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- Join us.
And maybe you can help solve a mystery.
Just not these.
They're pretty much wrapped up.
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We all love a good mystery,
so much so, sometimes, that the mistake
carries on in our imaginations even after
the mystery has been solved.
But get wise:
here are three events previously known as mysterious.
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Did Anastasia escape the Bolsheviks?
In 1918, during the onslaught of the Russian Revolution,
Bolsheviks assassinated Czar Nicholas II,
his wife, and their five children.
A few years later,
a woman calling herself Anna Anderson surfaced,
claiming to be their youngest child Anastasia.
Though she was rejected by the surviving Romanovs,
Natasha included, rumors of Anastasia's escape persisted
with the help from a strange finding in 1991.
The bodies of most of the Romanovs and their servants
were discovered in a mass grave in Yekaterinburg,
but two children, a girl and a boy, were missing.
In 2007, however, archeologists unearthed
a second grave with two more sets of bones.
Using modern DNA matching techniques,
they were confirmed to be Romanovs.
That's thanks to a blood sample taken from a shirt
that Nicholas II had worn during an assassination attempt
in 1891.
So basically, she really probably didn't escape.
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Mystery.
Why did the Maya civilization collapse?
Theories about the Maya's fall circa 700 to 800 BCE
have ranged from military defeat
to a massive peasant revolt,
to invasion by UFOs.
But, in a study published in 2012,
Arizona State University researchers
substantiated yet another theory.
Changing environmental conditions.
By analyzing the archeological data,
they found evidence that the Maya had
burned and chopped down so much of their surrounding forest
that they altered the land's ability
to absorb solar radiation.
Which, in turn, made clouds and rainfall scarce.
This subsequently exacerbated a naturally occurring drought
and caused soil erosion and depletion
which caused their agriculture to fail.
With less food available,
workers were forced to leave the lowland cities
to avoid starvation,
and their whole civilization imploded.
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Mystery.
What causes the Sailing Stones to move?
So, every ten years or so,
something seemingly impossible happens
in the Death Valley lakebed called the Racetrack Playa.
Racetrack Playa would be an amazing DJ name by the way.
Stones as big as 700 pounds seemed
to move around on their own,
leaving long tracks behind them
in the parched desert surface.
I know what you're thinking.
Dust devils.
Slippery films of algae with nefarious purposes.
But no.
In 2011, researchers brought in
15 similarly-sized rocks to monitor,
because the National Park Service
wouldn't let them attach GPSes to the natural rocks.
They concluded that ice is at work.
In winter, the playa sometimes fills with a thin layer
of rainwater which freezes overnight.
When it melts the next day,
it cracks into free-floating panels so huge
that light winds can push them.
Like ice sails, kinda.
These can drive the rocks along ahead of them
at just a few inches per second.
Too slow for visitors
to catch the movement from a distance,
but with enough pressure that they do leave tracks.
But hey, I've got a question for you.
What's your favorite still unsolved mystery?
And what do you think happened?
Check and make sure it hasn't already been debunked
in our article Ten Unsolved Mysteries That Have Been Solved
on howstuffworks.com, and, hey,
if you liked this video, make it official,
and subscribe so you won't miss the next one.
(stuttering)
Did Anastasia espake Bolsheviks?
(stuttering)
- [Voiceover] Did you say espake?
- Did I say espake?
(laughter)
- [Voiceover] You said espake.
- I like that I didn't even notice.
With less food available,
workers were forced to leave
the lowland cities to avoid starvation,
and their whole civili-zotion implerded.
(laughter)