Strangest Things (2021–2022): Season 2, Episode 7 - The Jericho Head - full transcript

[narrator]
What is this misshapen
9,000-year-old clay head?

[Kevin MacDonald]
The recreation of
the features of the living

suggest this was part of
an ancestral cult.

[narrator] Can this bizarre
machine really harness
intergalactic energy?

[Sascha Auerbach] It could
repel an alien invasion

and improve your sex life.

[narrator]
What do the drawings
on this ancient tablet mean?

It's a map of the unknown.

[narrator] These are the most
remarkable and mysterious
objects on Earth,

hidden away in museums,

laboratories
and storage rooms.



Now, new research
and technology

can get under their skin

like never before.

We can rebuild them,

pull them apart

and zoom in
to reveal the unbelievable,

the ancient

and the truly bizarre.

These are the world's
strangest things.

In a corner of
the British Museum

sits a strange misshapen head.

It was discovered
nearly 70 years ago

in one of the world's
earliest cities.

When it was found,
it was quite unique.



No one really knew
what it was for

and no one expected
anything like this.

[narrator] Now this object
can be examined

in minute detail.

This is the Jericho Head.

[Kevin] The first thing that
draws you in are
its bright shell eyes.

And then you notice its
light brown plaster skin.

It's a haunting object.

[narrator] And there is
a reason it looks so haunting.

Under the plaster,

there is an actual,
real human skull.

[narrator] Why is a human head
treated this way?

How is it made?

And who is the person
beneath the plaster?

The ancient city of Jericho
lies in the Jordan Valley

in modern-day Palestine.

Jericho is famous to us,
for one, the bible of course,

the famous Walls of Jericho.

But, actually,
it's a very ancient place.

[narrator] One of the world's
earliest cities,

founded more than
11,000 years ago.

[Altaweel] Athens doesn't
exist for another 4,000 years.

Or if we're talking about
a place like London,

it doesn't exist for
another 7,000 years.

[narrator] According to
theOld Testament,

the Walls of Jericho
collapse

when the Israelites
blow their horns.

But in 1953,

pioneering archaeologist
Kathleen Kenyon and her team

discover that the oldest walls
of ancient Jericho

date back far beyond
biblical times.

[Kevin] We're looking at
an earlier walled settlement,

stretching back to around
10,000 years before present.

[narrator] In the ruins of
this earliest settlement,

they make an
extraordinary discovery.

[Kevin] This looked like
large cobble or boulder.

But as it was excavated
and emerged,

it became clear that
what they had

was a reconstituted
human head.

[narrator] A clay face has
been sculpted onto the skull.

[Altaweel] They see a large
hole where the nose is,

which presumably is
where a plastered nose
would have been.

There's dirt also coming out,

which the archaeologists
assumed was actually infill

after the skull had been
buried by surrounding dirt.

And there's also a large hole
in the back of the skull.

[narrator] It's unlike
anything the archaeologists
have ever seen.

It's a skull which long ago
was effectively
brought back to life

by the introduction of
shell and earth.

[narrator] This strange thing
is crafted by someone who died

5,000 years before
the pyramids were built.

Why do they rebuild a face
on a human skull?

The skull is sent to the
British Museum for analysis,

but 1950s technology
has limitations.

Early attempts to X-ray it
showed only a cloudy mass.

[narrator] One thing they can
see clearly

is the large hole
on the back of the skull.

It's assumed to be
burial damage.

It's not.

More than 60 years later,

it's finally revealed
how wrong that assumption is

when the British Museum
teams up with Imperial College

to apply the latest
CT scanning technology.

[Altaweel]
We see cutting marks at the
back of the head in this hole.

It's clear that somebody
had actually

deliberately cut out
this hole, uh,

away from the skull,
that it was carefully cut,

uh, not to damage
other areas of the skull.

[narrator] The interior of the
skull is packed with earth.

It was assumed to have
fallen in after burial.

But that turns out to be
just as wrong.

[Kevin] The scan showed that
the soil within the skull

had been carefully applied
layer by layer

to support the fragile
interior bone structures
of the skull.

[narrator]
We now understand how
this strange thing is made.

Someone painstakingly
cuts out a hole

and packs this skull
with soil.

They even leave behind
their finger marks,

still visible
10,000 years later.

Then, they create the face.

[Altaweel] Plastering the head
would have taken perhaps

some multiple applications
to get it quite right

and to mold the features,

particularly the nose that
would have likely been there.

But also the eyes.

We know they used shells
from the Mediterranean

that was about 60 miles
away from Jericho.

So, clearly,
they're importing materials.

So this is something
that they really cared for.

It's not something they just
made haphazardly.

They took some time
in shaping this

and putting in precious
objects into the skull.

[narrator] But who could be
important enough

to deserve so much effort
after death?

The skull beneath
the clay face reveals

this was
almost certainly a man

and even his age.

[Mark Benecke]
The older you get,

the more your bone parts
start to attach to each other.

So from that, you can deduce
how old a person was.

And in this case,

the person was probably around
40 to 50 years when he died.

[narrator]
And stripping back the dirt

shows that he suffers at least
one injury during his life.

[Kevin] Examining their nose
which is twisted to one side,

it was apparent that,
at one point in their life,

they had suffered from
a broken nose.

[narrator]
This skull tells the story of
a short hard life.

But it also reveals something
very, very strange.

[Benecke]
The head is unusually formed.

This form of the head
is not natural.

[narrator] The shape of
the skull is distorted.

And the thickness of
the bone varies
more than a normal skull.

Cranial distortion like this
cannot happen after death.

Somebody intentionally
changed the shape of
the head of the person

by binding it and
applying force to the head

so it's deformed.

[narrator] This can only be
performed on an infant.

To get a desired
deformation of the skull,

you have to do it very early,
you have to start very early,

one month after birth
until six months after birth,
approximately.

[narrator] Tightly-wrapped
bindings slowly squeeze
his soft infant skull.

When the bones fuse
at around two years,

his deformed head shape
is fixed forever.

This unusual practice is known
in a number of cultures.

[Kevin] Cranial deformation
has been practiced
in many different times

and places
throughout the world.

[Altaweel] The head is often
used as a way to make
someone more prominent,

to perhaps make him stick out.

So it is a kind of
cultural practice

to make an individual become
sort of distinct.

[narrator] This can be
a mark of tribal allegiance,

a sign of beauty

or elite social status.

Whatever it means to
the people of ancient Jericho,

it tells us this man is
special from birth.

Who is he?

[narrator]
More than 9,000 years ago,

someone carefully
and deliberately

created a clay face
on the skull of a dead man.

Modern facial
reconstruction techniques

finally allow us to stare
into his living face.

[Altaweel] So they're doing
effectively what the ancients
were trying to do

with regards to the skull,

which is recreate what
the face actually looked like,

but this time using
laser scans

and 3D printing to
create a face.

[narrator]
Modeling the missing lower jaw

on other ancient
Jericho skulls

muscle by muscle,

through layer upon layer
of tissue and skin,

the face of a man appears.

The process that begins
with clay and shells

nearly 10,000 years ago

is finally complete.

This is the face of
someone very important

to the people
of ancient Jericho.

And he is not alone.

More than 50 other decorated
skulls have now been found

across the region,

including ten from
Jericho alone.

This curation of
plastered skulls

was undertaken
much more widely

than was previously thought.

[narrator] And they all
share something in common.

There is no body.

[Altaweel] Keeping the skull,

not necessarily
the rest of the skeleton,

shows that the head had
a great importance,

which was treated in
a very venerated way

relative to the rest of
the skeleton.

[narrator]
Could this decorated skull
be part of a religion?

Some kind of skull cult?

[Altaweel]
Most of the skulls that
have been found in Jericho

were in places that were
prominent in display.

They're looking
the same direction.

They often are
near each other.

So they probably even
put down a kind of a shelf

or some kind of pedestal
to show them.

[narrator] It seems that
in ancient Jericho,

these decorated skulls
take pride of place,

keeping their shell eyes
on the living.

[Kevin]
Current interpretations
suggest that these skulls

brought back to life through
the addition of plaster

were part of a kind of
ancestral cult.

[narrator] But why do
the living of ancient Jericho

create a cult of
their dead ancestors

in their own homes?

The explanation may lie
in Jericho's most
famous innovation.

It is one of the world's
first cities.

[Altaweel]
This is a period of great
innovation for societies.

They began to use agriculture,

specifically domestication of
different plants and animals.

Some had decided
to settle into villages,

decided to live
for long periods of time

or even the entire year
in one specific site,

which was quite a novelty
in this period.

[narrator]
For the first time in history,

large numbers of people
call the same place home.

But this means finding
an entirely new way
to live with each other,

crowded in together behind
the city's 12-foot walls.

They need a way
to avoid conflicts

developing between that other
great invention of the city,

neighbors.

[Altaweel] When humans
begin to settle,

they have to create a range of
different cultural practices

that allow them to succeed
in this kind of lifestyle

of where they stay in
one place

for long periods of time.

[narrator]
Archaeologists suspect that

the cult of ancestors
this skull represents

acts as a kind of social glue,

connecting the citizens
to their past, to their home

and, most importantly,
to each other.

Innovating ancestors as a way
of associating ownership

and tying yourself to the land

becomes a kind of
cultural phenomenon

and reflects a kind of
practical understanding

that you need to
belong to the land

and you need to
take care of the land.

[narrator] This dead man helps
bind living people together

in a whole new way,

which makes this strange thing
incredibly important.

This decorated skull
may have been central

to the early success of
one of mankind's
greatest achievements,

the city.

Hidden among trees in a small
forest near Rangeley, Maine,

stands a strange machine

designed to harness
a powerful source of energy.

It looks big and long,
but also futuristic.

[narrator]
According to its inventor,

it can drill holes
in the atmosphere

and trigger tornadoes.

This contraption effectively
looks like a massive ray gun.

[narrator] Now,
using the latest technology,

we can examine it
in unprecedented detail.

This is the cloudbuster.

[Andrea Sella] It was supposed
to control the weather.

It could make it rain.

It could stop the rain.

Just imagine being able
to control droughts

or control a flood.

[narrator] But this isn't
the only trick
of this new form of energy.

[Sascha]
And as an added bonus,

it could repel
an alien invasion

and improve your sex life.

[narrator] This energy seems
to have the potential

to change the world.

If you could control this,

you could make essentially
anything you wanted happen.

[narrator] Who builds this
game-changing weather gun?

What is the source
of its power?

And could it actually work?

[narrator] The cloudbuster
is created in 1952

by Dr. Wilhelm Reich.

Now, this is quite
a contraption,

this multiple-tubed device

mounted on a klin
then a swiveling mechanism

so it can be pointed
in any direction.

It's got the metallic
umbilical cables

that kind of thread down.

[narrator] These are designed
to channel energy

that triggers a change
in the atmosphere.

So Reich's idea is that
by attaching this umbilicus

to a body of water

and pointing the muzzles
of the device

at the correct direction
in the atmosphere,

it could draw this energy
out of the sky

and deposit it into the water.

The movement of this
mysterious energy

out of the atmosphere

would cause clouds to form

and, subsequently,
rain to fall.

[narrator] Who is the man
who believes he can really
control the weather

with his
astonishing cloudbuster?

Wilhelm Reich is not the
kind of person you'd expect

to dream up a world-changing
weather machine.

His interests begin not
in physics or engineering,

but in the mind.

Reich was born in Austria
in 1897,

a time which was part of
the Austro-Hungarian Empire,

and he studied medicine at
the University of Vienna.

[narrator] In the 1920s, Reich
is a brilliant psychoanalyst

and protege of the
discipline's founding father,

Sigmund Freud.

[Keon West] He took a lot of
Freud's ideas about

people having these needs
and these desires.

And there's always this
tension between what we need

and whether
that need is fulfilled.

[narrator] The more Reich digs
into needs and desires,

the more he focuses
on Freud's ideas

about the role of sexual
desire in mental health.

[Sascha] He believes that
repressing sexual outlets

can lead to neuroses.

So his argument is that

if you discharge
these sexual urges,

it will have a psychoanalytic
healing effect.

[narrator] But Reich
is just getting started.

He gradually becomes convinced
that sex is the sole cause

and sole cure
for almost any illness,

mental or physical.

This increasingly extreme
interpretation of Freud's work

doesn't go down well.

By 1939,

his ideas are
considered so radical

and so contrary

to the general clinical
practices of psychoanalysis

that he is kicked out
of the movement.

[narrator] And Freud's
followers aren't the only ones
Reich falls out with.

He also falls out with
the actual Reich...

[soldiers] Heil!

...the Third Reich.

The Nazis assert that he is
part of a Jewish conspiracy

to undermine the health
and well-being of Europe

and they ordered his
books burned.

[narrator] Reich is forced
to flee to the United States.

And it's there that
he creates the cloudbuster.

But how does he make the leap
from upsetting fascists

to upsetting the weather?

In the 1930s,

with the help of some
very accommodating friends,

Reich sets out to find
a scientific explanation

for the healing properties
of sexual desire.

[Keon]
So he took Freud's idea

and tried to
measure something,

something bioelectrical
or chemical or physical.

[narrator]
As the friends get friendlier,

Reich records an increase
in electrical activity.

He's certain it's
evidence of some kind of

previously unidentified
bioelectrical energy.

He names it orgone.

Through an elaborate
series of experiments,

Reich convinces himself
that he's rewritten
the laws of the universe.

Reich argues that
the entire planet is covered

with an envelope
of this orgone energy.

[Andrea] It was responsible
for stuff out in space,

like galaxies.

But at the same time,

it was also kind of
channeled through people.

It produced the life force.

[narrator] In 1940,

Reich invents a device
to harness the healing powers

of this miraculous energy.

He built what he calls
an orgone accumulator.

[narrator] Reich claims that
inside the wood and steel box,

orgone is absorbed
through the patient's skin

to cure them
of almost anything.

And he started to conduct
experiments and treatments

using the accumulator box
on patients

who had cancer
and schizophrenia.

[narrator]
But Reich goes further,

theorizing that orgone can
literally change the world.

And in 1952,
he sets out to prove it

by creating the cloudbuster.

[Sarah] Reich had made
a lot of claims about

what the cloudbuster could do,
but the key thing was

the fact that you could
take it anywhere,

you could point it at the sky

and you could make it rain.

[narrator] Reich's momentous
claims seemed crazy.

Could there be any real
science to support his idea

of controlling the weather
with the cloudbuster?

[narrator] In the 1950s,
Wilhelm Reich's
bizarre cloudbuster

promises to bring
an end to droughts.

But will it work?

[Sarah] In 1953,

there had been a drought
that had been going on
for months

in Maine in the US.

And, in particular,
the blueberry farmers

were worried about
their crop.

[narrator] Blueberry plants
take seven years to mature.

So a dead crop means
years of financial hardship.

The farmers are desperate.

Enter Wilhelm Reich
and his cloudbuster.

[Andrea] He wheels out
his device.

He connects it up to a source
of clear, pure water.

He points it at the sky.

And they begin to operate it.

And the next day...

it rains.

[narrator]
Official records confirm
a quarter of an inch of rain

falls the following day.

The blueberry farmers
are very happy.

Reich gets paid.

For Reich, this is a triumph.

There is clearly
cause and effect.

[narrator] Does this prove
the cloudbuster works?

Or has Reich just caught
a lucky break?

It sounds nuts,

but can you really
control rainfall?

[Andrea]
One of the key requirements

in order to be able to make
an actual raindrop

is to have something,

what's called
a condensation input,

a little sort of
starting point

on which the drop can form.

And so if you put tiny
solid particles into the air,

then they will be enough

to actually start
the formation of droplets

which will then fall to Earth.

[narrator] Scientists have
tried deliberately depositing
silver iodide,

or dry ice,
inside clouds to induce rain.

It's called cloud-seeding.

And the jury's still out
on whether it works.

But that didn't stop
the US government
from weaponizing it.

In 1967, the 54th Weather
Reconnaissance Squadron

conducts what's called
Operation Popeye.

The motto of which was
"make mud, not war."

And their goal was to
extend the monsoon season

over the Ho Chi Minh Trail,
softening the roadbed

and causing
transportation problems
in the movement of supplies

from North Vietnam
into the combat areas.

[narrator] It's impossible
to know if it really works.

After all, it can rain a lot
in the jungle

pretty much whatever you do.

But one thing we do know
is this approach

can only work if you add
particles to the clouds.

And that's a problem
for the cloudbuster.

It doesn't blast particles
into the atmosphere.

In fact, it doesn't actually
seem to do anything.

[Sascha] The device has
no buttons or trigger

or on switch of any sort.

You just point it
at the clouds,

and that's that.

[narrator] So why does it rain
on the blueberry crop?

Maybe it's nothing more
than the luck of the draw.

[Andrea] Most of us
can buy a lottery ticket.

You might win once.

What you need to do

is to do it
over and over again

and really show that
there are statistics there.

And what Reich does is
he tries it once

and he sees what he wants.

But the reality is
that it tells him nothing.

[narrator]
Despite the grand claims,

there's no scientific evidence
that the cloudbuster works.

But that doesn't stop Reich.

His cloudbuster
is about to graduate

from saving blueberries

to saving the world.

Reich goes on
to test his experiments

in the Arizona desert.

Whilst he's operating
the cloudbuster,

he notices that there is
an increase in cloud cover

and in humidity.

And he attributes this to
the power of the cloudbuster

and the orgone energy.

[narrator] Then the cloud
cover mysteriously breaks up.

But Reich has
an explanation for this.

[narrator] And even by
Reich's standards,

it's pretty out there.

[Sascha] Spotting a light
over the Catalina Mountains,

Reich becomes convinced that
the Earth is under attack

by aliens.

He claims that they are
releasing a substance

called deadly
orgone radiation.

He writes that we are
at war with a power

previously unknown to man.

[narrator] Luckily,
Reich has the perfect weapon
to defeat the aliens.

[Sascha] Armed with
two cloudbusters,

Reich fights
what he claims to be

"a climactic
interstellar battle"

with the aliens over
the skies of Arizona.

Not the craziest idea
ever floated in Arizona,

just for the record.

[narrator] But while Reich
is busy fighting aliens,

he's missing a much more
dangerous enemy.

[narrator] Armed with
his cloudbuster,

psychoanalyst and inventor
Wilhelm Reich

battles drought
and blasts aliens.

But his work is
attracting the attention

of an even more
powerful adversary,

the US government.

Reich is a committed socialist

with a radical attitude
to sexual freedom.

He rings all the alarm bells

for a government
paranoid about

the threat of subversives.

He attracts quite a lot of
negative media attention.

[narrator]
The government turns
Reich's work against him,

not the cloudbuster,
but his earlier invention,

the orgone accumulator.

[Sarah] He was presenting
the orgone accumulator box

as a legitimate
medical device,

which they argued he didn't
have the evidence to back up.

[narrator] The orgone
accumulator is banned.

[Sarah]
Unfortunately, for Reich,

one of his agents
sells one of the boxes

without him even
being involved,

and the FDA
considered this to be

a breach of the injunction.

[narrator] Reich is sentenced
to two years in prison.

And FDA agents destroy
his accumulators and books.

[Sascha] Over 6 tons of
Reich's writing are collected

and burned at
a public incinerator.

Any material related to orgone
is fair game.

And it all goes up in smoke.

[narrator]
Reich's reputation is ruined.

Aged 60, the creator of
the radical cloudbuster

dies of a heart attack
while still in prison.

But his ideas
don't die with him.

And it's easy to see why.

[Keon] It's really nice
to believe that there's just

one energy that flows
through the universe,

and that it's the source
of everything

and the solution
to everything.

When you have a really
complicated, difficult world,

you can understand
the appeal of an answer

that's both simple
and enjoyable,

even if it's
not the right answer.

[narrator]
Despite no scientific proof
that orgone exists,

Reich's fans are still
turning out online plans

to build your very own
cloudbuster today.

Just don't expect it to rain.

Locked away in the vaults
of the British Museum

is a strange clay tablet.

It took years to be deciphered
and its importance understood.

It's a map of the unknown.

[narrator] Now,
using the latest technology,

we can begin to decode
this ancient artifact.

This is the Babylonian
Map of the World.

[Abigail Graham]
While this is,
technically speaking, a map,

it's so much more than that.

It is the oldest map
of the world.

This map dates to more than
2,500 years ago.

[narrator]
It stands 4.8 inches high

and 3.2 inches wide.

Curious diagrams and cryptic
text cover its surface.

[Kevin]
You've got living cities,
you've got dead cities,

you've got
mythological places,

you've got the notion of
the end of the world.

[narrator] And at the heart of
this map is a mystery.

What do the symbols
and writing mean?

Why was it made?

Is this really
a map of the world?

The map is discovered
in 1881

in the lost city of Shapur,

17 miles southwest of
modern-day Baghdad.

It is part of
a 70,000-tablet bonanza.

And under this
avalanche of finds,

its significance is missed.

[Kevin] This object was
pretty much put to one side

for eight years until
its importance was discovered

as one of the first maps
of the world.

[narrator]
The information on the tablet
is in cuneiform form,

the oldest written language
on Earth,

and it reveals
a lost civilization.

In the center of the map
is a hole,

a device often found on
cuneiform tablets.

Above this lies a rectangle,

representing a mighty city
labeled as Babylon.

[Abigail] We know it's
the city of Babylon

because the other rectangle
that runs through it

is the Euphrates River.

And Babylon was famous for
being the city

that was on both sides
of the Euphrates River.

[narrator] When the map is
made around 2,600 years ago,

Babylon is home to
200,000 people.

It is the largest city
on Earth

and the location of
the greatest wonders of
the ancient world,

the Hanging Gardens
of Babylon,

the Ishtar Gate

and theBible's
Tower of Babel.

So it's no surprise
that this map of the world

revolves around
mighty Babylon.

[Abigail] They're setting out
their concept of their kingdom
and who they are

through the means of a map

in which they place
themselves in the center.

And everything that
isn't themselves

on the periphery.

[narrator]
Beyond Babylon itself,

other features of
this lost world appear.

[Abigail] There are also
just plain circles

that fall in various places,

and these are ruins of
ancient cities.

[narrator] There are mountains
marked in the north

in roughly the same location
as the Taurus Mountains
of southern Turkey.

A swamp in the south
corresponds to the marshlands

of the Euphrates and
Tigris floodplains.

But there is something
strange about this tablet.

Unlike maps as we know them,

it has no scale,
no measure of distance,

no roads, no paths.

The Babylonian map is not
a map which will allow you

to find where you are
in the world.

[narrator] This map clearly
isn't for navigation.

So what is it for?

[narrator]
Getting from A to B using
the oldest map of the world

would be impossible.

Yet the Babylonians
do seem to have
the knowledge and the skill

that a mapmaker would need.

[Kevin] We know that
the Babylonians
had surveying skills.

So if you could make
a more accurate map,

but you make something

which is rather less detailed
and crude,

there must be another
reason for it.

[narrator] The answer to that
may begin

with the lines surrounding
this lost Babylonian world.

There's a circle that
goes around it

called the Bitter River.

By "bitter," we're talking
about the kind of salt seas.

[narrator] The map does not
end at the Bitter Sea,

it shows land beyond it,

but it looks very different.

The outer bodies of land
are shaped like triangles,

reducing as they head
towards the abyss

at the edge of the world.

Some people have even said
the way that they're presented

as kind of triangles
coming out

represents the way
you'd have seen the land
approaching by sea.

[narrator]
These are distant places

outside the boundary
of the Bitter Sea

and beyond the lands
of Babylon.

Some of the labels say,

"Oh, the sun
never shone here.

It was dark as night."

And there were places where
birds wouldn't fly.

[narrator] These may well be
partially-known places

based on travelers' tales
or handed-down stories.

[Abigail] They have it
on the map

and they've tried
to map it out.

It's something that
you know is there,

but you don't really have
enough information

to describe it or
even kind of put it properly.

[narrator] Later mapmakers
called such unknown lands

"terra incognita."

[Abigail] In cartography,
terra incognita

is the "land unknown."

We often get the phrase
"hic sunt leones,"

"here be lions."

"Here be dragons."

[narrator] In the absence of
facts or firsthand experience,

mapmakers use
their imagination
to fill in the gaps.

It's amazing, really,
because it's not just
describing a place,

but it's almost describing
a philosophical concept

of something that
you don't know

and, therefore,
can't even imagine.

[narrator]
The text on the tablet
also includes references

to strange wildlife.

[Abigail]
You have all different types
of exotic animals,

almost otherworldly creatures,

like gazelles
and a scorpion man.

And that kind of
captures the idea

that they're seen as these
otherworldly, mythic places.

[narrator] The heavily damaged
text on the front

includes references
to legendary figures

and the Babylonian
creation myth.

This map and
the writing on the tablet

are effectively a description
of more than just the
Babylonians physical world.

It's their cosmology.

This is a strange
blending of worlds,

of the known world,

of a mythological world
beyond.

[narrator] But one theory
suggests that this map
could be more

than just a description of
a belief system.

Could it have
a more Earthly purpose?

1,700 years before
the map is made,

Babylon is part of the
first great empire on Earth.

And at the center of
everything is its ruler,

the legendary
Sargon the Great.

[Kevin] The time of Sargon
was the golden age.

This goes back many centuries
to around 2,300 BC.

A multiethnic civilization
stretched over
a great breadth of land

with roots by land and sea.

This was potentially
the world's first empire.

[narrator] But since then,
Babylon has become

just a pale shadow of
its former greatness.

[Kevin] It was no longer
the golden age of Sargon.

This region was no longer
a world leader.

Babylon had been
conquered by Assyria

and was in a perpetual
state of revolt.

It was ridden by conflict
and civil war.

[narrator] Yet this map shows
a Babylon-centric world view.

That could be because
the empire strikes back.

They kick the Assyrians
out of Babylon.

[Kevin] By the 7th
and 6th centuries BC,

we do see
a glimmer of change

with a short-lived
Neo-Babylonian Empire.

[narrator] In this period,

Babylonian culture
and arts blossomed

and spectacular palaces
and temples are built
across the empire,

particularly in Babylon.

This era features the iconic
King Nebuchadnezzar,

who, of course,
we all know created the
Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

[narrator] In the text
on the front,

the map talks of
the Babylonian creator god,

Marduk.

And it suggests one of
the distant triangular lands

may be home to
both Utnapishtim,

their equivalent of Noah,

and Sargon himself.

It's like a golden hits
of Babylonian mythology.

One means of interpretation
might be to say

that this map served as
a harkening back to that age.

[narrator] Could its purpose
have been to revive ideas

of Babylon's lost golden past?

It's tempting to connect it
with the resurgence of Babylon

in the 7th and 6th centuries

and this short secondary
golden age

and see it as
an attempt to appeal

to the glorious past
of the area.

[narrator] That's consistent
with what we know

of the Neo-Babylonian world.

[Kevin]
Archaeologically speaking,
there's other evidence

of the Neo-Babylonian state

using the past as
a form of legitimation.

[narrator] We know they
restore one of Sargon's
great ancient cities,

Ur, including
its towering ziggurat.

And they restore the Esagila,

the great temple to Marduk in
the center of Babylon itself.

The Neo-Babylonians
certainly wouldn't be alone

in using a glorious past
to help shape the present.

[Kevin] If we look,
for example,
at Mussolini in the 1930s,

he used the Roman past
and archaeology

as a means of discussing
Italian greatness

and the Italian right
to reconquer North Africa.

More recently in history,

we see Saddam Hussein
doing the same thing in Iraq.

[narrator]
Could the Babylonian map

also have been intended
to draw a parallel

with past greatness?

Although it's a tempting
theory and seems to fit,

modern scholars are skeptical.

The one thing we can say
with some certainty

is this ancient clay tablet
shows us the world

the mapmaker wants us to see.

[Kevin] Much like the map
of the world today

and its projections,

the relative size
of continents,

This is all guarded by
the priorities of

the people who were
drawing the maps.

[narrator]
We just can't be certain
what this mapmaker intended.

Is this strange thing
made as a map?

As a cosmological guide?

Or as a piece of propaganda?

[Abigail] What's so intriguing
about his object

is the fact that
we probably won't ever know

exactly what it was
meant to be used for.

[narrator] Unfortunately,
the Neo-Babylonian Empire
that likely created it

lasts less than a century.

But this remnant of that
short-lived period remains,

the oldest-known map of
the world in existence.