10 Mysterious Lost Civilizations - UNCOVERED

civilizations rise and fall what was everyday reality to our ancestors is now an unclear intriguing fog of the past explorers have turned a corner in the jungle or peeked underneath a strange rock and uncovered previously unknown chapters of human history even the mightiest civilizations disappear and historians still don't know everything that happened to them here are 10 mysterious lost civilizations number 10 the Indus Valley thousands of years before Christ the people of the Indus Valley in modern Pakistan and northern India had numerous towns and cities with well-planned streets and remarkably well constructed buildings they prospered and traded with Sumeria in the Near East however we know very little besides that there are no paintings or sculptures of their leaders history and religion quite a lot of their writing survives but none of it has ever been deciphered at some point the great cities of mohenjo-daro and Harappa were abandoned some historians think the people were forced to move out by drought others think they suffered great floods some conspiracy theorists argue they were wiped out by an ancient super weapon perhaps triggered by aliens this seems unlikely but the truth is we simply do not know what happened number 9 the Minoans for nearly 2,000 years the civilization of Crete flourished at the center of an empire that stretched into the Middle East one of its rulers King Minos entered legend and lent his name to the civilization the Minoans they were famed for their palaces and cities especially Knossos whose labyrinths in layout inspired the story of theseus's battle against the mine at all they had sophisticated art and invented two maybe even three systems of writing one of which was deciphered by codebreakers in 1952 the other writings remain a complete mystery Minoan culture eventually declined being conquered and absorbed by the myceneans from Greece more on them later number eight the Maya the Mayan Empire peaked in the sixth century AD in the lowlands of Guatemala the Maya were outstanding mathematicians using their skills to construct incredible stone cities and develop sophisticated farming techniques to support the urban population they had their own hieroglyphic writing system an astonishingly precise calendar for which they invented the concept of zero as a placeholder they also practiced human sacrifice using slaves and prisoners captured from other city-states a few and the Highlands continued to prosper but the majority of the maya retreated into villages as the rainforests reclaimed the ancient stone when the Spanish conquistadors arrived the Maya civilizations days were numbered number seven Rapa Nui for many Easter Island is defined by its iconic moai 900 giant stone statues it took teams of five or six men a year to hand-carve each one the tallest is over 10 metres high the heaviest weighs 86 tons they probably represent the ancestors of the Rapa Nui people but though Rapa Nui still live on Easter Island their society fell apart centuries ago Eastern Polynesians first settled on the island up to 1,400 years ago and developed their own language culture and Kingdom at their peak there were 15,000 of them on the island farming and fishing in crafting the great moai but by the time European explorers arrived just a century later there were only 2,000 surviving Rapa Nui something had nearly wiped them out then European disease and slave raids reduced the population to just 111 people by the time Chile annexed the island in 1888 all the moai had toppled a fitting metaphor for the collapse of the Rapanui today the surviving descendants are still fighting the Chilean government for their rights perhaps like the great statues they will rise again number six naviga in 1812 Swiss Explorer Johan Ludvig Burkhardt introduced the world to the city of Petra hewn into the rock walls of a canyon in the middle of the arid desert the people who built it were the Nabataeans who against all odds managed to form an empire across the inhospitable deserts of North Arabia they were known for their ingenuity as well as their obvious masonry skills they were able to exploit small Oasis so well that they could farm they used Oasis to form trade links between east and west Roman writers tell us they kept the origins of their trade goods and the trade routes utterly secret by disguising them in impenetrably fanciful tales their secrets are still preserved we know they could right but no records survived their civilization declined slowly they were conquered by the Romans converted to Christianity and later conquered again by Arabs who divided their lands what we can learn about them now comes from these tourist attractions and a few stories number 5 the Khmer Empire the Khmer Empire began in ad 802 when Jaya Varman the second declared he was king of the world at the time it must have seemed he was right from Cambodia the Khmer Empire ruled over almost all the mainland of Southeast Asia its capital was the stupendous Angkor which was by far the largest city in the world home to up to 1 million people or not 0.1% of the global population the buildings alone attest the enormous wealth skill and artistic culture of the hindu buddhist empire yet by the 15th century the Empire was in decline after converting to Theravada Buddhism the Kings were no longer seen as divine and their authority wane the technically advanced irrigation and canal system fell into disrepair making the sprawling urban center vulnerable to drought wars and probably plague devastated the heart of the Empire but quite frankly historians archaeologists and scientists disagree over how much these things had an impact if they even happened at all the end of the Khmer Empire is still an enigma number 4 the maca the maca civilization thrived in northern Peru for about 600 years they produced a great art and mudbrick temples so huge they are mistaken for mountains but the Machiko people had no writing so we know next to nothing about them Clues can be gleaned from artwork and burials these suggests they carried out ritual battles to control the weather particularly to bring rain the bodies of the losers of the fake fight were found with their throats cut and buried in mud as human sacrifices the moko civilization disappeared suddenly around ad 650 cities have been found buried in sand climatologists analyzed ice cores from the Andes Mountains and found that in the 6th century Peru suffered a super El Nino which caused 30 years of flooding followed by 30 years of drought they argue this killed off the Machiko then archeologists discovered some towns that were built after the Year 650 unlike earlier cities these settlements are all fortresses but there is no evidence of any invaders at this time it appears 60 years of natural disasters forced the maca into Civil War and they gradually wiped each other out number 3 my scene ID from 1600 to 1100 BC ancient Greece was dominated by the city of my scene I once considered mythical the citadel was identified by Francesco Grimaldi around the Year 1700 the military stronghold was home to 30,000 people a huge number in the Bronze Age their religion and political system had a lasting influence over Greece probably introducing many of the key gods in Greek mythology like Zeus and Poseidon the poet Homer composed about their exploits most notably their conquest of Troy another fortress city considered to be mythical until it was discovered in the late 19th century strangely all the Mycenaean cities were burned down around 1200 BC almost simultaneously it wasn't long before the Empire collapsed explanations for the destruction of the cities and the collapse of the Empire include invasion attacks by sea Raiders social revolutions earthquakes or all of these factors combined number two the kingdom of Aksum by the 3rd century AD the kingdom of Aksum was considered one of the four major world powers he called to roam Persia and China located in modern-day Eritrea and Ethiopia the city of Aksum skyline was marked by giant steel eye the tallest in the world it was a hub of trade as well as the Center for multiculturalism being seen as a safe haven by Jews Muslims and Christians the Old Testaments queen of sheba is believed to have come from Aksum and through her son the Ark of the Covenant is rumoured to rest inside the Church of Our Lady of Zion a place where Christians gather in their thousands it is not clear what ended the Empire at some point the capital city was moved to another location but we don't know where two different stories say the Empire was destroyed by a conquering queen either a Jewish queen from the north or a pagan Queen from the south architecture shows that Aksumite culture was not completely eradicated but the civilization was no more number one the pics the pics are a problem despite being Christian and therefore literate in Latin the only writings they left behind are a handful of indecipherable inscriptions on stones their buildings were made of wood and rotted away in the damp climate we don't even know what the called themselves they remain an utter mystery all we can do is make an educated guess about their culture thanks to their stunning jewelry carvings and a few comments from writers like Saint bead the pics lived in eastern and northern Scotland in a confederation of kingdoms they may have traced their Kings right to rule through their mothers they were once wont to wear word which earned them their Latin name pic T the painted people they spoke a language similar to what became Welsh but in the middle of the 9th century this language their laws and customs all disappeared tradition says they were wiped out by Kenneth MacAlpin a king of the Gaels or Scotty whose descendants gradually created Scotland however historian Alex Wolfe says evidence suggests Kenneth MacAlpin may have been a pict himself in which case the pics were not physically destroyed but culturally overtaken by the gales we just don't know for sure the problem of the pigs persists thanks for watching 10 mysterious lost civilizations are there any civilizations you would have liked to have seen on this list please let us know in the comments below and if you enjoyed this video then please don't forget to Like and subscribe and click right here to see more

Channel: Uncovered

Views: 1,963,907

Rating: 4.7854071 out of 5

Keywords: 10 lost civilizations, lost civilizations, history, lost cities, city of gold, el dorado, maya, mayans, khmer, angkor wat, picts, human sacrifice, petra, easter island, moai, rapa nui, aztecs, moche, inca, ancient cities, easter island statues, mycenae, trojan war, troy, homer, iliad, odyssey, el nino, minos, theseus, minotaur, knossos, aksum, lost ark, ark of the covenant, well of souls

Id: 3xFLfUWqsH4

Length: 12min 19sec (739 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 09 2017