15 Archaeological Discoveries That Science Can't Explain

What if some of the world's most puzzling discoveries weren't meant to be explained? From ancient stones that behave like topographic computers to nuclear reactors that formed without human help, these artifacts defy logic. Scientists came, observed, and left speechless. In this video, we're unveiling discoveries so strange they force us to question everything we know. It seems inconceivable that anybody could have made the Saihuit Monolith in Peru without a computer to assist them. There are over 200 individual designs carved into the monolith's surface, and most archaeologists and historians can't make head nor tail of them. Many have come to Abanque to look at the artifact with their own eyes, but all have returned home defeated. They can't even be sure when the monolith was carved. Although it's likely to have happened somewhere between the 15th and 16th centuries, that would make it an Inca relic. But what did the Inca mean by creating it? It's covered in animal shapes, but also in lines and curves that have been interpreted by some as canals or roads. There even appear to be residential dwellings here and there, along with temples. There's so much detail that some fringe historians believe that the Saihuit Monolith is a topographic model of the surrounding area that was used by the Inca to test the viability of artificial canals. They'd pour water onto the monolith, watch how the water behaved, and then replicate it in the land around them if they liked what they saw. If the theory is correct, then this is 15th century town and irrigation planning on an almost unthinkable scale. The idea of a naturally occurring nuclear reactor sounds ridiculous, yet it exists. It's called the Oklo Reactor, and you'll find it in Munanna Gabon. This is the first, and as far as anyone knows, only natural nuclear reactor in the world. About two billion years ago, the region's uranium-rich mineral deposits flooded with groundwater and set off a nuclear chain reaction that sustained itself for years, generating energy that raised the temperature inside the deposits so high that all the water in the area boiled away. Every time the temperature dropped below boiling point, the nuclear reactions would begin again. We can prove this because of the presence of xenon gas in the surrounding rock, which is a byproduct of uranium fission. The reactions continued until the fissile uranium was entirely depleted. When the low levels of isotope U-238 in the rock were first noticed during the 1970s, it was briefly feared that someone had stolen the uranium to create a nuclear weapon. But against all the odds, it turned out that the phenomenon had a natural explanation. There's theoretically nothing to stop this from happening again somewhere else in the world. We're heading to India now, where a collection of mysterious sandstone jars has been found in the region of Assam. Their discovery was announced in March 2022. Archaeologists in the area have found a whole 65 jars, none of which are a perfect match for any of the others. Historians have already noted similarities between these decorated jars and the famous Plain of Jars in Laos, and they suspect that they might have been used for the same reason. If the theories of the experts are correct, these jars were used in ancient burial rituals and might once have contained human remains. They're certainly big enough to have done so, with an average height of 10 feet. The experts currently have no idea which culture created the jars or when the work was done, but they don't think they're connected with any ethnic group or culture that lives in India today. The local Naga people say that they've been aware of the jars for years and have occasionally found cremated bones and personal items in some of the jars, but they don't think they were made by their ancestors. Research is ongoing, but it's possible this mystery will never be solved. In mid-2020, experts in the Antarctic were puzzling over a large potato-shaped fossil that they'd found on Seymour Island. Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be a 68 million year old soft-shelled egg. Scientists were initially so confounded by the discovery that they nicknamed it the Thing, but they're now confident that it's the second largest egg ever discovered and believe it might belong to a previously unknown species of marine reptile that existed on Earth at the same time as the dinosaurs. It challenges what we thought we knew about the Mosasaur and Long-necked Plesiosaurs. Until the egg was found, we thought that species of this kind didn't lay eggs at all and gave birth to live young instead. Paleontologist Rodrigo Otero from the University of Chile said that neither he nor his colleagues had ever seen anything like it before, and it took a while for the truth of their discovery to sink in. That's understandable. It's not every day that you make a discovery that changes the way we think about the reproductive behaviors of an entire species. As no embryonic remains were found inside the egg, we sadly don't know what the creature might have looked like. If you have a mysterious stone structure that you're finding hard to explain, we guess Mystery Hill makes an excellent name for it. This complex is sometimes called America's Stonehenge and can be found in Salem, New Hampshire, USA. Mystery Hill is around 4,000 years old and is made up of a series of underground chambers, some of which seem to be aligned to stars. It was likely made by early Native Americans, although it's impossible to say for sure. There are some fringe theorists who believe that the structures here were created by the ancient Celts. It's impossible to deny that there are similarities between these chambers and the ones that are known to have been created by the Celts across Europe. But there's an obvious problem here. If the chambers on Mystery Hill were made by the Celts, it would necessitate the presence of Celts in North America 4,000 years ago. Most scientists and historians have now accepted the fact that Christopher Columbus wasn't the first European to set foot on the continent, but convincing them that the Celts got to America 4,000 years ago might be a bridge too far. In March 2022, a collection of stone tools were discovered by archaeologists in Qiama Bay, China. That might not sound unusual given that all of our ancient ancestors used stone tools at some point, but these tools are special. Firstly, they're around 40,000 years old. Secondly, they don't look anything like any other stone tools that experts have ever seen before. The tools are mostly bladelets, some of which are still attached to fragments of the bone handles they were once attached to. These bladelets appear to have been used for everything from boring wood to scraping hides and whittling plant matter. Just under 400 tools have been recovered from the site thus far. As far as we know, no other group of Homo sapiens, Denisovans, or Neanderthals used tools like this at the time. This might even have been the equivalent of a Pleistocene-era workshop, where the tools were made. Their activities stained the ground red with ochre, which may have been used for tanning animal hides. Experts think that the inhabitants of Qiama Bay were human, rather than Denisovan or Neanderthal, but they're unable to be certain and can't say which group they might have belonged to. It's possible they were an entirely unique culture. The Joggins Fossil Cliffs in Joggins, Nova Scotia, Canada, are a record of life on Earth dating back more than 300 million years. The fossil of the world's earliest known reptile can be found here, along with some incredibly detailed fossilized trees. The idea that there were once exotic reptiles and trees in Nova Scotia might sound bizarre today, but 300 million years ago, this part of the world was covered in forests and jungle. The reptile we mentioned a moment ago is called Hylonimus aeoli and was declared to be the provincial fossil of Nova Scotia in 2002. The site as a whole is considered to be so important as a fossil record that it was included in Charles Darwin's famous book, On the Origin of Species. The fact that the rocks on the coastline are exposed to the elements means that fossils that were once buried deep within them are slowly making their way to the surface, although scientists have to brave 75-foot tall cliffs being lashed by 50-foot high tides in order to get to them. Joggin's Fossil Cliffs have been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2008. During excavations in a forgotten chamber near Saqqara, archaeologists uncovered a stone panel unlike anything they had ever seen. Among the traditional hieroglyphs stood out a disc-shaped figure, yes, a perfectly carved object with symmetrical details that appeared to be floating above a group of Egyptian priests. Even more intriguing was the presence of a central figure with an elongated head and The being was surrounded by symbols never before translated, and some experts suggested it might have been an ancient attempt to depict something, not human. The stone showed no signs of modern alteration. Carbon dating of the surrounding sediments indicates the chamber had been sealed for over 3,500 years. Could this be just another symbolic representation? Or were the Egyptians truly trying to communicate something they had witnessed, something from beyond the Earth? What if the gods of Egypt were, in fact, visitors from another world? Could this discovery rewrite history as we know it? Tell us your theory in the comments. Our next artifact is quite a strange one, and if you're British, quite a rude one. It's what's known colloquially as a bollock dagger, and it was found close to a 13th century cathedral in Belgium in March 2022. The pre-cathedral was badly damaged during the Second World War, and while the cathedral itself has been repaired, much of the land around it hasn't. It's that bombed out land that archaeologists are exploring at the moment, and the bollock dagger is easily one of the most interesting things they've found so far. The basic idea of a bollock dagger is that it could be tied around the waist and used as a second weapon if a primary weapon, like a full-sized sword, was dropped during combat. There are a few theories as to how it got its memorable nickname. The first is that the two spheres on the weapon's handle look like testes. The second is that when it was worn around the waist, the blade would often hang near the testes. As any British person watching this video will know, the most common term for testes in the British Isles is bollocks. A third theory is that the weapon is so named because of the part of the body it was intended to stab, but let's not get into that. The finding of an astrolabe is always a big deal for archaeologists. The complicated pieces of ancient machinery were used for navigation, but also worked as functional models of the known universe as it appeared to the people who made them, including the means to track the movements of celestial bodies through the sky. One such device was recovered from Vivera Estuary in northwestern Spain in October 2021. It's the 108th astrolabe to be found and recorded, and was made somewhere between 1575 and 1622. The shipwreck it came from might be that of the San Bartolomé, a galleon that is known to have sunk in the area in 1597. Archaeologists say that it's easily among the top ten best preserved artifacts of its kind. The owner of a marine astrolabe could calculate the position of their ship by aligning the rod on its circular base with the position of the sun, or if they were sailing at night, the position of a known star. Each astrolabe is thought to have been handcrafted for its owner, and represents the pinnacle of navigational technology during that era. The art of making clothes is one of the very oldest in human history, but it had to begin somewhere. Perhaps we can get some insight into its origins by checking out this September 2021 discovery from Katahoyuk in Turkey. Archaeologists are already aware that this is an unusual part of the world because as many as 10,000 people lived here together 9,000 years ago. Settling down permanently wasn't standard behavior during that point in the Stone Age, but these people did, and by doing so they created the largest known settlement from the Neolithic era. They also left behind a few scraps of textiles and fabrics for us to find. The most controversial of them was discovered in 1962. It's a small scrap of cloth that some experts have suggested might be made of wool or linen. In fact, as of September 2021, we know that it's made of bast fibers. As such, it's the oldest preserved woven fabric in the world. We've long believed that when our ancestors started making clothes rather than animal skins, they used linen as their default material. Based on the age of this fabric, which was created at least 8,500 years ago, it now seems that the first human-made clothes may have been made from bast. Here in the 2020s, we still don't have a totally accurate method of predicting earthquakes. It's a problem that the human race has been wrestling with for thousands of years, and the first known attempt to build an earthquake detector happened in China in the year 132. This is the seismograph designed by Zhang Heng, and it's incredibly sophisticated for a product of that era. Zhang's device works by placing it on the ground, where it's sensitive enough to detect tremors from long distances. When tremors are detected, a pendulum within the seismograph swings. Should the swing become strong enough, it will dislodge a ball from the mouth of one of the ornate dragons on the side of the device, which then drops into the waiting mouth of one of the equally ornate frogs. This not only indicates the approach of the earthquake, but also gives the observer a rough idea of which direction the earthquake is happening in. We can't decide whether to be impressed that Zhang Heng was so far ahead of his time, or embarrassed that we haven't come up with a much better way of predicting earthquakes all these years later. Our next artifact has several names, but precisely zero credible explanations of its origin or purpose. It's the Disc of Sabu, also sometimes known as the Schist Disc, or the Saqqara Disc. The latter name is a clue that it was discovered in Saqqara, Egypt. The best guess of archaeologists is that the 5,000-year-old artifact is a highly elaborate candlestick holder. If that's the case, it's the only one of its kind we've ever found. The fact that it's obsidian suggests there's more to it than a simple candlestick holder. Obsidian is a notoriously difficult material to work with, and nobody would go to the trouble of making a candlestick holder out of it back then, when other materials were available. Even the fact that it's shaped like a wheel is a puzzle, because as far as we're aware, the Egyptians were yet to discover the wheel 5,000 years ago. Conspiracy theorists on the internet will try to tell you that this is the steering wheel of an alien spaceship. We're not about to believe that, but the candlestick explanation is wholly unsatisfying. Subscribe now and turn on the bell so you don't miss a thing. Fascinating discoveries await you in every video. Thanks for your support. See you soon.