Archaeology

- Season 1

(1991)

Twenty-five years ago, the ancient Mayans were thought to be a mysterious and peaceful people governed by astronomer-priests. But in 1965, Russian linguist Yuri Knorosov cracked the phonetic code of Mayan hieroglyphic writing in the confinements of his bustling Leningrad study. Today, researchers reveal stories of Mayan blood sacrifices as they uncover a world so foreign as to defy our understanding of it. From excavations deep in the jungles of Honduras to the most recent interpretations of hieroglyphic messages, researchers are unraveling the fascinating story of ...

Romantic visions of the Explorer Hernando de Soto continue to celebrate the conquistador's arrival in North America 450 years ago as one of the most important events in the history of mankind. But archaeology tells a darker story - As they chart the conquistador's trail of death and human destruction from Florida's Gulf Coast to the mouth of the Mississippi, archeologists are not only discovering lost Native American cultures, but their excavations are also confirming the frightening truth of just how these people perished.

During the Middle Ages, in a period spanning 800 AD to 1100 AD, a powerful, seafaring people known as the Vikings came swarming out of the north-lands in their predatory long ships to burn and pillage their way across civilized Europe. But there was another sphere in which the Vikings were to win equally lasting fame. It was the Vikings who completed the Atlantic crossing westward to colonize Greenland. They disembarked upon the eastern coast of North America at a site they called Vinland. Of all of the achievements of the Vikings, it is this venture that has most ...

Rising out of the highlands of Sub-Saharan Africa are the ruins of the long-secluded, spectacular Great Zimbabwe. Dismissed by racist explorers as the work of some ancient black civilization and stripped by ignorance and prejudice of many of it's priceless artifacts, white colonizers were certain that Black Africans could not have built the towering stone walls. Only now, after a century of abuse, is the Great Zimbabwe reclaiming it's uniquely African heritage. But can archaeologists undo the years of preceding damage? Perhaps the real mystery connected with this site...

The tale of the Israelites' conquest of the Promised Land has long been an article of faith wherever the Bible is widely read and respected. But recent discoveries suggest that the military defeat of the Promised Land, as detailed in the Book of Joshua, simply never occurred. This archaeological verdict will no doubt come as a surprise to many: no sudden invasion, no bloody defeat of ancient Canaan; instead, a simple 'peasants' revolt' of farmers within the country. Spun throughout the decades, this triumphant chronicle was gradually embroidered beyond recognition ...

Although almost twenty-five years have passed since the end of Israel's most ambitious archaeological undertaking, the name of this site, Masada, still exerts romantic appeal. For many Israelites and visitors to Israel, the isolated, flat-topped rock in the Judean Desert remains the most visible symbol of the power and significance of modern archaeology. Excavations at Masada from 1963 to 1965 revealed the magnificent fortress-palace of King Herod the Great of Judeas (37 to 4 BC). These excavations also exposed tragic evidence of the unsuccessful attempt by Jewish ...

The Nazi's doctrine was clear: They, the Aryans, were a superior race, as they had demonstrated in their heroic past. Every effort must therefore be made to guarantee the genetic purity of the nation. In July of 1935, Heinrich Himmler, Head of the Gestapo and the SS, founded the Ahnenerbe (The Research and Teaching Society for Ancestral Heritage) to validate these ideas and to ensure their propagation. Himmler's goal was to research, excavate, and restore (real and imagined) Germanic cultural relics and to obtain scientific (or pseudo-scientific) support for these ...

Was Cleopatra black? Was Socrates? Did Egyptian armies conquer ancient Greece, thus setting the cradle of Western civilization in motion? Is this wishful thinking on the part of historical revisionists...or is it a long-suppressed historical fact? Today, a number of researchers claim that scholars of the 18th and 19th centuries were racists who could not stand the idea that their beloved Greece had been made "impure" by African influence. Modern researchers think that these early scholars dismissed as mere myth the Greeks' own accounts of the way Egyptian technology, ...

Sweeping aside nearly 2,000 years of doubt and mystery, on-going excavations in Germany's Teutoberg Forest have revealed the location of one of the bloodiest battles of antiquity. In 9 AD, an arrogant Roman general, Publius Varus, anticipated that he would easily suppress several rebellious Germanic tribes, after which he could leisurely march his troops to their winter campsite. Unfortunately for Varus and three of Rome's crack legions, he walked into an elaborate and well-organized ambush. With innovative computer graphics we will reconstruct how the battle may have...

In 1856, workmen in a cave in the Neander valley near Dussseldorf, Germany, unearthed a human skeleton. Its skull had a low, protruding brow, large teeth, and a massive bone structure. And from this discovery began a lengthy dispute: did the Neanderthal man represent an abnormal modern human? Or an extinct ancestor? Unintentionally, the workmen began the longest ongoing controversy in the search for the origins of modern humans. Today, archaeologists search for clues about Neanderthals in hopes of determining if these remarkable people deserve a place in our direct ...

Southeastern Utah is one of the richest and least disturbed archaeological areas in the Southwest. In 1990, archaeologists in this region discovered a dry cave/rock shelter with human remains. Only a small piece of sandal was removed in order to obtain a date on the site. Amazingly, the date was revealed as 5,490 BC. Utah's desert climate and the cave's dry soil conditions are near-perfect for preservation. This site offers scientists a unique opportunity to examine the culture and remains of a people more than 7,000 years old. What purposes did the cave serve in the ...

One of America's most famous historical landmarks is The Little Bighorn, a site where Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer and more than 250 troopers of the 7th US Calvary rode to their deaths on June 25, 1876. Though detailed facts of the event were unknown, the battle became shrouded in tales of myth and mystery that have endured for over a century. Now, by retracing the pattern of bullets and cartridge cases across the Custer battlefield, archaeologists have been able to generate a unique computer simulation of the final, fatal moments of the Battle of the Little ...

On June 7, 1576, Captain Martin Frobisher took command of an expedition to the New World. It was the first voyage attempted by an Englishman in search of the elusive Northwest Passage to the Orient. After a perilous Atlantic journey, Captain Frobisher arrived at a large bay in the remote Northeastern Arctic of the New World and decreed that he had discovered the entrance to the 'Passage'. Frobisher also found layers of curious ore deposited along the coastline. The Englishman, unacquainted with this exotic but worthless mineral, somehow believed that he had discovered...