10. Alabama Cave Art Scientists have used a new
process called photogrammetry to uncover ancient cave carvings in Alabama. These amazing carvings
are invisible to the naked eye, only viewable with the use of this fabulous new technology.
Archaeologists had to work together with photographers, spending long hours in the gloomy,
dark depths of the cave to map the ceilings underneath northern Alabama. But it was worth
the effort. They were able to identify ancient carvings made between 1000 and 1800 years ago.
The carvings are incredibly odd. The researchers identified 4 strange humanoid figures,
each one about 6 feet (2m) tall, the size of a point guard in the NBA,
and dressed in elaborate indigenous clothing. They also found the carving of a massive coiled
rattlesnake with its forked tongue sticking out, along with yet another enormous serpent crawling
along the wall, this one over 9 feet (3m) tall. For reference, that’s the size of Goliath!
According to the study, many indigenous people who populated what is now Alabama
during that time believed that the caves were "paths to the underworld," and the art could
have spiritual or ritual significance. This is Alabama’s 19th Unnamed Cave,
where artwork was originally discovered back in 1998. But scientists with the
Ancient Art Archive and archaeologists from the University of Tennessee wanted to find more,
and had a hunch there could be carvings invisible to the naked eye. And they were right. These
carvings had faded over time, so they could only be seen again by creating a 3D model of the cave.
But what's really cool is that with the success of this latest study, chances are
there could be other discoveries in countless other caves across the world. Carvings that
were made tens of thousands of years ago could be rediscovered using this new 3D technology..
9. Dolphin Taste Buds In one of the most interesting
animal discoveries in recent memory, scientists have learned something shocking about dolphins.
According to marine biologist Jason Bruck from Stephen F. Austin State University, dolphins can
actually identify their friends based on taste. Yes, that's just as weird as it sounds. With
humans, we recognize our friends in three principal ways, their smiles, voices,
and the way they walk. And while biologists have known for many decades that dolphins
can form close friendships, they've never known the different ways for the creatures
to tell their friends apart. They previously thought these mysterious animals identified
their buddies by their unique whistles. But it turns out, they actually use their taste buds.
Jason and his team of researchers then started observing bottlenose dolphins in the wild. What
they found was that dolphins would purposely swim through gigantic clouds of urine. Dolphins leave
behind them these kinds of plumes of pee when they need to relieve themselves. And apparently, it's
the perfect way for identification. Sure, dolphins can tell their friends apart by
their unique whistles, but they can also tell who they're dealing with by tasting their pee as they
swim through clouds of urine. You're welcome! 8. Ivan the Terrible’s Sword
A medieval sword was discovered buried underneath a tree in the Novosibirsk
region of Russia. According to scholars, this medieval sword may have once belonged
to the notorious tsar, Ivan the Terrible. It's a unique artifact, one that comes from
the time of the conquest of Siberia. It probably originated in Germany,
then was transported to the Swedish mainland. There, it was fixed with an impressive silver
handle and Norse runes on the blade. After, the sword found its way into the royal armory,
then into the hands of Ivan the Terrible. But let's go back to the discovery itself. How
in the world did the sword end up buried underneath a tree in the middle of nowhere?
Expert archaeologists believe it may have been lost during a battle. Ivan the Terrible,
who was the Grand Prince of Moscow from 1533 to 1547, then the Tsar of Russia from 1547 until
1584, expanded Russia greatly. He conquered the Khanates of Kazan, and pretty much all of Siberia,
transforming Russia from a sizable chunk of Eastern Europe into an enormous empire
of over 1 billion acres. But because this kind of sword was so rare, only wielded by the most
important men in the kingdom, it seems to make sense that it belonged to Ivan.
Sadly, we don't actually know for sure. Archaeologists are just speculating based
on what little information they have. But it would be pretty cool wouldn't it?
7. Torched Ship 250 years ago, a British ship was lit up off the
coast of Rhode Island by colonists. It happened on June 10, 1772. A group of Rhode Islanders, as
an act of rebellion, burned down the HMS Gaspee. The arson helped to spark the American Revolution
and the Boston Tea Party over one year later. Going on for around two and a half centuries,
nobody has ever found the remains of this mysterious torched vessel. However, that's all
about to change. Researchers with the Rhode Island Maritime Archaeology Project have accumulated
enough funds and will begin searching for the lost Gaspee, hopefully in July 2022. Archaeologists
will use the latest sonar technology and scan the waterline, looking for the Gaspee’s burnt
hull. It will be the first time anyone’s seen this ship since before the US was a country!
But just listen to the reason the Gaspee was burned down in the first place. It was sent by
the British to Narragansett Bay to enforce trading laws and discourage smugglers from
bringing goods to the colonists. But pretty soon, the colonists were sick of the British authority
stopping their ships and disrupting their trade routes. Then, when the Gaspee accidentally ran
itself aground in the middle of chasing a suspected smuggler, colonists descended on
the boat with torches. They looted the ship, shot the captain, and set the thing ablaze.
6. The Sarcosuchus Imperator The Sarcosuchus imperator is by far the
largest crocodile that ever lived on this planet. It makes any crocodile, alligator, or other
crocodilians look like baby geckos in comparison. The Sarcosuchus is a super croc, whose name is
Greek for “flesh crocodile.” It was a tremendous monster that could grow to its full adult size
in about 10 years. Imagine already being six feet (2m) tall at the age of just ten. But the amazing
part is that it didn't stop growing, and would continue getting bigger and bigger year after
year. The biggest Sarcosuchus fossils ever found were of beasts roughly 40 feet (12m) from the
tip of their nose to the end of their tail. That's about double the size of the biggest
saltwater crocodile ever found in modern times. Not only was this prehistoric reptile extremely
long, but it was also very heavy. These things weighed probably around 10 tons each,
making them serious monsters. And if you're wondering where these extinct behemoths lived,
the answer is North Africa. About 100 million years ago, the Sarcosuchus imperator made its
home in the tropical region where today lies the Sahara Desert. Before the Sahara was the biggest
desert in the world, it was a hot, humid swamp filled with crocodiles bigger than school buses!
And now for number 5! But first wanted to give a big shout to Anjzie Dagooc and
SBmedo20! Thanks so much for watching and supporting OE. If you are new here,
be sure to subscribe and join the family! 5. The People of the Pacific
For a very long time, scientists haven't fully understood why people colonized the thousands
of islands scattered throughout the South Pacific. There are so many Pacific islands,
and each one of them seems to have its very own culture going back thousands
of years. But obviously, human beings didn't evolve on these small islands. They must have
come from somewhere by way of the sea to populate each miniature tropical paradise.
Scientists believe they've figured out what happened. They say that within just 3000 years,
a single ancestral group known as the Lapita covered a third of the surface of the Earth,
reaching isolated lands by boat. And as these ancestral people moved, they brought
with them a distinct Austronesian language, and domesticated pigs, dogs, and chickens.
Their domesticated animals would decimate the natural island life everywhere they went.
But just where in the world did these people start out? Scientists believe the Lapita culture began
in the northern Philippines. From there, they crept out into the ocean, populating
one island at a time until they had spread across all the Pacific about 3000 years ago.
4. The Road to Atlantis Deep-sea researchers have uncovered
what looks like the underwater road to Atlantis. Beneath the waves off the coast of Hawaii,
a mysterious cobblestone-like formation has been identified on the seafloor. It looks like an
actual cobblestone path stretching across a huge part of the islands Marine National Monument,
one of the biggest marine conservation areas in the world. The path is distinctly yellow. It
breaks apart suddenly as if it had been destroyed thousands of years ago, and it doesn't actually
have anything to do with Atlantis. Sadly, this is actually just a dried
lake bed formation. It's a fractured flow of volcanic rock that formed during an eruption,
probably tens of thousands of years ago. That it looks like a yellow brick road is
just a really strange coincidence. What looks like cobblestones are most likely
just the result of heating and cooling stress, causing cracks and fractures in the seafloor.
Still, there’s no denying the strange formation looks like a road leading
to some underwater mythical city. It's just a shame the road doesn't actually lead anywhere.
3. Ancient Warrior’s Grave Scientists have discovered the
grave of an ancient warrior who was buried wearing golden jewelry and with a sword
positioned between his legs in Russia. They were astonished at the range of relics found
inside the 2,200-year-old necropolis because it had already been invaded by grave robbers.
The warrior was buried wearing chain-mail, with two swords, and they also found a pair of bronze
helmets. The warrior's grave, found near the town of Mezmay in the Caucasus, Russia, included
a gold brooch that measured just a little over 2inches by 2inches (5 by 5 cm), with
a rock crystal mounted in its center. The scientists who found the necropolis
discovered over 12 golden artifacts, along with many weapons, including the two helmets.
A smaller 19-inch (48cm) sword included a gold plate, leading the team to state, “the actual fact
that these articles were used to decorate weapons sets them apart in a category all of their own,
which has so far not been recorded anywhere else.” An ax that belonged to the warrior,
who researchers said was most likely a chief was also found, along with animal remains including
three horses, a cow, and a wild boar skull. Valentina Mordvintseva, a researcher at
the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences Institute of Archaeology, said the animals “were
particularly valuable among barbarian peoples of the ancient world.” They also found bones of other
animals and pottery in the grave, suggesting that they held a feast to mark the warrior's death.
Grave robbers first found the site in 2004, a year before legitimate
excavations began in the necropolis and officials do not know what may have been taken.
The researchers believe the grave was dug between the third century BC and the beginning
of the second century AD, but they could not tie the artifacts with any specific culture.
2. Mountains of Sugar Scientists recently discovered
that meadows of seagrass on the floor of the ocean actually store massive amounts of sugar
inside their fronds. The sugar isn't the white gold you and I are familiar with. Instead, it
comes as raw sucrose, and it's released from the seagrass to seep into the soil underneath. What
this means is that these vast patches of seagrass are sitting on about 1.3 million tons of sucrose,
which is enough to create roughly 32 billion cans of Coca-Cola. To put it even more simply,
there are literal mountains of sugar hiding beneath the ocean that nobody ever knew about.
According to marine microbiologist Nicole Dubilier, seagrass produces sugar during the
process of photosynthesis. Normally, when there are ordinary light conditions, the plants use
all these sugars to produce their own growth. But under extremely high light conditions,
like in the height of summer, the plants produce too much sugar. They can't store it all,
so they release it into the water, and it sinks into the soil where it accumulates.
Nobody has any idea right now how to go about harvesting this sugar. And besides,
harvesting the sugar would mean destroying these mountains of seagrass,
which are the most important blue carbon sinks on the planet. To give you an idea of how important
these underwater plants are, they suck up about twice as much carbon as a land forest
of the same size and dispose of it 35 times as quickly. Even though these grassy underwater
plains are hiding a wealth of sugar, trying to harvest it could plunge the world into chaos!
1. Octopus Torture One of the very last things a female octopus will
do in her life is lay her eggs. In almost every species of octopus, the mother lays her eggs,
stops eating, and does everything in her power to protect her eggs until just before they hatch.
Then, the mother octopus goes down a dark path of self-destruction. She will either beat herself
to death against a rock, rip her own skin apart with her tentacles, or actually consume herself.
It's brutal but entirely natural for the wild animal kingdom. Still, scientists have
always wanted to learn why octopuses felt the need to destroy themselves after laying eggs.
Some believed their death drew predators away from the soon-to-hatch babies. Others believed it was
to protect the babies from themselves since they are cannibals and have a thing for eating babies.
Researchers have discovered a previously unknown chemical process inside the octopus that controls
their barbaric self-destruction. After an octopus lays eggs, her body undergoes a unique change. The
way her body produces cholesterol changes, which increases her production of steroid
hormones. This creates biochemical instability. But here's something that's going to make your jaw
drop. Scientists discovered that right before the octopus has its meltdown and starts eating itself,
it produces insanely high levels of 7-dehydrocholesterol, also called 7-DHC.
Humans produce this as well, but we don't keep it in our systems because the compound is toxic. We
simply need it when making cholesterol. But sometimes, an infant is born with a genetic
disorder called Smith-Lemli-Opitz syndrome. This is when they can't clear the toxic 7-DHC
compound out of their body. And when it builds up in the human body, people develop behavioral
issues, grow extra fingers and toes, become intellectually stunted, and they self-harm.
It's shocking because it shows that the same building block of cholesterol that can cause
humans to hurt themselves is what’s behind an octopuses self-destruction before her eggs can
hatch. We may be worlds apart, but our biology is so similar it’s almost hard to believe.
Which of these discoveries surprised you the most? Let me know your thoughts in
the comments and thanks for watching. Remember to hit that subscribe button if you haven’t already,
and I’ll see you again real soon for another amazing video on the world’s greatest discoveries!