Original subtitles

This is the story of how Britain came to be.

Of how our land and its people were forged over thousands of years of

history.

This Britain is a strange and alien world.

A world that contains the hidden story of our distant prehistoric path.

We began as hunters who followed the herds across Europe before Britain was

island. It's fantastic after 14 ,000 years to get a glimpse of the way at

one individual was thinking.

Then the first farmers came, building monumental tombs to their ancestors.

Nothing like this had ever been seen before in Britain.

Before turning to the heavens,

and creating some of the greatest monuments of the ancient world.

Now, the journey continues, with the next chapter in our epic story.

That is magic.

An age of bronze, and a whole new way of living.

The rise of individuals controlling trade and wealth.

The beginnings of a practical, Domestic, almost modern Britain.

Britain, 2500 years B .C.

This is the height of the Stone Age.

People live by farming the land, growing crops, keeping animals.

There's little evidence of fixed villages, permanent settlement.

Instead, they seek out fresh grazing land and fresh soil, season by season.

Everything they have, clothes, tools, food, is gathered from the world around

them.

One material lay at the very heart of their world as it had done for thousands

of years Flint and it was needed in vast quantities

Look at this It's a moonscape of

deep hollows and depressions There are literally

hundreds of them

And these aren't the product of ancient farming or ancient settlements.

All of this was created by ancient industry.

Each one of these hollows is the remnant of an ancient mineshaft.

And there are 433 of them.

Some of the mineshafts have been excavated.

so it's possible to enter the very ground that was worked by our

ancestors.

It's a bit deeper than I thought.

Each shaft leads to a network of tunnels, hacked from the chalk bedrock

basic tools.

This is Red Deer Antler.

hunted or collected in the forest above.

And then it's been used, just as the shape suggests, as a pit.

You can see just how cramped the conditions are down here.

And some of the tunnels are so small, it's believed that as well as men

down here, there must have been children.

Because some of the spaces are just too small to believe it was grown -ups.

Now, here's what all the effort is in aid of.

This black stuff here, this is flint. They would have found a complete floor,

like a black floor of flint, as if a black liquid had flowed in and

It's like glass or equal toffee.

In any case, this is what this mine was all about.

Flint, the lifeblood of the Stone Age.

If you were going to fell a tree, build a house, make wood, make a dugout canoe,

you needed an axe like this.

But Britain and its ancient dependence on Flint was about to change.

In 2500 BC, a radical, unimaginable new technology was about to hit Britain.

Metal.

We take it for granted.

It's quite literally the scaffolding that holds up the modern world.

So much of what we have, what we depend on, is made of metal.

But four and a half thousand years ago, no one in Britain had ever even seen it.

Yet it was about to catapult us out of the Stone Age and into a whole new

chapter.

The arrival of metal would bring a social as well as a technological

The beginning of community life and a world that begins to look increasingly

like our own.

All of this change in an era that we call the Bronze Age.

The story of how metal first came to Britain begins much further west, in the

hills of South West Ireland.

Because the rocks around this stretch of water in County Kerry are rich in

copper ore.

And it was copper from here that was used to make the first metal objects

home in Britain.

Archaeologist Billy O 'Brien has spent decades here discovering evidence of

ancient copper workers.

The typical rock I'm seeing is just this dart with a white vein through it. Is

that? Well, that's what miners would call the country rock. It's limestone

pieces of calcite veining running through it. But there's no copper

that piece, I'm afraid.

So when I think of copper, I'm thinking of a green color. Should there be...

Yeah, you're right.

Absolutely. Copper oxidizes on the surface, so it becomes green and blue.

it's bright colors like that you're looking for. Right.

Oh, look.

What about that?

Yeah, that's got a lot of copper minerals. You can see the green

can see the bright, sparkly silver and gold of the copper sulphide mineral.

Yeah, where are you to?

Yeah, you can see the green instantly.

And there's even sparkling glitter.

And it's the glitter that's actually the copper.

It is the glitter, yeah. That would become the copper. The copper minerals,

yeah, against the limestone.

How on earth would you know it was there?

Surely to the average person, thousands of years ago, a stone is a stone is a

stone. How did anyone realise there was a completely different material hidden

in here?

We know that there was a history of stony settlements in this area going

thousands of years.

At some point they would have noticed that the limestone rocks on this part of

the lake were streaked with copper minerals.

And this knowledge, they wouldn't have known what to make of it, but at some

point they came in contact with people from outside of Ireland who were metal

prospectors. And the two would have come together, and with that outside

expertise, they would have eventually started to mine here.

So it was a foreign expertise that was required to trigger it all.

The very first copper mines were dug in the Balkans, far to the south, nearly 6

,000 years ago.

By 3000 BC, pockets of copper technology were appearing further west, in

northern Italy and along the Mediterranean coast.

But it wasn't until around 2500 BC that copper spread through northwest Europe.

And prospectors came looking for ore further north still, in Ireland.

And all of this was cut out by human labour.

There's good scientific evidence from things like lead isotope analysis to

indicate that the first copper from Ross Island came from this trench. It's

called the Blue Hole Mine.

And this copper was produced very early on, and it circulated all over Ireland

and then into Western Britain.

So when you find the earliest copper tools in Britain, wherever you find

The metal for them has come out of this hole.

Well, certainly the ones in Ireland and in Western Britain, absolutely. Many of

the ones in places like Wales and Scotland, some of the very earliest

accidents came out of this hole.

It is extraordinary to be able to track a story like metalworking, like copper,

all the way back to one hole in the ground.

It's like following a river right back to spring, the source.

Next to the mine.

workers would have begun to process the rock.

How do you know all of this? How do you know that this is the process and it was

done here?

We know that because of the tools we found in this fight.

The excavation of this work camp and the surrounding mine sites produced

thousands of these stone hammers. You can see they've got grooves around the

centre, and that's because they usually had handles put on them like this.

They've been worked, pecked away at. Exactly.

The purpose of the groove was to grip a handle like this so that you could use

it with more force.

So they'd rather more sophisticated tools than I do. Much more, yeah, much

sophisticated.

Most sophisticated of all, the secret of how to transform the rock.

into gleaming copper.

Melting copper ore required cutting -edge technology, bellows, to create

that was hotter than anything ever seen in Britain before.

For the locals, the new

people who could create glowing metal from rock must have seemed...

Like magicians Oh yeah Look at that That

is magic Wow That's magic

now What was that like four and a half thousand years ago?

Look it's actually turning green

But you can see as well how it reacts straight away with the air as soon as

out. Yeah. You know, imagine someone had turned up in your village and said, I'm

going to show you something.

Yeah. And then they go through all that process and then to see that, to see

that liquid leap in there and then turn into a recognisable object.

Yeah, no, it's magic.

And that's pure copper.

I love it. Yeah.

So, amazingly, it's raw material in these hills and the technology that

transformed it into copper that are, in many ways, the foundations of our modern

world.

The people who brought this technology also brought a new and very different

culture that was to spread throughout Britain and transform society.

They made and used a distinctive kind of pottery.

This piece was actually found here.

Before it was broken, it was part of a vessel that looked a bit like this one.

We call these beakers.

And the people who made these, used these, and were often buried with them

alongside them in their graves are called the beaker people.

Around 2500 BC, Beaker people first arrived in Britain,

bringing their new metalworking skill and a

whole new culture.

And we know that, at least partly, because of an early Beaker man who was

here on land between this school and that housing estate four and a half

thousand years ago.

And here he is.

We've got beakers here.

Real ones this time.

Terrifying at the prospect of even touching them.

Because these are some of the oldest, the earliest beakers in Britain.

This.

Fragile. Lovely.

A beaker. A classic.

Oh.

Also in amongst this dazzling array of grave goods is

metal.

There are copper knives in here, and this isn't just any metal.

Look at this. Here's one of them.

It's a copper knife. It would have been a wooden handle maybe coming out to give

you a grip on it, and there's the cutting edge.

These are the oldest metal objects found so far in Britain.

And alongside the earliest copper, I can't believe I'm about to touch this,

the earliest gold.

This is the earliest gold jewellery. It's been wrongly described previously

an earring, but it's not.

It's a decoration for hair.

You would put it on the end of pleated hair, or a braid of hair, just for

decoration. Look at that, look at this.

Look at how fine it is. It feels as fragile as the foil on a terry chocolate

orange.

And I feel as if, with an uncontrolled nervous twitch, I might crush it flat.

But look at it.

Amazing.

Put it down.

Taking a tooth from the Amesbury Archer, scientists could discover where this

new metal worker had come from.

First time we'd ever had a tooth that old in our hands. It was amazing

something that old from another human being.

Teeth contain traces of atomic elements, strontium and oxygen.

And the pattern of these traces can reveal where someone spent their

even after thousands of years.

We were absolutely overwhelmed with results.

It was absolutely amazing.

This guy didn't come from Britain.

The Amesbury Archer wasn't just an early Eaker man, but one of the original

pioneers.

Born a thousand miles away in the Alps of Central Europe.

You can't possibly think of somebody walking all that, that way.

I was amazed.

I was just totally amazed. And I was absolutely over the moon because he was

different, you know. And you see so many individuals who were...

just like everybody else and then all of a sudden here's one guy who's just

totally different.

After travelling a thousand miles the Amesbury Archer ended his days here in

Wiltshire.

Buried alongside the things that were important to him in life.

All of this so far makes him fascinating and compelling but there's one

last item in here that makes this individual crucial to our story.

It's this item here.

This is called a cushion stone.

It's used for working and finishing metal.

Look at it. It's seen years of use.

Look at how smooth it is.

You would have used the smooth surface of this one to work, to cold work metal

and give it the finishing shape and the finishing touches.

So, this individual, this pioneer from Europe, he didn't just own metal things.

He knew how to get metal, how to make metal, and how to work metal.

The arrival of Beaker people in Britain was a tipping point in the history of

our land.

Before the new people arrived, All our materials were simply collected from the

natural world.

Stone, bone, shell, wood, antler, animal sinew, all of these and more

had been used in countless ingenious ways.

And of course, people had been making pottery for over a thousand years.

But the Beaker people had brought something completely new.

Not just copper technology, but gold jewellery and the trappings of status.

perhaps even wealth.

Metal workers like the Amesbury Archer were pioneering a new and very different

world to that of the ancient past.

This was nothing less than the end of the Stone Age and everything that went

with it.

Stone Age Britain had reached its peak with the creation of massive, cosmically

aligned communal monuments.

Even in death, the ancestors shared a world, often buried or cremated in

communal tombs.

But now, just a few incomers from Europe had brought very different ideas about

how people fitted into society and the world around them.

The Beaker people brought a whole new sense of self.

of individuality.

Unlike most burials in the Stone Age, the Amesbury archer was laid to rest on

his own.

He was also buried with possessions, things that showed what he did, who he

an acknowledgement of his status, if you like.

For the Beaker people, all of this mattered.

But for British people in the Stone Age, this was radical thinking.

Right on the cusp of this change, the last great prehistoric monument in

was begun.

It's this enormous mound, Silbury Hill.

It's almost certainly the largest prehistoric mound built anywhere in the

It's been calculated that it took four million man -hours to build it.

And as for what it's for, I'll be honest with you.

Nobody knows.

One thing we do know for certain, the people who started building it didn't

long enough to see it completed.

It was the idea of Silbury Hill that survived, generation after generation.

And now, of course, it's just a mystery.

It could be that this was the last blossoming of the Neolithic.

before the new, more individual beaker ways took over.

Beakers, classic beakers, that give the beaker people their name are drinking

vessels and they're associated with a male -dominated culture of archery,

metalworking and drinking.

Analysis of fragments of real beakers to see what they contained had shown that

it was almost certainly alcoholic.

Now...

So in honour of the Amesbury Archer and the builders of Silbury Hill, I'm going

to try some.

Good health.

Metal was only one part of the new beaker culture.

But for all their individual skills and modern outlook, the new metal workers

had a problem.

Copper might have looked good, but it was so soft that it was barely better

flint as a tool.

But the Beaker people also knew about another, even more astonishing metal.

The metal that was to open up a whole new age was unlocked from the rocks of

Cornish coast.

Because to make it, you needed to combine copper with tin.

Bear with me.

Apparently it's quite distinctive when you see it.

If you don't break an ankle on the way.

Look.

The secret to all of it.

What those early metal workers were on the hunt for is in this ribbon of black

and white rock. It's very distinctive. See it?

It's called catheterite, a rock that contains tin.

Britain had been a latecomer to the copper age, but the discovery of local

a much rarer metal than copper, was to propel Britain to the very technological

forefront of Europe.

And if you were very lucky you'd find something like this.

I wish you could feel it. It looks like any ordinary pebble but trust me it's as

heavy as a cannonball.

And when you extract the tin itself it's as beautiful as silver.

And this is an ingot of tin.

It's very lovely.

They say that if you bend it, it crackles.

They call that the cry of tin.

But more importantly, if you have copper and you add this, you transform it into

bronze.

If you control the bellow speed, it holds the perfect temperature for

With just the right mixture of copper and tin, metalworkers could create an

alloy that was hard enough to make useful tools and weapons.

An impact that crumpled copper is no match

for bronze, the hardest metal of the ancient world.

No matter how often I do this, I still find it quite challenging.

Molds were made of stone or clay.

Fingers crossed, gentlemen.

Fingers, everything crossed.

In this case, to cast something that was unknown before bronze came along.

A sword.

Fantastic. Loving this.

Right. Can you lift that off, Rob?

Okay, this is it.

Right. That's it.

Whoa.

Okay. Like a beaten heart. Look at it.

Okay, in you go.

Bit lower.

Fine wine.

That's it. Well done, gentlemen.

Amazing.

Blood. Better than blood.

Okay. That's good.

Lift it up a little bit.

That's it. Right there.

It's a little visceral, isn't it? Oh, definitely.

The moment of truth.

There we go.

Look at that, behold.

That is amazing.

Look at the colour of it.

You impressed? I'm very, I'm deeply, deeply impressed.

Look at that.

Yeah, it even makes a ring.

It's a very hard piece of bronze.

Just amazing.

From liquid fire to a metal sword in a couple of minutes.

In the hands of master metalworkers, bronze was leading Britain into a whole

age, not only technologically, but socially as well.

Look at these, obviously lethal weapons.

But swords are quite a late development in the story of bronze, in the story of

metal. If you're talking about early bronze...

then you have to look at axes.

These are some of the earliest bronze objects found so far in Britain.

These date from as early as 2200 years BC.

A carpenter would have coveted an item like this because it would enable him to

do a better, faster job.

But bronze axes are about much more than the utility of the object.

They're about status and prestige. No humble carpenter could possibly have

dreamt of owning something so valuable in the early days of bronze.

Much more than tools, these are objects of desire.

There's a whole range of sizes and styles, although still early.

Look at the size of that one.

That's what that one's all about.

The bigger is better.

It's showing off.

And this one,

It looks silvery in colour rather than the warm gold of bronze.

And that silvering has been achieved by flashing tin onto the surface of the

bronze. It doesn't make a better axe.

It just makes it more eye -packing.

This ushers in a whole new era.

Because for the first time, there's a different way to get and to demonstrate

wealth.

After the time of the priestly class, where...

The status was conferred on people because of who they were and what they

Now there's a different opportunity.

The bronze here has been brought together from many sources.

The copper from South West Ireland, the tin from Cornwall. But these were found

in the north -east of Scotland.

So the materials are moving all over the country. If you are someone who can

control those trade routes, if you can get your hands on this as it's moving

through your territory, and control it, then you've got personal wealth and

you've got the ability to demonstrate and to show that you are someone who

matters.

Now, not everyone had to farm the land.

At least for a few of Britain's population of perhaps a quarter of a

people, new opportunities were emerging.

Specialist metal worker, metal trader, And in particular, those who controlled

the trade routes could become seriously rich.

This was a new, self -made elite for whom the Stone Age must have seemed a

quaint and distant memory.

In the Bronze Age, it wasn't just the ancient, sacred landscapes that were

important, but the practical landscapes of natural harbours and river routes.

One of the most important trade routes was the western entrance to the Great

Glen in Scotland, a place studied by archaeologist Alison Sheridan.

This glen is geographically in a great position to control the flow of metal

that's coming from Ireland up the Great Glen to northeast Scotland.

So this valley finds itself... At the hub of what is effectively a busy

motorway. Yes, absolutely. Those people who are able to control the flow of

copper or tin or both, we're going to make it rich.

The tombs of some of the new rich bronze elite of Kilmartin still survive.

Within this huge cairn, there was only ever one person buried.

This is no mass grave.

This is for a single high -status individual.

This cairn was rebuilt around this modern chamber that was itself built to

people see this single grave, this stone -lined cairn.

There was only ever one grave in this entire cairn, so this was an important

individual.

But the most interesting thing of all in here is the lid, the capstone that was

once laid on top of this to seal it. But before it was put down, it was

upgraded, reworked with these axe heads pecked and carved into the surface.

They're all over the place here.

So the person, whoever he or she was, was laid to rest in here and they would

spend eternity.

Looking up at the moon, because it was the axe, the metal of the axes, that was

the basis for the wealth and the power of these people.

The new wealth fed a new demand for luxury goods.

Alison, you don't often find or see anything quite as stunning as that, do

Mm -mm.

What is it made of?

It's made of jet from Whitby in Yorkshire.

This necklace had travelled over 300 miles to be worn by one special, very

woman.

It's actually semi -fossilised wood of the monkey puzzle tree family.

Isn't that fantastic?

It's great, and you can actually see the grain of the wood there.

And it doesn't feel as you would expect it to because it looks as if it ought to

be much heavier than it is.

Yes. It is quite like handling varnished wood. It's wonderful. It's also warm. I

mean, jet is an amazing stone. It's stone that is light.

It's stone that you can burn.

And it also has electrostatic properties.

This wasn't just precious bling. This was supernatural power dressing, if you

like. It's something which would have protected the woman in her dangerous

journey to the world of the gods and the ancestors.

Now, how old did you say that was?

It's about 4 ,150 years old. And fragile?

Yes.

So this is a replica.

That's right, yes. It was made for Kilmartin House Museum by a modern -day

Whitby Jet specialist worker.

Would you like to try it? Oh, I'd love to.

OK.

Now, does it feel different than other items of finery you've worn before? Yes,

it makes me feel like a queen.

It's just wonderful. It's so comfortable, so soft, so beautiful.

It would have been originally very tightly strung, so it's a solid black

precious magical material.

So 4 ,100 and odd years ago, this part of Britain was centre

stage? Absolutely, yeah. So in fact, at the time, Northern Britain and Ireland

were the epicentre of cool.

They were the places where the fashion trends were being created.

This is internationally significant, and the person would have held her own

among the elites across Europe.

Right, so Britain is at the centre, not on the periphery. Yes, absolutely.

If this glen teaches us anything, it's that by around 2000 BC, Britain had a

real presence in the world. We had the natural resources and the technical

skills that meant we couldn't be ignored.

In the Mediterranean and the rest of Europe, they'd had trade and wealth for

centuries. Now we had it too.

The waters around Britain can be some of the most treacherous in the world.

But to trade with Europe, Bronze Age sailors had to brave them.

And a remarkable discovery made in Dover reveals the sophistication of their

maritime prowess.

In 1992, while this underpass was being dug, the evidence emerged from the mud.

Incredibly, they found a boat, a big wooden boat, buried 20 feet underground,

down here.

It's hard to believe, surrounded down here by all this concrete and these

painted tiles.

But 3 ,500 years ago, the boat came to rest and was gradually buried under

layers and layers of mud.

And here it is.

This, quite simply, is the oldest surviving seagoing vessel in the world.

It's absolutely fantastic.

At first sight, it's honestly one of the most impressive archaeological finds

I've ever laid eyes on.

Originally up to 20 metres long, the Dover boat would have carried cargo

Britain and mainland Europe, scrap bronze and other metals.

perhaps also wool and fabric.

A vessel this size would obviously have taken some skilled handling.

It must have been either paddled with several of these, or

the thinking more recently has been that it might have been rowed, like a rowing

boat on a paddling pond, only on a much grander scale.

I've actually been given the privilege of going inside the case.

This. It's the magic handle that opens the door.

You don't get to do this in normal life.

There's a real atmosphere in here. I don't know if it's just the key, but

it's almost like being in here with someone rather than just something.

It's as if the Bronze Age and Bronze Age people are preserved in here.

The boat's construction relied on the expert skills of carpenters using bronze

axes.

Its hull, four enormous planks sewn together.

These are twisted yew branches, they're called withies, and they've been used

like thread or cords. So the whole, the pieces have been stitched together,

almost as though, rather than wood, it was made out of skin or cloth. It's the

same sort of technology, it's been sewn together, just on a kind of a giant

scale.

Close up, there's a detail that reveals how this boat ended its days.

It was in good nick, but at some point, people have decided to put it beyond

youth. It's been scuttled, if you like. You can see at certain points where the

whiffies, those twisted U -branches, have been cut deliberately.

So for some reason, it was thought appropriate to put this boat, this

functional boat, beyond the youth of man.

In ancient Britain, the earth was alive and sacred.

So anything taken from the earth, whether wood or bronze, was only

would one day have to be returned.

People in the past seem to acknowledge a relationship between themselves, their

belongings and their landscape and something unseen.

They accept...

that there's a relationship, that there's an obligation that comes with

ownership, that death follows life, and that deaths have to be repaid.

So an axe is buried or thrown away, a polished maize head

goes into a tomb with the ancestors, and a boat like the Dover boat, even though

it's still serviceable, has to be returned to the world.

Look at this.

beautiful rapier. Look how fine it is.

You can imagine the youth that was put to the handle here.

But it's been damaged to put it beyond the youth of men.

So it's been bent over someone's knee and then the edge has been ruined by

striking it on a rock.

Look.

Before this was given back to the world, it's been snapped.

Great force has been used.

This was probably a valuable, cherished object.

But the time came for it to go away.

And so it was put out of reach by destroying it.

Bronze Age discoveries are revealing more than ancient lives.

but ancient beliefs as well.

In some ways, the people of the Bronze Age were forging a new,

modern way of living.

But with the Dover boat, and with those damaged pieces of valuable bronze, we're

also seeing another side to Bronze Age life.

It's a glimpse of Bronze Age religion, if you like.

And it's connected with water.

The only evidence we have is the gifts that were given to the gods.

Rivers, particularly those that flow east in England, were special places

people brought treasured personal belongings like swords or cooking pots

threw them in.

And archaeologists think that those things were offerings to appease the

So, living beside nature and trying to work out how to appease the gods, how to

keep them happy, would presumably just have been part of everyday life.

In the thousand years since the Beaker people first brought metal to our

a wealthy Bronze Age elite had emerged.

By 1500 BC, Britain was a rich, well -connected land.

But of course, Almost all those riches were the preserve of just a few, those

the very top of society.

But one aspect of Britain had barely changed.

The way people lived their life was pretty much the same as it had been in

Stone Age.

They farmed the land as they had done for centuries, but they moved around

season by season.

Apart from a few exceptions, there's scant evidence of permanent homes or

permanent farms.

But all of this was about to change.

A Bronze Age site in East Anglia revealed the remains of something new.

A permanent farmstead, with evidence of houses built to last a lifetime.

Since the original discovery in the 1980s, some of the buildings have been

recreated.

To get a better idea of how Bronze Age people lived, you want to get inside one

of their houses.

So there's no way around reconstruction, because although stone foundations

survive, the timbers of the roof, they perish.

So there's no alternative but to use archaeological evidence and best guesses

put together as close a replica of a... Bronze Age houses we can get.

An entire family would occupy a single room with a central hearth for heating

and cooking.

It's quite interesting. You don't need a hole in the roof for the smoke.

The smoke just rises and sits above head height and then gradually seeps out

through the thatch.

The Bronze Age roundhouse formed a template for domestic living.

that would last for over a thousand years.

Bronze Age specialist Francis Pryor discovered flag -fen and he's studied it

ever since.

Francis, what would it have been like to live in the Bronze Age, 1200 years

BC? People were very relaxed.

They knew their place in society.

They ate well.

The archaeological evidence doesn't suggest that there was, let's say, an

underclass, a lower class, that wasn't properly nourished.

I mean, whenever you dig up a Bronze Age burial, nine times out of ten or 90

times out of 100, the body is well nourished, the bones are well formed. So

had plenty of calcium and they had a decent diet.

One of the things there isn't much evidence for in the Bronze Age is actual

strife. I mean, the population hadn't got so big that people were at each

other's throats.

You know, everyone knew what land they owned. People lived in families.

You know, your week was organised.

Life, I think, in the Bronze Age would have been pretty good.

As the Bronze Age matured, settled life came with an even bigger change.

A change that was one of the greatest social transformations in the whole of

history.

This sort of set up, these houses, this winding road, this

is our classic view of rural Britain.

Permanent houses led to the beginnings of the very first villages.

Fields all around, houses close together.

These are the neighbours.

And that fundamentally changed the way we related to a place.

And to one another.

It seems normal to us, but it all had to be invented.

The whole idea of getting used to living in the same house for your whole life.

The neighbours getting used to seeing the same faces day after day.

It seems obvious to us, but until about 1500 years BC, this.

was shockingly new.

The wild moorlands of Devon contain evidence of this new way of living.

If it's Bronze Age Britain you're looking for, this is the place to come

beyond this patch of woodland is the finest relic we have of that ancient

landscape.

Dartmoor has the best preserved Bronze Age landscape, not just in Britain, but

in the whole of Europe.

These rocky outcrops, called tors, are natural.

But the landscape is also marked by the work of people who lived on these hills

three and a half thousand years ago.

Faint crisscross markings are relics of Bronze Age field systems that divide the

land into plots, farmed by families living in their own homes.

But really what's impressive about it is the scale.

Within this landscape, the remains of some of the very earliest Bronze Age

roundhouses.

Proper entrance.

There's nothing temporary or half -hearted about this.

This is permanent.

Whoever built this wasn't moving on in a hurry.

Archaeologist Neil Sharples has made an extensive study of the Dartmoor

landscape and its buildings.

Activity areas, not rooms, not divided up, no walls separating the room, but

big room, but divided into areas where they're doing different things. So you

cook over here and then you make tools over here.

And then on the other side, over here perhaps, there's sleeping and storage,

perhaps a loom as well for weaving at the back of the house maybe. You know,

those kind of activities going on. When they start building these houses... This

is here for their adult lifetime. Their main social life will be carried out in

this house and is focused on this house for 20 to 30 years, something like that.

So it's a permanent part of the landscape.

And so for the very first time in history, people have a sense of play.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That's important.

Most radical of all, these houses aren't isolated farmsteads.

Here on Dartmoor, there's evidence of over 5 ,000 of them.

You know, there's another house just over there. That's the neighbours.

They would be related kin of some sort. There's another two houses over there.

Five, six, seven or eight, maybe up to 12 houses within this group of fields.

Take a tour of the neighbourhood now.

It does feel strangely familiar,

a layout like this. You know, families in their own homes.

dotted across the landscape, but they're within reach of each other. You've got

help at hand.

Morning, Neil.

Is this rain ever going to stop?

Shall we go and do some farming?

I think I'll just stay in today.

Your children would grow up with their children.

They would reach adulthood. They would move into their own homes. It's all

exactly the same as the way we think about our communities and our

Oh, you've got some impressive stones here. It's good, isn't it? Yes. We're

proud of them. We think it worked out very well.

An Englishman's home is his castle and all that.

So it starts now.

The warm climate had improved productivity, perhaps doubling Britain's

population to around half a million people in just a few hundred years.

Settlements weren't unknown before 1500 years BC, but now they were occurring

everywhere, right across Britain and Europe.

A fantastic view, sir.

Tied to the land that were once tribal and unfetteral were now personal and

practical.

Domestic life placed right at the heart of everything these people did.

Viewed from up here, it's a grand scheme, isn't it?

Very grand scheme.

I mean, there's nothing really like it in any other period.

Not a pattern of nature. They wanted to impose something that was man -made.

How you doing? All right.

Britain had come a long way in 2500 BC.

We were still in the Stone Age until the Beaker people arrived and showed us how

to make metal from glittering stones like these.

Until then, we were well behind the rest of Europe.

Then, with the discovery of tin in Cornwall, we had grown.

And suddenly, we were at the centre of trade.

But it wasn't until this big change, around 1 ,500 years BC, that we

began to settle down into the way of life that we would recognise now.

There was even a sexual revolution.

It's likely that sons and daughters were exchanged between hamlets 5, 10, 20

miles apart.

If you sent your daughter to be betrothed to a neighbour's son, that

forged an alliance between the families. People that you could look to for help

when times turned bad.

A kind of Bronze Age insurance policy.

In the year since 1500 years BC, things begin to look a bit modern.

Those early settlements on Dartmoor, though, didn't last.

Over just a few centuries, possibly because of climate change and over

the moors and those first villages were abandoned forever.

But places like Dartmoor had set a pattern for the rest of Britain and for

future.

Through thousands of years of prehistory, the building blocks of the

know had all been invented.

Society and class, religion and trade.

Now, by 1000 BC, the first neighbourhoods and settled villages were

which city life would eventually blossom.

From the strange and distant days of the first hunters, A very recognisable

Britain was beginning to emerge.

The ice finally retreated around 11 ,000 or 12 ,000 years ago.

People came.

There were shifts in technology and belief.

And all of that has moulded the Britain we know today.

The very shape of the land as Britain became an island.

The coming of farming with ideas of work and productivity and community.

But it feels that with the end of the Stone Age and the coming of bronze, that

the distant, strange world of our very early prehistory finally came to an end.

It was as if we as a people had come of age.

We had the keys to the door and we could...

mould the world in our own image, as individuals, taking care of our own

But there was a price to pay.

That realisation, that thought, three or four thousand years ago, that we could

impose our vision on the world, brought with it a very grown -up responsibility.

Because what kind of world did we want to shape?

What kind of Britain did we want to build?

Next time, my journey continues.

From

a golden

age of bronze.

And then there's this magnificent cauldron. It's so modern somehow.

To a Britain in crisis.

Everything about this place says, keep out.

A time of economic meltdown, sudden climate change, and the dawn of a new

era of iron.