On this episode of "Expedition Files"...
In 1696...
Fire!
[Josh] ...Captain Henry Avery is hailed King of the Pirates when
he pulls off an estimated 400-million-dollar heist
on the high seas.
But after the raid, Avery and his loot disappear.
Now, experts may have finally cracked the code,
revealing the fate of this legendary buccaneer
and his vast treasure.
Then, around 1153 BC, Egyptian pharaoh Ramses III
dies under mysterious circumstances.
Ancient records hint at a deadly palace conspiracy led
by his own queen.
More than 3,000 years later, modern scientific technology
could solve one of history's oldest cold cases.
And since the 8th century BC, mythological female warriors
known as Amazons have inspired everything from
South American rivers
to the iconic superhero, Wonder Woman.
But did the Amazons really exist?
New evidence suggests these legendary fighters were real.
In the corridors of time...
are mysteries that defy explanation.
Now, I'm traveling through history itself...
on a search for the truth.
New evidence.
Shocking answers.
I'm Josh Gates.
And these...
are my "Expedition Files."
Have you ever met someone who's larger-than-life?
I'm talking about a person whose charisma could be
measured in megawatts, lighting up every room
they walk into.
Well, tonight, you'll need your sunglasses to investigate some
of the most powerfully captivating characters in
history, squinting to discover the real people
and real mysteries behind their luminous lives.
We begin in 1696 aboard a ship called The Fancy.
But don't let the sweet-sounding name fool you.
It's manned by a crew of killers.
The captain here is Henry Avery, the so-called
King of the Pirates.
And right now, he's divvying up the score that earned him
that name, a massive treasure
snatched from the Mughal Empire of India.
It will go down as the largest pirate heist in history,
estimated to be worth a staggering
$400 million today.
But Captain Avery and all this loot will soon vanish,
never to be seen again.
So what happens to these incredible spoils?
The long-buried secrets of Henry Avery
are about to be revealed.
[ocean waves swishing]
Henry Avery is born around 1659 near Plymouth, England,
the same rugged port where the Pilgrims
had departed from just a few decades earlier.
The ocean is in his blood from the start.
As a young man, Avery goes to sea,
earning his place as he learns
the ropes of life aboard a ship.
He begins his career the respectable way,
serving in the Royal Navy,
then he moves on to privateering.
That is, piracy with a government stamp of approval.
As long as you fly the right flag, the crown is happy to
let you rob its enemies blind.
For a while, Avery plays by those rules, but rules at sea
have a way of slipping.
By 1694, Avery is a hardened sailor and the chief mate
aboard the Charles II, a sleek, heavily-armed vessel
tasked with hunting French ships across the Atlantic.
But before long, the voyage stalls
due to bureaucracy.
The ship sails into a Spanish port to receive important
legal documents authorizing their mission.
And there it sits.
The documents fail to arrive, and the crew is all
but trapped, unpaid, restless, and forbidden
from going ashore.
The captain promises that money is coming, but tensions are
on the rise. Avery has had enough.
One night, he leads a mutiny, seizing the ship,
renaming her The Fancy,
and cutting all ties to the British crown.
From this moment on, Henry Avery is
no longer a privateer. He's a pirate.
The Fancy leaves port, setting course
for the richest waters on Earth.
[indistinct battle cries]
Along the way, Avery and his crew raid and loot roughly
a dozen ships as they sweep down the West African coast,
round the Cape of Good Hope, and push into the Indian Ocean,
the vital trading artery of the mighty Mughal Empire.
The Mughals are a powerful Islamic dynasty that rules
across much of what is now India.
And their ruler at this time, Aurangzeb, is quite possibly
the richest man on Earth.
Naturally, that makes his trade route irresistible for
the eyepatch and cutlass crowd.
But Mughal ships are famously well-armed
and fiercely protected.
And as a vital trading partner with Avery's former employers,
the British Crown, an attack on a Mughal ship would make Avery
the most wanted pirate on Earth.
September of 1695, as The Fancy sails toward
the Arabian Peninsula, Captain Avery launches
a high-seas heist so bold,
it would make the "Ocean's 11" crew seasick.
He convinces other nearby pirate captains to join forces
and attack not just one vessel, but a whole fleet,
25 Mughal ships.
But Avery and his crew set their sights on
one particular target -- a massive,
heavily-armed treasure ship called the Ganj-i-Sawai.
It's a floating fortress with 62 guns and 400 guards aboard.
It's armed to the teeth for good reason.
The ship is owned by the Mughal emperor himself,
filled with his vast personal riches.
[explosion bangs]
Fire!
[explosions continue]
[Josh] After a volley of Avery's cannonballs takes out
the Indian ship's mast, the pirates storm the decks.
[grunting]
[splash]
[Josh] When the battle comes to an end, Avery's men claim
a treasure estimated to nearly half a billion dollars today.
As captain, Avery gets the lion's share, receiving not
just hundreds of thousands of gold and silver pieces,
but priceless artifacts too.
Suffice to say, Avery is now a very, very rich man.
With this victory, his reputation grows rapidly,
earning him the nicknames the Arch Pirate
and the King of the Pirates.
But before we break out the celebratory rum,
it should be mentioned that no treasure is valuable enough
to merit what Avery and his men do to claim it.
The pirates torture and butcher everyone aboard the ship,
allegedly including women and relatives of
the royal family. -[indistinct shouting]
[Josh] The Ganj-i-Sawai becomes a bloodbath.
[indistinct shouting]
[Josh] The fallout is swift and worldwide.
Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb is outraged and mistakenly blames
his trading partners in Great Britain for the attack.
He threatens to shut down all trade with
the British East India Company,
a move that would spell economic disaster for England.
The Brits promise to pay Aurangzeb what he's owed
and to bring the pirates to justice.
The search for Henry Avery is
the first global manhunt in history.
The navies of the British and Mughal empires
independently scour the seas for any sign of Avery's ship,
The Fancy, but the King of the Pirates
somehow escapes them.
Avery sets The Fancy on a course for the Bahamas,
at that time a sparsely populated,
loosely-governed British colony.
It's believed that Avery and about 100 crewmen arrive in
New Providence in April of 1696.
[metal clinking]
There, Avery allegedly split shares of the treasure
between his men.
As for The Fancy, her fate is also unknown.
Some say Avery handed her over to the authorities in
New Providence.
Others believe he may have scuttled her.
But either way, Avery and his crew scatter to the winds.
Some stay in the Caribbean,
some head for the American colonies.
Others head for home in hostile British waters.
Where Avery went, well, that's the mystery.
As many as 24 of The Fancy's crew are arrested
within the year.
Five are hanged at London's infamous Execution Dock.
Avery isn't one of them.
After 1696, the so-called Pirate King
appears to simply vanish, along with any trace of
his stolen fortune.
So what became of history's most successful pirate?
Over the last 300 years, there have been
numerous theories.
One of the oldest dates to 1709, when a printed pamphlet
circulates a rumor that Henry Avery took his riches
to Madagascar, married the daughter of
a local ruler, and established a pirate kingdom.
Another enduring theory, drawn from the 1724 book,
"A General History of the Pirates," says Avery
returned to England only to be cheated by merchants
who refused to pay fair value for his treasure.
Stripped of his riches, he allegedly dies a beggar.
But there's zero evidence to back up either of
these bold theories.
In the centuries since, the legend of Henry Avery
and his massive undiscovered treasure
has only continued to grow.
He's been the subject of books, stage plays,
even video games like "Uncharted."
And while his myth has heated up,
his trail has remained ice cold.
But now, an incredible string of discoveries
is quickly changing that.
In 1695, Henry Avery pulls off the greatest heist in
pirate history, when he steals $400 million worth of treasure.
For the next 300 years, the fate of the stolen riches
remains a mystery.
But then comes a remarkable find.
In 2014, a metal detectorist scanning an orchard in
Middletown, Rhode Island,
discovers something extraordinary --
a silver coin engraved with Arabic script
and minted in Yemen in 1693.
Over the next few years, similar coins turn up across
New England and as far south as North Carolina.
All of them are dated before 1695,
which means they could have been
on the Ganj-i-Sawai when Avery raided it.
In other words, this could be part of the lost loot.
The find was compelling, but it was far from
definitive proof that Avery and his treasure
made it to America.
And meanwhile, other leads elsewhere in the world emerged
as to where the Pirate King may have ended up.
In 2023, I joined an expedition to find the treasure,
not in the New World, but in the Old one.
I traveled to Cornwall, England to meet a team of
treasure hunters following cryptic clues from
an old letter that may reveal
some of Avery's long lost fortune.
"On his return from India, either landed or was
"shipwrecked near the Lizard, where he buried three chests
or boxes full of treasure in the sands of the seashore."
We're off to a good start.
We're literally talking about buried treasure here.
I also explored a sea cave straight out of "The Goonies."
And narrowly avoided a one-way trip to
Davy Jones' locker.
And I dived a shipwreck site rumored to have ties to
the Pirate King's lost fortune.
The results?
[explorer speaking]
[Josh speaking]
[explorer] This is just amazing.
[Josh] This is Arabic script here, yes?
[explorer] This is, isn't it? Yeah.
This is definitely Mughal. There's no two ways about it.
-This is a Mughal coin? -That is a Mughal coin.
[Josh] This is as good close to a smoking gun...
-[explorer] That is. -...as we've seen.
We may have found some of Avery's treasure, but if so,
it raises a question.
Could Henry really have returned to the country that
he'd made his enemy
and be allowed to live there happily ever after?
Well, a remarkable new theory developed by Dr. Sean Kingsley
may be able to explain how
the Pirate King managed to make peace.
[Sean] In December 2020, I was doing some writing about pirates.
I hook up with an old friend, Rex Cowan.
He's a wreck hunter, an encyclopedia.
So he gets super excited and gives me this letter that
says, "Avery the Pirate, December, 1700."
And I go, "Hello!"
You know, this is very clearly four years since he was
last seen in November 1696.
And it's shocking.
You know, if this letter is real, the Pirate King is back
from the dead.
[Josh] The letter is a copy of an older document and therefore
hard to authenticate, but Kingsley suspected
it might be the real deal,
calling it a once-in-a-lifetime
historical treasure and one that may totally rewrite
the final chapter of Henry Avery.
[Sean] Henry Avery says he's just come back from a journey.
He's incredibly wary.
He's about to go off on another mission.
He's waiting to receive his instructions
and he'll report back imminently.
But all these lines are kind of intercut with this sort of code
in numbers and letters, so it makes it impossible to
actually realize what the content is about.
In the late 17th century, codes like this were only used
by ambassadors, diplomats, and spies.
I think we can cut out the possibility that he became
an ambassador or a diplomat, which really only points
in one specific direction -- Henry Avery,
on His Majesty's Secret Service, a spy.
[Josh] Kingsley is arguing something remarkable.
He's saying that Henry Avery, the pirate who was England's
enemy number one, had an about-face and was now
part of a British spy ring that included, of all people,
the guy who wrote "Robinson Crusoe," Daniel Defoe,
and the Archbishop of Canterbury,
all to protect the country from a French Catholic invasion.
But if so, how had Avery managed to get back on
good terms with England?
Well, it turns out everybody's got a price.
I think that Henry Avery gave a large chunk
of his Mughal treasure to pay for his "freedom."
Avery's got all this cash,
but there's no way of spending it.
The authorities are gonna find him and eventually hang him
by his neck.
He's in his 30s, he's a young man,
and he's got this incredible resume of skills
which are transferable.
What's he gonna do?
I imagine that he fixed it with the King of England,
that he could come on His Majesty's Secret Service as
a spy in return for these incredible life skills
which he'd developed and for a king's ransom pile of cash.
[Josh] There was a big problem, though.
He couldn't make heads or tails of the code.
Could it be the location of Avery's lost treasure?
The only way to find out would be to crack it.
Easier said than done.
I contacted academics, mathematician,
even an advisor to the FBI.
And they all told me one thing, that there are ciphers
and there are codes.
Ciphers, you can actually hope to read them,
because there's an internal logic
within the rhythm of a letter.
And if there is enough repetition of words and letters
and sequences, you can crack the cipher.
But this was not a cipher, it was a code.
And to be able to crack that, you had to have a code book.
And you'd have your book, and you'd go down it,
and you'd look at a number, and it would revert to a word.
For instance, 131 might mean the French king, 249 might mean
Secret Service. Those are real examples.
So you've got to be really lucky to actually find one of
the original keys to the code.
[Josh] The way these codes work is that the author would reference
a standalone codebook to disguise sensitive messages
in the correspondence.
The recipient would have been issued an identical codebook,
so the secret message could be deciphered.
That way, if the document fell into the wrong hands,
it would be impossible to understand.
[Sean] The largest collections of these codebooks exist in
the British Library in London.
And I spent many days and weeks stuck in the archives going
through these volumes, hoping to discover
the Holy Grail, uh, but without luck.
The hunt for the elusive codebook continues.
Unless it turns up, the letters' strangest passages
will remain secret. My personal favorite?
Quote, "I'm not the least concerned for tank 29
of B26 being out of the T9211597."
Whatever the hell that means.
One thing we do know is that if the letter is authentic,
it rewrites Avery as less Jack Sparrow
and more James Bond.
Kingsley believes more clues could be buried in archives
across Europe, and he's still on the trail
of the world's most wanted pirate.
So watch this space, because who knows,
maybe the next treasure isn't sunk beneath the waves,
but locked away in a forgotten filing cabinet,
just waiting to be plundered.
It's around 1153 BC. The place?
Ancient Egypt.
And the pharaoh, Ramses III, has held his empire together
for three decades with an iron fist.
But tonight, this warrior king's grip is slipping.
Before the sun rises, Ramses will be dead.
How does he die?
And was it, as many will argue, murder?
Well, that will become the foundation of
history's oldest cold case.
But 3,000 years on, modern science will help
explain the death of the last great pharaoh.
Ramses III grows up during one of the most dangerous moments
in Egypt's history.
His father, Setnakhte, seizes the throne around 1186 BC,
at a moment when Egypt is coming apart.
[horse neighing]
[Josh] Foreign rulers are chipping away
at its borders.
Vital trade routes are under attack.
The kingdom is in chaos.
While his father struggles to restore order,
the young Prince Ramses is sent to govern
the Sinai Peninsula,
Egypt's volatile frontier.
There, he learns how to command troops, protect trade routes,
and defend the fragile empire he may one day inherit.
It's a harsh training ground, but Ramses proves himself
a strong leader and fierce warrior.
His father saves the kingdom, but his reign is brief,
just three years.
And when he dies around 1184 BC,
Ramses III, as he'll come to be known,
assumes the throne.
He inherits a kingdom restored by force, but surrounded by
enemies on every side.
The young pharaoh now carries the responsibility
of holding Egypt together.
And almost immediately, he is tested.
Libyan tribes invade from the west.
Then an even greater threat arrives from the sea.
Mysterious maritime raiders known as the Sea Peoples,
whose attacks are helping to topple civilizations
across the ancient world.
Ramses fights back.
[horse neighing]
Against overwhelming odds, his armies defeat the invaders
in one of the most decisive battles of the age.
The victory is immortalized
on temple walls, showing the pharaoh as
Egypt's defender, standing between his civilization
and destruction.
But decades of war takes its toll.
The treasury is drained. Workers go unpaid.
Nearly 30 years into his reign, laborers building
the royal tombs lay down their tools in protest.
It is the first recorded labor strike in history.
[indistinct shouting]
[Josh] The empire Ramses fought so hard to defend
is beginning to weaken.
And inside the royal palace, an even more dangerous threat
begins to emerge.
The pharaoh has designated his eldest son,
Ramses IV, as his successor.
But that plan doesn't sit well with some of the royal family,
particularly with one of Ramses' three wives.
A betrayal is brewing.
Queen Tiye believes her own son, Prince Pentawer,
should take the throne instead.
But Tiye is only a secondary wife
with far less power at court.
She does not hold the prestigious title of
Great Royal Wife,
the rank reserved for a pharaoh's
principal queens, whose sons typically
had the strongest claim to rule.
Born a commoner, Queen Tiye lacks royal blood,
and her lower status leaves her son far down
the line of succession.
But that doesn't stop her from trying to seize power.
According to surviving papyrus records, Tiye begins secretly
organizing a plot to assassinate Ramses III...
Kill the Pharaoh.
[Josh] ...and place Prince Pentawer on the throne.
If she can gather enough support, she could overturn
the royal line of succession.
Tiye and Pentawer recruit several of Ramses' inner circle
to aid their plot,
including a chef, a butler,
and an overseer of his harem,
exploiting growing dissatisfaction with
the pharaoh from within his own household.
History will remember this as the Harem Conspiracy.
Some loyal officials may have tried to warn the king.
But if they did, the warning came too late.
Not long after, Ramses III, the warrior pharaoh who spent
his life defending Egypt is found dead.
Father!
[Josh] Whispers of betrayal spread through the palace.
Had the king been murdered by his own family?
His body is embalmed and wrapped in layers of linen,
then buried in a tomb in the Valley of the Kings.
For more than 3,000 years, the truth about what happened
to Ramses III remains buried with him.
Thanks to modern science, we now have the answers.
All will be revealed.
Egyptian pharaoh Ramses III is dead, but was it murder?
And if so, was his plotting wife, Queen Tiye, responsible?
Well, there is a fascinating document that's key to
understanding the truth.
Writings known as the "Judicial Papyrus of Turin,"
which describe the trial of assassins of Ramses in
the so-called Harem Conspiracy.
But it is frustratingly vague on the details.
Here's what we do know.
The trial consists of 12 judges and is overseen by
21-year-old Ramses IV,
the late pharaoh's designated heir.
The fact that he presides and not Pentawer,
tells us that although Queen Tiye
may have succeeded in arranging Ramses' death,
her plot to install Pentawer as ruler failed.
The new pharaoh, Ramses IV,
shows little mercy in exacting revenge on those
who are seemingly implicated in his father's death.
The papyrus lists an astounding 28 people who were executed for
their roles in the conspiracy.
As for Tiye and Pentawer themselves, the papyrus states
Pentawer is allowed to take his own life.
Though the method of execution isn't mentioned,
scholars believe he most likely hanged himself.
But the papyrus tells us nothing about what happened to
Queen Tiye, the apparent instigator of
the Harem Conspiracy.
Many believe she was executed,
perhaps by burning, erased from royal memory.
The papyrus was discovered in the 1820s by Italian diplomat
and antiquities collector Bernardino Drovetti,
who shipped the documents and crates of Egyptian
treasures to the Turin Museum.
The papyrus sat there for decades
until Egyptologist, Adolf Erman finally translated it
around the turn of the century.
And while the details it revealed gave us
a revolutionary look into the Harem Conspiracy,
some key questions remain a mystery,
namely how Ramses III died and who killed him.
But then in 2012, a team of researchers
led by Dr. Zahi Hawass decides to take another look
at the pharaoh's remains
using modern forensic techniques.
When archaeologist Nicholas Brown
saw the results, he was stunned.
The findings that Dr. Zahi Hawass
and his team made broke open this whole mystery.
They actually used modern technologies like CT scanning
to virtually unwrap the mummy of Ramses III.
Underneath the bandages, the king's throat had actually
been slit with a knife.
This wasn't just a surface wound that
the king had experienced.
This cut had run deep and actually severed
his windpipe and several arteries.
[Josh] Nearly 3,200 years after the brutal deed,
we finally know how the pharaoh died.
This new forensic evidence now proves the pharaoh was
assassinated, just as Queen Tiye had planned.
But one question remains.
Who could have gotten close enough to Egypt's most
protected man to slit his throat?
The ancient Egyptians' access to the king would have been
really limited and restricted, which means it must have been
somebody close to the king, either in his court
or even his harem, who was able to accomplish something like
an assassination plot.
[Josh] Dr. Hawass's team believed they may have found
the murderer by examining another mummy discovered near
Ramses in the pharaoh's tomb.
At first, this mummy appeared to be an anonymous young man
who had been mummified without the usual care and respect
afforded to royalty.
But then DNA analysis showed he was far from unknown.
The DNA analysis that Zahi performed on this unknown mummy
and the mummy of Ramses III found that the two
were very closely related.
It's possible that this mummy could, in fact, be Pentawer,
the son of Ramses III and Queen Tiye.
Some Egyptologists have suggested that the way this
mummy looks, right, with its mouth wide open
and it looks like he's screaming in pain, that perhaps this
indicates that he was killed by hanging.
38 people are accused as being involved with the assassination
attempt against Ramses III.
It's really unlikely that all 38 of those individuals
actually had direct access to Ramses and therefore
would have been the one to kill him.
[groan]
Access to the king would have been really
limited and restricted.
It's more likely that as the son of Ramses III,
Pentawer would have had closer access to the king than most
other people in the court, and could have been the one
who actually assassinated him.
Modern forensics has unwrapped the millennia-old mystery of
the death of Ramses III.
We now know that his throat was slit.
There's even circumstantial evidence suggesting Ramses' own
son carried out the deed.
Not bad analysis for
a 3,000-plus-year-old crime scene.
Today, visitors to Ramses' temple can still see
the magnificent reliefs
showing him as a triumphant warrior king.
But it now seems this famed pharaoh's greatest battle
wasn't against foreign armies, but with his very own family,
who thirsted for the throne.
Welcome to the ancient world, and a place made famous
by the Greeks. We're not in Greece, though.
We're in a place beyond its borders,
a place where women rule.
This young fighter is training to join an all-female army in
a society said to be so powerful its name will echo
through time, inspiring everything from
the name of a mighty river to our most iconic superheroine,
Wonder Woman, because this warrior is an Amazon.
Now, in time, scholars will say these fearsome females are
simply the stuff of myth.
That is, until new evidence suggests something incredible,
that the Amazon might just be real.
[horse neighing]
The Amazons are first mentioned by name in "The Iliad,"
written in the 8th century BC.
In Homer's famous epic, King Priam of Troy mentions
that he, quote, "Once fought alongside the Amazons,
women the equal of men."
It's barely more than a name drop, but their mystique
is firmly established.
Over the next few centuries, Greek storytellers return to
the stories of the Amazons.
They write about a tribe of fierce warriors existing in
a female-only society beyond the borders of Greece in
the area of the Black Sea.
They procreate with men from neighboring communities,
then raise only the daughters,
sending male children back to their fathers.
According to legend, Amazon women are,
almost from birth, trained in hand-to-hand combat,
as well as horseback riding and archery.
They also expertly wield battle axes and spears.
Their strength is beyond compare, warriors so fierce
they blur the line between mortal and mythic.
Ultimately, the Amazons are said to go head-to-head
with the greatest heroes of Greek mythology.
And I promise you, this is a fight you don't want to miss.
[Josh] Legends of female fighters known as Amazon warriors have
endured for thousands of years, stemming from stories left by
the ancient Greeks, known for their lethal skills as archers.
Some stories even describe them cutting off one of
their breasts to better steady their bows or hurl
deadly javelins. They're nearly unstoppable.
That is, unless they're squaring off against
mythical Greek heroes.
In tales recorded in the 8th century BC,
Queen Penthesilea of the Amazons
faces off alone against the Greeks
and the greatest warrior in Greek mythology, Achilles.
[guttural screams]
[Josh] They engage in a savage battle.
And while she's a nearly even match for Achilles,
he ultimately slays her.
Afterward, he's struck by Penthesilea's valor and beauty,
ironically falling in love with the very foe he kills.
In another famous story, the queen of the Amazons,
Hippolyta, sister of the slain Queen Penthesilea,
is about to come face to face with the one man in
Greek mythology you don't want to pick a fight with,
because sailing into the harbor, is Hercules.
As the half-mortal, half-divine son of Zeus,
Herc is on a roll, tackling 12 lethal labors,
including the slaying of a giant lion,
a pesky Hydra, and the infamous Minotaur.
It's the ninth of these deadly missions which pits
him toe-to-toe, or sandal-to-sandal,
against the Amazons.
Hercules is tasked with claiming
the queen's golden war belt, the symbol of her power.
To his surprise, Hippolyta doesn't resist.
She meets him peacefully and even offers the belt as
a gift and a show of mutual respect between warrior equals.
Believing it too good to be true, Hercules turns on
the queen and strikes her down dead.
He escapes with the belt and his life.
Notice a pattern?
In myth after myth, an Amazon queen dies by
the hand of a Greek male hero.
It is no coincidence that the stories of Amazon warriors
being defeated by Greek heroes were written by Greek men,
men with a patriarchal worldview to defend.
So were the Amazons just a myth shaped by male imagination?
Or is there any truth to the stories of
these proud warrior women?
Well, there's at least one historical source which
suggests they may have actually existed.
In the 5th century, the historian Herodotus
documented an account of Amazon warriors captured by
the Greeks, who later escaped by seizing their captors' ships
and settling among the Scythians in what is now
Ukraine and Russia.
For millennia, Herodotus' account is
written off by scholars as imaginative storytelling,
not credible history.
But now there's extraordinary new evidence that the Amazons
may have been so much more than myth.
For centuries, historians have debated,
were the Amazon warriors of Greek legend
real or fantasy?
In the 5th century, Herodotus claimed they hailed
from the ancient region of Scythia, a vast swath of
territory stretching from Ukraine to Turkey around
the edge of the Black Sea.
Professor of anthropology Marin Pilloud
reveals that recent discoveries about the Scythians
may help solve the mystery of the Amazons.
So, some 30 years ago, some interesting discoveries
were found in the Caspian Pontic steppe region.
They found around 19 mounds that were large burial tombs.
And in 2019, in one mound, they found the remains of
four female skeletons.
And it's dated to around 2,500 years ago.
This date of about 2,500 years is important because it places
the culture in the area.
So, we know that around that time, the Scythians were in
this region, and we know the Scythians to be a group
that had women warriors that
predominantly traveled around via horseback.
Within this mound, with the skeletons of these
four women, were multiple iron arrowheads, spears,
artifacts associated with horse riding, and knives.
The oldest woman also had a golden headdress
around her head.
It was intricate and could have also suggested something about
her position in society.
Not only was she the oldest individual, but also had
the most elaborate grave goods with her,
with the golden headdress.
These were things that were placed there to honor
the dead amongst the living.
The women who were buried in these mounds would have held
an elevated place in society.
Just like the Amazons of legend, these women from
the late 4th century BC,
were apparently part of a family dynasty,
buried with the honor one would expect for revered warriors.
[Marin] In fact, there is some skeletal analysis of other
Scythian remains that suggests that there could be
battle wounds on women that's very similar to men.
Based on some of these recent archaeological findings,
we can see that it was quite normal for women to engage in
warfare activities amongst the Scythians.
As a nomadic tribe, they would need to, at times,
defend their areas.
[Josh] Trained from youth in horseback riding
and mounted combat, much like the Amazons of legend,
Scythian women were adorned with animal tattoos
meant to imbue them with
magical protection and strength in battle.
These tattoos mimicked the striking gold and bronze
animal art also found in their graves.
This find adds to growing evidence that women had
strong roles in the past.
This is a notion that we have been at times reluctant to
embrace based on our own sort of conceptions of
gendered roles in the present.
And so, we infer those onto the past, but there's such
a growing body of evidence to suggest that women were in fact
engaged in all levels of society, including warfare.
And with discoveries like this one in 2019 of women buried
with grave goods indicative of being a warrior,
it seems highly probable that the Scythian warrior women were
the inspiration for the Amazon women
that the Greeks wrote about.
The archaeological findings are revealing that the Amazons
may be a legendary echo of historic female fighters.
The very name, Amazon, is now attributed to the old
Persian word Hamazan, meaning "equal warrior."
After all, who needs Wonder Woman
when you've got the real-life action heroines
of the Scythians?
I'm Josh Gates, and I'll see you on the next expedition.