Original subtitles

[music playing]

NARRATOR: 5,000 years ago, before the Egyptians built

the Pyramids, a mysterious people

created some of the greatest monuments of the ancient world.

They were the Pagan tribes of ancient Britain.

And across 30 centuries, until the coming of the Roman

legions, they built villages of sea stone

like Skara Brae, massive tombs like Maeshowe,

mountains of chalk and earth, including

the mysterious Silbury Hill, and the most famous

ancient monument in Europe, Stonehenge.

They found ingenious ways to transport huge, stone blocks

hundreds of miles.

They devised specialized techniques

to mark the passing of the seasons

with astonishing accuracy.

The Pagan tribes lived in a world

without writing so few clues remain as to how they built

such extraordinary structures.

Yet 50 centuries on, evidence of their achievement

is still written on the land.

Now, a team of experts will attempt

to decode the riddle of these ancient monuments

and see them as they looked when they were built thousands

of years ago.

Getting into this tomb is difficult, dirty,

and uncomfortable.

You have to crawl.

You have to bow your head in humility

and enter a different world.

NARRATOR: Using state of the art animation and the latest

research, the lost world of Pagan Britain

will be brought back to life.

[music playing]

Off the far northern tip of Scotland,

where the Atlantic Ocean in the North Sea meet,

lie the Orkney Islands, as inhospitable

as they are remote.

Yet despite this, people have lived on these islands

since the dawn of time, and they left behind some of the best

examples of Stone Age construction

found anywhere in the world.

Wandering hunter gatherers settled here 6,000 years ago.

They cultivated the land and became farmers.

We know little of their day-to-day lives,

but clues to their world can be found in ruins that still

remain today.

There are stone circles that measure the changing cycles

of the solar year, tombs designed

to bring the living into direct contact

with the world of the dead.

The people who built these structures we now call Pagans.

What they called themselves, we may never know.

All that we do know for sure is that their beliefs drove

the Pagans of Orkney to extraordinary feats

of construction long before the great buildings of Greece

and Rome were erected.

What these ancient Pagan monuments

looked like in their heyday has long been a riddle.

For centuries, all trace of these people

was lost or hidden.

Then in the winter of 1850, a freak storm

hit the Orkney coastline.

In a place called Skara Brae, the wind and high seas

stripped the grass from a mound by the seashore.

And when the storm had passed, the local people

found ruins emerging from the sand.

They were the remains of a Neolithic or Stone Age Pagan

village.

For Erika Guttmann, an archaeologist,

Skara Brae is more than a ruin.

It's a gateway to a lost world.

It's absolutely astounding because archeologists

are used to dealing with really ephemeral remains

from the past.

So we're scrabbling around after very faint traces

of archaeology, and here, we've got this whole village.

Not just the individual standing structures,

but a whole Neolithic village.

Tests have dated this settlement as being around 5,000 years

old, making it hundreds of years older

than the Egyptian pyramids.

Most Neolithic homes were made of wood

and have long since rotted away.

But the Orkney Islands are almost entirely treeless.

Out of necessity, these houses were built from stone.

What I'm standing on is the Orkney flagstones,

and this is a sedimentary rock.

So it means it was all laid down in thin layers.

This was all created under water, and what that means

is that it cracks into this nice, little building blocks.

So all around them, they have this natural building material,

and it makes sense that they would have used this

rather than use up their precious firewood.

NARRATOR: The village is made up of 10 circular houses.

The walls are built of natural beach stones held together

without mortar.

ERIKA GUTTMANN: The dry stonewalling technique

is really effective, and you can see that it's quite solid

because the building's still here after 5,000 years,

and you can't say that about most of the buildings

that we're putting up today.

NARRATOR: All the homes of Skara Brae

are built to the same basic design.

The focal point of this house was the hearth or fire.

Built into the fire wall is what archeologists assume

was storage space while on each side wall

are structures believed to have once housed beds.

Archaeologists don't know for certain how many people lived

in this house at any one time but believe that it was home

to a large, extended family living in close, rather cramped

conditions by modern standards.

This was clearly a close-knit community,

and the building's bound the people together.

The houses were actually linked by low, narrow passageways

covered with stone.

It was possible to move from one to another without ever setting

foot outside.

Historian Ronald Hutton stoops low to enter the village

and discover why its inhabitants built this way.

There are two really good reasons

for having long, narrow, low passages like this approaching

Neolithic houses.

One is if you're a guest, it impresses on you

you're approaching somebody else's personal space.

Alternatively, if you're an attacker,

it's pretty forbidding to have to crawl down here

if your head stuck out knowing there are people waiting

to behead you or club you at the other end.

NARRATOR: The most extraordinary thing about these buildings

is their location.

On first inspection, they appear to have

been dug into the ground.

But this isn't the case.

In fact, the entire village was made by burrowing into what's

called a midden heap.

A mound of garbage left by previous settlers.

Midden is basically prehistoric garbage,

and that includes all the waste from the hearth, the ash

and charcoal, and all the kitchen waste.

And what's important to remember is that they divided up

their garbage.

So all the muckier stuff is out on the edge of town.

That's where they've got the animal dung and human poo

and everything.

And then here in the middle of the town,

they've got the cleaner sorts of material.

NARRATOR: This extreme form of recycling

had huge practical benefits.

ERIKA GUTTMANN: The reason they used midden material to build

their structures is it has good insulation properties,

and it also, they mix it with clay so it

helps the structural integrity.

It helps hold the building together.

NARRATOR: These buildings are so well-preserved that they offer

clues to how the Pagans of Orkney

originally put them together.

But we can see that the wall is coming in like this.

They're building it up more and more narrowly.

So it might have come to a sort of dome shape on top,

but we think it's more likely that there were timber roof

struts perhaps or maybe whalebone,

and then they would have had a turf roof perhaps.

NARRATOR: We can now reveal what the houses

of these mysterious Pagans looked like when they were

built 5,000 years ago.

Each follows the same basic design.

One room of around 400 square feet.

That's around half the size of an average modern New York

apartment.

A stone dresser lies opposite the doorway with a bed

either side and a large fireplace

at the center of the room.

The walls rise inwards to meet roofing joists covered

with turf.

Built into a midden heap and connected

by covered passageways from the outside,

the village would have appeared as a low mound broken only

by the turf-covered roofs of the houses.

The Pagans who lived in these houses

almost certainly helped build one of the greatest and most

baffling prehistoric monuments of Orkney, the Ring of Brodgar,

an enormous, stone circle seven miles south of Skara Brae.

Brodgar belongs to a special class of stone circles known

as henges, a ring of stones enclosed within a ditch

and earth bank.

This is one of the largest henges in the world.

To me, the obvious use of a great, open space like this

is you can put lots of people in it,

and they can see what's going on.

So almost certainly it was a center

where lots and lots of people met up

at certain times of the year, the great seasonal festivals,

in order to exchange ideas, celebrate religious rituals,

trade things, have dating services with each other

so they could find marry partners and mates,

and generally get together to do all

the things that large numbers of people need to do.

NARRATOR: But how these ancient people

managed to build something as large as the Ring of Brodgar

without modern tools or lifting equipment is astounding.

Just to dig the ditch surrounding

it meant excavating 11,000 tons of rock.

Enough to fill two Olympic-sized swimming pools.

Such a construction project must have

involved every able-bodied islander

over a long period of time.

But even more perplexing is why they built it,

and what this circle represented.

RONALD HUTTON: The fact that this is a circle of stones

is incredibly significant because around about 5,000

years ago, the people of the British Isles

became fascinated by round shapes.

Possibly, it's simply that by then they could see the horizon

because the horizon is a natural circle if you look around,

and these monuments could be matching the horizon mirroring

the land around.

NARRATOR: The Ring of Brodgar may have been built as a model

of the Orkney landscape.

The stones were brought from sites all over the island,

and it's possible that each small community erected

their own stone to represent their village.

Today, only 27 remain, but experts believe it once

looked like this.

60 large, standing stones were surrounded by a deep ditch.

Beyond the ditch rose a 10 foot high earthen bank

that enclosed the whole site.

The Ring of Brodgar would have sent a powerful message

down through the generations that this land belonged forever

to the builders and their descendants.

And evidence suggests the Pagans of Orkney

had a very close connection to their dead.

The tombs they built were entrance ways

to a forgotten underworld.

[music playing]

50 years ago, a farmer on Scotland's Orkney island

of South Ronaldsay was digging in a mound close to cliff tops

when he uncovered an entrance into a dark, subterranean

chamber.

What he found staring back at him was 30 human skulls.

When the tomb was excavated, the remains of a staggering 342

people were found.

But not one of them was a single, complete skeleton.

Someone or something had scattered the remains

around the tomb.

Trying to figure out what, Ronald Hutton

enters the burial chamber.

Getting into this too is difficult, dirty,

and uncomfortable, and that's the way it was designed.

You have to crawl.

You have to bow your head in humility

and enter a different world.

NARRATOR: Once inside, the tomb opens out into a narrow room

with a large chamber at each end and smaller side chambers

down at floor level.

Piles of assorted bones and rows of skulls were found here.

Ronald believes it's evidence that the Pagans often

return to handle the bones of their ancestors.

RONALD HUTTON: Probably people would have brought a light,

but it seems that they might not have done so that have collided

with the dead in the dark.

And at best, they'd have had this eerie glow revealing one

skull or one long bone after another,

and you're making contact with the dead very intimately,

very physically.

I'm almost literally your nose is being rubbed in death.

NARRATOR: But why would the local people

feel such a compelling need to be close to their dead?

The answer appears to lie in the young age at which so

many died.

Studies of the bones have revealed that very few

of the dead were over 25.

RONALD HUTTON: Most of the people in this population

would be children and adolescents.

They'd be desperately reliant upon oral tradition,

whispers, tales of what had happened before

to have any sense of continuity because actual experience,

lived history, for the people in this tomb

is very, very short indeed, which

means the power of the dead is all the greater.

NARRATOR: The lack of complete bodies

means that the skeletons may have been broken apart

and stripped of their flesh before being brought

into the tomb.

Clues to how this might have been done

lie among the human remains.

Sea eagle skulls and talons.

It seems likely that eagles were an integral part of the Pagan

death rituals that took place here.

RONALD HUTTON: Now, this could be that when the bodies were

laid out after death, they were picked clean

by these huge birds.

Certainly the bones were clean when they were brought

into the tomb, and this is so that the bones can be handled,

can be used in ceremonies, in rituals.

Or it could even be the eagle is the symbol

of the entire community down here on this island.

They are the people of the eagle.

NARRATOR: Today, this burial place

is known as the tomb of the eagles.

But when it was built, it was probably

as much a temple as a grave.

One of our problems in studying the Neolithic

is what we call these paces.

We call them tombs, but in the modern sense,

that has to be wrong because they

are the temples of the time.

They're the holy places, and it could be that the dead

themselves were transmitters.

So you use their bones rather like mobile phones

to contact the goddesses and the gods.

Are only through the dead can you

gain access to the other world.

NARRATOR: We can now rebuild the tomb of the eagles

as it was when Pagan tribesmen came here

to commune with their dead.

Divided into three sections by upright flagstones

built into the walls.

At either end of the tomb were compartments one of which

was full of human bones.

The chambers in the western end of the tomb

held dozens of skulls, and still more lined the walls

beside piles of bones.

And placed among the human remains

were the bones and skulls of sea eagles.

The only way in or out of the tomb

was through the long, narrow entrance way.

Back to the world of the living, and it's so bright.

NARRATOR: But the tomb of the eagles

is not the only example of a Pagan burial site in the Orkney

Islands.

20 miles north is a place which holds yet more secrets

about the death rites and religion of the Pagan

islanders.

The magnificent sandstone tomb of Maeshowe.

Archaeologist Erika Guttmann investigates.

ERIKA GUTTMANN: This place is amazing.

And one of the things that really strikes me to begin with

is just how fine the masonry is.

Remember at Skara Brae, it was quite coarse.

It was just little slabs of stone straight off the beach.

You know, some of them were even rounded beach pebbles.

But here, here it's all carved.

You can see the masonry marks where they're actually carving

this into a nice, neat block.

NARRATOR: Maeshowe is the largest tomb on Orkney.

Built some 5,000 years ago, it's made

of huge, Orkney flagstones.

Some weighing an incredible 30 tons.

Approximately 15 feet square with smaller side chambers

in the middle of the walls to the left, right, and rear

of the tomb.

It's floor plan mirrors the houses of Skara Brae.

This is about a similar sort of size and shape

to the houses of Skara Brae.

And not only that, but when you walk into the tomb here,

there's a focal point here right where the dresser would have

been in the house.

Also, you've got these chambers to either side

in the same place as the bed has been in the house

at Skara Brae.

Of course, the one thing that's missing is the fireplace.

NARRATOR: The similarities between the tomb of Maeshowe

and the houses of Skara Brae are further evidence

that the Pagans of Orkney believed in a special closeness

between the world of the dead and the world of the living.

Another central aspect of Pagan religion

was the cycle of the seasons.

Pagan means country dweller, and their dependence on the land

meant that Pagans were very aware of their place

in the natural world.

They attributed special significance to turning points

in the seasons.

They attached great importance to the summer and winter

solstices when the longest and shortest days of the year

occur, as well as to the spring and fall equinoxes.

The two days of the year when day and night are

of equal length.

Evidence of this can be seen in the tomb at Maeshowe.

It is deliberately designed to mark one

of these key seasonal events.

ERIKA GUTTMANN: On Midwinter Day, which is the winter

solstice, the sunlight comes straight down this passageway,

and it shines on the back of the tomb.

The Neolithic engineers designed this on purpose in order

to capture the moment of the winter solstice,

and that's because in Pagan thinking,

the solstices are very important.

NARRATOR: For the Pagans, midwinter

was the time of the dead.

The season when fields were barren and no crops grew.

The winter solstice marks the end of winter.

By bringing its light into the tomb,

the Pagans were seeking the help of the ancestors hoping

to ensure the return of spring.

But to capture the light of the midwinter sun,

the builders of Maeshowe needed to perfectly align the entrance

tunnel of the tomb.

The four large pillars at the corners of the chamber

hold a clue.

The pillars are an enigma.

They offer no structural support to the tomb,

suggesting their purpose may lie in their close resemblance

to standing stones.

Local archaeologist, Martin Carruthers,

believes that the four stones could

be part of a ring of standing stones

that once stood outside the tomb.

It may well be that there's a series

or have been a series of stones here present as a circle

prior to the construction of the tomb,

and it may even be that those pillar stones

you saw with inside the chamber originated out here

in the stone circle and were then incorporated

into the later tomb.

NARRATOR: Around the outside of Maeshowe,

archeologists have discovered holes that probably once housed

standing stones.

It seems likely that the four stones now inside the tomb

were once at the center of a circle of standing stones

and lined up the ring with the winter solstice.

The tomb was then built around the four stones.

The entrance tunnel perfectly aligned with the last rays

of the setting sun.

Over time, the ring of stones disappeared,

and all that remained was the tomb itself.

It's clear that communing with the dead

was an essential part of Pagan life,

and their death rituals are the basis for a striking new theory

about the lost world of the most mystifying

of all Pagan monuments, Stonehenge.

Stonehenge in southern England.

One of the most famous Pagan monuments in the world,

but what it was actually used for

has perplexed generations of researchers and sightseers.

Now, a team of experts will reveal what Stonehenge looked

like at its height and investigate a new theory of why

it was built.

They want to find out if Stonehenge was part

of a much larger, now forgotten, ceremonial complex that formed

a gateway to the land of the dead.

Archaeologist Erika Guttmann has uncovered a first clue.

Evidence that death rituals were being performed on the site

of Stonehenge 5,000 years ago.

Long before the stones arrived.

ERIKA GUTTMANN: When you first come to Stonehenge,

the first thing you see, obviously,

are this magnificent set of stones.

But in fact, the earliest feature here, the very first

thing to be built, was this little low bank and ditch,

and it seems to have a ritual sort of usage,

and we know this because in the ends of the ditches,

we find important little caches of things like whole cattle

skulls or whole pots and things.

NARRATOR: Many archeologists believe

that the pagans associated cattle skulls like those found

in the ditch with death, and excavations at Stonehenge

have shown that the site was being used for cremation

ceremonies before the stones were raised.

The first stones to arrive were the blue stones

brought from the Preseli Hills in Wales

more than 200 miles away.

A place which archaeologist Mike Pitts believes

held special significance for the Pagans.

This is really one of the great wonders

of the ancient world.

I mean, they don't look very big,

but there is nowhere anywhere in the world where people

with this level of technology and this

long ago have gone so far to bring rocks to a ritual site.

We have to imagine that there was something about the place

these stones came from that gave them a magic power

significance of this ritual religious location.

Now, one of the things that obviously comes to mind

is if we look that direction, which is where they came from,

which is where Wales is, we're also looking

towards the setting sun.

So it may be that there's a symbolism involved

with the dead and ancestors, and we're looking in the direction

of where the ancestors lived, where the sun goes at night.

NARRATOR: Bringing the blue stones from Wales

provided Stonehenge with a symbolic link

to the world of the dead.

And then 200 years after they arrived,

something extraordinary happened.

Stonehenge went through a vast rebuilding program.

The blue stones were rearranged and surrounded

by a protective circle of massive stones called sarsens.

Meanwhile, just a few miles away, a near identical henge

was being built to the same plan out of timber.

There were now two henges.

One of stone.

The other of wood.

The original Woodhenge has long since rotted away.

But the precise location of its 168 timber posts

is now marked by stout pillars of concrete.

MIKE PITTS: You've got well over 100 posts.

Great, tall, oak stumps.

It almost feel like an artificial forest.

The posts themselves are important.

So maybe some of them had bark on.

Maybe some of them were carved.

Some of them were painted, decorated.

They might have had things hanging from them.

NARRATOR: Using data archeologists have gathered

from the site, it is now possible to recreate Woodhenge

as it would have looked to the pagans who worshipped here

over 4,000 years ago.

The pattern of posts and the size of the circle at Woodhenge

bears close resemblance to Stonehenge,

and the site is also surrounded by a ditch and a bank.

But a major clue to Woodhenge's significance

is that the entrance way is aligned

with the Midsummer sunrise.

It's essential, I think, to imagine that there's

some symbolic meaning in that, and we have the cattle skull

and death associated with the megaliths

and so perhaps the wooden posts are more to do with life,

and wood is living, and stone is dead.

NARRATOR: For the Pagans, wood was living and warm

like the flesh-covered body.

Stone was cold and hard like the cold, hard bones

of the long dead.

It seems likely that wood henge stood for life.

Stonehenge for death.

A ceremonial way links wood henge to Stonehenge,

and historian Ronald Hutton believes

it may once have been used for elaborate funeral processions.

The Pagans would have set off from wood henge

in the direction of the rising sun

and then traveled along the nearby River Avon

en route to Stonehenge.

Water, like the River Avon here,

was really important to Neolithic monuments.

It's found around so many of them,

perhaps because it's such a strange element.

It's connects people, and it separates them.

It preserves life, and it takes it away.

It creates and destroys.

And perhaps this essence of death and life

is exactly what these monuments were about.

NARRATOR: The procession followed the river

until it reached the avenue, a ceremonial roadway that runs up

to Stonehenge.

Very little of the Avenue survives today,

but Ronald believes it may once have been lined by standing

stones.

RONALD HUTTON: We don't know exactly what

the processional avenue leading to Stonehenge looked like.

It was plowed out too long ago.

But it's just possible it may have looked like this one

not far away at Avebury.

However, it did appear it had the function

of any processional way in any religion,

to enable human beings to pass from a world mostly concerned

with human beings to one mostly concerned

with the supernatural.

NARRATOR: Before reaching its destination,

the avenue turns sharply to the west deliberately approaching

Stonehenge in the direction of the setting sun.

Having started at Woodhenge at sunrise,

it seems likely the funeral procession was timed

to reach Stonehenge at sunset.

And here, the Pagan Britons would have celebrated

the passing of the newly dead into the world

of the ancestors.

Work at the site of Stonehenge stretched over millennia.

But it's stone circle was built in only a few short years.

Over the centuries, many of the stones

have fallen or been removed, but we can now rebuild Stonehenge

as it would have looked to the Pagans who likely used it

for their death rituals millennia ago.

At the center of the ring was a horseshoe of five

trilithons, two large stones with a lintel atop them.

They surrounded 19 small blue stones

and were in turn surrounded by the famous circle

of massive sarsen stones topped by a continuous ring of gently

curved lintel stones.

Stonehenge and Woodhenge together

would have dominated the local landscape.

But only a few miles to the north

is another Pagan monument that has long

defied all explanation.

A vast, artificial hill that archeologists estimate

took 18 million man hours to construct.

Silbury Hill.

A few miles to the North of Stonehenge

is Silbury Hill, the largest prehistoric mound in Europe.

Created by Pagan Britons nearly 4,500 years ago,

it rises to over 120 feet and is older and higher than some

of the Egyptian pyramids.

But like the pyramids, does it contain a secret within?

RONALD HUTTON: One of the things that people always associate

with big, old mounds is buried treasure,

and people have looked for treasure in Silbury Hill

for hundreds of years.

But that's the twist.

There have been so many tunnels dug into this hill

by now that have found not a scrap of anything you could

call treasure.

NARRATOR: Despite centuries of digging,

no burials or treasure have ever been found.

Silbury Hill seems to be just a solid mound of chalk and earth.

The mystery of why it was built remains unsolved,

but how it was built may offer clues.

This would have been an incredible technological

achievement for the people of the Neolithic period.

They had no metals to work with.

So all of their digging was done with antler picks

and the scapulas, the shoulder blades of cows

that they used for shovels.

NARRATOR: Archaeologists calculate

it would have taken 700 men 10 years to excavate, dump,

and shape the nine million cubic feet of earth and chalk

that make up the hill.

It was probably built in two phases.

When this was first built, it was only about 18 feet high.

But then in the second phase of building,

they built it up to 120 feet.

So it's absolutely massive, and the slope is really steep

so it stands out in sharp contrast

to the low rolling hills all around it.

NARRATOR: But making a hill is no small challenge.

ERIKA GUTTMANN: You couldn't actually build a structure

like this by just piling up soil and rubble

because it would just erode down the slope.

So it's very carefully engineered

in order to retain this particular conical shape.

NARRATOR: Silbury Hill may not be truly circular

but could have been built as a polygon, possibly of nine

sides.

Outer walls of chalk leant inwards at an angle of 60

degrees for maximum stability.

They were joined by radial walls built out

from the center of the mound.

The gaps between were filled with chalk rubble.

It's possible that the mound was built

as a series of stepped platforms,

but the latest archaeological surveys

suggest a different method of construction.

Another thing that occurs to me

is that it may have been built as a spiral.

Now, there's some archaeological evidence for the construction

of this mound in a spiral, and it certainly strikes me

as I'm walking up that that might have been the easiest

way to build it.

Because certainly, it's easier to bring material,

construction material, up a ramp than up steps.

NARRATOR: A spiral shape may also have

had religious significance.

The spiral is one of the great artistic symbols of the age,

and so people taking a spiral path to the top of Silbury

would be literally walking a spiral.

NARRATOR: A spiral pathway would have made the hill both easier

to build and more suitable for religious processions.

But there may also be a link between Silbury

and the surrounding landscape which

could explain why the structure was built so tall.

Nearby is the largest stone circle in the world, Avebury.

Silbury Hill is also close to two other key Pagan sites.

West Kennet Long Barrow and The Sanctuary.

Historian Ronald Hutton wants to investigate a new theory

that Silbury Hill could have been used

as a signaling platform to coordinate

simultaneous ceremonies at all the different sites.

It's an idea that's never been tested until now.

Right, the theory is that from every major part of the Avebury

landscape, you should be able to see the top of Silbury Hill.

NARRATOR: To put the theory to the test,

archaeologist Erika Guttmann travels to West Kennet Long

Barrow.

The Barrow once contained the remains of around 50 people

and is one of the best preserved burial mounds in the British

Isles.

It's also one of the largest.

It's as long and half as wide as a football field.

Well, here we are at West Kennet Long Barrow.

Now, let's see if we can see Ronald.

Yep, there he is.

You can see him keeping the red flag flying.

NARRATOR: Next stop is The Sanctuary.

Probably once a forest of wooden posts, the sanctuary

was not so much a structure as a ritual site

where newly felled trees were ceremonially

planted into the ground.

Well, here we are at The Sanctuary,

and I can just make out Ronald silhouetted against the sky.

And that's kind of interesting because if Silbury Hill were

just a little bit lower, he'd be lost against the hills

in the background.

But as it is, we can see him quite clearly.

NARRATOR: The last stop is Avebury, the largest stone

circle in the world.

A giant ring of 98 huge stones enclosing two smaller circles.

It's likely to have been the most important ritual

site in the area.

For the theory to work, the flag on Silbury Hill

should be visible.

But inside the ring, it isn't.

Only when Erika climbs the circles

high outer bank does all become clear.

From the top of the bank here, I can see him quite clearly.

And in fact, he's silhouetted against the sky again.

And you can see Silbury Hill is standing up against the skyline

higher than the level of the surrounding hills.

So Ronald's theory really does work.

Maybe it could be a signaling platform.

NARRATOR: Because Silbury Hill is visible from all three

locations, it suggests that during certain times

of the year it could have been the central point of a series

of simultaneous ceremonies.

Avebury, West Kennet, and The Sanctuary

could each have taken their cue from what was going on

at Silbury.

What happened during those ceremonies remains a mystery.

But Ronald Hutton believes there is one more piece of evidence

that lends weight to the theory.

RONALD HUTTON: OK, what I'd love is to add another idea

in with that, and that is, they didn't cover the chalk rock

at Silbury with anything, and so it was a shining mountain

of light.

A glowing hill under sun and under moonlight

so you could see it for miles.

NARRATOR: If this theory is correct,

during the time of the Pagans, Silbury Hill

wasn't overgrown with grass as it is today

but was a shining, man-made mountain of white chalk

with a spiral pathway.

Anyone on it would have been visible for miles.

The magnificent mound of Silbury Hill

survives as one of the greatest monuments of Pagan Britain.

But it came from a world that would be lost forever.

On the South Coast of England, lay another hill.

The spectacular Maiden Castle.

In centuries to come, it would fall to the invading army

of Rome and witness the end of the ancient world of Pagan

Britain.

Maiden Castle in southern England

is the largest hill fort in Europe.

In Manhattan, it would cover 10 city blocks.

The defenses of this massive Pagan stronghold

seemed impregnable, but they were no match for the greatest

fighting force in the ancient world, the Roman army.

Today, only the eroded earth and ramparts remain.

But for thousands of years, Maiden Castle

was a military prize fought over by warring Pagan tribes

from the time of Stonehenge until the end of the Iron Age

when it fell under the rule of Rome.

These earthworks are absolutely massive.

We've got a great rampart there coming down

to a deep ditch coming up to another huge rampart here,

and this is actually standing about 75 feet over the height

of the ditch.

So it's an immense amount of effort

would have gone into building this thing,

and it would have taken an immense amount of effort

to actually charge up this slope if you were attacking the hill

fort.

NARRATOR: Normally, the weakest point of any stronghold

is the entrance, but Maiden Castle

was designed with a surprise in store for any invaders.

We're looking here at the western entrance to the hill

fort, and if it looks like a confusing jumble of mounds,

well, it would have been even more confusing to any attackers

who were approaching the fort, and the idea

is that people are led around in this confusing sort of maze.

It makes it more difficult for them to attack.

NARRATOR: We can now bring the defenses of Maiden Castle back

to life and discover why it was considered the greatest hill

fort in Pagan Britain.

Three concentric rings of ditches and banks

surrounded Maiden Castle.

On top of the final bank of chalk and earth

stood a wooden palisade.

A walkway along the top of the palisade

allowed warriors to keep watch and served

as a platform for the hill fort's main defense,

the stone slingers.

Two watch towers stood either side of the entrance

as added protection against enemies attempting

to storm the gate.

When the Romans invaded in 43 AD,

Maiden Castle was occupied by the Durotriges tribe who

were overlords of much of southwestern England.

Miners and iron workers, they were a powerful confederation

of tribes and even issued their own coins,

but they now face the most highly trained and fearsome

army of the age.

An army which possessed a huge technological advantage.

They used a type of crossbow called a ballista.

The nearby Dorset County Museum contains evidence

of its effectiveness in the remains of two Pagan warriors

found at the site.

ERIKA GUTTMANN: There were a number of graves of Iron Age

warriors, and about 10 of these people

had had sword cuts to the head, severe cuts and blows

all on the skulls, and one of them

actually had a ballista bolt through the spine.

NARRATOR: But to reach the defenders of Maiden Castle,

the bolt must have traveled over three huge ramparts.

To understand the ballista's range,

historian Ronald Hutton is looking at a working replica.

How many of these machines would a Roman legion

have packed?

DAVID RICHARDSON: Each legion had 60 pieces of artillery.

So there would have been 60 of these ranged around the hill

fort.

NARRATOR: Until the end of the Middle Ages,

the ballista was the most complicated weapon ever built.

In basic terms, the weapons bowstring is pulled back

using a pair of winches and a toothed mechanism

called a ratchet giving it many times more power

than simple human muscle.

A bolt is then loaded and released.

A ballista bolt could travel at over 110 miles per hour

and had a range of up to a quarter of a mile.

Good grief.

That bolt went faster than what I could see.

NARRATOR: The ballista allowed the Roman invaders

to launch volleys of bolts into Maiden Castle from far

out of range of the Pagan defenders slingshots.

When you're throwing sling stones,

there's only a certain range you can manage.

The Roman ballistas were able to far out distance the slings

that people were used to warring with.

So all of these ramparts, this great distance and height,

it wasn't enough to fight the Romans.

NARRATOR: Even from the top of the palisade,

the defenders would not have had a clear view of the Roman

encampment.

And with a range of only 200 yards,

their stone slings wouldn't even reach halfway

to the Roman ballistas.

The ballista was more than capable of sending a projectile

over the ramparts and wooden palisade

into the very heart of modern castle.

Death for a defender would have arrived literally

as a bolt from the blue.

By the middle of the first century AD,

most of the remaining 50 or so hill forts

had been conquered by the invading Roman legions.

The lives of the Pagan Britons were transformed completely

by an influx of people and ideas from all over the Roman Empire.

Yet even before the Roman conquest,

many of Pagan Britain's monuments and settlements

were long forgotten memories because the people who built

them had themselves changed.

The Stone Age village of Skara Brae,

the great Ring of Brodgar, and the Tomb of the Eagles

had already been abandoned for many generations.

The construction skills that created the summer and winter

alignments at Maeshowe and Woodhenge

had been lost as religions had evolved.

Even Stonehenge, the greatest of all ancient Pagan monuments,

would become a traveler's curiosity.

An enigma that would enchant and confuse scholars

from the Middle Ages on.

While the mysterious Silbury Hill and the great hill

for of Maiden Castle would be used by the Romans themselves

for their own temples and settlements.

As these sites slowly fell into ruin,

knowledge of them and what they represented vanished.

We are only now, many centuries later,

rediscovering these lost worlds.

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