Original subtitles

♪♪

FOX: The year is 1200 BC.

On the coast of modern-day Turkey,

1,000 Greek ships lay siege to the city of Troy.

For 10 years, the battle rages,

until the most cunning deception in history

helps the Greeks win the war.

♪♪

We've been told that the Battle of Troy,

as recorded in Homer's "Iliad,"

is the greatest piece of fiction ever written.

But did it actually happen?

New archaeological evidence has begun to blur the line

between myth and reality like never before.

I think the Trojan War happened,

and I think all of this supports it.

That's exciting.

I'll hunt down the most legendary heroes...

Mac SWEENEY: What you see in front of you is the tomb of Achilles.

FOX:...and gain special access to one of the greatest

archaeological finds of the modern age...

It's 3,500 years old?

I'll hold it like it was my newborn baby.

...to find out if the greatest Greek myth ever told...

Troy would have been a lot like the D-Day of World War II.

FOX:...was not really a myth at all.

Mac SWEENEY: There should be something to find.

FOX: All across the world, our ancient ancestors

left behind towering mysteries and enchanting myths.

That looks like a magic wand.

As an actress, I've been lucky enough to peek

behind the curtain at some of these ancient sites...

I've never been in a crypt before.

...and it's ignited an insatiable curiosity in me

to know more about these lost worlds...

It's amazing that, under our feet, there's so much history.

FOX:...some of which are still buried deep in our distant past.

That is amazing!

♪♪

♪♪

FOX: The only thing I ever loved in school

was studying Greek mythology, so I have to experience it.

♪♪

I'm on the picturesque waters of the Aegean Sea,

headed to an island off the northwest coast of Turkey.

3,000 years ago,

this area could have been the backdrop

for the greatest Greek myth of all time -- the Trojan War,

where powerful gods and men clashed like titans.

Most people view the story of the Trojan War as fantasy.

Maybe some of it was written in a more romantic way,

but I think there were historical facts

included in that.

FOX: Set around 1200 BC, this mythical war took place

between an attacking Greek force from southern Greece

and the Trojans who ruled the northwest coast

of modern-day Turkey.

The first written account of this conflict

comes 400 years later in Homer's epic poem "The Iliad,"

and recently, incredible new artifacts

have been discovered in this area

that suggest this epic war could have been real.

Stories that are in the Bible are equally as fantastical,

but they found the Walls of Jericho.

That is a real location,

and there was a real wall that fell.

So a lot of these stories

do contain legitimate historical information,

and I don't know why people are so hesitant to embrace that.

FOX: Could the pages of "The Iliad" be a treasure map

leading us to the truth of the Trojan War,

or is it just a fantastical work of fiction?

To find out, I'm on the island of Bozcaada

to meet a local legend.

- Hi. - Hello!

- Nice to have you. - How are you?

- Good to see you. - Good. How are you?

You look like a gentleman today.

I like your white trousers.

Thank you very much.

FOX: Dr. Haluk Sahin is a well-known Turkish journalist

and professor who has spent

over 2 decades deciphering the secrets of "The Iliad."

What was the catalyst for the Trojan War?

Well, the face that launched 1,000 ships,

the beautiful face of Helen, the queen.

According to Homer, the Trojan War began after Paris,

a Trojan prince, abducted the most beautiful woman

in the ancient world --

the Greek queen, Helen, took her back to Troy,

a heavily fortified city known throughout the ancient world

as being impenetrable.

In response, the Greeks sent a dream team of heroes

including the mighty Achilles, Ajax, and the cunning Odysseus,

plus thousands of elite soldiers to recover Helen

and to destroy the city.

FOX: Is this island written about in "The Iliad"?

SAHIN: Yes, Bozcaada, known as Tenedos in ancient times,

played a very important role in the Trojan War for the Greeks.

After they left the Trojan horse in front of the city,

they hid their ships behind the island,

waiting for a signal.

FOX: According to legend, after years of failing

to take the city of Troy,

the Greeks deployed one of the most cunning battle tactics

of all time...

the Trojan horse.

While pretending to retreat

and hiding their ships behind the island that I'm on,

the infamous Trojan horse was gifted to the people of Troy.

This massive wooden peace offering with Greek soldiers

inside gained them access inside the city gates.

The Greek soldiers then unleashed an ambush attack,

and the city of Troy fell.

♪♪

Goztepe is right up there.

It's the highest point on the island.

FOX: Using the words of Homer,

Haluk is going to try and pinpoint for me

exactly where this war would have played out.

SAHIN: Here we are.

♪♪

Okay, this is our island, the island of Bozcaada,

known as Tenedos in ancient times,

and Homer talks about Troy being across from Tenedos,

and here we are.

See some of the white buildings over there?

That's Troy. - So cool, wow.

And if we go this way, there is Mount Ida,

and gods Zeus and Hera came to watch the war from Mount Ida.

FOX: About 70 miles to the southeast of Troy is Mount Ida

where, according to Homer,

gods came to watch the epic war unfold.

FOX: You can say, like, "Look, we're standing here."

Homer described all of this.

He was familiar with the geography.

He could have traveled here and seen it,

but there's still a lot more dots that have to be connected.

FOX: Did Homer simply reference recognizable landmarks

to make this mythical story sound more authentic,

or was he reporting on real events?

To find out, I'm headed to the Turkish mainland,

where the ruins of the ancient city of Troy are believed to be.

♪♪

Three miles from the Aegean Sea

are 4,000-year-old ruins, first discovered in 1870.

Could these crumbling walls and massive foundations

really be the mighty city at the center of Homer's legend?

Let me just climb over this mountain here.

How are you? - Brian Rose.

- Megan. Nice to meet you. - Good to meet you.

FOX: I'm joined by world-renowned archaeologist Brian Rose,

who has dedicated 25 years to this site,

and he literally wrote the book on it.

The geographical references to the site of Troy

in "The Iliad" only match this one,

but there are a lot of mysteries that still surround the site.

FOX: Although these ruins have been studied for nearly 200 years,

no archaeologist has been able to definitively prove

whether or not this is Homer's Troy

because it's one of the most complicated

archaeological sites in the world.

ROSE: One of the reasons it's hard to understand the site

is that occupation here lasted for 4,500 years.

Do you just mean different people lived here?

- Yeah. - Okay.

Different people lived here, starting around 3000 BC,

going to about 1500 AD,

and so we have these layers of different settlements.

So how many cultures or people have lived here,

like, if you cut a cake open, you can count the layers?

Right, so we would say that there are nine layers,

one built on top of the other.

FOX: For thousands of years, this city was built

and rebuilt on top of itself,

creating a quagmire of walls and roads.

Through painstaking investigation

and high-tech digital reconstruction,

archaeologists have been able to reconstruct the layers.

The first dates to 3000 BC.

That's 500 years before Egypt's pyramids were built.

The next layer, city 2, is from 2400 BC,

right around the time when the pyramids

were believed to be completed.

All in all, evidence of nine completely different cities

can be found on the site, one on top of the other.

♪♪

ROSE: Because of these layers,

the city is incredibly difficult to understand,

but Troy VI, which is roughly between 1800 and 1300 BC,

that's about late Bronze Age, and that's the phase

that a lot of people associate with the Troy of Homer.

Can you explain why we believe that it's in the sixth strata?

ROSE: Because the fortification walls were incredibly strong,

5 meters thick, over 10 meters high,

that we can understand in accordance with the strength

that Homer described the city as having had.

FOX: Homer said the walls of Troy were so strong

that they looked like they were built by the god Poseidon.

Here, at level 6, the walls are more than 32 feet tall

and 16 feet wide,

as thick as the Great Wall of China and 10 feet taller.

But Homer also described Troy as being a mighty city

with tens of thousands of people,

and all in all, level 6 is only 650 feet across.

Is this really the great city of Troy?

The way it's described,

I would've imagined it being larger.

You're exactly right, but, with remote sensing,

we've been able to show

that there was an enormous residential district

to the southwest and east of the city

that we call the Lower City.

That's where people lived, and so I can point that out.

Yeah.

So the one thing to watch out for are the centipedes.

They won't kill you,

but they are poisonous when they sting you,

and down there, there are a number of snakes.

The small ones are more poisonous than the...

Brian, are you **** with me?

I'm telling you the truth.

Here is civilization, just ahead of us.

Okay.

ROSE: So as we look out on the horizon,

the residential district would've extended

beyond that line of trees that you see in the distance.

The population may conceivably have reached

something like 10,000 people,

which is phenomenal for that period.

- Yeah. - So this was a mighty city.

That's so cool.

FOX: After having him confirm there are some parallels

between the evidence and the things that they've found here

with "The Iliad," for me, that opens the door to,

"There has to be other clues."

I believe that the city of Troy was real,

but what about the Trojan War itself?

There has to be other dots to connect.

Wow.

And the truth could be hidden in one of the greatest

archaeological finds of the modern age.

Wow, and it's 3,500 years old?

FOX: We've been taught that the Trojan War,

immortalized in Homer's "Iliad," was just a legend

from one of the greatest works of fiction ever written,

but I'm on a journey to find out if this mythical war was real.

♪♪

- How are you? - Good to meet you in person.

I'm Eric. - Good to see you.

How are you? - Yes, welcome.

FOX: Dr. Eric Cline might have the answers.

He's spent his career studying little-known texts

from the ancient world.

The Trojan War is why I got into archaeology.

- Yeah. - When I was 7,

my mother gave me a book, and I told my parents,

"I'm going to be an archaeologist,"

so this is, like, near and dear to my heart.

FOX: Eric's research has focused

on a mysterious ancient civilization

known as the Hittites that could be the key

to proving that the Trojan War was real.

The Hittites, they do connect to Troy, and...

I don't know much about the Hittites

at all, honestly, so...

Well, you would have been in good company 200 years ago

because they were completely lost to history.

Were they?

Yeah, we only just found them in, like, the late 1800s.

FOX: For centuries, the Bible's Old Testament

was the only source that mentioned

the mysterious Hittite people,

but modern archaeology has revealed that the Hittites

were actually a major player in the ancient world.

Between 1700 and 1200 BC,

the time that the Trojan War would have been happening,

the Hittites controlled massive swathes of land

from the western coast of Turkey to Syria and Lebanon.

The Hittites are part of what I call

the G8 of the ancient world. - Okay.

The Hittite Empire was basically everything

that's in red on this map,

and then the capital city is right here, Hattusa,

and Troy is over here.

But the true power of the Hittites

was not the land they conquered.

It was the precious ancient knowledge that they left behind.

The connections that we've got to Troy come from Hattusa.

The archaeologists started excavating in 1906.

A year later, they hit the archives.

They hit all of the tablets.

FOX: During excavations near the location of the Hittite capital,

archaeologists uncovered a massive

cache of over 25,000 clay tablets

containing everything from the oldest-known peace treaty

from 1258 BC to intimate military records.

Once they were able to read Hittite,

which happened within 5 or 6 years or so,

they realized this was a treasure trove.

Within that period of time,

they found tablets mentioning things like Troy.

In the Hittite text, there is a place they call Wilusa.

Wilusa is the Hittite name for Troy

because the original name for Troy was Wilios.

Mm.

Doesn't Wilios sound a lot like Wilusa?

- Yeah. - Yeah, so I kind of go, "Hmm."

Now, let me add something else into the equation here,

and this is where the Trojan War comes in.

In the Hittite records,

some of the tablets that deal with Wilusa and Troy

also talked about the Greeks, and they talked about wars

involving the Greeks and the Trojans, and...

- Ooh, that's exciting. - Isn't it?

- Yeah. - I know. I know.

Now, where it gets even more interesting --

There is a treaty between one of the Hittite kings

with a guy named Alaksandu of Wilusa.

So we already said another name for Troy is Wilios.

- Mm-hmm. - Okay.

Paris, as in Paris and Helen and all that,

there's another name for Paris, right?

His name is Alexander.

FOX: Paris, the son of the king of Troy,

who Homer said abducted the Greek queen Helen

and ignited the Trojan War,

was also given the name Alexander as a child.

CLINE: Let's see if I can diagram this for you.

We've got Paris, right?

Alternate name for him is Alexander.

We've also got Troy.

Alternate name for that is Wilios.

So if you've got Alexander of Wilios from Homer,

and you've got Alaksandu of Wilusa,

on the other hand, from the Hittites...

I like Occam's razor --

"The simplest solution is probably the most correct."

I think that might be the same guy.

Yeah.

I mean, I don't know how you could argue against it.

FOX: If Paris is just a fictional character concocted by Homer,

how is he mentioned by the Hittites' writings

over 500 years before Homer was even born?

How significant was finding those tablets?

This gave us the keys to the kingdom.

It's as good as it gets without actually finding

a tablet that says, "PS, the Trojan War happened."

Right.

FOX: These Hittite tablets are one of the greatest

archaeological hauls in history, and because of that,

they are kept under strict lock and key in Istanbul, Turkey.

No one outside of the Turkish archaeological community

is allowed access.

I know it's almost impossible --

It's nearly impossible to see one of these,

but I'm going to go.

After days of phone calls and working back channels,

I've managed to get access to see one of these tablets

housed at the Istanbul Archaeological Museum.

Wow.

Thank you.

FOX: I'm joined by museum archivist Veysel Donbaz,

one of the world's leading experts

in dead ancient languages.

MAN: Alexander's tablet.

- Mm. - And it's 3,500 years old?

I would love to touch the tablet.

I'll hold it like it was my newborn baby.

It's really heavy, wow.

Wow.

The Alaksandu that's mentioned in this tablet,

that's also another name for Alexander,

which was also another name for Paris,

who was the son of the king of Troy.

By reading these tablets, we have further proof

and further confirmation that the Homeric Troy was real.

FOX: And if Alexander was real,

what other heroes of this epic tale could be real, too?

- Are we going up there? - Yes. Yes!

♪♪

FOX: I've discovered that the city of Troy existed, and Paris,

the Trojan prince who was said to have stolen Helen

and ignited this 10-year Trojan War,

was likely a real person, too.

FOX: I want to know, what was the truth,

if there ever was a truth to begin with?

Now I'm on the hunt to see what other key figures

from this myth could also be real.

The story, this really important story,

is an all-consuming passion.

To find out, I'm with Dr. Naoise Mac Sweeney,

a historian whose groundbreaking research

on ancient Greek mythology

is changing the way that we look at the past.

Let me just get over this hill.

You should be able to see Besik Bay.

Just miles from the city of Troy

is a stretch of beach known as Besik Bay,

where the Greek army is said

to have set up their camp during the war.

♪♪

Mac SWEENEY: What you see in front of you is Besik Bay,

which really fits nicely with the Homeric description

of the landscape of the Greek camp

and crucially, the camp of Achilles.

FOX: The key to uncovering the truth about the Trojan War

could be with one of the Greek's greatest heroes --

Achilles, a fearsome half-man, half-god warrior

who slays Trojans by the dozens.

"The Iliad" is the story of the wrath of Achilles,

and then there's passages within "The Iliad"

which give us a sense of the location

of where Achilles might have been.

Specific enough where you go,

"Oh, this must be the place because this is the only place

that matches exactly what he wrote in this passage"?

Pretty much, right?

Okay, so here we've got a little passage of "Book II"

of "The Iliad," and here we can say,

so, Achilles, he's down by the beach.

So we've got his horses and the chariots.

They are tethered, and the horses are grazing on...

And he's very specific about this.

The horses are eating this really particular type

of clover, which is fed on freshwater marshes,

and that fits this landscape because just over there,

we've got a freshwater stream, which runs down,

and it's one of the few places along the coast

which kind of has that kind of combination.

So it's really like piecing together the jigsaw pieces.

FOX: Ten years into the war,

after slaughtering hundreds of Trojan soldiers,

Achilles is ultimately killed by Paris,

the Trojan prince who strikes him in the heel

with a poison arrow.

For thousands of years,

people have come to this area in search of Achilles' tomb

because clues provided by Homer suggest his final resting spot

is just a few hundred yards from here

under a mound called Sivri Tepe.

So that black circle there is Sivri Tepe,

what we think is the tomb of Achilles.

- Are we going up there? - Yes. Yes!

Mac SWEENEY: Certainly in antiquity because they thought

there was an Achilles. They thought there was a tomb,

and I'm pretty sure they thought it was here.

FOX: Did Homer say, "It's a thousand paces past a certain landmark,"

and then that's how we end up with that?

Something close.

Actually, it's towards the end of "The Iliad."

Achilles' best friend, and actually, we think,

his lover, Patroclus, dies in battle.

Achilles is grieving, and what he does is,

he buries his lover here,

and what Achilles requests is that, when he dies,

he's buried in the same mound as Patroclus.

In fact, actually, the ghost of Patroclus

comes back to talk to Achilles,

and he says, "Don't let us be separated in death.

We weren't separated in life.

Let's not be separated in death."

FOX: The belief that Achilles was buried at this mound

was so strong that even one of the most famous

and powerful kings of the ancient world

came here to pay his respects.

Alexander the Great comes to visit, right?

He thinks it's Achilles' tomb, so then they start to...

You know, they have a whole bunch of ceremonies around it.

He and his lover, Hephaestion,

they kind of celebrate Achilles and Patroclus

as kind of... as parallels for themselves.

When he leaves, in the years that follow,

they start building the mound higher,

so they actually raised the mound

another kind of 12 meters or so.

It's like a tourist destination, right?

So Alexander is the first tourist

to come to pay homage to Achilles.

How many times has it been excavated?

Do you know?

So it's never been fully excavated,

but we've had a couple of slices kind of cut out of it,

enough to know what's going on.

Is that a burial mound?

- No, right? - Okay.

We know now, through excavations,

that it's a settlement mound.

That's where basically people lived.

FOX: Although Achilles isn't buried here,

the obsession to find him didn't end with Alexander the Great.

Over the centuries, Roman emperors,

powerful sultans and amateur explorers

have all made the pilgrimage to this area,

looking for the lost tomb of Achilles.

Are there any burial mounds that haven't been excavated?

Yeah.

There's really just a whole landscape full of mounds

associated with the tomb of Achilles.

Why are there so many potential tombs for him?

Different people want to claim a link with the Homeric past

because it's such a powerful shared past.

We, as a society, still care about it.

FOX: If we can find Achilles' final resting place,

it would be one of the most powerful pieces

of physical evidence to suggest

that the Trojan War actually happened,

and it could mean that there might be truth

in other Greek gods and legends.

The problem is there are burial mounds all over this landscape.

So based on the descriptions that Homer gave in "The Iliad,"

where should we look?

Tell you what, I'll show you instead.

♪♪

Around here.

♪♪

Okay.

♪♪

The thing that's really worth seeing from here

is across the bay, so...

All the way down there, at the end.

Yeah.

Up to the north, the least-explored plateau.

FOX: So that's virgin over there.

That hasn't been... - Yeah.

We can go for it.

There should be something to find.

♪♪

♪♪

So that's virgin over there. That hasn't been...

Yeah. We can go for it.

There should be something to find.

FOX: Just miles from the ancient city of Troy,

with the help of historian Naoise Mac Sweeney,

we have zeroed in on an area of Turkish coastline

that she believes could be teeming

with unexplored burial mounds,

and one of them could be the tomb of Achilles,

the greatest hero of the Trojan War.

FOX: Hi. How are you?

Hi. Megan.

FOX: But with 40 square miles of land in our search area

and Achilles' tomb likely hidden below ground,

we'll need some help to try and find him.

Aerial survey engineer Mehmet is armed

with a state-of-the-art mapping drone.

It captures tens of thousands of high-res images

and then uses software to piece them together

to create a 3-D map of the landscape

that can reveal anomalies that the naked eye could never find.

If you want to find other mounds, right, we know

that there are some up the ridge here and a bit further north.

That's something that you can do...

Yes, we can do, exactly.

Are you going to show me how to put it up?

Of course.

Three times... Okay.

Okay.

Hey, I did it, you guys! - Well done.

Another milestone.

FOX: It will take several hours for the drone

to finish its flight path

and then a week to analyze the data.

♪♪

So while I wait, I'm headed to investigate

rarely seen artifacts that could be the key to proving

that the Trojan War really happened.

I'm joined by Resit Berker, my local fixer and translator.

Growing up in Turkey, he has been obsessed

by the legends of Troy from an early age.

We're heading to the Canakkale Archaeological Museum,

located 16 miles north of the site

which may have been Homer's Troy,

to see some of the rarest artifacts

discovered in the ruins of that ancient city.

[ Speaking Turkish ]

FOX: Head Archaeologist Rustem Aslan

has been studying the ruins of Troy since 1988,

searching for evidence of the Trojan War,

and he may have finally found it.

FOX: These arrowheads are not

only consistent with the type of weapons used by the Greeks

but also date to around 1200 BC,

right when the Trojan War would have been unfolding.

So these were being shot by the enemy at the Trojan wall?

And that's exciting for you because you know that,

in the story, a lot of the battles took place

right out front of the West Gate.

So when you discover arrowheads, that confirms that.

So then you're like, "Oh, it's exactly as the story said,

in the exact place."

FOX: Hector was the most powerful Trojan warrior

and defended his city to the death.

As the Greeks stormed the Western Gate,

Hector fought Achilles head-to-head,

and these arrowheads could've been used

in that very battle 3,000 years ago.

Why is there no real written record of the Trojans?

Why are they still so mysterious?

FOX: I'm one of the few people

to see this rare piece of writing

that was pulled from the ruins of Troy.

This 3,000-year-old bronze seal

is written in Luwian hieroglyphs,

a mysterious language spoken in parts of ancient Turkey.

FOX: Do you know what it says?

Oh, yeah.

Was it carried as, like, a talisman?

Okay.

FOX: This seal would have acted like an ancient passport,

allowing this foreign messenger into the city of Troy.

- With gloves? - And touch it.

You haven't touched it yet?

Well, you should touch it before me.

Okay.

It's so cool.

Wow.

- You should touch it now. - Yes.

It's heavy, and, I mean, it feels like

I shouldn't be touching it, obviously.

It feels like I shouldn't be able to do that.

Why is that the most significant find in the last 50 years?

FOX: This bronze seal means Greeks and Trojans

weren't the only people swept up in this decade-long conflict.

What mysterious kingdom could this messenger have belonged to,

and why were they a part of the war?

Well, it seems like it was a battle

that was part of a much larger one.

Exactly.

Wow.

FOX: The story of this Trojan War just got a whole lot bigger.

FOX: The key to uncovering whether the Trojan War was real

could lie in a mysterious bronze seal

found in the ruins of Troy from the time of that infamous war.

This is the only written record ever discovered in that city,

written in an ancient and mysterious language

called Luwian.

I actually got to see and hold in my hand the Luwian seal.

- Yes. - And so who were the Luwians,

and how did that seal end up in Troy?

Yeah, I've been digging into this for best part

of 4 or 5 years myself now,

and I had exactly the same question.

FOX: Dr. Colin Barras is a well-known academic journalist

who studies emerging archaeological theories

about the ancient world.

That Luwian seal actually might be a key

to understanding a much bigger story.

Exactly who those Luwians are is a bit controversial.

In what we now consider western Turkey, we have,

at this point, a whole bunch of small isolated kingdoms,

and one guy in particular I talked to,

Professor Eberhard Zangger,

he would argue that, collectively,

those kingdoms have this shared cultural identity.

He would call that a Luwian civilization,

and Troy itself is actually...

As well as being the site of the Trojans, it's a Luwian town.

It's part of a Luwian kingdom.

When we try to answer the question of,

"Well, who are the Trojans?" the Trojans were Luwians.

That's why the Luwian seal is there because it belonged there.

That was the Luwian kingdom,

and the Trojans were a part of that.

FOX: So according to this theory, during the 13th century BC,

the time of the Trojan War,

this area of the world was split into three major powers --

the Luwians, occupying most of modern-day Turkey,

including Troy; the Greeks, also known as the Mycenaeans;

and the Hittites to the east.

And this is where we really have to go, like, much grander.

These Luwian kingdoms decide they want

to increase their territory,

gain more wealth, gain more power,

and one of their first moves is against their neighbors,

the Hittites.

FOX: The Luwians defeat the Hittites

and take over their large area of land,

becoming an even more powerful force,

and the fear was that they wouldn't stop there.

So at the point that war is breaking out, we can argue

that there were really two major superpowers, if you will,

in the region at this time -- the Mycenaeans and the Luwians,

and the Mycenaeans decide that they might well

be next on the hit list.

They sail across the sea,

begin attacking the Luwians in their own territory,

including, most famously, Troy itself.

Well, it seems like it was a battle

that was part of a much larger one.

Exactly. Exactly.

So no longer are we seeing Troy as an isolated battle.

Maybe it was actually a skirmish in a much broader war

that was being fought on multiple fronts, World War Zero.

Wow.

That's so cool.

So in that scenario, Troy would have been a lot

like the D-Day of World War II.

In essence, yeah.

FOX: Up until this point in the investigation,

it's only been about the Trojan War,

that Troy could've just been a smaller battle

that was a part of this huge war.

This is something that is revolutionary.

If what was going on at Troy was part of something much larger,

what we would consider a World War Zero,

why do you think we have only Homer's retelling?

Right. What's going on there?

What happened after this World War Zero scenario is,

basically, there's a collapse across the entire region.

Civilizations are falling,

and archaeologists would call this episode

the Bronze Age Collapse,

and it's one of the most dramatic events

in the entire history of this region.

So we're really talking about the Dark Age.

They're losing their ability

to keep very accurate written records.

FOX: A hundred years after the Trojan War would've happened,

the entire world is plunged into the Dark Ages...

♪♪

...where language and written records are lost,

and only oral tradition keeps history alive.

After this dark period ends,

Homer rises to prominence and writes "The Iliad."

Was Homer a keeper of this ancient knowledge,

and that's why he's the first and only person to commit

this epic history to written record?

This, I think, seems probable

because you have someone hundreds of years later

writing this epic poem about it.

It had to be...

There had to be more because like you said, and you noted,

Troy was such a small town.

So what was it about that that was so impactful

and the whole idea that, in "The Iliad," you know,

all of the gods are involved in what's going on,

and that does speak to something.

It was worldwide.

There was a great amount of people

being affected by this thing,

by this fight and this battle that was going on.

So, for me, this resonates with me

and makes a lot of sense, and it's pretty groundbreaking.

FOX: Not only is it more and more likely

that the Trojan War was real,

but that it was part of an even larger sequence of events

that changed the whole world.

FOX: The key to determining whether the Trojan War

was real could lie

in a never-before-explored swath of land

surrounding the ancient city of Troy,

which myth and legends say is the final resting spot

of the infamous Greek warrior Achilles.

You want to find other mounds, right?

We know that there are some up the ridge here

and a bit further north.

FOX: A week ago, we deployed a state-of-the-art survey drone

to scan this area

where dozens of unexamined burial mounds still lie.

Could one of them hold the remains

of a 3,000-year-old half-man, half-god?

- Hello. - Hey.

- How are you? - How's it going?

FOX: The results are in.

All right. I'm ready to see what you have.

Yeah, we got some data for you.

FOX: I'm meeting with Eric Agnello and Kory Kellum

of Phoenix LiDAR in Culver City, California.

They're experts at analyzing survey data for clues

of what lies below the Earth's surface.

FOX: We wanted to take a look at the mounds

and see if there were any anomalies

or what we could see

that could give us more information about Achilles.

We were able to make a 3-D representation

of most of the terrain.

And definitely, I think,

the most interesting thing here is this mound here.

♪♪

Clearly very uniform, it's very even.

If we go to the backside, however,

what you can't see with the naked eye,

and you can see from the data set,

is what appears to be kind of a shelving here.

It's hidden by the vegetation that's there,

but if you pull a good cross section,

you can see that we do have one area here

where there definitely is some kind of a shelf.

To me, that's an obvious anomaly.

Okay. What would that be?

My first thought would be that there was

some kind of an entry point to whatever is underneath.

FOX: This strange shelf-like anomaly

jutting out from the burial mound

is consistent with the work of ancient Greeks.

Throughout antiquity, Greeks buried their most important

heroes in beehive-shaped tombs.

They were often equipped with entrances that,

when viewed from the side, stuck out like large shelves.

We can do a width on that... whatever that shelf is.

The opening is 20 feet, about the width of a two-car garage.

It would've required a lot of manpower

to put something like this there.

FOX: It's obvious that that was regarded

as some sort of an important site.

We don't know what they were using it for,

and until we're able to go there and excavate and explore,

it's, you know, anybody's guess.

AGNELLO: Given the disturbance on the backside that we looked at,

this was put there for a significant purpose.

Okay, so Achilles could be there.

- Yeah. This is important. - Or anybody could be there.

FOX: I do believe Achilles existed,

and I do believe that he was buried in that region somewhere.

♪♪

FOX: In the last several decades, archaeological discoveries

have proven that the mythical city of Troy,

that Homer described in his epic poem "The Iliad"

nearly 3,000 years ago, was real.

We've been able to show that this was a mighty city.

FOX: And a great battle took place.

So these were being shot by the enemy at the Trojan wall.

Yes.

FOX: Each new discovery refocuses our view on the Trojan War

and suggests that this ancient work of fiction

may actually be a window into the past,

so if Achilles did slay the great Hector,

and the Trojan horse was the key to a Greek victory,

what other myths of the ancient world

that we've written off as fiction might also be true?

♪♪