Bettany Hughes: "People will be on the edge of their seat with this unexpected history"

Historian and TV presenter Bettany Hughes returns to our screens this Saturday (6 April) with the third instalment of Treasures of the World. This time around, Bettany explores the little-known history of countries that so often fly under the radar for travellers, from Albania to Azerbaijan. 

Ahead of the new series launch, founding editor Lyn Hughes catches up with Bettany to learn more.

This is series three of Treasures of the World. What do you think it is about Treasures that's captured the imagination of the public? 

First of all, it's a good word to have in a title! And I think there's a really smart, curious public out there and they recognise that a treasure can be anything from – as you have in Bulgaria – the oldest-worked gold in the world through to an attitude or an idea.

So, in Albania, in Berat, we meet people who are the incarnation of this idea of besa, of hospitality, and that Albania is one of the very, very few places in the world where the Jewish population was higher after the Second World War than it was before because so many people were given shelter there. That really is part of this code of hospitality and looking after strangers as though they're friends and guests.

So, I think it might be that it's a mixture of the fact that treasures can be many things, and that we go to quite out of the way places. I'm talking about Roman history, but I'm doing it on the borders of Russia and Dagestan, or I might be talking about it in a submarine base in Albania. So it’s familiar stories but in unexpected places.

Where you do go in this series and is there a theme throughout?

Well, five out of the six are countries are post-Soviet or post-Communist. I’m very, very aware that 30 years on, we shouldn't be complacent about the fact that these countries are very newly independent. Thirty years is no time in big history terms. I think we're all aware of that even more now with what's happening in Ukraine,

What a lot of these countries are doing are finding their roots via archaeology. There was quite a lot of Soviet archaeologists and that passion has continued in these newly free places: Albania, Estonia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Bulgaria. Those five places had all been either Soviet or Communist. Then we did a little sort of treat at the end with an episode on Greece and Turkey, so there's a little Eastern Mediterranean coda.

I think that one of the themes of the series is to show the joined-up nature of the global experience. You have got Roman soldiers being buried in the High Caucasus, for instance, and you've got Greek travellers going to remote islands in the middle of the Baltic Sea. You’ve got early Viking traders trading Arabic dirhams again in these islands which feel like something out of a Netflix Viking drama series.

So we're trying to draw up the dots which are there, but people often just haven't got the opportunity to make these connections, which are firmly there in the archaeology and in the history.

What would you think will be one or two of the surprises for viewers in this series? Where are they really are going to think “Oh, gosh,”.

Well, I think that's going to happen quite a lot, actually.

A contemporary one in a way, is in Estonia, when we go to the island of Kihnu, which is a place where women have always been very dominant. Some people said it was a female-only island or a matriarchy, but it's not that, it's just that women have always been dominant because the men have been sailors or fishermen, so they've often been away from the island for eight or nine months at a time.

So inevitably, the women became very potent and powerful. But I discovered this lovely thing there, which is that the most honoured people on the island are women over 50. Post menopausal women are looked after. They're cherished by their community. You have a different status. You wear a different coloured skirt and things. But you're given huge respect and honour. For me personally that was a fascinating thing to discover.

I think too the fact that we talk about Roman history in Albania, when the first emperor of Rome, Augustus, is clambering up on people's backs to get ultimate power. That happened on the coast of Albania in a place called Apollonia. We know that he was then called Octavian before he becomes Augustus. But he leaves Apollonia in order to go to Rome and become Roman emperor. So I think that that will be a surprise to people.

Then there’s the fact that the oldest worked gold in the world isn't in Egypt or in South America – it's in Bulgaria, and it's 7,000 years old! I mean, it's so so old. That will be a real surprise to people.

We’re just trying the whole time to keep people slightly on the edge of their seat so that they're getting an unexpected history.

And you go to one of my favourite places... Lake Ohrid.

Yes, it’s so beautiful and so unique! Did you know about the Neolithic posts? There are 7,500-year-old posts that the Neolithic Stone Age homes would have been on and they're perfectly, perfectly preserved.

It was very cool in every sense of the word. My head nearly fell off as it was so cold when I was diving. And, you know, like when you have a sort of brain freeze, it's like I had a whole head freeze for about an hour afterwards. But it’s incredible. So you can be in this lake and it says something very exciting about us as a species wanting to collaborate and live together. This is the time before farming has really taken off, but we're choosing to make our individual lives better by joining together as a group. So I found that really moving.

What about Estonia? What do you get up to there?

So that's the island of Kihnu there..

Which I feel like I need to move to...

And we all need to! They are so lovely. They all drink delicious homemade cider and this lovely rum-based warming thing and delicious home baked food.

There's a place called Viidumäe which is on an island called Saaremaa, where a couple of years ago they discovered a beautiful, coiled gold serpent. It's either a necklace or a bracelet and helps to put back the Viking Age by 100 years. It tells us that the Viking lifestyle – which basically means raiding and trading – started much earlier than we imagined, and this gold bracelet is part of the proof. So that's an example where it's literal treasure, but it unpacks a really important story.

There's a chilling aspect of that story where it [the bracelet] was discovered. [It] Turned out to be a site of human sacrifice. It's slightly otherworldly – like a fairy tale – with fresh water and silver birch trees. They discovered lots of jewellery which had been left as offerings in a bank, and then they discovered human remains and clear evidence of human sacrifice.

So that is very chilling, but it's one of those moments where archaeology backs up the myths. 

You go to Georgia too?

I really want to go back! We couldn’t fit it all in. Georgia is absolutely extraordinary.

I love the story of Tamar, the mediaeval queen who had a huge empire.

So why isn't she a household name? There should be a Hollywood movie.

Oh, definitely. We go to Vardzia in Georgia, one of the places she was. It’s very dramatic, a bit like Cappadocia, a rock-cast underground city that's been exposed – the front face of the rock was sheared off during an earthquake.

One of my favourite characters from ancient history is Medea, the Princess sorceress who's always painted as a kind of evil poisoner. But in Georgia she's a role model, and lots of young girls are called Medea. If you look at the evidence from Vani – which was the gold capital of the ancient kingdom of Colchis – there's evidence of pharmaceutical preparations on some of the altars. Maybe that's the origins of the myth of women dressed in gold, who would have been in charge of rites using a kind of ancient pharmacy.

It was very cool to go and do my own little homage to the real Medea because we only hear that she's a child-killing evil harridan – but that's only from one Greek source. So reclaiming Medea was a lot of fun in Georgia.

I'm sure our readers are going to want to follow in your footsteps somewhere. So is there anywhere that particularly stands out that you think we should go and discover for ourselves?

What I'd say is that a lot of the countries we visited border Russia, and it feels to me it's really important to go to those edges of places because these are countries who have got a very big, powerful neighbour. Rather than avoid them, it feels to me it's a time to try to embrace that and to explore these independent countries. So I would say take a four-week tour and just go from one to another.

You could do Albania, Bulgaria and Estonia, and then through the Caucasus, Azerbaijan, Azerbaijan and Armenia.

It always feels to me that we should meet that kind of bullying on the front foot. That activity shouldn't distract people or deter them from visiting these beautiful, independent countries that have got so much to offer.

Any final words?

I'm really proud of the series, and I love the fact it's putting these slightly different locations out on a Saturday night, and it's a way of putting Bulgaria there by talking about Alexander the Great or Albania because we're talking about Roman generals.

I'm really delighted. It’s a beautiful world out there and [we should] just enjoy it while we can.

 Catch the first episode of Treasures of the World with Bettany Hughes on Channel 4 this Saturday 6 April at 7pm, or stream online.