0:00:13 > 0:00:16I've always felt at home in the past.
0:00:17 > 0:00:23For after all, what is the present except an endless chain of memories?
0:00:25 > 0:00:28Some of them are translated into stone.
0:00:30 > 0:00:34We are all the inheritors of those memories,
0:00:34 > 0:00:37and we look after them as best we can.
0:00:43 > 0:00:49All this so we can pass on their revelation to the future.
0:00:55 > 0:00:58But every so often something comes along
0:00:58 > 0:01:01to shake them from our grip.
0:01:13 > 0:01:16In Mosul, in a matter of hours,
0:01:16 > 0:01:20the forces of Isis destroyed the work of centuries.
0:01:20 > 0:01:24And when they took the ancient trading city of Palmyra
0:01:24 > 0:01:28where the cultures of Greeks, Romans, Persians, Arabs and Jews
0:01:28 > 0:01:30have mixed and merged,
0:01:30 > 0:01:33it was feared that exactly the same would happen.
0:01:46 > 0:01:50Here in Geneva, a few Palmyrene artefacts have been saved -
0:01:50 > 0:01:53stolen before the violence began,
0:01:53 > 0:01:58arrested at customs as black marketeers tried to sell them.
0:01:59 > 0:02:02Like this bust of a priest.
0:02:05 > 0:02:08His eyes wide open, he seems not dead at all,
0:02:08 > 0:02:11just translated to a life elsewhere.
0:02:14 > 0:02:19These lovingly carved likenesses of the dead looted from their tombs
0:02:19 > 0:02:23ended up in exile, but safe for posterity.
0:02:24 > 0:02:28Saving the art that remained in Palmyra, however,
0:02:28 > 0:02:31could come at a terrible price.
0:02:31 > 0:02:35Khaled al-Asaad, the chief curator of Palmyra,
0:02:35 > 0:02:37was 81 when Isis took the town.
0:02:39 > 0:02:41And when their soldiers demanded he tell them
0:02:41 > 0:02:46where the city's artworks had been hidden, he refused.
0:02:49 > 0:02:53They beheaded him in the Roman theatre,
0:02:53 > 0:02:56suspended his mutilated body from a traffic light,
0:02:56 > 0:02:59placed his head between his feet...
0:03:01 > 0:03:07..and attached a placard identifying him as director of idolatry.
0:03:08 > 0:03:12Or we might say protector of what needs to be saved,
0:03:12 > 0:03:17cherished, passed on as the work of civilisation.
0:03:19 > 0:03:23A lot of us spend our days talking about art.
0:03:23 > 0:03:28I doubt very many of us are prepared to lay down our lives for it,
0:03:28 > 0:03:33but for Khaled al-Asaad, the stones and statues and columns of Palmyra
0:03:33 > 0:03:37were more than simply an ensemble of antiquity.
0:03:37 > 0:03:41He didn't need a Unesco certificate to tell him
0:03:41 > 0:03:48that the significance of Palmyra was at once both local and universal.
0:03:48 > 0:03:52It's there for believers and unbelievers, for East and West,
0:03:52 > 0:03:55and somehow it had fallen to him
0:03:55 > 0:03:59to be the guardian of that inheritance.
0:03:59 > 0:04:03We can spend a lot of time debating what civilisation is or isn't,
0:04:03 > 0:04:09but when it's opposite shows up in all its brutality and cruelty
0:04:09 > 0:04:12and intolerance and lust for destruction,
0:04:12 > 0:04:14we know what civilisation is.
0:04:14 > 0:04:18We know it from the shock of its imminent loss
0:04:18 > 0:04:22as a mutilation on the body of our humanity.
0:04:30 > 0:04:35The record of human history brims over with the rage to destroy.
0:04:37 > 0:04:41But it's also imprinted with the opposite instinct -
0:04:41 > 0:04:47to make things that go beyond the demands of food and shelter,
0:04:47 > 0:04:50things that make us see the world and our place in it
0:04:50 > 0:04:53in a different light.
0:04:53 > 0:04:56We are the art-making animal,
0:04:56 > 0:04:59and this is what we have made.
0:05:42 > 0:05:45When did it begin,
0:05:45 > 0:05:48that second moment of creation,
0:05:48 > 0:05:51the dawning of human creativity?
0:05:52 > 0:05:54Where did it begin?
0:05:58 > 0:06:01It must have started in Africa
0:06:01 > 0:06:05where Homo sapiens first evolved about 200,000 years ago.
0:06:07 > 0:06:10On South Africa's Cape Coast,
0:06:10 > 0:06:13archaeologists have found evidence of human habitation
0:06:13 > 0:06:17stretching back around 100,000 years.
0:06:21 > 0:06:24In one of those caves, this was discovered.
0:06:24 > 0:06:2777,000 years old,
0:06:27 > 0:06:32a piece of red ochre, a mineral naturally rich in iron,
0:06:32 > 0:06:35etched in a diamond pattern.
0:06:35 > 0:06:39The oldest deliberately decorative marks ever discovered.
0:06:41 > 0:06:43The pattern may have been a kind of language
0:06:43 > 0:06:46or a kind of number scoring,
0:06:46 > 0:06:50but it's hard to see them as serving any functional need
0:06:50 > 0:06:52connected with shelter or sustenance.
0:06:54 > 0:06:57They are a design,
0:06:57 > 0:07:01and design announces the beginning of culture.
0:07:07 > 0:07:11Another 40,000 years pass and in northern Spain
0:07:11 > 0:07:16within a hill so uncannily conical it seems man-made
0:07:16 > 0:07:20that mineral, that red ochre, has become paint.
0:07:25 > 0:07:27Deep inside a cave,
0:07:27 > 0:07:33rudimentary marks have bloomed and multiplied, red circles.
0:07:33 > 0:07:37There are no brushes, no sticks to lay on this paint,
0:07:37 > 0:07:39they are all applied orally -
0:07:39 > 0:07:42colour swilled in the mouth with saliva
0:07:42 > 0:07:45and blown directly onto the rock.
0:07:50 > 0:07:52And then these,
0:07:52 > 0:07:58an eruption of design not blown onto the surface, but painted.
0:08:00 > 0:08:06Contours, outlines, flowing streams of dots.
0:08:07 > 0:08:10There's a meaning here, but we don't know what it is.
0:08:10 > 0:08:15The signs of a biological compulsion to pattern,
0:08:15 > 0:08:18it's what we humans do,
0:08:18 > 0:08:19what we want to do,
0:08:19 > 0:08:22what we can't stop ourselves doing.
0:08:34 > 0:08:37And then you come across this.
0:08:38 > 0:08:43And in an instant, vast millennia of time just collapse
0:08:43 > 0:08:45and you're in the midst of fellow humans.
0:08:45 > 0:08:48Their hands doing what hands do,
0:08:48 > 0:08:51signalling from a very long way off,
0:08:51 > 0:08:5637,000 years distant, in fact.
0:08:56 > 0:09:00But this long-distance greeting somehow makes us bond
0:09:00 > 0:09:07with the makers of this because they establish a presence
0:09:07 > 0:09:10that is palpably alive.
0:09:14 > 0:09:18Astonishingly, hand stencils like these have been found in caves
0:09:18 > 0:09:22as far apart as Indonesia and Patagonia.
0:09:22 > 0:09:28Wherever we went, it seems the urge to signal a presence went with us.
0:09:30 > 0:09:33And, undeniably, these hand stencils do
0:09:33 > 0:09:38what nearly all art that would follow would aspire to.
0:09:38 > 0:09:41First, they want to be seen by others,
0:09:41 > 0:09:45and then they want to endure beyond the life of the maker.
0:09:49 > 0:09:51Like the earliest photographs,
0:09:51 > 0:09:55the images here are faded, indistinct,
0:09:55 > 0:09:58but something tantalising is happening -
0:09:58 > 0:10:03the realisation that we can, however crudely, represent.
0:10:07 > 0:10:10In another cave further west in Asturias,
0:10:10 > 0:10:1320 minutes walk away from any daylight,
0:10:13 > 0:10:17are images that are anything but crude.
0:10:29 > 0:10:33This was a doubling of the world, a life copy,
0:10:33 > 0:10:38and executed with startling precision of drawing technique.
0:10:38 > 0:10:40They even understood modelling,
0:10:40 > 0:10:45anatomical features following the rock wall surface of the cave.
0:10:45 > 0:10:47And there were many colours,
0:10:47 > 0:10:51not just the ubiquitous red ochre, but violets and blacks.
0:10:51 > 0:10:55And all those techniques seem to have been there from the beginning,
0:10:55 > 0:10:59tens of thousands of years ago.
0:10:59 > 0:11:02When you think about this technique, your head just spins
0:11:02 > 0:11:07because it has to have been, above all, a memory exercise.
0:11:07 > 0:11:13They would have had to fix in their mind exact anatomical details
0:11:13 > 0:11:18and then transpose them here on the surface of the cave.
0:11:18 > 0:11:20And, yet, when all that was done,
0:11:20 > 0:11:27they managed to preserve miraculously this animal vitality.
0:11:27 > 0:11:30This is truly one of the great marvels
0:11:30 > 0:11:34of the suddenly expanded human mind.
0:11:39 > 0:11:42It was in the later years of the 19th century
0:11:42 > 0:11:46that images like these began to be discovered.
0:11:46 > 0:11:49The first, and for many years the most famous,
0:11:49 > 0:11:54were in the caves of Altamira, also in northern Spain.
0:11:59 > 0:12:03Extraordinary paintings of bison, herds of them,
0:12:03 > 0:12:08sleeping, lying, standing.
0:12:15 > 0:12:18But as the number of painted caves discovered grew,
0:12:18 > 0:12:23it became clear that art and music came into the world together,
0:12:23 > 0:12:25for musical instruments were found.
0:12:25 > 0:12:28BLOWS HORN
0:12:28 > 0:12:29Animal horns...
0:12:29 > 0:12:31FLUTE WHISTLES
0:12:31 > 0:12:35..flutes made from bones of vultures,
0:12:35 > 0:12:40and even more hauntingly, bullroarers,
0:12:40 > 0:12:43a piece of wood tied to a rope spun round the head
0:12:43 > 0:12:47that makes this strange whooping sound.
0:12:47 > 0:12:50BULLROARERS WHOOSHES
0:12:52 > 0:12:55Recent experiments with these instruments have suggested
0:12:55 > 0:13:00that the proximity of painting and music was not accidental,
0:13:00 > 0:13:05that they were connected elements in sacred rituals.
0:13:06 > 0:13:11I'm using software to test the acoustics in the space.
0:13:11 > 0:13:14So we generate this swept sine wave
0:13:14 > 0:13:18and we use that to capture the acoustic of the cave.
0:13:18 > 0:13:24And we can look for relationships between sound and paintings.
0:13:24 > 0:13:27WHISTLING
0:13:32 > 0:13:36So the earliest paintings seem to be in these small little side areas
0:13:36 > 0:13:39where maybe one person might be there alone.
0:13:39 > 0:13:45And then the later paintings seem to be in more grand places,
0:13:45 > 0:13:48a venue where a few people would have gathered,
0:13:48 > 0:13:50somewhere more dramatic that sounds more dramatic.
0:13:50 > 0:13:52BULLROARER WHIRS
0:13:57 > 0:14:02You can compare these spaces to a cathedral or a temple.
0:14:02 > 0:14:06They're places where people came for sacred moments
0:14:06 > 0:14:14which were full of imagery and ritual and music.
0:14:14 > 0:14:17FLUTE WHISTLES
0:14:19 > 0:14:24And it's like going into a place that's kind of underground,
0:14:24 > 0:14:26where you can stop time,
0:14:26 > 0:14:31where you can pause and have that special moment
0:14:31 > 0:14:34where you're out of time, where you're somewhere else.
0:14:36 > 0:14:38Painting is the sound.
0:14:38 > 0:14:40The sound making, the music-making,
0:14:40 > 0:14:44whatever was happening in this sacred ritual,
0:14:44 > 0:14:46that is the painting.
0:14:46 > 0:14:49The painting is what's left of that activity.
0:15:06 > 0:15:09Anthropologists and archaeologists tell us
0:15:09 > 0:15:12that almost all of ice-age painting
0:15:12 > 0:15:16had some sort of otherworldly ritual function,
0:15:16 > 0:15:19and that, therefore, it ought not to be seen as art.
0:15:19 > 0:15:23Though, of course, religion has been a primary purpose of art
0:15:23 > 0:15:25for thousands of years.
0:15:34 > 0:15:39In Africa, the animals that dominate European cave paintings
0:15:39 > 0:15:41are accompanied by humans.
0:15:44 > 0:15:49They appear as stylised, elongated figures.
0:15:53 > 0:15:59Sometimes they're shown while becoming transformed into beasts.
0:15:59 > 0:16:02Men with the heads of antelopes,
0:16:02 > 0:16:05creatures that could never have been observed from life,
0:16:05 > 0:16:11but which arose from the trance-struck imagination of the shamans.
0:16:12 > 0:16:17In the rock art of Africa, these hybrids were painted.
0:16:17 > 0:16:20In Europe, where there were far fewer of them,
0:16:20 > 0:16:22they went three-dimensional.
0:16:25 > 0:16:29In 1939, the fragments of this lion-man,
0:16:29 > 0:16:35carved from mammoth ivory, were found in a German cave.
0:16:35 > 0:16:38They remained an unsolved puzzle for 30 years
0:16:38 > 0:16:43before archaeologists realised that they formed a single figure
0:16:43 > 0:16:48made between 35,000 and 40,000 years ago.
0:16:49 > 0:16:53This may be a shaman in the middle of a transformation.
0:16:53 > 0:16:57It may be the very first of the beast gods,
0:16:57 > 0:17:02around which Pagan religions would build their mythologies.
0:17:02 > 0:17:07Perhaps the making of such things was itself a sacred calling.
0:17:08 > 0:17:11To see how much work was needed to make a lion-man,
0:17:11 > 0:17:17archaeologist Wulf Hein embarked on an experiment to carve a replica
0:17:17 > 0:17:20using authentic tools and materials.
0:17:20 > 0:17:22Without a mammoth tusk,
0:17:22 > 0:17:26he used a piece of legally sourced elephant ivory.
0:17:26 > 0:17:30I started working from the whole tusk
0:17:30 > 0:17:33and then I took a big stone and hammered away this piece,
0:17:33 > 0:17:35and I was sweating like hell
0:17:35 > 0:17:38because if I would have ruined it, it would be a disaster.
0:17:38 > 0:17:41And the most time-consuming part of the work
0:17:41 > 0:17:44was setting free the arms
0:17:44 > 0:17:46because I had to take a very tiny tool
0:17:46 > 0:17:50and make grooves like this underneath, into the ivory,
0:17:50 > 0:17:52and just scratch and scratch and days and days
0:17:52 > 0:17:53and working and working.
0:17:53 > 0:17:56I had blisters on my hands, and every finger was aching.
0:17:56 > 0:18:00It was very heavy work.
0:18:00 > 0:18:03I started in April
0:18:03 > 0:18:07and I stopped working in the middle of July.
0:18:08 > 0:18:12I worked about four, five hours a day.
0:18:12 > 0:18:16In the end, it was about 400 hours, then I stopped counting.
0:18:16 > 0:18:20I guess it was a real artist who made this.
0:18:20 > 0:18:24And he was set free by his community only to do this piece of artwork.
0:18:24 > 0:18:27If you do this a whole summer or a whole winter through,
0:18:27 > 0:18:29you can't go hunting, you can't go fishing, you can't do nothing
0:18:29 > 0:18:32because you work all day on it.
0:18:32 > 0:18:36It must have had incredible meaning for the people who made it.
0:18:40 > 0:18:44And these must have been charged with meaning too.
0:18:44 > 0:18:49Small figurines embodying the primal life events
0:18:49 > 0:18:52of birth and procreation.
0:18:52 > 0:18:56Gravid earth mothers weighty with fertility,
0:18:56 > 0:19:01enormous distended breasts and buttocks.
0:19:01 > 0:19:05So powerfully elemental they seemed to speak directly
0:19:05 > 0:19:09to modern artists when they first saw them.
0:19:09 > 0:19:12The most self-consciously modern of them all, Picasso,
0:19:12 > 0:19:16told a friend that no sculptor had ever bettered
0:19:16 > 0:19:18the Palaeolithic carvers.
0:19:18 > 0:19:22He bought a copy of this one, Venus of Lespugue,
0:19:22 > 0:19:27and kept it in his studio all his life.
0:19:27 > 0:19:32Was he touched by its archaic spirituality?
0:19:32 > 0:19:34No.
0:19:34 > 0:19:37He was earthly and worldly,
0:19:37 > 0:19:43but he felt a deep communion with the makers of a physical art.
0:19:43 > 0:19:47And there were traces of that communion elsewhere in his work.
0:19:49 > 0:19:52Despite rumours, there's no direct evidence
0:19:52 > 0:19:56that Picasso ever visited the painted caves of Altamira
0:19:56 > 0:20:01or saw in person the extraordinary painted bison
0:20:01 > 0:20:03that those caves contained.
0:20:04 > 0:20:07But he was obsessed with animals,
0:20:07 > 0:20:09one animal in particular,
0:20:09 > 0:20:11not the bison, but it's cousin, the bull,
0:20:11 > 0:20:15an animal to which he returned again and again.
0:20:18 > 0:20:22Do we think this is mere coincidence?
0:20:23 > 0:20:27He liked to call himself a modern primitive,
0:20:27 > 0:20:30and in those images, glimmering images in the caves,
0:20:30 > 0:20:33he found, he thought, a fountainhead
0:20:33 > 0:20:36of everything that was truly creative
0:20:36 > 0:20:38about the artistic instinct.
0:20:38 > 0:20:42So he paid cave art the ultimate compliment
0:20:42 > 0:20:44by doing something very similar.
0:20:44 > 0:20:46He looked at a bull
0:20:46 > 0:20:51and then he produced this beautiful, dashing, impulsive picture of a bull
0:20:51 > 0:20:55so close to the original in Altamira,
0:20:55 > 0:20:58it could even have been a studious copy.
0:21:00 > 0:21:03But then he produced another ten prints,
0:21:03 > 0:21:07bulls drawn from his own enormous range of styles,
0:21:07 > 0:21:10from meaty naturalism
0:21:10 > 0:21:12through classical Cubism
0:21:12 > 0:21:18to a lightly delineated bull that's really just a pair of horns
0:21:18 > 0:21:21and then that other thing that bulls always need.
0:21:23 > 0:21:26The entire sequence expresses his admiration
0:21:26 > 0:21:29for the genius of the cave painters,
0:21:29 > 0:21:31his belief that ancient or modern,
0:21:31 > 0:21:37the hand of the painter, the hand of the artist, never really changes.
0:21:37 > 0:21:41And I have to say, I agree with Picasso.
0:21:52 > 0:21:55We can walk into rooms like this one
0:21:55 > 0:22:00which preserve the 19th century style of museum presentation -
0:22:00 > 0:22:02abundance.
0:22:05 > 0:22:08And as we wander through case after case,
0:22:08 > 0:22:13not just of minute fashioning tools, but ivory and bone,
0:22:13 > 0:22:16decorated with startling images of birds and horses,
0:22:16 > 0:22:20we can't avoid pushing back instinctively
0:22:20 > 0:22:23against the received wisdom of the scholars
0:22:23 > 0:22:27that none of these things should ever be thought of as art.
0:22:29 > 0:22:33For me, the last word in this entire debate
0:22:33 > 0:22:37belongs to one tiny ancient piece in particular...
0:22:40 > 0:22:43..La Dame de Brassempouy.
0:22:43 > 0:22:45The lady of Brassempouy,
0:22:45 > 0:22:49found in a cave in south-west France in 1892.
0:22:49 > 0:22:55She's between 22,000 and 25,000 years old.
0:22:58 > 0:23:03With this intensively carved female head,
0:23:03 > 0:23:05we have, for the first time,
0:23:05 > 0:23:09something immensely and movingly momentous.
0:23:09 > 0:23:14We have the revelation of the human face.
0:23:14 > 0:23:20It's a tiny thing, it can just go in the palm of your hand.
0:23:20 > 0:23:22This is exquisite.
0:23:22 > 0:23:24There are downward strokes and sideward strokes
0:23:24 > 0:23:29there is carving and gouging and polishing and scraping.
0:23:29 > 0:23:33Every kind of extraordinary craft is applied
0:23:33 > 0:23:37to give this face what we have to say is its personality.
0:23:37 > 0:23:43One example, a dig is made below the forehead
0:23:43 > 0:23:46to suggest the presence of eyes.
0:23:47 > 0:23:51Those eyes are hauntingly vivid.
0:23:51 > 0:23:55They only become eyes when a shadow falls
0:23:55 > 0:23:57over that passage in the head.
0:23:57 > 0:24:00So this little piece would have been turned into the light
0:24:00 > 0:24:03and as it was turned into the light, the shadow would have fallen
0:24:03 > 0:24:07and suddenly we have eyes as well as that beautiful nose
0:24:07 > 0:24:11and this extraordinary hair falling down the nape of the neck.
0:24:13 > 0:24:18Now we are not supposed to say, us amateurs in this field,
0:24:18 > 0:24:21we're not supposed to talk about art,
0:24:21 > 0:24:23we're not supposed to talk about things like
0:24:23 > 0:24:27the birth of a refined sensibility.
0:24:27 > 0:24:29I'm going to do that nonetheless.
0:24:29 > 0:24:32I don't care how anachronistic it is.
0:24:32 > 0:24:35With this tiny piece from Brassempouy,
0:24:35 > 0:24:40it seems to me that we have, right in front of us,
0:24:40 > 0:24:43the dawn of the idea of beauty.
0:24:47 > 0:24:50But beauty is hard to eat.
0:24:53 > 0:24:57The slow growth of civilisations depended, at first,
0:24:57 > 0:24:59on practicalities -
0:24:59 > 0:25:02the domestication of animals and cereal crops.
0:25:04 > 0:25:06The most ancient wheats were harvested
0:25:06 > 0:25:11on sites near the River Jordan about 10,000 years ago.
0:25:14 > 0:25:17Civilisations started small,
0:25:17 > 0:25:20it depended on the invention of needful things -
0:25:20 > 0:25:24pottery vessels for cooking, eating and storage.
0:25:26 > 0:25:30Excavations in Iraq in the 1920s and '30s
0:25:30 > 0:25:34began to reveal how intensive irrigation of the planes
0:25:34 > 0:25:37between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates had allowed
0:25:37 > 0:25:40the world's first true cities to arise.
0:25:41 > 0:25:44By about 5,000 years ago,
0:25:44 > 0:25:49cities with tens of thousands of inhabitants, such as Ur and Uruk,
0:25:49 > 0:25:55were producing art that reflected the self-image of the powerful.
0:25:55 > 0:25:57Here is the Standard of Ur
0:25:57 > 0:25:59where mosaic inlaid in bitumen
0:25:59 > 0:26:03showed the scenes that mattered most.
0:26:05 > 0:26:07Soldiers march,
0:26:07 > 0:26:10war wagons roll,
0:26:10 > 0:26:13and on the reverse, a court convenes
0:26:13 > 0:26:17with the king depicted larger than his priests and courtiers,
0:26:17 > 0:26:22ranged below the catering classes, the toilers and hewers.
0:26:22 > 0:26:25It's a complete social world,
0:26:25 > 0:26:28and it came with writing.
0:26:28 > 0:26:32These scripts usually recorded administrative matters,
0:26:32 > 0:26:37but sometimes told the stories of heroes and deities.
0:26:37 > 0:26:43And animals continue to provide the models for gods and monsters.
0:26:45 > 0:26:51This gorgeous goat, also from Ur, drew materials from far and wide.
0:26:51 > 0:26:54White shells were from the Red Sea,
0:26:54 > 0:26:58the blue lapis lazuli from far Afghanistan,
0:26:58 > 0:27:02and the gold leaf was the work of local goldsmiths.
0:27:05 > 0:27:09Around 4,500 years ago,
0:27:09 > 0:27:11in the islands of the Eastern Mediterranean,
0:27:11 > 0:27:18migrants from Western Asia seeded Europe's first great civilisation,
0:27:18 > 0:27:21the culture of the Minoans.
0:27:23 > 0:27:29Its ruins are everywhere on Crete and on the islands of the Aegean.
0:27:30 > 0:27:33This must have been a fishing village.
0:27:33 > 0:27:35You can almost hear the bustle.
0:27:38 > 0:27:42Protected by the sea on two sides, but closely packed.
0:27:42 > 0:27:45So even here people will have had to learn the skills
0:27:45 > 0:27:48that any fixed settlement requires -
0:27:48 > 0:27:51how to be neighbourly.
0:27:53 > 0:27:58But there's more to civilisation than keeping neighbours happy.
0:28:01 > 0:28:07On Crete itself, we find the ruins of large towns
0:28:07 > 0:28:09where the streets still thread their way,
0:28:09 > 0:28:12opening onto grandiose plazas,
0:28:12 > 0:28:16spaces for ceremony and pomp,
0:28:16 > 0:28:18for ritual and for politics.
0:28:22 > 0:28:27Minoan cultural style spread across the Aegean Sea
0:28:27 > 0:28:29to islands like Santorini.
0:28:33 > 0:28:38A volcanic eruption destroyed the port city of Akrotiri
0:28:38 > 0:28:42in around 1627 BCE,
0:28:42 > 0:28:45but the ash preserved the murals found here
0:28:45 > 0:28:48in all their vivid realism.
0:28:50 > 0:28:54They raised the ghost of a seagoing civilisation,
0:28:54 > 0:28:56a clear ancestor of our own
0:28:56 > 0:29:00with its clamour and glamour, its commercial pulse.
0:29:04 > 0:29:07These passengers aren't going to the afterlife,
0:29:07 > 0:29:11they're on ferries and festive excursions.
0:29:12 > 0:29:14And on the land behind them, there are streets
0:29:14 > 0:29:17with multistorey houses,
0:29:17 > 0:29:20and in the richer of them, decorative paintings
0:29:20 > 0:29:25of the kind consumers would want for ever after.
0:29:25 > 0:29:32This is the first truly social art the world had seen.
0:29:32 > 0:29:35Here are beautiful youths duking it out.
0:29:36 > 0:29:39Here are saffron gatherers.
0:29:40 > 0:29:43Here are swallows.
0:29:43 > 0:29:47A perpetual springtime brought into the living room.
0:29:51 > 0:29:57One contact sport dominated Minoan culture - bull leaping.
0:29:57 > 0:30:02Young men, possibly women too, back flipping over charging bulls.
0:30:03 > 0:30:06It's long been argued that this was too dangerous
0:30:06 > 0:30:08to have actually happened,
0:30:08 > 0:30:11that the art captures a myth, a fantasy.
0:30:13 > 0:30:15And yet in the British Museum,
0:30:15 > 0:30:17there's a little bronze sculpture
0:30:17 > 0:30:23that's pulsing with a natural energy that feels absolutely true to life.
0:30:27 > 0:30:32What strikes me as being physically real
0:30:32 > 0:30:35is the fact that this is not a stylised piece of work at all.
0:30:35 > 0:30:37It has physical immediacy.
0:30:37 > 0:30:40Even though our jumper has lost his legs,
0:30:40 > 0:30:44his back is braced, his head is flung back.
0:30:44 > 0:30:49And the bull, the bull is indeed a bull in full charge -
0:30:49 > 0:30:51front and back legs tensed.
0:30:51 > 0:30:56The eyes, and you can actually see the eyes, are blazing,
0:30:56 > 0:31:00and the muzzle is snorting with dangerous foam.
0:31:04 > 0:31:07Around the 15th century BCE,
0:31:07 > 0:31:13Minoan culture was producing myriad tiny masterpieces.
0:31:13 > 0:31:16Seal stones to be pressed into soft wax
0:31:16 > 0:31:19or worn as micro art.
0:31:19 > 0:31:25Gold rings, sometimes decorated with goddesses or their priestesses,
0:31:25 > 0:31:30bare-breasted, wasp-waisted with flaring skirts.
0:31:31 > 0:31:36Minoan art was irresistibly attractive to a raw rising power
0:31:36 > 0:31:38on the Greek mainland.
0:31:39 > 0:31:43Here was a culture that wanted to clothe its belligerence
0:31:43 > 0:31:49in sophistication that would play a vital role in European history -
0:31:49 > 0:31:51the Mycenaeans.
0:31:55 > 0:32:00In 2015, American archaeologists were digging in western Greece,
0:32:00 > 0:32:05and here, far from Crete, they made the most significant discovery
0:32:05 > 0:32:09of Minoan artefacts for many, many years.
0:32:11 > 0:32:17They found the grave of a warrior buried around the year 1450 BCE.
0:32:20 > 0:32:25Here we are in the grave to look at our body today.
0:32:26 > 0:32:29It was the body of a Mycenaean.
0:32:33 > 0:32:35Pretty amazing.
0:32:35 > 0:32:41Yet almost all the objects found with the body were clearly Minoan.
0:32:41 > 0:32:43This is our third gold ring.
0:32:47 > 0:32:52Four solid gold rings were eventually found in the grave.
0:32:55 > 0:32:57They're just exquisite, actually.
0:32:57 > 0:33:01The craftsmanship on all of them is stunning.
0:33:01 > 0:33:03And they all have their own story to tell.
0:33:03 > 0:33:05They're very much like the iconography
0:33:05 > 0:33:07that you find in Minoan Crete.
0:33:07 > 0:33:10I think that's a really important lesson to learn
0:33:10 > 0:33:13- about how civilisations evolve. - Yeah.
0:33:13 > 0:33:19That civilisations are constantly borrowing and receiving inspirations
0:33:19 > 0:33:21from their predecessors
0:33:21 > 0:33:25and from those that surround them as they evolve.
0:33:25 > 0:33:31In total, the grave contained over 1,500 separate objects.
0:33:32 > 0:33:36There was a corroded bronze mirror and ivory combs.
0:33:36 > 0:33:40Vanity was part of the warrior's job description.
0:33:40 > 0:33:43Hair was ritually combed before battle.
0:33:44 > 0:33:47And, of course, there were swords.
0:33:49 > 0:33:52The grave of the Griffin Warrior has all of the artefacts
0:33:52 > 0:33:56that you would expect a warrior to have accumulated in his lifetime.
0:33:56 > 0:33:59And this is the first time that we can really understand
0:33:59 > 0:34:02what the complete warrior kit looked like.
0:34:02 > 0:34:04One of the objects found in the grave -
0:34:04 > 0:34:08tiny, not quite 1.5 inches long -
0:34:08 > 0:34:10was crusted in mud and minerals.
0:34:12 > 0:34:16Once cleaned, it forces us to rethink everything
0:34:16 > 0:34:19we thought we knew about this moment in history.
0:34:21 > 0:34:26High resolution photographs show the extraordinary achievement.
0:34:35 > 0:34:37We see the long hair flowing free
0:34:37 > 0:34:40that would have been combed before battle.
0:34:42 > 0:34:45We see a sword lying on the ground
0:34:45 > 0:34:48exactly like the swords discovered in the grave.
0:34:49 > 0:34:51But that is just the beginning.
0:34:54 > 0:35:00This is the first fight scene in all of European art,
0:35:00 > 0:35:02for all I know, in all of world art.
0:35:02 > 0:35:06Yes, there are occasional moments of combat and battle in other cultures,
0:35:06 > 0:35:09but they're flat, they're very stylised,
0:35:09 > 0:35:14they don't feel like the smash of bone and bronze
0:35:14 > 0:35:17and metal and the spout of blood, this does.
0:35:17 > 0:35:24This goes straight from 1450 BC to action movies.
0:35:24 > 0:35:26Look at those rippling biceps.
0:35:26 > 0:35:28Look at those muscles.
0:35:28 > 0:35:29Look at those tense bodies.
0:35:29 > 0:35:33This cross of locked-together fighters.
0:35:33 > 0:35:36A spear that's about to try and impale the body of his enemy
0:35:36 > 0:35:38before it's too late.
0:35:38 > 0:35:41The sword that's about to plunge down.
0:35:41 > 0:35:44It's 3-D, folks. It's coming at you.
0:35:44 > 0:35:49And, inevitably, there is already a dead body,
0:35:49 > 0:35:53perfectly modelled, an arm bent back.
0:35:53 > 0:35:55Homer speaks of such bodies
0:35:55 > 0:36:00with a hand or a face writhing in the dust.
0:36:01 > 0:36:08But, people, Homer is 700 years later.
0:36:09 > 0:36:14700 years later, the time between Chaucer and us.
0:36:14 > 0:36:20Somebody out there with incredible hawklike eyesight is drawing on
0:36:20 > 0:36:22a body of combat literature
0:36:22 > 0:36:27that goes all the way down to those beautiful Homeric inventions.
0:36:27 > 0:36:31It sets something running in European culture.
0:36:31 > 0:36:35This Mycenaean love of guts and glory
0:36:35 > 0:36:38and the Mycenaeans themselves, along with the Minoans,
0:36:38 > 0:36:40will pass into history.
0:36:40 > 0:36:43But this doesn't pass into history,
0:36:43 > 0:36:46it passes into poetry.
0:36:46 > 0:36:49It passes for ever into the world.
0:36:54 > 0:36:58Sometimes there are discoveries that radically transform
0:36:58 > 0:37:01existing knowledge.
0:37:01 > 0:37:04But then there are other discoveries
0:37:04 > 0:37:08that reveal a culture so far outside the river of history
0:37:08 > 0:37:11that we may never truly understand them.
0:37:12 > 0:37:15As Mycenae rose about 3,000 years ago,
0:37:15 > 0:37:20an extraordinary culture grew in west central China -
0:37:20 > 0:37:22Sanxingdui.
0:37:26 > 0:37:31Its remains were unearthed in 1986 on a building site.
0:37:35 > 0:37:39The revealed pits contained hundreds of elephant tusks,
0:37:39 > 0:37:41the remains of sacrificed animals,
0:37:41 > 0:37:48and a vast and startling abundance of masks.
0:38:03 > 0:38:05There were scores of masks,
0:38:05 > 0:38:07There were giant masks
0:38:07 > 0:38:10which probably stood in some sort of temple.
0:38:10 > 0:38:12There were little itty-bitty masks,
0:38:12 > 0:38:14There were masks that were user-friendly,
0:38:14 > 0:38:18that almost certainly could be worn on the face.
0:38:18 > 0:38:21They all have huge eyes.
0:38:21 > 0:38:25This one, you can still see a few traces of black paint.
0:38:25 > 0:38:27They were painted black.
0:38:27 > 0:38:29Dashing eyebrows.
0:38:29 > 0:38:32Diamond-shaped eyes.
0:38:32 > 0:38:36Nothing in the rest of ancient China has ever been discovered
0:38:36 > 0:38:40remotely like these faces, like these heads.
0:38:40 > 0:38:45The bronze is the same, the figures and faces are not.
0:38:49 > 0:38:52Nothing that can tell us anything about the people
0:38:52 > 0:38:55who made these objects has survived.
0:38:55 > 0:38:58There are no writings, no other histories to tell us who they were.
0:39:00 > 0:39:03It's been suggested that some of the masks
0:39:03 > 0:39:08might have been used in rituals by impersonators of the dead -
0:39:08 > 0:39:12those enormous eyes which see beyond the world,
0:39:12 > 0:39:16the ears which might hear what the departed say.
0:39:17 > 0:39:19But this is all pure speculation.
0:39:21 > 0:39:26The civilisation of Sanxingdui came, it flourished,
0:39:26 > 0:39:29and then it disappeared off the face of the earth.
0:39:37 > 0:39:41But civilisation is always a balancing act.
0:39:41 > 0:39:43There may be enemies at the gates,
0:39:43 > 0:39:47there may be enemies within the walls,
0:39:47 > 0:39:50and sometimes the very landscape and climate
0:39:50 > 0:39:53in which a culture grows must be conquered.
0:39:57 > 0:40:01It may be too rocky, too arid,
0:40:01 > 0:40:07but here canyons and gullies became the streets and thoroughfares
0:40:07 > 0:40:10for one of the most spectacular civilisations
0:40:10 > 0:40:13in all of human history.
0:40:39 > 0:40:44This is Petra where the sheer improbability of its location
0:40:44 > 0:40:49was also the secret of its spectacular flourishing.
0:40:50 > 0:40:56The reason why this tomb endured and survived armies and earthquakes
0:40:56 > 0:40:58is that the Nabateans who built it
0:40:58 > 0:41:02cut it into the sandstone surface of the mountain,
0:41:02 > 0:41:07rather than build some freestanding marble monument.
0:41:07 > 0:41:10The mountains shook with earthquakes,
0:41:10 > 0:41:14but these buildings stood intact.
0:41:14 > 0:41:17The Nabateans had what you might call
0:41:17 > 0:41:19an instinct for cultural ecology.
0:41:19 > 0:41:23They worked with the rock of their desert home.
0:41:23 > 0:41:25The columns are graceful.
0:41:25 > 0:41:28The capitals are heavily decorated.
0:41:28 > 0:41:31It's all part of an international Hellenistic style,
0:41:31 > 0:41:35and, yet, it seems to me this place is very local,
0:41:35 > 0:41:38untransferable.
0:41:38 > 0:41:42This is Petra and only Petra,
0:41:42 > 0:41:45these great palatial buildings seem to say.
0:41:55 > 0:41:59More amazing still, this place was built by people who were nomads
0:41:59 > 0:42:04when they first arrived here in the fourth century before Christ.
0:42:08 > 0:42:14The Nabataeans were goat herders, camel riders, dwellers in tents.
0:42:15 > 0:42:20But flocks and herds weren't going to produce this.
0:42:24 > 0:42:29Petra was built on trade in incense.
0:42:32 > 0:42:342,000 years ago,
0:42:34 > 0:42:38aromatic frankincense and myrrh were essential
0:42:38 > 0:42:41for the ceremonies and rituals which punctuated daily life.
0:42:44 > 0:42:48The nondescript little chunks and granules of dried tree resin
0:42:48 > 0:42:53produced these clouds of fragrant incense smoke,
0:42:53 > 0:42:57and they became the hottest trade between Africa and Persia.
0:42:57 > 0:43:01And here's the thing, the trees that produce the resin
0:43:01 > 0:43:03only grow in a particular part of Arabia,
0:43:03 > 0:43:07and who knew that desert mile by stony mile,
0:43:07 > 0:43:10oasis by oasis, better than the Nabataeans?
0:43:10 > 0:43:11No-one.
0:43:11 > 0:43:16So the Nabataeans started as navigators and pilots, if you like,
0:43:16 > 0:43:18for this precious cargo,
0:43:18 > 0:43:20went on to be full-service providers,
0:43:20 > 0:43:24and then thought, "Well, why don't we trade it ourselves directly?"
0:43:24 > 0:43:28Pretty soon they were monopolists of the incense trade,
0:43:28 > 0:43:31the emperors of aromatics.
0:43:36 > 0:43:39But a civilisation here was inconceivable
0:43:39 > 0:43:43without the one thing more precious than frankincense -
0:43:43 > 0:43:44water.
0:43:44 > 0:43:50The Nabataeans engineered systems to trap the rains which came in winter
0:43:50 > 0:43:54and their desert hydraulics made this place not so much rose red,
0:43:54 > 0:43:57as bright green.
0:43:57 > 0:44:00A garden city of fountains, swimming pools,
0:44:00 > 0:44:03groves and orchards.
0:44:08 > 0:44:10And the water which made all that possible
0:44:10 > 0:44:16also made it possible to feed a city of 30,000 people,
0:44:16 > 0:44:18many of whom were immigrants from all over the region.
0:44:18 > 0:44:23There were Egyptians and Syrians and Judeans and Greeks and Romans,
0:44:23 > 0:44:26and they were all coming to Petra
0:44:26 > 0:44:30to enjoy what the Persians called a pairi daiza,
0:44:30 > 0:44:34a pleasure resort, a little bit of heaven on Earth.
0:44:39 > 0:44:45And they all brought a flourish of their own cultural styles with them.
0:44:45 > 0:44:49Most of the art discovered here has been taken to museums,
0:44:49 > 0:44:54but what survives tells the story of a cosmopolitan playground.
0:44:55 > 0:44:58There are curious abstract representations
0:44:58 > 0:45:00of a Nabataean goddess...
0:45:02 > 0:45:08..carved heads from the wine soaked Hellenistic cult of Dionysus.
0:45:12 > 0:45:15Recent excavations have brought to light ritzy villas
0:45:15 > 0:45:19carved into the living rock.
0:45:19 > 0:45:23Inside them, "here's to happiness" murals
0:45:23 > 0:45:25from that same Dionysian cult,
0:45:25 > 0:45:29cherubs, vine leaves,
0:45:29 > 0:45:33the inevitable bunches of grapes.
0:45:35 > 0:45:39And from the later years of Petra's life, Byzantine mosaics
0:45:39 > 0:45:43found beneath the sand and rubble of a ruined church.
0:45:48 > 0:45:55Petra had its day, or rather its centuries, and then it ended.
0:45:55 > 0:45:57Not because of conquest,
0:45:57 > 0:46:02but because new trade routes simply made Petra commercially irrelevant.
0:46:02 > 0:46:05And without that commercial lifeblood,
0:46:05 > 0:46:10there was no longer any reason to struggle against the desert.
0:46:12 > 0:46:14The people left,
0:46:14 > 0:46:18the systems for capturing water fell into disrepair,
0:46:18 > 0:46:22and the desert reclaimed the city.
0:46:30 > 0:46:33BIRDS SING
0:46:40 > 0:46:44On the other side of the world in Central America,
0:46:44 > 0:46:47another culture would face a set of ecological conditions
0:46:47 > 0:46:50that seemed far more hospitable.
0:46:53 > 0:46:57The Mayans lived amidst tropical forests.
0:46:57 > 0:47:00It looks almost absurdly fertile.
0:47:00 > 0:47:06And these great ruins are proof that when the delicate balance
0:47:06 > 0:47:10between prospering habitat and vaulting ambition is maintained,
0:47:10 > 0:47:15civilisations can bind rulers and the ruled,
0:47:15 > 0:47:21and a culture can burst into riotously prolific bloom.
0:47:23 > 0:47:27If you take away all this magnificent vegetation
0:47:27 > 0:47:29that's sprung up naturally from the space,
0:47:29 > 0:47:32you realise this is an extraordinary plaza,
0:47:32 > 0:47:34it's the centre of a city.
0:47:34 > 0:47:38Wherever you look, there are these huge stone staircases,
0:47:38 > 0:47:40some temples, some tombs,
0:47:40 > 0:47:43all the more amazing because there are no draft animals,
0:47:43 > 0:47:45there are no wheels,
0:47:45 > 0:47:50so human labour only is responsible for these great things.
0:47:50 > 0:47:52This is a spectacular space.
0:47:52 > 0:47:57The kind of space you would really expect to see in Rome or Greece,
0:47:57 > 0:48:01these great pyramids with platforms for performances
0:48:01 > 0:48:05because this, as much as anywhere in the Western world of antiquity,
0:48:05 > 0:48:08is essentially an urban theatre.
0:48:13 > 0:48:17It's a theatre of political and religious power.
0:48:18 > 0:48:21A structure like this looks down upon the citizens
0:48:21 > 0:48:25and forces them to look back up.
0:48:25 > 0:48:28And what they looked up to was often gruesomely violent,
0:48:28 > 0:48:32the mass sacrifice of captives.
0:48:32 > 0:48:35And one God in particular had a special thirst...
0:48:36 > 0:48:38..the rain god, Chaac.
0:48:44 > 0:48:48The power of the Mayan kings rested on the promise
0:48:48 > 0:48:52that every year they would persuade Chaac to bring the rains
0:48:52 > 0:48:55on which all life depended.
0:48:55 > 0:48:58Mayan art and architecture was a prayer
0:48:58 > 0:49:00and appealed to the weather -
0:49:00 > 0:49:04"Let us live, let every year be fruitful."
0:49:08 > 0:49:10Only the most damaged of the art
0:49:10 > 0:49:14that used to adorn Calakmul remains on-site.
0:49:16 > 0:49:18In Mexico's anthropology museum,
0:49:18 > 0:49:23we can see some of that art and how Mayan society worked.
0:49:23 > 0:49:26There were kings made of flesh and blood
0:49:26 > 0:49:29and kings made of stone,
0:49:29 > 0:49:32and you had to obey both kinds.
0:49:36 > 0:49:41But Mayan art wasn't all enormous and formal, far from it.
0:49:41 > 0:49:43It was hugely varied.
0:49:43 > 0:49:46One of the most spectacular flourishings of creativity
0:49:46 > 0:49:48in human history.
0:49:49 > 0:49:53Every human type got his or her figurine,
0:49:53 > 0:49:58like action characters and heroes from a comic book or a play.
0:50:03 > 0:50:07There were ceramic vessels and there were murals too.
0:50:09 > 0:50:12And out of the Mayan delight in making pictures
0:50:12 > 0:50:14developed a fully-fledged script.
0:50:20 > 0:50:24Writing made up of glyphs or word pictures.
0:50:25 > 0:50:30They were brushed onto paper made from wild fig tree bark,
0:50:30 > 0:50:33painted onto beautiful ceramic pottery
0:50:33 > 0:50:37or, like this one, carved into limestone.
0:50:37 > 0:50:39They were everywhere in Maya city states.
0:50:39 > 0:50:43The Maya were the wordiest of all ancient cultures.
0:50:43 > 0:50:45So that this,
0:50:45 > 0:50:48which looks like something purely decorative, ornamental,
0:50:48 > 0:50:49a bestiary with all these animals,
0:50:49 > 0:50:51there's a monkey,
0:50:51 > 0:50:55there's a magnificently complacent frog,
0:50:55 > 0:50:59there in the middle is an extremely scary killer rabbit,
0:50:59 > 0:51:03in fact, all these are words which make a text.
0:51:03 > 0:51:07Each glyph is not a single word, but it's a syllable, in fact,
0:51:07 > 0:51:12and you put them together and you have a sentence, a paragraph.
0:51:12 > 0:51:15But in this case, it makes up a date.
0:51:15 > 0:51:18We know exactly what that date was.
0:51:18 > 0:51:22This is the 11th of February, 526.
0:51:27 > 0:51:32In 526, Mayan civilisation was at its height.
0:51:32 > 0:51:34It's art and culture flourished
0:51:34 > 0:51:38and many believe that the finest Mayan art of all is to be found
0:51:38 > 0:51:40in the city of Copan.
0:51:46 > 0:51:48The city was home to a dynasty
0:51:48 > 0:51:52that lasted from the fifth to the ninth centuries,
0:51:52 > 0:51:5516 successive kings ruled here.
0:51:57 > 0:52:01An archaeological team, led by Bill and Barbara Fash,
0:52:01 > 0:52:04have been studying Copan for over 30 years.
0:52:05 > 0:52:08And they've found that for most of its life,
0:52:08 > 0:52:13the art of Copan is elegant, refined, astonishing.
0:52:14 > 0:52:19Single carved steles announce the accession of new kings.
0:52:23 > 0:52:27It's the work of a society where that balance between habitat
0:52:27 > 0:52:30and ambition is still in good order.
0:52:33 > 0:52:37It's certainly hard to imagine a more vivid realisation
0:52:37 > 0:52:41of the rain god Chaac than this.
0:52:41 > 0:52:46Complete with the bubbling streams of water that his blessings brought.
0:52:49 > 0:52:52In the seventh century, the 12th ruler of Copan
0:52:52 > 0:52:56commissioned a new grand structure.
0:52:58 > 0:53:02This is the hieroglyphic stairway of Copan.
0:53:02 > 0:53:05It was built, originally, in honour of ruler 12
0:53:05 > 0:53:07who is portrayed here,
0:53:07 > 0:53:10and then was finished by ruler 15
0:53:10 > 0:53:14who added on the uppermost section of it.
0:53:14 > 0:53:18And it has 64 steps in total
0:53:18 > 0:53:20and they told the history of the dynasty
0:53:20 > 0:53:23and the succession of the different rulers.
0:53:25 > 0:53:28The stairway itself is a monumental statement.
0:53:28 > 0:53:33Certainly ruler 15 was trying to impress the population
0:53:33 > 0:53:37so he was really trying to cement in stone
0:53:37 > 0:53:40what the history of Copan was and what the dynasty was
0:53:40 > 0:53:44and to make sure that it stayed for the future.
0:53:46 > 0:53:50The hieroglyphic stairway sought to impress the people
0:53:50 > 0:53:53and to persuade the gods to continue to bring rain.
0:53:58 > 0:54:03But by tunnelling beneath it, the archaeologists have discovered
0:54:03 > 0:54:07that this grand structure was, in fact, badly built.
0:54:10 > 0:54:13You can see all these gaps in the fill itself
0:54:13 > 0:54:15indicate that it was just loose rubble.
0:54:15 > 0:54:18This is a terrible way to build a pyramid.
0:54:18 > 0:54:21What this tells us is that, at this point in time,
0:54:21 > 0:54:23people were no longer as enthusiastic
0:54:23 > 0:54:25about supporting the rulers.
0:54:25 > 0:54:31Even though a gorgeous and very explicit hieroglyphic stairway was built here,
0:54:31 > 0:54:33it was built on poor fills,
0:54:33 > 0:54:35so it was a castle built on sand,
0:54:35 > 0:54:38and with time, eventually, it did decay
0:54:38 > 0:54:43and the stairway itself collapsed in a heap at the bottom of the pyramid.
0:54:48 > 0:54:52The stairway we see today has been reconstructed,
0:54:52 > 0:54:56but around it, we can see the chaos of the collapse.
0:54:58 > 0:55:03The stairway was built as the Mayans were suffering a drought
0:55:03 > 0:55:04that would last decades,
0:55:04 > 0:55:09and the promise of rain had been a central plank of royal authority.
0:55:11 > 0:55:18Shortly afterwards, the kingdom of Copan itself collapsed completely.
0:55:18 > 0:55:20All across the Mayan territories,
0:55:20 > 0:55:25art and authority were out of step with reality.
0:55:25 > 0:55:29There was nothing grand or stately about starvation.
0:55:31 > 0:55:34And the ordinary people of the Maya saw that their civilisation
0:55:34 > 0:55:38had become a death trap and walked away,
0:55:38 > 0:55:41left kings and cities and art behind.
0:55:41 > 0:55:46They went back to simpler lives in the surrounding forest.
0:55:47 > 0:55:51And their descendants are still very much alive.
0:55:52 > 0:55:56IN SPANISH:
0:56:31 > 0:56:33The Maya and their language lived on
0:56:33 > 0:56:37but far away from the stone monuments of their ancestors.
0:56:37 > 0:56:42All that remained to say that beneath the forest canopy
0:56:42 > 0:56:44there was the civilisation,
0:56:44 > 0:56:47were the summits of the platform pyramids,
0:56:47 > 0:56:49but only the wheeling birds
0:56:49 > 0:56:53and the howler monkeys scrambling to the tops of trees
0:56:53 > 0:56:55would have seen that.
0:56:58 > 0:57:02All civilisations want what they can't have -
0:57:02 > 0:57:05the conquest of time.
0:57:05 > 0:57:09They build higher and grander to escape mortality.
0:57:09 > 0:57:11It never works.
0:57:11 > 0:57:14There's always an ending.
0:57:14 > 0:57:17Cities with their markets, temples, palaces and tombs
0:57:17 > 0:57:19are simply abandoned
0:57:19 > 0:57:23and that great leveller, Mother Nature, closes in,
0:57:23 > 0:57:27strangling the place with vegetation,
0:57:27 > 0:57:30covering it with desert sand.
0:57:32 > 0:57:36It might seem, then, that it's all for nothing,
0:57:36 > 0:57:40but that's entirely wrong.
0:57:40 > 0:57:44All these ruins, all these remains are monuments
0:57:44 > 0:57:47to human creativity,
0:57:47 > 0:57:50human ambitions,
0:57:50 > 0:57:51human hopes.
0:57:54 > 0:57:59Monuments to shaping hands and shaping minds.
0:58:02 > 0:58:06Monuments to humanity itself.
0:58:12 > 0:58:15The Open University has produced a free poster
0:58:15 > 0:58:18that explores the history of different civilisations
0:58:18 > 0:58:19through artefacts.
0:58:19 > 0:58:23To order your free copy, please call...
0:58:25 > 0:58:27Or go to the address on-screen
0:58:27 > 0:58:30and follow the links for the Open University.