Deep under the waves, the ocean is not just a dark place. The underwater landscapes hold ancient events, mysterious animal behavior, and vast gardens of glass and octopuses.

Each contributes new facts and riddles to this incredible aquatic world. However, the ocean also has a scary side—from wrecking the weather on land to blowing giant holes in the seafloor and countries.

10 The Loudest Fish

One can be forgiven for not associating fish with noise. More often than not, they are mute. One species, however, can be very vocal during reproduction. The Gulf corvina is a large, silver fish about the size of a snowboard.

During spring, when the tides and lunar phases are perfect, shoals migrate to the Colorado River Delta. The event is an unforgettable one and worth seeing. When corvinas gather, they pack together in a sheet that can span for miles.

In 2014, scientists followed the spawning shoal and used underwater equipment to record their sounds. The loudest noise captured during the study hit a deafening 150 decibels, which is a record among fish.

Additionally, the sound also rated among the loudest ever recorded underwater—and very capable of damaging the hearing of other creatures, including sea mammals. Researchers believe that male corvinas are responsible for the chorus. Similar to frogs and crickets, the boys produce a throaty croak to attract females.^[1]

9 Return Of The Blob

“The blob” is not as adorable as it sounds. This massive anomaly—a patch of hot water in the Northeast Pacific—affects the weather in extreme ways. The blob was blamed for the persistent California drought (2013–2015), Seattle’s hottest year (2015), and the freakish polar vortex intrusions of two winters (2013–2014 and 2014–2015).

In 2018, the return of the oceanic hot spot was caused by unusually warm weather in Alaska during the fall. Though the blob is famously crabby, it remains hard to predict the phenomenon’s moods.

When it made another appearance in 2016, the spot showed many signs of troubling times ahead but faded away before anything could go wrong. The latest manifestation leans toward weakening in the same way, but even the experts admit that nothing is certain when it comes to the blob.

Either way, Alaska has already suffered notable damage. The southeastern rain forest is in the grip of a persistent drought, and snowfall showed a record delay.^[2]

8 Rectangular Iceberg

In 2018, an unusual photo turned an iceberg into a social media star. A far cry from the usual mountain-shaped behemoths, this icy wonder was almost perfectly rectangular and flat.

As it turns out, this shape is not unknown to scientists. Called “tabular icebergs,” they form during calving (when pieces dislodge from a parent iceberg). The rectangles commonly occur after an ice shelf extends too far and then breaks off at the tip. This gives them a geometric shape.^[3]

A whopping 90 percent of the tabular iceberg remains hidden underwater. This unseen part is usually perfectly angular, too. In this case, the sheet came from the Larsen C ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula.

Even though these floating tabletops are known to science, this one was unusual. For once, it was almost short enough to be a square. The size of the object remains unknown. But judging from the image, it could be as long as 1.6 kilometers (1 mi).

7 Largest Octopus Nursery

Most octopuses live solitary lives. This made the discovery of about 100 nesting together near Costa Rica a sensational find. However, this nursery paled in comparison to another found by accident in 2018.

Off the coast of California, marine biologists steered a remotely operated vehicle at a depth of 3.2 kilometers (2 mi). The goal was to study an underwater volcano called the Davidson Seamount.

As the vehicle turned a corner, it happened across the world’s biggest deep-sea octopus garden. The species was Muusoctopus robustus, and over 1,000 huddled together. Nearly 99 percent were females guarding eggs between the volcano’s cracks.^[4]

Their unprecedented conglomeration is not the only unanswered question about the Davidson group. Researchers do not know why the water appears to shimmer around the octopuses.

One theory suggests that heat is behind the glitter, which could explain why the creatures gathered at Davidson to successfully incubate their eggs. Since the volcano is extinct, the heat could be coming from an unknown source.

6 Canyon That Removes CO₂

The Porcupine Bank Canyon is an underwater trench marking the border of Ireland’s continental shelf. In 2018, an effort was made to map the sheer cliffs and contours. Near the canyon’s edge, the research drone discovered something amazing: The underwater trench removed carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the atmosphere using two species and death.

Porcupine Bank came fringed with corals snacking on dead plankton. While dwelling near the surface, living plankton grow by packing their bodies with CO₂ from the atmosphere. When they die, they sink down into the ocean, taking the CO₂ with them.

In turn, the corals eat the plankton and use that carbon to build their own structures. When the coral perishes, it tumbles deeper into the canyon. Researchers found a massive amount of dead coral inside the canyon, all with CO₂ locked up inside them.^[5]

Sadly, this process cannot stop climate change. But at least, it showed that nature has ways to remove some of the greenhouse gas from the air.

5 Garden Of Glass

When the deepest volcano was found in 2015, it was not just a cone-shaped mountain lower than the rest. It was anything but plain—and very unexpected. A deep-sea submersible was investigating the Mariana Trough in the Pacific Ocean when it reached a depth of 4,500 meters (14,700 ft). There, it encountered an environment straight out of a Gothic novel.

An underwater volcano had released intertwined and blackened lava tendrils, which scientists likened to “a nightmarish garden of glass.” Inside a 4.5-kilometer-deep (3 mi) trench, cold water had rapidly cooled the lava into a glassy substance. The frozen twists and turns covered an area 7.3 kilometers (4.5 mi) long.

The visuals are heart-stopping, but something else turned the discovery into a scientific gem. The deepest volcanic eruption on Earth was also fresh. Only a few months old, the undamaged site can advance knowledge about volcanoes on land, how eruptions affect ocean chemistry, and when different species colonize a lava field.^[6]

4 White Shark Cafe

Once a year, a group of sharks confused biologists. Known as the northeastern Pacific great whites, they normally cruise California’s coast, a region rich with prey.

In December, the sharks journey into the Pacific and stop about halfway to Hawaii. Satellite studies suggested that the place, nicknamed “White Shark Cafe,” was a marine desert without prey. Despite this, the predators gathered in droves and stayed for winter and spring.

In 2018, scientists wanted to know how the sharks survived and why they found the location so attractive. They followed the whites and also tagged a few. When the research boat arrived at the cafe, they found the place teeming with fish, squid, phytoplankton, and jellyfish.^[7]

These critters took daily trips up and down from the depths. The tagged sharks showed that the predators did the same thing. During the day, they hunted up to 450 meters (1,500 ft) down. At night, they kept to shallow dives, about 200 meters (650 ft).

An unusual gender mystery turned up. During April, the males dramatically stepped up their activity to around 140 dives a day. Researchers do not understand why this behavior is displayed by only one gender.

3 Methane Craters

Recently, scientists visited craters lining the seafloor between the archipelago of Svalbard and Norway. First discovered in the 1990s, they were huge but few. Upon arrival, the team was shocked to find hundreds of previously unrecorded holes.

In a single area near one of Svalbard’s islands, the floor was pockmarked with more than 100. Astoundingly, they had been blown from solid bedrock. The sheer force created craters that measured up to 1,000 meters (3,280 ft) in diameter. The culprit was methane gas from the last ice age.

In the past, enormous ice layers kept the trapped methane in place. Once these melted, the gas exploded. The largest pockets blew 12,000 to 15,000 years ago, but some remain intact and could punch large holes south of Svalbard.^[8]

Satellite images showed that pingos, hills with ice cores, preceded most of the craters. Researchers suspect that the Norwegian pingos had frozen gas instead of normal ice and were possibly instrumental in an explosion. Incredibly, once scientists knew what to look for, they found 7,000 gas-filled pingos in thawing permafrost.

2 Lost Volcanic World

In 2018, scientists investigated something that would not raise many eyebrows—the link between the East Australian Current’s nutrient levels and how phytoplankton behaved. Part of this study included mapping the seafloor. A stunning discovery followed—a lost world dominated by dramatic volcanic peaks.

Some were sharp, while others resembled immense plateaus. Smaller cones made up the rest. Located near the east coast of Australia, the extinct volcanoes towered 3 kilometers (1.9 mi) high.

The depth of the valleys likely contributed to how this underwater wonderland avoided detection for so long. The highest parts of the mountains were still 2 kilometers (1.2 mi) below the surface.

Years of research are required to understand a large geographical area that is seen for the first time. However, researchers are positive about one exciting suspicion—this was the spot that helped Australia and Antarctica to separate 30 million years ago.^[9]

The birth of the volcano chain was pivotal to crumble the Earth’s crust in preparation for continental division. The landscape also hosts a breathtaking ecosystem, including a huge pod of at least 60 pilot whales.

1 Brewing Eruption Underneath Japan

Researchers are well aware that an ancient, underwater volcano lurks underneath Japan. The Kikai Caldera is prone to super-eruptions and, in the past, experienced three devastating episodes. The last time was 7,000 years ago. The eruption was one of history’s biggest and destroyed a vast area of the Japanese archipelago.

In 2018, several expeditions using a wide array of equipment all came to the same conclusion. Underneath the Kikai Caldera was a massive lava dome. The giant bubble held over 32 cubic kilometers (8 mi³) of magma.

Analysis showed that the dome contained lava chemically different from the last eruption. This meant that the giant structure was not a leftover of the event that razed the Japanese archipelago but a completely new formation.

For thousands of years, the magma continued building up inside this new reservoir—something scientists view as a preparation for the next super-eruption. Earlier research indicated that the probability of a caldera catastrophe in the next 100 years was about 1 percent.

The discovery of the active dome was not so comforting. Should Kikai erupt, 110 million people would be in danger.^[10]

Throughout the majority of anthropological history, a council of gods and divine forces dictated the affairs of humankind. The following items capture life as it was when the world was mystical and magic still real.

10Scrolls For Tortured Souls

Surveyors in the Serbian city of Kostolac have discovered a forgotten burial ground that harkens the former glory of Viminacium, a Roman outpost from the fourth century BC that at its peak boasted 40,000 inhabitants.

The site belched up a few 2,000-year-old skeletons and also two mystifying leaden amulets. Inside the amulets, they found adorably tiny scrolls of gold and silver. Commonly referred to as “curse tablets,” such spells generally invoke otherworldly powers to affect or afflict the caster’s friends, family, or foes.

The mere presence of magical scrolls suggests the amulet bearers died grisly deaths. Such arcana are buried with the violently murdered, as it’s believed that tortured souls are most likely to encounter the demon middle-men that pass messages on to higher after-worldly offices.

Unfortunately, it’s unlikely these particular scrolls will be deciphered anytime soon. Thanks to an inconvenient confluence of culture, the alphabet is Greek but the language is Aramaic, offering a seemingly uncrackable linguistic nut.

9Galilean Tomb Magic

Tomb robbing has plagued humanity throughout its history of entombing. Hollywood-style booby traps are infeasible, so the denizens of Southern Galilee inscribed curses onto the surfaces at the Beit She’arim necropolis.

Dating to the early centuries AD, the catacombs bear markings in a variety of languages, including Greek, Hebrew, Palmyrene, and Aramaic, the universal lingo of the Near East. Roman and pagan influences are present as well, like the sarcophagi that populate a burial trove known as the Cave of Coffins, a practice borrowed from Romans.

The messages throughout wish the dead an agreeable resurrection, yet another tradition not inherent to Jewish beliefs. Magical spells in Greek adorn the walls and tombs, preferring protection and peace to the reposed and invoking poxes on any who disturb the sacred bones.

8The Catalhoyuk Statuette

Turkey’s most fruitful Neolithic excavation site is Catalhoyuk, the remains of a settlement established circa 7,500 BC and lasting nearly two millennia before its dissolution. It has relinquished a range of archaeological goodies, from the household to the mystical, including a recently discovered 7-inch, marble statuette of a woman.

The first thing you’ll notice is that the Neolithic woman boasts a more substantial figure compared to the female representations of other cultures and times. Similar figurines, though not as large, well-preserved, or delicately crafted, have been found throughout Europe and the Middle East.

Researchers previously ascribed them as fertility goddesses, but a new point of view argues a more terrestrial influence. Instead of goddesses of any kind, the sculptures may immortalize the community’s respected, elderly women.

The egalitarian community here respected its elders as well as the concept of corpulence, because obesity designated a more distinguished and sedentary clerical or bureaucratic career.

7Re-Used Roman Coffin

In spite of a belief in hexes and pervading fear of sacrilege, coffin recycling was apparently A-OK for Roman Britons, according to a grave site at Dorset Quarry in England. Here, archaeologists discovered an open-faced stone sarcophagus, presenting the skeleton of a man who died mysteriously sometime around 1,500–2,000 years ago.

Only 100 or so such burials have popped up across the former Roman Brittania, including 11 others at the quarry, suggesting the individual in question, who died aged 20–30 years old, likely achieved some form of high status to deserve such an unusually dignified send-off.

However, this belief is somewhat at odds with the burial itself. The coffin is too small for its 177-centimeter (5’10″) inhabitant, whose feet have been bent back to accommodate the one-size-too-small coffin. Researchers believe the sarcophagus reused like some grisly pass-me-down.

6Moche Ritual Cat Claws

Renowned temple builders and metalworkers, the agriculturally adept Moche populated northern Peru from AD 100–800. Recently, archaeologists discovered a stupefying pair of metal cat claws in a tomb at the former Moche capital.

The grave, at the Huaca de la Luna (Temple of the Moon) dig site in Trujillo, also surrendered a man’s body and assorted finery, including a mask, bronze earrings, copper scepter, and mixed ceramics. It’s doubtful that the claws served as weaponry and more likely that they carried mystical value, possibly advertising their owner’s nobility or societal influence.

Like their Pan-American neighbors, the Moche enjoyed their own brutal traditions. It’s believed that two warriors squared off in costumed ritual combat, with the winner receiving the costume and claws while the loser earned the privilege of being sacrificed.

5Shamanic Animal Bone Burial

A 12,000-year-old Natufian grave site in Galilee reveals a laborious, six-stage internment process fit for an evil witch.

Of the nearly 30 bodies found inside the burial cave near the Hilazon River, one presumably belonged to a female shaman. It was surrounded by an embarrassment of animal parts, including a bovine tailbone, an eagle wing, a pig leg, a leopard pelvis, 86 tortoise shells, deer bones, and a human foot to boot. The burial process began with oval grave and lined with plaster and stone slabs, upon which several different layers of animal parts and flint tools were layered, followed by the woman’s body, then a final garnish of more bones and a triangular stone slab to seal the grave.

The process is unexpectedly intricate for the period. Though maybe we should be less surprised, because these same Levant-dwelling Natufians were among history’s first civilizations to ditch the nomadic, hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

4The Vestal Virgin Hairdo

Even more so than today, hairstyles in ancient Rome expressed identity. Personal factors such as age, gender, and station in life dictated one’s hairdo, which doubled as a societal nametag to visually designate one’s role and rank.

Most styles are lost forever to history, but at least one has been revived courtesy of self-proclaimed hair-chaeologist Janet Stephens. Inspired by Roman busts in museums, Stephens spent seven years studying a style known as the seni crines, a Roman staple that consisted of six braids.

The seni crines was the notorious ‘do that adorned the crowns of Rome’s famed vestal virgins, the celibate devotees of the hearth goddess Vesta, and spiritual tenders of the eternal Roman flame.

3Medusa Good-Luck Charm

The image of Medusa, the serpent-haired Gorgon with a petrifying gaze, is synonymous with evildoing and general villainy. But it wasn’t always so, and some even regarded Medusa as a harbinger of good luck.

Like the inhabitants of Antiochia ad Cragum, a first-century Roman city in southern Turkey that hosted the spectrum of Roman conveniences, including an organized, colonnaded street grid, bathhouses, shops, and a rich artistic culture. Within the remnants of the ruined outpost, archaeologists discovered a marble Medusa head.

The decoration served as a Pagan apotropaic charm, intended to ward off evil and imbue the settlement with divine protectorship. Myriad similar sculptures adorned the city, though were destroyed by the Christians who smashed a majority of the Pagan iconography to bits.

2Monument To The River God

Ancient life was ruled by a compulsion to appease the gods, who communicated with the mortal world through various mediums. So when the river god Harpasos appeared to Flavius Ouliades in a dream almost 2,000 years ago, it was like a direct message from the heavens.

To commemorate the apparition Ouliades erected a marble shrine next to the AkCay River in southeastern Turkey, hoping to invoke Harpasos’s blessing for a fruitful harvest and flood-free season.

According to researchers, the scene depicted might portray a particular traditional myth: Hercules’s son, Bargasos, defeating a maleficent river monster in hopes of summoning the riparian deity. Alternatively, the image may pay tribute to divine hero Hercules himself, commemorating his slaying of the many-headed hydra.

1Egyptian Spells Of Manipulation

The ancient Egyptian arsenal of magic contained invocations for every terrestrial desire, especially in the arena of love. Spells ranged from the hopeful to the overtly evil, as in the case of two recently deciphered papyri from Oxyrhynchus.

Written in Greek some 1,800 years ago by an unknown mage, both spells promise varying levels of mind control. One spell claims to subjugate its male victim to the whims of the wielder, while the other spell is female-specific, capable of “burning a woman’s heart” until she falls in love with the caster.

The one-size-fits-all spells are open-ended, written to be wielded when and where the occasion strikes. The love-sick caster only needs to insert a name and Bam! Their beloved is now cursed with debilitating fits of passions.

Every year, our knowledge of the past improves a little bit. 2016 has been no different. Scientists have made several discoveries and revelations which have helped us better understand (and, in some cases, drastically altered) our history.

10 Ancient Chinese Beer

We’ve known for a while that the ancient Chinese enjoyed a drink due to evidence of fermented beverages derived from rice found at a 9,000-year-old site in the Henan Province. However, in 2016, we learned that the Chinese were also beer lovers. Archaeologists excavating the Shaanxi Province found beer-making equipment dating to 3400–2900 BC.

This marks the first direct evidence of beer being made on-site in China. Residue found in the vessels also revealed the ingredients of the ancient beer, including broomcorn millet, lily, a grain called Job’s tears, and barley.

The presence of barley was especially surprising as it pushed back the arrival of the crop in China by 1,000 years. According to current evidence, the ancient Chinese used barley for beer centuries before using it for food.

9 A Man And His Dog

Dogs were man’s best friend 7,000 years ago according to evidence found at Blick Mead near Stonehenge. Archaeologist David Jacques found a dog’s tooth that belonged to an animal originally from an area known today as the Vale of York.

The dog served as a companion to a Mesolithic hunter-gatherer. The two undertook a 400-kilometer (250 mi) trip from York to Wiltshire which is now considered the oldest known journey in British history. Jacques argued that the dog was domesticated, part of a human tribe, and most likely used for hunting.

Durham University later confirmed his findings through isotope analysis performed on the tooth enamel. It showed that the dog drank from water in the Vale of York area. They also believe that the dog would have looked similar to a modern Alsatian with wolflike features.

8 King Tut’s Extraterrestrial Dagger

In mid-2016, scientists were able to wrap up a mystery that had been puzzling archaeologists since Howard Carter found King Tutankhamen’s tomb in 1922. Among the many items buried with the young pharaoh was a dagger made of iron. This was unusual as ironwork in Egypt 3,300 years ago was incredibly rare and the dagger had not rusted.

An examination with an X-ray fluorescence spectrometer revealed that the metal used for the dagger was of extraterrestrial origin. The high levels of cobalt and nickel matched that of known meteorites recovered from the Red Sea.

Another iron artifact from ancient Egypt was tested in 2013 and was also made using meteorite fragments. Archaeologists suspected this outcome due to ancient texts referencing “iron of the sky.” Now they believe that other items recovered from the pharaoh’s tomb were also made using meteorite iron.

7 Greek Bureaucracy

The ancient city of Teos in modern-day Turkey has been an archaeological boon as hundreds of steles were recovered from the site. One remarkably intact stele features 58 legible lines that represent a 2,200-year-old rental agreement. It shows us that bureaucracy was just as much a part of ancient Greek society as it is today.

The document describes a group of gymnasium students who inherited a piece of land (complete with buildings, altar, and slaves) and then rented it at auction. The official document also mentions a guarantor (in this case, the renter’s father) and witnesses from the city’s administration.

The owners retained the privilege of using the land three days a year as well as annual inspections to ensure that the renters didn’t damage the property. In fact, half the agreement deals with various punishments for damages or not paying rent on time.

6 Neanderthal STDs

A few years ago when scientists mapped out the human genome, they were surprised to discover that we have about 4 percent Neanderthal DNA due to cross-species breeding. However, our ancestors got something else from their Neanderthal cousins—a primitive version of the human papillomavirus (HPV).

Through statistical modeling, scientists were able to recreate the evolutionary steps of the HPV16 virus. When modern humans and Neanderthals split into different species, the virus also split into two distinct strains.

Initially, the HPV16A virus was only carried by Neanderthals and Denisovans. When humans migrated out of Africa, they only carried the B, C, and D strains.

However, when they reached Europe and Asia and started having sex with Neanderthals, they gained the HPV16A strain, too. Further study into our genetic history could explain why the virus can cause cancer in some people but clear right up for others.

5 Unearthing A Dead Language

Even though it hasn’t been used for almost 2,000 years, Etruscan remains one of the most intriguing dead languages. It had a large influence on Latin which, in turn, influenced many European languages we still speak today. However, samples of Etruscan texts of any significant length are few and far between. Even so, in 2016, archaeologists uncovered a 1.2-meter (4 ft) stele inscribed in Etruscan.

The 2,500-year-old stone slab was found while excavating a temple in Tuscany. It was well-preserved because it was reused as a foundation for the temple. Coincidentally, one other major Etruscan artifact, the Linen Book of Zagreb, also was preserved by being repurposed as mummy wrappings.

Despite its condition, the stele still featured chips and abrasions. So scholars want to clean and preserve it thoroughly before attempting to read it. They suspect that the text is religious and will provide us with new insight into the Etruscan religion.

4 The Elusive Higgs Bison

This year, a new animal species was discovered using a unique method—ancient cave art. Researchers studied paintings from caves in Lascaux and Pergouset and noticed several changes between the bison painted 20,000 years ago and the ones painted 5,000 years later. The changes included different body types and different horns.

While the earlier paintings were reminiscent of the steppe bison, scientists believed that the newer drawings depicted an entirely different species. To confirm their hypothesis, they examined DNA evidence from bison bones and teeth that were recovered from numerous sites across Europe.

These bones and teeth originated between 22,000 and 12,000 years ago. The scientists concluded that, indeed, the later bison was a new species descending from the steppe bison and the aurochs.

The new revelation ends a decade of confusion regarding the sequencing of the steppe bison genome which sometimes had sections out of place. The newly found elusive species has been named the Higgs bison.

3 First Right-Handed People

A new study in the Journal of Human Evolution gives proof of the first recorded instance of right-handedness in hominins—and it’s not for Homo sapiens. Paleoanthropologist David Frayer has found evidence of this phenomenon in Homo habilis from 1.8 million years ago.

The study looked at teeth fossils from Homo habilis and found scrapes that were indicative of right-handed tool use. Frayer and his team tried to recreate the hominins’ behavior. Modern subjects would hold meat with their mouths and left hands while using their right hands to tear away flesh using stone tools. Scratches left on mouth guards were similar to those found on the fossils.

While not everyone agrees with Frayer’s methods, more significant here is the mere existence of hand dominance in Homo habilis. This trait is still poorly understood in modern humans, and it seems to be much older than we previously thought. Further study might help to explain this phenomenon and provide new insight into the evolution of the human brain.

2 Humanity’s New Mystery Ancestor

New discoveries made on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi suggest that it might have once been inhabited by an as-yet-undetermined hominin. Archaeologists have uncovered hundreds of stone tools which are at least 118,000 years old. However, all evidence indicates that modern humans first set foot on the island between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago.

The existence of a new species of hominin is very plausible. Sulawesi is located near the island of Flores. In 2003, archaeologists found another hominin there called Homo floresiensis (the so-called “hobbits”) which evolved independently on the island before going extinct 50,000 years ago.

Perhaps it is a new ancestor in our evolutionary timeline. Or maybe Homo floresiensis somehow made its way to the neighboring island. Or humans reached Sulawesi much earlier than we think. Archaeologists are now digging for fossils that would enable them to know for sure.

1 The Cannabis Road

Current thinking says that ancient China was the place where cannabis was first used and perhaps cultivated as a crop around 10,000 years ago. However, the Free University of Berlin recently compiled a database of all available archaeological evidence of cannabis that showed Eastern Europe and Japan developing cannabis usage around the same time as China.

Moreover, cannabis use throughout Western Eurasia remains consistent throughout the years while the record is spotty in China until it intensifies in the Bronze Age. Scholars speculate that cannabis had become a tradable commodity by this time and spread throughout Eurasia using a trade network akin to the iconic Silk Road.

The hypothesis is backed up by other crops like wheat that also became more widely available around the same time. Scholars even identified the nomadic Yamnaya culture as the possible ancient dope dealers who, according to DNA studies, traveled this route at that time.

Every day, the oceans crash upon countless beaches. More often than not, oddities arrive between the usual flotsam of shells. There is always the mandatory monster’s carcass and real species so surprising that few can recognize them.

The most bizarre shoreline finds are usually man-made. From large pieces of foreign harbors to hundreds of Garfields, beachcombing is the lucky dip of the sea.

10 Enormous Sunfish

In 2019, a couple strolled along a beach in South Australia. When they reached Murray River, something caught their eye. Near the mouth of the river was a huge object. At first, they thought that the weird-looking fish was fake. However, the creature was very real (and very dead).

One can understand why they thought it was a hoax. For anyone who has never seen one, sunfish are odd-looking. Their fins sit too close to the tail, and they have a beak and surprised-looking eyes.^[1]

Additionally, this particular fish was enormous and not a local customer. Called the oceanic sunfish, it drifts all across the world but rarely visits South Australia.

Earlier that month, another species beached in California. Known as the hoodwinker sunfish, it solidly smashed the belief that this type only lived in the southern hemisphere. Nearly all species count among the heavyweights of fish, but swimmers have nothing to fear. Sunfish nibble on zooplankton and jellyfish.

9 Ice Tsunamis

North American beaches sometimes meet with walls of ice. Despite their name, ice tsunamis do not move with the speed or devastation of real tidal waves. Technically, when heaps of ice clutter a beach, it is called an ice shove. The frosty phenomenon fringes the shorelines of large lakes, occurring when spring arrives and winds sweep the breaking ice outwards.

Some shoves are not satisfied with staying on the beach. When there is enough ice and strong winds, the stacks can overrun retaining walls and cross roads. A 2001 crush piled ice 4.9 meters (16 ft) high on the beach of Alaska’s Chukchi Sea.

The floes also have an interesting effect on large rocks at the bottom of the lake. When the frozen sheets expand and contract suddenly from temperature swings, they maneuver boulders onto the shore. This process forms what is known as ice-push ramparts, and they can measure 1.5 meters (5 ft) across.^[2]

8 Monster Driftwood

In 2010, Phillip Lachman and his daughter walked on the beach in Washington. Lachman, a retired teacher living in the nearby community of La Push, also had his camera with him. Which was a good thing as they found a pretty impressive piece of driftwood. When they come in this size, they are called drift logs.

The tree was never measured, but it dwarfed Lachman’s daughter who posed to have her picture taken next to it—and she was 183 centimeters (6’0″) tall. A park official from the surrounding Olympic National Park admitted that the size of the drift log was a rare sight even though the area is known for big forest trees.^[3]

It was probably felled by a winter storm before bobbing down a river and ending up on the shore. It was not a simple matter of floating into place. Researchers estimated that exceptionally powerful winds had to have been present to push this monster ashore. The tree’s species could not be identified, but it was probably a Douglas fir, a Sitka spruce, or a Western red cedar.

7 Rare Jellies

Holly Horner was a professional wildlife photographer. For 45 years, she walked the beach in Brigantine, New Jersey. In 2018, she encountered something that matched nothing in her experience. It was a bright turquoise creature, round and fringed with feather-like tendrils. It also resembled a jellyfish.

Several washed ashore and caused a sensation among beachgoers. However, scientists have already met the blobs. Called blue buttons, they are not jellyfish but are related to the Portuguese man-of-war instead. A single button hosts a predatory colony working together to stun prey. Luckily for swimmers, they do not have the same horrible sting as their Portuguese cousins.

The odd thing about the New Jersey buttons is that they are not native to the area. Researchers believe that they were happily bobbing about in the Gulf Stream when Hurricane Florence kidnapped them. Unfortunately, most of them likely perished in the following weeks when local temperatures dropped to a level to which they were not accustomed.^[4]

6 The Wolf Island Creature

In 2018, the sea left something on the beach. The creature washed up in Georgia at the Wolf Island National Wildlife Refuge. Jeff Warren found and photographed the remains. After he distributed the images to media outlets, it divided the scientific world in two.

Some supported the notion of an unknown species or a known animal rendered unrecognizable by decomposition. Other marine experts were not satisfied that the thing had ever lived. The “decay” was too neat. There was no flayed skin, damaged extremities, or exposed internal areas. Ergo, the Lochness-like thing was probably a hoax.^[5]

If this was someone’s idea of a joke, they chose the perfect location. The area is the haunt of a mythical creature called the Altamaha-ha Monster. The photographs matched artistic depictions of the animal, but the one thing that could have solved the case—the creature’s body—had vanished.

5 Human Urns

In 2019, a beachcomber took his 14-year-old son, Maarten, with him. They found a funeral urn, the first of three to show up on Katwijk and Noordwijk beaches in the Netherlands. The other two were discovered by a woman and a fisherman, respectively.

The teenager, Maarten, thought the urn might contain drugs. But once he opened the container, the content was clearly human remains. All three urns were marked, which allowed them to be traced back to a crematorium in Germany.

German laws surrounding human remains are very strict. Rarely will permission be given for ashes to remain in a private home or garden. Sea burials are permissible with biodegradable vessels, but the Dutch finds were made from aluminum.

The urns sparked a furious debate about how they ended up where they did. Then a Dutch shipping company came clean. The three urns had been aboard one of their ships. Had things gone according to plan, they would have scattered the ashes at sea. Instead, an employee accidentally dropped the box with the urns and it fell overboard.^[6]

4 Frozen Turtles

Every year in November, a few turtles become stranded in New England. The 2018 batch was far from normal. Hundreds washed ashore. Many were from the critically endangered Kemp’s ridley species. The reptiles had been caught in a cold snap, which was not a good thing for creatures needing warmth to function.

Cape Cod’s beaches counted 219 animals within three days. Only 46 clung to life, while the rest had already died. During one of the three days, the weirdest thing happened.^[7]

On that Thursday, 82 turtles came ashore. Except for one, they were all dead and frozen solid. One researcher noticed that their flippers were in odd positions, almost as if they had been flash-frozen while swimming. The following day, a Friday, temperatures rose slightly and more of the beached turtles were found alive.

3 The French Goop

The English Channel coastline hugs a busy shipping lane. Strange things often float to its beaches, but none matched the greasy balls that arrived in 2017. Hundreds of yellow clumps lined miles of northern France’s beaches. There was a faint whiff of paraffin wax, but paraffin melts in the sun and this goop never did.

Authorities issued a statement that the spongy-looking balls were probably not dangerous. In the same breath, they could not positively say what the objects were made of. Pollution watchdogs were more realistic and warned people not to touch the stuff.^[8]

Considering that tons littered miles of coastline, some beachgoers undoubtedly touched the gunk. Thankfully, no morgue reports were forthcoming. The only clue seemed to be that that fluff balls originated from an oil product. One theory suggested that it was some kind of boat exhaust grease that solidified once it came into contact with the cold seawater.

2 Tons Of Invasive Life

When the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami hit Japan in 2011, a lot of debris got sucked back into the sea. A year later, one such item floated into Oregon. The Japanese dock measured 20 meters (66 ft) long and was encrusted with 100 tons of sea life.

This may sound peachy, but scientists were horrified. There is a huge problem in the area with invasive species, some so aggressive that native creatures cannot compete. Environmentally speaking, the tsunami dock was a ticking bomb. The floating “island” had an astonishing variety of anemones, starfish, urchins, algae, crustaceans, worms, snails, mussels, and much more.

Most had already called the dock home before the tsunami hit. After it was torn from its moorings, the float picked up more hitchhikers at sea. Admirably, the dock’s teeming citizens survived traveling across the open Pacific.

However, they were destroyed to prevent the threat they posed to native species. The threat may still be realized—some could have dropped off the dock earlier and already settled into Oregon’s shores.^[9]

1 Garfield Phones

Garfield the cat is a cartoon icon. During the 1980s, a company created novelty Garfield phones that became very popular. Mysteriously, they started to appear along the coastline of France. The feline flotsam invaded French beaches for decades, long after the phone’s popularity had passed.

In 2019, environmentalists finally found the source. A local man knew the secret all along—only it was not a secret to him. After learning that the rest of humanity considered the washed-up Garfields a mystery, Rene Morvan told his story.^[10]

In the 1980s, he and his brothers had explored a seaside cave. They found a shipping container inside. Among other things, it contained an enormous number of the Garfield phones.

Morvan took the anti-litter organization Ar Viltansou to the site, where they found the plastic cats and the container. Records show that a local storm raged around the time that the Morvan brothers made the discovery. The storm probably knocked the container off a passing ship and crushed it into the cave.

Swamps aren’t just for Hollywood anacondas. They’re perfect history pockets. Their general inaccessibility allows artifacts, bodies, and even cities to await discovery without being damaged or looted. The physical conditions of marshlands can sometimes slow down deterioration, taking snapshots of the past that would otherwise have been lost.

10Swamp Ghost

Months after the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941, US bombers raided the Japanese at Simpson Harbor, Papua New Guinea. One plane made a second run after its bomb bay malfunctioned. Even though it worked the second time, a hot fight ensued between her crew and the enemy. The Flying Fortress managed to not explode in a spectacular fashion, but she never made it back to base. Badly whipped, she belly landed in a deep swamp.

Her crew stumbled to safety a few days later, bringing with them a tale of survival and a fresh dose of malaria. The war bird was only rediscovered in 1972, and its haunting appearance quickly earned her the name “Swamp Ghost.” Roughly three more decades would pass before conservation efforts freed the bomber in 2006. Today, Swamp Ghost enjoys a much better home at the Pacific Aviation Museum Pearl Harbor.

9The Hidden Community

The Great Dismal Swamp of Virginia and North Carolina was once runaway central. Fleeing Native Americans, wanted whites, and escaped slaves saw freedom inside the near-inaccessible environment. They received it for 10 generations. At one point, they numbered in their thousands. Then the elusive inhabitants of the swamp just disappeared.

Artifacts show they were self-sufficient and innovative, building cabins, weapons and tools, even clay pipes. They honored chiefs and followed an Africanized religion. One Dismal Swamp maroon, called Charlie, was later tracked down in Canada. He added that labor was communal and described how they made their own furniture and musical instruments. Why they vanished remains unclear. All archaeological evidence of this survivor community ends after the Civil War. One theory suggests that after the war, they blended back into society as free people.

8Ancient Floor Game

A swamp in Mexico holds an artificial island that is 5,000 years old. Mostly made of discarded clam shells, it grew to such a size that the fisher folk who created it started using it as a food processing station. To prevent the shells from cutting their feet to ribbons, they laid clay floors. Holes in the platforms fit the pattern of wooden racks, perhaps used to dry fish.

The site of Tlacuachero also has other head-scratching holes nobody can fully explain. These oddities are arranged in ovals, are smaller, and dent specific areas of the floors. Decorated clay disks found at Tlacuachero hint that the workers could have played some sort of floor board game. If true, it could be the oldest clue to how the ancients amused themselves in the Americas.

7The Windover Cemetery

In 1982, a peat pond in Florida revealed 168 bodies. They weren’t freakishly preserved like other bog corpses, but about half were found to still have their brains. They’re old. The Windover site was used by a hunter-gatherer community to bury their dead 3,500 years before the Pyramids.

The discovery clarified a few misconceptions about prehistoric people, if only about this bunch. Finely woven shrouds proved they weren’t figures running around in crude animal skins. Some walked this Earth for 70-plus years, and their tools were also incredibly sophisticated. They ate well, didn’t move around like hunter-gatherers usually did, and (unlike most ancient cemeteries) the Windover group had little evidence of violent deaths. If you wanted peace, plenty, and a ripe old age thousands of years ago, this was apparently the place to be.

6Houses On Stilts

Once upon a time, a village of stilt homes perched above water until fire destroyed it. After the settlement collapsed into the river below, it became frozen in time for 3,000 years. When rediscovered in the East Anglian Fens, the site was heralded as historic. Not only are the roundhouses the best preserved Bronze Age homes in Britain, but archaeologists are getting a good look at what their domestic life looked like—and it’s not what they thought.

The wooden huts yielded goods bearing a sophistication never before credited to this era: rich textiles, intricate jewelry, crockery, and a carpentry excellence that included a timber palisade around the houses. Remarkably, even the footprints of the prehistoric villagers remained preserved at the site.

5The Bridge Battle

In a zombie-movie moment, a human arm was found sticking from a riverbank. Soon, more human remains were unearthed in the Tollense Valley, Germany. Their wounds and numbers were horrifying. At the 10 percent mark of the investigation, 130 skeletons were already dug out of the marshy soil. Archaeologists realized that they were standing on an epic battlefield.

Thousands took up arms, and the slain changed the story about Europe’s Bronze Age men. Most researchers favored the idea that they were peaceful and focused on trading. However, this battle unearthed professional fighters and warfare on a scale never before seen in the area. The Tollense skeletons may even be the earliest example of direct conflict between warriors with weapons. The deadly confrontation probably sparked when both sides wanted control of the river’s bridge where the fighting started.

4Istanbul’s True Age

Archaeologists were delighted to discover 30 ships from the Byzantine era in Istanbul. During excavations, they stumbled on an even greater treasure: the city’s real age. At the heart of Istanbul, an ancient swamp revealed a grave that knocked its age back by a whopping 6,000 years.

Previously, the history books pinned Istanbul’s beginnings at around 700 BC. What appeared to be a family burial, two adults, and two kids, dated back to the Neolithic era when people first started to live in permanent locations. Traces of houses and tools nearby proved that there was a settlement, one that was almost certainly the earliest roots of the great Turkish city.

3The Fallen Russians

In 1983, Ilya Prokoviev found boots protruding from a swamp. What turned out to be an accidental discovery of a fallen World War II Russian soldier became a lifelong passion for Prokoviev, a former army officer himself. Together with volunteers, he scours known battlefields for his comrades—four million of them who are still considered missing in action on the Eastern Front. They don’t have to look very hard. The dead are everywhere, sometimes only covered by leaves.

Despite hardships, the diggers are committed. Some have been killed by explosives. Others cannot forget the mass graves that they have seen. All race against looters who strip bodies of their valuables and dignity. But thanks to their ongoing efforts, half a million soldiers have been returned to their families for burial.

2Paestum

During a relaxing swamp stroll, it might come as a surprise to see a huge Greek temple–especially in the middle of mosquito-infested nowhere. Imagine finding three together, all remarkably intact.

This is the last footprint of Paestum, a settlement that once thrived in the south of Naples. Dedicated to the goddesses Hera and Athena, they were constructed in the sixth and fifth centuries BC by the Greeks. The sacred sites were the only buildings to survive when the Romans destroyed the colony of Poseidonia and replaced it with their own city, Paestum. The next few centuries saw Paestum slide into obscurity and malarial marshes before being abandoned.

Rediscovered in the 18th century, the temples changed architectural history. At first considered primitive against later Roman styles, scholars now promote Paestum as evidence that the Greek Dorian style conceived classical Roman architecture.

1Atlantis In Spain

Atlantis has been found everywhere, so why not in a marsh, too?

In yet another claim that the mythical city is real, a team of US archaeologists and geologists point to southern Spain. Their high tech surveillance show that something is definitely there. Submerged in the marshlands of the Dona Ana Park, it’s big and multi-ringed just like the ancient metropolis. It’s not just the shape of the strange formation that makes this particular Atlantis more credible to the researchers. About 150 miles away, they found what they called “memorial cities” and believe the ruins are remnants of Atlantean hands who built them in the image of their lost home.

The story of France goes back thousands of years. Unsurprisingly, the region is packed with ancient remains. Certain villages contain secret codes, weird graveyards lurk inside kindergartens, and some towns even turn out to be lost cities.

History also has a dark side. From shackled bodies to massacres, the violence of ancient France left a disturbing trail throughout the archaeological record.

10 Oldest Muslim Graves

In 2016, excavations in Nimes uncovered around 20 graves. Found at Roman ruins, the graves were too disorderly to be a cemetery. Further investigation also found three unexpected individuals. Several clues suggested that the medieval burials were Muslim. Their faces were turned toward Mecca, and the socket shape of their tombs matched other Muslim graves.

Historically, the medieval Arab-Islamic conquest left traces around the Mediterranean and the Iberian Peninsula. In France itself, Muslim graves had already been found at Marseille and Montpellier.

However, those burials dated to the 12th and 13th centuries, respectively, while the graves at Nimes were dug between the seventh and ninth centuries. This made them the oldest Muslim graves in France.

As surprising as the burials were, their presence was not entirely out of place. Records showed that Muslims were in France during that time. As to the identities of the three men, DNA tests suggested that they were Berbers, a North African group that had adopted the Arab religion during the early Middle Ages.^[1]

9 The Kindergarten Bones

In 2006, playtime for a group of toddlers took a gruesome turn. An adult noticed that the kids were pulling human bones from the ground and alerted the police.

It turned out that the kindergarten in the town of Saint-Laurent-Medoc was sitting on an ancient burial mound. Archaeologists identified 30 skeletons that likely belonged to a Bronze Age group called the Bell-Beaker culture.

A recent study reviewed the so-called Le Tumulus des Sables burial mound and found an extraordinary mystery. For reasons unknown, people returned to the mound for 2,000 years (3600 BC to 1250 BC) to bury their dead. Archaeologists cannot understand why the shallow, unadorned site remained in use for so long.^[2]

The analysis also showed that only six individuals were from the Bell-Beaker culture. Unexpectedly, they appeared to have been born as locals. Most Bell-Beaker remains indicate a people constantly on the move throughout Europe.

Another oddity was their diet. Dental chemicals showed that they ate no fish or seafood despite the region’s proximity to estuaries, rivers, and the Atlantic Ocean.

8 Shackled Skeletons

In 2014, researchers returned to a cemetery they had found a year earlier. The necropolis was constructed centuries ago by the Romans near the town of Saintes.

The team uncovered hundreds of graves, including several individuals who were in chains. They were not just temporarily cuffed, either. Three men had iron shackles fused permanently around their ankles.

Another adult, whose gender could not be determined, wore a metal “bondage collar.” This type of restraint resembled a large ring fastened around the neck. Sadly, the body of a child showed similar treatment. The youngster had been buried with a restraint around the wrist.^[3]

No grave goods accompanied the shackled skeletons, suggesting that their social status must have been low in life. Although nothing is known about them, they were likely kept as slaves by the Romans during the second century AD.

7 The Arago Tooth

In 2015, Valentin Loescher volunteered at an archaeological dig. The 20-year-old was assigned to Arago cave in southwestern France. The site had already produced the famous Tautavel man, a Neanderthal ancestor who died around 450,000 years ago.

While brushing away dirt, Loescher found a large human tooth. A single snapper sounds like a worthless find, but it is immensely useful. A fossil tooth’s wear and tear can reveal things about a person’s diet and health. Teeth also contain DNA, which can add genetic information like gender and ethnicity.

While future studies could paint the profile of the person who lost the tooth, dating tests showed that it was around 560,000 years old. That alone made it a major discovery. Not only did it predate Tautavel man by over 100,000 years but it also could reveal more about somebody who lived during a time that left few human traces in Europe.^[4]

6 The Aurochs Slab

There are many ancient rock shelters in France. In 2012, archaeologists applied their craft in a shelter located in the southwestern part of the country. While investigating the cave, they found a block of limestone on the floor. When they turned the piece over, it showed what could be among Europe’s oldest art.

Around 38,000 years ago, an artist drew the now-extinct cattle called aurochs. The person also added dots numbering in the dozens. The decision to dig at the cave, called Abri Blanchard, was based on the fact that the region—and the shelter itself—had already produced carved slabs and art in the past.

Abri Blanchard would have been a winter shelter for the first Homo sapiens who arrived in Europe. Known as the Aurignacians, one of them would also have created the dotty aurochs. While similarly aligned spots are known from other Aurignacian artifacts, researchers called the mix of an animal figure with the geometric decorations “exceptional.”^[5]

5 The Hidden Fossil

Near the town of Toulouse, a farmer found something unusual in 2014. The enormous skull resembled that of an elephant, but instead of two tusks, the fossil had four. Fearing that the discovery would cause his land to be trampled by amateur fossil hunters, he decided to keep it a secret.

However, a few years later, he approached the town’s Natural History Museum. The delighted staff identified the fossil as Gomphotherium pyrenaicum, an elephant relative that bore the usual two tusks with an additional pair curving out of the lower jaw.

This species is painfully rare in the fossil record and known only from tusks found 150 years ago in the same region. The creatures, which roamed Toulouse around 12 million years ago, were faceless until this skull popped up. This made the fossil priceless to researchers. For the first time in millennia, the species had a face again.^[6]

4 The Secret Code

In northwest France is a village named Plougastel-Daoulas. A few years ago, somebody walked on a nearby beach and found a rock with carvings. The symbols included a sailing vessel and a heart. The boulder also carried the capital letters “ROC AR B . . . DRE AR GRIO SE EVELOH AR VIRIONES BAOAVEL . . . R I OBBIIE: BRISBVILAR . . . FROIK . . . AL.”

Some letters were not clear enough to read. But overall, nothing made sense.

The facts are sparse. Around 230 years ago, somebody chiseled the marks, which are only visible during low tide. The age was determined from the dates 1786 and 1787, both of which were clearly inscribed into the rock.

Around that time, artillery batteries were being constructed to protect a local fort. However, it remains unclear whether there is a link between the builders and the puzzle. In 2019, the village offered 2,000 euros ($2,240) to anyone who could decipher the inscription.^[7]

3 The Body Pit

In 2012, archaeologists stumbled upon 60 silos, or pits dug in the ground. Situated near Bergheim, a French village near Germany’s border, one pit was horrific. Stuffed with human remains, the nearly 6,000-year-old silo contained amputated arms, fingers, hands, and seven bodies.

Whatever brutal event transpired, children were not spared. One arm was hacked off a child aged between 12 and 16. Four of the bodies were those of children, and another belonged to a small infant barely a year old.

A middle-aged man had a particularly violent end. His arm was cut off, and he had suffered several blows, including a vicious swipe to the head that probably killed him. The man’s remains were at the bottom of the 2-meter-deep (6.5 ft) pit.^[8]

At the top, things looked a little different. Centuries after the slaughter, it appeared that the silo was used again as a grave. A woman was interred, but unlike the rest, her body showed no signs of violence. Researchers speculated that the Stone Age group was punished for some transgression or died during warfare.

2 A Fire-Preserved Neighborhood

In 2017, a suburb in Sainte-Colombe was earmarked for a new housing complex. The standard practice called for archaeologists to survey the area first, and what they found was astounding.

As excavations continued, a Roman neighborhood from the first century AD revealed itself. There were 7,000 square meters (75,000 ft²) of houses, artifacts, shops, mosaics, the largest Roman market square discovered in France, a warehouse, a temple, and what could have been a school of philosophy.

It was so well-preserved that the site quickly earned the nickname of “Little Pompeii.” The neighborhood was used for at least 300 years, during which the residents faced two great fires.

The first occurred during the second century AD, but another from the third century killed the settlement. It was so catastrophic that families fled, leaving almost everything behind. However, there was a silver lining—for researchers, at least. The extreme heat of the fires was the thing that preserved the site so well.^[9]

1 A Lost City

The city of Ucetia was known only from an inscription found in Nimes, another ancient city in France. The name “Ucetia” was listed on a stela along with 11 other Roman settlements in the region.

For some time, researchers suggested that Ucetia was modern-day Uzes, a town north of Nimes. In 2016, plans to erect a boarding school at Uzes prompted archaeologists to sweep the area. Fearing that new buildings could forever cover the lost city, excavations began in earnest. Sure enough, they found Ucetia.

By the 2017 excavation season, the area uncovered had reached 4,000 square meters (43,056 ft²) and revealed immense structures. Ucetia’s origins were thousands of years old. The oldest buildings dated to over 2,000 years ago, well before the Romans conquered France.^[10]

The city also showed signs of activity as recently as the Middle Ages (seventh century). Mysteriously, it was temporarily abandoned between the third and fourth centuries. But the most surprising find was floor mosaics done in a style thought to have been invented about 200 years later during the first century AD.

Once home to the ancient Romans, Italy is a great window into the past. Using archaeological discoveries, the view spans from prehistoric times to just a few centuries ago.

There are hidden chambers, mysterious cave rituals, and possibly even assassinations. More intriguingly, some of Italy’s unique finds are also its strangest—metal streets, fossilized crawling, and even vanilla-flavored rocks.

10 Biggest Fossil Whale

In 2006, a farmer in Matera arrived at a lake and found enormous vertebrae near the shore. It turned out to be the biggest whale fossil ever discovered. The creature was a blue whale, a species still alive today and famous for being the largest animal in existence, past and present.

This individual measured 25.9 meters (85 ft) long, but more surprising was its age. The mammal cruised the seas 1.5 million years ago. This was much earlier than when giant whales supposedly became a thing. Considering that behemoths evolve as such, big whales must have existed far earlier than the Matera blue whale.

There is a debate surrounding baleen whales. Some scientists believe that they became bigger during a short period of time. Others believe that their body size increased gradually.

Since chicken teeth are more abundant than massive whale fossils from the last 2.5 million years, the issue cannot be settled to everyone’s satisfaction. Ever so slightly, the Matera fossil supported the idea that whales started growing bigger and did so gradually millions of years ago.^[1]

9 Italy’s Oldest Olive Oil

Around 20 years ago, archaeologists found pottery shards at Castelluccio, a village in central Italy. The fragments belonged to a jar. After its 400 pieces were reassembled, the vessel was around 1 meter (3.5 ft) tall and looked like an egg.

A 2018 analysis tried to find out what the jar contained and how old the contents were. Using several cutting-edge techniques, the team found signs of linoleic and oleic acid—in other words, olive oil.

This was perhaps not so surprising given Italy’s long love affair with the “liquid gold,” as it is sometimes called. An age test, done with nuclear magnetic resonance, squarely put the oil in prehistory.^[2]

Remarkably, the jar and its contents were 4,000 years old. This showed that the region already produced olive oil during the Bronze Age, a whopping 700 years earlier than previously believed.

8 Nero’s Hidden Chamber

When Nero ruled as the Roman emperor almost 2,000 years ago, he lived an opulent and cruel lifestyle. After his death in AD 68, his palace in Rome, known as the Domus Aurea (“Golden House”), was so luxurious that it even disgusted his successors. It sprawled 300 acres over several hills.

Piece by piece, the Domus Aurea was deliberately obliterated. Some areas were hidden under renovations or filled with sand. One famous piece that was built over became the Colosseum.

In 2019, archaeologists engaged in a restoration project of the Domus Aurea. While working on the Oppian Hill sector, they needed more light. The moment it flooded the room, the team noticed an opening in one corner. It led to a large chamber with a vaulted ceiling and painted walls.

The murals included the god Pan, centaurs, plants, aquatic animals, birds, and a warrior fighting a panther. The so-called Sphinx Room (there was also a sphinx) was filled with dirt. The rubble will not be removed as it could weaken the entire complex. But even half visible, it offered a tantalizing glimpse at a room in which Nero himself might have stood.^[3]

7 A Poisoned Warlord

The Scaligeri dynasty ruled Verona, Italy, for 90 years. The most famous member, Cangrande I della Scala, rose to the throne at age 20 in 1311. Through betrayal, warfare, and politics, he united northern Italy.

At one point, he won the city of Treviso. He rode in victorious and died four days later. His physician was executed shortly afterward, but the reason was never recorded.

Writers of the time claimed that Cangrande’s death resulted from a polluted river where the 38-year-old warlord had quenched his thirst. Rumors of assassinations also floated.

In 2004, his mummified body was exhumed to explain Cangrande’s symptoms of diarrhea, nausea, and fever. His bowels and liver contained toxic levels of digoxin and digitoxin. Both chemicals are produced by a lethal plant called foxglove. Furthermore, foxglove pollen was found in the warlord’s stool samples.^[4]

Time degrades the quantities, which meant that the original amount of poison was likely fatal. It remains impossible to say how Cangrande ingested the toxin or whether it was murder. The executed doctor’s story also remains hazy, but he could have been killed for giving it to Cangrande or failing to save him.

6 First European Defleshing

In ancient times, burial rituals sometimes included defleshing. During this gory task, the deceased’s bones were stripped of all flesh. Although this happened all over the world, no evidence of defleshing had ever been found for prehistoric Europe.

This started to change when human bones turned up in Scaloria Cave in Italy. The bones were found in 1979, but only recently, in 2015, did scientists examine over 2,800 bone fragments belonging to at least 22 people. The latter had lived during Neolithic times around 7,500 years ago.

Cut marks suggested that this was the first ancient European community who defleshed their dead. Given the clean state of the bones and the slight marks, the “cleansing” required minimal effort. This was probably because the bodies were first buried and then exhumed after about a year. By then, most organic materials had decomposed.^[5]

The original burials likely happened outside the cave somewhere. The second ritual placed the bones, together with grave goods, in a large chamber inside Scaloria Cave.

5 The Casentino Baby

In 2009, a 6.3-magnitude earthquake devastated L’Aquila in central Italy. Over 300 people lost their lives, and neighborhoods were severely damaged. Among the affected villages was Casentino. The settlement harbored a historical building—the St. John the Evangelist Church.

The holy site had not escaped unscathed. A part of its floor collapsed, revealing rooms below. They were filled with human remains. Scientists moved in and determined that the skeletons were around 200 years old. A small bundle, dating back to around 1840, contained a mummified baby.

When the parcel was zapped with a radiograph, the child’s gender could not be determined. But two things soon emerged with tragic clarity. The fetus had died when it was around 29 weeks into development or the seventh month of pregnancy. The tiny skeleton had also been clipped apart.^[6]

Its skull had been dissected more than once and removed from the spine. The arms had been severed at the joints and removed from the body. This was not a normal autopsy procedure. Given its age, experts strongly suspect that an embryotomy (a kind of abortion) was performed.

4 A Hidden Settlement

A few years ago, construction workers stumbled onto a religious site. While working near the Apennine Mountains in Italy, they found two temples from the late Roman period (AD 300 to AD 600). The rough terrain of the region made it too dangerous for archaeologists to gather data by plane, but they were desperate to find out about the ruins.

Nobody knew who built the temples, what they were used for, and why the buildings appeared to stand alone in the valley. Between 2013 and 2015, archaeologists enlisted the help of drones. The plucky machines not only flew where no plane had flown before but they also sent back photos that stunned the team.

Computer programs used the images to find ruins below the ground. Appearing on the computer’s screen, the pictures revealed something unexpected—near the temples was an entire settlement. A dense pattern of buildings included storage areas and homes.^[7]

Although researchers got a good understanding of the town’s internal organization, its link to the temples and why the settlement was abandoned remain unanswered.

3 Pompeii’s Iron Streets

The Roman Empire was famous for its paved roads. One of its cities, Pompeii, was just as famous for being destroyed by a volcano in AD 79. The event preserved the settlement, making it a smorgasbord for archaeologists looking for time capsules. Sometimes, these capsules bring surprising details about the past into modern times.

One of them was Pompeii’s metal streets. The lanes were not made of metal. But using a process that remains mysterious, the ancient Romans poured molten iron between the stones to repair them.

This was pure genius. Pompeii was a busy place, and the roads eroded quickly. However, replacing stones with new ones could have closed down important lanes for months. Instead, iron drops found in the city showed that they carried the molten metal, somewhat messily, toward where it was needed.^[8]

Once they arrived at the worn slabs, the workers poured the iron under, between, and above the holes to fill them up. Once the iron cooled, the road was ready to use again.

2 Ancient Cave Explorers

In 2019, around 180 human footprints were analyzed in northern Italy. Discovered inside a cave called Grotta della Basura, the prints revealed that five people had entered it 14,000 years ago. They were two adults, a preteen aged between eight and 11, and two children aged six and three, respectively.

After making it 150 meters (500 ft) into the cave, they arrived at a corridor and fell into a single file. The three-year-old was last in line. The party walked close to the wall until the ceiling lowered and forced them to crawl. The marks left behind from their hands, feet, and knees were the first fossilized signs of human crawling ever found.^[9]

After making it through stalagmites, a pond, and a slope, they paused in a chamber. There, the three children did something unusual. They scooped clay from the ground and smeared it on a stalagmite at different heights. The group then exited the cave.

1 Vanilla Rocks

A cataclysm struck Earth around 250 million years ago. It was so merciless that 90 percent of all species vanished. Scientists call it “the Great Dying” because no other extinction could match the lives lost, not even the disaster that famously removed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

Theories like space impacts, microbes releasing too much methane, and world-destroying volcanic eruptions could not be proven. In 2015, researchers smelled cupcake-scented rocks in northern Italy. This was significant. The same molecule that gives the vanilla plant its flavor—vanillin—also occurs elsewhere in nature. However, in soil, bacteria quickly destroy it.

Finding large amounts of vanillan in rocks dating back to the extinction meant that something had removed the bacteria. It was probably acid because acidifying milk prohibits bacteria and makes vanilla-flavored drinks keep their taste longer.

This supported the volcano theory—that eruptions caused acid rain on a global scale, destroying ecosystems and making survival difficult. Although the discovery helped, researchers still need to find vanillin in other places to confirm that a worldwide deluge of acid rain once took place.^[10]

Caves have served as homes, storage sites, and sacred spaces throughout history. This makes them rich and rewarding hunting grounds for archaeologists. Far from yielding just the occasional odd fossil, caves hold tough-to-crack ancient mysteries, reveal unknown behaviors from the hominid clan, and are sometimes home to the rarest and oldest artifacts. Even legends are found in them.

10 The Rhino Cave Ritual

A cave in Botswana has yielded intriguing artifacts that could have been used in the world’s oldest ritual. First examined in the 1990s, Rhino Cave produced over 100 spearheads in bright colors. Also inside was a python carved from rock. The stone reptile measures 6 meters (20 ft) by 2 meters (6.5 ft) and rests on a crushed wall. Some of the cracks in the cavern were stuffed with quartz chips.

The site clearly held great importance for the San people who used it. The weapon points were delivered, often from a great distance away, and then burned during what researchers believe was python worship practiced around 70,000 years ago, smashing the previous oldest-known rites by 30,000 years. Other scientists feel that more research is needed and even argue that there was no ritual. Yet, throughout the Tsodilo Hills, home to Rhino Cave, rock art shows the San engaged in acts resembling the ceremony. The handling of the spearheads and quartz flakes is previously unknown behavior documented for the first time in Rhino Cave.

9 The Liang Bua Teeth

A case of hobbit murder might be afoot. Ever since the diminutive hominid Homo floresiensis was documented in 2003, scientists have pondered why they swirled down the extinction drain. Now, a toothy find could clinch the case. Two human molars turned up in 2010 and 2011, respectively, in the Liang Bua cave on Flores. This is the same cave where the only known hobbit remains were excavated years before. The Homo sapiens snappers slightly postdate the hobbits’ final bow, which experts claim happened 50,000 years ago.

Humans already lived in Southeast Asia by then, making an overlap of the two species possible. They might even have interbred or competed for food—although the 1-meter-tall (3 ft) hobbits hardly qualified as opponents. Most likely, the humans obliterated their smaller cousins. There is additional evidence that the arrival of hunter-gatherers wiped out more than H. floresiensis. Several animal species also disappeared from the island around the same time.

8 Earliest Winery

The world’s oldest shoe is a perfectly preserved moccasin, despite its 5,500 years. It also led to the world’s earliest winery near the village of Areni. Returning in 2007 to the Armenian cave where the footwear was unearthed, archaeologists found equipment for producing ancient alcohol. There were dried vines, vats for trampling grapes by foot, storage containers for fermenting the juice, and tasting cups. The complete production line is over six millennia old.

The large-scale factory indicates that the grape was domesticated earlier than thought, which is not impossible, considering the location. DNA studies have traced the beginnings of winemaking back to Armenia and surrounding countries. The prehistoric winemakers left their shoes and equipment but no clue as to who they were. Apparently, they kept their dead involved. A cemetery surrounds the site, with drinking vessels around and even inside the graves.

7 Witchcraft Island

An island near Sweden is wrapped with legends of the dark arts. Removing a rock from Bla Jungfrun will guarantee lifelong bad luck, and the island is best avoided on Easter, because that’s when the witches arrive for some Devil worship.

These ancient beliefs may hold a grain of truth. You might not be cursed for life for stealing a stone or witness a holiday witch convention, but some people once took rituals seriously on Bla Jungfrun. Archaeologists visited the uninhabited island in 2014 and were astonished to find that 9,000 years ago, Stone Age ritualistic activity was rife.

People traveled there specifically to partake in these rituals, and two caves in particular were adapted for this purpose. One contains an altar-type construction to perhaps prepare religious offerings. A fireplace lies in the other, beneath a large hollow hacked from one of the walls. The entrance to this cave offers a theater view of below. Researchers speculate that, together, the blazing fire and the hollow being enlarged was an act viewed by audiences for some unknown reason.

6 Cave Of Games

The Promontory culture, forerunner to the Apache and Navajo nations, settled in a cave near Utah’s Great Salt Lake. During excavations in the 1930s and 2010s, an aspect of this mysterious people came to life in magnificent numbers: They loved gambling. Hundreds of gambling aids showed that the Promontory competed with guessing, chance, and physical prowess.

Women’s games consisted mostly of what were essentially dice matches, using split canes marked with burns and playing for low-risk wagers between them. Even so, these were social times, avidly followed by the men, who placed bets. Male games ranged from domestic recreation (such as seeing who could shoot a dart first through a moving hoop) to interactively forging bonds with other tribes.

The Promontory flourished in the late 1200s, while their neighbors faced drought and famine. Gambling while sharing feasts with their neighbors likely created better relations and prevented raids. The rich variety of Promontory games is unmatched in Western North America and could have been the key to their success as a peaceful culture.

5 Hellenistic Petra

The ancient capital of the Nabataeans has a canyon cave complex known as Little Petra, not far from the more well-known Petra. This second site served as a getaway for wealthier citizens. In the main chamber and a connecting compartment awaited a discovery that still shocks scholars since its find in 2007. Wall paintings may not sound like much, but the quality and rarity of these 2,000-year-old Hellenistic scenes shook everyone.

There are no complete artworks bearing this style, leaving almost nothing of the color and composition of the great masterpieces to study. Little Petra’s paintings could change that. Restoration took three years, but what emerged was an exceptional slice of this lost style. Exquisite realism allowed the identification of plants, birds, and insects. Children play flutes, collect fruit, and shoo birds away. The extensive range of colors were made even more luxurious with the addition of gold leaf and glazes. The wall paintings are now considered the best examples of Nabataean art and are the only figurative paintings that survive at Petra.

4 The Lupercal

The Lupercal (or Lupercale) is part of Rome’s intricate past, where legend and history often overlap. It is the city’s most sacred site, since it involves the twin brothers Romulus and Remus. Said to be the founders of Rome, the children were supposedly raised by a she-wolf in a cave known as the Lupercal. In 2007, an Italian team of archaeologists located a cavern 16 meters (52 ft) under the Palatine Hill. Part of it had already collapsed, and the fragility of the site prevented a full-scale excavation, but endoscopes and scanners revealed details about the inside of the grotto.

Decorated with marble and seashells, a round space measures 8 meters (26 ft) high, with a diameter of 7.5 meters (24 ft). The best evidence that this is the Lupercal comes from its location as well as a white eagle insignia within the vault. Emperor Augustus, who died in AD 14, is said to have restored the holy site, situated near his palace, and added such an eagle. Indeed, this grotto lies beneath the ruins of where Augustus once lived.

3 Neanderthal Builders

Neanderthal achievements aren’t bad for a hominid still viewed by many as brainless animals. They produced stone tools, glue, clothing, and jewelry, They used fire and shelters, and there’s evidence that their dead were buried with ritual. Their greatest and most mysterious act came to light in the 1990s. Cave explorers were 300 meters (984 ft) into the Bruniquel cave in France when they stumbled upon strange formations. Almost 400 stalagmites had been used as building material to construct walls. The most extraordinary are two ring-shaped walls, the biggest running 7 meters (23 ft) across and 40 centimters (16 in) high in places.

Building occurred 175,000 years ago, and Neanderthals were the only human branch that lived in Europe during that time. This unique display proves once again that they were more intelligent than is generally accepted. The walls were erected in a place of total darkness, which might explain scorch marks found on the inside, as if hearths burned within. Researchers still don’t know the exact purpose of the stalagmite structures or if building underground was something that Neanderthals normally did.

2 Buddha’s Life

In 2007, an international team archaeologists was restoring murals at a Nepalese monastery and asked the locals about ancient art in the area. The kingdom of Mustang, once a part of Tibet, has managed to keep its Tibetan and Buddhist heritage unscathed throughout history. This interested the team very much. A shepherd recalled something he’d seen as a child and led them to a cave. After scaling a 3,400-meter (11,200 ft) height to reach the site, the researchers received the treat of a lifetime.

Inside the cavern were 55 untouched paintings showing the life of Buddha. The scenes were full of color and were done by skilled artisans showing a strong Indian influence, rather than Tibetan. At the same time that the 12th- to 14th-century works were discovered, another religious treasure, ancient Tibetan manuscripts, were found in nearby caves. It’s possible that the area was a Buddhist school or retreat. The exact location of the paintings is being kept secret to prevent looters from making off with the rare collection.

1 Egypt’s Lost Fleet

Wall carvings discovered at an Egyptian temple in the 19th century showed cargo ships returning from a legendary land called Punt. In 2004, archaeologists found the missing fleet. Eight caves near the Red Sea held the remains of equipment, ships, and a harbor community. Incredibly, the vessels were built to be assembled like puzzles, something nobody had ever done before. From the harbor oasis, Mersa Gawasis, great sea voyages were launched.

When a 20-meter (66 ft) replica was made, the dubious-looking ship was essentially a giant hull without a frame and made from immensely thick wood. Sailing on the Red Sea for weeks, it performed with agility, surfed out a storm, and reached 16 kilometers per hour (10 mph). Perhaps more tantalizing than proving that ancient Egypt was a phenomenal maritime nation is the link between Mersa Gawasis and the mythical Punt. Among the artifacts were stones inscribed with factual-sounding accounts of sailing to Punt.

The harbor was abandoned after four centuries, and everything was sealed up in caves. After 4,000 years, the historic rediscovery includes some of the oldest seafaring ships.

The advent of scanning equipment has been a godsend for scientists. The ability to reveal contents without having to open up fragile artifacts or dig into the ground brings experts closer to the facts than ever before. But as instantly as scans can solve ancient enigmas, they can turn everything into the sort of mess that researchers love to tangle with. From discovering architecture that makes no sense to having artifacts turn out to be something entirely different than previously thought, scans have become an invaluable tool for understanding the real history of the world.

10 The Viking Toolbox

Borgring is a Viking ring fortress, the fifth to be discovered in Denmark. In 2016, a metal detector sounded hopeful while hovering over a clump of soil. Archaeologists took the small, earth-encrusted object they found to a local hospital. Graciously, the medical folks gave permission for their CT scanner to be used, and it revealed one of the most valuable finds ever made at the fort: the remains of a Viking Age toolbox.

Iron was highly prized by the Vikings, and to find such a complete set of tools anywhere in the world is very rare. The wooden box is long gone, thanks to the magic of rot, but the CT scan showed what could be carpenter’s tools. The 14 pieces include what appears to be a drawplate as well as spoon drills. Most require further work to determine their exact nature. Signs of a structural collapse at the gatehouse, where the artifacts were buried 1,000 years ago, hint that the owner was forced to leave the precious tools behind.

9 England’s Lost Roads

A clear sign of Roman conquest, apart from the hordes of soldiers, was well-engineered roads appearing all over the place. Britain in the first century AD was no different. The Romans stamped an imposing network all over the countryside. Stripped of their stones or farmed over, the roads’ disappearance erased what was known of the armies’ travels from one city or town to another.

Some of the ancient highways have come to light. Since 1998, the UK’s Environment Agency has lasered over 72 percent of England’s terrain and has made the scans available to the public.

The project, meant to study flooding and coastlines, has provided a wealth of information for those trying to fill in the gaps. One history hobbyist, David Ratledge, who has spent 50 years sniffing out Roman routes, used the data to find a 17-kilometer (11 mi) stretch of road linking Ribchester to Lancaster. Two other archaeologists also plumbed the Agency’s research and discovered a lost part of a Roman path called the Maiden Way.

8 Healthy Pompeii Victims

When Mount Vesuvius destroyed the city of Pompeii in AD 79, it left a petrified wedge of history behind. Life in the city froze for 1,800 years, providing a smorgasbord for modern researchers. In 2015, they managed to peek inside the iconic casts of citizens and animals found throughout the ruins.

The casts’ exteriors were good for studying faces, what people wore, and sometimes the reaction to their impending death, but scans were needed to investigate the insides. The CAT machine used in the study could only admit remains friendly to a 70-centimeter-wide (28 in) space, which meant that most corpses only had their heads and chests scanned.

An orthodontist looked at the ancient teeth and noted that the people from Pompeii were overall very healthy. Their dental health showed a diet better than most modern eaters, with few sugars and a lot of fruits and veggies. This goes against the popular image of the outrageous food- and wine-gorging banquets held by the Roman elite.

7 How Lucy Died

The 3.18-million-year-old human ancestor called Lucy made waves when she turned up in Ethiopia in 1974. An adult Australopithecus afarensis, Lucy is the oldest upright-walking hominid ever documented. Ever since she was found, scholars have debated fiercely about her preferred environment. Was she an exclusive ground walker, or did she, on occasion, also take a good swing between the branches? How she died might provide the answer.

A high-resolution CT study in 2016 showed that Lucy has several fractures. The pelvis, ribs, knees, ankles, and arm all cracked during an event matching an impact with the ground from a 10-meter (33 ft) height. Since there are no signs of healing, this is likely what killed the famous hominid. While nobody can say for sure, it’s highly possible that she fell out of a tree. Ironically, experts believe Lucy’s evolved ability to walk upright could have made her climbing ability less sure.

6 The Black Sea Flood

Dr. Robert Ballard is no stranger to great discoveries. He found the German battleship Bismarck as well as the Titanic. He may have even found the Biblical flood. The marine scientist was more interested in finding a civilization that had perished during the inundation of the Black Sea than proving that Noah’s boat floated, though.

In 2000, Ballard’s ship used sonar to map a 500-square-kilometer (200 mi²) area near Sinop, Turkey. Flood myths linked to the area include the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Genesis deluge. Video-equipped robots investigated anomalies 90 meters (300 ft) down and found two ancient ships belonging to the unlucky community. Then came stone tools, ceramics, and a foundation measuring 3.7 meters (12 ft) by 7.6 meters (26 ft), complete with a collapsed home and roof structures. More wattle and daub shelters also turned up.

The unknown culture lived next to the Black Sea when it was still a freshwater lake. Geological scars tell of the eventual disaster. Around 7,000 years ago, the Mediterranean Sea is believed to have risen and fed into the lake, rapidly submerging almost 250,000 square kilometers (100,000 mi²) of land.

5 The 1800 Earthquake

When a massive earthquake shook the San Diego area in 1800, its origins remained obscured for 200 years. Despite trying, nobody could identify the fault that bucked. In 2012, scientists renewed the hunt for this mysterious rupture.

The main suspect was the Clark Strand, located within the San Jacinto Fault Zone. Using a light aircraft, the team laser-scanned the geological features along the fault line. This technique allowed them to see the ground contours perfectly, even where they were covered with thick vegetation. To double-check the results, the researchers went old-school and measured the entire thing again, this time on foot.

Comparing the field mission data with the laser results and throwing in some radiocarbon dating, too, they identified a telltale displacement that had moved 4 meters (13 ft) around the time of the 1800 shaker. The size of the shift fits with the San Diego event’s velocity and effectively identifies the Clark Strand as the culprit. Two centuries is the average time that the fault takes to produce another major rumble, which means that the Clark Strand is already overdue.

4 The Triple Pyramid

El Castillo, aka the Temple of Kukulkan, is a monument to weird architecture. Built by the Maya, it stands today as part of the Chichen Itza complex in Mexico. During the 1930s, archaeologists were intrigued to find that a second pyramid nestled within. The structure was about 10 meters (33 ft) shorter than the roughly 30-meter (100 ft) Kukulkan pyramid.

In 2015, it became clear that the whole thing was constructed on a cenote (sinkhole lake). The Maya held such lakes as sacred, which could be why the location was chosen.

Incredibly, a year after that, scanning revealed a third pyramid. Sitting at the heart of the second, it is also 10 meters shorter than the pyramid above it. The pyramids weren’t created at the same time. The baby pyramid was constructed between AD 550 and 800 and the second between 800 and 1000. The visible El Castillo is the newest, as it was completed somewhere between 1050 and 1300.

3 The Hawk Infant

When the Maidstone Museum in England received a hefty donation, staff decided to brush up on their Ancient Civilizations gallery. They wheeled a trove of artifacts over to the Kent Institute of Medicine and Surgery for a CT scan in 2016. Such a noninvasive technique was perfect to inspect the fragile collection without damaging it.

One item was tagged as “A mummified hawk with linen and cartonnage, Ptolemaic period (323 B.C.–30 B.C.).” The minute sarcophagus contained a wrapped mummy up to 2,300 years old. After it was scanned, the results shocked the Institute experts. Instead of a bird of prey, the tiny coffin contained a human fetus that had been miscarried at around 20 weeks’ gestation.

This begs the question of why a child would be passed off as a bird. One fringe theory speculated that it was the love child of a pharaoh, hidden to avoid a scandal. However, the Maidstone Museum pointedly stated that there is little evidence for such a claim.

2 Shakespeare’s Skull

William Shakespeare’s remains haven’t always been treated with respect. Being one of the most revered writers in existence seems to have turned him into a target for fans craving bits of Shakespeare as mementos. In 1879, such a desecration was reported in the UK’s Argosy magazine. The story claimed that the Bard’s head had been removed by trophy hunters during the previous century.

To find out if this was true, the Stratford-upon-Avon church where Shakespeare was buried gave permission for the 400-year-old grave to be scanned in 2016. Using ground-penetrating radar, it soon became obvious that not all was peachy. Buried beneath the church floor, next to his wife, Shakespeare’s nameless tomb wasn’t uniform when the results came back. The head area looked different, almost interfered with, while the rest of his body had no such signatures.

Shakespeare’s grave isn’t allowed to be opened, but researchers believe the radar images back up the story that his skull was stolen.

1 Dome Fields

A 2015 scanning project of the ruin-rich Angkor sites in Cambodia turned up something inexplicable. Archaeologists coined the term “dome field” to describe the mysterious sites. Helicopters with laser equipment scanned the Cambodian jungle, covering some 1,904 square kilometers (735 mi²) when they found strange, earthen mounds. There was nothing random about the heaps; they were arranged in perfect grids. Found within the remains of 1,000-year-old cities, the pointy shapes refuse to yield their secrets.

A ground study and even excavations of the mounds could not determine their purpose. Most of the cities that were scanned belonged to the Khmer Empire, which is credited with archaeological wonders such as the temple of Angkor Wat. One city in particular, Mahendraparvata, appears to have much of its roughly 50-square-kilometer (20 mi²) surface covered with the peculiar grids. They remain one of the most puzzling discoveries to come from the Khmer culture.

When Pompeii was first discovered, wealthy young gentlemen were expected to embark on Europe-wide tours to learn the continent’s history. A visit to Pompeii quickly became a key part of this rite of passage. These gentlemen took their experiences home, where they used their wealth and influence to patronize the Neoclassical movement.

Since it was first excavated in the 1700s, Pompeii has given us thousands of finds, some of which changed our understanding of ancient Roman culture. While this helped us understand the Romans like never before, the discovery of shockingly explicit frescoes and statues offended the sensibilities of the people of the Enlightenment.

They hid many of them away in private collections. These more controversial facets of Pompeii (and Roman culture in general) are still glossed over in classrooms today, but their archaeological importance cannot be denied.

Pompeii has consistently been a source of finds that fundamentally shape our understanding of the Roman world. In 2018 alone, two new discoveries helped to shed light on the daily lives of the Pompeiians. In this list, we’re investigating 10 of the most amazing archaeological discoveries found in Pompeii.

10 Ancient Graffiti

We forget that the Romans produced a lot of writing, especially in comparison to other societies. Most of these texts have sadly been lost now.

But at the time, most public figures would have produced some writing which they hoped would boost their political standing back home. It was this that inspired Julius Caesar to produce a multivolume account of his Conquest of Gaul, which featured many embellishments to make him more appealing as a political leader.

Even among the uneducated classes, politics was a highly emotive issue. Political graffiti was as common as any other type of graffiti on the walls of Roman towns.

In perfectly preserved Pompeii, however, we get to see a much rarer form of Roman street art: the kind that was painted onto walls instead of scratched in with a rock or knife. This kind of graffiti is much more perishable but has survived in Pompeii under meters of ash.

Some political graffiti may have been paid for by the candidates themselves as some of them are very simple: “I ask that you elect [name] as [position]” was a common form of graffiti in Pompeii. Others, though, were more advanced, and one appears to be an attack ad: “All the deadbeats and Macerius ask for Vatia as aedile.”^[1]

Of course, the Romans were more sexually open than many other people in history and their graffiti could be extremely graphic. “I don’t care about your pregnancy, Salvilla; I despise it” and “Romula sucks her man here and everywhere” are two of the less explicit examples of lewd graffiti discovered at Pompeii.

9 The Villa Of The Mysteries

The Villa of the Mysteries (Villa dei Misteri) is a well-preserved old Roman villa that was likely the home of a powerful family. Like most expensive homes of the time, the villa is not located within Pompeii but lies on the road just outside it.

Despite being covered with ash during the Vesuvius eruption, it remains remarkably intact. The majority of its walls and ceilings survived with only minor damage. Most importantly, though, its stunning frescoes are still almost whole, making them some of the best-known examples of Roman painting we have today.

Experts disagree over what the frescoes actually depict. But the most common assumption is that they show a young woman going through the rites of induction to a special secret cult of Dionysus, the god of wine.

Incidentally, a Roman wine press was also discovered at the site. This would have made it easy for the family to make its own alcohol. The rest of the house, which was more than 200 years old by the time of the eruption, featured baths, gardens, shrines, and several large kitchens which, along with the farm outside, would have made it largely self-sustaining.^[2]

When the site was first uncovered in 1909, it was extraordinarily vulnerable to the elements. Within months, the walls and paintings had sustained water damage and the paint was starting to fade.

Early attempts to use wax to protect the surface gave the frescoes an unwanted glossy appearance and, over time, darkened and yellowed the paint. In 2013, however, an extensive program was started with the ambition of restoring and preserving the site. Study and conservation are much less intrusive than they were in the past, and the site is now in much better shape.

8 A Horse Wearing A Harness

In 2018, excavations taking place in some stables outside the Villa of The Mysteries uncovered at least three horses which had been buried by ash from the eruption. A tragic occurrence, but it was also incredibly useful for historians because two of the horses were wearing harnesses. One also wore a saddle.

They may have been harnessed as part of a failed last-minute attempt to flee the volcanic eruptions. Harnesses from Roman times are incredibly rare finds.

As they are so unusual and evidence is generally lacking, discussions continue over how exactly Romans rode horses in both peace and wartime. While the remains are in poor shape, they may in the future help shed some light on precisely what horse-related equipment was available to the average Roman rider at the time and how it was used.^[3]

Interestingly, the horses were discovered as part of a law enforcement investigation led by the Italian police. Operation Artemis was launched in 2014 after thieves stole a Roman fresco. By 2015, the operation had resulted in the arrest of more than 140 suspects across 22 Italian provinces and the recovery of over 2,000 illegally acquired artifacts.

7 Lupanare

The Romans were much more open about sex than we are today. Phallic symbols frequently appeared in both religious and everyday imagery and could be found everywhere from the walls of temples to the city streets.

Brothels were completely legal in ancient Rome. The use of prostitutes was not criticized if people conducted themselves with self-control and were not seen as being overly desperate or addicted to sex. Perhaps most shockingly to us, though, a particular brothel in Pompeii seems to have used lewd frescoes on its main room as a way of advertising what services were available to visitors.^[4]

In much the same way as we can stare at the rotating menu board in McDonald’s as we wait for our order today, those guests who were waiting for a prostitute or a room could view a wide assortment of different sexual services and positions.

The brothel itself, called the Lupanare (“Wolf’s Den”), was a two-story building with 10 rooms and a lavatory which had been built just years before the eruption. It seems to have been the only building in Pompeii that was intended to be a brothel from the start.

In typical Roman fashion, the walls are adorned with over 100 graffiti messages.

6 A Roman Launderette

Many of the poorer urban Romans lived in multistory apartment blocks, the likes of which would not look entirely out of place in our cities today. And just like modern people, the Romans needed a place to wash their clothes.

These places of accommodation were often too small to host the full range of equipment needed for washing clothes back then. As a result, many of these urbanites would have taken their clothes to the local launderette instead.

Archaeologists have restored and opened an old Roman building which was the place where your average Roman brought their clothes to be washed and dried back in the day. The facility, which is now open to the public, featured large baths for washing and a press which would have been used for ironing. The building also contained several stone basins which would have been used for dyeing.

The Romans used urine to clean their clothes because it was both readily available and fairly acidic. As such, the launderette would almost certainly have maintained a large supply of urine collected from the city’s various public toilets. Once the clothes had been washed, they were left on the roof to dry, which no doubt would have created a nasty smell.^[5]

5 A Perfectly Preserved Shrine

Another 2018 discovery, this perfectly preserved shrine was found in one of the previously unexcavated parts of the city. The ash which buried Pompeii protected it from water, air, and sun erosion, keeping the paintings vibrant and fresh.

It’s likely that most of the frescoes across Pompeii looked like this when the city was rediscovered in the 18th century. But the amateur archaeologists of the 1700s didn’t have the knowledge or the tools to prevent the frescoes from weathering over time.

Now, however, we have a chance to look upon a beautiful fresco in all its original glory. The small room features several different paintings, including a shrine flanked by guardian snakes, a hunting scene on a vivid red background, and a man with a dog’s head who might be a Roman interpretation of the Egyptian god Anubis. Elsewhere, the room also contained a pool, marking the house as one of Pompeii’s more expensive properties.^[6]

Perhaps most impressive, though, is the painting of a lifelike peacock which is framed to look as though it’s walking in another part of the shrine’s garden. Since medieval artwork was highly symbolic and rarely resembled the real world, it is often assumed that art as we know it today came about during the Renaissance. Finds like this help to dispel that myth and remind people that the Romans were perfectly capable of producing lifelike art.

4 Varied Food

It is commonly believed that the Roman elite ate a wide range of exotic delicacies while the average man or woman lived on boring bread or grains. Most of us have heard the myth that the “Vomitorium” was a room where the rich Romans would make themselves sick so they could carry on eating.

A wide-ranging survey of 20 shops near one of Pompeii’s gates has revealed a host of new information about the diets of average urban Romans. It seems that wealthier Romans could indeed afford strange, varied foods, the likes of which we would flat out refuse to eat today.

The drain of an eatery contained the remains of imported shellfish, sea urchin, and a giraffe’s bone. The drain also contained traces of spices and other flavorings from places as far away as Indonesia.

However, the study revealed that the diets of everyday Romans could be surprisingly varied, too—at least for those who lived in the city. The average resident of Pompeii lived on a diet somewhat like the Mediterranean diet of today. They consumed mainly lentils, olives, nuts, and fish alongside the occasional portion of salted meat.^[7]

3 The Bread Fresco

While many of the Pompeiian frescoes depict grand events such as religious festivals or great historic battles, some are concerned with more mundane affairs. One of the greatest “everyday” frescoes is called The Sale Of Bread.

Its name is a misnomer because the fresco actually shows a politician in a toga distributing bread to citizens for free. Many Roman sources tell us that politicians would provide gifts to build political support. But this mostly came in the form of hosting gladiator games, which were often politically funded and free for the average person to enter.^[8]

This fresco, though, shows us how political campaigning worked in the Roman world. Much like how politicians will host surgeries and meetings with their constituents today, it was not uncommon for a Roman who aspired to high office to take to the streets with gifts and ideas in an effort to drum up support.

It is also important because it depicts Roman furniture. In the fresco, we can see a wicker basket, a countertop, and some shelves. All these things would never survive into the modern day because they’re made from perishable materials. Such paintings are therefore essential to our understanding of what everyday urban environments looked like for most Romans.

2 The Stabian Baths

The Stabian baths are the oldest baths in Pompeii and some of the earliest Roman baths still standing. First built in 120 BC, they cover over 900 meters (3,000 ft) of ground and contain two different sections—one for men and one for women.

Each section contained several rooms, including cold, warm, and hot bathing rooms. There was also a courtyard, a gymnasium, and a central pool. A block of lavatories was added much later. The women’s section even contained a room full of bronze baths for individual bathing in case a visitor didn’t want to share someone else’s water.

As some of the oldest baths in the Roman Empire, the Stabian baths had few windows and were more poorly lit than the other bathing facilities in the city. Even so, it seems that the baths were still in use when the eruption occurred. By that time, they would have been almost two centuries old.

They are still standing today and, in some places, even retain their original Roman plaster, decorations, and roof. Visitors can still walk their halls today and see everything from the advanced central heating system to the holes in the plaster where renovations were ongoing when the city was destroyed.^[9]

1 The Secret Erotica Museum

Some Roman practices are disturbing to our modern sensibilities and were even more alarming to the Victorian and medieval people who sometimes encountered them. It is rumored that when Count Muzzio Tuttavilla accidentally discovered the ruins of Pompeii in the 1590s, he found sexually explicit frescoes and purposely reburied them, leaving them undiscovered for another century.

Whether or not that is true, shortly after excavation of Pompeii began in earnest in the 1800s, the diggers uncovered frescoes and statues which they believed were indecent, if not outright immoral. Before long, the king of Naples established a secret museum which could only be viewed by men of an upright moral standing.

Many of Pompeii’s more erotic artworks were removed from the site and taken to Naples to be hidden away in this special museum, which quickly became infamous. It was opened for a brief time in the 1860s after Italy was united by Garibaldi and then again in the 1960s.

But it wasn’t permanently opened to the public until 2000. It contains some finds which people would deem questionable even today. These include a whole collection of uncircumcised stone penises and a satyr (half-goat, half-man) mating with a female goat.^[10]