From a city built on a coral reef to ruins that may tell us the secrets of humanity,
here are 8 of the most mysterious ancient structures in the world.
8.
Nan Madol
Off the coast of the island of Pohnpei in Micronesia stand the ruins of the ancient
city of Nan Madol.
The only ancient city ever built entirely on a coral reef, the city is made up of almost
100 artificial islands made of coral fill and stone, separated by narrow canals and
protected by an outer seawall.
Like Easter Island, this place is an engineering marvel!!
The name Nan Madol means “the space between” and refers to the canals that cut through
the ruins.
The megalithic structures are estimated to have been built in between the 12th and 13th
century, about the same time as the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris.
The entire city covers an area of about 75 hectares (185 acres) and features walls built
of columnar basalt.
The walls are up to 15 meters (49 feet) tall and 5 meters (16 feet) thick.
The average weight of each individual stone is almost 5 tons, but some weigh as much as
50 tons.
Amazingly, the total weight of the stone used to build the city is estimated to be about
750,000 metric tons.
The building of such structures must have taken a herculean effort, but nobody really
knows when it was built, how the massive rocks that were used in the construction were transported
to the city, or where those rocks came from in the first place!
Why it was built on the reef, separated from the actual land of the island, is also a mystery.
7.
Teotihuacan
Before Europeans came to North America, an unknown culture arose in central Mexico and
built a grand city that we have come to know as Teotihuacan.
In its heyday, it was a city that covered 20 square kilometers (13 square miles) and
was home to 200,000 people, all of them in carefully constructed and delineated neighborhoods
where people were grouped according to the crafts that they constructed.
The Teotihuacanos, as the mysterious residents have been called, left no written records,
and their city predated the Aztecs by as much as 1000 years.
The city was marked with pyramids, one of which, the Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent,
was found to contain the bodies of over 100 human sacrifices.
The city collapsed and was abandoned, and nobody knows why.
We don’t even know who built the city, or what it was actually called.
The name Teotihuacan (“the place where the gods were created”) was given to the city
by the Aztecs, who found the city already in ruins when they entered the area.
In its day, Teotihuacan was the largest city in the western hemisphere, but by 550 AD it
was a ghost town.
Where did everybody go?
And now for number 6, but first be sure to subscribe and click the notification bell
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6.
Puma Punku
The massive ancient city of Tiwanaku in Bolivia is dominated by a temple complex called Puma
Punku that has puzzled archaeologists for decades.
The city was already standing when the Inca moved into the region in 1470, although it
was completely abandoned.
The stone buildings of Puma Punku (an Incan name, since we have no idea what the original
inhabitants called it) are built with massive stone blocks that were so exquisitely shaped
and fitted that even today you can’t fit a knife blade between the blocks.
Even more curious, none of these obviously man-made blocks show any sort of chisel marks
or other signs indicating how they were constructed.
Like with Teotihuacan, nobody really knows who built Puma Punku, and even its age is
a matter of debate.
Some scholars say that the buildings date back to about 500BC, but others believe that
the city is much, much older.
What is known is that the buildings were built as ancient observatories.
On the equinoxes, the sun rises directly above the center of the temple, visible through
and perfectly framed by stone archways.
On the summer and winter solstices, the researchers thought the sun would rise over the cornerstones,
but the sunrise is actually over a different point.
It’s odd that a culture capable of such feats of accuracy would have failed to mark
two of the most important dates on the ancient calendar, but if you take into account where
the sunrise would have been 17,000 years ago, the cornerstones are in perfect alignment.
This seems to indicate a much more ancient origin for the city.
Who built it?
And how?
Your guess is as good as mine!!
5.
Ggantija, Malta
On the Mediterranean island of Gozo, one of the islands of Malta, stands a megalithic
temple complex that predates the pyramids of Egypt.
The two towers were built during the Neolithic Age, between 3600 and 2500 BC.
They are the second-oldest manmade religious structures in the world.
Number one is coming up so stay tuned!!
The temples appear to have been built to honor fertility deities.
There have been many figurines and other artifacts found on the site that are associated with
fertility cults.
According to local folklore, they were built by a giantess, but the true builders are unknown.
The Ggantija complex includes two complete temples and a third that was never finished.
They face the equinox sunrise and are enclosed inside a boundary wall, setting them apart
from the daily lives of the people who worshipped there.
The temples were built in a clover-leaf shape, with semi-circular apses connected with a
long central passage.
The walls were covered with plaster, some of which can still be seen.
The largest temple is the one furthest to the south, and it’s also the most complete.
It stands 6 meters (19 feet) tall and includes multiple altars and huge stone block with
a carved recess, which might have been used as a place of ritual ablution, or purifying
baths.
Based upon the sheer volume of animal bone that has been found on the site, it’s conjectured
that the temple was used as a site of animal sacrifice.
These temples were built at a time when the wheel had not yet been introduced to Malta,
and when there were no metal tools available to the islanders.
Researchers have found many small, spherical stones, which they think were used like ball
bearings to help transport the huge stones.
4.
Stonehenge
The Salisbury Plain in England is home to possibly the most famous mysterious megalithic
structure in the world, so of course, I had to mention it!
Stonehenge was built from 3000 BC to 2000 BC, constructed in a series of stages.
The site currently consists of a ring of standing stones, each stone at least 4 meters (13 feet)
tall, 2.1 meters (7 feet) wide, and weighing around 25 tons.
These stones are set inside a circular earthen bank and ditch, which might date back to 3100
BC.
The standing stones were made of bluestone taken from the Preseli Hills, which lie about
250 kilometers (150 miles) away in Wales.
How were the stones brought?
How were they erected?
That’s only part of the mystery.
Like many other Neolithic monuments, Stonehenge is a kind of ancient observatory, with the
great trilithons aligning with the sunrise on the summer solstice and with the sunset
at the winter solstice.
Apart from its astronomical uses, the site was also probably used as a burial ground
and a religious gathering area of sorts.
Deposits of human remains have been found dating back to the very earliest stages of
the monument’s construction, and it has been determined that burials continued at
the site for nearly 500 years.
It was long believed that Stonehenge was built by the Celtic Druids, and certainly modern-day
Druids have laid claim to the place.
It’s now thought that the monument was built by three different groups of ancient people,
each one using a different construction style and process, all of whom pre-date the arrival
of the Celts in Britain.
3.
Newgrange
Another Neolithic site, with important astrological alignment, can be found at Newgrange in Ireland’s
Boyne Valley.
Older than Stonehenge and the Great Pyramids of Giza, Newgrange was originally believed
to be a tomb, but it’s actually a temple complex that was built by Stone Age farmers
more than 5,200 years ago in 3200 BC.
Newgrange is a large mound that is 85 meters (279 feet) in diameter and 13.5 meters (12
feet) high, covering about one acre of land.
It is ringed and held in place by a retaining wall of some 97 kerbstones.
Some of these stones are highly decorated with carvings, often with spirals or whorls.
There is one doorway into the mound, which leads to a passageway that extends more than
19 meters (62 feet) into the man-made hill.
The passage leads to a room with three alcoves, and the chamber and the passage are aligned
with sunrise on the Winter Solstice.
Newgrange is just one of a series of structures built along the River Boyne, making up a complex
known collectively as Brú na Bóinne.
The other two monuments are called Knowth and Dowth, but there are as many as 35 other,
smaller mounds in the complex, as well.
2.
Skara Brae
Located on the windy Orkney Islands of northern Scotland stands the Neolithic settlement known
as Skara Brae.
The most complete Neolithic village in Europe, Skara Brae was probably occupied between 3180
BC and 2500 BC.
The site consists of eight clustered houses, which were sunk into the mounds called middens,
which were made up of domestic waste.
The middens provided stability for the walls and shelter from the brutal winds that scour
the islands.
Each house is about 40 square meters (430 square feet), with a large square room holding
a stone hearth that was used for heating and cooking.
Seven of the eight buildings have stone-built furnishings, including cupboards, dressers,
seats, beds and storage boxes.
It's like the real life flintstones!!The beds and dressers are in the same place in every
house.
Each house had a stone slab door that could be closed with a sliding bar, and there was
a sophisticated drainage system, and each house had its own toilet!
The eighth building was not a house and was not sunk into a midden.
Instead, it seems to have been a sort of workshop, with the space divided into small cubicles
where fragments of stone, bone and antler were found.
These fragments were probably the result of the manufacture of tools and hunting implements,
which could indicate that this building was actually a very, very early version of a factory.
The people who lived at Skara Brae were not, as some wild-eyed folk have fantasized, an
enclave of philosophers and spiritual teachers who studied the stars and other esoterica.
Instead, they were pastoralists, meaning that they were settled herders who lived and died
according to the welfare of their flocks.
When the climate changed in 2500 BC, the residents abandoned their cold and rocky settlement
and moved south, where the grazing was better.
The village was gradually covered over by sand and lost until it was revealed by a blistering
storm in 1850.
1.
Göbekli Tepe
Its name is Turkish for “potbelly hill,” and it’s the most recently found ancient
structure on this list.
Found on the plains of Anatolia, Göbekli Tepe is a man made hill, standing about 15
meters (49 feet) tall, and about 300 meters (980 feet) in diameter.
Who cares??
Well It’s about 11,000 years old, making it the oldest temple structure in the world.
The temple was built in two phases.
During the first phase, more than 200 pillars in about 20 circles were erected.
Each pillar is about 6 meters (20 feet) tall and weighs up to 10 tons.
They are fitted into sockets that were dug into the bedrock.
The second phase saw smaller pillars that were set up in rectangular rooms that had
floors polished with lime.
The site was abandoned in the Neolithic era for reasons that remain a mystery.
The site was excavated by a German archaeological team directed by Klaus Schmidt from 1996 until
he passed away in 2014.
Schmidt compared the site to a cathedral, believing that it was a place where people
intermittently gathered for religious reasons.
The site was a place of pilgrimage for people coming from as far away as 150 kilometers
(90 miles).
The remnants of butchered and cooked animal waste have been found, indicating food that
was prepared for large numbers of people.
Although there have been no graves yet found at the site, Schmidt was convinced that Göbekli
Tepe was a central location for a cult of the dead.
The 2017 discovery of human skulls with deliberate incisions might support that theory.
There are more questions than answers about Göbekli Tepe, because only 5% of the site
has been excavated.
What is certain is that, since it is so old, the site may be a window into the way that
mankind first developed its concept of religion, making Göbekli Tepe one of the most important
early human monuments ever found.
What did you think of these sites?
Have you been to any of them, and do you have any theories about these unanswered questions?
Please share your thoughts in the comments, and be sure to subscribe before you leave!!
See you next time!