All language subtitles for Historys Greatest Mysteries S05E04 1080p WEB h264-EDITH_track3_[eng]

- Tonight,

its haunting images captivated
millions around the world.

- Many people believe this is

the cloth that wrapped
Jesus of Nazareth

after his crucifixion.

- It is a bloodstained image
that is forensically accurate.

It's an anatomically
perfect human being.

- But is the Shroud of
Turin a genuine holy relic

or something very different?

- The image on the shroud
reflects what the Bible says

about the beating, the torture,
and the crucifixion of Christ.

- If you look at
the image carefully,

you'll see some inconsistencies.

- Millions of people die.

We have nothing else like this
for any other human being.

- Now, we explore
the top theories

behind the origin of
one of the world's

most mysterious objects.

- We don't know how
this image was created.

It's not painted.

There's no way to tell how this
image ends up on the shroud.

- To replicate the shroud image,

you would need 14,000 lasers

all going off instantaneously
at the same time.

- How did this image come to be?

And is it truly
an image of Jesus?

(tense dramatic music)

- [Laurence] Jerusalem, 33 AD.

According to the gospels,

after years of preaching
and gathering disciples

throughout the Holy Land,

the life of Jesus of Nazareth
reaches a pivotal moment.

- For many Christians,

the story of Holy Week
begins with Jesus on Sunday

entering into
Jerusalem in triumph.

Here he is in the most
important city for Jews.

He's in this temple,

the sacred place
for Jewish worship,

and he's appalled by
what he finds there.

- The gospels have Jesus
going into the temple complex

and overturning the tables
of the money changers there.

He's condemning the abuse
of people that are poor.

He's condemning
the abuse of people

that might want to go to the
temple to actually worship.

- He says, "You've
taken something

that is holy and beautiful,

and you've made this
a den of thieves."

- When your control is
being threatened, you act.

And so what the
aristocratic priest do

is they bring Jesus
in for a hearing.

And they're not
so much interested

in hearing what he has to say

but imposing charges on him

that he was threatening
to damage the temple.

- When Jesus is arrested,

they argue that he
has disrupted Judaism,

that he is claiming to be God

and hasn't been mindful
of secular authority.

- What Jesus is
doing in Jerusalem

is absolutely upsetting
the status quo,

and they're just not sure
what to do with this guy.

The Jewish aristocratic
leadership,

they are not the
most senior members

in the status quo
power of Jerusalem,

the Romans are,

so they need to take Jesus
to the civil authority.

- [Laurence] The Jewish
authorities arrest Jesus

and hand him over to the Romans.

The Roman governor,
Pontius Pilate,

declares that Jesus's claim
to be king amounts to treason

and sentences him to
death by crucifixion.

- Crucifixion is not
a noble form of death.

Crucifixion is brutal.

He was to carry his own cross

to transport the
instrument of his death

to the location
where he would die.

His hands are
nailed to the cross.

His feet are nailed
to the cross.

- Above his head is this phrase,

"Jesus of Nazareth,
The King of the Jews,"

crowned not with a
crown but with thorns.

This is partly punishment.

This is partly to
humiliate Jesus.

- The Romans use
crucifixion as a deterrent

and what better deterrent
than one that causes death

in a slow, agonizing,
and painful way.

For the Romans, this is
a public way of saying,

"If you mess with us, if you
mess with the Roman Empire,

this is what will happen to you.

You will die and you will
die horribly and publicly."

- It takes roughly six
hours for Jesus to die.

Once he's dead,

he's taken off the cross
and wrapped in cloth

and taken to a borrowed tomb.

- Jesus' death at three
o'clock in the afternoon

means that burial needs to
occur very, very quickly

because the setting of the
sun and the start of Sabbath

is going to be on them
very, very quickly.

So there's a sense of urgency
about moving Jesus' body

from the execution site
to the burial site.

- There could be no work
done on the Sabbath,

so there was a rush to get
him enshrouded and entombed.

And that is why, of course,

the women were returning on
Sunday morning after the Sabbath

so that they could finish
the anointing of his body.

- What happens is, of course,

the great event in
Christianity, the resurrection.

Jesus isn't there.
His body isn't there.

He has been resurrected.

- All that remains
is the linen cloth

that once covered the body.

- [Laurence] Jesus's
burial cloth

aren't mentioned
again in the gospels

and what happens to
them is a mystery.

The next chapter in
the story of the shroud

doesn't happen for more
than a thousand years.

- The next time we see it
showing up in history is 1355,

where a Christian knight who
has been part of the Crusades

obtains this cloth,

brings it back to
his home church,

and he claims that it
is the burial shroud

that held the body of Jesus
before his resurrection.

- Because this knight
fought in the Crusades,

there was reason for
folks to believe

that he may have been
able to secure this cloth

in the Holy Land and
bring it to his church.

- There's no good
reason to suspect

he wasn't able to find something

while he was there in
Jerusalem, in the Holy Land.

There's obviously a direct
connection between this man

and the treasures that
he may have discovered

while he was in those Crusades.

- [Laurence] The knight
is Geoffroi de Charny

and a close examination
of the cloth

seems to confirm his story.

- The shroud is roughly
14 feet long, 3 feet wide,

and it contains the image of
a man who has been tortured.

You see his front
as well as his back.

And what really captures
the imagination of folks

is that the shroud
seems to contain

a tremendous amount of blood

in areas that would
suggest crucifixion.

The image seems to suggest that
this person had been whipped

and the blood around the
head seems to suggest

something placed on the head,

perhaps along the lines
of the crown of thorns

the Bible says was placed
on the head of Jesus.

Wounds on the wrist,

wounds on the feet suggest
a narrative very similar

to what we have been told about
the crucifixion of Christ.

- [Laurence] The shroud is
the subject of veneration

and speculation
for many centuries.

- This cloth comes
into knowledge in 1355.

It stays in the Charny family
for about a hundred years.

Eventually, it's sold
to the House of Savoy,

which has jurisdiction ruling

over what is now
France and Italy.

- The Savoy family
actually provides

the perfect historical construct
for us to piece together

most of the documented
history of the shroud.

The Savoy family came into
possession of the cloth in 1453.

- The Savoy family
would take it with them

and display it in different
churches over the years,

particularly when they
were still in France.

When they moved it
to Turin in 1578,

that sort of became the seed
of the Savoy family's power.

- When the last of
the House of Savoy,

the last king of Italy,
Umberto II, dies in 1983,

he wills the shroud
to the living Pope,

who was at the time,
Pope John Paul II.

It was with the stipulation

that the shroud would be
the property of the Pope,

whoever the Pope is,
as an individual,

and would not belong to the
institutional Catholic Church.

- [Laurence] More than 600 years
after the shroud first appears,

scientists are granted a
chance to uncover the answers.

- The shroud itself was moved

amidst conditions
of great secrecy.

It was done at midnight,

no cameras were allowed in,

and the Roman Catholic priests
who are the normal custodians

took a solemn oath
afterwards that the cloth,

which was placed in
the display cabinet,

was indeed the Holy Shroud.

- The Shroud of Turin
Research Project, or STURP,

was a group of 33
scientists and researchers

who came together in 1978

to perform an in-depth
scientific examination

of the Shroud of Turin.

- In their report, the
STURP team concludes

that there was no scientific
explanation for the image

that could be accounted for
by any known scientific means.

- [Laurence] In
the decades since,

hundreds of scientists have
studied the data collected

by the Shroud of Turin
Research Project,

but one professor has
proposed a unique explanation

for the appearance of
the image on the shroud.

- Giovanni Fazio is a researcher
out of Messina in Italy,

and in 2015, he comes up

with this really
interesting hypothesis

that maybe what's caused the
image to appear on the shroud

would've been on the body as
it was prepared for burial.

(tense music)

- [Laurence] According
to Fazio's theory,

the process begins in
the hours after Jesus

is lowered from the cross.

- Jesus was Jewish

and traditionally
in Jewish burials,

you should be buried
within 24 hours of death.

So what you did was
you used substances,

oils, ointments, myrrh.

You wrapped the body in cloth
partly to avoid this to smell,

partly to counter the fact
you've had a decomposing body

in the hot sun.

- [Laurence] A biblical passage

describes what happened
with Jesus's body.

- The gospel
according to St. John

is the one that gives
us the most detail.

- In John's gospel,

there's an interesting
character, Nicodemus,

who brings about 75
pounds of oil, aloes,

to help prepare Jesus's
body for its burial.

- This is enough to
bury several kings.

- [Laurence] But
how could this oil

have created the image seen
on the Shroud of Turin?

- It is possible that there
can be residues left on cloths

from certain ointments or oils,

particularly ones that
are very, very dense,

very thick in their composition.

- One of the really interesting
things that Fazio raises

is that if you
look at the shroud,

the image on the back
is a little bit darker.

This makes sense,
according to his theory,

that the person being
laid on their back,

the oils on the back would've
had a lot more chance

to absorb into the
fabric of the shroud.

- [Laurence] It seems like
a logical explanation,

but some believe Fazio's theory

contradicts the extensive
testing done in the 1970s.

- That Shroud of
Turin Research Project

relied heavily upon film
photography, use of x-ray,

use of microscopic imaging
technologies as well,

to examine individual fibers.

- They were able to
say from the x-ray,

from the spectroscopy,

from all the other
analysis that they've done,

there's no evidence of
any kind of oil or perfume

on the shroud.

In 1532, there's a
fire that breaks out

in the chapel where
the shroud was held.

This is what Fazio thinks is
the reason why there's no oil,

that given the heat, given
what happened with the fire,

that those oils and perfumes
would've evaporated.

- The fire may have
changed the shroud

in ways that are picked up
by the scientific testing

and warp the findings.

- [Laurence] Despite
Fazio's explanation,

other experts remain skeptical.

- A problem with the theory

is that we do have cloths
from that time period

where these oils were used,

but they don't make an
image on that shroud.

- [Laurence] The Shroud
of Turin has been

an object of fascination
since its emergence

in the mid-14th century.

- The Savoy family gets the
shroud from the Charny family.

In 1532, there's a
fire that breaks out

in the chapel where
the shroud was held.

- It was rescued from the fire

and the image itself
was not damaged.

But the shroud was folded
into a metal reliquary

and so the heat from the fire

left the parallel
set of scorch marks

that run the length
of the shroud.

(tense music)

And the Savoy family
regularly displayed it.

They would hang it from the
balcony of their royal palace.

They displayed it
at royal weddings.

And more importantly, for
the provenance of it,

every time it was
publicly displayed,

they commissioned an artwork.

- [Laurence] The Savoy
family's involvement

kept fascination with the
shroud alive for centuries,

but the origins of its ghostly
image remain a mystery.

Burial oil stains could
be one possible cause.

But in 2003, one
of the scientists

on the 1978 Shroud of
Turin Research Project

suggests a new possibility.

- Dr. Ray Rogers is one of the
original STURP team members,

brilliant chemist who was with

Los Alamos National
Laboratories,

and he had an interesting theory

that this could be the
product of a natural process.

(tense music)

- [Laurence]
According to Rogers,

the key is a phenomenon we
experience when we cook.

- Dr. Rogers thinks that
the image may be caused

by the Maillard reaction,

which has to do with a
chemical reaction that happens

when amino acids and
sugars interact with heat.

We see an example of
the Maillard reaction

when bread is baked,

the sugars, the yeast, the
amino acids in the bread

combined with the
heat of the baking

to form that nice, crispy,
brown crust on the bread.

- The Maillard reaction
is very similar

to toasting a piece of bread.

You get a different coloration

on perhaps the very
top of the bread.

But you haven't done
anything to change,

in a permanent, lasting
way, the bread itself.

- [Laurence]
According to Rogers,

all the necessary elements
would have been present

following Jesus's crucifixion.

- A few hours after death,

the body starts to break
down and decomposes,

and there's well over
30 kinds of amino acids

that are released from
the body after death.

After you have these
amino acid compounds

coming off the body,

what you then need is the sugar

that has to combine to
create this reaction.

- [Laurence] Rogers
believed that sugar

comes from the cloth itself.

- Rogers and his team,

when they were looking at the
composition of the shroud,

realized that in ancient times,

they would've used
flowers to make the linen,

and this particular kind
of flower, Saponaria,

that has a fairly
high sugar content.

So the sugar that
the amino acids

would've been in touch with

would've been in the fabric
of the shroud itself.

- Rogers had a theory where
he suggested that the cloth

was soaked in a solution
from the soapweed plant,

and it acts as a
preservative and a fungicide

but it would leave a very
thin sugar compound layer

all over the cloth.

- [Laurence] With two of
the three conditions met,

Roger's next turns
to identifying

a possible source of
heat in the cave.

- After death, when
a body decomposes,

you see a temperature spike.

It may go as high
as 106 degrees,

especially if the person
has died of dehydration.

What's interesting here

is that we know that Jesus
would've been dehydrated

from his time on the cross,

so it makes sense that his body
would've been able to reach

that kind of
temperature after death.

There would've been
just enough heat

combining with
amino acids released

from that decomposing body

mixing with the
sugars in the shroud

to create that brown image.

- [Laurence] Rogers and his
team conduct an experiment

to test the hypothesis.

- Dr. Rogers realized you
can't use modern linen,

which is bleached,
which is treated,

so he was able to find
people who used techniques

that go back 2,000 years

to create the kind of cloth
that would've been used

at the time of Jesus's burial.

Using cloth that was made
in that traditional way,

Rogers subjected it
to ammonia vapors,

which would've simulated gases

that would've been
coming off of a body.

They turned up the heat
to about 106 degrees

and they were able to get
the same kind of darker color

that shows up on
the Shroud of Turin.

- [Laurence] Biophysicist
John DeSalvo

contends there could be
another agent at work:

human sweat.

- John DeSalvo realized

that someone who died in
the way that Jesus did,

his body would've been
covered with sweat.

And that's where you get
the organic compounds

that are able to make
these kinds of images.

This also helps to explain

some of the coloration
on the shroud,

the darker areas were where
the sweat was in direct contact

with the shroud.

- There's a correlation
between the density

or the darkness of the
image on the shroud

and the distance it
would've been from the body.

So whether it was
direct contact,

the image on the shroud,

tip of the nose,
top of the hands,

the image is darkest.

As the distance increases up
to about 3 1/2 centimeters,

the image grows more faint.

- So what you have is the
sweat sort of evaporating,

not literally being
absorbed into the shroud,

so you have this
interesting image

of these light and dark areas.

- [Laurence] But critics say

there are still many
unanswered questions.

- The Maillard
reaction hypothesis

is interesting and intriguing

in that it can
reproduce an image.

It leaves an after effect,

but it does not produce
something that is complex

as the image on the shroud.

- On the shroud, you see
the detail of the hair,

the eyes, the areas of the face

that weren't directly
touching the shroud.

You don't get that
kind of detail

with this sort of reaction.

- Millions of people die.

Millions of people
have been enshrouded,

their bodies decompose.

We have nothing else like this
for any other human being.

their bodies decompose.)

- [Laurence] Jesus's burial
cloth is lost for centuries,

until it turns up with
Geoffroi de Charny

in medieval France.

- We do not have a record of
de Charny acquiring the shroud.

We do not know how he
came to possess it.

We know that he comes
from a chivalrous family.

There have been a lot of
historical assumptions made

that perhaps he had
been a crusader.

- [Laurence] For centuries,

it's assumed de Charny found
the shroud in Jerusalem.

In 1997, two scholars bring
that assumption into question.

- Robert Lomas and Christopher
Knight have a theory

that yes, the shroud is
evidence of a crucifixion.

Yes, it is a burial cloth,

but not for the
figure you think.

(tense music)

- After the Christians
reconquered Jerusalem

during the Crusades,

you have the creation
of the Knights Templar.

This, in order to help
protect Christian pilgrims

as they're going
to the Holy Land

to visit these places that are
so important to Christians.

- The Templars took their name

from where their
barracks were located,

on the grounds of Solomon's
temple in Jerusalem.

And after the first Crusade,

they actually became
a quite wealthy order.

- They developed a
complex banking system

and developed a network of
fortresses across Europe.

They were powerful and
reported only to the Pope.

- [Laurence] But by
the 14th century,

the Templar's power and
prestige are declining

and they've made
a powerful enemy:

King Philip IV of France.

- King Philip IV, who was
indebted to the Knights Templar,

had borrowed money.

Rather than paying it back,

argued that they were heretics

that did not practice
the faith properly

and that the Pope
should end them.

- Philip is, I think, concerned
that the Knights Templar

are so powerful,
they're wealthy.

Moreover, he's indebted to them.

He's gone for the Knights
Templar to get money

to help support his
wars against England.

So he owes the
Knights Templar money

and he sees them as a threat.

What better way to
get rid of the threat

and also to cancel your debt

than to declare
them as heretics?

- [Laurence] In 1307,

King Philip has Templar
leader, Jacques de Molay,

arrested on blasphemy
and heresy charges.

de Molay is forced to face
the French Inquisition.

- King Philip thought

this punishment should
involve crucifixion.

- The inquisitors would've
done to Jacque de Molay

what had been done to Jesus,

that he's stripped naked,
he's scourged, he's whipped,

the crown of thorns
put on his head.

- [Laurence] But Robert
Lomas and Christopher Knight

see evidence of something
different in the shroud.

- The position of the
arms is not identical

to the description of how
Jesus is hung on the cross.

The legs are also
positioned differently.

- The book's
authors hypothesized

that the pattern on the shroud

isn't from someone
who's crucified

in a normal kind of way,

with their arms
stretched outright.

It's someone who's
crucified very differently.

And in this case,

the pattern seems to match
someone who's crucified

with their right arm
above their head bent

and their left arm
stretched out on the side

as if they're placed on a door.

And this would be the
convenient way to do this

if you don't have a cross.

- The crucifixion of the
leader of the Knights Templar

was not meant to kill him.

It was meant to
produce enough pain

to get him to admit he was
a heretic and to recant.

And it did just that.

- [Laurence] After
the confession,

the inquisitors have
one final humiliation

left for de Molay.

- For the inquisitor,

wrapping this knight in a shroud

was meant to amplify
the embarrassment,

to amplify the humiliation.

He's left wrapped in
that shroud for 24 hours,

long enough for the
blood and the sweat

to soak in to the shroud

and produce the image
that we now see.

- [Laurence] Despite his ordeal,

de Molay lives
another seven years,

only to be burned at the stake
for renouncing his confession.

But what happened to the shroud?

- Jacques de Molay
is tortured in 1307.

The hypothesis from the authors

is that there's a
Templar, Jean de Charny,

who takes this
shroud and keeps it.

What's interesting
is Jean de Charny

is the grandfather
of Geoffroi de Charny,

who's the one that
we know in 1355,

first brings the shroud
to our attention.

- The haunting image
on the Shroud of Turin

has been an enigma since the day

it was first publicly
unveiled 700 years ago.

And while millions are convinced

it's the imprinted
image of Jesus,

the shroud's authenticity
remains in debate.

Historians often
cite one big question

as a reason for doubt:

why was it missing for so long?

- The 14th century is a long
way away from the event itself,

in the first century.

You know, you're talking
about 1,300 years.

You would think, if this
were important to the story,

it was important to
communicating that story,

it would've shown up somewhere.

And it simply doesn't.

- [Laurence] Skeptics also note

that the shroud may not
match the description

of Jesus's burial
cloth in the Bible.

- In the earliest accounts,
we do have cloth mentioned,

and not in the
singular but plural.

We have cloths
that are mentioned.

- When you're looking
at the Shroud of Turin,

you're looking at one
long piece of cloth,

14 feet long, that
covers the entire body.

But these would've been
several pieces of cloth,

according to the
biblical accounts.

- [Laurence] And there
appear to be inconsistencies

in the imagery itself.

- The front and the
back don't line up.

If this were actually
the imprint of Jesus,

wouldn't those line up?

- If the shroud was
wrapped over Jesus

and you have the image of
the front and the back,

why is it these images
are two different lengths?

It means that his front
side is a different length

than his backside.

- [Laurence] There is
one possible explanation,

one that would shatter
a long-held illusion.

(tense music)

- The sudden appearance
of the shroud

coincides with a period in
which relics are important.

You have all sorts of relics,

you have all sorts of churches
that have things on display

that they claim to
connect back to Jesus

or the early
Christian community.

Relics play an important
part in the church.

People come to give
money to visit these,

people donate for this,

and so this is a source
of revenue for the church.

But we know that
relics can be faked.

- If you stood to
benefit financially

from relics in general,

you stood to benefit
extraordinarily

from a relic like
the Shroud of Turin.

- I think that it is proper
for anyone to be suspicious

about any relic that has a
footprint in the Middle Ages.

In an age when you
could go into a pasture

and pick up the bone of a cow

and pass it off as
the femur of a saint,

I think we are right to be
suspicious about anything

that we can even link
to the Middle Ages.

- [Laurence] When the French
knight, Geoffroi de Charny,

first appears with
the shroud about 1355,

it immediately goes on
display in his church.

- If you wanted to
encourage pilgrims

to come to your church,
to come to your abbey,

to come to your village,

it was important that
you have a relic.

Hence, the proliferation of
relics in an age when perhaps,

I think it's fair to say,
that in many occasions,

the supply might have
outstripped the demand.

- If relics are
like trading cards,

they're not all
of the same value.

And there are some relics

that are going to
be of minor value

and some that are of
extraordinarily major value,

and I gotta put a relic
like the Shroud of Turin

at the top of that list.

- [Laurence] Even at the outset,

not everyone's convinced
it's the real thing.

- In 1389, Bishop
Pierre d'Arcis,

of the Diocese of
Troyes in France,

writes to Pope
Clement VII in Avignon

that he knows that this shroud

that is being displayed in Liray

is in fact an artwork.

He claims he knows the artists.

He claims that this
is an exhibition

that needs to be
stopped immediately.

- He's saying that
this is a forgery,

that an artist has
confessed to painting

this image on the shroud.

d'Arcis is scandalized,

and his letter to Pope
Clement talks about

how scandalized he is

by these pilgrims
who've been swindled,

where this money has
been rung out of them

under false pretenses.

In the 1300s, crucifixion
paintings were quite popular,

so there's no
surprise here to think

that someone might
have painted this image

and that it would've been used

to raise funds for the church.

- [Laurence] Was
the Bishop right?

Is the shroud a painting?

It will take nearly 600
years to get an answer.

- The Shroud of Turin
Research Project

was given access to
the shroud in 1978

and they were allowed to
analyze it 'round the clock.

- [Laurence] After
a battery of tests,

the research team
releases its findings.

- Painting, in the
High Middle Ages

and certainly by the time
of the Late Middle Ages,

was a highly developed craft

and we know a lot about
the pigments and dyes

that were used in
those processes.

But the Shroud of
Turin Research Project

demonstrated conclusively,
in peer reviewed science,

that there is not a trace of a
pigment, or a dye, or a paint

on that linen anywhere.

- The research team concluded

that they don't know how
this image got there.

It wasn't paint, the
bloodstains are real.

They don't know how
that image got there.

They don't know how
the blood got there.

- In an age when relics did
not have to be sophisticated,

in an age when people
did not ask the questions

that the modern mind asks,

why did this image have
to be that sophisticated?

And how, importantly,

did that image get there
in the first place?

- [Laurence] For centuries,
visitors to the Shroud of Turin

were only able to
see a faint image

of what is allegedly Jesus
after the crucifixion.

But with the advent
of modern photography,

the shroud would reveal
yet another secret.

Barrie Schwortz was the official
documenting photographer

for the Shroud of Turin
Research Project in 1978.

- So in its early days,

there were people of faith
who were aware of the shroud.

Science, on the other hand,

I don't think was
very interested

until 1898 when the first
photograph of the shroud

was permitted.

Italian lawyer and amateur
photographer named Secondo Pia

made this first
photograph of the shroud

and that ushered
in the beginning

of the scientific
era of shroud study.

- [Laurence] When Secondo Pia

develops his photographic
plates of the Shroud of Turin,

he's shocked by what he sees.

(pensive music)

- Of course, not
knowing that it was

going to spark a controversy,

he went into the dark room
to process his glass plate.

This is 19th
century photography,

so we're talking about
a prolonged process.

- And it was that moment

when he processed that
glass plate and held it up

that the image on the
shroud itself is a negative

and when inverted,
he had a much more

natural-looking
result in his hands

than what was on
the cloth itself.

- It's one of those really
interesting paradoxes

that if you look at the shroud,

you don't see the detail.

If you look in the negative,

you see the detail of
the face, of the beard.

It's almost as if this
was meant to be seen

in a photograph of the image,

not the image itself.

- [Laurence] It's as
if the shroud itself

is a photographic negative,

a concept that boggles the mind.

- There's no precedent for it.

There isn't another image

that I've seen in my 50-year
professional experience

that even comes close to
having these properties.

(tense music)

We know that photography

didn't exist until
about 1826 or 1827.

Consequently, there was no way
that someone in medieval times

could have created a
photographic image.

On the other hand, artists
back in medieval times

did use a technique
called camera obscura.

So what they did was they
would make a little hole

at one end of the room

and put, say, a canvas
at the other end,

and the hole acted like a lens

to focus what was outside
that camera obscura onto that

and then the artist could
then paint or illustrate

what the camera was pointing at.

- Camera obscura is ancient.

I mean, we do know it
from the ancient texts.

It is a very simple principle.

- The earliest evidence we
have of a camera obscura

is by a Chinese writer, Mo Tzu.

The ancient Greeks
knew about this.

And so in the medieval world,

certainly even in
the first century,

people would've
known about this.

- [Laurence] In 1993, art
historian Nicholas Allen

proposes a radical theory:

a medieval forger could have
used an ancient technique

known as camera obscure

to create the world's
first photograph.

- In order to make the
cloth photo sensitive,

you would have to coat
it with silver nitrate.

- You would've coated
the cloth with this

and then when light
hits the cloth,

it would expose the silver
nitrate and leave a dark pattern

like the negative
on a photograph.

- [Laurence] Theoretically,

the chemicals needed
to produce an image

were available in
the Middle Ages.

But when analyzed, the cloth
was missing one vital element.

- We were looking for silver
nitrate on the shroud,

and we could detect
one part per billion,

and we didn't find any silver
anywhere on the shroud.

Nicholas Allen says he soaked
his cloth in a silver solution

to create his
light-sensitive emulsion,

so they would be
permeated with silver.

We found zero silver
anywhere on the shroud.

- [Laurence] What would
prompt a medieval inventor

to create an image
like the shroud?

- There's no evidence that
anyone used the camera obscura

in the fashion that
Nicholas Allen proposes.

And if he had,

I think we'd be seeing a
lot more examples of it.

- Art history itself tells us

that this is not something
that some medieval artist

would've even thought to
do or even cared to do

when a simpler attempt at
depicting Jesus on a cross

would've been plenty acceptable

by everybody in the
medieval world anyway.

- What's the motivation

for creating something that's
a pious fraud on the public?

I can make money from it.

I become more prestigious
because of it.

I have a souvenir
that no one else has.

There's a lot of things
that could motivate

the development of something
like the Shroud of Turin.

Did they? That's the question.

- [Laurence] In 1988, the
Shroud of Turin undergoes

what many consider to be
a definitive analysis.

These carbon dating tests make
headlines around the world.

They indicate the cloth
was made between 1260

and just before French
knight, de Charny,

brought it to his church.

(tense music)

But not everyone
believes the findings.

- There was a fire in 1532

and there was repair
done to the shroud

by the Poor Clares,
this order of nuns.

Could this have
contaminated the shroud?

Is this carbon dating
not of the actual shroud

but of the material from 1532?

- [Laurence] And in early 2022,

new evidence centered
around the age of the cloth

may support that belief.

Researchers present a
surprising observation.

- They had about a dozen
samples of other linen cloths

dating all the way
back to 5000 BC

and they could assess the
amount of natural aging

in all these other cloths.

And the only cloth that
had a comparable amount

of natural aging as
fibers from the shroud

was taken from Masada,
which is in Israel,

circa first century.

And so this then becomes a
very strong piece of evidence

that suggests, just
based on natural aging,

that the cloth is far
older than the 700 years

ascribed by the carbon lapse.

- That leaves us with a
very real possibility,

we could be talking about
a first century cloth.

- [Laurence] And in 2011,

a finding by Italian physicist,
Dr. Paolo Di Lazzaro,

may offer believers
further support.

- In 2011, he published
in a peer reviewed journal

how they've been experimenting
with ultraviolet excimer lasers.

These are high powered,
these are industrial lasers.

These are not some
kind of pointer.

And they determined
a 40 nanosecond burst

achieves the very same
depth and coloration

as we see on the shroud.

This experimentally
shows how the image

could indeed be the
result of light.

- [Laurence] But it would take
an incredible amount of power

to generate the light needed
to create the shroud image

in a split second.

- To replicate the shroud image,

you would need 14,000 lasers

all going off instantaneously,
at the same time.

- I have to remind everybody,

lasers weren't invented
until about 1946.

So something of that
nature in medieval times,

or even in the first century,
just couldn't exist.

- [Laurence] But if
the shroud is truly

from the first century,

an event from the Bible
might reveal an answer.

- Just before Jesus makes
his last trip to Jerusalem,

he takes Peter, James,
and John with him

up on a high mountain

and is transfigured
before them.

- Some turn to the Bible

and point to the
transfiguration of Christ

that took place when Christ
was praying with the disciples.

They read scripture

and they highlight the
passage that indicates

that his face was
shining as the sun

and his clothes
became bright white.

- In the biblical account,

Jesus is transfigured into
a form of energy or light.

His disciples describe
him as his face glowing.

His clothes dazzling white.

- [Laurence] Di
Lazzaro hypothesizes

that the transfiguration's
burst of light and energy

could have repeated itself

during another important
event in Christianity.

- Following his transfiguration,

Jesus tells his disciples
to not tell anyone

until the son of man
has risen from the dead.

So this clearly foreshadows

something that is
going to happen,

something that the disciples
are going to see again.

- For many believers,

the idea is that
this is a snapshot,

this is literally the moment
of Jesus's resurrection.

He's wrapped in this
cloth, he gets resurrected.

There's this phenomenal
amount of energy

that must've been
released in that.

Is that what creates this image?

(tense music)

- The marks on the cloth
are not the result

of a conventional type of heat

or a light that
would generate heat.

For instance, it's not
like you would get a scorch

on an ironing
board, for instance.

It's more analogous to a light
that might be from a laser.

- Now, we know that the burns
clearly are the result of heat

because they fluoresce
under ultraviolet light.

But the body image
does not fluoresce,

so it looks like a
scorch but it's not.

- For di Lazzaro,

he stopped short of
saying this is a miracle.

But of course, this
is extraordinary

because you don't have
that kind of ultraviolet

light technology needed
in the first century.

So if this actually
has happened,

this is inexplicable.

- Christians will argue

that that kind of energy
was actually produced

through the resurrection.

For them, the amount of
energy needed isn't an issue.

The resurrection was
such a powerful event

that it could produce
what science cannot.

- [Laurence] For many
Christians, the Shroud of Turin

is proof of the cornerstone
in their faith,

the death and
resurrection of Jesus.

- For Christians, this
is an important symbol.

It speaks to the death
and resurrection of Jesus,

the center point,

the fundamental
meaning of the gospel.

Their argument is, until
science can tell them

how this was produced,

there is good reason to
believe that it is authentic.

(tense music)

- I don't think we can
exclude a physical process,

but it is a physical process
that we do not understand

and cannot replicate today.

More academic scrutiny
has been brought to bear

on this 14.5 foot strip of linen

than any other
object in the world

and we still can't
explain the image.

That's a philosophical
challenge.

When you confront the limits
of your human knowledge,

your human capacity,

where else do you
go for an answer?

(rising dramatic music)

- Over the course of many years,

scientists have applied
the latest technology

to unraveling the
mystery of the shroud.

Yet the question of what the
image is and how it was made

remains unsolved.

For the skeptics,

it's an incredibly
sophisticated medieval fraud.

For the faithful, it's
a miraculous relic.

Maybe one day, the
truth will be revealed.

I'm Laurence Fishburne.

Thank you for watching
"History's Greatest Mysteries".