12 Most Amazing Ancient Artifacts Finds

what can we learn from studying an artifact left behind by our ancient ancestors the answer to that question is almost anything the most incredible of the many artifacts discovered by archaeologists over the years are like windows through time allowing us a glimpse of people and places long gone you'll see many discoveries like that in this video all with their own amazing stories to be told [Music] carving figures of the naked female form was an obsession of every ancient civilization in the world we suspect that most of those civilizations created such artwork purely because they were attractive to look at but archaeologists suspect that there might have been a little more to these stone carvings they were found in rehab israel in july 2019 and are thought to be 3 500 years old back then rehab and the surrounding area were part of the egyptian empire and these carvings may have been used in an egyptian fertility ritual rather than being depictions of anonymous women it's thought that the carvings represent fertility goddesses like ashtarte and ashira items like this are thought to have once been common and would most likely have been kept in the bedroom confusingly though there's an inscription on the back of one of the five clay tablets that dedicates it to a deceased man named amonement quite why a dead man would need a carving of a fertility goddess dedicated to him is unknown maybe amon emmett was very fond of the artwork while he was still alive our next discovery isn't strictly an archaeological one but it does provide us with new information about human history in the british isles in april 2019 a fragment of rabbit bone was found at fishborn roman palace in sussex tests have been performed on the bone dating it to the first century according to scientists and experts this means that the romans kept rabbits as pets and that rabbits arrived in britain one thousand years earlier than anyone previously thought it's long been held that it was the normans who brought rabbits to britain but as with so many things it now seems likely that the romans got there first rabbits are popular family pets but in ancient europe they were native only to spain and france before they spread elsewhere through trade and adoption the fishborne roman palace rabbit bone is a fragment of the tibia and shows no signs of butchery that implies that the rabbit was kept rather than eaten although the identities of the ancient roman owners of the palace are unknown it's understood that they were very wealthy and kept a range of exotic pets perhaps they were the first family to own a rabbit in the whole country here's an ancient artifact story you might recall hearing about on the news in 2018 the allegedly christian arts and crafts company called hobby lobby was fined three million dollars in the usa for knowingly importing illegal smuggled goods into the country the goods in question are a collection of tablets bearing cuneiform inscriptions and they come from a city that was once thought to be a myth yale university professor eckert from was called upon by the u.s government to verify the authenticity of the recovered goods and he was stunned by what he saw the tablets which hobby lobby bought on the black market for 1.6 million dollars with the intention of putting them inside a bible museum come from a city called irisa greg the city is mentioned in many other sumerian texts but has never been found the worry here is that while professional archaeologists are yet to find erisa grigg smugglers and criminals appear to have gained access to its artifacts it's hoped that the ancient city hasn't been entirely looted by the time legitimate archaeologists turn up the smuggled tablets of which there were five thousand were shipped through israel and the united arab emirates before arriving in the usa we're heading back to sussex in england now because that was the site of a remarkable iron age warrior burial discovery in 2014. the warrior who was probably a participant in or victim of julius caesar's gaelic wars passed away and was buried somewhere around 50 years before the birth of christ he was found buried within land that has been earmarked for a new housing development while the land was empty at the time of the survey there are plenty of signs of human occupation in the distant past as well as the iron age warrior researchers also found a roman building an iron age roundhouse and a few bronze age boundary ditches containing axes the warrior burial is unusual because of its isolation it appears to be the only human burial in the area he was around 30 years old at the time of his death and was buried with his calvary helmet and shield bombs along with bronze latticework sheets that might have once covered his shield curiously the pottery he's buried with appears to have come from gaul the warrior may have had a preference for gaelic pottery or he may have been one of caesar's gaelic mercenaries [Music] it was a happy day for the christian faithful of york in england in september 2019 when a valuable ancient figure of christ was returned to the city after an absence of almost 200 years this gold figurine which features precious inlaid stones in its eyes crown and loincloth once adorned saint mary's abbey in the city saint mary's abbey is now a ruin and has been for hundreds of years the figurine itself is closer to 800 years old archaeologists believe that the artifact was made somewhere close to la majes in france during the 13th century but was unexpectedly found in the ruins of saint mary's in 1826. in the days before the abbey was ruined the figures would have been mounted on an enamel cross and used to decorate a religious object of some kind perhaps a casket or a manuscript nobody knows how it was spirited out of england but it was next seen in the private collection of a german art dealer in the 1920s it remained in germany for almost another century until the york museum's trust eventually agreed to purchase it the circumstances of the discovery of the bassy udes flagons in france are a little shady it's generally understood that they were found in the bassy ute's muscle in 1927 during the construction of a new railway line unfortunately the railway workers didn't call in professional archaeologists and performed a hasty excavation of the site themselves instead probably destroying the grave of an important iron age celtic dignitary in the process we suppose we should be grateful though flagon survived at all they're believed to be ceremonial drinking vessels and they're around 2500 years old such is the excellent state of their preservation that they were initially feared to be fakes but they've since been confirmed as genuine the flagons are each made from a single sheet of copper alloy beaten into a shape with incredible skill and precision they're kept watertight with a resin coating and each features more than 120 pieces of red coral and glass as decoration according to experts in ancient celtic art they represent the peak of lieutenant era the celts may not always have been literate but they were clearly adept at expressing themselves in other ways map making astronomy and astrology were all linked during the medieval era we can see that here in the catalan atlas which is arguably the most important of all the maps made during the middle ages the map was produced by the majorcan cartographic school in 1375 and is thought to be the work of jewish cartographer and book illustrator crescus abraham it consists of six gold and silver painted leaves which fold together vertically enclosed in leather bindings the astrological and astronomical connection comes in the first two leaves which are dedicated solely to those topics and feature lengthy texts with illustrations of the night sky notably they show the earth to be round the map content is split across the remaining four leaves with jerusalem as the center of the world some of the accompanying texts surrounding china contains details of customs described by marco polo many of which are inaccurate in fact the map as a whole is fairly inaccurate when it comes to land distribution and the locations of major territories but it does at least contain the first known use of a compass rose [Music] border disputes can be fraught or complicated if they're not managed correctly they can quickly turn into skirmishes at the borders or even all-out war that's as true today as it was 4 500 years ago as we can see from this pillar it's held in the collection of the british museum and is thought to be the oldest known record of a border dispute in the world not only that but it also contains the oldest known use of the familiar term no man's land the inscriptions etched into the pillar are written in sumerian cuneiform and remained undeciphered until a museum curator irving finkel cracked the translation in late 2018. because of his work we now know that the pillar was created to establish and define new boundaries between the warring city-states of uma and lagush both territories are within modern-day iraq the city-states both claimed ownership over a particularly fertile area of land known as guadina but the pillar states that it was enmetena king of lagush who won ownership of the land a little over 3 400 years ago the author of the text even appears to have mocked uma using finely chiseled letters whenever lagush's name was mentioned but using a childlike scroll to write the word uma if that happened today we'd call it trolling looters gaining access to archaeological sites before professionals have had a chance to assess them is a common problem for professional archaeologists but sometimes they get to have the last laugh in 2015 these ballista balls also known as slingstones were returned to the courtyard of a museum in golan heights israel along with a note of apology from the looter who'd stolen them 20 years earlier the content of the note identifies the artifacts as two roman ballista balls originally from gamla the thief claims he took them in july 1995 and has suffered nothing but bad fortune ever since he now believes that the artifacts are cursed and returned them in the hope that his luck would improve the tale is likely to be genuine gamma an ancient walled city on a hillside to the south of golan heights was excavated extensively between 1989 and 1996. ballista balls were among the most common discoveries made at the site having been fired at gamla by roman soldiers during a siege at the beginning of the first jewish roman war in the year 66. according to the israel antiquities authority a few conscience-driven returns like this happen every year the most fascinating thing about the artifacts known as the peergy tablets isn't what they've told us so far but what they might tell us in the future they're a trio of 2500 year old golden plates inscribed with a dedicatory text in both phoenician and etruscan the phoenician language has mostly been translated but the attrition language never has if we can completely translate the phoenician inscriptions on these tablets and use them to translate the alternative attrition text they might hold the key to translating the entire ancient attrition language the plates were found in lazio italy in 1964 in the foundations of an ancient attrition temple dedicated to the goddess uni in the context of ancient manuscripts the pyrgy tablets are considered to be almost as important as the 2600 year old golden orphism book also known as the golden book of the etruscans and commonly believed to be the oldest surviving book in the world the golden orphism book also contains etruscan writings and is thought to record the burial of an aristocrat between the existence of these two ancient texts we should have the means of translating etruscan but the secret still eludes us when two mammoth bone bracelets were found close to the village of mezen in the chernahiv region of ukraine in 1908 they were thought to be incredible works of stone age jewelry made 20 000 years ago even if they were nothing more than that they'd still be outstanding artifacts however in 2019 a new theory emerged it's now been proposed that these bracelets served a practical purpose as a sort of stone age calendar according to a team of russian archaeologists from navasobursk the patterns on the bracelets are similar to ancient greek meander patterns which are often seen on amphorae on vases it's a remarkable claim to make because the bracelets are older than the first known appearance of greek meander patterns by some 15 000 years the experts go even further stating that the patterns on the bracelets can be divided into five zones each of which has 30 meanders and 12 lines they see similarities between this layout and the oldest calendars of ancient egypt with 366 lines making up a combined solar and lunar calendar the findings of the russians have been treated with skepticism by the rest of the scientific and archaeological community but might they be onto something we're back on the topic of the mysterious etruscans again with this battered fragmented artifact it's the tabula corintensis a 2200 year old inscribed bronze tablet that was found in cortona italy in october 1992. the tablet is broken into seven pieces with an eighth piece missing the circumstances of its 1992 discovery are debated a member of the public handed it to the police claiming they'd found it at a construction site the construction site was thoroughly searched but no other ancient etruscan artifacts were located archaeologists were so suspicious of the tablet's origins that it wasn't confirmed as genuine or made public until 1999. this is the third longest etruscan language inscription ever found and might be a record of a legal transaction concerning either a sale or inheritance of real estate the few scraps of etruscan we've been able to translate confirm that a vineyard some cultivated land and lake tressamento are all mentioned in the text there also appear to be several references to table furnishings although it's impossible to make sense of these without context again we're tantalizingly close to being able to comprehend these words but we're not quite there yet [Music] subscribe to the channel and turn on notifications and you will be the first to know when a new video comes out thank you for watching and see you in the next video

Channel: Inforado

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Keywords: 12 Most Amazing Ancient Artifacts Finds, artifacts finds, amazing artifacts, ancient artifacts, mysterious artifacts, archaeological artifacts, archaeological finds, ancient mystery, 12 most, top 12, most amazing

Id: tDzf0Q-ynfQ

Length: 16min 11sec (971 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 16 2021