All language subtitles for Strangest.Things.S02E05.The.Mamari.Tablet.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DD+2.0.H.264-playWEB_track3_eng

NARRATOR: Could the mysterious
markings on this wooden

tablet be the key to
a lost civilization?

GRAHAM: They look a bit like
Egyptian hieroglyphs.

They look a bit like
Mayan writing.

NARRATOR: Is this the world's
most bizarre cosmetics device?

BELLINGER: It would fit over
a woman's head and take

micro measurements, which
referred to her level of beauty.

NARRATOR: And could
this strange disc really be

5,000 years old?

The first impression is
this is modern, it's from some

sophisticated machine.

NARRATOR:
These are the most remarkable

and mysterious objects
on Earth,

hidden away in museums,

laboratories,
and storage rooms.

Now, new research
and technology can get under

their skin
like never before.

We can rebuild them,

pull them apart,

and zoom in to reveal

the unbelievable,
the ancient,

and the truly bizarre.

These are the world's
strangest things.

In the archives of
a religious order

in Rome lies a mysterious
wooden artifact.

Strange marks carved
into its surface

may be the writings
of a lost civilization.

It's an extraordinary object,
and we're just

scratching the surface
of what it actually is.

NARRATOR: Now, using
the latest technology

we're bringing it into
the light.

This is
the Mamari Tablet.

It is one of only
a small number of artifacts

discovered on a remote
speck of land

in the Pacific Ocean
called Rapa Nui,

or Easter Island

The strange wooden tablet is
12 inches long, 8 inches wide,

and an inch thick, and every
corner of it is covered in

curious markings.

There are about 120 different
symbols, pictures of things that

we encounter
in everyday life --

birds, animals,
plants, people.

NARRATOR: Are these symbols
a forgotten language?

What do they say?

Why did this lost
civilization create it?

The remote island of
Rapa Nui sits 2,300 miles

west of Chile in the middle
of the Pacific Ocean.

BELLINGER: Rapa Nui is
a really small island.

It's essentially a dot in

the ocean, just 14 miles long
by 7 miles wide,

but it's hugely important.

NARRATOR: The island's most
famous inhabitants are the Moai,

giant stone heads that dot
the rugged landscape.

BELLINGER:
There's about 900 of them,

and they're spread
throughout the island,

and they've been
creating a great debate

ever since Europeans first set
foot on the island as to what

they are, why they were made.

NARRATOR: But these incredible
monuments are not the island's

only mystery.

For 150 years,
these strange symbols

have also
confounded experts.

GRAHAM: They look a bit
like Egyptian hieroglyphs.

They look a bit like Mayan
writing, but in terms of

the way that it's presented
and in terms of the language,

it actually appears to be

something quite new,
quite unique.

NARRATOR: The Mamari Tablet
contains more than

1,000 carvings,
using around

120 unique symbols
called glyphs.

GRAHAM:
They depict various objects --

fish, plants, local animals.

NARRATOR:
This is one of just 26

surviving glyph-covered
wooden relics from Rapa Nui.

How does this one end up in
a Roman Catholic archive?

The latest research suggests
people first reach Rapa Nui

between 1100 and 1300 AD.

What they find
is a paradise.

BELLINGER: It was filled

with trees that could be
used to make rope and sap

that could be used to make
sugar and wine,

used as firewood,
as building materials.

There were ferns
coating the ground,

and they even had at least
one large crater of freshwater.

NARRATOR: And archaeological
evidence reveals they

feast on porpoise, fish,
and seabirds.

The first settlers did really
well for some time,

and we know that,
because we have evidence

that the population boomed to
at least 7,000 and as much as

20,000 at its peak.

NARRATOR: The new arrivals
sculpt the giant Moai

from volcanic rock,

and they carve the Mamari
Tablet out of Pacific Rosewood.

But Rapa Nui
is a tiny island

for such a large
and growing population.

So they are using up
the trees at an alarming rate,

and unfortunately, they managed
to bring along with them rats,

who were prone
to eat the seeds for

the trees, and this is
the perfect storm, and it did

indeed result in complete
deforestation of the island.

NARRATOR: Which accounts
for the rough shape

of the Mamari Tablet.

GRAHAM: Wood, by this time,
was actually

quite a rare substance,
and so any

piece of it that you could get
to this beautiful, shiny

Pacific Rosewood,
you would

use and use as it was and
certainly not be cutting off

any bits or pieces.

NARRATOR: This rarity suggests
the tablet is very

important to the people
who live here.

The high value
of the wood,

it's almost the equivalent
of writing on gold.

NARRATOR: When the first
Europeans arrive

on the island in 1722,

they describe a grassland
without a single tree or bush

over 10 feet high, and
experts believe their arrival

likely signals the end for
the Rapa Nui civilization.

No more Moai appear to have been
built after the arrival of

the Europeans, and that seems to
correlate to

the fact that the Europeans
brought Christianity,

they converted the islanders,
and so their previous practices

and beliefs were
considered idolatrous.

Which explains why
the Mamari Tablet is one

of the few carved wooden
objects that survives.

BELLINGER: The islanders
convert to Christianity.

Most of these tablets
are burned,

and the Mamari Tablet
itself survives

only by virtue of having been
taken by Roman Catholic

missionary back to
an archive in Europe.

NARRATOR: The Mamari Tablet
could give us a unique

insight into the lost
civilization that made it,

but is it even writing at all?

How do we determine that
something is writing?

One of the things
we look at is the way

that the glyphs are placed.

So these don't look
like a random comic strip.

They're in clear lines
facing in clear directions

with clear,
repeated groupings.

NARRATOR: And the structure
of these lines

and groupings is very familiar
to linguists.

GRAHAM: One thing we've been
able to glean from these tablets

is the way that
the writing appears

to be presented,
and it appears to be

what they would call
reverse boustrophedon.

NARRATOR:
In reverse boustrophedon

the first line is read,
and then

the tablet is rotated
180 degrees

to read the next line
that is effectively

upside down and back to front.

And so it's this that suggests
the writing is actually writing.

NARRATOR: If so, this is
the only known writing system

in this part of the world
until the 20th century.

So what does it say?

NARRATOR: For decades,
experts have been trying

to decode these strange symbols,
known as rongorongo.

The first step is
to try and figure out

the writing system.

There are two principal
possibilities --

alphabets, like English,

and logograms, symbols that
mean a whole word, like Chinese.

Most alphabets have
a relatively small number

of symbols.

Even one of the largest,
Russian, has just 33.

But the Mamari Tablet
contains up to 120

unique symbols -- that's far
too many for an alphabet.

So could it be a logogram?

One of the problems with this
being a logogram is that

we only have 120 of
these different symbols,

and in something like
Chinese, you have 20,000, so we

don't have enough for these
actually represent words.

NARRATOR: A third option is
that rongorongo could be

a syllabary, where glyphs
represent syllables,

such as do, re, mi.

But there is a problem
with this theory, too.

Japanese Katakana
is a modern syllabary.

It has 48 symbols.

With as many as 120 symbols,

rongorongo seems
to have too many.

So more recent theories
suggest it could be a hybrid.

GRAHAM: There's still a bit
of a debate as to whether

the glyphs represent
an entire word

or whether or not they
represent syllables, and at

the moment, the prevailing
theory seems to be

possibly a bit of both.

So some of these pictograms
could actually represent

a word,
while others could represent

sounds and parts of words.

NARRATOR: But experts are
increasingly confident

that this really is writing.

GRAHAM: We're learning more and
more about how rongorongo works,

but this doesn't actually
help us in

terms of decoding
or translating the language.

NARRATOR: Possibly because
it may not be writing

as we recognize it today.

BELLINGER: A number of
scholars have suggested

that the rongorongo is not
a complete language

but rather
a proto-language of sorts,

a mnemonic set of
symbols that would prompt

memory as an individual told
a story or performed a ritual.

NARRATOR:
In the Rapa Nui language,

the word rongorongo itself means

to recite or chant, so this
idea does make sense.

But that still doesn't help
crack the Rapa Nui code.

Could the individual symbols
on them Mamari Tablet

provide answers?

In the 1950s,
a German epigrapher called

Thomas Bartel made it
his mission to decipher

these tablets.

NARRATOR:
Bartel travels the globe,

studying every tablet he can.

And on the Mamari Tablet,
he spots something familiar.

Many of the symbols on
the Mamari Tablet are really

just completely mysterious,

but there's one
that's quite clear in

representing a crescent moon,

and what's more,
it appears repeatedly,

and this is
very intriguing.

Knowing the importance
of lunar calendars in

Polynesia, he starts thinking,
could this possibly be

a lunar calendar?

In the 1990s,
epigrapher Jacques Guy

develops the idea further,

suggesting
one key symbol right

in the middle corresponds to
Rapa Nui's traditional

mythology of
the woman in the moon,

and another symbol
on the tablet provides

a further clue.

When we have the lunar symbols,
they're followed by a fish.

As they come to the full moon,

the fish is facing up,
and then on

the other side of the full
moon, the fish is facing down.

NARRATOR:
Guy suggest the upward fish

represents a waxing moon and
the downward fish a waning one.

Most experts now accept that
Bartel and Guy have

cracked the code
of this part of the tablet.

It is a lunar calendar,
but that's

not enough on its own to
decode rongorongo.

GRAHAM:
While we can get somewhere

with the lunar calendar,

the road of translation
and figuring out the code

kind of ends there, it doesn't
help us further crack the code

of the rest of the tablet.

So we've kind of taken
the tablet as far

as we can go
for this moment in time.

NARRATOR: Will we ever
completely decipher

the rongorongo code?

GRAHAM: It's incredibly
fascinating, but it's also

something that's going to be
very hard to crack.

There's always hope that more
materials and new scientific

approaches will allow us to
crack this code one day.

NARRATOR: For the time being
at least, most of

the secrets contained within
these symbols remain a mystery.

In a locked cabinet under

the bright lights of
Hollywood's

Entertainment Museum

sits a strange metal cage
that looks

like a torture device from
the Dark Ages.

AUERBACH: Despite
its appearance, however,

it is not a medieval device.

It's very modern,
it's 20th century,

and it's completely
unrelated to torture.

NARRATOR: Now, using the latest
technology we've brought it

out of the shadows and
painstakingly reconstructed it.

Adjustable metal screws
and rotary gauges

poke out of the frame.

Measuring 17 inches wide and
15 and a quarter inches high,

it's designed to engulf

a woman's head and lock it
rigidly in place from

the cranium to the neck

and even the eyes.

STEELE:
This really is one of

the most bizarre inventions of
Hollywood's Golden Age.

NARRATOR: Its purpose
is to measure beauty.

Who comes up
with such a weird idea?

Can you really
quantify beauty?

And how exactly is this

bizarre contraption supposed
to achieve that?

NARRATOR: This weird machine
is the beauty calibrator.

It is first unveiled to
the public in 1932.

BELLINGER: Basically,
this device would fit

over a woman's head, and it
would take micro measurements,

and the operator would
manipulate them to come up with

one number, which referred to
her level of beauty.

NARRATOR: Flexible metal strips
inside the cage

align with
the wearer's facial features

and can be adjusted with
screws so that it sits

perfectly centered
on the face.

A rail at the front
supports a series

of micrometers with metal
probes on the end.

A micrometer is essentially
a very accurate screw device,

which can measure things

to thousandths of an inch,
and that's what gives it

its real engineering authority.

NARRATOR: A typical
micrometer uses a screw,

which is marked along
its length.

Each mark represents
a whole turn,

and each turn might move

the screw just one-hundredth
of an inch.

The body of the drum
might be marked

around the circumference to show
thousandths of an inch

so that one full turn would
be one hundredth.

The device can measure things
to such a degree

of accuracy that's not even
visible with the naked eye.

NARRATOR:
The micrometer system can be

moved up and down the rail
and in and out,

allowing the machine's creator

to accurately measure
different features.

He used his beauty
machine to measure certain

distances and ratios on
the face, which he believed

corresponded
to optimal beauty.

For example,
he thought that

a nose being the same
height as a forehead was

optimally beautiful, and
the distance between the eyes

should be about the same as
the width of one eye.

After all of
these various measurements

had been taken,
a total score

could be assigned,
with a maximum of 100 percent.

But, of course, nobody ever
made it to that the idea of

absolute beauty.

The inventor made sure that
everyone had something perhaps

ever so slight
that could be improved.

NARRATOR: The man who believes
he has the expertise

to determine what defines
beauty is world famous.

So who is he?

One thing that's really
interesting about this device

is that it wasn't created by
an inventor who was just

casting about trying to think
of something to make.

It was created by arguably

the beauty industry's
ultimate guru.

NARRATOR: Even today,
he is a household name.

Max Factor.

ANNOUNCER: Big news from
Hollywood with the premiere

of Max Factor's
colossal makeup studio.

NARRATOR:
And the company he founded

is now
a multi-billion-dollar business.

The man behind it all comes

from very humble beginnings
in Poland.

His name
is Maximilian Faktorovich.

AUERBACH:
He is one of 10 children

born to a relatively
poor family in Lodz.

At 9, he's apprenticed
to the city's leading wig maker

and cosmetician.

By the turn of the century,
he's opened up his own shop,

and a very famous touring
theater is employing

his products -- that,
in turn, lands him an even more

prestigious job working for
the Russian Royal Ballet.

The story Goes that
the Russian royal family is

so impressed by his work
that he's brought

for a formal introduction.

NARRATOR: He is summoned
to the Imperial Court as

Chief Cosmetics Advisor to
the Russian royal family.

But for a Jew, this is not
a good time to be in Russia.

The imperial family, with
cooperation of the army, is

instituting a program of
de-Jewdification

across the country.

Things are bad,
and they are getting worse.

NARRATOR: In 1904, Maximilian
flees To America with

his wife, Esther,
and their three children.

Here, he takes a new name --
Max Factor.

He ends up in California,
just as Hollywood is about to

take off.

STEELE: He was appalled by
the standards of the makeup.

The actors were still using
the rather brash, thick, greasy

makeup that was so popular

on stage at the time,
and close up with the camera,

that just wasn't as flattering.

Max Factor spots
an opportunity,

and by 1914, he has perfected
a new style of cosmetics

tailored specifically to
the demands of the movies.

Some of the earliest pioneers
in Hollywood used his products.

I mean, we're talking Chaplain,
Arbuckle, Keaton,

but his big break came in 1925

with a whopping order
for 600 gallons

of body paint for use for
the extras in Ben Hur.

Women everywhere want to look
as glamorous as the sirens of

the Silver Screen,
and everyone

knows the man to do that
is Max Factor.

he is the go-to guy
for hair and makeup

for anyone who's anyone
in Hollywood at this point,

the likes of Rita Hayworth
and Judy Garland, included.

NARRATOR: Max Factor Cosmetics
go mainstream.

He even coins
the term "make-up."

So why does someone
this successful

need a beauty calibrator?

NARRATOR: This weird device
is conjured up by

a titan of the cosmetics
industry -- Max Factor.

But why does he need it in
the first place?

BELLINGER: He's not just
a gifted cosmetic artist.

He's an inventor,
and an experimenter.

AUERBACH: One of the things that
Max Factor becomes known for is

not only finding the right hues
for different skin tones

but also finding subtle ways
to apply makeup

differently to different
parts of an actress's face

to even out all the features
so that it's symmetrical.

The goal
of this device is to find

a way to formalize that
measurement in order to later

achieve better symmetry with
the application of cosmetics.

SOMARA: To me,
he was a kind of version

of Leonardo da Vinci
who created

such beautiful art
but then also cared a lot about

functionality and form,
and it's this idea

that innovation
is born out of

creativity and logic.

NARRATOR: This incredible
contraption is also meant

to help with the advent of new
color film technologies.

BELLINGER: Originally,
all actors had to worry about

was looking good
in black and white,

but in 1932,
with the advent

of Technicolor, that all got
much more complicated,

and this really was
the impetus behind

his desire to perfect
this system.

NARRATOR: But unlike many
of his other inventions,

this one is never meant
for the public.

The beauty calibrator was
never intended for

mass consumption --
it was targeted

and, in fact, used by Hollywood
royalty, essentially,

and American socialites who
had the money to pay for it.

But can it really work?

Is the idea
of measurable beauty credible?

WEST: When we use
the word beauty, we tend

to think mostly about women,
because we've constructed

an idea that beauty is
a feminine thing.

Really, though, we should be
talking about attractiveness,

because everybody can be
attractive, whether you're a man

or woman or anything else,
you can be very attractive,

and so that's
an important consideration --

not just what's beautiful,
but what's attractive.

NARRATOR:
So why are some men and women

seen as more attractive
than others?

WEST: There have been many
studies about what makes someone

attractive, what makes a human
face or human body attractive.

People are surprised that
these are reasonably consistent

across numerous societies,
numerous cultures.

NARRATOR: One key factor
in our perception

of attractiveness
is averageness.

STEELE: If you have
an average face

in the scientific
sense the word,

are you one that's close to
the population average, numerous

studies have shown that those
faces are considered to be more

attractive by other people than

faces that deviate from
those average proportions.

NARRATOR: Another key factor
to what we consider attractive

is symmetry.

WEST:
Humans like certain things --

they like symmetry, for example,
and so the more symmetry

you get, the more attractive
people think you are.

NARRATOR:
This could be something to do

with how our brains function.

STEELE: There's evidence that
faces that are closer to average

proportions and symmetrical
faces and any other

symmetrical objects
are easier for

our minds to cognitively
understand, and that reduced

burden of processing might be

one of the factors that makes
them appear more attractive.

NARRATOR: So Max Factor may be
onto something with his beauty

calibrator, because one thing it
measures is symmetry.

STEELE: Although Max Factor
didn't have access

to this science at the time

when he developed his beauty
machine, nonetheless, there may

have been something
to what he was doing

in the sense that if
he detected a face that was

slightly asymmetrical,
then he could apply makeup

to try and correct that
to make the face

look more symmetrical again,
and we get closer to what modern

science would let us understand
is an ideal of attractiveness.

NARRATOR: Max Factor might also
be onto something with

his device's measurements of
the ratios of facial features.

A recent study found that
attractiveness is optimized

when the vertical distance

between the eyes and mouth
is approximately

36 percent
of the face's length

and the horizontal
distance between

the eyes is approximately
46 percent of its width.

We find that faces the shadow
these ratios are perhaps almost

objectively perceived to be
more active, because even if you

show a newborn baby faces with
different proportions, it will

tend to pick the one that's
closer to these ratios

and closer to the average --
seems to

be something that we don't
learn through societal

conditioning but something
we're actually born with.

NARRATOR: This suggests
our brains may be hardwired

at birth to look
for attractiveness --

or as Hollywood
prefers to call it, beauty.

And it's possible that this
may sometimes hijack our minds.

People who are more attractive
are perceived as better, as more

moral, as more honest,
as more

worthy of being treated well --
attractive people are

just treated better than
everybody else,

and that's not fair,
and it's not good, but it

is, unfortunately, a reality of
the society we live in.

NARRATOR:
So somewhat surprisingly

with the beauty calibrator,

Max Factor may have
spotted something

fundamental about our brains.

And he isn't the only person

to apply science
and technology to beauty.

NARRATOR: This eccentric device
is designed to use science

and technology to enhance
beauty, and it's not alone.

AUERBACH: The beauty calibrator
is one of the earliest of

these beauty machines,
but it's far from

the last -- it was just
the beginning of a long

line of various gadgets and
devices that appear in the '30s,

'40s, and '50s,
all with one

purpose in mind, to enhance
female beauty through science.

BELLINGER: One of these was
called the freckle freezer,

a contraption that used
a wand dipped in frozen

carbon dioxide to burn off
offensive moles and freckles,

which would ruin an otherwise
perfect complexion.

NARRATOR: The freckle freezer
is just one of many weird

cosmetic devices,

but despite the general
enthusiasm for beauty

technologies, Max Factor's
calibrator fades from view.

The beauty calibrator is first
created in 1932, and in 1933,

it makes it to the cover of

Popular Science, but after that,
it just ends up sitting in

a storage room
in Max Factor's headquarters.

NARRATOR: The calibrator
remains there for decades before

the building and all its
contents are sold in 1994.

It doesn't return
to the light of day

until this museum opens
in 2003.

The beauty calibrator may seem
antiquated and weird today,

but the ideas
that underpin it do persist.

WEST: We should almost never
look at these things and laugh

and say how silly that such
a thing would exist that we'd

measure beauty that way ---
we're still doing that.

We still look at our noses
and think

they're too small,
we still look

at our foreheads and think
they're too big, we still look

at one thing or another thing
and compare ourselves to some

other arbitrary standard,
and this continues to affect

the way we think about
ourselves today.

NARRATOR: Bizarre as it may
seem, nearly a century

after its creation, the beauty
calibrator's legacy lives on.

Locked away in a display case
in the Cairo Museum sits

a mysterious object that has

confounded the experts
for decades.

The first impression
is this is modern.

It's from
some sophisticated machine.

But it's not --
it is more than 5,000 years old,

and it comes from Egypt.

ESCOLANO-POVEDA: This object
is completely unique.

We don't have anything
like it from ancient Egypt.

NARRATOR: Now, using
state-of-the-art

digital imaging,
we're unlocking its secrets.

This is the Disc of Sabu,

and it's a complete mystery.

Since it was discovered,
we have been trying to find out

what it was
and what it was used for.

NARRATOR: The disc is
24 inches in diameter,

with three sweeping lobes

separated from the rim
by three distinct apertures.

At the center is a smooth
hole roughly 4 inches across.

Its shape is
really organic, as if

you could fold it with
your hands.

NARRATOR: It is so thin,
less than half an inch,

it seems as if it's made
of metal, but it's not.

It's made out of stone.

To make that today, you would
use something like a 3D printer.

NARRATOR: So how was
this strange object made?

What is it for?

Who did it belong to?

January 1936.

Famed Egyptologist
Walter Emery is

excavating the tomb of
the Egyptian prince, Sabu.

We don't know much about who
Prince Sabu was -- we know that

he lived during
this very early period

of the First Dynasty,
and we know

that he was a high official
and an important person in

the court of this time
and perhaps the ruler of

a particular province
in early Egypt.

NARRATOR: Once inside
Sabu's tomb, Emery

discovers many typical
Egyptian burial items.

ESCOLANO-POVEDA: In the burial
chamber, we find the coffin

of Sabu with the body inside

and a series of objects, stone
vessels and different elements

that would allow him
to go into the afterlife.

NARRATOR: But in the center of
the room, positioned close to

the body of the prince,
is a collection of strange

stone fragments.

Walter Emery found this broken
object in many pieces,

an object that doesn't
resemble anything

that we have from
ancient Egypt.

STEELE: This disc-shaped object
resembles a bowl, apart from

these three strange lobes

that protrude from
the periphery

at about 120 degree angles
from one another.

NARRATOR:
The shape is unique.

STEELE: The incredible delicacy,
the thinness of that material,

and the incredibly elaborate
shape makes this thing look

like it's made of metal with
modern metallurgy techniques.

SOMARA: In theory, you can
pretty much make anything from

stone, but the idea that they
were able to achieve such

a thin, curved,
finessed finishes...

I mean, it looked like
it had almost been cast

NARRATOR: This strange thing
would be unusual

in any period
of ancient Egypt,

but it actually
dates to the very

earliest days of the Egyptian
Empire, 5,000 years ago.

Who were the ancient artisans
that crafted it?

The First Dynasty is
a very important period in

the history of Egypt.

We're starting to see trade
with different lands in Egypt

and also outside of Egypt --
we see an increase in

the complexity of the society,
a more hierarchical society,

a developed administration,
the use of writing.

NARRATOR: The First Dynasty
is also marked

by the prominence
of stonework.

STEELE: Ancient Egyptian
craftsmen were

incredibly skilled
at extracting and shaping

all different kinds of stone,
including granite,

travertine, diorite,
and quartzite.

NARRATOR:
But despite the obvious skill

of the ancient artisans,
nothing

this finely crafted has ever
been found from this period.

Exactly how it is made
remains a mystery.

But it's clear it would

have been incredibly difficult
to produce,

which suggests that whatever
it is, it must be important.

Too much work has gone
into it -- it must have had

a real use,
and, as an engineer,

the mind boggles as to what
that use could be.

NARRATOR: Now there is
an astonishing new theory,

one that involves
a precious resource

that sits
at the very center

of ancient Egyptian life.

This strange disc
was somehow carved from

a single block of stone
5,000 years ago.

What is it for?

Some experts propose
the hole in

the center of the disc
provides a clue.

They think it could be
for an axle

and that this weird disc
is just an unusual wheel.

The idea that this could be
a wheel isn't entirely crazy,

and we know that the wheel had
been invented by this time.

The oldest known example,
the Ljubljana Marshes wheel,

is made of ash and oak

and has been dated to
about 5,200 years ago.

Could the Disc of Sabu be
an ancient Egyptian equivalent?

Although we know the wheel was
around at this time in history,

as far as we know, the ancient
Egyptians didn't have access to

this technology --
even pyramids that were

built long after this disc was
discovered were manufactured,

as far as we can tell, without
any help from wheels at all,

and the first recorded instance
of wheel usage in ancient Egypt

dates several centuries after
the disc was made.

NARRATOR: And there is an even
bigger problem with this theory.

SOMARA: From an engineering
point of view,

there's no way that this
could have been a wheel,

because those thin,
fragile sections would never

have taken any kind of load.

NARRATOR: The extraordinary
thinness and unique form

of this disc have led to even
more outlandish ideas,

including the conspiracy
theory that often comes

with unexplained Egyptian
artifacts -- little green men.

But for every idea about UFO
steering wheels, there's

a different and more
Earthly explanation

that's a bit easier
to swallow.

Could it be a battle shield
for warfare?

The fact
that it's made of heavy stone

and has three large
holes in it suggests it would

be less than ideal.

One suggestion is that it
could be an incense burner,

but incense burners
are commonplace

in ancient Egypt and are much
simpler in design.

The sheer difficulty of
producing this strange object

suggests something
much more important.

One of the theories is that it
was part of a centrifugal pump,

and it was essentially
the impeller part of

the device that
sat inside a casing

and spun around a shaft,

and centrifugal pumps are

a very efficient way of
pumping water.

NARRATOR: But there are
very good reasons

why centrifugal pumps don't

turn up until thousands of
years after the disc is made.

SOMARA:
For the impeller to work,

it has to spin really fast,

and for that you need bearings.

it would have had
to have been encased

in a watertight container,
split in two halves.

There would have had
to be sealings around

the shaft, they would have used
screws, and none of that

technology had been
invented at that time.

NARRATOR: The disc's use in
a pump is just a leap too far.

A slightly less implausible
idea also focuses on water.

STEELE: This disc could have
been used to distribute

water vapor in
an environment like maybe

a sauna,
so you bring the disc down in

a column and allow it to
contact the hot water.

Then as you lift it up,
the shape

naturally causes steam to
waft about.

NARRATOR: But are these ancient
Egyptians really creating

steam rooms?

ESCOLANO-POVEDA: Even though
purity and cleanliness

were really important
for the ancient Egyptians,

we don't have any evidence

that they had steam rooms
to clean themselves,

so this theory
just doesn't work.

NARRATOR: Recently, a new idea
has surfaced, one that proposes

the disc is used in a liquid,
just not water.

Scientists from
Kanagawa University in Japan

has proposed that it

could have been part of
the tools used for brewing beer.

What this theory proposes is
that there will be a pole

inserted in the middle of

the disc, and then the disc
will be moved

up and down
to create a vortex,

or circulation of the water,

in order to mix
this water with

the grain
in a more efficient way.

NARRATOR: Similar implements,
known as mash rakes or paddles,

have been used
for thousands of years

and are still used in
the brewing process today.

But is beer important enough
to the ancient Egyptians to

justify the time and effort to
make this complex disc?

Beer was one of
the two staple foods

in ancient Egypt,
together with bread,

so we find lots of
production centers for both

bread and beer together, and it
was one of the ways in which

workmen, for example, were paid,
by means of bread and beer.

NARRATOR: Archaeological
evidence suggests the workers

who build the pyramids
of Giza are

given a daily ration of more
than a gallon of the stuff.

And another recent discovery
has revealed that beer is just

as central
at the very beginning

of the Egyptian empire.

In 2021, archaeologists found
what is considered the oldest

large production factory of
beer, a very old brewery.

The site in the ancient city
of Abydos dates to

the First Dynasty
5,000 years ago,

the same era the disc
is created.

ESCOLANO-POVEDA: The brewery was
composed of eight large areas

of around 65 feet long,
and each

one of them had 40 large
containers for the beers,

so this was a massive space.

NARRATOR: The team
who unearth it estimate

5,900 gallons,

or 22,400 liters of beer,

could be brewed here
in one go.

ESCOLANO-POVEDA: The amount of
beer has been calculated

to be able to support
the daily ration for

8,800 workers, which gives you
an idea of how important beer

would be
for the ancient Egyptians.

NARRATOR: One further clue
could support the argument

that the disc is related
to beer production.

ESCOLANO-POVEDA: The importance
of beer for the Egyptians

was not just something
for daily life,

but it also extended
to the afterlife.

In the tombs, we find beer jars
deposited as offerings that

would allow
the deceased to drink

in the -- in the afterlife.

NARRATOR: So despite all
the wild theories of

alien intervention
and ancient hydraulic

engineering, maybe
this strange relic is simply

a tool for brewing beer...

or is it?

If this disc had been used
for the production of beer,

we would have many of them,
because of this large-scale

production, but unfortunately,
we only have one, so even though

it is a nice theory, there is
no evidence to support it.

NARRATOR: There are multiple
explanations for this beautiful

and strange thing, but none
seem like a perfect fit.

Perhaps it is simply
made for its beauty

and for its strangeness
with no practical purpose,

an expression of
a unique artistic ability.