- 19/06/2025
Documentary, Ice Age Giants S01E02 Land of the Cave Bear
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00:00Two and a half million years ago, life on planet Earth faced the dawn of a new era.
00:19The Ice Age.
00:24Now we can go back in time.
00:27Because out of the permafrost, from deep inside caves, and from hostile deserts, the astonishing remains of giant animals are emerging.
00:47How amazing to be one of the first people to see this ancient creature.
00:52The Ice Age was the last time such creatures would walk the Earth.
01:02A lost Eden with mammoths taller than any elephant, cats with seven inch teeth, and some of the strangest beasts that have ever existed.
01:15I'm fascinated by what the remains of ancient animals can tell us about them and the world that they lived in.
01:25Using new scientific advances, we can reveal how they lived and why they died out.
01:32Why they died out.
01:41Come with me, back to the Ice Age.
01:48A world ruled by giants.
01:50A world ruled by giants.
02:06A world ruled by giants.
02:10A world ruled by giants.
02:1280,000 years ago, our planet began to cool, heralding the beginning of the last ice age.
02:33The Arctic ice sheets expanded.
02:37The impact on everything alive was huge, and sometimes in ways you wouldn't expect.
02:47The largest ice sheet covered half of North America.
02:52But south of the ice, the lands became richer than ever.
02:59At that time, I saw how the Colombian mammoth, the glyptodont, the giant ground sloth, and the sabre-toothed cat all flourished here.
03:13But in the rest of the Northern Hemisphere, the story was very different.
03:23These lands had their own cast of giants.
03:27Magnificent animals that now faced a huge battle for survival.
03:35Here, the impact of the ice age was to be especially severe.
03:41I want to find out what chilled Europe to the core, and what it took to survive the harshest conditions of the ice age.
03:53My first encounter is with a truly ferocious beast.
04:00No other creature has left us such vivid clues about its life and its struggle for survival.
04:10I'm here in the Romanian province of Transylvania, which is the traditional home of Count Dracula.
04:15But I'm not looking for vampires.
04:18Here in the Apisane Mountains, there is a remarkable cave, which has kept a dark secret from the ice age for tens of thousands of years.
04:28The cave was discovered by a group of miners rock-blasting from marble.
04:39This is what they found inside.
04:53Once, these bones would have been assumed to be from unicorns or dragons.
05:03But scientists identified them as Ursus Speleus, the cave bear.
05:10The greatest heavyweight of all ice age bears.
05:14Cave bears were even larger than grizzlies.
05:20Analysis of their flat, grinding teeth reveals that they were vegetarian.
05:26They ate mainly berries and alpine plants.
05:29Their remains tell a story from around 40,000 years ago.
05:37Average global temperatures were about six degrees lower than today.
05:43Marius Robu, an ice age mammal expert, has spent years piecing together the cave bear's story.
05:58There's bears everywhere. Are these cave bear bears?
06:01Yes, he belongs to cave bears.
06:03How big are these bears, Marius?
06:05They were 30% larger than the biggest brown bear.
06:10Really?
06:11Yeah.
06:12They could have weighed even one tonne.
06:14And what were they doing in here?
06:16They're coming in here to den, to hibernate?
06:18Definitely for hibernating, right.
06:20Yeah.
06:21Because, as you can see now, outside is very cold, but here you have a constant temperature.
06:28It's quite a difference as well, isn't it?
06:30I mean, we've come in, it was, what, about minus 12 outside?
06:32Yeah.
06:33And this must be plus 10.
06:35Yeah, plus 10, 11, something like that.
06:38Yeah.
06:39Yeah.
06:40I wouldn't mind hibernating, I think.
06:45But these bones can only mean one thing.
06:48Many hibernating animals never woke up.
06:53And the reason for that is what was happening outside the cave.
06:58SIREN
07:21Ummm.
07:23Not everything.
07:25SIREN
07:28As winter approaches, the bear's head
07:30for their hibernation cave.
07:40She must choose the perfect spot, warm and safe.
07:4440,000 years later, we're following in their footsteps.
08:05Here, we have an unnatural polished rocks.
08:08Really?
08:09Yeah.
08:10This isn't just water flowing down the side of the cavern?
08:13No, no, no, no, it's a polished rock generated by a cave bear.
08:18So many bears passed this way
08:20that over thousands of years, they've rubbed the rocks smooth.
08:26This is like looking at ancient steps
08:28which have been worn down with people walking up and down them.
08:31This is amazing. This must be...
08:32I mean, this isn't just one or two cave bears,
08:34this must be generations of them.
08:36Definitely, yeah.
08:37Massive beasts pushing their way into this cave
08:40and polishing the walls as they go.
08:43It's hard to believe they came so far in
08:55and through such tight passageways.
08:58There's something very unusual about this place.
09:11Thanks to the constant conditions, the mud on the walls
09:13is just as soft as it was all those thousands of years ago.
09:17And 250 metres in, etched into the mud, is something truly extraordinary.
09:26In this area you see some imprint.
09:29That's just amazing. Look at that.
09:32Scratch marks.
09:34Marius and his team can only find one explanation.
09:43These impressions were made by cave bears during the Ice Age.
09:48I just can't believe that these traces are still there from tens of thousands of years ago.
09:55The bones are one thing.
09:57And it's amazing to have those fossils preserved here.
10:00But to have these traces of life...
10:03They look very fresh.
10:04They do.
10:05They do.
10:06They do.
10:07Another 100 metres in, there's a big drop.
10:20Now Marius has told me that this is absolutely worth it
10:24and what's at the bottom of this long drop,
10:26that I'm now going to try and negotiate,
10:29is very exciting indeed.
10:31OK.
10:32So, Alice, try to find a place where to stay.
10:36OK.
10:37You will see them there all over.
10:39And here, all this area...
10:40Oh, goodness me, it's coloured in them.
10:43Oh, this is just astounding.
10:46The thing is that if you look carefully,
10:50you will see the scratch marks that belong to an adult,
10:54maybe a female,
10:55and you will see some scratch marks belonging to a cow.
10:58Oh, this is a cool one.
10:59I mean, the difference is quite obvious.
11:00Yeah, yeah.
11:01These are the traces of a struggle trying to go out.
11:10I want to know what became of them.
11:16The trail takes us deeper in.
11:28Oh, my goodness.
11:36So, I'm looking at a tomb.
11:39These are the remains of the cave bears
11:42that left all those scratches in the clay above me,
11:46scrabbling to get out.
11:48But they never made it.
11:51Just imagine dying here in the dark,
11:54alone, in desperation,
11:57gradually starving to death.
12:00It's not a nice way to go.
12:03It makes me wonder why the bears even took this risk,
12:16going so deep inside to hibernate.
12:22It seems they were not always alone.
12:25Deep in another tunnel,
12:28there are traces of a different Ice Age giant.
12:38Panthera Spellia,
12:40the cave lion.
12:44Look at that.
12:45That is magnificent.
12:47So, this is the cave lion we found here.
12:49At the beginning, we thought it's a cave bear,
12:50but when we started to have a closer and closer look,
12:52we realised it's a cave lion's skull.
12:53Superficially, they look quite similar.
12:54I can imagine if they were covered in a bit of mud,
12:55you might have thought he could be a cave bear.
12:56But look at these teeth.
12:57Wow.
12:58Look at that.
12:59I mean, huge canines and meat-slicing molars.
13:14That is wonderful.
13:16Cave lions were 25% larger than African lions.
13:21Cave lions were 25% larger than African lions.
13:28Chemical tests on their bones reveal
13:31that they preferred eating large herbivores,
13:34but under pressure, would hunt just about anything.
13:39So what was this cave lion doing in the cave?
13:42Was he making a den here in a similar way to the bears?
13:44Definitely not. He came here for hunting.
13:47So he's hunting the cave bears? Yes.
13:49Usually there are cubs as well.
13:52But what a risk for a cave lion to take,
13:54coming into a cave like this,
13:56knowing that, OK, there might be cubs there that she could take easily,
13:59but their mothers are likely to be there as well,
14:01and they're big animals with big teeth. And some males as well.
14:05Extraordinary as it may sound,
14:07Marius is convinced that a lion fought a bear in this very cave.
14:13The lion's bones were found close to a bear's nest,
14:17and there are some intriguing marks on the lion's skull.
14:21If you look closely, you'll see some bite marks.
14:26Right, yeah. OK, so this has been gnawed?
14:28Yes. And this area is also chewed.
14:34I mean, I know this would have been a formidable predator,
14:38but I do find it astounding that he would have faced up to a cave bear.
14:42Yeah, definitely.
14:43I think maybe an ultimate experience.
14:47A cave lion tracks its favourite prey.
15:04Reindeer.
15:08But each year there are fewer of them.
15:11High in the mountains, driven by desperation, the cat approaches a cave.
15:30He can smell a meal.
15:32In total darkness, the lion must use its senses of smell and hearing
15:49to land a killer blow.
15:51Outro.
16:21It's a harrowing story of animals forced into desperate measures as the Ice Age changed their world.
16:35The puzzling thing, though, is that at this time the nearest Ice Sheet was still far to the north.
16:52Could it really have had such a long-range impact?
17:17Well, there is a place that shows us how the Ice Age took hold.
17:22It's so incredible to see this, I've never seen anything like this before.
17:46Now this is just a fragment, a remnant of that once gargantuan Ice Sheet which dominated the northern hemisphere, stretching right down into North America and Europe.
18:04This is the Greenland Ice Sheet.
18:07Like icy fingers radiating outwards from the Ice Sheet, glaciers stretch out to the sea.
18:25These rivers of ice can move at over 35 metres a day.
18:38And when they meet the ocean, this is what happens.
18:43Icebergs are born.
18:44But this is nothing compared with what happened during the Ice Age.
18:50As the Arctic ice sheet grew, its glaciers spewed out great flotillas of icebergs, many the size of large islands.
18:57They floated out into the Atlantic.
18:58They floated out into the Atlantic.
19:00When one large iceberg melts, it releases.
19:01It's the Atlantic.
19:02The Atlantic.
19:03It's the Atlantic.
19:04So, it's the Atlantic.
19:05So, it's the Atlantic.
19:06I don't know where it is.
19:07And it will be.
19:08As the Arctic ice sheet grew, its glaciers spewed out great flotillas of icebergs, many
19:17the size of large islands.
19:20They floated out into the Atlantic.
19:25When one large iceberg melts, it releases millions of tonnes of cold water.
19:31When a thousand icebergs melt, they can disrupt ocean currents, and that changes the climate
19:39right across the world.
19:49Between 50 and 30,000 years ago, Europe was rattled by three massive deep freezes – Heinrich
19:58events.
20:05It was these intense, savage pulses of cold produced by Heinrich events when whole armadas
20:11of icebergs were released, which kick-started the ice age.
20:17And as the temperature continued to drop, the great polar ice sheet advanced ever southward.
20:24And its influence began to alter the habitats of Europe.
20:33For the cave bears back here in Transylvania, those sudden, brutal cold pulses were tough.
20:51The woodland glades, which provided the rich vegetation that the cave bears depended on, were disappearing
20:58in those Arctic conditions and being replaced by much hardier shrubs and grasses, useless for
21:05a giant, calorie-hungry bear.
21:12Each autumn saw more bears starting their hibernation underweight.
21:25By 30,000 years ago, this was a species teetering on the edge as more and more bears died in hibernation.
21:35Within a few thousand years, the European cave bear was extinct.
21:50Europe's woodland gave way to ever more open landscapes, putting forest species under extreme
21:57stress.
21:58But this harsh new world wasn't a total disaster.
22:05It presented a great opportunity for one feisty giant.
22:11A two-ton eating and fighting machine.
22:18An animal you might have thought would be more at home in the tropics.
22:25Its remains crop up in the most unlikely of places.
22:35Under the North Sea lies a vast Ice Age plain.
22:42Today it's a rich fishing ground and the trawler's nets often dredge up a lot more than just cod
22:48or haddock.
22:53Sometimes, the remains of woolly rhinoceros.
23:09Hundreds of rhino remains have been discovered between Birmingham and Vladivostok.
23:21And just recently, a new specimen superbly preserved by the permafrost has been discovered in Siberia.
23:34I'm going to Yakutsk, the coldest city on Earth, to see it.
23:43In winter, temperatures seldom creep above minus 40.
23:53And it's thanks to this unforgiving climate that we can see exactly what a real Ice Age
23:59rhino was like.
24:08A 20-year-old female woolly rhino was found in a mine just outside the city.
24:18I can't believe that she died 40,000 years ago.
24:39This is an incredibly rare and precious thing.
24:56It's the almost complete carcass of a woolly rhino, the most complete that has ever been
25:03found.
25:06When you touch it, you expect the skin to give a little under your fingers.
25:10And of course, it doesn't.
25:11It's still frozen, so it feels like a cold, hard stone.
25:21This is an animal which was perfectly adapted to living on the steppe in Siberia.
25:27She was covered in this woolly, furry coat to keep her warm.
25:32There's a little bit of it still clinging on, on the back feet.
25:41A woolly rhino was about the same size as a modern African rhino.
25:47But it had a double-layered coat of wool to shield it from the brutal cold.
25:55Long hairs formed an outer protective layer.
25:59Shorter hairs formed a downy thermal layer underneath.
26:06Its ears and tail were smaller than an African rhino's to prevent heat loss in temperatures
26:12as low as minus 60.
26:20And our whole body shape, this massive stocky body with short legs, is a very good way of
26:27keeping warm in cold climates.
26:33Their most striking feature, the horn, was about twice the size of an African rhino's.
26:41Just the thing for settling territorial disputes.
26:50With two males competing over the same precious territory, it's going to end in a showdown.
26:58The woolly rhinoceros was an impressive creature.
27:19But its very presence reveals something quite odd about the ice age in Europe and Siberia.
27:29To fuel its large body, a rhino needs to spend virtually all day eating.
27:36It simply couldn't exist in a place where its food is always getting covered in snow.
27:50And this is the great paradox of the ice age.
27:55In the freezing wastes of Europe and Siberia, one thing that was thin on the ground was snow.
28:05It's a very cold.
28:06It's cold.
28:07It's cold.
28:08It's cold.
28:09It's cold.
28:13Temperatures were colder, but with so much of the planet's water locked up as ice, this
28:18meant that the climate was also drier.
28:21So under clear blue skies, there was plenty of sun in the summer for grass to grow.
28:28And in the winter, hardly any snow to cover it up.
28:32It's cold.
28:37Huge as they were, rhinos weren't the largest eating machines to benefit from these cold,
28:43dry plains.
28:45There's one giant without which the ice age story would be incomplete.
28:51winter.
28:52Woolly mammoths make their yearly migration across Siberia.
29:06Over the past hundred years, the Siberian permafrost has yielded some truly amazing specimens.
29:25And this is the most captivating of them all.
29:34This is one of the most famous mammoth finds of recent years.
29:38She's called Liuba, and she's a little baby mammoth, probably just a month old.
29:43She was found in 2007, and she is amazingly well preserved.
29:48So that we have her skin, her soft tissues, and we even have the contents of her gut.
29:53Specimens like this one reveal that the inside of a woolly mammoth is even more impressive than the outside.
30:06Like the rhino, a woolly mammoth had a double-layered coat of wool to shield it from the brutal cold.
30:12But under the skin caused antifreeze blood.
30:19Inside the red blood cells, the haemoglobin, the oxygen-carrying component of blood,
30:25operated efficiently in sub-zero conditions.
30:30In other words, mammoths actually preferred the cold.
30:42But the real mystery of both woolly mammoths and rhinos isn't how they survived appalling cold,
30:51but what these giants found to eat.
30:55These were animals that needed up to 200 kilos of food a day.
31:01And this was nothing like the Serengeti or the jungles of Borneo, where elephants live today.
31:14How could a freezing Ice Age environment provide enough food for these mighty giants?
31:2430,000 years ago, mammoths ranged over a vast area.
31:34Thanks to lower sea levels, Britain was joined to Europe,
31:39and Siberia to Alaska, north of America's great ice sheet.
31:45Which meant that mammoths could have walked an unbroken belt
31:49all the way from Britain to the Canadian Yukon.
32:08Today, it's in this far-flung corner of the mammoth world, the Yukon,
32:14that their lost habitat is uniquely well-preserved.
32:29Mammoth remains were first identified in the Yukon
32:32when they were discovered by miners of the Klondike gold rush.
32:37A century on, and things are a bit more organised.
32:52The territory now has its own official paleontologist.
32:58We have here is a woolly mammoth molar.
33:01This is a typical, iconic Ice Age fossil
33:04that's found from the Yukon, Alaska, Siberia, all over the north.
33:09The grinding surface on the top of a woolly mammoth tooth
33:13is very indicative of a large grazer, something that eats a lot of grass.
33:17But sometimes, with the paleontological record, you have to look beneath that.
33:21You have to look at some of the smaller guys that lived here, too.
33:24They can actually provide us with a lot more information
33:27in terms of the whole ecosystem and how it functioned,
33:30how it was structured during the Ice Age.
33:42Look out on these valleys here. This is a mammoth playground.
33:46This is a huge Serengeti of large mammals during the Ice Ages.
33:51Today, in the search for gold, the ground, still frozen since the Ice Age,
34:00is broken up with high-pressure hoses.
34:09Giving Grant a brief chance to hunt for clues,
34:12left behind by one very special Ice Age character.
34:16Well, we're always looking for these bales of grass heaps.
34:22These look like little hay bales, but it's just grass, grassy material.
34:27When we see that in the outcrop, we know we're dealing with squirrel nests.
34:34These are the traces of an Ice Age animal,
34:37one that is still with us today.
34:41Arctic ground squirrels.
34:44These endearing rodents once lived under the feet of mammoths.
34:49Today, they still thrive in the Yukon,
34:52alongside a couple of other Ice Age survivors.
34:59The reason that the ground squirrel is so useful to Grant
35:02is that it's one of nature's collectors.
35:06In the brief summer, the race is on for this male ground squirrel.
35:24Before he settles down to hibernate,
35:26he must eat enough to double his body weight,
35:29collect plants for his bedding,
35:31and make a cache of seeds,
35:34ready for when he wakes up in the spring.
35:36When winter finally arrives,
35:54he goes underground to hibernate.
35:56This is the most dangerous time of year.
36:01There's no guarantee that he'll survive the winter.
36:07Back in the Ice Age, death in hibernation was common.
36:13Thousands of years later,
36:15the frozen remains of ground squirrels,
36:18along with what they collected,
36:20are an Ice Age time capsule.
36:26I think we have a dead squirrel in this nest.
36:29Oh, oh yeah, for sure.
36:32Oh wow.
36:34Look at that.
36:36Wow.
36:37We got ourselves a whole Arctic ground squirrel skeleton in this nest.
36:40This guy died during the Ice Age,
36:42never made it through hibernation.
36:45Very interesting.
36:46Within a few feet of space,
36:51there's three squirrel nests.
36:53This is literally a colony of ground squirrels here during the Ice Age.
36:57Well, this is a great one.
36:58There's some really nice seeds preserved in here.
37:01The plant remains in the ground squirrel nests
37:15hold the secret to the woolly mammoth's success.
37:18Well, I'm seeing here a number of plant species that we typically find in Arctic ground squirrel nests.
37:34There's a number of buttercups and poppy seeds,
37:37things like wild rye grass, some blue grass.
37:40And these are all the types of plant species that really love cold settings.
37:45So places like mountain tops and ridge tops, grassland environments.
37:51It's not just grass, but a wide variety of species creating a robust and productive habitat.
37:59Plenty for mammoths and rhinos to feast on.
38:02It's not a good place today to be a mammoth in the north because there's essentially nothing to eat.
38:08But if we go back where there's grass everywhere and small flowers,
38:12very few trees and very few shrubs,
38:15it's a feeding frenzy for grazing mammals.
38:18And if you could imagine that sort of grassland environment spread all the way from northern Canada,
38:23northern Canada here in the Yukon, all the way to England.
38:31This lost grassland is known as the mammoth steppe.
38:36A source of food for mammoths and woolly rhinos that wrapped around half the world.
38:58Autumn on the European steppe.
39:01Mammoths mingle with a huge herd of bison,
39:05making their way to winter grazing grounds in France.
39:09A cave lion waits to pick off the weak and the old.
39:30But there's only one predator that's a real threat to the mammoth.
39:38And it makes the lion look like, well, a pussycat.
39:48This Ice Age creature was a giant of its kind.
39:52And it preyed on giants.
39:55Science has probed it more than any other Ice Age species,
39:59right down to its genetic makeup.
40:05Supremely successful hunters and scavengers.
40:09Intelligent.
40:10With a huge geographic range.
40:13One of the largest apes.
40:16Our very own cousins.
40:18Neanderthals.
40:19Neanderthals.
40:29Neanderthals with their long low heads,
40:31pronounced brow ridges and stocky frames,
40:34were better adapted to the cold,
40:36and had already survived several Ice Ages.
40:45But for Neanderthals, this Ice Age was to prove more challenging than any that had gone before.
40:51In one site on the edge of Europe, there is compelling evidence that in their struggle to survive,
41:03Neanderthals turned to the biggest beasts of the steppes.
41:07Neanderthals.
41:08It's a cave.
41:09La Cotte de Saint-Brelard.
41:11On Jersey.
41:12Matt Pope of University College London wants to show me what it looked like 30,000 years ago.
41:30We're getting the perspective here that Neanderthals would have had approaching it from the bay.
41:42This would have all been dry land.
41:44And you can see it absolutely dominates this bay,
41:46and it would have dominated the skyline out there on the hunting grounds and the plains that are surrounding the site.
41:52And these cliffs, which have always been a feature of the Jersey Coast for the past several hundred thousand years,
41:57would have just been rising up of this relatively flat, open landscape.
42:10Excavations spanning nearly a century have revealed that generation upon generation of Neanderthals used this cave.
42:22Now, this has got to be one of the most famous Neanderthal sites anywhere in the British Isles.
42:26So, what types of animal bones have been found here?
42:29Well, bone preserves fairly poorly at the site,
42:32but it's dominated by abundant amounts of mammoth and rhinoceros bone.
42:36And we know this isn't just a natural accumulation of animal bone,
42:40because on the bones are clear marks from stone tools.
42:47And we know exactly what those tools were.
42:50And that's just a good thing to do.
42:51And that's just a good thing to do.
42:52Yeah.
42:56This is a hand axe or a biface.
42:59It's a large symmetrical tool,
43:02but where they really come into their own is where they become an incredible meat knife.
43:07We're just using a rotational hand grip.
43:09It kind of picks up the tissue, it picks up meat
43:11and then it slices through.
43:13So having with you a very portable, very usable butchery knife
43:18is a survival tool in itself.
43:20I mean, that makes sense, especially, I think,
43:21when we think about earlier ancestors,
43:23who would have been competing with all sorts of formidable predators
43:25in the landscape to be able to cut a carcass up,
43:28to take pieces of meat away with them quickly.
43:30A tool as simple as this extends any kind of human range.
43:34It's a technology that extends the abilities of our basic anatomy.
43:43Before the Neanderthals could butcher a mammoth,
43:49they had to kill one.
43:51So how did they hunt these five-ton behemoths?
43:58An early theory was that they chased mammoths over the edge of the cliff here.
44:02But Matt thinks this an unlikely strategy.
44:13He's got another theory, based on the shape of the landscape here.
44:35During Neanderthal occupation, with sea levels far lower than today,
44:41the cave was at the head of a narrow gorge, a dead end.
44:47If you bring a small herd of mammoth within that dead end valley,
44:52you stand a good chance of being able to isolate individuals,
44:55isolate a group of them and kill them through a different way,
44:58using technology and the Neanderthal's robust physique
45:01to kill them at close quarters.
45:02A woolly mammoth searching for water follows the path of the gorge.
45:20He has no idea that he's walked straight into a trap.
45:25Oh!
45:42No!
45:44No!
45:45No!
45:50But despite their prowess as hunters, Neanderthals were a species threatened with extinction.
46:13In the north, the great ice sheet was growing, locking up more and more water.
46:30The land began to dry out, and across Eurasia, deserts formed.
46:36Their dust was scooped up by strong winds and blown westward.
46:44In the cave in Jersey, above the Neanderthal remains, archaeologists discovered a thick
46:50layer of this dust.
46:52Around 35,000 years ago, the Neanderthals cave was suffocated by it.
47:06Shortly afterwards, Neanderthals disappeared from Jersey.
47:13Their species now clung on in just a few refuges around the Mediterranean.
47:24As the ice sheet neared its greatest extent, there was one final, mighty glacial pulse.
47:32It sent armadas of icebergs out into the North Atlantic.
47:40As they melted, the ocean cooled.
47:44This time, the continent was plunged into the coldest period of this last ice age.
47:54The average global temperature plunged to 12 degrees below that of today.
47:59By now, Neanderthals had become yet another ice age species to go extinct.
48:14The climate was partly to blame, but it's also very likely that it had something to do
48:30with the arrival of some new immigrants.
48:33Our own species, Homo sapiens, began colonising Europe just 20,000 years before the peak of
48:50the last ice age.
48:52Our ancestors didn't have the physical adaptations of Neanderthals, and they weren't proven ice
48:59ice age survivors.
49:02So how come our ancestors survived while the Neanderthals died out?
49:12During the ice age, modern humans spread right across Europe and Asia, right up to the coast
49:18of the Arctic Ocean.
49:19But as the last glacial maximum approached and conditions worsened, they sought refuge in
49:24the south.
49:25Even there, though, the climate was harsh, but they found ways of surviving.
49:30Using the natural resources available to them, they eked out a living in the challenging
49:35environment of central Europe and southern Siberia.
49:39Evidence of their survival skills has been found here in the town of Zoraisk on the banks
49:55of the Ozoptera River in Russia.
49:58A medieval fortress now stands on this spot, but excavations show that humans were making
50:07their home here 20,000 years ago.
50:17And there are clues as to how they survived the ice age.
50:27Those ancient hunter-gatherers used whatever material they could lay their hands on.
50:31And there was one material in particular that was to be found in great abundance across
50:36swathes of Europe and Asia at the time.
50:39And that was the remains of woolly mammoths, their bones and their tusks.
50:45It is a big mammoth tooth.
50:46Sometimes we find very many of them lying separately or together or their remains.
50:48being burned.
50:49It is a big mammoth tooth.
50:50It is a big mammoth tooth.
50:55It is a big mammoth tooth.
51:07It is a big mammoth tooth.
51:10Sometimes we find very many of them lying separately or together or their remains being burned.
51:16This, it is not cold, it is burned bone remains.
51:28Trees were scarce during the ice age
51:31and mammoth bones, teeth and tusks
51:34offered an alternative fuel.
51:42200,000 artifacts have already been found here.
51:47Some of which suggest an ingenuity not known in Neanderthals.
51:53This is a really beautiful example of something
51:56that would have been used probably for piercing
51:58or for drilling some kind of material,
52:00probably quite hard material.
52:02And we can tell just from the lovely slender shape
52:05and the fact that there's all this wear around the top.
52:10They've shaped it very carefully to begin with
52:13and then we have additional wear on top of that.
52:16So that's been used to drill through something.
52:18It could be ivory.
52:20You think it's for ivory working?
52:22Yeah, it could be ivory.
52:23Yeah.
52:28The archaeologists have discovered some really ingenious uses
52:31for mammoth remains.
52:33Tusks were driven into the ground to form a frame.
52:49And Sergei believes that traces of organic material suggest
52:52that hides were stretched over the top to form a roof.
52:57These semi-subterranean pit dwellings are some of the very first houses ever built.
53:13Our ancestors had been using Ice Age giants to survive.
53:22The technology used by these people surviving in extreme conditions
53:35during the peak of the last Ice Age is a fantastic example
53:38of the ingenuity and adaptability of our species.
53:43But it wasn't just about building shelters and making stone tools.
53:48The archaeologists here at Zoraisk have uncovered some truly beautiful
53:53and enigmatic objects.
53:56Many of them speak to us of the close relationship that our ancestors had
54:12with the Ice Age giants whose world they shared.
54:17This bison carved from mammoth ivory represents an animal that must have been key
54:29to the survival of the people who lived here during the Ice Age.
54:33It takes time and effort to carve something this beautifully.
54:38And I would love to know what it meant to the person who made it
54:42and to his or her community.
54:44Was it an object of great ritual significance,
54:49an object that was perhaps revered?
54:52Was it something used to teach children about the animals
54:55that they would hunt when they grew up?
54:58There are some things that we will never know,
55:02but how wonderful to have this intimate connection
55:07to those Ice Age hunters.
55:14For our ancestors, these animals were sources of food, clothing,
55:28and building materials.
55:30They may even have worshipped them.
55:33These images of lions, bison, woolly rhino, woolly mammoths,
55:53and cave bears are from Chauvet Cave in southern France.
55:58Animals which, along with our own species, battled against the Ice Age.
56:15Right across the Northern Hemisphere in Eurasia and North America,
56:19the temperatures plummeted to the lowest they'd been for thousands of years.
56:24The changing climate and environment put large numbers of species under enormous pressure,
56:30driving many to the brink of extinction.
56:34But many species survived through the peak of the last Ice Age.
56:40And what's really surprising is that it wasn't those years,
56:44those millennia of intense cold that finally finished them off.
56:49It was what happened next as the world began to warm up
56:53and the great ice sheets of the North started to melt.
56:57Join me next time as I revisit the Ice Age landscapes of the Northern Hemisphere.
57:18I'll discover what it took to survive the Ice Age.
57:32And find out why so few of the megafauna are still with us today.
57:38It's been a mystery for over a hundred years,
57:50but new discoveries tell a surprising story
57:54of what finally killed off the Ice Age giants.
57:59Close encounters with deadly and beautiful creatures of our age
58:13when Simon Reeve continues his journey around Australia in a moment.
58:17And go to the BBC TV blog to discover all about the filming techniques
58:20and special effects used to bring the animals of Ice Age giants to life.
58:24I'll see you next time.
58:25I'll see you next time.
58:26Bye.
58:27Bye.
58:28Bye.
58:29Bye.
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