12 Most Amazing Recent Archaeological Finds

we love new archaeological discoveries on this channel and we also love sharing them with you there's always something new and exciting going on in the world of archaeology work goes on all year round and every week someone finds something interesting somewhere we've seen some incredible things discovered in the recent past and we've put a few of the highlights together for you in this video we hope you enjoy finding out about them as much as we did [Music] coins are among the most common objects found by archaeologists but being common doesn't mean that they don't have value so long as you have the right coin you could be sitting on a small fortune an englishman named graham rushton knows all about that graham was out in a field in south yorkshire with his metal detector in late 2018 when he found an extremely rare 12th century silver penny the coin was so battered looking that he didn't think much of it so it wasn't until months later that he took pictures of it and sent them to a museum out of curiosity to see if it was worth anything the coin was minted during the reign of king stephen who took the throne of england in 1135. only 25 examples of coins from this era are known to have survived to the present day making graham's discovery an exceptional one understandably he decided to cash in on his discovery as soon as he realized its true value and sold it for just over twelve thousand dollars at auction [Music] landscapes and terrain can change completely over time what was once forests can become cities or towns and what were once towns or cities can become forests archaeologists proved that in early october 2020 when they identified the remains of a 2 000 year old village hidden under a forest in the north of poland the settlement which was found complete with farming land boundary markets the foundations of buildings and roads between houses is thought to be unique in europe the discovery was made in the bori takolski area which is a dense woodland today and has thus far gone largely unexplored by archaeologists when a discovery like this is made it usually happens during construction work and only uncovers a small portion of an ancient settlement defined so much at once and for so much of it to be well preserved is highly unusual the arrangement of the fields is consistent with the three-field farming system that was popular in the poland of the middle ages so historians must now consider the question of whether the practice began much earlier than they once thought in 2016 scientist steve emsley arrived in antarctica in hope that he'd be able to solve a mystery he'd heard numerous travelers tales of penguin guano on a rocky cape close to scott coast but nobody had ever recorded a sighting of a penguin colony or even a live penguin there he knew he was onto something the moment he arrived because there were pebbles dotted around the shore pebbles don't often appear grouped together in antarctica other than where adelaide penguins live because the birds use them to build their nests moving further inland emsley found the remains of a penguin with its feathers still attached and its flesh barely decomposed naturally he assumed he was on the verge of locating a live penguin colony he was wrong what he'd actually found was receding ice sealed away in permafrost and then mummified up to 5 000 years ago it's only in recent times that the ice has begun to melt revealing the remains of the penguins and their guano for the first time in living memory it's a little sad that there are no penguins there now but the flip side is that the climate conditions here now would be suitable for modern day penguins to return and live here again while coffin burial is the most common way to dispose of human remains in the modern world our ancient ancestors have tried a few different methods in the past one of them being the use of these enormous burial jars that have recently been unearthed in van eastern turkey the massive ceramic jars were buried around 2800 years ago and are correctly known as pythos burial chambers the archaeologists and historians responsible for the discovery believe them to be relics of the kingdom of urartu which ruled this part of the world 2900 years ago but fell to the midis 300 years later vans would have been the kingdom's capital the burial jars were found close to the top of an ancient fortress with the remains of a palace at its northernmost point the experts were amazed to find that the jars appear to be mostly undisturbed given the fact that tomb raiders must have picked through this area in the past and the region has also been impacted by enormous earthquakes during the many centuries since the kingdom of urartu fell the next step is to get the burial jars open and find out who or what might be inside them if you want to find out about the climate of the ancient world you need to find an ancient tree trees have a way of recording the temperature the chemical makeup of the atmosphere and a lot more information about the world around them during their existence all you need to do is cut them open and take a look thanks to the discovery of a 10 million year old fossilized tree in peru in september 2020 we now know that a few of the things we'd always presumed about the ancient climate are incorrect today this part of peru is arid and sparse but when the tree was alive it was extremely humid far more so than any climate models of the neogene period had predicted the average temperature appears to have been higher than it is anywhere in the world today the landscape was also drastically different evidence suggests that the tree grew at an elevation of 6 000 feet above sea level but today its fossil is 13 000 feet up one possible explanation is that there may have been significant movements in the lithosphere beneath south america but more studies will be required in order to confirm this [Music] students at a school in turku finland were shocked in early 2018 when renovation work inside their school gymnasium uncovered long forgotten medieval ruins many of turku's medieval ruins were destroyed in 1827 when a great fire tore through the city and burned down over three quarters of the buildings the school was built in the aftermath of the fire but we now know the work was carried out directly on top of the remains of at least two medieval houses and a section of street archaeologists believe that if they were to carry on digging and rip up the schoolyard as well they would find more of the street and probably several more houses too the school isn't keen on that idea and would like the archaeologists to give them their gym back as well local authorities are now trying to find a way to preserve the ancient ruins without causing any harm to the school one possible option is to finish excavating the ruins put the floor of the gym back on top and open up an underground museum at the same time [Music] you've probably heard it said that the taste of wine improves with age so with that in mind how would you feel about trying this ancient chinese liquor it's theoretically safe to drink but it's spent the past 2 200 years inside a sealed bronze kettle inside a shin dynasty tomb the tomb is one of many that were discovered in china's shangshi province in march 2018 and was probably occupied by a commoner rather than someone of notable social standing being a commoner didn't mean that you were sent to your eternal rest without a few grave offerings though this liquor was probably something that the tombs occupant was very fond of back when they were alive the experts who opened the kettle described the alcohol as about 300 millimeters of milky yellow fluid later testing revealed that it was made of glutamic acid substances created during a rudimentary fermentation process involving honey berries grapes and rice it probably tastes a little bit like rice wine drinking it for pleasure might not have been the point though 2200 years ago alcohol was used as medicine as much as it was used for merriment hence the old saying let's drink to health our next recent discovery is causing a stir in the world of archaeology at the moment because science tells us that it shouldn't exist at all it's a human footprint in the rock of new mexico's robledo mountains and it's 290 million years old obviously this is long before the emergence of human beings on our planet according to our current understanding of history the footprint was apparently made before dinosaurs roamed the earth and that can't be right we can't rule out the possibility that this is a hoax or a fraud but other footprints recorded at the area have reliably been dated back to the same time so we can't dismiss the idea of its veracity completely what we might be able to say is that it was made by a human-like creature but not a human there are many footprints up in the mountains that seem to belong to bear-like or bird-like creatures but aren't exact matches for any type of bird or bear that lives on our planet today could this be the footprint of a long extinct creature that just so happened to have human-like feet or is the whole story a fraud our next discovery is a little gruesome but fascinating all the same it's the mummified hand of an infant child discovered in a graveyard in nyarlarink south hungary in 2018 the rest of the child's body was skeletonized but the hand forearm and upper back were mummified scientists janos balas studied the strange phenomenon and came to an astonishing conclusion the tiny copper coin in the child's hand was responsible for the partial mummification copper has long been known to have antimicrobial properties but nothing on this scale has ever been seen before at the same time balaz discovered that the infant had been buried long after the abandonment of the graveyard most of the bodies there were buried between the 12th and 16th centuries but this baby died only 150 years ago he feels the most likely explanation is that it was a stillborn child born to a commoner living nearby who wrapped up the body of her son in cloth buried it in the abandoned churchyard and placed a coin in its hand to pay john the baptist for a christening in accordance with an ancient tradition that's been observed elsewhere in europe but never before in hungary we've all heard of the bermuda triangle a place where planes ships and people are said to disappear without a trace in 2018 experts announced that they'd located its undersea equivalent close to greece marine archaeologists have identified no fewer than 58 ancient shipwrecks near a tiny archipelago in the aegean sea the wrecked ships come from several different eras from the modern age to the days of ancient greece and its empire this collection of lost ships that surrounds fornoy has already been described as the most significant marine archaeological find of the 21st century these islands are considered to be remote today but centuries ago they were an important stopover point on major trade routes and a welcome opportunity for shore leave to sailors on long journeys unfortunately for those sailors fornoy is notable for its rocky reefs and treacherous sandbanks it takes an experienced and skilled navigator to avoid getting in harm's way and it appears that these vessels didn't have anyone with the right skill or experience on board legend has it that pirates once roamed the islands too so they may also have played a role [Music] some versions of australian history suggest that the aborigines the people who lived in australia prior to the arrival of western and european settlers were primitive hunter-gatherers a discovery made in august 2020 has proven that this can't have been the case experts have found the remains of ancient banana farms on an island in the country's taurus strait proving that organized agriculture and farming was taking place there more than 2100 years ago aside from banana microfossils experts also found charcoal the remains of retaining walls and stone tools these farms and the walls that surrounded them were built to last historians used to believe that agricultural practices like this were conducted in ancient times in indonesia and papua new guinea but that australia's people were less developed and that the taurus strait almost acted like a physical divider between the two cultures now it seems that the strait was more likely to have functioned as a bridge allowing the understanding of farming methods to spread the people that the early british colonists found in australia when they first landed here might have been far more advanced than the british approved version of history tells us [Music] it's been over a year since a 3 200 year old sword was found on the spanish island of majorca in september 2019 and archaeologists are still puzzling over who left it there and what it might mean the sword found by accident by a civilian at a bronze age site is one of very few weapons of its era ever discovered in majorca it might be a relic of the mysterious tileotic culture the same people who are believed to have created the equally enigmatic taliyat stone megaliths that can be found on the island the tip of the weapon's blade has snapped off but other than that it's in stunningly good condition for an artifact so old the placement of the sword under a stone suggests that it was left there deliberately perhaps as an offering or as part of a ceremony we know nothing about only ten swords of this style have ever been discovered and only this one is complete and mostly unspoiled the big question that historians are wrestling with now is whether the placement of the sword means that the nearby taliot was a focus for religious worship which might get us one step closer to understanding why they were made 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 Recent Archaeological Finds, archaeological finds, recent archaeological, recent finds, amazing recent, ancient finds, ancient mystery, ancient archaeology, archaeological mystery, 12 most, top 12, most amazing

Id: MsOT9QhX2WQ

Length: 15min 42sec (942 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 23 2020