00:00So, hi! How about exploring some cool and unusual artifacts from the past? Let's go!
00:06Have you ever heard of Chinese magic mirrors?
00:09These mirrors were made of solid bronze.
00:12They had two sides.
00:14The front was a shiny polished surface, similar to our typical mirrors.
00:18It was the back that did the magic.
00:21When bright light fell on the mirror, it looked as if it was transparent.
00:25And the pattern on the back of the mirror got projected onto the wall.
00:30The backside could have different designs on it, depending on what its creator wanted to depict.
00:35Since the mirror was made out of bronze, no one expected this optical illusion to occur.
00:41These ancient artifacts date back to 2,900 to 2,000 BCE.
00:46They became popular in China and were produced in large numbers at the time.
00:51Eventually, their fame faded away.
00:54For centuries, the magic of these mirrors baffled both people and scientists.
00:59In the 11th century, Chinese scientist Shen Kue decided to study the mirrors.
01:05He conveniently had three of them.
01:07He was surprised by the ability of the metal to act as if it were transparent.
01:12He believed that some tempering techniques created surface wrinkles on the mirror to make it translucent.
01:18Yet, these wrinkles were imperceptible to the human eye.
01:21It turns out, he was right.
01:25Many scientists tried to decipher the open mirrors over the centuries, but remained clueless.
01:31Finally, in 1932, William Bragg discovered that Shen Kue had been right about imperceptible surface wrinkles all along.
01:39Every once in a while, people open multiple tabs in a browser and come to a point where there's no room for a new tab.
01:48Apparently, this had also been happening long before computers and the Internet were invented.
01:54Meet the 16th century browser.
01:56This is a full-size book wheel.
01:58It's kind of a custom-made rotating bookshelf.
02:03Gregory Hayworth, a specialist in textual science, says that this tool has a system of epicyclic gears.
02:11That means that the book wheel has a working principle like a planetary system.
02:16One gear rotates around another.
02:18The shelves of the device maintain a constant 45-degree incline that holds the book securely as the giant wheel turns.
02:27Back then, people used the tool while writing encyclopedias and editions of classical works.
02:33In this kind of work, a person has to have many books open simultaneously so that the information from multiple sources can be gathered easily.
02:41Italian engineer, Agostino Ramelli, is the inventor of this piece of early modern machinery.
02:50What if I tell you that sponge divers in Greece accidentally found an ancient computer?
02:56They pulled out this artifact from a shipwreck near Antikythera Island in 1901.
03:02Scientists called it the Antikythera Mechanism and labeled it as the first mechanical computer.
03:08The machine looks like a hunk of bronze, but it has some kind of mechanism composed of gears and wheels.
03:16So, experts first assumed that it was an astronomer's tool.
03:21After an x-ray scan, though, they found out that the instrument was far more complex than they thought.
03:27The artifact was meant to calculate astronomical positions, track the four-year cycle of athletic games, and so on.
03:35It contained a box with dials on the outside, and had an assembly of gear wheels attached.
03:41It's still unknown who built an instrument with this level of artistry 2,000 years ago, and why this technology was lost.
03:50After seeing how sophisticated the device was, scientists accepted that their perception of ancient Greek engineering wasn't really accurate.
03:59Professor Michael Edmonds of Cardiff University admits that, based on the knowledge they have, this mechanism shouldn't even exist.
04:08Edmonds says the machine is one of a kind, and its astronomical calculations are precise.
04:15For him, the Antikythera Mechanism is more valuable than the Mona Lisa.
04:20In 1929, scholars working in Topkapi Palace Museum in Turkey discovered a map.
04:28It became famous for being the oldest map showing the Americas.
04:32Perry Rees drew this detailed map on a gazelle skin in 1513.
04:38He depicted Europe, North Africa, the coast of Brazil, and several islands, such as the Azores and Canary Islands.
04:46The most exciting thing is that he created the map only 21 years after Columbus had set foot in the New World.
04:54Well, it was new to him.
04:56Perry Rees was a maritime scholar and a successful naval commander leading the Ottoman fleet.
05:02Yet, while drawing the map, he relied not only on his expertise in sailing.
05:07He created it by assembling and referring to 20 other regional maps, like the Arab map of India, four Portuguese maps, and the map of the western parts, drawn by Columbus.
05:20Yes, the part he got from Columbus raised the heartbeat of many historians.
05:25Columbus drew a map during his third voyage to the New World and sent it to Spain in 1498.
05:32It's assumed to be lost.
05:34Surprisingly, historians can now understand what Columbus noted down by looking at Perry Rees' map.
05:42Fun fact, he also drew another world map in 1528.
05:48Even though only about one-sixth of this map has survived, it's clear that it described the northwestern part of the Atlantic,
05:56the region from Venezuela to Newfoundland, and the southern tip of Greenland.
06:00The map also showed Antarctica, centuries before its discovery.
06:05Historians had to rethink the chronology of history after getting this crazy information.
06:11Perry Rees described Antarctica's topography without ice in great detail.
06:16In the 1930s, workers found dozens of stone spheres in Costa Rica.
06:24Locally, they are known as bolas de piedra, literally stone balls.
06:28They were made by a civilization lost in time.
06:32What's interesting about these balls is their shape.
06:35They are perfectly spherical.
06:37How ancient people could make such precise shapes is a mystery.
06:41The spheres are of different sizes.
06:44Imagine a small one, like a tennis ball.
06:47Then put another one next to it, seven feet in diameter.
06:51The largest spheres weighed 16 tons.
06:55Archaeologists are sure that these balls are human-made.
06:59Yet their purpose remains unclear.
07:01Some archaeologists claim that the spheres could represent the solar system
07:06or could be inspired by various stages of the sun and the moon.
07:11Others say that the stone's placement refers to the houses of chiefs.
07:16Most of the stone's spheres were sculpted from granodiorite.
07:20It's a hard rock similar to granite.
07:24Experts believe that ancient people used smaller rocks from the same material
07:28as tools to shape these spheres.
07:31They also think that sculptors probably heated portions of the stones
07:35and then cooled them rapidly.
07:37This could have helped them to remove the outer layers of rock.
07:42Our next one is an ancient battery set found in Iraq in 1936.
07:48The set consists of a ceramic pot, a copper cylinder, and an iron rod.
07:54At the top, the iron rod is isolated from the copper by asphalt.
07:58And both the rod and cylinder fit inside the mouth of the jar.
08:03The copper cylinder isn't water type.
08:05So if the pot was filled with a liquid, it would surround the iron rod as well.
08:11Archaeologists focused more on the oxidized iron rod
08:14because the vessel just needed to be filled with an acid or alkaline substance
08:19to produce an electric charge.
08:21After examining this bizarre artifact,
08:25an Austrian archaeologist hypothesized that the instrument made use of chemical reactions
08:30to generate electrical energy.
08:33That's why they likened the instrument to a battery.
08:37An ancient civilization might have used it for some kind of electrotherapy.
08:42Yet there isn't any electroplated object known from this period.
08:45So, Koenig's hypothesis was rejected by many archaeologists.
08:50But nobody has proven him wrong either.
08:53The origin and purpose of the vessel remain unclear to this day.
08:59So, want to see the world's oldest art studio?
09:02In 2011, archaeologists found 100,000-year-old shells in a South African cave.
09:10Those shells were used for paint-making.
09:13A coating of bright red powder on the inside of a pair of shells is the proof.
09:19Archaeologists say they found a complete kit used to produce a pigmented mixture.
09:25Now, in a different part of the cave,
09:27several paintings were displayed with little price tags on them intended for sale.
09:33Nah, just kidding.
09:34Although, that big one over there would look good over my couch.
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