12 Most Incredible Finds Of Archaeological Artifacts

great discoveries about the past come in all shapes and sizes and all sorts of people can find them there might be something amazing buried deep below your garden on the other hand there might be something equally surprising and valuable hidden down the back of your sofa very few things stay hidden forever though and this video is dedicated to some of the more remarkable finds and artifacts that have been discovered over the years some on purpose and some by chance [Music] tracing the origins of the human race is a difficult job and it gets harder the further back you go half a million years ago there was a race known as homo heteroborogenesis living in what's now west sussex in england were they early ancestors of humans or neanderthals we don't know for sure but what we do know is they were among the first bipeds to manufacture tools as the earth and pit box grove site was excavated during the 1990s archaeologists discovered not only the bones of our potential ancestors but also a set of tools made from horse bones providing clear evidence that primitive butchery was carried out in the area flakes of stones found around the horse bones suggest that the bones were shaped with flint and turned into knives there's so much material at the site that it's unlikely this was the work of one homo heidelbergenesis working alone it's more likely that there were up to eight of them that sat around the horse as they made tools was this the beginning of human socialization nobody is suggesting that human beings built the druid stone in nottinghamshire england strange as its appearance is it's definitely a natural rock formation what is it natural though is the passageway that's been cut through the middle of it as this is agricultural land and there are no other significant ancient structures close to the druid stone that begs the question of who went to all the trouble of creating the passageway and why the name of the stone comes from the fact that some people believe it's an ancient druidical altar although there's little in the way of substantial evidence to back that idea up what might be more significant is the fact that the passage loosely aligns with the position of the sun during sunrise on may day which is connected to the gaelic festival of beltane legend has it that if sick people walk through the passageway they can be cured of any illness it's likely that this is a pagan monument of some sort but it's just as likely this will never be proven israeli scholars were very excited in 2011 when they verified the authenticity of a stolen burial box in jerusalem the ossuary was discovered and taken by tomb raiders during the 1990s but was recovered years later then spent a further three years being studied by historians and scientists who've been able to reach two solid conclusions first the box is around two thousand years old second the box bears an inscription that proclaims it to be from the possession of miriam the daughter of yeshua who was the son of cephas the priest of messiah that's significant because a priest with that name high priest joseph barcephus plays a prominent role in the biblical story of the crucifixion of jesus christ there will always be doubters and of course it's possible that there was more than one priest called saphis but to believers this is evidence that the stories told in the new testament are true the box certainly comes from the right era and the inscription is also 2 000 years old which eliminates the chance that it was added at a later date to fool historians in 1361 an army of danes boarded their boats and set sail for visby on the swedish isle of gotlin bisbee's inhabitants knew they were coming they'd already armed and prepared themselves there were around two thousand on each side although the danish army with its trained soldiers and german mercenaries ought to have overpowered the ragtag band of visby villagers easily that turned out not to be the case the brutal conflict that followed is known to history as the battle of visby and the scars of that battle are still visible all over the land almost 700 years later chainmail armor spears knives and other weaponry were left scattered across the battlefield along with gauntlets coifs and other items of battleware it wasn't until 1905 that the remains of the battlefield were discovered which led to a brief archaeological free-for-all before the gotland museum took ownership of the relics and placed them on permanent public display the incredibly well preserved artifacts attract thousands of visitors each year and might be considered the best preserved collection of medieval weaponry in the world for the record the danish invaders eventually won the battle in 1962 a british teacher named gordon taylor noticed a piece of bone in a field on irby on humber england the amateur archaeologist knew that where there's bone there might be treasure so he spent the next 17 years digging up as much of the field as he could to find out what else could be hidden down there by the time he concluded he'd recovered as much from the ground as he ever would he found over 250 items including spearheads scissors jewelry and a 1 000 year old human skull the skull is something of an enigma as the rest of gordon's discoveries come from around the year 450 although the jewelry makes for the most eye-catching part of the collection historians are more interested in the pendants which are marked with runic characters that come from the early tectonic alphabet and may be able to teach us more about the history of riding on the british isles gordon peacefully passed away at the age of 88 in 2017 and his family took the decision to sell his collection in may 2020 when it went to auction it fetched 50 000 [Music] while we're on the topic of ancient jewelry here's a vast collection that was discovered at the side of the temple of jupiter dalicanus in the ancient city of delicie in turkey jupiter delecinus was a weather god to the roman empire citizens so it's likely the impressive collection of more than 600 amulets and seals were left as tributes to the deity in hopes that they would bring favorable conditions for crops and harvests the artifacts range from 2700 years old to 2400 years old the majority of them are made from glass although there are also examples made from quartz or even stone which probably tells a story about the wealth and means of the people who left them there small holes drilled into some of the seals suggest that they were once worn around the neck on pieces of string with many bearing inscriptions that might relate to the wearer's identity in other cases scenes of animals or people are depicted on the amulets although whether these depictions were intended to be anything more than decorative is anybody's guess one of the most common forms of graffiti you see anywhere in the world are depictions of the phallus these days we find them offensive but representations of the phallus are actually one of the world's oldest art forms as an example here's a set of six phallus shaped tools carved from volcanic black glass which were discovered accidentally by workers using bulldozers at a site in papua new guinea dr robin torrence of the australian museum was the first specialist who got the chance to look at them more closely and he believes they're around 6 000 years old he also believes that their purpose was almost certainly more ceremonial than practical these tools are so thin that they'd shatter if they were used to hit or carve anything he doesn't know for sure but he thinks that they were most likely made by melanesian people one of the most ancient civilizations of the pacific region based on the shape it wouldn't be a stretch to assume the ceremonies they were used in related to fertility [Music] at the site of talcaraza in syria there's an artificial mound made up of layer after layer of human beings using the land for a variety of different purposes for thousands of years excavation work there has been ongoing since 2007 and in 2014 it turned up a remarkable discovery it's an ancient wand or staff with human faces depicted on both sides of it as it's made from an arc bone it's been possible for experts to date the artifact and they've concluded that it's 9 000 years old these days we associate wands with magic and perhaps that's not too far off the mark when it comes to what this staff was designed for the object was found close to an ancient graveyard so it's possible perhaps even likely that the staff was used as a part of a long-forgotten funeral ceremony so far these are thought to be the only examples of naturalistic depictions of human faces that come from this era in this part of the world based on the discovery of traces of barley chickpeas and herds of goats at the same site the people who made the staff might have been the world's first farmers we've all heard of the ancient aztecs of south america but far fewer of us have heard of the perapeca a warrior race who were enemies of the aztecs and managed to resist them for centuries holding and controlling the state of mikahoken for 400 years from the 12th century to the 16th despite their relative success very little is known about them even their language doesn't correspond to any other known mesoamerican language that's why discoveries like these copper and bronze rattles in 2014 by a team from colorado state university are so important because they were found in tombs alongside ceramic vessels they're thought to be grave goods amazingly the rattles still work after so many years buried underground cutting edge laser scanning technology also has revealed the remains of over 20 000 architectural features at the site including a central platform surrounded by five pyramid-shaped temples this might even have been the herd of the pura pekka civilization if everybody had rattles like these must have been a noisy place to live [Music] even though tablet computers are a relatively recent invention we take them for granted today our mobile phones are effectively tablet computers and you might even be using a tablet to watch this video right now the origin of the idea is far from recent though you could even say that these ancient wooden notebooks relics of the byzantine empire were found in tenecopie turkey in 2014 were the equivalent of ipads 1200 years ago this well-preserved example was found inside a shipwreck at theodosis port and was probably a personal possession of the ship's captain the box opens up to reveal a tablet for making notes using wax and another layer that had space for weights to be inserted and used as an assay balance thereby providing the captain with a means for weighing gold or other precious objects to put it another way the captain could use this tablet to create notes and also perform calculations doesn't that sound like the basic function of a computer to you if you had any gold to weigh you could still use this remarkable ancient gadget to perform the task today [Music] ayahuasca has recently become a popular hallucinogenic in several parts of the world despite the fact that it's generally illegal this isn't a new habit though it's a revival of a very old one in fact human usage of ayahuasca goes back at least one thousand years which is the age of this leather bundle that was found buried in a cave deep within the bolivian andes in 2019 the pouch made of three fox snouts crudely sewn together contains harmine and dimethyltryptamine both of which are key compounds in the creation of ayuhuaska anyone who ingested this mixture would have been experiencing visions and strange sensations for quite some time there are even traces of cocaine in the mix so that's nothing new either the owner of the pouch was probably a member of the tiwanaku civilization and appears to have chosen a remote cave 13 thousand feet above sea level to go about their ayuhu oscar use getting the mixture wrong could easily prove to be fatal so a shaman likely prepared this it all points to humans using plants to go on psychedelic trips for more than a millennium were the barabar caves of india designed and built as the world's first concert hall we might never know the answer to that question but they have incredible acoustic properties and it's doubtful that those properties would have been arrived upon by accident the caves were carved out and polished by human hands around 2300 years ago and the polishing seems to have been a deliberate attempt to amplify the echo effect once they were complete the caves appeared to have remained in regular use for several centuries as evidenced by the multitude of early hindu and buddhist inscriptions on the walls of all the caves in the complex the lomas rishi cave is thought to be the most significant because it contains the oldest known chiatra arch in all of india the design was a staple of indian rock architecture for several centuries but it appears to have started here the echo effect inside the caves was probably intended to amplify the sound of chants hymns and prayers in the same way many cathedral buildings do today but it would be nice to imagine ancient rock bands here doing their thing as well 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

Views: 357,413

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

Id: VQX_M7AM0xo

Length: 14min 46sec (886 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 08 2020