Plot

A team of explorers discover a forbidding cave system riddled with ancient markings that seem to contain a mysterious meaning; using advanced photogrammetry, experts finally decode these cryptic scrawls to expose a dark chapter of English history.

The cliffs at Creswell Crags in Nottinghamshire, contain several caves, around 40,000 years old. In 2018, explorers found animal carvings there, previously unknown in Britain, and used state-of-the-art analysis to date these to about 12,800 years ago. Also found were 16th Century "Witch" symbols now believed to have been created to ward off evil.

A museum at Tarapaca, Chile, houses some of the world's oldest mummies. Though well-preserved for millennia, these have recently started oozing a strange black slime. Scientists found this to contain dangerous microbes. It appears that locally rising humidity is the culprit; this was absent at the mummies' original location in the dry Atacama Desert.

In 218 B.C., the legendary Hannibal trekked 1000 miles over the Alps with his army of men, horses and elephants, in pursuit of his Roman enemies. His exact route was not known, but starting in 2004, scientists used radiocarbon dating of soil and animal waste to show his probable route to be the treacherous Traversette Pass.

At Houtamuga, Northeast China, ancient skeletons were recently excavated with inexplicably elongated skulls. Advanced 3D imaging was brought to bear on the mystery, and scientists have concluded that the ancient practice of deliberate deformation was the probable cause.

In Southern iraq about 1917, a Babylonian clay tablet was found, bearing undecipherable texts. Now, after close scrutiny, experts believe it was an ancient trigonometrical calculator, preceding Pythagoras by about 1000 years.