There are innumerable modern marvels on Earth that are built and visited by tourists every day, but the most marvellous spots aren’t new, but they are the mysterious and the ancient.
Mega structures make a traveller wonder how our ‘simple’ ancestors had the insight and fortitude to construct these wonders and what they were really used for in their prime. There are many such incredibly magnificient structures that have survived millenniums, and do not fail to amaze us 21st century humans and leave us thinking if our predecessors were really as simple as we think.
Every year ten million people visit Stonehenge in England. But the real reason why the structure was built by the ancient people about 4,000 years ago is still unknown. The area is so big that only half of it has been excavated till now and archeologists are still figuring out the meaning of all that has been found in the excavations.
These huge rock formations standing on top of the hill are perfectly carved to the same size, and though some have fallen over it is very evident that they were arranged in a circular pattern and the whole thing was arranged inside a circular ditch. Some say that it was a place of pilgrimage for nomadic people and some say it was a way of honouring seasons and the solstice. Human and animal remains have been found buried under the ditch, leading to speculations that it was a place where important people were laid to rest.
Every day something new is discovered about this World Heritage Site and it shows the ingenuity of the people 4,000 years ago who got these rocks from hundreds of miles away and then put them in the trilithos (two vertical pillars with one horizontal one resting on top of them) form that we can see today after millenniums.
Equally mysterious are the Nazca Lines drawn on the Nazca Desert in southern Peru. These are elaborate patterns of lines on the ground (formally known as geoglyphs. Geo means earth and glyph means carve). The Nazca Lines can be classified as geoglyphs because they are large and made by removing a layer of red pebbles so that the underlying greyish white layer is visible, thus making the designs visible on the ground. Archeologists believe that the Nazca lines were made between 500 BC and 500 AD. Some of the lines form simple geometrical shapes, but some form elaborate zoological designs like that of monkeys, spiders, birds, fish and lizards.
These drawings are as large as 660 ft across and are only visible in their full glory from either an aircraft or the foothills surrounding the dry arid plateau. Till date the purpose or the method of carving these motifs on the ground is undetermined by archeologists and scientists.
The strangest part of all this is that there is a figure of an astronaut on the ground as well, and we know that let alone space travel, not even air travel was invented when these lines were made. So there is a theory, albeit a non-serious one, that these massive carvings on the ground were made by aliens.
The excavated site of Göbekli Tepe in Turkey is a wonder because carbon dating has placed the construction of the structure around 10,000 BC, which is about 7,000 years before the pyramids of Egypt were constructed. All the books and theories of evolution have stated that in that Neolithic age, humans were simple hunters and gatherers.
This partially excavated tell (mound of earth that forms over centuries by generations building structures over others) reveals complex structures and heavy pillars that would have taken around 500 men, to transport them, and keep in mind the wheel had not been invented then. As expected this highly ancient structure’s purpose is still ambiguous.
India is not devoid of such mysterious historical sites, the most eerie of which is possibly the Roopkund Lake in Uttarakhand. For a month every year when the ice in this glacial lake melts it reveals within it hundreds of human skeletons. Scientists have dated the bones to be 1,200 years old. It is not clear who these people were and why their remains were found a millennium after their death in the waters of a thawed lake. Intensive DNA testing showed that some of the skeletons are of Iranian descent, while the majority of them share traits similar to modern Maharashtrians.
There are many speculations and stories about this large group of people who died together and lay undiscovered, but the most popular one is that the King and Queen of Kanauj along with their procession were heading to Nanda Devi when they were caught in a hailstorm and everyone perished. Grim, but interesting.