From a forgotten shipwreck to an ancient sarcophagus with unknown secrets, and even some pointy
shoes from the time of the plague – here are ten mysterious archaeological discoveries!
10: Shipwreck Treasures A team of researchers surveying the seabed
off the coast of Greece discovered four mysterious shipwrecks that could hold clues to trade
in the ancient Mediterranean.
The discovery happened off the coast of the Greek island of Kasos, with help from the
Institute of Historical Research of the National Hellenic Research Foundation.
Inside the shipwrecks, archaeologists excavated a treasure trove of ancient pottery.
The most significant discovery was from the oldest vessel dating back to the 2nd or 3rd
century which was a large collection of pottery from ancient Rome.
The pottery vessels are called amphorae, and they used to be filled with oil produced in
Spain and Africa and then transported across the Mediterranean to various empires.
Amphorae get their name from the Greek term “amphiphoreus,” which means, “carried
on both sides.”
That explains the 2 handles!
These amphorae may not be gold or jewels but they date back 2,500 years they hold many
clues to life in ancient times.
The truly amazing part of the discovery is that according to the expedition leader, this
was the first time archaeologists found amphorae from both Spain and North Africa in the same
shipwreck.
The oil had probably been on its way to the old city of Rhodes when the ship sank.
But what about the other three ships that were found?
They span a period of about 1000 years, with the most recent being from modern times.
The expedition was part of a 3-year research project to map the sea bed near Kasos.
The team has done over 100 dives and the next time, they hope to have some state of the
art machinery that will help uncover even more ancient treasures!!
9: Gumusler Monastery The Gumusler Monastery comes from the Byzantine
era.
It’s a monastery built straight into the side of a cave.
But it's actually more than just an ordinary monastery.
It's one of the best preserved in all of Turkey, a country known for having dozens of ancient
rock monasteries and some of the oldest temples on the planet.
According to scholars, the most important part of the Gumusler Monastery is its church,
located just slightly to the north.
At least three separate masters worked on the paintings that adorn the interior.
But here’s where things get really interesting.
The monastery was only rediscovered recently in the year 1962.
It also has on one of its walls something not seen anywhere else in the whole region:
paintings of hunters hunting.
The pictures show several different animals being hunted down, which is strange considering
the rest of the paintings mostly depict religious scenes, with figures like John the Baptist
and Saint Stephen.
This beautiful cave monastery dates back to before the 7th century, though scholars don’t
know exactly when.
The paintings have been dated to between the 7th and 13th centuries AD, which is incredible
when you think about it, since the monastery was painted continuously over a course of
at least 500 years.
8: World’s Oldest Tea Do you like to drink tea??
It’s been around for a very long time!!
The oldest tea in the entire world was just found by archaeologists inside the tomb of
an emperor from the Han Dynasty, in China.
The tea dates back an astounding 2,150 years!
The discovery came when archaeologists were doing excavations inside the Han Yang Ling
Mausoleum, a massive tomb built for emperor Jing Di, found near the modern Chinese city
of Xi’an.
It’s an amazing discovery because it not only confirms that Chinese royals drank tea
thousands of years before people in the West, but also because it shows historians some
interesting facts about the old Silk Road.
The mausoleum was first excavated back in 1990, with researchers uncovering incredible
chariots with horses, weapons, pottery figures, and much more.
The oddest part of the discovery came in the form of withered, decomposed plants.
Researchers couldn’t tell what was going on back in the 90s, but with new technology
and specialized equipment, they have finally identified the mysterious plant matter as
ancient tea.
Here’s a fact.
According to the Smithsonian, the first written mention of tea dates back to the year 59 BC.
which lines up roughly with this newest discovery.
However, the exact origins of tea are still unknown.
Tea was wildly popular with the Uighur people in northern China beginning in the 7th century
AD, but tea drinking may have already been going on for a few thousand years before that.
7: Nude Horseman Volunteer archaeologists excavating an ancient
Roman fortress in the north of England stumbled upon an insanely rare carving of a nude warrior
hanging out with his horse.
It’s a totally bizarre sculpture, and one of incredible value.
It was dug up at Vindolanda, by a pair of volunteers named Richie Milor and David Goldwater.
They had already been working at the heritage site for 15 years and still couldn’t believe
their luck when they found the statue hiding just a few inches beneath the topsoil.
The Roman fort of Vindolanda is one of the most important archaeological sites in the
world and is often revealing exciting and unique artifacts!
But what exactly does the carving represent?
It’s the first of its kind to be found at the Roman fortress, and to be honest, the
experts are a bit stumped.
The carving is roughly 12 inches long, which was quite large for the time.
Marta Alberti, a resident archaeologist at Vindolanda, says the nudity of the figure
suggests it could be a god instead of a man.
She goes on to say that because the naked man (or god) is holding a spear in his left
arm, he could be a representation of the God of War, Mars.
But here’s where things get tangled up.
The god also appears to have wings, and this was the attribute of a different god, Mercury,
the God of Travel.
Mercury was often depicted with horses, since he was the protector of travelers.
Either Mercury or Mars, it’s still a fascinating discovery.
Because of where it was found at the fort, inside the cavalry barracks, archaeologists
say the soldiers stationed here could have even made up their own god, giving him a cornucopia
of different features.
6: Ancient Necropolis In Croatia, local archaeologists have discovered
a necropolis packed full of ancient remains.
32 corpses to be exact, with some of their remains buried inside of ceramic jars.
These dead folks date back to around the beginning of the 5th century AD, or just over 1500 years
ago.
They were found on the grounds of the Radosevic Palace, built on the Island of Hvar in the
17th century.
But forget the old castle because the ancient remains are exceptional.
The experts say the burials were done so well that even all these years later, the corpses
are in excellent condition.
The archaeologists even found grave goods like utensils, coins, and ceramics.
If you’re wondering why the people were buried in jars, so are the archaeologists.
It’s weird because usually, jar burials were reserved for infants or very young children
in this area.
This makes sense because their small bodies were easily put into the jars.
It was a huge task to get an adult’s body in a jar, and the experts are a little confused
on why the ancient people who lived here went through all that effort.
It looks like they just made the jugs bigger to be able to make them fit.
The jars here are huge, over six feet long with enough room inside to hold a fully grown
person along with enough treasure to be rich in the afterlife.
5: Mathematical Secrets Archaeologists found a clay tablet from Babylonia
that dates back to 1000 years before the Pythagoras theorem was invented.
The clay tablet is kind of amazing because whoever made it had already figured out this
famous theorem – and had made his clay tablet into a trigonometry table even more accurate
than those used by scientists today.
Whaaaa?
Who was this Babylonian genius?
Nobody has any idea, but he beat Pythagoras by a millennium.
This unnamed genius figured out that the square of the longest side of a right-angled triangle
is always going to be equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides, then he
went on to make a clay tablet and reed pen to mark out the mathematical equations with
shocking accuracy.
This happened about 3700 years ago, according to Columbia University, where the artifact
is being held.
The tablet is known in the scientific community as Plimpton 322.
It was found prior to the 1930s, excavated from Iraq by a guy named Edgar Banks.
Edgar is believed to be the original inspiration for Indiana Jones.
He’d even gone on the hunt for Noah’s Ark, though of course he never found it.
Or did he?
The bigger mystery here is why did the Babylonians figure out complex math equations at least
a thousand years before anyone else?
The experts are convinced that Babylonia was much more advanced than previously thought,
perhaps with some of the most brilliant mathematical minds in history.
It’s just hard to know for sure because so much of their history and written records
have been lost.
And now for number 4, but first it’s shout out time!!
I wanted to say a big thank you to Edward Parkhurst and Sarah Elmore!
Thanks so much for supporting this channel and spending time with us!!
If you are new here be sure to subscribe for more videos on archaeology and amazing discoveries!!
4: Weighing Systems Researchers have recently made some pretty
fascinating discoveries in the world of currency.
There has long been a debate over whether the Bronze Age saw any kind of complex trading
market that used a form of money.
Now, researchers believe that even without standardized currency or a governing institution,
traders and merchants across Europe used a weighing system to trade currency for goods.
Researchers looked at weighing systems that were used from Western Europe all the way
to the Indus Valley, from between 3000 to 1000 BC.
What they found was that the system for weighing currency became standard across the ancient
world, meaning someone could travel from Mesopotamia to Europe and their goods would be worth the
same amount.
It was basically the first global trading network.
Professor Lorenz Rahmstorf from the University of Gottingen says that free trade and entrepreneurship
was active starting in the Bronze Age, and may have been the start of our global trade
network today.
And They don't call it the Bronze Age for nothing!
If you’re wondering what was used as currency, it was usually bronze scrap.
This included everything from broken swords and axes to fragments of jewelry.
These scraps were weighed using the standard system and traded for other goods, anything
from oil to furs.
Plus, research has shown that across the ancient world, the weighing system would almost immediately
correct itself and adjust to the fluctuations in prices.
3: Pointy Shoes According to a new study, the British people
have been suffering for fashion ever since the days of medieval Europe.
Researchers in Cambridge investigated the bodies of dead people buried in the center
of town and noted that the wealthier citizens and those belonging to the clergy had suffered
bunions much more frequently than those of poorer status.
What is a bunion?
It’s a malformation of the big toe caused by wearing shoes that end in a point, similar
to what happens to ballerinas who force their feet into tiny ballerina shoes.
A bunion is a minor deformity in the large toe in which it gets angled outward.
It’s not that common today but used to be a pretty nasty affliction.
The study has shown that the wealthy citizens of Cambridge were able to afford fancy shoes
with tipped points, and this resulted in a plague of bunions throughout medieval England.
Even weirder is that the corpses showed that those who suffered from bunions because of
wearing fancy footwear were much more likely to have suffered one or more broken bones
from a fall.
In other words, the wealthy urbanites became obsessed with pointy shoes, they got deformed
feet because of them, and a lot of people couldn’t even walk in the shoes, and so
they often fell and broke their bones.
2: Pottery Workshop The remains of a huge pottery workshop believed
to have been built in the Greco-Roman era was just discovered in Egypt, in the Egyptian
governorate of Beheira, north of Cairo.
It dates back to around the 3rd century BC and so far, archaeologists have unearthed
the forming, drying, and furnace areas for the pottery.
They also discovered pots and pans made from clay mixed with unknown additives.
These dishes, which is basically what they were, are still preserved in perfect condition,
in the exact same shape they were 2500 years ago.
In the forming area, where the pottery was molded into shape, archaeologists found bits
of a potter’s wheel, metal tools, and partial clay pots.
It was quite the complicated operation, with kilns, ventilation, and hardened mud-brick
walls.
The workshop had likely been used to help furnish nearby settlements with pots and other
everyday pottery.
Plus, the archaeologists found mud-brick tombs in the area, with some of the tombs filled
with dead humans buried in squatting positions.
Perhaps it was the artisans that were buried here.
These tombs contained pottery probably crafted in the workshop, with funerary vessels made
of alabaster and copper.
1: Ancient Sarcophagus In the old city of Bath, populated by the
Romans when they occupied England 2000 years ago, archaeologists have uncovered a limestone
coffin containing the bodies of two individuals.
They say the bodies may have been used as offerings to the Roman gods.
Inside the limestone coffin, archaeologists found the remains of someone in a prone position
The bizarre positions of the dead have led archaeologists to speculate that they may
have been part of a pagan burial ritual.
Nearby, they found small glass beads of blue and red, which could have been left as offerings.
It was common in Roman days to give these kinds of donations to the gods.
Sylvia Warman, the science advisor for Historic England, said the discovery is amazing, and
that this is the first sarcophagus of its kind to be excavated in modern days.
It was actually found beneath the Sydney Gardens, a place once frequented by the famous Jane
Austen.
It was discovered while workers were landscaping.
And to make things even more shocking, the team also uncovered someone’s cremated remains,
a rarity in the ancient Roman world since they almost always buried their dead.
Not much else is known about who the people buried and cremated were, though the experts
are certain they had something to do with an old and unknown pagan ritual.
Which of these mysterious discoveries is your favorite?
Let me know in the comments and thanks for watching.
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