BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//InvisionCommunity Events 4.7.23//EN METHOD:PUBLISH CALSCALE:GREGORIAN REFRESH-INTERVAL:PT15M X-PUBLISHED-TTL:PT15M X-WR-CALNAME:RMCommunityCalendar NAME:RMCommunityCalendar BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:Europe/London TZURL:http://tzurl.org/zoneinfo/Europe/London X-LIC-LOCATION:Europe/London BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:+0000 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:BST DTSTART:20250330T020000Z RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=3;BYDAY=-1SU END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0000 TZNAME:GMT DTSTART:20251026T020000Z RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=10;BYDAY=-1SU END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT SUMMARY:King Arthur Truth from Secrets Of The Dead 02/07/2025 DTSTAMP:20250207T161009Z SEQUENCE:0 UID:187-7-c3fe8195a3dde498d013e477e2142422@aalbc.com ORGANIZER;CN="richardmurray":troy@aalbc.com DESCRIPTION:\n King Arthur Truth from Secrets Of The Dead 02/07/2025\n\n https://aalbc.com/tc/profile/6477-richardmurray/?status=2838&\;type=st atus\n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n King Arthur's Lost Kingdom from Secrets o f the Dead\n\n MY THOUGHTS\n\n So the angles+ saxons were scandanavian far mers who intermated with the peoples of the british isles  focusing on tr ade to denmark to germany\, focused to the east[modern day southern/easter n central england]\, then in the west[modern day wales\, western england] the people of the british isles traded with the mediterranean\, the sea la nes from the eastern meditteranean through the Jabal Tariq.north around th e coast to tintagel. Which i realize now is like AL hambra in Spain\, the last viestiges of a militaristically+financially powerful region that exis t foreignly to its neighbors/\n\n VIDEO\n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n \n\n Uniform Reso urce Locator\n\n https://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/king-arthurs-lost-kingdo m-king-arthurs-lost-kingdom-about-the-film/4069/\n\n\n\n TRANSCRIPT\n\n\n\ n  \n\n\n\n -In the rich recorded history of Great Britain\, one period i s shrouded in mystery and clouded by myth.\n\n \n\nAfter an occupation las ting nearly 400 years\, in 410 AD\, the Roman army abandoned the island.\n \n \n\nHistory holds that Britain then plunged into two centuries of turmo il and violence... known as the Dark Ages.\n\n \n\nLegends tell of a great leader who unites the lawless land to fight off an invading horde -- King Arthur.\n\n \n\nBut how much truth is there to the story?\n\n \n\n♪♪ Now\, new archaeological discoveries are rewriting this chapter in Britain 's history.\n\n \n\n-It's really clear!\n\n \n\n-With exclusive access to unprecedented new finds... -When you look at their bones\, you find a very \, very low incidence of weapon injury\, sword cuts.\n\n \n\n-...and using groundbreaking science... -It was one of those total wow moments.\n\n \n\ n-...Professor Alice Roberts pieces together the real story... -It's just absolutely phenomenal.\n\n \n\nWe've got continuous occupation all along t his strip which is immense.\n\n \n\n-...to reveal how 5th and 6th century Britain was anything but dark.\n\n \n\n-We're not looking at an abandoned landscape of desperate poverty.\n\n \n\n-It's not necessarily the truth.\n \n \n\n-It's about as far removed from history as you can get.\n\n \n\n-Mo dern archaeology could finally uncover the true story of King Arthur's Los t Kingdom.\n\n \n\n♪♪ ♪♪ -In 410 AD\, Britain suffered a political catastrophe.\n\n \n\nThe Roman Empire that covered most of Western Europe had become over-stretched\, weakened by infighting and external attacks.\ n\n \n\nAfter 400 years of prosperity\, the Roman aristocracy\, troops and bureaucrats left the island.\n\n \n\n♪♪ -Dies tenebrosa sicut nox.\n\ n \n\nIt's a brilliant\, evocative way of saying \"Welcome to the Dark Age s.\"\n\n \n\n-The common belief is that the Roman departure had a devastat ing impact across Britain.\n\n \n\nWithout Roman authority\, society colla pses.\n\n \n\nThe roads and towns fall into ruin.\n\n \n\nCivilization cru mbles.\n\n \n\nThe era after Roman rule became known as the Dark Ages.\n\n \n\nBut the truth is\, almost nothing is known about what life was really like.\n\n \n\n-For the period 400 to 600 -- that's 200 years\, that's 8\, 10 generations -- we know the names of... you can kind of count them on t wo hands.\n\n \n\nFor the whole of the period 400 to 600\, in the British Isles we have 2 or 3 people whose writing we have fragments of.\n\n \n\n-I n the absence of recorded history\, stories about one powerful leader beca me popular -- The great King Arthur.\n\n \n\nBut what truth\, if any\, lie s behind the legend?\n\n \n\nWhat was 5th-century Britain really like?\n\n \n\nProfessor Alice Roberts\, an expert in archaeology and human remains\ , wants to separate fact from fiction using scientific discoveries- and fi nd out what really happened at this pivotal moment in history.\n\n \n\ n♪♪ Her journey to uncover the truth about King Arthur's Britain begin s at the British Library in London.\n\n \n\nShe's meeting Julian Harrison\ , the Curator of Medieval Manuscripts.\n\n \n\n-So this is Geoffrey.\n\n \ n\n-Here we have one of the earliest copies of Geoffrey of Monmouth's \"Hi story of the Kings of Britain.\"\n\n \n\n-It's a copy of a 12th-century be stseller.\n\n \n\nThe writing on the animal-skin parchment is still crysta l clear.\n\n \n\n-The script is so beautiful.\n\n \n\nIt's so regular.\n\n \n\nThat's fantastic.\n\n \n\n-900 years ago\, a Welsh monk\, Geoffrey of Monmouth\, wrote his own account of the history of Britain.\n\n \n\nHis c hronicle told of a King Arthur who ruled 600 years before Geoffrey's time. \n\n \n\n-Here we are.\n\n \n\nHere's the page I want to show you.\n\n \n\ n-Geoffrey's manuscript is in Latin\, the written language of medieval Bri tain.\n\n \n\n-I can recognize the odd word here.\n\n \n\nI can see concep t and then \"eadem nocte.\"\n\n \n\n-\" Eadem nocte.\"\n\n \n\nSo\, this t ells you that on this night\, \"eadem nocte\,\" was conceived\, celebrated \, King Arthur\, \"Arturus\,\" \"Arturum.\"\n\n \n\n-According to Geoffrey \, the mythical king has a rather bizarre conception.\n\n \n\nArthur's fat her asked the wizard Merlin to cast a spell to disguise him as the Duke of Cornwall\, so he could seduce the Duke's wife.\n\n \n\n-He's in the appea rance of her husband and he satisfies himself\, and as a result on that pa rticular night\, on that particular occasion Arthur was conceived.\n\n \n\ n-That moment as those words appear on the page\, that's the beginning of King Arthur as we know him.\n\n \n\n♪♪ -A remote rocky outcrop called Tintagel in the far west of Britain is where Arthur's story begins.\n\n \n \n-It's in the top line there.\n\n \n\n-That looks like \"dece\" to me.\n\ n \n\n-It says \"dei\" and then there's a new word.\n\n \n\n-Tin-ta-gol.\n \n \n\n-\"Tintagol.\"\n\n \n\nExactly.\n\n \n\n-Is this the first associat ion of Tintagel as a place with Arthur?\n\n \n\n-It is indeed.\n\n \n\n-Pa cked with sex and violence\, Geoffrey's account unfolds like a modern-day action movie.\n\n \n\n-It's full of excitement\, it's full of horror\, it' s full of lots of things that an audience would love.\n\n \n\n-And eager t o please his Christian audience\, Geoffrey came up with the perfect bad gu ys.\n\n \n\nWith the Romans gone\, the ancient Britons are vulnerable to a ttack.\n\n \n\nIn Geoffrey's retelling\, pagan tribes known as the Angles and the Saxons swarm in from modern-day Holland\, Germany and Denmark.\n\n \nTheir armies invade the east coast of Great Britain\, destroying everyt hing in their path.\n \n-I suppose he gives us this idea today that the Ro mans abandoned Britain to its fate and when the Romans go it is just chaos .\n \nThere's plagues\, there's civil war\, there's the Saxons just slaugh tering everybody.\n \nSo it's real blood and thunder stuff.\n \n-But accor ding to Geoffrey\, Arthur comes out of the West\, unites the Britons\, and leads the counter attack.\n \nThe result is a split country.\n \nEmbattle d Britons in the west and in the east\, new Angle and Saxon hordes\, that later historians combine into a single entity -- the Anglo-Saxons.\n \nThi s is King Arthur's Britain.\n \n-In his account to simplify it\, yes\, you get\, you get this sense of the Britons are the ones who are defending ev erything that is right and good.\n \nYou get this sort of frontier line be tween these two constantly warring factions.\n \nIt is \"us against them.\ "\n \nIt is Britons against the Anglo-Saxons.\n \nThe Anglo-Saxons are the forces of evil that need to be destroyed.\n \nBritons and Saxons are kill ing one another\, and that's Arthur's world\, that is where he existed.\n \n-Here it talks about his sword\, \"g ladio optimo.\"\n \n-The best sword .\n \n-And that was called Caliburno.\n \n-Caliburn-- Is that Excalibur?\n \n-This is Excalibur.\n \n-Yes!\n \n-But in the original it was called Ca liburn.\n \n-Arthur's sword is a weapon of mass destruction.\n \n-It tells you that with Caliburn alone\, Arthur killed some 470 men single-handedly .\n \nHe went berserk\, essentially.\n \n-470 victims in a single rush.\n \nI mean that is -- it's too extraordinary to believe\, obviously.\n \nI m ean\, he's being portrayed here as... -He's a superhero essentially.\n \n- Yeah\, yeah.\n \n-Geoffrey's book is the first reference to a King Arthur that we have.\n \nEarlier accounts written closer to the Dark Ages don't m ention a king named Arthur\, but they do describe a violent invasion.\n \n The earliest description was written by a monk named Gildas.\n \nA few fra gments of his text are still legible.\n \n-He's writing in the 6th century .\n \nAnd he isn't writing so much a work of history.\n \nIt's more a pole mical text\, criticizing the Britons and blaming their evil ways\, their b ad ways of living with that's why they were conquered by the Saxons.\n \nT his is one of the few passages we can still read now but he talks about th e -- like ravishing wolves.\n \nThe Saxons are loopy.\n \n-Loopy yeah.\n \ n-They are obviously destroying.\n \nIn Gildas' terminology\, they are des troying everything in their wake.\n \n-So\, again this is a\, this is an i nvading force.\n \nThis is the arrival of the enemy essentially.\n \n-Prec isely.\n \n-And the difficulty with these kind of accounts I think is that \, is that you're almost getting a single view of how this happened.\n \n- Both Geoffrey and Gildas's histories are highly subjective\, making it dif ficult to take them at face value.\n \nThey can't be trusted as fact\, but they have given Professor Roberts something specific to investigate.\n \n They both describe a massive invasion from the east and the native Britons resisting in the west.\n \nAnd the archaeological evidence supports this idea -- Anglo-Saxon artifacts have primarily been found in eastern Britain .\n \nIf great wars were fought\, evidence of mass slaughter and conflict should lie along this frontier line of their supposed occupation.\n \nArch aeologist Dominic Powlesland has been flying\, digging and mapping a vast area on the eastern side of this imagined border\, near the village of Wes t Heslerton in Yorkshire.\n \n-Clear prop.\n \nOkay\, ready Dominic?\n \n- Yeah\, I'm ready.\n \n-Right\, hold on tight here we go.\n \nGolf-Romeo-Ro meo rolling.\n \n-Will Dominic's research confirm the written accounts of a full-scale foreign invasion?\n \n-These fields underneath us are entirel y filled with archaeology.\n \nThere's archaeology in every single one.\n \n-Dominic uses modern technology to map every single artifact relating to the Anglo-Saxons found over 25 square miles of what is today farmland.\n \nIt's taken an army of volunteers 40 years to complete their survey.\n \n -We've surveyed all these fields.\n \n-Roberts is here to find out what th e hard work reveals about life on the alleged frontier of King Arthur's Br itain.\n \nKey to the process is geophysical surveying -- a technique that uses ground-penetrating radar to map traces of ancient structures.\n \n-S o\, every single spot here is a feature?\n \n-Yeah.\n \nSo\, all those dot s are individual features.\n \nYou can zoom in to this area here.\n \n-Cli ck on that we get all the finds information.\n \n-Oh\, wow!\n \n-That's th e plan\, this is the distribution of finds within it.\n \n-It just goes on and on!\n \nYou've got thousands of finds coming out of every single one of these features\, and hundreds of these features.\n \nI mean\, that's a phenomenal amount of data.\n \n-Yeah.\n \nAbout a million finds altogether .\n \n-What Dominic has found is extraordinary.\n \nBut even more amazing is what he hasn't found.\n \nThere are no mass graves of defeated warriors .\n \nNo signs of battle or conquest... anywhere.\n \nThere is no evidence here for mass slaughter of local Britons by violent Angle and Saxon tribe s.\n \n-I have never seen any evidence of an invasion.\n \n♪♪ -And the Anglo-Saxon skeletons show few signs of violence.\n \n-Once you start kil ling people in large numbers they leave themselves lying around\, you can' t avoid them.\n \nSo\, we don't see lots of Anglo-Saxons with massive inju ries.\n \n-When you look at their bones you find a very\, very low inciden ce of weapon injuries\, sword cuts.\n \nThis is a society that is playing with the idea of a military world\, but doesn't actually seem to be engagi ng with physical conflict to a huge degree.\n \n-And the findings here are backed up elsewhere.\n \n-Here's a very\, very good piece of science -- o f all the dead bodies dug up that may belong to the period 400 to 600 -- a nd we have thousands of them -- men and women\, children\, old people\, yo ung people.\n \nBut of all those thousands of bodies\, if you ask the numb er of those bodies that have sharp-edge weapon injuries\, it's less than t wo percent.\n \nWhere do battles fit into that?\n \n-The archaeology makes it very clear -- there was no large-scale conflict.\n \nIt's a stark depa rture from Geoffrey and Gildas's written accounts -- the idea of native Br itons fighting the invading Angles and Saxons doesn't reflect what's being found on the ground.\n \nInstead\, the archaeology reveals exactly what t he Angles and Saxons who came to Britain were doing.\n \nDominic has pulle d together all the data in what he calls The Wallpaper.\n \n-It's just phe nomenal because all of that work comes together to give you a picture of a landscape which is so densely settled.\n \n-Yeah.\n \n-The Anglo-Saxons w eren't blood-thirsty warriors.\n \nThey were farmers.\n \n-We've got settl ements here.\n \nThere's one here.\n \nThere's one here.\n \nThere\, of co urse there's this large one at West Heslerton.\n \nWe've identified 14\, p robably now 15 settlements.\n \n-Anglo-Saxon buildings dominated the lands cape.\n \nThe settlers imported their traditional\, northern European buil ding style.\n \nStructures were built in wood with thatch roofs -- a style known as Grubenhauser.\n \n-So\, these blobs here are the Grubenhauser.\n \n-All of these little blobs?\n \n-You see big houses there\, big houses here\, and lots of these Grubenhauser.\n \nYou will also see this hamlet h ere\, a hamlet there\, a load of buildings there\, a load here.\n \nYou se e -- it's all joined up.\n \nThere's stuff everywhere.\n \n-In the Anglo-S axon period\, this area was densely settled -- hundreds of buildings in mo re than a dozen separate communities.\n \n♪♪ -Roger Lima.\n \nStandby to land.\n \n-I think that might be Alice down there.\n \n-Dominic's metic ulous research tells a very different story from the common understanding of a violent invasion.\n \n♪♪ -Bit of a bumpy landing there.\n \n-That 's okay.\n \n-Are you all right?\n \n-Yeah\, I'm fine.\n \n-The picture th at's emerging in the east is of a peaceful society\, not a violent one.\n \nBut what about in the west?\n \nWill archaeologists find any evidence of either violent conflict or a legendary king on this side of Britons' Dark Age Divide?\n \nProfessor Roberts has access to a new excavation on the f ar west coast of Britain.\n \n♪♪ -And it's at Tintagel\, the very site where\, according to Geoffrey of Monmouth\, Arthur is supposed to have be en conceived.\n \n♪♪ ♪♪ A major archaeological dig is underway her e\, on a part of the island that has never been excavated before.\n \n ♪♪ Archaeologist Win Scutt is the site's curator.\n \n-So\, Win\, intr oduce me to Tintagel from the air then.\n \nWhat are we looking at?\n \n-W ell\, it's fantastic\, you can already see one of the rectangular building s that dates to the 5th\, 6th Century.\n \n-So\, this is the period you're specifically interested in here.\n \n-Absolutely\, yes.\n \n-In contrast to the wood and thatch buildings in the east\, there were more than 100 st one buildings here.\n \n-Is that more?\n \n-Some more over there\, absolut ely.\n \nIt's a settlement of hundreds of people.\n \n-These simple dwelli ngs were first excavated more than 80 years ago.\n \nBut in the summer of 2017\, a much grander complex was discovered.\n \n-We're excavating behind these cliffs on -- these are the Southern cliffs and there we are\, it's coming into view.\n \n-Oh\, there are the trenches.\n \n-There are the tre nches.\n \nFantastic\, yes.\n \n-And they're at work.\n \nWe can spy on th em.\n \nThat's brilliant.\n \n-Really exciting.\n \n-With only five weeks to dig\, the archaeologists rush to gather all the evidence needed to crea te a detailed portrait of life in the 5th century.\n \nAlice joins site di rector Jacky Novakowski to understand the significance of the new excavati on.\n \n-Once we started taking off the turf\, the stone walls started to appear quite quickly.\n \nSo\, it's been buried over 1\,400 years ago and now we are uncovering it for the first time.\n \n-They look very different to me\, to the remains of the buildings that I have seen on the eastern s ide\, which again are fifth\, sixth century but much smaller stones and mu ch thinner walls.\n \n-They're completely different in terms of build char acter and the amount of sheer investment that has gone into their build.\n \nI mean\, they are substantial.\n \n-Well-built walls\, aren't they?\n \ n-Yeah\, they're extraordinary.\n \nThey are over a meter wide\, and you c an see that they are made of large blocks of slate.\n \nVery blocky materi al and you've got them laid horizontally forming a really nice coursed wal l.\n \n-These buildings were built to impress\, I think.\n \nAnd they're p art of this larger complex of other buildings that go off in that directio n\, and in that direction\, so you can see we've got our work cut out.\n \ n-The team's findings will be used to create a 3D model of this apparent 5 th-century citadel... bringing Tintagel out of the Dark Ages and back to l ife.\n \nThe buildings occupy a natural terrace with a stunning vista.\n \ nTheir prominent position\, substantial size and thick walls indicate a gr eat deal of time and effort was taken in their construction.\n \nThere are strong hints that whoever lived here was someone important.\n \nThese peo ple weren't farmers like in the east of Britain.\n \n-They do look like th ey're high status.\n \nThis isn't people eking out an existence up here on top of Tintagel.\n \nThis is people living well.\n \n-This is people livi ng very well\, I think.\n \nA lot more care has gone into the construction of these buildings.\n \nWe're working on the idea that these buildings ar e probably residences\, high-status residences.\n \nIt's all got the feel of an extraordinary large settlement.\n \nWhich is maybe the place where t he most powerful person who is living in this area was resident at the tim e.\n \n-A powerful Dark Ages leader perhaps\, but it's still a huge leap t o say that it could be King Arthur.\n \nIn fact\, no one has ever found an y proof of the legendary leader's existence\, let alone whether he lived a t Tintagel.\n \nJust like in the east\, the team is unearthing evidence of a peaceful lifestyle.\n \nBut it's a much\, much more extravagant one.\n \n-That's a good piece.\n \n-Ah\, nice.\n \nThat is a nice high-quality pi ece of tableware I'd guess.\n \nThere's a rim on the bottom.\n \nThat's sa t on the table.\n \nBeautiful.\n \n-We've been finding a lot of the fine t ablewares.\n \nAnd even some of the dinner plates\, and the storage vessel s containing the wine and olive oil are being broken and just discarded ar ound here.\n \n-Whoever lived here was rich.\n \nThis is the biggest hoard of this type of high-value pottery dating from the Dark Ages that's ever been found in Britain.\n \n-That is really beautiful.\n \n-And there are e ven pieces of fine glassware for drinking wine.\n \n♪♪ The artifacts b eing unearthed at Tintagel are completely different from the Anglo-Saxon o nes found all over the eastern side of the country.\n \nIn this sense at l east\, the archaeological evidence and historical accounts are matching up .\n \n5th-century Britain does seem to be a very divided country.\n \nBut divided by culture\, not violence.\n \nBut what happened to the Britons in the eastern half of the country if the Saxons and Angles did not invade o r conquer?\n \nIn the last decade\, more than 100 skeletons have been unea rthed in an Anglo-Saxon cemetery in the eastern half of Britain.\n \nAnd w ith them\, some important new clues.\n \n♪♪ The remains of one of the female skeletons give Professor Roberts a better understanding of everyday 5th-century life.\n \n-My first impressions looking at this skeleton is t hat this is somebody who was quite gracile\, quite slightly built.\n \nI'm looking at these teeth really carefully.\n \nIf I look at the molars\, sh e's quite clearly a young woman.\n \nThe third molar\, the wisdom tooth\, comes through 18 to 21 years\, and there's just a little bit of wear on th at\, But then if you look at the front teeth it's completely different.\n \nThe enamel has been completely worn away and they're flat on the surface .\n \nSo that suggests she's doing something with her front teeth\, which isn't just about food processing.\n \nSo perhaps using her teeth as a tool \, maybe leather working.\n \nDefinite use of the teeth just there.\n \n-A fascinating glimpse of life and work in the Dark Ages.\n \nBut it's the o bjects found with her and other skeletons that provide fresh insight.\n \n Alice meets lead investigator Duncan Sayer.\n \n-So\, we've got an adult i n the middle with two brooches on her shoulder and a load of amber beads.\ n \nAnd next to her is an adolescent.\n \nAnd we have a child.\n \n-Yes\, a small child.\n \n-Small child\, yeah.\n \n-It makes you wonder happened\ , how they ended up in the same grave.\n \n-Well\, it does doesn't it?\n \ nWe've got round brooches and we've got long brooches\, we've got crucifor m brooches.\n \nWe've got all the works really.\n \n-All what you'd expect from an Anglo-Saxon cemetery.\n \nNo surprises there.\n \n-No surprises.\ n \nAbsolutely typical in every way.\n \n-The grave goods suggest these pe ople were part of the newly arrived Anglo-Saxon group.\n \nBut archaeologi cal evidence\, just like written history\, is open to misinterpretation.\n \nSo Duncan is using high-energy physics to examine one of the brooches i n greater detail.\n \n♪♪ Here at the UK's national facility for synchr otron radiation\, a beam of electrons is accelerated almost to the speed o f light as it travels around a 600-yard loop.\n \n♪♪ As the electrons move\, they throw off intensely-focused X-ray beams that allow for composi tional data gathering.\n \nThe X-rays let Duncan probe the chemical make-u p of a tiny part of the brooch.\n \n♪♪ ♪♪ The results are unexpect ed.\n \n-Okay.\n \nSo\, do the blue areas and green areas represent differ ent elements?\n \n-Exactly.\n \nThe green bits highlight iron\, and the bl ue bits highlight lead.\n \nThe lead tells us that this is glass.\n \n-It' s a style of glass work that's been seen before... typical of Britons\, no t the Angles or Saxons.\n \nThe brooch was made locally\, not imported.\n \n-What you're doing is you're taking out a glass\, grinding it up\, and g rinding into it the scrapings from the inside of a crucible.\n \nAnd then you bake it into the holes into the object and it makes enamel.\n \n-Ename l like this was a specifically British production technique.\n \nSo althou gh the style of the brooch is typical of continental Angle and Saxon tribe s\, it's either been made by British hands or by someone who learned from a local.\n \n-So\, this is fascinating\, because it means that this is not an import from the continent.\n \nIt's an imported idea\, it's an importe d style\, but it's a locally made object.\n \n-Exactly.\n \n-What appears to be jewelry imported from Europe was more likely made in Britain.\n \nTh e results suggest assumptions that these are all Anglo-Saxon skeletons mig ht be wrong.\n \nSomething more complicated is going on.\n \nThe team need s a way to identify the skeletons scientifically\, so they turn to another modern technology -- DNA analysis.\n \nSkeleton 82's DNA is a close match to the DNA found in today's Dutch citizens... She's genetically Anglo-Sax on.\n \nBut Skeleton 1 is genetically indigenous -- a match with ancient B ritons.\n \nSkeleton 96 is an even bigger surprise -- a hybrid of British and Anglo-Saxon ancestry.\n \nIt's a very small sample\, but it suggests t he Angles and Saxons who arrived from northern Europe didn't suddenly repl ace the Britons in the east -- they mixed with them.\n \n-People would pro bably not have thought of themselves as Britons or Anglo-Saxons.\n \nThey would probably have thought of themselves in a much more local way than th at.\n \n-This is not a period when people would have known that they were members of a particular nation state.\n \nNation states didn't exist\, peo ple didn't have passports\, they weren't citizens of one country or anothe r.\n \n-The story of Arthur defending the ancient Britons against an invad ing army is likely a myth.\n \nDespite Geoffrey and Gildas's accounts\, th e archaeology shows the Anglo Saxons didn't arrive overnight en masse.\n \ nInstead\, it was a slow and gradual process\, probably over a very long p eriod of time\, not murdering the locals\, but merging with them.\n \n-The re are people coming across the North Sea.\n \nBut they're not entirely re placing the group that are here.\n \nThey're bringing new styles\, new ide as\, new ways of talking\, new religions which are adding to the mix that' s already here.\n \n-It's not a full-scale\, you know\, replacement of one culture by another.\n \n-Over time\, people are trading\, intermarrying\, even swapping fashions.\n \n-We're seeing Britons adopting Saxon-style br ooches.\n \nWe're seeing Saxons adopting Roman-style brooches.\n \n-These things wouldn't have been in these very clear-cut identities that we ascri be to today.\n \nIt would have been much\, much more complex than that.\n \n-Eastern Britain is trading with the Germanic world\, with the Saxon wor ld\, with Scandinavia.\n \nThat's where their fashions\, that's where thei r trade is being connected to.\n \n-Given their geographical proximity\, i t makes sense that Northern Europeans would have formed connections with B ritons in the east rather than the west.\n \nThis is a radical new underst anding of life after the Romans left Britain.\n \nFar from being conquered \, the native Britons in the eastern half of the country seem to have abso rbed the incoming Northern Europeans.\n \nIt was a time of trade and integ ration.\n \nBut in terms of daily life\, little changed.\n \n-I suppose if you think of a sense like if you take America as an example you've got Af rican-Americans\, Italian-Americans.\n \nPeople are adding things to the v arious pot that is America.\n \nThat's what happening in\, in Britain in t he 5th and 6th century.\n \n-And proof of the true story of the Dark Ages can be found today in modern Britain's DNA.\n \nResearchers at the Univers ity of Oxford have collected thousands of DNA samples from people across B ritain whose families have lived in the same area for generations.\n \n-We tried to focus on individuals\, all of whose grandparents were born in th e same area.\n \nSo in that sense their DNA had been there at least for tw o generations and probably quite a long time before that.\n \n-Peter Donne lly's work maps regional variations in British people's genetics in greate r detail than ever before.\n \nAlice wants to understand what modern genet ics can reveal about Britain's past.\n \n-So\, what do we see on this map then?\n \nWhat do the different colors and different shapes represent?\n \ n-So each circle or square or or triangle represents one of the 2\,000 ind ividuals we sampled.\n \nAnd then the combination of color and shape repre sents a genetic group.\n \nThere's a group represented here in pink square s that's one of the genetic groups we saw.\n \nThere's another group in bl ue circles.\n \nThere's a large group across much of central and southern England\, groups in\, in South Wales and North Wales and so on as\, as we look through the country.\n \n-And what I find utterly extraordinary about it is you've got all of these different colored clusters\, which do seem to be quite localized\, and I would just have expected the whole thing to be much more homogeneous.\n \n-It was one of those total wow moments that we don't have too often in our career\, but it was really exciting.\n \n-A t first\, it looks like the genetic map supports the historical accounts o f Anglo-Saxons decimating the local population.\n \n-Do you think this pat tern of red squares is explained by a massive Anglo-Saxon invasion\, repla cing everything that was there before?\n \n-That's absolutely not the case .\n \nWhat's interesting is if you take a typical person in Central and So uthern England\, that accounts for about 10% of their DNA.\n \nSo\, we do see evidence of the Anglo-Saxon migration\, I think clear evidence of that .\n \nBut it certainly wasn't the case that they replaced existing populat ions.\n \nThey contributed to the DNA of modern English people but in the minority of the DNA that's there now.\n \n-The surprise is that Anglo-Saxo n DNA has contributed only around 10 percent of the genetic variation.\n \ n-What's very clear is that most of the DNA that's carried by someone in C entral and Southern England now is DNA that was there before the Saxons ar rived.\n \nNot only did they not replace the existing populations\, they m ixed with them\, but they're a relatively small proportion of the ancestry of the people now have.\n \n-Even though the archaeological record now su ggests differently\, the Anglo-Saxon invasion story still fills the histor y books\, and Anglo-Saxon ideas shaped British culture\, not least by insp iring the English language that's spoken all over the world today.\n \nBut despite popular belief\, the genetics indicate Anglo-Saxon immigrants pro bably never outnumbered the native Britons.\n \n-Historians and archaeolog ists have argued for decades if not centuries over whether the appearance of a new culture really means that a whole load of new people came in.\n \ nAnd we've actually never been able to resolve that question and now we're starting to be able to do that.\n \n-What's interesting about genetics is it\, by definition it's reflecting what happened to the masses.\n \nWhere as often some of those other sources are colored by the successful elites who impose languages or impose political systems.\n \n-In the east\, the n ative British and Anglo-Saxon people merged on a large scale.\n \n♪♪ B ut what about the west?\n \nWhy does Tintagel seem so wealthy in compariso n?\n \nAnd why is King Arthur so strongly connected to the site?\n \nThis is Fort Cumberland\, the home of Historic England's Archaeology labs.\n \n Many of the finds from Tintagel are analyzed here.\n \n♪♪ The fort is a scientific production line\, turning excavation into information.\n \n♪♪ From the new site at Tintagel\, 130 gallons of soil filter throug h the flotation tanks.\n \nThe experts can finally separate the Arthur leg end from archaeological fact.\n \nAlice has come to meet pottery specialis t Maria Duggan.\n \nShe is one of the experts examining the unprecedented haul of pottery shards unearthed at Tintagel... and looking for clues abou t the lives and identity of the people who lived there.\n \n-So\, this is our really characteristic fine-ware form for that late 5th Century\, early 6th Century.\n \nAnd we've got about 14 vessels of the same form.\n \nAll slightly different.\n \n-So\, that's a bowl is it?\n \n-Yeah\, it's a big dish.\n \nSo it's actually quite big\, it's probably about 30 centimeters .\n \n-The distinctive shape indicates the bowl was not made locally.\n \n -So that's coming from Turkey?\n \n-Sort of Western Turkey.\n \n-Yes\, yea h.\n \n-It's come a long way.\n \n-This fragment of pottery connects Tinta gel to what would then have been Byzantium in the Eastern Roman Empire.\n \nThere are hundreds of pieces to examine.\n \n-The vast majority of the f inds are amphorae\, so they're storage vessels for transport of wine or ol ive oil\, things like that.\n \nAlso other fine wares.\n \nSo we've got so me North African material.\n \nAnd also\, from southwest France so from th e Bordeaux region.\n \n-Right.\n \nSo\, it's coming in from all over the p lace.\n \n-Yeah.\n \n-When you find a blooming great sherd of Roman amphor ae\, and not just one sherd of amphorae\, but buckets of the stuff\, that tells you that there's trade and diplomacy and interaction and people are moving across the European landscape and seascape.\n \n-These artifacts de monstrate that the Mediterranean and the Atlantic coasts were incredibly w ell connected to Tintagel.\n \n-Tintagel is producing evidence that's show ing us how active those trade routes were in the -- the 5th and 6th centur ies\, that you do have this material that's coming up from the Mediterrane an up the Atlantic Coast and is clearly being valued and perhaps traded up that Atlantic seaboard.\n \n-While eastern Britain interacted with northe rn Europe\, western Britain traded with Byzantium in the Mediterranean.\n \nTintagel was clearly an important international port of call.\n \nSo\, w hat would it have looked like in its heyday?\n \n-Yeah.\n \n-Co-director o f the site\, James Gossip\, has made a detailed architectural survey of th e dig.\n \n-Okay.\n \nCan we have a spot height on the hearth\, Martin?\n \n-Combining measurements with thousands of photographs creates a perfect virtual record of the new site.\n \n-So\, this is towards the sea\, isn't it?\n \n-Yup.\n \nYou can really see how the buildings are part of a plann ed design\, with shared spaces.\n \n-The complex is laid out over upper an d lower terraces.\n \nThe upper building has a 32-foot room with a 16-foot side-room.\n \nThere's a smaller building next door and a large open cour tyard -- all connected by a central path.\n \n-What you can see is a serie s of steps leading up into this opening in our upper building\, connecting the building with the trackway that runs between the two terraces.\n \n-A n area of carefully-laid stone floor strongly suggests some rooms may have had a special function.\n \n-It's a really nicely laid surface of fairly thin slates.\n \nWhat's noticeable about that is how fragile and delicate it was.\n \nWhen we walked on it\, we noticed that\, you know\, some of th e slates might break pretty easily.\n \n-You do wear big boots though\, to be fair.\n \n-True\, but I tried it out in bare feet as well.\n \n-Unlike the well-worn floors in the rest of the settlement\, this section is much more delicate and in pristine condition.\n \n-That suggests that perhaps it's\, it's a really quite special floor.\n \nPerhaps it was a space that wasn't really designed to be walked on very often.\n \nWhat that means abo ut the function of the building we don't really know.\n \n-But I suppose i t suggests that it's not an ordinary domestic dwelling.\n \n♪♪ -This n ew data helps generate the first 3D model of the entire Tintagel site.\n \ nThe complex may not look opulent to modern eyes\, but to Dark Age visitor s\, it would have felt palatial.\n \nIt's among the most substantial post- Roman buildings found in southwest Britain... ...and a complete departure from how we thought people were living at the time.\n \n♪♪ But people weren't just sailing to Tintagel to sell exotic goods.\n \nTintagel must h ave had something worth buying.\n \n-For the people who are coming up the Atlantic seaboard they would see Tintagel in the distance\, that is the pl ace that they are aiming for\, that is their destination.\n \nIt's an impo rtant harbor that will give them the resources that they want.\n \n-Whoeve r ruled Tintagel\, had access to a rare commodity in high demand across Eu rope.\n \nThe secret to Tintagel's Dark Age wealth and power lies at the e nd of a quiet country track.\n \nThis is a vast tin mine -- just 15 miles away.\n \nExploited by the Romans\, it was still in business at the beginn ing of the 20th century.\n \nWhat looks like a natural gorge was once a ma ssive mine -- 120 feet deep\, 130 feet wide\, and 900 feet long.\n \n♪ ♪ Tintagel lies on the larger peninsula of Cornwall.\n \nThe rocks in th is area are one of only three sources of tin in Western Europe.\n \nThe me tal was one of the reasons the Romans came to Britain in the first place.\ n \n-Whoever's been mining that stuff for hundreds of years is going to ge t rich because the Mediterranean needs those resources.\n \nThey will come to you to get them.\n \n-Tin\, when mixed with copper\, makes bronze -- v ital metal for Roman weapons.\n \nEven after the Romans left Britain\, Eur ope continued to buy Cornish tin.\n \n-Whoever controls Tintagel is at the head of a large financial empire.\n \nWe mustn't think of them as being o n the margins of anything.\n \nThey are at the center of a very sort of do minant\, successful political world.\n \n-In dramatic contrast to the trad itional view of the Dark Ages\, trade in the west does not collapse after the Romans leave.\n \nThe connections to the continent remain\, and they c ontinue to influence every aspect of life.\n \nEvidence for this influence is found on the very last day of the Tintagel dig.\n \nJacky Novakowski's team makes the most exciting discovery of all.\n \nIt's a stone\, used to make a windowsill in Building 94.\n \nAnd someone's been writing on it.\n \n-There's at least three lines.\n \nIt's either an \"A\,\" with a hat on .\n \n♪♪ -I think it's okay actually.\n \n♪♪ I'll wrap it up first .\n \nIt's very heavy\, yeah.\n \n-The stone is transported to the labs at Fort Cumberland for closer study.\n \nJames Gossip gives Alice access to this rare find.\n \n-So\, this is it?\n \n-This is it.\n \n-It's really cl ear.\n \nThat's amazing.\n \n-The letters were scratched with a sharp tool \, roughly\, as if for practice.\n \n-It's not in its original position.\n \nProbably only ever a trial piece anyway.\n \nJust somebody practicing t heir inscription.\n \nSo presumably\, once this was created as a trial pie ce it wasn't that important anymore and it was incorporated into this wall where we found it.\n \n-It's one of only a handful of inscriptions from t his period ever found.\n \nThe Dark Age etching gives precious insight int o the lives of the people living at Tintagel.\n \nFirst\, there's a distin ct flavor of Roman Latin.\n \n-So\, the top line is here\, possibly \"Tito \,\" which could refer to Titus.\n \n-So that's a Roman name.\n \n-That's a Roman name\, yep\, popular in the Roman and post-Roman world.\n \nHere w e've got a word which could be \"Viridius.\"\n \nAnother name\, another La tin name.\n \nOr \"Viri duo.\"\n \n-I think I can make out the letters her e.\n \nI mean that looks like \"Fili.\"\n \n-Yup.\n \nThat's right.\n \n-B ut there's also local dialect.\n \n-What does this say here?\n \n-We think this is perhaps \"Budic\" -- B-U-D-I-C.\n \nThere's a word that's common in Welsh\, Breton and Cornish contexts.\n \n-Ah\, so this\, so this isn't Latin?\n \n-That is not Latin\, no.\n \nThat's Bretonic or... -Yeah.\n \n- It's the Cornish word form basically.\n \n-The people here seem to be flue nt in more than just one language.\n \n-And then a \"T\" here?\n \n-Yeah.\ n \nPerhaps\, um\, T-U-D.\n \n\"Tud.\"\n \n-A possible translation is... \ "From Titus\, to Viridius\, the son of Budic Tuda.\"\n \nThe text's layout and few legible words indicate the inscription was for a monument.\n \nIt was discarded at the time\, but centuries later\, it's exciting proof of a sophisticated culture.\n \n-This is a lovely \"A.\"\n \nThat's a really nice style.\n \n-This is the style of lettering that they're using in manu script at the time.\n \nIt might even have been designed to be a deliberat e Biblical connotation.\n \n-It takes time and skill to inscribe stone\, a nd money to pay for it.\n \nThe writer was part of a complex and wealthy s ociety that valued both faith and craftsmanship.\n \n-And this coming out of the Dark Ages when we used to think people were living in hovels\, scra tching around\, illiterate.\n \n-Yeah.\n \nBut actually created by a liter ate Christian elite at Tintagel.\n \n-I wonder who did it?\n \nI want to k now.\n \n-Perhaps Titus.\n \n-So we're seeing these sort of debased forms of Latin inscription surviving in Cornwall.\n \nBut it does tell us that w hat we've got there is a literate society.\n \nThey're not at the margins of anything.\n \n-Civilization didn't collapse when the Romans left Britai n.\n \nTintagel in the west stayed connected\, thriving and interacting wi th Europe as it had probably done for centuries.\n \nThe archaeology has r evealed so much about Tintagel in the Dark Ages.\n \nThe prominence and st ature of the buildings being unearthed here\, along with the high-value po ttery indicating the apparent wealth of their residents\, may help explain another mystery -- the connection to Geoffrey of Monmouth's King Arthur.\ n \n-The dig at Tintagel is showing us that this rocky promontory sticking out into the Atlantic was not only a trading hub\, but also a remarkably high-status site.\n \nSo perhaps there was someone\, someone powerful\, wh o much later would inspire that myth of King Arthur.\n \n-King Arthur was a construct\, created from fragments of the written historical past.\n \nB ut Geoffrey chose Tintagel for his birthplace because it really was a seat of power in the Dark Ages.\n \n-And that in a way is what we're talking a bout when we're discussing Arthur.\n \nHe is the literary creation based o n that kind of primary evidence.\n \nWhether or not he was real I think is irrelevant.\n \nIt's the period itself that -- that is essential.\n \nTha t's what draws archaeologists and historians to it.\n \nIt's so important for understanding what made Britain today.\n \n-The biggest revolution in Dark Age archaeology has been this recognition that Britain is fully conne cted to the continent all the way through.\n \n♪♪ -The maritime connec tions are absolutely crucial here.\n \nTintagel is connected down to Franc e and Spain and up to Wales\, Scotland and Ireland.\n \nIt's right at the center of this Atlantic trading network.\n \n-But in the east of the count ry\, the connections were to Northern Europe -- the Angles and Saxons\, wi th their very different beliefs and culture.\n \n♪♪ All the archaeolog ical evidence points to two societies not facing each other across a battl efield\, but living very different lives.\n \n-It's an economic divide bet ween two halves of Britain\, two distinct trade outlooks.\n \nIt's not a p icture of conflict.\n \n-The two halves of Britain are looking in differen t directions\, going outwards rather than clashing in the middle.\n \n-I t hink if you look at the sea instead of the land\, and the rivers instead o f the land\, I think you have a much better chance of understanding where people are coming from.\n \n♪♪ -At Tintagel\, the excavations are comp lete.\n \nThe new discoveries have revealed that rather than being filled with violent conflict and turmoil\, the Dark Ages were a time of trade and continuity.\n \nSomewhere between the archaeology\, written history and m yth\, a new truth has emerged.\n \n-There are elements in there that all f eed into one another and all help -- help us to understand the past\, and you've got to try and master all these things to really get a clear unders tanding of what's going on\, especially something like the 5th or 6th cent ury.\n \n-But the myth of King Arthur endures.\n \n♪♪ -It's a myth.\n \nBut it's such a wonderful myth.\n \n-He's a literary invention -- a roma ntic hero who embodies the ideal of kingship\, and not a real historical f igure.\n \n-It's still something that resonates today because we all sort of need an heroic character to defend what we think is right and good\, an d it's Arthur who sort of fills that void. 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