Alien Portals: Strange Artifacts, Devices and Technology | Documentary | Full Movie | Alien Evidence
[soft music] [intense music] [intense music] - [Narrator] The Antikythera Mechanism is an ancient Greek mechanical model of the solar system, [mysterious music] and has been described as the oldest example of an analog computer. As it's the only one of its kind, its origins are a complete mystery. However, recent research has indicated that the Antikythera Mechanism might in fact be the famous planetarium made by the Sicilian astronomer, engineer, and mathematician, Archimedes. However, ancient sources mentioned that Archimedes made two of these machines, which means that the other one is out there somewhere, waiting to be discovered. At Easter, 1900, Elias Stadiatis and his party of Greek sponge fishermen were fishing off the coast of the tiny rocky island of Antikythera, between the southern Greek mainland and Crete. Surfacing after one of his descents, Stadiatis began babbling about a heap of dead, naked women on the seabed.
Further investigation by the fishermen revealed the 164 foot long wreck of a sunken Roman cargo ship over 140 feet down. The buried objects from the ship included 1st Century BC marble and bronze statues, the dead naked women, coins, gold, jewelry, pottery, [mysterious music] and what looked like lumps of corroded bronze which broke into several pieces shortly after being brought to the surface. The shipwreck has subsequently been dated to 70 to 60 BC.
The finds from the wreck were later examined, recorded, and sent to the National Museum in Athens. On the 17th of May, 1902, Greek archeologist Spiridon Stais was looking through the odd lumps from the shipwreck, covered in marine growth from 2,000 years beneath the sea when he noticed that one piece had a gear wheel embedded in it, and what looked like an inscription in Greek. There'd been a wooden case associated with the object, but this, as well as the wooden planks from the ship itself, had subsequently dried out and shriveled up. Further examination and meticulous cleaning revealed additional pieces of the mysterious object, and soon an elaborate gear mechanism made of bronze and measuring about 33 by 17 by 9 centimeters was revealed. Stais believed a strange mechanism to be an ancient astronomical clock, but the prevailing opinion at the time was that it was too intricate a device to belong to a wreck dated by the pottery on board to the early 1st Century BC.
Many researchers thought that the mechanism was the remains of an astrolabe, an astronomical device for observing planetary movements, used for navigation. [mysterious music] The earliest known example of which is from 9th Century AD, Iraq, but no general agreement on the date or purpose of the artifact was reached, and the enigma was soon forgotten. In 1951, English physicist Derek de Solla Price became fascinated by the complexity of the shipwreck mechanism, and began what was to be eight years of detailed study using x-ray photography.
In June, 1959, the conclusions of his analyses were published as an article in Scientific American, entitled "An Ancient Greek Computer." X-rays of the mechanism had revealed at least 20 separate gears, including a differential gear previously thought to have been invented in the 16th century. The differential gear allowed for the rotation of two shafts at different speeds, as used on the rear axle of automobiles. Price deduced from his research that the Antikythera find represented the remains of a great astronomical clock, which had close ties to a modern analog computer.
These conclusions met with some unfavorable reactions from scholars at the time. A certain professor refused to believe in the possibility of such a device, and hypothesized that the object must have been dropped into the sea in medieval times [mysterious music] and somehow made its way into the wreck. The discovery and reconstruction of the Antikythera Mechanism has also persuaded scholars to look at descriptions in ancient texts of such devices in a different light. Roman orator and writer, Cicero, writing in the 1st Century BC and living at the time of the Antikythera shipwreck, mentions an invention of his friend and teacher, Possolonius. Cicero notes that Possolonius had recently constructed a device which, at each revolution, reproduces the same motions of the sun, the moon, and the five planets that take place in the heavens every day and night.
Cicero also mentions that the Sicilian astronomer, engineer, and mathematician, Archimedes, about 287 BC to 212 BC, is said to have made a small planetarium. Apparently Cicero saw it in the 1st Century BC and said, "The invention of Archimedes deserves special admiration because he'd thought out a way to represent accurately, by a single device for turning the globe, those various and divergent movements with their different rates of speed. The moon was always as many revolutions behind the sun on the bronze contrivance [mysterious music] as would agree with the number of days it was behind it "in the sky." Some researchers have even proposed that it was an astronomical device designed and built by Archimedes that was rescued from the Antikythera shipwreck.
Credited with the first calculation of Pi, the volumes of spheres, and the distance from the earth to the moon, Archimedes may well have had the skill and knowledge to craft something like the Antikythera Mechanism. But could the Antikythera Mechanism have been designed, built, or even owned by Archimedes? A number of other ancient writers also refer to Archimedes' planetarium, both in prose and in verse. The ancient Greek mathematician, Pappus of Alexandria, who lived in the 4th Century AD, wrote that Archimedes wrote a now lost manuscript entitled, "On Sphere Making." Pappus also states that it was the only manuscript written by Archimedes on practical matters.
Could this lost manuscript contain a description of, or even instructions for using, the Antikythera Mechanism? The latest dating of the Antikythera Mechanism puts its construction at around 200 BC, so it was already well over 130 years old when the ship sank. For some researchers, this new date after the death of Archimedes means that he couldn't have played any part in its creation. However, it was created just a decade or two after his death, which surely means that it's possible that the device may well have been designed by him, and survived long after he was gone.
Other researchers consider it unlikely that Archimedes built the device, because it utilizes certain findings on the movement of the sun and moon which are attributed to Greek astronomer, geographer, and mathematician, Hipparchus around 150 BC, long after Archimedes had died. However, mathematician Tony Freeth believes that the original form of the astronomical computer came from Archimedes, and the Antikythera Device represents a later version of this design. A study published by an Anglo-Greek team of scientists in the journal Nature in March, 2021 put forward a believable theory for the functions and appearance of the Antikythera Device. The conclusion of their paper states, "The Antikythera mechanism was a computational instrument for mathematical astronomy, incorporating cycles from Babylonian astronomy and the Greek flair for geometry. It calculated the ecliptic longitudes of the moon, sun, and planets, the phase of the moon, the age of the moon, the synodic phases of the planets, the excluded days of the Metonic calendar, eclipses, possibilities, times, characteristics, years and seasons, the heliacal risings and settings of prominent stars and constellations, and the Olympiad Cycle, an ancient Greek astronomical compendium of staggering ambition.
It's the first known device that mechanized the predictions of scientific theories, and it could have automated many of the calculations needed for its own design. The first steps to the mechanization of mathematics and science. Our work reveals the Antikythera Mechanism as a beautiful conception translated by superb engineering into a device of genius. It challenges all our preconceptions about the technological capabilities of the ancient Greeks. Without doubt one of the most amazing and intriguing artifacts of the ancient world, the original Antikythera Mechanism is currently on display in the Bronze Collection of the National Archeological Museum in Athens, accompanied by a reconstruction. [mysterious music] There is also a replica of the ancient device displayed at the American Computer Museum in Bozeman, Montana.
The discovery of the Antikythera Mechanism has challenged our perception of the scientific and technological capabilities of the ancient world in no uncertain terms. Derek de Solla Price commented that the civilization who possessed the technology and the know-how to construct such a mechanism could have built almost anything they wanted to. Unfortunately, most of what they created hasn't survived. The fact that the Antikythera Mechanism isn't mentioned in any of the ancient texts that have come down to us proves how much has been lost from this important and fascinating period in European history. In fact, if it wasn't for the curiosity of Greek sponge fishermen over a hundred years ago, we wouldn't even have this eloquent proof of the advanced scientific achievements of the Greeks of 2,200 years ago.
[intense music] - [Narrator] The Salzburg Cube is a small block of iron that was found buried in a coal seam in Wolfsegg, Austria, in 1865. The cube became famous when some researchers recently claimed it to be an out-of-place artifact, a piece of worked iron manufactured from an unknown source found buried in the 20 million year old coal seam. Some scientists originally identified the cube as being of meteoric origin, but there is no unanimous opinion on what exactly the Salzburg Cube is. For some, it is one of the so-called many out-of-place artifacts, controversial objects that science cannot explain. The discovery. The Salzburg Cube, often referred to as the Wolfsegg Iron, is an archeological curiosity.
It was allegedly discovered in the autumn of 1885 by a workman named Riddell who worked at a foundry in Schondorf near Vocklabruck in Austria. Riddell broke open a block of lignite, or brown coal, that had been mined at nearby Wolfsegg am Hausruck, and was to be used in the factory's furnace. But when he opened the coal, he was shocked to discover an artificial looking metal deformed cube-like object embedded in it. The tertiary coal deposit from which the lump of coal came is generally dated to about 60 million years ago, so how could there be a lump of possibly man-made iron inside it? The mysterious object. The mysterious object measures about two and a half inches wide and high, and two inches thick, weighs 785 grams, and has a specific gravity of 7.75. The artifact is not square or rectangular in shape, but irregular, four of its sides are flat, while the remaining two sides are convex.
Its surface contains numerous bumps and pits. Around the edge of the object runs an indentation or groove. Riddell gave the unusual object to his boss, who in turn took it to the Heimathaus Museum in Vocklabruck. In 1886, the mining and engineer, Adolf Gould, also Professor of Geology at the University of Bonn, determined that the artifact was coated with a thin layer of rust and was made of iron.
In the lecture, he suggested that the object was of meteoric origin, but Gould did not explain how a meteorite had ended up in a 60 million year old piece of coal. An article about the mysterious object appeared in the science journal, Nature, in 1968, and in the following year, L'Astronomie, a French astronomy journal. Later analysis.
In 1966 to '67, the object was analyzed by the Vienna Natural History Museum using electron beam microanalysis. Their analysis found no traces of nickel, chromium, or cobalt in the iron, indicating that the object could not have been of meteoric origin, while the lack of sulfur suggested that it was not a pyrite. Due to the object's low magnesium content, Dr. Giro Kurat of the Vienna Natural History Museum, and Dr. Rudolph Grille of the Geological Survey of Austria of Vienna, hypothesized that they thought it might be cast iron.
There were reports that, when found, the edges of the strange object edges were sharpened straight, and that it may have been machine-made and part of a much larger instrument. Some researchers have suggested that this lump of iron is an out of place artifact, perhaps left by an advanced ancient civilization on Earth, or even ancient astronauts from another planet when they visited Earth millions of years ago. An examination of the artifact in 1973 by Hubert Matalina concluded that the cube had been cast using the lost wax method. Dr. Rudolph Grille noted that such pieces of metal
were often used as ballasts for early mining machinery. One explanation is that somehow during early mining work, a piece of the machine's ballast became stuck in a seam of coal. Skeptics have argued that, as we do not have the piece of coal the mysterious artifact has came out of, we have to accept Riddell's word about the object being discovered inside the rock. It's possible, they suggest, that he was simply mistaken about the origins of the object. Although there were rumors that the Salzburg Cube had mysteriously disappeared, perhaps confiscated by those who would rather its real origins were kept secret, it is actually still on display at the Heimathaus Museum in Vocklabruck Austria. One mystery about the Salzburg Cube is that even though the original object still exists, all online articles describing it use old photographs.
It is odd that no one seems to have approached the Heimathaus Museum to request a modern photograph. Out-of-place Artifacts. The Salzburg Cube is far from being the only out-of-place artifact. Out-of-place artifacts are objects found in contexts that are a long way out of sync with the accepted chronology of human history, for some people place a huge question mark against what we think we know of the world and its history.
Some argue that these discoveries offer convincing evidence that, in remote antiquity, mankind was significantly more advanced than we could ever imagine. They contended at various stages in pre-history, we have reached a high level of civilization, only for it to be subsequently destroyed without a trace by a natural or manmade catastrophe. The artifactual evidence for such ancient civilizations consists mainly of what appear to be fossilized human footprints, such as those apparently discovered in the 1880s at the summit of Big Hill in the Cumberland Mountains in Jackson County, Kentucky, evidence of ancient contacts made between distant cultures centuries before the conventional timeline allows. And ancient and apparently manmade objects enclosed in pieces of coal or rock, like the Salzburg Cube and the Coso Artifact.
The latter was mysterious object consisting of an inch-thick circular section of white porcelain material in the center of which was a two millimeter rod of bright metal. Initially, the object was thought to be discovered inside a geode, but subsequent research revealed that it was in fact an iron-oxide nodule, and the mysterious object was a 1920s spark plug. But there are mysterious out-of-place artifacts which are not so easily explained.
One of these is known as the Tecaxic-Calixtlahuaca head. The small terracotta head, apparently of Roman origin, was discovered in 1933 during the excavation of a burial offering in the pre-Hispanic settlement of Tecaxic-Calixtlahuaca, located around 40 miles northwest of Mexico city. The mystery of how a 2,000 year old ancient Roman figurine ended up in a burial in Central America, dated between 1476 and 1510 AD, has never been solved. The various theories put forward to explain the mystery have been collected in the paper called "The Roman Head" from the Tecaxic-Calixtlahuaca Mexico, A review of evidence by Romeo H. Hristov and Santiago Genoves.
In the abstract of their paper, the authors described the discovery of the artifact. The figurine was discovered in 1933, the offering was placed under three intact floors of a pyramidal structure, and besides the head, include different objects of gold, copper, turquoise rock, crystal, jet, bone, shell, and pottery. Although the burial itself was dated to between 1476 and 1510 AD, Ernst Bollringer, a respectable classical archeologist, has argued that the head is a Roman work from the 2nd to 3rd Century AD. Some researchers have argued that the statuette represents hitherto unknown contact between the Roman world and Meso-America. Others believe that the object is not Roman, but Viking, as the figure's unusual headdress is similar to Norse headgear. They contend the is evidence of pre-Colombian contact between the old and new world, perhaps involving Viking explorers who visited the Americas years before Columbus arrived.
One other explanation put forward to explain the controversial artifact is that, whilst it is of Roman origin, it was brought over by the Spanish during their colonization of Meso-America. The problem with this theory is that the settlement where the artifact was discovered was destroyed and abandoned in AD 1510, around a decade before the Spanish conquest. With the only surviving evidence of an isolated voyage made by ancient Romans to the new world, there is no other evidence of this hypothetical voyage, but Romeo H. Hristov and Santiago Genoves
seem to think that it may well have taken place. They say there are some data of various kinds and levels of credibility that suggest the existence of a few sporadic, most probably accidental, trans-oceanic voyages before Columbus, which apparently had very limited, if any, cultural and biological impact. The find of an apparently Roman head in Mexico seems to support the occurrence of one such voyage across the middle Atlantic, possibly somewhere in the first centuries of the Christian era. [intense music] The Vikings were one of the most mysterious and brutal groups known in history.
[mysterious norse music] They kept few historical records, but passed down their tales of battle and bravery through oral traditions. Legend legends of Viking artifacts, Norse gods, and horrific methods of torture still intrigue modern minds today. One of the most mysterious legends in the Vikings is the existence of the elusive Sunstone.
The stone has been mentioned in countless stories, passed down through generations. It's believed that seafaring Vikings would've used the stone to guide them on their voyages. To this day, we don't know precisely how this stone would've worked. While roaming the seas, the Vikings likely used several methods of navigation. Some researchers believe Vikings would've used the sun, as well as the paths of migratory animals, such as birds or whales, to guide their way. These animals most likely would've helped guide them to Iceland, Greenland, and as far as North America.
The recent discoveries also suggest that they may have also used sundials or other rudimentary inventions to navigate, but none of these methods have captured the interest of Viking researchers as much as the Sunstone. The original stories of this mystical stone date back to the reign of Norwegian King Olaf II. The many stories about the stone suggest that it would've harbored some sort of magical power.
However, it's possible that the stone may have simply been some sort of crystal used to manipulate light. One theory claims that the stone could have been a special cut of calcite crystal. In modern times, replicas of these crystals have become popular for their ability to split light into several wavelengths, creating a rainbow effect. If this is true, the Vikings may have used the sun's rays and the color spectrum to guide themselves around the ocean when there was no land in sight. This may also explain why people throughout history thought the stone was magical.
To primitive people, the properties of the Sunstone seemed impossible to explain. This could be where the stories of the mysterious Sunstone originated. People simply couldn't understand how light could be projected from a stone in such an incredible way.
Maybe the mysterious Sunstone is not so mysterious after all. The weapons of the Vikings are legendary. One particular style of sword, known as the Ulfberht, was especially unique. The craftsmanship applied to these weapons was hundreds of years ahead of its time.
The privilege of having such a sword belonged exclusively to the elite, [hammer striking steel] because an Ulfberht's sword unparalleled strength could only be had at high cost. The sharpness and durability of the blade made it possible to cut through bone or a lower quality weapon with one blow. The quality of these swords was so remarkable that other societies would not be able to forge such a weapon until over 700 years later.
Scientists have been mystified as to where these swords were created, until recently, when new information became available. A previous theory held that the swords may have their origins in the Middle East or Asia, but surprisingly, it seems that the materials were sourced closer to where they were found, in Central Europe. A sword found in 2012 was studied for its chemical composition, and it was revealed that this sword had a high manganese content, which implied that it didn't come from the east. The guard was made of iron with a high arsenic content, which suggests it may have originated from a European deposit. The pommel was covered with a sheet of tin-lead alloy.
[sword crashing] It was determined that the pommel plate lead had come from a site in the Tornus region, just north of Frankfurt, Germany. The lead would not have likely been mined and transported elsewhere for processing, since the deposit was already largely depleted in Roman times. This suggests that the sword was forged close to the source, bringing researchers one step closer to the elusive Ulfberht sword. In addition to being known for their sea voyaging and advanced weaponry, the Vikings were infamous for their brutality.
One particular infamous method of punishment is the Blood Eagle, a glory ritual Vikings are said to have performed on their most loathed enemies. The ritual involved carving the victim's back open and cutting their ribs away from the spine before the lungs were ripped out through the wounds. The fluttering of the lungs splayed out on the outspread ribs would supposedly resemble the movement of a bird's wings, giving the horrific practice its name. [mysterious music] For years, researchers have dismissed the Blood Eagle as a legend. As the Vikings themselves kept no record, no archeological evidence of the ritual has ever been found.
However, the Vikings passed down their history via oral tradition in spoken poetry, stories, and songs. Legends of the Blood Eagle have been dismissed by researchers as improbable, and the reflection of Christian writers' desire to portray their Viking attackers as barbaric. However, one team of researchers has taken a new approach to the study of this mysterious ritual.
A team made up of medical scientists and a historian bypass the longstanding question of, "Did the Blood Eagle ever happen," and instead posed the question, "Could it have been done?" Their answer was a resounding yes. Using modern knowledge of anatomy and physiology, along with a thorough reassessment of the nine medieval accounts of the ritual, the researchers studied what effect a Blood Eagle would've had on the human body. What they discovered was that even with the technology of the Viking era, the procedure itself would be difficult, but not impossible to perform. The team studied nine medieval accounts of the Blood Eagle ritual, and discovered that barbed or lugged Viking spearheads could have unzipped the ribcage quickly from the back.
The researchers stated if the Blood Eagle ritual was ever actually performed, it was reserved as a demonstration of elite power in the Viking age. The whole affair of cutting bones and removing organs would've been a blood-soaked gore fest. However, the victim's screams would've silenced soon after the soft tissue was stripped from their backs, an event which the scientist said would've been audible over a significant distance. The brutality of this elite ritual seems to be in alignment with the character of this violent cultural group.
The researchers also said Viking rulers had no qualms about displaying the dead bodies of humans and animals in special rituals, including during spectacular executions. The Vikings routinely used fear to establish dominance, and the scientists concluded that the anatomical realities of the Blood Eagle make it clear that the procedure would be attention-grabbing, to say the least. So, what happened to this brutal and powerful culture? According to Welsh historian, Gwen Jones, the Viking age did not end suddenly, the downfall was the result of a combination of factors, principally a string of debilitating defeats in battle, and the rise of Christianity. Between 950 to 1050 AD, Christianity experienced rapid growth in Europe. Christians went from being targeted by Scandinavian vikings to successfully converting the villages from the religion of Norse Paganism to the faith of Jesus Christ. The results was the complete transformation of the region, because, according to Jones, nothing was more characteristic of the northern lands than the Old Norse religion.
The Norse worldview slowly faded from the region with every new convert. Many of the new Viking converts were baptized, and some eventually rose to leadership positions in their local churches. Many Vikings adopted biblical values and a new way of life in accordance with the teachings of the gospel. The disappearance of the Vikings can also be attributed to the decline of slavery.
Years of raiding and killing their European neighbors created a lack of people to take back to their homeland to enslave. The Viking Scandinavian farms relied on forced labor to function. [metal crashing] Without this labor pool, Viking sons were forced to remain home and do more work on family farms.
The Viking way of life was proving to be unsustainable. Christianity also preached that the slave trade was immoral. As Vikings converted to Christianity, the practice of slavery diminished.
So after centuries of pillaging, torturing, and murder, you could say the Vikings simply settled down to a quiet, Christian, agrarian life. Maybe they got tired, and just didn't have much fight left in them after all that violence. By the 13th century, the Viking way of life was practically non-existent, and for that, we can literally thank Jesus.
[intense music] [mysterious music] The Dashka Stone is a controversial artifact that is believed by some to be the guidelines used by the architect of the world. Known as "The Map of the Creator," the stone tablet has baffled researchers since its discovery in 1999. As impossible as it may seem, Russian experts believe the stone map could be 120 million years old. The Dashka Slab depicts not only the environs of the Euro mountains, but also a series of civil engineering projects, including 7,457 miles of channels, several dams, and hieroglyphic notations of unknown origin. The accuracy and perspective of the map suggest that it was created from an aerial point of observation. The hieroglyphs have not, as of this time of writing, been deciphered, but are thought to be related to an ancient form of Chinese.
Archeologists from the Bashkir State University discovered the Dashka Stone in the euro mountains of Eastern Russia on July the 21st, 1999. The discoverers were immediately struck by the size of the tablet. It measures 58 inches high, 42 inches wide, and 6 inches thick, and weighs one ton.
Upon further examination, the researchers were even more stunned. The tablet appears to show a highly accurate topographical map of Bashkiria, a specific area of the euro mountains at a scale of approximately one to 1.1 kilometers. Alexander Churov, a professor at Bashkir State University who led the team, named the stone "Dashka" in honor of his grandfather who was born on that day. He said, "At first sight", understood that this was not a simple stone piece, but a real map, and not a single map, but a three-dimensional. "You can see it yourself." The Map of the Creator is comprised of three levels, strongly suggesting that it didn't originate in nature, but was artificially made.
The first layer is roughly seven inches of a cement or ceramic compound based on dolomite. The second layer is roughly one inch of dioxide glass enriched with silicon. The third layer is only a few millimeters thick, and is made of calcium-porcelain mixture, perhaps to give the tablet added protection, or perhaps to create a diffuse light to better illuminate the stone. "How did we manage to identify the place?" said Churov.
"At first, we couldn't imagine the map was so ancient." Happily, relief of today's Bashkiria has not changed so much within millions of years. We could identify Ufa Height, while Ufa Canyon is the main point of our proofs, because we carried out geological studies and found its track where it must be "according to the ancient map." Displacement of the canyon happened because of tectonic slabs which moved from east. The group of Russian and specialists in the field of cartography, physics, mathematics, geology, chemistry, and old Chinese language, managed to precisely find out that the slab contains the map of the euro region, with the rivers be Belya, Ufimka, Sutolka. You can also see Ufa Canyon, the break of the Earth's crust stretched out from the city of Ufa to the city of Sterlitamak.
At the moment, Urshak River runs over the former canyon. The Dashka stone undoubtedly points to a Euro civilization more advanced than previously suspected. However, the claims that it was made 120 million years ago by a geographic creator are most likely false.
The Bashkir researchers derived this date from a pair of ancient seashells found locked in the stone slab. The first shell could be as old as 500 million years old. The second shell could be as old as 120 million years. Why these shells, still intact, were incorporated into the tablet, or if they were purposely included at all, that cannot be known for certain.
Scientists suspect that, aside from the ancient shells, the tablet was made approximately 3,000 years ago. However, it's exceedingly difficult to radiocarbon date the engravings themselves. Great attention has been paid to the variety of magnificent megalithic structures around the world.
Yet very little is reported on the mysterious and impressive set of stone structures that can be found in the Euro mountains of Russia. In the Sverdlovsk Oblast region in the middle Euros, there can be found numerous dolmans. According to controversial descriptions, a dolman is a type of single-chambered megalithic tomb. However, there's really no evidence to suggest that they were initially constructed as tombs, rather it seemed that subsequent civilizations chose to use them for this purpose.
Dolmans are usually comprised of two or more vertical stones supporting a flat horizontal stone on top. There can be variations, ranging from relatively simple to very complex. The dolmans in the Euros are considered to be small compared to other dolmans, ranging from approximately 1.5 to 2.5 meters in width and length. There is some variance in the dolmans of the Euros, with two distinct styles.
The stone plate dolmans are created with a mound of stones that have an attached chamber, these usually have a square court in front, and are sometimes surrounded by smaller stones. The boulder dolmans are constructed from large boulders that form a chamber. The chamber is covered by one or more flat stones. There is some variation in structure of the boulder dolmans, but they all have two entrance points: a main entrance to the side, and a smaller entrance between boulders. The menhirs are the most typical type of megalith found in the Euros.
A menhir is a single vertical stone. They can be found singularly as a monolith, or in groups. The menhirs found in the Euros include monoliths in groupings, and tend to be roughly finished.
All of the monoliths discovered to this point are located near either a settlement or a cemetery from the Bronze Age 3300 to 600 BC. Some of the menhir groups are in rows 13 to 18 meters long. A circular shaped structure was discovered at the village of Acu Novo in Bashkiria.
Eight menhirs are formed in a circular shape that is approximately 25 meters in diameter. While the dolmans and menhirs are amazing and mysterious structures themselves, the most amazing find in the Euros are the megaliths of Vera Island in Lake Tuguyak. Dating to the Neolithic period, these megaliths are referred to as Megalith #1, Megalith #2, Megalith #3, Vera Island 9, and Vera Island 4.
Megalith #1 is the largest megalith structure on the island, standing at 16 by 9 meters. It's cut into the bedrock and covered with capstones. It's orientated towards the west, and includes a long entrance, a central hall, and two chambers with a connecting corridor. It includes windows and sculptures of bulls and wolves. It's speculated that Megalith ♪1 served as a temple at some point. Megalith #2, pictured in the feature image, was found carved into a rocky slope, with a mound structure covering it.
It's orientated north, and contained two chambers connected by a corridor. Megalith #3 is created by large boulders with a square pit cut into the center rock. It's closed off by vertical stone slabs, with massive boulders as capstones. Vera Island 9 is a cultic ritual place with two menhirs, while Vera Island 4 is a cultic place surrounded by vertical stones, with a small menhir in the center. The megaliths of the Euros are undoubtedly an impressive sight, yet, strangely, virtually nothing is known about who created them, how they were built, or what purpose they were intended to serve.
The megaliths stretch across an immense area of land, suggesting that they were not all created by a single group. Megalith #1 on Vera Island is believed to have been a temple at some point. However, other Megaliths present no obvious signs that they were used for any religious purposes.
Nevertheless, it's possible that the megaliths had a common use, in spite of the variances in size and shape. It's hope that further archeological research may help to unravel the mysteries of these spectacular structures, as well as the civilization that created them many millennia ago. [intense music] [mysterious music] There are many examples of technological know-how and advanced engineering in ancient times, and these range from magnificent megalithic structures to intricate designs of musical instruments and even medication. There is perhaps no better place to start when looking at technological achievements of the ancient world than the Pyramids of Giza, not least as we still have no real idea just how these massive structures were built or why. Even when experiments have gone ahead to try to explain these perplexing buildings, all have failed to provide a solid explanation. And as well they might, given that the pyramids are made up of millions of huge stone blocks, each weighing multiple tons.
And what's more, the sheer precision with which these stones have been placed only makes their construction all the more mysterious. Whether the truth of just how the pyramids were constructed ever comes to light remains to be seen. For now though, they remain a complete mystery.
Across the Atlantic Ocean on the outskirts of Corsica and Peru, lay Inca ruins, some of which are just as perplexing as the Pyramids of Giza. In particular, a fort named Sacsayhuaman, which is made up of equally huge stones that weigh around 100 tons each. Furthermore, the precise nature with which these stones have been placed are equally as advanced as these stone placements at Giza.
Even more remarkable is the fact that these stones appear to have been treated so they have a smooth, polished surface, something that could only realistically have been achieved in a huge kiln much larger than has ever been known to exist. Much like the Pyramids of Giza, there have been many theories put forward to explain how the stones were positioned and treated. None have been able to show conclusively that they are correct, and the fort's construction remains unexplained. If we cross back over the ancient lands of Europe, there is the Antikythera Mechanism, which was discovered off the coast of the Greek island of Antikythera in 1901.
Upon examination, it appears clear that the device is some kind of advanced mechanical reproduction of the solar system. This device is sent to date back to around 200 BC, leaving those who have investigated it completely at a loss as to how such a device was built almost 2,000 years previously. In total, almost 40 separate inter-meshing gears are contained within the device, which is entirely accurate in its workings, and is truly a peek into the past and the technological know-how that was clearly present in antiquity. Although it is something that has been well-documented between the years of 600 and 1200, a weapon of the Byzantine Empire known as Greek Fire still cannot be replicated today. According to the many reports of this deadly weapon, pipes were fitted to the masts of warships, which, when activated, fired a thick fire at enemy ships and soldiers. And what's more, this strange, fiery substance was able to continue to burn for some time on the surface of the water.
Suddenly, however, at some time around the 1300s, the deadly weapons simply disappears from history. It's not clear why this happened, with some suggestions being that the ingredients required to make this substance became suddenly unavailable, or that the knowledge of how to blend the required ingredients simply became lost as the empire itself weakened. What makes the Lycurgus Cup so intriguing, its remarkable decorations around its side, is that nobody is entirely certain as to what the cup is made from. What is further interesting about the Lycurgus Cup is that the glass within it is dichroic, which means that when a light is shone behind it, it shines red, however, shining the light in front of it will make it appear green. What makes this so interesting is that this effect is achieved by changing the structure of gold and silver nano particles, something that modern science only managed to achieve in the 1970s. Just how this was achieved in an item thought to date back to Roman times is beyond explanation.
Although some people have put forward that this could have been completely unintentional and achieved purely by chance. It would appear, from the many writings speaking of it, that ancient Egyptians and ancient Greeks made use of a drug that was an ancient equivalent of an antidepressant. Known as Nepenthe, it translates to anti-sorrow, and was seemingly given to those who were feeling sorrowful or sad, what we would call in the modern world "depressed." Although there is documentation of its use, it's not certain exactly what the drug is, whether it's a single plant or herb, or an ancient combination of different ingredients. Some researchers have suggested such drugs as cannabis or opium to be the true nature of Nepenthe.
However, both drugs were widely-known and used in the ancient world, and we would assume that they would simply be referred to as such. Whether Nepenthe contained a mixture of cannabis, opium, and other such drugs remains a mystery. Perhaps one of the strange mysteries from history is that of the Stradivari Violin. Widely considered to be the finest violins ever built, the Stradivari family produced these masterful instruments throughout the 17th and 18th centuries.
It is thought that around 600 still exist today, however, there is no one who knows just how to make or recreate them, meaning their numbers will continue to dwindle, and it's unlikely an exact replica will ever be reproduced. Although they can't be reproduced, some scientific studies of these instruments suggest that the wood they're made from is particularly dense, which is likely to contribute to their unique sound. Another substance that the modern world has collectively forgotten how to produce is Damascus Steel, a particularly hard and strong metal used in the middle ages throughout the Middle East.
Its ability to be shaped into particularly sharp edges made this metal ideal for making blades for swords and other weaponry. Like the Stradivari violins, although there are plenty of examples of these blades made from Damascus steel in the modern world, the knowledge to make the metal itself has been lost, and despite several attempts to recreate it, all have fallen short. While this knowledge was likely lost as empires fell and demographics changed, there was also likely an element of keeping such knowledge secret, meaning, even in the Middle Ages, only a select few would've been privy on how to produce the metal. In 1940 in the United Kingdom, an experiment was set up that is largely referred to as The Oxford Electric Bell, which involved two brass bells being buried beneath two dry piles and then sealed. This apparent makeshift battery then produces enough power to create an electrical charge that swings a hammer of sorts that chimes the bell.
What is particularly amazing about this is that this battery has remained charged ever since, and continues to chime the bell today. Scientists are not certain when the charge will run out, if indeed it will. As they don't wish to interrupt this generational experiment by delving beneath the dry pile, they'll have to wait until the battery runs out before they can examine it further. Without a doubt, one of the most remarkable technological achievements of the ancient world is Da Vinci's Tank, otherwise referred to as Leonardo's Fighting Vehicle.
When we examine the designs and blueprints of this vehicle, it's clear that Da Vinci was light years ahead of his time, both in this design, and in general. Perhaps what makes this vehicle even more intriguing is that the gear system appears to have been designed and placed in reverse order. This could be one of the quirks that truly makes Da Vinci a unique and one-off individual. It could though, particularly if we subscribe to such notions, have been able to look into the future or even time travel, to explain this advance know-how of some kind of reverse engineering. Indeed, the ancient world remains a mysterious place indeed.
[intense music] - [Narrator] Since the late 1800s, scientists have been baffled by mysterious pieces of stone found buried in India and Pakistan. [mysterious music] Belonging to the Indus Valley civilization, one of the oldest Indian civilizations known to have existed, these small stones are carved with a line of symbols over a depiction of an animal. This mysterious script was in use at a number of sites, including one of the Indus Valley civilization's major urban centers, Mohenjo-daro.
The stones represent one of the oldest uncracked codes ever discovered. But recently, complex statistical techniques and cognitive science have been brought in, and researchers now believe they are finally close to cracking the code. The Indus Valley civilization, also known as the Harappan civilization, is the earliest known urban culture of the Indian subcontinent. It originated around 3300 BC, in the Indus and Kagurhaklar River Valleys in what is now Pakistan and Western India. Around a thousand towns and settlement sites of the Indus civilization have so far been discovered, with the main sites being the cities of Mohenjo-daro, and Harappa, located 400 miles north of Mohenjo-daro, and the coastal site of Lotal. Traces of the Indus civilization have been discovered as far north as the Himalayas in Northern Afghanistan, and as far south as Mumbai in Maharashtra State, India.
During its peak between 2600 and 1900 BC, it's been estimated that the Indus civilization may have had a population of as many as 5 million people. The remains of one of the world's first great cities, Mohenjo-daro, lie on the bank of the Indus River in the Sindh province of Southern Pakistan. Surrounded by a fertile flood plain, Mohenjo-daro must have been an extremely prosperous city, controlling the trade routes based on the river network.
The site of Mohenjo-daro was first occupied around 3500 BC, but was at its peak during the time of the Indus civilization, 2600 to 1900 BC. The city covers an area of over 250 hectares, and as with all the Indus Valley sites, was laid out on a grid-pattern plan, with both wide and narrow parallel streets intersecting one another to divide the city into a grid filled with compact blocks of houses. Most Indus valley towns also used the same size bricks, and a standardized system of weights in the form of carefully worked colored cubes of stone. The majority of the buildings at Mohenjo-daro, and other Indus sites, are made of baked bricks which give greater durability than mud-brick construction, and is one of the reasons why so much survives at the sites today. Signs of change in Mohenjo-daro began to appear after 1900 BC in the form of a new kind of pottery called Chukar, and seals inscribed with geometric designs, rather than Indus writing.
It's been suggested that contorted skeletons found scattered in the streets of Mohenjo-daro indicate that the city came to a violent end, perhaps at the hands of Aryan invaders from the north. For the excavator of the site, Sir Mortimer Wheeler, these remains brought to mind verses from the Rigveda, an ancient Indian collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns dedicated to the gods, some verses from which tell of the destruction of cities by the terrible, warlike God, Indra. Wheeler stated his opinion of the skeletons of Mohenjo-daro in dramatic fashion.
"Men, women, and children were massacred in the streets and houses, and were left lying there, or at the best, crudely covered without last rites." However, no weapons or signs of such an attack have ever been found at the site, and the 37 skeletons discovered were found in the lower town, the residential area of the settlement, rather than the fortified citadel. Despite this evidence, some bizarre claims have been made surrounding the supposed destruction of Mohenjo-daro. Without doubt, the most extreme theory is that Mohenjo-daro and other cities of the Indus civilization were destroyed by ancient atomic warfare. Cited as evidence for this are the facts that the skeletons found at the ancient city were highly radioactive, comparable with those from Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and that many of these skeletons were sprawled in this streets, some holding hands as if some instant horrible doom had taken place. The supposed discovery of a heavy layer of radioactive ash in Rajistan, India, which covers a three square mile area, is also given in support of the claim of ancient atomic warfare.
One unsolved mystery surrounding Mohenjo-daro and the Indus civilization is its undeciphered language. In fact, we don't even know the original names of the cities of the Indus Valley. Mohenjo-daro, for example, is Sindh for "Mound of the Dead."
The Indus script used between 2600 to 1900 BC consists of short texts written from right to left on flat stone tablets known as seals, and on pottery, copper tablets, bronze implements, and ivory and bone rods. Although there are around 4,000 objects described with the Indus script, the texts are brief, the longest is only 26 characters, and there are numerous duplicate inscriptions. Indeed, with an average of just four or five signs, the shortness of most inscriptions makes decipherment all the more difficult.
Sometimes the unidentified characters are accompanied by engravings of animals: elephants, tigers, rhinoceroses, and occasionally by anthropomorphic figures, which some scholars have identified with early versions of the Hindu deities first described 2,000 years later in Sanskrit texts. Several thousand Indus inscribed texts have been discovered so far, mostly from Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, but also in the more distant lands of trading partners along the Persian Gulf and in Mesopotamia. There have been various claims to have deciphered the Indus script, but the general opinion of scholars is that until a bilingual inscription is found, like the ancient Egyptian Rosetta Stone, it's unlikely that we'll discover the language of the inhabitants of Mohenjo-daro and the Indus Valley. Nisha Yaddahav, a researcher in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, India, highlights the difficulties in decoding the script. The first one is that the texts are really short, an average artifact only has five symbols.
The longest example excavated so far has 17. Such short texts make uncovering the writing's structure difficult. This is, of course, complicated by the fact that we don't know what the underlying language is.
However, there may be some linguistic light at the end of the tunnel. It was recently announced on various news outlets that scientists believe they were close to solving the mystery of the Indus Valley script. Utilizing complex statistical techniques and cognitive science, researchers into the elusive script are finally getting closer to cracking the code. Rajesh Rao is director of the National Science Foundation's Center for Sensory-Motor and Neural Engineering, and a professor in the Computer Science and Engineering Department at the University of Washington. A few years ago, Rao published a study that examined the sequential structure of the Indus script. Rao explained that, "What we were interested in" was if we could deduce some statistical regularities or structure, basically ruling out that these symbols were just juxtapositions of symbols, "and that there were actually some rules or patterns."
In the end, Rao and his team found that the mysterious Indus script was in fact likely to represent a language. It's not proof that the symbols are encoding a language, but it's additional evidence hinting that these symbols are not just random juxtapositions of arbitrary symbols, and they follow patterns that are consistent with those you would expect to find if the symbols are encoding language. Since the publication of this paper, Rao and other researchers have used various methods of statistical analysis to help in their work, with some success. Something unexpected which they uncovered was that artifacts found in different regions depicted noticeably different symbol sequences.
So, for example, seals found in what is now Iraq have symbol sequences that are different from others found in India and Pakistan. This suggests that perhaps the same symbols were being used to encode the local language in the Indus Valley homeland, but elsewhere they were using the same script to write a different language. Although the Indus script has still not been decoded, Rao believes that until we find longer examples or a multilingual text, statistical methods are the best way to crack the code, even if it turns out not to be a language after all. In fact, if the mysterious Indus script does not encode a language, it may be more interesting. According to computational theorist, Richard Sprote, we know a lot about ancient civilizations that had writing, but we know a lot less about civilizations that lacked writing. And if this was some kind of general non-linguistic system, in a sense, that would be much more interesting than if it was just some kind of script.
Sprote made the news a few years ago when, along with comparative historian Steve Farmer, and Philologist Michael Witzel, he offered a $10,000 reward to anyone who finds a lengthy Indus inscription. So far, there have been no takers. [intense music] - [Narrator] Did George Van Tassel build a structure in California [mysterious music] that could slow down the aging process based on instructions given to him by extraterrestrials? And was he killed before he had a chance to fully finish this facility and share it with the world? According to some researchers, that is a strong possibility. Although he spent the vast majority of his life in California, George Van Tassel was born in Jefferson, Ohio, where he spent the first two decades of his life. After dropping out of high school while only a young teacher, he obtained a private pilot's license.
By the time he was 20, he'd moved west to California, where he would find work with Howard Hughes, with whom he struck up a close friendship. There was little doubt that, for all his skill and intelligence, Van Tassel was an eccentric, and very much had a spiritual side to him. It was during his early years in California when he met another eccentric person, France Critzer.
Critzer was an entrepreneur of sorts who had developed a mining operation at Giant Rock in Landers, and also converted nearby land into a private airstrip. In fact, Critzer lived in several rooms he had carved himself underneath Giant Rock, near the mines. It was here where Van Tassel began spending an increasing amount of time, undoubtedly learning whatever he could from Critzer. In 1942, however, with the United States having recently encountered the Second World War, Critzer received orders from local authorities to register himself as available for the military draft. Rumors had been circulating for some time, most likely incorrectly, that Critzer was a German spy, and when law enforcement arrived to give him a friendly ride to the draft office, the culmination of that meeting did little to quash such talk.
Critzer emerged from his settlement under Giant Rock with dynamite around his neck and a wire in each hand. He stated that he wasn't going to the draft, and with that he touched the wires together and blew himself up, [dramatic music] killing himself instantly. At least, that is the official version.
Reports would circulate afterwards that the explosion was the result of an FBI raid that had not gone according to plan, and that a tear gas canister had ignited dynamite stored near the entrance where Critzer was standing. Whatever the truth of the matter, a short time after his friend's death, Van Tassel bought the land once owned by Critzer, and after building a small house near Giant Rock, moved his family to their new home. Van Tassel, though, would spend considerable time in the hollowed out room under Giant Rock.
Then, in 1953, Van Tassel's life changed forever. He would claim that he was awoken in the middle of the night by extraterrestrials who declared that they were from Venus. They would invite him aboard their spaceship, where they would share information with him concerning the re-energizing and rejuvenation of the human body. Ultimately, they offered the secrets to reversing aging, and possibly achieving immortality.
However, in order to achieve this, he would have to construct a very specific building, a facility called an Integraton. By now, Van Tassel had attracted a relatively large number of followers, plenty of whom were happy to help fund his project. By 1954, the construction of the Integraton was underway.
Van Tassel would describe his structure at the time being as a time machine for basic research on rejuvenation, anti-gravity, and time travel. The building itself had a domed roof made entirely of wood. However, around the outside of this was a metal apparatus that would rotate, and was made from non-ferromagnetic materials. It was Van Tassel's belief that a high voltage electrostatic generator would supply a broad range of frequencies to recharge cellular structures. This would, he proposed, reverse the aging process. He would offer in one interview that the problem with human life on Earth was that when a person finally becomes smart enough to do something with the knowledge they have acquired, they're old and heading to towards death.
Ultimately, the human lifespan is just too short. He would also often quote the line from the Bible, which stated that the last enemy to be destroyed is death. There was certainly plenty of people who also believed in the project, and funding continued to come Van Tassel's way over the years that followed. And while Van Tassel was far from viewed as being a cult leader by the media, he was not without his critics, all of whom would offer well thought out responses, offering on one occasion that science itself continues to disprove its own theories. Ultimately, after almost 25 years in early 1978, Van Tassel would state that the Integraton was almost complete, and fully functional, and that he would appear in a television interview to update everyone on these final technological steps.
It was while preparing for this interview on February the 9th that Van Tassel suffered a sudden and fatal heart attack in his hotel in Santa Ana, California. He'd only recently been given a clean bill of health, and was only 67 years old. If there wasn't any reason to suspect foul play initially, the fact that Van Tassel's home was ransacked in the hours following his death, with several boxes of papers and notes removed, as well as the symptomatic stripping of the Integraton itself, of various tools and devices, there perhaps was in the days that followed. Incidentally, none of these papers or devices has ever been seen since. Even more suspicious, Van Tassel's body had been cremated before members of his family had even been told of his death. So what should we make of this intriguingly but seemingly outrageous account? Perhaps one of the first things we should note about the account of George Van Tassel, and the instructions he claimed to have received from extraterrestrials in order to build the Integraton, is how similar they are to many biblical accounts that some researchers claim show interaction between humanity and alien entities in the distant past.
Such stories as Noah receiving instructions to build the Ark, for example, or Moses receiving similar instructions to construct the Ark of the Covenant. We might also consider the notion that if alien beings did indeed manipulate our DNA thousands of years in the past, part of the reason for doing so was to shorten the human lifespan. There are, at least according to some researchers, many reasons to think that the human lifespan should be much greater than it is. If we look at the Bible once more, we can see many characters that have lifespans of 800 to 900 years. Or if we examined the Sumerian king list, we can see
2024-11-10 07:50
