From shackled skulls to books that are literally wrapped in human skin, there have been things
found by archaeologists that will chill you to the bone!
Here are 12 of the most terrifying archaeological discoveries ever.
12.
Headless Gladiators Let's start off with a combat one.
In York, England, a large set of skeletal remains were found buried.
This isn't too bad on their own, however, when the remains were fully uncovered, they
found that every single person that was buried there was missing their head.
What's more, they were buried with their heads alongside them, which made it even more odd,
and scary.
After some research and study, scientists dated the bodies back to around the second
and fourth centuries, A.D. which lead to speculation that these might have been gladiators.
This theory was supported when when the bones of the victims were shown to have clear battle
wounds.
Other people believe that they could have been soldiers, but it's impossible to tell
either way.
No matter what they did for a living, this raises a very disturbing question.
Regardless of whether they were soldiers or gladiators, why were they decapitated then
buried with their heads?
It's clear that they weren't thrown in, the heads I mean, they were placed in specific
spots from body to body.
Which says that they were buried there with care and detail, but to what end?
The archaeologists are just as confused as we are.
11.
Screaming Mummies Sticking with the past in a big way, let's
talk about mummies.
They're a well-documented part of archaeology, and some of the biggest discoveries in history
have been finding mummies and their crypts and tombs and discovering who they were and
what they did.
The process to examine these former rulers, like Tutankhamun is extensive, as doing it
the wrong way will cause the body to disintegrate...The mummy's, not the archaeologist although there
are some curses around that they should watch out for!
However, a trend was discovered back in 1886 in regards to improper mummification that
surely scared the crap out of the archaeologist at the time.
For he discovered...a screaming mummy.
Of course it wasn’t alive and screaming, but rather, the pose and posture of the mummy
made it look like it was screaming.
Can you imagine brushing the dirt off of its face and its mouth close up while it’s frozen
in a scream?
This naturally lead to much speculation as to how this mummy ended up this way!
Was he buried alive?
In pain?
Well, apparently, it's all about following procedure.
When we die, our body gets rigid, the process called Rigor Mortis.
However, after a while our body relaxes, and allows itself to rest.
This is no different with mummies, and because of that, if the jaw isn't fastened shut, (which
is a practice in proper mummification), it will go slack, and fall open.
And without skin or muscles to give context, it looks like a screaming mummy.
Despite being explained by science, it would still be creepy as heck if you turned around
and saw one staring at you!!
And now for number 10, but first if you are a returning subscriber, welcome back!!!
Glad to see you again!!
Can any of you identify this noise??
Put your guess in the comments below!
The answer is coming up!!!
10.
Shackled Corpses History is written by the victors, and because
of that, the "dirty little secrets" of societies and their rulers have to be dug up and found.
One such secret of the ancient Greeks was found in 2016 in Athens.
They were trying to dig up ground to make some new buildings.
Nothing wrong with that, right?
Well, as they were doing so, they found an ancient Necropolis, or a massive cemetery.
This always happens in Athens and in Rome so for them, it’s not really that big of
a deal.
A lot of them are just frustrated because of all the delays!
The archaeologists were called in and they started exploring.
Eventually, someone stumbled onto a hidden part of the Necropolis, a room that held over
80 skeletons in it that were long-dead, and each one of them was shackled.
In fact, some of the corpses were shackled twice.
Adding to the intrigue was that scientists determined that these people, whoever they
were, were very young when they were bound and killed.
How did they die?
That's unclear, but there is historical text that says this could have been a band of rebels
trying to overthrow the leadership of Athens, but again, it's been so long it's very hard
to say for sure.
However, there's a lot of mysteries to go along with this.
Why were they shackled AFTER their death?
Why were they put in this hidden room?
These questions will likely never be answered.
9.
Pit Of Death Speaking of unanswered questions, this pit
raises plenty more of them.
In France, another construction project led to the discovery of something heinous and
foul.
A literal pit that was over six feet deep and five feet wide.
But it’s not called the pit of death for nothing.
Inside the pit were numerous bodies.
As sad as it sounds, it gets worse.
There were bodies of all kinds of people: men, women, children, infants all within the
pit.
Add to that, some of the bones didn't have a proper host, suggesting there were even
more within it.
Still not enough?
Some of the bodies were amputated, or dismembered.
The really sad thing though, aside from the mass death, was that these bodies had been
in the ground for over 5300 years, and only got discovered in 2012.
That's a long time to be stuck in a pit like that.
If the last few entries have proven anything, it's that history isn't always pretty.
It can be downright gruesome.
8.
Vampire Burials Fear is a powerful thing.
It can lead people to do things they would never do of their own rational mind.
And it can cause them to fear things that are truly irrational.
The fear of vampires were a real thing for a long time in the ancient world, and the
thought that the dead could rise again and come for blood made many take "precautions"
in order to protect themselves.
The Polish for example decided to take their precautions to rather unsettling levels.
If a person died, and people thought they would come back as a vampire, they would be
buried with the proper "precautions" to ensure they couldn't rise again, or cause trouble
if they did.
For example, some people were buried with sickles around their necks, likely to chop
off the head should they try to get up.
Others had massive stones wedged between their jaws so that if they rose they couldn’t
suck out people's blood.
People do strange things when they fear what goes bump in the night.
7.
The Moa Under The Mountain Exploration is key in finding archaeological
artifacts, but sometimes even the most hardened of archaeologists can't predict everything
they would find.
And this particular one is one for the history books.
New Zealand, 1986, a group went to Mount Owen to examine and observe the underground complex
of tunnels that lied beneath the mountain.
As they were exploring though, they found a large pile of bones.
Nothing out of the ordinary in context, but, they found something very fresh next to it.
A massive claw that didn't look like anything living today.
Turns out, the freshly decayed claw belonged to an ancient bird call the Upland Moa.
This bird was flightless, but given the size of its claw, was clearly a threat to many.
The questions remain though, how did this claw get under the mountain?
Why was it so perfectly preserved despite other bones not getting the same treatment?
And can you imagine if they had found a fully alive Moa in that mountain?
Pretty exciting stuff!!
6.
Altamura Man While certain finds can be scary, they can
also be fascinating in the historical sense, and one such grand case is the Altamura Man.
A cave scientist (yeah, that's a thing, I looked it up) was in Altamura, Italy doing
some work, and while examining a particular structure, he turned to find a skeleton looking
at him through the rock.
A very human-looking skeleton in fact, and it's literally fused into the rock around
it.
This is the Altamura Man, but he's not exactly human, he's a Neanderthal, and in fact, he's
the oldest Neanderthal ever found!!
Now, if you're waiting for the feeling of terror to come back, here it is.
The "rock" he was in...wasn't always a rock.
It was actually once a sinkhole, one that Mr. Neanderthal fell into when he was having
a bad day, and he was never able to get out.
Because of that, he was literally consumed by it, to the extent that he because fused
with the calcium deposits within the sinkhole, thus creating the sight that scientists found
tens of thousands of years later.
What a way to go, am I right?
5.
Tortured Skulls No, that’s right, "Not tortured souls",
"tortured skulls".
In Sweden, in 2009, some archaeologists were excavating a dried up lake bed.
Near the bottom of the lake they found a sealed structure, that's already pretty terrifying,
but trust me, it gets worse.
Within that stone structure were a set of 11 skulls.
No, that's not the scary part just yet.
What's odd is what happened to these skulls.
Many of them were impaled, some of them were burnt to a crisp, and one of them was literally
shoved inside another skull.
Yeah, say what now?
And it should be noted that these skulls were all by themselves, no bodies attached to them.
So, how and why did the people who killed these people do this to their skulls?
No one really knows, but it's definitely creepy to think about.
4.
The Sewer Of Babies The ancient world did a lot of great and wondrous
things.
But, it also did a lot of terrible things, including facilitating the death of many young
babies.
Yet, one of the most disturbing finds ever might just be a sewer full of their corpses.
In Ashkelon, Israel, a group of archaeologists were examining a bathhouse that was built
by the Romans.
Eventually, they made their way to the sewers underneath it.
If you think sewers are a weird place to look for artifacts, you'd be surprised by how many
incredible things are found down there!!
Anyway, they started to notice as they explored that there were bones in it.
But they were tiny.
Upon finding tiny human skulls to go with them they realized, they were in a literal
baby sewer.
It's not known why the babies were thrown into this particular sewer, or why there were
over 100 of them put into it.
But it's safe to say that whoever did it did not do this by accident, and that's what makes
it so terrifying.
3.
Family Betrayal Sometimes the truly terrifying things we find
aren't the remains of people, but the stories they leave behind.
Yan Shiwei was a prominent member of Chinese society during his time and he loyally served
the first female Emperor in Chinese history.
As a military man he fought by her side through high times and rebellions, even breaking his
own arm so that he couldn't rebel against his ruler.
But then, his brother betrayed the family and the Emperor.
As a punishment, the entire family was branded as "traitors" and killed.
This story was revealed in a text found in the tomb of Yan Shiwei 1300 years later.
Emperor Wu Zetian helped unify China but was only in power for 15 years.
Mass executions were the norm and she got rid of supporters and her own family members
if she had to.
2.
Neanderthal Cannibalism Cannibalism is the act of a humanoid eating
another humanoid.
It was once widely felt to be a tribal act, rooted in specific groups of people.
Yet, Archaeology has taught us differently.
This act goes all the way back to the Neanderthals.
In fact, one find depicted a rather large family being eaten by another Neanderthal
family.
Caves in Goyet Belgium reveal human bones of adults and children showing signs of cuttin
and fracturing to extract the marrow.
This is kind of new information that Neanderthals ate each other, and it is not the first case
of this happening.
It could have been just for food or it could have had symbolic meaning but it’s hard
to piece it together.
1.
Death Whistles If you recognized this sound earlier, then
you know it comes from an Aztec Death Whistle!!
This was discovered when digging up an Aztec grave, where the deceased sacrificed man,
was holding onto the Death Whistle!
Now, if you're wondering what it sounds like, it's blood curdling, and it took years for
any of the scientists to even know what it was, let alone blow on it.
Speculation is that this whistle was used during human sacrifices to the gods.
Or to terrify their enemies since it sounded like hundreds of people screaming their heads
off.
Thanks for watching!