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A research team surveying deep subsurface formations beneath the Sahara Desert has uncovered structures and anomalies that don’t fit known natural patterns. Using advanced ground-penetrating scans, they detected vast underground cavities and geometric formations that suggest something more than simple geology. While many questions remain, the findings have sparked intense debate about whether an unknown, ancient underground society once existed beneath the sands.
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00:00There you are, trekking across a desert on foot.
00:04It's hot, you're terribly thirsty, and now you gotta walk around this stupid wall.
00:09Wait, a wall in the middle of a sandy, lifeless nowhere?
00:13Exactly, a wall in the northern Saudi desert.
00:17Archaeologists have just made a super exciting discovery,
00:20and what they found was not just a single wall.
00:24No, it was a whole ancient walled city that might date back to 2400 BCE.
00:30They think this place was home to around 500 people, and could have been used for a thousand years.
00:36This discovery is groundbreaking.
00:37It means that the area could have been way more advanced than anyone expected.
00:42This city was well-organized, with different zones for living,
00:45towers and strong walls for protection, and different sections for all kinds of daily life.
00:51This ancient city, now called Al-Nata, was basically an oasis town.
00:56And it's great, since it can give us a peek into what life might have been like in this desert
01:01thousands of years ago.
01:02Apparently, they had clearly separated areas, like residential sections, a cemetery, farmland, and even a town center.
01:10This oasis city, found in the Kaibar area, is the first big organized settlement from the 2nd or 3rd millennium
01:17BCE
01:18that researchers have uncovered in northwestern Arabia.
01:21The first surveys show that this town, which covered about 6 acres, had several districts,
01:27including the residential area, the cemetery, and the legal one, with courts.
01:31The houses were set up in neat rows, all connected by small roads.
01:36Those streets kept the residential area separate from the rest of the town.
01:40Back then, most people in this region were nomadic herders, always moving around.
01:46But archaeologists have been sure that, during the Bronze Age,
01:50northwest Arabia had small, walled towns and oasis centers scattered across it.
01:54These connected oasis towns were unique, offering secure places for people to live, store goods, and trade.
02:01They started showing the beginnings of urban planning,
02:04which hints that people of that time were already starting to settle down and organize communities more seriously.
02:11The research team estimated that there were about 50 homes in Al-Natal,
02:16but that number could go up to 70 as they keep digging.
02:19They think that a few hundred people lived there,
02:22And probably one of the coolest things is that some houses went up to three stories tall.
02:27Built on a slope near a couple of major trade routes, this city was set up in a prime spot.
02:34Now, one of the most impressive things about this place is its water supply.
02:39The oasis had springs and aquifers, which are underground water sources,
02:44and such conditions were perfect for farming.
02:46Those water sources meant residents could grow their own food,
02:50making the town self-sufficient.
02:52The outer walls probably helped control who could enter the town and get access to its resources.
02:58This settled way of life was an impressive shift from nomadic living to a more agro-pastoral lifestyle,
03:04which means a mix of farming and herding animals.
03:08Another find that supports this theory is a bunch of tools,
03:12like grinding stones, mortars, and pestles, discovered inside the town.
03:16People there must have ground grains and prepared food.
03:20They had a diet of cereals, meat, and milk from animals they raised themselves.
03:25These astonishing findings show that the inhabitants of the town could easily feed themselves
03:30and were surprisingly advanced for that time.
03:33Thanks to better access to Saudi Arabia in the past couple of decades,
03:37archaeologists now have a much clearer picture of what life there was like thousands of years ago.
03:43The most exciting thing is that Al-Natar might have been part of a whole network of similar fortified oasis
03:49towns
03:50spread across the region,
03:51and all of these connected sites could show us how trade routes and small settlements
03:56worked together at that time in that arid area.
04:00Now, at the same time, this recent discovery isn't the only one that has the scientific world buzzing with excitement.
04:07How about we visit Egypt and see for ourselves?
04:10After all, archaeologists have just found a stash of ancient Egyptian and Greek treasure underwater.
04:17They were exploring the lost city of Thonis Heraklion, off the coast of Egypt,
04:22which sank more than 1,000 years ago.
04:24This city was legendary, and nobody even knew where it was until it was rediscovered in 2000.
04:31Now they're uncovering more and more, and on this dive, they found a pile of gold and silver treasures.
04:38Those were probably used in rituals to bless Egyptian pharaohs when they took the throne.
04:42The researchers even found an ancient Greek temple dedicated to Aphrodite and some super-old Greek weapons.
04:50Frank Gaudio, the lead archaeologist, said it was astonishing that those delicate objects
04:55had survived the disaster that brought the city down.
04:59Back in its prime, Thonis Heraklion was one of the biggest port cities in the Mediterranean.
05:04It was a huge center of social life and was the main entry point for ships from Greece coming into
05:10Egypt.
05:10But, tragically, due to rising waters, earthquakes, and a catastrophic tidal wave,
05:16the soil underneath the city literally turned into mush.
05:20And then the entire city sank into the Mediterranean.
05:24It was forgotten until Gaudio's team founded in 2000.
05:27Since then, they've been uncovering new parts of the city and piecing together its history little by little.
05:34If a lost underwater city doesn't seem impressive enough, we can travel to the Amazon.
05:39The discovery made there is truly mind-boggling.
05:42For centuries, people have talked about lost cities deep in the Amazon, like El Dorado,
05:48that mythical city of gold that lured Spanish explorers into the jungle.
05:52A lot of them never came back.
05:54Then, in the 1900s, a British explorer named Percy Fawcett went searching for what he called
06:00the lost city of Z, and he too disappeared.
06:05But now, finally, scientists have actually found proof that those lost cities in the Amazon were real all along.
06:12A team of scientists use a tech called LIDAR, which basically allows you to see through thick jungle from above
06:19by bouncing light beams off the ground.
06:21They flew over the jungle in Bolivia in a helicopter about 650 feet up and mapped out those hidden ancient
06:28cities.
06:28What they found were ruins of a huge urban settlement built by the Casarabi people,
06:34who lived there from 500 to 1400 CE.
06:37And it wasn't just a couple of buildings here and there.
06:40No, the LIDAR maps revealed massive urban centers, pyramids, platforms, roads, canals, and causeways,
06:48all carefully laid out.
06:50Turns out the Amazon wasn't just an untouched jungle.
06:53It was once home to big, complex cities.
06:56A scientist from the German Archaeological Institute
06:59explained that Europeans had long ignored the possibility of ancient Amazonian cities,
07:05but the LIDAR maps showed they were wrong.
07:08The new maps have revealed 26 sites, including 11 that no one even knew existed.
07:13Researchers have discovered two main city sites, Landivar and Kotoka.
07:19They had massive moat causeways stretching out like spokes on a wheel,
07:23linking the main cities with smaller surrounding settlements.
07:27Some of the canals even connected the cities to rivers and a big lake,
07:31which allowed water to flow through the area.
07:33Over the years, scientists found scattered ruins all over this region,
07:38but the thick jungle made it nearly impossible to connect the dots and see if or how they were related.
07:44With LIDAR, the whole layout came to life,
07:47showing that those sites were part of a much larger, organized urban system.
07:52It's now also clear that the sites had a greater meaning,
07:56since everything is lined up in a way that could be symbolic of the spiritual beliefs of the inhabitants.
08:01The Qasarabi culture isn't as famous as the Maya,
08:05but they had a thriving society in an area that faced huge challenges, like yearly flooding.
08:11And although the nearby Andes had their own monumental sites,
08:16the Qasarabi were doing something absolutely unique.
08:19They even had reservoirs to store water,
08:22which suggests they might have been dealing with occasional droughts,
08:25which is pretty unusual for the Amazon.
08:27Actually, those terrible droughts could be why the Qasarabi eventually left their cities around 1400 CE.
08:37Humans invest a lot of time and money exploring the unknown.
08:41First, outer space.
08:43Then, the ocean floor.
08:44But there's another frontier we're trying to conquer.
08:47Scientists call it the deep frontier.
08:50I'm talking about how far down to the Earth's core we've made it so far.
08:54During the 60s, humans tried digging the deepest man-made hole on Earth.
09:00This took us deep into the Arctic Circle.
09:02What later became known as the super-deep borehole is also the deepest artificial point on Earth,
09:09reaching the depth of 40,230 feet.
09:13It took 20 years to drill this far into the Earth's crust.
09:16And researchers say this is only about one-third of the way through to the mantle.
09:22Here's a quick anatomy of our planet.
09:25If the Earth is like an onion, the crust is like the thick skin of this onion.
09:30This part is only 25 miles thick.
09:33Beyond this is the 1,800-mile-deep mantle.
09:37And after that, right at the center of the Earth is the core,
09:41which is made up of two layers, inner and outer.
09:44Now, can you guess where on the planet the crust is at its thinnest?
09:49On the ocean floor.
09:50When American scientists understood that, they started drilling holes on the seabed.
09:56This gave way to Project Moho.
09:58It began in 1961, but their technology to drill deep holes on the ocean was really bad.
10:05They had to improvise.
10:07They installed a system of propellers along the sides of their drill ship to keep it steady over the hole.
10:13The main challenge was to drill as vertically as possible.
10:17Otherwise, that deep hole would look more like a deep maze.
10:20Both the Kola Superdeep Borehole Project and the Project Moho came to an official stop in the years that followed.
10:28But hey, humans have built some pretty deep stuff underground.
10:32In 1963, a Turkish man took a swing with his sledgehammer to improve his basement and discovered a tunnel.
10:40That tunnel entrance led to more openings that connected a multitude of halls and chambers.
10:46He didn't know it, but he had discovered Derengoyu.
10:49This once-lost city was up to 18 stories tall and 200 feet deep.
10:55The city was large enough to host 20,000 people, and it was simply standing beneath Cappadocia in Turkey the
11:02whole time.
11:04Cappadocia hosts hundreds of subterranean dwellings.
11:08Forty of these underground cities are at least two stories high, but none of them are as huge as Derengoyu.
11:14There's not a lot of historical accounts of how Derengoyu was born.
11:18Some speculate that the oldest part of the complex was dug about 2,000 BCE by the Hittites.
11:25The Hittites were an Indo-European civilization who formed one of the first major civilizations of the Bronze Age in
11:33West Asia.
11:34Scholars think they built this underground city to protect themselves from invasion.
11:39Others think it was actually the Christians who built the city in the first century CE.
11:44They speculate that it could have been constructed to protect people from the intense temperature variations, extreme heat in summer
11:52and freezing cold in winter.
11:56Geographically, the terrain under Cappadocia is great for building.
12:00The rocks are soft, which makes tunneling easier.
12:03For that same reason, opening large caves underground is fragile.
12:07That's why most chambers have pillars that support them.
12:11On the bright side, and we are, none of the floors at Derengoyu have ever collapsed.
12:16The builders of Derengoyu thought of everything.
12:21The city was shut off from the world by huge rocks that hit its entrance.
12:26It was ventilated by a total of more than 15,000 shafts, around 10 centimeters wide.
12:32This way, they guaranteed enough breathing air in the upper levels in a way that they ended up being used
12:38as the living and sleeping quarters.
12:40The lower levels of this impressive maze were mainly used for storage.
12:45But honestly, they had it all.
12:48A room for a wine press, for domestic animals, small religious buildings.
12:53They certainly didn't spare any efforts to make that underground city as complete as an above-ground one.
13:01Now, speaking of impressive underground stuff,
13:04Switzerland has the longest tunnel in the world, built here on the Swiss Alps.
13:09This absurdly huge tunnel was built over 8,000 feet below the surface.
13:15Check this out.
13:16This is what the Gothard Base Tunnel looks like.
13:19The first idea to build the tunnel was put forward as early as 1947.
13:24But construction only officially began in 1999.
13:28It took them years to approve the project, and then scout for the perfect location.
13:33Even so, the 73 different rock types that composed Massif turned the construction into a real challenge.
13:41Some of the rocks were as hard as granite, and others were as soft as sandstone.
13:47This meant they needed different approaches and equipment so the whole thing wouldn't crumble down.
13:52Overall, they had to excavate about 28 million metric tons of rock to make way for the tunnel.
13:59There were many other challenges to build that far into the Earth.
14:03The deeper into the mountain they got, the hotter the temperatures were.
14:08Since there's no natural ventilation, temperatures would get as high as 115 degrees Fahrenheit,
14:14making it really hard for workers to endure.
14:19The tunnel stretches for 35 miles from one end to the other.
14:23During the construction, workers had to use four massive tunnel boring machines,
14:28aka moles, to penetrate through the massive.
14:31Each of these moles was around 1,400 feet long.
14:36But that was one of the best things they could do,
14:39since these machines limit the disturbance to the surrounding ground
14:42and help to produce a smooth tunnel wall.
14:47You'd never guess that the world's deepest basement belongs to the Sydney Opera House in Australia.
14:53The building goes as deep underground as it grows above ground.
14:57But this basement isn't just the Opera House's foundation.
15:00It's a parking lot.
15:02This unique parking garage penetrates 120 feet underground, or 12 stories deep,
15:09while most car parks are only 4 or 5 stories deep.
15:12But that's not all that makes it unique.
15:15You see, if they decided to build a normal rectangular parking space,
15:19this would end up eliminating a bunch of possible parking spaces.
15:23And since they wanted to maximize the space they had available,
15:27they had to come up with some superb structure.
15:31First, they opened up a man-made cavern to make that dream possible.
15:35Then they had to come up with a design.
15:38That's what led to the donut-shaped cavern,
15:40or what engineers call a double helix.
15:43This design shocked the engineering community for its innovative approach.
15:48But hey, it worked!
15:50Today, there is space for over a thousand cars down there,
15:54which seems about right for an Opera House.
15:58Let's wow once again real quick.
16:00Some underground structures may take up to an hour to reach.
16:04Take this gold mine in South Africa that lies around two and a half miles below the surface.
16:10Yeah, you may think, hey, it's just a couple of miles.
16:13Why does it take an hour to get there?
16:16But the conditions are hard, and it's not for the weak.
16:19But Milan Ladina, an Ecuadorian runner, even completed a half marathon there,
16:25despite temperatures reaching 104 degrees Fahrenheit,
16:28high humidity at 80%, and an atmospheric pressure of 1.4,
16:33comparable to what divers experience 5 meters under the sea.
16:37Yikes!
16:43Strange and amazing items are discovered often,
16:46but figuring out what our ancestors were up to is pretty tough.
16:50Especially when all you have are just some rusty cups and cave drawings.
16:54It's no surprise that even the experts in lab coats sometimes make mistakes.
16:59But it's not just about dusty plates and huge stones.
17:03Sometimes there's even humans with large heads.
17:06So grab your digging tools and let's travel back to ancient times
17:09to explore incredible societies that even scientists can't fully explain.
17:17Sardinia may look idyllic now, but I'm not gonna lie.
17:21I wouldn't fancy visiting it 3,000 years ago.
17:24Rumor has it, terrible giants roamed around this island back then.
17:29People even talk about finding human skeletons over 13 feet tall there.
17:33Although nobody's ever shown anything to prove it.
17:36But the stories will make you wonder,
17:38because some weird stuff has definitely happened.
17:42In 1974, over 5,000 pieces of broken stone artifacts
17:46were found in a part of the island called Monte Prama.
17:49But instead of being displayed in a museum,
17:52they were locked up in an underground vault for about 30 years.
17:55Sounds a bit suspicious, doesn't it?
17:58When they were finally displaced in 2005,
18:02scientists put the pieces together to find statues of 38 giant men standing 8 feet tall.
18:07Not quite as tall as the legendary skeletons, but still pretty huge.
18:12It's thought these statues were made by the Nuragic people,
18:16who lived on the island a long time ago.
18:19Besides giant statues, they also built over 8,000 massive stone buildings.
18:25Perhaps Nuragic weren't giants themselves,
18:28but they definitely liked their things big.
18:30I do too.
18:31I like a big number of likes on our videos.
18:34That'd be pretty great.
18:35Thank you if you liked this and subscribed.
18:38Now back to the video.
18:40You and I are pretty smart, but we might not be the smartest humans ever.
18:44Actually, we might not even be the smartest species.
18:48Since 1913, some skull fossils found in South Africa
18:52have hinted at a possibly smarter contender called Boskopman.
18:56This human-like species might have lived as recently as 10,000 years ago.
19:01Their skull suggests they had really big heads,
19:04which means their brains could have been 30% bigger than ours.
19:08Wow!
19:09Their average IQ could have been around 149,
19:13making them among the smartest 0.05% of people today.
19:18But if a Boskop Brainiac was so much smarter,
19:21why are they not around and we are?
19:24Well, bigger isn't always better, you know.
19:27Our brains are a lot bigger than our ape relatives,
19:30mainly in the prefrontal cortex.
19:32This part helps with high-level tasks like making decisions,
19:36remembering things short-term, and being aware of ourselves.
19:39The parts of the brain that handle our senses and movements haven't really grown much.
19:44So, maybe the Boskops spent too much time dwelling on the past
19:49rather than doing practical things like hunting.
19:52But this is all just guessing.
19:54We really don't know what happened to these clever cousins of ours.
19:57Some people even argue that Boskops weren't any different from us,
20:01with the only evidence being parts of skulls.
20:06The jungle is huge.
20:08Did you know the Amazon rainforest is home to about 30% of all the world's plant and animal species?
20:14That's impressive.
20:16However, the history of one native species, humans, has long puzzled scientists.
20:22The mysterious Kassarabe people lived here for hundreds of years,
20:26and then vanished around 1400 AD.
20:29People thought the Amazon only had a few scattered tribes,
20:33but recently, we discovered big, unusual shapes in the ground, called geoglyphs.
20:39These might look like simple shallow ditches,
20:42but they're actually the remains of a vast civilization
20:45that spread over 5,000 square miles and includes about 450 markings,
20:51some as wide as 1,300 feet.
20:54That's insane!
20:56They likely contained ceremonial buildings and could have hosted up to a million people
21:00as recently as 550 years ago.
21:05Thanks to new technology like LIDAR,
21:07which uses a safe laser to map the forest without harming it,
21:11we can explore deeper.
21:13In 2019, some scans showed miles of raised roads and pathways
21:18and even pyramids over 70 feet tall.
21:20They found 26 separate settlements,
21:24two of which were at least 250 acres each.
21:28Damn, that's like 330 soccer fields.
21:31It's not certain what happened to the Kassarabe people.
21:35Maybe European conquistadors drove them out.
21:39Maybe the most baffling ancient civilization
21:42is one we've never actually found a trace of.
21:45Yep, I'm talking about Atlantis,
21:48the grand city that supposedly sank into the ocean.
21:52The first mentions of Atlantis come from the ancient Greek philosopher Plato,
21:56who talked about a great city near the Strait of Gibraltar.
21:59But for ages, everyone just thought Plato made up Atlantis
22:03as a perfect version of his own Athens.
22:06So why, about 12,000 years after it supposedly vanished,
22:11do we still wonder if it might be real?
22:13Well, in the 19th century,
22:16U.S. Congressman Ignatius Donnelly wrote a book
22:19giving 13 reasons why he thought Atlantis was more than just a myth.
22:24Then, in 1965, some folks thought they actually found Atlantis
22:28when they discovered the Richat Structure,
22:30a massive 25-mile-wide dome in Mauritania, Africa.
22:35It's so big that you can see the whole thing from space.
22:39Two astronauts flying over the Sahara Desert
22:42spotted this giant eye staring back at them
22:45and thought they'd made the discovery of a lifetime.
22:47Unfortunately, there's no solid evidence linking this structure to Atlantis.
22:52It's believed to have formed from volcanic activity about 100 million years ago.
22:57But it does look suspicious, doesn't it?
23:00Still, we're no closer to knowing the truth.
23:05Imagine going back to about 3,300 BCE and finding yourself in South Asia.
23:11Welcome to the Harappan civilization.
23:14These people were way ahead of their time.
23:17They had cities like Harappa and Mohenjo-daro,
23:20complete with baked brick houses, sophisticated drainage systems, and even public baths.
23:25This place might have had over 5 million people,
23:29making it one of the densest regions at the time.
23:31They also invented a system of standardized weights that was incredibly useful for traders.
23:37And trading they did.
23:38These people had connections stretching all the way to the Middle East,
23:42thanks to their great skills in metallurgy.
23:44They even had a form of ancient branding.
23:47The seals were used to stamp clay on tray goods.
23:51Despite being so advanced with a thriving urban life,
23:54there's a whole bunch of mystery shrouding their language and script.
23:59We've got bits and pieces of their writing, but no one's deciphered them yet,
24:03even with all the technology we have today.
24:06We also still don't know how exactly their society worked.
24:10It looks like they didn't flaunt their social status as much as other civilizations.
24:15No grand palaces or massive monuments.
24:17Instead, their largest buildings might have been granaries.
24:21They sure were practical.
24:23Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end.
24:27Around 1,800 BCE, this bustling civilization started to decline,
24:32possibly due to shifts in river patterns.
24:35As the environment changed, the Harappans packed up,
24:38moving towards more hospitable lands.
24:42Ever heard of the minotaur?
24:45The beast with a bull's head and a man's body,
24:48hunting the bravest travelers in a massive maze.
24:51Well, this wasn't just any old tale.
24:53It was one of the most popular dramas of the ancient world.
24:56And it was inspired by this place.
24:59The Island of Crete
25:00The Minoans lived here during the Bronze Age.
25:03They had stunning palaces, amazing frescoes,
25:06and a culture so rich it still fascinates historians to this day.
25:10They built places like Knossos,
25:13which was so complex with its multi-story buildings and elaborate hallways
25:17that it might have inspired the whole labyrinth myth.
25:20Their engineering was so ahead of its time
25:23that even their drainage systems were more advanced than what many of us have today.
25:28Let me know in the comments which of these stories you find the most fascinating.
25:32And thanks for watching!
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