10: The Coso Range Petroglyphs The Coso Range can be found near the towns
of China Lake and Ridgecrest California.
Here, you can see some of the most spectacular petroglyphs left behind by Native Americans
thousands of years ago.
The Coso Range is littered with images including those of bighorn sheep, giant shields, and
human-like forms.
The figures were made rather simply, by grinding and scratching designs into the surface of
thousands of rocks.
These are what we call petroglyphs, which are very different from pictographs.
Petroglyphs mean the pictures were carved from the rock, while ancient pictographs were
painted.
Just in case you were confused.
The exact date the petroglyphs here were made is unknown.
Most of them are estimated to be somewhere between 1000 and 3000 years old.
However, the practice of creating this style of artwork likely began much earlier, perhaps
some 13,500 years ago when humans first settled in the region.
As soon as people made it to North America, they began experimenting with the artwork.
After all this time, the biggest mystery is trying to decipher what the petroglyphs were
meant to represent.
The tradition has been lost for centuries, and there is no direct explanation for the
strange figures and mysterious animals.
Some experts believe Coso rock art is connected to hunting magic.
Because of the immense number of sheep drawings that have been discovered in the area, researchers
like Campbell Grant hypothesized in the 1960s that the bighorn sheep were necessary for
local sustenance.
The rock drawings may have been used as a way to make sure the next hunt would be a
great success.
This is one possible explanation as to why there are so many sheep petroglyphs in the
region.
Perhaps the ancient people believed that drawing and carving the images of the animals into
the stone would conjure another bountiful hunt.
9: Yilbilinji Rock Art Archaeologists have been puzzled for decades
by the strange outlines of human-like figures and strange objects at Yilbilinji.
Yilbilinji is a site in northern Australia, near the Gulf of Carpentaria, that is the
home to some of the rarest pieces of rock art in the world.
The pictures date back roughly 500 years, and mostly show scenes of humans holding boomerangs
and other objects.
What’s unique is that the pictures were all made by stenciling.
For at least the past 44,000 years, the Aboriginal people of Australia used stenciling in much
of their rock art.
They would hold an object against a piece of rock, or even just their hand, and then
spray liquid pigment over it.
This would leave behind a negative on the stone the exact size and shape of the object.
What's so strange about the human figures at Yilbilinji is that they’re miniature.
The stencil tools and objects are also miniature.
They were definitely created using stencils, but scientists have been struggling to figure
out how the ancient Aborigines made such perfect stencils of people and things.
In total, there are over 17 miniature humans, boomerangs, and complex geometric patterns
on the rocky overhangs.
After much deliberation, scientists believe the Aboriginal people made their stencils
from beeswax.
They heated the beeswax to gently mold it into the shape they wanted and then used that
in all their stencil artwork.
But we don’t know why they did it.
Scientists can't agree if the miniature art was for spiritual or ritualistic purposes,
or simply artistic expression.
What do you think?
Share your thoughts in the comments!
8: Sego Canyon Sego Canyon is located north of Thompson Springs
in Utah.
It's a double feature of historical landmarks, with both incredible prehistoric rock art
and the remnants of an abandoned coal town.
The petroglyphs and pictographs found just a few hundred feet from the ruins of the mining
camp are some of the most mysterious in the entire country.
The reason?
The ancient art pieces were left behind by more than one culture.
Archaeologists believe the Fremont culture left behind drawings, and so did the people
who came before them.
The rock art here dates from as recently as 700 years ago and as far back as 9000 years
ago.
The most recent contributors were those of the Ute tribe.
Those who created rock art during antiquity, in the year 7000 BC, remain a mystery.
Sadly, too much human activity in modern times has erased a lot of the artwork here.
What few designs can still be seen are, quite frankly, a little mind-boggling.
There are shapes of giant animals that look like mutant cows, as well as humanoid beings
with round heads, big eyes, and looming bodies like shadows thrown against the wall.
They look an awful lot like aliens, but mainstream scientists say they were probably just artistic
representations of humans.
Still, it's strange that none of the human figures seem to have arms or legs.
Have you ever visited a ghost town?
Tell me about it in the comments.
7: The Aliens of Wandjina When the British arrived in Australia and
first laid eyes on the ancient artwork in Western Kimberley, they immediately connected
the images to alien visitors.
The idea has stuck ever since.
In truth, the mysterious figures known as Wandjina were drawn as representations of
spirits.
They can be found on cliff faces, inside countless caves, and on just about any large rock surface
in Western Kimberley.
Without any context, it's easy to see why the first British colonialists looked at the
thousands of images of the Wandjina and thought it was surely meant to be aliens.
They assumed a race of alien beings had visited the Australian Aborigines thousands of years
ago.
The British thought the Aborigines had recorded the aliens’ coming by drawing them on cave
walls.
What the Aborigines really documented was just the Wandjina, a sacred spirit respected
by three major tribes in the area.
((The Worrora, the Ngarinyin, and the Wununbul tribes worshiped it as an almighty god)).
It was viewed as the supreme being that created the land, passed down the rules of society,
and was omnipresent.
Somewhat analogous to Judeo-Christian representations of God.
They believed Wandjina was in the trees, the rocks, and the air itself.
It was everywhere yet intangible and untouchable.
The rock drawings of their great deity have nothing to do with alien visitors, but it’s
easy to see how the mistake could be made.
Have you ever seen anything like this?
Let me know in the comments below!
6: The Great Hall of the Bulls In the southwestern region of France, the
Lascaux Cave is home to some of the most sophisticated cave paintings from prehistory.
According to the Bradshaw Foundation, the artwork here is estimated to be around 20,000
years old.
The pictures are exceptional due to their size, preservation, and masterful quality.
The ancient cave people who made these paintings were highly advanced.
They were basically the Michelangelos of the pre-ancient world.
The paintings themselves aren’t all that wild or shocking.
They depict fairly ordinary things, like really big animals that were once native to the region.
It's the unbelievable variety that really captivates the archeologists and historians
who visit the site.
The Lascaux Cave has over 2000 figures divided into major sections.
There's the Great Hall of the Bulls, where you'll find mostly paintings of bulls and
extinct aurochs.
There is the Shaft of the Dead Man, the Painted Gallery, and even the Chamber of Felines.
The ancient people grouped everything into three categories: animals, abstract, and humans.
It’s amazing that such primitive people had the foresight to plan the cave system
like an art museum, with each section having its own theme.
There's even a giant bull over 17ft (5.18 m) long, the largest ancient cave portrait
of an animal ever found.
Why do you think they made it so large?
And now for number 5 but first Wanted to give a big shout out to
Travis Castaneda and
SilverWolfMage Love you guys and thanks so much for watching
and spending time with us!
If you are new here, welcome and be sure to subscribe!
5: The Mysterious Pictish The Picts were ancient people that lived throughout
northern and eastern Scotland.
When you think about the ancient Celtic people of Ireland, the Picts were the Scottish equivalent.
They didn't leave any written records of themselves behind, and the people vanished about 1000
years ago.
Today we know almost nothing about them.
However, the Picts did leave behind examples of artwork that have baffled researchers for
decades.
For example, the Eassie Cross Slab is a giant piece of intricately carved stone.
It was made by a Pictish artist and is currently sitting in a churchyard in the town of Angus.
The amazing artwork shows a typical Pictish hunter walking with his pack of dogs as they
search for a stag.
The meaning here is easy to decipher.
The artist wanted to show a hunter in the act of actually hunting.
But the stone also shows a mysterious winged figure in the top right corner.
The figure is very worn with age but seems to be a human/bird hybrid or an angel with
four wings.
To make matters even stranger, the right corner of the stone is broken.
We can't see what was facing the multiple-winged angel on the other side.
And this is only one example of hundreds of artworks completed by the Picts, scattered
all over Scotland like lost grave markers.
What do you think the winged creature on the stone is supposed to represent?
Let me know your theories in the comments!
4: Egyptian Portraits Scientists from Northwestern University in
Illinois, have done some fascinating work on old Egyptian portraits.
They took three of the most immaculately preserved Egyptian paintings and digitally analyzed
them.
The analysis proved the paintings to be over 2000 years old.
They also discovered that all three portraits were made by the same person.
Researchers were also able to source the pigment used in the different colors of paint.
It almost certainly came from Greece, which could explain the obvious Greek style of the
paintings.
The researchers are now fairly certain that influence from Greece helped turn the Egyptians
away from the old way of making artwork and into a more modern future.
The portraits came from the days when the Roman Empire was in full control of Egypt.
This was just after the Battle of Actium in 31 BC.
Once Egypt was under Roman influence, they began to paint what is known today as “mummy
portraits.”
The major difference was that before the Romans came along, Egyptians painted the faces of
the deceased on their own coffins before they were buried.
The person would be mummified, they would have their face basically stamped on their
coffin, and then they were sealed in a tomb.
After the Roman occupation, the Egyptians painted the faces of the dead on wooden panels
instead.
They would then place the portrait inside the coffin in a layer of linen and plaster,
directly over the face of the mummy. 3: The Villa of the Mysteries
The Villa of the Mysteries is just like any other large villa in the ruins of Pompeii,
Italy.
It too was mostly destroyed during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD and then sealed
under volcanic ash for 2000 years.
But while this villa may look like many of the others in Pompeii, it contains one very
special feature.
There is a room inside the villa decorated with mysterious and yet strangely beautiful
artwork.
The room is known to archaeologists as The Initiation Chamber, as they believe it was
involved in secret ceremonies and hidden rituals.
The fresco images inside the villa show a ceremony taking place.
The ritual appears to involve young girls and the psychological transition to becoming
married women.
In other words, this was likely a place within Pompeii where young girls set to be married
came to make the necessary mental preparations with other women.
One of the biggest clues is that the Greek god Dionysus is on the wall.
Not only was he one of the most popular gods in Classical Greece, but he was the most popular
god for Roman women.
He was viewed as the source of sensual and spiritual health.
It makes perfect sense that whatever was happening in the transitional ceremony from girl to
married woman, Dionysus played a part.
2: Art in the Altai Mountains At a gravesite in Siberia, estimated to be
over 5000 years old, archaeologists came across unbelievable rock art.
They found images of fantastical beasts, figures that look like aliens, and humans with horns,
or perhaps what is meant to be feathers sprouting out of their heads.
Experts believe those who made these drawings would have required scientific knowledge far
beyond what a Neolithic person would have possessed.
It's all quite strange.
The mysterious rock drawings were found in a remote village tucked away in the Altai
Mountains.
The artwork decorated multiple graves at the ancient necropolis.
Scientists working with the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow say the drawings were made using
red ocher, soot, and ordinary rock scraping.
This enabled them to use three colors in their pictures: red, black, and white.
But it's the use of the red ochre that has really stumped scientists.
In order to use such color, they would have needed to heat the ocher to a certain temperature.
It was only usable by creating a chemical reaction with heat.
It's hard to believe that 5000 years ago, primitive mountain dwellers who had no formal
writing system were conducting experiments to create new colors of paint.
1: Tassili n`Ajjer There are over 15,000 drawings and engravings
to be found at the ancient site of Tassili n`Ajjer in Algeria.
It's a vast plateau with one of the highest densities of paintings and prehistoric artworks
in the world.
The earliest paintings here are an estimated 12,000 years old.
That said, the vast majority were drawn after 6000 BC.
What's truly remarkable is that the pictures here tell a story that spans millennia.
The drawings show the evolution of human life on the edge of the Sahara Desert.
They also give a reliable account of the incredible change in climate, animal migrations, and
human migrations.
According to UNESCO, the carvings were first discovered in the desert here in 1933.
After significant study, researchers have been able to identify every individual era
depicted in the paintings.
10,000 years ago, during the Round Heads Period, locals who practiced religious magic made
pictures showing their ceremonies.
During the Cattle Period, which began around 3000 BC, we can see images of daily and social
life.
This is where the art turns to natural realism, showing the taming of animals.
Much later, around 1000 BC, we can see the domestication of camels and the rise of trans-Saharan
trade networks.
After humans domesticated camels and started trading with other societies, they stopped
carving pictures on the rocks.
What happened to them after that is a total mystery.
How incredible is the artistic record of life in ancient Algeria?
What’s your favorite mysterious piece of ancient art?
Let me know in the comments and don’t forget to hit subscribe!
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