Channel 4 - Secrets of the Stone Age (1999) Part 1 The Wisdom of the Stones Life in the Neolithic Age

According to the history books, civilization began with the ancient Egyptians. But in this intriguing three-part series, iconoclastic anthropologist Richard Rudgley, author of the provocative “Lost Civilizations of the Stone Age”, argues that it began earlier — much earlier. We view our distant ancestors as nothing more than cave-dwelling savages but 100,000 years ago there were people who walked the earth every bit as gifted as us, who looked and thought just as we do today… In SECRETS OF THE STONE AGE, anthropologist Richard Rudgley offers a lively account of his journey across the continents in search of the lost legacy of prehistoric man. He takes us to Ancient Egypt, where excavations at Abydos have unearthed hieroglyphs belonging to an age before the pharaohs, and to the stone circles and burial chambers in Ireland, which precede Stonehenge by two millennia. In central Turkey, he discovers a Neolithic city over 9,000 years old. In the Alps, we are introduced to the Ice Man, a 5,300-year-old mummy, whose body reveals that acupuncture was practiced in Stone Age Europe, and to the awe-inspiring cave paintings of Ice Age France. In the Czech Republic he reveals a thriving textile industry dating from 24,000 BC. Delving further back still, Rudgley discovers many so-called 'modern attributes' amongst the Neanderthals of the Old Stone Age the beginnings of art, symbolic communication and even seafaring in the days of Homo Erectus, at the very dawn of humanity's existence. In Indonesia, we examine stone tools that prove pre-Neanderthal man undertook raft voyages across the open sea –700,000 years before the Kon Tiki!

Part 1 The Wisdom of the Stones Life in the Neolithic Age

In this program, anthropologist Richard Rudgley strives to roll back the limits of history to include the remarkable achievements of the Neolithic Age. Engineering skills, as demonstrated by the temple of Hagar Qim and the Hal Saflieni Hypogeum, in Malta; indications of well-developed religious systems; evidence of acupuncture techniques; examples of bookkeeping via clay tokens; and proof of an intricate social structure through the digs at Catal Hoyuk and Asikli Hoyuk, in Turkey, reveal the depth and the genius of the Neolithic peoples. In this first episode of the documentary series, Rudgley travels from New York to Egypt in search of evidence of writing, medicine and architecture from the Neolithic Age - 8000 to 3000 BC. He visits 5000 year old Oetzi the Ice Man, New York's Central Park, temples to a Mother Goddess in Malta and probably the oldest city in the world - a settlement in Turkey. Architect Richard England, writing specialist Denise Schmandt Besserat, and others support Rudgley's thesis with expert analysis.

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