Original subtitles

On this episode of "Expedition Files" --

Dracula is said to be inspired by the real-life terrors

of a bloodthirsty 15th-century warlord,

Vlad the Impaler.

He's believed to have killed thousands.

But the circumstances of Vlad's death

and the location of his burial remained a mystery until now.

Then, as the Cold War burns hot,

a top-secret U.S. government program

attempts to spy on the enemy using the power of the mind.

But were the abilities of these so-called "psychic spies"

real or just science fiction?

We declassify the jaw-dropping truth.

And, in ancient Rome, Spartacus is a legendary

slave-turned-gladiator who sparks a rebellion,

bringing the nation to its knees.

One!

[Josh] But did he really exist?

Two!

[Josh] New archaeological findings

shed light on the man behind the myth.

In the corridors of time,

are mysteries that defy explanation.

Now, I'm traveling through history itself

on a search for the truth.

New evidence.

Shocking answers.

I'm Josh Gates.

And these...

are my "Expedition Files."

I've been lucky enough to travel to 117 countries,

but some of the best places I've ever been

aren't out there. They're up here.

Arrakis, the Shire, Diagon Alley,

all completely fictitious,

all made real by a brilliant book

plus our own brilliant imaginations.

But the thing is, powerful fiction is still

inspired by powerful facts, whether it was Tolkien's time

in the trenches for "Lord of the Rings,"

or Frank Herbert hitting those magic mushrooms

to create "Dune."

And tonight, we search for the facts behind some other

equally epic fiction, investigating three iconic stories

to find the truth behind the tale.

We begin in the year 1462 in the forests of Carpathia.

In time, this will be part of Romania.

But in this century, it's known as Transylvania.

And here's the man in charge around here, Prince Vlad III,

also known as Vlad Tepes and Vlad the Impaler.

He's currently leading a military campaign against

the invading Ottoman Empire, which has resulted in thousands

of his enemies dead by, well, you get the idea.

This very real man is said to go on to become the inspiration

for one of fiction's most infamous vampires,

because his other name is Vlad Dracula.

But while the monster becomes iconic,

curiously, we know very little about the man himself.

We don't know how he died or where he was buried.

But 600 years from now, new discoveries may allow us to

come face to face with the real Dracula.

Vlad III is born in the winter of 1431 in Sighisoara,

in the region of Transylvania,

then part of the Kingdom of Hungary.

Vlad belongs to a ruling family of Wallachia, a brutal

15th century borderland caught between Hungary

and the expanding Ottoman Empire.

Vlad's father is the ruler of Wallachia and member of

the Order of the Dragon, a Christian brotherhood sworn

to keep the Ottomans at bay.

His membership perk? A fearsome new title, "Dracul,"

which makes Vlad III "Dracula,"

quite literally, "the son of the dragon."

And the rest of Vlad's childhood appropriately reads

like the origin story of a monster.

As a boy, Vlad is hauled off as a hostage

by his father's enemy, the Ottoman Turks.

But while Vlad is a prisoner of the Ottomans,

Wallachia's other great enemy, the Hungarians,

decide to strike, assassinating Vlad's father and brother.

With his dad gone, Vlad assumes the throne of Wallachia

in 1448.

But that only lasts for two months before he's forced out

in a coup led by rival nobles.

Vlad then spends the next eight years in exile,

sharpening his grudges against the Ottomans, the Hungarians,

the Wallachians, frankly, anyone

who will stand in his way.

By 1456, Vlad is done waiting.

He returns to Wallachia with an army to retake his throne

by any means necessary. He's brutally successful.

Vlad's first order of business is settling scores with those

who he feels had betrayed his family.

[man gasping]

Accounts say he invites hundreds of local aristocrats

to a grand feast,

framing it as a gesture of peace.

Then he has them arrested.

The lucky are sent to toil as forced laborers.

The unlucky are executed

in what becomes Vlad's signature style,

impalement.

A sharpened stake driven through the body,

leaving victims to die slowly.

Their corpses are left skewered, a forest of warnings

to anyone who dares defy him.

The fearsome nickname "Vlad the Impaler"

spreads throughout the land.

Meanwhile, Vlad's enemies, the Ottoman Empire, push west

towards his territory, spreading their Islamic regime.

In response, the Pope calls for a new crusade to protect

Christian territory that includes Vlad's.

Eager for revenge against his former captors,

the Impaler seizes the moment.

When the Ottomans march into Wallachia, Vlad strikes back

with scorched-earth fury, raiding camps, poisoning wells,

and, yes, impaling thousands.

The savagery works.

The Ottomans pull back, and Europe hails Vlad

as a defender of the Christian faith,

a hero to some, a nightmare to others.

Vlad's brutal tactics become the stuff of legend.

One commonly repeated tale claims he dined among

the impaled, dipping his bread in their blood.

Now, we should be clear, much of what we know about

these stories comes from enemy propaganda,

pamphlets from the late 1400s.

In Romania itself, Vlad is today considered

a national hero, a brave leader who defended his country

from foreign invaders.

So the line between fact and fear-mongering is blurry.

The story of Vlad's death is similarly debatable.

Even the year, 1476, or maybe 1477.

Some say he fell in battle.

Others claim he was betrayed by his own men.

Another tale says his severed head was sent

to the Ottoman Sultan as a trophy.

As for his body, his final resting place

has never been found.

But just as the man becomes lost in the shadows,

the monster takes center stage.

In 1897, Irish author Bram Stoker writes the novel

"Dracula," inspired, at least in part, by Vlad the Impaler.

While writing the novel, Stoker dives

into Eastern European lore.

In an 1820 history book,

he finds mention of Vlad III as

"Dracula, son of the dragon."

The name is exotic, mysterious, terrifying.

Stoker scraps his original villain, "Count Wampyr,"

and instead christens him "Count Dracula."

From there, Stoker pulls details from Vlad III's life

to shape Count Dracula's backstory, his role as

a ruthless warlord, the Transylvanian setting,

and his battles with the Ottoman Turks.

Meanwhile, the mythical side of Stoker's tale

comes from his deep dive into centuries-old

vampire folklore in Eastern Europe.

In the Middle Ages, long before science could explain disease

and decay, villagers sometimes exhumed the dead,

fearing those who lived evil lives died

with unfinished business and might rise again.

When the graves were opened,

some bodies showed bloated faces, darkened skin and blood

at the mouth, natural signs of decomposition that villagers

misinterpreted as proof the dead had returned

to feed on the living.

To stop them, communities resorted

to brutal measures.

Archaeologists have since uncovered anti-vampire burials

throughout Europe, skeletons nailed to the ground

with stakes, others with bricks or metal forced into

their mouths to prevent biting.

Several years ago, I explored these practices myself,

working alongside archaeologists

at a dig site in Bulgaria.

Amazing. So this is the metal.

And what is it exactly?

It's a plowshare, the tool that local people use to

plow the ground.

[Josh] So this is something that was done after the person died?

This was then driven into them?

Definitely happened after death, and it shows evidence

that this is a ritual

preventing this person from becoming a vampire.

[Josh] These real-world horror stories gave

Stoker's Dracula its fangs.

But not all Dracula legends are rooted in medieval folklore.

One of the most iconic, the bat, is a later invention.

Drawing on reports of blood-sucking bats in

the Americas first documented in the 16th century,

Bram Stoker fused this image with Vlad's fiercer reputation

to create his infamous monster.

Since the late 1800s, Dracula has sunk his teeth

into popular culture like almost no other character.

The Count has starred in stage plays, silent films,

blockbuster movies and TV shows, comic books,

even breakfast cereal.

But behind the legend lies an unsettling mystery,

the fate of the real man who inspired it,

Vlad the Impaler.

For centuries, historians have disagreed on how he died

and where he's buried.

Now, a modern-day search has uncovered new evidence

that may finally lead to Vlad's long-lost remains

and the secrets buried with them.

For centuries, the final resting place of Vlad the Impaler,

the ruthless ruler whose reign of terror helped

inspire the legend of Dracula, has been a mystery.

Now, Dr. Anne DeLong, professor of British and Gothic

literature and editor of the "Journal of Dracula Studies,"

follows the trail of clues that may finally lead

to Vlad's lost grave.

The fact that there is no clear trail to Vlad's death

or to his burial site is a bit strange,

particularly considering his status today

as a hero of Romanian history.

For many years, popular tradition believed that

Vlad the Impaler was buried in a monastery in Romania.

One of those is the Snagov Monastery, a site that was

connected to Vlad's family.

On a small island north of Bucharest, Snagov Monastery has

long been linked to Vlad the Impaler's fate.

16th century accounts claim he died in battle nearby,

and was buried there.

For generations, locals pointed to a plain stone slab inside

the church as his hidden grave, a humble marker for a man

with a monster-sized legend.

The monastery at Snagov was excavated in 1933 in order to

search for remains of Vlad.

The tomb turned out to be completely empty,

except for animal bones.

That's led some historians to look elsewhere,

like Comana Monastery, a fortress-like church

Vlad founded during his reign.

[Dr. DeLong] The Comana Monastery is closer to the site

where he is believed to have died.

It makes more logical sense that he would have been moved

to a closer monastery.

But excavations at Comana in the 1970s discovered

no proof of Vlad.

In the end, no grave site for the Impaler has ever been

discovered in Romania, leading some to the theory that

Vlad was buried somewhere else.

In 2014, there's a fascinating new development.

A team of Italian researchers identified a curious tomb at

the church of Santa Maria La Nova in Naples,

featuring ominous engravings and what some claim to be

a coded inscription of letters and symbols.

[Dr. DeLong] Some historians believe that Vlad's remains ended up

in Naples, which is where his daughter lived.

And some have suggested that she sent for the body, then was

able to memorialize him where she lived and presumably be

buried with him also.

[Josh] Supporters of the theory point to details carved into

the tomb's facade, an ornate dragon

and a knight's helmet,

symbols that could reference the Order of the Dragon

to which Vlad's father belonged.

Behind the tomb lies an epigraph that has yet to be

fully deciphered, but two translated words,

"Vlad" and "Balkans,"

have fueled speculation that it may be

connected to Vlad the Impaler, raising the possibility that

this is his long-lost grave, more than a thousand miles from

the land he once ruled.

Skeptics argue that the tomb may simply belong to a noble

Neapolitan family who adopted similar symbols to reflect

their status and religious devotion.

But that hasn't stopped the church from embracing

its newfound celebrity as

the possible resting place of Dracula.

Researchers have asked for permission to investigate

the tomb to find out for sure.

But legal and ethical obstacles mean it could be years before

we have a definitive answer.

And Vlad's alleged tomb in Naples isn't the only recent

Dracula news to come out of Italy.

In August of 2023, Italian scientists examined

centuries-old letters attributed to Vlad the Impaler.

They detected microscopic protein traces that may have

been left on the paper by his hands.

These proteins are linked to a rare condition called

hemolacria, which can cause a person's tear ducts to bleed.

If true, it means the man who inspired Dracula may have

literally wept blood.

That doesn't make him a vampire,

but it's not gonna help me sleep any better tonight either.

It's 1979.

That's a Soviet military base somewhere near

the Arctic Circle.

American intelligence suspects they're building

a new aircraft carrier here, but can't confirm it,

because the CIA has no agents on the inside.

Or do they?

-[swoosh] -[gasps]

Nearly 5,000 miles away, in a windowless room at

Fort Meade, Maryland, a new kind of operative

is at work, the "psychic spy," agents who claim they can see

anywhere on Earth at any time using nothing but their minds.

The U.S. government will pour millions

into Project Star Gate until,

after decades of operation, it's labeled

a failure and shuttered.

But 50 years after its inception, former members

of this top-secret initiative will speak out,

and declassified documents will emerge.

What they reveal is nothing short of mind blowing.

The story of Project Star Gate may sound like science fiction,

but according to Joe McMoneagle, it's all too real.

In 1978, he's a 32-year-old officer

in the Army's Signal Intelligence Program.

He says he's invited to interview for a position

with physicist Hal Puthoff,

head of a new top-secret military operation.

-You served in Vietnam, correct? -Yes, sir.

[Josh] Midway through the meeting,

McMoneagle gets a question he never expected.

Have you ever experienced anything called

a "paranormal event"?

[Josh] He hesitates, but then decides to answer truthfully.

Well, actually...

[Josh] He tells Puthoff about a night at a bar with his wife

and a friend when he suddenly feels sick.

Stepping outside for air,

he collapses and stops breathing.

They rush him to the hospital, where he remains unresponsive.

McMoneagle is unconscious, but will later claim he sees

everything that is happening to him, watching the doctors work

on his body from somewhere above it.

When he finally wakes after being revived,

he's back in his own body.

[woman] Dr. Florence, please dial 1-1-8.

McMoneagle figures Puthoff must think he's crazy after hearing

such a wild story.

But instead of being dragged out of the office

in a straitjacket, he's offered a job

in a top-secret psychic espionage program.

McMoneagle will help found the program,

tasked with harnessing

his supposed "supersensory abilities"

to see and hear things across the world,

all without ever leaving his office.

He's allegedly even given a code name,

"Remote Viewer 001."

And in a time of global tension, his mind may become

one of the government's most unconventional weapons.

In 1978, Army officer Joe McMoneagle allegedly joins

a top secret program called "Project Star Gate" and trains

to become a psychic spy.

Now, if you're wondering how

one trains to become a psychic, you're not alone.

The project stems from the work of physicists

Russell Targ and Star Gate director Harold Puthoff

at the Stanford Research Institute in the 1970s.

Convinced psychic abilities can be taught, they spend years

testing the limits of remote viewing, a kind of mental

teleportation where those the mind's eye reaches across

time and space to perceive distant locations and events.

Their experiments soon catch the attention

of the U.S. Army's Intelligence Command,

especially with reports that

the Soviets are researching similar techniques.

The unit stays small, just 15 to 20 people working in secrecy

in an old, leaky wooden barracks.

In 1979, McMoneagle claims

he starts getting real assignments.

A U.S. spy satellite

has captured images of a massive industrial complex

at a Soviet naval base 650 miles north of Moscow.

Ground operatives can't get close,

leaving American intelligence completely in the dark

about what's happening inside.

McMoneagle says he isn't told any of this.

Instead, he's given the coordinates.

Meanwhile, a satellite photograph of the target

is sealed in an envelope.

So what do you make of this?

[Josh] He's asked to view the contents

not with his eyes, but with his mind.

McMoneagle says he begins to sketch a series of boxes,

like an aerial view of buildings.

Then he reports what he believes is inside.

I see an object.

I see water.

It's a shark.

Shark is important, but shark fins, no.

It has fins, elongated fins.

It's a submarine.

[Josh] McMoneagle is told that his sketch eerily matches

an overhead view of what the photo captures,

a secret Soviet base.

And if McMoneagle is right,

then that base hides a submarine.

McMoneagle says Army intelligence reports

his findings up the chain to the National Security Council.

But the council dismisses it, saying it's not plausible.

Still, McMoneagle believes his so-called psychic instincts

were eventually proven correct.

Just four months later, new satellite photos reveal

a massive submarine docked at the same Soviet base,

exactly as McMoneagle described.

To the Americans, this type of sub becomes known as Typhoon,

later made famous by Tom Clancy's

"The Hunt for Red October."

But it's what the Soviets call the sub

that really gets heads spinning.

They call it "Shark," just like McMoneagle first declared when

he was attempting to remotely view the site.

It's a shark.

[Josh] You'd think a success like this would cause the military

to double down, but apparently

not everyone's convinced.

The CIA argues that Project Star Gate is wasteful and its

results are inconsistent and hard to verify

in real time.

In 1984, a National Academy of Sciences report backs them up,

concluding remote viewing relies on poor methodology

and cherry-picked data.

The U.S. Army shuts down the program as a result.

But just a year later, in late 1985,

the Defense Intelligence Agency steps in

to continue funding the work.

That's too late for Joe McMoneagle, who had already

retired in 1984.

By the end of his service, McMoneagle says he was involved

in hundreds of remote viewing missions, though it's worth

noting the results of his work remain classified,

with no public paper trail to independently verify them.

Still, McMoneagle would not be the last remote viewer

to claim the program produced real results.

On May 15, 1987, remote viewer Paul Smith,

a one-time co-worker of McMoneagle, claims to see

something terrible during a session.

An American ship under fire from missiles launched

by an enemy aircraft from a desert region.

It's the height of the Iran-Iraq War and tensions

in the Gulf, are at an all-time high.

Smith says his warning is passed up the chain of command,

but officials see nothing they can act on.

Two days later, news breaks.

The USS Stark, a U.S. Navy destroyer,

is struck by two missiles from an Iraqi jet.

Thirty-seven sailors are killed.

Remote viewing skeptics chalk it up to coincidence.

The program also suffers some clear failures.

In 1988, the DIA reportedly turns to Project Star Gate

to help locate William Higgins,

a Marine colonel taken hostage in Lebanon.

A remote viewer supposedly claimed to vision that he was

alive and being held at an underground location.

But the information doesn't lead to his rescue,

and Higgins is eventually found dead.

With a much-disputed record of success, Project Star Gate comes

to an abrupt end once again in 1995

after a U.S. government review conducted for the CIA

concludes that remote viewing fails to produce reliable,

actionable intelligence.

Most of the documents relating to program operations remained

classified, fueling decades of rumor and speculation about

what the government might still be hiding.

For more than 20 years, those files sit buried

in archives, sealed away from public view.

But then, in 2017, everything changes.

The CIA quietly uploads millions

of declassified documents to its online Crest Archive,

and hidden among them

are the long-lost records of Project Star Gate,

and what they reveal is staggering.

[Josh] After years of secrecy, classified files tied to

the government's experiments in psychic intelligence

are finally declassified.

For the first time, the public can access

over 12,000 Star Gate documents

from CIA headquarters in Langley.

Even the former remote viewers themselves step forward,

eager to prove their incredible stories.

Paul Smith, who claims he predicted

the missile attack on the USS Stark,

is at the front of the line.

One of the things I found exciting about the archives

becoming public finally,

was that it allowed me to get back into them

and find my session against the ship that was attacked by

the Iraqi jet, the USS Stark.

And I found the typescript of that session.

But what was maybe even more exciting was that I found

the documentation for the Typhoon Submarine Project

that Joe McMoneagle is famous for,

with the sketches, the descriptions, everything,

and it absolutely matched the story

that had been passed down to us.

So this is documentation that proved that it really happened.

Not only that, the CIA files reveal that plenty of

government officials believed the program

was getting results.

For the first time, we can show McMoneagle's sketch of

the Soviet base, supposedly attained

through remote viewing.

We can also show that it eerily matches

the actual satellite images of the site.

Some even go so far as to say that the data

gathered through remote viewing was generally consistent

with later intelligence and assessments.

[Smith] We were doing things, of course,

that humans aren't supposed to be able to do,

and yet here we were doing them.

And if this was impossible and wasn't real,

we shouldn't get it right ever.

And yet we actually have the evidence that we have

gotten it right many, many, many times.

While believers like Paul Smith argue

Project Star Gate proved the mind can reach

beyond the limits of space and time,

it should be noted that a number of the declassified CIA files

tell a different story, one of lucky guesses

and vague details stretched to fit facts that

developed at a later date.

The divide endures, yet the accounts

of these former remote viewers remain fascinating,

leaving many to wonder, were they really on the verge

of an extraordinary breakthrough in mental espionage?

To answer that question, well, you'd need to be psychic.

The year is 71 BC on the banks of the Silarius River

in southern Italy.

An army has just been defeated in battle, valiantly led

by this dying man.

He is a former slave- turned-gladiator-

turned-general.

No, it's not Russell Crowe's fictional character

from the movie "Gladiator," this is a real person.

Or at least he might be.

His name is Spartacus.

Legend says that for the last two years, he's led nearly

120,000 slaves in a rebel uprising against

the Roman Republic, until it ends with his death.

Did this one man really fight his way out of slavery

and nearly take down the mighty Romans?

Or is all of this just a myth?

For 2000 years, there will be no definitive proof

that Spartacus existed at all.

But a remarkable archaeological discovery may change all that.

If you know the name Spartacus, it's probably thanks

to Kirk Douglas' iconic on-screen portrayal

in Stanley Kubrick's 1960 film.

Or perhaps through the more recent TV series.

But as for the real story of Spartacus, curiously,

we know almost nothing firsthand.

No written eyewitness accounts,

no definitive archaeological evidence.

Instead, almost everything we think we know is written

over a century after his death by the two ancient historians

behind me, Plutarch and Appian.

They wrote their accounts separately decades apart,

but the story they tell is quite the tale.

According to ancient historians, Spartacus was born

around 103 BC in Thrace, then a province of Rome,

but what today is an area of Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey.

He was likely raised as a free tribesman before serving in

the Roman army, probably as an auxiliary soldier,

which means he fought for Rome,

but without the full protections of a Roman citizen.

But before long, Spartacus is no longer an ally

of the Roman army.

He ends up on the run after abandoning his post,

and under Roman law,

desertion is punishable by death.

[screaming]

[Josh] But because of Spartacus' size and strength,

he isn't executed.

Instead, he becomes a Roman slave and sent to become

a gladiator in southern Italy.

Here, Spartacus has one simple, brutal job, fight to the death.

While some gladiators were free men who fought by choice,

most were enslaved men like Spartacus.

They had few rights.

Their only chance to ever earn their freedom

was through deadly combat.

For Spartacus, if he is to die, he believes it should be

on his own terms.

At this time, much of Rome's power depends on slave labor,

with more than a million people in servitude.

With so many in bondage, revolts are a huge threat.

And according to Appian and Plutarch, in 73 BC,

Spartacus hatches an escape plan, organizing a band of

about 70 other gladiators,

ready to fight for their freedom.

Under cover of darkness, they manage to

overthrow the guards.

They then retreat to a hideout near Mount Vesuvius.

Twice, the Romans send a small band of soldiers after them,

but Spartacus and the other gladiators

easily beat them back,

even overwhelming their forces to steal

proper military equipment.

The histories record that for months,

Rome treats Spartacus' revolt like a mosquito bite,

more an annoyance than a military threat.

This underestimation allows Spartacus to spend time

gathering more and more rebels to his cause.

His army is growing fast.

One!

-Huh! -Two!

[Josh] By the spring of 72 BC,

legend says that Spartacus' forces swell to 120,000.

One!

[Josh] An almost unbelievable number.

Thrust!

[Josh] What will become known as the Third Servile War

is about to begin.

Rome finally wakes up, and they send two legions,

about 10,000 soldiers, to fight him.

Initially, they are successful,

cutting down about 30,000 of Spartacus' men.

But despite the Roman army's superior training,

Spartacus' overwhelming numbers prevail on the battlefields.

[soldiers grunting]

It's a crushing blow for the mighty Republic.

It is an extraordinary legend that has been told

for centuries. But is it true?

Is the uprising as epic as history claims?

Furthermore, did Spartacus really exist?

Now, a discovery hidden in the forests of modern-day Italy

may finally offer answers.

In 71 BC, following a humiliating defeat

after a slave uprising, Rome prepares to finish off

their leader, Spartacus, once and for all.

The Republic sends nearly 50,000 elite soldiers to hunt

him down in southern Italy, led by one of its most powerful

and ambitious generals, Marcus Licinius Crassus.

He has a single mission -- kill Spartacus.

As Roman pressure mounts, Spartacus and his army are

pushed toward the narrow toe of southern Italy.

To the south lies the Mediterranean Sea,

but Spartacus has no navy, no escape route,

and nowhere left to run. Crassus sees his opportunity.

According to Plutarch, Crassus orders

the rapid construction of a massive wall

nearly 40 miles long,

stretching from sea to sea across the peninsula,

effectively sealing in Spartacus and his forces.

The wall will also become a turning point that will shape

the final chapter of this epic rebellion.

Once construction of the wall is complete,

Crassus then attacks,

knowing that Spartacus has nowhere to hide.

The rebel supposedly recognizes he has no way out

and asks for a truce.

But Crassus wants blood, denying the request and forcing

Spartacus into a fight for his life.

What is said to follow is a brutal battle,

with both sides losing tens of thousands of men.

Remarkably, Spartacus breaks through the Romans' barricade,

but it costs him a huge portion of his army.

It isn't long before Crassus' legions catch what's left of

the rebels, forcing Spartacus into his final stand

near the Silarius River,

where the slave-turned- rebel-general

is wounded by a spear to the thigh.

[grunting]

Spartacus' forces are decimated.

And with that, the man himself finally succumbs to the might

of Rome. Or so we're told.

The fact is, archaeologists have never found

any evidence of Spartacus.

No grave, no firsthand accounts.

The historians who recorded his story were writing

hundreds of years after his death.

But that lack of evidence would seemingly change in 2024,

when Paolo Visona, a classical archaeologist at

the University of Kentucky, was on an expedition

in southern Italy.

In 2024, we were in southern Italy, and I was accosted by

a group of local environmentalists

who had wanted to show me some

photos on their cell phones.

And this is when I saw the first images of this wall.

In my 30-plus year career doing fieldwork, I've never seen

anything like it. So I needed to see it.

When Visona and his team arrived at the site, it became

clear that the small photo shown to him on that cell phone

was only the beginning of something much, much bigger.

Their investigation would soon blow the archaeological community away.

We walked the wall with a GPS receiver so that we could plot

the route of the wall.

And the wall turned out to be almost two kilometers in length

from east to west.

What would the wall that long be doing in such a remote area

on a mountaintop in the middle of a forest?

And then we deployed the magnetometer,

and sure enough, we found presence of the Galli

on one side of the wall, and only on one side,

the southern side of the wall,

all the way to the end.

And they corroborated Plutarch's description of

the fortification consisting of a ditch and a wall.

So that made it possible that this could be Crassus' wall.

But the metal detector was a clincher because the metal

detector produced a number of objects, some of which were

believed to be Roman.

And these objects included fragments of weapons.

They could fit a very narrow time period

between 75 and 50 BCE,

which is the time period within which we have

the Spartacus War.

Visona believed he had found the wall that the Romans used

to defeat Spartacus.

If it's true, this would confirm the legend,

the first physical evidence of Spartacus' stunning life.

This was a planned operation that implied military strategy

and also a large labor force, all of which would tend to

support Plutarch's account.

But it is clear that this system did not extend from sea

to shining sea, like Plutarch's description.

In other words, the archaeology that we have done

both proves and disproves

the veracity of Plutarch's account.

It reminds us that we can never take ancient literary sources

at face value.

But in any case, I believe with confidence

that this most likely was the fortification system

built by Crassus.

So did Spartacus truly rise up from nothing to nearly

overthrow the Roman Republic?

It seems more possible than ever, thanks to the evidence

uncovered by Dr. Visona's team.

To this day, Italian researchers continue to

investigate the site.

And with any luck, more evidence

will be discovered.

Enough, perhaps, to finally free Spartacus

from the chains of rumor.

The freedom fighter enslaved no more.

I'm Spartacus. No, wait, I'm Josh Gates.

And I'll see you on the next expedition.