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(SPIVEY) Every day of our lives,

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we are bombarded
by thousands of different images,

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images which affect us
in countless different ways,

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But of all these there's one particular kind
of image whose power is uniquely mesmerising,

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because while it terrifies us
somehow it also comforts,

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But although it can manipulate us,
it also reassures,

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It's the image of death.

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Even though these young people have
probably never seen a dead body in their lives,,,

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they are captivated by these pictures,

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And they're not alone,,,

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because, whether we realise it or not,
we are all drawn to images of death,

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whether we're on our own,,,

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or with others,

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We build graveyards and monuments to the dead

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and their photographs fill our homes,,,

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,,but why?

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What makes us surround ourselves
with constant reminders of death?

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The answer lies not in the modern world
but thousands of years ago,

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when human beings first created images of death,

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This is the story
of how death captured the human mind...

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..and how that drove us to create
some of the most powerful images in the world.

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Like most people, I've got images of my ancestors
scattered around the family home.

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I've always loved this one of my Grandpa Fred.

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He was a self-made man
from the East End of London,

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lived through two world wars
and died about fifteen years ago.

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Naturally, we want to surround ourselves
with pictures of people who've died

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because we loved them,
we want to preserve their memory,

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but I wonder if there's something else
going on with these pictures,

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What if they triggered
a range of emotions that I wasn't aware of,

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subconscious emotions,
more to do with my death than Grandpa's?

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Could my desire to surround myself
with images like these

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be somehow helping
to overcome my fear of death?

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Well, to try and find an answer,
what if we went back in time?

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What if we tried to discover

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what compelled people to surround themselves
with images of death for the very first time?

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0ur journey starts at a place

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where people have been living continuously
for longer than anywhere else on earth,

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This is the Jordan Valley in the Middle East,

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Here there's a town called Jericho,

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Jericho is famous for the biblical story

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of how Joshua and his trumpets
brought the walls tumbling down,

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The collapse of these walls is believed
to have happened about 3,000 years ago,

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But Jericho the city is much older than that.

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It's something like 9,000 years old,

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and it was in order to investigate
what was happening behind these walls

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that a team of archaeologists arrived here
from Cambridge in the mid 1950s.

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(LIVELYMUSIC)

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The archaeologists wanted
to reach right back into Jericho's past,

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They dug deep trenches
into where the ancient town had stood

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to try to find evidence
of how these earliest inhabitants had lived,

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As a young woman, Cecil Western
was one of the Cambridge archaeologists,

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(WESTERN) It was a jolly good dig,

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There was an enormous lot to do
so we were working all the hours there were,

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because they were finding so much stuff,

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(SPIVEY) By the end of the expedition
the team had uncovered pots and tools,

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They'd even found the remains
of some of Jericho's ancient walls,

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But what they were about to uncover

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would make everything, including
the legendary walls, pale into insignificance.

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It happened on the very last day of the dig,

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(WESTERN) Everything had been packed up,
We were all preparing to go the next day,

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That's when it often happens,

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at the most inconvenient moment,

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that you find something
that you've got to pay attention to.

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(SPIVEY) The team had noticed something
sticking out from the side of the trench,

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This was in one of the oldest parts of the site,
an area that was 9,000 years old,

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(WESTERN) We didn't want to leave it there
because we thought the children would get it out,

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And they would make a nasty hole
in the section anyhow

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so we might as well make it ourselves
and see what we'd got.

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(SPIVEY) With great care,
one of the team began to dig the object out,

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but they were completely unprepared
for what they would find,

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(WESTERN) Everybody got very excited,

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When it's something unusual that
you think nobody's ever seen the like before

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it's very exciting.

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And the cause of all this excitement
was this, a human skull,

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but a skull quite unlike any other
they'd so far found on the expedition,

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in fact a skull quite unlike
any other known to archaeology

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because its nose
had been reconstructed in plaster

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and where two vacant sockets should have met
our gaze, a pair of eyes made out of shells.

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This wasn't an ordinary skull
taken from a skeleton,

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An ancient artist had separated it from its body
and then decorated it,

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Using plaster, the artist had rebuilt
the front of the skull to create a delicate face,

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Where the eyes had once been
he'd placed two highly precious objects,

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shells from the Red Sea, many days' walk away,

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So, 9,000 years ago, the people living in Jericho
had made artistic representations of the dead,

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the earliest ever created,

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But there wasn't just one,

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As they dug further, the archaeologists at Jericho
found another and then another,

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In all, the team discovered
nine decorated skulls at the site

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and they immediately
began to ask the question,,,

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what were they for?

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(WESTERN) They were obviously portraits,

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We speculated as to whether they were enemies

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or whether they were ancestors
or what they were, or family portraits.

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But they were strange
because, so far as we knew at that point,

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nobody had ever discovered
this sort of portraiture on the actual skull,

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so they were quite unusual,

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None of us had ever seen such a thing before,

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(SPIVEY) But there was far more to it than that,

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By looking at the layers of earth
ancient objects are buried in,

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archaeologists can tell what they were used for,

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In the past
when archaeologists had found buried bodies,

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the layers had always shown
that they were in special burial grounds,

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But when they came to look
at the layer where the skulls had been found,

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they discovered something that astounded them.

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The layer clearly showed that the skulls hadn't
been tucked away in some sort of cemetery

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but lodged above the floor of someone's home,
someone's living space.

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Nine thousand years ago, decorated skulls
would have been kept in people's houses,

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and just as the experts began to wonder
what this meant, they noticed something else,

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Take a look at the underside of this skull.
It's smooth and flat.

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''So what?'' you might think.

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Well, that's the crucial key
to unlocking the mystery of these skulls,

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because they weren't intended Just to lie flat.

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They were specially designed to stand upright,

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perhaps on the floor of someone's house

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or, more likely, in some special alcove or niche.

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It was an astonishing revelation

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because it meant that these skulls,
the earliest images ever of dead people,

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had been made to be seen by the living.

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But archaeologists were to discover

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that Jericho wasn't the only place
where there were skulls like these,

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0ver the decades that followed, as archaeologists
excavated elsewhere in the Middle East,

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they discovered more decorated skulls
at other sites,

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and it wasn't just the Middle East,

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Thousands of years ago,
ancient artists had also created decorated skulls

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in what's now the Ukraine,

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And it wasn't all in the past, either,

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because indigenous people
in modern-day Southeast Asia

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were also decorating the skulls of their dead,

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Archaeologists realised that
this seemed to be a sort of biological instinct,

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a human predisposition to decorate
the skulls of those who'd already died.

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What had driven people so far apart
in time and place to do this?

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What had compelled them, just like us,

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to decorate their homes
with images of their dead ancestors?

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Compared to all other creatures on earth,

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there is something unique about human beings
that may provide an answer,

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It's to do with the way that our mind works,

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All animals take action to avoid their own deaths.

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It's something that we humans share
with even the smallest creatures.

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But this is just the basic evolutionary instinct
to survive, to try to avoid being killed,

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Human beings have got something else.

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We humans are the only creatures
who understand the inevitability of our own death,

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the fact that we Just can't escape it,

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and unlike other animals

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we've got a brain that's powerful enough
to imagine a world in which we're no longer alive.

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And there is a group of experts

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who believe that this helps explain why humans
surround themselves with images of death,

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They aren't archaeologists
but psychologists, based in Arizona,

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I remember being eight or nine years old
and my grandmother dying

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and my mom saying ''0h, come say goodbye
to Grandma, because you'll never see her again.''

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When I thought about
why that was so difficult to bear

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it was because I realised by inference
that that would be me at some point,

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0nly human beings are explicitly aware
of the fact that they some day die.

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It's a powerful problem that humans have to face,

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their knowledge of their own inevitable death

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and how that violates
so much of what we're doing day to day.

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We're trying to stay alive, we're trying to thrive
and yet we know, inevitably, it'll be thwarted.

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(SPIVEY) It's a terrifying thought,

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that the one certainty in life
is that we're all going to die

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and there's nothing we can do about it,

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But these psychologists believe
there is a way of easing this fear,

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a way of trying to come to terms
with our own death,

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The first uniquely human way
of accomplishing this is art.

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What art does is to take the natural world
and to give us some control over it.

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(SPIVEY) So, by creating images of our ancestors,

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we're reassuring ourselves
that death isn't so bad after all,

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(S0L0M0N) That is
the psychological impetus for its creation,

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your father and your grandfather and your mom
and your grandmother are still very much with you

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even though they aren't moving around
as much as they did in the past,

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(SPIVEY) It's an interesting theory,
but could it be true?

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Professors Solomon and Greenberg
decided to run an experiment

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to try to discover what's happening in our minds
when we see images of death,

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They began by taking two groups
of American students,

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The psychologists made one of these groups
think about death, but without them knowing it,

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and they did it by showing them these words,

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See anything else?

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Well, you wouldn't,
because it was too quick for television to pick up,

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Let's slow it down,

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Between the words,
the psychologists flashed the word ''dead'',

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Each subliminal image
lasted just a fraction of a second

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but long enough to put the idea of death
into the subconscious minds of the subjects,

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The psychologists then showed
both groups of people a series of pictures,

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They were images of famous dead Americans,

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icons who would have emotional value
for the subjects,

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Like past presidents, George Washington and JFK,

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0r screen stars,

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The subjects then chose
how long they wanted to look at the pictures,,,

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,,time which was measured,

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What the psychologists found was remarkable,

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The group who'd been made to think about death

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wanted to look at the pictures for
significantly longer than the group who hadn't,

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It seems to show that if we're thinking
about our own death, we gain reassurance

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by looking at images of those who've already died,

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So, how does this help to explain
the decorated skulls?

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Well, 9,000 years ago,
Jericho was a death-ridden place,

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Average life expectancy was just 24,

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Thoughts of death would have dominated
the minds of the inhabitants

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and would have terrified them,

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So, to try to reassure themselves,

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the Jerichoans created
artistic representations of their dead,

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(GREENBERG)
The skulls from Jericho are a striking example

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of the people of that time trying to keep
their dead alive and to keep them present,

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and if they're still present then they still exist
and thus they exist after death.

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That's what we're all looking for.

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That would be the most,
you know, comforting thing

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that would really assuage this potential terror.

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(SPIVEY) What motivated the Jerichoans
was a universal human instinct,

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The fear of our own death is so great

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we surround ourselves
with pictures of people who've already died

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in order to reassure ourselves,

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But reassurance is only part of the story,,,

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because there are other images of death
that are very different,

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These seem to have the very opposite effect,

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Far from reassuring us,

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they exploit our fear of death
and seem to make it worse.

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Take a look at this.

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This unsettling painting from the 18th century

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depicts a leader of the French Revolution
who's been murdered,

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while this 19th-century picture
shows a massacre of Spanish civilians,

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This etching shows a hanging,,,

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,,and in the 20th century

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Himmler's SS chose to use
as its regimental symbol a skull and crossbones,

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Images of death like these aren't reassuring,

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They're upsetting, Terrifying, even,

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Why do human beings create images
that are so deeply disturbing?

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What we need to find is a civilisation
that's taken images like these

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and pushed them to the limit.

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If we can understand what motivated them,
then we might understand what motivates us.

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This is the coast of northern Peru

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00:22:04,601 --> 00:22:07,115
in South America,

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00:22:10,441 --> 00:22:17,040
Between 100 and 700 AD,
a powerful civilisation dominated this area,

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It was called the Moche,

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00:22:21,801 --> 00:22:26,079
Ten years ago,
an archaeologist came here to study the Moche,

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His name is Steve Bourget,

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Borge began his excavations
at the foot of this building,

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00:22:41,081 --> 00:22:44,869
the Temple of the Moon, or Huaca de la Luna,

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It was built almost 2,000 years ago,

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Today, the images on its mud walls have faded
and seem to have little significance,

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But this is what they would once have looked like,

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0n these walls are some of the most grotesque
images of death one can imagine,

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These, for instance, are spiders,,,

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,,but they are no ordinary spiders,

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Each one is carrying a knife,,,

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00:23:32,961 --> 00:23:37,318
,,and on their backs
they have a human face with fangs,

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Here's a row of lizard beasts,,,

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,,all carrying a decapitated human head,

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And scattered around the site was Moche pottery
showing other disturbing acts,

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(MAN) These images look terrifying, for example
people being literally eaten alive by birds,

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Having their face taken off. This crude facelift.

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Things like that,

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(SPIVEY) What kind of dark mythology
produced these images?

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Were they simply the product
of a lurid violent fantasy?

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(B0URGET) We see what appears to be
supernatural beings, people with fangs,

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so it looks unreal.

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(SPIVEY) But there were no clues
as to why the Moche had created such art,

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What had compelled them, Bourget wondered,
to create such disturbing images of death?

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Then, one day, walking near the temple,
he noticed something strange,

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It was a large rock formation,

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But what was so unusual was that it had an
almost identical shape to the mountain behind it,

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Bourget began to wonder
if that had given it a special significance,

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I believe that there was a connection

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between this rock and the mountain behind it

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but that this rock was in fact
a sacred rock, a sacred outcrop,

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in fact a copy,
a small copy of the mountain behind it.

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(SPIVEY) Bourget and his team began to excavate
the area, and what they found astonished them,

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(B0URGET) At the beginning, all we had there
was sand, clay, rubbles, bricks, nothing else,

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So we start digging there

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and a metre, a metre and a half

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inside this rubble we located...human remains.

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(SPIVEY) Not just one skeleton but seventy,
and these bodies hadn't died naturally,

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(B0URGET)
As soon as we encounter the human remains,

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we found for example a cranium
with a large opening in the back of the head.

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We found another man
resting on his back with a gash,

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a wound Just alongside the head, Just right there,
probably made with a copper knife.

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(SPIVEY) There was something else about
these skeletons, Many of them weren't intact,

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What we have there is a human cranium

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00:26:44,761 --> 00:26:48,151
and you can see that
this head is literally standing alone.

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The body has been removed from the corpse itself.

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So it indicates that not only they killed people
there, but also dismantled the corpses.

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Took them apart, so to speak.

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(SPIVEY) Next to a prominent rock,
people had been killed

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and their bodies had been dismembered,

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For Bourget, it could mean only one thing,

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(B0URGET) This rocky outcrop was a sacred altar,

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In fact a sacred mountain, a small microcosm
of the big mountain behind it,

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and in front of this altar, this would have been
the best place for performing human sacrifice.

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(SPIVEY) Bourget had discovered
that this was a site of ritual sacrifice,

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00:27:38,161 --> 00:27:43,838
but that was just the start,
because then he noticed something else,

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Dismembering, skeletons, severed heads,

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these sacrificial remains

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bore a remarkable resemblance to
many of the artistic images created by the Moche,

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00:28:00,561 --> 00:28:02,631
(B0URGET) What we are looking at,

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these are illustrations of sacrifice
at the same time that they are the real thing,

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00:28:07,201 --> 00:28:09,874
They are the real McCoy, so to speak,

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Time and again, the Moche had performed horrific
acts of sacrifice and then created images of it,

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00:28:19,321 --> 00:28:22,518
This wasn't art as fantasy,

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it was art as documentary,

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00:28:32,281 --> 00:28:35,079
And the Moche weren't alone,

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For thousands of years, Latin America had been
dominated by a series of ancient civilisations,

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including the Inca, the 0lmecs and the Maya,

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00:28:45,601 --> 00:28:51,198
and they had all created
terrifying images of death,

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skulls,

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flayed bodies

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and bound captives,

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Archaeologists had long wondered why this was,

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00:29:05,641 --> 00:29:09,919
The Moche discovery
finally confirmed their suspicions,

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00:29:10,081 --> 00:29:15,109
In all these civilisations
sacrifice had been a way of life

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and artists had celebrated these grotesque acts
by creating images of them,

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But there was one civilisation that was
doing all of this on a simply colossal scale,

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They were the people who ruled here
in Mexico City 500 years ago,

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the Aztecs,

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And these are their descendants,

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Today they're here to see
a modern-day blood ritual,

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a bullfight,

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Here in the stadium, the deaths of some half
a dozen bulls will be watched by a huge crowd,

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0ver the next few hours,
40,000 people will witness and enjoy this killing,

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(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

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What if the situation were reversed?

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00:30:58,881 --> 00:31:06,879
What if all of us here were lined up to be
sacrificial victims over four days, one by one?

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Well, that's what happened here
about 500 years ago.

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(CHEERING)

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00:31:21,521 --> 00:31:28,757
It's almost impossible for us
to comprehend the scale of such bloodletting,

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00:31:28,921 --> 00:31:36,999
but Aztec historians record that in 1487
at the great pyramid of Tenochtitlán

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00:31:37,161 --> 00:31:41,313
executioners sacrificed four lines of prisoners,,,

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,,each two miles long,

325
00:31:51,561 --> 00:31:54,871
Victims were forced to climb to their deaths

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00:31:55,041 --> 00:31:59,751
up the pyramid's 114 steep steps,

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00:32:05,921 --> 00:32:09,231
And at the top, two killing rooms.

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(EERIE WHISPERING)

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Here they were met by priests
wearing masks made of human skulls,,,

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,,and wielding sacrificial knives,

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While still alive, the victims
had their hearts hacked from their chests,

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Their heads were then removed,,,

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,,and placed on this stone rack,

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It was killing on a truly industrial scale,

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at least forty thousand deaths over four days,

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But that's not all, because the Aztecs
then meticulously documented this slaughter

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with their art,

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Images like the giant statue of Chalchiuhtlicue,,,

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,,with her necklace of hands, hearts and skulls,

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And Michtlantecuhtle,

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the god of sacrifice, with his flayed body,

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And the wall of skulls itself,

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Here's an entire society that wanted to record
the horrific slaughter it was perpetrating,

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The question you keep coming back to
with the Aztecs is ''Why?''

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Why the killing on such a horrific scale?

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And, more importantly for our story,

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why would you want to fill your world
with images of this wholesale human butchery,

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as if you were proud of what you were doing?

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00:34:03,721 --> 00:34:10,638
A clue to the answer
lies on one of the Aztecs' most sacred objects,

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Three and a half metres across,
it's the Stone of the Sun,

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00:34:19,681 --> 00:34:26,871
To the Aztecs, the sun god was the giver of life,
but this was a gift that didn't come cheap,,,

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,,and the Sun Stone reveals why,

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At its centre is the sun god

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and in his outstretched hands
he's got two obJects.

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They're human hearts

356
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and in his mouth he has a knife,

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This is one vast sacrificial altar,

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The sun god created the earth
by sacrificing his own blood,

359
00:34:59,321 --> 00:35:02,631
This meant the people were forever in his debt

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and now they must repay him with
the most precious commodity that they had,

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their own lives,

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If the debt wasn't repaid,

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then the sun would go out,
the crops would fail and all life would perish.

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By constantly reminding people
of the debt they owed,

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images like these
instilled loyalty and obedience to the state,

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The Aztec leaders were using art to bolster
the whole structure of their civilisation,

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Aztec society was based
on a rigid hierarchical structure

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and sacrifice
was carefully integrated into each tier,

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00:36:01,081 --> 00:36:05,597
At the bottom
were half a million law-abiding citizens,

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This was the audience for the ritual,

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00:36:11,961 --> 00:36:15,840
Above them was the elite warrior class,

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These were the people who fought neighbouring
states to capture victims for ritual sacrifice,

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Then came the priesthood, who turned killing
into a form of gruesome theatre,

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And at the very top
the Aztec court and its king reigned supreme,,,

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,,safe in the knowledge
that no one dared challenge them,

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00:36:50,121 --> 00:36:53,716
So, the winners in this orgy of death imagery

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00:36:53,881 --> 00:36:58,511
were the powerful elite
who stood at the top of Aztec society,,,

378
00:37:00,521 --> 00:37:06,118
,,perhaps the most successful regime of terror
the world had ever seen,

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00:37:06,921 --> 00:37:14,157
Through this art, they gained a powerful grip
over the hearts and minds of their people,,,

380
00:37:15,481 --> 00:37:21,875
,,and that wasn't just because these images
made people fearful of being killed,

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00:37:22,041 --> 00:37:23,872
The psychologists believe

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they were having another even more powerful
effect on the minds of the Aztec population,

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driving them towards the values of the state,

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If you were an Aztec you could say, ''This is brutal.
What the hell's going on?'' Maybe some did that.

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00:37:41,281 --> 00:37:44,318
But most would be better psychologically served

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00:37:44,481 --> 00:37:48,440
by identifying with the powers
that are dispensing death

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00:37:48,601 --> 00:37:53,914
and feeling that, ''Hey, we're on the side
that has control over death.''

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00:37:56,201 --> 00:37:59,398
(SPIVEY) Professors Solomon
and Greenberg wondered

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00:37:59,561 --> 00:38:06,637
if thinking about death would manipulate
the minds of people in a similar way today,

390
00:38:06,801 --> 00:38:11,591
So they conducted
an unusual experiment to find out,

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00:38:11,761 --> 00:38:17,358
They started by dividing a group of American
students according to their political allegiance,

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Half were strong Democrat Party supporters,

393
00:38:20,641 --> 00:38:24,077
The other half supported the Republicans,

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00:38:25,841 --> 00:38:33,998
The students were asked to dole out a portion of
foul-tasting hot spicy sauce for someone to eat,

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First they were told to do it
for a supporter of their favoured political party

396
00:38:40,441 --> 00:38:44,434
and then for a supporter
of the party they opposed,

397
00:38:45,681 --> 00:38:50,072
The students served on average
the same amount of spicy sauce

398
00:38:50,241 --> 00:38:54,951
regardless of whether it was
for political friends or adversaries,

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00:38:56,081 --> 00:38:59,756
The psychologists then took
another group of students,

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00:38:59,921 --> 00:39:01,832
but they asked them to read

401
00:39:02,001 --> 00:39:06,279
a series of questions designed
to make them think about their own death,

402
00:39:07,441 --> 00:39:12,754
(W0MAN) Please briefly describe the emotions
that the thought of your death arouses in you,

403
00:39:14,721 --> 00:39:21,240
Jot down as specifically as you can what you think
will happen to you as you physically die,

404
00:39:25,441 --> 00:39:31,232
(SPIVEY) When these students measured out the
sauce for their political allies, nothing changed,

405
00:39:31,401 --> 00:39:36,236
0nce again, the portion averaged 12 grams,

406
00:39:36,401 --> 00:39:42,317
But when they doled out the sauce for
their political opponents, something happened,

407
00:39:42,481 --> 00:39:47,350
This time they measured out
an average of 27 grams of sauce,

408
00:39:47,521 --> 00:39:50,991
more than twice the previous amount,

409
00:39:51,161 --> 00:39:54,551
So, reminding people of their own deaths

410
00:39:54,721 --> 00:39:59,715
seems to drive them towards
supporting those who share their values

411
00:39:59,881 --> 00:40:02,349
and opposing those who don't,

412
00:40:04,361 --> 00:40:09,833
And the experiment suggested
this was a universal human instinct,

413
00:40:10,001 --> 00:40:15,598
as relevant to modern-day students
as to 15th-century Aztecs,

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00:40:15,761 --> 00:40:17,672
(GREENBERG) These results suggest

415
00:40:17,841 --> 00:40:21,231
when people are reminded of their own mortality

416
00:40:21,401 --> 00:40:30,196
they are going to lash out at those who
have a different belief system than their own,

417
00:40:30,361 --> 00:40:32,352
the idea being that

418
00:40:32,521 --> 00:40:38,232
when we think about our own death we become
more invested in our own belief system

419
00:40:38,401 --> 00:40:42,872
and someone with a different belief system
becomes psychologically threatening,

420
00:40:43,041 --> 00:40:46,397
so we're gonna lash out at them,
oft-times with violence.

421
00:40:51,321 --> 00:40:57,715
(SPIVEY) This psychological explanation would
also account for unsettling images like these,

422
00:40:58,481 --> 00:41:03,350
This was painted to inspire loyalty
to French revolutionary values,

423
00:41:05,041 --> 00:41:11,389
Here a painting celebrates the sacrifices
that were made for Spanish independence,

424
00:41:12,881 --> 00:41:17,909
This etching was created
to provoke revulsion towards slavery,

425
00:41:18,921 --> 00:41:26,714
And in Nazi Germany the skull and crossbones
was used by the SS to instil obedience,

426
00:41:29,481 --> 00:41:36,398
In each case, disturbing images of death
were being used to bind people to a cause,

427
00:41:45,761 --> 00:41:52,280
So, we seem to surround ourselves
with two very different types of images of death,

428
00:41:53,921 --> 00:41:56,355
Some reassure us,,,

429
00:41:57,361 --> 00:42:00,558
whereas others terrify,

430
00:42:00,721 --> 00:42:04,031
Each has a powerful hold over the human mind,

431
00:42:04,201 --> 00:42:08,831
but just imagine
the power of an image that could do both,

432
00:42:09,721 --> 00:42:14,795
Because there seems to be
another kind of image of death,

433
00:42:14,961 --> 00:42:22,072
strangely, one that terrifies and reassures us
both at the same time.

434
00:42:22,241 --> 00:42:29,955
In the Western world, this is one
of the most familiar images that we ever see.

435
00:42:32,601 --> 00:42:35,274
It's used to reassure people,

436
00:42:35,441 --> 00:42:41,437
and even if you're not a Christian there are
plenty of people who take great comfort from it,

437
00:43:01,801 --> 00:43:03,792
But, just for a moment,

438
00:43:03,961 --> 00:43:06,759
look at the cross simply as an image.

439
00:43:11,121 --> 00:43:17,276
It's the figure of a man oozing blood,
dying an agonising death,

440
00:43:18,281 --> 00:43:20,954
It should terrify us,

441
00:43:24,561 --> 00:43:31,876
Is this really so far from
the images of sacrifice created by the Aztecs?

442
00:43:42,561 --> 00:43:49,717
So, why create an image that both terrifies
and reassures at the same time?

443
00:43:49,881 --> 00:43:51,872
What's going on psychologically

444
00:43:52,041 --> 00:43:57,991
that makes this image such a comfort
to countless millions of people?

445
00:44:06,801 --> 00:44:10,316
Well, now we may be able to find the answer

446
00:44:10,481 --> 00:44:13,120
because we now know the moment

447
00:44:13,281 --> 00:44:21,473
at which human beings first brought together
images of death which both reassure and terrify,

448
00:44:25,921 --> 00:44:29,516
It happened here in Italy,

449
00:44:33,681 --> 00:44:38,801
Two and a half thousand years ago,
a great civilisation ruled this land,

450
00:44:38,961 --> 00:44:42,476
It had cities, wealth and beautiful art,

451
00:44:45,281 --> 00:44:48,432
No, not the Romans,

452
00:44:48,601 --> 00:44:51,399
These people were the Etruscans,

453
00:44:55,441 --> 00:44:57,750
Who laid the foundations of Rome?

454
00:44:59,121 --> 00:45:02,033
Not the Romans. The Etruscans.

455
00:45:03,321 --> 00:45:05,835
You thought gladiators were Roman?

456
00:45:06,001 --> 00:45:09,073
You're wrong, because they were Etruscan, too,

457
00:45:10,361 --> 00:45:15,071
Think straight roads were a Roman idea?
No, they were Etruscan.

458
00:45:15,321 --> 00:45:17,915
Bridge building, irrigation systems,

459
00:45:18,081 --> 00:45:21,198
the Etruscans were superb engineers.

460
00:45:21,361 --> 00:45:24,876
They gave Rome the tools to build an empire.

461
00:45:27,081 --> 00:45:28,673
Despite this,

462
00:45:28,841 --> 00:45:34,279
for a long time it was believed
that little remained of this once-great civilisation,

463
00:45:36,441 --> 00:45:40,992
Then, in the 19th century,
archaeologists began to prove otherwise

464
00:45:41,161 --> 00:45:46,554
with a series of discoveries
that would give us the final chapter of our story,

465
00:45:47,761 --> 00:45:50,321
They lay buried underground,,,

466
00:45:52,361 --> 00:45:59,870
,,because down here are thousands
upon thousands of Etruscan tombs,

467
00:46:08,841 --> 00:46:12,720
This is where the Etruscans buried their dead

468
00:46:12,881 --> 00:46:18,877
and they're some of the most reassuring
visions of the afterlife ever created,

469
00:46:29,961 --> 00:46:33,840
I'm in the tomb of the Matuna family,

470
00:46:34,001 --> 00:46:38,950
who lived in Cerveteri
about two and a half thousand years ago,

471
00:46:39,121 --> 00:46:44,798
and although this was designed for them
in their death, it's got a very cosy feel about it.

472
00:46:46,881 --> 00:46:50,954
The Matunas were given
tools for farming, livestock,

473
00:46:51,121 --> 00:46:55,319
cooking utensils, a flagon of wine, beds

474
00:46:55,481 --> 00:47:01,477
and even little luxuries such as a pair of slippers
for those cold winter mornings,

475
00:47:02,561 --> 00:47:08,352
With all this food, the only problem the Matunas
may have faced in the afterlife is mice

476
00:47:08,521 --> 00:47:12,230
but, thoughtfully, the artist has created a cat,

477
00:47:13,721 --> 00:47:16,155
Etruscan tombs were designed

478
00:47:16,321 --> 00:47:18,277
as houses for the dead,

479
00:47:18,441 --> 00:47:22,957
so they've got all the features
that you'd expect from a house.

480
00:47:23,121 --> 00:47:29,196
We've got doorways leading into bedrooms,
en suite of course,

481
00:47:29,361 --> 00:47:30,680
windows,

482
00:47:30,841 --> 00:47:33,674
really sturdy roof beams.

483
00:47:35,601 --> 00:47:37,876
They made them to last,

484
00:47:38,041 --> 00:47:42,876
Thousands of years after the wooden houses
of the living have disappeared,

485
00:47:43,041 --> 00:47:46,317
the stone cities of the dead still stand,

486
00:47:49,281 --> 00:47:56,278
For the Etruscans, death seemed to be simply
a joyful continuation of life,

487
00:47:56,441 --> 00:48:01,469
(WHISPERS) If I were an Etruscan,
I'd be looking forward to my death,

488
00:48:01,641 --> 00:48:07,113
But it wasn't the whole story. There was
a dark side to the Etruscan view of the afterlife.

489
00:48:12,321 --> 00:48:17,441
And it was dramatically revealed to the world
20 years ago,

490
00:48:18,641 --> 00:48:23,192
In 1985 Italian workers were digging a trench
for a new pipeline

491
00:48:23,361 --> 00:48:26,273
to supply the town of Tarquinia with water,

492
00:48:27,641 --> 00:48:33,830
They came across yet another buried
Etruscan tomb and called in the archaeologists,

493
00:48:35,521 --> 00:48:40,914
The archaeologists pushed a tiny camera
through the earth to investigate,

494
00:48:41,081 --> 00:48:44,437
What they first saw
was what they expected to see,

495
00:48:46,081 --> 00:48:47,719
Covering one wall of the tomb

496
00:48:47,881 --> 00:48:52,716
were the kind of enchanting images
for which the Etruscans were famous,

497
00:48:52,881 --> 00:48:58,877
Anyone buried here would be surrounded
by paintings of a reassuring afterlife,

498
00:48:59,761 --> 00:49:04,073
Then the archaeologists
turned their camera around,

499
00:49:04,241 --> 00:49:07,438
and what they saw on the opposite wall
shocked them,

500
00:49:09,881 --> 00:49:14,716
Here were paintings of disturbing
and unsettling creatures,

501
00:49:14,881 --> 00:49:19,397
images intended not to reassure but to terrify,

502
00:49:19,561 --> 00:49:22,200
This is the blue demon,

503
00:49:22,361 --> 00:49:26,320
the hook-nosed creature
from the Etruscan underworld.

504
00:49:27,201 --> 00:49:31,558
The demon's skin is the colour
of rotting human flesh,

505
00:49:31,721 --> 00:49:34,519
He has a snake coiled around his arms,

506
00:49:36,121 --> 00:49:42,435
Beside him is a winged devil, ready to drag the
dead off to an underworld of pain and suffering,

507
00:49:43,961 --> 00:49:49,274
An Etruscan artist
devised this vision of a terrifying afterlife

508
00:49:49,441 --> 00:49:52,353
around 420 BC,

509
00:49:52,521 --> 00:49:57,117
making it perhaps
our oldest surviving image of hell.

510
00:49:58,321 --> 00:50:02,997
It's not intended to reassure, quite the opposite,

511
00:50:07,041 --> 00:50:13,150
When they dated this tomb,
archaeologists realised it marked a watershed,

512
00:50:13,641 --> 00:50:15,871
For the previous 200 years,

513
00:50:16,041 --> 00:50:22,116
Etruscans had created tombs
full of images promising only a happy afterlife,

514
00:50:22,281 --> 00:50:25,193
but then something had changed,

515
00:50:26,401 --> 00:50:28,357
By 400 BC,

516
00:50:28,521 --> 00:50:32,275
the Etruscans were combining,
in a single work of art,

517
00:50:32,441 --> 00:50:35,080
images of death that were both reassuring...

518
00:50:36,801 --> 00:50:38,632
..and terrifying,

519
00:50:38,801 --> 00:50:41,269
rather as we do today.

520
00:50:41,441 --> 00:50:43,352
So, what had happened?

521
00:50:44,081 --> 00:50:45,480
At this time,

522
00:50:45,641 --> 00:50:51,079
the Etruscans were being threatened
by the rise of another Italian civilisation,

523
00:50:51,241 --> 00:50:53,550
a greedy and aggressive people

524
00:50:53,721 --> 00:50:58,351
who would steal their land
and destroy their culture,

525
00:50:59,361 --> 00:51:01,875
Who else but the Romans?

526
00:51:09,201 --> 00:51:11,635
The Etruscans knew the Romans were coming

527
00:51:11,801 --> 00:51:15,714
and they knew
they needed to resist them at all costs,

528
00:51:17,721 --> 00:51:22,511
Their tombs became a resonant call to arms
because they offered a stark choice,

529
00:51:23,361 --> 00:51:26,034
Would you be damned or saved?

530
00:51:27,761 --> 00:51:30,434
These images of hell reminded the Etruscans

531
00:51:30,601 --> 00:51:37,074
of the gruesome fate that awaited them
if they failed in their duty and surrendered,

532
00:51:39,641 --> 00:51:43,111
But these images of a reassuring afterlife

533
00:51:43,281 --> 00:51:48,514
promised the Etruscans their reward
if they stood up to the imminent threat,

534
00:51:50,641 --> 00:51:56,398
For the first time in history, these
conflicting images had been brought together,

535
00:51:57,241 --> 00:52:01,598
The Etruscans gave us the earliest images of hell

536
00:52:01,761 --> 00:52:10,351
and in doing so they created the first ever
images of what we today would call redemption,

537
00:52:15,361 --> 00:52:19,798
This is the place
where the Etruscans built their capital,

538
00:52:19,961 --> 00:52:24,079
Today it's the Italian city of 0rvieto,

539
00:52:26,681 --> 00:52:33,200
Around 1500 AD, almost 2,000 years
after the Etruscans had disappeared,

540
00:52:33,361 --> 00:52:35,955
Christians built a cathedral here,

541
00:52:40,841 --> 00:52:43,958
0n its walls are two huge frescos,,,

542
00:52:45,081 --> 00:52:49,074
one showing the damned suffering in hell,,,

543
00:52:50,281 --> 00:52:55,480
and here those who have been saved
rising up to heaven,

544
00:52:57,361 --> 00:53:01,036
(CH0RAL SINGING)

545
00:53:20,801 --> 00:53:22,757
Notice anything?

546
00:53:22,921 --> 00:53:27,392
Well, again, we've got a vision
of the happy afterlife

547
00:53:27,561 --> 00:53:34,160
contrasted with an intense depiction
of suffering and pain in the other world

548
00:53:34,321 --> 00:53:37,552
meted out by blue-green demons,

549
00:53:43,801 --> 00:53:49,512
These frescos offer the same mix
of terror and reassurance

550
00:53:49,681 --> 00:53:54,038
as the Etruscans' tombs 2,000 years earlier,

551
00:53:57,921 --> 00:54:01,675
This, if you like, was their legacy.

552
00:54:16,481 --> 00:54:18,949
The artist who painted these images

553
00:54:19,121 --> 00:54:26,391
knew only too well the powerful effect
that combining them had over the human mind,

554
00:54:27,641 --> 00:54:31,759
(GREENBERG) The cleverness
of the idea of redemption is that

555
00:54:31,921 --> 00:54:36,870
it can lead people to actually look forward
to death, rather than dreading it,

556
00:54:39,921 --> 00:54:44,790
The idea of sacrifice for the greater good
is widespread,

557
00:54:44,961 --> 00:54:48,192
the idea of falling on a grenade for one's buddies,

558
00:54:48,361 --> 00:54:53,754
Then what we do is we memorialise such people,
They're remembered more than the rest of us,

559
00:54:53,921 --> 00:54:57,231
So the idea of giving up one's life
for the greater good

560
00:54:57,401 --> 00:55:02,759
and then getting something from that,
getting redemption, and being in a better place

561
00:55:02,921 --> 00:55:05,560
by dying in a heroic manner,

562
00:55:15,681 --> 00:55:18,559
And that's why the cross is unique.

563
00:55:18,721 --> 00:55:25,593
It's the one single image that's working
on the human mind in two opposing ways.

564
00:55:25,761 --> 00:55:31,711
It's a terrifying image,
representing pain, loss and suffering,

565
00:55:31,881 --> 00:55:38,912
and yet at the same time it's an image
that reassures, one that holds out hope.

566
00:55:40,801 --> 00:55:47,559
This combination has made the cross
one of the most powerful symbols ever

567
00:55:47,721 --> 00:55:54,877
and it explains why so often
it's been used to try to give meaning

568
00:55:55,041 --> 00:55:59,956
in the face of the incomprehensible loss of life.

569
00:56:05,281 --> 00:56:08,159
(CH0RAL SINGING)