Mysteries Unearthed with Danny Trejo - Season 2 Episode 02- Blasts From the Past
#EnglishMovie #cdrama #drama #engsub #chinesedramaengsub #movieshortfull
#EnglishMovie #cdrama #drama #engsub #chinesedramaengsub #movieshortfull
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00Buried anywhere, under the earth, beneath the sea, or even right under our own feet.
00:11And when we stumble upon them, sometimes what we find can change history.
00:20Tonight, explosive discoveries from a ticking time bomb underneath our nation's capital.
00:28As he peers down into the hole, he's stunned.
00:32They are panicked. This is a real World War I mortar shell.
00:37To remnants of a killer asteroid.
00:40From the size of the crater, the asteroid was about twice the size of the superdome,
00:46striking the earth at over 45,000 miles per hour.
00:50The impact was a cataclysmic event.
00:54To a lost weapon of war.
00:56It's loaded with over 270 pounds of high explosives.
01:00In other words, this thing could bring down a small building.
01:04Join us now, because nothing stays hidden forever.
01:08When fishermen head out to sea, they hope to return with a full net.
01:23But one captain hauls in a catch that might just sink him.
01:28It's October 2022, and Captain Glenn Westcott and his crew are fishing off the coast of Rhode Island.
01:39It's a family operation, so helping him man the rigging are his son and nephew.
01:43As they haul their catch and drop it on deck, fish are flopping around everywhere.
01:49That's when Captain Glenn notices something unusual.
01:53Mixed with the fish is a large, corroded metal barrel.
01:58But it doesn't look like a normal barrel like an oil drum.
02:03It's covered with all these bolts and metal plates, and it's really heavy.
02:09The captain's first move is to call the Coast Guard, who then races a boat out to evacuate the crew.
02:15The Coast Guard quickly realizes that they're in over their head, so they call in the Navy.
02:20When the Navy explosive experts arrive, they lose no time in identifying the threat.
02:26It's a World War II MK-6 depth charge, loaded with 270 pounds of TNT.
02:34It's enough to bring down a small building.
02:38During World War II, depth charges played a vital role, serving as a primary defense against German U-boats.
02:45After these depth charges roll off the back of a destroyer escort or a frigate, they sink very rapidly.
02:53And when they reach a specific depth, which has been preset by the crew, the pressure fuse triggers the bomb, and it goes off.
03:01And it sends a shockwave, and that shockwave reaches the enemy submarine hull and crushes it.
03:07The goal was to sink any submarines lurking in the area.
03:10In some cases, multiple ships would rain down hundreds of depth charges, hoping one of them will cause the destruction of the U-boat.
03:21Based on where it was found, naval historians believe this particular depth charge was dropped in one of the final sea battles of the war.
03:30So, in May 1945, a Coast Guard frigate and a Navy destroyer spotted a German submarine, U-853, just two miles off the coast of Rhode Island.
03:41The two American ships unleashed a barrage of 195 depth charges, hoping to sink the sub.
03:51Eventually, the relentless pounding sent the German U-boat to the ocean's floor.
03:55Apparently, not all those depth charges detonated, because here one is, 80 years later, in Captain Glenn's net.
04:05All of those control measures that are in the depth charge to keep it from going off have all corroded.
04:11It really could go off at any minute.
04:12So, the Navy works with the Coast Guard to set up a perimeter to ensure that nobody gets too close.
04:17The Navy carefully removes this from the fishing boat, they take it out to sea, they're a mile offshore, they put other explosives around it, and they detonate it.
04:28And it's an explosion, bystanders said they could feel on the shore.
04:33I know fishermen are full of tall tales about the one that got away, but in this case, I'm sure that Captain Glenn and his crew were happy to let this one go.
04:43The ocean floor isn't the only place that World War II left behind a few surprises.
04:49Just ask the kids who uncovered something just as shocking on a beach a decade earlier.
04:55In May of 2008, two nine-year-old boys are playing on the sands of Ovig Beach in Denmark on a family vacation.
05:07They're jumping in the water, running around, they're having a great time.
05:11One of the boys spots something near a bluff.
05:14It looks like a bucket sticking out of the stand, so he runs over to check it out.
05:19But when he gets there, he finds something even more interesting.
05:24Buried in the sand next to the bucket is what appears to be a metal door with concrete around it.
05:31They clear the sand from around the door and pry it open.
05:36When they peek in, they discover something amazing and horrifying.
05:42This is a concrete room that's about 200 square feet, and it's filled with beds, uniforms, and military equipment.
05:53They even find that some of the equipment is marked with a swastika.
05:58The authorities finally arrive and call in archaeologists, who confirm what the locals already suspect.
06:05They found a long-lost Nazi bunker from World War II.
06:09In the early days of the war, German forces invade Denmark.
06:15But the Danish military is no match for the Nazi war machine, and the country quickly falls.
06:22The Germans then spend the rest of the war fortifying Denmark's western shoreline.
06:27These bunkers are part of a broader system that Germany builds during World War II
06:31that consists of over 7,000 bunkers and fighting positions that stretch from Norway all the way to the Franco-Spanish border.
06:37It's designed to defend their conquered territory from a counterattack by the Allies.
06:43The project is known as the Atlantic Wall.
06:47The scale is staggering.
06:49It takes over 300,000 workers to build these bunkers.
06:53They use over 700 million cubic feet of concrete and over a million tons of steel.
07:00The Danish bunkers are designed to hold out against anything the Allies can hit them with.
07:05They have six-foot-thick walls to stop bomb blasts, mortars, and gunfire.
07:13With thousands of such bunkers and fighting positions along the Danish coast,
07:18archaeologists are convinced that there could be more hidden by sand bins.
07:21So they start searching.
07:23Sure enough, nearby, they find two more bunkers poking out of the sand.
07:30These things have been buried out of sight for nearly 70 years, and now suddenly they've found three of them.
07:37What's really amazing is that the inside of these bunkers, they're like time capsules, untouched since the end of the Second World War.
07:43They find boots, socks, underwear, Hitler postage stamps, soda bottles, mustard.
07:52They even find half-finished bottles of schnapps and a pipe with tobacco still in it.
07:57What they don't find are any bodies or remains of German soldiers.
08:05When the war ended with the German surrender on May 8, 1945,
08:09the soldiers inside these positions simply walked out, closed the doors, walked to the nearest town, and surrendered.
08:15Soon after, many of the bunkers were looted and stripped, but some were never discovered.
08:20Until now.
08:21In the end, all of the items inside are preserved and sent to a museum.
08:27And the bunkers themselves, although once hidden, are now preserved and open to the public.
08:32They attract thousands of visitors every year.
08:40When you're digging in your yard, you have to be careful.
08:44You could hit a pipe, sprinkler line, or if you're really unlucky, something much more dangerous.
08:54In 1993, in the Spring Valley section of Washington, D.C., a construction crew is preparing to dig a trench.
09:01They're surrounded by some of the fanciest houses in D.C., the kind of place where your next-door neighbor might be a U.S. senator or an ambassador.
09:08A backhoe operator fires up his engine and begins digging.
09:13Suddenly, the bucket on his backhoe hits something and makes a large clang.
09:19He climbs out of the machine to go down and have a closer look.
09:22As he peers down into the hole, he's stunned.
09:26What he's hit isn't a rock, and it looks pretty alarming.
09:30It's metal and shaped like a foot-long bullet.
09:34They are panning, so the crew calls the fire department.
09:37When they see it, they panic and call the cops.
09:40And yes, the cops also panic, so they call the bomb squad.
09:44The bomb squad confirms that this is a real World War I mortar shell.
09:51Concerned there could be more bombs buried nearby, the authorities carefully search the rest of the area.
09:59They find dozens more of these mortar shells.
10:02Of course, they immediately evacuate 25 of the surrounding homes, and they call in the Army to try to get a handle on the situation.
10:10Even though these shells are old and corroded, they're still alive, therefore still dangerous.
10:15So they could explode.
10:17When the Army arrives, they start carefully removing these shells, and within a few days, they've uncovered 140 of these.
10:25However, what looks like standard ammunition hides an even deadlier secret.
10:32These shells were not designed to kill and maim through fragmentation.
10:35It's worse than that because this site used to be home to a U.S. Army chemical weapons depot.
10:42Inside of these shells are some of the deadliest chemical compounds known to humankind.
10:49World War I broke out in 1914, and it was the first war that started since the Industrial Revolution.
10:57A lot of new weapons were being tried out for the first time, and one of the worst of these was chemical weapons.
11:03Highly poisonous compounds like mustard gas were loaded into shells and fired at the enemy.
11:08When they hit, they'd unleash a cloud of death.
11:13They would burn and blister flesh, destroy soldiers' lungs, cause blindness, and often they'd lead to an excruciating, painful death.
11:23In 1917, as the United States is preparing to intervene in the First World War, it establishes a chemical weapons service in the U.S. Army.
11:32The new U.S. Army Chemical Service enters into an agreement with the new American University, and together they establish this facility called Camp Leach.
11:43There they tested chemicals on soldiers' skin, tried out new designs of gas masks, and they developed toxic chemical compounds, loaded them into mortars, and fired them there right on site.
11:54But before the new weapons could be sent to the front, Germany surrendered, and the war was over.
12:02Camp Leach was shut down, they dug pits in the ground, stuffed the chemical weapons in, and just buried them.
12:09At the time, the military thought these chemicals would dissipate on their own.
12:13So no one really thought much when 10 years later, 1928, the ground was turned over to developers to build what would become this Ritzy neighborhood.
12:23Now, seven decades later, these canisters remain just as lethal as the day they were buried, making this wealthy neighborhood a dangerous minefield.
12:35The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and several private hazardous waste disposal companies have been working to try to bring this problem under control.
12:44But the problem keeps getting bigger and bigger.
12:47They'll clean up one burial site of former World War I chemical weapons, and then immediately find another one.
12:53The Spring Valley site is about 661 acres of land, and nearly 1,600 private homes, several embassies, and American universities sit atop this collection of toxic chemicals.
13:08In the end, it takes the government nearly 30 years and $250 million to clean up the mess.
13:15They remove over 1,000 military shells filled with the deadliest chemicals and poisons man has ever developed.
13:21And yes, today, they say they think they've got it all.
13:24But honestly, if I were buying a house, I'd be looking for a discount.
13:29Next up, another war era surprise washes up on the shores of Normandy, just in time for its close-up.
13:41In 1961, a film crew is clearing the beaches where the historic D-Day landing site occurred in Normandy, France.
13:49They're prepping to start filming their own World War II epic film called The Longest Day, starring none other than the Duke himself, John Wayne.
13:58Before the cameras can start rolling, the beach, which has a lot of debris on it, has got to be cleaned up.
14:04As they come up with sand, they uncover what at first looks like a random piece of metal.
14:08But as they begin to clear the sand away from it, it gets bigger and bigger.
14:13They, at first, think they've uncovered some kind of vehicle, maybe a jeep.
14:18They keep digging, and it becomes pretty clear that this thing, it's way bigger than a jeep.
14:23It is a buried, full-size tank.
14:28The film's military advisors quickly identify the machine.
14:32It's a vintage World War II Sherman tank used by the Americans on the D-Day landing beaches 17 years earlier.
14:42On June 6, 1944, nearly 160,000 Allied soldiers crossed the English Channel and landed on the Normandy beaches.
14:52This was a coordinated attack along 50 miles of German-controlled and fortified coastline, and it turned out to be one of the bloodiest battles of the war.
15:01One of the reasons that it was so difficult for Americans was because that initial wave was also supposed to include 64 Sherman tanks.
15:10The tanks were supposed to provide cover, lay down fire, and then roll over German fortifications.
15:17Unfortunately, nearly half of the tank fleas sunk in the rough waters of the English Channel before they reached Normandy.
15:27While this particular tank was lucky enough to make it to the shore, it quickly ran into another problem.
15:35The film's military advisors think that the tank may have broken down not long after it made it to the beach,
15:41and that it was left behind during the Allied advance.
15:44Eventually, it sank into the sand, where, in the end, it was covered by a dune.
15:50But it turns out to be a fortunate find for the producers of The Longest Day.
15:54They're desperately looking for period-accurate props for the movie, so when they find the tank, they're ecstatic.
16:00The film crew refurbishes the tank, slaps on a fresh coat of paint, and gives it a role in the D-Day sequence of the movie.
16:07And that's how a lost, forgotten relic turned into a motion picture star.
16:20Sure, home improvement projects often come with surprises.
16:24But for one couple in France, what was hidden in their wall was no mold or mouse nest.
16:31In 2017, in France's Burgundy region, a couple is remodeling their home.
16:43And as they're doing so, they pull down the drywall.
16:47And in one area of the house, they see that there's something hidden inside.
16:53As it turns out, the object is an old pistol.
16:55They pull it out of the wall, and they're shocked to see there's another gun behind it, then another, and then a submachine gun.
17:08By the time they're done, the couple has pulled out three Sten submachine guns, three pistols, over a dozen live hand grenades, and a thousand rounds of ammunition.
17:19The biggest mystery is that two of the machine guns have names engraved on them, Pipette and Alice.
17:29The couple contact a local military museum who date the weapons back to World War II.
17:35Turns out, at the same time, French Resistance leader Armand Simonot was living in the house.
17:41The French Resistance was a paramilitary unit waging guerrilla warfare against the German occupation.
17:47It started as a scattered and loosely organized group.
17:52But by 1943, French General Charles de Gaulle was coordinating the activities of multiple factions from exile in England.
18:00The French Resistance blew up rail lines, sabotaged supply routes, rescued downed allied pilots.
18:08And by 1944, they grew into a 400,000-strong force that was a major thorn in Germany's side.
18:18Among them, the well-armed Commander Armand Simonot.
18:23It's clear that Simonot hid these weapons in his house from prying eyes or to keep them close in case the enemy came knocking.
18:31When he died, the secret died with it.
18:34And it wasn't unearthed until a sledgehammer hit the wall.
18:37It still leaves one question.
18:41Who were Pipette and Alice?
18:43Researchers wonder, were Pipette and Alice fighters?
18:47Or were these just simply nicknames that people gave to the guns?
18:51Fortunately, the couple that found these items understood their historical significance.
18:56They donate them to a local museum, and they remain on display as a testament to the courage and the sacrifice of the French Resistance.
19:08Finding an arsenal hidden in your wall is pretty wild.
19:12But that's child's play compared to what's found at one playground.
19:17On January 14th, 2025, a crew is hard at work expanding a children's park in Northumberland, England.
19:29They're adding things like a balance beam and a net bridge, and they have to clear the land and lay foundations to install those.
19:37As they dig, one of the workers strikes something solid, and it rings out with a clang.
19:45Work grinds to a halt as the rest of the crew comes over to take a look at this partially exposed object.
19:51As they clear away more dirt, a shape comes into view that stops them cold.
19:56It's a bomb.
20:02It's a foot long with a conical shape and what looks like a fuse at one end.
20:07The first call goes to the local police, and within minutes, the bomb squad is on site.
20:14The experts quickly identify it as a British World War II-era bomb.
20:18It's not big. It's only 10 pounds, so it's quite a bit smaller than most World War II bombs.
20:24But with a live fuse and an intact charge, it's still lethal.
20:30Authorities evacuate the entire park.
20:33Local officials bring in a private bomb disposal company for what they expect will be a couple of days of searching the site to make sure there are no more explosives.
20:41It soon becomes clear that this is a much bigger job than they expected.
20:46By the end of the first day, they've uncovered 65 more bombs.
20:52The next day, they find 90 more.
20:55Altogether, they remove 176 bombs and smoke devices.
21:01The real mystery isn't just how many bombs there are.
21:05It's why they're here in the first place.
21:07It turns out this playground was sitting on what used to be a British Home Guard training site.
21:14These are specialized training munitions that were called practice bombs.
21:18Don't be fooled by the name. Practice does not mean harmless.
21:23These bombs have a smaller explosive charge than regular ordnance, but they can still explode.
21:29And when they do, they can kill.
21:31These bombs are used in training exercises where the bomb is dropped over a target.
21:36When it strikes the ground, it can either produce smoke or a visible flash that allows the trainee to ascertain whether or not they hit the target.
21:46During World War II, the Home Guard was a last line of defense.
21:50A citizen militia trained to fight in case the Nazis invaded.
21:53But the German invasion never occurs.
21:57And then, in the aftermath of the war, the practice bombs that were located there were not carefully dealt with.
22:03They were simply buried under the training grounds and forgotten about until now.
22:09Until authorities are confident that every bomb has been found, the playground in Northumberland remains closed.
22:16But when they are able to safely reopen, there's no doubt the kids will have a real blast.
22:21Some explosions don't impact cities or battlefields.
22:32They ripple through space.
22:34And on one quiet night in 2016, an amateur stargazer catches something no one has ever seen before.
22:42One night in September 2016, Victor Buzo is outside taking pictures with his new camera.
22:52When he gets a cool idea, he attaches the camera to his 16-inch telescope to try to take some pictures of the stars.
23:00After searching around for something interesting to shoot, he spots what appears to be a distant, spiral-shaped galaxy.
23:09Victor sets the camera to take a sequence of images, each with a 20-second exposure.
23:17He waits for the camera to click, and then he checks to see how each photograph turned out.
23:22The images turn out about how he was expecting.
23:26Some great images of the spiral-shaped galaxy.
23:31Cool, but ultimately unexceptional.
23:34But then, in one of the last photos, he sees something strange.
23:40A bright dot of light suddenly appears in the galaxy.
23:44But what's even weirder is that the dot of light gets brighter and brighter in subsequent images.
23:52Victor thinks he's captured something interesting, but he's not really sure what it could be.
23:57So he posts the pictures on an astronomer's message board, where they catch the attention of some Argentinian astronomers.
24:04They immediately freak out.
24:08It turns out that Victor Buzo has captured something that no one has ever imaged before.
24:14One of the holy grails of astronomy.
24:21It's a supernova event, taking place over 60 million light-years away.
24:27A supernova occurs when a very massive star, which is essentially a nuclear furnace, runs out of fuel.
24:34In that case, the outer layers of the star collapse inward, crushing the supernova down onto the core.
24:41A shockwave goes through the entire thing, and that triggers the biggest explosions in the universe.
24:48When a supernova blows, it destroys everything in its solar system.
24:54All the moons, all the planets, everything.
24:56The blast is so powerful, it can affect planets and other star systems light-years away.
25:07Victor's incredible photos give scientists their first visual evidence that many of their theories about supernovas are correct.
25:15It's one thing to think you know how something happens.
25:18It's another to see it with your own eyes.
25:22You just happened to be pointed in the right place to capture a star that burned for billions of years
25:29at the exact moment that flash of light hit planet Earth.
25:35As proof, you just never know what you might find the next time you look up into the night sky.
25:42Not all evidence of huge space explosions come from above.
25:49Sometimes it's hidden far beneath the waves.
25:56In 2017, engineers are exploring the seafloor off the coast of Guinea in West Africa.
26:03They work for a company that's looking for offshore oil deposits,
26:07and they use sound waves to create a map of the Earth deep underground.
26:13When Dr. U.S.D. Nicholson starts breaking down their data,
26:17he notices something strange, and it has nothing to do with oil.
26:21About 3,000 feet beneath the ocean's surface, there appears to be a small ridgeline or mountain range.
26:31What's strange is that it doesn't fit with the known geology of the region.
26:35As he expands his search, Nicholson realizes this odd geological feature stretches nearly five miles,
26:44and it's in the shape of a circle.
26:48He's looking at a massive, round ridge, and in the center appears to be a mountain.
26:56He also sees that outside of this ring is debris that looks like it's been blown out of the center in all directions.
27:03Nicholson has an aha moment, because he's seen this type of formation before.
27:10It's the site of a massive meteorite crater.
27:13News spreads in the scientific community about the discovery, which becomes known as the Nader Crater.
27:19From the size of the crater, astronomers are able to calculate that the asteroid that created it was about 1,500 feet wide.
27:27That's an object twice the size of the Superdome in New Orleans, striking the Earth at over 45,000 miles per hour.
27:36Upon impact, it would have created a tsunami 2,600 feet high.
27:44That's a wall of water twice the height of the Empire State Building, crashing upon the Atlantic coast, wreaking complete heaven.
27:53But the real surprise comes when scientists date samples from the impact zone.
27:59It turns out that this asteroid struck 66 million years ago, and that catches everyone by surprise,
28:05because there was another very well-known asteroid that also struck around the same time.
28:11That asteroid was called Chicxulub, and its impact is credited with wiping out the dinosaurs.
28:19That asteroid was between 6 and 9 miles wide, which is wider than the island of Manhattan.
28:25It left a 124-mile crater under the Yucatan Peninsula, and it blackened the skies with ash and debris,
28:34triggering global fires and wiping out 75% of all life on Earth.
28:40So the discovery of the Nader Crater led to the question,
28:45was the extinction event due to two asteroids at once, like a one-two punch?
28:51Or is the Nader Crater a completely separate event a few hundred years before or after the Chicxulub impact?
29:00Until scientific dating methods are more precise, we'll likely never know.
29:07Either way, the impact was still a cataclysmic event of the magnitude that we certainly wouldn't want to experience in our lifetimes.
29:21In 1709, in the town of Racina, Italy, a group of workers is digging a well for a monastery.
29:41When they get about 50 feet down, they strike something hard.
29:44It appears to be a man-made wall, five stories underground.
29:53They decide to break off some pieces so they can show them to the local Prince of Lorraine, Emmanuel Maurice.
30:00The prince examines the stone and identifies it as marble.
30:05This gets the prince thinking.
30:07If there's a marble wall down there, then maybe there are more treasures to be found as well.
30:13He orders some crews to dig a tunnel.
30:16When they do, they find that the wall is part of an entire buried building, and it's stuffed with ancient artifacts.
30:24These incredible finds are buried under several feet of solid stone that the workers have trouble cutting through.
30:34Eventually, it becomes too difficult, and they give up.
30:37The site lays undisturbed for nearly 30 years, until King Charles VII of Naples hears about the mysterious underground structure.
30:48Charles hires military engineers to conduct a proper excavation.
30:53As the king's engineers restart the dig, they realize that this discovery goes way beyond marble walls and statues.
31:01First, they find more rooms in the uncovered building.
31:06Then, they discover more buildings.
31:09And soon, they realize what they found is incredible.
31:12An entire city buried underground.
31:19There are city streets, beautiful frescoes, bronze sculptures, ornate jewelry, and even statues of Roman emperors.
31:29Clearly, this is a city of wealth and importance.
31:33It's a stunning discovery, so experts scramble to figure out what city it could be.
31:40They scour ancient records and texts, trying to put some clues together.
31:45And eventually, scholars realize that this is the long-lost city of Herculaneum.
31:52Herculaneum was the exclusive seaside retreat of luxurious houses for the Roman elite.
31:58Think of it as the Hamptons of ancient Rome.
32:00But this paradise turned into hell.
32:04In the year 79 A.D., the nearby volcano, Mount Vesuvius, erupted.
32:09This is the same eruption that famously buried the nearby city of Pompeii.
32:15The cities were struck by a wall of 750-degree superheated gas, rock, mud, and ash.
32:24Within five minutes, the entire city was buried under volcanic tuff.
32:31Ironically, the same searing heat that brought devastation also preserved items from the past.
32:39Wood, textiles, loaves of bread, even human waste were instantly cooked by the intense heat, preserving their shapes in a kind of charcoal.
32:51It's a process that's called carbonization.
32:54And many items look exactly like they did on the day of this disaster.
33:00What archaeologists don't find are any human remains.
33:04Then, in the 1980s, archaeologists discover 300 human skeletons packed together in a boathouse.
33:12They speculate that these were residents trying to escape the eruption by sea, but they didn't make it.
33:21The extreme heat was so intense that it burned away flesh and violently contorted bodies in an instant.
33:28All that's left are twisted skeletons, all piled together, frozen in their final moments.
33:36While much of Pompeii has been uncovered, it's estimated less than a third of Herculaneum has been explored.
33:43Considering what has already been found, there are surely more discoveries to be made in this unique and tragic archaeological site.
33:52In 1954, workers are clearing out and rebuilding an area of Walbrook Square in East London.
34:11The city as a whole is basically still recovering and rebuilding from the massive amount of damage inflicted upon it by German bombers during the Blitz of World War II.
34:22As the workers are digging test wells in preparation for construction, they hit something long and flat.
34:31It doesn't look like a slab of rock or part of the rubble, so the workers are confused.
34:38What they've struck isn't a World War II casualty.
34:41It's something much older.
34:43So the workers call over an archaeologist to take a closer look.
34:4721 feet down lies what looks like a pinkish-gray mortar floor.
34:54They continue the excavation and expose more of the foundation.
35:03What they find is a floor that's roughly 60 feet long, 30 feet wide, a perfectly rectangular chamber buried below ground with the remnants of pillars that must have stretched all the way up to the ceiling.
35:18Then they start finding amazing artifacts, sculptures and statues.
35:26There's a bust of the goddess Minerva.
35:29There's a statue of the god Mercury seated next to a ram.
35:33They begin to put two and two together and realize this isn't just some random assortment of relics.
35:38This is some kind of temple or a shrine.
35:41They feel it most likely dates back to the Roman origins of the city when it was still called Londinium.
35:47But beyond that, the archaeologists are mystified.
35:51Then, on the last day of their excavation, the team makes a critical discovery.
35:59It's another bust, this time of a man wearing a special hat known as a Phrygian cap.
36:06The archaeologists know this particular image very well.
36:11It's the Roman god Mithras.
36:13Mithras was originally a Persian god that was adopted by Roman soldiers in the second or third century.
36:21He became sort of a patron saint to them, representing loyalty, strength and secrecy.
36:28In fact, he was so revered that his followers sort of built a secret society around him.
36:34Followers traveled all throughout Europe and they built hidden temples called Mithraeums where they could worship in secret.
36:43We do know that only men were allowed inside to worship Mithras, but beyond that, it's mostly a mystery.
36:50Despite the mystery, archaeologists date the site to 240 AD and they turn it into a museum.
36:58As many as 30,000 people come out and wait for hours just to see the site.
37:03This temple stands once again and the mystery and intrigue of Mithras lives on.
37:13Imagine your life's work going up in flames.
37:20But when you return to assess the damage, you find an even bigger mystery.
37:25That's just what happened to one researcher in Wyoming.
37:29In 2003, Wyoming state archaeologist Dan Eakin is researching wooden animal traps left behind by the indigenous Shoshone people.
37:44On one summer day, he's watching uneasily as storm clouds gather over the forest.
37:49Sure enough, within moments, lightning strikes and trees erupt in flames.
37:58Over the next few days, this fire burns over 11,000 acres of the Shoshone National Forest.
38:07Dan is devastated because he really believes that all these wooden traps that he's been looking at
38:13and any other sort of artifacts would have perished in this kind of a blaze.
38:17As soon as authorities give the all clear to re-enter the forest, he goes in and tries to survey the damage.
38:27The devastation is even worse than he had initially feared.
38:30The fire had burned through nearly all the trees and brush, leaving behind only smoldering earth.
38:37And the ancient wooden traps he's dedicated his entire career to are nearly all wiped out.
38:44But as Eakin surveys the charred grounds, something catches his eye.
38:52Scattered on the smoldering earth are hundreds of ancient-looking artifacts.
38:58There are arrowheads, flint tools, glass beads and ceramics.
39:03Eakin recognizes that these are Native American items.
39:08But he's stunned to suddenly find so many where none had been noticed before.
39:15He contacts some fellow archaeologists and soon they're combing all over the fire zone.
39:22What they uncover is staggering.
39:23Thousands of artifacts, from bone knives to metal tools.
39:31They find a tri-notched projectile point, once used for a spear, and the remains of indigenous lodges.
39:39Now, what's really extraordinary about this is that these objects weren't just placed there anew.
39:47What has happened is that the fire has burned all of the underbrush.
39:52And what it did is reveal centuries-old artifacts that have been lying there the entire time.
39:58This accidental discovery is just the beginning.
40:04With each wildfire season, more artifacts emerge.
40:08Some date to just after the last Ice Age.
40:11Even more surprising, metal artifacts were found at the site.
40:15This means once Europeans came on the scene, locals were trading with them much earlier and more widely than previously thought.
40:23In all, over 600 previously unknown sites have been revealed, leading to the discovery of more than 160,000 artifacts.
40:33The finds are remarkable.
40:36But once uncovered, these relics face a new challenge.
40:40Staying intact.
40:42They can be washed away by rain, trampled by wildlife, and stolen by looters looking to make a buck.
40:48So, it's ironic that these destructive wildfires have revealed these lost artifacts.
40:55But now, researchers are in a race against man and nature to catalog them as quickly as they can, before they are lost once more.
41:06Whether it's an explosive asteroid from the heavens or a fiery eruption that covers an ancient city,
41:13these blasts from the past left an unforgettable mark.
41:18I'm Danny Trejo.
41:20Thanks for watching Mysteries Unearthed.
Be the first to comment