The trouble with history is that it's only as good as the people who write it down.
Thus, we know relatively little about ancient history because written languages didn't exist
for a while.
With that in mind, here are some ancient discoveries we still can't explain.
The Saqqara Bird was discovered in 1898 in a tomb in Saqqara, Egypt.
It's roughly 2,200 years old and it looks like an airplane with a bird's head.
Also, papyrus documents found near the artifact contain the phrase "I want to fly."
That's led some people to hypothesize that the Saqqara Bird is actually a model of a
literal airplane that the ancient Egyptians either built themselves or saw someone else
fly.
And in fact, a couple of people have tested working replicas of the Saqqara Bird and say
that it would've been capable of generating lift.
"Perhaps a full-size Saqqara Bird could've flown."
Sometimes these little projects kind of just prove what everyone wants them to prove, though,
and not every reproduction of the Saqqara bird has had similarly impressive results.
In 2002, a glider designer named Martin Gregorie made a working model of the Saqqara Bird.
It demonstrated that in order to fly the bird would've needed a tail wing stabilizer, which
was missing on the original model.
Even with that addition it was still not particularly aerodynamic.
That would lend weight to the theory that the Saqqara bird was just a toy that coincidentally
happened to resemble an airplane.
The Copper Scroll, or "3Q15," was the last of 15 Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in Cave
3 at the Qumran archaeological site.
It was obviously unique just because it was written on metal, as the rest of the scrolls
were written on parchment or papyrus.
Furthermore, it was written in a different type of Hebrew than the other scrolls.
Also, it wasn't a work of literature like the others, but a list.
Specifically, it was a list of precious metals with a modern estimated value of around one
billion dollars.
Also, it included directions to all 64 locations where the treasure could be found.
Alas, the directions are vague and contain references to obscure locations like "the
old washer's chamber."
To date, no one has been able to figure out where exactly those places are.
Despite many treasure-seeking expeditions, the scroll has thus far failed to turn up
a single hoard of silver and gold.
The Great Serpent Mound in Ohio certainly seems like it must've had some purpose, but
no one has more than a vague theory about what that purpose actually was.
It's 1,300 feet long and 3 feet high, and it might've been built around 1070 A.D.
But it's hard to say for sure since that date is based on radiocarbon testing of some charcoal
found inside the mound.
Also, there's no proof that the charcoal didn't end up there years or even centuries after
the mound was built.
The mound is made out of clay and ash and was reinforced with stone, and it's generally
thought to represent a serpent with an open mouth, which is about to eat an egg or possibly
the Sun.
Other theorists think the mound actually represents an eclipse or phases of the Moon.
Research conducted in 1987 found that part of the mound is aligned to sunset at the summer
solstice, which means it could've served as a calendar.
But it might have had a more sinister purpose, too.
At one time there was a blackened stone monument in the egg part of the mound, and since then
numerous headless skeletons were found buried nearby, as well as ceremonial knives and blackened
stones.
Gobekli Tepe is an 11,000-year-old site full of broken slabs of limestone in southeastern
Turkey.
It now sits in an empty, lifeless landscape, but at one time the land would've been full
of water, fruit and nut trees, and herds of wild animals.
It was the sort of place that would've attracted human nomads, and it's possible that some
of them decided to settle there and build a holy site.
If that theory is true, it would change what we understand about the rise of civilization.
It would mean that humans built temples before they developed agriculture, and we've assumed
for a long time that those things happened in the opposite order.
Not everyone agrees, though.
Some archaeologists insist there's no evidence that anyone ever lived at Gobekli Tepe.
And the carvings on the stones are fantastic and scary.
Spiders, lions, snakes, and scorpions dominate.
This might suggest that Gobekli Tepe wasn't a site of civilization but simply a place
where hunter-gatherers could symbolically confront the dangers of their world.
Since the site predates written language by 6,000 years, though, once again we can only
guess as to what might've actually been going on there 11,000 years ago.
"Inevitably in archaeology if we don't know what something is for, we think of ritual.
But really, it's pure speculation."
The Berkeley Mystery Walls run across the California hills from Berkeley to San Jose.
They're made from randomly sized boulders, some weighing up to a ton, and they run in
strange, broken sections.
Some of the sections are only a few yards in length, while others are up to a half mile
long.
Some are in bizarre, inaccessible places, and none of them are really tall enough to
have a utilitarian purpose.
And since the mere existence of these walls isn't weird enough, they eventually lead to
some strange stone circles and a 200-foot wide spiral that encircles a large boulder.
The first Europeans settlers in California reported that the walls predated their arrival,
and the local Ohlone tribe apparently said that the stones predated their arrival as
well.
Some people think they're a sign that an advanced civilization once lived in the Oakland hills.
Others think they were built by pre-European settlers from Mongolia, or by colonists who
were left there by Sir Francis Drake.
Those are all fun theories, and none of them can be definitively discounted.
"People see these things, and they naturally wonder, 'Well, why is that there?'
They create a story around it, and I think that's a natural human tendency."
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