There are so many ancient mysteries still left to be solved they boggle the imagination. You would think by now we would have a better understanding of everything which came before us and yet there is so much we still do not know or even understand. In China workmen found something very strange when they were working on a construction project. It was an ancient cache of artifacts. It was a large cache and contained more than 200 jade figures, all sorts of bronze art and even a life size statue. Most of this stuff was damaged and it looked like it was just dumped into a pit. There is nothing to indicate why most of these things were broken or why they were dumped into a pit. When the articles were dated they were found to be from 1200 BC. There was a problem however. The problem was the technology which was used on some of the objects was said to not have existed yet. It was not as if there was some sort of factory nearby either. It seems they were dumped in a remote location. The figures have exaggerated features and this is also a mystery. These artifacts have become known as the Sanxingdui artifacts.

When we find stone tools scientists are quick to point out how humans made them. They also claim Neanderthals and others also made stone tools. What they have neglected to tell us which is coming out now, is the fact paleoanthropologists have found capuchin monkeys also make what is known as a flaked tool. They go on to say these flaked tools are indistinguishable from those made by early hominines. What are we to think about this? Are these monkeys on the road to becoming more like us or is this just something they have been doing for a long time? Does this mean a lot of the stone flaked tools we have found are not from ancient races at all, but are from animals? I can’t help but wonder how this is going to effect the archaeological record.

There is a very mysterious statue which came into the hands of the Concordia University in Montreal. It bears the name, “Starving of Saqqara” and is about two feet tall. It was found in a collection of antiquities which came from the area of the Mediterranean. It has been examined by experts ad nauseam and yet not one of the experts has any idea where it came from originally or how it got its name. All they know is the name Saqqara belongs to an ancient Egyptian burial ground, which makes things even more eerie. If you think this is the entire mystery, you would be wrong. There is more to the story. There is a mysterious inscription etched into the statue. No one has been able to decipher it. They don’t recognize the inscription as writing from any known race. We may never be able to get any more information on this object.

Some animals have been around for an incredible amount of time. As we find evidence for the longevity of their race we can’t help but be amazed. This is especially true when we find out these animals were around in the time of the dinosaurs. One wouldn’t think an animal around today could have lasted with these giants roaming the planet, but new evidence has been found showing crocodiles evolved over 200 million years ago. They are truly ancient creatures. Scientists claim they have hardly changed at all in that time. Crocodile eggs have been found which date back 152 million years. It was hard for scientists to agree on the age of the eggs and some state they are only 112 million years old, but this still puts them firmly in the time of the dinosaurs. Scientists claim they can estimate the size of the mother croc by the size of the eggs and claim she would have been about 2 meters long which is about 79 inches. This is certainly within the ball park for the size of modern crocs.

Let me ask you a question. Why would any race want to create thousands of stone jars and leave them on a grassy plain? This is precisely the question which has been bugging scientists since an area known as the Plain of Jars was discovered. The Plain of Jars is in a remote part of Laos, because of this it is not as big a tourist attraction as it could be. It is not near anything being in a very remote location. Some of the jars are up to nine feet tall. Some are in groups while others are by themselves. Some are decorated while others were left plain. No one knows why the jars were created or why there are so many of them. There are many suggestion for what the jars could have been used for, but these are all guesses. My guess is they might have been used to melt metal for weapons and such.

Starting in 1972 and ending in 1991 a cemetery in Bulgaria was excavated. This ancient grave site contained artifacts which were over 6,500 years old. Apparently a few leaders or nobles were buried among the hundreds of graves. When the excavations took place over 13 pounds of gold was found in the form of artifacts. Over 75 percent of this gold was found in only four of the graves. All the graves which had gold in them were graves of males and this fact has been used to disprove the theory women ran early European civilizations. 312 graves had been examined and they dated from 4,600 to 4,200 BC. It is believed the first farmers had showed up in Europe only a couple of hundred years before. It is thought this was the beginning of the time period when humans began to work with metals.

One would think there couldn’t possibly be any ancient mysteries left, but nothing could be further from the truth. Some of these ancient mysteries have been vexing archaeologists for hundreds and in some cases thousands of years. There are ancient Greek records of visits to the pyramids and Sphinx which show the Greeks were not allowed in certain areas under the pyramids. They were interested in knowing what was under there since ancient tales suggested there might be at least one underground city. Nothing has really changed.