"Ancient Mysteries That Still Baffle Scientists Today"

It seems like every day there are new discoveries being made about the ancient civilizations that have come before us. Archaeologists and scientists have been able to find and research artifacts from the ancient world to learn more about how our ancestors lived and how we came to be who we are.

Most of the time, the findings are evident after doing extensive research, like the invention of the wheel or the purpose of the pyramids of Ancient Egypt. But there are times that no matter how much research is done, scientists have no idea how or why things existed.

Here are the biggest ancient mysteries that still baffle scientists today:

Baghdad Battery

While doing archeological excavating in the Middle East in 1838, in the area now known as Iraq, Wilhelm Konig, a German archeologist, unearthed a collection of clay jars dated to around 200 BCE. Inside each jar was an iron rod wrapped in a copper cylinder. Konig studied the clay jars and their odd contents and came to the conclusion that these were ancient batteries. When he published his findings, the scientific world was abuzz. How could the ancient people even know about electricity, let alone make batteries to create it?

To test the battery theory, a college professor had her students make replicas of the clay jars, iron rods and copper coils, and to everyone’s surprise, the Baghdad batteries produced an electrical current. Now that experts confirmed that the clay jars were really batteries and that they worked, it led to a much bigger question. What were ancient people using the electricity for?

Sumerian King List

An ancient cuneiform clay tablet lists every single one of the Sumer kings, going all the way back to the third millennium BCE and is a veritable who’s who of power rulers of the ancient Sumerians. What makes the Sumerian King List some intriguing is the reigns of many of the prehistoric rulers.

Some kings, according to the tablet, reigned for thousands of years and some for hundreds of years. Did the people of ancient Sumer live an incredibly long time? Was this proof of their divinity? Or is it simply a mathematical error? It seems unlikely that so many mistakes were made…the keepers of the Sumerian Kings List took great care to be as accurate as possible in their record keeping.

The Devil’s Bible

An enormous medieval book, the Devil’s Bible is a strange and thought-provoking religious book that was said to have been written entirely in one night by a 13th century monk who sold his soul to the Devil in order to meet his deadline. According to the legend surrounding the Devil’s Bible, the author monk was convicted of breaking his vows and sentenced to a grisly fate. He was going to be walled up alive, left to starve to death in his own tomb. The monk struck a plea deal with the monastery. He would write a single book containing all the knowledge in the world and he would accomplish this impossible feat in one day and night. Left alone to his work, the monk struck a deal with the Devil. In the morning, the monk presented his finished book, with 310 filled pages, to the monastery to secure his release.

Clearly a single person could not hand-write that much in such a short amount of time, yet there are some anomalies with the Devil’s Bible. The handwriting indicates that a single person wrote the entire book and that the work was completed in a relatively short amount of time. The book is massive, measuring three feet in length and it weighs so much that two people are needed to lift it. In the pages of the Devil’s Bible is a complete Latin translation of the Holy Bible, as well as other works, a huge and frightening drawing of the Devil, and pages of medical formulas and notes of exorcisms. The book remains complete today, except for twelve pages that have been removed. No one knows what information was on those missing pages or why they were removed.

Japan’s Atlantis

The ruins of an ancient city, said to be at least 5,000 years old, is submerged in the waters just off the coast of Yonaguni Jima in Japan. Some researchers think that the site is the former city of the Jomon culture, but others believe that the giant stones, with their sharp right angles, are merely a strange natural phenomenon. Any time there are ruins of an ancient city found under water, people immediately link it to the legends of Atlantis, the fabled sophisticated city that fell into the ocean in a single day.

Scientists studying the Yonaguni Jima site, however, believe that rising sea levels eventually swallowed the coastal city and it was not the victim of a cataclysmic event. The ruins are a recent find. A diver happened upon the giant stones in 1995. And although many people still maintain that the ruins are nothing more than natural rock formations, it is hard to explain an arched entry way and stone staircase as natural formations.

Rongorongo Writing

Overshadowed, quite literally, by the giant stone heads on Easter Island is the Rongorongo writings, a strange and indecipherable written language found nowhere else but on the mysterious Easter Island. The writings were first discovered in 1864 by researcher Eugene Eyraud, the odd symbols seem to be an early form of writing that features symbols, called glyphs, instead of letters.

The Rongorongo writings date back to around 1200, the unique symbols were carved into wooden planks using a shark tooth. To date, no one has been able to translate the writings, but anthropologists believe they may contain religious information. What makes the Rongorongo system of writing particularly significant is that it developed organically without influence from the outside world.

Saksaywaman Fortress Walls

Stones weighing more than 200 tons form the Saksaywaman Fortress Walls in Cuzco, Peru. The fortress predates the Incan empire, but researched have not been able to definitively date the structure. The craftsmanship at the site is awe-inspiring. The boulders fit together perfectly, as if they were machined. There is no evidence at the site to indicate how the giant stones were carved and lifted into place. Even today, that would require a team of experts and a tremendous amount of manpower.

The people living in the area have a legend that says that a liquid extracted from a native plant makes the stones lighter and more malleable. The legend goes on to say that the rocks were heated to a high temperature that forced them to meld tightly together. Although archeologists do not know how the structure was constructed, they do have evidence that the site was used as a temple and that various ceremonies took place there in the ancient past.

The Stone Spheres of Costa Rica

In ancient times, a stone carver or group of stone carvers in the Diquis Delta of Costa Rica carved hundreds of giant stone spheres with such precision and craftsmanship that most of the stone balls are nearly perfectly round. Attributed to the now extinct Diquis tribes, the spheres represent some of the best and most mysterious stone sculptures of the Isthmo-Colombian region. The stone spheres were carved out of a type of igneous rock found in the area known as granodiorite. Some of the carved stones weigh as much as 16 tons and are larger than two meters in diameter.

Although the exact purpose of the giant stone has yet to be determined, it appears that the spheres were placed in a line leading to the home of the tribe’s chief. Today, many of the spheres have been moved from their original locations and can be found in private gardens of wealthy homeowners. Because so many of the stones have been moved, it makes it difficult for researchers to glean new information from these unusual artifacts.

Nasca Lines

Walking on the dry, desert plains of Nasca in southern Peru, you’d be hard pressed to notice anything unusual. But fly over the region in an airplane and you will see something truly amazing and unexplained. Etched into the hard-packed earth are giant images and symbols, called geoglyphs. There are more than a hundred of these geoglyphs, allegedly made by the Nasca culture between 500 BCE and 500 CE. In addition to numerous long, straight lines that look a bit like runways, there are recognizable images, such as birds, fish, monkeys, and humans.

The strangest thing is that these images were clearly meant to be viewed from above, yet they were made centuries before air travel was possible. At ground level, the difference in color between the surface stone and the stone just below the surface is hardly distinguishable. But from above, the images can be easily seen. How were these images created on such a large scale is as much as mystery as why they were etched. Were they religious or ceremonial symbols? Or were they meant to guide visitors from above?

The Hellenikon Pyramid

Although we most closely associate pyramid structures with ancient Egypt, similar pyramid-shaped buildings can be found all over the world. It is obvious that the design was an important and symbolic one to the people of many cultures. Take, for example, the Hellenikon Pyramid, one of the more famous of the Pyramids of Argolis, Greece.

There is surprisingly little textural evidence to tell us when the Hellenikon Pyramid was built and why, but there is a notation from the 2nd century AD that makes mention that the Hellenikon Pyramid was a mass tomb for the soldiers who died in battle for control of Argos. Archeologists, however, have failed to unearth any evidence that the Hellenikon Pyramid was built to be a tomb. Interestingly, experts believe the Hellenikon Pyramid was constructed around 2721 BCE, which means it is much, much older than the Egyptian pyramids.

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