Secrets of the Stone Age 1 2 DW Documentary

The human race has been building huge stone structures for ages. What are the origins of these structures? What were these circular constructions used for? Many of these structures were sealed up thousands of years ago by the people who built them. But in some cases, wind and waves wore away that protective covering over time. These structures are called megaliths. You could call them gigantic works of art. They were built long before the pyramids. Technical and logistical masterpieces that pushed the limits of human imagination. Large stone structures like these were built in many places around the world. For example, in the far north of Scotland, you'll find ancient constructions that are older than Stonehenge. Every hump and lump and bump that you see could be a new archaeological site. And each year, particularly during the ploughing season, new sites are discovered by farmers. These discoveries outline an important chapter in human history. Until about 12,000 years ago, our ancestors were hunters and gatherers. Then an irreversible transition to a new way of life got underway. The transition from hunting and gathering to sedentary farming was a key development. For millions of years, people had lived by hunting and gathering. And suddenly their lives changed radically, much more so than during the transition to industrialization or the digital age. This is Göbekli Tepe, a small hill in southeastern Turkey. Here in 1994, German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt discovered a series of huge stone structures, including decorated pillars that weigh up to 20 tons. A few years later, Austrian archaeologist Barbara Horesch began researching the site. Göbekli is not only an architectural treasure and one of the most important structures of its kind in the world, it also symbolizes the beginning of the Neolithic age. The Göbekli Tepe complex was built by hunters and gatherers — that is, before mankind became sedentary. This fact revolutionized the conventional archaeological wisdom. We discovered a society that was completely new to us. That society had such a long history, and yet some aspects of it were familiar to us. An aggressive lion, for example, was just as much a threat to the people who built Göbekli as it is to us today. For those who lived near the site, a parallel supernatural world was part of everyday life. This crane may have symbolized a connection between the earth and the heavens. Beetles and snakes were important mythological symbols in many cultures. There seem to have been few barriers between the natural world and the supernatural. Teams of archaeologists from Germany and Turkey have only excavated a fraction of the site. But they've determined that this period of mysticism was relatively short-lived. Our research indicates that the early generations of sedentary societies kept covering up these sites and sealing them shut, so that they could no longer be used. But these sites were preserved in the collective memory of society for a very long time. There are good reasons why Göbekli lay abandoned for thousands of years. Perhaps the first farmers wanted to distance themselves from the practices of their ancestors. Göbekli had lost its original meaning. People had become sedentary. The director of the State Museum of Prehistory in Halle, Harald Meller, says this was a major turning point in human history. It was really decisive. Here we have nearly 4,000 axe heads from the Neolithic period. People used axes to clear forests to create farmland. They also used them to split wooden beams, which were then used to build complex houses. This construction of housing was a key element in the transition to sedentary life. Hunters and gatherers also stayed in one place for extended periods, provided that they could find enough food. But the changes that took place in the Neolithic period were revolutionary. The transition to sedentary life was a key development. For thousands of years, people had lived as hunter-gatherers, a natural way of life. They fed themselves in a natural way as well. They had relatively few children because the women did not become pregnant while they were breastfeeding. But all that changed radically with the development of agriculture, because that prompted people to change their diet. Grain now provided carbohydrates, and domesticated animals provided meat and fats. That increased the fat content in the body. Also, women became pregnant more often, and this led to a population explosion. That, in turn, meant that people had to live together in smaller spaces, in houses, settlements, and villages. The work of archaeologists is often like trying to solve a puzzle. They carefully dig up artifacts that belong to a specific society, and then try to recreate an image of what that society was like. Some objects, like these shards of decorated pottery, have lent their names to entire cultures, for example, the linear pottery culture, which coincides with the first appearance of food-producing societies. Burial sites are often rich sources of information for archaeologists. Not just human remains, but various items that were buried with the deceased. For example, an expert can determine whether a person was buried properly. If not, animals may have gotten into the grave and chewed at the bones. Maria Teschler-Nicola is the director of the archaeological biology department at Vienna's Museum of Natural History. She says you can learn a lot from skeletons. For example, we've confirmed vitamin deficiencies and stress symptoms in some remains. And that helps us to reconstruct what people ate, and other aspects of daily life. We've found evidence of anemia in the upper reaches of eye sockets. We've seen evidence of vitamin C deficiencies in the alveolar ridges and other bone formations. If we analyze this evidence systematically, we can extrapolate it to the entire population and try to reconstruct specific living and working conditions. Archaeologists always try to determine the age of artifacts. The development of radiocarbon dating was a major step forward in this process. Over the last 20 years, genetic analysis has also provided important evidence. Experts can now examine human and animal DNA that is several thousand years old. Anthropologist Joachim Bruegger says that genetic analysis of livestock can provide information on the migration patterns of Neolithic farmers. We did our very first tests on domestic animals, and determined that all European cattle are descended from Iranian cattle. Today, those animals are found in Switzerland or East Frisia or somewhere, but they originally came from Anatolia and the Middle East. And then we thought, perhaps we can apply that hypothesis to the migration of Neolithic peoples. And after 10 years of research, we were able to determine that these people from Anatolia, especially northwest Anatolia, are indeed the ancestors of all European Neolithic peoples. It's difficult to find well-preserved genetic material from this period. In warm environments, bones decay more quickly, and with them, the genetic evidence. Another problem is that sometimes, older genetic material has been contaminated by newer material, which produces inaccurate results. Still, archaeologists have come up with some interesting findings. Genetic analysis of skeletons from northwestern Turkey, specifically an area south of Istanbul, shows that Neolithic people in modern-day Germany and Spain were descended from an ancient people that we call Aegeans. There is evidence that the migrants at that time used both a Mediterranean and a Balkan route. Farming peoples spread rapidly throughout Europe over several hundred years, but not in an organized way. This research facility is located in Turn, in Austria. Maria Teschler-Nikola and her colleague Thomas Prochazka are using analytical chemistry to try to determine the migration patterns of ancient peoples. The technology we have today is incomparably better than it was 20 years ago. We can use invasive and non-invasive methods, plus isotope analysis, which has been widely used in anthropology for about 15 years, to track prehistoric migration patterns. Here, Prochazka examines a tooth that's about 5,000 years old. Tooth enamel does not change over the course of a person's life, so scientists can tell from its composition where people grew up. The same technology is used to determine the place of origin of some modern-day foods. The place of origin can always be clearly determined, whether in plants, animals or humans. We can now use this data to confirm a definite pattern of migration, and not just a transfer of ideas. In effect, we've been able to track the colonization of Europe. There are few traces of Europe's original residents, the hunters and gatherers who lived there for thousands of years. They were probably displaced by the new settlers, or absorbed into new societies. At this point, Europe had been settled by migrants from the Middle East. But what prompted them to move into this new territory? It's hard to say. I don't think it had anything to do with overpopulation, not at that point in time. Population density was low, compared to what it is today. Neolithic peoples may simply have heard about this region and decided to go there. Perhaps some groups had been there and came back and spread the word. I can only speculate, but I think one reason may have been simple human curiosity. Hunters and gatherers eventually learned to travel by sea. Later, some of the sedentary farmers also used boats to travel west. We don't know whether they used sailboats or rowing boats. In any case, rowing boats were easier to maneuver. These migrants spread gradually to Mediterranean islands, including one that today is known as Malta. The Republic of Malta actually consists of three inhabited islands, Malta itself, plus Comino and Gozo, and several smaller islands that are uninhabited. Malta is located approximately 80 kilometers south of Sicily. On a clear day, one can see Sicily from Gozo, and likewise one can see Gozo from Sicily. So one must assume that there was a degree of curiosity in the people from Sicily, wondering as to what this land was that lay slightly beyond the horizon. However, it's hard to grasp why people would decide to leave such a fertile island as Sicily and in order to occupy and colonize somewhere that was far away. The first to arrive were probably explorers, perhaps then followed by their families. About 2,000 years later, some of the residents started building temples. The origins of these monumental structures are still shrouded in mystery. Some of these limestone blocks weigh up to 20 tons. They could turn to dust before we find out more about them. Timmy Gambin, a marine archaeologist at the University of Malta, is trying to preserve the ruins. Here, he's photographing some of them. Gambin converts the photos to 3D animated images. This is what the temples might have looked like. But he says he's running out of time to complete his work. What's incredible is that the rate of erosion has been much faster over the past 70 years than it has been in the past 4,500 years. And that is not just because they've been uncovered, but because you have aspects such as acid rain, pollution, carbon monoxide and so on that actually accelerate. So it's not just the period of time since they've been uncovered, but since you've got all these modern pollutants, this is really accelerating the rate of erosion. This is the Hajar-e-Im temple complex on the main island. It's a major tourist attraction. The canopy is designed to protect the site from the elements and slow the process of erosion. You know, these temples are 1,000 years older than Stonehenge, which for a country that's a colony of Britain, this becomes a big thing. All of a sudden, our Neolithic is 1,000 years older than the people that are ruling us, you know? So this is what I mean about the political factor that these structures come to play. But why did people build these structures? We humans want a comfortable life. We want not to be hungry, not to be sick. And the way to do it was to make sure that the gods were smiling upon you. And one way to make the gods smile upon you was to build monuments in their honour. This is what the site looks like without the canopy. We can now reconstruct how the temple might have looked in its original form. But we can only speculate about its actual purpose and what sorts of rituals might have been carried out there. Who was allowed to enter the inner sanctum and who was not? There is a clear division between the inside space and the outdoor space. The temple is built, covered over. It is the realm of the priest or priestesses. The outside is open to the elements and the realm of the common people. This division is clearly thought of in the design of the temples. The interior of the temple is hidden from the outside world. This hole in the stone may have been used by an oracle. It provides a connection to the temple interior. What was sacred to the local residents at that time? What gods did they worship, if any? Did they have sacrificial rituals? We can only speculate. The site leaves many questions unanswered. The temples of Malta were used for about 2,000 years. And then they were abandoned. Why did that happen? At that time, and this is very typical of prehistoric cultures, they were not able to achieve real societal consistency. They had no established traditions that could be passed down from generation to generation, like written records, a class of priests, or a line of hereditary rulers. Those are key elements in cultural development. Prehistoric cultures that did not have these elements didn't last long. Some of the farming peoples who sailed towards Central and Western Europe traveled as far as what is now Spain and Portugal, and the Brittany Peninsula in modern-day France. The rocky coastline provided building materials for these new settlers. They created a new society at the dawn of the Neolithic age, a society that remains a mystery to this day. The temples that were built in Malta are unique to that island, just as these rows of standing stones are to the village of Carnac on Brittany's south coast. The legacy of these and other structures has been preserved in one of the regional languages. Breton. The word menhir means long stone. Dolmen means stone table. It describes a specific kind of grave. It's impossible to accurately translate these words into other languages. Experts have tried to solve the mystery of the standing stones in vain. Serge Cassin is an archaeologist at the University of Nantes. This spectacular sight, the Stone Rose of Carnac, makes a profound impression on everyone who sees it. People are astonished by the scope and the size of it. It simply boggles the mind, and it gives new meaning to the word monumental. The rows of stones cover an area of more than three kilometers. The site used to be much larger. Every rock is distinctive, and each one could have its own individual meaning. Some researchers believe that the stones represent an expression of political power. Others believe that supernatural forces were at work here. Still others simply see rows of stones as a symbol of political power. It's not a regional or a local design, and we don't know its origins. But you really can call it architecture. The rows of stones extended from the coast into the interior. Perhaps they indicated a pathway of some sort. If so, where did it lead? One thing is clear, and this applies to all megalithic structures. It's a sacred construction that involves the landscape and living space. You really can see that in the rows of stones, and they're linked to a sacred site. Megalithic sites are found on many Mediterranean islands and along the Atlantic coast as far north as Britain. They were also built along the North Sea and the Baltic Sea coasts. But there are none of these sites in modern-day Hungary, Austria or southern Germany, that is, places where migrants traveled over land. What's the explanation for that? As these Neolithic peoples left central Anatolia, they experienced a sharp reduction in cultural diversity. They were farmers when they arrived in Europe. As they traveled along the Balkan route, they lost their connection to their previous society, including the construction of large monuments. They became highly specialized farmers, and they were very good at it. But it was not a life that was rich in culture. The migrations from the Fertile Crescent to Austria continued for nearly 5,000 years. In many parts of Europe, receding Ice Age glaciers left behind lots of boulders. The Neolithic migrants found large areas of fertile topsoil in what is now eastern Austria. But there weren't a lot of large rocks that could be used for construction, so they used other materials. In the 1980s, researchers who were analyzing aerial photographs discovered circular shapes in the soil in Austria's Danube region. This was definitely something worth looking into. Those aerial photos led to excavations, and they found these huge monuments that were more than 6,000 years old. Archaeologists wondered what they'd been used for, and there was a lot of discussion about it back in the 1980s. There were all sorts of possible explanations. Everything from forts to meeting places, temples, or cattle pens. Here, archaeologists use radar to scan the area, to get an idea of what sort of structures might have been built here — fences, ditches, or entryways. Archaeologist Wolfgang Neubauer has used this equipment to investigate sites around the world. For example, Neubauer was able to prove that Stonehenge, perhaps the world's most famous prehistoric monument, was originally made of wood. These circular shapes can be seen from the air only at certain times of the year, provided that they've not been covered up by blowing soil. Neubauer found a total of 40 circular ditches in the Weinfirtel region of northeastern Austria. In 2005, archaeologist Wolfgang Lobisser and his team reconstructed one of these ditches near the town of Heldenberg. They used stone tools and the same materials that would have been available during the Stone Age, including wood, bone, and plant fibers. But it's the stone structures that tell us the most about our ancient ancestors. On the North Sea island of Silt, for example, there are more than 500 burial sites made of stone. A number of Neolithic tombs can also be found on the northern German mainland and in Denmark. Archaeologists continue to excavate and analyze some of these sites. These large stone tombs were often used for centuries. These megalithic tombs gave people a sense of identity. The local residents performed their rituals there. It helped them to reaffirm their existence. So these sites really did help to shape society at that time. Burial practices can tell us a lot about a given society and its people. Megalithic peoples used common burial sites. There's little evidence of individual graves. It's as though the deceased lost their identity. During the early Neolithic period, the focus was on the community, not the individual. Those who could contribute substantially to the community were held in high regard. Over time, our ancestors began to create high-quality, elaborately designed ceramics. This beautifully decorated bowl was found in a grave near Lülsen in the eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt. Items such as these, and burial practices in general, can tell us much about society, including the status of women. We've observed no major differences in the way that men and women were buried in Neolithic societies. In many cases, women were given burials that were just as elaborate as those for men. And sometimes even more so. But did Neolithic burial objects really indicate the status of women in society? Stone constructions represent spiritual immortality. That is, the deceased will be remembered forever. The key element in reconstructing ancient architecture, whether it's temple buildings or tombs, are the stone building blocks. If these structures had been made of wood, we would have found very few remains. We could only speculate as to how large the structure had been. But the stone blocks really gave us an idea of what it was like in prehistoric times. There's an amazing variety of Neolithic structures in the Orkney Islands, off the northeastern coast of Scotland. Excavation work began at this site in 2002, led by archaeologist Nick Card. I think what we're seeing today is just really the very tip of the iceberg of what was here 5,000 years ago. Our eyes are drawn to these wonderful upstanding monuments, but over about the last 10 years, the University of the Highlands and Islands has embarked on a large-scale geophysical program of survey around these monuments to see what else was potentially here. And what we've discovered is that the landscape was filled with monuments. Excavations have yielded evidence of sites that were used by cults, as well as settlements and graves. The concentration of Neolithic structures on the island is extensive. This is the Maze O burial site. The standing stones of stenness form one of the oldest circular structures in Britain. 150 meters away are the remains of the Barnhouse settlement. The entrance to the narrow headland is guarded by a 5.6 meter high monolith called the Watch Stone. Further along, we find the Ness of Brodgar, a major settlement that included houses, a huge stone wall, and even a Neolithic version of a cathedral. Archaeologists have discovered other Neolithic structures that lie directly on the coast. This settlement includes some small stone houses. Much of the excavation site has been covered to protect the masonry from the elements. No visitors are allowed. Only Nick Card and his team. Neolithic people were really no different from ourselves. What you see here in a house is everything that you'd expect really in a modern day house, without the electricity and the water. The flat construction protects the structure against stormy weather. The grass roof provides warmth. People led a decent life here. As far as we know, there were no armed conflicts or other serious existential threats at the time. The local forests were more widespread in Neolithic times, and the climate was relatively mild. Thanks to the influence of the Gulf Stream, the conditions were ideal for growing crops and raising livestock. And there were also plentiful supplies of fish. During the Neolithic, what we found is that Orkney had a kind of predominance amongst many other areas. And what we found is that there's material being brought to Orkney from right the way across Britain. But equally, a lot of the ideas that seem to dominate the prehistory of Britain seem to have originated in the Orkney Islands. Was the stone circle of Orkney a model for similar structures throughout Britain? Meanwhile, archaeologists have been able to precisely determine Neolithic migration patterns. All they need to carry out a comprehensive analysis are a few bones or teeth that contain traces of DNA. This is the same method that proved that Central Europeans were descended from the people of Anatolia. Researchers also came up with another surprising discovery. They examined genetic material found in what is now Iran, that is, the heartland of the Fertile Crescent. And they found a break in the migration pattern, approximately between western Iran and western Anatolia. The population groups had become so diverse, there are indications that they may have split up between 50 and 70,000 years ago. Following the migration of anatomically modern humans from Africa, both major groups became sedentary, farmed the land and built houses. Populations made the transition to sedentary culture in both Europe and Asia at about the same time. But of course, independently of one another. Megalithic structures can be found throughout Asia, and especially in Korea. Constellations, the patterns of stars, play an important role in Korean mythology. Well into modern times, it was not unusual to find images of constellations engraved on headstones. But it's not always easy to determine the precise age of these relics. The Neolithic Age appears to have been a relatively peaceful period in human history. Archaeologists have found no evidence of armed conflict during this time. The Neolithic period in Europe came to an end around 2000 BC, when it gave way to the Bronze Age. The stone structures remained, of course. Today, some of them serve as road markers. Others took on a Christian look. Churches were built atop burial grounds. And some stone monuments simply faded into the local background. In Neolithic times, temples served the same purpose as mosques, synagogues, and churches do today. This period saw the development of communities, where people lived in small settlements, raised their families, and tended their crops and livestock. These Neolithic elements still shape our society today. Sometimes more than we think.