World history keeps a lot of mysteries. Despite more and more sophisticated methods and billions of dollars in research budgets, science has not explained some things.
1. Was there Atlantis?
Atlantis is the most famous of the legendary continents of the Ancient World. Plato wrote about her in detail. Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, Posidonius, Strabo and Proclus mentioned her in their writings. According to Plato, the island was located west of the Pillars of Hercules, opposite the Atlanta Mountains. During a strong earthquake, he went under water in one day. This happened around 9500 BC.
Atlantis was searched all over the world, from Gibraltar to Peru and Brazil, but to date there is no scientifically based theory of its location.
2. Was there a Flood?
The Flood is mentioned not only in the canonical books of the Bible, but also in the later apocrypha. For example, in the Book of Enoch. There is a story about the flood in other books, in the Jewish Haggadah and in the Midrash of Tanchum, as well as in the Sumerian myth of Ziusudra. The earliest surviving Sumerian flood poems date back to the 18th century BC.
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There are references to sea trensgression in the myths of all cultures, but was there really a flood? Historians cannot yet give an unambiguous answer. However, it is known, for example, that about 5600 BC. a real flood happened in the Mediterranean, when, due to earthquakes, the level of the Black Sea rose by 140 meters, it increased by 1.5 times, and the Sea of Azov appeared. Perhaps, for the inhabitants of those places it was a "worldwide flood".
3. Who built the pyramids?
No matter how modern reenactors and scientists have struggled to solve the riddle of the construction of the pyramids, no convincing versions of the method of their construction have been found so far. Some experts say that the pyramids were built from ready-made blocks hewn into the rock, others (Joseph Davilovitz) say that the blocks were made already at the construction site from a mixture of stone chips and "geopolymer concrete" based on limestone. The incredible laboriousness of the process casts doubt on all hypotheses. The question also remains open about who built the pyramids, slaves or civilians, and how many there were.
4. Where did the Maya go?
The Mayan civilization was one of the most developed, but by the time of the arrival of the conquistadors, only scattered forest tribes remained from the Mayans, underdeveloped and not representing a serious force. They lived in huts and did not build magnificent temples with palaces. Where did the Mayans disappear? The riddle is still unsolved. There are many versions, from epidemic and war to alien intervention, but none of them has been proven.
5. Who were the Sumerians?
The world community learned about the Sumerians only in the middle of the 19th century, when scientists proved that there was a state in Mesopotamia, whose age reaches 6000 years. It was from him that Babylon and Assyria inherited their culture.
It is still unknown where the Sumerians came to Mesopotamia. It is assumed that it was a mountainous region, since in the Sumerian language the words "country" and "mountain" are spelled the same. It was also supposed to be an area with advanced technologies - the Sumerians were pioneers in many fields of knowledge, from astronomy to physics. Presumably, but not yet proven, this could be the south of India.
6. Did the Vikings discover America?
The Norman version of the discovery of America is being voiced more and more often, but the Columbian version is still the official one. In both of them, the interesting thing is that both times America was discovered by mistake (a Scandinavian merchant named Bjarni Herjulfsson lost his course due to a storm, and Columbus sailed to India).
There is much less material according to the Norman version than according to the Columbian version, and not all of them are considered authentic, which greatly undermines its credibility.
7. Who were the Hyksos?
They are called “shepherd kings”. It was during their reign that a two-wheeled military chariot appeared in Egypt, which changed the tactics of fighting. Little is known about them. The Hyksos are nomadic tribes, "rulers of the desert uplands" who invaded Egypt around 1700. BC e. They ruled over it for over 100 years and even founded an entire dynasty of Hyksos kings. The Hyksos were expelled from Egypt only by the founder of the XVIII dynasty, Ahmose I in 1587 BC. e. The question of who exactly were the Hyksos, where they came from and where they disappeared, remains open.
8. Why did the Neanderthals die out?
The human and Neanderthal genomes are approximately 99.5% identical, but this does not mean that we are descended from Neanderthals. We have a genome similarity of 98% with monkeys.
Contrary to popular belief that Neanderthals were semi-savage, they were not. It was a fairly advanced evolutionary branch, they even knew how to make musical instruments. The versions of their disappearance are as follows: 1) Assimilation; 2) Genocide of Cro-Magnons; 3) The Ice Age, which they could not stand, because they did not know how to make clothes as unnecessary.
None of these versions is scientifically legalized yet.
9. Where did the Scythians disappear to?
It is believed that Scythia became the first state to disappear as a result of the Great Migration. The Scythians fought with the Sarmatians, Philip and Alexander the Great, with the Goths and Huns. It is believed that after the defeat of the latter, most of the Scythians died, while many became part of the army of the victors. Because of this, there is a lot of confusion in history with the late definition of the Scythians. Some historians classify Chechens and Ossetians as descendants of the Scythians.
10. Why did Alexander the Great die?
We still do not know where Alexander the Great is buried. This significantly reduces the chances of finding out the main riddle - why he died in his prime, at 32. The Persians, whom he mercilessly defeated, argued that the commander was punished by the sky for desecrating the tomb of King Cyrus. The Macedonians who returned home said that the great commander died of drunkenness and debauchery (sources brought us information about his 360 concubines). Roman historians believed that he was poisoned with some kind of Asian delayed poison. According to the most common version, Alexander died of malaria. She does not explain why she delivered such a "single blow".
11. Did King Arthur exist?
Almost all of us have known King Arthur since childhood. The Arthurian cycle was a bestseller back in the Middle Ages, and in our time it has become one of the cult phenomena of mass culture. Some critics argue that all fantasy literature came from Arturiana. However, the reliability of Arthur's existence as a separate historical personality has not yet been proven. Probably, the real prototype of Arthur had a different name, or it is a collective image of several prototypes.
12. Why did the plague "mow down" Europe?
In the history of the European plague pandemic, which literally “mowed down” Europe in the Middle Ages, there is much that is not clear. So, it was not possible to establish wild rodents, whose ranges would also extend so far to the north. There is also no answer to the question of why the pandemic of the "black death" struck Europe in the same sequence and in the same territories, and for the same time as the first pandemic - the plague of Justinian (531-589)? How did its foci flare up simultaneously in very extended territories of Europe, for example, the plague epidemics in Moscow and London in the middle of the 17th century?
13. Where did the gold of the royal family go?
By the beginning of World War I, the Russian Empire possessed the world's largest gold reserve, which was estimated at 1 billion 695 million rubles (1,311 tons of gold, more than 60 billion dollars at the exchange rate of the 2000s).
The fate of most of the gold reserves of tsarist Russia is still unknown ("Kolchak's gold"). It was approximately 490 tons of pure gold bullion and coins worth 650 million. According to one version, it was stolen by the Czechoslovak corps, according to another, it was hidden by order of Kolchak himself, according to the third, the funds settled in European banks.
14. Where did the Templar gold go?
The countless treasures of the Knights Templar are still legendary. According to the historian Lozinsky, the chief treasurer of the order was the chief treasurer of France, and the largest debtor to the order was King Philip IV the Handsome of France.
After the trial of the Templars, he discovered that there were not so many treasures of jewelry and gold. Where the Templar gold disappeared is a mystery. It is known that the surviving Templars transported part of the accumulated treasures by ships, but where it is not known for certain. According to the legends, the Templar gold ended up in Nova Scotia, the territory of modern Canada. It is believed that part of it was transported to Oak Island, Canada, where the descendants of the knights of the temple hid it in a cache with numerous traps.
15. Where did the 10 tribes of Israel go?
At the end of the VIII century BC, five-sixths of the Jews completely disappeared - 10 out of 12 ethnos-forming clans. They have been looking for them for 2500 years, and sometimes they are found in the most unexpected places - from India to Europe. Even in Japan, their relationship to the lost knees is claimed. There is a religious movement Makuya, whose representatives claim that the very imperial title "Mikado" comes from the Hebrew mi gadol (great). None of the versions are official today.
16. Who built Stonehenge?
The mystery of the Stonehenge megalithic complex has not yet been solved. According to one version, it was built by the Druids, according to another - by the Celts, according to the third - by the ancient Britons, according to the fourth - by Merlin himself. There are those who claim that Stonehenge is a hoax and was built in modern times.
It is also unknown how exactly Stonehenge was built. During the restoration of the complex, which began in 1901 and ended only in 1964, the stones were moved using cranes, but in the Middle Ages there was no such technique.
17. How were the monuments built on Easter Island?
Among researchers, the most widespread theory is that moai on Easter Island were erected by settlers from the islands of Polynesia in the 11th century. How they did it is still unknown. Thor Heyerdahl's experiments were only partially successful. His method of transportation was not suitable for multi-meter colossus weighing 50 tons or more. The Norwegian scientist also could not explain how hats weighing up to two tons were worn on the Maoi.
18. Where was the "cradle" of the Indo-Europeans?
This question is still open. Previously, it was believed that the "cradle" of the Indo-Europeans was in India, but linguistic analysis refutes this. Typically, in the region of origin of a language family, there are many different languages and dialects of the same family, while in India there is only one Indo-Aryan branch of languages. In contrast, Central and Eastern Europe has hundreds of varieties of Indo-European languages.
The most reliable, although not proven, is the version that the Volga and Black Sea lands were the ancestral home of the Indo-Europeans, on which archaeologists have recorded the Yamnaya culture.
19. What caused the Great Migration of Europe?
The Great Migration destroyed the ancient world, building the Middle Ages on its ruins. Despite many versions, it is still not clear what was the main reason for the movement of the barbarians. As is usually the case in such cases, scientists talk about the sum of the factors. Firstly, about overpopulation in Scandinavia, secondly, about changing climatic conditions (cooling and increasing humidity), and finally, about a shift in social strata - the tribal elite that came to power was interested in profit. The best target was the Roman Empire.
20. Who sponsored the Bolsheviks?
The question of whose money the revolution was carried out in Russia is still controversial. For a long time, the main version was that the German General Staff played the first role in financing, but today more and more historians are inclined to believe that support was from England and from Wall Street, and even from the Old Believers who had close business contacts with British industrialists.