Original subtitles

[man speaking]

[narrator] A mysterious frozen mummy is discovered

on one of California's most treacherous glaciers.

[Anthony C] They can tell it's a male body,

it's lying face down, arms spread out.

But when they got closer,

they saw that he was even missing a leg.

[narrator] A lagoon on a harsh remote island

holds the clue to solving

a bizarre World War II mystery.

Two of their planes crashed,

including the one found by the Norwegian scientists.

[narrator] Hikers make a strange discovery

lurking behind a rocky snow-capped peak.

[Anthony M] If these are body bags,

this would have been a massacre.

Did something horrible happen here?

[narrator] These are the strangest mysteries

trapped in the coldest places.

Lost relics...

forgotten treasures...

dark secrets...

locked in their icy tombs for ages.

But now, as ice melts around the world,

their stories will finally be exposed.

[tense music playing]

[narrator] The Sierra Nevada,

the spine of California's rugged interior.

This is Kings Canyon State Park,

home to several mountains over 13,000 feet tall,

attracting extreme adventurers from all over the world.

There's only one road in and out of Kings Canyon,

and it's closed for most of the year due to snow.

So only the most experienced climbers

should venture into the area.

[wind howling]

[narrator] In October 2005,

two backcountry ice climbers make their way

to the base of the Mendel Glacier,

just over 1,000 feet below the summit.

A piece of fabric fluttering near a mound of rubble

attracts their attention.

As they get closer to the mount,

they see something that they can't unseen.

[suspense music playing]

[narrator] It's a corpse

partially buried in the ice and snow.

They can tell it's a male body,

it's lying face down, arms spread out.

[tense music playing]

[Anthony C] His head had been crushed.

But when they got closer,

they saw that he was even missing a leg.

[narrator] Over time,

his face has become unrecognizable,

but his head is still covered in thick blond hair.

The ice climbers wondered if this was once a hiker

who met an unfortunate end.

Who was this person?

Then they see his knapsack...

and realized that it's not a knapsack.

It's a parachute.

[suspenseful music playing]

[narrator] On closer inspection,

they see the words "US Army Air Corps"

stenciled on the fabric.

US Army Air Corps is an old name.

It's a forerunner of the US Air Force.

But back then,

before the attack on Pearl Harbor,

it was called the US Army Air Corps.

[narrator] When the hikers brushed the snow

off the body, it's confirmed.

His uniform is clearly from the Second World War.

World War II serviceman in California?

That's strange.

But we do know that top secret activities

were carried out during World War II

all over the American West.

Was this soldier involved in a mission

that has never been revealed?

[narrator] The climbers alerted local law enforcement

to their bizarre discovery.

[dramatic music playing]

[narrator] Within days, a specialized

military response team is on the scene.

The first order of business in an investigation like this

is obviously to get the remains back to the lab.

Because they didn't want to damage the body

and it was encased in ice,

they ended up taking a block of ice

with the body back to the lab.

That's where forensic anthropologists

will gently thaw him out by spraying him with water.

They need to go slowly to minimize

any damage to tissues.

The forensic anthropologists of course

begin to look through his personal effects...

and they find a nameplate.

But unfortunately, it's terribly corroded

and unreadable.

[narrator] Investigators turn to the same tools

employed at crime scenes,

an ultraviolet light helps tease out

faint details on the nameplate.

Inscribed in the metal are the letters

E, O, A, M.

They searched through the military records,

but there's no names that matched those letters.

[narrator] But the pockets of the dead man's uniform

offers several clues.

Eleven coins, a fountain pen, and a scrap of paper.

What was written down on that note

that he was carrying with him?

Was he bringing some kind of secret message?

[narrator] This time, they used a high resolution

video spectral comparator.

It's actually the same technology that the FBI uses

to investigate suspicious documents.

[narrator] The comparator is able to decipher

the faded words.

Could it be coded, classified information?

[Anthony C] It turned out to be

a few lines from a limerick.

And given the kind of songs and stories

that lighten the mood for military members

going off to war,

you can imagine what kind of a limerick it was.

[narrator] If he wasn't on a secret mission,

why was he there?

The skies over the Sierra Nevada were busy

during the war years.

Airmen would train in several nearby bases.

Unfortunately, but not surprisingly,

aviation cadets often crashed

and there were lots of crashes in that vicinity.

Since World War II, nearly 50 aircraft

had been listed as missing

in the area around Kings Canyon Park.

Some of the planes in the backcountry

have never been found, so how do you match

this airman to his plane?

[suspenseful music playing]

[narrator] The coins in the man's pockets

may help narrow down the timeline.

The most recent coin is from 1942,

so obviously that was the earliest year

he might have crashed.

A search through the military archives for 1942

finally offers a clue.

November 18th, 1942...

seven military aircraft took off from Mather Air Base

outside of Sacramento on a training flight.

Only six aircraft returned.

These planes were Beech AT-7s...

a twin-engine aircraft used for navigational training.

[narrator] Air Force recovery records show that two years

after the end of the war in 1947,

the wreck was found in the vicinity

of where the airman's body was located.

[ominous music playing]

But something doesn't add up.

Official documents already list a place of burial

under a single headstone for the four-man crew

that was aboard.

[narrator] If the four men are already buried,

who is this fifth mystery man?

[suspenseful music playing]

[narrator] High up in California

Sierra Nevada Mountains,

the remains of a World War II airman

have been discovered.

But instead of solving the mystery of his identity,

the investigation team is met with more questions...

and a deepening mystery.

The team then catches a break,

they find the flight manifest of the airplane.

One of the names on the manifest

is Leo M. Mustonen,

a 22-year-old cadet from Minnesota.

The letters of his name are close to the letters

found on the corpse's ID tags.

But they'll need more evidence to get a definite match.

They turned to DNA analysis.

The sample is mitochondrial DNA,

a molecule that's passed from mother to son.

And it's this kind of information

that they need in order to make the identification

of this airman.

[narrator] But when the team tracks down

the Mustonen family, they discovered

that there are no maternal relatives alive

to provide a sample for comparison.

But then the investigation team realizes

that there's another way that DNA

can help with this case,

it's called process of elimination.

[narrator] Investigators trace the families

of the other three airmen

known to be on board the flight.

Luckily, those families are able to provide

DNA samples that can be compared

to the DNA of the mystery airman.

None of them is a match.

So the investigators can conclude

that these have to be the remains

of air cadet Leo Mustonen

who was only 22 years old when he died.

[narrator] The mystery of the Sierra airman's identity

is solved.

[Marina] So what about that name tag?

Why was there no match?

Well, it turns out the investigation

was thrown off by a misspelling.

[narrator] Leo Mustonen's middle name was Arvid.

Leo A. Mustonen,

not Leo M. Mustonen.

The report incorrectly reported

his middle initial as M.

But one thing still doesn't add up.

The military said that there were four bodies

in that grave,

so who is the fourth body if Leo Mustonen

was actually buried in the ice?

It turned out that the military

hadn't been entirely forthcoming about the burial,

and the reasons are actually quite understandable.

When the crash was discovered,

no bodies were found to bury.

But the military thought it'd be easier on the families

if they had a grave, if they had a place to visit.

And so, they told them that the bodies were found,

but just not identifiable.

And they staged a mock burial in that grave.

[narrator] In 2007,

two years after the discovery of Leo Mustonen's body,

searchers found the body of another crew member,

Glenn Mun.

The other two crewmen are still out there,

resting in the Sierra Nevada.

[narrator] The Chilkoot Pass,

a high mountain pass that runs from Alaska

into the northernmost corner of British Columbia,

on the border with Canada's Yukon Territory.

Snowstorms and icy winds rage year round,

and avalanches come out of nowhere.

[suspenseful music playing]

The Chilkoot Trail is rocky, it's icy,

and it can be very dangerous.

One misstep could lead to disaster.

[dramatic music playing]

[narrator] In 2012, a group of hikers

stopped near the trail summit.

Not far off the path,

something strange lurks behind a rocky snow-capped peak.

It's a pile of large salmon pink bundles.

There are dozens and dozens of them.

At first glance, these bundles look like

pink body bags.

It's a disturbing sight.

If these are body bags,

this would have been a massacre.

Did something horrible happen here?

[narrator] They counted approximately 80 bundles

in total scattered across the summit plateau.

But as the hikers drawn nearer,

they see that the bags don't contain

human remains at all.

Instead, they appear to be full of wood.

[Alison] Some of the wooden slats are rotten,

and the canvas wrapped around them

is sun-bleached and moldy.

It's evidence that these bundles

have been here for years, if not decades,

so what could they be?

[narrator] There are no markings, or labels,

or any other clues about where they came from

or what they were meant for.

It's more than 3,000 feet above sea level.

It's unforgiving terrain.

Why would people carry these heavy packages

all the way up here?

And why would they leave them?

[narrator] The materials themselves may provide

the first clue.

When you see canvas and wood together

on a dangerous mountain, you might think Alpine rescue.

So, could these be stretchers

or some sort of other rescue gear?

[narrator] Landslides, avalanches, and accidents

can all leave hikers in need of medical evacuation.

A simple stretcher is a really good way

of moving people across tough terrain

where vehicles and aircraft can't reach

like the side of a mountain.

Maybe this is the remains of the old cache

safety equipment that would have allowed rescue teams

to respond faster to accidents on the mountain.

The problem with this theory is the bundles themselves.

[Alison] A canvas for a stretcher

would only need to be about 6 feet long

and a couple of feet wide,

but this canvas is much bigger than that.

And stretchers need slim, strong poles for good grip.

But the wooden slats are lumber rectangles,

way too bulky to carry.

This just isn't practical for rescue gear.

[narrator] So, if they aren't stretchers, what are they?

Hoping to learn the answer,

researchers extracted a dozen bundles

from the mountain and selected two for examination.

As the heavy canvas is slowly unpeeled,

they noticed that the material is tacky or sticky.

That's a good indication that this canvas

was covered by some kind of waterproof layer.

We're in the mountain, we're on a hiking trail,

could we be looking at some kind of tent?

[narrator] The Chilkoot Trail

has been a popular hiking route for decades.

It's 33 miles long

and can take up to a week to complete,

requiring hikers to make camp along the way.

The canvas bundles are 2 1/2 feet by 5 feet

and contain exactly 72 wooden slats.

Once the canvas is unrolled,

the sheet stretches more than 17 feet long

and 5 feet wide.

That is what I would call a party tent.

This thing could sleep like 15 people.

Who would have been trekking the Chilkoot Trail

in a group that big

that they would need that kind of sleeping space?

[whimsical music playing]

[narrator] From 1896 to 1899,

gold fever gripped the region.

Prospectors swarm to Dawson City,

Canada's Yukon Territory,

to stake their claim in the Klondike Gold fields.

When news of the gold strike broke,

it was a spectacular story.

It made headlines around the world.

Gold fever is serious business.

It makes people do all kinds of things,

take all kinds of risks,

and the Klondike Gold Rush is a prime example of that.

[narrator] The port of Skagway, Alaska

suddenly boomed as prospectors found

the quickest route to the gold fields.

At the summit, they'd crossed the border into Canada,

and onto the shores of Lake Lindeman.

From Lindeman, a series of waterways

connect to the Yukon River that flows to Dawson City.

[Jamie] Snow, ice fog, and to top it all off,

the trail could be incredibly unstable.

In April 1898,

at least 65 people were killed by avalanche.

So taking the Chilkoot Pass may have been faster,

but it was a big risk.

[narrator] For many, the promise of gold

was worth dying for.

At its peak, a thousand people per day

queued up in the ice and snow to make the dangerous journey.

Could the bundles left on top of the Chilkoot Pass

be the camp of a large group of Gold Rush prospectors?

[tense music playing]

[narrator] High atop a rugged mountain pass,

on the border between Alaska and Canada's British Columbia,

hikers stumble across a perplexing discovery.

Researchers investigate the 80 canvas bundles

that are each wrapped around a pile of wooden slats.

The age and condition of the materials

certainly makes it plausible

that they were made in the late 1890s.

[Anthony M] But tents were supposed to be

easy to set up.

Putting together 72 wooden slats,

that's a lot of time,

work, tools...

not exactly a time saver.

[narrator] Researchers decide the only way to discover

the bundles' purpose is to assemble one.

They arrange and rearrange the wooden pieces.

Eventually, a shape takes form.

The slats are ribs for the hull

of a boat.

When the canvas is stretched neatly around it,

it forms a vessel over 17 feet long

and 5 feet wide.

This is really quite bizarre,

because the last thing I'd expect to see

in a summit of a mountain is a boat,

let alone 80 of them.

[Alison] But now, there's a whole new mystery to solve.

Why were 80 of these bulky boat kits

abandoned at the top of the Chilkoot Trail?

It just doesn't make sense.

[narrator] The end of the Chilkoot Trail

is at Lake Lindeman,

15 miles north of where the bundles lay.

By the Spring of 1898,

a bustling tent city had sprouted

at the end of the trail.

After crossing the Chilkoot Pass,

thousands waited for the ice to break,

then they could connect to the Yukon River

and complete a 500-mile journey to Dawson City.

Back then, there were rough rapids

and there were huge sections

you had to get out and portage.

Prospectors needed boats for two to three people

plus all their supplies.

The trouble was prospectors

aren't exactly expert boat makers,

so thousands and thousands of boats were made

right there in Lindeman.

[narrator] In May of 1898,

7,000 boats prepared to sail up to the Yukon River,

to the Klondike gold fields.

It was a perilous journey,

hundreds never made it.

But then you have to wonder,

if all the boats were being made down in Lindeman,

why were 80 of these boat kits

found 10 miles away at a top of a mountain?

[narrator] The Canadians were worried about the number

of Americans pouring across the Chilkoot Pass,

so they enforced a new law.

Anyone crossing the border

had to bring a year's worth of supplies,

which back then cost an average of a $1,000,

around $27,000 today.

Takes a lot of wooden expertise

to build these boats and they were expensive.

These prospectors, though,

they weren't exactly flush with cash.

[narrator] Were the boat kits designed

for prospectors cutting back on costs?

Well, today, we know it's much cheaper

to buy pre-fab furniture and assemble it ourselves,

so you can imagine that was probably the plan

with the stash of boat kits.

In 1898, flyers in the camp advertised

lightweights DIY canvas boats,

and those boats looked a lot like the boat built

from the bundles on the mountain.

[Anthony C] The flyers were produced by

an American freight business,

Flowers, Smith & Company.

They wanted to be the supplier for the Klondike Gold Rush

and they actually had a wharf and a warehouse in Lindeman.

[narrator] Their kits were designed to be bought

and assembled close to the lake,

requiring no more experience of building boats

and the ability to swing a hammer.

They were supposed to be as easily broken down

as they were to assemble,

that's why they were nicknamed knockdown boats.

[narrator] But at the end of 1898,

Flowers, Smith & Company's time

at Lake Lindeman screeched to a halt.

The Canadians seized the land claimed by Americans

and shut down their businesses.

So it's possible the company just grabbed

whatever they could, including these 80 boats

and hauled them to the Chilkoot Pass.

Carrying boats up a mountain like this is crazy difficult,

so they probably just ditched them.

[Alison] So the boat kits were neatly tucked away,

just off the main path.

It's entirely plausible that Flowers, Smith & Company

intended to come back for them,

but they never did.

[narrator] Whether the company intended

to collect the boats or not remains a mystery.

The bundles stayed hidden behind a rocky nook

under the ice and snow.

Frozen in time for over a century.

[tense music playing]

[narrator] The storm-battered island of Jan Mayen,

a territory of Norway,

Jan Mayen is a volcanic island

that was thrust out of the frigid waters

of the Arctic Ocean 500,000 years ago.

Jan Mayen is a hard, harsh climate.

Early explorers called it terra nullius

which means nobody's land.

It's a place of subzero temperatures,

impenetrable fog, driving snow,

it's the kind of place that you have to be very brave

or very crazy to go hiking around in.

[narrator] In 2015, a group of Norwegian geologists

journey to Jan Mayen to map the bottom of a lagoon.

They used what's called an AUV,

an automated underwater vehicle

which has cameras, and lights, and arms

to collect samples with underwater.

[narrator] As the AUV roves through the murky water

near the lagoon floor,

the camera picks up a shadowy object.

[tense music playing]

[dramatic music playing]

[narrator] On a remote volcanic island

in the middle of the Arctic Ocean,

a team of geologists set out to map

the bottom of a lagoon

using an automated underwater vehicle or AUV.

But their attention is quickly drawn

to a strange object that appears on the bottom.

It's not immediately apparent what it is.

Is it some sort of creature?

After several minutes,

the object reveals its true identity.

It's a rowboat,

but what's it doing at the bottom of this lagoon?

This is a wooden boat,

and wood normally decays in water.

But very cold water can actually preserve wood,

so they don't know.

This wooden boat could have been down there for decades

or could have been down there for centuries.

[Anthony M] If the boat had been found on the shore,

it means it could have just floated there from anywhere.

But the fact that it was found

in this landlocked lagoon

means that somebody must have brought it there

for a very specific purpose.

Finding an unidentified rowboat

in this remote arctic island

raises all kinds of questions,

and it teases answers to historical mysteries

ranging from the 6th Century

to World War II, to the present.

As remote as it is,

Jan Mayen has been on navigational maps

since the early 16th Century.

And its human history may go back

even farther than that.

[dramatic music playing]

[narrator] Possibly the first person

to set foot on Jan Mayen

was a 6th Century monk

known as Brendan The Navigator.

He sailed through the North Atlantic

searching for the promised land of the saints.

Saint Brendan was an extraordinary monk,

and stories of his extensive travels

were passed down from generation to generation,

and recorded over the centuries.

And it's possible that Jan Mayen was part of that.

[Anthony C] He described the black fiery island

where he heard tremendous noises,

were there were sulfuric gasses,

fire, ash, volcanic activity.

He thought it might be the gates of hell.

[narrator] Did Brendan The Navigator

land on Jan Mayen

and take a boat inland for some reason?

[Anthony C] If you look at historical depictions

of Brendan's ship,

you'll see that it has a round bottom,

and that actually tells us something.

That's typical of Irish boat building.

It's shaped like a canoe and it has square sails.

What's also notable is that the hull

is wrapped in leather to create a water tight fill.

[narrator] The researchers estimate that the boat

at the bottom of the lagoon

is between 12 and 20 feet long,

and between 3 and 5 ft. wide.

Its aft is square rather than round

shows no signs of a mast to support a sail

nor any remnants of leather on the hull.

Brendan's boat was primitive.

He had a lot of knowledge but limited technology.

He was doing a lot with a little,

and the boat was small,

too small to carry another boat,

and definitely too small to be the boat

at the bottom of that lagoon.

So that boat is not Brendan's boat.

[dramatic music playing]

Brendan wasn't the only sailor

in these freezing waters.

The Vikings were also sailing there

attempting to set up colonies in the far north.

The Book of Settlements records their activities

in the 9th and 10th centuries.

One entry reports a place, a two-day sail from Iceland,

called [indistinct] or Cold Coast.

[Anthony C] Jan Mayen is 340 miles

northeast of Iceland.

A sailing ship can cover that in two days

with favorable winds.

So it's definitely in the zone of possibility.

However, when the Vikings went somewhere, you know it.

They left a mark wherever they went.

And there's no physical evidence

of Viking activity on Jan Mayen.

Plus the boat in the lagoon

is unlike any known type of Viking vessel.

[narrator] But Jan Mayen itself

may offer more clues to the puzzle.

When the scientists hike over a rocky glacial hill,

they come upon a chilling site.

It's a plane.

[dramatic music playing]

[narrator] Determined to solve the mystery of a rowboat

found at the bottom of a lagoon,

on a remote island in the Arctic Ocean,

a team of Norwegian geologists

have brought in their search of the island.

As they climb a nearby hill,

they're amazed to find another clue, a plane.

But not just any plane...

a Nazi bomber.

The aircraft is a Junkers Ju 88,

a twin-engine bomber flown by Germany's Luftwaffe

during the Second World War.

The Junkers 88 was an all-purpose aircraft.

It was a bomber, it was a night fighter,

it was used for reconnaissance.

But Jan Mayen is a long way from Germany.

What was it doing there?

[narrator] And does the plane hold the key

to the mystery of the sunken rowboat?

Just when things couldn't get any stranger,

the scientists discover

another curiosity on this island,

the remains of a World War II era outpost,

including a weather station.

The key thing for me is that this rowboat

was found at an island

where there was a weather station.

That's a key piece of evidence.

We think of controlling the weather

as something for a super villain in a comic book.

But controlling knowledge of the weather,

especially in an era before satellites,

that's of tremendous strategic importance.

[tense music playing]

At the outbreak of the Second World War,

the UK and the Soviet Union

depended on convoys of supply ships.

The weather in the North Atlantic

could be as dangerous as German U-boats.

So you needed to be able to predict the weather.

These ships needed accurate weather forecast.

[Anthony M] Strong winds, rough seas,

dense fog, cloud cover,

all these things could have been disastrous

for the invading forces.

When the Germans occupied Norway,

they wanted to rely on Norwegian weather station

such as the one on Jan Mayen

which had become known as Island X.

That was the codename the allies gave it

so that if their communications

were intercepted,

it wouldn't be immediately clear

what place they were talking about.

But the Norwegians manning the weather station resisted

and actually passed on the information to the British.

Now, surprisingly, the Germans decided

to punish the Norwegians on Island X.

[narrator] They expanded their battle to the skies.

The Germans continued bombing

and harassing the Norwegian meteorologists.

But this handful of Norwegians on Jan Mayen

stuck it to Hitler.

[narrator] On May 19th, 1942,

a German bomber attacked Jan Mayen.

The Norwegians at the station responded by shooting back.

After an hour of combat,

they heard an explosion and saw a smoke.

Two of their planes crashed

including the one found

by the Norwegian scientist in 2017.

[Anthony C] And that boat at the bottom of the lagoon,

the Norwegians figured it out.

In 1940, a Norwegian naval vessel

ran aground on Jan Mayen...

and the sailor saved themselves

by rowing the shore in that boat.

The wreck lay there for years,

then in the early 1950s,

a protracted windstorm hit the island.

The wind was so strong that it grabbed the lifeboat

and tossed it into the lagoon.

[narrator] The boat remains there to this day.

It's fascinating to think that this little island

in the middle of the Arctic Ocean,

far away from everything else

is actually connected to political

and military and meteorological events

all over the world.

[narrator] Zhokhov Island.

A tiny isolated island

in Russia's freezing East Siberian Sea.

This is an inhabited and treeless island.

It's ravaged by storms and bad weather,

and it's surrounded by sea ice for most of the year.

[Alison] Since the early 1990s,

researchers have been excavating the remains

of an 8,000-year-old settlement on the island.

So far, they've recovered more than 19,000 stone tools

as well as hundreds of bone, and with artifacts.

[narrator] But now, buried in the permafrost,

they find something they've never seen here before.

A beautiful shining shard of black glass.

This material is called obsidian

and it's an absolutely extraordinary find.

[Anthony M] Obsidian is pretty cool.

I mean, what if their blade could stop a White Walker?

Also known as Dragonglass.

You got it.

[narrator] Obsidian is an igneous rock,

forms when lava with a high silicon content

erupts from a volcano

and cools so rapidly, it turns into glass.

[Kim] It's just slightly harder

than your run-of-the-mill window glass.

Obsidian can be sharpened into very fine edges

which can be very useful

for making knives and arrowheads.

But my question is

how did it wind up here on this island?

[dramatic music playing]

[narrator] These archeologists excavate

an 8,000-year-old settlement,

buried in the permafrost on Siberia's Zhokhov Island.

They make an extraordinary discovery.

Obsidian.

Obsidian needs a high silica content.

And the ground on the island of Zhokhov

is mainly made of basalt.

So wherever these pieces came from,

it wasn't from here.

[narrator] All together, the researchers unearth

79 blades and fragments.

All made from the same lustrous material.

Obsidian is interesting.

Each rock has its own geochemical signature

which corresponds to exactly where it comes from

on this planet.

[narrator] The researchers perform analysis

on the blades from Zhokhov

to determine the elements of composition

of the ancient glass.

By comparing the results to obsidian

from known sources in Northeastern Siberia,

they are able to pinpoint the exact source of the rocks.

A volcano near Lake Krasnoye in eastern Russia

over 900 miles away.

That is the distance from Miami to New Orleans.

That's a long way to go for a piece of rock.

[Anthony C] These blades were being used about 8,000 years ago.

So obviously, there were no roads,

there were no cars, there were no planes.

The wheel was still about 3,000 years

from being invented.

[Alison] Covering that distance would have taken

at least a couple of months on foot.

You think that would be an impossible journey

for someone to undertake.

So it's highly unlikely that one person

traveled that distance on their own.

It's a real mystery.

[narrator] For centuries, trade routes

such as the Silk Road where the primary way

far-flung communities could acquire

and exchange materials and goods.

[Alison] The Silk Road was really important.

It was the main connector

between a number of different cultures,

trading goods, sharing ideas,

getting a number of items

that they didn't normally have access to.

[narrator] Did the island inhabitants

obtain the obsidian from a Silk Road trade route?

The only problem with this theory is that

the Silk Road didn't even exist

until about the 2nd Century BC.

This obsidian is from 6,000 years before that.

Is it possible that trade routes

had been active in this area thousands of years earlier

than previously thought?

[narrator] Determined to find the answer,

the archeologists on Zhokhov Island continue to dig.

One discovery stands out from the rest.

A long wooden shaft.

[Kim] It's an unusual shape

and one edge has been rubbed smooth

from repeated use.

This tells us whatever it is,

it was important enough to be used constantly.

[narrator] Based on the size and shape,

they conclude that it is a sled runner.

At nearly four feet long,

this fragment would have been part of a much larger sled.

This is really interesting.

Sleds are known to have been used around this time

in Northern Europe

but the engineering on this sled

is much more advanced than what was known

to have been used there in this era.

[narrator] European sleds were traditionally flatter,

but this one contains uprights and bracing

that is similar in construction to sleds

used by local communities in Northern Siberia today.

Using this kind of sled,

it would have been pretty easy

to transport things across huge distances.

But a sled this big still

would have been pretty heavy even on snow or even ice.

So you would have to put a lot of muscle

behind something like this.

[Kim] Walking on foot would have been nearly

an impossible task.

What do people do when they need extra power?

Humans use animals.

[narrator] When horses were domesticated,

it enabled people to travel much longer distances

and transport more goods.

[Anthony C] The Ancient Scythians

living on what is now Central Asia

and Southwestern Russia were excellent horsemen.

And they used those horses to travel great distances.

But horses would have struggled

in the freezing climate and snowy condition.

And they weren't even domesticated

in the western part of the Eurasian Steppe

until about 6,000 years ago.

[narrator] An unexpected discovery

at the site provides a new clue.

Bones.

From the bones,

archeologists are able to identify

the remains of 13 dogs.

But it's important to know that these dog bones

were found in the center of the camp

which means that these dogs

weren't just roaming around wildly.

They were part of the community.

[narrator] Analysis of the dog's body type and size

indicates that they were likely similar

to modern day Siberian huskies.

Siberian huskies are famous

for their strength and endurance.

The modern day Iditarod in Alaska uses them

for its roughly 1,000-mile dog sled race.

[narrator] Were the dogs kept in the community

to pull the sleds long distances

back and forth to the island?

Is this how the obsidian was obtained?

[Alison] It's definitely a viable theory.

This may be an example of the oldest known

dog sled on record.

Early Russian explorers reported gatherings

and springtime fairs for people

from across Northern Siberia.

It's not improbable that these community networks

had been in existence for thousands of years.

The Zhokhov community could also have traded

goods and knowledge at these spring gatherings.

So it's quite likely that those obsidian tools

made several small journeys from their point of origin

before they were traded one last time

and brought to Zhokhov Island.

[narrator] But the researches still

had one unanswered question.

Zhokhov Island is about 270 miles out the sea.

How did the small community reached the mainland?

[Alison] When you look at the geological record,

8,000 years ago,

Zhokhov wouldn't have been an island.

It would have been attached to the mainland

at the end a low peninsula.

[narrator] It wasn't until 7,800 BC

that the land between Zhokhov Island

and the mainland was inundated with water

separating from the rest of the continent.

It's amazing that while these people

were living so remotely,

they were still connected to community

and technology.

[Anthony C] It turns out that these ancient northern communities

actually had the technology and the ability

to travel quite extensively.

This discovery of this obsidian

reveals that the ancestors

of today's indigenous peoples in Eastern Russia

had a sophisticated trade network millennia

before the establishment of the Silk Road.