10: Talking to the Dead Researchers at the Hal Saflieni Hypogeum in
Malta have made some pretty fascinating discoveries.
This place is a prehistoric necropolis from 5000 years ago, a kind of mortuary temple
on the Mediterranean island.
It's an underground complex built in the Stone Age as a place for people to deposit the bones
of their dead.
They also used it as a shrine for ritual purposes.
But there's one place inside the necropolis that's particularly interesting.
It's called The Oracle Room, and it may have been used as a place to literally speak with
the dead.
At least, the ancient people probably believed they were speaking to the dead.
Scientists believe the ancient residents of this place were able to use super acoustics
to alter consciousness.
In their altered states, people thought they could speak with their dead ancestors.
Sound inside of this room doesn't act the way it should.
Just one person speaking can make their voice reach frequencies that stimulate in a bone-chilling
way.
Archaeologist Fernando Coimbra said that during audio tests, he felt the speaker’s voice
cross his body at a high speed, leaving him weirdly relaxed.
Even more amazing, Fernando said he occasionally had the illusion that the sound was reflected
from his body and reverberating off the red ochre paintings on the room’s walls.
It's hard to say if this is ancient knowledge or just luck.
The room takes sound in the baritone range of 70 to 130 Hz and vibrates them in a way
that creates a natural phenomenon.
The sound is so intense bouncing off all the hard surfaces that it has a physical effect
on brain activity.
The ancient people of Malta used that to their advantage, performing ceremonies and turning
ordinary sounds into the grumbling chanting of the dead.
9: Cult of Anubis Anubis was the most important god in ancient
Egypt.
Depicted as a man with the head of a black jackal, he was originally the “destroyer
of corpses,” though later he was associated with all things related with the processes
after death.
Oddly enough, he was actually called Anubis by the Greeks; his real name in Egypt was
Anpu or Inpu.
He was the god of the afterlife, of lost souls, and embalming.
But what's truly fascinating is that archaeologists haven't uncovered any monumental temples dedicated
to Anubis.
The Egyptians understood that Anubis didn't need a temple.
He was worshiped in the places he was associated with, the tombs and necropolises.
One of the biggest reasons there wasn’t a lot of graverobbing was that the Egyptians
lived in fear of Anubis.
He was the guardian of the dead, and they knew that anyone who desecrated a tomb would
be punished in the afterlife.
The cult of Anubis, those who dedicated their worship to the god of the dead, were active
for a few thousand years.
The cult originated in Middle Egypt, in the seventeenth province, where his worship was
centered.
The town in which the cult of Anubis was founded featured a large dog cemetery, but the cult
was spread throughout the entirety of Egypt.
In Egyptian mythology, Anubis was said to be the one who mummified Osiris after his
death.
Because of this, Anubis also became the patron god for embalmers.
The embalmers, with their secret knowledge of mummification, worshiped Anubis at his
graveyard shrines.
But their real praise came in their jobs, making mummies that would last for thousands
of years.
8: Mesopotamia’s Scientists In southern Mesopotamia, the area that is
now known as Iraq, city states began to emerge around 3500 BC.
That's over 5000 years ago.
The Sumerian civilization rose to power, the city of Babylon rose up under King Hammurabi,
and Assyria became a powerful force in the north.
For 3000 years, Mesopotamia was a melting pot of development, destruction, and changing
rulers.
Babylon fell to the Persians in the year 539 BC.
200 years later, the Persians were conquered by the Greeks.
But going all the way back to the beginning, we have to credit the original Sumerians with
a great deal of what makes up modern life.
Archaeologists say they developed the first writing system in 3200 BC.
Their writing system started out with pictures conveying certain meanings, then turned into
a series of signs called cuneiform.
They also had a mysterious secret knowledge of mathematics.
What many historians find interesting is that the Sumerians seem to have come up with a
system for writing and advanced mathematical knowledge at the same time and from out of
nowhere.
Prior to the Sumerians, people didn't write and people didn't know how to do math.
Then, seemingly from thin air, these people were writing epic stories, practicing astronomy,
developing their own medicines, and even dividing time into units.
It was the Mesopotamians over 5000 years ago who came up with 60 seconds to a minute and
60 minutes to an hour.
And to give you an idea of just how bizarre all this is, they figured out the wheel around
3500 BC, then complex mathematical theory in 3200 BC.
It just seems like a big stretch, even over 300 years.
Some people wonder where they got all this knowledge.
7: Michelangelo the Doctor It turns out the great painter and sculptor
Michelangelo was a secret doctor.
At least, he may have had an acute understanding of certain medical details that weren’t
revealed to the public for another few centuries after he was dead.
This all has to do with Michelangelo’s David.
It's arguably the most famous sculpture in the world.
And yet the Renaissance master of sculpting added something to David that you don't see
on any other statues from that time.
The prominent jugular vein in David's neck shows that Michelangelo had an understanding
of the circulatory system at least 100 years before medical knowledge had reached that
point.
You probably already know that the jugular vein is visible above a person's collarbone
when they go into a state of excitement.
And because David was about to battle the Philistine giant, Goliath, it makes sense
that he was physically excited.
Michelangelo put this into his work, adding massive realism.
But he did it 124 years before medical scientists documented the bulging of the jugular vein.
Back then, artists like Michelangelo sometimes had a more impressive understanding of the
human body than doctors.
6: The Emerald Tablet The Emerald Tablet is said to be a very old
Hermetic text that was sought after by alchemists in the Middle Ages.
Alchemists believed the tablet was written by the legendary figure Hermes Trismegistus,
from Hellenistic Egypt.
This man was considered the very first to practice alchemical philosophy, and he wrote
down his secrets on this mysterious tablet.
It was allegedly discovered in a broken tomb underneath a statue of Hermes in ancient Tyana.
When people went inside the tomb to investigate, they found the Emerald Tablet still clutched
in Hermes’ skeletal hands.
Written on the green stone was every secret of the universe.
There are a lot of other theories surrounding the Emerald Tablet.
One legend says it was written by the third son of Adam and Eve, Seth.
Others say the tablet was once kept secret in the Ark of the Covenant.
Some stories say the tablet came from the lost city of Atlantis.
The list goes on and on.
No one knows if the Emerald Tablet actually exists.
The closest thing that we know about is the Kitab sirr al-haliqi, or “The Book of the
Secret Creation of the Art of Nature.”
This was an Arabic work from the 8th century composed of earlier writings on the secrets
of alchemy.
If the Emerald Tablet ever did exist, i wonder what kinds alchemical masteries did it contain?
What would be written on the tablet?
Let me know your theories in the comments 5: Ancient Spanish Medicine
Archaeologists excavated a man’s skeleton at a medieval necropolis in Spain.
This man died 1000 years ago and was put in the necropolis of Can Reiners, located in
an old Roman military camp in the city of Pollentia.
The man died between the age of 25 and 30, but it wasn't for a lack of medical innovation.
Scientists identified the first physical evidence of ferns being used in medical concoctions
to treat a variety of conditions.
Those living in ancient Pollentia apparently had some previously undiscovered knowledge
of herbal medicine.
It was the skeleton teeth that revealed the mysterious medical practices.
Researchers with the University of York found traces of starch grains and microscopic cells
from plant spores.
These plant spores were traced back to the ordinary fern leaf.
What's really strange is that ferns were never eaten in recorded history.
There's only one account from the 1st century that describes it being prepared in a drink
to alleviate symptoms of sickness.
When the Middle Ages came along, some doctors started experimenting with herbs and plants
a lot more than others.
One recipe called for fresh fern leaves to be sweetened with orange flowers and honey
as a cure for dandruff, the common cold, or even kidney stones.
And they were partially right.
Recent studies have shown that ferns do indeed have healing properties.
Although it's still better to go to the hospital if you have kidney stones rather than experimenting
at home with fern leaves.
4: The Maya Calendars The ancient Maya had a shockingly advanced
way of tracking time.
They had three main calendars.
The first was a sacred calendar that lasted 260 days each cycle.
This was what they used for scheduling religious ceremonies.
But they had a second calendar very similar to the one we use to date.
It consisted of 365 days, separating the year into four seasons.
And finally, they had a long calendar, one that completed a major cycle which ended on
December 21, 2012.
Considering it's currently 2022, we know the Maya didn't actually have some secret knowledge
of a cataclysmic event that would cause the world to end.
It's been 10 years and the world is still turning.
What they did have was sophisticated knowledge of how the Earth revolves around the sun.
Though this wasn't necessarily due to astronomical revelations.
It was simply because they figured out when one year ended and the other began, and they
were able to piece this together into one of the world’s first functioning calendar
systems.
3: The Ancient House of Knowledge If there was one repository for secret knowledge
in the ancient world, it would be the Great Library of Alexandria, located in Egypt.
It was the biggest and most significant library anywhere in the ancient world, part of a research
institution called the Mouseion.
This institution was dedicated to the Muses, the nine goddesses of the arts.
Historians believe the idea of the library was proposed by an exiled statesman named
Demetrius of Phalerum.
The library began its construction under the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphus and quickly
became one of the greatest places for knowledge seekers in the world.
The scope of knowledge contained within the library was thanks to an aggressive policy
to procure texts.
Nobody knows today how many scrolls were housed here, but it's been estimated there were over
400,000 documents brought to the museum.
And considering this was nearly 2500 years ago, all of these scrolls were ancient.
It contained the oldest writings in the world.
We honestly can't even begin to imagine what kind of secrets people traveled here to learn
from all over the world.
But in the year 48 BC, Julius Caesar burned it down.
Much of the ancient knowledge was lost, but the library survived.
It was actually a lack of funding and support that saw the great library dwindle during
the Roman period.
Then it was fully destroyed between 270 and 275 AD.
All those secret ancient scrolls are now lost.
2: Creating Sea Silk There is only one person left alive who knows
the ancient secret to produce sea silk.
This ancient knowledge isn't quite as interesting as predicting the end of the world, but it's
still pretty fascinating.
Most silk you're familiar with probably comes from the cocoon of the Mulberry silkworm larvae.
But sea silk comes from a Mediterranean clam called the pen shell.
The only person alive right now who knows how to extract the silk from the clam and
turn it into the rarest fabric in the world is Chiara Vigo.
When she's gone, the ancient tradition of silk will be gone too.
Nobody knows exactly how far back the tradition of creating sea silk goes.
We do know it was used by the Egyptians, Romans, and the Greeks.
That means the tradition is at least 2000 years old.
What really separates sea silk from modern silk is that the final material glistens in
sunlight like gold.
This is why it was wildly popular among the richest and most powerful people of the ancient
world.
Some historians believe sea silk was the inspiration for the Egyptian myth of Jason and the Golden
Fleece.
But as with many traditions, this one slowly fell out of favor.
People stopped learning how to make it, people stopped caring, and now only one woman on
the island of Sardinia knows how to do it.
1: The Mysterious Dogon Tribe The Dogon tribe of Mali dates back to 3200
BC.
These ancient people had a mysterious knowledge of space that almost seems impossible.
For example, they had knowledge about the Sirius system in our galaxy over 5000 years
before it was discovered by scientists in 1862.
This African tribe was able to identify Sirius A, the brightest star in the night sky.
But they also identified a much dimmer star near it, Sirius B. They commemorated Sirius
A’s fifty-year orbit around Sirius B with something called a Sigui Celebration.
In simple terms, a primitive tribe identified two stars in a remote system locked in orbit.
We don't know how, but they did.
What's even stranger is that the Dogon’s oral traditions speak of extraterrestrials.
Not only did they have an in-depth knowledge of the solar system, but they also talked
about aliens coming down to Earth and visiting them.
They described these aliens as ugly, amphibious monsters that looked like mermaids.
They called them the Nommos, and believed they lived in the Sirius system.
Do you think this is part of their religious beliefs?
How do you think they knew about the stars?
Let me know in the comments below!
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