10: The Sword in the Monastery An archaeology student visiting a Venetian
monastery noticed a sword on display that didn't quite seem to fit.
The ancient sword was believed to be just a few hundred years old, displayed by the
monks at the monastery as part of their museum.
But the student was insistent that the weapon was much older.
Her name is Vittoria Dall-Armellina from the Ca’ Foscari University in Venice.
In 2017, she insisted that a proper analysis of the sword be done to see how old it truly
is.
As it turns out, the sword dates back about 5000 years and nobody has any idea how it
managed to get where it is today.
What we do know is that 5000 years ago, swords were invented in eastern Turkey.
It was the first time humans picked up a blade with the intention of using it for combat.
But how it got to the monastery is the real mystery.
The university contacted the monastery for more information, and they revealed that Armenian
Catholic monks had been residing there since 1717.
The sword had been a gift from an art collector 150 years before today.
The art collector had procured the sword from parts unknown.
It's believed it could have been discovered at Kavak, the location of an ancient Greek
colony in Turkey.
But its exact journey from being handcrafted 5000 years ago in the Bronze Age to being
put on display at a Venetian monastery in the 18th century will probably never be pieced
together.
9: Roman Iron Mask An archaeological mystery may have just been
solved with the help of some very interesting Roman remains discovered in Turkey.
Archaeologists unearthed the partial remains of an iron mask from the days of Rome.
The rusted artifact was uncovered thanks to excavators with the Karabuk University at
the site of Hadrianopolis.
It was once one of the biggest settlements in the area, inhabited from between the 1st
century BC to the 8th century AD.
But let's get back to the mask.
It's exactly what you think an iron mask would look like - a Halloween-style mask wrought
of iron.
Masks exactly like this were probably worn by Roman cavalry 1800 years ago.
The masks were used to protect the face and neck of the warriors as they charged into
battle.
But until this discovery, historians hadn't been entirely sure.
The mystery was that they couldn't figure out if the masks were only used as part of
some kind of ceremony or indeed for war.
But because this iron mask was found in an ancient military installation in Hadrianopolis,
it looks like the mystery has been solved.
Now just try to imagine hundreds of Romans in chariots adorned with terrifying iron masks,
all of them charging across the field of battle to slaughter your tribe!
8: Wiped Out Roman Legions Experts working at the archaeological site
of Kalkriese in Germany recently discovered a fully preserved cuirass that once belonged
to a Roman soldier.
According to the director of the local museum, Stefan Burmeister, the piece of armor is the
oldest and most complete of its kind ever discovered.
And that makes the discovery both tragic and unique.
The reason it's tragic is that the armor undoubtedly belonged to a soldier who died during the
epic Battle of the Teutoburg Forest.
This battle was more of a massacre than anything.
Three legions of Roman soldiers were walking through the forest when they were ambushed
by Germanic tribesmen.
It was one of the greatest military defeats in Roman history.
15,000 soldiers were slaughtered in a very short period of time.
The Germanic barbarians burst out of the forest and massacred everyone.
Although the Romans probably deserved it!
Now you're probably wondering where the mystery is.
It's not necessarily the battle,, but what happened to the Roman soldier that’s mysterious.
He was found, along with his armor, with a device that had been used to lock his wrists
in an iron board.
He may have been part of a sacred ritual, meaning he was probably alive when the fighting
was over.
The Germanic tribe kept him to be sacrificed in an unknown, and probably extremely brutal,
ritual.
It’s why they left his armor alone.
It probably would have been tainted by the ritual.
7: Ancient Human Species Scientists believe they have uncovered the
remains of a new human species.
The discovery actually happened about 90 years ago, and it wasn't scientists but rather a
Chinese construction worker who uncovered a fossil from 146,000 years ago.
It was a human fossil, a preserved skull.
But for almost 90 years, nobody had known what humanoid creature the skull had belonged
to.
It was a total mystery.
At the time the skull was discovered, in 1933, the area was under Japanese rule.
The construction worker found the skull while building a bridge.
He smuggled it back home, believing it may have cultural value.
When he arrived home, he hid the skull at the bottom of his family well.
But he never told anyone until just a few years ago on his deathbed.
His family then went and got the skull from the bottom of the well and handed it over
to scientists.
After analyzing the skull with the newest forensic technology, scientists determined
that the cranium could have belonged to a previously unknown human species.
According to Xijun Ni from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, it's one of the most complete
skulls he has ever seen.
The mysterious person whom the skull once belonged to has been nicknamed the Dragon
Man.
One of the reasons is that his skull seems to be among the biggest of any species of
human.
Scientists believe he may have belonged to a sister group of Homo sapiens, creatures
very similar to us but with larger and more primitive features.
6: The Mysterious Median Empire Archaeologists in Iran recently uncovered
the remains of a prehistoric military fortress in Tepe Rivi.
This is in the North Khorasan province, with the fortress being dated back about 2700 years.
Back then, the area was ruled by the Median empire.
But the Median empire is so obscure that they’re barely more than a myth.
As far as we know today, the Medes occupied an area they called Media in the 11th century
BC.
This was a mountainous region of Iran and Mesopotamia.
They appeared sometime in the 8th century, though nobody actually knows for sure.
Their capital was the city of Ecbatana, what is today the modern city of Hamadan.
And here's where things get really mysterious.
The ancient city of Ecbatana is still considered to be a riddle because it's completely buried
under the modern city, which has never been excavated.
This means anything scientists want to learn about the mysterious Median empire is out
of reach, buried directly underneath modern homes, businesses, and streets.
The new discovery of the fortress simply proves that the enigmatic Median empire had probably
existed with regional governments and a fairly beefy military.
But what happened to them after the year 625 BC is still largely unknown.
5: The Origin of Native Americans Until recently, archaeologists were fairly
certain that the original Native Americans who migrated into North America did so from
Japan.
Specifically, the first people who ever lived in North America were believed to be descendants
of the Jomon, a people who occupied Japan 15,000 years ago.
This was around the same time, although the exact dates have been highly debated in recent
years, that people were migrating to North America via the Bering land bridge.
A new discovery has flipped this hypothesis on its head.
Scientists are now saying that the biological evidence does not match up with previous archaeological
findings.
G. Richard Scott from the University of Nevada says the Jomon of Japan have absolutely no
ancestral links to Native Americans.
Instead, the Jomon are more closely related to southeast Asians in places like Thailand
and Cambodia, as well as East Asians in China and Korea, and Pacific Islanders.
Now here comes the mystery.
Since Native Americans weren't descendants of the Jomon, then who?
Scientists are now speculating that they came from a different group living somewhere in
East Asia.
They just don't have any idea of where or who.
4: The Alien Pharaoh Akhenaten is one of the most mysterious figures
in history, mostly because he may have been an alien!
First let's take a look at the facts.
Akhenaten was the 10th ruler of Egypt during the 18th dynasty.
He's most famous for his bizarre appearance, having a seemingly elongated head and extremely
large features, while also looking oddly feminine.
But he's also famous because he tried to drastically change the religious order of ancient Egypt
during his rule.
He moved the capital from Thebes to Amarna and established the Cult of Aten that would
specifically worship the sun.
Not exactly the sun itself, but the sun disc which was an aspect of the god Ra.
Ra was to be the one and only god and all the others were to be ignored by the rest
of the Egyptians.
The people were not very happy with this change and there was much civil unrest.
The pharaoh changed his name from what it was originally (Amenhotep IV) and became Akhenaten.
He ruled for 17 years, completely disrupting Egyptian life, and then died.
When his son Tutankhamun took over, he got rid of the Cult of Aten and reintroduced all
the ordinary Egyptian gods.
The reason some people believe the pharaoh was an alien has a lot to do with the way
he looked.
In pretty much every depiction of him, he looks like an alien.
He is skinny with a protruding belly and large eyes that take up way too much of his extremely
large head.
Why did he look and act so strangely?
Plus, there was allegedly a medallion found in an Egyptian temple that showed the pharaoh
Akhenaten with a UFO hovering above him.
There’s also been a lot of other weird artifacts found surrounding this guy too, and many of
them seem to suggest he was at least in cahoots with a race of extraterrestrials.
3: The Oldest English Coin An archaeological dig in the Canadian province
of Newfoundland has unearthed what could be the oldest English coin in Canada.
William Gilbert, the head archaeologist involved in the project, says the small silver coin
he and his teammates uncovered was minted between 1493 and 1499.
The coin itself is known as a Henry VII half groat.
It's about the size of a nickel and was minted in Canterbury, the UK.
The mysterious coin was discovered at the Cupids Cove Plantation Provincial Historic
Site.
This site was the location of one of the earliest English settlements anywhere in North America.
It was settled by a merchant from Bristol named John Guy in the year 1610.
It's no surprise that the oldest coin would come from the oldest settlement.
But how that coin came to be there is still a mystery, mainly because it was minted 100
years before the settlement was even founded.
The next most recent coin found here was from 1560.
So the question is, what happened in all those years in between??
2: Lost Indigenous Settlement A team of archaeologists claim to be fairly
certain that they have discovered the location of a lost community of indigenous people who
once thrived in the northeast part of Florida.
Mention of this mysterious settlement appears in historical documents from both France and
Spain, dating as far back as the 1560s.
But for decades, the actual location of the mysterious community has eluded researchers.
Now, a team from the University of North Florida says they have probably found the settlement.
They found the remains as part of the Mocama Archaeological Project.
For those who don’t know, the Mocama were some of the first indigenous people to encounter
Spanish settlers during the 1560s.
They were also some of the first people to encounter brutal warfare with the British,
infectious diseases from European colonization, and all that historical terribleness.
They were also completely wiped out by the Europeans, with no trace of them left today.
This is why discovering their settlement is so important.
The archaeological team has found 50 pieces of Spanish pottery, stone artifacts, bones
and shells, and fragments of what were probably houses.
Excavations are going on for the next three years, so hopefully the mystery will soon
be solved.
1: Non-Returning Boomerangs Boomerangs have been used by the indigenous
people in Australia for at least 20,000 years.
This is based on cave paintings found depicting boomerangs that have been dated back that
far.
The oldest discovered boomerang is only 10,000 years old, but that's because boomerangs were
traditionally made from wood and don’t stand up very well to the test of time.
Recently, a pair of workers with the National Parks and Wildlife Service in South Australia
found four boomerangs.
They dug them out of a dry creek bed during the middle of a drought.
They had been there for about 400 years, yet were in surprisingly good condition.
The mystery behind the boomerangs is that they weren't designed to return to the person
who threw them.
We all know that when you throw a boomerang, it's supposed to come back to you.
But all four of these weren't designed that way.
This became a huge mystery as archaeologists scrambled to figure out why the aboriginals
would have wasted their time with non-returning boomerangs.
To understand the mystery bit better, we need to look at what boomerangs were used for.
They were typically used as projectiles for hunting and fighting.
But as it turns out, boomerangs may have also been used as multitools.
They could have been used in ceremonies, as shovels for digging, and for a whole host
of other menial tasks.
The truth is that we don't know why these boomerangs were designed not to return.
They may have been used as hammers, as clubs for beating, or they could have just been
failed models that were thrown into the creek as trash.
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