Original subtitles

An amazing discovery

in an abandoned Greek olive grove.

A hoard of treasures from the age of myths and legends.

I don't think anybody ever imagines

they'll find something like this.

It's our Tutankhamun.

The body of an Ancient Greek hero

guarding the deepest secrets

of Europe's first great civilization.

They're a warrior culture.

They're absolutely delighted to march

into somebody else's territory.

Now, the tomb is revealing

the mysterious origins

of one of the ancient world's greatest cultures.

They appear out of nowhere.

There is this fantastic explosion of civilization.

It's a world of staggering beauty.

The artistry, it's like the Michelangelo

of the Bronze Age.

And ferocious brutality.

Towards his left leg, is a butcher's knife.

They're involved in sacrifice.

As the civilization that invented the modern world

burst into life and condemned another to fire and flame.

Pretty much overnight it crumbles

in this firestorm of death and destruction.

The relics of the past hold secrets.

Written in gold.

Stone.

And blood.

We can unlock them.

These are the secrets of history's greatest treasures.

Ancient Greece.

Land of mythological heroes.

Gods.

And monsters.

From Art, to architecture.

Mathematics and the alphabet.

No single civilization has had more impact

on history than the Ancient Greeks.

What happened in Greece

really changed the story of humanity.

And still affects our lives today.

But how it all started

has always been shrouded in mystery.

Archeological and historical evidence suggests

that three-and-a-half thousand years ago,

this advanced civilization

burst into life almost fully-formed.

They sort of almost appear out of nowhere.

There is this heady,

fantastic explosion of culture and civilization.

It's one of the most exciting times on Earth.

How this advanced civilization appeared,

seemingly out of thin air,

is a mystery that has fascinated

and divided scholars for centuries.

But now,

a remarkable new discovery offers a unique insight

into how ancient Greek civilization exploded into life.

Eclipsing all that came before it.

Pylos, South West Greece.

High up on a hill with commanding views

of the Mediterranean Sea.

A team of archeologists has spent 30 years

excavating an ancient site, surrounded by tombs,

dating back to the mysterious world of Greek mythology.

The Palace of the legendary Greek King, Nestor,

has long been thought to hide

Ancient Greece's deepest secrets.

Because it was immortalised

in one of the greatest stories ever told.

The epic poem, The Odyssey.

Nestor's palace is described in loving detail,

and we hear that Telemachus,

who's the son of the hero Odysseus,

who's looking for his father, turns up at Pylos,

where he found the people on the sea beach

sacrificing jet black bulls to Poseidon.

Then he's led up to the palace by a goddess.

And there he sees this extraordinary feast,

and he's gonna sit down and hear stories

of the Trojan War from Nestor and his companions.

And I love the fact that this is one of those moments

where myth and history and archaeology coincide.

There's a throne room; there are storage centers

where over 2,000 wine cups have been stored

ready for a mammoth feast.

So it's a really, really incredible place,

and I'm not surprised that it ends up in the stories

of this wonderful world.

It's an incredibly rich site in all kinds of ways.

Husband and wife archaeology team Shari Stocker

and Jack Davis have spent 30 years here,

unearthing evidence of the lives of Ancient Greeks.

In 2015, believing the site still held secrets,

they cast their net beyond the palace walls.

In an abandoned olive grove,

they began to clear the undergrowth.

We noticed that there were several stones

on the surface of the earth,

and immediately, we started excavating.

And as we went deeper,

the four walls of a fairly small shaft, began to emerge.

10 days into the excavation,

the team hit something remarkable.

We got a text from the woman who was supervising the trench

and she said, "You'd better come quickly."

They were about a meter deep in the shaft

and had found next to nothing.

And then suddenly there was a thick layer of bronze,

and we knew we had something special at that point.

The team had unearthed

an incredible treasure trove,

so rare, nothing like it had been found

on Greek soil for more than a century.

Everything was made of something precious.

Precious stones, substantial amounts of gold and silver.

There were beautifully-crafted weapons,

armor, stunning gold rings,

exquisite jewelry with intricate carvings

of heroic scenes.

I still get very moved by this

because it was an amazing discovery.

And I don't think anybody ever imagines

that in their career they'll find something like this.

After I got over the excitement,

I began to become afraid.

I was afraid about the enormous responsibility

that had landed on our shoulders.

Then, finally, the reason

for this incredible hoard of treasure,

the skeleton of a man.

He was of moderate stature.

He was between 30 and 35 years old.

His leg bones and his arm bones are slightly bent,

which suggests that he was very, very strong.

Amongst the grave goods

in the mystery man's tomb, Jack and Shari found images

of animals and mythical beasts.

Echoing paintings on the nearby palace walls.

Inspired by the eagle-headed lion of Greek legend,

they named the skeleton, The Griffin Warrior.

The discovery of the Griffin Warrior tomb

is certainly for Shari and me, it's our Tutankhamun.

It's the most amazing thing that we could have ever imagined.

And I doubt very much we'll ever find

in our lifetime something similar.

The remarkable preservation of the grave

is just the beginning of this extraordinary investigation.

The burial dates back to 1,450 BC,

around 150 years before the Palace of Nestor was built.

The Griffin Warrior was on the scene

as Europe's first great civilization was born.

The physical embodiment of a hero

from the age of Greek mythology.

Could he hold the answers to the mystery

of how Ancient Greece exploded into life?

It's an intriguing possibility.

But there's a problem.

Closer analysis of the Griffin Warrior's grave goods

reveals that while many are recognizably Greek in origin.

Many of the most beautifully worked pieces, are not.

We know that these objects were not being produced

on the mainland at this time.

We don't have a lot of evidence for metalworking;

we don't have a lot of evidence for gold-working either.

The most striking grave goods

buried with the Griffin Warrior

seem to have come from somewhere else.

An even more ancient civilization.

So, who is this bejeweled warrior?

It's a question that takes archeologists

and historians deep into a world of myth and mayhem,

exquisite art and barbaric violence.

As this single tomb reveals a unique insight

into the birth of one civilization

and the death of another.

Clearly, there is something very exciting going on

in that man's life story.

In a remote Greek olive grove,

one of the greatest archeological discoveries

of modern times has been unearthed.

The three and a half thousand-year-old tomb

of a man dubbed

The Griffin Warrior.

Laden with treasures.

This is our third gold ring.

The haul is priceless.

But for archeologists its true value

is in the unique clues it offers in unlocking

one of the ancient world's biggest mysteries.

How one of history's most influential civilizations,

Ancient Greece, actually came into being.

It's really hard to describe

the extraordinary nature of this find.

It's a beautiful, beautiful snapshot

of this extraordinary world and time.

The grave dates to the Bronze Age.

For centuries, mainland Greece

had been populated by simple farming communities.

But then, around the time of the Griffin Warrior's burial,

a seemingly fully-fledged civilization

burst onto the scene.

The Mycenaeans.

The Mycenaean Greeks are an incredible civilization.

They end up controlling huge swathes of territory

around the Mediterranean.

The discovery of this warrior grave, it's remarkable,

because it comes from this very pivotal moment

in world history, when the Mycenaeans

are really finding their feet.

But many of the Griffin Warrior's grave goods

don't belong to Mycenaean culture.

They seem to be linked to an older society.

One that despite its age,

was much more sophisticated than the new breed

of mainland Greeks.

The iconography on these rings is truly amazing.

We have no evidence that the mainland people

at this time had the technology to produce something like this.

The beautifully-worked designs

of the Warrior's finest grave goods

are echoed in wall paintings.

200 miles away from his grave on the mainland,

across the Mediterranean, on the island of Crete.

Home to the legendary Minoans.

The remains of this mysterious civilization

were first uncovered in 1900.

When archeologists began to excavate

the vast ancient city of Knossos.

Knossos was among the largest cities

in the entire eastern Mediterranean.

It was a super city,

the capital of the Bronze Age civilization

on the island of Crete.

Excavations at Knossos unearthed

a fabulous palace that was decorated with frescos,

filled with elaborate stone vessels.

Among the artifacts,

and ruined walls still covered with paintings.

One repeating symbol stood out.

A figure leaping over a bull.

It's exactly the same image discovered

in the Griffin Warrior's grave.

The first ring to be brought out of the tomb

was a scene of bull-leaping.

Bull-leaping scenes are absolutely iconic

of Minoan civilization.

They appear on vases, they appear on frescos.

So bulls were obviously a really important part

of the culture of the Minoans.

This obsession with bulls echoes

one of the most chilling Greek myths.

One of the most famous stories

about Crete is the story of King Minos.

His wife makes love to a bull.

And from this unnatural union,

a monstrous creature is born half-man, half-bull.

Who is kept in the palace of Knossos, in a labyrinth.

Experts believe the persistence

of the Minotaur story down the ages,

through Greek mythology,

is proof the Ancient Greeks

were influenced by the bull-obsessed Minoans.

Now, Jack and Shari have evidence linking

the mysterious island culture with the Griffin Warrior.

At the very moment Greek civilization first emerged.

So what is the connection between the Griffin Warrior

and ancient Crete?

Your first impression when you look,

is that these are Minoan pieces.

They've been manufactured by Minoan artisans

in the palaces on Crete.

The question is, how did the Griffin Warrior

obtain those objects?

There is one crucial clue

that makes this find one of the most important

archeological discoveries in decades.

Around the same time the Griffin Warrior was buried,

the Minoans disappear from history.

Minoan Crete was special and sophisticated

and glorious and almost magical.

And then pretty much overnight it crumbles

in this kind of firestorm of death and destruction.

Almost every ancient town on Crete,

seems to have been scorched to ashes

at exactly the same time.

1450 BC.

When archeologists first uncovered the charred

remains of the Minoan settlements,

they assumed the devastation

must have been a result...

...of the eruption of the nearby volcanic island of Thera.

The Theran eruption is considered to be the one

of the largest volcanic eruptions ever.

This really was a cataclysmic event.

It would have shaken the known world.

Archeologists now know the volcano,

along with the earthquakes and tsunamis it produced,

hit the island at least 100 years

before the burning of Crete's towns.

But its knock-on effects were devastating

for the Minoan way of life.

I think it's very possible

that the Theran eruption would have damaged

the agricultural system in the years

immediately following the eruption.

And certainly, trade was massively disrupted.

Knossos doesn't collapse.

It survives, there is rebuilding.

So I'm certain that the eruption

didn't destroy Minoan Crete,

but it seems to have, it seems to have rattled it.

The evidence from the Griffin Warrior's grave

suggests that a century on from the massive Theran eruption,

the Minoan civilization was still producing

the highly-crafted goods that made them famous.

But the Minoans hold on the region

had been significantly weakened.

And now, this ancient culture was about to be tested

to its limits, as the new civilization

of the Griffin Warrior awakened.

While the Minoans are still on their beautiful island,

there's this other power pulsing away

on the Greek mainland,

and it surely is no coincidence that is the moment

when Minoans lose their grip.

Could these mainlanders,

the Griffin Warrior among them,

have played a role in Minoan Crete's death

in fire and flame?

The riches of the Warrior's tomb capture

a pivotal moment in time.

A moment when the young upstarts in Greece

decided to take over.

Minoan Crete was still a jewel.

And jewels attract thieves.

So you can absolutely understand why the Mycenaeans

might have had their sights set on that island.

So what role did the Griffin Warrior

have in the Minoans' demise?

Could he even have helped bring it about?

Three and a half thousand years ago,

at the height of the Bronze Age,

a man was laid to rest on a Greek hillside.

Surrounded by some of the most incredible

riches ever discovered.

But many of these treasures appear to have been taken

from another, earlier and more culturally advanced,

civilization than his own.

So could it be that the Griffin Warrior

was part of a war party that raided the Minoan stronghold

of Crete and left the island in ruins?

It would make perfect sense for the Mycenaeans

to invade Crete.

They're very ambitious. They're a warrior culture.

They're absolutely delighted to march

into somebody else's territory.

Experts now suspect the Griffin Warrior's

own people, the Mycenaean Greeks

came to Crete set on invading this once prosperous island.

His grave goods suggesting they looted

whatever took their fancy and destroyed everything else.

We've begun to wonder whether what we have here

is an expedition by local warriors

who brought back material

from the places in which they fought.

One of the most interesting objects

that we found is the breastplate

that the Griffin Warrior

was wearing at the time that he was buried.

These suits of armor were made so that important people

could wear them in battle.

We certainly think that the Griffin warrior

was a warrior,

and that a part of his wealth

would have been accumulated in fighting overseas.

With the Minoan civilization

still weak after an epic volcanic eruption,

It was a sitting duck for the warlike mainlanders

seeking their own wealth and status by any means necessary.

When Jack Davis and Shari Stocker

first presented the finds,

I think everyone's first thought was,

here is a Mycenaean warrior,

who has participated in the sack of Crete.

And this is the booty that he came back with.

It's a scenario that neatly explains

why one civilization disappeared and the other triumphed.

But close analysis of other treasures found in his tomb

throws doubt on the smash and grab theory.

The more we study the grave goods,

the more complex the story becomes,

certainly that is the case.

One of the most puzzling, and beautiful items

buried with the Warrior,

is an inch-long, intricately-carved stone

used for stamping a personal imprint into clay, a seal.

But its exquisite craftsmanship means

it can only have been Minoan.

There's this beautiful toned,

heroic warrior who is vanquishing an enemy.

And the detail on it is just remarkable.

It's just the most exquisite work

of art kind of from any time in the story of the world.

That object alone, it's so different.

It's so unparalleled, unexpected.

The artistry on that is,

it's like the Michelangelo of the Bronze Age.

But closer inspection of the stone revealed

this was no treasure looted in war.

There were clear parallels between the

and the remains of the Griffin Warrior.

The vanquishing hero appears

to have these kinds of long, curly locks.

And I know that in the grave where this was found,

combs were found.

So maybe the original owner himself had beautiful long hair.

Ivory combs and a bronze mirror

might be circumstantial evidence connecting the warrior

with the well-groomed hero in the carving.

But detail after detail on the Minoan sealstone

seemed to match the burial.

There's a particular sword

lying at the base of the image

and a real sword very similar to this was found

in the same grave.

The most exciting thing, this man,

has around his neck a necklace,

which kind of flows out of the back,

or it's being hurled back.

And this necklace was discovered in the grave.

There are simply too many similarities

between the Minoan stone and the Greek burial

to be a coincidence.

The stone could only have been a highly personal belonging

of the Griffin Warrior,

either commissioned by him, or made for him in his honor.

The Griffin Warrior appears to be Mycenaean,

an original Ancient Greek.

He may even have participated in the invasion of Crete.

Yet in death, he seems to want to be Minoan,

celebrated in Minoan style.

But could his apparent bond with Crete

have been even deeper than the sealstone suggests?

Other evidence in the Griffin Warrior's grave

suggests his appreciation for Minoan culture

went far beyond their craftsmanship

to religion.

This really was a knockout,

never imagined finding something like this.

It's a scene of a religious ceremony taking place

on the banks of the sea.

Arguably they all have something to do with Minoan religion.

I'm holding the head of a staff,

that's in the shape of a bull,

found next to the chest of the Griffin Warrior.

Minoan religious symbols appear again and again

among the Warrior's grave goods.

As well as the repeated bull motifs,

and ceremonial iconography.

Representations of the sun appear.

As well as a goddess holding snakes.

All elements known to be revered in ancient Minoan society.

For Shari and Jack,

these ancient treasures aren't the spoils of war.

They're evidence of a deep understanding

of the Minoan religion.

The people who chose to bury these

with the Griffin Warrior understood the concepts

and the meanings.

These were carefully selected for inclusion in the grave.

Far from seeing the Minoans as mortal enemies,

the Griffin Warrior seems to have revered them.

What looked like a story of annihilation,

is becoming one of appreciation.

This is a man who is so mysterious.

There are so many things we don't know about him.

But slowly, slowly, the answers

are being jigsaw puzzled together

from the clues in the ground.

The Griffin warrior was enchanted

by Crete's sophisticated artwork and religion.

But evidence from the tomb suggests

it wasn't just a personal obsession.

He was so bewitched by ancient Minoan culture,

he brought it back to the mainland,

to his own emerging civilization,

helping to spread its philosophy.

A gruesome combination of ritual,

and sacrifice.

Three and a half thousand years ago,

a civilization died, as one of the greatest cultures

the world has ever seen was born.

This upheaval left the Ancient Greeks

as the powerhouse of Europe.

At the heart of this world-changing transition,

was a man with close links to both the old and the new ways,

the Griffin Warrior.

But the huge number of Minoan religious

and cultural artifacts unearthed from his grave,

suggest he was more than just a warrior

with an interest in the Minoan faith.

He may also have been a holy man.

A man so important that he could have been responsible

for changing the ways Ancient Greeks

communed with their gods.

Alongside the intricately carved stone bearing a likeness

of the Griffin Warrior,

archeologists Jack Davis and Shari Stocker

unearthed dozens more sealstones.

So down here we had a group of three seals

that were resting right next to the arm bone.

But these were carved with key symbols

of the Minoan religion.

This seal is very curious.

There's an altar of characteristic Minoan shape.

And on either side is these strange creatures.

Usually when we find these representations,

they're involved in sacrifice.

These strange creatures

are animal headed deities,

found in scenes of sacrifice all over the Minoan world.

But the sealstones weren't the only link

to these sacrificial practices.

Alongside the Griffin Warrior,

archeologists discovered the very tool the Minoans

used for ritual killings.

Toward his left leg, was something

that the Germans have called Schlachtmesser,

which is a butcher's knife.

Knives of this sort were used

for slaughtering animals in sacrifice.

So this is important in helping us understand,

that the Griffin warrior was thought to play

a priestly role, by participating in

animal sacrifice.

The evidence in his grave suggests

the Griffin Warrior personally oversaw deadly ceremonies.

Ancient records of these ritual events

suggest they were bloody affairs.

So some of the sacrifices

would have slaughtered enough heads

of cattle to provide meat for, 1,000 families.

You have to imagine that this is a place

where the letting of blood is part of the cultural life

and the belief system of these men and women.

The historical record suggests

that along with the art, weaponry and culture,

the Ancient Greeks also adopted

many of the Minoans' religious rituals.

It has led some to wonder how far these people

were willing to take their newfound bloodlust.

Because evidence suggests that on Crete,

ritual killing went beyond sheep and cattle.

There is also evidence on Minoan Crete,

of human sacrifice.

It's a very contested subject.

It's very difficult for us to understand,

with our kind of 21st Century mindset.

But this was an age where the world

was in some ways inexplicable,

so when truly, truly terrible things happened,

like devastating earthquakes or volcanic eruptions,

societies thought that the only way they could keep

the gods on side, was to offer the thing

that they treasured the most, and that would be a human.

Ancient poets described the sacrifice

of animals at Pylos,

the site of the Griffin Warrior's grave.

There are even references to human sacrifice.

But experts think that while Mycenaean Greece

was flourishing, there was no need to resort

to the desperate act of ritual murder.

And the evidence seems to bear that out.

We would expect to find some type of human bones

that display some evidence

that they had been killed in this way,

or some type of iconography.

And we just don't have that.

You do not sacrifice humans

when things are going well.

It's not impossible,

but it seems more unlikely than likely to me.

The Griffin Warrior seems

to have been part of a giant cultural shift

at a time when his people were thriving.

The presence in his grave of the Minoan sacrificial knife,

and weapons of war, suggests the Griffin Warrior

was a man who combined military and religious influence.

Could he have been not just a man

who lived through this transition,

but the person responsible for bringing the culture

and belief of these two civilizations together.

He was buried with items

that are usually associated with religion,

items that are associated with power,

and items that are associated with warriors.

This was without a doubt a man who mattered.

What the Griffin Warrior

was buried with suggests he held high status.

But the way he was buried has led archeologists

to believe that, at the time of his interment,

he may have been more important than anyone else.

At the time of his death,

normal practice was to bury high-ranking Mycenaeans

in family crypts.

Beehive-shaped structures,

very different from the Warrior's shaft tomb.

We find lots of beads of amethyst and gold,

so we assume that individuals who were buried

inside were very, very wealthy.

It's likely that the tombs are associated

with aristocratic families, with the nobles of the time.

If the Griffin Warrior

was simply a noble of this young civilization,

his body would have been added to an existing family tomb.

But it wasn't.

He was buried alone,

in a specially-constructed grave,

packed with the finest riches his culture could afford.

The fact that we have a single individual interred

with all of the grave goods

that accompanied him in burial is very, very unusual.

If the Griffin Warrior was so important,

he warranted his own individual grave

and high-status grave goods,

could he have been the single-most important person

in his society?

The sole leader of his people?

The grave of the Griffin Warrior

suggests one individual is beginning to emerge ahead

of the other people,

as somebody who holds power and position within the society.

It's not impossible that he was one

of the most powerful men in society at the time,

if not the most powerful.

And that would have been a king.

The Griffin Warrior was a leader

in an historic time and place.

A key part of the birth

of Europe's first great civilization.

So what role did his peoples' plundering of Crete play

in the origins of Ancient Greece?

The culture that formed the building blocks

of the modern world?

The grave of the Griffin Warrior,

unearthed in a Greek olive grove by Jack Davis and Shari Stocker,

has revealed the secrets of one

of the most mysterious periods in ancient history.

It's remarkable because it is packed

with treasures.

But it's also incredible because it comes

from this very pivotal moment in world history.

And when the Mycenaeans

are really starting to flex their muscles.

Evidence suggests he was a military chief

and a religious leader.

He may even have been a king of the earliest Ancient Greeks.

A warrior people who crossed the Mediterranean

to ransack Europe's most advanced culture.

Going on to become Europe's first great civilization.

But among the scorched remains

of Ancient Crete's burned-out towns,

evidence is coming to light

that suggests the Griffin Warrior's people

were not simply hell-bent on conquest.

After 1450 BCE, what is very clear

is that the Mycenaeans

have a lot more of a presence on Crete.

They're a warrior culture,

so they wouldn't have been shy of coming to Crete

and taking it over as an act of military aggression.

But that doesn't mean that they did that.

Now, new analysis suggests the Greek incursion

into Crete may not have been a takeover bid,

but an alliance.

A collusion between the Griffin Warrior's people,

and some of the Minoans themselves.

The key clue lies in the buildings

that survived the destruction.

When archeologists picked through the ruins of Knossos,

they found the palace had escaped burning.

The reasons why we don't find destruction in the palace

at Knossos, belonging to the 1450 BC,

is, has been a bit of a puzzle, archeologically.

What seems to have destroyed

so many of these towns across the island does not seem

to have had the same impact at Knossos.

And that leads many of us to believe that Knossos

may have played a role in the destruction.

In the decades following

a major volcanic eruption,

the Minoans had suffered.

Experts suspect the turmoil

weakened the rulers' grip on power.

And that elites at Knossos saw an opportunity

to take control of the island.

They would have needed help,

and The Griffin Warrior's warlike mainlanders

could have been the ideal partners.

It's quite possible that the Minoan aristocracy

invited them in, because the Mycenaeans are flourishing

at this point and maybe they wanted to come and help

as a kind of agent of regime change.

The Griffin Warrior may have been a mercenary,

leading his army under the banner of Knossos.

But what was in it for the Greeks?

The answer may lie in dozens of inscribed clay tablets

discovered in the palace at Knossos.

Many are written in the as-yet undeciphered language

of the Minoans.

This tablet is both fascinating

and really frustrating

because we haven't worked out how to decode it.

The Minoans on Crete could be telling us

their story but we just can't read it.

But archeologists have managed to read others,

the ones written after the burning.

This tablet is a remarkable thing.

These things suddenly turn up all over the place

from around 1450 BCE onwards.

And what is fabulous about this is that we know how to read it.

For archeologists, the tablets' value

is not in what the script says.

It's in how it's written.

The new tablets are inscribed

with many of the same characters as the earlier Minoan ones,

but in a more familiar language.

It's very exciting

because this is the very earliest form of Greek.

And we know that Greek, very early Greek,

is a language used by the Mycenaeans.

These are the first written examples

of the Greek language.

Before 1450 BC, the Mycenaeans are believed to have passed

information down the generations by word of mouth.

But the Minoans had already been writing on clay

for 100s of years.

And once the Griffin Warrior's people arrived on Crete,

they appear to have adopted the practice,

and learned to write their own words down.

The proper understanding of how the script worked

and how it could be adapted to the new language

would be there on tap, if you like, on Crete.

It seems the Griffin Warrior's people

gained much more from the Minoans than

just their treasures.

The real reward may have been a new skill

in mainland Europe.

The ability to record the Greek language in script.

A giant leap forward on a journey

leading to the creation of western civilization.

There's a much more complex relationship

between Minoan Crete and Mycenaean groups

on the mainland.

And that's one of the great aspects of the new finds

from the Griffin Warrior,

their ability to help us isolate

the details in that relationship.

The true role Greeks played in the destruction

and downfall of Minoan civilization

may never be fully understood.

But the precious treasures the Griffin Warrior

was buried with,

show the relationship between the cultures

was deeper than anyone anticipated.

It's two powerful cultures

who might well want to share

ideas and inspirations rather than just be arch enemies.

And the brilliant thing about this particular

burial discovery,

is it might finally prove that.

The Griffin Warrior was a man of two peoples.

Jack Davis and Shari Stocker's discovery

is transforming archeologists'

understanding of the birth of Ancient Greek civilization.

It didn't just appear fully-formed,

but was forged as a fusion of two cultures.

There is a free flow of information

from the older civilization in Crete.

And the people on the Greek mainland

are selectively choosing things

that they wished to incorporate within their own lifestyles.

The Griffin Warrior is really

the beginning of the culture

that is inherited by the people of Classical Greece.

The mystery of Ancient Greece's origins

is finally unravelling.

Not born complete, out of thin air,

but as a hybrid, with roots both on the mainland,

and in the ancient Minoan civilization of Crete.

From these beginnings, Ancient Greece

became one of the greatest cultures the world has seen.

Laying the foundations for the modern world.

It can be traced back to one hero

from the age of Greek mythology,

the Griffin Warrior.

This man really matters...

He was a key player in a chapter in the human story.

We are the inheritors of the world

that he started to create,

so what he did matters to all of us now.