6 Ancient Artefacts That #Archaeology Can't Explain

Well, fancy finding you here. You know, I've spent years uncovering ancient artifacts as a part of my studies and then job as an archaeologist. And while a lot of them I can look at them and say, that's a piece of pottery, that's a stone tool, I have found this humorous, sometimes I also have no idea what they are. And I'm not the only one. In fact, there are artifacts sitting in museums right now that we can describe, we can kind of get a rough idea of their date, but we have no idea what they're used for. It might surprise you to know that not everything we dig up makes sense. In fact, we actually have this inside joke in archaeology that when we don't know what something is, we say it's ritual. From ancient computers found in shipwrecks to what looks like a 12-sided dice from D&D, but isn't, I'm going to show you today six artifacts that still mystify experts and defy every attempt to explain them. These objects are the ones that truly stump archaeologists and challenge us to dig even deeper into the past to figure them out. And no, Emma, they aren't all just ancient cat toys. If learning more about this sounds like it's right up your trench, let's dig in to these fascinating and frustrating finds. Our journey begins in the Aegean Sea in Greece, where over 2,000 years ago, a Roman cargo ship carrying luxury goods sank off the coast of the island of Antikythera, which I also, like side note, just love saying as a word. The shipwreck lay undisturbed 45 meters deep on the seafloor until the year 1900, when a crew of sponge divers came across it. After alerting the authorities to the find, the team then spent two years working with the Hellenic Royal Navy, retrieving numerous objects from the wreck, including bronze and marble statues, pottery, unique glassware, jewelry, coins, and a sizable and somewhat unremarkable looking clump of corroded bronze and wood that, after it was removed from the sea, fractured into a couple different pieces. It went relatively unnoticed for two years until an archaeologist spotted that one of the fragments had part of a gear wheel embedded in it. A closer look revealed that the object was effectively a metal sandwich and the peanut butter and jelly inside of it were the gears. On the back of it were lines of reverse Greek text. Since then, smaller pieces have broken off during cleaning and handling or been found on the seafloor or might even still be in storage, as one was discovered that way in 2005. In total, there are now 82 known fragments of this device. Seven are mechanically significant and they contain the majority of the mechanism and the inscriptions. And even then, once we knew it wasn't a run-of-the-mill object, its true significance wasn't known as it was assumed that it was a much later mechanical device that had coincidentally been dropped and ended up at the wreck site centuries later after the original wreck. Then, in 1951, a British scientist took a closer look and concluded that it was some sort of astronomical computer, planetarium, or orrery and was indeed ancient. He went on to publish his findings and build a replica and the device became known as a wonder, a unique one-of-a-kind object. In the 1990s, interest in the Antikythera mechanism, as it's called, picked up considerably. It's now been examined by x-rays and CT scans to look at every layer of the fragments, millimeter by millimeter, which has revealed an abundance of engraved text and instructions. Thanks to these ongoing research projects, the workings of the mechanism are now much better understood, although the interpretation of what it was used for is still hotly debated. So, what do we know about it? Well, it was made between 200 and 60 BCE. The ship carrying it set sail between 70 and 60 BCE and it was a Greek cargo ship coming back from the coast of Asia Minor. The front of the device has two concentric dials engraved with the signs of the zodiac and the days of the year. There are five dials on the back, two large spiral-shaped dials and three small ones. The large dials keep track of lunar phases and predict eclipses. One of the small dials even records the four-year Olympic game cycle. The device is capable of predicting astronomical positions and eclipses decades in advance and because of this, it's often called the world's first analog computer. Cicero, a first century Roman writer and politician, wrote about similar devices built by the famous Greek mathematician, scientist, inventor Archimedes that were brought back to Rome as war trophies after the siege of Syracuse. His friend the philosopher Poseidonius, living on Rhodes, built a similar device showing that while rare, these kinds of machines were not one of a kind. Although it still doesn't exactly tell us what it was used for. What we do know is that it wasn't used to do everyday labor or work. There's nothing that you could do with it that you couldn't accomplish much more easily with other more readily available navigational instruments. Some of the inscriptions on it are almost like what you might see at a museum explaining to you what a certain object is and they seem to explain what's happening as the machine is working. The current prevailing theory is that it was a philosophical or teaching device summarizing knowledge of the universe and how it works. Another theory that might also be true because, you know, there could be multiple different purposes for it, is that devices like this were signifiers of social status like today's Birkenbag or Rolex watch. A more far-fetched theory that completely ignores the archaeological context of the find, Cicero's writings and the technological capacity of the Greeks suggest it was an alien technology used on spaceships. You may have also spotted that it had a leading role in the fifth Indiana Jones film as a time machine, I wish. I have done a breakdown of all the archaeological elements of that film if you want to check it out it's just up here. Divers have been going back down to the Antiquitara wreck since around 2012 hoping to either find more pieces or more devices like it. At least 10 replicas of the mechanism have been built since the 1950s. One amateur machinist and clockmaker in Australia has actually been building one since 2016 and documenting the entire process on video on his YouTube channel, Clickspring, which is also linked for you to check out. Our second object, or rather collection of objects, are Neolithic carved stone balls mainly found in Scotland. They're usually round and rarely oval, about the size of a tennis ball, with between 3 and 160 protruding knobs on the surface. This is a replica of the Towie ball which is found on a hill near Towie in Aberdeenshire in 1860. It seems that circles and spirals and straight lines are symbols that played an important part in the early beliefs of this time as they're often found in tombs, monuments, houses, pottery, balls, and more. Many of the stone balls are made of greenstone, a general term that we use for describing varieties of dark green igneous rocks. Some of the balls are actually also made of a harder stone to carve. The majority have been found in Aberdeenshire in Scotland, but a few have been found further afield in other parts of Scotland, as well as Ireland and England, and one has even made its way into a Norwegian medieval cairn. We think it was probably acquired and carried home by a To date over 425 of these balls have been found, but beyond what they're made of we don't really know anything else about them or what they were used for. This is largely because most balls have not had their discovery site recorded and are found as a result of agricultural activity like plowing, not via excavation, and even then that doesn't come with a nice like written description of I use this ball for this thing. Several theories have been put forward for their use. The first shouldn't be a surprise. It's a ritual oracle ball where the way in which it came to rest after being thrown or rolled is either a message from the gods or an answer to a question, just like a magic eight ball. So in that spirit, should I give Emma a treat or maybe they're a weapon? It's been suggested that in the grooves between the knobs you could tie a string and throw them like a slingshot or a bola, which is a weapon made of weights on the ends of an interconnected cord that's thrown to capture animals by entangling their legs, or perhaps they were ball bearings for transporting megalithic stones for constructing monuments. This theory is based on two things. First, many balls have diameters that are differing by only like a millimeter, suggesting that uniform size was important for their purpose and that they could be used either together or interchangeably. Secondly, when mapping where they're found in Aberdeenshire, they were often found in the vicinity of neolithic megalithic circles. To test this, archaeologists built a model transport system using hard wooden balls made to the same size. These were placed into grooves cut in pieces of wood molding, similar to a railway track, and the balls were then spread apart and a mirror image of the track was placed on top supporting a wood platform that they then put concrete slabs on top of to mimic the weight of the megalithic stones. The experiment found that the concept works, although it doesn't prove that the neolithic people used the balls in this method, just that it was and is possible. This theory also ignores the ornamentation of the balls. Why would you spend more time carving something so intricate if you're using it for just a functional purpose where they're not even seen? Smooth balls would have worked just as well and you could even say that carving the balls weakens their structural integrity which makes them less fit for this task. One thing we do know is that it was possible for neolithic people to make them. They didn't need lasers or modern tech as replicas have been reproduced in modern day using pecking or grinding techniques. My version is not a true replica, it's not made of stone, it's a cast made of tiling cement coated in a matte black finish. It was made by Scott Knight who started carving balls many years ago to try and gain some answers about their purpose, although he quickly realized that without a time machine there aren't any. So instead he brings uncarved granite and sandstone balls to fairs and lets people have a go. Through this he's found that pecking them with harder stones like tuff or flint seems to be the best way to break down the channels around the bumps. Over the last couple of decades he's put his creations in the hands of thousands of people and seen a lot of very strange reactions and heard some wonderful stories as they seem to really open people up and stimulate conversation. He's also sold sets to schools for children with sensory difficulties and sent some to an old folks home where they are used as communication and handling aids and therapy. He sells his replicas as well as many other cool carved and handmade items through his website linked in the description of this video if you want to check it out. Full disclosure I paid for my replica, it's not gifted or sponsored, I just wanted to support a local artist and have something tactile to show you in my video. Our next mysterious artifact I picked mostly because of its name, the holy jar, which is not a religious relic but a roman jar literally full of holes. This item lay forgotten and broken in 180 pieces in the storeroom of the Museum of Ontario Archaeology in Canada for decades. Then the pieces were glued back together and archaeologists were faced with a completely one-of-a-kind artifact. At just 40 centimeters tall and 1800 years old it has stumped Roman pottery experts all over the world. This is not helped by the fact that we don't know exactly how the jar came to be in the museum's collection. It is most likely part of a Romano-British assemblage that was given to the museum in the 1950s by an archaeologist after his team had dug them up out of a World War II bomb crater in London, England, not far from an ancient temple dedicated to Mitra. But it's not mentioned on the list of artifacts that came with the assemblage which is annoyingly short on details. Alternatively it might come from Ur in Iraq as part of another gifted collection from the British Museum. So what was it used for? Possible explanations range from a lamp to a planter, maybe for something like strawberries, a beehive, octopus trap, or an animal cage for snakes or dormice. However we have dormice jars from elsewhere and they don't resemble this one. Notably this example doesn't have internal paths or food holders for the mice. One thing is for sure, while all these theories are plausible you can also poke holes in all of them. Speaking of mysterious jars, perhaps you've heard of the Plain of Jars where thousands of massive stone vessels are scattered across a remote plateau in Laos, puzzling archaeologists for decades. Local legend associates the plain and the jars with a race of ancient giants brewing and storing rice wine to celebrate a victory in battle. There are over 2,100 jars that are between one and three meters high. The majority are made from sandstone although other rock types have been identified that they're made of as well. They were carved and transported from quarries up to 10 kilometers away but who carved them, when were they made, and how they were transported still largely remains a mystery. Initial archaeological work in the 1930s concluded that they were related to burial practices. As normal size, not gigantic, human remains and glass beads were found in and around some of the jars. The bone and teeth inside show signs of being cremated while the burials surrounding the jars outside of them don't. Ceramic vessels, stone tools and pendants, spindle whorls, iron implements, glass and stone beads and copper alloy bangles and bells have all also been found in the area. Two soil samples from beneath the jars have been analyzed using optically stimulated luminescence which can determine when the soil grains were last exposed to sunlight i.e right before when the jars were put on top of them. This at last allowed us to establish a preliminary dating range for when the jars were being put in place which was between 1240 and 660 BCE. The next challenge is to obtain further samples from other sites which sounds easy but is not given the extensive amounts of leftover unexploded bombs from the Vietnam war when the US dropped more bombs on Laos than they did in the entirety of World War II. This destroyed much of the plain surrounding area making it difficult for archaeologists to verify the precise original context of the jars. It has also severely limited free movement, damaged the jars themselves and restricted archaeological research for decades as people were risking their lives to study the sites because you know they might get blown up in the process. Seven of the jar sites have now been cleared of unexploded bombs and are open to visitors and further excavations. So far the work that has been done has concluded that the variations in jar size, placement and the associated grave goods suggest that certain individuals held higher social status than others. The labor and coordination that would have been needed to carry, carve and transport the jars also points to there being an organized society with leadership and division of labor. Together these features indicate a community with a clear social differentiation rather than an egalitarian structure and work on this site continues slowly and meticulously telling us the story of these ancient people and their giant jars. Sometimes the mystery surrounding an artifact is not what is it but how did it get there and this is the case for the Tamil bell, a crown of a bronze ship's bell inscribed with the Tamil script that was allegedly found being used as a cook pot in New Zealand in the 1830s. At this time there was no trade between the Maori and any part of Asia and we have no idea how it made it all the way to New Zealand. It was acquired in the 1830s by a missionary visiting a Maori village. According to him the village women were using it to cook a tuber similar to potatoes and they said it had been with them for many generations after it had been found in the roots of a tree that had toppled in a storm. It struck the missionary as particularly odd because the village had not established trade with foreigners and therefore had no access to bronze which was not manufactured on the island at that time. He recognized the object as being part of a ship's bell and traded a cast iron pot for it. The bell's original swell is gone and only the crown which is not much larger than a pair of remains. This size raises questions about the original story of how he found it. Would it have been big enough for cooking potatoes? Probably not. The inscription on it does appear to be genuine and reads Moho Yidin Buck Ship Spell. The script is an archaic form of Tamil and dates to the 17th or 18th century. The name probably comes from a saint revered by many Muslim merchant communities in Southeast Asia who named ships after him to protect them and their crews. It is known that Tamil traders traded as far as the southern tip of Madagascar and to what is today Indonesia but there is no record of them ever reaching New Zealand. Explanations for how it ended up there include a lost souvenir of a well-traveled sailor. Emma's ready for her cameo. Say hello! Descendants of Spanish sailors marooned in French Polynesia in the 1500s bringing it to New Zealand. It was dropped off the shore by a Portuguese ship whose sailors had been in touch with the Tamil and finally an abandoned ghost ship floating from the Indian Ocean and then wrecking on the coast of New Zealand. It's important to note that a single bell is not proof of early Tamil contact with the Maori. More substantial evidence than one artifact would need to be found to support that kind of conclusion. Our last object is one you've probably come across before, Roman dodecahedrons. These 12-sided copper alloy artifacts are distinctive and have been found at Roman era sites across Europe but not, interestingly, in Italy. With no inscribed numbers or letters on them we've been rolling the 12-sided dice, so to speak, on their purpose for almost 300 years. The first one was found in a field in England in 1739 and since then over 100 have been unearthed in Roman military camps, public baths, temples, theaters, and tombs, meaning that we have no clear pattern that can associate them easily with a particular purpose. Over 50 theories have been published academically and even more put forward unofficially on what they were used for. I'm sure the comments of this video will have a few. These are some of the most popular. A candlestick holder, mainly due to the fact that a few were discovered with some wax residue attached to them, although it's entirely possible that that is left over from when the objects themselves were made. A tool for either stretching leather, weaving rope or cord, checking counterfeit coins, spool knitting gloves, or weaving wire into chain for jewelry. A survey instrument for estimating distances to or sizes of distant objects, a puzzle or a game, and once again a ritual object used for fortune telling. The issue with a few of these suggestions is that although several similar dodecahedra have been found, no two of them are identical. If they were used as some kind of tool for standardization then you would think that they would be uniform, not to mention that this ignores the fact that they are not usually found in workshops which is where you tend to find tools. What we do know is that they are made of a relatively expensive material, bronze, and would require some skill to craft. This has led to another theory that they are some sort of test for smiths to demonstrate their skill to be part of a guild. Ultimately they remain a mystery and again it's key to remember that just because they could be used for a specific purpose like knitting, it doesn't mean that they were. For example, just because I could use my trowel to cut potatoes doesn't mean that is what it's designed for and intended to do or what I actually use it to do. While you're welcome to put your own theories on the dodecahedra in the comments, I'd also like you to think and tell me about what kind of everyday object you have or use that you think would stupefy a future archaeologist if they found it in a movie theater, a public pool, or a house of worship. Alright everyone, time to pack up our finds and holster our trowels. That's everything for this video. Did you like it? Don't forget to let me know your theories on what these objects might be in the comments and please like the video or subscribe before you leave. If you're feeling extra generous you can give me a super thanks on youtube or a ko-fi donation of any amount that you like if you want a kind of tangible return for supporting me. All of my books and variety of things on my bookshelf are listed in my amazon storefront and I also have a redbubble shop full of some designs about archaeology that I've made myself and you can get put on a sticker, a t-shirt, a hat, or a mug, or whatever. The links to all of this is in the description of the video. Thank you so much for watching, especially if you made it all the way to the end. Stay curious and I hope to see you on my next adventure inside archaeology.