Most Incredible Archaeological Finds

Scientists and archaeologists are making new, incredible discoveries all the time about the history of Earth’s civilizations. Here are some of the most important--and the most bizarre--findings.

3. Lead Books Found in Jordan
In 2008, 70 books--or codices--were uncovered in a remote cave in Jordan. The pages are crafted of lead and appear to be almost unreadable, bound together on rings. To an outside observer, they may not look like much, but this was a find that could change the way ancient Christianity is studied and maybe even how we perceive Jesus Christ himself. Through rigorous testing, all 70 books were determined to be genuine and date to the first century AD, making them 2,000 years old. The books reference the apostles John, Peter, and James as well as the earliest mentions of Jesus Christ--even including a portrait of him. The writings in the codices suggest that Jesus was not beginning a new religion; rather, he was continuing a thousand-year-old religion begun during the time of King David, a religion that worshipped a God who was both male and female. One of the book has seven seals, matching the description of a codex mentioned in the Book of Revelation. These are the earliest known Hebrew-Christian documents, which means they could provide valuable information for those practicing Christianity, Islam, or Judaism.


2. The Library of Ashurbanipal
It is said that this was the library which inspired Alexander the Great to build the great library of Alexandria, all of which has been lost. This library, however, sometimes called “the first library” or “the oldest library” in the world, still exists and 30,000 tablets of literature, medical texts, and more have been recovered from its shelves. The library dates to the 7th century BC and is today located in northern Iraq, near Mosul. During its time, it would have been located in the ancient city of Nineveh, the capital of Assyria in Mesopotamia. Ashurbanipal was motivated to create the library because his childhood education allowed him to learn to read and write, as he was not originally expected to take the throne. During his reign, Mesopotamia expanded to include Egypt, Babylon, Persia and Syria. For this reason, the texts included in the library are of incredible significance to understanding the history of these places. Finally, among the tablets found in the library, is one that nearly everyone is familiar with: The Epic of Gilgamesh, which is considered one of the earliest great pieces of literature.


1. Gobekli Tepe (teep)
The discovery of this temple in modern-day Turkey is an incredible archaeological find that could force scientists to rethink the timeline of human civilization as we know it. The temple has been carbon-dated to be around 11,000 years old, having been constructed around 9600 BC. Civilizations as we know them, with beginnings in Egypt and Mesopotamia, did not begin until around 3000 BC, about 5000 years ago. But this temple was clearly built with care and a ton of hard work, supposedly with the intention of making it a place of worship. The temple consists of two 10-foot pillars in its center, decorated with carvings of animals and more identifiable icons. Bones at the temple suggest there were once sacrifices here. The temple then goes outward in rings, with more pillars inside each ring. The building of this temple would have predated writing, pottery-making, metalworking, and according to previous estimates, organized worship. The mystery of the site continues as crude Neolithic tools were found, which were made of flint. But how were such tools used to carve pillars that weigh around 40-60 tons? And how did they move these pillars to the site of the temple? The questions continue, but one thing is certain: The discovery of this temple could lead to incredible answers about the evolution of society.

[FUGYOO]

Thumbs up for not using that annoying computer generated voice.

[Crazy__Canuck]

It makes me sick what must have been lost in the Library of Alexandria. They rumoured to have over a million scrolls. Things like the exact building techniques used on the pyramids could have been common knowledge or Mathematics could be 1, 000 years ahead of where it is today. So many intriguing answers went up in flames when that library did.

[austinsullivan]

Dead sea scrolls were found by a boy retrieving a stray goat he believed had wandered into the cave.

[AveryMilieu]

Dodecehedra (my spelling leaves something to be desired here) have been shown to be knitting widgets specifically to knit gloves.
Which is why they are found in the northern latitudes and in different sizes.
You may have used a simple wooden variation as a child - an open centered spool or tube with pegs or nails at the circumference of one end. The yarn is looped over the pegs and progressively looped over the other loops (a hook or tool can be used for this) creating a knitted tube that feeds out through the center of the spool. These are single fingers. The Roman tool was designed to create five different sized tubes and a palm piece all as a single unit.

[susanbarton]

This has to be edited. I never hear her breathe.

[kcchiefs]

#1, they forgot to mention that its ok only been unearthed about 10%. 90% of tepe is still underground and is 50x bigger than Stonehenge and 7000years older

[jonosterman]

Recorded on a Friday afternoon right before closing time.

[ancientbuilds]

I posit that the Roman Dodecahedrons were used in building shelters. You would insert wooden lengths into it from two directions and then lash them using the knobs. So you got an extra sturdy roof corner. Being a dodecahedron, this allowed the 2 wooden lengths to pass by each other in the middle with some resistance further tightening the joint. Very handy for units on the move in rough weather. Kinda handy not having you're shelter fall on your noggin in the early morning hours during a storm. Another thing that backs this up is that a narrow hole (Roof joint) always passes a larger hole at 90° (Support)

[Dawnspell]

Got one for all of you to wrap your heads around. In Turkey, an under ground town was found. The doors of which weighted several tonnes but could only be opened from the inside by a child. Within there where many chambers, some with the remains of plants. Its seems that people lived here through the mini-ice age that occurred about 8, 000 years ago.
Here is the fun part. These people claim they were told about this years before by a being called Aura Masda: Sky God. Who also taught them the incredible engineering feats involved in it's construction. Aura Masda is unique among ancient gods as he claimed responsibility for evil but pledged himself to good.

[stober]

The origins of the Antikythera Mechanism was solved a few years ago when they discovered stamped printing around the outside edge. Because the printing was pressed into the metal, the metal was more dense where it had been compressed by the tool.
Using a scanning device to differentiate the compression of the tool marks from the metal surface, the printing was legible. It was most likely made by Archimedes a Greek mathematician who was killed in the ‎Siege of Syracuse when an attacking solder ordered him to stand. The old man was slow or wasn't paying attention, so the soldier killed him. I expect that soldier was killed too because the invaders had instructions to find and capture him.
The device was made because Archimedes' king attempted a campaign against another enemy which failed because of a full moon. The device was constructed to show planets and stars as they revolve around Earth in the center of the universe and had a pretty cool trick built into it to cause the retrograde of the planets as seen from Earth. I watched a program about how the various gears were crafted. The method used was so simple, he may have made one gear a day. The hard part was the math...but look who we're talking about and the math is easy-peezy too. I was disappointed. I wanted it to be a very advanced computer. Fraid not. The machine is wonderful in how it works, but...too bad it couldn't plot the gradual rise and fall of the moon over the 18-year cycle.

[nefelovamon]

Something tells me that the narrator's favorite song is "Take my breath away". But no one ever did.

[estbroc]

The guy writing the Voynich Manuscript-
"This is going to be my best D&D campaign yet!"

[richardlorych]

narrators were in a real hurry to go home!

[darmst]

The first one was a knitting device for making woollen shapes. A length of wool was used and the knobs were anchor points and the holes allowed pulling through.

[donatist]

Five-sided shape is a pentagon not a hexagon.

[stephaniereif]

The shepherd tossed a rock to the cave to scare back his goat that wandered in. The boy heard a stone hit a clay pot and went in, finding the scrolls.

[MajWMartin]

Why is it we assume that any building we don't understand was some kind of temple? Someday a thousand years from now someone is going to dig up a parking garage and declare it the Tower of Babel or some other kind of temple because they don't use cars anymore.

[robertschlesinger]

Very interesting video, but with far too many annoying commercials.

[mrdisorderly]

Honestly how accurate is the system we use to date things, I think certain circumstances could have caused the gear to deteriorate more than usual.

[dougvb]

The Voynich manuscript was recently decoded. The manuscript was written in a proto-Romance language that was often used in medieval times, but rarely written in official documents. The proto-Romance language used in the manuscript eventually gave rise to Romance languages such as Portuguese, Spanish, French and Italian. It was determined that it was a plagiarized health manual.