HAUNTING Remains of Ancient Sites | Digging for the Truth *2 Hour Marathon*

join me as I explore the rise and fall of central Mexico's city of the Gods teot taakan a metropolis of Mega proportions that thrived for centuries then mysteriously collapsed who built teot taakan and what happened to them to find out I float above the ruins play one of the world's oldest Sports make razor sharp tools with volcanic class and learn about one man whose bones become my window into the past it's a search for answers to one of History's great enigmas we're digging for the truth and we're going to extremes to do it like [Music] [Music] butter these are the ruins of teot wakan at one point this was a thriving Cultural Center some believe this was the first great city of the Western Hemisphere but after centuries of dominance it suddenly collapsed its inhabitants left us no readable documents to explain why just their monuments their art and their graves hi I'm Josh Bernstein and I've come here to Central Mexico to explore the fate of this City's people and there's no better place to start than with the ruins of the city itself pyramids dominate the city skyline today three major ones still stand but in the past as many as 200 smaller pyramids all just a few feet from each other dotted the City Construction started in the first century ad at its height around 450 ad almost 150,000 people lived here in specially designed apartment complexes the city stretched out for some 20 square miles making it one of the ancient world's largest cities then sometime after 550 ad the city was suddenly abandoned with no records left to explain what happened teote wakan is located some 30 m from modern-day Mexico City it's easy to confuse the toot AOS with the Maya or the Aztecs but the Maya who lived hundreds of miles away were culturally and ethnically distinct from teot wakan the Aztecs on the other hand may have descended from the teote wakos they were the ones who discovered the silent ruins of the city some 700 years after its collapse the super superhuman Majesty of the ruins so profoundly impressed them that they immortalized it in their Legends they named this Monumental city taakan the city of the Gods today it's the most visited archaeological site in Mexico but is still one of the least understood who built teot teak Khan I'm here at the an sight museum with Dr Mike Spence he's conducted extensive excavations at teot wakan his specialty analyzing human remains Mike introduces me to some of the earliest inhabitants or at least what's left of them Clues like these have given him insight into the City and its people when we found these these revolutionized our understanding of T Wan we had theide idea that t aan was primarily peaceful but when we found these we realized that there was a more Sinister aspect of the city um these particular individuals Are Soldiers we believe Mike how do you know that these guys were soldiers you can see that they're wearing these shell collars and below the collars hanging from them are a series of of replicas of human jawbones the ones here are replicas because this is a Museum or they actually were buried with replicas no they were buried with replicas oh really replicas meant to symbolize or represent the uh various kills they made in Warfare so each jaw represents one or a certain number of people they've killed I think so judging from the number of Jawbone pendants we can tell that they were clearly elite soldiers but a closer examination of their remains could tell me a lot more about them and their civilization Mike takes me to store room stacked from floor to ceiling with ancient remains found at the site is that it well there's more in other aisles got anything in a size 11 we go on a treasure hunt of sorts here's another one and Stack Up on the bones of one man who lived here some 2,000 years ago I'll carry this one okay first he's a critical source of information now this is like a really scary Christmas present what'd you get me you can catch I might give him something grab that one that's the Fe y the other fur ah I got you a the tiia ah very good you go we lay the bones out like you'd expect him to be buried but this wasn't the way his bones were actually found put this out like this a little bit and then these would come back in sort of flexing the legs you know and that's how the legs were close together and bent his bent position tells us that he was bound at the feet and that's not all now the wrists they would have looked like this only they would have been underneath behind the pelvis pelvis so was it like is it like this where they're actually that's right yeah a little higher about the small of the back and in this case cause of death was I think he was probably buried alive buried alive along with 200 other healthy young people all sacrificed in a single seemingly gruesome event who were these victims fortunately bones and teeth store chemical records of oxygen Isotopes these act like Geographic markers allowing us to find out more about these people nearly all of the oxygen that goes into the formation of tooth and Bone comes from the water we drink the oxygen Isotopes in Bones change when a person moves from one place to another by analyzing these Isotopes scientists can tell where the person lived before he died can you show me how that's done the bone told us that he'd been living in tan for some years before he was sacrificed on the other hand oxygen Isotopes in teeth don't change over time they're imprinted by water we drink in childhood when our teeth are forming by comparing these Isotopes to those in the water in various places Mike can tell that this Soldier wasn't born here the Isotopes in the tooth indicates that he spent his childhood someplace else not in tan not even near ter to workan how far away could have been Highland Guatemala and that's thousand more kilometers away it could have been meaan which is still 2 to 300 kilm away so his story he was born a long distance away probably Highland Guatemala arrived at some point in tan became a member of the military served in tan for some years and then was sacrificed the other victims have a similar story most of them were born elsewhere and moved to teot wakan later in life this suggest that the rulers recruited people from diverse regions of meso America before sacrificing them at the altar of the state isn't that a testament then to the power of T this city had quite an Allure tells us that this was the premier city of meso America so that so teot tan was known far and wide it was for being special it it was more than special it wasn't just an ordinary City not even an extraordinary City it was absolutely unique it was the city where where time began where the present Universe was formed where the gods sacrificed themselves to make men risking their lives on the battlefield wasn't all that was asked of these Soldiers the state even demanded the ultimate sacrifice at times of Peace who or the death of these people how did they make this state so attractive that immigrants from so far away gave up their lives for it I'm on a quest to find out who built the city of the Gods I've examined their bones and found some pretty Grizzly evidence of sacrifice now I'm heading to see their monuments to learn more about the city the scale and magnificence of teote wakan has lost perplexed archaeologists and scientists the Epic architecture and organization suggest a strong central Authority I've asked Linda manania a leading archaeologist in Teo to tell me more about the city's design you know when people first settled here we have traces of villages towards the southern part of the valley around 400 before Christ but the beginning of the construction was around 80 ad okay and then we think that there was an elite who planned the city as a model of the Mesoamerican Cosmos so this city was always designed to be something significant yes it seems as it was very planned from the beginning I learned that the Visionary Elite responsible for the early stages of construction planned this city in such detail that it's still one of the most impressive examples of City Planning in human history to get a full grasp of this city scale Linda tells me I have to get another point of view all right up up and away to get to the ancient city of teot wokan from here I have to fly above the modern one yeah the captain just told me that if we stay low wind will take us right over the pyramids we go high it's going to come back this way wind direction shifts with altitude around 45,000 people live in the teot wakan municipality today was a bit vois that's not even a third the number who lived here 2,000 years ago but the way in which this modern city is laid out seems much more halfhazard than the ancient one I was impressed by the size of the city from the ground but from up here what I see is a testament to the complexity and sophistication of the people who designed and built this city I've learned from Linda that the architects of teot wakan had something very precise in mind when they laid the city out we've got the Avenue of the Dead running north south at this end what we call today the Pyramid of the Moon we don't know what they actually called it back then and then over here on the east side is the Pyramid of the sun here we can see the Avenue you see there's there's a line imagine a line going from the Pyramid of the sun du West and that crosses the Avenue of the Dead heading north south this quadrangle is how archaeologists believe that this city was laid out to a Master Plan there's something more to this grid plan that meets the eye apparently every wall every street going north south is angled exactly the same bearing just shy of true north they're all angled at 15° 25 minutes east the significance of this orientation it's still a mystery it's really obvious from up here that nothing in this site is accidental or random everything was designed with a purpose it's as if the rulers wanted their pyramids to compete with the surrounding mountains the scale and size of the pyramids were perhaps assurance that the elite were so so powerful that they can now rival the gods themselves what else do we know about these rulers and their Imperial City I head back to rejoin Linda manania who wants to take me to a place where most people aren't allowed to go I would like you to wear this okay it's it's a tunnel that goes like a serpent towards the center of the pyramid and it's like the uh entrance to the underworld F Linda is taking me under the Pyramid of the sun one of the biggest pyramids in the world it rises as high as a 20 story building and is filled in with about 3 million cubic tons of dirt and Rubble ah so this is this the entrance here no no that's a tunnel made by the archaeologist we should go inside this one the tunnel we're entering is the only one made by the Ancients that's been found so far but Linda thinks there may be other hidden tunnels she wants to show me how they're trying to find these and why they may be important there we go with hard hats for protection we descend into the tunnel should be fine Linda believes that this shaft was created by removing loose volcanic rocks from the ground the resulting Serpentine tunnel heads down for 300 ft tight squeeze humid and uh I can definitely feel sensation of going down down into the center of the pyramid CH over the centuries this tunnel has been looted many times all that's left of the original interior are a few Stone channels that collected the water dripping from the ceiling a hidden tunnel or chamber would be a real prize for the archaeologists it could hold secret treasures that offer Clues to some of this City's riddles getting hard to breathe to penetrate the hidden secrets of the pyramid scientists are using the latest technological tool got something huge in white in the center of the oh yes this is a muon detector is an instrument uh that we are using to see if if if there are chambers that the archaeologists have not seen inside the pyramid muon detector muon detector yes wow the muon detector is like a huge x-ray machine it tracks muons subatomic particles just like dental X-rays find cavities in teeth the muon detector finds cavities in the pyramid above most muons get absorbed by the mass of the pyramid and don't reach the detector but in spots where there are holes or Chambers more muons pass through to the machine where they're recorded and mapped as for the tunnel this is where it ends in four chambers which Linda says may have represented the four quadrants of the city above who knows what clue may have been in these chambers before it was looted the muon detector will hopefully help improve our knowledge but it'll take at least another year to measure the muons and work out if there are any hidden Chambers so until then we'll just let it do its thing in search of clues about the inhabitants of the city of the Gods I found out about Mass sacrifices and possible hidden Chambers under the State Temple from above I've saw real evidence that this was a true Metropolis it was a city with a multi ethnic population ruled by a mysterious Elite how did this city become so Grand what was it that propelled it to Greatness you're going to need this okay and we have a flashlight so let's go all right I'll grab my sh I'm here with Ken Heth an anthropologist and expert on Mesoamerican Commerce he tells me that the source of their power wasn't gold or diamonds it was a substance called obsidian volcanic glass it's hard to imagine that this was the great wealth that propelled the rise of teote wakan so Ken's going to show me what this material was all about and why this versatile Stone was the steel of meso Amica now be careful going down it's been raining a lot so it'll be slipp Ken's taking me to an area where obsidian has been mind since the days of teot wakan now we're going in so be careful it's been raining a lot and we don't want to have roof collapse okay that would not be good this ancient mine was converted into a modern shaft and it's still mined today Ken explains that the roof is completely unsupported recent rains have soaked the ground and weaken the walls just 2 days ago a tunnel collapsed and that's not something we want to happen while while we're inside hopefully the miner's prayer candle will offer us some protection the miners dig until they find a vein of obsidian and then they'll follow the vein uh taking out the nodules that they can uh they can find be careful it's really tight here I like it that way can and I are now a long way in we can no longer see the mouth of the tunnel but we've asked some of the miners to wait near the entrance just in case something happens Josh here's a good spot all right oh wow look at that you can you can see the natural obsidians embedded in a a soil Ash Matrix wow there's obsidian everywhere look at this so this was gold but to them this was this was the valuable stuff yeah so let's just uh see if we can find a good quality piece can we take a piece from like up here would that be unwise uh we could but uh the roof might collapse we're better off looking yeah let's focus on the floor yeah F focus on the floor okay and what is it that we're looking for what makes one piece of obsidian better than another well the quality of the glass no inclusions or veins because that makes it easier to flake and that's what the people at teot wakan would have been looking for might be good this one here that one is very good yeah let's just test it and see what Quality Glass it is how do you test it uh I've got a little hammmer down if we just uh knock off a couple flakes mhm oh boy that is good quality glass all right that one's mine okay this may be another good quality piece here okay yeah looks like pretty good glass so I've got one I'll take this one Ken says that there's something special about this obsidian but we need to get a good look at it in the light outside the mine there's a debris area where miners have left their rejects you'll see that what makes this obsidian but even the rejects carry the Hallmark of what makes this obsidian unique you see that it has a green golden Sheen to it look at that which uh was important to prehispanic people they thought green stone was alive and so it had in symbolic importance whether it was a green obsidian or Jade it was uh symbolically important to them this green quality obsidian you won't find in any other obsidian in Mexico or anywhere in the new world only occurs here so if anyone had a green obsidian blade it came from here it came from here see the uh the old traps one of the secrets to teot tean's success was their control of this source of rare green obsidian but the city was also surrounded by two other huge obsidian deposits and several small ones the raw materials and tools found in various stages of production at teao show that every aspect of obsidian manufacturer was controlled by the city let's just Ken and I head to a nearby campsite where he and other archaeologists do their field workor he wants to show me how to shape obsidian into the tools of the era and demonstrate the unusual qualities of this Stone what we want to shape is something like this it's called a macroc COR and it's uh made by percussion flaking and has a a flat platform that we take our flakes off of what we' like to produce are nice parallel sided uh ridges this is what we want to create this is what we're starting that's what we're starting with okay right show me how Okay Hammerstone Hammerstone enhan Tricky Tricky Tricky creating a core is standard Flint napping procedure but napping obsidian is Trick can I just come in hard and heavy right here and see if I can probably not it flakes off very easily if you're not careful huge chunks would break off and you'd be left with a lot of useless bits and I don't want that yeah that's good that's a good one yeah just like that all the way around to learn Flint napping you got to break a lot of rock once they have a percussion core like this they use these ridges to start making blades this is a this is Tean finished core and what you can see are all the parallel ridges are the uh spots where uh blades came off MH looks like this so so one of the things that the teot Wako Flint Nappers were making were long skinny blades like this long skinny blades they would have basically the teot wakos would have braced themselves between trees or stumps But Ken has created this portable rig holding the core with his feet he has to apply just the right amount of pressure it takes skill and precision something that Ken has developed over many many hours of hard practice good one nice that's great this core is a blade Factory you can flake off blade after blade from it you can see where they came off the core and that's just what the taot wos did that's great and we know that they made these right these replicate exactly what archaeologists have found exactly archaeologists have found teot Tayan green obsidian tools all over meso America in sights thousands of miles away this obsidian trade was key in making teot taakan the economic Center of meso America Traders and Craftsmen car carried these cores to distant towns and flaked off blades on the spot for their customers the city not only controlled the export of obsidian it also controlled the human skill it took to shape it and that skill was vital they were a stone AG Society they didn't have metal uh they manufactured all their Cutting Edge from obsidian which is the sharpest Cutting Edge you know that you can manufacture uh even sharper than surgical stainless steel sharpest Edge you can Manu manfactured even today even today that's so cool I want to explain what's going on here some of the local miners have actually brought in a goat which they're going to prepare for dinner but I want to make a point using obsidian the reason why obsidian blades were found all over meso America is because everyone had to eat and everyone needed a knife obsidian was the most important tool when it came to processing this is what puts the meat on the table they would use the obsidian blades for for weaponry and and then also they used it for ceremonial activities they would let their own blood to give it to the gods and so a small lancelet they could Pierce their tongue or their ears and draw blood and and then offer it as an offering to the Gods blood was sacred wow so this is practical ceremonial and sacred I want to let these guys come in and take their goat back gracias teote Wan's control of this versatile substance made them an economic Powerhouse the their sphere of influence extended well beyond their borders I'm trying to piece together the story of teot Tay wakan I've seen a master planned metropolis and evidence of mass human sacrifice now I've discovered that A Unique Stone Age Technology was the source of its power Obsidian made teot wakan the dominant culture in the region but how did this concentration of wealth and Authority impact its citizens to find out we have to go to an apartment complex on the site some 300 years after Teo was established city planners shifted the emphasis from the construction of monumental architecture to the construction of more than 2,000 residential compounds in the city I'm back with Mike Spence and he tells me that in its prime around 450 ad close to 150,000 people lived in teot wakan that's a residence people would have been eating and sleeping and living in here to accommodate them these apartments were designed and built on a scale unprecedented in history this is absolutely unique meel America hasn't seen anything like this before and this wasn't practice any place else in meeso America at this time is there any way to know if like if this was a major switch the living lifestyles of these people I suspect the state had to use a little bit of muscle to get people into these uh and you can see it is sort of State Design there's commonalities in all of them that suggest that so here this is this is a residence that's a residence by forcefully relocating the people into government housing the ruling Elite tightened their grip on daily life but the social engineering didn't stop there political indoctrination was incorporated into the decor of every home and that is my next clue teot wakan may have had a written language but Scholars haven't been able to decipher it yet so another way we can learn about this Society is by studying the art and artifacts they've left behind I'm now heading to an apartment complex here on the site to meet an art historian and I'm hoping she can tell me more about this civilization her name is Kim Goldsmith she's been studying the mural art in teot teak Khan for more than 15 years she says that the art work is as well planned as the architecture of the city we stop at a recurring icon an image of a priest these fabulous that's so what can these tell us about the people of teot well we could learn a lot more if we had more we probably have about 1.1% of their mural artwork remaining but in general the mural paintings of teoton are really representing State symbolism as trying to be really a state propaganda even in your own house on the inside of your house you're not allowed to pick what you're going to put on your walls you are going to have a state mandated theme inside your house so it's visually mesmerizing everybody into saying we're the greatest we're the best go team really so there's some sort of programming going on through the murals definitely and it works it works very very well the mural art was like a political campaign for the elite archaeologists believe these ornate drawings of high priests ritual and sacrifice were painted on the walls in every single home in the city burning their message into the minds and the hearts of their people it's as if the murals were used to impose the will of the state on every individual was this the climate in which the sacrificed soldiers lived a climate where they might have accepted that they'd one day give their lives up for the state Kim takes me around the corner to see another mural she thinks this room might have been a school they're really beautiful we out there it's very different because this is more of a slice of everyday life These Are Men playing all different kinds of games that I'm sure they must have played during during the time period of the city looks like here they're playing bot or marbles or something yeah some kind of a ball game using balls and you have a fellow getting a piggy back rod right here and here's another this is very interesting these two fellas are playing here's the ball it looks like they're playing using their hips without being able to touch it with their hands it looks like they're going to a lot of trouble to avoid touching it in fact maybe it has even a continuance in modern times today some relative of it what game there is a game where they played in a court like this some people play a game like it very much so everything in the city of the Gods had a religious or ritual ual aspect if the rest of this culture is any indication the game probably wasn't Child's Play to find out if this game can offer me more insights into this Imperial culture I travel to Western Mexico where the game is still being played here I meet Ricardo uro a local who knows a lot about the game called hip AMA so this is the game huh yeah this is Lama they're using atast which is the field ground MH and here you have this line which is right in the middle it's called analo when they uh cannot respond then that's a point for this team it's a bit like volleyball each team tries to hit the ball back to the other side except of course here they're using their hips instead of their hands and how many points until you win eight the game has a history dating back before the Aztecs and even before the teot tanos stretching back some 4,000 years K is it okay if I give it a try sure yeah okay yeah sureit you guys have your shoes up bring it on that's to me learning to play Ama is all about learning to flick your hips that getting hit by an 8lb ball I'll tell you one thing when the ball hits you you can feel it it's heavy and it's just like a massive amount of rubber I'm going to have a nice bruise to play but it's [Music] fine this is seemingly playful stuff an innocent ball game [Music] but it turns out it wasn't innocent at all this game between competing teams may have symbolized the battle between the Gods in the sky and the Lords of the Underworld the ball itself may have symbolized the Sun the rulers of teot rakan took a physical game and turned it into a supernatural ritual once again the heavy hand of the state made its mark on daily life so Ricardo any sense of how the rules or the game has changed over the last 2,000 years they have changed a lot because uh in towan days the winner was uh sacrificed to the gods to half fertility good crops rain so you you'd want to die through this game yes right cuz to me as someone who's playing now like I I would think the loser would die you know it's like we beat you you die you know but you're saying that actually it was the honor of the winning team to be sacrificed in one of the highest ways possible yes of course okay did we win or lose I don't know I hope I lost I'm glad to be going back unharmed well mostly but I've learned something in teot wakan the dominance of this state was so complete that for centuries people were asked to give up their lives for it in war and in peace I'm trying to understand the mysterious city of teot wakan I've crawled into volcanic glass mines examined human bones and played one of the world's oldest Sports once people gave up their lives for this all powerful state but no City can last forever it's time to explore how it fell a vital clue is found in an unlikely substance lime when originally constructed each pyramid was plastered with lime which was then beautifully painted by [Music] artists Elizabeth soero a scientist who studying the impact teot wakan had on its environment is exploring a theory that's becoming increasingly popular this is an oven where the produced lime lime to plasted their pyramids so how do you you make lime does it need a lot of wood they needed a lot of yeah lime is really just burnt and powdered Limestone mixed with water and to make lime from scratch I'd have to keep this Kil burning at 800° for at least 8 hours that would take a lot of wood back in the day the city was surrounded by thick forests when the Chans started to live here the all the mountain was pled of of Pines if we were here 2,000 years ago there were trees here pine trees wow Elizabeth tells me that to get a sense of how much lime was used by the city I'll have to make some lime mortar myself okay W it feels that's hot yeah because the reaction is very strong and produce heat a lot of heat a lot of heat it's impressive in order to maintain their City the teot wokanos plastered and replastered the walls again and again to do this they would have probably kept kils burning Around the Clock it's been estimated that they used roughly 30,000 tons of wood each year to build and maintain the plaster on the city that's about 3,000 Acres of forest cut down and burnt each year over centuries it's as if they were smearing their forests all over their walls the forests never recovered from this abuse neither did the city the resulting soil erosion slashed Farm productivity setting the stage for crisis scientists believe that during the final days of teot wakan pine forests like this one were almost completely wiped out at the same time the city began to spiral out of control was environmental degradation caused by humans the real reason the city of the Gods collapsed what was the final straw once again the answers May lie in the graves a space here okay Mike is taking me to a grave in one of the apartment complexes apparently teot tanos frequently buried their relatives right in their own Courtyard mhm oh wow huh yeah it's it's been excavated by the archaeologist and re sealed it okay I've already seen the graves of elite soldiers sacrificed with riches to the gods now Mike wants to show me what archaeologists found in the graves of average citizens so this is a kind of material that was found in Graves and you can see it's a sort of reflection of the wealth of T wakan you've got green stone you've got Marine shell you've got Coral all of this coming in from some distance away these may not look like much to you and me but these objects were treasured by the people of teote wakan the kind of things you'd bury with a loved one for centuries people knew they'd take some of these things with them to their graves but all that changed as the forests got depleted wow so these types of items were found in Graves like that yes throughout tootak well uh not entirely they were in the earlier years of Tean uh this wealth seemed to flow fairly freely throughout the city some people had less than others but everybody had some and then that changed in the later years yes uh that kind of material would be found only in the graves of the Richer people toward the center of the city so we're seeing a polarization of the well there's a growing gap between the upper class and the lower classes so it sounds like something is changing internally at teot Uh something's going drastically wrong in the last century or so what environmental fact once again it's the teeth that tell the story We examined the teeth and we were able to see these lines of growth interruption in their teeth and those increased late in the apartment compound history so that uh people were apparently suffering a lot of episodes of growth interruption which means episodes of infection malnutrition perhaps trauma teot wakan it seems had gotten too big to sustain itself with the forests depleted the farmlands insufficient to sustain the dense Urban population the city was literally crumbling under its own pressure but did people just abandon it and migrate elsewhere I head back to Linda manania to put the final pieces together she has startling new evidence that the city was deliberately burned on the top we have excavated them and we see the burning of the city around 550 ad these Mounds are the remains of teot tean's administrative Center still in the early stages of excavation so this is what it looks like before archaeologists clean it all up right this is how the these tars are here to protect some of the most important archaeological evidence yet discovered at teao for example you see here the stco floors originally were white and you have black the ceiling collapsing and the beams are burning and falling that's what this says to an archaeologist you can tell by looking at this because to me I can see the discolorations here yes but you're saying that 1500 years ago a ceiling collapsed on fire and fell here well I knew you were going to ask that and I brought a sample of the carbon IED wood of the when excavations began here in the early 90s Linda's team found the charred remains of massive roof beams littering the floor as if from a great fire a fire that marked the end of a civilization carbonized wood is fragile so Linda has brought only this tiny sample the rest has been removed and carefully tested to determine the date of the fire so we have the dates of the construction of the white part and then the dates of the Fall with the black part why does this fire say internal revolt and not just Wildfire came through and burned everything because the the fire was selective particularly in the temples and the places where the rulers and the decision making was made so a wildfire if it did come in and burn would have burned everything indiscriminately site [Music] right for centuries teote 's rulers dominated every aspect of life even demanding the ultimate sacrifice in return they promised to bless and protect the people when these promises fell flat it seems the people exacted the perfect revenge on their masters and their monuments it was a no confidence vote on the existing power structure carried out on an unsurpassed scale overnight This Magnificent Metropolis that dominated the region for centuries was reduced to a shadow of its former self never to rise again a civilization that thrived on order collapsed in chaos [Music] [Music] [Music] this week join me as I search for evidence of the great Trojan War As Told in homers the ilad and the Odyssey this is a big big deal did Helen of Troy really caused an epic 10-year war between the Greeks and the Trojans did the Greeks really win the war by entering the strong Gates of Troy in the belly of a wooden horse with Homer's works as my guide I'll follow a trail of Clues across the aian sea I'll dive for ancient shipwrecks oh my God it's amazing I'll test the tools and weapons of the Bronze Age Greeks that's a flesh wound and I'll journey to an island with a history of violent earthquakes so everything that's down here was basically up there where NASA Imaging is revealing new evidence that the Trojan War was more than just a good story we're digging for the truth and we're going to extremes to do [Music] it the ancient Greeks are world famous for their stories especially those of an epic 10-year battle between the soldiers of Greece and a fortress city called Troy hi I'm Josh Bernstein I've come here to Greece to find out if the stories of the Trojan War could possibly be true the story of the Trojan War recalls an age of powerful kingdoms on the shores of the aan sea Greek minini and Troy it's a tale of War nearly 3,000 years old all fought over a Greek princess named Helen she leaves her husband and her home for Troy with her lover a Trojan Prince named Paris her actions wreak grave consequences King Agamemnon gathers soldiers from across the Greek Empire and launches an allout attack on Troy War rages for 10 long years until the hero odys brings the fighting to an end with a clever trick the Greeks sneak into Troy in the belly of a wooden horse they burn the city to the ground and take Helen Back to Greece it's one of History's oldest and most famous stories but is it true to find out I've come to Athens Greece to the American School of class IAL studies here copies of two ancient epic poems called The Iliad and the Odyssey are stored between them these two books tell the story of the Trojans and the Greeks of the war over Helen and odys is long journey home ah so this is where all the rare books are kept yes this is The M Las r book room and here is where we keep the Homer created in Florence Italy in 1888 this is one of only three remaining copies on Earth from the first ever printing of The Iliad and the Odyssey looks like uh handwriting but it's actual printing done on a printing press but it's not the first written you said right no it existed in in what form prior well we have fragments of the text of Homer on papay found in the Sands of Egypt that uh the earliest at probably the 3rd Century BC the first word right Dr Steven Tracy the director of the school tells me that more than 2,000 years before this book was printed a single mysterious man told the story of the Trojan War in a song around 725 BC late 8th Century this man comes along whom we call Homer who had an Incredible Gift who was so fluent in this oral art that he could sing I huge long song we know nothing really about him uh we don't even know if this was his name the name Homer comes down to us today from Greek historians of the classical age but his songs recall an age even older Homer sang of a world that was ancient history even for the Greeks who built these famous columns and theaters he recalled civilizations from the dawn of human history a war story from around 1250 BC and a city that early Scholars dismissed as fantasy but could Troy have been a real place could Homer stories be true if they are then a whole world of ancient kingdoms and brave armies Li waiting to be discovered and I'm joining the hunt to find them Homer placed Troy in what we now call turkey on the other side of the aian sea roughly 200 Mi Southwest of what's now Istanbul he sang of a massive City strong walled at the edge of a windy plane it rested at the southern coast of the helison a narrow strip of water connecting the aan Sea and the Sea of marmura what is now called The Dells the search for Homer's Troy began on a large scale at the end of the 19th century with a German businessman turned archaeologist named Heinrich schleman schan amassed a huge fortune in business and he spent it trying to prove that Homer Sayang about real places and real events and in 1870 Hinrich schleman came here with Iliad and odyssey as his guide he was convinced that the unassuming Hill directly behind me was nothing less than the legendary city of Troy schlaman was on a hunt for the Treasures of the Trojan Kingdom and for proof that the war Homer described actually took place following Clues from The Iliad and the Odyssey he believed that both Troy and proof of a Great War could be found here with teams of more than 100 local workers he dug a massive trench straight through the side of this hill so this is the infamous trench this was exactly the trench which he duck at the time Dr yashar ER soy is an archaeologist and an expert on Shan's excavations here in Turkey he decides to cut this huge trench right through this mound yeah I can see how far down he went I see these rock walls this is this is as far as he got right these rock walls here that is right okay that is right and those are apparently the earliest remain so far he had reached at the site and they were dating to the early Bronze Age and what's going through schon's mind at the time his his main mission was identifying the city of Troy he was hoping to find to prove that the stories that Homer told to us were basically realities in search of Homer's Fortress City schleman dug over the course of seven years his excavations were later condemned as some of the most destructive in the history of archaeology but he Unearthed the remains of an ancient civilization reminiscent of Homer's descriptions of Troy and he was thrilled to to discover the treasures of an ancient aristocracy for schan this collection of gold could belong only to the royal family of Homer's epic he draped the jewels on his own Helen of Troy his young wife Sophia but it turned out they weren't quite what he thought he was wrong with his inoc assumption especially in terms of his dating this treasury was almost thousand years earlier than the time when PR Priam lived but he didn't know that right absolutely not archaeologists Believe The Iliad and the Odyssey describe a time around 1250 BC but new scientific dating techniques have determined that the treasures schan discovered were nearly 1,000 years older than that the gold didn't come from the time Homer described but that doesn't mean schleman was wrong about the place within his massive trench later archaeologists have discovered multiple levels of civilization here a series of ancient cities all built over time on the very same Hill and basically what we learned is the fact that Troy apparently had a long history of occupation and excavators identified nine levels at the site from the third millennium BC until the Roman Imperial era so this shows that for 3,200 years civilizations rebuilt themselves one on top of the other that is exactly the case in all nine separate City levels have been discovered here dating from 2900 BC all the way to around 550 ad these findings have shown this location to be the largest and longest occupi human settlement in the area but is it Homer's Troy so yes is this the Troy that Homer was writing about well both the archaeological evidence as well as the historical sources strongly suggest the fact that it is the best candidate for the region mhm as well as for the geography and apparently Troy is so far the largest site we know of from this area Northwest of Asia Minor okay and Homer's writings confirm I guess how he describes Troy right they would confirm this location indeed so yeah if Homer did write about a real City it's most likely the Bronze Age Fortress here but finding the city of Troy and finding proof of the Trojan War are two very different things and like schan later archaeologists have failed to find strong evidence here of Homer's 10-year War the search for truth in The Iliad and the Odyssey shifted outside the walls of Troy to the earliest civilizations of [Applause] Greece and that's where I'm heading next I'm on a hunt for the Warriors who fought the Trojan War using Clues from The Iliad and the Odyssey byom in Turkey I followed the trail of the poet Homer to the ruins of an ancient city I learned that buried treasure had been discovered and that a Bronze Age Kingdom existed in the very Place Homer described now I'm off to continue my search on the other side of the sea because if stories of the Trojan War are true then the walls of Troy were toppled by the Greeks and the Greeks had a Kingdom of their own I'm now searching for the city of King Agamemnon which Homer described as minini rich in Gold Homer Sayang that the kingdom of minini rested between two ancient landmarks it was in the north of a plane called the argive and south of an area still called Corinthia in what is now the Greek peloponese once more I find myself on the path of Hinrich schan who followed these clues in 1876 3 years after his discoveries at Troy I've discovered just as schleman did that the trail of Homer's Clues once again lead to the ruins of a Bronze Age city minini has been on the map at this location for more than 3,000 years Dr vasiliki plika has been Excavating here since 1999 so what did this place look like when schleman showed up well the gate was cleared it was cleared in 1841 so he could see the gate and see the lindle and see the triangle this is pretty much the picture he saw schan was certain this impressive gate was the entrance to the great Kingdom of the Greeks this emblem of these Lions was already here that's right what it basically says is that the lions are protecting the Royal House of minini which Rules by Divine Right In The Iliad it's King Agamemnon himself who gathers armies from across the states of Greece to launch the attack on [Music] Troy and for schaman proof of Homer's minini would come from finding great wealth and evidence that the mighty king could have lived and ruled here passing through the Lion's gate one can't miss the site where schan and another huge team launched the first major excavation of this buried city 125 workmen working for him 125 he quickly cleared this enormous area just behind the Lion's gate he wasn't he was paying people to do that for him okay and at the bottom of this very grave Hinrich schan made a discovery Beyond his wildest expectations 30 1 lb of gold and beautifully wrought golden Death Masks so he's got bones he's got gold what does he think well he thinks he a royal burials and he thinks he's found a the M's burial but why like why why do bones gold and masks say Agamemnon to him well he knows from ancient writers that Agamemnon and his people were buried inside the Citadel so he thinks you know he just puts two and two together he's got gold he's got the graves inside the Citadel he thinks this is a commment but time would prove that 2 plus two didn't equal four yeah what he found here were Kings but they were too old they were older than aamon the gold schan found here was the first in a long string of discoveries at minini and archaeologists have since proven that this was the most powerful City in the area throughout the entire Bronze Age that makes this the only possible location for the Greek Kingdom Homer described with the Iliad and the Odyssey as his guide Hinrich schleman rediscovered Troy and minini for the modern world and generations of explorers have followed in his wake today a new search is on for an island Empire described in Homer's Odyssey if this kingdom is found it'll add a whole new dimension to the archaeological search for the truth behind Homer stories it'll mean the discovery of the home of odyusa to Troy and ended the Trojan War few locations in The Iliad and odyssey are as important as an island Kingdom called Ithaca home of odys new evidence suggests that the location of itha may have been found as discussed in Homer's writings here off the western coast of Greece on an island called kefalonia kefalonia lies in a small island group called the ionian islands they lie at the very edge of a fall line between two tectonic plates this is one of the most active earthquake zones on the planet I'm here with Robert biddlestone who believes these earthquakes maybe hundreds of them over the last 3,000 years have hidden the location of Homer's itha until now right the way out to the Sea there well the most important description in The Odyssey of where ancient itha is supposed to be is when King adicus announces his identity and he says my island of itha Lies furthest to the darkness of dusk in other words furthest to the west and when you look at today's map of this part of the world you find there's an immediate contradiction because the modern island of itha doesn't lie furthest to the West it lies furthest to the east so the description that Homer provides of itha this Kingdom doesn't match the current island of IA no it doesn't so there's a mismatch there's a contradiction and I thought to myself well why why would he get the geography wrong biddlestone Theory begins with identifying a deep ravine separating the westernmost portion of kefalonia from the main body of the island he believes this Ravine was once a narrow Seaway that as s filled in with grubble from earthquakes if he's right then the island now called kefalonia was at one time two islands and the island farthest west was Homer's IA making the maps which today call another Island IA incorrect the was SE were pretty confident here below but it got filled up by this process of catastrophic rockfall wow so basically everything that we're seeing in this Valley was up there on the mountain exactly exactly so before there was any of this rock slide we had a marine Channel going right the way through so most Scholars agreed that this place where you and I standing right now is ancient Sami but what they haven't been able to figure out is really where ancient itha was and I believe it was over there across this Valley since biddestone conceived his theory he's gained fantastic insights from NASA Global Imaging software called Whirlwind with it he's been able to hover over the island electronically and comb for clues in three dimensions with the aid of these images biddlestone set out to find specific features on the western portion of kefalonia that fit with Homer's descriptions of itha like this Bay in it two Headlands projecting sheared off crouching from the harbor shielded from waves whipped up by blust winds outside well the fascinating thing is that the description of the harbor in The Odyssey matches almost exactly what we see in front of it like schan biddlestone is turning ancient poetry into a hunt for historical truths and he's confident excavations here will eventually prove he's right they row inside the bay they knew the Bay of old the ship ran up the beach for half its length at speed such strength within the rower's arms so we've got to have some kind of sandy beach wow okay so I see what you mean we have sand we have sand no shortage of that from sandy beaches to mountain peaks biddlestone is hot on Homer's Trail is speaking to ad disuse she says to him look up there and you will see your mountain of Mount nittin covered with waving foliage and there it is to date he believes he's identified separate locations described on itha by Homer more than 2,000 years ago and each location is a clue that he hopes will one day lead to the Palace of odyusa we have if I can oversimplify we have a treasure map with all these points on it but we never had where to start well that's right and the exciting thing is this everyone's imagined that the treasure map was a map of a myth a mythical Treasure Island that it wasn't a real Island anyway you couldn't even find IA let alone identify particular mountains or places on it m but now we've got a real good chance of being able to demonstrate that Ithaca is real what Hinrich schan started Robert biddlestone will carry into the future and in the years that have separated these two men other archaeologists have made a wealth of amazing discoveries on the trail of the troan war I'm on the trail of the Trojan War following Clues left by the poet Homer I've explored two ancient cities at the center of the story and on kefalonia I learned that earthquakes may have hidden one of the islands described by Homer but finding these cities is only part of the story I still have to find evidence of the people Homer described Warriors clad in armor and equipped with the weapons of the late Bronze Age I've picked up my journey in a town called nafo where a pile of teeth have made the world of Homer come alive yes Dr eleny pelou and conservator pinka tarator have invited me to see these ancient remains it may not look like much but archaeologists recognized what they discovered immediately from the writings of Homer this is a big big deal and I want to explain why because in The Iliad in book 10 it says the following marionis gave odys isow quiver and sword and over his head he set a helmet made of leather inside it was crisscross taught with many thongs outside the gleaming teeth of a white tusked boar ran round and round in rows stitched neat and tight a Mastercraft Craftsman's work the cap in its Center padded soft with felt Boris Tusk helmet that's what we're looking at right here here we have the cheick plates which are made of bronze okay and they protected the face so these would go like that this way yes ah okay using these fragments as a guide pinka made a model of how the helmet might have appeared more than 3,000 years ago so that's what okay without Homer's description the fact that these teeth were actually a Bronze Age helmet might have never been realized but with the helmet archaeologists have proven an important historical link between Homer and the Warriors he describes more remnants of these helmets have been found in tombs around minini the Greek Kingdom itself and back at my Dr PLA and her colleagues have determined that in 1250 BC this city was the wealthiest and most powerful in all of gree like it was portrayed in the songs of Homer they found relics of bronze cast swords and arrow points the same weapons of Homer's Trojan War and they've discovered a society with a rich Warrior culture just like the meini of The Iliad and the Odyssey we know that the people who were in charge of a group of soldiers were the heroes were the the bravest and those who belong to a higher rank socially they were viewing themselves as soldiers and Hunters what Homer says is that we've got Warriors who are using this kind of weaponry and these were people that were higher than the the simple folk who were working in the fields or as herdsmen mm so the fact that Homer depicts these people the people of minini as this Powerhouse as we disc discussed that's actually pretty dead on this is a an accurate picture what Homer says is pretty accurate archaeologists discoveries at minini have linked the words of Homer to the realities of a warrior culture still being uncovered today residents of this city in the late Bronze Age used the weapons described by Homer from arrow heads to bronze swords to chariots drawn by horses these chariots were the tanks of the Trojan War and Homer describes their use in battle repeatedly in book 20 he sings Achilles rampaged on his sharp hoofed stallions trampled Shields and corpses Axel under his Chariot splashed with blood I want to see one of these chariots for myself and we got one here a chariot formidable War Machine Beautiful and this is a late Bronze Age Chariot exactly tuon tonle has reproduced a Greek Chariot matching both Homer's descriptions and artwork from the late Bronze Age how many riders two a charioteer and a warrior okay covered with leather outside leather outside wicker I have wicker inside and leather outside a charioteer running the horses and a Warrior fighting do we know if the warriors were using chariots as transport or as Weapons we have records of showing that they were doing both both getting to the field and also doing the war at the field so one person would be driving and the other person passenger it would be their Chariot and they'd be fighting with what do you think bows and arrows bows and arrows and Spears and there is also a record that they might be getting off and then fighting with swords as well what do you think would you like to have a ride we can go for a ride too yep okay let's do it okay let's get the horses in them these horses have modern bridles but the concept is the same two horses a driver and a warrior granted this is all new to me but traveling at a Gallop takes a little bit of getting used to all right it's a bit harrowing there's absolutely no shock absorption so even on a field like this which looks pretty flat I could feel every stone that went under the wheel but getting to the battlefield was only half of it remember this is war and in The Iliad there's no shortage of depictions of gruesome fight scenes people doing battle on the back of their chariots now for me as a competitive Archer firing from stable ground not that big a problem but could it be done from the back of a moving Chariot let's go find out ah a low shot even with a modern bow this stuff's pretty tricky archaeologists are still searching for proof of exactly how ancient Greek Warfare was conducted concrete evidence exists of Bronze Age chariots arrows and Spears all right here we go debate continues as to exactly how these weapons were used in combination but there's no doubt that they were deadly that's a flesh wound oh I think that would hurt I think that this shows that with the speed spear with a bow and arrow with the sword the weapons of the late Bronze Age were incredibly effective so far on the trail of Homer I've discovered the cities the weapons and even the armor described in The Iliad and the Odyssey but now I want to know if the Greek army really traveled to Troy to wage war how did they get there did the Greeks of the late Bron age have ships that can make the journey as Homer described if the Trojan War actually happened the Greek Sailors had to somehow cross the aan I've come to the ancient Port of Volos where ship building has gone on for thousands of years I'm here to meet an admiral who says he can show me how it was done the oldfashioned way we have the rear Admiral apostos ctis and his team are building a pentacon one of the earliest in a long line of Greek Naval warships this could be the kind of Battleship used in the Trojan War Bronze Age artwork indicates that warships of the period had a flat front and three main structural elements joined at the stern Homer's Greek Fleet sets off for Troy in boat seeding 50 rowers each the Admiral and his team are setting out to build a ship exactly to the scale described we have no Nails no metal Nails no nails eventually they'll test their theory that these boats are fast and maneuverable in the water but they have to build one first okay and the tools they're using these are traditional tools yes single Hand Tools hand tools no Machinery no so during the troan war the ship Builders had a crew of 50 yes to build their ships how big is your crew one two three so they had 50 you have three to four yes for apostos and his team the ship is labor of love but it's also an exercise in experimental archaeology the tools they're using are exact replicas of those found in Myan tombs from the late Bronze Age we have a primary findings of these kind of tools at the time these tools were at The Cutting Edge of Technology the new science of bronze smelting gave ship Builders a Precision in woodworking previously impossible that and then making only the bow drill seems slow goinging but it's hardworking tip along with other bronze tools like the hammer and chisel were innovations that helped Usher in the bigger stronger ships of the era okay so where it's a lot of work for apus but the framework of his ship is slowly taking shape important point he's got plenty left to do and I still need to prove that the ships from the late Bronze Age could sail to the other side of the aan I'm heading back to Turkey in search of Clues to prove that Myan Soldiers the ancient Greek army had ships capable of reaching this Coast in the late Bronze Age as they did in the songs of Homer here in Turkey evidence of such Greek Journeys may exist in ancient shipwrecks off the coast thear yiis is the director of the Museum of underwater archaeology in Bodrum he wants to take me to an area with one of the highest concentrations of shipwrecks in the world in ancient times reefs like the one were approaching were incredibly dangerous to Mariners just below the surface and close to shore such hazards spelled Doom for captains for as long as ships have been Crossing into this region and it's in these Waters that a Trojan War era shipwreck was discovered and excavated Yasha says I can see remains from that ship later in a museum back on Shore but first i'm going for a dive and no I'm not diving with the hat there's no telling what what archaeological Treasures might remain along this [Music] Coast these Waters have become world famous for their scuba diving and no wonder immediately a world of decaying shipwrecks is visible as yashar guides me deeper it becomes obvious that the modern wreck is just one of many clearly this pot did not come from that big steel ship this huge modern anchor chain has come to rest on a pile of ancient Pottery litter nearly 2,000 years old honestly this is the most incredible dive site I've ever seen for archaeologists this is a gold mine it's obvious that sunken ships and cargo like this can provide incredible insight into the lives of ancient civilizations but what can it teach us about the Trojan War that was that was a good dive I got to I got to shake your hand for that I get over there that was a great dive great dive yes great dasar tells me that the wrecks we just saw below date backwards from 1960 to around 150 ad sites like this one have provided archaeologists with a wealth of information about the nautical history of the area but none is more important to my quest than a Bronze Age Galley discovered in 1982 its cargo is on display at the Bodrum Museum of underwater archaeology Dr Jamal pulock directed excavation on the Shipwreck ULU buron wow so I've looked at second century ad shipwreck this much older yes can you tell me the story that's 2 Century ad yeah this is uh 14th century BC so this is 1500 years older than the wreck that you've been on it's the oldest shipwreck to have been excavated and and also has the uh the wealthiest and the most diverse cargo ever found from the Bronze Age in the scattered remains of the wreck Jamal and his team discovered copper plates from the Middle East pottery from what's now Syria Israel Lebanon and Cyprus elephant tusks and Ebony logs from equatorial Africa colored glass and Tin from Central Asia and gold from Egypt what it does tell us that uh the greater part of the Mediterranean in Antiquity was connected extensively with trade networks do we know where it was going to I think it was going to Greece or uh Greek mainland because there were also myin or Bronze Age Greeks on board based based on the finds yes I think we had at least two of uh two Myans on board because we have two uh swords uh we have two uh seals we have two petrols or glass beads that the mean Elite wore everything that you can imagine that a wealthy individual an elite IND individual would carry so I think they represented emissaries or envoys that were on board the ship escorting The Vessel to their Homeland ULU Barun was a cargo ship not a warship so this was not the Greek Galley of the Trojan War but it proves that the world of the Mediterranean and aan seas were connected in the late Bronze Age through an established system of seagoing trade and it proves that Greeks from minini were intimately involved they were a rich and Powerful trading empire and they were clearly more than capable of reaching the city of Troy by sea armed for war I'm on the trail of the Trojan War following Clues from The Iliad and the Odyssey I've journeyed through both Greece and Turkey to learn that a world of fierce Warriors and incredible riches did exist much as the poet Homer described I've crossed the aan sea and beneath its clear waters discovered evidence that the Greek army could have sailed to Troy armed for [Music] war now I'm going back to Troy to find out what scientists have learned at what would have been the battlefield itself the scars left by Hinrich slean's excavations at Troy remain today within his massive trench and across the ancient city archaeologists have continued his search for evidence of the Trojan War I'm back with Dr yashar ersoy Who wants to tell me what scientists have discovered since schan archaeologists now agree that for over 3,200 years civilizations one after another flourished here and collapsed nine cities were built and destroyed and the ruins here at Troy contain remains from all of them in his Zeal to discover Homer's Troy it appears Hinrich schleman dug far deeper than he ever had to his brutal excavations likely destroyed much of the evidence he'd hoped to find but enough Clues did remain for later archaeologists to determine which city layer here was contemporary with the period Homer describes shards of pottery similar in style to what I saw back at my cini were found in the sixth level of Troy in abundance these artifacts were some of the major Clues archaeologists used to identify the sixth level as Homer's Bronze Age Troy but according to yashar it wasn't the Meenan Greeks who destroyed it this is from the six settlements level six level six which is actually contemporary with the meinian Greeks it was reached to an end by a major destruction some sort of catastrophe that is exactly the case wow now if you put in the 13th century BC this is around the time that people attribute Homer's writings in the Trojan War to have happened it is contemporary but it is beyond the limits of the human agency this the cause of this event must have been not by the human agency but instead it was a natural disaster namely an earthquake an earthquake wow okay and that's shown in the archaological record how buildings were collapsed walls were dismantled fortification systems were partly disintegrated so it seemed like this was a severe catastrophic event which caus the end of the six settlement at Troy for yashar discover recoveries at Troy so far point to natural disaster and not War as the cause of the destruction of the Bronze Age City this appears to be the city from the songs of the ilad and the Odyssey but concrete proof of Homer's 10year War has not been found so far so what would archaeologists need to be able to say the Trojan War is a true historical event the physical evidence of it mhm the destructions uh the destruction of the structures by fires by human agency corpses laying on the on on the streets with the Weaponry that they carry that kind of tragic evidence will be not to say that otherwise we are basically trapped The Smoking Gun so to speak the the archaeological evidence that we would need to say this happened yeah it's missing they are so far missing unfortunately for more than one 130 years archaeologists have been on a quest to prove that the war described by Homer was a real historical event The Iliad and Odyssey have proven to be invaluable treasure maps which have led to Great riches but more importantly they've led to the very cities Homer described they've given us the gift of a marvelous insight into the weapons the culture and the Technologies of the late pron age but for the archaeologist required to make judgments from evidence not conjectures it seems that the Trojan Horse agamemnon's Warriors at the doorstep of the strong wall City and the Beautiful Helen of Troy can only be said to have lived for certain in the songs of an ancient poet whose Tales remain among the greatest ever [Music] told this week join me as I go in search of one of the most enigmatic women in all of history the Queen of Sheba the Bible says she appeared from the desert leading a caravan of riches to the court of King Solomon in Jerusalem many cultures claim her as their own but what's the truth behind the stories to find out I'll explore ruined temples in Ethiopia follow ancient Caravan routes through biblical lands and head into the dangerous tribal no man's land of modern Yemen we're digging for the truth and we're going to extremes to do [Music] it exotic romance surrounds the legend of the Queen of Sheba in folktales and scripture she's described as beautiful and captivating sophisticated and powerful and very very wealthy I am Josh Bernstein my quest is to determine if the Queen of Sheba really existed and if so where she came from my first stop is the Catholic University of America in Washington DC the library here has one of the greatest collections of religious texts in the United States most of what's known about the Queen of Sheba comes from just a few short passages in the Bible and I'm hoping that one of the scholars here can help me flesh out her story according to First Kings the queen journeyed to Jerusalem at the head of a long Caravan of gold precious stones and spices which she presented as gifts to King Solomon but what the Bible doesn't say is where the land of Sheba actually was Dr Doug gr is an expert in Middle Eastern texts and I've asked him to help me decipher other passages that may offer some interesting Clues begin with Jeremiah 6: 20 the Lord says Lish what is frankincense to me which comes from Sheba Doug tells me that the spice the queen brought to King Solomon was frankincense an aromatic resin that was one of the most prized Goods of the ancient world more precious than even silver or gold what makes this clue so useful is that frankincense comes from a very limited geographic area this means I should be able to trace the trade routes back to the Queen's Homeland fairly easily or so I hope in the ancient world it came from South Arabian area and on the other side of the Red Sea and Horn of Africa and that's it that's pretty much it so sha could be that region right somewhere okay somewhere in that region is there any place else in the Bible we can learn about she well there's a few other places uh that mention Sheba but there's also a related term a term that most Scholars think is related that has just a different s sound siba Doug explains that Sheba sometimes appears with a slightly different spelling and pronunciation he shows me a passage from the Old Testament book of Isaiah that speaks of a land called siba and more importantly gives a pretty precise clue about where it may have been okay so saah is a region either south of Sudan or in that in that area the Horn of Africa area which again is the Ethiopia area right and we have one more another passage from Isaiah describes the people I'm looking for and even gives them a name and the saans who are described as un men of stature huh tall tall men ethopians Ethiopians are pretty tall they are I have a picture here of Solomon and sheba's meeting Doug tells me that the Ethiopian story of the Queen of Sheba is one of the most elaborate and that it plays an important role in the country's history so Ethiopia definitely has a very historical and even tangible connection with the queen of shivba yeah it's is absolutely Central to their whole National Consciousness so the Queen of Sheba may have been from Ethiopia she may have been from South Arabia but based on what I just heard sounds like Ethiopia has a slight Advantage so it looks like I'm going to Africa I hop an Ethiopian Airlines flight across the Atlantic to the Horn of Africa I've been to Ethiopia before looking for the Ark of the Covenant and I'm really excited to be back [Music] I start my search for evidence of the queen in the northern Highlands of the country in a sleepy village with a very promising local nickname this is the town of libella it's also called the New Jerusalem and is considered by many to be the holiest place in Ethiopia but is there a connection between this Jerusalem and the Jerusalem visited by the Queen of Sheba let's go find out at first glance the town doesn't bear much resemblance to Solomon's Capital but there's an elaborate complex of churches here that give the place its holy status and famous nickname to help me learn the lay of the land I'm meeting up with asak Hub of Adis Ababa University Place okay so I've heard that this place is called the New Jerusalem yes you see see in Ethiopian tradition it is said to have been that King l in order to minimize the Journey of Ethiopians to Jerusalem he was said to asaki explains that lb Bella is a pilgrimage site modeled on holy Jerusalem the same city where King Solomon first impressed the Queen of Sheba with his wisdom could this place be part of that Legacy as we come upon the first of the churches it comes clear just how inspired L Bella was the site is made up of 11 churches all carved seamlessly from the mountain Bedrock complete with Windows and Doors over the centuries hundreds of thousands of souls have come to pray here even now it's a thriving Center of Faith everywhere we go we pass monks and nuns who are immersed in prayer oblivious to our presence as we pass through one of the dozens of tunnels and passageways on our way to the most sacred of the churches asnake fills in the details of the Ethiopian version of the Queen of Sheba Legend Ethiopians believed that from northern Ethiopia queen of sha she went to Jerusalem to visit King Solomon the story that esaki tells me Begins the same way as the biblical tale I heard in Washington the queen at the head of a caravan of jewels and incense Journeys to Jerusalem to pay her respects to Solomon once in Jerusalem though the Ethiopian version takes a very different turn King Solomon to sleep with her because of her beauty and her Fame but she refused according to the legend the queen resisted Solomon's efforts to seduce her he promised to leave her be so long as she agreed not to take anything belonging to him he then set a trap Solomon served the queen a lavish Feast of spicy salty food but offered her no water to drink forbidden from asking him for anything she went to bed with her thirst unquenched Solomon's trap was set in the dead of night the queen awoke desperately thirsty she searched the palace for water but the only pitcher had been placed next to the king's bed [Music] the queen had broken her promise and Solomon felt entitled to break his according to the legend the queen bore Solomon a son as a result of that night named menelik the he founded the solomonic dasty in Ethiopia a dynasty that lasted 3,000 years and ended only with the death of the emperor were highly salassi in 1975 drawing such a connection is a critical part of Ethiopian history and identity by tracing their descent to Solomon through the Queen of Sheba the Ethiopians thus become children of Israel and among God's chosen people the spiritual importance of this New Jerusalem is even more apparent once we reach our destination the most dramatic Church in all of lella carved into the shape of a cross bet goros or the house of St George was the last of the churches to be constructed the elegant workmanship and fine detail speak to the extra care that was taken in carving it as we descend through the winding trench towards the entrance I can't get over how incredible this place is amazing is that a lot of the stone that they had to remove to make those temples had to go out these narrow quarters look at how narrow that is once we're inside it's clear that other visitors here have been even more affected by the magic of this place some of the monks spend years living like Hermits in holes carved in the wall to be as close as possible to the church and to God some of them would never leave the church and pray all the time here throughout their life the whole lifetime yes living Inay and some of them never leave this holy place so people really did everything they could to be close to this place yes and this is one example for instance these are skeletons of people who were believed to have come from Jerusalem Jewish people asaki shows me the skeletons of pilgrims that the local folklore says came all the way from Jerusalem to pray here at libella wow it's a little bit creepy huh their piety was so great that they were left here in death to continue their devotion yes they came here to pray yeah and then they spent their whole lives here after they came here they decided to remain here throughout their life and they died it's clear that Jerusalem and the Queen have a profound spiritual influence here but what does this tell me about where to find her this is a very nice question saki says that L Bella was completed only 700 years ago scholars believe the Queen of Sheba would have ruled in the 10th Century BC nearly 3,000 years ago so I clearly need to go further back in time to find a tangible connection to the queen but asaki tells me there is a civilization in Ethiopia that could date back far enough I just have to travel a bit farther north to find it could this be the saan kingdom that Doug told me about back back in Washington I've come to the Horn of Africa searching for the Queen of Sheba and learned that one of the gifts she brought to Solomon was frankincense which comes from only a few places around the Red Sea in Ethiopia I visited a place called The New Jerusalem where I learned how important the queen is to Ethiopian national identity now I'm following a lead that's brought me into te Province the heart a frankincense country I've hooked up with my old friend Miss Ghana ganu to learn more about this precious commodity so frankincense has been used in Ethiopia for thousands of years is from thousand and thousand years ago the land of Frankincense the Bible says the queen brought Solomon quantities of incense that would never be equal learning the history of Frankincense in Ethiopia could shed light on whether the queen might have started her journey here so frankincense is used throughout Ethiopia all types of religious ceremonies all type of religious when we have the church mass the service it should not be without incense no incense no service no incense no life and now we're going to go see how it's actually now it is the same way of they doing from old tradition until now so the process hasn't changed too much not too much everything is doing by hand here is we've come to the town of Shir where frankincense is still processed in the traditional way for sale through throughout Africa and the Middle East in this building as soon as we walk in I can see why he said things haven't changed much this is how they are preparing for market for selling everyone here's working on frankincense here in t Province frankincense is a major part of the local economy just as it's been for Millennia children production involves every member of the community so the so the mothers work here fathers are out there collecting this they're collecting and the kids don't really have any place to go so they come here and help their mom they come here and helping the family the El okay the parents why don't you show me what's happening right here she is cutting you know separating uh the best quality inide frankincense is harvested as a resin that oozes from Cuts made into the Busia tree frankincense is actually in the bar the process isn't actually that different from tapping maple trees to make syrup only with frankincense the resin is allowed to harden on the trees the resin encrusted bark is then sliced off and brought here where these women separate the hardened incense from the woods that's not so good we want good sh you think I decide to give it a try she's happy she say hey he's helping me or she's like hey he's messing up all my hard work we'll find out soon is that a good piece no ah okay see that a little speck there it's got to come off I want to make it as clean as clean a resin as possible right clean resin Yeah clean resin she's got to have a really good eye for that you know what happens next you can I show you now okay okay thank you so this is the second phase this is the second phase because tropy after now she's separating you know yeah she's basically winnowing these pieces of bark small bits of bark at each stage of processing the incense is refined until it's ready for Market the highest grades are exported throughout Africa the Middle East and Beyond continuing a trade that began thousands of years ago so this is the product of all their hard work yep wow that's fun so if the Queen of Sheba went to Solomon with this that was an offering of course there is nothing a gift more than this you see this is worthy of a king this is a wonderful is more wow if frankincense has been such an integral part of the economy and culture here for so long perhaps T Province could have been the land of [Applause] Shiva we head on to the Tiny Village of yeha just a couple of hours away to check out a temple I've been told it dates back to the beginnings of civilization in Ethiopia M Ghana tells me that yha was the center of the first state to arise in Ethiopia between 2500 and 3,000 years ago this puts it around the right time for the Queen of Sheba could there be any relationship between this place and the Mysterious saan civilization the temple is now little more than a shell but with its high well-built walls it must have been quite a such in its day perhaps even suitable for a legendary Queen the complex has since been converted into a Christian church but the shrine's Pagan past is apparent everywhere elements from the original Temple like these Antelope heads built into the church wall are still revered inside the monks show me their most prized artifacts inscriptions removed from the temple unfortunately no one here can read them in fact the language they're written in doesn't even come from Ethiopia what the monks can tell me though is that the language they're written in is saan and that it comes from South [Music] Arabia this is exciting information Doug gr told me that the queen might have come from either the Horn of Africa or South Arabia the evidence here at yha indicates Ates that her people may have immigrated to Ethiopia from Arabia which means I'm hot on the trail I traced the frankincense trail to the Horn of Africa in search of the Queen of Sheba I learned how the incense is process and I explored the ruins of the first Ethiopian State now despite the warnings of the US state department I'm heading 100 m east across the Red Sea to the South Arabian country of Yemen to track the queen and her civilization my first stop is saana the ancient capital of Yemen so I've come from Ethiopia where I've learned that this saan culture has roots here in Yemen of course yes what is the relationship Dr Hussein alamry is the professor at s University the yen in that time was a center of merchants and S the capital especially was one of the oldest Su of Arabs really so this city is one of the oldest markets Hussein believes that the queen civilization was based here in Yemen and was built on Commerce he explains that the yha temple I saw in Ethiopia was actually a Sian Colony established when they extended their trade networks into the Horn of Africa so people have been meeting here for thousands of years yes of course yes buying selling yeah watching spending their time beautiful city the saan civilization lay at the crossroads of trade in Antiquity controlling the movement of goods between East and West spices from India gold and ivory from Africa silks from China and of course frankincense all passed through the kingdom of sabba before heading north on the Caravan routes to the markets of Egypt Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean they seem to sell everything special prize today just for you my friend but sauna wasn't the Sian Capital if I'm to find the queen I need to head to a city called maritt just 100 m east over the mountains but it might as well be a world away it's in a very conservative tribal area of the country that's known for its animosity towards Outsiders I'm told in no uncertain terms I should postpone my visit in order to even make the trip I need to find the right escort Hussein sends me to the former Governor of marab and the present governor of s abdulah aliti abdulwahed tells me that the bedin who live in marab highly value their traditional Customs He suggests that before we head out I should pick up a jambia one of the large daggers that have seen nearly all the men wearing here in SAA if participating in the local Traditions is the best way to gain acceptance and keep me safe I'm all for can I touch this one it's okay yeah yeah you can now which is more important the blade or the handle the handle the handle yeah you can recognize anyone in the street through his gamban so you know he's from this area he's from that area this one from this tribe this one that tribe by his Gambia zambas have been an important status symbol in Yemen going back to Sian times and they communicate a lot about their owners history and personality count the older the Zambia handle the more prized it is Abdul wahad tells me that one sh recently paid a million for an especially prized chambia what do you think it's pretty nice huh J in Arabic J means nice nice good very good like this or like very good okay I guess straight up yeah yeah all right this now that I've got myia abdulahad gives me a lesson in another time honored Yen tradition cut with like this yeah you can use it yeah exactly oh how you taste it yeah it's got a weird taste yeah kind of Tangy bitter it's not sweet very dry what happens when you chew a lot of it like these guys are make you comfortable like meow makes you works a lot uhhuh you can read a lot mhm and you can't sleep can't sleep yeah ah you up interesting yeah and this is a tradition where cot is a natural stimulant chewed by over 80% of the population each afternoon it feels like about six shots of espresso okay did no I'm I'm good I'm good in for you to eat it it's not enough just to taste it I have to more I've got to sign on for The Full Experience he swear in for you to eat it all oh my God so you can do it like this really uhhuh so I wouldn't want to offend him will H it's fine it's fine I wish I could tell you what this tastes like but it's like nothing else I've ever had it's really bitter like maybe if you ate a whole bunch of dandelion greens but wow better better okay I'm GNA wait until I get some sort of effect and I'll just float away okay now now that I've had my crash course in Yemen culture I'm ready to head into the tribal desert so I'll sett it up with this man here okay I don't know if it's my excitement or the lingering effects of the cut but the next morning as the call to prayer signals Dawn I can't wait to to hit the road good morning it's a beautiful day I've got my jambia and now I've got to meet Abdul we're Going to Mar [Music] run the road to Marb takes me from the mountainous Highlands of SAA through some spectacular scenery to the flat Dusty edge of the vast desert known as the empty quarter I'm going to meet Abdul wahad along the Route he's traveled ahead to guarantee my safety in this Lawless Zone over the years this road has developed a well-earned reputation for highway robbery good morning some of the tribes have been known to kidnap Travelers and hold them for ransom traveling with Abdul wahed should make things go smoothly but even he takes precautions so I got to admit this is my first time traveling in a car with three armed guards carrying machine guns it's a little unsettling you always travel with guards huh you always travel with guards with armed guards yeah when you come to you need to have things have gotten better in recent years but the 14 checkpoints we pass through along the way speak to the still volatile conditions 100 m later we arrive safely at the outskirts of the city OD City OD met as we approach the ancient town I see buildings rising in the distance when we get closer though it becomes clear that what I see is a city of ruins Abdul wahad explains that these buildings date back some 300 years but that the city's foundations go back nearly 3,000 to the time of the Queen of Sheba after so many centuries of civilization it was a modern war in the 1960s that finally left old Arab a crumbling Relic inhabited by only a few lonely [Music] squatters as we move on I can only hope that the rest of mb's ancient past hasn't met a similar fate and that something of the queen can still be found I've traveled from the Horn of Africa to the deserts of Arabia in search of the Queen of Sheba in the old city of sauna I was welcome welcomed by the local Governor Abdul wahad Al buiti who's escorting me through the Lawless tribal deserts of Yemen the betwin are famous for their Hospitality but hostility can also Arise at a moment's notice which we soon found out after we left the ancient city of Marb heavily armed tribesmen surrounded our camp in the middle of the night we were literally under house arrest in a place where for corers are routinely kidnapped the stakes were very high thankfully Abdul wahad has taken pains to help me navigate the terrain drawing on his contacts from his days as Governor here Abdul wahad has called a meeting of the local tribal shakes so that I can pay my respects and prove my [Music] intentions I make sure to do all the right things I'm dressed appropriately with my new jambia and a traditional tribal skirt called a futa and I pay close attention to all the local Customs I noticed Customs says we eat with a right hand only yeah mhm okay yeah and then the rice you just kind of grab the rice abdulahad explains my quest to the shakes and the famous bed in Hospitality quickly takes the place of the hostility at least for now so this type of gather hasn't changed much over the thousands of years right not a lot no this water and the bottles yeah DRS okay new some of the foods maybe theice is new cell phones C cellones are new okay after dinner we sit around the fire to share stories about the Queen of Sheba that have been handed down through generations here in marab okay ah very nice he my new jambia goes over well in Ethiopia the Legends I heard about the Queen of Sheba were very detailed and played a big part in defining Ethiopian national identity now that I'm here in Yemen I want to hear the yemenis tell her story and find out about the place she occupies in their history and culture they believe she came from the desert and she is for sure from mer they feel a honor because queen of shba from their land from their Hometown I hear Tales of a beautiful young woman named billis who appeared From the Dunes to assume the Throne of the kingdom of sabba to the shakes there's no doubt that this kingdom here in Marb and the Biblical land of Sheba are one and the same [Music] the holy books andan the Quran also tells Vivid stories about the kingdom that bilis ruled and what's more where to find its remains it was a heaven half two Heavens the shakes explain that the land of sabba is described in the Quran as land of the two paradises the name comes from two oases created by a massive Dam the saans built here in Marb a dam whose ruins they tell me can still be seen nearby it sounds like I need to go to see this Dam and to explore marib further do I have the permission of the shakes to do so this this Gambia yeah it's like a it's like a permission for you to go anywhere okay and well if I have their permission that's all I need thank you for this this [Music] was my evening with the shakes went over very well not only did I gain their permission to explore their land but the stories they told me about the the Queen of Sheba have inspired me now my goal is to search for archaeological evidence to support their stories I've arranged to meet archaeologist zun Zade at the marab dam to tell me more so this is one of the towers of the dam of marab yeah this is the North Tower that's right where's the other one the South Tower just ahead of your eyes that part you see it there the South one so there was a wall going the Dam's wall stretched from where we're standing all the way to the South Tower over 2,000 ft away that made it about twice as wide as the Hoover Dam the water it controlled was used to irrigate the valley below supporting an estimated 35 to 50,000 people this really must have been a lush Green Valley well as you can see now it's still green and you can imagine at that time it was much much better more yeah the water was which was coming out of here was supporting at the two side of it something like paradise two at two side of one at the right one at the left I've heard about this so this is the left paradise and the right Paradise exactly that's that's it the dam worked by collecting runoff from the mountains and then channeling the water into slle Gates on either side of the two towers the gates in turn led to canals that branched into the valley below creating the oases that gave sabba the name land of the two paradises as they Dune and I make our way to the South Tower I ask him what led to the collapse of this incredible structure and the civilization that built it there's two theories about it one which will say that the dam was destroyed by a strong earthquake zun says that an earthquake may have toppled the dam or an unusually heavy rainy season could have damaged it Beyond repair other factor in either case the march of History also played a part from to Sea a shift in trade routes away from their ter territory had already dramatically weakened the kingdom and they were unable to recover from the loss of the dam what I've seen so far supports what I've heard about a flourishing civilization but what about the queen it's thought she would have reigned in the 10th Century BC so here we are does the archaeological evidence here date back far enough well the construction of the dam went through different phases and what we are looking in fact at the latest of it well inscriptions on the tower are written in the same saan script I first saw in Ethiopia though they date this phase of the dam to the 7th Century BC after the time of the queen zun tells me that this is only the latest construction its Origins go back far earlier the sabians continually updated and improved their Dam over centuries the saan civilization managed to block this Canyon in 1,500 BC so they finished building the dam at that point but the history of daming using water goes back up to 3,200 BC if this is true the saan civilization in Marb would have existed at the time the queen made her journey to Jerusalem in fact it would have been thriving All That Remains is to find her and zun has an answer for that too it would it would make sense that somewhere in this region is a palace and perhaps a queen a queen with a Temple is that true is there someplace around here where that exists yeah exactly the Temple of the queen of shba right here right here my search for the queen of Shiva has taken me across the world and thousands of years back in time in a religious archive I heard the stories of her journey to Jerusalem to visit King Solomon in Ethiopia I learned that frankincense could have provided her with the wealth she was famous for here in Yemen I discovered that she and her civilization appear in the Quran and in the oral traditions of the local people I've now come to the possible seat of her civilization a sandswept temple that bears her name Maham bilis the sanctuary of the Queen of Sheba to learn what it reveals of the queen I'm meeting up with another extraordinary woman Marilyn Phillips Hodson of the American foundation for the study of man has been Excavating here for nearly a decade pleasure to be here before we explore the temple Marilyn and I must pay our respects to the Sheikh who watches over the site Sheikh marzuk and his sons keep a close eye on the Maham bilis the centerpiece of their Heritage and they want to be sure of my intentions I'm grateful that the shake is welcoming me because he's packing a lot of heat my Explorations here in Marb have attracted some attention and while I have the blessing of the tribes to be here I still have to tread carefully after some friendly diplomacy we're given the go-ahead to explore the temple grounds and so so this wall this was the first thing discovered here well sure because everything else was covered by sand Maryland tells me that the entire complex encompasses 37 Acres making it the largest Ancient Temple in the entire Arabian Peninsula but only a small percentage of it has access been excavated working here is a NeverEnding battle against the blowing Sands which reberry much of the sight between digging Seasons I asked Marilyn how she came to work in such a forbidding place I came here because I wanted to fulfill my brother's unfinished dreams but now it's my passion the Maham bilis was first excavated by Marilyn's brother wend Phillips in the early 1950s when he began the site was almost entirely covered in sand and though his dig lasted only one season he uncovered a wealth of artifacts so your brother brings his archaeological team here they start Excavating what happened they found many many exciting wonderful Treasures one of the greatest is I happen to have a picture here to show you oh yeah it's everybody every Yemen has a picture of it because it's on the 50 R note wow W so this was such an exciting find that they actually put it on their money that's right more than 4T High Warrior one of the rulers of this great area that's impressive it is the statue that Wendell Phillips found is considered to be one of the masterpieces of saan art it depicts a ruler called the mik carb complete with a jambia at his waist this statue from the 6th Century BC helped put a face to the Queen's glorious civilization unfortunately Wendell was never able to finish his work tribal Strife forced him to flee Marb after just four months on the site he didn't want to leave it was a terrible heartbreak they left all their cars all the artifacts everything remained behind so after making these world class discoveries he has to flee for his life yes so what happens to this site it filled up with sand and only the great pillars showed there uh-huh and uh the aam enclosure the Great Wall this space that we're sitting in now 18 ft above us was all sand all sand nearly 50 years passed before Marilyn and her team were able to return to marib since work has resumed the foundation has Unearthed much more of the site this is like the Library of Congress then we're joined by the assistant site director yemeni archaeologist Abdu galip who shows me some of their recent discoveries anything had to do with daily life or was important to them they put on these ston they built a too the Maham bilis is literally covered in inscriptions from top to bottom the elegant South Arabian script that I've seen throughout my journey adorns nearly every surface of the temple this description talking about social economic and about the the thbes the names and what they believe you know Abu tells me that all aspects of daily life were recorded here from ritual dedications to Social and economic history of the for and the foundation's team has only scratched the surface below this yeah below this goes back to the 8th Century B but it's covered now by Sant again so if you were to dig down if you dig down you will go down down down down down 1550 M like the great dam of Marb the Maham bilis was improved and expanded over successive generations to date they have yet to find any inscriptions referring to the Queen of Sheba but the deeper they dig the further back in time they go and thus closer to the time of the queen I ask Abdu and Maryland if what they found Can Shed any light on the Legends I've heard throughout my journey this is the main gate of the Timber they take me to a newly discovered area of the temple where they show me a grand staircase decorated with Antelope heads I've seen these before in Ethiopia and both cultures claim to have this belief that the Queen of Sheba is from their Homeland yeah because the queen of shba is the queen of saah you know she's saan queen and the people who lived and in Ethiopia and establish the kingdom of Ethiopia people this helps explain the Ethiopians beliefs that they're descended from the Queen of Sheba in a way they are or at least from her civilization why you see the similar decoration and Lang yeah and writing this was the center I mean actually we're standing at the center of the Sabian civilization yes and if the queen of she which sounds like it if the Queen of Sheba lived here then her influence would have spread throughout her domain and that you said went into Ethiopia and that's why they believe that that she was their queen as well yeah that's that's right it is you know Marilyn and amdu have one last thing they want me to see at the top of the staircase they bring me to a wall covered in sand and invite me to help them dig okay Abdu explains that they reberry this treasured artifact after each season to protect it from the elements look at that that's a face as we clear away the sand I can see why they take so much care who found this me and mland when we were digging here in 2001 that must have been pretty exciting yeah it was it was very exciting that so every time you see it what do you think it's became more beautiful more beautiful yes you know this is my favorite Discovery even though it's it's not as early as the time of the Queen of Sheba I'm sure that when we do see the tatue of the Queen of Sheba she will be something like this it's clear that the Maham bilis is an incredible archaeological site every season of digging reveals more about the remarkable saan civilization and brings Marilyn and Abdu closer to finding the real Queen of Sheba she speaks to you she says keep digging yeah we'll keep digging and to think that just by digging another 10 meters you could come face to face with the most famous Queen in the world yeah somewhere we are going to find the queen of shivba so you don't believe it's a question of if but just a question of when it's a a question of time and a question of work so we're going to find her [Music] here my mission to uncover the real story of the Queen of Sheba has been a success I haven't found her yet but I have found her civilization and learned firsthand how she became so important to cultures and in both South Arabia and the Horn of Africa perhaps Marilyn and Abdu will find her here and perhaps very soon what is certain is that the story of this legendary Queen will continue to captivate [Music] [Music]

Channel: HISTORY

Views: 133,483

Keywords: history, history channel, history shows, history channel shows, the history channel, documentary history channel, history documentary, documentary, history channel full episodes, documentaries, history channel documentaries, digging for the truth, history digging for the truth, digging for the truth show, digging for the truth full episodes, digging for the truth clips, full episodes, watch digging for the truth, ancient mysteries, historical mysteries, research, Teotihuacán

Id: L-eHbc5LRCY

Length: 132min 28sec (7948 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 19 2024