Treasure Seekers: Glories of the Ancient Aegean Page #3

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archeologist had an easier assignment.

Unlike Troy, the city

had never been lost.

It's picturesque ruins

still dominated a hill in Greece,

not far from the Aegean Sea.

Hungry for gold, Schliemann began

to dig in August 1876.

Within a few weeks, he discovered

evidence of a sacred site.

The man's luck seemed unbelievable.

Pressing on, he unearthed

a series of royal graves

filled with treasures

and skeletons adorned with gold.

Leaping to conclusions yet again,

Schliemann declared he had discovered

the golden mask of Agamemnon.

As it turned out, later archeologists

decided it wasn't the mythical king.

But it didn't really matter.

Schliemann had uncovered evidence of

a rich and sophisticated civilization

which had flourished 1,000 years

before the days of classical Greece.

The objects he'd unearthed

were elegant and skillfully crafted.

He'd even found a helmet made of boar's

teeth that matched Homer's description.

Schliemann fabulous discovery at

Mycenae brought him international fame,

even the respect of

many of his critics.

Throughout the next decade,

he dug at other Greek citadels,

accumulating evidence of the wealth

and splendor of this previously

unknown civilization.

But Schliemann wasn't satisfied.

In his heart, he knew

his new discoveries cast doubt

on the primitive treasures

he'd found at Troy.

How could he be sure that the walls

he uncovered deep beneath that mound

were the same ones that

kept Agamemnon's forces at bay?

That down those broken street

Helen once walked?

It was time to return to Troy

and make sense of that perplexing

mound once and for all.

This time, Schliemann proceeded

slowly and cautiously,

digging on the edge of the mound.

And bit by bit, the old treasure hunter

uncovered a layer in the middle

that he'd missed in his earlier days.

Here, finally, was what he had been

searching for all along:

the ruins of broad streets,

massive walls, and a much bigger citadel.

Schliemann should have been thrilled.

But instead, his heart sank.

It meant there was a lot of

rethinking to do.

In a sense,

he saw before his eyes 20 years

of work just going down the drain.

For four days Schliemann retreated to

his tent, searching for answers.

From the beginning,

he'd assumed that Homer's Troy lay

at the bottom of the mound.

Now his new discovery changed

everything.

If he'd finally found the Troy of

the Trojan War in this middle layer,

then 20 years ago he'd made

a tragic mistake.

For in his haste to dig to the bottom,

he destroyed much of

what he'd been looking for.

He'd never know

what treasures had been lost.

Exhausted, Schliemann vowed to continue

the following season.

But it was not to be.

Suffering from a terrible pain

in his ear,

he traveled to Germany for surgery,

then headed home to Greece.

He never got there.

Buried in Athens with a state funeral,

Schliemann was mourned

even by his critics.

For 20 years he'd lit up

the world of early archeology

with his drive and enthusiasm.

Pursuing his childhood dreams of

ancient Greek heroes to the end,

he pushed back the frontiers

of European history.

In the process, he put the

young science of archeology on the map.

Among the many he inspired was a

brilliant young man named Arthur Evans

who visited Schliemann

several years before his death.

Reaching beyond Schliemann's

discoveries,

the intrepid Englishman would also

track down a legend

into the far corners

or Europe's hidden past.

He would reawaken an even older

civilization buried in myth and oblivion

for more than 3,000 years.

Unlike Schliemann, Arthur Evans seemed

destined to become an archeologist.

His father,

a wealthy paper manufacturer,

was a pioneer in studying the past.

Born in 1851,

Arthur spent his childhood

in the English countryside

digging for Roman coins.

But as the boy grew older,

his nickname grew increasingly annoying-

"Little Evans,"

son of John Evans the great.

He's kind of, in his early years,

like a rebel without a cause.

He's looking for something

to get hold of to be different

than his father and to prove

his own worth.

And so as an expression of

this sort of rebelliousness,

he did the most romantic thing

he could think of,

which was to travel to the Balkans.

From his first sight of

the Balkans in 1871,

Evans rejected any notion of

returning to his father's business.

Instantly at home,

he haunted the bazaars,

delighting in the colorful mixture

of East and West.

To Evans the fact that the land

was at war only added to its appeal.

The Slavs were rebelling against the

Ottoman Turks after years of domination.

Evans became a roving reporter

for the Manchester Guardian.

Affected with bad eyesight,

he disdained glasses.

Instead, he used is walking stick

which he named 'prodger'

as a kind of antenna.

The mad Englishman with the walking

stick became a familiar sight,

and a thorn in the sight of

authorities.

He was quite a romantic.

Much more volatile than his father.

He did things like wearing a red cloak

and riding on a black horse

at the Turkish Burgess,

really quite dangerous

difficult territory.

He did it with a sense of drama.

He wanted to be a spy,

and he did some very rash things.

Evans sympathies were with the Slavs

and their struggle for independence.

As the years went on

and the conflict intensified,

his articles became

more and more impassioned.

His recklessness began

to worry his wife Margaret,

whom Evans had married

after several years in the Balkans.

The young couple had settled

into Brovnia, Croatia,

Arthur's version of paradise.

But in 1882, Evans articles

caught up with him.

Thrown into jail as a spy,

he languished there for seven weeks.

Characteristically,

the young adventurer found a novel way

to communicate with his wife.

Breaking a tooth off his pocket comb,

he drew blood from his arm.

"Dear Margaret"

He wrote in his blood,

"I'm fine, but it would be wise

to get a lawyer."

His family did succeed in

getting him released.

But Evans was expelled

from the Balkans.

For him, paradise was lost.

Once home in England the landscape

looked grey and leaden.

Arthur missed the Mediterranean

and found that he couldn't sit still.

So he and Margaret took off

on a grand tour,

a holiday that would have

a lasting impact on his future.

In Greece, the young couple

visited the customary sights

revered by educated Europeans

as the essence of beauty.

Evans was unimpressed.

He was more interested in truly

ancient ruins,

like the ones at Mycenae.

Ever since the first newspaper

accounts more than a decade before,

Evans had been fascinated by

the discoveries of Heinrich Schliemann.

He visited the German archeologist

at his home in Athens.

With great pride,

Schliemann showed the younger man

the objects he'd unearthed at Mycenae.

Evans was captivated.

His nearsighted eyes would often

notice details others missed.

And what excited him here were

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