From a disgusting shrunken h ead to a fascinating piece of weaponry from a sunken 16th century
ship, here are 10 of the most mysterious recent archaeological discoveries!
10: Shrunken Head A strange shrunken head was recently found
stored deep in the archives of Mercer University.
The head originally came from Ecuador, though nobody is
quite sure how exactly it ended up in the university or who had taken it from South
America in the first place.
Researchers at the university used CT scans to assess the skin and hair found on the shrunken
head, comparing what they discovered to criteria provided by the National Cultural Heritage
Institute in Ecuador.
What they found is that the shrunken head was an authentic and very unique ceremonial
tsantsa, a valuable artifact popular with many different indigenous groups in South
America up until the 20th century.
They were crafted from the severed heads of enemies defeated in combat.
But during the 19th century, when Europeans began invading South America, the Europeans
started stealing the shrunken heads and keeping them as souvenirs.
This is why authentication is so important when a shrunken head is found, even if it
was found stashed in a university basement somewhere.
In June of 2019, the shrunken head was given back to the Ecuadorian government.
9: Bronze Currency Something that has always been a bit of a
mystery to archaeologists is how exactly people living in the Bronze Age managed their finances.
A new discovery of bronze scrap found in a European hoard has revealed some answers to
this very question.
According to recent research published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, pieces
of scrap – often leftovers from swords and axes, jewelry, and other pieces of metal – were
used as currency between 1350 and 800 BC.
This scrap was used in the same way that we use cash today.
Western Eurasia developed a sophisticated cash society about 1000 years before classical
civilization ever started.
The discovery itself involved 2500 metal objects broken into fragments.
Scientists used a statistical technique that can determine if a sample of measurements
is due to an underlying system, and what they discovered is that the fragments each weighed
a specific amount.
They had been broken into fragments to be a specific weight, suggesting scrap was used
as money, and the worth depended on the weight.
Also, fragments of metal would have been used as change when trading with something more
valuable, like trading in a $100 bill and getting back a handful of coins.
Umm is that a fair trade to you?
8: Rome’s First Emperor Archaeologists in Italy have made a rather
shocking discovery.
They unearthed a marble bust of the first Roman emperor ever.
I am of course talking about emperor Augustus, whose bust was recently identified based on
his signature hairstyle and his unmistakable facial features.
It is quite amazing how intact the head still was - minus a damaged nose and the rest of
the body being missing of course.
What's truly shocking is that the bust was found by construction workers.
Imagine their surprise when they were working on a renovation in the small town of Isernia
when the weathered marble head appeared in the dirt.
Augustus ruled Rome from between 27 BC and 14 AD.
He was the adoptive son of someone else you may remember, Julius Caesar.
Augustus expanded heavily, focused quite a bit on colonization and imperial growth, and
really was the father of Rome’s imperialism.
So, what was his head doing buried in the dirt?
Nobody’s 100% sure.
Archaeologists do know that parts of Isernia’s historic city were built during Imperial Rome.
Perhaps the real mystery here is where the rest of Augustus's body is.
Not only that, but what other mysterious relics are waiting for the next construction project
to be revealed?
7: 16th Century Cannon A bronze cannon has been recovered by Spanish
police after it was stolen on the same day that it was discovered!
What?!
The cannon was one of three, all of which probably belonged to a ship dispatched by
King Philip II of Spain in October of 1596 to join the rebellion in Ireland against the
English forces.
But the ship never arrived.
Instead, it got caught in a storm and sank, along with at least twenty other vessels,
killing an estimated 1700 people!
The three cannons were discovered initially by a group of shellfish catchers near the
Galician town of Ribeira while they were out looking for goose barnacles.
They told the proper authorities about the discovery, but when the navy came to salvage
the cannons the next day, one of them was missing.
It was pretty obvious that someone had gotten wind of the discovery and decided to steal
the artifact.
This is known as a cultural ge offense, which is a criminal act.
Police eventually found an actual video showing the cannon being taken from the sea using
ropes and a hook.
But they still had to figure out who it was that stole it.
After a lot of investigating, they did eventually apprehend the culprits, who had been hoping
to use the ancient piece of Military Memorabilia as a decorative artifact in their home!
What should the punishment be for this kind of criminal act?
Let me know in the comments section below and while you’re at it, go ahead and hit
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6: Elite Infections In the early 19th century in North America,
urban areas were rife with parasitic infections.
For a very long time, the rampaging infections have been blamed on sharp population growth,
urbanization, and poor sanitation.
Also, it was generally believed that the less fortunate suffered from more infections because
they wallowed in unsanitary conditions, had too much contact with domestic animals, and
were just generally yucky.
But new evidence coming from a fecal sample taken from an old toilet found at Dartmouth’s
college has shown that wealthy elites in New England were just as vulnerable to parasitic
infections as the poor.
The poop used in the study is 200 years old.
It was found at the bottom of a toilet, along with trash from early America, luxury items
like peanuts and coffee, and 12 bottles of a product marketed as a cure for digestive
ailments.
An analysis of the fecal sample revealed tapeworm eggs and whipworm eggs!
The only issue is that it's impossible to know who the samples came from.
Researchers assume they were wealthy because they came from a wealthy toilet, but it’s
impossible to know for sure.
A lower class person could have snuck inside the building to use the fancier toilet, who
knows!
Another issue is trying to figure out why wealthy people who had little contact with
things like animals and other dirty humans were suffering from the same kinds of infections
as people hanging out in public toilets.
Right now, nobody really knows, but I’m guessing it’s probably because we’re all
the same gross humans.
5: Pregnant Mummy Researchers have found the very first pregnant
mummy, which dates back to 1st century Egypt.
The find was unexpected because the inscriptions on the coffin suggested that the mummy inside
was actually a male priest.
According to Live Science, the mummy was initially donated to the University of Warsaw back in
1826.
But archaeologists in 2021 working with the Warsaw Mummy Project conducted an analysis
of the mummy and found that it had the skeletal remains of a fetus inside of it.
Obviously, this was not a male mummy.
But how did this even happen in the first place?
Researchers don't have a clue who the mummy was.
What they do know is that she died between the ages of 20 and 30, while around seven
months pregnant.
They based this on the circumference of the fetus’s head.
Why she was put inside another mummy's coffin is a mystery, where the other mummy went is
also a mystery, and why the woman was mummified while pregnant is perhaps the greatest mystery
of all – one that archaeologists are currently working to solve.
4: The Bed Burial While demolishing a modern residence in western
Macedonia, workers discovered the grave of a woman from 2100 years ago.
She was found underneath the foundation of the modern building, laid out on a bed.
Researchers are now scrambling to figure out who this mysterious woman was and why she
was buried in such a peculiar way.
The leg posts of the bed were found, but the rest of it had already rotted away.
The burial dates back to the Hellenistic period, around the 1st century BC.
It was a time when the locals were experimenting with bed burials, though they often used wooden
beds.
The only reason archaeologists know about the beds is because of the nails that have
been found inside of graves.
There have even been stone beds and brick beds found inside Macedonian tombs.
What is really curious is that a decorative plate from the woman's bed was discovered
inscribed with the head of a mermaid.
The dead woman also carried a gold plate in her mouth - most likely a mouthpiece and 10
double gold laurel leaves that were sewn onto leather or cloth material, maybe a veil or
a wreath on her head.
Nobody is really sure what this means, but some have speculated that she could have either
belonged to a royal family, been part of a high economic and social class, or have held
some kind of religious authority in the region.
3: Gothic Warrior The grave of a Gothic warrior who had been
buried along with his valuable weapons has just been unearthed in Greece’s second largest
city, Thessaloniki.
This ancient city was named after Alexander the Great’s half-sister.
It was founded in 315 BC and is rich in archaeological treasures.
This newest discovery was made while excavating a graveyard beside the remains of an old Christian
basilica.
Most of the tombs here are vaulted and many of them are honestly quite boring.
But one of them held the incredible skeleton of a Gothic warrior and an extremely well-preserved
sword that he may have used in combat.
Scientists believe the warrior died in the 5th century AD.
They also believe he was employed as a Gothic mercenary.
But what's really fascinating isn't the skeleton but the fact that a Goth was found in Macedonia.
There has been a lot of speculation over the years because historians simply don't know
where the Goths originated, if they started out in Scandinavia or came from Germany or
hailed from Poland.
Almost nothing is known about them until they started defeating the Romans.
With more Gothic graves being discovered, historians hope to eventually unravel the
mystery.
2: The Mary Rose Researchers working with Cardiff University
have found evidence of extreme racial diversity among the crew of an ancient warship from
the time of King Henry , called the Mary Rose.
Evidence of the diversity came from an analysis of eight sailors’ remains that were excavated
from the wreckage of the ship.
Here's what we know.
The Mary Rose served the navy for 33 years, and she was sunk during a battle in 1545.
The ship was then discovered in 1971, raised in 1982, and investigated very recently.
Researchers wanted to learn more about the crew.
The artifacts had already been investigated thoroughly.
Nobody had really looked at the bones of the sailors though..
Researchers used multi-isotope analysis to study the teeth of the skeletons.
What they found was that not all of the sailors hailed from England.
Two of them were from southern Europe and a third had actually come from Africa.
The mystery is why people from so many faraway nations were serving on a warship in the English
Navy during the 16th century.
Scientists can't answer that question, but they are fairly certain that other warships
of the same time would have been equally as diverse.
1: Alien Skulls Strange ancient skeletons with skulls shaped
as though they were aliens from a galaxy far far away have been found in Croatia.
Archaeologists discovered three of these peculiar skeletons, two of them with deformed skulls
that made them look a lot like monsters.
Each skull had been molded to form a different shape, with researchers saying it was probably
because each person belonged to a specific cultural group.
As you may already know, cranial deformation has been practiced everywhere in the world,
from South America to Africa.
But in this case, researchers aren't sure why the deformations were going on.
It could have been to indicate social status by having a more attractive skull.
Nobody's really sure.
The alien-like skulls were discovered in a burial pit.
All three were males, with all three being between the ages of 12 and 16 and showing
evidence that they had suffered from malnutrition.
A bio-archaeologist from the Institute for Anthropological Research in Croatia said that
the youngsters may have died from something like a plague that left no traces of the disease
in their bones.
There were no artifacts found inside the grave to help identify them.
Right now, who these malformed people were is a total mystery.
Thanks for watching!
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