Real ancient mysteries (not Atlantis) that we need to discuss!

[Hanslune]

So the fine folks here added a few while I was asleep. Sneaky b*******.

1. Who were the Sumerians, and what was their original homeland?

2. The Copper Scroll that was discovered with other Dead Sea Scrolls: As its name suggests, the writing was engraved onto a copper scroll. The scroll records a vast amount of hidden gold and silver treasure — so much, in fact, that some scholars believe that it is impossible for it to exist?

3. Is the Sumerian Cuneiform actually the first written language?

There are other possibilities such as proto-writing systems that mainly used symbols that are older

4. While this isn’t ancient it could certainly make for an interesting conversation:  Who was Jack the Ripper?

5. Who actually discovered America?  Oldest proof of human occupation in the Americas. Were the Americas peopled before 30,000 years ago? Did Homo erectus or other non-sapiens hominins make it to the Americas?

6. Were the people of Gobekli Tepe actually agroforesters? Not tethered nomads?

7. Who was the man in the Iron Mask in Versailles? Was his real name Eustache Dauger?

8. The Sarmatian Laeti Theory

9. My question would be who was the greater inspiration for the King Arthur stories, Owain Ddantgwyn or Riothamus?  Was there a real king Arthur?

10. The Giza Pyramids: A History of Wireless

11. Ye old Baghdad battery

12. Who was Kaspar Hauser the most mysterious person in history?

That should give us something to chew on for a bit.

 

Edited June 23, 2022 by Hanslune

[SHaYap]

4 hours ago, Piney said:

@Hanslune

Were the people of Gobekli Tepe actually agroforesters? Not tethered nomads? 

What's the average family size for a grindstone?

Quote

https://www.archaeology.org › issues

Tools of the Trade - Archaeology Magazine

 

Gobekli Tepe Grinding Tools Rotated ... Dietrich began analyzing thousands of stone grinding tools that had been excavated at Göbekli Tepe over the...

 

~

 

[Hanslune]

4 hours ago, Piney said:

@Hanslune

Were the people of Gobekli Tepe actually agroforesters? Not tethered nomads? 

Possibly but the area may have been short of forest even before the arrival of chomping hordes of domesticated sheep and goats. I would suspect they were not 'just hunter-gathers' but may have been 'helping' wild crops and starting perhaps the domestication process. It will be interesting if they find dog bones in the excavations from earlier than the Neolithic-Chalcolithic era.

[Piney]

18 minutes ago, Hanslune said:

So the fine folks here added a few while I was asleep. Sneaky b*******.

1. Who were the Sumerians, and what was their original homeland?

2. The Copper Scroll that was discovered with other Dead Sea Scrolls: As its name suggests, the writing was engraved onto a copper scroll. The scroll records a vast amount of hidden gold and silver treasure — so much, in fact, that some scholars believe that it is impossible for it to exist?

3. Is the Sumerian Cuneiform actually the first written language?

There are other possibilities such as proto-writing systems that mainly used symbols that are older

4. While this isn’t ancient it could certainly make for an interesting conversation:  Who was Jack the Ripper?

5. Who actually discovered America?  Oldest proof of human occupation in the Americas. Were the Americas peopled before 30,000 years ago? Did Homo erectus or other non-sapiens hominins make it to the Americas?

6. Were the people of Gobekli Tepe actually agroforesters? Not tethered nomads?

7. Who was the man in the Iron Mask in Versailles? Was his real name Eustache Dauger?

8. The Sarmatian Laeti Theory

9. My question would be who was the greater inspiration for the King Arthur stories, Owain Ddantgwyn or Riothamus?  Was there a real king Arthur?

10. The Giza Pyramids: A History of Wireless

11. Ye old Baghdad battery

12. Who was Kaspar Hauser the most mysterious person in history?

That should give us something to chew on for a bit.

 

It's rather obvious that certain Asian species of hominids made watercraft.

@Harte and I thought H. Erectus, but now it's been discovered Denisovans were in the vicinity too and they seemed pretty advanced. But I doubt either species of human made it to the Americas.

Then again 60 to 80 percent of Native North American archeology sites have been destroyed without even being studied and firms working for governments and development companies still hide things.

Savannah, Georgia was a major trading center where even the Arawak-Taino and Carib tribe's came to ply their wares. As with Plains tribes.

But it has never been truly studied.

The Plains tribe's sign language was noted by many of the earliest setters as being used on the East Coast and Alan Carman and I found Rocky Mountain obsidian in Cumberland County, New Jersey.

The Virginia Algonquians told John Smith about the Rockies.

Think about the extent of the trade networks and what a "vast untouched wilderness" North America wasn't.

Which debunks those false Nordic accounts of NA exploration.

 

[HollyDolly]

All this is ver interesting. As far as the Man in the Iron Mask goes, there is some thought  that he might have been the real father of King Louis the 14th.  Only way to prove it would be to dig up both Eustace Dauger and Louis 14th  and do DNA samples. Same with Kaspar Hauser. Some thought he might be related to the  Royal Family of Baden. Is it possible that he could have been the product of an affair by either the Grand Duke  or  his wife, hard to say. And  the family I understand won't dig up the right family members to find out.

It's like the bones of the two princes in the Tower of London, whose bones were found while renovations were going on during the reign of King Charles II.

They sit in Westminister Abbey.  After the body of Richard the Third was  found in I think York, under a parking lot, people wanted to test the  bones in the urn of the supposed princes, but requests to do so have been refused.

[Windowpane]

1 hour ago, HollyDolly said:

...

They sit in Westminister Abbey.  After the body of Richard the Third was  found in I think York, under a parking lot, people wanted to test the  bones in the urn of the supposed princes, but requests to do so have been refused.

According to this article from 2018, the bones were tested, and a descendant found:

Quote

... opera singer Elizabeth Roberts is an all-female line descendant of the boys, revealing their mtDNA group.

Elizabeth was traced by Glen Moran. She is a direct descendant of the boys’ aunt Margaret Woodville and is their first cousin16 times removed.

 

[Abramelin]

15 hours ago, Manwon Lender said:

1. Who were the Sumerians, and what was their original homeland?

According to the Sumerians they came from the north.

Several Magyar/Hungarian sites claim they were the ancestors of the Sumerians.

Both their languages are agglutanative (sp?), and the Magyars claim to have the oldest script.

True? No idea.

Edited June 23, 2022 by Abramelin

[Abramelin]

15 hours ago, Manwon Lender said:

5. Who actually discovered America?

Those we now call Native Americans.

[Abramelin]

15 hours ago, Manwon Lender said:

3. Is the Sumerian Cuneiform actually the first written language?

Maybe the first 'written' language can be found on the Mas d'Azil pebbles.

[Tatetopa]

Might be too mundane for this august list, but who was Ulfberht?  Where were the exceptional swords made that included his name  graven into the blades?  Where did the metal come from?   They were highly prized for their quality. Many of the existing blades, something near 200,  are found in Scandinavia, Norway in particular, though Ulfberht seems to be a Frankish name. And they seem to be made over a period of a couple of centuries. Did they originate in a metal working center on a trade route between Asia for the raw materials and Northern Europe the final customers?  

I'd like to believe Ulfberht was a skilled smith whose apprentices carried on his work, an actual historical Wayland character.  Could he have been a 9th century genius whose history is gone, but whose work remains? I am aware that like to believe doesn't make it reality, so dash my dreams if you know better. I don't want to die stupid.

[Abramelin]

35 minutes ago, Tatetopa said:

Might be too mundane for this august list, but who was Ulfberht?  Where were the exceptional swords made that included his name  graven into the blades?  Where did the metal come from?   They were highly prized for their quality. Many of the existing blades, something near 200,  are found in Scandinavia, Norway in particular, though Ulfberht seems to be a Frankish name. And they seem to be made over a period of a couple of centuries. Did they originate in a metal working center on a trade route between Asia for the raw materials and Northern Europe the final customers?  

I'd like to believe Ulfberht was a skilled smith whose apprentices carried on his work, an actual historical Wayland character.  Could he have been a 9th century genius whose history is gone, but whose work remains? I am aware that like to believe doesn't make it reality, so dash my dreams if you know better. I don't want to die stupid.

Ulfberth means something like 'borne from a wolf'.

The metal that Viking used to create the sword came from present-day Iran.

It was metal from a meteorite.

[Trelane]

Thank you all for this thread! The very real mysteries are far more fascinating (to me at least).

[Piney]

27 minutes ago, Abramelin said:

Ulfberth means something like 'borne from a wolf'.

The metal that Viking used to create the sword came from present-day Iran.

It was metal from a meteorite.

Probably traded from the Eastern Iranians who were reported by the Chinese "gathering sky iron" to make their weapons.

1 hour ago, Abramelin said:

According to the Sumerians they came from the north.

Several Magyar/Hungarian sites claim they were the ancestors of the Sumerians.

Both their languages are agglutanative (sp?), and the Magyars claim to have the oldest script.

True? No idea.

Attila Joseph's and another nationalist nutjob whose name I can't remember line of crap. When we started the Silk Road Foundation we all wanted to choke them.

The Magyars used "Rovas" (runes) based on the Turkic Orkon ones which they borrowed from the Khazars when they were under their yoke.

[The_Spartan]

My turn to add to the list.
Where is "The Gold Chin of Huascar" (my favorite Missing Treasure)
I had a post about it in UM earlier

 

[Tatetopa]

1 hour ago, Piney said:

Probably traded from the Eastern Iranians who were reported by the Chinese "gathering sky iron" to make their weapons.

Considering we have the remains of 200 or so,  and likely there were many that did not survive, that is a crap ton of iron at a couple of kilograms each.    There are many references to caliphs, conquerors and potentates in the region that had sky swords, but they were notable enough to be owned by royalty and recorded in history.  I know meteoric iron was used across the region and also in Africa.  I suppose many  thousand pounds of meteorites have been collected over time. If that was the source, a big one must have been found and kept secrets for a long time to make swords available  for warriors not in the noble class.

I am thinking the Chinese also get some credit for inventing the blast furnace around 1100 AD.  Could something like crucible steel be coming out of the area  for a couple hundred years as the blast furnace was being perfected?

[The_Spartan]

Another mystery to add.
Do the Vinca Symbols aka Danube Script pre-date the Sumerian Cuneiform?
Keeping aside the Tartaria tablets which were baked some idiots that prevents Radio Carbon dating,. the other artefacts containing the symbols have been dated to a period of 4500 and 4000 BCE, Predating the Cuneiform.


Though labelled as Symbols, these markings are too complex to be 'Symbols' alone. They have to be a proto-script.

[Piney]

2 minutes ago, Tatetopa said:

Considering we have the remains of 200 or so,  and likely there were many that did not survive, that is a crap ton of iron at a couple of kilograms each.    There are many references to caliphs, conquerors and potentates in the region that had sky swords, but they were notable enough to be owned by royalty and recorded in history.  I know meteoric iron was used across the region and also in Africa.  I suppose many  thousand pounds of meteorites have been collected over time. If that was the source, a big one must have been found and kept secrets for a long time to make swords available  for warriors not in the noble class.

I am thinking the Chinese also get some credit for inventing the blast furnace around 1100 AD.  Could something like crucible steel be coming out of the area  for a couple hundred years as the blast furnace was being perfected?

Lonquan was the sword making capital of China and where Koreans and the Japanese learned how to fold swords. I wouldn't be surprised that the technique traveled West too.

It was where I acquired my blade in the early 2000s.

[jethrofloyd]

So far over 8,000 Terracotta Warriors has been excavated in the pits near Qin Shi Huang's mausoleum in China. But, no commander has been excavated among them. Why?

 

 

[Thanos5150]

The same type of question was asked here:  Is there any real mystery?

Myself: 

Quote

 

1) Where did the Fayoum A culture come from? Where did the Naqada culture come from? What was the extent of Mesopotamian influence on the formation of the Egyptian Dynastic state?

2) Why are 1st Dynasty non-royal mastabas at Saqqara and elsewhere superior to their royal counterparts at Um el-Qa'ab? Why do these mastabas utilize the Mesopotamian inspired palace facade motif whereas those at Um el-Qa'ab do not? And yet the nearby enclosures do? What inspired the practice of ritual mass murder of royal retainers lasting through the 1st Dynasty only to end abruptly in the 2nd Dynasty? 

3) What inspired the "pyramids" of the 1st Dynasty? How many were there? Credited to the reign of the pharaoh Anedjib, why did they build a "pyramid" only to later completely enclose it within a palace facade mastaba? Why were many of the 1st palace facade mastabas ransacked by arson? What inspired the practice of ritual mass murder of royal retainers lasting through the 1st Dynasty only to end abruptly in the 2nd Dynasty?  

4) Why did the Dynastic state apparently collapse in the 2nd Dynasty and why the resurgence under Khasekhemwy? What were the relationships between early Dynastic Egypt and their neighbors in the Levant? 

5) What led to and make possible the abrupt and radical transformation of stone working from the reign of Khasekhemwy to his successor Djoser with no difference in tooling or materials? When was the original mastaba inside the Saqqara pyramid built? Why did Djoser convert it to a pyramid? Why are there "fake" buildings in Djoser's pyramid complex not meant to actually be used? Many more. 

6) Who built the tower core of Meidum and why and when? Why did Sneferu convert it to a true pyramid despite the fact he built two others supposedly as his "tombs"? 

7) What was the extent pre-4th Dynasty occupation at Giza? Why did Djedefre build at Abu Roash, also an early Dynastic site, and not Giza? Why do the people of the time not acknowledge the Sphinx not only as the guardian of the necropolis but nearly at all? Why is the architecture of the mortuary temple of Khafre so different from one segment to the next? Why is the megalithic architecture of the G2 mortuary temple and Valley Temple and the G3 mortuary temple so different than the rest of Giza? I could write a whole page of "mysteries" to be had at Giza before I even got to the mysteries of "how" they did it.

And this is just a snippet of just one period of ancient Egypt. Much more and it keeps going. 

What are the origins of Cro-Magnon and why was he so physically and behaviorally different than his Homo sapien contemporaries? When did he really disappear? Why are there no fully modern skulls found in Africa until thousands of years after their appearance in Europe which with few exceptions all [are found] some 25,000-30,000yrs later? What does the Venus figure really represent? What are the origins of the Dolni Vestonice culture and where are there predecessors? Why do elongated skulls start appearing in the Near East in the 8th millennium becoming part and parcel of the population of the Near East and greater Mediterranean for the next several thousand years? Who and what are the elongated skull eye-idols and "reptilian" figures of the Ubaid? 

What caused 90% of all life to become extinct prior the Cambrian explosion and where did the new life that replaced them come from? What is wave-particle duality really? What is quantum entanglement really? Baryon asymmetry-where is all the dark matter? What is dark matter? Why are all electrons in the universe identical? What is wrong with the cosmological constant?

I need to go, but if everything is a mystery you know too little. If nothing is mystery you know to little. All I know is the more I know the less I know. 

 

 

[Tatetopa]

11 minutes ago, Piney said:

Lonquan was the sword making capital of China and where Koreans and the Japanese learned how to fold swords. I wouldn't be surprised that the technique traveled West too.

It was where I acquired my blade in the early 2000s.

Thanks for that.  That gets more to the heart of my puzzle.  It is not simply about raw materials, but technique.  Ulfberht swords are made in European style rather than Eastern, and made for that European market.   Does it imply a manufacturing center along a trade route manned by European craftsmen?  Could they have gotten their techniques from further East?  Knowledge moving west earlier than we thought? 

 

[Piney]

10 minutes ago, Tatetopa said:

Thanks for that.  That gets more to the heart of my puzzle.  It is not simply about raw materials, but technique.  Ulfberht swords are made in European style rather than Eastern, and made for that European market.   Does it imply a manufacturing center along a trade route manned by European craftsmen?  Could they have gotten their techniques from further East?  Knowledge moving west earlier than we thought? 

 

Eastern Iranians in the middle. Like the Sogdians probably. 

[Carnoferox]

13 hours ago, Manwon Lender said:

Yea I agree with you, he should have gone down with Titanic and then picked up all the litter from the ship wreck on the ocean floor!

Speaking of the Titanic...

Although more of a historical mystery than an ancient one, who really rediscovered the Titanic wreck? There are many rumors that it was actually rediscovered in the late 1970's-early 80's, before Bob Ballard and crew made the official rediscovery in 1985.

[SHaYap]

2 hours ago, jethrofloyd said:

So far over 8,000 Terracotta Warriors has been excavated in the pits near Qin Shi Huang's mausoleum in China. But, no commander has been excavated among them. Why?

 

 

The central tomb hasn't been excavated or breached as yet, maybe that's where the top brass are assembled ... 

~

[SHaYap]

3 hours ago, Tatetopa said:

I am thinking the Chinese also get some credit for inventing the blast furnace around 1100 AD.  Could something like crucible steel be coming out of the area  for a couple hundred years as the blast furnace was being perfected?

Lack of funding, lack of interest from qualified researchers, and recent discoveries across Asia eclipsed the importance of this site.... 

Quote

The discovery of the excavation sites within the area of 4 km² (1.5 sq mi) in Sungai Batu, Kedah proves the existence of a prehistoric Malaysian civilization as early as 788 BC.^[7] Archaeological sites in Sungai Batu show evidence of a flourishing industry in iron ore smelting and trade at that time. The current date of the Sungai Batu ancient civilization predates the founding of Ancient Rome making it the oldest civilization in Southeast Asia.^[8] The excavation in Sungai Batu started from a request made by the National Heritage Department (JWN) for the Global Archaeological Research Center (PPAG), Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) to complete the Bujang Valley area data. This request was made due to the record in Geographike Hyphegesis. In it Ptolemy, stated there was a trading system between the Western and Eastern worlds through the Golden Chersonese (Golden Peninsula) route, better known as Malay Peninsula in the 1st century.

Findings from archaeological excavations indicate the existence of ancient port center and trade activities. The discovery of building ruins such as ancient jetties, administrative building walls and unique local ritual sites remnants using brick-building foundations show evidence that the local community at that time had high skills in infrastructure and building architecture. In 2015, archaeologists in Sungai Batu managed to find several ancient ships buried at the bottom of the lake around the excavation area.^[9] The ships were found to be 12–30 m (40–100 ft) long and estimated to be 2500 years old believed to be used for commercial purposes.

...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sungai_Batu

~

 

[Grim Reaper 6]

56 minutes ago, Carnoferox said:

Speaking of the Titanic...

Although more of a historical mystery than an ancient one, who really rediscovered the Titanic wreck? There are many rumors that it was actually rediscovered in the late 1970's-early 80's, before Bob Ballard and crew made the official rediscovery in 1985.

I am certain about the ship actually being discovered in 70s - early 80s, do you have more information about that?

What I find interesting is the fact that the US Navy financed Robert Ballards tests of his remote vehicle the Argo. The Navy financed the test because they wanted to locate to Submarines that had sunk in the 1960s. Well Ballard and his team located both Submarines and had approximately 12 days left. So Ballard asked if he could use the remaining time to search for the Titanic, and using the Argo and the French Research Ship they discovered the Titanic in September 1985; all of his previous missions had failed.