Secrets of the Stone Age - First Season

'New York...

..the face of civilisation for the western world.'

'During the 20thC the values of big city life became a touchstone...

..for the best and worst of which our times are capable.'

'But what are the roots of civilisation?'

'History says it all started with ancient Egypt.'

'From the Greeks and Romans onwards,

..all cultures have bent the knee to the pharaohs.'

'But I believe the real origins of civilisation...

..go back further than we can imagine.'

100,000 years ago, here in Central Park...

..there was a glacier so big it could have buried these skyscrapers.

The rocks bear the scars of that Ice Age glacier.

Even then there were people on earth that looked and thought just like us.

I believe that the Stone Age holds lessons for us today...

..not from the books of history, but from the real lives of our ancestors.

'I'm an anthropologist.'

'I've always been interested in what makes people tick.'

'At school, I was taught that prehistoric people were almost subhuman...

..savages in animal skins.'

'Now I know that's nonsense they were as gifted as we are.'

Look at this handaxe it's 250,000 years old.

It's been shaped and designed to do a simple job and do it well.

But the person who made this...

..was concerned that the fossil shell was kept intact.

This axe is all they left us...

..but to me it says as much as a letter or a poem.

There's a sense of beauty here...

..and perhaps curiosity about why things are as they are.

Recorded history goes back 5,000 years, but what happened before that?

We're going on a journey through two million years of prehistory...

..to give a voice to our Stone Age ancestors.

'Conventional history begins in the Middle East...

..with the dawn of writing around 3100BC.'

'That's where we'll start too...

..but our journey will take us not forwards, but back in time.'

'Architecture, mathematics, medicine and writing -

..the benchmarks of civilisation.'

'In Egypt and Mesopotamia...

..they seem to appear out of thin air some 5,000 years ago.'

'And wherever there's a vacuum, whacky theories become best sellers,

..that the Egyptians got their knowledge from visiting astronauts or some vanished super race.'

'The truth is simple but breathtaking.'

'The knowledge of the Egyptians came from people who'd lived before them.'

'The evolution of the pyramids gives a small clue to the bigger picture.'

'But we have to know how to read the evidence of the stones.'

We need to look beneath the surface.

And we can do that because the facing of the pyramids has crumbled away.

The structure underneath reveals the true background to the civilisation of ancient Egypt.

'Beneath the surface of the Great Pyramid...

..the layers of its construction are obvious.'

'Going back 100 years, we find where that building technique came from.'

This is the Step Pyramid at the City of the Dead at Saqqara.

Just as this was the forerunner of the Great Pyramid...

..it too had something which came before it.

'200 years earlier we find the basic building block for them all.'

This is the foundation upon which all pyramids were built.

The mestaba - or bench tomb - appears from the First Dynasty.

Without it, none of the architectural wonders of Egypt would be possible.

The tombs of the pharaohs didn't appear overnight...

..they developed over hundreds of years.

'And what's true of the pyramids applies to all Egyptian civilisation'

'It sits at the junction of many layers of knowledge, stretching through prehistory.'

It wasn't aliens or superbeings from the lost continent of Atlantis..

..that helped the Egyptians build the pyramids.

They built on the knowledge of earlier generations.

To find the roots of human ingenuity, we need to embark on a journey that begins at the dawn of history..

..and takes us back through an immeasurable expanse of time.

'From their beginnings in Africa, humankind had been on the move.'

'For two million years they'd been hunters and gatherers...

..taking food where they found it, making their bed where they chose.'

'But 10,000 years ago there was a revolution.'

'Our journey covers the 5,000 years of the Neolithic or New Stone Age.'

'This was when prehistoric people began to settle and to farm.'

'The repercussions of that still affect us all.'

'Before this time, people didn't keep animals or grow crops.'

'They ate wild plants and berries...

..and their meat came from whatever they could kill.'

'But as they settled down, they cultivated crops and bred livestock.'

'Cereal and milk, bacon and eggs, bread and butter...

..are all the gifts of our Neolithic ancestors.'

'They were innovators.'

'In England, their genius produced Stonehenge.'

'Long before the Egyptians...

..they'd built monuments that challenge us even today.'

'These are the oldest stone buildings in the world...

..prehistoric temples on the Mediterranean islands of Malta and Gozo.'

'This is the first landfall in our journey back through time.'

'The first settlers made the 50-mile crossing from Sicily around 5000BC.'

'They led the Egyptians in seafaring, and they had agriculture too.'

'They brought cattle, sheep and seeds for wheat and barley.'

'This was to be their new world.'

'Today Malta is one of the most densely populated spaces in Europe.'

'Then, it was covered in undergrowth and was home to red deer and bear.'

'That's all gone.'

'Erosion has laid bare the limestone, the island's bedrock.'

'It's from this limestone that the settlers built their temples...

..using massive stones weighing up to 50 tonnes each.'

'They were building 1,000 years before the Egyptians...

..but matched them for sophistication without the use of any metal tools.'

'For pickaxes they used antlers...

..and for other implements they imported hard stone...

flints from Sicily and greenstone axeheads all the way from the Alps.'

'They combined genius with resourcefulness...

..but are so mysterious that we only know them as the temple builders.'

How could Neolithic people with stone tools and bone-and-antler picks

..make megalithic buildings on this scale?

The answer is that they also had technical know-how.

One of their ingenious ideas was using round stones...

..putting the slabs on top to move them around.

With rollers you can only go in straight lines...

..whereas they were able to manoeuvre in all kinds of ways.

By this method they were able to move even the biggest stones.

By using this technique, huge megaliths like this could be put up.

You can see there's a socket.

One of these round stones would have been in here.

This stone shows us the true height of the temple...

..as it must have been in ancient times.

What we see here is only half the story.

The plasterwork, painting and woodwork haven't survived.

The fact that this much has survived...

..is a testimony to the master masons of prehistory.

'Temples like this one at Hagar Qim..

..were three times higher than the remains we see today.'

'5,000 years of exposure leaves a lot to the imagination.'

Some stones do look distinctly phallic.

But it's an occupational hazard among

archaeologists and anthropologists. Because they do tend to see willies everywhere!

'The ruins are the bare bones of a culture that was alive and vibrant.'

'Traces of pigment and plaster show the interior walls were decorated...

..with carvings of plants, animals and spirals.'

'Their religion was enduring.'

'They were building and using these sacred places for 2,000 years.'

The temple was for the whole community, but it's not that simple.

These postholes reveal the true story.

It's obvious that a screen was put across here...

..so that the community outside could not see the secret rites...

..being performed by the priesthood in the holy of holies.

'And who were these secret ceremonies intended for?'

This is one big earth mother!

'These people prayed not to God the Father, but God the Mother...

..giver of food - the earth herself.'

'Her fertility meant the difference between feast and famine.'

'Everything had a purpose, which was embodied in their architecture.'

One has to remove from one's mind...

..the idea that these were primitive people.

We have here what I like to think is an architect's drawing.

It's not exactly computer generated, but it's sophisticated for its time.

We have a clear indication of the language of the architecture...

..which these people were using.

The plan seems to have been a relationship with the earth goddess.

There's the idea of walking into the body.

Look at these walls, the way the stones are put together...

..the sheer size of these slabs.

And the precision of the doorway carved out of one monolithic stone.

This is extremely sophisticated.

It's magnificent, it's tactile.

As an architect, I want to touch these walls...

..and listen to the wisdom of these stones.

One can almost have an energy of learning coming back...

something which we've lost in time.

'It's not time that separates us from the temple builders, it's the way we look at the world.'

'Their limestone figurines show people we could almost recognise.'

'These two fat ladies on a couch seem like a celebration of life.'

'But we are not like them.'

'In their world, no trace has been found of weapons or warfare.'

'The key to their mind set is in the architecture.'

'It's ruled not by straight lines, but by curves.'

'The shape of the temples reflects that of the earth goddess...

..and her endless cycle of birth, life, death and rebirth.'

'The earth goddess guided the temple builders in life...

..and in death she embraced them.'

'Beneath the modern streets...

..a chance discovery revealed the depth of their ancient beliefs.'

At the turn of the century, the whole thing collapsed.

'What came to light was a mass burial chamber - a hypogeum.'

'The goddess is sleeping, her skirts gathered round her...

..an image of serenity and peace.'

'It took 1,100 years to make this place...

..2,000 tonnes of rock chiselled out by hand.'

'It can hold 6,000 bodies...

..and mirrors the temples above ground in every detail.'

'You can almost feel the spirit of the temple builders down here.'

'Red spirals on the tomb walls make it feel like a giant birth canal.'

'In this carved chamber, the Oracle Room...

..every sound seems to anticipate a response from the goddess.'

We're in the so-called Oracle Room.

There's these remarkable remains of red ochre on the ceiling.

What's particularly curious...

..is that the natural echoes have been contrived in certain areas.

There seems to have been a conscious effort to produce certain effects...

..particularly with the carving out of this niche.

What we have here is ultimate space within the womb of Mother Earth.

How would you go about producing something like this today?

We don't have the spirit.

We might have the technology, but we don't have the soul.

'The temple builders lives are as tantalising and elusive...

..as the echoes in their tomb.'

'What were people at that time like as flesh and blood?'

'I've always dreamed of meeting our Stone Age ancestors face to face.'