0:00:43 > 0:00:51When Edward Ware bought a building plot in a West Country village, he thought he would make a killing.
0:00:51 > 0:00:59But his plans for six luxury homes were halted when archaeologists uncovered an ancient burial ground.
0:01:10 > 0:01:16This sounds like a really exciting site, at least 2 to 3,000 years old,
0:01:16 > 0:01:21but the big unknown is how many were buried there and who were they?
0:01:24 > 0:01:30'The site lies in an old farmyard in the small village of Bleadon near Weston-super-Mare.
0:01:30 > 0:01:37'Before being allowed to build, the developer had to have an archaeological survey done.
0:01:37 > 0:01:44'By chance, one of the first trenches uncovered a ring of six strange pits.
0:01:44 > 0:01:47'Two contained human remains.
0:01:47 > 0:01:52'Andrew Young, in charge of the excavation, showed me the burials.
0:01:52 > 0:01:56'But the bones in the first one were in a very poor state.'
0:01:56 > 0:02:02As you can see, there are a number of long bones - two parallel here,
0:02:02 > 0:02:06and a socket end, possibly a femur, in front of us.
0:02:06 > 0:02:13- It doesn't look like someone's body laid in here, does it?- No. - The bits are all over the place.
0:02:13 > 0:02:18'In the second pit, the burial looked far more promising.
0:02:18 > 0:02:22'With the skull and the leg bones starting to appear,
0:02:22 > 0:02:24'it looked like a male.'
0:02:24 > 0:02:31I suppose we're used to graves being elongated and people being buried laid out.
0:02:31 > 0:02:38This pit here is a more appropriate grave for somebody buried in this crouched position.
0:02:38 > 0:02:44A position that maybe has ideas of being asleep or slightly submissive
0:02:44 > 0:02:51or maybe even reflects the way in which a baby lies in the foetal position.
0:02:51 > 0:02:55'The burials have caused quite a stir in the village.
0:02:55 > 0:02:59'Archaeologist Vince Russett is giving guided tours.'
0:02:59 > 0:03:04What you can see here is the excavation of human remains
0:03:04 > 0:03:09of late Bronze Age date - that's probably about 1000 BC.
0:03:09 > 0:03:14They're important as it's rare to find skeletons of this date.
0:03:14 > 0:03:18An important thing is that they are human remains.
0:03:18 > 0:03:23We have to treat these people with dignity - they are our ancestors.
0:03:23 > 0:03:25Not an archaeological feature
0:03:25 > 0:03:28in the way potshards or a grain are.
0:03:28 > 0:03:32They are dead people and we must consider that all the time.
0:03:32 > 0:03:36'With the burials getting so much media attention,
0:03:36 > 0:03:43'how could Andy and Vince be sure they dated from the Bronze Age, 3,000 years ago?'
0:03:43 > 0:03:50When we opened the trenches, we exposed the pits and some of them were looked at partly excavated.
0:03:50 > 0:03:52From those pits, we recovered...
0:03:52 > 0:03:57'Andy had the evidence - fragments of pottery from a burial pit.'
0:03:57 > 0:04:03We could only say late prehistoric - plain, black and not Roman or later.
0:04:03 > 0:04:07We had to send it to a specialist to get definition on that.
0:04:07 > 0:04:13- And what have they confirmed?- That it's late Bronze Age around 1000 BC.
0:04:13 > 0:04:17'Back at the site, the better-preserved burial
0:04:17 > 0:04:21'was coming out of the ground piece by piece.
0:04:21 > 0:04:26'Every part is labelled and bagged before going to the bone specialist.
0:04:28 > 0:04:33'Records show that the village of Bleadon dates back to Saxon times.
0:04:33 > 0:04:39'But I wanted to know what the area would have been like in the Bronze Age.
0:04:39 > 0:04:44'Our illustrator, Jane Brayne, is an expert at recreating the past.
0:04:44 > 0:04:50'But she needs to start from today's landscape - this tower gives a wonderful view.'
0:04:50 > 0:04:56- You've got the main landforms in with the ridge behind.- Yes.
0:04:56 > 0:05:00And the Celtic fields which are those bits up there.
0:05:00 > 0:05:05And the edge seems to come just behind those houses there.
0:05:05 > 0:05:10And the site is right at the edge of the dry area
0:05:10 > 0:05:17- and by those drainage ditches, it would have been a wet, marshy environment.- Yes.
0:05:17 > 0:05:21- It gives it a very enclosed, safe sense.- Yes.
0:05:21 > 0:05:25Probably why the medieval village is also here.
0:05:25 > 0:05:28We'll add environmental detail
0:05:28 > 0:05:33- when we get the information.- Once we know about tree cover and so on.
0:05:33 > 0:05:38- Right, OK. Well, that's great. Hot day up here.- Phorr, yeah!
0:05:38 > 0:05:44'Much of the information Jane needs will come from the site itself.
0:05:44 > 0:05:49'Every bucket of excavated soil is painstakingly sieved,
0:05:49 > 0:05:52'revealing tiny carbonised seeds
0:05:52 > 0:05:55'and the bones of fish and small animals.
0:05:55 > 0:06:00'Samples of soil are taken, which will tell us about the vegetation
0:06:00 > 0:06:05'which once covered and surrounded the site.
0:06:10 > 0:06:15'And in fields below the village, deep cores are bored from the soil
0:06:15 > 0:06:21'to find out how long ago it stopped being a marsh.'
0:06:21 > 0:06:27I hope I've got a head for heights cos I'm going up to look at the site from above.
0:06:34 > 0:06:40What you get from up here, about 60ft above the site, is an idea of its layout.
0:06:40 > 0:06:43For the first time I can really see
0:06:43 > 0:06:50that there's a cluster of six pits in a circle, two of which we know have got complete burials in them.
0:06:50 > 0:06:56Another contains bits of human bone and the others haven't been studied.
0:06:56 > 0:06:58And further on from that,
0:06:58 > 0:07:03they've been burying animals - sheep, possibly some bits of pig
0:07:03 > 0:07:08so there were all sorts of strange, probably ritual activities going on.
0:07:08 > 0:07:14'Back at the burial, there were problems - time to remove the skull
0:07:14 > 0:07:16'but it just wouldn't budge.'
0:07:16 > 0:07:22- There's not much more we can do. - Is that going in the right place?
0:07:24 > 0:07:27As it's stuck we'll have to pull.
0:07:27 > 0:07:30Let's try and free it if we can.
0:07:30 > 0:07:36We have been but with the gravel on the side, you can't get much down.
0:07:37 > 0:07:41< See if you can give him a gentle rock now -
0:07:41 > 0:07:44see if you get any movement at all.
0:07:44 > 0:07:48No, nothing. < Nothing at all?
0:07:48 > 0:07:54- Something's come out.- Never mind, it'll break anyway, up to a point.
0:07:54 > 0:08:00- Oh, yes...- Hold on tight there. Excellent!- His jaw too.
0:08:00 > 0:08:05I'm quite surprised that he came out in one piece, really.
0:08:05 > 0:08:09I was expecting him to just collapse but it's good.
0:08:12 > 0:08:17'Several weeks later, I caught up with the man from Bleadon
0:08:17 > 0:08:23'in a laboratory where he's been examined by human bones specialist Simon Mays.'
0:08:23 > 0:08:26It seems ages since I've seen him.
0:08:26 > 0:08:29Looks very different as well.
0:08:29 > 0:08:35I suppose last time I saw the burial, it was all crouched.
0:08:35 > 0:08:38Oh, no! What happened to the skull?
0:08:38 > 0:08:44Last time I saw that, it was in one piece - it was cracked a bit
0:08:44 > 0:08:47- but it's fallen to bits.- Yeah, yeah.
0:08:47 > 0:08:52It was only held together by soil and when cleaned, it fell apart.
0:08:52 > 0:08:57Oh, dear. Well, if we accept that that's a bit of a disaster,
0:08:57 > 0:09:03- what have you been able to find out about the person? - Well, firstly, it's a man.
0:09:03 > 0:09:08- And how old was he?- It's the teeth that really tell us about that.
0:09:08 > 0:09:16This is part of his upper jaw. The white enamel crown on this molar has been completely worn away.
0:09:16 > 0:09:23- And that sort of thing is probably characteristic of a man in his fifties when he died.- Right.
0:09:23 > 0:09:26'His dental health was dreadful.
0:09:26 > 0:09:30'But it was the shape of his lower jaw that surprised me.'
0:09:30 > 0:09:35The jaws of people in the medieval period and before that
0:09:35 > 0:09:40are much more robust than are jaws of modern people.
0:09:40 > 0:09:43Is that cos they had harder stuff to chew?
0:09:43 > 0:09:49Yes. Their diet was very coarse whereas we eat factory-made pap!
0:09:49 > 0:09:55So, are we all becoming weak-jawed? Would our jaws look very different?
0:09:55 > 0:10:02I think they would. If we could bring this person to life, or anyone else from the medieval period,
0:10:02 > 0:10:06they would look very lantern-jawed compared with us.
0:10:06 > 0:10:09'As if abscesses weren't enough,
0:10:09 > 0:10:14- 'he also seemed to have fairly bad arthritis.'- If we look here,
0:10:14 > 0:10:18- the light is catching that. - It's shiny.- Exactly.
0:10:18 > 0:10:24That should be a dull surface - the shine signifies advanced arthritis.
0:10:24 > 0:10:29- So, is one bone rubbing on another and wearing it away?- Exactly.
0:10:29 > 0:10:37'By the end of my talk with Simon, I was getting a picture of Bleadon man - 5'6" tall and muscular.
0:10:37 > 0:10:42'But did all that arthritis suggest a hard life?
0:10:42 > 0:10:46'We know he was 50 when he died but when?
0:10:46 > 0:10:51'To find out, Simon will send a bit of leg bone away for carbon dating.
0:10:51 > 0:10:59'The discovery of the Bleadon man made me wonder if any of his relatives live in the village today.
0:10:59 > 0:11:02'To find out, we called a meeting
0:11:02 > 0:11:07'and asked for volunteers to take part in a DNA survey.
0:11:07 > 0:11:14'All were asked to give details of their forebears and donate a blood sample for analysis.
0:11:14 > 0:11:17'By comparing the DNA from these
0:11:17 > 0:11:22'and a sample of the bones of Bleadon man, we might find a match.
0:11:22 > 0:11:26'Did any of them think they were related?'
0:11:26 > 0:11:29I don't know. You don't, do you?
0:11:29 > 0:11:34I suppose we've got to wait for you people to sort it out.
0:11:34 > 0:11:37I shall be very surprised.
0:11:37 > 0:11:43There's a good chance that we are interrelated one way or the other
0:11:43 > 0:11:48if there's just a couple of villages of hunter-gatherers interbreeding.
0:11:48 > 0:11:54'The blood samples we sent to Erica Helgelberg, at Cambridge University,
0:11:54 > 0:11:59'who specialises in comparing DNA from different populations.'
0:11:59 > 0:12:07Anthropologists are always rushing off and trying to get DNA samples from people all over the world.
0:12:07 > 0:12:14We don't really know that much about the background of British people -
0:12:14 > 0:12:18they're a mix of Celtic, Anglo-Saxon and Viking,
0:12:18 > 0:12:23and relatively few studies have been done on British populations.
0:12:23 > 0:12:29It's a challenge to go to an English village and find out from scratch
0:12:29 > 0:12:35just how many DNA sequences we will detect among these villagers.
0:12:35 > 0:12:39'From Cambridge, it was off to Manchester University
0:12:39 > 0:12:43'to meet facial reconstruction specialist Richard Neave.
0:12:43 > 0:12:48'I was very anxious to know if he could rebuild the shattered skull.'
0:12:48 > 0:12:56It's as if someone's just broken it into bits, to give me hours of amusement putting it together again.
0:12:56 > 0:13:01But all the indications are that it's going to be possible to do that.
0:13:03 > 0:13:09'Over the next two days, Richard painstakingly assembled the skull.'
0:13:09 > 0:13:11Ha-ha! Oh! Ah-ha! Oh! >
0:13:11 > 0:13:15- What is it? - Oh. It's part of the nasal bone.
0:13:15 > 0:13:20- Oh, brilliant! - My God. Now, are we lucky or what?
0:13:20 > 0:13:25Not a desperately prepossessing looking fellow.
0:13:25 > 0:13:30- There's our lower jaw - pretty wild, eh?- Hmm.
0:13:34 > 0:13:38'Now the skull is complete, a plaster cast is made
0:13:38 > 0:13:43'and this becomes the foundation for the facial reconstruction.
0:13:44 > 0:13:51'Richard's assistant, Caroline, has to drill and insert over 20 pegs into the cast,
0:13:51 > 0:13:56'each one representing the depth of facial tissue at that exact point.'
0:14:03 > 0:14:09It gets more frightening as time goes on, doesn't it?!
0:14:09 > 0:14:13The pegs were bad enough but when you put the eyeballs in as well!
0:14:15 > 0:14:20'Next, the layers of muscle, soft tissue and skin are added.'
0:14:24 > 0:14:29It looks like a strange hat at the moment, doesn't it?
0:14:35 > 0:14:40'While I was away, the excavation of the second burial had been done.
0:14:40 > 0:14:48'This turns out to be a woman, about 35 years old, who was buried with something very unexpected.'
0:14:48 > 0:14:53The one day we weren't on site, look what came up with the burial.
0:14:53 > 0:14:59I think this object will change the whole way we think about the site.
0:14:59 > 0:15:05'At the conservation centre in Salisbury, I met with Mark Corney.
0:15:05 > 0:15:08'I wanted his expert opinion on this new find
0:15:08 > 0:15:10'which had now been X-rayed.'
0:15:12 > 0:15:17- Ignore all these - this is the one. - That's the one you're interested in.
0:15:17 > 0:15:22Right. It's a brooch, what's called a penannular brooch.
0:15:22 > 0:15:24Of late Bronze Age, we understood.
0:15:24 > 0:15:30- Oh! Sorry to disappoint you - no. - Why not?- This is Iron Age.
0:15:30 > 0:15:36It's a type that is not known before about 300 BC.
0:15:36 > 0:15:39A problem with a Bronze Age date -
0:15:39 > 0:15:43this is iron and you don't get that then!
0:15:43 > 0:15:47So, we have to rethink about the burial date?
0:15:47 > 0:15:51Quite considerably. But it's still interesting -
0:15:51 > 0:15:54this type of brooch in iron is quite rare.
0:15:54 > 0:15:58- It's just about 600 years later than we thought.- Yes.
0:15:58 > 0:16:02'Funny how such a small find can change ideas.
0:16:02 > 0:16:06'But does anything else indicate the Iron Age?
0:16:06 > 0:16:10'At Bristol University, I met Vanessa Straker,
0:16:10 > 0:16:14'an environmentalist, who's been analysing seeds from the site.'
0:16:14 > 0:16:18- So, did all that sieving on site pay off?- Yes.
0:16:18 > 0:16:25We've found a nice collection of the remains of the crops that were consumed by the people
0:16:25 > 0:16:29- who lived there.- What were they growing?- Wheat and barley.
0:16:29 > 0:16:34These are the two sorts found in the samples from Bleadon.
0:16:34 > 0:16:39- Which one's which?- This is a modern ear of emmer wheat here on the left.
0:16:39 > 0:16:41And on the right is spelt wheat.
0:16:41 > 0:16:45Neither has been grown in Britain for hundreds of years.
0:16:45 > 0:16:50It's much harder to extract the grain from these "hulled" wheats
0:16:50 > 0:16:54than it is from modern "free-threshing" wheats.
0:16:54 > 0:17:01It would have been more complicated to extract the grain for consumption from these wheats.
0:17:01 > 0:17:04- So, hard work for the farmers.- Yes.
0:17:04 > 0:17:12If you didn't know what date this site was, and you'd looked at all the seeds, what would you suggest?
0:17:14 > 0:17:17I would think it was late prehistoric,
0:17:17 > 0:17:20um, most probably Iron Age.
0:17:20 > 0:17:26'At Southampton University, animal bones specialist Dale Sergeantson
0:17:26 > 0:17:30'had just received a huge pile of bones from the site.'
0:17:30 > 0:17:35My image of this man from Bleadon is that he's a farmer.
0:17:35 > 0:17:39Does your first look at the animal bones bear this out?
0:17:39 > 0:17:42 Yes. Lots and lots of sheep,
0:17:42 > 0:17:45including a lot of young sheep.
0:17:45 > 0:17:52A certain amount of cattle and very, very few pigs or possibly even none at all.
0:17:52 > 0:17:55Did they also have sheep dogs, then?
0:17:55 > 0:18:02They certainly had dogs to guard the sheep and cattle and we found a bit of evidence for them in the site.
0:18:02 > 0:18:06That's a tooth and we can get an idea from that
0:18:06 > 0:18:09of the sort of size of dog it was.
0:18:09 > 0:18:12We compared it with the dogs
0:18:12 > 0:18:17in our reference collection and it's about the same size and shape
0:18:17 > 0:18:21as the modern collie - perhaps a little smaller.
0:18:21 > 0:18:25- Right. That's one man and part of his dog.- Yes!
0:18:25 > 0:18:29- What else is there? - There are some other animals.
0:18:29 > 0:18:33There's evidence for horse from the Iron Age.
0:18:33 > 0:18:38But what is interesting is that the most obvious finds of horse
0:18:38 > 0:18:43are two skulls from two different pits. This is one of them.
0:18:43 > 0:18:47You can see we've arranged the teeth in a row,
0:18:47 > 0:18:52but you can see the state in which it was found is very fragmentary.
0:18:52 > 0:18:54So, just the skulls?
0:18:54 > 0:18:57- Yes.- Isn't that rather strange?
0:18:57 > 0:19:01Well, the rest of it's eaten just as the cows and sheep were.
0:19:01 > 0:19:06It was perfectly normal - people ate their horses in the Iron Age,
0:19:06 > 0:19:10they ate every animal that died on the site.
0:19:10 > 0:19:15And, in fact, that's a cow's tibia and it's been butchered
0:19:15 > 0:19:19to be put into a cooking pot and stewed,
0:19:19 > 0:19:25 so that the lovely nutritious marrow can come out of the bone to be eaten.
0:19:27 > 0:19:32I think we've probably got a fairly typical Iron Age assemblage here.
0:19:32 > 0:19:37'Some of these ancient breeds are very different from today's
0:19:37 > 0:19:41'as I found out at the Cotswold Countryside Park.'
0:19:41 > 0:19:44These are Soays - small, slender,
0:19:44 > 0:19:49their wool can be plucked instead of shorn and both sexes have horns.
0:19:53 > 0:19:58These are Dexter cattle, the sort our Iron Age man would have had.
0:19:58 > 0:20:03He would have milked them and also used them for pulling his plough.
0:20:03 > 0:20:05They're lovely, aren't they?
0:20:08 > 0:20:14'Everyone met to help Jane with the details for her ancient landscape.
0:20:14 > 0:20:18'Andy was still sure that the site was Bronze Age.'
0:20:18 > 0:20:24What you can say is that there's no Middle Bronze Age cultural material on the site
0:20:24 > 0:20:30or later Iron Age material, excluding the possibility of that.
0:20:30 > 0:20:34And you have to work from that starting point.
0:20:34 > 0:20:37Well, this is interesting because...
0:20:37 > 0:20:40Well, I didn't know about this iron brooch.
0:20:40 > 0:20:43'But the evidence was pointing
0:20:43 > 0:20:49'to a later date and only the radiocarbon dates would finally resolve this.'
0:20:49 > 0:20:55This is the drawing I made on site to get a good sense of the landscape
0:20:55 > 0:20:57and the feel of the place generally.
0:20:57 > 0:21:03'Jane could now put the latest developments into her landscape.'
0:21:03 > 0:21:06I made a much more detailed drawing.
0:21:06 > 0:21:11We've included an Iron Age settlement - entirely conjectural,
0:21:11 > 0:21:14we've no idea whether it was there or not,
0:21:14 > 0:21:19but it seems likely that people were living there and farming.
0:21:19 > 0:21:23This will be the final drawing, still unfinished.
0:21:23 > 0:21:28I'm still undecided about what to do with the excavation site itself -
0:21:28 > 0:21:34how to make it special. For now, mounds indicate the burial pits.
0:21:34 > 0:21:39We know now that, the whole area was much more wooded than thought,
0:21:39 > 0:21:45so I've brought the trees forward and hopefully given a sense
0:21:45 > 0:21:50of the settlement being surrounded by trees, by quite dense woodland -
0:21:50 > 0:21:55the species that you would find today in this kind of environment
0:21:55 > 0:21:57where it was really quite wet -
0:21:57 > 0:22:00willows, which cover the Somerset levels,
0:22:00 > 0:22:03but also oak
0:22:03 > 0:22:07and a lot of ash, there's a lot of ash.
0:22:07 > 0:22:10We know from the faunal remains
0:22:10 > 0:22:18that these people had horses - three skulls were found on site - and they would have been quite small,
0:22:18 > 0:22:20something like an Exmoor pony.
0:22:20 > 0:22:25And we know that people in the Iron Age had dogs.
0:22:25 > 0:22:32So, a drawing like this is very much a coming-together of a lot of different information.
0:22:32 > 0:22:37'In Jane's final illustration, we see a landscape of fields and farms.
0:22:37 > 0:22:42'And downhill from the settlement, lying in a woodland clearing
0:22:42 > 0:22:46'at the edge of the salt marsh, is the burial site.'
0:22:54 > 0:23:00'In Manchester, Richard was putting the final touches to Bleadon man.'
0:23:01 > 0:23:04It's what they do in the barbers, isn't it?
0:23:04 > 0:23:07I'm just kind of fidgeting about.
0:23:22 > 0:23:26He doesn't look anything like I thought he would!
0:23:26 > 0:23:33It really is odd because this isn't the face that I expected I was going to see.
0:23:33 > 0:23:40I feel I've almost got to know him from having seeing him in the ground as a skeleton,
0:23:40 > 0:23:48and then seeing Richard rebuilding the skull, and the face emerging, but it's still a surprise.
0:23:48 > 0:23:55I think it's a very strong face, it's almost got a touch of authority or nobility about it.
0:23:55 > 0:24:02Yet, it's a person who probably had a hard life - which figures in the Iron Age.
0:24:02 > 0:24:07I'd love to have met him in real life and been able to talk to him
0:24:07 > 0:24:12but that's one thing archaeology will never let us do.
0:24:15 > 0:24:18Right. Meet Bleadon man.
0:24:20 > 0:24:25'I took the cast of Bleadon man to show Andy and Vince.'
0:24:25 > 0:24:27What d'you reckon?
0:24:27 > 0:24:29Very striking, I think.
0:24:29 > 0:24:37'But I'd just had news that Bleadon man was 2,000 years old, not 3,000. He was Iron Age, after all.'
0:24:37 > 0:24:42So, if I said that the radiocarbon dates suggested about 100 BC...
0:24:42 > 0:24:48- I'd be very disappointed.- Oh! That's what they are.- Oh!- I know!
0:24:48 > 0:24:50I'll put it down gently.
0:24:50 > 0:24:52- Really?- Yeah.
0:24:52 > 0:24:56Well, somebody has some explaining to do!
0:24:57 > 0:25:02I mean, you said that you were disappointed. Why?
0:25:02 > 0:25:06That's an interesting question. I think it's primarily
0:25:06 > 0:25:11because the archaeological evidence that we gathered meticulously
0:25:11 > 0:25:15doesn't correlate with this instrumental data.
0:25:15 > 0:25:19And it's nice that when you look at a site in that detail,
0:25:19 > 0:25:23you expect to be able to correlate the finds, the pottery
0:25:23 > 0:25:29with the instrumental data fairly tightly - here, we have a huge difference.
0:25:29 > 0:25:36But the unpredictability is the very reason why Andrew and I actually do this.
0:25:36 > 0:25:41Now, we've got to explain how we fit this all together again.
0:25:41 > 0:25:46We've had one idea about what the site was like and what age it was.
0:25:46 > 0:25:51Now, we've got more complicating factors with a later date.
0:25:51 > 0:25:54Fine! So we go back and ask new questions.
0:25:54 > 0:25:58And hopefully, we can explain where all this fits in.
0:26:00 > 0:26:06'Back in Bleadon, the burial site has sadly disappeared under the new houses.'
0:26:06 > 0:26:11I'm Julian Richards, the archaeologist working on the series.
0:26:11 > 0:26:15'In the village hall, nine months after his discovery,
0:26:15 > 0:26:19'it was time for the villagers to meet their ancestor.'
0:26:19 > 0:26:22And so, the question is now,
0:26:22 > 0:26:26do any of you recognise this person?
0:26:26 > 0:26:27George Wall. >
0:26:27 > 0:26:30EVERYONE LAUGHS
0:26:30 > 0:26:35What? There's somebody in the village that looks like this?
0:26:35 > 0:26:37Ah!
0:26:41 > 0:26:46Well, that's quite interesting. That seemed to be fairly unanimous.
0:26:46 > 0:26:50There was a shout from several people about it.
0:26:50 > 0:26:52The profile might be a giveaway...
0:26:52 > 0:26:56 'Another surprise was the results of the DNA study
0:26:56 > 0:26:59'and Erica was here to explain.'
0:26:59 > 0:27:04We can't say for sure that you're direct descendants
0:27:04 > 0:27:11but it's quite clear that you do trace back to a common origin with this man and I think that's nice.
0:27:11 > 0:27:19'Out of 48 people who gave blood, the DNA sequence of five matched with Bleadon man. But who are they?'
0:27:19 > 0:27:22Move right in close - that's it!
0:27:22 > 0:27:24Can you tip the head down for me?
0:27:24 > 0:27:30< Can you lean right in close together? Heads as close as you can.
0:27:30 > 0:27:31At least it's warm!
0:27:31 > 0:27:36'After the meeting, it was time for a photo call.
0:27:36 > 0:27:40'And we gave all of Bleadon man's five descendants
0:27:40 > 0:27:43'certificates to mark the occasion.'
0:27:43 > 0:27:47- How do you feel being related to him?- I'm not very keen.
0:27:47 > 0:27:53- You're not?! You think he looks a bit miserable? - I do. Horrible nose!
0:27:56 > 0:28:00Let's have a look. Hang on. What d'you reckon?
0:28:00 > 0:28:02ALL: No!
0:28:02 > 0:28:05I don't know! There's something there, I think.
0:28:05 > 0:28:08- There is, is there?- Yeah.
0:28:31 > 0:28:35Subtitles by Judith Eacott BBC - 1998