Today, when it would seem that almost all science is looking into the future,
archaeologists are still finding ancient artifacts that can change
our understanding of the planet's past. In this video you will see the finds that most
influenced the world history of discoveries. Hi Friend. You are on the KirTop channel.
Mound Hisarlyk (1800s)
An archaeological team led by Professor Rustem Aslan during excavations in the ancient city of
Troy in northwestern Turkey discovered a cultural layer that pushes back the estimated date of the
founding of this city by about 600 years. Archaeological excavations in the ancient
city of Troy, located on the territory of the modern Turkish province of Canakkale,
have been ongoing for about a century and a half. Scientists scrupulously open the settler layer by
layer. In total, nine of them have been found over the past years. This proves
that during its existence Troy was destroyed more than once by wars, fires and earthquakes,
but its inhabitants always restored it. Rustem Aslan's team from Çanakkale University
found traces of a previously unknown tenth settlement layer. This is an earlier
period than what scientists call Troy-I. The new layer was named Troy-0. It proves
that the history of the city is much richer than it was thought. So far, the oldest layer
found in Troy dates back to around 2920 BC. According to Aslan, the discovered layer
turned out to be about 600 years older. In other words, Troy was found around 3500 BC.
Megalosaurus (1824)
Megalosaurus was the first dinosaur to be explored. Of course, fossil skeletons of
dinosaurs were found before, but then science could not explain what kind of creatures they
were. Some believe that it was the study of Megalosaurus that was the beginning of many
science fiction stories about dragons. However, not only this was the result of such a find,
there was a whole boom in the popularity of archeology and humanity's passion for dinosaurs,
everyone wanted to find their remains. The found skeletons began to be classified and
exhibited in museums for public viewing. Megalosaurus holds a special place in
the history of paleontology, being the first dinosaur known to humans. But it is still not
entirely clear what he still looked like. At the beginning, when the lizard had just been found,
and there was no one to compare it with, the first paleontologists reconstructed the Megalosaurus as
an animal that looked like a dragon with a large head and walked on four legs. And so they thought
until, decades later, in North America, the remains of theropods similar to it began to be
found and it became clear that it was a bipedal animal. The head of Megalosaurus was large and
armed with sharp predatory teeth, and its neck was very flexible. The body was in balance
even when the lizard stood on two legs thanks to its long tail. Massive legs held a lot of weight,
on the paws there were, apparently, three supporting fingers, and another one sticking
out back. The front paws were smaller than the hind ones, they had either three or four fingers.
Treasures of Sutton Hoo (1939) Sutton Hoo is a barrow necropolis
in the English county of Suffolk, which was discovered in the late 1930s and where the most
significant archaeological finds in the history of Great Britain were made. Among these finds was a
burial ship dating from the turn of the 6th and 7th centuries. It is believed that this tomb of
the East Anglian king Redwald, and the antiquities that archaeologists have found are amazing.
Redwald died in 624 and was buried in a burial boat 27 meters long. It was in the necropolis
of Sutton-Khoo that the earliest burial grounds of the 6th-7th centuries were discovered, and it
turned out quite funny. Excavations in 1939 were initiated by a certain lover of mysticism, Edith
Mary Pretty, who had heard enough stories from local old-timers about gold hidden in mounds, and
who dreamed of mysterious figures on the hills. This place itself has an interesting history.
Initially, people of the Neolithic period lived in this area about 3000 years ago.
Then people of the Bronze Age settled here. These were prosperous communities that pioneered
metalworking. But it was the Anglo-Saxons who brought the greatest changes to Sutton Hoo.
The tragic history of Baghdad
Baghdad is a large and beautiful city of the Middle Ages. Science and art flourished here.
The city conducted extensive trade and was economically successful.
How did it happen that in the late Middle Ages Baghdad abruptly went to the margins of history?
See the inner circle in the city center? There was a mosque and a caliph's palace.
Also in this circle were the palaces of other members of the royal family,
barracks for horse guards, royal kitchens and houses for officials and servants of the caliph.
In the 8th century A.D. Caliph of the Abbasids, al-Mansur sailed along the Tigris River several
times in search of a suitable place for the capital. As a result, he decided to build
a city on the Tigris, but in the immediate vicinity of the Euphrates. To actively trade
using the advantages of both rivers at once. In the 9th century, Baghdad becomes the
leader of the Arab world. Crafts and trade flourish here. Baghdad traded with Europe,
India and Arabia, but merchants from very distant countries also came here. It is known that the Rus
also traded in Baghdad - traders came from the shores of the distant Lake Ladoga.
In the 13th century, it was plundered by the Mongols. It took them only 12 days of siege
to take Baghdad. The Mongols had the best Chinese siege engineers at their disposal,
whom they captured during the conquest of China. Baghdad had about a million inhabitants. But the
Mongols did not spare anyone. This was their principle - if the city did not surrender,
then they sought to completely destroy the population in order to keep everyone else
at bay. Usually only artisans and blacksmiths were left alive. The Mongols took them and used
them inside their country, because they themselves were not engaged in crafts.
The Mongols destroyed and burned down the Baghdad House of Wisdom. Scientific works from all over
the world were kept here. Here was the largest library of the Middle Ages. For centuries, people
have been recording and accumulating knowledge, and the Mongols burned it all down overnight.
The Mongols captured the Caliph and he died of hunger in prison.
His family managed to escape to Cairo (Egypt) and rule the country from there. However,
Baghdad has since begun to fade. And again he was never able to come close to the glory
that surrounded this city for 500 years before the invasion of the Mongol horde.
Dmanisi (2005)
A long-term biomolecular study by Georgian scientists and their foreign colleagues
confirmed that the world's oldest DNA, extracted from the remains of an animal,
was found in the southeast of Georgia, in the ancient settlement of Dmanisi, located 90 km
from Tbilisi in the Kvemo Kartli region. From the tooth enamel of a rhinoceros
found in Dmanisi, scientists were able to extract important genetic information,
which is about 1.77 million years old. "This is the oldest DNA recovered from the
remains of an animal, which is a million years older than information previously
known about DNA taken 700,000 years ago from a horse on Ukon Island, in northwestern Canada."
Ancient man and the creatures that evolved into modern Homo sapiens have been studied for
many years. It would seem that today there are no white spots left in the history of our evolution,
but a 1.8 million-year-old skull found in the Georgian city of Dmanisi made archaeologists and
historians think. It represents the remains of the Homoerectus species, which migrated from Africa,
and confirms the hypothesis that this species stands separately in the evolutionary chain.
Jamestown (2013) The site of what once was Jamestown, the first
permanent British settlement in North America, has recently unearthed the remains of Gabriel Archer,
one of the leaders of the colony. This discovery in itself is an important event for American
historical science; however, in Archer's grave, among other things, they also found a silver box
of unknown purpose. Archaeologists suggest that the box was used as a repository for relics and
could be a relic for Catholics. Considering that Jamestown was found by the Protestant English and
was conceived as a stronghold of the British Empire in the fight against the expansion of
the Catholic Spaniards, the Catholic relic in the grave of one of the founders of the city looks at
least strange - and suggests that an underground Catholic church existed in the settlement circle.
Scientists have always talked about cannibalism in the ancient settlements of Jamestown,
but neither historians nor archaeologists have ever had direct evidence of this. Of course,
history tells us that in ancient times, people in search of the New World and riches often found a
terrible and cruel end, especially in the cold winter. Last year, William Kelso and his team
discovered the punctured skull of a 14-year-old girl in a pit filled with the remains of horses
and other animals that the settlers ate during the famine. Kelso is convinced that the girl
was killed to satisfy hunger, and the skull was pierced to get to the soft tissues and brain.
Headless Vikings of Dorset (2009) On the south coast of England near
the city of Weymouth (Dorset), archaeologists from Oxford Archeology have discovered a mass grave of
decapitated men, presumably Vikings. Radiocarbon analysis dated the find to 830 - 1034 AD,
that is, just the era when the Anglo-Saxons fought fiercely with warlike newcomers from Scandinavia.
The mass grave contained the remains of 51 people. They were all young, healthy,
strongly built. Their skulls were buried in the same pit, but in a separate pile.
Most of the remains show traces of sword or ax blows that fell on the necks,
heads and jaws. One of the men apparently raised his hand in defense, and his fingers were cut
off. It is noteworthy that all the victims were stripped before dumping their bodies into the pit.
Although detailed anthropological studies of the found skeletons have not yet been carried out,
archaeologists have reason to believe that they found the Vikings, and not the Anglo-Saxons.
In particular, the dead were buried on top of a hill, which is natural for the local population,
and not for newcomers: the Vikings would have left their victims at the site of the
battle or murder - in the landing area on the seashore or in the attacked villages or towns.
Scientists have to conduct two studies of the remains from the mass grave. First,
they will find out the chemical composition of the teeth of those killed:
as a rule, it can be used to determine quite accurately where a person came from.
Secondly, an anthropometric study of the skeletons will indicate the
type of activity of the murdered men. If they were Vikings, then most of them were rowers,
which means that they can observe the specific development of the shoulder girdle, back and arms.
Göbekli Tepe (2008)
The oldest temple complex in the world, Göbekli Tepe, built about 12 thousand years
ago and located in the province of Sanliurfa in southeastern Turkey, is now experiencing a
rebirth. The Turkish authorities intend to turn it into a world-class archaeological center,
and 2019 has been declared the Year of Göbekli Tepe in Turkey.
The complex was discovered relatively recently - in 1963, and before that,
local peasants complained with irritation about incomprehensible stone slabs that prevented
them from farming. Initially, scientists assumed that these slabs were the remains
of a cemetery from the Byzantine era, but in the 90s the German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt
arrived here, who attributed the finds to the Neolithic period, the last period of the Stone
Age. He called their discovery a supernova and devoted the rest of his life to studying them.
Geomagnetic studies carried out later confirmed Schmidt's guess: the structures on Pot-bellied
Hill were built about 12 thousand years ago. For a long time, Stonehenge was considered
the oldest religious building in the world. In the 60s of the XX century,
this hill in southeastern Turkey was potentially older than Stonehenge, but very soon it was
recognized as a medieval cemetery. However, in 2008, Klaus Schmidt discovered 11,000-year-old
stones there, which were clearly processed by a prehistoric man who did not yet have either
clay or metal tools for this. Share this video with your friends
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