10: Giants of Nevada There is an ancient legend that says North
America was once the home of a race of giant human beings.
They were taller, stronger, and more ferocious than any other men on the planet.
They also happened to have red hair and practiced cannibalism!
It’s quite a terrifying story and ancient people would warn their children to beware
the giants.
The Paiute tribe has legends and stories that speak of these giants, as they claim to have
had a tribal war with them.
The clan of giants was called Si-Te-Cah.
They were notorious for capturing Paiute tribe members and then taking them back to feast
on their flesh.
According to the Paiute, this finally came to an end when they chased the giants into
a cave, filled it full of flaming arrows, and suffocated and burned the giants alive.
But just how much of this is true?
Depending on who you ask, maybe all of it.
The entrance to this particular cave collapsed a few centuries ago because of an earthquake.
It wasn't discovered until 1911, 20 miles south of the town of Lovelock in Nevada.
The Sunset Mining Company went into the cave to mine bat guano.
During the mining, the workers discovered a series of artifacts that lent some serious
credibility to the story of the Paiute and the giants.
They even allegedly found two skeletons of humans that measured over 8 feet tall.
If true, this would dramatically change history as we know it.
It would confirm that giants really did walk among us.
However, these skeletons inevitably vanished without a trace and the cave was forgotten,
so there's no way for modern archaeologists to either confirm or deny that they were ever
found at all.
9: Coins from Atlantis The mystery of the lost city of Atlantis may
have just been solved after a researcher made a revelation analyzing a coin from 2400 years
ago.
As you may already know, the mythical island of Atlantis was first described by Plato,
the Greek writer.
He claimed Atlantis was a nation unlike any other in the world, hugely advanced and insanely
wealthy.
However, Atlantis eventually fell into the Atlantic Ocean and all trace of it was lost.
Christos Djonis believes that a coin found over two decades ago could hold the secret
of Atlantis’s true location.
The coin was discovered by Mark McMenamin, a professor of geology.
It was minted in ancient Carthage in the year 350 BC, with one side of the coin printed
with an ancient map of the world.
It's this map that has revealed the clue to the possible location of Atlantis.
In the center of the map is the Mediterranean Basin, and there appears to be an unknown
landmass across from the geological formation known as the Pillars of Hercules.
This is exactly where Plato described Atlantis as being.
Plus, the coin was minted around the time that Plato was alive.
The suggestion here is that people knew about Atlantis before it sank; it was basically
common knowledge.
Archaeologists still haven't found any trace of it in the Mediterranean, but its presence
on the coin suggests it was definitely there.
It could be that a powerful earthquake destroyed Atlantis so effectively that even with archaeologists
looking at its exact location, they still can't see any leftover ruins of the ancient
city.
8: Ancient Ghost Tracks A series of ancient ghost tracks just discovered
by archaeologists could force schools all over the world to rewrite their textbooks.
These ancient ghost tracks are actually human footprints left in the dirt 23,000 years ago.
They were found in New Mexico, and scientists say they prove that humans set foot in America
thousands of years before previously thought.
Until recently, archaeologists have been in agreement that the first humans arrived between
13,000 to 16,000 years ago.
But thanks to these ancient footprints, scientists say it happened at least 7000 before that,
maybe even 30,000 years ago.
Since the footprints were found in their natural environment with no alterations, and their
dating has been verified, this new discovery is unequivocal evidence of earlier migration
to the Americas.
This would explain many of the advanced early cultures found throughout the Americas, especially
central America and Peru.
To be quite honest, this is the one discovery that actually does require history to be rewritten.
There's simply no denying the physical evidence.
And for a bit more background, you may be interested to know that after the earliest
humans migrated out of East Africa, they spread across the entire globe.
By 50,000 years ago, they had made it all the way to the southern coast of Asia and
even to Oceania, around Australia.
But since America was so far away, it took them a much longer time.
30,000 years ago, when there was a land bridge between Asia and North America, groups of
migrants likely crossed over.
That land bridge vanished somewhere around 19,000 years ago, trapping this group of humans
on the continent, where they eventually spread all the way to the furthest reaches of the
Andes, the Amazon and beyond.
7: The Female Hunters When you think about the earliest hunters
in the Americas, you might think of muscled men in loincloths with bows and arrows.
But a recent study done by researchers at the University of California says this could
be a false narrative.
In fact, everything we know about early hunter-gatherers may need to be reworked.
For centuries, we've been taught that the men hunted and the women gathered.
But when archaeologists uncovered the burial site of a female hunter from 9000 years ago
in the Andes Mountains, that story changed.
It now appears that women may have participated just as much in the hunting as they did in
the gathering.
According to assistant professor of anthropology Randy Haas, part of the reason why modern
people view our ancient ancestors in these gender segregated roles is because of the
world we live in today.
However, Randy says it's clear after multiple excavations in South America that have turned
up female hunters that segregation based on sex may be a much newer invention and not
something our ancient ancestors even thought about.
In other words, separating work based on gender is not natural at all, but a cultural and
modern invention.
6: Hallucinogenic Cave Drugs In a California cave, researchers have found
remnants of hallucinogenic drugs that may have been used by the natives of the land
when they created rock paintings.
Researchers have been able to directly link the use of psychedelics to artistic expression
in the ancient world.
Believe it or not, this isn't a new theory.
Researchers have believed that hallucinogenic substances played a role in art for decades.
They've always thought that the ancient people were inspired to create art after consuming
these hallucinogens.
But this is the first time that they've actually found physical evidence of it.
On the ceiling of the California cave, the researchers found a pinwheel-type painting
that they say depicts the psychoactive plant known as datura.
And to make the case even more convincing, they also found the remains of the plant itself,
chewed up lumps of the stuff jammed into crevices in the ceiling of the cave.
This goes to show that it wasn’t the Beatles who did it first – it was actually the Native
Americans.
But there might be a different reason for the drugs and the drawings.
Some archaeologists say the experts have it all wrong, and that the drugs weren't used
to inspire paintings.
Instead, some say the paintings may have been visual aids for drug-induced trips!
What do you think about this bizarre discovery?
Which came first?
The art, or the hallucinogens?
let me know in the comments below!
5: The T. Rex Everything you thought you knew about the
T. rex could be wrong.
A handful of recent discoveries by paleontologists have changed the scientific understanding
of how this monster dinosaur hunted, lived, and even grew.
The T. rex was one of the most fearsome creatures that ever walked the land.
But unfortunately, it went extinct with the rest of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago
after an asteroid crashed into what is today Mexico.
One of the biggest issues with the way the public sees the T. rex is the way it was represented
in the 1993 film Jurassic Park.
What's really interesting is that at the time the movie was made, only about 7 skeletons
of this dinosaur had ever been found.
In the nearly three decades since the movie was released, scientists have found dozens
more, helping to paint a much clearer picture of this incredible creature.
Perhaps one of the most interesting recent discoveries is that scientists have confirmed
the T. rex was such a giant beast that it wasn't able to run.
The dinosaur would never have been able to sprint after a moving Jeep.
It was so big that if it tried to run, it would simply fall over and hurt itself.
This thing was 43 feet from its teeth to its tail, weighing upwards of 9 tons.
It actually moved at about 3 miles per hour, maximum.
Another interesting fact is that young T. rexes were covered in feathers, which they
needed to stay warm and keep hidden from predators!
4: Ancient High-Tech Workshop Archaeologists in Israel have just discovered
the earliest evidence of a furnace being used by humans.
This mysterious technology has been branded more sophisticated than anything else developed
in the ancient world.
And amazingly, it dates back 6500 years.
The shocking discovery was made in the city of Beer Sheva, in the Negev Desert.
Archaeologists were excavating the city back in 2017 when they uncovered an ancient neighborhood.
Inside that neighborhood they found a high-tech workshop once used for smelting copper ore.
According to the researchers from Tel Aviv University, this ancient high-tech workshop
employed the very first furnace ever built.
This wasn't the most advanced furnace you've ever seen.
It was a small installation, crafted primarily from tin, probably used specifically for smelting
copper ore.
What makes the discovery so important to history is that during this period of time, known
as the Stone Age, humans weren't really making copper tools.
There have been copper implements found, but they didn't have a sophisticated way to do
it.
The furnace appears to be a fluke invention in a secluded part of the world, meaning no
other civilization on Earth even knew about it.
3: The Dragon Man The fossilized skull of a creature that’s
been nicknamed the Dragon Man may be revealing new clues about how our ancestors transitioned
from primitive monsters to the human beings we are today.
In other words, this mysterious skull could be physical proof of the actual missing link.
The skull of the Dragon Man was found near the Dragon River in China, hence the name.
It dates back 140,000 years ago.
Amazingly, scientists have been able to get a solid idea of what this individual looked
like by analyzing his cranium.
They say this guy, as he was an adult male, had a very pronounced brow line.
He also had a huge brain and a rather bulbous nose.
But here's the part of the discovery that could rewrite the history books.
The experts claim that the Dragon Man is actually our closest relative, not the Neanderthal
as previously believed.
If this is ever confirmed, it will dramatically change what children are taught in school.
Mention of the Neanderthal could be removed entirely, with children instead learning about
how we evolved from a creature known properly as Homo longi.
But it's not time to change the curriculum yet.
Researchers are still trying to figure out where this ancient human-like animal fits
in on the evolutionary chain.
Before Neanderthal, after Neanderthal, or from a different branch on the evolutionary
tree altogether?
2: Nubian Super Church An ancient super church discovered in modern
Sudan is changing our understanding of history in this part of Africa.
This recent discovery was made in Old Dongola, the capital of ancient Makuria.
This was once one of the three Christian kingdoms of Nubia, just south of Egypt.
The amazing part about the super church is that researchers say it’s the largest of
its kind ever identified in Nubia.
To understand why this could change history, we need to go back in time.
Old Dongola was a thriving metropolis for 1200 years.
It functioned from between the 5th century until the 18th century, at which point the
city was abruptly abandoned.
In medieval days, when the Nubian kingdom converted to Christianity, the city was at
its most splendid.
This super church was likely the seat of a powerful archbishop who governed the area.
It was so big that archaeologists claim it had likely been used as the seat of power
for the entire kingdom during the Makurian period.
Whereas Nubia wasn’t really considered to be a powerful Christian empire before, the
size, splendor, and luxury of the super church suggests they were a much larger Christian
powerhouse than previously imagined.
The biggest mystery is trying to understand why and how they lost power and basically
went extinct in the 18th century.
1: Mysterious Runes A series of mysterious Runic letters scratched
onto a cow bone from the 7th century could change history.
This discovery was made in a small village in the Czech Republic called Lany, by a graduate
student.
The student uncovered the rib bone of a cow and immediately identified the strange markings
carved on its surface as being made by a person.
She couldn't figure out what the symbols were, but they were clearly manmade.
The student’s name is Alena Slamova, studying at the Masaryk University in Brno.
She took the mysterious bone to her colleagues for additional analysis.
They soon realized that the carvings were Germanic runes, a type of alphabet used by
Germanic people between the 2nd and 7th centuries AD.
Carbon dating proved it to be 1400 years old, from 600 AD.
The reason this discovery could change history is that the bone dates back 200 years before
the Slavic people in the area came up with their own language.
One of the theories is that the carvings were made by a Germanic person living in the territory
of the Slavs.
Another theory is that the bone was inscribed by a Slavic person who had learned the Germanic
alphabet and was practicing on cow bones.
Whatever the case, it shows that there was at least some cooperation between the Slavic
people and the Germanic people, when history shows they were almost always at war with
one another.
Somehow, before learning their own language, the Slavic people from what is now the Czech
Republic were taught to write with the Germanic alphabet.
Which new discovery do you think will literally rewrite the history books?
Let me know your thoughts in the comments and thanks for watching.
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