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Top 10 baffling historical mysteries

TEN BAFFLING HISTORICAL MYSTERIES

Nazca lines
Where: Southern Peru
created: 300bc–ad 600
Discovered: 1930s
these extraordinary ground markings depicting animals and plants – some over 200m long – have puzzled scientists for decades. some have even claimed they’re ancient runways for visiting aliens.
Piri Reis map 
Where: Topkapı Palace, Istanbul, Turkey Created: 1513
Discovered: 1929
How did a 16th-century Turkish mariner map northern Antarctica – the continent wasn’t visited until 1818? Just one of the questions posed by Piri Reis’ remarkable cartography.


Chou Chou buckle
Where: China
created: around ad 300
discovered: 1956
Aluminium wasn’t isolated until the 19th century. So how was this girdle fastener – found in the grave of Chinese general Chou Chou – created 15 centuries earlier and made from 85% aluminium?


City of Nan Madol
Where: Micronesia
created: 12th–13th century ad
Discovered: early 19th century
this once-great city – dubbed the ‘Venice of the Pacific’ and constructed using 250 million tonnes of huge basalt blocks on a coral reef – was made without machines. the question is: how?


Mary Celeste 
Where: Atlantic Ocean
Discovered: December 1872
When this brigantine was discovered drifting, unmanned, in the Atlantic ocean a great maritime mystery was born. Did the crew abandon the ship fearing an explosion, after smelling alcohol fumes?


Jack the Ripper murders
Where: Whitechapel, London
When: 1888
the violent murders of several prostitutes in east london triggered one of the most famous whodunnits in history as the police hunted the elusive killer ‘Jack the ripper’.
Rongorongo writing
Where: Easter Island
created: late 18th century
inscriptions on stone and wooden tablets found on easter island are in a script called rongorongo, a mix of ideographs and a kind of phonetic alphabet. But what does it mean?
Roanoke colony abandonment
Where: Roanoke Island, North carolina, usa Created: 1587
An english colony was established on roanoke island in 1587. three years later, when John White returned with supplies, he found the colony abandoned, its population having mysteriously vanished.


Phaistos disc
Where: Phaistos,
Crete created: second millennium bc Discovered: 1908
scientists have been trying (and failing) to decipher the code on this 15cm fired-clay disc – discovered at the site of a Bronze Age minoan palace – for over a century.
Egyptian aeroplane
Where: Saqqara, egypt
created: c 2000bc
Discovered: 1898
Discovered in a tomb, this remarkably aerodynamic model was designed by ancient egyptians, 4,000 years before man could fly.

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