15 Oldest Technologies Scientists Still Can’t Explain

we often arrogantly think of modern society as the peak of humanity thus far incorrectly seeing technology as a modern craft but in truth some societies of the past were far more creative than we give them credit for and not only did they craft technology we still use today but in some cases they designed things that all these years later we modern buffoons can't wrap our heads around how they work they may not have invented iphones but some of their technology is still bafflingly brilliant these are the oldest technologies scientists still can't explain number 15 damascus steel most people know the pain and frustration of trying to cut through a squishy soggy tomato with a blunt knife no matter how many times you sharpen it it seems to go blunt within just a few days which is why damascus steel is so astounding a quick note on the confusing state of affairs regarding the term damascus steel both in what it is and why on earth it no longer exists damascus steel was a type of material that existed from around the 4th century a.d not only did swords of this material look amazing but they were deadly sharp they would cut through the barrel of a rifle or even a single fine hair that fell across the blade as you can imagine few people survived their cuts on a battlefield some say that the blade material got its strength from dragon blood but scientists would obviously call that an old folk's tale we're still no closer to getting the answer from around the 3rd century until the 17th century metal derived from wutes from india was shipped to the middle east but by 1750 damascus swords were no longer made and metalsmiths over time lost that skill maybe the use of guns made them obsolete or perhaps the type of raw material could no longer be gathered all we know is we could use some damascus steel in the kitchen right about now like this video smash the subscribe button and click the notification bell right now or slenderman will come from under your bed while you're sleeping number 14 anticythera we don't give our ancestors a lot of credit for their achievements after all we now have machines to do our washing and they use their local river but maybe we should have given them more credit for there have been a few discoveries that now prove they were far more ahead of their time than we thought the anti-kythera mechanism is an example of that [Music] this strange device was found in 1901 on the wreck of a trading ship that sank in the first century bce in the mediterranean sea near the anti-kythera island a group of divers happened to stumble across the device during an unscheduled diving adventure it was nearly missed but when it was unearthed everyone was in awe it appears to be an ancient greek mechanical device now known as one of the oldest computers in the world it had intricate clockwork gears that were all ahead of its time and it may have been used to calculate the movement of the moon and stars the bronze device had survived underwater for all those years and it shed light on just how advanced the greeks really were all those years ago number 13 voynich manuscript most of us at one time or another have picked up a book and couldn't understand what it was talking about most of the time though it was because it didn't make much sense to us not because we couldn't decipher it that's why the voynich manuscript has scientists completely astounded no one has any idea what this book is all about it appears to be an illustrated codex handwritten book in a writing system that's basically just a question mark essentially this structure was visually very similar to my native turkish language it's unknown it's not english it's not mandarin it's not a doctor's undecipherable handwriting it's just nothing the vellum or animal skin that it's written on dates back to around the 15th century which means that it may have been written during the italian renaissance in italy no one even knows what the book's title is for the name voynich manuscript refers to the polish san magician book dealer who bought it in 1912. some pages appear to be missing but around 240 remain the writing is from left to right and some pages have diagrams and illustrations or contain foldable sheets the world's best code breakers and cryptographers have given deciphering efforts a good go but have come up with nothing we're not sure if scientists will ever get to the bottom of this one number 12 bygone pipes when it comes to plumbing in your home there's probably a lot of things you don't know about it uh that pipe under the sink yeah better leave that one to the experts as long as they know how it works that's all that matters but some pipes leave even plumbers scratching their heads and those are the bygone pipes in the town of dalinga in china's ching hai province a chinese writer and archaeologist baiyu found pipe-like formations in 1996 while exploring the chai dom basin he had been checking out what looked like a triangular cave near tosan lake when he stumbled across them at first he thought the cave was human-made but then he saw what he thought were metal pipes embedded in the walls of the cave and rising from the floor more pipes were found around the hill and the lake shores and scientists started thinking that they may have been fossilized casts of tree roots for whatever reason the pipes ranged in size from needles to 16 inches and were all uniform and purposeful in appearance when samples were sent away for testing they contained common materials like calcium oxide and silicon dioxide but eight percent of one material they had no idea of could this be some kind of paranormal plumbing exercise number 11 the baghdad battery our new electric and battery technology is pretty astounding believe it or not though it is by no means new that's right a unique artifact in the baghdad museum of iraq is proof of that with a combination of materials something as simple as a clay pot was able to produce 1.1 volts good stories and the baghdad battery is one of those great stories the pot was six inches tall and had a copper cylinder in the center followed by an iron rod in the middle the copper cylinder and iron rod were held in place with a plug made of asphalt more than one of these pots were found during excavations in a village called jujat rabu near baghdad that village was around 2000 years old dating back to the parthian period no one knows what the clay pot would have been used for but there are of course plenty of theories some believe it was an ancient battery which may be true when filled with an electrolytic liquid like vinegar some corrosion was left behind in the bottom of the pot to indicate that might be the case could they have been using it to charge their prehistoric iphones who knows number 10 the iron pillar we know how quickly buildings can crumble evidence is often found through earthquakes in cities around the world but do you know what one thing seems to handle anything the elements throw at it the iron pillar of delhi this mind-boggling structure stands at over 23 feet tall and weighs around 7 000 pounds it features a combination of rust resistant materials and these give nothing away about its 1 600 year old age it looks as new as the day it was possibly put in place the only evidence to suggest that it has seen a lot over the years is the slight dent caused by a cannonball fired at close range it is thought that the current location in delhi is possibly not where the pillar was first positioned in memory of a mighty king named chandra believed to be chandragupta it was constructed by king chandragupta between 375 to 415 ce and may have been placed outside of the yudu yagiri caves now it's at the kutbu complex qutb in marali delhi india it's covered in inscriptions from several eras and has a carefully placed crystalline iron layer to protect from the deli climate the pillar brings about more questions than answers from scientists who are yet to study all the different dates and inscriptions therefore this mind-boggling metal post remains a mystery number nine the feistus disc is it an alphabet educational tool is it a toy is it a poorly thought out frisbee scientists are yet to understand what the feistus disc is and even what the language on it means or did mean at the time many of these symbols can be easily recognized like the one that looks like a flower and the other one that looks like a man's head archaeologists found the feistus disc in 1908 on creep a greek island it was a clay disk of around 6 inches in diameter and under 1 inch thick this in itself was not unique but the disc was covered in a spiral of 242 symbols none of which made a whole lot of sense it got its name of feistus disc from the city where it was discovered rather than the scientists actually getting to the bottom of what it was all about today the disc sits in an archaeological museum in heraklion displayed as a 2500 year old clay artifact and one of the first samples of printed writing some scientists don't believe there's enough writing on it to form a script but that there is too much for it to just be an alphabet therefore even today the 61 groups of letters and 45 distinct signs mean nothing to us number eight bridgian valley track marks to look at these rut marks cutting across the landscape of the phrygian valley in west central anatolia turkey you would think that someone went through it with a cart when it was muddy and boggy it literally looks like cart drag marks and most people would form this opinion from photos alone except you'd be wrong and scientists are wrong we're all wrong no one knows the answer to the mysterious ruts in the landscape what it looks like is definitely not what it is for these track marks date back over 12 million years and are cut into the bedrock in even spaces evidence shows that they date back to the hittite empire between 1600 bc and 1178 bc further evidence shows that more tracks were left later on by the greeks alexander the great with his army and the phrygians but still the question remains about who got there first 12 million years ago did glacial waters create the ruts or have aliens been carting materials through our land long before we were here with the imprints fossilized in the ash number seven earthworks of kazakhstan most of us have a magnificent view of our surroundings from the earth but nothing quite beats the view that nasa gets from space and that is why they keep finding some pretty amazing sights that many of us miss from the ground the earthworks surrounding kazakhstan is one such find one day economist and archaeology enthusiast dmitry day from kazakhstan had been looking at pyramids and tombs on discovery channel when he thought it might be quite interesting to see if he could see any pyramids in kazakhstan on google earth instead of pyramids though he found something far more unique from above there are a series of rings crosses lines and squares that are around the size of many football fields they are around 8 000 years old and the photos were taken 430 miles above the ground since dimitri's find astronauts have now been asked to observe the kazakh region to see what else they can find because dimitri continues to discover other earthworks too but time is running out for road builders have now destroyed even some of the more recently discovered earthworks number six wheel of giants israel is home to many forgotten archaeological sites basically you can be out and about on a casual hike and stumble across something dating back thousands of years that no one has ever seen one such sight and perhaps one of the more mysterious ones is the wheel of giants this prehistoric monument made of stone in the golden heights dates back hundreds of years but went unnoticed for centuries why because you can't see it from the ground only the air in arabic the wheel of giants is called the ruja melhiri which means the stone heap of the wild cat something roughly that shape they've measured it out carefully in hebrew the wheel of giants is gilgal refame which relates to an ancient race of giants written about in the bible the monument consists of five circles and one is more than 500 feet round there's also a burial chamber in the middle since it's been found people want action experts wish for it to be turned into a national park so that it can be preserved and enjoyed by all however it's more likely that the wheel of giants will join several other forgotten archaeological sites in the middle east number five great pyramid of giza okay okay so you're probably wondering why the great pyramid of giza is something we can't explain that subject has been well and truly covered by scientists or has it if there's one thing that scientists don't yet have a full grasp on it's the sound technology that may exist within the pyramid in the hidden chamber there is a dead-end passage made of rock that appears as though it may have operated as a sound resonance tube it has the ability to generate infrasound in the range of 5 hertz now what we know about infrasound is that it can have some crazy effects on humans it can make you feel sick paranoid anxious not to mention bringing about feelings of disconnect and other worldliness that's some pretty advanced stuff for 45 000 years ago no one knows whether this soundtube was created on purpose or not but if it was we want to know why unfortunately that might be something that we never know we don't even know whether it was used in other ancient cultures or whether it was purely in egypt number four sand clock most of us are familiar with the hourglass it looks like two glass triangles attached end to end with sand granules flowing down the center but where did it come from and why did it replace the water clock that used to work just fine in egypt in 1500 bc egyptians used to use a draining liquid klepsydra or a water clock but somewhere before the end of the medieval period the hourglass with sand or a granulated material came into existence scientists still don't really understand how it came about some people credit a french monk from the 8th century known as liut prand while others don't think they became common tools until around the 14th century written records showed evidence of them in the 1300s from medieval europe so how are they any better than water most people who used them at least early on were on ships after all can you imagine trying to tell the time accurately when the boat is continuously moving sand moving down a funnel was the most consistent option out at sea most of the time the granules were sand but they could sometimes be crushed marbles eggshells or lead the size would also differ from minutes to hours number three greek fire during war and battles both sides are always trying to get a one-up on their enemy they do this through mega weapons and sneaky tactics all in the name of securing the wind for their side this might seem like something we've developed in modern times but the greeks were on the ball too the greeks developed a weapon known as greek fire that potentially became the reason why they resisted their enemies for as long as they did between 959 and 963 a.d unfortunately the recipe was such a top secret one that scientists don't know for sure what was in the greek fire with certainty all they knew was that it was lethal fire in war isn't anything new but it wasn't back then either they used missiles guns cannons and flamethrowers but greek fire was different it was a mixture of fluid chemicals that could be lit on fire and then sprayed onto the ships of enemies the reason why it was so deadly was that not even water could extinguish it today scientists think the recipe might have included sulfur niter saltpeter refined petrol and nafta to name a few number two zhang heng's seismograph we have some pretty advanced technology at our disposal that allows us to measure earthquakes and general seismic activity but did you know this technology is by no means new in fact chinese mathematician engineer and astronomer zhang heng created such a device all the way back in 132 a.d his seismometer could detect ground movement during an earthquake even knowing which direction they were coming and within a few hundred miles or more at this time zhang and no one else for that matter knew that tectonic plates were to blame instead they thought they were displeasure from the heavens and a shift in the cosmic yin and yang still that didn't stop him from creating a pretty compelling product this handyman was also thought to have invented a water-powered armillary sphere an amended version of the water clock and the first odometer scientists still aren't 100 sure though how zhang came to create something so accurate given the time period especially since they didn't even know what created earthquakes but could somehow measure that they were happening at any moment number 1 yolf bert sword when you watch movies set in medieval times you tend to notice how rough and unrefined everything is most things are handcrafted and pure is not generally a term that's thrown around unless you're talking about the youlfbert sword and then you can speak about perfect this sword baffles scientists even to this day yofbert's swords date back to the times of the vikings and were made with metal that was so pure that it wasn't supposed to have existed in that form for another 800 or so years however that was proven wrong when around 170 such swords dating back from 800 to 1000 ad were found so why shouldn't they have existed well the forging process of the metal required it to be heated to around 3000 degrees to liquefy it at that temperature blacksmiths could remove the impurities known as slag carbon would then be added to give the sword strength however during the time of the vikings such temperatures were impossible to achieve the slag had to be pounded out but could never be done so correctly so scientists are baffled as to how they manage to make such perfect tools of war without modern methods okay brain boxes scientists can't work out what most of these things are for or what they do or did but can you do you have any ideas that you think scientists should consider also check out our other cool stuff showing up on screen right now see you next time

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Keywords: unexplained, mysterious, mystery, cant explain, science, ancient, ancient technology, discoveries, ancient mystery, science cant explain, mysterious discoveries, mysterious things, mysterious finds, strange, facts, ancient artifacts, aliens, ancient inventions, history, mysteries, mysterious artifacts, still cant explain, ancient discoveries, most mysterious, discovered, list, viral, ancient aliens, scientists, scientist, strangest, unknown, oldest technologies, ancient structure

Id: mO9Zcp1RNIc

Length: 21min 56sec (1316 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 22 2020