From mummifying yourself to mysterious figures stalking people in the mountains, here are
ten shocking discoveries.
10 Self-Mummification Japan is famous for many things, but mummies
are not one of them.
Mummies are not very common here at all mostly because of the climate.
There are no deserts, no humid peat bogs, and no tall mountains encased in ice.
There's nowhere ideal to mummify a human being, but that didn’t stop the self-sacrificing
Sokushinbutso.
There were actually at least 17 people that became mummies between 1081 and 1903.
A small group of Buddhist monks discovered how to mummify themselves through rigorous
training in a shadowy part of Japan, in the northern prefecture of Yamagata.
And even though some scientists claim the number of mummified monks could be higher,
only 17 of them have been discovered so far.
How did they do it?
The first monk to turn himself into a mummy was a man named Shojin, who did it in 1081.
His plan was to mummify himself and then come back to life in the future to spread goodness
among mankind.
Unfortunately, it didn't work.
Over the next several hundred years, other monks would try to perfect the process.
Natural self-mummification involves three years of preparation before dying.
For 1000 days, monks will slowly starve themselves down to just skin and bones, only eating what
they forage from the mountain.
Then they slowly drank poisonous lacquer made from the sap of the urushi (lacquer tree)
so their organs wouldn’t rot after death.
When the monk felt like they were about to die, they would be placed in an underground
tomb where they sat in the lotus positions reciting chants and ringing a bell so the
disciples would know he was still alive.
When the bell stopped, they believed the monk had entered eternal meditation.
The monk’s body was typically left underground for 3 years and 3 months until it had fully
hardened.
If the process was complete, the body was considered a true sokushinbutsu and enshrined.
The last monk to mummify himself did so in 1903, 30 years after this was considered a
criminal and barbaric act.
His preserved remains were found in 1961 by a team of researchers working with Tohoku
University.
His remains are now on display in the nearby Niigata Prefecture.
9: The Dark Watchers Visitors to California have discovered something
extremely disturbing.
There are beings known as Dark Watchers apparently watching Californians from the high peaks
of the Santa Lucia Mountains.
These figures typically appear at twilight, they are extremely tall, cloaked in strange
clothing, and undoubtedly eerie.
Some claim the Dark Watchers are 10 feet tall and wear creepy hats and capes.
If you spot them, they will stare at you and then disappear.
And even though there were some bizarre sightings recently, the Dark Watchers were originally
discovered over 300 years ago when the Spanish arrived in the 1700s.
The Spanish actually called these apparitions los Vigilantes Oscuros, or Dark Watchers or
Night Watchmen in English.
And according to legend, when settlers began arriving in the region, they too discovered
they were being watched by mysterious beings from the tops of the mountains.
One famous observer who felt the presence of the Watchers was the American author John
Steinbeck.
Remember, Grapes of Wrath and all that we had to read in highschool?
In his 1938 short story "Flight," a character sees a black figure leering down at him from
a nearby ridgetop.
No one knew who the watchers were, nor where they lived, but it was better to ignore them
and never to show interest in them."
But just what are the Dark Watchers?
One of the most popular theories is that the beings are actually just hallucinations, the
exact type of hallucination that a person experiences when they see a dragon in a cloud
or a face on the moon.
Some claim there are no watchers at all but simply shadows being interpreted as giant
monsters come dusk.
Still, this has not stopped hikers visiting the Santa Lucia mountains from reporting strange
floating beings high up on the peaks.
Could they really just be hallucinations or is there something greater out there still
to discover?
8: The Oldest Idol A creepy and very old sculpture in the shape
of a human figure with a spooky face predates even the Great Pyramids of Giza.
The idol is shaped like a giant and is the oldest of its kind ever discovered on earth.
This thing is known as the Shigir Idol because it was found in the Shigir peat bog in the
Ural Mountains of Russia way back in 1890.
But even though the sculpture was discovered just over 100 years ago, it was actually made
around 12,000 years ago.
To put into perspective just how old this sculpture is, it was around to witness the
extinction of hordes of animals after the Ice Age, such as the dire wolf and the woolly
mammoth.
It's 7000 years older than Stonehenge and no less impressive.
The sculpture, when first made, would have stood nearly 18 feet tall.
This makes it the earliest monumental wooden sculpture ever, according to a team of researchers
from the State Agency of Heritage Service in Germany.
What's totally bizarre is that nobody has any real idea of who built the idol or just
what it was made to represent.
The geometric patterns and zig-zag lines are common elements from the palaeolithic and
the Early mesolithic.
And to be quite honest, it's one of the oldest and most obscure archaeological mysteries
on the planet.
If we don’t even know who built Stonehenge, how can we possibly know who built a wooden
sculpture 7000 years before?
7: The Catacomb Saints The Catacomb Saints were once Christian martyrs
who were buried inside the catacombs of Rome.
The Catacomb Saints were exhumed from their place of burial in Italy and then sent abroad,
where they each served as a relic of a particular saint from between the 16th and 19th century.
The reason that the saints were sent throughout Europe, to places like Germany or Switzerland,
was because starting in the 16th century, Catholic churches throughout Europe began
to be stripped of their religious symbols and relics.
The church appeared far too luxurious and rich, and in the UK Henry VIII completely
denounced the Catholic church and made himself the head of the new church of England so the
Pope had no more authority.
This was bad news for the Catholic church, and they entered a period of crisis.
To unload some of their cumbersome wealth, the church began to dig bodies out of the
catacombs and announced them as Christian martyrs, though it’s believed most of them
were probably people of little religious significance.
Each skeleton was dressed in finery of gold, jewels, silver, trinkets, and even full suits
of golden armor.
They were then gifted or sold to wealthy families as relics of saints.
But here’s the deal.
Many of the saints were likely made up.
Some of the saints even shared the same name as the wealthy family that served as their
patron.
In the end, it was a sneaky way for the church to decorate thousands of skeletons in gold
and jewels, including stuffing as much finery as possible into eye sockets and headdresses,
and then giving them to wealthy families in exchange for patronage.
It was a big loophole that allowed the church to sell tons of gold and jewels.
Today, the Catacomb Saints are mostly gone.
Though there are some still sitting in museums across Europe, and some still remain in private
collections.
6: Grasshopper Diet About 1400 years ago, a man living in the
Lower Pecos Canyonlands of Texas suffered such a horrible spell of constipation that
he died.
At least, this is according to a recent study of the man's mummified remains.
The new study revealed that for several months before this man's death, he ate basically
nothing except grasshoppers.
He had such a weird diet because he’d already caught something known as Chagas disease.
This is a disease caused by a parasite, and it was so deadly that it backed up the man's
gastrointestinal system and caused his colon to swell to at least six times its normal
size, a scientific condition known as megacolon and it’s something no one should ever have
to experience.
This guy became so sick that he was unable to digest foods and became malnourished.
He couldn't even walk.
Probably for the last three months of his life, he was cared for by his family, who
fed him nothing but grasshoppers which would have been easier for his messed-up body to
digest.
The remains of this poor man were discovered in 1937 inside of a rock shelter in southern
Texas.
His body had been naturally mummified because of the dry conditions.
His preserved corpse was put inside a museum until it was loaned to the Institute of Texan
Cultures in 1968.
It wasn’t until just recently that scientists learned of his unusual diet and medical affliction.
5: Mass Burial Site A team of archaeologists working in southeastern
Poland were shocked to recently discover a mass burial site with no less than 119 tombs.
This horrifying discovery revealed the skeletal remains of children and other young people
buried near the small village of Jeeowe, many of whom were discovered with coins inside
of their mouths.
The coins were likely intended to help the dead reach the afterlife, much like the ancient
Greek myth of Charon and the River Styx.
Archaeologists were able to date the remains of the burial structures to the 17th century,
and the coins were minted under the rule of King Sigismund III.
Since approximately 80% of the remains were from children, this means that the mortality
rate for children at that time was significant.
Also, since they were buried without any worthy possessions, archaeologists believe that the
remains were likely from poor families.
As of right now, there isn't much more that archaeologists can tell us since they are
still working on uncovering the fragile bones.
It’s not clear why the mortality rate in this corner of Poland was so high in the 17th
century or if there was some kind of epidemic that grossly affected young people.
For now, we just have to wait.
4: Creepy New Fossil Researchers just discovered the shocking remains
of a previously unknown reptile that lived during the early Triassic Period.
The bizarre creature appeared between 247 and 251 million years ago, coming into existence
right around the largest mass extinction event in our planet's history, at the end of the
Permian Era.
This extinction event wiped out at least 95% of marine life and over 70% of the land species.
The cause: probably volcanic eruptions and global warming.
During this time, there was a group of animals called tanystropheids.
These have given scientists a lot of headaches because very few specimens have been recovered
but it looks like they did well in the wake of disaster!
They have spent a really long time trying to figure them out!
What we do know is that these animals had really long necks and probably lived in shallow
bodies of water.
Their necks were so long, they included anywhere between eight and thirteen elongated vertebrae.
The long neck carried down to an elongated spine that was low to the ground.
The most recent fossil found in Brazil has turned out to be the cousin of a tanystropheid,
and it’s been named the Elessaurus.
The Elessaurus was a long-legged creature that somehow survived and thrived during the
Permian Extinction, diversifying and spreading across the world to live all throughout the
old supercontinent of Gondwana, which once consisted of Antarctica, Africa, South America,
India, Australia, and even New Zealand.
How exactly this monster went extinct or what it evolved into is still a mystery.
3: Whale Vomit When Ken Wilman was walking his dog along
the beach in England, his dog began to make a bit of a fuss.
Ken’s dog had found what looked to be a rock.
But according to what Ken told the BBC, when he picked up the rock and smelled it, it definitely
didn't smell like any old rock.
Ken took the rock home and did a quick Google search to see just what kind of lump he had
found.
It turned out that Ken’s dog found a piece of ambergris, which comes directly from the
digestive tract of a sperm whale.
Would you have brought this home with you??
I don’t think I would have picked it up!!
But good thing Ken did!
Ambergris does not smell good, but it is one of the most expensive ingredients found in
many luxury fragrances.
It’s worth an absolute fortune.
It’s not quite clear what ambergris actually is.
Some people call it whale poop, others whale vomit but neither one is actually correct.
Nobody knows how ambergris is created.
All scientists know is that it comes from inside the whale's intestines and might be
used as a type of fatty coating to help whales digest things like squid beaks.
Immediately after Ken’s shocking discovery, a French ambergris dealer offered him $68,000
for the piece he had found on the beach.
But according to the curator from the Aquarium of the Lakes in Cumbria, the piece could actually
be worth as much as $180,000.
Never take the first offer!!
Nobody knows if Ken has gone through with any sales just yet, he definitely stumbled
upon a small fortune all thanks to his dog.
2: Neolithic Salt Archaeologists recently discovered the oldest
salt production housing in Britain during a dig in east Cleveland.
The salt production housing has been dated older than Stonehenge.
The find was incredibly rare, with researchers saying that the salt production was likely
of high value to the community that ran it sometime around 3800 BC.
And it was probably passed down for hundreds of years after into the Neolithic period.
The Neolithic people produced salt by evaporating seawater into a brine solution and then heating
it in pots.
The pots were then broken to collect the salt.
The excavation was done by Dr Steve Sherlock and his team of researchers.
One of the reasons the find is indeed so significant is that it puts a timeline on when early Britons
began changing from nomadic hunters and gatherers to settled farmers.
Ancient communities who worked together to produce salt often benefited from extreme
wealth.
They were the capitalists of their day.
The excavation of the salt production facility revealed three hearths, hundreds upon hundreds
of pottery shards, old stone tools, and of course lots of traces of salt.
All of these things were key to early salt production.
1: Shipwreck Remains A warship was recently discovered sunk at
the bottom of the Mekong River in Cambodia’s Kampong Cham province.
The warship had been sunk during the bloody civil war that went down in Cambodia in the
1970s.
A team of underwater recovery specialists were investigating the wreckage when they
discovered the old remains of a soldier who had likely been on the warship when it sank.
The original team of researchers were sent to the bottom of the Mekong River to take
out the unexploded bombs and dispose of them safely.
They hadn't expected to find the bones of a fallen soldier.
According to the research team, the soldier had likely been guarding the ship.
They even found his name tag.
The young soldier’s name was Chhim Chheangly.
The government has since called on the man’s family to claim his bones and give him a proper
burial.
As for the warship, officials found a significant amount of unexploded ordnance.
They also discovered 60mm shells, 105mm shells, and almost 55,000 bullets from handguns and
machine guns.
And this was only from a single section of the ship.
This thing was equipped for battle.
The ship was actually used to transport ammunition between 1970 and 1975 – until it exploded
and sank to the bottom of the river, probably in late 1973 or early 1974.
Which of these discoveries was your favorite?
Let me know in the comments and thank you for watching.
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