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History's greatest enigmas continue to baffle our brightest minds! Join us as we explore the most perplexing puzzles that have stumped scholars for centuries. Our countdown includes mysterious artifacts, undeciphered scripts, and legendary locations that we have all the resources to solve, yet still can't figure out. Got any theories that might crack these ancient codes?
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00:00The killer contacts local press.
00:02He includes a strange three-part coded message.
00:06Welcome to WatchMojo, where we'll be looking at some of the most perplexing enigmas from human history.
00:10For our criteria, we're considering a puzzle to be something that we have all the resources needed to solve,
00:15but still can't figure out.
00:16The first thing that you need to do when you have an undeciphered script
00:19is try to figure out the direction of writing.
00:22Number 10. Were the Hanging Gardens of Babylon Real?
00:25For thousands of years, people have wondered about the majestic Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
00:30Despite more than a century of searching, no trace of this enigmatic structure has ever been found.
00:34The ancient city is located in modern Baghdad,
00:37and we've found tons of relics and ruins from when the Babylonian Empire stood tall.
00:41Legends claim the Hanging Gardens were built around 600 BC,
00:44but they'd completely vanished by the time Jesus was born.
00:47Archaeologists have found no evidence that they ever existed, despite finding other pieces of Babylon.
00:51Plympton 322 is arguably the most interesting mathematical artifact from the ancient world.
00:58It tells us that past civilizations understood mathematics a lot better than we thought.
01:02Some scholars believe they may be buried beneath the Euphrates River, which has moved over time.
01:07Theoretically, if it existed, evidence is out there.
01:09We just have to know where to look.
01:10The fact that so grand a structure as the Hanging Gardens of Babylon could have disappeared entirely
01:15serve as sobering reminders of the fragility of the ancient past,
01:18how much history may have been lost forever.
01:20Number 9. Roman Dodecahedrons
01:23Since 1739, archaeologists have discovered these mysterious shapes across ex-Roman provinces,
01:29except Italy, peculiarly.
01:31Any discovery of a Roman dodecahedron is remarkable and unusual,
01:36because there's not many more than 100 known to exist.
01:40They all date from between the 2nd and 4th centuries AD.
01:42Ever since we first uncovered one, scholars have been debating what they were used for.
01:47There's no theory that's widely accepted, making it a complete mystery.
01:50What's strange about them is that there is no record of what they were used for.
01:55Some think they were used for measuring distances.
01:57Others believe they were used for spool knitting, computing mathematics, or that they were simply toys.
02:02Maybe they were made just to confuse future historians.
02:05None of our written sources ever mentions them, but with so many available,
02:08surely we have all we need to solve the mystery.
02:10They remain a fascinating enigma, and suggest that the Romans' craftsmanship was far ahead of their time.
02:19Number 8. The Phaestos Disc
02:20This peculiar clay disc was discovered on Crete in 1908.
02:24We believe it was created in the 2nd century BC, but we have no clue why.
02:28As you may well know, I usually avoid the word symbolism, like the plague, when talking about the Phaestos Disc.
02:33But today, let's consider the disc and Crete as metaphors.
02:38It likely belonged to the Minoan civilization, but its specific origin is still debated.
02:42As a result of the lack of other documents written in the same system, it's not possible to read the description.
02:50The disc is decorated with 241 signs of 45 different varieties.
02:54These symbols didn't line up with our expectations of Crete in writing,
02:57leading historians to briefly believe it was a hoax.
03:00Now, it's widely considered authentic, but we still have no clue what it says, why it was made, and what it was meant to do.
03:05May the mother goddess always smile on you and yours. Thank you.
03:10Number 7. The Copper Scroll Treasure
03:12In the mid-20th century, the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in Palestine's West Bank.
03:16They're ancient Jewish manuscripts, including the Copper Scroll.
03:19It's unlike anything else ever found in the ancient world.
03:22As the name implies, it's written on metal, but not copper.
03:25It's unique from the rest, since it's a list of 64 locations where one may find buried treasure.
03:30By some accounts, the treasure amounts to a billion dollars worth of gold and silver.
03:35Archaeologists believe it came from roughly the first century AD.
03:38This means it likely comes from the Jewish-Roman wars,
03:41so this was theoretically written to prevent the Romans from capturing their valuables.
03:45We think it came from a temple, but we have no idea if the treasure is real and where it is.
03:49We'll only know for certain when we find it, but that's easier said than done.
03:52One thing is certain. The allure of the Copper Scroll continues to inspire the curious,
03:57and the search for its riches goes on.
04:00Number 6. Hilbert's Problems
04:01In the year 1900, German mathematician David Hilbert proposed 23 problems to be solved.
04:06In doing so, he had a greater effect on shaping mathematics in the 20th century than any other person.
04:12Over a century later, they're still not completely solved.
04:14The most problematic of these is the 8th problem, also known as the Riemann hypothesis.
04:19It's arguably mathematics' greatest problem.
04:21If the hypothesis is true, it would solve a mystery as old as math itself.
04:25That is, the mystery of the prime numbers.
04:28If you want to get rich, then there's $1 million up for grabs if you can solve it.
04:32The issue surrounds a specific mathematical function, the Riemann zeta function.
04:35Hilbert proposed that all non-trivial zeros of this function lie in a singular vertical line.
04:40Slowly, researchers are getting closer to solving the issue,
04:43but some believe it's false and not worth their time.
04:45That's why this Riemann hypothesis is so important,
04:48because it is only if we know that Riemann hypothesis holds
04:52that we can obtain all these deep results about distribution of prime numbers.
04:57Number 5. Voynich Manuscript
04:59Carbon Dating says this codex was first written at the start of the 15th century.
05:02It's a 240-page-long book full of peculiar writings and illustrations.
05:07At first glance, the manuscript in question appeared unimportant.
05:11Barely larger than a modern paperback,
05:13Agent Ware had reduced it to a sorry condition.
05:16No one knows what language it is,
05:17meaning historians have no idea what the book's about.
05:20Illustrations allow us to divide it into four sections,
05:22each focused on botany, astronomy, balneology, and pharmacology.
05:26Some say the astrological part is the book's most translatable section.
05:30It features constellations like Pisces, Taurus, and Sagittarius,
05:34but they're a little bit off.
05:36And the balneological section is by far the most bizarre.
05:39There's a final fifth section,
05:40but since it's without pictures, it's a total mystery.
05:42This has led many to believe it's a hoax
05:44and that its contents are entirely nonsensical.
05:46Either way, we generally believe its origin is medieval,
05:49but we're yet to truly comprehend its meaning.
05:51It seems likely that the Voynich Manuscript will one day be cracked,
05:55and its secrets divulged upon the world.
05:58Number four, Zodiac Killer's ciphers.
06:00Over half a century after the Zodiac Killer was terrorizing San Francisco,
06:04we still have no idea who he was.
06:05Between 1969 and 74,
06:07he sent haunting letters and ciphers to the police and the media.
06:10This letter sent to the San Francisco examiner says,
06:14Dear Editor, this is the Zodiac speaking.
06:17There were four ciphers in total, but only two have been solved.
06:20The first was figured out in 1969, then the second in 2020.
06:23Deciphering these messages has been made more difficult by the killer's atrocious spelling.
06:28Detectives who study the Zodiac's letters know that he misspells quite a few words.
06:33We think that's often deliberate, and that K-A-Y-R might just be K-A-Y-E.
06:38The first cipher had 408 characters, the second 340, then the final two at 13 and 32.
06:44You would hope that made them easier to solve, but that's not been the case.
06:47Maybe someday we'll figure them out,
06:48but it's uncertain whether they'll reveal the killer's identity.
06:50I'm not the Zodiac, and if I was, I certainly wouldn't tell you.
06:56Number 3. Linear A script
06:58Once again, the elusive Minoans of Crete make it onto our list.
07:02We know they spoke a language called Minoan, but this language is barely understood.
07:06Was it the lost language of the Etruscans?
07:08Or perhaps it represented an early form of Basque?
07:11It was first written with Cretan hieroglyphs,
07:13then with the Linear A writing system, and finally with the Linear B system.
07:17We have deciphered the latter script, but Linear A is a total mystery.
07:20It was primarily used in religion and palaces, becoming predominant in the second millennium B.C.
07:25One of the main reasons it's such a challenge is because of how few texts we have.
07:29So now let's take a look at Linear A.
07:31Linear A has this set of symbols, at least half of the symbols, and then it continues here.
07:40For Linear B, we found roughly 6,000, but for A, we've only found 1,400.
07:44Theoretically, it can be solved, but that may not be within our lifetimes.
07:47It remains a mystery, at least for now.
07:51Number 2.
07:51The Somerton Man
07:52In 1948, the body of a man was found on a beach near Adelaide in Australia.
07:56He was nicknamed the Somerton Man.
07:58We don't know much about the unknown man, obviously enough,
08:01but thanks to police records, we do know quite a bit about his last day of life.
08:06In his pocket, there was a piece of paper which had the Persian phrase for,
08:09It is finished, inside.
08:10It had been torn from a poetry book, which was found and included a coded message in mysterious telephone numbers.
08:15A man came forward to say that he had found a copy of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam,
08:21and it did have the last page torn out, so he handed it in to police.
08:26He said it had been thrown into the backseat of his car six months earlier.
08:30In 2022, researchers successfully found his identity.
08:34His name is Carl Webb, an electrical engineer born in 1905.
08:37That's only a small piece of the mystery, however.
08:39It's still unclear what caused his demise and what the code meant.
08:42It's a fascinating breakthrough in a case that has really captivated the nation for such a long time now.
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09:03Number one, Indus script.
09:04The Indus Valley civilization was one of the earliest human civilizations ever discovered.
09:08Now, the Indus civilization was roughly contemporaneous with the much better known Egyptian and the Mesopotamian civilizations.
09:15But it's actually much larger than either of these two civilizations.
09:18They existed in northwestern India along the Indus River and survived from 3300 all the way to 1300 BC.
09:25Archaeologists have discovered peculiar scripts in the civilization's remains.
09:28It's unclear whether they're a writing system or not.
09:31This is made harder by the fact that we have little understanding of the Indus language.
09:34Three different groups of people.
09:36So first, there's a group of people who are very passionate in their belief that the Indus script does not represent a language at all.
09:43These people believe that the symbols are very similar to the kind of symbols you find on traffic signs or the emblems you find on shields.
09:51If you can manage to crack the code, then you can be rewarded $1 million by an Indian chief minister.
09:56Figuring out their language would allow us to learn tons of new things about their society and customs, which are currently an unattainable secret.
10:03We have no way of validating these particular readings.
10:06But if more and more of these readings start making sense, and if longer and longer sequences appear to be correct, then we know that we're on the right track.
10:15Do you think you've got any plausible theories that may explain some of these puzzles?
10:18Let us know in the comments section.
10:20What will we find out about them?
10:21About us?
10:23I can't wait to find out.
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