Meet the Ancestors

In January last year,

deep inside the limestone rocks of the Yorkshire Dales,

cave divers, Andrew Goddard and Phil Murphy,

were exploring the narrow and boulder-choked passages

of a little-known underground river.

When they surfaced in an uncharted chamber,

they thought they were the first to set foot in these caves.

But they were soon to discover otherwise.

As the divers progressed deeper into the cave,

wherever they looked, there were bones. But how old were they?

Even more remarkable, a set of bare human footprints

in the soft clay floor of the cave.

By pure chance,

the divers had stumbled upon an ancient burial site

and one of the most important cave finds this century.

Those bones turned out to be 3,500 years old.

It's an amazing find,

and means that the cave's probably a burial site

belonging to our Bronze Age ancestors.

So, this morning, I'm on my way to meet the team

who are going to explore the site.

That was quite a drive! Hello. Hi, Phil Murphy. Pleased to meet you.

Hi, Julian, Andrew Goddard. Pleased to meet you.

So you're the two that found the cave?

That's right. Do you reckon we're going to find a way in? No problem!

As an archaeologist, I've always been fascinated

by how much you can tell about our past from a few scattered remains.

In this programme and the coming series,

I shall be joining in excavations of burials across the British Isles,

and finding out more about our ancestors.

I'll be talking to specialists,

trying to discover who these people were,

and when and how they died.

Excellente.

At the end of each programme,

with the help of experts in facial reconstruction,

we'll come face-to-face with one of our ancestors.

Back in the Yorkshire Dales, the team was heading into the hills.

Their first task is to find an alternative way into the cave

that doesn't involve dangerous water-filled tunnels.

Heading the team is one of Britain's leading cave archaeologists -

Andrew Chamberlain from Sheffield University.

Our prehistoric ancestors couldn't have potholed into the cave,

so there must have been another entrance.

Could one of these depressions on the hillside be the way in?

There are several of these in the neighbourhood.

We don't want to dig the wrong one.

This is why we're using the radio location device,

to try and find exactly where we are.

Andy and Phil have volunteered to dive back into the cave

with a small radio transmitter.

We hope this will guide us to a suitable spot on the hillside

where we can find a way into the cave.

On the surface, Bob's location device

can pinpoint the exact location of the divers,

even if they're deep underground.

The divers have to work their way

through 120 metres of narrow, water-filled passages

before they re-emerge into air.

From here, they climb up a steep, rocky slope up into the burial cave.

TRANSMITTER BEEPS

That's right, then it dips off...

BEEPING CONTINUES

..and it comes back.

So, that's the spot?

That's the spot - they're directly below that, yes.

Andy and Phil are now deep in the cave.

They think they've found the original entrance,

but it's now completely choked with huge boulders.

OK, Bob. What do you want us to do next?

You can move three metres south.

Bob wants the divers to move

towards one of the depressions in the hillside.

It looks quite shallow.

HE-L-L-OO!

They can hear us! They can...?! What, they can hear us?

Hello-o! Can you hear him? Yes, I can hear him.

Hello?

Sounds like I can hear Julian up there.

Not very loud, but I can definitely hear him.

Can you hear me?

THEY HOWL

HE LAUGHS

What's going on, Julian?

Um, well, the cave's called the Wolves' Den, isn't it?

They're howling like wolves down there!

So I think that means they've found the place!

OK, lads. That's it. You can come out. We'll see you on the surface.

This was amazing luck.

Andy and Phil had found a shaft that led almost up to the surface.

So all we have to do now is clear the rocks blocking the entrance.

For that job, Andrew and his team needed some heavy equipment.

There are lots of caves in the area,

some of which contained human burials,

but many were excavated over a century ago

and very little survives today.

That's why this cave, inaccessible until now, could be so special.

GENERATOR WHIRRS

Now we've got the generator rigged up,

we can see how far this hole really does go.

JULIAN LAUGHS Can you tell us that, Julian?

Um...

It's a bit deeper than we thought!

The floor of the cave is about nine metres down -

that's nearly 30 feet from where we're standing at the moment.

And I reckon... Hang on, put that tape there again.

There's only about two or three feet of clay and rock

that we're standing on! Yes.

There's not much to go and a long way to the bottom of the cave!

But it's incredible.

While the team carried on digging,

I went off to find where Bronze Age people in this area lived.

I found some clues in the next valley,

where tumbled stone walls marked the remains of a prehistoric settlement.

This may not look much, but it's the remains of a prehistoric hut.

I'm sitting on what remains of the back wall,

level floor in front of me,

and there is the entrance, pointing out to the valley bottom.

It was probably a small farmstead, with pens for sheep and cattle.

Perhaps home to two or three families.

And in this wonderfully sheltered spot,

they would have been able to have grown their crops of wheat and barley.

Back at the site, they'd got a grip

on the last rock blocking the entrance.

But it was vital this boulder didn't crash onto the cave floor,

destroying any remains that lay below.

More tension! More tension!

Steady. Steady.

MOTOR REVS

THEY CHEER AND APPLAUD

After three intense days of digging and heaving great rocks around,

the entrance was finally clear.

Oh!

Very snug!

Lower me away!

Right.

As an archaeologist, I've spent a fair bit of my working life

digging in holes in the ground.

But this will be the first time I've gone underground

in search of ancient remains.

I felt an enormous sense of anticipation and excitement

as I climbed down the flimsy wire ladder.

Andrew had gone ahead, and helped me to land on a platform

the team had built at the top of the steep rocky slope.

Now, don't step backwards. No. Good God, that's the...?

It's scree.

This is the scree running down to the flooded passage,

which is where the cavers initially came up into this cave.

I see what they mean about it being steep!

And I can see bones on the...

'When we turned away from the slope the divers had clambered up,

'we saw human bones laid out in front of us.'

Everywhere you look, there's more bone!

I mean, there's some under here.

'They looked so fresh and remarkably well-preserved.'

Is this how they were left 3,500 years ago?

I think so, yes. Yes.

I've never...

In all the years I've been an archaeologist,

I never believed that I could come and see something like this!

I'm sort of genuinely quite speechless!

Underneath the platform, there's one... Crikey, yes.

..right under here.

Are these all human? These are all human.

OK, so what's that bone, Andrew? That's a humerus.

Right. So there's a humerus there. That's another arm bone.

That's a radius.

Then that's a tibia. Yep.

What about that one under there? Another tibia.

So these are long bones from both the arm and the leg...

that are all stacked up in a neat little pile. That's right.

If you look at this bone here, we have another human humerus -

it's missing its head. You can see the epiphysis is missing.

It's the end of the bone.

It's not fused, the person died before the age at which that fuses,

which is in the late teenage years.

So we can be sure this is a separate individual from this one here.

So there's the remains of more than one person buried in here. Right.

Hang on, that must be human.

That's right. It's very recognisable as a human jaw.

Two left premolars and the first molar is very worn,

which is typical of the jaws of the early population.

The team are mapping the entire cave.

In a small space near the boulder slope

are parts of three individuals -

a woman, a man and a child aged about 15.

The floor of the cave has partly collapsed,

taking some of their bones tumbling down the slope

towards the underground river.

The wolf bones litter every part of the cave floor.

Animal-bone specialist Roz Cord was very excited by the evidence

that wolves had been using the cave as a den.

It's quite remarkable. There's a few passages there,

and they have wolves in them.

Not live ones. No, not live ones! We have canid bones.

And it looks like it's typical denning activity.

What do you mean?

Denning activity is when they go into a cave, a hole underground

where they can have their cubs without being disturbed.

There's adult wolves down there and there's juvenile wolves down there.