This summer a remote region of Turkey hit the headlines. On the banks of the Euphrates archaeologists have discovered extraordinary examples of Roman art buried in a forgotten ancient city. But it is all about to be lost for ever under the floodwaters of a new dam. This film charts the archaeologists race against time. Horizon: The Secret Treasures of Zeugma, BBC 2000
The City of Zeugma: it was once the most important crossing point of the Euphrates. And the thriving centre of the great trade routes between east and west. Zeugma was founded by the Greeks in 300 B.C. and quickly grew to become a major city. ibid.
Under these trees is an entire city: streets, houses, markets and temples. It’s impossible to uncover it all in the time they have left. ibid.
It’s beginning to dawn on them that they might well at last have found one of the great villas of Zeugma ... They discover something very rare indeed. As they brush away the earth from sections of wall brightly coloured paintings emerge from beneath the crumbling mud ... Now that the paintings have been uncovered, they will have to be cleaned and removed from the site ... Over the next three days sixty-three square meters of a richly coloured and exquisitely designed mosaic are revealed ... The discovery of this extraordinary mosaic caused an international outcry ... The mosaic tells the story of a Greek myth. ibid.
There must be scores of other villas as beautiful as this buried in the lower terraces of Zeugma that will never now be found. ibid.
Deep inside this ancient mine is the key to one of Europe’s biggest archaeological mysteries. It’s a story that begins with a robbery from a burial site in the dark heart of Europe ... At its heart is one small piece of bronze. This is the extraordinary tale of how one small bronze disc is rewriting the story of how civilisation may have first come to ancient Europe. Horizon: Secrets of the Star Disc, BBC 2004
This forest in eastern Germany contains some of Europe’s oldest human settlements. ibid.
In 1999 three men came combing through this forest with metal detectors ... After a brief struggle the earth gave up a treasure it had kept safe for over three thousand years. What these robbers didn’t realise was that they may have dug up one of the most significant archaeological finds of the century ... A fantastic hoard of what seemed to be bronze-age treasure. There were jewels, tools and swords. But there was something else too: a disc of exquisite design. ibid.
And for the first time Harald Meller [archaeologist] really took in the disc. There inlaid in gold was the reason why it had been called magical. An incredible picture of the sky with the sun, moon and what seemed to be stars. Nothing like this had ever been seen before. ibid.
‘We could securely date the disc to 1,600 BC.’ ibid. expert
The oldest accurate picture of the night sky in all history. ibid.
In the heart of downtown Miami between the skyscrapers and hotels lies a mystery. Something extraordinary was recently discovered here. Strange holes in the ground. These holes are worth $27 million. They don’t contain oil or gold. But something much more intriguing. These holes could be the most exciting find in America for decades. Or they could be a costly mistake. Horizon: The Mystery of the Miami Circle, BBC 2001
Below the fill was a layer of ancient refuse, or midden. It was evidence of prehistoric life. But this was just the start. What they were about to find would exceed their wildest expectations. As they carried on digging a bizarre feature came to light. They had found strange round holes pock-marking the surface of the limestone bed-rock. The rock is porous and easily eroded, so these could be normal erosion holes. Or could they be man-made? ibid.
Riggs was right: underneath his line was a complete circle of basins cut into the rock. The archaeologists believed they may have found something truly remarkable. The remains of a mysterious ancient monument. Perhaps it was the legacy of a long-lost people. ibid.
Was the Circle two-thousand years old? Or the most expensive mistake in archaeology? ibid.
Was it really the Tequesta who built the circle? ... Perhaps this was a place of religious significance. So what kind of structure was the Circle? ... A building on stilts made perfect sense ... It is possible to reconstruct what this Tequesta village looked like. ibid.
The remains of shellfish once eaten on the site were carbon dated. The results were sensational. The earliest date is 730 B.C. This means that the settlement could have been founded 2,700 years ago. What has been discovered has changed our entire view of the people who once lived here. ibid.
The first breakthrough was made by Heinrich Schliemann in 1870. He was something of an amateur but he had other qualities ... They placed Troy in the north west corner of what is now Turkey ... Fifteen metres down he found a walled palace with a paved ramp leading to a gate. Schliemann thought he had found Homer’s Troy. The rest of the world wasn’t so sure. But in this trench he answered the doubters with a breath-taking discovery: treasure. Horizon: The Truth of Troy, BBC 2004
These jewels could never have been worn by Helen. They were more than a thousand years too old. Schliemann had dug down too deep. ibid.
Perhaps there was more to Troy than had so far been uncovered. Outside the city walls [Manfred] Korfmann’s team began to excavate ... A city of the late Bronze Age was now revealed. Korfmann believes it was a sizeable city with a population between four and eight thousand. ibid.
A strange disc covered in strange signs dating back to an ancient civilisation over 3,000 years old. The Phaistos Disc has stunned historians ever since it was discovered. Ancient X Files s1e2: Blood of Christ & Mystery Disc, National Geographic 2010
The disc displays 242 mysterious characters arranged in groups leading in a spiral towards the centre, and covering both sides. ibid.
In 79 A.D. this volcano exploded ... Pompeii: the eruption which wiped this ancient town off the Roman map is one of the world’s most famous disasters. Professor Mary Beard, Pompeii: Life and Death in a Roman Town, BBC 2012
Pompeii is the most important archaeological site in the Roman world. ibid.
Herculanium was buried under more than fifty feet of volcanic debris during the eruption of 79. ibid.
There are so many previously unknown sites and structures all over the world. And I think most importantly what satellites help to show us is we’ve actually only found a fraction of a percent of ancient settlements and sites all over the world. Sarah Parcak
In 1974 some Chinese farmers made one of the world’s greatest archaeological discoveries: by chance they’d found the Terracotta Warriors. Secrets of the Terracotta Warriors: Secret History, Channel 4 2015
Suppose the city of Sparta to be deserted, and nothing left but the temples and the ground-plan, distant ages would be very unwilling to believe that the power of the Lacedaemonians was at all equal to their fame. Their city is not built continuously, and has no splendid temples or other edifices; it rather resembles a group of villages, like the ancient towns of Hellas, and would therefore make a poor show. Thucydides
The site Heinrich [Schliemann] identified as Troy is still one of the most famous digs in the history of archaeology. Troy: The Truth Behind the Legend
First test excavations are very promising. His finds indicate an ancient settlement on the hill. The artefacts salvaged by Frank Calvert are now exhibited. ibid.
A total of ten different layers have been identified. At first Schliemann is helpless. ibid.
Eight weeks later on August 5th 1873 a German newspaper reports the sensation: Heinrich Schliemann has discovered the treasure of Priam. ibid.
Homer describes Troy as a metropolis of several thousand inhabitants. ibid.
At the gates of the citadel there is no sign of a bolting device ... The excavators assumed there was a further city wall outside the fortifications. ibid.
Troy’s existence is now proved. But was there really a Trojan war as Homer described it in the Iliad? ibid.
Schliemann is once again as lucky as he could be: in 1876 he actually discovers a royal cemetery. ibid.
He gives Greece 1,000 years of additional history. ibid.
He became the most famous archaeologist in the world. ibid.
Over a thousand years ago an ancient people built a thriving metropolis that dominated an entire continent. It was bigger than either medieval London or Paris … North America – and it was built five hundred years before Columbus arrived … An ancient city that vanished as soon as it arrived. Ancient Mysteries s1e1: America’s Hidden Pyramid City, Channel 5 2016
A series of mysterious mounds rise up [sic] from the Mississippi flood-plain … How long had they been here? ibid.
1150 A.D. … a besieged fortress, and was potentially dealing with a violent internal conflict … People began abandoning the city. ibid.
Climate: terrible droughts, ‘the tree rings get much narrower.’ ibid.