12 Most Mysterious Artifacts Finds Scientists Still Can't Explain

almost every kind of archaeological discovery is significant in some way but many of them are similar to things that have been found before even some of the world's most experienced archaeologists feel that if you've seen one ancient piece of pottery or ceramics you've seen them all they yearn for more unique unexpected discoveries the type that are hard to explain or understand that's what you'll find in this video strange one-of-a-kind artifacts with mysteries attached to them [Music] our first artifacts are so small you have to look at them through a magnifying glass to appreciate their intricacy and beauty they're tiny gold foil carvings no bigger than a human fingernail and they were found on farmland in choline norway by an amateur archaeologist with a metal detector someone obviously went to a lot of trouble to make them but historians are at a loss to explain who or why we know that killing was an important meeting place for tribal chiefs around 1500 years ago were these little gold works of art somehow related to those meetings if so how initially they were thought to be relics of the viking age but we now know they're older than that they belong to the merivinian era a time when norway was divided up into smaller warring sub-nations thus far artifacts like this have only ever been found in scandinavia and only where rulers are known to have lived or met these may have been tokens of some kind but we can't imagine what they could have been used for when mount vesuvius erupted in the year 89 and trapped the city of pompeii like a fly in amber it also claimed the herculaneum library it's now the only surviving library of antiquity but the eruption carbonized it and everything inside it that includes these 2 000 year old scrolls which presumably contain information that might tell us a lot about what life was like in the region prior to the eruption we don't know for sure though because they're rolled up and crumpled and in far too fragile stay to ever be opened again that may not be a problem for much longer though using the synchrotron particle accelerator in the diamond light source facility in oxford england scientists believe they can virtually open the scrolls and read their contents using the power of harnessed light beams and they're actively working on the project right now because of the age of the herculaneum library and the fact that no other libraries of the era have survived the scrolls are viewed almost as a gold mine for archaeologists offering information that could never be obtained elsewhere if the project is successful it could open a whole new chapter of understanding for ancient roman culture [Music] as anyone who follows fashion knows very well styles come and go what's fashionable right now will probably look dated five years from now but will then almost certainly come back around a few years later that's as true for hairstyles as it is for clothes and it even appeared to be true of the most denigrated of all hairstyles the 1980s mullet this statue discovered in february 2021 is thought to be a depiction of an ancient celtic deity but it could just as easily be a statue of a 1980s football player not only do they have the right hairstyle for the era but they also appear to have a mustache the copper figurine which stands just two inches high was discovered at an archaeological dig site in cambridge england and dates back 1900 years to the iron age it was likely used as a handle for something possibly a spatula but the tool it was connected to has long since either rotted away or otherwise disappeared either the people of the area believe their gods had mullets and mustaches or this is a representation of the male fashion of the time there you have it mullet wares your time will eventually come again even if it takes two thousand years as the influence of rome declined in western europe the goths briefly rose to prominence they lasted only a few centuries as a major player in the region but what they achieved during their time was significant they were the first germanic people to convert to christianity and because of that they created the codex argentius this mysterious silver bible is considered the masterpiece of all the medieval era's religious manuscripts at one point it was believed that the whole codex was the work of ophelus a prominent bishop of his time but it's now thought that it was transcribed by several scholars working under his guidance aside from being the first translation of the bible into the gothic language it was also a valuable and treasured artifact ophilis almost certainly made it for theodoric the great he had to create the entire gothic alphabet as part of the process otherwise he'd have had to use the pre-existing runic alphabet which was unsuitable because of its perceived connections to pagan heritage it's the very definition of a one-of-a-kind item written on calfskin stained with a royal purple hue after being completed it went missing for one thousand years after the reign of theoritic the great came to an end before finally resurfacing at werden abbey during the 16th century nobody knows what happened to it during those 10 centuries but that only adds to its legendary status by the 18th century maps of every populated area of north america were commonplace that makes it a little strange that archaeologists discovered the scorched remains of a previously unknown tavern in brunswick town north carolina in june 2019. this drinking establishment doesn't exist on any contemporary map of the area and appears to have burned to the ground for unknown reasons at some point during the 1760s the fire caused the walls and ceilings to collapse onto the floor sealing everything beneath them like a time capsule to make things even more mysterious archaeologists exploring the wrecked tavern have discovered smoking pipes that don't appear to have been used and iron tools that don't resemble any other tools that experts have ever seen one possible explanation for the omission of the tavern from official records could be that it was also a brothel for sailors visiting the local port and so would have been met with disapproval from local authorities aside from the pipes and mystery tools archaeologists also found liquor bottles brass taps from wine barrels and irish pennies stamped with the date 1766. this was obviously once a thriving hub of activity but seems to have been intentionally erased from history [Music] in february 2021 a farmer working on his land close to scarabray on the scottish island of orkney made a surprising discovery he accidentally disturbed a stone burial cyst and within the cyst a perfectly preserved complete human skeleton according to the archaeologists the farmer summoned to the scene this long forgotten individual has been waiting to be discovered for approximately 4 000 years the farmer has no idea how the cyst has evaded his attention for such a long time nor how anyone else has failed to discover it before now the cyst was sealed so well that not even small animals have been able to break in and disturb it meaning that even the tiniest bones are still in place the skeleton is buried alone with no other burial sites in the immediate vicinity experts now have to work out whether this was a resident of the scarabray settlement or whether this discovery suggests the existence of another previously unknown neolithic settlement elsewhere on the island archaeologists found a badly damaged ancient wall that appeared to have been built by human hands not far from here in 2019 and so had begun to wonder whether there was more to be found here this fortuitous find is the first sign that they're on the right track archaeologists in poland still aren't sure what to make of the bronze age mace head they found in dukla in mid-2019 but they're fairly sure it isn't local it turned up during an exploratory dig aimed at finding relics of the second world war but this is far more ancient and arguably far more interesting if it can be proven that the artifact isn't polish in design it will be the oldest non-polish object ever found in the country that confirmation probably won't get historians any closer to finding out who made it but it's a start no other bronze age relics were found during the dig so the artifact seems curiously out of place it's probably around three thousand years old and is similar but not identical to mace heads that were common in the middle east during the same era at one point it would have been attached to a wooden handle might have been used as a symbol of authority rather than a battle weapon it probably found its way into the country through the carpathian mountains but beyond that it thus far has proved to be impossible to trace back to its place of origin wherever that might be on august 20th every year the people of hungary celebrate saint stephen's day as part of that celebration the severed and mummified hand of saint stephen himself is removed from saint stephen's basilica in budapest and paraded around the city that's quite a strange tradition but this is quite a strange artifact the hand is known as the holy right and has been a venerated object ever since 1083. that's the year saint stephen was canonized as part of his canonization his tomb was opened and his body was exhumed records from the time state that while the rest of the body was nothing more than bones his right arm was miraculously still fleshy and perfectly preserved for some reason that made it a good idea to cut the arm off the hand became separated from the rest of the arm during the 13th century after the arm was sent for safe keeping away from the tartar invasion of hungary the monks responsible for its preservation decided the best course of action was to sever the hand send the hand to lemberg and the lower arm to vienna while the lower arm's fate is unknown the hand was eventually brought back to hungary from austria by american soldiers at the end of the second world war every depiction of jesus christ you've ever seen portrays him with a beard and long hair but is that depiction accurate according to one of the oldest illustrations of christ ever found it might not be that depiction comes in the form of an etching on a glass plate which was found in spain in 2014 and dates back to the 4th century the plate was probably used in early christian rituals to store and distribute eucharistic bread it was smashed into pieces by the time it was found close to the spanish city of linares but archaeologists have been able to piece around 80 of it back together jesus is shown next to the cross on the illustration flanked on either side by figures believed to be saint peter and saint paul he seems unusually tall which is probably a representation of his status but more strikingly he has no beard short hair and is wearing a roman style philosopher's toga styles can change a lot in four centuries so this might have more to do with the fashions of the 4th century than the way jesus kept his hair and beard but it makes us wonder about where the traditional depiction of bearded jesus came from in november 2016 citizens of jerusalem got their first look at the mysterious ancient artifact known as the gasulian star when it was exhibited at the headquarters of the israeli antiquities authority the challenging object was discovered inside a jordanian cave during the 1930s but still isn't completely understood the eight-pointed star was presumably created with either a purpose or a symbolic meaning but that purpose or meaning still eludes us this is a puzzle that's over 6 000 years old this star was painted on its cave wall long before the first cities were formed and even before the first form of writing was created the gasulian star is a relic of the chalcolithic period a time prior to bronze working during which even the most sophisticated human settlements were little more than tiny farming villages some historians view it as a representation of the sun and point to the idea of a sect of sun worshipers but there's no solid evidence to back up that idea it may never have been intended to be seen as a star of the solar kind at all it's an enigma and a reminder that there's still so much we don't know about our ancient ancestors [Music] as we're talking about ancient things that we don't understand let's remind ourselves that we still haven't completely translated many of the world's oldest forms of writing you can see examples of it here on these stone tablets discovered at the cedenga necropolis in sudan in november 2017 the inscriptions on the stone are written in a language known as morotic thought to be the first written language of the sahara and cannot be fully deciphered it's thought that the artifacts date back to the kingdoms of moreau and napara some 2700 years ago sydenga is a necropolis so large that it's sometimes known as the city of the dead covering more than two and a half million square feet and hosting the remains of 80 brick pyramids the tablets probably tell the stories of the people who are buried here but other than understanding that some of the symbols are borrowed from egyptian hieroglyphics we can't decode them we can see the names of a few places and probably the names of a few people too but the intricacies of their stories are lost to time joe mandagu aren't rare discoveries in japan they've been found at archaeological dig sites in places like kanto chubu hokkaido and everywhere in between more than 100 were once found in asahamira in a single year considering they have so many examples of the artifacts to study it's surprising that archaeologists still aren't totally sure why the jomon people made so many of these clay figures nor what they were used for the jomon period ended approximately 3 000 years ago with most of the dolls dating at least that far and in some cases up to four thousand years earlier their best guess is that they played some kind of role in fertility rituals a conclusion based on the fact that so many jamundagu appear to represent pregnant women the vast majority of them are discovered broken seemingly deliberately which might have been the ritual's final stage some but not all are found buried on purpose in circular arrangements an act that must also have had ritual significance sadly there aren't any german shamans around to ask anymore so we might never get answers to these questions 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

Channel: Inforado

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

Id: mi_69LqUzPA

Length: 16min 17sec (977 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 19 2021