All language subtitles for o2 07 okokokfr

What is this misshapen
9,000-year-old clay head?

The recreation of the
features of the living

suggest this was part
of an ancestral cult.

Can this bizarre machine really
harness intergalactic energy?

It could repel an alien invasion

and improve your sex life.

What do the drawings on
this ancient tablet mean?

It's a map of the unknown.

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 a corner of the
British Museum

sits a strange misshapen head.

It was discovered
nearly 70 years ago

in one of the
world's earliest cities.

When it was found,
it was quite unique.

No one really
knew what it was for

and no one expected
anything like this.

Now this object can be examined

in minute detail.

This is the Jericho Head.

The first thing that draws
you in are its bright shell eyes.

And then you notice its
light brown plaster skin.

It's a haunting object.

And there is a reason
it looks so haunting.

Under the plaster,

there is an actual,
real human skull.

Why is a human
head treated this way?

How is it made?

And who is the person
beneath the plaster?

The ancient city of Jericho
lies in the Jordan Valley

in modern-day Palestine.

Jericho is famous to us,
for one, the bible of course,

the famous Walls of Jericho.

But, actually, it's a
very ancient place.

One of the world's
earliest cities,

founded more than
11,000 years ago.

Athens doesn't exist
for another 4,000 years.

Or if we're talking about
a place like London,

it doesn't exist for
another 7,000 years.

According to the Old Testament,

the Walls of Jericho collapse

when the Israelites
blow their horns.

But in 1953,

pioneering archaeologist
Kathleen Kenyon and her team

discover that the oldest
walls of ancient Jericho

date back far
beyond biblical times.

We're looking at an
earlier walled settlement,

stretching back to around
10,000 years before present.

In the ruins of this
earliest settlement,

They make an
extraordinary discovery.

This looked like large
cobble or boulder.

But as it was
excavated and emerged,

it became clear
that what they had

was a reconstituted human head.

A clay face has been
sculpted onto the skull.

They see a large
hole where the nose is,

which presumably is where a
plastered nose would have been.

There's dirt also coming out,

which the archaeologists
assumed was actually infill

after the skull had been
buried by surrounding dirt.

And there's also a large
hole in the back of the skull.

It's unlike anything the
archaeologists have ever seen.

It's a skull which long ago was
effectively brought back to life

by the introduction
of shell and earth.

This strange thing is
crafted by someone who died

5,000 years before
the pyramids were built.

Why do they rebuild a
face on a human skull?

The skull is sent to the
British Museum for analysis,

but 1950s technology
has limitations.

Early attempts to X-ray it
showed only a cloudy mass.

One thing they can see clearly

Is the large hole on
the back of the skull.

It's assumed to
be burial damage.

It's not.

More than 60 years later,

it's finally revealed how
wrong that assumption is

when the British Museum
teams up with Imperial College

to apply the latest CT
scanning technology.

We see cutting marks at the
back of the head in this hole.

It's clear that
somebody had actually

deliberately cut
out this hole, uh,

away from the skull,
that it was carefully cut,

uh, not to damage
other areas of the skull.

The interior of the skull
is packed with earth.

It was assumed to
have fallen in after burial.

But that turns out
to be just as wrong.

The scan showed that
the soil within the skull

had been carefully
applied layer by layer

to support the fragile interior
bone structures of the skull.

We now understand how
this strange thing is made.

Someone painstakingly
cuts out a hole

And packs this skull with soil.

They even leave
behind their finger marks,

still visible
10,000 years later.

Then, they create the face.

Plastering the head
would have taken perhaps

some multiple applications
to get it quite right

and to mold the features,

particularly the nose that
would have likely been there.

But also the eyes.

We know they used shells
from the Mediterranean

that was about 60
miles away from Jericho.

So, clearly, they're
importing materials.

So this is something
that they really cared for.

It's not something they
just made haphazardly.

They took some
time in shaping this

and putting in precious
objects into the skull.

But who could be
important enough

to deserve so much
effort after death?

The skull beneath
the clay face reveals

this was almost certainly a man

And even his age.

The older you get,

the more your bone parts
start to attach to each other.

So from that, you can
deduce how old a person was.

And in this case,

the person was probably around
40 to 50 years when he died.

And stripping back the dirt

shows that he suffers at
least one injury during his life.

Examining their nose
which is twisted to one side,

it was apparent that,
at one point in their life,

They had suffered
from a broken nose.

This skull tells the
story of a short hard life.

But it also reveals
something very, very strange.

The head is unusually formed.

This form of the
head is not natural.

The shape of the
skull is distorted.

And the thickness of the bone
varies more than a normal skull.

Cranial distortion like this
cannot happen after death.

Somebody intentionally changed
the shape of the head of the person

by binding it and
applying force to the head

so it's deformed.

This can only be
performed on an infant.

To get a desired
deformation of the skull,

you have to do it very early,
you have to start very early,

one month after birth until six
months after birth, approximately.

Tightly-wrapped bindings slowly
squeeze his soft infant skull.

When the bones fuse
at around two years,

his deformed head
shape is fixed forever.

This unusual practice is
known in a number of cultures.

Cranial deformation has been
practiced in many different times

and places throughout the world.

The head is often used as a way
to make someone more prominent,

to perhaps make him stick out.

So it is a kind of
cultural practice

To make an individual
become sort of distinct.

This can be a mark
of tribal allegiance,

a sign of beauty

or elite social status.

Whatever it means to the
people of ancient Jericho,

it tells us this man
is special from birth.

Who is he?

More than 9,000 years ago,

someone carefully
and deliberately

created a clay face on
the skull of a dead man.

Modern facial
reconstruction techniques

finally allow us to
stare into his living face.

So they're doing effectively
what the ancients were trying to do

with regards to the skull,

which is recreate what
the face actually looked like,

but this time using laser scans

and 3D printing
to create a face.

Modeling the missing lower jaw

on other ancient Jericho skulls

muscle by muscle,

through layer upon
layer of tissue and skin,

the face of a man appears.

The process that begins
with clay and shells

nearly 10,000 years ago

is finally complete.

This is the face of
someone very important

to the people of
ancient Jericho.

And he is not alone.

More than 50 other decorated
skulls have now been found

across the region,

including ten
from Jericho alone.

This curation of
plastered skulls

was undertaken much more widely

than was previously thought.

And they all share
something in common.

There is no body.

Keeping the skull,

not necessarily the
rest of the skeleton,

shows that the head
had a great importance,

which was treated in
a very venerated way

relative to the rest
of the skeleton.

Could this decorated
skull be part of a religion?

Some kind of skull cult?

Most of the skulls that
have been found in Jericho

were in places that
were prominent in display.

They're looking
the same direction.

They often are near each other.

So they probably even
put down a kind of a shelf

Or some kind of
pedestal to show them.

It seems that in
ancient Jericho,

these decorated skulls
take pride of place,

keeping their shell
eyes on the living.

Current interpretations
suggest that these skulls

brought back to life through
the addition of plaster

were part of a kind
of ancestral cult.

But why do the living
of ancient Jericho

create a cult of
their dead ancestors

in their own homes?

The explanation may lie in
Jericho's most famous innovation.

It is one of the
world's first cities.

This is a period of great
innovation for societies.

They began to use agriculture,

specifically domestication of
different plants and animals.

Some had decided
to settle into villages,

decided to live for
long periods of time

or even the entire
year in one specific site,

which was quite a
novelty in this period.

For the first time in history,

Large numbers of people
call the same place home.

But this means finding an entirely
new way to live with each other,

crowded in together behind
the city's 12-foot walls.

They need a way
to avoid conflicts

developing between that
other great invention of the city,

neighbors.

When humans begin to settle,

they have to create a range
of different cultural practices

that allow them to succeed
in this kind of lifestyle

of where they stay in one place

For long periods of time.

Archaeologists suspect that

the cult of ancestors
this skull represents

acts as a kind of social glue,

connecting the citizens
to their past, to their home

and, most importantly,
to each other.

Innovating ancestors as a
way of associating ownership

and tying yourself to the land

becomes a kind of
cultural phenomenon

and reflects a kind of
practical understanding

that you need to
belong to the land

and you need to
take care of the land.

This dead man helps
bind living people together

in a whole new way,

which makes this strange
thing incredibly important.

This decorated skull
may have been central

to the early success of one of
mankind's greatest achievements,

the city.

Hidden among trees in a small
forest near Rangeley, Maine,

stands a strange machine

Designed to harness a
powerful source of energy.

It looks big and long,
but also futuristic.

According to its inventor,

it can drill holes
in the atmosphere

and trigger tornadoes.

This contraption effectively
looks like a massive ray gun.

Now, using the
latest technology,

we can examine it in
unprecedented detail.

This is the cloudbuster.

It was supposed to
control the weather.

It could make it rain.

It could stop the rain.

Just imagine being
able to control droughts

or control a flood.

But this isn't the only trick
of this new form of energy.

And as an added bonus,

it could repel an alien invasion

and improve your sex life.

This energy seems
to have the potential

To change the world.

If you could control this,

you could make essentially
anything you wanted happen.

Who builds this
game-changing weather gun?

What is the source of its power?

And could it actually work?

The cloudbuster
is created in 1952

by Dr. Wilhelm Reich.

Now, this is quite
a contraption,

this multiple-tubed device

mounted on a klin then
a swiveling mechanism

so it can be pointed
in any direction.

It's got the metallic
umbilical cables

that kind of thread down.

These are designed
to channel energy

That triggers a change
in the atmosphere.

So Reich's idea is that
by attaching this umbilicus

to a body of water

and pointing the
muzzles of the device

at the correct direction
in the atmosphere,

it could draw this
energy out of the sky

and deposit it into the water.

The movement of
this mysterious energy

out of the atmosphere

would cause clouds to form

And, subsequently, rain to fall.

Who is the man who believes
he can really control the weather

with his astonishing
cloudbuster?

Wilhelm Reich is not the
kind of person you'd expect

to dream up a world-changing
weather machine.

His interests begin not
in physics or engineering,

but in the mind.

Reich was born
in Austria in 1897,

a time which was part of
the Austro-Hungarian Empire,

and he studied medicine
at the University of Vienna.

In the 1920s, Reich is
a brilliant psychoanalyst

and protege of the
discipline's founding father,

Sigmund Freud.

He took a lot of
Freud's ideas about

people having these
needs and these desires.

And there's always this
tension between what we need

and whether that
need is fulfilled.

The more Reich digs
into needs and desires,

the more he focuses
on Freud's ideas

about the role of sexual
desire in mental health.

He believes that
repressing sexual outlets

can lead to neuroses.

So his argument is that

if you discharge
these sexual urges,

it will have a
psychoanalytic healing effect.

But Reich is just
getting started.

He gradually becomes
convinced that sex is the sole cause

and sole cure for
almost any illness,

Mental or physical.

This increasingly extreme
interpretation of Freud's work

doesn't go down well.

By 1939,

his ideas are
considered so radical

and so contrary

to the general clinical
practices of psychoanalysis

that he is kicked
out of the movement.

And Freud's followers aren't
the only ones Reich falls out with.

He also falls out with
the actual Reich...

Heil!

The Third Reich.

The Nazis assert that he is
part of a Jewish conspiracy

to undermine the health
and well-being of Europe

and they ordered
his books burned.

Reich is forced to flee
to the United States.

And it's there that he
creates the cloudbuster.

But how does he make the
leap from upsetting fascists

To upsetting the weather?

In the 1930s,

with the help of some very
accommodating friends,

Reich sets out to find
a scientific explanation

for the healing properties
of sexual desire.

So he took Freud's idea

and tried to measure something,

something bioelectrical
or chemical or physical.

As the friends get friendlier,

Reich records an increase
in electrical activity.

He's certain it's
evidence of some kind of

previously unidentified
bioelectrical energy.

He names it orgone.

Through an elaborate
series of experiments,

Reich convinces himself that he's
rewritten the laws of the universe.

Reich argues that the
entire planet is covered

with an envelope of
this orgone energy.

It was responsible
for stuff out in space,

like galaxies.

But at the same time,

it was also kind of
channeled through people.

It produced the life force.

In 1940,

Reich invents a device to
harness the healing powers

of this miraculous energy.

He built what he calls
an orgone accumulator.

Reich claims that inside
the wood and steel box,

orgone is absorbed
through the patient's skin

to cure them of almost anything.

And he started to conduct
experiments and treatments

using the accumulator
box on patients

who had cancer
and schizophrenia.

But Reich goes further,

theorizing that orgone can
literally change the world.

And in 1952, he
sets out to prove it

by creating the cloudbuster.

Reich had made a
lot of claims about

what the cloudbuster could
do, but the key thing was

the fact that you
could take it anywhere,

you could point it at the sky

and you could make it rain.

Reich's momentous
claims seemed crazy.

Could there be any real
science to support his idea

of controlling the weather
with the cloudbuster?

In the 1950s, Wilhelm
Reich's bizarre cloudbuster

promises to bring
an end to droughts.

But will it work?

In 1953,

there had been a drought that
had been going on for months

in Maine in the US.

And, in particular,
the blueberry farmers

were worried about their crop.

Blueberry plants take
seven years to mature.

So a dead crop means
years of financial hardship.

The farmers are desperate.

Enter Wilhelm Reich
and his cloudbuster.

He wheels out his device.

He connects it up to a
source of clear, pure water.

He points it at the sky.

And they begin to operate it.

And the next day...

it rains.

Official records confirm
a quarter of an inch of rain

falls the following day.

The blueberry
farmers are very happy.

Reich gets paid.

For Reich, this is a triumph.

There is clearly
cause and effect.

Does this prove the
cloudbuster works?

Or has Reich just
caught a lucky break?

It sounds nuts,

but can you really
control rainfall?

One of the key requirements

in order to be able to
make an actual raindrop

is to have something,

what's called a
condensation input,

a little sort of starting point

on which the drop can form.

And so if you put tiny
solid particles into the air,

then they will be enough

to actually start the
formation of droplets

which will then fall to Earth.

Scientists have tried deliberately
depositing silver iodide,

Or dry ice, inside
clouds to induce rain.

It's called cloud-seeding.

And the jury's still out
on whether it works.

But that didn't stop the US
government from weaponizing it.

In 1967, the 54th Weather
Reconnaissance Squadron

conducts what's called
Operation Popeye.

The motto of which was
"make mud, not war."

And their goal was to
extend the monsoon season

over the Ho Chi Minh
Trail, softening the roadbed

and causing transportation
problems in the movement of supplies

from North Vietnam
into the combat areas.

It's impossible to
know if it really works.

After all, it can rain
a lot in the jungle

pretty much whatever you do.

But one thing we do
know is this approach

can only work if you add
particles to the clouds.

And that's a problem
for the cloudbuster.

It doesn't blast particles
into the atmosphere.

In fact, it doesn't actually
seem to do anything.

The device has
no buttons or trigger

or on switch of any sort.

You just point it at the clouds,

and that's that.

So why does it rain
on the blueberry crop?

Maybe it's nothing more
than the luck of the draw.

Most of us can
buy a lottery ticket.

You might win once.

What you need to do

is to do it over and over again

and really show that
there are statistics there.

And what Reich
does is he tries it once

and he sees what he wants.

But the reality is that
it tells him nothing.

Despite the grand claims,

there's no scientific evidence
that the cloudbuster works.

But that doesn't stop Reich.

His cloudbuster is
about to graduate

from saving blueberries

to saving the world.

Reich goes on to
test his experiments

in the Arizona desert.

Whilst he's operating
the cloudbuster,

he notices that there is
an increase in cloud cover

and in humidity.

And he attributes this to
the power of the cloudbuster

and the orgone energy.

Then the cloud cover
mysteriously breaks up.

But Reich has an
explanation for this.

And even by Reich's standards,

it's pretty out there.

Spotting a light over
the Catalina Mountains,

Reich becomes convinced
that the Earth is under attack

by aliens.

He claims that they are
releasing a substance

called deadly orgone radiation.

He writes that we are
at war with a power

previously unknown to man.

Luckily, Reich has the perfect
weapon to defeat the aliens.

Armed with two cloudbusters,

Reich fights what
he claims to be

"a climactic
interstellar battle"

with the aliens over
the skies of Arizona.

Not the craziest idea
ever floated in Arizona,

just for the record.

But while Reich is
busy fighting aliens,

he's missing a much
more dangerous enemy.

Armed with his cloudbuster,

psychoanalyst and
inventor Wilhelm Reich

battles drought
and blasts aliens.

But his work is
attracting the attention

of an even more
powerful adversary,

the US government.

Reich is a committed socialist

with a radical attitude
to sexual freedom.

He rings all the alarm bells

for a government paranoid about

the threat of subversives.

He attracts quite a lot of
negative media attention.

The government turns
Reich's work against him,

not the cloudbuster,
but his earlier invention,

the orgone accumulator.

He was presenting the
orgone accumulator box

as a legitimate medical device,

which they argued he didn't
have the evidence to back up.

The orgone
accumulator is banned.

Unfortunately, for Reich,

one of his agents
sells one of the boxes

without him even being involved,

and the FDA
considered this to be

a breach of the injunction.

Reich is sentenced
to two years in prison.

And FDA agents destroy
his accumulators and books.

Over 6 tons of Reich's
writing are collected

and burned at a
public incinerator.

Any material related
to orgone is fair game.

And it all goes up in smoke.

Reich's reputation is ruined.

Aged 60, the creator of
the radical cloudbuster

dies of a heart attack
while still in prison.

But his ideas
don't die with him.

And it's easy to see why.

It's really nice to
believe that there's just

one energy that flows
through the universe,

and that it's the
source of everything

and the solution to everything.

When you have a really
complicated, difficult world,

you can understand
the appeal of an answer

that's both simple
and enjoyable,

even if it's not
the right answer.

Despite no scientific
proof that orgone exists,

Reich's fans are still
turning out online plans

to build your very
own cloudbuster today.

Just don't expect it to rain.

Locked away in the vaults
of the British Museum

is a strange clay tablet.

It took years to be deciphered
and its importance understood.

It's a map of the unknown.

Now, using the
latest technology,

we can begin to decode
this ancient artifact.

This is the Babylonian
Map of the World.

While this is, technically
speaking, a map,

it's so much more than that.

It is the oldest
map of the world.

This map dates to more
than 2,500 years ago.

It stands 4.8 inches high

and 3.2 inches wide.

Curious diagrams and
cryptic text cover its surface.

You've got living cities,
you've got dead cities,

you've got mythological places,

You've got the notion
of the end of the world.

And at the heart of
this map is a mystery.

What do the symbols
and writing mean?

Why was it made?

Is this really a
map of the world?

The map is discovered in 1881

in the lost city of Shapur,

17 miles southwest of
modern-day Baghdad.

It is part of a
70,000-tablet bonanza.

And under this
avalanche of finds,

its significance is missed.

This object was pretty
much put to one side

for eight years until its
importance was discovered

as one of the first
maps of the world.

The information on the
tablet is in cuneiform form,

the oldest written
language on Earth,

and it reveals a
lost civilization.

In the center of
the map is a hole,

a device often found
on cuneiform tablets.

Above this lies a rectangle,

representing a mighty
city labeled as Babylon.

We know it's the city of Babylon

because the other
rectangle that runs through it

is the Euphrates River.

And Babylon was
famous for being the city

that was on both sides
of the Euphrates River.

When the map is made
around 2,600 years ago,

Babylon is home
to 200,000 people.

It is the largest city on Earth

and the location of the greatest
wonders of the ancient world,

the Hanging Gardens of Babylon,

the Ishtar Gate

and the Bible's Tower of Babel.

So it's no surprise that
this map of the world

revolves around mighty Babylon.

They're setting out their concept
of their kingdom and who they are

through the means of a map

in which they place
themselves in the center.

And everything
that isn't themselves

on the periphery.

Beyond Babylon itself,

other features of
this lost world appear.

There are also
just plain circles

that fall in various places,

And these are ruins
of ancient cities.

There are mountains
marked in the north

in roughly the same location as the
Taurus Mountains of southern Turkey.

A swamp in the south
corresponds to the marshlands

of the Euphrates
and Tigris floodplains.

But there is something
strange about this tablet.

Unlike maps as we know them,

it has no scale, no
measure of distance,

no roads, no paths.

The Babylonian map is not
a map which will allow you

to find where you
are in the world.

This map clearly
isn't for navigation.

So what is it for?

Getting from A to B using
the oldest map of the world

would be impossible.

Yet the Babylonians do seem to
have the knowledge and the skill

that a mapmaker would need.

We know that the Babylonians
had surveying skills.

So if you could make
a more accurate map,

but you make something

which is rather less
detailed and crude,

There must be
another reason for it.

The answer to that may begin

with the lines surrounding
this lost Babylonian world.

There's a circle
that goes around it

called the Bitter River.

By "bitter," we're talking
about the kind of salt seas.

The map does not
end at the Bitter Sea,

it shows land beyond it,

but it looks very different.

The outer bodies of land
are shaped like triangles,

reducing as they
head towards the abyss

at the edge of the world.

Some people have even said
the way that they're presented

as kind of triangles coming out

represents the way you'd have
seen the land approaching by sea.

These are distant places

outside the boundary
of the Bitter Sea

and beyond the lands of Babylon.

Some of the labels say,

"Oh, the sun never shone here.

It was dark as night."

And there were places
where birds wouldn't fly.

These may well be
partially-known places

based on travelers' tales
or handed-down stories.

They have it on the map

and they've tried to map it out.

It's something that
you know is there,

but you don't really
have enough information

to describe it or even
kind of put it properly.

Later mapmakers called
such unknown lands

"terra incognita."

In cartography, terra incognita

is the "land unknown."

We often get the
phrase "hic sunt leones,"

"here be lions."

"Here be dragons."

In the absence of facts
or firsthand experience,

mapmakers use their
imagination to fill in the gaps.

It's amazing, really, because
it's not just describing a place,

but it's almost describing
a philosophical concept

of something that you don't know

and, therefore,
can't even imagine.

The text on the tablet
also includes references

to strange wildlife.

You have all different
types of exotic animals,

almost otherworldly creatures,

like gazelles and
a scorpion man.

And that kind of
captures the idea

That they're seen as these
otherworldly, mythic places.

The heavily damaged
text on the front

includes references
to legendary figures

and the Babylonian
creation myth.

This map and the
writing on the tablet

are effectively a description of more
than just the Babylonians physical world.

It's their cosmology.

This is a strange
blending of worlds,

of the known world,

Of a mythological world beyond.

But one theory suggests
that this map could be more

than just a description
of a belief system.

Could it have a more
Earthly purpose?

1,700 years before
the map is made,

Babylon is part of the
first great empire on Earth.

And at the center of
everything is its ruler,

The legendary Sargon the Great.

The time of Sargon
was the golden age.

This goes back many
centuries to around 2,300 BC.

A multiethnic civilization stretched
over a great breadth of land

with roots by land and sea.

This was potentially
the world's first empire.

But since then,
Babylon has become

Just a pale shadow
of its former greatness.

It was no longer the
golden age of Sargon.

This region was no
longer a world leader.

Babylon had been
conquered by Assyria

and was in a
perpetual state of revolt.

It was ridden by
conflict and civil war.

Yet this map shows a
Babylon-centric world view.

That could be because
the empire strikes back.

They kick the
Assyrians out of Babylon.

By the 7th and 6th centuries BC,

we do see a glimmer of change

with a short-lived
Neo-Babylonian Empire.

In this period,

Babylonian culture
and arts blossomed

and spectacular palaces and
temples are built across the empire,

particularly in Babylon.

This era features the
iconic King Nebuchadnezzar,

who, of course, we all know created
the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

In the text on the front,

the map talks of the
Babylonian creator god,

Marduk.

And it suggests one of
the distant triangular lands

may be home to both Utnapishtim,

their equivalent of Noah,

and Sargon himself.

It's like a golden hits of
Babylonian mythology.

One means of
interpretation might be to say

that this map served as a
harkening back to that age.

Could its purpose have
been to revive ideas

of Babylon's lost golden past?

It's tempting to connect it
with the resurgence of Babylon

in the 7th and 6th centuries

and this short
secondary golden age

and see it as an
attempt to appeal

to the glorious
past of the area.

That's consistent
with what we know

of the Neo-Babylonian world.

Archaeologically speaking,
there's other evidence

of the Neo-Babylonian state

using the past as a
form of legitimation.

We know they restore one of
Sargon's great ancient cities,

Ur, including its
towering ziggurat.

And they restore the Esagila,

the great temple to Marduk
in the center of Babylon itself.

The Neo-Babylonians
certainly wouldn't be alone

In using a glorious past
to help shape the present.

If we look, for example,
at Mussolini in the 1930s,

he used the Roman
past and archaeology

as a means of discussing
Italian greatness

and the Italian right to
reconquer North Africa.

More recently in history,

we see Saddam Hussein
doing the same thing in Iraq.

Could the Babylonian map

also have been
intended to draw a parallel

with past greatness?

Although it's a tempting
theory and seems to fit,

modern scholars are skeptical.

The one thing we can
say with some certainty

is this ancient clay
tablet shows us the world

the mapmaker wants us to see.

Much like the map
of the world today

and its projections,

the relative size of continents,

This is all guarded
by the priorities of

The people who were
drawing the maps.

We just can't be certain
what this mapmaker intended.

Is this strange thing
made as a map?

As a cosmological guide?

Or as a piece of propaganda?

What's so intriguing
about his object

is the fact that we
probably won't ever know

exactly what it was
meant to be used for.

Unfortunately, the Neo-Babylonian
Empire that likely created it

lasts less than a century.

But this remnant of that
short-lived period remains,

the oldest-known map
of the world in existence.