12 Most Incredible Archaeological Finds

every country and continent on the planet that's ever played host to human life is covered in the ruins and relics of the people who used to live there we might have built modern towns and cities on the foundations of those that came before us but their objects and artifacts are still there lying underneath waiting to be discovered by archaeologists and treasure hunters that's why archaeology is a truly global enterprise and we'll be showing you the fruits of the labors of the world's archaeologists in this video [Music] the brighter horde has been turning heads and provoking wonder ever since it was discovered in low foil northern ireland at the end of the 19th century it's considered one of the greatest treasure discoveries in northern irish history and is today looked upon as a symbol of ancient irish culture the battle for ownership of the 2100 year old artifacts went back and forth for a few decades but they eventually ended up in the hands of the british museum although every item in the horde is valuable the undisputed star of the collection is the elaborately detailed golden boat it's thought to have been buried as a votive offering to manon and mclair worshiped by the ancient irish as the god of the sea while the symbolism of the boat is easy to understand the cauldron-like bowl found with it is more mysterious it's made from one single piece of gold and is unlike anything ever discovered elsewhere on the british isles its characteristics like the characteristics of the chain necklaces in the collection are more middle eastern in style how they came to be in northern ireland so long ago is unknown the library of ashurbanipal in iraq holds the distinction of being the oldest surviving royal library on the planet it might even be the oldest library of any kind ever discovered this palatial structure was built almost 2600 years ago during the time of ashurbanipal the last significant ruler of the neo-assyrian empire and then lost to time until it was discovered near mosul in iraq by archaeologists working for the british museum in the 1850s such was the size of the library that it took from then until the 1930s to excavate it completely by which point fragments from more than 30 thousand separate clay tablets had been on earth historians believe that the library contained the sum total of everything these ancient people knew as the cuneiform script records cover subjects ranging from royal proclamations to instruction manuals persian tradition says that alexander the great once visited this library and was so inspired by it that he vowed to translate the literature of every civilization he'd conquered into greek and build a library of his own that became the great library of alexandria the latter library is much better known but this is the one that's more worthy of your awe and respect [Music] why do the rulers of the ancient kushite kingdoms build so many pyramids in sudan almost 1 000 years after the end of the same burial tradition in ancient egypt well if you ever discover the answer to that question you'll have earned the right to call yourself a master historian the nubians were heavily influenced by the egyptians but didn't get around to building the first of their pyramids until 2 700 years ago all of them are made of granite and sandstone and appear to have been modeled on the elite family style of egyptian pyramid that was popular during the time of the new kingdom more than 3 600 years ago 35 nubian pyramids still stand today all of which were built within a few centuries of each other and served as tombs for kings and queens they're much smaller than the egyptian pyramids but might have been designed as a tribute to what the ancient kushites saw as a superior culture unfortunately most of them were attacked by grave robbers centuries ago so a lot of what we might have been able to learn from them has been lost [Music] the lord of sipan must have lived a life of luxury in ancient peru seventeen hundred years ago we know this because we found his tomb in 1987 and it's one of the most spectacular undisturbed tombs ever discovered in south america when this mohican warrior priest went to his final resting place he did so accompanied by a treasure collection of incalculable value in a grisly spectacle the archaeologists who found the tomb at huwaka rahata archaeological site also discovered that he had a century to watch over him the remains of a soldier wearing a copper helmet and holding a shield were found at the entrance of the tomb his feet had been amputated presumably to prevent him from walking away and abandoning his duties when you consider the value of the goods inside the tomb perhaps it's not surprising that they were guarded they include an ornate face mask golden body ornaments a golden scepter and a necklace made from gold and silver beads as rich as this mighty leader was he didn't live for long experts believe he was only around 35 when he passed away [Music] we know that some dinosaurs were adept at hunting but were they also good at climbing we suppose they must have been how else could they get their footprints all over this near vertical 300 foot high wall in bolivia more than one dinosaur appears to have scaled cal orco in sucre also known as dinosaur rock there are over 5 000 dinosaur footprints on the gigantic limestone slab left by creatures that somehow clamored up it around 68 million years ago all might not be as it seems though paleontologists believe that this cliff was actually once part of the shoreline but was pushed upright by tectonic activity millions of years ago thus giving the impression that the giant lizards had walked up a sheer cliff face to get to the top that theory isn't yet proven but it might be more plausible than the idea that eight different dinosaur species including a baby tyrannosaurus rex developed the ability to defy gravity in prehistoric times the site is now a major tourist attraction in bolivia and features a dinosaur museum at the top of the rock [Music] the roman empire spread far and wide across europe in ancient times leaving traces behind in every country it reached one such trace has recently been found in croatia where archaeologists have been excavating a full-sized roman chariot with the skeletal remains of the horses that once pulled it still attached it's thought that chariot burials of this kind were reserved for extremely wealthy roman families two thousand years ago the discovery was made in the croatian city of vinkovsky at the bottom of a large undisturbed burial chamber based on previous burials of the kind in the area historians believe that the human occupant of the tomb was a local leader of some kind and played an important role in the social or political structures of the old roman region of pannonia chariots of this kind were used in battles long before this tomb was created but by the first century their role in combat had been reduced and they were more likely to be used during processions or in competitive sport oddly the chariot and the horses appear to have been standing upright when they were buried raising the unpleasant prospect that the horses were alive at the time for many decades historians and archaeologists have puzzled over frying pan-like artifacts that keep turning up during archaeological explorations in greece now they have a theory about their function if they're right these strange objects are venus calendars and they were used to help track pregnancies the calendars which are named because they're designed to track the movements of the planet venus appear to have been popular among aegean civilizations 6 000 years ago the theory rests on the idea that the ancient greeks believed venus was a representation of the goddess aphrodite and that venus spends 263 days of its 584-day year appearing before sunrise and the other 265 days appearing after it both periods are roughly equivalent to 9 months the average length of a human pregnancy the patterns and markings on the venus calendars which include depictions of the uterus appear to provide a means of marking those days off the theory may not be true but just the fact that these ancient people were aware of how many days it took venus to complete a single orbit of the sun is incredible even if we've misunderstood these artifacts of all the materials that you might make a suit of armor from you'd assume that stone is among the least practical nevertheless here's a suit of armor made from stone and it might have belonged to china's first emperor the unusual armor was found inside qin shihuang's mausoleum in china's sangshi province which is also home to the famous terracotta warriors it's the largest underground tomb ever discovered in china and still hasn't been fully excavated the suit of armor wasn't found until 2013 26 years after the mausoleum was designated as a unesco world heritage site the armor probably wasn't as uncomfortable as you might imagine while the plating is made of stone it's broken up into many different small plates connected by bronze wires to assist with maneuverability although no armor from the time of the qin dynasty has ever been discovered prior to this dozens of stone suits have been found since the first one in 2013 and there might be more hiding away in the dark perhaps this is how all of the first emperor soldiers dress for battle [Music] the biet gufrin caves of ashkelon israel are breathtaking looking at them it's difficult to imagine that every single one of them was carved into the rock by human hands and that those humans were working only with hand tools to go about their work archaeologists believe that the cave network was added to over hundreds of years with new caves created for a variety of purposes ranging from burial sites to secret religious meeting spaces the city of maresha once stood on the land above the caves more than two thousand years ago but was sacked and destroyed leading to beit gurveren being built on its ashes that city fell and turned to the romans who destroyed it and left us without enough clues to say for sure exactly who built these caves and what went on inside them the network is made up of more than one thousand caves some of which are a little basic and rustic but many of which are elaborately decorated and painted evidence suggests that the romans made use of some of the space but so did the sidonians and israelites it's like there was a whole underground city here and we know almost nothing about its story we've just mentioned the romans so this will be a good time to talk about the discovery of the oldest roman irrigation system in britain it was found in early 2014 as construction workers attempted to dig out the foundations of a proposed 1 billion housing development close to cambridge university evidence obtained from the site has shown that settlements have existed there for over 2 800 years but it's the pit wells and planting beds from the first century that have attracted the most curiosity experts believe that they're a part of an ancient irrigation system and were probably used to help grow asparagus or possibly grapes for the production of wine if they're right this is the oldest irrigation system in the country the romans might have come to britain as occupiers but they improved the standard of roads buildings and general infrastructure in the country significantly after they took over and irrigation was one of the innovations they brought with them in this case the beds are arranged in stripes surrounded by pit wells in which water could be gathered during wet spells and then poured onto the beds during dry spells to irrigate crops for the first century this would have been considered sophisticated agricultural planning we often think of dental surgery as a comparatively recent innovation but it isn't it's one of the oldest forms of surgery known to humankind in fact it's been happening since at least the iron age as we can prove with this 2300 year old dental implant found inside the mouth of a celtic woman buried in lachen france the implant is fittingly for its era made of iron and is roughly the same shape as an incisor it's thought that it would have been covered with ivory or wood to make it less irritating inside the woman's mouth we can't imagine that iron would have tasted pleasant otherwise perhaps she never tasted it at all though historians have a hard time believing that the people of 2300 years ago could hammer a pen into the jaw of a living human without seriously injuring them so the implant may have been added posthumously to make her corpse more aesthetically pleasing when she was laid to rest that might sound odd to us in the 21st century but our ancient ancestors had many strange burial practices that we can't even hope to understand today while the romans might have been happy with the irrigation system in britain that we saw a few moments ago it couldn't hold a candle to the incredible hydraulic systems of kariz ikish this underground city in iran ought to be considered as one of the wonders of the ancient world kish is an island and doesn't have much in the way of ancient landmarks or notable features on its surface below it though is another story this triumph of engineering is the kisch conic a series of vertical wells built on a slope to carry water to wherever it needs to go it predates the roman aqueduct by many centuries most historians agree that it was built 2500 years ago its job is to take water from the mountains and filter it down to the valleys far below them tunneling through layers of coral in the process the tunnels run on for more than five miles the walls and rooms created within the structure must have had a purpose beyond carrying the water but experts don't believe that anyone ever lived down here it's called a city because it looks like one not because it's ever thought to have hosted people subscribe to the channel and 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Channel: Inforado

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Keywords: 12 Most Incredible Archaeological Finds, archaeological finds, incredible archaeological, archaeological artifacts, ancient artifacts, incredible artifacts, ancient archaeology, mysterious archaeology, 12 most, top 12, most amazing

Id: 7yb1JI7ZCmk

Length: 15min 34sec (934 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 11 2020