The Mystery Of Ancient London's First Bridge | Time Team | Odyssey 

Yes. That's why no subsequent archaeology shows can equal its popularity or enjoyability. Alice Roberts has a sense of humour but must be careful because often she's dealing with a variety of people, often strangers, often exhausted dig directors who've been slogging through their projects for months or years, and the excitement draining away months ago. Others have some "professional" presenter, who when male has conventional good looks and seems more interested in presenting himself and who seems to be trying too hard to convey the same enthusiasm for a diversty of subjects he'd just encountered that day. Others are tediously earnest and concerned with social justice.

Well, they knew how to extract ore from rock and smelt bronze, along with how to cast bronze into tools afterwards. Pile driving seems simple by comparison. Anatomically they were no different than us and just as smart in an IQ sort of way, just not as advanced technically. Technology usually advances by improving an idea or existing invention, which in turn leads to more ideas and inventions. Obviously the rate of technological advances was slower during this time period because most of their time was taken up just trying to survive. I would imagine the average life span was much, much lower as well. Just image the daily work load of a bronze age farmer, especially considering the primitive tools they had to use compared to what we have today. It must have been brutal.......

I may be able to offer a guess as to their thought process - a guess only, mind you, but I am going to assume our ancestors used a somewhat similar thought process approach to engineering this as I do with computers: at some point they (or their ancestors) probably had a need to place small wood posts or stakes in the ground; somebody figured out that it was easier to place them in the ground if you sharpened one end, and then beat on the other end with a rock. When it came to building this bridge, they decided to take the same approach, just appropriately scaled up. While scaling up the sharpened stakes into posts pointed on the bottom was fairly straightforward, the difficulty became how to scale up that rock to a size suited to beating the larger post into the ground; the "rock" part of the equation was straightforward stonework which they were quite capable of doing (this was not long after the "Stone Age" after all), so the question became how to raise and lower the weight - the involvement of a rope would have been a given, most likely. The application of the tripod was fairly obvious, if it hadn't already been developed (perhaps for use in handling large stones as part of Megalithic architecture), and if not, simple trial and error and logic would have been applied to figure it out - one leg won't enable you to hang the weight over the post, two legs won't stand on their own, but the addition of a third leg is just the ticket. The use of additional wooden beams for use as a guide was probably the final addition - someone may have thought of it after a brief trial without them, or may have looked at it beforehand and figured they would be helpful - but were likely added to control the fall of the weight. And suddenly they invented the pile driver (and possibly the tripod). At least, that is how I think they figured it out: something basic on a small scale was applied as a basic principle to a larger problem, and the application was developed by breaking the problem down into smaller pieces and solving each in turn. We still do it all the time in engineering.

They had the same brains that we do. They figured things out through the same cognitive responses. It's surreal for me to ponder that the Bronze Age people who built it were my literal ancestors.

RIGHT !!!!!

have you ever done anything ? how do you do it? have you ever watched a crow use made devices to get at food.? no animal starts from the start. we have ''instinctive wit. and learned wit.

Could they use sonar or something like that to "see" what is under the water?

They said it could be a jetty. Same thing.

@@patricktracy1966 I live on a boat. A jetty is a water control structure, not a dock.

@@rhettoracle9679 a jetty (at least in British English) is a wooden or stone structure built into the water at the edge of the sea, a lake or a river and is used by people getting on and off boats (Cambridge Dictionary). You are right in that it also has the meaning as a structure to protect from waves.

​@@rhettoracle9679not in the UK. Please stop assuming American usage is the only option.

@@catzkeet4860 My comments are based on 60+ years of boating around 4 continents and through hundreds of rivers in more than 40 countries , so I'm limited to those observations and experiences.

The river might be rather stable over thousands of years, or just happen to be roughly in the same position now as it was then, moving elsewhere and back in the meantime.

@@HappyBeezerStudios 'rather surprised' does not imply that I think they are lying, it just means that I am surprised.

The river is radically different in some places, where there are buildings, it really varies. And it would be enourmously difficult to damn and pump out the area, partly because the Thames is tidal so high tide varies from day to day, and because of the environmental impact that would have. Archaeology isn't always the priority

@@nicolawebb6025 I wasn't talking about damming up the entire Thames, just a small area, maybe 15' X 15'

@@PtolemyJones I realise that, it would still be called a damn even for a small area.

They could, if this wasn't filmed 15+ years ago.

@@paulfisher8226 coffer dams are very old themselves. but they also could have brought in floodlights and had a second half of dig time each day also. this is some made for tv drama I think

I don't think the environmental types would go for that.

​@@robwilliams287😂 frustrated soap writer are you? I'd imagine it was much simpler than that. Try, money. Time Team was already a hugely expensive show to produce..... Given that they only have the tagline "3 days" they weren't going to be able to do much more than scratch the surface(the idea was always that TT would focus attention onto a site, so that the ball could be picked up by others to do the in depth investigations) the huge expense of a coffer dam and associated pumps etc, was probably never going to be a possibility.

@@catzkeet4860 frustrated soap writer ? Idk where you get that from. Everyone knows that the whole 3day concept was for dramatic impact I was replying to the idea of building a coder dam, which by itself would have taken much more than three days to build

There are millions of them lying around, but if the area is otherwise unremarkable, nobody will organize and finance a dig to look for them. Some of them are found by accident, most of them will never be found.

Probably didn't get permission. Much easier to get dig permissions for a weekend, than it would be to get permission to dam off a section of the bank. Especially when they said they had limited digging space due to environmental restrictions.

maybe official permit last only for that long

@@shlby69m I can't enjoy the premise of the show without knowing that answer definitely you know?

I feel like it's a self imposed time limit they put on themselves for the TV show, but honestly have no idea. Either way it sucks that only do/show 3 days for their excavations. Sometimes they are just getting to the good parts on day 3 and I want to see more 😢

@@philinator71 yeah it seems a waste of time and our interest to take it to day 3 only to leave us hanging. Like a guy that almost gets you to orgasm only to leave a mess and we'll you know, no bang for our efforts

Mick and co pitched the series to the TV execs as a three day dig. They figured they couldn't convince anyone that a live archeology show would be interesting enough to gain a following, and giving themselves three days added a sense of urgency and suspense. If they couldn't crack it in 3 days they would either encourage other archeologists to continue the work, or possibly return to it in a later episode/special.

THEY DID EXTRACT IT, NO NEED TO TAKE THEM ALL JUST NEED HALF OF IT TO STUDY IT.

Because that is when it was filmed.

There probably was someone, but when the new technique is so much more useful, it would spread.

The bronze age flint wasn't as good as the stone age pieces though, since they'd adapted to working with bronze they lost the techniques of working with flint.

He actually said exactly the opposite. 36:05 "No Bronze Age person was capable of making regular blades like that. No way."

I read that in Phil's voice. It sounds like Phil. Lol

I agree wholeheartedly. Not only that, bronze was a valuable commodity not to be thrown away.

If you listen to that guy everything was ritual/offering/religious based. Basically it sounds according to him that the people back then had nothing else to do. Not like they would have been just trying to survive most the time! The last bit with him on it, he was going on about religious aspects and it was like the other people in the discussion were ignoring him.

@@BobbieSmith46 That is the default when we don't know the purpose of something. Can't get any "practical" reason together? Might be a spiritual thing then.

@HappyBeezerStudios if you can, check out a book called "Motel of The Mysteries" for a comedic take on everything has religious connotations.

Time team started at a time when the general public had some pretty nasty attitudes towards archaeologists. Modern archaeology was becoming a science rather than being referred to as relic hunters or antiquarians (those who simply remove artifacts without recording where it was found) . The environment in which the artifacts or other evidence is found in is just as important as, sometimes more important than, removing an artifact. Also any archaeological survey will be required to record the results of the survey before removing any found items. The English Heritage authorities are in charge.

@@dotcassilles1488 yup, the context of artifacts is important

PEOPLE LIKE YOU WHY ARMATURE ARCHAEOLOGIST ARE HATED BY SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY. THIS IS A SCIENTIFIC EN DEVOUR, NOT A TOMB ROBBER THAT JUST DIG EVERYTHING UP. CONTEXT ARE EVERYTHING IN ARCHAEOLOGY, IF THERE IS NO CONTEXT THEN YOU CANT DATE THE STUFF THAT YOU DIG, IT CAN JUST BE SOMEONE PUTTING AN OLD LOG YESTERDAY TO TRICK PEOPLE. ALL THE MUD, GRAVEL, SILT AND EVERY ORGANIC STUFF AROUND THAT LOG GAVE THE CONTEXT FOR THE ARTIFACT. AMATEUR ARCHAEOLOGIST LIKE THE ONE THAT DUG ALL THE STUFF IN ANCIENT EGYPT IN 19 AND EARLY 20TH CENTURY ARE THESE TYPES OF CRIMINAL WHO JUST BLASTED OPEN ANCIENT COFFIN AND TOMBS AND TOOK EVERYTHING OUT WITHOUT ANY CONTEXT. THEY DID NOT CAREFULLY STUDY EVERY SINGLE PEACE OF STUFF AROUND THE ARTIFACT AND JUST CHUCKED THEM AWAY WHEN IN REALITY WE CAN KNOW A LOT ABOUT THE ARTIFACT FROM THESE CONTEXT ESPECIALLY THE ORGANIC MATTER. BECAUSE WE CAN ONLY DATE STUFF WITH RADIOCARBON BY TAKING SAMPLE FROM ORGANIC MATTERS.

or fishing, there is water after all

@@HappyBeezerStudios idk maybe fishing was a religious practice. Something something it was a religious site lol

@@Ulfhednir9 when in doubt, it's ceremonial :)

They sound like they were pushed straight down after being broken though, not like they were at angles and had been complete when placed.

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