How did one person manage to decipher ancient Maya writings, what other finds were found by
archaeologists on the Yucatan Island in Mexico, what kind of stone funeral statues were found
in Russia, and what warnings our ancestors left in Japan. Watch the video till the end,
you will definitely like it. Hi, friend. You are on the KirTop channel.
Roasted nuts in antiquity
Of course, roasted nuts don't seem like much of a surprise these days. And everyone and
everyone you at least once in your life tried this amazing delicacy. But in ancient times,
people were not so willing to cook food. Why roast nuts if they are already tasty
and healthy. The other thing is meat. So, scientists from the Center for Baltic
and Scandinavian Archeology claim that people in Germany mastered the technology of roasting
hazelnuts about 10 thousand years ago. Personally I like cashews more, and which nuts do you
like? - write in the comments under the video. In the Duwensee swamp in northern Germany,
archaeologists have found 10,500-year-old cremated bones. By the way, these are the first bones
discovered at this place and the oldest ones that could be found on the territory of present-day
Germany. Historians believe that the Duwensee was once a lake, where people used to catch fish,
which they cooked on a fire nearby. And at that very moment the hazelnuts were roasted. That is,
people in ancient times were those gourmets! Most likely people came to this place in autumn and
collected nuts. Archaeologists have found smaller and larger hazelnut roasting pits. They also found
bark mats for sitting on damp soil and pieces of worked flint. Local tools are very similar
to those found in Britain. This proves that people in ancient times exchanged experience
with the neighboring region. To get to each other, they used the Doggerland land corridor,
which is now flooded due to climate change. The most interesting thing is that flint is not
found in nature in this region, it was brought here from another place. And archaeologists
discovered the bones of ancient people here quite by accident. Now we know that roasted hazelnuts
were once very popular in Germany, and in Japan they discovered a terrible message from antiquity.
A warning from the depths of time
Japan is one of the most developed countries in the world, while located in one of the most
dangerous regions of the planet. An entire country with a population of many millions lives in danger
every day. The most interesting thing is that this has always been the case throughout the
existence of this region. And people have lived here for centuries. This forced the ancestors of
the Japanese to understand natural phenomena. Throughout Japan, there are so-called "tsunami
stones" - these are ancient plates with inscriptions that warn that it is dangerous to
build houses below a certain mark. If a tsunami happens, the houses in this place will flood.
One of the most famous of these stones is located in the village of Aneosi. A text is carved on a
three-meter slab that reads: "High dwellings are the peace and harmony of our descendants.
Remember the disaster of the great tsunami. Do not build houses below this point." On other stones,
a warning is written that people should be afraid of an earthquake, because after
it a tsunami will come. Stone slabs of this kind are found all over the Japanese coastline,
and some of them are over 600 years old. The problem is that many Japanese do not believe this
kind of prediction written on stones. It seems to them that these are just ancient curses - they
build their homes in dangerous regions, after which entire families suffer and die.
It seems to me that people in ancient times, when placing these stones,
experienced more than one tragedy, after which they decided to warn their descendants. Well,
the descendants consider themselves smarter than their ancestors. We don't want to listen to our
grandparents either, do we? Yes, the ancestors did not have high technologies and modern measuring
instruments, but they had well-developed senses of observation and some worldly wisdom. Therefore,
we should definitely listen to our past. That’s what archaeologists did with the next find.
Kensington Runestone Discovered in 1898 in central Minnesota,
this enigmatic stone is a beautiful piece of stone engraved with many ancient Scandinavian letters.
Yes, Scandinavian letters in North America. Archaeologists and historians have long puzzled
over the dating of the Kensington Stone and determined it to be 1362. Were the ancient Vikings
able to get to this place in the 14th century? This find was of great interest to local Swedes
and Americans who live in Minnesota. But linguists were not so happy with the find.
About a hundred years ago, experts almost unanimously declared that a certain work of
the 19th century was written on the stone. Despite some disputes between scientists and historians,
it is still believed that this work is about 100 years old. Why, then, does the dating indicate the
14th century, and who is right? Is it possible that historians here do not want to agree that
this stone is older than it seems - otherwise they will have to rewrite history and many
historical events that are now so well placed in school textbooks. And as we know, humanity
is in no hurry to write the truth, so as not to cause people to panic. If it was still possible
to read the ancient Scandinavian texts, then with Maya writing everything is much more complicated.
How a scientist deciphered the Mayan script
The greatest discovery in the study of ancient Mexico was made by the Soviet ethnographer Yuri
Knorozov. He did what no one else had done before. He found the key to reading ancient Mayan writing.
Although he first visited Mexico only 40 years after his discovery. Yes, you can make world-class
discoveries from thousands of kilometers away. Yuri Knorozov was an interesting, mysterious
and silent person. There were various stories and tales about him. He was fond of mysticism, Indians
and the decipherment of ancient writing. As I said earlier, he came to Mexico decades after his
discovery, it was in the 90s of the last century. He was greeted as a local star, as an artist,
while in Russia, where he lived all his life, few people knew about him. He was born in Kharkov in
1922, in a Russian intelligent family. During World War II, he and his family moved to Moscow,
where he became interested in ethnography. Later he moved to Leningrad. Back in Moscow, Knorozov
came across an article by the German scientist Paul Schelhas, who argued that deciphering
the Mayan script was an impossible task. The young scientist took it as a challenge.
And he believed that if something was created by the human mind, then it could be unraveled
by another human mind. While still a student at Moscow University, Knorozov helped sort out the
archive of war trophies from Germany and, among the materials of the Berlin Library, discovered
an edition of three surviving handwritten "Mayan codes" published in 1930. In addition, he came
across another important document - the “Report on Affairs in the Yucatan” of the 16th century. It
was written by the Catholic Bishop Diego de Landa after the Spanish conquest of Mexico and the Maya.
After studying the documents, he realized that each Mayan sign is read as a syllable - and
proposed a system for reading the entire language. In 1952, the scientist published
an article "Ancient writing of Central America" ​​in an ethnographic journal,
where he outlined his method. His work was appreciated in scientific circles and he received
an offer to write a dissertation on this topic. When Yuri Knorozov began to decipher the ancient
texts of the Maya more, he realized that this mysterious civilization had its own script,
army and administrative apparatus. This means that the Maya had a state. It was previously
believed that the ancient Maya were barbarians and conquerors. After deciphering ancient texts,
the scientist received many awards. He was awarded in the USSR, students and officials came to him
from Guatemala, Mexico and the USA. He has been compared to Jean Champollion, who deciphered
Egyptian hieroglyphs in the 19th century. During his trip to Mexico and Guatemala,
the scientist visited all the significant places of the ancient Maya - Palenque, Merida,
Uxmal. And with his own eyes saw the writings of the Maya. From the Mexican ambassador to Russia,
he received an honorary award - the Order of the Aztec Eagle, which he was very proud
of. In the meantime, archaeologists are trying to study another mystical find.
Stone thread connecting the eras
Funeral practices throughout history have been full of mysteries. All peoples, for thousands of
years, buried the dead in different ways. At the place of burial of the deceased relatives, people
from ancient times erected memorial structures - steles, mounds, later - obelisks, crosses,
monuments. The more prominent the deceased was, the more expressive his grave looked.
The ancient Egyptians buried their rulers in giant pyramids, the peoples of Asia poured mounds from
the ground or laid them out of stone. Residents of Altai in Russia call such sculptures Kezer-tash.
These stone giants have survived wars and natural disasters, cataclysms and negligent human
attitude. These tombstones look like real people. Many have pronounced facial features, clothing,
and even jewelry. On the best-preserved idols, even belts with typesetting plaques are visible.
Their number and material during life determined the status of a person in society. Archaeologists
have discovered a large number of stone statues in the Altai Mountains - this indicates their mass
production. Scientists concluded that in ancient times people picked up stones of such a shape so
that they were easier and less processed. The "stone" ancestors of the Altai Mountains
can tell a lot about the people who lived here. How they looked, how they dressed,
what they fought, what they ate. For a long time nothing was known about them,
they were far from prying eyes. And only recently they began to be found and studied en masse.
Kezer-tash is the memory of ancestors. This is a thread that binds entire generations,
and in no case should you break such a thread! A people without a past has
no future. From Russia we will go to America, where interesting artifacts are waiting for us.
Relics of Michigan
Did an ancient advanced culture once live in Michigan, in the USA? The digger James
O. Scotford tried to answer this question, who in October 1890 found ancient artifacts in Edmore,
Michigan. Cups, figurines and inscribed tablets were very reminiscent of finds found
in the Middle East. Other diggers in the region have made similar finds besides Scotford. All
artifacts were sold to buyers and collectors. It's just something else that's interesting.
The vast majority of historians and archaeologists claim that all these finds are a carefully planned
forgery. They believe that the so-called artifacts were well thought out and copied
from other artifacts found around the world. After our hero created ancient artifacts,
he decided to bury them so that later he and other diggers would find them. Thus,
everything would look realistic and believable. Clay objects crumbled at the slightest contact
with water, how they could then be stored in the ground for thousands of years. Ancient
writings were chaotically written on tablets, without any pattern or logic. The figurines
were a copy of the finds found in the Far East, only their quality was much lower and
not so durable. These were the main arguments of archaeologists who conducted a superficial
analysis of the ancient relics of Michigan. One thing is for sure, James Scotford wanted to make
money and he did a great job of it. But the next find, discovered in Mexico, is the real one!
Rare Mayan canoe I have already talked
about the decoding of the Maya writing, and now let's look at the transport used by the Maya.
In the previous video, if someone has not seen it, I already said that during the construction
of the Mayan Train railway route, archaeologists constantly find ancient buildings and artifacts of
a mysterious civilization. This time on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, archaeologists
found a well-preserved wooden canoe. The canoe was found in a freshwater
reservoir - a cenote, it was completely submerged in water and at the same time perfectly preserved.
The marshland is a great help to preserve ancient objects due to the low amount of oxygen. The
length of the canoe is 1.6 meters, the width is 80 cm. According to preliminary data, this canoe
was used as a container for storing water or a container for offering during ritual purposes,
and dates back to approximately 830-950. ad. This canoe is the only one of its kind that has
survived in its original form, although it is more than a thousand years old. Scientists will create
a 3D model of a canoe, this will help to better and safer study the ancient object. During the
construction of the railway route, archaeologists discovered more than 80 Mayan burials and the
ruins of more than 2,400 pre-Hispanic structures. Ecologists, archaeologists,
as well as representatives of Mayan communities actively opposed the construction of a new railway
line. You can see some other finds in this place in the previous video on the channel, but only
after watching this video. Because the next mysterious object will definitely surprise you!
Lonely red mountain Australian Aborigines call this mountain Uluru.
European discoverers named it Ayers Rock, almost 150 years ago. At first, there was nothing out of
the ordinary in this mountain. An ordinary rock formation in the middle of a semi-desert. But the
number of tourists was amazing, every year this figure reached hundreds of thousands of people.
The peak of the popularity of this mountain came in October 2019 - it was then that local
authorities forbade tourists to climb it, and in September 2020, Google even removed Street View
3D panoramas from their online maps. Mount Uluru is located in the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park
in central Australia. This block was formed from sedimentary rocks 680 million years ago.
Uluru is 3.6 km long, 3 km wide, and 348 meters high from base to top. In most of the photos,
Uluru looks like a completely lonely mountain, which definitely adds to its "mystery".
Archaeologists say that people lived near this mountain 10 thousand years ago. The
first Europeans arrived in Australia in 1788, but reached Mount Uluru only 100 years later in 1870.
All because of the specific arid climate. For local aborigines, the mountain is a sacred place,
there are legends about it, and traditional religious rites are held next to it. In order
for local peoples to have the opportunity to visit this place, local authorities turned the territory
into the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park. Red Mountain has become one of the main
attractions of Australia, so an airport was built 20 km from this place, now from 300 to 400
thousand tourists come here every year. And it was because of the invasion of tourists
that this place became more closed. Wherever a human foot steps, debris and destruction
remain. Have mountains of garbage caused the removal of 3D panoramas from Google maps?
It is possible to climb the mountain without the help of climbing equipment, but this does not mean
that it is easy to do so. Over the past 50 years, about 40 people have died here. For this reason,
local authorities have banned climbing to the top. How wonderful that there is Google that allows
you to go to the mountain using a smartphone or computer. But the local natives did not like it.
Let me remind you that the mountain is a sacred place. And some places on the
mountain are taboo for them. Not only can they not be visited, but even seeing them
is a terrible violation. Even if it's just a photo. Modern natives also use smartphones,
and in order not to accidentally see photos of these places on the Internet, Google at the
request of local authorities, removed the pictures previously uploaded by tourists.
It's good that there is our channel that will tell you more and show you amazing and unique artifacts
of antiquity. Subscribe so you don't miss a new video. Thanks for your views, bye everyone!