Original subtitles

NARRATOR: Could this really be the man who destroys Troy

with the mythical wooden horse?

Schliemann's been quoted with saying he'd gazed upon

the face of Agamemnon.

NARRATOR: Is this corroded metal plate

a weapon of mass destruction?

It's the equivalent of a nuclear bomb.

NARRATOR: And can these weird chalk cylinders

unlock the mysteries of Stonehenge?

It's a giant puzzle,

and we don't have the picture on the box.

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 the National Archaeological Museum in Athens is

one of the most iconic finds from ancient Greece.

Some claim it's proof that one of

the greatest myths in all of history is true.

Now, with the latest technology,

we're bringing this mysterious object out into the light.

This is the Mask of Agamemnon.

Agamemnon is said to have been

the Greek king who led the siege against Troy.

He was seen as a mythical king, really,

not someone who is real.

NARRATOR: But if this is Agamemnon's mask,

then he is very real.

Roughly 10 inches tall by 7 inches wide,

it is crafted from a single sheet of gold.

Every detail is painstakingly embossed into its surface.

PLUMMER SIRES: You get the sense that you're really staring

into a person's face from thousands of years ago.

NARRATOR: But is that really true?

This don't look like anything that

we see in Greece in this period.

NARRATOR: Or was it conjured up by

an archaeologist obsessed with turning myth into reality?

Looks like the mask had been redone or repurposed.

NARRATOR: So is this enigmatic relic the real deal?

Who is the man behind the gold mask?

And could finding him really rewrite history?

1876. Southern Greece.

German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann is searching for

a legend in the astonishing ruins of the Bronze Age

citadel, Mycenae.

Mycenae was clearly an important town.

It had huge stone masonry walls, which were these large

boulders or blocks, uh,

reportedly built by the cyclops monsters,

basically because the walls were so huge that only monsters

can build such a city.

So it was seen as this grand, great place.

NARRATOR: Inside the mighty walls,

Schliemann's dig unearths a lost tomb complex.

ALTAWEEL: Schliemann discovers remains of 19 individuals,

from children to adults, men and women.

NARRATOR: He uncovers a treasure trove.

ALTAWEEL: There were a number of precious objects,

including gold and silver, precious stones,

ornate kinds of jewelry, even gold leaf covering

for at least some of the bodies.

NARRATOR: And he finds something unlike

any previous discovery from ancient Greece.

Some of the bodies that were buried in

these tombs had their faces covered by gold masks.

NARRATOR: No one had seen Greek death masks like these before,

each one crafted from a single sheet of gold.

ALTAWEEL: Four of them are relatively plain in decoration.

What stands out is one mask,

which was actually quite decorative.

It has more detail.

It looks more like a face we would recognize.

NARRATOR: It becomes known as the Mask of Agamemnon.

Has Schliemann really uncovered the tomb of a mythical king?

Schliemann's been quoted with saying that he'd written

to the King of Greece,

saying that he'd gazed upon the face of Agamemnon.

NARRATOR: Who is Agamemnon,

and why is finding him such a big deal?

According to myth, Agamemnon was one of

the most powerful kings of Greece at the time.

NARRATOR: Agamemnon's story is told

in the Iliad and the Odyssey,

the mythical poems of ancient Greek writer, Homer.

According to Homer, Agamemnon wages

a legendary 10-year war against Troy.

It ends when his soldiers breach the mighty citadel by

hiding inside a giant wooden horse,

the famous Trojan horse.

The story of the war of Troy is one of the most important

narratives in the history of myth and literature.

But is that all it is, just a myth?

According to Homer, the Trojan War happened

over 3,000 years ago, in a mysterious age

we know little about.

Disentangling these stories and trying to find out

what's truth versus what's a story, uh,

is not an easy task.

The problem with these stories is they were full of characters

who seemed potentially quite real -- kings and warriors that

seemed possible.

But it also had all kinds of mythological creatures.

We read about the cyclops, the one-eyed giants.

We read about other sort of great monsters

fighting these heroes.

NARRATOR: And hard evidence is very thin on the ground.

Places like Troy, where the conflict is centered

upon in the Iliad, um, was not known.

It was for -- many scholars have

considered Troy to be completely mythological.

NARRATOR: Gods, monsters, mythical lands --

it's all a bit hard to swallow.

So what makes people think that this really could

be Agamemnon?

By the time he finds the mask,

Schliemann has already spent years obsessed with proving

the Iliad is more than just a tall tale.

Schliemann thinks that many of the famous classical stories

like the Iliad were true,

that they were full of real characters,

not just mythological kinds of stories.

So he was obsessed about proving this.

NARRATOR: And Schliemann's first step is to

hunt for the legendary city of Troy.

For millennia,

there have been whispers that the ruins of Troy

are buried somewhere in the northwest

of modern-day Turkey.

In 1870, Schliemann begins to excavate

at a site called Hisarlik.

PLUMMER SIRES: Hisarlik was a man-made mound -- in the past,

it would have been a lot closer to the coastline,

which means it had a good sight for incoming ships,

but it also meant that it was a really good position within

the Mediterranean for trading.

So the location of it makes sense.

NARRATOR: After three years of digging,

Schliemann hits the jackpot.

He uncovers a lost city.

There's evidence of destruction and fire,

which would match well with the story

that Troy was sacked by the Greeks.

He finds a group of high-valued objects,

gold and other kinds of objects, that he associates with

Priam, the king of the Trojans, the key character in the Iliad.

NARRATOR: It is one of the greatest

archaeological finds of all time.

The discovery of Troy proved that actually it was not

just some mythological place, but a real city that existed.

NARRATOR: It's music to Schliemann's ears.

If Troy is real, what other myths could be true?

So now, having found a key location of the Iliad,

his next mission was to find one of the characters.

NARRATOR: Schliemann zeroes in on Agamemnon.

According to Homer, after victory in the siege of Troy,

Agamemnon heads home to Mycenae,

where he is murdered by his wife's lover

and buried by the city walls.

This is exactly where Schliemann finds

the extraordinary gold mask and seals his fame.

There was a media frenzy, because it seemed that it was

definitive proof that the mythological king

of the Greeks during the Trojan War was real.

NARRATOR: Which is remarkable, because for decades,

other archaeologists had tried and failed to find proof of

the Trojan War.

But in the space of just three years, Schliemann uncovers both

the central location and the leading man.

ESCOLANO-POVEDA: Schliemann seemed to be finding

everything that would corroborate his story

of these mythical figures

being buried exactly where he was digging.

NARRATOR: Schliemann is either extraordinarily lucky,

or is it just too good to be true?

NARRATOR: The mask of Agamemnon is unlike anything discovered

before from ancient Greece, and for some experts,

that was a problem.

At the time of Schliemann,

this would have been a very odd find, because we don't have

anything like this from Ancient Greece.

You actually have to go to Egypt to find

something similar,

this gold mask that would be

placed on the heads of the deceased.

NARRATOR: And Schliemann doesn't find just one

never-before-seen mask, he finds five of them.

For some people, that was too much.

They didn't believe that this was authentic.

They thought that maybe Schliemann

actually had them forged somehow.

NARRATOR: Not only does the mask seem out of place,

but Schliemann's reputation was highly questionable.

People had doubts about him.

They know he was very charismatic and very

resourceful and very passionate about what he was doing,

but they didn't always necessarily believe him.

ESCOLANO-POVEDA: Many of the objects that he had found

in Troy seemed to belong to different periods, and he

seemed to have been putting them together in order to

create these groups of objects that were very impressive.

They thought that he maybe just made up stories sometimes.

NARRATOR: And he's done more than just spinning a tall tale.

Schliemann was actually accused of smuggling

part of the treasure of Priam

and actually had to pay a fine because of this

to the Turkish government.

NARRATOR: So it's not exactly surprising that some suspect

that Schliemann fakes the discovery of this mask.

But there is a problem with this accusation.

Schliemann was being observed during excavations

at Mycenae by Greek officials.

Schliemann was a controversial figure, so people didn't

completely trust him,

um, and he was being watched all the time

he was excavating.

NARRATOR: Most scholars now believe that Schliemann

simply never had the opportunity

to slip in fake masks to the dig site unobserved.

They are certain

the mask of Agamemnon is genuinely ancient,

but some still thought that something about it smelled off.

Examined in detail,

the crisp features, the individual hairs of his

beard and handlebar mustache, really make the mask of

Agamemnon stand out.

The look of the mask was quite different

from the other masks that were found.

NARRATOR: The level of detail seems out of place in something

so ancient.

Some scholars have suggested it looks more akin

to Classical period kinds of looks or appearances.

So this is about 700 years after the story of the Iliad,

around 500 BC.

NARRATOR: So the accusation is that, ironically,

it looks a bit too Greek for something so old.

ALTAWEEL: The idea came that perhaps

Schliemann reworked the mask.

NARRATOR: Visible under high magnification,

there's one detail that stands out to scholars.

The mustache looks like it's been flipped.

It was sort of pointing upwards

but maybe at one point was pointing downwards.

NARRATOR: The argument is that Schliemann didn't have

the opportunity to slip in a fake,

but maybe he reworked the original.

ALTAWEEL: It was not very clear what it looked like.

It initially was removed from the grave.

It was only photographed some weeks after its discovery.

So there was a period of time

where someone could have potentially altered the mask.

NARRATOR: But there is a flaw in the argument

that it looks too detailed to be genuine.

It may be different to many Mycenaean artifacts,

but its look is not unique.

ALTAWEEL: There was a drinking vessel that was found

with a mane,

a kind of depiction on the lion, and this mane

was quite similar to the beard and mustache

of the Agamemnon mask in terms of the style.

So this gave support, potentially,

that Agamemnon's mask may have come from a period

similar in time to this drinking vessel.

NARRATOR: Which has finally led to one

very obvious conclusion.

The consensus is that the mask is real.

It does represent a mask that was created in antiquity rather

than something that was forged much later.

NARRATOR: So is this really the face of

the mythical destroyer of Troy, King Agamemnon?

The problem is, with Schliemann,

little is ever quite as it seems.

Take his undisputed discovery of Troy.

Schliemann stopped digging when he found evidence of

a settlement that had suffered

a great fire, and he believed this to be evidence of

the Trojan War.

What he didn't perceive at the time is settlements had been

built one on top of each other almost like a layer cake.

So once a settlement was abandoned, centuries later,

another one would be built on top.

ALTAWEEL: What he found was actually a much earlier city.

Um, and the real Troy from

the period of the Iliad was actually dug through.

He went right through it without noticing it.

NARRATOR: And it seems that Schliemann

got his timings wrong at Mycenae, too.

The tomb in which the mask was found doesn't date

to the time in which Agamemnon

is supposed to have lived.

NARRATOR: The mask was found in a shaft tomb.

And recent studies show that the Mycenaeans stopped

building these around 300 years before the Trojan wars.

The consensus does seem to be

that the mask is a genuine artifact,

it just isn't King Agamemnon.

NARRATOR: If not Agamemnon,

who is the man behind the gold mask?

NARRATOR: This fabulous golden object

is known as the Mask of Agamemnon.

Unfortunately, it turns out to be hundreds of

years too old for the mythical destroyer of Troy.

ALTAWEEL: It may have not been Agamemnon,

but it certainly was an important individual,

perhaps even a king, who was buried in this death mask.

NARRATOR: Recent research suggests

he was a powerful figure.

The Mycenaeans during the Bronze Age dominated most of

the Mediterranean when it came to trade and culture

and warfare.

NARRATOR: His influence would have reached

across the entire region.

ESCOLANO-POVEDA: In the excavations in Mycenaean cities,

we have found a tomb of a warrior with lots of elements

that are connected with other civilizations of the area.

NARRATOR: It seems this king could have had contact

with a very powerful and very famous civilization.

We have been able to find a little head

of the goddess Hathor, which is an Egyptian goddess.

NARRATOR: And that could explain where

the Mycenaeans get the idea

for this stunning gold death mask in the first place.

ALTAWEEL: So it's quite possible, for instance,

that the Mycenaeans had seen similar masks on deceased kings

and pharaohs in Egypt and thought this was a great idea.

NARRATOR: The fact that this mask isn't the face of

Agamemnon doesn't make it any less remarkable

or less important.

And the real Agamemnon might even be

a descendant of this man.

Troy turned out to be real.

So why not Agamemnon?

Behind glass in the International Spy Museum

in Washington, D.C., is a corroded copper plate.

This is an object worth more than its weight in gold.

NARRATOR: Now, using the latest technology,

we're bringing it into the light.

By expanding the object and zooming in,

faint markings become visible etched across its surface.

And by digitally removing the corrosion,

we can finally see them clearly.

AUERBACH: This object is covered in tiny symbols and writing.

It's a really highly skilled piece of engraving.

NARRATOR: It's hard to read,

because everything is back to front,

but flip the image,

and the words "Bank of England" appear.

AUERBACH: As you look more closely at it,

you see a sign for 10 pounds and a date, 1937.

This is a printing plate for making British 10-pound notes.

NARRATOR: Something this valuable should have been

locked away in the British Treasury.

But this plate isn't discovered in a London vault.

It was found in 1959 in the most unexpected

of places -- at the bottom of an Austrian lake.

NARRATOR: How does it end up at the bottom of the lake?

Where does it come from?

Is it even real?

By the 1930s, the 10-pound note design is over

150 years old, and it shows.

They were printed just on white paper.

There was no use of color.

They were printed on one side, there was no embossing,

there was no metal stripe.

NARRATOR: The note is produced using

a printing plate exactly like this.

SELLA: That's going to be an incredibly carefully

engraved object, onto which you place the ink,

and then you press it onto the paper

to produce the final product.

NARRATOR: But close examination of this plate reveals

a flaw -- next to the abbreviated word

for company is an extra sliver of metal that

would leave a dot of ink on the note.

Does this error mean it's a fake?

Quite the opposite.

The Bank of England thinks they've got some neat

little tricks to fool the forgers.

BALL: Britannia has only one earring instead of two.

And there were a few little dots that were meant to

look like printing errors but were actually put there

on purpose.

And the idea was that these little flaws

were extremely hard to identify and to replicate.

This was to deter counterfeiters.

NARRATOR: By the 1930s,

the notes have up to 150 marks hidden on them.

The tiny dot on this plate is definitely one of them.

Others may have been eaten away

from this plate after years underwater.

They were made from very, very fine bits of metal.

Those fine details are exactly the ones that will corrode

first of all.

NARRATOR: Britannia, for example,

has been almost completely erased.

But based on what remains of this plate,

there seems to be nothing about it

that indicates that it would be

anything other than a genuine printing plate.

NARRATOR: So what is a British bank plate doing almost

700 miles from London at the bottom of

Lake Toplitz in Austria?

The key clue to the plate's origin is that the divers

who find it are searching for an infamous hoard of treasure.

AUERBACH: Towards the end of the war,

people see German soldiers bringing wagons with chests in

them and dropping them into the lake.

Now, nobody knows what's in those chests,

but of course, everybody wants to believe it's Nazi gold.

NARRATOR: But when they dive to the bottom of the lake in 1959,

it's not gold they find.

AUERBACH: They discover this copper plate.

NARRATOR: Which raises one very obvious question.

Why did the Germans have

a printing plate for British 10-pound notes?

NARRATOR: Historians searching for answers have

zeroed in on secret Nazi files,

a plan code-named Operation Andreas,

a deadly scheme to bomb Britain with money.

The plan is to airdrop 30 billion pounds

in forged notes over Britain.

BALL: The British people would find this money and would

start to use it, and that by, you know,

feeding that into the economic system, it would undermine

the whole basis of currency and really

collapse the economic system.

NARRATOR: Britain would end up in such huge financial distress,

it would be unable to wage war at all.

Germany would win without firing a shot.

It's the economic equivalent of a nuclear bomb.

NARRATOR: All they have to do is produce

a perfect counterfeit plate.

How are they going to do that?

NARRATOR: A top secret Nazi plan is going

to destroy Britain without firing a shot.

Operation Andreas sets up shop in

a stone mansion west of downtown Berlin.

The building that they use is an SS training center

that had already been used to produce false documents

and forgeries.

NARRATOR: The Nazis recruit mathematician

and code breaker Albert Langer to run it.

AUERBACH: He's a highly skilled scientist,

but he also believes that King Arthur was real.

He believes that the British

flag contains astral magical symbols.

Langer comes up with a fiendish plan --

use a light-sensitive and acid-resistant dye

to create a perfect copy of a real plate.

Langer's plan was, to begin with, to take as perfect as

possible a photograph of a genuine 10-pound note,

and then to transfer that image onto a plate using

this acid-resistant dye that would enable

the rest of the plate to be etched away.

And so you'd have a perfect printing plate

for a 10-pound note.

NARRATOR: But even with the best cameras, Langer struggles.

BALL: None of them looked convincing

close up, and in fact, Langer himself said that

the reproduction of Britannia herself

just looked like an old hag.

NARRATOR: Langer's genius plan is a flop.

He is forced to abandon

science for old fashioned craftsmanship.

He hires expert engraver, Walter Ziedrich.

Even for him, this is a challenging job.

The engraver has to capture all those little marks,

those little intentional flaws

that characterize the genuine thing.

NARRATOR: Britannia is particularly tricky

for the Nazi forgers.

Getting the eyes right was incredibly difficult.

NARRATOR: It takes Ziedrich six attempts to make

a perfect-looking plate.

AUERBACH: Now, we don't know for sure

if this is one of Ziedrich's plates.

It's not like a forger can sign his own work.

All we know is that it was

important enough for them to hide it.

So this was really one of the better versions.

NARRATOR: But a perfect plate alone isn't enough.

The Nazis also need the right paper.

It's actually gotta feel right.

Is it smooth? Is it slippery?

Does it fold correctly? Does it sound right?

Langer was so obsessed with this

that he actually got some blind people to test this out.

They wouldn't be distracted by the look of it and really be

able to listen to the crackle of the note as it folded.

NARRATOR: Langer thinks he's cracked it.

All he has to do is prove it to his paymasters.

AUERBACH: The story goes that the Germans sent an officer

across to the Swiss border with a forged passport and a whole

bunch of these forged pound notes, and then they tipped off

the Swiss authorities that someone's going to try to cross

the border with fake documents.

They assumed, and they were right, that the Swiss would

check both the passport and the money.

Well, they spot the forged passport.

They know it's a forgery,

but as far as they're concerned, the money is legitimate.

NARRATOR: Langer has pulled it off.

They're ready to destroy the entire British economy.

But on the brink of victory...

[record scratches]

...Operation Andreas unexpectedly grinds to a halt.

BALL: The problem with this plan to bomb Britain

with money is that you have to be able

to get the airplanes over Britain to do that.

And after the Battle of Britain, that just

wasn't going to be possible for the Luftwaffe.

NARRATOR: It's all gone wrong for Andreas.

Is this the end of

the greatest counterfeiting operation in history?

In July 1942, Hitler's spymaster, Heinrich Himmler,

is struggling to pay his network of foreign agents.

He needs cash and lots of it,

but Germany doesn't have any spare...

unless they print it themselves, of course.

He doesn't care whether or not the money they have is forged.

NARRATOR: Himmler's code name for the new plan is

Operation Bernhard,

named after the man put in charge,

SS Major Bernhard Krueger.

He's a much better choice than Langer, because this is a guy

experienced in the art of forgery.

He himself has produced fake documents.

NARRATOR: The 10-pound plate and all of the other

equipment have been gathering dust in a Berlin basement.

Krueger takes it all to his new forgery HQ,

Sachsenhausen,

a concentration camp north of Berlin.

One of the main problems with Andreas

was they had all kinds of intelligence leaks.

This explains why they set up

the new operation in the concentration camps.

They could keep it under wraps if they did it there.

NARRATOR: There is no risk of workers leaking information out

of the new base.

AUERBACH: Sachsenhausen is a labor camp,

a vicious, brutal concentration camp where its occupants can be

executed at any time and without reason.

NARRATOR: But Krueger's operation treats

the largely Jewish prisoners very differently.

He goes to great lengths to try to make the workers

on his project happy and comfortable --

distributes extra rations, cigarettes,

even sets up ping pong tables for them to amuse themselves.

NARRATOR: By 1943, Operation Bernhard is in full swing.

The counterfeiting plates turn out high-quality fake money on

an industrial scale.

Lines of prisoners pass the notes between them

to make them look used.

The very best,

the ones that were almost flawless,

were good enough to give to German spies for

their activities.

NARRATOR: Himmler's spies are never told

they were receiving counterfeit money.

The second grade were used to launder money

throughout Europe.

NARRATOR: And the less convincing bills

are not circulated.

The lowest quality of notes were kept

in a room labeled Abwurf, meaning airdrop.

BALL: That idea that perhaps one day they

would be air dropped hadn't been completely abandoned.

NARRATOR: But it never happens, again.

Germany loses the war.

The work of this plate is a bust...

...or is it?

The scale of what Bernhard and Andreas

had actually achieved was a real shock to the Allies.

NARRATOR: The airdrop plan may have failed,

but this plate and others like it still do enormous damage.

It seems that the scheme was actually

surprisingly effective.

There were over 130 million pounds of fake notes produced,

around 10 percent of all sterling on the market.

With just a little more effort,

this scheme could actually have been extremely,

disturbingly effective in disrupting the British economy.

NARRATOR: This remains the only known surviving plate from

the greatest counterfeiting operation ever mounted.

Had this plate and the others like it,

had they done their job,

this could have been one of

the most devastating weapons of the Second World War.

NARRATOR: In the British Museum's archives

are three mysterious chalk artifacts.

They are a 5,000-year-old puzzle.

Ever since these objects were discovered in the 19th century,

archaeologists have been uncertain as to

what they were made for.

NARRATOR: Now, using the latest technology,

we're bringing these incredible artifacts into the light.

They are known as the Folkton Drums.

Although these are called drums,

they most definitely were not drums.

It's merely because of their form

that we have called them this.

NARRATOR: Each one is intricately carved.

They're beautiful objects with geometric

and curvilinear designs,

some that even suggest a stylized human face.

NARRATOR: But that's not the strangest thing about them.

These three objects were incrementally different sizes.

NARRATOR: Each one is .84 times the diameter of the next

biggest drum.

Small, medium, and large.

They had a mathematical relationship with one another.

NARRATOR: This is unknown for Stone Age artifacts,

but new research suggests an explanation,

one that connects them to

the greatest monument of the entire Stone Age.

These objects could be related somehow to Stonehenge.

NARRATOR: What is the meaning behind this precise

geometric sequence?

What are these bizarre markings,

and can these extraordinary objects

unravel the secrets of Stonehenge?

NARRATOR: 1889, Folkton, Northern England.

An amateur archaeologist, excavating a burial mound

finds something unexpected.

The Canon William Greenwell discovers a grave of

a child, probably around five years in age.

NARRATOR: The tomb is Neolithic, a period in

the British Isles that spans around 4000 to 2500 BCE.

And next to the body

are these three strange artifacts.

They were placed very deliberately within it,

behind the head and hips.

NARRATOR: But what were they for?

Archaeologists have offered some intriguing ideas.

One holds that they were a mnemonic device,

an object that would prompt memory and assist

an individual, for example,

telling a story to a group of people.

That was a function of the tactility

of it, of the lines, incised,

and the shapes, that as the finger would follow,

They would prompt the next part of the story.

NARRATOR: Another theory is that they are talismans.

MacDONALD: They feature carefully engraved decoration,

showing what could be interpreted as human eyes.

Might seem to suggest that they were watchers,

that they are somehow overseeing the sleep of this

child in death within the tomb.

That they are, in a sense, protective objects.

NARRATOR: That fits with the drums' resting place,

but it doesn't explain the most puzzling thing

about them.

Their sizes form a precise geometric sequence.

It's not clear why this should be the case.

NARRATOR: Now, new research suggests

that the answer could lie in one

of the greatest and most mysterious monuments of

the Neolithic world -- Stonehenge.

The drums are dated to around 3000 to 2500 BCE,

the same time that Stonehenge is being built.

The scale and precision of Stonehenge suggests

that it must have an important function --

a pagan temple, a ceremonial burial ground,

and astronomer's solar calendar.

We're still looking for answers.

In the early 2000s, archaeologists

Andrew Chamberlain and Mike Parker Pearson

investigate the layout of the site in detail.

BELLINGER: They went to measure the concentric circles of

Stonehenge and discovered

something quite extraordinary, that each of them was

a multiple of a measurement of 1.056 modern feet,

which they called "the long foot."

NARRATOR: And the long foot doesn't just

appear at Stonehenge.

Two miles away is a site known as Durrington Walls.

Durrington Walls itself may have been

a settlement for people who are creating Stonehenge.

It also features a now-disappeared henge

monument, which was probably made in wood.

The Durrington Wall site happened to have

circular structures, which also have

this ratio to the long foot.

NARRATOR: The further afield researchers look,

the more structures they find that seem to be built using

this same measurement.

The Ring of Brodgar in Orkney, 500 miles away,

and the Great Circle in Newgrange, over 300 miles away

across the Irish sea, they all seem to use the long foot.

What's so intriguing is the possibility that it

represents a standardized measurement system that was in

use not just in the immediate vicinity of Stonehenge,

but potentially throughout Neolithic Britain.

NARRATOR: It's as if someone sent a memo to everyone

across Stone Age Britain to agree the same system,

and yet this was 5,000 years ago,

almost 3,000 years before writing even appears in Britain.

Formerly, when we looked at Neolithic Europe,

we imagined small farming communities

living in relative isolation.

BELLINGER: if there was a standard measurement system

in use at the time,

well, the next question becomes, how are they sharing it

with one another?

NARRATOR: Recently, an archaeologist

has found an extraordinary possibility,

a link between the long foot and the mysterious drums.

Could they hold the answer to

these strange connections right across the country?

The Folkton Drums have

a precise mathematical relationship to one another.

NARRATOR: The largest drum is 5.575 inches in diameter.

The next 4.88, and the next 4.1.

Each one is .84 times the size of the next biggest drum.

Could this simply be coincidence?

In 2016, a researcher at

Manchester University discovers something amazing.

Dr. Anne Teather examines the smallest drum

and discovers that its circumference is 1.056 feet.

NARRATOR: The long foot.

Dr. Teather takes a cord measuring exactly 10 long feet.

She wrapped it around the smallest of these

chalk drums, and it went around 10 times precisely.

NARRATOR: She repeats the test on the other two drums.

She did the same with the larger drums,

and it went around eight or seven.

NARRATOR: This suggests an astonishing possibility.

One theory is that these drums could have been used as

portable devices for the wrapping around of cords,

for the creating of standard measurements, for laying out

buildings or monuments.

NARRATOR: The suggestion is that these are like

5000-year-old measuring tapes,

but with only one isolated find,

it could all be coincidence,

except...

it's no longer just one find.

In 1993 in West Sussex, 50 miles from Stonehenge,

archaeologists discover another drum.

But this time with no carved decorations,

almost as if it were unfinished.

NARRATOR: When Dr. Teather tests the new drum with

the 10 long feet cord,

it wraps around exactly nine times.

The idea that these strange drums are

tools for the architects of Stonehenge is attractive,

but there's one very big problem.

The drums are made out of chalk.

There is a problem with chalk,

particularly if you're using it for some kind of

measuring standard.

It is soft, and it erodes easily.

If these objects were part of some Neolithic toolkit,

then you'd expect to see marks of wear upon them.

NARRATOR: But up close, there are no cord marks

or signs of damage from regular use as tools.

But weirdly, in Neolithic Britain,

not all tools are made to be used.

We call these sorts of objects skeuomorphs,

objects which were functionally in one material,

but for which replicas can be made in another material,

which is not functionally suitable.

A good example of this would be a chalk ax,

which, while looking like an ax,

would shatter if you actually used it like an ax.

And we've actually found such

a chalk ax from near Arundel in Britain.

NARRATOR: The working theory is that the real drums would

have been made of something more durable, like wood.

So why make copies out of chalk?

MacDONALD: Their use appears to have been largely ritual.

It would appear that the long foot measurement had

an important symbolic as well as functional use in

this society.

We may view these two realms,

the functional and the spiritual,

as different phenomena today,

but for the people of the past, this was not the case.

NARRATOR: That fits with the long foot being used

at a ritual site like Stonehenge

and why the drums might be buried in

a tomb.

But if the drums really are connected to the monuments,

how is it they were found

hundreds of miles away from any of them?

New evidence that Durrington Walls may hold an answer.

BELLINGER: Researchers analyzed 38,000 teeth and bones

from animals that had been butchered and consumed

at the Durrington Walls site, and they were quite astonished

to find that many of them had come from

as far away as the northern tip of Scotland,

500 miles.

NARRATOR: Archaeologists have had to rethink

ideas of Neolithic communities being isolated.

There was a huge amount of contact, and not just with

neighboring communities,

but communities that spanned the British Isles and could

have even included the continent.

NARRATOR: The idea that knowledge of measuring drums

could have traveled hundreds of miles

no longer seemed so strange.

People were traveling long distances,

and when people come together, they share ideas.

They talk, they talk about religion,

they talk about what they've experienced.

It's what humans always do.

NARRATOR: These beautiful and strange chalk objects

are fundamentally challenging our views

on both the skills and the beliefs of

the Stone Age people who crafted them 5,000 years ago.