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00:00I was convinced this was the place.
00:02This is Unveiled.
00:04And today we're counting down our picks for the Top 10 Ancient Mysteries That Were Finally Solved.
00:09For the first time, archaeologists are able to give clear answers to these questions.
00:15For this list, we're looking at baffling historical questions that have recently received likely and widely agreed upon explanations.
00:23What do you make of these answers? Let us know in the comments below.
00:26Number 10. The Impossible Egyptian Sculpture.
00:30Housed in the National Museums, Scotland is this so-called impossible Egyptian sculpture.
00:36Just a tiny thing, it depicts a young pharaoh sitting in the lap of a mysterious person whose face has been unfortunately sheared off.
00:43For a long time, neither the kneeler nor the pharaoh could be identified.
00:47Making the sculpture even more impossible to discern was the fact that pharaohs are never depicted with non-royal individuals in ancient sculptures.
00:55But thanks to recent work done by the museum's curator, Margaret Maitland, the mystery has finally been cracked.
01:02This statue was made by a cult at Deir el-Medina, which was given exclusive permission to depict kings with non-royals.
01:09It likely depicts a young Ramses II sitting on a cult leader named Ramose.
01:13Number 9. Atlantis of the Sands.
01:16Iram of the Pillars. Atlantis of the Sands.
01:20Call it what you will, but everyone has heard of the Arabian city that was swallowed by the ground.
01:24As with many legends, experts have found that there may be a kernel of truth behind the tale.
01:29In 1992, archaeologist Nicholas Clapp found an old fortress buried under the sand in Oman.
01:35Over 2,000 years old, this fortress is thought to have collapsed into a sinkhole and became the source of legend.
01:41Further work postulates that this fortress was part of a trading city area known as Ubar
01:46that figuratively collapsed once the fortress fell and the demand for incense decreased.
01:51Number 8. The Honeycombed Skull of Otranto.
01:55On the very eastern tip of Italy lies the coastal town of Otranto,
01:59which was targeted in 1480 by Sultan Mehmed II during his invasion of Rome.
02:04This skirmish resulted in the Martyrs of Otranto, some 800 local men who refused to convert to Islam.
02:11Their skulls are proudly displayed in the Cathedral of Otranto,
02:14and one is honeycombed with 16 perfectly round holes.
02:18So what exactly caused these perforations?
02:21The question baffled historians for centuries, until the University of Pisa provided an answer in 2015.
02:28They acknowledged that the holes were made by a surgical saw in the late Middle Ages,
02:33as bone powder made from religious martyrs was thought to aid in various health afflictions.
02:38Number 7. Pukios.
02:40Found in southern Peru are a number of spiral wells tunneling deep into the ground.
02:45These spiral openings are called pukios, meaning source or spring,
02:49and they're formed from a wall of stacked rocks.
02:52Not only is it an amazing sight, but it's an amazing feat of agriculture.
02:57These holes form part of an irrigation system meant to bring fresh water throughout the dry desert.
03:02But for a long time, we didn't know exactly how they worked.
03:05Well, that was answered by Rosa Laspanara and Italy's Institute of Methodologies for Environmental Analysis.
03:12They not only proved that pukios are pre-Hispanic,
03:15they also explained that the intricate system of pukios utilized wind
03:19to push water through a series of underground canals.
03:22Number 6. The Water of Palmyra.
03:25Found smack in the middle of Syria is an ancient city called Palmyra.
03:29This was an extremely prosperous city during the Roman Empire
03:32thanks to its prime location on ancient trade routes.
03:35In the 3rd century, the kings of Palmyra, notably the famous Queen Zenobia,
03:41confronted the Romans and in fact at times managed to conquer
03:45major parts of the Roman Empire in the east.
03:48They basically controlled an area all the way from Asia Minor, from Turkey today, to Egypt.
03:54There was just one problem that baffled historians for years.
03:57How did such a massive city thrive in the middle of the desert?
04:01The University of Bergen worked with members of the Palmyra Museum to find answers.
04:05Using satellite photos, they studied the surrounding land
04:09and realized that buried grass roots kept rainwater on the surface.
04:13This rainwater would then form a shallow river called a wadi
04:16and it was collected using a series of dams and cisterns.
04:20Nature provided and humans did the rest.
04:23Number 5. Roman Concrete.
04:25Called Opus Caementicium by the Romans, their concrete was a special kind of sturdy.
04:31Now this amazing material, Roman concrete,
04:34it has the great advantage that it can be made by semi-skilled people.
04:39Concrete is notoriously unreliable and prone to cracks and breakage.
04:43Yet Roman concrete structures are still standing after thousands of years.
04:47So what gives?
04:48It's as easy as ash and lime.
04:50A volcanic substance known as pozzolanic ash was used in the production of Roman concrete,
04:55which prevented cracks from spreading.
04:58First of all, in terms of its composition,
05:00Roman concrete is a mixture of lime, sand, water, of course aggregates.
05:06Basically, it's modern concrete.
05:07This was further backed by research done by Stanford's Tiziana Vanorio,
05:11who found a natural concrete-like material at the volcanic region of Campi Flegrei.
05:16But that's not all.
05:17Not only were cracks prevented from spreading,
05:20they completely self-repaired thanks to the presence of lime.
05:24Number 4. The Great Pyramids.
05:26The Great Pyramids have long been a mystery.
05:29Their answer is known only to those who built them.
05:32They could be considered the world's most startling architectural achievement.
05:36So much so that we still don't know for sure all the details of their construction.
05:40The pyramids of ancient Egypt stand like giant sentinels watching over the city of Cairo.
05:49Built more than 2,000 years before the birth of Christ,
05:53these stone giants continue to mystify and captivate archaeologists
05:58seeking to understand their origins and purpose.
06:02But many answers have been revealed over time.
06:05We know they used the Nile to ferry limestone,
06:07and that they quarried the blocks from nearby central field.
06:10When the water level was at its height,
06:12the blocks were floated downstream on barges.
06:16They were then unloaded onto a specially constructed landing wharf.
06:20A massive ramp was also built,
06:23via which the great blocks could be hauled to their destination as the pyramid took shape.
06:29We know they took hundreds of thousands of laborers roughly 20 years to build.
06:33And we know they used ramps to build the pyramids in horizontal layers.
06:37Perhaps most exciting was an abandoned quarry found in 2017,
06:41which helped answer how the blocks were made,
06:43and confirmed that 250 could have been produced in a single day.
06:51Number 3. The Maya Calendar
06:54It's frankly amazing what ancient civilizations knew about the universe.
06:58Constructed in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica,
07:00the Maya Calendar baffled scholars with its use of 819 days.
07:05They correctly posited that it had something to do with the planets and their orbits,
07:09but the timeline simply didn't match with the calendar.
07:12Lending credibility to this conspiracy theory,
07:15a string of natural disasters with intensities not seen in recent times
07:20struck our modern civilization and caught us very much unprepared.
07:26The problem was that we were thinking too small.
07:28It wasn't just 819 days that we had to look at,
07:32that was just one of 20 different periods that encompassed a total of 16,380 days,
07:38or approximately 45 years.
07:41It's amazing the almost organic understanding that the Mayans have of mathematics.
07:46A mastery which also led them to conceive of the number and the concept of zero.
07:53When viewed through this 45-year window,
07:56the orbits of the observable planets line up perfectly.
07:59The Mayas used a very complicated system of calendars.
08:03They used some 20 calendars altogether.
08:06There were three primary calendars that were critically important to them.
08:10The mystery was finally cracked by scholars working at Tulane University,
08:14who published their findings in the journal Ancient Mesoamerica.
08:18Number 2. Troy
08:20For a long time, the existence of Homer's Troy was under question.
08:24It's a story that's been told and retold by poets and actors for thousands of years.
08:31But is it real?
08:34Did the city of Troy actually exist?
08:37The ancient Greeks believed the city was real,
08:40but this opinion eventually fell out of favor.
08:42For many years, most people regarded Troy as a fanciful place of legend.
08:47In this place, the ancients believed Troy had stood.
08:55Here, one said, no stone is without a name.
08:59That is, until 1871,
09:01when Heinrich Schliemann and Frank Calvert began their excavations in modern-day Hisarlik, Turkey.
09:06Found on the west coast of the country,
09:08the city of Troy contains nine distinct layers,
09:11as new settlements would be built on the ruins of others.
09:14Schliemann, with his interest in Homer, was not the first in this area.
09:19Frank Calvert, a British expatriate, had been living in the area from 1845 onward.
09:25He grew up in this area and gradually amassed
09:29a tremendous amount of textual evidence for where Troy lay.
09:36Many experts believe that Troy VI was the city upon which the mythical Troy was based.
09:41While the truth of the Iliad remains cloudy,
09:44there is no doubt that Troy itself existed in some form.
09:48History can never confirm if Homer's heroes ever lived,
09:52nor whether the legendary Trojan horse ever existed.
09:56But thanks to modern archaeology,
09:59the city in which Homer placed his heroes,
10:01the lost city of Troy,
10:04is lost no more.
10:05Number 1.
10:06The Vanished Army of Cambyses II.
10:09Ruling the Achaemenid Empire between 530 and 522 BC was Cambyses II.
10:15Shortly before his death,
10:17Cambyses II sent an army of 50,000 men to intimidate the Oracle of Amun in the Siwa Oasis of Egypt.
10:23However, the entire army fell victim to a massive sandstorm and was lost forever.
10:28They were said to have been lost without trace.
10:31But is it just legend or terrible truth?
10:35It sounds like a fanciful tale,
10:37and for many years that's exactly how it was regarded.
10:40The primary source is Greek historian Herodotus,
10:43who has been known to spin a tall tale and no physical evidence was ever found.
10:48For the Persians, this must have been a huge burden.
10:51The logistics make it virtually certain that
10:54Cambyses' army could not have been as vast as Herodotus said.
10:58That is, until 2009,
11:00when brothers Angelo and Alfredo Castiglione found Persian tools and human remains near the oasis.
11:06According to the University of Lecce,
11:08it was quote,
11:08the first archaeological evidence of the story's veracity.
11:12Many have searched for this army, but all have searched along the oasis route.
11:16The oasis of Dakhla, Farafra, Aindala, then across the desert up to Siwa.
11:22We worked on a different hypothesis since these oasis were under the Egyptian rule.
11:27What do you think?
11:27Is there anything we missed?
11:29Let us know in the comments,
11:30check out these other clips from Unveiled,
11:32and make sure you subscribe and ring the bell for our latest content.