Ancient Riddles Concealing Advanced Non-Conventional Elements
Greetings readers.
The world is still full of plenty of mysteries, even now, in the twenty-first century. There is a lot that human beings still haven’t uncovered.
You may be familiar with this famous tweet by Elon Musk back in 2020.
Well, whether he was joking or not is not very clear (we all hope he was), but the fact remains — there is plenty of mystery in the world that almost all of us are ignorant about.
As modern humans, we pride ourselves on our technological advancements and scientific understanding, yet there remain pockets of history where our knowledge falters, where the whispers of ancient builders echo louder than the explanations of contemporary scholars.
The Industrial Revolution in the eighteenth century had brought about significant improvements in technology. New buildings and other monuments could be constructed in the blink of an eye. But you have to remember that many of the real wonders of the world were conceived and built much before the whir of steam engines and clatter of machinery echoed through this world.
Out of all these, we explore some magnificent examples that have stupefied many archaeologists, not only by the skill of the creations but also about their purpose.
Nazca Lines — A call to the Gods or prediction of doom?
One of the most curious architectural creations is the Nazca Lines, located in south-western Peru. They date back to around 200 B.C., long before the advent of the Incas, the main rulers of western South America. The Nazca Desert that houses these lines provides the perfect conditions to preserve them — there is little to no rain in Nazca and even the winds are mainly sandstorms, which do not harm them.
The lines crisscross each other to form a series of extraordinary pictures in the ground. There have been hundreds of such shapes discovered and interestingly, many of them form pictures of animals. There is a hummingbird, a spider, a deformed monkey, a whale and more recently, a snake and a llama have also been discovered.
The real mystery begins at the fact that the Nazca Lines can only be properly seen from the air. They were discovered only in the 1930s when a pilot flying over them noticed the stunning geoglyphs. The Nazcans clearly didn’t have planes. This has led to a number of theories with the general question being — Why go through so much trouble to create these pictures if you cannot see them from the ground?
A Swiss writer, Erich von Daniken, has suggested that these lines were created by aliens (maybe Elon Musk’s source of inspiration?) to create landing sites for their spaceships to land. Coincidentally, there is a picture of what seems to be an astronaut. Another theory by archaeologists Kosok and Reisch was that the lines were intended to act as an observatory for celestial bodies — the movement and position of the sun with respect to the lines would tell the Nazcan farmers about the time of day or the season of the year.
There have been speculations that the Nazca Lines could have been some sort of message to the Gods — which is why they can only be seen from space. However, although the pictures seem magnificent, the pictures of such large size would probably have looked terrifying to the residents. The monkey is drawn with four fingers on one hand. Were they some sort of warning of imminent danger in the future?
The most recent and widely-accepted idea is that these lines were used as a form of communication between settlements in the desert. But the alternatives cannot be ruled out — and they are certainly more fun (or scary) to think about!
The Stone Gallows of England
Travelling to the east, we come to another archaeological mystery in the Salisbury Plains in England — Stonehenge. It is a large megalithic structure, comprising of massive standing stones arranged in a circular pattern. It is made up of two rings, with the outer ring having large, vertical sarsen stones topped by horizontal lintel stones, and the inner ring having smaller bluestones.
The exact purpose of Stonehenge remains unknown. Again, like the Nazca Lines, it’s construction was certainly not easy. It was built in various phases till around 1800 B.C. and geological evidence suggests that the rocks weren’t native to the region and were in fact, transported from different regions across England. It probably took over a million man-hours to build it, and doing so required a fantastic knowledge of engineering.
Many researchers agree that the stones were of religious significance which has something to do with their composition. Many of the stones are highly concentrated with barium — an element that is very lightly radioactive, not enough to harm humans. But it is believed that the central stone, with high quantities of barium quickly became a source of comfort and connection for the ancient community in the plains. They may have even believed that the stones had enough power to connect them to the heavens and to the Gods.
There is another similarity between the Nazca Lines and these stones — Stonehenge was arranged in a carefully curated circular arrangement, most likely to follow the Sun’s path in the sky. Both the rings of stones were positioned with remarkable accuracy, to align with the rising and setting of the Sun during solstices and equinoxes — when the Sun is directly overhead for twelve hours. There is a path leading to the Stonehenge that is expected to have been a location for making celestial observations.
Stonehenge, whose origins were once thought of as simple, is now a subject of intense debate and exploration.
Some Architectural Wonders in India:
A Temple made from a Single Rock
Let’s come to our India — a country known for some of the most fascinating monuments in the world. Tamil Nadu, known as the Land of Temples, is home to a wide variety of beautiful temples and shrines, most of them built during the Pandyan and Chola dynasties.
One of these is the Vettuvan Koil Temple, which dates back to around the 8th century A.D. Located in the Thoothukudi district, its rock-cut architecture is one of its most striking features. It is one of the largest such monuments that are monolithic — cut out of a single granite rock. The temple also features some intricate carvings that include scenes from the various Epics. Temples in ancient India were symbols of power and prestige of the kings, and many ensured that the ones they built were more unique and complex than the previous ones. Surely the king who built the Vettuvan Koil would have set the bar high.
A Pillar that never rusts!
While the Qutub Minar is no doubt a famous monument built during the Medieval Period, there is a pillar within the same complex that is an architectural genius. This is the Mehrauli iron pillar, which was built during the Gupta Empire. It is almost 23 feet tall, weighs around 6 tons, and is beautifully inscribed upon with many carvings and scriptures.
But the amazing fact is that, despite being made of iron, it has withstood rusting for all these years! Scientists have explained that the pillar has a protective film (basically making it neutral to effects of the environment) on its surface. This film is made up of iron oxides and high amounts of phosphorus. Some of the iron oxides is transformed into magnetite, when it comes in contact with the atmosphere — this in itself slows down the process of corrosion. Further, the phosphorus is formed due to a chemical reaction of the unreduced iron oxides and this promotes passivation of the iron.
From our limited knowledge of the past, most of what we have inferred about these monuments could actually turn out to be false! Of course, the best way to figure out the main purpose behind these ancient wonders is to actually go back in time :).
But until a time machine is invented, the best we can do is keep researching these places and decode the many secrets behind them. There are a lot of archaeologists and researchers who do exactly that — spend decades at that location and try to uncover the mysteries that lie underneath.
Although probably we could also stay put and hope that the aliens, the builders of these monuments, return and enlighten us.
By Team Technothlon
This was just a short list of some of the exciting secrets that are present in our world. You can find out about more such examples in our ‘Around the World’ series on our Instagram page.
