JOSH GATES: In Turkey, a 12,000-year-old site
could hold the secrets
of mankind's missing link.
While a deadly road in Bolivia
connects a notorious plant with an enchanting Witch Market.
And ruins on an island in French Guiana
tell the story of a hellish prison
where escape was nearly impossible.
I'm Josh Gates.
I've traveled millions of miles
and explored over 100 countries.
Lost city, here I come.
And my favorite destinations
have epic tales to tell.
These are the stories
and the secrets
of those legendary locations.
One of the things I've learned in all my travels is that
it's not the destination that matters but the journey.
From Scotland's North Coast 500 to Australia's
Great Ocean Road, the routes I've taken
to track down history's greatest stories
are often treasures in their own right.
Now we're off road.
That's not always the case, though.
At one legendary location in Bolivia,
a road connects the country's coca farms
to the markets of La Paz, and the getting there,
as they say, isn't quite so good,
because this might just be the most dangerous road
on Earth.
[ Beeping noises ]
Buckle up for a journey that begins
in Bolivia's Yungas Valley, nestled between
the Andes and the Amazon Basin.
It's hard to tell by looking at these steep cliffs,
but for millennia, this place has been known
for one thing, farming,
and today, we're meeting two men doing just that.
GATES: Coca leaf is the key ingredient in cocaine,
a drug that's illegal in most parts of the world.
But in Bolivia,
the coca leaf is as legal as a maple leaf.
Here, it's cultivated for less illicit uses,
including the treatment of everything from hunger
and headaches to fatigue and, well,
more mystical purposes.
Twist -- Eddgor's mother is totally a witch,
and not the cool Harry Potter kind.
She sells the coca leaf at the Witches Market
and schools buyers on traditional ways
to cure what ails them.
But since the market is 65 very mountainous miles away,
keeping that tradition alive means taking
one hell of a journey.
♪♪
The first challenge farmers here face
is simply getting to a road.
The valley's so steep
that precious few have been built, but luckily,
locals have rigged up a solution.
FELIPES: So this is where the real adventure begins.
This is the zipline -- it's the only connection
between the main road and Porfirio's house.
He has to use it every day,
so it's normal for him, exciting for us.
Yeah, or terrifying depending on how you feel
about heights and questionable harnesses.
♪♪
GATES: Fifteen harrowing minutes later,
they've made it to the Yungas Road.
Adios.
TRANSLATOR: Be safe. Good luck. Don't fall asleep out there.
It's very dangerous.
GATES: This is Eddgor's driver, Marcos.
He's the region's go-to guy for driving
coca shipments to the city.
Buena suerte . Bye.
[ Engine revs ]
GATES: And so they're off to see the witch,
the wonderful witch of La Paz.
Sorry, that's a required joke.
And also, I gotta say, the Yungas is no Yellow Brick Road.
In fact, this legendary location has earned an iconic name
of its own -- the Death Road.
The Death Road was built in the 1930s by Paraguayan prisoners
captured by Bolivia in the deadly Chaco War.
Forced to work in enemy territory
in brutal conditions, they carved the crude road
out of rock, but some locals say
they got their revenge by building a route
now responsible for as many as 300 deaths a year.
♪♪
So that's why I have Marcos. He's the best.
GATES: Marcos has been driving this route for almost 20 years,
and to him, the Death Road is only as dangerous as you make it.
GATES: Eddgor and Marcos weave along the cliffs,
praying for help as they pass
constant reminders of what makes this road so deadly.
[ Honking loudly ]
GATES: In most places, the road is only 12 feet wide,
less than the width of two trucks,
and with very few guard rails, this is the only place
in Bolivia where cars traveling in this direction
drive on the left to keep farther away from
the 2,000-foot cliffs.
But of course, it's not just the narrowness
that makes the driving so dicey.
Land and mudslides are a common occurrence
thanks to the abundant waterfalls.
And all the blind curves can be deadly...
...especially if your car breaks down.
This is not a good place for us to get stuck. Yeah.
[ Tense music ]
[ Horn honking ]
GATES: In the heart of the Amazon Jungle,
a road responsible for 300 deaths a year
connects Bolivia's coca farms to the city of La Paz.
And now, two men are attempting to traverse
this legendary location, but their vehicle
isn't cooperating.
[ Hissing noise ]
I'm gonna check quickly, because this is not
a good place for us to get stuck. Yeah.
GATES: A broken-down car is potentially a death knell here.
[ Clanking noises ]
But luckily, it's just an overheated engine
that needs to cool.
It's okay.
We could go ahead. We should leave this place.
♪♪
GATES: Eddgor and Marcos finally arrive in La Paz
with their precious coca cargo, and they head
to the city's famed Witches Market,
a legendary location in its own right.
♪♪
From incense and dreamcatchers
to dried frogs and...
uh, llama fetuses,
it's clear that this place puts the "ritual"
back in "spiritual."
Hola . Mama, I'm back.
Here we have the coca leaves.
GATES: Eddgor's mom, Ivet, will sell
the valuable coca leaves for a variety of medicinal purposes,
and when it comes to their more otherworldly uses, well,
Ivet's the master.
She's a yatiri, a witch doctor of sorts
who uses coca leaves like oracles use crystal balls.
And since Marcos will be making many more journeys
down the death road on her behalf,
she offers to look into his future.
♪♪
FELIPES: Now...
GATES: For the grand finale,
the coca leaves are set aflame,
and if Ivet is right, faith might help ensure
that future trips down the Death Road
might not be so deadly after all.
This Bolivian road is a perfect example
of how many of the world's deadliest places
are also among the most beautiful,
and on the other side of South America,
just north of the Amazon River Delta,
is another such place, the Salvation Islands,
a legendary location immortalized in
my favorite Steve McQueen film, Papillon ,
where a tropical paradise hides the most feared prison
in history.
[ Beeping noises ]
♪♪
It's early morning in French Guiana,
a remote section of South America under
the jurisdiction of France.
Ten miles offshore are the Salvation Islands...
...the site of the real prison that inspired the story
of Papillon --archaeologist, Nicolas Payraud,
is headed to this legendary location with expert company --
Serge Colin, a historian who has spent decades
studying the island's dark past.
[ Speaking French ]
TRANSLATOR: I'm going to retire soon, and I'm happy to share
what I know, because the island's history
must never be forgotten.
GATES: That history started in 1852
when French emperor, Napoleon III,
decided to turn the untamed territory of Guiana
into a penal colony.
It was an ideal way to rid France
of its worst criminals, by stranding them
in a barbaric offshore prison, multiple sites
that became commonly and collectively referred to
as Devil's Island.
Think Alcatraz Island, but split in three.
Ile-Royale housed most of the inmates.
Devil's Island was for more dangerous political dissidents,
and Saint-Joseph Island contained a feared
prison within a prison called the Reclusion.
[ Speaking French ]
TRANSLATOR: The Reclusion was the most dreaded side
of the prison.
To come here was a gateway to death.
GATES: The Reclusion offers a chilling glimpse
at how Salvation treated its inmates.
Serge explains that prisoners were sentenced
to captivity here for up to five years,
but few survived beyond one.
[ Speaking French ]
TRANSLATOR: I've heard that the Reclusion was also called
the Man Eater. TRANSLATOR: Imagine total isolation.
No communication was allowed.
You're condemned to forced labor
and given almost no food, so you could enter here
in good health then leave feet first.
[ Splashing noise ]
GATES: An estimated 80,000 inmates were shipped
to the penal colony in its 101 years of operation,
yet only a handful ever escaped.
Why?
Even if you could break out of the concrete cells,
you'd need to get past patrolling guards
and then swim through deadly riptides in waters
teeming with, you guessed it,
sharks.
But a select few prisoners did get away.
Famously, a writer named Henri Charrière
penned a book called Papillon in 1968.
It detailed his daring escape from the prison
on a coconut raft and was later adapted into a film
starring Steve McQueen.
But as Serge explains, Henri's story
has a few holes in it.
TRANSLATOR: Henri Charrière was in jail, that's true,
but records show he escaped from a camp located
on the coast of Trinidad and that he made up the part
about escaping from here.
Okay, well, that's a bummer.
Turns out based on a true story isn't always what it seems,
but the fact is, not many prisoners
even attempted escape, because those who tried
were punished, with a capital P.
TRANSLATOR: So here is the location of the guillotine.
Many men were beheaded here, but it was mainly
to serve as an example for other prisoners.
GATES: Perhaps the island's most insidious form of punishment
was psychological, but inside one cell block,
Serge reveals a secret suggesting the inmates' spirits
weren't completely broken.
♪♪
GATES: On French Guiana's Salvation Islands,
one of the most notorious prisons in history
lies an astonishingly preserved ruin,
and today, a long-time researcher
is taking an archaeologist to see one of
the least-known buildings in the penal colony.
TRANSLATOR: I want to show you something
that nobody knows about.
GATES: This is one of the solitary confinement cells,
where prisoners were locked
in cramped rooms with no windows.
TRANSLATOR: These drawings are nearly 80 years old.
Look at this caricature -- do you see?
GATES: This detailed drawing depicts a humorous scene
of the prison's wardens -- incredibly, prisoners
likely on the edge of insanity
were capable of social satire.
A decade after these drawings were made,
the ruthless penal colony was finally shuttered,
with the last prisoners transferred out
in 1953, but as Serge studies the ghostly remains
of their graffiti, he discovers something astounding.
TRANSLATOR: See, you have a boat here.
You can see the masts and even the sails,
and, of course, it's a symbol of salvation.
The idea, not the island.
It represents the dream of escape.
♪♪
GATES: And it proves that even though few people
did escape from Salvation, something about
the human spirit here remained free.
♪♪
The human spirit is, after all, a powerful thing,
and 6,000 miles away at a legendary location
in Turkey, scientists might finally be unearthing
the very origins of human spirituality.
It's a site called Gobekli Tepe,
and at 12,000 years old, it may just be
the first man-made structure on Earth.
But what was it for?
Some suspect human sacrifice, but new finds
are revealing a startling truth.
♪♪
[ Beeping noises ]
Southwestern Turkey, 12,000 years ago.
Just kidding. It's today.
♪♪
Yeah, not much has changed here over the millennia,
but for researchers, that's a good thing,
because the lack of major development here
has preserved what some call the most important
archaeological site in the world.
We're here at the Pre-Pottery Neolithic side
of Gobekli Tepe, which was discovered
by Klaus Schmidt in 1994.
GATES: October 1994.
Archaeologist, Klaus Schmidt, inspects an unexcavated
hillside that was first surveyed in the 1960s.
He has a hunch that something big is hidden here,
and when he breaks ground, he makes what could be
the discovery of the century --
remnants of a temple more than twice as old as Stonehenge.
Today, Jens Notroff is the lead archaeologist here,
and he believes the site fills a major gap
in the story of man.
The shift from hunter-gatherer to settled farmers is one of
the most important steps in the history of humanity.
GATES: And not just put a finger on it,
but overturn our understanding of it completely.
Conventional wisdom holds that civilizations are born
when people start farming,
but this site reverses all that, because its creators
didn't yet know how to farm, but they did know
how to collaborate, and based on their carvings, worship.
GATES: Scholars believe these depictions of wildlife and assorted humans
suggest an early religion, perhaps the earliest.
But learning more about
how this primordial belief system worked
has been hard, mainly because its believers are missing.
But we think this might be connected to the rituals
having taken place here.
GATES: What exactly those rituals were has been
a subject of intense debate for over two decades,
with some suggesting they involved human sacrifice,
but recent finds might finally set the record straight.
Jens heads to the nearby city of Sanliurfa,
where a world-class museum has the artifacts
under lock and key.
♪♪
[ Speaking Turkish ]
GATES: Jens greets the museum's director,
who leads him past a treasure trove of exhibits,
but nothing here
compares to what he has sealed
behind closed doors.
♪♪
GATES: In a remote region of Turkey,
a legendary location called Gobekli Tepe might be
the first temple ever built.
Archaeologists know little about what it was for,
but now, an incredible new find locked in a museum's
secure lab might hold the answer.
GATES: These skull fragments were found
in the immediate vicinity of Gobekli Tepe.
The interesting thing is that we have
these tiny scratch marks here and there.
This definitely hints at some kind of excarnation
or defleshment.
Oh-ho -- those are some fancy archaeology terms
he just threw out -- excarnation and defleshment
are basically high-falutin' terms that describe
cutting the flesh off of dead bodies.
So kids, sleep well tonight.
♪♪
In all seriousness, the marks are something
of a revelation, suggesting that the lack
of human remains at Gobekli Tepe
was no accident -- the site might've been
a sort of graveyard minus the graves
where people who died naturally were disassembled,
the flesh offered up to scavenging animals
and the bones buried elsewhere.
The find suggests
that humans were sacrificed here but only in death,
and it confirms the idea that this earliest of human societies
valued living symbiotically with nature,
but Jens cautions against closing the book on this place just yet.
NOTROFF: While we uncovered only a very small part
of the site as of yet, there's still much left.
Who knows what else we might find there.
GATES: There's no question
that Gobekli Tepe still holds many mysteries.
It is one of our best links yet
to our distant past, a place where humanity
and nature once lived in balance.
♪♪
Around the world, there are legendary locations
that may appear dark and remote,
yet they still offer a passage toward hope.
From the earliest signs of spirituality
and a deadly road that ends in revelations
to a prison where isolation sometimes led
to salvation.
I'm Josh Gates -- travel adventurously,
and I'll see you next time on "Legendary Locations."