25 Most Amazing Archaeological Finds

They say that one man's trash is another man's gold. That's a motto that archaeologists believe in. The artifacts and objects thrown away by our ancestors thousands of years ago can be very much like gold to the people who find them today. And we don't just mean because of their value. Any ancient artifact comes with the potential to teach us new things about our ancestors, as you're about to see in this video. If we were to ask you to picture an astronomical observatory, you'd probably think of a large domed building with a huge telescope poking out of the top, pointed toward the skies. 4,000 years ago, though, an observatory would look more like the archaeological complex of La Cernica in the Lambayaca region of Peru. Historians say that this site contains some of the very earliest astronomical observations and Many of these observations are engraved on stone altars, which implies a connection between astronomy and religion in the ancient Peruvian culture. On flat surface rocks, archaeologists found records of the movements of stars. It's thought that these movements were used to measure the passage of time, thus allowing ancient scientists to determine when to plant crops or when the rains were likely to come. Nobody knows for sure which culture or civilization made these markings. There are Hispanic and Andean influences here, as well as yet-unidentified markings from what's thought to be an older culture. Perhaps all three cultures came here to watch the stars, each one making use of the findings of their predecessors. There's a place called Grotte de Ruffignac in Dordogne, France, which is far better known to archaeologists by its nickname. They like to call it the Cave of a Hundred Mammoths. This enormous series of caverns, which stretches on for over eight kilometers, is like an ancient art gallery that's been added to by culture after culture for thousands of years. The first human markings on the walls here date back to the Paleolithic era and are joined by Neanderthal paintings, but we also see later examples taking us through the Mesolithic, Neolithic, and Bronze Ages. The nature of the paintings is extensive and varied, but the recurring theme is mammoths. As the nickname implies, there are around 100 pieces of art based on mammoths here, including carvings and line drawings. The caves were used as a shelter and a secret meeting place for members of the French Resistance during the Second World War, but it's thought that the cave art somehow went unnoticed until it was discovered by Professor Louis-René Nouget in 1956. Scientific testing carried out in later years suggests that the oldest paintings were made around 15,000 years ago. The celebration of Halloween is generally associated with American culture, but its true origins are far more ancient. It was once thought to be impossible to pin down the precise location of the first Halloween celebration. But in 2014, archaeologists announced that they believe they've found it in Ireland. If they're right, the first-ever feast and bonfire to mark All Hallows' Eve was held at Lochta, also known as the Hill of Ward in County Meath, Ireland in the very early 6th century. The location appears to be consistent with the 17th-century writings of Geoffrey Keating, who said that the Feast of Samhain was regularly observed by the lighting of a large fire on a hilltop in Meath during his lifetime. Archaeological evidence of intense burning has been identified at the site, and appears to show layer upon layer of fire upon fire going back many centuries. Samhain was later taken and turned into All Souls' Day by Christians in much the same way they took Saturnalia and turned it into Christmas. It's possible that there were older Halloween celebrations in Ireland than the ones that happened at Lochta, but this is the way the evidence is pointing. The origins of our species are still largely a mystery to us, and every time we think we're getting close to putting the picture together, we find another piece of the jigsaw that doesn't seem to fit. In August 2021, scientists and archaeologists announced the discovery of a previously unknown group of human beings in Liangpanning Cave in Sulawesi. Analysis of the DNA of a 7,000-year-old hunter-gatherer who was found in a burial pit inside the cave has revealed that her genetic lineage is unlike that of any human found anywhere else in the world. It's known that ancient humans used and lived in the caves of many Indonesian islands as long ago as 50,000 years, so for a previously undetected human group to have been here as comparatively recently as 7,000 years ago is a big shock. It's thought that the female, who was only a teenager when she died, was a member of the Taulian culture, which was confined to a small region of the southwestern peninsula of Sulawesi. The Taulians are known for their unique stone tools, including Marrow's points, but we know almost nothing else about them. There may be a tiny clue here, though. As well as the unknown lineage, her genome also contains traces of the Denisovans, another barely-known human group from Siberia. Could the Denisovans have made it down this far? Ozkanak Underground City in Turkey is a spectacular place, but it's unknown even to many of the people who live in Turkey. It's clear that the people who built it wanted it to remain a secret, too. That's why they built hot oil traps above almost every entrance. Nobody knows how old it is. The hot oil traps were probably created during the medieval era, but there are signs that the stone halls are far older. Nobody in the modern age knew it existed at all until around 1972, when it was found accidentally by a farmer trying to resolve an annoying water drainage issue on his land. The architecture of the city is stunning. It consists of 10 subterranean levels, with a crude, pipe-based communication system existing on each one so messages could be passed from one level to the next. There's also a ventilation and water system. The ventilation and communication systems mark Ozkanak out as different to the other notable Turkish underground cities of Kaymakli and Derinkuyu. While the most common belief of archaeologists is that the city was built by the people of Byzantine Cappadocia, there's a lack of direct archaeological evidence to prove it. There's no shortage of Copper Age burials along the banks of Lake Onega in the Russian Republic of Karelia. But there's something special about the one that was found by archaeologists from the Petrozavodsk State University in August 2021. The research team believes that this burial is that of a very high-status individual, and they're basing that conclusion on the discovery of rare amber jewelry inside the grave. The burial is a narrow oval pit with a red ochre lining. Red ochre repeatedly appears in ancient European burials, but experts have never known why. The jewelry is of a kind that's only ever been seen before in burials in the eastern Baltic region, and includes pendants and buttons along with various flint items of unclear purpose. The amber buttons were once part of a leather cover that was wrapped around the remains of the grave's occupant, with the other items carefully placed around them in two tiers. Whoever this person was, they were buried around 5,400 years ago. The current working theory is that they were a very rich trader who'd come to the area from the eastern Baltic states, but that theory may change as the grave continues to be studied. You might have seen ancient Egyptian mummies in museums before, but we guarantee you that you've never seen mummies as well-dressed as the ones in the Capuchin Monastery catacombs in Palermo, Sicily. This is surely the most morbid of all the tourist attractions on the island. Most of the human bodies here are stuffed into open coffins, but some of them are pinned to the walls. All of them are wearing their finest clothes, just as they were on the day they were buried. The bodies are divided into rooms based on the occupation and social standing that these people had when they were alive. One room is full of monks and priests, for example, while another contains doctors. Women have their own room, as do infants. We don't know the identity of every person in the catacombs, but the oldest is thought to be Friar Silvestro da Gubbio, who passed away in 1599. We also know the youngest, a two-year-old called Rosalia Lombardo, who was sent here when she died in 1920. The more advanced embalming procedure used to treat her body has preserved her so well that she's nicknamed Sleeping Beauty. If an archaeologist living 1,000 years in the future wanted to know more about our present-day culture, they'd probably start with our history books. That's an option that also exists to our present-day historians when studying the cultures of the past. One of the oldest history books in the world is the Palermo Stone, which tells the story of Egypt's first five dynasties, starting in the year 2925 BCE and running through to 2325 BCE. It's called the Palermo Stone because it was found in Sicilia in 1877, but it's one of six fragments of what was once a single stela that stood in an ancient Egyptian temple. The full stela would have been around six feet long, two feet high, and three inches thick. The hieroglyphs that have been delicately carved into both sides of the Palermo Stone feature the names of Egypt's pre-dynastic rulers, followed by a series of columns that each contains information pertinent to one year. Only the most important events of each year were committed to the stone, such as Sneferu ordering a military raid on Nubia during the fourth dynasty, and his armies returning with 7,000 slaves and 200,000 cattle. Annoyingly for archaeologists, the artifact's history prior to 1877 is unknown. Speaking of Nubia, here's the rock-cut tomb of Pennet in Aniba, Lower Nubia. He was the viceroy of Cush during the reign of Ramses VI of Egypt. That means the tomb must have been built around 3,140 years ago. The town of Aniba no longer exists after being flooded by Lake Nasser during times of antiquity, but it was once an important regional seat of power. It might even be the case that the floods helped to preserve the tomb. It wasn't found until the second raising of the Aswan Dam in the early 20th century. The level of respect afforded to Pennet is reflected in the design of the tomb, which includes an offering chapel. At the rear of the tomb is a niche full of reliefs, telling the story of his life. Inscriptions within this niche identify Pennet as the deputy of Wawat and Miam, as well as the viceroy of Cush. Miam is an old name for Aniba. Further inscriptions tell us that members of Pennet's family held the offices of Treasurer of the Two Lands of Miam and Scribe of the White House and Mayor of Miam, but their names and tombs are yet to be found. The site of the Fonte Sacra Su Tempiesu is all that remains of an ancient water cult in the Italian town of Orun. It's a well temple, and it was built roughly 3,300 years ago. The structure is notable for its keyhole-shaped entrance, and the way that the positioning of the stairs and the route to the bottom of the well is designed in such a way that sunlight reaches all the way down on the day of the summer solstice. That's an incredible level of precision engineering for something that's so old. It's thought that this well was built on top of an even older one that was created around three centuries earlier. At some point during the Iron Age, a landslide buried the well and covered it for hundreds of years. It was subsequently rediscovered by accident in 1953, but wasn't excavated and explored by archaeologists until 1981. More recently, scientists have been able to prove that the stone used in the construction of the well mostly came from Dorgali, which is miles away. How the stone was transported is uncertain, and why it was deemed necessary to use stone from distant places when there was plenty available locally is an even bigger mystery. Humans have been drinking beer and making bad decisions because of it for thousands of years. How many thousands of years is open to question. The Chinese claim it as their own invention, with the idea that the world's first beer was a liquid called kui, which was brewed about 9,000 years ago. The oldest direct evidence of beer drinking comes from a 6,000-year-old Sumerian tablet, which shows people drinking it through straws from a communal bowl. The precise recipes used to make ancient Chinese beer aren't fully understood, but a recent study of pottery containers used to store beer has identified several ingredients in the remaining residues. The beer brewed in Mijiaya in China's Shanxi province 5,000 years ago was made of broom corn millets, tubers, barley, and an Asian wild grain known as Job's Tears. Aside from allowing modern-day real ale brewers to recreate this ancient Chinese beer if they so desired, the discovery also proves that barley reached China about 1,000 years before historians thought it did. The barley must surely have come from trade with the West, so archaeologists now have to find out when and where that trading process began. Woolly mammoths were very large, very powerful creatures. It would have been dangerous for our ancient ancestors to hunt them, but also very tempting. A single mammoth could provide food and clothing for an entire community, so the rewards outweighed the risks. In November 2019, we got a priceless insight into how the ancient inhabitants of Mexico went about the task of mammoth hunting. It turns out that they built traps, like the ones that archaeologists found in Tultepec that month. The traps still contain the skeletal remains of 14 mammoths who were trapped and killed there some 15,000 years ago. It's thought that humans went out to hunt the mammoths in large groups and herded them into the traps by chasing them with flaming torches. Prior to this discovery, archaeologists thought that humans of this era would only be able to capture or kill a mammoth if it was already injured or weakened in some way. They never suspected that our ancestors of 15,000 years ago would be capable of such large-scale planning. We guess that when there are food or clothing opportunities involved, human beings will always find a way. The Sahara might be the most intimidating barren desert in the world, but the Taklaman Desert in China gives it a run for its money. It runs on for hundreds of miles, it's desolate, and it would be a difficult place to get out of if you found yourself alone right in the middle of it. In fact, there are a great many bodies buried in the Taklaman for the rest of eternity, but they were put there deliberately. At the easternmost edge of the desert, you'll find Zhaowei Cemetery, which has been in situ for around 4,000 years. Simple wooden stakes act as grave markers at this unusual gravesite, which uses small upturned boats as coffins to contain the dead. When Zhaowei was found in the mid-20th century and some of the dead were exhumed, experts were amazed to see how well the dry, arid conditions of the desert had preserved the human remains. One female body, nicknamed the Beauty of Zhaowei, is in such good condition that even her eyelashes are still present after so many centuries. We don't know who these people were, but they appear to have European features. That's a mysterious finding that experts are still trying to explain. You don't expect to see green trees in the middle of the desert for the same reason that you don't expect to see grass. Flora like this requires moisture, and moisture is something that the world's hottest deserts don't tend to pack in abundance. It's no wonder that the people of Bahrain consider the existence of this tree to be a miracle. They go as far as calling it the and it's easy to understand why. Known in the native tongue of Bahrain as this mesquite tree isn't a fluke or a flash in the pan. It's been standing in a remote part of the desert for more than 400 years. Amazingly, this 32-foot tall tree isn't just surviving, it's thriving. Scientists come to measure it every year, and they've proven that it's still growing. Mesquite trees are notable for being able to retain a significant amount of water within their roots, but even that can't explain the tree of life's existence. You can't retain water if there's none to be retained, and there's zero moisture in the ground around it. As science can't provide an explanation, some religious leaders have stepped in to claim that this is the site of the Garden of Eden. The ancient lines that have been carved into the ground of Nazca in Peru might be the most famous in South America, but they're not the only example of the phenomenon. There are also the Sajama Lines, which stretch across miles of the desert floor in Bolivia. If you laid these lines end-to-end, they'd go on for 10,000 miles. Viewed from above, the lines look almost like a network of roads, crisscrossing the country's Altiplano Plateau. But there was no such thing as a road when these lines were created. They were slowly and deliberately etched into the desert for unknown reasons around 3,000 years ago. They're close to the Sajama Volcano, which might be significant, but why the existence of the volcano would persuade ancient people to carve 10-foot-wide straight lines across the ground for several miles is anybody's guess. They don't appear to start or end anywhere significant, and nor do they form any kind of pattern. There must have been a reason for such intensive labor, but unfortunately, it seems likely that we'll never find out what it was. Finding a tree in the desert, as we've already seen in Bahrain, is pretty surprising. Finding a whale in the desert would be mind-blowing. And yet, Egyptian researchers found the remains of a colossal whale in the desert in 2015. And that wasn't all. Inside this long-dead whale were the remains of a second whale. Calling this fossilized creature a whale might be a little inaccurate. It lived around 40 million years ago, and it was actually a creature called a basilosaurus, which can be considered as a prehistoric ancestor of modern whales. It turned up in a part of the Egyptian desert known as Wadi al-Hitan, which, appropriately enough, is also known as the Valley of the Whales. That's because even though this is a barren desert now, it was once the basin of a vast ocean, and it's become one of the world's most searched locations for the fossils of ancient marine life. Even with that fact in mind, though, the discovery of this basilosaurus is remarkable. It's the only discovery of a full set of the remains in world history, and proves that the prehistoric whale was more than 50 feet long. One day human beings will walk on Mars. We might even build a permanent base on the red planet. Before we can do that, though, we need to prepare ourselves for what life on the surface of that inhospitable planet would be like. That's why China has built a simulation Mars base in the middle of the Gobi Desert, miles away from the nearest settlement, and so detailed that it even contains a simulation decompression chamber. This isn't a purely scientific endeavor, though. As realistic as it is, China intends for this Mars base to become a tourist attraction, and right now, it's full of teenagers. Inside the nine domes of the desert base are a control room, a greenhouse for growing food, and living quarters. The teens have the ability to go outdoors, but they have to put on a spacesuit for the journey. The gravity and oxygen conditions aren't a match for life on Mars, but everything else is as authentic as possible. Until we're finally ready to land a human being on the Martian surface for the first time, this Chinese base is as close as it's possible to get. While the Mars base in the Gobi Desert is focused on the future, the discoveries that were made in Jordan's Black Desert in 2016 are all about the past. Here, archaeologists and historians are still recording and transcribing thousands of petroglyphs and inscriptions that appear to have been left on the rocks here some 2,000 years ago, during a time when the landscape must have looked very different. While the petroglyphs are open to interpretation, the inscriptions are in sapphyotic script and appear to have been written by the Jebel Kurma people, who, as far as we're aware, were tribal nomads. Rather threateningly, one of the inscriptions reads, I am looking for Nabataeans. The Nabataeans were the ancient inhabitants of the rock-hewn Jordanian city of Petra. Whether the Jebel Kurma were looking for them because they were afraid of them or because they were hunting them is unclear. Petroglyphs of birds, lions, and horses, coupled with the charcoal remnants of several different kinds of trees, might imply that this was once a lush and verdant area. These rocks might once have In the mid-1970s, American Leonard Knight felt directionless and lost in life and called out to God for help. He believes that God responded to him and instructed him to create the site that's now known as Salvation Mountain in the California desert. Whether you're a believer or not, you can't help but be impressed by Leonard's creation, which he continued to work on and expand for the rest of his life. Leonard never claimed to be a professional builder or designer, and everything you see at the site is made from a haphazard mixture of house paint, adobe, putty, hay bales, and more or less any other raw material that he could lay his hands on. For more than 20 years, Leonard lived next to the mountain in a truck, without water or electricity. The local government moved to have the mountain torn down around the turn of the century because they were concerned that all the lead paint was polluting the ground. But a petition to protect it was successful, and in 2002 it was listed as a National Treasure in the Congressional Record by Senator Barbara Boxer. Leonard is sadly no longer with us, but the listed status of his mountain should mean that it lasts forever. We know that human beings domesticated horses several thousand years ago. We just don't know which civilization was the first to do it, and exactly when it happened. In 2013, a discovery made in the Arabian Peninsula forced scientists to consider the possibility that it happened even longer ago than we once imagined. 300 stone carvings and other objects have been discovered in Saudi Arabia's Almagr desert, made by an unknown ancient civilization. Whoever these people were, they were fairly advanced. Their relics include arrowheads and stone tools, and representations of several animals, including ostriches, sheep, goats, and of course, horses. It's the horses that are attracting the most attention, because they appear to include depictions of reins and harnesses, which would confirm that the human-horse relationship had already been established when these sculptures were made some 9,000 years ago. The previous best guess of when humans and horses started working together was 6,000 years ago in Kazakhstan, but these carvings predate that by 3,000 years. We wish these people would also have left behind some statues of themselves, so we might know a little more about them. Although dinosaur remains have been found almost everywhere in the world, some countries contain more traces of the giant lizards than others. Mexico's Dinohall has been a little sparse in the past, but that changed in 2013 with the discovery of a 16-foot-long dinosaur tail in the desert close to Coahuila. This 72-million-year-old fossil is the first complete dinosaur tail ever discovered in Mexico, and is one of the most well-preserved examples of its kind ever found anywhere on the planet. The 50 vertebrae that make up the tail probably represent around half of the creature's total length and have been identified as belonging to a hadrosaur. These dinosaurs were odd-looking creatures, with a bill like a duck, as opposed to a mouth full of sharp teeth. Aside from being a historically significant find in its own right, the tail has given scientists the opportunity to discover illnesses and ailments that affected dinosaurs. Part of the hadrosaur's hip bone was also recovered, and it shows signs of an arthritis-like condition. As large and powerful as dinosaurs were, it seems that they could be struck down by the same afflictions as human beings as they entered old age. If you've ever wanted to get a feeling for what the world would look like and feel like after an apocalyptic disaster, you could find out by heading out to the Maramare Project in Pardis, Iran. This enormous skyscraper city was supposed to be one of the crowning achievements of the reign of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Instead, it's a lifeless concrete wasteland, abandoned in a state of semi-completion and seemingly now left to face the harsh conditions of the desert on its own. Officially speaking, this desert site, which is some 30 miles away from Iran's capital city, is still under construction. In reality, it's looked like this since 2014 and doesn't appear likely to change anytime soon. There are numerous reasons why this project ground to a halt, ranging from difficulties providing access to power and sewage facilities to enormous inflation in Iran, which stopped many construction projects in their tracks. The idea of Maramare was to provide a better quality of living for lower-income families, but it soon became apparent that only middle-class families would be able to afford to live here, and they would rather live in the existing larger cities. The project now appears to be doomed. We've already seen one piece of artwork in the California desert, thanks to Leonard Knight and his Salvation Mountain. Now here's another piece of Californian desert art, this time in Yucca Mesa. It goes by the name Rhythms of Life, and it was created in 2008 by the respected Australian sculptor Andrew Rogers. Rogers is known all over the world for his earthwork sculptures, and examples of his work can be found in the deserts and plains of every major continent on Earth. Rhythms of Life, however, might be his best-known work. Rogers designed the piece with two different perspectives in mind. From ground level, it appears as a series of stone walls, shapes, and statues, almost taking the form of a labyrinth as you walk through it. From high above, it appears as one connected whole, taking on an appearance similar to a musical note. This Californian example is just one of more than 50 stone sculptures that share the same name all over the planet, and in Rogers' mind, they're connected even if they're physically separated by thousands of miles. It's definitely an abstract idea, but there's no doubt that it's beautiful. You generally don't expect to find a lake when you're walking across a desert, and if you ever did, you'd probably suspect that it was a mirage. Water does sometimes appear in the desert though, even if scientists don't always know why. Nobody has any idea why there are lakes among the world's tallest sand dunes in the Badain Jaren Desert of Alxa, China, but there are now more than 100 of them, and new lakes are still appearing. It's believed that the source of the lakes is a store of groundwater below the sand, but that wouldn't explain the fact that over half of them are salt lakes. You wouldn't normally expect to see high levels of salinity in a groundwater lake, but then you wouldn't normally expect to see lakes in the desert. Another possible theory is that the lakes are generated by snow melting in the mountains of Mongolia, but if that were the reason for the formation of the lakes, it ought to be possible to track this process as it happens. The reality is that we don't know why these lakes exist, we just accept their existence as an anomaly, and an amazing desert find.