Using footage shot at Bank of Scotland fireworks and music extravaganza, at the end of Edinburgh's International festival as background, we explain how Edinburgh's landscape was formed, and examine the lifestyle of the city's earliest inhabitants (The Votadini).
Fireworks are choreographed to music of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and choir, synchronised to the beat of their conductors' baton (Matthew Hall).
Read the Film Script
Rising up from a primeval swamp, Edinburgh began its life as one of the many volcanoes in the area. Over many thousands of years as ice ages came and went, grinding movement of huge sheets of ice shaped and reshaped Edinburgh castle rock's contour. The glaciers of the last ice age melted, and left a trail of earth and stones in its wake, creating a crag with a tail; this forms the distinctive landscape, upon which Edinburgh grew.
These old volcanoes would've been just the place for the early inhabitants of the area, an advantage of high ground would give local tribes precious time to gather livestock and get ready for any threat that came their way. Traces of habitation from over two thousand years ago, show settlements where people lived behind stone wall enclosures high on the craggy rocks, and cultivated lower slopes.
Move forward, first century, first millennium; the Roman army advancing north: Here in South-east of Scotland, the local Celtic British tribe became allies of Rome. The Votadini tribes' kingdom ended at the South bank to the Firth of Forth. A small boat ride away on the far bank, a ferocious warrior tribe the Romans named the Picti (painted people) land began; A land the Romans didn't manage to conquer. The Votadini welcomed the havoc the Romans wrought on the Picts and would do business with them, rather than any savage Picti raiders from across the water.
