Space Barista

I’m starting to post more blogs about things I find interesting, so here it goes!

The world is still full of mystery and wonder, and today I’m covering unusual places that cannot be easily explained!

Here are 5 unexplained archaeological finds.

1. Stone spheres in Costa Rica

In Costa Rica, large stone spheres dot the landscape, their original purpose unknown.

Costa Rica Stone Spheres, From Wikipedia:

The stone spheres (or stone balls) of Costa Rica are an assortment of over three hundred petrospheres in Costa Rica, located on the Diquís Delta and on Isla del Caño. Locally, they are known as Las Bolas (literally The Balls). The spheres are commonly attributed to the extinct Diquis culture and are sometimes referred to as the Diquís Spheres. They are the best-known stone sculptures of the Isthmo-Colombian area. They are thought to have been placed in lines along the approach to the houses of chiefs, but their exact significance remains uncertain.

While commonly attributed to an extinct culture, their purpose is unknown. Similarly, stone donuts in Micronesia called the Rai Stones have a similar unknown purpose. More intricate balls have been found in Scotland, servicing possible ritualistic or spiritual practices.

What purpose do you think the stones served?

2. Santorini, the real Atlantis?

The island of Santorini, now a hot tourist spot, was home to a seafaring civilization thousands of years ago. The island is full of archaeological finds, but the most interesting thing about the island is it’s similarities and archaeological parallels to the stories of Atlantis.

The actual name “Atlantis” was not the island’s original name. The word came from the Egyptian Philosopher Solon, who had translated it from another, unnamed language. Of course, the idea of a mythical city falling beneath the waves in a huge catastrophe has sparked the imagination of people for centuries, from Plato to modern movie and TV audiences.

So why Santorini?

Well, Santorini holds an archaeological site that is no less than wondrous. The architectural methods were unparalleled during their time, with multiple story living spaces, intricate art and indoor plumbing. Indoor plumbing, after Santorini, would not be seen in civilization for another 1000 years, when the Romans re-invented the technology. The people of the island were recorded to be very fierce, having an incredible navy that began to dominate the Aegean and Mediterranean.

That all ended, however, when Santorini’s volcano exploded in an eruption, the likes of which had not been seen for 4,000 years. The explosion was similar to the Krakatoa eruption.

Santorini, From Wikipedia:

While seismic activity around the volcano was intense in the years preceding the cataclysmic 1883 eruption, a series of lesser eruptions began on 20 May 1883. The volcano released huge plumes of steam and ash lasting until late August.^[25]

On 27 August, a series of four huge explosions almost entirely destroyed the island. The explosions were so violent that they were heard 3,110 km (1,930 mi) away in Perth, Western Australia, and the island of Rodrigues near Mauritius, 4,800 km (3,000 mi) away.^[4] The pressure wave from the third and most violent explosion was recorded on barographs around the world.^[26] Several barographs recorded the wave seven times over the course of five days: four times with the wave travelling away from the volcano to its antipodal point, and three times travelling back to the volcano;^[24]:63 the wave rounded the globe three and a half times. Ash was propelled to a height of 80 km (260,000 ft). The sound of the eruption was so loud it was reported that if anyone was within 16 kilometres (10 mi), they would have gone deaf.

The combined effects of pyroclastic flows, volcanic ashes, and tsunamis had disastrous results in the region and worldwide. The death toll recorded by the Dutch authorities was 36,417, although some sources put the estimate at more than 120,000. There are numerous documented reports of groups of human skeletons floating across the Indian Ocean on rafts of volcanic pumice and washing up on the east coast of Africa up to a year after the eruption. Average global temperatures fell by as much as 1.2 °C (2.2 °F) in the year following the eruption. Weather patterns continued to be chaotic for years and temperatures did not return to normal until 1888.

Two thirds of the island were obliterated, and geological evidence on Santorini shows the same type of cataclysmic evidence. While little survives, the island did preserve some amazing archeological evidence of the civilization that once dwelled on the island, now lost to the mists of time.

Do you think Santorini was the home of Atlantis?

EXTRA: Santorini Reading

https://www.livescience.com/4846-eruption-thera-changed-world.html

https://www.livescience.com/705-olive-branch-buried-volcano-revises-history.html

3. Göbekli Tepe

One of the most revolutionary discoveries of the 21st Century so far is the discovery of Göbekli Tepe, an ancient site of megalithic stones and carvings that serve to be, to date, the earliest human structures ever found.

Göbekli Tepe, from Wikipedia:

Göbekli Tepe (pronounced [ɟœbecˈli teˈpe]^[1]), Turkish for “Potbelly Hill”,^[2] is an archaeological site in the Southeastern Anatolia Region of Turkey, approximately 12 km (7 mi) northeast of the city of Şanlıurfa. The tell has a height of 15 m (49 ft) and is about 300 m (980 ft) in diameter.^[3] It is approximately 760 m (2,490 ft) above sea level.

The tell includes two phases of use believed to be of a social or ritual nature^{[by whom?]} dating back to the 10th–8th millennium BCE. During the first phase, belonging to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA), circles of massive T-shaped stone pillars were erected – the world’s oldest known megaliths.^[4] More than 200 pillars in about 20 circles are currently known through geophysical surveys. Each pillar has a height of up to 6 m (20 ft) and weighs up to 10 tons. They are fitted into sockets that were hewn out of the bedrock.^[5] In the second phase, belonging to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB), the erected pillars are smaller and stood in rectangular rooms with floors of polished lime. The site was abandoned after the PPNB. Younger structures date to classical times.

The details of the structure’s function remain a mystery. It was excavated by a German archaeological team under the direction of Klaus Schmidt from 1996 until his death in 2014. Schmidt believed that the site was a sanctuary where people from a wide region periodically congregated, not a settlement. In 2018, the site was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site.^[6]

What makes this site so mysterious is that only 5% of the entire site has been excavation, so there are many mysteries as to the true purpose for this site. It was definitely ceremonial, but little else is known about the place. Even more mysterious is evidence that the builders were actually nomadic, this place being built before the agricultural revolution. Until the discovery of this site, it was assumed that agricultural societies built religious sites AFTER the beginning of farming. However, this discovery predates farming, so there is a giant mystery of how societies like this operated if they didn’t farm, and why they would build stationary religious sites if they were constantly on the move.

4. Yonaguni Ruins

Off of the coast of Japan lie something indescribable. Ruins of an ice-aged society, or an entire city, are reported to be dwelling beneath the surface of the ocean.

Yonaguni, from Wikipedia:

The Yonaguni Monument (Japanese: 与那国島海底地形 Hepburn: Yonaguni-jima Kaitei Chikei, lit. “Yonaguni Island Submarine Topography”), also known as “Yonaguni (Island) Submarine Ruins” (与那国（島）海底遺跡 Yonaguni(-jima) Kaitei Iseki), is a submerged rock formation off the coast of Yonaguni, the southernmost of the Ryukyu Islands, in Japan. It lies approximately a hundred kilometres east of Taiwan.

Marine geologist Masaaki Kimura claims that the formations are man-made stepped monoliths.^[1] His ideas are disputed and there is debate about whether the site is completely natural, a natural site that has been modified, or a man-made artifact.^[2][3] Neither the Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs nor the government of Okinawa Prefecture recognise the features as important cultural artifacts and neither government agency has carried out research or preservation work on the site.^[4]

The entire area is populated with sharp, 90-degree stones which seem to me artificially made. Is this an ice-age culture whose city and technological understanding vanished beneath the sea?

5. The City of Great Zimbabwe

In the continent of Africa, in the Kingdom of Zimbabwe, lie ruins of extraordinary origin.

Great Zimbabwe, from Wikipedia:

Great Zimbabwe is a city, now in ruins, in the south-eastern hills of Zimbabwe near Lake Mutirikwe and the town of Masvingo. It was the capital of the Kingdom of Zimbabwe during the country’s Late Iron Age. Construction on the monument began in the 11th century and continued until the 15th century.^[1][2] The edifices were erected by the ancestral Shona.^[2] The stone city spans an area of 7.22 square kilometres (1,780 acres) which, at its peak, could have housed up to 18,000 people. It is recognised as a World Heritage site by UNESCO.

Great Zimbabwe is believed to have served as a royal palace for the local monarch. As such, it would have been used as the seat of political power. Among the edifice’s most prominent features were its walls, some of which were over five metres high. They were constructed without mortar (dry stone). Eventually, the city was abandoned and fell into ruin.

The earliest known written mention of the Great Zimbabwe ruins was in 1531 by Vicente Pegado, captain of the Portuguese garrison of Sofala, on the coast of modern-day Mozambique, who recorded it as Symbaoe. The first confirmed visits by Europeans were in the late 19th century, with investigations of the site starting in 1871.^[3] Later, studies of the monument were controversial in the archaeological world, with political pressure being put upon archaeologists by the government of Rhodesia to deny its construction by native African people.^[4] Great Zimbabwe has since been adopted as a national monument by the Zimbabwean government, and the modern independent state was named after it. The word great distinguishes the site from the many hundreds of small ruins, now known as “zimbabwes”, spread across the Zimbabwe Highveld.^[5] There are 200 such sites in southern Africa, such as Bumbusi in Zimbabwe and Manyikeni in Mozambique, with monumental, mortarless walls; Great Zimbabwe is the largest of these.^[6]

The reason that this great city is not well known is because for years, systemic racism of the local white populations refused to acknowledge that the local peoples could ever have been technologically apt enough to great a huge city. However, times have changed and archaeology doesn’t lie. At it’s height, it would have held 18,000 people: a monumental achievement in the ancient world.