10 Oldest Technologies Scientists Still Can’t Explain

[Music] hey how about a mystery you okay with that alright here are the oldest technologies that scientists can explain if you think that advanced technology is only a present-day commodity then you're in for a big surprise thousands of years ago great minds managed to create incredible technologies that were way ahead of their time like a fire that couldn't be extinguished by water an unbreakable medieval sword and even an ancient computer from 200 BCE if you're ready to learn more about these mind-blowing ancient inventions plus a whole lot more then keep on watching but before we hop into our time machine and blast off into the past don't forget to subscribe to our channel and turn on post notifications so that you won't miss any of the daily updates on the bright side of life now let's kick off this list at number 10 the stone globes of Costa Rica you can easily make a stone shaped object out of clay by molding it however the people living in Costa Rica during ancient times did it the hard way literally in the 1930s spheres ranging from a few inches to more than 6 feet in size were discovered in the decay Delta region of Costa Rica and no they weren't made from clay but from a hard igneous stone called granodiorite hundreds of these stone spheres were found quarried in the foothills of the talamanca mountains researchers even saw a gigantic ball weighing over 16 times so who would paint staking lee carve perfect spheres out of giant rocks was this some kind of ancient hobby or an offering to the gods maybe a ginormous soccer ball we still don't know who the mastermind or minds behind these stone orbs were according to studies they were made as early as 200 BCE but whoever was doing it stopped when Spanish colonizers showed up in the area during the 16th century so it looks like they did have ample time to carve all these stones more or less eighteen hundred years but how did they do it well granted I rate rocks can easily be carved using temperature techniques first they heated up some section using hot coals and then cooled it off with cold water next they hammered it using harder materials that were strong enough to chip the stone for the finishing touch they polished it using sand or leather this was the same process used to create small stone axes and statues as for what purpose these spherical stones served well unfortunately that remains one of the most baffling mysteries in archaeology I got it let's send in Indiana Jones well researchers assumed that they were used as a compass or for astronomical observations since some were found in patterns of lines triangles and parallelograms others theorized that the stone globes were a status symbol of the rich and influential families at the time ah I guess we'll never know number nine the Roman dodecahedron we can thank the ancient Romans for inventing such modern-day conveniences as concrete roads and highways toilets and newspapers to name a few I think the Vespa actually came later these Roman inventions have a pretty straightforward approach on how to use them the same however can't be said about the dough de heck yeah sorry the dodecahedron well you try to say it these strange hollow objects made from bronze or stone were discovered about 200 years ago they have 12 flat pentagonal shaped faces with a knob protruding on each corner over a hundred of these dodecahedra were found in Hungary Great Britain Switzerland Belgium Austria Germany the Netherlands France Luxembourg and Poughkeepsie all which used to be part of the great Roman Empire well not pick it see that's in New York the objects range in size from an inch and a half to a little over four inches and some date way back to the second or third year see II the ancient Romans had a habit of keeping records but none were found for their dodecahedra researchers do have a few theories though the dodecahedron might have been a dice a kid's toy a candle holder a simple decoration a measuring device on the battlefield or an astronomical instrument to name a few experts really have no idea so the Roman dodecahedra remain a mystery yet to be solved number 8 the Phaistos disc in crete in 1908 Italian archaeologist Luigi Bernier found the Phaistos disc in the Minoan Palace in the city of Phaistos on the Greek island of Crete it's made from clay and measures about 6.2 inches in diameter it's covered on both sides with 243 symbols arranged in a spiral pattern experts guessed that the disc was created sometime between 1400 and 1850 BCE but its meaning and purpose remain a complete mystery at first it was thought to be some sort of hoax but that didn't stop scientists and decipher us from cracking the code of the face dose disk experts originally argued that it was something like a movable typewriter but dr. Gareth Owens a linguist and researcher at the technological educational institute of Crete thought otherwise in collaboration with Professor John Coleman from the phonetics department at Oxford University they concluded that it was a prayer to an ancient Minoan goddess the disk which is now on display at the her Ackley on Archaeological Museum is about 90 percent deciphered but only on one side so it seems this 4,000 year old mystery is not yet fully unraveled number 7 Greek fire everybody knows that water beats fire right well it looks like Greek fire doesn't adhere to the laws of physics this sorta napalm of ancient times was introduced by Byzantine Greeks in the 7th century CE II in fact it was such a precious asset to the kingdom that Emperor Romano's ii of Constantinople declared that aside from the Byzantine Imperial regalia and any royal princess noticed the order Greek fire must not end up in foreign hands at all costs for that reason its formula was a well guarded state secret for over seven centuries a whole lot longer than the stealth fighter jet what was that five minutes so how was this super-secret seventh century military weapon used and was it really that effective well to answer that first question Greek fire was used in naval warfare and yes it got the job done all right the highly combustible liquid was carried by Byzantine ships and launched onto enemy vehicles immediately setting ablaze anything and anyone on board even the water below it it was indeed hot hot hot number six Damascus steel invented by Middle Eastern sword smiths at around five hundred seee blades made from Damascus steel we're the most sought-after in medieval Europe and this because they were the best swords at the time hard flexible and beautiful weapons made from Damascus steel were of extraordinary quality in fact these swords were rumored to be able to slice right through a falling silk scarf which came in really handy if you were ever attacked by a silk merchant experts believe that the iron in Damascus steel was yielded from wootz a type of Indian steel that was made over 2,000 years ago in the third and fourth century wootz became a popular trade item in the city of Damascus where of course the steel that Europe was trying to get its hands on at the time was coming from the technique to create this marvelous sword was lost in the 1700s along with its primary ingredient Woods number five the iron pillar of Delhi it seems India had already perfected the art of metallurgy way back in ancient more proof of this can be found in the iron pillar of Delhi a plain twenty two-foot tall iron column isn't exactly a head-turner but the history behind it and the mystery that surrounds it is what makes it so impressive it's origin dates back to the Gupta period which lasted from about 240 to 590 seee it was originally located in Madhya Pradesh but its purpose was never put on record some say it was a Flagstaff or a Sun Dial it's also believed to have been built to honor Vishnu one of the important Hindu gods or for a king presumably Chandragupta Vikramaditya however these are only speculations and no concrete evidence has been found the pillar is made from 98% wrought iron and weighs over six tonnes any object made of iron is prone to rust but not the one thousand six hundred year old iron pillar of Delhi well it's not entirely true that it doesn't rust at all a small amount of rust has started to form but it's strange that there isn't more experts believe this might be due to the fact that Delhi isn't a very humid city and humidity causes iron to rust quickly another theory is that the pillar has a protective layer called mists away again these are only speculations and haven't been scientifically proven number four the Viking ulfberht sword it was made of metal so pure than archaeologists thought it was created with technology that was way ahead of its time Viking ulfberht swords are believed to have been made around 800 to 1000 CE but experts were sure that the technology used to make swords of such extraordinary quality didn't come around until 800 years later so yeah that's how futuristic this weapon was only about 170 ulfberht swords have been found this rarity in numbers has led scientists to believe that it was a prized possession only for elite Vikings thanks to research conducted by dr. Robert layman from the Institute of inorganic chemistry at the university of hannover in germany we now know the swords composition Lehmann found that its blade had a high manganese content and its guard was made from iron with a high arsenic content but how they managed to make these swords at that time remains a mystery today the slag or impurities in the ore must be removed by heating it to 3000 degrees Fahrenheit and mixing it with carbon to make it stronger however this method of heating iron to such high temperatures didn't exist in medieval times back then the common and less effective method was to pound the slag off yet the Viking wolf Bert sword contains three times more carbon is made from crucible steel and it has almost no slack making it superior for its time it was rumored that the swords maker had magical powers since the weapon was so advanced well there's no proof that this wasn't the case so who knows number three the Voynich manuscript this strange manuscript has been a source of frustration for cryptologists scientists and scholars alike it is by far the most baffling and unsolvable document of all time experts do know that it dates back to the 15th century it has 240 pages broken into four sections herbal astrological balneal logical and pharmacological but this book is by no means an encyclopedia well if it is and it's a really really weird one it's full of strange drawings of unidentifiable plants celestial charts of unknown origin and naked women bathing in some green liquid sitting on giant ovaries and holding rainbows in their hands you think maybe that's the herbal section it's written in a completely unidentifiable language that's been dubbed Voynich Eve's who on earth or better yet in the universe made this thing well the manuscript does go back centuries and has traveled most of the world throughout that time it actually went missing for about 250 years and was only rediscovered in 1912 when polish book dealer Wilfrid Voynich purchased it since then there have literally been dozens of failed attempts to crack this thing world-famous cryptologist William Friedman tried to decipher it in the 1940s but to no avail according to his article published in The Paris Review Friedman concluded that it was most likely an early attempt to construct an artificial language in 2016 another attempt was made by a team of computer scientists at the University of Alberta they used artificial intelligence and even use Google Translate to decode it they concluded that it's written in Hebrew but they need an actual Hebrew scholar to confirm this and fully translate the whole book now if you want to take your shot and try to decode this mysterious and out-of-this-world book yourself the entire thing is available online in Yale University's Beneke Rare Book and Manuscript library good luck number two the zheng hang seismograph in 132 c e jiang hang a chinese inventor astronomer engineer scientist scholar and artist invented a seismic oh and presented it to the Han Court as an instrument for measuring seasonal winds and the Earth's movements this ancient seismograph could actually determine the location or direction of an earthquake hundreds of miles away and the proof was in the pudding the device successfully detected an earthquake in the west of ulang in 138 C so how does it work it drops a bronze ball through one of eight tubes shaped like a dragon into the mouth of a toad that sits right below each one which tube it falls through tells you the direction the earthquake is coming from scientists from zhangzhou China made a replica of the device in 2005 and it actually worked the replicate was able to detect four quakes in China and Vietnam but still nothing beats the original since it was so far ahead of its time number one the Antikythera mechanism also known as the clockwork computer the Antikythera mechanism was retrieved by a group of divers in 1900 in an underwater shipwreck near the Greek island of Antikythera it's been dubbed the world's first analogue computer and get this it was made around 200 BCE this bronze mechanism displays exceptional engineering and astronomical precision that was you've got it extremely advanced for its time according to analyst obscura the mechanism could tell the positions of the Sun Moon planets and stars as well as the lunar phase the dates of upcoming solar eclipses and even the speed at which the moon moves through the sky that's how awesome this device was however no one is sure who used it and how or where was made a sophisticated device like this must have had a wealthy origin considering how complicated it was Bill you can visit the remains of the Antikythera mechanism in the bronze collection at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens it also has a replica in the American computer Museum in Bozeman Montana Wow so which of these ancient and yet advanced technology surprised you the most let us know in the comments and don't forget to give this video a like if you found it entertaining and share it with your friends don't probably enjoy it too if you haven't yet be sure to click that subscribe button and hang out with us on the bright side of life

Channel: BRIGHT SIDE

Views: 4,945,135

Keywords: old technologies, inventions of the past, stone globes, Roman inventions, Greek fire, Damascus steel, iron pillar of Delhi, Voynich manuscript, seismograph, Roman dodecahedron, Phaistos Disk, Iron pillar, Viking Ulfberht sword, Zhang Heng seismograph, Antikythera mechanism

Id: BAhHZ1Gi9Kk

Length: 16min 48sec (1008 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 19 2018