25 Most Amazing Archaeological Finds

Heilongtang Castle in China made history in 2015 when it became the first designated world cultural heritage site in the country's Gizhou province. Archaeologists say that the castle is the largest, oldest and best preserved of all the Tusi settlements in China. Over the many years it was in use, it served as a military citadel, a temporary imperial palace and government offices. Historical records indicate that work on the castle was completed in the year 1257, which makes it a product of the Southern Song Dynasty. It remained in use until at least the start of the 17th century and perhaps even a little longer than that. The extensive facilities within the castle during its peak years would have included administration offices, multiple living quarters, several water wells and handicraft factories. Its primary purpose was military defense, but it also contained leisure facilities for people who called it home. Most of the wooden structures inside the castle were destroyed by fire during the Pingo Battle in the year 1600, but the stone walls remain standing. The theory that the dinosaurs were wiped out by an enormous meteor impact is increasingly becoming accepted as fact, and that process is helped along by discoveries like this one. It's a massive pile of fossilized fish layered on top of each other. Scientists believe that they were deposited here 65 million years ago in the aftermath of the impact of the meteor that killed the dinosaurs. The sea that the fish lived in would have turned into a 30-foot-tall wave when the meteor hit, tossing the sturgeon and paddlefish onto a sandbar and stranding them there to be pelted by glass beads raining down from the sky. Around 20 minutes later, a second wave hit, covering the fish in sediment and gravel and condemning them to fossilization. The fish and the dinosaurs weren't the only victims of the impact. Some scientists estimate that the disaster wiped out around 75% of the life that existed on Earth at the time. Nowhere else in the world have scientists found evidence of so many creatures that died on the same day at the same time. We're heading back to China now to take a closer look at a tomb discovery from 2011. It's the plainly named Tomb 13 at Han Dynasty Cemetery Complex in Shaanxi Province, and the only tomb in the entire complex that was discovered to be full of bamboo containers. Experts believe that the containers were probably full of delicacies and desserts when the tomb's occupant was buried, suggesting that whoever they were, they may have been known for their sweet tooth. Proving who was buried here will most likely never be possible, but the most likely candidate is a daughter-in-law of a high-ranking Western Han Dynasty official, Zhang Anshi, who died a little over 2,100 years ago. The entire tomb complex was built for Zhang and his extended family. The tombs are thought to have been designed to reflect the lives of the people buried in them, so when the time came to bury this woman, she presumably went to her resting place with all her favourite meals. Archaeologists also found a wooden lacquer box inside the tomb, but thus far, they haven't been able to open it and aren't sure what it contains. You'll have to excuse this whale for not looking its best. It's been dead for 5,000 years, so we think it has a reasonable excuse. The massive whale skeleton was discovered in Thailand in late 2020, close to Bangkok, and just over 7 miles away from the coast. The skeleton is 40 feet long and almost perfectly preserved. Its excellent state of preservation has allowed experts to identify it as a bride's whale. The species still exists in the waters around Thailand today, but is considered endangered and is an officially protected species. The fact that the skeleton was found such a long way from the coast is evidence of significant changes to the sea level in the Gulf of Thailand during the past 5,000 years. It seems the sea once came much further inland than it does now. Scientists hope that the whale discovery will provide them with fresh insight into the cause of the change in the sea levels and better their understanding of bride's whales. From studying the deposits around the whale, they may be able to reconstruct the biological communities that existed at the time and compare them to the biological communities of today. We love an archaeological site that has a literal name, so let's check out Riding-on-Stone Provincial Park in Alberta, Canada. As you might expect from the name, the park is full of First Nations rock art, including paintings and inscriptions that some have interpreted as writing, although that interpretation is controversial. The inscriptions are certain to have symbolic meaning, but that alone doesn't qualify them as writing. The Blackfoot name for the park is Aesinaipi, which translates as It is Pictured, and is probably a more accurate description. This is the largest concentration of pictographs and petroglyphs anywhere in North America. Archaeologists know that people have lived in the area for more than 3,000 years, but the earliest of the carvings here is far more recent, with an age of close to 700 years, Although most of the work was created by the Blackfoot, the oldest are the work of the Shoshone. This appears to have been a spiritually important place for both tribes. The park is protected to ensure that the glyphs are preserved, which means that parts of it are off-limits to visitors, but the Hoodoo hiking trail remains open and allows tourists to see the best of the work so long as they don't mind a long walk and a bit of a climb. In October 2020, Spanish farmer Gonzalo Crespo was plowing his olive grove exactly the same way he's done it for years, when his tractor collided with an object. He thought it was a large stone, but that illusion was quickly dispelled when he got out of the tractor to take a closer look. The object of Gonzalo's tractor hit was a 3,000-year-old sculpture of a lioness hunting its prey. Aside from some unfortunate damage to the nose caused by the impact of the tractor, the statue is in excellent condition and is now in the hands of the Archaeological Museum of Cordoba. This is an especially valuable find because, while there are documents that cover the history of this area during the Roman era, very few physical Roman-era discoveries have ever been made here. In fact, Gonzalo's statue is already thought to be one of the most significant Roman-era finds in the region's history. The symbolic meaning of the statue is unknown, and it might not have any symbolic meaning at all beyond suiting the artistic tastes of whoever commissioned and owned it. It most likely once stood on the grounds of a villa, although there's no signs of the villa in the surrounding land. Humans have enjoyed making and wearing jewelry and accessories since time immemorial. Our tastes in what constitutes stunning jewelry have changed somewhat during that time, but the best examples of the art form look beautiful in any era. As evidence of that, we present this 3,000-year-old gold jewelry that was discovered in a tomb in Cyprus in early December 2021. There were more than 500 artifacts inside the tomb complex, along with the remains of over 150 individuals, but nothing quite as remarkable as the jewelry. Such is its quality that archaeologists now think that the tombs may have belonged to the region's ruling elite. That theory is backed up by the fact that even young children were buried with valuable golden objects like a tiny tiara, necklace, and a pair of solid gold earrings found with the remains of a five-year-old. Elsewhere in the tombs, the experts found a ceramic bowl with openings at each end of its body, one to fill it with wine and the other to drink the wine from. This is evidence that feasts were held inside the tombs after they were finished as a way of honoring the dead. England's Chislehurst Caves are an unusual archaeological discovery because, although they're ancient, they're also still a work in progress. New carvings are added regularly, and probably always will be so long as there are people around to add them. The caves run on for more than 22 miles and arguably ought to be called tunnels rather than caves, but it's too late to change their name now. They stretch beneath the suburbs of East London and have been there for thousands of years. How many thousands of years is a matter of some debate. Some historians say that they were created by the Saxons around 1,500 years ago, but other historians say they could be anything up to 8,000 years old. Both might be true. The most recent detailed study suggests that the core areas of the tunnels are around 6,000 years old, but the tunnels that stretch out from the core were added less than 2,000 years ago. There are some signs that the Romans might have carried out the expansion for unknown reasons, but not enough evidence to prove that. In the 20th century, the caverns even hosted performances by Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie, and the Rolling Stones. We're staying in England for our next discovery, but we're heading west from London to Wiltshire. Wiltshire is where you'll find the world-famous site of Stonehenge, but it's also where you'll find the West Kennet Long Barrow. This is one of the largest Neolithic tombs on the British Isles, so large in fact that visitors can walk all the way through it. Historians say that the barrow tomb was created somewhere around 5,600 years ago during the Neolithic era and remained in use for roughly 1,000 years. Around 50 people were buried here during that time. Some were cremated, but there are signs that others were left unburnt and then, for unknown reasons, occasionally removed and then reburied, which led to their bones becoming disarticulated. Archaeologists have also found stone tools, beads, and pottery within the tomb. The mound is covered in grass today, but when it was new, it would have been a bare chalk structure built into a larger chalk ridge. It's 10 feet tall, 300 feet long, and contains a 45-foot-long passage that connects the four internal burial chambers. Visitors, as we mentioned earlier, are welcome, but it's not a place for the claustrophobic. Could a mosaic floor in Edmond, Oklahoma rewrite the history of North America? There's only one way to find out, so let's look at it. The floor, which was discovered in 1969, is peppered with holes that have been interpreted by archaeologists as post holes, into which wooden beams would have once been inserted. It was originally found by construction workers, but it wasn't until professional archaeologists arrived at the scene that the mystery truly began. According to the evidence, this mosaic floor is close to 200,000 years old. That ought to be impossible. In fact, it's so impossible that some scientists refuse to acknowledge it. While they acknowledge that it looks like a mosaic floor, they insist that this is a natural formation, and we only see a mosaic pattern when we look at it because that's what they want to see. However, those same scientists are unable to explain how and why nature inserted perfect post holes in their natural rock formation. Human life as we currently acknowledge didn't exist 200,000 years ago. So if this structure is artificial, we'd love to know who made it. Millions of people enjoy crossword puzzles, but comparatively few of those people are aware that the history of creating crossword puzzles can be traced back thousands of years. Here's one from the ancient city of Smyrna. You'll find the ruins of the settlement within the boundaries of the modern Aegean city of Izmir in Turkey, where it appears on the wall of a 2,500-year-old basilica. Crossword appears to have been written about 500 years after the basilica was built. It contains Greek words that can be read left to right and top to bottom. It would technically be more correct to call it acrostic than a crossword, but it's effectively the same thing. Making sense of the crossword is difficult because it contains the names of people as well as seemingly random Greek words, but there are some who believe it contains encoded information used by early Christians to communicate with each other in secret. There would have been stalls obscuring the wall here 2,000 years ago, so the words would have been hidden. On the other hand, it's just as possible that the crossword was created for the same reason we create crosswords today – as a form of entertainment. There have been more archaeological discoveries made in Egypt within the past two years than there were in the previous 20. Here's another stunning find. It's a sun temple, and it's been hidden from the world for the past 4,500 years. The temple was found beneath the ruins of another ancient temple, and there might yet prove to be another even older temple buried beneath it at this site in Abu Ghraib. It seems that the older temple was only around a century old when the Egyptians decided to build another one on top of it for unknown reasons. The 19th century archaeologists could and perhaps should have found the older temple at the time of the original discovery, but they mistook its mud bricks for a building phase of their discovery rather than a different building. There are historical sources that suggest that six sun temples were once built in this part of Egypt, but this is just the third to be found. Perhaps it would be a good idea for archaeologists to go and look underneath the other previous discoveries to see if they're hiding in there. What was it that inspired the ancient Chinese Hongshan culture to make so many strange statues out of jade? Sadly, unless we find a hidden repository of their knowledge, we may never know. All we can do is appreciate the artistic beauty of their creations and wonder about the processes that created them. Virtually nothing is known about the Hongshan culture, aside from the fact that they were a Neolithic-era culture and they lived in and around China's Liao River. The jade figurines they made are interesting because while they're mostly humanoid in shape, they don't appear to be representations of humans. What people see when they look at them varies from observer to observer. Some people look upon the statues and see dragons or horned beasts. Others see goats, deer, cattle, or other animals. There are even a few examples that look like the classic grey alien that's so beloved by science fiction writers. It's no wonder that some people believe that this ancient community was visited by extraterrestrials. Perhaps it's more likely that these are figurines of the gods that the Hongshan worshipped. If so, they're remarkable works of devotion. There are several recorded examples of long staffs or wands being discovered in the graves of Viking women. The most notable and best preserved of them comes from a grave that was opened several years ago in the Gavla area of Sweden, although a longer one has more recently been found in Fuldby close to Ringsted in Denmark. All of the burials appear to be of wealthy women, but the presence of the staffs isn't thought to be connected to the wealth of the women. Instead, there's a suspicion among Scandinavian archaeologists and historians that these are the Viking equivalents of magic wands and were carried by women believed to be cirruses. The ancient Viking word vulva is thought to mean staff carrier or wand carrier, and it seems that this was an important rank in Viking society, hence the apparent wealth of the women who held it. On more than one occasion, the graves of women buried with these so-called wands have also been found to contain cannabis seeds, suggesting that the cirruses used cannabis to assist with their visions. Henbane, a substance that can induce hallucinations, was also found in the Gavla grave. There's no set size or shape for a puzzling archaeological discovery. They could be so small you could fit them in your pocket, or they could be the size of a whole city. As an example, here are the ruins of El Mirador, overgrown by the Guatemalan jungle in El Petén. The historic settlement dates back to the time of the Mayans, and was once the capital city of their entire civilization. It's almost completely cut off from the world, with no roads leading to it or even going close to it. We've known about it for a long time, but getting close enough to it to explore it properly was an issue for decades. It was first photographed from a plane in 1930, but it wasn't until 1962 that the first detailed expedition reached it. They found that it was wider, deeper, and more intricate than any of the photos it suggested, and also far older than any other existing Mayan city. The site has three pyramids which date back over 2,000 years, one of which is 230 feet tall. We still don't know everything about it, so scientists are carrying out research and conservation work at the same time in an effort to discover more. Our next discovery comes from a temple on Dango, which is a long-standing archaeological site on the Sudan side of the Nile River. It's a 2,600-year-old statue of a Nubian king inscribed with Egyptian hieroglyphics. It was discovered in February 2018. The temple is dedicated to the Egyptian deity Amun, but the statue is a representation of Espelta, ruler of Kush between 593 BCE and 568 BCE. The inscription claims that Espelta was the king of Upper and Lower Egypt, which is a headache for historians who don't believe that Espelta ever ruled Egypt at all. The accepted version of history is that Kush lost control of Egypt during the reign of Tanwe Tamani, almost exactly 100 years before this inscription was made. The statue was discovered in pieces, with the head discovered first, before the torso and fragments of other statues representing the Kushite kings Taharqa and Senka Manusken. It's likely that the statue was once the centerpiece of a display within the temple, but unusually it depicts the king at only half his presumed size. This find doesn't prove that the official version of history is wrong, but it does pose some awkward questions. The lost city of Atlantis is one of the most famous mythical places in the world, and possible explanations for the source of the myth have been found all over the planet. China has an Atlantis of its own, and you'll find it at the bottom of Qiandao Lake. Properly known as Xicheng, an approximation of the City of Lions, it was built during the Eastern Han Dynasty. That means the buildings have stood since around the 2nd century. Unlike the fate that said to a befallen Atlantis, though, the drowning of Xicheng was no accident. The Chinese government needed to create a lake to feed a hydroelectric plant in 1959, and they decided that Xicheng was the perfect location. On the one hand, that sounds like a wanton act of vandalism, but on the other, it's meant that the buildings have been preserved far better than they would be if they were still facing the wind, sun, and rain every day. Most of the buildings remain fully intact, as do the 300 stone arches of the old city. Now that awareness of its existence is increasing, there are plans to build a bridge over the lake and turn Lion City into an unusual tourist attraction. Bram Stoker might have popularized the idea of vampires when he wrote Dracula in 1897, but he didn't invent the concept. The people of Europe believed in and lived in fear of vampires long before Stoker put pen to paper. But no country or populace feared them quite as much as the ancient Polish. The graves of alleged vampires are common discoveries in Poland, but there's a burial site close to the village of Gorzyka in West Poland that's quite unlike any of the others. Three people were buried here between the 14th and 15th centuries, and all of them were brutally mutilated after death. They were each decapitated, punctured in the spine, and impaled through the sacrum before having their severed heads wedged between two stones. A traditionally held Polish belief of the time said that following the process would prevent the vampires from rising from the dead to terrorize the living once more. Tragically, it seems that all three of the people buried here had medical conditions that affected their appearance. They didn't look like the people around them, so the village folk decided they must be vampires and treated them as such, even in death. When is a small round stone not a small round stone? The answer to that question might be when it's part of a board game. Over recent years, we've seen archaeologists recover hundreds of small polished round stones, some of which bear inscriptions from the sites of ancient settlements across the Mediterranean and Aegean. Locations the stones have been found at include Cyprus, Santorini, Crete, Rhodes, and other islands in and around Greece, as well as the Greek mainland. In the past, archaeologists have speculated that the stones might be sling stones, a system of counting or mere tossing balls. More recently, it's been suggested that they might be board game pieces. A research team from the University of Bristol in England has identified patterns within the sphere concentrations and has demonstrated that it's possible to group them by size, colour and the markings on their surfaces. In addition, the same team identified places in Ancrotiri and Santorini where there are shallow cup marks and stone slabs where the spheres might have been placed between 3,600 and 4,500 years ago. If these are all board game pieces, then the game itself would be even older than the ancient Egyptian board game of Senet. But we have no idea how it might have been played. The folklore and fairy tales of Brittany and France say that La Rochaphie was created thousands of years ago by fairies. That myth is reflected in the name of the monument, which translates into English as The Rock of the Fairies. In reality, this is a Neolithic aerostructure that should correctly be referred to as either a dolmen or a galley grave. There are 40 large stones at the site, creating a corridor that's four times longer than it is wide, with a total length of just over 80 feet. This corridor has been aligned with the rising of the sun on the winter solstice. Branching off the corridor are two separate chambers, both of which have entrances that are also aligned with the winter solstice. Back when the dolmen was built, it'd have been topped with a mound made of stones and mud, but they've long since been weathered away, leaving the former interior exposed to the elements. Experts say that La Rochaphie is around 4,500 years old, and while they can rule out the idea that it was built by fairies, they have no idea how the people of the time managed to lift 45-ton stones into place to create it. There hasn't been much of a focus on archaeology in the United Arab Emirates until fairly recently, but that's changed in the past few years, and we're starting to see the fruits of that change. In September 2022, a huge Iron Age ceramic jar was found in the Emirate of Sarjah. Experts believe it to be around 3,000 years old, and have hailed it as evidence that there was already a bustling trade scene in Sarjah all those years ago. It's hard to get a sense of the size of the artifact from these pictures, so let's look at the measurements. The jar is almost exactly 5 feet tall and has a body diameter of 4 feet and 5 inches. It's too large to fit through the door of the building it was found inside, so archaeologists have concluded that the room must have been built around it, ruling out the idea that it was made inside the room. Historians in Sarjah aren't yet sure what the container was used for, but it's possible that it was once full of incense. There was an incense trade route between Persia and the southern Arabian Peninsula thousands of years ago, and Sarjah might have been an important stop on that route. Our next strange discovery takes us to what appears to be the set of a horror movie, sitting right in the middle of a beautiful Italian garden. These terrifying carved statues and caves are known as the Monsters of Bamarzo, and they've been giving people nightmares since they were built during the 16th century. Prince Pierre Francesco Orsini commissioned the creation of the strange spectacle in 1552, and he never meant for them to be beautiful. The prince was struggling with his mental health at the time, he'd battled through a brutal war, and had lost both his best friend and his wife in separate incidents. The monster garden was to be an expression of his grief. Piero Ligurio was the architect chosen to realize this vision, an interesting choice given that Ligurio was known for more refined works like the Cathedral of St. Peter. If the massive screaming head in the middle of the garden doesn't scare you, perhaps its accompanying inscription will. It reads simply, All Reason Departs. Standing next to it is a giant fish head, and a giant tearing another giant in two. The whole place is a monument to violent insanity. The Zee Wee Horde is either a fascinating and unique treasure discovery, or an elaborate hoax. Those who believe it to be a hoax will likely never be convinced that it's genuine. And the reverse is true of those who believe it to be genuine. The official story of the Horde, which is made up of a dazzling collection of ivory, gold, and silver artifacts carved in a variety of styles, is that it was found in Zee Wee, close to Saqqez City in Iran in 1947. There are several reasons to doubt that claim. The biggest is that there are three different artistic styles on show among the artifacts – Mesopotamian, Scythian, and Persian. That makes them exceptionally unlikely to have been discovered together. The second reason to doubt their provenance is that they were allegedly found by local peasants, and no professional archaeologist ever saw the site of their discovery. In fact, the precise location of the site remains unknown to this day. Many of the objects were then sold by the peasants, making it hard to now say what was part of the original Horde and what wasn't. It's possible, perhaps even likely, that many of the objects in the Horde as it exists today don't belong to the original discovery. It's also possible that there never was any such discovery, and the alleged Horde is actually a collection of black market goods. Sometime between 1601 and 1700, hundreds of mortuary crosses were made from lead and used as grave markers in London. It was once thought that the crosses were much older, dating to the time of the Black Death outbreak of the 14th century. But now we know this isn't the case. A recent study by archaeologists and historians Bruce Watson and Barney Sloan has concluded that while it's true that the crosses mark the location of mass burial pits of the kind you'd normally associate with a plague, the individual burials within the pits are separated into small shafts. This isn't a process you'd normally associate with a mass plague outbreak. They've also been able to scientifically prove beyond doubt that these are 17th century burials. They've also been able to scientifically prove beyond doubt that these are 17th century burials Rather than the Black Death, Watson and Sloan believe the burial pits are connected to the former Newgate Jail, which once stood in this part of London and may have been troubled by an outbreak of something like typhus. As for the unusually plain, rough lead crosses, they appear to have been made by unskilled hands and might even have been created by the prisoners themselves as a mark of respect for either their dying cellmates or even themselves when they became ill.