Lost Tombs Discovered and Revealed | Unearthed | Science Channel
Lost Tombs Discovered and Revealed | Unearthed | Science Channel
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0:06At Trelleborg, almost 900,000 cubic feet of
earth, stone and clay make up nearly a third
0:13of a mile of 56 foot thick earth ramparts.
0:19Just outside the walls lies a burial site
with over 100 skeletons, some in mass graves.
0:30Clues suggest that 16 Viking longhouses sit
behind heavily defended walls.
0:42So what exactly is Trelleborg and why was it
built?
0:49Trelleborg doesn't appear in any written
records.
0:53Archaeologists didn't even realize it was a
Viking structure until the 1930.
0:59It's really a fantastic and magnificent
monument.
1:03Triloba.
1:06And Christine Larsson is Trelleborgs
director.
1:12Until experts started digging here, it was
thought most Vikings only lived in small
1:17farms and villages.
1:20Tyler is a very unique site in many senses.
1:23It's nothing like the villages around
Trelleborg.
1:28Looks like a simple structure with ramparts
made of earth and piled stones.
1:35But archaeologists like Ann Christine can
tell from detailed surveys that Trelleborg is
1:42a masterpiece of advanced engineering.
1:45A geometrically perfect circle some 450ft
across, aligned to the compass.
1:53It's quite clever, actually.
1:57Tournament has four gates and they are
pointed to the compass, meaning that one is
2:02pointed to north, one to the south, one
east, one west.
2:07And Christine thinks Trelleborg showcases an
astonishing new level of sophistication in
2:12Viking architecture.
2:15Thousand years ago, when the Vikings built
this fortress, they put out the ramparts.
2:20Very accurate, completely circular.
2:23And it's amazing that today we actually need
this to do what the Vikings did without any
2:30equipment.
2:33A ring is the perfect shape for a fortress,
with a clear line of sight from every point
2:37on the wall. But Ann Christine suspects that
Trelleborgs precise geometry goes far beyond
2:43what's needed for defense.
2:45This was designed to display prestige and
power.
2:49So what exactly went on here?
2:52A clue might be hidden on the other side of
these ramparts.
2:58Outside the Vikings structure.
3:02Archaeologists have uncovered a grisly
surprise.
3:08157 skeletons in a major Viking cemetery.
3:15Buried with one of the bodies are the
remains of a massive battle ax adorned with
3:19intricate silver inlay.
3:21Its blade over a foot long.
3:24In its day, this would have been a valuable
and lethally effective weapon.
3:29But were all of the people buried here
Warriors?
3:33And can they reveal why Trelleborg was
built?
3:40Today, the hundreds of bone fragments
discovered at Trelleborg are locked away
3:45securely underground.
3:47Here at the University of Copenhagen,
forensic anthropologist Niels Lynnerup is
3:55trying to solve the mystery of what these
warriors were doing here.
3:59Having the bones really adds an extra
dimension to what we know about Trelleborg.
4:05The sheer number of bone fragments makes it
difficult to work out how many individuals
4:10were buried at Trelleborg.
4:13In this box here, for instance, is clear that
we have fragments of several of the limb
4:19bones, the long bones, and of the skull.
4:22Well, we really have only the mandible, see,
with a couple of teeth in.
4:28As he expects, most of the bones do appear to
belong to young warriors.
4:35There's very little abrasion on the third
molar, which erupted when you're 18 at
4:40Trelleborg. We find more young males than we
would do in, let's say, more ordinary village
4:48cemetery.
4:50But what really shocks Nils are some of the
other skeletons buried with these fighters?
4:58Surprisingly, even though we have a lot of
young males.
5:03This is an old individual which can be seen
again from the mandible.
5:07This is probably an old female, maybe 4050
years of age.
5:12So why was a woman considered elderly for the
time, living alongside a force of Viking
5:18soldiers? Nils believes she was part of an
army of workers who supported the young
5:22warriors. Inside Trelleborg.
5:28Archaeologists found parts of a loom,
revealing that skilled female weavers made
5:33cloth for tunics and cloaks.
5:38The people here also smelted raw materials
into pure metals.
5:48Anvils found within Trelleborg reveal
blacksmiths repaired weapons and forged new
5:54ones. This was a hugely sophisticated
fortress, one of the most impressive in
6:01northern Europe, built with incredible
precision on an extraordinary scale.
6:10The Vikings traditional way of life was
raiding and fighting before returning home to
6:15tend to their farms.
6:17But these Vikings appear to be a garrison
stationed inside a permanent military base.
6:24Probably be compared a bit to Roman camps in
England.
6:28So again, I think it reflects sort of a
military encampment where an army has been
6:34stationed for some time.
6:401500 years ago, the Roman Empire was falling
apart.
6:45Fierce tribes invaded, led by warriors like
Attila the Hun.
6:53Why was Rome unable to stop them?
6:57What had happened to this superpower of the
ancient world?
7:01The German city of Trier that was once an
important Roman settlement could hold the
7:07answers. Dr.
7:11Markus Reuter is head of Trier's team of
archaeologists, scientists and historians.
7:18He wants to find out what was making Roman
life here crumble.
7:24We do not know exactly how tria collapsed.
7:28It is a great mystery what happened to the
city.
7:31There are more questions than answers.
7:37Markus's team investigates a 10,000 square
foot area north of the city, a Roman burial
7:43ground. Could it hold a clue to the fate of
Trier's last Roman citizens?
7:51Hidden beneath the modern city.
7:54The dense clay soil is perfect for
preserving bones.
7:59Digging down more than ten feet below the
surface.
8:03Reveals layer after layer of human remains.
8:10Each Roman household buried their dead in a
tightly arranged plot, often alongside a
8:15selection of coins, pottery and jewellery.
8:20The dead are crammed into a 3D jigsaw
puzzle.
8:26So how many people were living in Trier when
the barbarians attacked?
8:30And when did they all die?
8:34It's fantastic for me and for my colleagues
to work here.
8:39Every day we find new objects, graves and
something more.
8:46Marcus joins the team on their 12th
excavation north of the city wall.
8:51Each dig reveals hundreds of bodies.
8:55The colleagues find about 150 graves in this
part, but it's only a small piece of a much
9:02larger cemetery with thousands of graves.
9:06The overall size of the cemetery is
staggering.
9:10Marcus discovers that Trier, in its Roman
heyday, was a crowded metropolis.
9:18But in the five hundreds, after the age of
Attila, it was a shadow of its former self.
9:25In Roman times, there were about 80,000
inhabitants in Trier.
9:29But in medieval times there were only about
5000 inhabitants.
9:35So was a series of bloody attacks responsible
for this dramatic decline.
9:40Or was something else behind the fall in the
city's fortunes?
9:47Trier thrived for over 400 years, sitting
near the frontier of the Roman Empire.
9:54It bordered lands occupied by fierce
barbarian tribes.
10:00Ancient historians say that Roman Trier
suffered assaults from these barbarians time
10:06and time again.
10:10One of the most devastating attacks in this
area was in 451 AD, when Attila's Huns
10:16rampaged across Europe.
10:20But is the decrease in population really
related to repeated invasions by hostile
10:26tribes? To find out.
10:30Marcus needs to work out exactly when the
population fell.
10:35And if it corresponds with the time of the
invasion.
10:39The burial plots are incredibly dense.
10:43This makes it difficult to know which bones
belong to which century.
10:48The key to dating these remains is not the
bodies themselves, but all the items buried
10:53with them. The team uses the grave goods to
date each burial.
10:58This helps them build up an image of how
many people died in each century.
11:03It's a great problem to deal with the
enormous finds.
11:08We have much more excavations inside and
outside the city, and there are hundreds,
11:13thousands of objects of pottery, of coins,
of stones and.
11:19Much more.
11:22The dig team sends all their finds here.
11:27Trier's cavernous storage depots.
11:31Every single item, human remains or grave
goods is categorized and boxed up, ready for
11:38further analysis.
11:40All these boxes come from one excavation.
11:43Last year it was a small area, but we found
over 350 Roman graves.
11:52Sifting through the fines is a mammoth task.
11:56But Marcus makes an incredible discovery.
12:00Trier's population seemed to simply
disappear.
12:03About 100 years before Attila was even born.
12:08Most of them are dating in the first and the
second century AD, some of them are dating in
12:14the third century AD.
12:16So where are the fourth and fifth century
people?
12:19We don't know.
12:20It's a great mystery and we're still looking
for these people.
12:28Archaeologists have now pieced together some
of the biggest mysteries of the Spanish
12:33conquest of Peru, revealing how fewer than
200 conquistadors brought down an empire and
12:40made it their own.
12:42The Spanish thought that their civilization
was better than that of the Incas, and so
12:48they wanted to impose it right on top of the
Inca civilization.
12:52But there's one final missing piece of the
puzzle.
12:55What happened to the Incas themselves?
12:58Why did they seem to disappear?
13:02Now a sensational discovery high in the
Andes could reveal the answers.
13:10In 1985, on the fringes of the Inca Empire
in the Aconcagua mountains, hikers discovered
13:17the remains of a mummified boy.
13:22They found him in a semicircular stone
structure.
13:27Wrapped in Inca textiles and surrounded by
offerings to the gods.
13:32Forensics suggest the boy was the victim of
an Inca ritual sacrifice.
13:37Taken up the mountain, drugged and killed
with a blow to the head.
13:43The boy's body was so well preserved that
over 500 years later, his DNA is still
13:49intact. The Aconcagua boy was an Inca born
near Cusco.
14:00Geneticist Antonio Salas thinks his
mummified body could hold the secrets of what
14:05happened to all the Incas after the
conquest.
14:13Antonio tests a DNA sample taken from the
boy's corpse.
14:18We are analyzing.
14:20The DNA from the mummy, and we are comparing
the profile of this mummy with the profile of
14:27the populations living in South America.
14:30Antonio's team expects to find people in
South America still carrying traces of the
14:35Incas genetic profile.
14:39But he makes a shocking discovery.
14:43Almost nobody at all carries it.
14:46It's as if the Incas simply vanished.
14:50We see a continuous population growth till
the arrival of Europeans.
14:56And from this point there was a population
decline.
15:02Antonio's investigations suggests the Spanish
didn't just take over the Inca's empire, but
15:07also wiped out thousands of Inca families.
15:12Did the invaders commit genocide?
15:16The population decline of the Incas could be
due to military conflicts, but also because
15:24they married with Europeans.
15:27So what you observe is that the DNA was
diluted.
15:32But could something else have played an even
bigger role in the decline of the Incas?
15:37When they stepped off their boats, the
Spanish brought with them an invisible killer
15:42a completely new set of diseases, including
the lethal smallpox.
15:49Their immunity system were not prepared for
to fight against these germs.
15:55The arrival of the Europeans was very
tragic.
15:58For Incas.
16:00For the indigenous people.
16:02Disease was a time bomb.
16:04We know that even today in the Amazon region,
the populations suffer from the impact of
16:13diseases when they enter in contact with
people coming from other regions.
16:23With no natural resistance.
16:25European illnesses swept through the
empire's population like wildfire, killing
16:30millions. War, intermarriage and deadly
germs destroyed the last great pre-Hispanic
16:36civilization of the Andes, the Incas.
16:40When the Spanish conquered Peru, the Inca
Empire was completely dismembered.
16:44Essentially, what was going on was a massive
and thorough looting operation, which was
16:49literally obliterating virtually everything
they'd done.
16:54Today, the Incas huge buildings have nearly
all vanished.
16:58But visitors still marvel at the fragments
that are left.
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