Original subtitles

NARRATOR: Violent swells eroding England's coastline

reveal a strange wooden structure.

- The top of it has been chopped clean through

and all of its bark is trimmed off.

- And it's not just that, this piece of wood

weighs two and a half tonnes!

So whoever put this here, really wanted it to be right here.

NARRATOR: A dam in Ukraine is destroyed,

exposing mysterious artefacts hidden in the riverbed.

- They pulled out a variety of interesting things

from the area's history, like WWII era German helmets

and a 1st-century Roman coin!

NARRATOR: A massive earthquake in China

buries an entire village alive.

- Shortly after the quake, tragedy struck.

NARRATOR: All over the world incredible discoveries

are being revealed by devastating events...

floods, earthquakes...

droughts...

hurricanes...

volcanic eruptions...

trails of destruction... expose long lost mysteries.

This is Discovered by Disaster.

- (fast paced music playing)

NARRATOR: The coastline of Norfolk, England faces one of the most

temperamental bodies of water on the planet: The North Sea.

Violent swells constantly batter the shore,

leading to a tremendous amount of erosion.

- This part of Britain has one of the fastest eroding coastlines

anywhere in northwestern Europe.

And with climate change exacerbating the problem,

it is possible that the sea level here will rise almost four feet

by the end of this century!

This is a disaster happening in slow motion.

- Even without rising sea levels,

several feet of shoreline can be gobbled up in a matter of days.

At a place called Happisburgh,

the coastline has changed immeasurably in just a few years.

NARRATOR: Just a few miles northwest of Happisburgh ,

at Holme-next-the-Sea, the beaches are continuously disappearing

into the ocean, and as the sand is removed,

what lies beneath comes to light.

In 1998, a man out crab fishing was walking along the beach

when he noticed something green and metallic at his feet.

- It's pretty obvious what it is, the shape is unmistakable!

At one end it's narrow and thick

while it's flared towards the end...

this is an axe head!

NARRATOR: Thinking that the axe head may have been a firefighting axe

from a well known nearby shipwreck,

the man didn't think too much of it and continued with his crab fishing.

- The thing is, this shipwreck isn't very old,

it's from the first half of the 20th century.

In fact, it's a freighter that ran aground

with a cargo of ice from Norway!

- But, there are a few things about this axe

that the man hadn't noticed.

For one, all ships do have these firefighting axes,

but they almost always have this long ice-pick like thing

sticking out the back, for tearing down walls

and stuff like that.

The axe head on the beach doesn't have that.

- Also, it has no hole where you would expect to mount

the handle onto the axe head.

Meaning you would have to tie it on!

But most importantly, its greenish colour gives away an obvious clue,

it's made of bronze.

- People haven't made axes out of bronze for thousands of years.

There's a reason we call it "The Bronze Age",

which in Britain means roughly 2000 to 700 BCE.

NARRATOR: Curious if the area where he discovered the axe

could reveal any other treasures, the man went down to the beach again

and found that a sufficient amount of sand had eroded to reveal

a large, upside-down tree trunk.

- It's pretty big, a little over eight feet tall,

with the top of it chopped clean through

and all of its bark is trimmed off.

So this, this is the work of humans!

Nature did not place this stump upside down here!

- And it's not just that, this piece of wood

weighs two and a half tonnes!

- (dramatic music plays)

- So whoever put this here, really wanted it to be right here.

And they must have had a good reason for it...

NARRATOR: Over the next few days,

the quickly eroding sand begins revealing several

rounded tree stumps, aligned in a circle

with a huge tree trunk in the centre.

- The rounded timbers are arranged in a circle with a 22 foot diameter.

There are 55 of them in total and they're all about the same size,

roughly one and a half feet each.

Most of them have been split in half,

while only a few maintain their natural round shape.

What is this place?

NARRATOR: Archaeologists are called to the site

and realising that what they're looking at is quite vulnerable

to changing conditions, immediately start excavating.

They dig a trench inside the circle and one trench outside of it,

directly to the north.

- An excavation like this has to happen during low tide,

meaning you have between two to four hours to work.

You also have to run pumps every day to get rid of the seawater

which is filling the trenches, and you even have

to remove sea life.

- But those difficult excavations have a huge pay off.

Underneath the trunk they find fragments of rope

that are stuck to the sides of the tree.

And there are also these two holes cut, on opposite sides,

through the trunk of the tree.

So now we know that somebody took this rope,

threaded it through these two holes and dragged

this two and a half tonne tree to put it right here

and turn it upside down.

Who did that and why?

NARRATOR: The archaeologists find no human remains

in or around the circle.

However, they do notice that there are peat beds to the east and west

of the site and that to the south

there is an entire area covered in peat.

- There is even some peat left on a few of the timbers

that made up the circle.

So I think it's pretty safe to say that this entire area

was covered in peat at some point.

That's probably how this wood and rope were preserved.

- Peat bogs famously preserve things very well.

Like the Tollund Man of Denmark...

or the Lindow Man of England.

Two men that lived around 2,000 years ago

who were killed and thrown into peat bogs

and when discovered looked as though they could've been alive yesterday.

- This really drives home how lucky they were to find this place

when they did.

A peat bog, with its low oxygen levels and the way

it just sits there can preserve things for centuries.

But the ocean is a different story. It has the power to destroy

pretty much anything it wants to, as fast as it wants to.

So because this place has become exposed to the ocean,

it is basically one storm away from being erased forever.

These archaeologists are racing against time.

NARRATOR: The 55 posts are fitted very close together.

Towards the southwest end, there are two posts placed

against the outside of the circle,

directly in front of a forked timber.

- You can see that the way one of these posts

has been placed blocks off the only potential access point

or viewpoint into the circle.

Although there's an opening created by the forked timber,

it's only a few inches wide.

So because there's no obvious entryway,

we can discount this being some sort of home, or even fortification.

Nor would it have been an animal pen.

- But opposite to that small opening, at the northeast end,

there is one piece of roundwood timber...

and the axis of that piece of timber is pretty much lined up

with the sunrise and sunset,

so it could be some kind of sundial.

- (metallic swish)

NARRATOR: Prior to Christianity, the people of Great Britain

worshipped pagan gods, and among their deities

may have been a form of sun god.

Paying respect to the sun was central

to their spiritual understanding of the world.

- Ancient monuments dedicated to the worship of the sun

aren't entirely unheard of in this part of the world.

There's a roughly 5,000 year old site called Newgrange in Ireland

that consists of a huge mound of earth surrounded by stones...

and for five days around the winter solstice,

a beam of sunlight illuminates a small room inside the mound

for about 17 minutes at dawn.

- And on the Orkney Islands,

off of Scotland's north-eastern coast there's the Maeshowe tomb,

a 5,000 year old chambered burial cairn

where the setting sun shines straight down

the length of a passageway and hits the back wall

for three weeks before and three weeks after the winter solstice.

- Of course, Stonehenge is the most famous

of all of these kinds of historic sites

and we know that it's aligned to both

the summer and winter solstice...

so it could be that this wood monument is something similar.

But was it built around the same time as Stonehenge?

- Most trees have growth rings, one for each growing season,

and scientists now have an enormous database of different rings

that they can use to determine the age of any given tree.

They can also learn what the climatic conditions were

during the course of a tree's lifetime.

If for example, the rings are close together,

then it was likely a difficult year.

If they're more spaced out, it was a good year.

NARRATOR: Analysis reveals that the trees were under stress,

likely owing to difficult environmental conditions,

and they were cut down in 2049 BCE.

- So these 4,000 year old trees were being hampered in their growth

because of miserable, harsh weather.

And amazingly, the analysis is also able to pinpoint

when during the year, these trees were cut down.

In this case - springtime.

- So it could be that this thing was built in preparation

for the summer solstice, when the sun

is at its highest point in the year!

- It's hard to know what life was like here 4,000 years ago.

We do know that there were some climate changes around that time

that probably had a big influence on the lives of these people.

So maybe this structure was built as a way to try to understand

or even fix some of those changes that the people were experiencing.

NARRATOR: At the time the monument was constructed,

one of the most severe climate events of the last 12,000 years

was taking place.

- This was a global megadrought of cool and dry conditions.

It lasted for 100 years

and is thought to have had a hand in the collapse

of the Egyptian Old Kingdom, as well

as the Akkadian Empire of Mesopotamia.

So it's possible that this monument was built

as a means to worship the sun in desperate times.

But is that the only thing it could be?

- Whoever built it put the tree trunk on its head for a reason.

We can only speculate, but symbolically,

it speaks to the life force returning to the place

from where all life derives, the earth.

So the upturned trunk in the centre might have supported a body.

Meaning this also could have been a burial site.

- The body may have been laid out on top of the trunk,

and with the help of the weather as well as insects and animals,

allowed to return to its natural state.

Or it may have been placed under the trunk, into the ground.

We simply don't know.

NARRATOR: Archaeologists begin to examine the marks

that have been left on the monument's timbers.

- These little marks are from the tools

that were used to cut the wood and shape it.

And because every single tool has a slightly different shape,

each of them has its own distinct signature.

- To obtain the signature, we look at the width and depth

of a tool's imprint.

This will correspond to the width and depth

of the sharp end of the blade, like an axe.

When we have these two numbers,

they're expressed as a curvature ratio.

- The wood at the monument shows very little duplication

of curvature ratios, meaning that there were probably

a lot of different tools being used.

Which of course, means that there were a lot of people

doing the chopping!

NARRATOR: The different curvature ratios logged

in the analysed timbers indicate that at least 51

different bronze tools were used to create the monument.

- This is quite a surprise,

because we previously assumed that bronze tools

were far more scarce at this period of the Early Bronze Age.

But it seems people were able to acquire them, exactly how,

we don't know.

- So if 51 different tools were being used,

it's safe to assume that at least 51 different people

were working on this.

This means that this was a community event,

where the act of participating in the monument's construction

may have been as important as the monument itself.

- Remember, communities at this time weren't that big,

so 51 individuals, likely male adults,

would represent a significant contribution

from one or several communities.

They all needed to be fed and housed

and the time they spent building the monument

was time they weren't spending doing other important things.

- Maybe it was purely for ceremonial purposes,

or maybe it was a burial site for a prominent individual,

or maybe it was both of those things or neither of those things,

we don't know.

But what we're very confident saying though,

is that this place held huge significance for the people

of that time.

NARRATOR: The monument at Holme-next-the-Sea

is now known as Seahenge,

and while it may not be as famous as Stonehenge,

it still provides a valuable window into the world

of Early Bronze Age Britons.

- (fast paced music playing)

NARRATOR: The Dnipro River is one of Europe's main waterways,

flowing through different countries over a span of 1,400 miles.

Owing to its location and size, it has been central

to the region's history, providing transport

for both valuable goods and armed men for thousands of years.

- Measuring seven miles long by one and a half miles wide,

the Ukrainian island of Khortytsia is the largest island

of the Dnipro River. - (crowd chats indistinctly)

It's a national treasure and a designated reserve

that protects the floodplain of bays, canals and forests.

- The island is located about a 125-mile drive

from the Kakhovka Dam, an enormous piece of infrastructure

built by the Soviets in 1956 to provide electricity

for the region.

The construction flooded a very large area but luckily,

Khortytsia was somehow spared and wasn't too heavily impacted

by the change in water level.

- The environmental impact when the Soviets built the dam

in 1956 was significant, and the same could be said

when the Russians allegedly blew it up in 2023,

following the invasion and occupation of parts of Ukraine.

While it's unclear how the dam was destroyed,

the result was catastrophic...

both agricultural land and villages were flooded,

and drinking water was poisoned,

leading to the evacuation of thousands of people.

NARRATOR: The waters surrounding the island of Khortytsia receded,

exposing artefacts once hidden on the riverbed.

- They pulled out a variety of interesting things

from the area's history, like World War II era German helmets

and a 1st-century Roman coin!

So this place has seen its fair share of activity

over the centuries.

- A few weeks after the destruction of the dam,

a man walking along the beach noticed a large object

protruding from the sand.

It looks like a long smooth, rounded piece of wood,

with a rectangular-looking shape towards one end,

obviously not naturally occurring.

- If you look at the shape and the right angles

that have been made towards the end,

it leads me to think that this may have been part

of some sort of vessel.

I mean it was found at the bottom of a river after all!

But what vessel is it?

NARRATOR: The region of the Dnipro River

has seen an incredible amount of human activity

over the course of thousands of years.

Owing to its location it was and remains a key strategic location

to trade, farm and go to war.

- This area is one of the cradles of history.

The vast steppe landscape to the river's east

leads to the Russian heartland, Central Asia and onwards to China.

The soil here is rich and great for agriculture,

and the Black Sea offers ports that lead into the Mediterranean

and out into the wider world.

For these reasons,

the region has seen an endless amount

of human activity and conflict.

NARRATOR: Owing to the area's history, and to the different people

and cultures that have been through here,

the options for what kind of vessel it could be

and when it could be from are extensive.

- The wood is very dense and heavy.

It's also straight-grained.

This means that the pattern of the wood's fibres

that created as the tree grows is straight.

That identifies it as oak!

- But what's interesting is how the wood

has been shaped towards the one end.

It's slightly curved

and then flares out into this rectangular piece

acting somewhat like a mantelpiece

presiding over the rest of the vessel.

- Maybe it's obvious,

but the first thing that comes to my mind is Viking ships!

The bows of Viking ships were famously prominent,

sometimes quite ornate, sometimes less so.

Viking ships are also famous for having been constructed

from oak. So could this be the remnants of a Viking ship?

NARRATOR: The Vikings were a lot more

than their reputation would suggest.

They weren't just fearsome warriors, they were sophisticated seamen

who used their navigational skills

and advanced shipbuilding technology

to sail to and to engage in trade with far off people and places.

- It's well known that the Vikings who resided in what is now Norway

sailed west, colonising Iceland and Greenland

and parts of Britain, but what is less known

is that the Vikings from Sweden sailed east,

and down into the river systems of central and eastern Europe.

NARRATOR: This was known as the Varangian route.

Using the Dnipro as the main artery, the Vikings entered

the freshwater system in the Baltic and exited at the Black Sea.

Some of them ended up putting down roots in the areas surrounding

the Dnipro River,

and over time became assimilated into the local language and culture.

These people ultimately became known as the Varangians.

Their descendants eventually seized the city of Kyiv in the 9th century,

establishing a new kingdom in the process.

- They were able to travel this route

because they developed a specific type of ship

that was excellent for navigating both the stormy seas

as well as the shallow freshwater systems of continental Europe.

- The ships had a shallow draft and no deep lying keel

in the way a traditional sailing boat does,

which allowed them to sail into shallower waters.

To compensate for their lack of a modern keel they were quite wide,

keeping them stable even in the roughest of seas.

- But if you look closely at this massive carved piece of wood

found on the beach, it's missing something important.

Viking ships were clinker-built,

meaning that they were constructed by riveting

overlapping pieces of wood called strakes,

and this piece of wood is lacking these rivets...

So if this isn't the remnants of a Viking ship, what could it be?

AMMA: This flared bow, if it indeed is the bow, is interesting.

It's somewhat like the famous vessel that was built by another

storied group of people, the Cossacks!

- (battle cries)

NARRATOR: Like the Vikings before them, the Cossacks were known

as fearsome warriors dedicated to their semi-nomadic way of life.

Originating from the steppe surrounding the Black

and Caspian Seas, they maintained their independence

through their militaristic culture and excellent horsemanship.

- (tense music plays)

- Because of their fighting prowess, they were granted a lot of autonomy

from the powers that be in exchange for military service.

Essentially, they served Ukrainian and Russian rulers as mercenaries.

NARRATOR: Historically, the Cossacks have an outsize importance.

They fought in several wars

and had a hand in the shaping of the power dynamics of the region.

- The island of Khortytsia served as an important base

for the Ukrainian Cossacks between the 16th and 18th centuries.

Some even say that it was their first headquarters,

and they're said to have built a "sich" here,

which was their military administrative centre.

NARRATOR: From the 16th to the 19th century,

the Cossacks fought alongside the Russian Empire

for control of the Black Sea and surrounding areas.

- The Cossacks who lived on Khortytsia sailed in longships

known as chaikas which were manned by dozens of sailors.

So could this vessel found on Khortytsia be part of an old chaika?

- If you look at the texture of the wood,

you can tell that it's scalloped,

meaning the vessel was made by hollowing out

one big piece of wood using a special tool,

like a chisel or a gouge of sorts.

- But chaikas were kind of like Viking ships in their design...

long and wide and using a clinker structure.

Because this piece appears to have been hollowed out,

maybe it wasn't part of a vessel but rather the entire vessel.

- Perhaps it's as simple as being a dugout canoe,

but this would place us in a time before the Cossacks...

in fact, it would place us into time immemorial!

NARRATOR: Dugout canoes are one of the oldest, if not the oldest,

forms of waterborne transportation that exists on the planet.

They have been designed, built,

and used by humans for thousands of years.

- To give you an idea, the oldest dugout canoe on record

was discovered in Pesse, Holland.

At 9 to 10,000 years old, it predates the Egyptian Pyramids.

- In 2015, a dugout canoe was found on the Styr River

in Ukraine's Lutsk region.

Radiocarbon dating revealed that it was more than 500 years old,

which compared to the Pesse dugouts, is modern-day.

- These dugouts can be said to be ancestors of the Cossack chaika.

Although they were quite basic, they would have been used

for a variety of purposes, ranging from mundane everyday tasks

to military campaigns.

They were cheap and reliable and served their owners well

until they were replaced by more sophisticated vessels.

NARRATOR: The dugout canoe is a reminder of the importance

the Dnipro River has played and continues to play

in the history of this region.

(fast music playing)

NARRATOR: Almost 4,000 years ago,

an enormous earthquake shook central China's Huangtu Plateau.

The seismic tremors tore open the earth,

creating fissures in the dusty, dry ground.

- The earthquake measured around a magnitude of seven,

powerful enough to cause damage to well-built,

modern structures, and certainly to those built thousands of years ago.

- (rocks falling)

- A small village along the Yellow River

built on unstable ground bore the burden of the disaster.

If the earthquake wasn't bad enough,

the movement of the earth's plates destabilised the already loose rock

that made up the surrounding hillsides.

- Shortly after the quake, tragedy struck.

Tons and tons of earth, moving very quickly, hit the ancient village,

known today by the name of Lajia, destroying it completely.

The mudslide flooded the entire village,

drowning the homes in red mud.

NARRATOR: In the year 2000,

Chinese archaeologists began excavating the site.

Among the collapsed homes buried in red clay,

they begin finding victims of the disaster.

Skeletal remains, twisted in agony, appeared before their very eyes.

- The mud is what killed those people

but it is also what preserved their skeletons,

and because of that, their bodies are preserved

in exactly the positions they were in at the moment of death.

That one victim is in this crouching position,

with a child in their arms, looking upwards,

that horrifying last moment of their lives,

preserved for thousands of years.

- Others are cowering in the corner,

probably trying to escape the crushing power

of the landslide...

seeking comfort or cover amongst each other.

Even though four millennia have passed since this event,

it doesn't make it any less disturbing.

You can see the panic here.

- They acted like anyone would do today.

You can't help but imagine if this happened to you today,

you would do the exact same things.

You would be preserved in the same kinds of postures.

You can almost imagine being one of these people.

So who were they?

NARRATOR: The house where some of the victims are found

is more like a cave,

a semi-subterranean dwelling.

It's square with the door pointing to the south.

- These people took advantage of the looser earth

and carved out caves to live in.

They're ingenious residences, well insulated

by the surrounding earth, meaning they're cool in the summers

and warm in the winters.

And since they face south. they're well lit!

- Even today, it's estimated that about 27 million people

in Central China still live in this type of house!

Now these people are year-round occupants,

but were they 4,000 years ago?

Or did these homes belong to semi-nomadic people?

NARRATOR: As the excavations expand across an area

measuring roughly 27,000 square feet,

the archaeologists discover that the hamlet

was situated around a central plaza.

In the centre of the plaza,

a slightly raised portion draws the attention of the team.

- Oftentimes when you see a raised platform,

or slight bulge in what is otherwise a pretty flat area,

it can be hinting at the presence of a burial or a grave of some sort.

- Sure enough, in the middle of the plaza,

under this bulge, they discover a beautiful jade knife

as well as the jaw of a pig.

Its location relative to the rest of the hamlet

indicates it was a central gathering point for the whole community,

so this raised portion was probably a form of altar

where they would pray and even sacrifice animals

like pigs.

- We're aware that ritual sacrifice of pigs was relatively common

in Neolithic China,

which defines the period preceding the Early Bronze Age.

So this find also helps us understand

that pigs had an important or even sacred position

for the people of Early Bronze Age Central China.

But the question still remains:

were they moving around with these pigs

or did they stay in the same place?

NARRATOR: Located at the southeast end of the plaza is a dwelling

that captures the archaeologists' attention.

- There's all sorts of stuff lying all over the floor;

you've got tools made from stone and from bone,

you've got lacquered objects, you've got pottery.

But, there is something really neat in here.

It's kind of camouflaged by the brownish-yellow earth.

There's this one bowl lying upside down,

and underneath that bowl there are these dried up

string like things in the sediment.

- What we're looking at here is an ancient bowl of noodles!

In fact, if you were to just throw them back into the bowl,

they don't even look that old.

That's how well they have been preserved!

NARRATOR: Chemical analysis of the noodles

indicates that they were made of a mixture of broomcorn

and foxtail millet.

- Broomcorn and foxtail millet are both cereals.

A cereal is any species of grass that is harvested for its seeds.

So today we eat things like corn, rice, wheat, oats

and a bunch of other kinds of cereals

and together they make up about half of all the calories

that humans eat on earth everyday.

This finding of broomcorn and foxtail millet

shows that cereals were important in this society too.

- This tells us that the people living here

were occupying this hamlet full time!

Cultivating and processing these crops requires year round work,

so these people were definitely farmers,

and not semi-nomadic at all.

- Outside several homes there's also evidence

of ash remains, meaning that this is likely

where they cooked these noodles, at least on a seasonal basis.

So in the summer months, they cooked outside

and during the winter, inside.

- This is interesting because this type of cooking system

is very similar to what was seen at the famous archaeological site

of Banpo, lying east of here.

Could these people at Lajia have been associated with that village?

NARRATOR: The Banpo site is one of the most important

archaeological sites of ancient China.

Located roughly 500 miles to the east of Lajia,

it has provided immense insight into the cultural practices

and livelihoods of the people of the Yangshao culture.

- The Yangshao culture possessed a lot of similarities

with what we see here at Lajia.

They domesticated animals, they were farmers

whose primary crop was millet

and they also used stone and bone tools!

- There's a big "but" here.

The Yangshao culture existed roughly between 5000 and 3000 BCE,

coming to an end about 1,000 years before this hamlet of Lajia

was destroyed.

So although there are obvious similarities,

the people of Lajia weren't of this ancient culture.

NARRATOR: As the excavation of the Lajia continues,

the team discovers plenty of ceramics at the site.

Broken pottery shards, as well as intact vessels,

are found across the entire area.

- For an archaeologist, examining the style of pottery,

as well as its production techniques can be a very helpful way

to not just identify a particular culture,

but also to learn about its practices.

If you take a look at the pottery styles of different peoples

and civilisations, you'll see how vastly different they can be

whether it's in their design or adornment.

- A lot of the pottery at Lajia has flat bottoms and is unpainted.

Some of them exhibit a coarse, reddish-brown ware,

and they're mostly handmade, which you can tell

because some of the edges aren't exactly perfect,

they're a little uneven.

Many of them are also either one or two-handled large-mouthed jars,

with the broad arched handles flaring out from the sides.

- These vases look an awful lot like something we've seen

from ancient Greece called an amphora,

but that's a design that's not found in China at all,

except for in one specific group - the Qija!

- Settling along the upper Yellow River and its tributaries,

the Qija occupied parts of Central China from around 2300 to 1500 BCE.

They weren't just known for their pottery but also for being

one of the earliest people in China to smelt bronze.

For this reason, they played an important role

in the transition from the Stone to the Bronze Age.

NARRATOR: The Yellow River is known

as the cradle of Chinese civilisation.

For thousands of years, the villages that dotted its banks

were the lifeblood of technological and cultural development

and the Qija people of the Lajia village

undoubtedly played a significant part in the process.

(fast music playing)

NARRATOR: Just over 20 miles east of Las Vegas, Nevada is Lake Mead.

The biggest reservoir in the United States,

it supplies water and energy to 25 million people

across the American Southwest.

- The lake straddles the border between Arizona and Nevada

and is pretty huge, roughly 10 times bigger than the island of Manhattan,

which is kind of ironic given that it's found in a desert ecosystem.

- Lake Mead was created in the 1930s

when the Federal government decided to build the Hoover Dam nearby.

Water in the reservoir mostly comes from the Colorado River,

but despite having one of America's mightiest rivers as its source,

the lake has been under duress,

as the entire region has been plagued by drought.

- In 2022, things reached a crisis point,

the lack of water in the Colorado River

caused Lake Mead to shrink dramatically.

- (dramatic music playing)

- It was down to 30 % of its capacity,

the water level had dropped 170 feet.

It was the lowest it had been since the dam was built.

NARRATOR: In the early days of summer,

two sisters were out paddleboarding on the lake

near Callville Bay when they come across a disturbing sight.

- There were bones sticking out from a recently exposed sandbar!

They hadn't seen the light of day in years...

and at first glance, they seemed to be in the form of an animal,

like a bighorn sheep.

But on more careful inspection, the girls recognised ribs, a femur,

and the unmistakable shape of a human cranium.

Teeth could also be seen in the sand near the remains.

- Some of them have silver fillings,

but it's impossible to know if they were knocked out at the time

of death or if they fell out while the body's been lying here.

So who was this person,

and how did they end up at the bottom of Lake Mead?

NARRATOR: As the drought continues to reduce the amount of water

in the lake, a strange, rectangular shape,

half buried in the newly exposed sand comes to light.

- It's kind of drab grey. It's lying on its side.

It's 36 feet long. It's 11 feet across

and it has a flat bottom,

which is weird because this is definitely a vessel

of some kind, but not a lot of boats have that shape!

- It's made of plywood that has half an inch of steel armour covering it.

This tells us that this is likely a naval vessel.

So my guess is that the vessel's shallow draft would allow it

to sail through water that isn't very deep

and deposit goods on shore by lowering its ramp,

reminiscent of the famous Higgins boat!

- During WWII, Higgins boats were built to transport

Allied soldiers from troop carriers to beaches.

They could manoeuvre in just 10 inches of water

and proved vital to the war effort.

But why would there be a Higgins boat at the bottom of Lake Mead?

Was there some sort of military exercise here?

Could the skeleton have been an unlucky soldier

who lost his life during training?

- Maybe. But the boat and the body weren't found in the same place

and besides, Lake Mead has the unfortunate distinction

of having the highest number of deaths per year of any national park

in the United States.

On average, every year, 25 people lose their lives here.

So there's a very, very good chance that this body

has nothing to do with that Higgins boat.

Chances are this skeleton is the victim

of some unrelated event.

NARRATOR: That same summer, a couple out boating for the day

were passing near Hemenway Harbour when they suddenly heard a scream.

- (screaming)

NARRATOR: Heading to the shore to investigate,

they were met with a frightening sight.

- A 50-gallon oil drum was lying on its side on a sandbar

that had emerged because of the drought.

It was rusted through in parts, and inside,

the scrunched-up body of a man could be seen...

bones poking through the faded clothing.

- Finding a corpse in an oil drum that has been lying on the bottom

of a lake for god knows how long definitely brings to mind

certain people or organisations...

- Lake Mead is only around 20 miles from Las Vegas, AKA Sin City.

During the 70s and 80s the mob notoriously ran that town.

They were ruthless.

- An inspection of the body reveals a neat,

circular hole in the victim's cranium.

He appears to have been executed.

At this point, I don't think we need any more evidence

to conclude that this was a mob hit!

In 1976, handsome Johnny Roselli, a well-known Las Vegas mobster,

was found deceased and floating in a 55-gallon steel drum

off the coast of Miami.

- Clearly, this technique of trying to dispose of mob-related

murder victims isn't original. But here's the thing...

the victim in the barrel wasn't dressed to the nines

like a mobster would be.

He was wearing cheap clothes. He had a pair of blue sneakers on

that were eventually identified as size 11, Trax tennis shoes.

Trax are not high end.

Those were literally available at K-Mart in the 70s and 80s.

- Aside from the fact that he wore unfashionable clothing,

nothing was found that identifies the man,

so we can't rule out the possibility that his murder

is connected to the original skeleton found by the two sisters

near Callville Bay.

Maybe forensic analysis will give us some answers.

NARRATOR: DNA samples of the remains discovered by the sisters,

identify the body as a man who died in a drowning accident in 2002.

His tragic fate was entirely unrelated to any mafia activity.

- Law enforcement does have several theories

as to who the man in the barrel could be.

But at the moment that's all they are, theories.

No conclusive proof has emerged... yet.

For all we know,

we'll need another megadrought to bring more evidence to the surface.

NARRATOR: Since 2022, the water level in Lake Mead has risen,

although it remains far below full capacity.

Droughts and overuse of water are expected in the future,

which will perhaps lead to more discoveries

and solve the mystery of the man in the barrel.

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