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There's something we do hundreds
of times a day without even noticing it.

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It's an ability that we utterly depend on
in our lives yet we take it for granted.

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Just watch.

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We see some lines
and can give them meaning.

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We can tell one shape from another,

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And we understand that an arrangement
of colours can represent something,

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The ability to read images
is an essential part of our lives,

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What if we didn't have this ability?

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Imagine we couldn't understand images.
What would our world be like?

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For a start, images would
never have been invented,

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We'd have lost something,,,we totally rely on,

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Life would be impossible,,,
and our world would be unrecognisable,

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But at some point in our ancient past
that's what the world looked like - imageless,

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Now, of course, pictures dominate our lives.

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This is the extraordinary story of how
we humans discovered the power of images

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and how they created the world we live in today.

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How long has it taken for you
to realise that I'm drawing a horse?

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A second? A fraction of a second?

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We can tell what a two-dimensional image
represents almost instantaneously,

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without even having to think about it,

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I'm not much of an artist,

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but even I can arrange a collection
of pencil lines on a piece of paper

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so you see what I want you to see,

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And I don't do Just horses.

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I could draw almost anything in the world
and you'd probably guess what it was,

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But there must have been
some point in our human story

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when we first got this ability,

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some moment in time
when we began to create pictures

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and to understand what they meant.

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So what happened back then?

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How did we first get this ability to create images?

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To find the answer,
we need to go way back in time.

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What if we go back 2,000 years?

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This is the image of a horse
from classical antiquity.

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It was made to decorate a Roman household,
about 100 years before Christ.

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And clearly the artists here had no problems
with two-dimensional representation.

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We've gone back another
1,000 years to 1200 BC.

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This tiny fragment comes from ancient Egypt.

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The person who painted it knew perfectly well

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how to represent something
in the world around them.

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We're going to have to go
back much, much further,

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This is northern Spain, a place called Altamira,

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We've come here because,
towards the end of the 19th century,

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a discovery was made at Altamira
that would radically alter

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our understanding of when
the world's first images were created.

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This historic discovery
was made by a nine-year-old girl.

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Her name was Maria,

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She was the daughter
of Marcelino de Sautuola,

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a local Spanish nobleman who was
also an amateur archaeologist,

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He'd become intrigued by Altamira,
and in autumn 1879,,,

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,,Maria and her father paid the cave a visit,

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This was a cave that was completely
unknown until a few years before,

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Even though I was a mere amateur, I was
determined to undertake my own investigations,

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As a gentleman scholar,
de Sautuola took a serious interest

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in finding out more about the prehistoric past.

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But like other archaeologists of the day,

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he assumed that the people who once
settled or sheltered in these caves

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were little more than savages, uncouth, lowbrow,

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hardly better than apes and certainly incapable
of any kind of creative achievement.

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(SAUTU0LA)
I hoped that through these investigations

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we would manage to tear away the thick veil
that separates us from the origins

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and customs of the ancient
inhabitants of these mountains,

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De Sautuola had come
to the cave to excavate the floor,

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to poke around for prehistoric relics
such as bones and tools.

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It was Maria who made the discovery
for which Altamira became famous.

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(MARIA) Papa...look! Oxen!

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(SAUTU0LA) I was overcome with amazement,

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What I saw made me
so excited I could hardly speak,

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Young Maria had caught sight of the first gallery
of prehistoric paintings ever to be discovered.

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Many more have since come to light
in caves all around the world,

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but these at Altamira are still
considered among the most beautiful.

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Dominating the ceiling
were dozens of paintings of aurochs,

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a species of ox that had long been extinct,

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They appeared to be standing,
sleeping...and running,

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As soon as he saw them,
de Sautuola was convinced

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that the images had been
painted by prehistoric people,

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But others weren't so sure,

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When de Sautuola announced
his discovery to the world,

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archaeologists immediately began
to question its authenticity,

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The images were simply too good,

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It was unthinkable that they'd been
created by prehistoric savages,

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Experts claimed that
the paintings had been faked

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and that de Sautuola was either
the victim or perpetrator of a hoax,

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He stood by his discovery,

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(SAUTU0LA) It's hard to believe that someone
would have shut himself away in the dark

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to paint extinct animals,

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There was no reason to doubt that these
paintings came from an ancient period in time,

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De Sautuola fought to clear his name but his
fellow archaeologists were consistently sceptical.

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Within a few years, he'd died,
here at his family home not far from Altamira,

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a disbelieved and a disillusioned man.

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His supporters said
that the accusations of dishonesty

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had broken his heart and caused his death.

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But the time would come
when de Sautuola was vindicated.

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0ver the decades,
discovery after discovery was made,

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in France as well as Spain,
that proved beyond doubt

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that the cave paintings were prehistoric,

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Then came an even more exciting find,

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in a cave called Lascaux - a gallery
of pictures of breathtaking beauty,

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As more and more paintings
came to light, they revealed

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prehistoric artists had painted
with a confidence and a skill

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that matched almost anything
from the modern world,

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Pablo Picasso himself said,
on first setting eyes on these pictures,

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''We have learnt nothing'',

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When experts began dating these paintings,
there was another surprise,

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They found that we'd started creating images
comparatively late in our human story,

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Let me show you what I mean,

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Let's imagine that the entire length of time
that modern humans have been on the planet

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is represented by these steps.

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People like you and me,
a species known as Homo sapiens,

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we've been around for about 150,000 years.

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That's where I am now.

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Biologically, from then onwards,
human beings didn't change,

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We had exactly the same
brain as we have today,

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Yet for more than 100,000 years
we didn't create any images,

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It wasn't until here...
that's about 35,000 years ago,

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that something began to change.

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Archaeologists call it ''the creative explosion'',

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the moment in time when people
first began to create pictures,

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So what happened back then?

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Why did people suddenly decide to start
creating images of the world around them?

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Experts began searching for an answer,
and their first explanation seemed obvious,

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Today, one of the main reasons
that we make pictures

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is to create representations
of things in the world around us,

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Surely, the experts said, thousands of years
ago prehistoric humans also had painted

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to create representations of things around them,

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But as more and more cave art was discovered,
it became clear that this explanation was wrong,

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Today, artists create images of every
aspect of the world that they live in,

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But back then they created
images of mostly one thing,

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Prehistoric artists were obsessed,,,by animals,

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And not just any animals, but some in particular,

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Like horses,,,

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Bison,,,and reindeer,

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But why?
What was it about these animals

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that so fixated the minds
of our ancient ancestors?

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Henri Breuil was a French priest,

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He was also the foremost expert
on cave art for much of the 20th century,

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He believed, perhaps not surprisingly,
that the paintings were about hunting,

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Prehistoric artists had painted
animals because they believed

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it would increase their chances
of a successful hunt,

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The theory made sense,

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It certainly explained why
only some animals had been painted,

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Breuil seemed to have settled the question,

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But more recently, when archaeologists
began to examine the bones of animals

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that had been hunted
and then eaten around the caves,

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they discovered something puzzling,

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If people had created these images
to improve the chances of a successful hunt,

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you'd expect them
to paint pictures of their quarry,

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But they didn't,

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At Altamira, for instance,
prehistoric artists had painted oxen,

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But the bones that had been left
were those of deer.

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At other French sites
they were painting woolly mammoths.

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But they were eating a wild
version of this animal, the goat.

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All in all, there's very little correlation
between the animals depicted in prehistoric art

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and the animals that feature in the prehistoric diet.

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So Breuil's hunting theory had
also failed to solve the mystery

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of why people first started painting,

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And there was a bigger
problem with these theories,

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The pictures would need to be painted
in places where people could see them,

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Yet something had compelled
many prehistoric artists

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to paint in the narrowest
and deepest parts of the caves,

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Like here in Peche-Merle, in France,

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Sometimes, images are found in parts
of the cave that are almost inaccessible.

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It's hard to imagine
how the artist got in to paint them,

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let alone how anyone else got in to admire them.

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I mean, who would have got into a tight spot
like this...to decorate the ceiling?

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This painting isn't just difficult to reach -
when you finally get here -

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it's even harder to understand
what these artists were painting,

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Because, like many other cave images,
it doesn't seem to represent anything at all,

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They're made up of dots and lines
or abstract shapes and patterns,

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Nothing in the natural world of the prehistoric
artist would have looked like this,

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Or this,

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And very often these patterns are repeated
or scattered across more recognisable images

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in a seemingly random way,

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Here, the Peche-Merle caves in France,

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the prehistoric artist has painted
a splendid pair of horses.

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But look, he's covered the image
with a series of spots.

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It really is hard to see what a pattern of spots
has got to do with the world of hunting.

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Archaeologists realised they were as far away
from understanding cave painting

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as they had ever been,

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The obvious explanations,

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like the paintings having been created
to represent things in the world, or for hunting,

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would never unlock the puzzle of these images,

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Because both of these theories missed the point.

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Instead of explaining why people
were painting images in caves,

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they should have been
trying to solve the mystery

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of how we got the amazing ability
to create images in the first place.

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To be able to paint a picture of something,
you first need to know what a picture is,

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And how can you know that
if you've never seen one before?

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Henri Breuil himself realised
that this was at the heart of the problem,

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He told the curious story
of a Turkish man in the 19th century

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who was shown a picture.

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It was a picture of a horse.

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The man was mystified,

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He'd no idea what he was looking at because
never in his life had he seen a picture before,

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This Turkish man, it seems, was a devout Muslim.

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At its strictest, Islam forbids
images of living creatures.

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So here was someone, apparently,
who refused to believe

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that you could create an image
of an animal in two dimensions.

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He said he didn't recognise it was a horse
because he couldn't move around it,

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For us, looking at a painting as vivid
as this one, it's almost impossible to believe.

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We can't imagine what it would be like
not to understand what a picture was,

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that it can represent something in the world.

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This is what it might look like for people
who've never seen any pictures before.

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A collection of lines, colours,
markings, without any meaning.

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If you can't understand what a picture is
unless you've seen one before,

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how on earth do you come up with the idea
of creating one in the first place?

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00:21:57,382 --> 00:22:02,012
So how did our ancient ancestors
come to realise

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that a collection of lines, dots and colours
could represent something?

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00:22:08,862 --> 00:22:13,982
How did the penny drop
all those thousands of years ago?

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This is one of the great
mysteries of human creativity,

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It's one that experts have long
tried and failed to solve,

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But then, a few years ago,
a revolutionary idea appeared,

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It was an idea that might solve this very problem,

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It originated not in Europe
but a place thousands of miles away,

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00:22:52,022 --> 00:22:55,776
It came from South Africa,

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Hidden among high crags
of these mountains, the Drakensberg,

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are images on rock walls
uncannily like European cave paintings,

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They too feature large animals,

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00:23:17,822 --> 00:23:21,258
And they also seem to show hunting scenes,

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But unlike the European paintings,
these pictures aren't thousands of years old,

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They were painted just
a couple of hundred years ago,

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almost within living memory,

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They were painted by people called
the San,,,the bushmen,

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For a long time these paintings
were largely ignored,

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But one man became fascinated by them,

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00:23:54,942 --> 00:23:58,252
His name was David Lewis Williams,

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(WILLIAMS)
When I first started looking at the paintings,

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the general opinion was that
they were scenes from daily life,

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00:24:05,262 --> 00:24:06,854
and because they were San people,

230
00:24:07,022 --> 00:24:09,252
they thought they were hunting scenes.

231
00:24:09,422 --> 00:24:11,219
Take this one as an example.

232
00:24:11,382 --> 00:24:16,775
Here we have an eland and a man
who appears to be holding the eland's tail.

233
00:24:17,542 --> 00:24:21,660
People thought maybe
when eland were hunted by bushmen

234
00:24:21,822 --> 00:24:26,976
they'd pull its tail as a demonstration
of being very brave or something like that,

235
00:24:27,982 --> 00:24:32,612
When you look more closely at the paintings,
you begin to find point after point

236
00:24:32,782 --> 00:24:34,500
that Just doesn't add up.

237
00:24:34,662 --> 00:24:40,498
For example, this man here
has got hooves and not feet.

238
00:24:40,662 --> 00:24:43,779
So had no one noticed these hooves before?

239
00:24:43,942 --> 00:24:47,457
I don't think anybody stuck their head
under there to notice it, no.

240
00:24:47,622 --> 00:24:52,571
Then there are things about
the man himself - his legs are crossed

241
00:24:52,742 --> 00:24:55,336
and the eland's legs are crossed,

242
00:24:55,502 --> 00:24:57,493
Then you notice other things.

243
00:24:57,662 --> 00:25:02,178
Like that one higher up there,
that has a very clear antelope head.

244
00:25:03,382 --> 00:25:09,298
Then you realise that he's also got hairs
standing on end, all over his body,

245
00:25:10,182 --> 00:25:13,299
And the eland has hairs
standing all over its body,

246
00:25:16,262 --> 00:25:20,175
When you say these are pictures of daily life,
it Just doesn't fit.

247
00:25:20,342 --> 00:25:26,372
When I began to notice all these...strange
points about the painting, I thought,

248
00:25:26,542 --> 00:25:32,936
''We've got to find some way of cracking
the code of what these paintings are, ''

249
00:25:38,182 --> 00:25:41,458
(SPIVEY)
But when Lewis Williams began his investigation,

250
00:25:41,662 --> 00:25:44,051
he immediately faced a problem,

251
00:25:49,462 --> 00:25:52,738
Because these are the San today,

252
00:25:57,982 --> 00:26:02,737
Rather than living in mountains,
they now live 1,000 miles away

253
00:26:02,902 --> 00:26:05,894
on the Kalaharigrasslands of Namibia,

254
00:26:06,942 --> 00:26:12,380
0ver the centuries, their ancestors were
persecuted and driven from the Drakensberg,

255
00:26:12,542 --> 00:26:18,492
Although the San still hunt, today they no longer
paint, and there's a good reason for that,

256
00:26:20,302 --> 00:26:26,013
For one thing, there are no rocks
in the Kalahari for them to paint on,

257
00:26:26,182 --> 00:26:29,618
Their ancient tradition has disappeared,

258
00:26:32,022 --> 00:26:36,652
The San artists have died out,
taking their secrets with them,

259
00:26:38,182 --> 00:26:43,017
So the key to unlocking the mystery
of these strange paintings in the mountains

260
00:26:43,182 --> 00:26:45,901
seems to be lost forever,

261
00:26:48,942 --> 00:26:54,335
There seemed no way of getting that because
those who made the paintings were extinct.

262
00:26:56,302 --> 00:26:59,533
(SPIVEY)
But then, far away from the Drakensberg,

263
00:26:59,702 --> 00:27:02,899
Lewis Williams found the first clue,

264
00:27:03,502 --> 00:27:07,415
It was the start of a trail
that would eventually lead him

265
00:27:07,582 --> 00:27:11,461
all the way back to the prehistoric
cave paintings of Europe,

266
00:27:14,022 --> 00:27:19,619
Although there are no bushmen today who
remember when their people painted on rock,

267
00:27:19,782 --> 00:27:23,457
there were some still alive
at the end of the 19th century.

268
00:27:23,622 --> 00:27:28,901
Thankfully, the stories that they had to tell
were written down and preserved.

269
00:27:29,062 --> 00:27:32,213
They're kept here, at an archive in Cape Town.

270
00:27:35,382 --> 00:27:40,331
At the end of the 19th century,
a German settler, Wilhelm Bleek,

271
00:27:40,502 --> 00:27:47,214
discovered there were still some San bushmen
alive who had lived around the Drakensberg,

272
00:27:49,942 --> 00:27:54,220
Bleek realised that they opened
a rare window onto the past,

273
00:27:54,382 --> 00:27:56,373
He began to interview them,

274
00:27:58,302 --> 00:28:04,491
This vast archive, 12,000 documents,
is their testimony,

275
00:28:04,662 --> 00:28:10,100
It gives a tantalising glimpse
of a culture that no longer exists,

276
00:28:11,182 --> 00:28:15,175
Lewis Williams had a hunch
that buried among these papers,

277
00:28:15,342 --> 00:28:17,902
which were like a Bible of bushmen belief,

278
00:28:18,062 --> 00:28:23,011
there would be clues as to the original
significance of the Drakensberg images.

279
00:28:25,382 --> 00:28:28,135
There was indeed something there,

280
00:28:30,302 --> 00:28:33,180
(WILLIAMS)
In reading the Bleek manuscripts,

281
00:28:33,342 --> 00:28:35,139
it became very clear

282
00:28:35,302 --> 00:28:40,934
that their religion was built around
a notion of travelling to a spirit world.

283
00:28:44,022 --> 00:28:48,015
(SPIVEY) It seemed the San believed
that while you're still alive

284
00:28:48,182 --> 00:28:53,176
your spirit can leave your body
and visit the spirit world,

285
00:28:54,542 --> 00:29:01,459
It happens when you enter a trance, or what's
called an altered state of consciousness,

286
00:29:03,622 --> 00:29:08,173
This San tradition is still practised today,

287
00:29:11,782 --> 00:29:17,778
I came to a village near Chunkwe,
in Namibia, hoping to see it for myself,

288
00:29:18,702 --> 00:29:22,934
Here, I was introduced
to the community's healer, or shaman,

289
00:29:23,942 --> 00:29:29,141
I'd been told he was the person
who travels to the spirit world,

290
00:29:29,302 --> 00:29:32,533
Doctor, can you tell us
why he goes into a trance?

291
00:29:32,702 --> 00:29:36,854
(HE SPEAKS NATIVE LANGUAGE)

292
00:29:37,022 --> 00:29:42,016
(TRANSLATI0N) Any time somebody comes
and asks for his family if I can help them,

293
00:29:42,182 --> 00:29:46,619
because I'm their doctor,
I go to help them in another world.

294
00:29:46,782 --> 00:29:51,617
When I come back,
I find out if it has worked or not.

295
00:29:54,302 --> 00:29:58,818
(SPIVEY) I knew the community was
holding a trance dance that evening,

296
00:30:00,622 --> 00:30:04,535
The shaman gave me
his permission to stay and watch,

297
00:30:09,302 --> 00:30:13,580
(CHANTING AND RHYTHMIC CLAPPING)

298
00:30:16,102 --> 00:30:21,813
It all began with the women of the village
creating a powerful rhythmic chant,

299
00:30:26,862 --> 00:30:29,296
Then the dance began,

300
00:30:29,462 --> 00:30:33,774
and orchestrating it was the shaman himself,

301
00:30:44,102 --> 00:30:49,222
As the dance intensified,
something dramatic seemed to happen to him,

302
00:30:53,862 --> 00:31:00,210
He seemed to lose himself in the rhythm
and become detached from what was happening,

303
00:31:05,542 --> 00:31:10,138
He did indeed seem to be going
into some kind of trance,

304
00:31:22,382 --> 00:31:25,294
Then he fell to the ground, unconscious,

305
00:31:32,182 --> 00:31:38,132
I'd been told that when the shamans enter
a trance they sometimes lose consciousness,

306
00:31:38,302 --> 00:31:43,695
and while in this state they say they die
and they visit the spirit world,

307
00:31:43,862 --> 00:31:48,253
And from there, they say they can heal people,

308
00:31:53,462 --> 00:31:59,492
Lewis Williams had discovered the vital role
that trance played for the San people,

309
00:32:01,542 --> 00:32:06,616
But how could this help to solve the mystery
of the haunting rock paintings

310
00:32:06,782 --> 00:32:10,138
created by their ancestors?

311
00:32:11,542 --> 00:32:14,102
(WILLIAMS) Having read the Bleek papers,

312
00:32:14,262 --> 00:32:18,141
and found out about altered state
of consciousness or trance on the one hand,

313
00:32:18,302 --> 00:32:21,897
and then knowing the rock paintings
on the other hand,

314
00:32:22,062 --> 00:32:25,452
the real crunch is putting those two together.

315
00:32:25,622 --> 00:32:30,457
How do they dovetail?
How do the San beliefs explain the paintings?

316
00:32:32,182 --> 00:32:38,496
That was a real puzzle,,,that kept me
in the dark for a long, long time,

317
00:32:41,462 --> 00:32:43,453
(SPIVEY) When the answer finally came,

318
00:32:43,622 --> 00:32:47,854
he realised it had been
literally staring him in the face,

319
00:32:49,542 --> 00:32:52,659
I used to have copies of the rock
paintings that we had made

320
00:32:52,822 --> 00:32:57,213
and I'd take them home and put them on the
mantelpiece with ornaments holding them in place,

321
00:32:57,382 --> 00:33:00,533
and sit and contemplate them,

322
00:33:00,702 --> 00:33:07,972
There's one painting that was particularly
important to me from a site in Drakensberg,

323
00:33:09,302 --> 00:33:15,696
(SPIVEY) It was a copy of the same rock painting
Lewis Williams had shown me in the mountains,

324
00:33:15,862 --> 00:33:20,253
(WILLIAMS) 0ne day, looking at this
particular painting, it just clicked,

325
00:33:20,422 --> 00:33:23,300
What was going on here?

326
00:33:23,462 --> 00:33:26,898
0n the left hand side of the painting,
there's an eland,

327
00:33:27,062 --> 00:33:30,816
and it suddenly occurred to me
that this eland was dying,

328
00:33:31,702 --> 00:33:34,819
We could tell that by the crossed legs,
it was stumbling,

329
00:33:34,982 --> 00:33:37,815
its head was lowered,
its hair was standing on end,

330
00:33:37,982 --> 00:33:42,021
This is what an eland does when it's dying,
particularly from a poisoned arrow.

331
00:33:44,462 --> 00:33:50,378
Next to it and holding its tail was a man,
and his legs were also crossed,

332
00:33:50,542 --> 00:33:55,616
He had hooves, beautifully painted,
cloven eland hooves,

333
00:33:55,782 --> 00:33:59,252
And he had hair standing on end,

334
00:33:59,422 --> 00:34:05,861
And it was obvious he was dying,
the eland was dying,

335
00:34:07,622 --> 00:34:12,980
and so it became clear that the paintings
were not pictures of everyday life,

336
00:34:15,582 --> 00:34:18,574
They were about spiritual experience in trance.

337
00:34:29,942 --> 00:34:35,175
(SPIVEY) This was the true meaning
behind the San paintings,

338
00:34:35,342 --> 00:34:39,096
The eland is the largest antelope in Africa,

339
00:34:39,262 --> 00:34:43,778
Its grace and power had captured
the imaginations of the San

340
00:34:43,942 --> 00:34:47,617
and given the animal a magical potency,

341
00:34:51,302 --> 00:34:54,658
It was what they saw in their trances,

342
00:34:59,302 --> 00:35:03,580
The paintings that the San
had made weren't about hunting,

343
00:35:03,742 --> 00:35:09,658
Instead they were recreating
their hallucinatory encounters with the animal

344
00:35:09,822 --> 00:35:14,054
by painting them onto the rock surface,

345
00:35:29,862 --> 00:35:36,256
Now an ambitious new idea began
to take hold in Lewis William's mind,

346
00:35:37,262 --> 00:35:44,657
He was aware there were other rock paintings
which were very similar to those of the San,

347
00:35:46,022 --> 00:35:52,336
These were many thousands of years older,
the earliest pictures ever created,

348
00:35:53,462 --> 00:35:56,340
And they were in Europe,

349
00:35:59,782 --> 00:36:02,012
(WILLIAMS)
For many years I'd also been interested

350
00:36:02,182 --> 00:36:06,494
in the cave paintings in France and Spain,
the palaeolithic paintings,

351
00:36:08,022 --> 00:36:10,456
0ne of the things that is very striking

352
00:36:10,622 --> 00:36:14,501
is the similarity between
the rock paintings in Europe

353
00:36:14,662 --> 00:36:16,778
and the Southern African rock art.

354
00:36:18,782 --> 00:36:22,377
(SPIVEY) Just like the San's
obsession with the eland,

355
00:36:22,542 --> 00:36:30,051
prehistoric cave artists had also
been captivated by a few key animals,

356
00:36:34,782 --> 00:36:37,501
And as with the images in South Africa,

357
00:36:37,662 --> 00:36:43,771
European paintings seem to graft
features of animals onto the human body

358
00:36:43,942 --> 00:36:48,015
to create strange, new creatures,

359
00:36:49,382 --> 00:36:56,970
But above all there was one inexplicable feature,
shared by both San and European paintings,

360
00:36:57,142 --> 00:36:59,781
which intrigued Lewis Williams,

361
00:37:01,862 --> 00:37:06,299
What we've got here is a tracing of a painting
made by the San bushmen,

362
00:37:06,462 --> 00:37:08,453
probably about 200 years ago.

363
00:37:08,622 --> 00:37:15,300
It shows a picture of an eland with some
San figures surrounding the animal,

364
00:37:15,462 --> 00:37:18,454
But there's also something else,

365
00:37:18,622 --> 00:37:22,774
The artist has scattered dots
across the whole image,

366
00:37:24,982 --> 00:37:27,576
Ring any bells? Take a look at this.

367
00:37:27,742 --> 00:37:32,532
It's a drawing of those two horses that
we saw down in the caves at Peche-Merle.

368
00:37:32,702 --> 00:37:37,571
That too has got this strange
patterning of spots all over it.

369
00:37:38,382 --> 00:37:42,421
Just 200 years ago on rock walls in Africa,

370
00:37:42,582 --> 00:37:46,336
the San were creating the same abstract patterns

371
00:37:46,502 --> 00:37:51,895
as those painted tens of thousands
of years ago in the caves in Europe,

372
00:37:52,062 --> 00:37:57,090
But why? What made people from completely
different parts of the world,

373
00:37:57,262 --> 00:38:03,019
and thousands of years apart, come up with
such strikingly similar geometric patterns?

374
00:38:03,182 --> 00:38:07,972
Lewis Williams began to wonder
if the answer lay not so much in the art

375
00:38:08,142 --> 00:38:11,339
as in the brains of the people who generated it.

376
00:38:16,782 --> 00:38:18,932
(WILLIAMS) In Southern Africa we knew

377
00:38:19,102 --> 00:38:25,337
that the art came out of trance experience,
altered states of consciousness,

378
00:38:26,622 --> 00:38:29,420
It's a simple matter then to turn to people

379
00:38:29,582 --> 00:38:33,416
who have studied altered states
of consciousness in laboratory work

380
00:38:33,582 --> 00:38:38,258
and ask them what happens to the brain
when people go into an altered state.

381
00:38:41,102 --> 00:38:45,380
It was then that we learnt
that when people go into an altered state,

382
00:38:45,542 --> 00:38:49,091
the first thing they see is zigzag lines -

383
00:38:50,302 --> 00:38:54,773
bright, flashing zigzag lines,
as in a migraine headache, for example.

384
00:38:55,702 --> 00:38:59,138
0r clouds of dots or grids.

385
00:39:00,102 --> 00:39:04,539
And they see these things because
they are wired into the human brain.

386
00:39:07,382 --> 00:39:14,140
(SPIVEY) All our brains work the same way,
regardless of who we are or where we're from,

387
00:39:14,302 --> 00:39:19,695
Physically, our brains haven't
changed since humans first evolved,

388
00:39:19,862 --> 00:39:24,936
This means that if our brains
are stimulated - say, put in a trance,

389
00:39:25,102 --> 00:39:30,893
they'd respond in the same way
as the brains of our ancient ancestors,

390
00:39:33,302 --> 00:39:37,932
It's an intriguing explanation
for the strange patterns,

391
00:39:38,102 --> 00:39:40,616
But could it be true?

392
00:39:42,462 --> 00:39:47,820
I've come to London,
to the Institute of Psychiatry, to find out,

393
00:39:50,022 --> 00:39:54,459
They're going to try to induce
a trance-like effect in my brain,

394
00:39:54,622 --> 00:39:58,581
Dominic, can you tell us
what's inside this box of yours?

395
00:39:58,742 --> 00:40:05,341
We have an apparatus to stimulate the visual
parts of your brain in a very specific way.

396
00:40:05,502 --> 00:40:11,293
(SPIVEY) Dr Dominic ffytche treats
people with a rare type of visual disorder,

397
00:40:11,462 --> 00:40:14,340
They don't have a problem
with their eyes as such,

398
00:40:14,502 --> 00:40:17,619
but with the part of their brain
that deals with vision,

399
00:40:18,822 --> 00:40:23,612
To investigate their condition,
he's designed an unusual device,

400
00:40:23,782 --> 00:40:30,972
It's actually very simple. It's a set of goggles
with some high-intensity LEDs,

401
00:40:31,142 --> 00:40:35,101
light-emitting diodes,
connected up to the computer,

402
00:40:35,262 --> 00:40:39,619
which allows me to control the number
of flashes I'm presenting to you per second.

403
00:40:41,302 --> 00:40:43,896
- Just place them over the eyes...
- Yeah.

404
00:40:44,062 --> 00:40:48,453
Then you're going to beam
things into my eyeballs.

405
00:40:48,622 --> 00:40:54,254
That's right, but you have to keep your eyes
closed as the flashes are rather bright.

406
00:40:54,942 --> 00:40:59,777
His patients had reported
seeing peculiar shapes and patterns

407
00:40:59,942 --> 00:41:02,172
appearing before their eyes,

408
00:41:02,342 --> 00:41:06,221
The goggles are designed
to induce these images in the brain,

409
00:41:06,382 --> 00:41:08,771
- Is it going to hurt?
- It's not going to hurt.

410
00:41:08,942 --> 00:41:11,695
- Have your eyes closed.
- Got them closed.

411
00:41:13,302 --> 00:41:17,011
- What are you seeing now?
- What I've got now is...

412
00:41:19,302 --> 00:41:22,977
sort of throbbing blobs, if that makes any sense,

413
00:41:24,302 --> 00:41:29,615
with a sort of network of very fine black lines,

414
00:41:35,182 --> 00:41:37,696
Right...0K...

415
00:41:37,862 --> 00:41:44,779
Very, very vivid colours... All the colours
of the spectrum, it seems to be, popping up here.

416
00:41:48,182 --> 00:41:52,175
Behind all that colour,,, How can I explain it?

417
00:41:52,342 --> 00:41:55,061
It's like a fishing net or,,,

418
00:41:57,702 --> 00:42:03,777
Very fine black lines linking up,,,
like a honeycomb effect, I guess is what it's like,

419
00:42:03,942 --> 00:42:06,297
(FFYTCHE)
What happens when I Just stimulate one eye?

420
00:42:09,702 --> 00:42:13,695
(SPIVEY) Ah,,, Electric checkboard,

421
00:42:14,262 --> 00:42:17,937
Sorry, chessboard - electric chessboard
is what it's like.

422
00:42:18,102 --> 00:42:20,616
Reminds me of a dance floor I was once on.

423
00:42:20,782 --> 00:42:25,333
- Colours in it or black and white?
- Black and white, very bright black and white.

424
00:42:28,862 --> 00:42:33,253
This is a new experience for me.
I had my eyes closed but I was seeing things.

425
00:42:33,422 --> 00:42:35,014
Tell me why.

426
00:42:35,182 --> 00:42:39,778
There are parts of the visual brain
that seem to code or represent

427
00:42:39,942 --> 00:42:43,696
the types of grid patterns and lattices
that you've been seeing.

428
00:42:43,862 --> 00:42:48,936
And presumably what's happening
is that the light is irritating those areas

429
00:42:49,102 --> 00:42:51,172
and inducing an hallucination in you.

430
00:42:51,342 --> 00:42:56,655
So anyone that's given this type of stimulation
will have the same types of experiences.

431
00:42:59,302 --> 00:43:02,578
Paradoxically, you can get
exactly the same phenomena

432
00:43:02,742 --> 00:43:05,461
when too little information
gets into the visual system

433
00:43:05,622 --> 00:43:10,059
and many subJects when
they're blindfolded, after a time,

434
00:43:10,222 --> 00:43:14,135
will start to see those sort of patterns
as we induced in you today.

435
00:43:14,302 --> 00:43:19,774
So if I went into a cave, with no
sources of light, or blindfold myself,

436
00:43:19,942 --> 00:43:24,936
- I might start seeing Just the same sort of things?
- Indeed.

437
00:43:27,182 --> 00:43:30,572
(SPIVEY)
This would explain the strange patterns,

438
00:43:32,942 --> 00:43:35,297
Deep within the darkness of the caves,

439
00:43:35,462 --> 00:43:39,421
prehistoric artists
experienced sensory deprivation,

440
00:43:42,302 --> 00:43:46,614
This induced hallucinations
of abstract shapes and patterns,

441
00:43:47,782 --> 00:43:52,219
which our ancient ancestors then painted,

442
00:43:57,622 --> 00:44:02,377
But Lewis Williams realised
abstract shapes was just the beginning,

443
00:44:02,542 --> 00:44:05,534
As people spent longer in trances,

444
00:44:05,702 --> 00:44:11,060
their hallucinations took the form
of things of great emotional importance,

445
00:44:12,622 --> 00:44:18,458
As with the San, for our prehistoric ancestors
that meant the animals

446
00:44:18,622 --> 00:44:21,932
whose power had captured their imaginations,

447
00:44:25,022 --> 00:44:30,096
(WILLIAMS) We're going to hallucinate
an eland if we're a San person,

448
00:44:30,262 --> 00:44:36,895
whereas if we're living in France
we're going to hallucinate a bison, shall we say.

449
00:44:41,382 --> 00:44:48,094
0r they will see a horse,
so culture plays an enormous role in it,

450
00:44:51,702 --> 00:44:55,012
(SPIVEY)
And because these images were hallucinations,

451
00:44:55,182 --> 00:45:01,132
they'd appear and later be remembered
as two-dimensional representations -

452
00:45:01,302 --> 00:45:05,215
visions flattened onto the wall of the cave,

453
00:45:07,022 --> 00:45:11,937
(WILLIAMS) People didn't one day
invent making pictures,

454
00:45:12,102 --> 00:45:18,735
What happened was that people were familiar
with the images that their brains were producing

455
00:45:18,902 --> 00:45:22,497
and being projected onto walls,

456
00:45:23,702 --> 00:45:30,175
And they wanted to nail down and make
permanent those images, visions that they saw,

457
00:45:30,342 --> 00:45:34,699
So they weren't making pictures
of horses they saw outside the cave,

458
00:45:34,862 --> 00:45:37,251
they were nailing down visions.

459
00:45:39,942 --> 00:45:44,458
(SPIVEY) Lewis Williams had finally
found an answer to the mystery

460
00:45:44,622 --> 00:45:48,058
of how people who had
never seen a picture before

461
00:45:48,222 --> 00:45:53,740
came to create two-dimensional imagery,
all those thousands of years ago,

462
00:45:54,382 --> 00:46:01,697
They weren't copying nature but reproducing
visions created inside their heads,

463
00:46:09,942 --> 00:46:13,378
Here, for the first time, we've got a theory

464
00:46:13,542 --> 00:46:18,411
which seems to solve many of the puzzles
that have mystified experts in the past.

465
00:46:18,582 --> 00:46:24,054
It's a theory based not Just
on an investigation of cave art itself,

466
00:46:24,222 --> 00:46:29,535
but a scientific understanding of what was going
on inside the heads of those who had made them.

467
00:46:31,622 --> 00:46:38,380
It explains how we went from a world
with no images to one with cave paintings,

468
00:46:45,022 --> 00:46:51,018
But it doesn't explain
how we got from there to today,

469
00:46:51,182 --> 00:46:54,538
the modern world where
images dominate our lives.

470
00:46:54,702 --> 00:47:00,857
Because, about 12,000 years ago,
something strange happened.

471
00:47:01,022 --> 00:47:04,776
People stopped painting in caves.

472
00:47:07,462 --> 00:47:11,216
Archaeologists don't know
exactly why it happened,

473
00:47:11,382 --> 00:47:16,775
But throughout Europe, wherever
they looked, they found little evidence

474
00:47:16,942 --> 00:47:20,821
of images being created
for many thousands of years,

475
00:47:22,302 --> 00:47:26,136
The prehistoric people
who discovered how to create images

476
00:47:26,302 --> 00:47:29,692
and then reproduce them
for countless generations

477
00:47:29,862 --> 00:47:33,059
seemed to have lost interest in them,

478
00:47:34,862 --> 00:47:40,459
It was almost as if rather than being
an essential part of human existence,,,

479
00:47:42,182 --> 00:47:46,175
images had been just an optional extra,

480
00:47:47,662 --> 00:47:52,941
Imagery seemed to have lost
its hold over the human mind.

481
00:47:53,102 --> 00:47:57,141
So how did we get from there...

482
00:48:05,782 --> 00:48:07,773
..to today?

483
00:48:07,942 --> 00:48:13,300
How did the power of the picture
recapture our imaginations

484
00:48:13,462 --> 00:48:19,298
and lead to a world so full of images
we can't imagine life without them?

485
00:48:19,462 --> 00:48:22,932
It was only recently that we've
begun to discover the answer.

486
00:48:51,622 --> 00:48:58,698
We've come to southern Turkey, to the foot
of a large hill called Göbekli Tepe,

487
00:49:05,302 --> 00:49:10,057
At the top lies something which reveals
just what happened to imagery

488
00:49:10,222 --> 00:49:13,214
all those thousands of years ago,

489
00:49:21,542 --> 00:49:26,172
Researchers first visited
Göbekli Tepe in the 1960s.

490
00:49:26,342 --> 00:49:33,020
What they found was a hillside that was
carpeted with the remains of flint stone working.

491
00:49:35,302 --> 00:49:37,293
Little pieces like this.

492
00:49:37,462 --> 00:49:42,980
But then they assumed that the site itself
had no special archaeological significance.

493
00:49:49,702 --> 00:49:55,413
Then, around 10 years ago, German
archaeologists began excavating here,

494
00:49:57,182 --> 00:50:00,015
What they found astonished them,

495
00:50:03,582 --> 00:50:06,574
Under their feet were colossal structures,

496
00:50:06,742 --> 00:50:11,941
stone circles built from huge
T-shaped megaliths,

497
00:50:21,382 --> 00:50:23,498
The site is vast,

498
00:50:23,662 --> 00:50:29,658
At least 20 stone circles remain buried,
containing hundreds of pillars,

499
00:50:35,062 --> 00:50:39,578
In Britain, Stonehenge
was built 4,500 years ago,

500
00:50:39,742 --> 00:50:43,781
But this site is almost three times older,

501
00:50:43,942 --> 00:50:47,901
It dates back nearly 12,000 years,

502
00:50:48,062 --> 00:50:51,896
to the time when people
stopped painting in caves,

503
00:50:53,462 --> 00:50:55,578
It is pretty obvious that Göbekli Tepe

504
00:50:55,742 --> 00:51:00,293
was some kind of ritual centre,
a meeting place in the mountains

505
00:51:00,462 --> 00:51:03,499
with great religious power
for the people who created it.

506
00:51:06,462 --> 00:51:11,490
How did this help to explain what happened
to our ability to create images?

507
00:51:11,662 --> 00:51:15,541
Well, the best time to see that is at night.

508
00:51:25,862 --> 00:51:31,653
It's what's on these pillars
that's essential for our story,

509
00:51:31,822 --> 00:51:36,612
They're not Just megaliths,
big stones, they're decorated,

510
00:51:36,782 --> 00:51:41,060
covered with carvings of dozens of wild animals.

511
00:51:41,222 --> 00:51:46,216
You see these best at night-time,
by the light of a naked flame.

512
00:51:46,382 --> 00:51:49,135
Just as their creators once saw them.

513
00:52:05,302 --> 00:52:10,422
Lions,,, Cranes,,,

514
00:52:12,182 --> 00:52:17,779
Boars,,, Foxes,,,

515
00:52:19,622 --> 00:52:26,141
12,000 years ago, at exactly the time
images were abandoned in the caves of Europe,

516
00:52:26,302 --> 00:52:32,411
here on a Turkish hillside
they completely gripped people's imaginations,

517
00:52:36,022 --> 00:52:40,254
It means images were never an optional extra,

518
00:52:40,422 --> 00:52:45,052
0nce humans discovered how
to create them, they didn't stop,

519
00:52:45,222 --> 00:52:48,578
They've been engraved onto the human mind,

520
00:52:52,182 --> 00:52:56,300
But this place may contain an even bigger secret

521
00:52:56,462 --> 00:53:01,536
because, remarkably,
it seems to reveal that it was images

522
00:53:01,702 --> 00:53:04,774
which created the world we live in today,

523
00:53:07,862 --> 00:53:13,653
It's all down to the immense effort
that lies behind these images,

524
00:53:17,462 --> 00:53:20,852
0n one side of the hill,
archaeologists discovered

525
00:53:21,022 --> 00:53:23,411
an area that had been used as a quarry,

526
00:53:23,582 --> 00:53:28,861
This is where the huge pillars
that dominated Göbekli Tepe

527
00:53:29,022 --> 00:53:31,582
were cut from the limestone bedrock,

528
00:53:32,702 --> 00:53:35,170
Here's a pillar that never made it.

529
00:53:35,342 --> 00:53:39,733
This is the oblong of the head
and here it narrows to the shaft.

530
00:53:39,902 --> 00:53:45,101
For some reason we'll never know, it was
abandoned while still half finished in the bedrock.

531
00:53:45,262 --> 00:53:51,610
Here we have the space where another pillar
was successfully extracted.

532
00:53:51,782 --> 00:53:57,334
It really is amazing to think that
these stones were cut out of the rock

533
00:53:57,502 --> 00:54:04,180
and carved with images
using only flint tools - metal didn't exist.

534
00:54:04,342 --> 00:54:08,494
And what's also remarkable is their size.

535
00:54:08,662 --> 00:54:14,658
Each one of them is about 20 feet long
and weighs an estimated 50 tons.

536
00:54:14,822 --> 00:54:21,091
That means it would have taken about
500 people Just to shift them up the hill.

537
00:54:22,622 --> 00:54:26,217
Even the hill itself is man made,

538
00:54:27,102 --> 00:54:30,458
But what's so important about this huge effort

539
00:54:30,622 --> 00:54:34,376
is the effect it had
on the society that built Göbekli Tepe,

540
00:54:37,542 --> 00:54:42,138
12,000 years ago, hundreds
of people travelled long distances

541
00:54:42,302 --> 00:54:44,691
to work and worship here,

542
00:54:45,462 --> 00:54:48,022
And they all had to eat,

543
00:54:49,782 --> 00:54:55,334
Back then, people throughout the world
led the lives of hunter-gatherers -

544
00:54:55,502 --> 00:54:59,461
hunting wild animals, gathering wild plants,

545
00:55:01,542 --> 00:55:06,457
This way of life had successfully
supported small groups of people

546
00:55:06,622 --> 00:55:08,613
since humans first evolved,

547
00:55:11,942 --> 00:55:16,538
Today though, we feed
large numbers of people by farming,

548
00:55:17,302 --> 00:55:21,295
We grow crops and keep domesticated animals,

549
00:55:22,302 --> 00:55:26,090
Agriculture is the cornerstone
of our modern world,

550
00:55:28,302 --> 00:55:34,093
Archaeologists had always wondered what
made us give up our hunter-gatherer existence,

551
00:55:34,262 --> 00:55:40,292
What caused the agricultural revolution,
the greatest change in human history?

552
00:55:41,782 --> 00:55:44,296
Göbekli Tepe got them thinking,

553
00:55:44,462 --> 00:55:49,377
Because it was in this area
that farming first started,

554
00:55:49,542 --> 00:55:55,014
and it happened at the same time
as this place was being built,

555
00:55:58,942 --> 00:56:04,175
Could it have been the need to feed
all the people building Göbekli Tepe

556
00:56:04,342 --> 00:56:09,496
and worshipping there that first
compelled people to start farming?

557
00:56:09,662 --> 00:56:12,301
There is some convincing evidence.

558
00:56:15,502 --> 00:56:21,293
Scientists recently sought to discover
where our modern cultivated wheat came from,

559
00:56:26,102 --> 00:56:31,734
They began by analysing the strain
of farmed wheat that goes into our food

560
00:56:31,902 --> 00:56:34,814
and extracting its DNA,

561
00:56:37,622 --> 00:56:41,979
They did the same to several
varieties of wild wheat,

562
00:56:45,702 --> 00:56:49,581
Then they compared their genetic make-up,

563
00:56:53,302 --> 00:56:59,935
What they discovered is that the closest
wild relative to our cultivated wheat

564
00:57:00,102 --> 00:57:03,538
grows in those mountains over there,

565
00:57:03,702 --> 00:57:09,015
the Karacadag,
about 20 miles from Göbekli Tepe.

566
00:57:09,182 --> 00:57:14,256
The theory is that wild wheat
was brought from the mountains

567
00:57:14,422 --> 00:57:19,496
and farmed here to feed the thousands
of people frequenting the site.

568
00:57:36,462 --> 00:57:39,374
So there's the momentous conclusion,

569
00:57:39,542 --> 00:57:44,616
that imagery had become so powerful
in the minds of human beings

570
00:57:44,782 --> 00:57:49,617
that it brought about the greatest
transformation in human history.

571
00:58:00,782 --> 00:58:04,491
Today, our modern world
is dominated by pictures

572
00:58:04,662 --> 00:58:10,020
in ways our ancient ancestors
could never have begun to imagine,

573
00:58:10,182 --> 00:58:14,573
What would they have made
of images that moved,,,

574
00:58:15,702 --> 00:58:21,857
,,that are beamed across the globe
and are seen by millions?

575
00:58:22,782 --> 00:58:27,776
Yet none of this could have happened
without people thousands of years ago

576
00:58:27,942 --> 00:58:30,695
having had a revelation,

577
00:58:30,862 --> 00:58:37,461
the revelation that with lines, shapes
and colours, they could capture the world,