Landscape Mysteries
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- Episode
- Britain Before the Ice
- Broadcast Info
- 2003 (29 mins)
- Description
- Following the successful BBC2 series "Talking Landscapes", Professor Aubrey Manning embarks on a new set of journeys in which he follows clues in the geology, natural history, and archaeology of different parts of the British Isles in an attempt to solve mysteries arising in the landscape.
Aubrey journeys back nearly 30,000 years, to a Britain before the last great ice sheets covered the country at the height of the ice age, and conjures up the landscape of this lost world.
At the Oxford Natural History Museum, Chris Petit shows Aubrey the ancient remains of a human (known as the ‘Red Lady’, although male) dating back to this period.
Aubrey also meets scientists, such as bone expert Mike Richards, involved in The Ancient Human Origins of Britain (AHOB) project, an ongoing collaborative effort involving archaeologists, palaeontologists, and geologists at a number of different British Institutes. Key questions include the environmental nature of the earliest human occupation of Britain, and whether Britain was truly abandoned by humans between 22,000 and 13,000 years ago.
Aubrey’s investigation leads to a picture of adaptable human communities migrating across the continuous tundra landscape of northern Europe, at that time unbroken by the North Sea or English Channel.
ice age Britain Oxford Natural History Museum Red Lady bone experts AHOB project human migration tundra landscape of Northern Europe - Genre
- History; Geology; Natural History
How to cite this record
The Open University, "Landscape Mysteries". https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ou/search/index.php/prog/6736 (Accessed 10 Jan 2025)