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How did men find the technology two and a half thousand years ago to melt

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rock and turn their hilltop fortresses into impregnable glass?

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Can this German scientist justify his astonishing claim that these relics are an electric battery

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invented long before the birth of Christ?

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The remarkable thing is that these objects are 2,200 years old.

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That means 2,000 years before electricity was invented in Europe and Italy.

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In Athens, has this distinguished professor found irrefutable evidence of ancient wisdom?

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Can it be that in the heart of this fragment lost from a ship 2,000 years ago lie hidden

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the cog wheels of the world's first computer?

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Mysteries from the files of Arthur C. Clarke, author of 2001 and inventor of the communication

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satellite.

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Now in retreat in Sri Lanka, after a lifetime of science, space and writing, he ponders

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the riddles of this and other worlds.

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A lot of rubbish has been written about mysterious knowledge possessed by the ancients.

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They didn't need any help from visitors from outer space to do this sort of thing, part

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of a vast irrigation system built in 700 A.D. still in full working order with a little

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assistance from modern engineers.

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But there's nothing mysterious about it.

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We know exactly when it was done 13 centuries ago, we even know the names of the builders.

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On the other hand, there are some relics from the past which are truly mysterious because

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they challenge our ideas about the level of technology that existed at the time.

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There are also some things from the past which, though they may not challenge any of our existing

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concepts, are still puzzling and enigmatic.

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Heathrow Airport, London.

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Miss Anna Mitchell-Hedges newly arrived from Toronto, Canada.

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With her in her green bag, she has brought one of the greatest jewels in the world, a

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headache for the security men and half a million dollars worth of mystery.

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In London, the tangled story of her sinister treasure may at last be unraveled.

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She found it herself in a lost city when she was a girl.

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My father was excavating in Central America and British Honduras and we found an old ruin,

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a Maya, who he thought had something to do with Atlantis.

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We excavated for about seven years, clearing the ground, and then one day we spotted something

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shining through the stones and that was my 17th birthday, so we were full of happiness

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and joy.

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I'm bringing it to London because I want the British Museum to have a test at it and

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to find out more of its history if we can.

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Burlington Gardens near Piccadilly Circus.

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Few of the works of art brought here for analysis at the Museum of Mankind present a challenge

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as great and as frustrating to the experts as the one Anna Mitchell-Hedges unveils in

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the laboratories in the depths of the building.

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This is the weirdest gem in the world, the skull of doom.

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The circumstances of its discovery were bizarre, its origin is unknown, and its powers some

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say are fatal.

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The Maya people say it was used to will death or to heal and like if an old medicine man

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or a witch doctor was getting too old to perform a ceremony, a young man was chosen and both

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laid in front of the altar and the high priest would perform a ceremony and the old man knowledge

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would go into this young boy and the old man would pass away peacefully but this young

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boy would get up as a very knowledgeable young man.

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This crystal skull here has tremendous power but it also gives you a warning that something's

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going to happen.

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To Anna's father the crystal skull was the strangest trophy in a lifetime of adventure.

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Mike Mitchell-Hedges, explorer and celebrity of the 20s was a man who'd take on a crocodile

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before breakfast and before donning his trousers.

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Primitive tribes offered him their choicest brides and held him as a god and using only

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a rod and line he reeled in some of the great and monstrous creatures of the oceans.

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In 1924 in British Honduras he found his buried city Lubantun.

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Mitchell-Hedges believed it was part of the lost Atlantis.

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With the local people the Maya he cleared the jungle from Lubantun's pyramids and platforms.

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On the last of these expeditions he brought Anna his adopted daughter to the city.

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It was on her 17th birthday that they first glimpsed the crystal skull amidst the fallen

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stones.

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For days we kept seeing something shining through the stones where the sun was giving

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and of course we were anxious to get to that one spot.

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I went to pick it up because I had smaller hands than the other people did and I picked

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it up and showed it to my father and he just couldn't believe that we found this beautiful

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crystal skull.

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As you see it's got all the little lumps that you have on your own head and all the, if you

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look deep down in the eyes you'll see sockets down in the eyes and the jaw moves like a

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human jaw.

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Almost from the day of its discovery this, the largest worked gemstone in the world,

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has been a mystery.

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Thomas Gann who was there and Lady Richmond Brown stayed silent.

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Mitchell-Hedges simply said it is the embodiment of all evil.

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But the question remains was it really an ancient symbol of death that took generations

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to fashion or could it have been modern?

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The only hint lies in an uncannily similar but less intricate skull in the care of the

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Museum of Mankind in London.

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It was bought from Tiffany's, the New York Jewelers in 1898, property it was said of

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a Mexican soldier of fortune.

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Rock crystal is impossible to date but the Tiffany's skull does bear a faint trace which

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could betray the moment when a modern cutting tool accidentally slipped.

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The tests begin on the Mitchell-Hedges' skull.

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It is weighed in water and in air.

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The result, it's genuinely pure quartz rock crystal.

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That's very nice indeed.

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2.65 which is just what it should be.

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That's absolutely great.

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There are no tell-tale scratches on this flawless surface to help top gem expert Alan Jobbins

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date the skull of Doom.

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We see no positive evidence on it that the metal has been used.

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There's no positive evidence of that but it may have been very skillfully concealed.

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It's a skillful, sophisticated job.

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If it's made by primitive people it's absolutely amazing because the standard of

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workmanship is absolutely first class.

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It must have taken anybody who made this a very considerable length of time even if he

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were using modern diamond tools and every modern device that was available to him.

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The most likely source for quarrying such a large and immaculate block of crystal would be Brazil.

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But where and when it was worked are pure guesswork.

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Whether it was worked in Honduras or Mexico or whether it was worked in Europe or Japan or China,

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I wouldn't care to say. I just wouldn't.

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In terms of mystery concerning their origins, I think it's likely to remain a mystery for a very long time.

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The probability is that the material came from Brazil and it came from Brazil probably post 1700,

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sometime like that.

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But Alan Jobin's theory is one with which Anna Mitchell-Hedges totally disagrees.

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The skull was made long before that about 3,600 years ago.

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This is what the Maya people told us.

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I lived seven years with the Maya people as a child and I lived in eighth and slept the same way they slept on the earth.

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And once you live with people who are so down to nature, you got to believe them.

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But what are we to believe about the strange vitrified forts of Scotland?

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The Iron Age hillfort of Tapo Noth, more than 1800 feet up in the hills of Aberdeenshire.

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Ian Rolston is one of countless archaeologists who have climbed to this cold summit,

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seeking to explain why the fort's high walls are built not of loose stones but strangely of melted rock,

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rock that will melt only at furnace heat, more than a thousand degrees centigrade.

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It's absolutely solid. In places one can kick it, it won't disintegrate, it's as if it's cemented together.

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In fact, what appears to have happened is that at some stage, presumably with great heat,

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the rocks have melted, or at least partly melted.

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And here, for example, we can see one bit where the rock has gone really glassy.

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It's been absolutely molten here at some stage.

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One fort where the walls have vitrified or turned to a kind of glass would be strange enough.

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But Tapo Noth is one of at least 50 scattered throughout Scotland.

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And no one has yet managed to explain whether the rock walls, sometimes hundreds of feet long,

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were melted accidentally, perhaps in battle, or whether the fort builders used some technique now lost

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to strengthen the walls by welding the rock together.

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Ian Rolston, in an ambitious attempt to crack the mystery, decided to build his own Iron Age fort.

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The idea here is that we hope to reconstruct what one of these walls looked like before it was vitrified.

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We know that these walls must contain considerable quantities of large timber beams.

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These have been recorded, and sometimes they also turn up on the forts that have been vitrified.

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Professional dry stone wallers toiled for days to build the wall of rocks laced with timber.

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For the wall itself to catch fire, it's a very difficult task.

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For the wall itself to catch fire, tons of loose timber must have been stacked against the face.

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This, as regards authenticity, I think is a very good attempt at one of these walls.

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Of course the main thing is it's only part of the circuit of a defence.

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We've only built something like six or eight metres in length.

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So it's a part model, but that part I think is fairly accurate.

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Within minutes of the fire being lit, the wood stacked on the outside is well alight.

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Within an hour the framework of wooden beams has caught fire, carrying the flames to the heart of the wall.

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It is here in the centre that enough heat may build up to melt the stones.

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Outside they are already beginning to crack.

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After several hours and many tons of wood, a load of old furniture has to be commandeered from the local dustmen.

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It is the only way to keep the temperature up.

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Later, yet another consignment of wood, the sixth of the day, arrives to keep the fires burning.

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As night falls over Aberdeen, weary helpers begin to see the fire.

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The fire is burning.

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As night falls over Aberdeen, weary helpers begin to realise the true extent of the mystery of the vitrified forts.

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To wonder not only how the fort builders could achieve the searing temperatures needed to melt the rock,

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but how they managed to drag vast quantities of wood up to the hilltops with only primitive transport.

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The morning after, and deep inside the wall, the fort is still burning.

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22 hours after the fire was first lit, it's time to demolish the wall and see whether the stones at its core have melted.

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At first sight, the result looks disappointing. There are no ramparts of fused stone.

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The search is now on for evidence that any rocks have melted.

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Yeah, that's it. The rock here has melted completely. Look at it, it's bubbled on one side.

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Great. God, it's hot.

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Hot for more here.

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We've been able to show that at least a very small quantity, in the case of this wall,

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of the rock has indeed melted and then re-solidified.

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Some of the samples are here, little pieces of rock.

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We've no great chunks of vitrified material, but here, for example, one with a bit of granite,

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where a lot of material is soldered onto it in this position.

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And this other one is one which has gone really glassy on the surface, the vitrified effects.

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You see perhaps we move it round in the light that catches it on this face.

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But the mystery of Tapo North and the other vitrified forts of Scotland

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has survived the experiments of the modern archaeologists.

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For all their expertise and the tons of wood they burnt,

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the 20th century fort builders produced only a handful of melted rock and no real answers.

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Beyond the conviction that the walls of this great castle must have been fused together

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as a deliberate act by people who dragged forests to mountaintops like this,

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there is nothing to explain why they set the hills alight two and a half thousand years ago.

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This experiment suggests it would have taken half the trees in Scotland to vitrify all the forts.

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So it would only deepen the mystery.

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Such things as the crystal, skull and vitrified forts are intriguing and puzzling,

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but they don't shake our preconceived ideas about history.

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Yet there are other artefacts which do just that if they are what they seem to be.

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This man, Dr. Anna Eggebrecht, director of a West German museum,

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has no doubt at all that there is at least one astonishing example of ancient technology

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which is 2,000 years ahead of its time.

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He found it in an exhibition of treasures from ancient Iraq,

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a pottery jar, a copper cylinder and an iron rod discovered in Baghdad.

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He believes they are components of an electric battery

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made 2,000 years before batteries were invented in the West.

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I decided to check it and for that purpose we got made a replica.

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Here you see the replica, the Baghdad battery, you see here a ceramic pot,

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you see a copper cylinder and you see the iron rod here.

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All replicas.

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Now I have here a voltmeter

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and this voltmeter shows on the scale a distance from 0, a quarter of a volt to half a volt here,

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which we should reach by this battery.

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For that purpose I combine now the voltmeter and the battery with these wires.

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Now one wire is fixed to the rod, the other one is fixed to the copper cylinder.

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To get it to work we need only some acid and for that purpose a bunch of grapes should help us and should do it.

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Here I have the grapes and here a glass and in this I am putting now some of the grapes

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and with a wooden stick I am pressing the juice out of it.

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I hope I get enough so that we see on the scale how the voltmeter is working.

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The grape acid battery delivers almost half a volt.

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Could it have been used for gilding ancient treasure?

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To show you that this can be done with this battery I have prepared an experiment.

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The technique may have been to immerse a small silver statuette in a gold cyanide solution and electroplate it.

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The implications for museum directors are chilling.

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Treasures they always assumed to be solid gold may merely have been gilded.

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And indeed in a matter of minutes the bottom half of this silver statuette acquires the sheen of gold.

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This experiment shows that it is possible to do it and that also in ancient times it might have been possible

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to have these batteries used for such gold plating processes.

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If this is indeed an electric battery well one can only register astonishment because it is 2,000 years ahead of its time.

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So it is possible we have completely misinterpreted its function.

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It may be something quite different like a container for scrolls.

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But from almost the same era there is a device about which there is now no dispute.

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And here is a friend I have been bullying for 20 years to complete his researches on it.

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Professor Derrick de Soyer Price of Yale University.

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It was in Athens among a group of statues brought up in 1900 from a ship wrecked around the time of the birth of Christ that Price made his discovery.

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The ship sank off the island of Antikythera near Crete.

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Amongst the hall from the shipwreck were some fragments of corroded bronze.

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They fascinated the professor when he came across them.

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But he needed the help of the Greek Atomic Energy Commission to examine them.

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There was a good colleague Dr. Karakalos who had been experimenting with gamma rays.

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He was able to take the gamma radiograph of the main fragment in the museum.

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And as soon as I saw it the effect was dramatic.

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You could see that inside the fragment where it wasn't visible to the naked eye were all little gear wheels.

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You could see the teeth plainly and you could even count teeth.

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This had such a big effect that there was hidden evidence that Dr. Karakalos was able to get permission and using much better X-ray equipment could make X-ray photographs of all the gear wheels in the interior of the machine.

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These photographs were so good that each gear could be located and even if we only had part of a gear we could actually count the teeth.

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See there is a wheel complete with all the gear teeth absolutely countable.

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From the X-rays Professor Price reconstructed the machine now known as the anti-kithera mechanism.

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It was a wooden box with bronze plates. A handle moves interconnected dials at the front and back.

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The innards of the mechanism are a complex mesh of cog wheels and gears until now concealed in the heart of the fragments.

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That wheel is the one you see here. More gearing at the back and you turn the handle and everything goes round all geared together in quite sophisticated club work.

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It was designed he believes as a computer to show the varying cycles of the moon, sun and planets.

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A device that by all previous knowledge simply ought not to have existed for another 2,000 years.

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Its maker had perfected a system of differential gearing.

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When Professor Price discovered this he had found a unique demonstration of the lost wisdom of the ancients.

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It is just incredible that the Greeks could invent this principle of the differential gear.

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It is so complicated that it contains in essence all of the line that led right through to modern clockwork, to the computer and indeed to the machine age and everything that distinguishes our civilization from everything that went before.

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And the whole line began right here with this one unique relic.

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The Antikythera computer and the Baghdad battery, if indeed it is a battery, represent two of the great ifs of history because they are 2,000 years ahead of their time.

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If the societies that produced them had continued to develop their technologies by now it would be 4,000 AD.

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By this time we would not merely have sent a few men to the moon.

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We would have colonized all the stars visible to the naked eye.

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The search for the world's missing ape men