12 Most Incredible Recent Artifacts Finds

archaeology might be the study of ancient human history but the discoveries made by archaeologists happen in the here and now every time they're made they tell us something new about our ancestors and the way they lived their lives there's always something new and exciting to talk about in the field of archaeology and that means we are always able to bring you fantastic videos full of amazing archaeological discoveries like this one you might occasionally use an oil lamp or two to light up your home today and if you do you're taking part in a practice that can be traced back for centuries it might even go back further than you realize archaeologists discovered an ancient oil lamp workshop close to bite native in israel in january 2021 and the oil lamps they found there look very similar to the type you use today despite the fact that they were made more than 1700 years ago there were hundreds of lamps waiting to be found at the site along with molds for making stone lamps and a collection of terracotta figures it's likely that the artifacts are of pagan design it's known that pagans settled in the area after the bar kokba revolt which saw the romans take over the administration of the area and the majority of the disgruntled jewish population moved out a few of the lamps have small discrete symbols like the menorah and the shofar though so it might be that pagans and members of the jewish faith lived side by side in bait native for a time possibly trading with each other in the process one or two of the lamps also feature the fish motif often associated with christianity so whoever owned the workshop was either hedging their bets in terms of religion or making lamps for people of all faiths [Music] a british bird watcher had a very happy christmas in december 2020 after accidentally finding the country's largest ever celtic gold coin horde while out watching buzzards the field he was watching the birds in had recently been plowed and he caught a glimpse of something gold in the mud while looking through his binoculars after moving in closer for a better look he picked the golden object out of the ground and thanks to his interest in archaeology immediately knew he'd found a 2 000 year old coin after returning home to get his metal detector he eventually unearthed 1 300 gold and silver coins with a combined value of more than 1 million dollars the colossal coin hoard is of such significant size and value that some historians have speculated it may have been queen boudicca's secret war chest to be used to finance her ongoing campaign against the occupying forces of the roman empire during the 1st century that's possible but it becomes less likely when you consider the fact that most of the coins were found inside roman urns she would have been unlikely to keep her money in objects made by her sworn enemies while most archaeological discoveries are made by archaeologists they do sometimes come from elsewhere the public occasionally makes them by accident and every now and then the police will make a few too we have the police to thank for the recovery of this gargantuan collection of stolen archaeological treasures in january 2021 the collection which includes sarcophagi from ancient egypt gold coins and dozens of bronze sculptures was retrieved by israeli police during a series of raids in the country after a months-long investigation while many of the recovered artifacts are israeli some come from across africa and the middle east and a few are from as far away as south america there are coins from the seleucid empire which ruled the region 2 300 years ago distinctive red and black pottery from italy roman era israeli oil lamps and green glass vessels of uncertain origin many of the recovered goods were described by police as being of museum quality and are thought to have found their way onto the black market thanks to the action of unscrupulous dealers israel is one of few countries that allows almost any dealer to obtain a license to sell antiquities so it's relatively easy for criminals to launder stolen goods through such dealers perhaps it would be wise to re-evaluate that law at the very end of 2020 archaeologists in egypt were getting very excited about the discovery of a painted stone chest inside a temple devoted to hatshepsut the stone chest which might have been missed by archaeologists in the past because its green surface acted as a form of camouflage is approximately 3500 years old inside experts found the remains of a sacrificed goose along with a few items delicately wrapped in linen cloth including an ibis egg and some small statues more exciting than that though is the fact that the name of pharaoh tutmos ii is written in hieroglyphs on the box's interior egyptologists believe this might mean that the tomb of the long-lost pharaoh is somewhere nearby tutmose was the husband of hachepsit so it would make sense for him to be buried somewhere near his queen's temple he was a mere 13 years old when he ascended to power and passed away only three years later so his reign wasn't a notable one but it's possible that his tomb might be unspoiled in the same way his fellow boy king tutankhamun's was when it was found in the 1920s our next artifact has had something of an undignified recent history considering its providence for the majority of the past decade it's been used as a horse mounting block but it's recently been identified as a 2 000 year old marvel roman relic despite the elaborate decorative pattern on the stone the owner of the english countryside home in wiltshire it was found in didn't think anything of it until a friend suggested letting an archaeologist have a look at it she was stunned to be told that not only was it an ancient artifact but that it had traveled a long way to help her mount her horse the stone was carved in either greece or asia minor as well as having two laurels etched into the stone the slab has an inscription that reads the people and young men honor demetrios son of metrodoros son of lucius its meaning is unknown the property on which it was found was built during the 1960s and it's thought that the slab might have been there the whole time where it came from before then is a total mystery for obvious reasons the second world war was a dangerous time to try to move anything across the seas people still had to attempt to do so though and so there are a lot of shipwrecks at the bottom of europe's oceans with a lot of valuable cargo on board the hunt for those shipwrecks is a lifetime's work for a lot of people and the most recent major discovery was made in late 2020 the british press has described this find as churchill's sunken treasure it's a treasure hall of silver worth more than 200 million dollars the ship that carried it the ss garcopa was sunk by a german u-boat close to galway ireland in february 1941. the wreck of the garcopa was found in 2011 but its cargo had spilled out across the ocean floor and so it took several more years to track down the silver odyssey marine the company responsible for the discovery says that it's a world record in terms of the depth that the silver has been identified and recovered from as there were more than seven thousand tons of silver on board though it's unlikely that this discovery represents the whole hall there could be more out there [Music] a group of farmers on mexico's gulf coast decided to start 2021 by digging out their citrus grove in the act of doing so they came across a six foot tall statue of a woman that might be an ancient depiction of a god experts from the country's national institute of anthropology and history were sent to the location and say that it's the only statue of its type that's ever been found in the huasteca area the statue is six feet tall and is mostly undamaged from its years spent underground the details on its surface are clear enough to see that she wears a headpiece and has numerous accessories that denote her as someone of status but they're not sure whether she's supposed to be a god or a powerful leader she was probably carved at some point during the 15th century and while the discovery was made close to el tajin a spanish ruin there are some suggestions that the statue might be aztec women in this part of the world were much better respected in the time directly before the spanish conquest than they were immediately afterward so the idea of a female aztec leader isn't out of the question [Music] how much can you tell about a civilization from just one tomb well if the tomb in question is this 1400 chinese si dynasty tomb the answer to that question might be quite a lot the tomb was found in anyang in china's henan province in april 2020 but it lain undisturbed since it was created during the days of the sioux dynasty which began in the year 581 the most striking discovery within the tombs walls is a white marble coffin bed marked with symbols that refer to both buddhism and zoroastrianism zoroastrianism was popular in the persia of the time but persia wasn't thought to have become a significant influence on chinese culture until at least another century after this tomb was made fortunately for historians the tomb was so well preserved that its full epigraph is still legible thanks to that we know the tomb was made for a married couple mr and mrs quixing the style of calligraphy used in the epigraph is unusual and might have been specific to this century or perhaps even this decade the combination of the written history of the tomb's occupants and the rich variety of grave goods will help inform studies into the sioux dynasty era for some time [Music] here's a very big question that's never been answered properly who invented the alphabet as of january 2021 experts have a new and promising theory they think it was invented by illiterate canaanite miners who'd become bored of trying to learn egyptian hieroglyphs 4 000 years ago according to the research of israeli egyptologist orly goldwasser and her team there's evidence that shows the hieroglyph for ox which was pronounced alef became the letter a this is borne out by the similarity between the shape of the letter and the shape of the original hieroglyph she says b came from bet which was the pronunciation of the egyptian hieroglyph for house examples of a rudimentary form of the current alphabet can be found on a temple in sinai and goldwasser believes they should be considered prototypes of the letters we use today the letters form the cyanidic script which would go on to influence the phoenician script which eventually influenced latin and greek if it's true it means that the alphabet wasn't started by aristocrats or academics but by ordinary people who thought there was a better means of written communication than drawing elaborate symbols when a workshop warehouse or factory closes down today there's every chance that unfinished goods will be left behind after the gates are locked for the last time that's apparently always been the case even if the production facility we're talking about is thousands of years old archaeologists recently discovered the remains of an ancient workshop at gabol el silcia in egypt and within it the remains of a collection of unfinished carvings including what appears to be a sphinx with the head of a ram carved from sandstone to the best of their knowledge the workshop was opened three thousand years ago during the reign of amenhotep iii grandfather to tutankhamun when archaeologists started digging only the head of the sphinx was visible by the time they'd done they'd uncovered a statue 15 feet long and nine feet tall an unfinished sculpture of a coiled cobra was discovered nearby and might once have been intended to function as the sphinx's crown the workshop was almost certainly buried under soil because of roman activity in the area but the reason why it was abandoned when there was clearly so much work going on will probably never be known [Music] the cultural importance of tenei in greece has been known about for centuries goods from tenay have been illegally smuggled out of the country for decades and wound up on the walls of some of the world's most famous galleries the koros of 10a is the most famous example which is currently in a museum in germany but was never formally allowed to leave greece you'll also find stolen tanian goods and a few american museums the location of the city itself though remained a mystery and had almost started to be thought of as a myth when archaeologist elena corka finally found it in the southern peloponnese area of the country in november 2018. corka and her team have identified a housing settlement burial sites coins and jewelry that all indicate a large population was based in the area around 1700 years ago based on these beautiful coins and the stylish design of the hellenistic graves it was an extremely affluent area that supports the idea of it being tenia and so the long search of hundreds of archaeologists over countless generations might finally be at an end more recently than that a stunning temple dedicated to the goddess aphrodite was discovered in turkey in january twenty twenty one the two thousand five hundred year old structure was made easier to locate thanks to a helpful inscription found at the site which reads this is the sacred area belief in and worship of aphrodite the goddess of love and beauty was so prevalent in the region at the time that some historians say it had almost become a cult if that's true then this was where the cult came to go about their business there isn't much left of the temple today saved for the inscription and the broken remains of a statue of a woman found alongside a battered terracotta bust of a female head but there's enough left for experts to be sure of what they're looking at the nearby city of aphrodisias was named in honor of the goddess but this temple was found under the orla semci peninsula that suggests that the city limits of aphrodisias extended much further than archaeologists once assumed or that the worship of aphrodite was observed beyond those city limits the reasons for the temple's destruction are unknown but it didn't get this badly damaged by accident 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

Views: 161,130

Rating: 4.8574572 out of 5

Keywords: 12 Most Incredible Recent Artifacts Finds, artifact, ancient finds, ancient artifacts, recent finds, archaeology artifacts, most incredible, mysterious finds, mystery, 12 most, top 12, most amazing

Id: iWoB-1jpJyI

Length: 16min 14sec (974 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 02 2021