Original subtitles

[dramatic music]

- Countless terrible events

have been attributed to angry gods.

From wiping out entire cities-

- He commands the Israelites

to kill everyone in Jericho.

- God even has Joshua issue a curse

on anyone who attempts to rebuild the city in the future.

- To doling out eternal torture-

- Zeus condemns Prometheus

to have his liver eaten every day forever.

- To conjuring up deadly curses.

- The Egyptians believe that even after the pharaoh is dead,

no one is safe From his anger.

- Shortly after unearthing King Tut's tomb,

Lord Carnarvon is found dead.

- At least nine people connected with the excavation

die over the next decade.

- When the wrath of a god is unleashed,

there's nowhere to hide.

[dramatic music]

The Great Flood in the Bible's Book of Genesis

is among the most famous stories

associated with a furious God,

but it's far from the only one.

[lightning cracking]

- The Old Testament God is pretty famous for his wrath.

In Genesis, he kicks Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden.

In Exodus, he curses Egypt with the 10 plagues.

In the Book of Numbers,

he even sends poisonous snakes

to bite his chosen people, the Israelites,

when they complain about being hungry in the desert.

- [Dennis] God also famously vents his anger

at a city standing in the way of the Israelites

reaching the Promised Land.

[pensive music]

- After the death of Moses,

God picks Joshua to lead the Israelites.

But as they near the city of Jericho,

there's a problem.

It is occupied by the Canaanites,

and they are refusing to let the Israelites in.

[dramatic music]

- Joshua's army camps on the other side of the Jordan River

across from Jericho.

He then sends out two spies

to gain information about the city.

A prostitute named Rahab,

who lives in Jericho, assists them.

She gives them information

and helps them to avoid capture.

[suspenseful music]

- Once he has his insider info,

Joshua leads his army to cross the Jordan River.

With the help of the powerful Ark of the Covenant

that they're carrying,

the river dries up in one area

so they can walk right through.

- The King of Jericho reacts

by ordering the gates to the city walls closed.

[doors slamming]

No one is allowed in or out.

- [Dennis] This upsets God tremendously,

so he decides to teach the people of Jericho a lesson.

- God tells Joshua to march his army around the city,

once a day for six days,

carrying the Ark of the Covenant.

And then on the seventh day,

the Israelites are to march around the city seven times

with the priests blowing their trumpets.

They do exactly as instructed,

and after the last trumpet blast on the seventh day,

the whole army shouts

and the walls of the city come tumbling down.

[wall crashing]

- The Bible leads us to believe

that it's the power of God's wrath

that causes those walls to crumble.

[dramatic music]

- [Dennis] But that's not the end of the story.

- God is so angry,

he commands the Israelites

to kill everyone in Jericho.

Joshua and the Israelites destroy with the sword

every living thing,

men and women, young and old,

cattle, sheep and donkeys.

And then they burn the city to the ground.

- God even has Joshua issue a curse

on anyone who attempts to rebuild the city in the future.

At the cost of his firstborn son,

he will lay its foundations,

at the cost of his youngest,

he will set up its gates.

The only people in the city spared

are Rahab and her family.

Rahab eventually becomes an ancestor of both King David

and the Virgin Mary's husband, Joseph.

- [Dennis] It's a terrifying tale

of what happens when humans anger God.

But could some aspects be rooted in fact?

[inquisitive music]

- There is still a Jericho.

It's in the modern-day West Bank.

- Jericho is one of the oldest

continuously occupied fortifications in the world.

It has the same name,

it's in the right part of the world,

and it's very old.

[pensive music]

- [Dennis] One of the first major excavations of the area

takes place in 1868,

led by British archaeologist Charles Warren.

- There's a place named Tell es-Sultan or Sultan's Hill.

Warren suspects it's the right spot

because it's near a spring

that is described as supplying water

to ancient Jericho in biblical times.

Warren digs trenches on the site,

but he doesn't find anything significant

and so decides it is not worth excavating any further.

- [Dennis] 40 years later,

biblical scholar Ernst Sellin

and archaeologist Carl Watzinger

pick up where Warren left off.

- One of the most vivid details

of the destruction of Jericho

would be the walls that collapse

when the Israelites blasted their trumpets.

- Sure enough, Sellin and Watzinger

do find remains of two walls,

which they believe supports the biblical account.

These walls clearly collapsed

in some kind of major damage-causing incident.

They also find piles of mud brick inside the walls

that they believe are from the Canaanite settlement.

Now, this is still before carbon dating is possible,

so once the walls and the bricks are discovered,

there's not much else to be done at that time.

- [Dennis] Progress continues

when a new team joins the effort in 1930.

- A British archaeologist named John Garstang

works with his son to perform even more excavations

at Jericho.

He finds several more things

that he believes support the events in the Book of Joshua.

- Garstang believes that Exodus

is set around 1450 BC,

which is the timeframe that is widely accepted

among biblical scholars.

Then the Book of Joshua

says that the Israelites moved about the desert for 40 years

before going to Jericho.

Garstang locates and excavates another collapsed city wall

near the one Sellin and Watzinger found.

Based on other artifacts

discovered near this wall's foundation,

he dates the wall to the late 15th

or early 14th century BC.

So the timing could fit.

- He also notices something interesting.

The exterior walls of the city

appear to have fallen outwards.

With a walled city being invaded,

you might expect the walls to be pushed in.

This might explain why the destruction

was chalked up to God's wrath.

- [Dennis] But Garstang thinks

there's another possible explanation.

[dynamic music]

- Jericho and the surrounding valley

are in a very seismically active area,

and have experienced numerous earthquakes

throughout recorded history.

[inquisitive music]

Garstang believes that this evidence of an earthquake

supports the statement in Joshua

that the Israelites are able to cross the Jordan River

as it dries up.

- Mudslides following the quakes in this area

sometimes dam up the Jordan River,

temporarily stopping its flow.

So maybe that's what allowed the Israelites to cross.

Garstang concludes his dig in 1936,

confident that Jericho was destroyed

not by the wrath of God,

but by an earthquake.

- [Dennis] For the next 88 years,

archaeologists continued to debate

how Jericho was destroyed.

Then in 2024, biblical scholar Tom Meyer

points to a crucial piece of evidence

overlooked in an early excavation

that might help prove the story.

[upbeat music]

- In the biblical account,

Rahab and her entire family

are spared from the destruction

because they helped Joshua's spies.

Way back during the excavations by Sellin and Watzinger

in the early 1900s,

they discover a small portion of the city

had been spared.

- On Jericho's north side,

a small eight-foot-tall section of the wall didn't collapse.

And next to this wall,

they find a house that's also still intact.

For Meyer, there is no other explanation.

This house must be Rahab's

because it is standing alone amidst the destruction

with the wall around it,

miraculously spared,

just as it says in the Bible.

- If this is true,

it's proof of both God's wrath on Jericho

and his mercy.

- The Bible isn't the only place to find wrathful gods,

Greek mythology is filled with them.

But the rage of one in particular is legendary.

[pensive music]

- You've definitely heard of Zeus.

He's the almighty father,

the king of the Greek pantheon of gods.

And despite the fact that popular worship of him

ended back in the fourth century,

even today,

hit movies and TV series

are made about his legendary wrath.

[pensive music] [thunder rumbling]

- In the Greek pantheon,

Zeus is the ultimate authority,

and he's there to protect gods and humans,

but he's also there to make sure

that they respect the rules.

- Zeus is pretty much the final word

when it comes to justice and truth,

but when wielding his judgment,

he's often just straight-up cruel.

You never wanna get on Zeus's bad side.

- In one famous story,

a minor god called Prometheus defies Zeus

by stealing fire from Olympus

and giving it to humans.

Zeus condemns Prometheus to be chained to a mountain

and have his liver eaten by an eagle

every day for eternity.

As soon as the liver is eaten,

it replenishes itself

and gets eaten again.

- [Dennis] It's not just stealing that infuriates Zeus.

- After Atlas leads an attack against Zeus

during a battle between the gods and the titans,

Zeus forces him to stand at the western edge of the world

and to literally hold up the heavens

on his shoulders forever.

Besides all of these elaborate punishments

that he hands out,

Zeus also has a famous weapon

that he can use when he's angry,

a thunderbolt hurled from his bare hand.

- [Dennis] In one famous story,

he wields it against a god named Phaethon.

- Phaethon is the son of the sun god, Helios.

One day, he takes his father's chariot,

which guides the sun through the sky.

Phaethon accidentally rides it too close to the earth

and he scorches great swaths of land.

After hearing complaints

from the stars and the earth itself,

Zeus mercilessly throws down

a devastating thunderbolt,

striking Phaethon dead for his joy ride.

- [Dennis] Zeus doesn't just take out his anger on gods,

he unleashes his rage on mortals as well.

- In 491 BC, King Darius I of Persia

sends out envoys to the Greek city-states

demanding tributes of earth and water.

In other words, he wants them

to submit to Persian rule.

Some of the city-states comply,

but Athens and Sparta

don't take kindly to the offer.

[suspenseful music]

- Even though these envoys are supposed to have safe passage

to pass on the word of the king,

both the Athenians and the Spartans

cast the Persian messengers down into a pit.

In the Greek world, this is a grave transgression.

- When he learns of his dead messengers,

Darius takes a bow

and shoots an arrow towards the heavens.

According to the Greek historian Herodotus,

he shouts, "Zeus, let it be granted to me

to punish the Athenians."

- So he shoots an arrow at Zeus

and tries to command Zeus to do his bidding,

which is to punish Zeus's chosen people.

That is a surefire way to make him mad.

[pensive music]

- The next year, Darius invades Greece

with a massive Persian army.

The Athenians are vastly outnumbered

at the Battle of Marathon,

but somehow the Greek army

inflicts a crushing defeat on the Persians,

driving them back with a loss of only 192 Athenians

against 6,400 Persian casualties.

- The Persians should've won this battle

and they should've won it easily,

and so a lot of people at the time are thinking,

"Was Zeus somehow involved

in striking down Darius's army?"

- [Dennis] After Darius dies,

his son Xerxes I succeeds him.

- Xerxes invades Greece in 480 BC,

winning some battles,

initially sacking cities, like Thespiae and Plataea,

and burning Athens.

He also defeats the Spartans at Thermopylae,

as famously dramatized in the movie "300."

- According to the Greek historian Herodotus,

Xerxes asks his wise uncle Artabanus

for advice about whether to continue invading,

and Artabanus warns him against it.

He says, "The god strikes with his thunderbolt

those creatures that tower above the rest."

In other words, "Zeus is gonna take you down

if you get too grandiose."

- [Dennis] But Xerxes doesn't listen to his uncle,

and instead makes an even bolder move.

- There's a sacred precinct in Xerxes' territory in Babylon

where people had been allowed to worship Zeus.

Xerxes goes in and steals their statue of Zeus

and kills the priests.

Then Xerxes continues his offensive against the Greeks,

turning his naval fleet towards Salamis

- In the Battle of Salamis,

Xerxes is soundly defeated,

hastening the decline of the Persian Empire.

Herodotus very clearly describes Xerxes' defeat

as a punishment for his audacity

to make the land of Persia

border on the lofty realm of Zeus.

- [Dennis] While we may never know if Zeus

was truly behind these stories,

we do know Ancient Greeks did anything they could

to stay on his good side.

[suspenseful music]

- One way they can do this is with sacrifices.

There is vast archaeological evidence

that the Greeks made thousands,

maybe even tens of thousands of animal sacrifices to Zeus,

most often goats or pigs.

- The Greeks believe that Zeus

is intimately involved in their daily lives.

If something good happens,

it's because he's happy.

[thunder rumbling]

- [Dennis] They also claim to know when Zeus is angry.

[lightning cracking]

- One of the main ways is by the weather.

With science in its infancy at the time,

thunder and lightning storms

are something that the Ancient Greeks don't understand.

So they attribute them to Zeus.

thanks to his well-known association

with lightning bolts.

- In fact, if someplace on earth

gets struck by lightning,

oftentimes the Greeks will erect a temple right there

where people could worship

and hopefully ward off any more violent storms.

- In 2009, a team from the University of Pennsylvania

uncovers a particularly ancient sacred spot

where this happened,

at the top of Mount Lykaion in Arcadia.

They find charred animal bones

and a bronze statue of a male hand

holding a silver lightning bolt.

They also find petrified lightning,

which is the fused soil and minerals

that are left behind when lightning strikes the ground.

- The evidence suggests that people gathered at this spot

to worship Zeus and offer animal sacrifices

more than 3,200 years ago

because it was a location

where they believed his angry lightning bolt

once struck the earth.

[pensive music]

- [Dennis] These days, Zeus may no longer be feared,

but we continue to honor him,

just in case.

- One of the most iconic ancient events

that we still celebrate now

is the Olympic Games.

They were actually originally started

as an important tribute to Zeus.

- For several centuries,

the ancient Greeks held the Games

at Zeus's Temple of Olympia every four years.

[audience cheering]

Even if there was a threat of invasion,

the Games would go on,

because we all know what happens

when Zeus feels disrespected.

[pensive music]

- We've all heard of the lost city of Atlantis,

a fabled place that supposedly sank into the ocean,

destroyed by angry Greek gods.

Is it possible this legend

was inspired by an ancient disaster?

[thunder rumbling] [pensive music]

- Atlantis is a legendary kingdom

that's said to once have occupied a large island.

- It's been featured in books

by big-name authors like Jules Verne,

CS Lewis and Arthur Conan Doyle.

It's been the subject of movies, TV shows,

and it's also famously the home of Aquaman.

- [Dennis] The fascination with Atlantis

dates back to 590 BC.

- In his writings, Plato says that an Athenian poet

named Solon was visiting Egypt

when he heard about Atlantis from a local priest.

It's a story of an entire kingdom

destroyed by an angry god.

This tale passes down

through several generations

of Solon's family

to Plato himself.

And once Plato starts writing about it,

the story really starts to spread.

[inquisitive music]

- Plato describes a large island

created by the god Poseidon.

Poseidon is the god of the sea

who controls all bodies of water,

creates storms and tsunamis,

and also can cause earthquakes.

[lightning cracking]

- Poseidon gives this island to his son,

the god Atlas.

It becomes known as the Island of Atlas,

and over time, gets shortened to Atlantis.

The Atlantic Ocean gets its name the very same way,

it's the Sea of Atlas.

[dynamic music]

- According to Plato, this island existed around 9600 BC,

and it was located, he says,

beyond the Pillars of Hercules,

which is a phrase that the Greeks typically use

to describe the strait of Gibraltar.

So he likely means it's out in the Atlantic somewhere.

- Atlantis is a grand utopian society,

inhabited by half gods and half humans.

They're technologically advanced,

they're extremely wealthy,

and they control a very powerful navy.

- [Dennis] But unfortunately, things take a dark turn.

- According to Plato,

the need for power corrupts the Atlantians.

In their greed and quest for domination,

they try to conquer the people

of the Mediterranean.

So they attack Athens,

but the city manages to fight them off.

[pensive music]

- As we all know, getting too power hungry

is a surefire way to upset the Greek gods.

Plato describes Zeus holding a council of the gods

to discuss how to deal with Atlantis.

It includes Poseidon, Hera,

Apollo, and several others.

- Atlantis' moral decline

and their hubris are simply too much for the gods,

and so they punish the Atlantians

by destroying their entire civilization.

[vase smashing]

The gods unleashed 24 hours of cataclysmic flooding

and earthquakes on Atlantis,

causing the island to be swallowed up by the sea,

never to be heard from again.

It's a major civilization

that is just wiped out overnight.

It is the ultimate tale of divine wrath.

[dramatic music]

- [Dennis] As soon as Plato's account of Atlantis

is published,

people start asking,

"Is this true? And if so, where is Atlantis?"

[inquisitive music]

- Plato's own students are divided on this.

Aristotle believes that Plato invented the island

to teach a moral lesson.

He even jokes about Plato's ability

to create nations out of thin air

and destroy them in a day.

- Despite their questions,

the Ancient Greeks don't really have the technology

to go out and look for Atlantis

beneath the ocean.

People don't really start seriously searching for it

until the age of transatlantic exploration,

when advances in ship building and navigation

allow Europeans to venture

much farther across the oceans.

- [Dennis] This opens the floodgates

for a range of ideas on where Atlantis could be,

including one from a Spanish historian

in the 16th century.

- The new world of America

has recently been discovered,

and it inspires Francisco Lopez de Gomara

to speculate that this might be where Atlantis is located.

It's the biggest piece of land

outside the Pillars of Hercules,

and so it could be where Plato was talking about.

[inquisitive music]

- As European explorers push into Mexico

and Central America,

they find evidence that they think backs up

Lopez de Gomara's claims.

They see the impressive architecture and large cities

in the territory of the Maya and the Aztec,

and they think, "You know, this really could be Atlantis."

- But of course, the Maya and Aztec cities

aren't underwater,

nor were they destroyed by earthquakes

or leveled to the ground.

They're mostly still standing.

So this doesn't really fit the narrative

of the wrath of the gods

taking down Atlantis.

- [Dennis] In 1882, another theory emerges

when American writer Ignatius Donnelly

publishes a popular book.

- He takes some of these old ideas

and really pushes them to the extreme,

actually claiming that all ancient civilizations

are descended from Atlantis

and that this is also where the Garden of Eden was located.

- He combines a hodgepodge of research on Plato

and the Bible and geological data concerning floods,

and he comes up with a theory

that Atlantis was once a large island

right in the middle of the Atlantic

and its people spread from there in all directions.

They settled in Mexico and South America,

in Africa and Europe.

He cites similarities in the mythologies

of Ancient Egyptian and Native Americans

and similarities in their buildings,

such as pyramids,

similarities in their languages,

to suggest that Atlantis started it all.

- Donnelly writes that the destruction of Atlantis

was caused by the God of the Bible

as part of the Great Flood.

So according to him,

it was destroyed by God's wrath,

not the Greek gods' wrath.

[waves crashing] [pensive music]

- Today, we know that Donnelly's claims

are just wrong.

We know the separate origins

of the Maya and the Aztec and the Egyptians,

and we also know that no civilization

had the technology to travel so far across the ocean

9,000 years ago.

- So once again, we're back to square one.

If the story of Atlantis' destruction

at the hands of the gods

is based on a real place,

this can't be it.

[suspenseful music]

- From Plato's ancient writings

to modern-day expeditions,

the search for Atlantis has turned up empty,

but what if they've all been looking

in the wrong place?

- What we're looking for is evidence

of the massive destruction of a thriving culture,

possibly a large amount of ruins

and possibly underwater.

- Ever since the time of the Ancient Greeks,

when trying to prove Atlantis existed,

there's only really been one hint

as to its location,

that important passage from Plato

where he says, "It's beyond the Pillars of Hercules."

- In the southern part of Greece,

we find two protruding cliffs

on either side of the Gulf of Laconia.

These could also be referred to as the Pillars of Hercules.

[inquisitive music]

- If this is the case,

then everyone looking all around

the Atlantic Ocean for Atlantis

might be way off base.

Atlantis might actually be in the Mediterranean Sea,

somewhere just outside the Gulf of Laconia.

[seagulls squawking]

- The Gulf of Laconia is nearly 1,600 miles

east of the Rock of Gibraltar.

And over by Gibraltar,

we haven't found anything close

to an island civilization

that got wiped out overnight.

But guess what?

Near the Gulf of Laconia, we have.

- [Dennis] It's called the Island of Thera.

And long ago, it experienced unholy annihilation.

- During the Bronze Age,

Thera is home to the Minoan civilization.

Tragically, around 1600 BC,

the island is destroyed, nearly overnight,

due to a massive volcanic eruption

that triggers earthquakes and tsunamis.

- Studies of ash deposits on the sea floor

reveal that the force of that eruption

dwarfed anything seen to that point in human history.

[volcano booming]

Scientists believe the explosion

had the energy of several hundred atomic bombs

exploding in a fraction of a second.

[explosion booming]

- It's precisely the kind of destruction

that Zeus and Poseidon are known for.

[inquisitive music] [lightning cracking]

- References to what might be the plume

and volcanic lightning from the eruption

are recorded on an Egyptian monument

called the Tempest Stele

from the same time period.

This was huge if they could see it that far away.

And it lends some credibility to Plato's story

that the records of Atlantis

were originally found in Egypt.

- Even the Chinese might have recorded the destruction.

A text called "The Bamboo Annals"

from around 1600 BC

reports unusual yellow fog,

a dimming of the sun

and frost in July leading to crop failure,

all possible consequences of a distant eruption.

- As far as cautionary tales about angry gods go,

this could be the one

that's grounded in reality.

- On the other side of the world,

the ancient Maya also believed

they live at the mercy of temperamental gods.

According to them,

one wrong move could trigger untold destruction.

[pensive music]

- At the height of their classic era,

between about 250 and 900 AD,

the Maya Empire has more than 40 large-scale cities

and 1,000 settlements

that stretch over the Yucatan Peninsula.

It's mostly present-day Belize,

Guatemala and Southern Mexico.

- Like the Greeks,

the Maya believe in a whole pantheon of gods

that are involved in every aspect of life,

every harvest, every birth, every death.

There are spirits of the earth,

the sky, and those that dwell deep below the surface

in an underworld called Xibalba.

[dynamic music]

- Xibalba is populated by 12 gods,

including Camazotz, the bat god,

who feeds on blood,

Ah Puch, the god of death and disaster,

and perhaps most importantly,

Chaac, the supreme god of rain.

- Scholars know about the mythology surrounding Chaac

from the Dresden Codex,

one of the oldest and only surviving Maya texts.

It dates to the 11th or 12th century,

and is believed to be a copy of an original

that is much older.

- [Dennis] Chaac's importance can be seen

throughout the codex,

where he's depicted 134 times.

- Chaac carries snakes that he hurls at clouds

to make it rain.

According to Maya lore,

you do not wanna make Chaac angry,

because when he gets angry,

he withholds the precious rain.

[dramatic music] [thunder rumbling]

- So the Maya must keep Chaac happy.

Rain is everything.

Where they live, there are almost no freshwater lakes

or rivers.

For drinking water and water for crops,

the Maya rely on rainfall

and on a network of underground caverns

filled with groundwater,

called cenotes.

But they are also believed

to be sacred portals to Chaac's underworld home of Xibalba.

[pensive music]

- It becomes common for the Maya

to make ritual offerings of pottery,

figurines and jewelry

inside the cenotes

where they're most likely to reach Chaac

and to keep him from becoming angry.

- [Dennis] One of their most sacred cenotes

lies deep in the jungles of Belize,

inside a hidden cave.

- Between 300 and 600 AD,

the Maya begin exploring

the three-mile deep Actun Tunichil Muknal cave

and performing rituals inside.

By 700 AD, it's firmly established

as a supposed gateway to Xibalba

and becomes a well-known site of pilgrimage.

- Now, over time,

the Maya venture deeper into the cave,

navigating a maze of underground rivers

and scaling slippery limestone

to bring their sacred offerings to Chaac.

- For centuries, the Maya have a thriving civilization,

incredible buildings,

advanced mathematical and scientific knowledge,

and bountiful agriculture.

- [Dennis] But around 820 AD,

all that changes.

- Their usual gifts of ceramics,

shells, masks and precious stones

seem like they're no longer good enough

to appease him and bring forth the rain.

So the Maya decide to take more extreme measures.

- Could the wrath of an underworld god

have ravaged an empire?

By the ninth century AD,

that's what the Maya believe,

as they confront a massive drought.

[pensive music]

- Blood is an extremely precious offering,

especially the blood of royalty.

A blood sacrifice is believed to open

a direct channel of communication with the gods.

- The king and other aristocratic men

might pierce themselves with stingray spines.

The queen and her noble woman

would draw obsidian blades

over their tongues.

Drops of the blood would then fall on a special cloth

that would be brought down into the cave

and offered to the gods.

- [Dennis] When this doesn't work,

they try something else.

- They start doing an elaborate ritual of human sacrifice.

The victims would be taken into the cave and prepared,

and then a priest slices open their chest

so that their blood pours like rain,

evoking, hopefully, a downpour of actual rain from Chaac.

[pensive music]

- [Dennis] Unfortunately, human sacrifice

doesn't yield the results they hoped for.

- Between 550 and 800 AD,

there are several periods of intense drought,

each lasting decades.

The classic Maya cities are abandoned for good

by about the year 900,

and the drought

is thought to be the main contributing factor.

- The Maya that do survive

have a greatly weakened civilization,

which suffers a complete collapse

during the Spanish conquest of the 1500s.

[pensive music]

- [Dennis] Their sacred cenote sits mostly forgotten,

until 1989,

when it's rediscovered by archaeologist Jaime Awe.

- Awe explores the Actun Tunichil Muknal cave

and he finds it littered with evidence

of Maya rituals for Chaac.

There's ceremonial pottery

that's more than 1,000 years old

and ample signs of human sacrifice.

- One of the most famous examples

is called the Crystal Maiden,

though later evidence suggests it may actually be male.

This is the skeleton of a 17 year old

that can still be seen on the cave floor today.

The bones have been there so long

that they are completely calcified,

glittering with mineral deposits.

- The remains of at least 14 people are down there,

ranging in age from about 45,

all the way down to a one year old.

Some appear to have been tortured

before they were killed.

Some are stuffed into tight crevices

and side chambers

as if the Maya were trying to squeeze them

even deeper into Chaac's realm.

[pensive music]

- [Dennis] A new discovery in 2006

uncovers the shocking extent

of just how far the Maya were willing to go.

[birds singing]

- In the same area as Actun Tunichil Muknal,

a local farmer hears the screams of a looter

who has fallen 60 feet to the floor

of a pitch-black cave.

[pensive music]

- This turns out to be one of the

largest Maya sacrificial sites ever discovered.

More than 9,000 human teeth,

bone and bone fragments

have been found so far.

- [Dennis] The grisly discovery earns the site

a fitting nickname,

the Midnight Terror Cave.

[suspenseful music]

- After years of excavation,

in 2016, it is revealed that the victims

are exclusively children,

believed to have been sacrificed to Chaac.

- Today, there are descendants of the Maya

who follow the old religion,

minus the sacrifices, of course.

Many still maintain that the civilization declined

because Chaac became angry.

And some suggest that Chaac

still has a powerful hold over the region today.

- [Dennis] This is evident in July of 2024

when a group of locals in Progreso, Yucatan

are worried a statue of Poseidon will set him off.

- According to reports that go viral around the world,

indigenous Mayas threatened to destroy the statue

and give its remains to Chaac.

- But before any action is taken,

Hurricane Beryl rips through the area,

bringing heavy rains, high winds and destruction.

Maybe the wrathful Chaac

took matters into his own hands.

[thunder rumbling]

- We've seen angry gods

incensed by everything from pride to disobedience,

but what are the consequences

for disturbing the dead?

[pensive music]

- The Egyptians have hundreds of gods in their pantheon

that have to be respected,

but there's also one that walks side by side

with the rest of humankind

who quite literally interacts with the people every day.

- According to Egyptian beliefs,

the pharaoh is a divine being as well.

During the coronation ceremony,

a pharaoh is transformed into

the manifestation of Horus,

the god of kingship,

the sun and the sky.

In writings, the pharaoh is referred to as the good god

or the perfect god.

- As a divine ruler, the pharaoh is tasked

with preserving the god-given order of things

and preventing chaos on Earth.

- [Dennis] Once a pharaoh dies,

he or she becomes an even more powerful god.

- As we know, the Egyptians use an elaborate funerary system

after a pharaoh dies,

including massive tombs like the pyramids

and the complicated practice of mummification.

[inquisitive music]

All of these things work together

to transition the pharaoh

from a divine human on Earth

to a fully immortal and permanent god.

- The Egyptians believe that even after the pharaoh is dead,

no one is safe from his anger,

and the most surefire way to make him mad

is to disturb his mummy.

- [Dennis] Some believe these actions

can trigger a terrible curse.

[pensive music]

- Researchers have found actual curses

written on the walls of mummys' tombs.

Some Egyptologists say is that they serve

as a kind of primitive security system,

threatening desecraters with divine retribution.

And this could come in the form of bad fortune

or hauntings, death, disaster. you name it.

[pensive music]

In 1699, author Louis Penicher

writes a book called "The Treatise on Embalming,"

which describes Egyptian funerary practices.

- But it also includes a story

that might be the first written account

of a mummy's curse.

Penicher describes a Polish merchant

who buys two mummies in Alexandria

and cuts them into six parts

to fit them into trunks

before boarding a ship to take them home.

- During the voyage, a storm arises.

And a priest on onboard the ship

has terrifying visions

and believes there are great obstacles to the journey.

The seas become incredibly dangerous,

and the priest's visions continue

until they throw the mummies overboard.

[water splashing]

- [Dennis] But the most famous pharaoh's curse

probably belongs to King Tut.

- Tutankhamun's tomb is discovered in 1922

by British archaeologist Howard Carter

and his sponsor, Lord Carnarvon.

[pensive music]

- It's reported in newspapers

that one of the items found in the burial chamber

is a golden shrine

with a carved figure of a goddess,

and the inscription reads,

"They who enter the sacred tomb

shall swift be visited by wings of death."

- Shortly after unearthing King Tut's tomb,

Lord Carnarvon is found dead.

A mosquito bite on his face becomes infected,

leading to deadly blood poisoning.

In fact, Sherlock Holmes author,

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,

publicly suggests he's been killed

by the mummy's curse.

- [Dennis] Newspapers around the world

run headlines about the dark forces

unleashed from King Tut's tomb.

- Carnarvon's half-brother also dies from blood poisoning

less than a year later.

Wealthy American financier George Jay Gould

dies from the same affliction,

following his visit to the tomb in 1923.

- In 1924, archaeologist Hugh Evelyn White

even takes his own life.

He leaves a note that allegedly reads,

"I have succumbed to the mummy's curse."

[pensive music]

- At least nine people connected with the excavation

die over the next decade,

and many are convinced that the curse

is to blame.

- The incidents freak out

Italian dictator Benito Mussolini so much

that he immediately gets rid of an Egyptian mummy

he had received as a gift.

And ordinary newspaper readers feel the exact same way.

Nervous people are cleaning out Egyptian relics

from their home

and sending them to museums

in order to avoid being the next victim

of the pharaoh's revenge.

- [Dennis] While some chalk up these deaths to coincidence,

others suspect there's a different cause.

- Tut's tomb was never tested

prior to being emptied

and refurbished as a tourist site,

but we do know that among the treasures inside

were bags of bread and raw grain,

a great breeding ground for fungus and mold.

Consequently, many researchers believe a toxic spore

might have been responsible

for some of the deaths surrounding King Tut.

- But this doesn't explain all the deaths,

and as believers will tell you,

just because there's a scientific explanation,

doesn't mean that angry gods

aren't ultimately responsible.

- [Dennis] Whether it's through massive buildings,

elaborate worship or even sacrifice,

people will continue to try and stay on the right side

of an angry god,

just in case.

I'm Dennis Quaid.

Thanks for watching "Holy Marvels."