All language subtitles for BBC Raiders of the Lost Past Series 2 1080p

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.