Secret History: The First Brit: Secrets of the 10,000 Year Old Man TV - Jennifer Westwood - Tony Robinson TV - Neil Oliver TV - The Untold Invasion of Britain TV - Mysteries of the Bible TV - Bettany Hughes TV - Timewatch & Alice Roberts TV - Dr Robert Beckford TV - Sam Willis - Michael Wood TV - Time Team TV - Peter & Dan Snow TV - Sam Newton - BBC News TV - Francis Pryor TV - David Carpenter - Ben Robinson TV - Thomas Asbridge - Janina Ramirez TV - Noel Denholm-Young - Charles William Chadwick Oman - Flores Historiarum - Julian Richards - Simon Schama TV - David Dimbleby TV - Venerable Bede - The British TV - William of Malmesbury - Thomas Becket - Becket 1964 - Helen Castor TV - Dan Jones TV - Peter of Blois - Magna Carta - John Ball - William Stubbs - Robert Bartlett TV - David Starkey TV - The Boleyns: A Scandalous Family TV -
Science is about to reveal the truth about where we come from and who we really are. It’s a story that begins about 10,000 years ago before Britain became an island and our first ancestors arrived. We’re following Britain’s most ambitious ancient human DNA project ever. Secret History: The First Brit: Secrets of the 10,000 Year Old Man, Channel 4 2018
10,000 years ago marked the end of the last Ice Age. ibid.
Cheddar Man had blue eyes … Cheddar Man had dark hair … Cheddar Man was probably darker than we initially expected … Dark to Black. ibid.
In the beginning in England it was inhabited only by Giants. Jennifer Westwood
The beautiful country that surrounds us – the rugged coastline, the rolling green hills, the craggy mountains – were formed millions of years ago when Britain was a very different place. Giant geological forces have shaped the land we know today. Tony Robinson, Birth of Britain: Volcanoes, National Geographic 2010
It’s an epic story of giant volcanoes, colliding continents, and of how Britain was ripped away from what is now north America. It’s the story of the Birth of Britain. ibid.
But there’s another force that has had perhaps the greatest effect on the landscape we see around us today: Ice. During the last Ice Age most of Britain would have been covered with a great sheet of ice up to a mile thick. Tony Robinson, Birth of Britain: Ice
Loch Ness was once filled by an enormous powerful glacier. ibid.
Scientists suspect that this natural cycle of climate change is being disrupted by human activity. ibid.
The landscape around me has been shaped by ancient oceans and erupting volcanoes and ice ages. But it’s here down in the mud that the real treasures of Britain are buried: coal, lead, even tin have been pivotal in making Britain what it is today. Tony Robinson, Birth of Britain: Gold
Gold: it underpinned our economies, celebrates the pinnacles of our achievements, and epitomises the extremes of luxury and wealth ... What is surprising is Britain’s gold heritage. ibid.
The amount of gold we can get hold of is tiny. ibid.
The Black Death wiped out between a third and two-thirds of the entire population of Europe. In England alone, more than two million people are thought to have died of it. Man on Earth with Tony Robinson IV: The Modern World
8,000 years ago a tsunami passed through this sea ... a phenomenally destructive force. Tony Robinson, Britain’s Stone Age Tsunami, Channel 4 2013
Nearly four hundred miles of our prehistoric coast ... An astonishingly rich lifestyle ... We call this drowned world Doggerland. ibid.
An empire that stretched all the way from Egypt to Hadrian’s Wall and brought people from Europe, Asia and Africa to live here. Tony Robinson’s History of Britain s2e1: Romans, Channel 5 2022
Why do we regard some places as being more sacred than others? Neil Oliver, Sacred Wonders of Britain I, BBC 2013
The coming of a whole new age, one that would see great monuments, sacred monuments rise from the earth around Britain. ibid.
The time of the stone circles had begun. ibid.
3,350 years ago much of East Anglia was a landscape of marshland, shallow waterways and ponds. Neil Oliver, Sacred Wonders of Britain II, BBC 2013
Sacred Wonders of Britain is the story of how our island has been shaped by belief. ibid.
Even to war-hardened Roman soldiers, the Druids appeared a terrifying spectacle. ibid.
This new religion was undercover and banned in the Roman empire. Neil Oliver, Sacred Wonders of Britain III, BBC 2014
It’s the Lindisfarne Gospels. Books were rare. ibid.
A long-standing mystery about this – unmarked grave in a local parish church. Neil Oliver, The Search for Alfred the Great, BBC 2014
Alfred the Great was born in 849 in the town of Wantage, now in Oxfordshire. ibid.
A new England was emerging under his rule. ibid.
North Britain: about two thousand years ago. The Romans ruled most of Europe but not here. Scattered groups from all over north Britain rose up against the Roman Empire. The Emperor they defied was Septimius Severus. He was an African. To steal Rome’s throne he had waded through blood. The Untold Invasion of Britain, Channel 4 2010
A war that would change Britain for ever. ibid.
Road to Rome April 193 A.D. – having declared himself Emperor, Severus moved on Rome with utmost haste ... The outsider was now the most powerful man in the world. ibid.
Hadrian’s Wall built almost a century earlier still marked the northern limit of Roman Britain. It snaked across the hills all the way from the North Sea to the Irish Sea splitting the island in two. ibid.
Crippled by age, Severus was carried north. Riding alongside was his son and heir Coracalla. ibid.
Archaeologists are still discovering evidence of his huge army. ibid.
The Emperor was at the head of one of the largest invasion forces the Roman Empire ever mobilised. It needed massive logistical support. ibid.
40,000 Romans marched to the foot of the Scottish highlands. ibid.
York 210 A.D. This is where Severus came to die ... Britain’s African Emperor died at York 211 A.D. ibid.
Rome never marched into Scotland again. ibid.
Did Jesus travel to England? And does the cup from the last supper – the Holy Grail – hold the key which could unlock the secrets of his missing years? Mysteries of the Bible s3e10: The Lost Years of Jesus, National Geographic 1998
The story of how modern Britain was created isn’t just about kings, queens and politicians. It’s about how we learnt to farm, to trade and to live together. It’s about how war, new gods and new learning shaped life on these islands. Bettany Hughes, Seven Ages of Britain: 6000 B.C. – 2000 B.C., Channel 4 2003
The First Age of Britain: it tells of a struggle between man and the environment. ibid.
The island of Britain exists because of global warming. ibid.
The people who lived here eight thousand years ago were hunter-gatherers. ibid.
Our best guess is that the population numbered a few hundred thousand. ibid.
Possibly the most revolutionary innovation was farming. ibid.
In the First Age of Britain its people had subjugated Nature; in the second, they would subjugate each other. ibid.
Around three and a half thousand years ago less than a quarter of a million people lived in Britain. That’s about the population of Leicester today. They were scattered across the landscape in small groups. Bettany Hughes, Seven Ages of Britain 1500 B.C. – 43 A.D.
Now it seems more likely that a comet travelling near the Earth’s atmosphere in 1159 smothered the planet in a massive dust veil. ibid.
People had discovered a new metal much more readily available than bronze – iron. ibid.