1 00:00:13,380 --> 00:00:18,818 In the dim past of Europe, by the shores of the Aegean Sea, 2 00:00:19,552 --> 00:00:25,286 the ancient bards told stories of a golden age long ago, 3 00:00:25,592 --> 00:00:29,824 a time when men were heros larger than life, 4 00:00:30,597 --> 00:00:33,623 when the daring Theseus battled the Minotaur, 5 00:00:34,834 --> 00:00:39,032 and soldiers clashed over the face of the beautiful Helen 6 00:00:39,272 --> 00:00:41,570 who brought down the walls of Troy. 7 00:00:43,843 --> 00:00:49,372 For hundreds of generations these tales will pass down as myths. 8 00:00:51,684 --> 00:00:54,209 Then in the 19th century, 9 00:00:54,454 --> 00:00:56,684 two remarkable men dared to believe that 10 00:00:56,923 --> 00:01:01,257 the myths were clues to the treasures of a forgotten past. 11 00:01:03,463 --> 00:01:05,055 Their extraordinary adventures 12 00:01:05,298 --> 00:01:08,790 uncovered the roots of Western civilization. 13 00:01:50,410 --> 00:01:54,744 In the 19th century, archeology was in its infancy. 14 00:01:56,416 --> 00:02:00,147 Ancient Greece was considered the beginning of Western civilization, 15 00:02:02,021 --> 00:02:05,684 its architecture the most beautiful; 16 00:02:05,925 --> 00:02:09,691 its ideas the foundation for everything to come. 17 00:02:12,432 --> 00:02:18,234 Yet its roots before the 8th century B.C. Were shrouded in mystery. 18 00:02:19,205 --> 00:02:23,232 Did this extraordinary civilization spring out of nowhere? 19 00:02:27,213 --> 00:02:31,707 Or did another, almost as advanced, come before it? 20 00:02:34,154 --> 00:02:37,089 The only accounts of an earlier age were legends 21 00:02:37,323 --> 00:02:40,486 that nearly everyone dismissed as myths. 22 00:02:41,127 --> 00:02:43,618 The first grade works of Western literature, 23 00:02:43,863 --> 00:02:48,163 the lliad and the Odyssey, were considered fiction, nothing more. 24 00:02:51,004 --> 00:02:53,700 Who could have guessed that Homer's beloved stories 25 00:02:53,940 --> 00:02:56,636 could lead the way to a real past? 26 00:03:00,980 --> 00:03:03,471 In Athens today a classical temple 27 00:03:03,716 --> 00:03:09,552 marks the grave of Heinrich Schliemann, to some, the father of archeology. 28 00:03:10,423 --> 00:03:12,983 To others, an impetuous fool. 29 00:03:14,227 --> 00:03:18,596 To Schliemann, Homer's stories of the Trojan War were true, 30 00:03:18,831 --> 00:03:20,321 and he set out to prove it. 31 00:03:21,668 --> 00:03:27,004 His incredible discoveries pushed back European history a thousand years. 32 00:03:29,375 --> 00:03:31,900 Schliemann's story has been romanticized 33 00:03:32,145 --> 00:03:34,739 in films, books, even grand opera. 34 00:03:35,615 --> 00:03:39,949 But none more fantastical than his own stories about himself. 35 00:03:41,621 --> 00:03:45,352 I think he thought that he was the center of the world. 36 00:03:45,592 --> 00:03:49,619 And I think he had a kind of medieval map of the world 37 00:03:50,230 --> 00:03:51,857 in which he was at the center and everything else 38 00:03:52,098 --> 00:03:54,931 was in concentric circles around him. 39 00:03:55,168 --> 00:03:58,729 I think he was the most frightful big head. 40 00:03:59,939 --> 00:04:03,739 Schliemann throughout his life was pretty cavalier with the truth. 41 00:04:03,977 --> 00:04:08,539 He, I don't think, distinguished so clearly as most of us do 42 00:04:08,781 --> 00:04:12,547 between what is true and what is false. 43 00:04:12,785 --> 00:04:15,948 He tended to tell the story that suited the moment. 44 00:04:17,090 --> 00:04:22,027 Schliemann's personal myths stretched all the way back to his childhood. 45 00:04:22,395 --> 00:04:26,695 He was born in 1822 in northeastern Germany. 46 00:04:26,933 --> 00:04:30,198 At the age of 7, he tells how his father gave him a history book 47 00:04:30,436 --> 00:04:33,894 with a picture of the ancient city of Troy in flames. 48 00:04:35,441 --> 00:04:36,908 Electrified by the site, 49 00:04:37,143 --> 00:04:40,579 the young Heinrich asked what had become of the great city. 50 00:04:41,481 --> 00:04:46,942 His father explained that Troy had burned to the ground leaving no trace. 51 00:04:48,488 --> 00:04:52,117 Unconvinced, Heinrich disagreed: 52 00:04:52,358 --> 00:04:55,816 "Father," retorted I, "if such worlds once existed, 53 00:04:56,062 --> 00:04:58,656 they cannot have been completely destroyed. 54 00:04:58,898 --> 00:05:03,995 Vast ruins of them must still remain hidden away beneath the dust of ages." 55 00:05:04,304 --> 00:05:09,708 In the end we both agreed that I should one day excavate Troy. 56 00:05:10,143 --> 00:05:15,775 It's a wonderful story, but there's really no reason why we need to believe it. 57 00:05:16,449 --> 00:05:21,148 He tells us not a day went by where he thought about this goal 58 00:05:21,387 --> 00:05:24,515 of earning enough money to go out and excavate Troy. 59 00:05:24,757 --> 00:05:29,660 But we have thousands of letters and many diaries when he was a young man. 60 00:05:29,896 --> 00:05:33,423 There's no mention of going out and excavating Troy. 61 00:05:36,235 --> 00:05:40,729 Schliemann may have been trying to mask the truth of a painful childhood. 62 00:05:41,140 --> 00:05:42,767 His mother died young, 63 00:05:43,009 --> 00:05:45,978 but not before his minister father lost his job 64 00:05:46,212 --> 00:05:49,045 by committing adultery with the housemaid. 65 00:05:49,615 --> 00:05:54,416 Schliemann had to drop out of school to help support his brothers and sisters. 66 00:05:55,521 --> 00:05:59,890 All this, I think, etched itself deeply onto Schliemann's mind. 67 00:06:00,126 --> 00:06:05,154 He was left with a bitter, bitter resentment about it in later life. 68 00:06:06,432 --> 00:06:07,399 On the other hand, 69 00:06:07,633 --> 00:06:13,094 the drive for all that he achieved came out of this unhappy childhood. 70 00:06:16,275 --> 00:06:20,735 Schliemann's story continues like a fairy tale. 71 00:06:20,980 --> 00:06:23,505 He ran away to sea, was shipwrecked, 72 00:06:23,750 --> 00:06:27,811 and then became a clerk for a trading house in Amsterdam. 73 00:06:28,054 --> 00:06:30,488 Toiling endlessly, he taught himself languages 74 00:06:30,723 --> 00:06:34,625 by copying passages and then learning them by heart. 75 00:06:35,595 --> 00:06:39,463 He mastered at least ten languages this way. 76 00:06:40,299 --> 00:06:42,665 As Schliemann himself said: 77 00:06:42,902 --> 00:06:47,839 Talent means energy and persistence, and nothing more. 78 00:06:49,208 --> 00:06:53,144 Schliemann's talent was making money. 79 00:06:53,379 --> 00:06:55,210 With energy and persistence, 80 00:06:55,448 --> 00:06:57,678 the obsessive German became an international merchant, 81 00:06:57,917 --> 00:07:00,909 trading in commodities like indigo. 82 00:07:05,291 --> 00:07:10,319 In 1849, prospectors struck gold in California. 83 00:07:11,531 --> 00:07:15,467 Ever the opportunist, Schliemann joined the Gold Rush. 84 00:07:15,701 --> 00:07:19,762 In Sacramento, he opened a bank, buying gold dust from the miners 85 00:07:20,006 --> 00:07:24,636 and lending them money at 12 percent interest per month. 86 00:07:25,111 --> 00:07:30,606 After two years, he left California a very rich man. 87 00:07:30,950 --> 00:07:33,919 My biggest fault- being a braggart and a bluffer- 88 00:07:34,153 --> 00:07:36,815 yielded countless advantages. 89 00:07:37,523 --> 00:07:40,515 And there were even more to come. 90 00:07:40,760 --> 00:07:42,694 Russia was on the brink of war, 91 00:07:42,929 --> 00:07:47,525 so Schliemann cornered the market on saltpeter, an ingredient of gunpowder. 92 00:07:47,767 --> 00:07:50,998 The Crimean War made his fortune. 93 00:07:52,405 --> 00:07:56,000 It seemed that everything he touched turned to gold, 94 00:07:56,242 --> 00:07:58,403 except his social standing. 95 00:07:58,644 --> 00:08:03,672 His unhappy marriage to the daughter of a St. Petersburg lawyer didn't help. 96 00:08:05,351 --> 00:08:09,879 The uneducated merchant was shunned as nouveau riche. 97 00:08:10,456 --> 00:08:11,753 Now in his mid-40s, 98 00:08:11,991 --> 00:08:15,449 Schliemann realized he wanted more out of life than making money. 99 00:08:15,695 --> 00:08:18,186 He wanted respect. 100 00:08:19,232 --> 00:08:23,999 The situation in 1868 was that he was adrift. 101 00:08:24,237 --> 00:08:27,695 He'd divorced his first wife, a Russian woman. 102 00:08:27,940 --> 00:08:30,170 He had sewed up his business in St. Petersburg, 103 00:08:30,409 --> 00:08:32,468 and he didn't know what to do. 104 00:08:32,712 --> 00:08:36,546 He was going through a kind of mid-life crisis. 105 00:08:36,782 --> 00:08:41,719 And he took a journey to the Mediterranean, to Italy and to Greece. 106 00:08:41,954 --> 00:08:45,185 It was during the course of that journey, 107 00:08:45,424 --> 00:08:50,521 he was looking for something to do with the rest of his life and he found it. 108 00:08:52,665 --> 00:08:58,331 In June of 1868, Schliemann arrived at the ruins of Pompeii. 109 00:08:58,571 --> 00:09:02,507 Buried under layers of volcanic ash for almost 1800 years, 110 00:09:02,742 --> 00:09:07,509 this lost city was in the midst of a spectacular rediscovery. 111 00:09:09,682 --> 00:09:14,381 Excavations had uncovered magnificent public spaces. 112 00:09:17,957 --> 00:09:22,656 And rescued intimate frescos from the buried houses. 113 00:09:25,598 --> 00:09:31,161 Schliemann was captivated by this journey into a lost world. 114 00:09:35,074 --> 00:09:40,205 For the first time he met a real archeologist, Giuseppe Fiorelli. 115 00:09:43,182 --> 00:09:47,516 It was the Italian's innovation to inject plaster into the ancient ash, 116 00:09:47,753 --> 00:09:54,022 revealing the forms of the Pompeiians caught in the last moments of life. 117 00:10:00,066 --> 00:10:04,093 At this point, archeology was more romance than science, 118 00:10:05,271 --> 00:10:08,707 with few precedents and even fewer rules. 119 00:10:10,376 --> 00:10:14,142 Needless to say, it was right up Schliemann's alley. 120 00:10:16,782 --> 00:10:18,511 As he continued his travels, 121 00:10:18,751 --> 00:10:22,278 His diaries began to reflect a new direction. 122 00:10:26,525 --> 00:10:29,756 He would set off on a grand archeological adventure 123 00:10:29,996 --> 00:10:32,191 and uncover the biggest challenge of all: 124 00:10:32,431 --> 00:10:34,865 The legendary city of Troy. 125 00:10:35,534 --> 00:10:39,129 But first he had to find it. 126 00:10:45,778 --> 00:10:48,770 When Heinrich Schliemann set out on his quest for Troy, 127 00:10:49,015 --> 00:10:52,109 most people believed the city was a myth. 128 00:10:53,252 --> 00:10:55,948 For one thing, it wasn't on the map. 129 00:10:56,188 --> 00:10:58,418 Legend had placed Troy on the Dardanelles, 130 00:10:58,658 --> 00:11:00,717 near the coast of present-day Turkey 131 00:11:00,960 --> 00:11:04,259 But no ruins identified the great city. 132 00:11:08,701 --> 00:11:11,465 It was as if the site of the Trojan War- 133 00:11:11,704 --> 00:11:15,367 the greatest war story ever told- had never existed. 134 00:11:16,008 --> 00:11:20,638 But for thousands of years people had repeated Homer's tale. 135 00:11:21,947 --> 00:11:24,814 How Helen, the face that launched a thousand ships, 136 00:11:25,051 --> 00:11:27,781 had been taken away to Troy. 137 00:11:30,923 --> 00:11:34,518 How the Greeks had battled for ten long years to get her back, 138 00:11:34,760 --> 00:11:37,524 led by the great king Agamemnon. 139 00:11:40,666 --> 00:11:45,660 How the war was finally won with a wooden horse full of soldiers. 140 00:11:49,442 --> 00:11:50,739 In Homer's tale, 141 00:11:50,976 --> 00:11:56,243 the Greeks destroyed the great city of Troy; burning it to the ground. 142 00:11:57,116 --> 00:12:00,552 Schliemann was just captured by the lliad, 143 00:12:00,786 --> 00:12:03,186 the descriptions of what goes on, 144 00:12:03,422 --> 00:12:07,518 everything about the human condition is found in the lliad 145 00:12:07,760 --> 00:12:09,819 in a very poetic and agnificent manner. 146 00:12:10,062 --> 00:12:14,499 And the idea of finding the site where all of these great tensions 147 00:12:14,734 --> 00:12:16,326 between love and strife, 148 00:12:16,569 --> 00:12:19,367 between divine and human interaction were worked out 149 00:12:19,605 --> 00:12:22,597 was something that just swallowed him up. 150 00:12:23,676 --> 00:12:25,940 With his copy of Homer as a guide, 151 00:12:26,178 --> 00:12:30,808 Schliemann examined the mound thought to be the likeliest location of Troy. 152 00:12:32,318 --> 00:12:37,017 In the lliad, two springs marked the foot of the great city's hill. 153 00:12:37,256 --> 00:12:41,192 To his dismay, Schliemann found many more here. 154 00:12:43,362 --> 00:12:47,958 And trial excavations turned up nothing but dirt. 155 00:12:48,534 --> 00:12:53,164 But just as he was about to leave the area, the German got lucky- 156 00:12:53,806 --> 00:12:57,799 He met an Englishman named Frank Calvert who owned another mound, 157 00:12:58,043 --> 00:13:01,035 the site of many prior civilizations. 158 00:13:01,380 --> 00:13:06,750 Calvert believed his mound held the real Troy far beneath the surface. 159 00:13:07,019 --> 00:13:11,388 Frank Calvert explained to Schliemann that he had done some excavations there 160 00:13:11,624 --> 00:13:15,060 which took him below the Greek and Roman levels, 161 00:13:15,294 --> 00:13:18,229 into deep deposits where were earlier. 162 00:13:18,464 --> 00:13:22,924 So he said there was a very good chance that in these deep burial deposits 163 00:13:23,169 --> 00:13:26,263 you will find the Troy of the Trojan War. 164 00:13:26,705 --> 00:13:30,163 And that convinced Schliemann; it gave him something to do. 165 00:13:30,442 --> 00:13:34,173 But Schliemann didn't have a clue how to begin. 166 00:13:34,914 --> 00:13:40,318 Dear Mr. Calvert, have I to take a tent and iron baluster and pillar with me? 167 00:13:40,553 --> 00:13:43,886 What sort of hat is best against the scorching sun? 168 00:13:44,123 --> 00:13:47,889 Please give me an exact statement of all of the implements of whatever kind 169 00:13:48,127 --> 00:13:52,188 and of all the necessaries you would advise me to take with me. 170 00:13:55,100 --> 00:14:00,970 With Calvert's encouragement Schliemann began digging in earnest in October 1871. 171 00:14:05,945 --> 00:14:08,539 On the first day, he hired 8 men. 172 00:14:10,316 --> 00:14:12,648 By day three there were 80. 173 00:14:14,920 --> 00:14:16,945 Caution was not his style. 174 00:14:18,123 --> 00:14:21,320 Assuming Homer's Troy lay at the bottom of the mound, 175 00:14:21,560 --> 00:14:26,224 Schliemann had his men dig a great gash right through the center of it. 176 00:14:27,633 --> 00:14:30,101 One must plunge immediately into the depths. 177 00:14:30,336 --> 00:14:33,100 Only then will one find things. 178 00:14:36,342 --> 00:14:40,938 On their way down the men uncovered not one city, but many of them. 179 00:14:41,180 --> 00:14:44,672 But Schliemann didn't let these other Troys get in his way. 180 00:14:45,651 --> 00:14:49,018 You can see when he began that his methods were very, very crude. 181 00:14:49,255 --> 00:14:52,816 He was going in with winches and crowbars and battering rams. 182 00:14:53,058 --> 00:14:56,789 The horrifying tales are spelled out in some of his writings. 183 00:14:57,129 --> 00:15:00,530 Nowadays, one just blenches at the thought of it. 184 00:15:03,035 --> 00:15:06,903 Numbers of immense blocks of stone which we continually come upon 185 00:15:07,139 --> 00:15:10,267 cause great trouble and have to be got out and removed. 186 00:15:13,345 --> 00:15:16,371 All of my workmen hurry to see the enormous weight roll down 187 00:15:16,615 --> 00:15:19,709 and settle itself at some distance in the plain. 188 00:15:25,057 --> 00:15:27,924 Schliemann was discarding priceless relics 189 00:15:28,160 --> 00:15:31,391 from thousands of years of civilization on the site. 190 00:15:33,032 --> 00:15:36,559 Thankfully, rains closed the season early. 191 00:15:39,672 --> 00:15:44,132 But the next year he was back, this time attacking the mound 192 00:15:44,376 --> 00:15:48,904 with 150 men under the command of a railroad engineer. 193 00:15:50,049 --> 00:15:53,485 Often by Schliemann's side was his new Greek wife, Sophia, 194 00:15:53,719 --> 00:15:57,177 who won his heart by reciting from the lliad. 195 00:15:59,892 --> 00:16:00,916 Forging ahead, 196 00:16:01,160 --> 00:16:04,687 Schliemann continued to aim straight for the bottom of the mound, 197 00:16:04,930 --> 00:16:07,194 haphazardly uncovering ancient stone walls 198 00:16:07,433 --> 00:16:11,130 and collecting pottery and other artifacts along the way. 199 00:16:13,505 --> 00:16:18,306 What Schliemann did was to go down deep into this complex, complex site. 200 00:16:18,544 --> 00:16:22,571 And he did try to understand 201 00:16:22,815 --> 00:16:25,113 how the layers had built up one on top of the other. 202 00:16:25,351 --> 00:16:28,946 He wasn't bad at either; he was quite observant. 203 00:16:31,290 --> 00:16:35,727 Of course now we would do it in much finer detail than he did, 204 00:16:35,961 --> 00:16:38,589 but he was the one to reveal 205 00:16:38,831 --> 00:16:42,790 that this sort of thing could be done in a site of this sort. 206 00:16:46,171 --> 00:16:50,699 In the third season of digging the hard work finally paid off. 207 00:16:54,446 --> 00:16:55,811 Near the bottom of the mound 208 00:16:56,048 --> 00:16:59,848 workman uncovered the charred ruins of a citadel. 209 00:17:00,619 --> 00:17:01,984 It didn't look like much, 210 00:17:02,221 --> 00:17:05,486 but Schliemann declared it must be the place of King Priam 211 00:17:05,724 --> 00:17:07,919 burned in the Trojan War. 212 00:17:10,195 --> 00:17:11,685 As he himself told the story, 213 00:17:11,930 --> 00:17:16,833 he dismissed his workman and began to attack the palace walls himself. 214 00:17:23,409 --> 00:17:25,604 I cut out the treasure with a large knife, 215 00:17:25,844 --> 00:17:30,372 which was impossible to do without the most fearful risk of my life. 216 00:17:30,616 --> 00:17:32,880 But I never thought of any danger. 217 00:17:34,119 --> 00:17:38,249 It would, however, been impossible for me to have removed the treasure 218 00:17:38,490 --> 00:17:42,324 without the help of my dear wife who stood by me ready to pack the things 219 00:17:42,561 --> 00:17:46,224 that I cut out in her shawl and carry them away. 220 00:17:52,204 --> 00:17:54,331 It was a fabulous find. 221 00:17:54,573 --> 00:17:56,871 Ancient silver and copper vessels. 222 00:17:57,109 --> 00:17:58,371 Bronze weapons. 223 00:17:58,610 --> 00:18:02,876 And most extraordinary of all, elaborate gold jewelry. 224 00:18:04,316 --> 00:18:05,943 With Schliemann's usual panache, 225 00:18:06,185 --> 00:18:09,552 he announced that he had uncovered the treasure of Priam 226 00:18:09,788 --> 00:18:12,518 and the jewels of Helen of Troy. 227 00:18:15,861 --> 00:18:19,228 A photograph of Sophia Schliemann modeling Helen's jewels 228 00:18:19,465 --> 00:18:23,196 became one of the most celebrated images of the 19th century. 229 00:18:24,236 --> 00:18:26,227 Yet, Schliemann's account of the discovery 230 00:18:26,472 --> 00:18:29,100 was controversial from the start. 231 00:18:30,242 --> 00:18:35,646 The story is certainly fiction in at least one major element, 232 00:18:35,881 --> 00:18:38,179 and that is that Sophie was not there. 233 00:18:38,417 --> 00:18:42,376 Sophie had left about three weeks earlier, gone back to Athens. 234 00:18:42,621 --> 00:18:46,387 So she was certainly not there packing the stuff 235 00:18:46,625 --> 00:18:49,025 in her shawl and carrying them off. 236 00:18:49,261 --> 00:18:54,597 The question is how much else is true? 237 00:18:56,902 --> 00:18:59,871 I think that although Sophie wasn't there- 238 00:19:00,105 --> 00:19:02,903 and we know that Schliemann was telling a lie about that- 239 00:19:03,142 --> 00:19:08,341 that doesn't necessarily mean that the treasure itself is a hoax. 240 00:19:08,680 --> 00:19:12,047 I think, in fact, there are very good signs that it was genuine. 241 00:19:14,319 --> 00:19:18,187 There are discrepancies with regard to where the treasure was found, 242 00:19:18,423 --> 00:19:23,087 the day on which it was found, and exactly what was found. 243 00:19:25,531 --> 00:19:27,396 He makes wrong connections. 244 00:19:27,633 --> 00:19:31,330 For example, he misremembers exactly where things were found. 245 00:19:31,570 --> 00:19:34,403 He associates them with the wrong features and so forth. 246 00:19:34,640 --> 00:19:37,507 But I think you also have to consider 247 00:19:37,743 --> 00:19:40,041 what he has left us with at the end of the day, 248 00:19:40,279 --> 00:19:45,615 and what he has left us with is an enormous volume of material 249 00:19:45,851 --> 00:19:47,318 because he was so energetic, 250 00:19:47,553 --> 00:19:50,954 and spent so much money and spent so much time at Troy. 251 00:19:56,628 --> 00:19:58,459 A master of 19th century media, 252 00:19:58,697 --> 00:20:01,825 Schliemann informed the world of his success. 253 00:20:03,802 --> 00:20:07,294 But first he carefully smuggled his treasures out of Turkey, 254 00:20:07,539 --> 00:20:13,034 ignoring his permit stipulation that all finds belonged to the Turks. 255 00:20:15,480 --> 00:20:18,074 The crafty German was triumphant. 256 00:20:19,318 --> 00:20:21,684 Convinced that he'd uncovered Homer's Troy, 257 00:20:21,920 --> 00:20:25,048 buried in myth for more than 3,000 years. 258 00:20:26,625 --> 00:20:27,819 Being Schliemann, however, 259 00:20:28,060 --> 00:20:31,826 even fame and recognition couldn't occupy him for long. 260 00:20:33,565 --> 00:20:38,559 Homer pointed him in a new direction, to a city rich in gold. 261 00:20:39,471 --> 00:20:44,738 He turned his sights to Mycenae, home of Agamemnon, leader of the Greeks. 262 00:20:49,915 --> 00:20:55,376 According to Homer, the conqueror of the Trojans had met a violent fate. 263 00:20:56,255 --> 00:20:58,587 Agamemnon returned home to Mycenae, 264 00:20:58,824 --> 00:21:02,316 only to find that his wife had taken up with another man. 265 00:21:05,831 --> 00:21:09,164 Late one night, the two murdered the great hero. 266 00:21:12,337 --> 00:21:16,671 It was another compelling tale- sufficient motivation for Schliemann. 267 00:21:16,908 --> 00:21:22,141 And with Mycenae, the fledgling archeologist had an easier assignment. 268 00:21:25,017 --> 00:21:27,451 Unlike Troy, the city had never been lost. 269 00:21:27,686 --> 00:21:30,621 It's picturesque ruins still dominated a hill in Greece, 270 00:21:30,856 --> 00:21:32,983 not far from the Aegean Sea. 271 00:21:36,762 --> 00:21:41,631 Hungry for gold, Schliemann began to dig in August 1876. 272 00:21:45,070 --> 00:21:48,801 Within a few weeks, he discovered evidence of a sacred site. 273 00:21:49,808 --> 00:21:52,504 The man's luck seemed unbelievable. 274 00:21:53,545 --> 00:21:56,776 Pressing on, he unearthed a series of royal graves 275 00:21:57,015 --> 00:22:01,714 filled with treasures and skeletons adorned with gold. 276 00:22:07,993 --> 00:22:09,722 Leaping to conclusions yet again, 277 00:22:09,961 --> 00:22:14,227 Schliemann declared he had discovered the golden mask of Agamemnon. 278 00:22:17,803 --> 00:22:22,365 As it turned out, later archaeologists decided it wasn't the mythical king. 279 00:22:22,841 --> 00:22:24,570 But it didn't really matter. 280 00:22:26,278 --> 00:22:30,544 Schliemann had uncovered evidence of a rich and sophisticated civilization 281 00:22:30,782 --> 00:22:35,378 which had flourished 1,000 years before the days of classical Greece. 282 00:22:39,291 --> 00:22:43,227 The objects he'd unearthed were elegant and skillfully crafted. 283 00:22:47,566 --> 00:22:52,128 He'd even found a helmet made of boar's teeth that matched Homer's description. 284 00:22:55,574 --> 00:23:00,341 Schliemann fabulous discovery at Mycenae brought him international fame, 285 00:23:00,579 --> 00:23:03,207 even the respect of many of his critics. 286 00:23:05,884 --> 00:23:09,285 Throughout the next decade, he dug at other Greek citadels, 287 00:23:09,521 --> 00:23:11,421 accumulating evidence of the wealth 288 00:23:11,656 --> 00:23:14,682 and splendor of this previously unknown civilization. 289 00:23:18,797 --> 00:23:21,061 But Schliemann wasn't satisfied. 290 00:23:24,569 --> 00:23:28,164 In his heart, he knew his new discoveries cast doubt 291 00:23:28,407 --> 00:23:31,376 on the primitive treasures he'd found at Troy. 292 00:23:34,413 --> 00:23:39,009 How could he be sure that the walls he uncovered deep beneath that mound 293 00:23:39,251 --> 00:23:43,415 were the same ones that kept Agamemnon's forces at bay? 294 00:23:45,991 --> 00:23:49,722 That down those broken street Helen once walked? 295 00:23:53,832 --> 00:23:55,800 It was time to return to Troy 296 00:23:56,034 --> 00:23:59,731 and make sense of that perplexing mound once and for all. 297 00:24:05,710 --> 00:24:09,168 This time, Schliemann proceeded slowly and cautiously, 298 00:24:09,414 --> 00:24:12,406 digging on the edge of the mound. 299 00:24:12,884 --> 00:24:17,287 And bit by bit, the old treasure hunter uncovered a layer in the middle 300 00:24:17,522 --> 00:24:19,717 that he'd missed in his earlier days. 301 00:24:23,795 --> 00:24:26,787 Here, finally, was what he had been searching for all along: 302 00:24:27,032 --> 00:24:32,902 The ruins of broad streets, massive walls, and a much bigger citadel. 303 00:24:37,309 --> 00:24:39,209 Schliemann should have been thrilled. 304 00:24:39,444 --> 00:24:41,935 But instead, his heart sank. 305 00:24:44,416 --> 00:24:46,748 It meant there was a lot of rethinking to do. 306 00:24:46,985 --> 00:24:47,815 In a sense, 307 00:24:48,053 --> 00:24:54,686 he saw before his eyes 20 years of work just going down the drain. 308 00:24:58,897 --> 00:25:03,698 For four days Schliemann retreated to his tent, searching for answers. 309 00:25:09,341 --> 00:25:10,569 From the beginning, 310 00:25:10,809 --> 00:25:14,711 he'd assumed that Homer's Troy lay at the bottom of the mound. 311 00:25:17,182 --> 00:25:19,980 Now his new discovery changed everything. 312 00:25:22,554 --> 00:25:27,048 If he'd finally found the Troy of the Trojan War in this middle lanyer, 313 00:25:27,325 --> 00:25:31,352 then 20 years ago he'd made a tragic mistake. 314 00:25:32,998 --> 00:25:35,364 For in his haste to dig to the bottom, 315 00:25:35,600 --> 00:25:38,569 he destroyed much of what he'd been looking for. 316 00:25:40,305 --> 00:25:44,765 He'd never know what treasures had been lost. 317 00:25:49,080 --> 00:25:53,346 Exhausted, Schliemann vowed to continue the following season. 318 00:25:55,787 --> 00:25:57,550 But it was not to be. 319 00:25:58,557 --> 00:26:01,151 Suffering from a terrible pain in his ear, 320 00:26:01,393 --> 00:26:03,588 he traveled to Germany for surgery, 321 00:26:03,828 --> 00:26:05,693 then headed home to Greece. 322 00:26:07,232 --> 00:26:08,893 He never got there. 323 00:26:11,336 --> 00:26:13,531 Buried in Athens with a state funeral, 324 00:26:13,772 --> 00:26:16,798 Schliemann was mourned even by his critics. 325 00:26:19,611 --> 00:26:22,944 For 20 years he'd lit up the world of early archeology 326 00:26:23,181 --> 00:26:25,376 with his drive and enthusiasm. 327 00:26:26,918 --> 00:26:30,479 Pursuing his childhood dreams of ancient Greek heros to the end, 328 00:26:30,722 --> 00:26:34,283 he pushed back the frontiers of European history. 329 00:26:34,526 --> 00:26:39,987 In the process, he put the young science of archeology on the map. 330 00:26:42,801 --> 00:26:47,067 Among the many he inspired was a brilliant young man named Arthur Evans 331 00:26:47,305 --> 00:26:50,536 who visited Schliemann several years before his death. 332 00:26:55,747 --> 00:26:57,942 Reaching beyond Schliemann's discoveries, 333 00:26:58,183 --> 00:27:01,380 the intrepid Englishman would also track down a legend 334 00:27:01,620 --> 00:27:04,919 into the far corners or Europe's hidden past. 335 00:27:05,190 --> 00:27:08,421 He would reawaken an even older civilization buried in myth and oblivion 336 00:27:08,660 --> 00:27:12,426 for more than 3,000 years. 337 00:27:20,839 --> 00:27:25,776 Unlike Schliemann, Arthur Evans seemed destined to become an archeologist. 338 00:27:26,511 --> 00:27:29,742 His father, a wealthy paper manufacturer, 339 00:27:29,981 --> 00:27:32,745 was a pioneer in studying the past. 340 00:27:34,319 --> 00:27:37,152 Born in 1851, Arthur spent his childhood 341 00:27:37,389 --> 00:27:40,290 in the English countryside digging for Roman coins. 342 00:27:44,295 --> 00:27:48,925 But as the boy grew older, his nickname grew increasingly annoying- 343 00:27:49,167 --> 00:27:52,568 "Little Evans," son of John Evans the great. 344 00:27:52,837 --> 00:27:56,329 He's kind of, in his early years, like a rebel without a cause. 345 00:27:56,574 --> 00:28:00,442 He's looking for something to get hold of to be different 346 00:28:00,679 --> 00:28:03,580 than his father and to prove his own worth. 347 00:28:03,815 --> 00:28:07,717 And so as an expression of this sort of rebelliousness, 348 00:28:07,952 --> 00:28:10,682 he did the most romantic thing he could think of, 349 00:28:10,922 --> 00:28:13,516 which was to travel to the Balkans. 350 00:28:16,327 --> 00:28:19,057 From his first sight of the Balkans in 1871, 351 00:28:19,297 --> 00:28:23,097 Evans rejected any notion of returning to his father's business. 352 00:28:26,571 --> 00:28:29,369 Instantly at home, he haunted the bazaars, 353 00:28:29,607 --> 00:28:32,576 delighting in the colorful mixture of East and West. 354 00:28:41,286 --> 00:28:46,189 To Evans the fact that the land was at war only added to its appeal. 355 00:28:46,424 --> 00:28:51,259 The Slavs were rebelling against the Ottoman Turks after years of domination. 356 00:28:51,496 --> 00:28:55,159 Evans became a roving reporter for the Manchester Guardian. 357 00:28:57,335 --> 00:29:00,771 Affected with bad eyesight, he disdained glasses. 358 00:29:01,005 --> 00:29:03,997 Instead, he used is walking stick 359 00:29:04,242 --> 00:29:07,370 which he named 'prodger' as a kind of antenna. 360 00:29:07,612 --> 00:29:11,514 The mad Englishman with the walking stick became a familiar sight, 361 00:29:11,750 --> 00:29:14,617 and a thorn in the sight of authorities. 362 00:29:16,921 --> 00:29:18,115 He was quite a romantic. 363 00:29:18,356 --> 00:29:20,449 Much more volatile than his father. 364 00:29:20,692 --> 00:29:23,092 He did things like wearing a red cloak 365 00:29:23,328 --> 00:29:25,523 and riding on a black horse at the Turkish Burgess, 366 00:29:25,764 --> 00:29:27,857 really quite dangerous difficult territory. 367 00:29:28,099 --> 00:29:30,659 He did it with a sense of drama. 368 00:29:31,402 --> 00:29:35,930 He wanted to be a spy, and he did some very rash things. 369 00:29:37,509 --> 00:29:41,070 Evans sympathies were with the Slavs and their struggle for independence. 370 00:29:41,346 --> 00:29:44,975 As the years went on and the conflict intensified, 371 00:29:45,216 --> 00:29:48,151 his articles became more and more impassioned. 372 00:29:52,757 --> 00:29:55,487 His recklessness began to worry his wife Margaret, 373 00:29:55,727 --> 00:29:59,219 whom Evans had married after several years in the Balkans. 374 00:29:59,697 --> 00:30:02,461 The young couple had settled into Brovnia, Croatia, 375 00:30:02,700 --> 00:30:04,827 Arthur's version of paradise. 376 00:30:10,275 --> 00:30:14,268 But in 1882, Evans articles caught up with him. 377 00:30:16,114 --> 00:30:21,142 Thrown into jail as a spy, he languished there for seven weeks. 378 00:30:23,121 --> 00:30:26,090 Characteristically, the young adventurer found a novel way 379 00:30:26,324 --> 00:30:28,019 to communicate with his wife. 380 00:30:31,663 --> 00:30:36,123 Breaking a tooth off his pocket comb, he drew blood from his arm. 381 00:30:36,801 --> 00:30:37,733 "Dear Margaret" 382 00:30:37,969 --> 00:30:39,937 He wrote in his blood, 383 00:30:40,271 --> 00:30:44,970 "I'm fine, but it would be wise to get a lawyer." 384 00:30:46,044 --> 00:30:49,036 His family did succeed in getting him released. 385 00:30:49,280 --> 00:30:51,646 But Evans was expelled from the Balkans. 386 00:30:51,883 --> 00:30:54,579 For him, paradise was lost. 387 00:30:56,588 --> 00:31:00,319 Once home in England the landscape looked grey and leaden. 388 00:31:02,894 --> 00:31:06,887 Arthur missed the Mediterranean and found that he couldn't sit still. 389 00:31:10,468 --> 00:31:13,596 So he and Margaret took off on a grand tour, 390 00:31:13,838 --> 00:31:17,706 a holiday that would have a lasting impact on his future. 391 00:31:19,444 --> 00:31:22,936 In Greece, the young couple visited the customary sights 392 00:31:23,181 --> 00:31:27,140 revered by educated Europeans as the essence of beauty. 393 00:31:30,889 --> 00:31:33,187 Evans was unimpressed. 394 00:31:34,092 --> 00:31:38,119 He was more interested in truly ancient ruins, 395 00:31:38,363 --> 00:31:40,297 like the ones at Mycenae. 396 00:31:42,367 --> 00:31:46,326 Ever since the first newspaper accounts more than a decade before, 397 00:31:46,571 --> 00:31:50,905 Evans had been fascinated by the discoveries of Heinrich Schliemann. 398 00:31:52,610 --> 00:31:56,011 He visited the German archeologist at his home in Athens. 399 00:31:59,851 --> 00:32:02,547 With great pride, Schliemann showed the younger man 400 00:32:02,787 --> 00:32:05,688 the objects he'd unearthed at Mycenae. 401 00:32:07,025 --> 00:32:09,016 Evans was captivated. 402 00:32:12,597 --> 00:32:16,624 His nearsighted eyes would often notice details others missed. 403 00:32:18,870 --> 00:32:23,034 And what excited him here were the tiny sealstones used to press 404 00:32:23,274 --> 00:32:25,834 a design into wax or clay. 405 00:32:31,015 --> 00:32:34,075 Their intricate symbols reminded him of picture writing 406 00:32:34,319 --> 00:32:36,310 like the Egyptian hieroglyphs. 407 00:32:38,156 --> 00:32:40,681 Could it be that this early European civilization 408 00:32:40,925 --> 00:32:42,950 had also mastered the art of writing? 409 00:32:47,598 --> 00:32:50,066 And if it was so advanced, thought Evans, 410 00:32:50,301 --> 00:32:53,702 then surely another civilization must have preceded it. 411 00:32:56,374 --> 00:33:01,073 He seemed to feel almost instinctively that there had to be something earlier. 412 00:33:01,312 --> 00:33:04,475 I think that as one of the great contributions, really, 413 00:33:04,716 --> 00:33:06,547 that Evans made was the sense 414 00:33:06,784 --> 00:33:09,582 that Mycenaean art wasn't the beginning of something; 415 00:33:09,821 --> 00:33:10,719 it was the end of something. 416 00:33:10,955 --> 00:33:13,651 So he had this sense that there must be something earlier to find. 417 00:33:13,891 --> 00:33:16,086 And that, of course, was one of the things that pointed him 418 00:33:16,327 --> 00:33:18,124 in the direction of Crete. 419 00:33:21,499 --> 00:33:26,732 In 1893, Evans' wife Margaret died of tuberculosis. 420 00:33:27,638 --> 00:33:30,300 The couple had been living in Oxford for ten years 421 00:33:30,541 --> 00:33:33,908 where Evans served as director of the Ashmolean Museum. 422 00:33:37,081 --> 00:33:40,209 Without his companion, Evans was bereft. 423 00:33:40,852 --> 00:33:45,255 For the rest of his life he would only write on black bordered note paper. 424 00:33:48,626 --> 00:33:51,254 Clearly, he needed a new adventure. 425 00:33:52,630 --> 00:33:55,724 His mind returned to his meeting with Schliemann 426 00:33:55,967 --> 00:33:58,765 and the enigma of the sealstone. 427 00:33:59,003 --> 00:34:02,803 He'd heard that the island of Crete was full of these little treasures. 428 00:34:03,107 --> 00:34:05,905 It was time to see for himself. 429 00:34:12,383 --> 00:34:18,413 In 1894, Arthur Evans went to Crete, a sleepy island in the Aegean Sea. 430 00:34:23,694 --> 00:34:28,791 In ancient times it had been fabled as a rich and populous land. 431 00:34:33,271 --> 00:34:35,364 Now under the control of the Ottoman Turks, 432 00:34:35,606 --> 00:34:38,598 it was timeless and unspoiled. 433 00:34:41,079 --> 00:34:44,048 Exactly the sort of place Arthur Evans liked. 434 00:34:44,715 --> 00:34:50,210 He traveled all over the island looking for sealstones unearthed by the plow. 435 00:34:51,923 --> 00:34:55,381 Here women called them 'milkstones' and wore them around their necks 436 00:34:55,626 --> 00:34:57,958 to ensure enough milk for their babies. 437 00:35:04,368 --> 00:35:06,563 Finally, he came to a great mound, 438 00:35:06,904 --> 00:35:10,237 still identified by the locals as the site of Knossos, 439 00:35:10,475 --> 00:35:13,740 in Greek mythology, the palace of King Minos. 440 00:35:16,280 --> 00:35:19,408 Arthur Evans couldn't resist the power of the myth, 441 00:35:20,051 --> 00:35:26,047 that beneath this hill once lay the labyrinth of the monstrous Minotaur. 442 00:35:31,195 --> 00:35:34,562 As the story goes, every year the City of Athens 443 00:35:34,799 --> 00:35:37,791 was required to send tribute to King Minos. 444 00:35:39,570 --> 00:35:42,971 Seven youths and seven maidens were sent into the labyrinth 445 00:35:43,207 --> 00:35:44,834 to face the Minotaur, 446 00:35:45,076 --> 00:35:48,773 the terrifying monster half man and half bull. 447 00:35:52,350 --> 00:35:53,840 No one came out alive. 448 00:35:59,590 --> 00:36:02,388 Then a youth named Theseus devised a scheme 449 00:36:02,627 --> 00:36:05,960 to mark his trail with a ball of thread. 450 00:36:16,274 --> 00:36:19,300 The hero met the Minotaur in a great battle. 451 00:36:31,756 --> 00:36:34,782 Triumphant, he followed the thread to freedom. 452 00:36:39,564 --> 00:36:42,032 When Arthur Evans arrived at the great mound, 453 00:36:42,266 --> 00:36:45,758 it looked like any other hill with no evidence of a palace, 454 00:36:46,003 --> 00:36:48,164 let alone a abyrinth. 455 00:36:49,540 --> 00:36:54,603 But Evans met a man who had found some huge storage jars close to the surface. 456 00:36:54,979 --> 00:36:58,745 He claimed there was much more waiting beneath the earth. 457 00:37:02,086 --> 00:37:06,079 Evans began to negotiate with the land's Turkish owners. 458 00:37:08,793 --> 00:37:11,557 It took him five years and the patience 459 00:37:11,796 --> 00:37:16,096 to wait until Crete gained its independence from the Turks. 460 00:37:16,901 --> 00:37:18,994 Evans had learned as a collector 461 00:37:19,237 --> 00:37:25,506 that the only way really to control an artifact was to own it. 462 00:37:25,743 --> 00:37:29,338 So Evans decided to own his greatest artifact, 463 00:37:29,580 --> 00:37:32,845 and to buy Knossos because he knew that as landowner 464 00:37:33,084 --> 00:37:34,210 he would have a right to do 465 00:37:34,452 --> 00:37:35,942 whatever he wanted on it. 466 00:37:36,754 --> 00:37:42,715 On the 23rd of March 1900, Arthur Evans broke ground at Knossos. 467 00:37:54,605 --> 00:37:57,699 In an effort to heal scars from the recent war for independence, 468 00:37:57,942 --> 00:38:03,175 he hired both Muslims and Christians, men and women, to work the dig. 469 00:38:05,883 --> 00:38:09,512 Evans himself was almost overcome with excitement. 470 00:38:10,021 --> 00:38:12,956 There is a bit of schizophrenia almost in Evans 471 00:38:13,190 --> 00:38:18,093 where he is trained by his father as the scientific archeologist. 472 00:38:18,329 --> 00:38:19,193 At the same time, 473 00:38:19,430 --> 00:38:24,561 the romantic explorer is desperate to get at the treasure. 474 00:38:29,407 --> 00:38:31,034 It didn't take long. 475 00:38:32,543 --> 00:38:35,011 Exactly one week after he began digging, 476 00:38:35,246 --> 00:38:37,146 Arthur Evans found clay tablets 477 00:38:37,381 --> 00:38:41,613 inscribed with two different systems of writing never seen before. 478 00:38:41,852 --> 00:38:45,379 Evans called them 'Linear A' and 'Linear B.' 479 00:38:47,058 --> 00:38:51,119 He would spend the rest of his long life trying to decipher them. 480 00:38:55,900 --> 00:38:59,836 Even more extraordinary lay in wait. 481 00:39:02,740 --> 00:39:07,006 Arthur Evans found in the very first week of his excavation 482 00:39:07,244 --> 00:39:09,075 a wonderful gypsum throne, 483 00:39:09,313 --> 00:39:13,147 a stone throne still it in a place, 484 00:39:13,384 --> 00:39:18,151 in a room beautifully decorated with frescos, it was flanked by griffins. 485 00:39:18,589 --> 00:39:20,887 And he was instantly able to announce to the world 486 00:39:21,125 --> 00:39:22,786 this is the oldest throne in Europe, 487 00:39:23,027 --> 00:39:26,895 this is the beginning of European civilization. 488 00:39:32,403 --> 00:39:36,999 The civilization Evans was uncovering seemed amazingly advanced. 489 00:39:39,643 --> 00:39:42,168 While the rest of Europe was still living in huts, 490 00:39:42,413 --> 00:39:47,976 these ancient people had resided in comfort and splendor. 491 00:39:49,653 --> 00:39:54,420 Essentially it really was like a grand European palace 492 00:39:56,026 --> 00:40:00,019 where you had running water actually running through the building itself. 493 00:40:02,066 --> 00:40:08,733 This sort of thing, most of Evans' readers in the London Times didn't have. 494 00:40:08,973 --> 00:40:12,841 You know, flushing toilets in their own houses and fresh water 495 00:40:13,077 --> 00:40:14,635 running through the houses. 496 00:40:18,849 --> 00:40:21,215 Elated by the extraordinary treasures of Knossos, 497 00:40:21,452 --> 00:40:26,253 Evans boldly announced to the world that he had found a completely unknown, 498 00:40:26,490 --> 00:40:28,515 unimagined civilization. 499 00:40:34,231 --> 00:40:35,630 Older than Schliemann's Mycenae, 500 00:40:37,435 --> 00:40:41,769 and more than 15,000 years older than classical Greece. 501 00:40:43,374 --> 00:40:47,367 He decided these remarkable ancient Europeans needed a name. 502 00:40:47,812 --> 00:40:51,771 'Minoan' he called them after the legend of King Minos. 503 00:40:53,984 --> 00:40:56,316 This time Arthur Evans had found a cause 504 00:40:56,554 --> 00:40:59,523 equal to his boundless imagination. 505 00:41:05,129 --> 00:41:08,394 As the years went on, the challenges set in. 506 00:41:10,067 --> 00:41:13,434 Winter storms damaged the vulnerable ruins. 507 00:41:15,139 --> 00:41:19,473 Evans realized he had to devise a way to protect them. 508 00:41:20,544 --> 00:41:24,275 It was only the beginning of his conservation problems. 509 00:41:26,016 --> 00:41:28,382 Soon his workmen found evidence that 510 00:41:28,619 --> 00:41:31,179 the palace had actually had several stories. 511 00:41:34,558 --> 00:41:39,086 Evans sent two experienced silver miners tunneling into the earth. 512 00:41:44,001 --> 00:41:44,933 They dug for weeks, 513 00:41:45,169 --> 00:41:50,266 eventually revealing the remains of four magnificent flights of stone steps. 514 00:41:55,579 --> 00:41:58,309 Evans found the only way to preserve the staircase 515 00:41:58,549 --> 00:42:01,143 was to restore it to its former glory. 516 00:42:03,254 --> 00:42:06,314 All it would take was a bit of imagination. 517 00:42:08,125 --> 00:42:13,995 Really what started off as a first- aid to keep the building in tact 518 00:42:14,231 --> 00:42:16,461 grew out of hand a little bit 519 00:42:16,700 --> 00:42:19,828 because he began to really enjoy what he was doing. 520 00:42:21,739 --> 00:42:25,505 Little by little, Evans began to restore Knossos. 521 00:42:29,179 --> 00:42:33,513 Using his own fortune, he transformed the ruins into rooms, 522 00:42:33,751 --> 00:42:37,278 based on his personal vision of Minoan architecture. 523 00:42:41,725 --> 00:42:44,922 The project was controversial from the start. 524 00:42:45,629 --> 00:42:50,726 Evans used modern materials like steel and reinforced concrete, 525 00:42:51,001 --> 00:42:55,631 melding the ancient with the latest in 20th century architecture. 526 00:42:58,108 --> 00:43:03,102 Evans was trying to recreate a total experience in the same way 527 00:43:03,347 --> 00:43:06,475 that we try to set up virtual reality mazes 528 00:43:06,717 --> 00:43:08,844 where people can experience architecture. 529 00:43:09,086 --> 00:43:12,214 Evans was trying to do the same thing at Knossos. 530 00:43:13,724 --> 00:43:16,124 He was criticized for building a movie set, 531 00:43:16,360 --> 00:43:19,124 and in a sense that is what he was doing. 532 00:43:24,535 --> 00:43:29,029 He wanted people to be able to walk through and experience the building. 533 00:43:30,541 --> 00:43:34,944 But really one is experiencing Evans' vision 534 00:43:35,179 --> 00:43:39,377 more than anything else when you visit Knossos. 535 00:43:47,124 --> 00:43:51,390 Even Evans critics today admit that the palace would be a confusing maze 536 00:43:51,629 --> 00:43:53,790 without his unifying vision. 537 00:43:56,533 --> 00:43:59,058 As more and more ruins continued to be unearthed, 538 00:43:59,303 --> 00:44:01,430 Evans hired architects to help him 539 00:44:01,672 --> 00:44:04,766 make sense of the twisting corridors and rooms. 540 00:44:06,610 --> 00:44:07,736 He began to think that 541 00:44:07,978 --> 00:44:11,607 the palace itself had inspired the myth of the labyrinth, 542 00:44:11,849 --> 00:44:16,786 for he found 1400 rooms stretched over 6 acres. 543 00:44:19,757 --> 00:44:23,215 The palace was reasonably well preserved, 544 00:44:23,460 --> 00:44:26,952 but nothing like as well preserved as it now feels. 545 00:44:27,197 --> 00:44:32,294 It is really quite important to walk into a place and have a sense of walls 546 00:44:32,536 --> 00:44:35,596 and ceilings as well as just foundations 547 00:44:35,839 --> 00:44:37,602 the come up to about knee level. 548 00:44:42,012 --> 00:44:43,707 So with things like the grand staircase, 549 00:44:43,947 --> 00:44:45,505 of which he was hugely proud, 550 00:44:45,749 --> 00:44:48,946 I think a lot of people have cause to be grateful to Evans 551 00:44:49,186 --> 00:44:53,179 for allowing them the chance to walk down a Minoan staircase 552 00:44:53,424 --> 00:44:57,417 and to be surrounded by Minoan columns and even restored frescos on the wall. 553 00:44:57,661 --> 00:45:00,755 It has been a wonderful experience. 554 00:45:09,139 --> 00:45:11,835 Evans was inspired by the frescos. 555 00:45:18,482 --> 00:45:22,043 The fragments suggested a world surprisingly modern, 556 00:45:22,286 --> 00:45:25,619 a handsome people who lived in harmony with nature. 557 00:45:27,591 --> 00:45:30,560 But the images were indistinct and broken. 558 00:45:33,097 --> 00:45:34,792 So Evans took another leap. 559 00:45:35,032 --> 00:45:38,934 He hired a team of artists to help him fill in the blanks. 560 00:45:40,504 --> 00:45:45,567 What emerged from Evans palette was a world of grace of sensuality, 561 00:45:45,809 --> 00:45:48,300 unlike any other in ancient times. 562 00:45:52,649 --> 00:45:54,583 There were no images of war. 563 00:45:56,053 --> 00:45:59,045 Women were on an equal footing with men. 564 00:46:00,524 --> 00:46:04,187 Priestesses led the worship of a mother goddess. 565 00:46:05,796 --> 00:46:09,493 How much of this inviting world was truly Minoan, 566 00:46:09,733 --> 00:46:13,635 and how much the creation of Arthur Evans? 567 00:46:15,806 --> 00:46:17,706 He idealized the Minoans. 568 00:46:17,941 --> 00:46:20,637 He had no real concept that there could be 569 00:46:20,878 --> 00:46:23,904 an darker side to their nature, any war-likeness. 570 00:46:24,148 --> 00:46:27,811 They were, for him, sort of latter-day hippies, really. 571 00:46:28,051 --> 00:46:30,918 They were people who lived in an almost perfect world, 572 00:46:31,155 --> 00:46:34,522 a world which I think Evans saw in contrast to the real world. 573 00:46:34,758 --> 00:46:37,226 They were always a bit of an escape for him. 574 00:46:38,762 --> 00:46:40,753 During Evans years at Knossos, 575 00:46:40,998 --> 00:46:44,934 the outside world was shattered by the violence of World War I. 576 00:46:50,307 --> 00:46:52,798 Evans was horrified by the brutal technology 577 00:46:53,043 --> 00:46:55,307 and raw power of the 20th century. 578 00:46:58,949 --> 00:47:02,350 Just as he had escaped from industrial England in his youth, 579 00:47:02,586 --> 00:47:06,044 he found solace in the refined world of the Minoans. 580 00:47:10,494 --> 00:47:13,054 They became almost real to him, 581 00:47:13,297 --> 00:47:16,460 a perfect people who lived in an ideal world. 582 00:47:20,437 --> 00:47:23,565 In his writings only once did Evans admit 583 00:47:23,807 --> 00:47:26,742 that his Minoans might have had a violent side. 584 00:47:28,946 --> 00:47:30,470 He couldn't help noticing that 585 00:47:30,714 --> 00:47:36,311 everywhere he looked in the palace he saw menacing images of bulls. 586 00:47:37,588 --> 00:47:38,646 They reminded him of 587 00:47:38,889 --> 00:47:42,882 the innocent youths and maidens sacrificed to the Minotaur. 588 00:47:47,698 --> 00:47:49,791 One fresco haunted him, 589 00:47:50,033 --> 00:47:54,936 a charging bull with a young acrobat in the midst of a suicidal leap. 590 00:47:57,007 --> 00:47:59,942 What could be the meaning of this cruel sport, 591 00:48:00,177 --> 00:48:03,977 so like the bloody rituals of the Roman amphitheater? 592 00:48:11,588 --> 00:48:14,455 "The sports of the Roman amphitheater may thus in Crete 593 00:48:14,691 --> 00:48:17,854 may be trace back to prehistoric times. 594 00:48:18,328 --> 00:48:21,957 Perhaps the legends of Athenian prisoners devoured by the Minotaur 595 00:48:22,199 --> 00:48:28,468 preserve a real tradition of such cruel sports."...Arthur Evans 596 00:48:35,612 --> 00:48:39,514 But most of the time Evans Minoans seemed to have lived with all the grace 597 00:48:39,750 --> 00:48:42,446 and polish of their eminent discoverer. 598 00:48:47,291 --> 00:48:50,419 He was Sir Arthur now, widely honored and renowned. 599 00:48:52,195 --> 00:48:53,822 He entertained frequently, 600 00:48:54,064 --> 00:48:58,797 but remained a private person, more at home in the world he created. 601 00:49:04,074 --> 00:49:07,703 He spent much of his later years writing a history of the Minoans called, 602 00:49:07,945 --> 00:49:09,708 "The Palace of Minos." 603 00:49:09,947 --> 00:49:11,539 In defiance of modern technology, 604 00:49:11,782 --> 00:49:17,084 he wrote all four volumes in longhand with a white goose-feather quill pen. 605 00:49:19,289 --> 00:49:21,587 Many of his friends said his handwriting 606 00:49:21,825 --> 00:49:25,022 was even beginning to look like Linear A. 607 00:49:31,768 --> 00:49:36,796 Throughout his writings Evans insisted on the superiority of his Minoans. 608 00:49:39,576 --> 00:49:41,737 He believed they had dominated the Aegean, 609 00:49:41,979 --> 00:49:45,540 lording over the more warlike tribes of mainland Greece. 610 00:49:48,819 --> 00:49:50,753 Even in the face of conflicting evidence, 611 00:49:50,988 --> 00:49:55,015 he insisted that only an earthquake precipitated their fall. 612 00:49:57,961 --> 00:49:59,553 Other archaeologists disagreed. 613 00:49:59,796 --> 00:50:03,596 They pointed to evidence which showed that the Minoans had been conquered 614 00:50:03,834 --> 00:50:08,533 by the Mycenaeans sweeping in from Greece about 1450 B.C. 615 00:50:15,879 --> 00:50:20,976 Evans could never accept the image of his Minoans as a captive people. 616 00:50:28,792 --> 00:50:33,627 To the end of his life Evans remained true to his dream of the Minoans. 617 00:50:36,500 --> 00:50:39,731 All over Crete other excavators were digging, 618 00:50:39,970 --> 00:50:42,097 revealing the outlines of other palaces 619 00:50:42,339 --> 00:50:45,206 that had flourished at the same time as his Knossos. 620 00:50:49,846 --> 00:50:56,308 Their methods were not the same as his- science had taken over archeology. 621 00:50:56,887 --> 00:51:01,085 No longer would a single vision recreate a civilization. 622 00:51:02,292 --> 00:51:05,784 The days of the treasure seekers were over. 623 00:51:07,364 --> 00:51:09,355 There are instances where we can see him 624 00:51:09,599 --> 00:51:13,160 as being wrongheaded, pigheaded, just plain wrong. 625 00:51:13,403 --> 00:51:17,066 But what really strikes you very forcibly is that 626 00:51:17,307 --> 00:51:20,834 if you're starting any piece of Minoan research, 627 00:51:21,078 --> 00:51:22,568 if you're asking any questions, 628 00:51:22,813 --> 00:51:25,646 you can almost always go back to Arthur Evans' writings 629 00:51:25,882 --> 00:51:27,144 and find a starting point. 630 00:51:27,384 --> 00:51:29,181 You may not agree with what he says about it, 631 00:51:29,419 --> 00:51:32,786 but he almost always been there first and thought of the question. 632 00:51:35,525 --> 00:51:39,757 Regardless of whether it was true or not, Evans image of Minoan culture- 633 00:51:39,996 --> 00:51:44,092 its elegance and grace- captivated the Western imagination. 634 00:51:48,038 --> 00:51:52,873 It continues to inspire more than a million visitors to Knossos every year. 635 00:51:55,645 --> 00:51:58,637 The treasure he'd unearthed was more than gold. 636 00:52:00,016 --> 00:52:02,814 It was the vision of a civilized world 637 00:52:03,053 --> 00:52:06,716 deep in the dark recesses of the European past.