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00:00:00This is the story of a journey of a lifetime.
00:00:09I am circumnavigating the world in just five months.
00:00:13My quest is to seek out 80 of the greatest treasures created by mankind.
00:00:22Some of the treasures I have chosen are undisputed ones of the world.
00:00:30Others are not as well known, but no less awe-inspiring.
00:00:38And some of my choices are surprising and shocking.
00:00:45My mission is to reveal what has driven man, and for thousands of years,
00:00:49to create art and architecture that is incredibly beautiful,
00:00:53which tells the story of mankind, not civilization.
00:00:59Along the way, I'll visit some of the most mysterious places on Earth,
00:01:03and the most dramatic.
00:01:07I'll come face to face with the legacies of great ancient civilizations,
00:01:11and encounter cultures which are clinging on to survival in the modern age.
00:01:18I hope to learn something about human aspirations,
00:01:21about the secrets of life and death, and ultimately, about myself.
00:01:26that civilization.
00:01:28I'll study several when Bohindians invite you to find human justice.
00:01:32Look for one to be able dead.
00:01:33Wait, see, take a closer look in place on hell.
00:01:35Stop it, can't change it.
00:01:36That's nothing.
00:01:37Harrison's got scared before letting people go down.
00:01:39Now, you wait.
00:01:40Let's eat, see, take a closer look to the world,
00:01:47Pelican respition of DOC's.
00:01:49I've faced an exhilarating and daunting challenge.
00:01:58I'm going to 40 countries and six continents in 150 days.
00:02:06Here we go. This is it, starting.
00:02:09The waiting's over.
00:02:11Months of planning. Months of planning's over and we are now going.
00:02:15It feels great, actually, to be on the move.
00:02:19Setting up such an ambitious expedition has been a logistical nightmare.
00:02:24We've got all the visas to obtain and arrangements to make.
00:02:29I'm booked onto 90 flights that will cover more than 80,000 miles,
00:02:33seeing a new treasure every other day.
00:02:36My schedule's so tight that if anything goes wrong,
00:02:39the whole enterprise could fall apart.
00:02:43I wonder what I've been myself in for.
00:02:45The finest moments of human creation are five months flat.
00:02:56My odyssey begins with a 15-hour flight from London to Peru.
00:03:01There's no better place to start.
00:03:16Peru is home to some of the world's great treasures
00:03:18and most enigmatic lost civilisations.
00:03:22Not least, the Incas.
00:03:25Their achievements of my life are still celebrated in modern-day Peru,
00:03:29500 years after the local world was destroyed by Spanish conquerors.
00:03:34To find what I'm looking for,
00:03:47I head deep into the Incas' mountainous heartland.
00:03:49I'm travelling on a narrow-gauge railway through the high Andes.
00:03:55I'm going to a place that I'm told is one of the most beautiful
00:03:59and spiritually uplifting on Earth.
00:04:01It's Latin America's Shangri-La,
00:04:06a place shrouded in mystery.
00:04:09It had a short life,
00:04:11little more than half a century.
00:04:14It was lost in a cloud forest for 400 years
00:04:17and only rediscovered in 1911.
00:04:21It's gone on to become one of the most famous places in Latin America.
00:04:25Machu Picchu is standing on a natural shelf high in the Andes,
00:04:492,350 metres above sea level.
00:04:51It's a staggering location.
00:04:54An amazing place to build a city.
00:04:59Machu Picchu feels like it's on top of the world,
00:05:03the realm of the gods.
00:05:08It's thoughtfully built in the 1460s
00:05:10by the Inca god king Pachacuti Inca.
00:05:16I'm intrigued why I built a city
00:05:18on such a remote and difficult location.
00:05:20This is the main gate to Machu Picchu and it's amazing.
00:05:28It's so small and that tells us a lot about Inca society,
00:05:32indeed about Machu Picchu.
00:05:35The simple fact is that the Incas were very advanced in some ways
00:05:38and not in others.
00:05:39They didn't have the wheel,
00:05:41they didn't have great forms of transport, great carriages.
00:05:45Therefore, they didn't need to bring things inside the city.
00:05:47Things would be delivered outside and brought in by hand.
00:05:51So the city gate can be no bigger, really,
00:05:54than the door to a room.
00:05:56To a room, it's really quite astonishing.
00:06:03Machu Picchu has about 200 buildings,
00:06:05and was home to around 1,000 people.
00:06:09It's laid out with streets,
00:06:11built on terraces cut into the mountainside.
00:06:14Most people lived in small, humble houses.
00:06:17And here is a very intact house in Machu Picchu,
00:06:27which is absolutely staggering.
00:06:29All here, apart from the roof.
00:06:31Roof timbers and thatch outside
00:06:34that had been tied on with ropes onto
00:06:36sort of stone pins on these gables.
00:06:39Otherwise, all here.
00:06:42Now, the Incas didn't have much furniture, I believe.
00:06:46They lived most on the floor, on carpets.
00:06:48But would keep some things,
00:06:49these little recesses here,
00:06:51cupboards, these little niches.
00:06:52Oh, gosh, more niches.
00:06:54And the wonderful view.
00:06:55God!
00:06:57The sacred mountain.
00:06:58The Incas were amazing civil engineers.
00:07:02They were great road builders,
00:07:06and they built sewers and water systems.
00:07:10And here, you see, at Machu Picchu,
00:07:13how water was supplied to this city, this town.
00:07:18Water was gathered from the higher mountains up there,
00:07:20brought down into a little canal here,
00:07:23running through and then into this cascade waterfall.
00:07:25Roman quality, really.
00:07:41really. Look at this, a fantastic example of Inca stonework, massive blocks cut to fit
00:07:58together like a jigsaw, beautifully finely jointed, no more of course, just astonishing,
00:08:06a very very very strong walling anti-earthquake. This of course must be, yes, the temple complex,
00:08:13more temples, two more temples here. One in front of me, a temple of three windows as it's now called,
00:08:21relating I think to Inca creation myths about three caves.
00:08:26Wonderful view through those windows of divine landscape beyond. Here is what's called the
00:08:39principal temple, massive altar stone. And just look at this masonry, it's incredible,
00:08:46cut precisely by hammering one stone against another. And the size of those blocks of stone,
00:08:53good lord, it's absolutely superb. The large number of temples at Machu Picchu shows what a special place
00:09:06this was to the Incas. The most important of these is the Temple of the Sun. At this time of year,
00:09:16the winter solstice in Peru, the stone altar and the window are in perfect alignment with the rising
00:09:23sun.
00:09:29I'm approaching a temple, but before I get there, there is this very strange stone. Look at it,
00:09:36the profile. Well, you may think not too strange, but behind it, you realise this profile is a miniature
00:09:43version, a model of the mountain range in the distance. So evidence, I think, of the Inca,
00:09:52a veneration for the highlands, for mountain peaks.
00:10:04Machu Picchu was once thought to be home to beautiful virgins of the sun who dedicated their lives to the
00:10:10Inca sun god. This may be fantasy, but little doubt Machu Picchu was a sacred city, a holy place.
00:10:20I'm at the highest point of Machu Picchu, and this must have been the site of a temple, because here is an altar,
00:10:34an altar of a ray. Magnificent, though peculiar kind. It's cut from the mountain itself. No one really knows quite what this meant to the Incas.
00:10:46Some people think it's to do with the veneration of the sun. Why not? Could that be a sundial up there, the
00:10:53protruding part? Or, another charming notion, this was a hitching post of the sun. At the winter solstice, the
00:11:04Incas would fear the sun would never return and anchor it to the earth.
00:11:15Now I understand. Obviously, for the Inca, this was the axis mundi, the axis around which the world turns, the centre of their world.
00:11:26Incredible sight. And now, my goodness me, the rainbows appearing. And because the rainbow for the Inca was very, very important.
00:11:37They believed the rainbow was the sun of the sun god made manifest. And there it is, stretching right apart,
00:11:45arcing over Machu Picchu as I stand here.
00:11:48Machu Picchu is a magical vision of heaven that enabled the Incas to be at one with nature. And to venerate their great gods, the mountains and the sun.
00:12:05The following day, I travel to the old Indian capital of Cusco. It's a very special day. The winter solstice is the time of a great celebration for the descendants of the Incas.
00:12:30It's the ancient Inca festival to celebrate the sun's return. The rebirth of the great sun, the giver of life.
00:12:46Oh, look at that. Hello. Where's your, oh, this is, they want to show me their oven. Let's have a look.
00:13:00Everywhere people are making potatoes. It was the Incas who developed the potato, which is in fact a tasty hybrid of poisonous plants.
00:13:10The potato is not my next treasure, but it provides a clue. My treasure has a key role in the food chain. It's a product of the Incas genius for manipulating the landscape to improve their lives.
00:13:28My dream is to see it from the skies like the Inca's holy bird of prey, the condor, by soaring high over their sacred valley on a paraglider.
00:13:52Just hang on to this. No, not this. I push with my knees. Yeah. No, you push with your hands.
00:14:04We're at an altitude of over 3,000 meters. I'm feeling lightheaded and more than a little nervous. So I chew coca leaves, which I use to make cocaine.
00:14:16What we do is we make offerings before we do a flight. Let some of the leaves go into the wind as offering to them. And we always put a couple more in our mouth.
00:14:28A couple only. And this, what does it do? It does seriously help with the altitude situation, does it?
00:14:34It increases the circulation in the system. So it oxygenates the mind a little bit more.
00:14:39Okay, let's oxygen down further. Which is the oxygen of altitude sickness.
00:14:42Yeah.
00:14:44Let's go. Run, run, run, run.
00:14:48Yeah.
00:14:52Running. Running.
00:14:53Keep running.
00:14:56That wasn't...
00:14:59Sorry.
00:15:00No worries.
00:15:04Look at your left.
00:15:06Running, running, running.
00:15:07Run, run, run, run, run.
00:15:11Oh.
00:15:12Get down.
00:15:13We seem to be airborne.
00:15:18At first it's promising as we fly upwards and onwards towards my treasure, perched on a mountainside across the valley.
00:15:28You're flying, Dan.
00:15:30I'm the condor.
00:15:31Absolutely amazing.
00:15:32Amazing.
00:15:33Amazing.
00:15:43But the conditions aren't right.
00:15:45And we're soon sinking towards the ground.
00:15:48It's so disappointing.
00:15:49I must revert to a four-wheel drive vehicle, but still touch and go whether I can reach my treasure before sunset.
00:16:02It's a surprising choice, but it's one of the Inca's most enduring legacies.
00:16:18I'd say the sun's fading.
00:16:19I'd say the sun's fading.
00:16:21Going down below the mountain range.
00:16:29And this is it.
00:16:31This extraordinary abstract work of sculpture in the landscape.
00:16:34The salt pans are our most appropriate choice.
00:16:47Salt is one of the foundations of all civilization.
00:16:50It has enabled man to create the wonders I'll enjoy on my journey.
00:16:54Below me are these salt pans that date from Inca times or earlier.
00:17:02Four, five, six hundred years old.
00:17:05Strange geometry.
00:17:08Tear upon tear.
00:17:09And what happened is, is this, that some water carrying salt comes out of the hill over there.
00:17:19Gushes out through a cavern, flows through here.
00:17:23And then it's diverted into these salt pans where it cascades down, filling pan after pan.
00:17:30And the water stands in the sun, evaporates, leaving the salt.
00:17:35The salt's gathered.
00:17:37And industry, the Incas, certainly used it if they didn't establish it.
00:17:42And it goes on to this day.
00:17:43And I look down and I can see the salt evaporating on the side.
00:18:00The salt pans capture the essence of the Inca way.
00:18:04In harnessing nature, they create something life-giving and liberating.
00:18:12To be able to preserve food at times of plenty, gives man the time to think, to invent,
00:18:18to produce great works of art and architecture.
00:18:25That, of course, is what happened with the Incas.
00:18:27This is one of the keys to their civilization.
00:18:30They had time.
00:18:32And that time was bought, acquired with salt.
00:18:43Tragically, few Inca artistic treasures have survived.
00:18:47When the Spanish conquered Peru in the 1530s, they melted down Inca gold
00:18:52and attempted to justify their greedy conquest of this land
00:18:56by eradicating all evidence of Inca civilization.
00:19:05I head now to the desert coast of Peru.
00:19:08But before seeing my next treasure, I want to sample an Inca delicacy.
00:19:12Oh, my favourite thing, a nice nibble for the flight.
00:19:25I said I wanted a guinea pig for ages.
00:19:28What will they say of this in England?
00:19:29Oh my God.
00:19:33Delicious.
00:19:36Very tasty.
00:19:38Lovely.
00:19:40Say the rest for later.
00:19:45I'm about to witness one of the most mysterious treasures on Earth.
00:19:50It's the largest work of art in the world.
00:19:53So enormous in fact, you can only see it from the sky.
00:19:56Bye, sir.
00:19:58Bye-bye.
00:19:59It's even been suggested that it was created by aliens.
00:20:15This is my treasure.
00:20:17The Nazca lions, these great images.
00:20:20Carved, so to speak, into pampas below me.
00:20:23These images, huge in size, not visible, not apparent from the ground, from up here, are absolutely dramatic and wonderful.
00:20:36There, there, there's the monkey, there's the monkey with the spiral tail.
00:20:42There it is very clear.
00:20:44And there's the hummingbird.
00:20:46Of course, this is all a mystery.
00:20:50But what's certain is carrying a message, but the message we can't understand.
00:20:57There's the spider.
00:21:00It's like a dictionary of sacred images from this part of South America.
00:21:05There is the amazing astronaut figure.
00:21:20It does indeed look like a modern image of a man from outer space.
00:21:25Great goggle eyes waving benignly at his fellow space travelers, I suppose.
00:21:30But as far as these images, there's a whole landscape crisscrossed by these straight lines that go everywhere.
00:21:40From mile upon mile upon mile.
00:21:43It's like flying over an airfield, really.
00:21:48It's as if we've stumbled into a secret ancient magical landscape floating above it.
00:21:54Almost like we have no business to be here.
00:21:56It holds secrets we don't understand, can never understand.
00:22:00But yet, here it is.
00:22:04A message written in the landscape.
00:22:21I returned to Terra Firma to find out how these huge figures were fashioned in the landscape up to 2,000 years ago
00:22:27by a people whose history is now lost.
00:22:31Here we can see how the great images, how the straight lines were constructed.
00:22:37A very simple process, actually.
00:22:40All over the terrain are these reddish boulders, I suppose, brought here.
00:22:46Through the acts of glaciers thousands and thousands of years ago, rounded.
00:22:53All the Nazca's did was to move the stones to expose the gypsum underneath, creating a different texture, a different colour to the boulder stream.
00:23:09Land each side.
00:23:12A very minimal manipulation of the landscape.
00:23:16The lions have survived over the centuries because Nazca is one of the driest places in the world.
00:23:22And its remoteness has saved these fragile works from the destructive tendencies of modern man.
00:23:27I'm drawn into the mystery surrounding these astonishing creations.
00:23:35What on earth could they have been for?
00:23:38Who made them on this vast scale?
00:23:41Surely the artists couldn't have seen their complete masterpieces.
00:23:44The mysterious nature of these images has provoked many speculations about their origin and meaning.
00:23:53Some of these speculations are pretty wild indeed.
00:23:57Among the more sensible ones, I suppose, are, in fact, these are maybe an astronomical clock, a bit like an early zodiac.
00:24:04Or perhaps they're part of an agricultural calendar telling the people when to reap, when to sow.
00:24:11Other people, of course, think that these images were made for men from outer space because one could only see these images when looking down from above.
00:24:23These images, I presume, are forms of communication with the gods, the all-seeing eye above.
00:24:31I'm becoming more and more enthralled by the mystical we are.
00:24:59I am more and more enthralled by the mystical world of ancient Peru.
00:25:04I travel north to see my next treasure,
00:25:07the legacy of another lost civilization called the Moche.
00:25:12The Moche people are known for their sinister beliefs and extreme bloodlust.
00:25:17They flourished in northern Peru almost 2,000 years ago.
00:25:24The quest for my treasure takes me first to Sipan,
00:25:27the site of a priceless treasure trove,
00:25:30the Latin American equivalent of Tutankhamun's tomb in Egypt.
00:25:37It was discovered by tomb raiders as recently as 1987,
00:25:41buried deep in muddy hills which were once huge majestic pyramids pointing to the heavens.
00:25:49Sipan was the scene of gunfights over a prize so valuable
00:25:53that people were willing to die for it.
00:25:56This is the tomb of what is now known as Lord Sipan.
00:26:13Here we see in the centre Lord Sipan with various bodies arranged around him.
00:26:21I believe there are eight bodies in all found in here.
00:26:28One so-called guardian with his legs cut off.
00:26:35A savage civilization.
00:26:37The Moche fascinating.
00:26:39For the Moche people, human sacrifice was central to their religion.
00:26:46But they were also brilliant goldsmiths and metal workers.
00:26:52An amazing horde of jewels was found in several different tombs in Sipan,
00:26:56dating from between the first and third centuries AD.
00:27:00The jewels now on display in the tombs are reproductions.
00:27:03The originals have been removed for safe keeping.
00:27:09My treasure is to be found among them.
00:27:11So I head to the nearby town of Lambayake,
00:27:14where a museum has been specially built in the shape of a Moche pyramid.
00:27:19Among the wildly beautiful jewellery,
00:27:33a work that reveals another of the Moche's artistic obsessions.
00:27:37The creation of explicit fertility symbols.
00:27:40It seems that death and sex were their passions.
00:27:47But my treasure chills the blood
00:27:49and cuts to the heart of the Moche world.
00:27:52Now this is my treasure because, well, it's very beautiful.
00:28:08And I have seen nothing else like it.
00:28:11It's a necklace.
00:28:13It's from the tomb of the old Lord Sipan.
00:28:16About 1900 years old.
00:28:18Nearly, maybe 2000.
00:28:20The spider god, the spider deity, had many powers.
00:28:23He was a god of healing.
00:28:25The web, of course.
00:28:28The heal's wound stops blood flowing.
00:28:31The spider encapsulated, represented,
00:28:35many of the feelings,
00:28:38the religious beliefs
00:28:40and what we would now regard as rather barbaric rites
00:28:44and rituals of these people.
00:28:46So it's sacrifice.
00:28:48Decapitation of the enemy.
00:28:50The head has great power.
00:28:52These people, imagine they would tie up their victims
00:28:57before sacrifice.
00:28:58Bind them up.
00:28:59So the web symbolises the binding up,
00:29:04the tying of the sacrificial victim.
00:29:07The spider consumes the bodily fluids of its victim.
00:29:15It devours the victim.
00:29:17And, of course, these people, they drink the blood of their sacrifices,
00:29:25devour their power, their spirits.
00:29:27The spirits of the spider represented
00:29:29much of their actions
00:29:34during the ritual of sacrifice.
00:29:37On the back, I notice something very strange.
00:29:41A spiral, a sacred pattern
00:29:44one finds in many religions.
00:29:51This necklace is my treasure
00:29:53because it tells me so much
00:29:54about the world of the enigmatic people that produced it.
00:29:57A world in which delicate beauty
00:29:59and shocking violence went hand in hand.
00:30:03This is history that still has the power to shock.
00:30:06From my next treasure,
00:30:17I travelled to the charming city of Trujillo.
00:30:28Trujillo was founded in the early 16th century
00:30:31by the Spanish conquerors.
00:30:33By which time my treasure had passed into history.
00:30:37It's three miles from Trujillo
00:30:39on the Pacific coast of northern Peru.
00:30:43Legend has it,
00:30:44it was created a thousand years ago
00:30:46by a god called Nymelap
00:30:48who came from the ocean.
00:30:55I made my way along the coast
00:30:57to seek out the fragile remains of a city
00:30:59once drenched in gold.
00:31:01It served as the capital of the mighty Trujillo Empire,
00:31:04which extended 600 miles along the coast of Peru
00:31:07as far north as Ecuador.
00:31:09CanChan was the largest mud-built city in the world.
00:31:16Indeed, when at its prime about 700 years ago,
00:31:20this was one of the largest cities in the world.
00:31:24It is also, in its form and planning,
00:31:28a very, very wonderful and extraordinary place.
00:31:33CanChan spreads out over eight square miles,
00:31:36and is linked by wide streets protected by tall walls.
00:31:40Some of the walls were once decorated with beaten gold panels,
00:31:43which have long since disappeared.
00:31:47The city has suffered at the hands of the elements,
00:31:50but there's enough left to show
00:31:51what brilliant builders and engineers
00:31:52are changing the world.
00:31:53It's a great place.
00:31:54It's a great place.
00:31:55It's a great place.
00:31:56It's a great place.
00:31:57It's a great place.
00:31:58Theš Edition
00:32:03And many people had many flying
00:32:26citadels each really a little wall city in its own right these were defined by high walls about
00:32:3315 meters high within each of these little citadels there was some and all sort of things
00:32:38her city has public buildings administration buildings temples private houses and a palace
00:32:45or two and here we see the remains of this complex and strange urban structure
00:32:56these tall walls were partly for defense but mostly they were to make life as comfortable as
00:33:04possible in the town they act as windbreaks and also being made of mud adobe brick they have
00:33:13incredible properties of insulation thick mud walls keep the heat out in the summer and the warmth in
00:33:21in the winter here also you see this net so our pattern is perforated so it's kind of lets air
00:33:28creep in cross ventilation outside to the inside in very hot summer days um it's all all a very
00:33:36ingenious arrangement making this natural material do a lot of jobs at once keeping you warm keep you
00:33:43cool and keeping you safe the chibu people's reverence for nature is reflected in their architecture
00:33:53some of the walls take the form of fishing nets and are decorated with images of their gods including
00:33:59sea birds and fish
00:34:09this um decoration is largely original maybe partly repaired but most of it is uh i suppose 700 years old
00:34:19says so much about the the belief the belief of the people here we have fish and we have pelicans
00:34:26they venerated the sea and water sea water for fish fresh water for life itself or for plants irrigation
00:34:39there's water i suppose too represented there by the horizontal bands
00:34:45water made the difference between the chimu's survival and extinction
00:34:50their great achievement was to build a thriving civilization
00:34:54in the most arid and exposed of locations
00:35:05golly from up here one gets a sense of a fast scale of chan chan
00:35:13it stretches as far as the eye can see citadel after citadel wall after wall one beyond the other
00:35:20also from here one can see what this place is all about water over there you can see the sea
00:35:32waves breaking so there we have the fruits of the sea fish being gathered and just there what looks
00:35:39like a pond ornamental now but originally that was full of growing vegetables things to keep the population
00:35:48alive what these people did they dug right down to groundwater to get fresh water so fresh water
00:35:56salt water fish and vegetables to support and sustain this gigantic population a population that depended
00:36:06almost entirely for its livelihood on irrigation and on the fruits of the sea no wonder they've venerated water
00:36:18the chimu empire was crushed not by the spanish but in the late 15th century by the inca king who created
00:36:28machu picchu chan chan was plundered for his riches and abandoned to the elements
00:36:35i continue my journey by flying from peru to santiago in chile then onwards to the remotest island on earth
00:36:49it means the massive detour but i'm about to see all the undoubted wonders of the world
00:36:54i'm in the middle of the pacific ocean over 2000 miles away from south american mainland
00:37:11and i'm on my way to see treasure that's gripped my imagination for decades
00:37:16i've chosen to see my treasure from the sea because that's how it first appeared to startle european
00:37:25sailors almost 300 years ago
00:37:36the giant statues or moai on easter island were first seen by europeans on easter sunday 1722
00:37:53giving the island its name locally is known as rapa nui
00:37:59at first the explorers didn't know what they were or who had created them
00:38:07the story of the moai is powerful and disturbing it's about man's relationship with his world
00:38:14and with his gods it says much about his hopes and fears and the fragile nature of existence
00:38:23one of my earliest most memorable visual experiences was seeing the moai on the staircase
00:38:32in the british museum i was very very young but it burnt itself into my memory it wasn't frightening
00:38:40just incredibly powerful the face so elemental one wanted always to know more about it
00:38:50the solemn stare what did it mean so i've come here to see other moai just see them in their landscape
00:39:00in their setting in their context to find out more about them i've just seen this group here and they are
00:39:09absolutely stunning these are definitely amongst the great treasures of the world
00:39:16the moai believed to represent the souls of dead ancestors
00:39:33and face inwards towards the island protecting their descendants
00:39:46and here's the moai lying on its back
00:39:57it must have been on its way to the
00:40:02sacred platform over there the stone the figure was carved not here not in situ not at the uh the site
00:40:12of which it was to be erected but where the stone was quarried and that is over there that broken
00:40:24volcanic peak in front of me
00:40:29it's a mystery why so few of easter island's 900 moai are mounted on their sacred platforms
00:40:40and here's a mystery why so many of the people who have been able to see them in the desert
00:40:45this is extraordinary there are dozens of moai loitering around here on the slope leading up to the
00:40:51quarry facing all different directions some out to sea some inland
00:40:57i suppose this is like a storage area for the moai they've been carved in the quarry right up there
00:41:05and here i can begin to see the little recesses where they've been cut out
00:41:10i guess slid down here and then stored in these pits
00:41:16and here you see the key characteristics of the moai the jutting chin
00:41:25the pouting lips
00:41:26the great extended nose slightly concave the beetling brow
00:41:45there are an amazing 400 moai still in the rano raraku quarry almost half the total ever carved
00:42:04crikey this is the crater of the volcano that spewed out the stone called tough from which the moai are
00:42:13carved and over there more moai standing looking into the crater itself i suppose they're um again
00:42:22they're they're in storage
00:42:33here we can see very clearly how the moai was made how it was quarried from the volcano face this end is
00:42:40still attached to the to the rock there we are being cut around being freed from its bed
00:42:51bird nesting underneath it here's the um the arm the torso here and here the incredible
00:43:00head taking shape the nose
00:43:07and here is the mouth and chin now this stuff called tough was um
00:43:15shaped using a bit of harder rock like this basalt basalt's harvest compacted volcanic ash called tough
00:43:25and the mason was simply chip away chip away chip away but what happened here one day
00:43:32this particular mason down two
00:43:37and walked away leaving it never to be completed
00:43:43clearly something dramatic happened and very rapidly the sacred tradition suddenly stopped
00:43:49what abandoned normally after completion of the quarry the moai would have been dragged using ropes and
00:43:58log rollers down to their platforms by the sea here the finishing touches would have been applied
00:44:07when the moai had been placed on its ahu eyes made of obsidian which is a volcanic rock
00:44:13and coral were put in place and those eyes it is said brought the moai to life
00:44:27but the moai did not live forever long ago in the mists of time the cult appears to have been ended
00:44:34by some cataclysmic event
00:44:50the following morning i set out to discover more about the tragic fate that befell the moai
00:45:04the moai here each one has been toppled face down you see their faces buried in the ahu in the ground
00:45:33now this could have been a great wave a tsunami but that wouldn't have uh had quite this effect
00:45:41no these have been toppled by men these moai have been murdered have been killed ritualistically
00:45:50they have been robbed of their power and made meaningless some have even had their their necks broken
00:45:59their heads crushed and i guess their eyes gouged out what this tells us of course is that something
00:46:12terrible happened on this island many years ago something led people to fight
00:46:20to turn on themselves and to murder their own gods
00:46:30the moai were almost certainly toppled by rival clans about 500 years ago when the island descended into
00:46:36civil war the islanders had cut down most of the island's trees to move the moai and didn't have
00:46:44enough timber left to build fishing boats so food supplies began running desperately short
00:46:52locals replaced worship of the moai with the sinister cult of the birdman whose image can still be
00:46:57seen carved into the rocks this new cult involved rival clans competing for control of limited resources
00:47:04i head for a dark and hidden place which holds the grisly secrets of the bird man
00:47:18wow paintings birds red birds wonderful they're very fresh bright as if painted almost yesterday
00:47:28this cave is a um a solemn place indeed grim i guess known locally as anna kind tengata which means the cave
00:47:43where men eat or the cave where men are eaten so this is perhaps evidence of cannibalism
00:47:58the story of easter island is really a parable tells the story of really heaven becoming hell
00:48:16of benign gods becoming malign and all to do with the exploitation of resources of the island
00:48:24as i head back to the mainland of latin america i'm about to witness the story tale of easter island
00:48:43repeating itself in 21st century brazil
00:48:45i'm at quaiaba in western brazil and i'm about to fly go by car and by boat around 750 kilometers
00:49:02into the amazon rainforest to find my living treasure
00:49:07my treasure is not an ancient artifact but something very special that continues to be created
00:49:18and used by people deep in the rainforest
00:49:37of course i've heard about the devastation of the rainforest but i'm shocked by the sheer scale of it
00:49:56over hundreds of miles valuable timber has been removed by loggers and the forest transformed into
00:50:02the grazing land for cattle to feed the world with beef burgers
00:50:13after several hours we cross the threshold into what remains of the rainforest
00:50:18being fenced off is now protected by the brazilian government
00:50:22i head down the warima river the tributary of the amazon towards my treasure
00:50:33it's an unbelievably beautiful work of art created by a tribe called the ibatsa
00:50:41the ibatsa people cling on to the traditional way of life as hunter gatherers their walls have been
00:50:47threatened by the locals and cattle marches as well as roman catholic jesuit missionaries
00:50:52who forcibly removed their children's recently of the 1960s
00:51:01the
00:51:10excellent reception committee
00:51:14what do i approach
00:51:21hello
00:51:25that is what i've come to see the headdress
00:51:41my most colorful of treasures is a symbol of the amazon and an object of immense importance to these people
00:51:47people
00:51:54shall we come
00:52:00oh my god wow i expected one maybe two umahara but a whole heartful
00:52:08beautiful objects beautifully made but more than point they are full of meaning to these people
00:52:20they celebrate their culture their aspirations their religion
00:52:24and made from human hair parrot feathers ah that's
00:52:38the umahara headdress is worn with great pride by the imbatsa people is the emblem of the endangered
00:53:00culture it once played a key role in war ceremonies and still used in dance rituals
00:53:08this dance takes place every day for 90 days after the first of june is a celebration of birth and all
00:53:26things new during the dance wives have the right to ask favors of their husbands who are obliged to
00:53:37grant them
00:53:38after the dance i talked to members of the tribe about the headdress and how it's made
00:53:44can i ask what it means to them today the umahara headdress
00:53:52what it means to them today the umahara headdress
00:54:05what it means to them today the umahara represents a great richness in their own culture
00:54:12and for their future and for their future they shouldn't stop creating it and using it for their own use
00:54:19it represents a sense of identity really it represents a sense of identity
00:54:26it represents a sense of identity really it represents a sense of identity
00:54:33it represents a sense of identity of the hikibata people
00:54:38it represents a sense of identity of the hikibata people
00:54:45it represents a sense of identity of the hikibata people
00:54:49it represents a sense of identity of the hikibata people
00:54:52thank you so much for the people
00:54:55so we've got feathers from the parrot and female hair that is correct is it we
00:55:01on to um
00:55:05some plumas
00:55:08this is from the amarela clan
00:55:13yes and there's the hair
00:55:16it's all rather perplexing
00:55:19to preserve their traditions the hikibata have to make the umahara headdresses
00:55:24yet in so doing they must kill protected bird species for their feathers
00:55:30they don't eat poison
00:55:32while the faces and bodies of the men and women are brightly painted in the traditional way
00:55:37they sport natty shorts and bikini tops
00:55:41bit by bit the hikibata are being drawn into the modern world
00:55:45whether they like it or not
00:55:47as evening approaches preparations are being made for supper
00:55:58a rather tasty feast awaits me
00:56:01a rather tasty feast awaits me
00:56:05it all brings back very deep memories
00:56:12the family halls scattered round about the compound
00:56:16the main hall where the communal ceremonies take place
00:56:20the people gathered round the fire at night eating
00:56:35the fields round about
00:56:37it's like an anglo-saxon village in england
00:56:411200 years ago
00:56:43it's like i'm meeting one's ancestors coming back here
00:56:48after the tranquility of the rainforest one of the world's most energetic and romantic cities awaits me
00:57:03it's a place bursting with contradictions
00:57:18alongside the glamour and wealth
00:57:20the football
00:57:21is some of the most appalling poverty in the world
00:57:23the most appalling poverty in the world
00:57:27california
00:57:29elnutri
00:57:30breaks
00:57:31brown
00:57:32muu
00:57:33ah
00:57:34ok
00:57:45my treasure expresses a paradox of rio
00:57:48it's the first great colossus on my trip
00:57:51and an icon which shouts out brazil
00:57:55Christ the Redeemer was built to mark the centenary in 1922
00:58:07of Brazilian independence from Portugal.
00:58:10It was finally inaugurated in October 1931.
00:58:15As I approach, a dense fog descends.
00:58:19This is not how I expected to meet my Redeemer.
00:58:22At 38 metres high, the largest art deco statue in the world.
00:58:29He's become a symbol not only of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, but also of South America.
00:58:36The great arms embracing the people of this land, the different mix of people, very powerful.
00:58:45The fact is offering welcome and peace and love, understanding.
00:58:52And of course, it is a great Roman Catholic image.
00:58:56And that is the religion of the land replacing the older religions, the various religions we've seen.
00:59:04And lamented their loss, really.
00:59:09So for good or ill, this is the image of the new South American.
00:59:15Amazing as the mist comes down, the figure is disappearing before me.
00:59:21I had hoped to enjoy spectacular views of Christ's Redeemer from the air.
00:59:38It's not to be.
00:59:39But the flight does give me the chance to reflect on Rio, my travels in Latin America.
00:59:49Treasures I found in South America have revealed it to be a place of thrilling and at times disturbing contrasts and of deep mysteries.
00:59:59And this history really comes from the fact that the old civilizations, the Incas, for example, their civilizations were so fragile, they had no written language, that made it very easy to obliterate so much of what they had discovered, so much of what they stood for, so many of their achievements.
01:00:21And Rio is a great emblem, I suppose, of the new South America, the South America formed on the graves of the old civilizations, the conquerors come, they bring the new religion, Roman Catholicism, and the great civilizations of the past are laid in the dust, surrounded by mystery.
01:00:46And that's really what my treasures have revealed, the glories of the past, the indigenous civilizations here, and also the emblem of the new, the Christ the Redeemer, presiding over this great, teeming, thrill-seeking city.
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