Unearthing Mysteries: A BBC Radio History Series - Aubrey Manning Audiobook

Written by Aubrey Manning
Read by Aubrey Manning
Format: M4B
Bitrate: 128 Kbps

Much of human history is hidden from us, buried deep under our feet. Layered beneath the landscape are the unknown stories of ancient peoples and civilizations, written in bones and long-lost artefacts, waiting to be revealed and deciphered. Between 1999 and 2006, over eight radio series, renowned author and broadcaster Aubrey Manning followed geological and archaeological clues in an attempt to unravel some of these mysteries – from the Lost Map of London and the Amber Room to the Pharos Lighthouse of Alexandria, the Antikythera Mechanism and the Land of Punt. This landmark radio series, lost for years, can now be listened to again.

Journeying around the British Isles and worldwide, he visits sites including tombs, tunnels and temples, setting out to uncover the secrets that lie within them. Could ‘KV 55’ in the Valley of the Kings be the final resting place of the great Pharaoh Akhenaten? What can the ‘Red Lady’ of Paviland tell us about how homo sapiens succeeded Neanderthals? Did the Saxons make top-notch steel 1,000 years before the Industrial Revolution? And was a swamp in the South Anatolian plain the unlikely location for the world’s first city?

These and other burning questions are tackled by Manning, with erudite input from a host of expert researchers, historians, scientists and archaeologists. His investigations take in a Roman drinking cult; a Bronze Age archer dubbed the ‘King of Stonehenge’; Boudica’s forgotten husband, Prasutagus; the tale of a saint, severed hands and a sword in the stone – and the remarkable discovery of British prehistoric cave art…