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00:00Mysteries can be buried anywhere, under the earth, beneath the sea, or even right under
00:19our own feet. And when we stumble upon them, sometimes what we find can change history.
00:30Tonight, big discoveries. From a monumental secret buried beneath a basement.
00:38Behind the wall, there's a cabin. Not an old cellar, but a tunnel. This sprawling maze spans
00:45over 170 square miles. It's a mind-boggling discovery. To a massive ancient structure.
00:53Archaeologists realize it dates back to a mysterious civilization.
00:58Hell is known about this culture because almost nothing has been found from the time
01:02of their reign. Until now.
01:04To a monster of epic proportions. They uncover three feet of it. Four feet of it. Ultimately,
01:13it's ten feet long. Join us now, because nothing stays hidden forever.
01:20It's 1927. Charles Lindbergh is fresh off his historic solo flight across the Atlantic. It's the first of his kind. It took him 33 hours to complete. Now a global celebrity, he heads out on a two-month goodwill tour through
01:38Central America. He flies solo location to location and basically shakes hands with locals and basks in his newfound fame. One day he's flying. He's crossing over this thick jungle in Honduras. And something weird catches his eye.
01:45Something that doesn't look quite natural. These structures poking through the gaps in the canopy.
01:52To Lindbergh, it looks like this might be a city.
01:59For centuries, rumors swirled of a jungle settlement overflowing with riches. They call it a city.
02:06It's a city, a city of the city.
02:08For centuries, rumors swirled of a jungle settlement overflowing with riches. They call it a city of the city, a city of the city.
02:17To Lindbergh, it looks like this might be a city.
02:22For centuries, rumors swirled of a jungle settlement
02:26overflowing with riches.
02:28They call it La Ciudad Blanca, the White City.
02:32Now Lindbergh's sighting reignites the search to find it.
02:37Explorers, archaeologists, and treasure hunters
02:40set out on new expeditions searching for the city Lindbergh claims he saw.
02:46But even after several decades, nobody finds a trace of the city.
02:51Eventually, in 2012, an explorer named Steve Elkins
02:56tries to follow in Lindbergh's footsteps.
03:00This time, he's not looking out the window.
03:02He's using LIDAR from the air to see what the jungle below might be hiding.
03:07Over the course of five days, Elkins and his small team
03:10fly over this rugged terrain of the Honduran rainforest, mapping the invisible.
03:15On the final day, they process the LIDAR data.
03:18And it seems to reveal what looked like the outline of multiple man-made geometric structures.
03:25Armed with the coordinates, Elkins and his team head deep into the jungle for a closer look.
03:32They cut paths, encounter pit vipers, and even flesh-eating parasites.
03:38But despite all the hells of the jungle, they keep going.
03:41After several weeks, the journey proves worth it.
03:44When they find the area pinpointed by their LIDAR scans.
03:47And they find something incredible.
03:51There are hundreds of artifacts arranged almost as if they were abandoned mid-ceremony.
04:01These are the remnants of an unknown culture.
04:04The scientists estimate they were built somewhere between 1000 and 1500 A.D.
04:10As the group presses further into the site, they come across something even more incredible.
04:17At the heart of it all, they find a massive pyramid.
04:22Half buried under the ground.
04:25And it's just the tip of the iceberg.
04:28There are mounds, pillars, plazas stretching wide beneath the vines.
04:34This wasn't a small mountain village.
04:36This was a metropolis that flourished before European contact.
04:41The team recovered over 190 artifacts, including a carved head of a part human, part jaguar.
04:49They renamed the area of the site Valley of the Jaguar.
04:53Excavations continue to this day.
04:56And the site is deemed so valuable that the Honduran military now protects it.
05:03To date, they haven't found any huge cache of gold or treasure.
05:06But there's a lot of excavating still to be done.
05:09The recovered artifacts are now housed in the Ciudad Blanca Research Center.
05:14Which focuses on the preservation of the archeology and culture of the site.
05:19Along with the wildlife that surrounds it.
05:23You don't always have to go off the grid to make amazing discoveries.
05:30Sometimes a big find is just beneath your feet.
05:34In 1480, a boy is playing under the Italian pines on Esquiline Hill in the heart of Rome.
05:44As he runs along the slope, his foot slips along a crack in the soil.
05:48He leans down, peers into the opening, and sees something that shouldn't be there.
05:55He crawls through the gap.
05:57And he finds himself in this hidden chamber.
06:02Low ceilings, curved walls.
06:06And when the boy looks up, he notices that on the ceilings are these very detailed frescoes.
06:13There are mythological scenes, strange creatures, and elaborate floral patterns covering the domed roof.
06:21Soon his discovery attracts some of the era's most famous artists.
06:25Artists like Michelangelo and Raphael lower themselves down and explore the subterranean passages by torchlight.
06:36Looking at all these mythological paintings on the walls to get inspiration for their own art.
06:42But the site's purpose remains a mystery for centuries until a full-scale excavation of the area is ordered in the mid-1700s.
06:52Archaeologists soon find other enormous rooms, some up to 100 feet deep, covered in elaborate artwork.
07:00As they explore the frescoes and the opulent rooms, they start to put the pieces together.
07:06They realize that this is a palace, and it's a palace that matches the description of one that was built in the first century A.D.
07:15It's the Domus Aria, better known as the Golden House, built by infamous Roman Emperor Nero.
07:25Nero ruined Rome for 14 years in the first century A.D.
07:30He's known for his extravagance, his cruelty, his persecution of Jews and Christians,
07:36for murdering his mother, and for his very literal desire to burn down the city of Rome, to recraft it in his image.
07:44So when a massive fire destroys much of Rome in 64 A.D.,
07:49many believe that Nero started it himself on purpose, so that he could build an opulent palace.
07:56That new palace, the Domus Aria, is huge.
08:01It sprawls over 300 acres, has over 100 rooms, marble walls, rotating dining rooms,
08:10detailed frescoes, and perfume-dispensing ceilings.
08:15There's an artificial lake surrounded by gardens.
08:19And of course, at the center of it all is a gorgeous golden statue of Nero himself.
08:25It is 100 feet tall.
08:28But before Nero can move into his new palace, he's declared a public enemy by the Senate.
08:34Even Nero's own guards abandoned him.
08:37So he decides to take his own life.
08:39And he stabs himself in the throat with a dagger before he can be executed.
08:44Once he's gone, Romans try to erase all evidence that he even existed.
08:50That includes his lavish estate, which is torn down and buried.
08:55Years later, another iconic structure is built in its place, the Colosseum.
09:01Then over time, the site is completely forgotten about.
09:05Until centuries later, when a young boy slips in the dirt.
09:13It's just another day at sea for a group of fishermen until they haul in their nets and find a lot more than just dinner.
09:22It's September of 1931, and a British fishing trawler is making its way up the North Sea.
09:31It's just an ordinary day when, all of a sudden, the nets come up heavy.
09:37Excited at the possibility of a big catch, the crew pulls the nets aboard and begins looking through their hull.
09:43The skipper, Pilgrim Lockwood, notices a huge lump of peat tangled up with their catch.
09:49He goes to break it apart with his shovel.
09:52But as he does, the shovel clangs against something solid.
09:58At first glance, it looks like a chunk of bone.
10:04But it's a darker color, and it looks carved, and on one side it has what looks like serrated, jagged teeth.
10:12Whatever it is, it doesn't look natural.
10:15The skipper sends his strange find to the British Museum for more insight.
10:20The researchers examine the object and realize that it's a prehistoric weapon that's carved out of red deer antler.
10:29It would have been lashed end to end with another antler and used as a harpoon.
10:34Researchers date the tool to the late Mesolithic era, sometime between 10,000 and 4,000 BC.
10:40Everything seems to check out, except for the fact that it was found so far out and so deep underwater.
10:47Mesolithic people were skilled hunters with sophisticated tools like this harpoon.
10:53But they were not skilled mariners.
10:56They had no way of venturing far from shore.
10:59That's when archaeologist Graham Clark proposes a radical theory.
11:03Maybe that spot in the North Sea used to be dry land.
11:07Up to now, everyone had assumed that there had always been a sea between Great Britain and continental Europe.
11:14But Clark suggests maybe that's wrong.
11:16Maybe thousands of years ago, this was land.
11:20The following year, a test of the peat found with the harpoon gives Clark's theory a boost.
11:26Further analysis shows that it formed in freshwater, not saltwater, confirming the weapon was lost on land.
11:34In the ensuing decades, more evidence comes in, providing more support for this theory.
11:39Fishermen begin to pull up bones from a variety of land animals.
11:43Hippos, bears, woolly rhinos, saber-toothed cats.
11:48They find more stone tools and even pieces of a Neanderthal skull.
11:53After decades of clues, the mystery comes into sharper focus when researchers managed to extract DNA from the ancient skull.
12:01Turns out he was a young man who was a meat-eater with a stocky build and he lived about 60,000 years ago.
12:11The incredible discovery leads researchers to name the area Doggerland after a nearby sandbar.
12:18But the real breakthrough comes when oil and gas companies lend a surprising hand.
12:24Using underwater survey data, they are able to create detailed 3D models of the seabed.
12:31This wasn't just an archipelago of islands or a land bridge.
12:36Doggerland was vast and teeming with life, which attracted bands of Mesolithic hunters.
12:43At its peak, Doggerland was big.
12:46It stretched over 70,000 square miles, bigger than the state of Illinois.
12:51Then, around 8,000 years ago, the Ice Age ends and temperatures start to rise.
12:58Glaciers begin to melt and water levels rise.
13:01And over the next 3,500 years, Doggerland slowly disappears beneath the sea, causing its people to have to relocate.
13:10Today, Doggerland is one of the best preserved prehistoric landscapes ever discovered.
13:17Finding a whole ancient world hidden under the sea is incredible.
13:23Our next big discovery takes us even further back in time, and it's on an even bigger scale.
13:32In 2017, a man in Pombal, Portugal, is trying to expand his garden.
13:39He starts digging and digging, and suddenly he hits something really hard.
13:44Now, this is deeply unusual because the soil there is pretty loose and sandy.
13:53He bends down to take a closer look, brushes across the soil with his hand, and he sees some sharp fragments.
14:01He takes a closer look, and he thinks that they look very much like pieces of fossilized bone.
14:07The man reaches out to the University of Lisbon, who sends a team of paleontologists to investigate.
14:14They confirm that these were indeed fossil fragments, and then a deeper investigation ensues.
14:20Pretty soon, they find another fossil, but this one's no tiny fragment.
14:26Now, this time, they find a complete bone.
14:28They uncover three feet of it, four feet of it, and there's still more in the ground.
14:35Ultimately, when they retrieve it, it's ten feet long.
14:41This is one of the largest ribbed fossils ever recorded.
14:46So scientists ask, what could this giant animal be?
14:50From the shape and the size, they are able to determine that these bones come from a sauropod.
15:00Sauropods lived over 100 million years ago, and are the largest land animals to ever roam the earth.
15:08Sauropods were herbivores.
15:10They had a long neck, long tail, and they grew into the largest dinosaurs ever.
15:15With very tiny heads, because, you know, how much weight do you want to put at the end of a 40-foot lever?
15:22The long necks allowed them to graze over a wide area of vegetation without having to move.
15:29And they had to do a lot of grazing, because sauropods could weigh as much as 50 tons.
15:38Experts estimate that the individual uncovered from the backyard in Portugal
15:42was probably close to 40 feet tall and around 80 feet long, roughly the size of a tennis court.
15:48It's one of the largest dinosaur specimens ever found in Europe.
15:53Despite millions of years passing, the ribs are still in place and aligned, just like when the dinosaur was alive.
16:01That's really unusual for fossils this old.
16:04Hopefully, the rest of the fossils from this magnificent beast will be found, and it will be stalking the floors of a museum very soon.
16:16For one man in Turkey, a small remodel opens the door to a whole buried world.
16:23It's 1963 in the Cappadocia region of central Turkey, and a man is remodeling his home.
16:33But he keeps having a strange predicament.
16:35His pet chickens keep disappearing.
16:38He starts investigating, and he traces the problem to the basement, where he finds a small opening in the wall.
16:44Curious and frustrated, he grabs a sledgehammer and knocks it down.
16:53Behind the wall, there's a cavity.
16:55Not a pipe, not an old cellar, but a tunnel.
17:01He climbs through the wall and starts to walk.
17:04One tunnel becomes two, and then it connects to different chambers.
17:10And eventually, it seems to stretch off into a dark distance.
17:14Fully weirded out, the man retreats back to his house and informs the local authorities.
17:21Investigators inspect the tunnels, and what they uncover is beyond anything anyone imagined.
17:28It's an enormous ancient underground city.
17:31This sprawling maze spans over 170 square miles.
17:41It reaches 18 stories, 280 feet below the surface, and is carved into hardened volcanic ash called Tuff.
17:49But what's truly unbelievable is that it was originally built around 3,000 years ago.
17:54The city is named Derinkuyu after the town that sits above it.
18:03And it wasn't just a place to hide.
18:06It was a fully functional underground city.
18:09There are schools, churches, a convent, apartments, even an underground wine press.
18:15The upper level was found to have stables where they kept livestock so that the odors would not penetrate down into the lower levels where people lived.
18:26They truly thought of and designed everything that humans would need to carry out life underground.
18:31There are over 50 ventilation shafts that ensure that fresh air is delivered to all levels.
18:38And there's a well that reaches over 180 feet to fill numerous water tanks.
18:44It's an engineering marvel.
18:46There's also a security system.
18:49Several tunnels have enormous 1,000-pound millstone doors that could be used to close off the tunnels from inside.
18:56Each door has a hole right in the center, big enough for a sphere to poke through.
19:02But who built it? And why remain a mystery?
19:07Archaeologists find a Hittite statue of a lion and other relics during their excavation.
19:13This leads some to believe that the Hittites built the city as their last refuge,
19:18when their capital was under attack from the Phrygians in the 12th century BC.
19:22Others believe that this kind of incredible construction could only have been the work of the Phrygians themselves.
19:28But one thing that's clear is that the original builders were not the only ones that lived here.
19:33Eventually, Derinkuyu was inhabited by Byzantine-era Christians who used the city to avoid persecution,
19:40which explains the cruciform church on the lowest level, 18 stories down.
19:44All together, researchers find more than 600 hidden entrances, including one that extends much further than anyone thought.
19:55Researchers find a five-mile tunnel that connects this subterranean world to another underground city called Kaimakli.
20:02This city is smaller, less elaborate than Derinkuyu, but the design is nearly identical.
20:10Over the ensuing years, they find over 200 more of these underground cities spread throughout the region.
20:17Each one a sleeping giant carved in stone that serves as a monument to survival.
20:24Our next discovery takes us to a very different kind of hidden world, this time in Rome.
20:33It's 2006 in Rome, and workers are drilling test holes ahead of the construction of a new underground parking garage.
20:44That is, until their drill hit something unexpected.
20:53As is the way in a city with as rich and ancient a history as Rome, when you're digging and you hit something strange, you need to stop and investigate.
21:04The workers take a closer look and they find pottery shards and pieces of jewelry.
21:13So they ultimately call in the archaeologists to take over.
21:16And they uncover more pottery, parts of a fountain, and even the foundations of a portico.
21:23Then they find something really unusual.
21:25A piece of glass filled with transparent, crystal-like stones.
21:33The crystal stones are a major clue.
21:36In 40 AD, the philosopher Philo described seeing this kind of glass with these crystals on a visit he made to the Roman Emperor Caligula.
21:46The archaeologists realize they found Caligula's long-lost infamous pleasure garden.
21:55Caligula was the third emperor of Rome, and many consider him to be the most eccentric.
22:02Some accounts say he believed he was a god.
22:05Others say he was just insane.
22:07But either way, his behavior was bizarre.
22:10He once made talking about goats in his presence a capital offense.
22:13He would appear in public dressed like Greco-Roman gods like Venus and Apollo.
22:21He once declared war with the sea and even appointed his horse consul to the Senate of Rome.
22:29But Caligula took access to a whole new level in his pleasure garden.
22:35Caligula surrounded himself in luxury.
22:37So when he wasn't feeding Romans to the lions or sleeping with his political rival's wives or even his own sisters, he enjoyed spending time in his pleasure garden.
22:50Excavations revealed frescoes inlaid with rubies and precious stones, marble staircases and also pieces of jewelry.
22:58They also find animal bones, but not pets like cats or dogs. The bones they find are from lions, from bears, from ostriches, from peacocks. Just rare and exotic animals brought in to impress his guests and to make himself out to be this larger than life, hedonistic, godlike figure.
23:19Ultimately, Caligula's reign of indulgence didn't last.
23:26After just four years in power, Caligula was assassinated by his own bodyguards. His body was cremated in the garden he loved.
23:34By the fourth century, the garden is abandoned and fades from memory until it's rediscovered in 2015.
23:42When archaeologists finally finished the excavation, over 100,000 artifacts are uncovered.
23:50Today, the site has been transformed into a museum and it contains many of those very same relics and preserved architecture.
23:57Compared to the legend of his life, the ruins of his pleasure garden are surprisingly tasteful.
24:03But the jewels, the bads, exotic animals do point to one thing. Caligula threw one hell of a party.
24:12And 2,000 years later, we're still cleaning up after it.
24:18In 1992, a man sets out to solve a local legend, but instead uncovers a long-lost engineering wonder.
24:27It's 1992 in the Zhejiang province of China, and farmer Wu Anai is a man on a mission.
24:37He's just bought a water pump. And with the help of his neighbors, he's trying to drain a pond in his hometown of Longyu.
24:44It sounds crazy, but for generations, locals have passed down tales that the ponds are bottomless.
24:51And Anai is determined to get to the bottom of this legend.
24:54So he turns on the pumps and watches.
25:00As the water recedes, it reveals more than just mud and stone.
25:05When Anai peeks into the hole, he can't believe his eyes.
25:12Beneath the surface of this pond is actually a massive man-made cave.
25:16Its walls are intricately carved, its ceilings are held up by pillars, and every inch is decorated with these chiseled parallel lines.
25:29Anai and his neighbors cannot believe what they found, so they go and they drain more ponds in the region.
25:34Sure enough, they find four more caves, each as elaborately carved and decorated as the first one.
25:45These things are huge, ranging from 25 to 60 feet deep and 50 to 100 feet wide.
25:53Just as impressive is the engineering.
25:55The sloped walls help distribute weight, preventing collapse from the ground above.
26:02Every cavern faces south, which allows the caves to be filled with natural light.
26:08Over the next few years, researchers find 19 more hand-carved caves.
26:14We have over 300,000 square feet of engineered space, but no signs of the builders, the techniques, or of their intentions.
26:25This lack of cultural or material evidence is unprecedented.
26:30Archaeologists date their construction to between 206 B.C. and 23 A.D.
26:37This makes them the biggest underground construction project of that era.
26:41This is a project on par with other monumental architectural wonders like the Great Pyramid of Giza.
26:49As mysterious as the pyramids are, these caves are even more so.
26:54Some researchers have suggested that the caves might have been used to store grain.
27:00Others have thought that they might have been a mine for natural resources.
27:04And then there are those who think that these hidden structures are so secretive
27:08that they must have been used for religious or other cultural ceremonies for the elite.
27:14With little to go on, the mysterious caverns become known as the Longyu Caves,
27:20named after the town where they were found.
27:23In China, they're considered the ninth wonder of the ancient world.
27:27But for all their size and sophistication, they raise more questions than answers.
27:31The fact that we still don't know who built the caves or why makes them the most fascinating mysteries of the ancient world.
27:40A nice curiosity uncovered an ancient mystery.
27:46A find 20 years later in Serbia reveals something even stranger.
27:52It's July 2023 in the small mining town of Kostelac in Serbia.
27:59Miners are busy excavating in a quarry when about 25 feet deep, their mechanical digger hits something really hard.
28:09It sounds like wood, so they figure that it's a buried tree trunk.
28:15But they decide to play it safe and take a closer look.
28:18When the workers brush some of the dirt away, they confirm it definitely is wood.
28:23However, this is definitely no tree.
28:28It's got sharp, crisp lines.
28:31It's been carved by man, and it looks really old.
28:35Archaeologists are called in to examine the site.
28:38And as they dig, the find gets bigger and bigger.
28:41From one plank to another, to dozens.
28:44They've uncovered a massive wooden structure.
28:47It's the remains of an enormous riverboat.
28:53Now that it's exposed, archaeologists rush to fully dig out the boat before it falls apart.
29:01It takes them two days to fully uncover the boat.
29:05And it's huge.
29:06It's 65 feet long.
29:08It's 11 feet wide.
29:10Researchers believe it was a cargo vessel crewed by up to 30 men.
29:15But curiously, there's no cargo.
29:18There's no personal items.
29:20There's no human remains.
29:22Even stranger, it's underground and miles away from the nearest waterway.
29:29The Danube River is more than two miles away.
29:32But it turns out that it has shifted over the centuries.
29:36Researchers believe that at one point, it flowed directly over this spot.
29:39The ship likely sank here, and then the river changed course, and then the ship was left to be buried by the shifting sands.
29:49The whole area seems to have changed centuries ago, because just a mile away, there's an even larger archaeological excavation.
29:56The ancient port of Viminosium.
30:01Viminosium was a major ancient Roman trading hub and military port that boasted a population of about 45,000 people.
30:11Its ruins included temples, theaters, palaces, even a hippodrome.
30:15Beginning in the fourth century, Viminosium was attacked by invading forces, including Attila the Hun in his campaign against the Roman Empire.
30:25By the time the Roman Empire began to collapse in 476, Viminosium was abandoned.
30:30Experts conclude the buried ship was likely servicing the port of Viminosium around 1700 years ago.
30:40But questions still remain about its final voyage.
30:44The ship has no signs of battle scars, no signs of cargo, no signs of crew, which suggests it may have been sunk intentionally.
30:52Perhaps better to lose it than for it to fall into enemy hands.
30:55After nearly two millennia underground, this river barge is still a mystery, but at least it's finally returning to port.
31:05Road construction usually slows you down.
31:08But in 2024, it stopped everything when cruising Mexico hit something incredible.
31:15In June of 2024, just outside of Mexico City, construction workers are expanding Highway 105.
31:25As the workers labor under the blazing summer sun, trying to dig out a hillside to create space for a new lane, they hit an unexpected obstacle.
31:33It's a flat stone, which is pretty strange, but stranger still is that it is attached to another flat stone and another flat stone and they're all linked together by mortar.
31:48All these stones form a steeply pitched wall buried underneath the mountain.
31:55They realize this is clearly part of a structure.
32:00They halt all work and they call in the archaeologists.
32:05As they dig up this angled wall, it appears to stretch in two directions.
32:10One, up the side of the mountain, and two, down towards the road.
32:15Soon they begin to make out of shape.
32:18They find stepped corners on the outer edge of the wall.
32:21And behind that, another wall continues at a 90 degree angle.
32:26This crew thought they were working to widen the highway.
32:30But what they've really done is discovered an ancient pyramid.
32:36And not just any pyramid.
32:38The base stretches out to around 1,000 feet, about 25% bigger than the Great Pyramid of Giza.
32:47Archaeologists realized the pyramid dates back to a mysterious and largely unknown ancient civilization known as the Metzka.
32:58The Metzka were a multi-ethnic group that lived in the area from around the year 950 to 1350.
33:04Little is known about this culture because almost nothing has been found from the time of their reign.
33:10Until now.
33:12Unfortunately, experts can't fully excavate the pyramid.
33:16So they use drones and imaging technology to scan the entire site from the air.
33:21When they analyze the data, they're shocked.
33:24There is an entire ceremonial complex with the pyramid as its centerpiece.
33:29This discovery suggests that this site was of great significance to the Metzka.
33:35A combination religious site and cultural hub.
33:39And just when we're hot on the heels of learning and uncovering this treasure trove of the ancient world,
33:46all work comes to a stop.
33:48Funding dries up and archaeologists are forced to abandon the site.
33:52Then they actually have to rebury it to protect the site from the elements and from any looters.
34:02There's obviously more to uncover here.
34:05More stories about the history of this otherwise forgotten civilization.
34:08But until more funding materializes, this giant pyramid and the ancient civilization that constructed it remains once again buried underground.
34:23Across the sea in England, another surprising relic is buried even deeper.
34:28Not a pyramid, but a far more personal piece of the past.
34:36The year is 1972.
34:37And in the city of York, England, construction has just begun on a new branch of Lloyd's Bank.
34:45They fire up the excavator and start to haul away layers of peat.
34:50And that's when the workers notice that mixed in with the soil are some strange looking objects.
34:58There's pieces of timber, there's textiles, and there's straps of leather.
35:03Archaeologists are called in, and as they are sifting through these artifacts, they find an object they can't quite identify.
35:13It's rough and cylindrical in shape.
35:19It's about eight inches long, two inches wide, and it weighs about half a pound.
35:26Archaeologists take a closer look at the mystery object under a microscope.
35:31They see evidence of plant pollen, cereal bran, and other organic material.
35:38And before long, it becomes pretty evident what they're looking at.
35:40What they have found is an enormous human coprolite.
35:46It's another way of saying a gigantic piece of fossilized poop.
35:51In fact, it's the largest intact piece of fossilized human feces ever discovered.
35:58What's unusual about it, apart from its gargantuous size,
36:02is that typically, human feces breaks down pretty quickly, way before it has a chance to fossilize.
36:08But in this case, because it fell in peat, which is a low-oxygen environment, it didn't rot.
36:17Testing puts it in the ninth century AD, right in the middle of the Viking occupation of York.
36:23In 866 AD, the Viking great heathen army conquered the city.
36:30York became the Viking capital in England until 954 AD, and based on the diet, this coprolite was left behind by a Viking.
36:40Today, the relic is on display at the Jorvik Viking Center in York.
36:48It may not be the most important Viking artifact ever found, but it is a strong contender for number two.
36:55The ocean is full of big creatures and even bigger secrets, but none like the one a group of fishermen find in Norway.
37:07It's April 26, 2019, just off the coastal village of Tufjord in Norway.
37:17You have a group of fishermen that are on their boat, and before long, they feel something colliding with the side of their ship.
37:24One of the men on board looks down in the water, and he sees a large beluga whale rubbing itself against the side of the boat.
37:38Even though this animal is large, 14 feet long, maybe 2,700 pounds, it seems friendly, tame even.
37:48But it seems to be tangled in something.
37:56He puts on a survival suit and jumps into the water to help free it.
38:01But as he gets closer, he realizes that the whale is in a harness, so he unbuckles it and sets the beluga whale free.
38:09Back on the boat, they see something strange.
38:12There's a camera mount on the harness, but the camera itself is missing.
38:19They also notice a stamp on the harness that says, Equipment, St. Petersburg.
38:25So it looks like this whale came from Russia.
38:29Nearly overnight, the beluga becomes a media sensation in Norway.
38:34But something seems off about this friendly giant.
38:37This whale doesn't swim back north towards his more natural habitat.
38:41He instead stays in the harbor, socializing with fishermen and tourists.
38:47Hi. Hi.
38:50I mean, the whale, he seems too well-trained to be a wild whale.
38:55That's when Norway's domestic intelligence agency puts two and two together and comes up with a shocking theory.
39:01The strange behavior, the harness, the familiarity with humans, this whale was clearly trained to perform specific tasks.
39:11Which leads investigators to hypothesize that this whale is an intelligence gathering spy.
39:17For years, rumors had spread around intelligence circles that the Russian Navy was actively trying to get their hands on aquatic animals to train them as Russian spies.
39:32Now, of course, Moscow denies that any such program ever existed.
39:36Although there was that one time that they placed a newspaper ad seeking to buy five bottlenose dolphins for $24,000.
39:42As unlikely as it seems, the spy whale theory picks up momentum, leading investigators straight to a possible source.
39:52Intelligence officers comb over satellite imagery and indeed they find a nearby Russian naval base.
39:59The base has large sea pens that would be perfect for housing beluga whales.
40:03They conclude that this beluga either escaped from its pen or that it might have actually become lost during a training session in open waters.
40:09In honor of his Russian roots, the whale is given the name Havaldemir, combining Haval, which means whale, in Norwegian, with Vladimir, as in Putin.
40:24Sadly, Havaldemir's story does not have a happy ending.
40:28In 2024, his body is discovered floating in Rysavika Bay in Norway.
40:32Of course, given his purported spy background, rumors begin to fly that he's been taken out by the Russians.
40:39But the Norwegian Veterinary Institute does an autopsy and determines that Havaldemir died from a bacterial infection.
40:46To this day, Russia has neither confirmed nor denied Havaldemir's origins.
40:50But one thing is certain, whether he was a runaway spy or just a very confused beluga, this giant whale left behind a legacy that was larger than life.
41:02A colossal city buried in the jungle, a massive mammal working as a secret agent, and a metropolis unearthed 200 feet below the surface.
41:17Sometimes, gigantic discoveries lead to even bigger revelations.
41:21I'm Danny Trejo.
41:23Thanks for watching Mysteries Unearthed.
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