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.
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. With monkeys, we have a genome similarity of 98%.
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.
Did Atlantis Exist?
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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.
Was the 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. The story of the flood is also found 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.
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 "global flood".
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.
Where did the Maya go?
The Mayan civilization was one of the most developed, but by the time the conquistadors came, 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.
Where did the Sumerians come from?
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 this 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 technology - 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.
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.
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.
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.
Where was the "cradle" of the Indo-Europeans?
This question is still open. Previously, it was believed that the "cradle" of Indo-Europeans was in India, but linguistic analysis refutes this. Typically, there are many different languages and dialects of the same family in the region of origin of a language family, while India has 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 ancestral home of the Indo-Europeans was the Volga and Black Sea lands, on which archaeologists recorded the Yamnaya culture.