Cold Case - Ipswich Man
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00:00Britain's finest unit for forensic investigation has a groundbreaking new mission, a mission
00:16that will put the full arsenal of modern forensics to the ultimate test.
00:21The first time the cold case team will strive to put a face to some extraordinary human
00:27remains from the long distant past.
00:30It's not the kind of face that children would happily look at, it's the kind of face that
00:34children would cry at, and that's quite sad for someone who's so very young.
00:39Forensic anthropology, facial reconstruction and painstaking research will open new windows
00:44on history, as they reconstruct the lives of people not seen for centuries.
00:53This historical research is allowing me to investigate people's experiences at different
00:58times throughout history.
00:59He certainly had a nasty crack to the top of his head.
01:02That must have been so painful.
01:05So we've got the face, the facial reconstruction, and we've added some textures.
01:09Fantastic.
01:10That is just superb.
01:15The team's latest case surrounds a puzzling skeleton discovered in a medieval Christian
01:20burial ground in Ipswich.
01:23The archaeologists who found the body believe the man is from Africa.
01:28This is really important.
01:30What was he doing there?
01:31What event could have brought an African to medieval Ipswich, and what led to his demise?
01:36I think I may just have found a cause of death.
01:41The investigation unearths evidence from the 13th century that will challenge the view
01:45of Britain's ethnic past.
01:47It's amazing.
01:48It's just, you know, it's what gets scientists excited.
01:54Is this skeleton irrefutable proof of an African presence in medieval England?
01:58And if so, who is he?
02:18The Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification at the University of Dundee.
02:25The forensics team is about to start work on a curious skeleton presumed to be male
02:30and African.
02:31It was excavated from a medieval burial ground in Ipswich in the 1990s.
02:37But his identity and his story are a mystery.
02:42The first stage of the investigation is for Head of Unit Professor Sue Black to examine
02:46the skeleton, along with her colleague Dr. Xanthi Mallet.
02:50Excavation medieval burial site in Ipswich.
02:52Ipswich.
02:53What search report on the site suggests that the skull showed sub-Saharan African characteristics.
02:58OK.
02:59They record every detail.
03:02And Sue is immediately struck by what could be a clue to confirming the skeleton's ethnic
03:07origin.
03:08Give it a drape.
03:09OK.
03:10Gosh, it's very wide.
03:11Look at the width.
03:12Huge.
03:13Huge pallet.
03:14You know, that's a jaw flaring that Tom Cruise would be very proud of.
03:18Yeah.
03:19Beautiful.
03:20Absolutely beautiful.
03:21It was at Ipswich?
03:22Mm-hmm.
03:23But before tackling the complex issue of his possible ancestry, they begin by putting an
03:29age to the man at time of death.
03:31Well, we're definitely in the adult category.
03:35When you're very young, they're quite far apart, and you can see them really clearly.
03:40And as you get older, they ossify, and they sort of merge and fuse together.
03:46And they've started to disappear round at the back here.
03:50And that's an indication of age.
03:52So we've definitely got a mature adult here.
03:54We've not necessarily got a young adult here.
03:56We've got a mature adult here.
03:59The archaeologists who discovered the skeleton classified it as sub-Saharan African.
04:04And the shape of its jaw would seem to fit with that.
04:08Not an overly prognathic jaw, but it is a little bit prognathic.
04:12And I think we'd be very happy to agree with her classification.
04:16And I think it's very interesting.
04:18And I think it's very interesting.
04:20And I think it's very interesting.
04:22And I think it's very interesting.
04:24It is a little bit prognathic.
04:25And I think we'd be very happy to agree with her classification of sub-Saharan African.
04:32The whole investigation will hinge on being able to ascertain beyond any reasonable doubt where this man came from.
04:40Skull shape is commonly relied upon to indicate ethnic origin.
04:44Although every skull is unique, a prognathic or relatively prominent jaw is linked to skulls of sub-Saharan African ancestry.
04:53Over 3,000 miles from Ipswich.
04:58Bottom line is, his skin was a different colour to yours and mine.
05:02And that's fundamentally what we mean.
05:04And when we look at him in terms of his position in Ipswich at that time, he'd have been really different.
05:12Absolutely.
05:13And he'd have been really different because of the colour of his skin.
05:18The initial observation has confirmed that he was male, between 40 and 60 years old and around 5 feet 6 inches tall.
05:27But the cause of his death is still a mystery.
05:31And there's much more they'll need to substantiate about his ancestral origins.
05:37He's a very well-developed, mature man.
05:42So a lot of muscle development in his body.
05:44I think, height-wise, he's not overly tall.
05:47He's sort of of middling height even by UK standards at that time.
05:52He's about 5 foot 6, maybe 5 foot 7.
05:55But he is, I would say, a 40 to 60 year old male who may well be African in terms of his origin.
06:02OK, what we have today...
06:04Before further analysis takes place, Sue and Xanthi need to discuss the case with Dr Caroline Wilkinson.
06:10She will oversee the facial reconstruction and is the team's Ancestry expert.
06:16Ancestry is interesting because that's not the only thing we're going to be looking at.
06:20We're going to be looking at the anatomy of the body.
06:22We're going to be looking at the anatomy of the body.
06:24We're going to be looking at the anatomy of the body.
06:28Ancestry is interesting because that's not something I know a lot about.
06:32I know you're much more comfortable with that than I am.
06:34The only thing that I picked up, apart from the really heavy, dense nature of the skull, was the palate.
06:40The palate was very wide and very big teeth, which to me was a clear indication.
06:46We're not talking Anglo-Saxon, Celt kind of dentition at all.
06:50I think he's going to have an interesting face.
06:52I'll be quite pleased to do a reconstruction on him.
06:57If we're going to do a facial reconstruction, we can do it from a laser scan.
07:01Okay, so you want a laser scan?
07:03Yeah.
07:05And they will need to gather a lot more information.
07:08You really need to go back and speak to the archaeologists.
07:11I think we need to have some idea about where they were found, what type of a site it was,
07:16were there any other individuals around them, are we looking at high status, low status,
07:21is there anything known about that archaeological site,
07:24were there any artefacts?
07:26I think that's a really important way to go.
07:29Excellent, I think that's all we can do.
07:33I think what makes him interesting is the potential ancestry.
07:38So the fact that we might be looking from somebody who's sub-Saharan African.
07:42And in Ipswich, I think, in medieval times, that for me is very interesting.
07:47It might not be something that in a modern scenario, if I was doing a forensic case,
07:51would be in the least little bit unusual.
07:53But I can't help feeling that if we go back to medieval times, this is somebody who would stand out.
08:04Zanthi leaves Dundee to start her historical road trip.
08:09Her task is to hunt down any information she can that will help the team build up a profile of who the man was.
08:16I'm very lucky in that I have been given an opportunity by the University of Dundee to construct a team.
08:22And everybody who is in this department is hand-picked for a variety of reasons.
08:29Dr Wolfram Meyer-Augenstein is the team's stable isotope expert.
08:34He will analyse trace minerals found deep inside the Ipswich man's skeleton, which could tell us where he lived.
08:42There is nobody else that I would trust for a forensic investigation.
08:46He is the best that there is, and he has not only a national reputation, he has a huge international reputation.
08:56In order to carry out his isotopic analysis, Wolfram needs samples of teeth and bone.
09:04The information it could reveal is vital.
09:12A single molar tooth could reveal where in the world the Ipswich man spent his early years.
09:21While a small section of his thigh bone could tell us where he was living in the last years of his life.
09:28What we see here might overlap with the information we get from the tooth, or it might actually be completely different, should the person have moved.
09:36And since I understand the person was found in a grave in Ipswich, and you have information that he might be of sub-Saharan descent,
09:44clearly he must have moved during his lifetime at some stage.
09:53Xanthi has come to Ipswich, where the skeleton was discovered.
09:57In medieval times, Ipswich was a thriving port, situated on the river Orwell.
10:02The town had connections across Europe, and the route is still used for trading to this day.
10:07Medieval England is often thought of as an insular society, but in reality it was at the centre of a network of globalised trading.
10:15It's not hard to imagine a means by which an African man could have got here.
10:20In medieval times, Ipswich would have been a huge port that would have been really very busy with trade,
10:27and lots of international crews would have travelled up here from all over the world.
10:37The burial site where the man was found is located near the river. Xanthi's hoping she can dig up some clues about his identity.
10:44Xanthi's enthusiasm and her personality and her character makes her ideal for going out and asking people questions, and she does that particularly well.
10:56She's meeting Keith Wade from Suffolk Archaeology.
10:59They excavated the bodies back in the 1990s, before the site was built on as part of a new housing development.
11:07Before the flats were built, we excavated the whole site, and the last phase of activity was a cemetery.
11:13It lies within the precinct of a friary, the Franciscan friary, the Grey Friars.
11:19The friary was built in about 1290, and then was suppressed in 1538.
11:25This shows all the features excavated on this site.
11:28These burials are all in single graves.
11:31He was where, did you say? Approximately?
11:33He's up right in the corner.
11:37I can show you a photograph.
11:39Oh, this is the actual burial?
11:40Yeah, that's the actual burial.
11:42And as you can see, it looks like a fairly standard medieval burial.
11:46And why has he been dated medieval?
11:49We have very little evidence, other than the fact that's the type of burials you normally see in the medieval period.
11:54And one of them has a belt buckle, which is late 13th or 14th century.
12:03So, our Ipswich man was discovered in a burial ground next to a Christian friary.
12:08Two pieces of evidence suggest he is medieval.
12:11A belt buckle, found among the 150 skeletons.
12:15And also, the friary itself was only in operation between the mid-13th and the mid-16th centuries.
12:29Before the investigation can proceed, there is an important question to answer.
12:35Just how unusual is it for an African skeleton to be found in a burial site from this time period?
12:42To find out, Xanthi has come to the University of London to meet medieval historian and migration expert, Professor Jim Bolton.
12:49Nice to meet you.
12:50We found a medieval individual who's of African origin.
12:55Is that as unusual as my kind of gut instinct is telling me it is?
12:59Yes, undoubtedly, undoubtedly.
13:02It's very unusual indeed.
13:04There is some written evidence, I think, of Africans in medieval England.
13:09But to find skeletons, I've not come across it before at all.
13:12So, what do we know about the history of migration to this country?
13:17If you go back to the Roman occupation of Britain, then you would expect to find Africans and people from the Middle East here as soldiers, as merchants in particular.
13:28And you would expect that because Rome is a multinational empire.
13:33Then you get a huge gap.
13:35And that's between the end of the Roman Empire, as it were, and almost the 16th and 17th centuries,
13:40when Africans begin to come into England because of the slave trade and as personal servants in great households.
13:48But between the fall of the Roman Empire, which is 5th century AD, and about 1500, 1600, then it is rare to find Africans.
13:57It's very rare indeed.
13:59And very rare that they should be in a friary as well, because that assumes they've been given a Christian burial.
14:05And most of the people I know who come from Africa or North Africa or Spain would be Muslim.
14:12So, why would they end up in a Christian burial ground?
14:19What Professor Bolton has told Xanthi has raised the stakes in the investigation.
14:23Between the fall of the Roman Empire and the 16th century, there are virtually no records of Africans in England.
14:31This makes the Ipswich Man so improbable that the team must be sure of their findings.
14:38And the first thing they must prove scientifically is the age of the skeleton.
14:43Is he really medieval?
14:45To find out, a sample of the Ipswich Man's bone has been sent for carbon dating.
14:55The bone sample is crystallized into a powder, which is then combusted in a sealed glass tube and converted into a gas.
15:05The gas is then converted back to solid carbon, which can be analyzed and dated.
15:11An accelerator mass spectrometer analyzes the ratio of radiocarbon content, which will ascertain the age of the bones themselves.
15:20It's a vital part of the investigation, but it will be two weeks before the team get the results.
15:25Caroline Wilkinson is responsible for giving the Ipswich Man a face.
15:29She is one of the world's leading facial reconstruction experts, working on historical faces as well as contemporary criminal cases.
15:38Caroline Wilkinson is a prolific facial reconstructor and has been working in the Ipswich Man's world since the early days.
15:46responsible for giving the Ipswich man a face.
15:49She is one of the world's leading facial reconstruction experts,
15:52working on historical faces as well as contemporary criminal investigations.
15:59Her scientific background, her artistic background
16:02and her intuitive nature when it comes to faces in particular
16:06is absolutely second to none.
16:09So I'm very fortunate I have a world-class leader
16:12in her field in this department.
16:17There you go.
16:19She will perform a detailed examination of the skull
16:22with her colleague Caroline Needham.
16:24OK. Do you want them separate now?
16:27Wow.
16:32If we've got some gushering and we've got quite rectangular orbits,
16:36that would suggest more sub-Saharan African.
16:40So you can see the mouth's a bit further forward than the rest of the face.
16:45Which, again, would suggest African.
16:48Mm-hm.
16:50And really wide palate, which again is another sub-Saharan African trait.
16:54Hmm. Interesting.
16:56Interesting face, that.
16:58So, I mean, I'd say that it looks like it could be sub-Saharan African.
17:04I would say the nose is not typical.
17:07OK. But not impossible?
17:10And the shape of the cranium's not typical.
17:13Mm-hm.
17:14But there's quite a lot of other indicators.
17:20Although Caroline agrees that he is of African origin,
17:23she thinks he's likely to be North African,
17:25from a country like Morocco or Tunisia.
17:28And she's hoping that some of the team's tests
17:30will help pinpoint his origins.
17:32Whatever the results,
17:34she's in no doubt that he will be a striking individual.
17:38We might get an indication of ancestry from DNA analysis,
17:43and also we might be able to tell where the person has lived
17:47by looking at stable isotope analysis,
17:50and that might in itself indicate ancestry.
17:53It's quite a big, robust, very muscly face.
17:58So it's going to be quite an interesting skull to reconstruct.
18:01I think he's going to have a very individual face.
18:07The first stage of the process is to create a laser-scanned 3-D model.
18:11This will be used as a base for the layers of facial tissue.
18:19But Caroline will need further historical and scientific evidence
18:23in order to recreate his face accurately.
18:38For Xanthi, the lack of knowledge of Africans in medieval England
18:42makes researching this case a unique challenge.
18:46What was the African doing here,
18:48and what would people have made of him?
18:53Xanthi has come to the National Archives in Kew
18:56to meet a man who has single-handedly been trying to build
18:59an evidence-based picture of early African history in England.
19:04Onyeka has been researching thousands of medieval documents,
19:08and what he's found is fascinating.
19:14He has come to the conclusion that the African found in Ipswich
19:17would have been treated with more tolerance
19:20than we've seen during later periods of history.
19:23The Africans who were here would have been here
19:26doing a specific skill or trade.
19:28Their position would have been determined by personal relationships
19:32that they developed, rather than based upon skin colour.
19:35There was not a scientific understanding of race.
19:39That comes about in the 19th century,
19:42the idea that human groups fall into different specific racial categories.
19:46That was not present in medieval England.
19:49How many individuals of African origin would you have found in the UK?
19:53That's difficult for us to know,
19:56because during the medieval period
19:59there are not consistent and substantial records.
20:03There are few records of the population as a whole,
20:06let alone of an African presence.
20:08However, having said that,
20:10we have in the Abbevito Doomsday Book of 1241 this African.
20:151241? 1241.
20:17So what does this mean?
20:19Now, this is an African image, an image of an African,
20:22from an account for Derby.
20:24The abbreviato of Doomsday Book
20:27was the 13th-century version of the original Doomsday Book of 1086,
20:31the first survey of the English population.
20:34This is one of the only known images of an African in medieval England,
20:38but Onyeka feels it's highly significant.
20:41But the point is that there was an African,
20:43or the idea of the African was known in 13th-century England.
20:47Which is just the right time period.
20:49Just the right period for your African, yes?
20:51People draw pictures of them, image-wise, yes?
20:54And therefore it is highly likely
20:56that Africans were part of medieval society.
21:01By the 16th century, there are an increasing number
21:04of recorded African images in British history,
21:07such as that of John Blank, Henry VIII's favourite trumpeter.
21:14But among the 11 million documents at the National Archives
21:18is some extraordinary evidence
21:20that as the numbers of black people in England increased,
21:23attitudes started to change.
21:25This document, created between 1595 to 1596,
21:29is a record of letters and proclamations
21:32created during the reign of Elizabeth I.
21:35OK.
21:36This letter is addressed to the Lord Mayors of the major cities,
21:39and it says in the letters, if you look, it says the word...
21:42Oh, it says this one.
21:43Black and Moors. You notice that word there?
21:45It says Black and Moors here and Black and Moors there.
21:47So this is another word for African individual, Black and Moor.
21:50Right. The word Moor by itself means Black,
21:53and Black added on means essentially Black...
21:55Black Black.
21:56Yes. So it's emphasising what these people look like.
22:00But the letter reads,
22:01an open letter to the Lord Mayors of London,
22:04and the Aldermen, his brethren,
22:06and to all other mayors, sheriffs and Her Majesty,
22:09understanding that there are of late
22:11diverse Black and Moors brought into this realm,
22:14of which kind of persons there are already here too many,
22:19considering how God hath blessed this land
22:21with great increase of people of our own nation.
22:30Onyeka believes that the lack of mentions in records
22:33is simply because in medieval times
22:35people saw less need to comment on the colour of a person's skin.
22:45So far, the team has relied on anthropology
22:48and historical research
22:49to establish the origins of the Ipswich Man.
22:54But as they reassemble at the evidence board,
22:56it's time to see if these conclusions
22:58will be supported by some hard science.
23:03Was this man alive during medieval times,
23:05and does he definitely come from Africa?
23:09OK, today we're going back to Ipswich Man.
23:13This is the sub-Saharan African male,
23:17possibly medieval,
23:18and that's because there was a belt buckle
23:20with one of the individuals from that group
23:22that was a medieval belt buckle.
23:24Sue has been sent the results of the carbon dating.
23:27The material is human bone,
23:30and, ooh, I like having knowledge that no-one else has got.
23:34So, well, the date that they have given us
23:38in terms of the range is going to be...
23:43Ta-da-da!
23:441190 AD and 1300 AD.
23:52So that's coming in at 805 years,
23:55plus or minus 30, before the present date.
23:58Wow!
23:59I'm a white panther!
24:01So the date of the Ipswich Man is confirmed,
24:04and Wolfram also has some exciting results.
24:07And I have a better chance coming from Mars
24:10than this guy having come from Ipswich,
24:13because the two states have definitely put him in a hot climate,
24:17near-coastal, near-equatorial climate.
24:20So that the south's most point, from a European perspective,
24:24would be something like Portugal, maybe southern parts of Spain.
24:27OK.
24:28And then we have to move either into the Middle East
24:31or, basically, northern Africa,
24:33places like Sierra Leone, Morocco, that sort of thing.
24:38The stable isotope testing of the tooth
24:40supports Caroline's opinion that the skeleton is North African.
24:44But the tests done on the man's leg bone
24:46prove he died somewhere like the UK.
24:49The bone oxygen data is consistent with where he was buried.
24:52OK.
24:53In the broadest possible sense.
24:55We can't really say it's absolutely pinpoint accuracy Ipswich,
24:58but it's consistent with the UK.
25:00And that tends to be consistent that says this is at least ten years
25:03in this sort of vicinity.
25:05If not more.
25:06It's definitely inconsistent with anything that's arid or warm,
25:09near-equatorial or coastal.
25:10But he grew up in a warm, dry place,
25:13and the last part of his life he was in a cold, wet place.
25:17There are two different...
25:18And he must have lived in that colder climate for at least ten years.
25:22OK.
25:26The scientific analysis has provided two vital pieces of information.
25:30The team now have proof that the skeleton
25:32dates from between 1190 and 1300 AD
25:35and is likely to have come from somewhere in northern Africa
25:38or possibly southern Europe,
25:40but it has not narrowed it down to an exact country.
25:45Nevertheless, this information allows Xanthi
25:47to focus her historical research.
25:50And for Sue, it opens a new line of inquiry.
25:54You know, at the outset, we just wondered,
25:56was there an ethnic issue here?
25:58Oh, boy! Is there an ethnic issue?
26:00There's a real ethnic issue.
26:02Did we have an African gentleman in Ipswich in the 1200s?
26:07Now there is no doubt.
26:09So the science that's come together with the history,
26:11with the archaeology, this is really interesting.
26:14This is really important.
26:15What was he doing there?
26:19The man's exact country of origin is still unclear,
26:22but another scientist hopes that further analysis
26:25will reveal this information.
26:28Ian Barnes, from the Royal Holloway University of London,
26:31has come to Dundee to take a sample of bone for DNA analysis.
26:37He hopes to find a DNA sequence
26:39that could identify the exact origins of the Ipswich man.
26:47He wears protective clothing
26:49to avoid contaminating the sample with his own DNA.
26:53One of the concerns is that DNA from other individuals
26:57may actually get into the sample.
26:59So in order to avoid having our real DNA from the skeleton
27:03getting swamped out,
27:05we try and work as carefully and as cleanly as possible,
27:08and then hopefully we'll be able to get a real sequence out of it
27:11that comes from that skeleton, not from outside.
27:21Xanthi is back on the historical trail.
27:24Why did the man come here?
27:26What brought an African from a life on the Mediterranean
27:28to a burial next to an English friary?
27:36The friary where the skeleton was discovered
27:38was built by Franciscan grey friars,
27:40who originally came over to England from Italy in 1224.
27:45The grey friars were great travellers,
27:47spreading their word and converting people across Europe to their cause.
27:52Is this how the Ipswich man came to England?
27:55Did he come here as a friar?
27:59Xanthi has come to meet Brother Philippe,
28:02a modern-day grey friar,
28:04to hopefully learn more about who our man was.
28:09The friary in Ipswich was founded in the first years
28:12of the reign of Edward I.
28:14So it was certainly founded before 1298,
28:18because it was founded by a fellow called Sir Robert Tiptot
28:21and his wife Una,
28:23and Robert Tiptot died in 1298.
28:26So we know it was in the reign of Edward I,
28:29probably the 1270s,
28:31but absolutely certainly before the 1290s.
28:34If he was found within the friary grounds,
28:36who would have been buried there?
28:38Well, that's interesting, because in 1250,
28:41Pope Innocent IV,
28:43in a letter called Cum Tamquam Veri,
28:46gave to the friars the privilege
28:49to be able to bury the friars
28:54and those of the family,
28:56so those people who served the friars.
28:58Oh, I see.
28:59So the fact that he was in the friary,
29:01a burial ground associated with the friary,
29:03is indicative he was either a friar
29:06or he worked with the friars in support of them.
29:10Probably.
29:12It would be certainly possible
29:15that he could be a friar, I think.
29:17On the other hand, he could have been
29:20a person who was close to the friars,
29:23who worked with them,
29:25who did a lot for them or with them,
29:27who was buried there.
29:29Those would be, I'd say, the two strongest possibilities.
29:32One of the individuals within the group
29:34had a belt buckle with them, which is medieval,
29:37so obviously that would be a personal possession, wouldn't it?
29:41If this was a group of friars,
29:43would one of them have had personal possessions with them?
29:46Well, the friars themselves
29:48wouldn't have been allowed personal possessions.
29:51The friars would have been buried in their habit
29:54and the Franciscans used a rope to bind themselves
29:59and they didn't have belts.
30:01So having a belt buckle would indicate
30:03that this was somebody who was not a Franciscan friar
30:07but possibly a lay helper
30:10or somebody else who would have been buried in the graveyard.
30:16Although the belt buckle may not have belonged to the Ipswich man,
30:20its presence in the burial ground
30:22challenges the idea that he himself was a friar.
30:26But to be buried next to a friary,
30:28he would have needed to be a Christian
30:30at a time when most of North Africa was predominantly Muslim
30:35and when Muslims and Christians were at war.
30:41The friary was built by a man called Robert Tiptoft
30:44in the 13th century.
30:46This was when Europe and the Middle East
30:48were consumed by the Crusades,
30:50a series of ferocious wars
30:52fuelled by the clashing ideologies of Islam and Christianity.
30:56Dr Adrian Bell from the University of Reading
30:59has been hunting for records
31:01that could link the Ipswich man with the friary.
31:03Could he have come to England as a result of the Crusades?
31:06We know that Lord Tiptoft actually built the friary, didn't he?
31:12So I understand that there may be a link
31:14between our individual and Tiptoft.
31:16Yes, and he established the friary sometime in the 1270s
31:19and he's actually buried there and we know that from this...
31:22Actually in the friary grounds itself?
31:24Yes, and we know this from this book
31:26called Weaver's Funerary Monuments,
31:28which is an antiquarian historian in the 1600s
31:32who goes around churches writing down what he sees in them
31:35and here he describes the grey friary at Ipswich
31:38where he says,
31:39''The grey friar's founded by Lord Tiptoft,
31:42''in which lay buried Sir Robert Tiptoft, knight, and his wife.''
31:46The interesting thing is that Robert Tiptoft himself
31:49travels to the Holy Land as part of a crusade...
31:51Oh, really?
31:52..led by the Lord Edward, that's the future Edward I,
31:55from 1270 to 1271,
31:57and they stop at various places, including Tunis.
32:03The Ninth Crusade is commonly seen
32:05as the last major mission to the Holy Land.
32:09On their way, the knights of Prince Edward stopped at Tunis
32:13with King Louis of France,
32:15who was renowned for converting Muslims to Christianity.
32:19Accompanying Edward was Robert Tiptoft.
32:23We actually have evidence that Tiptoft did go on crusade.
32:26It can be found in the pipe roll,
32:28which is basically a government document showing expenditure,
32:31and it actually shows here that it's paid out to Robert Tiptoft
32:35for his service with six knights, that's himself and five others,
32:39and they're paid 100 marks each for that service.
32:42It's Latin.
32:43That's in Latin, yes.
32:44So these are original pipe rolls, a collection showing who was paid,
32:48and there's 225 knights in total paid here, 100 marks each.
32:52For their crusading activity.
32:53For their crusading activity.
32:54So we have evidence here that Tiptoft, who was buried in Ipswich,
32:57who actually developed the Friar in Ipswich,
32:59went on these crusading activities to North Africa.
33:02Was there any evidence to show that Africans were actively brought back
33:05to England as part of this crusade?
33:07Yes, there is, because in the Floris Historiarum,
33:11we have an entry for 1272,
33:13where it actually says that after their voyage from the Holy Land,
33:18a number of nobles, including Thomas of Clare, or Thomas de Clare,
33:24who is also with Robert Tiptoft on crusade,
33:28brought back four captive Saracens.
33:31And in that sense, Saracen is a word that's used to describe Muslim
33:35or someone from North Africa.
33:37So he could have been converted and then brought back during one of the crusades.
33:41Yeah, I mean, that seems a likely story for the 1270 crusade.
33:45One of the knights accompanying Tiptoft on the crusade, Thomas de Clare,
33:50is recorded as having brought four Saracens back to London with him.
33:54Whether they were prisoners, trophies, or free men will remain a mystery.
33:59But this makes it plausible that Tiptoft himself also brought back Africans,
34:03such as our Ipswich man from Tunisia to England.
34:08So, yes, he's dead.
34:10Although the evidence is over 700 years old,
34:12it has finally provided an explanation for how the Ipswich man
34:15travelled from Africa to England.
34:19I mean, obviously, there's a lot of evidence,
34:22I mean, obviously, we're never going to know exactly why this individual was in Ipswich.
34:27But what's interesting is we've actually found a documented case
34:31of how people were being moved around the world from North Africa to the UK.
34:37Back in Dundee, Caroline is starting the facial reconstruction.
34:42Using a 3D scan of the skull, she begins to layer on the muscles
34:46and build up the foundations of our man's face.
34:50In theory, you shouldn't need to know the ancestry of an individual to be able to do this.
34:56It's a very simple process.
34:58It's a very simple process.
35:01In theory, you shouldn't need to know the ancestry of an individual to reconstruct their face
35:07because the majority of the standards that we use apply to all ancestry groups.
35:12And if somebody has a narrow nasal aperture, for example,
35:16they're always going to have a narrow nose, regardless of the ancestry group that they come from.
35:20But there are fine details that are reliant on knowing the origins of the individual
35:26and they will make small differences to the face.
35:31Caroline might have to make a best guess about the man's skin tone and eye colour.
35:38Well, those details will be reliant on knowing whereabouts the individual is from,
35:42which is obviously slightly problematic for us.
35:46Already, a distinctive face is emerging.
35:50I think because it was quite a robust skull that was very large,
35:54with heavy brow ridges and clearly a very large neck,
35:57I had this preconceived idea that he was going to be quite big and butch, which he is.
36:02But he's also got very nice, balanced features
36:05that mean that he's a lot more attractive than I thought he was going to be.
36:15With both the historical and scientific evidence having made good progress,
36:19the team reassembles at the evidence board.
36:22Historical evidence points to the man possibly coming from Tunis in North Africa.
36:27But will Ian Barnes be able to confirm this with the DNA testing?
36:32Hi Ian.
36:33Hi.
36:34Hi, how are you?
36:36Yeah, I'm alright, yeah. How are you?
36:38We're surviving. It's a sunny and very warm day in Dundee, which doesn't happen very often.
36:43No.
36:44Should you be outside?
36:45Probably, in bikinis, but it would scare the horses, so we won't do that.
36:51What have you got for us?
36:53Right, so we've got some DNA out to sample it anyway.
36:57Basically we find it today, both on the north and south shores of the Mediterranean,
37:03so all the way from Spain going east through Italy, Greece,
37:10and then on the southern shore we find it in Morocco and in Egypt,
37:14and then we find it in Turkey.
37:17That ties up with what my conclusions were on the geographic origin,
37:22from what I got from the teeth.
37:24So what you were saying from the DNA seems to fit very nicely with the stable isotopes.
37:28Thanks very much indeed, Ian.
37:30Thank you, Ian.
37:31Bye.
37:32Bye.
37:35Although the DNA analysis agrees with Wolfram's stable isotope results,
37:39it's not narrowed down the skeleton's origin to a specific country.
37:44But Sue wants to bring all the data together.
37:47The anthropological study of his bones, the stable isotope tests, and now the DNA results.
37:52Can all three disciplines work together?
37:55So we're still happy about the African ancestry in some regards.
38:00What we're less happy about is the sub-Saharan label that was given at the outset.
38:08And there are areas that Ian has suggested and that your isotopes have also suggested
38:13that it could be that we're less happy with because it doesn't fit with the anthro.
38:17But the area where the anthro, the isotopes, and the DNA all come together,
38:23that they're happy, is along the north coast of Africa.
38:26That's true.
38:29The conclusions are compelling.
38:31Ipswich Man is likely to be of North African origin.
38:34This supports the idea that he started his life in Tunisia
38:37before being brought back to the UK during the Ninth Crusade.
38:43To have those three areas all pinpointing you down to the same part of the world
38:48in scientific terms is huge.
38:51It's big. It's amazing.
38:52It's just, you know, it's what gets scientists excited.
38:55We know what he's going to look like.
38:57We know where he's come from.
38:59But what we don't know is why he's there
39:02and ultimately what it was that killed him.
39:04We don't know that either.
39:05So he's a little bit out of focus still.
39:12Sue wants to know how he died.
39:16She decides to take another look at the skeleton.
39:19Do the bones have anything left to reveal about the end of this man's life?
39:24There's a general principle in policing which says
39:28once you get to the point of a cold case,
39:31where a case goes as far as it can and it doesn't come to a conclusion,
39:36the best thing you can do in terms of policy
39:39is go back to the beginning and start again.
39:42Look at it again in a slightly different light,
39:45maybe with other questions foremost in your mind.
39:49It's a good principle, a good forensic principle.
39:53Even the smallest detail could transform the investigation.
39:59MUSIC
40:14As she looks at the spinal column, something grabs her attention.
40:20I think I may just have found a cause of death.
40:25It's a thrilling discovery.
40:27What is interesting, which was missed the last time,
40:30is the fact that it looks like he's got a spinal abscess.
40:33So that perfectly round hole is pus formation,
40:37so that we've got an infection that's going into the spinal canal.
40:41What that will do is that will compress the spinal cord.
40:45This is at the level of the ninth thoracic vertebrae,
40:48so that's going to be affecting lower limb mobility.
40:51So that's going to knock out a significant number
40:54probably of the sensory and the motor fibres to the lower limb.
40:58There's a lot of pain in that, a tremendous amount of pain,
41:01and a level of pain that you'd probably want to find some assistance to overcome.
41:07I mean, you know, the question is, could that kill him?
41:10Well, the bottom line is any form of an infection
41:13at any time pre-penicillin can kill you.
41:16It may be something as simple as a skin scratch or an abscess on a tooth,
41:21but an abscess into the spinal cord,
41:23then we're going to be talking about a serious amount of infection,
41:27an infectious level.
41:28So that, yes, that could well have contributed to his death.
41:32That's a large sack of pus-filled abscess.
41:35If it's at that level there,
41:36then the chances are it's spread throughout the rest of his body.
41:39You don't have penicillin, you don't have a means to combat those bacteria.
41:43The body system just shuts down.
41:46In what could turn into an extraordinary twist in this tale,
41:49it appears the Ipswich man was disabled and infirm
41:52in the last months or years of his life.
41:56It also gives the team a probable cause of death,
41:59the holy grail of any forensic investigation.
42:04So, the team has a profile of where the Ipswich man came from,
42:08they know why he might have come to Ipswich,
42:10and even how he might have died.
42:12But what they still don't know is why he was buried by a friary.
42:16What was he doing there?
42:24He was discovered with 150 other skeletons.
42:27Xanthi is keen to see if any of the other bodies
42:29can shed further light on the events surrounding his death.
42:33Who were they, and why were they all buried together?
42:37Sue Anderson carried out the original bone study of the skeletons.
42:44At the St Nicholas Centre, next to the site of the medieval burial ground,
42:4812 of the skeletons found near the Ipswich man have been laid out.
42:53So, this is our burial population from the grave site to start the road, isn't it?
42:58So, what are we looking at here?
43:00We've got the Ipswich man's body,
43:03So, what are we looking at here?
43:05We've got 12 individuals laid out here.
43:09What's unusual about this population, then?
43:12It's got quite a high proportion of pathological specimens,
43:15and also quite a high proportion of men and older individuals.
43:20It quickly becomes apparent that this is no ordinary group of skeletons.
43:26This is probably something called diffuse idiopathic skeletal hyperostasis.
43:30Oh, we've got some pathology here.
43:32He's got areas of infection and inflammation on his legs.
43:35He had quite an enlarged frontal bone.
43:38Oh, so he would have looked unusual as well.
43:40Yeah.
43:41This would be a result of a number of disease processes, wouldn't it?
43:44There's basically no cavity there, is there, for the white blood cells?
43:47Not at all. That's weird.
43:49A bone should not look like that, should it?
43:53You've got three vertebrae completely fused here.
43:56Another pretty unhealthy individual.
43:58He's got a disease called Padgett's disease.
44:02Almost all the bodies exhibit signs of debilitating disease or injury.
44:10He's got a very large abscess formed here.
44:12So she's got a spinal abscess.
44:14Now that's interesting, because the individual that we're looking at had a spinal abscess.
44:19And certainly that one isn't healed.
44:21No, so this would still have been active at the time of death.
44:24So none of these people are healthy, are they?
44:27There's nobody here that just, I don't know, fell over and hit their head and died.
44:31These are all people who've had some long-term pathology disease
44:36that they've had long enough that it's showing in their skeleton.
44:40Exactly, yeah.
44:41So it's not something that's killed them quickly.
44:43Nope.
44:44They're an interesting population, aren't they?
44:46Yes.
44:51I'm not an archaeologist by training.
44:53I don't go out every day looking at archaeological populations and burial sites.
44:56But to me this seems a very unusual population.
44:59My first impression of this group is that we're looking at a group that have been buried together for a reason.
45:05This is not a natural kind of demographic of a burial site that I would expect to see.
45:10So my response when I see all of this together evidentially
45:15is that we're probably looking at an infirmary population,
45:18people who are being cared for and were buried there as a result of their disease or other pathology processes.
45:27This site was a final resting place for the profoundly sick.
45:33But why?
45:35How would a friary have ended up associated with a graveyard full of the diseased and infirm?
45:43Was this in fact a medieval hospital?
45:48No.
45:59Angela Montfort has written a book that explores the link between friars and medicine in the medieval period.
46:06Xanthe has asked her to come to Dundee to see the Ipswich skeleton.
46:12The Franciscans in particular were known as apothecaries.
46:15Oh, really?
46:16There were no herbs for medicine in the infirmary, the friary infirmary garden.
46:20We know that the friars used to give medicine charitably to people.
46:26Is it likely that the friars would actually have been taking care of these individuals on site?
46:31There are quite close links between the friars and medicine.
46:35When St Francis first told his friars to serve the poor, he was expecting them to visit the sick.
46:43The whole view of medicine and life generally was that it was all one integral part
46:50and that the medicine of the soul was also important as the medicine of the body.
46:55And so a medical friar could treat both of them.
46:58In fact, some friars were called the physicians of the soul.
47:03At a time when religion and medicine went hand in hand,
47:06the friars were helping to treat the sick not just with prayers
47:09but also with what was then state-of-the-art medicinal knowledge.
47:15Would their treatments have been used to help treat the Ipswich man
47:18as he succumbed to the pain and disability of his spinal abscess?
47:22Dr Tig Lang is a herbalist who has studied the use of herbs in medieval medicine.
47:28What are we going to be making today?
47:30We're going to be making an ointment that would have been used for paralysis.
47:32It's mentioned in a herbal called Of the Virtues of Herbs or Maca Floridis On the Virtues of Herbs.
47:37And this herbal was around in the period that we're talking about with your skeleton.
47:41And the recipe itself reads, this ointment will wonderly help to the palsy.
47:45That means it will wonderfully help to heal paralysis.
47:48What it actually is, isn't an ointment, it's a rubbing oil.
47:51What they're basically intending to do is massage.
47:53They say here, if the patient is often with this ointment rubbed with,
47:57I love this bit in the English, with hundes somedel harder,
48:01which means with somewhat hard hands.
48:03So they're obviously dealing with somebody who's massaging quite firmly.
48:06And this ointment will make all his body supple and easy.
48:09Oh, OK.
48:10So what we have here is dried pelletry.
48:12OK.
48:13Dr. Lange is demonstrating how the herb pelletry could have been used by the friars.
48:20Some oil.
48:21We've got some oil, which is olive oil.
48:23So literally, if you just put a few handfuls in it,
48:26we'll see what happens when we stir this on the gas.
48:29Often in later recipes, certainly, you find the instruction to boil it
48:33for as long as it takes you to say the paternoster,
48:35which is a lovely way of timing, if you think, if you haven't got a clock.
48:39That's boiling in the oil now.
48:41That's boiled long enough, I think, to bring the virtues of the herb into the oil.
48:45I couldn't really smell the herbs, but that smells fantastic.
48:48It's gone beautifully green.
48:49That's quite nice. I like that.
48:51And pelletry does have a warming effect.
48:53Oh, does it?
48:54So that it would make the skin warm up.
48:56For massage, is that what it's called?
48:57So it's medieval algex.
48:58Something called therapeutic.
49:00We're all acting as if it's hand cream.
49:01I know, yeah, but it's quite nice, isn't it?
49:03We're going to get hot hands.
49:05Obviously, this is not going to help somebody with paralysis,
49:08but it may have brought some level of comfort, at least.
49:11Yes, I think, given that his paralysis is leading from a spinal abscess,
49:14no amount of what they do to his limbs is going to do him any good at all.
49:17No.
49:18We can't say they did use this ointment on him,
49:20but it's an ointment which was available at the time,
49:22which they may have used in an attempt to bring comfort to the patient,
49:25or even in their way of an attempt to bring cure to the disease,
49:29because they wouldn't have known about the abscess.
49:35I think what's nice now is we know that this individual
49:37had quite a serious spinal abscess,
49:40and I also now know that they grew herbs
49:43and they produced some sort of medicinal herbs
49:46for treatment of paralysis.
49:48So it's nice to know that even though they couldn't have done anything
49:51to assist with the abscess specifically,
49:54he may have been getting some sort of palliative care
49:57and they may have at least eased his discomfort,
49:59because this would have been a really uncomfortable, painful condition.
50:04The picture emerging is of a middle-aged African man
50:07living out his final years in England, receiving care from a friary.
50:12He lived in the UK in the mid-13th century,
50:15and analysis of his bones has proved that he was here
50:17for at least ten years before he died.
50:22He could have enjoyed years of good health before ending up in the infirmary.
50:25Did he settle here, set up a home, have a family?
50:30We can never know.
50:32But Xanthi has heard of an exciting new study
50:35that suggests our shared ethnic history goes back further than we think.
50:41And it's written in our DNA.
50:51St Pancras International Railway Station,
50:54a modern-day symbol of the global travel
50:56that has helped create our ethnically diverse nation.
51:02She's here to meet Dr Mark Jobling, a geneticist from Leicester University.
51:07His studies on the male Y chromosome
51:09could help support the idea of an early African presence in the UK.
51:15What would you say the normal view of ancestry in England and the UK is?
51:20Well, I think the history books are dominated by the stories we all know
51:23about Anglo-Saxons and Vikings and Romans before them,
51:26and then maybe Celts and Picts and so on.
51:28So there isn't much of a place for Africans in that story.
51:32So what is the actual ancestry, this pale skin?
51:35Is it kind of hiding a more complex ancestral past?
51:39Well, it's certainly, in our study,
51:41we find that it does hide a bit of a more complex past, yes.
51:44So what we were interested in doing was studying a piece of DNA
51:48that's passed down from father to son, the Y chromosome.
51:51And the nice thing about that is it associates with surnames.
51:54And we found that we can look at some surnames
51:57and find in them a signature of an African lineage.
52:00Could you see this as a visual, or was it just hiding in the genes?
52:03Absolutely not.
52:04So the man who carried this lived close to our lab,
52:06and so we brought him in and talked to him about it.
52:08And he's a white, ordinary British guy
52:11with no history in his family of any contact with Africa,
52:14so he was completely surprised about it.
52:16So he's a Yorkshire, UK resident, pale skin, typically British-looking,
52:21but he's got an African heritage.
52:23He has, yes. Specifically, he has an African Y chromosome.
52:26So this is the piece of DNA that passes down from father to son.
52:29So it means back in the past, at some point, he has a paternal ancestor
52:33who was an African who came probably from north-western Africa.
52:38What this could mean is that the British population
52:41has been multi-ethnic for far longer than we might think.
52:44Could our Ipswich man even have contributed himself
52:47to this African ancestral signature seen in our DNA today?
52:51So the individual that we've been investigating is of African origin,
52:55we know that, and he's buried in Ipswich.
52:57Is there anything that you know of that could suggest any information
53:01that he could have been mixing with a population as far back as the medieval period?
53:05Well, there could have been.
53:07From our evidence at the moment, we can't say that,
53:09but we could imagine finding other surnames
53:12where we can trace the history back into the medieval period.
53:16And I think if we had large enough sample sizes, we could probably do that.
53:21I think what we've found by finding this African individual in Ipswich
53:26is that possibly the multiracial society that we think of as a very modern construct,
53:31we think of Britain as very ethnically diverse now, but only recently.
53:37Whereas it seems that this African individual in Ipswich
53:41may represent a much longer history of multiracial Britain
53:46that nobody really knew about.
53:51This extraordinary case is reaching a conclusion.
53:55Using the modern arsenal of forensic science and historical detective work,
53:59the cold case team has painstakingly reconstructed a story
54:02that could have stayed buried forever.
54:06Possibly born a Muslim in 13th century Tunisia,
54:09our man could have come to England during the Ninth Crusade,
54:12converting to Christianity before living here for some time.
54:17As he succumbed to the pain of a spinal abscess in later life,
54:21he was very possibly nursed to his death by Franciscan friars,
54:24leaving behind irrefutable proof of an African presence in medieval England.
54:30Sue brings the team together at the evidence board
54:33for the final time to confirm the cause of death.
54:37So we actually missed a spinal abscess.
54:40So given where this is occurring,
54:42which is at mid to lower thoracic level,
54:45we have somebody who is really disabled in their ability to move around
54:49and to be able to look after themselves.
54:52And it's time for Sue and her team
54:54to move around and to be able to look after themselves.
54:58And it's time for the final piece of the jigsaw to fall into place.
55:02Caroline is ready to reveal the face of the skeleton
55:05for the first time in 800 years.
55:07Let's have a look at him then.
55:09Maybe my favourite.
55:10OK.
55:12Switch him out. Here we go.
55:14Oh!
55:15There we go.
55:16He's a bit of a bruiser, isn't he?
55:18Well, yeah, he's definitely got this big, strong, robust head and neck.
55:24Hair, obviously.
55:25I like the lips, actually.
55:26Yeah, I think his ears are fantastic.
55:28Hair, we don't know.
55:29He's quite delicate compared to the rest.
55:32He could have had a full beard, he could have had lots of hair,
55:35he could have gone bald, we have no idea,
55:37which is why we haven't given him any of that.
55:39And we've also got this quite massive neck as well.
55:42I see why you like him. He's great.
55:45I think he's quite beautiful, actually.
55:47He's got a great face.
55:48Yeah.
55:50What is interesting is that the historians are saying
55:54there is evidence that we have African individuals in the UK,
56:00in England, specifically, from Roman times.
56:04We've certainly got them in the medieval times.
56:07We've even got a situation in history where in Tudor times,
56:10Elizabeth I is saying, you know, actually, we've got too many,
56:13we need to stop this, we need to send them back.
56:16And how do you go from a small number of individuals
56:21to a community to such a point that you've got the monarchy saying,
56:25this is too much, we have to stop this happening.
56:28And I think that's interesting.
56:30And there's no doubt that the historians are saying
56:32this hasn't been researched, and I think it should.
56:34And if nothing else, what we've done is said, here's one,
56:37absolutely, here's one, you know, we found it, excuse me.
56:40All the rest, maybe it was, maybe it wasn't, this one is.
56:44Start with this one.
56:46A man discovered in an unmarked medieval grave
56:50could now change the view of our ethnic history.
56:54The first impressions, I think, of this case were not very exciting,
56:59is the honest truth.
57:01And we should learn from that, we really should learn from that,
57:04that it's always the case that the ones that look as if they are
57:07the most boring often end up to surprise the heck out of us
57:11and become really some of the most interesting stories.
57:16We have scientifically identified beyond all reasonable doubt,
57:21which is all any court in the land will ask of us,
57:24is that this individual is of African ancestry.
57:30We're happy with the age, we're happy with the sex,
57:33we're happy with the stature, and we're absolutely confident
57:38on the ethnic or geographical origin of this individual.
57:42That's rare, that's very, very rare to get to that point of certainty
57:47on ethnicity.
57:49And in terms of human history, migration patterns,
57:52this is terribly, terribly important.
57:56Next time, we're taken back to a world
57:59where bodies were turned into trophies
58:01and children were sold by the inch.
58:04Oh, this is really horrible.
58:06The story starts with the bizarre mummified remains of a child.
58:10Probably a little boy, somewhere around about an eight.
58:13And I have to say, I've never seen anything like it.
58:16I've never seen anything like it.
58:18I've never seen anything like it.
58:20I've never seen anything like it.
58:23And I have to say, I've never seen anything like it before.
58:26What happened to the child, and who was he?
58:35Your votes are in, and now it really gets exciting.
58:38Election 2010 has just started over on BBC One.
58:41Next year on BBC Two, something quite different.
58:44We're trying to create the ultimate fantasy rock and roll band.
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