every year a million people descend on Stonehedge they ask the age-old questions about this mysterious Monument who built it how was it built and why to find out archaeologists are studying Stonehenge with new tools and New Eyes by constructing own hinge these people were creating something which had never been created before it's a bit like their own space program there's a new theory about the meaning of Stonehedge when I say a lot of bone it's about the nature of Eternity the meaning of life and death that's a nice long piece of fibula I would think we're going to get at least 50 individuals in here an ancient world is coming back to life this is an extraordinary time for Stonehenge we're beginning to understand it in a way we've never been able to do before the secrets of Stonehenge revealed right now on Nova [Music] brooding and Majestic Stonehenge is an icon of prehistory it dates back to a time before Egypt built its pyramids to the stone age in Britain time has taken its toll but this Monument remains a Marvel of ancient engineering a circular ditch and Bank surround the stones upright Stones Tower over 20 ft and weigh up to 45 tons horizontal slabs called lentils Crown huge pillars all these Giants are made of s a local Sandstone harder than granite yet they were carved and fitted like woodwork uprights were tapered and topped with knobs these fit Hollows on the bottoms of lentils curved lentils joined by tongue and groove formed a nearly perfect circle and despite a slight slope this ring of lentils was level to within inches the sarson Dominate Stonehenge but nestled among them are smaller Stones no less remarkable geologists determined these are blue stones transported here from Wales at least 150 M away who built Stonehenge how was it built and why for ages we could only Wonder now a new age is [Music] beginning an army of archaeologists deploys around Stonehenge hey everybody led by Mike Parker Pearson the Stonehenge Riverside project is nearly 200 strong with Scientists students and specialists in everything from astronomy to field survey we're six years into this archaeological project it's one of the biggest in the world I reckon so it's a really big chance to find out some of the key questions about Stonehenge we're on a mission we're on a quest it's a quest to reconstruct the ancient world that gave rise to Stonehenge and resurrect the people who built it the strategy is to dig not just at Stonehenge but throughout the surrounding landscape Stonehenge itself was extensively excavated during the 20th century those digs established that the monument was built in stages prehistoric people chose a rolling stretch of Salsbury plane and around 3,000 BC they dug a ditch a bank and a ring of 56 pits into the underlying chalk of the plane these pits probably held the blue stones brought all the way from Wales then some 500 years later the Colossal sarson Stones were installed the blue stones were pulled from their outer ring and rearranged among the sarsens several other Stones completed the monument and later parallel Banks would Define a processional Avenue that stretched all the way from Stonehenge to the river Avon [Music] 20th century excavations also uncovered the dead of Stonehenge in the 1920s nearly 60 human burials were excavated here many in that outer ring of 56 pits known as the Aubrey holes but the discoveries were hardly acknowledged because these were cremation burials these people have been cremated so they didn't have nice skulls with gleaming teeth to display they had bundles of Ash and bits of broken burnt bone the archeologists weren't interested in those as objects at that time it was firmly believed that there was nothing you could learn from looking at cremated phone not a single Museum in Britain wanted the bones so in 1935 they were reburied in Aubrey Hall number seven the idea that Stonehenge was actually one of if not the biggest chromation cemetery in early prehistorical Europe just disappeared into the ground into or behold 7 and was forgotten about the bones were left undisturbed until today Mike Parker Pearson has come to retrieve the dead of Stonehenge to him they represent a treasure Trove of information with closer analysis of those remains even though they're burnt we can work out people's approximate ages we may be able to work out if they're male or female we may even be able to find out more about their standard of life so it's a really important opportunity to learn about the Stonehenge people records from 1935 State the bones were placed in four burlap bags and buried with a commemorative plaque this is the first time anybody has seen a decent Orbee hole for a good 80 years it's quite impressive but it's what's underneath it it's lower down that's what we're most interested in and we're getting close so oh look what's that is it suddenly they Spart a tiny piece of bone yep SP bone yeah there's more it's all over the place the burlap bags that contain the Bones have rotted away I think we've just got to very carefully loose the soil bit by bit is it desperately uncomfortable yeah it is Qui yeah so we're just going to take it in turns and do as long as each of us can stand till the blood rushes to your head and you start to feel faint that's already happened there we go here we go oh look what I found the pl there it is read it out most of these bones were dug up in the Years 1921 1922 1923 reburied 1935 yeah but actually it doesn't tell us anything we don't know does it I know but isn't it nice we finally reached the bone layer I think we were all hoping that the two men who buried these bones for posterity would actually put them in decent containers uh but what we're really looking at is very loose cremated bone oh c i a lot of bone we've lifted the plaque and what we saw underneath was quite a shock just a complete jumbled mass of bone from who knows how many people the plaque has stopped soil falling down in amongst them so as the sack rotted the bones were left completely clean but it's going to be a serious jigsa puzzle in the lab I was hoping it was going to be easy but this is the worst case scenario little remains of the people of Stonehenge what do we know of their world around 3 ,000 BC the age of the Pharaohs begins in Egypt the first cities are flourishing in the near East with writing and wheeled Vehicles the use of metal is spreading across Europe but has yet to reach Britain here the Stone Age is in its Final Phase the Neolithic the stone axe Reigns Supreme with this tool people clear forests and shape the Timbers of their homes their settlements are small and Scattered they keep livestock and move with their herds they raise barley and wheat people tend to get the impression that in the Neolithic life was grim and short that's not necessarily the case at all people generally seem to have been probably fairly well-nourished they would have had access to quite good food resources they were obviously sophisticated and they're probably having a fairly good lifestyle their stone tools and fine Pottery have survived the ages but objects crafted of wood plant fibers or leather have mostly vanished in Britain's climate and soil the fabric of their daily lives their customs and their beliefs have long eluded us but the remains of their dead are providing new Clues at Aubrey Hall number s Jackin McKinley joins the excavation effort an expert on Ancient human remains she quickly spots individual features that's a nice long piece of fibula brilant probably second or third Moler that's the back of the skull look in fact that's a chap that's a male J good it's a very important collection we're in a very important Place although it looks like a mass by separating out the different sceletal elements we can work out how many people there were in there and the sex and the age of those individuals looking at the amount of material we've got I would think we're going to get at least 50 individuals in here in all 35 lbs of cremated bone are eventually sent to the University of Sheffield graduate student Christy Cox is resurrecting the dead of Stonehenge bit by bit there's thousands and thousands of bone pieces um is far more than we ever anticipated when we originally started the excavation this sh Joy here that is just amazing so we're looking at this this bit down the side here where the mandible goes be the tmga Jo yeah and that suggests that we've got an older individual the bones reveal that Burial at Stonehenge was reserved for a select group with a normal domestic Cemetery you'd expect to find a range of Ages and individuals from both sex but most of the cremated bones are from adults and the majority of those adults appear to be male and mostly in the 25 to 40 year age group we're seeing just a slight wear and tear on the bones in this population so they were fairly healthy they were fairly robust male individuals if you mostly male cremations in that that's something odd that means that certain people are being selected for bual here what was special about them I suspect they may well have been people of important political stature quite possibly the the men in one or more Royal lineages whose authority made Stonehenge possible in the first place so what this could be indicating is actually at the time Stone Henge was built we have an an aristocratic male-based Society now that's something we would never have known without these bones perhaps one royal family marshaled the manpower to create Stonehenge and across the British Isles other families or Clans built their own Stone circles nearly a thousand still stand today Neolithic people also raised Timber circles today All That Remains are traces of post holes but their size indicates some held tree trunks 15 ft High weighing several tons enormous pits were dug to hold these Timbers and standing stones and many circles were enclosed by a circular ditch and Bank an earthwork known as a henge how did people with Stone Age Technology manage to build on such a vast Scale near Stonehenge Parker Pearson's team excavates a prehistoric ditch carved into the chalk of Salsbury plain suddenly an ancient digging tool comes to light oh oh oh look at that it's a pick made from the antler of a red deer oh yeah ant lipics were used as the means of Excavating these features dites and pits during the Neolithic you can imagine people using these pcks to lever out the great chunks of chalk prizing it out and then putting it into baskets and pulling it out of the hole an enormously labor intensive task when they got to the bottom and when they finished maybe it was broken and they just dropped it or maybe they just deliberately left it there almost as an offering but how did people moved the giant sarson up to 45 tons of solid rock how did they raise lentils to the tops of those gate light structures called trons to archaeologist Mike pittz the process involved Manpower and myth we're about 20 mi north of Stonehenge and this area is probably where all the big Stones the sassin at Stonehenge came from this landscape now looks very much as I think it would have been in the near lithic so we have the trees we have the forests growing expressing life we have the stones in thousands lying largely under under the ground like bodies these are places that could be repositories of superstition of myth and fear and danger to find a sarson of the right size and shape for Stonehenge may have been a sacred quest for the most skilled stonemasons like a Michelangelo they examine the stone very carefully these are guys that are used to making stone tools they understand Stone and I think a Stonehenge Mason would have looked at a stone like this there's something that he's used to making like a stone axe or an aead but enlarged into a huge scale Masons may have roughly shaped the sarsens at the Quarry site using pounding stones but they left few Clues to how they moved and raised giant stones 1 2 3 so researchers have experimented Stone Age Britain did not have the wheel but people may have pulled large Stones over rollers made of tree trunks perhaps they laid Timber tracks and slathered them with grease a wooden sled with a keel would have kept the stones centered over the tracks [Applause] [Music] raising a giant Stone involved somehow tipping it into a giant hole 1 2 3 lentil may have been pulled up ramps and levered into place all these techniques are plausible there's just no evidence they were actually used now there's a new Theory Andrew Young became obsessed with carved Stone balls during graduate work at the University of exitor some of these prehistoric objects are elaborately engraved but many are unadorned most have been found in Northeast Scotland an area known for its Stone circles these artifacts defy explanation people had said they might be weapons or for throwing or um possibly pounding vegetables kinds of things that you could do with a portable Stone object nothing that anybody had really said about them satisfied my question what are they for young taught himself to carve replicas and pondered one strange fact many carve balls engraved and plain have exactly the same diameter large numbers are identical in size to the millimeter and why would they need to be identical in size and that just gave him that Eureka moment wow if you're going to use them as a wheel you need them to be the same size Andrew Young had a vision of Stone Age ballbearing Technology for his PhD thesis he's testing his idea at a farm near Stonehenge so this one's High he's joined by a team of fellow students and his graduate adviser Bruce Bradley an authority on experimental archaeology all right let's move them back towards each other Andy brought this Theory to me I was astounded because it just made sense all it's just so obvious why didn't somebody think of this before with rails made of Douglas fur they'll build 80 ft of track it's not straight though each rail has a channel cut into it to hold Granite balls hand finished to a precise 75 mm diameter they'll also use wooden balls during the time of Stonehenge people were skilled at carving stone and wood and could have produced all these components that's a lot better instead of a giant Stone the team has 25 tons of gravel and Andrew Young has his concerns outside I'm really worried about the typee of wood we used um they would probably have used Oak in the Neolithic we haven't been able to use out because of the cost the wood we've got is perhaps too soft they build a platform a crib to straddle the rails and carry the weight the worst fear would be that we'd get just a couple tons on there and we couldn't push it anywhere there's a lot of unknowns right now and that's what experiments they're all about they load 3.3 tons roughly the weight of a blue stone at Stonehenge one two three go keep it going keep it going oh darn almost immediately they're stuck man what happened the weight is crushing the Douglas fur you know this amount of weight seems to have compressed it enough that our Gap we're losing our Gap it's less than a centimeter and that is not good no as soon as you've got that crib touching the rail you just got friction you've totally undermined everything we've done with the balls Young's worst fear about the soft wood has come true but there's a quick fix to offset the compression of the Douglas fur they place wooden inserts in the grooves Eastern 23 mil the Gap is back at least for now they load up nearly 6 tons roughly the weight of two blue stones can they do it look at the division of labor all of a sudden how'd that happen hey you girls the call will be giddy up all right one two 3 four go it's moving come on keep going folks keep at it let's get on those wood balls they're gaining Speedy we' moved the blue stones and once it was going we were going yeah we we were having a hard time stopping we're not as heavy as the SARS at Stonehenge but I'm convinced that that's it we can move the sarson no problem the largest sarson at Stonehenge weighs some 45 tons how much can this rig handle the team has one more day to find [Music] out moving the sarsens was just one challenge for the Builders of Stonehenge they also had to carve these Giants to fit together how how did they achieve such [Music] Precision just outside Stonehenge Parker Pearson's team noticed small pieces of sarson emerging from of all things mole Hills the little mole Hills allowed us to see that there was sarson under the ground as little chips were dug up by these little furry creates a small trench revealed an astonishing carpet of stone fragments debris from the dressing of giant Stones The Stone dressing trench has produced fantastic surprises this is where the stones were lying and having their faces trimmed and bashed and we've been able to find in that tiny trench 50 hammerstones this is the Hammerstone actually fits quite nicely in the hand as it turns out and uh you can see all the pitting around the outside where it's been banging against something the Neolithic Builder would literally have stood alongside the stone to do the more fine scale work it's going to take ages just to get that fine fine shape Stonehenge is an expenditure of labor on a grand scale you know it's easy for us to forget that these people were creating something which had never been created before it's it's a bit like their own space program Stonehenge is a masterpiece of Stone Age Technology but what did it mean to the people who built it was it simply the burial ground of a royal family or was there more to the monument an enduring theory about the meaning of Stonehenge dates back to an observation made by 18th century Scholars they noticed that the entrance to Stonehenge faces the Rising Sun on the longest day of the year the summer solstice by the 1960s people had embraced the monument as an observatory used by ancient astronomers to track the Sun and Moon some astronomers even claimed the mystery of Stonehenge had been solved well let's get one thing clear this wasn't some sort of astronomical instrument Clive Ruggles has written the book on Ancient astronomy an archaeologist and astronomer he ran his own studies of Stonehenge everyone thinks that it's some sort of ancient Observatory that incorporated lots of alignments in fact we archaeologists are only confident in one alignment at this monument and that was the main axis that you see here this axis runs right through the center of Stonehenge and down its Avenue in this direction it points at sunrise on the summer solstice around June 21st on those few days around the longest day of the year just as the sun rises you would have seen a shaft of sunlight coming right into this it would have been a very spectacular effect the thing is if the axis is pointing at Midsummer sunrise this way then it also has another Direction we come around the site you have to do a bit of imagining here we we've got these big trisons one and two standing here there was another one standing here we've only got one of the uprights left then in fact the axis in this direction points at the sun set on the shortest day of the year midwinter sun set so the sun would be coming down like this and setting in this direction along the [Music] axis this extraordinary alignment sheds light on the beliefs and rituals of people in the ancient world Stonehenge isn't the only place that has an astronomical alignment built into it there are many um ancient peoples all over the world who have Incorporated alignments on the Sun the moon sometimes the stars and what it's probably telling us is about a connection in people's minds between the Sun and the seasonal cycle and how by having the right ceremonials at the right time they could keep in harmony with the cosmos the alignment at Stonehenge suggests the solstices were important times of year for the people who built the monument Mike Parker Pearson has Unearthed evidence supporting that idea though he didn't set out to study Stonehenge I never thought I'd be doing any work here in a million years and I had many other interesting things to do so it was a series of accidents that really led to our project getting up and running he had spent years in Madagascar studying traditional burial practices here people build stone monuments for the dead they believe Stone belongs to the realm of the ancestors the realm of the living is built of perishable materials like wood [Music] in 1998 Parker Pearson happened to visit Stonehedge with an archaeologist from Madagascar when my colleague Ramil son saw all of this on a cold February morning it was something of a bombshell because what he was to say was to change archaeologist's understanding of this Monument completely and to lead to a huge new program of archaeological research I believe this is a meeting place to connect with the ancestors I am utterly convinced the stones are linked to the ancestors and that's the moment the light bulb went on in my mind and I thought Stone was associated with the ancestors the dead and constructions in Timber should be associated with the living and this made me think a little more about what was happening in the Stonehenge landscape he knew Stonehenge was full of cremated remains nearly 60 burials excavated in the 20th century and perhaps 200 more in untouched areas of the monument if Stonehenge marked the realm of the Dead where was the realm of the [Music] living less than 2 miles north of ston H sits the giant henge of durington walls in the 1960s when a road was cut through this henge archaeologists discovered the post holes of a Timber Circle nearly identical in size to Stonehenge if durington walls marked the realm of the living and Stonehenge the realm of the Dead perhaps the physical link between the two was the river Avon we know from mythologies all around the world that water is a very important part of that Journey from the world of the living to the world of the Dead it was a clever Theory with little to back it up until excavations began at durington walls my interest in darington wolves was to find out two things there should be an Avenue linking it to the river just as there was stonehengers famous Avenue leading to the water secondly there should be evidence of settlement of something to do with the living the team did uncover an Avenue some 30 ft wide running straight from durington walls to the river Avon the Dig all also revealed ample evidence of the living we've actually found the floor of a house now it's only 4 M that way by 4 M this way it has steak holes along its sides so Timber facade covered with chalk plaster it's the first time we have found the floor layer for a Neolithic house anywhere in England we can actually walk on the very surface that people walked on 4 and a half thousand years ago the floors of eight other houses came to light they were built around 2,500 BC the same time the sarsens were put up at Stonehenge hundreds of other dwellings probably filled durington walls clustered around the Timber Circle I think we could be looking at this entire area covered in houses perhaps with the central open area forming the largest Village in northern Europe at that time but people didn't live here year round they came for special occasions in between the houses the team found huge piles of pig and cattle bones we find a lot of them still joined together so they must have been thrown away while there was still soft tissue holding them together what this is telling us is that these are people who are feasting a clue to the timing of these feasts turned up in the astronomical alignment of durington walls on the morning of the winter solstice the Timber Circle pointed at the Rising Sun and at the end of the day Stonehenge framed the Setting Sun 6 months later the direction was reversed on the summer solce Stonehenge and its Avenue aligned with sunrise and the Avenue at durington walls aligned with sunet the two monuments were linked on the summer and winter solstices on these days crowds may have traveled along the river moving between the realm of the living at durington walls and the realm of the dead at Stonehedge some may have cast the ashes of their dead into the sacred Waters a gesture of devotion perhaps Royal burials were held at Stonehedge during these seasonal [Music] feasts it may just be the s of an unending cycle that is being reenacted by this flow back and forward between the living and the dead to enable Society to keep going Parker Pearson had discovered traces of an ancient belief system etched into the landscape around Stonehedge but one question still lingered about The Monument's location why was Stonehenge built on such an unremarkable patch of Countryside not on a ridge or Hilltop the answer May lie hidden beneath the surface of the Stonehenge Avenue the great processional route leading to the river [Music] Avon this feature was mapped by running a small electric current through the soil and measuring its resistance the technique can detect structures under the surface it picked up a series of mysterious grooves running beneath the Avenue for more than 200 yards Parker Pearson was convinced these grooves were the remains of a man-made structure older than the Avenue his team opened a shallow trench to investigate it runs over there yeah I was convinced we were going to find evidence for gullies that contained vertical Timber posts something like that and I was bitterly disappointed because they were entirely natural soil Specialists determined that these grooves were formed between two natural ridges in the landscape during the last ice age these ridges funneled rainwater and snow melt between them yearly freezing and thaing caus the ground to crack into long deep grooves what makes the grooves extraordinary is that they are aligned with the solstices on the winter solstice they would have pointed directly at the spot where the Setting Sun touches the Horizon think about this coincidence in the landscape the fact that you've got these natural stripes in the landscape actually aligning with the direction where the winter sun goes down yes to us it's a coincidence of nature but imagine how that seemed to people whose mindset was different it would have made it a very sacred and Powerful spot and that for me provides a very plausible reason why Stonehenge was constructed where it was prehistoric people built Stonehenge just beyond where the grooves end later they enhanced the natural ridges with massive Banks and extended the Avenue all the way to the river Avon or so it was assumed no one had ever excavated the riverbank where the Avenue ought to end just beyond a row of Country Estates so Parker Pearson brought his team well we came down here looking for the end of the Stonehenge Avenue um and what we were expecting to find would have been fairly straightforward just two Banks and two ditches what we actually found was completely different what we have here is a ditch that is curving around in a semicircle and most likely it actually formed a complete circle maybe it's marking off a venerated space maybe there's even a standing stone that once stood in this spot maybe there are special things here that the he was actually leading to by the river it will take more digging to get to the bottom of this mystery will that go through there not far from the Riverside trench Andrew Young and his team continue to test his system for moving giant Stones they tackle the equivalent of a sarson at Stonehenge these range from 7 to more than 40 ttimes up the slack one two three the team starts with a load of 8.3 tons they give it everything they've got no not going we didn't even budget it's that moment of inertia that you've got to break and obviously that was beyond 10 people some theories claim hundreds of people were involved in pulling Giants Stones young is convinced oxen did the heavy work for now he'll settle for a tractor a gauge will measure how much force it takes to get this load moving there it goes keep it going little faster yeah wow all right let's have a look at that gauge just over 1.2 1.2 that's very good young figures this would have been a snap for about a dozen oxen so what's happened there the uh insert is uh obliterated the spacers are breaking down it's too soft but young wants to try one last load what we could do is take off the top two build the of a crib and spread the weight out more redistribute it I think that's the plan yeah pleased to meet you finally lovely to see you just then Stonehenge expert Mike pittz drops by I've been reading your work for years and always been very impressed thank you thanks thanks for bringing the rain appreciate it pits is briefed while the team sets up a second I'm thinking as I look at this okay supposing this did happen you've got to have a really smooth track almost like a road absolutely you need engineered route again almost don't you basically yeah it's pretty sophisticated yeah but I can't believe that in the near lithic when they're moving these stones that the landscope is going to be nice and clear and smooth like this but there's going to be all sorts of things going on with swamp and Forest and Stones getting in the way and the Steep slops you've got to get through and that's the case but that's the case with any system that doesn't make it unique to this one absolutely okay now the rig is ready for a final run nearly 13 tons heavier than some sarson at Stonehenge about a third the weight of The Monument's largest Stones there it [Music] goes keep it going keep it going keep it going uh-oh stop what happened did you something just it just sort of went down and I think it went down I don't know where it went down picked them all up the woods bent now yeah but it worked I don't know about you but I was pleased with that I think we're done cuz we can't stay out here and get everybody Frozen the sky is clear for a few afterthoughts I'm not at all convinced I think it's too sophisticated we don't need that level of complex it to move Stonehenge the more complex you make it the more likely it is to go wrong I think a lot of times we think of people that live in simple cultures as we Define them don't have a science because it's not written down or it's not formulaic but these people's technology is their science I'm satisfied that my initial idea seems to work on a big scale so I'm just happy it's all gone the way it has because you don't know until you try for all we know the Builders of Stonehenge use techniques no modern researcher has yet imagined if only we could excavate the Neolithic [Music] mind back at the Riverside Parker Pearson and his team expand their trenches and expose more of that strange circular structure it appears to be the ditch and eroded Bank of a henge Ben we got a huge triangular Stone hole in that one in its Center they make a spectacular Discovery a ring of large holes recorded in a laser scan their shape and size point to one thing they probably held blue blue stones just like the ones now standing at Stonehenge this place was selected out as a special spot to build a stone circle and to do that with antler piix they had to dig a circle of holes and the hole in front of me they've created almost a nest of Flint nodules to form a base to support the stone coming in on top of it these Stones would have formed almost a mini Stone Henge without the lentils very close together standing some 3 m high in places the complete circle probably held 25 Stones the team names it Blue Stone Henge so when was it put up when was it taken down where did the stones go and we still starting to get some answers for those questions found in the stone holes a distinctive type of arrowe head suggests blue Stonehenge may have been built around 3,000 BC at the same time Stonehenge was first built as a ring of 56 blue stones the two monuments may have been linked from the start it may well be that these were set up together as two separate Stone circles one right by the river one up at the special Solstice place of Stonehenge itself so providing the two ends of a ceremonial route for people to move back and forwards but what happened to the blue stones by the river Parker Pearson believes they were moved to Stonehenge this probably happened around 2,500 BC when the giant sarsens were installed in the center of the monument but the blue stones still mattered they were pulled from the Aubrey holes and the Riverside and rearranged perhaps enshrined inside the sarson to the people who built and rebuilt Stonehenge what did the blue stones mean why were dozens gathered from these outcrops in whales at least 150 M away some of Britain's first farmers put down roots in Wales a thousand years before Stonehenge was created Parker Pearson believes their descendants brought the blue stones to Salsbury plane when you actually move a stone you're planted in your identity your very ancestry into the ground you're saying yes we used to come from over there but this is our place and these are the symbol that even our ancestors occupy this space so what I think we're seeing is that sense of transferring one's ancestors and ancestry in the form of stones and here we have this very expression of belonging around 2,500 BC Stonehenge became a monument like no other a symbol of everything the Stone Age could achieve but this is one of the last great monuments to be built in southern Britain it's the end of an era rather than the flowering of a huge powerful civilization it's something of a on Sun as Stonehenge reaches its peak something new is trickling into Britain copper gold and later bronze for people who Define their existence in terms of stone and wood metal change es nearly everything with metal comes a focus on personal wealth and [Music] status now the dead are laid to rest with their riches in individual burial mounts hundreds appear in the landscape around Stonehenge and the age of grand communal monuments comes to an end [Music] a symbol of Eternity Stonehenge was built to stand forever but in time the great Stone Circle was abandoned its age was eclipsed by a new technology a new way of being and that is a story as old as the Hills [Music] this Nova program is available on DVD at shop pbs.org or call 1800 play PBS [Music]