Giant Sarcophagus Found 100 Feet Below in the Saha...

Giant Sarcophagus Found 100 Feet Below in the Sahara

Giant Sarcophagus Found 100 Feet Below in the Sahara

The Sahara Desert is like a Mad Max movie.

Scorching heat, endless dunes, and an overall barren wasteland place where no one could live, right?

Well, forget all you know about it, because 5,000 years ago, the Sahara was a lush paradise of grasslands, lakes, and rivers, and the home of a ghost civilization that vanished [music] without a trace.

Our tale begins in the 1930s when a Hungarian explorer stumbled upon a cave in the middle of the Sahara.

Inside, he found something bizarre.

Ancient rock paintings of people swimming in a lake surrounded by giraffes, hippos, and crocodiles.

At the time, everybody shrugged it off as some symbolic depiction of the afterlife.

Because really, who would imagine a lake in the Sahara?

Well, fast forward some 70 years later when a group of archaeologists made a discovery that flipped [music] the script.

In a rock shelter in Libya, they unearthed 15 mummies along with baskets, ceramic pots, and other everyday items.

This may look like prehistoric junk to most people, but to archaeologists, ooh, it was like uncovering a key piece of evidence.

Those people weren’t just passing through.

They lived here.

You see, those weren’t just any mummies.

They were some of the oldest naturally mummified humans ever found, dating back over 7,000 years.

Take that, Egypt.

Two of them [music] still had readable DNA preserved thanks to a rare natural mummification process.

Almost a miracle considering the Sahara’s climate’s ability to turn everything into, well, be jerky.

Scientists struggle to understand where those mummies came from for a while because the mitochondrial DNA they recovered was not helpful at all.

But thanks to [music] scientific progress, they eventually managed to do a full genome analysis that revealed some weird secrets.

Those people belong to a human lineage that was [music] completely unknown and they lived isolated from the rest of humanity for thousands of years.

For decades, researchers assumed that the place where they lived, the green Sahara, was like a prehistoric highway, a lush corridor that humans and animals used to migrate between subsaharan Africa and the Mediterranean.

But the mummies demolished that theory like a hippo sitting on a sand castle.

Their DNA showed zero genetic mixing with subsaharan and Eurasian migrants, keeping their genes pure for 7,000 years.

Their closest genetic relatives weren’t their neighbors living right below the famous desert, but some ancient hunter gatherers from Morocco and even some guys that lived in the Czech Republic when it wasn’t even a country yet 50,000 years ago.

We’re not out of the woods yet because those mummies also carried some teeny tiny traces of Neanderthal DNA, just 10% of the amount found in modern Eurasians.

Now if you paid attention in school then you know that Neanderthalss lived in Europe and Asia and early humans only mixed [music] with them after migrating out of Africa.

But those green Sahara folks never left Africa.

So how did they get Neanderthal genes?

The leading theory is that their ancestors mingled with Neanderthalss in North Africa 50,000 years ago before settling in the Sahara and cutting off contact with the outside world.

Archaeologists also found cattle bones and [music] tools made of stone and wood at that rock shelter, proving that those people led a thriving pastoral lifestyle.

This discovery made scientists [music] scratched their heads for a while because, you see, animal domestication was not developed in Africa.

So, how did they learn it if they never mingled with anyone?

Did they have ancient YouTube tutorials?

Probably not.

The researchers believe they must have traded knowledge with neighboring groups, [music] but just knowledge, no saliva.

It’s almost too hard to believe that no outsiders mixed with them.

After all, who wouldn’t want to live in a thriving civilization in the middle of a green paradise?

Drinking milk, eating meat, and even using animal blood as a protein source.

Ooh, yummy.

They didn’t have to hunt for every meal thanks to their livestock and the abundant water made life pretty sweet.

And yet they never married outsiders.

Why?

Maybe it was a cultural choice to never date [music] outside their own group.

Or maybe the landscape itself kept them isolated.

This is where scientists [music] placed their bets.

They believe that the dense forests and rivers that existed in the green Sahara acted like nature’s no trespassing sign, creating a geographical barrier that isolates animals, plants, and whole societies.

This isolation is the reason why their genes were so unique.

These guys weren’t swapping spit with anyone else.

[music] But this genetic time capsule almost didn’t survive.

For most of the last ice age, the Sahara was even harsher than today.

A true dead zone where humans couldn’t survive.

70,000 years ago, even the toughest people disappeared, retreating to the Nile Valley and the Mediterranean coast.

Why?

Because Earth was a climate bully.

Massive glaciers stole all the moisture, weakening monsoons until rainclouds [music] barely reached North Africa.

Then came the knockout punches.

Armadas of icebergs flooded the North Atlantic, triggering devastating droughts each time.

This was the Sahara’s ultimate keep out era.

Now, you’re probably wondering how in the world the Sahara turned green after all this and then went back to being a desert again.

Well, it all started 15,000 years ago.

I wasn’t around then.

When Earth was shaking off the last ice age, our planet’s axis was a bit wobbly.

And because of that, the northern hemisphere got closer to the sun, getting extra sunlight and heat.

This eternal summer turned North Africa into a giant moisture magnet, pulling water from the Atlantic and making it all rain down on the Sahara.

The result of this ridiculous amount of rain was a lush savannah complete with lakes the size of small countries.

But the African humid period was not just a one-time miracle.

The truth is, this eternal on andoff switch between green and desert happened to the Sahara more than 230 times since the desert was born.

During one of these events, the Sahara even expanded, getting bigger than it is today.

So, when the green Sahara showed up, you can bet it brought the ultimate ecosystem glow up.

This wasn’t just a light dusting [music] of grass.

We’re talking full makeover.

The transformation was so complete it even reshaped animal populations.

Cheetahs suddenly struggled with [music] the new prey dynamics while rodents like the multi-made mouse thrived in the suddenly abundant grasslands.

But don’t pack your prehistoric swim trunks just yet.

This paradise had teeth.

The Sahara was an ecological maze of crocodileinfested rivers, malaria carrying mosquitoes, [music] and big cats lurking in the tall grass.

Crossing it would have been like playing a real life game of hungry hungry hippos.

This is probably why more groups didn’t settle permanently.

The Sahara’s climate cycled between wet and dry every 20,000 years.

Hardly a stable zip code.

For most ancient people, it was smarter to treat the green Sahara like an all you can eat buffet.

Grab resources and leave before the desert returned.

Still, this green Sahara period lasted for 10,000 years, giving our mystery shepherds plenty of time to thrive.

But around 5,000 years ago, Earth’s axis shifted again.

The rains moved away, and the Sahara dried up faster than a puddle in July.

As the desert returned, the shepherds from the green Sahara had no choice but to pack up their livestock and leave.

Some researchers believe they migrated toward the Nile, laying the groundwork for ancient Egypt.

So, I guess their legacy lives on.

Besides, their pure lineage may be extinct by now, but some faint genes of the mummies can still be found in the people that live in North Africa today.

But the introvert mummies were not the only ones using the Green Sahara as an Airbnb.

They actually had neighbors just around the corner in a lakeside village in Niger, to be exact.

Those people thrive for 5,000 years and left behind the oldest Sahara Desert cemetery, including a man buried in a turtle shell, a grinning Halloween man with filed teeth, and a heartbreaking family embrace frozen in time.

Victims of the very waters that sustained them.

Eventually, those people disappeared, too, just like it happened to our antisocial friends.

This proves that this desert [music] outsmarts everyone with a landscape that gives paradise with one hand and takes it away with the other.

When you think of super pricey colors, gold, silver, and purple probably come to mind.

But back in Pompei, blue was the real showstopper.

Known as [music] Egyptian blue and later renamed Pompeian blue, this color was total luxury.

Glamorously coating walls in ancient Egypt as far back as 2500 B.CE.

And in Pompei, the demand was so high that blue [music] could cost more than even the ridiculously expensive purple.

Finding a blue artifact from Pompei is not easy, let alone a whole room.

[music] But in May 2024, archaeologists finally uncovered a completely blue room filled with murals [music] featuring female figures and symbols of the Four Seasons.

>> Oh, wow.

This is the blue room.

>> This gem [music] was actually discovered ages ago during the Bourban era, but it took until recently to finish a full excavation.

The blue room isn’t huge, [music] about 86 square ft.

But don’t forget that vibrant blue is rare [music] for Pompean frescco, usually saved for the fanciest spots.

Experts think [music] this room may have been a sanctuary for rituals or sacred stuff.

Among the finds were bronze [music] jugs, lamps, and 15 hefty amphereay.

Aereay were the Tupperware of ancient Rome.

Perfect for transporting liquids like olive oil, beverages, or [music] garham, an infamous fermented fish sauce that Romans couldn’t get enough of.

Their tapered design meant [music] they had to either stand on a rack or be buried in the ground.

But that shape [music] made shipping them really efficient.

Also, the [music] archaeologist found there were building materials for renovations and a ridiculous number of empty oyster shells.

While you [music] might think this room hosted some fancy shindigs with oysters and gallons of beverages in those emporas, in reality, the shells weren’t even leftovers from a posh dinner party.

Instead, experts believe they were ground up to mix with [music] plaster and mortar.

The next find was unearthed around two [music] decades ago, but the scientists only realized it in 2024.

They had dug up the oldest cheese ever, clocking in at a whopping [music] 3,600 years.

The previous record holder was only 3,200 years old, found in an Egyptian tomb of some big shot named Tukmies.

When they discovered that younger cheese, they found broken jars with [music] this solid whitish mass inside.

It took some serious soouththing [music] to confirm it was cheese and not some ancient science experiment gone wrong.

But let’s go back to this 3,600y old cheese.

It wasn’t just sitting around like any old lump.

It was actually a fashion statement.

It was found in the tomb with the mummy of a young woman from [music] northwestern China.

She had the cheese hanging around her neck like some sort of dairy bling.

Now, let’s [music] talk taste.

When experts were asked if they’d try the cheese, their answer was a swift no way.

So, basically, nobody’s diving in to find out if it’s pungent or not.

But thanks to some fancy tech, they can analyze flavors.

But even if they [music] had dared to try, I bet it’s nothing to write home about since it’s as hard as rock.

Now, scientists [music] figured out this cheese was likely kafir cheese, made from fermenting milk with kafir [music] grains and had both goat and cow milk in it.

Funny enough, the ladies whose tomb it was found in belonged to the Shiaaha [music] people who were probably lactose intolerant.

But don’t fret.

Despite their limited plant options, they could still enjoy cheese since this [music] kafir delicacy had surprisingly low lactose levels.

Remember when everything felt brighter?

The grass greener, people friendlier, and trees looking regal.

Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating about the grass and the folks, but not the trees.

In 2024, some ancient [music] plant fossils from New Brunswick, Canada, are making waves.

They uncovered Sanfordis [music] densifolia, a tree over 350 million years old.

It sported a trunk flaunting over 250 massive leaves, some up to 5 ft long.

Instead of a classic crown, it had a bottle brush appearance on a slim trunk just 6.3 in wide.

[music] It’s like this tree went to the gym and skipped leg day for leaf gains.

Typically, ancient trees are depicted as basic trunks, but this one [music] is a real standout.

It’s somewhat similar to today’s ferns and palms, though palms came later.

These fossils are well preserved, buried in an ancient fault lake after an earthquake.

While many [music] might just think, “Cool tree, scientists are excited.”

This discovery [music] helps them piece together our planet’s evolution over millions of years.

I get it.

Those [music] blue rooms, ancient cheese, and trees aren’t exactly inspiring much hope for the future.

But I’ve got something that might just change the game.

In 2024, scientists discovered a new theoretically habitable planet called [music] Glee 12b.

It’s a bit smaller than Earth, but bigger than Venus, and is orbiting a mellow red dwarf star [music] about 40 lighty years away in the Pisces constellation.

This star [music] is just 27% the size of our sun and 60% as hot, which puts Glee 12b in the Goldilock zone, where liquid water could [music] actually exist.

Even with its speedy 12.

8 day orbit if it’s got no atmosphere, the surface temperature is about 107° [music] F.

So, if you’re used to Arizona summers, you’ll be just fine.

The only problem [music] is that Glee 12b is 12 parsects away and se here doesn’t mean a quick second.

With our fastest spacecraft, a trip would take around 225,000 years.

To put it in perspective, if we imagine a regular human lifespan of 100 years, which is already slightly exaggerated, it will take about 2,250 generations to get there.

Still, it’s [music] nice to know we have Glee 12b on deck in case things go south here on Earth.

And even if we never actually [music] get there, studying it with the James Webb Space Telescope might help unravel the mystery of [music] why Earth stayed livable while Venus didn’t.

Archaeologists [music] in Egypt have made an exciting discovery.

They found the upper half of a [music] huge statue of Ramsy’s II.

This 12.5 ft limestone piece was uncovered in Hermopoulos, now Ashunain, [music] and it lines up perfectly with the lower part found in 1930.

It took almost 100 years to finish the puzzle.

The statue shows Ramsay seated, wearing a crown [music] and a headdress with a cobra, symbolizing his rule over both upper and lower Egypt.

The back of the statue is covered in hieroglyphs listing [music] the king’s numerous titles, highlighting his status as one of ancient Egypt’s most powerful pharaohs.

Combining the upper and lower [music] pieces would create a statue nearly 23 feet tall.

You probably [music] know the Statue of Liberty was a French gift, but did you know that the famous Venetian [music] lions were actually made in China and not Italy?

Back in 1295, Marco Polo returned to Venice from a place [music] called Katai, we now know it as China, and shared some wild stories about everything from paper money to coal and even Kublaon Swanky Palace in [music] Zanadu.

While some people back then rolled their eyes at his tales, [music] modern scholars are still raising their eyebrows a bit.

Despite the skepticism, Polo is a key figure connecting Europe to ancient China.

Now, some recent research suggests Venice [music] and China were already well connected before Polo’s trip.

A prime example, the bronze [music] lion of Venice in St.

Mark’s Square.

Researchers from the University of Padawa [music] believe that it actually came from Chinese copper around the lower Yang River more than 3,000 years ago.

All due to a chemical analysis they ran in [music] 2024.

The winged lion became Venice’s symbol between 1261 [music] and 1264, probably even before Polo’s adventures.

Experts point out [music] its resemblance to the Tang Dynasty tomb guardians, which hint it might have had a makeover on its way to Venice.

2024 is not only the year of scientific [music] discoveries, but also the treasure hunt year.

A two-ft tall bronze statue of the Greek deity Diana, once a fixture on [music] the Titanic’s fireplace mantle, was discovered during a recent underwater expedition.

Discovering this statue was like finding a needle in a hay stack, except the hay stack is 2 and 1/2 miles deep in the ocean.

It’s just one of the many art pieces maritime archaeologists have been looking for among the Titanic’s wreckage.

[music] It was more than just a luxury liner.

It was filled with art treasures from a 1912 Renault to this stunning statue inspired by a piece at the Louv.

[music] Not many civilizations are as mysterious as ancient Egypt, a powerful empire that lasted over 3,000 years.

It gave us pyramids that still stand and myths that still inspire.

[music] It’s one of the most explored places on Earth.

Yet somehow we still find exciting stuff in Abidos.

Archaeologists just uncovered a 3,600-year-old royal tomb.

It’s huge.

It has golden hieroglyphs of deities covering the entrance.

But the pharaoh’s name, it’s not there.

It’s missing.

Who was this ruler?

And what new chapter could this open in Egypt’s story?

If there’s one place in Egypt where the line between life and demise feels thinner, it’s Abidos.

To the ancient Egyptians, this was sacred ground.

They believed it was the burial place of Osiris, the god who literally passed away, had his remains separated, and came back to life to rule the underworld.

Because of that, Abidos became Egypt’s spiritual gathering place.

Pharaohs built amazing temples here, like the temple of Seti, famous for its king’s list, a wall that has the names of 76 pharaohs carved in it.

Pilgrims came from across Egypt, leaving offerings and participating in Osiris festivals where his demise and rebirth were ritually reenacted.

It wasn’t just symbolic worship.

It was Egypt’s version of Comic-Con.

But instead of cosplaying superheroes, people reenacted gods coming back to life.

Obviously, Pharaohs competed to be buried as close to Osiris as possible.

Abidos became part cemetery, part holy city, [music] part afterlife insurance policy.

Fast forward thousands [music] of years and we still uncover remarkable stuff around Abidos.

That’s the case with the recently discovered tomb.

In early 2025, a joint team of researchers from the US and Egypt decided to dig beneath a rocky rise ominously called Anubis Mountain.

You remember Anubis, the jackal-headed deity who guarded cemeteries.

The uncovered royal burial was hidden 23 ft below the [music] surface.

Sadly, even though it eluded archaeologists for so long, robbers had already taken away with [music] treasures ages ago.

They could definitely tell this was a tomb of someone super important.

Similar to how you can walk around a mansion with no furniture, but still deduce that someone rich must have lived there.

The chamber had mudbrick [music] vaults rising over 16 ft.

That’s taller than a female giraffe standing upright.

For something built [music] 36 centuries ago, it still felt enormous.

However, when you remember that Egyptians [music] were masters of architecture, nothing seems surprising.

So, no treasures, no golden mask, and sadly, no name.

The cartou that should have spelled the king’s identity was unreadable.

Egyptian tombs usually bragged about who was inside.

In ancient Egypt, a cartou was basically a big oval name tag for kings wrapped in hieroglyphs.

Think of them as VIP passes that worked in [music] both this life and the next.

Without it, your soul couldn’t check into the afterlife hotel.

That’s because to the Egyptians, your name, your ren, wasn’t just so your teacher could distinguish you from kids with the same haircut.

[music] It was a core part of who you were.

As long as your ren survived, so did you.

To have your name forgotten was considered a fate worse than passing away.

A soul cannot journey without a name.

That’s why you’d see cartes all over the place on temples, obelisks, [music] jewelry, statues, and tomb walls.

It wasn’t there just for the marketing.

It kept the pharaoh’s presence front [music] and center everywhere you looked.

Imagine building a massive tomb only for 3,600 years later to walk in and go, “Uh, who is this guy again?”

Not cool [music] at all.

That’s why it’s fair to imagine our nameless pharaoh haunting the robbers for all >> [music] >> eternity.

So, yeah, Cartou was considered very significant.

One of the most famous and mind-blowing examples comes from the tomb of Tutmos III.

His burial chamber and sarcophagus were literally shaped like a cartou.

In other words, the entire room was a living architectural symbol of his name.

Thankfully, in the recently discovered tomb, not everything was erased.

Painted in golden hues at the entrance were two familiar guardians, deities Isis and Nepus.

Isis was the magician who stitched Osiris back together and breathed life into him.

Nepathus, her sister, was the eternal mourner and protector of the mummy.

Together, they promised that whoever rested here would not face the afterlife alone.

And it’s one additional proof of the importance of the mysterious pharaoh.

So, who could this be?

To answer that, we need to go down history lane.

This tomb dates back to Egypt’s messy chapter called the second intermediate period.

Instead of one ruler in charge, the country had many rival kingdoms, each with its own little power base, like a real life Egyptian version of Game of Thrones.

And right in the middle of that chaos was [music] Abbidos.

For a while, it was home to its own line of kings, the so-called Abbidos dynasty.

Those weren’t the pyramid builders everyone knows.

And that’s why they’re so mysterious.

They left behind almost nothing.

No great monuments, no sprawling cities, just fragments of names on broken blocks.

For centuries, many scholars even doubted they existed at all.

That sort of changed in 2014 when archaeologists uncovered the tomb of Senip, [music] one of those shadowy kings.

Now, everything we know about Cenip [music] points to him having quite a story to tell.

His bones revealed 18 deep wounds, the [music] kind you get in battle.

He had blows to his skull, back, and hands, and likely lost his life fighting, making him one of the few pharaohs we know who sadly fell in combat.

His tomb [music] was modest with reused artifacts from earlier kings, but it delivered one priceless thing, proof.

Until [music] Cenip, the Abbidos dynasty was just a theory.

With him, it became real.

And that’s why the new discovery could be a big deal.

The newly uncovered royal tomb at Abidos [music] shares the same layout and style as Senukes.

It has limestone chambers, mudbrick [music] vaults, and protective deities, although it’s much bigger, which again raises the possibility [music] that we’re looking at an even earlier, more powerful ruler of Abidos.

Whoever he was, he wanted to be remembered alongside the greats, which is ironic cuz it seems that history tried erasing him.

Perhaps additional findings alongside his tomb could tell us more.

Yes, there’s more.

And it’s actually pretty cool.

Not far from Abbidos in the village of Vanowit, archaeologists uncovered a Roman era pottery [music] workshop.

Yeah, you heard that right.

A pottery factory close to a pharaoh’s burial ground.

The site had huge clay kils, storage [music] rooms, and even broken shards called Ostrica.

They were basically ancient sticky notes, [music] except instead of shopping lists, those had receipts scratched onto them in Greek and demonic Egyptian.

Little records of everyday transactions, the kind of thing you’d never expect to find near a lost dynasty king.

Honestly, the potters missed a chance.

Forget boring receipts.

They should have been selling Osiris’s mugs and Anubis figurines to pilgrims and tourists.

But that’s not all.

It seems that centuries later during the medieval period, the same ground became a cemetery.

Archaeologists found mudbrick graves with skeletal remains.

This could [music] mean that abidos kept its aura of significance for hundreds of years after the age of pharaohs.

So why this hill again and again?

Is this place really a getaway to the afterlife?

It is, after all, the very place where Osiris is said to rest.

That belief lingered like a shadow for thousands of years, strong enough to pull in pharaohs and later medieval families.

Different rituals, same sacred ground.

Although to be fair, the Romans weren’t here for Osiris.

They came to make pots.

The story of Abbidos is not over.

The excavations will continue.

And who knows what else could be discovered in the future.

Today, archaeologists are armed with tools that are basically X-ray glasses for the desert.

Every scan could reveal a hidden chamber or if we’re lucky, finally give our nameless pharaoh his ren back to him.

In fact, I became strangely invested in finding out who he was.

So, let’s hope for some news soon.

It’s only a matter of time.

Do you have your own theories?

Let me know.

Waves are crashing higher than ever before, about to swallow one of the world’s most mysterious islands by 2080.

Rising seas could crash all the way up to Au Tongariki.

It’s the famous ceremonial platform on Rapanoui, aka Easter Island.

Unfortunately, that’s not [music] just a guess.

Researchers at the University of Hawaii at Manoa have already run the numbers and shared their findings in the Journal of Cultural Heritage.

Their study shows that up to 51 other cultural landmarks, including the iconic Moai statues, could face flooding.

But before we get to all that drama, let’s learn more about Rapanoui itself.

This is the original name of Easter Island.

People from Polynesia settled there way back around 300 CE.

Once they made themselves [music] comfortable, they started creating their own wild and creative culture.

Between the 10th and 16th centuries, they [music] built massive ceremonial platforms called au and huge statues called moai made to honor [music] ancestors.

Those giant figures still stand today, giving the [music] island a mysterious vibe.

Rapanui National Park protects all this.

It’s a Chilean wildlife area.

The heart of Rapanoui [music] culture.

The architecture and sculptures here are totally unique, even compared to other Polynesian islands.

Easter Island is super remote, literally the farthest inhabited island in the world, sitting 2,300 m from mainland Chile.

The island covers 64 square miles.

And the World Heritage site takes [music] up about 27 square miles, including four tiny nearby islands.

Rapanui National Park is full of archaeological treasures.

Experts [music] estimate there are about 900 Moai, more than 300 AU, and thousands [music] of other structures for farming, funerals, houses, and daily life.

The Moai are [music] incredible.

Some stand 6.5 ft tall.

Others reach almost 66 ft.

Most were carved from yellow brown lava using simple basaltt tools called toki.

Some moai were still being carved.

Some were being moved to their final au and some were torn [music] down and reerected.

The quaries like Rano Raku show [music] us today how the carvings were made.

The AU come in all shapes and sizes.

The biggest is Au Tongariki with 15 moi lined up on top of it.

Most AU have a raised platform of carefully worked [music] stones, a ramp often paved with smooth beach pebbles, and a flat area in front.

Rock art is everywhere.

You can find pictographs [music] and petroglyphs in all kinds of styles.

Caves hide even more carvings.

Even villages, farms, and other structures are super interesting.

By the 16th century, [music] according to studies, the Rapanoui society faced a big crisis.

Natural resources ran low.

The culture started to change.

Many of the megalithic monuments were ruined.

The ancestor cult was replaced [music] by the Manbird cult.

It was centered in Orurango by the Ranocawu volcano.

There [music] are 54 semi underground stone houses there, all shaped like ellipses and decorated with carvings about birds and fertility.

[music] This cult lasted until the mid 19th century.

It’s probably no wonder that colonization brought huge changes.

Livestock, forest relocation, and diseases cut the native population to barely over a 100 people.

Today, the island is home to descendants of the original Rapanoui people as well as immigrants.

They try to keep the culture and still live in the modern world.

Sadly, all that heritage might be lost soon for good.

And if nothing is done, rising seas could put Rapanui’s UNESCO World Heritage status at risk.

Scientists say that knowing these risks are just the first step.

If we actually realize what’s happening, we can figure out how to protect ancient monuments.

The team wanted to see just how bad rising seas could get for Rapanoui.

So, they built a digital twin of the island and ran insanely detailed computer models to track waves along the shore.

Then, they stacked those flood maps on top of data about all the cultural landmarks, which they got thanks to local partners.

They wanted to see which ones would get hit first.

The results were pretty intense.

Sea level rise is threatening coastlines everywhere.

But the question now is when and how bad.

The researchers timeline shows that waves could crash all the way to Au Tonger Riki by 2080.

That’s the famous platform with the Moai statues, the heart of the island’s culture.

The data is clear and the clock is ticking.

The island’s people need to start planning now before the sea starts taking what’s theirs.

And Easter Island isn’t the only potential disaster site suffering from the elements.

The old city of Chanchchan in Peru is feeling the heat from extreme weather.

It used to be the capital of the Chimu Empire and is basically the biggest [music] pre-Colombian city made out of earth in the Americas.

The place was super advanced for its time.

They had smart city planning, organized society, irrigation systems, and some amazing art.

The Incas took over in the 1400s, but the ruins still show how sophisticated the Chimu were.

[music] It’s now a UNESCO World Heritage site, and it’s really important.

And now, El Nino.

The warm phase of a natural climate cycle called El Nino Southern Oscillation brings both heavy rains and long droughts to this place.

These ups and downs have happened forever, [music] but now they occur more often.

Besides, rising groundwater is making the buildings unstable.

To fight this, people are controlling the water table, [music] fixing walls, documenting the architecture, training locals, raising awareness, and making [music] disaster plans.

Storms and shrinking sea areas are also causing problems for the 19th century whaler settlement on Hershel Island in Canada.

It’s so [music] bad that buildings had to be moved inland to stay dry and avoid flooding.

If erosion keeps going, locals might have to move them even more.

And some structures are likely to be abandoned.

Perafrost is also breaking down graves which makes buried caskets topple and break.

If we move to the mosque city of Barat in Bangladesh, we’ll find that water and salty soil are wrecking stone buildings.

Salt gets into the rocks and then expands when it gets wet.

This causes the stones to crack and crumble faster.

And this place is a UNESCO World Heritage site, too.

It contains 360 mosques, public buildings, water tanks, mausoleiums, bridges, roads, and other public buildings.

People once constructed them from baked brick.

Another place potentially in danger from rising seas and stronger waves is coastal Great Britain.

There weather conditions are threatening lots of historic castles.

Hurst Castle in Hampshire, Tintagle in Cornwall, Peele Castle in Kumbria, Bayard’s Cove Fort in Devon, Garrison Walls in the aisle of Skilly, and Kellshot Castle in Southampton all face danger.

English Heritage says they need to fix walls and build stronger defenses to stop storm damage.

Heavy rains and extreme weather [music] are also hitting Edinburgh in Scotland.

Flooding and landslides are a serious growing risk.

[music] Since 1970, annual rainfall has gone up 13%.

The sandstone repeatedly gets wet and dries, [music] which wears down Edinburgh Castle and erodess the volcanic rock it stands on.

Is it [music] going to topple one day?

If nothing is done soon, time will show, I guess.

Another super famous and touristy place that might get flooded soon is Venice in Italy.

Its lagoon [music] faces a serious threat from rising sea levels.

Flooding is becoming more and more common.

This puts the city’s buildings and streets at risk.

So, as you see, the problem of Rapanui aren’t unique.

Other coastal places like Hawaii face the same threat from rising seas.

Ancient temples, [music] sacred burial grounds, and other irreplaceable cultural sites are at risk.

Just like the Moai and ceremonial platforms of Easter Island, the rising waters don’t just threaten buildings, they put the history, traditions, and identity of entire communities in danger.

Researchers are using data on coastal flooding to predict what could happen to Rapanui and other historical spots.

They’re mapping the risks, studying how seas will rise, and searching for ways to protect those precious places.

The clock is ticking, and without action, some of the most sacred and ancient sites could be lost forever.

The lost city of Atlantis may have actually been found.

Not really.

Two researchers were working in the waters off the coast of Cuba when they discovered the ruins of what looked like an ancient submerged city.

That happened about 20 years ago.

And yet, no one really talks about it today.

It’s like the authorities just took the research, locked it away in some top secret room, and decided no one else should know about it.

But why?

Well, I’m going to tell you.

Back in 2001, Paulina Zalitzky, a marine engineer, and her husband Paul Vineswig [music] were hired to explore the waters off Cuba’s western coast.

They had two main objectives: to search for old shipwrecks, possibly hiding treasures like [music] gold and jewels, and to locate valuable oil and natural gas deposits deep underwater.

They were using a sonar.

Basically, this equipment is like a soundbased radar.

It sends out sound waves underwater, and when those waves hit something, like a sunken ship, they bounce back.

This system can figure out where and how far the object is just by listening to the echo.

So, the couple was scanning the seafloor with this equipment more than 2,000 ft below the surface.

And then, out of nowhere, they found something way more interesting than gold or oil.

They found stones.

Not just any stones.

I’m talking huge, perfectly arranged [music] stones.

Kind of like a mini version of the pyramid at Chicha.

Or even better, like a bunch of tiny submerged [music] chichinas.

Yep, they saw that.

Or at least they think they did.

The thing is, sonar doesn’t work like a camera.

It definitely doesn’t record [music] video or take actual pictures underwater.

What it does do is create images using sound.

And those images are usually just outlines or shapes, kind of like a blurry black and white sketch.

It shows you where things are, but not exactly what they look like.

And that’s exactly what happened back then.

The equipment started producing images of these perfectly organized stone structures.

And it really looked like some kind of urban development.

I mean, the site was just too organized, too symmetrical to be just random rocks.

But it sounded too good to be true.

I mean, this discovery could totally change everything we know about ancient civilizations on the American continent.

So, the scientists decided it would be too irresponsible to announce anything without finding more evidence first.

And that’s why they decided to go back to that same spot.

This time, they sent down an underwater remotely operated vehicle to actually see what was going on beneath the sea.

See, this robot was basically an underwater cameraman.

[music] And yep, it confirmed it.

There was definitely something strange down there.

It looked like an ancient city made of [music] huge smooth blocks of granite.

These rocks were about 8 ft by 10 ft.

Some were [music] in pyramid shapes, others were circular.

Some seemed to be deliberately cut [music] and then stacked on top of each other, while others appeared isolated from the rest.

Together, they looked like they were forming corridors [music] and outlines of rooms.

It was like finding large buildings in the middle of an underwater desert.

These images were enough for Zelitzky to seal the deal.

Back then, she confirmed that this amazing structure, her words, could have been a large urban center.

Again, her words.

Then the couple started to [music] speculate.

They said that these structures were probably built more than 6,000 years ago, which would make them older than the Great Pyramids of Egypt.

[music] It’s even older than the famous Maya.

You know, the civilization that used to live in the Americas and is known for their ancient and advanced temples.

The research also suggested that these structures might belong to a civilization that lived on the American continent thousands of years ago [music] and that we didn’t even know about.

This supposed civilization once thrived on a 100mile land bridge connecting [music] Cuba to Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula.

But then something catastrophic happened.

According to their theory, the earth’s faults shifted beneath the surface, leading to a massive earthquake.

Then, in the blink of an eye, the entire bridge was destroyed.

The land was swallowed up by the sea and ended up at the bottom of the ocean, and this civilization disappeared.

Of course, all the connections to the famous Atlantis myth got the media totally hooked on the story.

News websites ran headlines like lost city of the Caribbean found and Atlantis founding Cuba.

So, could that really be Atlantis?

I mean, did they finally [music] find the remains of this supposedly super advanced and lost civilization?

Well, it’s hard to say.

From the start, part of the scientific community [music] wasn’t buying into the story too much.

First, there’s the issue of the date.

Saying that this civilization existed at this spot at least 6,000 years ago just wasn’t very credible.

Then some European archaeologists [music] argued that the stones they found using sonar might just be natural limestone, not perfectly sculpted [music] granite.

And third, it was too deep.

Even with the whole theory of earth faults opening [music] up and swallowing everything, it’s still hard to explain how an entire city ended up so deep in the ocean.

For comparison, there is Paracleion, a real ancient Egyptian port city that got submerged.

Today, it is only about 19 ft underwater.

[music] But this so-called Atlantis city is at depths between 2,00 and 2,460 ft.

See how that’s totally different, right?

People think [music] it would have taken around 50,000 years for such stone structures to sink to the depth where they are said to be found.

And according to experts, none of the known civilizations from that long ago had the ability to build such [music] structures.

But for Zelitzky, yes, it was possible.

She still believed in the fault theory to explain how this land ended up at the bottom of the ocean so fast.

Big movements of the earth tectonic plates are [music] usually followed by things like volcanoes and earthquakes.

So, according to her, it’s a powerful event and the island sinking could have happened really quickly.

This earthquake theory [music] could also explain why some of the megaliths on the seafloor look organized while others don’t.

But to really prove any of this, they needed a specially designed robot to go down there again and take samples of the rocks and [music] sediment.

That way, they could figure out how old the rocks were and maybe even find signs of human life, like carvings, sculptures, or artifacts.

The problem is, drilling into those structures isn’t easy.

They look like granite, and drilling granite that deep underwater is seriously tough.

And more than anything, they needed money to do it.

A lot of it.

So maybe they just never got the funding because even with all that initial hype, no further explorations or studies were ever reported.

And that lack of follow-up sparked a lot of speculation.

Some people even wondered if the story got shut down on purpose.

Like maybe the authorities wanted to keep something top secret.

[music] H as if this underwater city was built by some kind of higher extraterrestrial being and they just don’t want us to find out.

But truth [music] be told, the strongest argument for saying, “Yeah, that is definitely a lost city,” is that nature supposedly couldn’t have built something so symmetrical.

Geologists did try to find natural explanations or at least similar examples from other parts of the world, but they came up short.

Still, just because we haven’t found a clear natural explanation doesn’t mean there isn’t one.

Nature can create [music] some pretty wild and unexpected stuff.

So, honestly, that whole too perfect to be natural angle is kind of a weak argument.

[music] What most likely happened is that experts just weren’t convinced it was actually a sunken city.

And that’s probably why no one followed up on their [music] work.

Over time, the buzz faded, the story disappeared, and the site slipped back into silence.

And without more data, [music] the true nature of those underwater formations off Cuba’s coast is still a mystery.

Now, picture a tomb locked for 1,400 years, and then suddenly, poof, it’s opened.

What could [music] be inside?

An ancient curse or exciting discoveries?

Maybe the former since a giant stone owl is guarding the entrance with the owl’s beak clamping down on a human face like it’s swallowing a soul.

Now, it’s not just a picture this situation.

The discovery probably happened like this.

The archaeologists were at a place called San Pablo in southern Mexico.

At one point, they stumbled upon something that resembled an entrance.

Ooh, where did it lead?

They just had to figure it out.

By that entrance, there was a large carved owl.

Soon, the researchers realized that it wasn’t just decoration.

The beak of the bird was open, and inside there [music] was the painted face of a man.

Most likely, it was an important leader.

For the people inhabiting that region, owls were linked to demise and power.

So, it was like either the owl was guarding the spirit of the person buried there, or was [music] it holding it captive?

Was it even wise to sneak into that mysterious place?

Well, the scientist’s thirst for answers was more powerful than any fear.

So, they entered [music] and found themselves inside a tomb.

It was made up of two main parts, a front room, kind of like an entrance hall, [music] and a deeper burial room.

There was a doorway between these two rooms.

It was covered in carvings.

At the top, there was a stone beam with special symbols on it.

Those symbols work like names based on a person’s birth date.

On each side of the doorway, there were carvings of a man and a woman wearing detailed headdresses.

The researchers thought they could have been placed there like guards watching over the tomb.

The walls were still painted in bright colors, white, green, red, and blue.

It was an astonishing view, and the paintings [music] actually told a story showing a funeral procession.

People were carrying bags of something called kopal, which is basically a tree resin.

The locals, called zapotex, [music] burned it like incense during ceremonies, kind of like how people today often light candles or incense during special rituals.

Besides, the archaeologists found carved symbols that work like a calendar.

A bit later, the researchers found out that the tomb was about 1,400 years old.

It came from the Zapotch civilization.

And what made it so special was how well everything inside was still preserved.

It was like opening a time capsule that hadn’t been touched for over a thousand years.

Interestingly, they didn’t just randomly find it.

Officials started looking into the site after someone reported [music] looting.

When scientists checked it out, they realized they had stumbled onto one of the most important discoveries in Mexico in the last decade.

The tomb dates back to around the year 600 when the Zapotch people were thriving in the area.

They were sometimes called the cloud people and they built a powerful civilization long before the Spanish arrived.

Even today, many people in Mexico still speak Zapotch languages.

Right now, experts from the National Institute of Anthropology and History are working carefully to protect the tomb and study everything inside.

They’re looking at things like pottery, symbols, and even a few human bones they found there.

One of the most exciting things about this discovery was that many other Zapotch tombs found in the region had already been looted before archaeologists got to them.

That means we lost [music] a lot of history.

Luckily, this tomb was miraculously mostly [music] intact.

Now, scientists are focusing on protecting the tomb.

They’re carefully controlling the air and humidity inside because even small changes can damage it, documenting the artwork, and studying the carvings and symbols.

But ancient tombs aren’t always hidden deep underground, like in adventure movies.

Sometimes you can find them right under a busy city.

In 2023, [music] archaeologists made a bizarre discovery on the edge of Chapultipek Park in Mexico City.

They found a group of graves that are about 3,500 years old, older than most ancient [music] pyramids in Mexico.

There were 10 tombs shaped a bit like upside down bottles or bells, wide at the bottom and narrower at the top.

About half of them had human remains inside.

Four women and one man, mostly young adults.

These people likely lived in a large village in the area during the early and middle pre-classic periods.

That’s long before the Aztecs ever existed.

One of the archaeologists explained that people had been living in that whole area before a volcano had changed everything.

That volcano is the Sheila volcano.

And when it erupted, it basically buried parts of the landscape under lava.

Because of that, the ground where those tombs [music] were stayed sealed and untouched for over 3,000 years.

The Sheila volcano is what’s called an ash cone volcano.

Basically, it looks like a classic volcano shape anyone would draw, round at the bottom and rising into a cone.

It’s about 1,000 ft tall with pretty steep sides, like walking up a hill that tilts about 30 to 40°, which is definitely not an easy climb.

Scientists believe Sheila erupted sometime between 245 and 315 CE based on radiocarbon dating.

When it blew, it wasn’t a small event.

It completely changed the landscape.

Lava spread out and formed what we now call the Pedreal Descent Anhal lava fields, [music] covering a huge area south of modern-day Mexico City.

Imagine a thick slowmoving wave of molten rock turning everything in its path into solid stone.

One of the biggest victims of this eruption was Quiquil Co.

Which was once a major and advanced city in Meso America.

The lava literally buried it, freezing it in time under layers of rock.

After that, the people who lived there had to leave and spread out to other regions.

On the bright side, this movement of people, kind of like a forced migration, helped spread their [music] culture across central Mexico.

It may even have influenced the development of nearby cities like Teotoon.

Sometime later, it became one of the most powerful urban centers in the region.

But this story has a twist.

Not all scientists agree on the timing.

Some think that a series of big eruptions and the destruction of Quail Co.

Might have actually started earlier around the 1st century B.CE.

So depending on which [music] history you look at, this disaster either happened a bit later in Roman times or [music] even earlier back when ancient civilizations in Mexico were still developing.

Either way, it was a catastrophic event that reshaped both the land and the lives of the people living there.

But let’s get back to the tombs.

They aren’t huge.

Most are about 3 to 6 and 1/2 ft wide and up to 5t tall.

Picture something about the size of a small closet or a big storage bin you could crouch inside.

Archaeologists call them bell tombs because of that rounded bottle-like shape.

This style isn’t unique to just one place.

We found similar tombs across different parts of Mexico.

It means people must have shared their ideas like trends spreading between regions today.

Another curious thing is that this wasn’t a one-time burial site.

The team found later burials, too, which means people kept coming back to that spot for generations.

It was a place that remained important to a community for hundreds of years.

Inside the tombs, archaeologists found offerings buried with those who had passed away.

There were tools made from deer antlers, a cup, and small female figurines.

They were probably personal items or symbolic gifts, similar to how people today might leave flowers or meaningful objects at a grave.

All those items have been moved to the National Museum of History for careful study.

Experts use them to figure out more about how those people lived.

Luckily, this isn’t the only discovery in the area.

Construction work around Chipotle Park has been turning up all kinds of [music] history lately.

In fact, not long before this, archaeologists even found a 16th century cemetery from less than [music] 100 years after the fall of the Aztec Empire after the Spanish conquest.

Once upon a time, I searched through the jungle following a map poorly drawn on a piece of cloth.

After days of walking, I reached an ancient Mayan temple.

As soon as I stepped in, a strange noise echoed.

I turned to leave, but suddenly the floor cracked beneath my feet.

I fell into a 1600year-old tomb.

Finally, I got lucky.

That day, I walked out with shiny jades, carved seashells, a creepy afterlife mask, and a curse that’s been haunting me ever since.

Well, okay, maybe it didn’t happen exactly like that.

Or maybe it didn’t happen to me.

Sadly, real life archaeology is not like Indiana Jones movies.

However, the findings can be as exciting and important, especially in Bise, where archaeologists just found the first identifiable ruler’s tomb in the lost Mayan city of Kuracol.

After 40 years of digging, a team of archaeologists [music] finally unsealed a hidden chamber, buried deep beneath a structure they’d already studied.

And inside that tomb, which is indeed around 1,600 years old, was Tob Shock, the first known king of Keracle.

His name is commonly interpreted as tree branch rain deity which is poetic and incredibly awesome.

King Chak was believed to be a Mayan deity in control of rain, thunder, and lightning.

According to folklore, he used axes to strike rainbearing snakes in the sky to make the rainfall.

The buried king is considered to be the dynasty founder.

The royal dynasty he founded lasted more than 460 years.

And judging by what was buried with him, we can assume that King Chunk was greatly celebrated.

His tomb had jade beads, carved bones, sea shell jewelry, and ritual pottery vessels.

One of those vessels shows Echua, the Maya deity of trade receiving offerings.

Others showed bound prisoners.

Archaeologists could tell they had found some high royalty when they noticed a considerable presence of red cineabar in the tomb, a rare and expensive material from the Mayan world.

Then there’s a jade mosaic mask pieced together like a puzzle to cover the king’s face in brilliant green.

Jade wasn’t used just because it was shiny.

It was sacred and symbolically associated with life and demise.

Polished jade glistens like it’s been dipped in water.

Cool at first, but quickly warming in your hand.

To the ancient Maya, this lifelike quality made jade a living, breathing substance, and for this reason, it possessed high religious and spiritual importance.

The Maya associated it with the breath of life, with royalty, and with eternity.

Covering someone’s face in jade show just how high ranking that person was.

King Shock’s mask has yet to be examined properly, but another famous mask of King Paka was made of over 346 green jade stone fragments.

That’s a lot of painstaking work.

But maybe the most symbolically fascinating thing about this king [music] was that he was old.

Not just lived a good life old, toothless old.

To us, that means he didn’t clean his teeth properly.

Because no, you don’t usually lose teeth just from getting old as long as you maintain good oral hygiene and dental care.

On the other hand, according to Maya legends, toothless elders were believed to have spiritual powers.

Rulers and shamans mediated between realms and aged or underworld deities were often shown as toothless in art.

Now, speaking of realms, Mayan cosmology divided the universe into three layers.

The upper world was where the deities lived.

The middle world was [music] where humans lived.

It was carried on the back of a giant turtle or cayman and surrounded by a primordial sea.

Beneath it was the underworld [music] known as Jibalba, a dark and complex realm of spirits and ancestors.

And certain people, especially rulers, shamans, and elders, were believed to move between these worlds.

This king was a ruler, had a deity-like name, and was a toothless elder.

Boy, his power level must have been off the charts.

But that’s not all.

Here’s the eerie part.

The tomb was buried beneath another tomb, which was discovered all the way back in 1993.

Archaeologists were investigating a different burial when they realized there was another chamber hidden beneath it, an interesting hiding place.

Remarkably, it worked.

For more than 1600 years, no one found him.

This makes Tob shocks tomb [music] the first ever discovered at Caracle that can be definitely linked to a known ruler.

Thanks to hieroglyphs, burial context, and artifacts.

Now, if you’re not a geography or history buff, you’ve probably never heard of Kacol.

Today, it’s a remote ruin deep in the jungles of western Bise.

But around 16 centuries ago, Kacol was one of the largest and most powerful cities in the entire Maya world.

At its peak, it covered over 77 square miles, which [music] for reference is larger than modern-day Biz city.

Its population was around 100,000 people.

That’s more than most cities in Europe had at that time.

And it wasn’t just big, [music] it was advanced.

Caracall had pyramids, ball courts, palaces, reservoirs, and a very complex road system.

Stuff like limestone superighways stretching miles through the jungle.

Past excavations also turned up arrowheads, drills, spindle whirls, figurines, and everyday tools.

King Shock’s tomb was one of the three major tombs found in the northeast Acropolis.

Best near Kana, the central archaeological complex at Kakaco and one of the tallest humanmade buildings in all of Bise even today.

It reaches an imposing 141 ft high and contains multiple levels of elite residences and temples.

But even with that size, finding tombs isn’t easy at all.

Most have already been looted.

We don’t know what else can be hidden there.

And in some places, it’s too risky to dig up without causing damage.

That’s why it took researchers decades to finally find something untouched.

However, they were able to report over 850 burials and 175 tombs at Kacall over their 4 decade long project.

One of the earliest tombs dating to around 350 CE was a cremation burial containing ritual artifacts such as obsidian blades, atal spear points, and ceramic styles associated with central Mexico.

So, if you’re an archaeologist, this city seems to be an old historical gold mine.

And old historical gold mines often come with warnings.

For one thing, it’s keep out.

The ceiling might fall on you.

Besides, even though scientists are excited about this discovery, [music] if the king can really walk between realms, he’s probably annoyed by all this.

So, what happens now that the king’s eternal rest has been disturbed?

Well, by opening and stepping into the tomb of tea shock, archaeologists basically stepped into a sealed sacred place.

Maya tombs weren’t just holes in the ground with a fancy [music] coffin.

They were sealed like cosmic vaults locked up with stone, soil, and sometimes elaborate closing rituals.

The goal was to mark the end of their use and protect what was inside.

Archaeology at Caracol and other Maya cities shows this in action.

Thick ceiling layers, termination offerings, and carefully placed debris, all saying, “This place is done.

Keep out.”

Today’s archaeologists still treat them that way, working under Bleian laws and cultural protocols, making sure they explore with respect for what these spaces meant to the people who built them.

However, it’s eerie to think about mythology and whether King Chock is going to haunt the archaeologists.

I guess we’ll see.

They shouldn’t be afraid because he’s old and has no teeth.

Maybe he will annoy them with rain.

He’s named after a rain deity after all, and we still don’t know about his true power level.

The Mayans were a fascinating civilization, and their structures are still among the most mysterious ones you can find.

Despite being isolated from the known world, they also built pyramids without cranes, mapped stars without telescopes, and knew how to bury a king.

Kacol is full of secrets.

A hidden tomb under another tomb.

A toothless king with [music] a scaryl looking mask and a deity’s name.

Almost unbelievable.

And amazingly, there is still stuff being found.

So maybe it’s not too late for me after all.

But first, let’s see the aftermath of this curse.

[music] Huh?

The ocean had a king 190 million years ago.

And that creature was just the size of a dolphin, but it still kept everyone else in fear.

A fossil collector found its relics in the rock at England’s famous Jurassic coast near a place called Golden Cap in Dorset back in 2001.

For centuries before that day, people just walked over it and never noticed this treasure.

Then it traveled all the way to a museum in Ontario, Canada.

But it was still [music] there until in late 2025.

Scientists realized they weren’t looking at just another sea reptile, but at something unique.

The only known specimen of its species.

The find received a nickname, the [music] sword dragon of Dorset, and got the attention of the scientific world.

Ichthyosaurus, the group this animal belongs to, spent their lives in the ocean.

But they don’t have much in common with fish.

Think of them as the marine equivalent of dinosaurs cousins.

For millions of years, they ruled the seas the way sharks and whales dominate today.

But the sword dragon didn’t have much in common with those bad guys.

This creature stretched just about 10 ft long and had a pretty unusual appearance.

Many Ichthyosaurus had thick skulls and strong jaws, which were just perfect for crushing prey.

Instead, evolution gave our guy an incredibly long, narrow snout attached [music] to a high-speed body.

Researchers think it used that snout to slash through schools of fish and squid and to stun or slice prey before swallowing it.

And the eyes of our sword dragon worked like giant camera lenses.

[music] They pulled in every bit of light available so the animal could see in places where most predators would be almost blind.

And in the ocean, where sunlight doesn’t travel very far underwater, it’s a huge advantage.

Fish, [music] squid, and other prey drifted through the gloom, thinking they had some cover from danger, and our dragon could spot them without a problem.

It also had a pretty unusual skull.

Most animals, including us humans, have a small bone near the nostril area called [music] the lacrimal bone.

Normally, it’s nothing special, but on the sword dragon, it had odd little pronglike projections sticking out from it.

Something paleontologists had never seen on any other ichthyossaur before.

In paleontology, those tiny details are everything.

They become clues that tell scientists they’re not looking [music] at a completely new species that lived millions of years ago.

The sword dragon skeleton survived in almost perfect shape and preserved [music] its three-dimensional form, not flattened like many other fossils.

Scientists [music] even think traces of the creature’s last meal still sit inside its remains.

So, one moment this animal hunted fish in Jurassic waters, and the next [music] moment it froze in time with its final lunch locked inside stone for 190 million years.

The story got even more interesting once scientists began studying the bones carefully.

Some limb bones and teeth have strange deformities, which means the animal suffered injuries or disease [music] while it lived.

The skull also has bite marks from a much larger predator, probably another ichthyossaur.

That beast likely delivered the final blow.

But the biggest reason scientists care about this animal so much is that it fills a massive gap in the fossil record.

Fossils from the time period when it lived around 193 to 184 million years ago show up very rarely.

Before this discovery, paleontologists saw two completely different groups of ichthyosaurs [music] in the fossil record.

Older ones before this period and newer ones after it.

But no one knew exactly when or how that change happened.

So the sword dragon enters the story like a missing puzzle piece.

This creature looked more closely related to later species that appeared millions of years afterward.

That means the big evolutionary shift in ichthosaurs likely started earlier than scientists thought.

Now let’s leave the ocean and jump to a completely different landscape.

One [music] that once baked under the brutal sun of the Sahara.

Around 95 million years ago, a predator walked there that looked just as strange as the sword dragon, but it chased prey on land and in rivers instead of the sea.

The scientists who led the discovery described this animal as a hell heron.

It stretched as long as a school bus and weighed several tons.

Its skull had long crocodile-like jaws filled with conicle teeth, so it could easily grip slippery fish for lunch.

But the really weird part was a crest on its head shaped like a curved blade, a scimitar.

It looked so unusual that scientists didn’t even recognize the species when they first uncovered the bones [music] in 2019.

They only understood what they had after they returned to the site in [music] 2022 and collected more fossils.

Researchers find spinosaurs in rocks that formed near ancient coastlines, [music] which clearly shows us that those creatures took their food from the sea.

But this one turned up hundreds of miles from any [music] prehistoric sea.

The land around it once had forests and rivers instead of desert dunes.

That means this giant predator probably went into freshwater ecosystems to look for food there instead of coastal waters.

So, it looks like this massive dinosaur was waiting through water up to 6 and 1/2 ft deep, standing on sturdy legs while scanning the surface for fish.

Instead of diving like a crocodile, it likely waited patiently and then snapped its jaws shut in a lightning fast strike.

More than 200 million years ago, another strange survivor swam through freshwater lakes and slowmoving rivers in what is now Zimbabwe, [music] an extinct species of lungfish.

Unlike most fish, lungfish [music] can actually breathe air.

They have organs that function like primitive lungs, which allows them to gulp oxygen directly from the atmosphere when water becomes too stagnant or low in oxygen.

In a way, they live between two worlds.

Part fish, part early experiment in the transition toward land animals.

And that superpower makes lungfish really important to scientists.

They are the closest living relatives to the ancient ancestors of all four-limmed animals.

There used to be a gap in our knowledge of these creatures, but the new discovery helped [music] fill it.

Now, we know that many lungfish may be more closely related than they used to think, and scientists can now better understand how these creatures survived for hundreds of millions of years.

In a way, lungfish are one of evolution’s masterpieces.

This ancient blueprint kept working when entire worlds of species were born and vanished around them.

Now, let’s travel even further back in time.

Way before dinosaurs ruled the planet, [music] around 275 million years ago, another bizarre creature swam through freshwater lakes in what is now Brazil.

Researchers discovered the species from nine fossilized lower jaws, each about 6 in long.

Instead of pointing upward like normal teeth, this creature’s teeth stuck out sideways.

Every single jaw had the same strange [music] design, which proved the twist wasn’t a mistake, but the way the animal evolved.

The inside surface of the jaw had tiny tooth-like bumps called dentacles.

These structures formed a grinding surface, so the creature had its own built-in food processor.

[music] Scientists think it used that unusual mouth to chew small invertebrates or [music] maybe even plant material.

That’s a pretty unusual diet for an animal whose close relatives were mostly carnivores.

[music] And speaking of its family, this bizarre creature belonged to an extremely ancient lineage called [music] stem tetropods.

Those were early four-limmed vertebrates that gave rise to modern [music] reptiles, birds, mammals, and amphibians.

By the time Tonia lived, most of those early lineages [music] had already disappeared.

Yet, this one somehow survived.

And newer, more modern animals evolved around it.

Scientists call this kind of animal a living fossil.

When researchers analyzed the fossils, they made the conclusion that this mysterious creature grew up to about 3 ft long and probably resembled a salamander with a longer snout.

It swam through lakes in a world where the continents still formed the giant superc continent Gonduana.

This discovery is also important because it helps scientists understand how ancient ecosystems functioned and which animals filled different roles in those early communities.

They were digging a well when they hit something that made [music] them stop mid swing.

Their shovels struck stone and as they cleared the dirt away, the farmers [music] saw blocks lined up like bricks in a fortress wall.

It happened in Texas in [music] 1852, but to this day, there’s no single explanation for something that looks like a secret buried city beneath quiet streets [music] and front lawns.

The diggers who found the well said that the structure stretched for miles.

In some places, it dropped dozens of feet below the surface.

The stones looked strangely orderly, almost like someone had stacked them, and in certain places, the shapes even formed arches.

Other sections looked like windows or steps climbing upward.

Before long, people started calling it the Great Wall of Texas.

And the story spread quickly.

Farmers, builders, and curious locals all grabbed shovels and started digging around, hoping to figure out what it really was.

And that’s when they noticed that the blocks seemed separated by seams that looked suspiciously like mortar.

It was really hard to believe that nature could stack limestone into right angles and parallel lines like this.

Then things got even stranger.

In 1886, a local newspaper wrote about a massive petrified skull found near the wall.

They also mentioned underground chambers, lost rooms beneath Texas soil, and relics of something powerful and old.

And then, almost as quickly as it appeared, the story vanished from print.

[music] There were no follow-up articles, no skull preserved in a museum, no official investigation that anyone could point to.

It was as if the story had quietly [music] slipped out of existence.

People got even more intrigued and wanted to know if someone had suppressed all the info about the find on purpose.

Someone suggested that some powerful institutions had quietly removed artifacts.

Over time, theories piled up.

Lost civilizations, ancient giants, even a North American counterpart to the [music] Great Pyramid.

But then modern science stepped in with drilling rigs.

Geologists drilled deep into the formation and pulled out samples of the rock.

Then they ran paleomagnetic tests.

When rocks form, tiny magnetic minerals inside them line up with Earth’s magnetic field at that moment, almost like microscopic compass needles [music] frozen in place.

If workers had cut these blocks somewhere else, maybe dug them out of a quarry and [music] then transported and assembled them into a wall, the magnetic patterns inside the rocks would have pointed in different directions.

Each block would carry the signature of the place where it originally formed, [music] but every sample had the same magnetic orientation, which means the stone formed exactly where it sits today.

Researchers figured out the wall was made of rare limestone.

This material can fracture in surprisingly straight lines as it hardens underground.

Over long periods, erosion opens up those fractures and they can look exactly like humanmade walls.

It’s like mud.

When it dries, it splits into neat geometric patterns.

Now, imagine the same process happening underground slowly over millions of years on a much larger scale.

Today, the scientists are sure that the rockwell formation developed naturally.

It only seems constructed by humans.

Recently, a family whose ancestors were early rock wall settlers donated a piece of land to the city that has the original site where the wall was excavated.

[music] And because the interest in the place lives on, the city authorities plan to make the original wall accessible to the public.

The rock [music] wall isn’t alone.

In 1968, three divers spotted large rectangular limestone blocks near North Biminy in the Bahamas.

The blocks were in a straight line stretching about a half a mile.

Divers called it the biminy road.

It consists of massive angular blocks of limestone.

Some of those blocks are up to 13 ft long.

Many of the blocks look like they once [music] had right angled corners, as if someone cut them and placed them there with purpose.

The three divers found this [music] construction when the world buzzed with interest in Atlantis.

So headlines immediately connected the dots and were seriously asking whether [music] this could be the first physical trace of Plato’s legendary civilization.

We still don’t have any archaeological evidence to confirm it actually existed, but the timing and the shape of the biminy stones made many people believe that was it.

But then geologists explained that beach [music] rock forms when sand shell fragments and other coastal sediments cement together in warm shallow water.

The biminy blocks consist of small mud pellets, grains of sand, shell pieces, remains of tiny single-sellled marine organisms and fragments of algae.

Over time, chemical reactions bound these materials into solid limestone sheets.

Natural fractures split the sheets into rectangular blocks.

As sea levels rose at the end of the last ice age, water gradually submerged the formation.

Waves and currents eroded the sand beneath parts of it and made some blocks look slightly elevated or recessed.

Then researchers did radiocarbon dating on rock samples, shells embedded with them, and the carbonate cement holding everything together.

That’s how they found out that the stones were roughly 2,000 years old.

It’s way after Atlantis’s supposed demise 12,000 years ago.

So, no, the biminy road doesn’t lead to Atlantis, but it helps scientists better understand how coastlines evolve, how sediment hardens, and how rising seas reshape continents.

There’s another mysterious structure that might have to do with Atlantis.

Meet the eye of the Sahara, or [music] more officially, the Richot structure in Moritania.

From space, it looks like a 25m wide bullseye carved [music] into the desert.

Concentric rings ripple outward like someone dropped a cosmic pebble.

People who saw [music] it first thought it was a spot left by a meteor impact.

And a new theory links it to Atlantis.

They say it looks exactly how Plato described it with a center island with three rings of water and three rings of land around it.

The eye of the Sahara sits totally dry right now.

But imagine if you dropped it down to sea level.

Ocean water would rush in and fill those dips and boom, you get something that looks a whole lot like Plato’s famous city.

On top of that, the size seems pretty close.

Plato said the main part of Atlantis measured about 11 mi across, [music] and the Richhat structure measures roughly 13 mi wide.

But wait, Atlantis famously [music] sank into the ocean.

So for this to work, the eye had to sit right at sea level a long time ago.

The fans of this idea claimed that this whole chunk of northwest Africa slowly pushed upward over the last 11,000 years.

They say it sat right at the ocean’s edge way back around 9,600 B.CE, which is exactly when Plato’s story takes place.

To back this up, they point out tons [music] of salt inside the rings in satellite pictures, saying this proves ocean water used to sit right there.

They also see sand all around the eye that looks like a giant wave washed over it.

A huge wave like that would totally wipe out any city sitting there, just like the wave that supposedly sank Atlantis.

It all sounds [music] pretty convincing, but actual scientists and historians totally disagree because when you look closely, the facts just fall apart.

Yes, [music] the eye has three clear ridges, but if you measure all three, the whole thing stretches [music] way bigger than 13 miles.

On the flip side, if you only measure out to 13 miles, you have to leave out the third [music] ridge entirely.

So, it doesn’t actually match Plato’s description perfectly since you simply can’t have it both ways.

Modern satellite images show that the eye formed from uplifted rock [music] layers that were pushed upward by molten material beneath the surface.

Wind and water erosion then peeled back those layers like an onion over at least 100 million years.

The oldest rocks sit in the center.

Younger layers ring outward.

It’s a geological dome, not a crater, [music] not a city.

Inside the structure, scientists found ignous rocks, hardened magma, and sedimentary layers twisted [music] by immense pressure.

Hot water chemically changed the rocks and left additional signatures.

Ancient stone tools also scatter across the region, showing that early humans once passed [music] through.

This site is now among the most significant geological heritage locations on Earth.

A perfectly carved vertical hole hidden deep in the North Caucasus Mountains drops into the Earth like someone drilled straight toward the planet’s core.

Some people even compare the shaft to internal passages inside the Egyptian pyramids.

Could there really be a connection between them?

So, the public learned about this mystery cave thanks to a local cave enthusiast who was hiking in the North Caucasus in 2011.

[music] The rugged slopes of the Kahora Mountain with glacier carved valleys and cliffs that have stood there against all sorts of weather for thousands of years seem to be a perfect place if you want to hide something.

And that’s where Shamikov found something that looked like an entrance to an underground cave.

He invited a team of cavers and together they went down the shaft.

At first they were sure it was a geological [music] formation.

But the deeper they descended, the more it looked like something carefully built by humans.

There were massive stone blocks that seemed fitted together so tightly that you couldn’t push a knife blade between them.

Some sources also say the shaft drops almost perfectly [music] vertical and its walls look polished, as if giant machinery smooth them long before modern tools existed.

But in reality, this smooth [music] appearance results from natural geological fractures.

What’s really weird are openings resembling ventilation channels.

These passages seem designed to move air through the structure.

Natural caves rarely organize air flow this cleanly.

That detail alone makes researchers argue whether someone designed and built all this intentionally.

And if someone did build it on purpose, it would have to be one really advanced civilization.

Some people say Jemikov described his discovery in every detail in his diary.

But even if it really existed, it was lost.

So we’ll never know what was in it.

In fact, we know so little about this man, and his discovery wasn’t mentioned a lot on TV or elsewhere that some people even questioned if he existed at all.

Or maybe he saw something down there he shouldn’t have seen.

And there’s no way to double check as he was hit by a car and passed away just 4 years after the discovery.

This tragedy fueled even more rumor, speculation, and conspiracy theories.

Geologists are trying to find a more logical explanation for this shaft.

Of course, the Caucasus mountains are part of a massive chain called the Alpa belt, which stretches all the way from southeastern Europe right into Asia.

The Caucasus formed as a result of a tectonic plate collision.

All these massive plates are still restless and constantly pushing against each other today.

So, the entire region gets hit with strong earthquakes on a regular basis.

Plus, water, pressure, and chemical reactions can carve vertical shafts over millions of years.

Underground rivers dissolve softer rock, and harder layers remain smooth, eventually forming deep chimneys.

But erosion usually creates rammedness, and Carora has symmetry, angles, and fitted stone features that resemble architecture more than accident.

Now, getting inside the shaft is still extremely dangerous.

You’d have to face sheer drops, unstable ledges, and oxygen levels that thin out deeper underground.

Twisting tunnels make it super tricky to find your way.

And locals warned that some of the first explorers who entered never returned.

Luckily, modern teams can use ground penetrating radar and remote sensors instead of human descent to study the shaft.

With every new scan, researchers find more voids that are still unreachable.

Meanwhile, Carahora has interesting neighbors.

For example, Verafkina Cave.

Currently the second deepest known cave on the planet.

This monster drops nearly 1 and 1/2 miles straight down deeper than four Empire State Buildings stacked end to end.

Explorers descend through freezing waterfalls, razor sharp rock corridors, and vertical pits that swallow light completely.

Temperatures here hover just above freezing, and underground rivers roar through darkness nobody saw until recently.

If you dare reach the bottom, prepare for a journey that will last weeks of staged camps, ropes stretching thousands of feet, and [music] absolute trust in teammates.

One mistake down there means you’ll be gone for good.

Veryina constantly floods and reshapes itself year after year, so cavers have to deal with flood [music] pulses all the time.

Water cuts deeper into the limestone rock and expands chambers slowly but surely and then because of the volume suddenly burst through cave openings.

But this doesn’t stop scientists from going down there to measure oxygen, air flow, and mineral growth to understand how caves evolve over geological time.

And that’s how explorers discover strange microbial life that somehow survives without sunlight and feeds on minerals instead of plants.

These ecosystems resemble conditions scientists expect beneath icy moons like Europa or Encettilus.

This means [music] the cave could be a great training ground for future space exploration.

But before we head to space, let’s check out another super interesting cave system.

This time in northern Spain.

There’s a chamber there which scientists call Pit of Bones.

Explorers have to trek into a pitch black underground maze to squeeze through a narrow shaft that suddenly drops straight down for 42 feet.

At the bottom of that geological trap, you slide down a steep stone ramp into a cramped muddy chamber that holds the largest and oldest collection of early human fossils ever discovered.

It’s a biological time capsule with the remains of at least 28 ancient humans frozen long before modern history even began.

Explorers also found over 6,500 fossil fragments mixed with the remains of at least 166 Ice Age cave bears, lions, wolves, and foxes that probably fell down the shaft by accident.

But the human bones are a massive mystery because they seem to have ended up down there much earlier than the animals.

Who these people actually were is still a huge debate.

When researchers looked closer at their skulls and jaws, they [music] noticed strong super early Neanderthal traits.

Then things got even crazier when scientists miraculously extracted mitochondrial DNA from those ancient bones.

It linked these individuals not only to early Neanderthalss, but also to the Denisans, a mysterious group of ancient humans found thousands of miles away in Siberia.

It proves our ancestors were moving and mixing in ways far more complicated than anyone ever guessed.

The drama doesn’t stop at genetics, though.

This dark cave might actually hold the world’s first assassination mystery and its earliest funeral.

Out of thousands of bones, archaeologists found absolutely no everyday tools or food waste except for a single carefully crafted quartzside hand axe they nicknamed Excalibur.

Because of this, some researchers think the group intentionally lowered their deceased down the shaft with the axe as a ritual.

It was probably a way to show compassion hundreds of thousands of years before we thought possible.

At the same time, one of the skulls shows two identical lethal fractures that look exactly like intentional blows.

To get the exact timeline for all this prehistoric drama, scientists use cuttingedge tech like electron spin resonance and uranium series dating and finally [music] lock down that is 430,000 years old.

Now, let’s jump across the world to another geological giant, Devil’s Tower in Wyoming.

The formation shoots nearly 900 ft above the surrounding land.

Its surface has long vertical columns and it looks like some careful hands carve them.

But geologists explain the structure formed when molten rock pushed upwards underground and cooled slowly.

As the rock cooled, it turned into hexagonal columns, similar to how drying mud splits into patterns, just scaled up to impossible size.

Erosion later removed the softer surrounding rock and left the hardened core unprotected.

Local tribes thought the tower was sacred and made up stories about giant bears clawing the stone during mythical hunts.

Now scientists agree on much of its volcanic origin, but debates continue about whether magma ever reached the surface or harden entirely underground.

Even after more than a century [music] of study, Devil’s Tower still has its mysteries.

When you connect all these places, engineered [music] shafts, endless caves, and underground ecosystem, one thing becomes clear.

Earth hides entire worlds beneath our feet.

And we’ve barely scratched the surface.