0:00:08 > 0:00:12People have always thrilled to tales of monsters.
0:00:12 > 0:00:16But there is nothing in myth that can compare for sheer wonder
0:00:16 > 0:00:21with creatures from Tyrannosaurs to Woolly Mammoths that once actually existed.
0:00:21 > 0:00:26Today, we know life on this planet evolved over many millions of years
0:00:26 > 0:00:31and we have some idea at least of how prehistoric creatures once actually looked.
0:00:31 > 0:00:33But such knowledge is comparatively recent.
0:00:36 > 0:00:39When people in the past came across the fossilised bones
0:00:39 > 0:00:43of large, vanished animals, it begged any number of questions.
0:00:43 > 0:00:46What sort of creatures could they possibly have come from?
0:00:46 > 0:00:49How old were these skeletal remains?
0:00:49 > 0:00:52Above all, perhaps, what did they mean?
0:00:53 > 0:00:58Just like us, ancient peoples were fascinated by the giant bones
0:00:58 > 0:01:00they found in the ground.
0:01:00 > 0:01:03Like us, they obsessed about their origins.
0:01:05 > 0:01:10In this programme, I'm going to explore the ways in which our ancestors sought to make sense
0:01:10 > 0:01:15of the remains of dinosaurs and other giant prehistoric creatures.
0:01:15 > 0:01:17And how they tried to reconcile such finds
0:01:17 > 0:01:21with their own understanding of life on earth.
0:01:22 > 0:01:26That these explanations were wrong doesn't mean that they deserve our contempt.
0:01:26 > 0:01:28Just the opposite.
0:01:28 > 0:01:30Science begins in wonder
0:01:30 > 0:01:34and a yearning to fathom what may at first seem unfathomable.
0:01:34 > 0:01:39In that sense, at any rate, our ancestors did have something of the palaeontologist about them.
0:01:39 > 0:01:44And in one fundamental respect, they were absolutely spot on.
0:01:44 > 0:01:48Monsters had indeed once trodden the earth.
0:01:55 > 0:02:00I made this, er, masterpiece when I was five. Looking at it now
0:02:00 > 0:02:04I think, well, I was never going to cut it as a sculptor.
0:02:04 > 0:02:09But I do remember the intensity of yearning.
0:02:09 > 0:02:14A kind of love, really, that went into the making of it.
0:02:14 > 0:02:19How desperately I wanted to see a dinosaur.
0:02:21 > 0:02:25Going out from my garden, the most exotic thing I could hope to see was a cow.
0:02:26 > 0:02:29But if I shut my eyes, I could imagine
0:02:29 > 0:02:34there was a long-necked Brachiosaur, reaching higher than the trees.
0:02:34 > 0:02:39A horned and crested Triceratops, making the fields shake.
0:02:39 > 0:02:43And, of course, if I was feeling particularly ghoulish...
0:02:45 > 0:02:48..a blood be-slathered Tyrannosaur.
0:02:49 > 0:02:52Why was the present day so dull?
0:02:52 > 0:02:56Why didn't I live in a world full of swamps and pterosaurs,
0:02:56 > 0:02:59and perpetually exploding volcanoes?
0:03:04 > 0:03:07Why couldn't my life be Mesozoic?
0:03:08 > 0:03:11And in a way, all my prayers have been answered.
0:03:11 > 0:03:1535 years too late for my seven-year-old self,
0:03:15 > 0:03:16but visit a museum today,
0:03:16 > 0:03:20and the displays have never been more...animatronic.
0:03:22 > 0:03:27Nor for 65 million years has flesh been put more convincingly
0:03:27 > 0:03:31on the bones of dinosaurs like this Tyrannosaurus Rex.
0:03:36 > 0:03:40CGI - the dinosaur lover's best friend.
0:03:45 > 0:03:47Now the truth is, of course,
0:03:47 > 0:03:50that no human being has ever seen a living dinosaur.
0:03:51 > 0:03:54This is the Peabody Museum in New Haven,
0:03:54 > 0:03:57on the East Coast of the United States.
0:03:59 > 0:04:03It contains this fabulous mural, painted in the 1940s.
0:04:04 > 0:04:09Dinosaurs first appear here around 230 million years ago.
0:04:09 > 0:04:13And they last another 160 million years, right the way up to there
0:04:13 > 0:04:16where...no more dinosaurs.
0:04:17 > 0:04:21Of course, there are no humans anywhere in this mural.
0:04:21 > 0:04:26Homo sapiens didn't appear on Earth for another 65 million years.
0:04:27 > 0:04:30But always, and it's certainly not just me who has it,
0:04:30 > 0:04:33that yearning in the imagination.
0:04:33 > 0:04:37That desire to know what these extraordinary creatures
0:04:37 > 0:04:39had truly looked like.
0:04:40 > 0:04:42And perhaps that's why,
0:04:42 > 0:04:46in the kind of science fiction story to which I was addicted as a boy,
0:04:46 > 0:04:50our prehistoric ancestors are always being shown alongside dinosaurs.
0:04:50 > 0:04:52Total fantasy, of course.
0:04:52 > 0:04:54But still, it made me wonder.
0:04:57 > 0:05:00When cavemen came across the bones of dinosaurs,
0:05:00 > 0:05:02what did they make of them?
0:05:02 > 0:05:06It's an abiding mystery. By definition, they wrote nothing down.
0:05:06 > 0:05:08But there were some prehistoric peoples, for all that,
0:05:08 > 0:05:11who survived into historic times.
0:05:13 > 0:05:17Take North America, for instance, where hunter-gather tribes
0:05:17 > 0:05:20that for generations had been roaming the Great Plains,
0:05:20 > 0:05:23had long observed fossilised bones weathering out of the rocks
0:05:23 > 0:05:26and invented stories to explain them.
0:05:28 > 0:05:31Adrienne Mayor is a historian of ancient fossil-hunting,
0:05:31 > 0:05:35with a high regard for scientific abilities of the native peoples
0:05:35 > 0:05:38who lived in America before Columbus.
0:05:38 > 0:05:42Peoples who, by and large, were pre-literate, pre-historic.
0:05:44 > 0:05:48Their theories and their speculations and their myths,
0:05:48 > 0:05:51oral traditions, preserved in oral traditions over generations,
0:05:51 > 0:05:55over thousands of years, they were based on observation over time.
0:05:55 > 0:05:56They knew anatomy.
0:05:56 > 0:06:02They compared, they tried to imagine the creatures while alive,
0:06:02 > 0:06:05how they behaved, what they looked like, what kind of habitat.
0:06:05 > 0:06:08They actually had a sense of deep time.
0:06:08 > 0:06:11They had a sense of different ages on the earth,
0:06:11 > 0:06:15past ages before the appearance of present-day humans.
0:06:15 > 0:06:20Each age characterised by different fauna and flora.
0:06:20 > 0:06:21Different land forms.
0:06:21 > 0:06:26These are all prototypes of modern science,
0:06:26 > 0:06:28although they were all in mythological language.
0:06:30 > 0:06:34Even in the 19th century, by which point bone-hunting,
0:06:34 > 0:06:37or palaeontology, had become an all-American obsession,
0:06:37 > 0:06:41these Stone Age myths were still being re-told.
0:06:41 > 0:06:44And among those pricking up their ears were scientists
0:06:44 > 0:06:47such as Othaniel Charles Marsh,
0:06:47 > 0:06:50the first director of the Peabody Museum.
0:06:50 > 0:06:53Marsh was one of the first great palaeontologists
0:06:53 > 0:06:55and a genuine pioneer.
0:06:55 > 0:06:58He rode shotgun on the Great Plains.
0:06:58 > 0:07:01He hung out with Buffalo Bill and Sitting Bull,
0:07:01 > 0:07:04and he was adopted as a blood-brother by the Sioux.
0:07:04 > 0:07:07Wicasa Pahi Huhu, they called him.
0:07:07 > 0:07:10He Who Digs Up Bones.
0:07:12 > 0:07:17Many of the dinosaurs in the Peabody were dug up in the 1870s,
0:07:17 > 0:07:21a time when the West really was very wild.
0:07:21 > 0:07:23Among the collection
0:07:23 > 0:07:26are the first specimens ever found of iconic species
0:07:26 > 0:07:29like Stegosaurus, and Apatosauraus,
0:07:29 > 0:07:32the dinosaur formerly known as Brontosaurus.
0:07:37 > 0:07:40Marsh's expeditions took him to the Badlands.
0:07:40 > 0:07:42There, in his hunt for fossils,
0:07:42 > 0:07:46he was drawing on the very latest in scientific research.
0:07:46 > 0:07:51But some of his sources were altogether more prehistoric.
0:07:51 > 0:07:54The Sioux, and other Native American peoples too,
0:07:54 > 0:07:59told stories of mysterious beasts, supernatural creatures,
0:07:59 > 0:08:04whose bones might be found scattered across the ground.
0:08:04 > 0:08:07But what had prompted these legends?
0:08:07 > 0:08:12From the Sioux, Marsh learned the legend of Thunder Horses,
0:08:12 > 0:08:15creatures that galloped over storm clouds
0:08:15 > 0:08:19and made them echo with the crashing of their hooves.
0:08:19 > 0:08:25His fascination with such stories helped to win him the trust of native Americans.
0:08:25 > 0:08:28In 1874, at a time of great tension,
0:08:28 > 0:08:31when the whites were encroaching on their lands,
0:08:31 > 0:08:33Marsh was able to employ a Sioux as his guide.
0:08:34 > 0:08:39He learned about some impressive bones found by the tribe.
0:08:39 > 0:08:41They said they were from strange creatures
0:08:41 > 0:08:43that had once lived in the land of the Sioux.
0:08:43 > 0:08:47Bones now turned to stone.
0:08:47 > 0:08:50Marsh was shown the bones of this magnificent beast.
0:08:50 > 0:08:53A colossal mammal, some 12 feet long,
0:08:53 > 0:08:56which had lived around 35 million years ago,
0:08:56 > 0:09:00and was indeed, amazingly enough, a relative of the horse.
0:09:01 > 0:09:04This is the very specimen that was shown to Marsh
0:09:04 > 0:09:09and, in honour of the legends of the Thunder Horse told him by the Sioux,
0:09:09 > 0:09:14he named the creature a Brontotherium - a Thunder Beast.
0:09:16 > 0:09:19Most intriguing of all, perhaps,
0:09:19 > 0:09:23were the tales told across the Great Plains not of Thunder Horses
0:09:23 > 0:09:25but of Thunder Birds.
0:09:25 > 0:09:29Stories passed down the generations and still retold today.
0:09:30 > 0:09:37Long, long ago, when the two-leggeds were new to walking on Mother Earth,
0:09:37 > 0:09:41the Thunder Birds were their friends and advisors.
0:09:41 > 0:09:48They were great beasts, with wingspans as long as two war canoes.
0:09:48 > 0:09:54They had sharp pointed beaks with sharp pointed teeth
0:09:54 > 0:09:58and they lived in the sky, on the edge of the clouds.
0:09:58 > 0:10:02Many of these legends tell how the Thunder Birds
0:10:02 > 0:10:07had as their deadliest enemies giant aquatic monsters.
0:10:08 > 0:10:11Now, at this same time
0:10:11 > 0:10:13lived the Water Monsters.
0:10:14 > 0:10:17They were huge,
0:10:17 > 0:10:19shaped like a snake with feet.
0:10:20 > 0:10:23They had a big horn on their head,
0:10:23 > 0:10:25and spikes on the tip of their tail.
0:10:27 > 0:10:33It's surely suggestive that the stories often derive from regions of America which once,
0:10:33 > 0:10:38back in the age of the dinosaurs, were indeed covered by seas.
0:10:38 > 0:10:41Nowadays, the Great Plains consist of weathered sediment,
0:10:41 > 0:10:48complete with the skeletons of long-necked marine reptiles called Plesiosaurs and Pterosaurs.
0:10:48 > 0:10:50Flying reptiles of the kind
0:10:50 > 0:10:52that were always carrying off Raquel Welch.
0:10:52 > 0:10:56And what do we find in Marsh's collection?
0:10:56 > 0:10:58A Plesiosaur.
0:10:58 > 0:11:02And a Pterosaur. A Pteranodon.
0:11:02 > 0:11:05What all this suggests is an intriguing possibility.
0:11:07 > 0:11:11Almost all of the tribes had stories about water monsters
0:11:11 > 0:11:13and sky creatures, Thunder Birds.
0:11:15 > 0:11:19And, of course, these are personified violent forces of nature.
0:11:19 > 0:11:24Thunder and lightning, very powerful, forces of nature,
0:11:24 > 0:11:28and then flooding which was supposedly caused by water monsters.
0:11:28 > 0:11:32And when they found very large bones,
0:11:32 > 0:11:35fossilised bones of extinct creatures
0:11:35 > 0:11:39eroding and weathering out of river banks and lake shores,
0:11:39 > 0:11:43they naturally thought they must have been water creatures.
0:11:43 > 0:11:47And when they also found fossilised shells and fish and turtles,
0:11:47 > 0:11:51they understood that this land had once been underwater.
0:11:52 > 0:11:55Now, it's not only on the Great Plains of America
0:11:55 > 0:11:58that we find evidence for a fascination on the part of
0:11:58 > 0:12:02pre-literate societies with the bones of vanished creatures.
0:12:02 > 0:12:05Go back far enough in time,
0:12:05 > 0:12:08and you find it on the opposite side of the Atlantic as well.
0:12:08 > 0:12:11In Greece.
0:12:13 > 0:12:17First and greatest of the Greek poets was Homer.
0:12:17 > 0:12:21But the two poems he wrote down some 2,800 years ago,
0:12:21 > 0:12:23the Iliad and the Odyssey,
0:12:23 > 0:12:26almost certainly contain material far older than that.
0:12:28 > 0:12:32Perhaps, then, even before the time of Homer himself,
0:12:32 > 0:12:34people were telling the story
0:12:34 > 0:12:37of one of the most celebrated monsters in all Greek mythology.
0:12:38 > 0:12:41The story, well, it's a thriller.
0:12:41 > 0:12:45The hero Odysseus, in his wanderings across the wine-dark sea,
0:12:45 > 0:12:48finds himself trapped in a cave by a hideous monster.
0:12:48 > 0:12:51A monster that snacks on human flesh
0:12:51 > 0:12:55and has, in its forehead, just a single, circular eye.
0:12:55 > 0:12:57It's a Cyclops.
0:12:57 > 0:13:00ROAR
0:13:02 > 0:13:05What is the trapped Odysseus to do?
0:13:05 > 0:13:07Well, he gets the Cyclops drunk.
0:13:07 > 0:13:11Then he and his men take a large spike.
0:13:11 > 0:13:15They aim it over the Cyclops's single eye.
0:13:15 > 0:13:17In goes the spike.
0:13:17 > 0:13:19Splat goes the eye.
0:13:19 > 0:13:21ROAR
0:13:21 > 0:13:24Who could doubt the truth of such a story,
0:13:24 > 0:13:28when there was evidence of the tale to be found in the earth?
0:13:30 > 0:13:35Now, of course, this isn't actually the skull of a one-eyed monster.
0:13:35 > 0:13:37It's the skull of an elephant,
0:13:37 > 0:13:42and this is the large nasal opening from which its trunk once extended.
0:13:43 > 0:13:49The Greeks didn't become familiar with real live elephants until the fourth century BC,
0:13:49 > 0:13:52long after the story of the Cyclops first emerged.
0:13:55 > 0:13:57But we know from the fossil record
0:13:57 > 0:14:02that prehistoric species of elephant lived on Mediterranean islands
0:14:02 > 0:14:04long before humans were around.
0:14:06 > 0:14:08When Ancient Greeks came across
0:14:08 > 0:14:12the preserved fossil skulls of these creatures, eroded from the rocks,
0:14:12 > 0:14:14or perhaps dug up by a farmer,
0:14:14 > 0:14:18did they mistake the outsize skull for a giant's head?
0:14:18 > 0:14:23And the large nasal cavity as a huge single eye-socket?
0:14:25 > 0:14:28Is this what inspired Homer's tale
0:14:28 > 0:14:31of the island-dwelling giant Cyclops?
0:14:31 > 0:14:36Now, no ancient source directly confirms the Cyclops theory,
0:14:36 > 0:14:39but it seems eminently plausible nevertheless.
0:14:39 > 0:14:42Not only were there large bones to be found
0:14:42 > 0:14:45scattered across the entire sweep of the Mediterranean,
0:14:45 > 0:14:47but we know as well from other legends,
0:14:47 > 0:14:49from the writings of classical authors,
0:14:49 > 0:14:55that the Greeks did take an interest in the fossil bones of giant beasts.
0:14:57 > 0:14:58On a few occasions,
0:14:58 > 0:15:02ancient writers wrote down what they thought of large bones.
0:15:02 > 0:15:07They are among the earliest surviving written records of paleontological knowledge.
0:15:07 > 0:15:11Take this, from the Life of Apollonius by Philostratus.
0:15:13 > 0:15:19"I agree that giants once existed because gigantic bodies
0:15:19 > 0:15:22"are revealed all over earth when mounds are broken open."
0:15:37 > 0:15:40This is the site of what in classical times
0:15:40 > 0:15:44was one of the most celebrated buildings in the entire Greek world,
0:15:44 > 0:15:47the temple of Hera on the Aegean island of Samos.
0:15:49 > 0:15:53But it wasn't just its scale and beauty that wowed the Greeks.
0:15:53 > 0:15:59It was famous as well for something else - a collection of giant bones.
0:15:59 > 0:16:01But where had they come from?
0:16:01 > 0:16:05Well, as everyone on Samos knew, their island had been the scene,
0:16:05 > 0:16:09way back in ancient times, of a quite spectacular battle.
0:16:09 > 0:16:12One that had been fought between an army of ferocious
0:16:12 > 0:16:15female warriors called Amazons, and the god Dionysus.
0:16:16 > 0:16:20And what had Dionysus brought with him as back-up?
0:16:20 > 0:16:24Nothing less than a war train of elephants.
0:16:32 > 0:16:35Panaima, the ancients called the site of this battle -
0:16:35 > 0:16:38"the Blood-Soaked Field".
0:16:41 > 0:16:44And its location?
0:16:44 > 0:16:47Well, its location seems to have been here.
0:16:48 > 0:16:52The soil, which elsewhere on Samos is a dirty white,
0:16:52 > 0:16:55here, you can see, is the colour of dried blood.
0:16:56 > 0:16:58And on either side of it,
0:16:58 > 0:17:04hills that are absolutely stuffed with prehistoric elephant bones.
0:17:04 > 0:17:08So what that implies is that this site was witness to
0:17:08 > 0:17:12an absolutely key event in the history of palaeontology.
0:17:12 > 0:17:16The ancients who came across the bones here, and explained them
0:17:16 > 0:17:19as the remains of elephants, were blazing a trail that would be
0:17:19 > 0:17:23followed by 18th-century, by 19th-century palaeontologists.
0:17:23 > 0:17:25For the very first time,
0:17:25 > 0:17:31the fossils of long-lost megafauna were being identified correctly.
0:17:31 > 0:17:36Nor was that the limit of ancient Greek paleontological achievement.
0:17:36 > 0:17:41Take the evidence on this Corinthian vase from the sixth century BC,
0:17:41 > 0:17:43now in a Boston museum.
0:17:43 > 0:17:46Here's a brave hero, Heracles,
0:17:46 > 0:17:49coming to the rescue of Hesione, a princess of Troy,
0:17:49 > 0:17:53who is being menaced by a monster.
0:17:53 > 0:17:56Most art historians, specialists of vase painting,
0:17:56 > 0:18:00had identified this monster
0:18:00 > 0:18:04as a very poorly drawn sea monster peeking out of a cave. To me,
0:18:04 > 0:18:09it looked a lot like a fossil skull eroding out of a cliff-side.
0:18:09 > 0:18:12You can see that it's disembodied. It has no body.
0:18:12 > 0:18:14So this monster looks the way it does,
0:18:14 > 0:18:17not because the artist was rubbish at drawing monsters?
0:18:17 > 0:18:22You think that it might actually be The fossil of an actual beast?
0:18:22 > 0:18:25Well, if you look at the other figures on the vase,
0:18:25 > 0:18:27the humans and the other animals,
0:18:27 > 0:18:32they are all very well drawn, and so the artist was actually
0:18:32 > 0:18:36a good artist and he has given us a very good rendering of what
0:18:36 > 0:18:40a fossil skull would look like as it weathers out of a cliff.
0:18:40 > 0:18:44I think the model may have been a Samotherium,
0:18:44 > 0:18:46which is a giant giraffe species.
0:18:46 > 0:18:49They lived in the Mioscene and they left a lot of fossils.
0:18:49 > 0:18:52In the Aegean, on islands in mainland Greece,
0:18:52 > 0:18:54that would be a very common fossil.
0:18:54 > 0:18:59Paleontologists notice the large empty eye socket,
0:18:59 > 0:19:04the broken-away nasal area which is a very realistic rendition
0:19:04 > 0:19:09of a skull that's been in the ground for a long time. The jagged teeth,
0:19:09 > 0:19:12the back of the skull, it really matches
0:19:12 > 0:19:15what a Samotherium skull looked like.
0:19:15 > 0:19:17This appears to be the oldest surviving
0:19:17 > 0:19:22artistic representation of a fossil in Greek art.
0:19:22 > 0:19:24So what we have here is an object of absolutely
0:19:24 > 0:19:27key significance in the history of paleontology.
0:19:27 > 0:19:30I think it's a really powerful evidence that fossils
0:19:30 > 0:19:34did influence the way Greeks thought about their myths.
0:19:34 > 0:19:37For it to have been drawn so realistically,
0:19:37 > 0:19:40the skull must have been in good condition.
0:19:40 > 0:19:44But how did the Greeks think it had been preserved like that in rock?
0:19:44 > 0:19:48One answer can be found in the story of a second princess
0:19:48 > 0:19:51rescued from a monster.
0:19:51 > 0:19:55This is a book which used to belong to my grandmother,
0:19:55 > 0:19:57and if I open it here,
0:19:57 > 0:20:02there is a fabulous picture by the Victorian artist Lord Leighton.
0:20:02 > 0:20:06And yes, it's true there's a half-naked woman tied to a rock,
0:20:06 > 0:20:09but when I first came across this book,
0:20:09 > 0:20:12back in my grandmother's house, I was still of an age to be far more
0:20:12 > 0:20:18interested in the fact that here was what seemed to be a dinosaur.
0:20:18 > 0:20:21In fact, it's a sea monster, sent to ravage Joppa,
0:20:21 > 0:20:24in what's now Israel, after the local queen had been
0:20:24 > 0:20:27foolish enough to insult Poseidon, the god of the sea.
0:20:27 > 0:20:31And the naked woman is Andromeda, the queen's daughter,
0:20:31 > 0:20:36who is being offered to the monster in an attempt to calm Poseidon down.
0:20:36 > 0:20:41But no need to panic, because here comes the hero Perseus,
0:20:41 > 0:20:42armed with a Gorgon's head,
0:20:42 > 0:20:46and anyone who looks at the head is immediately turned to stone.
0:20:47 > 0:20:51And this, as you can see from the painting,
0:20:51 > 0:20:54is precisely the mistake that the monster has made.
0:20:54 > 0:20:56Andromeda was saved...
0:20:56 > 0:21:01and the monster, well, the monster was turned to stone...
0:21:01 > 0:21:07just like a fossil. All of which raises an intriguing possibility.
0:21:07 > 0:21:11Was the story of the Gorgon's head an attempt by the Greeks
0:21:11 > 0:21:16to explain what would otherwise have been inexplicable wonders?
0:21:16 > 0:21:20Colossal skeletons fashioned out of rock?
0:21:20 > 0:21:23Certainly, one thing is clear.
0:21:23 > 0:21:27Giant fossilised monsters, back in Classical times as now,
0:21:27 > 0:21:30made for phenomenal box office.
0:21:31 > 0:21:34In 58 BC, when a flamboyant showman
0:21:34 > 0:21:37by the name of Marcus Aemilius Scaurus
0:21:37 > 0:21:41returned home after a spell throwing his weight around in Judea,
0:21:41 > 0:21:44he brought with him a giant fossil, which he claimed to have been
0:21:44 > 0:21:48the very monster turned to stone by Perseus.
0:21:48 > 0:21:52The monster, we are told, was over 40 feet long,
0:21:52 > 0:21:55the height of its ribs was greater than that of an Indian elephant,
0:21:55 > 0:21:59and its spine was one and a half feet thick.
0:21:59 > 0:22:04Now, we have no idea what it was that Scaurus had actually brought back with him -
0:22:04 > 0:22:08the fossil of some prehistoric beast, clearly, a giant whale perhaps,
0:22:08 > 0:22:12or even it may be some composite monster,
0:22:12 > 0:22:16fashioned out of a whole assortment of fossilised remains.
0:22:18 > 0:22:22But of one thing we can be absolutely confident.
0:22:22 > 0:22:24It wasn't a dinosaur.
0:22:24 > 0:22:28All the giant bones found across the Mediterranean came from mammals.
0:22:28 > 0:22:32Elephants, rhinoceroses, Samotheriums.
0:22:32 > 0:22:35We know this because the rocks that contain them
0:22:35 > 0:22:40are of relatively recent origin - say eight million years old.
0:22:40 > 0:22:43To contain the bones of dinosaurs, they would have had to be
0:22:43 > 0:22:46more than eight times that age.
0:22:49 > 0:22:53But what about dinosaur remains outside the Mediterranean?
0:22:53 > 0:22:56Did the Greeks know anything about them?
0:22:56 > 0:23:00Adrienne Mayor thinks they did. And for someone like me,
0:23:00 > 0:23:02whose childhood craze for dinosaurs
0:23:02 > 0:23:06evolved seamlessly into an obsession with the ancient Greeks,
0:23:06 > 0:23:08it's a completely gripping theory.
0:23:08 > 0:23:14The Greeks might have had knowledge of dinosaur remains
0:23:14 > 0:23:17if they travelled further east, along the silk routes
0:23:17 > 0:23:19where there are dinosaur remains,
0:23:19 > 0:23:21much further east than the Mediterranean world.
0:23:21 > 0:23:23Beyond the land of the Scythians,
0:23:23 > 0:23:27a people who inhabited a vast stretch of central Asia,
0:23:27 > 0:23:31there rose a steepling chain of mountains.
0:23:31 > 0:23:36So reports Herodotus, a Greek historian of the fifth century BC.
0:23:36 > 0:23:41And beyond these mountains there exist mysterious creatures
0:23:41 > 0:23:43called griffins.
0:23:43 > 0:23:48Herodotus reported stories that he heard from the Scythian nomads.
0:23:48 > 0:23:53They told him about griffins. Strange creatures with beaks,
0:23:53 > 0:23:56four legs, nests on the ground for their eggs,
0:23:56 > 0:24:01that guarded the gold deposits that the Scythians mined and prospected.
0:24:01 > 0:24:06These creatures were fearsome.
0:24:06 > 0:24:10They preyed on horses and miners.
0:24:11 > 0:24:14Looking at the way Greeks represented griffins,
0:24:14 > 0:24:16as in this fine collection on Samos,
0:24:16 > 0:24:20you might think that these were fantastical creatures,
0:24:20 > 0:24:22the product of over-heated imaginations.
0:24:23 > 0:24:27But that was not the understanding of the Greeks themselves.
0:24:27 > 0:24:31The early travellers may have been shown fossils of dinosaurs
0:24:31 > 0:24:35to support those stories of a beaked creature with four legs,
0:24:35 > 0:24:40burrows - nests on the ground near the gold,
0:24:40 > 0:24:42guarding the gold, actually.
0:24:42 > 0:24:47Now, in the Gobi desert, east of the Altai Mountains,
0:24:47 > 0:24:50there stretches one of the richest hunting grounds
0:24:50 > 0:24:53for dinosaur fossils anywhere in the world.
0:24:54 > 0:24:58In 1922, when an American adventurer,
0:24:58 > 0:25:01a kind of proto-Indiana Jones named Roy Chapman Andrews,
0:25:01 > 0:25:05made the first paleontological survey of the region,
0:25:05 > 0:25:08he and his men were astounded by what they found.
0:25:08 > 0:25:10Fossils, he reported,
0:25:10 > 0:25:15were strewn over the surface almost as thickly as stones.
0:25:15 > 0:25:19The desert was positively paved with bones.
0:25:19 > 0:25:25Most astounding of all, there were nests - nests filled with eggs.
0:25:25 > 0:25:28The very first dinosaur eggs ever found.
0:25:32 > 0:25:35This film shows the creature who laid them.
0:25:37 > 0:25:42It was a distant ancestor of one of the most celebrated dinosaurs ever found in the Wild West,
0:25:42 > 0:25:46the three-horned living tank Triceratops,
0:25:46 > 0:25:51and so, perhaps not surprisingly, it was named Protoceratops.
0:25:51 > 0:25:55And if it seems to resemble descriptions given by Greek writers of the griffin,
0:25:55 > 0:25:58well, perhaps it's not entirely coincidence.
0:25:58 > 0:26:01And there's further evidence for the link
0:26:01 > 0:26:04between dinosaur bones and griffins.
0:26:04 > 0:26:07We're told by Ctesias, a Greek physician at the court
0:26:07 > 0:26:10of the Persian king in the fifth century BC,
0:26:10 > 0:26:16"griffins are a race of four-footed birds, almost as large as wolves,
0:26:16 > 0:26:18"and with legs and claws like lions."
0:26:18 > 0:26:24The Scythians described griffins as combining the features of birds and mammals.
0:26:24 > 0:26:28They were attempting to describe accurately
0:26:28 > 0:26:31the fossils that they saw, the fossils of dinosaurs,
0:26:31 > 0:26:33things that they had never seen alive.
0:26:33 > 0:26:36And the fossils of the dinosaurs, Protoceratops dinosaurs,
0:26:36 > 0:26:41combine the features of mammalian, four-legged creature, a predator,
0:26:41 > 0:26:46with the beak of a raptor, or an eagle, or a bird of some sort.
0:26:46 > 0:26:51If Mayor's Protoceratops as bird-like monster theory is accurate,
0:26:51 > 0:26:55and it's received wide support both from classicists and from palaeontologists,
0:26:55 > 0:26:59then it suggests something really rather remarkable.
0:27:02 > 0:27:06The mural in the Peabody is called The Age of Reptiles.
0:27:06 > 0:27:08It shows us dinosaurs as terrible lizards.
0:27:08 > 0:27:12But the ancient nomads of Mongolia, it seems,
0:27:12 > 0:27:16recognised in Protoceratops not a reptile, but a kind of bird,
0:27:16 > 0:27:22which prefigures what is pretty much the consensus of scientists today.
0:27:22 > 0:27:24The notion that birds are so closely related
0:27:24 > 0:27:28to dinosaurs, that they are in fact a kind of dinosaur themselves,
0:27:28 > 0:27:33has been fundamentally shaped by recent discoveries in Asia.
0:27:33 > 0:27:35So how haunting it is to see
0:27:35 > 0:27:39in the fabulously ancient figure of the griffin,
0:27:39 > 0:27:42a possible foreshadowing of insights
0:27:42 > 0:27:46that embody the absolute paleontological cutting edge.
0:27:48 > 0:27:52And just maybe, griffins weren't the only mythical creatures
0:27:52 > 0:27:55to have been inspired by the discovery of dinosaur bones.
0:27:56 > 0:28:01In China, the figure of the dragon was for millennia
0:28:01 > 0:28:05an emblem of the Emperor, and it remains to this day
0:28:05 > 0:28:08a potent symbol of Chinese identity and culture.
0:28:10 > 0:28:13The earliest representations of dragons
0:28:13 > 0:28:16reach as far back as 6,000 BC.
0:28:17 > 0:28:24Could it be that the fossils of dinosaurs also gave rise to this fabulously enduring creature?
0:28:24 > 0:28:29Were dragons ancient China's attempt to explain the mystery of outsized bones,
0:28:29 > 0:28:33the bones of dinosaurs such as those that today
0:28:33 > 0:28:36are known as Tsintaosaurus,
0:28:36 > 0:28:39Yangchuanosaurus,
0:28:39 > 0:28:43or Sinosauropteryx?
0:28:43 > 0:28:46The evidence, as you might expect, is, to put it mildly,
0:28:46 > 0:28:48circumstantial.
0:28:48 > 0:28:52All the same, a fascinating demonstration of just how
0:28:52 > 0:28:56potent the hold can be of fossils on the Chinese imagination
0:28:56 > 0:28:58came to light only a few years ago.
0:29:00 > 0:29:05In 2006, in central China, palaeontologists discovered that
0:29:05 > 0:29:09the remains of dinosaurs were being dug up and sold as "dragon bones".
0:29:09 > 0:29:12900 grams were going for the equivalent of 50p.
0:29:15 > 0:29:18Villagers told the palaeontologists that they had been excavating
0:29:18 > 0:29:22the seam of fossils for a couple of decades.
0:29:22 > 0:29:26But the antiquity of Chinese medical practises suggests that
0:29:26 > 0:29:29the attribution of dinosaur bones to dragons
0:29:29 > 0:29:32may reach very much further back in time.
0:29:33 > 0:29:37Certainly, what we do know is that in China, dragons have been
0:29:37 > 0:29:42associated with health and good fortune for millennia.
0:29:43 > 0:29:47Ancient recipes employing the fossilised bones of large,
0:29:47 > 0:29:50prehistoric mammals, and probably dinosaurs too,
0:29:50 > 0:29:52are included in the Chinese Materia Medica -
0:29:52 > 0:29:57compendia of centuries-old traditional medicine.
0:29:57 > 0:30:02The size of the bones that are recorded in the Materia Medica,
0:30:02 > 0:30:06they are clearly large bones and not of ordinary mammals,
0:30:06 > 0:30:11and they would have been given tremendous significance in the Materia Medica.
0:30:11 > 0:30:15In a culture which believed in the reality of dragons,
0:30:15 > 0:30:18these large bones were clearly at a premium.
0:30:18 > 0:30:22This is one of the earliest recipes to mention dragon bones,
0:30:22 > 0:30:26first recorded in the third century BC.
0:30:26 > 0:30:29What you do is that you grind the bones to dust,
0:30:29 > 0:30:33and mix them with various herbal medicines.
0:30:35 > 0:30:39Then you eviscerate two swallows and you pack the bone,
0:30:39 > 0:30:44which is now fine dust, into small bags and place them
0:30:44 > 0:30:48inside the swallows and hang them overnight over a well.
0:30:49 > 0:30:53Once you have done that, they are magically efficacious.
0:30:56 > 0:31:01- So let's put our bag inside and let it boil.- It's like a tea bag.
0:31:01 > 0:31:03Like a tea bag. Exactly.
0:31:03 > 0:31:06So we're expecting all the essence of these various herbs
0:31:06 > 0:31:09to come out of the bag into the surroundings.
0:31:09 > 0:31:13Chris Duffin, a historian of geology and folklore, made tea for me
0:31:13 > 0:31:17following the ancient recipe, but omitting the eviscerated swallow.
0:31:18 > 0:31:20He didn't recommend I drink it, though.
0:31:20 > 0:31:22One of the herbal ingredients -
0:31:22 > 0:31:24not the powdered bone - turns out to be highly toxic.
0:31:29 > 0:31:31When Huang Di, the First Emperor,
0:31:31 > 0:31:34died more than 4,000 years ago, his admirers declared
0:31:34 > 0:31:38that he had risen into the heavens in the form of a dragon.
0:31:40 > 0:31:42An intriguing thought,
0:31:42 > 0:31:45that long before scientists gave Tyrannosaurus his surname of 'Rex',
0:31:45 > 0:31:47the Latin word for 'King',
0:31:47 > 0:31:51royalty and dinosaurs might have been paired up in ancient China.
0:31:55 > 0:31:58Nor was it only in China that big bones were
0:31:58 > 0:32:01believed by the ancients to bring good luck.
0:32:01 > 0:32:05The Greeks too, when they weren't listening to travellers' tales about griffins,
0:32:05 > 0:32:08might be busy harvesting fossils themselves.
0:32:08 > 0:32:12In Greece, giant petrified bones were seen as talismans
0:32:12 > 0:32:17that might bring power, prestige, even victory in battle.
0:32:19 > 0:32:23The best example comes from a war that featured that Tyrannosaur
0:32:23 > 0:32:27among the cities of ancient Greece, Sparta.
0:32:27 > 0:32:31Now, most Greeks, relative to the Spartans, were herbivores.
0:32:31 > 0:32:33Which isn't to say they were exactly wusses.
0:32:33 > 0:32:38When they marched to battle, they would make a fearsome sight. They would have their shields,
0:32:38 > 0:32:41the equivalent of the crest of this Triceratops,
0:32:41 > 0:32:47and they would use them to make a phalanx, out of which would bristle their spears,
0:32:47 > 0:32:50the equivalent of a Triceratops's horns.
0:32:50 > 0:32:53When they met with another city's phalanx,
0:32:53 > 0:32:57they would charge one another
0:32:57 > 0:33:00and shove and gouge and hack
0:33:00 > 0:33:03until one side turned and fled.
0:33:06 > 0:33:09But the Spartans were different.
0:33:09 > 0:33:14Unlike the warriors of other cities, they were full-time - professional.
0:33:14 > 0:33:19The very earth would shake to the rhythm of their metronomic approach.
0:33:19 > 0:33:22As they emerged through the dust of battle,
0:33:22 > 0:33:26they would reveal a terrifying wall of scarlet and bronze.
0:33:26 > 0:33:27When they charged,
0:33:27 > 0:33:31it wouldn't necessarily be a full-frontal attack.
0:33:31 > 0:33:34The Spartans, unlike other Greeks,
0:33:34 > 0:33:38had the training to launch their wings in a flanking action.
0:33:38 > 0:33:42Their aim - to attack the vulnerable sides of an enemy phalanx
0:33:42 > 0:33:45and shred it to pieces.
0:33:45 > 0:33:49Their style of battle, I suppose, was like that of a Tyrannosaur.
0:34:04 > 0:34:07Not that the Spartans always won.
0:34:07 > 0:34:10When, in the early sixth century BC, they sought to conquer
0:34:10 > 0:34:15the neighbouring city of Tegea, they suffered a humiliating defeat.
0:34:15 > 0:34:19But just like Tyrannosaurs, which often seem to have suffered
0:34:19 > 0:34:22quite serious wounds and yet invariably come back for more,
0:34:22 > 0:34:25the Spartans rarely took defeat lying down.
0:34:27 > 0:34:29In the wake of this reverse,
0:34:29 > 0:34:32they sent a delegation to Tegea under cover of a truce.
0:34:32 > 0:34:36News had reached them of a strange find in a blacksmith's yard -
0:34:36 > 0:34:39the spine of a giant skeleton.
0:34:39 > 0:34:42No wonder the Spartans were excited. They had been told, you see,
0:34:42 > 0:34:45by an oracle, that they would only ever conquer Tegea
0:34:45 > 0:34:48if they could first capture a skeleton,
0:34:48 > 0:34:52the bones of an ancient prince called Orestes.
0:34:52 > 0:34:56Orestes had the kind of dysfunctional family background
0:34:56 > 0:34:59that the ancient Greeks loved in their heroes.
0:34:59 > 0:35:04His mum had killed his dad. He'd killed his mum. Outsize events.
0:35:04 > 0:35:08And so who was to say that Orestes had not been outsize as well?
0:35:08 > 0:35:11And if he had been on a physically sensational scale,
0:35:11 > 0:35:12indeed, a giant,
0:35:12 > 0:35:15then what else could the skeleton in the blacksmith's yard be,
0:35:15 > 0:35:21if not the very bones of the great hero that the Spartans wanted?
0:35:21 > 0:35:24All just a bit of a stretch, you might have thought,
0:35:24 > 0:35:27except that sure enough, it turned out
0:35:27 > 0:35:30that the Spartans' hunch had been spot on.
0:35:30 > 0:35:36The bones were dug up, smuggled to Sparta, shown off, then re-interred.
0:35:36 > 0:35:38Shortly afterwards,
0:35:38 > 0:35:42the Tegeans submitted to their mastery of their hated neighbours.
0:35:42 > 0:35:47A resounding triumph for the Spartan military-paleontological complex.
0:35:50 > 0:35:56So what was the skeleton? Almost certainly not the bones of Orestes.
0:35:56 > 0:35:58We can't be certain,
0:35:58 > 0:36:01but the remains most likely belonged to a mastodon,
0:36:01 > 0:36:04a large prehistoric kind of elephant, the remains of which
0:36:04 > 0:36:09were still being dug up around Tegea as late as the 20th century.
0:36:09 > 0:36:13All of which makes for a puzzle - why should the Spartans
0:36:13 > 0:36:17have presumed that the bones belonged to an ancient hero?
0:36:18 > 0:36:23The Greeks, when they contemplated the Earth's ancient past,
0:36:23 > 0:36:26conceived of it as an age of giants.
0:36:26 > 0:36:29Heroes in particular had been built on a colossal scale.
0:36:33 > 0:36:37Now, it is true that, for all the restlessness of their curiosity
0:36:37 > 0:36:40and the sheer sweep of their metaphysical speculations,
0:36:40 > 0:36:44they had no real understanding of the vastness of time
0:36:44 > 0:36:48that had preceded the appearance of humans on Earth.
0:36:48 > 0:36:49What they did have, however,
0:36:49 > 0:36:53was a sense that humanity had evolved and changed over time,
0:36:53 > 0:36:56albeit not in a way that Darwin would have recognised.
0:36:56 > 0:37:02To classical thinkers, it was a fundamental presumption that everything was going to the dogs.
0:37:02 > 0:37:07What had once been a golden age was now an age of iron.
0:37:07 > 0:37:10The human race, originally a breed of heroes,
0:37:10 > 0:37:13had degenerated and diminished
0:37:13 > 0:37:17and ended up literally dwarfish.
0:37:19 > 0:37:23And what had served to give the Greeks this particular notion?
0:37:23 > 0:37:26Of course, in a sense it's just human nature to presume
0:37:26 > 0:37:28that things were better in the good old days.
0:37:28 > 0:37:32But the Greeks weren't just drawing on a gut conservatism
0:37:32 > 0:37:34for their understanding of the distant past.
0:37:34 > 0:37:37They had evidence for it,
0:37:37 > 0:37:41such as the outsize bones dug up at Tegea by the Spartans.
0:37:43 > 0:37:47The people of Samos may have identified the elephant bones on their island correctly
0:37:47 > 0:37:51but most Greeks, confronted by a giant fossil, would like as not
0:37:51 > 0:37:55believe it to be the remains of some legendary giant hero.
0:37:57 > 0:38:02Indeed, so wide-spread was this presumption that the relics
0:38:02 > 0:38:04of renowned big-hitters such as Theseus or Ajax
0:38:04 > 0:38:09became must-have accessories for any temple keen to make its mark.
0:38:11 > 0:38:16Here is one of those venerated giant bones, now recognised
0:38:16 > 0:38:19to be part of the femur of an Ice Age Woolly rhinoceros.
0:38:19 > 0:38:24It was dug up in a temple at Nichoria near Sparta.
0:38:24 > 0:38:25This is one of only two
0:38:25 > 0:38:31fossilised bones of this sort that are known
0:38:31 > 0:38:34from Greek sanctuaries.
0:38:34 > 0:38:38- So is a really rare and precious object.- It is indeed.
0:38:38 > 0:38:41It's a very rare discovery.
0:38:41 > 0:38:47They would have seen it as a relic, almost certainly of a lost hero.
0:38:47 > 0:38:52Very much like the way we see relics of saints,
0:38:52 > 0:38:57displayed in reliquaries in churches today.
0:38:57 > 0:39:02So it was that fossil bones ended up as tourist attractions
0:39:02 > 0:39:06across first the Greek, and then the Roman world.
0:39:06 > 0:39:08Even Caesars might come to gawp.
0:39:09 > 0:39:12The emperor Hadrian, we are told,
0:39:12 > 0:39:16when a skeleton with kneecaps the size of a discus was exposed
0:39:16 > 0:39:21on a beach, "embraced and kissed the bones, and laid them out."
0:39:21 > 0:39:26No wonder, then, confronted by such seemingly incontrovertible evidence
0:39:26 > 0:39:29for the colossal stature of ancient men, that the Romans
0:39:29 > 0:39:35should long have clung to their belief in a form of evolution -
0:39:35 > 0:39:37"survival of the unfittest".
0:39:40 > 0:39:42400 years on from the birth of Christ,
0:39:42 > 0:39:45and scholars still clung to it.
0:39:45 > 0:39:51"The older the world becomes, so the smaller will be the bodies of men."
0:39:51 > 0:39:54The man who spoke these words was Augustine,
0:39:54 > 0:39:58a brilliant intellectual living in what is now Tunisia,
0:39:58 > 0:40:02even as the Roman empire was busy imploding all around him.
0:40:02 > 0:40:06Tumultuous though the times were, Augustine didn't let them
0:40:06 > 0:40:10distract him from his excitement at the discovery of an elephant tooth.
0:40:10 > 0:40:14Not, however, that Augustine thought that it was an elephant tooth.
0:40:14 > 0:40:19In size, as he pointed out, "it was as big as 100 human teeth combined."
0:40:19 > 0:40:23No wonder, then, that he should have stated confidently,
0:40:23 > 0:40:26"I believe it belonged to some giant."
0:40:27 > 0:40:31Living as he did in the fourth century AD, Augustine's take on
0:40:31 > 0:40:35this mysterious relic, however, was complex.
0:40:38 > 0:40:42He had one foot in the waning world of classical culture,
0:40:42 > 0:40:46but he was also a Christian, a bishop, a saint.
0:40:46 > 0:40:51He knew and loved his Virgil, but he lived to see Rome sacked.
0:40:51 > 0:40:54In attempting to explain the mysterious giant's tooth,
0:40:54 > 0:40:58he looked backwards to the traditions of the Greeks and the Romans,
0:40:58 > 0:41:03but he looked forwards as well, to those of the Middle Ages.
0:41:03 > 0:41:06As the gods and heroes of the classical world
0:41:06 > 0:41:10faded before the triumph of the Church, so new explanations
0:41:10 > 0:41:15for the existence of huge fossilised bones took their place.
0:41:15 > 0:41:18This time, they were derived from the Bible.
0:41:18 > 0:41:21Of course, the scholars of the Middle Ages,
0:41:21 > 0:41:24like the philosophers and biologists of ancient Greece,
0:41:24 > 0:41:28had no real idea just how ancient life on Earth really was.
0:41:29 > 0:41:32But they weren't wholly lacking a notion of a vanished age
0:41:32 > 0:41:37that had belonged to beings larger and more exotic than themselves.
0:41:37 > 0:41:42These creatures, like the heroes of ancient Greece, were human.
0:41:42 > 0:41:44Colossally human.
0:41:44 > 0:41:46Giants.
0:41:49 > 0:41:51But where had these giants gone?
0:41:51 > 0:41:55The answer to that, so people in the Middle Ages believed,
0:41:55 > 0:41:59was to be found in the greatest cataclysm ever to afflict humanity -
0:41:59 > 0:42:01Noah's flood.
0:42:02 > 0:42:05Now, the animals may have gone in two by two,
0:42:05 > 0:42:07but not everyone got out of the rain.
0:42:07 > 0:42:11"There were giants in the earth in those days."
0:42:11 > 0:42:14So we're told in Genesis, the first book of the Bible,
0:42:14 > 0:42:17about the world that preceded Noah's flood.
0:42:17 > 0:42:20And sometimes, in the course of exploration or excavation,
0:42:20 > 0:42:24people would find the bones of these same giants.
0:42:25 > 0:42:28Augustine was one of the first, but certainly not the last,
0:42:28 > 0:42:31to explain fossils in terms of the Flood.
0:42:31 > 0:42:36In 1342, for instance, a cave was discovered in Southern Italy
0:42:36 > 0:42:40that contained the skeleton of a man 400 feet tall -
0:42:40 > 0:42:43or so we are told by the great medieval writer Boccachio.
0:42:43 > 0:42:47"To display their discovery to posterity, the citizens
0:42:47 > 0:42:51"of Trapani strung the bones on a wire and carried them to a church."
0:42:55 > 0:42:58Not every wonder discovered in rock, however,
0:42:58 > 0:43:02was to be explained as the relic of a vanished giant.
0:43:02 > 0:43:03What, for instance,
0:43:03 > 0:43:07were good Christians to make of mysterious footprints like these?
0:43:09 > 0:43:12We now know that these bird-like tracks,
0:43:12 > 0:43:13discovered in Oxfordshire,
0:43:13 > 0:43:16were left by the ancestors of carnivorous dinosaurs
0:43:16 > 0:43:18like Tyrannosaurus.
0:43:18 > 0:43:21But it's no wonder that back in the Middle Ages, when similar prints
0:43:21 > 0:43:25were discovered in locations ranging from Poland to the Alps,
0:43:25 > 0:43:28that some rather diabolical explanations
0:43:28 > 0:43:32should have been provided.
0:43:32 > 0:43:36"Whence comest thou?" God asks Satan in the Bible.
0:43:36 > 0:43:38Back comes the answer,
0:43:38 > 0:43:44"From going to and fro in the Earth, and from walking up and down in it."
0:43:44 > 0:43:48Indeed, so closely associated with the Devil were the footprints
0:43:48 > 0:43:52of prehistoric creatures that it was not unknown for attempts
0:43:52 > 0:43:56to be made to neutralise their malign power by incorporating them
0:43:56 > 0:44:00into the fabric of a church, as here at Bebington in Cheshire.
0:44:00 > 0:44:04But Satanic walkabouts weren't the only explanation for dinosaur tracks
0:44:04 > 0:44:06that seem to have grown up in the Middle Ages.
0:44:06 > 0:44:12As in the East, so in the West, people told tales of dragons.
0:44:12 > 0:44:17Those of Europe, however, unlike those of China, were malign,
0:44:17 > 0:44:20worthy trophies for a passing hero.
0:44:20 > 0:44:23Indeed, dinosaur footprints have been found
0:44:23 > 0:44:27beside the Rhine in the very spot traditionally associated
0:44:27 > 0:44:31with Fafnir, the gold-guarding dragon slain by Siegfried,
0:44:31 > 0:44:36and immortalised in the opera by Richard Wagner.
0:44:36 > 0:44:39Nice to think that a dinosaur's plod through a Jurassic swamp
0:44:39 > 0:44:42might have contributed to the Ring Cycle.
0:44:45 > 0:44:47In fact, so vividly did dragons haunt
0:44:47 > 0:44:52the imaginations of Germans in the Middle Ages that in 1335,
0:44:52 > 0:44:54when this huge skull was dug up
0:44:54 > 0:44:57outside the Austrian town of Klagenfurt,
0:44:57 > 0:45:00the locals had no doubt what it was.
0:45:00 > 0:45:04The story goes that once, back in the earliest days of the town,
0:45:04 > 0:45:08a nearby swamp was the haunt of a monstrous serpent...
0:45:08 > 0:45:11until a bold knight, as bold knights tended to do
0:45:11 > 0:45:15back in those days, decided to take the dragon on.
0:45:15 > 0:45:17So what the knight did was he got hold of a cow,
0:45:17 > 0:45:22he stuffed it full of quicklime and then he used the cow as bait.
0:45:22 > 0:45:24The dragon came roaring down,
0:45:24 > 0:45:29devoured the cow, the quicklime ignited, the dragon exploded,
0:45:29 > 0:45:34and bang, Klagenfurt had been made safe for civilisation.
0:45:34 > 0:45:39Two and a half centuries on from the discovery of the mysterious skull,
0:45:39 > 0:45:43and the legend had only improved in the telling.
0:45:43 > 0:45:48So much so, that in 1590, the good folk of Klagenfurt were inspired to commission...
0:45:48 > 0:45:50this.
0:45:50 > 0:45:54Once again, a fossilised bone inspired a fabulous creation,
0:45:54 > 0:45:59this time in three dimensions. Which I suppose begs an obvious question.
0:45:59 > 0:46:05To what creature had the skull dug up in 1335 actually belonged?
0:46:05 > 0:46:10The answer - not a dragon, but a woolly rhinoceros.
0:46:10 > 0:46:16And this forlorn spot north of the town was where it breathed its last.
0:46:17 > 0:46:20There's a sense, then, in which the sculpture,
0:46:20 > 0:46:23fashioned within the lifetimes of Galileo and Francis Bacon,
0:46:23 > 0:46:29might seem a last spasm of medieval superstition.
0:46:29 > 0:46:31But that, I think, would be unfair.
0:46:31 > 0:46:35Yes, it looks back to a time when people believed that dragons
0:46:35 > 0:46:38and giants had actually existed.
0:46:38 > 0:46:40But it looks ahead as well,
0:46:40 > 0:46:45to something that we can almost recognise as modern palaeontology.
0:46:45 > 0:46:50This, after all, is not a monster conjured up
0:46:50 > 0:46:57purely from the imagination - it constitutes, however inadequately,
0:46:57 > 0:47:02the oldest surviving reconstruction of a prehistoric beast.
0:47:07 > 0:47:10A century on, and to scholars touched by the dawning rays
0:47:10 > 0:47:12of the Enlightenment,
0:47:12 > 0:47:15talk of dragons or giants was becoming an embarrassment.
0:47:17 > 0:47:22In 1683, when the world's original university museum, the Ashmolean,
0:47:22 > 0:47:27first opened its doors in this Oxford building, a mysterious bone
0:47:27 > 0:47:32dug up near the village of Cornwell was one of its prize exhibits.
0:47:33 > 0:47:37In his book, The Natural History of Oxfordshire, Robert Plot,
0:47:37 > 0:47:39the first keeper of the Ashmolean,
0:47:39 > 0:47:43tried to work out what the bone had come from.
0:47:43 > 0:47:46First he speculates that it was the bone of an elephant
0:47:46 > 0:47:48brought to Britain by the Romans.
0:47:48 > 0:47:50And how he actually eliminates this as an option
0:47:50 > 0:47:55is in 1676, the year before his book is published, an elephant is
0:47:55 > 0:47:58actually exhibited in Oxford as part of a travelling menagerie.
0:47:58 > 0:48:02And you can imagine Plot going up to the elephant itself
0:48:02 > 0:48:05and pulling out his tape measure and measuring it,
0:48:05 > 0:48:08and actually comparing it to the bone he had in hand.
0:48:08 > 0:48:12He determines they're different in shape and size and eliminates that.
0:48:12 > 0:48:16He very quickly also eliminates horse and ox as viable candidates
0:48:16 > 0:48:20and he concludes in the end, basically with the only, the only
0:48:20 > 0:48:23other conclusion that he could draw, was that it was the bone of a giant.
0:48:23 > 0:48:28This is the illustration in Plot's book of the mysterious relic.
0:48:28 > 0:48:30The original has vanished.
0:48:30 > 0:48:34In 1763, when a scholar named Richard Brookes inspected it,
0:48:34 > 0:48:37he gave it, in the most up to date scientific style,
0:48:37 > 0:48:41an imposing classical name, he called it - what else? -
0:48:41 > 0:48:44"Scrotum Humanum".
0:48:44 > 0:48:47Now, reflected in this name was the fact that Brookes,
0:48:47 > 0:48:52although he knew he wasn't really dealing with a pair of unfeasibly large testicles,
0:48:52 > 0:48:56still had no idea what kind of creature his "Scrotum Humanum"
0:48:56 > 0:48:58had actually been.
0:48:58 > 0:49:00Like the Ancient Greeks,
0:49:00 > 0:49:04like the Christians of the Middle Ages, Brookes and his contemporaries
0:49:04 > 0:49:10had not the faintest notion of just how ancient the planet truly was.
0:49:10 > 0:49:12But all that was about to change,
0:49:12 > 0:49:16and fossilised bones, no longer embarrassments,
0:49:16 > 0:49:21would be enshrined as prize exhibits in a scientific revolution.
0:49:23 > 0:49:28In 1788, a Scottish geologist named James Hutton published an almost
0:49:28 > 0:49:31literally epochal book in which he proposed that the Earth
0:49:31 > 0:49:34was infinitely more ancient than humanity.
0:49:34 > 0:49:39Indeed, Hutton could find no evidence for there having been a creation at all.
0:49:39 > 0:49:44"The result," he declared, "of our present enquiry is
0:49:44 > 0:49:48"that we find no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end."
0:49:50 > 0:49:54The implications of this theory for the study of ancient beasts
0:49:54 > 0:49:56were not long in being in felt.
0:50:06 > 0:50:09Between 1815 and the early 1820s,
0:50:09 > 0:50:13a whole series of fossils were uncovered by men quarrying for slate
0:50:13 > 0:50:19down mine-shafts like this, at Stonesfield, north of Oxford.
0:50:25 > 0:50:29So this narrow, cramped passageway is where slate was mined
0:50:29 > 0:50:33for the roofs of Oxford colleges and Cotswold cottages
0:50:33 > 0:50:37and it's where in the course of that mining the teeth,
0:50:37 > 0:50:43the bones of a mysterious and monstrous beast were found,
0:50:43 > 0:50:46and the significance of these finds
0:50:46 > 0:50:50is precisely that they were made down here underground,
0:50:50 > 0:50:56because it meant that the origins of these bones
0:50:56 > 0:51:01could be very precisely identified to a particular layer
0:51:01 > 0:51:04in the sequence of rocks.
0:51:04 > 0:51:08Whatever the creature was that these fossils had come from,
0:51:08 > 0:51:11one thing was absolutely clear.
0:51:11 > 0:51:15It was old, it was very, very old.
0:51:15 > 0:51:19The bones belonged to the same mysterious creature
0:51:19 > 0:51:23that Richard Brookes had named "Scrotum Humanum".
0:51:23 > 0:51:26But now there was to be no talk of giant's testicles.
0:51:27 > 0:51:31This was because the fragments ended up in the hands of the man
0:51:31 > 0:51:35perhaps best qualified in the whole of Britain to identify them.
0:51:35 > 0:51:38A clergyman named William Buckland,
0:51:38 > 0:51:42who also just happened to be Oxford's Professor of Geology.
0:51:42 > 0:51:46What Buckland deduced was that the fossilised bones had belonged
0:51:46 > 0:51:50to a very carnivorous and very large lizard.
0:51:50 > 0:51:52A Megalosaurus.
0:51:54 > 0:51:59By 1822, the name had appeared for the first time in print.
0:51:59 > 0:52:01The animal identified by Buckland
0:52:01 > 0:52:05"must in some instances have attained a length of 40 feet,
0:52:05 > 0:52:07"and stood eight feet high."
0:52:07 > 0:52:10The notion that such a monster might once have wandered
0:52:10 > 0:52:14over Oxfordshire was, of course, a thrilling one.
0:52:18 > 0:52:22With the remains of other similar giant lizards simultaneously
0:52:22 > 0:52:24being found elsewhere across southern England,
0:52:24 > 0:52:28it opened up to the eyes of the public a quite staggering prospect.
0:52:31 > 0:52:34Once, it seemed, in the chillingly unfathomable reaches
0:52:34 > 0:52:38of a pre-human past, there had existed an entire world
0:52:38 > 0:52:42of savage reptiles, "red in tooth and claw".
0:52:43 > 0:52:49"Time, cruel time. Come and subdue that brow."
0:52:50 > 0:52:55Quite how the existence millions upon millions of years ago
0:52:55 > 0:52:59of ravening Megalosaurs was to be squared with a Biblical chronology
0:52:59 > 0:53:04that had man being fashioned by a loving God on the sixth day of Creation,
0:53:04 > 0:53:10was for theologians, a most unexpected and alarming poser.
0:53:10 > 0:53:13Buckland was merely the first of many clergymen
0:53:13 > 0:53:16to wrestle with the implications.
0:53:16 > 0:53:20Certainly, the discovery of so many fossils opened a vista
0:53:20 > 0:53:23of monsters to the wide eyes of the Victorian public
0:53:23 > 0:53:25that compared with anything in the Bible
0:53:25 > 0:53:27or Greek mythology.
0:53:30 > 0:53:33"Dragons of the prime", as the great poet Tennyson put it,
0:53:33 > 0:53:37"that tare each other in the slime."
0:53:37 > 0:53:43Except, of course, that "dragons" was precisely what they were not.
0:53:43 > 0:53:47The scientist who came up with a name for them was this man,
0:53:47 > 0:53:49Richard Owen.
0:53:49 > 0:53:52When he wasn't busy founding the Natural History Museum in London
0:53:52 > 0:53:55and being quite sensationally rude to all his colleagues,
0:53:55 > 0:53:59Owen had a day job as Britain's leading anatomist.
0:53:59 > 0:54:03Megalosaurus, and creatures like it, he announced,
0:54:03 > 0:54:07had ranked not merely as lizards, but as "terrible lizards".
0:54:07 > 0:54:11In Greek, dinosaurs.
0:54:11 > 0:54:15The name reflected the two sides of Owen's complex personality -
0:54:15 > 0:54:21the brilliant anatomist who had correctly extrapolated from a few scattered bones
0:54:21 > 0:54:26an entire kingdom of vanished creatures, and the devout Anglican,
0:54:26 > 0:54:30awestruck before the revelation of just how stupefying
0:54:30 > 0:54:33God's creations had always been.
0:54:34 > 0:54:36Nor was Owen alone in his wonder.
0:54:37 > 0:54:40Within a decade of his first use of the word,
0:54:40 > 0:54:42dinosaurs had become a veritable craze.
0:54:44 > 0:54:47In 1854, Owen himself and an associate,
0:54:47 > 0:54:51the sculptor Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, blazed what would prove
0:54:51 > 0:54:55a popular trail. They opened a dinosaur theme park.
0:54:55 > 0:55:00And here it still stands - Crystal Palace in south London.
0:55:14 > 0:55:18When Hawkins explained his motives for sculpting this Mesozoic wonderland,
0:55:18 > 0:55:23he did so in words that not only foreshadow Jurassic Park,
0:55:23 > 0:55:25but also echo the myth-making of our ancestors.
0:55:25 > 0:55:31His aim, he declared, was "the reviving of the ancient world,
0:55:31 > 0:55:35"to call up from the abyss of time and from the depths of the Earth,
0:55:35 > 0:55:40"those vast forms and gigantic beasts which the Almighty Creator
0:55:40 > 0:55:45"designed to inhabit and precede us in possession of this part of the Earth called Great Britain."
0:55:47 > 0:55:49No wonder, then, that he and Owen
0:55:49 > 0:55:52wanted to include this particular beauty.
0:55:54 > 0:55:59So what we have here is none other than Megalosaurus itself.
0:55:59 > 0:56:03Except that, as palaeontologists have long appreciated,
0:56:03 > 0:56:06it actually looked nothing like this.
0:56:06 > 0:56:10Megalosaurus was not built like a people-carrier.
0:56:10 > 0:56:15In point of fact, it was a theropod, a two-legged proto-Tyrannosaur.
0:56:15 > 0:56:19Which means that it looked like... this.
0:56:19 > 0:56:23And that's why, when I was a child, I made a point of refusing
0:56:23 > 0:56:27every offer from my parents to take me to Crystal Palace.
0:56:27 > 0:56:33These reconstructions offended every last bone in my dino-geek body.
0:56:39 > 0:56:44But now that I'm here, I can realise what a little prig I was being.
0:56:45 > 0:56:50This model built of concrete may not be cutting-edge palaeontology,
0:56:50 > 0:56:54but it tells you everything about why dinosaurs still fascinate us.
0:56:55 > 0:56:58About the sense of awe and smallness we feel
0:56:58 > 0:57:01when we contemplate the immensity of geological time,
0:57:01 > 0:57:05and about how extraordinary it is, considering the millions
0:57:05 > 0:57:08upon millions of years that separate us from the Mesozoic,
0:57:08 > 0:57:11that we know anything about dinosaurs at all.
0:57:11 > 0:57:14The achievements of palaeontology, ever since the heroic
0:57:14 > 0:57:16pioneering days of Buckland and Owen,
0:57:16 > 0:57:19have certainly been astounding.
0:57:19 > 0:57:21And recent finds, especially in China,
0:57:21 > 0:57:26have opened up new worlds of wonder and fascination.
0:57:26 > 0:57:30But there is perhaps a sense, after all, in which
0:57:30 > 0:57:35we are not so wholly far removed from those who saw in fossils
0:57:35 > 0:57:41the remains of Thunder Birds, or griffins, or giants, or dragons.
0:57:41 > 0:57:45Our understanding of dinosaurs today is defined for us
0:57:45 > 0:57:48by the discoveries of scientists.
0:57:49 > 0:57:54And yet, the nature of the fossil record being what it is,
0:57:54 > 0:57:58those same scientists will never be able to fill in all the gaps.
0:57:58 > 0:58:02And so it is, into those same gaps, that we,
0:58:02 > 0:58:07just as our ancestors did, project all our manifold obsessions,
0:58:07 > 0:58:10as variable and contradictory as human society itself.
0:58:11 > 0:58:16It turns out that the science fiction stories were right all along.
0:58:16 > 0:58:19Just when you think you've got dinosaurs pinned down,
0:58:19 > 0:58:21they always break free.
0:58:45 > 0:58:48Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
0:58:48 > 0:58:51Email subtitling@bbc.co.uk