Original subtitles

One of the largest volcanic eruptions

in Earth’s history leads to a stunning discovery.

This is Mount Toba, the largest volcanic eruption

anywhere on Earth in the last 25 million years.

600 cubic miles of material are ejected,

burying huge swathes of Asia.

And many creatures would have struggled to adapt,

including our ancestors.

Wildfires raging across mountains

in the American West reveal a settlement

hundreds of years old.

The highest peaks are almost 14,000 feet

above sea level, and some of these fires

reached up to around 11,000 feet.

Interestingly, each platform

is also ringed by rocks.

What is this place?

Was a 7th century earthquake responsible

for the destruction of an ancient civilization?

There are a number of Urartian palace fortresses

we’re aware of,

and this new site seems to share the same

architectural fingerprint.

It looks like a Urartian fortress.

And if it is a fortress,

this immediately raises the question, could this be Ayanis?

All over the world,

incredible discoveries are being revealed

by devastating events.

Floods, earthquakes,

droughts, hurricanes,

volcanic eruptions.

Trails of destruction expose extraordinary history.

This is Discovered by Disaster.

74,000 years ago on what’s now the island of Sumatra,

a great mountain that had for half a million years

resisted the mounting pressure of magma

pressing up from deep below...

explodes.

This is Mount Toba, believed to be the largest

volcanic eruption anywhere on Earth

in the last 25 million years.

600 cubic miles of material are ejected,

burying huge swaths of Asia.

Superheated ash shoots high into the atmosphere

and is carried around the globe.

Some of it falls in Africa.

In the early 1990s, scientists theorized

that Mount Toba's volcanic ash and gases

would have enveloped the Earth, blocking the sun's heat

and causing global temperatures to drop

up to nine degrees Fahrenheit.

The resulting volcanic winter may have lasted 1,000 years.

This is the Toba catastrophe theory.

It hypothesizes that some dry areas on Earth would have become

even more dry during that sudden disruption to the climate,

and many creatures would have struggled to adapt,

including our ancestors.

As a result, there may have been only about

1,000 breeding pairs of humans left.

We were almost completely wiped out in the Middle Stone Age.

Obviously, we bounced back.

But if this theory is correct,

human beings came perilously close to extinction.

So you would think there would be

definitive evidence of this event.

I mean, it was our near extinction.

So it should show up in the geological record.

And a lot of anthropologists have been very keen

to find that evidence.

South of the city Metema in northern Ethiopia,

along the Shinfa riverbed,

archaeologists may have found

exactly what they’ve been searching for.

What's initially found is tiny stone flakes

mixed into the earth.

We call this microdebitage:

the tiny flakes a tool-maker chips off

while shaping a stone blade or tip.

This is a telltale sign of stone tool production,

and therefore, of Stone Age humans.

So they follow up with more careful digging,

and sure enough, they find completed stone tools

with symmetrical bladed tips.

So these could be speartips or darts or arrowheads.

And there’s also a wide variety of animal bone fragments.

Thousands of specimens.

Nearly 16,000 pieces of chipped stones

are uncovered.

But something about the animal bones strikes anthropologists.

There is an impressively broad variety

of faunal remains here.

Among them, the femur of a small to medium gazelle,

showing marks made by stone tools; evidence of butchering.

There's a molar from a warthog,

the humerus of a savanna monkey.

And bones from guinea fowl, snakes, frogs,

antelope, cattle, and goats.

And quite a variety of fish bones, as well.

Many of the bones show tool marks,

strong evidence that they were either hunted or butchered

by humans, or both.

And they show partial calcination.

That’s evidence of being cooked over a fire.

So it’s very clear this was a valuable site.

Archaeologists name the site Shinfa-Metema 1,

or SM1, and establish a major archaeological excavation.

One of the things you look at in a site

is depositional layers.

Sedimentary layers are laid down over time,

so you know that fossils or artifacts found lower down

are older, and higher up, they’re newer.

In the case of SM1,

due to periodic overflows of the Shinfa River,

you've got a lot of nice, distinct depositional layers.

One of these layers in particular

alerts anthropologists to their golden opportunity.

There are tiny, glass-like particles,

invisible to the naked eye.

These are microscopic tephra--

material ejected by a volcano--

and their chemical signature

matches exactly that of the Toba eruption.

This is like a gift.

The archaeologists are excited to have found

the tephra layer at SM1, but it's the deposit layers

above and below it that they’re really interested in.

According to what is known

as the Toba catastrophe theory,

there should be a huge difference between the layers

below the tephra layer that were laid down

before the volcano went off

and the layers above it which were deposited after.

Before Toba's eruption, the layers should show

life as normal, in terms of the intensity of human activity;

so, tool-making, hunting and cooking.

But after the eruption, in the higher depositional layers,

we should see that activity drop off a cliff,

because that was when the climate tanked,

and humans almost died out.

This is a chance to glimpse our own mortality,

to see our near extinction as a species

recorded in the fossil record.

To find out more,

researchers study the layers closely.

There was a reduction in overall flow

to the Shinfa River, due to less rainfall.

There was a longer dry season

and a shorter wet season each year.

This is exactly what we'd expect to see,

based on the Toba catastrophe theory:

the climate at SM1 became more arid and less survivable.

Even today, this part of Africa

is a very tough, unforgiving environment.

So back then, after the Toba eruption,

it must have been much worse.

If humans had been struggling to survive all over the continent,

it definitely would have been very hard here.

But when archaeologists compare

the volume of the evidence of human activity

above and below the tephra layer, they get a surprise.

There is no discernible decrease

in overall human activity at all;

not in stone tool-making and not in the overall amount of food

hunted, collected or cooked.

You'd expect to see the intensity of human activity drop

radically above the tephra layer, but it does not.

So, how come?

The amount of human activity appears to be

roughly the same, from layer to layer.

But when archaeologists catalogue and compare

all the bone fragments found within each layer,

they come to a realization.

There's about the same overall amount of food

being hunted and consumed at SM1.

Their consumption of fish

goes from just 14% of their total diet up to 52%.

It almost quadruples.

If the river keeps shrinking with every year's dry season,

how do they end up getting more fish in their diet?

Archaeologists look to what happens

to the modern-day Shinfa River during the annual dry seasons,

and that shifts their perspective.

During the dry season,

the Shinfa often stops flowing altogether.

And at what were the deepest sections of the river,

you get these left-over, isolated water holes.

The fish there are captive,

until the next rainy season makes the Shinfa a river again.

Immediately after the Toba eruption,

when the climate became even more arid for a period of time,

those water holes would have been smaller.

Maybe that made the fish easier to catch.

The other thing is that during the dry season,

animals still have to drink.

The water holes would have been perfect spots

for SM1's inhabitants to build hunting blinds and lie in wait

with their sharp arrows and darts

for their prey to come to them.

So with smaller and fewer water holes,

humans may have adapted their foraging behaviors.

They turned a negative-- the increasingly arid climate--

into a positive, by hunting by the water holes,

and crucially, by making fish a much larger part of their diet.

And these humans, thankfully for us, thrived.

The researchers believe these revelations

may have even more far-reaching implications.

SM1 is in the proximity of two

of the possible routes by which it's thought

humans may have first migrated out of Africa,

at around the same time SM1 was in active use.

Many anthropologists have long thought

that the only way humans could have first ventured

off the continent would have been

via temporary green corridors.

The thinking has been that in regions like this,

most years were so arid and unforgiving

that those areas were basically impassable.

They were just too deadly.

It was only during periods

of greater than average rainfall that these dry areas

would temporarily transform and spring up with lush vegetation.

And while that existed,

they were avenues that could sustain human life.

Those green corridors may have been an opportunity

for early humans to increase their range

and ultimately spread beyond the African continent.

But this seems contradictory.

I mean, if this is a time when those green corridors

are less and less available, how come that's when humans

are able to use them to get out of Africa?

It's possible that SM1 humans became

more and more successful at emptying these water holes

of fish during the dry seasons.

Having done so in one water hole,

they could have made the relatively short journey

along the dried-up riverbed to the next water hole

to get fish from there.

This would have led to a natural, unintended migration

during the dry seasons, from water hole to water hole,

eventually to expand their range beyond Africa

by blue highways, which were these strings of waterholes.

This new hypothesis challenges the conventional,

previously accepted narratives

about Middle Stone Age human dispersal.

As we make more discoveries, we can test this hypothesis

and get closer to finding out

how our ancestors spread throughout our world.

Some volcanologists hypothesize,

due to the chemical makeup of the Mount Toba eruption,

it may not have had as strong or long-lasting an effect

on the planet’s climate as originally surmised.

The Toba catastrophe may just have been

more mild than we thought.

I mean, if you can call an eruption on that scale mild.

It was the biggest volcano in 25 million years.

But the data suggests that the Earth's climate

may have bounced back within a decade.

Were a super-eruption like Toba to occur today,

the effects on the climate, the food chain,

and the course of human civilization

would at best be difficult to predict.

In the summer of 2006,

wildfires raged across the American West.

In western Wyoming, tens of thousands of acres burnt up

as the state struggled to battle the flames.

The fires reached the mountains of the Wind River Range

and its alpine forests, lakes and valleys.

The Wind River Range stretches some 100 miles

across northwestern Wyoming.

The highest peaks are almost 14,000 feet above sea level,

and some of these fires reached up to around 11,000 feet.

Shortly after the fires had stopped,

an archaeologist working on the sides of a steep slope

that had recently burned saw a piece of curiously shaped rock

lying on the ground among massive granite boulders.

It has a rough, granular texture,

and if you look closely, you can see the rock

consists of tiny individual grains of sand,

which is what identifies it as sandstone.

Strangely, one side is smooth and heavily polished,

as though it had been used as a grinding tool.

New technologies and expanded interested

in the field have led to improvements

in high-altitude archaeology.

This site is about 11,000 feet above sea level,

which is roughly where the tree line comes to an end.

The area is interspersed with stands of white bark pine

and alpine tundra,

but doesn’t seem like much else can be found here.

So, what is this grindstone doing up here?

With their curiosity piqued, archaeologists continue

to inspect the area and come upon a flat platform

cut into the slope of the mountain.

On the ground are many little pieces of stone

with smooth, angular faces.

Although it's obviously stone,

its texture is really, really smooth to the touch.

And the angular faces on the rocks show that it's been struck

multiple times against other rocks to shape it.

This is what we call chert.

It's a stone used by ancient cultures around the world

to make their weapons sharp.

In the same location,

archaeologists find a projectile point

as well as what looks like small stone walls

that have been erected on the platform.

This is all clear evidence of human activity.

So people have been living here, which is pretty unexpected.

At 11,000 feet,

conditions aren’t exactly comfortable for humans.

Generally for every 1,000 feet you climb,

there is a reduction of about 3% of the oxygen available

for you to breathe.

This means that by the time you hit 11,000 feet,

you're only breathing 70% of the oxygen

available to you at sea level.

So you can imagine how difficult

it would be hiking through here, let alone living here.

But the sheer amount of chert flakes present

at the site indicates that there were likely

a lot of people living here.

And judging by the wear on grinding stone,

they must have been living here for quite some time.

So who were they?

Archaeologists expand their search across the area.

Because the fires have burnt the place bare,

features that were previously obscured by brush and trees

are now clearly visible to the naked eye.

Over 60 stone platforms can now be seen.

They have all been cut into the mountainside.

This is pretty impressive,

because at an angle of 23 degrees,

this slope is pretty steep.

So it couldn’t have been easy to do so.

Interestingly, each platform is also ringed by rocks.

What is this place?

This part of Wyoming is in the traditional lands

of the Shoshone people.

And prior to colonization, there was also a band that lived

in these mountains called the Mountain Shoshone.

Unlike those Shoshone groups who adopted the horse

and moved out into the prairie,

the Mountain Shoshone remained in the mountains

and used the dog as their beast of burden.

We knew that they called this place home,

but we didn't know where exactly they held

their annual or semi-annual camps.

Could this have been one of them?

Scattered across the platforms are tens of thousands

of chert flakes, butchering tools, projectile points,

ceramic vessels, and bowls.

Given the volume of artifacts and the fact

that this is traditional Mountain Shoshone territory,

I think it's safe to assume that these are the remains

of an alpine village, likely a seasonal one.

It would have been quite a sight.

The settlement's lowest point is 300 feet below its highest,

which is equivalent to a 30-story building.

The platforms were probably lodge pads

where teepees or wikiups would have been erected.

Further excavations revealed that a total of 52

of the platforms

also contain a grinding stone.

What these grindstones tell us is a little bit about

why they chose this location to settle.

The archaeologists believe that they were used

for processing bitterroot and biscuitroot,

which were highly valued for their medicinal

and nutritional properties.

They were an important component

of the Mountain Shoshones' diet.

To further cement their theory

that the high alpine was targeted

for the harvesting of roots,

the archaeologists use satellite, terrain,

and environmental information to create a digital model

to predict where the best sites to set up camp would be.

The model predicted things correctly,

and 14 more were discovered.

Of course, we need a computer simulation to figure this out,

whereas the Mountain Shoshone would have simply known

intuitively by observing the sites.

Archaeologists also notice that some lodges

had higher concentrations of specific tools than others.

In one lodge, for example, there were tools used

for making projectile points,

whereas in another, there were only artifacts associated

with butchering of meat and the cleaning of hides.

So, there appears to have been

some form of division of labor here,

or it could be that they designated sites

for specific kinds of work.

Observing the area in full,

the researchers surmised that the environment

would have provided more than enough resources

for the Mountain Shoshone to thrive.

There's a mountain spring at the northwest corner

of the site, so in the peak of summer,

when water in the lowlands is scarce,

they had everything they needed up here.

Also, animals would move farther up into the mountains

in search of water.

So there were plenty of bighorn sheep and deer and elk

for the Shoshone to hunt.

But when were they living here?

From the lodges, archaeologists take

several samples of charcoal found in the hearths

and radiocarbon date them in the lab.

The oldest sample is almost 3,000 years old.

While the most recent sample is from around 1850.

This latter date makes sense

considering the history of the region.

It was around this time when more and more

European and American settlers began to populate the territory,

while the United States government continued

to violently expel the Indigenous groups

already living on it.

To think that this place saw occupation

for four millennia, if not more, is really incredible.

It shows us that the Shoshone had and continue to have

a special relationship with the land,

allowing them to hunt and harvest food

in this relatively fragile environment.

The village was the first and largest

of at least 19 settlements that have been located

across the Wind River range.

These sites continue to provide new insight into the culture

and lives of the people

Indigenous to the American West.

Eastern Anatolia has historically been

seismically active, even dating back to the Kingdom of Urartu

in the 7th century.

The Urartu civilization dominated this region

for about 250 years.

At its peak, the kingdom spanned

part of present-day Armenia,

western Iran, and eastern Turkey.

King Rusa II had erected five fortresses in the region,

the last of which was known as Ayanis.

This was where the king had planned to live out

the rest of a long and secure reign.

Then, in 1989, archaeologists begin digging

on a site 22 miles north of the city of Van.

The site is on a hill

above the eastern shores of Lake Van.

Remnants of large stone and mud brick walls are visible.

What kind of structure was this?

As archaeologists uncover more walls,

things start to look familiar to them.

There are a number of Urartian palace fortresses

we're aware of: Karmir-Blur, Bastam,

Kef Kalesi, Toprakkale.

And this new site seems to share

the same architectural fingerprint.

A base of large, precisely cut stone blocks

with walls of mud brick blocks built on top of them.

It looks like a Urartian fortress.

And if it is a fortress,

then given its location, overlooking the lake

with a view of Suphan Mountain on the other side of it,

this immediately raises the question,

could this be Ayanis or whatever’s left of it?

Adjacent to the fortress' main walls

are the remains of smaller structures.

There are all kinds of earthenware jars,

grinding stones and casks for fermenting beer,

even baskets and remains of barley

and white millet have survived.

There are also sewing needles, iron axes, shovels, and knives,

and even metal tweezers for personal grooming.

So these buildings appear to have been

storage and living spaces.

The domestic area, where the fortress'

non-administrative support staff would have lived.

The fortress seems to have had all the amenities

for a luxurious existence,

but it’s situated in an unlikely location.

This part of the country has long, cold,

snowy winters, and the growing season is short,

so it’s not an ideal place to support a civilization.

Also, Lake Van is a rock basin.

It doesn't have any rivers or streams as an outlet,

so the water is brackish.

That makes it too salty for irrigation.

It’ll kill your crops.

So, is it just a bad location

that contributed to Urartu’s demise?

The terrain and climate would have required

a complex water management system

for any large population to survive.

So what the Urartians did was construct reservoirs

to collect freshwater from the winter melt.

And there's also evidence of dams and irrigation canals,

which they drew water from through terracotta pipes.

Elsewhere in the kingdom,

in order to get water from the Hrazdan River to their fields,

they cut a 900-foot tunnel through the rock.

They not only irrigated fields of essential crops,

but vineyards and orchards.

The Urartians were brilliant engineers.

That's how they could survive and thrive

in such an inhospitable environment.

As the excavation of the fortress site progresses,

the outline of a large,

distinctive, square building emerges.

The building's shape is square,

and is characteristic of a Urartian temple.

Inside the temple ruins is a podium

of mud brick and alabaster.

And this thing is ornate.

You can see carvings of winged lions within a mesh of trees

which look like they might represent the tree of life.

In the main temple space and adjoining storage chambers,

there are hundreds of objects, vessels for holy wine,

a great number of bronze shields,

lances, helmets, and swords.

Archaeologists also found cuneiform inscriptions

on tablets and pottery at the site.

We think it was during this period

that cuneiform first spread to this part of the world,

which was an ancient writing system that involved

making wedge-shaped marks in a soft surface like clay.

The Urartians were also renowned

for their skills in metallurgy.

Their iron tools helped them push the boundaries

of stone masonry and the chiseling of rocks,

and their metalwork was exceptional.

Belt buckles have been found

engraved with depictions of everyday life.

Art was apparently an important part of the culture.

Structural timber remains of the fortress

are located, and the dendrochronological analysis

of the growth rings produces a date range

between 677 and 673 BCE.

If that's the earliest date the timbers were felled,

this fortress must have been built around 673 or 672 BCE.

And given that the inscribed artifacts found in the temple

were offerings from King Rusa II to Haldi,

I think we can safely conclude that this fortress

must be the remains of the legendary Ayanis.

What's a bit puzzling is that the condition

and locations of all the finds

indicate Ayanis was abandoned in a hurry,

but apparently with little to no loss of life.

So, what could have caused this?

As the excavation expands,

a large number of crafted weapons,

helmets, and shields are found.

This suggests a preoccupation with war.

Inscribed dedications on some of the items

asked Haldi for protection against attack.

Were these dedications driven by the fear of a known threat?

The five fortresses built by Rusa II

were for protection against attack

from Urartu's neighboring Cimmerian and Scythian kingdoms.

But if Ayanis had fallen to attack,

you would expect to find bones with evidence of injury.

You'd also expect to see a lot of armor or swords

with similar damage.

But we don’t find that here.

Further examination of the stone blocks

that make up the rampart walls

may just provide some clarity on what happened to Ayanis.

There are deep cracks and fissures in the stone,

and at the base of the southern ramparts,

there’s clear separation of some of the basalt blocks.

This looks like earthquake damage.

But If Ayanis was destroyed by a quake,

that shouldn't necessarily have led to the failure

of the entire kingdom,

especially if the residents of the palace survived.

Three of the temple's pillars show signs

of having been displaced, north or northwest

from their original positions.

That kind of displacement is typical

of earthquake damage.

There's also evidence that one of the temple's mud brick walls,

was repaired sometime in antiquity.

So did Ayanis suffer but survive

a series of earthquakes during its existence?

If you examine the design of Ayanis

and the methods of construction,

it appears that Urartian engineers understood

the seismological risks they faced quite well,

and that they had built protections against damage

into their structures.

These were early attempts at quake proofing.

During an earthquake,

the soft ground will vibrate more,

especially as its magnitude increases.

In order to minimize a quake's destructive effects,

it’s necessary to build on firm, resistant ground.

The Urartian architects clearly understood this

and built their fortresses, including Ayanis,

on natural hills, embedding their foundations

in the bedrock.

If you look at the base of the fortress' walls,

you can tell its builders used iron tools

to create keystones in the bedrock.

This locks in the blocks in place to prevent them

from sliding during a quake.

They even put basalt rock powder between the blocks

to increase friction and to better lock them together.

So these aren’t afterthoughts.

It shows they were building earthquake-proof buildings

from the ground up.

The archaeologists' hypotheses

about Urartian know-how are put to the test

in the worst possible way.

On October 23, 2011,

even as excavation of the site continues,

a magnitude 7.2 earthquake strikes the Lake Van region.

This quake was felt as far away as Jordan

and even parts of Russia,

and it was a movement that's called an oblique thrust

where the earth comes up and to the side at the same time.

Well over 500 people were killed.

Thousands of structures in several towns were destroyed.

Ayanis' pillars drifted again during the 2011 event

and in the same direction.

The mud brick wall that was repaired in antiquity

was damaged again by the 2011 quake.

Most significantly,

the direction of violent movement produced by both quakes

matched the direction of movement

that the ancient Urartians had built to protect against.

A study of the fortress' lower levels

reveals that a row of walls collapsed like dominoes

as a result of an ancient earthquake.

Surprisingly, only two human skeletons

were found at the site.

We can only guess that tremors

preceded the main earthquake, alerting the inhabitants,

which gave them time to escape.

And once they had escaped,

there was nothing left for them to come back to.

Ayanis Fortress was never again occupied.

Rusa II's reign ended soon after the quake,

between 645 and 655 BCE.

And the kingdom may well have begun its decline

after his rule.

Seeing what that quake did to the fortress,

it's easy to imagine that it could have done

horrendous damage to crucial infrastructure

throughout the kingdom.

That would have made Urartu vulnerable to attack

from competing nations.

And maybe that’s what finally finished them off: an attack.

Maybe it was the Scythians.

Maybe it was the Cimmerians.

Even after more than three decades of excavations,

a kingdom's last magnificent fortress is still teaching us

about its lost great civilization.

Ayanis was destroyed by an earthquake

but managed to protect and preserve

Urartian achievements and culture, after all.

In the winter of 2021, an enormous storm

lashed Greece’s southern Peloponnese region

near the ancient site of Olympia.

The rains added to a long list of floods and severe weather

that impacted the country.

For an entire year, landslides were wreaking havoc

across the nation.

Layers of topsoil were washed away,

putting the ancient Temple of Zeus in danger.

Luckily, it withstood the intense weather.

But what the rains did do

was some of the work for archaeologists.

So you can call it a mixed blessing.

Following the storm, an archaeologist surveying

the damage in and around the Temple of Zeus

spotted a blue, horn-shaped piece of metal

sticking up out of the soil.

This was one of the most sacred sites

for the ancient Greeks.

So anything unearthed from in and around the temple

would be of immediate archaeological interest.

Once you dust the soil off,

you can see that it's a small sculpture of a bull

with two horns that's only

about two inches long.

But why would a bull be here

at the Temple of Zeus?

To the ancient Greeks,

Zeus was the father of both gods and men.

From his home on Mount Olympus, he ruled the heavens

and sent thunder, lightning, rain, and winds

out into the world.

And where this bull was buried

is where the Greeks would come to worship him.

The Temple of Zeus is the largest temple

in the Peloponnese region.

Although it has since collapsed,

its ruins show us that over 1,500 years ago

it was magnificent.

Its columns measured over 34 feet tall

and they were over seven feet wide.

At the far end of the temple

was a 40-foot ivory and gold statue of the god himself.

It showed him on a throne, holding a sceptre in one hand,

and Nike, the goddess of victory in the other.

So the bull could have been an offering to Zeus,

but for what exactly?

The temple is located at Olympia,

which as its name suggests

is where the Olympics of ancient Greece were held.

This was a five-day event that saw athletes competing

against each other in a variety of different competitions.

The ancient Greek Olympics were a far cry

from the games we know today.

Back then, only men were allowed to compete,

and they had to do so in the nude.

If they made, say, a false start,

they could expect to face corporal punishment.

Men boxed and wrestled covered in oil,

and the fights were no holds barred.

Basically, anything other than biting and gouging was allowed.

Sometimes people died as a result of the brutality.

But what does a bull have to do with the Olympic Games?

The Olympic Games of ancient Greece were held

in the honor of the most powerful god of all, Zeus.

Victorious athletes would be crowned with olive wreaths

in front of the temple dedicated to him.

It's important to understand that the Olympics

were steeped in religion, tradition and sanctity.

The entire five days were dedicated to Zeus,

and so as a result, many offerings,

both in blood and bronze may have been offered.

They were pagans after all,

and these festivities tended to be pretty intense.

The archaeologists discover that the soil

where the bronze bull was found shows evidence of fire.

During the ritual sacrifice of an animal,

the Greeks would burn the inedible part.

So it would make sense that someone, maybe an Olympian,

would bury the bull here, during or after a sacrificial ceremony

held to gain the favor of Zeus.

After all, bulls were symbols of both strength and fertility.

Not far from the temple grounds,

archaeologists have discovered thousands of animal figurines,

including bulls, buried underneath the surface.

So this shows you how dedicated

the people at this time were to their gods.

But this temple was in use for 1,000 years or more.

So were they all offering these bronze bulls

for the same reason: to bring them good luck in the Olympics?

Maybe not all of them.

Because the bull was a symbol of fertility,

it could be that your average Greek landowner

laid these bulls down, asking Zeus for a plentiful harvest.

The thing is, many of these sacrificial bronze bulls

have a peculiar shape.

Their pose is slightly tilted forwards,

and their horns are turned inwards,

and the angle formed by the skull's axis in the horns

is less than 60 degrees.

The horns are also much bigger than those of your normal bull.

So maybe they aren’t typical bulls after all.

Just to the south of the Peloponnese peninsula

lies the island of Kythira.

Recently, archaeologists analyzed the skeleton

of a bovine that roamed the Earth

tens of thousands of years ago.

If you look at its skeleton,

you can see that it has the same horns,

and the same forward leaning posture

that can be seen on this bronze statue of a bull.

This statue is by no means your typical bull,

or at least not one we’re very familiar with today.

It's actually a representation of the Bos primigenius,

which is the Latin term for the auroch.

Why would they have made a statue of the cow’s ancestor?

Today's cows are descended from the auroch,

which went extinct in the early 1600s.

During the time of the ancient Greeks,

the auroch, standing over six feet at the shoulder,

and weighing over 2,000 pounds, was a prime target for hunters.

The land around the Temple of Zeus

is hilly and forested, but is also characterized by marshes,

which is exactly the kind of environment

the aurochs liked hanging out in.

So could these offerings be not for luck in competition

or farming, but rather to succeed during the hunt?

It’s definitely possible.

It must have been a popular animal to hunt.

By the 5th century BCE,

the auroch had gone extinct from all of ancient Greece.

So these bronze offerings must be from

before the time of Herodotus.

We also have palace reliefs from the Assyrian Empire,

which came to an end around the 7th century BCE,

depicting nobles hunting the auroch.

Our understanding is that the hunting of the auroch

was an activity reserved for the aristocracy

throughout the ancient world.

But they must have hunted them with gusto,

because their numbers plummeted as a result.

The bronze bulls found here at Olympia

may be from some desperate aristocratic hunters,

hoping that their offering would see them succeed in the hunt.

Whether offered by hunters, athletes or farmers

desperate for a good yield,

it's fitting that this little bull was found

as a result of a storm that was brought on by Zeus,

the god of weather.