Museum Secrets (2011–…): Season 1, Episode 3 - Inside the ROM - full transcript
- [Narrator] Toronto a city
of the past and the future
and at it's heart a museum
with secrets dark and strange.
Tales of mummified
babies, brutal massacres,
forgotten weapons of war,
and a disappearing dinosaur.
Secrets hidden in plain sight
inside the Royal Ontario Museum.
(dramatic music)
(dramatic music)
It's an eye popping Canadian landmark.
A national treasure chest
and a place of mystery.
This is the Royal Ontario
Museum in Toronto.
The ROM.
For every object on display thousands more
lie hidden in backrooms
far from public view.
Enter the hall of ancient Egypt
and the hairs stand up
on the back of your neck.
You feel the presence of the ghosts.
How did they live, and how did they die?
If only the mummies could speak.
In a darkened room deep below
the public galleries it's as if they do.
- Here you can all the bone.
- [Narrator] Down here they
seem to whisper their stories
to epileptologist Gail Gibson
and bioarcheologist Andrew Nelson.
Telling them they weren't
all pharaohs and princes.
- People often think that
mummies were only elite people,
that they were only the rich
could afford mummification.
That's not quite true.
In fact people would try to do
their best for their friends
and relatives at whatever
social level they were.
I think it's nice to find out what life
is really like for ordinary
people in the past,
there were a lot more of us
than there were of kings and queens.
- [Narrator] Pharaoh or farmer there
is one kind of mummy
no one expects to see.
Babies.
Everything about these
tiny bundles in a mystery.
- Alas we have no idea how
these two baby mummies arrived at the ROM
they could have been
given to us by someone,
they could have been found
in somebodies basement.
I suspect they came back
as part of a cabinet of curiosities.
People could bring them back almost
as souvenirs in the 1820s, 30s, 40s, 50s.
It was the thing to
do, it was fashionable.
My friend bought a mummy,
I'll buy a mummy as well.
- [Narrator] It was a mummy craze.
At it's peak more than
a century ago collectors
would display newly acquired
mummies in their homes
and invite friends to
ghoulish unwrapping parties.
(eerie music)
Today archeologists and
egyptologists show more respect
when probing the secrets
of the ancient dead.
Especially the mummies of children.
- I Think we need to care
because this is a human baby.
I think it's a question of human sympathy,
I think it's a question of trying
to understand what it is to be human.
These are us at another time period.
- [Narrator] Using the tools
of modern forensic archeology Andrew
and Gail hope to learn
more about these children.
The mummified remains of infant number one
are in poor condition.
Andrew suspects the tiny body
was pulled apart during a grave robbery.
- My bet would be that that's
a quick grab out of the tomb.
- Astonishing.
- [Narrator] Infant number two appears
to be in better shape.
- [Andrew] We can use the calcification
of teeth to establish the
age of this individual.
This ones about nine months old.
- [Narrator] But Andrew sees
something else on the scan
something strange that shouldn't be there.
- Do you see this?
This is something long and rectangular
that is not bone all right,
that does not belong there.
And it goes right,
it's been jammed into the thoracic cavity
and right up into the cranial base.
- [Narrator] At first glance
it suggests the child met a violent end.
Killing unwanted children was accepted
practice in many ancient societies.
(gentle music)
(babies crying)
But not in Egypt.
- The ancient Egyptians realized
how vulnerable babies were
and they were most
anxious to protect mothers
and babies in anyway they could.
Their world was full
of dangers, ours is to.
We call those dangers germs
and viruses, and diseases.
They call them evil spirits,
they call them the evil eye.
- [Narrator] To protect children
and mothers ancient
Egyptians carried amulets.
Charms against the forces of darkness.
- For and ancient Egyptian
if your baby could have
something like this in his cradle
or a mother could be wearing some of
these around her neck
that gave them a little
bit of extra confidence.
- [Narrator] Even after
death parents took steps
to ensure the gods would
protect their children.
This is evident on the shroud
in which the first infant was wrapped.
- [Andrew] So what am I
looking at, tell me about this.
- It's a really nice little thing,
these people couldn't
afford anything fancy.
- Right.
- So this maybe has a
little bit of folk art
and you can see this is very,
very rough woven piece of linen.
- [Andrew] Right, what?
- [Gail] There is the child himself.
- [Andrew] Okay.
- [Gail] Shown as a mummy.
- [Andrew] Right.
- [Gail] And this is the God Anubis.
- [Andrew] Okay.
- Behind him and this is probably
one of his parents making offerings,
giving him pure water and food
and this is the goddess Isis one of
the most important goddesses
and even she is mourning for
the loss of this little baby.
So this is a nice little image
of the baby now safe
in the arms of the God.
- [Narrator] If the
Egyptians took such great
care to preserve the bodies
of their children why does this infant
have a stake in it's skull?
Andrew doesn't suspect foul play.
He believes it was inserted
after the child died.
- And they used this piece
of wood to make the head stay
in the proper relationship
with the rest of the body.
So that's really interesting to see that.
- [Narrator] The wood
kept the body in tact
during the mummification process.
Making it a final loving act
by grief stricken parents.
So what really killed the child?
Can the secret be revealed?
- [Andrew] Whatever it was that killed him
was probably something acute,
something from drinking
bad water, or some E. coli
from infected meat or some infected fruit.
There was some
superalimentation of goat milk
and honey after about six months.
So if the goats milk
was carrying infection
that may well have been the sort
of thing that would do them in quickly.
- Oh my poor little fellow.
- [Narrator] The verdict,
these tiny mummies may
have been loved to death.
Killed not my violence
or neglect but by milk
and honey fed to them by
caring, affectionate parents.
Next a medieval mystery
solved with a bang.
(booms)
(dramatic chord)
A museums treasures seem all
the more special when
they're one of a kind.
But hidden away at the
Royal Ontario Museum
are tens of thousands of treasures.
Most of them are precisely
measured and cataloged.
But some objects and their
purpose remain a secret.
- So these objects are
one of the mysteries
of archeology the middle
east in the medieval period.
They're found in archeological
sight in Egypt, Syria,
and Iran from about the
12th or the 13th century.
- [Narrator] Experts at
the world greatest museums
don't know what to make
of the mystery objects.
They're another museum secret.
- [Rob] This was not
just an ordinary vessel,
it was made for some enigmatic purpose
that we just do not really
know at this moment.
- [Narrator] Rob Mason hopes
to find out once and for all.
- Now to do that it
would be in appropriate
to go messing around with
an 800 year old artifact
like this so what we've done
is made replicas of them.
There are two hypothesis we can test,
one it was used as the
base of a water pipe,
an (speaking foreign language)
used for smoking probably
hashish at the time.
- [Narrator] It's a theory to be tested
not at the museum but
here at the Hot Box Cafe
and Roach Rama.
- So I was thinking given
your expertise could
you see how this could
work for a smoking purpose
but I would rather you use
not one made in about 12,
but the one made last week.
(water splashing)
(water bubbling)
- [Narrator] So is it an ancient bong?
It seems to work but Rob's not convinced.
- I still have one
major problem with that.
How comfortable is that in your hand?
- Not terribly, it's a little bit heavy.
- [Rob] It's rather heavy isn't it?
- [Man] Yeah.
- [Rob] When we see these illustrated
they were having relatively light vessels
like this so if you
can have a light vessel
why would you have such a heavy vessel?
And so I think there's possibly
a more likely hypothesis.
Which I'd now like to test.
- [Narrator] This test
needs plenty of open space
because Rob thinks the objects
are designed to explode.
- One of the interesting
things about these is
when we find them they tend
to be whole or really broken.
This looks like the impact
came from the inside.
(booms)
There's no doubt that in the 12th
and 13th century they knew of
the component materials of
black powder or gun powder.
And really there's no reason to assume
it was not known in the middle east.
And many people have
said oh it's decorated
so there for it can't be a bomb.
I spoke to ammunition's expert
about whether these might be hand grenades
and before I'd even
mentioned the decoration
he said are there Amy lines incised
in it and so we was saying
like a modern hand
grenade this will enable
it to break into small
pieces for shrapnel.
- [Narrator] If the
mystery object is a grenade
it should explode into blast patterns
roughly matching those on the fragments.
So Robs going to blow
up one of his replicas
and do some post explosion detective work.
- Another thing we'll try we'll see
the effect on a watermelon.
- All right so we've got a victim.
- Our victim.
So this will show what the
effects of the shrapnel
would be on an innocent bystander
or not so innocent bystander.
- [Jeff] So this will be
you're guys safe distance here.
Ready to light, let it go.
- [Rob] Go let it go.
(suspenseful music)
- [Jeff] Kay, lighting.
(suspenseful music)
(booms)
- Well one of those watermelons
is definitely regretting
the day it was purchased by this group.
- Yeah well that's for sure.
And it was a nice orange,
kinda fiery flash.
(booms)
Had quite the range.
- [Rob] Look at that watermelon.
(laughs)
- [Jeff] And you've got some big chunks.
- Watermelon blood all over it.
- What's amazing is there's
actually a piece of shrapnel
that was a few feet away
that actually has bits
of watermelon on it.
- [Rob] Nasty.
See if that were a human being
that would have been covered with blood.
- [Jeff] Yeah.
- And these other pieces would
have been embedded in him.
- Definitely was designed to kill.
- Imagine with tightly packed men
as well, they're besieging a fortress
or something like that and
you just drop it amongst the
and that explosion in tightly
packed men must have been
completely devastating.
- Oh yeah.
- Id have to say this experiments
actually been really quite conclusive.
If you look at the ones
we blew up you can see
how the pressures come from
inside and spored outwards.
(booms)
And when we look at the old one,
this one which has been broken apart
you can see it's broken outwards.
So this was a bomb.
- [Narrator] The mystery is solved,
the secret revealed
with a satisfying bang.
(booms)
(dramatic music)
Next a museum secret that
is the ultimate skeleton in the closet
(eerie music)
(dramatic chord)
the dinosaur gallery.
When it comes to the stars
of this show size matters.
Here monsters from more than 150,000,000
years ago come in three sizes.
Big, bigger, and humongous.
(roars)
You wouldn't think any museum could
ever lose a dinosaur but the
Royal Ontario Museum did.
One of the biggest was
here and then it was gone.
What happened?
It's the summer of 2007.
The museum is close to completing
a quarter billion dollar
transformation called the crystal.
(dramatic music)
The buildings main attraction
will be the new dinosaur gallery.
But just ten weeks from the
grand opening it's empty.
Curator David Evens is assigned
the task of filling it.
- They wanted a real show stopping piece.
We didn't have one of these
giant dinosaurs called sauropods
and it was clear that's
what we needed to anchor the exhibit.
- [Narrator] sauropods are among
the most gigantic creatures
ever to walk the earth.
100 metric ton vegetarian monsters more
than 30 meters long
from tail to tiny head.
150,000,000 years ago they roamed
what is now western North America.
With the clock ticking David boards
a flight to Wyoming's bad lands.
A well known dinosaur dig sight
and his best shot at
finding a sauropod skeleton.
He finds one before he lands.
- I happened to pick up
a very recent publication
by renowned sauropod
expert Jack Macintosh.
- [Narrator] A few pages
in David's jaw drops.
Macintosh describes an
almost complete sauropod
skeleton that was given
to the ROM in 1962.
there's even a specimen number, ROM 3670.
- And as soon as I realize that,
as soon as I saw that number
I just wanted to turn the
plane around right there.
- [Narrator] David rushes
back to the museum.
Could it be true?
Could there really have been
a sauropod here all this time?
- And I started pulling
an end of an arm bone
out of a drawer, 30 feet away another end
of an arm bone and realized hey these are
both from the same side,
they're both from the same bone.
Maybe they go together.
And sure enough I put the two together
and they fit perfectly
like a jigsaw puzzle.
And over the course of about an hour
I'd assembled over half
the major limb bones.
At that point I was
getting pretty excited.
- [Narrator] David suspects
this is the skeleton of
the sauropod diplodocus.
It's a huge find.
The bones in the museum for more
than 40 years were scattered during
various moves of the ROM's collections.
Will these pieces fit together
into a complete skeleton?
And if they do will the
go together in time?
It's a job for Peter May
and his display team.
He's racing the clock,
the new galleries will
open in just eight weeks.
- Well we picked the false
material up after all.
It was in probably ten drawers.
And I'd say 2,500 pieces.
We sort of went from a custom work
process into a full scale assembly line.
Where we have the forging
going on, the armatures,
we had other people doing the welding,
we had the grinding going on
so one person was involved with
every aspect of the armature,
we had a gang working on it.
- [Narrator] As the skeleton takes shape
David realizes these are not the bones
of a sauropod diplodiocus
as he first thought.
But something better
than that, much better.
This is a barosaurus, one of
the rarest of all dinosaurs.
- Barosaurus is known
form only a few specimens
and most of them are really scrappy.
There's about five
specimens that are known
and it turns out that the ROM specimen
that we had right here under our noses
for so long turns out to be the second
most complete specimen of
a barosaurus ever found.
- [Narrator] But even so only 40 percent
of the skeleton has been found.
For the other 60 percent
they improvise with casts.
- If we made an educated
guess based on parts
of the skeleton that we do have
and filled in the missing
bits with barosaurus
closets known relative
which is diplodocus.
One of the major part that
is missing is the head.
A head of barosaurus has never been found.
And so on our mounted
skeleton we have a diplodocus
skull as a stand in for the
unknown skull of barosaurus.
- [Narrator] David now has
a crucial decision to make.
- How the necks were
oriented is still a mystery.
And it's argued about with
quite fervent in paleontology.
- [Narrator] Else where at
other museums the barosaurus
is posed with it's head
held dramatically high.
But David suspects that even
the mightiest dinosaur heart
couldn't pump blood
ten meters straight up.
And so in the final hours before
the Crystal opens David poses
his barosaurus with it's
neck stretched horizontally.
- I'd say if Guinness had a world record
for mounting dinosaurs
that would have been it.
- [Narrator] The new gallery draws
one of the biggest crowds
in the museums history.
With the magnificent barosaurus
at the center of it all.
And David is still finding
this dinosaurs bones
in the basement rooms of the ROM.
- It just keeps coming
out of the wood work
you know it seems like
a never ends dinosaur.
- If you find that skull in there.
- That would be a real find.
- [Narrator] The ROMs barosaurus may yet
turn out to be the most
complete specimen in the world.
(roars)
Coming up we take our best shot
at revealing a secret
from the middle ages.
(suspenseful music)
(booms)
(dramatic chord)
(dramatic music)
The medieval galleries of
the Royal Ontario Museum
in Toronto bristle with weapons of war.
Objects both beautiful and deadly.
In the middle ages the
weapon you brought to battle
could mean the difference
between glorious victory
or bloody defeat.
What was the one you could count
on to do the job every time?
(laughs)
- Good question the crossbow,
certainly the European crossbow.
- [Narrator] Curator Corey Keeble
is a specialist in arms and armor.
- One of the fascinating
things about the crossbow
is it's, it was ubiquitous,
it was used everywhere.
There was hardly a castle,
there was hardly a town,
a city, anywhere in Europe that did
not have an arsenal or an
armory filled with crossbows.
- [Narrator] By the
end of the 15th century
the crossbow was the last
word in high tech weaponry.
Hands down the most
important killing device
on the battle fields of Europe.
But it's days were numbered.
Within just a few years the
crossbow all but disappeared.
Replaced my a lethal new weapon.
The gun.
Today it seems obvious that the fire arm
would replace the bow, changing
the face of war forever.
But 500 years ago when
they were new and unproven
why were warriors so quick
to throw down their crossbows
and pick up fire arms?
- [Corey] This is a match lock mechanism.
- [Narrator] Corey is going to unravel
this museum secret on a firing range.
Marksmen Andre Reed is ready with a gun.
(gun fires)
All we need now is a crossbow.
Like the one kept under wraps
by ROM conservator Susan Stock.
- This is really exciting,
it's like opening a bottle
of vintage champagne
only I think it's a little bit better.
(chuckles)
Let's put it this way, no
vintage champagne is this old.
It was bought in 1909 so
it's one of the earliest
acquisitions in our European
arms and armor collection.
- [Narrator] It's from
the late 15th century
and among the last used in
battle before firearms took over.
Making it ideal for Corey's test.
The plan is to recreate this crossbow.
That means finding out how it was made.
- It's never been X-rayed
and it would really
be great if we could
get an x-ray of the side
so that we could actually
see the inside workings
with the trigger mechanism here
and also if we could x-ray
and somewhere cranequin.
- [Woman] So you stabilize that.
- [Corey] Oh whoa.
- [Woman] The level of detail.
- The level of detail is just amazing.
- [Narrator] And there
it is, plain as day.
The inner working of the cranequin.
It's a kind of winch allowing the archer
to draw the bow stings
smoothly and easily.
Without it he'd need to pull back
the equivalent of 158 kilograms
of weight to load the bow.
The cranequin reduces that weight
to three and a half kilograms.
- Who would have imagined
that after 530 odd years
somebody would actually see the inside
of a gearbox that has
never been analyzed before?
- [Narrator] Corey's next step
a visit with weapons
builder Chris Waralow.
- This is the only way practically
that you can get any kind of comparison
with the actual power of a real crossbow.
- Yes, yes.
- It's as simple as that.
- I am looking forward to this project
cause I have never built a crossbow
that is as powerful as this one will be.
- [Corey] Oh really?
- [Chris] So I'm looking
forward to the challenge.
- The real principle is to follow
the basic methodology as it were,
the actual spanning of a bow,
the functioning of a bow
and if we make a few adjustments in terms
of the third millennium
then we shouldn't be doing too badly.
It's the principal of
the thing as they say.
- Exactly, exactly.
- Okay great.
(dramatic music)
- [Chris] Good morning gentlemen.
- [Corey] Whoa good morning,
this is absolutely fabulous.
- Excellent, I'm glad you approve.
- Oh very much so.
The bow is wonderful, and
it's nice to see the bridle,
all of this is, it's as good
as a 15th century original.
- [Chris] I did my best.
- What about the bolts?
- The bolts.
- Do you want me to hold it.
- Please sir.
- The bolts are period as well,
they're made out of hard wood with.
- Oh my gosh you know we
actually have some 16th century
originals in the museum
and these are as close to the originals
as anything that I could possibly imagine.
This is again, this is what
makes an exercise like this fun.
If it's not fun it's not
worth doing, this is a treat.
- [Chris] I am very much looking forward
to see weather to not this crossbow
will put that bolt
through our suit of armor.
- [Narrator] 500 years
ago the battle field
was dominated by armored knights
on horseback defending
heavily fortified castles.
But in the late 15th century gun powder
came to the battle fields of
Europe and everything changed.
Canons destroyed castle walls
and could kill several
armored men at once.
Warfare rapidly changed from the realm
of the armored few to formations
of unarmored thousands.
And the well armed infantry
became the dominant force
on the battle field.
As armies grew in size so
did the need to arm more
and more men.
Some historians speculate that cost
may have been a factor in
the rise of the fire arm.
- By the 1400s, late 1400s early 1500s
we find that fire arms have developed
to the degree where they are
useful as weapons of war.
They're cheap and easy to make.
(gun clicks)
- [Narrator] But Corey cost
alone brought down the crossbow.
He suspects the secret will be revealed
by comparing two important
aspects of any weapon.
Rate of fire, and killing power.
- I'll demonstrate loading this
and we'll see weather we can
send an arrow down range.
- Oh whoa.
- Crank it back.
- [Narrator] Chris uses a
windlass instead of a cranequin.
A safer option when building replicas.
Otherwise this bow is a match
to the original and will perform the same.
- [Chris] Back off the windlass a bit.
- Using a crossbow in war
would be a very tense,
very dramatic action.
- [Chris] Make certain
the crossbow bolt is set
right up against the string
otherwise it will miss fire.
Nestle up against the
shoulder, point, and shoot.
- [Narrator] The time to
load, aim, and fire 57 second.
- This is a matchlock smoothbore.
It's a mussel loader.
- [Narrator] Andre's musket if from the
same period as the crossbow.
- You load down the powder.
This is 69 caliber ball,
lead ball with a cloth patch.
(bangs)
You drive the ball home.
Use a priming powder to load the pen.
Close the safety, now you
introduce the ignition source.
- In battle would have you
scared out of your wits,
how fast could you load without panicking
and running for your life?
- Open the safety and we're ready to go.
(gun fires)
- [Narrator] The time to load,
aim and fire the gun 54 seconds.
- [Andre] Took the top off, we did it.
- [Narrator] So the gun doesn't
have a significant advantage over the bow.
Next a test of fire power against armor.
(clicks)
(whooshes)
(tings)
- Whoa, amazing.
(grin fires)
(tings)
- [Narrator] The verdict?
Both do some damage, it's a draw.
- [Corey] This is better than getting
this stuff out of books isn't it?
- [Narrator] As fewer and fewer knights
appeared on the battle field
the ability to pierce armor
became less important.
So the next test will be
on the unprotected solider.
- [Man] That's the
consistency of a human head.
(clicks)
(whooshes)
(cheers)
(gun fires)
(splashing)
(chuckling)
- Unbelievable, absolutely fantastic.
- [Narrator] While the gun
does the most damage both it
and the crossbow are
lethal to the unprotected.
So if it wasn't killing
power some other factor
must have dealt the final
blow to the crossbow.
the answer lies in the
soldiers themselves.
- This is a little more effective.
- [Narrator] like a
recruit of the 15th century
Corey Keeble is not a trained warrior.
(whooshes)
- Well yes, I think we hit the shed.
(laughs)
What a wonderful feeling.
- [Andre] Just reach around and.
- [Narrator] He misses with
the crossbow but with the fire arm.
(gun fires)
(cheers)
- [Andre] Hey look at that.
- [Chris] There you go.
(cheers)
- [Andre] There's one melon that's
not gonna live to see
another day all right.
- Thank you so much.
(laughing)
- One melon that's not gonna lose a day.
- Well what I found absolutely fascinating
was it is often said that
you can just take any shmuck
and train him to use a musket.
(laughs)
- [Narrator] And that's why the gun
became the weapon of choice,
the shmuck factor could
make killers out of anybody.
(gun fires)
(splashing)
Next sometimes museum secrets
are whispered to us from beyond the grave.
You just have to know how to listen.
(dramatic chord)
(dramatic music)
Be patent, be persistent
and one by one the museum
will reveal it's mysteries.
But some can't be solved with logic.
Like the mystery of the Sioux headdress.
- You know the difficulty
with this headdress
and it's case is that it has an X number
which tells me that all documentation
if there was any has been lost.
- [Narrator] The dreaded X number.
That means no providence,
no rational way of
telling it's real story.
All curator Arnie
Brownstone knows for sure
is that it's a Sioux headdress
form the late 19th century.
But he wants to know if it belonged
to the greatest Sioux chief of them all,
the warrior Sitting Bull.
In 1875 he lead the Sioux
and Cheyenne from their reservations
to battle settlers who were moving
and growing numbers into their
sacred lands in the Black Hills.
The army sent colonel George Custer
and the seventh calvary
to force Sitting Bull
and his people to return
to their reservations.
On June 25, 1876 Custer lead his men
in an attack on the Sioux.
The Sioux warriors overwhelmed
the calvary with a hail
of gunfire and arrows.
In less than an hour Custer
and all of his men were killed.
The only survivor was one
of the cavalry's horses.
A shocked nation demanded retribution.
Now a wanted man Sitting Bull
lead his men south to safety in Canada.
- They had a connection with
Canada dating back to 1812
when they fought with the
Canadians against the Americans
they were told that if
they were ever in need
of help from the crown
that they would have it.
- [Narrator] The US demanded
their return and Canada compromised.
Sitting Bull could stay
but there'd be no food or other support
for him and his people.
- The governments policy
would be to starve them out.
- [Narrator] James Walsh of the North West
mounted police sent to watch
over the Sioux became a
friend of Sitting Bull.
- Major Walsh kinda understood
that Sitting Bull wasn't the kind of beast
that they were portraying
him as in America.
So he kinda got to understand
him, got to know him
so he really did his best to
try to keep him in Canada.
- [Narrator] But Walsh didn't succeed.
Sitting Bull had no choice
but to lead his starving people back
to their reservations
in the United States.
Before leaving he gave his friend Walsh
his most precious possession.
His headdress.
But was it this headdress?
Nobody knows for sure.
Arnie is going to try something different.
Hoping to get closer to revealing
the secret with help from Ernie LaPointe.
Sitting Bull's last living descendant.
- I think that his genes or that his DNA
whatever you wanna say is in me
and I have that certain
special understanding,
or recognizing things that are his.
- [Narrator] Ernie never
knew his great grandfather
and he's never seen the headdress.
But he'll try to bring the two together
by invoking the Sioux belief
that the spirit of the dead
can be felt in things that
once belonged to them.
- [Arnie] Hi.
- Hey Arnie, how ya doing there?
- Good how are you?
- Good.
- [Arnie] Here we are, finally.
- Yeah finally I'm looking at this.
I rub my hand over it real slowly
and I can feel the energy come out of it.
If it doesn't belong to my grandfather,
I don't feel nothing.
It's like just nothing
and when I ran my hand over
this headdress I can feel the heat.
You can feel the energy.
- You can?
- I can yeah.
- Yeah.
- You don't have to touch it,
you know it's just about
that far it's really warm.
Here, feel my hand.
- Yeah.
- It emits this heat
and it really is an honor to see this
and feel it because it really
was on his head one time.
- Yeah?
- I can feel it as time.
- How he perceived that
headdress through his sight,
how he perceives the whole
context of our museum
and the way that we are
treating these object,
all of these things may have come together
and given him a complete sense,
a gut feeling that this object
is what it's reputed to be.
- [Ernie] Maybe Major really
wanted it preserved like this.
- [Arnie] Mm hm.
- [Ernie] Because it
was gift from a friend
and maybe they're friends in
the spirit world yet you know?
Who knows.
- Maybe.
- Yeah, maybe Sitting Bull
welcomed him in the spirit world.
(chuckles)
- [Narrator] Next a museum secret
that takes us on a walk through time.
With mans best friend.
(dramatic chord)
The museum galleries
bring the past to life.
But down here in the dark corners
of the museums zoology department
it's a graveyard.
Rare and exotic creatures through the ages
long dead are now stuffed and mounted.
And here rubbing shoulder with them
is Bungie the British bulldog.
In his day he was a canine celebrity.
- [Announcer] It's not all beer
and kibbles being a top dog.
They had to be spruced up like film stars.
But these animals are big business.
In exports they earn a yearly
total of half a million pounds.
- [Narrator] Curator Mark
Engstrom knows Bungie well.
- He may have been the most
famous dog period in the 1930s.
He'd won all the champions,
he'd won a large show in England
where there were 4,000 other
bulldogs competing against him,
he was the champion on show.
- [Narrator] The champ came to Canada
in the summer of 1936 to
compete in a Toronto dog show.
Big mistake.
- Unfortunately there was a
heatwave in Toronto one evening
and Bungie died of heatstroke despite
heroic efforts to try to save him.
- [Narrator] A champion
bulldog, symbol of tenacity
and strength done in by a hot summers day?
How could this be?
It's a museum secret but there are clues
in the turbulent history of the breed.
The bulldog of the 1800s was
taller with a longer face.
They got the name because
they were originally bred to bait bulls.
Butchers believed bulls
produced more tender meat
if they were frightened when slaughtered.
So bull baiting became a blood sport.
Bulldogs were bred for short legs
so a bull couldn't pick
it up and throw it.
And a short upper jaw so the dogs
could clamp onto the bulls snout
and bring them down through suffocation.
When bull baiting was outlawed aggressive
bulldogs made way for
more cuddly creatures.
Breeders again transformed the bulldog,
producing a gentler animal
with the familiar face
that wins hearts and championships.
To show how much the
breed has changed Mark
compares Bungie with the bulldog of today.
- In the last 70 years
actually the face of your dogs
been rotated up a bit but that's just
because the face is a bit shorter
and so the nostrils are actually pointing
up a bit more relative to this dog.
- Why do you think the dog can
change so much in 70 years?
- Through intense selective breeding.
It's like natural selection
but it's called artificial selection.
Well I don't think nature
plays a role in it at all.
It's interesting because
the traits that you see in
specific breeds are really
and wholly and artificial
construct produced by humans.
- [Narrator] Bulldogs are
notorious for their bad health.
Skin problems, eye
problems, poor digestion,
weak hips, and short lives.
Most don't make it past the age of eight.
It's the bulldogs distinctive pushed
in face that poses the greatest threat.
Over the decades the
face had become flatter
leaving the dog with a short airway.
On hot days the air they
breath has less time to cool
making them susceptible to over heating,
heat stroke, and death.
So a Toronto heat wave was
all it took to bring down
the curtain on Bungie the British bulldog.
But things are looking better
for the bulldogs of tomorrow.
- The American Kennel club
has been very interested
in our collection because
they can actually monitor
the changes that have occurred
in dog breeds overtime.
In the case of the bulldog
which has been bred
to the point where ts
almost an impractical dog
they actually are now
interested in bringing
it back to a more, it's past form
when it was actually a
healthier dog to begin with.
- [Narrator] Bungie is a story
from the past that's changing the future.
Many more wonders lie here
in these halls and galleries.
Asking us to see beyond the glass.
Challenging us to take
a second, closer look.
And if we're patient
or just lucky discover
another extraordinary museum secret.
(dramatic music)
(dramatic chord)
of the past and the future
and at it's heart a museum
with secrets dark and strange.
Tales of mummified
babies, brutal massacres,
forgotten weapons of war,
and a disappearing dinosaur.
Secrets hidden in plain sight
inside the Royal Ontario Museum.
(dramatic music)
(dramatic music)
It's an eye popping Canadian landmark.
A national treasure chest
and a place of mystery.
This is the Royal Ontario
Museum in Toronto.
The ROM.
For every object on display thousands more
lie hidden in backrooms
far from public view.
Enter the hall of ancient Egypt
and the hairs stand up
on the back of your neck.
You feel the presence of the ghosts.
How did they live, and how did they die?
If only the mummies could speak.
In a darkened room deep below
the public galleries it's as if they do.
- Here you can all the bone.
- [Narrator] Down here they
seem to whisper their stories
to epileptologist Gail Gibson
and bioarcheologist Andrew Nelson.
Telling them they weren't
all pharaohs and princes.
- People often think that
mummies were only elite people,
that they were only the rich
could afford mummification.
That's not quite true.
In fact people would try to do
their best for their friends
and relatives at whatever
social level they were.
I think it's nice to find out what life
is really like for ordinary
people in the past,
there were a lot more of us
than there were of kings and queens.
- [Narrator] Pharaoh or farmer there
is one kind of mummy
no one expects to see.
Babies.
Everything about these
tiny bundles in a mystery.
- Alas we have no idea how
these two baby mummies arrived at the ROM
they could have been
given to us by someone,
they could have been found
in somebodies basement.
I suspect they came back
as part of a cabinet of curiosities.
People could bring them back almost
as souvenirs in the 1820s, 30s, 40s, 50s.
It was the thing to
do, it was fashionable.
My friend bought a mummy,
I'll buy a mummy as well.
- [Narrator] It was a mummy craze.
At it's peak more than
a century ago collectors
would display newly acquired
mummies in their homes
and invite friends to
ghoulish unwrapping parties.
(eerie music)
Today archeologists and
egyptologists show more respect
when probing the secrets
of the ancient dead.
Especially the mummies of children.
- I Think we need to care
because this is a human baby.
I think it's a question of human sympathy,
I think it's a question of trying
to understand what it is to be human.
These are us at another time period.
- [Narrator] Using the tools
of modern forensic archeology Andrew
and Gail hope to learn
more about these children.
The mummified remains of infant number one
are in poor condition.
Andrew suspects the tiny body
was pulled apart during a grave robbery.
- My bet would be that that's
a quick grab out of the tomb.
- Astonishing.
- [Narrator] Infant number two appears
to be in better shape.
- [Andrew] We can use the calcification
of teeth to establish the
age of this individual.
This ones about nine months old.
- [Narrator] But Andrew sees
something else on the scan
something strange that shouldn't be there.
- Do you see this?
This is something long and rectangular
that is not bone all right,
that does not belong there.
And it goes right,
it's been jammed into the thoracic cavity
and right up into the cranial base.
- [Narrator] At first glance
it suggests the child met a violent end.
Killing unwanted children was accepted
practice in many ancient societies.
(gentle music)
(babies crying)
But not in Egypt.
- The ancient Egyptians realized
how vulnerable babies were
and they were most
anxious to protect mothers
and babies in anyway they could.
Their world was full
of dangers, ours is to.
We call those dangers germs
and viruses, and diseases.
They call them evil spirits,
they call them the evil eye.
- [Narrator] To protect children
and mothers ancient
Egyptians carried amulets.
Charms against the forces of darkness.
- For and ancient Egyptian
if your baby could have
something like this in his cradle
or a mother could be wearing some of
these around her neck
that gave them a little
bit of extra confidence.
- [Narrator] Even after
death parents took steps
to ensure the gods would
protect their children.
This is evident on the shroud
in which the first infant was wrapped.
- [Andrew] So what am I
looking at, tell me about this.
- It's a really nice little thing,
these people couldn't
afford anything fancy.
- Right.
- So this maybe has a
little bit of folk art
and you can see this is very,
very rough woven piece of linen.
- [Andrew] Right, what?
- [Gail] There is the child himself.
- [Andrew] Okay.
- [Gail] Shown as a mummy.
- [Andrew] Right.
- [Gail] And this is the God Anubis.
- [Andrew] Okay.
- Behind him and this is probably
one of his parents making offerings,
giving him pure water and food
and this is the goddess Isis one of
the most important goddesses
and even she is mourning for
the loss of this little baby.
So this is a nice little image
of the baby now safe
in the arms of the God.
- [Narrator] If the
Egyptians took such great
care to preserve the bodies
of their children why does this infant
have a stake in it's skull?
Andrew doesn't suspect foul play.
He believes it was inserted
after the child died.
- And they used this piece
of wood to make the head stay
in the proper relationship
with the rest of the body.
So that's really interesting to see that.
- [Narrator] The wood
kept the body in tact
during the mummification process.
Making it a final loving act
by grief stricken parents.
So what really killed the child?
Can the secret be revealed?
- [Andrew] Whatever it was that killed him
was probably something acute,
something from drinking
bad water, or some E. coli
from infected meat or some infected fruit.
There was some
superalimentation of goat milk
and honey after about six months.
So if the goats milk
was carrying infection
that may well have been the sort
of thing that would do them in quickly.
- Oh my poor little fellow.
- [Narrator] The verdict,
these tiny mummies may
have been loved to death.
Killed not my violence
or neglect but by milk
and honey fed to them by
caring, affectionate parents.
Next a medieval mystery
solved with a bang.
(booms)
(dramatic chord)
A museums treasures seem all
the more special when
they're one of a kind.
But hidden away at the
Royal Ontario Museum
are tens of thousands of treasures.
Most of them are precisely
measured and cataloged.
But some objects and their
purpose remain a secret.
- So these objects are
one of the mysteries
of archeology the middle
east in the medieval period.
They're found in archeological
sight in Egypt, Syria,
and Iran from about the
12th or the 13th century.
- [Narrator] Experts at
the world greatest museums
don't know what to make
of the mystery objects.
They're another museum secret.
- [Rob] This was not
just an ordinary vessel,
it was made for some enigmatic purpose
that we just do not really
know at this moment.
- [Narrator] Rob Mason hopes
to find out once and for all.
- Now to do that it
would be in appropriate
to go messing around with
an 800 year old artifact
like this so what we've done
is made replicas of them.
There are two hypothesis we can test,
one it was used as the
base of a water pipe,
an (speaking foreign language)
used for smoking probably
hashish at the time.
- [Narrator] It's a theory to be tested
not at the museum but
here at the Hot Box Cafe
and Roach Rama.
- So I was thinking given
your expertise could
you see how this could
work for a smoking purpose
but I would rather you use
not one made in about 12,
but the one made last week.
(water splashing)
(water bubbling)
- [Narrator] So is it an ancient bong?
It seems to work but Rob's not convinced.
- I still have one
major problem with that.
How comfortable is that in your hand?
- Not terribly, it's a little bit heavy.
- [Rob] It's rather heavy isn't it?
- [Man] Yeah.
- [Rob] When we see these illustrated
they were having relatively light vessels
like this so if you
can have a light vessel
why would you have such a heavy vessel?
And so I think there's possibly
a more likely hypothesis.
Which I'd now like to test.
- [Narrator] This test
needs plenty of open space
because Rob thinks the objects
are designed to explode.
- One of the interesting
things about these is
when we find them they tend
to be whole or really broken.
This looks like the impact
came from the inside.
(booms)
There's no doubt that in the 12th
and 13th century they knew of
the component materials of
black powder or gun powder.
And really there's no reason to assume
it was not known in the middle east.
And many people have
said oh it's decorated
so there for it can't be a bomb.
I spoke to ammunition's expert
about whether these might be hand grenades
and before I'd even
mentioned the decoration
he said are there Amy lines incised
in it and so we was saying
like a modern hand
grenade this will enable
it to break into small
pieces for shrapnel.
- [Narrator] If the
mystery object is a grenade
it should explode into blast patterns
roughly matching those on the fragments.
So Robs going to blow
up one of his replicas
and do some post explosion detective work.
- Another thing we'll try we'll see
the effect on a watermelon.
- All right so we've got a victim.
- Our victim.
So this will show what the
effects of the shrapnel
would be on an innocent bystander
or not so innocent bystander.
- [Jeff] So this will be
you're guys safe distance here.
Ready to light, let it go.
- [Rob] Go let it go.
(suspenseful music)
- [Jeff] Kay, lighting.
(suspenseful music)
(booms)
- Well one of those watermelons
is definitely regretting
the day it was purchased by this group.
- Yeah well that's for sure.
And it was a nice orange,
kinda fiery flash.
(booms)
Had quite the range.
- [Rob] Look at that watermelon.
(laughs)
- [Jeff] And you've got some big chunks.
- Watermelon blood all over it.
- What's amazing is there's
actually a piece of shrapnel
that was a few feet away
that actually has bits
of watermelon on it.
- [Rob] Nasty.
See if that were a human being
that would have been covered with blood.
- [Jeff] Yeah.
- And these other pieces would
have been embedded in him.
- Definitely was designed to kill.
- Imagine with tightly packed men
as well, they're besieging a fortress
or something like that and
you just drop it amongst the
and that explosion in tightly
packed men must have been
completely devastating.
- Oh yeah.
- Id have to say this experiments
actually been really quite conclusive.
If you look at the ones
we blew up you can see
how the pressures come from
inside and spored outwards.
(booms)
And when we look at the old one,
this one which has been broken apart
you can see it's broken outwards.
So this was a bomb.
- [Narrator] The mystery is solved,
the secret revealed
with a satisfying bang.
(booms)
(dramatic music)
Next a museum secret that
is the ultimate skeleton in the closet
(eerie music)
(dramatic chord)
the dinosaur gallery.
When it comes to the stars
of this show size matters.
Here monsters from more than 150,000,000
years ago come in three sizes.
Big, bigger, and humongous.
(roars)
You wouldn't think any museum could
ever lose a dinosaur but the
Royal Ontario Museum did.
One of the biggest was
here and then it was gone.
What happened?
It's the summer of 2007.
The museum is close to completing
a quarter billion dollar
transformation called the crystal.
(dramatic music)
The buildings main attraction
will be the new dinosaur gallery.
But just ten weeks from the
grand opening it's empty.
Curator David Evens is assigned
the task of filling it.
- They wanted a real show stopping piece.
We didn't have one of these
giant dinosaurs called sauropods
and it was clear that's
what we needed to anchor the exhibit.
- [Narrator] sauropods are among
the most gigantic creatures
ever to walk the earth.
100 metric ton vegetarian monsters more
than 30 meters long
from tail to tiny head.
150,000,000 years ago they roamed
what is now western North America.
With the clock ticking David boards
a flight to Wyoming's bad lands.
A well known dinosaur dig sight
and his best shot at
finding a sauropod skeleton.
He finds one before he lands.
- I happened to pick up
a very recent publication
by renowned sauropod
expert Jack Macintosh.
- [Narrator] A few pages
in David's jaw drops.
Macintosh describes an
almost complete sauropod
skeleton that was given
to the ROM in 1962.
there's even a specimen number, ROM 3670.
- And as soon as I realize that,
as soon as I saw that number
I just wanted to turn the
plane around right there.
- [Narrator] David rushes
back to the museum.
Could it be true?
Could there really have been
a sauropod here all this time?
- And I started pulling
an end of an arm bone
out of a drawer, 30 feet away another end
of an arm bone and realized hey these are
both from the same side,
they're both from the same bone.
Maybe they go together.
And sure enough I put the two together
and they fit perfectly
like a jigsaw puzzle.
And over the course of about an hour
I'd assembled over half
the major limb bones.
At that point I was
getting pretty excited.
- [Narrator] David suspects
this is the skeleton of
the sauropod diplodocus.
It's a huge find.
The bones in the museum for more
than 40 years were scattered during
various moves of the ROM's collections.
Will these pieces fit together
into a complete skeleton?
And if they do will the
go together in time?
It's a job for Peter May
and his display team.
He's racing the clock,
the new galleries will
open in just eight weeks.
- Well we picked the false
material up after all.
It was in probably ten drawers.
And I'd say 2,500 pieces.
We sort of went from a custom work
process into a full scale assembly line.
Where we have the forging
going on, the armatures,
we had other people doing the welding,
we had the grinding going on
so one person was involved with
every aspect of the armature,
we had a gang working on it.
- [Narrator] As the skeleton takes shape
David realizes these are not the bones
of a sauropod diplodiocus
as he first thought.
But something better
than that, much better.
This is a barosaurus, one of
the rarest of all dinosaurs.
- Barosaurus is known
form only a few specimens
and most of them are really scrappy.
There's about five
specimens that are known
and it turns out that the ROM specimen
that we had right here under our noses
for so long turns out to be the second
most complete specimen of
a barosaurus ever found.
- [Narrator] But even so only 40 percent
of the skeleton has been found.
For the other 60 percent
they improvise with casts.
- If we made an educated
guess based on parts
of the skeleton that we do have
and filled in the missing
bits with barosaurus
closets known relative
which is diplodocus.
One of the major part that
is missing is the head.
A head of barosaurus has never been found.
And so on our mounted
skeleton we have a diplodocus
skull as a stand in for the
unknown skull of barosaurus.
- [Narrator] David now has
a crucial decision to make.
- How the necks were
oriented is still a mystery.
And it's argued about with
quite fervent in paleontology.
- [Narrator] Else where at
other museums the barosaurus
is posed with it's head
held dramatically high.
But David suspects that even
the mightiest dinosaur heart
couldn't pump blood
ten meters straight up.
And so in the final hours before
the Crystal opens David poses
his barosaurus with it's
neck stretched horizontally.
- I'd say if Guinness had a world record
for mounting dinosaurs
that would have been it.
- [Narrator] The new gallery draws
one of the biggest crowds
in the museums history.
With the magnificent barosaurus
at the center of it all.
And David is still finding
this dinosaurs bones
in the basement rooms of the ROM.
- It just keeps coming
out of the wood work
you know it seems like
a never ends dinosaur.
- If you find that skull in there.
- That would be a real find.
- [Narrator] The ROMs barosaurus may yet
turn out to be the most
complete specimen in the world.
(roars)
Coming up we take our best shot
at revealing a secret
from the middle ages.
(suspenseful music)
(booms)
(dramatic chord)
(dramatic music)
The medieval galleries of
the Royal Ontario Museum
in Toronto bristle with weapons of war.
Objects both beautiful and deadly.
In the middle ages the
weapon you brought to battle
could mean the difference
between glorious victory
or bloody defeat.
What was the one you could count
on to do the job every time?
(laughs)
- Good question the crossbow,
certainly the European crossbow.
- [Narrator] Curator Corey Keeble
is a specialist in arms and armor.
- One of the fascinating
things about the crossbow
is it's, it was ubiquitous,
it was used everywhere.
There was hardly a castle,
there was hardly a town,
a city, anywhere in Europe that did
not have an arsenal or an
armory filled with crossbows.
- [Narrator] By the
end of the 15th century
the crossbow was the last
word in high tech weaponry.
Hands down the most
important killing device
on the battle fields of Europe.
But it's days were numbered.
Within just a few years the
crossbow all but disappeared.
Replaced my a lethal new weapon.
The gun.
Today it seems obvious that the fire arm
would replace the bow, changing
the face of war forever.
But 500 years ago when
they were new and unproven
why were warriors so quick
to throw down their crossbows
and pick up fire arms?
- [Corey] This is a match lock mechanism.
- [Narrator] Corey is going to unravel
this museum secret on a firing range.
Marksmen Andre Reed is ready with a gun.
(gun fires)
All we need now is a crossbow.
Like the one kept under wraps
by ROM conservator Susan Stock.
- This is really exciting,
it's like opening a bottle
of vintage champagne
only I think it's a little bit better.
(chuckles)
Let's put it this way, no
vintage champagne is this old.
It was bought in 1909 so
it's one of the earliest
acquisitions in our European
arms and armor collection.
- [Narrator] It's from
the late 15th century
and among the last used in
battle before firearms took over.
Making it ideal for Corey's test.
The plan is to recreate this crossbow.
That means finding out how it was made.
- It's never been X-rayed
and it would really
be great if we could
get an x-ray of the side
so that we could actually
see the inside workings
with the trigger mechanism here
and also if we could x-ray
and somewhere cranequin.
- [Woman] So you stabilize that.
- [Corey] Oh whoa.
- [Woman] The level of detail.
- The level of detail is just amazing.
- [Narrator] And there
it is, plain as day.
The inner working of the cranequin.
It's a kind of winch allowing the archer
to draw the bow stings
smoothly and easily.
Without it he'd need to pull back
the equivalent of 158 kilograms
of weight to load the bow.
The cranequin reduces that weight
to three and a half kilograms.
- Who would have imagined
that after 530 odd years
somebody would actually see the inside
of a gearbox that has
never been analyzed before?
- [Narrator] Corey's next step
a visit with weapons
builder Chris Waralow.
- This is the only way practically
that you can get any kind of comparison
with the actual power of a real crossbow.
- Yes, yes.
- It's as simple as that.
- I am looking forward to this project
cause I have never built a crossbow
that is as powerful as this one will be.
- [Corey] Oh really?
- [Chris] So I'm looking
forward to the challenge.
- The real principle is to follow
the basic methodology as it were,
the actual spanning of a bow,
the functioning of a bow
and if we make a few adjustments in terms
of the third millennium
then we shouldn't be doing too badly.
It's the principal of
the thing as they say.
- Exactly, exactly.
- Okay great.
(dramatic music)
- [Chris] Good morning gentlemen.
- [Corey] Whoa good morning,
this is absolutely fabulous.
- Excellent, I'm glad you approve.
- Oh very much so.
The bow is wonderful, and
it's nice to see the bridle,
all of this is, it's as good
as a 15th century original.
- [Chris] I did my best.
- What about the bolts?
- The bolts.
- Do you want me to hold it.
- Please sir.
- The bolts are period as well,
they're made out of hard wood with.
- Oh my gosh you know we
actually have some 16th century
originals in the museum
and these are as close to the originals
as anything that I could possibly imagine.
This is again, this is what
makes an exercise like this fun.
If it's not fun it's not
worth doing, this is a treat.
- [Chris] I am very much looking forward
to see weather to not this crossbow
will put that bolt
through our suit of armor.
- [Narrator] 500 years
ago the battle field
was dominated by armored knights
on horseback defending
heavily fortified castles.
But in the late 15th century gun powder
came to the battle fields of
Europe and everything changed.
Canons destroyed castle walls
and could kill several
armored men at once.
Warfare rapidly changed from the realm
of the armored few to formations
of unarmored thousands.
And the well armed infantry
became the dominant force
on the battle field.
As armies grew in size so
did the need to arm more
and more men.
Some historians speculate that cost
may have been a factor in
the rise of the fire arm.
- By the 1400s, late 1400s early 1500s
we find that fire arms have developed
to the degree where they are
useful as weapons of war.
They're cheap and easy to make.
(gun clicks)
- [Narrator] But Corey cost
alone brought down the crossbow.
He suspects the secret will be revealed
by comparing two important
aspects of any weapon.
Rate of fire, and killing power.
- I'll demonstrate loading this
and we'll see weather we can
send an arrow down range.
- Oh whoa.
- Crank it back.
- [Narrator] Chris uses a
windlass instead of a cranequin.
A safer option when building replicas.
Otherwise this bow is a match
to the original and will perform the same.
- [Chris] Back off the windlass a bit.
- Using a crossbow in war
would be a very tense,
very dramatic action.
- [Chris] Make certain
the crossbow bolt is set
right up against the string
otherwise it will miss fire.
Nestle up against the
shoulder, point, and shoot.
- [Narrator] The time to
load, aim, and fire 57 second.
- This is a matchlock smoothbore.
It's a mussel loader.
- [Narrator] Andre's musket if from the
same period as the crossbow.
- You load down the powder.
This is 69 caliber ball,
lead ball with a cloth patch.
(bangs)
You drive the ball home.
Use a priming powder to load the pen.
Close the safety, now you
introduce the ignition source.
- In battle would have you
scared out of your wits,
how fast could you load without panicking
and running for your life?
- Open the safety and we're ready to go.
(gun fires)
- [Narrator] The time to load,
aim and fire the gun 54 seconds.
- [Andre] Took the top off, we did it.
- [Narrator] So the gun doesn't
have a significant advantage over the bow.
Next a test of fire power against armor.
(clicks)
(whooshes)
(tings)
- Whoa, amazing.
(grin fires)
(tings)
- [Narrator] The verdict?
Both do some damage, it's a draw.
- [Corey] This is better than getting
this stuff out of books isn't it?
- [Narrator] As fewer and fewer knights
appeared on the battle field
the ability to pierce armor
became less important.
So the next test will be
on the unprotected solider.
- [Man] That's the
consistency of a human head.
(clicks)
(whooshes)
(cheers)
(gun fires)
(splashing)
(chuckling)
- Unbelievable, absolutely fantastic.
- [Narrator] While the gun
does the most damage both it
and the crossbow are
lethal to the unprotected.
So if it wasn't killing
power some other factor
must have dealt the final
blow to the crossbow.
the answer lies in the
soldiers themselves.
- This is a little more effective.
- [Narrator] like a
recruit of the 15th century
Corey Keeble is not a trained warrior.
(whooshes)
- Well yes, I think we hit the shed.
(laughs)
What a wonderful feeling.
- [Andre] Just reach around and.
- [Narrator] He misses with
the crossbow but with the fire arm.
(gun fires)
(cheers)
- [Andre] Hey look at that.
- [Chris] There you go.
(cheers)
- [Andre] There's one melon that's
not gonna live to see
another day all right.
- Thank you so much.
(laughing)
- One melon that's not gonna lose a day.
- Well what I found absolutely fascinating
was it is often said that
you can just take any shmuck
and train him to use a musket.
(laughs)
- [Narrator] And that's why the gun
became the weapon of choice,
the shmuck factor could
make killers out of anybody.
(gun fires)
(splashing)
Next sometimes museum secrets
are whispered to us from beyond the grave.
You just have to know how to listen.
(dramatic chord)
(dramatic music)
Be patent, be persistent
and one by one the museum
will reveal it's mysteries.
But some can't be solved with logic.
Like the mystery of the Sioux headdress.
- You know the difficulty
with this headdress
and it's case is that it has an X number
which tells me that all documentation
if there was any has been lost.
- [Narrator] The dreaded X number.
That means no providence,
no rational way of
telling it's real story.
All curator Arnie
Brownstone knows for sure
is that it's a Sioux headdress
form the late 19th century.
But he wants to know if it belonged
to the greatest Sioux chief of them all,
the warrior Sitting Bull.
In 1875 he lead the Sioux
and Cheyenne from their reservations
to battle settlers who were moving
and growing numbers into their
sacred lands in the Black Hills.
The army sent colonel George Custer
and the seventh calvary
to force Sitting Bull
and his people to return
to their reservations.
On June 25, 1876 Custer lead his men
in an attack on the Sioux.
The Sioux warriors overwhelmed
the calvary with a hail
of gunfire and arrows.
In less than an hour Custer
and all of his men were killed.
The only survivor was one
of the cavalry's horses.
A shocked nation demanded retribution.
Now a wanted man Sitting Bull
lead his men south to safety in Canada.
- They had a connection with
Canada dating back to 1812
when they fought with the
Canadians against the Americans
they were told that if
they were ever in need
of help from the crown
that they would have it.
- [Narrator] The US demanded
their return and Canada compromised.
Sitting Bull could stay
but there'd be no food or other support
for him and his people.
- The governments policy
would be to starve them out.
- [Narrator] James Walsh of the North West
mounted police sent to watch
over the Sioux became a
friend of Sitting Bull.
- Major Walsh kinda understood
that Sitting Bull wasn't the kind of beast
that they were portraying
him as in America.
So he kinda got to understand
him, got to know him
so he really did his best to
try to keep him in Canada.
- [Narrator] But Walsh didn't succeed.
Sitting Bull had no choice
but to lead his starving people back
to their reservations
in the United States.
Before leaving he gave his friend Walsh
his most precious possession.
His headdress.
But was it this headdress?
Nobody knows for sure.
Arnie is going to try something different.
Hoping to get closer to revealing
the secret with help from Ernie LaPointe.
Sitting Bull's last living descendant.
- I think that his genes or that his DNA
whatever you wanna say is in me
and I have that certain
special understanding,
or recognizing things that are his.
- [Narrator] Ernie never
knew his great grandfather
and he's never seen the headdress.
But he'll try to bring the two together
by invoking the Sioux belief
that the spirit of the dead
can be felt in things that
once belonged to them.
- [Arnie] Hi.
- Hey Arnie, how ya doing there?
- Good how are you?
- Good.
- [Arnie] Here we are, finally.
- Yeah finally I'm looking at this.
I rub my hand over it real slowly
and I can feel the energy come out of it.
If it doesn't belong to my grandfather,
I don't feel nothing.
It's like just nothing
and when I ran my hand over
this headdress I can feel the heat.
You can feel the energy.
- You can?
- I can yeah.
- Yeah.
- You don't have to touch it,
you know it's just about
that far it's really warm.
Here, feel my hand.
- Yeah.
- It emits this heat
and it really is an honor to see this
and feel it because it really
was on his head one time.
- Yeah?
- I can feel it as time.
- How he perceived that
headdress through his sight,
how he perceives the whole
context of our museum
and the way that we are
treating these object,
all of these things may have come together
and given him a complete sense,
a gut feeling that this object
is what it's reputed to be.
- [Ernie] Maybe Major really
wanted it preserved like this.
- [Arnie] Mm hm.
- [Ernie] Because it
was gift from a friend
and maybe they're friends in
the spirit world yet you know?
Who knows.
- Maybe.
- Yeah, maybe Sitting Bull
welcomed him in the spirit world.
(chuckles)
- [Narrator] Next a museum secret
that takes us on a walk through time.
With mans best friend.
(dramatic chord)
The museum galleries
bring the past to life.
But down here in the dark corners
of the museums zoology department
it's a graveyard.
Rare and exotic creatures through the ages
long dead are now stuffed and mounted.
And here rubbing shoulder with them
is Bungie the British bulldog.
In his day he was a canine celebrity.
- [Announcer] It's not all beer
and kibbles being a top dog.
They had to be spruced up like film stars.
But these animals are big business.
In exports they earn a yearly
total of half a million pounds.
- [Narrator] Curator Mark
Engstrom knows Bungie well.
- He may have been the most
famous dog period in the 1930s.
He'd won all the champions,
he'd won a large show in England
where there were 4,000 other
bulldogs competing against him,
he was the champion on show.
- [Narrator] The champ came to Canada
in the summer of 1936 to
compete in a Toronto dog show.
Big mistake.
- Unfortunately there was a
heatwave in Toronto one evening
and Bungie died of heatstroke despite
heroic efforts to try to save him.
- [Narrator] A champion
bulldog, symbol of tenacity
and strength done in by a hot summers day?
How could this be?
It's a museum secret but there are clues
in the turbulent history of the breed.
The bulldog of the 1800s was
taller with a longer face.
They got the name because
they were originally bred to bait bulls.
Butchers believed bulls
produced more tender meat
if they were frightened when slaughtered.
So bull baiting became a blood sport.
Bulldogs were bred for short legs
so a bull couldn't pick
it up and throw it.
And a short upper jaw so the dogs
could clamp onto the bulls snout
and bring them down through suffocation.
When bull baiting was outlawed aggressive
bulldogs made way for
more cuddly creatures.
Breeders again transformed the bulldog,
producing a gentler animal
with the familiar face
that wins hearts and championships.
To show how much the
breed has changed Mark
compares Bungie with the bulldog of today.
- In the last 70 years
actually the face of your dogs
been rotated up a bit but that's just
because the face is a bit shorter
and so the nostrils are actually pointing
up a bit more relative to this dog.
- Why do you think the dog can
change so much in 70 years?
- Through intense selective breeding.
It's like natural selection
but it's called artificial selection.
Well I don't think nature
plays a role in it at all.
It's interesting because
the traits that you see in
specific breeds are really
and wholly and artificial
construct produced by humans.
- [Narrator] Bulldogs are
notorious for their bad health.
Skin problems, eye
problems, poor digestion,
weak hips, and short lives.
Most don't make it past the age of eight.
It's the bulldogs distinctive pushed
in face that poses the greatest threat.
Over the decades the
face had become flatter
leaving the dog with a short airway.
On hot days the air they
breath has less time to cool
making them susceptible to over heating,
heat stroke, and death.
So a Toronto heat wave was
all it took to bring down
the curtain on Bungie the British bulldog.
But things are looking better
for the bulldogs of tomorrow.
- The American Kennel club
has been very interested
in our collection because
they can actually monitor
the changes that have occurred
in dog breeds overtime.
In the case of the bulldog
which has been bred
to the point where ts
almost an impractical dog
they actually are now
interested in bringing
it back to a more, it's past form
when it was actually a
healthier dog to begin with.
- [Narrator] Bungie is a story
from the past that's changing the future.
Many more wonders lie here
in these halls and galleries.
Asking us to see beyond the glass.
Challenging us to take
a second, closer look.
And if we're patient
or just lucky discover
another extraordinary museum secret.
(dramatic music)
(dramatic chord)