[00:22.41]Tacitus declared it "pretium victoriae" - worth the conquest,
[00:27.30]the best compliment that could occur to a Roman.
[00:33.12]He'd never visited these shores,
[00:34.72]but was nonetheless convinced that Britannia was rich in gold.
[00:42.61]Silver was abundant there, too.
[00:44.51]Apparently so were pearls,
[00:46.40]although Tacitus had heard they were grey,
[00:48.92]like the overcast rain-heavy skies,
[00:51.78]and the natives only bothered to collect them
[00:54.31]when they were cast up on the shore.
[00:59.57]As far as the Roman historians were concerned,
[01:01.72]Britannia might well be off the edge of the world,
[01:04.89]but it was off the edge of their world,
[01:06.69]not in some howling, barbarian wilderness.
[01:09.90]If the same writers had been able to travel in time
[01:13.11]as well as space to the northernmost of our islands,
[01:16.83]to the Orcades - our modern Orkney,
[01:19.51]they would have seen something much more astonishing than heaps of pearls
[01:23.67]The unmistakable signs of a civilisation thousands of years older than Rome.