The long history of mankind is rich in strange and mysterious events.
And in many places of our planet to this day from time to time they find so unusual objects and structures that they confound even very venerable scientists.
Some of them eventually turn out to be hoaxes, but quite a considerable number of these artifacts are genuine.
Scientists have to smash their heads (and turn over tons of historical documents) in order to find out what it is, in the end, such, and how, and why it was made.
And here you have only 10 of these really existing artifacts:
10. The Rat King
In several museums around the world there are very strange exhibits - the so-called “rat kings”: several rats fused or tied into a knot.
In fact, there are not so many cases of finding such “rat kings” - from 35 to 50. In the “bundles” there are from 6-7 to 32 individuals (the largest “nest” of 32 rats was found in a fireplace in an old mill in the city of Buchheim, Germany, in 1828).
The most interesting thing is that no one has ever seen the “rat kings” alive (there is not a single written evidence of this), they are always found dead, and most often, mummified. And although this phenomenon has been known since the middle of the XVI century, it still has not been clarified how it turns out that rats get entangled in a terrible living lump.
9. “Reptiles” from Ubeid (Iraq)
In 1918-1919, in Mesopotamia, or rather, on the territory of modern Iraq, archaeologists, digging up the hill of Tell el Ubeid, discovered an interesting ancient culture that preceded the Sumerian and existed from about VI to IV millennium BC. She was called Ubeid.
In addition to the mass of other artifacts, statuettes of creatures were discovered there, in principle, similar to people, but very strange in appearance.
These ceramic “humanoids” had, firstly, wide shoulders (decorated with some tuberous growths resembling huge warts) and narrow hips, and secondly, their faces turned out to be like the faces of lizards - elongated, with a wide mouth and strongly set narrow eyes .
Where these “reptilians” came from and who they are (are they the gods of Ubeid?) Is still unclear.
8. “Witch bottles” (Europe and the USA)
Recently, archaeologists and historians from the University of Hertfordshire (Great Britain) asked the local population to hand over to them the so-called “witch bottles” found in old houses.
The fact is that quite often these interesting artifacts are unknowingly thrown into a landfill. They are usually found in the secluded corners of houses built in the 16th-17th centuries: in the hearths, in the underground, at a far angle or in the yard (and in 2014 they found one of these clay “bottles”, about 15 cm high, at the site of a long-standing battle in Nottinghamshire).
According to scientists, these ceramic vessels were designed to protect against dark forces (in other words, from witches). They contain fragments of needles and pins, nails, as well as clippings of nails, hair and even the remains of urine. Apparently, these things, according to medieval English, were supposed to protect them from the witch's spell. About 200 such “witch bottles” have already been found to date.
7. Big Zayatsky labyrinth (Russia)
And these ancient artifacts are on our Russian Solovetsky Islands (in the Arkhangelsk region).
In total, 35 labyrinths were discovered here, created back in the Neolithic era (3 thousand years BC).
A significant part of them is located on the Big Zayatsky Island, on a low Signal Mountain.
14 structures from 6 to 25 meters in diameter (in the form of a single or double spiral) are composed of small boulders from 30 to 40 cm in height.
(By the way, besides the labyrinths, here, on Solovki, there are about 850 different stone objects: from mounds and ramparts to solar symbols).
They have been known for a long time, but scientists still argue about their purpose. The most common version: labyrinths are the border between the world of the living and the world of the dead (and the entrance to the "underworld").
6. Fulachtai Fia (Ireland)
Across Ireland and partially in Britain, about 6 thousand strange horseshoe-shaped mounds consisting of land and stones have been discovered at the moment.
Usually in the center of this “horseshoe” there is a rectangular gutter (approximately 1 m wide, 2 m long and 0.5 m deep) filled with water.
The Irish call these very obscure buildings Fulachtai Fia (in a free translation it will be something like a “wild roasting pan” or “pit for cooking”).
Well, the British simply call them “burnt mounds,” because inside the “horseshoe” they usually find traces of a large and long burning fire or hearth.
By the way, near Fulachtai Fia there is always a source of water and fuel (for example, forest).
For what purpose these pits were actually used, nobody knows today. There are several main versions (but they all agree on one thing - they heated water in the gutter with the help of hot stones): 1) it was a kind of ancient “laundries” in which clothes were steamed, 2) it’s big troughs for cooking a lot of meat, 3) ordinary bathtubs for bathing (with hot water), 4) these are tanks for dyeing fabrics and leathers, or 5) these are containers for making beer (in 2007, two archaeologists from Galway even conducted an experiment, quite successfully welding light ale in Fulachtai Fia) .
5. Roman dodecahedrons
Almost throughout Europe, in territories that were once within the sphere of influence of the Roman Empire (from Great Britain to Hungary, but most often in Germany and France), small bronze and stone objects are found, which are geometrically regular dodecahedrons with 12 pentagonal faces.
According to scientists, they were created around the II-III centuries. AD The size of these empty balls is from 4 to 11 cm in diameter. On each of their faces there are round holes of different sizes, and in the corners (often, but not always) - round “bumps”.
At the moment, 27 (!) Hypotheses have already been put forward what it is and why it was created, but not one of them has yet been conclusively proven. Here are just a few: these are candlesticks, dice, tools for calibrating water pipes, just toys, rangefinders, religious symbols, decorations of the attributes of power, etc.
4. Göbekli Tepe Temple (Turkey)
The oldest of the large megalithic structures in the world is the huge stone temple of Göbekli Tepe in Turkey - at least 5 thousand years older than Stonehenge. It was built from about X to VIII millennium BC.
When in the early 1990s. systematic excavations began here, then the ideas of scientists about the times of the Mesolithic and Neolithic were greatly shaken.
Such an impressive religious complex with powerful columns (up to 9 m high and weighing 10-20, and partially up to 50 tons) could not be built by unorganized hunters and gatherers who supposedly did not yet have a strict social hierarchy under the leadership of one leader.
At the moment, only about 5% of the total area of Göbekli Tepe has been excavated, but archaeologists are sure that this grandiose monument of antiquity (which will take about 50 years to completely clear) will still bring them a lot of surprises.
Already, the artistic level of animals and people depicted on its columns is causing amazement and admiration.
Another mystery of Göbekli Tepe: why was he not simply left and forgotten, but specially covered with earth in the VIII millennium BC?
3. Written Easter Island
Everyone knows about the famous giant "idols" of Easter Island. But another complicated riddle is connected with this place, which no one has yet been able to solve - this is the writing of rongo-rongo.
In the 1860s, Father Roussel (a member of the Catholic mission on the island) sent 24 wooden signs to Bishop Tahiti Jossen, which contained some pictographic symbols (i.e. more pictures than letters).
By our time, there are only 15 tablets left. Since then, at least a dozen of the best philologists, linguists, historians, and other scholars have tried to decipher the “text” written on them, but none of them have succeeded.
The fact is that, firstly, it is unclear what exactly the tablets of the rongo-rongo (about the rulers of Rapa Nui? About their gods? Or is it a solar calendar? Or something else?) Can tell, specifically, and secondly , Rapanui language was very mixed with Tahitian, therefore, even in the 19th century, the inhabitants of Easter Island did not remember their previous speech (and could not help scientists).
2. Gigas Codex (The Devil’s Bible)
Since the middle of the XVII century. the Swedish Royal Library in Stockholm houses a manuscript of the early 13th century, known as the Codex Gigas or the Devil’s Bible.
In fact, it was created in the Benedictine monastery of the town of Podlážice in Bohemia (present-day Czech Republic), and came to Sweden as a war trophy.
This huge book, consisting of 310 large parchment sheets and weighing 75 kg, is the largest and most voluminous manuscript publication in Europe.
And it is a collection of the entire amount of knowledge that this monastery possessed, from Biblia Vulgata (of course, in Latin) to the works of Josephus Flavius, the Czech Chronicle of Kozma Prague, The Etymology of Isidore of Seville, Hippocratic treatises and descriptions of rituals of exorcism under one cover.
Why does this code have such a name? Well, first of all, it has a “portrait” of the Devil (exactly opposite the image of the Heavenly City - apparently, as a contrast between good and evil).
Secondly, according to legend, the Benedictine monk who wrote the code was sentenced to be walled up alive for some terrible misconduct. And then he made a deal with the Devil and finished this work in just one night (and Satan allegedly painted a self-portrait in person).
Scientists who have studied the code argue that it could have been written in 20-30 years (rather in 30, given the speed of handwritten writing of the time). But it was clearly written by one person, in small and almost “printed” handwriting.
1. Sumerian list of kings
And again, we will return to present-day Iraq, to the territory of ancient Sumer. In 1906, during excavations, the so-called “List of the Kings of Sumer and Akkad” was first found on clay tablets.
To date, 18 more samples of the same text have been discovered.
The most famous of them is the so-called Veld Blundell prism, which is stored in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, which has 2 columns of text on each side (about 20 cm in height).
It lists all Sumerian rulers (from the end of the third millennium BC until about 1750 BC) and indicates the duration of their reign.
But here's what is interesting: firstly, on this list there are obviously mythical characters - Gilgamesh, Ethan, Lugal-gang and others; and secondly, according to this document, all the kings of the first dynasties (until about the XXVII century BC) were not just long-livers, but super-long-livers, for example, En Menloan safely ruled 43,200 years, Allalgar, Dumuzi and Ziusudra - 36 thousand years, etc. But from about the XXIII century. BC. the Sumerian kings somehow "degenerated" and began to rule a maximum of 50-60 years.