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This series presents information based in part on theory and conjecture.

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The producer's purpose is to suggest some possible explanations, but not necessarily the only ones to the mysteries we will examine.

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She was the most desirable woman in the world, the fabled Helen, wife to the Prince of Sparta.

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So beautiful was she that a rival prince stole her away to the Kingdom of Troy.

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Thus Helen became the face that launched a thousand ships, each ship carrying a hundred Greek warriors bent on revenge.

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For ten years the ships were beached while the army laid siege to Troy.

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The great walls of the city could not be breached, but the Greeks found another way.

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Were Helen and the battle of Troy just the dreams of an ancient poet?

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The place where Europe ends and Asia begins is as mysterious as its mountains are imposing.

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Where they meet the sea, rich farmlands were for centuries protected by great stone battlements.

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The ancient Greeks called this land Ionia. Modern men call it Turkey.

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Relatively few Westerners traveled to Turkey these days.

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Fewer still venture into the exotic countryside beyond the graceful minarets of Istanbul.

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A long time ago things were different.

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What we now call Turkey once seemed to be the great crossroads of the known world.

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Adventurers from all over the Mediterranean sailed for her shores.

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What were they looking for?

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Ten centuries before Christ the Greeks were just beginning to probe the strained sea coasts that lay to the east.

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The inhabitants of Ionia were said to be rich in precious metals and trade goods from even more distant lands.

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Eventually the Greeks would establish colonies, new cities and a new civilization.

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Even as the new cities prospered however mainland Greece was on the brink of collapse.

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For a time the colonies represented the only real hope for the future.

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The Greek settlers had brought with them their pantheon of gods.

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Clearly the Greeks of this troubled period wanted to keep alive the glories of the past.

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With their gods came mortal heroes somehow bridging the gulf between heaven and earth.

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Of these heroes it was said each could do what two men could not do such as now live upon the earth.

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No one helped preserve these illusions more than the great bard Homer.

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Some scholars believe Homer traveled through the great cities of Ionia in the 8th century before Christ.

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As he would pass through a city he would pause to recite a tale or hear one told.

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Under graceful columns and a long busy thoroughfares storytellers would gather to recite verse.

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Perhaps it was in this way that Homer first heard the story of Troy.

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He may have visited the place where the great battle was supposed to have happened.

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Whether Troy's location was known to Homer or not he certainly drew inspiration for his retelling of the story from the countryside of his birth.

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The result was Homer's epic poem The Iliad.

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The poem described the invasion of the Greeks but nowhere does it mention the gift horse filled with soldiers.

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The poem describes the invasion of the Greeks but nowhere does it mention the gift horse filled with soldiers.

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By the 18th century most scholars had concluded that the fall of Troy described by Homer was pure fiction or related to something that happened somewhere else.

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Many felt that Homer never lived at all, that the work ascribed to him was merely an anthology of folktales told by many writers.

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There were a few eccentrics however who believed otherwise.

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The most remarkable of these was a self-made millionaire named Heinrich Schleeman.

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As a boy Schleeman had taught himself to read The Iliad in Greek.

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His fascination with Homer's poem was to become a lifelong obsession.

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By 1870 Schleeman had made two fortunes in Russia and another in the California gold fields.

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He arrived in Turkey determined to spend every penny of his great wealth if need be on realizing his dream, the discovery of ancient Troy.

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When Schleeman committed himself to an objective it was with an all-consuming passion uncommon in average men.

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As Schleeman began his search he looked over the plain that might once have played host to the armies of Hector and Achilles.

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Schleeman came armed with The Iliad and took up residence in the small village of Bunarbashi.

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The few scholars who were prepared to even consider the possibility that Troy once existed generally placed it here.

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So he began his survey of the Turkish countryside looking for landmarks mentioned by Homer.

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Schleeman had given himself a good layman's education in archeology.

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An examination of the area others thought likely revealed nothing to his eye that could possibly relate to Homer's Troy.

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The springs which Homer described weren't of much help either.

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Surely their course must have changed dozens of times in the 30 or more centuries since Troy.

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Before giving up on Bunarbashi Schleeman decided on another test.

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Homer had said precisely how long it took Achilles to chase Hector around the walls.

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There was only one thing for Schleeman to do.

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Wrong. The time was wrong. Bunarbashi just didn't fit Homer's facts.

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Schleeman's detractors had a field day. More convinced than ever that he was a fool or simply crazy.

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Even Schleeman had to admit he'd picked a big haystack in which the search was not a good thing.

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But a gross apprentice who had the brains and energy to make himself a multimillionaire doesn't quit easily.

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He began to search again a short distance north of Bunarbashi.

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There he would encounter his destiny on a hill called Hiscola.

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He would go to the north of the hill and search for his name.

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There he would encounter his destiny on a hill called Hiscola.

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The site was less than an hour's march from the sea. If well fortified, it could command the whole plain below.

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Even an eye less astute than his couldn't miss the archaeological evidence.

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Schleeman was convinced he had realized a 40-year-old dream.

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In his journal he wrote, I have set foot on Trojan soil at last.

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He selected the highest mound on Hisselik and ordered his men to dig.

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Homer had said the Temple of Athena stood on the highest ground in the city, ringed by walls built by the gods.

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Still, the critics scoffed.

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Although Schleeman had taught himself to read and write 18 languages,

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the scholars of the day dismissed him as an unlawful man.

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He had said, I have set foot on Trojan soil at last.

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If he had written and write 18 languages, the scholars of the day dismissed him as an unlettered bore living in a fantasy world.

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Schleeman only worked harder, driving his men to dig deeper into the mound.

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Surely now he would find the proof to quiet those who laughed.

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Find it, he did.

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Here, indisputably, with a remnants of a lost civilization, but were they the fabled walls of Troy?

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Schleeman's trove of artifacts shook the academic world.

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What must the builders of this city have been like?

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What hands made these beautiful things?

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Clearly the ancient craftsmen used techniques more advanced than they did in the past.

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Why did they vanish after accomplishing so much?

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Schleeman discovered hundreds of spindle whirls, just like the ones still favored by local residents for spinning wool yarn.

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Other implements were found, similar, if not identical, to those in everyday use by villagers.

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Schleeman might have been struck by how little some things change in 3,000 years.

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But he would need more to prove his city was the Troy of Homer.

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Heinrich Schleeman's life had been one long love affair with the legend of Troy.

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It had taken 4 years to excavate the ruin he thought was Troy.

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Now, as he walked his ancient pavements, he believed he was following the path Homer had taken so long ago.

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Schleeman seeing as through Homer's eyes, he found a new way to find the true story of Troy.

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Schleeman seeing as through Homer's eyes, the skilled Trojan craftsmen at work in their stalls.

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Touching a dish that might have been set before Helen, the hostage princess who spawned 10 years of war.

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Admiring a lion's head carved in crystal, what great warrior might have carried it as a charm into battle?

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Schleeman could place on his own hand a ring made 30 centuries ago.

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Restore a brush whose bristles had turned to dust in the age of gods who walked with men.

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Still, Schleeman was not satisfied. He had in fact discovered 9 cities.

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He had no way of knowing for sure which one was the city of his dreams.

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Some early inhabitants imported bronze cast in ingots the shape of ox hides.

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There were ships anchors of chiseled stone and ships cook stoves of bronze.

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These Schleeman found in the ruin he called Troy too, but was this Homer's Troy?

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The answer was obscured by evidence of a great catastrophe.

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Violence more terrible than war had seared the very masonry of the walls.

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Jewelry was fused into shapeless blobs of metal.

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The whole countryside must have been laid waste by the disaster.

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Those who survived lived in squalor. The floors of their huts built on compacted garbage.

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If nothing else, Schleeman had unearthed the monument to the tenacity of man.

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Fire and sword had raged. Again and again, a city of the living had been raised on a city of the dead.

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Schleeman numbered the ruins from one for the oldest to nine for the most recent.

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He assumed his objective was among the older ruins, possibly Troy too.

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Yet in Troy's six, he found massive walls that could have been the ones described by Homer.

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If they were the walls that hid Helen from the armies of her betrayed husband,

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it would be easy to see why the battle raged ten years.

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It all seemed to fit Homer's description. A city fashioned by the gods.

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Yet the design of houses in Troy's six was remarkably similar to those of the more ancient second city.

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A major difference among the various ruins seemed to be evidence of the increasing influence of outside cultures.

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By the time of Troy's six, newcomers from the north were introducing a completely new kind of pottery.

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The other arts were also affected by the immigrants.

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Alexander the Great was a latecomer to Troy, but among the first to build an altar to the old gods.

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From inscriptions, it is clear Alexander read Homer as fact.

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More years passed and the Romans became masters of the Ionian coast.

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The poet Virgil took up in Latin where Homer left off in Greek,

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embellishing the story and giving it new credibility.

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Rome made Troy a sacred city.

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Emperors came to worship and be entertained.

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Augustus even considered making Troy the capital of his empire.

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Through it all, minstrels kept alive Homer's poem of glory.

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This was the world Heinrich Schleeman felt he had rediscovered,

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but was he seeing only what he wanted to see?

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So complete was Schleeman's dedication to Homer's Troy's work.

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So complete was Schleeman's dedication to Homer's Troy that he had taken a young Greek woman to be his bride.

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He thought she had Helen's blood coursing through her veins.

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And in a way, all this effort had been intended to restore her heritage.

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The greatest prize he had not been able to give her.

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Yet as he was about to give up, Schleeman made his most fantastic discovery.

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The glint of metal had caught his eye.

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Schleeman ordered his wife to send the workers away.

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Sophia was confused, but she had come to trust her husband's uncanny instincts.

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She did as she was told.

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In four years, Schleeman's men had moved 325,000 cubic yards of earth.

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Now, he was moving alone, deep into the excavation of the ancient second city.

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28 feet down was the lower level of the wall Schleeman identified with Homer's palace of Troy.

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It was here he had seen the flash of treasure.

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Schleeman had chanced everything for his dream.

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Even with all he'd accomplished, scholars still considered him a fraud or a madman.

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Now, he knew they would have to believe him.

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The treasure of Troy was surely only inches from his grasp.

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Then, his fingers touched it.

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They were 31 large objects of beaten gold.

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Had this once adorned Helen, daughter of the gods?

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The workmanship was unmistakable.

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Surely this was all the proof the world would need.

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The hoard included 9,000 small pieces, rings, buttons and charms.

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It was wealth beyond imagining.

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More important, it seemed that a lifetime's quest had finally been realized.

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In spite of promises to share the treasure with the Turkish government,

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Schleeman smuggled most of it out of the country.

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He held onto it long enough to dress Sophia in splendor.

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Somehow, Schleeman knew he had fulfilled his destiny and hers by finding the lost treasure of Troy.

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The collection eventually found its way to the Berlin Museum.

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Schleeman would go on to other triumphs in archaeology.

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The Trojan treasure, however, would vanish.

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In the closing days of World War II, the Americans and the Russians marched on Berlin from opposing flanks.

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The museum fell under Russian control, but the treasure was already gone.

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Someone may have hidden it from the bombardment, then died without revealing the secret of its location.

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It's possible the Nazis stole it for their own use in the headlong flight from the advancing Allies.

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No one really knows.

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Happily perhaps, Schleeman didn't live to see the day that the prize he struggled so hard to win would vanish again without a trace.

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Little has changed in Turkey in the hundred years since Heinrich Schleeman came here to play out his dream of finding Troy.

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Caravans still follow trade routes that were ancient even in Homer's day.

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Old men still sit in the shade and tell stories.

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It is the custom here and was so long before Homer's time.

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Tragedy and disaster are also familiar in this fabled land.

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In 1976, an earthquake killed hundreds of people and left thousands homeless.

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There was no warning, just sudden and savage destruction.

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A day's then heartbroken people began to rebuild even as they mourned their dead.

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Modern archaeologists believe the same fate overtook ancient Troy.

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That around 1300 BC, a violent earthquake leveled the mighty city.

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Before the city could be rebuilt, barbarians attacked the city.

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They fled from the north and put the survivors to the sword.

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Perhaps we can be forgiven for preferring to believe that Troy met its end gloriously and for the sake of love.