While many unusual ruins exist all around the world, some mysterious ancient places still baffle scientists, creating a true enigma regarding their history, origins and purpose. A few of these mysterious ancient places even feature buildings and monoliths seemingly constructed more accurately and efficiently than what our most advanced engineering tools are capable of. Let's take a look at the most intriguing of them.
Believed to have been built around 200 BC, the Nazca lines are set in one of the more mysterious ancient places in Peru. They are large geoglyphs depicting strange, remarkably straight lines, as well as intricate shapes and drawings that can only be viewed from above – suggesting that their creators may have had knowledge of air travel.
Although there is much information about Inca technology and culture, Machu Picchu – one of the greatest cities in the ancient Inca Empire – is a mysterious ancient place that raises a lot of questions about the economy of the Inca and the lack of any marketplaces. Also, the tapestries containing ancient writings and records have still not been deciphered to this day.
Part of a massive temple complex, the ruins of Tiahuanaco are another monument to the incredible engineering skill allegedly achieved by ancient Incas – or a civilization that predated them. Some of the large, 100 ton stones used to construct the Tiahuanaco monoliths found in the Puma Punku sites are so accurately cut and secured into place that even a thin piece of paper couldn’t fit between them.
Teotihuacan was initially a nameless deserted place discovered – not built – by the Aztecs. Experts say this gargantuan city of pyramids located outside Mexico City had been abandoned more than 500 years before its discovery. Who built it, why and how? No one knows, and judging by the seeming lack of art and writing and the many corpses found at the site, the initial inhabitants were probably not too friendly.
Everyone has heard of the great pyramids of Giza in Egypt; some of the largest, most famous and accurately built constructions in the history of the world. Although not everyone agrees that they were built by the pharaohs almost 5,000 years ago – some researchers believing they are much older – archeologists are still amazed by frequently discovered new chambers, tunnels and secrets associated with the large structures.
Discovered on Easter Sunday in 1722, Easter Island is home to more than 900 unique, mysterious statues called “Moai” that were allegedly built by Polynesian natives around 1100-1700 AD. This fact remains questionable, however, along with many other mysteries associated with the statues, including how they were moved (the largest weighing more than 80 tons) and the fact that 18 of the statues are perfectly aligned to the sun setting during the equinox.
Probably the strangest and most renowned of all mysterious ancient places we know of, Stonehenge is a prehistoric stone monument in Wiltshire County in England. There are numerous mysteries here, from the way the huge stones were transported from hundreds of miles away, to their exceptionally precise positioning and obscure, unknown purpose. Numerous theories exist: is it a place of worship, an observatory, maybe a “portal of the gods”? Nobody really knows.
These are only a few of the most mysterious ancient places to have baffled the minds of archeologists and paleontologists throughout the world. Do you know of any others? And what are your theories about these incredible locations?
Sources:
mysterypile.com
io9.com
weburbanist.com
paranormalhaze.com
cracked.com
livescience.com