12 Most Unexpected Archaeological Finds And Discoveries

while we can credit archaeologists with the majority of the world's greatest historical discoveries they don't deserve all of the credit sometimes fantastic discoveries happen by chance they're made by construction workers digging up roads or everyday people curious about what might be at the bottom of their garden some wonderful things have turned up by accident over the years and so we've made this video as a celebration of those happy accidental finds and the people who found them [Music] in 1949 an american traveler was making his way through peru when he came across an ancient city he couldn't find any references to it on his map and so when he reached the nearest town he told the people there what he'd seen they all thought he was mistaken or lying and so nobody went back to perform a thorough check on the site until 1994. they found that he'd made no mistakes he was in fact the first american to discover the ancient city of kharal experts believe that the first human settlement of coral took place around 5 000 years ago that makes it the oldest known city in the americas thanks to the dry climate the ruins of the old city have been exceptionally well preserved we can clearly make out seven pyramids an amphitheater plazas and residential streets oddly there are no fortifications and nor have any weapons been found at the site instead archaeologists have discovered primitive musical instruments like horns made from deer bones and flutes made from pelicans whoever lived here must have been a peace loving race [Music] in 2013 cooney's bar in south tipperary ireland was undergoing an extensive renovation there's been a bar standing in this spot on main street for over three centuries and it turns out that there had been a secret coin stash hiding under the floorboards for all of that time when they ripped the floorboards up construction workers were shocked to see 81 gold coins looking back at them neatly arranged in a line the stash which was probably once somebody's life savings dates back to the 17th century the heads of several different british monarchs are stamped on their faces including charles ii james ii and william iii most of them are either guineas or half guineas coins that were minted in britain but made from gold imported from west africa this is the largest ancient coin discovery in the country since 1947. irish law stipulates that any discovery like this automatically becomes property of the state although it's understood that the construction workers and the pub's owners were paid a finder's fee one of the most fascinating exhibits in the moose guard museum of hulkburg denmark is the grobel man a 2 300 year old human body that still has all of its skin and hair because it spent almost all of those years being preserved by a peat bog the people who found it weren't fascinated by it though they were terrified and ran away screaming peat bogs have very low oxygen content which means they provide a perfect environment for the preservation of organic matter the unlucky civilians who founded in 1952 were in the bog to dig out raw peat the material was used extensively both as fuel and as a building material back then and is still used extensively for the same purposes in several places in europe today grobble man is one of several bodies that have been pulled out of danish peat bogs but it's the most famous of them largely because of his distinctive red hair he was alive during the iron age and appears to have met an unhappy end through a ritualistic sacrifice it's thought that his hair color is the result of his exposure to the chemicals in the bog rather than being a natural shade in 2009 three-year-old boy james hyatt went out with his father into a field in england where he'd used a metal detector for the very first time within minutes of switching it on he got a positive response from the machine and found that he'd made the kind of discovery that most metal detectorists never make in a lifetime of trying james had uncovered a 500 year old solid gold pendant with an approximate cash value of 4 million dollars experts believe that it was a religious artifact of some kind there's a depiction of the virgin mary etched onto the surface of the tiny pendant and also an illustration of the five wounds of christ as described in the bible back when it was new the back panel of the pendant would have slid out and provided a safe space to store a relic but it's seized shut it's possible there's still a relic inside but we'd have to cut it open to find out and nobody wants to do that british law says the proceeds of any sale have to be split between the finder and the landowner but with four million dollars on the cards there's more than enough to go around most people probably believe that the ancient kings and queens of england are buried in grand tombs and some of them are but not all of them get that honor the final resting place of king richard iii who died in the battle of bosworth in 1485 was unknown for centuries until it turned up underneath a car park in the city of leicester in 2012. the car park belongs to the local council and is hardly the most auspicious place for a king to have spent the past five centuries there was no intended slight when he was buried though there used to be a church on this site but the church was demolished centuries ago and the grave was lost it took until 2017 to prove that the skeleton definitely belonged to the king following a long and complex process that involved locating his living descendants and matching their dna this meant that historians were finally able to confirm a long-held belief about the king he suffered from severe scoliosis that distorted his spine the king is referred to as crook back richard in the writings of shakespeare but until the discovery of the body it was impossible to know whether this was propaganda or not [Music] in december 2016 construction workers in los angeles usa got a mammoth shock while they were digging out an extension to the city subway and we literally mean mammoth the workers uncovered a three foot long mammoth tusk buried deep below the ground accompanied by a smaller skull and tusks from a younger mammoth or mastodon they can't rule out the possibility that the smaller animal is the child of the larger the work took place close to the la brea tar pits where asphalt has been seeping upward through the ground for more than 40 000 years the asphalt creates sticky pits which unsuspecting animals would often fall into quickly becoming trapped that's almost certainly the fate that this ice age pairing met with fortunately the workers had been told to expect to find fossils and skeletons in the ground so they had a team of paleontologists on site to call upon as soon as the bones were found the experts immediately preserved the remains by covering them in plaster and then dug them out for preservation and display at los angeles county's natural history museum [Music] we're not sure the people who found our next discovery were happy with their achievement but geologists certainly are in mid-2020 the evolution mining company of australia was trying to drill for gold close to the town of orabanda they didn't find any gold but what they did find was a gigantic crater left by a meteorite 100 million years ago given that the crater has a diameter of over three miles making it one of the largest meteorite craters anywhere on the planet it's a wonder that nobody's noticed it before expert geologist jason myers was summoned to the site to verify the finding and also received the honor of having the geological feature named after him it's now the myers crater while this was all very exciting for jason it was less exciting for evolution mining not only had the impact of the meteorite smashed the gold around a bit in jason's words but their work also had to be halted until the experts had completed their studies for them this was probably an expensive discovery we don't know where you buy your groceries but we imagine you like to believe that they're fresh and clean when you buy them you'd be unlikely to feel that way if there was a mass grave underneath your grocery store so there are probably a few people in paris france who feel uneasy about this next discovery a monoprix supermarket was undergoing renovation in the city in 2015 when construction workers dug out the floor and found a skeleton they did a little more digging and found more skeletons the more they dug the more bones they found eventually they'd unearthed more than 200 skeletons and realized that they'd found the remains of an old plague pit dating back to the time of the black death in the 14th century further research by historians revealed that the store was built on the site of an old hospital the black death tore through paris in 1349 killing more than 800 people a day at its peak and the graveyards and morticians simply couldn't deal with that number they dug pits like this because they had nowhere else to store the dead nearly 700 years later people walked across the remains to buy bread and milk [Music] owning a vineyard is pretty cool but not as cool as owning a vineyard that has an ancient roman villa with beautiful mosaic floors buried beneath the soil this find in the italian city of verona was originally made by archaeologists in 1922 but then covered over again and forgotten about historians knew that there was a roman villa in the area somewhere but were unable to find it despite spending decades searching for it it wasn't until may 2020 that the beautiful mosaics were found again during digging work at a local vineyard local legends say that the vineyard's first owner had known about the villa as long ago as 1887 but kept it quiet because he didn't want people digging up his land now after a very long wait the whole site will be dug up and exposed for the first time it's thought that the villa was built around 2 400 years ago but so far archaeologists haven't been able to determine its name or the identity of the person or people who lived there hopefully that will change in the near future blenheim palace in west oxfordshire england is best known as the birthplace of the country's legendary wartime leader winston churchill more recently it's also become known for the mysterious tunnels that run beneath it during the 18th century the great bridge in the palace grounds was flooded to create new lakes 250 years later in 2018 the lakes were dredged to remove silt from them and as the water level fell a secret floor has been discovered these rooms and tunnels don't appear on the plans of the building and their purpose is unclear they were clearly in regular use before the flood though archaeologists have discovered graffiti on the walls dating back to the 1760s some of the rooms have chimneys and fireplaces prompting speculation about whether they were lived in and if so by whom there's even a huge chamber at the center of the tunnel network that resembles a theater without any information to go on speculation has run wild was there a secret society living down here perhaps a religious cult we don't know and we might never know but it's fun to guess [Music] we might as well refer to the entire country of egypt as an archaeological site there are ancient statues temples and other artifacts all over the nation and it seems we'll never get done finding them archaeologists work on egyptian sites every day but they don't get to make all the discoveries in 2019 drilling work on a sewage drain in tama sohog had to be called to a sudden halt when workers realized they'd accidentally broken into a tomb archaeologists were summoned immediately and they were overjoyed when they realized that the workers had stumbled across the long lost tomb of ptolemy iv which was now open to the air for the first time in 2 200 years ptolemy isn't remembered by history as a successful or popular pharaoh he was said to be more interested in art and hedonism than he was in governing which might explain why his tomb is in an out of the way location on the western bank of the nile on the other hand he did build the largest human-powered sailing vessel ever made the tesseractorus with its crew of four thousand much like egypt italy is a country full of ancient ruins from its days of empire also like egypt many of those ruins have yet to be discovered and they have a habit of turning up by accident in early 2017 a team of construction workers building a new metro line in rome accidentally found what's now thought to be the city's oldest aqueduct it's around 2 300 years old and is thought to have been the first piece of the aqua apia which history tells us was completed in the year 312 bce the site of the discovery isn't far from another ancient roman wonder the coliseum is just to the northwest and is visible from the site of the digging work unfortunately it won't be possible to completely preserve the site now it's been found the metro line still has to be built and the city's authorities can't redirect it instead archaeologists have excavated as much as they can from the site and will create a museum nearby to exhibit everything they've been able to preserve 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: 12 Most Unexpected Archaeological Finds And Discoveries, archaeological finds, unexpected finds, ancient finds, ancient discoveries, most unexpected, artifacts, ancient artifacts, mystery, 12 most, top 12, most amazing

Id: O5_E6DBGDUQ

Length: 15min 0sec (900 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 27 2020