Original subtitles

[tense music]

- [Danny] Mysteries can be buried anywhere:

under the earth,

[volcanic eruption booms]

beneath the sea,

[airplane roaring]

or even right under our own feet.

[coins jingling]

And when we stumble upon them,

sometimes what we find can change history.

Tonight,

[swords swoosh] [explosions boom]

powerful discoveries.

[tires squeal]

From a muscle car with a legendary past...

- It turns out that this isn't just any old Mustang.

This is probably one of

the most famous Mustangs in history.

- [Danny] To a hidden stronghold...

- They find a vast, concrete chamber.

- They also find what looks like two escape tunnels.

- [Danny] To a floating force of destruction.

- This ship carried very large guns.

It was basically the 15th century equivalent

of a nuclear warship.

[explosion booms]

- Join us now, because nothing stays hidden forever.

[mysterious music]

When most of us think of power,

we think of physical strength,

but sometimes that force isn't in the body,

it's under the hood.

- It's 2017 and Hugo Sanchez is

picking through a junkyard in Mexico.

He restores muscle cars

and so he's looking for a beater with some good bones.

- It's like a graveyard of metal.

You've got your twisted frames,

your blown-out doors, your rusted fenders,

but then he spies something.

It's a familiar silhouette

that is just covered, unfortunately,

by decades of neglect.

It's the shell of a 1968 Mustang GT Fastback.

- The car's a mess,

dents everywhere, rust everywhere,

and yet he sees in the silhouette

something that he might be able to work with.

- [Danny] Without hesitating,

Sanchez buys the old car on the spot for $5,000.

- Sanchez hauls the wreck to his friend, Ralph Garcia Jr.,

a body shop owner who specializes

in customizing old Mustangs.

- [Andrew] As Garcia begins to inspect the car,

he realizes that this is an S-code Mustang GT

with a 390-cubic-inch V8 engine.

This was a beast of a car in its day.

- [Sami] So Garcia runs the car's VIN through a database

and what comes back is astonishing to him.

It turns out that this Mustang isn't just any old Mustang.

This is probably one of the most famous Mustangs in history,

because this is the Mustang

that Steve McQueen drove

in the 1968 film, "Bullitt".

- [Danny] Widely hailed as one of the greatest action films

ever made,

"Bullitt" became legendary

for its groundbreaking car chase sequence.

- [Andrew] This was 1968,

so no CGI, no green screen,

just Steve McQueen behind the wheel

of a stripped down Mustang Fastback,

tearing through the streets of San Francisco.

- [Paul] Well, the film "Bullitt" is what made

the Mustang one of the most iconic cars

in all of American history

that had only come on the market four years before.

But now everybody wanted a Mustang.

Everyone wanted to be as cool

as Steve McQueen was behind the wheel.

- [Danny] The car may look the part,

but to be sure, Sanchez and Garcia reach out

to a well-known expert for confirmation.

- [Andrew] Sanchez and Garcia send photos of the car

to Kevin Marti, a renowned Ford historian

and an expert on Mustangs.

As soon as he sees the photos,

he's on the next flight to Mexico.

- [Danny] Marti knows every detail about the cars used

in "Bullitt" and the first thing he explains is

that there were two of them.

- [Kavitha] One was the hero car,

used for closeups and regular scenes.

The other was the jumper used for stunts.

It was reinforced, gutted,

and totally battered by the shoot.

- [Sami] Marti takes a look at the car and he sees

the vehicle's reinforced suspension and chassis.

He also sees the holes that were put in the car

so that the movie lights and the cameras

inside the car could be powered.

He also notices that underneath

that cream-colored paint and those patches of rust,

the original paint,

that Highland Green, is still present.

- [Danny] It's official.

This is the jumper Mustang that made movie magic,

but how did it end up in Mexico?

- [Paul] After filming wraps on "Bullitt", the car sold.

It changes hands several times and moves

from New Jersey to Kentucky,

but eventually it's just so beat up

that it's sold for junk

and winds up in this automobile graveyard down in Mexico.

- [Danny] Today, the iconic Mustang is

turning heads all over again.

- [Andrew] Sanchez and Garcia have restored the jumper car

back to its original 1968 glory,

but for now, it's staying in the garage.

The hero car from "Bullitt" sold at auction in 2020

for a staggering $3.74 million.

So if the jumper car were to ever hit the market,

who knows what lengths collectors

would go to acquire it?

- Next, another vehicle that packs a punch,

but this one wasn't built for the big screen.

It was built for war.

- In 2008, on the quiet Rue de Perrier

in the city of Chartres in France,

road workers are pulling up old asphalt.

[equipment rattling]

- This is a routine maintenance project

until the digger hits something solid.

Work is halted and all of the workers come in

to take a look.

- They can see something just under the dirt.

It's not a stone, it's metal.

It's twisted and rusty,

and it definitely doesn't belong here.

- [Andrew] Unfortunately, whatever this is

is massive and it won't budge.

So they bring in some more equipment

and they're finally able to drag it out of the earth

and it is the most unexpected thing:

a tank.

- [John] The workers are shocked and afraid

because this thing could still have live ammo

or explosives in it,

which means it could blow up.

- [Danny] Unwilling to take any chances,

the team quickly calls in the bomb squad.

- [Andrew] They sweep the vehicle and declare it safe.

Next, historians come in and they identify the tank.

This is an M5 Stuart.

[explosion bangs]

- [Martin] The M5 Stuart was one of the most versatile

armored fighting vehicles used by American military forces

during the Second World War.

In an armored division, speed is armor

and the Stuart is lightweight and fast,

perfect for reconnaissance operations.

- [Danny] That speed put the Stuart

at the front of the action.

And in the chaos of the advance through France,

one mission would prove it was too fast for its own good.

- [John] Back on August 16th, 1944, American forces

are tearing through Nazi-occupied France.

Leading the charge is an M5 Stuart,

part of the 31st Tank Battalion.

- [Martin] This vehicle was on a scouting mission

when it was struck by a round

from a German Panzerfaust anti-tank weapon.

[explosion booms]

The Panzerfaust round hits the right track

and disables the vehicle.

The crew abandons it safely,

but they then spend the next three days

attempting to evade German forces

before they make it back to friendly lines.

- [Danny] Meanwhile, the tank is quickly seized

by German troops.

- German engineers disabled this M5.

They took the cannon, the machine guns,

they actually blew off the turret

and they just left it as this kind of metal hulk

that could never be used again.

- [Martin] Two days later, forces under the command

of General George S. Patton liberate Chartres.

They find the tank, but it's too damaged to be

returned to service,

so they push it off into a shell crater and bury it.

- [John] Over time, the land was paved

and the road became just another street.

The tank sat beneath it for 60 years, forgotten.

- Across history, some of the most powerful people

didn't rule empires;

they ruled arenas.

And a discovery in Italy uncovered

the story of one such figure.

- [Andrew] It's a few days before Christmas, 1959,

and construction crews in Taranto, Italy are

excavating a new foundation for a building.

- [Adam] The excavation is going along,

sort of business as usual,

until suddenly, there is the jarring sound

of metal hitting stone.

So the equipment stops, the workers grab their shovels.

They start clearing earth until they come

to a small limestone vault

about the size of a human body.

- [Kavitha] In a country where history runs deep,

this only means one thing.

It's time to call the archeologists.

They lift the slabs that form the lid

and inside, they find a sarcophagus.

- [Andrew] Inside the sarcophagus,

they find the remains of a body.

It's a man in his late 20s, early 30s,

who stood about 5'7".

- [Danny] But it's what's found around his bones

that tells a deeper story.

- [Kavitha] They find remnants of black and orange pottery

and they date to about 480 B.C.

Around this time, this part of Italy was

under Greek control.

- The archeology team brings these pottery fragments

back to the lab and they put 'em back together

and realize it forms three full jars,

and part of a fourth.

- [Adam] The jars have designs on the outside

depicting different sporting events

from the Panathenaic Games,

sort of the precursor to today's modern Olympics.

- [Andrew] Held every July, these games were

part religious ceremony, part competition.

Individual events range from foot races

to boat races to military dance contests.

If you competed and won at the Panathenaic Games,

you got something just as valuable

as a gold medal is to athletes today:

olive oil.

- [Kavitha] Olive oil was extremely valuable

in ancient Greece.

There was even a special reserve for Greek athletes

pressed from the sacred groves in Attica.

- [Adam] To have one jar alone was significant,

and the man in the sarcophagus had four jars with him.

That's not just the mark of a competitor;

that's the mark of a champion.

- [Danny] Archeologists wonder

what sport made him such a powerhouse.

- At 5'7", this athlete was tall for his day

and researchers can tell that he was very well built.

Regular exercise changes our bones,

increases our bone density

as muscles pull and push at them.

- [Adam] The man's shoulders and arms have

massive muscle attachments.

His right ulna, one of the bones in his forearm,

is much larger than the one in his left,

and all around the operating joints of his shoulders,

you could see the wear and tear

of repeated athletic motion.

- [Kavitha] Looking at his right shoulder,

experts are convinced

it came from throwing either discus or javelin.

- His lower body is equally impressive.

He has thick calf and thigh bones,

which suggests the type of muscles

that could launch you into a sprint or a jump.

- [Danny] That's when the images

on one of the four jars finally makes sense.

- The pottery doesn't just depict one athletic event.

It depicts all five pentathlon events:

discus throwing, running,

javelin, wrestling, long jump.

- [Danny] But for everything his bones reveal

about his strength,

they don't tell us how he died.

- [Adam] This athlete was young

and in incredibly good physical shape.

There's no sign of trauma or disease,

so no one understands

what could have possibly killed him.

- [Andrew] As of today, this man's remains are

the only ones we found that we can definitively say

are of an ancient Greek athlete.

We may never know this champion's name,

but his bones tell the story

of strength that still speaks to us

2,500 years later.

- Sometimes, powerful figures leave behind glory.

Other times, they leave behind secrets.

And this next discovery unearths a major one.

- [Don] In 2011, City Superintendent Anna Imponente

and architect Carlo Serafini

are overseeing a minor remodeling job

at the National Museum of the Palazzo Venezia in Rome.

- [Martin] The museum is quickly running out of room

to display its collection,

so they're going to convert an old storage area

into new exhibition space.

- As workers clear out boxes of forgotten papers and relics,

they find a trap door in the floor,

measuring three feet by three feet.

- Imponente and Serafini pry it open

and underneath the door, they see

a narrow, red brick staircase

descending into absolute darkness.

- [Martin] Curious, they grab a couple of flashlights

and head 50 feet down into the unknown.

At the bottom, they find themselves

inside a vast, concrete chamber.

It's about 860 square feet

and there are nine more rooms that branch off from the space.

- [Don] There's a functioning ventilation system,

electric wiring.

The rooms themselves are bare.

There's no decoration, no furniture,

just broken junk around,

all of which seems to date from the mid 20th century.

They also find what looks like

two unfinished escape tunnels.

- [Danny] What they've uncovered is no ordinary space.

It's a secret bunker from one of Italy's darkest chapters.

[planes roaring] [explosions booming]

- [Andrew] In 1929,

Italy's fascist dictator Benito Mussolini

chose the Palazzo Venezia as his seat of power.

From the palazzo's balcony,

he famously addressed massive crowds,

galvanizing support for he and his government.

[crowd cheers]

[explosion booming]

- By World War II, the palace wasn't just symbolic;

it became his official residence and command center.

From here, Mussolini governed

as Hitler's closest European ally.

- [Danny] But in 1942,

as the tide of war begins to turn,

Mussolini's once unchallenged grip on power

starts to loosen.

- [Martin] As Allied forces begin closing in,

Mussolini becomes concerned.

He's worried that Allied air forces will launch

a raid that will target him personally.

- Publicly, Mussolini famously declared

that he would never hide from an airstrike

and he'd bravely ride it out on his balcony.

But it's rumored that on one occasion

when he was caught in an airstrike in Albania,

[explosions boom]

Il Duce ran straight to the nearest bunker.

- [Danny] Before this bunker could be finished,

Mussolini's reign came to an abrupt end.

- [Martin] In July 1943, Mussolini was ousted from power

and arrested.

Nearly two years later,

he is executed by Italian partisans

and the bunker is never completed and never used.

- [Don] For nearly 70 years,

it did what it was made to do.

It remained hidden, sealed and forgotten,

until a renovation project turned it

into a once in a lifetime discovery.

Today, it stands as a chilling relic of power, paranoia,

and the downfall of a dictator.

- When scuba divers explore the sea,

they expect to find coral, fish,

and maybe some old artifacts,

but for one group out for a swim,

what they discover is proof of an ancient ruler's might.

- [Hugo] In the summer of 1971,

off the coast of Ronneby, Sweden,

a group of recreational scuba divers explore the Baltic Sea.

[water splashes]

The water is calm, visibility is clear.

It's a perfect day.

- They're out there admiring the marine life

when they see something that looks out of place.

There are these long, wooden beams scattered

across the sea floor,

and so they move in closer to get a better look,

thinking it's an old fishing boat.

Among the beams, the divers find

dozens of small, metal balls

about the size of golf balls.

- [Danny] Over the next few decades,

the shipwreck becomes a popular scuba spot for locals.

- [Micah] Then in 2001,

one of the divers notices something strange.

Some of the beams appear to be hollowed out in the center,

and so he contacts a local museum

and asks experts to come out and have a look.

- [Danny] When marine archeologists arrive on site,

it's immediately clear that this is not a fishing boat.

It's something much more impressive.

- [Hakeem] This ship is massive,

about 100 feet long and 30 feet wide.

Those hollow beams turn out to be artillery mounts

used to support heavy cannons.

And those little golf balls,

those were lead cannon balls.

- [Danny] These are the remains of a warship

and it's one of the oldest ever found

in Nordic waters.

- [Micah] This ship carried very large guns

and breechloading artillery,

which was extremely cutting edge for the time.

[cannons booming]

It was basically the 15th century equivalent

of a nuclear-powered warship.

- [Danny] No one knows exactly where the ship came from

or where it was heading,

but what is clear is that it wasn't just built for combat.

- The archeologists find coins,

a suede slipper, and barrels full of rare spices.

So there's saffron, and cloves,

and ginger, peppercorns.

And back then, exotic spices were a real luxury.

I mean, some were literally worth their weight in gold.

- [Hugo] Over the next several years,

teams keep coming back to the site.

They're mapping more of it,

trying to piece together what this wreck was.

- [Danny] Then in 2015,

a diver finally pulls up

a crucial piece of the puzzle.

- [Micah] It's an ancient piece of wood

with a painted figurehead,

and it either depicts a snarling dragon

or maybe a hound devouring a human.

Testing of the timber dates this piece to the 1400s,

and that means that this is

the oldest figure head ever recovered from a shipwreck.

- [Hakeem] With the ship's design, armaments,

and time period in hand,

the researchers turn to the historical record.

Only one ship fits the evidence:

the Gribshunden, which is Danish for Griffin hound.

It's the lost flagship of King Hans,

the 15th century ruler of Denmark and Norway.

- [Danny] Around this time in 1495,

King Hans had his sights set on the throne in Sweden.

- [Hugo] Hans wanted to unify the entire Nordic region

under his rule.

To win the throne of Sweden,

he had to meet with the Swedish Council.

If he could somehow win them over,

they would make him king of Sweden.

- Hans brought his A-game.

He loaded the Gribshunden with nobles, elite guards,

gold, and spices.

It was a display of his wealth and power

designed to win over the Swedish Council.

- [Hakeem] But during his journey, disaster struck.

When the ship was docked near the town of Ronneby,

a fire broke out on board

and it quickly spread down to the hold

where the gunpowder was stored.

[explosion booming]

- [Micah] There is a massive explosion,

and for everyone on board, it's literally sink or swim.

Close to 100 mercenaries and crew end up being killed.

- [Paul] The ship, along with all of Hans' weapons and wealth,

sink to the bottom of the sea.

Hans himself, though, survives,

through sheer lucky coincidence

because he happened to be ashore when the fire broke out.

- [Danny] It wasn't just a maritime disaster,

it was a political one too.

- Without his flagship, Hans returned home.

It took him two more years

before he claimed the Swedish throne,

but even then, he only held it for three years.

- [Hugo] Regardless, King Hans managed to leave his mark,

even from the depths of the ocean.

- 1,000 miles away,

another treasure from a different powerful leader

is uncovered,

only this time, it's not beneath the waves.

It's buried in someone's backyard.

- [Andrew] It's the spring of 2020

and COVID lockdowns have confined families

across the United Kingdom to their homes.

One household in England's New Forest area

decide they're gonna shake off their cabin fever,

gonna head out to the backyard

and do a little bit of gardening.

- [Martin] They're weeding, they're digging in the garden.

They're just trying to come up with things to pass the time.

When suddenly,

something attracts their attention.

It glints in the sunlight.

It's small and round and golden.

- They pick it up, brush the mud off,

and are shocked to see the image

of an angel fighting a dragon on a gold coin.

- [Andrew] The family can't believe it,

and so they start sifting through the dirt, digging,

and sure enough, they find another coin,

and then another.

- [Danny] By sunset, they've dug up

63 gold coins and one silver piece.

- [Hakeem] They call the authorities and within days,

archeologists show up and they find six more coins.

- [Martin] Most of these coins date to the 1400s,

during the reign of Edward IV.

One side of the coin shows a ship at sea.

The other side shows the Archangel Michael

defeating a dragon,

a powerful symbol drawn from the Book of Revelations.

- But four of the coins are different.

Instead of an angel and ship,

they feature a Tudor rose.

- [Danny] This is the mark

of one of England's most influential, flamboyant,

and controversial kings, Henry VIII.

- [Hakeem] Henry VIII was never supposed to be king.

He was the second son,

the spare, not the heir.

But when his older brother died,

the crown fell to him.

So in 1509, he ascended the throne.

- Henry didn't simply rule England, he transformed it.

He broke with the Catholic Church

and also began rewriting laws to suit his will.

- [Alex] In 1526, with Cardinal Wolsey by his side,

Henry overhauled the kingdom's currency.

He changed the weights and created a new denomination,

the gold crown, which was worth five shillings.

- [Danny] Henry also added a few other details to his coins.

- [Hakeem] He put his initial H on every coin,

kind of like the 16th century version

of personal branding,

and a total power move.

- [Alex] But he didn't hog the spotlight completely.

He shared the glory by giving his queens equal billing.

His wife's initial was always stamped beside his.

- Famously, Henry VIII had many wives,

and so the initial stamped into the coins changed over time.

- [Hakeem] Some of these rare coins,

including the ones with Henry VIII's wives' initials,

were recovered from the family's garden,

buried and forgotten for almost 500 years.

- [Danny] Today, the hoard is worth about $24,000,

but why was such a valuable stash buried in the first place?

- At the time, there was a lot of turmoil for Henry VIII.

He was seizing land and wealth from the Catholic Church.

Monasteries were being dissolved

and treasuries were being emptied.

- [Hakeem] Some historians think the hoard may have been buried

by a Catholic clergyman

who was hoping to protect the church's wealth

from the crown.

If that's true,

this coin collection may very well

have eluded King Henry.

- In 1871, a Swedish scientist sets out

to study ants,

but ends up stumbling onto something much bigger than bugs.

- [Micah] On the shores of Sweden,

entomologist Knut Hjalmar Stolpe is

digging through the mud,

searching for ancient ants preserved in amber.

- [Hugo] On the lake shore, he finds more amber

than he's expecting,

a much greater amount than should ever occur naturally,

and there's no obvious explanation for it.

He's in the middle of nowhere

with no people or businesses nearby.

- [Danny] But Stolpe recalls hearing whispers

of a lost Viking city in the area called Birka.

So, he decides to investigate further.

- [Nicola] Nearby, Stolpe excavates a pit.

Inside it, he finds twisted bits of iron.

He finds pottery shards.

He finds animal bones.

- [Micah] He shares what he's discovered

with a few other scientists,

but to them, he's just a eccentric insect guy,

and so most of them just kind of brush him off.

- [Andrew] Determined to prove them wrong,

Stolpe literally goes back to school,

earns a degree in archeology,

comes back to the site,

and begins a careful, years-long excavation.

- [Hugo] His work pays off.

He finds homes,

the remains of a shipyard,

and goods from as far away as the Middle East.

- [Micah] From the size of the settlement

to the types of relics that he's uncovering,

Stolpe becomes convinced that he's found

the remnants of the ancient Viking city.

- [Danny] Soon, Stolpe's theory gets a boost

when he discovers thousands of human graves,

but one in particular stands out.

- [Andrew] There's a skeleton surrounded

by a whole arsenal of weapons,

sword, ax, shields, lances.

Arranged next to it are two horses,

a mare and a stallion.

- [Nicola] In the Viking context,

burials this elaborate point

to somebody with significant status.

- [Micah] There were also remains

of an iron-framed gaming board

that was complete with dice and pawns.

Game sets like these were known to be used

by Viking leaders as more than just a pastime.

It signaled strategic mastery.

It was the mark of a true commander.

- [Danny] Stolpe concludes that this is

the grave of a very powerful man,

a leader and a guardian of Birka,

and for over a century,

no one questions that,

until modern science reveals a surprise.

- [Andrew] In 2019,

researchers run DNA analysis on the bones.

The analysis reveals that these bones have

two X chromosomes,

which means that the great leader of Birka was a woman.

While Viking sagas speak of shieldmaidens,

women who fought alongside men,

this is the first historical evidence

that women may have ascended to positions of power

equal to the greatest male Viking warrior.

- [Danny] While one ancient warrior's secrets are revealed

by her burial pit,

a modern ruler's legacy is

nearly lost forever in a trash pit.

- For 15 years, a man named David Rose has

worked at a garbage dump in England.

Every now and then, he finds a piece or two

that he rescues from the trash heap,

and one day in 2019,

something catches David's eye.

- [Andrew] Poking out of a pile of rubbish is a cardboard box.

Dusty, old, but sealed shut.

Thinking that something interesting might be inside,

David pulls the box from the trash and opens it.

- Inside, he finds a strange collection of objects.

There's a small wooden case with a cigar,

a worn cigar holder,

and an old top hat,

and there's also a stack of old letters,

more than 140 of 'em.

- [Andrew] Most of the letters are postmarked to the 1940s

and they're written by a London woman named Mary Dorgan.

They're addressed to her son,

who she calls "My darling Joe".

He is a soldier in the British forces

posted to Egypt in the waning days of World War II.

- [Martin] She writes to him almost daily,

sharing with him details of what it's like in London

during wartime:

blackouts, food rationing, fire watches.

- [John] Mary also describes her life

working as part of the domestic staff

in an upper class home.

She gives updates about her boss,

what mood he's in and what he's up to every day.

- [Andrew] As David rummages through the box,

underneath all of the items and the letters,

he finds an autographed photo of none other than

Winston Churchill.

- [Danny] Could this box of items really belong

to one of history's greatest leaders?

- [John] Winston Churchill rose to become Prime Minister in 1940

and quickly became the face of British resilience.

His fiery speeches

and unwavering leadership helped carry the nation

through the darkest days of the war.

[crowd cheering]

- [Martin] Looking for answers, David contacts

World War II historians.

They confirmed that Mary Dorgan was

an Irish immigrant who worked

in Churchill's household during World War II.

- Her stories of his moods and habits are

things that only someone who worked

in his household would know.

- [Danny] Incredibly, the letters don't just capture

Churchill's private life.

They place Mary at his side

during some of his most defining moments.

- [Martin] She writes about Churchill's 71st birthday.

She's there for the day Franklin Delano Roosevelt dies.

She's there for VE Day.

- She writes to her son about gifts

that Churchill gave her, including a cigar

and one of his signature top hats.

- [John] No one is certain how this box of Mary's mementos

ended up getting tossed in the dump.

But for David Rose,

who spent 15 years combing through

things that other people have thrown away,

it's the find of a lifetime.

- Late night scrolling on your laptop

often leads to memes, cat videos, or random trivia.

But for one student, it uncovered

the remnants of a once-powerful empire.

- [Andrew] It's 2024 at Tulane University

in New Orleans, Louisiana.

A doctoral archeology student named Luke Auld-Thomas is

doing what students do best: procrastinating.

- [Hugo] He's supposed to be working on a research project,

but instead, he's letting his curiosity wander.

He's scrolling through some old lidar surveys

of the forests of Mexico and Central America.

- [Micah] These scans have been made more than a decade earlier

by a team of researchers who were studying

forest density in the Yucatan Peninsula.

Essentially, they would fly overhead,

firing these lidar lasers toward the ground,

which produced a 3D image of the terrain.

- Once the scientists had finished their research,

these lidar surveys were quietly filed away

and eventually forgotten.

- [Danny] To a lot of people,

the images look like a tangle of trees,

but Luke sees something else entirely.

- [Andrew] In one scan, he notices

an odd depression in the ground.

It looks like something carved, not naturally occurring.

So with a few quick keystrokes,

he's able to remove most of the forest

as well as the shadows from the image.

- [Hugo] Luke is shocked when the thick jungle canopy

suddenly dissolves into a grid of geometric shapes.

These are clearly the outlines of manmade structures,

and there's a lot of them.

- [Andrew] He's able to identify roads, residences, a ball court,

and even the outline of stepped temple pyramids.

Luke believes that he has just discovered

a lost Mayan metropolis.

- [Hugo] Luke brings the potential discovery

to his professors, and they agree

that he's found something worth looking into,

so they assemble a team and get to work.

- [Danny] The team names the city Valeriana

after a nearby lagoon,

and quickly realize it's far larger

than they ever imagined.

- [Andrew] Using the lidar archive,

the team is able to map out 6,000 structures

hidden beneath the forest canopy.

The city is arranged in what's called

the E-group formation.

This was the classic design of Mayan cities before 150 A.D.,

arranged so that if you were to look at the city from above,

it would look like a capital E.

They even find evidence of a dam

that would've regulated the water supply to the city.

- [Nicola] The Maya who built Valeriana were

extraordinarily sophisticated for their time.

Not only did they have

an advanced understanding of engineering,

they also used astronomy and mathematics

in order to calculate lunar and solar cycles.

- [Andrew] They had a system of hieroglyphic writing.

In agriculture, they understood

principles like crop rotation,

needing to keep the land fertile

so you could support a large population of people.

- [Micah] Using the density and the layout of its structures,

researchers estimate that at its peak in the ninth century,

Valeriana would've been home to close to 50,000 people.

As far as Maya cities go,

only the mighty capital of Calakmul

would've even compared.

- [Danny] But even a city this powerful couldn't escape

the collapse around it.

- By 900 A.D., Valeriana was beginning a decline,

something that we see in cities all across the Mayan Empire

in this period.

Not long after that, it was swallowed by the forest.

- [Andrew] What's crazy about this site is

that it's only a 15-minute walk from the nearest highway,

but despite the fact that people in cars are

going by every day,

archeologists had no idea about Valeriana's existence.

So it has to make you wonder

what other secrets might be hidden

nearby in the dense jungle.

- A discovery in Jerusalem brings

a powerful name connected to the crucifixion of Jesus

back into focus,

through evidence no one expected to find.

- [Sami] On the outskirts of Jerusalem in 1990,

bulldozers are clawing their way through

a rugged hill in the Peace Forest

making way for what will become a waterpark,

but then suddenly,

[machinery rumbles]

that ground just gives way beneath them.

- [Hugo] Luckily, no one is hurt.

They halt the machines and they all curiously approach

the gaping hole in the ground.

Through the dust, the workers realize

that they've broken through the limestone roof

of a hidden chamber.

- [Adam] Down through the darkness,

amidst the dust and the shattered rocks,

workmen see several stone boxes,

so the foreman shuts down the site

and makes a call to the Israel Antiquities Authority.

An archeologist by the name of Zvi Greenhut

immediately recognizes these boxes

for what they are.

These are ossuaries,

stone containers for bones,

used in ancient burial rites.

- Now, ossuaries were actually a secondary burial box.

The way the burial would work is

that the deceased would be laid out in a tomb.

After a year has passed and decomposition is complete,

the remains of the individual,

specifically just their bones,

are then placed to rest in this stone box,

sort of a final, final resting place.

- [Danny] Most of the ossuaries Greenhut examines

are simple and plain,

but one tucked in the back grabs his attention.

- [Hugo] This ossuary is marked with a name:

Caiaphas.

- [Adam] In the New Testament,

Caiaphas is one of the high priests of Jerusalem

in the first century.

- [Hugo] He wields immense religious

and political power in Jerusalem.

He's the person who's in charge of the temple

when Jesus comes, according to the gospels,

and drives out the money changers and merchants

who are there.

Caiaphas would have viewed that as a direct affront

to his authority,

and he strikes back.

- [Sami] In the Gospel of Matthew 26:3,

it says that the religious leaders at the time

gathered together to conspire to kill Jesus,

and that this gathering took place

in "the palace of the high priest who was called Caiaphas."

- [Danny] Could this be the same Caiaphas

referenced in the Bible?

- [Hugo] As Greenhut looks deeper,

the connections grow.

Inside the box, Greenhut finds

the remains of multiple individuals,

two small infants, a young child,

a teenager, an adult woman,

and a man of around 60 years of age.

- [Sami] Caiaphas was said to have a big family,

at least five sons,

and he lived to be about 60.

So, the details are slowly starting to line up.

- [Nicola] This type of reburial is fairly easy to date

because this was a Jewish practice

that started around 100 B.C.

and continued up only until the Roman destruction

of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.

- [Danny] This leads many scholars to believe

these are the actual bones of Caiaphas.

- It is one of the few artifacts ever found

that is directly connected to a figure

written about in the New Testament.

- [Hugo] Today, the remains that were found in the ossuary

have been reinterred on the Mount of Olives,

but the box itself is on display

at the Israel Museum of Jerusalem,

and it's this stunning link

to a story that is read by billions of people today.

- From a warship centuries ahead of its time,

to a lost city hidden beneath the trees,

one thing is clear:

true power can stand the test of time.

I'm Danny Trejo.

Thanks for watching Mysteries Unearthed.