The Explorers Page #4

---

gone before...

two thousand years ago

when Roman ships criss-crossed

the Mediterranean

They were small vessels

at the mercy of the sea

Many of them never made it

home

To help him find

the sunken ships

Ballard has enlisted

the help of a Navy submarine

The NR-1 was used during

the Cold War

for missions so secret

the Navy still won't talk

about them

Now the sub is hunting for

a Roman galley

that sank to the ocean floor

Captain, ship's fit

for dive

You have permission

to submerge ship

Dive! Dive!

For hundreds of years

scientists have looked in

the ocean for our history

And for most of that time

they've only been able to

look a very short distance

And what we're trying to

accomplish is something

that has never been done

before

and that is to try and

excavate a ship of antiquity

that is thousands of feet

beneath the sea

The NR-1 hits thick mud

The sub's arm is unable to

dig below the surface

Do the wooden hulls

of Roman vessels

still exist just beyond reach

or has time stolen them away?

Will this be Ballard's first failure?

You can be lucky,

but you work for it

You know, you cannot

just go

and dig and discover

something

No! You have to stay day

and night and work very hard

And luck will come to you

And that's why luck cannot

come to a lazy explorer

Like Robert Ballard,

Egyptologist Zahi Hawass

is an explorer of deep time

He has spent a career

searching the sands

of the Giza Plateau

One of his most remarkable

finds began with an accident

when a horse, galloping

past his excavation site

plunged its hoof through

the sand

Below lay a vaulted tomb,

sealed in the time of

the pharaohs

Inside, Hawass glimpsed

eternity

Because of the size

of the tomb

because of the unique shape

of the vaulted ceiling

and also because it was

cased inside with plaster

then I believe this is

the man

who was in charge of

the whole administration

of the workmen

This is the man who wanted

to be sure that

all these people live in

a good living

and they go early in

the morning to work

and they come by the sunset

and they live in

the village,

and at the same time

when they die, there is

a tomb for everyone

Besides the foreman's tomb

Hawass and his crews

unearthed more than

an entire cemetery

of workers

For centuries,

the pyramid builders were

thought to be slaves

a captive labor force

cringing under the whip

This discovery shattered

that myth

For explorers like Hawass

the possibilities of

discovery seem limitless

The sands of the desert

are constantly shifting

Artifacts, hidden from one

generation of archeologists

can suddenly be revealed

to the next

In 1998, a team under

Hawass's supervision

made a startling find: A tomb, unseen

untouched for thousands of years

It is beautiful,

the painting is so beautiful

It is very rare

We discover a lot of things

every day, everywhere

in Egypt

But everything,

almost 99 percent of what

we discover, is robbed

This is unique,

and this is rare,

because of one thing:

This is intact

Beneath a limestone lid,

they discover a sarcophagus

This is wonderful

The symbol of resurrection

Under the glare of

television lights

they struggle to remove

the heavy lid

Have the contents inside

decayed and rotted?

They crane forward, peer inside and a gift

from the first

millennium B.C.:
a mummy dressed

in a shroud of bead work

portraying the gods of the afterlife

Hieroglyphs around the coffin tell a

story from the final glory days of

ancient Egypt.

Buried here is a

nobleman, a member

of the pharaoh's court

His name was Lufaa

He is the director

of the palace

He was near to the king

The king lives in

the palace

This is the man that is

used everyday

to know the throne is fine

your majesty

The ladies, or the wife,

your main wife

she's not coming today

to see you

You can meet this official

today

the dining room is set,

wine is there

we will make the party

tonight

That is the man that does

all the arrangements

at the palace

He makes the palace life

Hawass's explorations have

given us

a more detailed picture

of the past

of who we are and where we

come from

An explorer is someone's

who trying to find answers

to basic truths

I think all of us want to

know those answers

Certainly, we want to know

who we are and

where we came from and

where we're going

And I think most people

think about those questions

but very few of them spend

a career

trying to find answers to

those things

For weeks,

Robert Ballard has been

searching for history

in the depths of

the Mediterranean

He has not been able to

find the Roman ships

he believes sank in

these waters

He cannot afford to fail

A single expedition can

cost millions of dollars

Hold shipwreck

Holy mackerel

At last...

Look at that!

...3,000 feet beneath

the waves...

fragile amphora...

jugs that held wine

dried fish and olive oil

Instead of finding the

amphora sort of randomly

scattered throughout

this area

they are, in fact,

concentrated in

very narrow lines

one amphora after another,

hundreds of them

As Ballard and the captain

of the NR-1 plot the find

the final tragic moments for

the Roman ship are revealed

It must have been caught

in a fierce storm

They began to off-load

their cargo

as fast as they could

throwing the amphoras off

one side of the ship and

off of the other

This is probably the width

of the ship

the separation between

these two rows

Two miles of amphoras were

being thrown over the side

until finally the ship

went under and ultimately

sank here

Ballard deploys a scavenger

sub named Jason

to bring the 2,000-year-old

artifacts to the surface

Robert Ballard has proven

that we can dive into

the deepest oceans

and resurrect the sunken

stories of the past

The key is that

you plug away

you slug away,

you slug away

and then there's

this moment of discovery

And it's so exhilarating

It's just

the greatest natural

high known to a human race

And once you've

experienced that

you want to experience it

again

There is so much of the

planet that's unexplored

that I can't imagine

we're going to be out

of work anytime soon

Exploration really has that

element of discovering

something new

You make it a discipline

to observe

to document, to record

what you see

The old style of explorer

it was about conquering

something

about, you know,

putting your flag on it

about getting control,

to be the master of

I think the real difference

between adventure and

exploration

is that exploration is

adventure with a purpose

Michael Davie is just

starting to explore our world

In 1997, at the age of 22

he trekked from Cape Town,

South Africa,

to Cairo Egypt

a 5,000-mile journey that

took him seven months

Davie uses a video camera

to explore more than

geography

he explores culture

and people

His journey epitomizes the

explorer within us all

Do you think life here

in Botswana is difficult?

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes