Dan Snow's History Hit - 1. Story of England: Stone Age to Roman Days

Episode Date: May 21, 2023

Dan begins his ultimate historical road trip at the mysterious plinths at Stonehenge in the South-West of England. Dan uncovers how the stones arrived in Salisbury all the way from Western Wales and unravels the ancient burial practices of England’s early humans with English Heritage curator Heather Sabire. He hears how England was once populated by rhinos and elephants from the Natural History Museum’s Professor Chris Stringer. Passing through Old Sarum, the site of an Iron Age hillfort, Dan muses over what we have to thank those Latin invaders for in our daily lives, from our transport network to our baths. The day draws to a close as Dan prepares for the invasion of William the Conqueror at Pevensey, 100 miles east down England’s south coast.Produced by James Hickmann and Mariana Des Forges. Edit and sound design by Dougal Patmore and artwork by Teet OttinYou can take part in our listener survey here.If you want to get in touch with the podcast, you can email us at [e-mail], we'd love to hear from you!

When I was a child, we did history every weekend. We went to battlefields and cathedrals and museums and grand houses. And it was all so different. There is something about England's history which is so rich, so vibrant, so busy. And while we've destroyed far too much, we've preserved so many wonderful sites and places and objects. For millennia, the sea has connected us to the world. And for all those millennia, humans have been arriving on England's shores. They've come from across Europe.

They've walked across. They've taken small boats across the North Sea and the Channel. They've walked across, they've taken small boats across the North Sea and the Channel. They've been carrying tools and treasures, ideas, weapons and diseases. Our history has been a never-ceasing drama that's just unfolded as all these invaders and immigrants and visitors reacted with what they found here. reacted with what they found here. Fusing together, driving out, overcoming, cooperating, either way, shaping this country into what it is today.

From our landscape, character, language, industries, laws, religions, and settlements. And that's why I love history. I spent my whole life studying history and presenting TV shows and podcasts about the history of England. And every day I come across something new I've got to wrap my head around. From the turbulent kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxon period, the Lancastrians, Yorkists, Roundhead Royalists, several kings called George, there's a lot to get through. But on Dan Snow's

history hit, we like to go big. And so, in our most ambitious series yet, I'm embarking on a 500-mile road trip through England's countryside and history, and I'm taking you along for the ride. Over the next five days we'll be dropping jam-packed episodes that take you through one million years of English history. Well some of the most fascinating bits of it anyway as I visit English heritage sites across the country. heritage sites across the country. This is episode one of Dan Snow's Story of England, Stone Age to Roman Days. It's sometime between 950,000 and 850,000 years ago, and a family of early humans carefully picked their way through the storm-lashed mudflats on what is now England's east coast.

Made up of men, women and children, they are amongst the earliest known settlers of England. They are pioneers who've travelled here from the European continent when it's still connected to the British Isles. It's cold, much colder than England today. They wear heavy animal skins for warmth. They carry basic tools and weapons for hunting. They keep their eyes peeled for prowling hyenas and other predators. They are hunter-gatherers, travelling light, always on the move. Roaming the land, looking for animals to hunt or carcasses to scavenge.

The tall pine forests in the distance provide shelter and sanctuary for animals like elk, horses and mammoths. The children pick through the undergrowth as they move, looking for edible roots and vegetation. There weren't many creature comforts for them. This was a time of survival. Dramatic changes in climate across the millennia broke apart and reshaped the land. Water and ice contoured the hills and mountains, carving out rivers and coastlines. The inhabitants of this land were forced to adapt or flee, and many of them would vanish altogether.

Archaeologists think there may have been as many as ten waves of human occupation in England, where people migrated to the region only to be forced out again by extreme changes in the environment. But they've left fascinating and revealing traces across the landscape, if you know where to look. And so, almost a million years later, archaeologists found the fossilised footprints of these early humans on a beach in what is now Habsburg, Norfolk. We don't know exactly which species of human they belonged to, but they could be members

of the species Homo antisessor who inhabited parts of Europe in this period. It's a remarkable discovery that confirms a human presence in England about 500,000 years earlier than the oldest fossil evidence suggests. Professor Chris Stringer from the Natural History Museum in London is the person to ask about the history of humans in England. Chris, when does it all begin? When do humans arrive here? Well, on the evidence we've got, we think around 900,000 years. Of course, that may not be the oldest, but that's the oldest evidence we can point to at the moment. And have they been in England consistently since 900,000 years, or do they come and go in waves? Well, they certainly come and go, yes. So the big story is that obviously Britain is hit regularly by these

kind of really cold spells, the so-called ice ages, and there are a number of those. Every time those happened, we think everyone in Britain either got out or died out. So that happened repeatedly, and we can probably map at the moment 11 different occupations of Britain over that 900,000 years, and 10 of them disappeared or were unsuccessful, and we're in the 11th one. And are they all the same types of human beings? I know there's been a few different versions of us over the last million years. Well, that's right, yes.

So for some of them we're not sure because we don't have fossil evidence, we only have stone tools, but we think there were probably at least four human species involved. So this species we know about from Spain, Homo antisessor, pioneer man, may have been the first one we know of. Then there was a species around called Homo heidelbergensis. Then we get to the Neanderthals coming and going. And finally, there's us Homo sapiens. So there's at least probably four species, maybe more. Now, Chris, this sounds a little unscientific. Asking for a friend, could you or I make babies with one of these different types of human or are they sufficiently

different to us that would be impossible? Well, we don't know for some of them, but we can say yes for the Neanderthals because, of course, you and I have probably got around 2% Neanderthal DNA in our genomes. So there was interbreeding with Neanderthals maybe 50 or 60,000 years ago, and some of that DNA lives on today. For the other earlier species, we don't have the evidence to say whether it was possible or not. It's incredible to think that if they were completely different to us, that they've just died out, that that evolutionary branch has ended in failure. Well, that's right yes of course some of these might be our ancestors i mean directly in an evolutionary sense and possibly as we've mentioned

in a dna sense so even neanderthals even though physically they disappeared a bit of them in a sense lives on in us for those earlier species so some people think homomo antiseso could have been the ancestor 850,000 years ago of us today and of the Neanderthals. So in that sense, it carried on evolving and became us. That's one possibility. But yes, you're right. In other cases, these species simply died out. And we're the only survivors left of all these evolutionary experiments in how to be human. Okay, don't screw it up, listeners.

Just try not to screw it up. Let's keep going. For the vast majority of that 900,000 years, when there was some form of human feet walking on this scepter dial, the vast majority, it was hunter-gathering, right? Talk to me about how our species basically has lived for the majority of our lifespan. Yes, absolutely right. So hunter-gatherers, so they're living off the land. They're not producing their own crops. They're not domesticating animals. They're living off what they can find. So they're collecting plant resources. They are hunting and gathering, scavenging. They probably wouldn't have turned their nose up at a freshly dead carcass either. Later on, we get evidence of fishing. So these people were living off the land and

the waters to an extent. And that's how humanity was for most of its history, of course. You mentioned waters. These footprints we found are in the coast of Norfolk. Are we a coastal, are we a riverine, are we a littoral species, do you think? Well, water would always have been important, of course. Certainly, you know, we can't survive without water supplies. And those water sources would also be sources for other animals. So if you're a hunter, for example, being near a lake or river means you're also going to get opportunities to hunt the animals that are coming to that river to drink or possibly try and cross the river. So they'll be important in the landscape. So humans have always been not too far away from water.

Of course, there are some people who think that it was very important, that it was, in a sense, part of our evolution that we waded in the water. I think that's unlikely. But I think water was always important to us. There always had to be sources nearby. What about tools? Again, for the majority of that time, we're talking stone tools, animal bones. Is that how we're hunting things, making things, building things? Yes. So in the early stages, the evidence we've got almost entirely is stone because stone survives well through history.

So people were going to sources of rocks and often in Britain, it's flintint which is an excellent source to make a sharp cutting edge you you just break off some flakes and you've got a beautiful cutting edge there from flint so flint and rocks similar to that were the preferred resource to make stone tools but also they must have been using other materials so wood for example would have been important but generally the evidence has disappeared although we've got one exceptional artifact found at Clacton over a hundred years ago it's the end of a wooden spear made of yew wood and that survived 400,000 years and we've got it on show in our exhibition at the Natural History Museum so that was pretty certainly a spear maybe a thrusting spear for stabbing into an animal but wood would have been important but generally the evidence disappears so it's generally stone tools and the early ones are very simple so the ones we have

at Hayesborough in Norfolk for example the site where we've got these footprints around 900,000 years old the stone tools they were very simple people were just knocking off flakes to make a simple cutting edge later on we get to about 500,000 years ago. And at Boxgrove in Sussex, there's wonderful evidence of these hand axe tools, beautifully shaped, often almond shaped or teardrop shaped. And these were tools that certainly were good for butchery. And we find them there alongside the bones of animals like deer, horse, even rhinoceros were being butchered at Boxgrove about 500,000 years ago. Later on, things get even more sophisticated.

We get stone tools that are spear points, stone tools that are tools for boring in skins to make clothing, and so on. Let's stick with the 500,000 years. This is a new type of human now. Is this the Heidelbergensis that you mentioned? Yes. Well, we've been looking at the bones. So from Boxgrove, we've got only a shin bone and a couple of teeth, so it's not a lot to go on. It was a big-sized individual from the shin bone, very big-sized individual. We think it could be Homo heidelbergensis, but we'd like to

have more of it to really be sure. And at that time, there's evidence that the Neanderthals may have even been beginning their evolution. And so it's possible that the Neanderthals may have even been beginning their evolution. And so it's possible that the Boxcrow material could even be the beginning of the Neanderthal line. And we pick that up more strongly at Swanscombe. So Swanscombe on the south side of the River Thames today, dating from around 400,000 years ago. There, thousands of these hand axe tools have been excavated from the river gravels. And we know that there were humans there, not only only from the stone tools but we got the back of a

skull the swanscombe skull and that has got some features that we find later on in neanderthals so it's possible even 400 000 years ago we had an early neanderthal living in britain we then get a period of glaciation again so the humans seem to disappear for a bit after that, do they? That's right, yes. There was a really big glaciation about 450,000 years ago. It's called the Anglian glaciation in Britain. That ice sheet covered two thirds of Britain then. It pushed its way all the way down to just north of London and it actually pushed the River Thames, we think, close to its present course. So we think the Thames was flowing across Norfolk at the time of Hayesborough. And those footprints were probably made by people walking along what was the River Thames when it was up in Norfolk. And then this huge ice sheet pushed it south. And that's when we pick up the Swanscombe deposits made by the River Thames when it had been pushed down to its present course close to London.

And yes, the rice ages again. So the people who were at Swanscombe probably died out and Britain had to be repopulated about 300,000 years ago. We don't have any fossil humans from that time. And then when we get to about 200,000 years ago, people are back again. And we have some teeth from a site in North Wales called Pontnewydd, which are pretty certainly neanderthal teeth they show neanderthal features around 200 thousand years ago i love the idea that humans just keep pushing up pushing north as soon as the climate lets them and they're settling and moving and following the animals in its kind of cyclical fashion that's right yes but the remarkable thing is when we get to 125,000 years ago, the animals are back. It's nice and warm. It's even a bit warmer than the present day.

We've got elephants and rhinoceroses. We've even got hippos swimming in the River Thames 125,000 years ago, and their bones have been found under the buildings at Trafalgar Square. So that's a really nice time, you think, for humans. But the amazing thing is, we can't find any evidence of humans at that time period. And we think that Britain was an island then, much as it is today. And those animals managed to get across. But for some reason, the Neanderthals who were in Europe, and certainly in France at that time, they didn't have boats. And when the channel formed, it must have formed so quickly that the Neanderthals couldn't get across. So these animals were living in splendid isolation on the British Isles without any humans hunting them, we think.

Nice for them. Speaking of forming quickly, there is a theory, isn't there now, that the channel, it was a kind of catastrophic event, maybe even a tsunami that separated Britain from the continent. The channel probably formed in several stages, the evidence suggests. But yeah, you're right that this big angling glaciation I mentioned around 450,000 years ago, a huge lake formed in what's now the North Sea. And that lake had a huge amount of water in it, fresh water. And eventually it overflowed and cut through the chalk ridge that was joining us to France so where the cliffs of Dover are today imagine that chalk extending in a huge ridge

across to France and Belgium and so on this lake overflowed and began to cut through that ridge in a catastrophic event as you say it would have been a huge cut through and waterfalls would have then started to fill the basin of where the English Channel was and it starts to form cutting these deep channels that's the beginning of the formation of the English Channel and then this was repeated so each time it got cold later on the sea level fell and then it rose again and this continued to erode that channel until we get to 125,000 years ago when we have a geographical situation similar to the present day. When do modern human beings appear on the scene? We think our lineage evolved in Africa over hundreds of thousands of years,

but in terms of getting to Britain, the oldest evidence we have at the moment is a little bit of jawbone from Kent's cabin in Devon and that jawbone is probably a bit over 40,000 years old. So that's the oldest evidence we've got for Britain. They might have been here a bit earlier, but the Neanderthals seem to have been well in occupation for most of the time before that. So we've got a site in Norfolk called Linford, where there are beautiful little hand axe tools, we assume made by Neanderthals because that's the association in the rest of Europe, and they're inside mammoth skeletons. So there were mammoths around in Norfolk 60,000 years ago, and Neanderthals were there probably hunting them

or possibly scavenging dead mammoths at Linford. So the Neanderthals are here until at least 45,000 years ago. And then you get a period of time when we know in Europe, the Neanderthals were being replaced by Homo sapiens, but with a bit of interbreeding. And we've got some teeth from La Cot de Sombrella in Jersey, and that cave site, there were Neanderthals, or what we thought were Neanderthals living there, maybe 45,000 years ago. But we've restudied the teeth and intriguingly, they actually show mixed features of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens. So that might even be evidence of a population with kind of part Neanderthal and part Homo sapiens heritage. So we're restudying

those and it would be great if we could get DNA from those teeth. So that's something we're looking at for the future. That's really exciting. How are Homo sapiens different? I mean, there are scientific differences in the bones and teeth you're looking at, but do you see differences in their material culture? Well, by the time we get to Homo sapiens 30,000 years ago, there are quite big differences. So these people have very sophisticated toolkits. They've got tools made not only of stone, but also of bone and antler. So these materials were all around earlier humans, but they're quite difficult to work. So people before that didn't make great use of bone and antler and ivory from elephants or mammoths.

But by the time we get to Homo sapiens 30,000 years ago, yes, they're making a whole range of sophisticated tools. And of course, they're using those tools we think to make complex objects they're making quite sophisticated clothing so they can stand the cold better than neanderthals could and also they're using it for artwork of course so we've got these wonderful painted caves in europe there are even a few engravings up in creswell crags where you've got caves which you've got engravings done about 15,000 years ago of the animals that were around and so these people were artistically expressive we know there are musical instruments

from some of these sites flutes which have been replicated and play beautifully so the behavior is really essentially as we have today so that complexity was there 30 or 40,000 years ago we now know that the Neanderthals were actually not that different. They were doing a lot of these things as well, as we find more evidence about them. And they probably were also marking the cave walls where they lived, but probably in a simpler way. We don't think Neanderthals were painting animals and so on, but they were certainly making marks on the cave walls and doing little engravings. I think there's a hashtag engraved on a rocky cave floor in Gibraltar, for example, that we think was done by a Neanderthal.

We're better at art, lads. That's good. It makes me feel oddly proud. You know, it seems like climate is a huge part of this story. We are so, like any animal, we're so vulnerable. We're so dependent on the ground, the air, the wind, the sun, the water around us. Yes, absolutely. So climate has been a big part of the story of early humans in Britain. So Britain was on the edge of the inhabited world, of course, in the old Stone Age. So people coming here were coming to an extreme environment, if you like. And Britain

is really affected by the climate and by the Atlantic Ocean. If the Atlantic Ocean is relatively warm, as it is today, we have ice-free seas and we have quite mild winters and so on. But when it got really cold, when the Atlantic became cold, when the Gulf Stream switched off, because today that brings warm water up from the Gulf of Mexico, when that switched off, we got the weather that our latitude, if you like, should have. So we're about the same position as

Labrador in terms of latitude. And of course, Labrador has frozen seas. It has snow on the ground for months. So that is the situation that we would have without the Gulf Stream. And in the ice ages, that was the situation in Britain. So we go from an extreme where in an interglacial, we might have elephants and rhinos and hippopotamuses and things around even. And in the cold, the really coldest stages, we've got permafrost. We've got tundra, like you have in northern Siberia. And then we have things like woolly mammoths, woolly rhinos, reindeer, muskox, even possibly

polar bears here at times. So we think when it got that cold, everyone died out in Britain. I mean, they could have been here maybe in the summers coming across just for the summer, but they're at such low visibility, we don't pick up their presence in the archaeological record. So for all intents and purposes, when it got really cold, everyone disappeared from Britain. Even Homo sapiens, we don't think, survived here in any numbers during the coldest peak of the last ice age, which was about 20,000, 25,000 years ago.

We think even the Homo sapiens died out and people came back about 15,000 years ago when it began to warm up. This is my story of England, back in a moment. From biblical fame to its fabled great walls, Babylon was home to kings, conquerors and wonders of the ancient world. But what do we actually know about this legendary city? And how much is still shrouded in mystery? Join me, Tristan Hughes, every Sunday throughout May on the Ancients as we delve into the story of Babylon. We'll be covering topics varying from the King Nebuchadnezzar II and how

he forged a massive Babylonian empire. We'll be exploring the mystery of the hanging gardens of Babylon, looking at world-renowned objects such as the Cyrus Cylinder, and also looking at Babylon in the aftermath of one of the most well-known conquerors in the whole of history, Babylon after Alexander the Great. That's all to come this May on The Ancients every Sunday. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research from the greatest millennium in human history.

We're talking Vikings, Normans, Kings and Popes, who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions, and crusades. Find out who we really were

by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts. So early humans had now been in England for nearly a million years. We've had dramatic climate changes and the epic migrations of mysterious peoples, changes which we've pieced together from 150 years of painstaking excavation. This all takes us to the end of the Stone Age and the birth of the next age of human settlement, the Bronze Age. Beginning in England around 2000 BC, the Bronze Age earned its name because the incredible invention of metalwork,

with skilfully crafted and embellished items such as jewellery, weapons and tools, demonstrating just how sophisticated the culture was. The innovation of farming had also been introduced to England and dramatically reshaped human society and what it was capable of. England and dramatically reshaped human society and what it was capable of. Communities could now support larger numbers, allowing them to spread further and faster and begin adopting specialisms. In the early Bronze Age, communities were still moving around, but they'd started to build monuments and burial sites that allowed them to gather, worship and celebrate. The most famous and impressive of these is of course Stonehenge. And so this late Stone Age, early Bronze Age site is the perfect place to start my gallivant through England. It's time for me and Team History Hit to hit the road. I'm driving up to Stonehenge now. This's been closed the site's all been heavily reorganized

big visitor center's been erected as befits this astonishing world heritage site probably something we should get out of the way here clear the air is there was a report in the times newspaper the times london the paper of record last last August that I thought Stonehenge was overrated. That was from remarks taken out of context when I was drinking heavily on a podcast years ago. So I just want to make it clear, I love Stonehenge. It's flipping fabulous. It's up there with the pyramids and its antiquity and its impact.

And any suggestion that it's just a bunch of old stones that we know nothing about is a disgrace. I've just come over the brow of a little rise and there beneath me are those stones, the most famous stone circle on earth. This is what it's all about, folks. Blue skies, sun is out. We've got special permission by English Heritage to be here when there's no one about.

And I'm going to get up close to the stones. Look at that. I'm just, well, about 50 metres away now, heading towards the stones. And for those of you who can't immediately picture Stonehenge in the mind's eye, it is a stone circle probably two circles of gigantic stones some with lintels some now freestanding some fallen over there's a chalk outer circle as well but this is just a part by the way of a amazing landscape here a landscape that stretches over the horizon, in which there was building towards the end of the Stone Age, and then massive interest here in the Bronze Age and Iron Ages as well, burial sites, all sorts of features. The first features here we think are about 8,500 to 7,000

BC, so a huge period, we can't be certain. And then there was building in the centuries that followed, and the role of Stone Anne seems to have changed and adapted expanded over the centuries we think it was probably a communal gathering point a place to mark the passing of time to celebrate the solstice that religious ceremonial site and now I'm right up next to the stones

and you just get this extraordinary sense of peace and timelessness from these stones and these big ones now that I'm right up next to they were put in and you just get this extraordinary sense of peace and timelessness from these stones. And these big ones now that I'm right up next to, they were put in, we think, about 2500 BC. The biggest stones are known as the Sarsen stones. I love that. They weigh upwards of, well, staggering 25 tonnes, as much as seven metres tall. And if I look to the northeast between those two Sarsens,

that is where the sun rises on the solstice and why everyone goes bonkers everyone still comes here on the solstice as we can imagine people have been doing it for centuries millennia just give you a sense of the size of these stone blocks the average stone block used to construct the pyramids at Giza is about two and a half tons so just imagine the effort required of getting these sarsens. We now know they're from the Marlborough Downs, about 20 miles away. The archaeologists and the geologists have proved that. And we don't know how they did it.

We actually did. It's extraordinary. Now, the smaller stones, although they're still pretty big, are called blue stones. And they probably came all the way from the Preseli Hills in southwest Wales. Imagine that. And again, we just don't know how they were transported that far. You know, when you're lucky enough to stand among the stones like this up close, an experience most people don't get, and I'm very, very grateful for it, you're almost overwhelmed by the scale and the antiquity of this monument.

The idea that people have been coming here for generations because of the way that this place and these stones makes them feel, a way that allows us to connect with something much bigger than ourselves. I'm not a religious person, but when my wife and I experienced a really traumatic moment in our family story, we lost a very late pregnancy about 10, 15 years ago now, and we came to Stonehenge, and it brought us great peace. It was something we didn't even really discuss it or talk about it.

We just hopped in the car and thought we'd come here. And I'm sure that we were just two of hundreds of thousands, millions of people over the millennia that have come here to heal, to think, to learn, to wonder. In so many ways, it's the wellspring of our national story, of our beliefs and the forming of our character. And you also feel, as you do when you enter a towering cathedral, you think, wow, but why? The effort required to move these gigantic stones and align them like this. It must have been so important to people and it's so tantalising and mysterious.

Maybe that's what people love about this place too is we just have no idea why they did it or what it means. Other than that key alignment, the celestial alignment, the solstice alignment is so suggestive that that was such an important part of their calendar. I'm now walking through the stones. I'm just looking for Heather Sabir, who's a curator here at Stonehenge she's going to tell me more about the historic site. Heather very good to see you again. And you welcome back to Stonehenge. Thank you for having us back. Every time I come stand amongst the stones as we are now you're

just overwhelmed. What is it do you think? What is the magical? Is it antiquity? Is it longevity? Is it just the sheer artistry of it or is it the fact it's a mystery why are we so moved when we stand here i think it's a bit of all of that but it is spectacular i mean i think some people when they first come they wonder what all the fuss is about but once they get to understand how unique it is and it's mainly the construction features in particular that make it unique for this period but also the size of the stones and there is definitely something magical about this place at the risk of sounding corny and there's an acoustic quality inside the stones even though some of them are on the ground and in today's world of global tourism i think a lot of people

are fascinated by it and want to come and see what it's all about why have you devoted your professional life to it what gets you up here again again there is something about it definitely and people say well why is it here and you can almost see it's on a sort of terrace we're in this glacial landscape that's got these sort of soft rolling valleys and hills, nothing too dramatic. But the people that built it chose this space for a reason. And I think it is because the ridges around it all look into it. And when you are here and standing in the middle, and I have the privilege of being

in here quite a lot checking things, there's definitely an atmosphere. And we're fairly sure it was built as a ceremonial spiritual place there's nobody living here it's you know where people have come to worship if you want to use that word but um and tell me about the structures because we've got the famous stones but we've also got the earthworks around it what came first the first thing that happens is that they when they've chosen the space they cut a bank in a ditch. So they dig out a ditch and throw up a bank. And that would have been gleaming white on the landscape because we're on chalk here.

And that's one of the few bits of Stonehenge that we actually have a secure date on. It's been about 50% excavated, but most of it not under modern conditions, unfortunately. excavated but most of it not under modern conditions unfortunately but they literally would have dug out that ditch with antler picks and a scapula from animals which would have given you a broad digging tool and they left some of them just lying about the antler picks but they also deposited some of them we think in a ceremonial way when they had created the circle and we were able to get radiocarbon data on those antler picks of around about 3000 BC. So that's 5000 years ago. There's then, we think, a little bit of time before the stone part of Stonehenge comes in.

And that's the bit that everybody thinks about Stonehenge. Before that happens, though, inside the banking ditch, there are a series of 56 pits inside the bank that go all around the circle and they're named after an antiquarian course to john aubrey who lived locally and he was famously out riding one afternoon apparently he didn't have very good health and he came to wiltshire to recuperate and it was an autumn afternoon and he could see the shadows of these pits inside the bank. And they turned out to be pits that hold cremation burials. So Stonehenge is definitely a place of burial. And it's still the largest prehistoric cremation known in Britain.

And then we get a wooden structure. Yes, at that time, we think there were some wooden posts in what we now call the entrance and some small stones and then there's a series of two concentric circles of post holes known as the x and y holes would you believe from previous excavations and we're really not absolutely sure what they were about but they could have held timber posts before the stones actually came in and let's talk about those stones because they endure you've got is it two concentric circles one of the huge sarsens the which are very dense sandstone known as silk and that's the outer circle that's joined by lintels and then inside we've got a horseshoe of trilithons and that's just the greek word for three stones so we've got a horseshoe of trilithons, and that's just the Greek word for three stones. So we've got two uprights and a lintel,

and that's the sort of classic symbol of Stonehenge, the trilithon. And there's a horseshoe, and they're actually much, much taller than the eye to circle. You need to go a little way to the south and look back to really realise just how tall they are. And they are facing down the solstice alignment so the whole thing is built

on a solar alignment to reflect the midsummer sunrise and the midwinter sunset then there are smaller stones known as blue stones and that's an antiquarian term they're not blue but they well they have a bluey tinge when it's really wet, but they're rhyolites and diorites. And we know they came from the Preseli Hills in West Wales, which is a very long way away. It's over 250 miles away. So that sort of gives an indication of the sort of level of communication those people must have been having it wasn't just the local thing because the giant sarsens have come from way to the north on the marlborough dynas as well and brought to this place for whatever reason there is a thought that the blue stones might have had healing qualities they certainly have acoustic qualities they ring if you sit in the quarry and knock them together they have a sort

of ring to them and they're almost more likesized. And we think that there was at least one concentric circle of those. Unfortunately, what we've got left is very ruinous. And there's a thought that there was a horseshoe shape of blue stones as well as a circle. And there may have been a second circle as well. But unpicking all of that is very tricky unless we start more modern excavations and we don't know how the big stones in particular over 20 tons from 20 miles away we don't really know exactly how they would have got them here well sheer people power is certainly is one thing i think julian richards did an estimation that it would take about 200 people to actually drag one of them quite a few days.

And I think the thought now is that they might have been on sort of almost like sledges rather than just on rollers. But it would have taken a huge human effort and somebody giving the orders, I reckon. I'd have rather been given the orders than doing the pulling, I must say. And then reorganisations, rearrangements. It's a constantly evolving site absolutely and i think it would have evolved over generations they might have run out of steam at certain times these people were farming and growing their own food but it could be that they'd had a bad

cycle of crops or whatever or all sorts of factors could have happened and then maybe they started again with more people coming in from the West. There were certain elements that we will never know for sure. Do we know for sure what it was for? I mean, the solar alignment's important, right? Solstice alignment. Is that what we think it's for? Yeah, well, it's certainly built to reflect a solar alignment.

And what we do know is nobody's living here. So it's more a place of ceremony. We think people would have gathered here to perform ceremonies. And, you know, those people were just like us. They needed somewhere to live. They needed food. You know, they cared about family. When you've done all that, then it's the sort of spiritual side that we think Stonehenge was probably a manifestation of, if you like.

But what do we know about that? I mean first of all people we're talking about over thousands of years aren't we probably different belief systems and it always changes but from the archaeology from what you've seen these stones what can you tell about our ancient ancestors from looking at this? Well one thing we do know is that this is not a tomb we've got the cremation burials from before the stones came in, but the stones are not a tomb. There are Neolithic burial tombs in the landscape, and we know that Neolithic people very much respected their ancestors, and they put them in stone chambers,

and they almost curated the bones and put more people in over generations. Not in all of them it's been proved now that some of them are actually short-lived but that's not happening here i think we can learn a certain amount from the layouts and imagine the choreography if i can use that word of what was happening there is slightly later than the main sarsons come in there is what we call the avenue which is a long way that goes down to the valley just in front of us goes right up over the far ridge king barrow ridge and then drops down to the river avon and we think that people probably came up the river and possibly

that's how the blue stones arrived and would have made their way up this almost like a ceremonial avenue and from the arrangement of the stones you know you can imagine pilgrims whatever you like to call them or people that lived locally coming up and a bit like a modern cathedral or church or any place of worship in other faiths as well i wonder whether it was more important to be inside or outside where they're just elite people inside so I think we can think all this through. But of course, it's very, very hard to say for sure. I look at this and think, what is it about us humans that we're so desperate to do these things that can take lifetimes and absorb all our money and energy?

Why do you think they were so moved to build this? I think it's a communal activity. And I think we imagine that it was also related to them having a successful economy in that they knew where their next meal was coming from. They were farmers and they probably had enough success in their farming to be able to do other things if you like, you know, like decorate pots and make jewellery and all the rest of it and possibly to take part in communal acts as well there are sites in Scotland for example

where they've proved that long linear monuments were built in stages and they wonder whether it was seasonal that everyone came together to actually build something I mean I think in the modern day we come together don't we for all sorts of reasons but maybe not for constructing

huge edifices i'm not sure thank you heather it's always so good to be here thank you thank you by this stage settlers had spread from here what is now southern england all the way right to the north of the british isles humans were here to stay. They were planted firmly. It was no longer just a kind of wild, marginal, isolated rock in the Atlantic. Settlers were here and they were thriving. They built their homes, they built communities. In fact, news of their abundance reached across the ocean. It reached the ears of the mighty Roman army in Gaul and now England was in their sights. Well as I walk away from Stonehenge now, it's a little bit sad but I'm excited to

continue the next leg of the journey. I'm going to move forward. I'm going to dash through to the arrival of the Romans. In particular 43 AD the Romans were coming and what is now England was about to change forever. I'm going to jump in the car now and I'm actually going to use what is still one of Rome's greatest legacies on this island. That's its road network

because it's a few miles south of here. There's a place that we now call Old Sarum that began life as an Iron Age hill fort but soon became a Roman stronghold. It's on the way. It's a great site, and it's the perfect place to tell us about what life was like day to day under the Romans, and also how Roman culture mixed with that of the British societies that existed here previously. And it's not that far, so I'm going to pop in and have a quick look. I'm Matt Lewis.

And I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research. From the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings. Normans. Kings and popes. Who were rarely the best of friends.

Murder. Rebellions. And crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit. Wherever you get your podcasts. So I've just left the main road heading into Salisbury. I've turned up into the Old Sarum Fort

and it's great this road because this is, follows the original trackway into this Iron Age hill fort. You go through one huge dike really, a big rampart, then a ditch in the middle and then another second mighty rampart, like waves of landscape. And then I'm in, I'm into the big central area. This is Old Sarum. let's park up here go and have a look

the center of Old Sarum is a huge grassy area it's got these big iron age ramparts all around it and at the moment it's spring and there's just buttercups everywhere it's a carpet of yellow a smattering of daisies absolutely beautiful blue sky and it looks so rural there's dog walkers and families lying around it's hard to believe this was a kind of central node of Iron Age England this was the England that Julius Caesar found when he arrived he headed to England having defeated the Gauls he conquered much of what is now France, and in 55 and 54 BC he led these remarkable military expeditions to Britain, he crossed the ocean, but actually it was that crossing frankly was the biggest achievement because he didn't leave a lasting conquest here, all he managed to do was really extract some annual tributes, he got the people here to pay him some money and pay lip

service to the idea of kind of Roman supremacy perhaps but in reality southern Britain remained outside the Roman Empire. It was an important intelligence gathering exercise he learned a lot about the people that lived here and that did help pave the way for the proper Roman conquest which was under Emperor Claudius in 43 AD. His legions tore through southern Britain they arrived here pretty quickly and really within five years it was only Devon Cornwall, parts of Wales, northwest England and Scotland that remained unconquered on the island. Now the place I'm at now is Old Sarum, it's just such a fantastic example of a place where you can see the layers of England's history, and you get to see how the cultures of the invaders were kind of mixed together. So there was an Iron Age hill fort here, these huge ramparts stretching off, enclosing a gigantic area in the middle,

big enough really for a tribe to live in, to have their livestock in, to survive in, in the event of a siege there would have been wooden palisades on top of these ramparts. But it was probably built maybe around 400 BC, but we're not sure. But shortly after the invasion we do know that the Romans captured this and they turned it into a garrison. They made it one of their regional strong points and they called it Sorvio Dunum. It sat at a junction of key Roman roads. I'm looking behind me now to the north and east I can see beautiful straight road there. Still a road after all these years. Three Roman roads heading from central and eastern England,

and then they went down a kind of web of roads from here to the south coast and to the southwest. So this was a node of Roman military might. It's important for transport, for trade, for travel, and it was a centre of Romanitas. And we know two large settlements soon sprang up outside the fort's walls. Sadly, nothing really remains that you can see of these Roman sites, Roman settlements. The massive Iron Age ramparts remain. Everything else is underground or it's been mined by subsequent house builders and that material's moved elsewhere.

But the fact these settlements existed really do illustrate one of Rome's great legacies in this part of the world, in England, and that's urban living. In the pre-Roman world, most people had been farmers. If settlements had existed, they weren't kind of administrative centres, cultural centres in quite the same way. But after they arrived, they brought the idea of towns and cities with them. And people started to cluster around key locations, like here at Old Sarum. They lived in closer proximity to the fort here in much greater numbers than ever before in a much more settled way. New architectural styles are introduced, you get sanitation, you get plumbing famously, you get underfloor heating which for some reason it's taken about 2,000 years to reintroduce to Britain and citizens would have

learned Latin here, they adopted Roman clothes, built townhouses. The countryside around would have been scattered with classic villas. And as the Roman presence was embedded, they brought the key features of governance to Britain, a central government. There was taxation. They minted coins. They built a massive network of roads and of defensive features as well.

And these roads, well, as I said earlier, we are literally still using today. The armies that have marched across this island for the last 2,000 years have marched on the lines of the Roman roads. They brought their culture, they brought their religion, they brought their animals. Rabbits were also introduced by the Romans, bizarrely, which allows the gag, ben-fur. They also bought less benign things than rabbits, such as gladiatorial contests, but also, you know, you've got your bathhouses, you've got your advertising.

You've got it all. You've got the whole panoply of Roman life. And Roman Britain was a successful entity. It went from being a kind of frontier state to being settled, to being quite pacified. And it seems that the fort here at Old Sarum was sort of done away with eventually and you get a Romano-British temple built on the site here. Religion was such a great way in which you can see Roman and British cultures combining,

intertwining. They both, well initially the Romans had a polytheistic religion like the ancient Britons which meant that they could absorb existing gods, existing places of worship. They were repurposed. Places like Stonehenge, places like Old Sarum, they could be repurposed as part of a new kind of Romano-British religion. Ultimately, the Romans did introduce Christianity to Britain, which would, in the end, after a few ups and downs, replace the old pagan belief systems. It's hard to know what the fate of Old Turin was at the end of the Roman period. We do know that it was built on by the Anglo-Saxons, the societies, the kingdoms that came after the Romans and we also know that by the time of William the Conqueror it had become a really important settlement and he made a beeline for this place. Again it was seen as a central

strategic hub of this part of England. it was seen as a central strategic hub of this part of England. He transformed this into a really powerful military stronghold. He made, and I'm looking at the middle of this site now, there is a massive hill, but it is an entirely artificial one. It's built by human, probably unwilling English hands. It's a motte, a Motte and Bailey Castle,

and it would have had a huge Norman castle on top of this motte, so it's an artificial hill, and there was a huge Norman castle on top of this Mott so it's an artificial hill and there was a big Norman castle top very little of which survives but it was an important place because we know that here in 1086 William the Conqueror gathered the most powerful men in the country to come pay homage to him and we also know there was here that the Doomsday Book was collated so this was a beating heart of the Norman administration of occupied England was a beating heart of the Norman administration of occupied England. Well, the sun is getting low now. I'm sitting at Old Sarum, surrounded by such a nice scene.

There's just families having picnics, people having a few drinks, looking out over the astonishing view. Really, this has been a reminder that there's so much we don't know about England's prehistory. But sites like this, sites like Stonehenge, they just help us to get a little glimpse of the societies and peoples that lived on this land up until and through the Roman period. And one thing is really for sure, and that's the Romans had a massive impact on England. The England that emerged from hundreds of years of Roman occupation was very different to the land they'd arrived in. From the governance, to the architecture, to the entertainment,

to the religious ideas, to the physical geography of towns and roads, the Romans had truly transformed Britain. Well, actually I can't sit here all night because the team and I have now got a long drive to the east. We're going to head down a few Roman roads, in fact. We're going to go to Pevensey, where William the Conqueror arrived on these shores fatefully in the autumn of 1066. I'm going to tell the next part of England's story there. I'm going to talk about the early medieval period from the great kings of the Anglo-Saxon through the Norman conquest

right into the high medieval period. We'll talk about the devastating Black Death that wiped out around a third or a half of this country's population.

Make sure you check out your feed for the next instalment of my story of England. Dropping in the Dan Snow's history hit feed tomorrow. Subscribe

and tell your friends, folks. Send it to the old WhatsApp group. They're going to love it. And don't forget, you can email us on ds.hh at historyhit.com. We'd love to hear from you. We've taken a few of your suggestions in. We've got a few little dog legs, so thanks for that.

And also, if you want to see some pictures of these places on the journey, please head to my Instagram account at thehistoryguy for some behind-the-scenes action and some really beautiful photographs, if I don't say so myself. The producers of this episode are James Hickman and Marianna Desforges, and it was edited by Dougal Patmore. Me and the team will see you bright and breezy

tomorrow. Bye! you you