Civilizations have arisen and perished numerous times throughout history. Anthropologists and archaeologists have attempted to put together a history of civilizations’ growth and collapse via the collection of knowledge in modern times.
However, thanks to fresh findings and the tireless efforts of numerous academics, many previously undiscovered civilizations are being reconsidered. All of these are ancient, and they are evidence that we may not know as much as we would want about our history as we believe.
The Unfinished Obelisk In Egypt
The ‘Unfinished’ Obelisk, higher than any known obelisk ever raised, is one of the most notable stones left behind. The unfinished obelisk is the biggest known ancient obelisk and is located in the northern section of ancient Egypt’s stone quarries near Aswan (Assuan).
It is 42 meters long and was most likely abandoned when fissures occurred in the rock during construction. Others think it was built with the approval of Hatshepsut, the female pharaoh. When completed, it would have stood 42 meters (137 feet) tall and weighed about 1,200 tons.
In addition to the incomplete obelisk, an unfinished half worked obelisk foundation was unearthed in the Aswan quarries in 2005. All of the quarries in Aswan, as well as the unfinished artifacts, serve as an open-air museum and are formally protected as an archaeological monument by the Egyptian government.
Dwarka. Mythical City in India
Dwarka is one of India’s oldest ancient towns. The metropolis, which is five miles long and two miles broad, sits 120 feet underwater in the Gulf of Cambay off India’s western coast.
The finding astounded experts since it predates all other finds in the area by at least 5,000 years, implying a significantly longer history of the society than was previously supposed (carbon dating estimates the site to be almost 10,000 years old).
Marine experts utilized sonar photos and sum-bottom profiling to find the vanished remains, which are thought to have been submerged when the ice caps melted during the previous Ice Age. Surprisingly, numerous architectural remnants are still intact. This remarkable discovery was called Dwarka (The Golden City) after the Hindu god Krishna.
The Dolmen of Menga In Spain
The Dolmen of Menga (Spanish: Dolmen de Menga) is a 3rd millennium BCE megalithic burial mound termed a tumulus, a long barrow variety of dolmen. It is located near Antequera in Malaga, Spain. It is well-known for being one of Europe’s, if not the world’s, biggest constructions.
The largest stones are believed to weigh 180 tons. The main chamber is built on a natural mound and is made up of five capstones supported by three squared pillars carved into the floor stones. Its walls are covered in anthropomorphic figures. Archaeologists discovered the bones of several hundred persons within the grave when it was uncovered and inspected in the nineteenth century.
Ggantija In Malta
Ggantija Temples near Xaghra, Gozo, are one of Malta’s most important archaeological monuments, dating back to before Stonehenge and the Pyramids. These two temples are famous for their massive Neolithic buildings built during the Neolithic Age (c. 3600-2500 BC). The ruins had been known about since 1772, and they were ‘cleaned’ (not excavated) in 1827 by Colonel Otto Bayer.
The Ggantija megalithic complex consists of two temples encircled by a gigantic shared boundary wall constructed using the alternating header and stretcher technique, with some megaliths measuring more than five meters in length and weighing more than fifty tons. Remember that all of this was created at a period when there were no metal tools or wheels.
Ggantija is thought to have been the site of a fertility festival since figurines and statuettes associated with fertility were unearthed there. Because of the massive size of the megaliths, some villagers thought that the temples were the work of giants for centuries.
According to mythology, the temple walls were erected in one day and one night by Sunsuna, a female giant who was breastfeeding a baby at the time. Ggantija means “giant’s grotto” in Maltese. However, current studies indicate that the southern temple alone would have taken around 15,000 man-days to build.
To assure their preservation, extensive archaeological and restoration work was conducted out in the early twentieth century. The great temple complexes, generally known as “The Megalithic Temples of Malta,” are rightly classified as UNESCO World Heritage Sites due to their uniqueness and beauty.
Yonaguni Monument In Japan
Yonaguni Monument is a submerged rock structure off the coast of Yonaguni, Japan’s southernmost Ryukyu Islands. A diver (Kihachiro Aratake) on the island of Yonaguni Jima discovered several unusual buildings around 25 meters below sea level in 1986. Massive rectangular structures with flawless 90-degree angles, straight walls, steps, columns, and what appears to be a human face etched in the rock astounded Aratake. The monument is composed of sandstone and is derived from the same unique rock formation, measuring 150m by 40m and standing 27m tall.
The massive stone monument is made out of a level platform embellished with intricate adornment, flawlessly flat steps, and terraces of various forms. Many other intriguing artifacts, like stone carvings resembling animal forms, have been unearthed both on land and in the sea around the buildings.
Masaaki Kimura, a marine geologist at Japan’s Ryukyus University, has been investigating and documenting the site for more than 15 years and estimates it is over 5,000 years old but was submerged following an earthquake two thousand years ago. Others believe that the building is much older.
This structure, however, is not unique. Along with the monument, 10 additional buildings, including a castle, five temple-like structures, and what appears to be a massive stadium, have been discovered on Yonaguni. What’s more, all of these structures are linked together by roadways and water connections.
The Yonaguni memorial is shrouded in mystery. It has been thrown beneath the rug of conventional human history, perhaps wiping away a significant time in Asia’s ancient history.
Olmec Heads In Mexico
The Olmecs were a significant early Mesoamerican civilization that had a significant impact on succeeding cultures such as the Aztecs and the Maya. From 1200 to 400 B.C., the Olmec civilization thrived along Mexico’s gulf coast. They were exceptionally brilliant sculptors and artisans, creating numerous sculptures, celts, masks, figurines, stelae, thrones, and other works.
Best renowned for their huge gargantuan heads, seventeen of which have been discovered in Mexico’s three most important Olmec sites (La Venta, San Lorenzo, and Tres Zapotez). Almost all of these enormous heads have the same traits, including a flattened nose, huge lips, and capping headgear. The stone heads have traditionally been thought to depict soldiers or chieftain chiefs, or maybe a governing dynasty. The skulls were cut from massive basalt stones, some from the Tuxtlas Mountains, some from Cerro Cintepec basalt, and some from San Martin Volcano basalt.
There has been much debate regarding these heads, with many African tribes believing that these skulls with ostensibly African traits are proof that ancient civilizations in Africa sailed throughout the world long before the Europeans.
Gobekli Tepe In Turkey
Göbekli Tepe, an archaeological site of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A Period (c. 9600-7300 BC), is a complex of mostly circular and oval-shaped constructions erected on top of a hill; gigantic carved stones made and organized by ancient people who had not yet mastered metal tools or even pottery.
Göbekli Tepe is located on a flat, desolate plateau, with structures strewn around in all directions (the megaliths predate Stonehenge by some 6,000 years).
In 1963, Istanbul University and the University of Chicago undertook a study that discovered the location. As a result, it became clear that Gobekli Tepe is made up of severalnumber of such stone age temples. Prof. Klaus Schmidt began excavations in 1995 with the assistance of the German Archaeological Institute. Schmidt believes it is the location of the world’s oldest temple.
Göbekli Tepe is recognized as a monumental archaeological find because it has the potential to fundamentally alter our understanding of a critical moment in human society’s evolution. Future ideas include building a museum and transforming the surrounding area into an archaeological park in the hopes of preserving the monument in its original state.
“A 12,000-year-old temple being discovered in Turkey is rewriting history and appears to belong to a bigger, previously unknown civilisation that is slowly being exposed,” writes Philip Coppens.
Carnac Stones In France
The Carnac stones are an unusually dense collection of megalithic structures in and around the Brittany hamlet of Carnac, which includes alignments, dolmens, tumultuous, and solitary menhirs (large upright standing stones). The Carnac megaliths are constructed in long straight lines, some of which are more than a kilometer long and contain hundreds of menhirs in each row.
Carnac has the world’s highest concentration of megalithic monuments, with over 100 structures. Researchers estimate that the Carnac megaliths were created somewhere during the Neolithic period, about 4000 BC, and may have continued for the next 2000 years. Menec, Kermario, and Kerlescan are the three primary groupings of stone rows, which may have formerly been a single group but were divided up when stones were taken for different uses.
Menec is made up of eleven converging rows of menhirs that run for 1,165 meters and are 100 meters wide.
Kermario is made up of 1029 stones arranged in ten columns that span around 1,300 meters.
Kerlescan is a smaller collection of 555 stones located further east than the other two locations. It is made up of 13 lines with a total length of around 800 meters and heights varying from 80 cm to 4 meters.
Many people think they serve an astronomical purpose as a marker or foresight. Others believe it is a large cemetery due to the presence of passage burials (one myth is that they were Roman soldiers turned to stone by the wizard Merlin). However, like with other megalithic sites, not everyone agrees on the original use of the massive stones, leaving Carnac as the location of yet another riddle that may never be answered.
Carnac is one of three spots on Earth that are supposed to be seen from space. The Great Wall of China and the Nazca lines in Peru are considered to be the other two places.
Giant Stone Spheres of Costa Rica
The stone balls are one of the oddest riddles in archaeology unearthed in Costa Rica’s Diquis Delta. Hundreds of stone balls have been reported since the 1930s, ranging in size from a few centimeters to over 2 meters (6.6 ft).
For his 1963 paper, archaeologist and anthropologist Samuel Lothrop recorded roughly 186 balls. Today, over 300 balls are known to exist, with the biggest weighing more than 16 tons (15,000 kg). Almost majority of the balls are formed of granodiorite, a hard, volcanic stone found in the Talamanca range’s foothills.
Although exact dating is impossible, these rocks are assumed to have been erected between 1000 and 500 B.C. by vanished people. There are several beliefs surrounding the stones, such as that they originated from Atlantis or that they were created by nature. According to certain local traditions, the native people had access to a potion that softened the rock. Even thoughthe fact that the rocks have been impacted, shattered, and worn over thousands of years, some think they were originally constructed as perfect spheres.
What did they serve? Nobody knows for certain.
Since the 1971 release of Erich von Däniken’s ‘Chariots of the Gods,’ the stone balls of Costa Rica have been the subject of pseudoscientific conjecture. The ancient stone spheres were made famous by the opening sequence of “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” in which Indiana Jones was nearly crushed by a facsimile of one of the enigmatic treasures.
Moai In Easter Island
Easter Island is a Polynesian island in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, near the tip of the Polynesian Triangle. Easter Island’s most striking claim to fame is a collection of around 900 huge stone statues dating back centuries; monolithic human figures known as Moai, sculpted by the Rapa Nui people between 1250 and 1500 CE.
The statues reveal their makers to be great craftsmen and engineers, and they stand out among other Polynesian stone sculptures.
There are 887 known Moai sculptures, with the biggest being 21 meters (72 feet) tall and weighing more than 160 tons (176 tons), and the average standing 4 meters (13.2 feet). The Moai figures feature enormous heads and bodies with pointed noses and chins, and virtually all are sculpted from tuff, a volcanic stone.
For a long time, it was assumed that the Easter Island sculptures were just heads. However, a dig about 100 years ago revealed that the sculptures’ bodies were buried under the surface. Images from the excavation of the sculptures show that the “body” are adorned with intricate “tattoos.”
One of the world’s best-kept mysteries is the Easter Island sculptures. Rapa Nui National Park, which includes the Moai sculptures, was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1995.
There has been much debate concerning the sculptures’ specific purpose, their significance in the ancient culture of Easter Island, and how they were built and transported.
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