What’s the Story of the Multicultural Mummy?

The world’s longest existing text in the ancient Etruscan language, which was spoken in Italy around 700 to 300 BCE, was actually printed on mummy wrappings. Or rather, the mummy — that of a middle-aged woman named Nesi-hensu who died in the first century BCE — was for some reason wrapped in reused fabric strips that just happened to have previously been a linen book.

The mummy and sarcophagus of Nesi-hensu were purchased by a Croatian government official in the mid-1800s during a tour of Egypt. After he died, she was donated to the archaeological museum in Zagreb. But it wasn’t until 1892 that anyone realized the wrappings were in Etruscan.

Although scholars have dated the linen to the third century BCE, the “Liber Linteus” (as the wrappings are known) has only been partially translated, because the majority of the Etruscan language has not been decoded. The most recent attempt at full translation of the text came in 2007, but many word meanings are still unknown, and discussion among experts is ongoing. Most seem to agree, though, that the Liber Linteus was probably preserved as mummy wrappings because of its overall content: the description of certain sacrifices to the gods.

There is hope that the full book will eventually be able to be translated, but we may never know how an Egyptian embalmer got their hands on an Etruscan linen book in the first place.

Why Are There Huge Temples in a Tiny Island Country?

The small island nation of Malta in the Mediterranean Sea has seen waves of settlers since it was first inhabited by Neolithic farmers. But a civilization that lasted just one millennium is particularly bewildering: They built a dozen or so enormous temples across the islands and then disappeared.

The so-called Temple Period on Malta lasted from 3600 to 2500 BCE, during which at least 13 temples were built out of massive boulders. Ġgantija is the earliest of the temples and was built, according to Maltese folklore, by a giantess who ate beans and honey and had a child with a human. Predating even the Egyptian pyramids, Ġgantija is the second-oldest human-made structure in the world.

Megalithic temples were built for centuries, each one having a common architecture but also their own unique characteristics, almost as if the prehistoric Maltese people were experimenting with and refining their techniques over the years.

By 2500 BCE, the last megalithic complex at Tarxien — an elaborately decorated set of three temples probably used for rituals such as animal sacrifice — was no longer in use, and the civilization that created these enormous structures seems to have collapsed and disappeared.

How Do You Lose Track of a Hundred American Colonists?

On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, 4,000 years later, another disappearance happened that would come to intrigue archaeologists. More than 100 men, women, and children from England attempted to settle Roanoke Island, off the Outer Banks of North Carolina, in 1587. But a welfare check in 1590 by English ships bringing supplies found no one — just the word CROATOAN scrawled into the ruins of the wooden palisade of the camp.

There was both an island and a Native American tribe named Croatoan nearby, which led John White, an English colonial administrator who was trying to help the British colonize Roanoke Island, to assume that the colonists relocated to the island and created a blended society. But some people believe the colonists returned to England, while still others assume they were massacred.

Archaeological work starting in the 1990s attempted to solve the question of the fate of the Lost Colony residents, but so far has found nothing conclusive. And we may actually never know the answer, since portions of Roanoke Island that could hold artifacts or other signs of life are now underwater due to shoreline erosion.

What Is This 12-Sided Metal Object?

We can be pretty certain that the ancient Romans weren’t playing Dungeons & Dragons. But dozens of copper dodecahedra have been found across Europe since 1739, and their purpose is still unknown, since classical archaeologists have not found pictures or textual references to these objects anywhere in the works of ancient authors.

The hollow, cast object with 12 pentagonal faces was initially assumed to have been a weapon, but other hypotheses for its uses include a children’s toy, a religious or fortunetelling item, or perhaps a kind of proof-of-skill that a metalsmith would create to attract new customers. But since several Roman dodecahedra were found along with valuable coins, they are thought to have been made for a specific, important purpose.

The most recent theory comes from an unlikely source: the crafting community. Many knitters have shown that replica dodecahedra can help them make woolen gloves, which may have been useful for Romans in the northern climes of the empire. Since knitting doesn’t seem to have been invented until centuries after the Roman Empire collapsed, though, this theory hasn’t been substantiated, and the mystery of the dodecahedra lives on.

Who Made These Enormous Stone Jars?

Thousands of huge stone jars litter the fields of north-central Laos, created by an unknown culture as early as 1250 BCE. The containers are mostly made from limestone, ranging in size from about 3 to 9 feet tall, with a wide bottom and a top that supported a lid. Called the Plain of Jars, the area is key to the prehistory of southeast Asia. But that history is not fully understood.

Local legend mentions a race of giants who created the jars to brew celebratory rice wine, but early archaeological work in the 1930s revealed that the jars were likely used for one stage of a complicated prehistoric burial practice. The deceased was placed in the urn, where their soul was believed to transform to its heavenly form, and their body was then cremated, the bones and ashes collected and buried near the jar. It’s unclear why these jars cluster in this particular geographic area, but experts have suggested the placement is related to trade networks of salt or iron ore.

Clues to the people who created the Plain of Jars are still few and far between, particularly because the site is full of unexploded bombs dropped in the 1960s by the U.S. Air Force during the Laotian Civil War. Mine clearance work is ongoing, though, and perhaps eventually archaeologists will be able to return and figure out who created the jars.

What’s the Meaning of the Phaistos Disk?

A 6-inch clay disk was found on the island of Crete in 1908, covered with unique signs pressed into a spiral design on both sides. Initially thought to be a forgery because of its unknown and distinctive text, the Phaistos Disk is now generally assumed to be an authentic archaeological puzzle that has yet to be solved.

The palace complex of Phaistos was used from about 3600 to 1400 BCE during the Bronze Age, along with many other Minoan sites on Crete. Artifacts have been discovered at Phaistos that include text in the Linear A script, a writing system that has not been translated to date.

Although Linear A is also a well-known textual mystery, the Phaistos Disk seems to be a one-off. It was found in the basement of the palace near an underground ritual storeroom. The symbols were stamped into the clay before firing, possibly an early example of movable-type printing.

Over the last century, many people have tried to decipher the Phaistos Disk. Suggested interpretations of the text include prayers, an adventure story, a calendar, and a board game. But these are only guesses. Most experts agree that unless another example of the text shows up some day, the meaning of the Phaistos Disk may never be understood.

How Did These Human Ancestors Wriggle Into South African Caves?

A decade ago, spelunkers found the first evidence of a new human relative, Homo naledi, deep within the Rising Star cave system in South Africa. While hundreds more bones have been discovered since then, archaeologists are still unsure how the tiny, small-brained H. naledi got into the cave to begin with.

Due to the completeness of the fossil skeletons, some experts think that a H. naledi community brought its deceased compatriots to the cave to bury them, pushing back the earliest date of purposeful burial to more than 300,000 years ago. But others don’t buy the idea that these individuals could have shimmied through extremely narrow passages and navigated a dark underground labyrinth, suspecting instead that they were washed there by floods, brought by carnivores, or possibly wandered into the cave as a group and couldn’t find their way out.

Research on the fossil skeletons found in the Rising Star cave is ongoing today, meaning we may eventually figure out what our distant relatives were doing far below the earth.

What’s Written on the Herculaneum Scrolls?

In 79 CE, the volcano Mount Vesuvius roared to life, decimating the population around the Bay of Naples and covering the ancient towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum. For centuries, the towns lay buried while people rebuilt on top of them, until large-scale archaeological excavations began in the early 18th century.

The lava and ash that spewed out of Vesuvius protected houses and preserved the bodies of people who weren’t able to escape. But it also helped save thousands of ancient scrolls that were stored in the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum, turning them into compact but fragile carbonized blocks that look a lot like charcoal.

When the scrolls were first discovered in 1752, many were thrown out, until archaeologists recognized ancient Greek letters through the soot. No one back then knew how to deal with the charred scrolls, and early attempts to unroll them all resulted in destruction. In the 21st century, though, “virtual unrolling” has taken off, with several research teams using X-rays, CT scans, and 3D scanning to detect the ink on the scrolls and attempt to read the text.

Virtual unrolling is slow going right now, with just a handful of words convincingly identified here and there. But many archaeologists and historians hope that, with ongoing advances in AI technology, we’ll know sooner rather than later what’s written on the 1,800 Herculaneum scrolls — and perhaps find some previously unknown ancient texts.