Original subtitles

In this series, I'm following in the footsteps of three men who set

out across the globe in search of lost treasures.

The discoveries they made rewrote history...

I'm standing in the presence of the birth of Viking art.

..revealing the untold story of how human societies began.

What was going to come out of the ground here was going to rewrite

the book of Western civilisation.

But these finds are not always what they seem,

because the men behind them were products

of their eras, driven by nationalism, colonialism and ego,

competing to stamp their mark on our shared past.

This time, I've come to the island of Crete to uncover one of the most

contentious discovery stories of all time.

This colour, with this vibrancy -

oh, my goodness!

Just over a century ago, a rich Briton called Arthur Evans came

here in search of the truth behind the most famous Greek myth

of all - King Minos

and the terrifying monster known as the Minotaur

he kept hidden in the depths of his palace.

The underground maze with a half-man, half-bull

flesh-eating beast within.

He didn't find a man-eating monster, but what he did find

were the ruins of Europe's first civilisation,

lost for nearly 3,000 years.

And for Evans, that was the thing that showed him it was new.

He called them the Minoans,

and he spent his entire fortune on recreating their world.

These come from the excavations of Sir Arthur Evans.

It's a masterpiece.

Arthur Evans is now one of archaeology's controversial

characters, one whose professional imagination strayed into fiction.

Just complete and utter early-20th-century fantasy.

But not only did his discovery push the start of Western culture back

by 1,000 years, the civilisation he unearthed

was like no other.

DRIPPING

Is there any more powerful and compelling myth

than that of the labyrinth and the Minotaur? The underground

maze with a half-man, half-bull flesh-eating beast within.

The story has fed into the work of Chaucer and Shakespeare,

Jung and Freud,

Hollywood movies and, of course, the Percy Jackson novels

beloved by kids across the world.

According to legend, Minos was king here in Crete, the largest

of the Greek islands, a land of soaring cliffs, turquoise waters

and ancient ruins.

Almost 3,000 years ago,

the Greek poet Homer wrote about this wondrous place.

"Out in the middle of the wine-dark sea,

"there lies a land called Crete,

"a rich and lovely land washed by the waves on every side,

"densely peopled and boasting 90 cities.

"There, one language mingles with another.

"One of the 90 towns is a great city called Knossos,

"and there, for nine years,

"King Minos ruled and enjoyed the friendship of almighty Zeus."

This compelling tale survived for millennia.

King Minos was the son of the chief of the Greek gods, Zeus,

who had taken the form of a bull when he fathered him.

Later, Minos' wife, Pasiphae,

becomes enamoured with another magnificent bull.

She gets pregnant by the bull and gives birth to a dangerous

monster that is half-man, half-bull -

that's the Minotaur.

It does seem to me that King Minos has a rather

uncomfortable relationship with bulls.

Anyway, he wants to imprison this monster so builds a labyrinth

beneath his palace.

There, the Minotaur is fed on a regular supply of young bodies.

Finally, the hero Theseus manages to slay the Minotaur

and he escapes the labyrinth.

By the Victorian era, the culture of Ancient Greece was central

to the identity of the Western world,

not just because of their fantastic stories, but because they were

regarded as the world's first democracy. The great 19th-century

Western powers aspired to model themselves on it.

Arthur Evans arrived on Crete in 1894

determined to find King Minos' palace.

One of his first stops was a valley in the middle of the island.

Sandy MacGillivray is an archaeologist based on Crete

who's written a biography of Arthur.

Oh, gosh, look at that view.

That is incredible.

In terms of Ancient Greece, for men like Arthur Evans,

why was it so important to them?

Ancient Greece was a fundamental part of every

well-educated person's education.

Within that, you get all the history and you get all the mythology.

And so this is very much a part of who you are.

The young Arthur was sent to the exclusive Harrow School,

where he was taught Britain was the natural successor

to Ancient Greece.

But when Arthur was just a teenager, the world was stunned

by an incredible discovery - the legendary Greek city of Troy,

famous for the beautiful Helen, was real.

The man who found it was Heinrich Schliemann.

Heinrich Schliemann was a German entrepreneur.

He made a sufficient fortune to become self-financed.

And, in 1876, with enough money behind him,

he was able to go to Troy

and he began excavating,

and he found what we still call Troy today.

This discovery made Schliemann world-famous.

Schliemann goes to London, lectures about it.

Arthur Evans as a young man and a young professional

sees that this is something new.

It's very, very new, very exciting.

Suddenly, there was a whole new dimension to Ancient Greece,

the real history behind its legends.

And as the myth of King Minos included a lost palace,

finding it was the biggest prize of all.

Obviously, it captured Arthur Evans' imagination.

Was it just Schliemann and Evans up against each other in this race?

No, it's definitely not Arthur Evans and Schliemann alone.

You had an American interest coming in and you had a French interest

coming in as well.

And so there was basically a race,

it's almost like a colonial race to go and see

who's going to plant their flag on this site.

VOICEOVER: In the valley just below the very spot where

Sandy and I are standing, coins had been discovered, engraved on one

side with the image of a labyrinth.

This was a huge clue, but the question was -

who could get the rights to excavate?

When Arthur left Crete after his first visit in 1894,

he was already hellbent on winning the race to find

King Minos' palace and labyrinth.

He wrote home saying, "I am determined on the archaeological

"conquest of this island."

Arthur's single-mindedness began back in Britain,

where he was curator of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford,

my hometown.

I love this place. I've been coming here my whole life to gaze

upon its collection of artefacts and curiosities

from across the world.

Arthur Evans was once the curator here

and it now houses his personal archives.

Andrew Shapland now has Arthur's old job.

Andrew, tell me about Arthur Evans - what was it that set him

on this path towards international archaeology?

Arthur Evans, his father is actually an amateur archaeologist.

He's made his money in paper manufacturing.

He's the director of the family business.

And young Arthur used to accompany John on his expeditions to find

new artefacts and also to find things like coins to add

to his collections.

Arthur's father made his fortune on the back

of the Industrial Revolution.

Arthur had a happy early childhood, but when he was just six, in 1857,

it was shattered by the death of his mother, Harriet.

He was sent to board at Harrow,

where a typical public-school education

in the classics fuelled a lonely adolescent passion

for the Greek myths.

We have a map of the Aegean here that he did while he was at

Harrow. He's marked all of the important Roman cities

around the Aegean, including Knossos.

There's almost a sense of destiny in this map... I know!

Even at this very young age,

he's drawn to this area, isn't he? Oh, absolutely.

OK, so he's inherited money,

he's born into it, and he has this fantastic, privileged education.

Sounds like he's very much part of the English establishment.

Is that right? Yes.

Although it doesn't entirely go as smoothly as you might think.

After he'd left university, he went off travelling,

went to Bosnia and he becomes a journalist.

It was the time when the Ottoman Empire was disintegrating.

Arthur wanted travel and adventure, not a safe job

in the family business, and it was in the Balkans

he met his wife, Margaret.

He sounds like a pretty fearless guy. Well, he is.

Margaret spent a lot of time worrying about him as he went

off to talk to the rebel leaders in the mountains

and had various scrapes.

I think Arthur Evans often felt that, being an Englishman,

he could, erm, be guaranteed of safety, whereas maybe

that wasn't always true.

The late 19th century was an age of empires.

While Britain, Germany and France

scrambled for territory in Africa and Asia,

the Austro-Hungarian empire snatched control of the Balkans.

It was a dangerous place for a journalist, and Arthur loved it.

He was almost too fearless, because he ended up sending

dispatches back to the Manchester Guardian, his paper,

and they eventually got fed up of that and arrested him as a spy

and put him in prison.

He was eventually let out of prison on condition

that he never came back.

In 1884, the job of curator of the Ashmolean came free.

It was perfect.

Like Arthur, Margaret loved the mysteries of the ancient world.

For the next decade, they enjoyed long sabbaticals adventuring

around the Mediterranean, spending Arthur's fortune buying treasures

for the museum.

But it was one key find that would transform Arthur

from collector to discoverer.

The vital clue that set Arthur on his quest for Knossos

was one of these.

This is a seal stone.

It's made of a precious or semi-precious gem that's

incised into so that, when it's pressed into clay,

it leaves an inscription, a bit like a signet ring.

But Arthur recognised there must be some sort of lost

written script or language.

And the more he began to research them, he found that all these

seal stones seemed to be coming from Crete.

If there was this ancient forgotten language in Crete, then perhaps

there could also be an ancient forgotten civilisation there too.

But then, tragedy struck.

In 1893, Margaret died aged just 45.

Arthur never married again, and for the rest of his life

he wrote on black-boarded stationery in mourning for her.

Arthur needed to fill the huge hole in his life, so he headed for Crete,

determined that he would be the man to find King Minos'

Palace of Knossos.

Arthur got straight to work, buying up the land the labyrinth coins

had been found on to make sure that no-one else could dig.

Of course, it was only a brilliant plan

because he had the immense fortune

needed to back it up.

He began using all of his inheritance,

buying up the lion's share of the land around Knossos.

It was a monumental gamble,

and in some ways it's kind of an uncomfortable thought, really,

that this incredibly rich and privileged Englishman

was essentially buying the rights to an entire civilisation.

Now, Arthur just had to wait.

It took five long years,

but he finally got permission to excavate.

On the morning of March 23, 1900,

Arthur set out from here, Heraklion,

and headed for the hills, to the reputed site of Knossos.

It was his long-held dream,

but I can't help imagining just how nervous he must have been.

He's nearly 50, he's lost his wife,

he's dumped his career and he has staked

all of his inheritance on this.

What if it turns out to just be a mirage?

VOICEOVER: Colin Macdonald was director of Knossos in the 1990s.

So can you set the scene for me, Colin, on this first

day of excavation? It's exciting -

how is it going to pan out?

It's a certain colonial atmosphere, I suppose, to the fact

that the British are digging Knossos,

the Italians are digging Phaistos,

the French are digging Malia.

You know, each foreign European country seems to have a palace.

And this sounds like a big dig.

The team of 100 or so workmen that he had were largely local

workmen, both Muslim and

Christian Orthodox, who lived locally.

And what is always crucial here is people who have experience

in working the land,

they understand changes in soils.

Evans, the men, they set themselves up on the mound

with a tent. Possibly a Union Jack, who knows?

As owner and paymaster, Arthur was in total control

and he wanted results.

A system was introduced called the wages system, whereby

the different teams were told, dig down until you find the first floor,

and that tended to be a stone floor.

And then they would get a reward for having been the first

to find something decent.

So they were digging fast, then?

Yes, the wages system meant speed was of the essence,

trying to uncover as much of the site as possible, really.

Unfortunately, in their haste, the diggers destroyed

the more recent Roman and Greek layers.

But very quickly they were unearthing incredible finds.

March 30, day seven. In his diary, Arthur writes,

"Today two remarkable objects turned up...

"..fragments with script...and what appear to be numerals."

April 5, day 13. "A great day!

"Two large pieces of fresco...of a female figure."

Then on 13 April came the find that proved Arthur's big gamble

had paid off.

VOICEOVER: Colin's taking me into the heart of the palace.

He was digging on the west side of the palace and came

down into the throne room by chance and discovered this amazing throne

in its original place, with frescoes on either side,

and frescoes actually right the way around the whole room.

Gosh, it must have just astonished the world

what was coming out of this site at that point. I think it did.

And also, we must remember it was in the days when people

really read things.

And so the first notice of this was in the Times, two long

columns in August 10, 1900,

without any illustrations whatsoever.

The description of the entire first season is there in the newspaper

for people to read.

You would never dare do such a thing today.

JANINA LAUGHS No!

I mean, this is superstar archaeology. Yes, yes.

Well, certainly, by the end of the first season, he knew

he had found THE palace at Knossos,

whatever it was. He must have seen this throne and thought

it was something special.

Yes, he thought it was very special.

And it's very interesting because it's extremely delicately

carved, even to the extent of the buttocks of the person who sat

there being carved.

He at first thought that it was a female.

So when he's conducting this first stage of excavation, Arthur Evans

is certain that this is the throne that has a female buttock upon it.

Why did he then later change his mind

and think it was a throne for a man?

I think that, after the first season,

Evans begins to think more in terms of the whole of the excavation,

rather than individual finds.

And that, particularly with the background - the mythological

background, as it were, associated with Knossos - it seems

that he would really rather like to find where

THE ruler, Minos, might have sat.

And there it is.

This seemed to work for him.

In archaeology, evidence only gets you so far. Archaeologists always

have to fill in the gaps with their own knowledge

and imagination.

Arthur expected to unearth the palace of a king,

so it was just a small jump for him to announce that he'd found

King Minos' throne.

Although his imagination could stretch quite far.

Evans even wrote at the end of his first season of digging,

"This huge building with its maze of corridors was in fact

"the labyrinth for the Minotaur."

I mean, that is a seriously bold claim.

Arthur made Knossos front-page news.

Part of the story was its age.

Like Troy, it pushed the beginnings of Ancient Greece back

by 1,000 years.

To a world obsessed with the Ancient Greeks, this was huge -

a whole new chapter just waiting to be explored.

It even got its own name - Mycenaean Greece.

But that was going to mean nothing, that was going to be dwarfed

by what would happen in the second stage of the excavations,

because what was going to come out of the ground here at Knossos

was going to rewrite the book of Western civilisation.

We're actually walking on the original ancient road

which ran from the town of Knossos, which was behind us, to the palace

itself, which is before us, here.

Before Arthur's dig,

Knossos had been completely buried for millennia.

In spring 1901,

he reached the palace's deepest, oldest layers.

Interestingly, what we see before us is a perfect example of,

as it were, the antiquity of the entire site.

This humble-looking stone? This humble-looking set of stones.

LAUGHS: Yes, OK. Well...

The bottom one goes back to the middle of the third millennium,

right about 2500.

Up above it is about 2300.

And then this dress block on top

probably actually goes down to about 1700 BC

and is typical of the finest masonry of the palace.

To Arthur's shock, this foundation layer was 3,500 years old.

When he examined the finds within it,

he realised he was looking at a whole new civilisation.

All of this allows you to see the development,

the artistic development of a civilisation.

And, for Evans, that was the thing that showed him it was new.

Very rapidly, it must have been, you know, really blowing up his mind,

what he was getting back.

Yes, it was different from what was known from the mainland.

So this is a culture - a new culture, as it were -

and that's why he decided to use a different word

and call it Minoan, after King Minos.

It seemed Arthur had succeeded in finding the real palace

behind the Minos myth,

but now he revealed it was built by a lost people

he called the Minoans.

And they - not the Greeks - were the founders

of Western civilisation.

The scale of these stones! They're massive.

God, doesn't it just make you see this place so differently

when you imagine it with this colour,

with this vibrancy?

It's just overwhelming.

Look how beautiful the figures are.

Oh!

It would take Arthur three decades to dig Knossos out

from this hillside.

As he did, the world discovered that the real story

was much bigger than the myth.

Knossos was more than a palace.

It was the control centre of a trading empire

that spread far beyond the island of Crete.

It's kind of strange to have read about this place since I was a child

and to finally be standing here.

Oh, my goodness!

This is not a fledgling civilisation,

this is not a civilisation finding itself.

This is a fully grown, confident civilisation

that can afford to have spaces like this

to entertain thousands of people, potentially.

The size of it!

It's like a banner, isn't it?

"This is Minoan civilisation!"

I think it's often the small discoveries

that reveal the intimate details of people's lives.

So I'm spending the day in Heraklion Museum

to immerse myself in the art the Minoans left behind.

The Minoans' wealth came from commerce.

Their trading empire spread

through Greece, around the Aegean,

to Egypt and the Middle East.

Professor Jan Driessen has spent 40 years

unlocking the Minoans' secrets.

One of these ideas that the Minoans were ruling the waves

of the Mediterranean, the Aegean,

is actually shown by the presentation of these little boats.

You see these terracotta boats which...? They're beautiful!

It was already dated

the very beginning of the Minoan civilisation,

which shows the transport, the means of transport

with which they sort of, like, made their overseas trips.

To Arthur, this must have been evidence quite early on

that the Minoans were a, I suppose, a sort of maritime empire.

He found, like, an ideal British world -

which was slowly disappearing at that time, I think -

still represented on the island of Crete.

Oh, wow, there are some absolutely beautiful pieces in here.

Look at the detailing on the tentacles of that sea creature!

But it is interesting, if you compare it with Ancient Greek art,

which is very figural, it's sort of homocentric,

putting humankind at the centre of existence and controlling nature.

This is a love of nature in its own right.

There's also a lot of observation behind it,

because you have to know what an octopus or an Argonaut does,

or you have to know how the reed actually moves into the wind...

Totally! ..to be able to depict something like that.

This love for nature is something which distinguishes the Minoans -

and Arthur realised this very early on -

from the other civilisations of the Mediterranean.

What's even more striking is what Minoan art

says about Minoan women.

Well, Jan, these are the objects I have most wanted to see.

They are stunning, are they not?

They are, no?

Evans found these in 1903 in the Palace of Knossos,

and they were in fragments, but he restored them.

And the two ladies represented here, with their bare bosoms

and the detail given to their costumes, for instance,

the snakes that they are holding, or on the tiara of the other lady.

And these immediately became emblematic for what he called

the mother goddess on the island of Crete.

Do you know, Jan, I find it wonderful in a way

that, when you're looking through this museum,

but also through Minoan art more generally,

you're actually trying to find representations of men

rather than women.

It almost, throughout history, it's the other way round, isn't it?

There are male representations,

but they certainly don't get the same attention.

Men are represented in almost a stereotype way.

Again, it makes the Minoans seem

incredibly impressive, in my viewpoint.

Well, I mean, they're unique.

Until now, we believed European history began

with male-dominated Ancient Greece -

a culture that subjugated women.

The idea that Western civilisation was founded by a society

in which women had real status was revolutionary.

Arthur also found the likely source of the myth

of the monstrous Minotaur.

The bull was a symbol of Minoan power.

Arthur made Knossos one of the world's most famous discoveries

and himself one of its most famous archaeologists.

He wrote long volumes on his great achievements.

But there was one chapter he deliberately chose not to write.

Cretan archaeologist Samantha Ximeri has researched

early digs at Knossos.

So, Nina, I wanted you to see this house,

which is now the Historical Museum of Crete.

This used to be the mansion, the family house of

a very important man who played a crucial role

in the archaeology of Knossos.

His name was Minos Kalokairinos.

Shockingly, Minos Kalokairinos discovered Knossos

20 years before Arthur.

How did Minos first get started with his excavations at Knossos?

His excavation started in 1878.

The main excavation season was for three weeks.

He discovered 12 fully preserved storage jars we call pithoi.

On Evans's first visit on Crete,

he was shown to the findings at Knossos by Kalokairinos himself.

Evans knew what Kalokairinos had discovered.

Do you think Minos has been recognised enough?

I think Evans completely omitted Kalokairinos from his contribution

and from his diggings at Knossos,

even though he had many opportunities to mention his name.

His volumes were vast about Knossos, but Minos is only referenced

as a nobleman of Candia - modern Heraklion -

and his efforts at Knossos are mentioned as the "promiscuous digs".

But we have to remember there was no textbook at the time.

Any excavation would pretty much look promiscuous.

By promiscuous, Arthur meant careless,

but when Kalokairinos' logbooks were rediscovered,

it was clear he dug with love and care.

He wanted to use the antiquities at Knossos

to promote the unification of Crete with Greece.

Arthur Evans used his wealth to write

Minos Kalokairinos out of history.

It's only very recently that Crete erected a statue to honour

Minos alongside him.

It's interesting that Arthur Evans came to Crete in the first place

because of the myths associated with it.

The fact that he dug at Knossos -

that was down to the legends of the Minotaur and the labyrinth.

So, it's somewhat ironic, really, that he ends up

writing his own legend about himself,

saying that he was the one who discovered Knossos.

And if he made that up, what else did he invent?

Walking through Knossos,

the bright splashes of Arthur's restoration stand out.

This is the north entrance passage, right? OK.

Sandy MacGillivray knows the story of every stone on this site.

This is the icon.

Everyone who makes postcards, sees postcards of Knossos...

They even made a postage stamp in the 1930s in Crete of Knossos.

This is the image they used.

So, what evidence did Arthur base his reconstruction on?

I mean, how much of this could he have drawn inspiration

from the actual Minoan?

There were fragments of that fresco, down below here,

but this whole bastion that he's put up here

just goes with the idea of having an impressive entrance.

Yeah. Which it is.

But the idea of putting a colonnade in front of it, all that stuff,

just complete and utter early-20th-century fantasy.

I find that actually really astonishing.

You know, even if there were whole bases for the columns,

then at least you could kind of justify putting this up.

But... But I...

I mean, this is stage setting, isn't it, in that case? Yeah, yeah.

It's making an impressive entrance.

But the reconstruction is all from Evans's imagination.

Yeah. Wow. So it's a bit of a shocker. Yeah!

The bull fresco is based on actual finds,

but the pillars are Arthur's own,

inspired by the Victorian and Art Deco designs

of his own lifetime.

In fact, Arthur didn't just imagine what the palace looked like,

but also who lived in it.

Oh, wow!

So, this is the so-called domestic quarter -

that's what Evans called it - because you have him giving you

a queen's megaron, where the ladies could sip their tea or whatever.

And then you have the king's megaron, because it's bigger.

Megaron means a big room.

So, essentially, what Evans does here is he devotes spaces

to the royal family, an entirely fictitious royal family.

So, there is no evidence for a royal family?

We've never had any evidence for a king or a queen.

And he then gives you a reconstructed space here

when he imagines that there's this monarch

who comes here to be alone.

So much so that he gives him a little courtyard here.

There was never a wall here at all!

Now we know that Knossos was part temple

and part administrative centre.

But Arthur, born in the age of Empire,

could only conceive of an imperial palace.

He's creating a world of his liking. Yeah.

The world that he comes from,

the world that he reckons he belongs in.

So, it sort of all seems like he's filling in the gaps, if you like,

with his own views, his own ideologies.

Yeah, filling in the gaps - my goodness!

Concreting in the gaps!

He's filling in the gaps with reinforced concrete.

Some rebuilding was essential,

to protect the ancient stones from weather damage.

There is a 20th-century monument set on a prehistoric monument,

but, at the same time, the prehistoric monument

would have washed away by now.

There would have been nothing here.

It had to be conserved.

He just went a little over the top.

Arthur began excavating in 1900, at the height of the British Empire.

He dug for nearly three decades

as the old certainties of imperial power crumbled away.

He saw the mechanised warfare of World War I

destroy great buildings...

..like Reims Cathedral in France.

And he feared for the future of civilisation.

In rebuilding Knossos, he believed he could preserve the story

of how civilisation began.

He was also a populist.

Visitors flocked to Knossos

because of Arthur's efforts to bring it alive for everyone.

All archaeologists have to imagine what ancient ruined art

would once have looked like, but Arthur was different.

He created reproductions and put them back into the site.

So, if you've ever visited ancient ruins, somewhere like Pompeii,

for example, I think the thing that always strikes me

is how stripped out the spaces are.

Archaeologists have taken all of the art, all of the treasures

and put them in museums.

By utilising the frescoes, putting them in these spaces...

..it feels much more believable.

This... Yeah, I could imagine being in this space 3,000-odd years ago

and just seeing the art. It's so beautiful.

Arthur devoted the rest of his life -

and almost his entire fortune -

to bringing Knossos to life.

Until his death in 1941, aged 90,

he maintained an iron grip on how the Minoan story was told.

But after that, his vision came under attack.

One of the most important discoveries at Knossos

were clay tablets covered with what Arthur thought

were indecipherable Minoan languages.

In 1952, a pair of British scholars -

one a former World War II Nazi code-breaker -

began to decipher them.

After a lot of trials and errors, he tried out Greek.

They compared a tablet from Knossos with one from the Greek mainland.

Where you had little drawings of a tripod vase

and a word with three groups, three signs written underneath it.

So, he assumed this was a tripod,

and it actually worked.

So, it said "ti-ri-po". Tripod.

He actually reconstructed the language step by step.

When they announced this on the BBC, it was, like, a big surprise,

because nobody expected this to be Greek.

So everything was turned around upside down,

so we had to re-view a lot of things.

It turned out Arthur was wrong.

This language wasn't Minoan - it was early Greek.

This was a dramatic knock to his entire interpretation

of the Minoans, that they were fundamentally separate

to the Greeks.

So, in a way, these are kicking off a reassessment

of Arthur Evans's approaches?

Yes, because the decipherment of Linear B in 1952

was the first breakthrough, in fact, deconstructing the Evans myth

of Minoan civilisation.

Very quickly, the cracks began to spread to other corners

of Arthur's vision.

I'm back at Heraklion Museum to look a bit more closely at this beauty -

the Prince of the Lilies...

..the Priest King Arthur believed ruled the Minoans.

But if you look closely at it, you see that it is actually made up

of different fragments that maybe have nothing to do with each other.

The bottom part, you see that this is like a leg

going to the left,

whereas the torso is actually a man facing the right.

Evans put this all together within a single monolithic scheme

of the Priest King,

and so King Minos was born through this image.

I mean, I know it's difficult to project back 100 years,

but do you think Arthur was in any way trying to deliberately mislead

with this reconstruction?

I don't think so.

He was trying to figure out what this civilisation was.

But, of course, he didn't know better

because he didn't have any comparative material at the time.

He knew about priest kings in Mesopotamia,

he knew about the pharaohs in Egypt.

As far as Arthur was concerned,

all ancient civilisations had male rulers.

Jan thinks Arthur missed what made the Minoans unique.

We have, like, comparative evidence, which actually shows

that it's a female person sitting on this throne, either a priestess

or a priestess reincarnating, representing, re-enacting

the great goddess.

While he restored the portraits of Minoan priestesses,

Arthur couldn't conceive of them having earthly power.

But I can.

Just look at this gorgeous woman.

So, she's known as La Parisienne,

because a French art historian made the bold claim

that this 3,500-year-old fresco of a woman

would not look out of place on the front cover of Vogue Paris

in the 1920s.

She is just glorious,

the way that her eye make-up has been outlined.

You can see that the women of Knossos

were painting their faces white,

they were using kohl to outline their eyes

and colouring their lips bright red.

And you could tell she's probably a priestess

because she has the sacral knot fabric

at the back of her outfit here.

You could see a woman that sort of has freedom

and beauty and power all in one.

Arthur's upper-class Victorian mind-set

underestimated Minoan women,

but there were other Minoans whose lives he simply ignored.

Now, new generations of archaeologists have got their hands

on the evidence he uncovered.

One of these is Kostis Christakis, head of the British School at Crete,

which is based next to Arthur's old home.

What a beautiful place!

Yes, this is Villa Ariadne.

It's a beautiful Victorian-style manorial building

surrounded by a garden. CICADAS SCREECH

These cicadas are the loudest on Crete!

This is my nightmare, because, OK, I live in a very beautiful place,

like Villa Ariadne,

however, to wake up every morning, let's say around 6.30,

hearing that noise, it is a nightmare, really.

Arthur lived here in high Victorian style.

We can imagine Evans thinking

he's still like the typical English gentleman

and to be proud for his astonishing achievements

because Evans was a great scholar.

In this book, there is the first map...

..of the city of Knossos,

according to Evans' estimates.

Arthur made this map to show the city that surrounded the palace.

It was home to tens of thousands of people -

the biggest city in ancient Europe.

The school now analyses thousands of finds

from Arthur's decades of digging.

Actually, this comes from the excavations of Sir Arthur Evans

in the palace, and it's a masterpiece.

And you can realise it from the quality of clay, from the firing,

from the way the painter took his brush.

His or her brush. Uh-huh!

We don't know.

And make these beautiful decorative elements.

Very few Minoans were rich enough to own things like this.

But he was selective with his material, wasn't he?

It was highly selective, because during that period,

they used to keep only nice stuff.

Arthur's focus was always on the elite.

Now Kostis is using the finds he discarded to reveal the lives

of ordinary Minoans.

Conical cups, like this one,

simple, undecorated conical cups,

mass-produced, were overlooked.

Mostly used by the ordinary people, by the poor people.

These are the things they're using every day,

these are the cups they're drinking their liquid in. Exactly.

They use and then they throw.

You know, the conical cups for the Minoans

were like our plastic or party cups.

And also, you can see here the fingers of the potter.

So, let's say that holding this cup, it's like to have intimate contact

with the person who made it or the person who used it.

Oh, I love that!

The fingerprint there, it's almost like, by touching that,

you're sort of holding hands with someone from the past.

I mean, for me, you've got the sense that Arthur Evans is sort

of the foundation and then all these other archaeologists

are building onto that and creating a bigger picture.

Sir Arthur Evans was the product of its time

because archaeology is a science which evolves and changes.

Every year, archaeologists from across the world come to Crete

to crack the many remaining puzzles of the Minoan empire.

They've discovered towns, temples and forts.

One of the biggest Minoan mysteries is how such a rich and advanced

culture seemingly disappeared without trace.

But Sandy MacGillivray has found some crucial evidence

at the Minoan city of Palaikastro, on the eastern edge of Crete.

We've only excavated a small part of the town.

It would have stretched around here probably a kilometre long,

so we're looking at a population of around 30,000.

30,000?!

That seems to me like a big population for an ancient city.

Yeah, it's kind of like a small city, isn't it? Yeah, it is!

Wow. I'm walking on a 3,000-plus-year-old road.

Exactly.

It's very, very luxurious, with those cut sandstone blocks.

I mean, it really was a very well-to-do city.

Palaikastro was the second-largest city of the Minoan empire -

and a major religious centre.

We've come up to the crossroads on the site

and it goes up through here,

but here on the main street, we have this.

This beautiful boulder.

This boulder is no ordinary boulder.

In Ancient Greek, it's called a baetyl.

And we see in Minoan art that young men and women

draped themselves over it.

What, like hug it? Yeah. Wow.

What will be the result of me hugging the boulder?

You will tell us. OK.

So, kneel down and you have to connect your omphalos.

My omphalos, my bellybutton.

Yeah, connect your bellybutton to it.

Oh... And just take a deep breath.

Hmm. How's that? Mm!

This is...gorgeous.

I don't know if it's the wonderful Cretan sun on my back,

the fact I'm getting a lie-down or some cosmic energy,

but this is a really nice experience!

Mm...

150 kilometres north of this coast is the island of Santorini.

3,500 years ago, Santorini experienced

the biggest volcanic eruption in history,

triggering a mega-tsunami that hit Crete.

The coastline here is full of evidence.

One day, I was walking by and I noticed that

there were potsherds in it, so it couldn't be millions of years old.

This outcrop is actually made of debris

from a destroyed section of the city.

So, we're looking at the archaeology,

the remains of a disaster?

Of a disaster, the archaeology of a tsunami.

So, imagine a wave coming in, at least nine metres high here,

and going inland.

And it's the length of the wave as well - 15 kilometres.

Naturally, many experts came to believe it was the tsunami

that finished the Minoans.

But when Sandy began his excavations here,

he realised that, after the disaster, the city had been rebuilt.

I'll let you do the jump first. SANDY CHUCKLES

The billy goat jump.

JANINA CHUCKLES

What he also found were alarming signs

of a different kind of violence.

This building, when we found it, was completely destroyed by fire.

Wow.

So, in here, what we have is the evidence, like, really,

really clear evidence for how this building was destroyed.

Uh-huh. If you look here, you can see where a wooden post

came up here, so there's still an imprint there.

The wood is gone.

So, we know there was this huge fire,

it was an inferno.

Evidence on the brickwork shows how the fire spread.

They lit the fire, they stoked the building

and then cut off the oxygen,

brought the oxygen back in

and blew that whole wall out, basically.

As the Minoans desperately tried to rebuild after the tsunami,

attackers took advantage of their weakened state.

They burn every single town in Crete and every single building

except for the palace at Knossos.

Someone doesn't like 'em very much.

Who is doing this?

Sandy unearthed evidence during his excavations.

Come and meet our little friend here.

Absolutely stunning.

This is the Minoans' last artistic masterpiece.

Despite their peaceful reputation,

it's the figure of a soldier.

How did you find this incredible statue?

We found him blown apart.

We found him in hundreds and hundreds of pieces, all burnt.

And we had to sieve the soil, six tonnes of soil,

to get all these fragments out.

Yeah.

What's it made of?

The body itself is made of hippopotamus canines,

ivory tusks.

And then you have a serpentinite head.

And the eyes, which really shocked us, are inlaid rock crystal eyes.

Why do we think that they're investing so much in this object?

We're looking at a time period after the Santorini eruption

where a lot of Crete has been destroyed.

What we see in the Minoan art now is the rise of a warrior class.

I think it's always been there,

it's always been there out to sea protecting people.

But now it's really crucial because they're vulnerable.

Soldiers like this were their last hope.

This is a young man, we think he's right at the end

of his military training because he's stepping forward,

now he's going to join the ranks.

Sandy believes it was symbolically broken

by the invading forces of Greece.

So, you think it was destroyed by the Mycenaeans?

I think so, yeah.

I think because of what he represents.

He's this great hero of your enemy, basically,

and the first thing you want to do is just smash it to bits,

which is exactly what they do.

Arthur never found the evidence to tell this final brutal chapter.

It's quite wonderful to think, really, isn't it, that Evans

establishes this approach to Minoan civilisation,

but then each subsequent generation of archaeologists

sort of unpacks that, puts it back together?

Well, you know, it's kind of like Oscar Wilde says,

"Every generation has not only the privilege,

"but the duty to rewrite history."

Arthur Evans was a Victorian Englishman.

I'm not.

THEY LAUGH

The Minoans flourished here over 3,000 years ago.

But now we know they were conquered and submerged into Greece,

was Arthur right to call them Europe's first civilisation?

We know that Arthur Evans didn't get everything right,

but, in your opinion, Sandy, what was his contribution?

What is his legacy?

A lot of the Ancient Greek mythology and religion

is plucked out of Crete.

They're also picking up lots and lots of ideas,

picking up artistic traditions. In finding the Minoans,

he does actually push European cultures back to 2000 BC.

So, he gives us a brand-new chapter in history.

Arthur Evans' fortune gave him the opportunity

to discover the Minoans.

He didn't share this glory with his colleagues.

And he imposed his Victorian viewpoint on a people from the past.

I, to a certain degree, share Arthur Evans' vision

of this Minoan civilisation.

I feel intoxicated by this society that foregrounds women,

that celebrates the natural world in such beautiful artworks.

Arthur never found the Minotaur's lair,

but what he did find was much more vital.

His rewriting of the beginning of the Western world

is still radical today.

Very few people can say that they discovered

a lost civilisation.

Arthur Evans is one of those few.

In this series, I'm following in the footsteps of three men who

set out across the globe in search of lost treasures.

The discoveries they made rewrote history...

I'm standing in the presence of the birth of Viking art.

..revealing the untold story of how human societies began.

What was going to come out of the ground here was going to rewrite

the book of Western civilisation.

But these finds are not always what they seem because the men

behind them were products of their eras,

driven by nationalism, colonialism and ego,

competing to stamp their mark on our shared past.

This time, I'm in Norway to fulfil a lifelong dream...

Oh, what a treat!

..exploring the discovery of the world's oldest

and best preserved Viking ship.

It's so rich that it's quite hard to grasp.

Built at the very beginning of the Viking era...

Oh-ho-ho!

..it was buried as part of a royal funeral.

Somehow, the ship and its vast collection of burial treasures

survived almost intact for a millennium

before it was rediscovered in 1903.

This find would revolutionise our view of these legendary warriors,

previously famous only for their brutality.

It was unearthed just as nationalism was on the rise in Europe,

and became a powerful catalyst for Norway to throw off foreign rule

and win its freedom.

He's very much aware of a hatred of Swedes.

Known as the Oseberg ship,

it's the most lavish and extravagant Viking burial ever found.

The Oseberg ranks right up there with Tutankhamun's grave.

Whoever was buried here was certainly Viking royalty,

but with a twist that no-one expected.

On August 10th 1903, the director of Oslo University's

Museum of National Antiquities found himself on this remote farm

70 miles from his office.

This quiet, unassuming professor from Sweden had been persuaded

to investigate a mysterious mound of earth by the landowner,

who was convinced it contained something extraordinary.

As it turned out, he was right.

For the professor,

this would be the find of a lifetime,

but even he could never have imagined

just how significant it would turn out to be

when the dig commenced a year later.

What the subsequent excavations revealed wasn't just astonishingly

well-preserved. After more than a thousand years in the ground,

it also showed us a level of craftsmanship and artistry of such

sophisticated, intricate beauty that it would radically

transform our understanding of one of history's

truly legendary cultures.

The mound contained a near complete Viking longship, which had somehow

survived in miraculous condition,

along with its remarkable collection of burial treasures.

Known as the Oseberg ship, its delicate carvings and sleek design

would totally transform the Vikings' reputation

as vicious savages.

From the late 8th to the early 11th century, the Vikings sailed out

from their Scandinavian homeland to conquer much of Europe.

Their main goal was to establish trade routes throughout

their empire, but their raiding parties became feared

as notorious killers, hell bent on plundering gold, slaves and women.

Now, the Oseberg ship would tell a very different story.

That story begins here, at Oslo's Historical Museum,

which first opened to the public in 1904.

Back then, the man in charge was Professor Gabriel Gustafson.

He had moved to Norway from his native Sweden in 1900

to take up the prestigious job of director of antiquities

at the museum, then housed in Oslo's University buildings.

It was as he was preparing for the move to the new building

that a local landowner paid an unexpected visit.

It's the afternoon of August 8th, 1903.

It's one of the hottest days of the year and a farmer called

Oskar Rom has come to the museum specifically to see

Professor Gustafson, whose office is behind this door.

It just happened to be Gustafson's 50th birthday,

but he was rather preoccupied with the daunting task of relocating

the museum's entire collection to the new building.

So when he was interrupted by a farmer babbling on about some

Viking ship buried on his land,

apparently Gustafson was not very impressed.

This is Oskar Rom's account of the meeting.

"The professor did not look up.

"He looked very weary where he sat.

"He whimpered once and said, 'Well, they all say that.' "

But then Oskar produced from his pocket a piece of wood

about the size of this pencil.

It was intricately carved oak, inlaid with silver -

part of an ancient ship's tiller.

Suddenly, Gustafson was very interested indeed.

Fortunately, the museum also holds Professor Gustafson's archive,

which can tell us what he really thought about farmer

Oskar Rom's visit.

These boxes contain Gustafson's work diaries, sketches and copies

of his professional letters - including one he wrote immediately

after Oskar left his office.

We have a copy of the first letter he actually wrote to Oskar Rom

on August 8th, 1903,

so it must have been just after the visit from Oskar.

So this is his handwriting? This is his handwriting.

What does it say?

"In the mound,

"there probably is a grave from the Viking time

"that is of scientific importance.

"Any disturbance is prohibited." Wow.

"If someone breaks that rule,

they will be prosecuted," you say that? Wow! Yeah.

That's fantastic! Yeah.

Do you know what? For such a short letter... Yeah.

..he has laid out his case completely.

He's found this ship, he thinks it's a Viking burial,

he thinks the university should get in there,

anyone who's going to go in and look at that mound

is going to be prosecuted. Yeah. It's so succinct.

He knows what he wants... JANINA LAUGHS

..I think.

The chance to excavate a Viking ship was an almost unheard of opportunity

to find out more about a people whose fearsome reputation sprang

from one of their earliest attacks.

It took place not on mainland Europe, but on the small tidal

island of Lindisfarne, just off England's Northumberland coast.

Known as Holy Island, in 634 AD, Irish monks established a priory

here on a mission to convert the local pagans to Christianity.

This became the centre of Christian faith in northern England

and a beacon of civilisation across Europe.

Far from the distractions of the mainland,

the monks lived a simple but industrious life

of worship and study.

They were also celebrated artists, producing ornately illuminated

manuscripts like the Lindisfarne Gospels,

one of Europe's greatest medieval artworks.

But then, in the year 793, everything changed.

On June 8th, life in this idyllic island monastery

was suddenly and violently shattered.

VIKING WAR HORN SOUNDS

Strange-looking ships appeared on the horizon.

The monks would have had no idea who they belong to

or why they had come...

..until they landed on the shore.

The Viking invaders charged up the beach and stormed the priory,

helping themselves to valuable religious relics of gold,

silver and jewels.

They looted everything they could find and brutally

murdered the monks.

The attack sent shock waves through the Christian world.

The most moving account comes from a monk called Alcuin, who grew up

not far from here. He wrote,

"Never before has such terrors appeared in Britain

"as we have now suffered from a pagan race.

"The heathens poured out the blood of the saints on the altars

"and the bodies trampled in the temple of God

"like dung in the street."

Attacks like this became the hallmark of three centuries

of expansion by the Vikings. Their long ships carried them

across oceans and inland via rivers as they colonised Iceland,

then Greenland, forged trade links as far east as Russia,

and, by the 11th century, became the first Europeans

to reach North America.

The Lindisfarne massacre was almost certainly where this reputation

of the Vikings as ruthless, bloodthirsty savages began.

They themselves would have promoted it.

They knew that fear was a powerful weapon,

and soon the mere sight of their ships was enough

to cause panic and terror.

And so, for more than a thousand years,

the fearsome Viking warrior image simply stuck.

The Vikings came from what we now call Scandinavia,

which, over the next five centuries,

evolved into three separate nations -

Denmark, Norway and Sweden.

In the mid-1300s, the bubonic plague wiped out nearly two thirds

of Norway's population, including most of its social elite.

Politically and economically crippled,

it became the weaker partner in two forced alliances, first with Denmark

in 1536 and then Sweden in 1814.

By 1903, as Gustafson began his investigation, this second union

was at breaking point.

Norwegians were determined to reclaim their independence

and Swedes were often seen as enemies.

Against this backdrop, the Swedish Gustafson prepared to inspect

the mound, which he now believed could contain a Viking ship burial.

He wanted to leave immediately, but that evening he was due

to celebrate his 50th birthday with his family,

so early the next day he set off.

I'm following his trail roughly 70 miles south

to Oskar Rom's farm near the small town of Tonsberg.

Gustafson's letters give the impression of a cool, calm,

collected kind of guy. But, as he tumbled down the tracks

to Tonsberg, I can imagine he had a mix

of excitement and trepidation.

Was this going to be the find of a lifetime?

Was it going to secure his reputation in the academic world,

maybe in the public imagination?

Or, as I suspect, would he have also feared it could all turn out

to be a false alarm, or even a hoax?

The professor arrived early on August 10th, 1903,

and Oskar excitedly brought him to the mound of earth on his farm.

Gustafson did some initial exploratory digging and soon

he discovered the irrefutable evidence that he really needed.

This is what he wrote in his diary. "When examining the mound,

"we first encountered a burial chamber, a kind of roof

"which protected the tomb.

"Below, I came across riveted oak tables.

"The whole thing is exceedingly solid.

"It has also remained excellent as far as we've been able

"to see so far."

What he didn't yet know was that, beneath his feet, the clay

and peat of the mound had been kept wet by a small stream,

the perfect conditions to preserve the thousands of wooden fragments

for over a millennium.

This was it. It was definitely a Viking ship burial.

But the next question was - would Gustafson be allowed to excavate it?

The problem was Norwegian law stated that any treasure found

belonged to the landowner,

which leads us to the curious tale of Oskar Rom's neighbour,

Johannes Hansen, who, until very recently,

had owned this land.

Like many working class Europeans in the late 19th century,

Johannes had left for the United States in search of a better life.

But he soon found himself down on his luck,

living in squalor in the slums of Brooklyn.

In desperation, he turned to a fortune teller who told him

that, to become rich, he didn't need to suffer such hardships

in America,

because hidden on his farm back home was a great treasure.

Hansen was hooked. As soon as he could,

he rushed back to Norway and began excavating the mound.

But he didn't find anything, so he stopped digging.

He was worried he'd hit on a plague pit full of victims

of the Black Death. It wasn't.

But, ironically, poor Johannes soon died of an illness

he'd contracted in America.

For Oscar Rom, who bought the land in 1903, this turned out

to be a rather fortunate turn of events.

Oskar wasn't just lucky, he was also shrewd.

If there was buried Viking treasure here, he knew that, as the legal

land owner, he could simply sell it to the highest bidder.

Gustafson was appalled.

He realised that, if he was outbid, the fragile ship would almost

certainly be destroyed and lost forever.

What's more, winter was fast approaching and the ground

would soon be frozen solid,

so digging would have to wait until spring.

Over the winter, Gustafson would have examined the records

from a Viking find unearthed just 20 years earlier, offering the glimmer

of hope that much of his ship had remained intact.

Just 15 miles away, two sons of a farmer had been digging

into the frozen ground of a similar mound and they made

the most incredible discovery.

It was one of the first relatively intact Viking long ships.

The Gokstad ship was incomplete and damaged,

but what really mattered lay at the heart of the ship -

a human skeleton.

The bones came from a 9th century man.

He must have been a chieftain,

who looks like he died from injuries sustained in battle.

And, I mean, just look at these leg bones -

they're huge!

This is a real man mountain, a true Viking warrior.

In the late 19th century, nationalism was growing

across Europe. Norway was desperate for independence and the discovery

of this warrior was a way to stake a claim on their heroic past.

It was also an era when nations asserted their identity

through exploration, including a fierce competition to be the first

to reach the North Pole. To Norway's intense pride,

they also had a major contender in this race.

When this chap, Fridtjof Nansen, returned from his attempts to get

to the North Pole in 1895,

he was immediately hailed as a national hero.

Nansen's bid for the pole had fallen short,

but he did get further north than anyone in history,

which was enough for Norway to declare him a living legend.

And the best way to do that was to portray him

as a latter day version of another great seafaring hero,

the Viking king Olaf Tryggvason.

To prove it, just look at this book illustration.

It shows the Norse King Olaf squaring up

to Sigrid the Haughty of Sweden.

It was published in Norway around 1900.

Then, look at this photo of Nansen

taken at almost exactly the same time.

It's quite striking. You put them alongside each other,

it's like a mirror image.

This really does seem to demonstrate that, at this time,

there was an insatiable desire on the part of the people of Norway

to connect back to their Viking roots.

This put Gustafson in a difficult position.

He was a Swede about to excavate a priceless Norwegian treasure.

By March 1904, Gustafson had organised his team,

raised government funding and was ready to start excavating.

According to archaeologist Terje Gansum,

the only thing stopping him now was the landowner, Oskar Rom,

who was still holding out for the best financial deal

he could negotiate.

Oskar Rom is a fascinating guy. In the literature,

he is portrayed like this greedy farmer.

Mm. He wanted to earn money - there's nothing wrong with that.

And he didn't care that this Professor Gustafson comes from Oslo

and told him how to behave. He didn't listen at all.

But the professor also has his agenda

and he doesn't want to pay more than necessary.

He was arguing that, since the ship and everything was in pieces,

they should reduce the price.

It's broken! It's broken.

Oskar was demanding 12,000 kroner, a fortune.

To Gabriel's dismay,

the museum eventually caved in.

But there was still very much tension between them,

so they actually stopped talking and wrote notes each morning

to give to each other. Wow! Post-it notes!

Gustafson already faced prejudice from Norwegian

colleagues and neighbours.

Now he was to lead the world's biggest dig under the gaze

of a nation ready to hijack it for its nationalist cause.

The excavation began on June 13th, 1904.

Anticipation was running high.

People expected a ship, a warrior AND treasure.

But then, disaster.

Almost the first thing Gustafson discovered was a trench

dug centuries earlier into the burial chamber.

He realised to his horror that any precious metals

had disappeared, probably looted by graverobbers.

The disappointment was enormous because the whole country

was expecting him to find incredible treasures.

Within his own collection at the Historical Museum

was a superb example of a hoard of 9th century Viking treasure,

discovered in 1834,

yet again on a farm just 30 miles from Oslo.

This is known as the Hoen Hoard and it's one of the largest

Viking hoards of gold ever discovered.

There is two and a half kilograms of gold here

and it tells us so much.

Down here you can see coins

that have been reappropriated as pendants.

This is a Roman coin that has had this fitting attached

to the top to turn it into something that can be worn.

This utterly beautiful collection of objects tells us that Vikings got

as far afield as Byzantium, Constantinople,

that they had these contacts over with the British Isles,

Anglo-Saxon England, Celtic Ireland.

Some of these beads that you see, there's coral there

from the Indian Ocean.

You've got Asia represented.

These are things that are coming here from all over the known world.

Everything here shows us a traditional narrative

of the Vikings,

that they are bearded warriors sailing out on long ships,

travelling the oceans and grabbing plunder,

taking it back to their homelands.

This idea of the Vikings had lasted for centuries.

Now, it was about to be transformed.

As the dig progressed, Gustafson's dismay turned to joy.

The waterlogged soil had preserved a very different kind of treasure,

personal possessions designed to accompany a Viking

into the afterlife.

Far more precious than gold or jewels,

these wooden objects would have been found in Viking chiefs' homes

and beasting halls.

Never before had Viking life been seen in this intimate detail.

You have these wooden pieces of the ship's ledge

and you have tapestries. You have all these brilliant

artefacts with carvings and so on, very high quality.

And all this type of, eh, handcraft.

What we have here is everything that would usually be lost... Yeah.

..materials and wood and...? And it's so rich.

Also, so unique that it's quite hard to grasp.

The few human remains had been scattered by the looters,

but the anaerobic conditions had even preserved the flesh

of some of the animals sacrificed to provide the dead with a feast

on their journey into the afterlife.

The stomach of the ox in the aft of the ship is preserved.

Wow. So they know exactly what that ox had been eating...

Good grief! ..before they killed it.

Clearly, this would be the crowning achievement of Gustafson's career,

even if the excavation part lacked a certain glamour.

I guess it was kind of shitty work to do.

It smelled like, erm, yeah, you know...

..with 15 horses decaying,

starting the new decay when they are reopening.

You see, I hadn't even thought about that! Oh, yuck!

And Gustafson says also in his diary that it's not very fun,

people sitting on top of the mound and looking down

with his bottom in the air and excavating stinky horses.

I know. I mean, he does write, doesn't he,

he does talk about people looking at him, being watched,

being observed? The press in particular,

he's not happy about the press, is he?

No, I guess he is like the old-fashioned academic

who wanted to have quiet and order.

Yeah.

Gustafson's meticulous record-keeping

and systematic documentation were years ahead of their time

and vital to the success of this huge interdisciplinary challenge.

The practices he pioneered for the Oseberg dig

would be studied for decades - some are even still in use today.

He is the first archaeologist in Norway using millimetre paper

to get accurate documentation.

He also is one of the first to use photography,

so we should be super-happy that it was Gustafson

taking charge here.

He was aware how much this would mean for the future. Mm-hm.

For 115 years, it looked like no other significant Viking ship

would ever be found.

But, in the autumn of 2008, archaeologists were surveying

a known Viking settlement when they detected the unmistakable

outline of a ship.

Could this find be as rich as the Oseberg? Two years later

and I'm lucky enough to be able to visit Norway's first Viking ship

excavation since Gustafson's.

Building on his legacy,

this team has the advantage of 21st-century technology

to help them, which is just as well -

this ship's timbers have completely rotted away, leaving just a faint

impression in the soil.

Even so, it's a national event for Norway, with live streaming

over the internet, plus a week-long series of live broadcasts

from the site.

So just imagine the impact the fully preserved Oseberg ship

would have made at the time.

And, unlike Professor Gustafson, the manager of THIS project,

Christian Rodsrud, positively welcomes the attention.

Oh, there's been so much media interest from all over the world

and, of course, Norwegians are very proud of this.

The remaining ships, the Oseberg and... ..they are national

symbols, of course, and this will be the first

well-documented Viking ship.

And it's obviously a lot slower...

..if we compare how the Oseberg ship

came out off the ground!

We cannot compare it to the Oseberg.

It's not that well-preserved, but we're still able to get a lot

of information out of it by using modern methodology.

Using a technique called photogrammetry, a digital 3D model

of the ship will be created by combining photographs

of the faint impressions left by the timbers in the soil.

This is very interesting.

Most of these black or brownish parts of soil here,

these are decomposed wooden parts.

They would have been part of the burial chamber on top.

Oh! So we've got the roof of the burial chamber.

I think so, at least,

but I'm certain that this is some kind of high-level individual,

like a king or a queen. Oh, my goodness.

I guess this is what it feels like to be at a moment in history.

When I read about Gustafson finding the Oseberg ship and the sort of

feelings that must have been going through his head

as he scraped down, layer by layer, through the earth and revealed it,

I'm here watching that happen!

Just seven weeks into an excavation

that's expected to last around five months,

new discoveries occur almost daily.

So, underneath here, we have

something very fragile. You can...

SHE GASPS ..actually see that we have

bones remaining. Yeah. And it's the bones from

a big animal, from a horse or maybe an ox.

I mean, that is in good condition.

What could you do if you start to get bones of this calibre

that are human coming out?

Oh, now, that would be amazing, because then we can go and possibly

do DNA and come so much closer to the person buried there.

Centimetres beneath my knees right now are potentially the bones

of a Viking king that we could reconstruct from DNA analysis.

We could.

Analysing the DNA of a Viking royal would potentially

unlock a wealth of information about their lineage,

where they travelled to, even their physical appearance.

But, even after 150 years,

Gustafson's pioneering work on the Oseberg

still has a part to play in this cutting-edge excavation.

It's the most well-documented ship we have,

so he did a lot of drawings, which are great information,

and it's very comparable for us.

We consult his drawings to compare, of course, but he wasn't able to do

it digitally and that's the big difference.

With no wood to work with, the ability to create a digital model

rather than a physical reconstruction means this team

will be spared the seemingly impossible task

that Gustafson faced next...

..because HIS Viking ship was broken into thousands of pieces.

They were brought here, to Oslo's Akershus Fortress,

to dry out slowly, before Gustafson could even begin the mammoth

and unprecedented reconstruction job.

For a sense of the sheer scale of this operation, I visited

the fortress with Viking ship specialist Knut Paasche,

who has spent years studying and documenting the Oseberg ship.

Where exactly here did they lay out the pieces of the ship, then?

Well, the truth is that we don't know exactly which basement it was,

but it was part of this castle.

But why did he choose this place?

They wanted it to dry out slowly. Ah, right.

And a wet basement here in this castle

was just excellent for it, actually. So it stayed here for several years

and then they took it into the university, and they started

to build up the ship.

The ship was in 2,000 pieces.

2,000! And how on Earth do make a ship out of that?! Where to start?

But just to start with the keel and then slowly build it up.

But it was not only the ship,

it was also all the amazing things laying on board - the sleighs,

the wagons, and all those things needed care at once,

so they had actually to wait for the ship. That was good as well

because they kind of needed some time to do some thinking -

how on Earth should we start, how should we do this thing?

It took 21 years to complete, but it was worth it.

The Vikings were nothing without their ships and the Oseberg

taught us just how advanced they really were, how their shallow

draft allowed them to navigate in just one metre of water,

how they were built to be light enough to carry yet strong enough

to handle open seas.

Gustafson's work had given us something truly unique - the world's

only near-complete Viking ship.

When we look at the finished ship, how much of that is the original?

My guess is 95% - that's nearly everything,

and that's the only Viking ship. It's everything.

And you won't find anything like that another time,

this is the one and only.

How much of the success was down to Gustafson?

Without Gustafson, we would not have the ship today -

that's quite sure. Of course, it is a bit difficult for us -

he was actually born in Sweden and we're not too fine with that

in Norway, but, still, yeah, it's OK!

As Gustafson began the Oseberg restoration,

Norway finally won its freedom, able to make its own laws

and determine its own future.

On October 26th 1905, King Oscar II of Sweden

renounced his claim to the throne

and Haakon VII was chosen

as the new king of Norway, now an independent nation for the first

time in over four centuries.

But, for a Swede like Gustafson,

Norway was still a fairly hostile environment.

He had lived here for five years, married a Norwegian,

worked and raised a family here,

but he felt people never let him forget he was an outsider.

He wrote that he felt like an exile wishing to be on native soil,

so he threw himself into his work.

Gustafson's monumental achievement in reconstructing the Viking ship

gave us a huge body of knowledge.

Today, experimental archaeologist

Jan Knutsen and his team of craftsmen

are using his findings to give us a deeper understanding by actually

rebuilding a working Viking ship.

Hi, Jan. Hello! Hi, hi! Hi.

This looks great! Yes. What are you doing?

We're going to split this huge log to make boards for our ship.

Now, I thought there'd be chainsaws, you know,

great, big double-ended swords, but there's nothing like that here.

No, no, that's not exciting at all!

We're making it the old way, like the Vikings did it.

So they used the iron wedges like this...

OK. ..to split, and then afterwards we use bigger wooden wedges

and big sledgehammers to split the log.

Cor, it's such an amazing process to watch. I really want to have a go.

Guys, can I have a go?

Of course. I really feel like having a...

I want to use this hammer because it's got a bigger head.

I'm feeling strong. Hang on, take the middle one.

Yeah. OK. Agh, come on!

That feels good. Yeah.

Take out some rage!

Quite impressed by myself. Yeah, I'm impressed, too.

Thank you!

I think I'm done!

SHE CHUCKLES

Rolf, would you...? I'll let you take over, Rolf. OK.

It took the team three backbreaking hours to work their way

along the entire length of the log.

Oh-hoo-hoo!

CHEERING

Wow! Well done!

Thank you. Oh, it's lovely and smooth.

Going to be very nice boards.

How many do you think you'll get out of it?

I hope we will get 16 boards out of this.

That's a lot of work for just 16 planks, but it's nothing

compared to how much it'll take to finish the ship.

We need 400 metres of boards for this ship.

400 metres? 400 metres.

We started a couple of months ago and we have four metres.

Oh, no!

What do you learn in the process of making it this way?

We learn that it is possible to do it with only very simple tools

and I'm amazed what they were able to do 1,200 years ago.

Fully restored, the Oseberg stood as a testament to the Vikings'

shipbuilding skills, but it was what was carved

into it that changed our image of them as just raiding warmongers.

A prime example is the ship's decorative figurehead

carved into the shape of a coiled serpent.

This was considered too precious and delicate to be put on display,

so an exact replica was hand-carved out of oak, but the original

still exists and I've been granted special access to see it at a secret

location a few miles from the ship itself.

This is something not many people get to see.

SHE GASPS

Oh, what a treat.

Gosh. I keep having to remind myself

that I'm looking at 1,200-year-old wood.

This stuff never survives!

It's intact and it's very beautiful.

The...way that this serpent's spine is picked out, deeply carved there,

and then there's these waves to suggest undulation of the serpent

going all the way around, because it's such a dynamic...

This is... It almost looks like it's moving, like it's writhing.

This is beautiful carving. It's a beautiful object.

And if this is just a taste of what's to come, I cannot wait

to see the full ship.

Armed with this new-found appreciation, it was finally time

to visit Oslo's appropriately named Viking Ship Museum.

This unique cruciform-shaped building was designed almost

a century ago specifically to house the Oseberg ship.

After the separation from Sweden, granting Norway's greatest treasure

a home of its own was a point of pride.

So, in 1926, when it was time to transport the Oseberg

across the city to the new museum, people lined the streets to catch

a glimpse and cheer it along,

and I, for one, can't wait to see it.

This really is a wow moment.

I know presenters are constantly walking

into staggering places and going, "Wow!"

but this is something else for me.

It feels so special to just get to see this ship in the flesh

and it looks like it was made yesterday.

You can see why people thought it might be fake

cos it's just in such incredible condition, like it could just sail

out of this room right now.

The first thing that strikes you is the shape, with its elegant,

sweeping curves. At just over 70 feet,

it's actually shorter than typical longships -

probably because, as one of the very earliest built,

it blazed a trail for later designs.

Then your eyes begin to take in the detail.

Wow! The incredibly intricate carvings on the bow and stern.

The carving is just unbelievable.

It's so beautiful.

The craftsmanship is just outstanding.

This design is known as Oseberg style.

It's the earliest of six periods of Viking Age art, but it's also

known as the gripping beast style because, all the way here,

you can see creatures curling, overlapping one another.

There's snakes and dragons,

they're reaching out with their paws, touching

their surroundings and each other.

It's so exciting to think that I'm standing in the presence

of the birth of Viking art.

The early Vikings left us little in written form,

so the symbolism of these carvings has been lost, but Scandinavia's

relative isolation from the rest of Europe allowed its pre-Christian

worldview, in which animals and nature played a major role,

to survive much longer.

The sagas and stories passed down orally tell us that serpents

and dragons were especially important and that ships

were more than just transport -

they were imbued with spiritual qualities -

so these figures undoubtedly represent a coming together

of those very beliefs.

I just can't get over the condition of this thing.

Work like this could only be produced

by a dedicated artisan class.

The Vikings weren't just stealing other people's treasures,

they valued beauty enough to create their own.

This alone helped to redefine our view of them.

The Oseberg was a huge leap forward from the knowledge that had come

from earlier finds, like the simpler Gokstad ship that now

sits alongside it.

Much of what you see here is replacement wood,

but it's obviously a far more basic and rugged design, a workhorse meant

for trade, travel and terrorising.

It's a remarkable find, but it told us very little about Viking culture.

When it came to the Oseberg discovery, the ship itself

was the star attraction, of course.

But just as important as its ornate carvings was the art found

within it, a truly incredible collection of treasures to accompany

the ship's occupant into the next life.

So the Oseberg ship is pretty amazing, but look at this.

It's a cart and I keep having to pinch myself to remember

this is wood. Now, this was buried 1,200 years ago, but it was already

old at that stage. It was a precious antique.

What's really fascinating for me is the carving.

Just look at the detail here.

And this is one for cat lovers, because, all over the back

of the cart, you can see cats overlapping one another.

It's very possible that this is a reference to Freyja's chariot,

the goddess Freyja, because, according to mythology, her chariot

was pulled by cats.

From Odin's ravens to the monstrous wolf Fenrir, animals feature

heavily in Norse mythology.

So, at the very front, you've got the hero Gunnar, in a snake pit,

where you can see all the snakes writhing up and attacking him.

It really brings a drama to this incredible Viking art.

These carvings show a complex mythology

way beyond that of a simple warrior culture, echoing

the great civilisations of ancient Greece and Rome.

And this wagon is just one item in a collection

of more than 700 pieces - a staggering number -

many decorated and carved in the same gripping beast style,

from the intriguing brass and enamel hinges

of the so-called Buddha bucket,

to a dog collar that looks like it was bought yesterday.

What is really so exciting about the range of objects that came

out of the Oseberg ship burial are the insights they give us

into daily Viking life.

I mean, look here, that is a chest for holding clothes.

I know it's high status, but, still, it's the sort of thing

you'd have found in a Viking house.

You've got shoes, actual Viking shoes, and then these bits

of furniture. Six beds were put into the ship, as well as the only

surviving Viking chair.

And we find textiles -

these things NEVER survive in the archaeological record,

and yet here you've got needles,

you've got things for spinning wool and even little balls

of yarn themselves.

These objects add up to a spectacularly detailed

snapshot of the Vikings at home,

working, creating art, cooking

and socialising - so different from the brutish people

we previously imagined.

By restoring the country's noble ancestry, the Oseberg ship

and its treasures gave Norway the confidence to stand proud

as a nation, ready to take full advantage of the opportunities

of the 20th century.

Professor Gustafson SHOULD have felt he could bask in the glory

of his achievement.

In fact, his life only became more difficult.

By making the most important Viking discovery in history,

Gustafson had found himself in an impossible situation.

On the one hand, he was utterly delighted with his find,

but, on the other, he was deeply troubled by the aggressively

nationalistic exploitation of it.

He had gifted Norway with its greatest cultural treasure

and remained quietly loyal to his adopted home,

but even that wasn't enough.

In his letters, Gustafson writes that he's very much aware

of a hatred of Swedes in his social circle. Politics, he says,

is beginning to become unbearable, and he longs for a time

when the Scandinavian countries will come together

in a civilised arrangement.

As Gustafson began the restoration work, the Oseberg presented

the world with yet another revelation.

This time, it came from the human remains.

Before excavations began, it was assumed that,

like in the Gokstad ship, the tomb was probably that of

a big, strong warrior or a king.

But as the bones started to come out of the ground, it was obvious

there wasn't just one body there, but TWO skeletons.

And what was discovered next would shock everyone.

These weren't the bones of men at all.

This lavish tomb had, in fact, contained two Viking women.

Marianne Moen has studied the remains

while researching the roles played by women in Viking society.

How outrageous was this discovery when they found out it was women?!

It was massive, really, really massive.

The discovery of this burial was at a time when the Viking Age

was big news anyway

and so there was this whole desire to link the sort of the Viking Age

to present-day Norway by seeking a glorious past.

The news that the bones were female came as Norway's nationalist fever

reached its peak.

Many believed that one of these women must have been Queen Asa,

grandmother of King Harald,

the first ruler of a 9th century united Norway.

It fitted the narrative of what they wanted.

Look, here is a queen of the past - wasn't she mighty?

The assumption was that Queen Asa's extravagant funeral had included

the sacrifice of a female slave who was then buried with her.

But, in 2007, modern scientific analysis produced yet another

surprising turn in the story.

The younger lady's teeth show evidence of having used a toothpick,

which isn't something you would associate with a slave. Samples

taken from the bones indicates high status diets for both of them.

But then there are other indications, like the shoes -

and they're very fine shoes indeed.

So both of these bodies show indications of being high status.

Even now we're having conversations, in 2020,

this idea that women could have high status, power

and be commemorated in this way,

it still doesn't seem to fit.

You sort of have this narrative of Viking Age society

as if it was completely male-dominated,

but that's not what we see in the archaeology.

That the Oseberg ship burial contained not one but two powerful

women told us that our view of the Vikings

as an entirely male-dominated culture was simply wrong.

Professor Gustafson, the quiet hero behind all the Oseberg revelations,

never did return home. He remained in Norway,

braving the anti-Swedish sentiments aimed against him,

and spent the next decade working on the restoration.

His death in 1915 meant he never got to see the fully restored ship,

but we have him to thank for this unique discovery

and the many Viking revelations that it's given us.

The animal carcasses and other objects discovered

on the Oseberg ship told us

that feasting was an essential part of Viking life.

Today, experimental archaeologists use this evidence

to recreate Viking feasts.

This helps fill in the gaps in our knowledge and reveals

more intimate details about Viking life.

CHEERING

But it's also a way for Norwegians

to express their deep national pride.

Your foundation takes the name Oseberg - it's obviously important.

Why is that ship and that discovery so important?

Well, it's actually...

Obviously the Oseberg find is one

of the main archaeological finds in the world -

it ranks right up there with Tutankhamun's grave and others,

and it came at exactly the right time for Norway.

And I know, Unni, that you have a personal connection

to the archaeological dig, don't you? I do, I do.

My great-grandfather was there in 1904

and helped digging it out, yes.

Goodness me. He was not a very important person,

he was a free farmer with his own shovel!

So, he had a spade... He could dig!

He could dig, yeah.

But thinking back to the Viking Age, ships were deeply symbolic then,

weren't they? Ships were absolutely deeply symbolic. Ships were known

to have their own soul. They could punish the crew or they could

reward the crew.

Longships, with their living souls, became deeply embedded in Viking

culture, celebrated in their art, in stories and also in song.

HE SINGS TRADITIONAL SONG

From the games they played to how they ate and what they wore,

it's remarkable how Gustafson's Oseberg ship discovery

is still giving us new information today.

That was fantastic!

My final experience in Norway is the closest thing to a voyage

aboard the actual Oseberg ship.

This exact replica was hand-built

in 2012 by Jan's team, together with Tor and Unni's foundation.

OK, crew, are you ready? ALL: Yes!

This is such an experience!

It was created mainly to prove that the original was indeed

seaworthy, not just ceremonial, as some people thought. But it also

shows that, as well as a feat of great endurance, a Viking sea voyage

was one of quiet contemplation.

You can study Viking ships as much as you like from books,

but this is where you really learn.

What more fitting tribute could there be to a ship that sailed

across an ocean of time to show us how wrong

we'd been in our perception of the Vikings?

And to think how easily it could all have been lost.

The Oseberg ship quite simply should not exist. That wet clay left

us the most remarkable relic and it tells us so much

about the Viking people, about women, the home, art,

how the Vikings really lived.

But Gustafson is as much a part of history as the ship itself.

As he pulled those bits of wood out off the ground piece by piece,

he was saving two groups of people.

He was rehabilitating the ancestors of the past and he was galvanising

the Norwegian people of the 20th century.

That is the true power of archaeology.

In this series, I'm following in the footsteps of three men who set out

across the globe in search of lost treasures.

The discoveries they made rewrote history...

I'm standing in the presence of the birth of Viking art.

..revealing the untold story of how human societies began...

What was going to come out of the ground here was going to rewrite

the book of Western civilisation.

..but these finds are not always what they seem

because the men behind them were products of their eras,

driven by nationalism, colonialism and ego,

competing to stamp their mark on our shared past.

This time, I'm unravelling the story of a rebel archaeologist

who, in 1961, made a discovery that should be as famous as Pompeii.

In Central Turkey, James Mellaart cracked the mystery of when humanity

made its first leap out of the Stone Age

into the urban living we know today.

What he found was the world's oldest city

from the very dawn of civilisation.

Literally at the time, nobody had seen anything like this before.

It just didn't exist.

This discovery is still transforming what we know

about our earliest history.

I can imagine the face of someone else 9,000 years ago

gazing back out at me.

Yet his own reputation lies in tatters.

Both the media and government had begun

to ask some very hard questions.

Mellaart became engulfed in scandal, accused of forging evidence

and stealing from his own sites.

Now, I want to separate truth from slander to reveal one

of archaeology's greatest untold stories.

This is the Konya Plain in Central Turkey

known since ancient times as Anatolia.

It's a nine-hour drive south-east from Istanbul, and the border

with Syria is just another six hours away.

It's a vast, flat, remote land.

James Mellaart, known to everyone as Jimmy,

arrived here in 1951, when he was 26.

Coming from the rationing misery of post-war Britain,

he found himself in a fertile place where people farmed

as their ancestors had done for countless generations.

He'd been drawn here by mysterious features in the landscape.

Every few miles, there are these peculiar-looking low mounds.

They're everywhere.

They're not natural.

They're all man-made, the remains of long-lost settlements,

some of them thousands of years old.

In the 1950s, the Konya Plain was regarded

as an archaeological desert.

But Jimmy was convinced that these mounds held the secret

of how civilisation began.

Jimmy taught himself Turkish

and recruited local people to help.

He stayed in guest houses, where the beds were still warm

from the previous occupants, and he went from village to village

by bus before setting out on foot to search for evidence.

But not everyone was accustomed to foreigners.

Jimmy had to carry small rocks in his pockets,

which he'd throw to scare away wild dogs.

And he was arrested three times by the local police

who were suspicious of an outsider that was literally digging

in their back yard.

But coming from London, Jimmy loved the space and freedom.

Then, at a place called Catalhoyuk, he finally found

what he was looking for - a particularly large mound.

All Jimmy's instincts as an archaeologist were kicking in.

Was this the ancient settlement he'd been searching for?

He wrote in his journal, "The importance of the Konya Plain

"in Anatolian prehistory is obvious.

"No other region on the plateau shows such numbers of ancient mounds

"or so many mounds of great size."

Unfortunately, before Jimmy could even begin to dig,

he succumbed to a particularly nasty stomach bug.

He had to quit and make his way to the nearest village in search

of urgent medical help.

Jimmy's big discovery would have to wait,

but when he DID return, he'd reveal

how humanity took the very first steps towards civilisation.

In Turkey, Jimmy lived in the city of Istanbul,

known as the Crossroads of East and West.

It was his home for 20 years, and his son Alan still lives here.

Hello, Alan! Lovely to see you. Hi, welcome, welcome, come on in.

Come in, I'll lead the way.

Thanks very much.

Well, this is the picture of my father as a young student,

I think at London University, with the lovely period glasses.

HE LAUGHS Snappy dresser!

Yeah, he was probably a snappy dresser when he was young,

but later on, dress was not important whatsoever.

THEY LAUGH

How would you describe him? What sort of a man was he?

Dedicated to archaeology.

I think, clearly, archaeology was his major passion.

I admire my mother for having put up with him for all those years!

If she hadn't been an archaeologist,

I don't think the marriage would have survived.

No! But luckily, she was a very good partner in that sense.

Arlette came from an upper-class Turkish family.

Jimmy met her on a dig and they married in 1954.

She was his right-hand woman,

working alongside him on every excavation.

I'm intrigued by your mother.

Wasn't she the one operating the camera? Absolutely.

She was the official cameraman, and this is her camera.

For the Mellaarts, discovery was a family business.

Even young Alan was drafted in to help.

Most of the photographs of me,

like this lovely photograph of me cleaning skeletons...

How old are you in this? I'm seven, eight, nine, ten... Ah! ..exactly.

What sort of seven-, eight-, nine-, ten-year-old gets

that sort of an opportunity?!

I mean, I was basically born and they took me straight to the dig.

I mean, it was obviously deep inside him -

a deep-seated passion right from his childhood,

right from his education.

Is that coming from HIS parents or...?

Yeah, I definitely think that my grandfather, who was an expert

on Dutch drawings and Dutch paintings, very much encouraged him.

Jimmy spent his early childhood in London

in the heart of the art world.

But after the Wall Street Crash of 1929, his Dutch art-dealer father,

Jacob, moved to the family to Holland,

to the distress of his mother, Lynn.

I understand my grandmother was very unhappy with that

and she committed suicide. So, that was a very traumatic period.

He was about eight years old.

They came home from school and could smell gas in the kitchen.

Er, the neighbours had to break down the door,

and it was too late to save her.

Lynn's death left a huge hole.

He needed to find something to occupy himself,

and history and archaeology were all subjects

that filled in the time.

Plus, then the war started in '39. Yeah. So, you know...

Jimmy was 14 when Holland was invaded.

He was known to be a British subject,

and four years later, he was ordered to labour service in Germany.

But within hours, his father pulled strings and had him on a train

to the small Dutch city of Leiden, where a job in a museum equipped

with a hideout room, kept him safe from the Nazis.

At 21, Jimmy left Holland for good, winning a place at London University

to study Egyptology.

For Jimmy, experiencing the trauma of his mother's suicide

and then witnessing the Nazi occupation of Holland,

these things must have taken a huge emotional toll on him.

I can't help but think that, for Jimmy,

archaeology wasn't simply a career,

it was a means of escape.

At university, Jimmy's passion for prehistory grew, and he landed

himself a plum graduate job at the British Institute

of Archaeology in Turkey.

Arriving in 1951, he found a nation in the midst of rapid change.

Turkey's Ottoman Empire had been an enemy of the West.

Now it was building a new identity.

Jimmy was already rejecting the idea that Greece and Egypt

were the only ancient cultures that mattered.

He believed Turkey had been badly neglected

and saw a chance to make his name.

But there were risks.

Forging of artefacts was commonplace in the archaeological world.

In the Ottoman era, treasures of great national significance

were simply spirited out of the country.

They ended up in foreign museums and private collections.

This meant that archaeologists from outside of Turkey

were viewed with suspicion and jealousy.

It was against this hostile backdrop that Jimmy set to work.

Very quickly, his sheer determination got results.

This museum is packed with his discoveries.

Within just three years of arriving in the country, in 1954,

Jimmy uncovered a previously unknown 5,000-year-old Bronze Age culture

in Western Turkey, proving that this country had powerful

civilisations at the same time as the ancient Egyptians.

By 1957, Jimmy had another excavation on the go.

The finds he uncovered here proved the existence

of an even older culture.

They are beautiful and sophisticated.

I find it incredible to think that they're over 7,000 years old.

That's older than Stonehenge, than the Great Pyramids of Egypt.

It wasn't just about the dates.

Jimmy's finds challenged one of the biggest ideas in archaeology.

When he started digging, one of the core principles of archaeology

was that all the world's civilisations sprung from just one

place in the Middle East, known as the Fertile Crescent.

This was called Cradle of Civilisation Theory.

The idea was that, in the late Stone Age, around 12,000 years ago,

our ancestors switched from hunter-gathering to farming

and built permanent settlements.

This was the single most-important shift in our history,

the beginning of human civilisation.

But Jimmy's finds in Central Turkey were over 1,000 miles away

from the Fertile Crescent.

Jimmy was suggesting there was more than one cradle of civilisation -

a direct assault on conventional thinking.

For such a young man to challenge one of the core ideas of archaeology

was as risky as it was radical.

But for Jimmy, that was the sheer thrill of his chosen career,

challenging accepted theories, and if he was lucky,

finding the evidence to prove them wrong.

Which is what brought him back to the mysterious mound

at Catalhoyuk in 1958.

He wanted more evidence that Turkey had once been the home of advanced

early cultures, and he had a feeling this was the place to find it.

Professor Emma Baysal has been studying the career

of Jimmy Mellaart.

Jimmy would have seen other mounds.

Why did he get excited about this one in particular?

So, the different thing about this place is that, from the artefacts

that he could see on the surface, the material at the top

of the mound, which is the latest, and the material at the bottom,

which is the oldest, were all of the Stone Age.

They're all Neolithic.

Oh, so it's almost like a time capsule.

Rather than being built over later,

he's aware that this is self-contained.

It appeared this site was entirely untouched.

I mean, that must have been HUGE for him as an archaeologist!

He was so excited about it.

It was absolutely revolutionary.

What's more, the size of the mound indicated it had been built

on a huge scale.

Jimmy knew he had to dig here.

The realisation that under his feet might lie a Stone Age city

must've been one of the most exciting moments of his life,

because if he was proved right, this was a game changer.

He wrote, "It could mean only one thing.

"There were many houses.

"I realised that Catalhoyuk was all one huge Neolithic city."

Was this the place where Jimmy could prove

the Cradle of Civilisation theory to be wrong?

It would take nearly three years for Jimmy to secure

the necessary funding, build his team, and finally get digging.

"Catalhoyuk's 8,000 years of slumber came to an end on May 17th, 1961,

"when our party began excavations, and it was clear

"that this was no ordinary site."

Goodness.

Look at this site.

It's magnificent!

Absolutely huge, but also so clearly a city, isn't it?

You can see the buildings.

What would it have looked like when Jimmy Mellaart first arrived?

When he first started exploring, one of the things he noticed was

that right here up on the slope, there were bits of walls sticking

out of the dirt because the wind had blown across the top of the mound

and taken the dust away, and the walls were there,

so he knew right from then that there was buildings

of some kind underneath there.

That's incredible. So, nature was sort of yielding up the site.

Yeah, it was almost revealing the secrets - slowly.

Jimmy was a new breed of Western archaeologist.

As well as a revolutionary thinker, he built a reputation

for treating the Turkish diggers on his team with the utmost of respect.

He always gave them acknowledgement, including in all his publications -

he named them all.

And that's rare, isn't it? Extremely rare, even today.

Yeah. This was a small team,

they knew each other well and they worked fast together.

And when we're saying fast, do we have any sense of how fast he dug?

Yeah. So we have Jimmy's diary from the excavation,

which he kept meticulously all the way through.

We're lucky that he did that.

This is the actual diary - this is the diary that Jimmy was keeping

here on site as he was digging?

Exactly. Oh, wow! You can see how fast things progressed

from day-to-day. Here, on the fourth day of the excavation,

he's already drawn an entire house and wall paintings.

Oh, my goodness. Four days in, and you've got the entire footprint

of the house and details - that's incredible.

Untouched for millennia, the clay silt soil had preserved the houses

and their contents.

Jimmy could never have anticipated such luck.

He dug at a speed unimaginable today,

and the finds just kept coming.

And what were the major discoveries then, of that first excavation?

By the end of the first excavation, they could see plans of whole houses

and areas of the settlement and what was inside the houses.

So, ovens and hearths and wall paintings,

which was a totally new thing that nobody had expected.

This incredible level of detail and craftsmanship.

Absolutely astonishing.

You know, these ideas are all sort of challenging

our notion of our Stone Age ancestors, aren't they?

And what he finds in the end is that it's really something like a city,

where there are lots and lots of people living in the same place

together in very close quarters, with quite a complicated society,

far more complicated than anybody imagined.

Yeah, this is blowing my mind.

THEY LAUGH

You can still see the shapes of fireplaces and the outlines

of rooms, houses designed for the people who lived here

many millennia ago.

By the end of that first season in 1961,

Jimmy's Turkish and British team had unearthed the remains of 40 homes,

and the belongings of the people who lived in them.

And of course, this was just one section of the 34-acre site.

When Jimmy was trying to work out quite how many dwellings

were crammed together here, he began to realise that he was looking

at a community of possibly thousands of people.

But all the houses are right next to each other,

there's no spaces in between.

This was a city without streets.

How does such a place even function?

Jimmy came up with some startling conclusions.

The population built houses

for small groups to live in,

just like us.

There were no bigger buildings,

just houses,

but they had no doors.

Jimmy finally figured out

people got into their homes

through an opening in the roof.

He found evidence of ovens below,

the smoke escaping through the same hole.

He wrote in his journal,

"Rising in terraces, there were no streets or passages,

"but houses were built against each other like cells in a honeycomb."

He was suggesting something never seen before -

that, in Catalhoyuk, people used each other's roofs

rather than streets to get around.

But one of the most remarkable discoveries was what he found

underneath the houses.

When he dug down below floor level, Jimmy started to find human remains.

Dr Nurcan Yalman from the Nisantasi University in Istanbul

worked here as an archaeologist in the 1990s.

This is a typical house.

When we empty the traces of those cut...marks,

they're finding the skeletons.

Right! So, I'm getting a sense of this now.

So, this is it. This is where the skeletons

are underneath the floors of the houses. Yeah.

So, you can see here... Oh!

..some of the pictures.

That looks a crazy jumble of bones.

Is it completely chaotic, these burials?

Some of them are like that.

There are some burials that they just buried and left it,

like a whole body.

And sometimes we were finding headless bodies,

and sometimes we were finding only heads.

In all, Jimmy excavated 480 skeletons -

ranging from newborn babies to people in their 60s.

The inhabitants of Catalhoyuk seemed to be deliberately

burying their dead beneath their houses.

Wow. Oh, my goodness.

So, I find this strange.

Yeah, well, funeral is not a one-time thing

for Neolithic people of Catalhoyuk,

and this is actually a kind of relief psychologically as well.

They're kind of domesticating the fear of death.

It might seem unsettling to us, but for the people who lived

in these houses, it seems to have been comforting

to have the generations that had gone before them buried close by.

Early reports of what Jimmy was finding sent shock waves

through the world of archaeology.

But then came the date.

Radiocarbon dating revealed it was 9,500 years old.

Jimmy had found what he would call "the world's oldest city".

Let's just stop for a moment and take a trip back through time

to get a sense of quite how old this place is.

If you rewind to when the ancient Egyptian pyramids were being built,

you have to go back through 4,500 years of human history.

That's two world wars, the Victorian era, the Elizabethans, Vikings,

ancient Rome and Greece.

To get back to the time when THIS place was flourishing,

you have to go back the same amount of time again.

Further, actually - another 5,000 years back.

I mean, that is just mind-boggling!

Thanks to the excellent preservation here, we can get a glimpse

of what life was like for the world's first city dwellers.

Catalhoyuk was surprisingly sophisticated.

A child buried with care, delicate bracelets on both wrists.

Jewellery carefully crafted from bone, shells and stones.

Human figures carved with such rich variety,

while daggers and complex tools made of the rare volcanic glass obsidian

were powerful evidence for long-distance trade.

For me, so much of the thrill of archaeology is world building,

sort of imagining my way back in the past.

Objects like this really help me to do that.

It's a rock of obsidian and it's been shaped and chipped,

then cut through.

And the surface has been really highly polished

so that it becomes a mirror.

It's a wonderfully tactile object.

Just touching it, I am putting my hand

where someone from Catalhoyuk had theirs.

As I look into its reflective surface,

I can imagine the face of someone else 9,000 years ago

gazing back out at me.

In one short season, Jimmy's finds brought the beginnings

of civilisation to life.

He'd come to Turkey to make his name, and he succeeded.

But he'd also built the family life he lacked.

Arlette and Alan were by his side at the dig, and when they weren't

excavating, the Mellaarts lived an idyllic life

in Arlette's inherited mansion on the banks of Istanbul's Bosphorus.

Jimmy was riding high and he wanted to tell the world

about his discoveries.

He chose the popular Illustrated London News,

making the best use of Arlette's colour photographs

and his own gift for storytelling.

Jimmy was claiming that what once lay here was the world's first city,

a city of 8,000 people or more, all living together.

Here was the evidence that advanced civilised settlements were emerging

outside of the Fertile Crescent.

Jimmy had overturned the idea

that there was just one cradle of civilisation.

It was clear that art had been incredibly important

to the people of Catalhoyuk.

Of all the finds Jimmy made,

perhaps what most captured the public's imagination

were the designs they put on the walls of their homes.

Oh, my goodness.

These are amazing!

Beautiful colours still.

So what's actually going on in these scenes?

So what you can see here,

there's a really large deer in the middle of this picture.

Oh, yeah, you can see the antlers! Right, and then around it,

lots of little people in black and red surrounding it.

They're much smaller.

And the animal is huge, really out of proportion

to the other things.

They place huge importance on animals in this culture.

So, they're everywhere - they live with horns and skulls

and all sorts of things in their houses every day,

so animals are really present in daily life all of the time.

So these were on the walls of the houses.

Yeah, and it was a real surprise when they found these because

literally at the time, nobody had seen anything like this before.

It just didn't exist.

So we have some letters that were written by somebody

who was working on the excavation called Grace Huxtable,

and she was so excited about it.

She told her family everything,

about all the things that she was seeing.

LAUGHING: Oh, wow, look at this.

So, "Golly, you would adore this life!

"Every blasted day,

"this magician Mellaart digs out more priceless relics.

"We are all stunned.

"It creates a strangely exalted and odd state of mind."

The pace at which things were happening, it all happened so fast.

And she's actually a grandma at this time.

She's a grandmother? She writes like a 20-year-old -

or a ten-year-old! Absolutely. THEY LAUGH

The excitement of a child. Absolutely! Definitely.

The art of Catalhoyuk gave us an unexpected insight

into how Late Stone Age people saw their world...

..and their place in it.

I just want to hammer home this point.

These are the earliest paintings on man-made walls

anywhere in the world.

What's more, they're part of a collection of the most

extraordinary artefacts ever discovered in a Stone Age site.

The range of imagery is staggering.

You have these oversized beasts, these acrobatic dynamic figures,

all popping with colour.

Like the city itself, their discovery revolutionised our ideas

of how and when human culture first developed.

Just as startling were the images of humans.

These were just so surprising to everybody - that such detailed,

high-quality, realistic things could be found at such an early date.

A variety of materials and styles here.

Lots of different things.

So, we have very realistic forms of men and women.

Ones with large heads, small heads,

different shaped bodies, different poses as well.

Ten millennia later, we'll never know the exact thought processes

behind these figures, but they evoke human character and relationships

with all the complexity we know today.

Then, Jimmy pulled out one particular object,

larger and more intricate than any of the others.

Some early-20th century archaeologists thought

that Stone Age people believed in a single female deity,

a Mother Earth or Great Mother Goddess.

By the '50s, this theory had drifted into obscurity,

but Jimmy saw it fitted the evidence here.

His revival of the Mother Goddess idea would capture imaginations

in a 1960s that was foregrounding feminism.

I think it's easy to see where Jimmy was coming from.

These figurines are coming out of the ground in such high numbers.

They're beautiful. They're often associated with grain, with food.

When this object was found in the bottom of a basket of grain,

this was held up as the archetypal Mother Goddess.

You see this extraordinary female form.

She's got these drooping breasts, these folds of skin

and the most enormous bottom.

And she's perched on this throne that, for armrests, has big cats,

possibly leopards or panthers.

And the hands are resting, sort of subduing the beasts.

She is in control.

There's so many different things we could speculate about this object -

it's 9,000 years old, after all.

When it was discovered, it became the poster girl for Catalhoyuk.

This gave Jimmy the opportunity to say,

"Look at the magnificent art that we're discovering.

"Look at the world that we're building here,

"and watch this space."

Jimmy had set the archaeological world on fire.

Academics and colleagues were being forced

to sit up and pay attention to him.

He was now one of the world's most successful archaeologists.

His and Arlette's home on the Bosphorus was becoming a place

of pilgrimage where Jimmy held court, regaling his guests

with stories of his thrilling finds.

Jimmy was now also well known to the media.

He was to discover that the flip side of fame was notoriety.

Jimmy was about to become entangled in a plot with all the twists

and turns of a detective novel, a plot that would reveal

archaeology's dark underbelly.

It began when an English paper ran a feature in which Jimmy said he met

a woman on a train in Turkey, who invited him back to her place

to see her fabulous treasures.

The story would become infamous as the Dorak affair,

and it would mark the end of Jimmy's meteoric rise.

Hi, Christoph.

The person who can best help me navigate my way through this murky

tale is based here in Oxford.

So, he was invited to stay in this family home for a week...

A week?

..to make meticulous drawings of this collection

of objects from Dorak. Did he take photographs?

No, he apparently was not allowed to take photographs of these objects.

Hm. So, his sketches are all that we have of this encounter? Indeed.

Yet again, Jimmy chose the popular Illustrated London News

to reveal the treasures he said he'd seen.

I'd like to take us through some of the images in this article.

This image here really sets the historical context of Dorak.

It looks Egyptian.

It is indeed Egyptian.

Right.

If we look closely, we can see cartouches here and here

of one pharaoh in particular, Sahure, an Old Kingdom pharaoh,

one of the pyramid builders of ancient Egypt.

So, this drawing, it's making a big, bold claim

that there is a connection between this part of Turkey

and the Egyptian really kind of high point of Egyptian civilisation.

Indeed. So, this is a... absolute golden ticket.

Jimmy had built his career on finding cultures in Turkey

as old and older than ancient Egypt.

Now these treasures appeared to prove a direct link.

To the public, it was a sensation.

But to his peers, the idea that Jimmy had seen evidence

which had then disappeared without trace was puzzling.

But the biggest problem was the Turkish authorities.

Both the media and government

had begun to ask some very hard questions.

"Where are these objects?"

It's a fair question.

Yes, because this is Turkish property.

These are Turkish objects, right, in a sense.

So, they never found the house.

No record of this woman either.

Oh, gosh. So, that's starting to sound really suspicious.

Jimmy had been the golden boy of archaeology.

Suddenly, his integrity was being called into question.

The most widespread accusation was that he was somehow involved

with smuggling these objects out of the country.

But there was another hypothesis - that he simply made this story up.

In either respect, this is career-ending stuff.

To be either a fantasist or a smuggler... Yes.

..not great for an archaeologist, are they?

But Jimmy had another explanation.

He believed that he was set up in a sting operation on the train.

Some powerful antiquities dealer would lure James Mellaart

to the private collection in Izmir and he then would assess

these objects and give them value.

Right.

They were then sold and they simply vanished into the murky world

of antiquities dealers around the world.

Yeah, they're in some stately home somewhere in a cabinet. Right?

But why would Jimmy invent a story like this?

What's certain is he built his life around being an archaeologist.

So, did he feel he had to discover more and more

to keep his place in the sun?

Or had he become so immersed in the lost world he'd unearthed,

that the theories he formed in his mind

became confused with reality?

Until his death, Jimmy maintained he was the victim

of a sting - and he was soon cleared

by the Turkish police investigation of smuggling.

It seemed like he'd weathered the storm,

but then further disaster struck.

In 1963, while he was digging at Catalhoyuk, artefacts

from his sites began to appear on the black market.

A collector identified some of Jimmy's workmen

as the likely culprits.

Jimmy was devastated by the potential betrayal of trust.

He was personally cleared of theft, but with the still-unsolved Dorak

affair hanging over him, the media would not let up.

Jimmy Mellaart was tainted goods.

How could anyone trust an archaeologist accused

of smuggling treasure?

Even though he'd been proved innocent,

the Turkish government refused to renew his work permit.

The site at Catalhoyuk was shut down.

Jimmy was now in exile.

Still protesting his innocence, Jimmy was forced to take a temporary

teaching job at London University.

It was a terrible come-down.

He was an excavator who lived for the dig.

Every year he hoped to return to Catalhoyuk but was disappointed.

Then, personal disaster piled on top of his professional woes.

In 1976, the family house in Istanbul caught fire.

This had been the place where Jimmy enjoyed the fruits of his success.

Now it was a smouldering ruin.

Catalhoyuk, too, lay in ruin - its walls and foundations slowly

turning back to dust.

Marooned in England, Jimmy continued to turn the site over in his mind.

What else might the world's oldest city reveal?

His answer came from left-field.

Jimmy's theory was - what if Catalhoyuk

and its culture never died?

If you've ever visited Turkey, you'll have browsed stalls selling

the famous hand-woven rugs known as kilims, celebrated

for their abstract designs and handed down through generations.

Now, Jimmy announced he'd found a direct connection

between the kilim rugs and his prehistoric site.

Even more startling, he claimed the rug designs represented

the Great Mother Goddess.

Jimmy's home in England was halfway between Arsenal Stadium

and Finsbury Park Tube.

Excluded from Turkish archaeological sites, and their home

on the Bosphorus burned to the ground,

Jimmy and Arlette were now living full-time here in North London.

It was all so different to the glamorous life

they'd left behind in Turkey.

Shahina Farid worked at Catalhoyuk for more than a decade.

She was also a close friend of Jimmy and Arlette.

Here we are. Wow, what a treasure trove!

And this is where he would have done most of his research, his writing.

It is the study of someone with a very curious mind, isn't it?

Absolutely.

The flat belongs to Jimmy's son, Alan, who lives in Turkey,

so it's barely been touched since Jimmy's day,

a historical relic in itself.

This is where Arlette and Jimmy would meet and greet their guests.

Right. This is where Jimmy would sit.

You can still see the imprint of their heads on those armchairs!

Absolutely, and you can see that the whole room is just full

of their life in Turkey.

Now, Shahina, I am fascinated by Jimmy's goddess theory.

Where is the evidence, then?

In 1989, Jimmy went public with his radical Mother Goddess idea

in a book packed with drawings and reconstructions.

If you look at some of these designs, you've got photographs

of some of the artwork that was found in the field side by side

with kilim designs.

So, he starts with some of these geometric shapes

and then he extends it to his goddess theory

and the iconography that he starts drawing.

But not everyone could see goddesses in these patterns.

Is that the problem, is that the leap of faith?

Absolutely, that is the leap of faith.

So here, if you look at one of the drawings,

it could be a very stylised splayed figure.

And then with some imagination, you can see the same symbol

replicated in a kilim design, which he identified

as Mother Goddess depictions, as well.

But the biggest problem was that Jimmy had never mentioned

or recorded these artworks during the dig.

So, people felt that there was no proof that these paintings existed.

And some of them were quite fantastic that people couldn't

actually relate the images that he was publishing to,

at that stage, what we knew was coming out of Catalhoyuk.

Yeah, I find, it as an academic, problematic that you've got actual

proven evidence in there - photographs, factual information

of things we know exist.

Then, there are these drawings.

Is he making it up? JANINA LAUGHS

You know, one thing that I can say about Jimmy is that he was a great

archaeologist and he knew his history.

And I think this is one of those instances where

he was trying to fill in the gaps, but there was no evidence

to back it up, and that was...

As you say, that's what's problematic for academics.

Ancient sites like Catalhoyuk only give up so much evidence.

Any archaeologist in Jimmy's shoes would have to use their imagination

to fill in the gaps.

But what Jimmy did went way, way beyond this.

This book, this goddess book.

It is full of fabrications.

James Mellaart has literally made up evidence,

and you cannot do that as an academic.

But I also understand this is HIS world,

he's filling it with his imagination,

the things he thinks should be there.

Jimmy had only ever wanted to be an archaeologist,

yet in his obsession with his great discovery,

he had imploded his own career.

Meanwhile, 2,500 miles away, Catalhoyuk lay abandoned.

Jimmy's life's work, unfinished.

Then, just when it seemed that its remaining secrets

would stay hidden forever...

Hello, Ian, how are you?

I'm great. Yes, it's good to meet you...

Professor Ian Hodder is based at Stanford University in California.

As a student at University College London in the late 1960s,

he was inspired by Jimmy's lectures.

He was an extraordinarily charismatic person.

He would just stand at the front of a lecture hall

without any notes and in the dark, looking at these slides

and talking about them.

And he was just so enthusiastic, it was infectious.

Jimmy's own career was floundering, but he mentored younger

archaeologists like Ian, who went on to become an expert

in the Late Stone Age.

In 1993, he applied to the Turkish authorities

for a permit to excavate at Catalhoyuk.

And what were the conditions, then, that meant you were able

to resume this dig?

Well, I think they felt that the site had been left in a mess

and there was terrible erosion going on there

and yet it had become, through Jimmy's work,

a really internationally important site.

So, something needed to be done.

And I think they felt that enough time had passed

for the story to move on.

The other part was whether Jimmy would support something like that.

And I went to visit him in a flat.

And I finally said, "Well, do you think it would be possible?

"Would you support me going back?"

And Jimmy looked across at Arlette and said,

"What do you think, my dear?"

And she said, "I think it will be all right."

And that was it.

Wow, so it hung on that phrase!

Three decades after Jimmy's original discoveries,

one of the greatest ever concentrations

of archaeological firepower was now aimed at Catalhoyuk,

as a joint Turkish international team got to work.

Nurcan Yalman was one of the team.

During her time here, they unearthed new evidence that allowed them

to examine one of Jimmy's key theories -

that the world's oldest city was dominated

by a powerful Mother Goddess.

What they discovered surprised everyone.

James Mellaart, he really liked this story cos he found

this famous Mother Goddess figurine, but actually,

the new team also discovered different things ideologically.

Because first of all, men and women, it doesn't show any trace

that they were treated differently in society.

The team carried out modern scientific tests on the remains

of the people who once lived here.

They expected to find a difference between the lifestyles of men

and women, but in fact, the male and female bones and teeth

had all worn at roughly the same rate.

This is interesting, then, because although there isn't

necessarily a matriarchy, gender is not a dividing society in the way

that even it does today.

In general, they were working more or less on the same sort of tasks.

You know, that's why we can say that egalitarian in terms

of there was no chief, no priest class,

but also women and men looks equal here, which is really sweet.

Absolutely amazing. I want to go back there!

Yeah. It's amazing to think that 9,000 years ago,

they had better gender equality than we do today. Yeah!

The evidence was consistent through the generations.

So, the team concluded that this egalitarian society lasted

for hundreds, if not thousands of years.

Catalhoyuk is remarkable in so many ways.

People congregating together and producing what Mellaart describes

as the earliest surviving city.

But what really strikes me is in relation to elites and power,

there isn't what we think of in modern terms

of a sort of social hierarchy.

And even more extraordinary is this notion of gender equality.

Perhaps this 9,000-year-old civilisation actually had a better

idea of how to live than we do today.

The site had come back to life, but Jimmy was still in exile.

Then, in 1998, aged 73, he got a call from Ian Hodder

inviting him and Arlette to come back.

They took their son Alan with them.

This is his first visit since then.

Oh, Alan, how does it feel to be back here?

Amazing, absolutely amazing.

What did it feel like for them when they came back?

Were they treated well?

Brilliantly.

He was excited.

He was, you know, honoured.

It was, I think, a big bag of emotions.

And I think it was a sort of a reconciliation

in the end, as well.

But until the end of his life, Jimmy never satisfactorily

explained his fabricated Mother Goddess drawings,

and the mysterious Dorak affair remains unsolved.

In terms of the controversies,

Alan, what do YOU think was going on there?

Obviously, the Catalhoyuk site produced

so many fascinating objects -

wall paintings, obsidian tools

and many other items -

so to be able, you know, in the 1960s, to bring it to life,

to give it a story that people would understand,

it's obviously extremely, extremely difficult.

To do that, you have to be creative and think and interpret,

and whether you think

it was far-fetched or not is another matter,

but that's basically what archaeologists do,

is trying to build a story around the artefacts they find,

and the artefacts that my father found were absolutely outstanding.

Jimmy's achievements were remarkable,

but, as Christoph Bachhuber explained in Oxford,

it's hard to reconcile them with his flaws.

James Mellaart's legacy is a complicated one.

He is no doubt a brilliant archaeologist.

There is really no better person for Catalhoyuk -

he had all of the skills, all of the abilities,

all of the insights.

Now, there is this other James Mellaart,

he created worlds based on empirical data...

..and also based on what he thought the world should look like,

and that is a very complicated legacy

for archaeology and for archaeologists like myself

who are working in the footsteps of James Mellaart's research.

When Jimmy first arrived in Turkey,

no-one believed there was an ancient culture to be found,

but Jimmy always thought differently.

He was such an intuitive, instinctive archaeologist

and he really could feel his way back into the past.

The 9,500-year-old world he revealed was complex,

egalitarian...

..artistic

and sophisticated beyond any imagining.

Jimmy died on July 29th, 2012, aged 86.

He lived just long enough

to see Catalhoyuk declared a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Jimmy proved the idea there was just one cradle of civilisation was wrong

and began to tell the real story of how civilisation was born.

Jimmy had discovered things

that would transform our understanding of human history,

and THAT is what he deserves to be remembered for.