9 Most Mysterious Archaeological Discoveries

hi it's katrina from mysterious ancient caves built by a lost civilization to priceless artifacts made by the romans here are nine amazing and mysterious archaeological [Music] discoveries number nine alexander's bathtub located inside an abandoned palace is a ginormous granite bathtub but who would need such an enormous tub babalovo palace also called babovka palace was built as a summer residence and bathhouse toward the end of the 18th century during the reign of catherine the great of russia it's located about 15 miles south of st petersburg in a town called sars village the residence was seldom visited and was abandoned in 1791 partially due to its remoteness and it wasn't until the 1820s that it saw a revival within babalova palace is a giant granite bathtub called the tsar bath which was added to the palace during this time under the instruction of tsar alexander the first it's rumored that alexander used the palace and presumably the gigantic tub as a rendezvous point for meetings with his lover a court banker's daughter named sofia velo the tub was reportedly carved from a single 176 ton chunk of granite sourced from finland and the task took an entire decade to complete that's a long time to wait for a bathtub at approximately six and a half feet tall and 17 feet in diameter the finished product is more like a small swimming pool than a conventional bathtub it holds around 8 000 buckets of water and it's one of the few surviving remnants of babalovo palace which was badly damaged during world war ii and now sits in ruins number 8. long you caves deep in china's xiang province lies the village of long you where there are a series of ancient caves that were undiscovered until 1992 when a local man named wu anai decided to put a local legend about the town's bottomless ponds to the test upon attempting to find out just how deep the ponds were by using a water pump to siphon them dry he found that they were in fact flooded entrances to hand-carved caverns whose origins remain a mystery to this day it took 17 days for wu and i to get to the bottom of the legend literally and the ensuing discoveries amounted to 24 caves total which came to be known as the long u caves the cave's walls are adorned with carved lines and symbols of unknown meaning and that's merely the beginning of the mysteries to be found within none of the caves are interconnected yet several of them share extremely thin walls and given their estimated age dating back to 200 bc it's amazing that the builders did not puncture them with their primitive tools speaking of tools archaeologists have not found any evidence of the tools that the builders use to construct the caves with nor are there any signs of what the cave's original purpose was especially since they're seemingly too large for the population of a small village to construct on their own in fact experts estimate that it would have taken 1 000 workers to build the caves in a reasonable amount of time number 7. great pyramid void in november 2017 in what egyptologist yuki nurikawe called the discovery of the century scientists announced the discovery of two previously unknown voids in egypt's 4 500 year old great pyramid of giza standing at 455 feet tall the great pyramid of giza was built for pharaoh khufu scientists with the scan pyramids project reported the discovery of two previously unknown voids in the great pyramid in an article published in november 2017 in the journal nature there is one void located above a giant passageway that leads to the grand gallery and khufu's burial chamber measuring about 100 feet long its dimension seems similar to the 153 foot long 26 foot tall tunnel it's situated above the smaller corridor's length is unclear at the time the discoveries were announced scientists were unsure what was inside of it in january 2018 live science reported on researchers plans to investigate the corridor using tiny robots equipped with high resolution cameras thermal imaging and other advanced detection technology which they also used to discover the voids in the first place by doing so they hoped to learn what the voids were used for possibilities include burial chambers and construction passageways and if there are any unknown contents within or other spaces linked to them hopefully further investigation using muon detectors and thermal imaging will provide answers to the many questions we still have surrounding the pyramids the next step is to send robots into the void once it is safe enough to do so number 6. cocaine mummies some researchers have long speculated for various reasons that the ancient egyptians crossed the atlantic and reached the americas 3 000 years ago if this were to be true it would challenge essentially everything we believe about the first people to arrive on the continent after indigenous native americans got there one such piece of evidence pointing toward this possibility allegedly came to dr michelle lescott from the museum of natural history in paris in 1976 in the form of a sample from the mummified remains of the egyptian pharaoh ramses the great lescott discovered traces of tobacco on the bandaged remains using an electron microscope which her colleagues initially wrote off as contamination from modern sources after all as things currently stand in the historical record tobacco was first known to travel to europe after columbus traveled to the new world in 1492 2700 years after ramses the great passed away and was mummified years after lescot examined the tissue sample forensic toxicologist dr zvelta balabanova followed up on her findings by analyzing a piece of intestinal tissue from deep inside ramses the great's preserved body rather than external samples reducing the likelihood that the evidence was contaminated she reportedly discovered traces not only of tobacco but also of cannabis or marijuana and coca the plant used for making cocaine like rings on a tree despite her excellent reputation balabanova's colleagues like lescott said that this wasn't enough to prove that the ancient egyptians actually personally handled or used these substances in 1992 a decade later seven mummies were flown out of cairo for further investigation into the matter gas chromatography tests of all seven samples conducted by balabanova indicated the presence of nicotine and coca these findings suggest that the ancient egyptians either traveled to the new world or traded with people in it but very little follow-up research has been done on the matter and researchers are divided and whether or not ancient far-flung trade routes truly existed number 5. baigong pipes mount baigong located in china's qinghai province is home to what's called the baigong pipes local legend speculates that the pipes which are located inside caves near the mountain are the site of an ancient extraterrestrial laboratory three triangular entrances lead to the cylindrical formations and on top of the mountain there's a mysterious pyramid formation the pipes connect to a nearby lake all that said it's understandable why people assume that the pipes are man-made after all wouldn't you at first glance but the beijing institute of geology dated them back 150 000 years based on everything scholars know about human history it's therefore highly unlikely that humans built the pipes unless of course you're among the many people out there who are convinced that there is more to our past than science has yet explained the latter theory is bolstered by the fact that eight percent of the pipes material is allegedly unidentified according to state-run media organization qinhua in 2007 a geology research fellow from the china earthquake administration named zhang jiangdong claimed that the pipes are highly radioactive jang dong admitted that there is indeed something mysterious about these pipes but this does not necessarily prove that the formations are man-made on the contrary it points toward the possibility that iron-rich magma may have risen from deep in the earth and solidified into the pipe's current shape number 4. petra located in southern jordan and known to its original residents as ramku petra as greeks called it is an ancient unfinished city an archaeological site in an area that was inhabited as early as 7000 bc petra once served as the capital to the nabataeans a little understood group of nomadic desert people who archaeologists believe moved there around the 4th century bc due to its proximity to major trade routes it's nicknamed the rose city because of the hand-carved caves temples and tombs the nabatains built into the city's pink sandstone around 2000 years ago according to national geographic the nabataeans at petra profited handsomely from the lucrative incense trade and the city naturally became their most prominent metropolis it served as a hub that linked trading caravans between the mediterranean and arabian seas and the nabataeans prospered for centuries without conquest thanks partially to their clever architecture as well as their strategic geographical placement which gave them a lot of control over water sources some of the city's most impressive constructions including a theater that sat 6 000 guests were built after the romans arrived in 63 a.d the treasury and monastery which both boast hellenistic features were cut into rock facades from the top down simply put the buildings at petra are engineering feats especially for the time during which they were constructed included among them was a sophisticated water system consisting of an advanced irrigation tunnel carved into the rock which supported the city's peak population of around 30 000 inhabitants after petra's fall it was more or less forgotten about until 1812 when swiss explorer johann burkhardt rediscovered it more recently in 2016 a still-buried monumental structure was found using satellite imagery today petra is technically in ruins but it's also a unesco world heritage site and its stunning beauty continues to draw millions of visitors still researchers know very little about the nabataeans who constitute some of its pre-roman inhabitants number 3 basda caves about 12 miles outside the town of haran and southeastern turkey along a narrow road full of potholes are the bazda caves from the outside they're nothing spectacular one reviewer wilco van herpen of the hurriyet daily news even recounted that as he approached the cave's entrance he already wanted to turn around and leave due to the structures seemingly uneventful nature what you see when you get out of the car is not impressive at all van hurban wrote it definitely did not look spectacular on the contrary this was horrible he said of a small opening leading to some concrete steps but things got better when the writer realized that he wasn't just in any ordinary cave but a spectacular one as he put it the bazda magarasi or basda caves are actually a vast ancient rock quarry in an abandoned village the rocks cut away from basda were used to build nearby haran and what remains of the quarry has an almost biblical quality to it with lines and carvings chiseled into it the basta caves are surrounded by roads and tunnels that made it easily accessible to horses and donkeys and which also make them unique as a very well organized historical quarry the largest cave is at least two stories tall and the entrance is big enough for someone to drive an rv through to keep people from driving in however the turkish government built steps at this entrance but they also rejected the idea of turning the caves into a recreational area due to the instability of the structures archaeologists have dated the caves back to the 13th century based on writings on the wall but little else seems to be known about them including how the excavators transported the rock all the way to hurran number 2 great wall of texas in the city of rockwall texas is a rock wall no kidding that has perplexed locals and experts alike since farmers discovered it in 1852 while digging a well the wall appears man-made to many and that's part of the problem due to its estimated age of between 200 000 and 400 000 years old because it dates back so far many people believe on the other hand that the wall is a natural formation even if it doesn't seem like one as part of a history channel documentary dr john geisman of the university of texas in dallas tested samples of the wall he found that all of the rocks the wall is made out of are magnetized in the same way indicating that they are in fact natural formations rather than deliberately set in place by humans of course despite this there are believers out there who are set on their vision of the wall as being built by a sophisticated ancient civilization that must have existed in north america long ago if this were the case it would challenge our current scientific understanding of the continent's earliest modern humans arriving around 13 000 years ago and you may be surprised to learn that it's not just conspiracy theorists who have noticed that the wall seems man-made most notably harvard-trained architect john lindsay and geologist james shelton have admitted that the structure has what resemble architectural features including archways portals and window-like square openings number 1. nero's bathtub people have been loving their baths for thousands of years and are willing to spare no expense especially if you are a roman emperor nero's bathtub is made of a type of igneous rock called imperial porphyry which was highly valued at the time for its purple hue as well as its hardness which required sophisticated roman steel for structuring and shaping imperial portfree also only came from a single mine located in egypt making it extremely expensive it was imported for the wealthiest romans and such a large piece was practically unheard of a massive bathtub might sound like an odd or at least rare request but alexander the first certainly wasn't the only person in history to commission a custom-built model as a matter of fact long before alexander's reign in the year 64 a.d nero ordered his own giant bathtub nero's bathtub isn't just older than alexander's at 25 feet in diameter it's also larger although it's not deeper nero was the youngest known emperor of his time having come into power 10 years earlier at just 17 years old nero is perhaps most notorious for his ruthless tyranny supposedly playing the fiddle while rome burned and the alleged murder of the woman and his family and the alleged poisoning of several members of the roman senate whom he saw as obstructions to his power today nero's bathtub is housed in the vatican museums and is rumored to be worth about 2 billion practically priceless thanks for watching remember to subscribe and click that notification bell so you don't miss out on the latest videos see you next time bye

Channel: Origins Explained

Views: 139,491

Rating: 4.8309398 out of 5

Keywords: mysterious, archaeological, discoveries, amazing, recent, finds, unexplained, ancient, artifacts, origins explained, archaeological discoveries, mysterious discoveries, recent discoveries, amazing discoveries, unexplained discoveries, ancient artifacts, mysterious artifacts, amazing artifacts, archaeological finds, mysterious finds, mysterious archaeological discoveries, amazing archaeological discoveries, recent archaeological discoveries, ancient archaeological discoveries

Id: PHTJ4oUylWA

Length: 14min 44sec (884 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 21 2020