Original subtitles

A priceless diamond with a deadly past.

A picturesque lake

that hides a ghost town.

And a pharaoh's tomb

that was not meant

to be disturbed.

Throughout recorded history,

every major civilization

has believed in curses

and their power to inflict harm

on the unsuspecting.

Even today, many people are afraid

of walking into a so-called cursed place

or touching a reportedly cursed object.

But if curses are, in fact, real,

then what brings them into existence?

And how are they triggered?

Well, that is what we'll try and find out.

A young boy working for a British excavation team

led by archaeologist Howard Carter

is riding his donkey home one night

when suddenly the animal's hoof slips

into a hole below the sand.

Carter and his team later excavate the site

and discover a mysterious chamber

hidden deep beneath the shifting sands.

Peering inside, they lay their eyes upon

one of the most incredible

archaeological finds in history.

A massive treasure trove of gold

and ebony artifacts,

all laid out before another chamber

guarded by two imposing statues

and sealed shut

with an intricate combination

of rope knots and clay.

The long-lost tomb of King Tutankhamen.

It was absolutely a magnificent discovery,

it made headline news all over the world,

and really sort of captured public imagination

at just the right time.

Unlike most of the other tombs

that had been discovered of the ancient Egyptian pharaohs,

King Tut's tomb was untouched.

It had not been plundered,

it had not been destroyed,

and so there was a tremendous wealth of archaeological data,

as well as just a stunning display of artifacts.

After spending nearly three months cataloging

the more than 5,000 relics

found within the tomb's antechamber...

on February 16, 1923,

at just after 2:00 in the afternoon,

members of the press gathered to watch

Howard Carter finally break the seal

protecting King Tut's burial chamber,

which had lain undisturbed

for more than 3,000 years.

Carter started excavation of the burial chamber

within Tutankhamen's tomb,

and he found the intact burial of Tutankhamen,

which was contained, essentially, within

nine protective layers.

The sarcophagus is very elaborate.

It's got gold,

it's inlaid with precious stones,

and there's several layers of it

before you get down to the central layer,

which is of course the mummy of King Tutankhamen himself.

Once Carter began unwrapping the mummy of Tutankhamen

and removed the funerary death mask

and made his way through the different

mummy bandages and the bundle itself,

he was able to see the face of Tutankhamen,

which hadn't been seen by any living person

for nearly 3,500 years.

So, in a way, the opening of the tomb of Tutankhamen

is a kind of a resurrection.

The discovery of King Tut's mummy

launched an international media frenzy,

making headlines in every major newspaper around the world.

But Howard Carter and his team

had barely begun enjoying their success

when several strange things started happening to them.

That evening, Howard Carter is having his dinner,

and hears a commotion in the next room.

Goes in, and his

pet canary is being attacked

inside its cage by a king cobra.

Now, the king cobra is a symbol for the pharaoh.

And a canary, the symbolism.

The canary is the first to go.

The canary is the weakest and a warning.

After that, Lord Carnarvon,

the financier of the whole expedition,

was there on-site,

and then, while they're inventorying the treasures,

he gets a mosquito bite.

A few days later, accidentally nicks the bump with his razor.

The bump gets infected.

It leads to blood poisoning,

and he dies of it.

A prominent British radiologist

came out to the site to X-ray King Tut,

and shortly after handling the mummy,

he catches a mysterious disease that cannot be diagnosed,

cannot be treated, and it kills him.

All told, the deaths of no fewer than

seven members of Howard Carter's expedition

took place shortly after the reopening

of Tutankhamen's burial chamber.

While it was certainly possible

their untimely deaths were nothing more than coincidences,

many believed that by disturbing King Tut's mummy,

the archaeologists had somehow triggered

a deadly curse.

To the ancient Egyptians, death was not the end.

But in order to guarantee yourself eternal life,

you actually had to preserve

your earthly body for the spirit

to be able to function properly.

The idea of a mummy curse

is to keep those people out of the tombs.

The Egyptians said, if you bothered these mummies,

you would have a problem.

And people who have discovered those tombs

actually ended up dying weird ways.

If that's not a curse, what would be?

The ancient Egyptians, uh,

prepared the body for mummification

by removing the internal organs.

They would remove the brain through the nose

with a metal hook,

and clean out all of the organs

and put them in jars, except for the heart

because, for them, uh, the heart was the key to the afterlife.

And then, at that point, they'd wrap the body in linen,

and then they'd put them in sarcophagi

that looked like human beings,

and they were made to resemble the deceased.

The Egyptians thought the soul had multiple parts.

Upon death, certain parts of the soul

went down into the earth,

certain parts went up into the sky,

and then other parts remained with the actual body.

If you want that person perpetuated for eternity,

you need to maintain all aspects of the soul together.

That can happen if the body is preserved.

The idea was that, at some point, you will face the gods,

and those who are unworthy

would be obliterated for all time.

So these tombs were meant to be there until the day of judgment.

You were not supposed to open these.

Is it possible that the ancient Egyptians

were able to preserve the soul of King Tut

within his mummified remains,

effectively keeping his spirit alive for thousands of years?

And if so, could the pharaoh's spirit

have unleashed a curse

upon the men responsible for disturbing

his sacred burial chamber? Perhaps.

But there are some researchers

who claim that even before King Tut's tomb was disturbed,

there was already a pharaoh's curse in place.

A curse that was associated not with King Tut

but with his father Akhenaton.

Akhenaton was controversial

because he used his considerable power as pharaoh

to change the religious system.

Ancient Egypt had always been polytheistic...

Many gods... and then

there is a new pharaoh with a new idea.

Akhenaton announces there will be one god,

they will be a monotheistic people.

Aten, the sun god, would be

the one divinity they all worshipped.

The sun disc.

It shook the empire in really terrible ways.

Part of this religious revolution

included purposely erasing the names of older gods,

closing down their temples,

erasing their names from monuments,

and trying to obliterate these other deities

that the Egyptians used to worship.

Before the reign of Akhenaton,

the most sacred deity of the ancient Egyptians

was known as Amun-Ra, the chief of all Egyptian gods.

According to legend, Amun-Ra was angered

by Akhenaton's acts of heresy

and took vengeance upon the pharaoh.

For his offense,

Akhenaton was cursed by Amun-Ra,

a curse unique

to religious views in Egypt.

He would be cursed after death

to wander endlessly.

His soul would never be reunited with his body,

which was the point of all those funerary practices.

He would be disconnected and dislodged forever.

Was King Tut's body mummified

and placed within a sealed burial chamber

so that he could escape the fate of his father?

And is that why breaking the seals

on the tomb of King Tut

brought a curse upon Howard Carter and his team?

Well, it would seem

that either these tragic deaths

were a series of unfortunate coincidences

or the curse of the pharaoh was all too real.

But not every alleged curse

originates from the spirit of the dead.

Some are thought to be placed upon physical objects.

For instance, there are those who believe

that one of the most valuable gemstones in the world

has the power

to kill any man who touches it.

Over one million people turn out for the funeral procession

of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon,

otherwise known as the Queen Mother

of Great Britain's Queen Elizabeth II.

Atop her casket, in addition to

ceremonial flowers and her coat of arms,

is the crown she wore

at her husband King George VI's coronation in 1937.

Although it is adorned with an estimated 2,800 diamonds,

one in particular attracts more awe and fascination

from the crowd than the rest.

The diamond known as the Koh-i-Noor.

That, an imperial crown,

and at its center, in the front,

the most famous diamond in the world...

The Koh-i-Noor diamond.

The name means "Mountain of Light."

Since 1895, it has only been worn by a woman,

by Queen Mary, the Queen Mother's mother-in-law,

and then by the Queen Mother herself.

Measuring a massive 105 carats,

and estimated to be worth over $1 billion,

the Koh-i-Noor is one of

the largest cut diamonds in the world.

And, according to historians,

it is also one of the most feared.

The Koh-i-Noor diamond

is one of the, uh, more impressive diamonds

that have ever been unearthed in the history of humankind.

It was unearthed somewhere in India,

which was the main spot that diamonds were unearthed.

But this particular diamond,

it has a very, very long and sort of tragic

and bloody history.

And there are legends attached to this,

where it is held to be accursed and bring curses

to, especially, any man who touches this,

which is why, even in the British royalty,

it remains a part of the, um,

Crown Jewels for women only.

A curse on any man who touches it?

But what could give a beautiful stone

such a dark power?

Many believe the answer can be found by examining

the Koh-i-Noor's storied history,

which, according to records, dates all the way back

to 14th century India.

The Koh-i-Noor really catches your eye.

It's like a hundred-carat stone.

But what really catches your eye is the history.

The diamond was really first identified

after Mughal Empire invaded what's now Northern India.

They settled in Delhi after their conquest

and started collecting gemstones.

Shah Jahan became the ruler in 1626.

He designed this throne, called the Peacock Throne,

that was in the tradition

of biblical throne, like King Solomon.

It took seven years

and cost three to four times more than it cost

to build the Taj Mahal.

And you can understand the immense expense

that this took to create.

And then at the centerpiece of this

was the Koh-i-Noor at the very top.

In 1739, after 100 years of peace,

a merciless Persian ruler named Nader Shah invaded India.

Tens of thousands died

in his relentless quest for power.

Following his savage victory,

Nader Shah seized the Koh-i-Noor

and had it placed on his personal armband

as a symbol of his might.

Nader Shah

wasn't going to keep it in the chair.

It was going to be with him at all times.

Now, Nader Shah

became a very, very repressive ruler,

and even his allies began to hate him.

And they poisoned him.

After Nader Shah's death,

the diamond passed through various rulers

who-who died in very violent ways.

In the years after,

the Koh-i-Noor would pass from one ruler to another,

almost always drenched in the blood

of its prior owner,

as if the diamond itself demanded

a mortal sacrifice in order to possess it.

Because of battles, um,

it fell from one person to a next

and started to build up this, um, legend

that it had some kind of curse

associated with it.

Because, as soon as it was in the hands of one ruler,

they would be killed or their kingdom

would be lost, and it would be passed on to another.

Now, these rulers were wearing the Koh-I-Noor

as the armband to be a protector.

And this is probably where the curse legend came in

because the diamond certainly wasn't protecting them.

And then, in the 19th century,

when the British were in India,

it fell into the hands of the British Army,

and it was said that from that point onwards,

that no male

should ever wear this diamond.

Is the supposed curse of the Koh-i-Noor diamond

merely the stuff of folklore and legend?

Or is there any scientific evidence

to prove that its deadly reputation is justified?

So, diamonds are really good at taking heat away

from a source and transmitting it elsewhere.

And if you've never held a large diamond in your life

and if you've first encountered the stone

and you're putting it on your chest

or on a necklace, it would feel much colder

than anything that you'd have

because the heat is being sucked out of your skin

and transmitted through this diamond.

It could be one reason why somebody might feel like

the stone has got some magical properties

or why it might be cursed.

As long as we believe that something bad will happen,

if a male heir actually uses this or wears it,

then I think that it needs to be taken seriously.

So, very clearly,

no British king will ever wear it.

Some may scoff at the idea that a cursed diamond

can bring about death.

But then again,

I suspect that we probably won't see a British king

wearing the Koh-i-Noor anytime soon.

Truth is that there are many curses

around the world that are still acknowledged

and feared.

Like the curse that is said to plague a lake in New Jersey,

where numerous boaters and swimmers have vanished

without a trace.

Nestled beside the sleepy suburbs

of Clinton Township

lies Round Valley Reservoir.

First formed in 1960 as a primary water source,

this man-made lake is beloved by locals

for its great fishing and scenic views.

But many believe this idyllic watering hole

conceals a deadly secret.

For more than 40 years,

people have been disappearing in Round Valley Reservoir.

And not just a few.

More than two dozen men have been lost

beneath these placid waters,

never to be seen again.

Locals do believe that this lake is cursed,

and it's easy to understand why with so many tragic deaths

surrounding it in just about 40 years.

And while I can't be sure if it's cursed,

there's always one thing that's given me the chills.

I heard someone say that

when one body is found at Round Valley Reservoir,

another quickly replaces it.

We don't even know for sure how many bodies there really are.

When I worked in news,

I would hear the police scanner crackle to life

with "Round Valley,"

"fishermen," "trouble,"

"boater,"

somebody has gone under the water.

It's a creepy, horrible feeling when you hear this,

because you know

that 90% of the time, this is not

going to end well.

I can't explain why these people

at the bottom of the lake haven't been found,

especially after searching for them

with such a degree of intensity.

Even after bringing in cadaver-sniffing dogs,

using sonar technology,

and submarines to crawl the lake,

there was no sign. It's almost as if

some of these people disappeared without a trace.

And an interesting thing,

if you're looking for bones in Round Valley,

is that you aren't necessarily going to

find a fisherman who disappeared 13 years ago.

You may find a bone that was in the ground

long before Round Valley became a reservoir.

Bones from a time

before Round Valley became a reservoir?

There are some who believe that these bones

may have been the very reason

the bodies of those who have disappeared here

have never been found,

and that the lake's refusal

to give up its victims

is actually an act of revenge.

There was a town here once.

For centuries,

people put down roots in this valley.

It was very fertile and rich farmland.

There were thousands of acres,

and people grew their own food.

They raised their animals.

Then, in the 1950s,

there was a drought in New Jersey.

And they needed a source of water

for, predominantly, Newark

but the surrounding area as well,

and so they had to fill in somewhere,

and Round Valley, they believed, was the best choice.

People were opposed to the reservoir being built.

It was a small farming community,

very close-knit,

and no one wanted to leave their homes.

Most of the homes were eventually razed or moved.

Their homes were either torn down

or they were put on flatbeds and taken out of the valley.

And that construction started on the reservoir.

In the 1960s, they started filling it.

There was a lot of bad feeling here

when the landowners were pushed out of their valley.

Did these ill feelings carry over?

There are people who will say yes, they did.

When you're at Round Valley, you feel

the spirit of the people who came before you.

There is a presence here

that can make you feel a little disconcerting.

The idea that any body of water,

let alone a man-made one less than a century old,

could somehow be imbued with a deadly curse

seems far-fetched, to say the least.

And yet outlandish

and presumably irrational notions such as these

have been held by nearly every culture

throughout history. But why?

We all are afraid of things

and we would like to be able to understand them,

if only to give a little mental illusion of control

over things that go bump in the night.

And so we come up with stories, and they help.

They're entertaining and maybe they're true.

And then they get passed down to children and grandchildren,

and they gain authority through time.

A curse has to be believed in order for it to have power.

It's kind of like hypnosis.

You have to be willing to go under hypnosis

in order for it to actually be effective.

So maybe these curses

are created by us, by our imagination,

by us trying to deal with the mystery of nature.

It's just a game that we're playing,

but we ascribe meaning to it.

So, if we ascribe meaning to a curse,

could that actually make the curse real?

Although it may be human nature to blame inexplicable tragedies

on some sort of dark force,

according to skeptics, there's nothing

supernatural about the disappearances

at Round Valley Reservoir.

They claim that these strange occurrences

must have a perfectly rational explanation.

Some people who live around here think it's more

a matter of respecting your environment.

And when the wind swirls, you can get waves

up to three feet tall on this reservoir.

And that's where people get in trouble.

They're not expecting it.

In my career, I've handled anything from, um,

plane crashes, homicides, suicides,

uh, you know, lost children.

But, uh, when you're out there in a small boat

and there's fog coming across the lake,

it can be very eerie at times.

You have these 40-mile-per-hour winds

that come up out of no place.

They only allow small boats.

You have excessively cold water,

which leads to hypothermia.

I can guarantee

probably nine out of ten people

that are out on this lake don't wear their life preservers.

I think it's because of those factors.

And you know what? Just plain bad luck.

Period.

So where did the bodies of the lost men

of Round Valley Reservoir go?

Could it be that they're merely trapped

somewhere deep beneath the lake's surface,

in a place searchers haven't yet looked?

Or are they really victims

of a deadly curse?

The very notion that a malevolent force

could plague an entire lake

is a... chilling proposition.

But unlike this infamous body of water,

some curses are impossible to avoid,

including one that is thought

to have the power to strike anyone anywhere.

It's called the curse of Friday the 13th.

At least once a year,

all around the world, it happens.

From the moment the new day dawns...

to the 12th chime of midnight...

it is utterly unavoidable.

No continent is safe.

No country is spared.

No city is immune.

No matter where you are or what you're doing,

there's no escaping

Friday the 13th.

Well, it's actually very interesting,

the whole idea about Friday the 13th,

the mysteriousness, the-the fear, the dread.

There's a natural human desire to understand things,

to know why something happened.

And sometimes, if the unexplainable happened

but there was a curse involved,

you say, "Aha, I have the reason."

We never know when they're gonna turn out to be real,

but we have to give all of them

a fair shot and say, "Maybe."

Believe it or not, there is some statistical evidence

which suggests that more bad things happen

on Friday the 13th than any other day of the year.

But is it really cursed?

And, if so, how?

Although it would seem that the public's awareness

of Friday the 13th really came of age in modern times,

as it turns out, the origin of this curse

actually dates back to the 14th century.

It goes back, in my opinion,

to what happened to the Knights Templar.

So, the Knights Templar were founded in the 12th century,

and they were the world's first combination

of warrior and monk.

They were the guardians

of a lot of the treasures of various kings

and popes and monarchs,

and because of their amazing reputation,

they became known as the world's first international bankers.

Friday the 13th was such a pivotal day

in the life of the Knights Templar

that it ended one chapter and began another.

It literally was the day of the destruction of the order.

And the Friday the 13th

that was so critical to the Knights Templar

happened on the 13th of October in 1307.

The king of France needed money,

but he owed money to everybody, including the Templars,

and he decided the Knights Templar had money,

he wanted it, so he attacked them.

Everyone was arrested, people were thrown in jail.

They were tortured, they were being killed.

Then there were long trials.

These trials were conducted

by the Catholic Church,

and it basically ended

with the death of Jacques de Molay,

the grand master.

Jacques de Molay was a powerful enigmatic figure,

and so it was important for the Church

and the Crown to execute him publicly

to show as an example.

And when they were burning Jacques de Molay,

the fire was being lit,

he cursed Pope Clement

and also King Philip

and said, "Within this year,

you will die."

And, lo and behold, they did.

What happened was, within 33 days,

the Pope died of a terrible illness.

And all of a sudden, it just seized him

and killed him, just like that, suddenly.

Seven months later, the king of France

was on a hunting expedition, had a massive stroke,

fell down dead on the ground right there.

In the years since the Templars' eventual exile from Europe,

there were many who began to believe

that Jacques de Molay's death curse applied

not only to his enemies but also to the very day

that spelled the beginning of the end

for the Knights Templar.

The day they were arrested: Friday the 13th.

But is it really possible that a centuries-old curse

still has the power to cause bad luck

after 700 years?

There is this legend around Jacques de Molay

that he possessed some kind of extraordinary power.

When it comes to the Knights Templar,

one of the things that stand out is, of course,

they were the guardians of the Temple of Jerusalem,

and some people believe that they may have found

some ancient artifacts there,

possibly the Ark of the Covenant,

or came across some ancient knowledge

that was, sort of, confiscated

and held sacred from the general public.

And so some people look on Jacques de Molay

as some kind of a sorcerer,

in a way, where he had this ability

to put a curse that actually really did come into fruition.

When something happens,

such as De Molay's curse, the Templar curse,

it's entirely possible

that this actually has reality behind it.

It's entirely possible that just simply saying the words

and putting it in everyone's mind

was like a common prayer between so many people,

and the power of so many people desiring it and wanting it

might have influenced events as they happened.

The story of Jacques de Molay's curse

on Friday the 13th is fascinating,

and it raises an intriguing question.

Can a curse actually be created by simply

speaking it into existence?

Perhaps a clue can be found in the ruins of a lost city

located in the jungles of Honduras.

A city which some believe

would have been best left forgotten.

Deep in the heart of the jungle,

a team of American explorers,

journalists and archaeologists make a dramatic discovery...

Evidence of an ancient city

that has been lost for more than 500 years.

We were standing there on the banks of this river,

and the archaeologist was pointing

to this wall of jungle and saying, "Across the river,

that's the beginning of the lost city."

So we crossed the river

with soldiers with machetes cutting a path for us.

And all of a sudden, there it is,

rising up out of the jungle.

Just straight up, practically.

It was the most amazing thing.

And then what we saw

was a cache of sacred objects

carved out of stone that had been left

at the time the city was abandoned.

And this was a gigantic mystery.

Why did these people leave all of a sudden?

The expedition announced

that they had uncovered the top level of a vast city

which has been buried under centuries of jungle vegetation.

Soon afterwards, many began to speculate

as to whether the ruins were those of a legendary place

known to Hondurans as Ciudad Blanca,

or the "White City."

A place that was believed to have been deserted

centuries ago because of a deadly curse.

When we went to do our ground expedition in 2015,

many of the local Hondurans

and the Honduran Air Force people that were with us

and the special forces people

said, "Oh, yeah. My grandmother or my grandfather told me

"all about the lost city when we were kids,

and they said it's cursed."

They said, "If you go there

"and you pick any of the flowers,

you will die. You will never come back."

In the case of the White City,

there is a very interesting tradition

of a Tawahka Indian

who came to live there with them,

uh, and they refused him shelter, chased him out.

And in turn, he cursed the city

and he cursed that area...

so that it became, basically,

a poisonous area to live in,

and the people had to abandon their city and leave.

You know, we heard these stories,

but, you know, we're scientists.

We're, uh, anthropologists, archaeologists, ethnobotanists.

You know, we don't believe in curses.

Or so we thought.

But, you know, sometimes curses are based on the truth.

After we completed our first ground expedition,

everybody came back alive, nobody got injured.

We're shaking hands,

tipping a beer and going, "Great, we made it."

You know, everyone survived.

We all had hundreds of bug bites.

Didn't think anything of them until about a month later.

And 60% of our crew,

including the Hondurans, they had a bug bite

that didn't go away, it got bigger.

Eventually it became a big open wound,

a big open ulcer.

A couple of the people became very, very ill.

Two of them almost died.

And then we had them diagnosed at NIH, and they said,

"Yes, you have leishmaniasis, but not even just

"regular leishmaniasis, this is an entirely new one.

"We just did a genetic sequence,

and it's a really virulent one we've never seen before."

More commonly known as "flesh-eating disease,"

leishmaniasis is a rare parasitic disease

that is spread by the bites of certain sand flies.

The affliction eats away

at the skin of the limbs, nose and mouth.

The new strain that infected the explorers

is particularly aggressive

and, if not treated properly, fatal.

But even so, a parasitic disease

is hardly proof of an ancient curse.

Or is it?

What's interesting about the legend of this curse

is that it actually does appear to be true.

How can we explain that hundreds of years ago

a man left a curse saying that, forevermore,

people will be ravaged by disease

and all of these things,

and then we actually see it happen?

Was it merely a coincidence that the American team

happened to contract a deadly and previously unknown disease

at a site believed to be cursed?

Or could the curse have been real?

As far as journalist Doug Preston is concerned,

the answer is obvious.

I used to think that curses were just kind of silly,

but not anymore.

Next time I go somewhere and I'm told that it's cursed,

I'm really going to think twice about it.

Can the disease that infected the archaeologists

who rediscovered the White City

be explained by science,

superstition, or perhaps both?

In any case, it may have been better

to leave these ruins undisturbed.

The same can be said for the body of a man

who had been frozen in ice for 5,000 years.

While making their way across a snowy mountain range

spanning the border of Italy and Austria,

two German hikers make a gruesome discovery.

The body of a man half-frozen in ice.

When scientists later remove the skeleton

from the icy ground,

they come to a shocking realization.

The man,

who they nicknamed �tzi,

lived over 5,000 years ago.

This is a really spectacular find

because of the level of preservation here.

Um, we have the full body preserved,

including all of his skin, all of the internal organs,

and all of the possessions that he was carrying at the time.

And this, therefore, is giving us unique insights

into this individual

and also what life was like when he lived.

The recovery of �tzi's skeleton made headlines worldwide,

and his bones became an object

of intense fascination and scientific study.

But then, unexpectedly,

a series of bizarre deaths took place

in the years after �tzi's bones were recovered.

There's something very mysterious going on here

with this �tzi Iceman since he was discovered.

In the early '90s, and going into the 2000s,

people have died who were involved

in the discovery or the presentation of �tzi.

A gentleman called Rainer Henn had the privilege

of placing �tzi's body into a body bag at the discovery.

He died in a car crash.

Kurt Fritz, who was involved in the transportation

of �tzi from one place to another,

died in an avalanche.

Helmut Simon, one of the discoverers of �tzi,

had fallen 300 feet to his death.

Several other people have died as well.

All told, seven people

connected to the discovery of �tzi died.

Were their untimely deaths simply a coincidence?

Or is it possible

that the deaths were actually

the consequence of disturbing �tzi's bones,

which had remained untouched for thousands of years?

Some people believe there may even be a curse

associated with this man buried in the ice.

�tzi had these very strange tattoos,

all these spirals and different designs.

If he was some kind of shaman or sorcerer,

did he place a curse over his body

to protect him from future generations digging him up?

It's known that it took four full days

to excavate him from the ice,

so there's an element of desecration of a grave.

There are many, sort of, curse stories and curse rumors

that follow the realm of archaeology,

because archaeology is often involving

digging people out of their graves.

Is that disturbing their peace,

not allowing them to rest in peace?

What we can see is that this does reflect

a popular belief that maybe there is something wrong

with handling a body in this mundane sense,

as if it's an object to study.

Cursed bones, cursed tombs, cursed diamonds,

and even a cursed day on the calendar?

It seems like there's curses everywhere we look.

And while that may be a slight exaggeration,

the fact is, there are plenty of reasons to believe

that our world is filled with dark forces

that we don't fully understand.

So, until science can provide us with rational explanations,

perhaps we shouldn't dismiss

the idea that there are

powerful curses in our world that remain...

unexplained.

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