12 Most Amazing Artifacts Finds That Change History

when archaeologists or historians make a new discovery they try to fit it into the established history of whatever era their discovery comes from on most of these occasions their discovery tells us new things about the era or reinforces things that we already believe sometimes though their discoveries do the opposite they don't fit with our current understanding of history at all and challenge us to think again about the era they came from that's what this video is all about discoveries that have changed our understanding of history [Music] we know that humans weren't the only living beings to be mummified after death in ancient egypt cats sometimes received the same honor and so did baboons the existence of mummified baboons is a fact that most people are unaware of and yet they might be key to our understanding of the lost and forgotten land of punt we know that punt definitely existed but we're not sure where it was we know it was close to the red sea but historians can't agree whether it was in africa or arabia it's through punt's trading relationship with egypt which lasted for over one thousand years that we discover the most information the egyptians bought baboons from punt and then mummified them after they died and studying these mummified remains has recently proven that they came from a part of the world that now covers ethiopia somalia and yemen finally providing us with some clarity on where punt was and the amount of land it covered at the same time it also shows that the egyptians seafaring capabilities were even greater than we tend to give them credit for the long-range maritime connection between the kingdoms might even have been the beginning of the famous spice route and the origin of globalization because of its biblical connection there might be no part of the world that's been studied in more detail by archaeologists and historians than jerusalem and yet discoveries from there still have the propensity to surprise us in october 2020 a 2700 year old limestone weight was found beneath wilson's arch in jerusalem and shed new light on the monetary system that existed there during at the time the first temple was built the weight is the precise measurement of two shekalim and experts believe it would have been used to work out the correct amount of taxation to be taken from citizens as a contribution toward the construction and maintenance of the great temple coins didn't exist back then and so this weight would have helped to determine the correct quantity of precious stones or goods to be taken as payment the symbol on the top of the weight is egyptian but represents the greek symbol gamma and is taken as shorthand for shekel a double shekel would weigh precisely 23 grams which is also the precise weight of the artifact the area of england known as the fens is notorious for being very flat and very wet which made it difficult for anybody to settle there in ancient times due to the risk of flooding people did settle there though and in 2016 british archaeologists found out how they went about it it appears that they built houses on stilts the remains of a settlement built on stilts were discovered that year in cambridgeshire and have shed new light on bronze age civilization in the country it seems that the people who lived there spent their days in large circular homes made of wood and while they were safe from flooding they were sadly somewhat prone to fire the entire settlement was destroyed by a fire around 3000 years ago and collapsed into the mud where they were covered over with mud and remained undiscovered for centuries while the inferno destroyed the homes it left behind traces of textiles made from plant fibers cups and bowls and even a few jars that still contain the meat that was preserved inside them most curious of all is the discovery of jewelry made from glass beads which is a level of sophistication that's rarely seen in relics from bronze age britain many different races and cultures have made britain their home over the centuries including the vikings for many years the local folklore of galloway in scotland said that a great war between viking warriors and the native scots had taken place in the area but no evidence of it was found until 2014 when metal detectorist derek mclennan discovered what's now known as the galloway horde by the time he'd finished digging he'd uncovered more than 100 individual artifacts most of which are viking in design and approximately 1 000 years old the galloway horde is now thought of as the most significant collection of viking era objects ever found in the british isles the most stunning piece is a silver anglo-saxon cross which is of such high quality that it most likely belonged either to a king or a high-ranking cleric made from black and yellow and decorated with gold leaf and bearing the symbols of the saints matthew and mark along with depictions of animals associated with luke and john it's a stunning example of the quality of anglo-saxon craftsmanship derek received two million pounds as a reward for his discovery which is a fair amount when you consider its historical value [Music] when a team of french archaeologists went to egypt in 2012 they were hoping to discover things that had somehow been missed by the many experts who'd gone before them they were successful in their aim there in abu rawash to the west of cairo they found a 5 000 year old wooden boat that's thought to have been used as transportation by the ancient pharaohs you could even think of it as a royal boat the pharaonic solar boat dates all the way back to the time of pharaoh den one of the earliest rulers of the first dynasty it was the belief of the people of the time that boats like this could even transport them into the afterlife after they passed away so they were often buried with their owners it was previously thought that a 4 500 year old solar boat discovered in a giza pyramid in 1954 was the earliest solar boat but this discovery proves that egyptians were making them a full five centuries before that as the french team was able to provide compelling evidence of the vessel's age it's now recognized as the oldest intact ship in the world [Music] it goes without saying that the americas were populated long before the europeans arrived there but when did the first humans reach the american continents according to the surprising results of a study that was published in december 2020 the answer to that question is 130 000 years ago this is especially shocking because until this study it was generally thought that humans first came here just over 30 000 years ago a mere 10 000 years since the earliest human settlers arrived in europe historians now have to consider the possibility that there were people in the americas long before there were people in europe which turns the narrative of history on its head at the core of this new theory is the discovery of 130 000 year old mastodon remains in san diego which bones that show signs of being hammered and scraped using rocks there are also ancient cobbles in the same area that show evidence of bones being placed upon them and then struck with stone hammers leaving fragments of bone in the rocks unless there were some other species in the americas all those years ago working on bones with stone tools it appears that we've got the history of humanity spread all wrong [Music] a cigar tin in scotland is an unlikely place to find a relic connected to the construction of the great pyramid of giza and yet that's where one turned up in december 2020 the tiny 5 000 year old cedarwood fragment is one of only three artifacts from within the great pyramid that have ever been found and appears to have been donated to aberdeen university at some point in the distant past and then either lost or misfiled until it was rediscovered by abir el adani the curator of the university's historical collection who happens to be from egypt the artifact along with a bronze hook and a ball is thought to have been left behind by the people who built the pyramid carbon dating has shown it to be around 5 300 years old meaning it was created before the great pyramid itself it was found in the queen's chamber of the pyramid in 1872 by an engineer named wayneman dixon who probably took it back to aberdeen himself and left it to the university in his will with further study it might yet prove useful in working out exactly how the pyramid was built and by who [Music] while that scottish discovery might change egyptian history the thracian penigeriste treasure has definitely changed bulgarian history the collection of gold vessels found by accident by three brothers digging for clay in 1949 dates back 2 400 years and is a relic of the once mighty duration civilization the amount of gold used in their creation is mind-boggling and the level of detail and decoration on the artifacts is astonishing for objects that are so old there's a disagreement between experts about whether they were made by thracian crafts people or whether they were imported from somewhere like the ancient greek city of lamsakus in turkey by allowing the treasure to be displayed in galleries all over the world bulgaria has managed to change the more recent perception of bulgaria as a mostly insignificant former communist country into a place with a long and storied history and somewhere worthy of further archaeological study as for the treasure the presence of gold vessels with two holes at the bottom appears to confirm the belief that ancient thracian warriors were given vessels with two openings to drink from in recognition of their success on the battlefield [Music] in july 2020 a norwegian archaeology student out on a field visit with their tutor discovered the first evidence of a remote viking trading station in the country one that's forced norwegian historians to reconsider the viking age history of their nation the existence of the previously unknown station in tisland is evidenced by coins jewelry silver gold and artifacts from asia finland and the british isles there are even a few arabic coins at the site which further underlines how far and wide the vikings traveled and traded northern norway isn't traditionally thought of as a hive of viking activity and yet this was clearly a major trading center during the 9th century there's evidence of viking agricultural and fishing centers elsewhere in northern norway but they tend to be further to the west and arrived many years later this new site which is known as santorg therefore becomes the oldest known trading place anywhere in the country's north and the entire history of viking trading behavior in the region has to be reevaluated it might even be the case that the vikings who later populated france and the british isles set off from here a little earlier on we saw evidence of human activity in north america 130 000 years ago while that discovery is still considered contentious by archaeologists there's nothing contentious about the discovery of these 16 700 year old tools which were found in texas in july 2016. it's long been thought that the clovis people were the continent's first proven human settlers but these tools are thousands of years older than the earliest relics of the clovis people aside from the collection of 90 stone tools traces of human remains were also unearthed at a site called galt not far from the texan capital city of austin thanks to the discovery of spearheads during the 1990s it can be proven that the clovis people lived in the americas around 13 000 years ago but these tools were made by people 3 000 years earlier either the clovis people arrived a lot earlier than we've long believed they did or someone else was there long before the clovis people turned up the fact that the tools appear to be different in shape and design to those used by the clovis people suggest that it's the latter suggestion that's most likely to be true [Music] the art of building bridges was an important skill for humans to learn as their territory spread and rivers got in the way most people would probably assume that it began with the romans the egyptians or the greeks but it actually appears to have started around 5 000 years ago in the ancient sumerian city of gursu which is now part of iraq the waterway it crossed has long since dried up and gone away which initially made the remains of the bridge difficult to identify when they were first discovered during the 1920s it was generally thought that they were either the remains of an ancient dam or the foundations of a larger building like a temple it wasn't until a 21st century exploration unearthed clay tablets in the surrounding area upon which references were made to the existence of a bridge nearby archaeologists have now concluded that this structure is the bridge they speak of it's made out of baked bricks and appears to have been made one brick at a time in a process that might have taken years as the site was previously considered to be unimportant it's been left unprotected and exposed to the elements for decades so the race is now on to preserve it in a matter befitting the world's oldest bridge [Music] while we're talking about world firsts here's what we believe to be the oldest dam-free irrigation system on earth this is it's over 2200 years old and yet it was designed with such precision and perfection that it still works today bringing water to almost 50 cities in china's sichuan province you'd need a huge team of engineers to come up with anything similar in the 21st century but du jiangyan was planned and designed by just one man an ancient genius called li bing he'd been asked to work out why the minjiang river flooded so often and if anything could be done about it after extensive studies he concluded that the river flooded every time the snow melted in the nearby mountains and so the way to solve the floods was to direct the flow of that water and give the river a runoff to do so he spent eight years digging a hole in mount uli and allowing the excess water to escape through it to the chengdu plain his understanding of waterways and artificial canals was centuries ahead of its time making lee being one of the most important and overlooked geniuses in history 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 soon

Channel: Amazing Stock

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Keywords: 12 Most Amazing Artifacts Finds That Change History, ancient artifacts, artifact found, amazing artifacts, change history, ancient archaeology, archaeological artifacts, 12 most, top 12, most amazing

Id: FW3oQGo6-Mg

Length: 16min 18sec (978 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 15 2021