Ancient Wonders: The Forgotten Monuments of Our World

If you had to pick seven ancient wonders of the world, which ones would they be? We've compiled a list of our top seven, from the soaring heights of the Great Pyramid, through the statues of Easter Island, exotic Mayan temples, a Roman Amphitheater, and the Great Wall of China. The next two hours, we'll explore some of the most awesome ancient wonders,

The pyramid has magic admestry, and I always say, if you come by to visit the Giza plateau and just walk and you can see the pyramid for the first time, your heart will be going up and down because it's something that cannot be explained. The Great Pyramid of Kufu is immortal.

Amazingly, these ancient wonders are only a few minutes from downtown Cairo. The Pyramids at Giza are the planet's original tourist attraction.

Awesome to think that you are standing on ancient history and seeing it in person.

This is so much better than any kind of picture or television or anything.

It's just unbelievable.

Today millions of visitors from around the world come to marvel at the pyramids.

You know, I have always been thinking about pyramids since I was a little kid. For me, it's kind of a dream come true.

I tried to read up on ahead of time, and there's.

Just no way to.

Prepare yourself for this, which is absolutely amazing.

One scene, these ancient giants are never forgotten.

All of this Lily capture the heart of everyone who come to visit the ship. And therefore, when you got to Paradise, God will say the only mistake that you do in your life that you did not visit the.

The Great Pyramid is the largest monument ever built. The base is bigger than any temple or cathedral, and until the Eiffel Tower was finished in eighteen eighty seven, it was the tallest structure for over four thousand years.

When we did an estimation a few months ago, we found out that the stones of the Great Pyramid are one million and three hundred thousand blocks. This the pyramids were massive, built of massive stones.

The precision of their construction is astonishing. The four sides were aligned almost exactly with true north, southeast, and west, and the outer casing blocks were so skillfully laid that even a knife blade won't fit between them. Robert Bouval, born in Egypt, has been fascinated by the pyramids all his life. He's a construction engineer and full of admiration for the amazing skills of the ancient pyramid builders.

There is no question that the Disneycropolis is the largest engineering project in the world in history, and omal sky Rise will contain something in the order of two hundred thousand tons of material. This is six million tons. You're talking about ten to fifteen times greater. So they're the giant skycrapers of history.

Four and a half thousand years on, we still have no real idea how the Egyptians managed to construct these gigantic monuments, the largest stone structures ever built.

The thing that makes them special is the father that we know very little about them. We don't know exactly who build them, we don't know exactly how old they are, we don't know why the building, So it's a huge question mark that looms in the desert. Some of the blocks that we use way up to sixty tons. These blocks are made of granite. Granite is imported from six hundred miles to the south of Egypt down the Nile. Can imagine sixty tons. Sixty tons is sixty family cars,

It is a.

Challenge to future generation to say, figure out how we did it.

All three pyramids at Giza were originally cased with polished white limestone. Over the centuries, most of this limestone has been pillaged, but a few blocks remain around the base of the Great Pyramid and on the summit of King Kaffra's pyramid.

You can't see the pyramids today from Bianzidan, but with this reflective surface they would have been sparkling, so you can imagine when they were new, they would have been absolutely staggering.

If their size remains a marble, their purpose remains one of the greatest mysteries. The traditionally accepted view is that they were built as tombs for the mummified bodies of the pharaohs.

The pyramid was a tomb, but it was also a national project of the whole nation. Every household in the north of Egypt and the south participated in building the pyramid by sending workforce, grain food to help the king. Because the pyramid will help that the birth of the king. It would make the king as a god. When they put the cap stone in the top of the pyramid, it meant that the pyramid was finished and everyone dance and sing.

But Robert Bouval has a controversial alternative theory, which he began to formulate twenty years ago. His first seeds of doubt were sown deep inside the pyramid. The experience of climbing through this ancient ructure is unforgettable and completely impossible if you suffer even the tiniest degree of claustrophobia. Close to the heart of the pyramid, the tiny passageway opens

The Gyptologists say that this is a coffin for a dead body, but it may not be a coffin. It may be a place where great resurrection rituds take place. In fact, it may be something that served for the living, not for the dead.

No human remains have ever been found inside any Egyptian pyramid. Boval believes this suggests that the monuments were built not as tombs, but as a grand setting for symbolic resurrections. He was also intrigued by the curious layout of the pyramids. The two largest are set along a southwest diagonal line, but the smaller pyramid of my Serinas was slightly offset to the east. Why was the third pyramid both smaller and built out of line.

It was one of those things that being an engineer and being a surveying engineer was totally puzzling. I had a hunch that it had something to do with the stars the started engine.

Boval followed up his hunch by taking a closer look at a completely different pyramid at the ancient side of Sakara, twenty five miles from Giza. This small pyramid was built for King Unas two hundred years after the Great Pyramid. It may look decrepid, but it holds some of the most revealing testimonies of the ancient Egyptian culture. Apart from some insignificant graffiti, the Pyramids of Giza are completely devoid of writing. But deep inside this pyramid are the Pyramid Texts,

They're intensely astronomy. They speak of the stars, they speak of the sun. It seems it's all about the sky, which is not surprising because this was the afterlife destiny of the king.

Many of the hieroglyphs tell of the king making his afterlife journey to the stars, in particular the constellation of Orion. The Egyptians believed Orion was the representation of Osiris, the god of regeneration and symbol of eternal life. So Boval wondered if there could be a link between Orion and the unusual layout of the pyramids at Giza. After the break,

And he pointed specifically about the stars, and he referred to them as the three stars in a row. And then, just as an afterthought, said, but the third one is offset to the left, and the penny dropped. Suddenly, there was a correlation in my mind as to why this designed, this layout of the three pyramids had been said this way.

With mounting excitement, Boval began to formulate his theory that the ancient Egyptians based the layout of the pyramids on a plan of the stars When he got back to Giza, Boval found further proof that the pyramids were designed to

That the whole machinery of the religion was how to ensure that their pharaohs after death would manage to undertake this celestial journey and return to the stars, and these monuments are the agency to produce that results. They are launching pads, if you like, for the pharaohs to reach the stars.

How famous Orian correlation theory took the world by storm and reopened the debate about the mystery of the pyramids. Most Egyptologists stand firm in their belief that the pyramids were built as tombs, and they've completely dismissed Boval's star theory.

It's beautifully written, it's beautifully made, its computer analysis, but it's strong because those people they come and smell the dirt, like I always say that those people they go and ride this box in an air cordition room in London or in America. But we excavate and our perfume is a dirt.

Whichever theory is correct, there remains an unsolved mystery what happened to the mummified corpses of King Kufu, his son, and his grandson. If Boval's theory holds true and the pyramids weren't used as tomb, the mummies might have been buried somewhere nearby.

Perhaps one day they will pop out. I mean one has to bear in mind that you're looking at the tip of the iceberg here, because there are still a lot of unexcavated sites. I mean, they keep on finding things all the time. They say that seventy percent of what was here is still underground, so they may still pop out.

There are many questions still to be answered about the pyramids at Giza, and it's likely that these ancient wonders will always be shrouded in mystery. Perhaps rightly so, they will remain one of the greatest enigmas of our time. The Tower of London is the oldest palace and fortress in Europe. Behind this facade of respectability, like dark, blood curdling tales of terror, sinister acts born of ruthless ambition. For over nine hundred years, these monumental walls have overshadowed

Well, I've been working at the Tower of London as an assistant curator and archaeologist for six years and the place never ceases to amaze me how much there is to discover here. And one thing that I still can't get my head round is the fact that we have buildings here from every century, from the eleventh century to the twenty first century. I can't rethink of anywhere else in England or Europe, or anywhere else in the world that can say that. It's just immensely exciting.

The White Tower is the center of today's castle. In the twelfth century, the monarchy, inspired by the design of European castles, built the first perimeter walls. At the end of the thirteenth century, Edward the First, one of the greatest castle builders of all time, constructed a second concentric wall and dug a new moat, giving us the shape of the castle we see today.

One of the most long lasting functions of the Tyer of London, and the one that's impressed itself most on people's memories, is its function as a prison ah ah ah.

For prisoners jailed in the tower, this would have been a dreadful place.

They are kept, probably in solitary confinement, and food will be brought to them by their jae. They won't be able to talk to anyone. Sometimes prison must have been very, very unpleasant business.

Indeed, many of the tormented prisoners left behind engravings and the walls of their cells that can still be seen today. The intricacy of these gruesome carvings reveals the depths of their suffering. Their misery was sometimes made much worse by merciless torturers. These cruel acts were often the result the ambitious desires of the monarchy.

It's very, very important to be aware that torture in this instance was done only by royal warrant, and the interrogators did it out of sadism. They did it because they needed to get information.

Ah.

The Tower of London was founded by the first Norman King of England, William the Conqueror, soon after he invaded England in ten sixty six.

We know from writers at the time that he thought that the people of London were a huge, fierce and fickle population, and for that reason he felt that he needed to protect himself within the city, and so he built the Tower of London.

Next up gruesome tales of treason and treachery at the tower. As the Tower of London grew in size, a variety of intimidating defenses were added to resist attack.

The reason why this one particular art was so securely defended is because all those hundreds and hundred of years ago, this was the only entry into the Inner Wars into the Royal Palace itself.

Since the fourteenth century, the castle has been protected by jumen warders. Today there are thirty eight of them, all former non commissioned officers from the armed forces, and they live with their families within the Tower Wars.

Most people call us beef Is. That's the nickname. No one's really sure where it came from. The nearest week you get to it is that certainly during the reign of Henry the eighth we were partly paid in beef.

Ladies and gentlemen were now down beside one of the most famous infamous skates for that hatter in the history of the world. For before you lie, straight escape, And for all you lovely Americans, do you know what it was originally called?

Water Gate? We are the tower Guardians. We are more or less a policeman. We're responsible for everything within the tower, the safety, the security of everything and the people that visit. But our main job is the security of this great royal palace.

As well as being watched over by Yeoman warders, the tower is also secured by military guards from the same regiment as those at Buckingham Palace. Their most important duty is to guard the Crown jewels that are kept secure in the Waterloo barracks. And there are other residents of the tower that have an historic role to play in defending the castle. The Ravens, Yeoman water Derek Coyle is the raven master.

Bit of a wall name. See two of our ravens. The one million is called Mooning, the one just behind her is called Cedric. It's my job to look after these birds. Now, whilst we're on about them. They are not tame. They are semi wild. You go into their territory, they'll attack. Put your finger out. They're allowed to take the finger and straight off. Look at the bags on them as well as not their talons. I raise the shop. So please give these birds the respect that they deserve.

All right, come on, hondy, good boy.

Ravens have lived here for hundreds of years, and tradition holds that if they should ever leave, the White Tower will be destroyed and a great disaster will befall England.

Go on, so a good boy.

In sixteen sixty Charles the Sid took this belief so seriously had he decreed that at least six ravens should be kept here at all times. Today these birds have their wing feathers clipped so they can't fly away. These famous residents of the tower get five star treatment, and.

That's what they get.

Luck.

Prime hard raven's are magnificent, whereas they're very humorous, they're very mischievous, and they're very very intellivision. Oh I love them. Come on, then, come on then.

The London was originally built as a royal palace and was used as a royal residence until Elizabethan times. Many kings and Queens of England were treated to a lavish lifestyle here, but some of the aristocracy were brought to the tower for a much more sinister purpose, to be locked up.

It's very important to know that this isn't just any old prison. This is a very important prison of state, and most of the people who are brought here are people who are either too important or too dangerous to be kept anywhere else.

Prisoners at the Tower were expected to pay for their own cheap Wealthy royalty and noblemen could afford to live comfortably, bringing in their own possessions and buying themselves extravagant meals.

Most of your prisoners would be living in houses, or would be living in towers. It's not like Alcatraz. It's an awful lot more like living under house arrest. And that's what it would be like.

Sir Walter Raleigh, famous explorer of the Americas, was imprisoned in the Bloody Tower for thirteen years after his alleged involvement in a plot against King James the First. He lived here with his wife and two sons, wrote the history of the world, and even grew tobacco in the tower garden, and then he was finally executed in sixteen eighteen. The most notorious prisoners were brought to the Tower by river, often at night, where they entered the fortress through the now infamous Trader's Gate.

Many and a leed traitor when it comes from these gatesphere, including four Queens of England, Queen Anne Boleyn, Queen Catherine Howell, Lady Jane Gray, the unprowned Queen of nine Days Only, and of course the young Princess Elizabeth, who later became Queen Elizabeth First.

For prisoners such as Anne Boleyn, this journey would be their last. Anne Berlyn was the second wife of Henry the eighth, and after her conviction for adultery, she was brought to the tower. Ironically, her lodgings were the same rooms she had stayed in just three years earlier to prepare for her coronation. Anne was condemned to execution by beheading. At her request, a swordsman from France was summoned to deliver a swift death with a sharp sword rather than

They are still there now in the area of the alta, with a new Victorian pavement laid over the top of them, bearing their names in the coats of arms of the important people buried in that area, and Catherine Howard, Lady Jane Gray, the Earl of.

Essex, and many others. Some of the royal victims still haunt the castle today. The tale of the Two Little Princes is one of the saddest stories of the tower. After their father Edward died in fourteen eighty three, the boys were lodged in the tower while the eldest was prepared for coronation, but their uncle Richard declared the boys illegitimate and had himself crowned as King Richard the Third.

There's an aftermath to this story that in the year sixteen seventy four, some workmen doing some work near the White Tower, quite by accident, came upon the burials of two small children. The authorities at the time convinced King Charles the Second, then on the throne, that these were none other than the bones of the two missing princes in the tower, and they were taken to Westminster Abbey, where even now they're buried, interred within a marble urn in a place called Innocence Corner.

Every stone Every brick in the wall has its own little story to tell. And when you think that I walk around every day where kings and Queens of England have walked, some for their last walk, it just brings it home to you. It's a great traditional place and long mates stay.

That way as well.

Coming up, we relived the glories of ancient Rome and the greatest amphitheater ever built. The Colosseum, a marvel of Roman engineering and the greatest amphitheater ever built. This huge stadium was designed so that as many Romans as possible could watch the most cruel and violent games the world has ever seen. Thousands died here in the name of popular entertainment. The Colosseum stands in the heart of Rome,

I've seen pictures and everything, but they really can't capture how big it really is.

The fact that an ancient people were able to construct something so incredibly huge, it's just incredible to me.

The idea of it, the immensity of it, the enormous at the engineering of it, just absolutely fascinating.

What we see today is nothing compared to what the spectacular Amphitheater would have looked like in ancient Rome. In its prime, the colosseum was faced with marble, and each portico was filled with an ornate statue of an important Roman face. At the very top of the building, there were two hundred and forty masts which supported an enormous canvas awning known as the valerium. On sunny days, it was stretched over the top to provide shade for the spectators.

Above each of the arches on the ground level there is actually a Roman numeral and they go from one to seventy six. Through these numbers, you would know where to go into the building, and then so if you were sitting over there, you wouldn't want to come in over here and then wander all around. You would want

Despite the size of the building, more than fifty thousand people would have been able to reach their seats within a matter of minutes. Where the people sat was determined by social class. The highest class senators would sit nearest the arena, and wealthy men would sit in the second tier above that, poorer men would sit in the third tier. Women in slaves were restricted to the very top, where

Now these would be the only women who would be sitting low down, and these were prime seats or the vesta virgins. Gave up a lot to be vest of virgins, but they got something in return.

Each day's bloodshed was divided into three parts. Professor Roger Wilson from the University of Nottingham has researched the day's events.

Fest of all, in the morning you had the animal shows. This was if you liked the order. This was the warming up of the people. And then at midday, if there were criminals to be executed, then they would be executed. And then after a pause, there would be the afternoon entertainment, and that was what people were really waiting for, the gladiatorial combat. I think you've got to imagine a good

In to provide this dramatic entertainment, there was a large working area underneath the arena. Hidden elevators and trapdoors with a complicated system of counterweights and pulleys allowed animals, men in scenery to appear from underground.

The cage would pop up through the floor, and so this is one of the ways they could to make it more spectacular. They could have scenery or gladiators or animals sort of coming up from nowhere.

Up next the most sensational and bloodthirsty games ever, the most sensational games at the coliseum in Rome were in one hundred and seven AD. Ten thousand gladiators fought to the death in a blood bath that lasted one hundred and twenty three days, an.

Enormous amount of entertainment. And also there were no less than eleven thousand animals butchered in the course of that one hundred and twenty three days. At the end of the games, when they had all been slaughtered, one of the fascinating questions is what happened to the carcasses. When you've got an elephant dead in the arena, Okay, you can drag it out, but what then do you do

The dead animals and corpses would probably have been taken to one of the many buildings surrounding the Colosseum. In nineteen thirty seven, the remains of the Ludus Magnus, the largest gladiatorial school in Rome, were discovered. Next door to the Colosseum, a mini arena has been partly excavated, and this is where the gladiators were subjected to a strict program of training, watched over by their trainers, who would

Gladiators were either slaves or they were criminals. In either house, they were expendable. It was a very hard life. They lived in pretty harsh conditions. I'm sure they were pretty abysmally treated, but if the alternative was either straight execution or condemnation to the mind, then frankly, perhaps it was a better life being a gladiator. At least you had hope.

They walked to the games through an underground tunnel that led directly from the Ludus Magnus to beneath the Colosseum. The ultimate prize was a gladiator's freedom, but this was rarely granted.

The pinnacle of gladiator's achievement if they'd really been successful, was that they would go on winning, They go on getting adulation in the amphitheater, and as we know from inscriptions, they were the equivalent of the pop stars.

Of the day.

The Colisseum is so well preserved that it's not difficult to imagine the gory events of two thousand years ago.

Once you stood down on the floor and looked up at where Caesar sat, you can imagine what it's like to be a gladiator and be fighting for your life in there. Quite amazing.

It seated fifty thousand people, but pretty much for the wrong reasons.

So excited people being killed, we would be mold. But drama and fiercer and excitement. To me, everything was here, well, light was here.

Construction of the Colosseum began in seventy a d. And this masterpiece of engineering took ten years to build. Around three hundred thousand cartloads of huge stone blocks were used to build the outer walls. Towards the top of the monument. The stone was replaced by much smaller and lighter bricks held together with mortar.

Roman mortar is particularly strong, much stronger than say the mortar they would use in Greece, because there's a volcanic material in the area called Potslana. You can actually see the potslana in there. It's the little dark speckles, but it has chemicals in it that will bind with the lime and it'll create a mortar that's eight to ten times stronger than the regular mortar.

Since its heyday, the Colosseum has suffered from plundering and decay. The outer wall was partially destroyed when it was damaged by an earthquake in the fourteenth century, but some of the damage was much more deliberate.

Because people often ask me why the Colosseum looks like a bunch of Swiss cheese, because it has all these

It's a marvel that this huge building is still standing without any of the original iron clamps and dowels.

Once they put the arches all the way around. Then it forms sort of a unified hole, and so it's not nearly as unstable, and so even when you take the pens out, it's not going to fall down because it's structurally sound.

The more archaeologists learn about this grand monument, the more respect they have for the skills of the ancient Roman craftsmen.

This building is overwhelming at times. Every time I come here, I see something new. It's really exciting to be here.

For over three hundred years, this was Rome's premiere killing ground, but towards the end of the Roman Empire and the onset of Christianity, the Romans began to grow unhappy with the savage role call of brutality. In four hundred and four a d. The Emperor Honorius finally banned gladiator shows forever. Today, this triumph of Roman architecture is surely one of the most monumental ancient wonders of the world. Next up, we

Druids have always been at Stonehenge and celebrating the birth of the longest day, which is a major part of our religious experience, and what we as Drewids believe is that at the Samerson Stice, Druidsagans, Christians, Hindus, Jews, it doesn't matter, have a focal point in the British landscape where they can gather to celebrate what is the longest day of the year.

It is believed that this ancient stone circle has long been a spiritual focus.

And going back to a time in ancient Britain and the pagan faith was predominant, and they celebrated the changing of the seasons, and they went to specific places and sacred sites to celebrate that. So Stonehenge has always been a gathering point of the summer's solstice.

Stonehenge is the most complete megalithic monument in Europe, older than the Great Pyramid in Egypt. The site dates back five thousand years. That's two and a half years earlier than even the first Druids, and there is nothing else like it anywhere in the world. The magnetism of these stones draws more than a million visitors every year to ponder the questions who built this ancient monument, how was it built, and why.

Stonehenge is one of the great wonders of the world.

So we're here in the midst and the rain.

To see it.

My first impression is on the road coming up here and you just see them in the distance, and I was really excited over it. You know, that's pretty incredible.

Yeah, and then it's awesome for it.

Pandalous to think that it's British has been there so long. I mean, you know how did they do it?

The intriguing enigma of Stonehenge has left a lasting impression on many generations of visitors.

It is unique.

Stonehenge is recognized around the world. I mean, you draw the Triliathan symbol out and people recognize that in the same way as you draw the pyramid out. They recognize those things. It is an internationally known monument. It's become that sort of icon. The mystery is what was it used for? Why was it built? There is no written evidence, so we'll never actually know the motives behind it. And I suppose the fun about Stonehenge because we don't know, you can speculate.

There are plenty of theories. Some believe that this site was designed for sacrifice. In the Middle Ages, people thought the monster as stones have been put up by giants, and since then there have even been theories that this is a UFO landing.

Site, rising to the old.

Perscyd Ruined priests are firm in their belief that stone was built as a temple.

How Stonehenge got there and how it was built is lost in the mystery of time. But I firmly believe I know what it's there for, and that is as a place of worship at the turning of the seasons of the year of our name.

What we do know is that it was built with astounding precision, and the alignment of the stones will accurately predict the turn of the seasons. In the outer ring of stones, one of them is half the width of the others, creating twenty nine and a half stones. These may well represent the twenty nine and a half days in a lunar month. Four stationed stones set outside the stone circle mark the most northerly and southerly positions of the risings and settings of the Sun and the moon.

We imagine that the Earth is the center of Stonehenge. The temple represents the Earth. Then we can say that the outer diction bank represents the sky.

By moving a marker for the moon by two Aubrey holes each day and a marker for the sun once every thirteen days, the model behaves like an astronomical calculator. When the two markers coincide. The Aubrey holes predict an eclipse. When we return, we get fired up with the Druid priests. Four five hundred years ago, prehistoric man began the extraordinary feat of positioning the stones at Stonehenge. At first, there were just the smaller bluestones, named after the bluish color

I think that was a precarious operation. You had to slide the lintel from the cradle onto two upright stones with tennin joints in them and get it right. And they did get it right.

An hour before dawn, the solstice festivities reach a climax. The druids lead the torchlit procession in a complete circle around the stones, symbolizing the Earth orbiting the sun.

These stones have been used as a gathering point for many, many millennia, and it's in that that they have gathered their own power and their own mistake, and it's that that draws successive generations to them.

Over two hundred generations have passed since Stonehenge was erected, yet great Wonder is still here for us to admire and marvel at. Its construction. Built across mountain ranges up to eight thousand feet high, the Great Wall of China is a feat of engineering unparalleled in the world. It extends over four thousand, five hundred miles from North Korea to the wastes of the Gobi Desert. The same distance

I really thought it would be a straightforward walk in the park kind of thing. Trust me, it was amston.

Their plan was to walk along the most treacherous parts of the wall. Just get up to the wall itself involved a tough two hour height, the rough terrain, and the only way was up.

As coached the wall, it looked about a million feet high and I thought to myself, and they want me to get up there, now I'm going back up.

No one could get on it by themselves, and it was much higher than I was, probably about six seven foot high in some places where we wanted to get on. So we had to have two people on the top of the wall two people below and they sort of pushed you up and had to get you on top.

Reaching the top was a momentous achievement for Aid, who suffers from vertigo.

Actually got up on a wall and I said, I made it. I made it, and that was just ecstatic. Simply just being there.

Just really takes your breath away. It's so exhausting, but such an achievement when you actually.

Get up there.

The Hagers have been given permission to walk sections of the Great Wall normally off limits, and in parts it was crumbling and dangerously precarious.

The parts of it that were crumpling that we walked on, that was the best bit because you're out there on your own, and parts of it were a bit scary. Luckily I don't suffer from vertigo or anything, but it was still scary even for me.

At one stage, I was walking up and someone said to me, right, I now looked behind you, and I felt as if I was on the moon looking down. I didn't realize i'd gone that far up.

Chinese people are generally much shorter than all of us, and to think that they actually built the wall and climbed along it was just amazing. So it really made you think about who was building it and how they'd actually managed to lug all of these big blocks of stone and actually build the wall.

When the Great Wall was initially built during the Qin dynasty, it was made of compacted earth and reads. Emperor chinchewand used three hundred thousand soldiers and five hundred thousand conscripts. He built the three thousand miles of the wall in just ten years. One of the world's leading experts on Chinese history is Krol Michaelson.

Chinchi Hondi has been both revered and reviled throughout Chinese history, but generally his building of the Great Wall was regarded by most people as one of the most abhorred things that he did because an awful lot of people died building it. Many people were sent many hundreds of miles away from their home and never made it back again. There are millions of bones buried under the foundations of the Great Wall to help strengthen it.

In the sixteenth century, in response to the thread of invading Mongols from the north, the Great Wall of China was substantially renovated and extended.

It was during the Ming dynasty that the wall that we see in China today was reconstructed and rebuilt made of brick and stone. Special kilns being set up to bate the bricks in each place in order to make it sturdier than it had been. It is the brick and stone reconstruction that the astronauts could see from the moon and that the actual tourists who go to China today, and this is a very much sturdia more impressive wall than the original Great War would ever have been.

Up next, the Chinese Army defends the war against marauding invaders from the north. Today, the Great Wall of China is an accessible tourist destination and attracts people from all over the world. Most tourists visit the reconstructed sections close to Beijing. In nineteen seventy two, Richard Nixon was the first American president to visit China. Stop at the Wall provided the perfect photo opportunity.

We've come a long way, but I would say it's worth.

Coming sixteen thousand miles just to stand here and.

See the Wall. In nineteen ninety eight, Bill Clinton was equally impressed.

More magnificence than I had imagined it would be, and there are much more sudden changes in altitude than I thought.

The sheer size of the Great Wall ensure that it was rarely breached but during the early years it was constantly attacked by enemies from the north. Soldiers send coated smoke signals along the wall to warn of potential attack. When the wall was rebuilt in the Ming dynasty, watchtowers were constructed every two hundred yards, and extensions of the wall were built at right angles, so the soldiers could

Once they could use cannons, they could breach the Great Wall very easily, and by the end of the Ming dynasty it was perfectly obvious that building this wall was fairly useless if in fact it could be breached by cannons, and so at the end of the Ming dynasty in sixteen forty four, the reconstruction of the Great Wall basically ended.

After six days, the charity walkers completed their one hundred mile hike, reaching the end of such a unique adventure, an emotional experience.

It's very, very emotional. We'll hugged each old. You know we've made it.

Vistisnal.

Anyone who visits the Great Wall of China cannot fail to be impressed by the vastness of this ancient wonder.

It's just such an amazing feat. The fact that they were able in two hundred BC to build such an immense project is testimony to the greatness of Chinese civilization.

This is one of the most isolated places on Earth, yet every year twenty thousand tourists make the journey here to see some of the strangest wonders of the world. Easter Island is over two thousand miles from the nearest habitation in Chile. It's a place with a tragic history where the events of the past almost destroyed an entire population. Eight hundred and eighty seven gigantic statues dot the island. Some perch on top of beautifully crafted platforms called ahu,

If you look at these tattoos, you can see portraying their image. The presence of an elder person is not a friendly person that kind of look into your eyes and smiling, but somebody either mean or authoritarian and too arrogant to look close to you. So it's an attitude of in a sense of the Polynesian style.

Easter Island, known as Raphanui by the locals, has an area of just sixty square miles, about the size of Boston. The original inhabitants were Polynesians who sailed from distant islands sometime before eight hundred AD. Soon after their arrival, the islanders began to build these extraordinary statues. Their original purpose has been lost in time, but the Rapannui population today believed they were built as a representation of their Polynesian ancestors.

In many of the Polynesian islands, the representation of the ancestor were doed with small figurine, sometimes within piles of rocks. A Rapnoi we have the image of the ancestor, and it grew in size and style from a small roundhead figure all the way to the largest of twenty two meter high.

Most of the platforms with statues are sighted along the coast, but there are many more statues inland. The world's leading expert on the island statues is Joanne van Tilberg, an American archaeologist. She's been surveying and documenting the stones for the last twenty years.

East Island has probably been the most important project I've ever worked on. I didn't come here intending to work as an archaeologist, but once here I think, well, I fell in love.

Yeah, we have to check a.

Couple of these.

One sixty one, sixty three to the exact one sixty three to the mottom.

Of the deck.

By taking hundreds of careful measurements of each statue, Ben Tilberg has built up an intimate knowledge of their individual features.

And on the side of the neck.

Even though the statues at first glance appear all the same and appear standardized, they have individual design characteristics, and they have in fact individual personalities, so that now I can see what the revenue people have always said, which is that these are the faces of their ancestors.

Most of the statues were carved from compressed volcanic ash concentrated in this extinct crater known as Rano Roraku. There are three hundred and ninety seven statues stranded in various stages of completion in this quarry.

I think the quarry for everybody who comes here. It is sort of the beating heart of the island. It's the place where the energy is concentrated in terms of the numbers of statues, in the size of statues.

This rock was never used to build houses or even walls. The mountain was a revered site that provided the Rapanui with the precious material to build statues.

It was a place of tremendous energy and production, but it was also a sacred place, a place that was scary, that was filled with spirits. Come around at night. They seem a little.

A little spooky.

The original Rapanui islanders lived in complete isolation from the rest of the world until Easter Sunday seventeen twenty two, when a Dutch navigator yakup Roe Vane, landed on the shores and named the place Easter Island. These explorers marveled at the statues, but if they did discover anything of their purpose, nothing was recorded. For posterity. After the break we revealed a disaster that struck Easter Island. As recently as twenty five years ago, archaeologists made an intriguing new

We have learned for the first time that the stone carving on Easter Islands have carried inlaid eyes once they are placed on the platforms, and that is true throughout the entire islands. Although fragments of coral has been fined before by colleagues and even almost the whole eyes, we did not discover that these are eyes of status until nineteen seventy eight.

The most enduring mystery that has yet to be solved is how these huge statues were transported to their specially prepared platforms. It's believed that some of the smaller ones might have been rolled on logs, but this would have been impossible for the largest statues that can weigh anything up to eighty two.

Once you get up into these large size statues, there's a whole other series of problems that come up proportionate to their size increase, and there has been speculation on the part of some that perhaps they were in fact manipulated upright over this terrain and out along the roads. It hasn't been demonstrated yet that that could have been done here, but it's open to consideration.

For hundreds of years, Easter Islands supported a thriving community, and the population increased to around ten thousand. The islanders built bigger and bigger statues, but then in the seventeenth century something went terribly wrong. The landscape is strewn with toppled abandoned statues, and many of them seem to have been deliberately decapitated. Why would the islanders suddenly turn against

When that came then, the obvious consequence, among others was social conflicts, and societ conflict led to inter tribal fightings and eventually to a total social organization change. So within this social conflict, the monument were either abandoned or destroyed.

This was the end of the era of the statues. The survivors of the conflict had to find new ways of living on this desolate island. They couldn't escape because there was no wood to build boats, and there was worse to come when passing ships began to dock at Easter Island, Repeated raids by slave traders, and the introduction of unfamiliar infectious diseases almost wiped out the population.

We do know for fact that in eighteen seventy seven our population on this island was only one hundred and eleven. Almost two exterminations. We could have lost the entire human groups. That would be perhaps the saddest aspect of human history.

Now an x by Chile, the island has rebounded from near obscurity with its current population of more than three thousand. We still don't understand the original purpose of these statues, but today they provide an important source of income for the Rapanui. Tourists and archaeologists flocked to the island to wonder at these extraordinary legacies of the past. In the eighteenth century, the Spanish priest was sent by his bishop to explore the dense jungle of Central America, searching for

Kolenka is almost a magical place. It has a certain appeal that other sites don't. It's special between the buildings and the woods that surround the buildings. It's just a wonderful place to come and spend time and visit.

More than a thousand tourists every day flock to this lost city to admire the elaborate creations of the Maya tur guide Moyess Morales shows many of them around the site.

Balenka doesn't have beaches, Bananka doesn't have good hotels, Baloonque doesn't have a niceiscaus. Balenka has nothing but the ruins and the beautiful nature. So the people that comes to Palenka they come for the culture of reason. So you see the best people of the world visiting Palink and that's a real privilege.

Originally, this city would have supported a population of fifteen to twenty thousand people. Their wooden houses are long gone, but the palaces and temples built from limestone have survived the passage of time. The most spectacular building at Peleenke is the Royal Palace. It was built over several generations as successive ruling kings added their embellishments.

This is a paradise in the sense that the monuments are among the most important ones in the world. So the Maya culture is one of the ten very important cultures, So what else do you want?

The Maya culture was very complex. They had their own form of writing, the Central American equivalent of Egyptian hieroglyphics, which has still not been fully deciphered even today, and they had an obsession with blood ritual bloodletting was a major part of any important event. Human sacrifice was often the climax of religious celebrations and sporting events. Coming up,

Royalty.

After three seasons of intense excavation, he uncovered steps that led eighty feet down into the heart of the pyramid. At the very bottom was a vaulted burial chamber containing an intricately carved stone sarcophagus. Inside was the skeleton of Pakal Vautaan, one of the great ruling kings of the city. His face was covered by a mosaic j death mask. The carvings on the massive sarcophagus depict Pakal at the moment of his death, falling into the underworld, symbolized by a monster's jaws.

The man that is veries here was the most important person in the half of the war during his life. When this man was alive the seventh century, there was nothing in Europe, and there was nothing in the Pacific. There was nothing in the American continent but the Maya saw in the western ward. There is nothing more important in the seventh and eighth century than the Maya culture.

This was the very first pyramid tomb ever discovered in the Americas and is still the most important and impressive here at Polenke. There are more than a thousand buildings still to be reclaimed from the jungle, but by the laws of Mexico, you're not allowed to excavate a building unless you intend to restore it. For Mexican archaeologist Alfonso Morales, it's a time consuming process.

The restoration is very slow, it's very tedious, it is very expensive. We can tell that fifty structures had been uncovered in two hundred years. It will multiply by the non number of structures. It will take us three thousand, six hundred years to do the side of Polinka.

One of the latest projects involves restoring a pyramid that's become overgrown by trees. The Maya had ingeniously covered a natural hill with limestone blocks and built a temple on top. When Julia Miller and her team surveyed the site with ground penetrating radar, it revealed a tomb hidden fifteen feet beneath the temple. To investigate further, they dug and exploratory.

Pits about the before.

Dusting at the bottom of the pit. They located the corner of the tomb and the archaeologist. We're able to insert a video camera by digging out a small hole.

It's looking towards the northwest corner. Right now, it's at the roof. I can see the doors at the southern end of the tomb.

How's that?

I think, Yeah, that's a little bit better. And if you can turn it there we go. Okay. I can see four pots. I can see some jade beads that are on the floor. There's a lot of debris that's fallen onto the floor. It looks like the debris from the walls. It is really exciting because most tombs have something of pottery. They'll have jade, they'll have shell, they'll have lots of different kinds of artifacts. But this tomb is really special because it has mural paintings.

On the walls.

Yeah. Now you can see one of the figures on the west side of the tomb. It's a man who's wearing an elaborate head dress with lots of feathers on it, and he's got a necklace, probably with jade beads, and he's wearing a kilt.

The Maya didn't mummify their dead, so the body in the tomb has long since decomposed.

We don't know whose tomb it was. At this point. We can't see any hieroglyphic writing on the walls or on any of the ceramic vessels. I see what I think I can still see is but the shape of the ceramic pots tells us that the tomb came from about five hundred and forty a d.

Mysteriously, sometime during the eighth century, the Maya civilization at Polink collapsed. Nobody really knows why. Ecological disaster, war and famine are possible causes. But whatever the reason, these majestic monuments were deserted and left to decay under a shroud of tangled vines and foliage over a thousand years later. Pilenk has a mystical charm that will enchant tourists and archaeologists forever.

When Pelenki empties out at the end of the day and the sun is setting in the west, it's just a beautiful, beautiful place. The monkey start howling, the birds start singing, and you just want to sit and soak in the atmosphere.

Around the globe, there is a rich heritage of magnificent monuments left behind by our ancient ancestors. These amazing feats of engineering have survived the ravages of time and outlasted entire civilizations. They stand as a testimony to the triumph of human endeavor.

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