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00:002300 years ago, a brutal kill, the wounds still visible today.
00:07This is skeleton T-38, an ancient warrior buried with respect
00:12in a time when war reigned and every man had to fight.
00:18It appears to be the body of a military hero.
00:21Seems pretty clear that he died from a stabbing.
00:24But did he really die on the battlefield?
00:26If it did not hit the heart itself, it may have nicked the main vessel of the body.
00:30Or was T-38 taken out in cold blood?
00:49From a cemetery in Greece, the bones of a man stabbed to death.
00:53The marks of the blows that killed him are easy to see.
00:59This skeleton is 2300 years old.
01:03It belongs to a time when this land was Macedonia, the ancient kingdom of Alexander the Great.
01:09A time of battle and bloodshed, heroes and assassins.
01:14So who was this man?
01:16How did he die?
01:18Was he a soldier killed in battle?
01:19Or was this murder?
01:22Dr. Ken Nystrom, a bioarchaeologist and an expert in ancient death rituals, is on a quest to find out.
01:29He travels the world studying mummies and bones.
01:32The bones and the burial of T-38 are full of clues.
01:36We just have to pick them out and piece them together in order to answer the questions that we have.
01:40Joining Ken on the case is Dr. Tiffany Tong, a specialist in the study of violent trauma on ancient bones.
01:48Can she figure out how the fatal blows were delivered?
01:51Was he a soldier?
01:52Did he fight in the army?
01:54Just was he unlucky and somebody murdered him?
01:57To answer these questions, they must first reconstruct his life and then his death.
02:03Grease.
02:05This cemetery dates from 2,500 years ago.
02:10Among the burials of people and horses placed in the ground to honor their owners, this skeleton was discovered complete.
02:18The death was brutal.
02:21And crucially, the grave is intact.
02:24The evidence of what happened may lie here.
02:27He's known as T-38 because his was the 38th grave to be found.
02:33And it's immediately clear he was stabbed to death.
02:38To launch their investigation into the past, our scientists meet archaeologist Dr. Theo Antikas.
02:45When the burial site was uncovered by property developers, he was part of a team of archaeologists
02:50asked to analyze the remains in the graves saved in an emergency excavation.
02:55They begin by closely inspecting the evidence.
03:01Well, I invited Ken and Tiffany to resolve a problem we have identifying T-38's cause of death
03:09because it is extremely rare to find a skeleton with that particular injury.
03:19When I first looked at the case, just images of it, I saw that there were the cut marks on the vertebral bodies.
03:25They have distinct marks of a killing instrument.
03:30And I thought, stabbing?
03:31Pretty straightforward.
03:33What's so interesting about this?
03:35The intrigue lies in the circumstances of the death.
03:38How did that stabbing occur?
03:40Not just that he was stabbed.
03:41Sure, we can say that, but that's not what's interesting.
03:43It's how he was stabbed.
03:45Precisely how he was stabbed.
03:47Any blow that struck the vertebrae this deeply would have destroyed major organs and caused instant death.
03:54But who was this man?
03:56And why was he killed?
03:58The grave may hold clues, but the burial site has been built over.
04:02Luckily, Theo has a photographic record.
04:04This is the tomb of T-38.
04:07It's a simple plinthos tomb that is clay bricks plastered with white.
04:15And he's laid gently on an east-west direction.
04:20So it looks like the right arm was folded over a little bit that kind of collapsed on his chest.
04:27Historian Dr. Victor Davis Hanson offers some insight.
04:30I guess we could say that if a person was not buried properly or burned properly,
04:36then the Greeks felt the soul was never at rest.
04:38And so one of the worst things that could happen to anybody in the Greek-speaking world
04:42was to die and have your body either not found or mutilated or left to rot without proper offerings being given to it.
04:51Artifacts in the grave reveal vital information.
04:54A clay drinking vessel, a scythos, was an offering to the gods and to help nourish T-38's soul.
05:02An ancient bronze coin called an obol was placed in his mouth.
05:07It was meant to pay the mythical ferryman who would carry his spirit across the river Styx to eternal life.
05:13The grave goods seemed to indicate some sort of care was provided to this man.
05:20It wasn't necessarily just a dumping of a body.
05:25It seemed to indicate some sort of social status.
05:29So we're looking at someone.
05:31I guess we could use the term upper middle class.
05:34But the coin is more than a sign of T-38's status.
05:37It pinpoints for Ken when he lived.
05:42Dating around 350 B.C., this makes T-38 a subject of King Philip II, father to Alexander the Great.
05:51This means that he lived through the most bloody and extraordinary era in his country's history.
05:58A time when Macedonia grew to become a military superpower.
06:03And these are the grave's most dramatic artifacts.
06:07Two spears placed by his sides.
06:11Did T-38 play an active part in his country's history?
06:16Were these spears the tools of his trade?
06:19Was he a fighting man cut down in the heat of battle?
06:23The questions are stacking up.
06:25T-38 lived during an incredible time.
06:28But the mystery remains.
06:31How did he die?
06:33The ancient warrior known as T-38 died 2,300 years ago.
06:45And our team of scientists is in Greece to find out how and why.
06:50It's clear it was a violent death.
06:53The marks from three stab wounds are obvious.
06:57Forensic analysis may reveal some clues.
06:59If we want to understand why he died or to understand more about his death,
07:04you really have to investigate and learn more about the man.
07:08And all that remains of the man are his bones.
07:11So it's the bones that must tell his story.
07:15Theo Antikas, professor of anatomy and physiology, invites our experts in to perform a detailed examination.
07:21First, they look for confirmation that T-38 was male.
07:25I'm going to take a look at the skull.
07:30Check out the glabella.
07:31Yeah, that's a very, pretty pronounced ridging right there.
07:35Yeah, right between the eyes.
07:36Mastoid process right behind the ear over here.
07:40It's pretty robust.
07:41Looks like a male at least there.
07:42And then the chin, definitely.
07:44Yeah, that's a male.
07:45That's a pretty good chin.
07:46Yeah, that does look pretty robust.
07:48The shape of the skull strongly suggests that the skeleton is male.
07:53Cross-checking, they examine the pelvis.
07:55To an expert eye, this is a powerful indicator of the skeleton's sex.
08:00A woman's pelvis tends to be much wider than a man's.
08:04Now looking at the pubic bone, this front part of the pelvis,
08:07that looks quite male as well.
08:13It's not as wide as I would expect in a female.
08:16This evidence clearly indicates that T-38 was a man.
08:20But was he the right age to go into battle?
08:24Tooth development and wear helps to build a profile.
08:27In the head itself, in the cranium.
08:30Yeah, thermals are there too.
08:32They're also worn too.
08:34Pretty good, yeah.
08:35As they start to form an estimate of age,
08:38the team looks for supporting evidence from elsewhere on the skeleton.
08:42Again, they find it in the pelvis.
08:44This is the face of a bone called the pubic symphysis.
08:48Due to wear and tear, it changes throughout life,
08:51long after the skeleton has stopped growing.
08:53Its condition will indicate the age at which a person died.
08:57Yeah, but this part right here makes me want to push the age up a little bit.
09:01You know, individuals, it starts to erode a little bit on that interior portion.
09:05We all start to degenerate a little bit when we get older, yeah.
09:08This could be the first sign that T-38 lived an active life.
09:12But if he was really active, that could cause some of the degeneration as well.
09:16Yeah.
09:17But, you know, that indicates slightly old, you know, late 20s.
09:22Yeah.
09:22Possibly even into early 30s.
09:25Yeah, I would say about 30.
09:26They see nothing to indicate that he was unhealthy.
09:29He was relatively young, but was he the right age to fight?
09:33Was he a soldier?
09:34T-38 lived in ancient Macedonia, a military state.
09:41His king, Philip II, was building the force that Alexander the Great would lead to glory.
09:47Many men were conscripted, and they knew they would have to fight.
09:51T-38 died a violent death, and he was buried with weapons.
09:56It seems logical to think that he was a warrior.
09:58The question is, can the team find proof?
10:04A major clue lies in the burial site.
10:08Five of the men found in the graveyard were buried with horses.
10:12In ancient Greece, this was an extraordinary honor.
10:15So extraordinary that many archaeologists believe this is a cemetery for the shock troops of Philip's army.
10:22The cavalry.
10:23This suggests to me that people were veterans and probably veteran cavalrymen from a particular favored social stratum.
10:33Was T-38 a cavalryman?
10:36If he was, they should be able to tell.
10:40In ancient Greece, riding horses required more than skill.
10:43It took phenomenal muscle power.
10:46And remarkably, that strength should be visible on the bones.
10:49If he were a rider, we might expect to see skeletal markers that might indicate that he rode horses frequently.
10:56So if you imagine an individual on a horse, they wouldn't have actually put their feet in stirrups.
11:00So they would have relied on their leg muscles to basically keep them on the body of the horse.
11:05So you might expect to see really marked muscle attachments on the thigh bone or the femur.
11:11And right along here, the linea aspera, there's clearly muscle attachment.
11:16But it's not really highly, highly developed, like you might expect with an individual who is consistently using their leg muscles.
11:24It doesn't seem to indicate that this individual was riding a horse with any great frequency.
11:30If this man was a soldier, he didn't fight on horseback.
11:34They can dismiss the cavalryman theory.
11:37An examination of the shoulder blades points to an alternative military life.
11:42There does seem to be some unusual thing on the shoulder blade, right on the back part of it right there.
11:48They're separated into two pieces, and it's not, it's like developmental.
11:54It wasn't a fracture, it doesn't look like.
11:56The bones of the shoulder blade should fuse together before a person reaches adulthood.
12:02T-38 was a man in his 30s, but those bones didn't fuse.
12:06Why?
12:07And so it might have something to do with his activity.
12:10It might be a war-like activity, such as archery or possibly spirit throwing, I guess.
12:14It could be a condition called osachromiale, better known today as tennis shoulder.
12:20Intense practice or training in adolescence produces a deformity in adulthood.
12:26It comes from concentrated, repeated stress on the shoulder bones, firing a sling, drawing a bow, or hurling a weapon.
12:35Like the two spears T-38 was buried with.
12:38The men of King Philip's army were drilled, disciplined, and trained from a young age.
12:44They were also constantly at war.
12:49In the period 358 to 350, this was a period of consolidation.
12:53So Philip was usually fighting on the borderlands or in rough terrain with horsemen, light-armed soldiers that would throw javelins.
13:01So T-38 probably was a soldier, not a cavalryman, but an infantryman, fighting with a spear.
13:09The grave treasures and the historical records fit with what the bones are telling our experts in ancient forensics.
13:16It now seems very possible that he died a warrior's death on the battlefield.
13:21The focus now turns to T-38's final moments.
13:28I don't know yet precisely what kind of weapon was used or which part of the body was initially penetrated by the weapon.
13:35I need more information.
13:37Blow by blow, it's now time to reveal his brutal death.
13:42It looks like this ancient Macedonian man, known to our scientists as T-38, was a soldier.
13:56But did he die a hero's death on an ancient battlefield?
14:00Or could it have been something else, like murder?
14:04The discovery of his remains excited archaeologists because, unusually, the cause of his death was easy to see.
14:13Repeated stab wounds.
14:16So when I think about the cut marks on the thoracic vertebrae, I mean, it's important to think about the organs that would have been damaged in the process.
14:23And it's likely that a weapon could have come through the front and maybe hit the stomach and gone through maybe part of the liver and through the diaphragm.
14:31And then, importantly, it would have hit the thoracic aorta, which is this huge vessel that comes out of the heart, and it carries large quantities of blood.
14:38The second the thoracic aorta was hit, I think he was as good as dead.
14:44The team's goal is to find out the exact manner of this man's death.
14:49Can the bones tell them how these three fatal blows were delivered?
14:54Each one follows roughly the same diagonal line between the left shoulder and right leg.
14:59So I kind of see three working hypotheses in terms of direction.
15:03He was either stabbed for more of a direct interior motion or a slightly upward motion or the third hypothesis, of course.
15:12Start from the top.
15:13They have three possible scenarios to work through.
15:16What direction do you think that the blow was delivered?
15:21What if it was from below, up through the diaphragm?
15:25Not coming up that way.
15:26So was he struck from below in an upward motion?
15:30But they're on that side, though.
15:33Okay.
15:33If it was coming up from that side, put the marks to be on this side.
15:36Okay.
15:36To create those angled cuts, it seems like an upward blow would have to come from the victim's right.
15:43But the spine isn't flat.
15:45It's tube-shaped.
15:46And the wounds are on the other side of the bone.
15:50Upward blows of this kind are unlikely to have caused these wounds.
15:54The second possibility is that the blows were struck from the front, up close and personal.
15:59So what if he was in a face-to-face conflict and somebody came at him from the front, you might expect to see a wound through the rib area going through his gut and then hitting the front part of his spinal column.
16:15An attack from the front is possible, but the blade would need to have passed through the rib cage.
16:21Could it have slipped between the ribs without causing damage elsewhere?
16:26Given that there's so much skeletal structure and the thorax, you have all the ribs, the sternum, and the manubrium all right here.
16:31There's a lot to go through in order to actually reach through all of the organs and hit the back part of the, to hit the spinal column.
16:40Tiffany has found one small nick, which could suggest the fatal blows might have been struck from the front.
16:47Did the killer's blade take a chunk out of one of his ribs?
16:52The break pattern on the bone suggests the damage occurred near the time of death, not post-mortem.
16:58If the bone had been completely dry, you might expect to see more straight breaks on the rib.
17:05So that's not to say I'm convinced.
17:06I, I can't say 100% that this is a perimortem fracture.
17:09I just raise it as a potential question in trying to figure out what happened to this person 2,500 years ago.
17:15The chip on the bone supports the theory of a frontal attack, but it's not conclusive proof.
17:21The third option is an attack from above.
17:24The blade would pass behind the clavicle, the collarbone.
17:27Here you just have to miss the collarbone.
17:30It could have gone down behind the collarbone.
17:32And then there you just hit all the, the lungs and the heart and all the, the organs are right there.
17:37So you could go through and just hit that.
17:39So I mean, imagine if a weapon did come down from the top, you'd expect that it might hit your clavicle right in here.
17:46So it would have to have been a fairly thin weapon perhaps.
17:48It's imperative that we find out what kind of weapon was used to kill this man.
17:58I mean, that'll help us better contextualize his death.
18:01So we can find out if he was killed in battle or maybe he was killed in a more personal conflict.
18:06So I want to measure, you know, how long would the weapon have had to have been to have entered his skin, gone through muscle tissue, and then left those marks on the thoracic vertebrae.
18:17I mean, it would have had to penetrate about 19 centimeters or about seven and a half inches.
18:20We need to know the width of the weapon.
18:25So it would have been at least about four centimeters or about an inch and a half.
18:32What could have inflicted this sort of damage?
18:35The ancient Greeks fought with a number of different weapons.
18:40Historical weaponry expert John Naylor is going to help them conduct an experiment to identify blade type.
18:46We'll start with a straight, leaf-bladed sword.
18:51Okay.
18:52Typical of the period, in the sort of 4th century cruciform hilt.
18:56And see whether that matches up to your expectations.
19:00Seeing the weapons for the first time, I mean, brought down to reality what kind of weapons may have inflicted such a blow.
19:07The leaf-bladed sword is long and thin.
19:10How does its indentation compare with the marks on T-38's bones?
19:14Something coming in like this.
19:16The bottom one was tilted.
19:18The top one was more similar to that one.
19:21That looks like a good possibility.
19:23Okay, let's swap that for this one.
19:27This is a coppice.
19:28The coppice is a weapon used for hacking.
19:31So what kind of score would it leave on bone?
19:35It's not really thrusting through as easy, is it?
19:38The curved coppice wasn't the right weapon because it's a slashing rather than a thrusting type of weapon.
19:42And finally, the favorite weapon for Greek infantry, and that's the spear, a leaf-bladed spear.
19:50Xenophon writes that the spear is the weapon for a soldier.
19:55And the sword he relegates to secondary use.
19:57In fact, he castigates the Persians for training with the sword.
20:00He says there's no need to train with the sword.
20:02Train with the spear, that's the weapon that matters.
20:04Excellent.
20:04This is a shorter shaft than normal.
20:07This was the weapon of choice for Macedonia's main enemy, the Greek hoplite warriors.
20:13Every soldier had at least two.
20:15They were light and easy to use.
20:20I'll take the blade.
20:24That's not far off, I'd say.
20:26Yeah.
20:26That's impossible.
20:27That's very similar to the sword.
20:29It's still a leaf-bladed weapon.
20:31Right, right.
20:31And it is thinner, or less wide.
20:35It's narrower than the sword by a bit.
20:38If T-38 did die in battle, then it looks like this kind of spear may have done the damage.
20:44But for Ken, something still doesn't add up.
20:48It's not these wounds that are the problem.
20:50It's the lack of any other marks on the bones.
20:54Pieces of evidence that we had from the bones indicate a sharp force trauma.
20:57But those were the only marks on the entire body.
21:02And so it seemed like there should have been more based upon the position of the ones we did see.
21:07It just seemed way too clean.
21:10There should have been something else.
21:11I mean, I was certainly expecting to see some nicks or shallow cut marks on either the clavicle or some of the ribs or maybe even the sternum.
21:19And apart from the cuts on his vertebrae and one nick on his ribs, T-38's skeleton is pristine.
21:26This doesn't fit with what's known about the way Philip's army fought.
21:31The Macedonian army employed the ancient equivalent of shock and awe tactics.
21:35Tears of men, often armed with 20-foot pikes, would move as a single unit.
21:42Their aim?
21:43To steamroller the enemy.
21:46The chances are he would not know who killed him or who wounded him, nor would he know who he wounded or killed.
21:52Not simply because of the dust and the fact that you couldn't hear very well,
21:57but because this mass warfare of spearmen was based on momentum, pushing, and there's an anonymous nature about it.
22:05If T-38 died in a clash like this, why aren't there more visible wounds?
22:13I'm actually not really happy with any of the scenarios.
22:16There's something that still hasn't quite slipped into place from my point of view about how this guy was attacked.
22:24I don't know what the missing piece is.
22:25If we had more evidence of trauma on the skullt and another cut mark, just one single cut mark somewhere else,
22:31it throws it in and it out for me.
22:35They have two viable theories.
22:38The blows were dealt either from above, behind the collarbone, or in a frontal attack.
22:45To develop these theories, they need context.
22:48When T-38 came under attack, what other key factors played a part?
22:53It's time to visit the tomb of King Philip.
22:55The man for whom T-38 may have fought and died.
23:01Will the father of Alexander the Great help solve the mystery of T-38's death?
23:06Did this ancient Macedonian warrior, known as T-38, die on the battlefield, or was he murdered?
23:21The experts believe that the three fatal blows were struck either from the front, through his ribcage, or from above, behind his collarbone.
23:32Death was quick.
23:33Now they're on the trail of evidence to help reconstruct his last moments.
23:39They've come to the tomb of the one man they know played some part in T-38's life.
23:44His king, Philip II of Macedon.
23:47If T-38 was, as it seems, a soldier, he would have fought for Philip.
23:54If he died in battle, he would have died for him.
23:57And because Philip was a military genius, T-38 would have lived and lost his life, according to Philip's rules.
24:06I would look at the relationship between T-38 and what we know of Philip's grave, not so much as rich poor, but poor in the upper class versus the very elite of the upper class.
24:35He's, he's not going to get the same benefits after death that Philip is, but he's going to be much closer to the burial of Philip than he's going to be from the peasants, from the hills of Illyria.
24:47What I'm really interested in seeing is the weaponry, the swords, and the javelins, and the spears, and the shields, and all the armory.
24:56T-38's tomb contained weapons, and so did his kings on a royal scale.
25:03Seeing how Philip was buried, you know, one of the greatest warriors of all time, gives us a sense of, of the culture and seeing T-38 as a soldier and some of the parallels between his burial and Philip's burial, it just, it draws a nice connection.
25:18The tomb was built by the man who would become perhaps the most successful general in history, Alexander the Great.
25:28It's a warrior's gift to his warrior father, Philip, and it holds unexpected evidence.
25:34This is King Philip's breastplate.
25:38It's ornate, made of iron, and inlaid with precious metals, but its shape is identical to the standard body armor worn by Macedonian soldiers, and it impacts the working theories on the manner of T-38's death.
25:52As soon as they see it, Ken and Tiffany realize they have a major clue on their hands.
25:58You're about the right height for that.
26:01I can see that on you.
26:04I mean, actually, I can imagine, like, imagine if you were wearing that.
26:07Yeah.
26:07We could see how, what part of your body would have been exposed, like T-38, right?
26:12Because, I mean, this part would have been covered with the, uh, with the thorax, right?
26:16The armor, but right here, you're totally exposed, part of your clavicles, and I could, right in there, like, right?
26:24I mean, imagine a sharp spear, it could go in right behind your clavicle.
26:27It's pretty exposed.
26:29All of a sudden, I don't see just armor, I see vulnerable parts of the body exposed, and I think that's where the story really started to get interesting.
26:38T-38 would have gone into battle wearing armor, and that means that if he did die in battle,
26:44one of the two scenarios can be ruled out, the frontal attack.
26:49No hand weapon could pierce a chest plate.
26:52Suddenly, they have a clearer picture of how the killer blows might have been struck.
26:56That first strike would have opened up, tore apart those muscles, and gone down and stabbed the vital organs,
27:03leaving a mark on the front part of the spinal column.
27:05And it's that one, two, three, quick little stabs, thrusts in there, and then it pulls out, and the body is left there.
27:12Just how carefully targeted would the blows have to be to make these marks and no others?
27:19They return to consult weapons expert John Naylor.
27:23Tiffany wants to do some practical research.
27:26This is the style of armor worn by middle-ranking Macedonian soldiers, men like T-38.
27:32Phillips' chest plate was made from iron, but this type is made from layers of linen bonded with glue.
27:38It's extremely tough.
27:40It's quite durable.
27:41It certainly is, and it'll stop a sword.
27:43Yeah, but it was lighter than Philip II's.
27:46And a lot cheaper.
27:48Ken simulates an attack to see how the blows would have been struck using a sword.
27:52If we were going to try to get it up here.
27:54Right, which is the kind of injury that T-38 suffered, something from up at the top coming down.
28:00Yeah, I suppose it could have come up like that, but this is a pretty wide blade, too.
28:05And I feel like a mark would come up like that right now.
28:08It's awkward because you're raising a target.
28:09You're very vulnerable, too, right there with your arm up in there.
28:11I get you.
28:12The only other way would be the reverse on the handle.
28:15It just doesn't work to hold the sword that way, because you're trying to keep the sword between you and the opponent who's trying to kill you.
28:21Right, right, right.
28:22Yeah, so white, so coming upward at me, he's just open and exposed.
28:27True, yeah.
28:29But what about the spear?
28:30Yeah.
28:31We have the spear.
28:33This is the difference between theory and practice.
28:37Immediately, the spear seems much more likely.
28:40It could easily slip behind the clavicle.
28:43Holding it up like this, there is more of a much natural, more natural progression or direction of the blade.
28:51Well, here's my clavicle.
28:53Yeah.
28:53So it would have to get in, so you can get posterior to my clavicle.
28:56Yeah.
28:56Is there room there?
28:58There's one right there.
28:58The armor doesn't really protect everything.
29:00Not that.
29:01No.
29:01As soon as I saw the spear and as soon as I picked it up, I thought that this was the best possibility out of the three to have made these marks,
29:07because it was narrow, it was light, and it could have left these marks that we saw without touching anything else.
29:13This method of killing is fast and efficient.
29:16But for Ken, there's still something too neat about these wounds for a battlefield death.
29:23It seems clear that, you know, the direction and angle of the blade, how that happened,
29:30but then the fact that none of the other bones in the chest were affected seems incredible to me.
29:36It seems unlikely to me.
29:37And there's another possible flaw in the theory.
29:42Would even the most skilled attacker fighting in the heat of battle be able to deliver three such carefully targeted blows?
29:50In this type of warfare, nobody knew whom they were attacking, whom they wounded, whom they killed.
29:56It was six pikes against one soldier, three against seven pikes.
30:00It was completely chaotic.
30:01The evidence points away from a combat fatality to something more sinister, a murder.
30:10We kind of need to rethink how it was that he actually died and how he may have been stabbed if he wasn't killed on the battlefield.
30:18While Tiffany returns to the original data, Ken decides to pursue a new angle, shifting the focus from the victim to the killer.
30:27He's going to present the case to a criminal psychologist.
30:32What will these three wounds say about the man who made them?
30:45It was starting to look as if this ancient warrior had been cut down in battle.
30:50But further analysis has forced the team to re-examine the evidence.
30:54The damage to his skeleton is minimal, and the killing just seems too clean.
30:59I'm unsure about how it happened.
31:02What's the mechanism behind somebody getting stabbed through the neck and hitting the vertebral column without marking any of the other bones?
31:09That's unusual.
31:12Ken's sharing the details of the case with Dr. Eric Hickey, a criminal psychologist.
31:16He works on modern cases, profiling the most dangerous criminal predators, habitual violent offenders, and serial killers.
31:26The battlefield scene, it seems unusual for me not to have marks all over.
31:33That's my big issue at the moment.
31:36Well, let's just take, for example, that he was about to be killed.
31:39Someone who had been vanquished, he had lost his weapon, he'd been defeated.
31:42And so he submits himself as a true warrior to be executed.
31:46He understands it's over, he's lost the battle, and so his enemy treats him with honor and gave him a warrior's death, an honorable death.
31:56The man kneels down, he knows he's done, and he stabs him, and that was not uncommon in those days.
32:01Dr. Hickey's execution-style hypothesis would explain the precision of the kill.
32:06But then, what happened next?
32:12After the killing, the body would somehow have to be recovered by T-38's own side, which brought him back to be buried in a proper grave.
32:22But how credible is this theory?
32:25Does it fit with historical references?
32:29Ken consults with Professor Victor Davis Hanson, an expert in the military culture of ancient Macedonia.
32:34We were starting to think that he was a soldier and buried after he was killed, either on the battlefield or locally.
32:41What's your impression, given the evidence?
32:43Well, the coin might suggest that he lived between 350 and 320, and there's plenty of wars going on, so that would make sense.
32:50And the nature of the wound above the neck going into the body suggests he might have a breastplate.
32:55And he was buried with a horse or two nearby, so that's all good for a battle, but if you look at it a little bit more carefully, the most telling evidence is it was very rare for anybody to be brought back and buried from a battle.
33:09In a few cases, whether they were family members or the people who were important, they would be transported back home and buried.
33:16So it would have been unusual for someone of T-38 status to have been carried far from the battlefield.
33:24Given the problems of the ancient world of logistics, transportation, no refrigeration, if he had been killed three or four days march away in that type of trauma, he might have lost part of his corpse.
33:36Bits would have started falling off.
33:37Yes, I think so.
33:39A fellow like this probably was killed within a day or right next to the cemetery, I would imagine.
33:46What would happen if they were killed on a battlefield?
33:48Almost in every case, the battle was more than a day's march from home, so they were burned in a collective pit.
33:56It was important to the ancient Macedonians that the dead were dealt with respectfully and quickly.
34:03Usually, the bodies of the dead were burned on a large funeral pyre.
34:07So T-38, buried in a cemetery, in a carefully prepared grave, is more likely to have been killed close to home.
34:17Armed with this information, Tiffany plots the battles that took place in the reign of Philip II.
34:23Could T-38 have died nearby and been shipped home?
34:26In terms of battle sites near the burial area, we need to get an idea of how many battle sites are about 50 miles of the burial site,
34:35because we know that a Macedonian army could march maybe about 25 miles a day.
34:40During his reign, Philip's forces engaged in over 40 battles.
34:44Four of these are within an easy two-day march, and the very closest is 25 miles from the burial site.
34:53It's possible that a body was brought back from one of these battles and buried here, but Tiffany thinks it's unlikely.
35:00If he had been fighting somewhere in a battle scene, it's likely he would have been just buried there or burned in a funerary pyre right at the site.
35:09It seems highly unlikely that he was actually killed on the battlefield.
35:13So if he wasn't killed in action, there's now a new cause of death on the table, assassination.
35:19We need to understand a little bit more of the cultural context.
35:21How were people assassinated at this time?
35:24How were people murdered at this time?
35:27The violent blows on these bones hold more secrets for the team.
35:31If T-38 did not die in the frenzy of war, was his death assassination?
35:46Bioarchaeologists Tiffany Tung and Ken Nystrom are in Greece.
35:49These three clear blows to the spine of an ancient Macedonian man, known as T-38, have sparked an incredible investigation.
35:59His burial suggests that he was reasonably well off, and a soldier serving in the army of his king.
36:07Initially, it looked like T-38 died a warrior's death, cut down on the battlefield.
36:13But Ken has doubts about that theory.
36:16Their investigation revealed that warriors killed in battle rarely make it to a domestic cemetery.
36:23And the skeleton is virtually intact.
36:26In the mayhem of battle, it's likely it would have sustained more damage.
36:31And the biggest clue, the wounds are too clean.
36:35From the evidence on the bones, it seems like a fairly precise strike.
36:38A very, very precise blow.
36:40So, they are beginning to draw a new conclusion, that T-38 was murdered, assassinated.
36:48Ken needs historian Professor Hansen to shed some light on day-to-day life in ancient Macedonia.
36:54And it's treacherous.
36:55To read about Macedon and 350 is to read about random assassination, killing hits on various targets.
37:04So, it's a political hotbed.
37:05It is.
37:06It's sort of like the mafia wars of the 1930s in Chicago.
37:11So, a dangerous time to be around.
37:14It's a very dangerous time, because there's too many people who are going to take a whack at you.
37:18If this was murder, they must revisit their original theories about the attack.
37:23Do they still hold up?
37:25Tiffany returns to the evidence that triggered the investigation.
37:29The three marks on T-38's vertebrae.
37:32So, when we think about the difference between a battlefield killing and something that's more personal.
37:36I mean, in a battlefield, you have groups of anonymous men.
37:38They don't know their enemy.
37:40You contrast that to a more interpersonal killing, where chances are you might actually know your enemy.
37:46You might know the person that you're going to kill.
37:48Weighing up the angle of the wounds and lack of visible damage in the clavicle area, Tiffany suspects that they were wrong to rule out a frontal attack.
37:58She now believes that the blows were delivered face-to-face, that they were struck upwards under the ribcage and through the intestines of T-38.
38:06Basically, to get that kind of thrust and penetration through the gut and up through the diaphragm and to reach the back of this person,
38:13you have to be fairly close and thrust with some pretty good force.
38:18If a determined killer could find a way to get close enough, he could take out even the toughest, most well-guarded enemy.
38:26This method of assassination worked.
38:30Its most powerful victim was none other than T-38's king, Philip.
38:34He was stabbed to death, up close, by someone he knew.
38:39We know that Pausanias stabbed him in an embrace that for all public signs or appearances, look for a second as if he wasn't doing that.
38:50It's looking more and more as if T-38 was murdered, killed suddenly by someone who knew how to kill, planned carefully, and had the means to get close to him.
39:06For confirmation, Ken takes the evidence back to criminal psychologist Dr. Eric Hickey.
39:11It appears to me that these wounds were deliberate, precise, someone who knew exactly what he was doing and made the strike in the same way.
39:22Yeah, I mean, that fits right in because it has to be precise.
39:25The person has to know what they're doing in order to make those marks.
39:28Most people who kill, only kill once, in domestic disputes and so on, crimes of passion.
39:34And when there's crimes of passion, there's often dozens and dozens of stabbed wounds
39:37because people are afraid that the person's not dead, so they just keep stabbing, stabbing, and stabbing.
39:42You stab them in the ribs, in the sides, and they don't die.
39:44They simply lay down, they make all kinds of noises.
39:47So it's unlikely that that was a scenario because there would have been a lot of damage.
39:52This person was very deliberate, very calculating.
39:55This was a person who was trained in killing.
39:58Now, as an assassin, I have a different mindset.
40:01Okay, I'm looking at him.
40:02I have planned this in advance.
40:04I have thought about this.
40:05I've been paid to do this.
40:06I'm going to get this guy without making any mistakes.
40:09I get one shot at him as an assassin.
40:11That's all I'm going to get.
40:12How would this play out if it was an attack?
40:15I might take my weapon, such as his ruler, and I would approach the victim.
40:19As I'm walking by, and he's walking this way, I would simply reach out my arm.
40:23He's totally unaware.
40:24All of a sudden, he feels constrained.
40:25He looks down at my arm, and I'm going to thrust my weapon to his aorta until I know I've got him.
40:32All he feels when I do this is a moment of surprise.
40:35And before he can really think about it, he's already dead.
40:42He's done.
40:43This all takes place maybe in a space of 10 seconds, and it's over.
40:48Have they finally unraveled the story of T-38's violent death, a premeditated murder by a trained killer?
40:56Often when I'm talking about a death that happened 2,000 years ago, I'm reluctant to use the word murder just because it has a very modern connotation to me.
41:04And so we have to proceed very cautiously when we try to identify precisely how he was killed and the motive or the intentionality behind it.
41:13I believe he was murdered, assassination is basically just a fancy word for murder.
41:19Using forensic analysis and archaeological research, Ken and Tiffany have brought a turbulent ancient era into view.
41:28One where T-38 may well have suffered the same fate as the father of Alexander the Great.
41:35He lay in a simple grave, buried and forgotten for 2,300 years.
41:41Until now.