Myth Hunters - Episode Guide

The armies of Nazi Germany crossed the border with Austria, but when Hitler arrived in Vienna just 2 days later, the very first thing he did was to go to the Hofburg museum to lay claim to what appeared to be a simple Roman spear head. This spear head was something that Hitler had apparently coveted ever since he had first nurtured ambitions to become the ruler of a new German Reich.

The Holy Grail, the most prized relic of Christianity has been shrouded in mystery for centuries. Said to be the cup used by Christ at the last supper it is believed by many to hold miraculous powers. For centuries Kings, knights and treasure hunters have sought it, but it has always remained elusive and out of reach of human hands.

Heinrich Himmler sent his SS soldiers to locate a treasure so valuable to Nazi ideology that it must be recovered at all costs. The item they are searching for is an ancient manuscript, a perfect copy of a book written nearly two thousand years before in Rome which the Nazis call the birth certificate for the German race. The book is known as the Germania; for the Nazis it is the "Book of Power".

According to the great stories of the bible, King Solomon, son of David, ruled Israel 3,000 years ago. And he was renowned for his wisdom, his women and his great wealth.

Fifteen years ago Michael Hesemann, a German historian, set out to establish the authenticity of one of the most important Christian relics ever found. It's called the Titulus Crucis, or Title of the Cross, a small piece of wood that, it's claimed, hung on the cross of Christ announcing his name and crime. It's displayed in a church in Rome. But is it real or a medieval fake?

Ron Wyatt claimed he had finally found the Ark of the Covenant but he had no witnesses and could produce no evidence. Many people believe him but professional archaeologists are sceptical. New archaeological evidence in Israel suggests that there may not just have been one grand golden ark, but many simple everyday portable shrines called in Hebrew ‘Ark of God'.

This 50-minute documentary tells the story of three of these Christians and their expeditions which were full of danger and despair as they looked for Noah's Ark.

In 1941, the Germans looted one of the Soviet Union's most important art works, called the Amber Room. An extraordinary series of C18 amber screens worth millions of pounds and considered, by many, the 8th wonder of the world. It was taken to the Baltic city of Konigsberg. Four years later at the end of the war, it had vanished. So began one of the greatest treasure hunts of the twentieth century.

Edwardian explorer Percy Fawcett launched several expeditions into the uncharted Amazon, looking for the fabled city of El Dorado.

It's one of the most influential books ever written. It's said to have inspired early Freemasons, to provide the wisdom behind the Tarot and to have underpinned a string of 20th century esoteric cults. Yet after years of looking for it nobody has ever found the original text.

The Honjo Masamune is perhaps the greatest Japanese sword ever made. Forged in the 13th century by the great sword smith Masamune it became the ceremonial sword of the ruling Tokugawa shoguns for 250 years. After their fall from power in 1868 the great sword continued to be passed down the generations into the 20th century, but in the aftermath of the Second World War it disappeared.

FA Mitchell-Hedges and his daughter Anna claimed to have found a crystal skull in the 1940s. Did it really have predictive powers?

Richard Knight was an unlikely treasure hunter. He travelled the world working as an actor, cruise ship entertainer and casual labourer to make ends meet. But when he became obsessed by the story of Captain Kidd's treasure his life changed forever.

It's one of the most powerful and enduring myths ever created. The Garden of Eden. One maverick scholar, Dr. Juris Zarins sets out to prove its existence.

A dying Dutchman gives a young cowhand some cryptic clues about the existence of a rich gold mine in Arizona.

In 1914, prospector Freddie Crystal claimed to have found a map that revealed the site of Montezuma's legendary lost treasure, but was the area cursed?

Farmer Mel Fisher spent years searching for a sunken Spanish galleon that was loaded with fabulous spoils - with tragic consequences.

Famed archaeologist Ralegh Radford stares into an empty pit; has he found the final resting place of King Arthur, the wielder of Excalibur, the founder of Camelot and the Lord of the Round Table?

A young archaeologist risks everything in his quest to find one of the world's greatest treasures - the fabled lost library of Ivan the Terrible.

An ambitious young scientist is sent on a quest by Himmler to find the lost people of Atlantis; it becomes an expedition filled with mountain madness, lost integrity and political intrigue.

Forensic pathologist Dr Philippe Charlier, known to the French as the "Indiana Jones of the graveyards" faces his biggest challenge yet: to uncover the truth behind the remains of France's most famous daughter – Joan of Arc.

When a British Spy and adventurer goes on a quest to find the mythical Labyrinth, he uncovers a secret that rewrites history.

A local newspaper editor and businessman in South Africa unwittingly finds himself at the epicentre of a legend of buried gold that began during the Boer War.

German adventurer Heinrich Schlieman embarks on a lifelong quest to find the mythical city of Troy and its fabulous treasures.

The astonishing discovery of the Copper Scroll in 1952 led archaeologist John M Allegro on a hunt for silver and gold across 64 locations.

A Japanese legend tells of hidden gold in Mount Akagi, buried by shoguns in the 1800s to prevent it from falling into enemy hands.

The legend of Yamashita's Gold is one of the greatest stories of war loot in history. During WW2, as the Japanese Imperial Army conquered country after country across South East Asia, it's said they had a covert, systematic looting operation in place and amassed a huge fortune.

This programme follows the story of German journalist Paul Badde on a journey of discovery to learn about the 'face of God' discovered in Manoppello. This image on a transparent cloth, seemingly not made by human hands, is believed to be the only existing image of the living face of Jesus and could potentially revolutionise Christian beliefs and concepts. Historically the 'face of God' has been linked to the one of the greatest Catholic relics 'the Veil of Veronica', a similar miraculous image, created on the day of Christ's crucifixion. When stumbling under the weight of the cross, his brow was mopped by St. Veronica and an imprint of his face was left on her cloth.

A desert in California is said to hold something truly astonishing. According to the myth, somewhere in the Mojave Desert is a ship wreck with a precious cargo. In 1870, Charley Clusker, a Mexican War veteran, seasoned traveller and California Gold Rush prospector, would risk everything to find the legendary Lost Ship of the Mojave Desert.

According to legend, somewhere in Texas lies buried a vast treasure of Spanish gold. At the turn of the 20th century, Dave Arnold was on a mission to find it. Guided by a cryptic map he unearthed 3 mysterious stones. Convinced they were keys finding the treasure, Arnold began a 7-year quest to unravel the mystery of The Spider Rocks.

The dying days of World War Two. Hitler was in his bunker, unable to accept defeat. But most Nazis knew the game was up. It was time to start hiding evidence of their crimes. A unit of SS officers were instructed to transport boxes to the Salzkammergut lake district in the Austrian Alps. Their destination was one of the most remote and deepest lakes in the region: Lake Toplitz. On May 1st 1945, eyewitnesses still alive today saw SS Officers throwing mystery boxes into the lake. Local rumours grew the boxes were full of stolen gold. But what was actually in the boxes was only discovered decades later.

According to legend, a fortune in gold lies buried somewhere in America's Rocky Mountains. The only clue to the treasure's location is a cryptic map, drawn by the sole survivor of a doomed expedition. Colorado folklore states his descendants seek the gold for almost 200 years. But just when it appears to be within their grasp, The Curse of Treasure Mountain strikes.

In the early nineteenth century, stories emerged of mysterious ruins that lay buried and forgotten, deep inside the jungles of Central America. But a lost civilisation in this region was thought to be impossible in the 1800s. Everyone knew that the continent had only ever been peopled by savages, and they couldn't have created such sophisticated structures. But then a young American lawyer named John Lloyd Stephens, and a British artist, Frederick Catherwood, went to seek out these ruins for themselves. They travelled hundreds of miles through the jungles of Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras and eventually uncovered forty-four buried and forgotten cities. All with a common architectural style that confirmed that there was once a single, vast civilisation that had existed in a place where nobody believed there could be one. But, for all their extraordinary revelations, there was still one question they could not answer. Who were the people who built this place?

This is the story of August Gissler's amazing seventeen year quest to find the pirate treasure on Cocos Island; the home, it is said, to some of the world's most concealed riches. Cocos lies shrouded in mist and isolated in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, 350 miles off the South American coast of Costa Rica.

Whilst on holiday in Spain researching a book, American author and writer Janice Bennett, found herself looking at an exhibit in Valencia Cathedral, claiming to be the Holy Grail. Although initially unimpressed, she decided to find out more and her subsequent research took her on an exciting voyage of discovery, from 1st century Jerusalem to 21st century Spain. By tracing the history of this relic and examining all the supporting evidence she has concluded that it could well be.

In France a tiny village has attracted treasure hunters for the last 70 years. At the end of the 19th Century, priest of Rennes-le-Château, Bérenger Saunière, became fabulously rich. And nobody quite knows how. Some say the priest discovered buried treasure, but others claim Saunière uncovered a secret so profound, it could rock the foundations of the Catholic Church. But was it all just a hoax?

In 1911, Hiram Bingham was a young scholar specialising in modern Latin American history at Yale University, Connecticut. He was thirty-six years old and married to Alfreda Mitchell, an heiress to the Tiffany diamond empire; they had six children and lived in a thirty-roomed mansion on top of a hill. Bingham was a man who seemed to have all the comforts of life, but he was restless and driven. During a field trip to Peru in 1909, he was invited by his guide to see an ancient Inca site high up in the Andes Mountains. This set him on a path that would change his life forever.

In the early 1800s a party of men headed by a Thomas Beale set out from Virginia to the Colorado Rocky Mountains where they discovered gold. After mining a fortune in gold ore they exchanged it for treasure, which they then buried in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains. Beale recorded the secret location of the treasure in three numerical codes that when decoded would reveal the treasures value, its location and to whom it belonged.

According to legend, he was Britain's greatest King. His name was King Arthur. He led his Knights of the Round Table from Camelot, a vast, spectacular castle built on a hill, and was supposed to have bravely fought Anglo-Saxon invaders and united the country. But there's very little evidence he really existed. History wasn't written in the Dark Ages, an era said to have been ruled by barbarism and chaos. The only way to really prove he existed was to find something with his name on it, maybe even Excalibur or the remains of the Round Table. Maybe even Camelot itself.