All language subtitles for Attenborough.And.The.Mammoth.Graveyard.2021

Here at Cerney Wick,
in southern England,

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just north of Swindon,

the remains of Ice Age mammoths

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have just been discovered.

These beasts were found
not by professional scientists,

but by two amateur fossil hunters
digging in their spare time.

It's like a time travel
through the gravel.

What they've found is sensational.

Even I can see that's a tusk.

It's one of the oldest
mammoth graveyards

ever uncovered in Britain

and could hold secrets about
several extinct species.

Must've been rather enchanting.

But why and how did these mammoths
die here?

To find out,
a team of archaeologists

and palaeontologists
is carrying out

a forensic investigation
of the site.

It's like a really big whodunnit,
isn't it?

Hidden in this gravel pit are clues
that reveal an Ice Age world...

Really beautiful, actually.

..a period about which
we know very little,

when prehistoric people
lived alongside Ice Age animals.

This is very typical
of early Neanderthals.

This excavation could open

a new window onto ancient Britain

and help us understand the lives of
the humans who once lived here.

You might expect to have to travel

to remote parts of Siberia
to uncover bones of Ice Age beasts,

but, just outside Swindon,

less than two hours from my home
in Surrey,

two of Britain's most prolific
amateur fossil hunters have made

the discovery of a lifetime.

I've come to meet Sally
and Neville Hollingworth.

Hello. Hello.

Nice to meet you.
Lovely to meet you.

Absolute pleasure to meet you.
Come on in.

This is our humble home.

Gosh.

Sally and Neville both have
office jobs,

but they spend their weekends
hunting for fossils.

Like me,
they have a passion for doing so,

but theirs went rather farther.

When we went on fossil hunts,
and Nev would invite me,

and he passed me half
a vertebrae,

it's Jurassic,
it's marine reptile. Yeah.

A couple of weeks later,
he texted me to say,

I think I might've found find
the other half of that vertebrae.

Do you fancy meeting for a drink

and we'll see if they
join together?

It's a good line, isn't it?

This is true.
Well, of course.

So we met for a drink
and...

They joined together. ..they joined
together.

I thought there we go,
it's a match made in heaven.

Not a dry eye in the house.

No, no, not at all. No.

We've got some in the kitchen.

More fossils? More finds.

I thought for a moment
it was going to be sandwiches.

These are the finds
I've come to see.

Mammoth bones.

Wow. Gosh.

This is our kitchen-dino.

Yes. Well, I know it's leg bone,
isn't it?

Yes. Where was it?

It was, actually, literally
just sticking out of some gravel

on the floor of a working quarry.

Which end? This end.

So that bit was all you could see?

That's all you could see.
Probably only that bit.

We thought there might be
a bit more of it.

So we started to excavate
and, as we started digging,

we found that it was actually
a complete humerus of a mammoth.

This pelvis bone has actually
gone through

the processing plant

and it dropped out in
the reject pile yard of the quarry.

Two years ago,

Neville and Sally asked
for permission to look

for fossils in a freshly
dug quarry.

They never expected to find pieces
of bones of several mammoths.

A cup of tea for you, David.
Thank you very much. There we are.

Oh, hang on, mammoth cake.

Yeah, so, mammoth cupcakes.

Aren't you having one?

Yes, how is it?

I'm gonna have a chocolate one.

But there's one find that raises
intriguing questions

about how the mammoths died,

a stone tool, a hand-axe,
made by an ancient human.

There was a small glint.
And I thought,

"Well, that looks a bit interesting,
a bit different."

You saw this?

Yes.

Well, the main thing is that it was
made by man.

Yes. Yeah. And it was that feeling
that I was the first human

to touch this stone tool in hundreds
of thousands of years.

It's a great thrill, isn't it?

It is. Yes.
The whole of this business.

Finding a stone tool near
mammoth bones is extremely rare,

but we don't yet know if it was left
by humans

from a more recent time
in prehistory.

Well, you could certainly cut things
with that, I'm sure.

Yeah, we did.

We did. You did?

We cut our wedding cake with it.

You cut your wedding cake? Yes.

Yeah. Really?

There we are.

We cut our wedding cake,
got married and had...

And had a mammoth meal.

And had a mammoth meal,
had a mammoth event. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Mammoths once roamed the open
landscape of ancient Britain.

These extinct cousins
of elephants

had huge curving tusks
and thrived during the Ice Age.

Their remains are usually
tens of thousands of years old,

but Sally and Neville's finds
could be far older.

They could offer an extremely rare
glimpse of life deep in the Ice Age,

a time we know little about,

when early humans lived
alongside mammoths.

But how did these mammoths die?

Was it from natural causes?

Or could they have been hunted?

The quarry where Sally and Neville
made their discovery

lies just ten miles north
of their home in Swindon,

near the village of Cerney Wick.

Groundwater was deliberately
allowed to flood the site,

to prevent any bones in the ground
from drying out.

Now, two years after they made
their first find,

that water is being pumped out

ready for a team
to begin investigating.

Leading the dig is another
husband-and-wife duo,

Brendon Wilkins
and Lisa Westcott Wilkins.

Those ducks must hate us.

They had this place filled with
water and now they've got nothing.

The team starts by mapping
the site from the air.

It's so important to record this
from the instant that we're doing
anything,

so that we can build that exact
picture

of how it was before we came along
and disturbed it.

The drone images provide
a detailed map of the site

so that the exact location
of each find can be plotted.

The team searches
for fragments of bone.

Biologist Ben Garrod has been
helping co-ordinate the dig.

That, we think, is mammoth bone,
cos it's so thick.

Yeah.
It's definitely mammoth.

Ben was the first on the team
to hear about the site

and quickly realised
its significance.

Sally and Neville got in touch.
And I'd never met them.

And they said, Ben,
we found some fossils that

I think you might be interested in.
I said,

yeah, that's great,
send some photos across.

And they did.
And I was here the next day.

I jumped on the train
and dropped everything

and came to the site

and it was like someone
had sprinkled

mammoth bones everywhere,
which I'd never seen.

I thought I had to go to Siberia
to see that.

By looking at this in
a forensic level of detail,

that'll give us this really
in-depth understanding

of what was going on here
whilst these animals

and these people
were walking around.

What intrigues Ben, and me,

is why there are
so many mammoth bones here,

from at least four different
animals.

And the tantalising mystery
of who left that stone tool.

So, what did the landscape look like
when the mammoths were here?

OK, up.

To find out, geo-archaeologist
Keith Wilkinson extracts samples

of the underlying sediment.

So, at the very bottom
we've got these blue sands.

So they are probably the layer
with the mammoth fossils in.

We've got these river gravels

and then these silts
and sands at the top

are of the
same ancient river channel.

The layers of sediment beneath
the surface

reveal the bed
of a prehistoric river.

This is probably the ancient route
of the River Thames,

which, today,
lies nearly two miles away.

Could the mammoths have died
further upstream

and their bones have been washed
here when the river flooded?

To find out, the team plots target
areas for excavation...

..and the digging begins.

They sieve every shovel-full
of soil

in their search for fragments of
bone or stone tools.

When the trenches start
to reveal new finds,

I can't resist stopping by
to see how they're doing.

Welcome.
Thank you very much.

What do you think?

I haven't seen it yet.

Even I can see that's a tusk.

Let me get it right.
Where was the head?

So, this is the proximal end.

And that's the tip of the tusk.

So coming round the tip here.
So it's curving backwards.

Yes, exactly. Yes.

This is possibly a bit of
a mandible, this was just found.

So it's a left mandible?

Well, yes. And because we think that
might be a left tusk,

you know, it's possible that these
belonged to the same animal.

You can see bones running into
the section there

and here

and you can also see
a rib bone here. Yeah.

One of the things we wondered with
so many of these tusks around,

could it have been that they all
fall into the river somewhere

and then get washed down
in one big event?

But what we're looking at is not
a high energy environment.

If it was a wash-out, you would
expect to see more debris

in the channel, more debris in
the sediment around the tusks.

But this is basically lying in
where it fell.

And the same with the tusk over
there. So, we think, you know,

they could have just died
and fallen.

But it's a bit of a coincidence,
really.

This pit has been dug out
by excavators

because, until just recently,
it was full of gravel,

down to about this level.

But here is much more solid.

It's not gravel. It's mud -
sticky mud at that,

and it's in this undisturbed mud

that these bones are now being
discovered.

And, because it's been undisturbed,

very careful excavation can reveal
a lot of details about

the circumstances in which these
animals got here

and left their bones.

The most complete bones seem
to be lying in the riverbed.

And they've been covered by the fine
sediments of slow-moving water,

not pounded by fast-moving
flood water.

So, perhaps the mammoths died where
the bones are lying now.

Could their remains give us clues

about what the mammoths
looked like?

Conservator Nigel Larkin has come
to remove the tusk

in the centre of the trench.

All right?

Hi. Oh, my goodness.
You've been plastered.

OK, Sal, you smiling? Yes.
Good, great.

With a heavy plaster casing
in place,

the fragile tusk is ready
to be lifted.

Do we need an extra person?
I think we do.

OK. So if you get in there.

We're gonna lift up to sort of
waist height.

You need to get your hands
underneath, OK.

On my knees.

Go that way, that's better.

Do we need a rest?

Up to you.

I'm good.
My back's about to give out.

Go up a bit.

Just rest it there.

OK. Stop there.

Is it in? Yeah. Well done, guys!
We'll just shove it over a bit.

Woo-hoo!

Yeah! Well done.

Thank you.
Well done. Well done, well done.

It's a heavy old beast.
The question is,

how are you going to get out
the other end?

I'll get the wife to help me.

This ancient tusk will be
carefully preserved

and prepared for future examination.

Spectacular fossils like this have
always fascinated people.

Hundreds of years ago,

it was thought mammoth tusks
belonged to mythical beasts.

In Siberia,

mammoth remains were once thought

to be from huge underground
burrowing creatures.

In 17th century Europe,

mammoth bones were said
to be those of giants or unicorns.

By the 19th century, mammoths were
described as prehistoric animals,

but they were thought
to have existed long before humans.

Then, in 1864 in France,

a piece of mammoth ivory was found
with an engraving so accurate

it was clear the artist had seen
a living mammoth.

The engraving shows
a woolly mammoth,

the most recent species on
the mammoth family tree.

We now know that early mammoths
first evolved in Africa

around five million years ago

and then spread into Europe
and Asia.

Around 1.7 million years ago,

steppe mammoths evolved
that grazed the grassy plains.

They then moved into Europe
and North America

where Columbian mammoths
later appeared.

The famous woolly mammoths
developed around 700,000 years ago,

adapted for colder climates,

and they eventually spread
first into Europe

and then North America.

So, which kind of mammoth lived in
Britain at our site?

To find out, mammoth evolution
expert Steven Zhang

is examining the remains
found at the site.

The teeth have given him
a crucial clue.

Looking at a mammoth tooth
is like looking into

a barcode for the mammoth itself.

We start by counting
the number of enamel ridges,

so this one has about 18,

which is a very typical number
for a steppe mammoth.

Looking at this piece of tooth,

we know that it's
a last molar or a wisdom tooth.

So we know this was
a fully-grown adult.

Except, this is one of
the smallest steppe mammoth teeth

there probably is in existence.

It's like finding a German Shepherd
the size of a Westie.

These teeth appear to be from

a population of small
steppe mammoths.

Their reduced size could be
a consequence of food

becoming less abundant.

If a steppe mammoth was here now,

you would see that it wasn't
particularly hairy.

A sign that the climate must
have been quite temperate.

And as for size, well,

the female was about my size,

male a bit bigger

and the baby,

well, I guess, like that.

Must've been rather enchanting.

There are also remains
of another type of mammoth.

Over here, I would say this is
a typical woolly mammoth.

So these two different kind
of beasts

were occurring at the same site.

One possibility was that this site
was a habitat

shared by both steppe
and woolly mammoths,

or, as woolly mammoths migrated
westwards from Siberia

into Europe,

they started to mingle
with local steppe mammoths.

This is interesting
because not often do we see

a snapshot like this.

It's exciting.

Our site could be rare evidence
of a transitional stage,

when woolly mammoths are taking over
from steppe mammoths.

These bones could have belonged
to some of

the last surviving steppe mammoths
in Britain.

Back at the dig,

Sally and Neville
have ringside seats

as the professionals continue
their meticulous search.

There is almost a forensic
examination of the sediment

and everything else.

But that's, that's good, though.
So they don't miss anything.

It's like a time travel
through the gravel.

I'd like them to solve the story.

Was it hunted?

That's the big question, isn't it?

Yeah. One of the questions.
What was the climate like?

Yeah. What was the vegetation like?

And, also, what else was here?

Not just mammoths, but were there
early humans,

hominids wandering about?

Well, yes, they were, because
we know there's a hand-axe.

You have established that there were
mammoths here

and there were human beings
alongside them.

A human being wielding that axe.

I can say, at this particular site,
there were definitely mammoths.

There were definitely human beings,
early human beings, admittedly,

but I don't know yet if they were
here at the exact same time.

Now, the issue is, it could be like
you or I walking on

a Viking settlement
and dropping a crisp packet.

That's not from the same time
period, obviously.

Now, that might have happened here.
I'll let you know in a few months.

Ben's "few months" becomes two years

as Covid lockdowns keep
the team away from the site.

But, in 2021, they pick up
where they left off,

this time with some mechanical help.

If only we'd had this last time,

it would have just made it
so much easier.

The idea at the moment is just
to plane down to that level

where we've got material
that hasn't been disturbed.

They clear down
to the undisturbed layers

and dig new trenches.

Mammoth bones soon begin to appear.

Oh, wow. That looks good,
doesn't it?

Look at that.

Wow, we've got this wonderful
little tusk here.

It's beautiful, isn't it?

To determine the age of these finds,

they send sediment samples from
the trenches to a specialist lab.

In darkroom conditions,

grains of quartz from deep within
the sediment are placed in

a machine that records tiny levels
of radiation.

The amount of radiation emitted
by the grains

reveals when they were
last exposed to sunlight

and allows the team to estimate

the age of the ancient
river channel.

So here we've got our distribution
of age within our sample.

So, these three age estimates
indicate that the channel

was formed about 215,000 years ago.

Our site dates to
a period deep in the Ice Age.

But the Ice Age wasn't always icy.

Over the last
two and a half million years,

huge ice sheets travelled down
from the north

and then retreated during
warmer spells.

The advancing and retreating ice
changed the sea level

and the coastlines,
but, for most of this period,

Britain was connected
to mainland Europe.

215,000 years ago,

when the mammoths were living
at our site,

conditions were only slightly cooler
than today,

ideal for a variety of animals,

and our site is providing evidence
for what they were.

So we've got some lovely vertebrae
here from steppe bison.

So these were very, very large,

up to two metres at
the shoulders, big cow-like animals,

that were again on the steppes,
on these plains,

herbivores, they would equally
have been hunted.

We also have....

..this, which is wonderful.

That's part of a lower jaw
from a brown bear.

A bear.
Yeah. So we know that...

That's the socket of the teeth.

That's it, yeah. And that...

Little canal for the nerves
and blood vessels.

And this is the hinge.

It would have been sitting
at the back.

So you've got this lower jaw
sitting there,

the big tearing teeth,
shearing teeth,

doing exactly that process here.

So we're starting to build up
a picture of what this environment

would have been like.
This isn't Arctic tundra

where there was nothing available.

This would have been
a good place to live.

The bison and bear bones give us
clues about

the Ice Age landscape of the site.

But there are also the remains of
far smaller creatures

that enable us to piece together
a picture

of what was growing on this land
back then.

There's loads of small shell
fragments throughout this.

We've got this little snail
in here.

Environmental archaeologist Matt Law
carefully identifies samples

of tiny,
but perfectly preserved shells.

We have one land snail in there,

so that's a very common species
of short grassland snail

and the rest are looking like
they're coming from

a river-type setting.

Well-vegetated,
well-oxygenated water,

but not too much flow either.

What's really remarkable
is the level of preservation,

not just the snails,
but things like beetle remains,

seeds and bits of wood
that we don't often see

with the level of detail
that they are here.

The discovery of these species
of animals

and plants enables us to get
a quite detailed picture

of what the landscape here was like

when the mammoths
were roaming around.

This stretch of the ancient Thames
was flowing through an open,

grassy landscape,
a perfect place for large herbivores

to feed and find water.

Back at the site,

after weeks of searching
for more hand-axes

or stone tools among
the mammoth bones,

there's been a breakthrough.

The telltale signs of humans.

I think this may be
a flint artefact.

Ben is eager to see the new finds.

It's really over in this area
where we're starting

to find the really exciting stuff.

Hiding in this sand we have

a relatively large piece
of mammoth bone

sticking from the surface.

And, just in the last few days,
we've started to pick out

just a couple of flints,

so little bits of stone

which are being worked by humans.

And they're next door,
just 50 centimetres away

from this lovely bit of what looks
to be a leg bone of a mammoth.

You can see they've been taking
little chips out of the edge

to create a sharp cutting surface,

which they could scrape along bones
or along hides to remove fat.

Something as simple as this
starts to connect those dots,

starts to bring the human story
together with the mammoths,

and that's really quite special.

The presence of these
tiny fragments alongside

the bone suggests people were here

at the same time as the mammoths.

The tool Sally and Neville found

could also have been made
by the same people.

To find out how these early tools
were made,

Ben and I arrange to meet Karl Lee,
an expert flint-knapper.

So here we go.

He uses a rounded stone

and then a piece of antler
as a hammer,

just as the early humans did.

There we go.

That is amazing.

Thank you very much.

What do you reckon, David,

could you take down a mammoth
with one of those?

I should certainly cut up a deer,

they're around here. Yes.

If you killed it with a spear,

that's for the butcher

and you'd butcher it
in half an hour.

So I have, completely normally,

brought a piece of meat
on the bone.

Gosh.

Mind your fingers.

Yes. Mind your fingers.

Thanks, David.

Oh, yeah.
That's gone straight through.

No problem at all.

I think you should keep it for
a cookery show, David. Yeah.

So it seems that the hand-axe
Sally discovered

could well have been used
to butcher mammoth meat.

Karl also shows us a second method
of making stone tools,

in which thin shards of flint,

known as Levallois flakes,

are knocked away
from a large flint core.

I have to prepare a platform
at the base of the core

and then try and take
a nice flake.

Using this method,

they're actually planning exactly
what that flake's

going to look like. So I'm going to
be striking right at the base of

the core here and the flake will
hopefully come off on the underside.

That's a brave thing to say.

That is a Levallois flake.

Now, do watch your fingers on that
one because it's going to be sharp.

Yes, it's razor sharp.

Yeah. Razor sharp.

Where the edge is so thin
it's translucent,

it looks as though it's all got
a halo all around it.

Really beautiful, actually.

This is a very versatile technology,

it's portable, very lightweight,

rather than carrying around
something

four or five times the weight.

I can't imagine you teaching me
this

without a really good grasp
of language.

Teaching this without language
would be,

in my opinion, impossible.

And my guess would be that children,

just as they mimic their parents
today,

would have been mimicking
their parents back then, as well.

So, try and catch it
about two millimetres

back from the edge...

Oh, I've got you, yeah, yeah,
yeah, yeah.

That's it. You're away.

For hundreds of thousands of years,

human beings have passed on
that sort of skill,

that sort of insight into

the materials that lay around them.

Of course,

they had to be fortunate to find
such marvellous material as flint,

but, once they did,

what fabulous things
they created with it.

So who were the flint-workers
at Cerney Wick?

We know very little
about prehistoric people.

Most evidence of their existence
has decomposed

and disappeared long ago,

but their stone tools remain.

They reveal the remarkable story
of early species

of humans spreading from Africa

throughout Northern Europe.

To find out which type of human
was living at Cerney Wick,

I've come to a secure facility
in London.

It holds one of
the largest collections

of prehistoric artefacts
in the world.

Curator Nick Ashton is a renowned
expert on these ancient tools.

He begins by showing me simple
flint tools found near Happisburgh

on the east coast of England.

We know that in Africa they've been
making these tools for some

two to three million years.

But this is the earliest evidence
that we have in northern Europe

of humans reaching this far north.

Dates to an astonishing
900,000 years ago.

How much?

900,000 years ago.

Really? So it's the earliest
evidence for humans

in northern Europe.

In 2013,

Nick's team made a truly
extraordinary discovery

at Happisburgh.

A storm washed away sand on a beach

and revealed ancient footprints,
set in hardened mud.

They were the oldest
human footprints

ever documented outside of Africa

but, within two weeks,
they had vanished,

washed away by incoming tides.

It's thought that early humans
spread out from Africa

around two million years ago.

A million years later,

some of their descendants
reached Britain.

What sort of people was it
who did this?

Did they have clothes of any kind

or were they covered in hair?

Do we know what they look like?

We actually know very little,

but the species of human in Europe
at that time was Homo Antecessor.

They would have looked very similar
to ourselves.

Apart from slight different
facially.

But it's a guess
whether they were hairy or not?

It's a guess as to whether they were
hairy or had extra body fat to cope

with these cold winters.
Yeah, yeah.

By 500,000 years ago,
humans in Britain were capable

of crafting hand-axes like
the one found at Cerney Wick.

We know that they're hunting
by this point,

and they're certainly butchering
a range of different deer

and probably larger animals as well.

And one of the important things is,
if you're a hunter,

you get to the carcass first.
The hide is intact.

It hasn't been chewed to bits
by the hyenas

or the other carnivores
or the big cats.

And that hide, you would almost
certainly use

for either clothing or shelter

to help you cope
with those cold winters.

Humans first used fire in Africa

and, by 400,000 years ago,

they were using it in
Northern Europe as well.

This is burnt flint. It's a block of
flint that shattered under heat.

What we think we're dealing with
is a small campfire

which has all kinds of benefits.

It's not just warmth, it's not just
keeping away the big cats.

It's also a hub for social life.

It extends your daylight hours
into the night.

It means you begin to tell stories.

It's all part of
the development of language

and those all-important social bonds
that make us human.

You paint a very, very convincing
picture, actually,

and anyone who has sat by a fire
knows how hypnotic it can be.

Yes. Just sitting there watching
the flames.

Yeah...yeah.
That's a very exciting picture.

By 250,000 years ago,

Levallois flakes appear like
the ones that Karl had showed us.

Here we have these carefully
crafted points.

And this is a massive step forward
in terms of technology.

So where does our site fit in?

I've brought Sally
and Neville's stone tool.

Now this,

which I know you haven't
seen before,

was found alongside this mammoth
which we have been excavating.

What does that tell you about dating
or indeed anything else?

Well, it's undoubtedly a hand-axe

and very typical
of early Neanderthals,

quite similar to some of these.

I gather that the site dates

to roughly about 200,000 years ago.

So it would actually be contemporary

with these Levallois points.

But it's very different.

Here we have a traditional hand-axe.

So what's going on?

One idea is that you've got
different populations coming in

from different parts of Europe
with different technologies.

Another idea might be that maybe
you've got

a residual population in Britain,
in western Britain,

who are still making hand-axes.

We're still talking
about Neanderthals?

We're still talking
about Neanderthals.

Stone tools like these
reveal in detail

the history of the occupation of
these islands by human ancestors.

At least four different kinds
of human beings occupy them.

The stone tools and the dating of
our site both suggest

that the humans who were living
there were, in fact, Neanderthals.

To find out more about them,

Ben is meeting anthropologist
Ella Al-Shamahi.

So our ancestors and the ancestors
of Neanderthals were in Africa

and, then, at some point,
a group of them left

and we don't know where
and we don't know when.

But they became Neanderthals.

We have sites all the way
as far as Siberia

and then we have a whole pile
of sites in Europe,

doesn't mean that
they're a European species,

it just means that a lot
of the archaeologists

are actually in Europe and were
digging in their own backyards.

We've got this massive array,
actually, of Neanderthals

in this whole region.

And if you look at that region,

that's a number
of different environments

and a number of different climates,
as well.

And do we know what they
looked like?

Yeah. So Neanderthals
were very similar to us,

but there were
crucial differences.

So, for example, we know that
Neanderthals, on average, were,

well, they were shorter.

So male Neanderthals would have come
in at about five-foot four

or five-foot five.
They were also really stocky.

So we know that our site
at Cerney Wick

is about 200,000 years old.

How much do we know what life would
have been like for those people?

It would have been hard.

The interesting thing is
the date of that,

because we know that, pretty soon
after, you're looking at

a massive ice age that comes in,
a really, really cold spell,

and Neanderthals pretty much
disappear from the map in Britain

for well over 100,000 years.

So, potentially, what you're looking
at there

with your site is some of the last
Neanderthals in Britain

before that really cold phase.

It's not going to be good for them.

Back at the site,

the team is finding that nearly
all the tusks and bones

are lying in a single layer
of sediment,

suggesting the mammoths all died
around the same time.

What could have killed a group of
mammoths in such a short period?

We can trace this line pretty much
all the way round to

the tusk on the far right now.
So they're all...

..it's all formed at the same time.

And we can't see flooding?

I'm trying to think what is forcable
enough to move a tusk.

No. There's nothing.

This is weird, it really is.

There's not enough mud. There's not
enough... There's no flood.

No. They just died in this area
for some reason. Yeah.

Ben is doubtful that
the mammoths got stuck in the mud.

The mud's deep, but it's not up to
a mammoth's armpits deep.

Disease? I mean, there's nothing
really in terms of modern relatives,

the elephants, that would kill
a whole group that quickly

in one site at one time
to explain this.

And we've got adults
and juveniles as well.

So it's not the classic
elephant graveyard

all being left in one site either.

And it leaves this idea,

this possibility that it was people.

So were they chasing them in?

Were they corralling them somehow?

Were they...?
I don't know.

But that's almost weirder

because I can't imagine quite early
Neanderthal people

bringing down a bunch of mammoths

cos these things were tonnes
of anger and intelligence.

Evidence suggesting that
Neanderthals

could successfully hunt mammoths is
extremely rare.

But this is the Island of Jersey

and, here at La Cotte de St Brelade,

piles of mammoth bones have been

found that suggest that Neanderthals
may indeed

have been killing mammoths here.

Archaeologist Matt Pope has been
studying the site for years.

Our first glimpse of La Cotte de St
Brelade towering up above us.

Oh, wow.

It's like this huge cathedral
fortress, isn't it? It's beautiful.

We can see a lot of the site
from here.

The main granite structure.

The arch that takes you through to
the north ravine

and in front of us

the west ravine,
the main open space.

The site has been investigated
since 1881.

And, over the years, archaeologists
excavated down into the ravine.

At two levels, they discovered
heaps of bones

of butchered mammoths.

The mystery is how these bones
got there.

An original explanation,
and a very good one,

was that the mammoth were all herded
together by Neanderthal hunters

and driven over the cliffs
to their death. So you imagine...

From right up there?
Right up there.

That's quite a thought to think of,

a whole herd of mammoths coming

cascading over the edge
right there.

It's a good theory

but it's not a very good headland
for actually concentrating a herd.

There is simply no way
you could funnel

the mammoth into this ravine,

they'd be splitting off into
all different directions.

We've been recently relooking
at those bone heaps

and looking at the evidence

and we put forward
an alternative idea.

And that idea is that these
bone heaps didn't form

in one go, in mass kills.

Actually, they formed over
a long period of time.

The hunting was taking place out
here on the surrounding landscapes.

They were bringing
the bones back.

And, then, over time, they put these
heaps of bone together.

And this whole area,
as we look out now,

is this beautiful coastline
that stretches out to

the Channel here.

But this would have all been one
big grassy plain.

We've got the seabed
landscape mapped.

And that's an amazing landscape
for intercepting game.

There's little cul-de-sacs
where you get dead ends

and you could control game.

And we know from other

Neanderthal sites where
hunting is taking place,

they love landscapes in which
they control game.

Probably the whole

Neanderthal community would be
involved in hunting -

corralling, controlling, moving,

isolating particular members
of a herd.

Most archaeologists now think that

the Neanderthals were capable

of hunting large prey like mammoths,
as they seem

to have done in Jersey.

But it would be much harder
to trap them on

the flat grasslands of Cerney Wick.

Perhaps the river might have
slowed the mammoths down.

But how would the Neanderthals
have killed them?

Wooden spears may well
have been used.

Wood, of course, rots away quickly,

so we're very unlikely
to find one. But there are some.

In 1911, in Essex,

a wooden spear tip was found in
waterlogged soil.

And, in 1948,

stronger evidence
of spear hunting was uncovered -

a spear was found within
the fossilised ribs of

a straight-tusked elephant.

Then, in 1995,
at a mine in Schoningen in Germany,

ten miraculously well-preserved
Neanderthal spears were found lying

among the skeletons
of around 50 horses -

the oldest complete prehistoric
hunting weapons ever found.

Archaeologists had assumed these

early hunters thrust
their spears into

the flanks of prey at close range.

But is it possible that
Neanderthals at

Cerney Wick threw their spears long
distances at dangerous animals,

like mammoths?

To find out,

we asked a wood carver
to make exact replicas of

the Schoningen spears from
spruce - the same shape,

weight and type of wood
as the ancient spears.

Hi, guys.

We've brought you some spears.

Annemieke Milks is

an investigator
of Neanderthal hunting methods.

She wants to see how well
these replica

Neanderthal spears will perform in

the hands of Bekah Walton
and Harry Hughes -

two of Britain's
leading javelin throwers.

I'm really curious to see what

an experienced thrower
makes of how they feel.

They are the right length compared
to like a normal spear.

Yeah, the balance is really good.
They're surprisingly similar to

a normal javelin, actually.

Yeah, really surprised
at how far they're flying!

I won't be that far!

Fantastic.

The spears fly well.

So Annemieke now wants
to test if they can be used

with real accuracy, to hit a target.

We want to know -

can you two kill that mammoth
silhouette for us, please?

Shall we give it a go? Let's go.

Oh!

First time.

These spears are flying true.

They're hitting it
every single time.

On a mammoth,

that target zone
would be much larger.

Up until fairly recently,

most people were arguing that
Neanderthals were only capable

of hunting at immediate distances.

And this shows that their technology
was capable of distance hunting.

Oh!

Brilliant.

OK, big question of the day.

At our site, is there
any chance that our

Neanderthals could have been
hunting mammoths, do you think?

Given the fact that we have

a whole load of evidence that

the spears are functional weapons,

both as thrusting weapons
and as throwing weapons,

and that we see this evidence
of exploitation

of mammoth, I think
it's very much in

the realm of possibility that

mammoths were being hunted by

Neanderthals with spears like these.

So Neanderthals could possibly
have hunted mammoths at

Cerney Wick over 200,000 years ago.

But, in the millennia that followed,

both the Neanderthals and
the steppe mammoths disappeared.

Neanderthals resettled in Britain
around 60,000 years ago.

But our own species,

Homo sapiens,
arrives soon after that.

And evidence of

the presence of
Neanderthals vanishes.

It might be that
we out-competed them,

right, we were just better
at using the landscape

and resources.

One of the things that we know
is that they lived in small,

isolated populations.

That is not going to do your
gene pool any good at all.

There's even an argument
that they're still

with us today.

Me and you will have about
2% Neanderthal DNA in us.

And that's because our
ancestors, multiple times,

it seems,
interbred with Neanderthals.

So, actually, the end of the story
isn't completely tragic

because it turns out
there's a little bit of them...

Still here. In us, yeah.

Back at the site at Cerney Wick,

there's excitement as they assess
their haul of flint tools.

Are you OK? Breathe.

Wow. I think you forgot to breathe.

This lovely little flake.

So you can see it's got
a little point where they hit it

with a stone hammer to remove it.

It's perfect.

And that was the first hint that
you found? That's the first one.

Yeah. So there was
a party straight after that?

And then the next one we found...
Oh, my goodness.

..is this beautiful scraper edge.
Typically, we think, you know,

you would have held it like this,
they would have pulled

the fat off of the hide.
It's really quite impressive.

We've got these five flint tools
all from the same area,

all finely worked,
all really, really clear.

And that's quite exciting
and quite rare.

I mean, it's really easy
to say, "Oh, five things.

"That's not many." But, actually,

when we're talking about
200,000 years ago,

we might only be finding
one or two things in

a site which has been
excavated for decades.

On the mammoth leg bone
they found next to the flints,

they've seen scratch marks that
could provide evidence of butchery.

We see little marks
and nicks in the top.

Two lovely parallel lines.
There's one slightly longer.

There's another one,
just a short one, just in beside it.

And it's really tempting
to call them cut marks,

but we'll have to get it back into
the lab to actually determine.

It's like a really big whodunnit,
isn't it?

So did they all die of a disease?

Was there a massive flood that
came in, or were we hunting them?

Having worked with elephants
in the wild,

I think possibly a juvenile, very,

very young one might have
just got stuck in the mud.

It panicked the group.
Things went really badly,

really quickly.
And we came along as scavengers

and possibly found the world's
biggest buffet lying there for us.

We were just opportunists.
I think we were opportunists.

Well, I just love the idea
that the, you know,

Neanderthals are sitting
on the ridge over the far end,

hiding amongst the tall grass.

And then mammoths are coming down
to the water

and they're panicking them.

The Neanderthals come in

and they take advantage
of the mammoths,

they sort of start butchering them

and taking away
their nice meat for meals.

Isn't it wonderful to think that

the last time someone sat
exactly on this spot in

a little group

with that stone tool in their hands
was 200,000 years ago

as a mammoth's lying just
over there? Wow.

And here we are talking about it...
They were about to have their lunch.

..hundreds of thousands
of years later.

It's quite poignant, isn't it?
Absolutely. It really is.

As the excavation comes to an end...

..Ben and I survey

the whole collection of flint tools.

Some of these,

the one you've got in
the far corner there, are scrapers.

Well, hang on,
let me have a look at that.

That someone's very delicately
taken the edge off.

Yes. You can see?

Yes, yes, you can.

Now, these would have been
used for cleaning skins,

taking fat off skin in order
to preserve the skin,

but also taking little bits of meat
from the bone as well.

Yeah.

So what we have as well,
if you've got your hand lens.

Yeah. There are tiny, well,

quite indistinct little marks
along this bone here,

if you can see just there.

Oh, there, yes, absolutely.

There's definite, well,

there's strong evidence
that there is

a cut-mark series along here.
This is, we think,

evidence of people accessing
the animals in this area

and using them for their own food,
for fuel, for warmth.

Does that make you think
that this site was a camp?

I would find it very, very difficult

to believe that these animals
that weighed tonnes and tonnes

and tonnes wouldn't have offered
this wonderful opportunity to camp

there for at least weeks or months.

It's really bringing
this site to life.

This isn't a table of bones.

This is a point in history
where something happened.

Peering back 200,000 years,
it's hard

to know exactly
what happened at our site.

But the evidence that has
now been uncovered paints

a tantalising picture
of Ice Age Britain.

An ancient River Thames
flowing through grassland.

A group of some of the last
steppe mammoths in Britain.

And Neanderthals using flint tools
to butcher mammoth meat.

Whether or not they hunted

the mammoths requires more evidence,

but, at this site,
it certainly looks

as if something extraordinary
happened -

Neanderthals feasting on mammoth
on the banks of the River Thames.

At the end of the dig

and before the area
is flooded again,

we invite Sally and Neville
to return to the site

so that we can show them what

the scene might once
have looked like.

We've prepared something
where you don't have

to use your imagination
to visualise this area.

If I give these to you.
Thank you! Put them on.

Make sure they're comfy. And enjoy.

Righty-ho.

Ee! Mammoth!

Oh, that is just incredible!

Oh, my God, that's amazing!

The finds at this remarkable
site have given us

a rare glimpse of early Britain...

..a time when humans
were fully immersed in the wild,

living as part of nature.

It's thought that Neanderthals may

have been around
for some 400,000 years.

Their survival relied on
their understanding of

the natural world.

Whether our own species can thrive
for quite as long

remains to be seen.