More Creepy Archaeological Discoveries

today's video is brought to you by magic spoon now if you've watched this channel for a while you'll know that i'm a fan of cereal because cereal is great obviously but it's not always great for you there were several years where i just never ate cereal because why just has too much sugar and i don't need that in my life look i don't have the healthiest iron in the world but generally i keep in okay shape by just not eating tons of unnecessary sugar anyway along comes a magic spoon and they're like yo simon check this out no sugar four net grams of carbs 14 grams of protein yes ah basically i don't know how they do it i just see it as magic but they somehow made delicious cereal also healthy for you i don't know much about protein and carbs other than the former is good the ladder is probably not so good but you know the zero sugar had me sold and like i said it tastes amazing this is probably my favorite flavor what we've got here peanut butter there's also the fruity flavor there's also choco which is down there but it's fallen over and i can't reach it it's also keto friendly gluten free low carb gmo free all of that good stuff originally there were the four flavors cocoa fruited frosty and blueberry and then they also added peanut butter and cinnamon which are probably my two favorite flavors i have no cinnamon left even though they sent me a ton of it anyway just click the link below or go to magicspoon.com forward slash slide projects to grab a variety pack and try it all out and use the code side projects to get five dollars off also there's 100 happiness guaranteed if you don't like it you get your money back amazing and now today's video [Music] hello everybody welcome to another episode of side projects this one is creepy archaeological discoveries part two it's just like part one just with more discoveries understood let's get into it [Music] three decades ballroy was officially excavated in the mid-1990s fishermen on western australia's beacon island inadvertently uncovered human bones while digging a drain in a makeshift outhouse local historians quickly determined that they were left over from a particularly nightmarish maritime disaster that occurred more than three centuries before and later excavations revealed that though some of the dead had apparently perished naturally due to drowning exposure and dehydration others met decidedly unnatural ends some of the skeletons had limbs that had been hacked off and at least one was missing the top of its skull thanks to a powerful sword blow administered while the living person was kneeling before his executioner all were buried haphazardly in mass graves but what happened immediately after the shipwreck is even more disturbing than the remains themselves at 150 feet 46 meters long the dutch east india company ship batavia was a state-of-the-art ship for its day bristling with dozens of cast iron cannons and loaded to the gills with a heavy cargo of coins weapons and building materials the vessel was making its maiden voyage between the netherlands and java in 1629. all told the ship carried more than 300 people including soldiers crewmen company officers and scores of colonists bound for new lives in the tropics the journey would probably take between six and nine months but conditions on board were exceptionally harsh quarters were cramped the food and water was barely palatable and the sanitation was well abysmal in fact things had gotten so bad that tiny seeds of discontent that had been sown just months into the voyage had grown so rapidly that they threatened to derail the whole affair in fact one particularly conniving and disgruntled company official called geronimous cornelis along with another senior crewman had been planning to arrest control of the ship from commander francisco pelzert for some time that said their plans took on a new urgency when batavia struck morning reef in late june though most made it safely to beacon island they were only able to salvage a little flower that hadn't been inundated with seawater the dire situation called for immediate action and pal's art and a small detachment set off in one of the ship's longboats to find fresh water or barring that to make the nearly 1 600 mile journey to jakarta for help no water was found and after an epic 33-day sea voyage they finally reached their destination little more than leathery skin and protruding bones while parsart was away cornelius had taken charge ordered the meager supplies and ordered his henchmen to carry out dozens of killings though some were committed out of sheer rage others were intended to stifle dissent and shockingly the victims included women and children as well but for the survivors death may have been preferable because their existence had been reduced to equal parts exposure malnourishment and abject terror all while surrounded by shallow graves containing the remains of their murdered loved ones thankfully much of the misery came to an end when a number of men capitalizing on their superior numbers overpowered and restrained cornelis and his co-conspirators when palzel returned in a rescue ship nearly three months after departing he was confronted with a horror of epic proportions all told between 115 and 125 survivors have been murdered cornelis and some of the worst offenders had their hands hacked off before being hanged while others were left on the island to fend for themselves after last survivors departed but though shocking and tragic the beacon island discovery offered researchers the rare chance to compare what they found with a first-hand account written by pelzert himself after the event surprisingly there's no evidence or mention of cannibalism but thanks to dna extracted from some of the bones researchers learned much about the lives and ethnicities of those unfortunate souls who perished in unimaginable circumstances they found that most had been relatively healthy in the years before setting sail and that they came from all over europe and scandinavia at the time of the voyage europe was mired in the 30 years war and the netherlands had been fighting for independence from spain for more than six decades as dangerous and uncertain as the endeavour was many war-weary families viewed distant colonies like the dutch east indies as alluring opportunities from which they stood to make small fortunes though it rarely worked out that way for good reason beacon island is often referred to as batavia's graveyard though some locals prefer an even more macabre moniker murder ireland [Music] ancient mass graves containing dozens or hundreds of bodies are both unsettling and oddly intriguing but there's something particularly eerie about ones containing the remains of murdered children with mutilated teeth cracked craniums and eerily intertwined skeletons like those uncovered at a 2 400 plus year old grave recently unearthed in suburban mexico city the tlaupan site dates back to the mayan pre-classic period that began before a thousand bc and lost it to around 250 a.d the area around mexico city may have been inhabited for more than 500 years before the 10 clauban children were sacrificed and buried and though it wasn't the first grave discovered in the area it is the only one in which so many deceased were buried together of the ten remains found eighteen young adults are teenagers one was a child probably between three and five and the other was an infant just a month or two old though the children were buried with bowls pots and cookware to aid them in their journey through the afterlife it must have been a small consolation because their bones showed signs of severe trauma associated with ritualistic sacrifice by knife the discovery was made by experts from mexico's national institute of anthropology on the grounds of a prominent local university just five feet 1.5 meters below the floor of a well-used lecture hall the grave is also unique in that the children's bones were situated in a spiral pattern that has archaeologists and historians scratching their heads in addition their bodies were linked so forearm bones were placed under the spines of those buried on either side of them although mayan culture is shrouded in myth law and unanswered questions it's well known that they were terrified of death and believed that it was caused by souls being stolen by evil spirits that resided in an infernal underworld they also believed that the body and soul were bound at birth and that only death could separate them permanently mayans may have spent large portions of each day worshiping and they apparently saw child sacrifice as a way to appease the pickle gods who lorded over everything from the weather and human fertility to war and crops as they saw it without these sacrifices nothing stood between them and total destruction in a harsh world that they struggled to understand and over which they had little control researchers are confident that fines like clowpan will eventually shed more light on the complex and misunderstood culture in which ghoulish death rituals like those portrayed in mel gibson's apocalypto were relatively common [Music] located approximately 160 miles 250 kilometers north of lima in peru's andean highlands chavin de juantar may have been the birthplace of an ancient culture that dominated the region for as many as seven centuries before declining somewhere between 500 and 300 bc but though some claim that the civilization sprang from chaven exclusively it's now considered likely that it was a collection of multiple regional cultures that came together for protection stability and prosperity at more than 10 000 feet above sea level the 36 acre archaeological wonder is a somewhat lesser-known unesco world heritage site but at its height it was a sight to behold thanks to its location at the confluence of multiple rivers and overland trade routes between the interior jungle and coast chev andrew traders craftsmen and artisans from far and wide and their wares included everything from textiles and ceramics to gold jewelry and hunting implements fashioned from wood and animal bone characterized by a number of stepped multi-story buildings built from rafe stone stacked like bricks the site's true center both literally and metaphorically was its interior open-air plaza where most of the ceremonies were held and though relatively mundane offerings like crops and fish were probably regularly presented to the gods human beings were as well and the ghastly and bizarre rituals may have included herbal intoxicants primitive sound amplification devices and even light shows now if you're having trouble envisioning this scenario think of this as a peter frampton concert with a sacrificial murder at the end the main temple and surrounding buildings were crisscrossed with a maze of interior rooms and tunnels called galleries capable of transmitting and amplifying both sound and light and researchers theorized that during sacrifices and other ceremonies the priests may have lit fires and spoke or chanted from inside but though they were hidden from gawking spectators their bright lights and thundering voices may have radiated our wood with immense brightness and volume making it appear as though deities resided inside the god or gods to whom the temple was constructed are represented on the granite lands on or great spear a towering sandstone slab depicting a stylized face with large gazing eyes menacing fangs and talons for fingers of its two hands one points upwards towards the heavens while the other is lowered to the earth representing the innate connection between the two the deity is a hodgepodge of human and animal features as represented in its likeness to revered indigenous animals like jaguars came and snakes and jungle birds perhaps most tellingly however this carving also has a channel running through its head which may have been a pathway or receptacle for what archaeologists refer to as liquid offerings or more clearly put blood which would have come from the bodies of the recently sacrificed lovely barely protruding from the ground amidst volcanic rock ridges near lake turkana in northwest kenya the lothagam north pillar site is a nearly unnoticeable burial mound constructed approximately 5000 years ago lothagam is the region's largest and oldest monumental cemetery but though it's not particularly impressive compared to other more well-known burial sites around the world it was built by a society that most historians had previously thought were little more than nomadic hunter-gatherers long overlooked by archaeologists uninterested in sub-saharan african antiquities lotha gam offers a unique look into the rise and fall of an east african culture that was far more advanced than previously thought during the african humid period when the mound was constructed the region around lake turkana was much different than it is today rain and fresh water were plentiful the lake may have been nearly three times larger and the locals subsisted on fishing hunting and gathering comparatively speaking it was a time of plenty but as it got hotter and drier the lake shrank and what had been a relatively stable existence changed in just a few generations now families needed to wander farther than ever before to find what they needed to survive which translated into more danger and uncertainty less centralization and ultimately less interaction with one another but despite this great dispersal evidence suggests that the small migratory groups regularly returned a latha gam to bury their dead for as many as five centuries after it was built due to bureaucracy cultural considerations and the painstaking nature of the work only a small portion of the nearly 8 000 square foot site has been excavated to date three dozen individual remains have been discovered but based on burial density and the length of time the site was used there may be nearly 600 more interred within the shallow mound hewn about three feet into the poorest local bedrock the builders originally cleared an area about half the size of an american football field and sandstone slabs were hauled from near the lake to shore up the walls though small it indicates that from the very beginning the site was planned to be a cemetery this is interesting because in much of the ancient world cemeteries tended to evolve as one person was buried in an open plot then another and another until the sights just officially became a cemetery lothagam was a designated burial site from the very outset however a sort of communal and ancestral monument that served as a place where relatives could regularly return to strengthen old bonds lothagam is also unique in that its individual pits contain the remains of men and women and boys and girls of all ages all of whom were buried together which indicates that it was a relatively non-hierarchical society but though the corpses were all buried together some were adorned with particularly ornate items like bracelets and necklaces made with everything from stone and beads and emerald green amazonite to ivory and hippo tusks if none of this sounds particularly creepy there was one particularly eerie discovery an ornate headdress studded with more than 400 gerbil teeth which probably belong to someone of wealth or stature nothing is a flex quite like gerbil teeth on a sad side note approximately a hundred gerbils gave their life to make that headdress [Music] though they're not sure why archaeologists think that multiple unused burial pits were filled with dirt around 4 000 years ago after which the exterior mound was created with rubble and rocks in the end this could mean that the site had lost its cultural significance or perhaps that the climate had become so harsh and inhospitable that making the return track every time someone passed away was just no longer worth the effort [Music] stretching nearly 75 miles 118 kilometers across england between the north and irish seas hadrian's wall was built in the early 2nd century a.d to protect the more subdued south from northern brits who weren't thrilled about having a foreign army ensconced on their beloved island studded with barracks forts and imposing parapets and occupied by roman legionaries the wall and the area immediately around were hotbeds of conflict during much of the era in what was then roman britannia multiple 20th and 21st century excavations have revealed a number of interesting facts one of which is a small bronze votive hand discovered near the fort at vindalanda cast from nearly 5.5 pounds 2.5 kilograms of almost solid bronze the amazingly lifelike child-sized hand may have been an offering made by a military commander before commencing a large operation but that's not necessarily the case vote of hands and other body part-shaped offerings were commonly found in temples as well as in places where sickness injury and death were common like hospitals and frontier thoughts voter figures were long-standing greco-roman traditions by which offerings were made to the gods of healing and medicine so that they might bless or repair damaged and infirm body parts like hands feet arms legs researchers updated the hand to sometime in the early 3rd century which coincides with a particularly chaotic and dangerous time that was characterized by conflict rebellion and all-around strife during which grisly wounds would have been common in addition to its size it's interesting that the hand was apparently casually discarded in a ditch and that it probably once resided in a nearby temple devoted to jupiter dolochinus a prominent god in roman mystery cult of eastern origin the jupiter tunis cult was relatively secretive and only open to those who'd taken an oath and undergone a rite of initiation that means that little is known about its core beliefs and practices though at the time its members were spread across the near and far east and much of europe as well unfortunately the cults either died out or went underground before the empire's official adoption of christianity with some historians now believing that it was done not out of spiritual conviction but to appease unruly subjects in the middle east who'd become proverbial thorns in her own side measuring just four inches from wrist to pink dips the open hand originally had an attachment fitted into the palm but though missing it was probably a lightning bolt symbolizing virility power well-being and protection as dwyer was discarded in the ditch nobody's really sure but it may have been tossed aside after the fort was overrun by invaders if the romans had fled or retreated during battle the victors could have made off with the most practical items like weapons and food and they may have viewed the weird bronze hand as little more than a curiosity that just wasn't worth cutting off whatever the case the vindalander hand offers an interesting glimpse into the complex world of roman religion and mythology especially as it relates to the military men who often spent years away from their homes and families during which time they experienced untold hardships loneliness and brutal combat it's clear that some of them believed that their reward for service would come in the afterlife in a place called elysium where the dead were blessed by the gods and treated to eternal peace rest and happiness but the practical men that they were while still among the living they obviously wanted the gods to help them keep all their limbs and appendages in good working order so i really hope you found that video interesting if you did please do hit that thumbs up button below don't forget to subscribe and thank you for watching [Music] hello there yes i'm still here just to give a quick plug at the end of today's video to something new that i'm working on called into the shadows it's a brand new channel from me and if the name doesn't give it away it's very much focused on the darker side of things early episodes of code things such as how we fight the world's deadliest disease how the congo suffered the worst of colonialism and how the nazis escaped europe to south america so if you'd like to explore the darker side of history and science and humanity please check out into the shadows there is a link below and goodbye for now

Channel: Sideprojects

Views: 1,137,383

Keywords: megaprojects, construction, engineering, projects

Id: rjoMz3-lNfM

Length: 19min 15sec (1155 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 18 2021