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From ancient civilizations to prehistoric humans, these groundbreaking finds revolutionized our understanding of the past. Join us as we explore remarkable discoveries that unveiled secrets of human evolution, lost civilizations, and ancient knowledge. From mysterious tombs to prehistoric art, these findings changed everything we knew about history.
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00:00It's Dark Age by Jupiter! 6th century! This changes everything!
00:06Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're counting down our picks for the most notable archaeological findings that caused historians to rethink the past.
00:14That was exciting. One of the best moments in my career.
00:21Number 10. Alduvai Gorge
00:22This isn't one specific archaeological location, but an entire locality housing some of the most important works relating to paleoanthropology, or the study of early humans.
00:33Found in the northeast corner of Tanzania, Alduvai Gorge has been invaluable in our understanding of early human culture and evolution.
00:40Telling us is that there's a lot out there to be found. We actually don't have the whole story of human evolution.
00:48Researchers have unearthed ancient stone tools and hominid fossils.
00:53Occupation of the site is believed to stretch back nearly 2 million years, when it was inhabited by an archaic human species called Homo habilis.
01:01And then these other things, which are generally termed Homo habilis, after the species that Lewis Leakey named at Alduvai in 1960.
01:10Without Alduvai Gorge and its riches of archaeological material, our understanding of archaic humans would be much more limited.
01:17Number 9. The Cave of Altamira
01:20If you're interested in early humanity, then you cannot go wrong with the Cave of Altamira.
01:25This is the Museum of Altamira. It was built right next to the cave, where the original cave paintings, dating back to the Paleolithic era, were discovered.
01:37The original cave has been closed to preserve its archaeologically important remains.
01:43Archaeology has uncovered many notable caves relating to ancient humanity, including Lascaux and another in the small Spanish town of Artales.
01:52But nothing beats Altamira.
01:54Also located in Spain, this cave houses numerous prehistoric drawings and paintings, most of which depict local animals.
02:00After the site was discovered in 1868, the suggestion that the paintings were prehistoric was met with some skepticism.
02:07Not only owing to the nature of the drawings, but also because no other prehistoric cave art was known to exist in Europe.
02:14We're also interested in whether or not human symbolic behavior coincides, for example, with language,
02:21or whether human symbolic behavior in fact dates right back to the point of which we start looking like humans.
02:27But the research eventually prevailed, and it's now believed that the paintings are around 36,000 years old.
02:34Number 8. The Serapium of Alexandria
02:37Serving as the greatest library of its age, the Library of Alexandria attracted scholars to Egypt and served as the ancient world's symbol of knowledge.
02:46In its prime, the Library of Alexandria housed an unprecedented number of scrolls and attracted some of the Greek world's greatest minds.
02:54It proved so popular that a so-called Daughter Library was later created called the Serapium of Alexandria.
03:01The Serapium lasted a bit longer than its famous father, and it was finally destroyed in the year 391.
03:07The site later became a Muslim cemetery.
03:10In the mid-1940s, the foundations of the Serapium were discovered.
03:14And with it, one of the greatest centers of learning in human history was unearthed.
03:18Number 7. The Terracotta Army
03:21This is one of the most significant archaeological finds of all time, and it was discovered completely by accident.
03:29And they find some pieces of the pottery.
03:39They also find the head of the Terracotta Warriors, and the team, archaeological team, came to this area, and they start to dig.
03:47The Terracotta Army was first uncovered in the Shanxi province of western China by a group of farmers in the 1970s.
03:54The army resides within a tomb constructed over 2200 years ago as the resting place of Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China, which is why it's so elaborate.
04:04He was its first emperor, and his empire became his fortress, protected by a great wall.
04:14The legend says he was a tyrant, driven mad by power.
04:20In the parts we've been able to excavate, there are over 8,000 soldiers made out of clay, there to guard Emperor Qin in the afterlife.
04:27Row upon row of warriors.
04:31Hundreds of secret subterranean soldiers.
04:34All life-sized, and built to be immortal.
04:38But, even more astonishing is the fact that the entire necropolis is believed to be almost 40 square miles in size, with most of the site hidden in vaults that aren't yet accessible.
04:48Number 6. Tutankhamun's Tomb
04:50Tutankhamun's burial chamber is filled with magical decoration.
04:55But beside it, the rest of the tomb is left bare.
04:59This simple tomb is unlike any other royal tomb in the valley.
05:04The Valley of the Kings is the final resting place of many ancient Egyptian pharaohs.
05:09But, throughout its history, a number of tombs have fallen victim to grave robbers.
05:14This is the Egyptian red list of the missing pieces.
05:17We are already missing from museums and sites and everywhere in Egypt.
05:23And we give it to Interpol to stop any piece of them if they're moving from a country to a country.
05:28Tutankhamun's tomb was different.
05:30Remarkably, though grave robbers did break in shortly after it was initially sealed up, most of its contents were intact when archaeologists found it in 1922.
05:39Over 5,000 priceless artifacts, including golden statues.
05:45In the burial chamber, the pharaoh's mummy, wearing a golden death mask, was placed inside a coffin made of more than 200 pounds of solid gold.
05:57Today, Tutankhamun's gilded mask makes him arguably the most famous and recognizable pharaoh in history.
06:03Considering Tutankhamun only reigned for about 10 years and died between the young ages of 18 and 19, that is quite the legacy.
06:10This modest tomb was jammed full of all the royal possessions that were usually buried with a king.
06:17It can't have been meant to be all jumbled up like that.
06:21People are just trying to cram as much stuff as possible.
06:24Along with the mask, the tomb also contained a statue of Anubis, the god of the dead, and a dagger made from a fallen meteor.
06:32Number 5, Lucy.
06:34Several famous fossils have revolutionized our view of early hominins.
06:38Discovered in 1924 in South Africa, the Tongue Child, a skull of an Australopithecus africanus, was described as, quote,
06:46the missing link between ape and human.
06:48Although, anthropologists initially resisted the idea that humans had evolved in Africa.
06:52Some scientists even went so far as to suggest it was perhaps just a baby gorilla,
06:58and that the Tongue Child would bear little out on anything other than the origins of apes themselves.
07:07Eclipsing the Tongue Child in renown is Lucy, the 3.2 million-year-old remains of an Australopithecus afarensis.
07:15Unearthed in 1974 in Ethiopia, she was named after the Beatles song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,
07:21which the research team was playing on repeat.
07:24The completeness of her remains gave us much more information on the evolution of bipedalism and brain size.
07:30We now have 400 specimens of Lucy's species Australopithecus afarensis, named after the Afar region.
07:39And we know that they're very large individuals, which were males, and the smaller ones are certainly females.
07:45In 1994, Arti, the skeleton of an Artipithecus ramidus, thought to be 4.4 million years old,
07:52was also found in Ethiopia, becoming the most complete early hominid specimen ever discovered.
07:58The pelvis reconstruction has confirmed that Artipithecus was bipedal, a major step forward in the investigation.
08:07Number 4. The Library of Ashurbanipal
08:09Famous writer H.G. Wells once called the Library of Ashurbanipal,
08:13quote, the most precious source of historical material in the world.
08:17And he wasn't far off.
08:19English historian and traveler Austin Henry Layard found the ancient library in the remains of a palace in 1849.
08:25While the actual building had been destroyed, many of the library's old texts were still intact, though most were in fragments.
08:33It consisted of over 30,000 clay tablets, which provided an enormous wealth of information relating to ancient civilizations of the Middle East.
08:41The tablets date to the 7th century BCE.
08:45Perhaps the greatest find within the Library of Ashurbanipal was the Epic of Gilgamesh,
08:50which is widely considered to be the oldest piece of literature in human history.
08:54Inscribed on crumbling clay tablets was a 4,000-year-old story.
09:00So riveting, the first person to translate it started stripping from excitement.
09:06Number 3. Sutton Hoo
09:07One of the most remarkable medieval graves anywhere in Europe was excavated in England in 1939.
09:14Well, I'd say it's the biggest archaeological discovery ever made in this country.
09:20So it is an immense responsibility to look after the site, but also really what we're trying to do at Sutton Hoo is tell more people about it.
09:31The owner of an estate in Suffolk, Edith Priddy, enlisted some archaeologists to find out what was underneath the burial mounds on her property.
09:39What they uncovered was astounding.
09:41So much so that the story inspired a 2021 film, The Dig.
09:46That's a ship.
09:49How do you mean a ship?
09:51That's a ship that's been buried in the mound.
09:54Why would anyone want to bury a ship?
09:58Well, I expect because that's a grave.
10:01The most promising mound contained an entire long ship and innumerable artifacts, including pieces of armor made of gold and other Anglo-Saxon relics.
10:10Though it's one of the UK's most impressive archaeological discoveries, it's still not entirely clear whose grave it actually is.
10:17Shortly after the inquest, which ruled that all the items found in the Sutton Hoo burial mound lawfully belonged to Edith Priddy,
10:24Priddy donated the entire collection to the British Museum.
10:27It's among the most valuable donations of its kind, and the collection itself remains at the heart of the museum.
10:33Most evidence suggests it was the final resting place of a famous East Anglian king, Redwald, who ruled the region around 1400 years ago.
10:42Number 2. Pompeii
10:44Among the most famous ruins in the world, Pompeii was destroyed by a devastating eruption from Mount Vesuvius in the year 79 AD.
10:53The village was left forgotten until the 16th century, over 1500 years later, because it had been completely buried underneath volcanic ash.
11:02It took just 18 hours for Pompeii to be buried under millions of tons of volcanic ash and pumice.
11:10An entire living city wiped out.
11:13But that ash kept Pompeii largely intact when it was finally excavated, with people frozen in place where they died during the disaster.
11:21The point is we have a great opportunity here because we have a snapshot of the society.
11:26We might have slaves, we might have upper class people, and we can find out if there have been big differences.
11:33Today, it's one of Italy's most popular tourist attractions and a tremendous source of Roman history.
11:38As tragic as the story is, Pompeii has taught us more about Roman life than many other ancient archaeology sites anywhere in the world.
11:47Pompeii has regained its pride and continues to share its stories with people from all around the world.
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12:10Number 1. The Rosetta Stone
12:12For centuries, archaeologists had absolutely no idea how to decipher ancient Egypt's complex hieroglyphics.
12:19Jean-Francois Champollion in France and Thomas Young in Britain both believed that the Rosetta Stone, as it was called, held the key to deciphering hieroglyphs.
12:31But the Rosetta Stone did not yield its secrets easily.
12:35Without a starting point, they were unable to understand the inscriptions on Egyptian monuments and artifacts.
12:40But that all changed with the discovery of the long-lost Rosetta Stone in 1799,
12:46an enormous slab of stone inscribed with everything needed to start translating.
12:50This seemingly insignificant rock would forever change our understanding of mankind's past.
12:57The text it contained wasn't actually all that interesting,
13:00but the same passage was written three times in different languages,
13:04and one of those languages was ancient Greek.
13:07The Greek section told of the tablet having the same information written in all three.
13:12While Greek was easily understood,
13:14several obstacles stood in the way of using it to translate the two Egyptian scripts.
13:20By using the Greek, which is still widely understood by researchers,
13:24we were able to decipher the hieroglyphics and unlock the secrets of ancient Egyptian writing.
13:29Which of these archaeological discoveries fascinates you the most?
13:33Let us know in the comments.
13:33This stone offers great interest for the study of hieroglyphic characters.
13:40Perhaps it would even give us the key at last.
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