Stories From The Stone Age
9:30pm Wednesday, 26 January
Stories From The Stone Age continues the journey to the beginnings of civilisation, in the second episode, Urban Dream, to be screened on ABC TV on Wednesday January 26 at 9.30pm.
Based on extensive research, the three-part series takes us on a journey where we get to live alongside our ancestors as they cross between the Old and the New Worlds and into civilisation. The series utilises detailed re-enactments and short interviews with key archaeological experts.
Urban Dream shows the early Europeans 12,000 ago, living a hard life in nomadic bands. For hundreds of generations they had followed the wild herds, depending on them for survival.
But they were about to face a new challenge from the green hills of the Middle East. There, the hunter-gatherers had lived very well; they had abundant food and they had learned to hunt with dogs. But when the Middle East was hit with a sudden and catastrophic climate change - and more than 1,000 years of drought - the hunters were forced to change. To save themselves, they took control of their prey. They began to manage the wild herds and breed selectively, keeping the animals alive, rather than killing them.
It was the domestication of animals such as goats and sheep that brought farming to a new level. For the first time, our ancestors had a secure food supply and could plan for the future. Herding, combined with cropping, led to urban expansion. New towns spread down the valleys. The first builders learned how to make straight corners, staircases and shaped doorways and windows, 4,000 years before the first pyramids. They invented artificial building material - plaster. People across the region came together to worship. Religion became a huge public display and rituals were played out in open air sanctuaries.
Eight thousand years ago, the idea of farming spread out from the Middle East towards Europe, where they faced the challenge of a new landscape and a new climate. As these pioneers built their new way of life in Europe, they lost touch with the Middle East. Behind them, the old way of life was in crisis - the land that had once sustained the world's first farmers was worn out and ruined. Over 2,000 years, villagers had slowly changed the land.
In Europe, the advancing farmers continued felling the forests, but they found their old farming methods no longer worked. It took 1,000 years for them to find an answer to the bitter northern winters. And once they did, their new and uniquely European lifestyle spread with amazing speed. Within 300 years the continent was dotted with thousands of villages. The face of Europe was forever changed. The remaining hunter-gatherers abandoned a life on the edge of starvation for the more secure harvests of settled life. In fusing, the farmers and hunter-gatherers created the culture that started our western way of life.
Stories from the Stone Age is a Beyond Productions production in association with S4C and S4C International. The director is Roger Scholes.