12 Most Mysterious Archaeological Finds Scientists Still Can't Explain

one of the hardest truths that archaeologists have to face is that they'll never know everything there is to know about their discoveries some of the things they come across during their work don't seem to fit with the established narrative of history and others have purposes that we can only guess at not knowing all the details only makes the discoveries more mysterious though and we all love a good mystery here are some fantastic and mysterious archaeological discoveries that baffle even the people that found them archeologists have been trying to find Mayan ruins and monuments in Mexico for a long time now so you might expect that all the biggest sites have already been discovered that isn't the case in June this year a team of experts confirmed that they'd uncovered the largest Mayan monument they'd ever found and it's not just the largest it also happens to be the oldest the monument is at a site known as agua de fennecs in Tabasco and stands 50 feet tall in almost 5,000 feet long the reason it hasn't been discovered before is that it's virtually impossible to identify without the use of light detection and ranging technology it's so long and flat that to the untrained eye it looks like part of the landscape because of the jungle that's grown on only with the advanced technology can we see that it was designed by human hands in a precise shape fortunately there are charcoal pits at the site which has allowed the experts to say with confidence that the monument is around 3000 years old now that we know it's there the next step is to find out what it was used for [Music] the existence of the vittala temple in India is in a secret found in hampi it's one of the most revered and ornate ancient temples in the whole country built somewhere between the 14th and 16th centuries it had be considered remarkable because of its incredible beauty even if there wasn't anything mysterious about it but there is this temple wasn't just designed to look good it was also designed to sound good inside the temple is a pavilion containing 56 pillars each of which makes a different sound when struck with an object the tour guides who work at the temple insist that every single pillar is tuned to one of these seven notes that make up the saw ray gama sanskrit musical scale the ancient system of notation is still used in hindu music today but was devised thousands of years ago these strange qualities of the pillars are probably due to the fact that they're composed of a geopolymer blend of metallic alloys silicon particles and granite officially speaking geopolymers weren't invented until the 1950s so they shouldn't be present in this temple at all the mystery remains unexplained if you ever see an authentic Chinese puzzle ball for sale today it'll be on the black market they're made from ivory and trading in ivory goods is quite rightly prohibited back in the 14th century though these astonishingly complex works of art were the Rubik's Cube of their era frustrating some scholars to the point that the Ming scholar causal described them as the devil's work the best-known and most ornate Chinese puzzle balls come from Guangzhou and were carved during the 19th century they feature between 20 and 25 layers of ivory but were somehow carved from just one single piece of the material the aim of the puzzle is to align all of the holes but as they're so fragile they're generally kept in glass cases as museum pieces today the real puzzle is how they were made though they appear to have been carved from the outside in so how could the artisans have created such detailed designs on the innermost spheres we'd struggle to do that today even if we use lasers and computers archeologists are used to finding animal shaped pots and vases inside ancient Chinese tombs but this Swan shaped pot came with a riddle that experts are yet to get to the bottom of the previously undisturbed pot contains a 2000 year old liquid and we currently have no idea what the fluid is the discovery arrived almost by accident it came when construction workers in San Mejia in the Henan Province came across a previously unknown grave and called in the experts to take a closer look along with the Swan pot they also found a bronze helmet an iron sword and a jade ceremonial sword so this was likely the final resting place of a soldier or warrior the pot though is somewhat incongruous with the rest of the discoveries it's the only bronze pot ever found in this part of China so that coupled with the fact that it contains an unidentified liquid has got archaeologists very excited the fluid of which there was around 3,000 milliliters has been described as yellowish brown containing impurities it could be anything from ancient wine to the fabled and long sought-after Chinese elixir of life when will Reed went fishing with his two sons in Coventry England in April 2020 all he wanted to find was fish instead he found a whole 60 strange cubes covered with mysterious symbols and inscriptions along with a single silver coin that's decidedly non British and design at first he thought the cubes were tiles but it didn't take long for him to realize they were the wrong shape and size for such a task and also far too ornate experts are still divided on what wills discovery might be and where it came from but the most popular working theory at the moment is that the symbols are an ancient form of Hindu and when taken together they make up a prayer ritual each symbol represents a different incantation for the prayer and then the prayer takes effect when the cubes are thrown into a running body of water followers of the religion then receive the protection of a deity known as Rahu who will shield them from lies secretive enemies and miss diagnosis of illnesses that's a strange and specific set of powers and protections but we suppose it's better to have them than not iron age burial sites are common in England and as a result so are Iron Age skeletons skeletons usually come without the organs that once existed inside them though so it was a shock to everyone when a human skull still containing its brain was found in the village of Heslington in 2008 its owner didn't meet with a happy ending based on analysis of the skull he was decapitated around 2600 years ago and his head was then thrown into a muddy bog the brain is usually one of the first organs to decompose so the fact that it was still present when the skin and even the hair had disappeared from the skull mystified the archaeologists who discovered it the zero oxygen environment of the bog would have helped with preservation to some extent but not to the point where the entire brain should have survived for so many years perhaps we'll never know what freakish quirk of chemistry allowed the skull to keep its brain but it's provided scientists with a rare and welcome opportunity to look into the minds of our ancestors literally while great cities like London Athens Milan and Paris would all probably like to think of themselves as Europe's first great city that honour probably goes to lepenski vir in Serbia human activity at the site dates back more than 12,000 years and one of the activities that people like to get up to there was carving strange humanoid faces each of the carvings has an individual face and most of them look terrifying some of them appear to resemble human fish hybrids the purpose is totally unknown and we can't even say with any certainty who made them the first of the haunting looking statuettes were unearthed in the 1960s but they're still turning up today and there may be more buried in the earth closer to the river Danube their downturn mouths have led some experts to theorize that they might be tributes to lost loved ones although it's equally likely that their appeasement offerings to river gods lepenski ver is an especially important archaeological site because it marks the end of humanity's hunter-gatherer phase and the beginning of structured agriculture but finds like these show us that our ancestors also had an artistic side [Music] Danish archaeologists have recently been investigating a collection of over 300 stone carvings that turned up on the island of Bornholm in 2017 the intricate spider web-like designs on some of the stones initially made the experts suspect that they were nothing more than artistic representations of the cobwebs that the ancient settlers on the island saw in real life but might they have had a more complex purpose the five thousand-year-old artifacts vary in design and style but they all have one similar feature the patterns on them start in the center and then move outward like the Rays of the Sun the idea of a connection between the Sun is strengthened by the fact that some of the stones appear to have been burned so they might have been offerings to the Sun God of whoever lived on Bornholm 5,000 years ago the only thing that goes against that idea is that the stones are ornate and complicated and they would have taken a long time to create for items that were going to be discarded as soon as they were finished it's clear from this that there's a lot we still don't understand about European Stone Age beliefs and customs a lot of what scientists know about the fountain of 99 sprouts and lay akia Italy is contained within its name it's a fountain and it has 99 spouts beyond that almost everything we know about this gorgeous medieval water feature is based on either myth or speculation each of the 99 spouts featured on the 13th century structure is built into a stone face but nobody knows who or what the faces represent or why the architects decided that 99 was the correct number to stop at local legend says that each of the spouts represents a castle from the surrounding region but in reality there were only 70 castles back then each face has different features so it's possible that some might be likenesses of influential people of the 13th century but there are also demonic figures pagan symbols and human-animal hybrids they must have meant something to somebody when the fountain was new but as we don't even know who built the fountain we don't know where to start looking for information without any substantial detail to rely on many people like to believe that they're somehow related to the Knights Templar but then again people always say that about ancient European monuments generations of residents in Upton Massachusetts USA have wondered what the purpose of the Upton Chamber is but the younger generation who lived there today are no closer to discerning the truth behind this artificial cave than their great-grandparents work you can almost miss the entrance to it if you don't know what you're looking for the tiny hole opens up in woodland but goes on for 14 feet and eventually opens out into what can best be described as a stone igloo nobody knows who built it and because it's made of stone it's tough to put a date on its construction the land is built on once belonged to a leather Tanner during the 18th century so it's possible that he might have created it as a tannery but that's an informed guess rather than a confident statement plenty of farmers lived on the land before the Tanner and they might have had their own reasons for building a cave was it the work of early European settlers or might it have even been created by Native Americans we'll probably never know moving from the United States of America to the United Kingdom we find the Rocky Valley labyrinths in Cornwall England the mazes are so intricate and challenging that they put any maze you'd find in a modern theme park to shame but there's nothing modern about these labyrinths they're around four thousand years old and their origin and purpose are unknown we sincerely doubt that anyone living 4,000 years ago carved them purely for entertainment purposes but we suppose we shouldn't rule that out as an option somehow the carvings avoided detection until they were spotted from the air in 1948 which prompted archaeologists to go and take a closer look at them it's thought that they date back to the Bronze Age but there's also the ruin of an old mill on the site so there's speculation that the mazes aren't all that old at all and a board mill worker created them that seems unlikely though they're of a unique design that doesn't appear anywhere else in the South of England and appear to be closer in style to ancient Celtic fertility symbols than anything a board worker might come up with we won't hold it against you if you've never heard of pascha gardens in Thessaloniki Greece even most of the local residents don't know it's there if they did they might come and take care of it a little better than it has been over the years these days it's half ruined but visitors to the park still report feeling a strange energy the moment they walk into it Pasha Gardens belongs to the older part of the town where many ottoman era buildings still stand and it's mostly hidden from view by a hospital whoever built the park was either a surrealist or had a strange sense of humor the tunnel surrounding the fountain leads nowhere and there's a definite gaudi influence on the style of the sculptures inscriptions on some of the statues indicate a creation date of 1904 but the park itself may go back much further than that everyone from Sephardic Jews to Muslim mystics has been credited with its creation but the real story of its rise and partial fall is a secret lost to time 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

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Keywords: 12 Most Mysterious Archaeological Finds Scientists Still Cant Explain, archaeological mystery, archaeological finds, scientists cant explain, mysterious, ancient mystery, mysterious finds, ancient, 12 most, top 12, most amazing

Id: D30U1dbzpa8

Length: 15min 21sec (921 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 21 2020