From ancient Greek military science to the advanced weaponry of the Vikings, plus a mysterious pillar in India that has experts scratching their heads – here are ten amazing ancient technologies that science still can’t explain!
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10: The Wedge of Aiud
The aluminum wedge of Aiud is either a mysterious piece of early technology that doesn’t make any sense to anyone/ or something left behind by aliens. It’s definitely controversial, ever since it was discovered in 1973 in Romania on the muddy bank of the Mures River. Some reports claim that the object was discovered under a pile of sand, alongside a collection of mastodon bones.
9: Greek Fire
Greek Fire was the medieval equivalent to the flamethrower. It was an incendiary weapon first utilized in warfare back in 678 AD. What makes this such a remarkable technology is that all these years later, nobody has been able to replicate the formula that the Greeks used to create the highly flammable liquid known as Greek Fire.
8: Damascus Steel
Damascus steel is the most legendary type of metal ever crafted by human hands. It is still recognizable today by the distinctive wavy light and dark pattern seen on its surface. Damascus steel is beautiful, and it was highly valued hundreds of years ago because of its extremely sharp edge, its rigid strength, and its shocking flexibility.
7: The Antikythera Mechanism
The Antikythera mechanism is often hailed as the world’s first ever computer. But despite all the praise this thing gets, scientists don’t really know what it is, what it was used for, or where it even came from. The best that anyone can come up with is that the device replicated the motions of the heavens. By just holding this mechanism in your hands, you could track the route taken by the sun, the moon, and the planets in the solar system with startling accuracy.
6: The Iron Ashoka Pillar of Delhi
The Iron Ashoka Pillar of Delhi – located of course in New Delhi, India, seems to be rustproof. It doesn’t look like much from the outside. The iron pillar is only about 22 feet (6.5m) tall, it’s sitting in an empty square, and there’s really not much to look at unless you know what you’re looking for.
5: The Baghdad Battery
The Baghdad Battery is about 2000 years old, coming from the ancient Parthian period, which lasted from between 250 BC to 250 AD. The exact science behind the Baghdad Battery is simple enough. It was a jar made out of clay with a stopper of asphalt and an iron rod stuck through a copper cylinder.
4: The Ulfberht Sword
The Ulfberht sword is one of the most mysterious weapons ever discovered. This fascinating blade was crafted by the Vikings about 1000 years ago, and there have been about 170 of them found so far by archeologists. But what’s really shocking and unbelievable about these Viking weapons is that they were forged using technology that wasn’t available for another 800 years after the Viking era had already ended.
3: Zhang Heng’s Seismoscope
Zhang Heng worked as a Chinese scientist and expert mathematician back during the Han dynasty. During his life, he crafted one of the most advanced pieces of scientific technology in the ancient Chinese world. This guy managed to put together a seismoscope to detect earthquakes way before we had the Richter scale.
2: Roman Concrete
Roman concrete outlasts modern concrete by thousands of years. We use modern concrete to build everything in our society, and yet our modern concrete is known to start breaking down after as few as 50 years. On the flip side, even one thousand years after the Roman Empire disintegrated, their concrete structures have not.
1: The Wrinkled Stone
The wrinkled stone may look like a piece of advanced technology in which a stone was folded in such a way to fit into another piece of stone just like a jigsaw puzzle. But it’s not! The scary truth about this wrinkled stone is that it’s actually modern, and was crafted by a Spanish sculptor named Jose Manuel Castro Lopez, who has been experimenting with hand sculptures carved skillfully from granite and quartz.
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Okay you didn't do good enough research. Damascus steel is a classification of quality. It is folded with added carbon at least 100 times. A professional blacksmith would spend many thousands of hours or perhaps many years folding it thousands of times to work out all the impurities.
first one is an excavator
Greek fire is naptha that anyone can buy at Home Depot. Look it up. It was used to make napalm which we used in Vietnam. Greek fire is not a mystery and not worth talking about. Sensationalism…
10 is a backhoe bucket tooth.
8 No mystery there. Saladin's mines contained an ore with 0.08% vanadium, which is why the metal was strong. Normalizing it 6 times after smelting the ore with sand and moist tree leaves, gets it to a state where it can be forged and also provide the dendrite patterns. This is all common knowledge now. Has been for years. The method of making Wootz steel was never lost. Ingots of smelted ore show up on all kinds of dig sites and frequently make their way onto auction sites.
7 Oh please. Quit making BS lies up about items we know about. The machine was reproduced and its workings are completely known. Have been for years.
6 Yeah, it's called cast iron. Good on ya for casting out that idiotic alien BS.
5 was used for electroplating. Thousands of examples of plating come from all over the area and last time I checked there were a dozen of those batteries in the museum now.
4 Why did you show a tulwar and not a Saxon style sword at the beginning? We do know. The ingot it was made of came from Saladin's mines. The lettering is Saxon and translates to "Wolfbright". It could mean shining wolf, white wolf, etc., but it definitely is Saxon, not Frankish. At that time the Franks spoke vulgar Latin. The only language those words come from are Saxon. They are not Latin. Only 11 are Wootz steel. The others are just meh metal. Steel has been used in sword making for 8,000, yes eight thousand, years. And yes, their kilns could reach over 3,000F back then. This is all easily found common knowledge, yet you continue to spread lies and misinformation. Must be why you use the hammer and sickle as your avatar, eh, comrade?
2 No, it was not the salt. It was the lime.
1 Thank you for not perpetuating what so many other channels did with this one, comrade.
The viking swords, what if they used lava for it? Maybe there was a natural lava hole or something in Iceland, they could use for heating the metal.
So you end with one that is really just a MODERN sculpture… So Science can't explain that one either??
It looks like a mill table clamp
Dudes voice reminds me of Tim Poole…lol
The Romanian aluminium wedge did NOT disappear , you just want to create a mystery where none exists.
The thumbnail image is the creation of an artist. You can tell the "squeezed" block has been carved down into that shape in the way the surfaces no longer match.
The aluminum wedge could have easily been made from asteroid metal … If you were heating a found asteroid (this is known to happen) it would be mostly iron … but as you heated it the aluminum would come out first as it melts at a cooler temperature.
Viking Sward.
Is there any evidence of electroplating in that time though? Has there ever been found 2000+ year old objects that were electroplated? (..or that were even gold/silver plated or plated by any metal in a manner that appears to be electroplated?). I've heard of many 100, if not 1000s of ancient items discovered in Egypt and throughout the world… but I don't recall ever hearing of an object that was discovered that was electroplated. I've heard of different kinds of metal plating, like is seen on many ancient Egypt artifacts, but they were all hand plated, not electroplated or anything that could be confused with something that was electroplated.
The Wedge of Ayud looks like the foot of the luner lander of the capsul that we sent our astronots to the moon in,
Dear commentator, your mistake is to assume that “modern man" has a higher technology and knowledge or wisdom than the ancient civilizations of the ancient world. This is an arrogant misconception!
I think what the wedge was used for
from when I saw it first time ever, was a catapult.
When you wined the wheel back there's a little metal wedge that falls down in between the gears to hold the catapult back before you release it, and it shoots.
Your description of Roman concrete flies in the face of current testing. And concrete strengthens with time.
Is meteorites Made tools
What a crock of horseshit! Ponder growing up!
who else is sick of hearing about OPART that mysteriously vanishes? if it does not fit the narrative then the RELIGION OF SCIENCE will simply disappear it
WHY F. F. S. Don't they also talk about Plutonum, Uranum, Germanum, Polonum, etc. to match their Aluminum?
The so-called artist you admire for his stone sculpture is actually a cheat….he has discovered the formula for softening stone from what it originally was…..which i will not reveal because you will not believe
Damascus steel info is misinformation, and not true at all. They know exactly what was in it. It's not even debatable that it could be made. The really only interesting thing about it is the debate that it only originally came from a particular mine where the ores contained vanadium and other impurities naturally in just the right amount. Others say it came from India where crucible steel was being made with whatever else they added to the iron sand. In any case, it's in no way superior to the modern steel alloys we have now.
That wedge looks like a hold down for something , Maybeso E.T.
I'd like to know if that wedge was the same size as the scoop marks found
Try researching a bit more. For example. there are MANY formulations which result in Greek Fire which have been re-discovered. Even here on youtube. Some archery-related guys on here have been experimenting. didn;t boither watching after that but.
This sort of stuff is like Donald Trump news.
The battery was used for light, digging massive multi level chambers. That's why no trace of soot on ceilings.
I KNOW HOW THE STONES ARE SO PERFECT THE ONES YOU CANNOT PUT A PIECE OF PAPER INTO, YA I KNOW EXACTLY HOW , IM TRYING SOMETHING LIKE IT , JUST DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH POWER SO GOT TO GO SMALL
The Roman concrete is made with pozzolanic sand (volcanic) You can buy it today if you want. (Expensive)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pozzolana
The iron pillar was very important because at the time of construction such a large quantity of iron was rare and very expensive and to erect it with easy access to the public, it never was stolen because of it's size and weight and the manner of it's placement deep into the substrate. It was also very difficult to be damaged or defaced by protesters.
The secret to Roman concrete is to leave the mix with some dry clumps in it, so that years later when the concrete cracks and water seeps in, the dry clumps then get wet and harden the newly cracked material; simple yet ingenious.
Damascus steel is overhyped. The steel we have today is way more stronger.
Geopolymer paste https://youtu.be/rf9qK9QTlq0?si=BG-LGcNyvDr7v55w
Learned to use a flame thrower in Infantry training in the Marine Corps – nasty thing but heavy and not long lasting – but very, very effective.
I think the answer to the puzzle that a forged aluminum 'tool' could not possibly be found in ancient fossils is a simple one. The fossils are from the 1800s. Now, we simply have to throw away carbon dating as a valid tool, rethink the entire age of fossils and dinosaurs, the ages of the earth, and all of history. I don't have a problem with that, do you? 😉
You’re right scientist can’t replicate Damascus steel swords, bladesmiths however, do so all the time. I own several Damascus steel knifes made of superior quality modern steel.
What a pleasant surprise – straight into the discoveries, without any of the usual "Welcome to the channel", or "Like, subscribe and hit the bell notification".
Hallo Talltanic you are almost the only one who still believes we went to the moon
"Damascus" is a very broad term used to describe various kinds of patterned steels. Much "Damascus" steel is pattern welded, a mechanical process of layering different kinds of steel together in the forging process. What you are referring to is crucible or "Wootz" steel. The patterns in this steel are a result of impurities in the iron. The Wootz mines played out about 200 years ago and this iron was no longer available. Recent metallurgy has allowed the recreation of this once sought after steel. Wootz was superior in its day. We have better steels now, but this is a good steel with stunning eye appeal.
Similar to Napal the greeck fire was very destructive.
12th century illuminated manuscript…12th century illustrated manuscript.
Damascus steel's secret is a small percentage of Vanadium, I saw a video where an American man used Wootz steel from Saladin's own mine.
and the german wiki so… "2000 ergaben Untersuchungen eindeutig das Ergebnis, dass es sich bei dem Gegenstand um ein Teil eines Messerschmitt-Flugzeugs aus dem Zweiten Weltkrieg handelt." .. shure wiki…
number 1 is a modern sculpture…that science can't explain? why is n1 then?