Most Ancient Civilizations Of The World

Hi everyone! It's Katrina! You know, there's something incredibly captivating about the idea of a lost world, a place swallowed by the sea, a civilization, just gone, hidden beneath the waves, swallowed by cataclysms, or perhaps just conveniently forgotten. In this video, we are going on a journey to explore the mythical continent of Mu and other lost places that continue to haunt our imagination. Were these places real? And if so, why were they erased from history? Let's check it out! The Lost Continent of Mu What if everything we thought we knew about the origins of human civilization was wrong? Some believe the true motherland of humanity didn't start in familiar places like Mesopotamia or Turkey or Egypt, but in a sunken continent called Mu, hidden in the Pacific Ocean. It's said to be the home of a culture so advanced that they made every other ancient civilization look like it was stuck in the first third of a civilization game. The legend of Mu started pretty recently in the 19th and 20th centuries. Augustus Le Plongeant was the first one to record the name Mu when he mistranslated some Maya texts. He was translating the Toronto Codex and thought that the land of Mu was connected to Atlantis. Then things really took off with James Churchward. British soldier, part-time volcano demolition theorist, and self-declared linguistic decoder of long-dead civilizations. According to Churchward, Mu was the motherland of man. It was a continent even bigger than South America, teeming with millions of people, and an advanced civilization that vanished beneath the waves in a single night. But how would this be possible, and is there any truth to this story? In this version of Earth's early history, humanity didn't come from Africa, but Mu. Churchward believed that Mu was home to a single world religion and central government 25,000 to 50,000 years ago. Every civilization from the Himalayas to the Andes bowed down to the rulers of Mu. Churchward claimed Mu had 64 million people, seven major cities, and enough ancient wisdom to make the Library of Alexandria look like Sparknotes. Its capital was allegedly home to an advanced race called the Nakal. But hold on a second. Where did Churchward get this intel? How did he know any of this? According to him, it all started in India, where he befriended a high-ranking temple priest. This priest had sunburnt clay tablets written in the completely unverifiable Nagamaya language, known by exactly two other people in the world. The story goes that James convinced the priest to teach him this Nagamaya language, which allowed him to translate the ancient text himself. Churchward went on to dictate a creation story involving seven super-intellects, a seven-headed serpent deity named Narayana, and absolutely zero room for Darwin. Mu was not the result of evolution. It was a handcrafted society made by cosmic serpents and a divine committee. And then, as these stories always go, it was promptly blown to bits. Mu didn't gradually erode or slowly drift away on a tectonic cruise. It was obliterated in a single night by exploding granite. Apparently, Mu was built on a honeycomb of gas-filled underground chambers that one day decided, you know what would be fun? Instant apocalypse. The resulting series of earthquakes and eruptions dropped the entire continent into a fiery abyss, which was then covered by 50 million square miles of ocean. There have been so many more theories tied into the world of Mu since Churchward. People say it was the true origin of Egypt, Greece, Central America, India, and every culture that ever touched a chisel. He said that all the historical coincidences found throughout the ancient world and symbols and gods could all be linked to the lost civilization of Mu. The Naqal founded colonies, built megaliths, and maybe even invented sourdough. The king of Mu was named Ra, which of course Churchward linked to the Egyptian sun god Ra. He also placed the Garden of Eden on Mu. Churchward claimed that certain sun symbols found in Peru, Egypt, and Babylonia are all the same. He even linked Easter Island's Moai statues and their stone hats to the people of Mu. James claimed the hats represented the sun, and were part of Mu's strictly controlled global sun-based religion. There is no scientific support for this lost continent. As science progressed and we learned about plate tectonics and continental drift, the idea of an entire sunken continent like Mu is physically impossible. Continents move and change very slowly, not in sudden catastrophic events. While there are submerged landmasses like Zealandia, they are not lost continents in the mythical sense of rapidly disappearing advanced civilizations. Despite all this, the myth of the lost continent of Mu endures, probably because humanity has always been fascinated by lost worlds and forgotten histories. The Forgotten Port of Muziris Once upon a time, around 2,000 years ago, a small port on India's southwestern coast was making it rain. In gold, that is. From Rome. Because while Julius Caesar was conquering Gaul and making salad history back in India, the city of Muziris was quietly becoming a star of ancient trade. What was the secret weapon behind this economic superpower? Muziris was racking in the dough, all thanks to black pepper. Pepper was once so valuable that it had Roman senators checking their bank balances. You know what they say, he who controls the spice controls the universe. Muziris once sat along the Periyar River in Kerala. Tamil poetry described it as a city where foreign ships stirred white foam, arriving with gold and leaving with groceries. Another poet called it the Vegas of ancient India. Well, not in so many words. But they did say that liquor flowed freely, fortunes were made, and nobody left without a hangover or a handful of black pepper. So, Las Vegas, pretty much. And then suddenly, it was gone. Everyone stopped talking about Muziris. No mention of its demise can be found anywhere in the history records. In 2004, archaeologists in Kerala started digging and found something spicy. They excavated the port of Kandugalur, which they thought could be hiding the ruins of Muziris. However, they found nothing older than the 13th century, so this wasn't it. Then someone said, hey, what about Patanam? Just a few miles away, this quiet village was the perfect match for Muziris. Researchers started digging in 2004, and by 2007, they were convinced they'd hit the jackpot. They found Roman amphorae, a wharf structure, tools made of iron, lead, and copper, along with 4.5 million pottery shards. All evidence points to a very old trading port being buried beneath the village of Patanam. Is it definitely the lost city of Muziris? Archaeologists like Dr. P.J. Cherian, who led the dig, are cautiously optimistic. It could be, yes, but there is no plaque anywhere with the name of the city on it. Archaeologists still have some digging to do. Meanwhile, here's the lowdown on Rome's forgotten addiction issues. According to Professor Federico de Romanis, who happens to be a Roman history expert, the empire was absolutely pepper addicted. Thousands of tons of black pepper moved through Muziris because the Romans could not get enough. Other hot exports included ivory, pearls, silks, malabathron, which I don't know what that is, and that luxurious Himalayan-smelling root called nard. Ships arrived from the west bearing gold, coral, fine glassware, olive oil, and fish sauce. All of it was mostly used to buy pepper. So much pepper that Pliny the Elder estimated that Rome was bleeding 50 million sesterces a year on trade with India. Then, in the 3rd century AD, the Roman economy started getting shaky. Inflation hit, there was suddenly less money to buy anything, and Rome couldn't pay its debts. And the pepper train stopped in its tracks. And with it, Muziris vanished forever. And now for a quick break because I wanted to give a big thank you to JC for the super thanks. It really means a lot and we wouldn't be here without you. If you're new here, be sure to subscribe to join the Origins Explained family The Atlantis of the Sands For centuries, it was a ghost story whispered by the desert winds. It was once called the Atlantis of the Sands. The Muslim holy book, the Quran, sang songs of it. The infamous 1001 Arabian Nights even has a story centered around it. Heck, Lawrence of Arabia desperately was trying to find it. But for centuries, Ubar remained elusive. The lost city of Arabia was whispered about like a dusty myth, said to be a glittering city swallowed by the desert, devoured by divine wrath for living too large. It was the same old song and dance as Atlantis, but in the sand rather than the sea. And then everything changed forever. In the early 1990s, a team of archaeologists, dreamers, and a few NASA nerds actually found it. Ubar wasn't just a campfire tale for camel caravans. It's a real city that prospered 5,000 years ago and was lost under waves of sand. Located in the Rub al-Khali, more commonly known as the Empty Quarter of Oman, where the landscape looks like a Mad Max sequel waiting to happen, Ubar was the center of the frankincense trade. Frankincense was one of the most important materials of the ancient world. Jesus even got some as a baby. It was used as a resin, burned in temples, rubbed into wounds, and traded like it was liquid gold. Frankincense was so valuable it practically had its own stock exchange. If you had a full jar of the stuff, you were one sandal away from retirement. According to legend, Ubar's king, Shaddad ibn Ad, got a little too extra and built himself an imitation of paradise in the desert. God, annoyed and unimpressed, smote the city which was then swallowed by the Earth itself. Classic God move. And there it stayed under the sands until Nicholas Klopp came along. Nicholas is a filmmaker with a thing for ancient Arabia and just enough nerve to cold call NASA with a wild plan. Hey, can you use your space shuttle radar to help me find a city that might not exist? Instead of laughing him off the line, NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab amazingly said yes. With help from scientists Charles Elachi and Ronald Blom, they scanned the Rub al-Khali using shuttle radar that could see through sand. I bet you didn't know NASA has x-ray vision specifically for deserts. The images showed ancient trade routes, camel trails beaten flat by thousands of years of spice-laden caravans. These roads are preserved like prehistoric fossilized game trails throughout the Empty Quarter. Wherever they converge, there's a buried city. At one site, a dusty village called Shisr with barely more than a couple houses, a tiny mosque and a few bleeding goats, archaeologists hit hay dirt. They found the ruin of a fortress built 300 years ago. It was pretty cool. But then they made the real discovery. Under the fortress were even older ruins. The ruins of Ubar. This was not the kind of lost mythical city anyone expected to uncover. It didn't have public squares, pyramids, temples or marble fountains. Ubar was primarily tents with a single fort at its heart. The stronghold at the center of Ubar must have been the most formidable in the whole world. It had eight walls, each one two feet thick and 12 feet tall. On each corner was a defensive tower 30 feet tall. It was ready for the siege of the century. Additionally, archaeologists found a giant sinkhole that appears to have swallowed a large part of the city. Ubar really was swallowed by the sands like the Quran says. It makes you wonder how many other mythical cities might be real. Maybe way more than archaeologists admit. But before you get too excited, I have one little fact to share. According to the scientific team who excavated Ubar, it was not destroyed by God. It was destroyed because it was built on top of a limestone cavern. Oops. Here's a little architectural advice. Don't build your city on top of a cave. Eventually, the weight of Ubar caused the cavern to collapse like a cheap camping chair. The result was a catastrophic sinkhole that gobbled up most of the city. After that event, everyone left. Wouldn't you? Or would you stick around and be the only guy living in a collapsed city halfway inside a crater? The Lost Empire of Tartaria The myth of Tartaria might be the weirdest conspiracy to take root in the modern psyche. Forget a lost city, a lost continent, or a lost realm of paradise. Tartaria is a lost global empire. According to believers, Tartaria was a high-tech, world-spanning mega-civilization that rivaled Atlantis, invented free energy, and had a thing for elaborate towers and gorgeous architecture. Never mind that you won't find it in history books. That's the point, say the conspiracy theorists. They believe Tartaria was erased, scrubbed from memory like that one time you were abducted by aliens. You don't remember. This is actually a bit confusing because the Tartars actually existed. Historically speaking, the Tartars were a real ethnic group. The term was used by Europeans and Russians for centuries to describe a wide variety of Central Asian peoples, from the Mongols to the Crimean Tatars. They were nomadic warriors that specialized in horseback riding and warfare. But the Tartarian empire was said to stretch from Siberia and parts of Central Asia, including Mongolia, and went all the way to Afghanistan. But this empire is not in any history book. And here's where the conspiracy begins. Because this empire is not in any history book, that means it was intentionally erased. In conspiracy lore, the Tartars were not nomads or warriors. They were architects of wonder, builders of massive stone cities and electric grid systems powered by free energy. The details are fuzzy on how exactly their free energy worked, but you get the picture. Think Mongol Empire meets Art Deco meets steampunk utopia. But if the Tartars were so advanced and so special, where is the evidence they ever existed? According to theorists, the evidence is all around us. In 2019, as the world watched Notre Dame burn down, many people mourned. To the believers in the Tartarian empire, they watched something different. They believed the burning of Notre Dame was another step in erasing all evidence of Tartaria. To them, it was another piece of Tartarian architecture being erased. They've claimed that the cathedral was never French. It was Tartarian. And it wasn't a church to start out with either. It was a sound bath used by the ancient elite for spiritual spa days, powered by sacred harmonics. Now here's where it gets really sludgy. According to Tartaria enthusiasts, the empire was buried in a cataclysmic event called the Mud Flood. Cities were covered in layers of earth, buildings half submerged. It was essentially the biblical flood, but with muck. The Mud Flood was so devastating that it erased nearly every piece of Tartaria from the world, burying skyscrapers under hundreds of feet of mud. Then the survivors finished the job by destroying everything else built by the Tartarians and started their own new global civilization, aka the New World Order. The theory goes the empire was destroyed by mudslides, and so history was rewritten to make buildings seem younger and more modern. Believers say the evidence is all over the place. Windows below street level, sunken doorways, subterranean cities, and foundations that look like second floors. The U.S. Capitol building, the Taj Mahal, the Chicago Federal Building, all examples of surviving Tartarian architecture. The Tower of Jewels at the 1915 San Francisco World's Fair, a shimmering glass and steel marvel that was bulldozed after the event, is said to have been an ancient capital of the empire, masquerading as a pop-up pavilion. The Swamp Kingdom of Ancient Britain. Britain's mythical swamp kingdom is rising from the dead, and it's got frogs, ghosts, and carnivorous plants. What more could you need? Beneath a moody sky, the mist clings to the land like a door-to-door salesman who just can't let go. Hills loom like sleeping giants, and somewhere out there a frog is plotting a leap that could make Olympic history. Welcome to Somerset, land of ancient kings, swampy secrets, and now one of the wildest comebacks since Cher. For centuries, Glastonbury has been the crown jewel of British myth-making. I'm talking King Arthur, the Holy Grail, Jesus allegedly popping over for a gap year. This place has more legends than your dad's vinyl collection. The town itself is like if Woodstock and Hogwarts had a baby. There is incense in the air, crystals on every shelf, and a strong chance someone will try to read your aura while you're ordering coffee. But in Somerset, the real magic isn't in the myths. It's in the mud. Not the mud flood, though. We've moved past that. Somerset's not just mythical, it's historical. In the 9th century, Alfred the Great was out here fighting Vikings and laying the groundwork for England. Fast forward a few hundred years, monks at Glastonbury Abbey were burying signs that read, Arthur was here, just to boost tourism. The land itself tells a juicier story. The Somerset Levels, once a vast inland sea, used to be a soggy paradise where salmon, beavers, lynx, and wild horses hung out like it was Eden, with more mosquitoes. High spots like Glastonbury Tor and Athelney were islands floating in a kingdom of swamp. This is what the whole region looked like 2,000 years ago. Then the Romans arrived and went full DIY. They drained the vast natural wetlands so they could plant their own stuff. They completely changed the landscape in the most Roman way possible. But now, the Avalon Marshes Project is rejuvenating the soggy lands. They are rehydrating the area, pumping water back into dry soil like it's a botanical spa day. It's all part of an attempt to save the squishy soil and bring back nature. Louise Treneman is the senior reserve manager and a local nature whisperer. She explained that some places, like Shapway Keefe, are more than 500 hectares of what can only be described as prime frog real estate. Picture muddy paths flanked by wet woodlands, willow trees flexing over mirrored water, and the occasional leaping amphibian. It sounds fantastic, right? Now imagine what it was like during the Dark Ages, when Somerset was supposedly home to King Arthur. The Wizard Merlin, craggy castles, thatched-roofed houses, and everything else your brain can come up with. I can take you even further back, 6,000 years in the past to when Somerset was home to Neolithic humans. In the swamps, archaeologists found evidence of what they call the Sweet Track. It's a wooden walkway older than the pyramids, discovered perfectly preserved in the peat. The Sweet Track is the oldest known human-made trackway in the UK, said Julie Merritt from Wessex National Nature Reserves. It is a big deal, and it tells us a ton about Neolithic life. Archaeologists also found jadeite axes from the Italian Alps, and a wooden toy axe that could possibly be the UK's oldest known toy. The jadeite artifacts prove that people in the UK were part of a widespread trading network, even before Stonehenge was built. To keep the Sweet Track from turning into dust, scientists have buried it back under the peat. But don't worry. If you visit, there is a life-size reconstruction you can walk on, just in case you feel like channeling your inner prehistoric swamp hiker. Go ahead and hit that subscribe button now so you don't miss out on any updates. The Lost Continent of Argoland How would you like to track down yet another lost continent? Grab your butterfly net and seismic radar because this is going to be a big hunt. 155 million years ago, a chunk of Earth roughly the size of 5,000 Atlantises straight-up yeeted itself away from Australia and disappeared. No tombs, no hieroglyphs, no dramatic scarabs. The whole continent vanished. Scientists knew this happened because the Argo-Abyssal Plain, a cool name for a literal deep-sea dent, marks the exact spot where Argoland pieced out. But for decades, no one could figure out where the continent went. It seems ridiculous to lose a continent, but here we are. Years and years went by, with the best geologists in the game staring at maps, scratching their heads, and mumbling things like, well, that's weird. One of the people searching for Argoland was Utrecht University geologist Dawi van Hinsberg. He said that if continents can just sink into the Earth's mantle and vanish without a trace, then scientists basically have no idea what Earth used to look like. It's a real dilemma. Luckily, Argoland never vanished. It didn't break off Australia in one monstrous piece. It shattered like a window hit by a meteor. Using new plate reconstruction software, scientists ran the tectonic clock backward, starting from today all the way to the Triassic period. What they found was wild. Argoland had already been cracking up into fragments before it even left Australia. By the time it set off on its own, 155 million years ago, it was already a loose click of wandering land bits. When it detached, it broke into a bunch of pieces, and they went sailing in random directions across the globe like souvenirs from a really dramatic breakup. Today, pieces of the long-lost Argoland have been tracked down like a trail of ancient breadcrumbs. They're hiding in places like Southwest Borneo, East Java, South Sulawesi, West Burma, Greater Paternoster, and Mount Victoria. Argoland's pieces are scattered across Southeast Asia like a backpacker with unlimited night bus tickets. Whether it was home to a civilization or not, no one can say. If it was, all evidence is long gone, destroyed while Argoland split up like a failed boy band. Forget passport stamps and biometric scans. In ancient Greece, if you wanted VIP access to paradise after death, you got buried with a thin slab of engraved gold foil. It looked a lot like a ticket to Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, but in fact, it was a golden ticket to get into heaven. These sparkling spiritual cheat codes were your all-access passes to the Elysian Fields, the divine penthouse of the underworld, where the grass is eternally green, the olives are juicy, and nobody is stuck pushing boulders uphill for eternity. Tough break, Sisyphus. These lamella were tiny, shiny pieces of gold inscribed with ritual instructions, tucked into graves like the ultimate cosmic boarding pass. Found from Crete to Calabria, they told the gods who you were, where you were headed, and most importantly of all, that you were pure, sacred, and not just another soul trying to sneak past Cerberus with an expired ID. Here's the inscription from one such golden passport. I'm from the pure. I'm one of yours. I'm super holy. Oh, and fate kind of took me out, so please show me to the nice lounge and not the burning pit. I think we can all empathize with whoever commissioned this golden ticket. I too would rather be in the nice lounge than the burning pit. But why was this so important to the Greeks? Because in Greek myth, there were two main places you could go after death. Tartarus was a horrifying pit of doom where the bad guys and anyone who annoyed Zeus got eternal detention. Elysium was the garden club for heroes, philosophers, and people with excellent connections. It was heaven and hell, but with a twist. If you paid your fee up front while alive, you didn't even need to worry about going to the bad place. In ancient Greece, the privilege of wealth transcended death. Elysium was basically no poors allowed. The biggest mystery is where the golden tickets came from. Historians think it was a cult who started the trend, but no one knows which cult is responsible. The Greeks had cults dedicated to every god under the sun, including some whose names have probably been erased from history altogether. While Elysium is not a mythical lost city or a sunken continent, it is still a legendary paradise. And the Greeks were obsessed with it. They literally paid extra money to ensure they landed in the good part of the underworld. They invented gold-plated spiritual insurance before cryptocurrency and pyramid schemes even existed. Egypt's Lost Cities Egypt, land of pharaohs, pyramids, and missing cities. Beneath the golden sands and sometimes even under the sea, lie entire cities lost to time. Buried so well that not even Brendan Fraser has any hope of finding them. Sorry, Brendan. You know you're the only mummy hunter for us. While archaeologists have recently unearthed a few forgotten metropolises, some of Egypt's greatest ancient cities are still playing hide-and-seek. But there are two that scientists think could be revealed soon. Why? Because archaeology recently got a tech upgrade. Let's start in Egypt's New Kingdom around 1570 BC. This was one of the greatest periods of the nation. There were pharaohs like Amos I, Hatshepsut, Amenhotep III, Akhenaten, and good old Tutankhamen, the original boy king. Their capital cities like Thebes and Memphis are awesome, but not big surprises. Scientists know them, we've mapped them, and you've probably seen documentaries about them narrated by British accents. Before all the glitz and glam of King Tut and Memphis, there were the cities of Finnis and Itawi. Both are said to have been magnificent examples of Egyptian engineering and city planning. Both are legends in their own right, but both are also hopelessly lost. Now it's time to meet Dr. Chris Naunton, an archaeologist, historian, and all-around ancient Egypt fanatic. This guy isn't just brushing sand off artifacts, he's so deep in ancient history he's got sand in his ears. In a recent interview, Chris Naunton dropped some seriously thrilling news. Archaeologists might finally be on the brink of uncovering these two missing cities. It's all thanks to satellites, ground-penetrating radar, and some wildly sophisticated tech that makes your iPhone look like a stone tablet. Excavations are great, said Dr. Naunton, but they take forever. You're telling me. Waiting for archaeology news is like waiting for the tooth fairy to finally give me that 20 she owes me. However, with non-invasive methods like radar and electrical resistivity tomography, researchers can see the outlines of buildings and entire neighborhoods in an instant. This is extremely important because Naunton explained how the Nile River shifts, and it may have hidden or displaced these ancient cities over time. Picture building your dream home next to a river, only to have the river ghost you like a flaky tinder match. Without any water, entire towns had to relocate, leaving behind ruins that would probably never be found without modern technology. So now, with the Nile's ancient meanderings being mapped and high-tech radar bouncing through the desert like an army of echolocating bats, experts believe they are closing in on Thenes and Etawi. But they still haven't found them yet. Etawi was a royal city supposedly founded by Pharaoh Amenemhat I between 1991 and 1962. BC, that is. I knew you were paying attention. It was the capital of Egypt for more than 400 years, which makes the fact it's never been found kind of mind-blowing. It would be like if Rome just disappeared and no one ever found it. Thenes, on the other hand, was perhaps the earliest known capital of Egypt. It was established as early as 6,000 years ago, predating the pyramids by a lot. Not a single trace of it has ever been found. And to be honest, it might not even be real. Most mentions of it come from the Book of the Dead, which was used to navigate the afterlife. Not the most credible source for mystical cities. Myth or reality? Until someone digs these cities up, we'll never know. Korea's Lost City of Daggers A city whispered about in legend. A city forged in myth, guarded by warriors and ruled by a demigod, one of heaven and earth. This city was Wangjeomseong, the capital of Gojoseon, Korea's first and most mysterious kingdom. To this day, no one knows exactly where it is. According to Korean legend, the Gojoseon kingdom was founded in 2333 BC by Dangun, the divine son of a heavenly prince and a woman who had once been a bear. Yeah, Korean myths are intense. He descended from the sacred mountain, established his throne, and began the lineage of Korean civilization. But not everyone agrees with this series of events. Chinese texts place Gojoseon's emergence somewhere around the 7th century BC. That's still ancient, but lacking a divine spark. It seems the truth lies between myth and written record. If only the ruins could be found. In the 1960s, an extraordinarily rare joint excavation between China and North Korea uncovered something astonishing. They dug up a royal necropolis in China's Liaoning province. It was filled with elaborate wooden coffins, bronze treasures, and something even more important, mandolin-shaped daggers. Who cares about weird knives? Archaeologists, that's who. These daggers weren't just weapons, they were symbols. Smooth, standardized, and completely unique to the culture of Gojoseon, mandolin-shaped knives quickly became the Rosetta Stones of Korean archaeology. Found in abundance at the Liaoning site, the knives suggest that this was no mere burial ground. It may have been the outskirts of Wangjeongseong itself. Archaeologists uncovered 23 massive tombs holding more than 140 individuals, each buried with care, status, and an air of mystery. Could the lost city be just beyond those ancient tombs? Maybe, but it still hasn't been found. For years, scholars believed this city lay beneath modern-day Pyongyang, North Korea's capital city. But the necropolis in Liaoning tells a different story. Jin Min-li, a researcher at the National Museum of Korea, points to the widespread discovery of Gojoseon-style daggers as compelling evidence that Wangjeongseong's heart may have beat in what is now China instead of Korea. Official Chinese histories declare Gojoseon fell in 108 BC, its rulers defeated, and its lands absorbed. But there's more to the story than that. The kingdom of Gojoseon probably didn't die abruptly, but sputtered out over decades. Wooden coffins in the Gojoseon style continued to appear across what is now North Korea well into the first century AD. That means the culture, traditions, and possibly even remnants of royal bloodlines lived on for a century after their supposed downfall. But the city itself is still missing. Some are starting to think it never existed at all. Thanks for watching! Be sure to stay tuned for extra content you might have missed. Monte Alto The ancient people of Monte Alto had an unusual understanding of magnetism. The pre-Maya civilization possessed incredible advanced knowledge that many societies wouldn't know for thousands of years to come. In fact, scientists still don't completely understand the properties that rule magnetic fields. The civilization of Monte Alto lived centuries before the Maya in modern-day Guatemala. They flourished between 500 BC and 100 BC, then slowly faded into historic obscurity. But before they vanished, they experimented with magnets. There are stone sculptures and gigantic stone heads that they left behind that are mysteriously magnetized. These ancient people used very specific stones that had been magnetized by lightning strikes to build their sculptures. The culture became obsessed with it. They preferred to build their sculptures only with stones that exhibited what to them must have felt like a magical force. The Monte Alto were not the only early civilization to notice the peculiarity of magnetism. The Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus described the uncanny attraction between lodestone and iron in the 6th century BC. If the Greeks noticed it, and the Mesoamerican civilizations noticed it, chances are other people did too. Unfortunately, we still don't know much about the Monte Alto culture. They lived in massive communities, built pyramids and other grand structures, and were ruled by an elite class who dictated local religions. They mostly lived along the Pacific coast, and loved building giant stone heads just like the Olmec civilization. But we don't know what language they spoke, what they believed in, or what their obsession with magnetism was really all about. LOST HAWAII The true story of the Hawaiian islands is much more mysterious than most people realize. The truth about Hawaii is that the islands were likely inhabited by a mysterious race of tiny humans known as Menehune. Legend describes these miniature people as dwarves, residing deep in the jungles and down in the hidden valleys. They were the first humans to live in Hawaii, possessing advanced knowledge of stone cutting and engineering. Many believe it was the Menehune, real-life dwarves, responsible for great works in Hawaii that have baffled specialists for years. For example, the Menehune Ditch on the island of Kauai. The Menehune Ditch looks like almost nothing today. It's a few smooth blocks of basalt stone that you wouldn't even notice if you walked by, because they are so overgrown with grass. It looks like it could've been a wall or perhaps an ancient aqueduct. The one thing that's for sure is that it's unlike any other construction in Hawaii. The engineering technique was more advanced than the techniques used later by the Tahitian migrants in the 14th century. Whoever built this thing likely built other mighty marvels thousands of years ago, but they have since been destroyed by settlers and volcanic activity. The architects very well may have been the mysterious Menehune, an undocumented ancient species of human that looked more like the dwarves from Lord of the Rings. The Vascones The Vascones was not a civilization so much as a tribe of people whose history has largely been forgotten. This tribe lived in Europe during the Iron Age over 2,000 years ago. Specifically, they had their center in northern Spain. The Vascones lived in small mudbrick houses and had a rudimentary understanding of architecture. The recent discovery of a life-sized bronze hand has revealed some important new insights into their lost culture. The bronze hand is an artifact called the Hand of Irulegi. It was found by archaeologists with the Aransari Science Society during a dig near the city of Pamplona. The hand immediately captivated scientists because it's engraved with strange symbols. There are inscriptions that could reveal the root of one of the most mysterious languages in the world. Researchers say the inscriptions represent the oldest written form of Proto-Basque. This is a big deal for a few reasons. Scholars didn't think the Vascones ever created their own written language. But the Hand of Irulegi is evidence to the contrary. Professor Javier Belaza says the hand is evidence of a written Basconic language. It was likely the base language or the earliest form of modern Basque, a language that is still spoken in Spain to this very day. The discovery changes the way scientists are looking at the Vascones. This may have not just been another early European tribe. This was an advanced people who created their own written words, something not many early civilizations knew how to do. The Getty Ruins The Getty Ruins in Kenya are buried in a lush forest alongside the Indian Ocean. The ruins were originally part of a thriving town founded in the 13th century. The whole place has been a troubling mystery for scientists, who can't figure out why it was abandoned, or even how it was developed. The ruins today consist of broken coral brick houses, a destroyed mosque, and the scraps of shockingly advanced infrastructure. The town had flushing toilets, running water in the houses, and expertly planned city streets. Archaeologists used to believe Africa was extremely far behind the rest of the world in the building of civilizations. But places like the Getty Ruins prove otherwise. This place was a highly functioning urban metropolis, a city rich from trade, and built by advanced humans who knew exactly what they were doing. To make things even stranger, archaeologists have found vases from Ming China, Venetian glass, and other artifacts from around the globe. There were even Muslim inhabitants in this coastal Kenyan town, showing it was likely very multicultural. But who in the world lived here? The answer is that nobody knows. The site was first discovered in 1948, but we still don't know who this civilization was, or who built it. We also don't know why it was abruptly abandoned, and left to its isolation. And now for number 6, but first I wanted to give a big shout out to LA and Blaine Acevedo. Thanks so much for watching and supporting Origins Explained. If you are new here, be sure to subscribe and join the family. We'd love to have you! The Pyramid Builders of the Amazon Researchers with the German Archaeological Institute, headed by famed scientist Heiko Prumers, recently published some shocking information in Nature magazine about the jungle. Archaeologists described a pair of settlements that had never been seen before, named Kotoka and Landivar. They also uncovered 24 smaller towns hiding underneath the thick jungle canopy of the Bolivian Amazon. The team did this by using light detection and ranging technology to create a three-dimensional map of the terrain. Studying the map allowed them to see any remains of structures, even ones buried under dense vegetation. It was a pretty big shock when they saw just how massive the Casaraves territory really was. The culture developed around the year 500 AD, continued for nearly 1,000 years, and saw a massive change in the Amazon. It was always thought jungle dwellers in South America were primitive, living with the jungle and not altering their landscape that much. But that wasn't the case at all. The German researchers identified artificial hillocks 15 feet high, gigantic patches of terraformed land up to 22 hectares, ceremonial structures, civil centers, and even pyramids over 60 feet tall. The consensus here is that the Casarave culture was not primitive at all. They perfected tropical urbanism in a way that has not been done since. Sadly, this hasn't solved the mystery of what happened to them, or why they abandoned their jungle cities around 1400 AD. The Minoans and the Lost City of Atlantis 5,000 years ago, the first great civilization in Europe arose. A group of people called the Minoans. These mysterious early humans were unbelievably sophisticated. They are believed to have been the first Europeans to make their own written language, what we today call Linear A. They are also some of the first people to create paved roads, and to blossom as a community of artisans, civic engineers, philosophers, sailors, and scientists. The Minoans, who lived on the Greek island of Crete, were advanced enough that most people believe they were the real inspiration behind the story of Atlantis. When Plato wrote about Atlantis over 2,000 years ago, the Minoans had already been gone for about a millennium. To the ancient Greeks, the Minoans would have been even more mysterious than they are to us, because the Greeks didn't have advanced archaeology and science. We know today that around 1600 BC, the Mediterranean experienced a calamity. A volcanic eruption went off on the island of Santorini, destroying the wealthy Minoan seaport of Akrotiri. The earthquake that caused the eruption also triggered a tsunami, bringing general devastation to the entire area, and wiping out the Minoans in one brutal wave of death. This is likely the calamity that Plato talked about when describing Atlantis, making an undeniable connection between Atlantis and the Minoans. But the biggest mystery is still trying to figure out where the Minoans came from, and how they were so much more sophisticated than any other culture of the day. New Discoveries at Sanxingdui Sanxingdui was an ancient culture from the Bronze Age in China. The culture was first identified in 1928 when a farmer came across a mysterious deposit of jade relics while digging an irrigation ditch. Excavations around the original discovery were conducted in 1934. But it wouldn't be until 1986 that archaeologists found the real treasure. That was when they uncovered two sacrificial pits containing over 900 artifacts. I'm talking about a true treasure hoard of bronze, gold, and ivory. The treasure is dated from between 2700 and 1000 BC. That means the Sanxingdui culture existed many centuries before the pits were made, then reached their peak thousands of years ago. This was before the pyramids were built in Egypt, making the Sanxingdui culture just as advanced as the Egyptians in terms of architecture and urbanism. Maybe even more. Since 2019, Chinese archaeologists have been hard at work trying to excavate the entire site. So far, it appears to have been the Sanxingdui culture's only major city. But we don't know who these people were, where they came from, or what they believed in. There are so many questions left unanswered, and the discoveries made only raise more questions. In 2020, there were six new sacrificial pits found adjacent to the two original pits from 1986. They contained even more artifacts, many of them made from highly prized ivory. Researchers speculate that the culture believed in some mighty deity that craved offerings, and perhaps even demanded blood offerings. There's a high probability the mysterious Sanxingdui culture participated in human sacrifice. Subterranean Humans Throughout history, people have taken to living underground for various reasons. When there isn't enough wood to build a house, people will tunnel into the earth. In places where the climate is too extreme to be out in the open, people seek shelter underground. In Turkey, there are great underground cities like Derinkuyu, designed to hold tens of thousands of people for prolonged periods of time. But has there ever been a subterranean civilization of ancient humans? According to expert Will Hunt, who wrote the book on human civilization underground, the answer is a little complicated. Most subterranean dwellings were not as complex as the ones found in Turkey. People have lived in natural underground caverns for as long as we've been evolving. And if there's something easy to dig into, like soft volcanic rock, ancient people tended to create cozy homes called dugouts. The truth is that it's entirely possible that there could have been a subterranean civilization of humans we haven't found yet. Living underground has not shown to cause any negative psychological side effects, as long as there's ample lighting and the rooms are big enough. Will Hunt even believes that in the next 30 years, modern humans will start burrowing underground more and more. It looks like the underground cities of Turkey will make a resurgence as humans go back into the earth. What do you think? Let me know in the comments below! The Forgotten Kingdom of Ebla In 2334 BC, the Akkadian Empire was founded by Sargon the Great in southern Mesopotamia. It grew to be one of the greatest empires in human history, stretching all the way to Anatolia. Across the Euphrates River was another civilization, one that scientists didn't know about until much recently. Because up until the 1960s, archaeologists viewed Syria, on the other side of the old Akkadian border, as nothing but a backwater where no civilization could have possibly thrived. It wasn't until Italian archaeologist Paolo Mattiei took an interest that the Forgotten Kingdom of Ebla was finally identified. This came with the discovery of Tel Mardik in 1964, about 37 miles from Aleppo. Excavations continued for four years until the discovery of a monumental statue in 1968. The statue was dedicated to the goddess Ishtar, commissioned by King Ibitlim of Ebla. At this point archaeologists were in agreement that Syria had a lot more to offer. There was clearly a great society here with their own pantheon of gods, their own king, and their own grand cities. Even more shocking was the revelation that Ebla had been in direct contact with Akkad, as is mentioned in Akkadian texts. We now know that Ebla existed around 4,400 years ago at the latest. They had trading partners across the world, with links as far as Egypt and Afghanistan. They practiced amazing craftsmanship, creating fine works out of gold, ivory, and even lapis lazuli. But their mighty civilization came to an end around 2000 BC, when the Akkadians stole their land and ruined their city, the Nazca. The Nazca people of Peru flourished starting around the 2nd century BC, and continued living relatively peacefully until about 700. And while they are most famous for the geoglyphs they left carved into the earth, they were a lot more than that. They made distinctive pottery, built impressive urban cities like Cahuachi and Ventilla. They spread all through the Nazca region and were made up largely of chiefdoms. It was a lot of individual groups, connected through mutual interests and shared cultural coherence. The most shocking part is that there were very few of them. Experts have guessed there were only about 25,000 people in Nazca, divided throughout small villages built near irrigated floodplains. The one thing the Nazca excelled at is textiles. Archaeologists have found evidence that they traded their textiles with groups in the highlands and even further away. The Nazca also practiced mummification, wrapping their dead in cloth and burying them in deep shafts, much like how the Egyptians did it. And then of course there are the Nazca lines. A group of dozens of geoglyphs carved into the desert with strange symbols and weird creatures. Experts still don't understand what the purpose of these lines were, nor really how the Nazca built them when you can't even see the shape unless you're flying hundreds of feet above. Thanks for watching! What's your favorite lost ancient civilization? Let me know in the comments below and be sure to hit that subscribe button if you haven't already. See you next time! Bye!