The Wolf Den Meet the Ancestors


The Wolf Den

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In January last year,

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deep inside the limestone rocks of the Yorkshire Dales,

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cave divers, Andrew Goddard and Phil Murphy,

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were exploring the narrow and boulder-choked passages

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of a little-known underground river.

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When they surfaced in an uncharted chamber,

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they thought they were the first to set foot in these caves.

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But they were soon to discover otherwise.

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As the divers progressed deeper into the cave,

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wherever they looked, there were bones. But how old were they?

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Even more remarkable, a set of bare human footprints

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in the soft clay floor of the cave.

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By pure chance,

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the divers had stumbled upon an ancient burial site

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and one of the most important cave finds this century.

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Those bones turned out to be 3,500 years old.

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It's an amazing find,

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and means that the cave's probably a burial site

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belonging to our Bronze Age ancestors.

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So, this morning, I'm on my way to meet the team

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who are going to explore the site.

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-That was quite a drive! Hello.

-Hi, Phil Murphy. Pleased to meet you.

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Hi, Julian, Andrew Goddard. Pleased to meet you.

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So you're the two that found the cave?

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-That's right.

-Do you reckon we're going to find a way in?

-No problem!

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As an archaeologist, I've always been fascinated

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by how much you can tell about our past from a few scattered remains.

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In this programme and the coming series,

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I shall be joining in excavations of burials across the British Isles,

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and finding out more about our ancestors.

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I'll be talking to specialists,

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trying to discover who these people were,

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and when and how they died.

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Excellente.

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At the end of each programme,

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with the help of experts in facial reconstruction,

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we'll come face-to-face with one of our ancestors.

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Back in the Yorkshire Dales, the team was heading into the hills.

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Their first task is to find an alternative way into the cave

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that doesn't involve dangerous water-filled tunnels.

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Heading the team is one of Britain's leading cave archaeologists -

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Andrew Chamberlain from Sheffield University.

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Our prehistoric ancestors couldn't have potholed into the cave,

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so there must have been another entrance.

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Could one of these depressions on the hillside be the way in?

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There are several of these in the neighbourhood.

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We don't want to dig the wrong one.

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This is why we're using the radio location device,

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to try and find exactly where we are.

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Andy and Phil have volunteered to dive back into the cave

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with a small radio transmitter.

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We hope this will guide us to a suitable spot on the hillside

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where we can find a way into the cave.

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On the surface, Bob's location device

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can pinpoint the exact location of the divers,

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even if they're deep underground.

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The divers have to work their way

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through 120 metres of narrow, water-filled passages

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before they re-emerge into air.

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From here, they climb up a steep, rocky slope up into the burial cave.

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TRANSMITTER BEEPS

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That's right, then it dips off...

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BEEPING CONTINUES

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..and it comes back.

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So, that's the spot?

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That's the spot - they're directly below that, yes.

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Andy and Phil are now deep in the cave.

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They think they've found the original entrance,

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but it's now completely choked with huge boulders.

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OK, Bob. What do you want us to do next?

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You can move three metres south.

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Bob wants the divers to move

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towards one of the depressions in the hillside.

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It looks quite shallow.

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HE-L-L-OO!

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-They can hear us!

-They can...?! What, they can hear us?

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-Hello-o!

-Can you hear him?

-Yes, I can hear him.

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Hello?

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Sounds like I can hear Julian up there.

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Not very loud, but I can definitely hear him.

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Can you hear me?

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THEY HOWL

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HE LAUGHS

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What's going on, Julian?

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Um, well, the cave's called the Wolves' Den, isn't it?

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They're howling like wolves down there!

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So I think that means they've found the place!

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OK, lads. That's it. You can come out. We'll see you on the surface.

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This was amazing luck.

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Andy and Phil had found a shaft that led almost up to the surface.

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So all we have to do now is clear the rocks blocking the entrance.

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For that job, Andrew and his team needed some heavy equipment.

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There are lots of caves in the area,

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some of which contained human burials,

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but many were excavated over a century ago

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and very little survives today.

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That's why this cave, inaccessible until now, could be so special.

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GENERATOR WHIRRS

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Now we've got the generator rigged up,

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we can see how far this hole really does go.

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JULIAN LAUGHS Can you tell us that, Julian?

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Um...

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It's a bit deeper than we thought!

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The floor of the cave is about nine metres down -

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that's nearly 30 feet from where we're standing at the moment.

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And I reckon... Hang on, put that tape there again.

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There's only about two or three feet of clay and rock

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-that we're standing on!

-Yes.

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There's not much to go and a long way to the bottom of the cave!

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But it's incredible.

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While the team carried on digging,

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I went off to find where Bronze Age people in this area lived.

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I found some clues in the next valley,

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where tumbled stone walls marked the remains of a prehistoric settlement.

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This may not look much, but it's the remains of a prehistoric hut.

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I'm sitting on what remains of the back wall,

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level floor in front of me,

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and there is the entrance, pointing out to the valley bottom.

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It was probably a small farmstead, with pens for sheep and cattle.

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Perhaps home to two or three families.

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And in this wonderfully sheltered spot,

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they would have been able to have grown their crops of wheat and barley.

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Back at the site, they'd got a grip

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on the last rock blocking the entrance.

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But it was vital this boulder didn't crash onto the cave floor,

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destroying any remains that lay below.

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-More tension!

-More tension!

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-Steady.

-Steady.

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MOTOR REVS

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THEY CHEER AND APPLAUD

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After three intense days of digging and heaving great rocks around,

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the entrance was finally clear.

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Oh!

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Very snug!

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Lower me away!

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Right.

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As an archaeologist, I've spent a fair bit of my working life

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digging in holes in the ground.

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But this will be the first time I've gone underground

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in search of ancient remains.

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I felt an enormous sense of anticipation and excitement

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as I climbed down the flimsy wire ladder.

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Andrew had gone ahead, and helped me to land on a platform

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the team had built at the top of the steep rocky slope.

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-Now, don't step backwards.

-No. Good God, that's the...?

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It's scree.

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This is the scree running down to the flooded passage,

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which is where the cavers initially came up into this cave.

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I see what they mean about it being steep!

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And I can see bones on the...

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'When we turned away from the slope the divers had clambered up,

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'we saw human bones laid out in front of us.'

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Everywhere you look, there's more bone!

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I mean, there's some under here.

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'They looked so fresh and remarkably well-preserved.'

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Is this how they were left 3,500 years ago?

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I think so, yes. Yes.

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I've never...

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In all the years I've been an archaeologist,

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I never believed that I could come and see something like this!

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I'm sort of genuinely quite speechless!

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-Underneath the platform, there's one...

-Crikey, yes.

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..right under here.

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-Are these all human?

-These are all human.

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-OK, so what's that bone, Andrew?

-That's a humerus.

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Right. So there's a humerus there. That's another arm bone.

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That's a radius.

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-Then that's a tibia.

-Yep.

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-What about that one under there?

-Another tibia.

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So these are long bones from both the arm and the leg...

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-that are all stacked up in a neat little pile.

-That's right.

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If you look at this bone here, we have another human humerus -

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it's missing its head. You can see the epiphysis is missing.

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It's the end of the bone.

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It's not fused, the person died before the age at which that fuses,

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which is in the late teenage years.

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So we can be sure this is a separate individual from this one here.

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-So there's the remains of more than one person buried in here.

-Right.

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Hang on, that must be human.

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That's right. It's very recognisable as a human jaw.

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Two left premolars and the first molar is very worn,

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which is typical of the jaws of the early population.

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The team are mapping the entire cave.

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In a small space near the boulder slope

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are parts of three individuals -

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a woman, a man and a child aged about 15.

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The floor of the cave has partly collapsed,

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taking some of their bones tumbling down the slope

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towards the underground river.

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The wolf bones litter every part of the cave floor.

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Animal-bone specialist Roz Cord was very excited by the evidence

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that wolves had been using the cave as a den.

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It's quite remarkable. There's a few passages there,

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and they have wolves in them.

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-Not live ones.

-No, not live ones! We have canid bones.

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And it looks like it's typical denning activity.

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What do you mean?

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Denning activity is when they go into a cave, a hole underground

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where they can have their cubs without being disturbed.

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There's adult wolves down there and there's juvenile wolves down there.

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You can see the remains of their dinners scattered all about.

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-What were they eating?

-They were eating roe deer.

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-Somebody said there's a whole deer carcass down there.

-There is.

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Indeed, there is a deer carcass down there.

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It's a small deer, and it's mixed up with some other bones.

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-Is that wolves' dinner as well?

-Yes. It's a wolf's dinner as well.

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The adults are bringing in animals

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for the juveniles and themselves to eat.

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You can see, along the passages, as the small cubs have taken bones

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and they've dragged them along the passages.

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All the bones are piled up in the corners

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where the wolves have been walking through, trampling through.

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-How amazing.

-It's quite fascinating.

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Even more extraordinary are the human footprints in the midst of the wolf bones.

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They're impressed in the soft mud of the cave floor.

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But some are sealed below layers of limestone,

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which have taken thousands of years to form -

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so we know they're prehistoric.

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In fact, they're only ancient human footprints

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ever found in a cave in the British Isles.

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I still find it difficult to grasp

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that somebody could have come in here, thousands of years ago,

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and left a footprint in the mud

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that we can still see all this time afterwards!

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It's extraordinary.

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It brings you so close to the person, doesn't it,

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to see that there, especially as it's so small!

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I'll get a close-up of the good one.

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Bill Sellars arrived to examine the footprints.

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If you do it at the same height, we can collage the whole track together,

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which would be really nice.

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We've got a track with several sets of prints.

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We've got three really clear ones

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and we've got some others that are obscured by the flow-stem covering.

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What we're trying to do is get a photograph of the whole track

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so that we can recreate how whoever it was walked.

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On the last day of the excavation,

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Phil volunteers to go down the boulder slope.

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He wants to find the human bones he spotted

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when he first came into the cave.

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But it's a hazardous operation.

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This is going to involve a lot of rock falling down I think.

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-STONES RATTLE

-Oops! There goes some.

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ROCKS CLATTER DOWN

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As far as possible, Andrew wants to leave the cave as it was found.

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The only bones he feels should be removed

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are those that have fallen down the steep boulder slope.

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They simply wouldn't survive the next rock fall.

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-OK, just hold me there.

-Well done!

-Well done!

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Have a look. They're dead delicate. I wonder if they're the juvenile.

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I'll send it up to the surface. We'll have a look at it there.

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Be very gentle when you're pulling it up.

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By the time we'd all climbed out of the cave,

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everyone was desperate to see what Phil had found.

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It's very fragile, the bone.

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From that boulder slope,

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he'd recovered part of an incredibly delicate skull.

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It's not a very prominent brow ridge, but we need to know how old it is.

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After a day that was spent mainly underground down the cave,

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it's a real relief to be out in the sunshine

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and also to have retrieved this very fragile fragment

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of one of the people buried in the cave.

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I can't believe Phil was able to relocate it down that boulder slope

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and bring it out.

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CHEERING

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Well done! Well done!

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As we plugged the cave entrance,

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all hints of our efforts were camouflaged -

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the burial chamber once again sealed,

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as it was when boulders blocked its original entrance

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thousands of years ago.

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How much can we find out about a person from a few skull fragments?

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I went to see Richard Neeve at Manchester University -

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one of Britain's top specialists in facial reconstruction.

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I have one of these boxes at home which I keep an electric drill in.

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Is there anything down there?!

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JULIAN LAUGHS

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Ah!

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Oh, look at that!

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Isn't that nice?

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Female? Female.

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'From its shape and proportions,

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'Richard immediately identified the skull as female.'

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Your reaction's not as bad as I thought it'd be.

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It depends what you want me to do with it.

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I mean, if you want be to actually do anything with it,

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then my reaction might be very different!

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THEY BOTH LAUGH

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Now, what are you asking me about all this for?

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I sense some foreboding here.

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'Was Richard able to rebuild her face?'

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The foreboding I have is that if you ask a face to be built from that,

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you can use that as the basis

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upon which you can base a face,

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but areas of it are inevitably going to be very subjective.

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The loss of the lower jaw is one of the more important things

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when it comes to recreating a face which can be recognised.

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That IS an important feature and without that,

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you don't get the overall vertical proportions of the face as such.

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The first stage is to rebuild the skull

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using casts of the original fragments,

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a copy of a suitable jaw and clay.

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A plaster cast is then made of the whole thing

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and this forms the foundation for the reconstruction.

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But before Richard can get on with the next stage,

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he needs to know how old the woman was when she died.

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I hate going to the dentist,

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but at least it's the lady from the cave

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who's got the appointment, not me!

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'Cardiff Dental Hospital's forensic orthodontist, David Whitaker,

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'has developed a unique way of ageing individuals

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'using a thin slice of tooth.'

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Well...

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Let's look at the maxilla - the upper jaw

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of this incredibly delicate piece of bone.

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And we're going to take this tooth out

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to see if we can do an ageing on it.

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From my point of view, it's a slightly hairy problem.

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This very ancient material is SO fragile

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that it can suddenly shatter.

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It's not like taking teeth... Ah! ..out of living people.

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Well, it looks excellent.

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It's in amazingly good condition

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considering the age of a tooth like that.

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Before the tooth can be cut, it's set into a block of resin.

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Then it's mounted on what looks like a tiny bacon slicer.

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What we're expecting to see under the microscope

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is something like this tooth that we've dealt with before.

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What we're going to be looking for is this change here.

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And from the age of about the mid-20s onwards,

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this transparent change starts here

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and spreads along the root of the tooth.

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It produces this glass-like transparent appearance

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compared with the living healthy tooth.

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We have this scale to actually measure how far that change has gone.

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When the cutting was finished,

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our slice was one tenth of a millimetre thick.

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I'll look under the microscope. It looks pretty good.

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It really is in super condition.

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The enamel over the top of the tooth is beautiful.

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By measuring how far the crystalline area has progressed along the tooth,

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David can calculate the age of our Bronze Age ancestor.

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On the bottom, we've got the number of millimetres

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that this process has progressed up the tooth.

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So we'll just take this across from the regression line to the age line.

0:21:380:21:44

There we are. It comes out at...48.

0:21:460:21:50

48!

0:21:500:21:52

That's not a bad age for the Bronze Age.

0:21:520:21:56

I'm comfortable with that.

0:21:560:21:58

If that were a forensic tooth, I'd be very happy about that age,

0:21:580:22:02

give or take six years either way.

0:22:020:22:06

Now we know her age, Richard can calculate the correct depths for facial muscles and soft tissue.

0:22:060:22:13

Richard's reconstructions are based on a sound understanding of anatomy

0:22:130:22:17

and the way the human face ages.

0:22:170:22:20

Some people...

0:22:200:22:22

..say, "Why bother about the anatomy?

0:22:240:22:26

"Why bother about this laborious process of building it up?"

0:22:260:22:33

And the answer really to that is that...

0:22:350:22:39

without it, one can't demonstrate

0:22:390:22:44

how you've arrived at what you've arrived at.

0:22:440:22:47

You can't demonstrate that it isn't just imagination.

0:22:490:22:54

What we are doing now

0:22:580:23:00

is, I suppose, a bit like wallpapering or plastering.

0:23:000:23:07

We're putting the final coat on

0:23:070:23:11

which you see underneath.

0:23:110:23:14

One of the things when you're doing a young person

0:23:160:23:21

is to get the surface very smooth.

0:23:210:23:23

Now, on this one, it doesn't matter

0:23:230:23:26

because the skin surface, the skin texture

0:23:260:23:30

is less than perfect.

0:23:300:23:33

It's lost that peachy bloom which you associate with young skin.

0:23:330:23:38

While Richard continued to work on the woman's head,

0:23:410:23:44

I went to see Bill in his lab at Edinburgh University

0:23:440:23:47

to see what we could learn from the footprints.

0:23:470:23:50

First, he showed me how he can reconstruct the way people walk.

0:23:500:23:54

This is a reconstruction of a human walking.

0:23:540:23:59

It's a computer generation

0:23:590:24:02

based on the actual physical properties of the leg bones.

0:24:020:24:07

You can make it walk through the footprints you've got.

0:24:070:24:12

So, can you do this with the footprints from the cave?

0:24:120:24:15

-I HOPE to be able to do this with those.

-That sounds ominous.

0:24:150:24:19

It's not! It's just that the data we got from the cave is different.

0:24:190:24:23

Let me show you.

0:24:230:24:24

This is a photograph of the footprints.

0:24:260:24:31

I can't see much except one of the cavers' welly boots!

0:24:310:24:35

The footprints are actually here and here.

0:24:350:24:38

But if I outline, they're clearer.

0:24:380:24:39

Oh, yes, I can see the toes there!

0:24:430:24:46

They're lovely - you can see individual toes

0:24:460:24:48

and a an impression of the ball of the foot.

0:24:480:24:51

And you can see a mark from the heel, well-preserved.

0:24:510:24:53

-Can you do anything with the gait from these?

-I was hoping to.

0:24:530:24:57

We initially thought it was a trail of footprints,

0:24:570:25:01

but you can see on is pointing this way

0:25:010:25:03

and the other one's pointing in different directions.

0:25:030:25:07

The other thing I did was, if you actually move them around

0:25:070:25:10

so that you can measure them...

0:25:100:25:12

-Oh, they're different sizes.

-Different sizes.

0:25:120:25:16

-Is that the real size?

-Yes, they're life-sized.

0:25:160:25:20

-But they're not adult ones, are they?

-No. Not at all.

0:25:200:25:23

This one's children's size 11 and this is children's size eight.

0:25:230:25:27

What age does that make them?

0:25:270:25:29

Approximately, this is probably an eight-year-old and a five-year-old.

0:25:290:25:34

There were two children in the cave. What were they doing? Running?

0:25:340:25:38

If you look at this picture again,

0:25:380:25:42

you can see very clear imprints of the heels.

0:25:420:25:46

So these are flat footprints.

0:25:460:25:48

You only get them from walking or standing. They were walking slowly.

0:25:480:25:54

We think that children this age

0:25:540:25:57

are likely to have been herding sheep up on the hills.

0:25:570:26:02

Maybe they wandered into the cave

0:26:020:26:04

because it was raining or just wanted to look around.

0:26:040:26:08

It's an incredible thought.

0:26:080:26:10

They were probably told not to!

0:26:100:26:12

Yes, absolutely!

0:26:120:26:13

-So some things don't change.

-Nothing changes.

0:26:130:26:16

It's amazing to have a record of what these people were doing.

0:26:160:26:20

It's a direct record of their behaviour,

0:26:200:26:22

rather than just an artefact.

0:26:220:26:24

In his studio, Richard was putting the final touches

0:26:370:26:40

to the woman from the Wolf Den.

0:26:400:26:41

-Are you going to show me then?

-I'm going to show you, yes.

0:26:430:26:46

Here you are.

0:26:460:26:48

I think it's fantastic to see this face!

0:26:530:26:55

I'm amazed you managed to do so much

0:26:550:26:57

with those tiny little fragments of bone.

0:26:570:27:00

When I saw them come out the cave, I wondered if we'd see a face.

0:27:000:27:05

It's not a face that I could have invented.

0:27:050:27:09

It's not one I could have made up out of my head.

0:27:090:27:12

It's one that's grown of its own accord.

0:27:120:27:15

I think those people that knew her could recognise her from this.

0:27:170:27:23

So I'm reasonably happy with it, yes.

0:27:230:27:25

We'd finally met our Bronze Age ancestor,

0:27:300:27:33

and this is the landscape she knew as home.

0:27:330:27:37

When she died, she was taken on a final journey,

0:27:370:27:40

from the place where she lived,

0:27:400:27:42

across hills and rivers, to a very special place,

0:27:420:27:45

perhaps one she knew during her life.

0:27:450:27:48

Bearing offerings for the next life,

0:27:480:27:50

her grieving relatives laid her to rest deep in the cave.

0:27:500:27:53

Perhaps it wasn't nature that sealed the entrance.

0:27:550:27:58

Maybe their last task was to place the boulders that ensured her rest,

0:27:580:28:02

safe from wolves that roamed the hills.

0:28:020:28:05

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