[music playing]
NARRATOR: Sicily, 2015, archaeologist Sebastiano Tusa
excavates a shipwreck less than a mile
off the coast, which has remained undisturbed
for more than 2,600 years.
His team dredges up an ancient payload of 39 metal ingots.
Interestingly, spectrographic analysis of the recovered alloy
reveals the compound is unlike anything ever found
in the ancient or modern world.
The interesting part about this
is the composition of the ingots that they found.
The metal is 80% copper and 20% zinc.
There were other things found in it,
but that's the majority of the opposition.
Now zinc only occurs in nature as sphalerite.
It's a zinc-sulfur complex.
In order to create zinc, which didn't come around till about
1,000 years ago, you have to actually process
the zinc out of this sulfide.
They didn't have that technology back then.
DAVID WILCOCK: What was someone doing blending together copper,
zinc, lead, nickel, iron?
This is a complex alloy.
This is nothing easy to do.
It suggests the possibility that it
could have special electrical or energetic properties
that we don't even know about.
People would not be expected to be making
such a complex alloy back then.
NARRATOR: How is it possible that such an advanced alloy was
manufactured over 2,600 years ago, centuries before man
had the technology to manipulate elements like zinc into metals?
And what was its purpose?
Based on the composition of this alloy,
scientists believe what they have found
is orichalcum, a metal associated
with the legendary continent of Atlantis.
According to Plato's fourth-century dialogues,
"The Timaeus" and "Critias," Atlantis
possessed a power and technology greater
than any other civilization on Earth.
It was founded and ruled over by the Greek god, Poseidon,
whose temple was covered in a precious metal
called orichalcum, which translates to mountain copper.
The composition of the alloy is not specified by Plato.
But based on its electrical properties, color, and luster,
scientists suggest that if it really did exist,
it most likely consisted of copper mixed
primarily with zinc, just like the metal
found in the shipwreck.
It was said that the temple of Poseidon on Atlantis
flashed with the red light of orichalcum.
The copper tint of this metal caught
the attention of the seekers that came to this sacred place.
This is not just an attractive color.
This has spiritual implications.
There was something about this metal that was said
to resonate with the divine.
Perhaps it was its origin, that it had come from heaven.
It fell out of the sky.
NARRATOR: According to Plato's story,
the Greek god, Cadmus, son of Poseidon,
came down from Mount Olympus and gave orichalcum
to the people of Atlantis.
An important figure in early Greek mythology
was Cadmus, a divine character, the first hero,
fifth in the lineage from Zeus of the Greek gods.
It was Cadmus that brought the making of bronze.
He knew how to make alloys, special metals, which
in the early days of civilization,
was the beginning of technology.
So Cadmus is the one who shows us
the divine nature of metalwork and gives this as a gift
to the generations.
DAVID WILCOCK: Why are we so quick to dismiss the underlying
stories in those myths?
Those stories talk about extraterrestrials coming
and visiting our culture.
They talk about gods that walked among us
and interacted with humans, but with a severely
advanced technology beyond anything that we have today.
Ancient astronaut theory says that the legends
of these Greek gods are not just mythological,
but they're actually rooted in actual events.