Welcome to Top10Archive!
The more we dig throughout our historical timeline, the more things we find that, just
maybe, we were better off not knowing about in the first place.
We’re journeying through time with these top 10 creepy ancient artifacts and relics
of unusual times long since past.
10.
Witch Repellent Bottles During the 17th century, the belief in witchcraft
was at a high point and common folk were left struggling for a means of protecting themselves
from harmful spells.
At least, that’s what they thought at the time, and in 2004, one of these unusual methods
was unearthed in Greenwich, South London.
The ornate bottle, dated around 380 years old, was thought to reflect a witch’s spell
back on herself, often used by people that thought their illness was the doing of witchcraft.
Within the unearthed artifact, archaeologists found human hair, fingernail clippings, belly-button
lint, sharp tools, and, best of all, traces of urine.
Though not the first of its kind, this 9-inch or roughly 22-centimeter tall witch bottle
was the most complete specimen to have been discovered.
9.
Petrified Human Remains With a fascination for Egyptian mummification
fueling him, 19th-century anatomist and naturalist Girolamo Segato took to mimicking the process.
By 1823, Segato had perfected a more advanced mummification method that, rather than removing
water from cadavers, petrified them through an alleged mineralization.
Though the method was taken to his grave, never to resurface, his ossified participants
didn’t remain hidden.
Of the remains that were found and displayed at the Anatomical Museum Fiorentino were scalps,
hands, skull fragments, a fetus, a full human head, and, curiously enough, a strange collection
of severed nipples. 8.
Teotihuacan In the Valley of Mexico, just 25-miles or
roughly 40-kilometers northeast of Mexico City, sits a mysterious series of pyramids
and compounds dating back to at least 100 BCE.
Named Teotihuacan or Place of the Gods by the Aztec people that discovered it, the history
of the ancient city prior to its discovery is mostly a mystery.
Of the little that is known, archaeologists claim it was a bustling metropolis that housed
a quarter of a million, ethnically diverse people and the culture had quite the thing
for ritual sacrifice.
Excavation of the region led to the discovery of a mass grave of about 200 people, who were
said to have been sacrificed when Teotihuacan’s Feathered Sun Pyramid was being built.
The victims uncovered ranged from men dressed in elaborate military attire, young women,
and more men with more extravagant offerings.
7.
World’s Oldest Masks Nowadays, masks are often fun, goofy, or,
if the season’s right, bloodied up for Halloween.
Over 9,000 years ago, the concept of the mask was a little less playful.
Scattered through the Judean Desert and the Judean Hills, a collection of Neolithic era
stone masks were uncovered, making them the oldest known masks in the world.
The creepy, stone-faced artifacts bear a resemblance to human faces and were believed to represent
the spirits of dead ancestors.
Their significance likely came in during rituals and ceremonies and, despite being made of
stone, seem to have been built for comfort with wide eye holes and a molding appropriate
for facial contours. 6.
Rat King They’ve been discovered as early as 1564,
but there isn’t a solid reason for the unusual occurrence of rat kings, or bundles of rats.
The strange creation has been made with as many as 30 rats and involves binding the rodents
together with various substances, such as horse hair.
Thought to be a bad omen of sorts, the appearance of rat kings is startling, but also so few
and far between.
Particular to regions within Germany, there have been a considerably small number of rat
king discoveries, with the number of reports topping off at around 50.
Classic rat kings were typically made with black rats and, according to a discovery in
1963 in the Netherlands, may have been alive when bound together.
Whatever the strange cause for these rodent bundles, they are still found today with the
most recent one being in 2005.
5.
Pirate Medical Supplies Ever wonder how pirates took care of their
sick?
While it sounds likely that they just threw them overboard, findings discovered aboard
the Queen Anne’s Revenge wreckage tells a different story.
The wreckage, which was discovered in 1996, held secrets to pirate medicine, and it’s
about as grisly as one may think.
Among the tools discovered were a urethra syringe with traces of mercury and a clyster
pump.
The archaic, painful looking syringe was used to inject mercury through the urethra as a
means of treating syphilis while the pump administered medicinal enemas for quicker
absorption.
4.
Codex Gigas Though it sounds like something from Pokemon,
the Codex Gigas is a 165-lb or roughly 74-kilogram manuscript dated as far back as the 13th century.
Included in the massive book, which is popularly credited to Benedictine monk Herman the Recluse,
is the entire Latin Vulgate Bible, medical texts from Theophilus, Philaretus, Hippocrates,
and Constantinus, exorcism instructions, and, its most striking feature and reason for its
nickname of “The Devil’s Bible,” a full-spread illustration of the horned beast himself.
Most of the texts within the “bible” can be traced back to historical sources, but
the crude image, scrawled on the 290th page, is backed only by myth and lore.
One tale attributes the entirety of the Codex to a monk sentenced to death for breaking
his vows.
Prior to his execution, he sought to contribute to what was to be a work of evil, but short
on time, made a pact with the Devil, trading his soul to complete the book.
3.
Jigsaw Skeleton Like a real life Victor Frankenstein, somebody
over 3,000 years ago had pieced together different sets of human remains to create two mummies
for purposes currently unknown.
The uncovered bodies were initially believed to be a normal male and female specimen, but
as University of Manchester’s biomedical archaeology professor Terry Brown spent more
time with the bodies, the more he saw wrong with them.
Of the inconsistencies with the pieced together humans that Brown noticed was the female skeleton’s
jaw, which didn’t match up to the rest of the skull.
Using DNA testing, Brown determined that the jawbone, arm, skull, and leg of the female
were all from different people of the same time period while the male body was comprised
of parts from decedents that died hundreds of years apart.
2.
Aztec Death Whistles Initially discovered in the 1990’s, clutched
in the hands of a sacrificed male skeleton, these skull-shaped whistles were originally
thought to be children’s toys.
When a curious mind finally decided to blow into it, the sound that was produced could
only be described as terrifying.
Sounding like an accurate mimicry of a person’s terrified screams, the death whistle is thought
to have played a part in Aztec sacrifices.
Prior to being sacrificed to the gods, it’s thought that the person being offered would
blow into the eerie whistle just before being killed.
Another theory links it to warfare as a means of intimidating or terrifying enemies with
the shrill cry it produces.
1.
The Women of Lemb Statue Thought to be a fertility statue for an unknown
goddess, the Women of Lemb statue was uncovered in Lemb, Cyprus in 1878.
Since its discovery, the limestone statue earned the nickname “The Goddess of Death”
as it passed hands after the untimely death of its owners.
The first to allegedly perish at the hands of the statue’s curse was Lord Elphont and
six of his family members, who all died within six years of getting their hands on the relic.
From Elphont, the shapely statue was purchased by Ivon Manucci who, along with his own family,
met the same fate as its prior owner.
Up until it was locked in a glass enclosure at the Royal Scottish Museum in Edinburgh,
Scotland, the statue claimed another 7 or so victims, including the curator of the museum
that had handled it upon its arrival.