25 Most Incredible Ancient Artifacts Finds

A story about finding an ancient artifact isn't just about the artifact, it's also about how it was found, where it was found, and what it might mean. An artifact can be a physical connection between us and the people who lived before us, but for it to become such a connection, we have to understand its story. We begin with a treasure discovery that happened in Poland in January 2022. Archaeologists in the north of the country have confirmed the discovery of a collection of elite jewelry, including a ring made from solid amber. The artifacts are thought to be around 1,000 years old. Based on the fact that they were found inside a grave, they probably all belonged to the same person. Judging by the quality of the items, that person must have been an extremely wealthy member of the Pomeranian elite who lived close to the village of Ostrovite. Along with the amber ring, the team also found bronze buckles, an iron knife in a leather sheath, and a bowl made of solid bronze. A second amber ring, identical to the first, turned up right at the end of the dig. Rather than being buried in a casket, the unidentified man was laid to rest in a wooden burial chamber no smaller than a house. That's another clue that he was of elevated social status. Finding rings in graves is by no means unusual, but finding amber rings is. The quality of the craftsmanship that went into making them is outstanding. For a very long time, our next discovery was thought to be a figurine of a Roman wrestler. Experts have recently changed their minds about that. The figurine, which is made of lead, was first found at the Wall Roman site, which is in Staffordshire, England in the 1920s. Based on its design and the place it was found, it's not hard to see why people thought it might be a wrestler. English Heritage took another look at it towards the end of 2021, though, and they now think it might be an African warrior. Their assessment largely hinges on the fact that they think it once had a spear in its hand, but the spear has been lost. It's incredibly detailed for something so small. It's barely two inches tall from the bottom of its feet to the top of its head. Other indications that it might be African include the armlets it seems to be wearing and what's been interpreted as a necklace of beads. If it's an African warrior, we have to wonder what it was doing at the Wall Roman site. This is an ancient Roman cemetery, so we have to assume that the figurine was buried with somebody. Did the Romans bring African warriors to Britain with them? The Nazi death camps of Poland aren't a happy place for any archaeologist to visit because of what went on there in the Second World War, but they're still worthy of investigation, and they still occasionally turn up interesting finds even today. In January 2022, three Hebrew prayer amulets were found in a building at the Sobibor extermination camp. All three pendants bear the Shema Yisrael prayer, which translates into English as Hear, O Israel. Two of them also feature an image of Moses holding the Ten Commandments in his hands. All three pendants are different and were handmade in Eastern Europe. It's thought the building they were found in was where prisoners were forced to undress before being taken to the gas chambers. Excavations have been ongoing at the camp for more than a decade. More than 250,000 Jews were killed here between 1942 and 1943. Examinations of the pendants suggest that two were made in Poland, but the third, the one that doesn't bear a picture of Moses, was made in Lviv, Ukraine. Based on where they were found, it seems the owners of these amulets carried their faith with them through to their final moments. When a young Roman man signed up for a career in the military, he probably didn't expect to reach retirement age. There was always a war to fight, and those wars could be brutal. Some of them made it to the end though, and when they did, they were awarded with a military diploma of the kind that was discovered in Per, Turkey in December 2021. This bronze plaque is just under 1,900 years old, and was awarded to Caecilius Anticus upon the completion of his 20 years of service. Under Emperor Hadrian, Caecilius got more for his service than just this plaque. He was very kindly granted the right to live as a Roman citizen and marry a Roman woman. That implies that Caecilius wasn't Roman by birth, and that Caecilius might not even have been his real name. Based on records kept by the Roman military, it's thought that around 100,000 of these diplomas were awarded. Given that millions of people served in the Roman army over the years, that tells you how few of them made it to the 20-year mark. Only 800 of them have been discovered by archaeologists, and very few of those are in better condition than this one, even though it's broken. We're going back to Britain now, where archaeologists spent January digging through the remains of the first navy supply yard ever to be built in Plymouth, England. Recent repair works at the site uncovered the presence of old pottery, at which point professional archaeologists were called in to investigate. The area is known today as Commercial Wharf. Back in the 1650s, it hosted a supply facility providing beef, bread, and biscuits for the navy. It continued in that role for almost 200 years before operations ceased in the 1830s. Initial digs have found clay pipes, candlesticks, tableware, and storage jars to go with the ceramics. Rather than being used at the site, the objects were probably bric-a-brac, used by builders to gradually raise the ground level and allow further building. So far, the team has reached a depth of about six feet. They plan to go a further four feet down, at which point they hope to find a few more objects with a direct connection to the naval yard. Given that most of the old buildings were demolished in the 1930s to widen a road, it's a wonder there's anything here to discover at all. The ancient Romans made countless figurines of male gladiators, but almost none of female gladiators. That's what makes this next find so unique. The statue is currently in the Museum für Kunst und Gewaltbahn in Hamburg in Germany and is thought to be 2,000 years old. It's never been closely studied until now. It was initially dismissed as nothing more interesting than a Roman nude, which is a common type of statue. But it's now thought to show a female gladiator stripped to the waist and gazing down triumphantly at her defeated opponent. She has a bandage around her knee and wears only a loincloth. The object in her hand is thought to be a short, curved sword of a type known as a sicca. If these findings are accepted, the statue will become only the second statuette of a female gladiator known to exist. The amount of detail on the sculpture suggests that it's a depiction of a real person. Female gladiators did exist in Rome long ago, but women were banned from being gladiators in the year 200 by Emperor Septimus Severus, and precious little direct evidence that they ever existed at all has ever been found. We're going back to Turkey now, where this collection of artifacts was found in January 2022. They've been dated to the time of the Byzantine-Sassanid War of the 7th century. The discoveries come from the ancient city of Diocesaurea, which is today called Uzun Karbuk. Nineteen artifacts have been found in total in addition to one human skeleton. The other artifacts are, therefore, probably grave goods that were buried with their owner. They include a bracelet and chain, an amulet, earrings, a pendant, and a necklace. Archaeologists have speculated that the skeleton might be that of a priest, but that hasn't yet been confirmed. There are also a few coins at the site, and the coins were minted during the reign of Emperor Heraclius. That's helped with dating the coins because he reigned during the War of 602 to 628. However, none of the artifacts appear to have anything to do with the war. There are no weapons, nor anything of any military relevance. That further underlines the idea that the person buried in the grave might have been a man of faith, rather than a man of war. In the West, we tend to misunderstand the meaning of the word ninja. We think of ninjas as martial arts masters, or in some circumstances, giant anthropomorphic turtles. In reality, ninjutsu was more a means of planning guerrilla warfare than it was a martial art, and it may have begun at the time of the Siege of Odawara in 1590 in Japan. Archaeologists have recently been examining weapons found at the scene of the siege, and they've deemed them to be prototypes of the weapons that would be used by ninjas around a century later. They look like little more than flat, sharpened stones, but these stones are similar in size and design to the famous shuriken throwing stars that ninjas are so often portrayed as using in works of fiction. The connection was made by Akihiro Iwata, who's both an archaeologist and an expert in ancient Japanese weaponry. Aside from the stone shuriken, Akihiro believes he's identified clay versions of weapons known as makibishi caltrops. The stones wouldn't be a conclusive find on their own, but when accompanied by the caltrops, it's an indication that the ninja weapon kit was already in development by the time of the siege. The Romans were masters at working with glass. They were lightyears ahead of almost anybody else in the world during their era. Some people even say that they had a way of making flexible glass, although that's never been proven. Unfortunately, glass breaks easily. Because of that, very few Roman glass artifacts have survived into the modern era. But a few have. Here's a fully intact Roman glass bowl that was found in the Netherlands in January 2022. To look at it, you'd never believe it was 2,000 years old. The discovery was made at the site of an archaeological dig in Nijmegen, which is the oldest city in the country. As you can see, the blue bowl is in pristine condition. It doesn't even have any chips or cracks. It most likely found its way to the Netherlands from the Roman glass workshops of Zanten and Cologne, although it's possible it could have been brought in by an Italian trader straight from Rome. A dish like this would be made by pouring molten glass over a mold, and then allowing it to cool. The striped pattern would be added in by hand while the glass was cooling, and the blue tint comes from metal oxide. Here's another January 2022 discovery. It's a Bronze Age sword accessorized with rivets, and it was found in the bed of the river Ba, close to Hlovacek in Slovakia. Based on the design of the weapon, it's likely that it once had a wooden handle, but the handle hasn't survived the passage of time. The rivets would have joined the rivets and the handle together. The early assessment of archaeologists and experts who've looked at the short sword is that it's around 3,600 years old. Swords like this are typical of the tumulus culture, which existed in and around the Danube basin during the Middle Bronze Age. Similar examples have been found inside tumulus culture tombs, although they also turn up in bodies of water too often for it to be a coincidence. People may have thrown the weapons into the water as votive offerings, or it may have been a ritual act after the owners of the swords had passed away. The artifact is now in the hands of the Monuments Board of the Slovak Republic. There was excitement among archaeologists at St. Mary's Colonial Fort in St. Mary's City, Maryland, USA when this possible Spanish cross was discovered in January 2022. It was found during sifting at the site of a scheduled archaeological dig and was so encrusted with dirt when it was discovered that it was almost missed. The artifact can be identified as Spanish because it features two crossbars instead of the usual one and also has flared ends. The archaeologists at the site don't know enough about artifacts like this to know any more than the fact that it was Spanish, so they contacted experts. It's now thought that the cross is about 370 years old and was almost certainly made in the Spanish pilgrimage city of Caravaca. That means it's a rare and unique find in Maryland. Maryland was founded as an English colony, and relations between English and Spanish colonists were tense. It seems unlikely there was a Spaniard living among English settlers in the 1650s, so perhaps the cross was obtained via trade with local Native American groups who'd also had contact with the Spanish. When archaeologists take students into the field with them, there's always a risk that the students will embarrass their tutors by finding things they've missed. That happened in Tamil Nadu's Pudukottai village in India in December 2021 when students from Bharati Dasan University found a 10th-century Mahavir statue. Not content with that, they also found a Shiva lingam and an impalement stake nearby. The Mahavir statue represents the 24th Tirthankara in Jainism. What's especially unusual about it is the presence of the impalement stake nearby. It seems to confirm the veracity of scenes in ancient Indian paintings which show thieves and crooks being impaled on poles close to temples. This is a rural area of Tamil Nadu, and the people are very superstitious. They believe that a god occasionally comes and sits on the impalement stake, and so they worship it. Nobody, not even the elders of the village, can say how long it's been there for. The elders say that it was already old when they were children, and it predates the time of their parents and grandparents. More research will be required before any conclusions can be reached here. Hopefully, the students can be involved in the research. Would you queue around the block to go and see a couple of ancient jars? I think we can all agree that they'd have to be very special jars for us even to consider such a thing. In this case, we're talking about a pair of ancient Chinese jars that have been drawing enormous crowds ever since they were put on display at the famous Parthasarathi temple in Chennai, India. The stunning ceramics are believed to be a little over 1,500 years old. It's said that they've been here since the temple itself was built, but it's only within the past year that they've been available for the public to marvel at. The jars are enormous, each one standing almost five feet tall and two and a half feet wide at their widest point. Experts think that they were used to store brined mangoes, which were once used for daily offerings in the temple's kitchen. The elders among the community say that this practice continued until the start of the 21st century. Nobody knows how these jars arrived in Aranmula in the first place, which adds to their air of mystery. Speaking of all things Chinese, Chinese culture is even more synonymous with tea drinking than British culture is. In fact, the Chinese have been drinking tea for far longer than the Brits. We can prove that with this next discovery. It's an ancient Chinese tea bowl from the Warring States period, and it still contains traces of the tea that was poured into it 2,400 years ago. The bowl was found by archaeologists in a tomb site within the ancient capital of the Shu Kingdom in what's now Shuchang in Shandong province. Legend has it that tea was invented as a medical treatment by Emperor Shen Nung in the year 2737 BCE, although whether that's true or not is open to debate. The first reference to Chinese people planting and cultivating tea appears in an which was written something like 2,250 years ago. We can assume that it was common practice by then. This bowl, in which the tea traces are little more than charred residue, is the oldest direct evidence of tea drinking in the country, and as far as we're aware, the wider world. Let's move away from China and go to Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, where a stunning Roman-era figurine of a mythical creature known as a griffin was found in June 2021. The discovery was made in the Meleha area, where archaeologists say it's part of a censer featuring three statues arranged in a circular shape around a bowl that was presumably used for burning incense. Their assessment of the artifact, which is in remarkably good condition, is that it's a product of the first century. Sharjah was never Roman territory, but historians have taken the find as evidence of an ancient trade network that existed between Sharjah and the nearest Roman provinces 2,000 years ago. This is a part of the world that is still largely an undiscovered country, as far as archaeologists are concerned, so this could be the beginning of a whole new spate of discoveries in the region. If there's one ancient Roman relic in Sharjah, there are likely to be others, although it's unlikely there will be many that are in such good condition after all these years as this charming sculpture. The Battle of Visby is a legendary conflict that happened in July 1361. It happened on the Swedish Baltic island of Gotland and was fought between the invading forces of the Danish king and the local Gutnish country Yeoman. The military force of the Danish army was vastly superior to that of the locals, and so the Danes won the day. The conflict, however, didn't come without heavy losses on the Danish side, as indicated by the mass graves that archaeologists have been excavating for the past few years. It was within one of those mass graves that this iron gauntlet was found in August 2014. What's puzzled archaeologists about the find is that the gauntlet appears to be undamaged. Battle armor like this was valuable, so even when people died, it was common practice for their undamaged weapons and armor to be passed on to somebody else. For this gauntlet to be buried with its owner might be a sign that the warrior was held in high regard, and thus nobody else was deemed as being worthy of wearing their gauntlet. It's since been used as a template by a modern-day company that manufactures replica battle armor. A little piece of Indian history was found in November 2021, when this stone carving was found in the tiny village of Tegharsi in the Udupi district. The discovery is a four-paneled, intricately carved stone inscription that has been called a hero stone. The name comes from the fact that it displays a war scene involving a significant victory seemingly achieved by an individual soldier. The stone is thought to come from the time of the Vijayanagar Empire, which existed between 1336 and 1646. In all four panels, the anonymous hero is shown fighting against different people with a sword, winning each time. The discovery was made not far from Kambalagade, which is the scene of a popular annual buffalo race. The top panel, positioned above all the others, shows the apparently martyred hero standing in front of a lingam of Lord Shiva with a bull to his left. There's also an inscription on the same panel, although sadly, the text is too badly weathered to be deciphered. Historians aren't sure whether the hero of the story is a real person or a fictional one, and sadly, it might never be possible to find out. The history of the Philippines prior to the arrival of Spanish colonists is something of a mystery to historians. It's a part of the world that hasn't seen enough activity from archaeologists in the past, but that's beginning to change. Recently, archaeologists at the Balangasay Archaeological Site in Bolinao, Pangasinan, came across this decorated human skull. The precise location of the find is considered to be sensitive information, so archaeologists haven't given it out because they don't want to encourage looters. The skull still has all of its teeth, and upon those teeth are golden decorations that look a little like fish scales. The effect isn't entirely dissimilar to the golden grill that some rap stars have in their mouths. The only way to insert the gold decorations would have been to drill directly into the teeth and insert gold pegs. If the work had been carried out while this person was still alive, it would probably have been very painful. It was called pusad, and may have been a way in which a member of the societal elite visually demonstrated their status. Other members of the pre-Hispanic Filipino social elite sometimes stained their teeth red and black for reasons we don't yet understand. It's sometimes said that the pen is mightier than the sword. We're not sure about that, but we do know that the pen can sometimes be more interesting than the sword. As proof, here's the oldest ink pen in Europe. It was discovered during an archaeological excavation in Burren, Ireland in December 2021. The pen was found inside a 10th-century settlement known as a cashel, which is thought to have remained in use until the 17th century and hosted a wealthy populace. The design of the pen is innovative, with a hollow bone barrel topped with a copper alloy nib. You can think of it as a distant cousin to the modern biro. Tests have indicated that the pen was made during the 11th century. That makes it a surprising discovery in the context of its location, because it's long been thought that literacy in Ireland was reserved for the highest-ranking members of the church, rather than everyday people. Even with that in mind, feather quills were the preferred method of writing at the time. The pen appears to be a one-off and leaves us with unanswered questions about its owner. The most obvious place to go looking for incredible artifacts is inside a museum. Go to the Archaeological Museum of Sitaya in Crete, for example, and you'll find the chryselephantine statue known as the Pylokastro Chorus. Experts believe it belongs to the late Minoan period of 3,500 years ago, meaning that it's a product of the Bronze Age. The statue is only 20 inches tall, but that's considered large in the context of other Minoan statuettes. The fact that it's made from gold and ivory strongly suggests that it's a cult image and was either used in worship or worshipped directly. If so, it's the only known artifact of its kind from the Minoan civilization. The bulk of the figurine's body is made from the teeth of hippopotami, wrapped in gold foil, with the exception being the head, which is made from serpentinite. It's so detailed that even the tendons of the feet and the veins of the hand are visible. Some historians have suggested that it might be an early depiction of a young Zeus, who eventually became the greatest god of the Greek civilization, but that can't be proven. Our ancient ancestors experimented with many different forms of armor on the battlefield, constantly searching for a material that offered the right balance between protection and flexibility. Before metal and bronze armor became popular, the Assyrians experimented with armor made from leather. Here we see an example of their leather armor. It's about 2,700 years old and was discovered in China. The amount of work that went into creating the armor is incredible. It's made from more than 5,000 small pieces and 140 large leather scales, along with laces and lining also made from leather. The total weight of 10 pounds would have been heavy but lighter and easier to move around in than almost any other option that would have been available at the time. How it came to be in China is unknown. Its owner could have been an Assyrian mercenary working in China, or it could have been a Chinese soldier who looted the armor from a defeated Assyrian foe. Some historians have even speculated that its presence in China could indicate a hitherto unknown technological exchange between the two regions. It can be extremely difficult for archaeologists to work out what's just a pattern and what's an attempt at written communication when we're dealing with the inscriptions of some of our earliest ancestors. For that reason, we don't know whether the Danube Valley Civilization script is actually a written language or not. If it is, it's likely to be the oldest written language in the world. This mostly unknown culture lived in the Balkan region more than 7,500 years ago and was considerably more advanced than most of the civilizations around it, excelling in areas like leather processing, weaving, and spinning. They might also have been the first to invent the wheel. Many of their artifacts are covered in similar-looking engraved symbols that historians suspect could be a type of writing. There are enough different characters to qualify as a language, and the pattern they're laid out in follows most of the conventions of written language. The problem is that nobody can translate it, and we're not even sure whether there's truly any information within it to translate. Until we find the Danube Valley equivalent of the Rosetta Stone, this may always remain a mystery. We've looked at some ancient leather armor, so now let's check out some ancient stone armor. The armor was discovered inside the tomb of China's first emperor, also known as Qin Shi Huang's Mausoleum. The site is best known for being the place where the world-famous Terracotta Warriors were discovered, and has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1987. The mausoleum is enormous, and archaeologists are nowhere near finishing their work there yet. The stone armor is so intricate that it could almost be considered a work of art, with each suit made of over 600 pieces of stone, connected by bronze wires to ensure the person inside it can move easily. The discovery, which happened in 2013, marked the first time that Qin Dynasty armor had ever been found, but there's no shortage of it now. 87 suits of stone armor have been identified inside the mausoleum so far, but those at the scene suspect that there might be as many as 6,000. The sheer amount of armor in the tomb is yet another sign of how powerful Qin Shi Huang was, and what a massive impact his death had on the nation. In May 2019, a rusty old anchor was dragged up out of the water by a trawler close to the coast of Cornwall in the United Kingdom. That might not sound like an interesting discovery, and it wouldn't be if the anchor is all there was to it, but archaeologists are increasingly convinced that the anchor is a significant clue in the search for the most valuable undiscovered shipwreck in the world. If they're correct in their suspicions, the anchor comes from the wreck of the Merchant Royal. That's a British merchant ship of the 17th century that was lost in a storm close to land's end in September 1641. At the time of the sinking, the vessel was carrying a cargo of gold and silver bullion worth hundreds of millions of pounds. When adjusted for inflation, the cargo would today be worth tens of billions. The anchor comes from the right period and is unusually large. Only a few large vessels would have had an anchor this big, and the Merchant Royal was one of them. It's an anchor from the right time, it's of the right size, and it's in the right place. Salvage companies have spent decades looking for the Merchant Royal, known as the Eldorado of the Seas, but its discovery might now be closer than ever.