Original subtitles

NARRATOR: Can this weird shattered skull

illuminate the human soul?

There were changes that made him essentially

a worse person, less in control of his impulses.

NARRATOR: Could this bizarre device

have changed World War II?

The deadly power of this device

comes not from radioactive material

or from high explosives.

It comes from bats.

NARRATOR: What makes this odd scrap of deer antler so strange?

You could call it the Swiss Army knife of prehistory.

NARRATOR: These are the most remarkable

and mysterious objects on Earth,

hidden away in museums, laboratories, and storage rooms.

Now, new research and technology

can get under their skin

like never before.

We can rebuild them,

pull them apart,

and zoom in to reveal

the unbelievable, the ancient,

and the truly bizarre.

These are the world's strangest things.

In a display case at Harvard University's

Warren Anatomical Museum

is one of the most astonishing objects in medical science.

This is the shattered skull of

a 19th century American railway worker.

When you look closely, you can clearly

see that something truly catastrophic has happened here.

NARRATOR: Now, using state-of-the-art 3-D modeling,

we can investigate this strange relic

like never before.

This is Gage's skull.

It shows evidence of a truly traumatic injury.

There are two sections of the skull missing.

There are also cracks sprawling from those lesions.

There's also damage behind the left

eye socket and in the cheek bone.

BENECKE: When we see such a wound in a forensic context,

we can almost certainly be sure that this is nothing that

a person can survive.

NARRATOR: Incredibly, Phineas Gage does survive,

but he is a completely different person.

It is a revelation.

STEELE: The bizarre case of Phineas Gage taught us something

fundamental about the way that the human brain works.

WEST: For the first time,

you see that relationship between who we are

and that meaty thing inside our skulls.

NARRATOR: How does this injury happen?

Why doesn't such traumatic skull damage kill Gage?

Can the skull explain his dramatic personality change,

and why is it such a game changer for neuroscience?

September 13th, 1848, Vermont, USA.

[train whistle blows]

AUERBACH: This is a time of rapid

railroad expansion in America.

In Vermont, construction is underway of what

is to be the Rutland Burlington Railway.

[explosion blasts]

NARRATOR: Phineas Gage's job is to prep

explosives to clear the rocky landscape.

He uses a metal tamping iron

to compress the gunpowder into drill holes.

So Phineas is tamping down the gunpowder, as is normal,

and he turns to speak

to some men behind him, which brings his head directly above

the hole full of gunpowder.

The tamping iron strikes a spark on the rock...

detonating that gunpowder.

NARRATOR: The tamping iron becomes a lethal projectile.

And it fires the tamping rod right up into his skull.

The rather grisly path this tamping iron

took was up behind his left eye,

then out the top of his head,

where it just continued off up and behind him.

NARRATOR: The bloodied iron rod lands 25 yards away.

Gage is thrown to the ground, a gaping hole in his head.

It's reported that his arms and legs spasmed for a while,

but after a few minutes, he's sitting up and talking,

and eventually, they're able to load

him into a cart and take him back to his hotel.

It's pretty remarkable for someone who has a 13-pound

iron rod driven all the way through their skull.

NARRATOR: 30 minutes later, Gage is visited by physician

Edward H. Williams.

AUERBACH: Phineas begins to vomit.

The effort of throwing up apparently dislodges a piece of

brain tissue, which is pushed out

the hole at the top of his head

and lands at the feet of the physician.

NARRATOR: Gage's case is taken over by

local doctor, John Harlow.

He was able to put one finger through the top of his skull

and a second finger through the hole in his cheek

and make them touch in the middle.

BENECKE: He had to remove part of the brain that was just

attached with the tiny tissue bridge, and at least

he could bring some parts of the skin and put

a bandage and wrap it around the head.

NARRATOR: Gage slips in and out of consciousness.

AUERBACH: He had a fungal growth on his exposed brain tissue,

and that pus was forming in the wound,

even dripping into Phineas's mouth.

NARRATOR: Gage is not expected to survive.

His family prepare a coffin for him.

AUERBACH: Phineas is a very lucky man,

because his physician applies silver nitrate, which is

a substance that had just recently been introduced to try

to halt the infection,

and it actually works.

After a few days, Phineas starts to recover.

NARRATOR: By the middle of the following year, 1849,

Gage is strong enough to return to work.

This massive injury should have been lethal.

Does this skull hold the secret

to his miraculous survival?

In 2012, neuroimaging experts recreate Gage's brain by

combining CT scans of the broken skull with MRI scans

of typical male brains.

It shows the hole in the top of Gage's skull is

astonishingly neat,

considering the force pushing the iron bar out.

Maybe that's because his bar is unique.

AUERBACH: Phineas has a custom-made tamping iron.

He's had a local blacksmith put it together.

It weighs over 13 pounds,

and it tapers to a narrow point at one end.

It's a bit like a javelin.

What that meant was this tiny point was able to push

the brain and the skull smoothly out of the way,

making a smaller, smoother hole,

so there's less smash damage.

NARRATOR: But the recent analysis of Gage's skull

reveals something even more miraculous about his survival.

There are these huge blood vessels on

the left and the right of your head.

So since this giant needle entered laterally on the side,

it's just a matter of a hundredth of an inch

that these blood vessels were not disrupted and disturbed.

That was plain luck.

In my whole life,

I've probably seen maybe five of those cases

that were actually survived by the patients.

NARRATOR: But following his incredible survival,

friends claimed Gage has become

quite literally a different man.

Is the explanation for this bizarre

transformation also hidden inside this fractured skull?

NARRATOR: After a heavy iron bar shoots through his skull,

Phineas Gage miraculously recovers, but when he attempts

to return to his old job on the railroad,

he is turned away.

It's reported that the balance

between his intellectual faculties and his animal

propensities seems to have been destroyed.

He is fitful, irreverent, and indulging at times in

the grossest profanity.

There were changes that made him essentially a worse person,

someone who was less in control of

his impulses and less pleasant to be around.

NARRATOR: The dependable, easygoing Gage

has been wiped out.

He has been transformed into someone very different --

stubborn, temperamental, insolent.

His friends and acquaintances say he is no longer Gage.

For centuries,

there'd been a debate about whether our bodies were all

there was to us or if we had this immortal soul that was

somehow separate and encapsulated our personality.

WEST: For people back then, it must have been really quite

a shock to realize that you could change a personality.

This supposedly invisible, intangible thing can be changed

by knocking out a piece of something physical.

NARRATOR: The analysis of Gage's skull reveals

the precise location of the damage to his brain.

AUERBACH: The part of Phineas's brain that has been damaged is

the left side of the prefrontal cortex,

in the part of the brain known as the frontal lobe.

This part of the brain is not fully developed

and connected in little kids and small children,

and this is why their behavior and their consciousness is

different from that of an adult person.

WEST: Generally, it's accepted that the prefrontal cortex,

that bit at the front that poor Phineas Gage

was unfortunate enough to have,

you know, a chunk of it knocked out of his head,

that this is generally regarded as the area that's in

charge of our higher level thinking and of impulse control.

And, if you think about it,

that's really what makes us pleasant to be around

and capable of functioning in society with other people.

NARRATOR: But there's another unexpected twist

to the story of Phineas Gage.

NARRATOR: He later holds down a number of jobs,

some of which require significant focus and patience,

exactly the skills that are apparently erased when

the iron bar rips through his prefrontal cortex.

So is the story of his radical personality change even true?

In the immediate aftermath of the accident, the changes

to Phineas Gage's personality and his ability to focus

on work, basically, caused him to lose his job.

But just a few years later,

he was holding down gainful employment.

AUERBACH: He eventually got a job as a stagecoach driver,

and this is a job that requires

a pretty extensive skill set.

The task of driving a stagecoach requires incredible

motor control, incredible cognitive function.

AUERBACH: You have to have pretty good judgment,

you have to have agility,

you have to have the ability to care for

and understand animals.

You also have to have the ability to deal well

socially with passengers on trips

that often last hundreds of miles.

NARRATOR: This reads like a list of the skills

apparently erased from Gage's personality by the accident.

So is the story of Gage's radical

personality transformation just a tall tale?

WEST: The brain is not only an incredibly complex bit of

machinery inside of us, but it's also a very flexible

bit of machinery in that if parts of it are damaged,

parts of it are removed, it can reorganize,

rearrange itself, and some bits

can take over functions that other bits used to do.

STEELE: Psychologist Malcolm MacMillan has written

extensively about Gage's story, and he argues that

his brain must have regained a lot of that social

and cognitive function.

NARRATOR: Recent research in 2019 suggests Gage's recovery

can be explained by the way the brain automatically

reorganizes itself.

What's really astonishing about this is the regenerative

capacity of the brain -- it can rewire itself

to pick up many of the functions of

the missing parts of the brain, and people with even quite

substantial amounts of physical

brain lost can go on to live relatively normal lives.

NARRATOR: And 3D imaging also reveals that most of the damage

seems to be to the white matter

of Gage's brain rather than the gray matter.

This could be key to

explaining his miraculous psychological recovery.

Gray matter doesn't grow back well,

but white matter can regenerate.

It's this combination of Gage's incredible good fortune

in terms of the trajectory of the tamping iron

and the brain's incredible regenerative ability that seems

to have combined to allow him a few years later to go back,

not just to surviving, but to thriving, to having

a relatively normal life, to holding down a job,

to performing almost normally in society

in spite of this very, very nearly completely

fatal accident.

It's recently been suggested that Gage's personality change

may only last for two or three years.

Despite that, the accident does kill him,

it just takes 11 years to do it.

In 1860, following a series of severe epileptic seizures,

likely resulting from the accident,

Phineas Gage dies.

He is just 36 years old,

but he changes the world.

The case is still in every neuroanatomical textbook,

and medical students would certainly learn about the case.

The Phineas Gage case is taught

to all first year undergraduate

psychology students.

It's taught as the beginning of the understanding of

the relationship between brain structures and personality

and who we are.

NARRATOR: This one skull and its unfortunate owner has

literally transformed our insight into the human soul

and the nature of humanity.

Once locked away by the U.S. military and now

lost is one of the strangest weapons ever made.

The destructive power of this device could destroy a city.

NARRATOR: But how it does this is completely bizarre.

Now, using state-of-the-art digital imaging,

we can reveal every detail of this remarkable device.

Code-named Project X-ray,

it is quite literally born in the fires of World War II.

There has never been a weapon like it, before

or since, and there's a very good reason for that.

NARRATOR: Around five feet in length,

the giveaway is its cylindrical body

is perforated with tiny air holes

for its tiny passengers.

AUERBACH: The deadly power of this device comes

not from radioactive material or from high explosives.

It comes from bats.

NARRATOR: This is the bat bomb.

This has to number among

the weirdest inventions of the Second World War.

NARRATOR: Who comes up with it?

Why bats?

How is this bizarre device supposed to function?

And does it really work?

NARRATOR: By the end of 1941, America is at war with Japan.

The bat bomb is designed to

help America strike back after Pearl Harbor.

The shell looks like any other bomb, but inside it,

there are lots of tiny trays.

Within one of these trays, there are up to 40 bats.

In the whole of the bomb,

there are 1,000 bats, and on each bat,

there is a tiny, deadly device.

NARRATOR: These devices are the secret to

the bomb's potential, because they don't use high explosives.

A bunch of tiny explosives, even thousands carried

by a bat really isn't gonna do much damage.

The goal is not to blow things up -- it's to start fires.

NARRATOR: The bat bomb targets a specific weakness of

Japanese cities.

MARKS: Most houses were made of wood,

and they were densely packed together.

If you were to start a fire in just a few houses,

the whole city could go up in flames.

NARRATOR: The bombs will be dropped from

an aircraft high above the target city.

It will be loaded with sleeping bats,

each armed with a tiny incendiary device.

At 1,000 feet, parachutes deploy,

and the outer casing falls away.

Once the parachute opens, the trays space out,

and they hang in a column about 8 and 1/2 feet long,

NARRATOR: Exposed to the warmer air, the bats start to wake.

BENECKE: As soon as they were flying out,

they were ripping the safety pin off,

and it set off a time delay fuse.

NARRATOR: The designer calculates that

with a 30 minute delay, the bats can cover

an area 40 miles in diameter.

At the time,

a cluster of six U.S. M69 incendiary bombs might start

160 fires,

but the same weight of bat bombs could start almost

4,800 fires.

So the plan is that bats are going to burn

Japanese cities down

and this is going to be the decisive blow

in the war for the Pacific.

NARRATOR: Who comes up with the crazy idea

of using a bat as a war machine?

MARKS: One of the strangest things about this is that,

unlike many other weapons,

it's not devised in some kind of special military laboratory.

It's dreamt up instead by a dentist.

NARRATOR: His name is Lytle S. Adams.

AUERBACH: In 1941, he makes a trip to Carlsbad Caverns in

the U.S., and he reports

being fascinated by these swarms of bats

that came streaming out of the caverns at sundown.

When Adams is driving back,

he hears about Pearl Harbor on the radio.

Having just seen the bats, he thinks to himself, what if

each of those bats had a tiny incendiary device?

You could really devastate the enemy cities in Japan.

NARRATOR: It sounds crazy,

but in the desperate circumstances of war,

the military are prepared to try almost anything that can

give them an edge, no matter how weird.

The Second World War is littered

with these outlandish and exotic ideas about weapons.

NARRATOR: One of the most outrageous appears in 1943.

The British Directorate of Miscellaneous Weapons

Development is asked to dream up

a way to penetrate the concrete coastal defenses of

the Nazis' Atlantic wall.

What they come up with is a self-propelled bomb,

the Panjandrum.

The Panjandrum is a very freakish-looking device,

but it's a pretty basic concept.

You just put rockets on the edges of the wheels, like

a Catherine wheel, and you light

the rockets, and it sort of fires itself towards the enemy,

creating a breach in their lines.

NARRATOR: Despite the top secret nature of the project,

the beach chosen as a test site turns

out to be a popular destination for holidaymakers.

So these top secret tests end up

happening to an audience of holiday goers.

They light the rockets in the Panjandrum,

and everything goes wrong almost from the get-go.

The rockets start to dislodge themselves, flying off in

different directions.

Meanwhile, the device itself just careens across the beach.

NARRATOR: Unsurprisingly, the Panjandrum never sees battle,

but the military probably thought it was worth a try.

The problem is, the military can't afford to

ignore these ideas just because they seem outlandish

at first glance.

At some point, one of these is going to work.

NARRATOR: One of the most extraordinary is

a weapon designed to destroy hydroelectric dams.

It's based on the idea of skimming stones.

The bouncing bomb.

The idea is that you fly your bombers down at a precise speed

and a precise height,

usually quite low, and you release a bomb that immediately

starts to spin opposite of

the direction that the plane is traveling.

So when it hits the water, instead of sinking,

it bounces, and it skips quite a considerable distance.

And if you drop it at just the right place at just

the right speed, it'll skip, skip, skip...

and then crash into the face of the dam.

NARRATOR: On the 16th of May 1943,

19 Lancaster bombers take off to Bomb three German dams.

It's a costly operation, but it's a very successful one.

Two out of three dams attacked are completely destroyed.

NARRATOR: In 1942, the bat bomb is born.

Its codename is Project X-ray.

Will it turn out to be as successful as

the bouncing bomb or as disastrous as the Panjandrum?

Why does Adams believe bats can make the difference?

NARRATOR: In World War Two,

the safest time to bomb is at night,

to avoid enemy fighters and guns.

Gravity bombing is inaccurate at best,

especially if you do it at night, which is when

the U.S. Air Force likes to operate, because

you have less chance of getting shot down.

NARRATOR: It's hard for bombers to hit anything,

because humans can't see in the dark.

But bats can.

BENECKE: Bats can orient during nighttime, because they

send off soundwaves, and those soundwaves come back,

and they can interpret the pattern of

what is in front of them.

Bats use their night sound vision system to go back

and forth from roosting sites,

but also to hunt mostly insects, moths, etcetera.

NARRATOR: And where they like to rest

is another advantage for a bat bomb.

MARKS: The idea is that they drop it just before dawn,

so that the bats immediately want to find

somewhere to nestle, somewhere just like the eaves of a house.

So the fire would spread before anybody

knows and cause a lot of damage.

So they're a living, breathing, agile,

almost undetectable weapon

that's gonna go exactly where you want

them to go to achieve the effect

you want to achieve.

NARRATOR: Adams' team select the tiny Mexican free-tailed bat

as their flying rodent of choice.

They are a good choice, because you can fit

a lot of them into one of these bombs.

It was estimated that 10 planes could carry

as many as two million bats in these bombs.

NARRATOR: And these bats have one final advantage.

When it gets cold, they enter a state known as torpor.

BENECKE: In torpor, they're just very sleepy,

they're not moving much, their body temperature is low,

and they're just living on their body fat.

NARRATOR: This is perfect for Adams' plan,

because sleepy bats are easy to handle,

arm, and load into the bomb casing.

And they even set up a refrigerated truck to keep

the bats in this hibernating state until they need to

be deployed.

NARRATOR: But Adams doesn't just need

his tiny mission specialists.

He needs a deadly payload for them.

MARKS: By chance, almost at exactly the same time,

American chemist Louis Fieser invented a new substance,

which was highly flammable, called napalm.

One of the things that makes napalm a really

good fire starter is that it's a jelly-like substance.

Once it's on fire, it starts to run, and it flows down

the surfaces of buildings,

and it gets into all of the nooks and crannies,

and it really spreads the fire.

NARRATOR: Adams and Fieser come up with a payload

for the napalm containing

a time delay fuse that can be stuck to the bats

with adhesive.

The biology and technology seemed to marry up perfectly,

but will it actually work?

NARRATOR: In 1943, bat bomb testing

takes place in Carlsbad, New Mexico.

They get a real prime spot --

the newly-constructed Carlsbad Air Force Base.

Now, it's completely empty. It's not operational yet.

So it's got everything, it's got hangars,

control towers, barracks.

But since they're a top secret operation,

the bat bomb project gets the whole base to themselves.

NARRATOR: Initial tests using dummy bombs are a success.

AUERBACH: It works like a charm.

They spend hours trying to find the bats they've released,

and most of them end up in eaves under the buildings

and barns and stuff all around the base,

which is exactly what they wanted the bats to do.

NARRATOR: It's going so well, they decide to produce

a training film for the air crews

that will actually drop the bat bombs.

For the first time,

they arm the bats with live incendiaries.

So the bats are cooled, and they're supposed

to be in this torporous state until they can raise

their temperature and they wake up.

But here's the problem --

they're at an air base in New Mexico,

which is a very hot climate.

Six of the armed bats wake up

and they do exactly what they're supposed to do.

They fly off, looking for a place

to roost, and where else to roost

but under the eaves of this brand-new,

otherwise abandoned air base.

NARRATOR: Everything works according to plan,

which is a pity, because they're not in Tokyo.

They're in New Mexico.

In a strange way, it works exactly as expected.

The bats fly off.

They roost under the eaves of the air base.

The incendiary devices go off.

And it burns the entire base to the ground.

MARKS: Due to the top secret nature of the experiment,

they're not even allowed to bring in fire crews to put

the fire out -- they lose everything.

NARRATOR: Safe to say the trials have not gone to plan.

So is this the end of the bat bomb?

NARRATOR: After a disastrous test burns

an American air base to the ground,

It looks like curtains for the bat bomb,

but the bats get a reprieve.

In 1943, the Army passed the project to the Marines.

AUERBACH: The bat bomb concept clearly works,

and it only cost them one new airbase to prove it.

They decided to go ahead with the full-scale testing of

the project, and then, unexpectedly, in 1944,

the whole thing gets shut down.

NARRATOR: By this point, the project has already

burned through one brand-new air base

and $2 million dollars,

but is it actually cost that cans the bat bomb?

The real reason is what, on paper, looks like an even more

outlandish concept than the bat bomb --

harnessing the energy of the sun

in a small bomb to devastating effect.

And we're talking here, of course,

about the Manhattan Project.

NARRATOR: In 1944, despite the fact that

it actually works, the bat bomb is canned,

which probably comes as a big

relief to the Mexican free-tailed bats.

In a small glass cabinet at the British Museum

in London is a curious object made from reindeer antler.

It was crafted during the last great Ice Age.

It is truly ancient.

This object dates back almost 10,000 years,

before the pyramids of dynastic Egypt.

NARRATOR: Now, using cutting-edge technology,

we can bring it into the light.

It measures 6 and 1/2 inches long

by just over 2 inches wide.

On the front is the unmistakable image of

a galloping horse.

There are signs of use and wear both across the surfaces

and inside the hole.

We see scratches and chips

and evidence that there is an object

that was actively and repetitively used.

But the question then becomes, How was it used?

What was its function?

NARRATOR: Who made it?

What secrets does it hold about

our distant past?

Is it a piece of art,

a symbol of power, or something else entirely?

1863.

France.

On the edge of the Vézère River,

paleontologist EÉdouard Lartet

and Englishman Henry Christy stumble across a cave.

The site, known Abri de la Madeleine,

turns out to be a unique window into Stone Age life.

In the coarse way of that time, hacking about

with shovels and picks,

they made some remarkable discoveries.

NARRATOR: They uncover flint blades,

spear points, and numerous bone artifacts,

and this strange thing.

MacDONALD: The object was remarkable for its form,

which was unusual,

with its large central perforation,

but also because of the very naturalistic rendering of

a horse engraved onto the object.

NARRATOR: Finds like this and others in the cave

are unlike any other ancient human artifacts

discovered before.

This site represented a whole new,

previously unknown culture,

the Magdalenian.

NARRATOR: The Magdalenian peoples lived during the last

great Ice Age, between 17,000 and 11,000 years ago.

The strange carved antler dates to around

14,000 years ago.

To work out what this is, we need to understand the people

who created it.

Who are the Magdalenians?

The Stone Age world is often depicted as crude

and simplistic,

but in the case of the Magdalenians

nothing could be further from the truth.

PLUMMER SIRES: This was a very sophisticated culture.

They had a range of specialized tools based on

the types of activities that

they were undertaking -- spears, harpoons, snares.

They were very attuned to their surroundings, and they

hunted herd animals, like bison, horses, and reindeer.

NARRATOR: So it's no surprise that something made from

reindeer is a perfect example of Magdalenian craftsmanship.

The reindeer clearly was central to

the life of the Magdalenians.

It was a food source, but they made use of the antlers,

as well, either from those carcasses

that they hunted or when the animals

would shed them seasonally.

NARRATOR: The first step in the process of making

this strange thing is to reduce

the antler to the required size.

A key tool employed by these ancient craftsmen is the burin.

PLUMMER SIRES: A burin is a type of stone tool

with very fine edges, almost like a chisel.

It's used to either engrave or gouge

holes into things.

NARRATOR: Burins made from hard local stones like flint

and chert are used to shape and cut the baton.

MacDONALD: So the way that we think this is done

is by using a tool like a burin

and engraving a line where you want to make a break

or separation before striking a blow,

which will crack off the bit that you don't want.

NARRATOR: The distinctive hole in the center

uses a different process.

MacDONALD: Stone tools would be used boring down from both

directions across the antler to

create a kind of hourglass cross-section, and then once

that hourglass shape was achieved,

it would be scraped and smoothed out until you began to

get a more even perforation like we see on this object.

NARRATOR: The most difficult and time-consuming process

is likely the raised engraving of the horse.

MacDONALD: The area of the body of the horse would have been

initially smoothed to get rid

of the irregularity of the antler,

but then the central portion of the body would have been

left raised to add to the effect.

NARRATOR: The material from around the horse is then

carefully removed, a painstaking and laborious job.

This is unusual, because most of the other Magdalenian

representations we have of animals

are simply carved into a surface rather than using

this more three-dimensional approach.

NARRATOR: Everything about the object suggests it is special.

So what is it for?

NARRATOR: What is the purpose of this astonishing

14,000-year-old object carved from reindeer antler?

The archaeologists who discover it certainly

think they know.

BELLINGER: Because of the decorative element

of this thing, when they first found it,

they interpret it as some sort of symbol of authority,

like a scepter.

They called it a bâtons de commandement.

NARRATOR: Examples of similar objects are present in

many different cultures from across the globe,

but there's a major stumbling block to this explanation.

As time has gone on, archaeologists

have found more than 400 of these objects.

How can you have an object that is meant for the leader

of a small-scale hunter-gatherer society

and yet have 400 of them?

This simply doesn't make sense

and places this object more within

the realm of everyday functional items.

NARRATOR: So is it some kind of utility object, a tool?

If we look at the wear on this object,

we see scratches and chips and evidence that it is

an object that was actively and repetitively used.

But the question then becomes, how was it used?

What was its function?

NARRATOR: It's tricky to answer this question, because

the ragged end of the baton suggests it is broken.

But, using 3D imaging, we can rebuild the damaged section.

This is how it may have looked when it was first made,

14,000 years ago.

MacDONALD: Originally would have been around 12 inches long,

so we're missing part of its shaft,

which might have been lost in the process of use.

BELLINGER: One early thought was that this object might be

a harness of some kind to use with an animal.

But there's a real problem with that,

which is that animals weren't domesticated

for another 10,000 years.

NARRATOR: So if not a harness, then what?

Analysis of the holes in 135 of these batons

reveal strange wear marks symmetrically opposite

each other.

Asymmetric wear suggested another use,

as a spear straightener.

So if you have a shaft of a spear with a curve,

you would put it through the hole, and then you could

pull towards yourself to straighten out that bend

and creating that distinctive wear pattern.

NARRATOR: This fits with other archaeological finds,

such as the Murray Springs shaft wrench,

a spear straightener from the North American

Clovis culture, dating back to around 11,000 BCE.

But this is far from the only theory.

Another idea is that this was a form of spear thrower.

NARRATOR: Known in some cultures as atlatls,

spear throwers were used by many peoples, from the Mayans

and Aztecs to Native Americans and Australian Aboriginals.

A spear thrower effectively lengthens your arm span,

and so it gives you a great deal more leverage to add speed

and accuracy to your throw,

and that makes your spear all the more lethal.

A harness, a shaft straightener, a spear thrower?

To date, an incredible 40 different theories have

been proposed for the purpose of this strange thing.

Which one is correct?

It's generally accepted today that this baton

didn't have one use, it didn't have two uses,

it had multiple uses,

You could call it the Swiss Army knife of prehistory.

NARRATOR: This is a 14,000-year-old multi-tool,

but if it's simply a utilitarian tool,

why has so much effort been poured into decorating it?

The Magdalenian is not extraordinary just

for their technologies and their tools and weapons.

They created some of the most beautiful prehistoric art

that's been discovered to date

in the form of beautiful carvings and wall paintings of

bison and wooly mammoth.

PLUMMER SIRES: And these are really the types of art that

show you that they weren't just surviving in

their environment, they were thriving.

NARRATOR: And experts now believe that when

this baton is first made,

the exquisite horse carved on its surface

would not have been the only one.

There may have even been, originally,

a second horse on this object.

NARRATOR: Why did these ancient craftsmen

go to all this effort?

You know, what is art doing on a functional tool?

NARRATOR: And why a horse?

BELLINGER: Clearly, the horse was very important

to these people.

Was it a key source of food?

Did they venerate it for some reason

to do with their religious ideology?

Who knows?

NARRATOR: Detailed inspection suggests

one tantalizing possible explanation.

Look closely, and you can see small marks

behind the horse's shoulder, marks that shouldn't be there.

BELLINGER: There's a small mark on

the horse that otherwise is so lifelike,

but this mark is not anatomically correct, and it's

in just a spot that makes you wonder,

is it almost a diagram directing your spear to hit

right there, and that'll be the lethal shot?

Comparing these notches against the anatomy

of a horse reveals

they are directly positioned over the heart.

And other artifacts from this period also appear to display

the same kind of marks that could indicate

a lethal spear strike.

Whatever the exact purpose of the intricate carving,

it tells us something important.

These people had enough time on their hands for decoration.

BELLINGER: Clearly, they're not people living on the edge

of starvation.

There's time to devote to the pursuit of art.

NARRATOR: But quite suddenly, around 11,000 years ago,

the Magdalenian vanish from history.

This was the end of the last Ice Age, when the climate

changed drastically,

and a lot of the large animals that they were hunting

became extinct.

These were major changes.

They just weren't able to adjust to it.

And they disappeared.

NARRATOR: When the Magdalenian vanish,

so does their wonderful and sophisticated art.

But this astonishing artifact remains, one of the oldest

and most beautiful multi-tools ever found.