we love a good mystery as fascinating as it is when an archaeologist pulls something out of the ground and is immediately able to tell us all about what it is and what it says about the people who came before us we are much more excited when they come across something they can't explain even with all our current technology the amount of information we're missing about our ancestors and the way they lived is startling perhaps we'd understand them a little better if we correctly understood the purpose of the strange artifacts you're about to see in this
video our first mysterious artifact doesn't come from just one place in europe but from all over the continent and scientists can't agree on whether they occur naturally or whether human hands fashioned them between 700 bce and 300 bce a series of stone-walled forts were built in europe on hilltops that alone isn't unusual but what does make them unusual is the fact that there are parts of those walls that are fused together into glass even now so many years later the remnants of air bubbles can be seen inside the glass proving that the rock was once
subjected to incredibly high temperatures experts refer to the phenomenon as the vitrified fortresses of europe of all the countries within europe scotland is the place where most examples can be found john williams was the first researcher to identify them back in 1777 but in the 250 years since nobody has been able to shed any light on how this process could have happened the kind of extreme and sustained heat that would be needed to vitrify the rock on purpose shouldn't have been achievable by the people of the era deep in the all-time mountains you'll find a
getaway that may not actually be a getaway the majority of geologists insist that this door-shaped object is a natural formation that happens to look like a gateway but there are plenty of people who say that the smooth edges and contours mean that it must have been built deliberately unsurprisingly a lot of legends and rumors have sprung up around the mysterious structure to the people who believe in the myths this is ehrlich's gate a name that is caught on so strongly that even people who don't believe the tale use it to refer to the rock formation
the legend says that ehrlich was a dwarf who ruled the lower world and he used this gateway as a portal between the lower world and the world that we all occupy he didn't make the journey just for his own amusement he would enter our world to harvest human souls during the night and then take them back to his kingdom before morning arrived the story is more than a little fanciful so perhaps it is just a strange natural rock formation after all there's a lot that we don't know about the mexico of pre-columbian times but quite
high on the list of mysteries is how and why the mesoamerican indians chose to make so many complicated structures out of obsidian obsidian is a form of volcanic glass that's exceptionally difficult to make sculptures out of without breaking the material even by modern standards but apparently our distant mexican ancestors had no qualms or difficulties about working with such fragile rock some of the structures they made defy explanation this ornate monkey sculpture is easy enough to understand but what do they mean by sculpting something that so closely resembles a compact disc and what are these cylindrical
items if they're not spools similar to the type of device you'd find in a modern sewing machine these ancient artifacts were made without the use of any power tools or a lave both of which would be required as an absolute minimum to achieve this type of precision today the ancient mexican art of obsidian sculpture is a total mystery to us almost total mystery surrounds the existence of this clay tablet which was discovered on a coastline in the united states of america fans of lovecraft probably think it looks very familiar though the creature that's been etched
onto the front of it looks almost exactly like cthulhu who made his first appearance in lovecraft's story the call of cthulhu in 1928 since then lovecraft enthusiasts have created their own cthulhu mythology which some people treat as if it were a religion so it's entirely possible that a cthulhu devotee made this tablet and deposited it on the coastline for someone else to find it might not be that straightforward though we don't currently know the age of the tablet we can't rule out the possibility that lovecraft was inspired to create his famous creature after seeing the
design somewhere else perhaps he also once found a tablet that looked just like this and there's a lost civilization of space alien worshippers missing from our history books and what do you think the only thing scientists know for sure about the giants of mont prama is that they exist beyond that everything else is speculation and guesswork the most popular theory that currently prevails regarding the origin of the eight foot tall sculptures is that they're a product of the nuragic civilization who lived on sardinia between 1800 to 240 bce when they lost their land to the
ever-expanding roman empire they left very little behind themselves in the form of written records and unusually there are few mentions made of them in the writings of any other civilization or culture what they did leave behind though is their stonework and the giant statues may be examples of it at its best it wasn't until 1974 that the sculptures were found close to cabras in the island's west and they immediately puzzled the team that found them because of the large disc shapes that represent their eyes because ancient tombs were found close to their position it might
be that they're intended to be guardians of the dead but yet again that's just a guess [Music] it's not just the ancient neurogic civilization who've left some puzzling statues behind to confuse us we have even more questions about these statues from jordan which are more than 8 000 years old and were discovered at the neolithic settlement of ein gazal in 1983 the figures were close to two of the oldest temples ever to be found anywhere on the planet the oddly designed sculptures are humanoid but were made without arms and don't have any distinguishing features that
would identify their intended gender perhaps the most haunting thing about them is their eyes which are lifelike and thickly lined between the eyes and the strangely small ears it's challenging to identify which race of people they're supposed to represent if any at all some of the plaster sculptures are only two feet tall whereas others are six feet tall or even larger unfortunately for us the civilization who made the statues is no longer around to be asked about their purpose we don't know which neolithic artists to thank for the creation of these curiosities and nor do
we know who they're supposed to represent if you talk about geoglyphs in peru most people will assume that you're referring to the world famous nazca lines far fewer people are aware that a mere 25 miles away there are more ancient etchings in the earth and these are arguably even more impressive and puzzling the geoglyphs can be found on a plateau known as palpa pampa and cover a wide area despite their clear visibility western eyes weren't first laid on them until swiss researcher eric von daniken located them during the 1990s at the top of the plateau
you'll find just over a dozen detailed anthropomorphic designs including what appear to be human figures wearing feathered crowns and battle helmets far more impressive than the pictures of humans and animals though is the star figure which is known as estrella and its companion sundial design at the center of the sundial is a double helix which may once have been the foundation of a labyrinth right next to a criss-crossing pattern of bands and lines that may have been used to tell the time based on the position of the sun if you're brave enough to travel right
into the heart of the sahara you'll eventually come across the tenner desert it's a barren and inhospitable place with a name that translates into english as the place that contains nothing the name is a little dishonest though it's not empty it contains the largest animal petroglyphs ever discovered anywhere in the world and they go by the name of the dabose giraffes the larger of the pear is 18 feet tall the giraffes aren't even alone in the desert they're accompanied by more than 800 more carvings of many different types of animals including lions camels buffalo and
ostriches the biggest question that experts have about the giraffe carvings is the straight line that appears to lead down from the mouth of the giraffes to the humanoid figures below them could they represent leads if they do is this evidence that early humans once domesticated giraffes in the same way they later did with horses on many websites around the internet you'll find people who claim that there was once a species of giant humans living on our planet alongside regular-sized humans there's very little evidence to support their claim but the existence of old battle weapons like
these enormous minoan axes helps to add a little credence to their claims you can tell just by looking at them that there's no way a normal-sized human would ever be able to pick them up or use them in battle so what else could they have been made for all of the axes that have so far been recovered from the minoan megaron area of niru date back between 1700 and 1300 bce and some of them have been heavily and ornately decorated that makes it possible that they were used for ceremonial or worshipful purposes but picking them
up for a ceremony would still have been extremely difficult and we don't know of any culture who ever worshiped axes their existence is a riddle but that still doesn't mean that they were made for giant warriors it's likely that we'll never know all there is to know about the great pyramid of giza and the structures that stand around it especially when new mysteries come to light all the time in 2018 24 solid aswan granite boxes were found inside a series of hillside caves just south of the pyramid each one weighing more than 100 tons there's
something a little foreboding about the casket-shaped boxes perhaps it's the fact that they're a morbid shade of black or maybe it's the fact that we have no idea how the ancient egyptians could have created such geometrically precise shapes symmetrically perfect to a degree of a small number of microns the hieroglyphs on their sides offer no clues as to their purpose and may even have been added years after the boxes were created as an early form of graffiti the site is now known as the serapium of saqqara it is thought to date back approximately 3 300
years to the time of ramses the second the boxes are so well made that they're still air tight even after all these years but it's thought that they might contain the mummified remains of apis bulls which were worshiped by ancient egyptians as earth-bound representations of the god ta although it looks to some people like a sculpture of a hedgehog playing a mouth organ this is the monolith of plalac a depiction of the aztec god of rain that you'll find in mexico city and its history is almost as stormy as the god it represents even now
in these less superstitious times people believe this statue has supernatural abilities when it first arrived in mexico city it was followed by an enormous rainstorm that arrived out of season and yet soaked the city for an entire week that was some time after its discovery during the late 19th century near kuala lumchan it was likely built to encourage rain to fall on a field of maize although for some mysterious reason it was never completed perhaps that's for the best tributes to talalak were often the site for the most gruesome of all human sacrifices because it
was believed that tlalak specifically required the blood of children to generate rain the storm that followed its arrival in mexico city in 1963 was unmatched during the dry season by any recorded storm before it or any storm that's happened since the only things we've been able to discern about the long yao caves in china have been determined by way of testing as a result we can tell you that they're approximately 2 200 years old and they were therefore built before the beginning of the xing dynasty beyond that everything is a mystery there's plenty of writing
or what appears to be writing anyway on the walls of the caves but nobody has ever been able to translate it it doesn't match any known language from this region this period or any other place or period in history the carvings are precise and show evidence of chisel work and yet if we accept that the caves were made with chisels then we must also accept that well over one thousand people must have been involved in digging them out for several decades how was such a large scale project possible without leaving a single historical record or
identifying mark behind unless someone finally gets a handle on what the inscriptions might say it's likely that we are never going to find out [Music] subscribe to the channel and turn on notifications and you will be the first to know when a new video comes out thank you for watching and see you soon
