25 Most Amazing Archaeological Finds

Being an archaeologist can be a cold and dirty job. But if you were to ask an archaeologist, they'd happily tell you that all the cold and miserable days are worth it for the incredible things they sometimes discover. There's seemingly no end to the things our ancestors left behind for us to find, and we've packaged together some of the best of them for you in this video. We're starting with the Toltec Mounds, which can be found in the lengthily titled Plum Bayou Mounds Archaeological State Park in Scott, Arkansas, USA. They look like natural hills from a distance, but they're hand-built earthen mounds. And they were created by the people of the Plum Bayou culture more than 1,400 years ago. The tallest of them measures almost exactly 50 feet, but it's likely that they were a little taller when they were new. The mounds are likely to have served a variety of purposes, including ceremonial, cosmological, religious, and political. One of the largest of them was found to be full of animal bones when it was excavated, so historians think it might have been used as a feasting mound. While mounds like this are often associated with human burials, only one of them has thus far been confirmed as a burial mound. Their positions were specifically chosen to align with the sun as it rises in the morning. The name Toltec Mounds comes from an incorrect assumption made at the time of their discovery, which is that the Toltec Indians from Mexico made them. By the time the mistake was realized, the name had stopped. A lot of what you need to know about the Lion Tombs of Daden is contained in their name, their tombs. They're marked with carvings of lions, and they're in Daden. Today, that part of the world is known as Al-Ula, and it's in Saudi Arabia. Historians in Saudi Arabia once believed that the tombs were created by the mysterious Nabataeans during the first century, but the current theory is that they're the work of an even older civilization. We know that the Daden Kingdom existed as long as 2600 years ago because it's mentioned in the Book of Ezekiel in the Hebrew Bible. The entire fortified city of Daden was discovered buried beneath the region's sands by modern-day archaeologists, but the tombs themselves are on a mountainside called Jabal Daden next to it. The people of Daden believed that the souls of the dead would reach the heavens faster if they were buried in the mountains. This same belief was shared by the Lycians in Turkey. Most of the tombs are unmarked, save for the names of the people laid to rest within them, but those with lions are believed to have belonged to the richest and most powerful members of the ancient society. There are many theories about the so-called Angels of Ekbalam in Mexico, but we can't be sure if any of them are true. We know that the carvings were made by the Maya, but we don't know what they represent. The name Ekbalam means black jaguar, which is said by some to be the name of the ancient city's founder. It's thought that as many as 18,000 people once lived here at its peak in the 8th century. The Angels of Ekbalam is the name given to a pair of figures depicted in the stucco facade of the main entrance to the city's acropolis. They're human men in ceremonial attire, but they have feathered wings attached to their backs. They can't be angels in the Christian sense of the word, though, as they were created before Europeans arrived in Mexico and brought Christianity with them. There are a few possibilities here. One of them is that Europeans had a pre-Columbian contact with Mexico, possibly travellers from Turkey, where traditional depictions of angels as feathered humanoids appear in scriptures and art as far back as the 4th century. A more likely explanation is that the winged figures represent entities from unknown aspects of Mayan mythology, and the resemblance to angels is a coincidence. Here's an ancient example of a sacred Roman site turning into a brick factory. The site, which is around 1900 years old, is close to Pryor's Hall Park in Corby, England. The area is already known for its Roman connections, with 40 large ancient Roman villas found by archaeologists between 2011 and 2016. This old sacred site was found in December 2020 behind one of the villas and was originally a Romano-Celtic temple and mausoleum. It can be identified as a temple because of its large, walled-in rectangular courtyard, forming a typical temple cella. However, there are also kilns that were added during the 3rd century discovered along with the remains of bricks and tiles that were made at the site. Even the old walls were repurposed as a trackway, with the leftover material used to make the kilns. The eastern wall of the temple cella was partially destroyed to create an entrance to the factory. Destroying a sacred place in this manner would typically be viewed as an act of sacrilege, so archaeologists have no idea how the villa's owners got away with it. Now we head to Ethiopia to hear some colourful African legends. It is said that the Lioness of Gobedra was seared into a hillside when the archangel Michael did battle with a wild lioness. You will find the curious monument not far from the ancient city of Axum, etched into the side of an isolated hill called Gobodura. The existence of the lioness was unknown to westerners until it was observed by German archaeologists in 1913. The locals told the archaeologists that the image is the outline of an enormous lioness that Michael hurled into the hillside with such force that it left a permanent impression. Obviously that isn't true, but nobody knows for sure how or when the artwork was created. It is probably safe to assume that it has been there for thousands of years. Some historians have speculated that it might have been created as a landmark to let people know they were headed in the right direction to reach Axum. That's a neat theory, but without direct evidence, there will never be any way of proving it. And it doesn't look like we're ever going to get any direct evidence. In February 2023, archaeologists in Utrera, Spain went digging into the foundations of a bar and found the remains of a synagogue from the 14th century. That's significant for more reasons than the simple fact that the synagogue is old. Jewish people were forcibly expelled from Spain in 1492, and most of the country's synagogues were destroyed at the time. This newly discovered example becomes one of the only five that are known to have survived. It seems that rather than being destroyed, it was converted into the Hospital de la Misericordia. The conversion did surprisingly little damage to the original building. The entire prayer hall is still intact, as are the heckle and the perimeter bench. Because of this, the city council has now taken ownership of the building and plans to restore the original floor plan and walls, insofar as is possible, without damaging what's already there. The long-term plan is to open the old synagogue to the public, but excavation work is continuing for now because the team hopes it'll eventually find the woman's area of the synagogue and perhaps even its ritual bath. The wreck of the Gribschunden, a Norse ship of the 15th century, was discovered by marine archaeologists a few years ago. It's a complicated wreck site, though, and there's still more to be found there. In February 2023, marine archaeologists confirmed that a cargo of spices, fruit, and plants was still in the wreck's cargo hold. The ship was the personal property of King Hans of Denmark and was on its way to an important political event in Sweden in 1495 when, for unknown reasons, a fire broke out aboard the ship and it sank. The royal status of the vessel explains why the goods aboard it were so exotic and valuable. There are more than 3,000 specimens inside these newly discovered containers, including saffron, ginger, almonds, peppercorns, mustard, nutmeg, and cloves. Many of the spices are from Indonesia, indicating that the Denmark of the time had a wide trade network. The grapes, blackberries, and raspberries that were also aboard were probably brought along to impress the king's guests. King Hans himself wasn't aboard the vessel at the time of the fire, so he lived to tell the tale. The Gribhunden would have been a very expensive loss for him, though. When seen from ground level, the Saquello Ipegaico in Pastum, Italy, isn't very impressive. That's because the only part of this ancient Greek temple that protrudes from the earth is its roof. The rest of the temple is underground. Pastrum was founded by Greeks from the colony of Sybaris 2,700 years ago. The Greeks called it Pasidonia, but it became Pastum during the Roman era. At some point during the Middle Ages, the town was abandoned for unknown reasons. Its ruins are an archaeological park today, and the main attractions in the park are its three temples. This underground temple is the most unusual of them and is technically known as a herun, which is a shrine dedicated to a hero of ancient Greeks. It hasn't stunk over the years, it was deliberately built underground and was once covered by tumulus. The tumulus was removed during the 1950s during archaeological excavations. It was hoped that the excavations would determine which hero the shrine was dedicated to, but despite being full of Greek pottery and bronze vessels, it offered no clues. There are larger Mayan sites in Mexico than Bonampak, but none that are so perfectly preserved. If you want to experience the true color and vibrancy of Mayan artwork as it was originally intended to be seen, Bonampak is where you want to go. The name is actually a perfect description for what you'll find here. Bonampak translates out of Mayan as painted walls. The rainforests of Chiapas have proved to be the perfect hiding place for these murals, which are contained within just three rooms of an otherwise nondescript old ruin. The paintings cover every inch of space in the rooms, from the walls to the arched ceilings that are roughly 1,200 years old and depict various facets of Mayan life, from celebration to war, including some insight into what traditional Mayan ceremonies must have looked like. The exterior walls were also once painted in equally vivid styles, but time and have washed away the finer details. Since the rooms were opened to the public in the 1940s, they've begun to deteriorate. Restoration work is ongoing, with public viewings limited to looking in through a window from the outside. It's hoped that the work being done now will keep the rooms around for future generations to enjoy. Our next artifacts don't have the most poetic of names. They're called the Cadiz Phoenician Anthropoid Sarcophagi. The kindest thing we can say about that title is it's both descriptive and accurate. There are two of the sarcophagi, and they were considered such an important discovery that a museum was built specifically to house them in Cadiz, Spain. However, they weren't both found at the same time. The first of them, the male sarcophagus, was found in the necropolis of Punta de la Vaca in 1887. It was this discovery of such a rare and stunning Phoenician artifact that prompted the creation of the museum. The noted 20th-century Spanish archaeologist Paleo Quintero Atari theorized that a matching female sarcophagus might exist and spent years looking for it but never found it. It was eventually discovered accidentally during construction work in 1980. Somewhat cruelly, the discovery took place mere yards from where Atari used to live. Both sarcophagi are made of marble and were carved around 2,500 years ago. The male wears a beard and wears a tunic and carries a grenade-like object in his hand. The female is younger and dressed plainly. The remains of reddish polychrome cling to her hair, so it's likely that both sarcophagi were once painted. Plenty of people visit Myanmar to immerse themselves in its ancient buildings and temples. But you won't find the Khaku Pagodas on the established tourist trail. If you want to find them, you have to venture off the beaten path. It's absolutely worth it though. The many stupas that stand here were built and added to over hundreds of years, beginning in the 12th century and continuing into the 18th. The very largest is also one of the oldest and was made during the reign of Along Sithu, king of Bagan as part of his commitment to creating new religious sites across his empire during his reign. In total, there are 2,478 pagodas at the site. When seen from above, they take the shape of the Buddha's footprint. The sheer number of the Khaku Pagodas make maintenance difficult. Renovation work is always ongoing, but so are the effects of weathering. Some of the pagodas have been damaged beyond all prospect of repair by the earthquakes that plight this part of the world, but the larger and more elaborate of them were built to withstand such events. The green skeleton is precisely what it sounds like. It's a human skeleton and it's green. We appreciate that you'd like a little more detail than that though, so here it is. The unusual shade of this man's bones can be attributed to the fact that he spent thousands of years buried in a copper mine, absorbing copper sulfate from his surroundings. He lived during the Bronze Age and his remains can now be found in the Archaeological Museum of Asturias in Oviedo, Spain. Despite being buried in a mine, it's unlikely that this man was a miner. For reasons we don't understand, the high-ranking members of the ancient Asturian society during the Bronze Age were buried in disused mines. It's possible that their peers believed they were offering the remains of their venerated leaders to the gods of the earth in the hopes that they be rewarded with an abundance of natural resources, but that can't be proven. This was a time of great transition in Spain as the Asturians learned how to manipulate the world around them and their funerary traditions changed just as much as every other aspect of their society. We are starting off in Northern England, where archaeologists believe they found the remains of a 2,000-year-old port in early 2021. A collection of ancient Roman artifacts, including stone anchors and sharpening tools, has been identified close to the river Weir. Experts already knew that an ancient dam once existed in the area, but the possibility of an even older port has never been considered. If the find can be verified, it will only be the second port of its kind ever discovered in the country. It's also the first time anchors have been found in a river. Generally speaking, they only turn up at offshore maritime sites. The time period would coincide with the Roman suppression of the Burgundies, which necessitated the construction of forts and, perhaps, ports as well. There are ancient Roman forts a little further up the river at Benchester and Chester-le-Street. This might have been a supply route, with ships sailing up the river to take important stock to Archaeologists have even found a small model boat at the site, which might have been a replica of the vessels that were once anchored here. Speaking of previously unknown routes of travel and communication, might this ornamented baton purse from Poland be solid evidence of an exchange of cultural ideas between ancient Mesolithic communities? The country's archaeologists and historians certainly think so. The artifact is carved from an antler, which was later identified as having come from a species of reindeer native to northern Scandinavia and northwest Russia. That heavily implies that the object traveled from there to central Poland and might have found its way via trade. If that's the case, then it suggests that there was an organized flow of goods between hunter-gatherer communities across long distances during the Mesolithic period. Rather than being small, isolated communities, there may have been a concept of a wider society with established diplomatic and trade routes between those communities. You could almost describe it as sort of a Mesolithic European Union. More evidence is required before such remarkable conclusions can be stated with any certainty, but the antler ornament couldn't have gotten to Poland by accident. Someone brought it here on purpose, and they must have traveled a very long way to do so. Let's go even further back in time, from the Mesolithic era to the Paleolithic era. That's the early Stone Age, and it's also when this stone artifact was carved in northwest China. The carefully marked rock was found at the well-known Paleolithic site of Xiudango in 2012. It's the oldest engraved non-organic object in China. There are marked stones that are older, but in those cases it's been difficult to prove that the stones were marked intentionally rather than accidentally. There is no such debate about this one. The marks take the form of a series of straight lines carved at short intervals in a way that might indicate a form of counting. A culture that was capable of counting might have also been capable of a language, which is a new possibility for archaeologists and historians to consider. While they're considering that possibility, they'll also be trying to work out who made these carvings. Was it someone who migrated from the Altai Mountains, or the work of a North Chinese aborigine? Hopefully, time will tell. For as long as human beings have been waging war, they've been making weapons. And that's a very long time. In February 2021, a cache of 3,000-year-old weapons was unearthed in the Arabian Peninsula. To be more specific, they were found inside the ruins of an Iron Age building close to Adam in Oman. All of the weapons, which include bows and arrows, axes and daggers, are made from bronze. Some historians believe that the decision to make them out of such a material means that they're more likely to be replica weapons than the real thing. That begs the question of what the point of making replica weapons was 3,000 years ago. Some of the markings on the weapons suggest that they might once have been hung on walls or displayed on shelves, which again suggests that they were used in battle. Two quivers of arrows have been noted as being especially unusual because they're only 14 inches long, which is too short for them to have been useful. Real arrows would most likely have been made of wood and leather. As strange as the idea might seem, could these have been children's toys? The Silla Kingdom once ruled over the part of the world we know today as South Korea. The history of the Silla isn't well understood, and a discovery made in 2013 has only served to things more confusing. The discovery is a sword found inside the Golden Crown Tomb in Gyeonggi, inscribed with the name of a king upon its sheet. The inscription dedicated to the king Yesaji means this is the only tomb with an identified owner in the entire region. It's thought to have been built during the 6th century and was found by accident during a construction project in the 1920s. The sword was found at the time, but the inscription escaped attention until far more recently. Much of what's known about the Silla Kingdom comes from two annals, known as Samgaksaji written during the 9th century, but the problem is that the name of King Yesaji doesn't appear anywhere in those annals. Either the annals are wrong, which means we know even less about the Silla than we thought, or the Silla word for king didn't always literally mean a monarch, in which case the theory that all the Silla tombs belong to kings and queens is incorrect. Almost 150 years ago, a British archaeologist called Alexander Ray found an ancient sarcophagus in the hills of Palavaram, India. He quite rightly felt proud of his achievement, but in 2018 we found out that he somehow managed to miss an almost identical sarcophagus in the exact same place. The almost perfectly preserved clay artifact was eventually found during an archaeological survey of the area. As was the case with Ray's discovery, it's thought to be around 2300 years old. The finding of one sarcophagus could be treated as an isolated anomaly, but the existence of two might suggest that the people who lived in this area all that time ago weren't nomads. Instead, they were a settled people with an established burial tradition. They also had the necessary technology to make a clay sarcophagus with a redware lid and 12 individual legs. Quite why it would have required legs to stand on when it was buried in the side of a hill is unknown. Now we know that there were people living here either permanently or semi-permanently 23 centuries ago. New surveys have been ordered in the hope of finding out more about them. If you want to break down a heavy door, you'll probably need a battering ram. The police still use battering rams today, but they've been around for thousands of years. This particular example is known as the Belgamel Ram and was found in 1964 off the coast of Libya, not far from Tabrem. It's made of bronze and is thought to have come from an ancient Greek or Roman warship. Rather than being used to break down doors, it would have been affixed to the bow of the vessel and used to ram the timbers of enemy ships. Back before the invention of heavy projectiles, a battering ram was your best hope of sinking an enemy vessel. Casting a large alloy object like this wouldn't have been easy in those days. Dating the artifact was only possible because of burnt fragments of wood found inside it. Chemical analysis of the ram shows that the bronze was heated to a high temperature long after it was made, which suggests that the ship might have been on fire when it went down. Given the difficulties involved in making the weapon, that would have been an expensive loss. The Atarian culture lived in North Africa during the Middle Stone Age and is best known for producing stone tools in industrial quantities. The oldest of their known artifacts isn't stone though, it's bone. This bone knife was found in Dar es Sultan 1 cave in Morocco in 2012 and is roughly 90,000 years old. It's made from the rib of an unidentified large mammal. Bone tools of a similar age have been discovered in the South of Africa before, but the design of this one is sufficiently different for archaeologists to be sure it came from a different culture. The manufacture of a specialized bone tool like this suggests a cognitive complexity that's not often associated with the people of the time. This technological ability might even have been unique to North Africa at the time. The fact that it's made from bone rather than stone might suggest a shortage of natural resources at the time of its manufacture, but further study would have to be carried out before such a conclusion could be made. It may just be a simple case of its owner preferring the material. We're all familiar with the concept of a meme. We'd like to think it's a product of the social media age, but it isn't. In fact, you could describe this medieval silver badge as a meme. It was found in Pontefract, Yorkshire, England in 2020. Archaeologists say that it was probably made during the 13th century and shows a knight climbing out of a snail shell. As if that weren't absurd enough, the snail shell is perched on top of a goat. At the time, snails were associated with cowardice, so the badge was probably intended as a form of mockery, which is almost always the purpose of all memes. Historians think it was either intended as a parody of the British upper classes or a suggestion that an enemy had been cowardly in battle. The badge was probably mass-produced and would have been passed from friend to friend for the purpose of amusement. Apparently, someone somewhere in medieval England thought that a knight had behaved in a manner unbecoming, and so this would have been a hilarious thing to see. We guess it's one of those jokes where you had to be there. This beautiful bowl is a long way from the lavish table it probably once had a place of pride on. The elaborately decorated artifact was found by Dutch archaeologists in Oostgeest in late 2013. It's made from silver and covered with gold-plated decorations of plants and animals, finished off with precious inlaid stones. It probably comes from the early 7th century and suggests the presence of an extremely wealthy elite class with international connections living in the area at that time. Such is the value of the bowl that it was probably buried intentionally as part of a ritual. It would never have been discarded for any other purpose. Decorative bowls of the time were usually made from bronze, so this one would have been considered exceptional not only because of the silver, but also the gold leaf. Nothing like it has ever been found in the Netherlands. Until it was found, it was thought that the only people who lived in this area during the times of antiquity were simple farmers. Because of its historical and cultural importance, it's now the property of the province of South Holland, but it's on semi-permanent loan to the Dutch National Museum of Antiquities. These days, it feels more like theatres are closing down than opening up, but there are exceptions. A construction project working on a new theatre in Doncaster, England, set about breaking ground for their new task in 2011 and almost immediately had to stop when they came across a very rare ancient Roman artifact. It's a very well-preserved glass jug, and it was made somewhere around the year 150. While it might look like the sort of decorative item you'd have on your table, it's more likely that it had a funerary purpose. The entire area was once a Roman cemetery where thousands of cremations were carried out. Although York is better known as a centre of ancient Roman activity in Britain, the Romans actually arrived in Doncaster long before they got to York. This vessel was probably once filled with some kind of oil and placed alongside the buried remains of a high-status person. The neck of the jug would have been broken off deliberately as part of the burial process. The construction of the new theatre and civic centre was eventually allowed to resume, but not before a whole collection of other Roman artifacts was found. How did you ward off the threat posed by evil spirits in England 300 years ago? Well, apparently you used a magic shoe. This old leather shoe was found behind a wall at Cambridge University College in August 2016 while maintenance workers installed new cables. The old building is part of the college's second court, dating back to the Tudor era, and once served as the private residence of its master. The original building has stood since 1598, but it's thought the shoe was placed behind the panels during alterations carried out at the 17th century. England was a far more superstitious place back then, and shoes were believed to protect the living from the malevolent spirits of the dead. Quite why the shoes were thought to have these protective properties is unknown, but the people of the time are also known to have used horse skulls, dead cats, and bottles of urine for the same purpose. Perhaps some of those superstitions still hold true though, although nobody at the college would admit to believing in such things, the shoe was eventually put back in its original position before the wall was sealed up. Maybe someone else will find it 300 years from now and wonder what the people of our time believed in. The sunken town was found off the coast of Mammalpuram, India in early 2016. Archaeologists believe it to be between 1,000 and 1,500 years old. Very little of the town remains, but it's still possible to see the ruins of a temple, along with a staircase and what might have once been a city wall. The discovery confirmed rumours of a sunken town in the area that first appeared in 2004 in the aftermath of a tsunami in the region. As the waters receded, locals claim to have seen large granite boulders sticking out above the waves. Those boulders turned out to be part of the temple. It's hard to identify the builders of the ruins because the thick layers of aquatic life clinging to their walls make it difficult to identify the architectural style. After several years of careful study, experts now believe they were created during the Sangam period of 2,300 years ago. The reason for the town's sinking is still unknown. It could have been due to an earthquake, or it may just have been due to a global rise in sea levels.