There is much in the world that remains a mystery even for the world's leading experts. We have not explored the oceans even by 20%, and deserts (by the way, occupying a third of the entire surface of the Earth) surprise archaeologists every year. According to the most conservative estimates, deserts cover over one hundred thousand square kilometers every year. Thus, scientists have to literally chase nature: while we find ancient cities, reliably hidden by a layer of sand, the desert already has time to absorb something else. Here are 11 of the strangest things scientists have discovered among the sands - and who knows what else the desert hides?
Tarim mummies
In the early 1900s, Swedish explorer Sven Hedin discovered the ancient city of Lulan, buried in the sands of the Taklamakan Desert. The civilization that built this city simply could not be here: the DNA of the mummies was shown by the markers of the Caucasians.
Fairy circles
In the vast expanses of the Namib desert, scientists have found strange circles dating back to the last millennium. None of the theories can yet fully explain their appearance, although local tribes have several legends about some underground dragons that have come to the surface in time immemorial.
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Purple spheres
In 2013, casual travelers wandered into the Arizona desert, southeast of Tucson, where they discovered an entire field of thousands of mysterious translucent and purple spheres sparkling in the sun. Experts believe that these may be the spores of some fungus unknown to science, but there is no exact interpretation of the phenomenon yet.
Alien hand
A search group of archaeologists from the Institute of Inkari-Cusco came across a giant hand during excavations, most of all resembling an alien hand. French researcher Thierry Jamin claims that X-ray analysis showed the presence of three fingers and a metal implant on the hand. Nobody knows where it came from.
Mysterious Lights
For a hundred years, the inhabitants of the small town of Trans-Pecos have been disturbed by mysterious lights. Eyewitnesses describe them as spheres of different colors, hovering at a low height. Scientists believe that it is all about methane emissions, but to this day, science has nothing but speculation.
Lake in the desert
In 2014, about 25 kilometers from the city of Gafsa, a deep lake appeared literally out of nowhere. Officials from the Regional Directorate of Civil Protection attribute this phenomenon to seismic activity, but there have been no earthquakes in this area for hundreds of years.
Treasure map
The so-called Copper Scroll is one of 981 Dead Sea texts found relatively recently by archaeologists. Unlike other documents, this one tells not about biblical stories, but about treasures hidden somewhere in the desert. Who wrote it and when is a mystery.
The Lost Libraries of Chinguetti
The Sahara Desert will probably be the last place on earth where you expect to find an ancient library. However, in West Africa there is the ancient city of Chinguetti, known to modern science as the "City of Libraries". Chinguetti was once a huge metropolis and a staging post for pilgrims on the way to Mecca. Archaeologists have unearthed 7 libraries with priceless books of the 9th century.
Pharaoh's ship
In January 2016, in the Egyptian necropolis of Abusir, deep in the sands of the Sahara, archaeologists discovered an ancient funerary boat, on board which an ordinary peasant rested. Who was this man, honored with the funeral rite of the pharaohs?
Whale cemetery
This amazing discovery belongs to a group of road workers who widened the highway in the Atacama Desert. They stumbled upon a real cemetery of prehistoric whales: the majestic remains, whose age exceeded 75 million years, simply could not be in this area. Where did they come from and why did they die?
Mysterious geoglyphs of Jordan
In 1927, pilots discovered circular geoglyphs near Wadi Visad, in the Black Desert of Jordan. One of the pilots, Lieutenant Percy Maitland, even published a detailed account of the find in Antiquity magazine. Further research revealed a whole network of geoglyphs in Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. They are 8,500 years old and no one understands why ancient civilizations from several regions put so much effort into creating images that are visible only from the sky.