Original subtitles

[Music]

Can a weathered piece of metal

change the history of a continent

when that was clear wow a direct hit what does

a 3000 year old relic reveal about

a lost civilization

the Discus of Festos is one of the

greatest mysteries of the Bronze Age and

what secret does the most

coasted face hold of all time left

reading was so well known that you could

almost compare her with a kind of it girl,

as if she

had lived.

Fascinating mysterious objects

[music]

long hidden in museums, laboratories and

archives.

Now we can use the most modern

technology to reveal their secrets

You can recreate it,

disassemble it

and enlarge it,

revealing forgotten, hidden and bizarre things.

These are the strangest things in the world.

In the State Museum of the US State of

Maine in Augusta, a small piece of

metal is on display that

changed historiography

smallest detail of the coin from Maine

[music]

it measures almost 2 cm in diameter, is

oxidized and worn and yet

the so-called Main Penny is one of the

most famous coins in the world

because it is neither a penny nor does

it come from Maine, there are

hardly any visible traces on its

surface reveal who made it

Vikings

a Viking artifact in North America

how did it get there and what does it mean

that the find contradicts the findings of historiography at the time

[music]

US school children were taught that

Columbus discovered America how did

a Viking cathedral come to Maine is it

real or just a well-made

forgery

new findings now provide the

answer

the story begins at nescake point

a remote place on the coast of

maine

in the summer of 1957 the

amateur archaeologist gai melgryn and

a friend examined a

pile of Native American rubbish there and

discovered numerous

finds The people left behind 1,000 years ago

among the tools and

bone remains was a single

eaten silver coin.

The indigenous peoples of North America

did not use coins a thousand years ago,

so where did it come

from? I showed it to a friend who thought it was

an English coin from

the Middle Ages. Maybe it came with me After

the first settlers to New England,

the coin remained in

Melvin's private possession for almost two decades. It was not until

1974 that it was added to the museum's collection.

A local newspaper published a short

article about the coin and suddenly

the strange object was on everyone's lips

[music]

the English numismatist Peters CB

reads an article about it and realizes

that it is a very rare

Viking coin from the time of Olaf the

Quiet.

The coin is an original. The

matches are undeniable.

Experts date it to the year 1067.

What is historically significant is

a British penny on one

Finding such a place wouldn't be

surprising but a coin from Olaf

Köre the quiet wow suddenly we have

a Viking artifact in North America.

Somehow this tiny piece of

Viking history must

have crossed the Atlantic and ended up in 1000 year old

remains on the coast of Mowen

Sensation

[Music]

US schoolchildren were taught that

Columbus discovered America

the idea that Vikings had

contact with the native Americans 500 years earlier

was a huge deal

a bold claim

but there is further evidence that

can support this thesis

for Scandinavia is the idea that

The Vikings were the first Europeans

to reach North America. The

great Icelandic sagas tell of the

legendary explorer live Ericsson

[applause]

[music]

live Ericsson had heard the story of a

sailor who deviated from his

course in fog and found a forested coast west of Greenland

Erikson reached a land that he

bought land in Vienna.

Historians who read his description of this

land and its inhabitants came to the

conclusion that the only place that

would fit it was somewhere in

North America must most

likely be in Newfoundland

[music] it

means that the

Vikings landed in North America much earlier

than anyone else from

Europe

this amazing object is

actually proof of that

in any case it is not the first of

this kind

[music]

in 1898 A rune stone was found in

Kensington.

The runes tell of Scandinavian

explorers in 1362 who

encountered hostile inhabitants in Vienna.

This seems to more or less

coincide with the Icelandic sagas and there are

other finds

[music]

in Ontario Canada that were found

Viking sword, an ax and a shield.

There are also a number of stone

inscriptions that were interpreted as Viking runes.

North America seems to be littered with evidence for the

Viking theory,

the problem is that none of these finds

were real.

The Kensington rune stone turned out

to be a fake. The axes and

signs as well

[music]

why are there so many

Viking fakes the rune stone from

Kensington provides a clue

the name of its supposed

discoverer was Olaf oh man no

coincidence these objects were all discovered by

people of Scandinavian origin

and they fought

against their bad image in the USA

[Music]

Scandinavian immigrants were

often mocked and laughed at at the time, so

these immigrants wanted to

prove that it was not the Genoese

Columbus who had discovered the new world,

but rather the Scandinavian Eriksson,

so they hoped to increase their reputation.

All of this leads to the discovery

of the coin Mains is viewed skeptically

because its finder Melvin also had

Swedish roots

[Music],

so this strange artifact is just

another forgery

[Music] What is

undisputed is at least the origin

of the coin from Norway in the eleventh

century.

It was definitely from King Olaf the

quiet but the great one The question is whether it

really has an archaeological context

or, to put it another way,

even those of Swedish descent had

both a motive and the

opportunity to place the coin,

but for such a hoax you need more

gran of the right coin, which was

not a problem at the end of the 1950s

Norway found more than 2000

such coins,

so it wouldn't have been very difficult to get

one of these coins laid out. The

latest research believes that they have found an answer

to this question.

The Swedish nomismatist Sven

Gülbeck took on the Herculean task of looking

at each and every one of

Olaf's coin dogs Following the quiet night,

we locate 2,300 coins and

check whether any of them could have ended up in Melgran's

hands - an enormous

hard work that lasted more than ten years.

After a thorough investigation, he came to

the conclusion that none of the coins were

missing. In

addition, all of them These coins in

good condition are very different from the

Main Penny

the Maine coin is heavily oxidized

and this is difficult to counterfeit

this is a process that takes centuries

Museum performs a chemical analysis of the

various metal layers and

concludes that the object

is genuine

[music]

as analysis showed that the coin

was surrounded by water it lay

in barely moving water for a long time which in

turn supports the thesis that it

was buried for a very long time

there is no doubt that the Main

Penny is genuine

the coin of mow not buried but then

how did it

end up in the hands of the natives a thousand years earlier?

In 1960, three years after the Main Penny was

found, the Norwegian

archaeologist of a servant inster and

her husband examined a site in Longs

in Newfoundland,

which locals describe as an old

Indian settlement turns out

to be something else

[music]

they found remains of peat buildings a

large hole and a blacksmith shop

also remains of a

viking boat house that was

definitive proof that the vikings

were the first europeans to come to america

slender sagas are true so the

vikings actually have 500 of america

Reached years before Columbus,

the news is a sensation but

it does not explain why the coin

was found almost 1200 km further south

because there is no evidence that the

Vikings came so far south and how

did the coin get to Main

[Music]

again professional excavations At

Nasciac Point, no other

Nordic artifacts were unearthed.

What was found, however, were stone tools

and stone raw material from Labrador

hundreds of kilometers further north,

so there is evidence that

trade was carried out at that time, that goods and

people traveled greater distances,

so the coin could be together with

others Trade goods may have been slowly passed from hand to

hand further south.

Perhaps it

took hundreds to bring them south from their

place of origin in Labrador or even

Newfoundland.

Although the coin

has no value for the indigenous peoples, one of

its properties may explain

why and how it

was transported south because when she finds it

has a hole

now am it has been perforated which

could be an indication that it was

used for decorative ticks

perhaps it was worn around the neck or

wrist or served as an

ornament for another object We do

n't know, the important thing is that it

was not used as a coin but

as a prestige object.

Locals probably transported the

coin from Newfoundland to Maine,

but this

remarkable object was made on the other

side of the Atlantic

like the finds in Longs and Medus

The coin proves that Columbus was not the first

European in America.

The Vikings beat him by 500 years.

An unusually engraved clay disk

in a museum on Crete has been

puzzling experts for more than 100 years.

Some researchers consider your text to be

highly significant, the 3000-year-old text

Embassy of a lost

civilization

others doubt its authenticity

we take a closer look at it using modern imaging technology

the Festers disc is about two

centimeters thick, 16 centimeters in

diameter and is made of fired

clay

both sides are covered with

inscriptions made using a technique

that was unique to their time Far ahead was a

unique object.

It is the only known object

of its kind. It contains 242

strange symbols. Heads with Iroquois hairstyles

decipher

[Music]

but now after more than a

century, the latest

research results could show a solution,

interpret these bizarre symbols, what

function did the disc have and is it

even real

[Music]

[Music]

the mystery of the Discus of Festos

begins on the Greek island of Crete,

lived here According to legend, the legendary people of

the Menorah once had

their ruler King Minos

build a labyrinth under his palace by keeping a

fearsome creature captive:

the Minotaur.

According to legend, the Minotaur was a

terrible hybrid creature, half human and

half bull. Human sacrifices

were made to both

and the minors have a firm place

in Greek mythology.

Many thought the stories of the minors were

just an invention, but in 1900

the British archaeologist Ava

Events made a groundbreaking discovery on the north coast of Crete.

He came across the ruins of a 4,000-year-

old Minoan palace.

It was one archaeological sensation the

first proof that Noah really

gave me

I will tell you the

understanding of the Mediterranean cultures and

their abilities also changed

The Palace of Knossos has

amazing parallels to the old

legends

When the excavations in Knossos began,

many bull symbols were noticed in it It

became clear to him that this place has a

connection to the Minoan legends.

This ancient culture, known until then,

is highly developed like its time,

it reaches its zenith when most

cultures in Europe achieve less

than wooden houses and stone circles

[music]

the Greeks are considered the founders of

European civilization

but the menorah was there before them

Knossos was probably the first city

in Europe the first example of urban

life with a pioneering role in many

respects

but there are even more finds

In 1908 the Italian archaeologist

Luigi Pernier found a second

monological palace in the south of the Island

free His name is Festus One evening,

Pernier's foreman comes across

a small clay disk in the ruins.

The strange symbols on its

surface are comparable to nothing

Pernier has ever seen. The find

raises many questions.

Usually such

writing tablets were made from wet life

when they were still soft goods

could be written on it and

left to dry in the sun

it was burned in a fire and not

dried in the sun

it is the only

Minoan clay tablet fired in a kiln that has

ever been found

but even more remarkable are the

symbols on the disk as are most of the

writings of this time were carved in fiefs

but the symbols on the disc

are stamped

that the symbols were applied with a stamp

was a unique

discovery.

Some archaeologists consider the discourse

to be the oldest written story

and the first evidence of a type of

printing press

in all of antiquity. There is nothing

comparable

Kevin when you look at the work

there is the fact that it

was fired all of that suggests that

it was a special object that

was treated with great care

what could justify such an effort

the answer

perhaps lies in the cryptic symbols

[music]

for more For more than a hundred years people have been trying

to find out what the symbols

mean, is it a language, a kind of

symbology or something else?

Researchers from all disciplines,

cryptanalysts, linguists,

antiquarians, archaeologists

or historians. Almost everyone who is

familiar with antiquity or sign systems

has tried to decipher the Discos

There were many interpretations, for example it could

be an ancient game, a

type of backgammon, others suspected an

astronomical or astrological

background,

but one theory is receiving

more attention from experts than any other.

It is probably a

type of language, perhaps a locally

limited one, perhaps also one that is

more widespread These signs

should be read or presented to an audience,

but experts don't

even agree on where to start reading

Symbols are noticeable that they become increasingly

dense the closer they get to the center of

the disc.

Today it is likely

that you have to start reading at the outer edge,

but what do the characters mean?

The 242 stamp impressions on the disc

consist of 45 different

symbols,

most of them Alphabets have far fewer

symbols. Experts therefore consider an alphabet to be

unlikely.

On the other hand, there are too few symbols

and too many repetitions to

assume that pictograms

can represent entire words, as with

Egyptian hieroglyphs or

Babylonian cuneiform.

Instead, experts suspect that the

fixed symbols are a type of syllabary

where symbols stand for syllables

such as do re mi

syllabic script would fit well with the number

of symbols on the disc and

it was also used in another minute text

but even if the experts

agree that it

is a syllabic script we still do

n't know what As far as

the translation is concerned, it means that you would need

a kind of Rosetta stone for it.

The Rosetta Stone is an

inscribed stele that

was discovered in Egypt by Napoleon's soldiers in 1799.

Thanks to the trilingual inscription on the

Rosetta Stone, we were able to numerate hieroglyphs for the first time.

It contains

the same text once in hieroglyphs

once became fashionable in ancient Greek

script, which made it a kind of

translation key, but

there is no such translation aid for the discourse of Festus

and despite many attempts,

no one has succeeded in translating it to date.

After years of research, the

British denguist Gareth now believes the puzzle has

been solved to have, at least in part,

we went looking for a

parallel text to a text with a

similar function or similar

typography.

This is a common method that one

looks for comparable examples in other places and

compares the sequence of characters

with symbols in others Minoan

religious artifacts he discovers

recurring patterns on the disk

that are repeated three times like another woman

they resemble an ancient

critical symbol that means mother goddess

his theory is that the

disk is dedicated to that same mother goddess

this matches what we

know so far the mother goddess had

an important place in Minoan

society a prayer in their honor

seems logical

we see repetitions on the disk

similar to the prayer and the

fact that the disk was burned

testifies that it was an object of

great value a religious origin

would make sense

The problem, however, is that so far

no remotely

comparable object

has been found again, the strange symbols, the

use of stamps 1000 years before

their actual discovery and the

fact that this is the only burned

tablet of the minor, all of which justify

the special status of the disc

is correspondingly controversial This

ancient artifact among archaeologists

the uniqueness of this object

raises alarm bells, as is often the case in such cases,

one would actually expect that there are

other such objects such

stamps were certainly used more often and

clay is a very long-lasting

material so there should be

several such discs today It

is also difficult to determine

the age of the disc. The age of the disc has never been directly

determined, but it was found next to

a tray from the period 1700 to

1600 BC.

Archaeologists believe that it

is just as old, but the unusual

circumstances of its discovery cause

further uncertainty

was not found by a professional

archaeologist, a foreman

discovered it on the excavation site

of Festos when he was doing his rounds,

so is the disc real or a

fake,

one person in particular is suspected of

having a motive for it, the

excavation manager of Festos Luigi

pernier made

the discovery the after Evans and

Knossos made it sensational -

he had discovered the presumed throne of

King Minus -

a rather modest palace that, until

the disc was found, had no real sensation in

store for the media or would have

brought fame to the name Luigi Pernier -

all that changes are the discovery of the Discos

Suddenly everyone in the professional world is

familiar with it, but there are other

suspicions against Pernier. What is

particularly worrying is that Pernier was

also responsible for the collection of antiquities in the

National Archaeological Museum of

Florence.

In one of the collections there was a

remarkable Etruscan lead plate,

also known as the Discos of Mariano

Disc is round has a series of

engraved symbols arranged in a spiral shape

and overall looks surprisingly similar to the Discos of

Festos, which

means

Daniel has a motive and ways and means

to create such a fake

case solved

it's not that easy

[music]

decades after sign

another relic turns up In

1934 an ax was found and this bronze

ax like it actually has almost the same

symbols as those on the disk it

is known as the ax of arkalochori

in the middle are

engraved various unusual symbols

some are the characters on the Discourse

from Festos surprisingly similar

a plant a tea shape a y-shaped

stick and above all a man with a

spiky hairstyle

that suggests that the disc

is real that the symbols used on it

had a certain distribution in this region at a certain time

the question is how could it Pernier if he

had falsified the discourse by

creating symbols that had not yet

been officially described, that could speak for the

authenticity of the disc. On the

other hand, he was someone who was

very familiar with critical archeology

and

had perhaps discovered some of the symbols on objects

that had never been discovered were cataloged both

are possible

is the disc a fake or not

I think it is real the fact that

the ax was only discovered after the discourse

the great similarity of the symbols

and also that they were not known before

are indicators that speak for its

authenticity

You know, the Festos discourse is

one of those rare, enigmatic

objects where it's difficult to

form a final judgment.

It often seems to me that we

call things fake just because we

simply don't know what they were used for.

I don't see any clear evidence for

a fake

and I would like it to be real

the controversy over the authenticity of the

disc has been going on for over 100 years and

it doesn't look like it will end any time soon

[Music]

the death mask of a drowned girl comes from Paris

This means that no

face has been kissed more often than

this one. Poets, poets,

dancers, all

sorts of artists

have referred to her and have

received suggestions from her that, of course,

came from themselves.

It is said that she saved more than 2

million people's lives using

digital image technology the

mysterious mask brings back to life

every special feature immortalized in plaster

every detail the serene expression

the gently closed eyes and the

enigmatic smile

the mask can be found again and again in

exhibitions and private collections in

a world

but the woman behind it remains a mystery

who she is how did she die and why is

she so famous

[music]

her macabre story begins in Paris at

the end of the 19th century the

city is a paradise for tourists you

can climb the 422 steps of the towers of Notre

Dame, stroll through the galleries

of the Lupe or the

impressive Arc de Triomphe Admire

perhaps the biggest attraction

is the city's morgue.

The corpses couldn't

be identified well, so I

had long queues there as

people enjoyed it,

so to speak, or at least

thought it was a thrill to go there

and supposedly help out

There were real

street vendors on the street who sold things,

as is still the case today,

and the corpses were actually

already in a bad condition and

during this exhibition, especially in the

summer, the

condition naturally decomposed even further

deteriorated but that did

n't stop people

actually this is the place where the

bodies are supposed to be identified but for

many it has long since

become a morbid pleasure

these are already events in the middle of

Paris,

entry is free because they want

everyone to come to see them To identify the dead,

naked dead people lying in front of you,

you have to imagine the social dynamics

of such a situation, the

pleasant horror of the people

in this

face appears one day at the

end of the 19th century, some of which are

not exactly known, so

these should be incognito de la San the drowned

woman was taken out of the sand from the river

but since no one

knew the woman and no one

wanted to bury her, she was then taken to

what would today be an institute for forensic medicine.

Her flawless skin suggests

that she is no older than 16

according to her haircut she is of simple

origin

although she is made public

no one identifies her

but someone takes care of her

someone found this

peaceful facial expression so

interesting that the person decided to

make a death mask out of it which of course

made this possible

many, many times, so

that there were a lot of

facial prints.

Photography was invented. It wasn't

unusual for people to

take plaster casts in corpse halls. If a

face falls apart too much, it can no longer be

identified, but why is

this death mask in particular so famous

[applause ]

Making plaster masks of corpses may seem more

inappropriate from today's perspective,

but that wasn't always the case

in ancient Rome. This practice was known 2000 years ago.

The Greek historian Polibius

wrote a text in the second century

BC about the Imagines

majorum wax masks that the Romans made from

the

These masks were worn by dead people in

funeral processions to

keep the memory alive

not only of the person who

was buried but of the whole family.

Somehow exciting but also a

little scary.

The young woman is never identified,

no relatives come forward, but her

face is Immortal It is not

the first death mask to cause a stir,

but the other masks come

from famous men

who overthrew the British monarchy in the 17th century,

Ludwig van Beethoven,

one of the most important composers in

music history,

Sir Isaac Newton, the discoverer of

gravity,

outstanding historical figures,

all of them

the most famous death mask of all is

almost 3,500 years old and belongs to the ancient

Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun

the ancient Egyptians believed that the bar

so part of the soul

can live on after death

is a really good example of this

[music]

but this young girl is not a

queen she is not one Artist

and has not made any groundbreaking inventions

she is the opposite of that completely

unknown why is her death mask

so famous then

perhaps she was simply in the right

place at the right time during the

Victorian era

in Europe people were very concerned with death

symbols of earthly transience

called memento Mori Teutons the

living of their own mortality

[music]

was a completely normal way of

dealing with death, people keep it hanging

in their houses as a matter of course to

remember the gift of life and its shortness,

just as we do today the photograph of one

To keep the deceased, people had

the death mask of their

deceased child at home at the time.

The death mask of the drowned girl

finds enormous resonance in this culture of death.

It brings it to some fame as

longkonyu de la San, the unknown woman from

the lakes.

At the beginning of the 20th century, this

mask was the one left tired de la sen relatively

widespread, they hung it on the

wall, it was just a

death mask and people who perceived themselves as

sensitive or interested in art

simply hung it there and

enjoyed the fact that they had this

Her face could be seen there,

thousands of copies of her death mask were

made. Her enigmatic face

inspired the imagination of

writers and poets. The

French philosopher compared her

smile to that of the Mona Lisa. She

was so well known that she

could almost be compared to a kind of girl, as

if she were Poets,

poets, dancers, all sorts of

artists

referred to her and

received suggestions from her, which of course

came from themselves, but

how does a dead it girl become one of the

most kissed faces in the world

[music].

The answer to this is provided by a technique that

saves lives

[music]

when the body of the unknown person

is pulled out of the lake,

resuscitation is still in its infancy

and its methods seem more like Zara,

they tried many different

stimulating techniques to

bring people back to life

was to whip them with nettle leaves

to get the blood flowing in the body

again and to

start the engine again.

In the 18th and 19th centuries people began to

test whether people

could be brought back to life if

they were not completely dead. That sounds crazier

As it will sound like now,

for example,

hot ashes were placed on people,

they were hung over a horse so

that they were moved, they were

whipped with nettles. That

sounds very strange, as I said,

but they were actually good methods

Because these strong sensory stimuli can

really cause you to wake up

again and then not be buried as if

you were dead or as if you were dead.

Another method is

really ready. A method that

sounds a bit strange but

is actually very good was

blowing in tobacco into the rectum of a

person who it was thought might

still be alive or

that they might be able to be brought back to life, they would

introduce a strong tobacco mixture and insert

it into the other end, hoping that this

would stimulate the organism and bring the body back to life

It may not be surprising that none of

these methods lead to success,

but what does this face have to do with it

[music] It was

only in the 1950s that an

Austrian anesthesiologist achieved the first

successful resuscitation.

The modern resuscitative first aid

that we know comes from Peter Stefan,

who had a death and

said to himself that it couldn't

go on like this and he then

developed the ideas that we know today - move

the head back to clear the airways and get

the heart going again

by pressing on the chest

and to the mouth, resuscitation and the

like So it's a relatively new

procedure, this modern resuscitative

first aid

comes to the conclusion that many lives

can be saved if everyone

masters this technique,

but for that he needs a

training model that is as realistic as possible, which did

n't exist back then

[music]

in 1959,

Dr Safar is looking for one for him well-known

Norwegian toy manufacturer on

monkeys and lehrdahl unfortunately has a lot of

experience with a new material

called PVC and believes that this

could be the solution. The two are developing

a doll that imitates the basic function of

the lungs

[music], a

finished doll but

no face yet where the hell

he should get it here

wants a passive, non-

intimidating face

one day he visits his

in-laws and they see the

stranger with seeds hanging on the wall

and he thinks perfect, that's it,

absolutely

perfect and that's how it happens in

many countries

This exact

face can be seen on these training dolls and

has achieved worldwide fame, so to speak.

Finally, the unknown person from the

lakes is christened with the name resashing. Around

500 million people around the world

use it as a training doll and have contributed to it ever

since to save up to two and a half million

lives

[music] the

famous one who died 150 years ago in the sane

is probably the most buried face

in history

but a mystery surrounds

her famous face is almost too

flawless so beautiful to be true

with water corpses you can of course see

typical ones Signs, for example, that

the bacteria are migrating into the veins,

that a network of veins is breaking through or

that the skin is peeling off, but of

course you wouldn't see any of this in reality on

the death mask, so

the reasoning is that you can see

the signs of a death in the water on the death mask

Can't see at all, of course,

not quite right because you ca

n't capture them with the mask anyway, so that's

no indication

that the left is tired, perhaps even

still alive when the death mask was

made,

but there is still an inconsistency

when the eyes are closed The

lens underneath forms a slight

bulge under the songs but some

complain that this bulge is not completely

round, it seems as if her

eyes had moved when the plaster cast

was made, so is this really the face

of a dead person or perhaps it belongs to

someone quick -lively young woman

this question must remain unanswered