From lost cities to boiling rivers, here are
eight of the most mysterious things found in the jungle. 8. The Lost City of Giants Deep in the Ecuadorian jungle, explorers discovered
a lost city in 2012. However, it certainly wasn’t any normal
ancient city. It is known as the “Lost City of Giants.” According to reports, upon arrival, the explorers
found a set of massive structures, the largest being a 79-meter-tall by 79-meter-wide (260
ft x 260 ft) pyramid of unusual shape. At the top of the pyramid is a flat, polished
stone, believed to have been a sacrificial altar. The magnitude of these buildings is what gives
the city its name and leads many archaeologists to believe that giants did build and inhabit
the city, although many others remain skeptical on that point. What makes this discovery even more peculiar
is not just the buildings themselves but also the tools and artifacts found there. Many oversized, manufactured tools were said
to have been discovered, allegedly so big that it would be impossible for humans to
use them. The team that discovered the city believes
that the tools are a crucial piece of evidence that in the distant past, giants once walked
the Earth. 7. Maricoxi The Maricoxi are essentially the sasquatches
of South America. They are reported to be huge, ape-like beings
that can stand up to 3.7 meters (12 ft) tall. Although they appear primitive, they’re
said to be fairly intelligent, wielding bows and arrows and even living in villages. According to British explorer Colonel Percival
H. Fawcett, who allegedly encountered the creatures while mapping out the jungles of
South America in 1914, they were extremely hairy and lived north of a tribe called the
Maxubi. They could only speak in grunts and were extremely
hostile toward humans. In the colonel’s book, Lost Trails, Lost
Cities, he describes how he and his men were nearly attacked by the beasts when they got
close to their village. However, they were able to keep the beasts
away by firing their guns into the ground by the creatures’ feet, sending them running
in terror. In 1925, Fawcett disappeared along with all
his men while on an expedition to find a lost city. Theories suggest that they were killed by
local tribes or died of starvation. However, some say they were killed by the
Maricoxi, although there is no evidence to back this up. 6. Boiling River When he was only a boy, Andrés Ruzo, a geophysicist,
heard a legend from his grandfather. This legend was about how the conquistadors
went in search of El Dorado, the city of gold, deep in the Amazonian jungles. The fortunate few survivors of the expedition
returned with all sorts of stories, ranging from man-eating snakes, jungle people with
poison darts, trees bigger than they’d ever seen, and a boiling river capable of instantly
killing anyone who would fall in its waters. This story remained with Ruzo into his adulthood. For his PhD, he decided to make Peru’s first
detailed geothermal map. Boiling streams do exist. They are located near volcanoes or other geothermal
hotspots. The Amazonian basin is nowhere near such places,
and the existence of a boiling river would be next to impossible. However, as fate would have it, his aunt,
of all people, was familiar with the boiling river. Not only had she been there before, but she
was friends with the river shaman’s wife. She took Ruzo there, some 440 miles away from
any volcanoes, and deep within the Peruvian jungle. The river itself is about 82 feet wide and
20 feet deep in some places, and for a distance of about 4 miles, its waters are close to
boiling point. This site is known as Mayantuyacu, and is
considered sacred by the natives. They use its waters for everything from cooking,
brewing tea, or washing. Because Mayantuyacu is nowhere near a volcano,
there isn’t a simple answer as to where the heat comes from. The best explanation so far, is that this
water comes from far away, as far as the glaciers high up in the Andes Mountains. Then it goes through an immense network of
fissures within the mountains themselves, then deep underground where it’s heated,
only to come back out in this place, making this stretch of the river boil. 5. The Stone Spheres of Costa Rica Ever since the late 1930s, people have been
discovering strange stone spheres scattered all across southern Costa Rica. In order to make room for banana plantations,
farmers began clearing the jungle only to come across these round balls ranging in size
from only a few inches to over 6.6 feet in diameter, and weighing in as much as 15 tons. Not knowing what to make of them, the farmers
either pushed them aside with bulldozers or blew them up with dynamite. Word got around that there was gold inside,
so people began destroying them, only to find the rumors to be false. Nevertheless, they did a proper archaeological
investigation soon after their discovery. Some of the stone spheres, which were left
in their original place, were found alongside pottery shards dating from around 300 to 1550
AD. Most of them are believed to have been made
around the year 1000 AD, more than 500 years before the Spanish Conquest. There isn’t much information about their
creators, however, with the culture disappearing soon after the European arrivals. Nevertheless, archaeological evidence points
to the fact that these people lived in scattered settlements no larger than 2,000 people at
a time. They also made use of agriculture and lived
in circular houses. To create these spherical stones, this ancient
civilization probably used a combination of techniques such as controlled fracture, pecking,
and sand grinding. They are also not perfect spheres. But given the technology at the time, they
are impressive nonetheless. Their purpose, on the other hand, is a complete
mystery. 4. Lost Head of Guatemala In 1987, Oscar Rafael Padilla Lara, a doctor
of philosophy, received a photograph of a giant stone head located somewhere in the
jungles of Guatemala. Supposedly, the owner of the land where the
head was located took the photograph during the 1950s. Dr. Padilla went on a search for the head. Unfortunately, however, the head had been
disfigured. From 1960 to 1996, civil war ravaged Guatemala
and it appears that the rebels used the mysterious stone head as target practice. The site is located some 6 miles away from
the small village of La Democracia in southern Guatemala. Dr. Padilla measured what remained of the
monolith to a height of about 20 feet. Since the war was still taking place at the
time, he never returned to the site. Now, there have been other stone heads discovered
in the country, as well as southern Mexico, created by the Olmec civilization during the
first and second millennium BC. What makes this stone head so special, however,
is the fact that it doesn’t look anything like the others. While the Olmec monuments resemble a more
“Negroid” appearance – something that sparked all sorts of wild theories – this
one had a more “Caucasian” look to it, which again ignited alien conspiracies. Some, nevertheless, speculate that this head
was maybe an anomaly in the Olmec period, or maybe it was made by another culture altogether,
before or after the Olmecs themselves. Others believe that, similar to the Easter
Island Statues, there may be a body underneath yet to be discovered. But there is some controversy about the whole
story. Due to the odd nature of the discovery and
the unlikely and seemingly unfortunate series of events surrounding it, some believe the
head to be a hoax. The answer, however, is still hidden within
the Guatemalan jungles. 3. The White City of the Monkey God Ever since the time of Hernan Cortez and his
conquest of the Aztecs, there have been legends of a mighty city somewhere deep in the unexplored
jungles to the south. This city was said to be so wealthy and so
powerful that nobles were eating their food from plates of gold. In charge of this city was an all-powerful
monkey god. The city was believed to have been deserted
in 1520 after a flesh-eating disease broke out and has remained untouched ever since. The inhabitants of the city believed that
it was cursed. In 2011, a team of explorers uncovered the
legendary Lost City of the Monkey God in the Honduran “La Mosquitia” jungle. Among the team of explorers was Douglas Preston,
a world-famous author and explorer who wrote a book on the team’s findings. While the discovery itself was shocking, an
even greater shock came when the team discovered that they had contracted the flesh-eating
disease. They needed immediate treatment and very nearly
lost their faces. Preston explained in an interview, “The
parasite migrates to the mucous membranes of your mouth and your nose and basically
eats them away. Your nose falls off, your lips fall off, and
eventually your face becomes a gigantic, open sore.”While excavating the city, the group
also encountered venomous snakes that had made their way into the camp at night. The team narrowly escaped horrific poisoning. They took a number of artifacts and decided
not to return to the city, feeling it was just too dangerous, even though they’re
sure it still has many secrets to uncover. Perhaps the disastrous obstructions that the
team had to face were the monkey god’s attempts at striking back at the explorers for discovering
the lost city. Either way, it is likely that the city will
hold on to its secrets for a while longer, leaving it a true mystery of jungle. 2. The Amazon Rings A series of ring-shaped ditches can be found
throughout the Brazilian Amazon, which predate the rain forest itself. These structures remain a complete mystery,
and archaeologists are unsure what to make of them. It is suggested that they served as burial
grounds or a form of defense, but no one knows for sure. A further-fetched theory is that they are
marks left by UFOs that once landed there before the forest grew. These blemishes are similar to the Nazca lines
in that there is no confirmed reason as to why they exist. It is assumed that the early people who inhabited
the area constructed these rings. A further question is, “How did the early
men get the tools to create them?” This is also unanswerable, as there is no
proof that any tools sophisticated enough to have created the rings even existed at
the time they were constructed. 1. A Lost Mayan City It’s a fairly well-known fact that the Maya
were good astronomers. The Mayan calendar may ring some bells, though
it is often confused with the Aztec Calendar. Nevertheless, a 15-year-old boy by the name
of William Gadoury, from Quebec, Canada, put the Mayan stargazing ability to the test. He theorized that the ancient pre-Colombian
civilization used to build their cities in accordance with the overhead constellations. By making use of images from the Canadian
Space Agency, Google Earth, as well as other known Maya settlements, he pinpointed and
discovered marks indicating a possible hidden city deep in the Yucatan jungles of Mexico. Nobody actually went there to analyze the
site first hand, mostly because of the dense vegetation, but the images provided by the
satellite point to a possible pyramid complex hidden beneath the overgrown canopy. The satellite discovered linear elements that
resemble a street network, as well as a rectangular shape that may actually be a pyramid. These images could, of course, show nothing
more than natural features interpreted as man-made, but this is highly unlikely. Straight lines and rectangular shapes are
rarely found in nature on their own and are usually a sign of human activity. If proven to be true and there actually is
an undiscovered Maya settlement there, then this technique could prove useful in finding
other lost cities just by looking at the stars. To learn more make sure you watch my video
on lost cities!
