12 Most Mysterious Archaeological Discoveries

archeologists work tirelessly around the clock all year round digging into the earth to find out everything they can about the people and places who came before us not every discovery they come across gives us all the information we need though sometimes a strange archaeological find comes with more questions than answers in this video we're going to do some digging of our own and find out all about some truly mysterious archaeological discoveries from what we're taught at school most of us believe that the first European to arrive on the North American continent was Christopher Columbus it turns out our teachers could do with some more schooling because that belief is incorrect out on the northernmost reaches of Canada's Newfoundland is a Viking village that was constructed at least 500 years before Columbus even boarded his boat and made the journey overseas Lonzo Meadows may not be much to look at just a few basic wooden buildings covered in sod but what it represents historically couldn't be any more important historians believe that this is the place that the Vikings called Vinland which was recorded as one of their most distant outposts it probably acted as a stopping point for ships on long voyages allowing them to replenish their supplies before heading back to sea the people who lived here didn't stay for long our best guess is around 15 years so they may have retreated after coming into contact with a native people who lived here in pre B oh Times whoever left carvings in the wood and stone of Easter Island during the 17th century was trying to tell us something we wish there were still someone alive who spoke the language so they could tell us what the message means this ornate intricate and beautiful written language is known as rongorongo and was first noticed on the Pacific island by the Explorer Eugene arrowed during his 1864 visit various language experts have tried to translate the glyphs found edged onto the wooden objects but nobody has been successful the items containing rongorongo carvings have been dated and found to range from the 1600s to as late as 1860 but after that the language fell out of use and the knowledge of how to read it disappeared these days everybody on Easter Island speaks Spanish it's a shame we can't translate it but imagine how disappointed we'd be if someone managed to do it and it turned out to be a collection of shopping lists we've known about the plain of jars and Laos for quite some time they're scattered all over Jang Wooyoung plain in the highlands of the country molded from rock and can be anywhere between three feet and ten feet high with each jar weighing more than ten tons they are something like 2,000 years old and their purpose remains unclear but a recent discovery may shed a little more light on them an Australian team of archaeologists working in the country in May 2019 has located an additional 137 of the jars spread across 15 more sites and some of these appear to be closer to 2,500 years old than 2000 Louise Xuan who worked with the team has said she believes the jars were used in funeral rituals human bodies were stored in the jars and left to decompose and then the bones would later be extracted and buried stone carvings and personal belongings including jewelry and beads found near these newly found jars seemed to support her theory do you feel differently about the plain of jars now you know it might be a huge mortuary [Music] there's a little site in eastern Turkey which isn't much to look at now but for centuries seems to have been one of the most important settlements in the whole region and its name is norson Teppei German archaeologist Harold Hauptmann was the first person to notice something unusual on the crown of a hill in the area and said about excavating it in 1968 he only had a few short years to do his work dam construction in the area meant it would be under water by 1974 what he found there was curious there was antimony buried in the soil along with evidence of furnaces for smelting copper or clay fragments and many strange metal artifacts could this once have been the ancient equivalent of a steel works the deeper he dug the more history he found more than 40 layers of traceable history exist at norson Teppei dating from 6,000 years ago through to the iron age given the obvious wealth and importance the site once had it seems odd that it was spontaneously abandoned there's some evidence in the soil of a huge fire but why did nobody come back after it had gone out Winchester Cathedral in England isn't exactly a new building it's been there since the Year 1093 so you'd have thought the British would have had time to have a detailed look through everything that's in it by now apparently that's not the case because in may twenty nineteen they discovered the bones of a long-forgotten 11th century English queen hiding away inside a chest inside the Cathedral Queen Emma lived from nine hundred and eighty five to ten fifty two giving birth to Edward the Confessor during her time as the queen consort and was buried next to King Canute when she died at the site of the old minister sadly the old minister was destroyed during the norman invasion that followed in 1093 all the human remains buried there were placed in two chests and taken to Winchester Cathedral but the chests were broken open during the English Civil War and the bones were mixed up and then forgot about that was an undignified way for a woman who was one of the richest and most powerful in all of Europe during the 11th century to spend the next thousand years fortunately a team from the University of Bristol have been working on identifying the mystery bones since 2012 and we are now finally able to lay the Queen to rest our ancestors may not have been able to create magnets 2,000 years ago but it would seem they certainly at least understood how magnetism worked that's the finding of researchers working in Guatemala have decided after spending time studying sculptures of human bodies which come with magnetized foreheads magnetized cheeks and even magnetized navels the pre Guatemalan civilization of the time may not have understood what a magnetic force was but they consider the chunks of rock important enough to consistently use them in prominent places within the sculptures The Rock's probably became magnetic due to being struck by lightning during storms as local people noticed the strange effect of the rock they treated it with reverence and carved around it to make the ornate figures which are sometimes referred to as pot-bellied statues because they're carved directly into the rock the Potbelly's can sometimes be over six feet tall they were designed to represent a deceased members of powerful families and so it's thought that the ability of the sculptures to repel other magnetized objects was intended as a symbol of the deceased person's power continuing to endure after death many of you will be familiar with the story of Atlantis the great city that disappeared below the seas but Wales in the United Kingdom might have an Atlantis of its very own storms and high winds off the coast of Wales have unearthed an ancient sunken forest and locals say it proves that old local legends are true with the tide temporarily moved out to sea we can see the remnants of a rich variety of trees including altar birch pine and oak which have been preserved by peat for around five thousand years as well as the tree stumps there's also an old wooden walkway which demonstrates that before there was water here there were people this might therefore be part of the mythical lost kingdom of contra earth way laud a thriving region which extended sixteen miles into what's now the sea off the Welsh coast legends say that it was fertile farmland rich in flora and fauna and important enough to have its own king is this just a long drowned forest or lost kingdom who can say when archeologists discovered the ruins of an ancient theatre in Greece they probably thought that was as good as their day was going to get imagine how delighted they were when they dug a little further and found that the theater contained an even more ancient Greek temple dedicated to the worship of the goddess nemesis the temple was partially hidden by large limestone blocks towards the southern end of the theater shielding it from view experts believe that the theater was built in two stages 200 years apart the temple was likely built in the 1st century AD whereas the theater wasn't completed until the 3rd century by that time the Roman era had given way to the Hellenistic era the stone altar of the temple was a dead giveaway to its purpose as were the inscriptions which were still legible in the stone as there was a gladiatorial combat arena within the huge theater during Roman times it would make sense for successful warriors to visit the temple afterward to give thanks and receive blessings nemesis was a goddess who would punish those who were arrogant or overconfident and so paying respects to her would keep warriors humble here's a little archaeological research you can help out with if you have the skills all you need to do is translate what's on this rock and the French village that hosts it will pay you 2,000 euros there are a whole twenty lines of writing on the rock which is on a remote beach not far from Brittany the inscription is around a three feet high and can only be accessed when the tide is out it seems like whatever was written here over two hundred years ago was deliberately encoded there are some French letters but they often appear upside down or back to front there are also some characters which belong to Scandinavian alphabets whoever wrote the text includes the years of 1786 and 1787 and also etched a sailing boat into the rock along with a heart many academics have failed to translated and some people think the author may have been barely literate if you'd like to try you have until November to contact the mayor's office in the town of Blue Goose tell doulos who will send you detailed pictures and ask you to take your best shot the iron pillar of Delhi isn't a new archeological discovery and if you don't know what you're looking for when you see it it doesn't seem all that impressive it's just a 22 foot high iron pillar in the middle of an ordinary city square only when you factor in the fact that it's over 1500 years old does the mystery become apparent why hasn't it rusted away also known as the Ashoka pillar this is considered to be an out of place artifact an object that doesn't seem to belong to the time and place in which it was crafted the iron column is 98% pure and tells us a lot about the skill of the iron Smith's in India 1,500 years ago we'd be happy to get this level of quality from steel workers in the here-and-now it was likely made in a furnace heated by coal which would have generated a temperature sufficient for welding to take place back then that would have been even more dangerous a job than it is now the fact it has entrusted much is more by accident than design a lack of lime in the furnace seems to have combined with raw slag unreduced iron and exposure to moisture during cooling to form a thin protective layer of Mesa white on the pillars exterior depending on who you believe puma punku in Bolivia is either all that remains of a series of ancient temples or a collection of intricately carved stone monuments dating back 1600 years they're thought to be the work of the Tiwanaku people who once lived in the area around puma punku in numbers of up to 400,000 before spontaneously and inexplicably disappearing somewhere around the Year 1000 there are those who believe they were still in the process of building puma punku when they vanished and that's why we can't make any sense of it what we can say is that they were far more skilled with stone work than any other civilization around at that time the intricately carved stones that make up the site are made of granite and diorite as far as we're aware the tools that the native people used at the time were made of copper they shouldn't even have been able to make a dent but they managed to cut corners with laser precision where did they go and what was puma punku strew purpose the idea of making artificial islands sounds like it should be a fairly new one but our ancestors thought of it over a thousand years ago we know that because of the existence of nan madol a series of ruins on an island in Micronesia which was once one of the world's great cities the construction of nan madol began somewhere around the eighth century but the megalithic structures we can still see the remains of now weren't added until 400 years later the most likely explanation for its construction is that the ruling elite of the saudeleur dynasty wanted an unconventional seat of power in the region and so had one specially built because they couldn't find one they liked on the land archaeologists have been able to identify specific areas within the ancient complex which were used for the preparation of food the building of small boats and even the storage of bodies at its peak around 1,000 people lived here although most of them were probably servants the stone used in the construction is all from the surrounding area although how it could have been carried out to sea is a secret lost a time UNESCO finally recognized it as a World Heritage Site in 2019 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: Most Mysterious Archaeological Discoveries, archaeological discoveries, mysterious finds, historical discoveries, most incredible discoveries, recent discoveries, discoveries that changed the world, accidental finds, amazing discoveries, mysterious discoveries, most incredible finds in the world, most amazing, top 12, 12 most

Id: w-btNRY89Z0

Length: 14min 38sec (878 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 28 2019