12 Most Mysterious Archaeological Finds

being able to see something isn't the same as being able to understand its purpose that's true of almost anything from computer code to sophisticated machinery but it's an especially significant problem for archaeologists our ancient ancestors have left behind many mysteries for us to find and although we've discovered many objects and buildings we're often at a loss to explain what they were built or used for we love to bring you archaeological mysteries on this channel and this video is full of them there's already one iconic archaeological feature on Peru's Nazca plateau and that's the famous Nazca lines far fewer people are aware of the band of holes which is a shame because they're no less fascinating the first time they came to the world's attention was in 1931 when they were captured by a photo taken from a plane high above the Pisco valley an arrangement of 500 holes in a formation like this didn't happen by accident so what could they have been used for they were briefly thought to be a mass grave but that theory had to be thrown out when no evidence of human remains could be found at the site today we have a new theory that comes from research carried out by the University of California in the United States of America experts there believed that the holes might have been used as a crude way of determining units used in taxation or trade by the Inca Inca people didn't use coins or other forms of currency as we would understand them so they needed a way to determine a single unit of any item being traded or taxed if the theory is correct that unit was equivalent to one hole full of whatever commodity was being sold in the same way that the band of holes in Peru is overshadowed by the existence of the Nazca lines Robin Hood's ball in England is overshadowed by the presence of Stonehenge the famous stone circle is only two miles away from this Neolithic causeway enclosure and if you know anything about English geography you'll know that means it's nowhere near Nottingham which is the area usually associated with the legend of Robin Hood nobody knows how Robin Hood's ball came to have its name the title comes from a map drawn in 1820 with no further explanation it's a 6,000 year old site made up of a series of ditches each of which is connected to a central point of the site by a causeway if you stand right in the middle you have a spectacular panoramic view across the plains with several miles of visibility that would make it an excellent site for a defensive fortress but there's nothing to suggest it was ever used for that purpose in fact there's nothing to suggest it ever had any purpose at all and six thousand years later it's unlikely that will solve the mystery [Music] sometimes a name can be misleading take the side of guard dalam in Malta as an example depending on who you listen to the location is known as either cave of bones or the cave of darkness both titles suggest that it would be an unpleasant place to visit but it's actually spectacular as far as we know this is the oldest human settlement in all of Malta with a history that goes back more than 7,000 years the bones of guard olives nicknames aren't human bones though they're animal bones if you reach the back of the five hundred foot long cave you'll find the bones of hippopotami wolves bears deer and even a rare species of dwarf elephant there are even some enticing evidence that Neanderthals used the cave as a shelter before humans did which comes in the form of tooth fragments and shards of pottery there are human teeth in the same parts of the cave as Neanderthal teeth which might even imply a brief period of cohabitation between humans and Neanderthals that's the sort of thing historians have nightmares about dinosaurs did not invent the wheel we know that for a fact we found many dinosaur skeletons over the years but no record of them riding bicycles are sitting in chariots with that in mind we're at a loss to explain the discovery of this strange wheel imprint find almost 3,000 feet below the surface in a khole line in the Rostov region of donetsk in 2009 the rock here has been undisturbed since the Carboniferous age over 300 million years ago that means this wheel shape has also been present in the rock for 300 million years but what could have created it it's hard to imagine that it happened by chance the wheel is round solid and even has spokes leading to a central hub all around it are fossilized snakes and birds one explanation that's been posited is that it could be a shell but no shell that looks like this has ever been discovered anywhere else on earth access to the mine has been restricted ever since the wheel was found which suggests that experts and officials are taking the discovery seriously but it's been more than 10 years since the discovery and were still yet to receive an official explanation for its existence the problem with the sight of dear aziz in the golan heights region of israel is that every time we think we've got to the bottom of their mystery were proven wrong the complex of stone houses and temples is around four miles from the shores of the Sea of Galilee and is best known for its ancient synagogue when the first archaeological excavation of the site happened in 1979 the synagogue was officially dated to the early 6th century that estimate had to be moved back by 1,000 years when a collection of five hundred coins dating back to 518 BCE was found below the synagogue around ten years later later still a series of tombs was discovered beneath the synagogues foundations and they date back to around 1100 BCE that makes the settlement at dear Aziz at least three thousand years old and calls into question the beliefs of the people who built the site and their purpose for doing so far from being a synagogue as has always been assumed experts are now being forced to consider that it might be a pagan temple the entire site of Machu Picchu in Peru is an archaeological Wonderland but even within that Wonderland there are unique places and special objects one of them is the into who Tana Riverstone which appears to show telltale signs of advanced stone cutting technology despite such technology being out of the question for people living in the 15th century in truth it might be even older than that scientists are torn on the subject of whether the Inka built Machu Picchu themselves or whether they inherited it from an older forgotten civilization the river stone was probably used as a sundial with evidence to support that theory including the fact that it aligns with the position of the Sun during the winter solstice whether it was a simple sundial or not it was an object that was feared and loathed by the Spanish conquerors who came to the land in the 1500s Viceroy Francisco de Toledo the destruction of every into Etana stone in the region on the grounds that they were objects of blasphemy but fortunately he and his troops missed this one now it stands as a solitary mystery daring us to guess how it was made are the Drobo stones fact or fiction that's a question that's been asked by many experts for many years and we can't answer it for you today all we can do is tell you what they are and why people want to believe in them and you can decide whether you believe the story as the tale goes the stones were found on the by Ankara ulla mountains in China by dr. chief butai in 1938 the doctor was immediately struck by their strange appearance with their disk-like shape and central holes surrounded by a carefully carved network of grooves they looked just like vinyl records each of the grooves contained a series of tiny hieroglyphics none of which the doctor was ever able to translate seeking assistance he sent the stones off for analysis by experts elsewhere in China and that's where the trail goes cold there's a debatable written record of them being in a museum in 1974 but aside from that the only proof of their existence is a series of photos that could just as easily be fakes some people say that they're being hidden by the Chinese government because the hieroglyphics tell the story of ancient aliens living on earth but then conspiracy theorists always say such things [Music] while we're on the topic of aliens does anybody think it's likely that if they do exist they sometimes use meteorites to make face masks we only ask because of the existence of this next strange artifact which is known as the Botswana and meteorite mask it was found in the Kalahari Desert in uncertain circumstances and appears to have two holes carved into it in the perfect position for eyes there's even a hint of a groove below the eyes which would make the mask fit a little more comfortably around the nose was this a freak accident that occurred when the meteor fell to earth and shattered or was it found in the desert and then fashioned into this shape by human hands the latter option seems unlikely if this rock had been carved or tooled by humans we should be able to see signs of tool work on the rock and there are none scientists don't have enough information about the artifact to offer a satisfactory explanation and so it's sat in a museum in its home country waiting for somebody to turn up and provide it with an origin story our next mystery is not so much about why an object exists but why it was painted in such an unusual way this is the pakka makka idol recovered from an archaeological site of the same name 20 miles south of Lima in Peru many years ago the twelve hundred year old wooden statue was covered in flecks of dark red liquid when it was found prompting many experts to believe or perhaps fear that it was involved in some sort of blood sacrifice in early 2020 a closer analysis of the object confirmed that the experts initial assessment was wrong the red shade is in fact a red mercury paint and at one point it would have been accompanied by white color covering the statues teeth and a shade of yellow to pick out his headdress that might not seem all that mysterious but consider this the closest source of cinnabar which is the foundation of the red mercury paint is more than 250 miles away from pakka makka in the Andes whoever owned this either carried it a very long way or had the wealth and influence to order paint to be carried over long distances for such a specific purpose and we don't know what the idol represents as we don't know what the idol represents we don't know why anyone would do that if you can offer a reasonable explanation for the existence of the bola Island balls please report to the nearest center of science immediately these strange spherical rock clumps are a total enigma Ola island is a tiny piece of land that belongs to Azerbaijan not too far from the country's capital city of Baku there in the 1970s local geologist Konstantin mamonov located and recovered 21 balls of rock all of which came in slightly different sizes but with the same basic shape each of the white balls had a seam running around its center and a notch on the top demarcating the ball into two halves just under 20% of each ball structure is magnetite with the chief component of their chemical composition being aluminum this totally rules out the possibility that the rocks were formed naturally based on our current understanding of science it's highly unlikely to the point of being almost impossible that the balls were made by humans they're ancient and their composition is far too sophisticated that begs the question of who made them and the answer is we don't know because we often underestimate the building capabilities of our ancestors it comes as a surprise to most people to find out that human beings have been building artificial islands all over the planet for centuries in Scotland those Islands are called cranach's and thanks to a recent discovery we now know that these Scottish Canucks are even older than we thought they were it was once believed that the oldest Scottish Crenna came from the Iron Age somewhere around the 9th century in 2018 though radiocarbon dating was carried out on four of the cran augs in Scotland's Outer Hebrides and those tests yielded an astonishing result the crabs aren't 1,200 years old they're more like 5,500 years old making a cran ugh isn't easy the process involves piling layer after layer of rock onto the seabed until the island sits above the waves then coating the whole construction in soil so you can go grass and plants on it the building material would have to be shipped to the site of the cranek by both in other words the people who lived in North Scotland 5,500 years ago were master engineers and boat builders history has underestimated them there are only two possible ways to interpret the so-called book of ville s it's either the definitive Great Slavic text or an elaborate forgery compiled by a fraudster who's probably still laughing at us from beyond the grave scholars and experts still argue over its authenticity to this day and Russia has become so bored with the debate that the text is banned in the country if taken at face value the book of ls covers 1,200 years of Slovak social and religious history from 700 BCE to 900 CE II all of which is carefully documented on wooden planks the most common tale of its discovery purports that it was found in a castle in Ukraine in the first decade of the 20th century and then decoded by Russian scientists Yuri Mirabal of the scientists went to his grave convinced that the language is a very early version of Cyrillic and the book of vélez was genuine the prevailing theory in the 21st century is that it's a 20th century forgery probably written by the person who claimed to have discovered it in that Ukrainian Castle much of the book talks about velocity length the deity was an early Slavic god responsible for agriculture and cattle and the author was clearly devoted to him if it's a forgery it's probably a well-meaning one subscribe 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Channel: Inforado

Views: 385,802

Rating: 4.7845392 out of 5

Keywords: 12 Most Mysterious Archaeological Finds, archaeological finds, archaeological mystery, mysterious finds, ancient finds, artifact, ancient artifact, artifact discoveries, mysterious discoveries, 12 most, top 12, most amazing

Id: huXQkNl8wDk

Length: 15min 24sec (924 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 10 2020