The Makings of Wales The Story of Wales

From the land of storytellers, this is the story of the land itself

and of the peoples who've shaped it.

It's majestic, it's thrilling,

it's a story that tells us who we are, where we've come from

and where we're going.

It's a tale that's been 30,000 years in the making.

It shows our country in ways we've never seen it before.

From the Ice Age to the Information Age, this is our story -

the story of Wales.

To begin at the beginning, we need to come here,

to the western end of the Gower Peninsula.

And we need to take a walk along the cliff top.

We're following a path taken by a geologist back in 1823.

William Buckland scrambles down to a cave

you can only get to at low tide.

Inside, he finds the bones of a single human being,

stained by a red tint.

He thinks they may be those of a Roman prostitute.

And he gives her a name, a name that sticks: the Red Lady of Paviland.

But the real tale is a little different

and it starts 30,000 years ago.

Our story begins in a time

when these cliffs are a ridge above a river plain,

and the sea is more than 50 miles way.

The earliest truly human occupants of the land we know as Wales

are burying one of their dead.

With the body,

they place ivory rods that they've carved from tusks of mammoths

and other treasures that will lie undisturbed

until Buckland finds them, 30,000 years later -

a mammoth's skull, and a necklace of seashells.

But the person they're laying to rest isn't a woman,

as Buckland thought, he's a young man in his twenties.

His is the earliest-known human burial in Western Europe.

The loss of a single human life

counts for something, even back then.

The Red Lady of Paviland does seem very distant

from the story of Wales and the Welsh as we've come to know it.

And yet, the way we think of that single life and death

can set the tone for the whole of our history of Wales.

One version of our past would see these people

as sad and isolated, in a dark space of their own.

But I'm determined to remind us

that they're much more connected than that,

sharing a whole way of life with others across an entire continent.

That's how they know that this special pigment, red ochre,

will stain the bones of the dead.

And that's how they know that this is the way to honour the dead,

burying them with beautiful things they've made.

These people are tough.

Soon, they'll be facing the challenge of huge climate change.

Surrounded by mammoths and rhinos, hyenas and lions,

these Stone Age hunters know how to fight to survive.

'So as we trace our ascent from cave-dweller to modern citizen,

'I want us to keep in mind that Wales has always been home to people

'who take their chances at the cutting edge of change,

'people who are open to new ideas, and find ways to move forward

'without forgetting to honour those who've gone before.

The story of Wales

is the experience of each and every one of us in Wales,

of anyone who's ever lived in this country.

From the Red Lady of Paviland,

buried in this cave on the Gower Peninsula

tens of thousands of years ago,

to you and me today.

We are all part of the story of Wales.

The climate changes.

People are driven away from Paviland and everywhere else in Wales.

A wall of ice 40 metres thick comes as far south as the Gower.

For thousands of years, the whole of Britain is deserted.

Eventually, the melting ice

begins to shape the coastline we know today.

The great thaw brings back plants and animals.

People follow slowly.

The trees grow -

an ancient forest stretching across much what we know as Wales.

There are just a few gaps in the woodland,

where the deer eat out glades, or people set fires to make clearings.

About 6,000 years ago, agriculture reaches western Britain.

The farmers begin to clear parts of the forest

to grow primitive wheat,

and to keep sheep and goats, cattle, pigs and dogs.

Gradually, over the course of a thousand years,

the people who live on this land, the land we call ours today,

start to adapt.

They start to cut through this vast natural forest,

and start to tackle the challenges of the world around them.

This is the age of the great religious monuments,

like Pentre Ifan in Pembrokeshire.

They bear witness to cults of the dead and fertility rituals.

These people are farming,

and thinking about the meaning of their lives.

Bryn Celli Ddu on Anglesey.

The tomb's passage and chamber are perfectly aligned

to receive the first rays of the midsummer sun.

So these are people who understand the changing seasons

and the spinning Earth they live on.

And we know because of the distinctive way

that they decorate this monument

that they're trading goods and ideas

with communities as far away as Orkney and Portugal.

The people who inhabit this land are making some big statements.

Here in Wales,

we've discovered the largest timber construction anywhere in Europe

from that age.

Thousands of trees are cut down in order to build it.

And it tells us that these are people with complex needs.

People who want to make their mark on the world.

The Hindwell Enclosure is long gone,

but from the post holes left behind in the soil,

we can imagine how it dominates the Stone Age landscape.

It covers almost the whole valley floor

you could fit the Millennium Stadium inside eight times over.

The wooden posts, more than 1,400 of them, stand six metres tall.

And it's all built with stone and wood tools.

There are other signs of ancient human settlement

all over the Walton Basin,

but it's the enclosure which sends a message far and wide -

here are people who've organised themselves on an epic scale.

The enclosure isn't a defensive wall,

and a space this big isn't for penning animals.

Experts believe it's used for feasts and celebrations.

A hundred generations later,

you can still see the curved footprint of its perimeter,

determining the path of this country road as it crosses the Basin.

Just a few centuries after the building

of the Walton Basin enclosure, the world changes.

Humanity emerges from the Stone Age.

These days, this is what Llandudno is all about -

it's about relaxation and enjoyment

and this great tramway, which takes us all the way up the Great Orme,

tells us so much about the Victorian heyday.

Llandudno is all about leisure.

This is where people come to escape the grime of heavy industry.

And what a contrast to the world of 4,000 years ago,

when the heavy industry is right here, underneath this mountain.

There's a revolution going on.

I'm talking about metal, and the Great Orme is where it's happening.

The Orme, Penygogarth in Welsh,

'is still one of the great vantage points on the North Wales coast.'

But what lies under my feet is even more impressive than the view,

and that is saying something.

Because under here, we have something that is world-changing.

It is copper.

Now copper is a very beautiful, very valuable metal.

But it's not very hard-working - it's quite soft.

And here's the magical part - if you mix copper with tin,

you end up with something that is harder and much more useful,

and that is bronze.

'Less than 30 years ago,

'we knew nothing about the copper mines of the Great Orme,

'and their place in the great leap forward of the Bronze Age.

'They were discovered by chance when a new car park was being excavated.

'Sian James began work as a tour guide here,

'and found the mines so fascinating

'that she's gone on to make a full study of them

'as an academic archaeologist.'

Wow. That's quite breathtaking.

What are we looking at?

We're in one of the large chambers,

and this used to be full of malachite, of copper ore,

that the miners were digging out.

Digging it out with little tools, little implements?

Bone tools, stone hammers.

Nothing really more sophisticated than that.

About 30,000 animal bones have been discovered from the mine.

-That's a huge number.

-It is.

Originally, these were all thought to be food waste,

probably by the miners.

But I'm not sure you'd actually want to be eating down here.

My research over the past few years

suggests that these are all linked in with the mining itself.

I'm sure people will be interested in what exactly they're digging out,

-because I know that we've got an example here.

-Yeah.

-Just tell us what we've got here.

This is malachite, this is the main copper ore.

People think of copper today as this lovely orange metal,

but this is how they'd have probably first seen it.

If you smelt it with charcoal, a thousand degrees Centigrade,

and suddenly you get this wonderful orange metal.

So, you've got five miles of tunnels,

what does this represent worldwide?

This is the largest prehistoric copper mine anywhere in the world.

We've probably only discovered about 10% of it so far.

You see some of the little tunnels going off,

-which are terrifyingly small.

-Yeah.

What kind of working conditions would there have been?

Are people in there, digging?

I think possibly children are in some of those areas.

We're talking maybe five or six-year-olds.

-There's just surprises everywhere you look.

-Yeah.

One of the most exciting things, Sian,

is to think that this place was making a product

which wasn't for sale locally, it was going much further afield.

Enough copper came out of here to make about ten million axes.

So we're not talking domestic trade,

this is meeting some sort of demand, maybe internationally.

We're saying that Llandudno copper was being exported

-and used as weapons thousands of miles away?

-Yes.

-4,000 years ago?

-4,000 years ago.

-Now that is an eye-opener.

-It is.

The industrial scale of the Great Orme enterprise

demands a really sophisticated support network

to feed the workforce, to smelt the copper,

and to ship out the end product.

'By contrast, the basic tools of the trade are ingenious, but very simple.'

This is what?

This is a stone hammer, that they've just gone down to the beach,

picked up a suitable stone, brought it up here, ready for digging with.

-Yeah, that's a very basic kind of tool, isn't it?

-Simple, but very effective.

You've got something there which is a little more delicate.

It is more delicate, but still very effective.

These are two cattle bones that we found from the mine, they're both tools.

This one's a rib bone.

Rounded on the end, and would have been used

-for chiselling out, digging out the malachite.

-Mm-hmm.

And then this one is a humerus bone, so that's the front leg,

and that is the perfect shape for just holding and digging out...

-The handle?

-Chiselling out the malachite.

Well now, that chopping action you've done brings me to this,

because this, for me, is the most surprising thing of all.

You think of three and a half thousand years ago, and there's a level of sophistication here

which, I have to say, took me by surprise, so talk us through this.

Yeah, this is one of the palstave axes that they would have used in the Bronze Age.

It would have been made in a two-piece mould, but this is bronze, so this is the copper,

which would have come from here, and then tin, which you would have to go to Cornwall, probably, to get.

-That's something that was held three and a half thousand years ago.

-Yeah.

-Well, that's quite a thrill.

-It is.

Just one look at this ancient gold cape will tell you

how much industrial wealth is being generated here.

Discovered in Flintshire in the 1830s,

and beaten out of a single gold ingot,

the Mold Cape is an astonishing piece of workmanship,

fit to adorn the slender shoulders of a queen.

It dates from a time when Egypt is building the pyramids.

North Wales has riches to rival the Pharaohs.

People here are exchanging goods and ideas with mainland Europe.

But who exactly are their trading partners?

And how do they reach them?

The latest research points west, to the open Atlantic.

This is the trading superhighway of the ancient world.

Through it, we may be able to trace our Celtic roots

'much further back than we ever imagined.

'And one of the pioneers of this new line of thinking

'is Professor John Koch.'

John, it's an intriguing thought, as we look at the sea here today, on the coast of North Wales,

to think that this channel, this transport by sea,

which, frankly, lots of people would never have imagined,

was more sophisticated, more advanced, than we ever thought.

It was probably easier to get around by sea than it was over land.

The land was heavily forested,

before the Romans were here, there weren't good roads.

It was probably easier

to maintain, and create, long-distance connections by sea.

As soon as metals come into the picture,

and particularly copper and bronze, most especially,

you need the long-distance connections

just to keep the new economy going.

You're saying we should think of Wales in a much bigger world?

That's right. It's always...

certainly, it's always been connected to the rest of Britain.

But there's another side to it, and we're looking at that other side of it now.

It's the western ocean, if John is right,

which links Wales to the Celtic world of the continent.

And it's not the story we used to be told,

the idea of hostile forces sweeping in from the east,

in a series of sudden invasions from the continent.

Well, that idea is wrong.

For Professor Koch,

the links have always been to do with trade, not invasion.

They go way, way back in time,

and all the way down the Atlantic seaboard.

His evidence points to Celts from the West.

It's a major change of perspective for those of us who grew up with a history

that talks about Wales and its eastern neighbours and there's something very exciting

about the way we're telling the story now, John,

which is that it is an outward-looking Wales we're talking about, all those years ago.

Oh, it's a very different perspective now.

You now have evidence

for a diversity of very ancient Celtic languages

on the continent of Europe.

All of this new evidence is constantly turning up new connections

with the Welsh language, names of people, names of gods and so on,

so that there has always been this long-distance maritime connection.

And this goes right back, through the Iron Age, the Bronze Age,

Copper Age, right on back as far as you want to go

for human beings being here.

The trading links go deep into history,

but the technology is moving forward.

There's a big change coming and we can understand a lot more about it

because of a chance discovery a century ago.

One hundred years ago,

workmen were here at the foot of Craig y Llyn, Rhigos,

creating a reservoir for the people of Rhondda, just over the hill,

and in the course of clearing peat and vegetation,

they made the most fantastic of discoveries.

What they'd found was a hoard of weapons and tools

from the late Bronze Age.

Two bronze cauldrons, so big that you can't get your arms around them.

Carpenter's tools, chisels and gouges,

and some of the finest decorative horse gear ever found in Britain.

But there's something else, too -

an iron sword, probably made in Eastern France.

This superbly grooved, it's just part of a sword,

the grooves on the blade telling us that...

Hmm, this isn't just a first-time blacksmith's effort with iron,

because, 2,700 years ago, 2,800 years ago,

iron was something really new.

New and valuable. Too valuable to have been left here without thought.

From similar finds in bogs and rivers and lakes,

experts believe they're offerings to a local goddess.

But how do these gifts to the waters

come to be here in Wales in the first place?

Are they evidence of trade or war?

Perhaps 50 years ago,

an archaeologist looking at this Llyn Fawr collection

might say that the foreign sword from the continent

meant that an invader carried it here.

By today, many of us believe it was trade.

Gifts passing through many hands.

Most intriguing of all,

there's evidence here in the Lshaped iron sickle

and the short spearhead,

that local smiths are transferring their skills in bronze

to work in this even more useful new metal.

Here is our bronzesmith,

somehow being introduced, or experimenting, with iron ores,

that you can find in the geology,

in the rocks behind us here on the South Wales coalfield.

Experimenting with smelting, forging the iron

and creating new metal objects in the old style.

We're heralding. we're in the cradle of native ironworking,

not just in Wales,

because these are the oldest native-made iron objects

in the whole of the British Isles and Ireland.

Fantastic story.

'The Llyn Peninsula in the north-west corner of Wales

'is another location that opens our eyes

'to the nature of life here in this new age of iron.

'In the centuries before the Romans arrive,

'the population of Wales may have been around 80,000.

'There are no towns,

'but there are hillforts, more than 1,000 of them.'

Just think, this entrance has been here for 2,000 years

and it still tells us a story.

'We may be on top of an exposed peak 450 metres above the sea,

'but this is a major Iron Age settlement.'

'Tre'r Ceiri is one of the best preserved

'and most densely-occupied hillforts in Britain.

'Behind its ramparts,

'you can still see the shapes of more than 150 stone houses.

'But "hillfort" is a misleading term.

'The people of Tre'r Ceiri are farmers, not fighters,

'and from their homes,

'they can look down on the fertile land below.'

So what does this mesmerising place tell us?

It tells us that, long before the Romans arrived,

there was a sophisticated society here,

trading, not just in the local area, but much further afield.

And don't be fooled - it may look as if it's been built

to withstand an invasion from a distant enemy - not the case.

It's all about local power and local control.

So, by 2,000 years ago, a pattern has emerged -

the ancient peoples of Wales

have settled into a group of separate tribes.

From what's about to happen to them,

we can distinguish their characteristics,

and even give them names -

the fierce Silures in the southeast,

the Ordovices, led by the druids of Anglesey in the north.

Each tribe is many thousand strong,

with its own royal family, and priests and rituals.

They squabble and they skirmish, but they speak a common language

and they know each other's customs and gods.

This is their home.

43 AD.

They're confronted

by the most efficient killing machine in the world.

The Roman Army sweeps across Britain.

Many tribes surrender without a fight.

BATTLE CRIES

Others try guerrilla tactics, to ambush and surprise the invaders.

SWORDS CLASH

Across the Menai Straits, inspired by the Druids,

the Ordovices put up some of the strongest resistance.

In the south, the Silures take the battle to the Romans.

This land, rolling down towards the Severn Estuary,

is the power base of the Silures.

And power is the right word.

They're strong, they're fierce,

they're not the kind of fighters who hide in the hills

and launch the odd raid.

They're in the business of making full-frontal attacks on the Romans.

According to one story,

they demolished three Roman units in a single day.

And then they follow that success

by almost wiping out an entire legion.

Roman generals come to hate them.

They swear to sweep the Silures off the face of the earth.

BATTLE CRIES

But that's not so easy,

particularly when the Silures are joined

by one of ancient Britain's most skilful warlords.

His name is Caractacus, or Caradog, as he's known in Welsh.

It takes an epic struggle to capture him,

but he's such a catch that he's sent for trial to the Emperor himself.

When he gets to Rome, Caradog is condemned to death,

but for some reason,

the Emperor Claudius allows him one final plea for his life

and the Roman historian Tacitus sets down the words of that plea.

What we have is the first speech in history

credited to someone who's lived in Wales.

It's quite a speech.

"Noble Emperor and people of Rome,

"I face humiliation, while you have glory.

"I had horses, men, weapons.

"Are you surprised I'm sorry to have lost them?

"Just because you want to rule the world,

"do you think everyone else is happy to be made a slave?

"If I had surrendered without a fight,

"no-one would have heard of my downfall or your triumph.

"If you kill me, they will both be forgotten.

"But if you spare me,

"I shall stand forever as a symbol of your mercy."

The words work.

Caractacus is freed, but he never returns to Britain

and history records no more of him.

What we can say is that the Ancient Britons are a bit of a handful,

to put it mildly, and that's certainly the case here in Wales.

We're at the very edge of the Roman Empire

and Rome realises that it needs a very powerful military presence

if it's to keep things under control.

So what do the Romans decide that they have to do?

Well, they decide to build an immense fortress here at Caerleon.

And they call this place Isca.

This is where thousands of soldiers are fed and watered,

housed and trained -

trained to put the locals down and keep them down.

30 years after the Romans invade,

this amphitheatre is where a whole Roman legion is entertained,

as well as put through its paces.

But Isca, it turns out, isn't just a big army camp.

Whilst we've been filming this series,

archaeologists have been digging here

on a large area between the military site and the River Usk.

Their extraordinary new findings

give us a completely fresh understanding of this place.

Caerleon is a Roman city and a major port.

What we can see here is a new reconstruction that we've had done.

It's still in the development stage,

but it shows what this part of Caerleon might have been like

at the end of the first century AD as we imagine it,

around about 100.

You can see a river ship coming up the Usk from the Severn Estuary,

bringing men and materials into Caerleon.

Here we have the quayside, which we've been excavating here,

where all the materials and the men would've been offloaded.

And then we have a flythrough of the Roman buildings

that we've been uncovering,

including the very large courtyard complex,

a series of buildings

that we think are the marketplaces, that include bath houses.

Here we can see the amphitheatre

and then we fly through the fortress's west gate

into the centre of Isca,

where we can see barrack blocks and store buildings,

the commanding officer's house and headquarters,

Caerleon's bath house, where the Romans would have kept clean.

And then we fly through the main streets,

out towards the civilian settlement on the other side.

And it really gives a tremendous sense

of how big some of these buildings were

and how imposing and important they must have looked.

One of the new riverfront structures discovered by Dr Guest

is more than 100 metres long and 100 metres wide -

big enough to fit the amphitheatre inside its central courtyard.

It's just part of this port complex which is changing our view

of how Caerleon connects Britain to the rest of the Roman Empire.

We're in one of the excavation trenches closest to the River Usk.

And in this trench, we think we have the remains of the Roman port.

Here, this wall, we think, is the quayside wall

that the Romans would've constructed outside the fortress of Caerleon,

which would've allowed ships and boats to moor on the River Usk

and for men and materials and other goods to be offloaded

and then taken into the fortress and the other parts of Roman Wales.

One of the things the Romans brought to Britain nearly 2,000 years ago

was the use of writing.

This is a Roman brick that you can see here,

which has a stamp on it

which records the fact that this tile was made by

the Second Augustan Legion.

And this is a particularly special find.

It has parts of three letters on it.

An A. You can see the crossbar of the A there.

A V or a U, and then what is either a C or a G.

Roman inscriptions, particularly imperial inscriptions,

often record the imperial titles of the emperor,

one of which was Augustus.

The Romans were very keen to make sure that you knew, as you came to a place like this,

that it was now part of the new civilised world

and that the people who had done the civilising were the soldiers,

were the Second Augustan Legion,

but they were doing it in the name of the emperor.

Presumably, if we're lucky, we may well find more of this inscription

which might tell us which emperor that was.

The discoveries made by Doctor Guest and his team

allow us to see Caerleon in a much, much broader way

than we've ever done before.

It's the first, and only time, that we in Britain

became part of a Mediterranean world.

Caerleon was a major access route.

So the wine Romans liked to drink

or the olive oil they liked to put on their food

came in large storage vessels.

And it's not just the material things, but also

the new gods that Romans brought with them. The new languages.

The new ways of dressing and thinking about the world.

These would also have been brought into Western Britain,

presumably at places like this.

So we now have a better idea of the true scale and purpose of Isca.

The Romans clearly want Caerleon to be a major city,

a great city. An integral part of the empire.

And they want all the benefits of Roman civilisation

to apply right here in this new province of theirs.

So what we're talking about now is not just a military battle.

It's also a battle for hearts and minds.

Down the road from Caerleon, at the door of this church in Caerwent,

is a relic of Roman times which shows just how quickly

the native Britons embrace all that Rome has to offer.

It's a stone tablet with a Latin inscription -

a kind of operating licence for Civitas Silurum,

the self-governing council of the Silures.

The Romans have built a whole new town

for the tribe themselves to rule and govern.

Just a generation after fighting to the death to defend their land,

the Silures have accepted Roman rule and agreed to pay their taxes.

In return, they're enjoying all the benefits of Roman civilisation.

They even get their own assembly building.

You could say it's the first time devolution comes to Wales.

And it's not just in the south that the Romans secure their grip.

The mountains are no barrier to them.

They build a whole network of roads, military camps and towns,

stretching from Caerleon and Caerwent

to Carmarthen in the west and Caernarfon in the north.

The Roman occupation of Britain is a massive enterprise.

It ties up the Empire's military resources

and personnel for decades.

Just imagine the logistics involved

in building and maintaining this one fort,

'Segontium in Caernarfon, at the end of the Roman supply chain.'

So, why do the Romans come here and stay here?

One reason is prestige.

Conquering Britannia brings the Emperor Claudius a lot of glory.

It tightens his grip on power.

And never discount the importance of PR

in the politics of Ancient Rome.

But there are good practical reasons to be here, too.

This island is a bread basket

and Rome can tax its farmers

and enjoy the fruits of their labour on the land.

And then there's the most valuable resource of all - people.

While some Britons enjoy all the benefits of Roman civilisation,

many more of them are traded, as slaves.

Or "living tools", as the Romans called them.

And they're put to dig out Britannia's mineral wealth,

like the gold at Dolaucothi in West Wales.

Many other slaves are shipped off to Rome to serve its politicians,

philosophers and army veterans.

Life for many is nasty, short and brutal.

But others do thrive on Rome's bounty.

Any Welsh speaker will confirm just how comprehensively

the tribes of Wales adopt the benefits of Roman civilisation.

The language proves it.

Some of the words used here at Segontium 2,000 years ago

are still being used on the streets of Caernarfon today.

Pont, for bridge.

Ffenest, for window.

These are Latin words,

which now form some of the nuts and bolts of the Welsh language.

And there's something else that Rome leaves behind - Christianity.

At first, the Romans persecute the new faith, but then they embrace it.

In the year 306, when he's on a military campaign in Britain,

Constantine the Great is proclaimed Emperor.

He is the first Christian to rule Rome.

The Romans rule Britannia for 350 years.

There are Imperial soldiers here right up to the year 400.

But in the end, with their empire under threat,

the Romans march out of our history

and leave Christian Britain to defend itself.

Towns are abandoned.

Those living in the ruins of empire

have to deal as best they can with new threats -

Irish pirates and Saxon invaders.

Dyfed and Brycheiniog are overrun by the Irish.

Gwynedd is invaded, probably by tribes from north of Hadrian's Wall.

And then come the Angles and the Saxons.

From the year 400, these Germanic peoples

push eastwards from the Continent,

smothering the old Celtic and Roman culture in lowland Britain,

forcing it back into the hills and the mountains of the west.

The Anglo-Saxons don't share the Christian faith Rome has brought

and it seems that Britain's Roman legacy may be eclipsed completely.

These are mysterious times,

filled with battles against the odds.

Something in them sparks the Celtic imagination.

The hard facts are scarce,

but the struggle to keep the faith alive

inspires some of the greatest stories of Wales.

There is a world of difference between history and legend,

but when you come to a magical place like this,

deep in the heart of the Welsh countryside,

they seem to come together.

In this land of mystic waters and sacred springs,

it's a time for tales of heroes

whose exploits have cast spells on the world ever since.

I'm thinking especially of King Arthur,

the great defender of Christian Britain

and, of course, of his resident magician,

the mighty Merlin.

In one story, written down more than a thousand years ago

by a Welsh monk known as Nennius,

it is Merlin who predicts that the Red Dragon, the native Britons,

will eventually defeat the White Dragon,

the invading Anglo-Saxons.

These are tales of conflict and heroism.

They set up the notion that this land is embattled,

ringed around by dark forces.

And legend has it that Arthur and his warriors

are still waiting somewhere in the deepest countryside,

ready to come to our rescue.

The fact is that, the Arthur industry, if I can call it that,

built around Camelot,

the Sword in the Stone, the Knights of the Round Table,

all of this is invented, at a much later time.

But these inventions are based on

some intriguing fragments of historical evidence.

In one account of a great battle with the Anglo-Saxons,

said to take place in the year 516,

Arthur carries the Christian cross on his shoulders for three days

and nights, before leading the Britons to victory.

All over Britain, there is an epic struggle going on.

And because the Celts from Cornwall in the south

to Central Scotland in the north

speak a language that's an early form of Welsh,

we can still get a sense of the drama and turmoil,

if we know where to look.

This is the Book of Aneirin

in the National Library in Aberystwyth.

And it contains the record of a battle from around the year 600.

"Gwyr a aeth Gatraeth oedd ffraeth eu llu.

"Glasfedd eu hancwyn a gwenwyn fu."

'The men who marched to Catterick were a swift war band.

'Their drink was mead. It proved to be poison.'

They're very famous lines.

They're taken from the earliest surviving Welsh poem,

written by a poet living in Edinburgh.

And what's striking is that, it is still possible

for a Welsh speaker to get the gist.

It tells the story of an army of soldiers

going into battle against the Angles.

in the north of England.

And what we get, in all of these stories,

is a gradual recognition of our identity as a people.

We are the Cymry, the compatriots.

The Brithoniaid, the Britons.

The Wealhas, the Welsh.

That's the Anglo-Saxon word for "strangers",

or more precisely, those strangers who used to live in a Roman world.

Part of Rome's great legacy is Christianity,

but now, Wales produces its own Christian leaders.

They're determined to make the faith on these shores more rooted

and much more outward-looking.

Between the years 400 and 600,

they managed to defend and strengthen Christianity

in the teeth of Anglo-Saxon aggression.

This is the Age of the Saints.

Some focus completely on the spiritual life,

away from the turmoil of war that's all around.

It's a search for remoteness and isolation,

for the kind of spiritual peace

that can still be found along parts of the Welsh coastline.

These are people who want to withdraw from the world

and who take as their example

the Christian hermits of the Middle East, thousands of miles away.

We're on the edge of Europe here,

but we are in the mainstream of Christianity.

MONASTIC CHANTING

Other saints chose a different path,

engaging with the lives of ordinary people around them.

They build communities, which shelter the faith

in the troubled times of Anglo-Saxon attack.

The most important is the settlement at Llanilltud Fawr,

Llantwit Major.

'As Dr Juliet Wood explains to me,

'this is where a remarkable man called Illtud'

turns his back on a soldier's life

and builds what we believe to be

Britain's first ever centre of learning.

We don't have a lot of written records from this period,

but we do have the saints' lives

and we do have stories about mythical figures.

Now, these are always, sort of,

done much after the historical period.

You have to be careful with them.

But they tell us what was important to the culture.

And certainly with the Illtud stories,

you're getting this image of a powerful saint,

a saint who taught other saints,

a saint who carried forward this notion of the Christian message.

And Illtud starts out as a warrior, rather than a monk.

He was raised as a Christian - he's not a Pagan -

but he decided he was going to be a warrior.

And then he becomes converted to the monastic life.

The Church of St Illtud dates from long after the original monastery,

but it's built on the tradition

that Illtud sets up a powerhouse of learning,

producing a thousand graduates.

Some sources claim that both Saint David of Wales

and Saint Patrick of Ireland are pupils of Illtud.

MONASTIC CHANTING

The Celtic crosses at the church door

date back almost as far as the Age of the Saints.

One of them bears the name of Illtud himself

and several of his chief followers.

They are men who cling to faith and learning in a time of war.

Prayer and study are their weapons,

but the violent times they live in mark them

with a steely determination to fight for the faith.

The Welsh saints are a different bunch.

There are no martyrs. They're quite tetchy.

Um...they can really blast their enemies.

They're very strong figures.

So you get these wonderful legends,

which tell you what it is about a Welsh saint

that we ought to emulate.

Illtud's focus is on the world outside.

In church terms, Llantwit Major is what we call a "class monastery",

a flexible settlement linked to the local chieftains,

who are also determined to defend their patch.

It was a time when Wales was beginning to think of itself as different.

But it wouldn't have been all of Wales,

in the sense that we now think of this.

When we think of the story of Wales, you're really dealing with a mosaic,

which is eventually going to come together.

Illtud himself taught a number of very important Welsh saints.

And they went out and they founded their own class monasteries.

The mosaic of Welsh life isn't yet complete,

but the picture is filling out.

In the 500s and 600s,

Illtud's disciples build small communities all over Wales.

The physical evidence of their existence is long gone,

but the religious enclosures, the timber churches,

the small buildings, the cemeteries,

all inside a protective wall,

they've certainly left their mark in every part of Wales.

If you want to find lasting traces of the early Welsh Church,

just look at a map,

because the old Welsh word for enclosure is "llan"

and there are hundreds of Welsh place names

which combine the word llan with the name of a saint.

We've already been to Llandudno - the llan of Saint Tudno.

There's Llanbadarn - the llan of Saint Padarn.

There's Llanelli, of course - The llan of Saint Elli.

There are slightly more complex ones.

Llantrisant - The llan of three saints.

Llanpumsain - The llan of five saints.

And then, of course, there's the most exotic one of them all,

the one that talks about Saint Mary, and Saint Tysilio

and lots of other things, too.

And, yes, I CAN say it.

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndro bwyllllantysiliogogogoch.

How's that?

The Welsh saints certainly leave their mark in every corner of Wales.

And they do more.

Surrounded by Saxon enemies who don't share their faith,

they manage to break out to inspire others.

Their impact is immense.

Crossing the Celtic seas,

they nurture the Christian life of Ireland and Scotland,

Cornwall and Brittany.

The traditions they establish give us masterpieces,

such as the illuminated manuscripts of faraway Lindisfarne.

But not all of these spiritual giants are travellers.

The best-known figure of the age stays at home, here in Wales,

and he builds a wooden church

in this sheltered, tranquil spot

in the far west, on the coastline.

Today, it is the site of this magnificent stone-built cathedral,

which exudes power and certainty.

It is, of course, the cathedral church of Dewi Sant,

our patron saint, Saint David.

BELLS TOLL

Every schoolchild in Wales knows about the miracles of Saint David.

How the ground suddenly rises under his feet,

so that a crowd in Llanddewi Brefi can hear him preach.

Though I have to say, it's a mystery to me

why you'd need to create a hill in Ceredigion, of all places.

And then we learn that this gentle soul, on his deathbed,

urges people to be faithful to the little things.

It's a comforting image.

It's a reassuring image.

Saint David emerges as a bit of a softie.

Don't believe a word of it.

MONASTIC CHANTING

David's nickname was Aquaticus, "the water man".

People used to think this was because

water was the only thing he'd drink.

Experts now believe it's because he's given to testing his faith

by standing for hours in ice-cold pools.

We have very few facts about him,

but the way we see Dewi is important.

Because his name, his tradition are part and parcel

of a distinctive Welsh form of the Christian faith.

One that tries to hold onto its independence for 500 years to come.

And it's that tenacity, that determination,

which earns Dewi his place as our patron saint

and as a national figurehead.

So people have learnt to live

and to thrive in this landscape.

It's challenged them and they've left their mark on it.

They innovate, they trade,

they deal in objects of fabulous worth and beauty.

They've faced the armies of Rome

and they've benefited from all that mighty empire has to offer.

Now, they're fighting for their place in the world

and for the way THEY want to live.

So the Welsh have arrived.

They're a force to be reckoned with

and the battle to strengthen and defend that identity

is about to begin.

The Open University has produced a free booklet

for you to learn more about the history of the people of Wales.

You can call 0845 366 0253

or go to bbc.co.uk/storyofwales

and follow the links to The Open University.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd