Original subtitles

[Narrator] On the shores of the Mediterranean Sea,

hidden deep beneath the Rock of Gibraltar,

archaeologists dig inside a mysterious cave.

-What’s that one there, Nilia?

[Narrator] On the ground,

they discover ritual objects left by the Ancient Greeks.

-So this could be an offering.

[Narrator] And a secret passageway that heads into the

bowels of the earth.

-This is the start of a deep chamber.

[Narrator] Discoveries here could reveal the truth behind

the greatest hero of Greek myth, Hercules.

-What are we looking at down this hole,

was it perhaps the entrance to the Underworld?

[♪ theme music playing]

[Narrator] The wonders of Ancient Greece are among the

greatest ever known.

Greece was the birthplace of democracy,

and the cradle of Western engineering and architecture.

From inspiring inventions to epic heroes and legends,

the legacy of Ancient Greece still shapes the modern world.

Hercules, or Heracles in Greek,

is one of the greatest heroes of Greek legend...

...a warrior of superhuman strength who completed 12

seemingly impossible labours.

-Hercules was basically your quintessential Greek hero,

so he was celebrated as a monster killer because

he killed so many monsters.

[Narrator] The Ancient Greeks believed in many heroes,

but Hercules was one of the most popular.

This season, international teams of archaeologists dig

through centuries of earth to shed light on the

real world behind this legendary hero.

What did Hercules mean to the Ancient Greeks,

could a kernel of truth lie behind his mythical labours?

A clue could lie at the ancient site of Nemea

in southern Greece.

Here, archaeologist Tulsi Parikh is on a mission

to uncover how the stories of Hercules emerged.

Nemea is the setting for Hercules's first labour...

...Tulsi explores its enormous temple,

which dates to the reign of Alexander the Great in

the 4th century BCE, when the stories of Hercules

were well established.

But the earliest mention of the hero himself is by a

Greek poet known as Homer,

writing more than 400 years earlier.

-We're not really sure when the stories of

Hercules originated, all we know is that he

pops up for the first time in the 8th century BC.

Homer describes Hercules as a hero who's fought

all these battles,

he doesn't mention too much about his labours,

so it's likely that stories of Hercules were circulating

before this time as part of oral tradition.

[Narrator] According to the myth,

Hercules is the son of the chief god Zeus and

a mortal woman named Alcmene.

It earns him the lifelong hatred of Zeus’s wife

Hera, she casts a spell that drives Hercules insane,

tricking him into killing his wife and children

in a fit of madness.

To atone for his sins,

Hercules is told to complete a series of daunting tasks.

For his first challenge,

Hercules travels to Nemea to kill a

monstrous lion with fur no mortal weapon can pierce.

So he turns to brute super strength and strangles

the lion to death with his bare hands.

Tulsi investigates how the tale of the Nemean lion

could shed light on the origins of the saga.

It bears remarkable similarities with a much older

tale from ancient Mesopotamia,

about a god called Ninurta.

-Ninurta fights various animals that are very similar to the

beasts that Hercules fights.

And they were both known for their monster slaying,

and every time Ninurta completed a task,

he would bring the beast back home.

[Narrator] Hercules, like Ninurta,

also fights a many-headed snake monster...

...in Greek known as the Hydra.

And a ferocious wild stag, the Ceryneian Hind.

The civilization of ancient Mesopotamia predated that of

Greece by nearly 1000 years.

Archaeologists have found evidence of trade between them,

a route along which the stories might have found

their way to Greece.

But Tulsi thinks we should be cautious before drawing a

direct connection with Ninurta.

-I think it’s quite difficult to say exactly how much

they were inspired by the Ninurta myth.

The trope of humans fighting beasts were incredibly common

in ancient times and across cultures.

It’s something that we see right up until the present day

so for example, in superhero films.

[Narrator] So if Hercules was a homegrown hero,

how did his amazing stories develop?

And why was the story of the Nemean lion set here?

Another piece in the puzzle could lie 60 miles southwest at

the small town of Olympia in the region of Elis.

Here, archaeologist Oliver Pilz is digging at

one of the most sacred sanctuaries

in ancient Greece,

and the birthplace of the Olympic Games.

[Oliver] It's, it's an amazing site, this was a,

a Panhellenic sanctuary, meaning that it drew visitors

basically from all over the Greek world.

[Narrator] At Olympia,

Oliver and his team are uncovering the remains of

a colossal wall.

It lies close to a stream called the Kladeos,

a tributary of the mighty Alpheios River,

which plays a starring role in one of Hercules's

most notorious labours.

For his fifth task,

Hercules is ordered to clean the stables of King Augeas

of Elis, mired in decades of filth.

He does this

by diverting the flow of two nearby rivers,

the Alpheios and the Peneios, towards them.

Floodwater roars through the stables,

washing away 30 years of accumulated dirt and dung

in a single day.

Oliver's investigations at the wall could shed light

on the evolution of this story.

Its location close to the river is intriguing,

and despite its size,

the wall's exact function is unknown.

[Oliver] This so-called Kladeos wall is topped two meters wide

and in, in most sections, almost three meters high.

And several hundred meters long.

It’s really a massive structure,

it would be very interesting for us to learn more about why

was this Kladeos wall constructed,

because until now it’s unfortunately only guesswork.

[Narrator] Oliver wants to find out,

but first he must dig through feet of sediment.

The sediment comes from the Kladeos and reveals

that it was once not the gentle stream that it is today.

-The site in antiquity was very prone to flooding,

mainly by the Kladeos stream.

[Narrator] Oliver suspects that the wall might be an

ancient flood barrier.

To confirm that he needs to find out how far

the wall extends.

The similarity between the ancient flooded landscape of

Olympia and that in the myth is intriguing.

How far did the real world influence the

stories of Hercules?

Another clue could lie not with his first,

but with one of his final labours.

It took place far to the west at the very edge of

the Greek world.

[Narrator] Hercules was one of the most well-traveled

of all the Greek heroes.

His exploits supposedly spanned the Mediterranean world.

And the setting for one of them could shed light on the

rise of this legendary ancient hero.

More than 1,400 miles west of Greece stands the

Rock of Gibraltar near southern Spain.

Here, anthropologists Stewart and Clive Finlayson are on

their way down to investigate the mysterious cavern known

as Gorham's Cave.

The route there is treacherous.

[Stewart] That section there, we’ll stop there.

We’ve had a lot of issues there ‘cos it’s very slippery there.

[Narrator] But a magnificent site waits for those who make

it this far.

-I think it, it shocks you every time you come down.

It's really beautiful,

the sea comes straight up, it's amazing.

[Narrator] The cave lies at the bottom of the

Rock of Gibraltar,

one of two prominent rock formations either side of the

strait that connects the Mediterranean Sea

with the Atlantic Ocean.

The Greeks called the two rocky outcrops

the Pillars of Hercules and they believed that they marked

the end of the world.

Legend says that Hercules creates both pillars

by splitting apart a mountain that is blocking the way

to his 10th labour.

From there, he travels to an island where he fights

and kills a three-bodied giant called Geryon.

Stewart and the team want to find out why the rock features

so strongly in the Hercules myths.

He works alongside his parents, Clive and Geraldine.

[Stewart] I first started coming down here in 1989,

so I was 6 years old, I was the,

the young boy that spent his summers here, er,

and instead of going to the beach I learnt

sieving and archaeology.

[Narrator] Today, the team works at the entrance

to the cave.

[Stewart] Got quite a bit of sand there now.

-Yeah, it is quite loose compaction as well in this area.

[Narrator] The trenches here are not deep,

but the archaeology is fragile,

so the team must tread carefully and work slowly.

[Stewart] The problem is that if you start bringing

people into the sites, people walking on the surface,

which is archaeology, you’d actually be eroding it

and destroying it.

[Narrator] Archaeologists have discovered that people

have been using these caves for at least

100,000 years.

The first were early humans called Neanderthals.

[Stewart] What's that one there, Nilia?

I think it's probably a hammer stone,

it's Neanderthal.

[Narrator] For many years, archaeologists believed that

the ancient Greeks had only heard about this distant place

through myth and rumor.

But the secrets within this cave challenge everything they

thought they knew.

Gorham's Cave is a remarkable time capsule.

Inside are carvings made by Neanderthals 40,000 years ago.

But deeper within lies a much more recent discovery,

scattered ceramic fragments that,

when pieced together,

reveal a face in the form of a mask,

a Gorgoneion, an image of Medusa.

A terrifying monster from Greek legend.

What is this artifact doing so far from Greece?

And could its presence here shed light on why the

rock is associated with Hercules?

While the team continues to hunt for more Greek objects,

Geraldine examines the broken pieces of the mysterious

Medusa mask.

it's a unique discovery.

-As you start putting them together and the,

the face from antiquity starts looking out at you,

then the feeling that you get is incredibly

difficult to describe,

but it's like all your birthdays put together.

It would have had these eyes looking at you,

and it would of course have been painted.

It would have been something staring at you in

the darkness of the cave.

[Narrator] Medusa masks were common in Ancient Greece.

People used them as magical amulets to

ward off evil spirits.

Their powers drew on those of Medusa herself.

Medusa was a type of monster called a Gorgon,

she had snakes on her head instead of hair,

and just looking at her could turn mortals to stone.

The myth tells how Medusa was killed by another

Greek hero called Perseus,

he cuts off her head by using a polished shield as a mirror

to avoid looking at her directly.

Geraldine believes that the person who left the mask here

was probably a Greek traveller.

-An item like a gorgoneion,

which isn't found anywhere else in the Western Mediterranean,

suggests to us that this is an item that has been specifically

brought here by a person or a group of people who are

very closely associated with this cult.

[Narrator] This discovery reveals that for the Greeks,

the rock was not a fairytale location,

it was a place they knew.

The team's next step is to work out why the Ancient Greeks

left a magical amulet in this cave.

A clue could lie within the myths,

Perseus, the killer of Medusa,

was also believed to be the great-grandfather of Hercules.

What did the Greeks see here that might have shaped

the stories of both epic heroes?

[Narrator] At Olympia,

Oliver Pilz continues his hunt for more of

the mysterious wall.

It could be a flood barrier to protect against the Kladeos,

a tributary of the river diverted by Hercules during

his 5th labour.

To find out, he wants to know when it was built,

and how far it once extended, but his dig hits a dead end.

-Unfortunately, we are not able to establish

a precise chronology of the wall,

so it ends here now,

but in an antiquity probably it continued further down,

to the south.

[Narrator] So his team turns to other methods to

answer these questions,

Oliver works with geoscientist Andreas Voett.

He uses ground imaging devices to search for more

evidence of structures buried underground, and

drills to investigate the ancient landscape.

-So this is the coring machine we use for take

out the sediment course, meter by meter,

and we get our sections one meter long,

we open them in the lab and then we can analyze

and interpret them.

[Narrator] First, the team takes samples of earth.

By studying plant material locked inside the sediment,

Andreas hopes to work out when the river flooded

in ancient times.

[Oliver] Would you expect like charcoal fragments to

analyze with radiocarbon dating in these cores,

on the other side I remember, yeah.

[Andreas] Yeah, and there should be something inside,

of course, yeah.

[Narrator] Discoveries from the main sanctuary reveal

how the Kladeos River used to run through the

centre of Olympia until it was diverted around 700 BCE.

These samples might allow Andreas to tell if the wall

also dates to this time.

[Andreas] So we're not archaeologists,

but we can give some information about the age of

the wall, in that we are dating the sediments to the

left and to the right of it.

And so indirectly deduce the minimum age of the wall itself.

[Narrator] The samples will need to be sent

away for testing.

Early scanning results reveal the wall ran for at

least half a mile and they also hint at another

structure buried underground.

[Andreas] We think that there is some evidence to believe

that there is not only one Kladeos wall,

but a parallel wall that runs maybe 30 to 60 meters

parallel of the known part of the wall.

So and this would mean that they had a very early

system of water regulation.

[Narrator] The team suspects that these walls

may have been a canal,

designed to keep water out of the sanctuary.

Could this diversion of the River Kladeos have influenced

the Hercules story?

[Oliver] The diversion of the stream,

this is really a historical fact, whereas the,

the cleaning of the stables is a mythical narration.

But on the other hand,

I would not exclude that some memory of the

diversion of the stream has been preserved locally here.

[Narrator] The landscape of ancient Greece played an

important role in Greek myth.

At Nemea,

Tulsi explores how the real world might also have

influenced some of Hercules’s other labours.

She heads to the hills above the town on the hunt

for the truth behind the Nemean lion.

[Tulsi] The Nemean was said to have lived right here

in the Nemean hillside.

He had a den and a cave somewhere in this landscape.

[Narrator] Today, there are no big cats prowling

the hills of Nemea,

but recent discoveries reveal that this was

not always the case.

-We do have some evidence of lions once living in Greece,

we have some zooarchaeological evidence, some bones.

We're not sure when exactly lions became extinct in Greece.

[Narrator] Some lions may have survived until as recently

as the 7th century BCE,

around the time that the story of the Nemean lion

first appears in art.

Could the memory of this very real threat have

survived as myth?

[Tulsi] It makes sense to set the story of Hercules

killing the lion er,

right here in the Nemean mountains,

because it’s such a rugged landscape,

you can imagine wild animals roaming around and

being very real threats to humans.

[Narrator] Ancient Greece was a largely rural society.

One theory is that many of Hercules's early labours draw

inspiration from the dangers that Greeks faced in their

everyday lives.

The monsters he fights include an enormous wild boar,

a fire-breathing stag, and

bronze beaked birds that ravage crops and

feast on human flesh.

-I think the monsters and the challenges that

Hercules faces really reflect the environment that

people were living in.

Some of the struggles that Hercules faces also

represent some of the daily challenges that people

would go through in their life.

[Narrator] Hercules was a superhero who protected

humanity from nightmarish creatures,

and helped to make sense of a world where crops

could fail and wild animals lurked in the forest.

[Tulsi] The early labours of Hercules symbolize the

idea of chaos versus order.

The beasts symbolize chaos,

things that are often uncontrollable,

and Hercules fighting against these beasts is

part of creating order within the social world.

[Narrator] But the later labours all take Hercules

far from home.

Why did the Greeks place these exploits outside Greece?

[Narrator] Hercules's final six labours

all take place beyond mainland Greece.

An insight into why could lie hundreds of miles away

on the Italian island of Sicily.

Here, archaeologist Dario Giuliano is

excavating the ancient city of Agrigento.

Today, Agrigento is Italian,

but it began life as a Greek colony.

During the 8th and 5th centuries BCE,

Greece experienced an exodus of people.

The country's mountainous terrain struggled to support

its growing population,

and people began to travel west overseas in search

of new land to farm and minerals to trade.

Many colonized lands in southern Italy, like Sicily.

[Narrator] Today, Dario wants to find out more about the

religion of the ancient Greek settlers who founded this city.

So his team digs inside a sanctuary for Greek deities.

The fertility goddess Demeter and her daughter Persephone.

[Narrator] Dario is unsure if the statue is meant

to depict one of the goddesses,

or a person making an offering at the sanctuary.

[Narrator] These early Greek settlers brought their

gods with them.

Hercules was a particular favorite for those in Italy.

They named new towns after him,

like Herculaneum near Pompeii,

which is now famous as a Roman city.

Ancient texts recount how Agrigento citizens built an

enormous temple of Hercules.

Writers describe how the feet of the temple's bronze statue

of Hercules were worn away by the kisses of

his devoted worshipers.

[Narrator] Many of these colonies developed in

mid 6th and 5th centuries BCE,

around the same time as some of the later myths

of Hercules started to appear.

For his 7th task,

the hero travels to Crete to capture the massive bull

that sired the Minotaur.

Next, he heads north to Thrace where he tames the

human eating horses of Diomedes

and journeys east where he kills the Queen of the Amazons

to claim an enchanted belt.

Hercules travelled with the Greeks as they

explored strange new lands.

And the furthest he journeyed was to the western edge

of the Mediterranean.

At Gibraltar, one of the two pillars of Hercules,

the team digs close to where they found the Medusa mask.

Hidden in the sand could be clues that reveal what Greek

travelers were doing here and how they saw this cavern.

-Yeah.

[Narrator] This tooth isn't that of a human.

As they brush away the sand another emerges.

[Narrator] Gorham's Cave is difficult to reach which makes

Stewart think that this animal didn't wander

in by accident.

-So it's, it's definitely an animal that would have had to

have been brought in.

It's not an ibex from what we're seeing which is the

wild mountain goat, the,

the tooth would have been slightly different.

This is probably an animal that was brought in

and laid here.

[Narrator] This discovery may suggest that a goat was

sacrificed as an offering,

and that the cave may have been used as a shrine

or place of ritual worship.

Clive is the team's chief scientist,

he takes a closer look at the back of the cave

where they found the Medusa mask.

-This is the start of a deep chamber,

it goes for 37 meters,

as you can see it's a bit of a crawl right now.

It's an enigma, we don't know where it's going, we,

we know it ends in a slightly elevated chamber but whether

that carries on further or not, until we excavate,

we don't know.

[Narrator] The chamber is full of sediment.

But in ancient times it may have been the focal point

of the shrine.

[Clive] My own view is that it's not coincidence

that the fragments of this gorgoneion were found here.

It was a way of telling people do not go beyond here.

[Narrator] One theory is that Greek travelers believed this

was Medusa’s actual lair, where Hercule’s ancestor

Perseus killed the monster.

[Clive] When you read the descriptions of the

decapitation of Medusa, the descriptions are a

geographically perfect fit to what is Gibraltar

and Gorham's Cave.

[Narrator] The team intends to bring in specialist

equipment to excavate the chamber next season.

But what they can tell is that the Greeks were not

the first travelers to use it as a shrine.

Another people called the Phoenicians got

here before them.

[Stewart] Phoenicians were mariners from the eastern side

of the Mediterranean,

they were really great explorers.

The first items that we start seeing that are clearly

Phoenician are from the 9th century,

things like scarabs, beautifully painted glass er,

a huge amount of different kinds of, of ceramic,

really wonderful pieces.

[Narrator] The Phoenicians set up colonies in

southern Spain centuries before the Greeks got here.

How did the Greeks interact with the inhabitants

of these new lands?

[Narrator] In Agrigento in Sicily,

Dario and the team investigate the sanctuary

of the goddesses Demeter and Persephone.

They want to explore how the gods of the

Greek settlers fitted in with those of

the existing population.

Finds expert Martina takes a closer look at the

statuette uncovered the previous day to try to

work out its identity.

She thinks the figurine is wearing a crown called a polos.

[Narrator] The statuette dates to the 5th century BCE

when Agrigento was in its heyday.

Agrigento grew with astonishing speed and

by the 5th century BCE,

it stretched across 1,000 acres.

The city's sacred zone lay at its western edge,

overlooking the valley below and was lined with

grand temples and religious structures.

The sanctuary complex, dedicated to Demeter and

Persephone is one of the earliest here.

At its height,

the city was home to up to 300,000 people.

But the Greeks were not the first people here.

Nearby discoveries suggest that local people were living

in the area at the time the Greeks arrived.

[Narrator] Dario believes that when the Greeks first came here

they incorporated local cults into their own religion.

[Narrator] Greek religion could be inclusive and adaptable,

this helped the Greeks fit into these new lands.

At Gibraltar near Spain,

Clive thinks a similar process might have happened here.

He heads up to the top of the rock...

...even today visitors are struck by its grandeur.

-Directly below us is Gorham's Cave,

and over there you can imagine Greek ships coming in across

the sea and suddenly being faced by this massive

wall of limestone.

It's very likely that this geology was difficult

for them to comprehend.

[Narrator] The ancient Greeks might have tried to explain

what they saw here using stories of Hercules and Medusa

as a point of reference.

Clive thinks that the people who are already here might have

played a helping hand in encouraging these myths.

[Clive] One idea, and it's difficult to be

certain of course,

is to assume that the people who first came here

started the whole idea of the, the end of the world.

Those people were the Phoenicians.

[Narrator] The Phoenicians and the Greeks were great rivals,

what started as a myth might have gained another purpose.

[Clive] The Phoenicians got beyond the end of the world,

beyond the pillars,

and were very successful trading with peoples

on the Atlantic Coast.

From myth it turns into something which

gives you economic power,

by telling people don't go beyond here

it's very dangerous,

you are cornering the market and keeping it for yourself.

[Narrator] At least some Greek mariners who came here may have

heeded these warnings,

leaving offerings to ask for a safe journey beyond

the edge of the known world,

or to give thanks for making it back alive.

-I think that the Greeks related a lot of their

myths to this part of the world because it was really

the don’t go beyond.

This was like us going to the Moon or Mars, it was the,

you know the limit.

[Narrator] The grounding of these myths in places like

Gibraltar meant that those labours set in a faraway

neverland now received a specific real world location.

But there's a mystery.

If the stories of Hercules were not set in stone and

could evolve over time,

how did these individual tales join together to form

the epic saga that we know today?

[Narrator] Hercules's final two labours are the most

daunting of all.

They take him to the edge of the world and beyond.

First, Hercules travels to north Africa where he steals a

golden apple guarded by nymphs and a dragon.

Finally, he descends into the underworld where he completes

the hardest task of all,

capturing Cerberus...

...the three headed hell hound.

Hercules's journey into the underworld is the blockbuster

ending to the 12 labours saga.

But intriguingly this final labour might predate

all the others.

The first mention of Hercules in the underworld dates back to

the stories of the poet Homer in the 8th century BCE.

Historians think that the order and even the exact number of

the labours was not fixed.

At Olympia in south west Greece,

Oliver explores how the classic 12 emerged.

He thinks a clue lies with the sanctuary's magnificent

Temple of Zeus.

It dates to the 5th century BCE,

a period of great prosperity in Greece,

when the Parthenon in Athens was also built.

Olympia's rulers were growing in power and decided to expand

the site with a massive building program.

[Oliver] Standing in front of the Temple of Zeus in antiquity

or even walking in would have been a magnificent experience.

You must imagine this temple like a rich, colorful,

monumental building, it is a bold statement that they

basically control the sanctuary and have the power,

and also the means to realize such a

gigantic building project.

[Narrator] Olympia was home to the famous Olympic Games,

which took place every four years and in which any free

Greek adult males were eligible to take part.

Its rulers were keen to promote the games and encouraged

a local tradition that Hercules had founded them

after completing his 5th labour,

the cleaning of the nearby Augean stables.

[Oliver] Owners of the sanctuary,

they had the great interest to promote Heracles

as a founding figure, because as a hero,

Heracles was known in the whole Greek world.

In ancient Greece he was certainly considered

an ideal athlete.

[Narrator] Oliver investigates how the builders of the temple

incorporated Hercules into its design.

These sculptures once decorated the exterior,

and they show the hero completing all 12

of his labours...

...beginning with the defeat of the Nemean lion

and ending with Hercules's visit to the underworld.

These sculptures may have set the order of

the labours literally in stone.

[Oliver] The Olympic Games were visited in the classical

period by tens of thousands of people,

and you should imagine that all these people,

they also saw these sculptures.

The representation of Heracles's labours here at the

Temple of Zeus probably contributed also to the popular

imagination of his labours.

[Narrator] Hercules was a diving pin up who could bring

in the crowds.

But his attraction was not just skin deep.

At the end of Hercules's life,

Zeus judged his son worthy of immortality,

bringing him to Mount Olympus,

the home of the gods.

[Oliver] He is certainly a very interesting and the

biggest figure in Greek mythology,

because he was born as a mortal.

But the example of his life shows that the person can

achieve immortality through labours and deeds during life.

-Hercules was a pretty complex character,

he wasn’t just known for his brute strength and heroism,

he also had these occasional moments of uncontrollable

rage and violence.

Hercules has this moral struggle going on

so whilst he’s completing his tasks,

he also has this kind of tragic side,

he’s the combination of a hero and a tragic hero.

[Narrator] The secret to the success of Hercules's stories

were not just his victories, but his flaws.

[Tulsi] Hercules is very human in how he behaves,

he makes mistakes,

and in that sense he's a very relatable hero.

[Narrator] To the ancient Greeks,

Hercules was the champion who protected

humanity from monsters,

a guide who accompanied explorers on their journeys,

and helped to explain the world around them and

an inspiration of a life well lived.

Today the tales of Hercules continue to be told,

this ancient Greek demigod is the

western world's original superhero.