What Archaeological Sites Used To Actually Look Like

our planet's been around for a whopping 4.5 billion years in that huge expanse of time dinosaurs have been and gone the Earth's geography has completely changed and countless civilizations have risen and Fallen evidence of these lost civilizations remain however in Ruins across every country across the globe but what were they like before they were ruins well grab your Trel and get ready to dig in as we find out what archaeological sites used to actually look [Music] like Sky High Citadel almost 8,000 ft at top of mountain in Peru's urubamba River Valley stands the remains of

one of the world's most famous ruins the legendary Incan Citadel of Machu Picchu but when it was first discovered back in 1911 by American Explorer Haram Bingham it was barely recognizable as a citadel at all it's believed the Incans built this settlement high up so it would be really tough to attack however this also meant that after they fled the city in the late 16th century following a possible small poox epidemic it lay undiscovered for years during this time it became more and more overgrown and because Incans didn't use cement or mortar tree roots penetrated

straight through the ruins making the foliage incredibly difficult to get rid of without causing damage Bingham and his crew were painstakingly careful though and over the course of 4 months they toiled away for hours a day clearing The Unwanted plant life when they were finally done the team were amazed at the sprawling sight they'd uncovered and nowadays after further excavation the awe inspiring ruin is even clearer of course despite the dramatic Improvement it's still far from its 15th century Glory Days back then it's believed the many Stone houses were all in Tip-Top shape with thatched

roofs of dried grass as well as residential houses it had a farming Zone a sacred area and a royal District where historians reckon Incan ruler pakui Inca Yap panqui reigned from his Palace really it's a testament to the Incans building prowess that any of it still stands today considering how exposed the mountain Citadel is to the elements and knowing how flimsy some new buildings can be maybe Modern Men should be taking a little and advice the bronze giant a long time ago back in the 3r century BC there stood a great bronze statue in the

harbor of the Greek city of rhs the gargantuan Monument depict the sun god helos and was said to stand An Almighty 105 ft tall as such it was named the Colossus of roads and became one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World sadly however the Colossus only stood for 54 years before a Savage earthquake in 226 BC toppled It To The Ground breaking it into pieces even so the destroyed remains still proved a popular tourist attraction for centuries after until that is in 654 ad when Arabian forces raided roads and carried the fragmented pieces

of the Colossus away to be melted down and sold how did they do this why with an army of 900 camels of course sadly today there's a whole load of nothing where the great statue once stood but if you're familiar with the Colossus of Roads you might be surprised to hear that despite the famous imagery of it straddling the harbor this never happened that iconic image actually came about centuries later and was touted by historians in the Middle Ages who'd never seen the monument the harbor itself is almost the same width as an American football

field so to be proportionally accurate the statue would have to stand a stupendous 1,640 ft tall this was firmly impossible at the time even now India's statue of unity which is the tallest statue in the world is only 597 ft tall almost three times shorter so the Colossus was far more likely to have looked something like this not quite as impressive but sorry you can't become all knowing without shattering a few dreams along the way and you'll never become all knowing if you don't hit those like And subscribe buttons that way you won't miss another

of my amazing fact-based videos ever again anyway where were we Insanity in Italy of all the natural disasters in recorded history the eruption of Italy's mount vvus in the year 79 ad has captured people's imagination like no other the ensuing ashcloud crashed down the volcano and completely covered the nearby city of Pompei eradicated an entire community in one Fell Swoop it wasn't until about 1700 years later that archaeologists finally Unearthed the ancient Roman city and boy were they surprised despite all that time the thick layer of Ash had preserved everything so well in fact that

the majority of the city is still recognizable walls buildings paved streets even some art remains remarkably Untouched by age and just look at this street food stall man some things really don't change having said that it's still nothing like the bustling city of 12,000 people that existed for many years before the Fateful eruption the vibrant municipality had an Amphitheater gymnasium port and even a complex water system there were many temples too devoted to them various Roman gods including the Temple of Jupiter unfortunately Jupiter's Temple got toppled by an earthquake in 62 ad and today only

scraps remain regardless Pompei is still an astonishing place to visit if he can be brave being so close to mount vvus the real wall if you've ever seen Game of Thrones you'll be familiar with the wall the giant icy Mega structure made to keep out threats from the north of Westeros but did you know it's based on a real life wall in the north of England yep if you were to go there right now you'd find the ruins of a Hadrian's Wall a huge 73m long structure stretching all the way from one Coast to the

other it dates far back to the year 122 ad when the Roman Emperor hadrien ordered it built to separate the Roman Empire in Britain from The Barbarians up north sound familiar the real wall though Was Made of Stone not ice and it wasn't quite as tall as George R Martin's fictional barrier however it was a lot grander than the meager remnants that are left left over today standing almost 20 ft tall in some places the Towering barricade was an intimidating sight to behold and it wasn't just a wall by the end of the 4th Century

a whopping 40 forts called mile castles had been built along at two as well as these the extensive structure also hosted 17 larger Forts and numerous observation towers to ensure nothing got passed when the Romans left Britain at the start of the fifth century however the the wall quickly fell into disrepair people began plundering it by removing great chunks of stone and using it to build other things like churches farms and houses and although this practice was ended by the 19th century by that time the damage had already been done where imposing mile castles once

stood guard now only waste High fragments of stone remain it's a good job the white walkers aren't real then Nero to zero obviously ancient Rome's Emperors weren't the humblest bunch of people in comparison to Emperor Nero though the others look like Saints that's because Nero who became emperor in 54 ad commissioned a colossal Palace complex for himself in the heart of Rome that covered nearly half a square mile of space that's about three times the size of the entire Vatican City built with Stone and Marble between 64 and 68 ad the extravagant Palace had 150

rooms both above ground and underground as well as a pool and an enormous 100t statue of the emperor himself if that wasn't enough all of the rooms were covered floor to ceiling with gold precious stones shells and Pearls aptly then it was named the domus Ora or Golden House for those of us not too hot on the old Latin of all its rooms though the octagonal Hall was by far the grandest this incredible chamber served as a banquet hall and had five dining rooms branching off it with waterfalls cascading down the back walls flower petals

and perfume were rigged to fall from the richly decorated ceiling too but the really amazing thing about the octagonal Hall was that it revolved that's right day and night the flamboyant Food Hall rotated around its axis as petals fell from above and waterfalls cascaded all around it and crazy easily archaeologists reckon The Majestic mechanism was powered entirely by water all this narcissistic extravagance did not make Nero popular though and so his successors wanted to distance themselves from him as much as possible therefore they savagely stripped the whole Palace of its materials and riches and even

filled in most of the underground rooms in order to build on top of them this means that sadly although the main structure survives the palace is far from the grand complex at one was that said the octagonal Hall was excavated and is still immediately recognizable today despite the lack of decoration H I wonder if you could ramp up the mechanism and turn it into some kind of crazy historical Carousel the plundered Baron the ancient Romans weren't the only civilization partial to a little opulence at the height of the ancient Greek Empire between 447 and 432

BC One of history's most iconic temples was built at top Athens religious Citadel the Acropolis known simply as the Parthenon the 23,000 ft Temple was held up by 65 marble columns above which were Exquisite vividly painted freezes most impressively a 39t tall statue of Athena the Greek goddess of wisdom and War stood guard inside the temple it was made from gold and ivory and would have been spectacular to behold but by the 5ifth century ad it was gone we can't be sure what happened though it could have been looted by Christian byzantines that is the

Eastern Roman Empire who later conquered Greece in the 6th Century ad after they took Athens they converted the Parthenon into a Catholic church and destroyed many of the carved freezes it remained like this until 1458 ad when the structure changed hands once again this time the Muslim Ottoman Empire seized control of the Greek cap and made the holy building a mosque only a couple of hundred years later however Christian forces returned and launched another attack bombarding the Parthenon with cannonballs this would have been bad enough but the Ottomans had been using the temple to store

volatile ammunition inside uh-oh the cannonballs smashed into the ammo creating a powerful explosion which tore through the building and caused massive structural damage and there's more later in the 19th Century British Earl Thomas Bruce visited the Parthenon and stole some of the remaining marble freezes and sculptures to bring back to London where they still are today because of all this it's safe to say the poor old parnon doesn't look quite as glamorous as it did back in its Heyday but even so I'd killed to look that good at the age of 2,454 chilling in chich

chinita if you're ever in the rather specific mood to soak up some rays while marveling at some of the best preserved ancient pyramids on Earth then I suggest taking a trip to chichan in Mexico's Yucatan State this Mayan city is well over 1,500 years old and though nobody lives there now at its peak it was home to 35,000 people because of this the whole site covers four square miles and has a slew of 26 ruins to be explored the most famous of which is called El Castillo this tremendous Temple looms nearly 80 ft above the

main plaza and has 91 steps up each of its four sides for a total of 365 including the upper platform it's no coincidence that this number is the same number of days as a solar year and it's probably related to the rituals that were carried out at the top because those ancient Mayans had some weird rituals the pyramid was built directly on top of a Codi which is essentially a water-filled sinkhole at the top of the pyramid there's a deep pit which leads down into this Cenote in times of drought it's thought that the Mayan

people believed that by taking one very unlucky person and throwing them down the pit to their Doom the sacrifice would bring rain rain and pain but it can't have worked that well the city was completely abandoned in the 15th century and ironically it was probably because of a drought left to its own devices the Jun Le ran rampant on the temple and when it was finally decided to evacuate the site in the early 1900s you could hardly see it at all a full decade of hacking and slashing later though and the pyramid was eventually revealed

in all its glory to become the popular tourist attraction it is now H reminds me a bit of oh me lockdown versus post lockdown really old serum let's imagine that you and I are taking a nice stroll through this southern English Countryside when wait we come across this and he guesses what it is I wouldn't blame you for not knowing because there's very little left of old serum an iron AG Hill Fort that dates all the way back to 400 BC originally built and inhabited by British tribes people the fort changed hands around 43 ad

when it was occupied by Romans after their conquest of Britain then after the Romans abandoned Britain around 400 ad the site was took up by the Anglo-Saxons who lived there for hundreds of years until the Norman Conquest in 1066 still with me right well it was the Normans that made the biggest changes to the Old Fort they're responsible for throwing up the M that is the elevated mound in the center which the castle stood on at its peak around the year 1100 the site had become a buzzing burrow notable for theill literate clerks that resided

in the cathedral however bad Rel ations between troops in the castle and the clergy led to the cathedral being removed and rebuilt a couple of miles south in Salsbury where it still resides man imagine having a disagreement so intense you moved an entire Cathedral because of it after this Royal interest in the site declined rapidly and with it the population until finally In 1832 it lost its burough status and was deserted and because so many of the buildings were made from Timber they decayed and were lost to time now only a few Clues remain that

the once important settlement was ever there who'd have Ford it huh great Giza the oldest of all seven wonders of the ancient world the Great Pyramid of Giza is still an awe inspiring Testament to ancient Egyptian civilization built as a tomb for the Pharaoh kufu around 4500 years ago it now serves as one of the most popular tourist destinations on the planet but it wasn't always this way way when it was first built the Great Pyramid didn't have the rough Jagged appearance it has today rather it was smooth and shiny from top to bottom this

is because the Egyptians built a layer of limestone over the initial step-like structure and Polished it so it gleamed white in the sunlight they even decorated the point of the pyramid in Gold making the original structure far flashier than it looks nowadays but considering the gargantuan Monument is made from almost 9,000 tons of granite over 550,000 tons of mortar and more than 6 million tons of limestone how on Earth did they construct it in the first place well the workers would travel southeast of Giza to the Tura quaries on the other side of the Nile

and Hammer lines of wooden wedges into the stone then they'd soak the stone in water the wedges would absorb this water expand and and in doing so crack the rock into blocks these blocks were taken from the quaries and fed across the Nile before being dragged on sleds all the way to the site of the pyramid once there the painstaking work wasn't over oh no using a complex ramp and pulley system the heavy blocks had to be hauled all the way up the pyramid where they were finally smoothed down into shape woo and the real

tragedy after all this backbreaking work hardly any evidence of it remains today over thousands of years various peoples stripped the white Limestone and gold tip off to use in other buildings I bet Pharaoh kufu is rolling in his tomb talk attack Northeast of Egypt lies Iraq a country that was once part of a vast land known as Persia and 22 Mi southeast of Iraq's Capital Bagdad a strange old ruin protrudes from the ground believe it or not this battered Archway is all that's left of what was once the grandest richest city of its time chapon

founded in the 2 Century BC by King mithradates the first the sprawling city was the Jewel of the Persian Empire's crown for the best part of 800 years though surprisingly little is known about Cheston we do know that it boasted an extravagant Palace decorated with marble glass mosaics and Jewel adorned carpets which the arch known as T Kasra was once a part of even today it's still the largest single span arch in the world so what the heck happened well the sheer wealth of the city made it a pretty big Target the Romans attacked and

successfully invaded three times between 1616 and 198 ad but though the city was sacked it didn't fall continuing on as the epicenter of Persian culture for another 400 years in 637 ad however everything changed Muslim Arab forces gathered strength outside the city and fought a great battle against Persia they won after their Victory they rode into copon and looted everything they could luckily the inhabitants of the city had already fled nothing else was safe however not even the buildings themselves which were torn apart and carried away to build what would become Baghdad the only thing

they didn't take was talk Kasra because nobody takes the talk colossal col mum just about everybody loves going to the theater for an evening of live entertainment this was just as true back in ancient Rome only their entertainment happened to include brutal fights to the death and the most anticipated ones all took place in the biggest most recognizable Amphitheater ever to exist the Roman Coliseum commissioned around 70 AD by the emperor Vespasian as a gift to the people it was opened a decade later in 80 ad by his son Titus and with 157t tall walls

80 entrances and a capacity of up to 87,000 people the Behemoth building proved a resounding success Spectators of all social classes could attend the various events though they didn't get quite the same experience the seats nearest the front at the bottom were reserved for the most important people and the lower your social class the further back he sat with the poor slaves and women holding up the very rear partly because of this inclusivity the Coliseum flourished for four centuries but changing tastes and the decline of the Western Roman Empire led to its neglect and abandonment

after the 6th Century ad little by little parts of the structure were stripped off to be used elsewhere and violent earthquakes shook the amphitheater too further damaging it now only onethird of the original Coliseum remains and the stage that once held so many astounding events only holds Rubble but even though it's far from its former self its architectural Allure is as strong as ever H with those moves who needs a Gladiators anyway time touched to call nestled deep within the Guatemalan rainforest is a mysterious assortment of structures standing in stark contrast with the nature around

them they make up the ruins of the city of takal once one of the most powerful Kingdoms in ancient Mayan civilization covering nearly 177,000 Square ft of land though it's the imaginatively named to call Temple 2 that's the most impressive of these structures the temple was built as a mausoleum for lady Kajun unan Mo who was the wife of a Mayan King that reigned between 682 and 734 ad at 125 ft High it pierces through the trees but back in the 8th Century it would have been even taller at around 138 ft and though it's

remarkably well preserved for its age it used to look a whole lot more vibrant kind of like this yeah if you hadn't guessed it the Mayans loved red they even colored their cocoa with it the Striking color scheme isn't the only thing that's faded over time though the temples at te call were also covered with intricately carved designs some have survived like this mask but sadly many are long worn away even so the site is still well worth visiting today if it to calls your fancy that is mysterious mound in the north of Ireland there's

a mystical patch of land so drenched with history myth and legend that it holds a staggering 240 archaeological sites across its 2 and 1/2 square m expanse this is the land of wathen where the very first Halloween festivals were held back in the 9th century alongside the Myriad of other ancient sites including a creepy cave that supposedly leads to Hell there's well there's this okay so I know it doesn't look as interesting as a literal hell cave but that innocent looking Mound holds more secrets than you can imagine measuring 300 ft across and 20 ft

tall it stands prominently in the center of the landscape which means it was pretty darn important so any guesses what it might have been here's a clue about 1500 years ago it looked less like a mound and more like a huge fort but if you remember old serum Hill forts look a lot more like this nowadays which is entirely different so you can throw out that idea no this isn't a fort the Wrath Mound was actually a gigantic ceremonial Temple by scanning the Earth using special equipment archaeologists have found evidence to suggest wooden ramparts and

ceremonial henges used to sit a top the hilock we don't know exactly what rituals took place within the hallowed Hall but we do know that those practicing them were ancient Celtic pagans as such the temple was probably the site of All Sorts seers might have stood inside as they prophesied the future crowds of people could have gathered to offer up their precious possessions to the gods and on very rare occasions humans could have even been sacrificed Grizzly but you'd have never thought all that just from looking at it now so it just goes to show

never judge a mound by its uh its uh you know what I mean okay then that just about brings our historical tour to an end which site would you most like to visit and do you have any favorites I didn't mention let me know down in the comments below and thanks for watching [Music]