10.
Human Puppet An archaeologist in the UK discovered an ancient
corpse that appears to have been turned into some kind of human puppet.
The discovery came out of the southwest of England, dug out of a turnip field of all
places.
It was excavated by archaeologist and farmer Dr. Martin Green.
Martin happens to own a lot of property and has quite an obsession with archaeology, so
he actually excavates his own fields in hopes of finding amazing stuff.
I think we need to meet!!
The amazing thing is that he's almost never disappointed.
He even has his own private museum filled with things that he's found buried on his
farm, like skeletons, ancient cows, pieces of prehistoric tools, and much more.
It was in 2009 when he uncovered the eerie human remains from thousands of years ago
buried in his turnip field.
They were the ancient bones of a teenage female, and upon inspection, Martin noticed her bones
had drill holes in them, likely made from either a razor or some kind of sharp flint
tool.
The holes appeared to have been used as a method to prevent the girl's body from deteriorating
after death.
She had these drill holes in her legs and her arms, and it’s believed that she had
been strung together with primitive rope like some kind of ancient human puppet!
For some reason, somebody had tried their hardest to keep her as whole as possible after
death.
Whoever buried her wanted to keep her bones from separating, so they carved holes and
made sure each bone was linked together with string.
The truly bizarre thing about this discovery is that nobody knows why this would have been
done as we still have a very limited understanding of what people believed in 3000 years ago.
9.
Smoked Corpses In Papua New Guinea, you can find mummies
that are far more terrifying than anything hiding in an Egyptian tomb.
The Anga tribe, ancient people who live in the Aseki region of the country, are notorious
for smoking their dead to create the grisliest mummies you would never want to see in your
life.
These people don't even wrap their dead in bandages or bury them.
When a person dies, they’re left fully to the elements, perched above a cliff to overlook
the village where they originally lived.
To us in the western world it might seem extremely creepy but keep in mind that even the ancient
Greeks would sometimes leave their dead on mountain tops to return to the elements.
The mummification process starts with the removal of moisture from the corpse.
Water is the main cause of decomposition, so those bodies need to be dried out completely
like raisins.
To do this as quickly and easily as possible, the Anga heat the remains over a fire.
The body is cut open at the knees and elbows and other joints, bamboo poles are stuffed
into the slits, and then the insides are removed.
There have been rumors that the leftover fluid from the bodies is used as a cooking oil – though
this is complete hearsay and can't be proven.
It is most likely a much more spiritual process like that of the Egyptians who would remove
all the internal organs and keep them in containers.
Today the mummies can still be seen overlooking the villages.
They were first discovered by foreigners in 1907 when the British explorer Charles Higginson
visited the area.
But the practice came to an end in 1949 when missionaries finally settled in the region
and convinced the tribespeople to discontinue their unusual mummification practices and
convert to Christianity.
8.
Gruesome Golden Mask A creepy golden mask from over 1000 years
ago is hiding a gruesome secret.
In Peru, a man was buried inside a tomb filled with an unbelievable wealth of artifacts,
jewels, and pure gold.
He was flipped upside down, his head was separated from his body, and a metal mask was placed
over his face.
The mask is still around today, showing huge beaded eyes of pure black, a pair of decorative
earrings, and a blank expression that's enough to give you the chills.
And to make things even stranger, the mask, which was fastened to the severed head, and
the body of the dead man were painted in streaks of red.
This burial was discovered 30 years ago, and it creeped archaeologists out back then too.
But it was only recently that a team of researchers from the University of Oxford took an interest
in the mask and the red paint.
They were curious what made the red paint last over 1000 years in the grave.
They soon identified the red pigment as cinnabar.
But there was another ingredient as well that bound the paint together and made it more
robust.
As it turned out, the second ingredient was human blood.
The people responsible for the grave are known as the Lambayeque culture, and they predate
the Inca by quite a lot.
They lived in Peru between the 8th and 14th centuries and were obsessed with gold.
The man buried here had 1.2 tons of treasure in his grave, most of which was gold.
But why his head was taken off and he was buried with a mask of blood is still a total
mystery.
7.
Mass Peruvian Grave Speaking of terrifying discoveries in Peru,
here's another one, this time from the Chan Chan Archaeological Zone.
This is the location of the largest city anywhere in the Americas before the Spanish arrived.
The Chan Chan people, also called the Chimu, came after the Moche culture and flourished
from the 12th to the 15th centuries, just up until the Inca arrived.
Chan Chan was the main city, with excavations going on here consecutively since 1969.
That's how large the city was, even 600 years ago when it collapsed in 1470.
Found in this enormous ancient city was a mass grave.
The grave contained the ancient remains of 25 young females, all members of the Chimu
culture.
The skeletons date back to around 1100 AD, or about 1000 years ago.
What's so strange is that none of the females were over the age of 30, and they were all
buried in a seated position with their legs crossed.
According to Jhon Juarez, one of the men behind the excavations, it’s likely that the women
were garment makers.
They were found with tools of their trade buried beside them, such as needles and spindles.
But nobody can figure out why 25 garment makers were all buried at seemingly the exact same
time.
It may have been some sort of ritual sacrifice but it is unlikely since there doesn’t seem
to be evidence of violence.
Juarez and his team say that they could have been brought to one grave site from different
graves as some kind of bizarre attempt to keep all the seamstresses buried in the same
place.
6.
A Terrifying Delicacy Archaeologists have uncovered proof of a terrifying
delicacy that was enjoyed in the medieval days of Europe.
The delicacy is a creature called the lamprey, one of the most primitive types of jawless
fish in the world.
Based on fossil evidence, lampreys have been alive for over 360 million years in one form
or another.
They can be found pretty much everywhere in the world where it’s temperate, living in
coastal and even fresh waters.
Archaeozoologist Alan Pipe says that lampreys were a popular delicacy in medieval Britain,
specifically for nobility.
But they were also eaten as far as Spain and Finland, always by the richest members of
society.
One of the most bizarre stories is that Henry I of England had such a hunger for lamprey
meat that his doctor labeled his cause of death as eating too many of these feisty creatures.
And if you don't believe it, as recently as 1953, at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth
II, lamprey pie was actually baked and served as well.
The actual teeth of a lamprey were discovered during excavations near Mansion House station
in London.
Only the teeth were found because these animals don't have any bones or jaws, so they don't
leave much of themselves behind.
But it was enough to show direct evidence that Londoners loved to eat these creepy critters.
If given the opportunity, would you ever eat one of these unusual sea creatures enjoyed
by medieval nobles?
Let me know your thoughts in the comments and don't forget to subscribe if you haven’t
already!
We’ve got lots more videos like this coming up!
And I wanted to give a big shout out to Nancy Maschio and
Poky NovaKovic Thanks so much for watching and supporting
Origins Explained!!
5.
The Skeletons of Herculaneum Archaeologists have discovered over 300 skeletons
at the city of Herculaneum, near ancient Pompeii.
These skeletons once belonged to people who were alive in the year 79 AD, the year Mount
Vesuvius erupted and decimated the city.
But Pompeii was not the only place that got destroyed.
The Roman city of Herculaneum was also devastated, it's just not nearly as famous as its sister
city.
To understand the difference between these cities a bit better, Herculaneum was much
closer to the crater.
Whereas Pompeii was buried under about 12 feet (3.6 m) of volcanic ash, Herculaneum
was buried under 69 feet (21 m) of ash and other material.
Most of that material turned into solid rock, which has made studying the second city a
lot more challenging.
As for the 300 skeletons, they were found on what used to be a beach.
They appeared to have been trying to flee the catastrophic eruption when they were killed
by a sudden surge of boiling material that spewed out of the volcano.
Archaeologists described it as a scene of horror.
They were only about 4 miles (6.43 km) from Mount Vesuvius when it erupted, meaning they
would have been practically incinerated immediately as they ran, preserved in rock for 2000 years.
4.
The Spiked Vampire An extremely rare skeleton was discovered
in Britain with spikes jabbed through its shoulders, through its heart, and even through
its ankles.
Archaeologists say whoever buried this individual must have thought they were a vampire.
What makes it so rare is that it was discovered in Britain, whereas most vampire burials are
found in Eastern European countries like Romania.
The person died sometime around the year 550 or 600, at the height of Medieval paranoia.
It's impossible to say what the locals thought this person was, it could have been a vampire
or werewolf or ghoul.
The only thing that's certain is that the metal spikes stabbed through their body were
to prevent them from ever getting out of their grave and feasting on the flesh of the living.
3.
City of the Dead During routine excavations at Park Street
in Birmingham, the United Kingdom, workers discovered human bones.
At first, it seemed like maybe there was a small graveyard or something underneath the
street that people had forgotten about centuries before.
But once the archaeologists arrived, it became one of the biggest archaeological discoveries
in the history of Birmingham.
Over 6500 skeletons were found right underneath the street!
It turned out the road was actually a cemetery way back in the 19th century.
The city of Birmingham was built quite literally on the backs of its workers.
The skeletons that were exhumed from the massive grave were in rough condition.
Some were babies and kids without coffins, some of them had their feet or hands cut off,
and many of the dead bodies were buried with bowls of salt.
Why bury the dead with a sprinkle of salt?
It was because prior to the 19th century when a lot of these people were buried, the locals
believed that salt would keep away evil spirits and even the devil.
The only way to prevent their loved ones from having their souls stolen after death was
to bury them with a bowl of salt.
Further analysis of the corpses showed that many of them had scurvy or rickets, they were
in poor health when they died, and they had atrocious nutrition.
They were most likely the inner-city workers from hundreds of years ago who were buried
in a kind of backlog cemetery for the poor.
2.
Skulls of the Huns When it comes to terrifying skulls, nobody
can beat the Huns.
The Huns practiced extreme cranial modification during the 4th century AD.
At least 23 deformed skulls were found in the Republic of Georgia, 17 in the country
of Hungary, 13 in Germany, and two in the Czech Republic.
All of these deformed skulls date back to what is known in European history as the Great
Migration, which lasted between the 4th and 7th centuries.
This was the same time that the Huns moved out of Russia and into the territory of the
Romans – killing, burning, and looting all that they could.
For the Europeans, the Huns weren't just terrifying because they were savage warriors, they also
looked imposing because their skulls were way too large.
Many of the Hun warriors practiced cranial deformation, making them appear alien and
horrifying to the Europeans they were invading.
They literally looked like nightmare warriors.
But what's curious is that after the Huns invaded Europe, locals started to deform their
heads just like them.
This is despite the fact that cranial deformation had fallen out of style with the rise of the
Roman Empire.
It had been popular during the Bronze Age but nobody really did it any longer… until
the Huns showed up and started a revolution.
It was the influence of the Huns that led to another 300 years of skull modification.
1.
The Tarim Mummies The Tarim Mummies were discovered by European
explorers in the early part of the 20th century, deep in the deserts of western China.
Many of these mummies were pulled out of the Xiaohe Tomb, where they had been sleeping
soundly for thousands of years.
The remains of the people buried became mummified because of the natural dryness of the desert.
What was once a lush riverbank 4000 years ago is now a desert of sand.
The only things still surviving in that brutal wilderness are the tall upright poles jammed
into the earth to mark the burials.
These polls have survived the test of time, showing exactly where archaeologists needed
to dig.
In total, the Xiaohe cemetery had about 300 bodies in it.
But unfortunately, it had been pillaged by grave robbers a very long time ago.
People were originally buried here in the Bronze Age, around 3000 years before today.
They left a pretty big window for all the important relics to be taken out of the grave
by looters.
All that the thieves left behind were the shockingly ugly and frightfully dry faces
of 300 prehistoric dead people.
Which amazing archaeological discovery creeped you out the most?
Let me know in the comments and thanks a lot for watching.
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