Alexander's Lost World

- Season 1

(2013)

Inspired by the legend of Jason and the Argonauts, ancient Greek seafarers long searched for a way to the East. Adams follows the routes of these past mariners and discovers a lost waterway that could have carried Alexander and his men from the Aegean to the Caspian Sea.

By the time Alexander's army arrived in the East, the fabled capital of Bactria was already a great city. Driving into the Afghan wilderness, Adams sets off to find the place the Greeks called the mother of all cities.

Adams and his team cross the border into Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in search of another lost city: Alexandria on the Oxus. How could a man who spent so much time fighting have built so many cities, and how many existed before he got there?

Part of the answer to the Alexander-as-builder riddle lies in a remote corner of Afghanistan, at the city of the Lady Moon. Here, thousands of miles from Athens, Greek plays were performed before crowds of up to 5,000 people.

Alexander came not just for conquest but for riches, perhaps inspired by the epic quest of Jason and the Argonauts. Adams retraces the route of Alexander and the traders who sought the treasured resources of the East and carried them to every corner of the ancient world.

Nearing the end of his journey, Adams reaches the place British explorers called the roof of the world, a land of forgotten tribes and a people known as the children of Alexander. For this final leg, he makes a trek to the headwaters of the Oxus, in the process following pathways that lead back to our earliest beginnings.