We definitely got some signs that humans have been here.
It's time to dive.
I think we have an ancient quarry.
We're hunting for Atlantis in the remote Greek islands.
Oh, okay. Look, look!
Where an ancient civilization
That island looks like a pyramid.
...built a pyramid-shaped marble.
We've come for your obsidian.
But when one tiny discovery...
We've gotta go to Turkey.
...leads us to another ancient city
What are we looking at right now?
...we discover the lost city of Atlantis
It's still going.
...may be hiding in the shadow of another lost empire.
Oh my God, the entire field!
The story of Atlantis
...is the greatest historical mystery of all time.
And nobody can find any evidence for it
...because they're all looking in the wrong era.
I'm Stel Pavlou...
and I've been obsessed with Atlantis my entire life.
Greek philosopher, Plato,
...wrote that Atlantis was the biggest superpower of its age,
...but a natural disaster
...caused it to sink beneath the waves in a single day.
Around 9600 BC.
But I have a new theory
...that says that date is completely wrong.
I believe the real date is 5,000 years later,
...and it changes everything.
Oh, my God. Amazing.
That's it.
I'm teaming up with geologist and explorer,
...Jess Phoenix.
Oh, yeah.
Together, we're going to follow the trail of evidence
...to some of the most legendary locations
...around the world.
This is the most comprehensive search for Atlantis ever.
Whoa!
And we're going to find it.
(Dramatic music playing)
After our investigation on Santorini,
...we started looking at the Cycladic culture.
They were the most enigmatic
...and mysterious people in the ancient world.
Their iconic stylized figurines still seem incredibly advanced.
The problem is it's really difficult to figure out
...where their center of power was,
...where the capital of the Cycladic civilization was located.
However, recently,
...scientists have uncovered a new site,
...a pyramid-like structure built
...on a deserted island in the heart of these Cycladic islands.
Who built it,
...why did they build it, and how did they build it?
We do know that it's ancient,
...very ancient.
This was a huge undertaking.
If you can find where they planned this,
...it might just lead us to Atlantis.
Jess and I head straight to...
the tiny island of Dhaskalio.
It's just west of the uninhabited island of Keros.
Dhaskalio is off-limits to the public,
...but Cambridge archaeologist, Dr. Michael Boyd,
...is allowing us ashore to investigate.
Dhaskalio.
The shape of the island itself is like a pyramid,
...and I don't know, is that a natural formation?
Or do you think they transformed it?
Nature doesn't typically make pyramids.
I mean, not entire islands. (LAUGHS)
And nobody even lives on, on this island.
It's so remote.
-I mean, why this spot? -Yeah.
-Why... -I mean, if we don't even know exactly
...why people built,
...you know, Stonehenge and pyramids, so..
Maybe there's some answers over there.
Maybe, uh, Michael Boyd has got some insight he can give us.
Oh, okay. Look, look, look.
-Oh, yes! -Yeah.
(STEL LAUGHS)
-Oh, there's walls right there. -Uh huh.
-Yep, erosion is a pretty strong force. -Yeah.
But whatever they did was good enough
...to anchor the sides of the slope in place.
Now we're up close,
...this is even crazier than I thought it was.
Yeah.
Plato said Atlantis was a geo-engineered island.
But so is this.
-Okay. -Okay, we got a path.
Yeah, we do.
There's pottery everywhere. There's a huge shard of it there.
None of this looks natural.
-Yep, this looks distinctly created by humans. -Yeah.
And it's been very intentionally stuck in,
-just like bricks in a wall. -Yeah.
Except it's chunks of marble.
Dr. Boyd said he was working on the north slope.
Let's find him.
-Michael! -Hello.
Oh, hey, guys.
-Welcome. -What have you got there?
Well, this is one of our terrace walls.
And we have these all over the island.
As you can see, very large strongly-built walls
...behind everywhere you've been walking.
You just can't see them now because they're not
-...they're not exposed. -So we're on top of some of this stuff?
-Yeah. -Yes and it goes all the way up in,
...in a series to the top.
Just below you here,
...uh, you can see there's a drainage channel.
It's actually that the whole thing has been very well planned.
Which you do that before you build the buildings.
So this is pretty advanced engineering.
I mean, they've,
...they're used to putting towns and cities together.
Well, we use the, we use the term civil engineering.
This is beautiful marble, but, uh,
...I, something tells me this island isn't marble itself.
-Yeah, this is weird. -I mean, this is, this,
...this came from somewhere else, right?
This is not the local stone at all.
-Yeah. -So they've undertaken a program to bring this in.
How much of it did they bring?
Well, we calculate about 10,000 tons.
-10,000 tons! -Yeah.
Oh, my God!
-(LAUGHS) -Yes, it's a huge undertaking.
-How... how long would that have taken? -That's...
Well, it's hard to say.
I mean, you're talking about small boats, um,
...paddle boats, no sails.
That seems impossible. On small paddle boats!
-Yeah, huge project. -And I mean, that,
...I mean, you'd wanna plan this, too.
It's not just haphazard, obviously.
5,000 years ago, this island was gleaming with marble
...from sea to summit,
...a colossal feat of engineering.
But why? And more important, who built it?
Look at the size of this.
-Oh, my goodness. -Amazing block of marble, huh?
Even today, this is really quite shiny marble.
What would they use this for?
(CLICKS TONGUE) Well, it could have been a lintel.
So if there's a lintel, there's a building.
Were they living here? Or...
So far, we haven't yet really found
...just good clear evidence of,
...you know, this is where they lived, these are the kitchens,
-...this is where they slept. -Yeah.
We don't really have evidence for that.
What we have instead is we seem to have lots of evidence
...for really two different kinds of activity.
One is craft working.
-Okay. -And the other is storage.
What type of craft work, do you think?
Well, the evidence so far is principally
-...metal working. -Metal working?
Did you guys find a lot of metal here?
Yeah, we found a lot of it.
-This is -Copper, bronze?
...it's, at this time it's copper that they are working
...and lead. So we've also interestingly got, uh,
-...evidence for silver and gold at the sites. -Oh!
Really quite small amounts.
But this is the first site in
...in the Cyclades where any real amount of
-...silver or gold has been found. -What?
-Okay. -So it does seem to have been a very important
...metal working center.
Certainly there are lots of buildings.
I mean, we have uncovered evidence
...for many, many buildings all over the island.
-Because that's the purpose of making the terraces -Yes.
...is to have a flat space on which you can build.
And we have lots and lots of buildings
...which are basically comprised of these small rooms.
It seems like it could have been
...a really big settlement.
Okay.
-But the question about whether they were
...actually living here is an interesting question.
Because so far, we excavated about ten percent of the site.
So there's still 90 percent that we haven't looked at.
-Oh, my God! -90 percent you haven't looked at?
But...
So, you're going to be doing this
...for literally the rest of your life.
-It's possible. -Wow. -Okay, okay.
So if they are not living here, what, what.
...is this site used for, do you think?
-That's the million-dollar question, right? -Well,
-...it is, it is. -(LAUGHS)
They were doing something special here, that's clear.
So this has kind of got like a spiritual significance,
...like a Stonehenge or something like that.
-Well, Stonehenge is a great, I think, example to bring in. -Yeah.
-Okay. -And I want to show you something
...and I'll explain to you why the site
...does have some similar connotations to Stonehenge.
-Awesome, all right. -That's cool.
Let's go up here.
Really, one of the key things about the site,
...people were coming from different islands,
...and they were depositing broken special items,
...broken figurines, broken marble vessels,
...broken pottery in very specific shapes.
One of them is the very well-known Cycladic figurine.
-Oh, that's cool. -So you've probably seen
-...this kind of thing before. -Oh, yeah. -Wow.
It's in those, in the museum.
We found about 550 fragments of these figurines.
Um, and they came here really with this purpose
...of bringing these broken fragments in a kind of a ritual.
I wanted to ask you.
I've been looking and, you know, geologist brain,
...I look for something that's different
...and I saw that there's this little rock here,
...and it's not marble, I can tell that,
...but this one looks like a perfect little egg.
Yeah, so you've got a good eye. That's a,
...that's a piece of limestone.
It's from the nearby island of Koufonissi.
-Okay, okay. -But it seems that, at that time,
...the ritual was that you would go to Koufonissi,
...you would pick up a pebble, you would bring it here.
Finding your way through all the back alleys,
...all the stairs, you had to make your way to the top.
And then, when you got to the top, you,
...you placed something there, you left it behind.
-A whole pilgrimage. -That's really cool.
Another thing that they used a lot at that time is obsidian.
-Obsidian is a kind of a dark volcanic glass. -Aha!
I mean, we find obsidian everywhere.
Well, it's an excellent cutting tool.
-Is it black obsidian or is it... Okay. -That's, it's black.
-It's black, yeah. -Yeah. -Okay.
And we have an obsidian source on Milos,
...which is just an island just to the west of here.
But interestingly here,
...we also find obsidian from other places.
Now, this obsidian is not black.
It's kind of translucent. It's clear.
-Really. -Almost like, and it would
...it would have been a really exotic thing at that time.
Oh, yeah.
So that shows us the extent of the networks
...that they were operating within.
Oh, yeah.
-How they were able to draw stuff in. -That's...
I, I mean, that's significant.
-That's not the island next door. -Yeah.
Wow! Okay.
-That's a real mystery. -Yeah.
-Good luck with all the rest of the excavation. -Thank you.
-This was amazing. -Thank you very much.
-Keep in touch. -All right.
-Okay. Take care. -Bye, guys.
My biggest question is the marble.
So I want to know where it comes from
...and how they got it here.
The only thing native to this island is the bedrock itself.
Everything else, all the other rock we see,
...um, it's just from other places.
And, obviously, the marble is like the number one
...big thing they brought over here.
So I've gotta go do something real quick,
...and I will meet you back on the boat.
So we're going to use the XRF to go ahead and analyze it.
It reads the chemical composition of the marble
...so we can pinpoint its origin.
Ah-ha!
Oh, awesome.
This is good. This is a really distinct chemical signature.
I was doing some digging,
...and the closest source of marble
...that they could potentially use,
...it's actually like six miles away by boat
...on the island of Naxos.
That's where we need to go, is it?
Trace these people who built this island
...back to what could be Atlantis.
Our search takes us six miles north to the island of Naxos,
...known for its large deposits of marble.
A 45-minute drive takes us
...to a still active marble quarry in the central highlands.
Pretty excited. I mean, this could be the connection.
-It could be. I mean... -Yeah.
It's like a collapsed temple.
All right.
Oh, my God, this is awesome.
Oh, wow.
-Cool! -Fantastic.
I'm not a geologist, but this looks like marble.
(LAUGHS) It's a lot of marble. This is beautiful.
I mean, look at that.
I can see why people, both ancient and modern,
...would be very into this.
So what are you looking for?
If the chemical signature of the marble is the same
...as what we would have on Dhaskalio
...if this is a match, we'll know it.
And if it matches,
...we know they got the marble from this island.
We're going to take a sample here,
-...and I would like to get a fresh surface. -Okay.
-All right, you ready? -Yep, I'm ready.
Okay. One, two, three.
Ooh, yeah, nice.
All right.
So, what have we got?
We've got similar titanium, similar cobalt, similar copper.
Ah-ha.
-This signature, -Which means...
...this signature is close enough to what we saw at Dhaskalio.
Ah-ha! Yes!
Yeah, okay. I was going to say you can get excited,
-but you beat me to it. -No, I'm already excited.
This is really good.
So we have marble on Naxos that matches
-Dhaskalio. -...the marble on Dhaskalio,
...which means the marble had to come from here.
-Yeah. -There's a big question, though.
This is a modern quarry.
Where's the ancient one?
Well, this whole island, it's fairly homogeneous,
...as we say.
It's almost all the same chemical signature.
-Map. -My favorite.
Okay.
This is, this is my logic.
-Dhaskalio is here. -Here.
Now, we're up here. So logically for me,
...they're going to be in the southern region somewhere
-because why, -(LAUGHS) They would not want to go from here.
...why would they bring marble from there?
It doesn't make any sense.
So they're gonna want the shortest possible route.
Well, this whole island, it's got a lot of metamorphic rock.
I mean, it makes sense that this is where we need to look.
Is there anything there that sticks out to you,
...that you would wanna go see first?
(SIGHS) Things right near what looks like
...either a modern or an ancient...
port, sort of a protected cove.
-So, -Okay.
-...that's priority one. Perfect. -Okay.
To locate the ancient quarry,
...we head to the south coast of Naxos.
We secure local divers who are familiar with this coastline.
Okay, let's keep an eye out along the rock over there.
And then, you've got all these little bays
-Protected areas. -...coves and..
Whoa! What about that?
This one is really big.
That rock would never fracture in that direction on its own.
We've definitely got some signs that humans have been here.
And that certainly doesn't strike me as a modern operation.
-Yeah. -I think to ancient people,
-...it's probably reasonably accessible. -Right.
And the sea level was lower.
And so this outcropping of marble
...would continue down into what is now the ocean floor.
-Very likely. -Yeah, this is a really prime location.
Okay, going in.
Look, it's just this huge rock pile.
Is this natural?
No, this, this looks like chiseled stone.
Wow! These massive blocks, they've been cut for sure.
This quarry was huge.
It goes all the way down.
A lot of these rocks are definitely shaped by humans.
These ones over here are almost perfect squares.
And, and look, look over here.
That's the wall they were cutting these pieces from.
I think, we have an ancient quarry.
Incredible!
Okay, let's go up.
(SIGHS)
I have breached the ship. (CHUCKLES)
That was something else.
Visibility was incredible.
I don't know what that was, 60-80 feet, maybe more.
It was, it was crystal clear down there.
Okay, Stel, I am a 100% fine
...with saying that this is a quarry
...that was used in ancient times.
And I think you're right.
I think this is a likely source for Dhaskalio marble.
Based on the geography,
-...It's pretty clear you can get boats here -Yeah.
...right up to the edge.
It makes perfect sense
...that they were working all the way down to the shoreline.
And then, some of those things that we observed
...that were not natural shapes
...were down closer to where I would expect the sea level
-...to have been in the past. -Yes, yeah, absolutely.
Uh, which puts you at about 3500 BC,
...it could be even lower and further out.
-We now know where the marble came from. -Uh-huh.
-We now know where they were quarrying it. -Yeah.
And we just need to answer this question of
...how the heck they did it.
I mean, Dhaskalio,
...bringing all that material to that island.
It's mind-blowing, and I'm pretty comfortable saying
...that our XRF has showed us
...that the marble on Dhaskalio came from Naxos.
And when you put that together with the quarry
...we found underwater,
...I think that's where that stuff came from.
The theory that they went there with small boats,
...800 pounds to a ton per,
...per tiny boat,
...I mean, that's just not passing the smell test for me.
I haven't seen any evidence yet
...that these folks had big enough boats
...to transport all this marble efficiently.
Right. And we're talking about 20 million pounds of marble.
We don't have evidence of the bigger boats.
No one's found one.
But what we can do is we can test the theory
...of the smaller boats.
I have a feeling you don't want to use scale models, do you?
-No, I don't. -(LAUGHS)
Dhaskalio had about 10,000 tons of marble,
...which works out at about 20 million pounds of marble.
Yeah, that's no small order.
And they took it all over in a boat like this.
(SCOFFS)
-Not exactly this. -(LAUGHS)
I mean, about this size,
...it would have been reed or a log boat.
But we're gonna try and put 1,000 pounds in this boat
...and see if we can row it out.
Stel, I like you a lot, but you're on your own.
-(LAUGHS) -No, I'm kidding.
Seriously, we need, if we're going to do this
...we're gonna need a whole lot of rocks
-...because this is -Well, there's a whole lot of rocks right here.
Yeah. I mean, it's low-tech, high-risk,
...possibly high-reward. Let's do it.
-Okay. -Yeah.
(EXHALES)
(GROANS) **** heavy.
Dang, that thing is riding low in the water.
I mean, it's really low.
I don't even know how stable this is gonna be.
Okay, just a couple more.
-I don't think we can take it. -Yeah. See?
-I don't think we take 1,000 pounds. -If I just do that.
No, we're, we're close.
Whoa.
-Into the middle... Oh! -Oh, geez!
-Oh! -We just hit bottom.
I can't even get this thing to move.
Argh! I'm away...
Get away!
How many times did you think it took the Atlanteans to do this?
How much of this occurred?
With this load,
...it would have taken 20,000 trips to build Dhaskalio.
We've gone like ten feet, can you turn around?
-Um... -Oh, oh!
-There's no stability! (LAUGHS) -Stop it!
There's no stability!
-Oh, ****! -What?
It's leaking.
-Are you kidding me? -No, I'm not.
(LAUGHS) No!
The boat is leaking!
-We're gonna die. -No.
Go back, go back.
There is no way they did this. It's flooding.
-Yeah, it is flooding. -All right.
This is how we die.
-Well... -This is how it ends.
(LAUGHS)
This, this is it.
Here, I don't want these going off.
-(GRUNTS) -I think this will be better.
So, what we have proven is they had to have big boats.
They need a bigger boat.
And that is all I wanted to prove.
Larger boats need a harbor.
And to support a harbor,
...the Cycladic people must have had a sizable settlement nearby.
There are two ancient hilltop sites near their quarry.
And one of them, Panormos, is just up the hill from here.
-Ah-ha. -Watch out for the thorns.
Yeah, well, that looks promising.
These are bigger blocks.
And they're definitely not marble.
Oh, look. They made nice little stairs.
Eh?
Oh, look at this.
That back wall is a little curved there.
Huh. My understanding is this is like
...from the same time period as Dhaskalio.
Okay, but this doesn't seem as nice.
-It's... -I mean not that I'm an expert
...on ancient decor but, you know...
It's different architecture.
There's another curve right here.
Oh, yeah. All right.
-That's a really, really... -There's another one at the end.
-Have a look. -That kind of looks...
It's the same pattern,
...I've seen this somewhere else.
I'm trying to remember where I know this from.
All right. We really need to know what the floor plan
...and the layout is to get a sense of
...if it's really related to anything we've seen.
Do you think we can get the drone out?
-Take a look? -Yeah, definitely.
(DRONE WHIRS)
It makes much more sense
...from the air than it does walking through it.
-Yeah, definitely. -Yeah.
But those shapes, look, you can see
-Curve shapes. Yeah, -...they're curved.
...and I'm still trying to figure out where I know those from.
It really isn't that big.
I think what, 30 people lived there maybe?
At most.
And there's a couple of other sites around here.
-That's not enough for the number of people -And that...
...who made Dhaskalio.
Right, and that are the same size as this.
And everything that's going on at Dhaskalio screams
...like bigger enterprise.
Naxos has to be the site
...for where they sourced the marble from.
-But these aren't the people cutting it. -No.
All right, I'm bringing it back now.
Okay, so Panormos was a bust.
I mean, it definitely wasn't the city
...they launched this endeavor from.
So archaeology -wise, I'm at a dead end.
I don't know where we go from here.
Okay, so Dr. Boyd had told us that
...they found obsidian there on Dhaskalio,
...and nothing found on Dhaskalio is local in origin.
So we can use that obsidian
...and do a chemical analysis of it to figure out
...where the source was.
So that gives us another thread to follow.
So there's different types of obsidian.
-Is that what you're saying? -Yeah, I mean
...and, and different eruptions that produce the obsidian
...will leave that mark in the rock
...for us to hopefully figure out where we need to go.
Okay, that's a really good idea.
Why don't we call Dr. Boyd
...and see if he'll let us use his obsidian sample
-...that we can test. -Yes!
(SKYPE RINGTONE)
-Hi, Michael! -How are you guys?
So we've been looking into
...who the builders of Dhaskalio may have been.
We had a question for you.
We had a question about obsidian.
But before we get to that
...we really wanted you to take a look at what we found.
Yeah, so do you see the stuff I sent you? The location?
And then the images from that, from our dive?
Yeah, I did. I saw everything.
It's done near Spethal.
So, a few kilometers down the coast
from where we expected to find
the quarry. So it's really nice that you found something there.
Tell me about what you saw on your dive.
-(LAUGHS) -It was cool.
-(LAUGHS) -A lot of blocks.
A lot of, a lot of right angled blocks.
They appear to be clearly sort of man made. I saw some chisel marks
...on some of these, some of these blocks.
It was definitely not anything that would've occurred naturally.
So, I mean
...just looking at it, it's like, yup!
Somebody, some humans had to intervene
...for it to end up looking like that.
And the larger blocks, are like further up the hill
...and as you come down you can see where they sort of
...sort of smashed into the smaller pieces.
They're kind of what? like, ended up on Dhaskalio.
I will have to go and check that out for myself at some point.
So you, so this is new to you?
You didn't know about this place?
I've been out, I know that coastline very well.
It's near to a very important bronze age site,
site Sphethos.
But I haven't first hand done any diving there.
-I haven't seen anything underwater. -Fantastic.
So this might be new.
Okay, all right, so leaving aside
...you know, figuring out where the marble on Dhaskalio came from
...if I remember correctly,
...you said that you found obsidian on Dhaskalio.
-Right? -Yes, that's right, yeah.
Okay.
So I would really love to analyze that obsidian, um,
...is there a way that we can, that we can get that done?
Yeah, you could easily find a reference collection.
There's a lot of it in Athens, in fact, that could do it for you.
That's awesome. That's exactly what we want.
Fantastic.
-Well, thank you, Michael. -(CHUCKLE)
No problem.
In the ancient world, obsidian was so valued,
...it was traded like currency.
So if we can follow the money,
...it could lead us to the lost city of the Cycladic people
...which I believe could be Atlantis.
-Anno. -Oh, hi.
We've come for your obsidian.
(CHUCKLES)
And perhaps learn something about Dhaskalio,
-...if you can help us out. -Yes.
So, what are we looking at here?
Uh, this is actually the typical obsidian,
...which we find in the region from Milos.
Beautiful.
-And, it's a...-That brown is pretty distinctive.
This is the local obsidian from the Cyclades?
-Yes. -Ah.
Now, I will show you a different obsidian material
...which we find, it's imported from another place.
It's so dark.
See? Yeah, and that's a much finer obsidian.
Can we actually determine chemical differences
-...between the two? -Yes, we can actually
...try to trace the origin
...based on the known obsidian sources.
Oh, right, so you can just match it with, you know,
-...the data you already have, -Yes.
-...to locate where it would have come from. -Yes.
Great.
Each obsidian source has a, like,
-...something like a chemical fingerprint. -Okay.
It's the same as what we did with the marble.
Okay.
That's the fingerprint for the first sample.
Now, the second.
Let's see if we can find where it comes from.
I really hope this gives us a clue
on where to look for these people.
Almost there.
All right, here we go.
Let's see on the computer
...how the concentrations compare with the reference.
-Great, let's do it. -Okay.
The moment of truth.
This first sample it fits very nicely
...into the sources from Milos.
Milos is very close to Naxos.
These are the green and the blue circles here.
-Okay, so that's this guy. Right? -Yes.
-Okay. -The first sample.
-The brown. -But what about the second sample,
...where's that on here?
The second one, look, it's completely different.
These blue triangles here,
...they actually correspond to a source from Cappadocia.
-Wait, Cap... Turkey? -Turkey.
-(CHUCKLES) -Okay, that's,
...from where we were, that's like 500 kilometers.
-That's a long distance... -That's a long distance, yeah.
I don't, I,
...that's a long distance to trade.
I'm wondering whether they brought it with them
...when they moved from Turkey.
I don't think they made these.
I mean, we're talking thousands and thousands of years ago.
It's incredible to see the story that these contain.
-And we've only got part of it now. -Yeah.
I guess we've got to go find the rest.
We've gotta go to Turkey.
Sounds good to me.
A couple of troublemakers going from Greece to Turkey
...is how the Trojan War started.
So the obsidian puts us in Turkey which is,
...you know, it's fantastic. We've got that direction.
So I've been looking for more connections
...between Anatolia and the ancient Greece, okay.
So you remember Panormos.
I couldn't place it when we were there,
...but that turns out to have been a Castro fortification,
...but there are Castro fortifications
...just like it in Anatolia.
That got me thinking about
...how long these connections have been going on.
Yeah. I mean, that's just one more data point
...that shows that there is something going on here.
-Right. -Small problem.
Turkey's coastline is over 5,000 miles long.
It is, but there's research that's already been done on the coast,
...and they were looking at metals in Cycladic graves
-...in Anatolia, and it's there. -Okay.
Are you kidding me? This part right here that you highlighted?
"Paralleled at this period only in Troy?"
-Troy. -Like, Achilles-Hector, Troy?
Trojan-horse Troy.
My problem is that it's not underwater for a start.
Well, Troy's in Turkey.
And you've got mountains in Turkey,
...and you've got streams
...that are gonna run down from these mountains,
...and they deposit silt.
So you could actually have a coastline completely change.
What, what once was water is now land.
So we may not be looking for a city
...that's sunken underwater.
It may be sunken under silt.
Right. But what's the catastrophe?
I can't see
...what that catastrophe
...would be that would possibly link that area to Atlantis.
Okay. The one thing Turkey
...is really known for in geologic circles is earthquakes
...and potential tsunami generation as a result.
We need to go and check out Troy and its surroundings, I think.
All right.
So we're leaving Greece,
...and heading to Turkey,
...where on the eastern shore of the Aegean Sea
...lie the ruins of the ancient city of Troy.
They built a horse.
I, somebody had to do it.
I mean, it's cool.
That would fit a bunch of people inside of it.
So for those who don't know the story,
...the Trojans worshipped a god named Pallas,
...which was in the shape of a horse in the center of the city.
And so, the Greeks pretend to honor that horse
-...by building that. -(LAUGHS)
And then, overnight
...the Greek army has been hiding in this thing.
Comes out, open the city gates,
...and it's game over for Troy.
Does that about sum it up?
Yeah. It's like one of the first recorded acts of like trickery.
Up until the late 1800s, this was a myth.
And then a German named Heinrich Schliemann
...decided he was gonna set out and find it.
And he found it.
And now, it's an archaeological park
...and nobody questions that this is real.
The Trojan War, Troy, is only around 1200 BC.
This was a real place with real people who fought and died.
But does it fit your timeline, and what does it date back to?
If Troy is part of Atlantis,
...we need to know how much bigger their connection is.
-Right. -Whether there was a city here,
...in the time period of around 5000 BC.
-All right. Well, let's get to it.-Okay.
Let's see if we can find any artifacts from 5000 BC.
Oh, wow.
That's some skilled metal work.
Oh, my God, yeah.
I mean, this is true gold leaf.
And look at the filigree over here. That's unreal.
Yeah.
-Hmm. -Mmm-hmm!
Obsidian.
The one on the right looks a lot
...like what we saw in the lab in Greece.
That's fantastic. So we do have a match.
I'd say it seems like it.
So we've been on the right trail. That's awesome.
-This is different. -Yeah.
These are Neolithic, they are 4 to 6000 BC.
-Hey! (LAUGHS) -4 to 6000?
-So that's right in my timeline. -Yeah!
Oh my God!
They're really well made.
These are some of the nicest ones we've seen
-...from this era. -Yeah.
Look at the axes.
They're all different materials.
So they were trading then over a larger area,
-...I guess. -Yeah, or at the very least exploring a whole bunch.
-But I mean... -That's impressive.
-This is really cool. -(LAUGHS)
Wow, there's some metal work here.
OH, those are beautiful.
That is really finely worked.
What era? Oh.
Oh! 1800 to 1250 BC.
Too, too young, too new.
But they've perfected metal working in this area.
There's obviously a history of it.
-Yeah? -Yeah.
-But, yeah. -Those would have been it's like some anklet or anklets.
I don't think I would want to walk around with those on.
Ah, they look, yeah.
-I mean, they are pretty, but heavy. -Yeah.
Come on, let's see if we can find anything older.
These artifacts go back to 6000 BC,
...which is my Atlantis wheelhouse.
They show serious skill.
Ah. A bull.
So bulls were important here as well.
That's an interesting religious connection.
There's so much here that's still underground.
Yeah, we need to talk to the archaeologists.
Wow!
Oh, my God. This is really, really old.
We're meeting with Dr. Reyhan Korpe,
...who's been excavating Troy for 25 years.
Ah. Awesome.
-Hey! Reyhan. -Hello!
-Nice to meet you. -Nice to meet you, too.
-Welcome to Troy. -Thank you.
What are we looking at right now?
That's the one from the Trojan War, correct?
Yes, yes, yes.
How many layers are there?
How long has there been occupation here?
You found one more?
-Chalcolithic! -Chalcolithic time.
-Copper Age. -Yeah.
Are you excited yet?
Yeah, now, now I'm excited. That's right on the money.
From what I remember, the Greeks arrived by ship
...but we're nowhere near the beach.
Was the city closer to the sea?
So the coastline has changed
-...due to rivers providing silt. -Of course.
How far away from here is the new area that you've found?
-Wow! A whole kilometer away. -What?
-A kilometer away. -Yes, yes, yes.
-That's a massive city. -Yes.
Yeah, let me get this right.
Uh, if we wanna see some older things,
...we should go out and look in that area. Is that right?
Yes, yes.
-Wow, all right. -All right.
-Thank you. -You're welcome.
-Thanks very much. -You're welcome.
To find older settlements near Troy,
...we need ground-penetrating radar
...to see through thousands of years of silt.
With any luck
...remnants of Atlantis could be right here
...in the shadow of another famous lost city.
What do you reckon? Think it's gonna hold?
Cross your fingers.
In our search for Atlantis,
...we're tracking down the civilization
...that turned a Greek island
...into a marble-clad pyramid.
I think we have an ancient quarry.
The evidence led us clear across the Aegean Sea to Troy
...where there are signs of a city as far back as 5000 BC.
-Yeah! -Copper Age.
That's right on the money.
Today, silt has pushed the sea miles further west,
...but the coastline in 5000 BC was under this farm.
-Hello. -Hello.
-Hi. -Hi.
Oh, yes.
(CHUCKLES) Is it almost ready?
Which leads us to this spot,
...where we're going to search with ground-penetrating radar.
Oh, excellent. Okay.
-All right, start. Stop. -Mmm-hmm.
-Perfect. -Excellent.
All right.
Let's fire this thing up.
All right, let's go.
And this is just radar
...cutting into the ground, essentially,
...and then bouncing off
...of whatever solid is down there.
Yeah, okay.
So we've got
...Troy's over there,
...and the professor said they found
...some new archaeology on the plain.
I would expect if we're gonna find anything,
...it's probably not gonna be that big, right?
I mean, maybe some remnants from the battles or something?
Maybe. I mean, we're looking for an older settlement
...so as far as, as far as Hector and Achilles are concerned,
-...I have no idea what they were standing on. -Hey, hey, hey.
-Right there. -Just...
-You wanna... You wanna flag that one? -Yeah.
All right, let me flag.
Three meters, it looks like.
Look, that's,
-...I'm just gonna go real slow here. -Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Look, it's still going.
It's sort of like it's one thing.
I would mark it. Just mark it.
-Okay. -'Cause this thing's long.
There's something down there.
This isn't just surface rock that's been
-drummed up by it. -No, no. This is
...this is significantly far down.
Oh, there's another one.
Oh, my God.
-All right, keep going, keep going. -Oh, my God.
I'm starting to get excited.
-You see that? -Now, I see it.
Right now, we're, we're only looking at it in 2D.
We're gonna have to do a 3D render of the entire field,
...because that's the only way we're gonna get a good sense
...of how everything fits together.
-Because this is still going! -Still going.
It's not some weird rock formation,
-...we can rule that out. -Okay.
This is so cool!
Okay, I always thought like Troy was not real when I was a kid.
Then, I learned it was real and that was cool.
But I never thought I'd come here.
And I never thought I would actually get to do science here
-(CHUCKLES) -...and find something.
Oh, my God.
It's still going!
-Okay. Mark it again. -All right.
What is going on?
This is, this is human-made.
Right.
And I think, we're pretty safe to say
...that anybody who would have been here pre-Troy
...would probably have been using the ocean.
-Oh, oh, uh? -Huh?
Yeah, yeah. Here. Yeah.
-I'm, I'm not even, -You're on it, you're on it.
...I'm not even waiting for you to say anything.
-Okay. -There's so much stuff.
I don't know if it's a harbor or a port.
We're almost lined up with the end of the other one.
We are now out of spikes.
You could have brought 100 flags
...and I don't think that would have been enough.
And it's still going.
-Well, it's a different thing now. -And it's still going.
'Cause this place is littered with awesome stuff.
Yes.
I'm done. (CHUCKLES)
Let's see what we've got.
Okay, let me get the render going.
All right. Now, it's gonna start.
Okay, here we go. This is the good stuff.
All right. Now, we're going down. (GASPS)
Whoa!
We are like literally standing
...in the middle of an ancient boulevard or something.
This is, this is part of a city.
Oh, my God! The entire field!
-That is a street. -This is..
-I just saw buildings. -Oh, look pillars.
-Those look like pillars. -Pillars. Pillars!
One, two, three, four, five, six.
-Those are definitely columns, 100%. -Oh, yes.
You can see.
-What the... -(LAUGH)
Look, I hate to be conclusive about things
-But that's a column! -...because somebody, yeah.
Somebody always wants to prove you wrong,
...but there's no mistaking that.
What else would you call six cylinders in a row?
Something really cool.
Come on, join me on the street.
The street's about here, right?
-Yep, okay. -Yeah.
And then the columns would be
-The columns are -...right there.
...right there. Boom! Column, column.
You've got another building here.
You've got another structure there.
Oh, look, there's a lady selling bread.
(LAUGHS) I don't know!
-It's, I mean -Oh, my God.
...columns is not a little fishing city.
-No, definitely not. -It's like, it's a,
...it's a substantial place.
Think about where we started.
This has been a journey through the Cyclades
...to find out where those people came from.
We started in Greece.
-In the islands. -With, with a pyramid.
We almost drowned in a boat.
(LAUGHS) Proving that they had to have bigger ships.
Yeah. Well, you need a bigger ship
...to really make full use of this area.
And then we found obsidian that only comes from here.
We wind up at Troy
-...and then... -And we found this.
I, I...
Whatever this is.
Is it Atlantis?
-(CHUCKLES) -We're gonna have...
to let the archaeologists know.
And we're gonna have to come back here to dig,
...and find out how old
...it is and what it is.
This is some legit science right here.
Like this needs to happen.
We need to know more about this area.
It feels like Atlantis could be
...right beneath our feet!
(DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING)