Original subtitles

Mysteries can be buried anywhere,

under the earth,

beneath the sea,

or even right under our own feet.

And when we stumble upon them,

sometimes what we find can change history.

Tonight, we're uncovering heavy-metal discoveries,

from a school yard hiding an explosive secret-

He thinks it's just an old pipe,

but as he works to clear it away,

he freezes.

Panic sets in, and the school is immediately evacuated.

to a legendary lost ax-

It's got all these stuff marks on it,

looks like there are even burn marks on it,

but the guitar also looks pretty familiar.

to a pair of steel giants

buried beneath the waves.

At first, he thinks it's just an old shipwreck.

Then he calls in his friend,

and what they discover just makes no sense at all.

Join us now,

because nothing stays hidden forever.

Old storage units usually hide junk,

but one lucky buyer opened the door

to something straight from the silver screen.

In 1989, a contractor from Long Island

drops a hundred bucks on an abandoned storage unit,

one of those forgotten spaces

no one's paid rent on for years.

He has no clue what's inside it, of course,

but figures it might be a fun gamble.

He steps inside and sees a giant lump covered in blankets.

And when he pulls off the blankets,

underneath is a white sports car.

But the roof is caved in, and it has no wheels.

It looks like a Lotus sports car,

but there is some strange modifications.

There are fins jutting from the sides,

and the whole design is angular and futuristic.

It's beat-up

and can't be driven on the road

in this condition,

but he sees potential and decides to fix it up.

He loads the odd-looking car

onto a flatbed truck

and hits the road.

And as he's driving, the CB keeps crackling.

And truck drivers keep asking him the same question,

"Hey, is that the James Bond car

from the 'Spy Who Loved Me'?"

It sounds crazy,

but could this mystery car really be the one

that made movie history?

The contractor has never seen the movie,

so when he gets home,

he and his wife rent the VHS.

As they watch the film,

James Bond races away from the bad guys in a white Lotus.

The car drives to the edge of the pier,

and then it transforms.

Fins pop out, the wheels are gone,

and now, it's going under the water like a submarine.

This sub is the spitting image of the car

that he recovered from the storage shed.

If his car is the car, it's not just rare,

it's priceless.

So he contacts Bond author, Ian Fleming's Foundation,

for confirmation.

The foundation's mission is to preserve the works

and memorabilia of Fleming's career,

including his most famous creation, "James Bond."

The president of the foundation, Doug Redenius,

tells the contractor that eight white Lotus cars were made

for "The Spy Who Loved Me" in 1977.

Some were built for driving,

others were just stunt cars,

but only one was made to go in the water.

Known as Wet Nellie on set,

it was special-built with no gears.

It couldn't even drive in reverse.

Its only purpose was to go underwater, film the shot,

and resurface.

After filming wrapped in The Bahamas,

the Lotus was shipped to Long Island,

placed in the storage shed,

and prepaid for 10 years.

There's no real record of who put the car

in the storage unit,

but the rent wasn't paid,

and the producers who probably rented the unit

forgot all about it.

Once the car's identity is confirmed,

the contractor restores Wet Nellie from the ground up,

turning the dusty relic back into the legend it once was.

Over the next several years,

the contractor takes Wet Nellie

around to car shows and exhibitions.

But in 2013,

he finally decides to put the car up for auction.

Well, that hundred dollar investment

really paid off, 'cause ultimately,

that car was sold at an auction

for a million dollars

to an anonymous buyer.

Later, it's revealed that that buyer was Elon Musk.

Next up, another heavy-metal mystery

that makes some serious waves.

It's the 1980s, and off the coast of New Jersey,

a man by the name of Paul Hepler is mapping the sea floor

using a device called a magnetometer.

It essentially can create geographic maps

based on the earth's magnetic field.

He's looking for rocks and reefs,

things that could snag a fishing net,

or potentially, even sink a fishing trawler.

He maps these dangerous places

to help others avoid them,

and the work is usually slow and repetitive

until this day.

His machine starts wailing.

It's picked up on two huge objects on the seafloor below.

He drops on his dive gear, jumps into the Atlantic

just to see what's going on,

but visibility's really low this day,

the water's completely murky.

Paul tries to feel his way through the waters,

but suddenly, his hand hits something huge.

There are two cylinders side by side about 90 feet down.

At first,

he thinks it's just an old shipwreck.

Over the next few weeks,

he explores the find several more times.

Then he calls in his friend, Dan Lieb,

who's also the president

of the New Jersey Historical Divers Association.

And what they discover

just makes no sense at all.

They're not ship parts,

they're rusty old trains.

Hepler and Lieb aren't train enthusiasts,

these are water guys, these are divers,

so they have no idea what they're looking at.

So they sketch, they document everything they can.

They take measurements,

and they take their findings to true experts.

Well, the response is absolutely astonishing.

What they have discovered

are some of the earliest trains ever built,

Planet class 2-2-2 trains,

some of the rarest locomotives from the 1840s.

They weigh 15 tons each.

The production period for the Planet class 2-2-2

was an extremely fleeting time,

but these 15-ton, lightning-fast behemoths

were cutting-edge for the period,

and they were known as the "Iron Horses."

Their design is striking.

Six-wheeled frames with a pair of massive drive wheels,

flanked by smaller wheels in front and behind.

They were small by modern standards,

used to pull passenger cars over short distances.

But how did they wind up

at the bottom of the ocean?

The most widely accepted theory

is that they were being transported by barge

and maybe a storm came and they fell overboard,

maybe the boat capsized,

or perhaps they actually forcibly jettison these trains

in an effort to keep the boat afloat

and to lose additional ballast.

Whatever happened,

it's quite a mystery.

No one ever reported the loss of these locomotives,

which seems incredible.

No salvage teams were sent out there.

No newspaper reports about this.

They just vanished from the record

until Paul Hepler made his dive.

Today, they lie where they fell

side by side on the sea floor,

preserved by the cold Atlantic currents

like a snapshot of the beginnings of American rail.

For years, it sat unnoticed on a shelf,

just another hunk of metal,

until someone took a closer look and uncovered so much more.

It's 2014 in Cornwall, England,

and an elderly woman by the name of Doreen Liddell

has passed away.

And her family calls in a local auctioneer

by the name of David Lay

to come and investigate her belongings.

Initially, he sees much of the usual.

Old books, faded paintings,

a few semi-valuable antiques.

Nothing remarkable.

Then, he spots a small cat statue

on top of the hearth by the fireplace.

The family tells him,

"Throw it away if it's not worth anything."

But something about it catches David's eye,

and he wants to investigate further.

The golden earrings, its weight, and the patina

make David hesitate.

He decides to bring it back to his office,

where he contacts the British Museum

to have them examine it.

Experts at the museum run tests,

and the results are shocking.

Scientific analysis determines that this statue

is an authentic

2,500-year-old Egyptian bronze.

It turns out she's not just any cat.

The statue represents Bastet,

the Egyptian goddess of protection and fertility.

Bastet is one of the most beloved goddesses

in the Egyptian pantheon.

Statues of Bastet were cast in bronze

and often found in domestic settings,

placed within temples,

and also within graves

to accompany the deceased on the journey to the netherworld.

So how did a sacred statue from ancient Egypt

end up on top of a fireplace in Cornwall?

David digs deeper

and finds out that Doreen's late husband

worked for one of London's oldest auction houses.

But it turns out, their clients have included

one of the world's most famous archeologists, Howard Carter.

During the 19th and early 20th centuries,

Egyptian antiquities poured into Europe,

and Carter and his team

were responsible for unearthing over 5,000 artifacts

in the Valley of the Kings alone.

These include golden chariots, thrones, jewelry.

And most famously,

Carter is the man who opened the tomb of King Tut.

Somewhere along the way,

this Bastet had slipped through the cracks

and ended up on the family hearth,

mistaken for a worthless souvenir.

After gathering dust for decades,

the statue is now ready for a new home.

When the statue goes to auction,

they have only modest hopes

for how much money it'll bring in,

maybe 10,000, 15,000.

But when the bidding starts,

it just suddenly explodes.

$20,000 bids, 25,000,

goes up to 50,000.

When the hammer finally falls,

what did this cat drag in?

Almost $80,000.

Some old treasures sit right under our noses,

others are buried deeper,

waiting for the right moment to resurface,

like this next steel giant.

It's the fall of 1944,

and Estonia is finally being freed

from the crossfire of World War II.

Germans are now in retreat

as the country goes back into Soviet hands.

In a quiet lakeside village,

a young boy walks along the shore.

He's there to fish, something that he does all the time.

This time, however, there's something different.

He notices bubbles rising slow and steady just offshore.

And then he notices something even stranger.

Deep grooves cut into the tundra, leading into the lake.

And as the days go by, the bubbles don't stop.

Now, for some reason or another,

the boy decides to never tell anybody about the bubbles

or the tracks.

But he never forgets about them.

Then 50 years later,

a casual conversation

brings this mystery back to the surface.

In the early 2000s, the boy,

who, by this time, is an old man,

is swapping stories with Igor Shedunov,

a historian who heads a local war history club

called Otsing.

When the man recalls the tale of the lake,

the strange bubbles, the mysterious tracks,

Igor is 100% locked into this story.

And then, Igor decides to investigate.

Igor gathers a team of divers.

They head into the water with ropes and their own intuition.

No sonar, no radar.

They sweep the lake bed

and initially find nothing in the silt.

But then,

they detect the presence of something big and metallic

buried deep in the lake.

They don't know what it is,

but they're certain it shouldn't be there.

The object is buried under about seven feet of water

and nine more feet of peat and silt.

But nonetheless, they recognize

that this is no ordinary wreck.

They begin a recovery effort.

They bring in winches, cables, and bulldozers.

And then,

slowly, carefully, they start to raise it.

Finally, when it breaks the surface,

they're astonished with what they find,

a full-size military tank caked in mud.

They conclude that this tank is a Soviet T-34,

a well-preserved T-34.

The treads are still there,

ammo is still inside of the gun.

It's a remarkable find, but also a mystery.

Why was a perfectly preserved tank left here?

It turns out, during World War II,

Nazi Germany made extensive use

of captured foreign equipment,

like the Soviet T-34 tank.

They were called beutepanzer, or "a captured tank."

Because the Soviet T-34

was such an excellent armored fighting vehicle,

the Germans, by God, made use of them

when they captured them.

But during the retreat in September of 1944,

the Germans couldn't bring this tank with them.

And so, rather than leaving it behind

to allow the Soviets to recapture

and return the vehicle to service,

the decision was made to push it into the lake,

where nobody can use it again.

The Germans may have tried to bury it,

but now Igor is determined to bring it back to life.

A restoration crew cleans up the tank,

and they also decide to put the key into the ignition

and see if this machine will actually fire up.

Despite decades of being underwater,

when they turn the key,

it roars back to life,

which shows that the legacy of World War II,

even though it seems like a long time ago,

is still with us today.

We've seen metal made to conquer roads, rails,

and battlefields,

but this next find doesn't roll, it rocks.

It's 2009 in Curacao, off the coast of Venezuela.

Donald Balentina is this part-time guitar repairman

who one day has someone come into his shop

holding a pretty unique-looking ax.

It's a beat-up guitar.

It's been played for decades,

and it's been played pretty hard.

It's got all these scuff marks on it,

looks like there are even burn marks on it,

but the guitar also looks pretty familiar.

It's a 1954 Gibson Les Paul Custom,

heavily modified with three pickups

and a unique wiring setup,

features that are rarely seen together.

Despite the wear and tear,

it looks like a high-end, maybe one-of-a-kind instrument.

[Steve[ The more Donald examines the guitar,

the scratches, the burn marks by the bridge, the pickups,

he realizes he's seen this guitar before.

It looks exactly like the one

played by '70s rock icon Peter Frampton.

So what's it doing in Curacao?

Back in 1980,

Frampton and his band had just played a show in Venezuela,

and they board a plane to head to the next show,

which is gonna take place in Panama.

Now, the gear is following the band

on a separate cargo plane.

The band make it to Panama.

The cargo plane, unfortunately, doesn't.

The aircraft crashed upon takeoff,

and tragically, the four crew members never made it,

and neither did Frampton's guitar.

This wasn't just any guitar, this was iconic.

It defined the sound

on one of the greatest live albums of all time,

"Frampton Comes Alive!"

The album and the guitar that he played

turned him into a superstar seemingly overnight.

The album goes to number one on the Billboard 200

for 10 weeks,

and it even hits platinum eight times.

The cover of "Frampton Comes Alive!"

has the musician holding this Les Paul guitar.

So, when the plane goes down,

people believe that a small piece of rock and roll history

has been lost forever.

Convinced this is the legendary ax,

Donald reaches out to the only people

who would know for certain.

Donald takes photos of the guitar

and sends them to Frampton's team.

The response is almost immediate.

The wiring, the custom features, the burn marks,

even the serial number confirms

this is definitely the real thing.

It's an amazing discovery,

but the guitar's journey is just as extraordinary.

It turns out that after the crash,

pieces of the wreckage were salvaged by locals.

That included the Les Paul guitar,

which finds its way into the hands of a musician,

who eventually passes the guitar down to his son,

who brings it into Donald's shop.

Now, at first, the man vanishes,

but then a few months later, he resurfaces,

and he's asking $5,000 for the guitar.

And after months of negotiation between Donald and the man,

Donald purchases the guitar.

It now belongs to him.

But Donald doesn't keep it.

Instead,

he flies to Nashville

and personally returns it to Peter Frampton

without asking for a dime.

Frampton is stunned.

The guitar that shaped his sound,

that transformed his life,

lost for decades,

is back in his hands.

And soon, it's back on stage with him.

Frampton christens the guitar with a new name, Phoenix,

a reference to the mythical bird that rises from the ashes,

just as this guitar has come alive yet again.

Far from the stage,

another instrument lies buried in Denmark,

waiting centuries to be heard again.

In 1797, a farmer, Ole Pedersen, is digging up peat

in Brudevaelte Mose.

It's a peat bog, and it's hard, dirty work,

but they save the peat to store and burn all winter long.

They've been doing it for generations.

But today, as Ole drives his spade into the earth,

something rings hollow.

He digs out a long, twisted bronze tube

completely unlike anything he's ever seen.

Over the next few days,

he finds five similar ones just like it

along with what might be mouthpieces.

He's no expert on instruments,

but he presumes what he's found

are some kind of an ancient horn.

These six strange instruments

are sent to Copenhagen,

where they attract a lot of attention but remain a mystery.

It takes another 40 years

before anyone can figure out what they are.

In 1836, the Danish historian Christian J. Thomsen

examines these objects with fresh eyes.

He draws on ancient Norse sagas and local folklore,

and he pulls a name from the past

to describe what these things are, lurs.

Lurs are Bronze Age brass instruments

with no valves or finger holes,

just a mouthpiece at one end

and a flared bell at the other.

The sound they make is deep and resonant

and can carry for miles.

It's something ancient and otherworldly.

Until Ole made his discovery,

no one in the modern age has seen anything like it.

Even more incredible than what they are

is how they were made.

Over 200 years later, in 1990,

scientists finally X-rayed these instruments.

They find no signs of any hammering,

just thin seams cast together.

It tells them that the horn was built painstakingly,

a slow process using wax molds to go section by section.

And they can date this technique around 750 BC.

This places the lurs

among some of the oldest bronze wind instruments

ever discovered.

Since then, over 60 have been discovered

across Northern Europe,

always in bogs and often in pairs,

but the Brudevaelte remains the most extraordinary.

Six complete horns still intact.

Remarkably,

these ancient instruments also still work.

Modern musicians have performed on these,

and it brings to mind

what the ancient world might have sounded like

by resurrecting the voices of ancient Scandinavia.

Most people visit museums to learn about history.

For one curious student, her trip made history.

In November 2017, an Italian doctoral student

by the name of Vittoria Dall'Armellina

takes a day trip to a little island around Venice

called San Lazzaro degli Armeni.

She wants to visit the museum there,

which is attached to the monastery.

And as she travels through the museum,

in one of the cases, she discovers an old sword.

The label dates it to the Middle Ages,

but to Vittoria, who studies archeology,

this doesn't add up.

The size and shape look nothing like any medieval sword

she's ever studied.

The sword itself is simple.

There's no engravings.

There's no inscriptions.

And unfortunately, there's also no signs of wear.

Any signs of how this sword would've been used

are long gone.

This sword reminds her of another sword

found in one of the world's oldest known cities, Arslantepe,

in Turkey.

Swords found there are the oldest metal weapons

ever discovered,

with some dating back to 3000 BC.

Intrigued, Vittoria and a team of researchers

dig into the sword's history.

Vittoria goes through museum records

and shipping logs,

and she learns that this sword was actually excavated

nearly 150 years ago

from the site of Kavak in Eastern Turkey.

From there, the sword passes through several hands,

including an Armenian civil engineer,

who passes it to a monk from San Lazzaro.

When that monk dies,

the monastery inherits all of his property,

including the mysterious sword.

When the team does a chemical analysis

of the weapon,

it reveals something shocking.

Testing shows that this blade was made out

of a combination of copper and arsenic,

which was used long before tin came to be used

in bronze making.

In other words, this sword itself

is from earlier than the Bronze Age.

Believed to be one of the oldest swords

ever discovered,

it now resides in the San Lazzaro monastery,

preserved and studied as a priceless link

to the world's earliest warriors.

This sword, once a forgotten artifact,

mislabeled in a Venetian museum,

shows that sometimes all it takes is a keen eye

like Vittoria's

to discover something truly special.

It took a sharp eye to spot that sword,

but our next discovery clearly

has trouble written all over it.

August 2023,

the ground crew at Queen Kossamak High School in Cambodia

is sweating under the hot sun.

They're clearing some land to expand the school's garden.

As the workers dig,

one of the shovels

hits something hard and metallic.

Initially, he doesn't think much of it.

He assumes it's just an old pipe.

But as he works to clear it away, he freezes,

a chill running down his spine,

because it's not a pipe,

it looks more like a grenade.

Panic sets in,

and the school is immediately evacuated.

The authorities show up, examine it,

and confirm the worst,

it is a grenade.

As they continue to excavate the site,

they find that it's not just a few hand grenades,

they have uncovered thousands

of explosives.

They're rusty, but they're still live,

and they're still dangerous.

How did this quiet school yard become a minefield?

The answer lies in a turbulent chapter of Cambodia's past.

From 1967 to 1975,

the country was torn apart by a violent civil war.

At the same time, the war in Vietnam

reached a critical pitch.

Cambodia is eventually dragged into the conflict

with infiltration routes bringing weapons of war

from North Vietnam through Cambodia into South Vietnam

on what was eventually called the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Controversially, the US began bombing campaigns

and ground incursions

targeting suspected supply routes.

But many of the explosives from the conflict

failed to detonate.

Since the war ended,

unexploded ordnance has claimed 20,000 lives

and maimed 45,000 more.

The fighting may have ended, but clearly the danger didn't.

Over the next few decades,

the violence of the recent past

became a distant memory.

By the late 1980s, the site had become a school,

and it was believed

that the grounds were cleared of explosives.

But that turned out not to be the case.

After the incident,

government officials deploy the remnants of war team

to scour the 10 acres of the school ground.

After a week of thorough digging,

they remove over 2000 pieces of live ordnance

and then declare the ground safe.

For this school, the danger's gone.

But across Cambodia,

thousands more people are still at risk.

After the grounds have been cleared of explosives,

the Cambodian government makes a bold pledge

to clear every existing landmine

and piece of unexploded ordnance,

a task they hope to accomplish by 2030.

It's a massive effort

that will be helped by international partners

like Japan and the United States.

And if it succeeds,

Cambodia will be the first country in Southeast Asia

to wipe the slate clean.

It looked like just another day in the field

until a flash of metal revealed a surprising chapter

in Chinese history.

In spring of 1929,

a farmer by the name of Yan Daocheng

is digging an irrigation ditch near his field.

And all of a sudden, he strikes something hard.

The soil soon gives way to something unexpected.

It's old, it's odd looking,

it's green and fairly intricate.

It's also clearly handmade.

But he has no idea what this is.

He keeps digging and unearthing more amazing items.

Bronze implements, strange precision tools,

each one more wondrous than the next.

It's a treasure trove of relics,

but experts have no idea which dynasty they come from.

Then in 1934, archeologist David Crockett Graham

starts a formal dig in the area.

They uncovered temples, bronze workshops,

the remains of sacrificial pits.

It seems that this site extended over several square miles.

These aren't just artifacts, this is an entire civilization.

The most striking finds are the bronze masks.

They are giant with large bulging eyes

and these massive ears that look like wings.

To Graham and his team,

the masks suggest something bigger.

The masks' strange, otherworldly features

seem to elicit ancient texts

talking of a long lost kingdom called Shu.

From the 10th until around the 4th century BC,

this kingdom absolutely flourished.

It was a pinnacle of civilization.

They were masters of bronze, ritual, and symbolism,

and they were also warrior priests.

But then it ended very suddenly.

Historical records are scarce,

and there's really not a clear idea

of what exactly happened.

As the excavation goes on,

the evidence continues to mount.

They keep finding more and more artifacts.

Bronze trees, golden scepters, ornate jade stones.

And all these artifacts are covered in patterns and motifs

not found anywhere else in Chinese art.

Altogether, they unearthed 13,000 artifacts.

But the discoveries don't stop there.

Years later, the site reveals even more.

In 2021, to everyone's surprise,

an archeologist named Teng Fei

uncovers six more pits

at Sanxingdui.

Soon, they're unearthing gold masks

and towering bronze statues alongside other relics,

which suggests that the Shu civilization

was far greater and richer than previously thought.

The significance and scale of the finds

also challenges historians to rethink long held ideas

about how Chinese civilization began.

For decades,

scholars believed that Chinese civilization began

in a single cradle

along the Yellow River basin in the north.

But Fei's discovery challenges that idea,

pointing to multiple independent cultures

rising at the same time throughout China.

In the end, Sanxingdui turns out to be a window

into a lost civilization far more complex

than we might've imagined before.

And it's all because a farmer one day

made an accidental swing of his shovel.

Some treasures are buried in the soil,

others mysteriously sink into the sea,

like this next story.

In 2015,

Tzvika Feuer joins a group of amateur scuba divers

celebrating a friend's birthday

with an adventurous dive off the coast of Caesarea, Israel.

As they explore the Mediterranean seabed,

something catches his eye.

He sees a glint on the ocean floor.

At first, he thinks maybe it's trash.

But when he looks closer,

suddenly

he sees a ton of gold coins just sitting in the sand.

Tzvika is unsure what to do,

so he tells the diving club director,

and he reports it to the Israel Antiquities Authority,

or the IAA.

The IAA dispatches a professional dive team

to examine the site,

and what they find shocks everyone.

Over the course of a few days,

these divers managed to find a collection

of about 2000 gold coins.

It is the largest cash of gold coins ever found in Israel.

The coins also offer up more clues

about where they might be from.

Some of the coins are stamped with names,

Caliphs Al-Hakim and Al-Zahir,

who were rulers in the Middle East

in the early 11th century.

In other words,

the names that are stamped into these coins

show that the coins are over a thousand years old.

These Arabic inscriptions also include dates

and mint marks

from the Fatimid Caliphate,

the dominant power in North Africa and the Mediterranean

in the 11th century.

Several were minted near Caesarea,

a key Fatimid port.

The connection of these coins to Caesarea

suggests maybe a couple of different things.

Maybe it was a vessel

that was carrying taxes back to Egypt and it sunk.

Another possibility was that these coins

were meant to pay wages at the military garrison,

and for whatever reason, never made it.

While we may never know what the hoard was for,

unfortunately, for Tzvika, it's not finders keepers.

Under Israeli law,

all antiquities that are discovered

belong to the state.

And just in case the Navy divers didn't find

every last loose coin,

they tightened marine patrols

to make sure no looters were able to go down

and find anything else.

More coins may yet be found,

but in the meantime, the ones that we have

bear witness to the lost centuries of Caesarea.

When a married couple in Texas goes for a walk,

they're expecting a nice stroll in the fresh air.

What they find instead sparks a heated debate.

In 1936, just outside of London, Texas,

Max Hahn and his wife, Emma,

are going for a hike along Red Creek.

And as they hike along, they notice something strange,

a wooden shaft protruding out of a hunk of stone.

Curious, they lug the odd rock back home and set it aside.

It sits for years gathering dust as a conversation piece

and a backyard mystery.

Again, it's a wooden stick sticking out of a rock.

Everybody's curious what's inside.

So finally, one day, a family member convinces Max and Emma

to crack this stone open.

And what they find

shocks them.

It's a forged iron hammer

perfectly encased within solid stone.

Now, the Hahns must have lived a pretty extraordinary life,

'cause they don't think that's very interesting,

and they just kind of leave it on their mantelpiece,

collecting dust for years.

Then, in the early 1980s,

a minister buys the hammer

and decides to have it tested.

He commissions elemental analysis,

and the results are, the hammer is made from 96.6% iron,

2.6% chlorine, and 0.74% sulfur.

This is a strange alloy

that resists rust better than most 19th-century iron.

If the alloy is strange,

the results for the composition of the stone

are unbelievable.

Scientists suggest that this is Ordovician rock,

which would make this stone ancient,

hundreds of millions of years old.

So how does a modern-looking tool

end up inside a prehistoric rock?

Naturally, a lot of ideas start bubbling up.

Some people think this is groundbreaking, monumental,

perhaps it's evidence of a ancient civilization

that was working with these tools,

that was somehow lost to time.

Others argue that the hammer's design

is nearly identical to other 19th-century mining tools,

so this has to be something much more modern.

They believe that the minerals hardened around it

much more recently

during a rare natural process,

which could explain why the seemingly ancient rock

is actually more modern.

However, the hammer's wooden handle,

well, that's a little bit harder to explain.

I mean, it's petrified.

And while wood petrification doesn't take place

over millions of years,

it sure does take longer than a few decades.

Because the artifact has not been subjected

to any peer-reviewed scientific analysis,

the controversy persists.

To believers,

the hammer is a relic that rewrites history.

To skeptics, it's a rare but natural geological illusion.

Whatever the truth may be,

the line between myth and history

isn't always very easy to draw.

Whether it's a pair of iron horses on the ocean floor,

one of the oldest swords ever found,

or a bronze cat hiding centuries of secrets,

when it comes to heavy metal,

musics got nothing on these amazing discoveries.

I'm Danny Trejo.

Thanks for watching "Mysteries Unearthed."