What We Got Wrong About The Dark Ages | King Arthur's Britain | Timeline

[Music] in the Oxford history of England the great historians of Frank Stanton wrote between the end of Roman government in Britain and the emergence of the earlier English kingdoms their stretches a long period of which the history cannot be written [Music] with the departure of the Roman troops historians imagined the end of history and from their empty pages we have conjured up a desolate wasteland of abandoned cities overgrown fields & marauding barbarians and we call this the dark [Music] in actual fact sophisticated societies developed in Britain in the darkish release for its associations with Rome Britain began to forge an independent identity ancient trade routes were resurrected languages evolved and the foundations of modern European thought were laid down these were not a darkness [Music] the fall of Rome led to a period of political instability throughout Europe tribes of barbarian invaders swept across the provinces of Rome looting and pillaging the land simcha Rome laments this terrible time savage tried in countless numbers have overrun all part and those which the sword stares planning ravages I cannot speak without tears but what became of Britain on the outskirts of his crumbling Empire the trouble is there is a gap in the historical record at one end we have for 10 a date as indelible and emotive as 1066 410 was the year that Rome told Britain look to your own defensive at the other end we have 597 the year in which Pope Gregory the first of Rome converted the anglo-saxons to Christianity [Music] in between there are only fragments in story a murky historical no-man's land the perfect breeding ground for myths and legends emerging from the shadows of his peer is the figure of King Arthur who if he existed at all rose to prominence in these troubled years but here lies a crucial paradigm how can a period of dark age barbarism also have produced the greatest folk hero Britain has ever had was Arthur invented to make up for a lack of real history or is there some foundation to be as peculiar as a prehistoric I'm used to dealing with long periods without any written records that doesn't mean that nothing happened I'm going to find out what really did happen in this mysterious time and I'm going to start in the place where the collapse of the Roman government must have been most keenly felt the city the Romans built a network of civic centers across Britain I went to you're one of the largest appeals to find out what happened after the legions left [Music] underneath the medieval city walls it's possible to see the earliest layers of the city's rich history whilst the Roman and later Viking layers provide plenty of archaeological evidence the elusive Dark Age layers contained few recognizable artifacts it's almost as if the period is invisible to archaeologists however by the side of the Roman bridgehead in York archaeologist Marc Weiland has made a breakthrough by re-examining thousands of pieces of pottery thought to be part of the city's Roman history he has begun to shed some light on the city's Dark Age past ok for instance on sit over here the pottery wonderful it definitely does happen at the end of the 4th century in Britain is that coins disappeared coins are crucial to establish technology but with no coins available mark had to find a new way of interpreting the evidence we were looking for a type of pottery that might have continued in production beyond the end of Roman Britain the pottery mark was looking at could not be matched to any traditional Roman products well why do you believe this other strange-looking stuff if fifth-century well this is what learners can't like gritted where it's a late Roman coarse pottery type manufactured in huge quantities in East Yorkshire the material we're looking at here who's actually from a site excavated by the size of the Roman bridgehead in New York the layers that produce marks pottery had to be dated later than the Roman period this suggests that pottery was being manufactured in York after the Romans left this business of making pottery in the fifth century has put the cat among the pigeons like that the received view of Roman Britain one that is still quite widely however I think has been that Roman Britons end is exceedingly certain and the archaeological material that we require to understand activity to understand the past just isn't being made the reason I set out to do this research was to identify a type of artifact which we could say is manufactured in the fifth century to argue against the idea of everything suddenly coming to a juddering halt Mike in York did not come to a scamster were informed hem mark had found evidence for some kind of activity in the city after the Romans left and he is not alone with these discoveries all over the country archaeologists are starting to piece together a picture of Dark Age Britain very different from the conventional story of collapse it's time to start rewriting the history books archeology like all humanities is a product of its time [Music] and Victorian archaeologists were part of a British Empire which compared itself to realm so they had every reason to suggest that when great empires collapse disaster and chaos follow [Music] amid the gentle hills of a Shropshire countryside lie the remains of the Roman town of roxtor the romantic ruins fascinated early antiquarians who saw it as an evocative reminder of a great civilization which had fallen into ruin Bob Seger was first excavated in the 19th century this Victorian archaeologist was so excited by the Roman remains here but they did not spot something that would completely rewrite the history at the time it wasn't until the 1980s but archeologists discovered the real story of Rossiter as they wandered over the rubble we found these two large round stones the inspector said well perhaps these are the phone so noticed lines of tax rubble and blast off [Music] there's suddenly realize that it's a massive great building it was so big a bit like trying to see in an elephant standing a foot away [Music] lawful was taken down dismantled and the rubble was used to create a huge building part what we were doing was making a solid foundation onto which they could then build a timber frame structures [Music] the dating was the major problem the big fielding and all the other buildings around it had to fit in between about 5:20 and about five nine to six hundred so I mean we're weird long long after the official end of Roman Britain in 410 lovely and they're building huge buildings which are laying out in Roman measurements from independent like Romans on there are items it's this is our perception that we think of Romans as being foreigners who can over occupy the country and go where again they weren't the the people in the country romanized though became roman i mean central control central administration had sort of broken down so I mean who were who was organizing and what was it an Arthur like character it's it's a very difficult question to answer because you had no evidence but if you think about it this is like trying to answer the question of who lives in buckin palace truly from the foundation what we can photo them is what this person have power so they are someone who's able to command authority there is a structure to the society the discoveries of rock strata where a great advance in archaeology they opened the way for archaeologists to re-examine other Roman sites and Britons to discover what happened during the so-called Dark Ages Hadrian's Wall one of the most important military sites in Raynham Brittany [Music] stretching from coast to coast the wall includes a series of garrison for in its heyday this was a bustling community of soldiers and their families defending the northern fringes of the Empire what happened after the Roman armies move out has long been a mystery it used to be believed that King Arthur fought his final Battle of Camlann near this remote windy spot on Hadrian's Wall but recent work has shown that within the fort of Byrd Oswald there was an altogether more extraordinary archaeological story to tell Byrd Oswald is the most westerly of the series of forts which line the wall Miriam Lincoln showed me round the remains of this military headquarters it's the main road through the fort buildings either side huge drill tall granaries to the south here it was the granaries that archaeologist Tony Wilmot decided to exam when it began excavation here I just had a feeling from looking around to the site that late Roman would survive quite well and chopping one cornice it tell me I think we've got a bit of a straight line here is chapping another corner bit of a right angle and I basically went to the top of the tower the farmhouse looked down and that's just this great rectangle sitting there above the stone foundations of the Roman ground rules Tony discovered the remains of a huge structure which was built long after the Roman fruit to destroy it was a unique archaeological discovery was it like its jaw drops yeah you think it got this is yeah this is it you've got this lovely huge open structure flat roof and it would be the first thing you saw as you came through the Gateway there they put one of our most experienced diggers just to give a very quick clean to this slide trench and I didn't tell her what I was looking for and I said anything odd about this and she's a very sort of hard flat patches oh where are they she went what was one here and I pointed to that yeah I was wondering here I pointed to them I sure enough they paired up it was completely objects because I haven't told her what I was doing that's how he became confirmed the strange markings that Tony found with the remains of twelve footings which form the skeleton of an enormous wooden Hall that had been built after the Roman troops to party so what kind of a group of men built a building like that I mean it's a socking great big thing I think the key is there's no break to the commander perhaps even a hereditary commander by this one would have become a central authority and you can see that kind of gradually morphing into the idea of a petty king or a petty leader are we talking about a sort of protection racket it's not hard to see them saying well okay carry on paying your Roman taxes and we'll carry on seeing you alright and from from taxation to protects you reckon it's perhaps not fitting for you if such a huge jump the history books tell us Roman soldiers pulled out turned out the lights and and darkness to say anything yeah it wasn't happening here um these were native Britons I had I have nowhere to go this was home and so how to find a living somehow certainly there was no mass withdrawal from beautiful do you reckon there are more grateful along Hadrian's Wall I think they're certain to me these communities didn't just disappear if you're sitting pretty behind some high stone walls you're not just going to disappear and start practising subsistence farming you're going to stay put there's started to the evidence from a number of places now but this sort of thing took place perhaps build other words just one of a a network of 45 centres until growing up they're going to the southwest we've got dill Forks being reoccupy I think that we should see the novel as one of those rather than being part of the Roman frontier system at that time everything's too much [Music] to the east of Byrd Oswald is a lake called crag Locke from here archaeologists have extracted soil samples to construct a picture of how the landscape changed when the Roman troops pulled out this process known as pollen analysis involves examining the types of trees that once grew here I like trees which is why I've planted them on my farm but to archaeologists the presence of trees on land that had once been farmed shows that the countryside has been abandoned and in the dark ages the traditional view is that the countryside reverted to a wild wood once the Romans had withdrawn the work of Krag Locke challenges his skills it was carried out by petra dark of reading university hold analysis gives really good evidence for what comes inside of the past was like we can actually identify the pollen grains of different plants like the trees of cereals and so on and we can count the pollen samples taken to a cause of sediment and reconstruct vegetation change over long timescales petra is able to build up a picture of what the landscape looked like hundreds of years ago if we get cereal pollen that tells us that they're growing crops nearby if we have tree pollen that tells us there was woodland nearby and it's very important for reconstructing changes in farming in the past because we can see were they farming very intensively or had areas of land being abandoned to farming in which case they're quite rapidly revert to woodland by carbon dating the samples Petra is able to tell when a landscape change by the Roman period this is quite an open landscape a lot of the woodlands gone Patras charts clearly show but at Hadrian's Wall there was not a massive increase in forests when the Romans pulled out by the end of the Roman period we start to get an increase of birch pollen but the other trees are not really changing there isn't massive woodland regeneration happening contrary to popular belief the landscape at Hadrian's Wall did not revert to forest when the Romans left Petra has compared samples from a selection of sites across Britain while some do see an increase in woodland at many the land continue to be farmed in exactly the same way and in certain places land use actually intensified after the Romans departed we can't generalize across the whole of a landscape in the way that you know in the 1950s before we had this evidence there was a generalization that's much too simple a picture Petra's work demolishes the vision of Britain reverting for wild wood once the Romans depart in fourths like bird Oswald and towns like Rock City the end of Roman administration did not bring about the breakdown of society release from the controlling hand of Rome new leaders emerged in society regrouped but this new independence did not mean that Britain had cut herself off from the rest of the world a series of extraordinary contacts were about to be made with some of the most powerful players in the ancient world [Music] acting casual on the Atlantic coast of Cornwall there is a rugged promontory this dramatic sight has long been associated with the Dark Age warrior king of [Music] I think that's one of the most romantic places in Britain and I'm not surprised that Arthur is supposed to have been conceived in a castle here the trouble is those dramatic ruins over there of thirteenth century and of nothing whatsoever to do with Arthur or with Camelot King Arthur first became associated with King a jewel when the author Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote a version of a legend in which King Arthur is born here the Earl of Cornwall decided to build an Arthurian style castle on the headland tourists have been coming here ever since to catch a glimpse of camel however the Dark Age story of Kim Cattrall is far more exciting excavations here have shed new light on Britain's ancient contacts with the rest of the world Charles Commerce explained this is the classic way to exceed two approaches because we've got the island we've got that neck there and you can see most of the important parts we see the top four summit there in the early 1980s that was a fairly dramatic fire and the hill of the top the plateau caught fire the grass burnt even the roots Berg we then had a unique opportunity to examine two or three acres we found that the talk possibly bear was covered with the remains the footing as a little Hut's 20 or 30 rectilinear buildings we brought and these were all many more we now know that those weather we've investigated 10% of the top of the island we found that the pottery although Bert was still recognizable as opposed to have an imported pottery something had been taking place at the top for a big scale at the precise location where writers imagined a Dark Age king being born modern archaeology had found the remains of a large settlement dated to the middle of the dark ages and this was not all trampled amongst the remains of the buildings with thousands of shares of intriguing pottery the finds are extraordinary because there were large quantities of wheel made none of this was the same as we get in Great Britain and none of it was anything that could conceivably have been produced here in post-remand times archaeologists thought that the pottery looked Mediterranean origin but to be certain they had it analyzed by David Williams at Southampton University what I did with colleagues is to make a thin section of part of the actual pot stick it on to a glass slide and grind it down so it will terribly thin when you put it under the microscope you can actually see the minerals and the rock fragments in the clay of the vessel and they will actually reflect what type of geological area that they came from so if I look through this that sties have got in there lots of white bits I think yeah three sort of pinky things that's right that's certain time that isn't a common mineral at all we do get examples of serpentine run the Mediterranean in western Cyprus and they also occur just across the coast and southern Turkey there's a whole string of kilns round there when we compare the Tintagel pottery and it's almost a dead ringer David discovered but the Tintagel pottery had been made in one of a series of enormous kiln sites in southern Turkey so much pottery was produced at these sites but it still lies in huge piles by the side of the road today [Music] these are thick sturdy vessels that were made for the buffeting of a sea transportation they're very heavy indeed these heavy-duty pots were used for transporting goods such as olive oil and wine around the Mediterranean the ship that visited tin tangel may well have started from Turkey had to pick up further cargoes table where my Cassius jars the class to the Peloponnese becomes more Emperor and then to Carthage where possibly it picked up of African olive oil and for plus the African and tableware and from there possibly through the Straits of Gibraltar to contention the big containers they're really the coca-cola tins of their period if that's turning up until ouch all these things they've last forever the first time some idiot drops it ecstatic humans say this is a group of pottery from the Mediterranean which got here in some such period as 532 560 Britain was at the edge of a vast trade network driven by Constantinople for new powerhouse of the ancient world power shifted to Constantinople modern-day Istanbul after Rome was sacked by the barbarians in 410 the Eastern Empire continued to be run here for a further thousand years but what brought these Mediterranean traders to Britain what did we have to offer them a discovery in Devon in 1995 provided a clue divers looking for the remains of a galleon came across a most unusual thing this ashtray here was mistaken as the entrance to Plymouth Sound and then they'd see this great big expanse of water and of course you've got this hidden wreath of rocks and he hit that log I mean we've had it [Music] the first two divers came up to the surface big smiles from ear to ear with these tin ingots Shelley miss yes Puritan when we have them analyzed they analyzed them at 99.9% pure tin and this is a clue that they are very old one theories it was a boat anchored out there and we're ferrying them out and they turned over on the reef Tinh had been a British export since prehistoric times it was known to the Romans as the British metal is a spot Byzantium traders were coming to collect from Tintagel [Music] if you control a large area you let it be known that by mid-summer the tribute of entering force is X blocks of kin and you collected others and this is something which would be extremely exchangeable in terms of Mediterranean good is the tenth of the divers five may a few meters away from a beach which is yielded some intriguing remains coastal erosion has revealed harm where meat had being caught could these be connected to the pin track Sam Turner is advised to start excavating well as several cars eroding from the click it's like and known about since the 1960's been monitored since and the erosions got really quite bad recently and in fact you can see some of the charcoal knees products here in the face of the sand cliff blackadeshi aerial top the charcoal yeah yeah big lumps of charcoal and that's part of a heart which extends sort of five or six feet across this area and I mean there's more than just charcoal down I mean I'm looking down here look there what's that it looks like a bit of bone there's bone from various species here some of the boners clearly been butchered on the site yeah what's going on there right on the seashore it must have signed to do with it this is probably some kind of seasonal settlement associated with activity that was going on here probably trading activity and we know that imported pottery from the Mediterranean has been found at this site with these kind of features this is the kind of trading activity we know is going on all around the sufis Peninsula at the time it's Mediterranean pottery why is it being used on the port I mean you don't get champagne bottles being opened in the Port of London do you when that happens somewhere else certainly I think that this activity must be associated with the social elite these presumably would be the people who are here undertaking trade using it as a meeting place to meet and exchange news and ideas Sam's discoveries were not unique all along the coast archaeologists are beginning to find evidence for more of this elaborate activity on this shoreline alone 500 sheds of pottery and 10 feasting sites have been found these have were the remains of what can only be described as beach parties held on the occasion of visits for Mediterranean traders such festivities indicate there was more to this Mediterranean contact than the straightforward exchange of tin for wine [Music] then we replace different aspects of our lives into clearly labeled box were praying religions policy but in the past these partitions didn't exist so I don't suppose that the Mediterranean and British traders were there just to exchange good [Music] in speech markets what to do with something altogether more profound the ceremonial exchange of the lethal idea and some archaeologists even believe that these ceremonies were politically driven in the fifth century the Byzantine Emperor Justinian the first organized an attempt to reconquer the Western Roman Empire this program of the conquest was accompanied by a diplomatic initiative a charm offensive to try to get local elites across Western Europe on board one area where such elites existed within West of Britain and it's possible but what we see as trade between the Byzantine world and the British West was in fact diplomacy between Constantinople and the British Kings who ruled that area whether or not these traders are on a political mission I am certain that this contact was never purely commercial for trade networks established between Britain and Byzantium provided a basis for the transmission of spiritual and intellectual idea their bringing with them a whole range of new ideas archaeology can't show us that archaeology and history and language between them can infer its existence and the pure archaeology the dirt archeology of pots shows us one method by which it could have come so yes there is a trading ideas the Byzantine merchant did not fail halfway across the known world to visit a deteriorating island they came to an economically independent country whose people have goods and ideas to share with the rest of the world but what were these I guess there was one more step in the pottery story that would reveal the words of a Dark Age civilization hidden distinction very little written material survives from the 5th and 6th centuries who Britain for a long time this was taken as proof that these were illiterate uneducated times in actual fact nothing could be further from the truth [Music] Dark Age Britain was a time of intellectual as well as economic advance a single shared of Mediterranean Potter identical to the Tintagel material was recently found on the remote island called off the south coast of Wales Cordy has been a holy Island for hundreds of years it still houses a monastery today Jonathan wooden showed me around the only people are found here that where you find one this doubt has got to be more Eastern ceramics we're turning up here represent a period when the East is interested in the West ascending trade missions diplomatic missions whatever it may be but Eastern people are turning up in Celtic Britain and they're expecting to find people who are essentially like them descendants of Romans who know the same language as the same rituals the same basic cultural ideas Cordy was part of the early monastic movement which arrived in Britain with the pottery on boats from the Mediterranean well the monastic movement arrives at the same time as the departure of Roman rule in the East it was already playing a part in providing a new leadership almost a new focus of leadership in a changing society and I'm sure it was much the same here people took it up with great enthusiasm as an alternative to the more settled or urban Christianity of the Roman world dozens of monasteries sprung up in Britain in the Dark Age period and they produced a new class of learning monk there is one historical source for Dark Age Britain written by a monk named Gil dass in the sixth century about a hundred years after the departure of the Romans it's an extraordinary a rousing account of this country's history it was written in high grade and rather flowery latin it was clearly intended for a sophisticated and literate audience because it's peppered with classical references Guild s walls for the preeminent theologian of monasticism in his era the great founder of Irish monasteries on the continent actually cites him as someone that the Pope ought to have read in writing to the Pope but as any old Pope Gregory the Great the most monastic Pope really is first millennium he is very much a figure who is known all over western europe a world that can produce a guild as is the learning world in close connection with a wider intellectual a wider religious community we certainly isn't a unique figure is unique in fact our records but that's more tilting more about our records and it does about the time guild ass and men like you we're not isolated monks hidden away from reality but scholars in touch with the intellectual and religious ideas of their time we see a Britain and in contact with the rest of the world it's a normal process of contact it's not just one Eastern missionary turning up in an odd place I think we have to start thinking about it now is the sort of much more global thing I think finds and places like tint agile advanced them or on a scale now that make it unlikely that there's just one or two ships but more fines are turning up every year and I think in time we will have a much clearer picture of the scale and the importance of these contacts they're more or less contacts had escaped history so that's an example of archaeology has really told you something you just simply didn't know before literacy was not confined to the monastic elite in Dark Age Britain called the island had one more secret to give up in the form of an ancient stone inscribed in Latin with the sign of the Cross I asked from all those walking there that they pray for the soul from within of Cadogan this is rhythmic syllabic and onik verse and it is by centuries the oldest these people are using the meters that become the standard fare of every subsequent European literature is not dark age it is not illiterate stones like the one in Kolding have been found scattered across Western Britain [Music] these inscribed stones provide clear evidence for a highly literate society in darkness there are memorials written not by kings or priests but by ordinary people committing their thoughts to stay for centuries these inscriptions have been dismissed as a clumsy scrolling of a semi-literate society [Music] in actual fact they give us unique insight into the ideas that was structuring early British thought [Music] the job of deciphering these ancient messages have been the work of David Howard editor of the Latin medieval dictionary in Oxford we're coming into the oldest part of them oddly and library and what we see here is an embodiment in stone of the view of the universe that our ancestors had adopted from antiquity seven liberal arts the human construct of language grammar rhetoric and logic and the divine hard science all of them mathematical arithmetic is static number music is moving number astronomy geometry David believes that the structures which still shape learning today were first formulated in the dark ages was it some form of intellectual opposition and structured way they thought it was a cooperation a combination you have the School of Languages at the same door as school of geometry and arithmetic and over there the school of astronomy in the same door as a school of rhetoric it was a cooperation a combination the human arts with divine mathematical art you need both you cannot have one without the other during the sixth century modern Europe is invented and it's invented here inside Britain what we have is both this highly polished rhetorical eternity from Gilda's 130 years after the departure of the legions and these stone inscriptions of the inscriptions have looked like ropey odd Latin prose because they are in fact verse nobody read them aloud to see that they go Dumpty Humpty Dumpty it's just there you see it once you see it it transforms your view of what you're reading and it even more seriously transforms view the society from which this emerged some of these stone inscriptions contain hidden layers of meaning an inscription reads Carosi as he Crockett in Hoch Canarias laughs Adam Carosi as here lies in this a heap of stones straightforward but if you read it backwards it reads um Lapidus Gary Cohn hook in yucca dtu's a scar which is a faultless dactylic hexameter that's classical Latin classical Latin poetry but read backwards and if we return to the sprang forward carouses inscription and count at intervals of seven letters we find the name of the woman who designed this which is viola you're vert and voila and settlers look in peace for the awesome engine to the judgment Oh Sancta Simone Moliere geeky akkad quaver dammit asama conics beaver teasing al diva a most holy woman here lies who was the most beloved wife of beaver teasers in morals disciplined and for wisdom than gold and precious stones this woman was better now she is the most holy most beloved wife of a bishop you've said there are thousands of these Dark Age prescriptions that does rather imply that there were an awful lot of regions some of these inscriptions are on hillsides in deepest Brittani on they imply that there is a large class large enough numbers to make this worthwhile these islands are the focus for the real survival of Latin if you imagine that at the time of the departure of the legions the Brits are the only people in Europe would carry on writing very high-level literary latin and the reason this remained pure was that these were the only people in europe who did not speak a romance mother tongue there was less linguistic interference from one to the other so they learned Latin by the book rather like Salman Rushdie learning English by the book and then writing very high level literary language and the Brits are the only people in Europe who do this are we looking at a sense for a renaissance to occur you have to have a dark age and I don't think the Dark Age ever existed what I see is continuity in the intellectual life the fall of Rome in 410 what caused the withdrawal of the legions from Britain is a finite historical moment with great ramifications and they're serious and catastrophic and people have just supposed but that was what happened to Roman Britain but it didn't this is the only place that did not happen so in other words instead of turning the lights out do you actually think that the lights were turned up brighter this is the only place in which the lights were turned up right [Music] but only had Britain survived the Roman withdraw refashioning towns and resurrecting trade Li she had started to lay the foundation for an intellectually exciting future I started this journey with the mythical figure of Arthur looming in the background a reminder of a lack of real evidence we had for the Dark Ages I ain't it believing that I'd really found my camera this period had given birth to myths and legends as magical as that of Earth because this really was an extraordinary creative time our third maybe historical fiction but he is put in a real historical situation in order to crystallize it there becomes a person round whom these myths gather and I don't mean myths as lies this imagined Golden Age did have a real solid foundation and that's Camelot I own belief what it's worth is that there wasn't after that he was I'm a local war leader door took place in the north of Britain Arthur could have been one of many strong leaders in this turbulent society perhaps he was one of the tough soldiers on Hadrian's Wall who took advantage of a crumbling government maybe he was a romanized sophisticate who helped restructure towns like ROC city in order to carry on living a civilized life it could have been a merchant made good one of the southwestern elite with a bountiful Mediterranean link for part of the monastic elite of the West well versed in Latin and a Holy Light in looking for Arthur I have found a world far more exciting and far more real than any romantic tale of knights and shining our fees were the real men and women of Arthur's Britain but this world could not last forever the Roman pound of Brock City where archaeologists have found such remarkable evidence for Dark Age survival and rebuilding did eventually collapse by the seventh century a pagan ruler known as PEMDAS overwhelmed the time and its inhabitants this town's fate was sealed so if ever an Arthur was required it was then it was but he wasn't there is fantastic early Welsh crowns talk about Arthur like figures they talk about this period but they're actually been written in the eighth or ninth century and one can imagine this sort of sense that if only there was someone who could come and help us if only there was someone who could fight off these these oppressors and I think that that's what this is all about Arthur is all about this is wish this nostalgia for a past that never actually happened but the only if it had they would have turned it all back and it would if they would have kept their kingdom whether or not they had an Arthur to protect them the inhabitants of rock SATA abandoned their town in the seventh century changes which have been happening elsewhere in Britain had finally overtaken them it was a revolutionary tide which came not from the hills and mountains of Wales in the West but from the flat fertile plains of eastern England the end Rock Sita was the beginning of a new chapter in Britain's history the anglo-saxon invasion [Music]

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

Views: 1,220,106

Rating: 4.8214965 out of 5

Keywords: King Arthur, 2017 documentary, Full length Documentaries, Documentary Movies - Topic, Documentary, documentary history, stories, History, history documentary, real, Channel 4 documentary, Britain A.D, Archaeology, Francis Pryor, BBC documentary, Roman occupation, Anglo Saxons, Full Documentary, TV Shows - Topic, Documentaries, Roman rule

Id: 3f21eVcY3pw

Length: 48min 45sec (2925 seconds)

Published: Mon May 15 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/bibib0i]

The Dark Ages is really only appropriate for continental Western Europe, overrun by Germanic tribes.