The 3,500-Year-Old Cup That Reveals an Ancient Secret

All through the week we've been counting down the top 50 treasures found by you the public in gardens, fields and rivers up and down the country. From slave shackles to viking silver, from golden coins to world war one medals, all these extraordinary objects are helping us to jigsaw puzzle together the story of Britain. Together with a panel of experts from the British Museum and the Council for British Archaeology, we've sifted through almost a million of your finds but it's the top 10 that caused the biggest argument. I mean for the Vikings that's their whole world in one vessel. So that's fine, so I get my bronze age and we ditch the helmet. Today we reached what our panel think are the most extraordinary of your finds. And throughout this program we'll be counting down to our number one secret treasure. A silver badge could pinpoint the location where a king of England died in battle. This might have fallen close to where Richard fell. It would have certainly been worn by a man of nobility so it's very important. An ancient and precious gold cup tells of a sacred past. Could I hold it? Wonderful to hold that and think that is three and a half to four thousand years old. Over the course of this week we've been asking you to send in new treasures and tonight we'll be revealing the best of them. But first our secret treasure number 10 is not only an amazing find in its own right but comes from the moment that Britain was invented. On the 6th of January 2007 engineer David Whelan and his son saw something glinting in the ground in a field in the Vale of York near Harrogate. What they discovered amazed them. They found a silver pot filled with treasure. This was one of the largest hordes of Viking treasure ever discovered in Britain. 617 silver coins, brooches, necklaces and bars of silver. It was valued at just over a million pounds and bought jointly by the Yorkshire Museum and the British Museum. John Sargent investigates. Some of the greatest treasures in the world have extraordinary priceless treasures and I'm here to see a very special collection. So this is the Viking hoard? Yes it's the biggest and most important Viking hoard found in this country for over 150 years. That's terrific. What's fantastic about this is we've got the whole of the Viking world in one cup. We've got coins from as far away as the Middle East and Central Asia. This little piece of silver here that's come all the way from Russia. These fabulous objects of Vikings loot could have been gained from violence, raiding or trading. One coin in the hoard depicts the Vikings chief English foe. You can read that it says here Athelstan Athelstan king of all Britain. Athelstan was king of England from 925 to 939. Athelstan wasn't any old king. He turned a country split down the middle, half occupied by the Vikings, into England united. One kingdom for the very first time. The Vikings were banished and as it says on the coin Athelstan became king of all Britain. What's amazing is we can see the history of our country, the beginning of it, by looking at this hoard. We don't get finds like this every day. So this single coin is vivid testament to our first king and the moment that Britain became an independent state. Which is why it's extraordinary that King Athelstan isn't far more famous. Even the abbey where he's buried doesn't seem grand enough for a great king. It is perhaps odd that we're not at Westminster Abbey or even maybe in the grounds of Windsor Castle. We're at Malmesbury in Wiltshire, the final resting place of King Athelstan. Appropriately Malmesbury is the one place in Britain where Athelstan's memory is still alive. It's thanks in part to a gift of his land to the people here a thousand years ago. Athelstan recruited men from this town to fight for him in a battle against the Vikings. For that he gave them land, roughly 500 acres, and that's our heritage. And because of this the people of Malmesbury still gratefully acknowledge Athelstan at a strange ceremony to swear in new freemen to the town. Turf and twig I give to thee as free as King Athelstan gave to me. Thou shalt be. The ancestors of people in Malmesbury fought alongside Athelstan and it's because of their brave efforts that the worldly goods of one Viking may never have been reclaimed. He could have buried the hoard to hide it from Athelstan's army. He could even have been killed in battle by the English forces. It's marvellous that Athelstan's memory is still kept so vividly alive here in Wiltshire and it's extraordinary to think that because one of his coins was found 300 miles away we're able to relive one of his greatest moments, defeating the Viking invaders. Who says that history is dead? We're counting down the final 10 of Britain's secret treasures. Number nine on the list is an extraordinary and very rare bit of history that's now sadly lost to the nation. In fact nobody knows where it is or who's got it. Bettany investigates the Crosby-Garrett helmet. In May 2010 a young man was metal detecting in a field in Cumbria near Crosby-Garrett and he uncovered this bronze figure of a griffin, a kind of fierce mythological creature. Understandably he carried on digging and he uncovered no less than 68 metal fragments. What was extraordinary about this find was that all the bits of metal appeared to come from the same object. Although the finder informed the British Museum of his discovery because it was made of bronze, not gold or silver, it was up to him what he did with it. So he instructed London auctioneers Christie's to reconstruct and sell it. Within six months they transformed the box of broken fragments into something truly astonishing. A unique and magnificent Roman parade helmet with a face plate designed to shock and awe. This was such an extraordinary find for Cumbria that a local museum wanted it as the centrepiece of a new gallery. With only three weeks to the auction the Tully House Museum in Carlisle started a fundraising campaign. We were getting donations being pledged from Canada I remember, Brazil, Bulgaria. What surprised me and made me more determined really was the response locally. I remember going to a secondary school and they all started putting their hands up and say we're going to do a car wash, we're going to have a store, bake cakes and they did. They were emptying piggy banks and you know the amount of excitement that generated locally was just phenomenal. In just three weeks they'd raised an astonishing £1.7 million to bid on the helmet. On the day the restored helmet went under the auctioneer's hammer in London there was a great deal of interest. Now ladies it went so quickly it seemed to be a matter of seconds I'm sure it was minutes but it just rattled through really quickly. £100,000, £200,000, £300,000. I got a sinking feeling because the pace of the auctioneer seemed to suggest this is going to go incredibly high. £700,000, £800,000. The auctioneer shot over a million. £1.1 million, £1.2 million, £1.3 million. There was a bit of a pause at about £1.5 million and I thought maybe there's a chance here, maybe we could get it. And then suddenly it took off again. £1.6 million. We pulled out £1.7 million. Hammer price was £2 million and that's basically the last time I saw it. So this amazing piece of British Roman history never came to the Tully House Museum and the Today no one knows where the helmet is or which private collector owns it and its disappearance has left a hole in history. Of course money can buy you anything, in this case a unique Roman helmet but it certainly hasn't bought the love of historians and archaeologists and members of the public right across the country. Still to come, an ancient gold ring gives up its saucy secrets. So it looks like, I don't know, a couple arguing or kissing or having sex. Really? And a beautiful Roman bowl offers a rare glimpse of life on Hadrian's Wall 2,000 years ago. It's a real window into history. We're counting down the final top 10 objects discovered by you, the British public. Extraordinary finds that have changed the way that we view our past. That's true and number eight on our list is tiny but perfect. It's a gorgeous gold seal ring that was discovered in 1998 on a patch of waste ground just outside Norwich by a member of the public who wants to remain anonymous. Local girl Mylene Class goes in search of an East Anglian fairy tale. I've come back to Norwich where I grew up to meet the Castle Museum curator Tim Pestel and find out the story behind this tiny but beautiful seal that was once attached to a gold ring. Oh, it's quite heavy. It is, yes, it's 98% pure solid gold. Oh wow, so it looks like, I don't know, a couple arguing or kissing. Or having sex. Really? Possibly. My eyesight must be bad. I didn't see that. The image on the ring shows a bearded man and a long-haired woman in a naked embrace. Once pushed into wax, the ring made an imprint that was used as a seal. This saucy stamp was meant for a lover but the flip side is more official and intriguingly has the name of the person who owned it. You can read the name Balderhildes, a 7th century queen. That's amazing, this is a queen? We think so, yes. Balderhildes was the ultimate local girl made good. Born in 7th century East Anglia, she rose to become the Queen of France, an area that covered much of modern-day France. I'm travelling to a town outside Paris where Balderhildes lived towards the end of her life to find out more about her. Balderhildes wasn't born into royalty. Amazingly, she was an Anglo-Saxon slave but legend has it she was so beautiful that she enchanted none other than the King of France himself. And in 648 AD, the slave girl became his queen. I hate the idea of anyone thinking they have ownership over anybody else so this girl becoming a queen from the ranks of a slave, that's like a real fairy tale. I'm meeting medieval expert Martin Ryan in a museum in the town of Shell. Astonishingly, personal items from Balderhildes's life still exist here. Just down there at the bottom there, you might be able to see it's a lock of her hair. Look at that. I want to find out what the slave girl did with her newfound royal power. Someone about 10 years after her death wrote down her life stories. I've got a translation here. She gave orders through all the lands that no one was to sell captive Christians within the borders of the Frankish realm. So she tried to stop... She tried to stop the slave trade, yeah. Slavery was a common practice in medieval Europe. It actually wasn't made illegal until as late as the 19th century. So Balderhildes's decree to stop it was a thousand years ahead of its time. The last years of Balderhildes's life were spent in a monastery. Where she would have given up all of her worldly goods. The gold ring is so personal, it could be that Balderhildes sent it back to her family in East Anglia. On the flip side, you have a couple having sex. You can't really take that into a monastery without nuns talking. Not the kind of thing you take in though. Balderhildes was an incredible woman. And for me, this ring represents her finest moments. A woman in love and a queen in power. And that is why it deserves its place at number eight in the list of treasures. The finder of the seal has discovered a very personal slice of history. A discovery to be proud of. Indeed. Now, number seven in our final countdown is an incredibly important find from Roman Britain. Not only does it give us clues to one of the greatest monuments from that period, but it also brings us up close and personal to one man who was sent to this outpost of the Roman Empire. In 2003, two metal detectorists were searching fields in the Staffordshire moorlands when they saw something in the ground they thought was a coke can. When Kevin Blackburn dug it out, what he and his colleague Julian Lee actually found was an extraordinarily rare and beautifully decorated Roman copper pan or bowl. What's exceptional about this bowl is that it's one of only a few objects that refer directly to the time when Hadrian's Wall in the north of England was a manned fortification. To find out more, archaeologist Helen Geek has come to the Tully House Museum in Carlisle where the bowl is displayed to meet the curator, Tim Padley. And this is the Staffordshire moorland. So tell me what the inscription means. Well, it has the names of the forts at the western end of Hadrian's Wall, starting at Maes, Coggebarto, then you leap to Camerglannach and possibly the earliest reference to Hadrian building the wall. And this is what he built. 1900 years later and Hadrian's Wall is still the greatest landmark the Romans left Britain. It was the furthest outpost of the Roman Empire, built to separate civilisation from the wild, raw and untameable tribes to the north. A frightening prospect for anyone posted here. All along the wall were fortresses stationed with troops and this bowl may have been owned by one of them. Fantastic colours. So do we know who this belonged to? Well, it belonged probably to Draco, the Draconis at the end. Do we know who Draco was? Have we got any idea? We don't know who this particular Draco was. There are various Dracos that we do know about and they do seem to be Greek. Draco is not a Roman name but Greek. Greeks, like many who were conquered by the Romans, were enslaved and forced to work or become soldiers. Draco may have been brought to be stationed on Hadrian's Wall. The bowl is like a memento of where he served. It's like a wonderful piece of China is stamped Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya. You know, these are not romantic places. These are not beautiful places. These are just garrisons. And yet the pan is so lovely. After 25 years' service, soldiers conscripted from all over the empire were given citizenship. They became free men. So this beautiful object could represent an enslaved man's freedom, a moment when Draco could choose his own destiny. Maybe he married a local girl and settled down in Staffordshire, and that's why the bowl was found there, 140 miles from the wall. What I love about this object is that it gives us a really intriguing look at a soldier's life. They weren't all conscripts gloomily serving out their time in the Roman Empire's equivalent of Siberia. It's easy to underestimate the Romans' influence on Britain. It may well have been our ancestors' fear of them that led them to bury this next treasure, not just one object, but 5,000, that make up number six on Britain's secret treasures. Our next object was discovered in the Leicestershire town of Hallerton in 2000. I'm meeting retired teacher Ken Wallace to hear about his find. How did you find this hoard? I scrubbed the top of the soil with the tip of my boot. Not very scientific. Not the archaeologist in action. Two Iron Age coins popped up, and you can tell they're Iron Age because they're saucer-shaped rather than plain discs. The site was littered with coins, so I was really just collecting the ones that were blatantly near the surface. The dig wasn't actually started until September the following year, which was done by Leicester University. What was discovered was no less than 5,000 silver and gold Iron Age coins from the first century AD. The vast majority of coins were Col Retorvi, which is the tribe of the Leicestershire area. However, almost every other tribe was represented by their coinage. But that was just the beginning. Oh, that was just the beginning, yes. Perhaps most bizarrely on the surface, about 400 to 500 peas, or the remains of peas, and the vast majority had their front forelimb missing. The bones of more than 300 slaughtered pigs, each with the right front leg cut off. What was this place? One reason these extraordinary objects and the ritual pig bones might have been buried is because all the tribal chiefs came together to prepare for a new and frightening enemy. In 43 AD, the Romans began their second invasion of Britain. All the tribal leaders needed as much help as they could get. What we now think, based on this site, is they're all coming together on this hilltop to bury their gold and their silver together, to pray to their gods and to deposit their coins in the hope that the gods will look favourably on them. After the break, we'll be running down the country's final five secret treasures, including a coin that could reveal a completely unknown Roman emperor and a prehistoric golden cup. Oh, wow, look at that. So beautiful, isn't it? Up until now, most of our treasures have told us what once happened, but the next one, a silver badge in the shape of a boar, discovered in 2010 by the university lecturer Carl Dawson, could pinpoint where the last king of England to die in battle actually fell. Who better to investigate than the ex-Defence Secretary, Michael Portillo? In 2010, in a field near the historic town of Market Bosworth, a metal detectorist found this, a silver gilt badge in the form of a boar. The location of the boar badge in central Leicestershire was close to where the historic Battle of Bosworth was fought on the 22nd of August, 1485. Henry Tudor faced King Richard III to decide who was to rule England. It was a battle that lasted just a few hours before Richard was killed. The horse! My kingdom for a horse! And a new royal family ushered in the golden age of the Tudors. This badge tells us something amazing about that battle. I'm going to the local information centre to meet battle re-enactor Paul Parker. Was this being worn by somebody at the time of the battle? Oh, definitely. Everybody that supported Richard would have been wearing these effigies of the white boar, the blank sanglare, and then if we look at the smaller badge, which is more the size of what you're showing, it is actually made out of pewter. Now, this is why this is so different, because this is made of silver and it's gold gilted, so it would have certainly been worn by a man of nobility, showing support for Richard. If the silver boar badge was worn by one of Richard III's closest knights, he was probably by the king's side to the bitter, bloody end. So it may be that this rich and noble supporter of King Richard met his end close to where his king fell. Most certainly. So it's very important. The boar badge was found a few yards behind me. So this could be the very spot where Richard III fell. But that brings up a real conundrum, because this field is two miles away from the visitor's centre, the official location where the battle was believed to have happened. Hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren and tourists and battle reenactors flopped here like pilgrims. But the discovery of the boar badge suggests that they'd been led up the garden path to the wrong field. The reason this simple silver badge deserves to be number five on the list is because it could be one of the most significant clues to where a royal dynasty fell one fateful day 500 years ago. It's really fascinating to think how objects found by members of the public can change our knowledge of such important moments in history. But our next item at number four on the list is slightly different in that this one actually makes history itself. When someone finds a hoard of coins like these, they're brought here to the British Museum's Conservation Department to be cleaned. When the Chalgrove hoard of 5,000 coins from Oxfordshire was being treated, an eagle-eyed conservator spotted one little coin that was completely unexpected. It dated from the third century AD. And it would rewrite the history books. In 2003, Brian Mallin, a plastics engineer, was metal detecting in a field near Chalgrove, Oxfordshire. Didn't just find loose change here. Didn't just find a clay pipe. Found 5,000 coins in a pot. To Richard Abdey, one of the British Museum's coin curators, it was all pretty familiar stuff. Until, amongst the thousands of coins, he spotted something mysterious and unique. What made this hoard special? What came up was someone that looked very similar initially. And you might be able to see what's different is the name above the head. If you imagine... Demi... Demicianus. Richard had never heard of the Emperor Demicianus. He consulted his coin bible and made an amazing discovery. Demicianus turns up here. Demicianus, a coin of doubtful authenticity, was found. Another Demicianus coin, found in 1907, was dismissed as of doubtful authenticity. In other words, a forgery. Because no one had ever heard of Demicianus before. But the discovery of the new coin could prove that Demicianus was a real Roman Emperor. However, that 1907 coin was found in France. Richard asked his equivalent at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, Michel Amundry, to track it down. That coin has been locked away in a drawer for the best part of 100 years, thanks to a review by an academic. After the discovery of the coin in 1907, there was an Italian scholar, Lafranchi, who wrote an article without seeing the coin, saying that the coin was a forgery. Until now, Demicianus had been considered as mythical a character as King Arthur. If it could be proven that both coins came from the same Roman mint, even better, cast from the same die, the French and British coins could prove the existence of Demicianus himself. A previously unknown Roman Emperor. Now, for the first time ever, the two coins are going to be brought together and compared side by side. Michel has come to Oxford's Ashmolean Museum to meet Roger Bland, former curator of coins at the British Museum and head of the Portable Antiquities Scheme. So, gentlemen, are we going to see these coins side by side? I think we should, I think. The Oxford one, I think it's much fresher. This one is very irregular around the edge here. Look at the crown and you see where the crown is ending. I think it's very clear, actually, that these two coins definitely are from the same die. This is history in the making. The fact that these two coins are definitely not forgeries means a new Roman Emperor has been discovered. What's so exciting about being able to place these two coins physically together is that we can guess that Demician had power in Britain as well as France. That's the miracle of loose change in archaeology. Absolutely. The little we know of this Emperor comes from these coins. But I can't help thinking it won't be the last we hear of Demicianus. The Ashmolean Museum acquired the hoard for £40,000. Brian's opened a new chapter on our history and it's hard to think of anything better than that. But there are still three items to go on our countdown. The next treasure made it to number three because it's so magnificent, so awe-inspiring, so beautiful that it caught the imagination of the world. The Staffordshire Hoard is one of the most famous and stunning troves of Anglo-Saxon gold. 1,500 gold and jewelled objects, including war gear such as sword fittings, belt buckles and helmet parts. Were discovered by Terry Herbert in 2009 when he was metal detecting in a farmer's field at Hammerwich, Staffordshire. When the hoard was displayed at the Birmingham Museum, it broke attendance records as people from all over the world flocked to see it. And when Birmingham Museum and the Staffordshire Potteries Museum needed to raise the money to buy their most important local treasure, the public answered. We had four months to raise £3.285 million, but the general public themselves put their hands in their pockets and raised something over £900,000, which is incredible. The reason this is Britain's number three treasure is because it sheds a beam of light on a period of history we knew very little about and was a truly amazing find. Coming up, the final contenders for Britain's number one secret treasure. The countdown of Britain's 50 greatest secret treasures has brought us to the final two. The treasure that came in at number two is as old as the pyramids. It predates Jesus by 2,000 years and it comes from a period known as the Bronze Age, although this is made of solid gold. To find out more, William Roche has gone on a journey of spiritual discovery. In 2001, a plough ran over a strange metal item. Although damaging it in the process, it had exposed an object that might never have been found at all. 3,500 years ago, a craftsman from an era known as the Bronze Age fashioned a precious golden object with nothing other than simple tools. The end result was astonishing. This is the Ringlemere Cup. It was discovered in a farmer's field in Kent by a retired electrician, Cliff Bradshaw. I've come to the British Museum to meet Michael Lewis and see the cup for myself. Well, this is the Ringlemere Cup. It's kind of a corrugated design with a kind of a rounded base at the bottom. Could I hold it? Yeah, I'll pass it to you. Thank you. It's wonderful to hold that and think that is 3,500 to 4,000 years old. You don't know whether it was a druidic thing or... We know really very little about the period. Obviously, there's no kind of written records from this period of time. The idea is that it's a high-status object. It's in a pretty mangled state, isn't it? So do you have an idea of what it would have looked like in its purer state? Well, I've got a recreation here I can show you. Oh, wow, look at that. How beautiful. You can see the little indents down there. It's so beautiful, isn't it, in its simplicity? You almost feel love radiating out from it. Do you feel that, Michael? No, I... No, you don't. You're working in the head and I'm working in the heart. To get to the bottom of what this strange, beguiling cup was used for, I'm meeting archaeologist Keith Parfitt in the field where it was discovered. Could you just point out where it was actually found? Can you just make out that very slight rise in the field? It was found right on the summit of that mound. It was actually a deliberately built mound. Deliberately built mound. Following the mound's excavation, it was refilled to protect what's beneath. So what actually is under that mound? What we found is that it's enclosed by this huge great ditch, nearly six feet deep and enclosing an area of about 150-odd feet. Right in the middle of the ditched enclosure, we came across this pair of L-shaped trenches containing the remains of decayed wood. It's some sort of central timber shrine. What the discovery of this cup had revealed was an ancient religious place of enormous importance. A wooden henge that was a distant cousin of Stonehenge. Stonehenge is a cathedral. We could see this more on a pile in a local parish church. Yeah, that's a very good way of putting it. And the final act on the site seems to be to dig a pit in the top of that mound and bury the gold cup. So the cup had actually been deliberately buried. It doesn't mean it got lost and forgotten. It had been buried. That's very interesting. Could it be that a priest stood on that mound to preach and maybe that gold cup featured in the ceremony somehow? It's funny to think that the lips of our ancestors touched this sacred cup. Cups like this have been at the centre of spiritual rituals throughout the ages. I'm heading to the wooden henge's modern-day equivalent, the nearby parish church, to try and understand how the cup was used. Right, this is the Ringelmeyer gold cup, which you've no doubt heard about, that was found just down the road. I don't think it's decorative because you can't put it somewhere and leave it, otherwise it will fall over. Fall over, it's got a round bottom, yeah. The round bottom. The nearest thing is a chalice, which is one of these. It has a direct relation to God, but it also has a relation to other people. So communion is communion both with God and the other people who are present. Do you think that's interesting? If you have a cup like the Ringelmeyer cup that you can't put down, and the implication is that once you start you have to finish, and if it's passed around and everybody shares, then there is that same sense of developing community. I can see why a cup is at the heart of religious practice. It's an offering to each other, to your God. It sort of makes you feel a part of how your world works. I'd love to have been there when our ancestors buried it and to ask why. The gold cup is a great treasure because it not only led us to this place, but it also opened the door to us understanding what went on here. It was obviously designed to be used in some sort of communal ritual, definitely something of a spiritual nature. And what went on is something that just hasn't changed in 4,000 years. We're always looking to find the meaning and the great truths that underlie the mystery of our existence. It's quite a thing, isn't it, to think that under that farmer's field was an object that was 4,000 years old. I know, and it just goes to show that you never know what amazing little pieces of history you could be walking over. All this week you've been sending in images of the treasures you've found for our team here at the British Museum's Portable Antiquities Scheme to decide which is the most interesting. They've picked out some of the best. There's been a fantastic response. That's lovely, isn't it? In just a few days, you've sent in nearly a thousand pictures of new treasures via itb.com forward slash treasure. It's just an amazing variety of different finds, isn't it? From gold coins to brooches, swords to ancient toys, rings and even a set of Victorian false teeth. Some of these objects have only just come out of the ground. This 9th century silver brooch was discovered little more than a week ago. How are we going to make a start? I don't know. That's lovely, isn't it? Yeah, that's fantastic. That's what they call a square-headed brooch, isn't it, from the Anglo-Saxon period. Quite early, I think, isn't it? Yes. And it's really rare to see them as well-preserved as this, isn't it? It's very strange to have it complete like that. Well, this is a lead teaching tablet from the 17th century. And it's believed that they were used to help teach children the alphabet. Now, this is an interesting little group of objects, isn't it? I mean, there are bits of pottery here and there's a handle here of a knife blade. And some clay pipes as well. The finder was a little boy who found these on the Thames foreshore, which is nice. One item really intrigued them, though. Well, it's got an inscription on the back. Peace to you, Mark, my evangelist. That's the inscription they've got on the cathedral of St Mark's in Venice. Oh, really? Yeah. What's this doing in a field in Hampshire? It's amazing, isn't it? Oh, look at that. Fantastic. It's exactly like a little book, isn't it? Oh, look, even a little spine and the cover. So you get another bit of information from this, don't you? Because you can see what a medieval book would have looked like. That's right, yeah. Where did you find it? I found it here in this field. Actually, in this field. So do you have a theory about what it is? Well, we're on the Pilgrim's Way to Canterbury, so I did think perhaps it was a Pilgrim souvenir. Well, it seems like it was made in Venice, but exactly how many steps it took to come here, who knows? It's got no pin to fix it onto your clothes, so it would have been really easy to lose. And I suppose that might be what it was doing in the field. I think this is really going to add to our understanding of things like international pilgrimage, perhaps, and maybe even our knowledge of the medieval book. So thank you very much for submitting it. Thank you for taking it on. Well done, everybody. What a fantastic response. And now for the number one secret treasure. Until now, the oldest treasure on our list has been 5,000 years old. But our final object is at least a staggering 500,000 years old. And for once, the judges' decision was unanimous. This is an absolutely pivotal moment in the whole of human evolution. It's like when the humans stood up for the first time and walked on two legs or started intentionally using fire. I completely agree. We should be overwhelmed by the age of this thing. And really, this is the beginning of us. This is where life as we knew it for humans on Earth and in Britain began. So for me, that is the winner. The number one treasure was found on the east coast of Britain, on the Norfolk shoreline around Haysborough. I'm heading there to meet our finder of finders, Mike Chambers, a civil servant who stumbled across it in 2001 while walking his dog along the beach. He spotted a strange-looking rock, more of a black slither, buried in the clay right at the water's edge. He knew there was something different about it. He picked it up and looked at it. But he didn't realise then the significance of what he was holding. It was a straight line in a piece of clay. And it just seemed odd. So I had a rummage around, and out it came. Mike used a replica to show me how difficult it was to spot. Can you see anything? Well, there's something... Well, this thing, this black thing... Yeah. That's all I could see when I first found it. It'll come out fairly easy because it was in solid clay when I found it. And this is the real object that he found. This amazingly crafted piece of flint is a prehistoric hand axe that was made somewhere between 500 and 700,000 years ago. You can tell this has been... It's been crafted, can't you? Yes. What did you think at the time? I knew it was a hand axe. Yeah. But the last person that touched that, what was he like? Who was he? You really feel a connection with this person. Absolutely. I'd love to meet him. So you lost this chap. I think you dropped something. I want to find out how this very ancient Briton made and used this axe, so I've come to meet local craftsman John Lord. Can I hit it right on the edge? You're in the wrong place for me. It took John just two minutes to knock up the most astonishingly versatile tool. But this is really sharp, isn't it? It can cut through animal skin, carve into bone and fashion a stick into a spear. It's a prehistoric Swiss army knife. So we know where it was found, we know how it was made and we know, broadly speaking, what it was used for. But what sort of creature owned it and maybe lost it? What sort of land did he live in? 500,000 years ago, Britain was a very different place. Since that time, ice ages have been and gone. Britain was joined to Europe. This land, now beneath the North Sea, was called Doggerland. It was lush and green. Mammoths and herds of other animals roamed its plains. And that is where the original owner of the hand axe would have hunted and gathered his food. The prehistoric owner of this object could have best be described as human-like rather than human. But it was the simple tool he'd crafted from flint that made him stand out from every other animal he came up against. And, quite simply, explains why we are here today. The reason that this is Britain's top secret treasure is that it changes what we thought we knew about ourselves. We've been here far longer than we ever imagined. When it was found, this flint tool showed us that Britain had been inhabited for 100,000 years longer than we thought before. And that staggering knowledge is down to this extraordinary and beautiful object. So, those are our top 50 treasures as discovered by the British public. It just shows you how much history there is still waiting to be uncovered. What will you find in the future? Goodbye.