Shocking Mysteries of Forgotten Civilizations | Lost Worlds | *2 Hour Marathon*

[Music] 1300 BC the mighty Egyptian civilization is in its golden age its ruler is rames II a man who intends to be the greatest of the Pharaoh he will make his Mark by building he built everywhere vast statues towering obelisks temples carved from living rock rames is a giant of a man he dominates this Kingdom for 67 years pushing it on to ever greater glory north south east and west he's got a temple going up he's building a new capital city he's creating jobs like no one has created before the ruins of what Ramsey's built still stand but 33 centuries on with the aid of new research and cuttingedge Graphics technology the true scale of his ambition can now be fully revealed extraordinary Feats of engineering performed with only the most basic tools thousands of people thousands of tons of stone all manipulated by the will of one man we can now reveal the lost world of M sees the [Music] [Music] great Ramses is the heir to the throne of Egypt one day he will become Pharaoh ruler of a civilization already 2,000 years old but the Empire he stands to inherit is emerging from a time of great political and religious upheaval and rames is part of a dynasty that has forced its way to power he watched as his grandfather the first rames became the first of the family to wear the Egyptian [Music] Crown now he watches his father King seti enforce his will through military power you have to remember that the rides were a new family Ramsay's the first that only reigned for a year and a half and then s he comes to the throne and rules for about 11 years Ramsey's family has to show that they are fit to rule they choose to do it by [Music] building building is the tool that Pharaoh have always used to show themselves to the world and they do it at Carnac the vast Temple comp complex in the great city of [Music] Thieves this is the domain of the god Aman raay the Imperial god of the Egyptian new kingdom carac is where the Pharaohs worship their God they are his chief priests by the time of Ramsey's birth carac is already vast buildings were continuously added or removed or [Music] changed Amon re Sanctuary lies at its heart around it each Pharaoh in turn has made a demonstration of his power and his piety adding his own new structure or Gateway pylon a new Pathway to the God so in periods when you have great pharaohs pharaohs that are Conquering the world Carnac Temple's expanding Carnac is a place where every Egyptian king needs to make his Mark so it makes absolute sense that Ramsey II would be one of those kings that would need to extend um carac Temple to make his Mark Ramsey's father conceives the idea of a grand pillared or hypo style Hall his first born son his chosen Heir will help him build it well I think the transition between the reign of SII the and Ramsey II was a very gradual one and Ramsey was given a fair amount of responsibility as a young man at the age of 10 Ramsey was made a general of the army the site for the building is in the temple approaches between two great pylons today any visitor to carac will be overw by what Father and Son built the hypest hall is was absolutely vast you could fit most of notredam cathedral in Paris within its walls investigators are now trying to decipher how the hypostyle hall was constructed and recapture what this extraordinary building looked like during the reign of the man who built it this space was covered by a huge roof resting on Stone supports the columns packed closely to accommodate the weight so if you want a large room you have to put in an awful lot of columns so quite literally the hyp style Hall is a vast Forest of columns we know that the ancient Egyptian Builders had nothing more sophisticated to work with than Stone Pounders and copper chisels and yet they undertook a project which would be ambitious even by modern standards well you're not building the columns individually what you do is you lay out the foundations for the entire building the column bases and the side walls the building's plans demanded 134 columns the central colonade had pillars that were seven stories high Clues to how the builders set about the task lie in these wall paintings from a private tomb a kind of 3,000-year-old construction manual when deciphered they reveal a highly inventive solution this wonderful 18th Dynasty scene of mud brick making could be a photograph taken in an Egyptian Village even today because the techniques that it shows have not changed in about 5,000 years water is being dipped out of a pool surrounded by trees and it's mixed with mud and probably wheat chaft temper to make the mixture which is then put into molds and put on the ground to dry for a couple of days the mud bricks are then carried over and used to build wall walls or in this case a ramp for the construction of a hyper style Hall the use of ramps in the construction is a key discovery on this wall painting the ramp leads to a hall that appears buried evidence indicates this technique was used elsewhere in carac because the remains of one of these ramps can still be seen it's now possible to work out how the builders did it they didn't use scaffold or cranes to raise the blocks above the ground they raised the ground itself you lay the first level of blocks for all the column bases and you fill inside with dirt and you build mud brick ramps on either side you bring your next level of blocks these are all roughed out and you place them over the next level and then you fill that in again you extend your ramps out further and repeat the the process so when the building is finished it is completely buried under a mountain of Earth and huge mud brick ramps on either side the ramps were only temporary structures but they were hugely labor intensive the slope would have been around 7° to reach to the height of the columns in the hypostyle hall it must have been as long as two football fields 25,000 tons of stone were dragged up these long slop hopes to make the columns the column drums were so massive that they had to be made in two d-shaped blocks each tipped the scales at 10 tons Ramsey's Masons locked these Stones together so tightly that some haven't shifted in more than 32 centuries Peter brand hunts for Clues as to how they did it with Dennis stocks a specialist in ancient building techniques the key lies in pieces P of wood fitted into notches cut into the stone first of all you had to get a piece of hard wood and cut out the shape so that it fitted into the other side so the block that's coming up to it you put it in bang bang bang it pulled the two blocks together tight so they couldn't move so these are more to assemble it rather than to hold it together once it's built it is it's to line them up properly and make sure that they can't move at all uh while the whole job's being built of course when it's all solid and finished there's no way that it's going to move after that and then the stones had to be sanded smooth we know they didn't put the columns up smooth from the beginning because we have one here that's still carved in the rough now I think they didn't have time to be fussing with these in the Quarry they left it to the builders at the site to finish dressing them they were trying to produce as many blocks in the quickest amount of time possible when the cols have been being erected and the ramps and the platforms were gradually being lowered the workers would be smoothing the stone like this uh with a a Sandstone rubber like this in preparation for The Cutting of the hieroglyphs ramsy and his father oversaw this work but the time was coming when seti would die and ramsy become king he would be able to do as he wished and the hall at carac would be just the start of the most ambitious series of engineering projects that his country had ever seen when Ramsey became Pharaoh he became the most powerful man in the world his entire life had been a preparation for this and he grasped the challenge he took personal control of the building at Carnac artists working under his orders depict him joining in the work it's hard to believe that he would have gotten his hands dirty but a formal Foundation ceremony demonstrated that what his father had started was now to be his Monument his Achievement First the king stretches out a cord between two poles in order to ceremonially survey the temple next he takes a madic and he hacks up the Earth then he has to make the first mud brick and then finally he does the ceremony of giving the temple to its Lord he seems to claim in many texts to have taken a considerable interest in it to have been involved in the planning to have researched historical records to ensure the accuracy of of Temple plans and Designs Kent weeks has researched these records himself and built up a picture of how hundreds of Masons scaled these columns working up to 70 ft in the air it's clear work didn't finish once the columns were up every surface was to be covered with elaborate hieroglyphs there's good evidence that the ancient Egyptians knew and used scaffolding in their engineering work as in this tomb painting from the 18th Dynasty here the workmen have lashed pieces of wood together to create scaffolding so that they can polish and prepare larger than life-size statues of the king every inch had to be carved or shaped by hand one man is using an abrasive to polish the surface of the stone and this man is working with a chisel to carefully detail the eye the size of Ramsey's ambition becomes even more astonishing when you realize what his men had to work with this was a time before iron the Masons had to carve their stone with tools made from soft copper Dennis stocks believed that the only way we can understand what these ancient Builders did is by attempting to recreate their work with the tools they used having done that and delineated the edge of the sign all we need to do is take out the Middle with a chisel Dennis discovers that although the ancient Egyptian culture was highly sophisticated they could achieve some of their most complex work using Stone Age Technology like this Flint tool and because it is so hard and shell it will delineate the features of the sign much better than the copper chisel wh each column each wall would be adorned in this way and the hieroglyphs are more than decoration They are packed with political and religious messages to the average tourist the hypol hall seems a jumbling confusion of scenes and inscriptions but when you look carefully at them you see there is an order the Gods in the scenes always faced as if they're inside the temple looking out the king always approaches as if he's coming from the outside into the temple to greet the gods the walls of this Temple describe the relationship between the gods Ramses and the people of Egypt it's a demonstration that Ramsey's Authority is born from divine power you stand there surrounded by this Forest of columns and it's meant to evoke the feeling that you're in a Sacred Space an enclosed space that's contained by the gods where New Life comes into being by bringing together Decades of research with state-of-the-art computer Graphics we can reveal what this space would have looked like when it was first built all this weathered Stone was once covered with Vivid painting most temples in Egypt were appear to us today to be pretty monotonic but actually in an Antiquity they were a riot of colors the kind of raw pigment that Ramsey's designers use can still be bought today in the markets of Luxor now as then it's mixed with vegetable oil and bound with natural glue the ancient Egyptians had a much more limited range than than what we see here they were basically working with six colors red yellow green blue white and black and that was it most expensive pigments were blues and greens can you imagine a tomb painted in this color blue and would actually really communicate to the people looking at this material that you were able to afford the very finest I think we're lucky that most of the paint and pigment on these Temple walls has faded because 3,000 years ago these must have been the most garish places you can imagine thousands of manh hours and vast expense went into building and adorning this Hall and yet only a privileged Elite of courtiers and Priests would ever get to see it ordinary hooy like you and me might be allowed outside the temple and maybe on festive occasions we might be allowed into the first Courtyard but that would be it the temple was not a public place of worship it was the private home of a God the place where on behalf of his people the Pharaoh makes his offerings to that God it raises him above all other Mortals it gives him power the secret interior of the hypostyle hall would be hidden behind Monumental curtain walls and the walls themselves would be a statement of Ramsey's greatness this phase of the building would require 7,000 tons of stone and only a certain type of stone would do here we are we are at thieves with these huge Limestone Hills surrounding us and yet Limestone was not the stone of choice for the building of temples for that the Egyptians much preferred sandstone and the closest source to that is about 100 km further south the vast majority of it came from one area the Silla quaries they are 3 days journey up the Nile from carac Kent week has made this journey the Pharaohs had an enormous hunger for stone when you consider the number of cubic feet of sandstone that have gone into the New Kingdom buildings constructed at thieves Silla must have been a site that was going full bore practically every day of the year for 500 years Silla was on the river but investigators have found other quaries deep in the Egyptian desert a team of investigators have been trying to map the network of roads built to service these quaries well this is probably the best preserved Road network from ancient Egypt I think we're here yeah probably we're here the quaries here are more than 2 miles from the Nile and interestingly all the roads coming down from the quaries here they're leading in the same direction all towards this this point down here the shortest Overland route to water they could have stockpiled the stone and then waited for the highest floods to then float the stone away to Quarry so many blocks drag them to the river load them on ships bring those ships in timing with the Nile flood offload them at various sites in the Carnac luar area it must have kept thousands of people busy throughout the year it took a fleet of 50 barges to keep Ramsey's Builders supplied they had to be almost flat bottom to take advantage of the Nile's flood but they could still carry huge loads we have shipping records from the time of Ramsay that tell us that there were captains delivering loads of Stone from the Jebel Cilla quaries each boat was carrying anywhere from 5 to seven blocks of stone with the Nile in full flood the boats could sail right up to the temple this is the inundation of year 28 of Ramsey III this tells us that 3,000 years ago during the annual flood the Nile reached to this level using specially built canals the blocks were delivered as close as possible to the construction site but they still had to be manhandled into position for the Masons to begin Dennis St believes that this was done using mortar it acted as a Lu lubricant to help the workers ease the stones into place we've got the motor on now which lubricates the block as they slide across the other blocks bit more that's it that's it block by block Ramsey's great hyp style Hall was enclosed and the pathway to the inner sanctum was completed 3,300 years on we can reveal a site once only visible to the priests of Amun Reay the further in you go the closer you are moving toward the God who takes up residence in this Temple here in the inner sanctum sat the enormous goldplated bark of the god almond Ray with a ram-headed proud filled this room every day the king as the chief priest had to to go into the sanctuary of the god clothe the god feed the god anoint the god read a number of texts that would awaken the God and give him new life and then sacredly close up that Shrine leave no Footprints behind Ramsey had made his mark on carac it had been impressive by any standard when he started but now it was one of the wonders of the world he now turned his attention to the other great Shrine in the city of Thieves the Luxor [Music] Temple even as the hall at Carnac was being built Ramsey II began another project just as ambitious and located barely 2 miles [Music] away the road to the Great temple at Luxor was lined with sphinxes every year the Pharaoh took this route in A procession to celebrate the most important gift the gods could give to Egypt the Nile flood the flood kept the land of Egypt fertile the ceremony that marked it was called the opet festival the ceremony started out fairly somber but by the end of the week it had become a wild almost carnival-like atmosphere this would have been a time of great drunkenness great joy lots of sexual abandon it was meant to help the god Aman Reay recreate himself so that he could be renewed and help Egypt get through another year of growth and prosperity wherever Ramsey built he was competing with the pharaoh who had gone before for him there was already a massive colonade at Luxor Temple ramsy would add to it make it his own and overshadow it by building even bigger worn down over three Millennia but still clearly visible this wall carving shows the scale of ramy's [Music] vision the statues would be 40 ft tall the obelisks even taller each carved from a single block of red granite the Obelisk would be the first thing illuminated by the sun's Rays every morning a symbol of the connection between the king and the gods we know that Ram's Engineers took on the daunting task set by their King and completed it the challenge all for archaeologists is tracing the steps back and deciphering from the clues how they did it an obelisk needs to be made from hard Stone ramsy's men chose red granite and the nearest source of red granite is 100 Mil [Music] South at Awan fresh Granite is a marvelous Stone it's very hard and there's only one place in Egypt you can get it here at as one this half-finished Obelisk is an incredible source of Clues it was abandoned only after hundreds of laborers had put in months of work well this Obelisk is quite incredible I mean it would have been about 130 ft long as maybe as wide as 9 ft uh when you get to this point here you find that they dug a deep trench here and then what they would have had to do is lower the stone down and dug underneath the obelisk now they would have had to undercut it along its entire length leaving it only on a few supports this was the Second Challenge to remove a single piece of stone weighing close to 800 tons the tools were basic to say the least you know sharp points that's very helpful for cutting granite have a look days weeks and months spent chipping away at the Rock the body having to absorb the shock of each impact that must have been harder your hands though it is very hard the pressure of of banging this rock into another rock it must have been excruciating work trials suggest that with a 100 men working at full stretch it might take a week to remove even an inch of stone and this was Precision work the visual impact of an obelisk depends on Geometry and symmetry okay pull you're really tight to create the four converging edges which travel from the base to the tip of the rock Craftsman had to rely simply on a length of string stretched from fixed measuring rods yes brilliant now this is right on the nose here this is just touching the underneath of the string which means it's exactly right once the cutting was finished the task began of getting the 800 ton Obelisk into place it would be floated down the Nile on a vast specially built barge [Music] in luxer it would be hauled into position it was then lowered into place using temporary walls and sand they would have brought the obelisk in but end up a big huge ramp and then they would have come to a silo filled with sand as they slowly let the sand out the obelis would Flo down now would it would hit this narrow Groove at the bottom then men with ropes could come and they could tilt it up to the final position Ramsey had achieved his aim The View that faced him when he first saw this grand entrance can now be revealed 33 centuries later he had eclipsed the achievements of those who had built here before and he claimed the temple for his own throughout Egypt the story was the same this sky is building everywhere north south east and west he's got a temple going up he's building a new capital city he's creating jobs like no one has created before this is a time of economic Prosperity Ramsey wasn't just building to ensure his place in history turning his attention to the southern gateway to his kingdom he would build a new Temple Abu symbol and here he would make himself a god Ramsey would rign for 67 years almost three times the life expectancy of the average Egyptian male and during that time an army of Masons would be constantly at work carving his name and his image onto walls columns and statues throughout the [Music] kingdom but his next building project would take this a stage further the West Bank of the Nile at thieves stands his Mortuary Temple the [Music] ramum it took 20 years to build had its own pillared Hall and was dominated by a statue of rams which lies smashed On The Ground by the building's entrance it would have resembled this statue only many many times larger it was one of the largest sculptures in the ancient world calculations put it at around 70 ft tall the entire structure would have weighed over a th000 tons that's 15 times the weight of the Statue of [Music] Liberty the Pharaoh intended that when his time came the ramum would be his obituary in [Music] stone the evidence suggests that he was doing much more than simply following tradition these carvings reveal that Ramses had a grand political and religious plan he was rewriting history the way he wanted it to be they tell the story of Ramsey's most famous military battle [Music] Kadesh the battle of cadz happened in year five of the reign of Ramsey II and he faced his strongest foe the hitti Empire and they met at the aranes river in Syria and it was a near disaster we know that Ramsey II did very badly in the Battle of kades and in fact we have information from the other side obviously written by the enemy of a peace treaty that was signed after the battle had been fought that suggests that at best the fight between the Egyptians and the Hittites was a draw and yet these are images of Ramsey Victorious Supreme the Pharaoh is shown as a giant the foes that surround him are dead dying or in complete surrender these carvings distort the truth and in the Egyptian way of thinking they are more powerful than simple propaganda when you represent the Battle of Kadesh in its ideal form form with the outcome that you desire then in the Egyptian mindset that's what will come into being rames believed that if he cast something in stone he made it happen even if it wasn't [Music] true and the ramum was only the [Music] beginning he is going to do what few other Pharaoh's ever dared he is going to transform himself and Rule as a living God to make it happen he will use the stone Cliffs at Abu [Music] symbol Abu symble is a unique Temple carved in the rock with these giant statues it's so audacious Ramsey embarks on his most ambitious building project a vast temple on the edge of his Empire this Temple is built for a field to celebrate the king so that he's not infringing on the territory of the god Amon it has taken the work of generations of investigators to uncover the true scale of ramy's achievement here with Abu symbol Ramses is literally breaking new ground because unlike his other monuments this Temple is not built but cut from The Rock instead of transporting Stone to the site they are carrying it away teams of Masons chip the Sandstone away until four great statues of their Pharaoh emerge each one on almost 70 ft high they are a deliberate attempt to intimidate the local Nubian [Music] population the Nubians were in possession of Egypt's principal source of gold and it was extremely important that Egypt maintained control over the gold mines and the trade routes that led into Africa source of ebony ivory slaves and so forth the interior of the temple is equally ambitious a network of Chambers tunneled over 150 ft back into the cliff and on two days a year there is a dramatic demonstration of the royal architect's grasp of astronomy and the Precision of his [Music] Builders the Rays of the Sun travel all the way through these Chambers hitting the inner Sanctuary the the place where Ramsey statue stands with those of three other divinities and so ramse proves a point to himself he is not merely the greatest of the Pharaohs while alive Ramy the second is one of the few Kings in Egyptian history to declare himself Divine before he died I think many in ancient Egypt would be a struck that a king could live to such an age could produce what he' produce and it is quite possible that some ancient Egyptians did believe that he was the God [Music] incarnate Ramsey made his Mark but a final challenge awaited him in the eyes of the people he was a living God he now had to build a tomb that was worthy of his [Music] greatness every Pharaoh builds his own tomb the planning Begins the moment he takes the throne as in every part of his life Ramses will build for his death on a greater scale with greater Vision than every pharaoh who has gone before the traditional Royal resting place the Valley of the Kings on the Nile's West [Music] Bank [Music] well in a rough sense as we cross from the East Bank to the West Bank we are crossing from the city of the living to the City of the Dead in the time of Ramsey II this has been a royal burial ground for 500 years the plans for his tomb take these past burials as a starting point but he lives into his 80s ruling for almost almost seven decades and before he is placed in his tomb he will bury many of his own vast family as part of his work mapping the Valley of the Kings Kent weeks has discovered an extraordinary complex of underground Chambers they have been given the name [Music] kv5 this is is the largest tomb complex in the valley and it is where Ramsey buried his own Sons we discovered that the tomb contains more than 125 Chambers and it has every earmark of the reign of Ramsay's 2 about it it's Unique in plan unique in size unique in function as a family mosum it must have been a very sad job and it must have been a very difficult one and it may explain why kv5 is such an unusual tomb this was one man's attempt to keep his family with him for eternity making it a reality required a special team of workers who left their Mark here written on the Rock deciphering these notes has revealed a world of men that history overlooks they left behind a great amount of material a lot of that consisted of ostrica notes that they made to themselves from Love Letters to IUS from uh notes to parents to shopping lists and basically they're just a piece of limestone on which they would make little Doodles these are wonderful texts for an archaeologist and historian because they tell us things that we ordinarily known nothing about in ancient Egypt this is the home of kaha and his wife tuy their nice siiz living room kitchen with a mortar for grinding Grain on the floor it's a very substantial house but that makes sense because kaha was a very important figure in the early ramde period he was responsible for a substantial amount of building activity during the important Reigns of se1 and Ramsey 2 once every 10 days the work team made the journey along the Cliff face for their tomb building shift in the Valley of the Kings they worked on a 10day work week and they received at least during the rain of R thei 2 days off Kent weeks retraces their [Music] path the Builder's challenge was within this Maze of existing tombs and passageways to find a suitable site with enough space to accommodate Ramsey's vision of what his tomb should be every tomb for a pharaoh served the same purpose in the New Kingdom that was to ensure the safe journey of the king from this life to the next rames had officiated at his father's funeral presided over the ceremony in which his beautifully decorated tomb was sealed the images that cover these walls would have been burned into his mind said he decided that he wanted this entire tomb to be decorated with very elaborately painted and carved reliefs and so the entire tomb from the entrance to the burial chamber is covered with a reliefs and inscriptions Ramsey commands The Men Who Built This for his father to build a tomb for him but more lavish more Magnificent the task was daunting before any decoration could begin the tunneling had to be completed we know that they worked to far 4our shifts every day and they timed their shifts by using lamps to light their work with Wicks of a certain length when the wick had burned out it was time to break for lunch after lunch they put a second Wick in the lamp when that was gone it was time to go back home the Egyptian Builders were highly skilled and disciplined but they were also capable of making mistakes with so many burial Chambers in the Valley of the Kings it was inevitable that some of the tunnels would cut into existing tombs what did they do when they run into another tomb well in each case they had a different solution in one case they Incorporated the earlier tomb into the plan of the new one some of the most impressive tunnel systems were effectively connected by accident ramsy plan to be buried in a magnificent chamber at the end of a series of long descending tunnels this chamber lay pristine and ready to receive his body for as much as half a century but the 3,200 years since his death have seen earthquakes and floods the roof has partially collapsed the decoration which would have covered its walls is erased only by studying the burial chamber on which Ramsey based his design can we recover what the king's final resting place looked like religious symbols would have covered every surface the ceiling would have been adorned with a Starry Sky on each of the walls an image of the protective God Isis would stand guard over the pharaoh's sarcophagus positioned in the center of the room a multi-layered stone casket was as much of a feet of skill as the tomb that housed it yal yal come on yal Dennis stock has been trying to establish precisely how the ancient Egyptians managed to cut and shape the rock into a casket this is very hard Gran the hardest Stone in Egypt to C he discovers that the Egyptians found a way of cutting Stone using soft copper bladed saws the saw is cutting this down probably at a rate of a cm per hour which means it would take several days to cut this through the saw doesn't have teeth sand is used as an abrasive it's labor intensive but extremely effective wind the Rope around the shaft hollowing out the sarcophagus would be even more difficult by studying wall inscriptions from before the time of Ramsey Dennis believes he can recreate the Innovative techniques that the Masons used if you imagine the top of the sarcophagus being like this nobl long then they had to drill holes around the perimeter in order to delineate the shape of the hollow inside the sarcophagus then they could put some weakening holes in the middle and then break away all the column of rocks between as well as the caes and then after four or five levels of that they will have reached the bottom of the sarcophagus deep enough for pharaoh to be put into it although this process took a long time it was finished long before Ramsey died even his age marked him out as remarkable he was in his 90th year when he was laid in his sarcophagus by the very length of his Reign rames achieved a literally Godlike status there probably was nobody El alive in Egypt that could remember the reign of his father or that had even been alive when ramsy had come to the throne the mummified body of Ramsey II lies preserved in Cairo Museum 3,000 years on we can still see his face and we can still see the mark that this Builder King left on his country Ramsay's left his stamp throughout Egypt you cannot go to a site in this country and not find the name of Ramsey's II inscribed on at least one block or statue it is easy to see why his achievements have so captivated Engineers archaeologists and historians scarcely a ruler in human history had left more monuments than he we're interested in a king who lived for so long we're interested in a king who's able to marshal incredible amounts of manpower to make his mark on Egypt the hypo style Hall at Carnac the tomb that he built for himself the temple he cut in the Rock at Abu simol these ruins are all Clues to the Egypt that rames built but it is only when they are brought back to life see them as Ramy saw them that we can truly know what he achieved a world whose Splendor has never been equaled in 3,200 [Music] years the knight's Templar defended the Holy Land their tools were Bloodshed and prayer founded in the 12th century these Christian Warrior monks were an unbeatable Force for nearly 200 years then they suffered a spectacular Fall From Grace tried for heresy they were accused of practicing strange rituals accusers said they spat on the cross worshiped the severed human head and engaged in perverse sexual acts they were disbanded their Grandmaster was burned at the stake ever since their name has carried an air of mystery and romance today books like the D Vinci Code embellish the myth of the Templars claims persist that they guarded the most sacred object in Christendom the Holy Grail behind the legend we explore the real world of the Knights Templar a world built from Stone 800 years ago they constructed some of the finest fortifications ever known oh my look at this this is fantastic today much of what they built is crumbling into the landscape now a team of experts is journeying back to their world I don't think this has been used for centuries using state-of-the-art computer animation they will reveal for the first time in 8 centuries the Lost World of the Knights Templar [Music] in a hidden corner of the Middle East is the long forgotten world of the Knights Templar torosa in modern Syria was once a Templar City their Splendid military headquarters was at its heart those who passed through the city in the 13th century tell of an enormous chapel and Great Hall an impregnable castle and fine walls with towers as if crowned with precious jewels now all that stands intact is a Cathedral at the time of the Templars this was an important place of pilgrimage the rest of the city is decaying just fragments of ruins embedded in the modern city today local people seem unaware they are living within what was once a great city of a secretive International Organization our experts will piece together Clues found at torosa they will reconstruct the long lost world of the Templars the knight's Templar was formed in the 12th century its purpose was to protect Christian pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem Professor Paul Crawford is traveling along the old route to the ancient city it was so dangerous that one Pilgrim wrote back home after having gone along the pilgrim route and said that he saw heaps of Bones littering the sides of the roads where people had died and rotted if your friends are killed don't stop to bury them because if you dig them a grave that grave will turn out to be your own grave someone will come along and kill you and put you you in it the knights took vows of poverty Chastity and obedience they offered their lives to safeguard the roots that the pilgrims took they were now Warrior monks soon the role of the Templars expanded to defend the Christian territories in the holy land from local Muslim Warlords the Templars represented A New Concept they represented a fusion of the medieval calling of warrior on the one hand with the medieval calling of religious on the other hand fuse them together and you get fighting religious this concept of holy war was new and shocking toroso was handed to the Knights Templar in 1152 in return they would protect the city and the surrounding land from Muslims who wanted the Christian settlers to leave the Holy Land The Hub of the city was the templar's castle Man by The Warrior monks David Nicole is attempting to find the castle walls to understand how they engineered their defenses well here we have the inner wall it's quite short sections of wall and then these protruding Towers they look like sort of zigzags actually in the wall but they are individual towers as David passes between the fortification it becomes clear that there is a remarkable amount Still Standing does seem that this little street that we on just hugs the wall it's not possible to follow the wall anymore in this direction but the wall made of these really large pieces of masonry disappears into these houses linking together The Remains the scale of the castle can be revealed double concentric walls surrounded on three sides lives protecting the seaward flank are two strong Towers these walls were designed to withstand even the most ruthless attacker records from the time tell us of enemy armies attempting to Tunnel underneath the defenses to take the castle the first step was to get right up against the base of the wall the normal system of doing that was what at least in medieval French would be called a Sha a cat the cat was a heavy framed sturdy wood structure that could creep up to the walls withstanding the arrows and rocks that the Defenders would rain down from above would be inched forward slowly slowly slowly until it gets right there then the attackers dig destabilizing the wall pit props support the tunnel until a section is undermined you put inflammable material around there straw and oil and olive oil and fat and anything that's going to make a good old Blaze and then you light it and get out quick the pit props burn away and under its own weight the wall begins to collapse you've cracked the shell the torosa castle walls were designed to resist the enemy tunnelers the distance between the towers seems to be the range of a crossbow the spacing enabled archers to cover the area between you've got a relatively low outer wall a probably slightly higher inner wall so The Archers and what have you up there can shoot down over the outer wall but there was a problem in shooting down from the towers at torosa most crossbows of the time were designed to shoot horizontally and here the Templars would have to aim downwards you clearly are going to have a problem rather like that giving your arrows to the enemy but not quite in the way that you intended so an ingenious device was added it has here a clip which although it doesn't hold the uh the bolt very strongly it does hold it in place and you can very clearly shoot [Music] but any ankle you wish you don't lose the thing but bows and arrows were useless against this the ultimate medieval war machine it's called a trebuchet this enormous catapult at nearly 60 ft tall is the biggest like this in the world six oak trees were used to build it for the Templars inside torosa the sight of a machine like this would have been terrifying soon 50 lb Stone balls would be raining down on the fortification it would be devastating with a range of up to a quar of a mile trebuchet had the power to break through Stone workor David Nicole has pieced together Clues to rebuild the towers and walls engineered to withstand both trebuchets and tunnelers if the enemy breached the outer wall by tunneling there is still an inner wall to break through and at 20 ft thick they were almost impregnable torosa was the gateway to a string of equally imposing fortifications Protec prot in territory across the holy [Music] land at the heart of the Christian kingdom was Jerusalem and here the Templars adapted the world's most important religious site to suit their own purposes in the First Crusade of 1099 Christians seized Jerusalem from Muslim rule on Temple Mount stood the Magnificent al- AXA mosque the built in the 7th Century in Christian Jerusalem this was to serve as the headquarters of the knight's Templar it meant the Templars were now linked with one of the most important sites in Christendom there were all the stories from the Bible associated with that area that's where Jesus was supposed to have walked where he supposed to done his Miracle the Templars were associated with all these events in the Bible the former mosque was adapted to become an administrative Center beneath it in Subterranean vaults the warrior monks stabled their horses ready to go into battle to defend Jerusalem's holy places the Magnificent arches of the Stables were 30 ft high and covered an area of some 60,000 Square ft in it they can have maybe a thousand horses one Western visitor says that if you fought a crossbow Bel the Bol wouldn't have even have reached the end of the room it was that big this is the perfect place for the templers to set themselves up this militarization of the holiest of sites embodied the spiritual and Military roles of the Knights Templar the defense of the Christian East cost many lives at the furthest reach of their network was a church where new recruits were inducted but here the strange rituals of the Templars were shrouded in mystery [Music] in the heart of the city of London stands the English headquarters of the Knights Templar Temple Church was consecrated in 1185 its structure Echoes the most important Church in the Christian world the holy Seiler in Jerusalem the holy Seiler is built on the site where many Christians believe Jesus was crucified buried and rose from the dead as with the Holy Seiler the Nave of Temple Church is circular Within These Walls a mysterious ritual took place to induct new members into the Brotherhood across Europe Knights were received into the Templars at a phenomenal rate they replaced men lost in battle defending the kingdom of Jerusalem there are times the Templars suffered terrible casualties in battle there's one battle in 1244 348 Templars went in 312 were killed new recruits would enter the temple by the west door which was then locked shut this was a secret ceremony so many took place at dawn just as the sun was Rising as if they were going into a new life the initiates passed through the circular Nave and between the ghostly statues then began a solemn ritual the new recruits would take monastic vows of poverty Chastity and obedience you're not allowed to kiss women not even your mother or your sister as Knights these men would suffer all for God and be servants to the Templars forever the secrecy of the ceremony provoked rumors from those outside the Brotherhood we hear strange things that that were going on uh one night says that he he had to actually kiss the white scabby belly of one of the Masters he recoiled from this this terrible sight there is nonetheless a strong suspicion their initiation rights are ra the suspect the secret rituals going on inside Temple Church contrasted with its highly visible presence from the outside the church was built as an advertisement for their cause the kingdom of Jerusalem soon the Great and the good were bequeathing their money and Estates to the Templars these strange statues on the floor of the Nave represent the most generous donors to the Templar cause all these people would be very rich land owners in England so these represent the cream of English chivalry of the period by bestowing vast sums of money to the Templars the donors were assured of Glory in the eyes of God the Knights Templar became by today's standards a multi-billion doll multinational organization with the wealth and the lands they acquired the templers became institutionally fantastically Rich they had offices if you like with their representatives all over Christendom they were also trusted going away on Crusade would give them their wealth to look after the Templars operated an international banking system pilgrims could deposit money in Europe and withdraw funds once they reached the Holy Land it reduced the risk of robbery on the road the Templars are the first International banking organization the city of torosa was not only an important Templar headquarters its coastal location provided a vital shipping link with the West David Nicole has located the port by the castle walls where the Templar ships were Dark Men and goods horses food and supplies practically everything is brought in by sea and then Communications Messengers reports going back to the Templar headquarters keep everybody informed to what's going on in this part of the world now we can recreate how the port at torto would have been at the time of the Templars 800 years ago the sea would have lapped against the castle walls allowing men and goods to be offloaded into the city these walls enclosed an area now packed with modern homes they mask what were once magnificent medieval buildings contemporary sources tell us the wealthy Templars built an impressive Great Hall here and it's here that battle plans and tactics would have been drawn up as the Templars defended the surrounding territory Paul Crawford is searching for remains of the Templar building cannibalized in this row of houses be really nice to see what's in there behind somebody's house now may I come in may I come in in here let's see if we can go up they've built their houses out of bits of the Great Hall itself oh my look at this this is fantastic people are living up against the walls of the Great Hall here up in the vaults is evidence of the gothic style of architecture that the Templars favored the Templars built the vaulted arches of the Great Hall from wedge-shaped Stones a keystone at the center was held in place by the pressure of neighboring pieces the Keystone is the supporting element for a structure like this without it the arch would collapse the weight is directed to strong springing points at the base of the Arches if we follow the the lines of this Vault down we should be able to find the springing Point some somewhere and it should be let's see right about in here H let's give this a try little washroom oh look at that look there decorated oh that's ornamental that's beautiful look at that imagine yourself below that maybe 18 ft looking up at it oh that's amazing we can now reveal the magnificence of the Great Hall eight centuries ago it would have been bustling with activity as the Templars plotted against the great Muslim leader Saladin on the floor perhaps long tables Knights sitting along them planning doing strategy imagine in 1188 they're sitting there talking and a scout comes in saying saladin's on the way saladin's on the way and they all jump up and run to their stations the warrior monks would seize their weapons and fight to the death to defend torosa from the enemy but to the Templars just as important as fighting was prayer so buried somewhere within the castle walls there must be the remains of a chapel Paul Crawford is hoping to find them H we've got it look up there it's amazing to walk into this thing Discover It tucked away in a little corner of Tartus nobody having used used it for hundreds of years it's an amazing thing it's wonderful remarkably the Templar Chapel is still being used as a home people with their houses built into it but they've all been just added in sort of like like wasps nests inside an abandoned Barn these buildings mask the scale of the chapel and centuries of debris have raised the floor level by 15 ft as the position of these windows shows we can now reveal the once magnificent Templar Chapel the space would have been massive 80 ft long 30 ft wide and 50 ft tall the scale and Splendor of the building is an indication of the crucial importance of prayer to the knight's Templar at the nucleus of the castle was the keep this strong Stone Tower would have been the military nerve center of the castle it dominated the entire city today the keep has been obscured by over 800 years of conflict and change military historian David Nicole believes he has located remains of the tower but what lies inside has remained hidden for centuries he is about to investigate this is the actual center of the Old Tower this is quite difficult to get through it has not been cleared at all and I don't think this has been used for centuries ah there's a door David has stumbled upon the inner sanctum of the keep if the city was attacked this would be the final stronghold the Templars could Retreat to here may be Clues as to how they survived during a Siege judging by the sound of it it's full water which is a bit scary it echoes and there steps leading down into the water this is creepy this is a stunning find a sistern still stocked with water centuries after the Templars left how Deep's that water deep enough I don't want to go in there during a Siege the knights could have been trapped within the keep for weeks the sister would be an essential supply of water next door is another chamber even in the depths of the keep the quality of the construction is outstanding beautifully made I mean look at that window I think you'd been proud to find that in your local Parish Church this was the weapons store at the top of the Vault there is a small access hole a secret trapo would have provided the Templars with a supply of Swords Shields and crossbows the sistern and the weapon store contained in the 60t Square keep represented the last line of defense for the Templars in 1188 their great enemy Saladin attacked torto the city and walls fell but the keep with its 15t thick walls held out it was a testament to its Construction and design now for the first time the team of historians has rediscovered the long-lost Templar city of torosa and brought it back to life through rediscovering Templar toroa with the castle and the chapel so close to one another we can see the Dual role of the warrior and the Monk encapsulated from toroa Power radiated out to a network of castles and Christian cities across the holy land but the lynchpin of the network is not a castle but a unique fortified Church within this building the Templars would have taken part in a Sinister ritual venerating relics the body parts of saints from the port of torosa the Knights Templar radiated their power and wealth across the Holy Land just 25 mil from torosa is chastel Blanc it's out in the frontier land of the Christian kingdom today All That Remains is a solitary stone tower on a hill that dominates the modern town of safita chastel Blanc Towers 100 ft over the highest peak in the Reg region but this is a very special and unique building it is a fortified Church it is the Templar ideal set in stone the Christian faith defended by military might Fusion of the warrior calling and the religious calling because this is a religious building it's a church but it's a chapel with arrow slits instead of stained glass windows hidden within the 15t thick walls of the Fortified church is a secret staircase it leads to the roof Paul Crawford is exploring the fortification to determine why chastel Blanc was constructed on this site I can see why the Templars put a network of castles here on this spot this isn't dry dead desert there isn't heaps of gravel it's Orchards olive trees orange trees lemon trees look at the richness in the beauty of this Countryside it's not only appealing to the eye it's appealing to the pocketbook it's economically financially valuable territory from here there are sight lines to all the nearby fortifications putting chastel Blanc at the center of an impregnable web of defenses it forms the Lynch pin of a network of castles that holds this Rich beautiful fertile valuable land in place and defends it chastel Blanc is a beautifully compact design with a chapel on the lower level it has a dormatory above cut into the rock below is a water sister but to the medieval Builder constructing a fortification high on this hill represented a major engineering challenge a castle like this is incredibly expensive to create look at the the depth of the walls the size of the blocks look at how carefully they're put together historian David Nicole has studied how the Templars moved the gigantic 2,000lb stones to construct their castles they used Timber cranes and pulley systems it was very very sophisticated in a sense they had all the engineering that we have the only difference being that it was made of wood and ropes not from steel or any of that kind of stuff and instead of electric or diesel power the traction was provided by humans or animals there's a person inside a wheel which they walk along like hamsters in a in a in a wheel in a cage and that is converted into Power which will then pull the ropes it's very very effective and it's not just the scale of the engineering that is impressive it's the quality every stone is engineered to Perfection and look at this the bottom of the arrow sled is angled so that when you come over here you can look and if there's an enemy out there you shoot your little bow at him and you can get him because of the angle there's no blind spot for him down there for the Templars guidance in battle came from God within their fortified Chapel the warrior monks would have taken part in religious rituals venerating relics the body parts of saints there's always been this element in Christian in history of of coming close to a holy person uh being in their presence or being able to touch them often A Relic would be a fragment of bone or a piece of a Saint's clothing sometimes it would have been more gruesome like a severed head the relics were so important to the Templars they were taken into battle to provide Divine guidance but the ultimate relics were those of Jesus Christ himself we can't have relics of Our Lord CU he was ascended into heaven and so we've latched on to uh the things which were closest to them and for many of course the cup of the Last Supper is something which is very important this cup the Holy Grail has for centuries been the subject of Mythology it is claimed the Templars in their search for relics Unearthed the Holy Grail at Temple Mount this became their most sacred possession which they guarded with their lives but there is little evidence that this persistent legend is true this was the invention of a 12th century French romance writer called cretian deis the Templars could never have had hold of this this thing that goes back centuries back to the time of Christ in the Middle Ages there were people who we would call today fantasy writers who apparently thought that it would be really cool to connect the ideas of the Holy Grail with the ideas of the Templars it seems linking the mysterious and secretive Templars with the greatest icon in Christendom was the ultimate medieval fantasy the trouble is it takes on a life of its own goes on and on and then people start to believe it but it's it's Fantasy by stripping away the modern settlement we can reveal chastel Blanc as the Templars would have known it on top of the steeply sided Hill protected by double concentric walls the Fortified church was fantastically defended this centerpiece of the network links the headquarters at torosa to the rest of the Christian defenses but just 25 M away is the world's finest Castle CA chaler built to withstand the most brutal attack Lawrence of Arabia described CA chaler as the finest castle in the world with outer walls 100 ft thick and seven guard towers 30 ft in diameter this Castle was virtually impregnable The Fortress was constructed and manned by the hospitallers partners and Rivals of the Templars its location is crucial it defends the most important trade route in the region over there you have the Long Valley with the main road it's a main road today day and it was a main road in medieval time linking the coast to the Inland cities which in the Crusader period were the centers of Islamic power and the coast was the center of the Crusader power the hospitallers and the Templars joined forces to defend this important territory this was a massive military operation and David Nicole is on a quest to find out how the knights operated horses were essential to of the Holy Warriors but stabling the animals was a major undertaking the first of two Stables this one is the smaller of the two still pretty big these magnificent vaulted buildings could stable up to a thousand horses from here they could be out and in battle in minutes they are quite literally chomping at the bit they're probably as eager as the men who are going to ride them to get out there and get into action horses were also essential to transport weapons food and men around the castle the designers of caka chaler had to find a way of allowing the animals to move around the Steep inclines of the Fortress they solved the problem by constructing the passages as long shallow steps instead of slopes by having these relatively shallow steps it reduces the slope which makes it easier for the animals and of course it gets wet it gets slippery and if You' got that many animals you're going to have an awful lot of animal done moving men about the castle was just as important especially when under attack we're deep inside this really really thick solid piece of Mason this is known as a gallery wall a secret passage within the broad fortifications allowing the knights to move clandestinely around the castle in times of attack they'd like to keep it as hidden as possible from the enemy imagine yourself being under attack people racing backwards and forwards with new arrows for the crossbowmen or bringing water or food to them or help to the injured there's going to be a lot of activity going on during a [Music] Siege Knights would be Manning not only the arrow slits but an ingenious piece of high-tech medieval engineering known as machicolations machicolations protrude from the castle walls they are a cunning anti- tunneling measure if you could get above them and then drop rocks or indeed anything nasty on top of them boiling water forget the boiling oil that's far far too expensive to waste but I think some boiling water on top of the enemy miners heads could be quite effective let's put them off but the greatest example of military engineering at Kaka chaler is the great sloping wall that surrounds the central keep known as a Talis it prevented the enemy undermining the Towers the idea being that um if you do get penetrate into that it all falls down on top of you despite the web of fortifications by 1187 the tide was turning against the Templars their great enemy Saladin swept through the Holy Land grabbing town after town from the Christians ultimately he captured Jerusalem within months his army was at the gates of torosa the the templar's military headquarters the city fell but the knights managed to shelter within the castle the Templars needed to regroup they set about rebuilding their fortifications David nle is searching for Clues as to how they reinforce torosa and this diagonal line here is a beautiful clue I think you can say with reasonable certainty that that marks the line of the Talis that went around the base of this Tower this Talis meant torosa would now resist an enemy attempting to undermine its walls inside David Nicole makes another Discovery it is clear the intersection of the keep containing a weapon store and sistern is surrounded by a later fortification what the Templars do is build this extra bit on the outside they strengthen and greatly enlarge this and on the outside of that the sea the whole structure is now very strong very strong indeed David's F reveals how reinforcements were constructed around the existing keep at torosa this second wall created a passage where archers could h to defend the inner fortifications in combination with the Talis the keep within the castle at torosa was now impregnable but despite the unparalleled fortifications the Templar were unable to resist the tide of the Muslim forces who wanted to sweep them out of the Holy Land by the end of the 13th century every Templar Castle had fallen except torosa but without their network of castles the Templars were doomed realizing all was lost they retreated to a tiny Island less than a mile from torosa their wealth secrecy and brutality were about to come back to haunt them by 1291 the Templars had failed in their task to defend the Christian territories of the Holy Land There seemingly impregnable fortresses had fallen the Templars were pushed back to the coast to torosa the only Castle they still held but without their once great Network this Castle too would soon fall the Templars were left with little choice but to escape torosa became pointless in a way and indefensible so in August of 129 1 the Templars got on their boats and sailed away the Templars sailed to the island of Cyprus this was a secure base where they could regroup ready to launch an attack on the mainland to retake torosa and the castle Network they assembled a fleet of ships designed to transport the knights to the mainland horses would be essential to this new assault and the Templar ships were designed to transport up to 30 animals each but the journey by sea from Cypress to torosa is over 100 miles transporting horses over this distance would be challenging horses get seasick just like humans do unlike humans horses can't throw up and that causes a problem launching an attack with sick horses would be disastrous so the Templars needed a staging point for the animals to recover less than a mile off the coast of torosa is the island of ruad if you have ruad you can bring the horses by transport and take them off rest them up then put them back on the ship and take them the mile or so over to the mainland and they won't be in bad shape when you get there in 1300 the Knights Templar set sail for ruad island with a huge Garrison of 120 Knights and 500 archers ready to launch the attack the Templars came back here in force intending to use it as a beach head to retake torosa and then the entire Mainland the only territory in the holy land now held by the knight's Templar was ruad an island less than half a mile across imagine having held all of that the coastline that we can see having been in the city of torosa the cathedral cracked a sh shast shast Blanc all of those great structures in those networks of castles across the hinderland and having lost the mall having been reduced to possessing an island only slightly larger than the dimensions of the city of torosa but in 1302 things went from bad to worse for the Knights Templar a Muslim Force got wind of their Garrison on ruad threatening the mainland they launched an amphibious attack made contact on two points on the island attacked the Templars and their infantry drove the Templars back to a castle a fortress possibly this one on this end of the island and separated them from their infantry and there was fierce house- toh house fighting in the narrow Alleyways and the buildings that were on the island realizing the game was up the Knights Templars surrendered their last foothold had fallen to the enemy the era of of the Templars as Defenders of the holy land was over back in Europe they were held to account their vocation was to defend the holy places and they failed I mean everybody poured all this money in over centuries now on the basis that they would guard the Christian places it hasn't worked the reputation of the once great Templars was now in tatters on Friday 13th October 1307 the king of France ordered their arrest he accused them of denying Christ spitting on the cross urinating on the cross he accused them of homosexual practices he accused them of worshiping Idols of worshiping heads their mysterious rituals were challenged in particular the secret reception ceremony where new Knights were sworn into the Brotherhood there were mutterings about what could possibly be happening Behind These closed doors if it was a good thing like the Templar said and holy and honest why can't we go in to see they must be up to something horrible and obscene in there that they want to keep a secret there's no smoke without fire the Templars were interrogated under brutal torture there's one record of a Templar priest whose feet were held over a fire and his The Souls of his feet were burned until a few days later the bones fell out there were other Templars who were hung from the ceilings of Dungeons and had weights attached to their feet or even their sensitive private parts and then dropped these broken men confess to everything from idol worship to sodomy we know that today you can make a man suffer enough that you can make him say anything uh and that fact alone makes historians suspect that the charges against the Templars were not true in March 1314 the Templars were found guilty on mass the grandm was burned at the stake and the Knights disbanded when an organization as big Grand and Powerful as this one Falls conspiracy theories will inevitably develop the most enduring myth is that of the Holy Grail and the templar's quest to find it it has gripped Western imagination more than any other Legend in the trial proceedings in the interrogations this thing isn't mentioned the tempers had had it in their possession this would have come to light in the tri proceedings it's not mentioned at all the destruction of their records in the 16th century by Turkish Invaders means there will always be an air of mystery about the knight's Templar the templar's obsession with secrecy and their interest in relics and Arcane rituals means that in many respects they're Their Own Worst Enemy they go from the heroes of Christendom and they fall and they're the they're the bad guys today everyone knows the knight's Templar for the Mystique that surrounds them but their buildings defended the holy land for almost 200 years now they're slowly crumbling into the landscape and so it seems the mythical status of the Templars will outlive their Lost World [Music] 35,000 years ago the biggest volcanic eruption in recorded history Rock Ed the planet in the heart of the Mediterranean a peaceful Island exploded with devastating [Music] Force at a stroke an entire civilization was wiped from the face of the Earth then at the dawn of the 20th century the remains of a spectacular Palace were discovered on the island of creit on a neighboring Greek island a town was Unearthed preserved beneath thousands of tons of volcanic ash teams of investigators are examining every fragment from these mysterious sites to decipher their hidden secrets and out of the physical Clues lifted from the ash a radical theory has emerged these ruins could be the home of an ancient civilization Atlantis you using Cutting Edge visual technology we rebuild the incredible towns temples and palaces we reveal the majesty and the Mystery of this Lost [Music] World every search for Atlantis begins with the writings of the great Greek philosopher Plato Plato was essentially the father of Western philosophy and because what he had to say was so important and has remained important throughout the history of Western thought it became much more acceptable much more respectable if you will than if someone else had written it in one of the most intriguing of his writings ings Plato describes a remarkable utopian society rich in wealth and knowledge their skills as Builders and Engineers were Advanced Beyond imagining but he says the Peace of this land was suddenly torn apart Legend has it that the entire civilization was wiped out in a single day and night engulfed by the ocean and lost to the world world for thousands of years no other mystery on Earth has sparked such Obsession or given rise to so many extraordinary theories on the Mediterranean island of Cree a discovery was made in early 1900 that would add a new chapter in the search for Atlantis an archaeologist named Arthur Evans A Real Life Indiana Jones arrived on cre he was searching for the Treasures of the ancient world Evans was looking for something very specific he was looking for the first European culture but he was also looking for the roots to Greek mythology Evans began his search in a Hilltop settlement called kosas he soon found something that was beyond his Wildest Dreams in the very first trench he dug Evans Unearthed a magnificent Stone Throne it was the heart of a spectacular Palace complex covering an area the size of four football fields and containing 10 times as many rooms as Washington's White House the Dig exposed construction on a massive scale what he found was beyond all expectations of anyone at the time and essentially he defined the civilization around it which he called the monan civilization the name Evans chose came from a figure in ancient Greek myth called King Minos Minos was said to live in a great palace at the center of which he had imprisoned a terrible monster half man half bull it was called the minor Sir Arthur EV thought that he had found the Palace of King Minos they probably had nothing to do with King Minos but on the other hand it seemed like a a good label and it is stuck today a groundbreaking new theory has emerged as to the origin of this lost world it's entirely possible that something like the Atlantis myth comes out of here and it's passed on for centuries and grew in some kind of grand importance and so there is this theory that the Minoans were in fact the uh early atlanteans it is the sophistication of the palace on creit that is the first link to the idea of Atlantis the Builders of this remarkable structure had achieved a level of engineering Excellence that would not be seen anywhere else in the world for centuries it is littered with artifacts dating back over 3 and 1 12,000 years the remains of hundreds of decorative pots and beautiful wall paintings are being discovered as investigators piece together the fragments of this ancient Arc they are discovering sophisticated images of the people and the lives of A Lost Civilization people were extremely interested because this was going back beyond the boundaries of uh classical studies and classical archaeology into something entirely new uh which had not really been envisaged before the buildings here are older than anything previously discovered on the island and they are infinitely more advanced teams of experts are now searching for the clues that relate this complex architecture to Plato's story of Atlantis Colin McDonald has scoured every inch of the palace above and below ground to expose every technological achievement and beneath the surface he has discovered one of the site's most advanced features down beneath all of this there is the most remarkable water system both for the drainage of water and for the water supply itself astoundingly this sophisticated network of of pipes predates the plumbing of the great Greek and Roman Empires by over a thousand years these terracotta or clay water pipes are made up of one meter sections the one tapering into the other it took water to lots of different parts of the palace and equally impressive systems were used actually to get water out of the palace for the drainage system itself a vast Subterranean Network carried Wast water away from the palace using the details of Colin's survey we can now see how the drain circled through the palace's Royal quarter we're right in the middle of the main drainage system of the palace here on the east side it's Stone built on either side about a meter high here in times of torrential rain huge quantities of water could be dealt with by this drainage system a similarly sophisticated water management system is described in Plato's stories he wrote of a palace where water was plentiful collected from the surrounding Hills it was in abundant Supply throughout the city just as it was here at [Music] kosas what's more at the palace of kosis the engineering above ground is every bit as sophisticated as that which Plato describes the palace contained 1300 rooms spread over four floors all interconnected by miles of passageways it was centuries ahead of anything seen from the same era on Mainland Greece what we had on the Greek mainland in the period of the Palaces was nothing more complicated really than maximum three or four room single story mud brick structures there's no Grand architecture on the scale that we see in the creton Palaces Plato describes the Palace of Atlantis as an acropolis sitting at top a great Hill at kosis we find just that construction must have involved huge Earth moving operations the entire Hilltop was flattened and Terraces were carved so that the palace could be built on multiple levels the large Foundation blocks of the palace walls were constructed of crystalline stone called gypsum it was quarried locally and then cut into massive blocks with bronze saws we're right in the middle of a large Quarry used for quaring the gypsum that was used in the construction of the first palace at canosos here one can see very very clearly the tool Mark of the bronze of object which sliced away an enormous part of the face and the resulting block which would have fallen down would then either have been worked here or moved the 800 M or so over to the Palace itself in the Atlantis myth the external walls of the great palaces were said to shine like silver today the gypsum walls of kosas have been eroded by the elements but in their full Glory they too would have sparkled you can almost imagine what it felt like for a Greek coming ashore in cre and seeing something like the glimmering gypsum Palace sauce this giant shiny structure glistening in the Sun from all this crystalline gypsum and on a scale like they couldn't have even possibly imag imagined at that time a vast Royal residence a place of worship and ceremony at the center of an advanced and Wealthy civilization using their latest evidence our team applies state-of-the-art Imaging techniques to rebuild this prehistoric Palace we can now see the structure as it would once have stood here supporting Ed by huge Redwood pillars many believe this was Atlantis now our investigators are going deeper to the very fabric of this extraordinary Palace in search of the vital clues that might provide proof what they find is evidence of the cause of the destruction of this Lost World in the heart of the Mediterranean Sea on the island of creit a remarkably sophisticated Palace has been Unearthed and the find has reignited the search for the most famous of all lost worlds with its massive scale its complex Water Management systems and its sparkling gypsum walls the engineering of this extraordinary Palace ties it closely to Plato's descriptions of Atlantis hidden deep in the fabric of this amazing place there are even more compelling links Plato wrote of Atlantis that it was a complex society that lived a utopian existence its people in harmony with nature and their fellow man that same Harmony can be seen here in the order and symmetry of the building's Engineering in the way it makes use of the natural flow of the elements the palace Engineers were Masters at controlling the path of air and light through the depths of the palace quarters they devised systems that appear Advanced even today even though they are almost 4,000 years old internal rooms were divided with an ingenious system known as pier and door partitioning rows of pillars were linked by discreet wooden shutters which could be controlled independently of each other they could be set to block the path of a cold wind or channel of Breeze to the palace's innermost room at the very heart of the palace is the Central Court providing light and air to all areas of the complex to the east is the Royal quarter a multi-story structure to rival anything described in Plato's accounts of Atlantis at its heart a huge four story spiraling staircase was built around pillared balconies open to the elements to form a vast light [Music] well this impressive structure was really one of the great achievements of my know [Music] engineering and in the middle of the staircase is this marvelous rectangular light well which allowed the natural sunlight to diffuse all the way down to the bottom and then outwards into all the rooms which would otherwise have been very gloomy indeed this awesome technology and the sophisticated culture that created it appear to have thrived in the Mediterranean for centuries but then they simply disappeared just as in the story of Atlantis it seems this entire civilization was wiped from the face of the Earth in a sudden and violent catastrophe the first Clues to what might have happened lie in the sea that surrounds the island the whole of the Mediterranean is divided into two tectonic plates with Europe on one side and Africa on the other these two colossal land masses Collide and periodically the energy of these collisions is released in earthquakes the archaeological evidence for earthquakes is very difficult to detect here partly because of course they rebuilt and repaired immediately afterwards there is one instance however on the south side in the so-called House of the Fallen blocks it seems that at the end of the first palace period there was a huge earthquake and these enormous blocks were thrown several meters uh to the South and there they remain today um as evidence of this enormous earthquake our experts have discovered that the palace Engineers devised new and Innovative techniques to create structures that would withstand the destructive force of these violent Quakes simply put if today our team are Keen to learn from the experience of the palace engineers and they study closely the anti-seismic techniques deployed at Koso in order to make their tall skinny walles stand up it's quite probable that the first thing they did was to buttress them up rather like this so if if I pretend to be an earthquake and shake this table here well as we can see buttressing on its own doesn't do the job in the Final Phase of building at the palace walls were construed constructed of stone and supported by an ingenious system of wooden frames this combination of materials gave the structure both enormous strength and flexibility so what the people of kosas did was to use timber framing to reinforce their thin masonry walls and support the framed up wall off big heavy walls buttressing like this and if I pretend to be an earthquake machine again and give it a good old Shake we can rapidly see that I could be shaking there all day long and this wall is going precisely nowhere despite these incredible engineering achievements nothing was going to save the palace from the devastating cataclysm to come seismologists that have been studying the geological history of the area now believe that CIT suffered a cataclysmic event around 1500 BC this new evidence shows that creep was struck by a massive and deadly wave dozens of tsunamis swept across the entire aan Tsunami Tsunami Tsunami trains of these waves on the Mediterranean island of C archaeologists have discovered the remains of an ancient Palace these stunning buildings are the first trace of a culture that has been missing for 3 and a half thousand years and many believe that the palace was at the heart of the most famous of all lost Worlds the civilization of Atlantis just like Atlantis the Palace of kosas and the island of creit were devastated in a cataclysmic event in search of the source of this destruction experts have focused on a volcanic island 100 m north of cre it was known in ancient times as Thea today it is Santorini volcanologist Floyd McCoy has made it his life's work to decipher the geological Clues and piece together the Island's destructive history this volcano has an amazing history of repeated giant explosions with every explosion this hole in the ground which we call a Caldera is re-excavated repeatedly and every time it blows itself apart it leaves a deposit on the landscape and layer by layer it build itself up and so what we see over there are the layers of these repeated explosive eruptions through tens of thousands of years at the center of Santorini inside the Cliffs of the main island is NAA kameni the new furnace it is a Barren and hostile Island peaked by the Crater of an active volcano Floyd McCoy has discovered that there was once an island right at the center of the Caldera it was swallowed up by a terrible volcanic eruption occupying this large C than was this large large island that a civilization lived on it's gone the island was blasted to bits Plato wrote of a devastating cataclysm that destroyed the great civilization of Atlantis and Santorini the closest neighbor to creit and the Palace of kosas was the location of one of the biggest explosions in recorded history researchers have developed a new theory that santarin and cre were both a part of Atlantis the theory has its basis in the dramatic color of these Cliffs Plato described quaries in Atlantis where rocks of white black and red were extracted from the hills The Rock was then used in the construction of a great Island City the description matches the rocks found here in Santorini This Island City was described as being laid out out in a series of concentric circles of land and water each one connected to the ocean by an immense Canal 100 ft deep there were also docks for huge numbers of ships and a Causeway over which they could offload the riches whatever they were that were coming into Atlantis in other words everything that human beings could need was available in Atlantis itself Plato's description of the island as circular relates perfectly to the symmetrical formation of the central volcanic island on Santorini but to prove a link is impossible without proof of life on the island before its last big eruption then in the early 1900s during excavations in a quarry here a fantastic Discovery was made that layer that white layer on top of the cliffs is a deposit left from the catastrophic eruption in the Bronze Age and it was digging there that they found a house site in other case they found a burial they realized this eruption had buried a civilization a culture lived there the story then of that ancient civilization starts there with that that layer of white ash these volcanic deposits which still cover the entire Island fell in the course of a single cataclysmic eruption now our experts are stripping back the ash layer by layer to expose evidence of the lost world that Lies Beneath here it is this is the level that man lived on right here here in fact is what appears to be a remnant of a wall built by man on top and then the eruption came the big blast started and all of this was deposited this is pomus and the pomus piled up very rapidly and then the eruption continued four days of a massive accumulation of all of this material all up here 30 50 60 80 ft of this material piling up and then way up at the top the debris flows the mud flows that scoured the surface all of this one the giant eruptions in hum human history the first signs of life from before this big eruption had been found and the search was on to reveal proof of a culture that would link the island to the great civilizations of cre and Atlantis the answer was Unearthed in 1966 by an American archaeologist named James maver Jr maver assembled a team to search the islands for signs of ancient artifacts they began their dig on the southern tip of the island in the Tiny Village of actii in their very first trench they struck gold they Unearthed an ancient wall buried under 30 ft of volcanic rock as they dug deeper the wall became a house and the trench revealed a cobbled street at their very first attempt maver team had discovered an extraordinary Town perfectly preserved in the Ash of a volcanic eruption we are talking about a brilliant culture brilliant civilization with a very Advanced um technology in all ways and especially Building Technology the discovery was hailed as one of the most important finds in classical archaeology the town remained substantially intact just like the city of Pompei in Italy volcanic ash had filled the city and sealed it from the elements its contents had been preserved for more than 30 centuries the huge task of uncovering the Town continues today with every inch of Ash that is removed new Clues to the civilization that was here are revealed and just as described in the legend of Atlantis we see engineering skills that were sophisticated way beyond their time when I first came to aceri I was expecting something rather simple but then I realized that this town was made of uh multi-story buildings and when we are talking about multi story we're talking about two and three story buildings and at some point I realized that I was walking on the third floor of a building that had been constructed 3,500 years ago that was really extremely impressive actii is a truly extraordinary find it is a city arranged with a structured assembly of interconnecting roads and paths the earliest form of organized town planning ever discovered and centuries more advanced than anything that has ever been seen before from this period archaeologists have mapped every inch of the town and from their data our team have built computer generated models you are now traveling down the streets and ENT interacting with the buildings of a sophisticated community that was destroyed at the height of its power thousands of years ago just as we have seen in the Palace of kosas at actii there are complex multi-story buildings constructed of wood and stone and the plumbing was even more elaborate fresh running water fed each house and a sewage system ran throughout the entire town there is a perfect stward system running under the streets and these are connected to latories on the upper floors of the buildings not for at least a thousand years would it become commonplace to find bathrooms inside people's homes the discovery of this lavatory as you can imagine is truly very important if you just stop to think I mean that it again I mean it took ages hundreds of years to have lavatories within a house it was not just the discovery of a toilet that so amazed the engineers but also its ingenious design the waste fell through a clay pipe to a chamber below where water from the town drains flushed it into a Cess pit the pipes interconnected in such a way that a siphon effect was formed drawing foul smells down the pipes and away from the laboratory the design was centuries ahead of its time this sophisticated system of water management matches up to the stories of Atlantis in which Plato wrote of ancient towns equipped with hot and cold running water but there was one crucial Discovery at actii that lent new credibility to the idea that Santorini was the island at the center of Atlantis a fresco was Unearthed that re revealed an image of life on the island 32,000 years ago can we be so lucky as to have a snapshot of what this landscape looked like here is the peninsula aceri Peninsula it shows a profile of the island One Two Three Peaks going down further we see a waterway that surrounds a central island a fairly large island and on that Island a city they were living on the central island that central island was a developing Volcan this idea of a central island port encircled with layer upon layer of buildings fits perfectly Plato's description of the Island City of Atlantis a city that at the height of its power was blown to bits in a devastating eruption seismologists are now following a trail of clues that lead from Santorini back to the Palaces of creit they will reveal the full extent of the horrific disaster that tore Santorini apart and led to the destruction of an entire [Music] civilization in the heart of the Mediterranean a lost world has been discovered a palace on Creet and a town on Santorini linked by the unique engineering of their buildings archaeologists have opened a window on a highly Advanced culture known today as the Minoans they thrived 3,500 years ago and many now believe that what they left behind gave rise to the myth of Atlantis since the discovery of the palace at kosas in 1900 archaeologist s have expanded their search today a network of ancient towns and palaces has been revealed across the length and breadth of creit what all these sites have in common is that they were destroyed in the middle of the second millennium BC by a series of terrible disasters according to the Greek Phil philosopher Plato Atlantis 2 was destroyed in a single day and night the land was swallowed by the Sea 100 miles north of cre on Santorini Floyd McCoy has been Gathering data to determine if the magnitude of the eruption that happened here in 1500 BC was enough to cause the devastation of creit what he has discovered is beyond all expectations so how big was this eruption it was huge how do we determine this is by how much material is blown out during the eruption and the more we look the more we find there are huge thick deposits of this Ash and pmus on the seafloor that surround this island it's been found down to the Nile Delta it's been found up in the Black Sea when we take all of this material and calculate the volume of it we come out with an eruption that is perhaps 10 times katow in 1883 because katoa exploded in the late 19th century we have comprehensive records of the eruption and the details are spine chilling the eruption ejected more than 6 cubic miles of rock Ash and pmus into the atmosphere killing 36,400 people but it would have been dwarfed by the Santorini eruption it was enormous and it occurred right in the middle of a flourishing [Music] Civilization now things got nasty in this eruption things got terribly violent and the mixture of water with this magma produced what we call py plastic surges and flows as they swept across the landscape they destroyed everything that had not been buried in the pomus at the heart of this civilization in actii archaeologists have found signs that the residents were preparing to leave belongings were piled up outside houses and beds were found pulled out into the streets sadly for the few who took to the sea to head for cre and the shelter of the Palaces of kosis escaped was no guarantee of survival because the settlements of C would be devastated not by the Ash and pmus that was raining down on Santorini but by the next even more devastating phase of the eruption every pyroclastic flow that entered the ocean also pushed the ocean aside when we push the ocean aside tsunami our investigators have turned to the experts at the national observatory in Athens for proof of what happened using the very latest investigative techniques they have discovered evidence of a killer tsunami because of this uh new field of science we have been able to discover a number of about 10 uh distinct tsunami events so there's no doubt today that this very big tsunami event really existed and possibly contributed to the collapse of the minan civilization dozens of tsunamis swept across the entire aan they made their way into the Mediterranean these massive waves surged towards the unprotected North Coast of C first in the firing line was the coastal town of Malia just yards from the seashore stood a magnificent Palace its sophisticated structures engineered with the same complex out as the palace at kosis the three-story facade facing north was directly in the path of the approaching [Music] waves the inhabitants of the region probably gathered here at the palace because they saw this great plume of Ash shooting up into the sky off to the north it would have been visible all the way down to the Nile Delta when the ash cloud reached the island the sky above this ancient minan Palace turned gray during excavations on cre Alexander mcgil discovered this volcanic ash in the deepest parts of the palace's ruins it's a clue to the catastrophic sequence of events that overtook this society when the first wave came pushing ashore bringing with it their Fleet from fishing boats to great trading ships would have all come crashing through here and gone all the way to the foot of the mountains over there ripping away at this architecture grubble and trees and smashed up Ships Come crashing back through here and over back into the sea this scene of Destruction was repeated all along the coast of cre and far beyond not even the brilliant Builders of the great reinforced walls at the palace of kosas could have foreseen the power of the Tremors that accompani these waves they rocked the island massive earthquakes caused by the volcano shook the palace to its foundations the devastation of this ancient civilization was complete today long after the destruction that struck the Mediterranean the search for the links that bind these places to the story of Atlantis has taken a new turn the final extraordinary clue leads East to the ancient land of [Music] Egypt for the Survivor of the largest volcanic eruption in history life in the Mediterranean became hell on Earth thousands were dead tsunamis had poisoned the land with saltwater and the air was thick with Ash and noxious gases just as Plato wrote when he described the end of Atlantis the island of Santorini at the center of this newly discovered world had been destroyed it had been blown to Smither then swallowed by the Sea and 100 miles away the great palaces of cre had been devastated by Quakes and engulfed by terrible tidal waves in their search for evidence of the survivors of this devastating cataclysm our investigators are piecing together the final chapter in the life of this extraordinary civilization when the tsunami swept through here here and reduced this building behind me to Foundation level the best way for the survivors to cope was to go to the most powerful nation and the wealthiest nation of the time to ask for help Alexander mcgil believes that the survivors turned to their long-term trading partners the Egyptians there may have been people brought in from elsewhere to help with all of this with the Pharaoh in Egypt contributing the wealth and perhaps the Manpower this close relationship with Egypt is probably the single most important link that researchers have established between this newly discovered civilization and the stories of Atlantis because the origin of the story of Atlantis was not Greek it was Egyptian in 590 BC in the holiest Shrine of Egypt's capital the great Greek Statesman Solon was shown ancient inscriptions they date back to almost a thousand years before 1450 BC these documents told of the existence of a civilization of great power and Prestige ruler of all the lands to the west of Egypt when Solen returned to to his homeland the story of Atlantis became part of Greek folklore a tale told at parties and passed down through the generations until in 370 BC Plato penned his version of this Egyptian Tale Now on the wall of an Egyptian tomb researchers have discovered inscriptions that they believe are the original texts that were shown to Solon it turns out that Solon must have invented the name Atlantis because the Egyptians called the people of this ancient world by another name that name was kefu and keu is the Egyptian name for the people of creit the very Island at the heart of this lost world so what happened to the survivors from this remarkable civilization there are signs on cre that the keu did begin to recover after the effects of the catastrophic volcano but the survivors were dangerously vulnerable and soon after the catastrophe Warriors from the Greek mainland invaded creit the Minoans did not have the strength or the numbers to repel the Invaders and the island fell this finally spelled the end of one of the greatest civilizations in human history the sophisticated engineering techniques and the extraordinary architecture that gave them their unique identity disappeared forever the Greeks went on to dominate the entire Western World they gave birth to a culture on which Western societies are based but things could have been so different if it weren't for the tsunami and the theor eruption we would probably be reading Plato in monan the monans would have continued to EXP B their empire onto the Greek mainland the White House would probably look more like the palace eosu than classical Greek architecture there are still many questions to be answered that could shed light on the links between the great palaces towns and temples of creit and Santorini and the Mysterious Legends of the Egyptians keu and Plato's Atlantis on santarini vast areas wait to be excavated and the ocean bed remains largely unexplored but time may be running out at the heart of the Cera beneath the Towering Cliffs of the modern-day Santorini is the niakan or new furnace it is the sight of the present volcano and it is still very much alive when the volcano collapsed after the eruption 3,500 years ago it left behind a hole in the ocean 1,000 ft deep since that time the volcano has been growing again pushing back up through the ocean today it rises 400 ft above sea level back almost to the size that it was when it erupted 35 centuries ago seismologists believe that it will erupt again the question is when when that next big blast comes the best we can do is hope that we can predict it and get away if we don't if we stay here for that next big explosion we'll be a piece of the volcanic ash deposit when the volcano does blow it will engulf the surrounding Islands again freezing life in a moment of time burying it under a new layer of volcanic ash a new Lost World will be [Music] created [Music]

Channel: HISTORY

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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, lost worlds, lost worlds clips, lost worlds full episodes, lost worlds full episode, history lost worlds, watch lost worlds online free, lost worlds scenes, lost worlds show, lost worlds history, lost world, GREAT Legends of LOST Civilizations

Id: gWp_CZAcy4g

Length: 135min 54sec (8154 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 26 2024