12 Most Mysterious Ancient Artifacts Finds Scientists Still Can't Explain

you might have heard the old expression that seeing is believing that might be true but seeing and believing isn't the same as understanding historians archaeologists and even members of the public have come across countless artifacts in their travels that have turned out to be hiding surprising secrets and here's a collection of the very best of them let's start off in north carolina usa with a good look at this unusual stone artifact it was discovered close to monroe in 1973 by a landowner and has been studied several times since then but in truth we're still not totally sure what it is it was initially thought to have been an arrowhead similar to many that have been discovered in the surrounding area but it's too heavy for that it also comes from far too early a point in time according to the most recent study that was performed on the artifact back in 2019 it's at least three thousand years old and might even be as old as five thousand years that same 2019 study concluded that the object is most likely to be in ads a tool that was used for trimming and smoothing wood during the late archaic period it could have been used to make weapons or it might have been used to make bowls tools or household objects a multi-purpose tool like this could even have been used to make a whole canoe what's stopping experts from stating its age or purpose with certainty is the isolated nature in which it was found why was it on its own why is nothing like this been found anywhere near it it's a mystery in 2013 a farmer in scotland broke his plow on an enormous stone in his field while he was irritated at first he calmed down a little when he inspected the stone more closely and realized it was covered in mysterious symbols and carvings this priceless object is now known as the dandelite stone named after the farm upon which it was found some archaeologists believe that it's a relic of the mysterious pictish culture but not everybody is convinced some of the symbols etched onto its surface the eagle for example appear regularly in pictish symbology but the alignment of the symbols on the rock isn't typically pictish that raises the possibility that the artifact is a hoax but even if it is a hoax it's an ancient one experts believe that it dates back to the 8th or 9th century the pick survived in scotland until the 9th century so the stone might be authentic but it will probably be impossible to ever know for sure so little is known about this elusive culture that even the name we use to describe them comes from the romans we have no idea what they called themselves [Music] leaving your money somewhere that people can see it is like advertising it to thieves so we tend to keep our cash somewhere secret that's not a new type of human behavior it's been going on for centuries back in 2016 this unusual chinese wooden sculpture was being prepared for sale by an auction house as experts carefully examined the bust they discovered an ancient chinese banknote stashed away inside it apparently for safe keeping to their amazement they realized that this paper note dates all the way back to the time of the ming dynasty it was printed in the year 1371 it appears that counterfeiting and fraud were serious offenses even back then because the note comes with a printed warning that anyone caught making fake baked notes will be executed the sculpture itself is lohan a religious figure connected to buddhism and wouldn't normally be thought of as somewhere to keep money the note is worth the equivalent of 1 000 copper coins and is a reminder of how far ahead of its time the chinese economy was back then paper bank notes didn't start to appear in europe until the 17th century speaking of the ancient chinese why is it that they were so obsessed with the making of jade kongs archaeologists have found many examples of artifacts over the years but they've never truly understood why the most impressive examples of the practice of making jade kongs comes from the zhaejiang province where they're thought to have been made by the liangshu culture during neolithic times in basic terms a kong is a square-shaped tube punctured with a circular hole they can be long or short but they always are elaborately decorated more often than not a kong will have four faces painted in the corners around each hole perhaps intended to represent spirits or guardians watching over it almost every kong that's ever been found has been discovered inside a tomb taking all of that together it strongly suggests that the artifacts have a spiritual or religious meaning of some kind what that meaning might have been though is a mystery while they were once ubiquitous it seems that the production of jade kong stopped almost overnight around two thousand years ago they appear to have fallen out of fashion extremely abruptly which is every bit as big a mystery as their purpose [Music] when you've got something very valuable and you want to protect it from thieves you might consider putting it inside a safe safes have been around for almost as long as money and jewels have but they haven't always looked the same here's what a safe looked like in the time of ancient rome it's an elaborately decorated storage vessel and it was found in the roman villa of casa del matreo in western spain in april 1994. as you can probably tell from these pictures the safe which the romans would have referred to as an arca ferrata is made from wood that doesn't make it particularly robust in order to put people off the idea of breaking into them archiferatas were booby trapped with iron spikes this is one of only four that are known to have survived to the present day the once grand villa it was found inside burned down centuries ago so the safe has been preserved by layers of ash even with that protection it was in such a delicate condition when it was discovered that it couldn't be fully excavated and recovered until 2017. [Music] more than 200 years ago a badly damaged stonehead was found in a flowerbed in chichester england try as they might no expert was able to identify it it wasn't until the invention of laser scanning technology that archaeologists were finally able to get some answers and by 2013 they felt confident enough to give the head a name at long last according to them this is a bust of the roman emperor trajan who reigned between the last first and early second centuries prior to that identification it had simply been known as the bosham head on account of where it was found at more than double life size experts think it might have once been a part of what would have been the largest roman statue in britain rather than being sculpted during trajan's reign it was probably made by the order of his successor hadrian the severe state of the weathering on the face of the head suggests that it might have spent at least a few of the past 18 centuries in the sea before somehow arriving in a flower bed in the year 1800 [Music] it's not often you head out on an archaeological dig and find a whole previously undiscovered place but it happened in jerusalem in 2020 a team of researchers working around two miles south of jerusalem's famous old city came across a collection of large elaborately carved stone artifacts and tell-tale relics that indicate the ruined building was once a place of extreme prestige rather than being allowed to crumble and fall to pieces though the layout of the remnants and rubble suggests that it was buried in an organized fashion it's possible that the palace was destroyed by a natural disaster of some kind and then carefully buried out of respect based on the style and design of the pieces that have been recovered from the site so far archaeologists believe it to be around 2700 years old the most impressive individual artifacts recovered so far are the stone capitals which would once have sat at the top of mighty columns an alternative to the natural disaster theory is a suggestion that the palace might have been destroyed during the babylonian conquest of jerusalem in the year 586 bce although if that were the case we'd expect to have at least some idea of who might have lived here as it stands we have none at all back in early 2014 archaeologists in turkey were excavating the remains of an ancient shipyard in istanbul they identified the remains of almost 40 ships by the time they were done and inside one of those ships they found this strange tablet-like wooden device because of its distinctive appearance the archaeologists responsible for the discovery named it the byzantine ipad the resemblance between this artifact and apple's famous piece of technology is nothing more than aesthetic but it's impossible to deny that it's a sophisticated device it's made of five different rectangular panels all of which have a wax coating that helps them to slide in and out of each other most of the contents of the tablets are missing but experts did find a collection of small weights that were probably used as an assay balance to assess the value of gold and silver impressions of greek characters have been found in the wood too which implies that it might have been used to take notes it probably belonged to the ship's captain who might have even invented it himself [Music] the romans settled in the british isles for a very long time and left behind a wide variety of structures and artifacts most of them have since been logged studied and understood but not all of them we still have a lot of questions about the so-called wolf god of wood eaton the tiny sculpture is now in the british museum but even the museum's best experts don't truly understand it their best guess is that it represents a pagan deity of some kind you might not be able to make out the shape of the object dangling from the beast's jaw from these images but it's a pair of human legs the rest of the human is being eaten by the wolf god carbon dating of the object has given it an age of around 1900 years historians know that wolves were symbolically important to the romans representing the might of their empire and also reminding them of the mythical founders of their civilization romulus and remus who are said to have been raised by a female wolf known as lupa romana however the celtic britons also worshipped a deity known as cudamoglas the wolf lord who was associated with the underworld that makes it possible that this artifact could be a product of either culture and we'll probably never know which archaeologists who spend a lot of time in jerusalem are often looking for evidence of stories told in the bible occasionally they find precisely what they're looking for this tiny seal impression was found in jerusalem in 2018 and is stamped with the hebrew name isaiah the artifact is roughly 2700 years old those who believe in the authenticity of the bible are claiming this as evidence of the prophet isaiah who's named in the religious text and is said to have lived during this time the hebrew bible tells us that it was isaiah who told king hezekiah of judah to resist the assyrian attack on jerusalem in the year 701 bce and refused to surrender under any circumstances the seal of king hezekiah was found only 10 feet away from where this clay seal was discovered at temple mount as compelling as this evidence might seem we shouldn't forget that isaiah would have been a common name 2700 years ago and there were probably several government officials of the same name who might have used seals like this it's certainly a fascinating artifact but it's by no means conclusive [Music] the true history of when each ancient civilization first had contact with another will probably never be known but we regularly find clues that the official version of history is probably wrong take these ancient chinese coins for instance they were found at two separate sites in england in 2020 and might point to a previously unknown connection between northern song dynasty china and medieval britain historians prefer to believe that the coins have been lost from professionally collected and curated collections but that seems unlikely we can believe that one priceless coin like this might get lost and turn up in a field but the same thing happening twice is pushing the boundaries of plausibility so many northern song dynasty coins were minted that they remained in circulation in their home country from the 10th century to the 14th so while it's probably unrealistic to believe that contact between the two countries existed toward the start of that period it seems plausible that a degree of cultural interaction was happening by the middle or end of it it would take more than a pair of coins to prove that a relationship existed but they're a good start [Music] we started this video with a strange find in a field and now we're going full circle to come back with another one this bizarre stone slab found in a spanish farmer's field in 2002 has become known as the stella of montouro the symbols etched into its surface are well preserved and clearly visible but they don't translate into any known iberian script if we take the authenticity of the stella at face value that might make these puzzling characters the oldest monumental script in the region language experts have detected an iron age influence on the style of the characters and believe there are elements of ancient greek south arabian and canaanite characters in their design all of these cultures had a presence on the iberian peninsula during the iron age the carvings are thought to have been made around 2400 years ago experts think that some of the symbols were added several years perhaps even decades after the original set which might make them a form of graffiti it could be an example of illiterate people trying to replicate symbols they'd seen but didn't understand or it could be the sole relic of a culture that's been lost to time [Music] 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Channel: Inforado

Views: 149,321

Keywords: 12 Most Mysterious Ancient Artifacts Finds Scientists Still Can't Explain, ancient artifacts, mysterious artifacts, most mysterious, ancient finds, archaeological mystery, scientists still cant explain, ancient mystery, mystery, 12 most, top 12, most amazing

Id: EFKts3vt5iU

Length: 15min 46sec (946 seconds)

Published: Tue May 04 2021