[narrator] How can this corroded scrap of metal
change the history of a continent?
[Ben] As soon as it's identified, wow.
[Kevin] It's the real deal.
[narrator] Why can't we translate
this 3,000-year-old relic
of a lost civilization?
[Tamar] The Phaistos Disc
is one of the greatest mysteries
of the Bronze Age.
[narrator] And is this dead woman's face
the most kissed in history?
[Mark Benecke] She became what we would today call
an it girl.
[narrator] These are the most remarkable
and mysterious objects on Earth,
hidden away in museums, laboratories,
and storage rooms.
Now, new research and technology
can get under their skin like never before.
We can rebuild them,
pull them apart,
and zoom in
to reveal the unbelievable,
the ancient,
and the truly bizarre.
These are the world's strangest things.
[theme music playing]
[narrator] In a display case
in the Maine State Museum in Augusta
sits a tiny scrap of metal
that helped rewrite history,
because it is unlike anything ever found
in the United States.
Now, the latest imaging technology
reveals it in astonishing detail.
The Maine penny.
Despite being less than an inch across
with chipped and corroded metal,
the Maine penny is one of the most
famous coins in the world,
because it's not a penny,
and it's not from Maine.
Strangely, barely visible markings on it
reveals something incredible.
Vikings.
[Ben] All of a sudden this is Viking archaeology
in North America.
How did it get there and what meaning did it have?
[narrator] It flies in the face of accepted history
at the time of the coin's find.
American schoolchildren were being taught
that Columbus had discovered America.
[narrator] So how does a Viking coin
end up in Maine?
Is it genuine or an elaborate hoax?
Now, new research settles this question
once and for all.
[suspenseful music playing]
[narrator] This strange story begins at Naskeag Point,
an isolated site on the coast of Maine.
[Kevin] In the summer of 1957,
an amateur archaeologist
by the name of Guy Mellgren and a friend
set out to investigate a Native American midden
or trash heap.
[narrator] They unearthed thousands of finds
left by the indigenous people
a millennia ago.
[Kevin] And amongst Native American tools
and bone debris
was a single remarkable eroded silver coin.
[narrator] But coins have no place
on a site like this.
[Ben] A thousand years ago,
indigenous American groups
weren't using coinage.
[narrator] So what exactly is it?
[Kevin] Mellgren shows it to a friend of his,
who thinks it's a medieval English coin.
Perhaps it came over with some
of the earliest settlers to New England.
[narrator] Mellgren puts the coin on a shelf
and forgets about it
for nearly two decades.
[Ben] And it sits in his house until 1974
when it makes its way to the museum.
[narrator] A local paper publishes
a short article about it,
and that's when this object
becomes one of history's strangest.
[dramatic music playing]
[Kevin] English coin expert, Peter Seaby
sees an article on it, sees the coin, and realizes
it is a very rare Viking coin
of Olaf the Peaceful.
[narrator] This is an original Olaf the Peaceful coin.
The similarities are undeniable.
Experts date it as early as 1067.
And that changes everything.
[Ben] When it's considered to be a British penny,
there's no real mystery as to how
that might have turned up on an archeological site.
But as soon as this is identified
to King Olaf the Peaceful,
wow, all of a sudden, this is Viking archaeology
in North America.
[narrator] Somehow a tiny piece of Viking history
has been transported across the Atlantic to America,
and ended up in a thousand-year-old
trash heap on the coast of Maine.
And that is huge.
American schoolchildren were being taught
that Columbus had discovered America.
The idea that there were somehow Vikings
in contact with Native Americans
500 years before Columbus was big news.
[narrator] Extraordinary claims
require extraordinary proof.
So where is the evidence to back this up?
[dramatic music playing]
[narrator] The idea that Vikings
might have got to North America first
isn't news to Scandinavians.
They know of the great Viking tales contained
in the Icelandic sagas.
In particular, the story of legendary explorer,
Leif Erikson.
[Kevin] Leif Erikson heard a tale
from a shipwreck mariner
who had been carried by currents
near a land to the west of Greenland,
which he noted was covered with trees.
This enticed Erikson,
so he set out with one well-laden
and equipped boat.
[narrator] According to the sagas,
Erikson reaches a new land he names Vinland.
[Kevin] When historians saw his descriptions
of this country
and the people he encountered,
they thought there's only one place that this can be.
This must be somewhere
in North America.
Very possibly Newfoundland.
[Ben] If there's any truth to those stories
and those sagas,
then it really does mean that the Vikings
have made landfall in the North...
On the North American continent
much earlier than anybody else
from a European perspective.
[dramatic music playing]
[narrator] Could this incredible object
really a proof of that?
It certainly isn't the first Viking artifact
to turn up in the States.
[dramatic music playing]
[Kevin] In 1898,
there was the Kensington Runestone in Minnesota.
[narrator] The runes translation
records a voyage by eight Goths
and twenty-two Norwegians
to Vinland in 1362
that encounters hostile locals.
This seems to fit more or less
with the Icelandic sagas.
And there are other finds too.
[Kevin] In Ontario, there was a Viking sword,
axe, and shield found.
And there are also various
bits of writing on stones
which people attributed
to being Viking runes.
[narrator] North America seems to be littered
with evidence that the Vikings
were there before Columbus.
[Kevin] The problem is that none of these
were in fact authentic.
The Kensington Runestone
is now known to have been a forgery.
The axes and shields, likewise.
[narrator] So why all the Viking fakes.
The Kensington Runestone may hold the answer.
If you look at the name of the man
who discovered it, Olof Ohman,
you'll have a clue.
These objects were found by people
of Scandinavian descent
who were combating a negative image.
[dramatic music playing]
[narrator] Scandinavian immigrants to the US
had often been taunted and belittled.
[Kevin] So if these immigrants could prove
that it wasn't the Italian,
Columbus, who discovered the New World
but instead, effectively,
a Scandinavian, Leif Erikson,
this would be greatly to their credit.
[narrator] And that makes the discovery
of the Maine penny particularly suspicious
because Mellgren, the man who finds it,
is of Swedish descent himself.
So is this strange artifact just another hoax?
[dramatic music playing]
[theme music playing]
[narrator] Could the Maine penny
be just another in a long line
of Viking hoaxes?
One thing that isn't in doubt
is the coins origins
in 11th century Norway.
[Ben] The coin is definitely authentic.
It's definitely a coin of King Olaf the Peaceful.
But the big question then is
how can we know that this coin
comes from an archaeological context?
[narrator] Or, more bluntly, did Mellgren plant it?
[Kevin] So Mellgren, himself of Swedish descent,
has both a motive and an opportunity
to plant this find.
[narrator] To pull off a hoax,
Mellgren would need the right coin,
but by the late 1950s,
that is relatively easy.
[Kevin] In 1879, a hoard of more than 2,000 such coins
had come to light.
So the coins themselves
were easy enough to find.
[narrator] Could Mellgren have got hold
of a real coin to plant?
Now, brand-new research
claims to have finally answered this question.
[Kevin] The Swedish coin expert, Von Goldbeck,
decided to take on the enormous task
of tracing every known coin find
of Olaf the Peaceful.
[narrator] Goldbeck tracks down
more than 2,300 coins
to find out if any could have made it
into Mellgren's hands.
It's an enormous piece of research
that takes over a decade to complete.
The result after exhaustive study
is that no Olaf the Peaceful coins
were unaccounted for.
[narrator] Additionally, unlike the Maine penny,
all other Olaf the Peaceful coins
are in very good condition.
[Kevin] The Maine penny is very heavily corroded.
And that's hard to fake.
This is a process that goes on
across the centuries.
[narrator] The Maine State Museum
analyzes the chemistry
of these layers of corrosion.
The results support
the object's authenticity.
[Ben] There's evidence that water sat around the coin.
It's been sat in slowly moving water
for a very long period of time,
and this would be supportive of the fact
that it's been buried for a long period of time.
There's no doubt that the Maine penny
is the real deal.
[narrator] Mellgren did not plant the Maine penny.
In which case, how did it find its way
to a Native American settlement
a thousand years ago?
In 1960,
three years after Mellgren discovers the Maine penny,
Norwegian archaeologist, Anne Stine Ingstad,
and her husband, Helge,
are investigating a site at L'Anse aux Meadows
in Newfoundland.
Locals describe it as an old Indian camp,
but it's something far stranger.
[dramatic music playing]
[Kevin] They find the basis of turf structures.
One large hall.
Also a blacksmith's workshop.
They find remnants of Viking boat sheds.
So this is definitive proof
that the Vikings were the first Europeans
to come to America.
[narrator] The Icelandic sagas are true.
Vikings really do reach North America
500 years before Columbus.
[thunder rumbles]
[narrator] It's a revelation,
but it doesn't explain the coin's discovery
750 miles farther south,
because not a single scrap of evidence ever
turns up to suggest the Vikings reached
anywhere near this far down.
So how does a Viking coin end up in Maine?
[dramatic music playing]
[Kevin] Renewed professional excavations at Naskeag Point
have not found any other traces
of Norse artifacts.
But what they have found
are stone tools and stone raw materials
coming from as far away as Labrador,
hundreds of miles to the north.
So there's evidence here for trade,
for the movement of goods
and also the movement of people
over really quite significant distances.
[narrator] Despite the fact that it has no value
to the indigenous people as a coin,
one feature may explain
why and how they carry it south.
Although, it has since crumbled away,
when Mellgren finds the coin,
it has a hole in it.
[Kevin] It's been perforated,
which would indicate that it was being used
as an object of decoration.
Perhaps worn around the neck or around the wrist.
But the important thing is
that this object was not being used as a coin.
[narrator] So it's likely local people
transport the coin from Newfoundland
all the way to Maine.
This remarkable object was created a millennia ago
on the far side of a stormy ocean.
Like the finds at L'Anse aux Meadows,
it proves that Columbus
isn't the first European in North America.
The Vikings beat him to it
500 years earlier.
[dramatic music playing]
[narrator] In a museum in Crete,
sits a strangely-marked clay disc
that has sparked over
a century of controversy.
Some say it is one of the most astonishing texts ever found,
a 3,000-year-old cryptic message
from an ancient civilization.
Others claim it's just too good to be true.
Now, using the latest imaging technology,
we're bringing it into the light.
This is the Phaistos Disc,
measuring roughly half an inch thick
and six inches in diameter,
made from fire-baked clay.
Its two sides are covered with inscriptions
made using a technology
thousands of years ahead of it time,
this disc is unique.
[Mark Altaweel] It's the only object that we know of
that looks like that.
[narrator] There are 242 strange symbols
from Mohican-haired men to twisted figures,
birds, fish, and other cryptic shapes.
The Phaistos Disc is one of the greatest mysteries
of the Bronze Age.
And we've not been able to decode it yet.
[narrator] But, now,
after more than a century of debate,
new research may have made the first steps
to revealing its secrets.
So what do these bizarre symbols mean?
What is the disc for?
Is it genuine?
[dramatic music playing]
[theme music playing]
[narrator] The mystery of the Phaistos Disc
begins on the Island of Crete in Greece.
A place steeped in mythological stories
of a lost civilization called The Minoans.
Ancient legends tell the story of their ruler,
King Minos.
Beneath his palace, he builds a vast labyrinth
to imprison a fearsome beast called the Minotaur.
[Mark Altaweel] The Minotaur was this terrifying
half-man half-bull creature.
And it was kind of the scourge of anyone
who came to visit Minos.
They would basically be eaten by this Minotaur.
[narrator] The creature and the civilization behind it
were considered little more than ancient Greek legends.
A lot of people thought it was mythology.
That perhaps they were just kind of mythical people.
[narrator] But in 1900,
near the north coast of the island,
British archeologist, Arthur Evans,
makes a discovery that changes everything,
the ruins of a vast Minoan palace
4,000 years old.
[Mark Altaweel] It's a major deal for archeologists.
This is the first time we discovered
that they're actually a real civilization.
They're not just some made-up mythology.
[Tamar] It transformed our understanding
of what Mediterranean civilization
were capable of at this time.
[narrator] The site is called Knossos.
And it has intriguing links to the ancient legends.
[Mark Altaweel] When Arthur Evans began
excavation at Knossos,
he notices there are a lot of bull symbols.
He understood that, "Hey, this is may be a place
associated with the Minotaur story."
[dramatic music playing]
[narrator] It is a previously unknown
and extraordinarily sophisticated
ancient civilization.
It existed at a time when the crowning achievement
of most other European societies
is building wooden huts and stone circles.
But there is more to come.
In 1908, Italian archeologist, Luigi Pernier,
excavates a second Minoan palace complex
on the south of the island.
It is called Phaistos.
One evening, Pernier's foreman
happens on a small clay disc laying the ruins.
The bizarre symbols covering its surface
are unlike anything Pernier has ever seen.
But this disc is exceptional in every way.
[dramatic music playing]
Normally, such tablets for writing
would have been formed out of wet clay.
And then when they were rather hard,
they would have been written upon
and simply left to dry in the sun.
The disc was very different.
This disc, first of all, was baked.
So rather than sun dried, it was actually fired.
[narrator] It is the only Minoan clay tablet ever found
that's been fired in a kiln.
And that's just the start,
because there's something remarkable
about the symbols on it.
Most writing at this time was inscribed into the clay.
But the symbols on the Phaistos Disc
have been stamped.
The fact that it was impressed by a stamp
has also been considered a unique discovery.
And some archeologists have, in fact,
called this perhaps the oldest
or first evidence of a type of printing press.
[narrator] There is literally nothing else like it
in the ancient world.
[Kevin] Given the care that was taken in it.
The degree of its... of its firing,
all of these things mean that this was a special object
which was view as worthy
of special treatment and preservation.
[narrator] What could have been worth all this effort?
Could the answer lie in decoding
these strange symbols?
[dramatic music playing]
[Mark Altaweel] For over a hundred years now,
people have been trying to decipher
what exactly is on that disc.
There have been a number of interpretations.
It could have been an ancient game perhaps.
A kind of backgammon or something like that.
Another interpretation is it's used
for some kind of astronomical or astrological purposes.
[narrator] But one obvious theory
has gained more traction among experts than any other.
[Mark Altaweel] More likely it's some kind of language.
Whether it's a localized language
or a slightly more widespread language is debatable,
but it seems to be something meant to be read
or, at least, perhaps even announced to an audience.
[narrator] But experts couldn't even agree
which direction they should read
this language in.
[Abigail] Archeologists initially thought
that you started from the inside of the disc
and read kind of in a swirl pattern,
coming out to the outer edges.
But then when they looked more closely at the symbols,
they seem to get more crowded and difficult
as you move from the outer rim inside.
So scholars now think that it's more likely
that it was read working from the outside in.
[narrator] But what does it actually say?
There are 242 impressions on the disc
using 45 unique symbols.
Most alphabets have far fewer symbols
than the Phaistos Disc.
So experts think it's probably not an alphabet.
But it has too few symbols and too many repetitions
to be a pictographic script,
where one symbol can represent an entire word,
such as Egyptian hieroglyphics
or Babylonian cuneiform.
Instead, experts suspect the Phaistos script
is what's known as a syllabary
in which symbols represents syllables
such as do, re, mi.
Syllabaries fit well with the number of symbols
on the disc,
and we already know another Minoan script uses them.
But a century of intense effort by experts
has failed to get any further with its meaning.
Now, after years of analysis,
Gareth Owens, a British linguistic scholar,
claims to have solved at least part of the riddle.
[Abigail] What Owens has done
is try and find a parallel text.
Something else that either
has a similar function
or has a similar type of text,
going through, looking for other examples
in other languages is a kind of natural process.
[narrator] Owens has matched a sequence of symbols
on the disc with a pattern of symbols
on Minoan religious artifacts
believed to be a prayer.
He has also identified
another pattern of symbols on the disc
repeated three times like a chant,
which is similar to an older Cretan symbol pattern
meaning "Mother Goddess".
His theory, the disc is a prayer
to the Mother Goddess.
This would fit quite well of what we know.
The Mother Goddess was very important to Minoan society,
so having some kind of dedication of prayer to her
seems to be logical.
We do see some repetition in this disc
like you would do in a prayer.
And the fact that it's baked clay seems to indicate
that it's a high valued item.
And so having a religious reason
as to why you have this disc, I think it makes a lot sense.
[narrator] But the problem
with every theory about the disc
is that nothing quite like it has ever been found.
The strange symbols,
the use of stamps thousands of years
before anyone else,
the fact that it's the only kiln-fired tablet
the Minoans ever produced,
it seems out of place and out of time.
But there is one explosive theory
that could answer every question
about this mysterious object.
[theme music playing]
[narrator] The Phaistos Disc
is a unique ancient relic,
and that worries some experts.
[Kevin] The uniqueness of this object is...
As is often the case with unique objects,
rings a lot of alarm bells.
[Abigail] We would expect to find more
of these objects,
because if someone had made the stamp
and have the set, then we would think,
particularly something that is made in clay,
which a relatively durable material,
that we would have more of these surviving.
[narrator] Establishing its age is also troublesome.
The disc itself has not been directly dated,
but as it was found near a tablet
made between 1700 and 1600 BCE,
archeologists have assumed
it's the same age.
But the issue is clouded
by the unusual circumstances of its discovery.
It wasn't actually found
by a professional archeologist.
It was in an area which had been previously excavated
and was spotted by a foreman doing their rounds.
[narrator] So is it the real deal
or did someone plant it?
Suspicion has fallen on one person in particular
at Phaistos.
Site director, Luigi Pernier,
has a strong motive to conjure up a fake.
[Kevin] What was being found to the north at Knossos
by Arthur Evans was quite sensational,
the supposed throne of King Minos.
Phaistos, by comparison,
is a relatively humble palatial complex
which had,
up to the find of the Phaistos Disc,
provided nothing really sensational
for the media at the time
or to the credit of Luigi Pernier.
[narrator] The disc definitely puts Pernier's Phaistos site
on the map.
It raises his archeological profile immensely.
And that's not the only detail
that casts a shadow over Pernier.
[Kevin] Pernier was also responsible
for antiquities in Florence, in Italy,
and the museum there.
And in its collections
was a remarkable Etruscan disc
known as the Milano Disc.
The disc is circular.
There is a set of symbols engraved
in a helical or spiral shape
which looks uncannily similar
to the Phaistos Disc.
[narrator] Pernier has means, motive, opportunity,
and even inspiration.
Cased closed?
Nothing about this unique object
is that simple.
[dramatic music playing]
[narrator] Decades after the disc's discovery,
another relic turns up.
[Mark Altaweel] In 1934, an axe was found.
This bronze axe actually had symbology
that were very similar to what was found on the disc.
[narrator] It is known as the Arkalochori Axe.
Running down the center of the axe
are a series of unusual symbols.
Some appear strangely similar to symbols
on the Phaistos Disc.
A plant, a T shape,
a Y-shaped stick-like symbol,
and, most striking of all,
a man with spiky hair.
[Mark Altaweel] So that supports the argument
that this was an authentic disc.
That these kinds of symbols were symbols
that would have been known to at least somebody
from this region.
[Kevin] The question is, how would Pernier
have known if he was faking the disc
to make symbols which had not yet officially
been archeologically discovered.
This might attest
to the authenticity of the disc.
[narrator] So fake or not fake?
[Mark Altaweel] I think it's real.
I think the symbology that has been found
subsequent to this disc,
the fact that it's very similar to it,
and at a time of discovery,
were not known symbols
indicates to me that it's real.
[narrator] Others are less certain.
[Kevin] The Phaistos Disc is one of those rare
enigmatic objects
that it is very difficult
to make an absolute judgment about.
[Abigail] What I've often found is
when we call something a fake,
sometimes that is largely because
we can't understand what it was used for.
I don't see clear signs
that it's a fake.
And I would certainly like to believe
that it's real.
[narrator] Controversy about the disc's authenticity
has raged for a hundred years.
It shows no signs of being settled anytime soon.
[suspenseful music playing]
[narrator] On display in an old workshop in Paris
is the death mask of a drowned girl.
Some claim this is the most
kissed face in history.
[Mark Benecke] She inspired people, poets, music, dance,
and she was really well known.
[narrator] And she is said to have saved
over two million lives.
Now, using the latest imaging technology,
we're bringing this mysterious mask
into the light.
Every feature immortalized in plaster
in exceptional detail,
the serene expression,
the eyelids lightly closed,
and that strange enigmatic smile.
This mask appears again and again
in museums and private collections
across the world.
But the woman behind it is shrouded in mystery.
Who is she?
How did she die?
Why is she so famous?
[theme music playing]
[suspenseful music playing]
[narrator] Who is the mysterious girl
behind this famous death mask?
Her macabre story begins in Paris
in the mid-19th century.
It is a sightseer's paradise.
You can climb the 422 steps
of Notre-Dame's towers,
meander through the halls of the Louvre,
or marvel at the newly-built Arc de Triomphe.
But one of the biggest crowd-pullers
is the Paris morgue.
[ominous music playing]
[Mark Benecke] They were lining up and queuing
to see which people were put on display.
There were street vendors.
Like today when there's something entertaining
taking place.
So it was just, you know,
fashionable for normal people
to go and watch the corpses.
[narrator] In theory, this is done to aid
in the identification of the dead,
but it quickly becomes
a grisly form of entertainment.
[Ruth] This is a show in the middle of Paris
that's free to enter,
'cause they want everybody to come and have a look
to identify the bodies,
in which naked dead people are laid out in front of you.
So I think you have to imagine
the sort of social thing that's going on here.
We're looking at a sort of mixture
of titillation and thrill.
[narrator] Out of this macabre world
appears this mysterious face.
[Mark Benecke] The story goes that a drowned woman
was found in the River Seine.
Nobody claimed the body
so it was brought to the morgue.
Since there were no signs of violence on her body,
people thought that she probably killed herself
by drowning.
[narrator] Her flawless complexion suggests
she is around 16 years old.
Her hairstyle fits that of a peasant girl.
Despite being displayed to the public,
it seems no one steps forward
to identify the drowned girl.
But she catches someone's eye.
One of the morgue staff
decided that the face was calm and interesting,
and the person was captivated and decided
to build a plaster cast.
And everybody who went in could also see the mask.
[narrator] In an era before photography,
it isn't uncommon for morgue attendants
to take plaster casts
before the faces deteriorate too much to identify.
But how does this one become
one of the most famous death masks of all time?
[ominous music playing]
[narrator] Making casts of a dead person's face
sounds macabre today,
but it wasn't always like that.
Two thousand years ago in Rome,
they are a family affair.
[Abigail] The Greek historian, Polybius,
in the 2nd-century BC,
wrote about these things called imagines maiorum.
These are the wax masks
that Romans would make after someone died.
The idea would be that at every funeral,
they would get these masks out
and wear them as a part of the funerary procession,
as a way of remembering
not just the one person being buried
but making sure that the entire family was present.
Kind of exciting, but also a bit creepy.
[narrator] But as far as we know,
no family comes to identify
and preserve the mask of this young woman.
Yet she achieves immortality.
She is not the first death mask
to become famous.
Although others were rather better known in life.
Oliver Cromwell, the 17th-century general
who overthrew the English monarchy,
Ludwig van Beethoven,
one of the most revered composers
of the Western world,
and scientist, Sir Isaac Newton,
the man who discovered gravity.
These are all historical celebrities.
And for the most famous celebrity death mask of all,
you have to look to Egypt
almost three and a half thousand years ago
to the death mask of a king no less,
Tutankhamun.
[Rebecca] The ancient Egyptians believed
that your ba or your soul
would go into the afterlife.
And in order to identify its body,
so soul and body can be reunited,
it needed to have something really visual,
really clear to identify your body as you.
Tutankhamun's very famous death mask
is a really, really good example of that.
[narrator] But this young girl is no royal.
She doesn't produce great works of art
or make world-changing scientific breakthroughs.
She is the total opposite.
Completely unknown.
So why does her death mask become so famous?
It may just be a question of right time, right place.
In Europe during the Victorian era,
masks become a key part of an obsession with death.
They are keepsake reminders of our mortality
known as memento mori.
[Ruth] Death masks were normal way
of dealing with death.
People have them about themselves,
have them in their houses,
used them as little reminders
of the sweetness of life,
as well as the shortness of life.
Like we might keep a photograph
of somebody who's passed away,
you might keep a death mask
of your child that you've lost.
[narrator] In this culture, the plaster mask
of the drowned girl from the Paris morgue
finds a receptive audience.
She becomes known as L'Inconnue de la Seine,
the unknown woman of the Seine.
[Mark Benecke] At the beginning
of the 20th-century,
the mask of L'Inconnue de la Seine
was relatively widespread.
[narrator] Thousands of copies of her death mask are made.
Her enigmatic features capture the imagination
of novelists and poets.
Famous French philosopher, Albert Camus,
even compares her smile to the Mona Lisa.
[Mark Benecke] L'Inconnue de la Seine became
what we would today call an it girl.
She was known.
She inspired people, poets,
music, dance.
[narrator] But how does a dead it girl
become the most kissed face in the world?
[theme music playing]
[ominous music playing]
[narrator] How does the death mask of an unknown girl
become the most kissed face in history?
The answer to this mystery begins
with the search for a way to preserve life.
When L'Inconnue's body is fished out of the Seine,
resuscitation is still in its infancy,
and there are some pretty bizarre methods.
[Ruth] People are looking at many different ways
that you might help stimulate a person
to bring them back.
One is to whip them all over with stinging nettles.
That that sort of would get the blood moving
all over the body and therefore perhaps
trigger something into action.
[Mark Benecke] Maybe they could resuscitate people
by putting you over a trotting horse
or putting hot ashes on your skin.
A method that sounds surprising
is to blow tobacco fumes
inside of the anus of a person
that you try to resurrect.
[Ruth] You'd make up a really strong concoction
infused with tobacco
and then you'd introduce it at the other end
and hope that that would also stimulate
and excite the whole bodily system,
jerk it back into life.
[narrator] Unsurprisingly, none of these methods
really help.
So how does this face become part of the solution?
[dramatic music playing]
[narrator] It isn't until the 1950s
and the work of an Austrian anesthesiologist
that modern medicine really gets to grips
with resuscitation.
[Mark Benecke] Peter Safar came up with the idea
that you could resuscitate a person correctly.
For example, by putting the head
a little bit to the back,
giving mouth-to-mouth,
applying chest compression
to get the heart started again.
So he invented CPR.
[narrator] Safar reasons that if everyone
learns these techniques,
more lives will be saved.
To do that, he needs a realistic training model
for people to practice on.
But no such model exists...
yet.
[dramatic music playing]
In 1959, Dr. Safar goes to a toymaker,
a Norwegian toymaker of his acquaintance,
Asmund Laerdal.
And Asmund has a lot of experience using PVC,
a brand-new material, but he thinks
that this might be the way forward.
And between them, they come up with a mannequin
which mimics the basic usage
of a pair of lungs within a person.
Nearing the end of the process,
Laerdal has his doll
but it hasn't got a face at the moment.
So where on Earth is he gonna get one of those?
[narrator] Laerdal wants a passive,
nonthreatening face.
[Ruth] Well, luckily at this moment,
he goes and visits his in-laws.
And there on the wall
is hanging L'Inconnue de la Seine.
Perfect.
Absolutely perfect.
[Mark Benecke] And this is why we have the face
of L'Inconnue de la Seine on the CPR mannequin.
[dramatic music playing]
[narrator] And the unknown girl
finally gets a name.
Resusci Anne.
It's estimated she has been used to train
more than five hundred million people worldwide
and saved as many as two and a half million lives.
A girl who drowned in the Seine
more than 150 years ago
has become the most kissed face in history.
But there's one last twist to the story
of L'Inconnue de la Seine.
[dramatic music playing]
[narrator] Her drowned face is famously picture perfect,
and that's a problem.
[Mark Benecke] When you die in water
and your body is resting or laying in water
for an amount of time,
then your skin starts to slip
or you get marbling which means
you have bacteria in your veins.
And since you don't see that on the death mask,
some people thought that maybe she was not dead.
[narrator] And that's not the only unexplained thing
about her.
[Mark Benecke] One thing that is mentioned often
is that when you look at the eyeballs,
the eyeballs are not perfectly round.
[narrator] When your eyes are shut,
the lens underneath creates
a slight bump in the eyelid.
Some have suggested that this bump is not circular
on L'Inconnue's face
as though the eyes were moving
while the plaster was setting.
So is this really the face of a dead woman
or is she just a fiction
built around an artist's model?
We'll probably never know for sure.