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Treasure, that has connections with the german lord henry the lion. we know that he visited constantinople and requested relics. but it's possible that may have had origins much older than that. ♪ >> should we get the bone out and have a look at it now? >> sitting in an elaborate gilt housing dating back to the 14th century, for the researchers the challenge will be thou remove the bone from its precious casing. ♪ and when they try to extract the bone from its mount, there's a problem. >> the mount does not come off of the bone. >> oh, you mean i can't actually take the bone out? >> no. >>...

This bone could have belonged to john the baptist. in jerusalem, the more john the baptist denounces herod, the more he risks inflaming herod's anger. with all the danger that could follow. >> you could talk about repentance and judgment day and maybe not get into much trouble. but you start to attack herod personally, and he's going to attack you personally. >> what's wrong? >> i see herod as a really divided soul. he was really kind of caught between his ambition, his desire to rule and his desire for his wife. by marrying his wife, he had transgressed jewish law, and that put him in a diffi...

Come to the nelson atkins museum in kansas city, missouri. they want to analyze an ancient treasure reputed to be the finger of john the baptist. could it come from the same individual as the bulgaria find? >> this is containing the relic. it's silver. it dates from about the year 1400. >> what's really exciting about the kansas relic is for the first time we'll be able to compare the carbon data relic with the one we've already obtained from bulgaria. >> the bone has been identified as a human bone coming from a hand. >> what's interesting about the finger is it's part of a medieval treasure,...

That. ♪ >> should we get the bone out and we'll look at it now? >> sitting in an elaborate gilt housing dating back to the 14th century, for the researchers, the challenge will be how to remove the bone from its precious casing. ♪ and when they try to extract the bone from its mount, there's a problem. >> the mount does not come off of the bone. >> oh, you mean i can't actually take the bone out? >> no. >> and that means tom will struggle to reach the central part of the finger containing collagen, the most reliable material for carbon dating. >> it's very tricky in order to get a decent-s...

>> in kansas city, professor tom hyam of oxford university is trying to figure out a way of drilling into a relic of john the baptist. >> i think it's best to go in here. >> he hopes to date the carbon inside the bone and perhaps even get a dna profile that can then be matched against the first century relic he has already tested from bulgaria. >> it's the collagen part of the bone that we want to date. that's the protein part. and that, in modern people, is about 20% by weight. but of course, in older materials, the collagen decays and degrades. and so it's often not present in that large an ...