Imagine finding an ancient artifact so strange that even experts can't agree on what it was used for! That’s the Sabu Disc, a mysterious 5,000-year-old object discovered in an Egyptian tomb. Made of fragile metaschist stone, it looks like a modern machine part with curved blades and a precise circular shape—something you wouldn’t expect from an ancient civilization. Some believe it was a ritual object, while others think it might have had an advanced practical purpose, like a spinning tool or even a lost technology! The mystery deepens because nothing else quite like it has ever been found. Could it be proof that ancient Egyptians knew more than we thought?
00:00In 1936, British Egyptologist Walter Brian Emery found a small object in the desert that made people debate whether it was an elaborate stone model of a flying saucer or even a hyperdrive from a spaceship that belonged to some advanced civilization that visited the Earth.
00:20Emery spent years excavating sites along the Nile River Valley, especially in the huge ancient necropolis of Saqqara.
00:27He found countless treasures from ancient Egypt, and the most bizarre one was definitely from the tomb of a high official, Sabu.
00:36Historians don't know exactly who he was for sure.
00:40Some sources say he was a king's son.
00:43His burial at Saqqara means he was an important figure in the royal court.
00:47There are no records from this early period he lived in, so Sabu's role and fate are still a mystery.
00:54Inside his tomb, scientists found seven funerary chambers, each filled with traditional grave goods, animal bones, flint tools, pottery, ivory objects, and stone bowls.
01:11And then there was a strange, broken artifact that became famous as the Disc of Sabu.
01:18It resembles a shallow, round-bottom bowl, but with three delicately carved, curved lobes spaced roughly 120 degrees apart around its perimeter.
01:29These lobes are separated by three holes.
01:32And at the center, there's a thin tube.
01:36The material used to build the disc is meta-silt stone, or schist.
01:41This type of rock is fragile, highly porous, and super difficult to carve.
01:47It flakes easily and crumbles under pressure.
01:49So, how they made the disc out of it with rather simple stone and copper tools from 3000 BCE is still a mystery.
02:00The next big question is why they decided to bury Sabu with it.
02:05Perhaps if we knew its true purpose, it would make more sense.
02:09When it was first discovered, archaeologists thought it was nothing more than a vase, an incense burner, or a ceremonial decoration.
02:16But those who took a closer look from the point of view of an engineer decided it could actually be a component of a larger mechanism.
02:26An amateur historian made an exact copy of the artifact with a 3D printer.
02:31And it turned out that the Disc of Sabu was an ancient impeller, a crucial part of a centrifugal pump.
02:38When they put it in a housing and span at high speeds using the small central shaft, the disc was able to displace water.
02:46When it was tested without a housing, the disc created a powerful vortex.
02:52It became clear that the curved lobes and slightly concave shape of the disc weren't random.
02:59It was probably all engineered to move water with remarkable efficiency, like a powerful pump mechanism.
03:07Ancient Egypt's entire civilization depended on irrigation.
03:10Later dynasties perfected basin irrigation and managed to control the rise and fall of the Nile to take the most from agriculture.
03:20So, the engineers of the first dynasty may have been experimenting with advanced irrigation techniques thousands of years earlier than scientists previously thought.
03:30But then again, some people have doubts schist is strong enough to be used for a pumping mechanism.
03:38They suggest that artisans from Egypt's first dynasty were trying to recreate an even older object, using whatever tools and materials they had.
03:48It could be a stone replica of something originally made from metal, possibly belonging to a civilization far older and more advanced than ancient Egypt itself.
03:58One Swiss author takes this idea even further, and proposes that the disc is a copy of a component from an extraterrestrial spaceship's hyperdrive, or stone model of a flying saucer.
04:11One French researcher believes the disc of Sabu was part of a secret massive factory system to manufacture sodium carbon inside pyramids.
04:22Some people suggest that the disc may have been a primitive tool for weaving ropes.
04:28The lobes held strands of silk or fiber that were twisted into twine when it was spun.
04:33Or, it may have been a gigantic lamp.
04:36Another historical mystery is a map from 1513 that is believed to be the oldest surviving detailed map showing the Americas.
04:47The author of the map is a Turkish captain, Piri Reis.
04:51He never crossed the ocean himself, and put together this map from 20 regional maps.
04:57He used an Arab map of India, four Portuguese maps showing India and China, and a map of America by Christopher Columbus as he saw it.
05:08This last map was lost for many years, so Reis' map gave us an idea of what Columbus must have recorded during his third voyage to the New World.
05:18A historian who studied the map suggested that it showed Antarctica in prehistoric times, because it strangely resembled Antarctica's true coastline the way it looked when it was free of ice.
05:31But it was later proven that this idea wasn't right.
05:35Another idea that rocked the science world was Klerksdorp's spheres.
05:40They were found in deposits of mineral pyrophalate in South Africa, and looked like tiny ancient cricket balls with lines around the middle.
05:50Back in the 1980s, there was a theory that some super-advanced pre-flood civilization we know nothing about had made these spheres.
05:59One journalist shared stories about how they rotated on their own in a display case.
06:05There was also a TV show that invited a psychic who was telling everyone the spheres were pieces of an ancient spaceship.
06:14But, according to geologists, these spheres are pretty regular spherical objects formed from different minerals than the surrounding rock.
06:23The seam-like lines on them are just imprints from the host rock's layers building up over time.
06:29The Klerksdorp spheres come in different shapes, from flattened spheres to distinct discs.
06:35As for that episode, when one of these spheres spun on its own, the curator of the Klerksdorp Museum cleared that up too.
06:43He said that when he put one sphere on its glass shelf when the journalist came to visit, the sphere rotated a bit because it's round.
06:51There are some gold mining activities going on nearby, so the land where the museum stands often experiences earth tremors.
06:59In a remote part of China, there are some bizarre pipe-like formations known as the Beigon Pipes.
07:07A local explorer found them back in 1996 protruding from Mount Beigon and along the shores of Tosan Lake nearby.
07:17Some people thought they were the work of ancient guests from other planets.
07:21When scientists tested samples of the pipe material, they found out that they contained mostly common minerals, but there was a mysterious 8% of unknown stuff.
07:34Some extra tests showed that these pipes had been there before humans.
07:38Chinese geologists later visited the site and suggested that these pipes were formed naturally over time.
07:46It was probably fossilized tree roots from the area's supergreen past.
07:49It's still a real mystery with no clear-cut answer.
07:55While digging a trench along a river in Romania, workers found a wedge, which is now famous as the Aluminum Wedge of Ajud, or the Object of Ajud.
08:06Right next to it, there were some mastodon bones.
08:10Those distant relatives of elephants lived 11,000 years ago, so some people concluded the wedge is of the same age.
08:18The cool part is that it's made of aluminum, but this metal wasn't discovered until the 1800s.
08:25This material requires serious heat to produce.
08:29The wedge is said to be covered in a thick layer of oxide that's been sitting there for hundreds of years.
08:35Some folks believe this wedge must have crash-landed here on a spacecraft from some other planet.
08:42Some scientists think it's all a hoax, and others suppose it might be a human-made object with an unknown purpose.
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