The Archaeology Iceberg Explained

Archaeology. It's a fascinating field of science devoted to unearthing the shared past of humanity. To most people, it's mainly mummies and Stonehenge, but to archaeologists like me, it's more than that. Today, I, Trey the Explainer, am going to take a deep dive into some of the weirdest, most obscure, and just fascinating finds and stories in the history of archaeology that the average person doesn't really get to hear about. And I am doing this in the Iceberg meme format, where at the top are things people generally know about, and as we get closer and closer to the bottom, the topics will get weirder and weirder and more niche. Okay, are you ready? This is the Archaeology Iceberg. The Sphinx's Nose Job. This refers to the apparent absence of the Great Sphinx of Giza's nose. A popular legend claims that the nose was shot off with a cannonball by a couple of Napoleon Bonaparte soldiers during the 19th century. This story, however, is clearly false, as many illustrations show the Sphinx already lacked a nose centuries before Napoleon was even born. The nose is thought to have been intentionally removed sometime during the 3rd to 10th centuries AD. It also once had a beard. It was aliens. This statement refers to the fringe ancient astronaut or ancient aliens conspiracy theory, popularized by Erich von Däniken. The theory is essentially that ancient civilizations, namely non-European ones, couldn't have constructed or made their technological advancements without the assistance of a more advanced civilization of aliens teaching them how to do it. Aliens apparently helped build everything from the pyramids to Stonehenge to the Nazca Lines, because we were too stupid to do it ourselves. 5000-Year-Old Murder Mystery. A reference to Ötzi the Iceman, a naturally mummified human body dating to 3300 BC. He was discovered encased in ice on the border between Austria and Italy, with his clothes, belongings, skin, and organs all intact. He is perhaps one of the oldest and most well-preserved human specimens to date. Examinations of his body appear to show that Ötzi was murdered by an unknown assailant and left for dead in the snow thousands of years ago, for reasons unknown. It's a real cold case. Dead Sea Scrolls. These are possibly one of the most significant archaeological finds of the past century. They are a collection of Hebrew manuscripts discovered in a system of desert caves in the West Bank, originally by a goat herder. This collection of documents consists of some of the oldest surviving copies of the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament, dated to about 408 BC to 318 AD. Giant Skeletons. This is a reference to Nephilim conspiracy theories on the internet, where dozens of poorly photoshopped images of giant skeletons are presented as evidence for a race of building-sized humans in our distant past. Lion Man. This is the Löwenmensch, a prehistoric figurine of a lion-headed man carved into mammoth ivory and dating to between 35,000 to 40,000 years old. It is one of the oldest examples of figurative art and fursonas. Some say it might be a bear-headed man instead of a lion, but who knows. Curse of King Tut. This refers to the superstitious belief that the opening of the tomb belonging to the boy pharaoh Tutankhamun in 1923 placed a curse on the excavation team and other visitors, resulting in many untimely deaths. In truth, out of the 58 people who were present when the tomb was opened, only about 8 died prematurely within a dozen years. Many of those deaths were the result of outside factors, such as malaria and fever, and probably not related to the excavation at all. Most people who worked on the tomb went on to live otherwise healthy and long lives. The Shroud of Turin. The Shroud of Turin is a controversial linen cloth which contains the negative image of a bearded man. Many have claimed that the cloth was used to wrap Jesus Christ after his crucifixion. However, numerous scientific tests conducted on the cloth have shown it to be most likely a counterfeit product of the Middle Ages, rather than an authentic relic. Seven Wonders. According to ancient historians, there were seven legendary man-made monuments built in antiquity that Greeks and Romans marveled at for their beauty and sheer impressive scale. All of them, save one, the Great Pyramid of Giza, have been destroyed or lost to time. The Terracotta Army. This is an immense collection of terracotta sculptures depicting the vast army of Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China, and buried with him for the purpose of protecting him in the afterlife. Oak Island. Oak Island is an island in Nova Scotia that has been the focus of pseudo-archaeologists for several hundred years. Many enthusiasts have become convinced that anything from alien technology, to pirate gold, to the Ark of the Covenant, to Shakespeare's plays exist beneath the island, in the so-called Money Pit. The search has been fruitless for many decades as no significant treasure site or artifacts have been uncovered, despite the claims of its proponents. There's probably nothing there. Also, like King Tut's tomb, a curse is believed to exist around the site. However, this hasn't been substantiated. It wasn't aliens. If there's one thing archaeologists have discovered, it's that humans are crafty and smart buggers, constantly finding unique and ingenuitive ways to reach a goal. Just because it wasn't white people doesn't mean it was aliens. The Walking Heads. In 2012, a team of archaeologists successfully transported a five-ton moai head replica using only ropes and manpower, as an experiment to replicate the methods by which the people of Easter Island in the past might have transported the heads themselves. No aliens were required. Internal Ramp Theory. This refers to one of the several competing methods by which the Great Pyramid of Giza was constructed. The Internal Ramp Theory posits that an internal spiral ramp exists within the pyramid itself, and aided in the dragging of building materials during construction. Archaeological evidence supporting this view exists, although it has not been fully accepted yet. There is seemingly a universality of humans' tendency to draw these little rocket ships on everything. Augustus Under the Stairs. This is the Meroe Augustus, a decapitated bronze head originally belonging to a statue of the famous Roman emperor. It was discovered beneath the staircase of an ancient Kushite temple in what is now Sudan. In 24 BC, the head was hacked off from its original body in Roman Egypt by invading Kushite soldiers, who took it across the border as a prize of war. Back in Kush, as a gesture of victory, the head was buried beneath the temple staircase, so worshippers would symbolically step on the defeated emperor's face. This insult, however, had the unintentional consequence of preserving it over thousands of years, better than pretty much any other Roman bronze. Notably, the head retains its decorative inlaid eyes that are often missing in other specimens. Also, the eyes look like prime meme material. Cave Paintings Are Movies. This is an interesting theory concerning the extra heads and extra limbs that are commonly depicted in prehistoric cave paintings of animals. The theory speculates that these duplicated body parts were drawn intentionally to create the illusion of movement. The light of torches would twist the shadows along the cave walls and make the images appear to come alive, through a primitive form of animation by early humans. I Was Here. Throughout history, humans have always had the tendency to leave dumb, goofy inscriptions simply stating they were here. There's literally thousands of examples of these. Work In Progress. The best way for archaeologists to learn about how peoples in the past did things is to see what they just gave up on and left incomplete or abandoned. For example, there are dozens of unfinished moai, or easter island heads, and Egyptian obelisks chiseled out of the rock, but never fully completed. These are often due to accidental damage during construction, or a simple lack of enthusiasm to finish them. Some of these things are still waiting to be finished after thousands of years. Man, I thought my procrastination was bad. Europeans Ate Mummies. From the middle ages up until relatively recently, wealthy Europeans would consume the flesh of Egyptian mummies by grinding them into a powder called mummia. It was believed that this powder had great medicinal properties, and could treat gout, epilepsy, and cataracts. King Richard Found In A Parking Lot. Remember that one time archaeologists straight up found the skeleton of King Richard III, the last king of the Plantagenet dynasty, beneath a car parking lot? Good times. Ancient Statues and Buildings Were Colorfully Painted. Although many of the ancient statues and buildings that survive to us today appear to be rather drab stone or smooth white marble, in the past they would have looked much different. Closer analysis of these monuments have shown that many would have been beautifully painted in their heyday, with faint traces of their pigments still detectable. The ancient world was in truth very bright and vibrant. From this statue of Augustus, to the entire Parthenon, to Aztec temples, to the Sphinx's face, all of it would have been filled with color. But due to time, many of these pigments have long since faded. KV55 Is Akhenaten. Refers to the interpretation of the mummy in Valley of the King's Tomb KV55, is the infamous monotheistic pharaoh Akhenaten. DNA evidence appears to support this long suspected identity, as the individual in this tomb was both the son of Amenhotep III, as well as the father of Tutankhamun. Creeping Feathered Serpent Shadow. During the spring and autumn equinoxes at the Mayan temple of Kukulkan in Chichen Itza, the sun hits the pyramid in just the right way that it causes a series of triangular shadows to creep down the front stairway. This effect only lasts a few minutes out of the entire year, but through this clever arrangement of architecture, the dark body of the feathered serpent god appears to slither down to its fearsome carved head. Donkey Headed Jesus. This is the Alexamenos Graffito, a piece of graffiti in Rome that might be the earliest depiction of Jesus. Dated to around 200 AD, the graffiti shows a young man worshiping a crucified figure with the head of a donkey. An inscription accompanies the image stating in Greek, Alexamenos worships his god. It is thought that the drawing was created to mock an early Christian named Alexamenos. The donkey headed figure being an insulting caricature of Jesus of Nazareth. Mesoamerican Grills. Among several pre-contact cultures in Mesoamerica, the teeth of elites were drilled into and filled with inlays of precious stones and jewels. These ancient grills were a type of status symbol, as well as a huge health hazard. So much has been lost. Everything that has survived is only an incredibly small fraction of what actually existed in the past. Roman Bikinis. There are several well preserved Roman floor mosaics that depict a bunch of women wearing bikini-like athletic outfits. Voynich Manuscript. The Voynich Manuscript is a rather mysterious document written in an unknown writing system. It consists of nearly 240 pages and is filled with illustrations of fictitious plants, mythical creatures, and people. It has been carbon dated to the early 15th century, although its exact origin is a little muddy. It is unclear who wrote the manuscript and why. It seems probable that it was written in some kind of cipher or code that only the author understood. Andean Brain Surgery. Several civilizations in the Andes mountains conducted skull and brain surgeries and were actually pretty good at it, as evidenced by their high survival rate of patients, estimated to be around 90%. Gospel of Judas. This refers to one of the lost gospels found in the Nag Hammadi library, a collection of religious texts belonging to an early but now extinct sect of Christianity. The only fragmentary copy of the Gospel of Judas that survives us is one of the most intriguing of these documents, as it narrates an alternate narrative of Jesus' crucifixion and frames Judas not as a traitor, but a loyal servant to the end. Undeciphered Languages. All around the world, there are dozens if not hundreds of inscriptions on everything from clay tablets to old boulders, written in systems of glyphs and symbols that are as of yet undecipherable to modern experts. Although we would very much like to, we currently have no way to read what these inscriptions say, because the languages they are written in have lost to time. From Rongo Rongo on Easter Island, to Linear A in Minoan Crete, to the Somali scripts, to the Singapore stone, to the writing on the back of the starving Saqqara statue, all of these are completely unreadable scripts and they still keep their secrets, at least for the moment that is. Maine Penny. There is a Norwegian medieval coin that was found in what is now the state of Maine in the United States. If this artifact is genuine, it would support the idea that Norsemen from Europe had not only crossed the Atlantic Ocean on their longships, but had contact and conducted trade with Native Americans centuries before Christopher Columbus. Rock Music. Several fragments of Paleolithic flutes have been discovered in caves and dated to tens of thousands of years old. These ivory and animal bone flutes were made by some of our earliest ancestors during the Ice Age. Archaeologists have reconstructed them to determine what Stone Age music would have sounded like, and boy is it eerie to imagine hearing their sad notes echoing throughout a forest in the dark of winter. Want to listen to some tunes? Cat on the Roof. As this Roman roof tile shows, even after 2,000 years, cats have never changed. Hey don't touch that mask! Refers to an image of a carved green stone mask discovered beneath the Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacan, Mexico back in 2011. Due to its resemblance to the stone mask in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure and the mask in The Mask, a lot of people online joked that the archaeologists should leave the mask alone because disturbing it would end the world. They might have been right. Faces of the Dead. In Roman Egypt, mummies of people belonging to the upper class were typically buried with highly detailed portraits of their living faces. Many of these coffin portraits have survived to us over the centuries and are incredibly lifelike, showing a wide range of facial shapes, hairstyles, and personalities. Ocean Man. In the summer of 1964, the nets of an Italian fishing trawler snagged something off the coast of the Adriatic. This was what they found. The fisherman had discovered an ancient bronze sculpture encased in centuries of patina and sea scum. Extensive cleaning revealed that the statue was a lithe and beautiful athlete, and consequently he is now referred to as the Victorious Youth. He was sculpted sometime during the Hellenistic period, possibly by the famous Greek artist Lysippos. The sculpture likely ended up off the coast of Italy on a Roman ship that sunk in a storm, although the wreck of the ship itself has not been located. Meteoric Iron. Before the Iron Age, iron was, as to be expected, in short supply. Humans had no means to produce it from raw ore. However, iron from meteorites provided people in the past a very rare opportunity to fashion metal tools and weapons. Scientific evidence has shown that artifacts like King Tut's dagger and the spearheads of some Inuit lances were in fact fashioned out of iron harvested from space rocks fallen from the heavens. The Nazis took the Lance of Longinus. During the 1930s, several Nazi leaders took a keen interest in the field of archaeology. Heinrich Himmler greenlit several searches for legendary places and artifacts like the city of Atlantis and the Ark of the Covenant, apparently to no avail. One object that was supposedly recovered by the Nazis was the Lance of Longinus, or Holy Lance, the spear allegedly used to pierce Jesus' body on the cross. The Imperial Regalia of the Holy Roman Empire dubiously claimed to have acquired the Lance in the Middle Ages. In 1938, after the annexation of Austria, the relic was brought to Adolf Hitler and displayed in Germany for a short time. After the war ended, however, the Holy Lance was returned to Vienna. Crown of Nails, well, maybe not. The Iron Crown of Lombardy is a metal crown made during the early Middle Ages for a Christian Italian king. A band in the crown was supposedly made from one of the iron nails used in Jesus' crucifixion. However, an examination of the headwear has revealed that it is 99% silver, not iron, meaning the legendary story surrounding it is almost definitely false. Ramses II Passport In 1976, the 3000 year old mummy of Pharaoh Ramses II was flown from Cairo, Egypt to Paris, France, so that he could receive a much needed restoration. A popular internet rumor states that in order to leave and enter the two countries, Ramses had to be issued a passport. This is a bit of a half-truth, as although a lot of paperwork was created for him, an actual physical passport was never produced. This image circulating around on the internet is a clever photoshop. Golden Eye At the site of Sharesukte, a skeleton belonging to a woman possesses the oldest artificial eyeball ever found. The eyeball was covered in a thin layer of gold, and was worn regularly while the woman lived. Ancient Barbies Ancient dolls for children have been discovered at several archaeological sites around the world. Some of these dolls are really creepy looking, and incredibly similar to modern Barbie dolls, with poseable limbs and decorative clothes that can be swapped out. Gay Caveman This was an incredibly bad piece of journalism. Okay, so in 2011 in the Czech Republic, archaeologists uncovered a prehistoric skeleton that appears to have been biologically male, but had been buried in a ceremonial manner that was typically reserved for females in this society. This led the archaeologists to speculate that this individual might have represented an example of a third gender, or an individual with a gender role that was neither wholly male, nor wholly female. Something common in many cultures throughout history. Third gender burials like this are actually quite common in archaeology, particularly in North America and in pagan societies. Now, the media totally misunderstood the story. News articles shouted when the original archaeologist said nothing of the sort. It might be more accurate to think of this individual as a transgender caveman, or non-binary caveman. That being said, there are some archaeological finds that might represent two individuals in same-sex relationships. But as with many things in archaeology, it's hard to know for sure. Dindra Lightbulb This is a stone relief in the Egyptian temple of Hathor, vaguely resembling a modern lightbulb. The relief is actually a depiction of a scene out of Egyptian mythology, involving a serpent emerging from a lotus flower. The nearby hieroglyphics confirm this interpretation. Scooby-Doo Mug refers to these really amazing Greek terracotta vases made in the shape of realistic dog heads. The Hobby Lobby Smuggling Scandal Whoa boy, this is quite the doozy. Okay, so starting around 2009, representatives of the popular arts and crafts store chain Hobby Lobby, you know, that store your grandma gets her Minion stickers and scented candles from, purchased $1.6 million worth of ancient Iraqi artifacts from dealers in the United Arab Emirates. Literally thousands of Mesopotamian cuneiform tablets and cylinder seals. The Evangelical Christian Green family, the owners of Hobby Lobby, wished to put many of these artifacts on display in their Museum of the Bible. A museum that has often been criticized for its, let's just say, lenient views towards historical accuracy. Now, you might be wondering how these artifacts from Iraq ended up in a completely different country. And I'm happy you wondered that because Hobby Lobby allegedly sure as heck didn't. As it happens, the majority of the items lacked much, if any supporting documentation of their past ownership, which is crucial to ensuring an artifact was obtained legitimately and not through, I don't know, looting? Well guess what, Hobby Lobby bought over 5,000 illegally looted artifacts. You see, after the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, the country was left in complete disarray, and looters quickly began to pillage Iraq's archaeological sites and museums, selling the stolen artifacts to dealers on the black market. These items would then resurface outside the country, their shady origins left unquestioned by future buyers. We know that some looters were just local civilians just trying to make money to feed their families. However, others have been connected to more malicious organizations. In 2011, U.S. Custom Agents seized several shipments of Hobby Lobby's artifacts after correctly suspecting that they had originally been acquired through illegal means. Now, it is, uh, debatable if the parties involved were aware of the illicit origins of these artifacts, but let's just say that they had been, uh, accidentally mislabeled in custom declarations as ceramic and clay tile samples from Turkey and Israel, and not Iraq or the United Arab Emirates. Whoops. Archaeologists have since determined that several of the pieces Hobby Lobby purchased originally came from the National Museum of Iraq, which was rather violently ransacked less than a decade prior. The United States government prosecuted Hobby Lobby for the scandal, and in 2017, the company made a settlement, returning more than 5,500 artifacts to Iraq and having to pay a $3 million fine. Cats domesticated themselves. This is a popular theory on how wild cats were domesticated into house pets. They did so themselves. When early human farmers began to create food stores for their excess crops, it attracted mice and other pests. Cats, drawn by the high concentration of easy prey, began to live near human houses, until gradually over time, cats learned to live with us and we just kinda let them hang out. The original dark-skinned Europeans. Several genetic studies on prehistoric human remains in Europe have revealed that several of the earliest Europeans looked very different when compared to the Europeans of today. Cheddar Man, for example, was a 9,000-year-old man in England who, according to genetics, possessed dark skin, dark hair, and light-colored eyes. El Gigante. El Gigante is the name given to the largest moai, or Easter Island head, ever constructed. However, it was never lifted or transported from its original quarry, due to the sheer impracticality of its size. Mickey Mouse Pre-Columbian Car. The wheel and axle are often regarded as one of the earliest and most essential inventions to humanity, as they make transportation, especially over long distances, much easier. However, in some regions, like in Mesoamerica, it appears that wheels and axles never gained as much prominence. Oh, the Mesoamericans invented them, but appear to have only used them for kids' toys, never incorporating them into larger wagons or chariots. The reasons for this are unclear, but it appears it might have something to do with the fact that Mesoamerica lacked large domesticated animals to be used as beasts of burden to pull said inventions, so there was little practical use for them. Green Sahara. There was a period in prehistory where much of the Sahara Desert, one of the most inhospitable places on Earth, was not a sandy wasteland, but once a lush and wet grassland. Evidence of this period exists in prehistoric rock art, showing that giraffes, rhinos, elephants, and other animals once lived in this region. People swam in freshwater lakes and had thriving communities here, but they died out or moved elsewhere once the desert sands crept in. Ancient trade. Several archaeological finds have revealed that the world of the past was surprisingly much more interconnected than often thought. Although it was difficult for a single person to travel far from home in these times, objects could travel great distances through a complex network of trade. We've found a Buddha figurine in medieval Scandinavia, ancient Greek tapestries depicting centaurs in China, and carvings of Hindu deities in Roman Pompeii. You could get goods thousands of miles from the original locations, but let's just say the shipping times were quite the long wait. Prehistoric shark attack. The remains of this 3,000 year old Japanese hunter-gatherer show that he had been attacked by either a tiger or great white shark at some point. Neolithic gummy bear. This amber amulet was found in a Polish bog. Its provenience can't be attested, but it seems like it was dropped by a prehistoric hunter sometime during the Neolithic period. It also looks really, uh, tasty. Wooden ship underneath the World Trade Center. After the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, a massive construction effort was made to rebuild the destroyed area of the city. In 2010, an excavation site revealed that 20 feet below the New York City street level was the intact hole of a wooden ship dated to the 1700s. Pygmy mammoth in Egypt. There's a mural in an Egyptian tomb, the Rekhmire tomb, that seems to depict a small hairy elephant on a leash. There is a kind of fringe theory that the animal depicted is not an elephant, but a woolly mammoth. Although not entirely impossible, this probably isn't the case. As per my previous tablet, 4,000 years ago, a Babylonian administrator wrote a complaint on a cuneiform tablet that reads, I am not getting water for my sesame field. The sesame will die. Don't tell me later you did not write to me. The sesame is visibly dying. Ibi ilabrot saw it. That sesame will die, and I have warned you. Are you lifting, son? refers to the infamous Bybon stone, a large block of granite found near Olympia, Greece, and dating to the 6th century BC. The stone has been engraved, presumably by a man named Bybon, with an inscription that reads, Bybon, son of Phola, has lifted me over his head with one hand. Can we just take a moment to appreciate how Bybon wrote his inscription in the first-person perspective of the stone? Viking was a job description. An extensive genetic study of Viking age remains revealed that the quote-unquote Vikings were an incredibly genetically diverse group, and not the homogeneous people that they are often thought of. They came from all over Europe, and it is perhaps better thought of as a job description, like pirate or mercenary, rather than an ethnic group. Antfim. In the city of Novgorod in Russia, archaeologists found the spelling homework of a seven-year-old medieval child named Antfim. Antfim was obviously disinterested in his homework as he doodled all over it. I took a deeper dive into this story in a previous video, so you should check that out. Caligula's Coffee Table. In the first century AD, the notorious Roman emperor Caligula ordered the construction of two of the largest wooden ships ever built in antiquity. These pleasure barges were some of the most expensive and technologically advanced of their day, and were said to host the emperor's lavish parties and orgies. Caligula's fancy ships eventually sunk to the bottom of Lake Nimi, where they remained for almost 2,000 years. In the 1920s, however, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini ordered the lake be drained and the wreckage of the ships recovered. The two Nimi ships were successfully razed and eventually housed in their own museum, but in 1944 an Allied attack resulted in a fire that eventually burned down the museum, sadly almost completely destroying the remains of the original ships in the process. Little managed to survive. That was until 2017, when a New York attorney's office confiscated a mosaic panel from a private collector in New York City. The artifact turned out to be a Roman mosaic used to decorate the floor of one of the Nimi ships. Surviving the fire, it had been sold by an Italian aristocratic family to antiquity dealers in America. The owner of the mosaic apparently had no idea how special it was, and was using it for years as a coffee table. Knowing what Caligula probably did on that ship, I just hope they wiped it down a little before they used it. It's ritual. It refers to the tendency for archaeologists to explain something like an artifact or burial custom as ritual, which basically means that we don't know what the heck this thing is or what it was used for. It's kind of a vague catch-all term that really means nothing in the end. Brushing your teeth can be considered ritual and a whole bunch of other stuff. Mormonism. The religion of Mormonism has this kind of weird relationship with archaeology. The founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, was a bit of an amateur archaeologist himself. In 1823, Smith claimed to have discovered with the help of an angel, an ancient book of gold plates buried on a hill in Manchester, New York. Smith claimed that they were the remains of a bygone civilization of Israelites called the Nephites, who crossed the Atlantic Ocean in ancient times. Now, with the hindsight of modern archaeology and genetics, this claim of an ancient transatlantic crossing is simply not supported by the evidence. But it is possible that Smith might have actually uncovered the remains of the very real Native American Mississippian culture, which existed across the eastern part of North America from 800 to 1600 AD. These Native Americans did know a bit of metalworking and crafted decorative copper plates with glyphs and designs. Perhaps Smith found a few of these copper plates and misidentified them as Israelite. The Schliemann Level. This level is devoted to the story of one of the founders of modern archaeology, the man us archaeologists really love to hate, Heinrich Schliemann. And oh boy, was this guy wild. Heinrich Schliemann was a German businessman in the mid to late 1800s who had a passion for the works of the ancient Greek poet Homer, and used his extensive wealth to finance his hobby of digging up ancient sites across the Aegean. Schliemann's lifelong dream was to hunt down the legendary city of Troy, mentioned in Homer's Iliad in the Odyssey. At the time, this was seen as a bit of a fool's errand. Up until the late 19th century, Troy and the Trojan War was largely thought of as a fantasy or a myth, with no historical basis. Schliemann disagreed and believed that the war was an actual historical event, and the city was at one point a real location. After some sleuthing, he identified the site of Hisserlich, in what is now Turkey, as the historical Troy, and began excavating it in the 1870s, with the most delicate of archaeological methods, dynamite. The crazy thing is, is that he was right, Hisserlich is seen by modern archaeologists as the historical Troy. Unfortunately for us however, Schliemann was the one who found it first, and his explosive methods were devastating, destroying much of the important historical context of Hisserlich forever. For example, we now know that the soil level that Schliemann identified as the Trojan War was too old to be Homer's Troy, and in order for him to access this older level, Schliemann had to recklessly remove the younger layers above it, effectively obliterating all traces of the real Trojan War in the process. Schliemann kept few of any records or maps of his excavations too, so he took little care to document the locations of objects or finds. He also had this tendency to claim any artifact he found must have belonged to someone historically significant, calling things like the treasures of King Priam, or the mask of Agamemnon, based on absolutely nothing. He literally just went, yeah sure that sounds right. Source? I made it all up. But wait, it gets worse. Schliemann smuggled several of the more valuable of Troy's treasures out of Anatolia, and the Ottoman Empire only knew about this because Schliemann let his wife Sophia wear the priceless 4,000 year old jewels in public at parties and stuff, which is like what? Upon learning this, the Ottoman government understandably banned Schliemann from digging in their country and tried to sue him for the gold, but he just fled to another country and dug up the ancient city of Mycenae in Greece instead. All agree, Schliemann was pretty bad, pretty, pretty bad. Even for the time when the field of archaeology was still in its very infancy, the amount of damage to science Schliemann did through his needlessly careless methods is immeasurable to say the least. We can never get the knowledge he destroyed back. Schliemann's story basically serves as the textbook example of how not to do archaeology. Oh Schliemann, you rapscallion, you... Kings of Earth refers to a rather obscure fresco at the Umayyad caliphate site of Khuzra Amra. It is said to depict the six kings of the world, known at the time. The fresco is very damaged so it's hard to say who all of them would have been, but of the ones we know there was the Visigothic king of Hispania, Roderic, the Negus of the The identity of the last two kings is a subject of much debate, but they are speculated to be a Chinese emperor and a king of India, but this is still very much conjecture. This is a reference to the Ektved girl's well-preserved clothing. This bronze age girl was buried in a wooden coffin in what is now Denmark. Her surviving 3,400 year old clothes consist of a loose bodice that left her waist bare and a short string skirt with a large decorative disc. A bit of a bronze age waifu. Arabic coin for the pope refers to a rather unique gold coin minted by the English king Offa of Mercia in 774 AD. The coin appears to have been a blatant copy of a coin struck by an Islamic caliph, with the words Offa Rex awkwardly added in. The engraver who produced it tried their best to copy the original Arabic inscription, but obviously had no understanding of the language, so the text contains many grammatical errors and typos. Why this bizarre coin was made in the first place is unclear, but one theory posits that it was a gift to the Vatican pope. Which is kind of funny when you realize that the Arabic letters on it read, there is no god but Allah alone. I'm guessing that probably wouldn't have gone over well with the Christian pope. Medieval Panties In 2008, archaeologists discovered a secret chamber in Lengberg Castle, Austria. Inside was a hidden stash of clothes dating to around the 1400s. Among these garments were some of the best preserved medieval underwear, including four linen bras. This was a bit of a surprise, as it had been previously thought that female bras like these with two separate supportive cups wouldn't be invented until much later in the Victorian era. Discovery provided, I quote, a missing link in the history of women's underwear. Also, it is pretty funny that the linen panties found in the chamber probably belonged not to a woman, but a dude? Hey, I get it, I'm more of a briefs guy myself. Hair Gel The Cloney Cave-In Man is a well-preserved Iron Age bog body found in Ireland. Analysis of his body showed that the man liked to style his hair using tree resin as a primitive type of hair gel. Coffin Juice When the so-called Black Sarcophagus in Alexandria, Egypt was opened in 2018, news outlets reported that it was filled with bones floating in a soup of red-dark sludge. The story and its accompanying photos quickly captured the attention of the public. In maybe not the best of ways, many online petitions circulated around demanding that the archaeologists allow people to drink the coffin juice? The, uh, juice in the coffin was actually sewage from Alexandria's underground drains, so it is in my humble opinion that you probably shouldn't drink it. Pre-Contact Dogs Prior to European contact, the indigenous peoples of North and South America had their own unique dog breeds found nowhere else in the world. However, aside from Chihuahuas and a handful of other breeds, all these dogs became extinct after European contact, likely due to disease and competition with European dogs. I also did an entire video on these guys, so check that out. Boskop Man In 1913, the fossil remains of a prehistoric human were discovered in South Africa, and according to anthropologists at the time, it apparently had a massive brain. The Boskop Man, as it was later known, had a calculated cranial capacity between 1,700 and 2,000 cc's. By comparison, the average human today has a cranial capacity around 1,400 to 1,500 cc's. Now, reexamining the story, it is hard to ascertain the truth of this claim. The fossil was highly fragmentary, so I would chalk this unusual cranial capacity to researcher error. Olmec Heads Were Actually Thrones It appears that at least some of the famous Olmec Heads of Central America were not, at least originally, meant to be heads. At least two of the colossal craniums show the unmistakable signs of being re-carved. They originally seemed to have been stone chairs or thrones prior to being re-sculpted. Star Wars Archaeology For decades, people have been searching in some of the most remote parts of the globe, not for the remains of lost civilization, but for artifacts from a galaxy far, far away. You see, after filming the iconic Star Wars film franchise, the behind-the-scenes crew for several of the movies apparently just left many of the original props at their filming locations, where they sat abandoned for years. Enthusiastic movie fans have tracked down several of these artifacts, from the charred ruins of Uncle Owen in Aunt Beru's house, to the fiberglass skeleton of the Krayt Dragon in the deserts of Tunisia, to the fragmentary wreckage of Jabba's sail barge in Buttercup Valley, Arizona. Unfortunately, many of these unique pieces of film history have either been destroyed by the elements, or scavenged by locals and resold to private collectors. The Stain There was once an ancient Greek statue called the Aphrodite of Kindos. It was supposedly so attractive and lifelike that at night young men would sneak into the temple that housed it and, uh, let's just say used it inappropriately. According to legend, this happened so often that over time a dark stain became visible on the statue. Now, we can't verify the truth of this claim because although we have numerous Roman copies, the original statue has not been found, and most likely it never will. But who knows, the statue and its possibly legendary stain might still be out there. Boba Fett Mayas The helmets of Mayan ritual boxers look a lot like Mandalorian helmets from Star Wars. These boxers use giant spiky conch shells as boxing gloves in their very bloody sport. The Boiler Boys There is an obscure and ancient grave in what is now Germany that commemorates two brothers named Saluda and Magretho. They were Persian cataphracts, or heavily armored knights. Soldiers like these were often demeaningly called Boiler Boys because they tended to boil in the sun under all that metal plate. These particular Boiler Boys apparently fought on the Roman side against barbarians in Germany, circa 235 AD. The two brothers appear to have originally come from all the way in Mesopotamia, and served under the Sasanian king Ardashir. They were likely mercenaries who sold their services to whoever needed strong fighters. Under Ardashir, they might have traveled as far as the Indus, before serving under Rome, in the defense of its borders on the Rhine. This simple grave and truth tells the story of two brothers who traveled the whole width of the known world together, and fought in dozens of brutal and bloody battles, only to die in a swamp so far from home, and fighting for an empire they probably didn't particularly care for. Fun Times in Pompeii This refers to an image of a cast belonging to a man killed in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, originally uploaded on Pompeii's Instagram. That sounds super weird when I say it. This image started to circulate online with people claiming that the man was, uh, having a fun time the moment he died. As it turns out, no, he's not giving it one last stroke before then. The man probably just ended up in this position because his arms and legs flexed after death due to the intense heat of the volcano's pyroclastic flow. Sweet potatoes. The common narrative we are taught in school is that North and South America and their native inhabitants were isolated from the rest of the world for tens of thousands of years, and it wasn't until Christopher Columbus crossed the Atlantic Ocean in 1492 that this isolation was broken. However, something is overturning this view. Something you wouldn't expect. Sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes are a crop native to the Americas, and were cultivated by Native Americans for many thousands of years. Interestingly though, archaeological evidence has shown that sweet potatoes were being cultivated in some of the very distant Pacific islands since the 1000s AD. Polynesians on the Cook Islands, Easter Island, Hawaii, and even New Zealand were growing sweet potatoes centuries before Christopher Columbus or any other European knew about the Americas. How these sweet potatoes made it all the way from Central or South America to these islands in the Pacific Ocean is a bit of mystery. These potatoes are some of the strongest pieces of evidence that there might have been actual interactions in trade between Polynesians and South Americans long before European contact. On top of this, the word for sweet potato in Polynesian languages and South American languages are suspiciously similar, suggesting a shared origin. Perhaps some canoes from the Polynesian islands, like Easter Island, traveled to South America, or perhaps the dispersal of this crop occurred naturally, and the language thing is a weird coincidence. The point is we don't know exactly, and the whole trans-Pacific sweet potato debate remains as this kind of unresolved mystery. Hammurabi's Shuverturn. This refers to one of the Mari letters, a series of clay tablets in Syria documenting written conversations sent and received by the King Zimri-Lim. A rather curious letter records an interaction between King Zimri-Lim and the King of Babylon, Hammurabi. Yes, that Hammurabi. In the letter, it states that Hammurabi received a pair of Cretan leather boots or sandals as a gift from Zimri-Lim, but Hammurabi returned them. These boots would have been a rather fancy and expensive gift, especially to transport so far, so it begs the question, why did Hammurabi return them? Were they too small or too big for his feet? As historian Eric Klein points out, he could have at least re-gifted them. Had to do it to him. Refers to the Gwinol Lioness, a supposedly 5,000-year-old Mesopotamian statue allegedly found near Baghdad, Iraq. It is better known as the most expensive antiquity to be sold in an auction. In 2007, it was sold for $57.2 million. Why? I have no idea, don't ask me. Somebody must really like their 5,000-year-old jacked furries. Throwing a King's Arm in the Trash. Possibly the oldest royal remains ever found was a skeletonized arm found in the tomb of King Djerr by Egyptologist Flinders Petrie. Petrie gave the arm to fellow Egyptologist Emile Bruch, who supposedly promptly threw it away, thinking it was too drab for the museum to feature. Welp. Sabertooth Lips. Okay, this refers to a Paleolithic statuette from the prehistoric French site of Itzuitz. The statuette has been lost since at least the early 20th century, so all we have of it are drawings based on the original. It depicts some kind of big cat, but what type of big cat is a point of contention? Most think it is a representation of a cave lion, but a small minority have posited that it might represent a sabertooth cat, specifically a homotherium, which is definitely the more intriguing possibility, as it would be the only eyewitness depiction of such a creature while it still lived. If this is in fact the case, it raises another question. Why are there no saber teeth? This oddity has spawned a theory that, contrary to most pop culture depictions, sabertooth cats had fleshy lips that actually hid their long fangs in life, but this is a bit of an extrapolation based on pretty tenuous evidence. Cursed Grilled Cheese. This refers to a pretty funny Tumblr thread where users wanted to use the combined ingredients of the world's oldest cheese, a lump of 2000 year old butter, and pieces of 14,500 year old bread from Jordan on an ancient non-stick frying pan discovered in Italy to make the world's oldest grilled cheese. The Lost Giant Aztec Snake Statue. This refers to a very enigmatic and poorly understood artifact. In 1824, the English naturalist William Bullock held a museum exhibition at the Egyptian Hall in London, England, titled Ancient Mexico. This exhibit primarily consisted of Aztec artifacts acquired by Bullock, such as authentic pottery and codices. However, the main features of Ancient Mexico were several full-scale plaster casts of Aztec statues, these casts being based on the stone originals all the way back in Mexico. Two contemporary sketches exist of this exhibition, and we can see that almost all the statues are known to us. All but one, that is. The most eye-catching of the plaster statues is this incredibly large and fearsome serpent with a man's head in its mouth. Suspiciously, there are no references to this giant Aztec snake statue outside of Bullock's exhibit, and the original it was said to be based on has not been found. Some have said it could have been straight up fabricated or invented by Bullock, but this seems unlikely to me. We know that pretty much everything else of the exhibit was based on real, authentic Aztec specimens, many of which we still have, all except this one. Even the plaster cast appears to have gone missing, as contemporary sources report it was sold to a private collector after the exhibit ended, never to be seen again. But, like, how does something this big get lost or misplaced? It's all very weird and crazy that this huge badass snake statue has straight up disappeared from history, and no one knows any details about it or where it went. With hope, it's still collecting dust in the basement of some old English manor right now, just waiting to be uncovered. Massive Cookie Jars. This refers to the plane of jars in Laos. Scattered across the valleys and foothills of the Shangquan plateau are thousands of stone jars, some small and some truly gigantic. They were constructed by an unknown prehistoric culture between 1240 and 660 BC for an even more mysterious purpose. Some human skeletons were buried around the jars, while others have been found within them. A few show signs of cremation, so maybe the jars were prehistoric crematoriums. Most of the jars are unadorned, lacking any inscriptions or pictures. All that is, save one, which has a pictogram of a frog-like humanoid on it. The plane of jars are truly an archaeological mystery. They obviously served a religious or spiritual function to bygone people, but we can't really say much beyond that. Indiana Jones' gold idol is fake. In the first Indiana Jones film, the fictional archaeologist grabs a gold idol from an abandoned temple somewhere in South America. This prop is actually based on the real Dumbarton Oaks birthing figure. This figurine is said to be a piece of pre-contact art depicting an Aztec goddess giving birth. Now, the Dumbarton Oaks figure has come under scrutiny, and it very well might be a fake. The provenience or origins of the artifact cannot be confirmed, because it first appears on the shelves of an antiquity store in Paris, France. Additionally, recent microscopic analysis of the artifact have shown that the incisions and drill holes on it were probably made by modern tools, not ancient ones. This is an incredibly similar situation to the infamous crystal skulls reportedly discovered in Mesoamerica. Stone Age, um, personal massagers. There are several, uh, interestingly shaped stone artifacts found in prehistoric sites all over the world. Some were probably simply ceremonial or artistic in their purposes, while others, uh, seem to have been used for something else by early ancestors. Yeah, I'm glad she's wearing gloves. Venus figurines are prehistoric selfies. This refers to a theory presented by anthropologists McCoyd and McDermott to explain the puzzling Venus figurines, a collection of Stone Age statuettes with large breasts and hips, and often lack heads or faces. The scientists suggest that the Venuses look this way because they were made by prehistoric women looking down at their own bodies. According to them, without mirrors, early humans had to rely on their first-person perspective to describe themselves, and the reason why many of the figurines lack heads or faces is because the artists did not have mirrors to see their own faces. To top it off, McDermott's paper had these really great visual experiments that essentially consisted of pictures taken from a woman's first-person perspective looking down at her own nude body. Other anthropologists have criticized this interpretation because prehistoric humans would have obviously had access to streams and puddles which could have been used as mirrors. The last makiwato. The makiwato of Mesoamerica was one of the most badass weapons in history. It essentially consisted of a wooden club held in one hand with several obsidian blades as sharp as steel razors embedded in its sides. It was said to be so sharp that some Spanish conquistadors reported it could cut the head off a horse with one strike, although this might be a bit of an exaggeration. The makiwato was the choice weapon of countless Aztec, Mayan, and Toltec elite warriors for centuries, so it might be a recently there was not a single surviving makiwato dating to the pre-Columbian era. Oh, there were replicas made centuries after European contact, but no authentic specimens from before. The last pre-Columbian makiwato was apparently housed in the Royal Armory of Madrid after Hernán Cortés sent it back to Spain as a prize of war following his conquest of the Aztec Empire. Now this is where things get a bit hazy and messy. The makiwato in question appears in a of the armory in 1837, and in a photo taken in the late 1800s alongside a suit of Japanese samurai armor and a Persian shield. And based on this image, the Madrid makiwato looks way longer than any previously known one. To me it almost looks like Guts' golden age arc sword. Some experts have suggested that this specimen in the Madrid Royal Armory represented a rare two-handed version of the weapon, almost like a European longsword. The armory along with the unusual last makiwato burned down in 1884, meaning this elusive two-handed variant has been lost to time. Some have suggested that it might have served a purely ceremonial purpose, but with no artifact to examine it's hard to say. Thankfully for us however, recently a second and maybe even a third authentic pre-Columbian makiwato was unveiled within the Museum of the Temple Mayor in Mexico, bringing the number of known surviving makiwatos back up to one and maybe even two since 1884. And there you have it, the archaeology iceberg. I hope you enjoyed and learned something new. Tell me what you thought of some of these obscure and weird pieces of trivia. I just have a love and a passion for this unique and diverse field of science. It's amazing how much hard work archaeologists around the world have done to advance our understanding of the past. Definitely feel free to share your strange niche archaeology factoids, because I obviously couldn't talk about them all on this list and had to leave a lot of stuff out. Okay, thank you so much for watching this installment of TrailExplainer. I hope to see you next time.