Archaeological Find at a Knights Templar Site!

[Music] just look here oh my god a mysteriously inaccessible tower in a commandery of the night’s templar has me dreaming of templar treasure only there’s no way to get to it this is crazy there really is no staircase of any kind we’ve got only electrical cable and the cable comes from the roof yes so they just dropped it down yes and so what are these little niches these little cutouts in the world the niches are inexplicable janet says they don’t in any way match the construction of the stairs in the other tower and to get a closer look at them will unfortunately be a little bit well unconventional how do you get up there the only way to get up is to come down like from the roof yes oh no no no it’s not so high no it is janet it’s very high and you know it come on [Music] to get to the top we make our way up the southwest tower the one with stairs just if you have a look oh look at that a templar cross wow every step is made with bricks shaped like this so this is the original staircase yes it has been here for almost a thousand years wow okay all right well you know what are the odds that it gives away today [Music] okay now we are on the roof now that i’ve reached the top it’s time to go down janet and the team have rigged the tower’s cross beams with repelling gear so we can descend from above and by we i mean me because nobody else wants to dangle from templar era timbers we don’t know what purpose this tower served or whether the niches could contain historic artifacts but there’s only one way to find out for sure okay here we go tight fit long way down i have plenty of repelling experience but somehow doing it in a 12th century building seems a bit more risky okay headed down so i’m at the first set of niches here right at the top they look empty nothing here okay i’m going down to the next level okay be careful yeah the niches are placed every three to four feet and are fairly regular throughout they don’t spiral down like a staircase would but they could have been placed here to support beams that have long rotted away okay don’t look down just keep working here we go all right i’m at the next opening on the wall here what can you see there some loose brick here more loose brick in here ah nothing else okay headed i down no carvings no nothing oh pretty weird looking bat on the wall right here hey buddy sorry to bother you all right i’m at the next opening on the wall here got something different here one of these openings goes way back not like the others can you tell me more about it it’s probably three or four times the depth of any of the other openings in the bricks but i can’t get to it from this angle because of the age and historical importance of this building we don’t want to use any invasive methods like drilling we film and document the recessed opening before carrying on all right i’m headed down okay great job pinterest i’m down congratulations a thousand-year-old dust aside our repel has aided the investigation and we’ve documented a previously unseen feature in the building in the future janet and the team will need to determine how they want to proceed as they continue to investigate the tower however no sooner have i reached the bottom josh josh come quickly then i’m called back outside for some exciting news what did you find we have discovered the wall and we think that maybe there’s a burial here a burial here oh where it’s where it’s dark yes space over there you can see there yes you can see right right the difference in color in these two sections of soil tells us at some point in time the darker portion was disturbed or dug up you think it’s a complete burial it looks like it’s facing east-west which could mean it’s a templar period burial wow templars were traditionally buried facing toward jerusalem to witness the rapture and christ’s return if this is a templar burial it may give us real physical clues about who they really were and why so little of their material culture survives as the team carefully digs another member scans the pit with a metal detector good thing too they found a coin there oh coin yes there’s a coin [Music] wear a brush or something official tool of archaeology toothbrush it’s made of is it silver silver but old silver yeah yeah 14th 15th century so this coin could be 700 years old yes it is and for you to give that to me that’s so nice of you thank you bye-bye a coin from the templar era buried in front of a commandery like this is a tantalizing discovery the team uses the find as fuel as they excavate further down and we quickly learn that coins are the least of what this place has to offer what did you find yeah it looks like we have a burial oh oh oh right here is that bone few relics from the templars are still in existence and a confirmed burial even rarer still and so the body is laying is this east west here yes so this may be templar uh yes this this may be templar because the head is west but the face itself is looking east towards the holy land today if they change ship support this location for burials was especially important one so it was possible that it was somebody very important and this was from the templar period here okay we’re in the right era and we’re perched on the edge of a huge commandery now for the question of the hour is this a templar this is really amazing look at this i mean this really actually well-preserved skull good teeth it’s hard to tell on the tops but the bottom teeth are in great shape so maybe somebody who is eating well somebody of status maybe i don’t know the condition of teeth in an historic burial is often a good indicator of social status for the simple reason that only the wealthy got enough nourishment to have healthy ones we might expect a templar at a commandery to have teeth like this and there’s one other strong indicator this man was once a templar it appears the arms are bent templars were always buried with their arms crossed right so we see his his right arm is crossed like this there appears to be two burials actually what yes they’re on different levels look at this so we have we have a totally separate burial here right and then this is directly underneath this so in the middle they didn’t have a tradition of remembering the exact location of every individual burial so if there were no monuments placed they just kept burying people one on to another right i’m a pair of bodies deep in this hole and things are looking more and more like we found an exceedingly rare templar burial but incredibly this grave seems to be more than just a table for two something here [Music] oh is this this is bone yeah yeah is that a third burial is that wait is this a skull oh my word another burial that’s three in this pit oh my word look at that so we have burial upon burial upon burial here this is truly incredible every every pile of dirt that you move reveals more of this this person maybe this templar we don’t know but more of their story is revealed with every handful of dirt so this is pretty extraordinary i think josh that you are likely standing with several templars at this very moment [Music] this is an important discovery and an emotional one this is more than just history these are individuals however i’ll admit to being a little surprised not to see evidence of more pageantry here when we imagine the templars i think many people picture you know knights and armor with shields and swords that’s our fantasy of the templars this is the reality right we have a burial here that is simple it’s humble at heart the templars were monks doing the lord’s work according to their traditions this is how we should find them no swords no shields and no mythical treasures well the mythical treasures are here i mean they are real people who had real lives and and real stories and this is their real story right here still we should probably make sure there isn’t a grail down here somewhere feel free to keep looking yes a little more just a little more we just we got to be sure we got to be sure you