Ancient finds with mysterious secrets often leave people baffled and inspire countless theories. Below are 25 such ancient finds that continue to astound and intrigue people around the world today. Get the best information about how cryptic ancient texts are decoded.
Archaeologists have discovered 12-sided metal objects throughout Europe for centuries but have never understood their purpose. One recent find stands out in particular as being complete and undamaged compared to others found.
The Voynich Manuscript
The Voynich Manuscript is an intriguing medieval codex filled with graceful loops and curves that no one knows if they represent letters, numbers, or images. Since its discovery in 1912, its meaning remains unknown to most. According to legend, Polish American antiquarian bookseller Wilfrid Voynich was invited into Villa Mondragone library’s collection to browse their library collection; upon doing so, he took home treasures, including this manuscript, as his prize finds.
Its pages are filled with botanical, figurative, and scientific drawings that accompany incomprehensible text. Its authors remain unknown; however, one name faintly written on its front cover suggests it might have been written by Jakub Horcicky of Tepenece, who served as Rudolf II’s steward and botanist.
This book, bound in vellum and comprising 116 pages that fold out to display more extensive diagrams, is said to contain herbal remedies, therapeutic bathing, and astrological readings from its first half of 15th-century origins; numerous claims of decipherment have never succeeded in cracking it open.
The Diquis Spheres
Diquis Spheres have become intriguing archaeological finds in recent years. These large stone spheres appear to have been used as symbols of power or authority by Diquis culture in Costa Rica, though their exact meaning remains a subject of ongoing study and speculation.
Most spheres were made from gabbro, a coarse-grained equivalent to basalt, though some were also created out of limestone and sandstone – evidence of resourcefulness and innovation among their creators.
Workers for the United Fruit Company were clearing jungle to make way for banana plantations when they first encountered these spheres in the Diquis Delta in the 1930s and 40s, only for them to quickly be destroyed or relocated as there was speculation they contained gold (much like other artifacts or grave sites throughout history), prompting further suspicion from them and other workers that their existence contained treasure hidden therein.
The Antikythera Mechanism
Antikythera’s mechanism shocked scientists when it was first recovered from the sea in 1901. Comprising bronze gears and mechanical parts that had become rusty over time but appeared to move still, this device—often described by one researcher as the “Titanic of ancient technology”—employed complex astronomical calculations and seemed alive with life. Read the Best info about Paranormal Investigations Revealed.
Scientists have made considerable strides toward understanding this machine, yet some mysteries remain. Built to calculate the cycles of the sun, moon, and planets as they move in relation to Earth, this device enabled people to predict eclipses, seasons, dates of the Olympics and Panhellenic Games, and even star movements.
The Antikythera Mechanism had dials for solar and lunar nodes, the ecliptic (which follows the path of the sun through constellations), Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, as well as gears that matched eclipse timetables. Scientists are uncertain who designed or created this device, but they believe ancient mathematicians and astronomers were among its designers.
The Big Circles
Many people assume aliens are responsible for crop circles, which are circular arrangements of plants that span hundreds of feet across. But humans themselves are to blame.
In 1991, Doug Bower and Dave Chorley from Southampton, England, admitted to creating hundreds of irrigation circles with nothing more complicated than ropes and boards. Farmers commonly create these patterns to water crops more effectively.
David Kennedy’s aerial photographs reveal that eight stone circles in western central Jordan and one near Azraq Oasis in Azraq Oasis had diameters of approximately 1,310ft (400 meters), an exact match that “couldn’t possibly have happened by chance,” according to Kennedy who told Live Science they “are far too similar for it all to be considered mere coincidence.”
Though these structures could have originally served as burial sites or corrals, he believes there’s no logical explanation for their circular shape. The presence of rock piles on their edges, known as cairns, indicates they might later have been utilized for other purposes.
The Cochno Stone
In West Dunbartonshire was one of Europe’s finest prehistoric rock art panels known as Cochno Stone, which attracted Ludovic Mann’s interest during the 1930s and inspired him to paint symbols and natural markings onto its surface more clearly in order to bring out its meaning more effectively. He added his yellow linear grid in order to try and interpret the cosmological significance he perceived it contained.
The 2016 excavation season was marked by its most thrilling discovery to date: that the Cochno Stone still contains some remnants of Mann’s paint markings, with yellow lines radiating out from an area in its center where Mann placed special significance, and red horizontal lines crossing some cups marked in white paint – and yellow horizontal lines radiating outward from it as well as some horizontal red markings encasing cup-marked cups marked white – revealing his paint markings still present! This was genuinely astonishing news!
The primary objective of the excavation was digital recording of the stone using photogrammetry, in which 2D images are captured across its surface, and computer software recognizes features to construct a 3D model of its surface area.
