Ancient Civilizations that Just... Vanished

throughout the history of mankind countless civilizations have crumbled and Fallen due to war internal conflict natural disasters and much more many of these collapses are well known and documented in detail such as the fall of Rome or the conquest of the Aztecs but others remain shrouded in mystery despite years of research and significant advances in technology there are some civilizations that just seemed to have abruptly ended Vanishing without much of a trace and today we're going to take a look at some of them [Music] often regarded as one of the first civilizations of Europe the Minoans were a people that lived on the island of cre with evidence showing that urban communities first began coming together as long ago as 2000 BC because this was in the distant past a lot of the details are quite murky but from the archaeological evidence that we do have it's clear that monan Society was quite Advanced with highly skilled Craftsmen Artisans and Architects they also had well-connected trade routes with other civilizations around the Mediterranean and their artists were so talented that they even were hired by Egypt to paint Fresco at a varis along with Fresco the Minoans Left Behind Pottery statues and every other type of art that you can imagine they also constructed impressive palaces with the most famous being the one at nsas home to Europe's first paved roads and running water one thing that we don't know is the language they spoke it appears that the island developed two forms of written language over the years which have been dubbed crean hieroglyphs and linear a these have yet to be fully deciphered but from what we've learned so far the language doesn't seem to be closely related to any familiar tongue the bigger mystery though is what on Earth happened to them sometime around 1500 BC Manan Society went into a sharp Decline and essentially disappeared from the map for a while it was assumed that the end of the Minoans was related to the greater late Bronze Age collapse but in fact the end of the monan civilization came a few hundred years too early to be confidently included in this however one event that very close coincides with the collapse is the volcanic eruption at Thea today also known as Santorini a smaller Island to the north this was an immense eruption and could have cause tsunamis to strike the islands the Minoans called home as oellers deposit thick layers of Ash and harm their agriculture all of which could easily contribute to the end of society but recent evidence shows that there actually wasn't much Ash and it seems as if the wind had been blowing in the opposite direction along with clay tablets that appear to have been written more than 50 years after the volcano's eruption detailing architectural projects that wouldn't be expected in a destroyed economy this has led to the theory that the volcanic erruption didn't end the civilization in an instant but rather led to severe environmental effects that slowly squeezed the life out of the island over a few Generations eventually forcing their descendants to abandon creete but other historians dispute the claim that the volcano had much to do with the collapse at all key to this claim is the evidence of Destruction around the island that doesn't seem consistent with natural disasters as certain areas seem to have been spared from the Carnage for instance the town at nosos was burned to the ground while the palace was left untouched natural disasters would have destroyed all of it indiscriminately but internal Waring parties may have spared their most sacred building during an armed conflict in any case we don't have all the answers perhaps completely deciphering the written records will shed some light on what really happens but as for right now the cause of their collapse is largely still a mystery [Music] also called the anastasi The ancestral peans were an ancient Native American culture that inhabited the American southwest centered mostly near the four corners area of Utah Arizona Colorado and New Mexico their larger settlements are among the most well-known Native American architecture comprised of Cliff Dwellings carved and built on the underside of large Rock faces such as Cliff Palace in Mesa National Park in Colorado these Cliff communities housed up to several hundred people contained communal areas for work ship and display clear evidence of Agriculture however sometime around the 13th century these beautiful homes were suddenly abandoned as for what could caused these tribes to leave such well-established communities behind and search for a new place to live there are a few theories the first is that they move was necessitated by drought investigations have shown that many of these settlements were constructed during periods of heavy rainfall which made agriculture simpler and didn't require advanced irrigation however beginning around 1150 North America went through a period known as the great drought which could have degraded soil quality and made the style of farming no longer viable forcing the communities to pack their bags and move to more favorable locations but Warfare is always a potential explanation in this case some academics posit that the true reason for the abandonment of the sites was the arrival of other tribes that were more nomatic in nature such as the Utes and the PES bringing vience that forced the pans to leave as the large cities made them easy targets for raids evidence for violence was first found in a 1997 excavation that Unearthed 24 skeletons showing clear indications of a violent death and even cannibalism however others argue that this isn't conclusive evidence and that the cannibalism and violent death may have other possible explanations such as ritual combat for religious purposes or even that the bones aren't from the pones themselves and are simply from a small and nomadic tribe that took refuge in the site for a few years long after it was abandoned by its creators unlike many other civilizations in this video the PO blans did not die completely and their descendants are still alive and known today with many of their oral histories maintained throughout the many generations but unfortunately without written language we may never know the true reason they suddenly left their grand [Music] cities at its peak the kimer Empire ruled over most of Southeast Asia and during their time inow the civilization constructed impressive monuments such as the famous ankle wat they are believed to have been the most complex pre-industrial society on Earth even inventing what is regarded as the first healthc care system spread out over more than a thousand hospitals however this all came to an end in the mid-15th century where the archaeological record suddenly contains a near 300-year gap in writing only showing that the majority of sites were abandoned and then later reinhabited by many different groups traditionally this sudden decline has been attributed to war with the Siamese AI Kingdom who conquered the capital anchor in the 1400 s but many scholars point out that in such a large empire the changing of power in the capital might not have been enough to completely destroy a civilization that span such a large area and so there seems to be more going on that meets the eye one of the main theories centers on Water Management the Kima had an extensive canal and irrigation system in place with numerous reservoirs that were used for cultivating rice their agriculture was so effective that they were clocking in three rice harvests a year which is what allowed the population to rise so steadily for so many decades however this Rising population may have outpaced the water system which combined with a couple of minor droughts could have brought the whole rice economy to a Breaking Point and resulted in Anarchy there's also the opposite theory that instead of some small droughts there were a few years of heavy intense monsoons which were so strong that they damaged the water canals across the region to the point that they couldn't be repaired before chaos erupted and everyone had to fend for themselves there's also the theory that the plague was to blame after all it was during the 14th and 15th centuries that the Black Death was ravaging Europe the Bubonic plague was known to have struck China as well with such a large population and such complex Urban settlements if it arrived the plague could have devastated the Kim leaving them vulnerable to all manner of other threats at the same [Music] time our final civilization for this video isn't just one per se but rather an entire geographic region due to a lack of written records it isn't known for certain just how many people lived in Central and South America before before the arrival of European powers and the true numbers have been debated for many years but the important thing to note here is that while for years these people have been typically portrayed as jungle dwelling tribes that were still largely hunted gather types we now know that there were many civilizations that were actually quite advanced in the pre-colombian era for example a new study from 2024 found one city in the Amazon that had been hidden by thick vegetation for thousands of years and showed evidence of neatly paved roads Gardens and canals and may have been home to a 100,000 people the idea that there were numerous cities and even large organized civilizations spanning the continent is consistent with the records of early European Travelers who explored the region such as Gaspar de caval who wrote of seeing huge numbers of peoples settlements and tribes as he floated along the Amazon River he described them as being so numerous and advanced that once his Chronicles were published back in Europe they were widely dismissed as wild exaggerations or even outright lies a sentiment That Remains the consensus for hundreds of years it was thought that the soil was too acidic in the Amazon for large agriculture to take place and of course there was no shortage of racism involved in thinking that these people were too primitive to form such Advanced societies however in recent years more and more findings have emerged showing that Cari wasn't exaggerating at all and in fact that his words didn't even capture the full scope of just how many people lived in the Amazon at the time the key to these new findings is a technology called Lial which scans an area using lasers to paint a picture of the surface able to spot things like stone structures even if they're covered by thick vegetation using liar from aircraft researchers have found thousands upon thousands of hidden structures across the Amazon indicating that there were indeed massive populations here throughout history and that they were far more organized than previously believed investigating these sites on foot scientists have found charcoal Pottery shards tools and rock art most impressive of all in 2018 a team of archaeologists discovered what they believe to be a series of interconnected fortified settlements spanning over a th000 miles indicating that the population was over a million people in just 7% of the Amazon rainforest this was in direct contradiction to the long held belief that the population of the entire Amazon at the time was just 2 million Jose AR one of the archaeologists on the team said that the finding was so significant that quote we need to re-evaluate the history of the Amazon and the more we search the more we find bringing estimates of the total population upwards of 20 million or more in the region but in just a few short decades the vast majority of these civilizations STS would vanish off the face of the Earth and disappear Without a Trace leaving their cities to be reclaimed by the Amazon and lost for hundreds of years becoming myths that would only be confirmed by modern technology by 1900 the population of the area was estimated to be just 200,000 meaning that potentially 99% of the Region's population had died off the culprit here is almost certainly disease The Adventures of early explorers through the region introduced the locals to Old World diseases such as smallpox for which they had no previous exposure or immunity and with our new knowledge of how interconnected and vast the societies were across the Amazon it's even easier to see how things like small parks and measles could have spread rapidly to bring an entire continent to its knees genocide was also a factor for the settlements unfortunate enough to be directly harmed by Conquest especially in Central America but disease outpaced Warfare across the continent likely killing most with sickness before guns and swords even had a chance it's terribly tragic and even more so because these people left almost no records behind leaving potentially hundreds or even thousands of years of the history of tens of millions of people under a complete and utter mystery [Music]

Channel: Sideprojects

Views: 235,670

Keywords: megaprojects, construction, engineering, projects, sideprojects, lost civilizations, ancient history, ancient mysteries, ancient apocalypse, history, archaeology

Id: SCT526LQp84

Length: 11min 49sec (709 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 05 2024