5 Ancient Mysteries We Still Haven't Solved

today on side projects we're going to profile five ancient mysteries that we salem and solved and if you enjoy a good mystery especially a good murder mystery then i think you might want to check out my new podcast the casual criminalist covering some of the darkest things that we could find from the history of crime from the uk doctor who was the worst serial killer in history to the time an american socialite murdered her best friend with her car allegedly and totally got away with it allegedly and much much more but it's also pretty laid

back it's a bit more free-form was the occasional laugh because isn't death hilarious weekly shows wherever you get your podcasts also on youtube as of recently there are links below and let's get into the video [Music] history gives us context and helps us understand how we got to where we are today or why a historical event happened the way it did so little changes here or there could have resulted in massively different outcomes of course that really only works if we know what actually happened unfortunately there are many historical events where the records that could

tell us exactly what happened are either gone or hidden away being lost to history is a real concern which is partly why universities have such massive libraries with tons of obscure documents to catalog everything so that we don't lose anything again of course anything that was lost before they were catalogued is basically unrecoverable even so that doesn't stop historians and archaeologists from trying and since the industrial revolution there's been a concerted effort to patch up the gaps in the historical record as best we can with that in mind we've got five ancient mysteries that even

today we still haven't fully solved and without further ado let's get into them [Music] the first mystery in today's video is not a strange event or a lost city but a person about whom the only thing we know with absolute certainty is that he existed zoroaster also known as zarathustra was a man who lived in what is today eastern iran born to nomadic parents he supposedly became a priest as a young man before he had a divine revelation at the age of 30. we won't bore you with the extensive theological details here but what he

learned from this revelation would eventually become the basis for the religion known as zoroastrianism famously practiced by the ancient persians and the not so ancient freddie mercury but it's not just powerful empires and world famous musicians that illustrate zoroaster's reach tenants of zoroastrianism are believed by some historians to have influenced other religions including the abrahamic faiths of judaism christianity and islam incredibly zoroastrianism is still practiced in parts of iran and india today making it one of the oldest contiguous religions on earth so zoroaster and his theological ideas were in historical terms a really big deal

so what else do we know about him the answer is well not much at all though we have a decent picture of zoroaster's religious ideas the man himself is almost as legendary as the gods he spoke of historians don't know exactly where he was born or even when the more orthodox historical conclusion is that zoroaster lived at around the same time as cyrus the great founder of the first achievement persian empire which would put his life at around the 7th century bce but cyrus has a few historical blank spots too you see around this time

history as a profession was less about actual facts and information than it was about telling a good story hence why the persian empire is often viewed as despotic and tyrannical even though they were actually as the technical term goes pretty chill the bad reputation we get from the persian empire comes largely from herodotus a greek historian who despite being called the father of history included many obvious legends in his historical writings which means that you can't take the source solely at its word and you have to split hairs to find out what's real and what

isn't as such with both cyrus and zoroastra it's difficult to disentangle the legend surrounding these two with the actual historical fact which is a tendency you will notice a lot if you study ancient history case in point here's a drawing of cyrus the great with wings with that in mind some scholars think that zoroaster could have lived as far back as the 6th millennium bce that's some serious guesstimation there but it really is the best we can do with the information that we have available if we want to know more we'll probably have to go

to iran to get it and we're probably not going to do that the next entry in this video is one that if you've watched any history channels on youtube you're probably quite familiar with it's the late bronze age collapse now we won't spend too much time on this one because there are a billion videos about the bronze age collapse that go into far more detail than we could in a couple of paragraphs so with that in mind we'll just give you the cliff notes version and then you might want to go and read or watch

about the bronze age clap somewhere else why would you want to do that well probably because it's one of the greatest mysteries in history so here's the deal in the year 1200 bce there were several huge empires in the eastern mediterranean and mesopotamia you may recognize the names of some of them the hittites the babylonians the myceneans greeks and so on these empires were large populous and powerful fifty years later they were gone according to archaeological evidence almost every single major city in the eastern mediterranean was violently destroyed many of them never to be occupied

again so what happened to them the most powerful states on the planet we don't know well when we say we don't know what we really mean is we don't know for sure progress has since been made in researching the bronze age collapse and historians have settled for now on something known as the systems collapse theory basically everything just stopped working all at the same time it would be like the internet going out then the tv then all of the starbucks close and that causes the world to collapse overnight especially the starbucks thing there were probably

famines natural disasters tin shortages tin being a necessary component of bronze which makes it vital resource for you know the bronze age in addition to this there is a good deal of evidence for a group of people that historians refer to rather blandly as the sea peoples a lot of information about them is still shrouded in mystery but here's what we know for sure first there were an ethnically diverse confederation of peoples originally from the western mediterranean second they migrated via sea to the eastern mediterranean either to find wealth or to escape hardship in their

original homes and third they were really good at winning wars it's not known for sure how much of an impact they had but there is historical precedent for armies of unified groups conquering vast swaths of territory and annihilating entire towns with thinking of you genghis khan and well speaking of genghis khan genghis khan is remembered as history's greatest conqueror he unified the disparate nomadic tribes of mongolia into a unified force of unmatched warriors and then led them on a military campaign across the eurasian continent conquering the steps of central asia northern china and northern persia

his successors would go on to continue his conquests creating the largest land empire in history and conquering lands in russia the rest of china and the middle east descendants of genghis would famously create their own empires including timur and babu who founded the timurid mughal empires respectively nobody is immortal at least not yet still waiting on that scientists come on and as such genghis khan died in august of the year 1227 we don't know exactly how he died could have been illness injuries from hunting killed in battle or simply passing away quietly in his sleep

his body was taken back to mongolia where a giant mausoleum was constructed as his tomb becoming a place of reverence for mongols everywhere a fitting resting place for the great khan at least it might have been if that's where he was actually buried because this mausoleum isn't actually genghis khan's resting place it's a memorial but it's not a tomb so where was genghis khan buried put it simply no idea genghis khan requested for his body to be buried quietly without any markings or signs since you don't disobey the great khan even when he's dead he

still might get you that's exactly what was done his body was returned to mongolia after his death and the best guess that we can make from there is that he was returned to kenti in the east of the country where he was born and that he is buried somewhere close to the oman river and that's really the best we can do without churning up every square foot of dirt in mongolia looking for the guy according to legend 2000 people attended his funeral who were then killed by one of his armies who were then killed by

his escort who then killed everyone they found along the way who then committed suicide when all was said and done now in terms of historical authenticity that maybe probably isn't what actually happened but we get the gist that genghis wanted his body to be hidden away from the world after he was dead which is an oddly humble end for a man who wrote himself into history with so much blood and conquest much like where he is buried we can only speculate about his intentions going back about a millennium we come to the roman empire rome

is the time period where history starts becoming less messy there's no winged cyrus the greats to pick apart or anything like that there were still legends but at least compared with ancient history it's relatively easy to separate them from historical fact but roman history still has its breaks one of the most head-scratching is the ultimate fate of the ninth legion the story of the ninth begins with julius caesar who inherited the legion when he became governor of cesarean gaul today's northern italy caesar led the legion throughout the gaelic wars in the roman civil war after

caesar won that civil war he disbanded the legion and settled the veterans in the italian countryside those veterans were later recalled by caesar's adopted son octavian to fight another civil war and make him into the emperor we know today is augustus the legion spent some time flitting around between spain germany macedonia all over the place really before it was finally stationed on the island of britain the legion was present during bodica's rebellion in 61 ce where it suffered a disastrous defeat against her afterwards the legion was reinforced but the string of bad luck continued when

in the year 82 ce the roman general agricula had them invade caledonia a mythical and legendary place of wonder and magic known today by the name of scotland long story short the caledonians nearly destroyed the legion in a surprise nighttime attack but the men fought them off and later won a resounding victory at the battle of mons grappy with yet another victory under their belts the men of the 9th returned to roman territory where they promptly disappeared from the historical record and that's really it we have no idea what happened to them after agricola's invasion

there is one stone tablet which states that the ninth were present at york rebuilding a fort in the year 108. after that they're just not mentioned ever again there are inscriptions of them afterwards that were found in the netherlands but some scholars argue that these were just detachments of the ninth rather than the entire legion itself so what happened to them the most dramatic telling is that the ninth marched once more into the caledonian frontier where it was never heard from again this theory of annihilation in northern britain was thought to be supported by the

discovery of a damaged roman eagle sculpture in the town of solchester which was believed to possibly be the eagle standard of the ninth legion unfortunately we have to do our due diligence and let you viewers know that some archaeologists think that this eagle is just scrap metal and has nothing to do with the ninth legion stupid historians taking the fun out of absolutely everything other theories for what happened to the knights include destruction in judea during the second jewish revolt against the romans 132-135 while yet another offers that the ninth was destroyed by the parthians

during the reign of marx aurelius but these theories are not airtight and there's a lack of evidence that the ninth was even in the eastern part of the empire during these two time periods whatever the case we know for a fact that around the year 200 ce the ninth legion did not exist as it is not included in two independent but identical lists of the 33 existing legions of the time so for now at least what ultimately became of the ninth legion is just lost to history as one historian so sickly put it further evidence

is needed before more can be said our last entry in the video today takes us to south america into the country of peru in 1553 a spanish conquistador published a book that described a set of trail markers in southern peru high on an arid plateau in the nazca desert although they were visible from nearby hills it wasn't until the 20th century that airplane pilots flew over them and people realized that they were far more than just trail markers the nazca lines are a group of huge geoglyphs created somewhere between 500 bce and 500 ce that's

a big range but given the lack of written records for andean cultures it's just our best guess the vast majority of the lines are simple geometric shapes but many of the glyphs depict various designs of plants and animals they're quite aesthetically pleasing on their own but what's even more impressive with these designs is how they were created and how they did it is going to shock you they were created quite simply by drawing lines in the sand and exposing different coloured sand underneath and i know what you're thinking simon that's lame what's the big deal

about these sand lines and first of all viewer you're lame just kidding we love you especially since you thought this far along in a video second what's absolutely amazing about these lines is that even though they're nothing more than drawings on the ground they've existed for more than a thousand years at the earliest that's insane and that's insane because there are barely buildings that last that long the second secret behind the preservation is the incredibly stable climate of the plateau that they're located on there's no wind no rain no natural erosion walking here is like

walking on the moon your footprints will be there basically forever in fact if you want to visit the nazca lines in person you will be required by the guides to put on special shoes to ensure that you don't mess up the delicate ground as we said before some of these inscriptions are absolutely enormous many of them made from one continuous line with the largest one around 370 meters long what that means is that these weren't created by some bored guy with nothing better to do probably i mean stranger things have happened it's more likely that

the creation of these lines was an organized effort by a large group of people using a lot of maths which begs the question well why did they do it why create these glyphs and why make them so large the point that nobody even knew where they were until the invention of the airplane and look you know the drill by now we just don't know for sure in general this is such a disappointing video for people who want answers but then why did you click on this video in general scholars believe that there's a religious significance

behind the nazca lines beyond that vague assertion however there really is no way to tell because of the aforementioned lack of written records some have hypothesized that they were created to be seen by deities in the sky others believe astronomy and constellations may have played a role which considering the existence of the mayans would not be implausible still others have posited that they may have even served as a kind of calendar for agricultural purposes there are several more outlandish theories and explanations regarding the nazca lines but honestly they're just really cool to look at i

mean check out this hummingbird it's pretty awesome so there you have it five ancient mysteries that we haven't yet been able to solve while no doubt some of these like the nazca lines will remain mysteries for the foreseeable future historians are working on these there has been an incredible amount of progress made over just the last 20 years in regard to events like the bronze age collapse even as we speak historians are no doubt making progress and piecing together the story of how we got here and perhaps very soon this list will have to be

updated until then thanks for watching remember to like comment subscribe thus spoke zoroaster [Music] you