Unsolved Mysteries of History: The Questions Your Teacher Couldn’t Answer

Unravel the mysteries of history with our latest video! From the enigmatic collapse of the Maya civilization to the elusive tomb of Alexander the Great, journey through four captivating unsolved historical puzzles.

[alisonanthony]

I'm going to Gobekli Tepe tomorrow - a trip 30 years in the planning! I'm currently sitting in a hotel room in rainy Istanbul, watching videos about the site and bouncing with excitement. Can't wait to see it!

Edit: Well, all I can say is it's worth the hype, and the 4 days travelling there and back. I've never seen anything like it, or felt the weight of time quite as strongly. It's magical. If anyone's interested in seeing it, I've uploaded a slideshow thingy to what is laughably called my "channel". I've never done it before, so please don't be too rude about

[billyshane]

I built many of the structures in this video on my days off and after work. It has been most rewarding to see people enjoying them.

[kevinfoster]

As of April 2024 there are also other settlements found in the area around Gobekli Tepe dated to the same time or older. These are more residential areas than Gobekli Tepe,

[amberm]

Please do more videos like this! Historical mysteries are the best.

[christiansebastianlauritse]

To answer your last point: Karahan Tepe, discovered right near by Göbekli seems to be from sround same period, or maybe even predate. It's a settlement carved directly into bedrock.

Have a look at it. ;)

[ignitionfrn]

0:40 - Chapter 1 - What happened to the maya ?
5:05 - Chapter 2 - What happened to alexander's tomb ?
8:05 - Chapter 3 - What caused the bronze age collapse
12:35 - Chapter 4 - Who build gobekli tepe ?

[MajoraZ]

I do posts on Mesoamerica and consulting for History/Archeology channels: The Maya section has a lot of issues, and this has been a consistent issue with Simon's network of channels with Mesoamerican vids. Here, Teotihuacan is at 0:38 and 1:33 despite it very much not being a Maya city (though it did have some Maya artists and diplomats living in a specific part of the city, potentially), and to say the Maya "began" growing ~250AD is wrong: Kaminaljuyu and El Mirador were GIANT Maya cities from 400-100BC, while Aguada Fenix, Nakbe, etc were notable centers dating back to 1000-800BC. The biggest issues though with how the video talks about the Classic Maya Collapse.

"The Entire civilization" did NOT suffer a "near complete political collapse" nor "the abandonment of nearly every major city" in the 9th century AD in the "Maya Collapse". The Classic collapse was just that, a collapse which marks the end of the Classic period. Simon does later walk those statements back by (correctly) noting that the Maya were still around at the arrival of the Spanish and millions of Maya people are around today, but this is still far overplaying the severity of the Classic Maya Collapse, which some researchers reject the label of entirely: it's really mostly only large cities in the Central and Southern Maya regions which decline: Medium and smaller sites were often fine, and the big cities in the Northern Maya regions actually GREW during/right after the period rather then decline: Chichen Itza is perhaps the most famous Maya city, yet it's heyday wasn't till centuries after the Classic Collapse. (The collapse was also a more gradual process then over 50 years like the video says, but that's a minor thing relatively speaking). The League of Mayapan, perhaps the largest Maya political network to ever form, was around primarily from ~1100 to the mid 1400s!

Listing a Toltec invasion as a potential cause of the Collapse is also really incorrect. The Toltec, if they even existed, really only became a thing (~900 to 1100AD, give or take a century.) AFTER the end of Classic Maya Collapse. And as I alluded to, they may not have even really existed at all. Aztec accounts describe the Toltec as this great utopian civilization in their accounts, but these are clearly at least partly mythical, and while researchers used to believe that they were merely mythologized versions of a real grand historical empire, and pointed to similarities between Tula (a city in Central Mexico during the Early Postclassic period some accounts identified with the Toltec Tollan) and Chichen itza, alongside parts of the account like the Toltec lord Ce Acatl Topiltzin (associated with Quetzalcoatl) leaving to the east and Feathered Serpent cults being popular with the Itza Maya around the time as evidence for a Toltec conquest of the Yucatan, that is now mostly discredited.

Tula, and almost certainly no other single Central Mexican city, did NOT have a massive empire spanning over all of Central Mexico and up into the Yucatan as shown at 4:19: Tula had a medium sized kingdom in Central Mexico, and while some researchers still believe there was some sort of direct connection between Tula and Chichen itza with trade or diplomacy, even that is suspect now and it's clear that a lot of the perceived connections and reading into the myths about the Toltecs don't hold up to scrutiny. "The Tula-Chichen-Tollan Connection" by Tlatollotl is a great writeup on this. And again, not only is the idea of a large conquering Toltec Empire itself not correct, again, the outdated idea of that still would have been AFTER the Classic Maya Collapse, not as a cause of it.

I get that Simon's channels put out a ton of content on a regular basis and the team making them probably can't do a ton of research on every given thing, but almost every video touching on Mesoamerica has had both very basic (not as in small/minor, but as in "this should have been easy to catch, but it wasn't") and very large errors. I'm not sure what the production workflow is like, but I'd be down to help out potentially, or at least point you guys towards good resources and sources and maybe get you in touch with some researchers.

[ThailandOutsider]

There's a high chance we are missing alot of other structures of the same age or older as GT because they are under the sea, sea levels at that time were far lower than today and given the tendency even now to build along the coast theres a high chance they are hidding off shore

[darthplageous]

There is actually a site older than gobekli teppe. The older site is called Boncuklu Tarla, and it is in the same part of turkey as gobekli teppe

[luisochoa]

And NOW, Karahan Tepe...
Pre agriculture
Pre pottery
Pre Pyramids
Pre Stonehenge

[c.l.]

"Two cannibals walked into a restaurant in Prague...they asked for separate Czechs...."

[ruththinkingoutside.]

The Gobekli Tepe thing, isn’t quite up to date.. there are a handful of other sites that likely pre date it .. regardless.. it’s AMAZING.. the accomplishments of the early humans, before pottery, before metal..

I saw an interesting documentary with subtitles at another pre pottery site about a week ago.. incredible stuff!

[MikeBaxterABC]

6:23 ... And THAT my friends is why Elvis is still alive to this day!! Thank you .. Thank you very much!

[Hykje]

"You know -all that pyramid building and stuff -why are we doing that?"
"Don't you know that? It's because... because... I have actually no idea at all."
That was the beginning of the end of the Mayan Civilization.

[waterandshovelgardening]

I love your channels. I always learn something new. Keep up the good work!

[mdsfo]

Thank you, Simon! As an ancient history buff, I love learning new things about happenings thousands of years ago. Gobekli Tepe still amazes me, it's SO old. No doubt the Egyptians would love to find Alexander's tomb. It would be a huge tourist attraction! So would Cleopatra's, if she had one. Octavian/Augustus didn't like her much.

[JSLEnterprises]

There have been more sites near Gobekli Tepe that have been dated older than Gobekli Tepe already, one almost by 2200 years earlier.

[greensean]

I admire you and your knowledge, and your efforts.

[moseshorowitz]

I've heard on a podcast or two that Gobekli Tepe sat undisturbed for so long because it was erroneously identified as a Moslem graveyard. This kept the usual tomb raiders from tearing up the joint in search of trinkets to sell.

[MichaelRoy-hclz]

Very good episode and your last statement concerning what is buried or hidden l believe could add unimaginable volumes to our history