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Mysteries Unearthed with Danny Trejo Season 2 Episode 04 Hidden Giants EnglishMovie cdrama drama engsub chinesedramaengsub movieshortfull
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00:00Mysteries can be buried anywhere, under the earth, beneath the sea, or even right under
00:14our own feet. And when we stumble upon them, sometimes what we find can change history.
00:22Tonight, big discoveries from a monumental secret buried beneath the basement. Behind
00:33the wall, there's a cabin. Not an old cellar, but a tunnel. This sprawling maze spans over
00:40170 square miles. It's a mind-boggling discovery. To a massive ancient structure. Archaeologists
00:49realize it dates back to a mysterious civilization. Little is known about this culture because
00:55almost nothing has been found from the time of their reign, until now. To a monster of
01:01epic proportions, they uncover three feet of it, four feet of it. Ultimately, it's ten feet
01:10long. Join us now, because nothing stays hidden forever.
01:19It's 1927. Charles Lindbergh is fresh off his historic solo flight across the Atlantic.
01:37It's the first of his kind. It took him 33 hours to complete. Now a global celebrity, he heads
01:42out on a two-month goodwill tour through Central America. He flies solo location to location and
01:49basically shakes hands with locals and basks in his newfound fame. One day, he's flying. He's
01:57crossing over this thick jungle in Honduras. And something weird catches his eye. Something
02:05that doesn't look quite natural. These structures poking through the gaps in the canopy.
02:13To Lindbergh, it looks like this might be a city. For centuries, rumors swirled of a jungle settlement
02:21overflowing with riches. They call it La Ciudad Blanca, the White City. Now Lindbergh's sighting reignites the search to find it.
02:32Explorers, archaeologists, and treasure hunters set out on new expeditions searching for the city Lindbergh claims he saw.
02:41But even after several decades, nobody finds a trace of the city.
02:45Eventually, in 2012, an explorer named Steve Elkins tries to follow in Lindbergh's footsteps.
02:54This time, he's not looking out the window. He's using LIDAR from the air to see what the jungle below might be hiding.
03:03Over the course of five days, Elkins and his small team fly over this rugged terrain of the Honduran rainforest, mapping the invisible.
03:11On the final day, they process the LIDAR data. And it seems to reveal what looked like the outline of multiple man-made geometric structures.
03:20Armed with the coordinates, Elkins and his team head deep into the jungle for a closer look.
03:27They cut paths, encounter pit vipers, and even flesh-eating parasites. But despite all the hells of the jungle, they keep going.
03:37After several weeks, the journey proves worth it, when they find the area pinpointed by their LIDAR scans.
03:44And they find something incredible.
03:50There are hundreds of artifacts arranged almost as if they were abandoned mid-ceremony.
03:57These are the remnants of an unknown culture.
04:00The scientists estimate they were built somewhere between 1000 and 1500 A.D.
04:06As the group presses further into the site, they come across something even more incredible.
04:13At the heart of it all, they find a massive pyramid, half-buried under the ground.
04:21And it's just the tip of the iceberg.
04:24There are mounds, pillars, plazas, stretching wide beneath the vines.
04:30This wasn't a small mountain village. This was a metropolis that flourished before European contact.
04:37The team recovered over 190 artifacts, including a carved head of a part human, part jaguar.
04:45They renamed the area of the site Valley of the Jaguar.
04:49Excavations continue to this day, and the site is deemed so valuable that the Honduran military now protects it.
04:59To date, they haven't found any huge cache of gold or treasure, but there's a lot of excavating still to be done.
05:05The recovered artifacts are now housed in the Ciudad Blanca Research Center, which focuses on the preservation of the archaeology and culture of the site, along with the wildlife that surrounds it.
05:17You don't always have to go off the grid to make amazing discoveries. Sometimes a big find is just beneath your feet.
05:32In 1480, a boy is playing under the Italian pines on Esquiline Hill in the heart of Rome.
05:40As he runs along the slope, his foot slips along a crack in the soil.
05:45He leans down, peers into the opening, and sees something that shouldn't be there.
05:51He crawls through the gap, and he finds himself in this hidden chamber.
06:00Low ceilings, curved walls, and when the boy looks up, he notices that on the ceilings are these very detailed frescoes.
06:10There are mythological scenes, strange creatures, and elaborate floral patterns covering the domed roof.
06:17Soon, his discovery attracts some of the era's most famous artists.
06:22Artists like Michelangelo and Raphael lower themselves down and explore the subterranean passages by torchlight,
06:32looking at all these mythological paintings on the walls to get inspiration for their own art.
06:37But the site's purpose remains a mystery for centuries, until a full-scale excavation of the area is ordered in the mid-1700s.
06:47Archaeologists soon find other enormous rooms, some up to 100 feet deep, covered in elaborate artwork.
06:55As they explore the frescoes and opulent rooms, they start to put the pieces together.
07:02They realize that this is a palace, and it's a palace that matches the description of one that was built in the first century AD.
07:10It's the Domus Aria, better known as the Golden House, built by infamous Roman Emperor, Nero.
07:21Nero ruined Rome for 14 years in the first century AD.
07:25He's known for his extravagance, his cruelty, his persecution of Jews and Christians, for murdering his mother,
07:33and for his very literal desire to burn down the city of Rome, to recraft it in his image.
07:41So when a massive fire destroys much of Rome in 64 AD, many believe that Nero started it himself on purpose,
07:49so that he could build an opulent palace.
07:52That new palace, the Domus Aria, is huge.
07:58It sprawls over 300 acres, has over 100 rooms, marble walls, rotating dining rooms,
08:07detailed frescoes, and perfume-dispensing ceilings.
08:11There's an artificial lake surrounded by gardens,
08:15and of course at the center of it all is a gorgeous golden statue of Nero himself.
08:20It is 100 feet tall.
08:24But before Nero can move into his new palace, he's declared a public enemy by the Senate.
08:30Even Nero's own guards abandoned him.
08:33So he decides to take his own life, and he stabs himself in the throat with a dagger before he can be executed.
08:39Once he's gone, Romans try to erase all evidence that he even existed.
08:46That includes his lavish estate, which is torn down and buried.
08:51Years later, another iconic structure is built in its place, the Colosseum.
08:56Then over time, the site is completely forgotten about.
09:01Until centuries later, when a young boy slips in the dirt.
09:04It'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.
09:17It's September of 1931, and a British fishing trawler is making its way up the North Sea.
09:26It's just an ordinary day when, all of a sudden, the nets come up heavy.
09:32Excited at the possibility of a big catch, the crew pulls the nets aboard and begins looking through their hull.
09:37The skipper, Pilgrim Lockwood, notices a huge lump of peat tangled up with their catch.
09:45He goes to break it apart with his shovel, but as he does, the shovel clangs against something solid.
09:55At first glance, it looks like a chunk of bone.
09:58But it's a darker color, and it looks carved, and on one side it has what looks like serrated, jagged teeth.
10:08Whatever it is, it doesn't look natural.
10:11The skipper sends his strange find to the British Museum for more insight.
10:17The researchers examine the object and realize that it's a prehistoric weapon that's carved out of red deer antler.
10:24It would have been lashed end to end with another antler and used as a harpoon.
10:30Researchers date the tool to the late Mesolithic era, sometime between 10,000 and 4,000 BC.
10:36Everything seems to check out, except for the fact that it was found so far out and so deep underwater.
10:43Mesolithic people were skilled hunters with sophisticated tools like this harpoon.
10:48But they were not skilled mariners. They had no way of venturing far from shore.
10:55That's when archaeologist Graham Clark proposes a radical theory.
10:59Maybe that spot in the North Sea used to be dry land.
11:03Up to now, everyone had assumed that there had always been a sea between Great Britain and continental Europe.
11:10But Clark suggests maybe that's wrong. Maybe thousands of years ago, this was land.
11:15The following year, a test of the peak found with the harpoon gives Clark's theory a boost.
11:22Further analysis shows that it formed in freshwater, not saltwater, confirming the weapon was lost on land.
11:29In the ensuing decades, more evidence comes in, providing more support for this theory.
11:36Fishermen begin to pull up bones from a variety of land animals.
11:40Hippos, bears, woolly rhinos, saber-toothed cats.
11:44They find more stone tools and even pieces of a Neanderthal skull.
11:49After decades of clues, the mystery comes into sharper focus when researchers manage to extract DNA from the ancient skull.
11:57Turns out he was a young man who was a meat-eater with a stocky build and he lived about 60,000 years ago.
12:06The incredible discovery leads researchers to name the area Doggerland after a nearby sandbar.
12:14But the real breakthrough comes when oil and gas companies lend a surprising hand.
12:19Using underwater survey data, they are able to create detailed 3D models of the seabed.
12:27This wasn't just an archipelago of islands or a land bridge.
12:32Doggerland was vast and teeming with life, which attracted bands of Mesolithic hunters.
12:38At its peak, Doggerland was big. It stretched over 70,000 square miles, bigger than the state of Illinois.
12:47Then, around 8,000 years ago, the Ice Age ends and temperatures start to rise.
12:52Glaciers begin to melt and water levels rise.
12:57And over the next 3,500 years, Doggerland slowly disappears beneath the sea, causing its people to have to relocate.
13:06Today, Doggerland is one of the best preserved prehistoric landscapes ever discovered.
13:11Finding a whole ancient world hidden under the sea is incredible.
13:19Our next big discovery takes us even further back in time.
13:24And it's on an even bigger scale.
13:29In 2017, a man in Pombal, Portugal, is trying to expand his garden.
13:36He starts digging and digging and suddenly he hits something really hard.
13:39Now, this is deeply unusual because the soil there is pretty loose and sandy.
13:47He bends down to take a closer look, brushes across the soil with his hand, and he sees some sharp fragments.
13:55He takes a closer look and he thinks that they look very much like pieces of fossilized bone.
14:02The man reaches out to the University of Lisbon, who sends a team of paleontologists to investigate.
14:10They confirm that these are indeed fossil fragments, and then a deeper investigation ensues.
14:16Pretty soon, they find another fossil, but this one's no tiny fragment.
14:19Now, this time they find a complete bone.
14:23They uncover three feet of it, four feet of it, and there's still more in the ground.
14:30Ultimately, when they retrieve it, it's ten feet long.
14:35This is one of the largest rib fossils ever recorded.
14:42So scientists ask, what could this giant animal be?
14:46From the shape and the size, they are able to determine that these bones come from a sauropod.
14:54Sauropods lived over 100 million years ago and are the largest land animals to ever roam the earth.
15:04Sauropods were herbivores.
15:06They had a long neck, long tail, and they grew into the largest dinosaurs ever.
15:11With very tiny heads because, you know, how much weight do you want to put at the end of a 40-foot lever?
15:15The long necks allowed them to graze over a wide area of vegetation without having to move.
15:25And they had to do a lot of grazing because sauropods could weigh as much as 50 tons.
15:34Experts estimate that the individual uncovered from the backyard in Portugal
15:38was probably close to 40 feet tall and around 80 feet long, roughly the size of a tennis court.
15:43It's one of the largest dinosaur specimens ever found in Europe.
15:49Despite millions of years passing, the ribs are still in place and aligned just like when the dinosaur was alive.
15:57That's really unusual for fossils this old.
16:00Hopefully, the rest of the fossils from this magnificent beast will be found
16:06and it will be stalking the floors of a museum very soon.
16:09For one man in Turkey, a small remodel opens the door to a whole buried world.
16:22It's 1963 in the Cappadocia region of central Turkey and a man is remodeling his home.
16:28But he keeps having a strange predicament. His pet chickens keep disappearing.
16:33He starts investigating and he traces the problem to the basement where he finds a small opening in the wall.
16:40Curious and frustrated, he grabs a sledgehammer and knocks it down.
16:45Behind the wall, there's a cavity. Not a pipe, not an old cellar, but a tunnel.
16:54He climbs through the wall and starts to walk. One tunnel becomes two.
17:03And then it connects to different chambers. And eventually, it seems to stretch off into a dark distance.
17:10Fully weirded out, the man retreats back to his house and informs the local authorities.
17:15Investigators inspect the tunnels and what they uncover is beyond anything anyone imagined.
17:23It's an enormous ancient underground city.
17:26This sprawling maze spans over 170 square miles.
17:36It reaches 18 stories, 280 feet below the surface.
17:41And is carved into hardened volcanic ash called Tuff.
17:45But what's truly unbelievable is that it was originally built around 3,000 years ago.
17:50The city is named Derinkuyu after the town that sits above it.
17:59And it wasn't just a place to hide. It was a fully functional underground city.
18:05There are schools, churches, a convent, apartments, even an underground wine press.
18:11The 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.
18:22They truly thought of and designed everything that humans would need to carry out life underground.
18:28There are over 50 ventilation shafts that ensure that fresh air is delivered to all levels.
18:33And there's a well that reaches over 180 feet to fill numerous water tanks.
18:39It's an engineering marvel.
18:41There's also a security system.
18:44Several tunnels have enormous 1,000 pound millstone doors that could be used to close off the tunnels from inside.
18:52Each door has a hole right in the center, big enough for a sphere to poke through.
18:56But who built it and why remain a mystery?
19:02Archaeologists find a Hittite statue of a lion and other relics during their excavation.
19:08This leads some to believe that the Hittites built the city as their last refuge when their capital was under attack from the Phrygians in the 12th century BC.
19:17Others believe that this kind of incredible construction could only have been the work of the Phrygians themselves.
19:24But one thing that's clear is that the original builders were not the only ones that lived here.
19:29Eventually, Derinkuyu was inhabited by Byzantine-era Christians who used the city to avoid persecution,
19:35which explains the cruciform church on the lowest level, 18 stories down.
19:40All together, researchers find more than 600 hidden entrances, including one that extends much further than anyone thought.
19:50Researchers find a five-mile tunnel that connects this subterranean world to another underground city called Kaimakli.
19:59This city is smaller, less elaborate than Derinkuyu, but the design is nearly identical.
20:04Over the ensuing years, they find over 200 more of these underground cities spread throughout the region.
20:13Each one a sleeping giant carved in stone that serves as a monument to survival.
20:20Our next discovery takes us to a very different kind of hidden world, this time in Rome.
20:28It's 2006 in Rome, and workers are drilling test holes ahead of the construction of a new underground parking garage.
20:41That is, until their drill hits something unexpected.
20:45As 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.
21:02The workers take a closer look, and they find pottery shards and pieces of jewelry.
21:07So they ultimately call in the archaeologists to take over.
21:12And they uncover more pottery, parts of a fountain, and even the foundations of a portico.
21:19Then they find something really unusual.
21:22A piece of glass filled with transparent, crystal-like stones.
21:27The crystal stones are a major clue.
21:32In 40 AD, the philosopher Philo described seeing this kind of glass with these crystals on a visit he made to the Roman Emperor Caligula.
21:42The archaeologists realized they found Caligula's long-lost infamous pleasure garden.
21:48Caligula was the third emperor of Rome, and many consider him to be the most eccentric.
21:57Some accounts say he believed he was a god.
22:00Others say he was just insane.
22:02But either way, his behavior was bizarre.
22:05He once made talking about goats in his presence a capital offense.
22:10He would appear in public dressed like Greco-Roman gods like Venus and Apollo.
22:16He once declared war with the sea and even appointed his horse consul to the Senate of Rome.
22:25But Caligula took access to a whole new level in his pleasure garden.
22:31Caligula surrounded himself in luxury.
22:34So when he wasn't feeding Romans to the lions or sleeping with his political rival's wives,
22:40or even his own sisters, he enjoyed spending time in his pleasure garden.
22:46Excavations revealed frescoes inlaid with rubies and precious stones,
22:51marble staircases, and also pieces of jewelry.
22:55They also find animal bones, but not pets like cats or dogs.
22:59The bones they find are from lions, from bears, from ostriches, from peacocks.
23:04Just rare and exotic animals brought in to impress his guests and to make himself out to be this larger-than-life, hedonistic, godlike figure.
23:15Ultimately, Caligula's reign of indulgence didn't last.
23:21After just four years in power, Caligula was assassinated by his own bodyguards.
23:26His body was cremated in the garden he loved.
23:28By the fourth century, the garden is abandoned and fades from memory until it's rediscovered in 2015.
23:39When archaeologists finally finished the excavation, over 100,000 artifacts are uncovered.
23:46Today, the site has been transformed into a museum, and it contains many of those very same relics and preserved architecture.
23:52Compared to the legend of his life, the ruins of his pleasure garden are surprisingly tasteful.
23:59But the jewels, the baths, exotic animals do point to one thing.
24:04Caligula threw one hell of a party, and 2,000 years later, we're still cleaning up after it.
24:10In 1992, a man sets out to solve a local legend, but instead uncovers a long-lost engineering wonder.
24:26It's 1992 in the Zhejiang province of China, and farmer Wu Anai is a man on a mission.
24:32He'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.
24:39It sounds crazy, but for generations, locals have passed down tales that the ponds are bottomless.
24:46And Anai is determined to get to the bottom of this legend.
24:51So he turns on the pumps and watches.
24:55As the water recedes, it reveals more than just mud and stone.
24:59When Anai peeks into the hole, he can't believe his eyes.
25:07Beneath the surface of this pond is actually a massive man-made cave.
25:14Its walls are intricately carved, its ceilings are held up by pillars,
25:20and every inch is decorated with these chiseled parallel lines.
25:24Anai and his neighbors cannot believe what they found.
25:27So they go and they drain more ponds in the region.
25:33Sure enough, they find four more caves, each as elaborately carved and decorated as the first one.
25:41These things are huge, ranging from 25 to 60 feet deep and 50 to 100 feet wide.
25:48Just as impressive is the engineering.
25:52The sloped walls help distribute weight, preventing collapse from the ground above.
25:58Every cavern faces south, which allows the caves to be filled with natural light.
26:04Over the next few years, researchers find 19 more hand-carved caves.
26:09We have over 300,000 square feet of engineered space, but no signs of the builders, the techniques, or of their intentions.
26:21This lack of cultural or material evidence is unprecedented.
26:26Archaeologists date their construction to between 206 B.C. and 23 A.D.
26:32This makes them the biggest underground construction project of that era.
26:38This is a project on par with other monumental architectural wonders like the Great Pyramid of Giza.
26:45As mysterious as the pyramids are, these caves are even more so.
26:50Some researchers have suggested that the caves might have been used to store grain.
26:55Others have thought that they might have been a mine for natural resources.
26:59And then there are those who think that these hidden structures are so secretive that they must have been used for religious or other cultural ceremonies for the elite.
27:10With little to go on, the mysterious caverns become known as the Longyu Caves, named after the town where they were found.
27:19In China, they're considered the ninth wonder of the ancient world.
27:23But for all their size and sophistication, they raise more questions than answers.
27:27The fact that we still don't know who built the caves or why makes them the most fascinating mysteries of the ancient world.
27:36A nice curiosity uncovered an ancient mystery.
27:42A find 20 years later in Serbia reveals something even stranger.
27:47It's July 2023 in the small mining town of Kostolac in Serbia.
27:56Miners are busy excavating in a quarry when about 25 feet deep their mechanical digger hits something really hard.
28:04It sounds like wood, so they figure that it's a buried tree trunk, but they decide to play it safe and take a closer look.
28:14When the workers brush some of the dirt away, they confirm it definitely is wood.
28:19However, this is definitely no tree.
28:23It's got sharp, crisp lines.
28:26It's been carved by man, and it looks really old.
28:30Archaeologists are called in to examine the site, and as they dig, the find gets bigger and bigger, from one plant to another to dozens.
28:38They've uncovered a massive wooden structure.
28:43It's the remains of an enormous riverboat.
28:49Now that it's exposed, archaeologists rush to fully dig out the boat before it falls apart.
28:56It takes them two days to fully uncover the boat, and it's huge. It's 65 feet long, it's 11 feet wide.
29:06Researchers believe it was a cargo vessel crewed by up to 30 men, but curiously, there's no cargo, there's no personal items, there's no human remains.
29:18Even stranger, it's underground and miles away from the nearest waterway.
29:23The Danube River is more than two miles away, but it turns out that it has shifted over the centuries.
29:31Researchers believe that at one point, it flowed directly over this spot.
29:36The ship likely sank here, and then the river changed course, and then the ship was left to be buried by the shifting sands.
29:44The whole area seems to have changed centuries ago, because just a mile away, there's an even larger archaeological excavation.
29:53The ancient port of Viminasium.
29:57Viminasium was a major ancient Roman trading hub and military port that boasted a population of about 45,000 people.
30:06Its ruins included temples, theaters, palaces, even a hippodrome.
30:11Beginning in the fourth century, Viminasium was attacked by invading forces, including Attila the Hun in his campaign against the Roman Empire.
30:21By the time the Roman Empire began to collapse in 476, Viminasium was abandoned.
30:27Experts conclude the buried ship was likely servicing the port of Viminasium around 1700 years ago.
30:34But questions still remain about its final voyage.
30:39The ship has no signs of battle scars, no signs of cargo, no signs of crew, which suggests it may have been sunk intentionally.
30:47Perhaps better to lose it than for it to fall into enemy hands.
30:50After nearly two millennia underground, this river barge is still a mystery, but at least it's finally returning to port.
30:57Road construction usually slows you down, but in 2024, it stopped everything when cruising Mexico hit something incredible.
31:10In June of 2024, just outside of Mexico City, construction workers are expanding Highway 105.
31:21As 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.
31:29It'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.
31:44All these stones form a steeply pitched wall buried underneath the mountain.
31:52They realize this is clearly part of a structure.
31:55They halt all work and they call in the archaeologists.
32:01As they dig up this angled wall, it appears to stretch in two directions.
32:06One up the side of the mountain and two down towards the road.
32:12Soon they begin to make out a shape.
32:14They find stepped corners on the outer edge of the wall.
32:17And behind that, another wall continues at a 90 degree angle.
32:21This crew thought they were working to widen the highway.
32:26But what they've really done is discovered an ancient pyramid.
32:31And not just any pyramid.
32:34The base stretches out to around 1,000 feet, about 25% bigger than the Great Pyramid of Giza.
32:41Archaeologists realized the pyramid dates back to a mysterious and largely unknown ancient civilization known as the Metzka.
32:51The Metzka were a multi ethnic group that lived in the area from around the year 950 to 1350.
32:59Little is known about this culture because almost nothing has been found from the time of their reign until now.
33:07Unfortunately, experts can't fully excavate the pyramid.
33:11So they use drones and imaging technology to scan the entire site from the air.
33:17When they analyze the data, they're shocked.
33:18There is an entire ceremonial complex with the pyramid as its centerpiece.
33:25This discovery suggests that this site was of great significance to the Metzka.
33:31A combination religious site and cultural hub.
33:35And just when we're hot on the heels of learning and uncovering this treasure trove of the ancient world,
33:40all work comes to a stop.
33:43Funding dries up and archaeologists are forced to abandon the site.
33:49Then they actually have to rebury it to protect the site from the elements and from any looters.
33:58There's obviously more to uncover here.
34:01More stories about the history of this otherwise forgotten civilization.
34:04But until more funding materializes, this giant pyramid and the ancient civilization that constructed it remains once again buried underground.
34:19Across the sea in England, another surprising relic is buried even deeper.
34:25Not a pyramid, but a far more personal piece of the past.
34:28The year is 1972 and in the city of York, England, construction has just begun on a new branch of Lloyd's Bank.
34:40They fire up the excavator and start to haul away layers of peat.
34:46And that's when the workers notice that mixed in with the soil are some strange looking objects.
34:52There's pieces of timber, there's textiles, and there's straps of leather.
34:58Archaeologists are called in, and as they are sifting through these artifacts, they find an object they can't quite identify.
35:08It's rough and cylindrical in shape.
35:14It's about eight inches long, two inches wide, and it weighs about half a pound.
35:19Archaeologists take a closer look at the mystery object under a microscope.
35:26They see evidence of plant pollen, cereal bran, and other organic material, and before long it becomes pretty evident what they're looking at.
35:36What they have found is an enormous human coprolite.
35:41It's another way of saying a gigantic piece of fossilized poop.
35:46In fact, it's the largest intact piece of fossilized human feces ever discovered.
35:53What's unusual about it, apart from its gargantuous size, is that typically human feces breaks down pretty quickly, way before it has a chance to fossilize.
36:05But in this case, because it fell in peat, which is a low oxygen environment, it didn't rot.
36:12Testing puts it in the ninth century AD, right in the middle of the Viking occupation of York.
36:20In 866 AD, the Viking great heathen army conquered the city.
36:25York became the Viking capital in England until 954 AD.
36:30And based on the diet, this coprolite was left behind by a Viking.
36:37Today, the relic is on display at the Jorvik Viking Center in York.
36:44It may not be the most important Viking artifact ever found, but it is a strong contender for number two.
36:50The ocean is full of big creatures and even bigger secrets, but none like the one a group of fishermen find in Norway.
37:04It's April 26, 2019, just off the coastal village of Tufjord in Norway.
37:11You have a group of fishermen that are on their boat and before long, they feel something colliding with the side of their ship.
37:23One 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.
37:32Even though this animal is large, 14 feet long, maybe 2,700 pounds, it seems friendly, tame even.
37:45But it seems to be tangled in something.
37:52He puts on a survival suit and jumps into the water to help free it.
37:56But as he gets closer, he realizes that the whale is in a harness.
38:02So he unbuckles it and sets the beluga whale free.
38:05Back on the boat, they see something strange.
38:09There's a camera mount on the harness, but the camera itself is missing.
38:14They also notice a stamp on the harness that says, Equipment, St. Petersburg.
38:20So it looks like this whale came from Russia.
38:23Nearly overnight, the beluga becomes a media sensation in Norway.
38:29But something seems off about this friendly giant.
38:33This whale doesn't swim back north towards his more natural habitat.
38:37He instead stays in the harbor, socializing with fishermen and tourists.
38:42I mean, the whale, he seems too well-trained to be a wild whale.
38:49That's when Norway's domestic intelligence agency puts two and two together and comes up with a shocking theory.
38:57The strange behavior, the harness, the familiarity with humans.
39:02This whale was clearly trained to perform specific tasks, which leads investigators to hypothesize that this whale is an intelligence gathering spy.
39:13For 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.
39:27Now, of course, Moscow denies that any such program ever existed.
39:31Although there was that one time that they placed a newspaper ad seeking to buy five bottlenose dolphins for $24,000.
39:39As unlikely as it seems, the spy whale theory picks up momentum, leading investigators straight to a possible source.
39:47Intelligence officers comb over satellite imagery and indeed they find a nearby Russian naval base.
39:54The base has large sea pens that would be perfect for housing beluga whales.
39:59They conclude that this beluga either escaped from its pen or that it might have actually become lost during a training session in open waters.
40:05In honor of his Russian roots, the whale is given the name Havaldemir, combining Haval, which means whale, in Norwegian, with Vladimir, as in Putin.
40:20Sadly, Havaldemir's story does not have a happy ending.
40:24In 2024, his body is discovered floating in Rysavika Bay in Norway.
40:28Of course, given his purported spy background, rumors begin to fly that he's been taken out by the Russians.
40:35But the Norwegian Veterinary Institute does an autopsy and determines that Havaldemir died from a bacterial infection.
40:42To this day, Russia has neither confirmed nor denied Havaldemir's origins.
40:47But one thing is certain, whether he was a runaway spy or just a very confused beluga,
40:52this giant whale left behind a legacy that was larger than life.
41:01A colossal city buried in the jungle, a massive mammal working as a secret agent,
41:08and a metropolis unearthed 200 feet below the surface.
41:12Sometimes, gigantic discoveries lead to even bigger revelations.
41:16I'm Danny Trejo.
41:19Thanks for watching Mysteries Unearthed.
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