01x04 - The Barbarian Kingdom

[bunniefuu]

Which way, that way?

Yeah, towards that headland.

As long as

I can remember,

I've wanted to be an explorer.

But as a kid, I thought all the

best stuff had been discovered.

That it, right there?

Yeah, this is it here.

I was wrong.

Our ancient history is full

of incredible stories,

lost to time.

That's incredible.

Wow.

Forgotten civilizations,

as important as any

that have ever stood.

Alright, I'm going to get

the grappling hook.

They're the stories

I want to tell.

One.

Woo!

That's a great shot!

Wow. Look at this place.

It's just so rugged.

Yeah, if you could just keep

a little tension on this line.

Yeah.

Be careful.

It's really crumbly.

Whew.

Rock!

LINDSEY Agh!

-You good?

-Yep. Good.

I find myself drawn

to stories of struggle.

Rock!

You alright? You had better hide

behind that big one.

Yep.

I'm inspired

by the human ability

to overcome any obstacle.

Almost to the top.

And the story of the people

who lived here

is the definition of that.

Ooh.

Wow!

Look at this place.

It's incredible.

Almost 2,000 years ago,

this sea stack was home

to one of Scotland's

oldest civilizations,

the Picts.

A mysterious tribe

of small communities

scattered across

a wild landscape.

These tribes found themselves

caught in the crosshairs

of the most powerful army

in the world

the Romans.

At the end of

the first century AD,

the mighty Roman Empire dominates

much of Europe and North Africa.

In Britain, what is now known

as England and Wales

have been conquered.

Next the Roman w*r machine

turns its attention north

to Scotland.

Over the next 300 years

the Romans attempted

to conquer Scotland.

But somehow the northern tribes

fought them off

and established

their own kingdom,

the kingdom of the Picts.

How's it going?

Give me a minute.

But nobody is certain

how they did it.

You got it?

That's why I'm here.

To discover how these

mysterious people

defeated the mighty Romans.

There you go.

Oh, my goodness.

This sea stack

is the site

of the earliest Pictish

settlement ever discovered.

Dr. Lindsey Büster is an expert

on the period.

I mean, what would

have told people

that this was a Pict site?

It's just so barren and remote.

Well, in the mid 1800s

they actually found

a number of stones with these

really interesting carvings

on them up here.

They are what we call

Pictish symbol stones.

Symbol stones?

So.

Okay.

Whoa!

Those are

Pictish symbol stones.

Ah, that's incredible.

You've got some kind

of mysterious triangle

with what looks like

water or fire.

Is this a fish?

What is the story behind these?

Look at this.

There's these crescents.

What are they?

What do they mean?

We don't have

the equivalent

of a kind of Rosetta Stone

to interpret them.

They've never been deciphered.

Maybe if I get the LiDAR

gear over here,

we can strip away

some of this grass

and get a better sense

of what is here.

Joe, Duncan.

Hey, good to see you guys.

You certainly

pick the spots, Albert.

There's no way my LiDAR

team can haul 500 pounds

of delicate technology

up this sea stack.

I've got a plan, but the guys

might not like it.

Look, did you guys bring

the, uh, the heavy lift?

We've got the M300, yeah.

I've put a little

spool of guideline

in one of the Peli cases.

If you guys can

fly it over here,

we'll create a pully system.

It's gonna work, promise.

We trust you, mate.

Let's do it, okay.

The wind's not

in our favor.

No.

Okay, coming over.

Tighten it, tighten it,

tighten it.

The cord.

Here it comes.

More towards me.

Hold, hold!

Okay, good to go up.

Woo hoo!

Okay, we can pull

this line across.

We've got the end

of the rope now. Okay?

Yes, perfect.

Right, we're

clipping in now.

Harness is

adjusted proper, Joe.

Yeah, Joe. Ready to go.

Our LiDAR system uses lasers

projected from air and land

to create an incredibly

accurate 3D model.

It's a hell of a way

to get to work, huh?

Ah.

Yeah!

Yes!

Yooh!

We did it!

I'm hoping you guys can rebuild

what was once here.

If you want to start

doing the scans.

Let's go.

Starting props.

Pushing off!

There she goes.

I think we're ready.

Perfect, let's get

the data coming in.

So, we can see

what the drone is seeing?

Yeah, you'll also be able

to see the LiDAR live.

Boom.

There's the stack.

Yes! There we go.

-Oh, my goodness.

-There we go.

See it in 3D as well.

That's fantastic. Wow!

The LiDAR has modeled

what remains of this site

to within a few inches

of accuracy.

Do you have any survey data from

the digs that were done here?

By adding pre-existing data,

gathered by Lindsey's colleagues

at the University of Aberdeen,

we can recreate

the 2,000-year-old Pictish site.

Basically,

in all of these trenches

they found archaeology.

If we can take this

and place it on that,

we can build this out

as a reconstruction

of what stood here before.

Yeah, that's started.

Coming up.

Here we go.

These are homes?

These are little homes?

Yeah, we're sat

right in the middle

of a Pictish village.

If this site reveals

what their world looked like

when the Romans

arrived in Scotland,

it's a miracle that

they weren't wiped out.

Because of erosion,

the original settlement

might have opened up into

a slightly larger area.

But it would never have been,

you know, a huge site.

We are talking kind of

tens of people here.

Tiny.

This is quite typical

for a Pictish settlement.

This is quite often

where we find them.

They're always

quite small scale,

dotted about the landscape.

So, the style

of Pictish life

was to live in these

tiny little villages?

Think about what

they were up against.

It was a scale order difference.

We have, you know,

small domestic communities

up against thousands of soldiers

just over the horizon.

So where were

the Roman forts?

Can you pull 'em up?

The team have already scanned

known Roman sites in the area.

Look at that right there.

Wow, look at that.

Look how big that is.

What are those long buildings

right there?

Each of these is

a barracks block,

and each barracks block

is holding 100 soldiers.

We're definitely looking

at more than 1,000 soldiers.

This is actually one

of the smaller forts.

There's bigger ones?

Let's see 'em.

Wow.

That just screams dominance.

We're looking at

kind of ten times the size

of the previous forts

we just looked at.

It just really

gets you to realize

just what the Picts

were up against.

It was

a military machine.

It feels like a David

and Goliath sort of moment.

Could you imagine

just the sort of sound

of their marching

across this hill?

You would have heard their armor

beating against their shields

all night long in the hills

surrounding you.

With your back against the wall,

surrounded by a sophisticated

brutal force,

taking their lands,

k*lling their people,

it'd be terrifying.

It's a terrible choice:

fight or run.

Rope!

Scotland, the third century AD.

Elite Roman soldiers, advancing

from their strongholds

in the south, are hunting the

native tribes from their homes.

If you felt that force

coming at you

and you were a Pictish village,

I would personally be

taking my family,

taking my things that I could

bring, and I'd be fleeing north.

It's a story I've seen

time and again.

A civilization overwhelmed;

people forced

from their homelands.

But somehow, they survived.

How did they overcome

such terrible odds?

I'm following the Picts'

ancient route north,

where the hunted tribespeople

could use their superior

knowledge of the coastline

to hide from the Roman Army.

Just head

for this beach here.

Yeah,

I'm gonna pull in.

This beach has kind of

an eerie feeling.

Okay.

It's getting cold.

Yeah,

I'm pretty cold and wet.

Should we make a fire?

The Roman writer Eumenius

was the first to record

the term "Picts,"

Latin for "the painted people."

Everything we know about them is

based on accounts from people

that were trying

to destroy them.

The Romans paint them

as these kind of

naked barbarians.

Whoa!

This is a depiction

drawing on those Roman sources.

Whoa!

We can imagine

there's a bit

of artistic license involved.

Wow.

Look at that.

They certainly

scared the Romans enough

to describe them

as very ferocious

and savage painted people.

So, these are tattoos?

They were either

tattoos or maybe body paint.

I don't want to be

influenced by Roman propaganda.

The problem is the Picts

didn't write down

their version of events.

Theirs is a hidden history.

If you want to feel

like they felt,

you've got to see it

as they saw it, right?

Exactly.

Woo!

♪

Look at this!

Wow!

Look at this entrance.

In almost every culture

that I've encountered,

caves represent some kind of

window into the spirit world.

Wow.

There's carvings everywhere.

Layer upon layer

of people

who've left their messages

on the walls for us.

It almost feels like

we've stepped through time.

Is this?

What's that?

Kinda looks like

It's so hard to make out

in the dark here.

When you move the torch from

side to side, you kinda,

you kind of make out a little

bit more of the shadows.

I feel like the Picts

are calling to us.

But what are they saying?

So little is known

about the Picts.

Searching for their lost kingdom

means I must follow every lead.

And there's something

on the walls of this cave

that's drawing me in.

I'm gonna start the scan, okay?

Yep.

My handheld LiDAR

technology allows me

to scan the walls

and process the data

to separate the ancient markings

from the modern.

Right.

There's so many small,

subtle details here.

Look at that!

Boom!

Oh, wow!

Look at that!

And then

Look at that.

Yeah, that's it!

Wow.

Is that what I think it is?

It looks like that

crescent shape

that you showed me

on that symbol stone.

That's amazing.

It is a Pictish symbol

right there!

-Wow!

-That's wonderful.

It's like finding

new chapters of a lost story.

They're trying

to tell us something.

It's some kind

of writing system.

These intricate

stone carvings

tell me the Picts were

far more sophisticated

than the wild barbarians

the Romans described.

There's got to be so many of

these all through this cave, no?

There's definitely

more of them.

Are you getting this?

As we scan the walls,

we discover even more

ancient clues.

And there's

another symbol

just to the left of that one.

Each one, a direct link

to the Pictish people

who touched these very walls,

nearly 2,000 years ago.

I can almost feel the presence

of the person who carved them.

It's not just an image,

or a piece of ancient art,

it's a window into the mind

of the person who made them.

I've found something.

Look. There's something

up there.

And this rectangle.

What is that?

You know, if you think

of caves as, you know,

gateways between worlds,

it could be a doorway

from one world to the next.

If it's a gateway

to the other world,

what's it doing here?

I think they're

memorializing the dead.

-The dead?

-Yeah.

When the first excavator

visited the cave

to have a look at the carvings

in the late 1920s,

she found the floor of the cave

strewn with human bones.

This was a graveyard?

Amongst those bones

were nine vertebrae

from the neck.

And those nine vertebrae

from the neck had evidence

for cut marks, cut marks

made by a bladed weapon,

probably a sword.

Up to nine individuals,

including two teenagers, were

Kids?

Essentially children, yes.

were decapitated right here,

right at the time

when the activity is

happening at Dunnicaer.

That must have been

a family, right?

Nine people. Kids. Adults.

And that downward strike

of an axe or a sword,

that's a classic Roman

execution style.

So, we know that

it wasn't bodiless heads

or headless bodies that

were entering the cave, but

It's impossible to know

exactly who k*lled the people

in this cave.

But what is clear is that

these traumatizing events

demonstrate the level of threat

the native tribes faced.

What a place to be.

There was kids there.

Kids that lost their lives

in that very cave.

Of the Picts, of the warriors

that would fight back,

these underdogs that would

stand up for themselves.

-Hi!

-Hey!

I miss you guys so much.

I miss you too, baba.

Ahhh.

What have you

been doing?

I was just in a cave

I'm starting to feel

connected to the Picts.

I know their people were hunted;

I know that they suffered.

Now, I need to find the place

where they began to fight back.

What happened

in that cave back there,

thousands of years ago,

it was tragic.

But the Picts fought back.

So somewhere out there,

there's a story of redemption,

and I'm gonna find it.

210 AD.

Emperor Septimius Severus

orders a bloody campaign

against the northern tribes,

so brutally effective,

archaeologists compare it

to a genocide.

The Roman army squeezed

the remaining tribes

further and further north,

forcing them together,

to deliver the final blow.

♪

But it never came.

Somewhere out here, they begin

to unite and fight back.

Most known Pictish sites

feel too small.

But one location

grabs my attention

Burghead.

♪

Look at this.

Looks like a rampart

or something.

Looks big.

I'm gonna scan this.

A modern town presents

a different kind

of scanning challenge.

But if the Picts did

establish a base here,

it could prove what

they became capable of.

Yooh!

Look at this place.

Yeah.

What do you

think this is?

'Cause look how big

these walls are.

Arriving here

at this massive site,

you can see that

there's something

just beneath the grass.

But what could it be?

We've got a good view

of it here, Albert.

Here we go.

Look at that.

You see these walls?

Look at those walls.

Yeah.

It almost feels like

a fort or something.

And look at that.

The city's built on top of it.

Look at that.

It just kind of stops there.

We only were able to see

part of the site.

The rest of the site's been

covered by this modern town.

It's an incomplete story.

I want to know what's

under those streets.

Our LiDAR technology

is state of the art,

but it can't see

through pavement.

What do you think?

Ground penetrating radar?

Yeah, it's got to

give us a good chance.

It's the only way.

It's the only way.

I'm deploying

GPR technology.

It may look like a lawn mower,

but the radio signals

that it produces

penetrate through the ground,

revealing evidence

of what's buried below.

Can you guys look up any

past digs, any past data?

Yeah, absolutely.

I'm also using findings

from recent excavations

and have brought one

of the archaeologists

who conducted those digs to

help us interpret our results.

Hey, James.

Are you Albert?

Yeah, good

to meet you, man.

How's it going?

Thanks for coming,

I really appreciate it.

So, we did a ground penetrating

radar survey of the city here.

And we don't quite know

what it is,

but here, can you fly in

just down under the ground?

So, here's the GPR data.

But look at that right there.

Look at that bump.

Oh, wow! Look at that!

Look at that! It's clear as day.

Bank, ditch, bank, ditch.

Maybe a third bank there.

What is that?

This is almost

certainly a rampart

which has been completely

covered over by the town.

A rampart,

like a defensive wall,

like that kind of thing?

So, like this.

Is that what you're thinking?

Exactly.

Yeah!

They're massive.

Okay, let's layer in

the modern town.

That's super.

That's amazing.

They are huge, aren't they?

They could be eight meters high.

They're obviously defending

against an actual threat.

I want to see the city

as it once was.

Can we combine this

with their survey data?

Yeah. Let me see

what I can spin up here.

Oh, yeah, right?

That's super, isn't it?

It's so tangible, too.

Wow.

This is on a scale bigger than

anything we've seen so far.

This can't be Pictish, can it?

Well, we have a lot

of carbon dates from the site,

and we're absolutely certain

it is Pictish.

This is Pictish?

All the other Pictish sites

we've gone to are small,

they're tiny little villages

on the top of sea stacks,

but this is

completely different.

This is not a little village.

Those disparate people

set throughout the landscape

are coming together

to build these forts.

This symbolizes

an event happening.

You know, like a momentum shift.

People coming together.

It feels like,

it feels like unification.

Burghead confirms the Picts

did re-establish themselves.

But a site of this size couldn't

defend Scotland on its own.

There is more to this story,

and I'll need to go

right into the heart

of the Roman battleground

to find it.

I've been

through jungles

which I thought were dense,

but this is rough.

Scotland, the fifth century AD.

The Roman Empire is

beginning to crumble.

And the Picts

take full advantage.

Banding together

in greater numbers

and using their intimate

knowledge of the landscape

to gain the upper hand.

I've left the northeast coast,

heading inland to a Pictish

archaeological site

called Rhynie.

My route takes me deep into the

same forests that the Picts used

in their battles

against the Romans.

The Romans had to

get through this?

With all their equipment.

Archaeologist

Kelly Kilpatrick has spent

more than two decades

exploring Pictish culture.

The enemy would use

these woods to their advantage.

At one point, Agricola

were looking into the woods

in horror,

because the brave beasts

would descend upon them

and ambush the Romans.

So, the Picts

are the brave beasts?

Yeah, they're

the brave beasts.

Looks like it might be

a little bit of a swim.

Imagine, if you were

a Roman soldier,

you'd see hints

of Pictish warriors

hidden in the forest beyond.

And now you've got

to cross this.

Let's aim to that tree

and see if we can make our way

towards the bank.

Alright, swimming!

You good?

Keep swimming.

Yep.

There we go.

This is the wild land

that protected the Picts

from their enemies,

the large, powerful Roman Army

weighed down by sophisticated

weapons and armor.

The underdog was biting back.

You good?

Yep. I'm good.

Ugh, thank you.

Aaagh! Ha ha!

Made it.

Ahh, we did it!

Woo!

We're in the heart

of Pictish territory now.

♪

Rhynie is home to

one of the largest

Pictish symbol stones

in Scotland.

What I see right here

is the fish.

Yep. You can even see

the little fins on the bottom.

And then

Beneath that is a symbol

that's called a Pictish beast.

What's it doing here?

What are they trying to say?

Well, there's quite

a few theories out there

about what these mean.

But we don't know,

is the answer.

It is humbling

that with all our technology

and knowledge,

we may never know exactly

what these symbols mean.

But instinctively

I know their presence

marks this place as significant.

I feel I'm getting closer

to understanding

the power of the Picts.

This must have been

an important site.

One of

the leading theories

is that this

Pictish symbol stone

is actually a stamp

of ownership on the land,

a sign that people

would have recognized

as they were entering

this place.

Was it somebody's home?

Well, a few years ago,

there were some

excavations up here,

and they discovered

that this symbol stone

actually marks the entrance

into a royal center.

A Pictish royal site.

Wow.

You're standing where

Pictish kings have walked.

Wow.

This is some, uh

hallowed grounds here.

In the David and Goliath story

of the Picts versus the Romans,

Rhynie represents the moment

the underdog is crowned king.

I don't quite get it, though,

because a king

would be surrounded

by all of the community;

where's the community?

Well, yeah, exactly,

you're not a king of nothing,

you're a king of people,

you're a king of a nation.

Where's the nation?

If this is the center

of a lost Pictish kingdom,

there must be a city

large enough to defend it.

Look at that mountain.

Look at that.

I think we should go there.

♪

It's like walking

on sponge, isn't it?

Kelly and I want to scan

the top of this hill

to see if it's connected

to the royal site at Rhynie

in the valley below us.

The moment we summit,

its strategic significance

becomes obvious.

Woo!

Look at this.

What a view.

From up here,

the Picts can see everything:

the royal site at Rhynie

and any approaching enemy.

You can see the entire landscape

in every direction.

It's beautiful.

It is amazing.

We got to get that tech

in here, scan this whole place.

It's the moment of truth.

Our powerful

laser scanning technology

can peel back the layers of time

on this hill

and hopefully reveal the ancient

Pictish world beneath our feet.

You guys found a way up.

We took the hard way.

This is Kelly.

-Nice to meet you, Kelly.

-Hi, nice to meet you.

Let's get the drones up

right away. A lot to scan.

It's a big old space.

Yeah,

let's get started.

Mapping the hill with

our laser-equipped drones,

the 3D data is beamed live

into our field lab.

Let's go back to the LiDAR view.

Professor Gordon Noble

is the leading expert

on Pictish Scotland.

Gordon. Good to see you.

This is Albert.

Albert.

So nice to meet you.

Yeah, heard a lot

about you.

He knows Tap O'Noth is

an important Pictish site.

It'll be interesting to

see what turns up in your scans.

I'm hoping we can reveal

just how important.

So, this is the,

this is all the data

that just came in off the drone?

Yeah, this is

all the LiDAR now.

The heather bushes

themselves that can be,

you know, a good foot,

foot and a half thick,

so that's really masking

all the archaeology there.

Are we able to get

through any of it

with the LiDAR?

I've still got

to process it.

Let's get rid

of those bushes.

This is gonna take

a little bit more rigging,

but we should be able to do it.

Right, Joe.

Let's see what you've

got on that drone.

-Ooh, wow.

-Nice. You see that?

-Oh, look!

-Look at that!

Lovely, yeah.

That's fantastic.

Can you look at those?

Can you see those? Going

What are they?

Look, there's more.

You can see these little divots

into the hill there.

Here. You can see they've just,

they've leveled out

big, long terraces.

Yeah. There's another one

of these terraces.

Yeah, amazing.

-It looks like, uh,

like the dimples of a golf ball,

doesn't it?

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

There's hundreds there.

So, these are platforms?

Is that what you think?

Yeah, yeah.

That's where they've built

structures there,

in the Pictish period.

Homes?

Were those all homes?

Yes!

Oh, wow!

Look at that!

We've done some

excavations here,

and there are actually houses.

Wow!

It's cool.

They're just everywhere,

aren't they?

How many people

is that?

So, if you think that,

you know,

maybe five people per house,

multiply that by 800,

you're dealing with

4,000 or more.

Wow!

This doesn't feel

like a village,

this doesn't feel like a town,

this looks like

a hilltop city to me.

It's, it's quite

something, isn't it? Yeah.

It's cool.

It does look like a city,

doesn't it?

The Picts are no longer

living in small groups;

they have unified.

An interconnected society

on a grand scale.

Instead of crushing the Picts,

Romans have united them.

The greatest army in the world

had created their own

worst enemy.

Feels like we're at the end

of this massive snowball.

As it's being pushed along

by the Romans,

they're picking up groups,

picking up groups,

building and building

until you end up with these,

these worlds on top of hills.

Well, I think this is

what happens, you know,

if you have a empire

on your doorstep,

you need to come together.

You need to create these bigger

communities in order to resist.

Our scan has revealed

the largest Pictish settlement

ever discovered in Scotland.

But as I look out

at the horizon,

it dawns on me that this is

only the tip of the iceberg.

Everything in the landscape

now looks like

it could be a hilltop fortress.

Yeah, they're

all over the place. Yeah.

They're all over!

Once you begin

to get your eye in,

and you begin to see

this network of sites

coming together.

I can almost

imagine each hill

covered in a fiery glow

of homes.

An impenetrable mesh

all connected together.

Yeah. Exactly.

This is how

they built the world

that could resist

the Roman Army.

-Yep. Yeah.

-Yeah.

When I first

showed up in Scotland,

I found a story

of a people in peril.

But all along this journey,

it's been about growth.

It been about the creation

of something bigger.

We've found a lost city at the

center of a forgotten kingdom,

the nation of Pictland.

A place forged from unity, and

a belief that even when faced

with the most powerful army

in the world,

you can always fight back.

Sites like this one must have

existed all over Pictland,

people living and

fighting together;

an interconnected kingdom

that held off the Romans

and reclaimed their homeland.

An inspirational victory

for the underdog.

By the middle of

the fifth century,

the Romans finally gave up their

attempts to conquer the north,

and with their empire crumbling,

withdrew from Scotland forever.

By the eighth century

the Picts began to fade

from the pages of history,

absorbed by larger groups.

But the Pictish spirit lives on,

in the people of the land

they helped to create,

Scotland.

♪

♪