13. Grand Designs Writ Large - Silbury Hill, Wiltshire
Neil Oliver: News, Comment, History
Fat Belly Films
4.7 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 17 August 2020
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week Neil travels to the largest artificial, prehistoric mound in Europe.
Half a million tons of chalk were used by our Neolithic ancestors to build Silbury Hill. Neil explores this colossal monument, the mystery and myths that surround it and the role it played in the lives of the people who constructed it. Built at a time when our ancestors had moved from being hunter gathers to farmers and were starting to make marks on the landscape, it’s an incredibly powerful statement that shouts ‘we are here’!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The 15 million pound Lotto Super Saturday jackpot must be won this Saturday. |
| 0:04.5 | Or thousands of you will win a share of the prize. |
| 0:06.7 | But who will it be? |
| 0:07.7 | Maybe Raj, watching the racewalk and thinking I could do that. |
| 0:10.6 | Well speed walk down the shop and get yourself a ticket. |
| 0:13.1 | Lotto will you be next play in store or on app the national lottery account terms |
| 0:17.6 | rules and procedures apply players must be 18 or over. 4,000,000 years ago, people were building places where they could, apart from anything else, |
| 0:31.6 | rely on some kind of contact with their fellow human beings. |
| 0:34.6 | I think that's moving. |
| 0:36.9 | That that needs has never gone away and in some ways in the 21st century it's been made even |
| 0:41.3 | more intense. |
| 0:47.0 | In this week's podcast, we're traveling in a landscape swirling with myths and legends to a time when our ancestors had moved |
| 0:58.0 | from being hunter-gatherers to farmers and're starting to make marks on the landscape. With colossal effort, |
| 1:08.4 | they built the largest artificial prehistoric mound in the whole of Europe. |
| 1:13.0 | A powerful statement that shouts, |
| 1:16.0 | We are here. |
| 1:18.0 | I'm stepping out across Britain to discover 100 remarkable places that have shaped you, me and the whole world. |
| 1:30.0 | I'm Neil Oliver and this is my love letter to the world's largest stone circle at |
| 1:49.9 | Avery. Where's the next stop on our journey? Well, we're still in Wiltshire at a place that's |
| 1:56.9 | full of intrigue and unanswered questions. When the first farmers in these islands were beginning to make sense of the world, |
| 2:06.0 | the stars, the seasons, creation and their place within it, |
| 2:11.0 | they built the extraordinary neolithic mound that we call Silbury Hill. |
... |
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