Top 10 Greatest Archaeological Discoveries Ever

finally they hoped there could be evidence of the historic jesus welcome to watch mojo and today we're counting down our picks for the top 10 archaeological discoveries as a result the angle of the hip looks nothing like a chimps but a lot like ours its scale is unprecedented and now some say they have found it for this list we're looking at the most incredible discoveries archaeologists have ever made we are excluding things that weren't discovered because they were never lost in the first place like the great pyramids or machu picchu those are great sites but local people have always known they were there let us know in the comments below which discovery you found most interesting number 10. tootin commons tomb tutor car moon's burial chamber is filled with magical decoration but beside it the rest of the tomb is left bare this simple tomb is unlike any other royal tomb in the valley the valley of the kings is the final resting place of many ancient egyptian pharaohs but throughout its history a number of tombs have fallen victim to grave robbers this is an egyptian red list of the missing pieces we are already missing from our museums and the sites and everywhere in egypt and we give it to interbol to stop any piece of them if they're moving from a country to a country tootin commons tomb was different remarkably though grave robbers did break in shortly after it was initially sealed up most of its contents were intact when archaeologists found it in 1922. over 5 000 priceless artifacts including golden statues in the burial chamber the pharaoh's mummy wearing a golden death mask was placed inside a coffin made of more than 200 pounds of solid gold today tootin common's gilded mask makes him arguably the most famous and recognizable pharaoh in history considering tooting common only reigned for about 10 years and died between the young ages of 18 and 19 that is quite the legacy this modest tomb was jammed full of all the royal possessions that we usually buried with a king it can't have been meant to be all jumbled up like that people are just trying to cram as much stuff as possible along with the mask the tomb also contained a statue of anubis the god of the dead and a dagger made from a fallen meteor number nine the antikythera mechanism if it hadn't been discovered when it was in 1901 no one would possibly believe that it could exist because it's so sophisticated this mysterious object was found submerged in grecian waters at the turn of the 20th century located inside an ancient shipwreck the strange device was already 2 000 years old when it was found and despite being eroded by the sea for all that time it was still eventually identified as the world's oldest computer finally another century after its discovery and we now know definitively what it did it was a device used to chart the positions of celestial bodies so that the ancient greeks knew when eclipses would happen some have argued that it's so complex the greeks couldn't have made it at all there are even some who say it must have been created by aliens it took a 3d reconstruction of the entire device in 2021 to get a better understanding of how it worked though its purpose was suspected for decades number eight lasko in 1940 a young man stumbled across the entrance to a 17 000 year old cave system in the south of france all thanks to his dog on this day he had gone after his dog who had chased a fox or a rabbit when he kicked a stone with his foot and it tumbled down into this little hole and made an echo that brought everyone running lascal cave was quickly excavated and was found to contain hundreds of cave paintings depicting the fauna that lived in rural france thousands of years ago it was one of the most incredible collections of cave paintings ever unearthed but not the only one in neighboring spain the cave of altamira was found between the late 1870s and early 1880s and boasted cave paintings even older than the ones in las go with some dating back 36 000 years the original cave has been closed to preserve its archaeologically important remains in its place a precise replica has been recreated inside this museum both lesko and altamira are major unesco sites in france and spain respectively number 7. lucy when this skeleton was discovered in ethiopia in 1974 it completely changed everything we thought we knew about human evolution when you look at it as a whole there's an amalgam of more primitive and more derived features that had not been seen before the skeleton was dubbed lucy because the team of scientists who found it happened to be listening to lucy in the sky with diamonds during the excavation despite this conventional name lucy was part of a newly described species at the time australopithecus afarensis and was over 3.2 million years old the significance of the discovery has made lucy an important part of modern ethiopian culture lucy became an almost instant celebrity in anthropological circles she didn't look like anything we had ever found before she was something very different and because of that she opened up for us an entire new chapter on human origins 50 years earlier another fossil from a closely related species australopithecus africanus was found in south africa a skull dubbed the tong child today millions of years after the small hominid child met his end its amazing fossil continues to play a crucial role in our understanding of human evolution number six troy for centuries historians debated not only whether the trojan war actually happened but also whether the lost city of troy ever existed at all it's a story that's been told and retold by poets and actors for thousands of years but is it real did the city of troy actually exist the trojan war is the focus of one of ancient greece's most famous epic poems homer's iliad and legendary greek heroes like achilles and odysseus fought in it but troy's location became lost knowledge throughout the 1800s many researchers argued that hisarlek a site in western turkey was probably the elusive city throughout the 20th century scholars have become aware that we can't even be sure that troy is indeed destroyed finally after decades of debate experts came to a consensus that yes his sarlic is in all likelihood troy unfortunately we've yet to find conclusive evidence that the trojan horse existed but troy's identification was hugely important for historians the idea that the greeks would have in fact built a large wooden horse hidden inside it and had it dragged inside of troy is certainly possible but it kind of strains your credulity a little bit that someone really could have pulled that off number five sutton who one of the most remarkable medieval graves anywhere in europe was excavated in england in 1939 well i'd say it's the biggest archaeological discovery ever made in this country so it is an immense responsibility to look after the site but also really what we're trying to do at sutton who is tell more people about it the owner of an estate in suffolk edith pretty enlisted some archaeologists to find out what was underneath the burial mounds on her property what they uncovered was astounding so much so that the story inspired a 2021 film the dig that's a ship [Music] how do you mean a ship that's the ship that's been buried in the mound why would anyone want to bury a ship would i expect because that's a grave the most promising mound contained an entire long ship and innumerable artifacts including pieces of armor made of gold and other anglo-saxon relics though it's one of the uk's most impressive archaeological discoveries it's still not entirely clear whose grave it actually is shortly after the inquest which ruled that all the items found in the sutton hoo burial mound lawfully belonged to edith pretty pretty donated the entire collection to the british museum it's among the most valuable donations of its kind and the collection itself remains at the heart of the museum most evidence suggests it was the final resting place of a famous east anglian king redwald who ruled the region around 1400 years ago number four the terracotta army this is one of the most significant archaeological finds of all time and it was discovered completely by accident and they find some pieces of the pottery they also find the head of the target worries and they the team archaeological team came to this area and they start to uh dig the terracotta army was first uncovered in the shanxi province of western china by a group of farmers in the 1970s the army resides within a tomb constructed over twenty two hundred years ago as the resting place of qin shi huang the first emperor of china which is why it's so elaborate he was its first emperor and his empire became his fortress protected by a great wall the legend says he was a tyrant driven mad by power in the parts we've been able to excavate there are over 8 000 soldiers made out of clay there to guard emperor chin in the afterlife row upon row of warriors hundreds of secret subterranean soldiers all life-sized and built to be immortal but even more astonishing is the fact that the entire necropolis is believed to be almost 40 square miles in size with most of the site hidden in vaults that aren't yet accessible number 3 the dead sea scrolls written mostly in hebrew the dead sea scrolls are some of the oldest abrahamic religious texts in existence a young shepherd is herding goats in qumran near the dead sea passing a cave he throws a stone to scare a wayward animal back to the flock and hears something shatter curious he enters the cavern and discovers ten clay jars [Music] holding seven ancient scrolls they were discovered in a cave in the west bank in the mid-1940s but in the decades since we've continually found more and more scrolls ready to be translated in a handful of additional caves the scrolls themselves talk of the battles of the great teacher of righteousness who led the community into the wilderness with the teacher of lies the scrolls are so significant because they've allowed historians and theologians to chart the development of the bible much more accurately and provided new information about the dawn of christianity thousands of years ago as well as the history of judaism and the holy land now we're becoming much more attuned to how very jewish jesus was very devout jew and that's the heart of christianity they are unquantifiably important and still have a lot to teach us there's really no way of predicting what the next discovery is is going to be or what it's going to come from i think it's fairly reasonable to guess there will be something surely there will be something number two the rosetta stone for centuries archaeologists had absolutely no idea how to decipher ancient egypt's complex hieroglyphics jean-francois champollion in france and thomas young in britain both believe that the rosetta stone as it was called held the key to deciphering hieroglyphs but the rosetta stone did not yield its secrets easily without a starting point they were unable to understand the inscriptions on egyptian monuments and artifacts but that all changed with the discovery of the long-lost rosetta stone in 1799 an enormous slab of stone inscribed with everything needed to start translating this seemingly insignificant rock would forever change our understanding of mankind's past the text it contained wasn't actually all that interesting but the same passage was written three times in different languages and one of those languages was ancient greek the greek section told of the tablet having the same information written in all three while greek was easily understood several obstacles stood in the way of using it to translate the two egyptian scripts by using the greek which is still widely understood by researchers we were able to decipher the hieroglyphics and unlock the secrets of ancient egyptian writing before we unveil our top pick here are some honorable mentions let's see the iceman in 1991 betsy's body was found naturally mummified in the alps 5300 years after he died the library of ashurbanipal these clay tablets were found in the 50s and contain the oldest extant work of literature nasus this palace is over 3000 years old and was the hub of crete's ancient minoan civilization this was an incredible structure and befitting one of the most powerful kings of the bronze age it's built with no expense spared richard iii's grave a parking lot in england was found to be the final resting place of richard iii in 2012. and for almost 530 years this is where he lay downtown leicester in a car park with people driving over him parking on him dripping oil from their motors over the last resting place of the monarch the madaba map the oldest surviving map of the holy land this floor mosaic was excavated in the 1880s [Music] before we continue be sure to subscribe to our channel and ring the bell to get notified about our latest videos you have the option to be notified for occasional videos or all of them if you're on your phone make sure you go into your settings and switch on notifications number 1. pompeii among the most famous ruins in the world pompeii was destroyed by a devastating eruption from mount vesuvius in the year 79 a.d the village was left forgotten until the 16th century over 1500 years later because it had been completely buried underneath volcanic ash it took just 18 hours for pompeii to be buried under millions of tons of volcanic ash and pumice an entire living city wiped out but that ash kept pompeii largely intact when it was finally excavated with people frozen in place where they died during the disaster the point is we have a great opportunity here because we have a snapshot of the society we might have slaves we might have upper-class people and we can find out if there have been big differences today it's one of italy's most popular tourist attractions and a tremendous source of roman history as tragic as the story is pompeii has taught us more about roman life than many other ancient archaeology sites anywhere in the world pompeii has regained its pride and continues to share its stories with people from all around the world do you agree with our picks check out this other recent clip from watchmojo and be sure to subscribe and ring the bell to be notified about our latest videos you

Channel: WatchMojo.com

Views: 1,592,697

Keywords: Education, Facts, History, ancient, ancient history, antikythera mechanism, archaeological discoveries, archaeological finds, archaeology, cave art, dead sea scrolls, historical discoveries, historical finds, knossos, lascaux, library of ashurbanipal, list, madaba map, otzi the iceman, pompeii, pyramids, richard III’s grave, rosetta stone, ruins, sutton hoo, terracotta army, top 10, troy, tutankhamun's tomb, watchmojo

Id: w5FXivLbsAo

Length: 16min 31sec (991 seconds)

Published: Tue May 25 2021