The Mysterious Ancient Civilization That Existed Before Us

Hi everyone, it's Katrina! Was there a civilization that existed before us? What if I told you there is evidence of an ancient civilization that existed long before humans, and more and more we are finding out that even ancient civilizations are older than we thought? The Maya civilization could be 12,000 years old, and human civilization itself could date back to the time of the dinosaurs. Today it's time to explore the truth about the ancient civilizations that came before us. There is an amazing ruin that may have once served as the last stand for humanity. This site was found buried under the top of a hill in southeast Turkey. It may have been where the civilization prior to us held out as long as they could before being wiped away by God's angry blood. It's called Göbekli Tepe, a place I know you've heard me talk about before, but today I'm exploring a new theory, one that I think you'll want to hear. First and foremost, Göbekli Tepe is one of the most fascinating archaeological sites in the world, and one of the oldest at over 11,000 years old. Archaeologists consider it the oldest temple in the world, and one of the earliest monumental structures ever. It's part settlement, part stone circle, part antediluvian mystery. The size of Göbekli Tepe is impressive. It isn't one building, but a whole complex of structures. The smallest is 20 feet long, its pillars rising 10 feet high. The largest stone circle at the site is 65 feet across. There are giant freestanding limestone pillars 18 feet tall and weighing 8 tons. You would need heavy-duty machinery to move these stones, yet archaeologists expect us to believe that Stone Age people did it using, what, an army of saber-toothed tigers and rope made out of grass? Do you believe it? Or do you believe they were a little more advanced than that? The pedestals upon which the giant pillars rest were carved straight from the bedrock of the hill. Those pillars aren't just boring old cylinders of stone, either. They are carved to look like people. When you look at Göbekli Tepe from the right angle, you can see the standing pillars are actually 20-foot-tall human figures gathered in a circle. You can see their arms, their hands folded, their fox pelts, and even their loincloths. This is the Sistine Chapel of the Stone Age. In 2006, archaeologist Klaus Schmidt announced that Göbekli Tepe was built by people before they had established permanent settlements. In other words, this great feat of engineering came before agriculture, before breeding domesticated animals, and before villages. Schmidt said he didn't think anyone had ever lived at the site. His interpretation was that starting around 9500 BC, hunter-gatherers started coming together annually to slowly build the monuments of Göbekli Tepe. They were nomads most of the year, but gathered as a community to build this place. They didn't care about cities or villages or growing food, they just wanted to build a megalithic ritual complex. One that makes the ancient Egyptian architects look like preschoolers with Lego blocks. This theory has recently been dismissed. Very new discoveries have shown that people did indeed live at Göbekli Tepe. More keeps being revealed from beneath the hill, including evidence of a fully functional settlement. The ritual structures were only part of the picture. This was a city, and it may have been huge. It could have been the capital of an intelligent civilization. But if that's true, what happened? And how far back does this civilization go? There is one key feature that most people fail to talk about. Göbekli Tepe was found filled with rocks, dirt, and thousands of animal bones. Archaeologists believe it was buried on purpose. Klaus Schmidt even argued that the culture would frequently bury their own sanctuaries. This means Göbekli Tepe may be built on the bones of an even older site. There could be temples here going back even further. But the big question is, how long ago? 15,000 years? 20,000 years? What made these people start this civilization to begin with? And what brought it to an end? Historians believe this could have been the last city to stand against the great flood. The Jars Built by Giants Apparently, we are not living in the first iteration of human society. Civilization existed long ago. So long ago that the only traces of it that remain are crudely hung stones. Like the giant stone jars in Laos that don't quite fit in the mainstream historical narrative of humanity. They appear to have been built by real giants. The giant stone jars look out of this world. Local legends say they were carved by a race of giants to, get this, brew rice beer. Sounds kind of good, right? However, archaeologists aren't convinced that giants even existed. Modern scholars say the giant stone jars were built by normal-sized humans, and also that they were used in burial rituals. The jars in Laos can be poking out of hillsides and even tucked away on remote mountain ridges. They aren't grouped in one place, but rather dotted across miles of rugged terrain. Researchers call them the jars of the dead. The reason for the nickname is a little ghoulish. Real human remains have been found at some of the sites, dated to about 2,500 years old. Even after finding bodies, there is no information on who originally made the jars. Scientists don't have a clue. They keep repeating their claims that the jars were used as burials. Bodies were allegedly stuffed into the jars, sort of like placing cremated ashes in an urn. Only this was on a huge scale. There are about 400 carved stone jars in Laos' famous Plain of Jars, and that's only one site. There are many other sites, with the jars themselves weighing more than 10 tons in some cases. And they stand over 10 feet tall. What race could be responsible? Which culture? Why didn't they leave any cities behind? If they could move and mold stones that weighed 10 tons, shouldn't they have been advanced enough to build a city? It is possible that these stones were left behind by a much older civilization, one associated with real giants. In 2016, excavations revealed that some of the giant stone jars were surrounded by pits filled to the brim with human bones. They looked like mass graves. To make matters even stranger, Laos isn't the only place that has giant jars. They've recently been found in India too, suggesting the culture that made them was global. In 2020, researchers from the Australian National University discovered monolithic stone jars in India's Assam region that's about 500 miles from Laos, far removed from the Southeast Asian giant jars. But these ones are very similar, reaching the same height, about 10 feet. They appear to have been made by the same craftsmen. In the case of India, some of the jars were found to contain cremated human remains. That backs up the funerary ritual hypothesis. But it still doesn't explain why the had to be so big, or how they were transported through dense, treacherous jungle. Other giant stone jars have been found in Indonesia too. There is something more than just a prehistoric ritual happening here. Any thoughts on what it is? And now for a quick break because it's shout out time! I want to give a huge thank you to William Ruston Aldradian Voltinian and his daughter for supporting this channel. Hi guys! Be sure to subscribe if you haven't already to join the Origins Explained family! The Castles of the Sea Everything you've ever known about ancient history could be wrong. Civilization didn't begin in Sumer, Harappa, or Egypt in 3500 BC. It started more than 10,000 years ago, and then it was destroyed by a global cataclysm. The Bible said it was a flood, sent by God to get rid of the race of evil giants known as the Nephilim. According to Graham Hancock, the author of Fingerprints of the Gods and host of Ancient Apocalypse, there are 600 flood myths around the world. The story of Noah and his Ark is only one of them. While scholars claim these myths are psychological archetypes, stories of birth and creation that every society came up with, Graham has a different idea. He thinks the 600 flood are variations of a very real event. 22 years ago, long before Graham Hancock was a household name, he brought to attention a series of sunken settlements. He learned to dive just so that he could research submerged ruins in India, Southeast Asia, and the Mediterranean. Graham Hancock claimed these sunken ruins were from as far back as 17,000 years ago. Graham believes the ruins belonged to a lost civilization that found itself flooded 12,000 years ago. The way Graham explains it, you have to keep in mind what the world looked like during the Ice Age. There were ice caps across northern Europe and North America. These ice caps were blankets of solid ice. Nobody would have been able to live anywhere in the interior, which left people building cities along the coastlines. A great example of this is the Persian Gulf, a place that was completely dry until 12,000 years ago. While it was dry, it would have been an excellent place to build a pre-flood city. Some of these cities have been found. India's National Institute of Ocean Technology discovered the ruins of an ancient city 25 miles from the coast of Gujarat. That's quite a distance. 25 miles from the shore, at the bottom of the Gulf of Cambay, there is a city estimated at 10,000 years old. If Hancock is right, the proof we need that an antediluvian civilization existed is underwater. But there are still other questions that need answering. How advanced were these people? And how long had their civilization been around before the melting glaciers flooded their cities? The stone walls at the bottom of At the bottom of Lake Huron in Michigan is a prehistoric structure. Some scientists say it was used as a caribou drivelane by ancient hunters. Other researchers think it could hint at a much older civilization, maybe even one that predates the rest of humanity. Could there be a connection between this sunken structure in Lake Huron and Gobekli Tepe in Turkey? Scientists don't think that's the case. John O'Shea from the University of Michigan recently published his findings after investigating the underwater ruins since 2008. John believes the prehistoric structure, which appears to be a huge stone wall, gives the clearest picture ever of the people who lived in the Great Lakes region when the Ice Age came to an end. John said the wall structure is more complex than anything that's been seen before. It's hard to imagine. The most complex prehistoric structure in North America at the bottom of a lake. How and why? It could be because it's been preserved underwater for around 9,000 years. While structures on the surface could have been dismantled or destroyed, the one at the bottom of the lake was left untouched. Though it's not without some damage. Water has eroded it a lot over the centuries. Although there is one huge structure, John O'Shea has found more than 60 others. What's unusual is that John has identified all 60 stone constructions as hunting blinds. John believes that as caribou herds roamed the spruce and wetlands of the North, Native Americans built stone walls to funnel them to their doom. It would have been a great way to hunt a lot of animals at once for their meat. But 60 blinds? And all at the bottom of a lake? Isn't that a little over the top for nomadic bands of hunters? Wouldn't it make more sense that all of these constructs were walls that surrounded villages? Or perhaps the foundations of castles or forts that crumbled 10,000 years ago? What are your thoughts? John claims the hunting blinds were built by the first people who inhabited the New World. He called them the descendants of the first folks who came to North America hunting mastodons. The reason the structures are underwater now is that as the Ice Age ended, the glaciers melted and filled the lake. The Lebombo Bone I recently did a video discussing an amazing relic known as the Ishango Bone. Now I want to talk about the Lebombo Bone, an artifact even older and more mysterious that defies explanation. It's the source of a lot of controversy, so maybe together you and I can make sense of it. If you remember my recent video, you'll know the Ishango Bone is believed to be a mathematical tool made by humans in the Democratic Republic of the Congo 20,000 years ago. Either it was a mathematical device, an early astronomical tool, or something of that nature. The Lebombo Bone is twice as old. It's between 43,000 and 42,000 years old, discovered in a cave in South Africa. The Border Cave, to be precise. Located high up in the Lebombo Mountains. Scientists have never been able to identify which animal the Ishango Bone came from, be it human or beast. But that's not the case here. The Lebombo Bone is a baboon fibula, or a calf bone. It's covered in the same kinds of markings as the bone from the Congo. The etchings on the bone make it look as if it was used for counting something. Some researchers think it was a tally stick meant for keeping track of some vital information. It has 29 notches on it, though, which has led other researchers to suggest it was used as a lunar phase counter. If that's true, it could mean that African women were the first mathematicians and the first astronomers. They may have used baboon bones to keep track of their menstrual cycles. So how does this fit in with our discussion of ancient civilizations? Because this is a huge advancement in human thinking. Other notched bones have been found that are twice as old as this one, more than 80,000 years old. But what scientists can't agree on is if the notches were decorative, functional, or accidental. If humans or human ancestors were already tracking lunar phases 80,000 years ago, what made them start? When did humans go from being animals worried about the present to looking up at the stars and start tracking them? The Mohenjo-Daro Massacre Now let's look at the Harappans of South Asia, a civilization that may have been annihilated by atomic war. In antiquity, starting around 4,500 years ago, their empire controlled an area significantly larger than Egypt or Mesopotamia. They were one of the earliest civilizations in the world, yet they were annihilated with a whimper. Some believe they were blasted with a nuclear weapon without any warning. It seems crazy, but there is evidence that supports this theory. One of the most important cities of the Harappans, also known as the Indus Valley culture, was Mohenjo-Daro. Thirty years ago, archaeologists published a study claiming that the Harappans of Mohenjo-Daro were destroyed by an army of invaders who slaughtered them in the streets. The report came because of the staggering number of bodies found in Mohenjo-Daro lying in the open. The evidence points to a massacre, with people being killed seemingly as they went about shopping for groceries. It was as if they had no warning, with people not even seeking shelter or trying to hide. Archaeologists tried to explain this by saying they were ambushed by the Aryans, a violent group of warriors who took the city when they weren't prepared and burned it to the ground. It was the equivalent of the Mongol hordes terrorizing European cities in the 13th century. The Aryans may have made the Harappans go extinct. Or something more dramatic happened. Excavations at the largest Harappan sites have not yielded any discoveries of an invasion. When dealing with an ancient armed conflict, archaeologists can typically find weapons. They find arrowheads, spears, swords, heads, brutalized bodies. There are a lot of different ways to confirm an invasion. Nothing of the sort has been found in the Harappan cities of India and Pakistan. But there have been skeletons found that prove a mass casualty event. In Mohenjo-Daro, after 9 years of excavations, scientists only found 37 skeletons from the Harappan period. These skeletons were contorted in ugly positions, almost looking as if they were thrown about by a blast. Additionally, the skeletons were only found in one area of town, the residential district. Not a single body was found in the fortified citadel, where you would anticipate a defense to have been made against an invading force. So where in the world are all the bodies? There are some remains that look like they were blown apart, and then the rest of the city is deserted. It doesn't even make sense. So the question is, could there have been an atomic attack that obliterated everyone? Let me know your thoughts in the comments. THE MAYA CONTROVERSY The Maya civilization may have once been completely underwater. Some archaeologists are finding more evidence to back up Graham Hancock's theory about an antediluvian civilization. There are tons of Maya ruins in Mexico, many of them studied meticulously by scientists for decades. Yet little is known about their culture and their history. Most of what scholars understand about the early days of the Maya Empire comes from a rather unexpected source, the Spanish. During the brutal subjugation of the Maya people, the Spanish invaders destroyed almost all of their sacred books, known as codices. These codices may have contained irreplaceable information on where the Maya came from. The Spanish also destroyed many of their temples, building Christian churches on top of them. What did survive the catastrophe are the chronicles of the Spanish conquistadors. In these records, you can read stories about the magnificent things the Spanish saw when they arrived in the New World. The Spanish gawked at the enormous pyramid complexes, which had been abandoned before their arrival. They were amazed by the observatories where Maya astronomers looked to the heavens for answers. There is no denying that the Maya were incredibly advanced in science. They had been for a long time. What researchers find hard to reconcile is the fact that the Mayas sort of came out of nowhere. It's almost as if they magically arrived in Guatemala, started building pyramids, and spread across the region. Did you know the largest pyramid complex in the Americas was built in 2700 BC? La Dante Pyramid in El Mirador, Guatemala is 4,700 years old. Why is the oldest Maya pyramid also the most impressive? Scientists have been finding similar examples in these inexplicable timelines across Central America. The most magnificent architecture is also the earliest. It's as if the Mayas started with an incredible understanding of complex engineering and then slowly forgot. The Maya arrived in places like Copan, Chichen Itza, Tikal, and El Mirador with thousands of years of scientific wisdom already under their belt. Try to make sense of that! Then as the years went by, their engineering projects became less sophisticated. It almost seems that the Maya began devolving, becoming more bloodthirsty, more brutal, and less scientifically inclined. Then their entire civilization collapsed, and scientists still don't know what happened. Keep watching because the truth of the Maya flood is coming up soon! The Lost Martian Labyrinth If I told you there was a labyrinth hidden underneath the Martian surface full of alien skeletons, would you tell me to take a hike? Well, just wait a second because I think you might want to hear what I have to say first. Scientists have apparently found a mysterious hole on Mars that could be a gateway to ancient life. Scientists have been searching for life on Mars since before the first telescope. When early humans saw that little red dot in the sky, they wondered what might be on its surface, and who might be looking back at them. With today's technology, scientists can now look directly at the surface, and even sometimes beyond it. NASA recently released an image of Arsia Mons, one of the biggest shield volcanoes in the entire solar system. The picture was captured by HiRISE, the camera on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter flying 159 miles above Mars. The image shows a huge hole on the slope of the volcano. Scientists aren't sure what the hole is or what's hiding underneath it. The most likely explanation is that it's the entrance to an underground labyrinth of lava tubes. If there's no life on the surface, scientists think there could be life inside the tubes. They also believe the underground tunnels could one day house human settlements. Mars is not the best candidate for a habitable planet. It has no magnetic fields to protect from the radiation of the sun. But living in an underground tunnel could reduce radiation levels by up to 50 times. Living in a labyrinth could also protect humans from the temperature swings at the surface. A summer day on the Martian equator is surprisingly comfortable at about 70 degrees Fahrenheit. Not bad, especially after this summer. But at night, it plummets to minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit. That's a bit too chilly, even with a good winter coat. There are those who believe that humans originally came from Mars. It's a theory so out there that it makes the Loch Ness Monster seem like a big friendly fish. But there is some logic to the idea. If humans did have a civilization 500 million years ago on Earth, and if they did have knowledge of advanced technology, maybe that knowledge was passed down from settlers from Mars. Of course, this theory is extremely sci-fi, so let me know what you think. Maybe when Mars lost its atmosphere, its surface water, and turned into a hellscape, some humans managed to flee to Earth. Maybe others escaped into the newly discovered labyrinth beneath the Martian surface. Do you think there could be life underground? Let me know in the comments. The Dorchester Pot 300 million years ago, somebody made a cast-iron cup in Oklahoma. It's a perfect piece of metal, a little dinged, but what do you expect after so many centuries? After making it, the cup was lost, buried, and became stuck in a chunk of coal. In 1912, that chunk of coal was broken open at a This is what you would call an out-of-place artifact, a real relic from a time that doesn't make sense. Humans have hardly been making metal cups for more than a few millennia. It sounds like science fiction, but out-of-place artifacts are real. In 1912, when the cup was found in Oklahoma, it was examined by researchers. They confirmed it to be made from cast iron, an alloy of carbon mixed with iron. The giant chunk of coal even kept an imprint of the bowl in it, proving the cup came out of the coal. It didn't fall in there recently. It took 300 million years for the coal to form around the cast-iron cup. These things don't just happen overnight. So how do you explain it without stepping into the realm of science fiction? You can't. The same way you can't explain the 500 million or the wolf's egg iron, an artifact from 60 million years ago. The Dorchester Pot is particularly fascinating. It was found in Dorchester in 1852, embedded in a rock. The rock was blasted into pieces during the explosion that destroyed the Roxbury conglomerate. When scientists inspected the rock, they found it to be from 500 million years ago. The only thing that makes sense is that the relic is left over from an old human civilization that had at least reached 18th century technology half a billion years ago. Of course, there are the naysayers and the negative Nellies, the people who claim the Dorchester Pot is nothing but a candlestick holder from the Victorian era that wound up in the debris after the explosion. But there's more, like the wolf's egg iron discovered in 1885 in Austria. This relic was found in a piece of coal just like the Oklahoma cup. Only this was no cup, and it definitely wasn't a candlestick holder. It was a metal cube like some weird alien artifact. This small cube was stuck in a block of coal which formed during the tertiary period. It has four flat sides and two sides that are convex, with a deep groove running around the middle. Scientists have analyzed the cube, but they always come up with inconclusive results. Some have said the cube emits an unusual aura. It supposedly has its own unique gravity. Others claim it's evidence of a technologically advanced society and prehistoric times. Adolf Gerlt from the University of Bonn suggested it was meteoric in origin. It could be a space rock, one that looks suspiciously like an energy cube. From 1950 until 1958, the wolf's egg iron was kept on display at a museum in Linz. Then it was taken by scientists who bombarded it with electron beams. Their microanalysis showed no traces of nickel or chromium, meaning the rock most likely didn't come from space. It could be cast iron, as suggested by Dr. Rudolf Brill in Vienna. But where did it come from? When taken individually, these artifacts are easy to dismiss, but when you start to realize there are dozens of them, then you start to get suspicious. THE MAYA CIVILIZATION WAS FLOODED To solve the mystery of the Maya, I must introduce you to one of the top researchers of Maya history. His name is Dr. Richard Hansen, director of El Mirador Basin Project. He's been studying the Maya almost his entire life. His opinion on anything Maya should be taken very seriously. Richard believes that the Maya did not have a mother culture. This is a big shock because a lot of scientists think the Olmec were the origin of the Maya. The general consensus among scholars is that the Olmec built cities, developed a culture, and then slowly transitioned into the Maya. Dr. Hansen said that's not the case at all. He believes there is evidence that the Maya destroyed the Olmec and burned down their cities. Cities like La Venta threw a series of vicious military campaigns. The Olmec may have been more like a rival nation than a mother culture. But where did the Maya come from? That's the big mystery I'm here digging through the evidence trying to solve with you. There was a recent geological study done on the surface features of the Yucatan Peninsula. Scientists identified tsunami damage from about 1500 years ago. Their data shows that there may have been more tsunamis in the thousands of years before that. These were big tsunamis too. I'm talking about waves 50 feet tall that would have been enough to wash away whole cities. Evidence of water damage has been found in Chichen Itza, Coba, Uxmal, and other Maya cities spread across the jungle. There are even flooded building complexes underwater in Mexico. Take a look at this image from Google Earth, showing the foundations of structures at the bottom of the ocean off the Yucatan Peninsula. Here's an image from Angela Mickel, Satellite Archaeology. It shows the bay lands just off the coast of Campeche, Mexico. If you look closely, you can see the ruins of what appears to be an ancient Maya complex. This may have been one of the cities washed away by a tsunami. Now check out this photo. It shows a highway submerged 30 feet under the ocean, just off the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula. This is an image of a real road from the Maya Empire that is currently underwater. Recent evidence has emerged that the west coast of the United States was flooded about 10,000 or 12,000 years ago. The flooding was so bad, it carved out entire valleys in Washington and Oregon. Researcher Randall Carlson said there were mega floods across most of the US. They destroyed whole civilizations. The floods were even recorded by the Zuni, Lakota, and the Maya. What all this means is that the Maya may have existed in the Americas long before when mainstream scientists said they did. They could have been around for more than 10,000 years, maybe more than 12,000 years. Their original cities may have been wiped out by relentless floods and tsunamis. The same flood that destroyed the rest of the world, Europe, Cobectli Tepe, may have hit the Maya where they lived in Central America. It was away from the ice caps and an ideal environment for an early civilization to thrive. Then after the flood, it took ages for the Maya to re-establish themselves and rebuild their cities. Maybe they had more technological knowledge, but the flood washed it away. What are your thoughts on the timeline of human civilization? I want to see your opinions in the comments. The Assyrians. Situated on the outskirts of Mosul in present-day Iraq, the ancient Assyrian city of Nineveh was settled as early as 6000 BC during the late Neolithic period. By 3000 BC, it had become a major religious center dedicated to the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar. Ishtar was the goddess of war and passion, as well as the goddess of rain and thunderstorms. Built along a fault line, Nineveh experienced numerous earthquakes, including one that destroyed the original temple of Ishtar. It became a great city and center of learning nonetheless. Serving as the capital of the Assyrian Empire for much of its existence. Under King Sennacherib, Nineveh grew to include parks, aqueducts, canals, an 80-room palace, a wall surrounding the city, and a library containing around 30,000 clay tablets. Nineveh was continuously inhabited for thousands of years, and for roughly 50 years until 612 BC, it was the world's largest city. That year, a coalition of allied forces sacked and razed Nineveh, massacring many of its residents throughout the brutal attack and scaring others to the countryside. The city never recovered from the destruction, but was also never fully abandoned. In the following decades, Nineveh came under the rule of either the Medes or the Neo-Babylonian Empire, and was further conquered by numerous civilizations, including the Seleucid Empire, the Parthian Empire, the Sasanian Empire, and finally the Arabs. It was reduced mostly to ruins by the 13th century. The modern-day site consists of two large mounds and the remains of the city's massive stone and mud-brick wall that was built around 700 BC. Sadly, what's left of Nineveh is losing its battle to the elements, looters, and the Islamic State, which threatened to destroy any remaining evidence of its long and rich history. Seleucid Empire The Seleucid Empire conquered many famous cities during their heyday, but who were they? The Seleucids started when Alexander the Great died. Upon his death in 323 BC, his empire was divided amongst his top generals who fought the wars of the successors, known as the Wars of the Diadochi. The winners decided to divide the empire amongst them, and Seleucus was arguably the most successful. Seleucus claimed Babylon for himself, taking Mesopotamia and Central Asia, which also included Nineveh. He continued what Alexander the Great had set out to do. He spread, creating the Seleucid Empire and merging eastern and western cultures. At first, the empire was known for religious and cultural tolerance, and stretched from the Mediterranean Sea to the Indus Valley. The problem was that as the empire grew, it began to fracture, and so Seleucus started to give up certain regions in exchange for diplomatic relations where they would respect his borders and accept trade agreements. This included getting war elephants, which helped him defeat several of his enemy generals. When he died, the empire struggled to stay together, but his son and grandson Antiochus III personally led troops throughout the land, putting down revolts and getting everyone to fall in line. The empire returned to its former glory, but the next rulers were unable to keep everything together. The Romans were at the door, and the monarchy began to fight amongst each other. Ultimately, it was all over in 63 BC. Greenland's Vikings After being exiled from Iceland for murder in 982, a Viking named Erik the Red led a fleet of 25 boats to Greenland, where he established two communities. The first, known as the Eastern Settlement, was paradoxically situated near the southwestern tip of the island, while the western settlement was located roughly 404 miles to the north, along Greenland's western coast. Around 500 initial settlers, consisting mostly of chieftains and wealthy farmers, set up farmsteads and built Christian churches on the newly established colony. Residents fished, hunted wild caribou and seals, and kept livestock, including cattle, sheep, and goats. The eastern settlement grew to include around 500 farms, while the western consisted of just 100, and the population peaked at around 5,000 people. But when Norwegian missionary Hans Ageri arrived in Greenland in 1721, he found the Norse settlements in ruins and devoid of their Viking residents. Researchers have long struggled to figure out what happened to these communities. One predominant theory holds that the settlers lost their battle to survive during a mini-Ice Age, triggered by a massive volcanic eruption in Indonesia in the late 13th century. Evidence shows that around this time, Norse Greenlanders adopted a more marine diet, suggesting that their cattle died off, and their lives became much more difficult amid the challenging environmental conditions. On the other hand, many experts believe that climate change alone cannot explain the Vikings' disappearance, and that a culmination of factors likely came into play, including the possible emigration of some residents back to Europe. But the plain and simple truth is that nobody knows for sure. Where did the Vikings go? Giroft Culture In the 3rd millennium BC, during the Early Bronze Age, a civilization perhaps as great as Sumer and ancient Mesopotamia lived in what is now Iran. Surrounded by tall, rugged mountains on three sides in the Halil River Valley, the mysterious culture built a sprawling urban settlement, consisting of two large burial mounds, a fortified citadel, and numerous smaller buildings. It is here that they lived, practiced their religion, and crafted fine artifacts like vases and statuettes, enjoying a sophisticated lifestyle and social hierarchy for their time. For unknown reasons, after peaking sometime between 2500 BC and 2200 BC, this and other settlements belonging to the civilization were ultimately abandoned, covered in dirt, and forgotten. The sites were rediscovered in the early 20th century and were unfortunately looted along with being formally excavated a handful of times. With limited artifacts to learn from, experts know very little about what they call the Giroft people beyond having established that they were a distinct group with their own architecture, language, beliefs, and a writing system consisting of geometric figures. Some researchers believe that the society may very well be one of the cradles of civilization. Karma Starting at least 5,500 years ago, one of Africa's earliest civilizations, the Kerma culture, lived in their self-named capital city in what is now Sudan. It's one of the largest archaeological sites within ancient Nubia, a region of sub-Saharan Africa that was known for its gold deposits, incense, ivory, and other luxury products. Kerma emerged as a culture and urban center around 3000 B.C., and by 1700 B.C., it was home to at least 10,000 residents. At its peak, the city was the most powerful in the region, as evidenced by artifacts connected to the culture that have been found over 200 miles away. It housed a royal audience hall, a tall mud-brick temple, a palace, funerary temples, and chapels. The pottery and other artifacts that the Kerma left behind differ from those of neighboring kingdoms like ancient Egypt, but Kerma's cemetery of over 30,000 graves show that it was not completely free of Egyptian influence. It's evident based on the arrangement of larger graves surrounded by smaller ones that the Kerma practiced a social hierarchy, and some royal burials contain imagery of Horus and other Egyptian deities, as well as Egyptian pottery, amulets, and scarab seals. In addition to exchanging cultural ideas with ancient Egypt, Kerma clearly engaged in extensive trade with the civilization. But this business relationship did not remain amicable forever, and when the Egyptians sacked the city around 1500 B.C., Kerma went on to host several new kingdom rulers. Etruria Etruria was an ancient culture that emerged as early as 900 B.C. in what are now the Tuscany and Umbria regions of central Italy. Its inhabitants were the Etruscans, who shared a complex culture linked by a confederation of 12 city-states. By 650 B.C., the civilization became a dominant culture, extending into both northern and southern Italy. The Etruscans also had far-reaching trade connections reaching as far as Egypt, with whom they both traded directly and through intermediaries, such as the Greeks and the Phoenicians. Etruria had a strong military tradition that generally benefited from warfare, embarking on raid campaigns of neighboring areas during the summer and acquiring territory and other valuable resources, including goods and slaves. The society valued monogamy and family life and gave women an unusual degree of freedom for the time, which perhaps contributed to the Roman and Greek views that Etruscan women were promiscuous. Etruscan culture strongly influenced Roman architecture, ritual practices, and other aspects of its culture. In fact, several Etruscan kings ruled in Rome until 509 B.C., shortly before the Roman Republic was established. Etruria is also credited with bringing elements of Greek culture into the early Roman Republic, including the 12 Olympian gods, olive and grape farming, the Latin alphabet, and architectural features including the arch and sewer and drainage systems. Most mainstream scholars believe that when Rome absorbed Etruria's cities during the 3rd century B.C., the two cultures merged. But there are admittedly noticeable gaps in researchers' knowledge of the Etruscans, including their architecture, language, and literature. Assyria The northern Mesopotamian kingdom of Assyria got its start as far back as the second millennium B.C. as a dependency of Babylonia in what is now northern Iraq and southeastern Turkey. Ruled by kings and generals, unlike the Babylonians who were under the leadership of a priesthood, Assyria became a burgeoning military power, with a rapidly expanding population, enabling it to establish independence in the 14th century B.C. and conquer other civilizations, including the Hittites. The Assyrians were technologically advanced for their time and placed a high value on education, establishing the first known university, the School of Nisibis, which taught theology, philosophy, and medicine. The civilization also had impressive architecture and is credited with building huge cities with extensive fortifications, as well as some of the first known aqueducts and arches. Assyria was a united kingdom consisting of local governors who answered to a central authority. It was this unity, as well as the civilization's military might, wealth, and advanced technology, that enabled it to rule the majority of the Mesopotamian region for around 1,800 years. The Assyrian state was destroyed between 612 and 609 B.C. by a Chaldean-Median coalition, following the death of its last great leader, Ashurbanipal. Researchers' knowledge of the Assyrian culture's demise is limited, but it is believed that the society entered a dark period around 1300 amid the region's persistent warfare with the Byzantine Republic. As Jews and Muslims flooded into the region, many Assyrians, who were traditionally Christian, converted to Islam to avoid high taxes imposed on their faith. The Vinca Civilization The Vinca Civilization, also called the Danube Valley Civilization, was a Neolithic culture that lived in parts of southeastern Europe, including modern-day Serbia, Kosovo, Bulgaria, Romania, and Macedonia. Dating as far back as 7,000 B.C., the Vinca are widely considered the cradle of European civilization. They built some of the largest prehistoric settlements in the region, fueled a population boom, and further developed farming after it was introduced in the area. In addition to raising livestock and planting crops, the Vinca developed a plow for sowing their fields, and used copper eating utensils some 1,000 years before they became common in Europe. They were not politically unified but maintained cultural solidarity by trading ritual objects over a long-distance network of settlements. Zoomorphic and anthropomorphic figures were defining features of the culture, with some scholars alleging that the collection of around 700 symbols that the Vinca used constitute one of the world's oldest writing systems. Layers of evidence found at some Vinca settlements indicate a period of occupation lasting over 1,000 years. Nobody knows why these sites were ultimately abandoned. The Mississippians From around 800 to 1600 A.D., a Native American civilization called the Mississippians flourished in the Midwestern, Eastern, and Southeastern United States. It consisted of urban settlements and satellite villages that were loosely connected by a large trading network, with many sites containing large earthen platform mounds. The Mississippian culture originated in the Mississippi River Valley, and its largest city and religious center, Cahokia, was established in what is now southern Illinois. Its extensive trade network stretched as far west as the Rocky Mountains, east to the Atlantic Ocean, north to the Great Lakes, and south to the Gulf of Mexico. Mississippians differed from their ancestors in numerous ways, including through intensive maize-based agriculture and the development of the complex chiefdom social hierarchy, and with it institutionalized social inequality. Their belief system, known as the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex or the Southern Cult, centered largely on ritual game-playing, literally playing games but with a spiritual or religious meaning. Mississippian settlements varied by region but were tied by a common culture and belief system. As far as experts know, the Mississippians did not have any stone architecture or a writing system. The civilization peaked between 1200 and 1400, after which time it began to decline amid increasing warfare, political turmoil, and outmigration from Cahokia. Most factions of the culture had dispersed or were in severe distress by 1500, with very few persisting long enough to be around when Native Americans made the first significant contact with Europeans, leaving modern experts with only artifacts and settlements to learn from. Numerous Native American groups today are thought to descend from the Mississippians, including the Alabama, Apalachee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Seminole, just to name a few. Mergar Located west of the Indus River Valley in modern-day Pakistan, the Mergar archaeological site contains some of the earliest evidence of farming and herding in South Asia. Situated at the foot of the Bolan Pass, which has long served as a connection between the Indus Basin and the Iranian highlands, the 300-acre Neolithic settlement was established as early as 7000 BC, thousands of years before the Indus Valley Civilization emerged in the same region. Researchers have defined eight different periods of occupation, with Mergar's first inhabitants being semi-nomadic people who lived in mudbrick homes, grew grains, and raised sheep, goats, and cattle. These pre-pottery people memorialized their dead with elaborate burials, containing grave goods such as baskets, pendants, tools, and other objects made from seashells, limestone, turquoise, and sandstone. During the second phase of occupation, the civilization began making ceramic pottery and introduced the use of the potter's wheel, resulting in a noticeable uptick in production. The oldest human figurines in South Asia were discovered in large quantities at Mergar, and the advent of copper technology helped to greatly expand the site between the from 5,500 to 4,500 years ago. The Mergar people abandoned the original site sometime between 2600 BC and 2000 BC during the seventh period of occupation and resettled five miles away in the larger and more fortified town of Nausharo. French archaeologists discovered Mergar in 1974 while searching for the root of the Indus Valley Civilization. While little is known about the people who lived there, it's clear based on the evidence that they were advanced for their time, that they engaged in deity worship, and that developments like agriculture and raising livestock do not have a single origin, but developed independently in various places. Thanks for watching! Which civilization was your favorite? Which one would you like to learn more about? Let me know in the comments below and remember to subscribe if you haven't already! See you next time!