If there’s one thing that archaeology continues to prove, it’s that the world is a strange place. While many archaeological artifacts can be placed into a concrete timeline, others remain mysterious, strange outliers, sometimes raising more questions than answers. And other times, even if we know the when, or the how, an artifact’s story can remain mysterious, or even seem out of place.
From out-of-place hammers, mysterious treasure maps, and manuscripts written in mysterious text, to ancient cave art, stone balls, and fossilized bog people, here are ten of the strangest archaeological objects ever found.
In 1936 a group of hikers discovered what appeared to be an 1800s-style hammer encased in rock in London, Texas. The rock encasing the hammer dates back nearly 100 million years. Explanations over the years for the artifact’s apparent geological misplacement range from time travel to a controversy sparked by creationists decrying the hammer to be a so-called “out of place artifact” which is an artifact that appears to be more advanced than the geological and fossil records would allow. To this day, the hammer is on display at the Carl Baugh Creation Evidence Museum in Glen Rose, Texas as alleged proof that the fossil record is wrong.
It’s not.
Despite the claims surrounding the hammer, the artifact became encased in the rock after being dropped by an 1800s-era worker in the area. In 1985, NCSE researcher John Cole debunked Baugh’s extraordinary claims by stating that while the stone is real and looks impressive to a person unfamiliar with geological processes, mineral solutions can harden around an intrusive object dropped in a crack or left on a rocky surface.
In this case, Ordivician (the rock the hammer was found in) is incredibly water-soluble.
Still, how the hammer got there is a mystery, perhaps a more interesting story than the offered conspiracy theories that surround it.
The Copper Scroll is one of the famous “Dead Sea Scrolls” discovered in 1947 by Bedouins who were spelunking in the caves surrounding the Dead Sea. The tablet is interesting because it seems to detail the locations of 67 different treasures, weighing in at 160 tons of gold and silver. All of the Dead Sea Scrolls date back to the second century C.E., but what’s strange about the Copper Scroll is that the other 14 discovered in the caves were written on forms of parchment.
If the treasure turns out to be real, the Copper Scroll would represent the map to the largest collection of treasure in recorded history.
But where would all that treasure come from? Historians think it would likely have belonged to Jerusalem’s Second Temple which was built between 516 B.C.E. and 70 C.E. The Romans retaliated against the rebelling Jews in 70 C.E., ransacking and destroying the temple.
The treasure itself was likely hidden by Essene priests.
There is a final, 64th clue on the Copper Scroll, detailing the location of a second version of the scroll with further instructions called the “Silver Scroll.” This Silver Scroll has never been found, but archaeologists are still hunting for it.
The Voynich Manuscript was first discovered in 1912 and its discovery baffled everyone who looked upon its pages, at least until recently. It appeared to be written in an unknown language, featuring pictures of alien plants, and is filled with zodiac symbols.
It’s thought that it was made in the 15th century, and sold to the Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolph II of Germany, who claimed to have obtained the manuscript for 600 gold ducats. Rudolph II thought the mysterious text to have been the work of Roger Bacon, but its authorship remains unknown.
The Voynich Manuscript has been fully scanned and uploaded to Yale’s Beinecke Library, where users can explore its pages for themselves.
Recently Historian and TV writer Nicholas Gibbs claimed to have finally deciphered the artifact’s mysterious code. According to Gibbs, the manuscript is written in a medieval shorthand and appears (post-translation) to be a women’s health document. Gibbs also suggests that this manuscript was plagiarized from a variety of other sources.
The Cochno stone, a 5,000-year-old chunk of stone featuring prehistoric cup and ring markings remains a mystery after years of careful research. The object was first discovered by Rev. James Harvey in 1887, but by 1967 it had been vandalized and damaged by weather erosion and local Glasgow residents, so it was reburied to prevent further damage to the markings on the stone.
But in 2016, researchers would unearth the stone once more and begin a massive photographing and 3D imaging project to recreate the stone for further study.
In addition to finding new prehistoric markings hidden from the naked eye, the scans of the object also revealed 19th and 20th-century graffiti and painted markings made by Ludovic Maclellan Mann, who was an archeologist who studied the stone extensively in 1937. Mann was attempting to figure out if the markings on the stone consisted with astrological events like eclipses.
Despite this research, the meaning behind the artwork is still unknown. However, some historians in the art community question whether there is any meaning behind the markings at all. Sometimes, art doesn’t have an easily defined point.
It might not look like much, but since it was reconstructed at a Canadian museum, this holey jar dating back to the Roman Empire has baffled every archaeologist who has examined it. Suggestions for what it could have been used for range from a crude lamp, a container for very large snakes, and even a place for ancient Roman homemakers to store delicious door mice.
The problem with the jar is that it just doesn’t match other jars dating back to the same period of time (about 1800 years). Some archaeologists believe it may have originated from Roman Britain dating back to around 43 to 410 C.E., and that it was gifted to the museum with some other artifacts in the 1950s by William Francis Grimes, whose team had dug up several artifacts in that same area after World War II. Though, no one can confirm whether or not the artifact was from the same dig. Frankly, the museum has no idea how the artifact became part of their collection.
And so the holey jar remains a mystery.
The discovery of more than 7,000 stone tools in India dating back 300,000 years completely changed the narrative of when Levallois technology (a particular method of developing stone tools by prehistoric hominins) made its way to the region. This is 250,000 years earlier than archaeologists originally thought.
The discovery itself was made in 1999 by two archaeologists from the Sharma Centre for Heritage Education in Chennai, beginning their excavation at a site about 60 kilometers from their main building.
Not only is it unknown how this technology for creating stone tools was introduced to India at this time, but it’s also unknown why the site where the tools were discovered was abandoned around 74,000 years ago.
The artifacts are also very similar to Middle Stone Age tools made in Africa and Europe and some scientists think the tools were made by an ancestor of Neanderthals called Homo heidelbergensis, but no one is certain.
Ancient alien conspiracy theorists and tin-foil hat aficionados everywhere lost their collective minds in 2003 when a six-inch mummy with a cone-shaped head was discovered in Chile’s Atacama Desert. The mummy’s features do admittedly bear striking resemblance to pop-culture representations of what aliens might look like.
Although the mummy is only about as large as a human fetus, its bones are actually as mature as a six-year-old child’s! Amazingly, x-ray and CT scans revealed that the mummy (named Ata) is completely human.
But how could a six-year-old be so small?
To answer this question, Ata was taken to Atul Butte’s team at the University of California, San Francisco. There they analyzed Ata’s genome. Their study revealed mutations in several of Ata’s genes, all of them pertaining to human growth.
The team at UCSF now thinks that Ata is a mummified stillborn fetus, but one whose genetic mutations caused her bones to rapidly grow.
Otzi the Iceman was discovered by a German tourist in 1991 in the Otzal Alps. Subsequent radiocarbon dating revealed that Otzi’s mummified corpse dated back to 3300 B.C.E., and the body belonged to a man of 25-35 years of age with a ton of health issues. The Iceman’s stomach was full the eggs belonging to parasitic worms, his arteries were hardened, his joints worn, and his gums diseased. He also had gallstones, and the scientists who studied him also think he might have had Lyme disease.
Though it is interesting to note that the Iceman’s body was tattooed using a technique requiring him to cut into his own skin and rub charcoal in his wounds. This is a practice that, before Ötzi, was thought to have originated 2000 years later.
The cause of death seemed to have been a blow to the head, but Ötzi did have an arrowhead lodged in his shoulder.
How Otzi came to be there in the Alps, though, is a bit of a mystery. However, some researchers suggest that he might have fled into the Otzal Alps after being shot, scaling Schnalstal, rather than the other valleys in the area, where he would have eventually died from blood loss, only to be covered by glaciation and preserved for modern humans to discover.
However, how accurate this reconstruction is, is up for debate, since there’s a lot we can’t reconstruct, given how old Ötzi’s mummified remains are.
Discovered in 1950 after a group of Peat diggers (a fossil fuel only found in bogs) stumbled upon his body in the Bjaeldskovdal bog in the middle of Denmark, Tollund Man, as he’s come to be known, is the incredibly well-preserved remains of a man who lived 2300 years ago. What’s strange about him is that his body has basically mummified, his skin becoming extremely rubber-like and changing color to a deep olive. Tollund Man was discovered in the bog, lying in the fetal position with a plaited leather thong wrapped about his neck, which researchers believe is the thing that killed him.
While the cause of death is certain, scientists and archaeologists aren’t sure why. Tollund Man has gotten around in the years since his discovery, and scientists at various universities have used machines like dual-energy CT scanners, and strontium tests, and are even attempting to sample his DNA to uncover more of his secrets.
Many researchers think ritual sacrifice is the most likely reason for Tollund Man’s death, but he isn’t the only “bog body” to be discovered in Northern Europe. While Tollund Man is the most well-preserved of these “bog bodies” researchers are hoping that together, their remains can help tell the story of why these people were killed.
Las Bolas are stone-carved balls ranging from just a few centimeters tall to almost 2 and a half meters in height and the largest weighing as much as 15 tons. They’re found all over Costa Rica, with nearly 300 discovered throughout the country.
Although exactly when the mysterious stone balls of Costa Rica were created isn’t known, most scientists and historians agree that they were most likely carved in 200 and 1500 C.E. But scientists have no clue who made them or why.
Perhaps as fascinating as their existence and the mystery archaeologists are attempting to uncover are the myths that surround them. Legend has it that there was treasure to be found inside them, leading to the smashing, drilling, and even dynamiting of some of the stone balls. The people of Costa Rica also believed that the balls were placed in a way that aligned with the stars. This is all but impossible to prove or disprove since many of them have been moved from their original locations.
Perhaps one day the answers will be revealed, but for now, Las Bolas remain a mystery.
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