Ancient artifacts and ruins all over the world have made many scientists question whether our currently accepted understanding of prehistory is correct.
1. The Bosnian Pyramid
When the humongous Bosnian Pyramid, 25 miles northeast of Sarajevo, was first discovered for what it was in 2005, researchers could only measure the age of the topsoil covering it, which is about 12,000 years old.Within the last decade, two Italian archaeologists Dr. Ricarrdo Brett and Dr. Niccolo Bisconti extracted an organic sample from this man-made stone structure and were able to carbon-date the pyramid’s age to be 25,000 years old—some 20,000 years older than the Sumerian and Babylonian civilizations, believed to be among the oldest in the world.
Dr. Semir Osmanagich, a researcher working on the Bosnian Pyramid told NTD: “The organic materials found on the Sun Pyramid and biological analysis are telling us that the pyramids are older than 12,500 years—the oldest on the planet.”
As the pyramid had been covered with soil and vegetation, people previously called it Visoko hill, until the artificially-deposited rock was discovered within.
While many local scientists backed Osmanagich’s theory, there are skeptics. Boston University geologist Robert Schoch, who spent 10 days onsite, told Smithsonian magazine in 2009 that the pyramid was a natural formation. Paul Heinrich, an archaeological geologist at Louisiana State University, concurred. Heinrich told the publication: “The landform [Osmanagich] is calling a pyramid is actually quite common. ... They’re called ‘flatirons’ in the United States and you see a lot of them out West.”
2. Gobekli Tepe, Turkey
Gobekli Tepe is made up of massive stone megaliths that predate Stonehenge by about 6,000 years. It is believed by archaeologist Klaus Schmidt that this is the oldest human place of worship—at least 11,000 years old—built at a time when scientists say people hadn’t developed agriculture.
“The astonishing fact is that we did not expect for a hunter-gatherer society to be able to manage such an operation, to transport a megalith,” he said.
With ground-penetrating radar, Schmidt and his team determined that at least 16 more rings of megaliths remain underground across 22 acres, according to the 2008 Smithsonian article. Even 50 years from now, much digging will remain.
3. Yonaguni Monument, Japan’s Atlantis
Believed by some to be built more than 8,000 years ago, before the last ice age, a colossal stone structure off the coast of Japan’s Yonaguni island has been cited as evidence an advanced culture thrived thousands of years before current textbooks say.After it was discovered by a diver in 1987, British journalist Graham Hancock and Professor Masaaki Kimura of the Ryukyus in Okinawa examined the structure. They both agreed that humans either built it from scratch or modified a natural formation to create the structure.
“It looks like a monument,” Hancock told the BBC. “It has very curious features. It has a series of steps and terraces cut into its side. It’s oriented to the cardinal directions. It faces due south, it has a deep east-west feature running along in front of it. It bears all the hallmarks of a designed, ceremonial, ritual or religious monument.”
Schoch, the same skeptic who commented on the Bosnian Pyramid, disagrees. He told BBC that “portions of it look like they’re manmade,” but the way the rock splits naturally could have caused the formation.
4. Sea of Galilee, Israel
At the bottom of Israel’s lake Kinneret, also known as the Sea of Galilee, lies a massive, enigmatic structure that could be over 9,500 years old.
Dani Nadel, an archaeologist at the University of Haifa, studied the discovery. “It’s very enigmatic, it’s very interesting, but the bottom line is we don’t know when it’s from, we don’t know what it’s connected to, we don’t know its function,” he told FOX. “We only know it is there, it is huge, and it is unusual.”
5. Bimini Road
There are two camps of scientists who have faced off whether this underwater structure, known as Bimini Road, first discovered off the coast of the Bahamas in 1968, is either natural or manmade.One camp dispenses with conventional wisdom that advanced civilization emerged some 5,000 years ago and claims the 12,000-19,000-year-old underwater “road” is manmade.
The other camp calls it a natural formation.
Psychologist-turned-explorer Dr. Greg Little, along with archaeologist William Donato, has executed multiple documented dives at the site.
Donato explained via email to The Epoch Times that the row of stones form a breakwater, built to protect a prehistoric settlement from the impact of waves. During their dives, Donato and Little found the structure to be multi-tiered and to include prop stones they say must have been placed there by humans.
They added that they found anchor stones with rope holes carved into them and at least one stone, later analyzed at the University of Colorado, found to have tool marks, deliberate shaping, functional wear, and erosion features similar to steps.
Little wrote in a 2005 paper that neutron activation analysis compared nearby shore stones to the Bimini Wall stones, revealing that the wall stones had fewer trace elements, suggesting they were formed elsewhere and transported to that location.
Dr. Eugene Shinn, a retired geologist, who worked for the U.S. Geological Survey for 30 years, says Bimini Road is made up of “beachrock”—where the local climate causes sand and other material on shore to cement into rock relatively quickly—which was covered by water as sea levels rose.
