00:00 Do you remember 2011? Well, open your ears wide.
00:04 A diver is about to dive deeply into the waters of the Musi River, located in the heart of an Indonesian island.
00:10 He is one of the many lucky ones to have found incredible artifacts at the bottom of it.
00:15 Divers and fishermen are slowly discovering a Sumatra civilization that has disappeared for a long time.
00:20 Known under the name of the "Blazing City", Sriwijaya's state city was probably the closest to a real El Dorado to ever have existed.
00:29 It, however, disappeared at the end of the 13th century, and until recently, researchers did not even know the exact location of it.
00:38 Imagine a civilization built on a river, a real aquatic world, according to archaeologists who studied Sriwijaya.
00:45 Houses, markets and places of worship were erected on piles of wood above the water level.
00:52 Its inhabitants moved, like modern Venetians, in simple boats.
00:56 Sriwijaya was known as a prosperous and respected maritime empire. It existed from the 7th to the 11th century.
01:04 It was part of the Silk Road, and anyone traveling from east to west had to cross the city.
01:10 Its rulers were wise and managed to take control of the Malacca District,
01:15 thus allowing the city to gain total control over the region's commercial routes.
01:21 The least we can say is that its name had something honorable.
01:26 Sriwijaya translates from Sanskrit as "Blazing Victory" or simply "Glorious".
01:32 The city was an important commercial hub of the time.
01:36 It was strategically located on the most influential commercial routes in the ancient world,
01:41 which means that its inhabitants became extremely rich.
01:45 The most prosperous societies were used to openly display their gold and wealth.
01:52 They often used these precious metals as offerings to their deities,
01:57 or they used them to create large statues and to make the appearance of their king and queen,
02:03 as well as the decorations of their palace.
02:06 Sriwijaya was not without rules.
02:08 Indonesian divers who explored half of the Musi River near the city of Palembang found some traces of it.
02:15 Until now, they have discovered a large Buddha statue,
02:19 jewelry embedded in precious stones, temple bells, mirrors, golden crutches, and many other objects.
02:27 No official archaeological excavation has been carried out in the region,
02:31 so these artifacts are the first elements of Sriwijaya's empire ever found.
02:36 John Kingsley, a British marine archaeologist who reported these discoveries, does not hide his surprise.
02:42 For a long time, people have speculated about the true richness of Sriwijaya,
02:47 and it seems that the rumors have been confirmed.
02:49 "We start from scratch", he says.
02:51 We do not know what clothes the inhabitants of Sriwijaya wore,
02:55 what their tastes were, or what kind of pottery they used to feed themselves.
03:00 But if this discovery has aroused some enthusiasm in the scientific community, there is a twist to this medal.
03:07 Divers and fishermen sell the artifacts recovered on the international market of antiquities,
03:12 even before archaeologists have been able to examine them.
03:16 Researchers could try to acquire some articles, but they are sold for millions of dollars around the world.
03:23 Most of the information we have about this Eldorado of the Orient comes from merchant stories.
03:29 These descriptions relate that Sriwijaya was a kingdom of snakes,
03:33 eaters of men and multilingual parrots.
03:36 This is not common.
03:37 Some say that these active volcanoes gave the city an unreal and disturbing appearance.
03:42 And all these stories emphasize the amount of gold it was worth.
03:46 Travel stories were a common way of describing cities in ancient times.
03:50 In case you didn't know, this is how the legend of Eldorado began.
03:55 When European explorers began their excavation of South American lands in the 16th century,
04:01 they decided that an Amazonian civilization had become accustomed to painting its chiefs in gold
04:05 in order to satisfy the offerings of the gods.
04:08 The legend of Eldorado, alias the Golden Man, began to spread rapidly throughout Europe.
04:15 It turned out that this was only the ceremonial practice of a pre-Columbian civilization.
04:20 It did not indicate any unlimited gold resources.
04:23 No one knows what caused the decline of the Sriwijaya Empire.
04:27 Some say that these active volcanoes could have swallowed it,
04:31 or maybe that the wooden houses built above the river ended up sinking.
04:36 Maybe if divers continue to recover lost objects at the bottom of the water,
04:41 archaeologists will be able to determine what really happened to the city.
04:45 It seems that this is quite common in the history of the world.
04:48 Some ancient civilizations have disappeared without a trace.
04:52 This is how it happened with the Maya civilization, for example.
04:56 The Mayas managed to build one of the largest empires in pre-Columbian America.
05:01 It was thought to have housed more than 2 million people, and it flourished for more than 6 centuries.
05:06 Its sudden disappearance is something that intrigues archaeologists and scientists.
05:11 The Mayas began to settle in South America as early as 1500 BC.
05:16 Their civilization extended from the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico to Guatemala via Belize.
05:22 It is thought that they built about 40 cities at the height of their empire.
05:26 They also developed a complex hieroglyphic system, which has been studied since its discovery by modern scientists.
05:34 The Mayas were fervent engineers, astronomers and farmers.
05:39 It was a post-nomadic people who settled in vast areas of agricultural land,
05:44 where they could grow corn and other types of vegetables.
05:47 Archaeologists still learn a lot about the Maya civilization by inspecting its ruins.
05:52 The city of Chichen Itza, located in the Yucatan Peninsula, is one of the most important Maya sites discovered to date.
05:59 The site has a total of 26 ruins and houses a world-famous pyramid, known as El Castillo.
06:07 It consists of a series of square terraces with stairs on each of the four sides of the temple.
06:13 It was built in tribute to the serpent god Apum.
06:16 The Mayas were so prodigious in architecture that they managed to build a pyramid that projected a particular shadow.
06:24 More precisely, in the late afternoon, during the equinox of the Printemps and the autumn,
06:29 the pyramid projects a plushy shadow of a triangular shape that creates the Yuchindon Serpent.
06:34 Apum is rampant along the building, and they have created it without knowing the technologies we have today.
06:41 The city is still incredibly incredible, and since 2007 it has been considered one of the 7 wonders of the New World.
06:49 The Maya civilization has prospered for more than 6 centuries thanks to a system of managed resources
06:55 and strong astronomical knowledge.
06:58 The Mayas were able to predict the eclipses with precision,
07:02 and with the only means of their rudimentary technology, they could even locate Venus and Mars.
07:08 They had put everything they needed to prosper for much longer than they had actually done.
07:13 This is why the fall of the Mayas intrigues modern scientists so much.
07:18 No one has been able to fully understand what led to their decline.
07:23 At least, until a recent discovery.
07:26 A study carried out by NASA claims to be able to explain what could have happened.
07:30 Archaeologists have discovered a sample of pollen trapped for more than 1200 years
07:35 in old layers of lacustrine sediments dating back to the previous era for the collapse of this civilization.
07:41 The analysis revealed something completely new about the Mayas.
07:46 Instead of the hypotheses that suspected that the Mayas had disappeared due to a terrible epidemic
07:51 or a prolonged conflict in the region, this could be due to deforestation.
07:56 It is possible that to build their entire kingdom, they had to cut down a lot of trees.
08:02 Without trees, their soil could have eroded and all their fertile land could have slowly but surely become sterile.
08:10 According to NASA researchers, the temperatures in the region could have increased by about 6 degrees.
08:16 And from that moment on, the soil would have become even drier and the crops would have been more difficult to maintain.
08:22 Basically, NASA says that the Mayas have become unable to do the only thing that made them prosper,
08:28 namely agriculture, and their kingdom began to decline.
08:32 Oh yes, and this theory was stunned by another discovery.
08:36 Archaeologists have found skeletons dating from the time of their former kingdoms.
08:41 These presented obvious signs of malnutrition.
08:44 This theory could really bring a new light on the history of the Mayas.
08:49 It could explain what led to the fall of such a powerful civilization.
08:53 What do you think? What theory seems true?
08:56 Have we really managed to discover the reason for the fall of the Mayan civilization?
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