The worlds of the ancient Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Celts, and other once-great civilizations
are fascinating to modern minds partly because all they accomplished without our technology.
How did they do it?
Here are some of the answers.
Stonehenge, the prehistoric ring of standing stones on England's Salisbury Plain, is one
of the great mysteries of the ancient world, in part because the questions surrounding
it hit on the classic "five W's and an H" line of questioning: Who built it?
What does it mean?
Where did these rocks come from?
When was it built?
Why did they do it in the first place?
How did they get these giant rocks over there anyway?
It's like a three year old designed Stonehenge as an excuse to let loose.
Fortunately for the sake of your itchy brain, researchers have made strides in answering
at least one of those questions.
According to scientists who know these sorts of things, evidence suggests that at least
some of the stones used to construct Stonehenge came from quarries in Wales, some 180 miles
away.
Apparently in these quarries, slabs of stone are already mostly vertically oriented, and
so dragging these "ready-made" blocks out of the Welsh quarries for almost 200 miles
was easier than carving stones out of a more local source.
And it would have been even easier if they had just made it 18 inches tall instead!
The Romans used concrete extensively in their architecture during the classical era of the
Roman republic, all the way until the fall of the Western Empire.
Its versatility and quick hardening led to what is known as the Roman architectural revolution,
and the freedom from the shortcomings of rock and brick gave the Romans the ability to implement
the arches, vaults, and domes that ancient Roman buildings are known for.
Its relative strength is also the reason that so many classic Roman structures, the Pantheon,
the Colosseum, the Baths of Caracalla, the Pont du Gard, and numerous bridges and aqueducts,
have survived to the present day.
"Without concrete, Rome and all modern cities would look very different today."
Following the collapse of the Western Empire, though, the technology of making concrete
was lost until the mid-18th century, and modern concrete is a different composition.
So for nearly 2,000 years it was a mystery how the Romans made the material that built
an empire.
In 2015, though, a geophysicist at Stanford University named Tiziana Vanorio reportedly
cracked the secret thanks to a catastrophe from her own youth, namely the eruption of
the volcano Campi Flegrei that forced the evacuation of the Italian city Pozzuoli in
1982.
While studying the volcano, Vanorio discovered a concrete-like material that was practically
identical to Roman concrete.
The Romans, keen observers of the natural world, apparently took inspiration from nature's
own concrete to formulate a material that literally changed history.
Runes.
The word itself sounds esoteric and magical, but runes were actually just letters in the
alphabets used by different Germanic cultures to write their languages before they adopted
the Latin alphabet.
Some runic inscriptions, however, are harder to interpret than others.
It turns out that this is intentional: A number of the inscriptions are written in code, and
one of these centuries-old Viking codes, known as jötunvillur, wasn't cracked until 2014.
According to The Guardian, University of Oslo runologist K. Jonas Nordby was able to figure
out the secret thanks to the discovery of a stick on which two people had written their
names in both jötunvillur and standard runes.
This allowed Nordby to realize the trick was that the standard runes would be replaced
by the last letter in the name of the rune, for example, the rune maðr, which normally
makes an "m" sound, would be replaced with the rune for "r," because maðr ends in "r."
Such rune sticks would have been used to communicate, but the use of code, it seems, was less for
privacy and more for the sake of a game that was meant to help teach runes, or maybe even
just to show off.
Oh, those wacky Vikings!
On August 14, 1480, Ottoman admiral Gedik Ahmed Pasha conquered the Italian city of
Otranto following a 15-day siege.
Thousands of men were killed, and women and children were sold into slavery.
According to tradition, the remaining 800-plus able-bodied men of Otranto were given the
chance to convert to Islam.
They all refused, and were executed.
Known as the martyrs of Otranto, these nameless men were canonized in 2013 as the patron saints
of Otranto by Pope Francis.
For hundreds of years, the skulls of those men have been displayed in large glass cabinets
in the Cathedral of Otranto, all with their faces pointed toward the visitors.
All, that is, except for the so-called honeycombed skull, which is arranged to display the pattern
of 16 perfectly round holes in its cranium.
For centuries, there was mystery surrounding how and why this skull was perforated.
According to Gizmodo, though, researchers at the University of Pisa seem to have cracked
it in 2015.
The perfectly rounded, conical holes told researchers that the culprit would have used
a half-moon shaped trepan, which as everyone knows is a drill bit used specifically for
drilling into the skull.
But the how is perhaps not as interesting as the why: The driller was likely harvesting
that good, good bone powder, and it probably happened centuries after the martyr was killed.
Why?
In the late Middle Ages, powder made from the bones of saints or martyrs was believed
to be particularly potent against paralysis, stroke, epilepsy, and other brain disorders.
The Nazca people were an ancient civilization in what is now Peru, perhaps best known today
for the mysterious Nazca lines, intricate and complex miles-long line drawings of subjects
such as a hummingbird, a jaguar, trees, flowers, and a monkey.
The Nazca people made these geoglyphs some time between 500 B.C. and 500 A.D. and were
in many other ways a sophisticated and advanced society as well, including developing an intricate
system for irrigating their crops.
However, despite all the complexity and sophistication of the Nazca society, this entire civilization
completely vanished about 1,500 years ago, and no one could explain why.
Until 2009, that is.
According to the BBC, researchers discovered that they disappeared due to deforestation.
Basically,The Nazca cut down too many huarango trees to plant maize, not knowing that huarango
trees were basically the only thing holding the ecosystem together.
Without the trees in place, the area basically became a desert and the Nazca were swept away
by El Nino-related floods.
It almost seems like there might be a lesson for modern society to take away from the destruction
of a once-flourishing society through their own hubris and destruction of the environment,
but...nah, probably not.
In 1901, divers off the coast of the Greek island of Antikythera were exploring a Roman-era
shipwreck when they discovered, among other treasures, the remains of a smallish wooden
box.
Inside that box were a complex array of gears that stumped scholars.
In the 1970s and 1990s, advances in X-ray technology allowed researchers to determine
that the device was likely designed to replicate the motion of the heavenly bodies, Sun, Moon,
and planets.
Beyond this, however, the secrets of the green-encrusted bronze cogs were too hard to unlock and failed
to spark the imaginations of anyone besides ancient alien types.
That is, until about 2006.
According to Smithsonian, modern technology such as CT scans revealed more of the inner
workings of the Antikythera mechanism, including previously hidden inscriptions showing that
the object was basically an ancient analog computer.
Yep!
The device's complex series of over 30 interlocking bronze gears allowed the ancient Greeks to
follow the movements of the Sun and Moon through the zodiac, predict eclipses, and model the
irregular orbit of the Moon.
It even served as a calendar!
Basically, it was the ancient equivalent of a Smartphone, except you couldn't watch this
video on it.
Thank goodness for progress!
According to the Greek historian Herodotus, sometimes around 525 B.C. the Persian ruler
Cambyses the second sent an army of 50,000 soldiers to attack the Egyptian Oasis of Siwa.
But a massive sandstorm appeared and completely buried the entire army, which was never seen
again.
Many historians dismissed it as myth, but in 2009, a team of archaeologists discovered
numerous artifacts near the Oasis of Siwa that appeared to be Persian in origin, along
with a mass grave filled with human bones.
So much for myth!
Rapa Nui, better known to English speakers as Easter Island, is home to numerous stone
works, including platforms called ahu, walls, houses, and petroglyphs.
But it's most famous worldwide for its mysterious enormous monolithic statues called moai, perhaps
better known as the "Easter Island heads."
These figures, many of which actually include bodies that have been buried over time by
shifting soil, have perplexed archaeologists for decades.
But answers have been hard to come by, as the native population was almost completely
wiped out in the 19th century.
One big question seems to have been answered, however.
Researchers at Binghamton University in New York discovered that the location of the statues
was, quote, "tightly linked" with access to freshwater sources.
The more water, the more statues; no water, no statues.
The pattern proved to be consistent, so it seems for now at least one mystery of Easter
Island has been partially resolved, it's got something to do with water!
Why and how the statues were built, though, remains a…head-scratcher.
The ancient city of Palmyra, now part of Syria, was once one of the wealthiest and most important
cities of the Roman Empire.
Its great wealth meant it was able to fill the city with monumental public works, such
as its Great Colonnade, the Temple of Bel, and numerous tower-shaped tombs.
All of this is well and good, but it raises questions for modern observers: Namely, why
would you put such an important city in the middle of a desert?
How did the people, you know, eat and drink?
Well, the answer turns out to be pretty simple: way back during the time of the Roman Empire,
Palmyra wasn't a desert!
It was actually more of an arid steppe.
Grass roots would have kept rainwater from being absorbed by the ground; pooled into
small creeks and rivers, it was enough to water crops for food and provide drinking
water.
The Pyramids of Giza are the only remaining structures among the Seven Wonders of the
Ancient World, and they have remained a constant object of fascination for the over 4,500 years
of their existence.
And a source of puzzlement: just how did the ancient Egyptians make them?
How did they ever manage to get those giant blocks of stone out of the quarries in the
first place?
Well, now we think we know.
According to Lonely Planet, in 2018, archaeologists working in the quarries at the Hatnub site
near the city of Minya uncovered a system of ramps that would have made it possible
for ancient workers to raise up the enormous limestone blocks used to construct the pyramids.
The structure contained a large central ramp with carved staircases running along each
side that would have made it possible for multiple people to drag the blocks up and
out.
This ramp system on its own would not be enough to show that this structure was used in the
development of the pyramids, but helpfully, some of the inscriptions were also uncovered
dating this system to the time of the Pharaoh Khufu, who built the pyramids, which is a
pretty good sign in favor of these being pyramid ramps, and not just used for sicknasty skate
tricks.
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