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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 Ú 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 Ăš 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.
04:59This, in the career of an archeologo cristiano,
05:02is a great prestige, a great importance.
05:07So this was a great entusiasmante for me.
05:13The burial site was located in an area of the Vatican's underground mapping system
05:21labelled 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.
05:52Both are highly experienced in excavating ancient mass graves.
05:58And the car is just here?
05:59Yes, here we are.
06:00Here we are.
06:01Tell me about your first impressions
06:05the first time you came here.
06:07And the car is just here?
06:08Yes, here we are.
06:09And the car is just here?
06:10Yes, here we are.
06:11And the car is just here?
06:12Yes, here we are.
06:17Here we are.
06:20Tell me about your first impressions
06:22the first time you came here.
06:24When I arrived here,
06:26I discovered this quantity of us.
06:28As excavations began,
06:42six more chambers were uncovered,
06:46each piled high with bodies.
06:52The tombs were arranged on three separate levels,
06:55all located around a central hub.
07:03We need to completely forget these modern walls here,
07:05which are actually working as foundations
07:06to stop the six metres or so of rock above our heads
07:09from collapsing on us.
07:10This is the crucial bit.
07:12This is the largest of the burial chambers.
07:14And the archeologists estimate
07:15that there's just under a metre,
07:16about 80 centimetres left,
07:17of compressed bodies still to excavate.
07:22There's another tomb there that was full of bodies
07:23that the archeologists have now removed.
07:25And there's another one, two, three burial chambers behind us.
07:29So when we stand here,
07:31we are surrounded by chambers of mass death.
07:36Picking their way through the bones,
07:39a few personal possessions came to light.
07:43A pair of earrings,
07:45a hairpin,
07:46and a small black ring.
07:49They also unearthed a few coins.
07:51The bones themselves revealed more clues.
08:08More clues.
08:09Okay.
08:10On peut voir des connexions Ă certains endroits.
08:15Ici, vous avez toute une colonne vertébrale,
08:27avec un bassin.
08:28Un bassin, alors.
08:29Ici, le fémur qui se poursuit.
08:31Des cadavres amenés ici et qui se sont décomposés ici,
08:35et pas des os men jetés.
08:41The fact the skeletons were still intact,
08:44with very little soil between the layers of bodies,
08:48suggests that large numbers were buried here
08:51at the same time.
08:53Ils sont tous relativement bien déposés sur le ventre ou sur le dos.
09:01Les corps étaient déposés soigneusement,
09:03les uns à cÎté les autres.
09:05TĂȘte bĂȘche.
09:06Ils inversaient les pieds et la tĂȘte
09:08pour inhumer un maximum de personnes
09:11dans un espace extrĂȘmement restreint.
09:17This has to have been something of a mass death moment,
09:21what archaeologists call a crisis event,
09:24multiple people dying within a very short space of time.
09:32But was this one single event,
09:34or a sequence of events?
09:38To investigate further,
09:39the team made a detailed study of one of the tombs
09:42where all the bodies had been excavated and accounted for.
09:46By digitally restoring the flesh to the bones,
09:51a computer program was used to work out
09:55the original volume of the bodies.
09:58It surpassed the whole body.
10:01It surpassed the whole body.
10:03It surpassed the volume of the room.
10:10It's very important.
10:12It means that it can't be a totally simultaneous depot
10:18because there's not enough space.
10:20What's obvious is that the bodies
10:22have been put in several times.
10:27The problem is that we don't know exactly how many times
10:30and we don't know the time interval
10:32between the beginning and the end.
10:34This study suggests these are the victims of a series of mass death events.
10:44Currently, the archaeologists estimate the tombs contain the bodies
10:47of around two and a half thousand people.
10:52This is an incredibly unusual discovery.
10:54Tombs packed full of bodies layered on top of one another.
10:58You 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
11:16and it's clear that they had great respect for their deceased.
11:21Burial in Rome was governed by two guiding principles.
11:24The 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
11:30because you wanted your family to visit your tomb,
11:32but perhaps more importantly, you wanted to show off.
11:38This is the ancient Via Appia, one of the main roads out of Rome.
11:44But every road outside the city walls would have been crammed with tombs like these.
11:49It was Dionysius of Halicarnassus in the first century BC that said,
11:56the endlessness of tombs on the roads leading out of Rome
11:59mirrored the endlessness of the Roman world itself.
12:06But as the population of Rome expanded during the second and third centuries AD,
12:11the space available became increasingly limited.
12:18Now, given the persistent desire amongst Romans to be buried in suburban soil,
12:23you can see how very quickly it became a pressing problem,
12:26what to do with the dead.
12:28And the solution, as far as the Romans were concerned, was to go underground.
12:32Rome was built on a soft volcanic rock called Tufa,
12:41which could be carved out by hand.
12:45These sprawling subterranean cemeteries grew rapidly under the city,
12:50but they look quite different to the ex-tombs.
12:53Despite the fact that the corridors in a typical catacomb meander every which way,
13:01the layout of the dead was actually fairly regularised.
13:04You had your individual tombs called loculi.
13:07I always refer to them as bunk beds.
13:09There's still the bones of one poor individual left there.
13:12And if you wanted something a bit more special,
13:14then you could have a cubicula, a bedroom for the entire family to be put to rest in.
13:19What was so good and so new about catacombs was their limitless potential for expansion,
13:29and as a result, inclusion,
13:31which made them really popular with communities,
13:34be it pagan, be it Jewish,
13:36or indeed, most importantly,
13:38with the increasing number of Christian communities in Rome
13:41during the 3rd and 4th centuries AD.
13:44And over time, as a result, they became a burial place,
13:47not just for ordinary Christians,
13:50but for their saints, their popes and their martyrs.
14:01As excavations continue, the bones from the ex-tombs are removed
14:05and kept in a makeshift storeroom for further analysis.
14:08So 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.
14:20From the pelvis bones, they can tell there is a mixture of men and women.
14:26The size and stage of development of the femur bones also gives an idea of their age when they died.
14:36These people certainly didn't die of old age.
14:51But 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.
15:12On the 500 individuals, we'd have to find, at a moment,
15:19an indication of pain or particular lésions on the squelette,
15:24which we don't have.
15:26None 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?
15:44Why were they buried down here like this?
15:47And when did they die?
15:49One way to establish a possible date for the tombs and their occupants
15:56is to study the few personal belongings uncovered with them.
16:02The earrings were made from fine gold.
16:05They have a design that became popular in the first century AD.
16:13The ring was found to be made of jet,
16:16a material Romans thought had magical powers.
16:19But studying its chemical composition,
16:22the archaeologists have concluded it came all the way from Whitby,
16:26North Yorkshire, in the third century AD.
16:31Then there were the coins,
16:33possibly left as payment to enter the afterlife.
16:36Their age is much easier to establish.
16:39The oldest coin is of the tenth emperor, Titus,
16:45dating from AD 79 to 81.
16:52The wife of the emperor Antoninus Pius features on another,
16:55as does the emperor Marcus Aurelius,
16:58both dating from the second century AD.
17:04The last coin was of emperor Gordian.
17:06It's a rarer find than the others.
17:09He only reigned for three weeks in AD 238.
17:17Coins are fantastic.
17:18They really help us narrow down a range.
17:20But there are caveats.
17:22You carry coins around in your pocket for a long time.
17:24They exist in circulation for ages.
17:26And the archaeological contexts here in which these coins were found
17:29are not secure.
17:30To try and get a more accurate date for the bodies,
17:34the archaeologists wanted to test the bones using carbon dating.
17:40But this proved quite difficult.
17:45Carbon dating works by comparing the ratio of two forms of carbon,
17:52carbon-12 and carbon-14.
17:56When you die, any carbon-14 decays over time to become nitrogen.
17:59But the level of carbon-12 in your cells stays the same.
18:03Over time, the ratio between the two forms of carbon changes.
18:04And it's this that gives you the date.
18:06The breakthrough here is that the two forms of carbon,
18:08carbon-12 and carbon-14.
18:09Carbon dating works by comparing the ratio of two forms of carbon,
18:10carbon-12 and carbon-14.
18:12When you die, any carbon-14 decays over time to become nitrogen.
18:16But the level of carbon-12 in your cells stays the same.
18:21Over time, the ratio between the two forms of carbon changes.
18:26And it's this that gives you the date.
18:31The breakthrough here is that the different chambers of the X-tombs
18:35came back with different results.
18:42The bodies from the two larger chambers date from the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD.
18:50But some of the bodies from the smaller tombs
18:53appear to have died in the 1st century AD.
18:58These dates suggest the first burials took place here,
19:02possibly up to 200 years before work began
19:05on the surrounding catacomb of St. Marcelinus and St. Peter.
19:11The fact that these tombs predate the catacombs that surround them
19:15raises the intriguing possibility that this could be the original core
19:20from which the catacombs later expanded outwards.
19:23This is an exciting revelation.
19:26The X-tombs could be the original core of the X-tombs.
19:27And the first time the X-tombs could be the original core of the X-tombs.
19:30Maybe everything would be born from this central network.
19:34Maybe it would be discovered at a moment,
19:37of this ensemble,
19:39which could be interpreted as a ensemble of martyrs.
20:00By the coins and the bones and the other finds,
20:02indicate that these people died between the end 1st century AD
20:06and the early part of the 3rd century AD.
20:09Now that period of time in Roman history was, by all accounts,
20:13a golden age.
20:20Some of Rome's finest imperial buildings were completed at this time.
20:27The Colosseum.
20:30Great Bath complexes.
20:34And ever larger public forums.
20:38The 18th century British historian Edward Gibbon described it as,
20:43The period in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race
20:48was most happy and prosperous.
20:53The people of the ex-tombs were living at the centre of a vast and powerful empire.
21:00At its height, the Roman Empire spanned three continents,
21:03five million square kilometres.
21:06And its territories stretch from North Africa, Egypt, Middle East, Asia Minor,
21:10across Europe and, of course, up to the border with Scotland.
21:13And at the very heart of it was Rome.
21:15Caput Mundi, as they called it.
21:17The capital of the world.
21:22The city was a mixture of cultures and traditions
21:26with trade links that spanned the known world.
21:31In the markets of Rome, you could find anything.
21:33Copper, gold, olive oil from Spain, cotton, wheat from Egypt,
21:38tin from Britain, iron from Germany,
21:40and more luxury products from further afield,
21:43like silks from China, or gems, pearls, spices from India.
21:47Rome was a multicultural city,
21:50full of people and products from around the empire and beyond.
21:58This was the world's first metropolis with a population of over a million souls.
22:04And the people of the X-tombs lived and died in this cosmopolitan melting pot.
22:27At their lab in Bordeaux, the French team are searching for more clues
22:32to the possible identity of these people.
22:41Kevin SalĂšs is analysing the chemical makeup of the bones and teeth
22:46in a process called isotopic analysis.
22:51This looks at the various atomic forms, or isotopes,
22:55of chemical elements like oxygen and carbon found in organic remains.
23:00The minerals in your teeth are set when you're a young child,
23:05and they don't change throughout your life,
23:06whereas your bones keep remodeling themselves,
23:08so they tell us about where you spent the last part of your life.
23:12And by comparing the two, we can find out whether these people were originally from Rome,
23:17or whether they came from elsewhere and migrated to the city.
23:20Here you represent the results obtained on the dents,
23:28and here you represent the results obtained for the os.
23:32We have a population that is different from the other populations that we know in Italy,
23:37or in Rome, contemporary,
23:39but the os indicates the last years of life.
23:42In a second study, Kevin is able to explore what sort of foods they might have eaten.
23:46Their bones reveal a diet rich,
23:51and in a second study, Kevin is able to explore what sort of foods they might have eaten.
23:56In 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,
24:19more than found in other communities in Rome at that time.
24:22These people must have been fairly wealthy.
24:27What's coming through very strongly in the archaeological analysis
24:30is that the people of the ex-tombs were not from Rome.
24:33They came to Rome, but where they were from initially, well,
24:36that's a question that the archaeology is still struggling with.
24:39There are some indications that it may have been central Europe,
24:41but also from elsewhere.
24:43This doesn't seem to have been a homogenous population all from the same place,
24:47but they came to Rome, they lived in Rome,
24:49and they died altogether in Rome.
24:57The French team are starting to build a picture of who these people were,
25:02and how they lived.
25:03But they also want to find out how they died.
25:09We know they weren't martyred.
25:10We know from the dating that bodies were deposited here possibly over a 200-year period.
25:19We also know they were carefully packed in several layers deep at a time.
25:28And that there was a series of separate mass burials.
25:31What the archaeology is showing is fascinating.
25:44Piles of bodies were put in these tombs on top of already partly decomposed bodies.
25:50So what we've got is waves of mass death.
25:54We know it wasn't massacres, so the best hypothesis for what could have caused this
26:01has to be disease.
26:10Disease was rife in the capital.
26:13From tuberculosis to typhoid.
26:15Leprosy to malaria during the time of the ex-tombs.
26:20Diseases 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 rooms.
26:37They were called insula or islands and there were thousands of them densely packed into the city.
26:50This is the Insula Daracelli.
26:52It dates from the second century and would have stood at least five stories tall.
26:57Down there is the ancient Roman ground level.
27:00That's where the floor was and the first levels are shops and inns.
27:04And then as you go up you get the private apartments.
27:06But you know what?
27:07You wouldn't want to be in the penthouse here.
27:14The lower floors were rented to wealthy tenants.
27:17The upper levels were for the less well-off.
27:21The apartments were smaller.
27:23The number of people in each room increased.
27:26And living conditions were just awful.
27:29The Roman writer Marshall talks about a chap who had to run up 200 steps to get up to his apartment.
27:36And what could he expect when he got there?
27:38Well, not much.
27:39Cramped living conditions.
27:41Dirty.
27:42Probably a leaky roof.
27:43Vermin.
27:45Our families, groups of labourers all squeezed into these spaces.
27:48I mean, to call these places homes is overkill.
27:52They were a place to put your head down at night.
27:55Not a very pleasant one even then.
27:59But the people of Rome still lived in filth.
28:13All rubbish basically just got shoved in the street.
28:15And then the public system of fountains washed it into the drains.
28:20But then, well, frankly there's the poo.
28:23At its height, the population of Rome it's estimated was producing 50,000 kilograms of excrement a day.
28:31And none of these apartments were connected directly to the drains.
28:35You had to take your chamber pot and get rid of it.
28:38More likely as not, straight out the window.
28:40The 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.
28:55Disease raged through the city.
28:57And there was no escape, even at the famous baths.
29:07The Romans loved their baths.
29:15It was a great place to relax, soak, have a massage,
29:20scrub down, chat with friends, or catch up on the gossip.
29:24It 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.
29:43They were part of the social glue that bound all Romans together.
29:54The baths were attended by rich and poor, young and old, healthy and diseased.
29:59In fact, we know that Roman doctors actually prescribed
30:02could soak in the baths for all sorts of ailments.
30:05So if you had everything from boils to rabies, from diarrhoea to tuberculosis,
30:12you came to the baths.
30:16Poor people who didn't have a slave to rub them down
30:19were encouraged to rub themselves against the walls.
30:24The Roman writer Pliny the Elder noted that scrapings taken from walls had warming properties.
30:36Long before antibiotics, these scrapings were prescribed in ointments
30:40to soothe sores and cure abscesses.
30:47The sick and the healthy bathed together because the Romans simply had no real idea of how disease spread.
30:52The only thing that seems really to have bothered them is seeing the physical signs of disease.
30:58So if you had pus-filled boils or weeping sores, then they asked you to keep your clothes on while in the baths.
31:05Sometimes they just put all the lamps out.
31:08The baths really were the perfect place to catch a disease.
31:11New strains of disease were constantly being brought into the city by traders, migrants and soldiers.
31:24You can easily see how the people of the X-tombs might have succumbed to waves of infection.
31:29To try to find out what disease might have killed them,
31:43the French team have drafted in a world expert in reconstructing ancient DNA.
31:52Johannes Krauser is a professor of paleogenetics.
31:56His 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 gravesite 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.
32:28There may be very little DNA left behind from any disease-causing microbes or pathogens.
32:37So what we want to have is the genetic material of the pathogen itself.
32:41So we're trying to find places in the skeleton that still might have the pathogen DNA to preserve.
32:47And 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.
33:00They 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
33:08where the pathogen DNA might still be present.
33:12So we can actually see that the jaw is just sticking out here.
33:14You can actually see the teeth here being exposed.
33:17And it's just perfect to actually get in here.
33:24Yes, yes, that comes out.
33:26Perfect.
33:26Look at that.
33:28Wow.
33:28Oh my god, you just need to see how wet that is as well.
33:31That's a molar on the left, lower jaw.
33:34Okay.
33:38The 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
33:56and then reconstruct the DNA, reconstruct the entire genome.
33:59We have a little bit of the pathogen DNA that we can also get out of those teeth.
34:02Johannes believes that some of the people here in the ex-tombs might have been killed
34:08by 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.
34:40Now the origins of this plague are shrouded in mystery, but there are reports that it emerged in the east,
34:46where in the early 160s AD, Lucius Verus was campaigning against the Parthians
34:52on 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,
35:10a pestilent breeze arose in a temple of Apollo from a golden casket,
35:17which a soldier had cut open, and it spread thence over Parthia and the whole world.
35:23The disease swept through the Roman army just at the time when the empire was challenged by invasions from the north.
35:35In 168 AD, the emperor brothers came here to Aquileia in northern Italy.
35:41Now Aquileia was a major trading centre, but it was also a major military centre,
35:46and it was to here that many of the Roman troops had been pulled back from the east,
35:50and it was from Aquileia that the emperors wanted to mount a campaign to push back invading tribes
35:55from the north that were threatening the Italian frontier.
35:58But when they got here, the emperors realised that the real problem wasn't the invading tribes,
36:04it was the plague.
36:13Army regiments would camp near towns and villages, and soldiers often returned home on leave.
36:21It wasn't long before the Antonine Plague passed into the civilian population.
36:34The Roman Empire was a vast, integrated, connected trading network, which also contributed to the plague being able to spread so far so quickly.
36:47It was in Italy, it was in parts of Central Europe, it was in the east, it was in Egypt,
36:51there's even one report that it made it as far as China.
36:55And of course, as the saying goes, all roads lead to Rome.
37:04When the plague struck the capital, there was panic and public hysteria.
37:19Priests were summoned and religious rites performed to purify the city.
37:23The people of the ex-tombs would have been vulnerable, just like everyone else.
37:32According to Roman consul and writer Diocasius,
37:352,000 people often died in Rome in a single day.
37:41In his books, the emperor's physician Galen describes some of the symptoms of the Antonine Plague.
37:47A fever, a rash, diarrhoea, foul-smelling faeces, an ulceration of the windpipe and dry, pustular eruptions on the skin.
37:57No one knows for sure what actual disease was responsible for the Antonine Plague.
38:06We do know it claimed more lives than any previously recorded epidemic.
38:11Across the empire, something like 5 million people were killed, up to a tenth of the entire Roman population.
38:20The plague struck in waves that lasted from AD 165 to 180, then again in 189.
38:27It'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.
38:57In his lab in Germany, Johannes and his colleague, Kirsten Boss, are trying to extract DNA from the teeth samples taken from the tombs.
39:09I drilled out the pulp from inside the tooth, which is now powder.
39:22That powder now goes into a solution where the DNA gets released from the bone.
39:27So our answer could be in that tube?
39:31I hope so very much.
39:35This process creates a mixture of billions of DNA molecules.
39:40It's a cocktail containing all manner of genetic material, but mostly soil microbes, plants and fungi that were present in the tombs.
39:49It's kind of like looking for the needle in the haystack.
39:54So you have billions of molecules that we get out of those teeth.
39:57And maybe just a few hundred come from the pathogen.
39:59So there's a lot of sorting and then there's a lot of puzzling.
40:02To isolate any fragments of DNA left over from bacteria or viral pathogens,
40:12Johannes has adapted a technique known as DNA hybridisation capture.
40:19He 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.
40:59DNA has this double strand where you have the bases facing each other and there's always this A
41:06facing with the T and you have the G facing with the C.
41:09And this creates that the famous double helix.
41:11Exactly.
41:12Everyone knows the kind of picture of DNA.
41:14And just if the right sequence kind of matches the opposite sequence,
41:18those DNA fragments will actually bind and form the double bond.
41:21If they don't match, they will not come together.
41:23It's like a magnet basically.
41:25It only kind of pulls the DNA together if the strands matches.
41:29So 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.
41:45We have not just looked for a single pathogen, but we've actually looked for hundreds of them
41:49in parallel because we don't know what has killed those people.
41:52We don't know if it was one or several pathogens that were spreading in that population during that time.
42:01And this is just the start of the process.
42:05Even if Johannes manages to isolate DNA from a disease causing bacteria or virus,
42:11it could then take months or even years of computer analysis, comparing millions of genetic sequences
42:20to identify which specific pathogen was the cause of death.
42:28He's got an incredibly difficult task ahead of him.
42:31But this technology, this science represents the best chance we have of 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.
43:01They've been doing tests on a white powder that was found in the tombs.
43:08It was very strange.
43:10At the very beginning, when we found this white material that covered the bodies,
43:16it was true that Dominique and me, our first reaction was to think of the heat.
43:23The heat used to avoid the proterifaction of the bodies and the propagation of the epidemic.
43:28It'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,
44:19legs stretched out with ankles touching.
44:24And in among the skeletons and plaster, a second curious substance was discovered.
44:30Amber was a very expensive material. It was used in burial sites to ensure
44:58a safe passage to the afterlife.
45:03But it's rarely been found in this ground-up form, and never in this quantity.
45:09In all, several kilos were recovered from the tombs.
45:13One final piece in the puzzle was nearly overlooked altogether.
45:20I was asked with Dominique. We were penchés, talking about a squelette.
45:29Then I saw the fil d'or. I said, but Dominique, did you lose a hair?
45:35She said, no, no, no. I said, in this case, I think we found a fil d'or.
45:41It was at the beginning.
45:42Could the people have been buried dressed in gold embroidered clothes?
46:04What began as just a mass of bones is beginning to come into focus a little.
46:13We've got a large number of individuals who are all carefully laid out, one by the other.
46:19Mostly adults.
46:22And then there are all these strange finds, the white powders, the red powders.
46:27And then there's the fine gold thread, what they thought to be Dominique's hair.
46:31We're getting a clear picture now of an elaborate and expensive burial ritual
46:38for what seemed to be some very wealthy and distinctive people.
46:48In Bordeaux, more clues are coming to light.
46:52One of the French team, Delphine Henry, has been studying remnants of the fabrics
46:57that were recovered from the tombs.
47:01We have different types of fabric.
47:09You can see very well that we have thick fabric,
47:13more thin fabric, and even very thin at some places.
47:19The thin fabric, very luxurious, are produced by professionals.
47:24The thick fabric are probably made by people at home.
47:32Delphine believes she can even work out where the person who made the fabrics came from.
47:38We're making a wire, and for that, we have to bend it.
47:43And tradition wants that with a fuseau, so it's the tool with which we make a wire,
47:49in the north of the Mediterranean, we hold the fuseau by the way,
47:53and most people being right, we give a torsion,
47:57which will produce a wire, what we call Z.
48:00It's incredible.
48:02It's incredible.
48:04The Z-torsion, it's European, in fact.
48:07It's a great Europe, in fact.
48:10And in the south of the Mediterranean,
48:13we will have a tendency to take the fuseau by the way,
48:16and therefore get a wire of torsion S.
48:18So, what do you think about this type of evidence,
48:28the material, the system of torsion, the color?
48:31These thick lines often come with the threads in S,
48:35so the traditions of the south of the Mediterranean.
48:38It could show that the people who have drawn to the house,
48:44women, are of the Egyptian traditions,
48:50in any case, the south of the Mediterranean.
48:52Philippe believes that this cultural connection
49:01with the southern Mediterranean can be narrowed further.
49:07In other words, the fact of covering the body,
49:11the corpse, entirely by the foot of the head,
49:15will give to the body an appearance of a mummy.
49:19This is something very special.
49:24This is really a funerary practice
49:28that comes from the North Africa.
49:34Probably in the region of Tunisie, of the Algeria,
49:37because we find a lot there.
49:38While the scientific analyses continue,
49:52there's one remaining historical avenue I want to explore.
49:59The ground directly above the X-tombs was actually a site marked out for 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, that's the Mausoleum of St Helena, Emperor Constantine's mum.
50:18But ignore it entirely for the moment, because it was built in the early 4th century AD,
50:23way after the time we're interested in.
50:26During that time, end 1st century to mid 3rd century AD,
50:30despite what it now looks like, car park, football pitch,
50:33this place was actually a really important cemetery for the emperor's personal cavalry.
50:38Now the name changes over time, but they're perhaps best known as the Equite Singulares Augusti.
50:44Equite Singulares Augusti is Latin for the emperor's chosen horsemen,
50:55a regiment founded in the 1st century AD.
51:01They are immortalised in reliefs on one of Rome's greatest landmarks,
51:06Trajan's Column, erected in AD 113.
51:09At the Museum of Roman Civilisation, copies of the scenes are laid out so we can get a closer look.
51:29The reliefs celebrate Emperor Trajan's epic battles and ultimate victory over the Dacians,
51:36now modern-day Romania, in the early 2nd century AD.
51:41Our Equites Singulares Augusti are shown no less than seven times on this column,
51:47and that's more than any other individual battle unit.
51:51Here they are heading off with the emperor Trajan into battle.
51:55These guys really were the chosen ones to share in the emperor's most successful military campaign.
52:01This is one of my favourite scenes, the Equite Singulares Augusti in full battle gear.
52:09Their helmets, their shields, their chainmail jackets on their horses,
52:12charging in behind their emperor, Trajan, who offers the horseman's salute, the open right hand.
52:20And they're coming to the rescue of the Roman troops that are being besieged over here by the Dacians.
52:26It really is the emperor, his crack cavalry, coming to the rescue.
52:35The Equites were the finest imperial horsemen.
52:39Most were foreigners, hand-picked as teenagers from across the empire.
52:44They were strong and by many accounts, very handsome warriors.
52:48To be selected was a ticket to great wealth and high status.
52:57They protected successive emperors, both in Rome and abroad,
53:01for over 200 years from the 1st to the 3rd century AD.
53:07But in AD 312, the cosy relationship between the Equites and the emperor came to an end.
53:13The Western Empire was divided by civil war, between two emperors, Maxentius and Constantine.
53:30Maxentius held Rome, but Constantine marched from the north to oust his rival.
53:38In a final showdown, the two sides faced each other at the Milvian Bridge,
53:47the entry point to Rome across the river Tiber.
53:54The Equites horsemen sided with Maxentius.
54:04But Constantine was victorious.
54:08Constantine was quite inexorable with the Equites Singularis Augustus,
54:13because they had made a big mistake,
54:16which was to kill themselves from the part of Maxentius.
54:24So they were destroyed, their bodies were destroyed by Constantine.
54:32Constantine even destroyed the Equites cemetery.
54:36All that remains are fragments of tombstones.
54:39Many now adorn the walls at the entrance to the catacomb of St. Marcellinus and St. Peter.
54:45The Ex-tombs were in use around the same time and in the same location as the former site of the Ex-tombs.
54:51of the Equites cemetery, which raises an intriguing possibility.
54:56The dates of our ex-tomb bodies overlap with those of the Ex-tombs.
55:00The Ex-tombs were in use around the same time and in the same location as the former site of the Equites cemetery,
55:02which raises an intriguing possibility.
55:05The dates of our ex-tomb bodies overlap with those of the Equites.
55:09It's unlikely that a space reserved for elites, as the Equites were, would have been used for burials of anyone completely unconnected with them.
55:15It's unlikely that a space reserved for elites, as the Equites were, would have been used for burials of anyone completely unconnected with them.
55:23It's unlikely that a space reserved for elites, as the Equites were, would have been used for burials of anyone completely unconnected with them.
55:39It's also possible that these chambers have been able to welcome the defuncts of the Equites Singulares Augusti.
55:50The people in the Ex-tombs were mostly young adults, a mixture of men and women.
55:59Now, we know from surviving tombstones that the Equites were often buried with their wives and slaves.
56:07When they were in a distance from Rome, they lived with their families.
56:11And so, here's the explanation of many women, many defuncts of female sex, that have been found in those contexts.
56:20The Equites numbered 5,000 strong.
56:26They were foreigners, selected from various occupied territories across Central Europe and also from Southern Spain and North Africa.
56:34We've got connections in the funerary ritual to the Southern Mediterranean, to North Africa, particularly to Tunisia and Algeria.
56:44The complex, elaborate and expensive funerary rituals with which they were buried, not only mark them out also as rich, particularly that amber, but also fairly distinctive.
56:55Written accounts also tell us they would dress in jackets embroidered with silver and gold thread.
57:03The Equites were wealthy, well-fed and well-connected.
57:13But when overwhelmed by waves of mass death, it's conceivable that the Equites community may have converted pre-existing underground chambers, possibly disused water systems, into a mass burial site.
57:28It's only a theory, and we may never know for sure, but from all the evidence we have at the moment, it certainly seems plausible that the ex-tombs could be the last resting place for over 2,000 of these great horsemen and their families.
57:49Soldiers chosen to protect the Roman Emperor.
57:52What I love about this investigation is the way that it's been able to put not just the flesh back on the bones, but to turn these skeletons back into real people.
58:06They came here to the Caput Mundi, the capital of the world, the kind of ancient Roman version of the American dream.
58:13And the irony is that it was also here in Rome that disease found its perfect breeding ground, and ultimately killed them.
58:33Earlier tonight, Professor Mary Beard delved into the life and times of the notorious Roman emperor and tyrant Caligula.
58:41In case you missed it, you can catch up tomorrow night at 11.20.
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