What's your favourite kind of ancient artefact discovery? Is it something that gives you new information about a great civilisation from the past, or do you prefer valuable objects made of solid gold? Do you prefer small-scale finds that could fit in the palm of your hand or the discoveries of entire ancient cities? How about a little bit of everything? That's what we've got for you in this video!
Why Beautiful Bodies Mattered to Bronze Age Warriors
The warrior aristocracy of Bronze Age Europe were buried in warrior graves with his personal weaponry - like daggers, swords, and spears.
But there were other objects in these graves like hair combs, bronze razors and tweezers, cloak pins, and awls for tattooing the skin, that all speak to a profound interest in clothing, personal grooming and in adorning the warrior.
So what can this all tell us about this aristocracy, the beliefs and practices of these elite men, and the nature of masculinity in prehistory?
Julius Caesar and Cleopatra: History's Most Captivating Love Story
Step back in time and witness a love story that defied empires and shaped history. Join us as we uncover the forbidden romance between Julius Caesar, the powerful Roman general, and Cleopatra, the enigmatic Pharaoh of Ancient Egypt. From political intrigue to scandalous affairs, this captivating tale of passion and betrayal will leave you spellbound.
How AI is Cracking the Code of Ancient Languages… And a Whole Lot More
In the video below we will dive in on How AI is Cracking the Code of Ancient Languages. Watch the video to find out more!
The Oldest Tombs on Earth? Megalithic Origins (4900 - 2700 BC)
The entire history of the megalith builders of Neolithic France's western Brittany region from the migration and rise of the first farmers to the demise of the culture. This feature length documentary shows how the famous megalithic monuments of Britain and Ireland, such as Stonehenge, derive from much earlier ones in Brittany. Who were the first farmers in France? Why did they start building the impressive megalithic chambered tombs or the enormous standing stones known as menhirs? This documentary looks at the world’s first tombs, some close to 7000 years old, and traces the development of the dolmens and other tombs from 5000 BC to 2700 BC. We also learn how the first farmers interacted with the Mesolithic Western Hunter Gatherers who were already there, and how they may have influenced this megalithic monument tradition. Learn how the exquisite jadeite axe heads of the Neolithic were symbols of power imported from the far away Alps. We visited the tombs of Gavrinis, Petit Mont, Table des Marchands, the Barrow tomb of Kercado and the truly ancient Saint-Michel tumulus among others. You will also learn about the 4 mile long alignments of Carnac and what they were made for. The adventure starts at the 9 maidens stones in Cornwall and ends on the stunning coasts of Morbihan in Brittany.
Inside the Battle - Here’s what it really looked like
This video presents a battle model of what modern historians believe to be realistic ancient warfare. With our limited sources and material, it has always been hard to visualize the combat experience and decipher what it meant to do battle, and how they played out to one's favor. Supporting this model will be countless sources from Polybius, Livy and Caesar, to modern combat of boxers and riot police. We believe the few descriptions and evidence we have is enough to visualize a general guideline for understanding ancient battles, especially Roman infantry bottles!
Largest Creatures To Ever Exist On Earth
The battle still rages on for the title of the largest dinosaur to walk the Earth. As more time passes, we uncover more evidence of these prehistoric giants. And we're not talking about just the plant eaters, but the meat-eating dinosaurs too.
Just how big were the mightiest sauropods, and could these giants really have fallen prey to the ferocious meat-eaters during their time? Could the mighty Giganotosaurus, or the huge and scary Spinosaurus, defeat a Tyrannosaurus-rex in battle? And could the T-Rex have been 70% larger than previously thought?
If you love dinosaurs, then get ready to find out the answers to this and more.
12 Most Incredible Ancient Artifacts Finds
Our ancient artefacts made some wonderful, incredible things. In this video we're taking yet another deep delve into the distant past, and we've got some spectacular things to show you. Enjoy!
This is the Greatest Hidden Treasure in Greece; Gold Seekers are Desperately Looking for it
BY THE ARCHAEOLOGIST EDITOR GROUP
There are many legends about the existence of hidden treasures in Greece. Of course, no one can prove that they exist, but just the reputation associated with them is enough to send gold seekers in search of them.
Amid the rich tapestry of Greece's history, filled with mythological creatures, godly feats, and tales of heroism, a less divine but equally captivating story lurks. The hunt for the most coveted hidden treasure in Greece, tucked away somewhere in the lush landscapes of the Peloponnese, continues to entice treasure hunters, historians, and thrill-seekers alike. This treasure, shrouded in legend and history, is tied to the infamous bandit, Lykos (or Lygos), who thrived during the time of the Turkish occupation.
The Legend of Lykos
In the Peloponnese, the most famous treasure is associated with the bandit Lykos or Lygos from the time of the Turkish occupation.
According to an old publication, in the 19th century the bandit Lygos hid priceless sums of money (in gold) in the underground passages of Mainalos, and on the other hand, Captain Perdikas (of the ELAS - Greek Liberation Army) hid golden pounds there (from the occupation forces).
Lykos wasn't your everyday bandit. He was something of a Robin Hood figure during the tumultuous days of the Turkish occupation of Greece. He stole not just for personal gain but also to redistribute wealth among the oppressed Greeks, earning him a revered spot in local folklore.
However, the most tantalizing aspect of Lykos's legacy is not just his deeds but what he left behind. Tales speak of a treasure hoard – a culmination of his numerous raids – buried deep within the rugged terrains of the Peloponnese.
Clues in Ancient Ballads
The pursuit of Lykos's treasure isn't just based on whispers and tales told by the elderly around a fire. There are tangible clues, albeit cryptic ones, found in the traditional ballads of the region. These songs, passed down through generations, often speak of a "golden cache guarded by the spirits of old," hinting at the treasure's divine protection.
The Peloponnese: Greece's Hidden Gem
The Peloponnese peninsula, a hand-shaped piece of land jutting out from the mainland, is a treasure in its own right. With its verdant landscapes, craggy mountains, and azure coastlines, it encapsulates Greece's natural beauty.
For treasure seekers, though, it's the Peloponnese's caverns, ancient ruins, and its deep woods that hold promise. These terrains have witnessed civilizations rise and fall, from the mighty Spartans to the Byzantine Empire. And somewhere within this expanse, it's believed that Lykos's treasure awaits discovery.
Region of Peloponnese
Modern Pursuits
The hunt for Lykos's treasure isn't limited to enthusiastic locals armed with shovels and stories passed down from their grandparents. In the modern era, equipped with metal detectors, ground-penetrating radars, and drone surveillance, gold seekers from around the world have been lured by the promise of this legendary treasure.
But the Peloponnese, with its vast expanse and myriad hiding places, has not given up its secret easily. Numerous expeditions, both licensed and illicit, have combed its landscape. While many have returned with artifacts, coins, and relics from various epochs, the fabled treasure of Lykos remains elusive.
In the summer of 2000, two Greek-American businessmen, originally from Arcadia and Laconia respectively, had brought a special and very expensive electromagnetic machine with a state-of-the-art scanner from the USA. They searched Mainalo but found absolutely nothing.
A Legacy Beyond Gold
While the gold remains unfound, the legend of Lykos serves as a potent reminder of Greece's enduring spirit during the occupation. The treasure, in many ways, symbolizes the resilience, hope, and the undying quest for freedom that the Greeks exhibited in the face of adversity.
For those who continue the search, it's not just about the potential riches. It's about becoming part of a legend, of connecting with a history that's both tangible and mythical, and of possibly unearthing a treasure that embodies the spirit of an entire nation.
As seekers continue to probe the depths and heights of the Peloponnese, the legend of Lykos's treasure grows. Whether or not it will ever be found remains one of Greece's most enduring mysteries. But in the quest, in the journey through the annals of history and the rugged terrains of the Peloponnese, lies the true adventure.
Ancient Warfare: The Ancient Greek Military Discipline
Much has been said and written in the past about the strategies and tactics that the ancient Greeks employed on the battlefields and that were crucial to the development of Greek and European history.
In ancient Greece, the Greek army generally consisted of trained men who were dressed martially (chest armor, shin, helmet) and were skilled with weapons (spear, sling, bow, sword).
The Rhodians were the best slingers, the Cretans the best archers, the Acarnans (from Acarnania) and the Agrians (a people near the Strymon River) the best spearmen, and the Thracians the best peltasts.
The army of the ancient Greeks was the first to use military formations in battle and to charge with battle cries to attack the enemy.
The naval power of the time was Athens. The famous tactics of the Athenians are known, who misled their enemy by changing the formations of their fleet. In the land army, the Greek army has used siege engines such as siege rams, catapults, and siege towers since the 5th century BC, long before the Roman army (which had a mercenary army of Roman and foreign men).
The Romans copied the ancient Greek military model: the equipment (armor, horsemen, peltasts, spearmen, archers, slingers), the war constructions (triremes, siege engines), and the strategy, both in infantry and fleet.
The Syracusan Greeks in the Peloponnesian War—the Sicilian campaign (415–413 BC)—had Italian mercenaries from whom they learned the art of war. The Greeks also had trumpeters who gave military orders in battle, as well as pipers who coordinated the march of the soldiers
As for the Spartan army, it was the first to use military formations in battle, even changing them during the fight. This was long before the appearance of the Macedonian phalanx, created around 338 BC by the Macedonian king Philip II.
The Lacedaemonian hoplites wore a dark red epaulet or breastplate (the most heavily armed), a spear, a shield with the characteristic large Greek letter L (=Lacedaemonian), and a small hand tool (a killing knife). The soldiers synchronized their steps with the flute music. During the battle, the formations were changed so that the best warriors were on the front lines.
If the enemy broke the formation, the fallen soldiers were replaced by other hoplites in the battle area.
The Spartan army also used other war tactics. For example, one such ploy was to feign the inactivity of the Spartan army in order to mislead the enemy. However, both the Spartan and Macedonian armies were models of organization and tactics. The same is true of other armies, such as those of the Athenians and the Boeotians.
Even in late antiquity, Greek and Roman writers and even modern scholars studied the subject from a distance, either by thinking of the tactical movements of opposing armies on a map or by studying on a geostrategic and political level the conditions of the area.
But they almost all failed to deal with and study the necessity from which these tactical and strategic applications emerged and led to the element that had such a crucial effect on shaping the battlefield and societies, which is the invention and introduction of the military phalanx!
It is obvious that the success of the phalanx on the battlefield depended directly on the precision and timing of its movements and, of course, on the degree of discipline of those who formed it. The need to develop a method of transforming a large number of people from a simple gathering of a disorderly crowd into a synchronized, compact, and determined war machine with an excellent arrangement of lines became immediately apparent.
Of course, each individual soldier did not cease to have a distinct personality, with individual character, needs, and desires. The functioning of the phalanx, however, required the self-chosen and voluntary subjugation of personal needs and the conscious disciplining of the movements and decisions of each individual soldier.
Thus was born the culmination of Greek social consciousness, which meant the subordination of personal interests to societal ones.
In this way, privileged states were built, composed of conscientious, productive, and active citizens that we admire and envy today, as if they were an unattainable dream.
Thus, the person in charge decided under a specific military command what would be the next movement of the phalanx, but the common conscious co-decision of all hoplites was the simultaneous and precise execution of the specific movement at the specific time.
This naturally led to the next practical need: a clear and precise way to communicate the leader's orders to the last soldier in a manner understood by all and with common terminology.
Thus came the invention of the command, which is nothing more than a codification of a series of actions and movements at a given moment after the leader has said a short and sharp sentence or word.
With the goal of making these movements effective and synchronized on the battlefield, precision drills were introduced in peacetime to train and prepare soldiers.
The more precisely the hoplites executed their movements, the more effective they were on the battlefield, as shown by the example of the Spartans, who not only developed the idea of the phalanx but also turned military training into a true art, making it an indisputable benchmark of martial virtue throughout the ages. From ancient times to the present day, in the modern army, we say that the discipline index of a division is the degree of accuracy in the execution of precision exercises.
The ancient historians even transmitted to us the astonishment in the eyes of the Persians when they saw from a distance the advance of the Macedonian phalanx of Alexander the Great. They compared them perfectly and said that the hoplites were so perfectly balanced and lined up during their movement that, from a distance, they did not look like a crowd but like nails in perfect geometric position on a board. And this image alone made them freeze with fear.
The "Golden Boy": The 2,300-year-old Mummy with the 49 Amulets and their Meaning
Researchers at Cairo University have used CT scans to "digitally unpack" a mummy discovered more than 100 years ago in a cemetery in southern Egypt, and the results are truly impressive.
Investigators found dozens of different amulets, many made of gold, carefully attached to or inside the boy's body.
These included a two-finger amulet next to his penis, a gold heart scarab in his chest cavity, and a gold tongue in his mouth, each with its own symbolism, which archaeologists are currently investigating.
The boy also wore sandals and was wrapped in garlands of ferns.
The sarcophagus from the Hellenistic period
The mummy of the "golden boy" was buried in two coffins: an outer coffin with Greek inscriptions (since the burial took place in Ptolemaic times) and an inner wooden sarcophagus.
The Ptolemies, in the spirit of Alexander the Great, adopted the Egyptian traditions, customs, and traditions of the Egyptian culture and tried to combine them with the Greek culture so that all these traditions lasted through time.
With the exception of the heart, the internal organs were removed through an incision, while the brain was removed from the nose and replaced with resin, which proves the Egyptians' extraordinary knowledge of the human body for the time that led them to perform such delicate and specialized operations.
With the crucial contribution of technology, which is also playing an increasingly important role in archaeology, the CT scans showed that the boy was 128 points tall, between 14 and 15 years old, had good teeth, and that no obvious cause of death was known.
The mystery of amulets and what they symbolize
Amulets represent a wide range of beliefs and ideas that accompanied Egyptian tradition regarding the afterlife.
For example, a golden tongue was placed in the mouth to ensure the boy could speak in the afterlife, while a rectangular amulet was believed to balance the child's path after death.
One of the researchers, Dr. Sahar Samem, said, "We show here that the body of this mummy was extensively adorned with 49 amulets, beautifully stylized in a unique three-column arrangement between the folds of the wrapping and inside the body cavity of the mummy.".
"Many amulets were made of gold, others of semi-precious stones, fired clay, or fayence," said the renowned archaeologist.
"Their purpose was to protect the body and give it vitality in the afterlife."
The symbolism is not yet known for the golden scarab in the place of the heart or for the two talismanic fingers next to the youth's penis.
The meaning of the "last journey"
In the journal Frontiers in Medicine, the researchers add, "The results of this study suggest that ancient Egyptians valued their children and provided them with ritual healing."
The ancient Egyptians believed that the spirit aspires to an afterlife similar to this world.
However, entry into this afterlife was not guaranteed. It first required a dangerous journey to the underworld, followed by a final personal judgment, according to the Daily Mail report.
For this reason, relatives and embalmers did everything they could to ensure that their loved one could reach a happy destination, giving him everything they thought would be useful on this final journey.
Did The Neanderthals Speak Differently Than Our Languages?
Modern humans and Neanderthals obviously got along well enough to mate with one another, although the level of conversation that preceded these inter-hominid romances remains a matter of great uncertainty.
Given that fossils are unable to talk and Neanderthals disappeared long before the invention of recording equipment, archaeologists have no way of knowing whether our extinct cousins possessed sophisticated language skills - although the author of an as-yet unpublished study has had a crack at analyzing Neanderthal lingo.
“Neanderthals almost certainly spoke languages that were quite like our languages, but seemingly less structurally complex and less functionally flexible,” writes study author Antonio Benítez-Burraco, a linguist from the University of Seville. This conclusion is the upshot of a multidisciplinary analysis of the ancient humans’ speech capabilities, combining anatomical, social-cultural, cognitive, environmental, and genetic evidence.
This Is What the Earth Looked Like Before the Dinosaurs Era
When we pose deep questions about the history of our planet Earth, or the origin of life, we often receive answers that are incredibly complex and mysterious. In prehistoric times, there was an era that gave rise to interesting and often disturbing creatures, stretching the limits of our current imagination. Today, we will delve into the depths of time to discover a series of strange and frightening creatures, from the most primitive lifeforms on our planet to the grand ancestors of dinosaurs.
Ancient Apocalypse: The Akkadian Empire
In 2334 BCE the Akkadians conquered and united the Sumerian city state kingdoms to create the world’s first empire. The Akkadian’s ruled over much of Mesopotamia, what is now modern-day Iraq, Syria and Turkey, but after only 140 years the Akkadian Empire fractured. Entire regions of Mesopotamia descended into chaos and the Akkadian Empire’s very existence was lost to history. Now archaeologists scour the Middle East searching for information about how they became so powerful and why they collapsed.
What Love and Marriage was Like in Japan
In the following video we will analyze what love and marriage was like in Japan. Watch the video to find out more!
Why 82% of Mexico is Empty
In the video below we will be explaining why 82% of Mexico is empty. Watch the video to find out more!
The 570 Ton Mega-Block in Ancient Jerusalem | Includes 3D Lidar Scans
The Western Wall (Waling Wall) stretches the length of Temple Mount with massive megalithic blocks in its lower levels, including one weighing 570 tons with others of a similar size stretching across the foundations of what was once Solomon's Temple, similar to Byblos and Baalbek in Lebanon. Hugh Newman explores and examines these gigantic megaliths and questions how they could have been cut, quarried and moved into position. Includes exclusive 3D Lidar scans
12 Most Amazing Archeological Finds
Archaeology is the practice of taking things from the past and looking at them with the eyes of the present. It’s about trying to understand the people who came long before us, including the things they believed and the practices they followed. In simple terms, archaeology is a quest for knowledge - and there’s plenty of knowledge waiting for us all in this video!
Why Are They All In Antarctica?
Meteorite hunters don’t search for meteorites in the places most frequently peppered by them – they go to Antarctica instead, because that’s where they are easiest to find. Watch the video below for more!
Breathtaking Colorized Photos From The Past (Mata Hari, Maude Adams, Emiliano Zapata etc.)
In this video we will see some more photos from the past, breathtakingly being brought to life with stunning colorizations. We have always been fascinated by old black and white photos, seemingly belonging to a completely different world from the one that we know today. With new technology and artistic skills of few individuals, we can now actually reimagine what this world looked like in full color. Some may argue that black and white photography is a classic art, yes of course... but still, adding vivid colors to these photographs, makes them look much more realistic and alive again.
