- 2 months ago
Japanese scientists uncover hundreds of previously unknown Nazca Lines, using cutting-edge AI to reveal ancient secrets hidden for thousands of years, while new research warns of a looming megaquake that could strike Japan and unleash a massive tsunami capable of reshaping entire coastlines. These discoveries highlight Japan’s leading role in advanced science and its ongoing confrontation with the powerful natural forces that define the region. Animation is created by Bright Side.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Music from TheSoul Sound: https://thesoul-sound.com/
Check our Bright Side podcast on Spotify and leave a positive review! https://open.spotify.com/show/0hUkPxD34jRLrMrJux4VxV
Subscribe to Bright Side: https://goo.gl/rQTJZz
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Our Social Media:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brightplanet/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brightside.official
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@brightside.official?lang=en
Stock materials (photos, footages and other):
https://www.depositphotos.com
https://www.shutterstock.com
https://www.eastnews.ru
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For more videos and articles visit: http://www.brightside.me
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This video is made for entertainment purposes. We do not make any warranties about the completeness, safety and reliability. Any action you take upon the information in this video is strictly at your own risk, and we will not be liable for any damages or losses. It is the viewer's responsibility to use judgement, care and precaution if you plan to replicate.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Music from TheSoul Sound: https://thesoul-sound.com/
Check our Bright Side podcast on Spotify and leave a positive review! https://open.spotify.com/show/0hUkPxD34jRLrMrJux4VxV
Subscribe to Bright Side: https://goo.gl/rQTJZz
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Our Social Media:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brightplanet/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brightside.official
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@brightside.official?lang=en
Stock materials (photos, footages and other):
https://www.depositphotos.com
https://www.shutterstock.com
https://www.eastnews.ru
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For more videos and articles visit: http://www.brightside.me
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This video is made for entertainment purposes. We do not make any warranties about the completeness, safety and reliability. Any action you take upon the information in this video is strictly at your own risk, and we will not be liable for any damages or losses. It is the viewer's responsibility to use judgement, care and precaution if you plan to replicate.
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:00A small team of Japanese scientists has just uncovered tons of new Nazca glyphs.
00:06In case you don't know, Nazca lines are massive geoglyphs of people, animals, and plants etched into the vast, arid plain in southern Peru.
00:15Most of them were created by the ancient Nazca civilization over 2,000 years ago.
00:20Originally, scientists found hundreds of different designs.
00:23They range from simple lines and geometric shapes, some of them being so straight they looked like they were drawn with rulers, to large drawings of different creatures.
00:33The most famous designs are of a monkey, a spider, and a friendly-looking human figure known as the astronaut.
00:40Some drawings are as long as 600 feet.
00:43That's why they can only be fully appreciated from the sky, like murals on the ground.
00:48There's even a small airport near the town of Nazca that's mainly used to let the tourists fly over the glyphs to look at them fully.
00:56Unfortunately, you can't see them from a regular commercial flight.
00:59That's way too high.
01:00But this nearby airport offers smaller planes.
01:04It's wild how the ancient people managed to draw these glyphs so well in the first place.
01:10They didn't have drones or planes.
01:12Not even some great tools.
01:13It was thousands of years ago.
01:15Well, they used very simple yet ingenious methods.
01:20First, they would remove the top layer of dark-weathered rocks and expose the lighter dirt beneath.
01:26The light clay stands out against the darker ground.
01:29By clearing about 12 to 15 inches of stones, they could create clear, contrasting lines.
01:36The desert is very dry, and the clay has stuff in it that helps keep the lines from being blown away by winds or washed away with rains.
01:43That's why they've stayed there for thousands of years, even with the wind and weather.
01:49To make sure that the glyphs would be nice and precise, they probably used basic surveying tools, like ropes and wooden stakes, to help guide their designs.
01:57They would place the stakes in the ground to mark points along the lines, using ropes stretched between them to maintain straight lines or create perfect curves.
02:07This technique is similar to how modern architects might use grid systems, and it's kind of like what people did to create the famous extraterrestrial crop circles in the cornfields.
02:17So, they likely first sketched smaller figures on the ground, and then used them as blueprints to scale up their drawings to the gigantic sizes we see today.
02:28And recently, 300 more of these mysterious glyphs were discovered in only six months.
02:35Normally, scientists had to sift through satellite images, walking or flying over vast stretches, to study the glyphs.
02:41It was crazy hard, but now we have AI.
02:46The drones flew high over the desert, took lots of pictures from all angles, and fed them to the deep learning model.
02:53The AI system can scan tons of data in seconds, spotting the patterns that people can miss.
02:59And the symbols the AI uncovered are more special than what we knew before.
03:04These glyphs aren't huge.
03:05It's what they now call the relief-type glyphs.
03:08They're smaller and harder to spot, despite being literally in plain sight.
03:13Also, the large glyphs usually depict animals.
03:16But these relief-type ones mostly show humans and pets.
03:20For example, one of them is a 16-foot-long humanoid that clutches a club in its right hand.
03:27There was also a fish, mouth wide open as if gasping for air.
03:31This one stretches about 60 feet across the desert floor.
03:34And perhaps most striking of all, a bird with two long, dramatic legs, each leg extending 255 feet.
03:43The birds are very special because they've been misidentified for a long time.
03:47Now, scientists use the ornithological analysis to reclassify these creatures.
03:52And, as it turns out, the drawings depict birds from far-flung regions.
03:57There was this one glyph that looked like a simple hummingbird at first.
04:02But now, upon closer inspection, comparing beak shapes, wing patterns, and tails,
04:07it looks like this wasn't a typical hummingbird at all.
04:10It was a hermit, a subgroup of hummingbirds native to the forest regions far from the desert.
04:16They have long, slender beaks and distinct tail feathers.
04:19Another surprise was a drawing once labeled as literally just a bird.
04:25Now, it turns out that it was a pelican, a coastal species commonly found along the shores of Peru, not in the desert.
04:32The pelican, with its wide wings and sharp beak, usually serves as a symbol of the sea and food.
04:39Perhaps this animal was sacred to the Nazca people.
04:43Now, the question is, how did the Nazca people know these birds?
04:46What did a creature from the lush, humid jungles of northern Peru, or from the shores, do in the harsh desert sands of the south?
04:54And why did they decide to etch it in the ground?
04:58Looks like there's a much more complex story behind the Nazca lines, as we thought before.
05:03One question boggled the minds of archaeologists for decades.
05:06What do these glyphs even mean?
05:09Well, the Japanese scientists have an idea.
05:11To read these symbols back in the day, you'd have to literally follow ancient trails, spotting some faded shapes underfoot.
05:19It's as if the Nazca people designed these glyphs to be discovered on foot, to be experienced as part of a journey.
05:27This, together with the fact that they can only be seen from the sky, hints that the Nazca lines might have been something like a sacred pilgrimage.
05:35Perhaps the idea was only deities above can see the full picture, while humans have to walk the path to understand the meaning.
05:44The lines are scattered across about 150 square miles of the Nazca Pampa.
05:49So, there's a high chance that they were part of a spiritual journey to Kahuachi, a ceremonial center that still looms in the distance today.
05:57Kahuachi was super important to the ancient Nazca civilization, the heart of their society.
06:04It was most likely a religious and pilgrimage site during the first centuries of the Common Era, when the Nazca culture was at its peak.
06:11Other ancient cities were bustling hubs of daily life, but Kahuachi was unique.
06:17People didn't live there permanently.
06:19Instead, they traveled there from all other places for important events, seeking connection, understanding, and spirituality.
06:26Kahuachi consists of large adobe mounds and plazas.
06:31Locals gathered there for ritual and offerings.
06:34The largest building, the Great Temple, was an incredible stepped pyramid.
06:39It looked like this place was especially sacred to the Nazca people, since it was full of stuff like textiles, pottery, trophy heads,
06:46all the things that are often associated with rituals and sacrifices.
06:50Since Kahuachi isn't that far away from the Nazca lines, the two are most likely connected.
06:57They could be pilgrimage paths or ritualistic symbols.
07:01But there's still so much we don't know.
07:04Even if those are trails or symbols, what exact messages were the Nazca people trying to convey through them?
07:11These drawings could be telling amazing stories, marking some important locations,
07:15or even be a spiritual map to guide those who came after them.
07:20It's also possible that symbols' meaning depends upon their arrangement and patterns.
07:25Right now, over 700 glyphs have been revealed.
07:28But this is just the beginning.
07:31This just shows the potential of AI to revolutionize archaeology.
07:35For example, there's an entire ongoing competition called the Vesuvius Challenge.
07:40The idea is to help decipher ancient Roman scrolls from the city of Herculaneum.
07:46They were carbonized during the catastrophic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.
07:52These scrolls are too fragile to actually touch them.
07:55Because of that, they've been a challenge for centuries.
07:59But the novel AI approach uses virtual unwrapping.
08:03They scan the scrolls' interior without damaging them
08:06and detect ink made from carbon that had long faded to the naked eye.
08:10There's already been some great progress.
08:13A 21-year-old student managed to reveal the first word from one of these scrolls,
08:18porphyris, meaning purple in ancient Greek.
08:21The competition has some great rewards,
08:24hundreds of thousands of dollars for future breakthroughs.
08:27All that is a handful of work for scientists,
08:30and they're determined to decipher it all.
08:32Not an earthquake, but a mega-earthquake could happen in Japan.
08:41It's scarier, bigger, and more destructive than ordinary tremors.
08:45However, the problem is that it will occur underwater,
08:48which means it will trigger a giant tsunami 100 feet high.
08:52A column of water nearly as high as a 10-story building will collapse on coastal cities,
08:59wiping out hundreds of houses.
09:01The water flow can destroy everything in its path like a bowling ball that knocks down pins.
09:07And then another wave may come.
09:09And another one.
09:11Anyone who is at risk should be on their guard.
09:13How to survive?
09:15You'll find out later in this video.
09:17But first, let's find out what a mega-earthquake is.
09:23This is an earthquake with a magnitude 9 or more.
09:27This is a very rare phenomenon,
09:29and it depends not on the power of the shock,
09:31but on the length of the fault where it occurs.
09:34The longer the fault, the stronger the earthquake.
09:38But what are these faults?
09:39These are cracks in the rocks of the Earth's crust that move relative to each other.
09:45Imagine a large puzzle where every detail is a giant tectonic plate.
09:50When one part of the puzzle moves away from another or when they collide,
09:54that's when earthquakes begin.
09:56If the fault between the parts is long,
09:58then the magnitude of the earthquake is great.
10:01The largest mega-earthquake ever recorded
10:04occurred on May 22, 1960, in Chile.
10:08The fault was almost 1,000 miles long.
10:12It's almost half the way between Chicago and Los Angeles.
10:15And now, a similar mega-earthquake can happen,
10:19underwater.
10:22That's how it all started.
10:24Last year, on August 8th,
10:25at 4.42pm,
10:27an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.1
10:30occurred in southern Japan.
10:32The tremors appeared off the coast of the mainland island of Kyushu.
10:36Everyone was terrified as they expected a large tsunami to appear.
10:41But, fortunately, they faced only a small wave.
10:44It collapsed on the shore, but didn't destroy buildings.
10:48About 15 people got hurt, which is sad, of course.
10:51But it could have been worse.
10:53It seemed that the disaster had passed.
10:55The residents breathed a sigh of relief.
10:57However, after that,
11:00the Japan Meteorological Agency sent a warning
11:03about a possible mega-earthquake
11:04that could be incredibly devastating.
11:08A previous earthquake of 7.1 magnitude
11:10could be a harbinger of an impending catastrophe,
11:14a disaster that could affect
11:15a quarter of a million people.
11:18As soon as people heard this,
11:19they ran to buy groceries.
11:21Increased demand and a slight panic
11:22led to shortages of rice
11:24and several other basic products.
11:27People were stocking up on food
11:28and preparing for the worst.
11:30But, a week later,
11:32the Japan Meteorological Agency
11:33canceled the warning.
11:35It turned out that the small tsunami
11:37on Kyushu Island
11:38was not a harbinger.
11:42No one knows whether a mega-earthquake
11:44and tsunami will happen in this region,
11:46but the chances are very high.
11:49To understand the nature of this danger,
11:50we need to dive underwater
11:52in a place called the Nankai Trough.
11:55It is a 500-mile-long underwater fault
11:58that runs almost parallel
12:00to the Pacific coast of Japan.
12:02This is where the two giant sections
12:04of the Earth's crust meet,
12:06the Philippine Sea Plate
12:07and the Eurasian Plate.
12:08And the Philippine Plate
12:09is subducting
12:10and slowly slipping
12:12under the Eurasian Plate,
12:13on which Japan is partly located.
12:16During this movement,
12:18the plates get stuck,
12:19accumulating energy.
12:21Afterward,
12:22when they move and align again,
12:23they release a powerful burst of energy.
12:26And this energy is capable
12:27of causing one of the most powerful
12:29earthquakes in the world.
12:31Experts report that the probability
12:32of a mega-earthquake and a tsunami
12:34is about 80%.
12:36Over the past 1,400 years,
12:40mega-earthquakes have occurred
12:42every 100 to 200 years in this region.
12:45The last time this happened in Japan
12:46was in 1946.
12:48The entire country felt a powerful tremor
12:51that destroyed 36,000 houses
12:53in the southern part of Honshu Island.
12:56Every year,
12:57the probability of a repeat of this disaster
12:59increases by 1%.
13:01And do you know how many years have passed?
13:0479!
13:06According to experts,
13:07a mega-earthquake with a magnitude of 8 to 9
13:10can trigger a tsunami
13:11that will flood small islands
13:13off the coast of Japan.
13:15And areas with large populations
13:16on the islands of Honshu and Shikoshu
13:19can be flooded in minutes.
13:21Hundreds of thousands of people are at risk.
13:24It can be billions
13:24and even trillions of dollars worth of damage.
13:28According to some reports,
13:29about 530,000 people
13:31may lose their homes.
13:32To save lives,
13:34the country needs to carry out
13:35a large-scale evacuation.
13:37But the problem is that
13:38no one knows the exact date.
13:41In general,
13:42no one in the world
13:43can predict in advance
13:44when the next big earthquake will occur.
13:47In the case of the Nankai Trough,
13:49it can happen in a few days
13:50or a few years
13:52or even centuries.
13:53So,
13:54what should people do?
13:55Prepare.
13:56Japan has been experiencing earthquakes
14:00for a long time.
14:02So,
14:02the country has learned
14:03to survive a disaster
14:04with minimal losses.
14:05Almost every building in Japan
14:07is equipped with dampers,
14:08which are devices
14:09that suppress any vibrations
14:11and make houses
14:12more resistant to shaking.
14:14In addition,
14:15on the shores of Japan,
14:17residents have built
14:17long and high shields
14:19that don't allow powerful waves
14:21to break through to land.
14:23Japan also has
14:25an advanced earthquake warning system.
14:27It's impossible to predict
14:28powerful seismic activity
14:30in a few days or weeks,
14:32but it's possible
14:33to detect small tremors
14:34that may portend
14:35an impending earthquake.
14:38Special devices
14:39monitor seismic signals
14:40and transmit the data
14:41to certain programs.
14:43Then,
14:43they evaluate the magnitude
14:45and intensity of the tremors
14:46and send warnings
14:47to people's phones.
14:49This can save seconds
14:50and even minutes
14:51for locals to reach
14:52the nearest shelter in time.
14:55These systems are also used
14:56to slow down the speed of trains
14:58to stop work at factories,
15:00hospitals,
15:00and office buildings.
15:01It's much safer
15:02for a train driver
15:03to slow down
15:04during an earthquake
15:05than to rush forward
15:06at full speed.
15:07But what if you're on the street
15:09and you can't hear
15:09your phone messages?
15:11How to act
15:12in case of disaster?
15:14This applies
15:14not only to Japan,
15:16but also to any place
15:18where a tsunami
15:18or earthquake may occur.
15:20To survive a tsunami,
15:23you need to prepare for it
15:24long before
15:25a big wave hits.
15:27It's very important
15:28to have good relations
15:29with neighbors.
15:30Be friendly with them,
15:31help them,
15:32and treat them well.
15:33In times of trouble
15:34or disaster,
15:35it's great to have people
15:36with whom you have
15:37a good relationship.
15:38They can help you get out
15:39of a difficult situation,
15:41and you can also help them.
15:43Be kind
15:43and compassionate
15:44to people.
15:45This way,
15:46it's much easier
15:47to survive any disaster.
15:49Prepare a backpack
15:50with necessities in advance.
15:52These are a first aid kit,
15:54canned food,
15:55flashlights,
15:56a battery-powered radio,
15:57and bottled water.
15:58All this will not only
15:59save your life,
16:00but will also help
16:01other people in trouble.
16:03So if you feel
16:04an earthquake start,
16:05immediately run for cover.
16:07If you're at home,
16:09try to stand against a wall
16:10closest to the center
16:11of the building
16:11or crawl under heavy furniture
16:13that stands firmly
16:14on the floor,
16:15such as a desk
16:16or a regular table.
16:18Stay away from windows
16:19and front doors
16:20and never use an elevator.
16:23If you're on the street,
16:25don't come close
16:25to power lines
16:26and any objects
16:27that may fall.
16:29During a tsunami,
16:30you may need to get
16:30as high as possible
16:31to avoid getting
16:32swallowed by water.
16:34Stay as far away
16:35from the shore as you can,
16:37and don't go down
16:38until you're sure it's safe.
16:42But how can you find out
16:44about an approaching wave
16:45if you haven't received
16:46the warning?
16:48When a tsunami
16:48approaches the shore,
16:50you will hear a roar
16:51similar to the rumble
16:52of a passing train
16:53or plane.
16:54If there's no elevation nearby,
16:56then try to get
16:57to the upper floors.
16:58It must be at least
16:59the third floor,
17:00but it has to be a building
17:01that can resist a tsunami,
17:03such as a massive house
17:04made of concrete.
17:06If there are no such
17:07high buildings nearby,
17:08try to climb
17:09a massive tree.
17:11When the disaster is over,
17:12look around
17:13and find those
17:14you can help.
17:15Listen to messages
17:16from rescuers
17:17via radio or TV.
17:19If all is well,
17:20then you can deal
17:21with the consequences.
17:22Yes,
17:23there's a lot of work ahead,
17:24but you've survived
17:25and helped others survive.
17:27And that's the most
17:28important thing.
17:29That's it for today.
17:34So hey,
17:34if you pacified your curiosity,
17:36then give the video a like
17:37and share it with your friends.
17:39Or if you want more,
17:40just click on these videos
17:41and stay on the bright side.
Comments