Legend of the Minotaur – Mythical Beasts

The Minotaur, a terrifying monster. Half man, half bull. The Minotaur was born because a woman fell in love with a bull. So dangerous, it was imprisoned in a huge labyrinth and fed on human flesh. Beyond the sacrifice, they were intentionally butchered. The ancient Greeks created this bloody myth because of what they saw here. The palace of Knossos in Crete. Archaeologists were convinced that buried beneath the city of Knossos, they would find the labyrinth. But what actually happened to inspire this monstrous tale? It really was a very large, very terrifying bull-like animal. Could there be far more to this ancient myth than we realize? We found a really, really interesting feature here, a subterranean feature. And will decoding it finally reveal the truth about the people who lived here thousands of years ago? And what they really did? To worship a monster, sacrificing our children, it's hard to relate to today. Now experts use the latest science and archaeology to investigate Crete's mysterious ruins. Pretty loose here, so just be careful. And venture deep into its hidden underworld. To uncover the terrifying reality behind this mythical beast of ancient times. Knossos in Crete. Said to be the birthplace of the mythical Minotaur. Way before the X-Men, Greek mythology was already combining humans and animals to create monsters and heroes. The Avengers or Game of Thrones can run for multiple seasons. The Greek myths, those stories have been going on for over 3,000 years. Minotaur is one of the greatest monsters of the ancient world. It's the first supervillain. The Minotaur myth tells of a terrifying ritual. Every nine years, 14 youths from the Greek mainland are torn from their families. And shipped to a magnificent palace on the island of Crete. Here they are forced into a gigantic labyrinth. So complex, there is no escape. They are a sacrifice to a mutant man-eating monster. Minotaur. But is this just a tale? Or did terrible things really happen on this island that inspired the ancient Greeks to create this myth? Most mythology is based in some fact, something that was really observed. Archaeologist Alexander Megalovre searches for answers at Knossos. This ancient palace city was built 4,000 years ago by a powerful and mysterious civilization. The Minoans. The palace here at Knossos was excavated 120 years ago. And yet even in all that time, we're still kind of scrambling to understand what this place is. These ruins hold many secrets. But evidence found here confirms that Alexander is definitely in Minotaur territory. Hundreds of these coins have been found here over the centuries. What we have on the front side is the Minotaur. We can see him sort of leaping through the air. And you flip it over, we have the labyrinth. So they're both references to the myth of the Minotaur. And on many coins, there's the inscription that says Knossos. And so we know that it's Knossos. The Minoans were once the most powerful civilization in the Mediterranean. Fierce enemies of the mainland Greeks. When we think about ancient Greece, a lot of times we think about it in modern terms, like it's a country. But at the time, it was a lot of little city-states that were not always getting along very well. The entire mainland of Greece must have been terrified of the Minoan civilization. But did a creature really kill Greek youths here? And if so, what was it? Alexander thinks the answer could lie in the Minoan religion and the mysterious ceremonies once performed here. These buildings all contain ritual rooms. It was up in this neighborhood that our excavations came up with this very, very unusual collection of bones. Remains of animal skeletons are common on archaeological digs. But these specimens reveal a very unusual story. This is what we're used to finding on excavation. Fragments of animal bones that have been defleshed. You'll find the cut marks. And that was the standard way of preparing meat. Sometimes if you're near a fireplace, you'll find that some of these bones have been burnt. But some specimens reveal a particularly disturbing aspect of life here thousands of years ago. We found bones that were completely different. Very, very interesting indeed. They were human bones. Alexander believes these people met a brutal and violent death. Some of the bones, like this femur here, were smashed up. Intentionally broken. These are the fragments of four individuals and they're all children. They're too young to even know what gender they are. What could have killed these four young people? There was no evidence for any disease. The teeth were all in very, very good shape. Seems very unlikely that these youths would have died of natural causes. Could these be the youths referred to in the myth? Who, or what, was responsible for these grisly deaths? Here you can see even on one of the vertebrae where there's been cutting on the vertebrae in the backbone itself. You can see the sort of cut marks slicing away exactly the same way that you remove the flesh from animals when you're preparing a meal. We suspected that they were perhaps sacrificed, but then beyond the sacrifice they were intentionally butchered. This discovery is not unique. Investigators have uncovered evidence of sacrificial rituals right across the island. Five kilometres south of Knossos, when archaeologists excavated the remains of a temple, they made a grisly find in one of the rooms. Lying on a table, a teenage male, his legs curled back like he'd been bound, and a bronze dagger by his side, signs that he was a victim of sacrifice. And at the western end of Crete, in the palace of Cydonia, archaeologists unearthed carefully arranged piles of rocks. They concealed animal bones and the skull of a young woman who could be another victim of a deadly ritual. The evidence leaves no doubt. Human sacrifice was happening here on Crete. But why was the flesh being cut off their bones? Was it to feed a monster? The idea that a monster would eat human flesh is something that's always freaked human beings out. And so any monster that does eat people, that's just one more thing to make that monster something to be feared. Was a beast the inspiration for the Minotaur? Investigators turn to the tale to hunt for more clues. The story goes that the god Poseidon gives King Minos a white bull as a gift. He then curses the queen to fall in love with it. She gives birth to a mutant baby, half boy, half bull, and tries to nurse the child herself. But she soon discovers he's cursed. A monster that can only eat human flesh. The king is so angry he imprisons the beast in a huge labyrinth. A giant maze so large and complex that no one can ever find their way out. There's a number of stories throughout Greek mythology of humans having sex with animals. This does not suggest that copulation with bulls was part of the everyday life of Minoans. I think it was a curiosity that is explored in myth so that it doesn't have to be explored in real life. But what real event could have inspired the tale of a bovine monster here at Knossos? What did the ancient Greeks see? Archaeologist Alexander MacGillivray investigates. There's evidence for bull iconography all over this building. This is a plan of the palace. There is this bull's head. Across the central court there were fragments of these Minoan horns of consecration. The great, charging, bellowing bull that we have in the north entrance passage that greets you on the way in. Think of the impression that would make on people coming in from all over Crete and even from overseas. Bulls clearly had incredible status here. But did the Minoans include them in a ritual that involved human sacrifice? At the heart of the palace, Alexander uncovers more clues. The whole architecture of this building looks into this court. This is really what defines the palace. This central plaza stands out at Knossos. It's huge and is the only area here left empty. Was this the location of a spectacular but deadly bovine ritual? So you've got buildings around it on all sides. You could have people gazing down into the court. So whatever happened in this court was hugely important. The remains of a palace mural could provide the answer. Some experts believe this could be evidence that people were indeed killed by bulls here in a dramatic event. This is part of a much, much larger composition that would have covered something like that whole space up there. Piecing together the remaining fragments gives an incredible insight into the event. When researchers unearthed this ancient megastructure, they found hundreds of fragments of painted plaster creating a huge puzzle nearly 3,500 years old. Together, they revealed a figure of a mighty charging bull. Around it, three Minoan figures. One grabbing the bull's horns. One somersaulting over its back. And one to catch the person jumping. Five of these paintings were found, forming a giant billboard of what could be an extreme ancient ritual. Bull leaping. One wrong move and you could be killed. What we see from the paintings is that bull leaping would have taken place right here. They probably led the bulls up the ramp here in the north entrance passage and leaped over the bulls right here with everybody watching. This ritual could have inspired the idea of bulls as killers at Knossos. Leaping over the bull is like, if you make it, you've survived this incredible feat. It's like overcoming your fear of death. What I continue to find so fascinating about the myth of the Minotaur is that we still have the same features in rituals today. For example, in the running of the bulls at Pamplona, we see the same motifs. Humans putting themselves in the way of danger, using bulls to show strength. The Minotaur is still around in different forms today. But not all bulls here were like the beasts of today. Alexander believes some were supersized monsters. A palace room destroyed 3,500 years ago provides the evidence. These blocks had been hurled by a massive earthquake right off the south facade of the palace. After the earthquake, the Minoans went back into the room and placed these two massive bull skulls. As part of an offering. Examining x-ray images of the skulls reveals these were indeed no ordinary creatures. You can see the bull's head, great long head. And they were placed, they were severed from the body and they were placed intentionally in the corner of the room. If you look at this detail of the horns, you'll see that, in fact, they're huge. These are from very, very large animals, much bigger than you would expect from regular domestic cattle. But just how large and powerful were these beasts? Comparative anatomist, Dr. Joy Reidenberg, dissects and studies the biggest creatures in the animal kingdom. Today, she investigates the real world origins of mythical monsters. Joy believes these skulls are from a giant ancient species called an auroch. This is a photo of an auroch skull. These are the types of skulls that were in the palace. And this is actually a reduced picture. If I were to measure the skull end to end like this, it would in reality be about this big. Almost as wide as I can reach. You can imagine, that is a huge head. We're starting to approach dinosaur size now. These extinct super bulls were on a completely different scale from cattle of today. So this is a skull of a modern bull. And it has horns, but they're not nearly as big as what you see in the auroch. And this part of the bone that supports the horns is a lot smaller than what you would see on an auroch. And if we look at the back, this is where the neck muscles attach. And this is pretty massive on a bull. But this is much bigger than the auroch. Which means the aurochs had huge necks to hold up those really big heads. Reconstructing the full scale of this beast reveals it was truly behemoth. Let's compare a human skull to an auroch skull. If we put one of these here, this is enormous compared to a human head. I would run the other way. But these animals were actually quite aggressive. They were found all over Greece and Crete in the wild. And so the Minoans would have been very familiar with these animals. Evidence for a towering bull creature living on this island is beginning to stack up. Based on the size of the skulls that were found at the site, estimates are that they were probably between 1,500 and 3,000 pounds. And probably more than seven feet in height. That would be a terrifying sight to see. Aurochs died out nearly 400 years ago. But these beasts were common in ancient Greece and Crete. There may actually be some truth behind this legend. Most legends really start with a little fact that is true. Giant bulls clearly had extraordinary status at Knossos. But was an even bigger one imprisoned somewhere in this palace? To find out, experts now hunt for evidence of the giant labyrinth, said to be the Minotaur's home. The clue to its location is in the myth. According to legend, the labyrinth is said to lie deep beneath the palace of Knossos. It is a huge web of winding tunnels, so complex and so vast, that once you enter, it is impossible to find your way out again. The certain fate of anyone brought here is death in the Minotaur's jaws. When the palace was first discovered, I think a lot of the people involved did genuinely think, now we'll find the labyrinth, you know, it's got to be here. Archaeologists were convinced that buried beneath the city of Knossos, they would find the labyrinth. British archaeologist, Sir Arthur Evans, was one of these. He dedicated most of his working life to hunting down the Minotaur's labyrinth. In 1900, he began his first excavations of the palace. Today, archaeologist Alexander MacGillivray continues the investigation. Within five years, Arthur Evans had given a pretty clear picture of this enormous building. What Evans discovered was a truly behemoth structure. In ancient times, it would have dwarfed anything in Europe. This palace, wrapped around a lavishly decorated throne room, and towered up to four stories high. There were over 1,000 rooms, spreading out across 20,000 square meters. But did the Minoans construct a concealed labyrinth here as well? Mysterious symbols carved across the palace suggest the maze could indeed be more than just a story. What we have here is a mason's mark in the shape of a double-bitted axe. You can see the two triangles and the staff in the middle. The ancient Greek word for this type of axe is labrys. It convinced Evans he was close to his goal. This gave him evidence for the labyrinth, the physical labyrinth. Evans discovered more crucial clues. The structure of the palace proved the Minoans had the engineering expertise to build a giant maze. The scale of the building was enormous. All of a sudden, he was excavating this building of 1,000 rooms. At the time, most structures on mainland Greece were small and simple. Knossos was on a completely different scale. So imagine somebody coming to Crete and then walking into this building, where you've got windy basement corridors, different floor levels going up and down stairs. They would have been completely blown away. But is there evidence of building work beneath the palace where the myth places the labyrinth? I found a really, really interesting feature here, a subterranean feature. At the western end of the palace, Alexander eventually finds a way into this mysterious network. It goes in underneath the building. It's like a complicated underground passageway. Where do these channels lead? Could this be the entrance to a maze? It looks like it goes in a long way. It's really kind of dark and claustrophobic in there, so to get a better idea, I'm going to put this camera in on a pole and monitor it on this phone. As we go in deeper and deeper, we find, in fact, that the channel is blocked. It's obviously incredibly well built. It's part of a well-engineered system, but we can't get any further here. Digging up these ruins to hunt for the Minotaur's maze is not possible. The palace is simply too delicate. But new technology may finally have found the answer. Ground-penetrating radar works by sending a radio signal into the soil. This detects anything hidden underground. Experts have now completed a number of different painstaking surveys. Combining the results gives a definitive answer. There is no maze beneath the palace. These channels are believed to be the remains of a water network. What's been found beneath the palace reveals the Minoans to be master plumbers. These channels link up to form a network, carrying wastewater away from the palace. The crowning glory of their plumbing is the world's first flushing toilet that drains straight into this system. And at the north end of the palace, the remains of another water system. It's made of terracotta pipes. Whose conical design may have helped to maintain pressure and keep fresh water always on tap. It's absolutely amazing. It means that this had to have been put into place 4,000 years ago. Which makes it unique. It's an amazing piece of engineering. This structure was centuries ahead of its time. But it isn't the Minotaur's labyrinth Evans was searching for. It is subterranean. It is buried below the palace. But it's clearly not the labyrinth. So with our coin, we've got our evidence for the Minotaur. What about the flip side? Where's our evidence for the labyrinth? If there's a labyrinth down here, ground penetrating radar would have found it. Maybe it's not here. Maybe we have to look somewhere else beyond the palace. The search is far from over. Could archaeologists have been looking for the wrong kind of maze? Medieval historians believe that the ancient Greeks were describing a natural underground structure found elsewhere on the island. The labyrinth itself might not be what you think it is. A labyrinth is structure combined with confusion. So it's something that might lure you in. Something that catches you and keeps you in there. Could the Minotaur's maze have been a huge cave system? And what could these dark caverns reveal about the beast? And why this myth began? The legend claims that the Minotaur was imprisoned inside a vast labyrinth under the palace of Knossos. Every nine years, 14 Athenian youths were forced into this giant maze. Here the Minotaur would hunt them down. And eat them. Archaeologists Loeta Tyree and Antonia Stamos investigate a site just over 13 kilometers east of the palace, deep in the Cretan countryside. Their work on how the Minoans used caves like this could also throw light on the real inspiration for the labyrinth. I think it's quite plausible that a cave could have brought upon the idea of a labyrinth. You are moving through a space that is very complicated and you're hoping to be able to return. The Skotino Cave is a completely natural feature of Crete's limestone bedrock. It's a complex web of chambers. But how like a labyrinth could it really be? The team's research involves mapping this particular system. It's a whole lot more cave than we were expecting. Some places are actually completely inaccessible. This cave is so dark and complex, it's almost impossible to tell what's down here. You can't understand these caves in a simple image. You don't understand the sheer sense of the size, the sense of the depth. Or how they drop off suddenly into the darkness. It's pretty loose here, so just be careful. If a cave system did help inspire the labyrinth, it would need to be so big and complex that people could easily lose their way. Antonia and Loetta use a theodolite to build up a very detailed picture of this subterranean lair. It's an electronic distance measurer and it measures elevation as well as distance. Okay, found you. Start levelling. Level. Got it. Giving us exact measurements down to the millimetre. The team must collect thousands of readings to map out all the passageways. Oh, there we go. They combine the data from many previous expeditions. Yeah, that's kind of interesting. This cave is much larger than it actually appears, because you can only walk to about here roughly and then the rest of that is off into the depths, into darkness. The team's work reveals that this cave system is much bigger than anyone first thought. The Scatino Cave opens like a subterranean cathedral, 26 metres wide. It drops 70 metres into the earth. There is only one complex route out of these chambers. So getting disorientated and trapped is a definite possibility. But how was this cave used by the Minoans? Did people die here? Artifacts found in the chambers reveal that these subterranean passages were the location for some kind of religious worship. We don't know if there were several huge rituals or numerous small ones. But the amount of pottery suggests that it was very well frequented. Archaeologists believe the Minoans used these rock formations as an altar. It seems that the main focus was toasting, libations, drinking and also eating. The exact nature of these rituals remains a mystery. But what historians do know is that bulls featured prominently in Minoan rituals and religious iconography. We estimated that maybe 100 people could have gathered standing and maybe hearing and trying to look into the sacred area. Anyone in this area would have known about it. Caves were not remote to people 3,000 years ago. For Loeta, it's impossible to say if a specific cave did inspire the maze. But it's the closest some experts think we can get to uncovering the truth. Scientists and archaeologists are discovering more and more elements that suggest the Minotaur myth could have been loosely based on a number of real-world sources. Human sacrifice, supersized bulls and labyrinth-like caves. But why did the ancient Greeks distort these events so much when they created the myth? Usually with myths, they're trying to express something that was memorable. Keep in mind, a lot of people didn't know how to write in history. So they would have passed on what they learned in an encoded way. Many of these stories were used as a way of sharing information. Being able to make the story compelling, make the story rememberable, you often would exaggerate, just like we do today. Did the ancient Greeks encode a message in the Minotaur myth? If we could crack it, what would it reveal? Even though myths are very fantastical, they have little secrets that are encoded in them that if you ponder the symbols in the right way, you can start to unlock their secret. We have versions of myth that have been adapted and transformed simply because they've been told so many times. So it's very likely that this story started out looking quite different. Can finding the coded message behind another legendary monster reveal why the ancient Greeks created the Minotaur myth? While this mutant bull terrorized people on land, another bloodthirsty beast hunted the seas. Mermaids. At first glance, they're beautiful women with fishtails. But beware, they are ambush predators, out to slaughter passing sailors. Using their seductive looks and angelic voices as a trap, they lure men towards the shore. And a deadly hunt begins. Beneath their pretty faces, mermaids are ravenous, man-eating monsters, dragging sailors to their death and feasting on their flesh. The original versions are nothing like Splash or like the Disney version. They tended to be a bit more sinister than that. Nothing like the sort of cutesy version that most people think of. Comparative anatomist Dr. Joy Reidenberg thinks Minotaurs and mermaids have a lot in common. She believes both were inspired by real animals. The mermaid's origins may be a familiar marine creature, the seal. We're looking at a harbor seal. But it looks very similar to the Mediterranean monk seals, which are common around ancient Greece. But why would seals have been mistaken for half-human, half-fish creatures? It actually has eyes that are facing forward. So this animal's eyes are looking at you the way a human would, because humans have binocular vision with two eyes facing forward. Very few animals have that. Then we go down this fish-like body and notice that these two feet can sprout and look just like a fish's tail with the webbing in between. The distinctive way the seal swims is also a clue to how it could have been mistaken for a mermaid. They actually push their feet back and forth like this. So they'd open one, scoop the water, close it, then open the other and scoop the water in the other direction. So at any one moment in time, you would see one of these completely expanded, looking just like a fish's tail. It's not just the seal's physiology that ties it to the mermaid myth. Its behavior fits too. These seals like to live on rocky coastlines. They like to climb up on the rocks, get a nice look around, and that's the kind of coastline you have off of ancient Greece. Mother seals make a cry that sounds a little bit like a singing human voice. So you imagine one of these seals sitting on the rocks, crying to its baby or calling to its baby. It would sound like it was a woman who was singing. So there comes the mermaid myth. These sirens calling the sailors in to their death on the rocks as these ships would crash. Like bulls, seals are not normally a threat to humans. So why did the ancient Greeks create the minotaur and mermaids as man-eaters? Could this be the key to the encoded message? Maritime archaeologist Dr. Derek Irwin believes the answer could lie in the dangerous coastline of Crete. The Aegean Sea is actually littered with shipwrecks. We think that there are thousands of shipwrecks lying in the seabeds around Greece. Derek believes the flesh-eating fame of mermaids is a coded message about the many deaths that occurred in these waters. We found several shipwrecks here around the island of Dias, the southern, eastern and west coast of the island. Hidden underwater volcanoes have created deadly ship-shredding geology, covering the seabed and shoreline with sharp rocks. So along here mostly we have drop-offs. From the surface you go to deep water to 40 or 50 meters straight down. Then we have some rocks protruding out here. A combination of bad weather, rough seas and all sorts of rocks on the surface, under the surface, near the coast could have been catastrophic for any ancient sailing ship. Derek thinks the mermaids' hunger for human flesh was created as a stark warning. Mermaid tales were all about danger and deception. Stories of mermaids were definitely like a coded message to ancient sailors not to go too close to the rocks. Greece has over a thousand islands and more than 13,000 kilometers of shoreline. For the ancient Greeks, sailing through this rocky maze wasn't easy. Their boats were small and made of wood, and the sailors had no compass. So at night, they used the stars to navigate. And by day, they had to hug the jagged coastline. The mermaid myth reminded them to stay alert. It was this life-saving warning that meant the tales of mermaids endured for millennia. Our human brain is wired to pay attention to storytelling, to things that we can relate to. If we make them meaningful, we're going to store them and remember them better. So if mermaids were created for a purpose, what message lies behind the Minotaur myth? What were the ancient Greeks warning of? Could the sudden downfall of their enemy, the fierce Minoans, be the key? The myth provides further clues. It recounts how a Greek prince decides to fight back against Crete, and disguises himself as one of the Minotaur's sacrifices. He enters the labyrinth, armed with a razor-sharp sword and a magical ball of string to trace his path. The prince tracks down the Minotaur in his lair, and the battle begins. This Greek hero finally slays the beast. Some of the most interesting and intriguing myths are ones that are mixing a little bit of truth and a little bit of fantasy. And a lot of messaging. If you look at the story of the Minotaur, there are powerful messages about what is acceptable or moral or righteous behavior. And that if those behaviors are not followed, the consequences are monstrous. Can the demise of the Minotaur be connected to the sudden disappearance of the Minoan world? Archaeologist Alexander Megillivray is looking for answers. So here we have the Minoans at the height of their power, with Knossos, this fabulous building at the center of a trade network. At the peak of its power, it's suddenly interrupted. Could the Minotaur's death be a coded message about the end of the Minoans? Environmental engineer Kostas Sinalakis investigates how the mysterious Minoan civilization met its downfall. The end of the Minoans is very puzzling, and we search for evidence everywhere. And the big question is, what happened? Kostas believes the rocks found on the coast of Crete hold the answers. See, this is Minoan pumice. Pumice comes in from volcanic eruptions. About 60 miles north of here, in that direction, there is a big volcano. This volcano erupted 3,500 years ago. The fact this pumice is found here in Crete tells Kostas it started a chain of events that brought down the Minoans. So, you put all the clues together, and it all points out to a huge wave, which is the hallmark of a tsunami. This giant wave would have crushed everything in its path. We know that the tsunami reached this high. And if we look around, there is a hotel right there, and we are higher than the top floor of the hotel. You can imagine how devastating it must have been if in this location the tsunami was as high as 15 meters. But could this tsunami really have wiped out the Minoans? Kostas wants to understand exactly how destructive this tsunami would have been. What we are interested in finding out is what's the impact, not just in this place where we have measurements, but in other places like in Knossos. So, we create a mathematical model, and then we try to see what kind of waves we generate. This animation shows the size of the wave that devastated Crete. This is a big wave. It changes history. It causes the demise of the Minoans. Powerless against this tsunami, the once fearsome Minoans could only watch as their home was devastated. After the tsunami, after all of this destruction, the surviving Cretans are very, very heavily weakened, and this makes them open prey to the Greeks. In the legend, a Greek prince slays the monstrous Minotaur. It's possible that this story reflects how the Greeks themselves killed off the Minoan civilization. The myth of the Minotaur could be political propaganda. An ancient enemy was presented in a barbaric, bloodthirsty light. The myth of the Minotaur is told to little Greek children on the mainland ad infinitum, saying once upon a time we were ruled by this vicious superpower just a little bit to the south of us on Crete. Myths are adapted all the time to gain power and to retain power. So, very frightening images will be adapted, will be readapted by rulers to strike fear into people. The Minotaur is one of the most terrifying monsters to come out of the ancient world. A myth so ferocious and extreme, it has survived for thousands of years. Wrapped inside this tale are clues to how the Minoans really lived, how they worshipped, and the rivalries that defined the history of this region thousands of years ago. What we have is a distorted version of the Minoan civilization. We have a culture who worshipped bulls, were able to build great structures, but also engaged in human sacrifice. One of the reasons that myths endure is because they deal with these universal themes that the human species is always struggling with. So, themes of survival, of fertility, of power, of war, of conflict. All of that is tackled through stories that will help us kind of deal with these challenges. Experts have finally discovered how the story of the Minotaur is much more than a simple fairy tale. It reveals how a once powerful civilization was eradicated by its greatest foe.