10: Discovering Atlantis An unbelievable discovery in Greece just about flipped the world on its head. The discovery had to do with the lost city of Atlantis. Archaeologists searching the seabed off the coast of Zakynthos, a popular Greek tourist island, discovered a field of debris stretching on for hundreds of yards in every direction. This large piece of seafloor seemed to be littered with the ruins of some kind of ancient city. In fact, the area is so big that it didn’t make sense for the ruins to be anything other than a huge city. After the ruins were discovered, scientists raced to investigate.
Simon Brown, an expert in 3D modeling, took almost 4000 high-res photos of the seafloor tracking each one with GPS accuracy. Then, the images were strung together to create a 3-dimensional image of the seafloor. With this technology, researchers were able to look at exactly how the ancient city would have looked. Unfortunately, it didn’t really turn out the way they wanted. According to the reveal on National Geographic, there was no city at all.
Once they had a 3D model of the seafloor, it became apparent that the pieces of rubble weren't actually stones from a lost town. Instead, they were geological formations called concretions, huge blocks of rock formed by underwater volcanic activity. Basically, not Atlantis. Still, scientists were close. Using the same technology, they may still be able to map other parts of the nearby seafloor, potentially finding the true location of Atlantis once and for all.
9: A Woman’s Silver Crown In Spain, a tomb was unearthed unlike any other. The person found in the tomb is so mysterious – so captivating, that they may change the way we look at Bronze Age Europe. Specifically, the way we look at the power of women in European societies. The discovery takes us back 3700 years ago to the Iberian Peninsula. A man and woman were buried together inside a joint tomb. Their tomb was built beneath the floor of La Almoloya, an ancient hilltop complex in what is today Murcia. It's one of the most famous archaeological sites that can be directly linked to the El Argar culture. These people controlled an area roughly the size of Belgium from between 2200 BC to 1500 BC. Inside this tomb, archaeologists found 29 artifacts.
The artifacts were of extreme value, suggesting the people buried here were elite members of society. But here's where history starts to change. The woman actually may have been the more important one in the tomb, even more, important than the man. Archaeologists came to this conclusion thanks to a silver crown found still clinging to her skull. She was also surrounded by emblems of power, her hair fastened with silver, her earlobes plugged with silver, and even a silver bracelet on her elbow. This is in stark contrast to the man, who had pretty much nothing on him. Archaeologists are now starting to wonder if perhaps women didn’t hold more prestigious positions in the El Argar culture than previously believed.
8: Noah’s Ark Archaeologists believe they have just discovered the very real resting place of Noah’s Ark. Yes, I'm talking about the great ship from the Bible, the one that Noah used in the Book of Genesis when God flooded the world. Scientists have long dismissed the story of Noah as nothing but a legend – but if these archaeologists are to be believed, the story was true.
The archaeologists, Andrew Jones, and Dr. Fethi Ahmet Yuksel, from Istanbul University, told the media that they used 3D scans to identify Noah’s Ark. They claim there's an object hidden under the mountain the exact length that the ark is described in the Bible, measuring about 450 feet. The final resting place of the great ark is supposedly in Turkey, high up in the mountains. Satellite images appear to show an unmistakable boat-shaped depression on the top of a mountain. It looks as though the ark crashed and then was covered by soil and nature over thousands of years. The obvious boat shape is still visible, though only from the sky.
At this point, it's important to note that no physical evidence of the boat has been found. Archaeologists are simply claiming that the ark is under there somewhere. Nobody's actually started digging in the ground to find it. In fact, people have been searching for the ark ever since the year 275; and as of today, no one has ever found it.
7: The Cave of the Tayos The Cave of the Tayos became famous back in 1976 when a great expedition was financed by the government of Ecuador and the United Kingdom. This particular cave is high up in the Andes mountains, in the southeast of Ecuador. Its entrance is a vertical pit that goes down about 210 feet. Before the great expedition, an Argentinian man named Juan Moricz had descended into the cave and returned with stories of a mysterious plague that seemed to show inscriptions of the entire history of humanity.
This immediately sparked theories that the cave was once used by extraterrestrials, by an unknown civilization that possessed all the knowledge of humanity – or something similar. Moricz also claimed there were libraries made of metal books, unusual sculptures he couldn’t describe, and mounds of gold. As a result of the outrageous claims, the expedition of 1976 was put together. It was one of the largest cave explorations ever undertaken at the time.
Over 100 people were involved, including former astronaut Neil Armstrong. But unfortunately, they never found any of the things that Moricz claimed to have found. When they came up empty-handed, Moricz claimed they had actually explored the wrong cave and that the real one would remain a secret. In the end, nobody can confirm the existence of anything other than rocks and critters inside the cave. Moricz was also far too suspicious after the expedition.
All credibility on his part was lost. Still, it's interesting to think that somewhere below the surface of our planet is a mysterious cave with all the secrets of humanity simply waiting to be found. What do you think? Did Moricz make the whole thing up, or is there a cave filled with wonders that remains hidden?
6: VIP Seating Archaeologists in Turkey have discovered that VIP status has been around for quite a long time. This bizarre discovery could change the way we look at our ancestors, seeing them not as primitive people living in medieval society, but just as status-conscious and concerned with their own importance as we are. Archaeologists were investigating the ancient city of Pergamon, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The city holds remains from the Romans, the Byzantines, and even the more recent Ottomans.
But it was the ruin of an arena from 1800 years ago, built by the Romans, that caught the attention of researchers. They discovered that some of the best seats in the arena had names carved into them. The seats appeared to have been reserved, in an arena that could hold anywhere between 15,000 and 50,000 people. This arena just so happened to replicate the much larger Roman Colosseum. And like the Colosseum, all members of the public were welcome to attend the games. But those who were considered more important had their very own box seats.
And while this isn't particularly surprising – after all, the more important members of society have always been treated a bit better than the rest of the rabble – it’s quite fascinating to see it firsthand in archaeological discovery.
5: Lost Mayan City A teenager has made a shocking breakthrough involving a lost Mayan city using Google Maps! The 15-year-old is a resident of Quebec, Canada. He used satellite images and star charts to uncover what has turned out to be one of the largest Mayan settlements ever constructed. In a shocking turn of events, the youngster has also hypothesized that the locations of all Mayan cities correspond to stars in the night sky.
He managed to figure this out by using 22 Mayan star maps and overlaying them with images from Google Maps. At least 117 major Mayan cities exactly match the brightest stars in the sky. This is incredible because the teenager has solved a mystery that scientists didn't even know existed. He's figured out exactly why the Mayans set their cities up the way they did; they had been mimicking the stars. As for the major city he's discovered, it's located along the border of Mexico and Belize. He's named it K’aak Chi, which translates to “Fire Mouth.” Nobody has actually put boots on the ground yet to investigate the potential ruins, but judging by the satellite images, this could turn out to be a major archaeological site that will take years to excavate.
4: The Cycladic Bronze Age New excavations on the remote Greek island of Keros have revealed that this tiny piece of land may have been significantly more important in history than previously thought. Archaeologists investigating the small settlement of Dhaskalio, occupied during the Bronze Age about 4500 years ago, have found that the civilization that lived here was incredibly advanced. Until just recently, the island was primarily known for ritual activities that went on during the Bronze Age. But thanks to the excavations, they've found evidence that almost the entire island was covered in megalithic structures.
Even more amazing is that the stone used to build these structures was brought across nearly 5 miles of mountains. According to archaeologists at the University of Cambridge, these people imported over 1000 tons of stone to build their enormous structures. Keep in mind this was about 1000 years before the Mycenaeans even existed. For those who don't know, the Mycenaeans are considered the original Greeks, the first major civilization in mainland Greece.
But the islanders of Keros seem to have been just as advanced as the people that came 1000 years after them. This has led archaeologists to speculate that maybe the Keros islanders were really the original Greeks and that their great cities and monuments have sat undiscovered all these years, until these most recent excavations.
3: Archaic Humans A previously unknown human species have been discovered at the bottom of a sinkhole. This amazing discovery happened in central Israel, near the ancient city of Ramla. It was here where humans hunted prehistoric aurochs, horses, and deer over 140,000 years ago. According to Rachel Sarig with Tel Aviv University, the human fossils found in the sinkhole could be ancestors of Neanderthals. They've been dubbed the “Nesher Ramla Homo type.”
And believe it or not, this new species of human may have bred with the original European Neanderthal before humans migrated out of Africa and the Middle East and into Europe. To be quite honest, it's a bit of a confounding mystery. Here are the other facts. Archaeologists discovered tools at the bottom of the sinkhole that is quite similar to ones crafted by modern humans. Researchers believe the similarities suggest the Nesher Ramla Homos interacted with more modern humans, copying their methods on how to make tools.
But for some reason that scientists still don't know, this other group of humans vanished abruptly and left almost no evidence that they ever existed behind. While this fantastic discovery may not completely rewrite the history books, it does make us reimagine what the world looked like over 100,000 years ago. It seems like every year a new type of human is found, making it seem as if the world was overrun by dozens of offshoots of human beings, all competing to be the dominant life form.
2: Egyptian Texts & the Bible The Amarna Tablets are a series of hundreds of clay tablets from the 14th century BC. They were uncovered in Tell el-Amarna back in 1887, though they were written 3000 years earlier during the reign of King Amenhotep III of Egypt. The tablets have fascinated archaeologists for decades because not only do they shine a light on the everyday political landscape of ancient Egypt, they also seem to be directly linked to the Bible.
This is because the tablets provide some of the earliest mentions in the world of Hebrews and the people who were inhabiting what is today Israel. Keep in mind that a lot of theologists consider the Bible to not only be a religious document but a historical account of factual events happening in the Middle East over a long period. Tom Meyer, a professor at the Shasta Bible College in California, says the Amarna Tablets are directly linked to the historical narrative told in the Bible. There are approximately 382 Amarna Tablets, each of which is about the size of your hand. The tablets show correspondence between the Egyptian pharaoh and dignitaries in places like Babylon and Assyria.
The correspondences go on for about 20 years, written in the ancient Akkadian language. Within the passages are references to a mysterious group of people referred to as Habiru. Experts like Tom Meyer believe the Habiru are actually the Hebrews. If correct, historians would need to take a closer look at the stories in the Bible. More and more, archaeological discoveries are proving certain stories in the Bible to be accounts of events in history. While obviously dramatized, it’s looking more and more like the Bible is indeed a historical tome, like the world’s oldest history book.
1: The First Farmers In the Middle East, archaeologists have found proof of the first farmers in the world, changing the course of history yet again. The discovery actually goes back to the 1960s, when the United States ran. The program involved covert reconnaissance flights across the globe, with the US taking photographs of areas across China and the Middle East that they deemed a security threat.
Some of these images led to the discovery of the first farmers to ever work the soil. It was Dr. Jesse Casana from Dartmouth University who spent years poring over the photographs. In 2007, he uncovered dozens of previously unidentified settlements in the Middle East. One of them, called Tell Brak, is believed to be 4000 years older than the pyramids of Egypt and possibly the first real city ever built. In recent years, archaeologists have begun excavating Tell Brak in hopes of finding out its secrets. Science tells us that around the time Tell Brak was built, an increase in rainfall and a temperature rise led to suddenly fertile lands.
This may have triggered a food revolution, at which point hunting stopped and the people became farmers. They cultivated plants, took care of animals, and built settlements. Tell Brak likely went on to become the most significant city anywhere in the region and the first city on Earth populated by farmers. Once this theory is confirmed beyond a doubt, chances are it will need to be added to the history books! Which of these amazing discoveries do you think really has the potential to change history? Let me know in the comments.
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Reviewed by Muneeb Awan
on
November 18, 2021
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