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The long history of mankind is rich in strange and mysterious events.
And in many places on our planet, and to this day, from time to time, so unusual objects and structures are found that they baffle even very venerable scientists.
Some of them eventually turn out to be hoaxes, but quite a few of these artifacts are genuine.
Scientists have to rack their brains (and turn over tons of historical documents) to figure out what it is, after all, and how and why it was made.
And here in front of you are only 10 of these real-life artifacts:
10 The Rat King
In several museums around the world there are very strange exhibits – these are the so-called “rat kings”: several rats fused or tied into a knot with their tails.
In fact, there are not so many cases of detection of such “rat kings” – from 35 to 50. In “bundles” there are from 6-7 to 32 individuals (the largest “nest” of 32 rats was found in a fireplace in an old mill in Buchheim, Germany, in 1828).
The most interesting thing is that no one has ever seen the “rat kings” alive (there is not a single written evidence of this), they are always found dead, and, most often, mummified. And although this phenomenon has been known since the middle of the XNUMXth century, it has not yet been clarified how it turns out that rats get entangled in a terrible living lump.
9. “Reptilians” from Ubaid (Iraq)
In 1918-1919, in Mesopotamia, or rather, on the territory of modern Iraq, archaeologists, excavating the Tell el-Ubeid hill, discovered an interesting ancient culture that preceded the Sumerian and existed from about the XNUMXth to the XNUMXth millennium BC. She was named so – Ubeid.
In addition to the mass of other artifacts, figurines of creatures were found there, in principle, similar to people, but very strange in appearance.
These ceramic “humanoids” had, firstly, broad shoulders (decorated with some tuberculate growths resembling huge warts) and narrow hips, and secondly, their faces turned out to be similar to the muzzles of lizards – elongated, with a wide mouth and wide-spaced narrow eyes .
Where did these “reptilians” come from and who are they (are these the gods of Ubeid?) is still unclear.
8. “Witch’s Bottles” (Europe and US)
Recently, archaeologists and historians from the University of Hertfordshire (Great Britain) turned to the local population with a request to hand over the so-called “witch bottles” found in old houses.
The fact is that quite often these interesting artifacts are unknowingly simply thrown into a landfill. They are usually found in the secluded corners of houses built in the 2014th-15th centuries: in hearths, in the underground, at a far corner or in the yard (and in XNUMX they found one of these clay “bottles”, about XNUMX cm high, at the site of an old battle in Nottinghamshire).
According to the assumptions of scientists, these ceramic vessels were intended to protect against dark forces (in other words, from witches). They contain fragments of needles and pins, nails, as well as cuttings of nails, hair and even urine remains. Apparently, these things, according to medieval Englishmen, were supposed to protect them from witches’ spells. At the moment, about 200 such “witch bottles” have already been found.
7. Big Zayatsky Labyrinth (Russia)
And these ancient artifacts are located on our Russian Solovetsky Islands (in the Arkhangelsk region).
In total, 35 labyrinths were discovered here, created back in the Neolithic era (3 thousand years BC).
A significant part of them is located on the Big Zayatsky Island, on the low Signal Hill.
14 structures from 6 to 25 meters in diameter (in the form of a single or double spiral) are built from small boulders from 30 to 40 cm in height.
(By the way, in addition to labyrinths, here, on Solovki, there are about 850 different stone objects: from mounds and ramparts to solar symbols).
They have been known for a long time, but scientists still argue about their purpose. The most common version: labyrinths are the border between the world of the living and the world of the dead (and the entrance to the “underworld”).
6. Fulachtai Fia (Ireland)
Around 6 strange horseshoe-shaped mounds, consisting of earth and stones, have so far been discovered throughout Ireland and partly in Britain.
Usually in the center of this “horseshoe” there is a rectangular chute (about 1 m wide, 2 m long and 0,5 m deep) filled with water.
The Irish call these rather obscure structures Fulachtai Fia (loosely translated, it would be something like “wild brazier” or “cooking pit”).
Well, the British simply call them “burnt mounds”, because inside the “horseshoe” they usually find traces of a large and long-burning fire or hearth.
By the way, near Fulachtai Fia there is always a source of water and fuel (for example, a forest).
What these pits were actually used for, no one knows today. There are several main versions (but they all agree on one thing – they heated water in the gutter with hot stones): 1) these were kind of ancient “laundry rooms” in which clothes were steamed, 2) these are large troughs for boiling large amounts of meat, 3) this ordinary baths (with hot water), 4) these are vats for dyeing fabrics and working leather, or 5) these are containers for making beer (in 2007, two archaeologists from Galway even conducted an experiment, quite successfully brewing light ale in Fulachtai Fia) .
5. Roman dodecahedrons
Almost throughout Europe, in the territories that were once part of the sphere of influence of the Roman Empire (from Great Britain to Hungary, but most often in Germany and France), small bronze and stone objects are found, which are geometrically regular dodecahedrons with 12 pentagonal faces.
According to scientists, they were created around the II-III centuries. AD The size of these empty “balls” inside is from 4 to 11 cm in diameter. On each of their faces there are round holes of different sizes, and in the corners (often, but not always) there are round “bumps”.
At the moment, 27 (!) hypotheses have already been put forward, what it is and what it was created for, but none of them has yet been finally proven. Here are just a few: candlesticks, dice, instruments for calibrating water pipes, simple toys, rangefinders, religious symbols, decorations of attributes of power, etc.
4. Göbekli Tepe Temple (Turkey)
The oldest of the major megalithic structures in the world – the huge stone temple of Göbekli Tepe in Turkey – is older than Stonehenge by at least 5 thousand years. It was built approximately from the XNUMXth to the XNUMXth millennium BC.
When in the early 1990s systematic excavations began here, then the ideas of scientists about the times of the Mesolithic and Neolithic were greatly shaken.
Such an impressive religious complex with powerful columns (up to 9 m high and weighing 10-20, and partially up to 50 tons) could not have been built by unorganized hunters and gatherers, who allegedly did not yet have a strict social hierarchy under the leadership of one leader.
At the moment, only about 5% of the total area of Göbekli Tepe has been excavated, but archaeologists are sure that this grandiose monument of antiquity (which will take about 50 years to completely clear) will still give them a lot of surprises.
Even now, the artistic level of the animals and people depicted on its columns causes amazement and admiration.
Another mystery of Göbekli Tepe: why was it not just abandoned and forgotten, but specially covered with earth in the XNUMXth millennium BC?
3. Easter Island writing
Everyone knows about the famous giant “idols” of Easter Island. But another most complicated mystery is connected with this place, which no one has yet been able to solve – this is the rongo-rongo writing system.
In the 1860s, Father Roussel (a member of the Catholic mission on the island) sent 24 wooden tablets to Bishop Jossen of Tahiti, which contained some pictographic symbols (that is, more drawings than letters).
By our time, there are only 15 tablets left. Since then, at least a dozen of the best philologists, linguists, historians and other scientists have tried to decipher the “text” written on them, but none of them have succeeded in doing so.
Дело в том, что, во-первых, неясно, о чём конкретно могут повествовать таблички ронго-ронго (о правителях Рапа-Нуи? об их богах? или это солнечный календарь? или что-то другое?), ну а во-вторых, рапануйский язык сильно смешался с таитянским, поэтому даже в XIX веке жители острова Пасхи уже не помнили свою прежнюю речь (и не могли помочь учёным).
2. Codex Gigas (“Devil’s Bible”)
From the middle of the XVII century. The Royal Swedish Library in Stockholm holds a manuscript from the early XNUMXth century known as the Codex Gigas or “Devil’s Bible”.
In fact, it was created in the Benedictine monastery of the city of Podlajice in Bohemia (now the Czech Republic), and came to Sweden as a war trophy.
This huge book, consisting of 310 large parchment sheets and weighing 75 kg, is the largest and most voluminous handwritten edition in Europe.
And it is a collection of the entire amount of knowledge that this monastery possessed, from Biblia Vulgata (of course, in Latin) to the works of Josephus Flavius, the “Czech Chronicle” of Cosmas of Prague, the “Etymology” of Isidore of Seville, treatises of Hippocrates and descriptions of exorcism rites under one cover.
Why does this code have such a name? Well, firstly, it contains a “portrait” of the Devil (just opposite the image of the Heavenly City, apparently, as a contrast between good and evil).
Secondly, according to legend, the Benedictine monk who wrote the code was sentenced to be walled up alive for some terrible offense. And then he made a deal with the Devil and finished this work in just one night (and Satan allegedly painted a self-portrait personally).
Scholars who have studied the codex claim that it could have been written in 20-30 years (rather, in 30, given the speed of handwriting at that time). But it was clearly written by one person, in small and almost “printed” handwriting.
1. Sumerian king list
And again we will return to present-day Iraq, to the territory of ancient Sumer. In 1906, during excavations, the so-called “List of the Kings of Sumer and Akkad” was found on clay tablets for the first time.
To date, 18 more samples of the same text have been discovered.
The most famous of these is the so-called Veld Blundell prism, kept in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, which has 20 columns of text on each side (about 2 cm high).
It lists all the Sumerian rulers (from the end of the 1750rd millennium BC to about XNUMX BC) and the length of their reign.
But here’s what’s interesting: firstly, this list contains clearly mythical characters – Gilgamesh, Etana, Lugal Gang and others; and secondly, according to this document, all the kings of the first dynasties (until about the 43200th century BC) were not just long-lived, but super-long-lived – for example, En-Menluana ruled safely for 36 years, Allalgar, Dumuzi and Ziusudra – 50 thousand years, etc. But from about the XXIII century. BC. the Sumerian kings somehow “degenerated” and began to rule for a maximum of 60-XNUMX years.