10: The Vinca The Vinca civilization proves that women have
been dressing to impress for at least 7500 years.
That is, according to the Neolithic figurines found at the Plocnik Archaeological site in
Serbia.
Recent excavations at this site, which was once part of Europe’s biggest prehistoric
civilization called the Vinca, point to an ancient metropolis with a large degree of
sophistication and an unusual lust for fashion.
The Neolithic settlement is situated in a valley, deep in the wilderness of what is
today modern Serbia.
The figurines discovered here display young women beautifully dressed in miniskirts and
short tops, and even wearing bracelets around their arms.
The tribe that made these figurines is unknown, but they definitely lived sometime between
5400 and 4700 BC.
They practiced art and metallurgy, and they even built a thermal well near their settlement
that could be the oldest spa in Europe.
According to local archaeologist Julka Kuzmanovic-Cvetkovic, they also produced about 60 different forms
of pottery and figures, to represent their deities and probably just because they liked
art.
But how could the tribe be unknown when they were part of the Vinca civilization?
It's because we know the culture flourished in what is today Bosnia, Romania, Serbia,
and Macedonia from 5500 to 4000 BC.
The culture was named Vinca after the small village near Belgrade where archaeologists
found eight Neolithic villages.
These were all part of the mysterious Vinca culture, one of the oldest civilizations in
Europe, but scientists don't actually know the names of the individual tribes, who their
leaders were, or even what gods they worshipped.
We just know they really liked fashion!!
9: Unknown Kingdom Archaeologists working in Turkey have just
discovered a previously unknown people who may have played a major role in the ancient
world.
They ruled a massive part of what is today Turkey and if the archaeological evidence
is to be believed, they even defeated the notorious King Midas.
Remember him?
He was said to have the “golden touch” where everything turned to gold!
Professor James Osborne from the Oriental Institute went on record saying, “We had
no idea about this kingdom.”
It was completely unknown!!
But everything changed when a farmer found a strange large stone on his property.
He was digging in a nearby canal when he found the stone and noticed it had mysterious writing
on it.
At the time of his discovery, there were researchers nearby exploring a prehistoric mound site.
So, he told them about it and they came over to take a look.
What they found shocked them to the core!
The stone was sticking out of the water and they had to wade into the canal up to their
waists to inspect it.
The archaeologists recognized the writing on the stone immediately as Luwian, an ancient
language used in both the Bronze Age and Iron Age in Turkey.
It turned out that the inscription was written by an unknown king named Hartapu, and he was
boasting how he had defeated King Midas and the Kingdom of Phrygia.
Considering Phrygia and King Midas were quite powerful back in their time, whoever these
ancient people were, led by the mysterious King Hartapu, must have been quite fierce.
So what happened to these powerful lost people?
Why have we never heard of them before??
And that my friends, remains a mystery!
8: The Gladiatrix Little do most people know, there was a group
of ancient people called the gladiatrix.
They weren't a race of people or the byproduct of a mysterious society.
Instead, they were the female equivalent of male Roman gladiators.
The gladiatrix or female gladiators would battle against each other or wild animals
during arena games and celebrations.
But don't get too excited just yet, as these ladies of the ring weren't treated quite as
well as the female fighters of today.
There wasn't even a word in Latin for a gladiatrix, it’s a modern term that was made up.
The gladiatrix began as more of a derogatory or joking event to entertain the spectators
which were mostly men.
In reality they were considered quite rare.
The Roman poet Decimus Junius Juvenalis said that gladiatrix trained using the same methods
and weapons as their male counterparts, though no records have been found in any of the gladiator
training schools that talk about women.
But here's where things get really odd with the gladiatrix.
Unlike gladiators who were mostly slaves, gladiatrix could be women of any class, both
high and low.
It seems any woman who wanted to fight could be trained and let loose in the arena.
This went on until about 200 AD when Emperor Septimius Severus banned women from the arena,
claiming that too many jokes were being made about upper-class women, so no more women
were allowed to participate in the games.
7: The Nuragic Civilization The Nuragic Civilization lived on the island
of Sardinia in the Mediterranean.
But even though we know of their existence, we don't know much about what they did, who
they were, or even where they went.
Archaeologists have found structures, graves, pieces of art, and figurines, and yet there
is a huge gap in the knowledge of the Nuragic.
We know that they lived during the Bronze Age and Iron Age, and that their best-known
structures left behind were the Nuraghi towers.
There are about 7000 of these towers scattered across Sardinia, though at the time the civilization
was thriving, there may have been up to 30,000 on the island.
That’s a lot for a limited space!!
The towers were all circular, each with their own flat rooftop and the earliest one found
dates back to the 18th century BC.
What the towers were used for is still up for debate, with some saying they were used
as rooftops and others saying they were used as terraces.
They may have even been dwellings or just silos for storing liquids and dry foods.
It’s hard to say since some of them were up to 90 feet tall.
Besides the towers, the Nuragic left behind giant megalithic graves, with each one stuffed
with about a dozen bodies and several hundred graves in a single cemetery.
Some of these burial chambers go 60 feet underground.
Scholars believe the Nuragic thought that their dead would be transformed into gods
when buried so deep underground.
But as for what the civilization believed in, nobody really knows.
They lived on the island for about 5000 years and then vanished mysteriously for unknown
reasons, just before the Carthaginian conquests of the 6th century BC.
6: The Indus Utopía The Indus civilization thrived for roughly
700 years without having a single war.
Archaeologists have referred to this civilization as the first paradise on Earth.
They had no inequality, no royalty, no weapons, and apparently no way to defend themselves
since it looks like they didn’t need to.
They also had 54 cities that were governed by educated officials and a prince who was
elected to serve for life.
These people saw no glory in fighting and may have been the first practitioners of Hinduism.
The Indus people lived from between 2600 to 1900 BC, occupying roughly 1000 settlements
in what is today Pakistan, Afghanistan, and India.
The remains of the civilization were only recently discovered in the 1920s, with all
signs pointing to an extremely advanced society and one of the greatest in history.
They had a trade network that stretched to the Arabian Sea, and archaeologists have even
found artifacts from the Indus civilization in Mesopotamian cities like Akkad and Ur.
The biggest Indus cities were Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, and even though they were built
thousands of years ago they were extremely advanced even by today’s standards.
They had streets that were properly planned, sewage systems that actually worked, and a
huge brick water tank called the Great Bath, which should be considered one of the seven
wonders of the ancient world.
The Indus Valley civilization even figured out the written word, creating their very
own mysterious script that has left archaeologists stumped because they can't decipher it.
But sadly, the society fell off the map about 4000 years ago and nobody knows why.
It could be that other civilizations saw their peaceful ways as weakness and destroyed them
but for now the reasons remain unclear.
5: Achaemenid Empire At around the time the Assyrians were building
their new empire, a group of tribes were settling what is today Iran.
These people were breaking away from their old nomadic lifestyles to start cities.
The tribes came together and formed what we know of today as the Achaemenid Empire, or
the First Persian Empire.
It was founded by Cyrus the Great and reached its peak under the rule of Xerxes I – you
know, the bad guy from the movie 300.
Xerxes conquered almost all of ancient Greece, even taking the city of Athens in 480 BC!!
At that point, the Achaemenid Empire stretched all across the Balkans and as far as the Indus
Valley, where the Indus civilization once flourished that I just told you about..
One of the reasons the Achaemenid Empire was so impressive is that the world had never
seen an empire of such magnitude!!!
It covered an area of about 2.1 million square miles – and amazingly, it came about simply
because of the Iranian tribes who settled what became known as Persia in the 7th century
BC.
Within just 300 years, the tribes had transformed into the greatest empire on Earth.
But other than just conquering pretty much everyone, what was the Achaemenid Empire known
for?
Well, they began to create roads across the world, they started the first postal system,
and they were one of the first people to use an official language across all their territories.
They also developed civil services, they maintained the largest standing army on the planet, and
they would become an inspiration to Alexander the Great many years later when he conquered
the Achaemenid Empire in 330 BC.
And now for number 4, but first wanted to give a big shout out to McGerard Alvarado
and Romeo Tayam!
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4: Dilmun Empire The Dilmun civilization was located on the
Arabian Peninsula and is significantly less famous than the other big civilizations that
sprang up around the same time, such as Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt.
Today, the ruins of the Dilmun civilization can be found in Bahrain.
But what’s really interesting about Dilmun is that it was kind of a mythological place
in ancient times.
In the Epic of Gilgamesh, arguably the first great work of literature ever written, the
hero must seek out Ut-napishtim to gain immortality, and Ut-napishtim hails from Dilmun.
Dilmun is mentioned in the myth of Enki and Ninhursag as well, with the nation being depicted
as an earthly paradise.
But Dilmun was by no means mythical.
It was a very real civilization that has even been found in records from Sumer and Babylon.
The Dilmun people also traded with the Indus Valley people.
But tracking down the actual archaeological evidence has been a bit trickier.
Dilmun was definitely part of Bahrain but may have also stretched into Kuwait and Saudi
Arabia.
Excavations in the 1950s revealed an ancient harbor that may have been the capital of Dilmun
near the current village of Saar, removing any doubt once and for all that Dilmun was
indeed one of the first major civilizations.
3: India’s Illuminati There was once a secret order of people in
India that many people today have never heard of.
This secret cult preceded any evidence of the illuminati.
The group was founded by the great emperor Ashoka around the year 270 BC.
Ashoka ruled the Maurya Dynasty in India and is considered one of the greatest Indian rulers
in history.
As far as the legend goes, Ashoka formed the secret society of The Nine Unknown.
Nine unknown men were chosen to preserve secret knowledge and prevent it from getting into
the hands of the public.
Each person was given a powerful book of knowledge to memorize and safeguard.
Some claims say that the books contained knowledge of things like time travel, aliens, and other
revelations that could spark panic if unleashed to the people.
But just whatever happened to these nine unknown men?
It's believed that they kept their books of knowledge until such a time when they needed
successors.
Then, each member found another worthy individual and passed on the responsibility, and that
has been happening for over 2000 years.
There's absolutely zero evidence of this except hearsay and vague historical records, but
that’s how the legend goes.
2: The Nok The Nok culture lived in what is today Nigeria.
Nigeria is one of the most populous nations in Africa today and one of the strongest,
and this history of strength and perseverance goes back thousands of years.
The Nok culture was one of the first in Africa to master iron working.
They left behind amazing relics of artistic value and some pretty impressive terracotta
sculptures.
However, not much is known about these people or their belief system.
According to National Geographic, the Nok culture existed from between 500 BC to 200
AD.
They farmed crops, they figured out how to use iron tools, and they mastered the art
of sculpting.
Up until 1943, this culture had been completely unknown even to the locals.
Near the modern town of Nok, archaeologist Bernard found the sculptures of human heads,
animals, and humanoid figurines with massive, triangular-shaped eyes that almost look like
aliens.
These weird sculptures have been found throughout an area of about 30,000 square miles.
Archaeologists have even analyzed the clay used to build the sculptures, determining
that all the clay came from a single source that was probably controlled by a central
authority.
As for ruins – well, not much has been found.
The origin of the Nok people is still a mystery, as basically nothing except their bizarre
sculptures have been found.
1: Hegra Hegra is an ancient city in Saudi Arabia that
looks an awful lot like Petra in nearby Jordan.
It is an impressive ruin carved into the side of a massive rock in the middle of a barren
desert.
The ruin was left behind by a civilization known as the Nabataean.
If you haven't heard of these guys before, you're not alone.
Even though they were an intriguing civilization that thrived throughout Arabia, there isn't
much known about them.
They lived in the desert and practiced a nomadic lifestyle before they turned into merchants
that controlled the spice trade going through Arabia to places like Egypt and Mesopotamia.
These were the people who led camel caravans filled with peppercorn, sugar, and cotton
through the desert to be traded to kingdoms in the Mediterranean.
The Nabataeans were also the suppliers of things like frankincense and myrrh, which
were crucial for religious ceremonies farther west.
These people prospered in the desert from between around 400 BC until 100 AD.
Everything was going just fine until the Roman Empire annexed much of their land and absorbed
the Nabataeans.
By the time the Roman Empire fell, Nabataean was a distant memory.
Which of these ancient people surprised you the most?
Let me know in the comments and thanks for watching.
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