These lucky finds changed the course of history. Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re counting down our picks for the most significant archeological discoveries that were uncovered inadvertently.
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00:00 It says here that all three scripts are saying the same thing
00:03 Welcome to WatchMojo and today we're counting down our picks for the most significant archaeological discoveries that were uncovered inadvertently
00:10 Now this was the first time the scrolls were ever found. It's where the whole story started
00:16 Number 10 Earthsea
00:19 A frozen relic from the Stone Age, the oldest intact human body ever found
00:25 Imagine going for a lovely mountain hike when you stumble across a 5,000 year old body
00:30 Well, that's what happened to tourists Helmut and Erika Ziemann who were walking on the Erzdell Alps on September 19th, 1991
00:37 The German tourists happened upon a mummified body that was frozen in the ice
00:41 They believed the death was recent and notified the locals who set up a team to extract the remains
00:47 The find causes a worldwide sensation
00:52 The press dubs him the Iceman or Ötzi
00:56 The body was salvaged and taken away for tests which proved that it was not recent at all
01:01 The man had died sometime around 3200 BCE
01:05 Ötzi is now regarded as the oldest natural human mummy in European history and has been deeply studied for information about the Copper Age
01:13 Number 9 the Lyceum
01:21 Few locations in classical Greece were as important as the Lyceum
01:26 This temple housed Aristotle's Peripatetic School in which he and his members discussed philosophy and science
01:32 It was basically an early university well before the concept of universities became commonplace
01:37 The school was founded by the famous polymath in 334 BCE and lasted until
01:42 86 BCE when the Roman general Sulla destroyed it in the siege of Athens. The ruins were considered lost until
01:49 996 when construction began on the city's Museum of Modern Art
01:53 Excavations unearthed the remains of the Lyceum and plans were immediately made to conserve the area and relocate the museum
02:01 Number 8 the Ulu Burun Shipwreck
02:03 Off the coast of Turkey in the Bay of Antalya lies a magnificent shipwreck dating to the late Bronze Age
02:16 And its discovery is thanks to a local sponge diver
02:19 Mehmet Şeker was diving for sponges in 1982 when he came across the wreck and then sketched his findings
02:25 Their locations were carefully mapped and although they were working underwater
02:29 The archaeologists gradually pieced together a detailed plan of what remained of the ship's cargo
02:36 These sketches attracted the attention of Oz Alpazan, the director of the Bodrum Museum of Underwater Archaeology
02:43 Who sent a team to investigate Şeker's findings. They discovered an ancient boat dating to the late 14th century
02:49 BCE that was carrying a number of trade items
02:52 These included weapons in gold proving the wreck's significance as an important piece of Bronze Age history
02:58 Number 7 the Edinburgh Vaults
03:01 Gambling dens, brothels, taverns all took over this location and famously it was used by the body snatchers and the grave robbers
03:08 Back in 1788
03:10 Edinburgh completed its south bridge which connects Nicholson Street with the high street passing over a steep valley in the ancient city
03:16 The bridge contains 19 arches and in these arches are the Edinburgh Vaults
03:21 People started to live and a whole
03:24 community if you like of
03:27 Edinburgh's lowlife
03:30 Existed down under the ground here. These vaults have been used for a variety of purposes
03:35 They were first used by tradesmen before eventually becoming dens for illicit and illegal activity
03:41 Rubble was eventually used to seal the vaults during the 19th century
03:45 They remained closed for about a hundred years before Scottish rugby player Norrie Rowan found a tunnel that led into their depths
03:51 He and his son personally excavated the tunnels and they are now a popular destination for ghost tours
04:03 Number 6 Derinkuyu. There you are renovating your home and minding your own business when you remove a wall and find a secret room
04:10 Curious you decide to explore and venture forth discovering that this secret room is actually part of an entire underground city
04:17 It sounds like a dream or a movie, but it wasn't. A Turkish man was renovating his house in
04:22 1963 when this scenario occurred leading to the unearthing of the ancient underground city of Derinkuyu.
04:28 Look at that
04:30 This is so cool
04:33 Extending about 300 feet into the earth
04:36 Derinkuyu consists of a series of tunnels dating back to the Byzantine Empire
04:40 These tunnels were reportedly made by local citizens to hide from invading armies during wars
04:46 They were used throughout history to escape persecution before they were finally abandoned
04:52 (Speaking Turkish)
04:54 Number 5 The Venus de Milo. One of humanity's most famous sculptures, the Venus de Milo has been housed in the Louvre since
05:07 1821. Standing six feet seven inches tall, the statue is known for its slight lean and for missing both of its arms
05:15 Believe it or not. This was not intended by the sculptor. Rather, this is how the statue was found in 1820
05:21 The Venus de Milo was discovered by a Greek farmer and a French sailor named Olivier Voutier on the island of Miloche
05:28 It was then purchased by Louis the 18th of France and installed in the Louvre, later becoming a world-renowned piece of art
05:35 Interestingly, it wasn't only the sculpture's quality that made it famous, but an intense marketing campaign
05:40 Number 4 The Dead Sea Scrolls. The Dead Sea Scrolls were written by scribes carefully copying from existing documents
05:49 Often considered the greatest archaeological find of the 20th century, the Dead Sea Scrolls were essentially just sitting in a cave for over a thousand years
05:57 Then a group of three Bedouin shepherds were walking in the Judean desert when a man named Mohamed Adeb
06:03 literally fell into the history books
06:05 He had stumbled into a cave and it was there that he uncovered the first of the Dead Sea Scrolls buried in some jars
06:11 Originally thought to be worthless, the scrolls are now considered supremely valuable artifacts of religious and linguistic history
06:19 Dated to between the 3rd century BCE and the 1st century CE, they mostly consist of ancient manuscripts
06:26 including ones that were never canonized in the Old Testament
06:29 Whoever placed the scrolls in the caves was never actually able to return and retrieve them
06:34 Number 3 The Rosetta Stone
06:36 So even though the text tells us that it would have been set up in every important temple of Egypt
06:42 We don't know where the Rosetta Stone itself was originally from
06:45 We can thank a French army officer named Pierre-François Bouchard for allowing us to translate ancient Egyptian script
06:51 It was July of 1799 and Bouchard was in Egypt fighting on behalf of Napoleon
06:57 During the campaign he was ordered to rebuild Fort Julian, an old Ottoman fortification built in the 15th century
07:03 While sifting through the rubble, Bouchard stumbled upon the Rosetta Stone which had been used in the fort's construction as a building material
07:11 "Different scripts on one stone"
07:14 "Why would they do that?"
07:15 He immediately pegged the find as being significant and he was so right
07:19 Created back in 196 BCE, the stone is an old decree written in both Egyptian and Greek
07:26 and the bilingual text allowed researchers to finally decipher the ancient Egyptian writing system
07:31 "Today the Rosetta Stone for me is a symbol of Western colonialism over my culture"
07:37 "It represents a spoil of war, it represents cultural violence"
07:42 2. The Lascaux Cave
07:45 When you think of prehistoric cave drawings, you probably imagine the ones in Lascaux
07:50 The famous cave is covered in over 600 beautiful paintings, most of which are stylized depictions of animals
07:57 The cave is found near the French village of Montignac-Lascaux and the paintings are believed to be 17,000 years old
08:04 And this incredible find was made in 1940 by a local teenager walking his dog
08:09 18-year-old Marcel Ravida was going for a stroll when his canine buddy found a hole in the ground
08:14 Ravida later returned with his friends to investigate the hole, finding the cave and its now legendary paintings
08:21 However, it was opened just 23 years before getting resealed in 1963 to protect the paintings
08:27 "Images of horses were among his drawings"
08:30 "Then, they were among the animals he hunted for food"
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08:47 1. The Terracotta Army
08:51 "So these warriors are all life-sized, like real soldiers"
08:56 "Also, they have different facial features"
08:59 Protecting their emperor in the afterlife are 8,000 clay soldiers known as the Terracotta Army
09:05 These soldiers protect the tomb of Qin Shi Huang, who served as the first emperor of China between 221 and 210 BCE
09:13 Serving as a highly elaborate form of funerary art, the Terracotta Army was literally unearthed in 1974 by a small group of local farmers
09:21 "But despite looting, fires, and the passage of time, Qin's army survived into the modern world"
09:28 They were digging a 50-foot well in Lingtong, China when farmer Yang Jifu dug up the head of a terracotta figure
09:35 He notified the proper authorities and a team of archaeologists was sent out to investigate
09:39 The rest, as they say, is history
09:42 "What an experience"
09:43 What would you do if you literally stumbled upon an ancient site? Let us know in the comments
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09:55 [music]