All language subtitles for Stories From the Stone Age - 3 - Waves of Change

4 ,000 years ago, the last Stone Age
hunter -gatherers are living on the

coastlines of Europe.

Now they will disappear from the human
journey.

Warriors are taking possession of the
land.

For this child, these are the creatures
of a dream.

She has never seen a horse.

She's never heard of a wagon with
wheels.

The strangers make an offering to the
ocean.

The arrow is tipped with bronze.

But their most powerful weapon is not
metal.

It's an idea.

They have a chief and they do what they
are told.

Now they cover Europe with a new
society.

It will create our world with all its
glory and its horror.

The end of the Stone Age hunter
-gatherers started 3 ,000 years earlier,

away in the Middle East.

The Jordan Valley is one of the driest
places on Earth.

Here, 6 ,000 years ago, was the
extraordinary town of Tulalit Rasul.

This one area...

was the birthplace of key ideas that
would eventually take Western

beyond the Stone Age.

What made the way of life in this area
so special?

And why was it so creative?

The Rasoolians had placed themselves
directly on a major trade route.

It linked two great emerging powers.

the Sumerians on the Euphrates, and the
Egyptians on the Nile.

Rakul and its world is a lifetime's
passion for archaeologist Stephen Burke.

He's been digging the Jordan Valley for
the last 20 years.

He's looking for evidence of something
very unusual, a complex Stone Age

economy.

What we have here is what seems pretty
likely to be an olive plantation.

And, I mean, the excavations showed us
the remains of houses, storerooms,

grindstones, and an analysis of the
material from the area, pretty clearly

of it or more is the remains of olives,
smashed up olive pips, pieces of

olive...

and what it seems to be fairly clearly
is an olive oil processing station, or

indeed an olive processing station, and
we're probably looking at a grove here

of olives all the way up the side of the
hill.

Burke believed the cultivation of olives
was the crucial spark for growth.

Once, a network of olive groves and
fields for crops spread out many

from Rasool across the hills and into
the valley.

We could say that these people are the
first grade horticulturalists.

Not only are they developing olive,
they're developing date and they're

developing fig. These are the first
great tree farmers in history.

These pioneering orchardists kept the
town going for 1 ,500 years of

and trade.

And they left large amounts of rubbish.

It's all Burke and his team needs to
reconstruct their way of life.

At its peak, Rasool was home to
thousands of people.

This was a big town for the time.

To visitors, it must have been the
height of sophistication.

Its crowded streets bustled with life
and new colour, a place of energy and

ideas.

Imports came from as far away as Yemen
in the south and Afghanistan in the

Sensual luxuries like perfume and lapis
lazuli.

You could show people your wealth.

This was a place where you could get
ahead, become a person of means.

The goods leaving Rasul were the mass
-produced staple commodities.

like olives, salt and lentils.

Olive oil was squeezed for all it was
worth, used for everything from cooking

lighting the lamps at night.

It was the liquid gold of the Middle
East.

We're talking hundreds of litres of oil.

We're not talking little thimblefuls,
we're not talking tiny vesselfuls, we're

talking industrial -sized vats of oil.

All this locally produced oil and grain
somehow had to be packaged.

It was the Rasoolians who came up with
the answer.

It was brilliant, and everyone would use
it.

They created the mass -produced clay
pot.

dried in a fire.

From beautifully decorated homeware to
crudely made storage jars.

Some were a metre and a half tall.

These artefacts are typical of the
Rasoolian culture.

And this range of artefacts encapsulates
several of the key points of this new

culture and the new way of...

acting economically.

They understood the importance of
converting raw materials into high

products, like milk into butter.

For the first time, we start to see
significant use of dairying, and this

churn is one of the things for producing
butter and labne.

The whole point of it is it's a key
secondary product. Instead of just

the cows and eating the sheep... they
get a secondary product out of them,

particularly into old age. In other
words, these things are an added bonus.

Trade was at the centre of this new way
of life.

They grew to sell.

They used sheep for meat and milk and
then learnt to process the profitable

wool.

One of the accidental bonuses of
changing from linen...

to wool is that wool holds colour, wool
holds dye.

For the first time, you develop a
society that differentiates itself

the way it dresses.

And of course, the more elaborate dyes
are extremely costly.

And if you're rich, in a society that is
pre -literate, the best way to

differentiate yourself is through the
clothes you wear, your physical

appearance.

This is a competitive society,
fashionable and status conscious.

People were calling attention to
themselves as individuals.

Rasool survived on trading food, but
this trade depended on some form of

preservation.

The answer was rare and valuable.

Salt.

Salt is a commodity that is very, very
costly. It's the white gold of

prehistory. And at Rasool, you have the
largest deposits of salt in the entire

southern Levant, right on the doorstep.

The wasteland around Rasool ran down to
the salt -rich waters of the Dead Sea.

The beaches were already an ancient salt
mine.

Salt... made possible the mass
preserving of foods like olives and

Now, they could be traded hundreds of
kilometers to new markets.

With donkeys, they could send large,
heavy loads to their partners as far

as Egypt and Mesopotamia.

Once you produce industrial quantities
of goods, you have to keep track of

For the first time, people aren't
dealing with small amounts of material

they're producing within their household
for use by their household. They're

producing large numbers of goods.

Amazingly, they ran their whole economy
with no money and no written numbers.

When you're trying to work out how These
commodities are to be moved around, and

who is to get them? The beginning of
record keeping is symbolic.

For a measure of grain, you developed a
small symbol.

For a measure of sheep, you developed a
symbol of sheep.

These first tokens are small clay
counters, if you will.

And the earliest records from what we
can tell are records of... Combinations

these tokens kept together, slapped
together in a ball of clay and sealed

the stamp seal of one of the signifying
authorities.

When the goods have been delivered, the
contract is checked by cracking open the

clay balls.

This is the precursor to the
bureaucratic systems of later ages.

The invention of these tokens laid the
very first tentative foundations for

written language.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about
this way of life was a location.

How did they survive in the middle of a
desert?

Everything in the Middle East is about
water.

All agriculture exists only because of
requirements of water. The key issue in

the South Jordan Valley, where Tlaloc
Rasul is located, is that there is very

little rainfall.

To live, flourish and develop a major
complicated society in this part of the

world, you had to add water.

The only way you could add water was
through irrigation.

The Rasulians were extraordinary
pioneers.

Faced with a hostile environment, they
did not surrender.

Instead, they changed it.

They built a whole network of irrigation
channels, crafted to follow the slope

of the hills.

It was an enormous imaginative
achievement.

These canals are many kilometres long.

This is not something that ten men and a
dog do. This is something that

hundreds, if not thousands of people
would have had to do.

For the first time ever, the Rasoolians
brought everyone together on a single

large project.

It's commonly thought that the pyramids
are the first great evidence for complex

society. But at Rasool, 2 ,000 years
before the pyramids, we have clear

of organised society.

In Egypt, the great emphasis is on
irrigation, as though it was unique to

We have the same evidence for
irrigation.

Probably more extensive if it comes to
that. Probably 1 ,000 years earlier than

they have in Egypt.

The system must have been controlled by
local leaders, an elite of families

enriched by trade.

Thousands of workers had to be organised
in a peaceful society.

There's no evidence of armies or squads
of slaves.

So how did the leaders inspire the
ordinary people to follow their plan?

The answer is painted on a wall.

This fresco is now called the Star of
Rasul.

It was found on the wall of a family
shrine.

This motif appears nowhere else.

A central star, glowing with colour.

Groups of masked figures with imaginary
heads.

It's a Stone Age dream.

Using the Rasoolian art, Stephen Burke
formed a picture of the town's social

order.

It was held together by religion.

And this religion had a social purpose.

The priests begin to set themselves off
as something special, something elite.

These people tell you what the gods want
done.

And of course, if they're in the
service... of the great priestly

great agricultural families. These are
the people that allow society to be run

in the way that the powerful families
dictate.

What we're seeing, effectively, is the
transition from personal gods to state

gods, from the god of your home, the god
of your clan, to the god of your city.

In a nutshell... What we think goes on
is that people are able to be mobilised

by their leaders because they believe
that the gods sanction it, the gods will

it, indeed the gods demand it.

Water. was the centre of their lives and
their faith.

Perhaps the star was a vision of order,
where worshippers came together as a

society.

They were united in faith.

Far away in Europe, the Stone Age
farmers were now part of the landscape.

Here, on the Atlantic fringe, the vast
natural world was full of mystery.

People's religion reached out to the
elements.

The sun, moon and stars that shone on
the life -giving earth and water.

They were awed by birth and death.

and the changing seasons.

There were no organized elites.

They lived together in small
communities.

Their beliefs sprang from the meeting of
incoming farmers and local hunter

-gatherers.

These people built a grand project.

Over 2 ,000 years they erected massive
standing stones in forest clearings

across Europe.

Some monuments took generations to
construct.

Later, another wave of incoming farmers
brought in different beliefs.

They smashed the great stones down,
turning them into underground burial

chambers.

Here, each person was laid to rest with
the bones of their ancestors.

They were part of the whole, united in
death.

It's the creation of another world
inside a little hill, it's almost like

fairies, where you bury your ancestors.

And the ancestors are in a different
world and often you approach them

long passage. And this is why these
things are often called passage graves

passage tombs.

Sometimes the passage is aligned on a
shaft of sunlight of the rising

sun at a particular time. time of year,
one of the solstices.

So these are probably things where
rituals take place, particularly at

critical times of year.

The ossuary is the place where the bones
are kept, is a separate chamber

approached by this long passage.

People go in and they commune with the
ancestors.

So you mustn't think of these just as a
repository of bones. They are places of

active worship. In a sense, tomb is the
wrong word to use.

And the rituals, I think, in many cases,
are communicating directly with the

ancestors, probably by using
hallucinatory...

devices and in these altered states of
consciousness they thought that they

communicating directly with the spirits
of their ancestors and a very powerful

set of circumstances you're in in total
darkness at the end of a long tunnel

surrounded by their bones and getting
stoned on whatever it is that you're

you're taking and this must have been an
enormously powerful emotional

experience

braziers with holes in their sides for
burning something that you inhaled, and

it wasn't just for the nice smell, it
was almost certainly something that was

mind -altering substance.

To these people, individuality and death
didn't matter.

It all came to an end, and there are no
surviving

members of this tradition.

People just don't do it anymore.

It was a magnificent experiment, and
then it was over.

Far away, in the Middle East, a
revolution was starting, which would end

vision of community forever.

human identity would never be the same
again.

In the Wadi Hanan in southern Jordan,
green malachite was exposed by flash

flooding in a riverbed.

It's one of the sources of copper.

The thing that's fairly clear about
malachite ore is that there was a lot of

around. In places like Wadi Fainan, it's
one of the predominant rocks. Anyone

that made a fireplace in Wadi Fainan out
of the green rock was going to realise

that this stuff melted at pretty low
temperatures.

And it wouldn't take them too long to
know how to fashion this melted stone

a variety of forms. And better still,
you could do it over and over again.

The miners were inspired by the color.

They ground it into beads for jewelry
without smelting it.

But they had customers from the other
side of the Dead Sea who wanted huge

quantities.

They had a monopoly.

that is the people living in the Be 'er
Sheva Valley, about 150 kilometers from

here over there, on metal production, i
.e. they would send their miners, their

traders over here to procure the ore, to
mine the ore, and then put it on the

donkeys and sort of schlep it back
across the desert to the Be 'er Sheva

These traders had a secret.

The exact way of heating the ore to
create something fabulous.

By superheating with blowpipes, they
created the first true smelted metal.

Copper was used to make everything from
ornaments to daggers.

Not only that.

it could be endlessly recast into other
shapes.

We're actually finding copper objects
abandoned, which is very strange.

Copper crucibles and the nozzles of
bellows, which show us that they're

making those objects on that site. And
they're a long way from any copper.

The nearest copper is over in the Wadi
Arabah in Jordan.

the other side of the Dead Sea and the
other side of the Wadi Araba.

And there we've got people who are
apparently mining and smelting copper.

And there's hardly anybody living there
to use the stuff. So presumably, again,

we've got networks.

And people living in southern Israel
know how to get the materials they need

from people who live in what is today
southern Jordan. And people in southern

Jordan who are sitting on the top of...

Metal resources know that there are
people living over to the west of them

a long way away, several days' walk.

But there's a market, as we would say,
in terms of our modern economics. They

know that there's people over there who
want the stuff.

Smelted copper was the first metal, and
very exotic.

It was a prime trade item, and the prime
traders...

were the Rasulians.

They loved a chance to show off, and
copper could be cast into such wonderful

shapes.

Occasionally, people hid away the kind
of things that they were making, not

the odd act and chisel and mundane,
trivial, everyday implements of that

but really special things.

There's a couple of sites where we now
have the most extraordinary hordes,

extraordinary not just in the volume of
metal and the quality of the technology,

but the quite extraordinary things that
they were making. These are not everyday

objects. It's impossible to work out
what kind of function these objects had.

They seem to be emblems and kind of
symbolic things which were placed on

staff. And we have them simply because
someone wrapped them all up in a reed.

and hid them away in a cave and never
got back to collect them.

There's something desperate about this
hoard.

It was dumped in a cave so deep it would
be hidden for 6 ,000 years.

Rasul was in trouble.

Their powerful neighbours, Egypt and
Mesopotamia, had developed massive

irrigation schemes of their own.

They had their own olives and salt.

Suddenly, they ceased trade with Rasul.

And this wonderfully complex culture
disappeared within a hundred years.

Most of the most brilliant aspects of
the Rasulian culture die with it.

The wall paintings and many of the more
elaborate.

organisational features.

What seems to survive is the new
specialised productive agricultural

Speculation has had it that what we see
is the old elites wedded to the land and

wedded to the old religious values seem
not to survive.

The new elites, perhaps more wedded to
the production of agricultural

and as has been speculated,

As the economy comes into stress, as the
environment collapses, those people

that cleave to the old ideas that the
gods could be made to provide a decent

landscape must have suffered when that
landscape would not respond to repeated

offerings.

Rasool was one of the first great
trading societies.

The survivors took their skills
outwards.

showing how to live by trade rather than
farming.

It was a dazzling idea which moved from
the Middle East towards Europe.

At that time, Europeans were still
living very simply.

They farmed together and grew only what
they needed.

Individual ownership or achievement was
not part of their culture. When they

died, they joined their ancestors in the
communal burial chamber.

But then, a new, mysterious culture
appeared across Europe, with a very

different kind of grave.

Two or three hundred years ago, when
archaeologists first began to excavate,

some of the round burial mounds that are
to be found in places like England or

Scotland or Scandinavia, they discovered
a very characteristic set of grave

goods. There would be a body which was
buried individually, unlike the

collective megalithic stone tombs that
had preceded them. These burial mounds

had people interred as individuals with
all the bones articulated and in place.

And they were buried with their own
personal equipment.

They were buried, for example, with a
drinking cup and with their fighting

equipment.

These graves were called, after their
contents, the graves of the Beaker folk.

The Beaker people were the traders of
Stone Age Europe.

Using packhorses, they brought a new set
of ideas and precious objects.

that turned the place upside down.

They were able to trade, they were able
to organise supplies of things, very

small quantities, we're not talking
about bulk trade, but items that were

precious and were considered highly
desirable and were traded over long

distances. and gave these people an
entry into a wide range of other

The drinking cups perhaps suggest that
there were new things to be drunk, and

it's a very plausible suggestion that
what we're looking at is the first use

fermentation to make alcoholic drinks.

This is a very handsome example of one
of these beakers, a relatively early

and you can see what it is. It's a tall
drinking cup that would have held a

considerable quantity of liquid.

So you can imagine them being used
rather like this, held in two hands, and

possibly parked around between the
participants of a drinking ceremony.

The drinking cups suggest that there
were new things to be drunk.

They made an early form of mead using
honey for drinking rituals.

Fermentation was one of the ways of
showing off your elite status along with

having your elite weaponry traded over
long distances.

So they're all different ways of showing
how you have access to things that

other people can't get.

And what we're really looking at is
people who are rich enough to have

of sugar to provide fermented drinks.

So this is both a drinking vessel and
also a symbol of power, a real symbol of

wealth and the ability to mobilize these
rare, sweet substances which can be

fermented into something even more
precious, that is, the intoxicating

substance, alcohol.

The Beaker people.

brought the spirit of change that shook
the staid old Stone Age life.

They believed much more in the value of
the individual.

They came as traders and stayed to farm,
building their own characteristic

villages.

What's more, they brought the art of
smelting, to the north.

They added a vital secret from Middle
Eastern trading routes.

Mix some tin to copper and you get
bronze.

This process was so important that
smiths had the richest graves.

They were probably clan chiefs.

At the beginning of the Bronze Age, you
can imagine that much of the

metalworking was actually undertaken by
the chiefs themselves.

And we now see this as a rather sort of
banal task that should be undertaken by

workmen or craftsmen, by sort of lower
status people.

But if you think of it as the magical
transformation of one thing into

then it's another way of showing off and
demonstrating your power and your

status and securing your role in
society.

And so it's therefore very
characteristic.

that you find the moulds in rich graves,
in the graves of the chiefs. So the

people who are in charge of society are
in charge of the transformation of oars

into flashing daggers and weapons.

The Bronze Age consists in the
introduction of edge weapons that you

make effectively in stone, daggers that
increasingly get longer and longer and

become swords, spearheads that can be
really effectively fixed on the end of a

long pole.

So the whole nature of armament was
transformed by the introduction of a

effective working metal, bronze.

These weapons exude power.

They are rare and dangerous.

We are seeing the birth of a military
elite with the power to get exactly what

they want.

Yet the weapons rarely show signs of
use.

Perhaps they were purely ceremonial.

These leaders wore breastplates and
decorative metal jewellery, again as

of their wealth.

And they had another power symbol, the
mounted horse.

The pack animal was now being ridden.

The owners powered over everyone else.

They could move fast.

and cover huge distances.

Horses were expensive to keep.

A single horse eats more than a family.

Only the elite could afford to keep
them.

This accumulation of symbols suggests
they were preoccupied with power.

They were developing a new kind of
society with leaders and followers.

The leaders dominated community life.

Most farmers who produced life's basic
necessities were the followers.

This new social dynamic created its own
momentum for change.

With their new wealth, the elite
families could support specialized

They used materials like wood in more
complex ways.

And they learned how to use the most
imaginative innovation of all, the

Well, archaeologists are always being
asked, when was the wheel invented?

And we can now give a rather precise
answer that it was about 5 ,500 years

that it spread.

And these are very simple, solid wooden
wheels.

often turning along with the axle that
made an amazing creaking sound as it

moved slowly through the streets. So
this is not a speed vehicle, but it is

first wheeled vehicle ever seen.

Like bronze, this invention came from
the Middle East.

In a muddy landscape without roads, it
transformed the movement of large loads.

Tray was beginning to move from Europe
back to the Middle East.

It started from the seaweed on the beach
of the Baltic Sea.

It contained the one thing that came
from nowhere else and would go as far as

Egypt.

In the Bronze Age, you have the first
example of a material that travelled all

the way from one sea to the other.

It must have been precious. It must have
been lightweight.

It must have been precious in relation
to its weight. And indeed it was. That

substance is amber.

Legend tells us a river of tears flowed
at the beginning of time into the sea,

turning to amber.

The clear tears of the innocent and the
dark red tainted by the evil and

corrupt.

It's the sap of fossilized pine forests.

They grew when the sea was dry land and
glaciers filled the valleys.

Suppliers of copper and tin moved
northwards and southwards to balance

trade. First of all came amber and later
on all the other forest products.

The daily farming life of the community
was bound by a network of sharing and

obligation.

Milk, grain and labour went back and
forth.

In the give and take, the elites offered
social organisation and protection.

Both safety and danger came from the
armed warrior chief.

Communities expanded their farmlands and
knowledge.

under the faint shadow of violence.

These farmers were now able to grow a
breed of sheep which offered a touch of

luxury.

The fleece was different.

The open, straight fibres of earlier
breeds were now curly and dense.

It is the wool we know today.

To use it, they developed the gentle
craft of spinning.

Clothing could now be much warmer for
this northern climate.

Customers wanted status, so spinners
turned to the expert colour dyers.

They extracted their dyes from plants in
the forest.

These people were healers, whose
knowledge of remedies was the beginning

medicine.

The new soft wools were spun into luxury
clothing.

Beyond the family, they could only be
afforded by the wealthy.

The clothes were so loved, people wore
them into the next world.

They were buried as individuals and took
with them the symbols of their own

identity.

Their clothes and ornaments.

In these magnificent burials, discovered
in Denmark, the dead were placed in oak

coffins hacked from whole tree trunks.

Some of the most spectacular individual
burials that we know come from the

Bronze Age.

We have a sudden window on what life was
like in Bronze Age Europe four

millennia ago.

And we see people buried in woolen
clothing.

It's brown wool, it's very simple, in
many ways it's rustic, but it's the

of sophistication, and probably only
they as the leaders could afford to be

dressed entirely in woolen clothes.

And you see for the first time, in a way
that we can only imagine in other

circumstances, what these people looked
like and how they might have acted.

And we see some specific human
motivations.

There is the chief buried with his long
wooden scabbard and poking out of it the

top of a metal weapon.

And you pull it out, and it's not the
sword that you expected, it's a little

dagger. And he's been buried there with
the appropriate piece of weaponry, but

his family must have known it was only a
little dagger.

The coffin was placed on stones above
the ground.

These funerals of the powerful were
elaborate ceremonies.

Later, a great mound of earth would be
built as a tomb.

It was there in memory of a person whose
name was expected to live on.

Right across Northern Europe,
archaeologists have discovered

Many are guarded by Mother Goddess
figures, important to the first farmers.

From the beginning of human habitation,
people have made offerings.

Now the warriors added thousands of new
objects.

Some of them show us they were seeing
their spirit world in a new way.

Nature too was an expression of power.

The sun god rose each day, drawn proudly
across the sky by the horse.

Across the Middle East, the chariots of
the Hittites and Egyptians brought

warriors and kings.

The story of the first farmers ends with
armies and the rise of the first

cities.

And in Europe, we see the first recorded
images of violence.

The farmers were running out of
available land.

There is evidence of boundary fences.

Stockaded villages were beginning to
appear.

The last hunter gatherers collided with
the warriors.

Their way of life disappeared forever.

And then, around 3 ,000 years ago, there
was a dramatic increase in the use of

metals.

The Smiths discovered iron, which swept
Europe.

It revolutionized farming with cheap,
effective tools.

And it gave rise to great Iron Age
civilizations.

It loosed the sword and the soldier on
the world

All

of

this was made possible by the first
farmers

They found a fertile landscape and
learnt to build communities.

When the climate collapsed, they
survived and invented farming.

They built thriving towns and developed
the art of trade.

They took their story to Europe and
transformed the northern world.

They invented weapons and leaders and
paid the price.

They made humanity into what we are
today.