10: Ancient Merv Merv was once a major oasis-city along the
Silk Road in Central Asia.
Today, it's located in modern Turkmenistan.
But throughout the years, many cultures have claimed Merv for both its riches and strategic
value.
The city originated in prehistory, with archaeological excavations revealing traces of life back
to the third millennium BC.
Eventually, it became part of the Achaemenid Empire and its name was changed to Margu.
Later on, in the 6th century BC, Cyrus the Great of Persia changed the city’s name
to Merv.
Going forward a few years, we get to the point where Alexander the Great conquered the Persian
Empire and all its lands.
He allegedly visited Merv and the locals changed its name to Alexandria for a brief period.
But it was changed back, and then ruled by the people of Seleucid, Bactria, Parthia,
and the Kushans.
It was basically a revolving door of different cultures coming in and out of the city.
From about 220 to 553 AD, Merv became a religious hub for Zoroastrianism, Buddhists, and even
Christians.
It was a thriving metropolis filled with people from across the region, all practicing different
religions in relative harmony.
Then between the 6th and 11th centuries, Merv was the seat of the East Syrian empire.
It was then converted to Islam, and Buddhism and other religions were banished.
Eventually its slow decline began.
Now there's nothing left of this impressive city or its thousands of years of habitation
except for some crumbling ruins in the desert.
Although it is a UNESCO World Heritage site, it’s a far cry from what it once was - a
thriving center of politics and culture that was briefly the largest city in the world.
9: Gardar Gardar is a mysterious ancient place in Greenland
that was used as the seat of the bishop, who overlooked all the Norse settlements in this
part of the world.
A wealthy farmer in the area was the one who came up with the idea to have a separate bishop
for Greenland in the beginning of the 12th century.
The Norwegian king approved the idea, and he sent a bunch of clergymen over from Norway.
A man by the name of Bishop Arnaldur took charge in 1126.
That same year, he started the construction of a great cathedral devoted to St. Nicholas,
the favored patron saint of sailors.
There was a lot of stuff going on around this time with bishops.
The newly established Archdiocese of Nidaros was spreading its influence through all the
islands populated by the Norsemen.
This included the Orkney Islands, the Isle of Man, the Faroe Islands, and Greenland.
But all the religious influence began to slow down in the later part of the 1300s.
By the early 1400s, the Greenland diocese had disappeared completely.
The great cathedral built at Gardar by the church was abandoned and left in ruins.
All that's there today is the settlement of Igaliku and the ruins of the bishop’s church.
Stone foundations, crumbling walls, and the remnants of two huge barns once used for storing
cattle are the last vestiges of the period of the diocese’s influence.
8: The Changbai Mountain Temple At the foot of the Changbai Mountain in China,
there lie the ruins of a royal temple over 800 years old.
It was established in the middle of what we call the Jin Dynasty, between 1115 and 1234.
That makes it the oldest temple ever used by the royal family on this mountain.
The destroyed temple can be found in the ruins of the forsaken town of Baoma, just a few
miles from the summit of the mountain.
Here's why both these places are important.
The Chinese emperors of days past stayed at the town while they performed mountain worship
ceremonies at the temple.
These ceremonies were known as Fengchan in Chinese, and involved the worship of the heavens
and the earth.
Every new emperor would go to the mountain and give praise at the highest peak.
It was a way for them to pay homage to the heavens while receiving the blessing of the
mountain.
This gave legitimacy to the emperor for however many years they would rule.
The most famous mountain where these types of ceremonies took place in China is Mount
Tai.
Nobody even excavated the ruins at Changbai Mountain until 2013.
No one had realized it was an archaeological site, as it was considered a scenic spot for
weekend getaways by the locals.
Now archaeologists have found tablets detailing the emperors who visited the mountain to perform
their rituals.
However, almost all evidence of them is gone.
The mountain hasn’t been used in any royal capacity for centuries.
Imagine learning some scenic picnic or vacation spot you visit was actually a wealth of archeological
knowledge.
What would you do if you made this kind of discovery?
7: Karahan Tepe If you follow archaeology, you will no doubt
have heard of one of the oldest and most mysterious sites in the world: Gobekli Tepe.
But there's another place that we rarely hear about, called Karahan Tepe.
It’s located near the border of Turkey and Syria.
Karahan Tepe is a village about 11,400 years old, and it could very well change history.
Archaeologists have excavated the remains of houses, and huge monuments unlike anything
else built at the time.
It's amazing because the site is over 1400 years older than the invention of agriculture.
It demonstrates that human beings, particularly original hunter-gatherers, were migrating
to permanent settlements much earlier than we ever thought.
According to Necmi Karul from Istanbul University, the discoveries here are literally changing
the perception of every schoolbook in the world.
Life in a settlement didn't happen because of farming or animal husbandry.
It happened separately, and agriculture came after.
This is mind boggling because the consensus until now was that agriculture caused humans
to stop being nomadic.
Now it appears that agriculture is actually the effect rather than the cause of settled
life.
People only figured out how to start growing crops once they started building towns.
The final amazing thing about Karahan Tepe is that it's located less than 30 miles (48.2
km) from Gobekli Tepe.
The evidence suggests that domestication started here in Turkey, over 6000 years before the
Druids of Britain started laying the stones for Stonehenge.
6: Ancient Synagogue Archaeologists working in Israel have discovered
a synagogue from over 2000 years ago in a large Jewish village along the sea of Galilee.
The village is called Migdal, and it was used in the First Jewish War as a rebel base.
That was when the local Jewish population rose up against the might of Rome.
This newest structure is the second synagogue found from the Roman period in the village.
It’s also the first example of two synagogues existing in a single locality from this time.
This was back when the Second Temple of Jerusalem was still standing, before the Romans tore
it down in 70AD.
Practicing Judaism wasn’t really high on the priority list for the Romans.
When they invaded what is today Israel, they tried their hardest to snuff out all the Judaism
they could.
It was one of the reasons the Jewish people fought back so hard against their oppressors
and ultimately won.
But what's interesting about this synagogue is that it shows just how important daily
worship was, even under the thumb of Rome.
The synagogue was found just a few hundred feet away from an earlier one discovered in
2009.
Archaeologists with the Israel Antiquities Authority also uncovered old streets, a ruined
marketplace, the remains of an industrial facility, and traditional Jewish baths.
5: Super-Henge The remains of an almost impossibly giant
stone monument have been found just two miles (3.21 km) from Stonehenge in England.
The monument, believe it or not, is over 15 times the overall size of Stonehenge.
For this reason, British archaeologists have named it “Super-Henge.”
It’s like the Stonehenge we all know and love, only on some major steroids.
The monoliths that make up the monument were discovered buried underground.
Researchers think they may have had something to do with Stonehenge, and may have made up
a Neolithic landscape unlike anything previously imagined.
What this would mean is that Stonehenge wasn't alone, but was part of a much larger network
of ceremonial plazas and ritual centers visited by people from all over.
Sadly, the true mystery of this place is unsolved.
Nobody knows when the stones were put in the ground or how they were used.
They were demolished and buried a few thousand years ago for sure, but it’s unclear why.
The stones may have been toppled by accident, or they may have been torn down on purpose.
The only thing we know for sure is that 4500 years ago, Stonehenge was not the only significant
arrangement of rocks in a field.
There were tons of these, many of which were significantly larger.
And yet despite the fact that archaeologists have found so many henges, they still know
almost nothing about them.
Why do you think the ancient people of Britain were so obsessed with building circles of
stone?
Let me know all your theories in the comments and don't forget to hit subscribe before the
end of the video!
4: Ancient Buddhist Temple Italian archaeologists discovered the foundation
of the oldest sacred Buddhist structure in Pakistan.
It comes from the Mauryan period in the 3rd century BC.
About a hundred years after the foundation was laid, the temple underwent major reconstruction.
And then the Greeks arrived shortly after that when Alexander the Great came conquering
through the area.
When King Menander came into power around 200 AD, he enhanced the temple and kept it
functioning.
It was used as a place of worship until the 4th century AD, when it was abruptly abandoned.
At that time, it was in the Kushan city of Bazira, and that city was destroyed by an
earthquake.
The temple, along with pretty much every other structure in the area, was demolished in a
matter of seconds.
Nobody ever rebuilt the temple, and so it was swallowed by the desert.
Only now have modern researchers finally found this little piece of history.
It's fascinating because it shows that Buddhists had a strong presence in this part of the
world ever since the 3rd century.
It also shows that the Indo-Greek rulers that came after Alexander supported Buddhism.
For the few centuries that people worshiped at the temple, religious freedom was much
more relaxed.
People of different beliefs came and went, and people were much more tolerant.
Some scholars believe this was a residual effect of Alexander’s tolerance and multiculturalism,
which was part of his vision for a more united world.
3: Maya City of Xcoch Researchers investigating the ancient Maya
city of Xcoch have made some pretty interesting discoveries.
This city once boasted a giant pyramid, as well as plenty of pieces of complex Maya architecture.
And to make it even more interesting, the buildings and the pyramid – in fact, the
entire city, were built over a cave system.
The cave system was key to helping the civilization survive.
Recent mapping of the caves revealed a huge network of reservoirs and cisterns directly
connected to the underground water table.
This meant the community had an almost endless supply of fresh water, allowing them to thrive.
It also allowed them to experience a population boom.
Exploration into the underground caves revealed many strange and wonderful things.
Archaeologists found broken shards of pottery, artifacts from everyday life, and the charred
remains of sacrifice victims.
The insane number of bodies found in the caves indicates that it was a religious site where
Mayans worshiped the rain gods.
Nicholas Dunning, a professor from the University of Cincinnati, says the cave system beneath
Xcoch was in continuous use from between 800 BC until the 19th century.
It was also the biggest city in the region for centuries, only abandoned in 300 AD after
their caves dried up and all the water was gone.
Would you explore the caves beneath this ancient city?
Tell me in the comments!
2: The Chinese Mountain Pass There’s one spot along the Great Wall of
China in the Shanxi Province that is particularly interesting.
It’s a choke point between the mountains, used for centuries to block the nomads from
the north, keeping them from invading.
It's a strategic passage and arguably one of the best natural defensive positions anywhere
in the world.
This is the Janman Pass, and it's been witness to thousands of horrifyingly bloody battles
ever since 476 BC.
It was originally nicknamed Wild Goose Gate because the mountains that rise up to either
side of the pass are too tall for birds to fly over.
This meant no message could get from one side to the other.
The only way to communicate with someone on the other side of the mountains was to go
directly through the pass.
When the Chinese figured out just how important this passage was around 2500 years ago, they
began building fortifications.
They built a protective wall through the pass, then three more giant stone walls, along with
25 smaller walls as barriers.
They essentially made this location one of unbreakable defenses.
There were military camps here during the Ming Dynasty between 1368 to 1644.
Lookout posts were erected, trenches, fortresses, and even beacon towers.
This is still one of the best-preserved parts of the Great Wall of China.
A section of about 15,000 feet (4572 m) is still in near perfect condition, with its
walls nearly 30 feet (9.1 m) tall.
1: The Plain of Jars There's nowhere on Earth quite as mysterious
as the Plain of Jars in Northern Laos.
The landscape here is littered with large, gray sandstone structures that at first glance
could be mistaken for abandoned wells.
From above, they pockmark the area in clusters that sometimes resemble barnacles.
But in fact, they are broken burial jars, many of them over 2000 years old.
The jars, seemingly discarded at random throughout a field, are made from sandstone.
They're absolutely enormous.
They were used by whichever ancient people lived here to bury their dead.
A person’s remains would be put into a jar and exposed to the elements until nothing
was left except their bones.
Then, the bones would be buried separately.
Louise Shewan from the University of Melbourne says the jars had something to do with ancient
rituals.
They were used for a span of about 500 years before the practice abruptly ended.
What's really strange is that who used them or where they went remains a mystery.
There was an ancient tribe of people in the area who became obsessed with giant jars and
the death rites of their deceased.
Then as quickly as they arrived, they left.
When they abandoned the area, the evidence of their ritual burials remained behind.
They also left behind almost no evidence of who they may have been.
Archaeologists have found no nearby cities or other structures.
There's nothing here except hundreds and hundreds of huge jars, almost as if they fell from
the sky.
What’s your favorite mysterious archaeological place in the world?
Let me know in the comments and thanks so much for watching today’s video!
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