they're up to date now on the w. news i'll be back again at the top of the hour with more in the meantime don't forget you can always get the latest news and information on our website just go to d.w. dot com i mean evan steen from all of us in berlin thanks for watching. let us we were wrong when do we want it now eighty percent of americans at some point in our lives will experience hardship listening. audience.

takes machine with the technological advancement is rabbit ocean earth so rapid it's almost impossible to keep up in the space of a lifetime. we've discovered thousands of new sites from a range of different periods. the generator allows us to shop in the focus of our inquiry and pinpoint exactly when to befall the date.

in archaeology state of the art technology sometimes assumes the guise of an antiquated handcart. while archaeologists route boys in and rose and shot set up their equipment on a meadow they colleagues nearby a preparing a device that does look more high tech. the geomagnetic apparatus is so heavy it has to be towed by a vehicle both devices do the same thing only this one is larger and can survey a wider area.

a group of german and irish archaeologists have met up at the old church at screen a fifteenth century site steeped in mysticism but the church ruin is almost young compared to the anxious monuments the top the surrounding area. northwest of dublin the hill of screen is located opposite island's cultural treasure the hill of tara a millennia old place of assembly. the region is also home to giant megalithic tombs unique monuments built around three thousand b.c. by people who left nothing behind but their graves. a digital reconstruction lens an impression of the graves interiors many built in alignment with astronomical events.

the archaeologists drag the senses across the meadow to determine what lies beneath the surface. is finished on this device is to me just wide and equipped with five sensors so you can cover two to three actors a day with a device like this so it's a fast way of collecting and evaluating archaeological data. equipped with sixteen senses their colleagues magnetometer is even more effective in gathering archaeological evidence that humans were going to kill so we need to be careful here because if we swap the cables and the sensors will transmit the wrong positions. that is why we do a final change to see that everything's working so we put on course for this one so that the team is scouting for traces of ancient life underground without the intervention of a shovel it's

a noninvasive technique called prospects and. have been really it's now hooking up the geomagnetic device to the computer. the computer has the task of recording all the measurement data and showing us where we have to prospect even when we are driving across the terrain invicta tighe over to prospect in. the sixteen cents a device is used to take g.m. magnetic measurements of the ground. wondering what i did to get. the landscape hard as a history that began thousands of years ago the archaeologist job description calls the knowledge not just of history but technology to an. today it helps if they

don't mind being followed by curious horses we don't know exactly was where the surface found it and we also want to know that or more about the history prior to the earliest documentary sources because we have some reference to say from the the eighth century in the tenth century referring to the screen being a place of burial. as courts macross and showers are exact position. with the help of g.p.s. data the archaeologists can steer their vehicle across the meadow with the precision they need to generate a comprehensive ground image. the sensors dragging behind their vehicle measure the earth's magnetic field which lies underground like an invisible veil the presence of walsall grads alters the pattern of magnetism in the soil. and that is exactly what the senses can measure the computer registers these disturbances to reveal

a long forgotten structure a shadow of the past. seventeen hundred kilometers further east in berlin work is underway on a different title digital archaeology in game developer thomas brennan studio for virtual reality. it looks like a game but it isn't. the game designers are working with berlin archaeologist i call maya hit technology makes ancient history their cooperation has yielded some surprising discoveries for example the hittites had not unusual reading technique. these are here for this one from left to right this one from right to left this one from left to right this again from right to left then back again yeah. like in wavy lines that's awesome.

is it's a business in that archaeologists are anchored in past centuries and that applies to the methodology to. be actually the rapid development of computer technology in general but also a virtue archaeology is still something we need to get our heads around. on come on and when i tell people i'm working with a game designer they just shut down because gaming technology sounds so frivolous but in fact this work is just the opposite views on what this is a goddess with his mom. this looks like a video game but in fact it's a highly accurate copy of a real temple it's the temple of the weather god from aleppo one of the most important day it is in the ancient middle east the oldest parts of the temple date from the third millennium b.c. with visualisation software the operator can make the sun rise and set allowing for

a view of the complex in changing daylight the viewer gets a sense of space size and proportion. does have provided it's done it's with the we are not really standing in this temple we can judge and see things very differently than we could on a normal computer monitor one of them really can computer morning couldn't. just the fact that i can stand here and for example squat down and actually get a three dimensional view of the object is not something i can do on a normal computer monitor at all. aleppo in syria the temple was located in the heart of the city in the medieval city del from twenty twelve rebels holed up inside use the citadel to fire on government troops the result five thousand years of history turned to dust in a brutal civil war. in early twenty levin the temple was still intact coal mines

team from the lynn was on site to scan the complex security in the country still seems so stable that the professor didn't just bring along his students he also took his young daughter on the trip. to him you know below amelia you'll see another representation of the weather god mounting his chariot here he's presented his combat ready. what's this that's the symbol for god and that's a makes. initially it was so only research but the dasher acquired new significance through the ravages of the syrian civil war. don't have to be a patsy these and. we had an unimaginably large amount of data but when the civil war erupted and we couldn't get there anymore we were left wondering what do we do now. with mommy gets ordered it's sounds almost cynical

now but we were in an ideal position we were the only team of near eastern archaeologists to have scanned everything in three d. . it was a ton of good fortune in the midst of terrible misfortune that don't look. the temple was badly damaged in the war but at least its memory has been digitally preserved. the scanned data is so precise the inscriptions are even more legible in virtual reality than they were in real life. at sea he commented on top when i learned to dig i had a piece of paper and a pencil that was all like to come here today we can use a scanner that is much more accurate than any reproduction on a sheet of paper lists of of course that also gives rise to new fields of inquiry

into can see how to handle it harder still to scour. the generation of exact copies is a field that also interests maritime archaeologists all over the world measuring and marking shipwrecks underwater is one of their most demanding and arduous tasks than the conditions are not always as good as they are here in the baltic sea off the german island through can. only exceptional shipwrecks a salvaged and restored like the fourteenth century braman kong one of the world's largest ship finds. it took eighteen years of expensive conservation work to restore it to its full glory to learn more about this merchant ship from thirty nine archeologists created a digital model of the cog. was on

a ship sponsored to us was the construction of a ship like this is quite specialising everything in the vessel is interconnected if you move one part by just two centimeters and it distorts the entire shape of the ship so the computer gives you an overview. but you're not dealing with a twenty three metre long ship you don't have to search the entire vessel for the place responsible for a deformed instead you can clearly see how every step you take impacts the entire structure and check whether a given step is change the overall shape. the technology allowed ray searches for example to find out how the coke was silent without ever having to lower it into water. because. there is a shipwreck off reuben that is not with recovering but it is never the less of interest to on here ologists. dust is on the

want special about this find is that it dates from the middle or perhaps even the early sixteenth century a period from which very few ships have been found and there is evidence that the word may have come from hamburg the bizarre herds are also some books dom's all. of them. even today certain details of the ship can be more clearly rendered if they're copied underwater by hand. but the main job is done by a special camera it takes hundreds of images that are then used to generate a three d. computer model of the shipwreck while the wood has been perfectly preserved in the nutrient pool water of the baltic the current has a road the ring down to its floor. david stop by as that's the great thing

about it is you never see the wreck like this on a dive because visibility is poor or. you can create a model like there's even if you have a visibility of just thirty centimeters. you just have to take enough photos so they overlap then you're looking at something no one has ever seen in that shape or form. for example the frigates ballast stones that still lie along the ship floor without them the vessel couldn't have carried its cargo of heavy canons. one of the most spectacular exhibits in the collection of the museum of islamic art goes largely unnoticed by visitors for the digital world is coming to its rescue can i call myers latest project is the richly carved wood done that was originally housed in the knesset palaces of the world famous alhambra in grenada spain in

berlin the dome is forced to lead a wallflower existence for conservation reasons. because if you believe the dome is very poorly illuminated here in berlin. visitors can appreciate the way they could amid the light conditions in the alhambra them so our aim is to recreate those lighting conditions virtually to allow visitors both here in the berlin museum and visitors to the alhambra and experience of the dome in its original context. invasion contex a thief. in eight hundred ninety one the banker arthur fund grinnell was granted permission by the spanish authorities to move the john to germany he had acquired a small palace on the alhambra from a spanish opera singer and later bequeath it to the spanish state but he decided to keep the don't feed himself for a time it decorated his villa in berlin before he donated it to the museum.

the dome was originally painted and gilded it's crafted from cedar and popular wood and consists of dozens of parts. a star ornament of heavenly beauty. one of the world's most important prehistoric landscapes is located in a bend of the highlands river boy no if west of dublin. the passage graves of new grange down and now would designated a unesco world heritage site in one thousand nine hundred three the central neolithic mound of now has a succumb france the two hundred seventy five meters and is surrounded by twenty smaller tombs. the significance of numerous engraved stones remains a mystery many stories and legends are associated with the enormous mounds they are said to be the birthplace of heroes the hidden dwellings of elves and kings.

the mount graves of newgrange doubt the now are all the katyn within sight of each other. it's long been standard practice in archaeology to use drones to get an overview of the landscape the drones gather data to build digital terrain models on the computer sites with churches dating from the middle ages often have an older heritage invisible underground. venice plex a good idea of all rulers seeking to exert political military or religious control over a territory but occupy any place that carried a particular significance so we use these old science as a starting point because it's easy to imagine that with christianize ation these ancient sites were chosen as places to build churches. and in fact when it comes time to evaluate the dr from the magnetic survey the

archaeologists discover round structures that appear to predate this small medical village. the lights and they may be traces of circular graves in closing burial mounds or they could be round house. in that distribution these objects make no reference to the stitch complex so one can assume that they date from another period so i play with. discovering hidden relics without taking draws on technology that originated in military applications. him to give us a colorful certainty of physical methods are based on measuring differences in the earth's magnetic field which to the technology comes from hunting submarines which could be located underwater because they created disturbances in the magnetic field . but this is a method that we now use in a modified form in archaeology or look you've been what's an.

axle podge loosely is surrounded by traces of the past his work focuses on the mountain plateau of glauber need frankfurt that was first settled thousands of years ago the celts in particular left their mark on the area today it is known that the plateau was surrounded by a magnificent wall it did not serve as a fortification but the slope was steep enough rather it was designed to signal the power and splendor of the celtic princes certainty on the began here in the so called merely to gauge with the emergence of the first farmers and cattle breeders in the region of the better of the first settlement up here the missiles back culture had no ramparts development continued into the late bronze age and by the early are an age around five hundred b.c. each of it was settled by the first people we could classify as celts and they were also the first. to fortify this plateau for professed on. an in conspicuous aerial

photo taken in one thousand nine hundred eight open the door to one of the most spectacular discoveries in archaeology in germany archaeologists have been using aerial photography for decades to identify structures in the ground but this method only yields results following long periods of drought. are a lot in the field here you can see a darker structure relatively clearly in the great order which indicates that the grain is being supplied with more moisture in this particular place but order that so it can be assumed that there is a ditch there that retains the moisture better as a whole can count. the grave of a county prince was discovered deep in the field at the foot of the glasberg the corresponding burial mound had been plowed away long ago the huge hill has since been reconstructed and a museum installed behind the hill. hole. a life

size sandstone figure was found near the grave. the figure was in doubt with decorative chains and rings it was lying in a ditch together with fragments from other statues the celtic prince is crowned by a strange head piece. a golden chain was found in the prince's grave the stone figure was depicted wearing exactly the same chain. it's likely that the stone were a prince of glau bag is the exact likeness of a person who lived more than two and a half thousand years ago. the body in the tomb was found with the same strange headpiece as the one crowning the stone figure. in subsequent years ariel archaeology has made further strides. we are made into

classes and in addition to classical aerial archaeology now carried out digitally we also have other computer assisted methods of nondestructive testing to obtain information about archaeological remains. in the law since often. the most important of these methods is the lie down scan the scanner is fitted to an airplane and surveys the landscape below light as scanning was originally used by surveyors for archaeologists the data has proved a quantum leap in knowledge even if light outer rain models look somewhat on spectacular at first glance. what makes the lidar scan so invaluable is the methods ability to remove the noise of trees and vegetation from the data.

driven off the off the ground penetrating radar shoots electromagnetic pulses into the earth from airplanes and sometimes helicopters these signals are reflected back by any underground structures and the difference in the laser return times makes it possible to create a three d. image of the terrain it works in the forest as well because enough laser like can penetrate through the trees so that we achieve a relatively exact surface image even in the forest come on this image of you can follow the course of the roman lemus the border between the roman empire and none occupied regions of the sklar this here may have been a watch tower for. you and here in the forest the remnants of a field of burial mounds this one here could theoretically be a burial mound that was opened in the past my guess would be sometime in the eighteenth century. at the time people typically entered from the top we call it

funneling so they dug a funnel into the mound to extract burial objects or skeletons and what remained where these small holes at the top of the mount these faint traces indicate that it's what happened here and also was an actual post lucian who discovered a large burial mount very close to the grave of the celtic prince a tiny dot on the scanner image not visible as a grave amid the thicket of the forest multiple layers of our past lie beneath the ground we walk on we just can't see it digital archaeology makes the invisible visible. in ireland to the number of discovered monuments has increased one hundred fold with the use of modern prospecting methods one particularly spectacular example is the hill of tara the mysterious national treasure it was the seat of irish kings and pagan

priests at the height of their power. for the hell of tara exudes an air of magic an island. back in the nineteenth century an irishman would gather here for that and swear a holyoke not to rest until the land had won its independence. and there was a reason they did it here in the town. today self proclaimed druids inhabit the area at night you can hear them playing their harps christians built a church. ruth boys in rows and shot systematically stride the length and breadth of the metro on the expansive plateau with them magnetometer.

here in tara it's a safe bet they'll find something interesting and they do the digital data shows numerous circles below the surface grave mounds or maybe sites of assembly. when we first started investigating tat there were about twenty five monuments known these mines that are visible but through geophysical survey we know there's more than one hundred monuments a lot of which you can't see above ground are buried beneath the surface. old maps can give clues to vanish structures. the people of tara lived thousands of years before the invention of writing they

recorded their history in the ground and crafted sacred landscapes that only need to be deciphered. a deep channel on the plateau was probably once the processional route it's clearly visible on the line down scanned it leads directly to the in a century the ratna re a large ring more complex in fact a procession away and believe this is the route that the king elect would take on his way up to the summit of the hill of tara to be inaugurated. to the left and right of the processional route ramparts will built to direct the marches gays to kimani humans. interestingly there are a number of gaps along the length of the banks in which you can get a view out on very significant monuments and in particular borough monuments. so it seems prehistoric builders knew all about visual effects.

but they also fear in fairness that's what i personally find particularly appealing is that up here you're afforded a wider view of the landscape surrounding tara and there are similar monuments on many of these mountains and held tops. not in the abundance we find on the heloc tara that is truly unique but there are also individual monuments which ultimately may have a common point of reference. and i never saw. the hill of ward as another sign that harbors a mysterious century students from dublin are digging their way into the hill at precisely defined points according to legend had a wing of each nation on the hill of ward a pagan festival of fire on the night of october thirty first. and in fact the students do find a large amount of animal bones an indication that people here may have come together for large celebrations with copious amounts of food and irish

archaeologists stephen davis has surveyed the hill but he was unable to find anything with g.m. magnetics he has a simple explanation one of the probably isn't magnetic survey here which is what we might use across the rest of it is all this heavy burning that we've seen behind you with all this heavy burning it really is very very magnetic just because it's been burned so the whole thing really gripes up and you can't see anything at all so with with resistance in this case so we can see that this big mound behind us here is actually defined by a stone wall which is actually what we're taking out now in this case so that's why that's why we dock here we've dug a small section into the side of this mound with the stone wall in the center. geo electric surveys measure the soil resistance and create images of structures underground only now can researches identify the various walls and ditches in the complex. where the rituals really celebrated in large bonfires ignited

here overnight on october the thirty first archaeological clues could confirm the theory. is that they were burning. ok so the burning took place before whatever happened here the fallen down onto itself this extends all the way over here. but have a fire best of all here now but it's hypothesized out of fire for still going back almost into the eye and there are mediæval references to create a major it's meeting here in lighting a great file five but those references would be several hundred years off it would have happened so we we were treated with a certain skepticism but we are finding a lot of evidence of fire so who knows. aside from graves and ritual sites the people who built these complexes left only one thing behind the bodies of them murdered kings there both bodies are on display at the national museum of ireland

in dublin the graves and their dead at the only testimony of early irish people a people who had no written language. like in tara a processional route can be made out in the digital data from the hill of ward a road that is no longer visible in the meadows. the same was true of the celtic burial ground on the glauber bag. here it's not just the burial mounds. been reconstructed but also the processional route leading up to the hill it was flanked by deep trenches and originally much longer this is clear from the digital data a geomagnetic survey has revealed the roads further course.

today it's known that the road was bordered by a high wall which was up to twelve meters wide and the banks visitors could only see the great mound after turning the corner researchers believe the hill was even whitewashed like an island the structures here were designed with visuals in mind and astronomically aligned. others it's kind of it's not a road that marks a path from a to b. it's aligned with the southern major lunar standstill an astronomical phenomenon that occurs every eighteen point six years so it was possible to be five units of time without a calendar without to watch over a longer period of time is youngest. the

isle hundred in grenada there are a few other sites in europe that draw as many tourists. every day only five thousand visitors are allowed to enter the castle the tickets are sold out weeks in advance i call my feels privileged to work here. oh my and his team have been working for days at the plant see odell part on the villa the belonged to a sultan then to an opera singer and then a german banker from berlin it was from here that our tour fund winner removed the decorative tone in one thousand nine hundred one. it was replaced by a poor copy. here's this one to give

it's really a great feeling to be able to get a sense of the dom's original setting with me because this. one really the aromas the views through the windows all make for an entirely different experience than if you're standing in a museum and looking up in a dimly lit room the good old. every detail of the chamber is carefully documented with a high performance scanner. watching the lengths being gone to here one can't help but ask why berlin doesn't just return the dome to its original home the archaeologists call such considerations a historical. people previously gonna believe that the dome was brought to berlin legally there's no question about it because it now has its own story and that story includes that of its previous owner the german banker who acquired it and brought it to germany. if you don't know which he incorporated it into his own

villa there and then by a detour that arrived at the berlin museum in this story belongs to the objects provenance it can't be ignored his wish list significance of the future. the digital reconstruction reveals the changes long lost splendor the original design housed in the berlin museum has been integrated into this virtual reality experience. the dome from this chamber was one of the oldest components of the alhambra probably cost around thirteen twenty. even if the dome was still in chinese here the tower chamber is too small to accommodate the alhambra is five thousand daily visitors no one would ever get a glimpse of eighteen are. you.

running. in places where the walls are too high for the scanner another method is used photo grama tree a three d. model is generated using thousands of overlapping photos principio blob this is in principle i think it's a good idea to upload three d. images of these objects to the internet so. because then everyone can access them to grant freedom. in ireland scientists are a step ahead many scanned objects have already been posted on the internet.

before the german archaeologists return home they take a few soil samples it's an inexpensive substitute for next ovation the researches are in doubt an area dotted with prehistoric burial mounds in mediæval farms a power cable runs underground through a small medieval settlement geomagnetic down to helps archaeologists of boyd hitting an electric cable rather than a medieval d.h. . doesn't solve the article that's the big difference today in the ideal scenario i already know a tremendous amount about the site before i start my day and that enables me to plan a dig very precisely generally the areas of excavation a much smaller than they used to be because i simply don't have to search as much as i used to with was looking was. the archaeologists are

drilling at a location they suspect hard as a waste it like modern garbage bins their historical previous s's say a lot about the living conditions of the people who lived here. the team can tell immediately that their technicians have hit the right spot. so when you're going to do what you can see quite well here is the lowest layer that we still had on the drill head and that there is charcoal innit. so we already know we're in the middle of the occupation layer i'm a bit of a but i can't say i'm surprised because we already knew from the geomagnetic data that there's a structure here which we've already been able to classify fairly accurately. and if we hadn't found this would be an indication that we've messed up our measurements. but it was accurate. it's not up to.

the others is a few to correct a lot of information without once driving our shovel into the soil and what is particularly satisfying is what we found in the core sample namely charcoal. through radio carbon dating we'll be able to establish how all this charcoal airs which doesn't mean we'll know how all the ditches that's how we proceed one step at a time and of course when the botanists then examine the charcoal forest will know what type of trees were burned here ah. the soil samples undergo further testing in frankfurt this small pieces of charcoal from the historical way spit a treated with the same ten to love and care as any ancient ceramic shot

finally the soil is pulsed with x. rays to break down its chemical components. rassmann is hunting for a very specific element. a mensch there fired him you know on the a human excretes about one kilogram a fast for us per year in cattle it's about eighty kilograms. or if we have a lot of phosphorous it's probable that it's from the feces of humans and animals. so it's an early indicator of the length of time this spot was settled and yesterday carter was the segment used for a short time or a longer duration the higher the phosphorus impact the higher the probability that the settlement was used for a long time even vaguely like that site or go to foreigners. with their high tech equipment archaeologists have pinpointed many places where they could dig but they don't because digging destroys traces that hold out the promise of key insights with future as yet undeveloped methods you have you know

and if. we shoulder a responsibility in humans archaeology is a finite field besides do not grow back and things that have been excavated are lost to research. unfortunately this is an inherent part of archaeological excavation in now if you look at it also comes the. digital archaeology is the future of historical research but even today we can't do everything on a computer justina you know we're standing here in the landscape and we feel what's unique about it we see the hill of tara we see the topography we get a holistic sense of the place but it's not possible to reproduce that in a virtual world in which technology provides us with useful tools but the archaeologist still has to do field work.

you know that this week's highlights. visit with the legendary ladies' man that has another museum in venice. as home with the vikings to move headship side heights a bit and down the valley. they did it in the oldest restaurant in the world the sabrina did the teen imagery of. your woman just in thirty minutes on t w.

crate yourself. interior design channel on. how do you want to. discover your concept discover it with close. to one hundred lives the ideals of the box are more relevant today than they were a hundred years ago missionaries reshapes things to come to ball about people or students sign is a way of shaping society. with ideas that are part of. our homes world this week on g.w. .

this is the w. news live from berlin the u.s. president says he's ready to compromise donald trump comes up with a plan to end the longest government shutdown in u.s. history and to get his mexican border wall built a short time ago but the democrats say no we'll tell you why and also coming up next how did it top spin the vice president of nigeria. and not one but soon no shows for nigeria's historic presidential debates made their president nor he.