weird and wonderful artifacts are being found all the time but it's hard work learning all the secrets of our forefathers when all you've got are two Rusty pennies and a bad drawing on a cave wall really it's no wonder even the white coat wearing boffins get it wrong so trowels at the ready but this is about more than big rocks there are also big heads and even bigger heads what well come on let's go back in time to the most incredible civilizations scientists can't explain jungle is massive did you know that the Amazon rainforest houses around 30 percent of all plant and animal species in the world that's tremendous however the history of one native species has eluded scientists for centuries humans human life in the Amazon was assumed to have never been anything more than a few scattered tribes however ongoing deforestation in Brazil's Acre state which was long believed to be uninhabited has revealed large unnatural shapes in the ground known as geoglyphs whilst they look like little more than shallow ditches they're actually remains of a vast civilization across five thousand square miles there are around 450 markings with some measuring up to 1 300 feet wide damn these huge hieroglyphs probably housed some sort of ceremonial buildings where up to a million people could have congregated as recently as 550 years ago holy guacamole that's insane and there's much more nowadays thanks to technological advancements like lidar we can explore without damaging the rain forest by firing a tree safe laser from directly above the surveying area a receiver measures the light bouncing back and Records a 3D map of the objects in the scene that's so cool but not as cool as what it's been hiding in 2019 scans of the southwestern Amazon basin uncovered miles of elevated roads and Pathways and even pyramids over 70 feet tall an astonishing 26 individual settlements were discovered two of which were at least 250 Acres each that's 330 football pitches cheese the mysterious casarabe people lived here for hundreds of years and then just disappeared around 1400 A.D European conquistadors probably drove them out but we don't know for sure still building a giant jungle community in the thickets is impressive right now hold up I've just had a crazy thought think about it a huge Congregation of people living together would need to cultivate tons of food and plants right well what if the Amazon wasn't originally a jungle then after the kasarabe people disappeared their crops grew a little out of control it's just a theory but an astounding 95 percent of this green Metropolis is still unexplored who knows maybe there's something even crazier in there family misfortunes you and me now we're pretty smart but we're not the smartest humans ever heck we might not even be the smartest species ever huh since 1913 partial skull fossils found around South Africa have provided a potential new brainiest Contender called the boskop man this presumed extinct human-like species could have lived as recently as 10 000 years ago but compared to us their skulls imply they had unusually large craniums meaning our big-headed brethrens brains might have been a whopping 30 percent larger than ours whoa their average IQ would have been around 149 putting the average boscop among the smartest .05 percent of people alive today double woe but a full bus got Brainiac here is so much smarter than us how come we're alive and he isn't well despite what my ex said bigger isn't always better our brains are about four-fold bigger than our ape relatives but most of this increase happens in a part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex which is mainly responsible for our highest cognitive functions such as decision making working memory and self-awareness the actual motor functions of the brain that control our senses and movement that don't really change so it's possible that all the extra brain size just translated to boskop spending more time crying about the past than going out hunting now this is all speculation truthfully we can't be sure what happened to our clever cousins in fact some people argue that Boscov wasn't different to us at all the only evidence we have are partial skull fragments nevertheless seeing as the boskop aren't here to collect their cleverest species ever award I guess I'll accept it on their behalf um I'd like to thank my mom my dad and anyone who clicked the like And subscribe buttons in this video it's the only way to stay up to date with all my amazing content thank you you're too kind you're too kind now back to the video Dude Where's My City perhaps the most mysterious ancient civilization is the one we've never found a trace of huh now I'm talking of course about Atlantis the once Grand City that ended up sinking beneath the ocean first records we have of Atlantis were written by ancient Greek philosopher Plato who spoke of a great City just outside the Strait of Gibraltar however there was nothing to say that Plato's Atlantis genuinely existed for Millennia people just assumed he'd created an idealized version of his home Athens so why is it that some 12 000 years after allegedly disappearing we still talk about it like it might be real well in 1882 U.S congressman Ignatius Donnelly published 13 reasons why he believed Atlantis was far more real than previously accounted for and no he didn't scatter them around on little tapes he wrote a book called The antediluvian World which proved to be highly influential then in 1965 someone actually found Atlantis well some people think they did at least this is the reshot structure a 25 mile wide geological Dome found in Mauritania Africa I'm not kidding this thing is so huge you can only see its full scope from space which is how it was discovered two astronauts flying over the Sahara Desert had spotted the Giant Eye staring back at them and thought they'd stumbled across the most important archaeological find ever alas there's nothing concrete linking it to Atlantis it's believed the reshot structure was formed from volcanic activity around 100 million years ago but come on it looks pretty suspicious hmm seems like we're no closer to the truth but what do you think is Atlantis real or a bunch of old baloney let me know down in the comments below trip down memory lane whether you've got a big one or a small one we all love our uh homes in fact you'd have to be a loony to wish anything bad on your humble or not so humble abode but if you lived with the kukuteni tripilia people who settled in Eastern Europe around 7 500 years ago home was less where the heart is and more where the Hearth is why because they routinely torched their own Villages uh what you heard me archaeological evidence shows that every 60 to 80 years they'd bash out the matches for a spot of accommodation incineration the burning question of course is why this was long before home insurance so they weren't trying to cash a claim and it happened way too regularly to be accidental we don't know for sure but one of the leading theories is that they were animists people who believed objects have souls so they might have believed their houses were alive and once it got to the end of a house's life it was proper send-off time still torching a whopping 3 000 buildings to the ground every 60 years just to rebuild them sounds like a lot of effort last time I felt like changing things up I just turned my bed around foreign missing mycinians honestly I'm such a scatterbrain I lose things all the time but even I'd have difficulty losing an entire civilization of people like I don't know the Mycenaeans of ancient Greece now despite being the ogs of ancient Greek society and true Pioneers in architecture engineering and language come 1050 BC they'd managed to totally lose themselves seriously they straight up disappeared poof gone how does one of the most developed societies of its time suddenly just cease to exist well that's one of History's Greatest unsolved riddles there's lots of possibilities about what could have happened maybe it was an invasion from a neighboring civilization like the dorians maybe there was a disturbance closer to home which led to Civil War or maybe there was a big natural disaster like a volcano or a giant flood that wiped them all out however unsatisfying it might be we just don't know whatever it was it was bad real bad the period following The mycenaean's Disappearance was a total Dead Zone known as the Greek Dark Ages it's like they vanished and took the next 300 years of history with them no reminds me of that time my dad popped to the shops for milk and cigarettes something in the water ever jumped in a puddle and realized it's deeper than you thought yeah me neither but if you lived in Xi'an baitsun Village in jejeong China a few decades ago and did it uh you've gotten more than a little wet that's because in 1992 local farmers drained five unassuming ponds and discovered a giant network of 24 cavernous Chambers hidden beneath them whoa and I mean giant directly beneath the five ponds were five main caves each dropping nearly 100 feet underground and averaging a whopping 11 000 square feet that's over two basketball courts a piece and it turns out there are 19 other cavernous Chambers too now known as the long u caves most astonishingly though all of them appeared to be exquisitely man-made they're held up by pillars and the walls rise at a perfect 60 degree angle and 23 inch wide bands that have been chiseled into all the surfaces on top of all this the entrance holes all face South to Southwest to draw in the most sunlight whoever built these caves must have been a highly sophisticated Architects but we have absolutely no idea who they were well almost no idea pieces of a clay pot were found half submerged in soil that dated way back to the Western Han Dynasty An Almighty 2 000 years ago oh mama these caves are old aside from that though there's nothing else to go off they don't look like any other caves quarries or ceremonial Caverns yet found in China and could have served as anything from mausoleums to military encampments man I'll be waiting with baited breath for any updates you cannot be serious best gift I ever got a telescope learning about the universe is so awesome but I don't know nearly as much as the dogon tribe despite living largely detached from modern society in the bondiagara cliffs between Mali and Burkina Faso their knowledge of the planets and stars is incredibly advanced in fact they may know more about the Sirius star system than we do serious a the dog star is the brightest star in the night sky it's easily spotted with the naked eye but in 1862 astronomers discovered a much fainter star just behind Sirius a which they imaginatively named Sirius B so when French scientist Marcel greal made first contact with the dogon in 1933 he expected to stun them with his knowledge instead he discovered they already knew every little detail about Sirius b or to them potolo despite owning no telescopes and the star being invisible to the naked eye what weirder still the dogon claimed there's a third even fainter star they call Emma yah astronomers haven't found any signs of this one but with the dogon's track record that doesn't mean they won't so how the heck did they get all this knowledge when they're so isolated from regular Society well the dogon insists they learned everything from an amphibian alien race called nomos who were from a distant planet orbiting the serious system right not what I expected most likely sometime between Sirius B being discovered in 1862 and griel making contact in 1933 traditional dogon believes and modern astronomy hash together how exactly I can't say perhaps griol wasn't actually the first to make contact but then what happened to whoever was I don't know extraterrestrial fishmen from Stars we can't be sure exist isn't quite cutting it for me what do you think let me know your thoughts on this Supernatural stickler in the comments curious China remember though long u caves I showed you earlier well they're far from the weirdest historical find in China in 1986 construction workers in Sichuan Province stumbled across a ginormous underground cache of 13 000 Eerie artifacts at an ancient site they named Sunshine DUI the pits were full of gold bronze and pottery unlike anything the country had seen before hmm Strangers still many of the artifacts appeared to have been damaged and burnt before being purposefully buried bigger hmm who or what could these have belonged to and why do they look so alien well historians reckon they're evidence of a mysterious 3 000 year old civilization that existed at the same time as known Chinese civilization yet was separate from it it was called the kingdom of Shu and sanchengdui was one of its cities one of the most striking finds a huge 400 pound mask apparently represents sansong a semi-mythical ruler with bulging eyes it could be one of the earliest religious icons in China Shu fell when the Qin dynasty United China around 300 BC so they could be responsible for trashing and burying whatever evidence they could of Shu when they took over but we can't be sure unfortunately the shoe people didn't have a written language so their history has been lost to the ages for now we'll just have to imagine what San Ching DUI and ancient Northern Chinese culture looked like local I've got a good imagination huh sad to see you go mama always said eat your veggies or you won't grow big and strong as you can tell I'm still not keen on the greens but some 1200 years ago residents of none madal an ancient city off bone pay Micronesia must have eaten better than me they needed building materials only problem was it was on the other side of the island 25 miles away yet these Polynesian powerhouses trekked all the way there turned around and somehow brought an astonishing 750 000 tons of heavy basalt rock all the way back the heaviest cruise ship in the world The Wonder of the Seas is around 250 000 tons so imagine lugging three of them that's unbelievable honestly I've not got a Scooby how they did this pulling all that seems impossible and basalt's too heavy to float around the island local Legends say great birds or Giants moved them into place which is as good as any guess I've got and moving it was only the first hurdle the inhabitants then had to carve and shape all that rock into 100 tiny Islands which they built on the top of a coral reef off the mainland non-madal was where the first organized government of Pompeii resided so it was turned into a grand Capital City even today you can see the remains of stone palaces ritual sites temples and tombs that were built hundreds of years ago remarkably it was all achieved without mortar or concrete the sheer weight of the stones themselves elves secured them into position some were up to 50 tons jankies it might not look like much now but in its prime you'd have needed some big stones of your own to go anywhere near this imposingly affluent Dynasty Tepe of the iceberg it blows my mind that farming has only existed for about 10 000 years and makes any civilization before it all the more impressive take Gobekli Tepe this vast 11 000 year old site in Southeastern turkey has archaeologists stumped somehow people who couldn't grow a potato came together and built the world's first known Stone megaliths Masons created 20 Circles of tall Rock pillars with each pillar weighing up to 150 tons many are almost 16 feet high and engraved with animal carvings and human forms providing a window into this weird prehistoric world however the knowledge of math and geometry required to achieve all this is comparable to that of the Great Pyramids and they came some seven thousand years later everything we thought we knew about prehistoric civilizations says Gobekli Tepe just shouldn't exist yet here it is some people reckon it was used for religious rituals While others insist it was some form of ancient Observatory without more solid information though it's hard to be sure who's right since it was discovered back in 1994 only around five percent of this site has been excavated I guess we've only seen the Tepe of the iceberg kofencing Crypt you've got to be a real weirdo to hang around grave sites that or your Indiana Jones looking for Treasure um who says he's not a creepazoid but if I saw tombs that looked like this I'd be more than a little curious to know what's in there they're called kofun and there's a staggering 160 000 of them scattered around Japan the largest of which dysonrio kofun in Sakai is over one thousand feet wide and the 1600 feet long that's twice as long as the Great Pyramid of Giza oh mother what 500-foot monster have they buried there well that's the confusing more co-fusing thing get it ironically these Keyhole looking Crypts are totally locked up so we're not entirely sure who or what might be inside it's assumed dicenrio was built for Emperor nintoku the 16th emperor of Japan he supposedly died in 399 A.D at the grand old age of 109 years Jeepers but until anyone goes in and checks can we really be sure I don't think so sadly that's unlikely to change anytime soon many are classified as sacred religious grounds and trying to enter them is illegal plus dysenrio is completely isolated by three separate moats there used to be a bridge but it was destroyed by a typhoon back in 1872 and nobody's been on the grounds since ah it's a shutout still imagine all the untold Treasures that might be buried there if they ever do decide to open old isenrio up mark my words it'll be the historical find of the century Hammer Time I like to respect everyone's ideas about the past but some historians make that really difficult for me in 1936 an iron Hammer was found in case in a piece of rock in London Texas and it sent some theorists Wild despite modern humans only being around for 200 000 years tests on the rock near where the artifact was found dated back to the Cretaceous Period that's a mind-blowing 66 to 145 million years ago wait so does that mean the hammer is that old too well self-proclaimed science whiz Carl Baum who bought the hammer in 1983 certainly thinks so and he also believes its comprehensive proof of an ancient civilization of giants okay I've wasted many hours and precious brain cells trying to decipher Carl's crazy theories but here goes as a creationist Carl believes the world as we know it was made by God about six thousand years ago therefore if something is older than that it must come from an unrecognizable pre-god Earth still following tests Carl authorized on the hammer showed it contained iron and chlorine which he falsely claims can't exist organically in our atmosphere before God though he argues the atmosphere would have allowed this compound to exist naturally and also have turned anyone alive at the time I.E the creators of the hammer into Giants sorry I tried this dude's a dingus there's no proof the Cretaceous rock near where the hammer was found is the same Rock encasing The Hammer itself actually Carl won't let anyone run tests to check suspicious I think so plus minerals and ancient rocks can dissolve and to re-harden around objects that aren't ancient if put under the right pressure it's called concretion so even if it was the same rock it still wouldn't be proof of a 100 million year old hammer come on I choose science over Carl's quacky crapola any day Rock and Romans the Roman Empire is one of ancient history's best documented civilizations but that's not to say we know everything in Lebanon on the outer edges of the old Empire six Hefty puzzles known as the baleback stones have us scratching our heads the Romans carved and shaped these colossal stones from a quarry by hand which might not sound impressive until you hear their size the smallest is a stalking 800 tons and the largest is a colossal 1 650 tons about the weight of 250 elephants whoa now for comparison the largest stone in the Great Pyramids is a measly 80 tons as if carving all that isn't impressive enough the three smallest which are anything but small Were Somehow moved about a mile from the Quarry to their current location whew absurdly you'd need 40 000 people to move just one block and that many people couldn't conceivably fit even around the biggest of them so it's been theorized that some sort of pulley system was used by chipping a gap beneath the slabs before they were cut away from the Quarry rollers could have been slid underneath them then when they were completely removed from the rest of the stone they'd already be sitting atop rollers and ready to attach to a pulley system like this it could have taken as few as 144 workers to Lug them to their destination as part of the Temple of Jupiter it's just a theory though we can't know for sure how the incredible feat was pulled off that we do know however that the three biggest Stones proved too heavy even for the Romans and are still lying in the Quarry today jeez I guess it's always good to know when you've been beaten colossal Coast Guards man I've been working so hard lately I need a vacation maybe in Sardinia but if I'd been there around 3 000 years ago there's no way I'd want to visit the Italian island at least not if you believe the Legends local myths say Giants once roamed the land and human skeletons over 13 feet tall were discovered on the island the evidence is kinda sketchy though as no one's got a big bone to prove it even so there have been some seriously strange goings-on that suggest there might have been more to it than you first think back in 1974 over 5 000 pieces of smashed up Stone artifacts were uncovered in an area of the island called Monte prama but suspiciously when they were sent to a nearby museum they weren't put on display instead they were immediately stashed in an underground Vault where they stayed locked away for some 30 years this seems shady to me when they were finally removed in 2005 the pieces were reassembled and turned out to be can you guess statues of giant men 38 of them to be precise at eight feet tall they're a touch shorter than the rumored skeletons but still mightily impressive it's believed they were carved by and represent the narage people who lived on the island many thousands of years ago as well as giant statues the narage also built over 8 000 of these enormous Stone buildings hmm I'm not saying the naragi were giants but these people sure seemed to like things a little uh larger than most I wonder what their civilization would have looked like in its prime could even bigger statues have stood guarding the island that have since been lost to time uh I don't know maybe I'm getting ahead of myself unlike the narage they've got the head body and everything else of themselves know which of those historical mysteries was your favorite in the comments below and thanks for watching thank you
2023-05-07