10: The Lost City of Nan Madol On the remote island of Pohnpei
(that’s Pon-pei not Pompeii!) is the ancient city of Nan Madol, nicknamed the Venice of the Pacific.
The ruins here are over 1000 years old, and built on top of a coral reef. It's
not only one of the oldest archaeological sites not on any heritage list, but also
one of the most mysterious. The city was built of giant stones, and yet how they were transported
onto the actual corals is completely unknown. All that remains today are the crumbled heaps of what
were once walls and foundations. Archaeologists have found no carvings, no pieces of artwork.
All they know is that a mysterious people called the Saudeleur ruled the island for a millennium.
The descendants of those people are still living on the island today, though not even they know
the origins of Nan Madol. They view the ruins as a sacred place where spirits come out at night.
We've known about the ruined city for decades, but it wasn't until recently that we really
gained knowledge of just how big it once was. Satellite images have now captured the
complex in its full glory. Researchers have identified 97 geometrically similar shapes
all along the coastline of the island. They don't know what they were used for,
if they were houses or temples – but they were definitely built by the ancient Saudeleur.
In total, thanks to the new information revealed by the satellites, researchers know the ruins of
Nan Madol are composed of at least 750,000 tons of black rock. What the satellite images fail to
do is solve the mystery. We still don't know what was happening on this island, which developed in
isolation in the middle of the ocean. 9: A Settlement in the Qatar Desert
While using satellites to look for underground water in Qatar, researchers at the University of
Southern California stumbled upon a lost settlement. The settlement is at least
3600 years old, lost in the wasteland of Qatar’s desert.
The researchers found traces of the structure in the form of a large plot of rectangular land.
It's not visible from the surface, only via satellite images. A person could walk straight
through the entire site without ever knowing they had just walked through an abandoned
village from prehistory. The only reason we know its age is because scientists went to the
location and radiocarbon dated the soil. Sadly,who lived in this lost settlement
and for how long is unknown. Judging by the size of the site,
it was a formidable fortress. The inhabitants of the former settlement landscaped the area and
practiced agriculture, keeping themselves alive by accessing groundwater deep beneath their feet.
It's a shocking discovery because until recently, researchers believed the people of the eastern
Arabian Peninsula were completely nomadic during this time. But by finding the traces
of a settlement, it's clear this wasn't the case. People were settling down and living in towns,
and they were even resourceful enough to pull water from underneath the desert. It's just a
bummer that the satellite images can't tell us who these mysterious desert citizens were
or where they went. 8: Japanese Tomb of Mystery
In Japan, there are mysterious tombs from ancient times that are known as Kofun. These tombs are
some of the most overlooked archaeological sites anywhere in the world. These enormous tombs were
built between the 3rd and 7th centuries and each one was constructed in the shape of a keyhole.
The Daisen Kofun is one of the biggest monuments on our planet,
over 1200 feet (365 m) long and just about 100 feet (30 m) tall. And it's only one,
there are plenty of smaller ones scattered across the Japanese islands. Most historians believe
they can be traced back to the 16th emperor of Japan, Nintoku. The smaller burials were for
court officers or relatives of the royal family. The biggest were for the emperors themselves.
One of the biggest mysteries surrounding the tombs is that there are no written sources
to describe what they were used for or who was buried inside them. The tombs and their
occupants remain an unsolved riddle as a result, and the Japanese government isn't
helping to solve the mystery. Because the tombs are considered property of the first emperors,
searching them is prohibited. This is also the result of cultural beliefs, as many Japanese
practices and norms regarding death and the dead require respecting the burials of their ancestors.
However, it has made it difficult to learn anything about them. The experts
have turned to using satellites to find out more about the mysterious keyhole burials.
Satellite images have now helped to reveal some new information about the tombs.
Researchers discovered they're all oriented to face the rising sun.
They also say the tombs were probably made in a keyhole shape as a representation of the sun
rising behind a sacred mountain. 7: Ancient Arabian Highways
Archaeologists with the University of Western Australia have found evidence of primitive
highways in Arabia. These highways, or more accurately funerary avenues, were created
in the Bronze Age. Researchers believe they were built as corridors linking one oasis to another,
as well as pastures. Because people of the desert obviously flocked to oases, where water and plant
life was in abundance, it made sense for them to build roads from one to the next.
But because this happened thousands of years ago, and nobody has lived in the desert since,
the highways have mostly been erased. They can now only be seen by satellite.
The lead author of the study, Dr. Matthew Dalton, says these funerary avenues were the major
thoroughfares of their day. They allowed people living all across the Arabian Peninsula to be more
socially and economically connected 4500 years ago. Even more interesting is that along the edges
of the funerary avenues were erected thousands of tombs. By looking down at the area from space,
researchers were able to identify more than 17,800 tombs alongside the roads.
If anything, these new discoveries have created more questions than answers.
Researchers still haven't identified all the settlements that these roads once connected.
That the burial sites and the areas along them connected the settlements however,
is a fascinating aspect of the remaining mystery. 6: Lost Coastal City
Archaeologists have identified a lost settlement off the coast of Croatia that is 6000 years old.
The discovery was made by Mate Parica, and partly by accident. He was examining satellite images of
the coastline when he spotted a mysterious area of the seabed just off the shore of Korcula.
As a professor at the University of Zadar, he recognized the foundations of a lost city when
he saw it. He and a group of colleagues went to the site and dove to the bottom.
What they discovered proved to be the remains of a Neolithic settlement from 4500 BC. It was built on
a small piece of land once connected to the main island. But as sea levels rose, the settlement
became isolated, and then completely submerged. In terms of archaeological evidence,
they found stone tools, broken stone walls, and pieces of ceramic. But other than that,
the sunken city is a mystery. The archaeologists don't know exactly which group of people built it,
or if they even escaped devastation when it was plunged into the sea. Considering that the process
that led to the city becoming completely submerged likely took some time, perhaps the people living
there had more than enough warning to take all cultural identifiers with them when they abandoned
the place. So now we have no idea who they were! And now for number 5, but first wanted to give a
big shout out to Charles Knight and Luna Moon! Thanks so much for watching and supporting OE!
If you are new here be sure to subscribe if you haven’t already for more videos about
amazing discoveries! Charles Knight and
Luna Moon 5: The Mega Lightning Bolt
In 2020, satellite images revealed the longest single lightning bolt ever recorded. According
to the World Meteorological Organization, two storms set new records for lightning. One of the
records was for the single bolt, captured by satellites at 477 miles (767 km) long.
To give you some idea of the scope, that's a single lightning bolt that stretched from
Texas to Mississippi. That’s the distance from New York City to Columbus in Ohio.
The second record is almost as cool. Satellites captured the lightning bolt with the longest
duration ever. This bolt of lightning lit up the sky with a brilliant flash for 17.1 seconds. It
happened over both Uruguay and northern Argentina. And while this is pretty exciting stuff,
a single bolt of lightning nearly 500 miles (804 km) long is also kind of scary. According
to Randall Cerveny from Arizona State University, it's likely we will observe even greater extremes
in the future. Not only because of new lightning detection technology in the form of satellites,
but also because of a wilder and more unpredictable future as the Earth’s
temperatures continue to rise. 4: Alabama Battle Site
Experts believe they have just located the site of a legendary battle in Alabama.
It happened long before the Civil War, about 500 years ago. Archaeologists say they used
satellite imagery to identify the location of the prehistoric Native American village, Mabila, where
the Spanish conquistador Hernandez de Soto fought against Chief Tuscaloosa of the Mississippi.
Based on historical records left behind by Soto, archaeologists have always known the battle of
Mabila occurred in what is now Alabama. They just didn't know exactly where. It wasn't until they
scanned the ground from space using satellites that they found evidence of it in Mobile County.
Here's the thing about the battle. It was terrible, with 2500 Native Americans killed,
along with 200 Spaniards. This was a wildly uneven battle. After the Spaniards claimed victory,
they burned Mabila to the ground on October 18, 1540. This left behind fire-hardened clay,
which is what researchers were looking for with the satellites.
Unfortunately, the archaeologists haven't actually been able to start digging yet.
They haven't found any physical evidence of the battle. They only know about a huge
chunk of land with fire-hardened clay where the legendary fighting almost certainly went down.
But I can't tell you exactly where the archaeologists believe the site to be,
as they haven't announced that information to the public. Archaeologists are scared that if they
give away the location of the alleged site, hordes of amateur archeologists will descend on and
damage the location looking for treasure. 3: Mysterious Shell Rings
In the southeastern United States, researchers from Pennsylvania State University have identified
what appear to be shell rings and mounds. The researchers used deep machine learning to analyze
data from synthetic aperture radars and satellite imagery. When the analysis was over, a series of
mysterious structures were outlined beneath the heavy forest where humans would never find them.
The significance of these mysterious monuments is unclear. We know that shell rings were constructed
from around 5000 to 3000 years ago, used as trade centers by the Native Americans.
Other shell rings have been found in the region, almost always with imported products like ceramics
and lithics from the Great Lakes region. This has led scientists to speculate that
the shell rings were trading posts. People from all different tribes met here to exchange goods.
But this was a long time ago. Almost nothing remains of these old sites,
nothing except mounds of dirt in places like rural Georgia. By using satellite images,
researchers are now able to look beneath the dirt, beneath the thick trees, and see where ancient
trading hubs lay buried and forgotten. 2: Forgotten Fortress
Actually, a collection of forgotten fortresses has been discovered in the Sahara Desert
thanks to satellite technology. These are real-life sandcastles in the middle
of the Libyan wasteland that were made by an ancient culture thousands of years ago.
Considering how truly isolated the Libyan desert is, not to mention how politically unstable the
country is, it's no surprise archaeologists on the ground have not discovered these sites.
But by simply looking at photographs taken by satellites flying over the country,
archaeologists could finally identify structures left behind by the Garamantes.
The Garamantes ruled the Libyan desert from around 100 BC to 600 AD. But very little is known about
them. They built their great fortresses over 620 miles (997 km) south of the major city of Tripoli.
One of the last archaeological expeditions here was in 2011, but it was cut short when civil war
broke out. David Mattingly from the university of Leicester had been one of the archaeologists on
the ground. He was astonished by the level of preservation in the ancient compounds,
most of which were built of nothing but mud and brick. The walls have slumped slightly,
probably because of ceaseless winds, but are still standing 13 feet (3.96 m) tall in many places.
The construction is just extraordinary. The other part that's extraordinary
is that the Garamantes kingdom was beyond the reach of the Roman Empire.
The Romans never made it down here, and so these fortresses mark the end of Roman occupation and
the beginning of the powerful kingdoms of Africa. Sadly, it's currently impossible to do a lot of
archaeological work here. Right now, all the experts can do is look at their satellite
images of the new fortresses and try to work information out from those.
1: Egyptian Metropolis In a spot located about 200 miles (321 km) south
from Cairo, recent satellite images have led to the discovery of a mysterious ancient settlement
in Egypt dating back to 400 AD. That makes the metropolis 1600 years old, give or take a few
decades. The images from space show obvious signs of habitation throughout a large plot of land,
suggesting a larger population of farmers living outside the main settlement. It never would have
been seen otherwise because much of the site has already been destroyed by modern development.
According to Sarah Parcak from the University of Alabama, the nameless city was once a regional
trade center. Based on coins and scraps of pottery discovered by scientists on the ground,
the people here traded primarily with civilizations in Greece, Turkey,
and Libya. Sarah also says Egypt is blanketed in innumerable mysterious lost cities like this one,
but that they're still undiscovered. Many of them are probably hiding beneath modern cities,
which bulldozed the old, ancient settlements to make way for the modern urban sprawl.
We don't know much else about this mysterious city yet,
but Sarah is hoping to make more headway. She’s also excited to make even more discoveries by
scrutinizing satellite images of Egypt and the surrounding area.
What do you think archaeologists will find next with all this new satellite technology?
Let me know your thoughts in the comments and thanks for watching! If you enjoyed the video, be
sure to hit subscribe to support the channel. See you again soon, bye!