Meet the Ancestors Episode 9: Unlocking Orkney's Secrets
Meet the Ancestors Episode 9: Unlocking Orkney's Secrets
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00:00In
00:29a distant corner of the British Isles, a windswept barley field is about to give up its secrets.
00:35An ancient underground tomb, its contents untouched for 5,000 years.
00:48Last June I drove over 700 miles from my Dorset home to Orkney, one of the most northerly
00:53outposts of the British Isles. Orkney's quite unlike anywhere else I've visited.
00:58It's rugged, windswept, and virtually treeless. Orkney may not have many trees, but it has
01:04got a lot of stone, and they've been using that stone for building for thousands of years,
01:09which is one of the reasons why they've got the best collection of prehistoric sites in
01:12northern Europe. And they've now got a new one, a new tomb, and I hope I'm going to find
01:17out what's inside it.
01:21The tomb was discovered at Crantit Dairy on the outskirts of Kirkwall, when a farmer's
01:25tractor dislodged a roof slab. Glasgow University archaeologist Beverly Ballan-Smith is in charge
01:34of the excavation. But even she hasn't seen inside yet, as the hole was quickly covered
01:41over. So this must be pretty exciting for you. It is, because although there are a lot
01:47of tombs on Orkney, a lot of tombs of the same date, possibly of the same size and dimension,
01:55none of them have had a roof surviving, or none of them have had a roof intact.
02:03Beverly and her team have just six weeks to carry out the excavation. Their first job
02:08was to start clearing the soil from the roof of the tomb. As well as archaeologists, Beverly's
02:15team had some rather unusual members. Two of the Strathclyde Police forensic team. Photographer
02:21David Thurley and pathologist Jeanette McFarland, had brought some rather bizarre looking equipment
02:25with them.
02:37What's the tent for?
02:39We're used to using this type of tent at outdoor crime scenes, so that it protects the body
02:45and the surroundings from the elements. And I think in this area it's going to be very
02:48important to protect the tomb as soon as it's open.
02:54With the tent in place, it was finally time to take the covers off the tomb.
02:58I don't know.
03:02But this was one dig that wasn't going to go smoothly.
03:10An archaeologist's worst nightmare, modern soil and water contaminating the once sealed chamber.
03:19It was going to take a bit of ingenuity to see past the blockage, but fortunately I'd come prepared.
03:28As I manoeuvred the camera deep into the tomb, Beverly and Jeanette kept their eyes peeled.
03:38This tomb has lain undisturbed since it was sealed nearly 5,000 years ago.
03:43More deposits there.
03:45Oh, there's a bone. There's a bone.
03:53In fact, there was more than one bone, as we all found out that evening when Beverly showed us what had excited her so much.
04:00You can clearly see we've got one skull here. It's got a little dent in the top, hasn't it?
04:06The brow ridges.
04:08We've got the second skull, which seems to be lying on its side, because there's an eye socket.
04:14We've got the nose bone.
04:16It looks to be in good condition, but we can't tell really here whether that's a male or female skeleton or skull.
04:25It's not lying as a skeleton, is it?
04:27No.
04:28Or two skeletons. It's a collection of bones.
04:30Collection, yes.
04:33The camera revealed more than just bones, although there were some dark recesses that we still hadn't seen.
04:39We now knew that the tomb was circular and was divided into three compartments.
04:44One had bones in, one was empty, and the third, full of soil from the collapse, was an unknown quantity.
04:55On the hillside above the tomb, series illustrator Jane Brain had settled in.
05:00Jane will reconstruct the landscape of Orkney in Neolithic times, 5,000 years ago when the tomb was built.
05:07Jane starts with the form of the modern landscape and then uses archaeological clues to transform it back in time.
05:14I hoped that Orkney expert Colin Richards might provide Jane with the information she needs.
05:19Well, I'm just trying to get to grips with the landscape, really trying to understand the topography
05:24and just generally get the atmosphere of the place.
05:27What about the tomb itself? What would I actually see from here?
05:30Presumably not a great deal.
05:32Probably not.
05:34It's like when you look at it now, you know, you simply don't know it's there.
05:38And, yes, it would be newly constructed, you'd be able to see the clay and so on.
05:42But it wouldn't have stood right out, no.
05:45Now, would a settlement where people were living have been close to that?
05:50And if so, where?
05:52Where we've done some work the other side of Kirkwall,
05:55where there's two chamber tombs on either side of a valley,
06:00in both cases there's a settlement which lies, if you can imagine looking out through the passage, downslope and to the right.
06:08We could have a little settlement over here, perhaps, if we were going to have one at all.
06:13Now that Jane knew where to put a village, she needed to know what it would have looked like.
06:19In most places in Britain, the answer is an educated guess.
06:22But here, there is solid evidence.
06:25Because Orkney doesn't have many trees, everything's built of stone.
06:29Fine, hard stone that splits into slabs and can be laid without mortar to make solid and lasting walls.
06:37So solid that some have lasted for over 5,000 years.
06:49In the north of the island lies Skara Brae, a whole Neolithic village buried under sand dunes for thousands of years.
07:00What I find incredible is that you can see not only the whole structure of the house,
07:04but also the way it was laid out with the hearth and the bed and all the other things.
07:09You get a sense, even with it open like this, of how it must have felt, don't you?
07:13You get a sense of how cosy the houses were and a real feeling for how they might have lived in them.
07:18I'll go and get my drawing board and get started. I'll see you in a bit.
07:32I'm just basically trying to get the position of the houses.
07:37Just draw these circles where the houses are standing so that I can get the overall shape of the village.
07:44Because, of course, the houses would be roofed in the village that we're going to reconstruct.
07:49It doesn't look like very much, but it means something to me.
07:54So while Jane hovered overhead, I burrowed deep into the warren of passages that linked the houses.
08:00One house has been roofed over and gives a real feeling of prehistoric life.
08:06Even the furniture is made of stone.
08:09This dresser is the ideal place to display your most precious possessions and your most mysterious.
08:29The houses in this village look fantastic from the outside,
08:33but there's nothing like the experience of being inside a real house that's 5,000 years old.
08:39The sort of house that the people from the tomb would have lived in.
08:42It's dark, it's smoky, it was probably very smelly as well, but it's cosy.
08:48I mean, I'm incredibly warm even though it's cold outside.
08:51And actually being inside this building, it makes you feel so much closer to those people.
09:00Back at the tomb, the archaeologists aren't having much luck.
09:04Caught on a home video camera, the tomb roof starts to collapse.
09:08Don't stand there.
09:11If this roof slab falls in, then any bones that lie underneath it will be crushed.
09:29The tomb needs urgent shoring to prevent any further collapse.
09:34Fortunately, Joffey Hill, one of the diggers, is also a builder.
09:43It's a wonderful structure of a wooden tape. What's it doing, Joffey?
09:48This is insurance. If it decides to suddenly collapse,
09:52we'll catch it before it goes down onto the top of the, you know, what is our primary deposit,
09:58you know, the skulls in the bottom.
10:00But the new hole did give David an opportunity to photograph the hidden recesses of the tomb.
10:05Are the bones sort of in the downslope a bit then?
10:08A bit over, downhill from where we are.
10:10That's creative.
10:11Oh, that's a good one, the blocking.
10:13A few hours later, his photos were printed, and he had a surprise for Colin and me.
10:18Oh, another skull.
10:21And long bones.
10:22The new skull and bones are in the same chamber as the two we saw first,
10:25but positioned at the end that our video camera couldn't see.
10:30Perhaps these people were related.
10:34By now it was time to get those precious bones out.
10:40These suits are not just to keep clothes clean, they're to prevent contamination.
10:47A touch from an ungloved finger or a single unmasked breath
10:51could ruin the chances of recovering DNA from the ancient bones.
10:54At last, Beverly was ready to climb down into the tomb.
11:04The newly discovered skull was the first to come out.
11:10I suppose this is the moment we've all been waiting for.
11:12We're actually getting our first glimpse of the bones as they come out of the tomb.
11:15It has to be said, what I've seen so far, they're not in very good condition.
11:20As each fragment emerged, it was carefully examined, recorded,
11:26and wrapped by bone specialist Julie Roberts.
11:32Inside the tomb, things seemed to go from bad to worse.
11:36This is just like sponge cake.
11:40In fact, it's worse. It's worse than sponge cake.
11:44The remaining bones were literally falling to bits as Beverly touched them.
11:48At the other end of the chamber, the two skulls that lay together were so soft
11:52that Beverly decided she'd have to slide them onto something flat.
12:10Parts of the skulls appear to be missing.
12:14But perhaps enough bones can be found to rebuild a face.
12:18I think I would have the shovel back once Julie's processed.
12:29How do you feel now they're out?
12:31I want to find out a bit more now. I'm keen.
12:33It would seem that the skulls were placed on top of the pile of bones.
12:38Or in this case, slightly to one side.
12:41But why two skulls and only what would appear to me to be one lot of bones?
12:45I don't know.
12:48I hope Julie, the bone specialist, might have some answers.
12:52A few weeks later, I headed to a laboratory to find out.
12:56In total, the tomb had contained four skulls.
12:59The fourth had been found completely crushed in the soil-filled chamber.
13:04The two skulls that had lain together in one of the bones
13:08The two skulls that had lain together in one of the bone piles
13:11were in terrible condition.
13:13But luckily, some important fragments were recognisable.
13:16Well, fortunately, we have some teeth.
13:19We've got these two developing first and second molars here.
13:25And we can tell that they're developing crowns,
13:28not just teeth where the root's rotted away.
13:31Because the actual surface of the crown hasn't developed properly yet.
13:34And this gives us an age of somewhere between four and six years.
13:39Four to six?
13:40Yeah, so it's quite young.
13:42And we've also got here, this is actually a wisdom tooth.
13:47And this is likely to go with the other individual,
13:50giving it an age of probably around 15.
13:55But it was the third individual that intrigued me.
13:59Well, judging from the bit of skull that we have here,
14:02the top of the skull and the forehead looks quite female in shape.
14:07It's got this peculiar sort of embossed bit on the back.
14:10Yeah, yeah.
14:11What is that?
14:12It's just thought to be a developmental abnormality.
14:16It's not an actual disease.
14:18It's more of a growth phenomenon.
14:20That's strange, I've never seen it before.
14:23Julie had identified more of this person's bones.
14:26A very odd selection.
14:28We've got the left hand and foot,
14:31left kneecap,
14:33right leg,
14:34left pelvis,
14:36and right arm.
14:37So we've actually got bits from all over the body.
14:40So no facial bones survive,
14:42and we'll never know what this person looked like.
14:44But my curiosity had been aroused, and I wanted to know more.
14:48We also have part of the pelvis.
14:51The fragment of pelvis confirmed that we were dealing with a woman,
14:54and some teeth suggested her age.
14:57I've got some of the teeth surviving,
14:59although they're in very poor condition,
15:01and also they've got wear on the bottom,
15:03they've got quite heavy wear.
15:05So that suggests that she was probably aged over 30.
15:10So in the one chamber, you've got an adult woman,
15:14an adolescent child,
15:16and a child of about four to six years old.
15:19Yeah, that seems to be the case.
15:21You wonder whether it's her children, don't you?
15:24Yeah, it's a possibility.
15:26They're all buried in the same chamber.
15:28Yeah, I mean, this is something that if DNA analysis is successful,
15:31then we may be able to find out.
15:34Unfortunately, the bones were just too decayed for any DNA to survive.
15:39But were there once more bones in the tomb?
15:41Had they simply rotted away?
15:43Here, science could help us.
15:46In the same laboratory,
15:48John Duncan had started the chemical analysis
15:50of tiny samples of soil from the tomb floor.
15:54Some from under the bone piles, and some from the empty chamber.
15:58What was he looking for?
16:01Well, you've got a nice range of colours here, John, anyway.
16:04These are the samples from the tomb at Cranted, are they?
16:07Yes, from the floor, from the soil.
16:09On the floor, I've been looking at chemical composition.
16:12So what does the dark blue and the lighter blue mean?
16:14The darker the colour, the more phosphorus in the soil.
16:18Bone contains a lot of phosphate,
16:20so if there's high phosphate values in the soil,
16:23we can say there's been bone placed there.
16:26As expected, the dark colour indicates a high amount of phosphate,
16:32which this back row are from beneath where we found the bone
16:36during the excavation.
16:39The light blue, not much bone.
16:41Right. So would you expect that the higher levels
16:44were going to be where the bone was?
16:46Yes, we did expect that, and that's what we found.
16:48Right. But what about in the rest of the tomb?
16:51Has it told you more about what's going on in there?
16:53Well, we've analysed a few samples, not them all,
16:55but there was one anomaly, which was this one,
16:58which was within the north chamber,
17:01which could suggest that there's been bone there
17:04which has subsequently decayed.
17:06It's totally gone? Nothing left at all? Yes.
17:08And what about that chamber at the back,
17:10where there weren't any bones at all?
17:12From the samples, there were no bones present.
17:15So you think that was a completely empty chamber? Yes.
17:18That's just really interesting there, isn't it?
17:20And what about the other chamber, where all the soil had collapsed in on it?
17:23Well, the floor of the tomb still showed that the two placements of bone.
17:29There was no other bone present. Right.
17:32So they really are just restricted to those two side chambers.
17:36Nothing in the passage, nothing in the middle and nothing at the back.
17:43So the tomb never contained more than our four people,
17:46and John's results couldn't account for all the missing bones.
17:49I hoped Colin had some answers.
17:51Were we dealing with prehistoric grave robbers?
17:54I think there's far more to it than that.
17:56For instance, in some tombs,
17:59where you do have a much better level of preservation,
18:02there's still discrepancy between certain bones.
18:06In some cases, there's a large number of skulls present.
18:10In other cases, there's far fewer skulls than the rest of the body and so on.
18:15One of the examples of this is the tomb of the eagles, Icebister.
18:21And you can see here, here's one of the side cells.
18:24And in this case, what's happened is you have a number of skulls,
18:29very few other bones.
18:31So what you're really seeing here is,
18:33after the flesh has decomposed from the body,
18:36they're actually going in and they're moving different body parts
18:39and putting them in different places.
18:41So do you think this is exactly what was going on at our tomb?
18:44Yes, to some degree, because it's quite clear from the deposits in Krantet
18:49that there's been a movement of bones,
18:52movement of bones, after the flesh has decayed from the body.
18:56So does that mean that bones that started out in a tomb like Krantet
19:01could have actually ended up in somewhere like the tomb of the eagles?
19:05Oh, I think almost certainly.
19:07Yeah, I'd very much think that was the case.
19:10The tomb of the eagles lies on a spectacular part of the coast.
19:13It was discovered and excavated by Orcadian farmer Ronnie Simerson.
19:23When he first crawled down the narrow entrance passage,
19:26he found a stone-built room many times bigger than our tomb.
19:35On either side lay tiny chambers packed with the bones of over 300 people.
19:44But nothing surpasses Maze Howe.
19:47Its huge mound contains a beautifully built chamber, but no bones.
19:54The Vikings looted its ancestral remains over 1,000 years ago.
20:14Tankerness Museum in Kirkwall is full of bones from Orkney tombs,
20:18the skulls of people who might have known our woman.
20:21But none of these are quite such a strange shape.
20:25I'm really intrigued by this bump on the woman's skull,
20:28and I think I've tracked down another example here at the Museum of London.
20:38Bone specialist Bill White has been working with locals
20:41for 20 years.
20:43The 17th-century skull that he wanted to show me
20:46had just been on display for the first time,
20:48and at first glance it did look very similar to the one from Orkney.
20:51I've brought a photograph, basically,
20:53because the skull's too fragile to bring with me.
20:55Do you think it's the same?
20:57It's very familiar indeed.
20:59The condition for which the technical term is batherocrani, or stepped skull,
21:03the step being from the back of the skull to this occipital protuberance,
21:08bun or bump.
21:10And how common is it?
21:12At that period of London, in the 17th century,
21:14a very high proportion of Londoners had it,
21:16perhaps as many as 10%.
21:18That seems quite a lot.
21:20Have you any idea what causes it?
21:22Frankly, no, but there are a number of ideas about it,
21:25that it could be environmental in origin,
21:27that something in the diet or the surroundings, pollution, etc.
21:31Alternatively, it could be genetic in origin,
21:33and to account for such a high number of Londoners during that time,
21:36it would have to be something like immigration, perhaps from the countryside.
21:39We haven't yet found which county they came from, these people,
21:43or possibly from abroad.
21:45It was certainly common in Germany,
21:47but at a different historical period.
21:49Too late to be related to this.
21:51Are there any methods that you can use to try and find out what caused it?
21:56We've tried taking X-rays, a conventional X-ray here.
22:01It shows the bump very well, of course,
22:03but nothing unusual.
22:05And moving to this Xerior radiograph,
22:07with its extra fine details, such as the blunt vessels and the tooth root canals,
22:12nothing abnormal shows up there either.
22:15But is there any reason to think that the face would have looked any different,
22:18just because she'd got this funny bump on her head?
22:21No, but that's what people believed at the beginning,
22:23when they first found these things, without the facial area,
22:26and it was thought that perhaps, as well as the skull being long in this direction,
22:29the face itself would be long,
22:31but I think you can see that...
22:33Yeah, that's perfectly normal, isn't it?
22:35Is this actually something that you see in people today?
22:38We believe it's very rare in people today,
22:40but since we've had the skull in an exhibition,
22:42we've had a number of members of the public either phoning in
22:45or turning up saying they have this bump on the back of their head.
22:48Yeah, so you see people standing in front of the case
22:50sort of feeling the back of their head still.
22:52They're certainly doing that, and they ask us to confirm it
22:54by touching the back of their heads to say so,
22:56but so far we've found no proper examples.
22:59In Somerset, Jane has put the finishing touches
23:02to the Neolithic landscape around the tomb.
23:04Have you finished the landscape yet?
23:06I think so. I hope so. Do you want to have a look?
23:08I would like to. What do you mean, you hope so?
23:10Well, I'm hoping there's nothing to be changed radically at this stage.
23:13It looks pretty finished to me.
23:15Although, where's the tomb?
23:17Well, it's here, look.
23:19I mean, looking from this direction,
23:21it would have been a fairly insubstantial little mound on the side of the hill.
23:25This is all grass and heather, is it, with some flowers?
23:28Yes, yes, well, these are heather flowers here amongst the grass.
23:31I think this would have been very good grazing for the little sheep.
23:34Yeah. What's all this area, the dark green?
23:37Well, this is the area of Salix Kyle, this very swampy area,
23:41with these little tiny willow trees all tangled together
23:44and growing in the water.
23:46It's a very magical landscape as well, isn't it?
23:48Oh, I think so. I think here, you know,
23:50to be able to see the places where people lived
23:52and the places where they placed the dead,
23:54you know, in such close proximity,
23:56and to think of all the standing stones and other tombs that are there,
23:59it's quite a magical landscape, isn't it?
24:02It's a very special place, a very sacred place, I think.
24:08In Orkney, land and sky and rocks and sea
24:11combine to create some very special places,
24:14places that the prehistoric peoples of Orkney
24:16chose to commemorate by building their great temples of stone.
24:20From these stones, the heavens were observed,
24:23and at midwinter, the entrance to Maze Howe, their greatest tomb,
24:27was illuminated by the rising sun.
24:31But a new discovery at our tomb is something even rarer,
24:35and the first clue is a small notch in a stone above the blocked entrance.
24:39Colin believes that with the roof in place,
24:41as this reconstruction shows,
24:43it would have formed a narrow window into the tomb.
24:47Is that not just an irregular stone that they've used?
24:50No, no. If you think how well that tomb was constructed,
24:54the masonry is really sophisticated,
24:56so something like this stands out a mile.
24:58I mean, it was instantly seen.
25:00And we suddenly realised we had the possibility
25:04of seeing something which is called a lightbox,
25:07or something which allows light to shine in,
25:10other than the entrance passage.
25:12But presumably it wasn't meant to be seen from inside, was it?
25:16I mean, to appreciate light in the tomb,
25:19you'd have had to have actually been inside it,
25:21and surely there were only dead people inside it.
25:24Well, that's true, but then you have to think, well, what's going on?
25:27The sun is shining through here at, well, twice a year, February and November,
25:33and at those specific times, the inside is illuminated.
25:38The ancestors are illuminated.
25:40But how did Colin know when the sun would have lined up with the light slit?
25:44Well, because an astronomer told him.
25:47Orkney resident Frank Zabriskie can use the sun's position in the sky today
25:51to calculate its path in ancient times.
25:55Using the mathematics first developed by Isaac Newton,
25:58he's worked out that the rising sun would have shone into the tomb twice a year,
26:02in early November and early February.
26:07It was time to put the theory to the test,
26:09but for the experiment to work, we needed to put a roof back on the tomb.
26:32OK?
26:33Yeah.
26:34Switching on.
26:36Oh!
26:38I hate to admit it, but you're right, Colin.
26:41Oh, no.
26:42It's brilliant.
26:44It's right at the top, the back of the chamber.
26:47Colin then showed me how the shaft of light from the rising sun
26:51would have slowly moved down the back wall of the tomb
26:54until it reached the resting place of the ancestral bones.
26:57That's absolutely fantastic.
26:59I don't suppose anybody who was alive ever experienced what we've just seen now,
27:05the shaft of light coming through and simulating the sunrise in the morning,
27:09but it was just an incredible feeling.
27:11I mean, it really makes you feel as if you're somehow closer
27:15to the beliefs of the people who buried their dead here.
27:24The story of our woman from the tomb is always going to be one of mystery,
27:28but we did learn something about her,
27:30something so intimate that it was perhaps known only by those closest to her
27:34during her short life, her strangely shaped head.
27:41But why has she remained such a mystery?
27:44Because when she went to join the ancestors,
27:47she went to another world where the dead were not left to rest in peace.
27:50Some of her bones may have started a restless journey around the magic islands,
27:54while some we know stayed hidden in that tiny tomb,
27:57illuminated twice a year by the rays of the rising sun,
28:01until she was forgotten by people and by time.
28:12Alice Roberts joins up with teams of archaeologists across the country,
28:16revealing remarkable finds, the fascinating world beneath our feet,
28:21in Digging for Britain on BBC iPlayer.
28:31.