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Private Notes
In the Wild West, one legend of lost gold endures above all others. The story begins after a few years after the American civil war. A young cowhand, raised in the Wild West hears of a tale from a stranger as he sits around a camp fire. It's a story of greed, duplicity and cold-blooded murder all fuelled by an insatiable lust for gold. Dick Holmes is hooked. A mysterious German - or was he a Dutchman - struggled out of the Superstition Mountains in Arizona in 1868. His name, he said, was Jacob Waltz, and in his pockets were samples of rock filled with gold. There was, he said, a mine with the richest seam imaginable deep in the mountains. Later, as Jacob Waltz falls critically ill, Dick Holmes seizes his chance to hear his deathbed confession. He manages to tell Holmes a few cryptic clues before dying. Underneath the Dutchman's bed Brownie finds a box. It contains 48 hundred dollars worth of high-grade ore. Proof that the mine is real. But Dick Holmes has to stop his search when he is injured by a horse. The mantle is passed to his son, Brownie. He meets up with a famous amateur treasure hunter, Adolph Ruth. Ruth sets off into the Superstition Mountains. He never returns. An expedition is mounted to find him. It came across his clothes, containing a detailed map of the where the mine was and a note with the words "veni, vidi, vici"- "I came. I saw I conquered". He must have found the mine. Weeks later his body was discovered, crumpled in a gully. It had two bullets in the head. What had happened? And had he found the mine?
It's one of the most powerful and enduring myths ever created. The Garden of Eden. It is the very definition of paradise: a land of endless plenty where there is no work, no sorrow, no hunger and no disease. But could it be true? Did the Garden of Eden exist as a real place? The only clues to its whereabouts lie in the Bible, which states that the garden is the source of four major rivers: the Tigris, Euphrates and Pishon and Gihon. The sources of Tigris and Euphrates are easy to find, as they are up in the Torus mountains. However they are hundreds of miles apart. So the key to finding Eden would be to locate the other two rivers' sources. The trouble is no one has any idea where the Pishon and Gihon are. The names have long since fallen into disuse. One maverick scholar thinks he may have cracked the code. Professor Juris Zanis thinks he knows where Eden really was and why it really disappeared. To find the answer, Zarins took a multi disciplinary approach; using geology, anthropology, archaeology, linguistics and hydrology. Zarins started to look at the cultures who inhabited the area where the Tigris and Euphrates Meet: Southern Mesopotamia. He believes that the Sumerians who lived 7000 years ago created large-scale urban settlements: the world's first cities. Among their legends was a bountiful garden, a paradise called Dilmun. Dilmun sits on the East coast of Bahrain. Could this be the remnants of the Garden of Eden? Now he had to confirm the stories of the Sumerians using the latest land sat technology. This would give Zarins a "birds eye view" from space at the geology of the region, able to view the rock formations clearly both on land and underwater. Would it give him the final confirmation that he had found the fabled Garden of Eden?
This is a story of one man's magnificent obsession. It would cost him terrible personal tragedy and sixteen years of his life, but it would ultimately end in triumph. Mel Fisher was a chicken farmer from Indiana. From an early age he had fallen in love with diving - in particular diving for treasure. Fisher became obsessed with the lost Spanish Galleon the Nuestra Senora de Atocha ("Our Lady of Atocha"), that had sunk off the Florida coast. It was loaded with fabulous treasure looted from the New World - including copper, silver, gold, tobacco, emeralds, jewellery, and indigo. But she was caught in a hurricane 35 miles off Key West in the Florida Keys and sank. 265 people drowned. Mel uprooted his wife and four children: and took them to Florida in his hunt for the Atocha. For sixteen years they found nothing. In the middle of these lean years, as money ran short, tragedy struck. On July 13, 1975 Mel's oldest son Dirk, his wife Angel, and diver Rick Gage died after their boat capsized during their quest for the treasure. Mel kept going through these hard times thanks to his motto; Today's the Day. Finally, on July 20th, 1985, his son, Kane Fisher, captain of the salvage vessel Dauntless, sent a jubilant message to his father's headquarters, "Put away the charts; we've found the main pile!" Ecstatic crew members described the find as looking like a reef of silver bars. At long last, the wreck's "motherlode" had been found. But this is not the end of the story -it continues today with Mel's grandson - Sean...
A young archaeologist risks everything in his quest to find one of the world's greatest treasures - the fabled lost library of Ivan the Terrible. It's a story that begins during the 15th century, and the sacking of Constantinople. The Ottoman Empire is approaching from the East, preparing to launch an all-out attack on the city. The Sultan rushes to save its most valuable treasures. The Library is its most valuable, and it's whisked away for safe keeping in Moscow. This was no ordinary library, but the greatest library outside of Rome. Records chronicled hundreds of carts laden with the rarest books, written by the world's greatest minds in history: Aristotle, Plato, Homer. These are reputed to be jewel encrusted tomes that hail from all parts of the globe. Ivan the Terrible's lost library became an obsession of Ignatius Stelletski, an archaeologist and historian. Its discovery would elevate him into the pantheon of history, and acquire wealth beyond his wildest dreams. In the early part of the 20th century he began to search the maze of underground tunnels lying beneath Moscow for the library. In 1914 he discovers a list that catalogues some of the more famous books in the library, including Aristotle's 2nd book of Poetics. The outbreak of World War One forces Stelletski to halt his work. Returning to his flat years later, the professor finds his home sacked, and the vital list gone. But his lifelong passion is undimmed. Stelletski continues undeterred to find the lost library, negotiating his way through all the political intrigue and villainy of 20th century Russia - the October Revolution, the rise of Stalin, and World War II. His search takes him under the Moscow Kremlin, in the Secret Gate to Zhitnev yard, in the bell tower of Ivan the Great Wall at Tseyhgauzskoy, the Round Tower, Borovitckii hill embankment of the Moscow River, and the Kremlin Arsenal Tower. Stelletski dies with the final words on his lips "maktaba", Arabic for library, with a tantalisi.
When an ambitious young scientist was sent on a quest by Himmler to find the lost people of Atlantis, little did he know it would become an expedition embroiled in political intrigue and lost integrity. Ernst Schaefer was one of the great explorers and scientists during the interwar years. By 1937, he had led two American-backed expeditions to the Himalayas to study geology and ornithology, his great specialism. But he was desperate for a third trip. The trouble was, with Nazism on the rise, American money could not be found. Schaefer managed to raise 80% of his funds from German companies, but he still needed more. Then he received a summons from Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS. Himmler said that he would back Schaefer on two conditions. The first was that the expedition would add anthropology to its list of sciences. Himmler revealed that he was convinced that Tibet contained the remnants of a long lost race - the "Hyberboreans." Referred to by the German philosopher Nietzsche, these were said to be an Aryan people with remarkable skills. They had been the people of Atlantis - a people, legend said, that had created the first civilisation of all. All other civilisations - the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Chinese, even the Incas, had learned from these Hyperboreans. Plato had written that Atlantis had disappeared beneath the waves and despite many explorers, no one had ever found it, though there have always been several candidates. Himmler's point was that Atlantis may be lost, but its people lived on in the Himalayas. Schaefer's task, Himmler said, was to find these Hyperboreans and prove that the Germans were their direct descendants. Himmler's second stipulation was that all members of the expedition would become members of the SS. Schaefer agreed to both demands. Propelled by the Nazi Party, it would be an expedition that would lead him ultimately into a tale of mountain madness, greed and sacrifice.
