10: Spines on Sticks In the Chincha Valley on the Peruvian coast,
researchers unearthed 192 human spines. These spines weren't
connected to the rest of the bodies, but rather threaded onto posts made of reeds.
To get a good idea of what this looks like, imagine taking somebody’s spine,
then threading all the pieces onto a long stick, almost like a club made of bones. That's exactly
what the people here did 500 years ago. It was a brutal yet fascinating burial tradition that
was only practiced in this one place in Peru. Forget about the rest of the country and even
all of South America – the Chincha Valley was the only place where people put spines on reeds.
The archaeological team excavated 20 different sites in the region and found
evidence of the practice at every single one of them. Why did they do it? The best guess
anyone has is that the practice started after the invasion of Peru by the Europeans. It was
fairly normal for European settlers to damage graves by looting them in search of treasure.
For the Chincha people, this was unacceptable. An important part of their culture was to bury dead
people fully intact with all their bones. With the graves disturbed and the skeletons ruined,
archaeologists believe the Chincha put what few remains they could find back together as a sort of
spine-on-the-cob. They then reburied the spine in hopes the dead could continue to be at rest.
9: Mummified Mongolian Monk
In Mongolia, a mummified monk was discovered by a local man rummaging through a mysterious cave.
This man first took the mummified monk back to his home in the Mongolian capital of Ulan Bator,
before trying to sell it on the black market. Local police got wind of his
plan, they swooped in and arrested him, and the monk was taken to a lab to be studied.
Even though the monk is clearly a mummy, he's not actually that old. He's also,
depending on who you ask, not dead. Buddhist doctor to the Dalai Lama, Dr. Barry Kerzin,
says the man is in a state called tukdam. This is the deepest stage of meditation that a person can
go into. If one is able to stay in this highly concentrated state for more than three weeks,
their body shrinks, they slowly decay until nothing is left except hair and nails, and a
rainbow appears somewhere in the sky overhead. In scientific terms, a monk in the tukdam state
is in fact slowly starving themselves to death until their heart stops beating. Whether a
rainbow appears overhead or not, the monk still meditates themselves directly into the afterlife.
That's what happened to this monk, who sat down in the lotus position in that cave, was covered in
cattle skin, and left for over 200 years. 8: Hair Bedsheets
Perhaps the worst bedsheet in the entire world was recently on exhibition at the Museum of London
Docklands. There is an inscription embroidered at the bottom of the sheet in human hair, which quite
likely came from a severed head. It's the bedding version of a book bound in human flesh – a sheet
embroidered with real human hair. And while that itself wouldn't be out of the ordinary
for the 1700s, the fact that the hair came from a decapitated person just makes it gruesome.
Perhaps even stranger is that the bed sheet was never intended to be gruesome.
It was embroidered as a tribute to James Radclyffe, the grandson of King Charles II.
James was executed on February 24, 1716, for the role he played in the Jacobite rising. This was a
rebellion that happened in England 300 years ago. James’s wife was Anna Maria Radclyffe. In the
four months that James awaited execution in the Tower of London, Anna Maria was allowed
to stay with him. After James was killed by decapitation with an ax, his body was stitched
back together and handed over to Maria. She then took hair from his head, hair from her own head,
and made a sheet with it. Researchers at the museum are fairly certain she used James’s
and her own hair because the embroidery is clearly in two different colors. In her grief,
Maria crafted a morbid reminder on the linens. 7: The Sacrifices of Yinxu
The burial ground at the Chinese archaeological site of Yinxu, used during the Shang Dynasty,
has revealed some pretty brutal practices. By studying the chemical composition of the human
remains here, archaeologists learned they were ritually sacrificed, but that wasn’t all they
endured. These people, believed to have once been soldiers captured by the Chinese during warfare,
were enslaved and then tortured. The victims were put to work for several years, kept alive on the
most meager of diets, and forced into labor until they outgrew their usefulness. At that time, their
captors would sacrifice them in a great ceremony. Here's a bit of background on the Shang Dynasty.
They ruled the area of the Yellow River Valley from the 16th to the 11th century BC.
It was around 1300 BC when the first major city in China was constructed by the Shang, called
Yinxu. Its ruins, where this burial ground was discovered, are near the modern city of Anyang.
But it was during the final two centuries of Shang rule that they really began to get barbaric.
There was something happening that destabilized the society.
In a desperate last attempt at saving themselves, they began slaughtering people to appease their
gods. This is similar to what happened near the end of the Maya empire when they got desperate
for rain to grow their crops – just before the entire civilization collapsed. In China,
archaeologists have estimated 13,000 people were killed as sacrifices in a span of just 200 years.
The bodies discovered in the graveyard here did not come from Yinxu. Analysis
revealed that they came from farther away, meaning the victims were captured and brought to the city.
Researchers were even able to look at their diet by analyzing the bone collagen
of their skeletons. They found that these people were eating gruel made from millet,
barely even food. This was worse food than the poorest villagers ate. The consensus
is that as the Shang collapsed, they started sacrificing their slaves to make their gods happy.
6: Aztec Ritual House Experts with the National
Institute of Anthropology and History in Mexico carried out excavations in the ancient Aztec city
of Tenochtitlan. They were looking at a housing complex when they found a ritual structure that
had been used in complex and scary ceremonies. It was more of a ritual house, a specific kind
of temple that wasn’t officially a temple. The house was most likely used for rituals
to mark the beginning and the end of life cycles. Archaeologists found incense burners,
vessels for holding ceremonial liquids, and the cremated skeleton of an infant inside a pot.
They also discovered musical instruments made from bone, such as flutes and ocarinas.
All of these date back to the 16th century, sometime between 1521 and 1610, right after the
Spanish conquered the city and defeated the Aztec. Nobody knows exactly what the ceremonies being
performed would have looked like. But based on the archaeological evidence, there was a lot of music,
a lot of smoke, and a lot of fire. We don't know if this infant was deceased before the cremation
inside the pot, or if the death was part of a sacrifice. It could also be that the ritual was
in honor of the infant, as a celebration of life and death. It’s all quite mysterious.
What do you think was going on in this ancient Aztec ritual house 500 years ago?
Let me know your theories in the comments! And now for number 5 but first wanted to give
a big shout out to Joker Joel Jennifer Balesteri
Thanks so much for joining us and if you are new here be sure to subscribe for more videos about
scary archaeological discoveries. 5: Fed to the Lions
Archaeologists in England discovered a bronze key handle carved kind of strangely.
The key handle was carved to depict a lion and a man locked in combat. Experts say this could
be a real reflection of what was happening in Britain under Roman rule 2000 years ago.
But it's not quite as innocent as it may seem. Men weren't simply fighting lions for sport.
Instead, archaeologist John Pearce says it had to do with executions. He believes the Romans
used to throw prisoners into a lion pit in front of spectators, who could then watch the ghoulish
show as the lions ripped men limb from limb. The key handle was initially discovered in 2017
while excavating a Roman townhouse in Leicester. It's only about four inches long,
crafted around the year 200. The man fighting the lion has long hair and a bushy beard,
which has made archaeologists believe he was supposed to represent a barbarian.
To the Romans, a barbarian was anyone not from Rome. And because Roman law allowed criminals
to be thrown to wild beasts as punishment, this may be what the key was made to represent. What
was just a myth prior to this discovery now looks very real. If you weren't Roman and
you did something the Romans determined to be a criminal offense, you would be in danger of being
fed to some hungry lions that had been exported to England from North Africa or Mesopotamia.
4: Lair of Bones A disturbing lair of bones was found in
a gruesome subterranean cavern in Saudi Arabia. The lair is just as horrifying as it sounds.
Archaeologists found the remains of at least 14 different animals here,
including human beings. The hollow cave is called Umm Jirsan,
and is a system of winding lava tunnels cut through solid rock by volcanic activity many,
many years ago. It's located beneath the volcanic fields of Harrat Khaybar. It was long after these
tunnels were formed and the volcanic activity settled down that so many bones found their way
here. Researchers believe the bones were carried into the cave by hyenas over a span of 7000 years.
The whole cavern system may as well have been taken straight out of The Lion King.
It was likely a den used by a family of hyenas who dominated it for thousands of years.
They brought their kills and scavenged carcasses back to the cave and devoured them,
leaving the bones to accumulate over time. The only thing scientists are unsure of is if the
human skeletons found in the cave were from people who had been hunted by the hyenas. Either that,
or they were corpses that the hyenas dug out of graves, which is possible with these scavengers.
3: A Salty Sheep’s Leg Sometime around the year 600 BC,
mining operations started at the Chehrabad salt mine in northwestern Iran. Salt mining continued
here all the way into the 20th century, just until a few decades ago. When activity finally stopped,
archaeologists were able to go in and explore the location for historical research.
Since 1993, experts have uncovered the bodies of eight ancient miners who had been left
dead in the deep underground tunnels. What's truly fascinating is that their
bodies had been mummified to perfection by the salt-rich soil and dry atmosphere.
But that's not all. Archaeologists have also found plenty of mummified animals. One of the
weirdest things they discovered was a sheep leg that had been left in the mine about 1600
years ago. The dry conditions left the DNA of the sheep in amazing condition.
Researchers from Trinity College Dublin were able to see exactly what kind of animal this was.
Amazingly, it showed no evidence of being a wooly fleeced sheep.
Instead, the sheep was hairy like a wolf, not fluffy like sheep we’re familiar with today.
Why was the sheep deep in a salt mine 1600 years ago? It was probably taken down there as a snack.
The miners likely ate the rest of the sheep, which is why only its salty leg was found.
2: Peruvian Mummies A brand new and very ghoulish discovery
was announced by Peruvian archaeologists in 2022. Eight mummified children were found inside a tomb.
The tomb belonged to an elite member of a pre-Inca society who died 1200 years ago. The
eight mummified children had been sacrificed upon his death as part of an ancient funerary ritual.
The research team was led by Yomira Silvia Huaman of the National University of San Marcos. They
were excavating the archaeological complex of Cajamarquilla when they stumbled upon the skeletal
remains of a high-ranking individual. Outside the tomb were the skeletons of 12 adults and
some animals that may or may not have been llamas. It's too early to say who this individual may have
been. Archaeologists right now are guessing he was a wealthy trader who died before the age of 30.
He was mummified and had his hands tied over his face before being wrapped in cloth and put in the
ground. The small skeletons of the children may have been very close relatives of the merchant.
Although the mere notion of sacrificing children is horrific to us,
it was an honor for people living back then. They didn't see death as the end, but as a beginning.
When those children were buried alongside the dead man, no one thought of them as deceased. They
simply thought they were going to help a wealthy relative in the transition to a parallel world.
1: Headless Horse Archaeologists in Germany
have discovered the remains of the Headless Horseman in an ancient cemetery! Or rather,
they found the skeletal remains of a headless horse as well as the man who presumably rode it.
The man and his headless horse were buried 1400 years ago in the town of Knittlingen. This was
during the Merovingian Dynasty, which ruled from 476 to 750 in a large part of Central Europe.
When the Roman Empire fell in 476, it was the Merovingian Kingdom that rose up to seize power
and begin laying claim to all the land. It was this kingdom that consisted of two major tribes:
the Franks and the Germanics. The Franks would go on to become the French,
and the Germanic the Germans. It's unclear who the rider was,
or even why he was buried with a headless horse. Archaeologists don't think it was a sacrifice, but
probably part of a burial ceremony. Archaeologist Folke Damminger says the man was likely the head
of a farming household, and so he was buried with a horse as a grave good. But why they had
to cut the beast’s head off is anyone’s guess. Which of these freaky discoveries unnerved you
the most? Let me know in the comments and thanks a lot for watching today’s video!
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