10.
Egyptian Kings from Heaven There's a document known as the Turin King
List.
It's an extremely old piece of papyrus from about 3000 years ago, created by scribes during
the reign of Ramesses II.
The list is filled chronologically with the names of Egyptian rulers.
In fact, it is the most extensive list from ancient Egypt that details the kings and overlords
of the great nation.
However, the beginning of the list was never found, and neither was the end of it.
And so, it’s not totally complete.
Scholars have been able to learn a lot of information from the list.
It details the names of the rulers, how long they were in power, including months and days,
and even which rulers were connected by family.
It's basically a cheat sheet going back thousands of years, for the entire history of the ruling
class in Egypt.
But there's something extremely mysterious about the Turin King List, and one major problem.
Not only does it name rulers going back to the 15th dynasty, but it also lists mythical
kings and gods.
Mixed in with the names of the normal human kings are legendary beings that supposedly
ruled Egypt, creatures that came down from the sky to take over the country.
Many of these are listed as having ruled the kingdom before the days of the pharaohs.
Obviously, there's a bit of confusion here.
If the list is to be believed, Egypt was dominated by god kings who ruled over a mythical time
in Egypt’s history, before the days of the pharaohs.
Either Egypt really was first ruled by godly beings from the sky, or the Egyptians just
believed that such a time existed, in what they thought of as their ancient past.
9.
The First Exorcism In France during the 1590s, there was a young
woman by the name of Marthe Brossier.
She became a pretty well known celebrity because it was widely believed she was possessed by
demons!
But it wasn't only her possession that made her famous.
It was the fact that her parents took her on tour!
They went from town to town and put on a show, with Marthe Brossier and the demon inside
of her drawing packed crowds of spectators.
According to the old reports, the girl's eyes would roll back in her head, she would flick
her tongue out like a snake, and convulse while growling in a deep and demonic voice.
This was so outrageous that even King Henri IV got himself involved.
He decided the girl needed to be cured of the demon inside her, and so he ordered what
became the first scientifically controlled exorcism.
A group of high priests gathered around the girl, placed a piece of wood in her mouth
to keep her from swallowing her tongue, sprinkled her with holy water, and recited holy scripture
while the demon inside of her screamed in misery.
But what Marthe didn't realize was that the exorcism was fake.
It was just normal water she was being sprinkled with, and the holy scripture was just Latin
poetry.
The whole thing was a scientific experiment, something set up by the king himself to expose
Marthe Brossier and her family as frauds.
8.
The Vatican Mythographers The Vatican Mythographers are a group of unknown
authors responsible for writing a small collection of medieval texts.
These unknown people, with ties directly to the Vatican, wrote down Latin translations
of all the Greek and Roman myths they could find.
All of these texts were then put into a single medieval manuscript, which was published later
on in 1831 by Cardinal Angelo Mai.
The thing about these translations is that they very well may have shaped our modern
understanding of mythology, specifically that of ancient Greece and Rome.
As you may already know, most fairy tales, stories like Cinderella and Hansel and Gretel,
are actually pretty horrifying in their original forms.
These were tales of caution from hundreds of years ago told to children to keep them
well behaved.
And in the same way, the ancient Greek myths were altered into Christian fairy tales by
the Vatican Mythographers.
They took the original stories and rewrote them to fit their own Christian purposes.
Not everything in the stories was changed.
But when these manuscripts were written in the 12th century, roughly 234 myths were retold
through the Christian lens.
Everything we know about gods like Zeus and Hades, and the legends of those like Medusa
and Perseus, it’s all a byproduct of the Vatican Mythographers.
7.
Aztec God’s Flesh The use of psychedelic mushrooms can be traced
back over 6000 years.
Some of the oldest surviving evidence of prehistoric people eating mushrooms to have a hallucinogenic
experience is in Villar del Humo, Spain.
That’s where scientists have uncovered cave paintings displaying psychoactive mushrooms.
In Spain, prehistoric humans munched on Psilocybe hispanica, the only native Spanish mushroom
known to get a person high.
On the other side of the world, the Mesoamerican cultures feasted on something called Psilocybe
aztecorum, or the Aztec god’s flesh mushrooms.
It was the Aztec who had a particular hunger for these fascinating psychedelic shrooms.
In fact, many historians believe that hallucinogenic substances played a massive part in Aztec
religious life.
And it wasn't only mushrooms.
A research study by Bernardino de Sahahun identified five key substances the Aztecs
used to keep themselves in a pretty constant state of intoxication, including the slime
from the Bufo toad!
The bare truth is that the Aztec had a serious issue with hallucinogens.
They used these kinds of substances during festivals, at celebrations, whenever an important
person came over for a meeting.
It was a major part of the culture, and was used in all rituals involving divination,
dream interpretation, prophecy, and even ordinary healing.
If you went to see the doctor during the days of the Aztec, chances are the doctor was out
of his mind on mushrooms.
6.
Hatshepsut’s Myrrh Tree There is a very mysterious tree in Egypt whose
roots can apparently be traced back to one of the most famous queens in history.
Her name is Hatshepsut, and if it had been up to one very bitter pharaoh, we wouldn't
even know her name because she was nearly erased from the history books!
After her stepson Thutmose III came into power following her death, he immediately began
destroying all records and accounts of Hatshepsut’s rule.
Scholars believe it was revenge because Thutmose had wanted to inherit the throne from his
father, but she had seized it instead and ruled for years.
She had actually become one of the most respected rulers in ancient history, and so her stepson
sourly tried to delete her from existence!
But he failed, and today we know all about Hatshepsut’s great accomplishments.
However, there is one great thing Hatshepsut did that's a little more mysterious than the
others.
There is a myrrh tree at Hatshepsut’s mortuary temple on the Nile.
It's a withered old tree stump, somehow still standing despite being beaten by the Egyptian
sun for thousands of years.
It was put there 3500 years ago, allegedly brought back from one of Hatshepsut’s expeditions
to the mysterious land of Punt.
What's so mysterious is that nobody knows where the land of Punt actually is, or was.
Some scholars believe it was Somalia, but that’s never been confirmed.
All we know is the Egyptians thought of Punt as a land of great intrigue, exotic delights,
and magic.
The ancient Egyptians thought of Punt the same way we think of the ancient Egyptians.
And apparently, Queen Hatshepsut brought this very tree back from the unknown exotic land.
And as if by magic, it’s still standing in front of her temple all these years later.
5.
The Spear of Destiny No other holy relic in the world goes by so
many names.
I’m talking about the Spear of Destiny, the Holy Lance, the Lance of Longinus, the
Spear of Longinus, and even the Spear of Christ.
These are all the names that were given to the lance that supposedly pierced Jesus’s
side as he was crucified on the cross.
The Lance is described in detail in the Gospel of John.
Now, nobody can say for sure if the spear was real because nobody even knows if Jesus
truly existed.
However, the spear was allegedly rediscovered by Helena of Constantinople when she traveled
to the Holy Land sometime around 300 AD.
It became an important relic in the Middle Ages, it played a significant role in several
of the Crusaders’ biggest battles, and then it vanished!
Nobody knows where it is today, but there is a bizarre rumor that Adolf Hitler had an
obsession with the spear and had sent his own men to find it!
It's also important to note that there are a lot of fakes out there.
There's a Holy Lance held in a museum in Vienna that was supposedly wielded by the soldier
Longinus.
And then there's the story of Dr. Howard Buechner.
The doctor says that the spear was sent to Antarctica with a whole bunch of other Nazi
treasures after the end of World War Two.
Then, in the 1970s, those treasures were rediscovered by a secret Nazi society and are now being
hidden in Europe.
4.
Mysterious Ancient Tooth There's some very strange science happening
regarding our ancient ancestors.
A tooth which once belonged to a young girl was discovered in a cave in the Southeast
Asian country of Laos.
The tooth is 164,000 years old and it belonged to a human lineage scientists call the Denisovans.
The only other evidence of this bizarre form of ancient humans has come from other caves
in Siberia and China.
Finding a tooth from the exact same type of mysterious humanoid in Laos shows that the
Denisovans must have lived in a wide range of environments, conditions, and latitudes.
They lived all the way from the tropical forests of Southeast Asia to the freezing cold of
the Siberian tundra.
But just who were these ancient people, so distantly related to us on our human family
tree?
The experts aren't entirely sure.
What they do say is that about 700,000 years ago, modern humans separated from Neanderthals
and Denisovans.
And then about 400,000 years ago, the Neanderthals and Denisovans diverged.
Although, for the next several hundred thousand years, they continued to mate with humans!
The truth is that scientists don't know a lot about them.
All they found so far are five confirmed fossils, consisting of three teeth, one finger bone,
and a single jawbone. 3.
Canaanite Goddess While cultivating some fields near the city
of Khan Yunis near the Gaza Strip, a farmer came across an extraordinarily rare sculpture.
The sculpture dates back 4500 years.
It's a stone head which had broken off of its body centuries ago.
And while it’s a little difficult to identify the face of the statue beyond any doubt, archaeologists
believe it could very well be the Canaanite goddess Anat!
Anat was the goddess of love, beauty, and also war in the mythology of the Canaanites.
This is according to Jamal Abu Rida, the local ministry director who said her statue was
discovered with a snake crown, which was once the symbol of strength and invincibility for
the Canaanites.
It was the Canaanites who lived in the ancient territory of Canaan, what is today Israel,
Palestine, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon.
They are considered to be one of the oldest civilizations in human history.
Anat was a truly remarkable goddess and was worshiped by everyone from the Canaanites
to the Egyptians.
This is something not a lot of people know.
In ancient times, gods were basically like celebrities.
The most popular would be passed around by word of mouth, they would become more popular
in different cultures, and then you had deities like Anat and Zeus being worshiped across
all the Mediterranean.
In fact, Anat became so popular that she morphed and turned into a whole bunch of different
goddesses in the ancient world.
She would even go on to become the goddess Athena in Greek mythology.
The Greeks took Anat, moved some letters around, made her a goddess of wisdom, and that was
that.
2.
Stonehenge Hunting Pits The mystery of Stonehenge just keeps getting
stranger.
Researchers have just discovered hunting pits dated at over 10,000 years old, made far before
the actual stones were ever erected at this ancient monument.
The find was made by archaeologists with the University of Birmingham.
The pits are about 13 feet(4 m) wide and over 6 feet(2 m) deep, and were made by hunter-gatherers
between 8200 BC and 7800 BC.
This was during the Mesolithic period, just after the Ice Age came to an end.
The first important thing to note is that the hunting pits have nothing to do with Stonehenge
itself.
Rather, it all has to do with this specific part of England.
These are some of the oldest prehistoric pits that have ever been excavated, and it shows
that people were continuously drawn to this area for about 7000 years.
From primitive people all the way to the Bronze Age, from living in caves to practicing agriculture.
The mystery is that we still have no idea what drew human beings to Stonehenge.
Even thousands of years before the first stones were put up, humans were digging holes all
around the site.
It's almost as if there's something in the soil here that drew ancient humans directly
to this spot.
1.
The Secret Greek Gods Even in the days of ancient Greece, some knowledge
and some beliefs were considered forbidden.
While gods like Zeus and Poseidon may have been mainstream, there were other gods who
were worshiped by a secret, underground cult.
These gods were called the Cabeiri.
This mysterious cult was so secret that we still don't know much about it today.
Historians believe the cultist activity was centered on the islands of Lemnos and Samothrace.
However, the worship of the Cabeiri gods could have taken place outside of Greece as well.
One of the most important places of worship for these discrete cult members was the Sanctuary
of the Great Gods, or the Samothrace Temple Complex, on Samothrace.
It was built to the west of the city, just at the fringe of civilization.
We don't know all the gods they worshiped.
But we do know that they had a special place for the divine witch Hecate, the fertility
goddess Demeter and her daughter Persephone, and the sea-divinities called daimones.
Archaeological evidence suggests there were two main figures at the core of this cult,
but nobody has ever been able to identify them.
What was your favorite piece of forbidden history from today’s video?
Let me know in the comments and be sure to hit that subscribe button to help support
the channel!
Thanks as always for watching and I’ll see you soon for more of history’s greatest
secrets!
Bye!