Original subtitles

Narrator: A Polynesian civilization collapses

on an island in the South Pacific.

Anthea Nardi: It's believed that Polynesian settlers

first arrived on Rapa Nui around 1200 CE.

James Ellis: But even before the end of the 19th century,

their social structure had collapsed,

their system of writing had been abandoned and forgotten.

What happened on Rapa Nui?

Narrator: The tomb of one of history's greatest rulers

vanishes on the Eurasian steppe.

Amma Agbedor: Attila stands unrivaled as the greatest

barbarian warrior of the ancient world.

Alison Leonard: And his final resting place has eluded

discovery for more than 1,500 years.

So where is Attila the Hun buried?

Narrator: One of the world's most important libraries

is lost to time.

Anthea Nardi: Most people imagine one massive building,

but the Library was more likely a network of

halls and gardens, housed within the Museum.

Adam Bunch: So how did the greatest collection of knowledge

in all of antiquity just vanish?

♪♪

Narrator: The chain of history has many missing links

prominent people,

priceless treasures,

extraordinary artifacts...

Their locations still unknown.

Lost to the fog of time.

What happens when stories of the past

become

Vanished History?

♪♪

♪♪

Narrator: The Island of Rapa Nui

is one of the most isolated places on Earth.

Despite that, it developed and sustained a civilization

with their own writing system,

their own social structure,

and their own strikingly unique cultural practices.

They were completely cut off from the rest of humanity

and yet they thrived.

Anthea Nardi: There's more than 2,300 miles of ocean

between Rapa Nui and the nearest continent.

And it's more than 1,200 miles

to even the closest inhabited island.

Humans first found their way to Rapa Nui at least

800 years ago, and somehow on that sparse little island,

less than 15 miles long and seven wide,

they either found or created everything they needed.

Adam Bunch: Once they'd arrived, it's thought that they had

no contact with any other civilization

for at least 500 years,

so they developed independently, following their own path.

Alison Leonard: In the early 18th century,

when the first explorer visited,

the rest of the world first became aware they even existed.

But after one day of contact,

they were left completely alone,

and didn't get a second visit for almost another 50 years.

And then the next major visit didn't happen

for the better part of another century.

James Ellis: But even before the end of the 19th century,

their social structure had collapsed,

their system of writing had been abandoned and forgotten.

They had stopped creating their striking,

mysterious monuments,

and no living person could even say with certainty

how the people of Rapa Nui had ever managed to move

these huge sculptures, and place them along their coastline.

The island's population, and the ecosystem

that had sustained it for centuries, was no more.

What happened on Rapa Nui?

Narrator: Anthropologists believe that it was

between 2000 and 1500 BCE

that people in south-east Asia began their expansion eastward,

along the islands of the Pacific Ocean.

One of the last islands to be settled,

due to its extreme isolation,

would have been Rapa Nui.

Anthea Nardi: It's believed that Polynesian settlers

first arrived on Rapa Nui around 1200 CE.

This tiny island in a galaxy of blue would have been everything

to subsequent generations, who'd known no other place.

They referred to it sometimes as "the navel of the world",

and sometimes, as "eyes looking toward the sky."

Adam Bunch: When they'd set out on their ocean migration,

the settlers had brought plants and seeds with them

so they could grow crops like bananas and taro,

maybe even sweet potatoes and yams,

adapting their agricultural techniques to the conditions

of their new home as they learned

how to thrive on the island.

Alison Leonard: Let's say the original founding group

that came to the island numbered about 50.

Assuming a 3% annual growth rate,

their population would have reached about a thousand

after around a century.

Evidence suggests the Rapa Nuis' population then leveled out

at about 3,000, from 1350 CE on.

Narrator: On April 5th, 1722,

a Dutch explorer searching for

the fabled continent of "Terra Australis Incognito",

which many Europeans then believed in,

sighted a "new", uncharted island.

It was Easter Sunday, and he dubbed it "Easter Island."

An armed company was sent ashore,

where they encountered a population estimated to be

between 2 and 3 thousand Rapa Nui people

living among some impressive landmarks.

James Ellis: The Europeans saw that there were hundreds

of massive statues called moai set about the island,

averaging about 13 feet tall.

The largest is nearly 70 feet tall.

The visitors couldn't imagine the Rapa Nui were able

to move stones of this size into position,

they concluded the moai must be hollow,

made of clay, and merely 'coated' with a layer of stones.

Anthea Nardi: The moai were, in fact, made of solid rock.

Most were quarried and carved at the cone

of the Rano Raraku volcano

and moved into their place around the island from there.

There are more than a thousand of them

and most weigh about 10 tons each,

but the largest is more than 200 tons.

A culture so inventive

and determined enough to create all this

virtually vanished,

and, quite suddenly.

Narrator: After this one-day visit,

and after the Europeans had returned home,

Rapa Nui was known to the world.

But even so, it was more than 50 years

before the next outsider came.

In 1774, Captain James Cook made a stop,

and noted then that many of the moai previously described

by the Dutch were now toppled,

a possible indicator of social decline,

after just half a century.

Adam Bunch: One popular theory that has often been repeated

points to evidence suggesting the idea

that the island suffered severe environmental degradation

caused by the humans who lived there,

that it caused the collapse of their society,

that it was a case of what's been called ecocide.

Alison Leonard: Forests of Jubaea Palm had existed

on Rapa Nui for more than 35,000 years,

but studies of sediment cores show a dramatic decrease

in pollen from 1200 to 1500 CE.

A drop in pollen indicates a precipitous drop

in the number of trees themselves.

It means the island underwent significant deforestation

in just three centuries,

beginning soon after the arrival of the Rapa Nui people.

James Ellis: The Rapa Nui used wood from the Jubaea Palms

to build their homes, and possibly,

to help move the hundreds of moai statues

into their positions about the island.

However, overuse of those forests would have made

a drastic change to the island's ecology.

Removal of trees is a removal of protection

against wind erosion of the soil.

And soil loss would have been highly detrimental

the Rapa Nuis' agriculture,

which was so crucial to their survival.

Narrator: Some researchers see a link between

the degradation of the island's environment

and the ultimate breakdown of society on Rapa Nui.

Anthea Nardi: Sometime during the 16th century

it appears the Rapa Nui just stopped producing

and erecting moai around their island.

In the Rano Raraku quarry,

dozens of unfinished moai seem to have been simply abandoned.

It's been suggested that runaway deforestation of the island

at that time could have been responsible for that.

If they were using logs to roll the moai on

and there were none left,

there would be no way to move them into position.

So maybe that's why the work stopped.

Adam Bunch: Ecocide theory assumes though, that

the Rapa Nui weren't able to adapt to their island's ecology.

Its limitations, its changes over time,

but there's plenty of evidence that they were actually

very adaptable people.

Alison Leonard: To counteract soil loss from wind erosion,

potentially a big problem, on a fairly barren island,

the Rapa Nui placed "Manavai" stone "planting rings",

around their crops.

It was part of a whole system we now call "lithic mulching"

that they'd developed.

This was a way to raise crops successfully

and sustainably in their environment.

James Ellis: As for overtaxing their small island,

modern data seems to show that by around 1350 CE,

during the civilization's peak,

their population leveled out at around 3,000 people.

All these recent findings seem to refute the idea

that the Rapa Nui committed "ecocide."

Narrator: It may not be as simple, however,

as the sustainable growth and harvesting of crops.

Because when the first settlers came to Rapa Nui,

bulbs and seeds weren't all they brought with them.

Anthea Nardi: The Polynesian settlers were aware

they would need a steady supply of protein

on their new island home,

to ensure their best chances of survival.

To that end, they brought an invasive species as food.

Rats.

Adam Bunch: Polynesian rat, or Pacific rat,

is very resilient and very competitive.

And they can give birth to a new litter every few months.

The initial population of rats brought over by the settlers

exploded into a peak population of something like

two or three million rats,

maybe as many as 75 of them per acre.

So they became the main source of protein

for the residents of the island.

Alison Leonard: The only thing is, the rats loved to eat

the seeds and saplings of the Jubaea palm.

Many ancient seeds have been dug up on the island

that bear the telltale marks of rats' teeth.

The voracious rats could very well have accelerated

the deforestation of the island,

by destroying countless numbers of seeds and saplings.

James Ellis: But the fact is, there's no evidence

of a complete ecological collapse on Rapa Nui.

The forests did not disappear completely,

the people were successful in growing their crops,

and they continued to get the dietary protein they needed

from fishing, as well as from rat meat.

Narrator: It's recently been suggested that one single day,

over three centuries ago, planted the seed

of what ultimately all but obliterated Rapa Nui culture.

Anthea Nardi: After the Dutch sailors' brief visit

to the island in 1722,

they had little interest in Rapa Nui,

but they did tell the world about the island,

and its people, that were living there.

This was the start of a slow-motion tragedy

that started to accelerate.

Adam Bunch: In 1862, enslavers from Peru came to the island

and kidnapped more than 1,400 people,

half the population,

including one of their kings or high chiefs,

and the priests and scribes

who knew their writing system, Rongo Rongo,

but to quite possibly be the only known writing system

of its kind in the world.

Alison Leonard: There was international condemnation

of this abduction into slavery,

which resulted in a small number of the kidnapped locals

being brought back to the island.

But tragically, that made things worse.

By then they had been infected with smallpox,

and the disease spread through the island's population,

many of them died.

Narrator: In 1866, a Catholic mission was established

on the island, to convert the small remaining

Rapa Nui population to Christianity.

By 1877, only 111 Rapa Nui remained,

none of whom could read or write Rongo-Rongo anymore.

James Ellis: Ultimately, the island was annexed by Chile,

which then granted a sheep ranching company

a 50-year lease of the whole island!

70,000 sheep roamed Rapa Nui,

and did significant ecological damage.

Adam Bunch: That lease wasn't canceled until 1953,

and it would be more than a decade beyond that,

before the Rapa Nui, who are still very much there,

were given formal Chilean citizenship,

by which point, of course,

there had been generations

worth of damage already done.

Narrator: In 2024, a human genome study determined

that prior to the arrival of Europeans on the island,

the local population had been stable and healthy,

there had been no collapse in their numbers,

disproving once and for all the theory

that the Rapa Nui people had perpetrated "ecocide"

upon their own land.

Alison Leonard: The more research is done,

the more it becomes apparent that the Rapa Nui

were a highly adaptive society.

Their agriculture was successful,

and sustained them reliably for centuries.

They evolved their own writing system, their own beliefs,

and created hundreds of striking monuments

that continue to bewilder and inspire people around the world.

James Ellis: No one alive can read Rongo-Rongo,

despite ongoing attempts to decode it.

At one time, Rongo-Rongo tablets were collectors' items,

of the 25 tablets known to have survived,

none of them are on Rapa Nui.

Narrator: Roughly 9,000 people inhabit the island today,

with around 45% of the population identifying

as Rapa Nui, and a small scattering of Rapa Nui people

live in mainland Chile and on the island of Tahiti.

Many of those who remain on Rapa Nui are working to preserve

and nurture what remains of their lost language and culture.

♪♪

Narrator: He was a ruler who brought empires to their knees,

known to his enemies as the "Scourge of God."

Attila the Hun, master of a vast realm

that extended from the grassy lands

of the Central Asian steppe to the borders of France,

remains one of history's most intriguing figures.

James Ellis: Attila the Hun's name is synonymous with fear,

by the mid-5th century, his power was colossal.

He united diverse tribes into a single war machine,

and orchestrated alliances through politically

motivated marriages.

Amma Agbedor: Attila stands unrivaled as the greatest

barbarian warrior of the ancient world.

While expanding the Hunnic Empire through brutal conquest,

he drained the Eastern Roman Empire's coffers

with exorbitant demands for gold under the guise of peace,

only to shatter treaties

whenever it suited his ambitions.

Adam Bunch: Attila's reign came to an unexpected end in 453 CE.

He suddenly died during his wedding feast,

having just married a Gothic princess named Ildiko.

His death shocked his allies and enemies alike,

and centuries later, it's still shrouded in mystery.

Historical accounts tell us a story of a spectacular funeral.

That Attila was laid to rest in three layered coffins,

one gold, one silver, one iron, and that he was buried

with so much treasure that a river was diverted

to hide his final resting place

and the workers killed, to keep the secret.

Alison Leonard: Despite questions over the story's

accuracy, these details remain our strongest clues

to the extraordinary precautions taken to guard Attila's grave,

and his final resting place has eluded discovery

for more than 1,500 years.

So where is Attila the Hun buried?

Narrator: Attila the Hun built a formidable empire,

rising to great power from a childhood spent

with the nomadic warriors of the Eurasian steppe.

James Ellis: Attila's youth was molded by

his tribe's warrior lifestyle.

His father, Mundzuk, was a notable Hunnic King.

In 433 AD, Attila and his brother Bleda

jointly inherited power from their uncle, King Rugila.

Attila soon showed an aptitude for strategic alliances

and ruthless diplomacy.

Amma Agbedor: Attila unleashed devastating cavalry raids

that ravaged the countryside and he crushed any emperor

who dared oppose him.

Some accounts claim he commanded an army

of hundreds of thousands strong.

Narrator: In 439 CE,

the Roman Empire and Attila the Hun

signed the Treaty of Magnus, which promised peace

and 700 pounds of gold paid to the Huns annually.

But the fragile agreement wouldn't last.

Amma Agbedor: By 453 CE,

he was mobilizing for yet another

large-scale campaign,

this time targeting Emperor Marcian

and the Eastern Roman Empire.

Marcian's refusal to honor the subsidies

that were established by his predecessor, Theodosius II,

had provoked Attila's wrath.

Adam Bunch: That same year, Attila's ambitions

came to an abrupt end when he died on his wedding day.

Some historical accounts say he was drinking heavily

that night and was then found dead in bed the next morning,

covered in blood, but without any wounds.

Details that helped fuel one of history's great mysteries.

Narrator: In the aftermath of Attila's death,

chaos threatened the unity of his empire.

Decisions had to be made swiftly,

and his burial may have reflected the urgency

and political significance of the moment.

Alison Leonard: Some believe that Attila fell victim

to murder at the hands of his new bride,

who may have sought vengeance for her oppressed Gothic people,

and there may have been a hasty, on-site burial

to destroy any evidence of poison or foul play.

James Ellis: Others point the finger at Emperor Marcian,

who boldly refused Attila's demands for tribute

and broke all agreements with the Huns.

Roman strategies often relied on covert tactics

like poisoning and manipulation,

and Marcian's actions reflected his defiance.

Amma Agbedor: By arranging or at least enabling Ildico's position

as Attila's final wife,

she may have been a pawn in a broader Roman scheme

to destabilize Hunnic power from within.

Alison Leonard: But it's just as plausible

that Attila's death was the result of natural causes,

perhaps a ruptured blood vessel

or an esophageal hemorrhage worsened by heavy drinking.

No surviving evidence definitively implicates

Ildico or Roman agents, and this theory does little

to illuminate the mystery of his final resting place.

Narrator: Some suspect Attila's sudden interment

concealed more than mere cause of death.

Instead, it laid the foundation for one of history's

most elaborate burial legends.

James Ellis: Attila might have been hidden

beneath the rushing waters of the Tisza River.

One historical account describes a vivid funeral scene.

Horsemen circling Attila's tent in sorrow,

mourners reciting funeral songs,

and grief so profound

they gashed their faces and cut their hair.

Adam Bunch: Historians suggest the Huns would have had

the knowledge they needed to divert the Tisza,

since they'd had contact with Roman engineers.

And if Attila really does rest beneath the river,

his burial must have been as grand and intimidating

as he was in life.

Narrator: Winding through Eastern Europe

for over 600 miles, the Tisza River flows

from the Carpathian Mountains

onto the Great Hungarian Plain,

the cradle of Attila's empire

and the cultural heart of the Hunnic world.

Alison Leonard: This was more than a geographical

Alison Leonard: This was more than a geographical

convenience, it was a spiritually potent choice.

Burying Attila in the Tisza, the lifeblood of his realm,

would protect his remains from desecration

and immortalize him within the very land he once ruled.

James Ellis: Archaeological surveys along riverbanks

reinforce the cultural significance of waterways

in steppe funerary practices.

High-status Hunnic graves have been unearthed close to rivers,

often laden with ceremonial items.

While these discoveries are exciting,

no trace of Attila's riverbed tomb has ever been discovered.

Narrator: Across the steppes of Central Europe,

ancient mounds stand as silent remnants of a nomadic past,

which some believe hold the key to unraveling the mystery

of Attila's final resting place

Adam Bunch: The steppe of central Europe is dotted

with ancient burial mounds called kurgans,

which were created by nomadic peoples.

And some people suspect

Attila's tomb could be one of them,

lost out there somewhere on the great Hungarian plain.

Alison Leonard: Steppe cultures often placed their greatest

leaders in lavishly appointed mounds,

sometimes with gold masks, precious weapons,

and tokens of authority.

Narrator: In 2023, a "princely" Hunnic tomb

unearthed near Mizil, Romania,

revealed over a hundred artifacts,

including a gilded saddle, ornate weapons,

and fragments of a gold mask.

Adam Bunch: Even though that tomb doesn't belong to Attila,

it gives us a tantalizing glimpse of

what his final resting place might have looked like.

And it fuels hope that the legendary warlord

could still be found somewhere in an even grander burial mound.

Alison Leonard: If Attila's coffin lies in a kurgan,

it could have been robbed centuries ago,

or it may still lie intact,

protected by both secrecy and time.

Discovering it would revolutionize our understanding

of Attila's empire and allow us to strip away

some of the legend that has long overshadowed the man himself.

Narrator: Attila the Hun's tomb is more

than a physical location,

it represents the power and legend of a vanished empire,

a monument to a leader whose shadow stretched

across continents and centuries.

James Ellis: Attila reshaped Europe's destiny,

forging alliances, demanding tributes,

and sowing terror wherever he went.

His military might and strategic marriages

left deep imprints on the Roman world and its neighbors.

Amma Agbedor: Discoveries like the "princely" tomb

near Mizil suggest we are only beginning to grasp

the complexity and grandeur of Hunnic burial practices.

But they also highlight how time and myth can obscure

definitive truths and evidence.

Narrator: Attila the Hun's life shaped a pivotal era

of alliances, conflicts, and collapsing empires.

His legend endures because the man, and the mystery,

refuse to be forgotten.

♪♪

♪♪

Narrator: The Great Library of Alexandria

was once a beacon of learning in the ancient world,

reputed to hold tens

or even hundreds of thousands of scrolls.

It attracted philosophers, mathematicians,

and poets from across the Mediterranean

to Egypt's capital.

Anthea Nardi: Most people imagine one massive building,

but the Library was more likely a network of halls

and gardens housed within the Museum,

an institution dedicated to the Muses.

Under Ptolemy I and II,

officials collected manuscripts from incoming ships

and purchased rare scrolls from distant lands.

Before long, this enterprise grew into the largest

collection of knowledge in the ancient Mediterranean.

Amma Agbedor: Beyond Greek classics,

the Library preserved Egyptian records, Persian texts,

and Hebrew scriptures,

including the famed Septuagint translation.

Papyrus scrolls covered everything

from Aristotle's philosophy

to newly rendered mythologies.

Estimates of the Library's total holdings span

from 40,000 to 700,000 scrolls,

accounting for multiple branch libraries,

such as the Serapeum, spread throughout the city.

Adam Bunch: It's one of the most fabled institutions

of the ancient world,

but archeologists have never been able to find

any definitive physical trace of it.

And the accounts of its disappearance are tangled

in contradictions.

So how did the greatest collection of knowledge

and all of antiquity just vanish?

Narrator: Under the early Ptolemies, around 300 BCE,

Alexandria became a vibrant melting pot of cultures.

Scholars from Greece, Egypt, Persia,

and beyond converged here,

driving advances in astronomy,

mathematics, and philosophy.

Anthea Nardi: The Library of Alexandria was the crown jewel

of the ancient world's intellectual landscape,

a groundbreaking institution that inspired

the very concept of the modern university.

James Ellis: It was originally envisioned

by Alexander the Great as a cultural and literary hub,

but his untimely death ultimately left

the project unfinished.

His successor, Ptolemy I, carried forward this vision,

founding the Ptolemaic dynasty

and ensuring the Library became a beacon of scholarship.

Amma Agbedor: It began with Demetrius of Phalerum

an exiled Athenian who urged Ptolemy Soter I

to build a "universal library".

By acquiring manuscripts from around the known world,

Alexandria aimed to gather

every significant work of the era.

Adam Bunch: As the library expanded,

every single ship that docked in Alexandria

was searched for books so that any written material

could be taken away and copied,

with the library often keeping the originals.

James Ellis: But as Rome's influence grew,

Alexandria's destiny shifted.

Cleopatra's political alliances, Julius Caesar's arrival,

and escalating internal unrest

plunged the city into turmoil.

Battles and political tensions

reverberated through the Royal Quarter,

setting the stage for the many theories about

how the Great Library ultimately met its end.

Narrator: Some argue a single, devastating incident

doomed the library once and for all.

Amma Agbedor: One theory suggests

the Library's destruction began in 48 BCE,

during Julius Caesar's campaign in Egypt.

To block enemy ships during a civil war between Cleopatra

and her brother Ptolemy XIII,

Caesar ordered the Alexandrian fleet set ablaze.

Adam Bunch: There are stories of flames spreading

from the ships to buildings near the docks,

including warehouses that stored manuscripts.

Some of those ancient sources claim

that tens of thousands of scrolls were destroyed,

or even the Library itself.

James Ellis: Roman philosopher Seneca,

writing in the 1st century CE, recorded that

40,000 scrolls were lost in Caesar's fire.

Later authors like Aulus Gellius and Orosius

dramatically expanded this figure,

claiming losses of up to 700,000 manuscripts.

Amma Agbedor: Despite these vivid narratives,

the geographer Strabo, while visiting around 20 BCE,

found a still functioning Museum in Alexandria.

This suggests that the Library was not entirely destroyed.

Parts of its collection may have survived or been rebuilt.

While Caesar's fire struck a painful blow,

it likely was not the Library's ultimate demise.

Narrator: Turmoil continued to rock Alexandria

for centuries. Civil unrest, uprisings,

and new military campaigns left the city perpetually on edge.

Some suggest another, more devastating episode

finally sealed the fate of any surviving manuscripts.

Anthea Nardi: Some assert that Emperor Aurelian's brutal

reconquest of Alexandria in the 270 CE

delivered the Library's fatal blow.

Ammianus Marcellinus recounts

how vast sections of the city, including the Bruchion district,

where the Royal Quarter stood,

were devastated, as Aurelian fought to seize Alexandria

from Palmyrene forces loyal to Queen Zenobia.

James Ellis: But interestingly, references to Alexandrian

learning persisted well into the 4th century.

Emperor Domitian, for instance, relied on Alexandrian copies

to replenish texts lost in a Roman library fire.

This implies that into the 1st and 2nd centuries CE,

enough manuscripts still existed in Alexandria

for Roman leaders to rely on, perhaps at the Serapeum,

which may have remained operational.

Amma Agbedor: We have no definitive record stating

that the Great Library perished at Aurelian's hand.

Scholars like Theon and his daughter Hypatia

remained active in Alexandria in the late 4th century,

hinting that some scholarly tradition persisted.

The question is whether they worked with a true

"Great Library" or a patchwork of smaller collections.

Aurelian's campaign was significant,

but may not fully explain

the Library's ultimate disappearance.

Narrator: By the late 4th century,

a new tide swept across the empire,

challenging not just Alexandria's temples

but perhaps the very heart of its scholarly heritage.

Adam Bunch: The Library's final chapter might have come

during the Christian crackdown on pagan sites in Alexandria.

The Emperor Theodosius I outlawed pagan warship,

and since the Serapeum was still an important site

for pagans, it was demolished.

So by the end of 391 CE, even whatever might have been left

in the collection of the daughter of the Great Library

seems to have been destroyed.

Anthea Nardi: Contemporary sources describe a whirlwind

of shattered statues, ripped-down altars,

and plundered artifacts.

If the Serapeum did indeed hold significant scrolls,

be they remnants of the Royal Library or another collection,

their destruction would have erased a priceless treasury

of astronomy, mathematics, and pagan philosophy.

James Ellis: But the record is murky on whether

"thousands of scrolls" literally went up in flames in 391 CE.

Surviving texts do not explicitly detail

a mass burning of manuscripts.

Some could have been removed, sold,

or left to decay well before the Christian mobs arrived,

which casts some doubt on the scale

of this supposed final blow.

Amma Agbedor: And some accounts suggest small pockets

of scholarship persisted beyond the Serapeum's ruin.

While the Christian purge was undeniably harsh,

it likely capped a long, gradual decline

rather than delivering a single, decisive end

to the once-great Library.

Narrator: The Great Library of Alexandria's disappearance

remains one of history's greatest riddles.

Conflicting theories paint dramatic pictures

of sudden fires and vicious sackings,

but the truth might be more complex.

Adam Bunch: Could be that there wasn't any single catastrophe

that was fully responsible for the library's destruction.

Caesar's fire, Aurelian's reconquest,

and the Christian purge all seemed to have delivered

devastating blows as part of a long history

of political turmoil and religious upheaval

that might have gradually eroded the library,

which would have relied on scholarly stability

and royal patronage to survive.

Anthea Nardi: Papyrus, the primary writing material,

was fragile and required careful maintenance.

Even minor neglect, let alone war, risked irreparable loss.

The legends of a single cataclysmic event may overshadow

the more plausible reality - a drawn-out unraveling

fueled by multiple crises and long-term decay.

Narrator: The Great Library of Alexandria remains an emblem

of humanity's highest intellectual ambitions.

Its rise and disappearance remind us

that knowledge is precious,

and that once lost, it is difficult to recover.

This iconic Library's spirit lives on in our ongoing quest

to safeguard what we know and continue to learn.

♪♪

Narrator: Around December of 1511,

off the coast of Sumatra, Portugal's Flor de la Mar,

carrying some 400 souls and 60 tons of gold,

got caught up on a reef during a fierce storm.

Captain Alfonso de Albuquerque

set off in a boat to find help

but the crew he left behind

never saw him again.

Adam Bunch: But Albuquerque wasn't just

the Fleur de la Mar's Captain, he was an admiral,

the viceroy of Portugal, and a military commander

nicknamed the Lion of the Seas,

who was bent on maritime conquest,

determined to control trade throughout Southeast Asia.

Anthea Nardi: The flotilla had set out with four ships,

two of which had already sunk in the storm.

De Albuquerque was able to locate the remaining one

and was rescued, but then, rather than sailing it back

to try save the Flor de la Mar,

he directed it to carry him to Portugal.

James Ellis: The Flor de la Mar was left helplessly stuck

on a reef in the shallows,

being pummeled incessantly by the storm's waves.

The ship, most of its crew, and all of its cargo disappeared.

Hundreds of years later, the question remains,

where is the Flor de la Mar's vanished treasure?

Narrator: The Flor de la Mar, one of the largest

and most beautiful ships of its era,

was born of Portugal's desire

to acquire and control the riches of the east.

The Flor could carry vast cargo and blast any ships

that stood in its way to splinters.

Amma Agbedor: The Flor de la Mar was built in Lisbon, in 1502.

It was 118 feet long,

111 feet tall,

and had a rounded hull that displaced

400 tons of water.

And it wasn't just large,

it was powerful,

with three masts, and a variety of sails

to catch and control the wind.

Adam Bunch: The ship was loaded with firepower.

It had 50 guns, six big ones that fired cannonballs

as heavy as 18 pounds,

eight swivel guns firing four pounds shot

and lots of smaller guns loaded with scatter shots.

Anthea Nardi: The Flor de la Mar was a trade ship and a warship,

in one overwhelming package.

This might be why Alfonso de Albuquerque

chose it as his flagship when he embarked

with a fleet of 22 vessels

on an ambitious and relentless string of conquests

that would take years.

Narrator: De Albuquerque attacked and plundered his way

from Mozambique, all along Africa's east coast

to the Red Sea.

Then he ransacked ports in India, Burma, and Thailand.

But his most ambitious target was known as

"the emporium of the east",

the richest city in the world.

James Ellis: The Sultanate of Malacca was a trading hub

that connected all of East Asia via the strait

that bears its name, and as such,

it had made the city of Malacca and the Sultan

fabulously wealthy.

Amma Agbedor: This was not an attempt at trade or diplomacy.

Albuquerque attacked with 16 ships,

destroying a dozen of the Sultan's vessels

and driving back his war elephants and army of archers.

He besieged Malacca for 12 days,

and when the city finally fell,

he slaughtered thousands of its citizens,

and plundered the Sultan's palace.

Adam Bunch: Albuquerque loaded the Flor with loot

and set sail for Portugal along with three other ships.

Two days later, while they were still making their way

through the strait, the storm struck and the Flor de la Mar,

heavy with treasure, was caught on a sandy shoal.

According to reports, the ship broke in two.

The back half stranded on the sand and pounded by the waves.

The ship had run aground on the shoals,

so the wreck was sitting in shallow water,

with easy access from the shore once the storm had passed,

at least until what was left of the hull eventually drifted

away with the current or sank into the silt.

Anthea Nardi: Albuquerque made his cowardly escape,

and after that, it was only a matter of time

before the remaining half of the ship disintegrated

and slipped beneath the waves.

Only a few of its crew were said

to have somehow made it to land.

The Flor de la Mar was gone,

and with it an incredible amount of gold and treasure.

Narrator: The men who miraculously survived the wreck

could be the key to what became

of the Flor de la Mar's valuable cargo.

James Ellis: The survivors would have known where in the ship

the treasures had been stowed.

And the next day, when the storm had subsided,

they could have trekked back

into the shallow and now calm waters,

to recover as much as they could.

Amma Agbedor: There were contemporary accounts

that described the men coming to shore clutching valuables

and personal possessions.

They could easily have gotten help in salvaging the treasure

from the very locals who'd witnessed their escape,

as soon as it was safe to do so.

Anthea Nardi: Getting help from the locals

would certainly help explain

how just a few crew members could have recovered

chests full of gold from the guts of a ship

wrecked on a silty shoal.

The only thing is, the Portuguese survivors

are described as having made it to shore at Pase,

about 90 miles up the coast from where the wreck was,

making this scenario very unlikely.

Narrator: Some believe that the survivors

and the Flor de la Mar's treasure,

may have fallen victim to something as treacherous

as the storm that destroyed the ship.

James Ellis: It's entirely conceivable that pirates

could have swooped in once the storm had passed,

and looted the remains of the hull.

The Strait of Malacca has lots of small islands,

with narrow passages between them.

Trade ships often had trouble navigating the shallow waters,

and that made them easy prey for pirates,

who could ambush them or simply comb through the wrecks

at their leisure.

Amma Agbedor: If pirates had access

to those surviving crew members,

they certainly might have compelled them

to divulge exactly where the chests had been stowed.

It's even been suggested that pirates aligned

with the Sultan of Malacca himself

could have looted the ship,

getting the Sultan his gold back,

and maybe even a little extra, to boot.

Adam Bunch: The Aru Kingdom, north of the Malaccan Sultanate,

had a reputation for piracy.

One Portuguese contemporary living in Malacca

wrote that the Aru had at least a hundred pardos,

a type of outrigger bow built for speed

and a reputation of thievery.

Anthea Nardi: That same writer said

the Raja of another kingdom, adjacent to Aru,

had "recovered everything water could not spoil"

from the Flor de la Mar wreck,

which had made him "very rich."

The only problem with this possibility is

that there's no evidence to substantiate it.

If someone managed to retrieve the treasure,

where did it end up?

Narrator: With all the possibilities

that have been suggested regarding the fate

of the Flor de la Mar's treasure,

some maintain that everything is exactly as it seems.

James Ellis: The Flor de la Mar sank in the Strait of Malacca,

and maybe the treasure sank with it

and that's where it remains.

The first and biggest challenge is

that we've never known exactly where it went down.

Amma Agbedor: There's that discrepancy about

where Albuquerque said the wreck was,

and where the few surviving crew members came ashore,

that makes it very hard to know where to start looking.

Adam Bunch: And then there's the fact that the area

is hard to search.

Their powerful currents stir up the muddy seabed.

For divers, visibility is often zero.

Anthea Nardi: Once the last of the Flor de la Mar broke up,

the heavy treasure chests couldn't have traveled far,

but after five centuries,

they could be buried very deep under the silt.

Narrator: The treasure of the Flor de la Mar

may simply be too valuable to be forgotten or left alone.

James Ellis: In 1992, a salvage company spent years

and millions of dollars searching for the treasure.

They finally hired a career treasure hunter

who claimed to have found evidence of the wreck,

including scattered ballast rock, several gold figurines,

and a gold bracelet.

Amma Agbedor: According to the treasure hunter,

this was a spot,

where scuba divers working for an oil exploration company

years prior had found four bronze cannons

and several gold artifacts.

Adam Bunch: A more extensive exploration of the site

was set to begin, but there were disputes over

who owned the salvage rights,

Malaysia, Indonesia, or Portugal,

and the project was abandoned.

So the mystery lives on.

Narrator: It was a priceless haul of gold,

stolen at the cost of countless lives

and abandoned in an act of cowardice.

With its dark history

and where the lost treasure of the Flor de la Mar lies,

it might be better off left alone.

If modern-day treasure hunters

can only resist its pull.

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