the Sahara Desert is perhaps one of the most famous in the world maybe even the most famous a place where the Sands are endless and there are countless secrets and that means as you could probably guess all kinds of weird and curious things have been found there these are the 20 strangest things found in the Sahara [Music] number 20 eye of the Sahara the eye of the Sahara is a special natural formation that looks rather incredible no matter what angle that you view it from but when you look at it from above like many have
with satellite imagery it often resembles a gigantic eye the fact that we can see it from space should tell you just how big that it is but I'll tell you anyways its diameter is about 50 km which is really really huge and when you get a massive natural structure like this there are all sorts of explanations that are thrown about about what it is and what it may not be for example there were some people who wondered if it was actually part of the lost city of Atlantis but here's a Hint it wasn't one of
the more scientific explanations is that this was somehow caused by a massive meteor impact something that I'll be talking about soon enough and that's not the case either eventually scientists realized that it was an uplifted geologic Dome characterized by layers of sedimentary rocks that have been exposed over millions of years by wind and water and erosion but wait water erosion in a desert well I know it may sound strange but the Sahara was not always a desert and this just goes to highlight that over time many things have happened in this landscape and we're only
getting started about what's been found there now it's time for the sweet topic this new secret Discovery in the Sahara Has Changed History because look at it it's a submarine what's it doing in the middle of the desert well that's not where they're normally found but it's where this one was discovered the sub went missing a few years prior but then somehow surfaced in the middle of the Sands of the Sahara and quite how or why is unknown but if David Lynch taught us anything it's that not every mystery can be answered as always you
can let me know your thoughts in the comment section down below by using the Hat # sweet topic number 19 Libyan Desert glass now I teased with a certain something earlier and now I'm going to deliver on it but for now let me paint you a real scenario that's happened to people that have traveled all throughout the Sahara Desert you're going through one of the many paths that the desert has or perhaps you're going through the sand itself it's your journey you can do it how you want you start to hear a sound that doesn't
match what the other terrain did when you went across it and as you stop your vehicle that's definitely not like the one from the fancy topic you find yourself looking at the ground and you see glass but this isn't glass from a car or a window or a building it's one that has a unique color and shape this is Libyan Desert glass so then how does so much glass form in a desert well simply put it had help from above and I'm not talking about some kind of deity if you you can't put two and
two together Libyan Desert glass is believed to have formed when a meteorite hit the Sahara Desert specifically the section near Libya and Egypt and it caused such a grand explosion of heat and pressure and such that the sand itself became transformed into glass in many ways it is not unlike obsidian which is also made out of certain Elemental factors and based on the findings of some of this glass there are scientists who believe that this may have been made about 29 million years years ago and another one so this is an area and look down
here on the ground you can actually see that's quite a long time for glass to be around in the desert which just goes to show just how long that it can last even in extreme heat there are also those that believe just like with obsidian that it was used to create various tools and weapons by the people who lived in times like the pist theine epic now the overall size and look of the glass can vary of course but the results are still the same no matter what it's a glass that is both of this
world and out of it number 18 the fossil Forest now earlier I talked about how in ancient times the Sahara was not always a desert we understand that this is something that's hard to wrap your head around as the Sahara feels like one of those infinite things because it's covering so much of Africa when you look at a map but there are various relics and artifacts of its previous states that you can look at for proof and one of them is the fossil Forest there are actually quite a few fossil forests in the world which
include some in places like England or even underw in the Gulf of Mexico but the one in the Sahara Desert can be found between ubari and some other places I can't pronounce the trees that are there are not alive they're literally petrified remains of what came before and yet you can still tell that they are trees you can even see some massive Tree Trunks and it is not the only area where a Petrified Forest has been discovered there this is where the original tree trunk would have sat these fossilized trees are said to be at
least 20 M tall and it shows you that life does indeed find a way to endure even in a desert and when they're fossils but why does any of this really matter well the fact is the Sahara was once something that wasn't yellow and baking it was actually green and Lush there were waterways which helped to create vegetation and were clearly fertile enough to have had multiple kinds of forests and various places that the Sahara now inhabits this is also important as it can paint a timeline for how the Sahara once looked it has been
a desert for quite a while but then exactly how long what events help to make it go from lush green desert to Yellow these trees amongst other things found in the desert can help to shed light on everything so while it may be strange it's also vital to know the history of the region number 17 dinosaur fossils now you just had to know that something like dinosaur fossils was going to pop up I mean after all if we're finding all sorts of strange things in the Sahara it would be inevitable that we would find a
creature or a being that should never have existed there before right enter the dinosaurs there have been loads of dinosaur bones found in various areas of the Sahara over the years and that includes some being found by famed paleontologist Paul Sereno equally as important some of those bones that he and others have discovered were were not just your classic dinosaur but brand new species some of the dinos that have been discovered there include a new kind of raptor some very dangerous fish that are said to have existed alongside the dinosaurs various kinds of reptiles that
could apparently fly and more now obviously the biggest problem with trying to find dinosaur bones in a place like the Sahara is that it's hard to discover anything in a place that has so much shifting Sands incredible Heat and it's not easily accessible to the places that you want to dig up however they do continue to make it work and they do continue to make big discoveries there again proves another fact about the past of the area that the Sahara now inhabits it used to be flush with ancient life of various kinds and now the
fossils of many of those ancient creatures lie within its Sands just waiting to be uncovered and unveil the mysteries of life that have not yet been thought about and for the record I'm not saying that you should go and get some tools and head out to the Sahara yourself as that would be really really dangerous but some people do feel that call to action and that's why some of these items keep being discovered number 16 stone structures now at first hearing that there are stone structures in the Sahara doesn't really seem all that strange after
all many past and current civilizations use Stone to craft a lot of things which includes the modern-day pyramids and the Sphinx equally as important Stone was a primary building tool for homes temples and statues of the Gods however in West Sahara back in 2019 archaeologists made a shocking discovery of not one but several hundred stone structures just as important these were not massive stone structures but hundreds of little ones that were clearly carved and shaped by human hands some are shaped like crescents others like circles and some some are in straight lines some are in
rectangular shapes that look like a platform and some structures consist of rocks that have been piled up into a heap there was one structure that featured these rocks organized in such a way that it measured 630 m in length so then what were the purpose of these tiny formations nobody is really quite sure and that includes the archaeologists who had documented the things the easiest answer would be that they were a kind of gravestone marker of some sort and if so that would certainly place a Twist on things however the only way to learn the
truth is to keep on digging around the West Sahara and see what other things or even rocks that they end up discovering number 15 Sahara crop circles some people looking at Google Earth images have found lines lots of lines now if you want to get real strange then check out this next entry where we talk about the mythical crop circles that have popped up in the Sahara Desert from time to time when we think about crop circles we think of those who chop down crops to make it look like certain things but in this case
they are literal indentations in the sand that form a circular pattern and when you look at them from satellite imagery you can see why people would be just a little suspicious about what it meant but then again here's the thing you are looking at the Nubian Sandstone aquafer system and if you live near the Nile River you have plenty of water to work with so long as you irrigate the land however if you go further and further away from it the water then gets more difficult to both reach and use so this special aquafer system
is used to get water up from within the sand and allow plants to survive and people who live near them to get the food that they need without having to travel a long distance it just goes to show that water is right under your feet at most times so long as you're willing to dig down to get to it number 14 funeral boat a consistent thing that can be connected through many cultures is special funeral rights there are all sorts of ways to bury someone and if you're special enough you can do high-end burials like
the ancient Egyptians however in this case of it being a funeral boat there is a bit of a twist it was found in an ancient necropolis and the materials that were used to make this boat specifically the wood were said to have been very highend and yet the person that it was buried along side was said to be a commoner these tombs belong to the elite of the first dynasty in ancient Egypt that's not only strange but it also raises the question of why this commoner was allowed let alone able to have a boat built
to Ferry him into the Afterlife further examination would reveal that while he may have been a commoner by birth he was eventually elevated to the ranking of high official for one of Egypt's rulers if that is the case that would explain explain why they got such Royal Treatment as it was likely ordered by the king of pharaoh to honor the service the official had put forth the Egyptians were very big on honoring those who did right by the nation and its people or leaders number 13 desert whale graveyard it's time for another entry where I
make you rethink about what the Sahara Desert it once look like this time I'm going to talk to you about a graveyard but it's not just any old grave graveyard it's actually one that contains whales and if you think that it has to be by the Sea well by now you should know that you're wrong it was found in Egypt in a place called Wadi hatan and it is the largest graveyard featuring ancient whales in the known world how many whales were found there well round about a thousand of them just as important these were
not small chunks of fossils that were scattered around an area it was sometimes entire skeletons of ancient whales so how exactly did that happen 40 million years ago the area was covered by a shallow ocean called the teus sea and when climate change lowered the sea levels the ocean then dried up and the area became a forest another climate change then turned it into the vast desert that it is today all littered up with skeletons these skeletons are a boon for archaeologists who descend upon the area to learn more about the whales and what life
was like back when they swam in these once full Waters number 12 the gaffa lake picture this you're going through an area that you know is covered in sand and that hasn't changed for a long time then out of the blue you pass by the area one day and you find yourself looking at a lake this is not a hallucination though it is what happened in Tunisia back in 2014 when gapsa Lake literally appeared out of nowhere GSA for the record is a town in Tunisia where the lake was closest to and the lake itself
was found by Shepherds and soon a whole lot of people came around to swim in that Lake if for no other reason then they could thankfully it was about 20 M deep so they didn't have to worry about getting injured on the bottom the lake water was not acidic or anything like that though there were fears that it could have actually been radioactive the biggest mystery however was how did this Lake get formed the common belief being that there was a small earthquake that had just resonated underground the most this broke a rock that may
have been covering a nearby water table and the result was that the water filled up the area nature can actually surprise you in various ways sometimes number 11 Namib fairy circles not to be confused with the previous circles I talked about the fairy circles in this entry are found in the Namib Desert in southern Africa yes that means I'm not talking about the Sahara but I figured that you could use a break besides it's a desert in Africa so it's close enough right thank you so much crack research team anyways these circles really show their
metal when you look at them from above they're only patches of ground that seem to have had something done to them but you don't really know what that might be that only gets Amplified when you see that these patches appear in multiple places in the desert so once again how did it happen the truth say there is no definitive answer however the two most common answers is that an animal did it such as a sand termite or that it may be a special action taken by plants that literally form a circle and then drain out
the water of the immediate area so that they end up Surviving either way it's a freaky thing and not something that you would want to see near you without a serious explanation number 10 Stone Age skeletons I've already highlighted some animal bones that have been discovered in the Sahara so now how about some human bones in 2013 scientists would find a rock shelter in the Libyan part of the Sahara and that's when they found themselves looking at a set of Stone Age skeletons those skeletons were said to have dated between 8,000 and 4,200 years ago
meaning that the burial site was used for Millennia that obviously was a good thing because it meant that they weren't Disturbed in that time since the burials ended 20 skeletons were uncovered with the majority being women and children and finding these bones and seeing burial sites like this just goes to help put more clarification on how people from the Stone Age and before lived in places like the Sahara it almost makes you wonder if we'll ever have a civilization spanning that expanse in the future number nine Deo giraffes now before you say anything I'm not
going to tell you that giraffes live in the Sahara right now they are quite the unique creature but they're not that unique instead these giraffes were a special kind of petroglyph that was found in a specific region of the Sahara and they weren't only small carvings either they were actually 6 M tall that also meant that someone really wanted to carve these beings and not just one but there were two of them in this particular Rock in the air mountains of njir now some believe that due to the look of the giraffes in question that
they were a special kind that lived in the Sahara once upon a time but this cannot be confirmed because there are no known bones of this hypothetical giraffe that have been found number eight flowery grave now I know that I just talked about a human Cemetery in the Sahara desert but I never said that it was the only one that was found there in 2008 a much different grave site was discovered and this one dated back 5,000 years these skeletons and we were looking at them and and looking at the artifacts around them it featured
the bones of a woman and two children and the other key difference was that instead of it being comprised of stone there were actually remnants of flowers the grave in question would be found near Goro and it's believed that once upon a time there was a lake there which would explain why people were in the area and where they likely had gotten those FL hours from equally as curious three bodies weren't only placed next to one another but they were basically embracing each other showing even more symbolism in the burial number seven goldfilled shipwreck this
one is a unique story because it's the tale of a vessel known as the bomb Jesus which was a Portuguese vessel that was supposed to arrive at its destination a few months after sailing out in the year 1533 except that it never actually made it there then in 2008 it was rediscovered in the subsaharan desert yes that's a real term I did not make it up it was found off the coastline of Namibia which many felt that wasn't surprising as that stretch of water was Infamous for storms and so the ship had likely been caught
up in it and then washed into the desert and been buried most of you would say that finding the ship was the real treasure except after digging into the vessel quite a bit that's when they discovered an actual chest full of treasure 2,000 pure gold coins and tens of thousands of pounds of copper ingots were discovered on the ship almost all intact number six the Dead Sea Scrolls now I know I'm stretching things a bit with this one but it's a classic and they were found in an area that's technically connected to the Sahara and
it's one of the coolest findings in history so we'll just roll with it found in the caves of kumran back in the 1940s and 50s the Dead Sea Scrolls are the oldest known versions of what many would consider to be the Christian Bible whole chapters and books from the Bible were inscribed upon these Scrolls making them one of the most important religious artifacts to have ever been discovered while some may have been damaged due to years of hiding and Elemental deterrence others remain pretty well intact and the more fragments have been found over the years
and some experts believe that there could actually be more fragments in the Sahara Desert that we just haven't discovered yet who's to say that they aren't there given how long that it took for these ones to be found number five ancient weapons given that we know for a fact that various civilizations lived in the Sahara Desert over the centuries and Millennia it goes to reason that they have had various weapons that they used to fight off other groups and get food for themselves surely enough there's been ancient weapons discovered in the Sahara over the years
which includes some swords and ancient axes now obviously there were likely other kinds of weapons that went with these people but they eroded or withered away due to them being made of wood and other materials that weren't sustainable but finding more weapons like these could actually help to further paint the picture of how various groups had fought off threats and survived in potentially dangerous conditions number four Saharan rock art now we're getting back to some quite classic things cave paintings or even basic rock art is a key archaeological finding that many people search for in
areas where ancient civilizations once existed the rock art that I showed you earlier you know the one with the giraffes well that was just one example of what has been found by scientists over the years one set of paintings apparently dated back to 12,000 years ago an archaeologists suspect that more rock art has been lost to time not only because of human destruction but because of natural weathering and erosion there are many who are fighting to preserve the ones that have been found ensuring that these pieces of History are not lost forever number three Lost
Cities this is another one that you likely expected to see at some point throughout the entirety of the Saharan Desert you will find the remains of Lost Cities and Villages that have been not only lost a time but completely covered up by the Desert [Music] Sands one such place is this one which many felt was a mysterious City that got lost because of nature until it was found once again in the Sahara the easiest way to explain why cities like this are buried is th sand and people were not there to keep it clean and
maintained when you give a desert with serious winds time to bury something it's going to bury it in fact it will do it gladly so the real question here is how many other cities are out there that need to be uncovered and discovered number two lady be good this is a tale that you may not have expected because it's about a World War II bomber called the lady be good according to history it took off from Libya and then did a bombing run in Naples which was a pretty standard Affair at the time but on
its way back it got caught up in a sandstorm in the desert and that led to the pilot not realizing that he had passed over the base that he was supposed to land at as a result the crew bailed out of the plane and they left it for the Desert Sands to consume the plane would not be discovered again until 1958 15 years after it had done its Mission equally as sad all the crew perished in their attempts to make it back to the base number one Ben amera now given everything that I've shown you
how should we end this video well how about looking at a giant rock that's out in the Sahara Desert this is the benamer it's not only a rock though it's actually a monolith in fact it is the second largest monolith in the entire world at 633 M high and there's people who literally go out of their way to try and reach it and then try to climb up on it why is that so strange well there is no clear path to it you have to hire somebody just to get you out there and then it
is still a treacherous Journey just to see the rock yet people do it which goes to prove that humanity is more strange than anything the Sahara Desert can conjure up in the end well that's all from the Sahara Desert and the rather curious items that just keep popping up there over matter of time for no Rhyme or Reason were you stunned at what people have discovered in the desert over the years and which of these discoveries did you find a be the most strange or outstanding perhaps there's another Finding from the Sahara that could have
easily popped up on this list be sure to let me know all about it in the comment section down below check out the other cool things that are showing up on the screen and I will see you next time [Music]