All language subtitles for What.on.Earth.S07E05.1080p.DSCP.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-BTN_track3_[eng]

Narrator:
They're watching you.

More than 4,000 satellites
Circle the earth.

Every day they uncover
New, mysterious phenomena

That defy explanation.

Attack of the giant blobs.

These blobs are just taking over
Everything.

Chamberlain: this town
Has been wiped from the map.

Narrator: the $500 million
Underwater heist.

This is really
The greatest story never told

To the american public.

Narrator: and the hunt
For wonder woman's tomb.

Maybe we've got our first
Flesh-and-blood evidence

That all of those stories
Are true.

Narrator:
Baffling phenomena.

Mysteries from space.

What on earth are they?

-- captions by vitac --
Www.Vitac.Com

Captions paid for by
Discovery communications

**

Narrator:
July 12, 2016.

More than 400 miles above the
Southern-central united states,

An orbiting camera captures this
In the vast plains below.

Wow.

In this image,

There are large white blobs
All over for the landscape.

Kourounis:
What the hell?

It looks like this small,
Rural farming community

Has been afflicted
By some skin disease.

Narrator:
Closer analysis reveals

Something even more disturbing.

Phoenix:
I can see a grid system here

For roads and neighborhoods.

It looks like
There was a town here

But now these whitish blobs
Are just taking over everything.

Mairot: it's like a freakin'
Bomb test site

Or something like that.

This is crazy.
What happened here?

**

Narrator:
Hooked by the weird image,

Haley chamberlain
Is hitting the road

To study the site up close.

This image is absolutely
Fascinating.

I've really never seen
Anything like this before.

Is this something biological
That has happened?

Is this a weather event?

Is it continuing?
Is it spreading?

We're only gonna find
Those answers

Once we put our feet
On the ground

And figure out
What's really happening.

**

Narrator:
Chamberlain's journey

Takes her towards oklahoma's
Border with kansas.

The first signs
Of devastation appear

Long before she reaches
The white blobs in the image.

There's some abandoned homes
Right up here.

**

These houses are in total ruins.

**

The windows are busted.
Completely dilapidated.

**

The eerie part
Is that all of this

Must have been bustling
With people

And now you just see
These open fields

With little remnants
Of what used to be.

Narrator: clues suggest that
Whatever decimated this town

Began many decades ago.

All of this that looks like
Forest and overgrown grasses,

You can see the pathways
Of old streets,

Old foundations,
Even driveways to houses.

Where did everyone go?

Why did they leave?

**

Narrator:
The road gives out

Long before chamberlain
Can reach

The strange white shapes
Seen from space.

Chamberlain:
Looks like I'll be walking

The rest of the way here.

Narrator:
As she gets closer to the sites,

The devastation
Appears to intensify.

**

This building --
There is nothing left here.

It's just a couple of walls.

[ birds chirping ]

I can't even tell what it was.

It must have been something
In its heyday, but now...

I got to say
That kind of creeps me out.

This town has been wiped
From the map.

**

Narrator:
Close to one abandoned street,

Chamberlain spots a danger not
Visible in the satellite image.

Chamberlain: oh, wow.
I was not expecting this.

**

There's a huge sinkhole
Over here.

Narrator:
The flooded chasm appears to be

At least 50 feet wide
And hundreds of feet deep.

People lived right here.

You can see the foundations
Of homes

Crumbling down the sides
Of this sinkhole.

If this happened
While people were living here,

That would be devastating.

Narrator:
Chamberlain fears this tragedy

Isn't an isolated event.

This is definitely the largest
Sinkhole that I have ever seen.

If something like this happened
In my community,

Literally in my backyard,

That would be an indicator
That I needed to leave.

Narrator:
This sinkhole lies just yards

From the first of
The white blobs seen from space.

[ birds chirping ]

Chamberlain:
Oh, look at that.

**

Narrator:
The white mountain is big --

Chamberlain believes
40 feet high

And hundreds of feet long.

And it's just one of dozens
Littering the ghost town.

I can see off in the distance,

There's a pile that looks
Even larger than this one.

There's one
Right back over here.

So what's the event that brought
All of these piles here?

Narrator: to find out,
Chamberlain wants to know

What the white mountains
Are made of.

All right.
This is an xrf tester.

And it's really gonna give us
The chemical makeup

Of what's going on in this pile.

I'm gonna dig down
So I get a proper reading here.

Narrator:
An xrf machine uses x-rays

To identify individual elements.

Chamberlain:
It just takes just a moment.

[ machine beeps ]

And we see there's lead
And zinc.

You've got some heavy metals.

Lead and zinc in a big pile
Like this --

That's got to be something
To do with mining.

Narrator: if these are
The remnants of mining,

Then this was once a massive,
Highly valuable claim,

Employing many thousands
Of people.

So how did it get
So out of control

And then make the whole town
Disappear?

**

Narrator: coming up --
The ghost town's deadly secret.

Chamberlain:
People thought they were safe,

And then they had all of that
Taken away from them.

Narrator:
And what's lurking in the woods?

I don't think I've ever seen
Anything like it.

**

Narrator: haley chamberlain
Is in oklahoma.

She's been drawn here
By this satellite image...

...And she's discovered
A massive mining community,

Its inhabitants forced to flee
By a mystery event.

It wasn't just a small town.
This was a big, thriving place.

And now...Now there's nothing.

Narrator:
Yet, among the devastation,

Chamberlain sees someone.

Thank you.

**

Hi there.

The pickup-truck driver
Is unwilling to talk

But does provide her
With a lead.

Is there anybody else left
To talk to?

Man:
Well, there's one guy.

Do you think he'd let me talk
To him?

Yeah.
He might talk to you.

He lives on the east side
Of town.

**

On the outskirts
Of the ghost town,

Chamberlain finds joel thompson.

[ metal clicking ]

Hi there.
Oh! Hello.

Narrator:
Joel reveals

That his family has lived
In the town, called picher,

Since soon after
It was established,

More than a century ago.

What were they mining for
In picher?

They were mining for lead
And zinc.

Of course, back then, it was
For part of the war effort.

What do you mean,
It was part of the war effort?

Well, they used the lead
For the bullets in world war I.

Narrator: chamberlain learns
The picher lead mines produced

Half of america's bullets
In world war I and world war ii.

Its zinc is used to galvanize
The steel

That fueled the massive
Expansion of american suburbia

And the car industry.

At its peak,

There are almost 250 mills here
And 14,000 people.

What was life like
During the heyday in picher?

People were happy,
And there was a lot going on.

It had two hospitals,
Four or five movie theaters,

Two or three banks.

So a big, thriving community,
For sure.

Yes, ma'am.

Picher was an excellent place
To live.

Yet as the community
And mines thrive,

Giant mountains
Of toxic by-product called chat

Rise up around the town --
178 million tons of the stuff.

They become a magnet
For local children.

They'd slide down on car hoods
And run around on them.

So children were sledding down
Chat piles,

Playing on them
As if they were piles of sand

Or anything else
That was not harmful?

They had no knowledge whatsoever
Of this.

Unaware, the children
Breathe in dust

From the lead-laced mountains.

They swim in ponds
Poisoned with chemicals.

And inside
The townsfolks' bodies,

A health time bomb
Begins ticking.

Were people affected
By the pollution of the mining?

They were starting to get
An influx of mine water

Into their drinking water.

Mostly children.

That's who was affected

With, you know,
Elevated blood levels.

Blood tests show that over 60%
Of picher's children

Suffer from lead poisoning.

But joel reveals
That for the town,

It's just one element
Of a massive unfolding disaster.

As demand for ore drops
In the '50s and '60s,

Jobs disappear,
And the mining companies depart.

They leave behind a dying town
And a landscape pockmarked

With 14,000
Crumbling mine shafts.

The mining company filled
Them up as cheap as they could.

They'd throw anything in them
To fill them up,

And then they'd walk off
And leave them.

As the old mine shafts
And tunnels collapse,

Sinkholes threaten to swallow

More than a third
Of the town's houses,

Forcing yet more people to flee.

[ alarm blaring ]

Finally, in 2008,

A 200-mile-per-hour tornado
Rips through,

Destroying what little remains
Of joel's hometown.

**

The tornado killed seven
Or nine people.

Four of them
Were my cousins.

It was gone completely.

Everything was gone.

Wow.

Wow.
I'm so sorry that happened.

You know, it's hard to adjust.
Yeah.

Today joel is one of just
A handful of people

Who choose to stay in a place

The epa calls
The most toxic town in america.

And all that remains
Of the community

That helped to build america
And win two world wars

Is a poisoned moonscape
Visible from space.

The story of picher
Is really emotional,

And this is a place where people
Thought they were safe,

And then they had all of that
Taken away from them.

And it makes me really sad

For all the families
That had to go through this.

**

Narrator: coming up --
The mystery of the cia,

The billionaire,
And the stolen russian nuke.

Morgan: this was one of
The most outrageous operations

In the history
Of the american military.

Narrator:
And the ocean's 700,000-ton

Invisible exterminator.

It's the death trap
That keeps on killing.

Narrator:
May 7, 2012 --

Eyes in the sky capture images
Of the u.S. Navy shipyard

At suisun bay, california.

Walters: my eye is drawn
To this one on the far left.

The rest are all battleships.

Then you've got this stubby
Little thing at the end,

Like a cigar butt.

Narrator: image analysis
Suggests the strange vessel

Is 324 feet long.

Military historian martin morgan
Thinks he recognizes it.

Based on the photograph,
It fits the description

Of this specialized vessel
Called hmb-1.

Narrator: it appears that
21st-century satellite images

Have identified the location

Of one of the most secretive
Crafts of the cold war.

This vessel was associated
With one of the most outrageous,

One of the most ambitious
Covert operations

In the history
Of the american military.

Declassified cia documents
Reveal the hmb-1 has its genesis

During a period of
Particularly strained relations

Between the cold war
Superpowers.

By the end of the 1960s,
Both countries

Are kind of hovering around
The trigger button.

The tensions are really high.

Walters: what the united states
Are looking for now

Is something that's gonna
Give them the competitive edge.

And in 1968,
You've got what could be

An absolute gift
To the americans.

Narrator: in march 1968,

The russian golf class-ii
K-129 submarine

Vanishes in the pacific ocean.

American agents learn
It's carrying

The revolutionary
R-21 ballistic missile,

The first soviet nuclear warhead

That can be launched
From deep underwater.

K-129 was a prized asset
Of the soviet union,

And its loss was
A serious setback for them.

The soviets searched
For over a month

Trying to find k-129
After it sank,

But to no avail.

This is dangled like a carrot
In front of the americans --

What a prize to get.

Narrator: while the soviets
Search for their lost sub,

The u.S. Navy tracks it
To a patch of seabed

1,500 miles north of hawaii.

And in a room
At cia headquarters

In langley, virginia,
Agents hatch

Perhaps the most audacious heist
In history,

Code-named project azorian.

The concept was like
The arcade game you would see,

With a big metal claw.

But the idea here was to have
A massive metal claw

Pluck this submarine
Off the ocean floor

And pull it into the hull
Of a large ship.

Narrator: but in this game,
The prize is three miles deep

And weighs 2,000 tons.

Walters: this is where
The barge comes in.

What she is
Is a fully submersible dry dock.

That metal dome completely hides
From view

Anything underneath it.

And so what you've got
Underneath it

Is what the military engineers
Have assembled,

Which is this massive claw.

Narrator: hmb-1's mission
Is to drop below the ocean

And covertly attach
The massive claw

To a much larger ship
Built for the operation,

Called the glomar.

The glomar will then haul
The sub up

Into a secret compartment

And steal her away from
Patrolling russian warships.

What's paramount
Is that the russians not key

Into what the cia
Is actually up to,

Because that could have created
A diplomatic catastrophe.

Narrator: so as not to arouse
Soviet suspicions,

Intelligence agents need to
Create a convincing cover story

For the two ships.

They go to none other
Than howard hughes,

Who, of course,
Is this very eccentric,

Very secretive billionaire.

Narrator: hughes, who has worked
With the cia before,

Publicly announces
That the two vessels are his

And they're searching for
Valuable minerals

On the pacific seabed.

To help with the operation,

Howard hughes launches
A fake media campaign.

He has a champagne christening
For the vessel

All to basically mark
His supposed entry

Into deep-sea exploration.

This is seriously audacious,

Including the cia placing fake
Academic articles

Into academic journals.

So it's really
A kind of large-scale psyop

Being played for the media
And for the american public.

Narrator: project azorian takes
Six years to plan

And costs $500 million
To set in motion --

Enough to fund an apollo flight
To the moon.

Armstrong:
The eagle has landed.

Narrator: in june 1974, the two
Vessels begin their mission.

Walters:
The hmb-1 lets out the claw

And gets it on board the glomar
Explorer without anybody seeing.

It's a fantastic piece
Of clandestine naval work.

Pavelec: there are two
Soviet ships in the area

That are watching
All this happen

That don't realize the americans
Are snatching this vessel

Right under their noses.

Narrator: what the declassified
Cia documents don't disclose

Is what happens next.

Wawro: urban legend is
That they grabbed

The weapons on board,

And they would have given
The cia

A good insight
Into all the technology

On one of these advanced
Soviet submarines.

Narrator: but subsequent aerial
Photos reveal something strange.

When you look at a satellite
Image, it's gone.

Narrator: the craft custom-built
To steal russian nuclear secrets

Appears to be on the move again.

Morgan:
Something is going on.

But the ship that was the cause
Of all of this drama

Is long gone now.

Narrator:
Further satellite images

Track the hmb-1 to a shipyard

Belonging to secretive military
Engineers lockheed-martin.

And for carlo munoz,
That's significant.

Munoz:
Years after project azorian,

The company used the ship

To actually help
With the development

Of the first stealth ships
To be developed.

Narrator: the stealth ship
Was the sea shadow.

The sea shadow
Was revolutionary.

It's virtually invisible
To radar.

It was really groundbreaking.

Narrator:
The hmb-1's presence here

Could suggest
That the u.S. Military

Is once again using it for
Clandestine military technology.

Wawro:
To keep this very secret,

What better place to conceal it
Than in the hughes mining barge?

Narrator:
The latest images from 2019

Above alameda shipyard
In san francisco

Confirm that the hmb-1
Has indeed started a new life.

Hymel:
This is bizarre.

It looks like somebody
Has peeled the roof off

And we're looking
Directly down into it.

Narrator:
But the barge's new role

Is not what analysts
Were expecting.

The craft that stole
A russian nuke,

Helped to win the cold war,

And gave rise to the world's
First stealth ship

Is now being used
To patch up luxury yachts.

Morgan:
So what we have left today

Is this barge that can still
Be seen from satellite.

That's all that is there
To remind us

Of what was at one time

The pride
Of the american military.

Narrator:
Coming up --

How hollywood helped hoodwink
Hitler.

It was a mad and crazy idea,
But it worked.

Narrator: and the lost tombs
Of the amazonians.

The bodies are women showing
Clear evidence of battle injury.

Narrator: april 7, 2015 --
An eye in the sky

Over western england
Captures this image.

Kourounis: you've got
Beautiful green fields,

But in the middle of it all

Is the most unusual shape --
A pentagon.

It's got odd,
Almost star-shaped lines

Coming out of a central
Circular area.

I don't think I've ever seen
Anything like it.

Narrator: for military historian
Martin morgan,

The structure's apparent age and
Distinctive shape are telling.

This unusual five-pointed
Structure is similar

To some of the sites that were
Created during the blitz

As a decoy.

Narrator:
The blitz,

Nazi germany's attempt to bomb
The british into submission,

Begins in september 1940.

The aerial onslaught
Costs 43,000 lives

And leaves many of the country's
Industrial centers in ruins.

Britain was facing
A desperate situation.

The luftwaffe,
The nazi air force,

Was devastating our cities.

They were being bombed
Into oblivion.

Narrator: in november 1940,
Engineer colonel john turner

Develops an elaborate plan to
Defend against the bombardment,

One which could explain
The mystery shape.

It's called operation starfish,

An ingenious idea
On how to fool the luftwaffe.

And he puts these sites
Around major u.K. Cities.

Narrator: turner employs a team
Of special-effects artists

From film studios

To construct 230 models
Designed to lure german bombers

Away from their
Intended targets.

The whole hollywood spirit
Took over.

They tried to make these fakes
Look as realistic as possible.

[ siren wailing ]

Narrator: as the first wave
Of luftwaffe bombers approach,

Operators at the decoy sites
Light flares.

Having attracted
The nazis' attention,

Technicians trigger a system
Of light arrays and pyrotechnics

To create a real-time simulation
Of a full-scale attack.

[ explosions ]

Walters: looking out the belly
Of a luftwaffe bomber,

That looks like a british town
On fire.

That looks like
It's being bombed.

That looks like
Where I'm gonna drop my bombs.

It was a mad and crazy idea,
But it worked.

[ explosions in distance ]

Narrator:
Declassified reports reveal

That the decoys fooled
The luftwaffe

Into dropping hundreds of tons
Of bombs onto fake sites.

These include mock towns
And cities

As well as ammunition dumps
And fuel-storage facilities.

Morgan: there are sites
That look similar

To what we're seeing
In the satellite image.

So there's the possibility
That this is a starfish site.

Narrator: however,
Further analysis

Reveals a problem
With this theory.

Silbey:
It's filled with water.

It's probably not
One of the decoy sites.

Narrator:
The starfish-shaped structure

Appears to be an elaborate pond.

When analysts consult
Local land records,

They discover it once served

A strange and totally unexpected
Purpose.

This bizarre shape
Is actually created to collect

And harvest a whole lot of ducks
At one time.

Narrator: the records suggest
That the duck hunting pond

Is constructed in the 17th
Or 18th century,

A time when a heavy meat diet

Was a sign of social standing
And wealth.

The english aristocracy
Were obsessed with game.

And in meals, feasts, whatever,
You'd be serving up game

Rather than ordinary things.

Peasants ate pork
And things like that.

The aristocracy ate game.

Narrator:
At this time in history,

The total british population
Stands at eight million.

Yet just 1% of them owned
80% of the land.

They stocked their game
In estates the size of delaware.

It's not enough
For the aristocrats

To just shoot one duck
Or shoot a few ducks.

There's this sense of
"We have to do this at a scale

That's beyond that
Of the normal individual."

Narrator: kays learns that
Gameskeepers force the ducks

Into the arms of the pond,

Funneling them towards
The muzzles of waiting guns.

The ducks start in the middle,

But as they get further
And further in there,

It starts to be covered
With nets and cages

So that eventually they're
Actually stuck in a trap.

Narrator: caught in the
Net-covered arms of the pond,

The ducks are easy prey
And are picked off by the dozen.

But as time moves on,
The british aristocrats

Turn to ways to kill even bigger
Numbers of fowl on their ponds.

Enter the punt gun,

A boat-mounted anti-duck
Superweapon.

Punt guns were massive guns.

If you look at an old picture

Of somebody holding
One of these things,

It looks like
It shouldn't even exist.

It had to be mounted
To a special boat called a punt.

And that's how the gun got
Its name.

Narrator:
Up to 14 feet long,

A punt gun can turn a flock
Of eider ducks into entrees

Before you can say "Bang."

When you fire the punt gun,

You are sending a spray of shot
Into the air,

And you could take down dozens,

Maybe even up to 100 birds
In a single shot.

It's like going and shooting
Sheep with a machine gun.

Narrator: as guns become bigger
And more powerful,

The bizarrely shaped duck
Decoy ponds fall out of use.

This site, spotted from space,
Is one of the last in the world.

This odd-shaped pond remains

As a window
Into the eccentricities

Of european aristocracy
At the time.

**

Narrator: coming up --
The 80,000-ton death trap...

This is super dangerous.

Narrator: ...And a code
In the deserts of china.

Who put these
In this remote place and why?

Narrator:
September 8, 2018 --

The worldview-3 satellite over
San francisco bay, california,

Spots some strange activity.

This ship has what seems like
A really long tail

Just dragging behind the ship.

I mean, what could it be for?

Kays:
It's really weird to see a ship

Pulling something so long
And skinny.

Narrator: scale analysis reveals
The mystery tail

Is 2,000 feet long.

You see these tiny little
White bobs along the line,

And I'm wondering if they're
Buoys for a net --

Specifically a gill net.

Narrator: if this is
A giant drift gill net,

Its presence here
Alarms experts.

Maritime law prohibits
This kind of fishing

Within three miles
Of the coast --

And with good reason.

Gill nets are
This microfilament curtain

That hangs down
From this big line of buoys

That are floating across
The surface of the water.

If a fish tries to swim
Through it,

Which they try to,

Often they're caught head deep
In by their gills.

Schuttler:
And their gills get stuck,

So they can no longer respirate

And they actually drown
In the water.

It's like a giant wall of death.

Once deployed, gill nets
Can be left unattended.

Kays: because these nets
Are left alone

Out there in the ocean,
They sometimes get lost.

They can break away
From their anchors.

A big storm can come through,

And now you have a giant
Floating gill net

Just cruising on its own.

Narrator: every year, a fishery
Operating in the atlantic

Loses 25,000 of them.

As they drift away, these walls
Of death continue to kill...

...A phenomenon known
As ghost fishing.

**

The derelict fishing gear

Catches around 650,000
Marine animals a year

And remains deadly
For centuries.

Because there's no fishermen
To empty the nets,

These decaying carcasses gather
More animals,

Attract more predators,
Which also become entangled.

It just is this continuous cycle
Of death.

**

Narrator: analysts consider
If the aerial image

Has captured evidence
Of an operation

To recover one of these killer
Nets from close to u.S. Shores.

I don't think that this is
A ghost-net cleanup operation

Because by the time they get
To them to clean them up,

They're usually in sort of balls
Or they're more of a mess.

They're not all
In this nice straight line.

Narrator: investigators return
To satellite data.

Successive images reveal

The path of the ship
With the giant tail.

If you track this ship

All the way out
Of san francisco bay and west,

You see it rendezvousing
With other ships,

All carrying the same
Piece of equipment behind them.

Narrator: the bizarre fleet
Congregates in an area

Midway between california
And hawaii.

And for some analysts,
That's significant.

This is the center of the
Great pacific garbage patch.

Kay: the great pacific garbage
Patch is this area of the ocean

Where all the currents
Kind of come together

So that any piece
Of floating debris

Is likely gonna end up
Sort of circling around

In the middle of the ocean
To this place.

**

Narrator: covering over 600,000
Square miles,

An area twice the size of texas,
The great pacific garbage patch

Is the largest of five ocean
Plastic dumps on the planet.

Anything you can imagine
Is in this patch --

Old toothbrushes, flip-flops --
And it all floats

From everywhere around the world
By currents,

And it accumulates
In this one big patch.

Plastic doesn't break down
In salt water very quickly,

So you end up with a massive
Amount of plastic

Of all different sizes.

Narrator: this patch of ocean
Contains 80,000 tons of plastic,

The equivalent weight
Of almost 500 boeing 747s.

It's estimated to contain
1.8 trillion pieces.

That's 230
For each person on earth.

Kay: the amount of plastic,
Of course,

Keeps increasing every year,

But the dimensions of each piece
Get smaller.

Animals are eating them,

And they're getting the plastic
Incorporated into their bodies.

And then guess who eats the fish
Next.

We do.

So we end up eating
Our own garbage.

Narrator: a 2019 study
Shows we will soon be ingesting

A credit card's worth
Of this plastic a week.

That's almost a laptop
Every year.

We're only starting to discover
What happens when humans

Or other animals eat
These tiny bits of plastic.

Narrator: for an area this big,
Containing so much garbage,

An ordinary cleanup operation
Is impossible.

It's tiny items that are gonna
Take forever

If you do it by a net or it's
Just an individual vessel.

You have to come up with
Some kind of new mechanism.

Narrator: analysts uncover
A report from 2018

That reveal scientists have done
Just that,

And it explains the giant tail
Captured from space.

Patel: researchers came up with
This long, floating device

That could funnel in
These microplastics.

These long tails we're seeing

Are actually used to collect
The garbage.

**

Narrator: the tail in the image
Is a surface float

Attached to a long mesh skirt
Hanging beneath the water.

As currents and winds move it
Around the patch,

It gathers up the tiny bits
Of plastic

Like a 2,000-foot-long broom.

Patel: this skirt actually
Creates, like, a "U" shape

That helps bring those plastics
To the center

So they can't escape back out.

Narrator:
When it's full,

The ship's operators haul in
The cleanup system

And remove any plastic
It's caught.

Scientists estimate
That this tail seen from space

Could reduce the great
Pacific garbage patch by 50%

In five years.

Ruben:
What we're seeing here

Is like a nature-fueled
Mobile prison for plastic.

**

Narrator:
Coming up --

The drugged-up warrior women
Of the ancient world.

These women went
To the front line in battle

Right alongside the men.

Narrator:
September 9, 2016 --

The worldview-3 satellite

Orbiting over china's
Western border with tajikistan

Captures this image.

Horton:
This is really interesting.

What we seem to have is nine
Of these circular structures.

Schuttler: they're in, like,
A straight line.

It looks like somebody took
A stamp

And pressed it
Across the landscape.

Narrator:
To some,

The location of the circular
Structures is significant.

Looking at these circular shapes
Makes me think about

A burial mound in this area
Called a kurgan.

Narrator: kurgans are circular
Earth-and-stone mounds

Covering ancient
Burial chambers.

Many date back to when a tribe
Of notorious mountain warlords

Ruled this region --
The scythians.

[ indistinct shouting ]

Bellinger: the scythians
Were fearsome warriors.

They'd roamed across and ruled
This entire steppe

For close to 1,000 years.

They were expert bowmen

Who could easily draw
And shoot a bow

From the back
Of a galloping horse.

Narrator:
Between 900 bc and 200 bc,

Scythians ruled about a million
Square miles of the steppe,

From the black sea to china.

[ indistinct shouting ]

Their feared archers use arrows
Dipped in poison

And often take to battle drunk
And high on marijuana.

Elite warriors
Are sometimes honored

With elaborate circular tombs.

The scythians would dig a shaft
Down the center of it,

And the body of the deceased,
Who was mummified,

Is placed in the bottom
Along with valued possessions,

Such as fabulous gold jewelry.

Narrator:
Dna tests on scythian mummies

Reveal something unexpected.

The bodies are women buried
With weapons

And showing clear evidence
Of battle injury.

These scythian warrior women
Apparently participated

In equal measure
In military activities

And went to the front line in
Battle right alongside the men.

[ indistinct shouting ]

Narrator:
New research suggests

The scythian warrior women's
Prowess in battle

Inspires one of the most
Enduring legends of antiquity.

One suggestion has been

That the story of the amazons
Comes out of scythian culture.

Narrator: the amazon tribe
Of female fighters

Features heavily
In greek mythology,

Which claims they fought
In the trojan war.

Wonder woman is supposedly
A descendant

Of these incredible
Warrior women.

Well, maybe we've got our first
Flesh-and-blood evidence

That all of those stories
Are true.

Narrator: yet further analysis
Suggests the line of circles

Is an optical illusion.

The shapes are craters,
Not mounds.

The spacing
And shape of the holes

Leads archeologist patrick hunt
To another theory.

It reminds me much more of this
Ancient engineering miracle

Of an underground
Human-made aqueduct river

That we called the karez system.

**

The karez found to the east
Of the structures in the image

Is an ingenious gravity-powered
Irrigation system

Constructed 2,000 years ago.

Dubbed china's underground
Great wall,

It transports ice melt
From the tian shan mountains

To the parched plains below
Through 3,000 miles of tunnels.

They didn't have
Electronic earth movers.

They didn't have borers
And huge drills

That were done by machines.

They dug these by hand.

That's just staggering
To consider.

Narrator: karez uses regularly
Spaced 300-foot-deep wells

To maintain atmospheric pressure
In the canals

And keep the water flowing
Steadily.

Hunt: you can't have
The gradient too steep

Because the water would flood it
Or wash whatever is there away.

And if it's not enough
Of a gradient,

The water won't move.

So you have to calculate it
Just right.

**

Narrator:
It's this extraordinary

Subterranean engineering
That enables oases and towns

To flourish
In these otherwise barren lands.

They are the arteries
That nourish the silk road,

The superhighway
Of the ancient world.

[ camel lowing ]

Hunt:
Despite how hot and dry it is,

People have actually lived
In this area

For thousands of years.

Civilizations have flourished
Here.

What was a dry, hot desert
Was transformed into a paradise.

**

Narrator:
Yet if these are karez,

They appear much more modern

Than ones currently known
To archeologists.

The satellite image
Raises the possibility

That china is attempting to use
This ancient form of engineering

To rejuvenate its secretive
Western borderlands.

We can never know for certain

That that's actually what they
Are until we can get there.

And, of course,

Because it's such a remote
And sensitive part of the world,

The likelihood of that
Ever happening is very remote.

Narrator: for now,
The strange line of circles

Captured from space
Remain a tantalizing mystery.