02x03 - Chapter III

[bunniefuu]

[intriguing music playing]

[Graham] We need to re-examine
the pre-history of Easter Island.

We shouldn't just accept what we're told.

[tense music playing]

Rapa Nui resident and archaeologist
Dr. Sonia Haoa Cardinali

has spent nearly five decades recovering
the island's lost history,

not by studying the Moai
or ancient settlements,

but through a close investigation
of its plants.

So, Sonia, I understand that you have
a special interest in botany,

but you're also an archaeologist.

[Sonia] Yes. The most important for me

is to understand the people.

- Yeah.
- Is to understand how people arrive,

is to understand
how people adapted to this island

because as a human,
we cannot do anything without plants.

[dramatic music playing]

[Graham] In the bowl
of one of Rapa Nui's extinct volcanoes,

Dr. Cardinali and her colleagues
have been searching for

the earliest evidence
of non-indigenous plants or crops

that must have been
brought here by humans.

What do plants say
about when people lived on this island?

[Sonia] In the study of the different food
we have, the result came...

Yes.

...with the banana.

They found the banana on the island


So bananas have been on Rapa Nui
for at least 3,000 years?

Yes. Yes.

[dramatic music continues]

[Graham] And they didn't get here
by themselves.

[Sonia] It's not coming by the birds.

It's not by the sea.

The banana had to be planted
by another human being.

So that's the reason it's telling you

that in Rapa Nui, there is
a different period of people arrived.

[Graham] Yeah.

[Sonia] And it's a huge surprise
for everybody.

It's changed, a little bit, the history.

- Well, it changes a lot the history.
- [Sonia laughs]

[Sonia] The soil is not lying.

No, the soil tells the truth.

We didn't think
that the banana was so important.

[music intensifies]

[Graham] Dr. Cardinali's dates
were derived

from microscopic remnants of banana plants

and pushed the arrival of people
on Rapa Nui back by around 2,000 years.

[majestic music playing]

So the plants are helping us
to push the timeline back.

Yes.

And it's possible
it may be older than 3,000 years.

We don't know. But that's the reason
we should continue to study.

Absolutely.

[tense music playing]

[Graham] In light of this new evidence,

Rapa Nui's prehistory
has to be reconsidered.

Dr. Cardinali's findings suggest that
Polynesian settlers reached this island

long before the accepted timeline.

But based on Rapa Nui's oral traditions,
there is another possibility.

[music continues]

Perhaps Hotu Matu'a
and his seven scouts arrived here

many thousands of years earlier
than anyone ever dreamed possible.

Might there not be a forgotten episode
in the story of this island?

An earlier chapter written by survivors
of the global cataclysm

that occurred around 12,000 years ago?

[music intensifies]

[music ends]

[theme song playing]

[theme song ends]

- [thunder rumbling]
- [electronic warble]

[suspenseful music playing]

[Graham] If humans arrived on
Rapa Nui many thousands of years ago,

where did they live?

Where are the archaeological traces
we'd expect to find?

Remember that at the peak
of the last Ice Age,

sea levels were more than 400 feet lower
than they are today.

Rapa Nui would have been
a much larger island.

All that land could have supported
a much larger population...

[music intensifies]

...which could help explain
how the huge Moai carving project

was pulled off.

Might their builders have chosen
to live near the ancient coastline,

now lost underwater

and only used
the higher ground we see today

for their great statue-building project?

It's not often realized
how much land was lost to sea level rise

at the end of the Ice Age,

and the figure is roughly


the best land in the world at that time.

And when the sea levels suddenly rise,

and those coastlines get submerged
beneath the sea,

anything built on those submerged areas
gets smashed to pieces and destroyed.

And goodness knows
what was lost to the rising sea levels.

[music intensifies, ends]

[waves crashing]

[intriguing music playing]

[Graham] What we do know is
that the earliest people living here

developed more than just
extraordinary stone-carving skills.

[intriguing music intensifies]

Rapa Nui lore holds that
their great founder, King Hotu Matu'a,

brought something special with him
from that far-off land of Hiva,

a written language.

Its remnants were preserved
on wooden tablets known as rongorongo,

most likely copies of copies
created down the ages,

as the originals were lost to history.

Fewer than 30 rongorongo survive,

now preserved in museums around the world.

For Rapa Nui residents

like Indigenous documentarian
Leo Pakarati,

these tablets hold
a special place in history.

It's an incredible achievement
because normally a written script

is associated with a big,
highly-organized culture.

- Here we're finding it on a small island.
- [Leo] Mm-hmm.

The rongorongo are very interesting
and very important in our culture.

- And I think it's unique in Polynesia.
- Yeah.

Yeah, it's unique.
There's no rongorongo on other islands.

[Graham] With the sl*ve raids
in the 19th century

and the complete destruction
of the wisdom tradition of Easter Island,

the ability to read
the rongorongo tablets was lost,

and they remain one of the great mysteries
of the ancient world.

Linguists have determined
that there are too many different symbols

for the rongorongo script
to be an alphabet.

[intriguing music playing]

It's likely a hieroglyphic
or a pictographic script,

similar to those developed
by the ancient Egyptians

and the Indus Valley civilization,

one that must have taken hundreds
if not thousands of years to mature.

[Leo] The rongorongo system
is very complex.

You need many elements, you know,
peace, water, food, society, you know.

This is a very intellectual,
complex process.

[Graham] For centuries,
up until the Europeans arrived,

the written language
was celebrated through song.

But the connection between sounds
and symbols has long been forgotten.

The people don't learn to read.

- They learn only the song.
- Mm-hmm.

And for a long time, the song continued.

What sort of things
do these songs speak of?

Agricultural system.

- Yeah.
- And the rules for navigation.

[Graham] Mm-hmm.

The inventory
to the different genealogical lines.

[Graham] Mm-hmm.

The territory owners, things like this.

Yeah.

[Leo] For me, the rongorongo,

maybe it's the most important thing
made by our Tupuna, our ancestors.

[intriguing music continues]

The presence of a fully evolved,
complex script on Easter Island

is a paradox and a mystery,
which has not yet been explained.

[suspenseful music playing]

I think the possibility
has to be considered

that that script was first brought
to Easter Island in remote prehistory

by those first settlers
who are remembered in oral tradition

as having come from a much larger land
of the Pacific called Hiva

that was inundated in an enormous flood
and submerged beneath the waves.

I realize this is speculation on my part,

but could we be looking at
the actual language

used by the lost civilization
I've been searching for?

[tense music playing]

A people from faraway Hiva

whose origin story and script were
preserved by the voyaging Polynesians,

who today call themselves Rapa Nui.

[tense music ends]

[intriguing music playing]

[Graham] I believe that
the Moai could also be a product

of this same earlier civilization.

There's even evidence
that the ahus supporting the Moai

might have been based on an older design,
created by someone else.

Like this one.

[intriguing music continues]

This is Ahu Vinapu.

It's unique in two respects.

First, it's constructed entirely
from hard basalt,

not from soft volcanic tuff,
like most of the others.

Secondly, and quite unmissable,

its megalithic blocks
are intricately fitted together in a way

that's far superior
to any other ahu on the island.

Indeed, it was so precisely made
by the original builders

that no contemporaneous organic materials

were trapped in the hairline joints,

rendering its origins undatable.

It seems so out of place here

that one might almost imagine it to be
the work of a different culture.

[intriguing music ends]

And there's another reason I suspect
that this different culture might be

the lost civilization of the Ice Age
I've been searching for.

The original name of the entire island is
Te Pito o Te Henua,

which means "the navel of the Earth."

This designation
of sacred ancient places as navels

is something that comes up again and again

across many ancient cultures
and languages around the world.

Göbekli Tepe literally means
"the hill of the navel."

Delphi in Greece was a navel of the Earth.

Angkor in Cambodia was another.

[tense music playing]

[car engine revving]

[Graham] Is it possible some single
globe-navigating culture of prehistory

used this umbilical reference
to name their most sacred sites,

including Rapa Nui?

If so, how could they have navigated here?

Well, there's one intriguing possibility.

[tense music intensifies]

[tense music ends]

[pensive music playing]

[Graham] Rapa Nui sits on the west end
of a ridge of undersea mountains.

During the Ice Age,
when sea levels were 400 feet lower

and the ocean floor perhaps higher
because of a phenomenon known as isostasy,

the peaks of some mountains
may have broken the surface,

creating a chain of tiny islands

linking Rapa Nui
to the coastline of modern-day Peru.

Sure enough, it's precisely there
that we find something remarkable,

carved into a hill facing the ocean...

[birds chirping]

[majestic music playing]

...a giant geoglyph, known today
as the Candelabra of the Andes.

The sand has been scraped away,
leaving the bare stone beneath

in the shape of an enormous trident.

[music continues]

As you approach the coast of Peru,

it seems almost like a beacon or a marker

that is calling people towards it,

that is saying, "Come here.
There's something important here."

The geoglyph cannot be reliably dated,

though pottery found nearby
has been attributed

to the local Paracas culture
of around 200 BC,

who certainly recognized and respected it.

[suspenseful music playing]

But it's said to have been inspired by
the legend of the ancient god Viracocha,

who was deified for creating
many mysterious wonders

in this part of the world,

from the famed Nazca Lines

to the enigmatic megalithic complex
of Tiwanaku in Bolivia,

high in the Andes, where his story begins.

[intriguing music playing]

[intriguing music intensifies]

[Graham] According to Incan lore,

this region was once struck
by a great cataclysm,

a true ancient apocalypse.

- [thunder rumbling]
- [rocks crumbling]

[intriguing music ends]

After it passed, a stranger appeared
from the waters of Lake Titicaca.

[tense music playing]

They named him Viracocha...

[tense music intensifies]

...foam of the sea.

He and his band of followers taught
the survivors the secrets of farming,

showed them advanced skills in stonework,
and how to track the heavens.

[tense music ends]

[thunder rumbling]

Fundamentally, he is teaching
the gifts of civilization

to demoralized
and devastated survivors of a cataclysm.

[thunder rumbling]

These stories resonate with stories
from all around the world

about beings, entities, deities, people,
I think, who survived that cataclysm,

who attempted to restart civilization.

[uptempo intriguing music playing]

In Egypt, it was Osiris
who taught his people

how to till the earth,
reap crops, and make laws.

For the Aztecs in Mexico,
it was Quetzalcoatl, the bearded wanderer,

who first brought them
the gift of civilization.

[intriguing music continues]

And on Rapa Nui, King Hotu Matu'a
and his chosen men echo this theme

of travelers from a far-off lost land
arriving by sea to restart civilization.

[intriguing music intensifies, ends]

[suspenseful music playing]

Because the same traditions are found
all around the world,

uh, we have to take them seriously.

Even today, storytelling is a powerful way

to pass down knowledge
one generation to the next.

[Keanu] With these universal stories,
do you feel like

what we're actually getting is
a ripple out of that older knowledge?

[Graham] Yes. Yeah. I think we are.

And where did that come from?

There were so few survivors
to pass on the knowledge,

but the knowledge was passed on
in the form of myths,

- in the form of traditions.
- [Keanu] Right.

The myths of humanity
are the memory bank of our species

from a time
when we have no written memories.

Right. We know
that the oral tradition is very strong

- as a way of communicating history...
- Absolutely.

...that kind of speak to me
of some kind of historical events.

[Graham] Yeah, exactly.

It's this repetition
of the same essential idea

from cultures that were not
supposedly connected in historical times

that makes me think
that what we're looking at

is a shared legacy, uh,
from a much more ancient culture.

[splutters] And that's why I think myths
need to be taken much more seriously.

Yeah, I think that too.

[intriguing music playing]

[Graham] These great teachers
from our myths like Viracocha,

could be amongst the few survivors
of a civilization now lost to history.

[metal scraping]

[car engine revving]

And there may be more evidence
of Viracocha's legacy.

Nearly 300 miles east from the Candelabra...

[intriguing music intensifies]

...on a mountaintop plateau
near the city of Cusco,

more than 11,000 feet above sea level...

this is Sacsayhuaman.

[intriguing music ends]

[suspenseful music playing]

This is one of the world's
most extraordinary ancient sites

and one of the most mysterious.

The vast hilltop site is filled
with archaeological wonders

crafted from stone.

And at the edge of the hill,
the greatest enigma of them all...

[music continues]

...three rows
of mind-boggling stone ramparts

zigzagging across the mountain top.

[tense music intensifies, stops]

[mysterious music playing]

[Graham] I've been coming here
for more than 30 years,

and it still never fails to confound me.

But now that my search
for a lost civilization

has zeroed in on the Americas,

I'm here to re-examine
this ancient megalithic mystery.

[music intensifies]

I always feel like
a miniature version of myself

standing next to these giant megaliths.

There are thousands
of these colossal polygonal blocks

perfectly shaped and fitted into place.

No single block is the same size or shape
as any other block.

And yet they're all fitted together
with this incredible level of precision.

It almost looks as though
they've been melted together.

Even using today's technology,
where would you start?

How was this done?

[music subsides]

To understand Sacsayhuaman,
we need to know more of its history,

which is intertwined with the city below.

[intriguing music playing]

Today, Cusco is a vibrant metropolis
that's home to 500,000 people.

For millions of visitors a year,
it's a popular tourist destination.

But for my search,
it's so much more than that.

[intriguing music continues]

Cusco was the capital
of the once mighty Inca Empire,

a truly remarkable,
indeed, astounding civilization.

A civilization that flourished
across the high Andes,

famous for its legacy of incredible sites
in stone like Machu Picchu.

[intriguing music ends]

But as with the Moai of Rapa Nui,
the true story is clouded by catastrophe.

[menacing music playing]

Here, in 1532,

the Spanish conquistadors
brought chaos and destruction to the Inca.

Because of the suppression
of Indigenous cultures

during and after the Spanish conquest,

what we know about the Incas
remains fragmentary

and in many ways a black hole in history.

[intriguing music playing]

Why? Because history,
of course, is written by the winners.

And very few of those conquistadors
spent time learning

about the culture they were decimating.

[men yelling]

The Incas were a glorious civilization.

They recorded incredible achievements,
but they were very short-lived.

Although rich and powerful,

the Incan Empire had existed
for less than a century

before the conquistadors arrived.

Of course, the Spanish didn't know that

and assumed that everything they saw,
including the incredible megalithic walls,

was the work of the Incas they'd just met.

[intriguing music ends]

[Graham] It's hard
to imagine how this was achieved

with the supposed tools
available to the Incas,

which were largely other stones

for pounding
these huge megalithic stones with.

It doesn't make sense to me.

[tense music playing]

The Incas had no written language.

But the Spanish records, such as they are,

tell us that Sacsayhuaman was
the brainchild of Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui,

whose reign ushered in the Incan Empire
more than 500 years ago.

[tense music continues]

I'm hoping to learn more
from site expert Amadeo Valer Farfán.

In which century, roughly,
at what date do you think

this incredible, majestic
work of architecture was built?

Approximately started construction
in 1440.

And finished after 90 years.

[Graham] Right.

[Amadeo] Exactly before
conquistadors came.

[intriguing music playing]

[Graham] Pachacuti instructed his workers
to build Sacsayhuaman using local stone,

which was a relatively soft rock.

Although now 12,000 feet above sea level,

it once formed the floor
of a primordial ocean.

Long time ago, this part of South America
also was part of the sea.

In different parts of this valley,

it's possible to see bedrock of,
uh, limestone.

- Limestone. Sedimentary rock.
- [Amadeo] Limestone. Yes.

And for this reason,

this stone is softer to work with
than different stones.

[intriguing music playing]

[Graham] Archaeology tells us
these huge limestone blocks

were likely cut at quarries
up to nine miles away.

I understand that limestone is
a soft stone and relatively easy to work,

but we're looking at
some gigantic blocks of limestone.

What's the heaviest here?

The heaviest here
weighed more than 100 tons.

Good Lord.

[intriguing music intensifies]

[music fades]

[Graham] What puzzles me is
the movement of those huge blocks.

I just can't understand how it was done.

In my opinion,
the secret was in the quantity.

Pedro Cieza de León was
a Spanish soldier and chronicler,

and according to him,

every day more than 20,000 people
were working here.

That's a huge organizational challenge.

To organize 20,000 people as a workforce

is a highly sophisticated task.

[somber music playing]

[Graham] The construction
of New York City's Empire State Building

took around 3,400 people
in the 20th century.

Even with six times as many workers,

shifting these stones
with far less advanced technology

would have been a gargantuan challenge,
which could swiftly go wrong.

The only record we have of the Incas
attempting to move a huge megalith

was preserved by a Spanish chronicler
a few decades after the conquest.

According to the account
he was given by local informants,

the attempt ended in disaster.

[menacing music playing]

He tells us of a great boulder
that was hauled across the mountain

by more than 20,000 people,

until, at a certain point,
it fell from their hands over a precipice...

[rocks crumbling]

...crushing more than 3,000 men.

If the Incas had that much trouble
transporting one megalith,

how could they have brought
thousands of them here?

[intriguing music playing]

[Graham] According to Spanish accounts,
the Inca used a combination

of ropes, log rollers, and levers.

[intriguing music continues]

You could,
with great effort and great care,

put two or three such blocks together,

but to put hundreds of them together,
all of them precisely fitted,

it defies logic.

What if that Incan emperor
was actually just supervising the building

of a fortress atop megalithic walls
that were already there?

It's hard to imagine the spectacle
that must have greeted the eye here

before the Spanish conquest.

But combining the latest scientific data

with eyewitness accounts
left by the first conquistadors,

we can get a fairly good idea
how Sacsayhuaman must have looked

at the height of the Inca Empire.

[intriguing music intensifies]

[suspenseful music playing]

[Graham] The Spanish tell us
that the main complex

was being used as a military barracks,
capable of holding thousands.

[suspenseful music continues]

They describe
a three-layered circular tower

soaring 50 feet above the site,

surrounded by rectangular buildings
and courtyards,

with their own freshwater system
and storerooms for grain.

[suspenseful music intensifies]

The invaders believed Sacsayhuaman
was first built as a fortress

because, after the fall of Cusco,

the Inca warriors made their last redoubt
from behind these walls...

[suspenseful music intensifies, stops]

...which are all that remain today.

[suspenseful music resumes]

But is that why they were built?

What is the archaeological view
of the origins of Sacsayhuaman,

and what was it for?

Many people think
that it was military construction.

Only Spaniards or conquistadors told them
it was a military fortress, but it wasn't.

It was a holy place, a temple,
to celebrate the rituals and ceremonies.

- [intriguing music playing]
- [drum beats]

[Graham] So the idea,
which we often read in the history books,

that... that Sacsayhuaman was built
as a military fortress, is a mistake?

It's a huge mistake.

[intriguing music intensifies]

[Graham] What's left
of the structures atop the hill,

which were made from
uniform rectangular blocks,

suggests they weren't built
at the same time as the megalithic walls.

It would be fair to say that
the Incas inherited some earlier works,

but those earlier works
are quite hard to explain.

Yes.

[Graham] It also suggests
they were constructed with a different,

as yet unknown, stone-working technique.

[uptempo intriguing music playing]

This could be considered,
um, lost technology.

We are confronted by mystery,
by an enigma that we cannot explain.

Could the smooth, massive, zigzag walls
of Sacsayhuaman have been carved

not by the Inca, but by someone else?

[dramatic music plays]

[intriguing music playing]

What if much of the construction
we see here that's attributed to the Incas

actually incorporates a legacy
of far more ancient knowledge?

Could there be a legacy in stone,

a legacy from an older civilization,
as yet unidentified by archaeology?

[intriguing music continues]

After all, no simpler versions
of these smoothly fitted megalithic walls

have been found anywhere in Peru.

But we did see something like this
back on Rapa Nui...

in the walls of Ahu Vinapu,

supposedly built long before Sacsayhuaman,
more than 2,000 miles away.

[intriguing music intensifies, stops]

The individual blocks
are made of solid basalt.

They are beautifully fitted together,

and they include polygonal elements,
just like the walls of Sacsayhuaman.

Similar construction can be seen
in ancient walls in Turkey and in Egypt.

There's a particular, a single small block

that is fitted in between larger blocks,
which is identical.

You can find the identical image in Cusco.

Some suggest the builders
were simply being efficient

with leftover waste material.

But just look at the precision.

So the feeling is that
this is a technology from the past

that wasn't confined to
or limited to Peru.

[intriguing music playing]

What if the Incas built
some of the structures we see here

on top of far more ancient foundations?

[intriguing music builds]

Foundations that may go back

to the very roots of civilization
in the Americas.

[dramatic music plays]

[suspenseful music playing]

[Graham] This possibility is
leading me down

to the city over
which Sacsayhuaman towers,

a place whose very name
might hold a vital clue.

In the original Quechua language
of the Inca,

Cusco means "navel of the Earth,"

just like
all those other sacred ancient navels,

including Rapa Nui.

[music continues]

This notion of navels being found
all around the world

should not be dismissed,
in my view, as coincidence.

Could the remarkably shaped stonework
we see throughout this navel of the Earth

be another surviving remnant
of that far older, advanced civilization

I've been looking for?

Everywhere you look in this city,

there are layers upon layers of beautiful
and intricately-shaped stone walls,

some incorporating giant megaliths.

The mystery is that in any wall,

you can often see
several different styles of architecture.

Some extremely fine,
some comparatively crude.

[suspenseful music continues]

That mystery has led me
to Cusco's Calle Loreto

and archaeological researcher
Jesus Gamarra, a descendant of the Inca,

who's spent decades studying
the unique stonework of ancient Peru.

Tell me about your work in the area
of Cusco and the Sacred Valley.

[in Spanish] My passion lies
in antiquities of human origin.

And this is reflected in the stone

which is the oldest witness
that exists in history.

[suspenseful music playing]

[Graham in English] Just as we saw
at Sacsayhuaman,

the street's megalithic walls
fit seamlessly together,

the stones' curved edges
flowing one into the other.

I mean, it boggles the mind.

I'm just stunned looking at this,
and I can't figure out

how anybody could have made walls

with these enormous stones
so perfectly fitted together.

What the archaeologists teach us
is that this was done by the Incas

and that they used simple pounding stones
to make all of this incredible work.

[in Spanish] It is not possible
to make this marvel with chisel technology

and a builder's kit

or to calculate the perfect precision

that exists in this type of expression.

[Graham in English] Nowhere is
this precision more clear than here

with the geometric feat
known as the 12-angled stone...

with its multiple faces fitting seamlessly

with 11 other unique blocks.

[intriguing music playing]

And yet something else is jarring
about these so-called Incan walls.

I see many different styles
of architecture here.

Some amazing stonework like this

and then some much poorer quality
stonework side by side.

Help me to understand that mystery.

[in Spanish] This architecture
does not correspond to the Incas.

The Incas did not use
this polygonal, cushioned architecture.

The Incas have another type
of architecture,

which is characterized by right angles.

[intriguing music continues]

[Graham in English] The upper sections
feature blocks that clearly show

marks consistent with
the basic tools the Inca used.

Their construction poses no mystery,
unlike the lower tiers.

So in your view,
the Incas did not make this?

No. No, no, no. No.

[Graham] Jesus believes
the Incas built above

and around more ancient walls
that were already here when they arrived.

[in Spanish] The history of Cusco
does not only go back to the Incas,

but much further back.

[in English] Jesus Gamarra, he's convinced
that we're looking not at one,

but at least at three
different styles of architecture,

the work of at least three cultures.

[intriguing music playing]

The most recent rough block work,
Jesus attributes to the Inca.

But he believes
the pre-Inca smoothly-shaped stones

both here and at Sacsayhuaman

have their roots
in a far more ancient technique,

one the Incas revered
but could not emulate.

[intriguing music ends]

[in Spanish] There are things
that are impossible

for more modern civilizations.

These are more ancient

and prove that moldable stone was used.

[Graham in English] Jesus Gamarra calls
this style Hanan Pacha.

And to get a first-hand glimpse of it,

he suggests I visit an intriguing site

on the side of the hill
topped by Sacsayhuaman.

[intriguing music playing]

A truly mystical location

with a secretive entrance
all but hidden from view.

One that again shows
a curious mix of building styles.

It's known as the Temple of the Moon.

[intriguing music continues]

This is a strange, complicated place
with an air of mystery about it.

The low stone walls here
are typical Inca masonry.

But hidden inside
this shaped rocky outcrop

is something altogether different.

You're drawn in
through a narrow passageway,

surrounded by silence.

[adventurous music playing]

It's almost like entering
into a labyrinth.

It looks like some unknown technology
that we don't fully understand,

created for reasons
that don't make sense to us.

[music builds, ends]

[closing theme playing]

[closing theme ends]