iPhone Leaks...Or Ancient Belt Buckle?

More than 2,100 years ago, a woman was buried in a site now known as the "Russian Atlantis" with an unusual accessory resembling a modern iPhone.

Transcript

00:00Archaeologists in Siberia found an object that was over 2,000 years old, but it looked

00:05like something very familiar to them.

00:09An iPhone.

00:14Now, obviously this wasn't a 2,000-year-old iPhone.

00:17It was actually a belt buckle made of jet, which is a gem that's made from very highly

00:23pressurized wood, so kind of like a cousin to coal.

00:27Very black, very shiny, and it was shaped in a rectangle, and it was decorated with stones,

00:33precious stones, so carnelian and mother-of-pearl and turquoise, and so it looked like a decorated

00:39iPhone case.

00:40And they found it in a grave at a site in southern Siberia, near the border of Mongolia.

00:47And the grave and the cemetery where they found it, they dated to about 2,000 years ago.

00:52But what's really interesting about this site is that archaeologists can only visit it for

00:56a few weeks a year.

00:58In fact, it's called the Russian Atlantis, because most of the year, the site is actually

01:02underwater.

01:03It's at the bottom of a sea.

01:05It's actually an artificial reservoir, and it's a floodplain.

01:10So for most of the year, the site is actually inaccessible because it's underwater.

01:16So for just a few weeks out of the year, in May into the beginning of June, archaeologists

01:20can go and visit this very historically important site.

01:23Now, archaeologists actually found this belt buckle a few years ago and published a study

01:28about it in 2018.

01:31But recently, one of the archaeologists posted about it on his Instagram, and people started

01:37noticing it all over again.

01:39Maybe because the iPhone was in the news this week already.

01:43When the researchers wrote about the belt buckle, they said that there were two round holes on

01:47one side for fixing the buckle to the belt, and one oval hole on the other side probably

01:53for clasping.

01:54So a very fancy accessory for a fancy lady.

01:57The grave where they found this iPhone belonged to a woman who was part of a Eurasian culture

02:03that was nomadic.

02:05And they've actually been able to find evidence of buckles like this kind of following a migratory

02:10trail.

02:11So as this group of people who were nomads wandered from east into the west, they brought

02:16these belt buckles with them, and archaeologists can now find them at different dig sites along

02:20the way.

02:21Because scientists can only visit this site for a few weeks out of the year, there

02:25is still a lot that they have yet to discover about these cemeteries and the people in these

02:30graves and the objects in these graves.

02:33But within just a few months, we should be hearing more about some of the interesting iPhones and

02:40maybe iPads, mini iPhones, mini iPads that are coming out of this site.

02:45So check back here and see.