Treasures of the World with Bettany Hughes - Season 1, Episode 3 Gibralta
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00:00I'm traveling the world, exploring secrets and wonders.
00:09This is really tight.
00:11An adventure by land and sea to the most fascinating places.
00:17This is absolutely incredible.
00:20Where I've been given special access to
00:22significant and surprising treasures.
00:25It's so tiny and absolutely unique.
00:29Buried in ancient sites, extraordinary buildings and glorious works of art.
00:37That help to explain the story of us.
00:41Come with me to discover how the past shapes our lives.
00:46This time, Gibraltar.
00:49An iconic landmark in sight of two continents, Europe and Africa.
00:55This rock's unique geography and prime location
00:59has given it a front row seat across thousands of years of history.
01:05Gibraltar, or simply The Rock, a British overseas territory,
01:10might only span two and a half square miles,
01:13but it is packed with treasures.
01:15Welcome to the lost world.
01:18It surveys the Strait of Gibraltar, an artery linking two great seas,
01:23the Atlantic and the Mediterranean.
01:27It's just one small rock, but it's been a driver
01:30both for world history and for our imaginations.
01:34A rock that's apparently at the edge of things,
01:37but that is actually right at the heart of the human story.
01:43From Neanderthal discoveries,
01:46to Admiral Nelson and the Battle of Trafalgar,
01:50great Islamic citadels,
01:52and the top secret tunnels that inspired James Bond.
01:58Look at that.
02:00This rock has witnessed the whole sweep of the human experience,
02:04so I can promise you some rich and rather unexpected treasures.
02:17Gibraltar's stories and histories are dominated
02:20by a towering 1,300-foot Jurassic limestone rock
02:25that rises out of the sea.
02:27My first treasure dates back before history, before prehistory,
02:32before the invention of time as we know it,
02:35and it's hidden not on the rock, but within it.
02:40It's the lost world of the Neanderthals,
02:43who lived in some of the 200 caves which honeycomb the rock.
02:49Ever since a ground-breaking discovery was made here back in 1848,
02:54Gibraltar has offered a rare glimpse into the lives
02:57of our prehistoric forebears.
03:00A fragmented female's body,
03:03and the remains of a young girl,
03:06A fragmented female's skull was discovered,
03:10and pretty quickly people realised
03:12there was just something a bit odd about her.
03:15She's got this very pronounced brow bone
03:17and a really elongated cranium.
03:20But the problem was she was unique, she was unprecedented,
03:23there was just nothing to compare her to.
03:26Then, just eight years later, in the Neander Valley in Germany,
03:31a male skull with very similar features
03:34was discovered, and that individual was named a Neanderthal.
03:42So, by right, Neanderthal man should be called Gibraltar woman.
03:49Almost 80 years after the discovery of that first skull,
03:53a pioneering young archaeologist called Dorothy Garrard
03:57returned to the rock to delve deeper
03:59into that initial extraordinary find.
04:05In 1926, Dorothy had excavated an entire cave,
04:09and just a few hundred yards from that original skull,
04:13she discovered this.
04:15A child who she called Abel, after the son of Adam and Eve,
04:19and suddenly a single find had become a community.
04:28Thanks to Dorothy, tiny Gibraltar had become
04:32one of the world's most significant Neanderthal sites.
04:37And the prolific discoveries made here since
04:40are challenging the view that simple Neanderthal cave men and women
04:44were wiped out 40,000 years ago by Aus Homo sapiens.
04:50Instead, a new picture is emerging of a thriving,
04:53much more complex community of people.
04:57So, it's a real treat to visit the archaeologists
05:00whose ongoing discoveries are transforming our understanding
05:04of Neanderthal life.
05:10So, I'm just coming down to a cave complex
05:12where there are genuinely incredible Neanderthal finds,
05:17and they're excavating right now.
05:19You're not normally allowed in, but I've been invited.
05:21Is that Clive?
05:23Clive, hi!
05:24How are you?
05:25I'm good.
05:27There we go.
05:28Brilliant. What a treat.
05:30Come down. Welcome to the lost world.
05:33The lost world. I'm delighted to be here.
05:36Thank you so much.
05:38Professor Clive Finlayson is Gibraltar's leading paleontologist
05:42and has spent decades researching its Neanderthal past.
05:47To get to his dig site,
05:49it's 300 steps down a remote eastern cliff face to sea level.
05:55Clive, I know we're wearing the hard hats for the rocks.
05:58They're quite useful for the seagulls today as well.
06:00They're very, very useful.
06:02Not so friendly. Is it nesting season?
06:04It's nesting season, yes. OK.
06:07Now, are you ready for a first impression?
06:09I've been hardly able to sleep.
06:14Oh, my goodness!
06:19These magnificent caves of such a significant Neanderthal home
06:24in 2016, they became a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
06:29God, Clive, I have to say, I didn't realise it was that size.
06:32That is spectacular. No, they are massive.
06:35It's like a cathedral, isn't it?
06:38Come and see it over here.
06:41I want to draw out the moment. It's too exciting.
06:51How are you doing?
06:54It is indeed quite a climb.
07:02First of all, I cannot believe this place. It is just extraordinary.
07:07So how long has there been Neanderthal occupation in these caves?
07:12Maybe 90-odd thousand years. That we know.
07:15But my hunch is that it was probably a lot longer than 100,000.
07:19That is an incredible amount of time.
07:22We have to understand that Neanderthals probably lived on this planet
07:26longer than we have done so far.
07:28Yes. And that puts this in perspective.
07:31So if we imagine we are here 50 or 60,000 years ago,
07:34what is the typical Neanderthal day?
07:37Well, the idea that hunting is all they did is the stereotype
07:41that we've grown up with.
07:43But caves such as these are giving us a new vision of Neanderthal behaviour.
07:48We are beginning to realise how sophisticated it was.
07:51They are hunting particular kinds of birds,
07:53particularly birds of prey like the golden eagle,
07:55for the feathers, for the talons to use as necklaces.
08:00So there would have been... I can imagine a place like this
08:04and a very busy Neanderthal family doing all sorts of crafts and skills.
08:10The evidence Clive and his team are unearthing has huge implications.
08:15Neanderthals weren't just surviving, but leading rich inner lives.
08:21I know that you've had a really exciting recent find here.
08:25Yeah. It's an engraving.
08:27It's an engraving made with stone tools on the base of the rock
08:30in one of these caves.
08:32And you can see it's a series of lines crisscrossing,
08:35so you can actually see the order in which they were made
08:37because one cuts across the other and so on.
08:39But we did a very detailed study of this to try and understand
08:43was this a doodle, was this a casual thing?
08:46First thing you realise is that if you try to do this yourself
08:49with a stone tool, it's not an easy thing to keep a straight line like that.
08:54So the first thing that we realised was whoever's done this
08:57had done it before and were probably quite skilled at doing it.
09:01It took us two hours to replicate this.
09:03That's a long time.
09:05This particular line took 60 strokes to do.
09:08What do you think it might relate to?
09:10Some people have said it's a map of the cave,
09:13it's a map of the constellations, it's a tribal sign.
09:16Somebody else has said we all have it.
09:21We do.
09:23Is it art? I don't know, but it certainly was done deliberately
09:27and it has no functional purpose to it.
09:29And it tells us a little bit about the minds of these people
09:32and how they were able to, like us, abstract in some way and symbolise.
09:39This 3D print of the engraving shows that far from being
09:43a doomed prototype of us modern humans,
09:47the Neanderthals were cultural, spiritual people.
09:52There's this very traditional idea about them
09:55that they're rather stupid and aggressive
09:58and then we come along as these kind of high-minded thinking,
10:01literally homo sapiens.
10:03But this shows how close we are, how much we share.
10:06Absolutely. Most of us who are of Eurasian origin
10:09would be expected to have Neanderthal DNA.
10:12I carry Neanderthal genes with pride.
10:16There is an argument that if we carry those genes
10:19that they never really went extinct.
10:21But there it is.
10:22It's beautiful, beautiful, so enigmatic.
10:25Would you like to hold it?
10:26I would love to hold it.
10:28There you go.
10:29Look at that.
10:31Look at that.
10:32That's a Neanderthal woman or man or child...
10:36Child.
10:37..made those marks for a reason.
10:40Clive, it's really...
10:42It's special, isn't it?
10:43It is really special.
10:48Gibraltar's caves are the story of us.
10:52They've transformed our understanding of the Neanderthals
10:55and also, by extension, of ourselves.
10:59And the discoveries keep coming.
11:02In 2019, it emerged Neanderthals
11:05have even left their mark in the sands here.
11:09It's a story that's evolving.
11:12Just recently, a faint footprint was discovered
11:15close to the scene left by one of those Neanderthals.
11:19And it's really magical.
11:21So they've left their imprint in the sand,
11:24the sun has baked it hard,
11:26covered over, over tens of thousands of years,
11:29and then just after it's revealed, it starts to dissolve away.
11:34So it's a ghostly reminder of people who once called this place home.
11:42The footprints were dated to just 29,000 years ago,
11:47over 10,000 years after we thought Neanderthals had become extinct.
11:53Gibraltar is their last known sanctuary.
11:57The secret world of the Neanderthals here is a thing of wonder.
12:02It's been genuinely humbling to be allowed to get just a glimpse of their lives
12:08and also to be reminded that us, as modern humans,
12:11we don't have the monopoly on imagination
12:14and that we are as much a part of them as they are of us.
12:24Some have framed Gibraltar as the edge of Europe,
12:28with the narrow strait of Gibraltar a frontier before North Africa.
12:33But in truth, the strait is less a gulf, more a highway between two continents.
12:40That's Morocco, just 13 miles away over there, emerging from the mist.
12:45And in 711, a man called Tariq ibn Zayed
12:51crossed these waters to claim the rock for his men and for his relatively new faith of Islam.
12:57In fact, Gibraltar is almost certainly named after him
13:01because originally this was called Jabal al-Tariq, the Mountain of Tariq.
13:07And that history-making moment gave us my next wonder, the Tower of Homage.
13:20Built in the early 1300s and almost 100 feet tall,
13:24this treasure is the single largest tower constructed
13:28when much of Spain and Portugal were Islamic.
13:32The Tower of Homage sits at the top of a huge fortification complex
13:36that still dominates Gibraltar today, the so-called Moorish Castle.
13:41It's named after the Moors, a label coined in medieval Europe.
13:47But, frankly, that is a ridiculous catch-all title just invented by Europeans
13:52to describe people who are Arabs or Berbers or simply from North Africa and the Middle East.
14:02In reality, a series of Islamic dynasties and cultures settled in Gibraltar over centuries.
14:08From here, they conquered and spread their influence across the territory they called Al-Andalus,
14:15where the Spanish province of Andalusia gets its name.
14:19A beachhead into Iberia, Gibraltar became known as the key to Spain
14:24and to this day its crest bears the tower and a small key.
14:30And it was the so-called Moors who first really exploited the strategic importance of the rock.
14:39This is a prize they did not want to lose
14:42so they built these massive fortification walls all the way down to the sea
14:46that were described as a halo around the crescent moon.
14:56The Tower of Homage is scarred by the legacy of medieval sieges
15:00as Christians tried to expel Muslims whom they viewed as foreign invaders.
15:07This formidable casbah, or keep, had just one entry point and walls up to three metres thick.
15:15I'm not a fan of small spaces but this is pretty unmissable.
15:23This castle was besieged again and again and again and there's evidence of that all around.
15:30Between the 14th and 15th centuries, the Tower of Homage was attacked nine times.
15:36Most sieges were Christian attempts to unseat Gibraltar's Muslim rulers.
15:42I don't know if you can see that rock in the middle there.
15:45That's basically a medieval missile.
15:47It's a stone that's been catapulted at these walls with huge, huge force
15:52so it's actually embedded inside.
15:54I mean, these walls, sometimes they are metres thick
15:58so you can just imagine the force and how petrifying it would have been to be trapped in here
16:04because by the time you got the attackers this close, this is absolutely your last place refuge.
16:17Despite constant attack, the intricate fortifications from the Tower down to the sea
16:22pretty much held firm for centuries.
16:25The town of Gibraltar is still shaped by the contours of these walls and ramparts
16:32and the formidable fortifications allowed civil society to flourish.
16:40I tell you what's really interesting is that one of the very earliest inscriptions describing this place
16:46says that it was dedicated to the god of peace, the gods who pacifies.
16:52And it's a reminder that even though this is a military construction,
16:55its story isn't all about conflict because for 700 years
17:00this was somewhere where women and men lived rich, fulfilled lives.
17:09The so-called Moors lived in Gibraltar for over seven centuries
17:14so of course they've left clues across the city.
17:19So they were mending a drain down here
17:22and they've discovered a bit of architecture from the so-called Moorish period
17:26so that's a building at the time that this was controlled by Muslim forces.
17:30Just wherever you dig here, there's something new.
17:35And it's underground that the full splendour and sophistication of Gibraltar's Islamic past is most visible.
17:45It is such a treat to be down here
17:48because I'm right underneath the modern streets of Gibraltar
17:52but this is a bath complex from the Islamic period.
17:56These were originally open to the sky
17:58so there have been kind of star-shaped sunbeams filtering through
18:02and all this was just for one man.
18:05He's used probably from the Roman and Byzantine period
18:08old classical columns to decorate his personal baths
18:12but then on top you've got that really distinctive horseshoe arch
18:16which was very popular kind of throughout the Islamic world
18:19and this is just the beginning.
18:21Every time there's an archaeological dig in Gibraltar
18:24a little fragment of the Islamic period comes to light
18:28and what you've got here is just a very simple terracotta water jar
18:33but on it is written the word Allah.
18:39This golden age wouldn't last.
18:42By the 14th century, the Christian kings of northern Spain
18:46entrusted a noble family, the Guzmans, to oust Gibraltar's Islamic rulers.
18:52For close on a century, successive generations of the Guzman dynasty attacked the rock.
19:00Gibraltar's heritage bears witness to the struggle that was played out.
19:05So this was originally a mosque or a private prayer room
19:08so it was the kind of sacred heart of the castle
19:11but look at what's happened here.
19:14So once the Christian forces eventually do manage to take Gibraltar
19:18they came here and gouged this out as a burial
19:22for one of their great military leaders from the Guzman dynasty.
19:26It's a really conscious act of desecration and control.
19:36For 700 years, a variety of Islamic cultures
19:40have prospered and made Gibraltar the place it is today, down to its very name.
19:46But the Guzmans and their Christian backers
19:49continued to have the tower of homage in their sights.
19:55In August 1462, this castle finally fell
19:59and was eventually taken over by the Guzman dynasty.
20:03Now, you'd like to think this is all very neat and cut and dried
20:07and a story of the triumph of Christian invaders from the north
20:11but actually the Guzmans were originally from Morocco
20:15and may well have been born as Muslims.
20:19It's a reminder that there are many blurred lines in history
20:23and it is rarely a simple story.
20:27Gibraltar is somewhere that is still home to Muslim and Christian and Jewish communities
20:41and where people from Africa, Asia and Europe are happily neighbours.
20:46That's what the great Mediterranean port cities all used to be like.
20:50They were multi-ethnic, multi-faith places.
20:53So, Gibraltar now is somewhere you can feel as though you were in two times at once.
21:07But one thing that is conspicuous by its presence here is Britishness.
21:12You see its influence everywhere.
21:15Since 1704, Gibraltar has been under British control
21:20and is officially a British Overseas Territory.
21:24For centuries, it was an important naval base in the Mediterranean.
21:28In fact, Gibraltar was the launch pad for the Royal Navy's greatest victory.
21:35My next treasure is a unique bit of evidence of a moment that saw the birth of a national hero
21:42as a result of a battle that took place just a few miles off the coast of Gibraltar.
21:47The game-changing Battle of Trafalgar.
21:52In the early 19th century, Napoleon Bonaparte controlled most of continental Europe.
21:59If he defeated the British Royal Navy, his French Empire would also control the seas.
22:08Under the command of Admiral Horatio Nelson, a British fleet set sail from Gibraltar
22:14to face a much larger enemy force at the nearby Cape of Trafalgar.
22:20On October 21st, 1805, Nelson charged into the enemy ships.
22:26Within five hours, they'd been decisively beaten.
22:30And for the next century and a half, the Royal Navy took control of the region.
22:36This was the beginning of an unparalleled period of expansion for the British Empire.
22:42But my next treasure isn't a cannon or a warship.
22:47It's tucked away in Gibraltar's sumptuous garrison library.
22:52The so-called Trafalgar Scoop.
22:59I do love this place.
23:05This was built just a year before the Battle of Trafalgar,
23:08and it might seem rather sleepy, but it's the guardian of historical treasures.
23:15The library holds every copy of the still-published Gibraltar Chronicle,
23:20the second oldest English-language newspaper in the world, only beaten by the Times of London.
23:27And it's in this copy from 1805 that you can read the Gibraltar Chronicle's greatest ever splash,
23:35the Trafalgar Scoop.
23:38It describes a great victory that came with a terrible loss.
23:44What we've got here is something remarkable.
23:46So this is an edition from three days after the battle, and it gives us an eyewitness account.
23:53It's really dynamic, you know, you get the sense that you're in the battle itself.
23:57And we've got here a dispatch from Collingwood, who is the vice-admiral of the fleet.
24:01But actually, what Collingwood is describing isn't really the battle itself, it's the death of Nelson.
24:07So we hear,
24:08Our loss has been great in men, but what is irreparable and the cause of universal lamentation
24:15is the death of the noble commander-in-chief, who died in the arms of victory.
24:22And then underneath, we discover his last words.
24:27Thank God I have outlived this day, and now I die content.
24:33So here, this is living proof that news really is the first draft of history,
24:39and that this is how heroic legends are created.
24:49This is the very first printed account of one of British history's key moments,
24:54victory at Trafalgar and the death of Nelson.
24:58In fact, the Chronicle reported the news a full two weeks before the times in London.
25:04Gibraltar was shaping British history just as much as it was being shaped by British rule.
25:13News of Nelson's death spread like wildfire.
25:16In Naples, the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge said that he had tears on his cheeks
25:21and that even the Italians had sorrow in their countenance.
25:24This was becoming a story as fast as it became history.
25:31Nelson's body was brought to Gibraltar before being sailed back to London
25:36for an enormous state funeral.
25:41Across Britain, streets and pubs are named after Trafalgar.
25:47Here was a foundational myth for a seafaring England.
25:51Here was a foundational myth for a seafaring nation.
25:55Nelson giving his life so Britannia could rule the waves.
26:01In Gibraltar's Trafalgar Cemetery, resting place for some of the battle dead,
26:05these values of heroism are written in stone.
26:10By dying as he did, Nelson became an archetypal hero,
26:14someone who gave their life for others and who perished fighting a military adventure in foreign lands.
26:20It's been the same through history.
26:22Think of the Greek heroes or even superheroes today in comic culture.
26:27Isn't it fascinating that as a species, we love the heroic?
26:32We love the idea that in bad times,
26:35there is always going to be somebody who will be our saviour.
26:40Gibraltar, British yet exotic,
26:44was a resonant backdrop for this kind of national myth-making.
26:49But just as the rock helped usher in the British Empire's lionised golden age,
26:55it also witnessed its darkest hour.
26:59My next treasure lay hidden and buried for over 50 years.
27:03It's no exaggeration to say that Gibraltar was pivotal to the outcome of World War II.
27:09Control those straits and you control access to the Mediterranean and to the Atlantic.
27:14But from 1940, the rock was under attack,
27:18bombarded from the air and the sea.
27:21This was a disaster waiting to happen.
27:27Nazi high command made detailed plans for the invasion of Gibraltar.
27:32They knew it was key to winning the North African and Mediterranean fronts.
27:37For the Allies, the rock could not fall into enemy hands.
27:42And it was not.
27:45The security of Gibraltar was so critical,
27:48the rock itself was turned into a vast military fortress.
27:52So the civilian population was evacuated.
27:55They were shipped out to Morocco or scattered throughout Europe.
27:58And 17,000 people were killed.
28:01The rock itself was a massive military fortress.
28:04It was the largest military fortress in the world.
28:07It was the largest military fortress in the world.
28:10They were shipped out to Morocco or scattered throughout Europe.
28:13And 17,000 Allied troops were brought here to create an underground world.
28:20So here there were hospitals and ammunition stores and bakeries in 30 miles worth of tunnels.
28:27And everywhere you go, there are still fragments and remnants of those hidden lives.
28:34There are as many miles of tunnel underneath the rock as there are roads above.
28:41Most of these World War II-era tunnels have been explored and documented.
28:46But my next treasure was considered an urban myth until just a few decades ago.
28:53Hi, Smudge! Hi!
28:55Bethany, how good to see you. Is it a great time for you?
28:59It's the most incredible place.
29:02It's just extraordinary.
29:04Phil Smith, better known by his army nickname Smudge,
29:08is one of Gibraltar's leading World War II experts.
29:11You hear about secret tunnels, but this really was secret, wasn't it?
29:14It was classified as secret.
29:16And he was in Gibraltar when some potholers made an extraordinary discovery.
29:22And we're just approaching now the spot where they rediscovered the secret chamber,
29:27which is just here.
29:30The caving group had been looking for years for the secret chamber,
29:34and in 1997, they just happened to stop here,
29:38and they felt wind coming through from the corrugated iron sheets that line the tunnel.
29:43So they removed the corrugated iron, and instead of the limestone rock of Gibraltar,
29:47they found a man-made concrete block there.
29:49What a discovery, because I know this isn't... It's not even on military maps, this, is it?
29:54No, no, no. It's ultra-secret.
29:56But we can get in? Yes, we can.
29:58Come on, let's go.
30:02The cavers had discovered a top-secret military installation,
30:07hidden within Gibraltar's existing tunnels.
30:12So here's the entrance. You can see it's quite low, so please be careful coming through.
30:17I will. OK.
30:20Oh! I just banged my head. OK. Yeah, yeah, fine, I just banged my head.
30:25Oh!
30:27It was constructed in the event of a German invasion of the rock,
30:31acting as a secret lookout post from which Allied personnel
30:35could radio enemy plane and ship movements back to London.
30:39Who would have thought this was such an extraordinary place?
30:42Yes, this is the main chamber.
30:44It's been secret for so long, the space is an eerie time capsule,
30:49going back to the height of the war.
30:51I know locally this is known as the stay-behind cave,
30:55but who's being left behind here?
30:57It was a team of naval ratings.
30:59There was a team of six altogether,
31:01a commander, two surgeons and three communication specialists.
31:05And this would have been home for them initially for a year,
31:09but later on they had enough supplies in here to last out seven years.
31:13So their mission is to stay here, nobody knows about them,
31:17and they're being left here so that they can be behind enemy lines
31:21if they need to be.
31:22Basically, they could spy on the Germans
31:24and report back each night by radio of any troop movements,
31:28ships, planes.
31:30It's a huge complex, isn't it? So it carries...
31:32Yes, we go through here, we've got the toilets, the radio room,
31:36and then we've got the viewing apertures
31:38so they can see out to the east side and also to the west.
31:41Every eventuality had been planned for,
31:45so these six men could spend months, even years,
31:48hidden in the stay-behind cave.
31:50If the Germans invaded, they were instructed to brick themselves in,
31:55and those bricks are still here.
31:58As a soldier, can you imagine what it would have been like
32:02for those men being in here?
32:04I've got some idea.
32:06When I was here with the military,
32:08I did a three-day exercise inside the rock.
32:11When I walked out into the sunlight after three days,
32:14I was totally dizzy and could hardly stand up.
32:16These guys potentially here for seven years,
32:19that would take a particular breed of individual.
32:21Well, incredible. It's moving, being here,
32:24thinking of what they were prepared to do for the common good, for others.
32:29Yeah, I have utmost respect for those people.
32:32Is it OK if I go and have a look at those?
32:34Yes, please do. Thanks.
32:36For those prepared to stay behind,
32:39this would almost certainly have been a suicide mission.
32:42So this man-made cave is a chilling monument
32:46to Gibraltar's strategic importance.
32:52These vantage points would be manned day and night.
32:55From one side, you can see across to Morocco,
32:57and here you've got the sweep of the whole Mediterranean.
33:00So they were watching out for enemy attack,
33:03but particularly planes landing at night,
33:06and every night they'd send reports back to London.
33:14For over half a century, its existence was officially denied.
33:20But newly unearthed documents tell another story.
33:26There's a report that's recently been released from the Amality Files
33:29that is top secret, as it says on the top, so it must have been classified.
33:33And this gives a really detailed description
33:36of how this whole area was going to be constructed and furnished.
33:40We hear that it was going to be built 1,350 feet above sea level,
33:45and that there'd be a tank for 10,000 gallons of water.
33:49And that is here. That's the tank there.
33:52And when it was first discovered here,
33:54the tap was switched on and it was still working.
33:59Thankfully, Gibraltar wasn't invaded.
34:02And although this treasure was never put to use,
34:05it's influenced our culture in a rather surprising way.
34:11Constructing the stay-behind cave,
34:13and, most importantly, finding those volunteers to man it,
34:16was a massive intelligence operation.
34:21Between 1941 to 1942,
34:24this underground command centre was the workplace of one spook
34:28who wouldn't stay in the shadows for long.
34:32Now, there's one thing I can't not tell you about the stay-behind cave story.
34:37The young naval intelligence officer
34:39responsible for recruiting those men was called Ian Fleming.
34:44That's the same Ian Fleming who created James Bond.
34:51Inside tunnels that span the full width of the rock,
34:55I'm suddenly immersed in Ian Fleming's wartime Gibraltar.
34:59And it feels very 007.
35:05Ian Fleming definitely was familiar with this place.
35:08And there is absolutely no doubt
35:11that his military experience here on Gibraltar fired his imagination.
35:16The character of M is almost certainly based on his superior officer, Admiral Godfrey.
35:22When he was serving here on Gibraltar,
35:24there was a naval officer whose surname was Moneypenny.
35:27And just think of those spy novels.
35:30There's always a cave hideout or a classified operation.
35:34And it seems that almost every Bond villain has a sinister mountain lair.
35:44The stay-behind cave is a treasure that once again reminds us
35:48of the hold Gibraltar has over our imaginations,
35:52where a top-secret tunnel complex hidden for half a century
35:56still shapes our popular culture.
35:59But even the caves that inspired James Bond can't elude my final treasure.
36:07Uh-oh. Hello.
36:09The wonderful and mischievous wildlife of Gibraltar
36:13and spellbinding geology of the rock itself.
36:18This landscape is so dramatic.
36:21The ancients thought it must have been made by the uber-hero Hercules,
36:26who used his superhuman strength to pull apart the continents of Africa and Europe,
36:32creating the Mediterranean and the Atlantic.
36:35The land that was left to either side was known as the Pillars of Hercules,
36:40as it still is today.
36:44Ancient authors imagined Gibraltar as the edge of the known world,
36:49the last stop before the legendary continent of Atlantis.
36:53And the geology and climate of the rock certainly give it a mythical quality.
36:58Easterly winds, known as the Levant, smother Gibraltar in clouds,
37:03but also glide in migratory birds.
37:07The rock isn't just a landmark for us, but many animals.
37:11Oh!
37:13I just saw the first one. Fantastic.
37:17Hey! Hello.
37:19Tour guide Angie Watkins is leading me to the wondrous creatures of these seas,
37:24first described by Romans.
37:26Oh, he's coming towards us.
37:28Coming in, yeah. Slowly, slowly, a little bit of patience.
37:31Oh, yeah? So these are the striped dolphin we've got here.
37:34OK.
37:36Three dolphin species inhabit the waters between Gibraltar.
37:41In the high season, we're expecting to see 3,000 to 5,000 dolphins.
37:46In the area of the bay and the strait of water,
37:49this area we have very deep, very clean water.
37:52There's a lot of fish for these guys to feed on.
37:54They'll also come here, they come here to give birth to the calves.
37:57Yes. And they'll keep the calves here while they're very young,
38:00using this area as a training ground.
38:05Hi!
38:08Hi!
38:12Yes!
38:14That is ridiculously cool. That is just showing off, frankly.
38:20It's always magical when you see them because, I don't know,
38:25just the fact you're sharing the water with these beautiful creatures.
38:29And I love the fact that the ancients always said
38:32that they were bringing messages from the gods.
38:34It's the god of the sea, Poseidon, kind of giving you his blessing.
38:37So it's a very calming feeling, knowing that you're up close to one.
38:44It seems that Poseidon might be on my side
38:47because one of his colourful messengers heads straight for our boat.
38:51Oh, loads of them, there!
38:55There's it! So the flying fish just came in.
38:58I think one's landed on the deck. Oh, poor thing!
39:01Yeah, look, we're going to put him back. Put him back.
39:07Oh, he's gone. Bless him. He swam off.
39:10Wow! So they just came hurtling across the boat.
39:13That is incredible to see. So they were flying fish.
39:16And again, the ancients talk about them as being these kind of
39:19magical creatures in this part of the world.
39:22And one landed on the boat. That's extraordinary, extraordinary.
39:26What a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful thing it was.
39:31You do really get a sense from that extraordinary rock
39:35jutting out of the landscape why this place has created
39:38this kind of micro-climate and a micro-ecology to go with it.
39:46If the waters around Gibraltar preoccupied the ancients,
39:50the vast network of caves within the rock became natural wonders
39:54in more recent history.
39:56Before hundreds of thrill-seeking naval officers and sailors
39:59in the 19th century, these caverns promised boys' own glory.
40:05This is where you came when you wanted to be just a bit more adventurous.
40:08I've been allowed special access into Leonora's Cave,
40:12deep inside the porous limestone, to see how the British presence
40:16has literally left its mark on the rock.
40:19If you made it this far down, there was even a signpost.
40:30Oh!
40:33This is really tight.
40:40This is so awesome in here.
40:43Far from the prying eyes of their superiors,
40:46Royal Navy sailors found Leonora's Cave ideal for settling personal disputes.
40:52It came to have a reputation for being the best place
40:55to come to have an illegal duel.
40:58Almost certainly, most of the visitors down here
41:00were just bored naval officers and military personnel
41:04or kind of adventure junkies.
41:06And actually, if you start to look at the walls,
41:08you can see they've physically left their mark here.
41:14So the guys here have obviously come as a bit of a sort of lad trip.
41:18So you've got Captain B. Walker up at the top, R.E.F. Ray,
41:23and they're all from the Royal Engineers,
41:26and they came here in 1897,
41:29and they've scored the walls to heroically prove
41:32that they made it down here together.
41:39As the 19th century wore on,
41:41Gibraltar's appeal grew beyond the British military garrison.
41:45Early tourists also flopped to the extraordinary St Michael's Cave,
41:49treating it like a subterranean pleasure garden.
41:54Word quickly got out that there were all kinds
41:57of exotic experiences to be had here,
42:00and Gibraltar became a destination for a trip of a lifetime.
42:04You can see here there are parties held here in St Michael's Caves
42:07with these fantastic Victorian women
42:09in their crinolines and guys in top hats.
42:11The guests describe these stalactites
42:13as looking like the trunks of palm trees
42:16and the lighting here in the cave like a halo of glittering gems.
42:23But Gibraltar's most exotic and recognisable natural wonder
42:27hasn't been carved into the rock over millions of years.
42:31It's made its home on the very top of the monolith,
42:35a cheeky colony of monkeys.
42:38The Barbary macaque.
42:46Now, there are a lot of theories as to how the macaques got here.
42:50Some people think they've been in this region for 5 million years.
42:54Some people think they came over with the Moorish occupation.
42:57Others think that the Brits brought them here for hunting practice.
43:02But however they arrived,
43:04the macaques have become a mascot of Gibraltar.
43:09I'm meeting Gibraltar's resident vet, Mark Pizarro,
43:13whose team monitors Europe's only wild monkey population.
43:17There are lots of theories about how the macaques ended up here.
43:20What do you think?
43:22Personally, I believe it's been mainly a British thing.
43:25I'm sure the Moors had them when they first came,
43:27but I doubt very much whether it's the same monkeys
43:30from that generation which are here now.
43:32I believe the British would have probably introduced them
43:35and then they've just become wild here.
43:38What is it about the environment here that suits them so well?
43:41It's a perfect environment. There's a lot of natural foraging.
43:44There's wild trees which they can feed off.
43:46There's cliff faces where they sleep at night,
43:49so they're very protected.
43:51And there isn't any major natural predator.
43:53So, therefore, monkeys here, they'll survive to their 30-odd years of age.
43:58Legend states that as long as the macaques continue to thrive,
44:02the rock will remain in British hands.
44:05And this myth is taken dead seriously.
44:07During the Second World War, with the monkey population dwindling,
44:11Churchill himself got involved.
44:15It's incredible that it mattered so much to Churchill
44:18that he sent a troop ship over to Morocco to bring them back.
44:21But I guess it was really important for morale at that time.
44:25Oh, yeah, I mean, it's synonymous with Gibraltar, isn't it?
44:28So, therefore, you're going to come to Gibraltar, you're going to see the macaques.
44:31And I do love this idea that as long as the macaques are here,
44:34there'll be a British connection.
44:36Hopefully that'll be the case for many millennia to come.
44:42Enchanting, tenacious,
44:45these remarkable animals are a fitting mascot for Gibraltar.
44:50The ideal companions for a place with such a distinctive story.
44:56That's why the ecology of the rock is a treasure.
45:05Gibraltar might only be two miles across,
45:07but it's mapped the story of humanity from Neanderthal homemaking
45:12through to the conflict of the 20th century.
45:15It is packed with hard history and culture,
45:19but it's also a reminder of the power of the human imagination
45:23to shape both our past and our future.
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