6 Strangest Archaeological Discoveries

Digging up some old treasure or a 3000-year-old trinket is always super
exciting, especially if you’re an archaeologist and that little trinket may
change everything we knew about some ancient civilization or a long forgotten
city. For some reason archaeological discoveries aren’t as popular as celebrity
weddings, so only a handful of people know what’s going on. So let’s see what
those crazy dirt-diggers unearthed during their excavations.

Here are the 6 strangers archaeological discoveries you had no idea were
real.

1. The Leicestershire
Bark Shield

What is a shield made of bark doing in III-IV BC Europe? Everyone was
using metal shields in that era, but this one daredevil was skillful enough to
use that light bark shield in combat for 10 years. Here’s the thing about
archaeologists: they can identify what and when was used but they have no
battle experience. To me it’s a no-brainer that a light sturdy shield was
enough to deflect arrows and melee blows, but to them it was a mystery. But
hey, we can’t all know everything!

2. The Written Rock Of
Gelt

About 1800 years ago, a quarry in Cumbria was occupied by some Roman
soldiers. As every human before and after them, they wanted to carve a message
for their followers in the stone walls of the quarry. A dozen centuries later
William Camden found their drawings, called the whole thing the Written Wall of
Gelt, but was unable to properly record them due to stone erosion. In 1980 the
quarry collapsed and decades later, the researchers using modern 3D scanning
tech were able to reach and scan at least some of the writings. 

3. The Tomb Of Philip
The Arab

In 2018 a supposed Tomb of Philip the Arab was found in modern Bulgaria.
Philip was said to be one of the richest bastards of his time, so naturally the
grave robbers got to the tomb way before the archaeologists… at least 500
years ago. The researchers found a secret tunnel and no treasures, aside from
some 2000 year old coins and pots, which was still a huge deal for them.

4. The Lloyds Bank
Coprolite

Ah, finally, a discovery that’s worth giving a sh#t! It’s a huge viking
poop. Yup. In all my life I’ve never seen a stinker even remotely as big as
this one – 19.5 centimeters (8 in)! In addition to its size, it fossilized,
which means it’s made out of something very dense.  If you want to see it with your own two eyes,
its’ on display in the Jorvik Viking Centre, in York, UK.

5. Ancient Egyptian Tobacco

Did you know that ancient Egyptians smoked tobacco? During a routine
chemical test the scientists found traces of nicotine on some of the mummies.
That’s weird because we thought that it could be found only in the New World.
Some believe that similar plants were growing in Europe and Africa too, but
went extinct a few thousand years ago. Or maybe they just sailed to the
Americas to ask for a jar of tobacco? They did have the ships, so who knows.

6. Neanderthal Glue

Turns out Neanderthals weren’t too dumb after all. Turns out they figured out how to turn pine resin and beeswax into organic glue. Which was quite the feat 40,000-55,000 years ago. For us today it’s child’s play: you get the resin, heat it up and boom, it sticks to stuff! But back then it was like inventing the Internet, but on a much smaller scale.