10: The Hats of Easter Island One of the biggest mysteries on Easter Island
is the fact that the giant stone statues, known as moai, once wore hats.
We've all seen pictures of the colossal statues on Easter Island, also known as Rapa Nui.
But there are two main things people don't know about them.
First of all, the Easter Island statues are not just heads.
All of these statues once had bodies.
They were also wearing huge, red stone hats once upon a time, though most of the hats
have already broken apart and been lost to history.
Some of the statues are pretty impressive, towering over 33 feet (10.5 m) tall and weighing
over 82 tons.
What's really shocking about the hats is that archaeologists say they were made separately
from the statues and crafted from a different type of rock.
In other words, the people of Rapa Nui built their enormous statues, then said to themselves,
“Hey, you know what’s missing?
Hats!”
And so, they used a different type of red rock, carved some hats, and put them on top
of the statues.
This was no easy feat.
The hats, called pukao, had to be transported from far away and then lifted way up onto
the top of the statues.
And this was all going on hundreds of years ago.
Some of these hats were nearly seven feet (2.13 m) in diameter and weighed 13 tons.
It took some serious ingenuity to get them on top of the statues.
They had to build dirt ramps, hoists, and employ dozens of men.
But this leads to another question.
Why did they feel the need for giant red hats?
Similar headgear has been seen on temple carvings across many places in Asia.
This has led some to speculate that the people of Easter Island, located off the coast of
Chile in South America, could have been contacted by people from Asia.
If not, no one has any idea where they got the inspiration for the hats.
They literally look like the exact same headgear on other statues thousands of miles away,
on the other side of the globe!
9: The Giant Finger of Egypt In 1988, a Swiss entrepreneur named Gregor
Spoerri managed to have a meeting with a grave robber who specialized in pillaging ancient
burials.
The meeting took place in a small house, hundreds of miles from Cairo.
The grave robber had something interesting that the Swiss entrepreneur really wanted
to see.
It was a finger, an absolutely huge finger that had apparently been taken out of the
tomb of a giant.
The finger was truly enormous, looking exactly like an ordinary human finger except far larger.
The Egyptian giant finger was measured at 15 inches (38 cm), even bigger than an average
person’s foot.
Gregor paid the man $300 just to take a few pictures of it.
But the guy wouldn't hand it over.
He said it was a family treasure and no amount of money could convince him otherwise.
Since this bizarre meeting, nobody has seen the giant finger of Egypt.
It's so strange of a story that a lot of people don't even believe it these days.
In 2009, Gregor returned to the same village in search of the giant mummy finger, this
time hoping to prove to the world he wasn't a liar.
But he was never able to find the tomb raider and nobody knows what happened to the finger.
If real, it would suggest that there was once a huge race of giants living in Egypt.
The finger, judging by its length, would have belonged to a person at least 17 feet (5.18
m) tall.
This would fit in well with the historical legends of a race of giants – but sadly,
it’s pretty much impossible to prove.
8: Historical UFO Paintings Throughout history, painters have been documenting
UFO sightings in secret.
It might be a shocking coincidence if just one or two UFOs appeared in old pieces of
artwork, but that's not the case.
There are heaps of famous historical paintings that very clearly show alien visitors loitering
in the sky.
For example, there is a painting hung above the altar of the Visoki Decani Monastery in
Kosovo which shows two unidentified flying objects in the top corners.
In the right corner, there is very obviously a person inside a sphere-shaped metal craft
flying through the sky.
It's definitely not supposed to be an angel.
It even has beams of light shooting from behind it.
There’s the exact same thing in the left corner of the picture, except painted red
as if on fire.
And to make this all the more strange, these UFOs are in a picture from 1350, a painting
of the crucifixion of Christ.
This is just one example.
There are plenty.
The Miracle of the Snow, circa 1428, also shows an entire sky of cloud-shaped UFOs.
The Madonna with Saint Giovannino from the 1400s also shows an aircraft buzzing through
the sky and a shepherd looking up at it, even pointing.
This coincidence repeats itself again and again, suggesting people have known about
alien visitors for centuries, way before the infamous incident in Roswell, New Mexico in
the 1940s.
7: Greek & Indian Mythology There are some pretty bizarre coincidences
between two of history's oldest mythologies.
Greek mythology and Indian mythology are sometimes so similar that when you look at them closely,
it's as if they were made up by the same person.
For example, let's look at Zeus and Indra.
Both are the king of the gods, both live on a holy mountain, and both have an affinity
for thunderbolts.
The Greeks and the Indians even have heroes who may as well be the same person.
Karna and Achilles have almost identical stories and mythologies surrounding them.
Both were skilled warriors, both wore a type of impenetrable armor, and both were demigods.
Each of these warriors was even involved in a huge war of which their mothers told them
not to participate.
And when they died, that was the end for both the wars.
Speaking of war, the Trojan War and the Ramayana were pretty similar stories.
In Greek mythology, the Trojan War happened when Helen of Troy ran away with Paris of
Greece and he refused to give her back.
The same thing caused the Ramayana, when Ravana kidnapped Sita and war was waged to get her
back.
Why do you think there are so many elements in the myths of these two cultures that are
similar?
Tell me your theories in the comments!
6: Deformed Skulls The practice of cranial deformation is one
of the strangest global coincidences we know of.
Deformed skulls have been found in Mexico, Peru, China, and Europe.
It was practiced in every place where civilization flourished, and yet no one seems to know why.
For example, cranial deformation began in the Bronze Age in Europe and was only discontinued
when the Roman Empire outlawed it 2000 years ago.
But then when the Huns showed up in the 4th century, they inspired a massive revival of
cranial manipulation throughout the continent.
What's really outrageous about this is that after the Huns invaded Europe, people began
modifying their skulls in places where the Huns never even flexed their influence.
Deformed skulls have been found in the Republic of Georgia, Hungary, Germany, Czech, Austria,
and even Crimea.
What this suggests is that cranial deformation spread across Europe as a fad.
But it seems like quite the fashion commitment since you have to start with young babies
to modify their head shape and it's not like it's reversible like an outfit!
Why were people so obsessed?
But just like in South America and other places, cranial deformation eventually faded out.
Researchers still can't put together why it was picked up in the first place by almost
every ancient civilization.
One of the main theories is that people all across the globe were visited by aliens with
really long skulls thousands of years ago, and it inspired early humans to do the same.
Thanks Ancient Aliens!
5: Humans in North America Almost every mainstream scientist agrees that
humans arrived in the Americas no more than about 20,000 years ago.
Yet an indigenous archaeologist is arguing that humans arrived 130,000 years ago.
That’s roughly 110,000 years beyond any physical evidence we have of human habitation
in the Americas.
Paulette Steeves reached her as yet unproven conclusion using some coincidences.
She suggests that because scientists already agree that early hominids made it to northern
Asia 2.1 million years ago, it makes no sense that they didn't go any farther north.
Paulette says it doesn't make sense for humans to have been so close, yet to never stray
onto this half of the world.
But there's no physical evidence that Paulette is right.
The earliest evidence of human beings in the Americas are fossilized footprints found at
White Sands National Park in New Mexico.
They date back around 20,000 years but so far the history books still claim that the
earliest inhabitants came to the US about 13,000 years ago.
Looks like history just may have to be rewritten!!
4: Prehistoric Astronomers Evidence of prehistoric interest in the cosmos
can be seen as far back as the oldest cave paintings on the planet.
Humans have been obsessed with astrology since they first started looking at the night sky.
But just when did humans turn into astronomers?
Researchers believe it was several thousand years ago, when structures such as the Great
Pyramids of Giza and Stonehenge were built for the express purpose of admiring the heavens.
In the 19th century, Egyptologist Flinders Petrie carried out the very first precision
survey of the Giza pyramids and found that each of the four edges of the pyramids’
bases point in a cardinal direction.
What this means is that each corner points at a position on the horizon where the sun,
moon, or stars rise and fall.
What's truly bizarre is that nobody to this day can figure out how the Egyptians were
able to do it.
It's just like Stonehenge, which was seemingly built to showcase the solar eclipse.
But even with modern science, we can't figure out how these ancient astronomers figured
out how to perfectly line up all their stones.
Either it was a coincidence that all these different people solved the same mathematical
equations and astronomical theories thousands of years ago, or they got help from an undetermined
outside source.
There could, however, be another explanation.
What do you think?
3: The Oldest Social Network A bizarre discovery from the Stone Age in
Africa has revealed an ancient social network going back 50,000 years.
As it turns out, Facebook wasn’t the first social network at all.
The discovery comes thanks to old beads found across southern and eastern Africa.
These beads were worn by humans as far back as 75,000 years before today.
That makes these tiny eggshell beads the earliest forms of human jewelry.
Now, researchers from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany
examined over 1500 of these ancient beads from within a region of 1800 miles.
The coincidence is that even though this region was filled with different communities, they
all produced identical beads made from ostrich shells.
The same thickness, the same diameter.
They may as well have come off a conveyor belt.
According to the researchers, the similarities in the beads from different communities with
different cultural practices shows a coherent social network spanning a massive distance.
When people were still living in caves, they came up with trends that spread from community
to community.
Basically, somebody had the idea for bead necklaces, it spread to another community
of cave dwellers, they started doing the same thing, and it continued over a huge part of
Africa.
2: India & Ancient Mesopotamia If you’ve ever looked at ancient sculptures
from Mesopotamia, you may have noticed that they look quite similar to sculptures in India.
In fact, when looked at side by side, these two cultures share quite a few similarities.
It's no coincidence.
Mesopotamia and India began trading with one another back in 3000 BC.
The very first reference made by a Mesopotamian ruler to India was in 2300 BC by Sargon of
Akkad.
He spoke of the Indus region, which was where India as we know it today got its start.
But researchers have found something quite interesting.
The relationship between ancient Mesopotamia and early India involved a lot of cultural
mimicry.
People in Mesopotamia studied Hinduism to understand the Indian people better.
And it was the same in India.
Archaeologists have even found depictions of great battles between the Mesopotamian
god Enkidu and the Hindu god Shiva.
Plus, DNA evidence has shown that the Sumerians who ruled Mesopotamia from around 4000 to
2000 largely came from India.
The point is that when you see similarities between these two ancient empires, it’s
because they spent so much time copying one another that their cultures became entwined
with one another.
1: Ancient China In ancient China, completely separate cultures
practiced the same rituals.
In what is today the Yangtze River Delta region, there once flourished the Liangzhou civilization.
Not too far away along the shores of the Liaohe River, there was the Hongshan culture.
Both cultures date back five millennia, but researchers don’t believe they had much
– if any – contact with each other.
That makes the similarities between them a little spooky.
For one thing, both cultures were skilled in agriculture and crafting.
They also both had an affinity for jade and made amazing handicrafts from this precious
material.
The things they made were almost identical.
They used mature techniques that involved smooth lines and smooth surfaces, with styles
and production techniques pretty much exactly the same.
Researchers say these similarities are not just coincidental.
The Liangzhou and the Hongshan probably came from the same ancestors.
Archaeologists don't know when they split up.
At some point, many thousands of years ago, two different groups of people settled at
two different rivers.
They would have essentially been the same culture, but then time and forgetfulness made
them each unique.
Yet they followed the same general road.
For example, a jade axe was found belonging to the Liangzhu, created for part of some
elite ritual.
A similar jade axe was found from Hongshan, slightly different but still used as a symbol
in a ritual rather than in battle.
Both of these Neolithic cultures faded into memory, much in the way their ancestors faded
before them.
But their cultural uniqueness persisted in those that came after them, adding to the
rich history of the Chinese civilization, still around after 5000 years.
What do you think is the wildest historical coincidence from ancient times?
Let me know your thoughts in the comments and thanks for watching.
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