music] so here in Central Europe by the 8th century BC a new society was emerging [Music] archeologists of the 19th century first noticed it in Austria and hallstatt a little lakeside village gave its name to the first period of celtic development [Music] to those familiar with the Celtic languages the very name hallstatt and the neighboring village Hollen suggests the reason for the area's importance in prehistoric times it lay not in the village but in the towering Saltzburg mountains archeologists are still working here all around them the secret of the area's importance Sault a vital commodity for the preservation of food [Music] the whole area is a labyrinth of mines salt mines whose output was prized far above miners lives [Music] in prehistoric times salt preserved food it also preserved the remains of those who mined it bits of cloth a miner's axe [Music] leather [Music] the miners rucksack perfectly preserved as are his other simple possessions his horn drinking cup his tasseled cap scant clothing and mining axes [Music] conditions here were horrendous the miners troglodytes working eating and sleeping in the mines for days on end life was cheap mining disasters frequent dizzy host a holiday have merely Apophis and we can endorse a indecisive evil anger inside info sheet on a technique to add up keep out wouldn't be sane thus this is Casa baya quiet tongue my concern getting in Devon and SES echo slam Lavinia no suki na Dhin tak movie for shooted with this attack movie heart of DC construction diva here seen some Ange - it's on - some Susannah goalkeeper asked me ham here I'll even in see appetite informed and take its Lisa from dist fatigue torn from this attack I'm insane on Thursday long T sustainability Helene the syska Santa's in Annan who love Amina inky fairness hospital that does not rule it is a construction LTS as to talk those who worked and died here were slaves living on basic necessities a few cherry PIP survive the unknown minor who died here [Music] the slaves who mined the salt from these mountains had their masters they were buried in style in 1846 a government director of mining George Ramsar discovered their remains archaeology owes him a great debt here in what is now common alpine pasture land he unearthed a huge Iron Age Cemetery over a thousand graves were excavated each meticulously recorded some were cremated in the old tradition and in some graves elaborate bronze containers discovered this one decorated with solar and duck-like symbols [Music] others were buried sometimes in pairs [Music] some went armed to the other world but not necessarily the battle [Music] this bronze Chabad with its slender iron sword is vividly decorated two men hold between them a spoked wheel the Sun symbol then a battle scene the mounted warriors new went to the other world with pride life in this world was short for men and particularly for women [Music] this mortality graph shows the incredibly high death rate for females between the ages of 13 and 26 here's the reason why [Music] a group of children and human embryos from young women who died in childbirth [Music] buried with them they're simple but precious trinkets [Music] the archaeologists thirst for knowledge is neveress waged and digs are a seasonal feature in this part of Austria dr. Kurt Zeller heads the dig of this romantically named site Grave 106 plundered in prehistory many things were destroyed or broken either stolen a multiple grave this body was one of five crudely cremated but grave 106 shows both burial styles side by side this body was buried delicately handled in the field the remains will be closely analyzed in the labs everything points to a male and a rich one at that classical writers described the Celts as fair-haired tall and muscular many of the finds in the region would endorse that description but it's dangerous to make too much of this more important is the abundant evidence of a highly stratified society dominated by the aristocrats whose burials were becoming increasingly opulent [Music] the mine owners of the whole of this region were becoming richer and richer as they traded the precious salt southward to the Mediterranean world beyond the Alps but salt is not all they traded magma tillage herbs class murder it was English's in the ice inside Lincoln shaft so Muslim I need faster to be our services super mutant then the goals and paragraph now misogynistic hose and hunger that's an incision in faha mention memory service its entire opinion for helplessness track are paying for it miss Indians claw for high order sweaters riemann stealthy a high mobility frog was this a high player this MST grappling then treat on the Tuscan Guardian looks escaped endurance lamp and avoid incision time gain GABA harmed a few 2040 long does clapping the perennial HP is any CF a look under our when we as decision our files and Colonel this then was the cradle for the Celtic world how would it develop in Central Europe no strong political organizations existed there were no great centers of power that was now changing trade routes were opening up and in prehistoric times waterways provided the quickest and most effective means of transport [Music] controlling the waterways meant controlling trade but with trade and wealth came trouble warfare was almost endemic [Music] guarding the main trade routes hill forts were appearing with increasing frequency [Music] set to take maximum advantage of the natural terrain they were supplemented by banks and ditches and enclosed defenses inside the simple square or rectangular huts of the inhabitants with their thatched roofs there was no building in stone the site par excellence overlooked the Danube Valley and controlled its trade the Heine Berg this hill fort is one of the most excavated sites in Europe each season the archaeologists return new students new surveys but since the Celts built their houses in timber there are no great ruined buildings to reveal just the defense's and within the hill fort comparatively few artifacts have come to light all the more care then when something is found here just a small piece of amber this part of a Celtic chief was made after the mold was discovered the pottery provides telltale clues of Mediterranean influences this has unmistakable Greek designs [Music] there's an almost reverential attitude to the civilizations of the South even influencing the Hohner Berg's defenses archaeologists have unearthed a wall of mud dried bricks not much used in this part of the world built on top of the original stone defenses celts are simply copying greeks outside the fort burial mounds the final resting places of successive Chiefs of the Heine burg and among the burial sites the giant mound known as the Homer hell [Music] the grand a sight of all but alas parts of it had been plundered in antiquity associated with such mounds were stone figures standing over them the male figure is naked except for his dagger his talk and a simple conical cap the figure perhaps of the chief himself [Music] then 25 years ago an amateur archaeologist working in this rich farmland area near Stuttgart persuaded the professionals to excavate this mound [Music] your bill led the team there discovery was amazing a chieftains to and plundered came to light [Music] the corpse was adorned by sumptuous pieces a wide gold bracelet a [Music] magnificently decorated dagger enclosed in fine gold [Music] The Chieftains talk symbol of power and authority worn around the neck it had been hammered from a single piece of gold [Music] the team were even able to restore the conical cap made of birch bark [Music] his shoes were adorned by thin gold plaques immaculately embossed [Music] that's here naturally any sales tax to take a sense a friendly star fast we're here liek this tapas and roshani after post ina familiar stain get us into this intense national manatee nasty she doesn t familiar this was a giant of a man over six feet two inches tall his body was laid out on this bronze couch at the time padded with animal furs and hemp supported by eight female figures it is highly decorated portrayed on the back the four wheeled burial wagon and on it a warrior possibly depicting the very chief himself he's accompanied by stylized answers there Ranveer the final engagement in carpet last consistency artful locating strand Effie Ratley Govardhan in feeling Trayvon feel guilty surveying about a walked off of artists artists besonders fighter fast forged and image for children by Sentai he puts August jammed in Varanasi potent cranium does no not him finding their Schmidt doesn't work about her that's violent anger by did the larvae shader films I was finished in window insult I'll want the question well on toy horizon was always disliked in Vittorio toboggan were you and Natalie Hunter Tommy look inside one request [Music] this elaborate wagon sported a fine service of bronze dishes there was to be a great welcoming feast in the other world nine places were set according to the Greeks nine were needed for a quorum nine the ideal number for a feast [Music] the Chiefs drinking cup has been recreated always the emphasis is on the pleasures that await there's nothing to suggest warfare [Music] now fully restored the great cauldron in the tomb again shows the importance of the drinking and the feasting that lay ahead three lions decorate the rim creatures unknown to the Celts and pointing again to the influence of the Mediterranean world but one of these lions is different peculiar not really like a lion [Music] - is secured as I know that like creation pong sealer even forlorn kacang nice toss DK in an alchemist albums you have me and clean and in living is saying or income-based eschaton so until now - Maxime snitch no copious and on a nine degree mark [Music] pollen analysis proves that the hawk dog chief was buried in late summer he represented a society whose aristocracy enjoyed great wealth in a period of great change [Music] this is modern-day Marseilles in 600 BC the Greeks established a trading post here it had major repercussions on Celtic society in Central Europe and helped contribute to the growing wealth of the Celtic aristocrats now more than ever Greek goods Greek styles and in particular wine flowed into the Celtic world [Music] the Greeks named their newport masala mantra SWA controlled its hinterland the trade that passed through the Rhone corridor and onto the valley of the sin it was typical of the major hill forts of the time but it was also untypical [Music] in 1953 the royal tomb weeks at the foot of the fort was excavated amongst the first things discovered was an enormous wine crater and with it a wonderful princely burial the craters lid was well preserved and on it a statuette of a female [Music] a goddess or princess [Music] the skull was largely intact and a cast made [Music] skeleton remains were pieced together and the archaeologists argued whether it was a male or female body prince or princess what I found was a very fragmentary human skeleton of a very very small person without very large muscles very diminutive in stature perhaps only about 160 centimeters tall though relatively short and small and I also realized another pathological condition that hadn't previously been noted and that's in addition to sort of bilateral dislocations as a very young person possibly in birth of the hips and so this person was actually showing that a pretty certain of female a small female a lightly constructed female and one that was unique in the sense that she would have had an unusual gait pattern there's a sort of waddling walk but would have been able to walk was both sides affected that's actually in this case beneficial and she also her face would have been twisted in her head permanently tilted to one side ever so slightly perhaps but certainly noticeable so she's not a real sort of you didn't immediately think of as a as a princess uncertainly no warrior princess [Music] the wheels of her funeral wagon had been removed and left leaning against the timber frame of the tomb there were the usual personal trinkets and a magnificent gold talk the Celtic symbol of authority this is an exquisite piece of gold work elegant and embellished by small Greek Pegasus figurines but there are none of the implements of warfare so what was the source of her power there obviously two ways in which in pre state societies individuals could achieve power or two primary ways and one of them would be through the practice of war that is a so-called war chief but the so-called peace chief very often would have created their their position or consolidated their authority as the result of other types of skills including among other things this ability to kind of interact with the supernatural world so warfare then or the or the sort of the the physical prowess required to be a warrior was not necessarily a precondition for it this type of governing elite status but the fact that there are no weapons in the burial suggests that she was on the one hand she was an individual with considerable political power but she seems to have been in this piece chief type of category that is not a warrior chief presumably a a leader at a time when her population had more need of someone who was a religious practitioner the most obvious feature of her too is that it contains so many items associated with wine and drinking beautiful flagons [Music] Griet drinking cups decorated with scenes of warfare and the great bronze crater with the capacity of over 250 gallons of wine a gift it is thought from the Greeks whose military prowess is proudly displayed and these Gorgon like gods [Music] snakes and lions [Music] why men was of great importance I think it was the ability of alcoholic beverages to literally transport an individual into another state of consciousness that was the important thing I mean they weren't just partying for recreational purposes this was pretty clearly a highly ritualized type of behavior that not all individuals in the society would have engaged in and that elites would have engaged in and and sub elite subordinates that were immediately related in a kind of retinue context and the source of a warrior retinue wine and the control over it must have contributed to the power of this shame and light chief death but why such a grand burial I suspect it was intentional that this person was being removed and the objects that may have been associated with her or with some vestige of her her life or actually it's intentional and I think it has a very strong socio-political dimension to it it in a sense the burial is like a hoard removed from view removed from circulation and that suggests a certain finality it's the end of something indeed it was shortly after her death mont blas hua was deserted great changes were happening throughout the celtic world [Music] inishmore the largest of the aran islands of the west coast of ireland the men of our own true Celts still gaelic-speaking living off the sea and off the land [Music] a landscape a society are people that are quintessentially Celtic [Music] but how when did the Celts get here simple questions that have provoked intense debate here as indeed in the whole of Ireland the archaeology of the early iron age is fraught with ambiguities there are some dramatic sites like dun aengus but no one can be sure that this was a celtic fort [Music] the sea has had a profound influence on all the traditionally celtic lands of Western Europe an influence that goes back well before the time of the counts the Atlantic sea waves brought in trade brought in people [Music] the corniche coastline is dotted with clues to explain the attraction of these lands this is a 19th century mine [Music] abandoned for a hundred years its rocks are still rich in metals we know that copper and gold were mined all along the Atlantic coast here in Cornwall the treasure was tin vital in the Bronze Age tin ingots like these were traded the length and breadth of Europe [Music] stretching from Brittany through corn through Wales and Ireland to Scotland and its many islands the traditional Celtic lands of today are regarded as remote [Music] not so in prehistoric times [Music] up until the 1960s it was believed that the Celts of Europe invaded these lands making maximum use of the Atlantic and Irish sea routes likewise the eastern half of Britain was invaded across the North Sea and the English Channel taking advantage of front door entry points such as the Thames Estuary such routes are still important to the Commerce of our own age but was there in the distant past an invasion of the celts from continental europe i think the whole idea it's a very popular idea it's almost widely accepted idea that there was the coming of the celts that there was a people called the celts who arrived in britain and ireland i don't know a thousand years before christ or something i think in that sense there was absolutely no coming of the celts and if you look at irish archaeology for instance you find irish archaeologists tying themselves in knots trying to locate the coming of the Celts there was none [Music] but if professor Renfrew is correct there are things that need explaining this school on the Isle of Skye is using Scottish Gaelic as its medium of Education it's the oldest spoken language of Europe so how did it get here if you get rid of the idea of there being a major Celtic migration into Britain that does raise very serious problems about the language because the language spoken in Britain and still spoken in parts of it belongs to what we call the Celtic family of languages the same languages that has spoken where spoken in Gaul and and further over in Europe so how can one explain that well the old idea used to be of course waves of population bringing over different sorts of Celtic but nowadays I think many of us would see the Celtic language as being a very old language possibly even going back to the Neolithic period or or earlier from that period onwards Western Europe was intimately in contact particularly along the Atlantic sea ways from Spain France and Britain there were ships going backwards and forwards trading carrying metals carrying people and in that context of trade and exchange I think one can understand how a a lingua franca grows up a language which enables all these disparate people to communicate that's the context I think we should see Celtic in enter genetic science and the survey of the DNA of the people of Britain well in the genetic atlas project we're going to build a very detailed genetic map of Britain and by Britain I mean Scotland England Wales Cornwall and Ireland as well to try and see what influences they've been on the British population and compare those with things we know about from history like the Vikings like the Celts like the Anglo Saxons trying to see what impact they and on the makeup of the British population prehistoric specimens are dated their DNA recorded of particular interest mitochondrial DNA which can only be inherited from the mother one mother nicknamed Hannah was around 20,000 years ago over 30% of Europeans relate to her this group's ancestral mother goes back 40,000 years then this orange group goes back 15,000 years of particular interest and related to the coming of farming this red group around 8,000 years ago this yellow group related to the recently discovered Iceman of the Alps 13,000 years ago and finally a comparatively rare group found in Britain and America this then is the broad grouping of the people of the Isles of Britain each and every local inhabitant have the clues to their ancestry in their genes [Music] but people speak languages and languages can be learned so what of Celtic languages no DNA exists for them I believe that those first farmers were already speaking proto-indo-european language out of what we call the Celtic languages developed in those areas so we're talking I think a very complete continuity from the period of Stonehenge right on through the Bronze Age and the Iron Age until the development of those societies chiefdom societies those heroic societies which finally emerge into the light of history when Caesar and other people described them the societies which in the 18th century AD were described as Celtic societies although Caesar never referred to kelps in in Britain or in Ireland we asked professor Brian Sykes the head of Britain's DNA survey to take a sample from this school at Lampeter in southwest Wales [Music] fish Jamar bodied are good morning now you all know what bodied are and good morning mean fish Jamar is the same in scots gaelic and the reason i'm introduced that is because it's the language the Gallic languages the Celtic languages that define the Celts and these languages are spoken in northern Scotland northwest of Scotland the Outer Hebrides they were spoken in the Isle of Man they're spoken of course in Ireland in Wales of course and an extinct Celtic language in Cornwall and further south in Brittany so what we're doing here today with your help is to try and see if there's a biological basis that helps is there such a thing as the Celtic people biologically and to do this we use DNA DNA which is in every cell of your body and you've inherited from your distant ancestors so do you have a Celtic biological tradition as well as a Celtic linguistic one that's what we're here to find out now DNA is in every cell of your body and the sales we're going to use for our tests are in the inside of your cheek and we collect these using this tiny little brush here so what I'd like you to do if you will is just to hold it by the stem and put it inside your mouth and then twiddle it round on each side of your inner cheek so as like this and roll it around I'm picking up cells as you go a bit alright and on the other side and this is picking up cells from from a tree and there's plenty of DNA now with modern technology to get a complete genetic readout which is what we'll use follow tests but we also need to know where your relatives are from your parents and your grandparents you have a form in front of you and if you could just fill that in let us know so we know exactly where to put you on the genetic map of Wales right the pupils of this school live 30 miles from one of the great megalithic monuments of Britain Penta even built by people of the Neolithic Age and linked with the early farmers of Western Britain could its builders be related to the pupils of Lamberton those surveyed at Lampeter are unquestionably of common cultural stock they're all well speaking for example but the biological test is different if the Celts are genetically distinct and related to their so-called cultural ancestors in Central Europe then they would share common genes their mitochondrial DNA should match this is the ultimate scientific test no one can argue with the DNA sequence this sequence is distinctive for each and every one of us as it is for the pupils of Lampeter but is there a pattern the most striking pattern all you see in the genetics has been the contrast between the west side of Britain and I mean Cornwall Wales and the west coast of Scotland and the Hebrides the islands off the west coast of Scotland they're really very different from the picture we're getting the beginning to piece together from the eastern side of Britain and we're sort of trying to think well why is that that is the most remarkable signal that we're getting so far and I think it's probably because we're looking at a very ancient pattern a pattern that's been established on the east side of Britain for the influence from the nearby continent by which I mean Germany and France the Low Countries Denmark on the east side of Britain and on the west side a much more Atlantic influence count people coming up from initially from Spain and Portugal up the Atlantic coast of France Britany into Cornwall and up that side and they've kind of met if you like in Britain but these will be very very old patterns patterns that might have been established for example with the megalith builders coming up the Atlantic coast the Lampeter sample is in keeping with the general pattern thirty-four percent had an ancestry going back twenty thousand years twenty-five percent an ancestry going back to the age of the megalith builders there was no trace of people's from the celts of central europe [Music] so the megalith builders of petra even of kallen ish those people who introduced farming to Britain and built their stone monuments built Stonehenge they and their predecessors are the true ancestors of the Celtic lands of Britain who then are the Celts the whole problem of the use of the word Celts is being hotly debated very hotly debated at the moment and I think rightly so because we've used it in a rather sloppy way in the past you can talk about Celts in terms of language there is a Celtic language group which was spoken over large parts of Western Europe no doubt about that if those who spoke Celtic were Celts fine you could define it in terms of art styles and the beliefs that went with the art styles again that would spread over a large part of Western Europe but if you took the word Celt in the narrow sense of the people who called themselves Celts then it's far more restricted British for example with never gawd Celts so under that more restricted definition you can't call a lot of people who otherwise you would believe to be Celts counts there's no simple answer I think we have used it poorly in the past but I think we can go on using the word Celt so long as we remember that it's a it's a fuzzy concept there are cause in it but it is fuzzy and therein lies its fascination therein lies its fascination indeed the celts remain one of europe's great enigmas [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: FilmRise Documentaries

Views: 2,638,810

Rating: 4.7310867 out of 5

Keywords: The Celts, Complete Series, Documentary (TV Genre), Television Documentary (TV Genre), Europe (Continent), Alps (Mountain Range), Roman Empire (Country), Great Britain (Geographical Feature), Celts (Ethnicity), Celtic, Viking (Film Subject), Barbarian, Empire (Quotation Subject), Ancient, History (TV Genre), B.C., Druids (Film), Druidism, British Broadcasting Company, BBC One (TV Network), Society, Culture, British Broadcasting Corporation (Production Company), Legend

Id: AU1dKfMIEUQ

Length: 51min 19sec (3079 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 31 2014