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00:00.
00:07Beneath the streets of modern-day Rome
00:10lies a network of interconnected tunnels
00:13that stretch for hundreds of kilometres.
00:16These are Rome's catacombs.
00:19They're over one and a half thousand years old
00:22and they contain many of Rome's ancient dead.
00:25In 2003, deep within this subterranean labyrinth,
00:31a bricked-up tomb was discovered,
00:34unlike anything seen before in Rome.
00:37I've never found a site with so many bodies.
00:45It's unreal.
00:47.
00:57This was an ancient mass grave,
01:00piled high with thousands of skeletons.
01:03As a classical historian,
01:06I've studied burials across the Roman world
01:09and I've never seen anything like this.
01:12Who were these people?
01:15What did they die of?
01:17And why are they buried here in this extraordinary manner?
01:20For the last ten years,
01:23an international team have been trying to find out.
01:26Combining archaeology with cutting-edge science,
01:31they're looking for clues in the layout of the tomb,
01:35in personal possessions,
01:38and in the bones themselves.
01:42.
01:43Joining the archaeologists is one of the world's leading specialists
01:54in decoding ancient DNA.
01:56He's trying to find out how these people died.
02:00This might be related to a catastrophe,
02:03to some kind of pandemic,
02:05to some kind of disease spreading.
02:07A chance find.
02:10A tomb that confounds all expectations
02:13and multiple mass deaths.
02:15This is the mystery of Rome's ex-tombs.
02:19Rome's catacombs have been explored and excavated for centuries,
02:38and by and large their use, their layout, their architecture,
02:42fairly well understood.
02:44But then a chance discovery in one of these catacombs
02:47opened up a whole new mystery.
02:59This is the catacomb of St. Marcellinus and St. Peter.
03:05It was here in the summer of 2003.
03:09A burst water main caused the roof in one of the tunnels to collapse.
03:16The Vatican's inspector of catacombs in Rome,
03:20Raffaella Giuliani, was called in to investigate.
03:24All'inizio io non sono stata particolarmente sorpresa,
03:29perché è un evento che si verifica abbastanza frequentemente
03:34nelle catacombe appunto.
03:36Poi andando avanti invece le cose sono cambiate.
03:46Proprio qui sopra si è aperta quella voragine
03:50che ha causato un po' l'inizio di tutta l'avventura.
04:00The first thing they found was the remains of a medieval fresco.
04:07The painting is believed to show the two fourth century patron saints
04:11of the catacomba.
04:13Marcellinus, a priest.
04:17And Peter, an exorcist.
04:20They appear to be standing guard over a burial chamber.
04:24Quando troviamo degli affreschi altomedievali,
04:28degli interventi medievali in catacomba,
04:30sono sicuramente dovuti alla presenza della tomba di un martire.
04:37But nothing could have prepared Raffaella
04:39for what lay hidden behind the fresco.
04:43Abbiamo trovato questi ambienti
04:45che erano completamente pieni di scheletri sovrapposti.
04:49They had uncovered a mass grave.
05:00Questo nella carriera di un archeologo cristiano
05:02è un elemento di grande prestigio, di grande importanza.
05:07E quindi questo è stato sicuramente un elemento per me
05:11proprio entusiasmante.
05:13The burial site was located in an area
05:17of the Vatican's underground mapping system labelled X.
05:23They came to be known as the X-tombs.
05:30To find out if this was the last resting place
05:33of hundreds of Christian martyrs,
05:35the Vatican sought specialist help.
05:44A team of French archeologists were called in,
05:46led by Dominique Castex
05:51and Philippe Blanchard.
05:53Both are highly experienced in excavating ancient mass graves.
05:58And the car is just in there?
05:59Yes, we're here.
06:00That's it.
06:01Tell me about your first impressions
06:18the first time you came here.
06:20as excavations began six more chambers were uncovered each piled high with
06:47bodies the tombs were arranged on three separate levels all located around a central hub
07:03we need to completely forget these modern walls here which are actually working as foundations
07:06to stop the six meters or so of rock above our heads from collapsing on us this is the crucial
07:11bit this is the largest of the burial chambers and the archaeologists estimate that it's just
07:16under a meter about 80 centimeters left of compressed bodies still to excavate there's another tomb there
07:22that was full of bodies that the archaeologists have now removed and there's another one two three
07:28burial chambers behind us so when we stand here we are surrounded by chambers of mass death
07:36picking their way through the bones a few personal possessions came to light
07:49a pair of earrings a hairpin
07:52a small black ring and a small black ring they also unearthed a few coins
08:05the bones themselves revealed more clues
08:08ok
08:09on peut voir des connexions à certains endroits
08:16ici vous avez toute une colonne vertébrale avec un bassin un bassin si le fémur qui se poursuit
08:31des cadavres amenés ici et qui se sont décomposés ici et pas des osments jetés
08:41the fact the skeletons were still intact with very little soil between the layers of bodies
08:49suggests that large numbers were buried here at the same time
08:53this has to have been something of a mass death moment what archaeologists call
09:22a crisis event multiple people dying within a very short space of time
09:32but was this one single event or a sequence of events
09:38to investigate further the team made a detailed study of one of the tombs where all the bodies had
09:44been excavated and accounted for by digitally restoring the flesh to the bones a computer
09:54program was used to work out the original volume of the bodies
09:57it surpassed the whole corps their volume surpassed the volume of the room
10:10it is very important that it cannot be a total simultaneity because there is not enough space
10:20this study suggests these are the victims of a series of mass death events
10:41currently the archaeologists estimate the tombs contain the bodies of around two and a half thousand
10:49people this is an incredibly unusual discovery tombs packed full of bodies layered on top of one
10:57another you just don't expect to find this type of burial in a roman catacomb
11:13i've studied the way the romans buried their dead and it's clear that they had great respect for their deceased
11:19burial in rome was governed by two guiding principles the first was you couldn't be buried in the city
11:27but the second was you didn't want to be buried too far from the city because you wanted your family
11:32to visit your tomb but perhaps more importantly you wanted to show off
11:38this is the ancient via appia one of the main roads out of rome
11:42but every road outside the city walls would have been crammed with tombs like these
11:51it was dionysius of halicarnassus in the first century bc that said the endlessness of tombs on
11:57the roads leading out of rome mirrored the endlessness of the roman world itself
12:06but as the population of rome expanded during the second and third centuries a.d
12:12the space available became increasingly limited
12:17now given the persistent desire amongst romans to be buried in suburban soil you can see how very
12:24quickly it became a pressing problem what to do with the dead and the solution as far as the romans
12:30were concerned was to go underground
12:32rome was built on a soft volcanic rock called tufa which could be carved out by hand
12:45these sprawling subterranean cemeteries grew rapidly under the city but they look quite different to the
12:52ex-tombs
12:53of course despite the fact that the corridors in a typical catacomb meander every which way the
13:01layout of the dead was actually fairly regularized you had your individual tombs called loculi but
13:07i always refer to them as bunk beds there's still the bones of one poor individual left there
13:12and if you wanted something a bit more special then you could have a cabicula a bedroom for the
13:17entire family to be put to rest in
13:22what was so good and so new about catacombs was their their limitless potential for expansion
13:30and as a result inclusion which made them really popular with communities be it pagan be it jewish
13:36or indeed most importantly with the increasing number of christian communities in rome during the
13:41third and fourth centuries a.d and over time as a result they became a burial place not just for
13:48ordinary christians but for their saints their popes and their martyrs
14:01as excavations continue the bones from the ex-tombs are removed and kept in a makeshift storeroom for
14:07further analysis so far the french team have made a detailed study of around 500 bodies
14:15they're starting to build up a picture of who these people were from the pelvis bones they can
14:24tell there is a mixture of men and women the size and stage of development of the femur bones
14:32also gives an idea of their age when they died on a femur droit qui va sarticule ici et la tête
14:39est entièrement formée on n'a pas de ligne de soudure donc là on a fémur adulte la plupart sont des
14:47adultes donc on a une grande quantité d'ossements qui se trouve dans la frange des sub-adultes adultes
14:57these people certainly didn't die of old age
15:02but are there any signs of trauma
15:04if they were christian martyrs or died of violent death you'd expect to see evidence on the bones
15:13sur 500 individus on aurait quand même dû trouver un moment des indices de coup de lésion particulière sur
15:24le squelette qu'on n'a pas
15:24none of the bones show any signs of trauma that one would expect if someone had been crucified
15:36or indeed if they died in battle in some sort of massacre
15:42so who were they why were they buried down here like this and when did they die
15:48one way to establish a possible date for the tombs and their occupants is to study the few
15:57personal belongings uncovered with them
16:02the earrings were made from fine gold they have a design that became popular in the first century ad
16:09the ring was found to be made of jet a material romans thought had magical powers studying its chemical
16:21composition the archaeologists have concluded it came all the way from whitby north yorkshire in the
16:28third century ad then there were the coins possibly left as payment to enter the afterlife their age is much
16:38easier to establish the oldest coin is of the 10th emperor titus dating from ad 79 to 81
16:52the wife of the emperor antoninus pious features on another as does the emperor marcus aurelius both
16:59dating from the second century ad
17:01the last coin was of emperor gordian it's a rarer find than the others he only reigned for three weeks
17:11in ad 238 coins are fantastic they really help us narrow down a range but there are caveats you carry
17:23coins around in your pocket for a long time they exist in circulation for ages and the archaeological
17:28contexts here in which these coins were found are not secure
17:35to try and get a more accurate date for the bodies the archaeologists wanted to test the bones using
17:42carbon dating but this proved quite difficult
17:46carbon dating works by comparing the ratio of two forms of carbon carbon 12 and carbon 14. when you die
18:12any carbon 14 decays over time to become nitrogen but the level of carbon 12 in your cells stays the same
18:21over time the ratio between the two forms of carbon changes and it's this that gives you the date
18:31the breakthrough here is that the different chambers of the x tombs came back with different results
18:37the bodies from the two larger chambers date from the second and third centuries ad but some of the
18:51bodies from the smaller tombs appear to have died in the first century ad these dates suggest the first
19:00burials took place here possibly up to 200 years before work began on the surrounding catacomb of saint
19:07marcellinus and saint peter the fact that these tombs predate the catacombs that surround them
19:15raises the intriguing possibility that this could be the original core from which the catacombs later
19:21to expand it outwards this is an exciting revelation the
19:51ex-tombs could be among the oldest underground tombs found anywhere in rome the dating provided by the
20:00coins and the bones and the other finds indicate that these people died between the end first century
20:05ad and the early part of the third century ad now that period of time in roman history was by all
20:12accounts a golden age
20:20some of rome's finest imperial buildings were completed at this time
20:27the coliseum
20:30great bath complexes
20:33and ever larger public forums
20:36the 18th century british historian edward gibbon described it as the period in the history of the
20:45world during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous
20:52the people of the ex-tombs were living at the center of a vast and powerful empire
20:58of the world at its height the roman empire spanned three continents five million square kilometers and
21:06its territories stretch from north africa egypt middle east asia minor across europe and of course
21:11up to the border with scotland and at the very heart of it was rome caput mundi as they called it the
21:17capital of the world
21:19the city was a mixture of cultures and traditions with trade links that spanned the known world
21:31in the markets of rome you could find anything copper gold olive oil from spain cotton wheat from
21:37egypt tin from britain iron from germany and more luxury products from further afield like silks from
21:44china or gems pearls spices from india rome was a multicultural city full of people and products
21:52from around the empire and beyond
21:59this was the world's first metropolis with a population of over a million souls
22:07and the people of the ex-tombs lived and died in this cosmopolitan melting pot
22:14of the world's first metropolis
22:27at their lab in bordeaux the french team are searching for more clues to the possible identity of these people
22:34kevin salis is analyzing the chemical makeup of the bones and teeth in a process called isotopic analysis
22:51this looks at the various atomic forms or isotopes of chemical elements like oxygen and carbon found in
22:59organic remains
23:01the minerals in your teeth are set when you're a young child and they don't change throughout your
23:06life whereas your bones keep remodeling themselves so they tell us about where you spent the last
23:10part of your life and by comparing the two we can find out whether these people were originally
23:16from rome or whether they came from elsewhere and migrated to the city
23:20here you represent the results obtained on the dents and here you represent the results obtained for the
23:31os
23:31we have a population which is distinct from other populations that we know in Italy or Rome
23:38contemporary but the os indicates the last years of life these individuals have
23:43in a second study kevin is able to explore what sort of foods they might have eaten
24:14their bones reveal a diet rich in meat and fish more than found in other communities in rome at that
24:22time these people must have been fairly wealthy what's coming through very strongly in the archaeological
24:30analysis is that the people of the ex tombs were not from rome they came to rome but where they were
24:35from initially well that's a question that the archaeology is still struggling with there are some
24:39indications that it may have been central europe but also from elsewhere this doesn't seem to have
24:44been a homogenous population all from the same place but they came to rome they lived in rome and they
24:50died altogether in rome
24:57the french team are starting to build a picture of who these people were and how they lived but they
25:04also want to find out how they died we know they weren't martyred we know from the dating that bodies
25:13were deposited here possibly over a 200 year period we also know they were carefully packed in several
25:22layers deep at a time
25:28and that there was a series of separate mass burials
25:40what the archaeology is showing is fascinating piles of bodies were put in these tombs on top
25:47of already partly decomposed bodies so what we've got is waves of mass death we know it wasn't massacres
25:56so the best hypothesis for what could have caused this has to be disease
26:10disease was rife in the capital from tuberculosis to typhoid leprosy to malaria
26:17during the time of the ex tombs diseases like these are thought to have killed over 30 000 residents each year
26:28much of this was down to living conditions
26:32most of rome's citizens lived in the world's first high-rise apartment
26:37they were called insula or islands and there were thousands of them densely packed into the city
26:50this is the insula dara chelian it dates from the second century and would have stood at least five
26:55stories tall down there is the ancient roman ground level that's where the floor was and the first levels
27:02are shops and inns and then as you go up you get the private apartments but you know what you wouldn't
27:08want to be in the penthouse here
27:14the lower floors were rented to wealthy tenants the upper levels were for the less well off
27:21the apartments were smaller the number of people in each room increased and living conditions were just
27:28awful the roman writer marshall talks about a chap who had to run up 200 steps to get up to his
27:35apartment and what could he expect when he got there well not much cramps living conditions dirty
27:41probably probably a leaky roof vermin her families groups of laborers all squeezed into these spaces
27:48i mean to call these places homes is overkill they were a place to put your head down at night and
27:55not a very pleasant one even then
28:03aqueducts brought in fresh water and the city had an impressive drainage system but the people of rome
28:10still lived in filth all rubbish basically just got shoved in the street and then the public system
28:16of fountains washed it into the drains but then well frankly there's there's the poo at its height the
28:24population of rome it's estimated was producing 50 000 kilograms of excrement a day and none of these
28:32apartments were connected directly to the drains you had to take your chamber pot and get rid of it
28:38more likely as not straight out the window the people of the ex-tombs may have lived during rome's golden age
28:50but the streets of the capital were more like an open sewer disease raged through the city
28:57and there was no escape even at the famous baths
29:12the romans loved their baths it was a great place to relax soak have a massage scrub down chat with friends
29:22or catch up on the gossip it was an incredibly important part of what it meant to be roman
29:32and it was a practice enjoyed by everyone from the emperor all the way down
29:39the people of the ex-tombs would have certainly gone to the baths
29:43the baths were attended by rich and poor young and old healthy and diseased in fact we know that roman
30:01doctors actually prescribed could soak in the baths for all sorts of ailments so if you had everything
30:07from boils to rabies from diarrhea to tuberculosis you came to the baths
30:16poor people who didn't have a slave to rub them down were encouraged to rub themselves against the walls
30:22the roman writer pliny the elder noted that scrapings taken from walls had warming properties
30:36long before antibiotics these scrapings were prescribed in ointments to soothe sores and cure abscesses
30:43the sick and the healthy baths together because the romans simply had no real idea of how disease
30:52spread the only thing that seems really to have bothered them is seeing the physical signs of
30:57disease so if you had pus filled boils or weeping sores then they asked you to keep your clothes on
31:04while in the baths sometimes they just put all the lamps out the baths really were the perfect place
31:10to catch a disease new strains of disease were constantly being brought into the city by traders
31:21migrants and soldiers you can easily see how the people of the x-tombs might have succumbed to waves of
31:29infection to try to find out what disease might have killed them the french team have drafted in a world
31:46expert in reconstructing ancient dna johannes krauser is a professor of paleogenetics
31:56in the x-tombs his previous work was on the black death which struck europe in the 14th century killing millions
32:07by extracting dna from bones from a mass grave site in central london
32:12he proved that the black death was caused by the bubonic plague
32:16here in the x-tombs he faces a greater challenge the bones are much older there may be very little dna
32:30left behind from any disease causing microbes or pathogens so what we want to have is the genetic
32:39material of the pathogen itself so we're trying to find places in the skeleton that still might have the
32:45pathogen dna to preserve and what we have found is the best container for the genetic information are actually teeth
32:52how do you pick the particular teeth that you're going to work with
32:56we try to identify teeth that are still intact they don't have a crack or some hole in the surface
33:04and inside those teeth we might have a little bit of dried blood where the pathogen dna might
33:10still be present so we can actually see that the jaw is just sticking out here you can actually see
33:15this tease you're being exposed and it's just perfect to actually get in here
33:24yes yes perfect like that wow oh my god just need to see how wet that is as well that's a molar on the
33:32left on the left the teeth are photographed catalogued and bagged up ready for transportation back to his lab in germany
33:51hopefully we have a little bit of the pathogen dna that we can also get out of those teeth and then
33:56reconstruct the dna reconstruct the entire genome johannes believes that some of the people here in
34:05the ex tombs might have been killed by one of the most virulent epidemics ever to strike the roman empire
34:12this devastating disease was first recorded around ad 165 when the empire was ruled by two brothers
34:31it was called the antonine plague because of the family name of the two ruling emperor brothers
34:37marcus aurelius and lucius verus now the origins of this plague are shrouded in mystery but there are
34:44reports that emerged in the east where in the early 160s ad lucius verus was campaigning against the
34:51parthians on the eastern frontier of the roman empire in what is today's iran and iraq
34:56a contemporary account from the pages of the historia augusta tells us a pestilent breeze arose in
35:13a temple of apollo from a golden casket which a soldier had cut open and it spread thence over parthia
35:22and the whole world the disease swept through the roman army just at the time when the empire was
35:31challenged by invasions from the north in 168 a.d the emperor brothers came here to aquileia in
35:40northern italy now aquileia was a major trading center but it was also a major military center and
35:46it was to here that many of the roman troops had been pulled back from the east and it was from aquileia
35:51that the emperors wanted to mount a campaign to push back invading tribes from the north
35:56that were threatening the italian frontier but when they got here the emperors realized that
36:01the real problem wasn't the invading tribes it was the plague
36:13army regiments would camp near towns and villages and soldiers often returned home on leave
36:19it wasn't long before the antonine plague passed into the civilian population
36:38the roman empire was a vast integrated connecting trading network which also contributed to the plague
36:45being able to spread so far so quickly it was in italy it was in parts of central europe it was in the
36:50east it was in egypt there's even one report that it made it as far as china and of course as the saying
36:57goes all roads lead to rome
37:14when the plague struck the capital there was panic and public hysteria priests were summoned and religious
37:21rites performed to purify the city the people of the ex-tombs would have been vulnerable just like
37:29everyone else according to roman consul and writer dio cassius two thousand people often died in rome in
37:39a single day in his books the emperor's physician galen described some of the symptoms of the antonine plague
37:47a fever a rash diarrhea foul smelling feces an ulceration of the windpipe and and dry pustular eruptions on the skin
38:01no one knows for sure what actual disease was responsible for the antonine plague we do know
38:07it claimed more lives than any previously recorded epidemic across the empire something like five
38:14million people were killed up to a tenth of the entire roman population the plague struck in waves
38:22that lasted from ad 165 to 180 then again in 189
38:30it's entirely possible that some of the people in the ex-tombs living in rome at that time
38:36were killed by this disease that shook the empire
38:49in his lab in germany johannes and his colleague kirsten boss are trying to extract dna from the teeth samples
39:08taken from the tombs
39:16i drilled out the pulp from inside the tooth which is now powder that powder now goes into
39:24the solution where the dna gets released from the bone so our answer could be in that tube i hope so
39:32very much this process creates a mixture of billions of dna molecules it's a cocktail containing all
39:42manner of genetic material but mostly soil microbes plants and fungi that were present in the tombs
39:51it's kind of like looking for the needle in the haystack so you have billions of molecules that we get
39:56out of those teeth and maybe just a few hundred come from the pathogen so there's a lot of sorting
40:01and then there's a lot of puzzling
40:06to isolate any fragments of dna left over from bacteria or viral pathogens johannes has adapted
40:13a technique known as dna hybridization capture he calls it fishing
40:22on this glass slide are a hundred short single strands of synthetic pathogen dna
40:29they include the genetic codes of everything from smallpox to measles typhus to bubonic plague
40:40the cocktail of dna from each tooth is then added to the slide
40:46the synthetic strands now act as bait to hook out any actual pathogen dna from the solution
40:57dna has this double strand where you have the bases facing each other and there's always this a
41:06facing with the t you have the g facing with a c and this creates that that the famous double helix
41:11exactly everyone knows the kind of picture of dna and just if the right sequence kind of matches
41:17the opposite sequence those dna fragments will actually bind and form the double bond if they don't
41:22match they will not come together it's like a magnet basically only kind of pulls the dna together
41:27if the strands matches so only pathogen dna would bind here
41:34but johannes is pushing this technique to its limits
41:38it's never been used to fish for so many possible causes of ancient disease
41:44we have not just looked for a single pathogen but we've actually looked for hundreds of them in
41:49parallel because we don't know what has killed those people we don't know if it was one or several
41:54pathogens that were spreading in their population during their time
42:01and this is just the start of the process even if johannes manages to isolate dna from a disease
42:10causing bacteria or virus it could then take months or even years of computer analysis comparing
42:18millions of genetic sequences to identify which specific pathogen was the cause of death
42:28he's got an incredibly difficult task ahead of him
42:33but this technology this science represents the best chance we have
42:39of finding out what killed the people of the ex tombs
42:54back underground the french team think they're getting closer to the possible identity of the people
43:02they've been doing tests on a white powder that was found in the tombs
43:09it's strange at the beginning
43:10when we found the white powder that covers entirely the bodies
43:16it's true that Dominique and I our first reaction was to think of the heat
43:22the use of heat and to avoid the proterifaction of the bodies
43:27and propagation of the epidemic
43:31we did research and we had results
43:33it's unusual to find plaster in traditional roman burials
43:45and this plaster contained further clues about how they were buried
43:49the presence of plaster and fabric suggests these bodies may have been bound in an intricate shroud
44:09this would explain why the shoulders were compressed hands resting on their pelvis legs stretched out with ankles touching
44:22and in among the skeletons and plaster a second curious substance was discovered
44:30we had discovered in some halles in direct contact with the
44:40red roses on the internet we put on a large amount of red illusion and very thin blue
44:41like little crystals
44:44In fact, these small paillettes seemed to be red amber.
45:14One final piece in the puzzle was nearly overlooked altogether.
45:44The more we looked, the more we found gold holes.
45:48Sometimes, in important concentration,
45:51on the shoulders, on the clavicles,
45:53on the bands of gold holes,
45:55sometimes small fragments.
46:00Could the people have been buried,
46:02dressed in gold embroidered clothes?
46:09What began as just a mass of bones
46:11is beginning to come into focus a little.
46:13We've got a large number of individuals
46:15who are all carefully laid out,
46:17one by the other,
46:19mostly adults.
46:22And then there are all these strange finds,
46:24the white powders, the red powders.
46:27And then there's the fine gold thread,
46:29what they thought to be Dominique's hair.
46:32We're getting a clear picture now
46:34of an elaborate and expensive burial ritual
46:37for what seemed to be some very wealthy and distinctive people.
46:42in Bordeaux, more clues are coming to light.
46:51One of the French team, Delphine Henri,
46:54has been studying remnants of the fabrics
46:57that were recovered from the tombs.
46:59We have different types of fabric.
47:09You can see very well that we have thick fabric,
47:13thin fabric and thin fabric,
47:15even very thin at some places.
47:19The thin fabric, very luxurious,
47:20are produced by professional people.
47:22The thick fabric are probably made by people at home.
47:27The thin fabric believes she can even work out
47:30where the person who made the fabrics came from.
47:36who made the fabrics came from.
47:39We're making a thread,
47:41and that's why we have to bend it.
47:43And the tradition wants that with a fuseau,
47:46that's the tool with which we make a thread,
47:48in the north of the Mediterranean,
47:51we hold the fuseau up in the middle,
47:53and most people being right,
47:55we give a torsion,
47:57which will produce a thread,
47:59which we call Z.
48:01Wow.
48:02It's incredible.
48:03It's incredible.
48:04The Z-torsion,
48:06it's European, in fact.
48:07It's a great Europe,
48:10and in the south of the Mediterranean,
48:13we will take the fuseau down
48:15and get a thread of torsion S.
48:19So what do you think about this type of evidence,
48:28the material,
48:29the system of torsion,
48:30the color?
48:31These thick fabric are often with the threads in S,
48:35so the tradition,
48:36rather from the south of the Mediterranean.
48:38It could show that the people who have drawn to the house,
48:44women,
48:45are from Egyptian traditions,
48:49or in the south of the Mediterranean.
48:58Philippe believes this cultural connection
49:01with the southern Mediterranean can be narrowed further.
49:04In other words,
49:09the fact of covering the body
49:11entirely by the plâtre of the feet
49:14to the head
49:15will give to the body
49:17an appearance of a mummy.
49:20This is something very special.
49:24This is really
49:26a funerary practice
49:28that comes from the North of Africa.
49:34Probably in the region of Tunisia,
49:36in Algeria,
49:37because we find a lot there.
49:49While the scientific analyses continue,
49:52there's one remaining historical avenue
49:54I want to explore.
49:56The ground directly above the ex-tombs
50:01was actually a site marked out
50:03for the burials
50:05of a very important group of people.
50:10That's the entrance to our tombs over there,
50:13and the big structure behind me,
50:14that's the mausoleum of St Helena,
50:16Emperor Constantine's mum.
50:18But ignore it entirely for the moment,
50:20because it was built in the early 4th century AD,
50:23way after the time we're interested in.
50:26During that time,
50:27end 1st century to mid 3rd century AD,
50:30despite what it now looks like,
50:31car park, football pitch,
50:33this place was actually
50:34a really important cemetery
50:36for the emperor's personal cavalry.
50:38Now their name changes over time,
50:40but they're perhaps best known
50:41as the Equite Singulares Augusti.
50:44Equite Singulares Augusti is Latin
50:49for the emperor's chosen horsemen,
50:51a regiment founded in the 1st century AD.
50:57They are immortalised in reliefs
51:02on one of Rome's greatest landmarks,
51:05Trajan's Column, erected in AD 113.
51:09At the Museum of Roman Civilisation,
51:19copies of the scenes are laid out,
51:21so we can get a closer look.
51:30The reliefs celebrate Emperor Trajan's epic battles
51:33and ultimate victory over the Dacians,
51:36now modern-day Romania,
51:38in the early 2nd century AD.
51:42Our Equite Singulares Augusti
51:44are shown no less than 7 times on this column,
51:47and that's more than any other individual battle unit.
51:51Here they are heading off
51:52with the emperor Trajan into battle.
51:55These guys really were the chosen ones
51:58to share in the emperor's
52:00most successful military campaign.
52:03This is one of my favourite scenes.
52:05The Equite Singulares Augusti
52:07in full battle gear.
52:09Their helmets, their shields,
52:10the chainmail jackets on their horses,
52:12charging in behind their emperor,
52:14Trajan, who offers the horseman's salute,
52:17the open right hand.
52:20And they're coming to the rescue
52:22of the Roman troops that are being besieged
52:24over here by the Dacians.
52:26It really is the emperor,
52:27his crack cavalry, coming to the rescue.
52:35The Equites were the finest imperial horsemen.
52:39Most were foreigners,
52:40hand-picked as teenagers from across the empire.
52:44They were strong and by many accounts
52:46very handsome warriors.
52:49To be selected was a ticket
52:51to great wealth and high status.
52:57They protected successive emperors
52:59both in Rome and abroad
53:01for over 200 years
53:03from the 1st to the 3rd century AD.
53:07But in AD 312,
53:09the cosy relationship between the Equites
53:11and the emperor came to an end.
53:17The Western Empire was divided by civil war
53:20between two emperors,
53:22Maxentius and Constantine.
53:30Maxentius held Rome,
53:32but Constantine marched from the north
53:36to oust his rival.
53:38In a final showdown,
53:42the two sides faced each other
53:44at the Milvian Bridge,
53:46the entry point to Rome
53:48across the river Tiber.
53:54The Equites horsemen sided with Maxentius.
53:57But Constantine was victorious.
54:09Constantine was quite inexorable
54:12with the Equites Singularis Augusti
54:15because they had made a big mistake
54:18that they had made a big mistake
54:19to steal from the part of Massenzio.
54:24So they were destroyed,
54:26their bodies were destroyed by Constantine.
54:30Constantine even destroyed the Equites cemetery.
54:36All that remains are fragments of tombstones.
54:40Many now adorn the walls at the entrance
54:43to the catacomb of Saint Marcellinus and Saint Peter.
54:46where their cemetery was built
54:49an enormous complex
54:51which unfortunately
54:53remains as the only significant testimony
54:56only the mausoleum
54:59where the mother of Constantine
55:01was buried, the Empress Elena.
55:09The ex-tombs were in use
55:11around the same time
55:12and in the same location
55:13as the former site of the Equites.
55:15Cemetery
55:17which raises an intriguing possibility.
55:23The dates of our ex-tomb bodies
55:25overlap with those of the Equites.
55:27It's unlikely that
55:29a space reserved for elites
55:31as the Equites were
55:33would have been used
55:34for burials of anyone
55:36completely unconnected with them.
55:40It's also possible
55:41that these cameras
55:43would have been able to
55:45welcome the defunders
55:47of the Equites singularis Augusti.
55:53The people in the ex-tombs
55:54were mostly young adults,
55:56a mixture of men and women.
55:59Now, we know from surviving tombstones
56:02that the Equites
56:03were often buried
56:04with their wives and slaves.
56:05When they were close to Rome,
56:06they lived with their families.
56:07They lived with their families.
56:08And so,
56:09here's the explanation
56:10of the many women
56:11who were found
56:12in those contexts.
56:13the Equites
56:23The Equites numbered 5,000 strong.
56:25They were foreigners,
56:27selected from various occupied territories
56:28across Central Europe
56:30and also from Southern Spain
56:32and North Africa.
56:34We've got connections
56:37in the funerary ritual
56:38to the Southern Mediterranean
56:40to North Africa,
56:41particularly to Tunisia
56:43and Algeria.
56:44The complex,
56:45elaborate and expensive
56:47funerary rituals
56:48with which they were buried
56:49not only mark them out
56:50also as rich,
56:52particularly that amber,
56:53but also fairly distinctive.
56:55Written accounts also tell us
56:58they would dress in jackets
57:00embroidered with silver
57:02and gold thread.
57:07The Equites were wealthy,
57:09well-fed
57:10and well-connected.
57:13But when overwhelmed
57:15by waves of mass death,
57:17it's conceivable
57:18that the Equites community
57:20may have converted
57:21pre-existing underground chambers,
57:23possibly disused water systems,
57:26into a mass burial site.
57:29It's only a theory,
57:33and we may never know for sure.
57:35But from all the evidence
57:37we have at the moment,
57:38it certainly seems plausible
57:40that the ex-tombs
57:42could be the last resting place
57:44for over 2,000
57:45of these great horsemen
57:47and their families.
57:49Soldiers chosen
57:50to protect the Roman Emperor.
57:52What I love about this investigation
57:58is the way that it's been able
57:59to put not just the flesh
58:00back on the bones,
58:01but to have turned these skeletons
58:03back into real people.
58:05They came here to the Caput Mundi,
58:08the capital of the world,
58:10the kind of ancient Roman version
58:12of the American dream.
58:13and the irony is
58:16that it was also here in Rome
58:18that disease
58:20found its perfect breeding ground
58:23and ultimately killed them.
58:33Earlier tonight,
58:34Professor Mary Beard
58:35delved into the life and times
58:37of the notorious Roman emperor
58:39and tyrant Caligula.
58:41In case you missed it,
58:43you can catch up tomorrow night
58:44at 11.20.
Recommended
57:26
58:39
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45:12
58:15
58:58
57:16