Original subtitles

♪♪

Wolter: The story of our past hinges on present day finds.

This is a crazy, weird chamber,

And it is in the middle of nowhere.

The landscape hides the unexpected.

Do you think that giants built this wall?

That's for you guys to figure out.

And the unexplored.

That could be the entrance to the treasure.

My job is to explain the unexplainable.

The only question I have is, "where am I going next?"

The history that we were all taught growing up is wrong.

My name is scott wolter, and I'm a forensic geologist.

There's a hidden history in this country that nobody knows about.

There are pyramids here,

Chambers, tombs, inscriptions.

They're all over this country.

We're gonna investigate these artifacts and sites,

And we're gonna get to the truth.

Sometimes, history isn't what we've been told.

♪♪

♪♪

Kids have long been taught that the first european

To reach america was christopher columbus in 1492,

But that's not true.

We now know the vikings beat him,

But I think other explorers did too, centuries earlier.

I'm always looking for more definitive proof,

And today I'm feeling lucky.

I'm heading to rock springs, wyoming,

Where a husband and wife want to show me a good luck charm

That they believe proves the phoenicians,

Famous ancient sailors of the mediterranean,

Came here to the cowboy state

Over 1,000 years before columbus.

If they're right, it'll rewrite the history books forever.

-Hi, guys. -Hey, hi.

-You must be patrice. -I am patrice.

-And don. -Yep, good to meet you.

Nice to meet you.

So I understand you have an artifact.

Can I take a look at it?

-She's got it with her. -Okay.

Wow, this is awesome!

So who found this?

My mom did, years ago.

Like what, 75 years ago?

It's a sandstone for sure.

There's definitely carved characters here.

This is definitely manmade, no doubt about that.

My mom, she was 12 years old when she found it.

Come upon it, and knew it was

Something more than just an ordinary rock.

Where was it found? Somewhere up here, right?

It was. I can take you to the general area.

Well, I would like to see roughly where it came from.

-All right. Let's do it. -Okay.

Wolter: Rock springs is known as the home of 56 nationalities

Because an influx of immigrants came to work

In the coal mines here in the late 1800s,

But if this artifact proves the phoenicians came here

2,000 years ago, they might have to start

Calling it the home of 57.

First and foremost, I want to look at the geology.

♪♪

The question is, "could this rock have come from this area?"

The answer is, "yes."

This is a sandstone, this is a sandstone,

And if you look at them, the size of the sand grains

In this sandstone look very similar.

Wolter: If the carved stone don's mom found

Was something other than sandstone,

We'd know it could have come from afar,

But because more than half the exposed rock

In the phoenician's home base, modern day lebanon,

Is sandstone just like this,

Which is a trademark of the city's architecture,

I need more evidence to figure out if this rock

Was carved here in wyoming or half a world away.

Wolter: Why was your mother up here?

Don: She was up here horseback riding.

Wolter: Lorene bolen was a coal miner's daughter,

Who moved from rural indiana to wyoming when she was young.

After losing her dad to a freak accident at age 9,

Lorene was a kid who could use a lucky break.

She was up here by some water tanks,

And she stopped there and just happened to notice it.

What happened next?

Well, she took it home.

She had it with her a lot of the time,

And showed it to a lot of people,

But nobody could tell her what it was.

She sent pictures of it to the university of wyoming,

And they didn't know what it was.

She just always was trying to find out.

She was curious.

-She was very curious. -Very much so.

Did she go to anyone else?

She sent a copy of the picture to the smithsonian.

They sent a letter back saying it's really nothing.

They didn't want anything to do with it, basically,

And so she got mad and threw the letter away.

Well, that doesn't surprise me.

The smithsonian doesn't particularly care for anybody

Who brings something forward

That might change the historical narrative.

Besides the smithsonian,

Did anybody else look at the inscription?

Yes.

Here's the letter from dr. Barry fell

Who was immediately able

To identify and translate the script.

Barry fell, he was a scholar from harvard.

He was one of the first guys to come out

Who was an academic to say that, "yes,

There were people that came here long before columbus."

In fact, people had been coming here for thousands of years.

It mentions phoenician people in there.

The way he explained it is it starts and goes,

It goes vertically first, start at the top,

And do an s-shape on the way down.

And here's the translation.

Keep safe.

Do not break the stone.

Misfortune it turns away.

It protects against evil.

Strikes harm and turns it aside.

Wolter: We know the phoenicians were merchant sailors.

You see their ships and exploits depicted

In the art of their neighbors, the egyptians and the greeks.

And herodotus, known as the world's first historian,

Wrote about the phoenician's claim

To have circumnavigated africa.

Maybe a phoenician sailor left behind an inscribed rock

That later became lorene bolen's good luck charm.

I'm open to the idea, because of everything

I know about the phoenicians.

Basically what barry fell is saying

Is that this is an amulet or a good luck charm.

Something to keep bad spirits away.

Does that make sense?

We think so.

It does with my mom's life, yeah.

With your mom's life, what do you mean by that?

There was a time when she went to jackpot, nevada,

When she was down to her last couple of quarters,

Put them in a slot machine, and won $48,000.

She hit it big!

Let me guess, she attributed it

To this good luck charm, right?

I think in a lot of ways, she did.

Wolter: This isn't the first time I've investigated

The possibility that the phoenicians made it to america.

A while back, I met a professor in new England

Who theorized there was a map of the world

Hidden on the back of a phoenician coin

Minted in 350 b.C.

♪♪

Wolter: The question is, "could the phoenicians

Have gotten here and carved that stone?"

The oceans and rivers were not barriers

Like many people think.

I mean, they were highways, super highways,

Especially going back thousands of years.

Wolter: I've seen evidence of pre-columbian contact

All over the americas.

Ancient mariners like the vikings, the early irish,

And the polynesians left behind rock formations,

Language, and canoe building technology.

In the case of the polynesians,

They even brought back foods like the sweet potato.

Now, there's a little more

That I'd like to do with the stone.

I've got a microscope.

Is it okay if we take a look?

-Let's do it. -That would be awesome.

Okay.

Wolter: The growth of microscopic organisms

Or evidence of erosion can help me date artifacts like this.

Okay, here we go.

That's coming up pretty good there.

You can see the carved lines.

Focus it just a little bit there.

♪♪

Huh.

I'm seeing something I don't like.

Has somebody messed with this at all,

Or done something to it?

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

I see something here I don't like.

Has somebody been messing with this?

Yeah. My mom, naive,

Tried to get a picture of it

And it didn't show up very well, so she took a nail to it.

So she recut the carvings?

She went in deeper so it would photograph better.

Wolter: If someone scratches over old marks,

They might as well be fresh ones.

She was trying to be helpful, but unfortunately for me,

A lot of the evidence that is the most helpful in aging this

Would be in the grooves,

And if she scratched it out, that evidence is gone.

Wolter: Since lorene ran a nail across the original inscription,

There's no way to see the natural weathering,

And no microorganisms left inside for me to date.

When someone uses something sharp

To clean out an inscription, I can no longer tell

How naturally weathered and worn

The edges of the inscription were,

Meaning there's no way to evaluate

How long ago it was carved.

You know this is unfortunate, but I think I have a plan,

Another way that we can get to the bottom of this.

♪♪

Wolter: It's too bad I won't be able to accurately date

Lorene bolen's carving,

But I know of a secret shoshone site here in wyoming

That might support phoenician contact with this area

As long as 2,000 years ago.

♪♪

♪♪

Wolter: Well, linea, I just recently looked at an artifact

That has been interpreted to be phoenician script.

The reason I am here is to see if this site

Potentially has a connection

To the phoenicians coming here to the new world.

If there is a connection, we can look for it right here.

♪♪

Wolter: I'm told there is evidence of a shoshone legend

Called the "water ghost woman" on this stone outcrop

In the middle of nowhere.

Sundstrom: Why don't you tell me

What you think you're seeing here.

This one here looks like a female, am I right about that?

Mm-hmm.

She's a ghost, and she lives in the water

So she's called the "water ghost woman."

Okay.

The eastern shoshone who lived around here,

This is an important figure in their belief system.

She's depicted as either very beautiful and young,

Or as a hideous old hag.

And she can go from one to the other rapidly.

Ah, are those tears?

You can very plainly see the tear streaks on her face.

When you hear her crying, you feel sorry for her

And you want to help, so you approach the sound

Of this crying woman, and the next thing

You know, you've been drowned.

Wolter: This legend is eerily similar to that of the sirens,

Characters from greek mythology the phoenicians believed in.

The sirens were dangerous creatures,

Whose enchanting songs

Drew unsuspecting sailors to shipwreck.

Wolter: Maybe this indicates that there was some type of contact

Between the phoenicians and the shoshone.

Now that doesn't mean that it does, but it could.

How would they have gotten here?

Well, if they sail across the atlantic ocean,

They could come into the gulf, sail up the mississippi,

Then they could have taken either the arkansas river,

Or the platte river with a portage

Not too far to the east here,

And it would put you right into this area.

How old do you think these petroglyphs are?

This type of rock art was probably made

Within the last 2,000 years, maybe a little bit older,

Maybe 3,000 years from now.

2 to 3,000.

That's an educated guess.

Well, I like those numbers.

I like those numbers a lot,

Because if we are gonna make the argument

That the phoenicians could possibly be connected here,

You got to go back at least 2,000 years

And 2 to 3,000 years would be right in the wheelhouse

That actually does make sense.

Doesn't prove it, but I really like those numbers.

Wolter: The idea that the phoenicians

Exchanged myths with the shoshone is fascinating.

If it's true, it would go a long way

Towards supporting the idea that lorene bolen

Found a genuine phoenician good luck charm.

Before I can buy into that theory,

I need to figure out if the phoenicians were even capable

Of sailing to america in the first place.

♪♪

♪♪

I need to see a phoenician boat,

And there's only one good seaworthy example

In the entire world.

♪♪

♪♪

-Philip? -Hi, welcome to phoenicia.

Well, thank you. Wow so this is it, huh?

This is it.

Well, this is pretty impressive.

Tell me a little big about this ship. It's really cool.

Well, she's a great ship.

Phoenicia has the only phoenician sailing ship

In existence as a working ship, a proper seagoing ship,

And it was built as near as possible

As an exact replica as one could possibly have.

Wolter: What are some of the features here

That are unique to the phoenician ship builders?

The phoenicians created the first rigid hulled boats.

Up until that point,

The ships had literally been sewn together.

So this stiff design was to

Withstand the large waves on the oceans, right?

That's it.

That's what enabled the phoenicians to trade

More successfully than anyone else.

Wolter: Wherever they went, the phoenicians

Brought the phoenician alphabet,

And their most famous trade item,

A dye known as tyrian purple, named after tyre,

One of their four mediterranean kingdoms.

More valuable than gold, it started the tradition

Of royals wearing purple robes

And earned the phoenicians the name the "purple people."

♪♪

Look at the craftsmanship. It's all handwork, right?

Yeah, all done by hand.

What's really impressive

Are these little dowel marks there that you can see.

-Oh, right here? -Yep.

The romans called it the phoenician joint,

And I've got a little model of it here.

So here are the two planks.

This is the peg, and these are the dowels

That are locking it in place.

So it's a really rigid construction.

Watertight joint right here, right?

And then not only that,

But the phoenicians did one better.

They were the first to use iron nails in the construction.

So this was what helped make the phoenician ships

Undoubtedly the strongest ships ever produced at that time.

The way it's built, I mean this thing looks like a tank,

Which brings me to a question I want to ask you back up top.

Sure.

♪♪

So, one sail and one mast.

I'm a little skeptical that a ship

Could navigate the open oceans with one sail.

Certainly one sail makes sailing a real challenge.

However, the phoenicians were clever people.

They knew which way the winds and currents were flowing.

The open ocean would have presented

No fears for the phoenicians.

Wolter: There's good reason to believe the phoenicians

Circumnavigated africa.

They made a statement that, as they sailed,

They had the sun on their right to northward of them.

That's only possible if they rounded

The cape of good hope while heading west,

Which no one had ever done before.

Then in 1990, in senegal, the most western point in africa,

French anthropologists studied 14 unfamiliar letters

Found on cattle brands and determined the closest match

Was phoenician, not greek, latin,

Chinese, or any african language, but phoenician.

Wolter: How far have you taken this out on the open ocean?

We've been around some of the toughest points,

Like going around the cape of good hope.

But in the atlantic, you know, we got pushed right out,

And at one point we were just

700 miles from the florida coast.

So we spent 80-odd days in the atlantic.

Okay, if you got within 700 miles of florida,

How many days if you wanted to go to florida would it take?

It would have taken probably

Another 10 or 12 days to get to america from there.

Well philip, I'm very impressed,

And you've pretty much answered all my questions,

But let me ask you point blank.

Do you think the phoenicians made it to north america?

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

Wolter: Let me ask you point blank.

Do you think the phoenicians made it to north america?

Yeah, I believe that they did make it there.

They had the ability, they had the means,

And undoubtedly, they had the ships that could have done it.

What we need to find is the proof.

I have a hunch the key to this mystery

Lies in what the phoenicians

Brought back from their voyages.

The ships that herodotus

Talks about circumnavigating africa,

They would have been trading vessels.

Right. So they were carrying big loads.

Copper is one thing that I think about.

They were certainly huge metal traders,

And the middle east was always short of metal.

Wolter: Historians struggle to explain

Where all the copper used in europe's bronze age came from.

It's got me wondering, "could the phoenicians

Have brought it back with them from wyoming,

Where copper mining was once big business?"

Wolter: Basically, you're telling me

They could have made it to the gulf.

The question I want to know is could your ship

Go up a river, and if so how far?

A ship like this could certainly

Navigate up a river quite a long way.

I've always believed that science one day

Will prove that the phoenicians got to america.

Well, you and I are on the same page there.

♪♪

♪♪

Wolter: Now that I have no doubt the phoenicians

Could have sailed to north america

And through rivers in its interior,

I need to take this investigation to the next level.

I'm back in wyoming to check out

An old copper mine with a local historian.

My goal?

To find a representative sample of native copper

So I can compare it to the copper the phoenicians used.

You really think that the phoenicians

Came all the way out here to wyoming?

Well, I'm not saying that they did come.

I'm saying that they could've come.

If they did come, they had to have had strong motivation,

And in my mind the strong motivation

Would have been copper,

But I want to investigate it,

And I think I have way we might be able to test it

To really bring some strong evidence, if it works out.

Wolter: If I can find some copper from the area,

I can compare it to copper the phoenicians used

To create bronze to see if it's of the same purity.

But first, I have to get to the mine,

And that's not gonna be a walk in the park.

♪♪

Because of the mining industry, both past and present,

Wyoming is crisscrossed with rugged roads

Used to haul everything from coal to gems and metals

Like the copper I'm going to find.

♪♪

♪♪

And look at these ruins here.

This is the ferris-haggarty mine.

They discovered copper here in 1897.

It caused this entire area to absolutely boom.

Over 5,000 people migrated to this area

For the copper mining boom.

If this was such a booming heyday at one time,

Copper everywhere, what happened?

Around 1908, copper prices plunged.

They absolutely plunged.

On top of that, there were a series of fires at the smelter,

And so it becomes very difficult to keep the profits going.

Well, actually, that makes a lot of sense, you know.

It was like a perfect storm of bad luck.

What I'd like to do is see if we can find

A good piece of native copper

Or a rock that has native copper in it,

And I'd like to test it with some copper

That we know came from europe

That's associated with the phoenicians

Because we can look for trace elements in both pieces.

These trace elements are like a dna fingerprint,

And the copper here is gonna have its own dna fingerprint.

If we can get a match, well, now we're cooking with gas.

The guy who finds the best piece buys the beer.

-Deal. -All right, man.

Let's go!

Wolter: To find copper, I'm looking for green.

There's a fancy name for it -- verdigris.

That's the color you get when copper's weathered

And exposed to air or sea water over time.

All the copper in this mine will have the same purity,

But I'm looking for a piece with a solid copper vein

Running through it that's big enough to test.

-See all this stuff? -Yep.

This is the stuff I wanted to see.

What it tells you is there's definitely copper here,

So it's obviously it's coming out of the water.

Wolter: My goal is to connect the dots

From lorene bolen's good luck charm

To the phoenicians who may have carved it

To the copper they may have come to wyoming to mine.

Once I find a good-sized sample of wyoming copper,

I'll test it to see if it has the same elemental fingerprint

As copper used in phoenician artifacts.

If it does, it might be strong evidence

That the phoenicians came here,

And brought this copper back home.

Wolter: So, this is one of the main shafts, I assume.

Yes, it is.

Okay.

"bad air." -yep.

-"keep out." -yep.

-Skull and crossbones? -I'm not going near there.

I'm not going in there either.

Clearly the water's flowing out

And it's coloring the rocks.

There's got to be some copper specimens here.

♪♪

There's some.

Most copper is not gonna be visible, right?

But I bet you there's some in here.

Oh, yeah, I can see it.

If you look close, you can see it with the naked eye,

But yeah, it's peppered all through there.

-Can I see? -Yeah, absolutely.

Can I take that one? -Absolutely, it's yours.

So, remember what I said

About the guy who finds the copper?

Yeah, that he's the one who buys the beers.

That's not what I remember.

-No? -But I tell you what.

Either way, we both win.

Okay, sounds good.

♪♪

♪♪

Wolter: What I need to do next is figure out

If the copper in this sample from wyoming

Matches the purity of the copper found in phoenician artifacts.

And I'm back in minnesota to do just that.

If it has the same elemental fingerprint,

Then I'll have even more reason to believe

The phoenicians made it to america,

Took the copper back home, and possibly left behind

The inscription lorene bolen found when she was a kid.

Lori, the reason I'm here is

I was recently at a copper mine in wyoming,

And I collected a sample,

And what I'd like you to help me with

Is to test it for its trace element content.

Definitely, we're gonna be able to image it

And get elemental information.

I'm investigating the possibility that phoenicians

Came to north america over 2,000 years ago.

If its trace element profile will match known samples

That have already been tested,

That will go a long way to proving that the phoenicians

Came to north america, collected copper,

And then brought it back.

Sound like something we can do?

Yeah, absolutely.

I've got the sample right here.

One concern that I've got, between extracting this

And everybody looking at it, handling it,

That the surface could be contaminated.

So it might be better if we can get a fresh cleave

Off of this to have a pristine surface to analyze.

Well, it's certainly been handled,

So I understand the contamination possibility.

Let's take a look.

You know what, we have a fracture right here.

Oh, perfect.

Actually, we have a crack that goes all the way around.

If we pop this thing with your chisel and hammer,

I bet we'll probably be able to get two pieces.

Okay.

♪♪

I'm gonna hit it right along there.

Let's see how it goes, ready?

Perfect.

Wolter: Now we have two uncontaminated surfaces to examine,

So we fire up the scanning electron microscope

To take a close look.

It magnifies what we're seeing 10,000 times.

-So we've got the sample here. -Okay.

Then we'll get this in the instrument.

♪♪

Lavanier: There's an electron beam

That's going to be striking the surface of the sample,

And that's what we're actually using

To detect the elemental composition of the sample.

Okay, so you're gonna be hitting it with electrons,

And it will record those and give us the quantity, right?

-Yes. -Perfect.

-Well, let's turn the beam on. -All right.

Wolter: We're going to zap our copper sample with an electron beam.

When that happens, elements will fly off our rock.

The scanning electron microscope

Will catch those pieces and analyze them.

That's how we figure out exactly what this rock is made of.

We're looking for a fleck of copper to zoom in on.

That's a nice shot.

Can we grab that photo?

-Yep. -That's beautiful...

...As rocks go.

[ both laugh ]

Wolter: Now that we're zeroed in, we can see

What this rock is made of.

You can see things are moving and glowing a little bit.

So the heavier the element, the brighter it'll appear

On the screen.

So copper on this should appear somewhat brighter.

This brightest region here might be the area of interest

So let's take a scan in here. -Yeah, let's zoom

In there and see what we get.

Ah, very interesting.

♪♪

♪♪

Wolter: As lori zooms in on the copper sample,

I can tell she sees something important.

Ah, very interesting.

Are you getting a pretty strong peak for copper.

It's fairly strong, but equally as strong with iron.

Okay, so those are in there together?

Yes.

Copper, iron, sulfur, silicon, aluminum, magnesium.

Okay.

Wolter: My sample isn't pure copper, and neither is the rest

Of the copper at the ferris-haggarty mine.

It doesn't even come close.

So we're talking 41, almost 42% copper.

It has lots a copper in it, but it has lots of other stuff.

Unfortunately lori, that's just not gonna do it.

That is not a high enough concentration

Because the samples that I wanted

To compare it with were 98% and 99% pure copper.

We're a long way from that.

Wolter: I did a little more digging and found out

There aren't any ultra-pure copper deposits

In wyoming or anywhere else in the u.S.,

Except for michigan's upper peninsula.

A few years back, I investigated the perplexing mine pits

In the great lakes region.

Someone pulled copper out of there,

And the big mystery has always been, "who did it?"

I gave credit to the minoans, an earlier sailing culture

Who disappeared mysteriously from the island of crete

In 1200 b.C.

Now, I feel strongly that phoenicians went

To the great lakes, too.

The copper in wyoming wouldn't have satisfied them.

That's not anywhere near what I think

The phoenicians would be looking for.

Back then, if they came up to this part of the country,

In the saint lawrence river to the great lakes area,

You're gonna find copper that,

After the glaciers had melted away,

Was just laying on the ground.

99% plus pure copper.

And to me, that would make a heck of a lot more sense

Than trying to mine this material that you would have

To smelt to concentrate the copper.

And that's expensive, time consuming.

They wouldn't have done that over here.

They would go for the easy pickings.

Wolter: Bottom line, this copper isn't

What the phoenicians were using in europe.

This doesn't prove that the phoenicians didn't come

To wyoming, it just doesn't help our case.

♪♪

♪♪

Wolter: I'll admit it, I'm disappointed the copper

In wyoming isn't pure enough for the phoenicians

To bother with.

That doesn't mean that they didn't come to wyoming,

Or that lorene bolen didn't find

An authentic phoenician artifact.

My new theory?

That minoans handed copper and their knowledge

Of the new world to their neighbors, the phoenicians.

It's a pretty narrow window.

The minoans vanish around 1200 b.C.,

And that's when phoenician script first appears.

Still, the ancients knew a lot,

More than we give them credit for.

Sometimes knowledge gets lost over time.

That's why I'm going to check out the map collection

At the world-class library here in minneapolis.

They have an ancient map that I think has a hidden detail

To help prove the phoenicians came here

Long before columbus.

-Hello, marguerite. -Hi, scott.

Nice to meet you.

Welcome the james ford bell library.

Well, thank you.

I understand that you have some of the oldest surviving maps

In the world, is that true?

That's true.

The bell library has more than 40,000 items dating back

To the year 400. -Amazing.

What I'm specifically looking for is a copy

Of claudius ptolemy's "geographia."

I pulled two from the late 15th century

For you, so let's go take a look.

Wolter: Claudius ptolemy was a 2nd century

Greco-roman geographer famous for creating

An atlas called "geographia."

This is a ptolemy atlas printed in 1490.

If this is late-15th century, ptolemy lived back

In the 2nd century, right? -That's correct.

Wow! Look at that.

So this is over 500 years old. -It is!

It's amazing!

Wolter: It's amazing, but I have to admit, it barely resembles

A world map of today, and I can't tell what I'm looking at.

This one is only a few years later.

It's in color, so it's a little bit easier to see.

Help me understand what's going on here.

What am I looking at? -This is the known world.

The world of ptolemy didn't really understand

That the ocean goes any further.

So that's the extent of the known world

As far as he was concerned.

Wolter: There are only three continents on ptolemy's map --

Europe,

Africa,

And asia.

And they are a total different shape than you'd expect.

Compared to a modern-day map,

Countries like Italy look horizontal.

But why?

Ragnow: He actually calculated the circumference

Of the earth too small.

And then, to make his theory work, ptolemy sort of fudged

The way he fit things in so that he can get everything

To work within the two points that he says are

The limits of the known world.

Wolter: Not long ago, an italian researcher

Named lucio russo made

A startling claim that this map actually does show more

Of the world than anyone ever considered.

And that's what I came here to see.

What I'm interested in now is looking here

At these islands right here.

So those are labeled the fortunate islands,

Which we believe ptolemy meant the canary islands.

But we don't know that for sure, right?

We don't.

Wolter: Taking into account ptolemy's mistake

In his latitude calculation, lucio russo deduced

That these islands pictured off the coast of africa are not

The canary islands, as historians long believe,

But actually, the lesser antilles.

Islands like dominica, st. Lucia, and trinidad

In the new world.

Wolter: Russo says that they are the antilles.

Ragnow: He's arguing that these aren't the canaries

That these are actually the antilles

That ptolemy just puts way too close to the continent.

If these are really the antilles,

Than somebody must have discovered them

And communicated that information

Back to ancient greece.

Somebody had to have been there.

Somebody had to have been there.

Somebody knew about the new world, going back

To ptolemy's time and before...

Probably before.

And really, the only candidate we have,

The most logical candidate, would have

To be the phoenicians.

♪♪

♪♪

Wolter: Is it possible that an ancient phoenician sailor left

Behind an artifact in wyoming?

If so, they had to get here.

And according to italian researcher lucio russo,

An ancient greek map by claudius ptolemy suggests

They may have done just that more than 2,000 years ago

On a ship like the one philip beal recreated.

♪♪

I'm on my way to wyoming to follow up on one last thing

That could tell me whether lorene bolen's artifact is

The proof that's long been missing.

Early translations from 1982 suggested it said,

"keep safe.

Do not break the stone.

Misfortune it turns away.

It protects against evil,

Strikes harm and turns it aside."

But I think I need a present-day scholar to weigh in,

Someone who has the benefit of more knowledge

That's been collected about the culture and the language.

Well, brian, help me understand phoenician script

A little bit.

It's safe to say at a minimum that the phoenicians had

A very heavy influence on the development

Of written language, right?

The alphabet is one of the great cultural achievements

In all of world history, period.

And the phoenicians played a massive role

In making that work.

Wolter: Before the phoenicians, cultures in the mediterranean

Were using a lot of different

Cuneiform symbols to communicate.

It made it hard to trade goods with other cultures.

The phoenicians came up with 22 letters based

On egyptian hieroglyphics in the 12th century b.C.,

Which they encouraged other cultures to adopt

And which inspired our alphabet today.

They can't be credited with inventing

The alphabet from scratch.

They can be credited with popularizing it.

And the phoenicians were really the pioneers.

They did a magnificent cultural service

With their alphabet.

We know that that the phoenicians were,

In a word, amazing.

And we know that the phoenicians went all

Throughout the mediterranean.

We know that they broke across the top of africa

And down, maybe circumnavigated africa,

Maybe were the first people from the region

To break out into the atlantic ocean.

Well, we'll see here.

It's moment of truth. -Yes.

Here is the stone.

Ah, very nice.

Barry fell was somebody they considered

To be an expert.

He said it was definitely phoenician.

I'm honored that you asked me to take a look at it.

I love things like this. It's a great little piece.

I mean, when I look at it, clearly

Somebody was doing something on this, right.

So you agree it's manmade?

Somebody was inscribing something on this.

I mean, these are very distinctive marks.

I wanted to get an opinion of an expert today.

Somebody who has the benefit of new knowledge.

And so, I ask you,

Is this a legitimate phoenician inscription?

♪♪

♪♪

Wolter: I'm speaking to an expert in ancient languages

To see if the artifact lorene bolen found

In rock springs, wyoming, is the proof

That's long been missing that suggests

Phoenicians made it to america 2,000 years ago.

Is this a legitimate phoenician inscription?

♪♪

I have some bad news.

I would say no.

I would say it's not.

What do you see that tells you

That this is not phoenician?

The phoenician script was standardized.

Wolter: Real phoenician script, which dates

To the 8th century b.C., has known letters.

And while lorene bolen's inscribed rock has a few marks

That could be phoenician, the rest of it is unrecognizable.

Dork: This triangular shape, a very clear horizontal one,

But a dalet, or a letter d, pretty much like our letter d.

A triangle, this is where we get this from.

I mean, this is clearly something, right?

-Oh, yeah. -This isn't nothing.

Somebody incised these markings in here.

The question is what is it and what were they trying

To do, and at what time period?

There are too many letters, though,

That have no correspondence to any phoenician character.

Unfortunately, I'm gonna have to deliver

Some bad news to don and patrice.

But in the end, the data's the data.

The results are the results, and thanks

For helping me get there. -My pleasure, thank you.

♪♪

Wolter: In the case of the bolen's good luck charm being

An authentic phoenician artifact, it is bad news.

But in the case of proving how likely it is

Phoenicians made it to america, I think I did get lucky.

I now have more evidence than before suggesting

They could've made it here and back in ancient times.

♪♪

♪♪

First things first, I told you I'd bring the artifact back.

And there it is. -Thank you.

I just met with a linguist, and his conclusion is

This is not a genuine phoenician artifact.

[ chuckles ]

I wish it was real from that time.

Not more than me.

A little disappointed, but we know it's something,

We just don't know what it is yet.

This still begs the question,

"could the phoenicians have come to north america,"

And specifically, "could they have come to wyoming?"

The answer is "yes."

I still think it's a great story, and I wish

That your mother was here to hear this.

I'd love to meet her and I'd like a little

Of that good luck hopefully to rub off on me.

Wolter: Well, tell you what, I would like to propose a toast

To your mom, lorene, and continued good luck

To your family going forward.

-Thank you. -Thank you, cheers.

Cheers.

♪♪

Wolter: Like I've always said, "you make your own luck."

It's only when you examine things from all sides

That you find what you're looking for.

In this case, I'm convinced it's entirely possible

The phoenicians, with their game-changing ability

To sail the open seas, came to the new world millennia

Before christopher columbus.

And I think proving it is just a matter of time.

♪♪

If you have a mysterious artifact or site I need to see,

I wanna know about it.

Go to travelchannel.Com/ americaunearthed.