Was Christopher Columbus really the first European to discover America? Since the discovery of a Viking settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows in eastern Canada in the 1960s, historians have begun to reevaluate the primacy of Columbus. Perhaps others arrived in America even earlier.

One candidate is Saint Brendan, a 6th-century Irish monk who exiled himself to the edge of the known world in order to follow a divine path. Irish oral tradition celebrates Brendan of Clonfert (also known as Brendan the Navigator) as a hero. It suggests he journeyed thousands of kilometers across the Atlantic to the New World, 500 years before even the Vikings. 

Who was Brendan of Clonfert?

Brendan of Clonfert was one of Ireland’s twelve apostles, a group of early saints responsible for spreading Christianity through the country. These scholars of theology, art, science, and geography built schools and churches and trained missionaries. 

Brendan loved sailing and went on several voyages to islands off the coasts of Ireland and Scotland. He also traveled to mainland France and Wales to establish monasteries. He managed 3,000 monks.

Allegedly, Brendan told St. Barinthus that he had heard rumors of lands across the Atlantic. He felt compelled to find these lands and establish monasteries.

Brendan's saga

Brendan recruited 14 monks and got to work on a vessel strong enough to carry them over the Atlantic. They built a traditional Irish vessel called a currach, which consisted of a light wooden frame covered in animal hides, as well as an extra protective layer of tar or pitch for waterproofing. With simple benches, a small mast, and a linen sail, it was able to carry 15 men and supplies.

The voyage was recorded in a saga-like fashion, titled Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis (The Voyage of St. Brendan the Abbot). The account places the journey between 512 and 530 CE. After sailing up Britain, where they supposedly encountered a sea monster and almost recited Mass on a whale (which they mistook for an island), Brendan visited several mysterious lands. 

The islands

He mentions visiting the Paradise of Birds and the Island of Sheep, where "the sheep were so very large...larger even than oxen...because they were never milked, and felt not the stress of winter, having at all seasons abundant pasture."

He mentions another island where “great demons threw down lumps of fiery slag from an island with rivers of gold fire." After that terrifying encounter with what sounds like a volcano, he described another island with an abundance of grapes:

They saw an island covered all over with trees, closely set, and laden with such grapes…all the branches weighed down to the ground. Taking up one of them, and seeing its great size, and how full of juice it was, he said, in wonder: ‘Never have I seen or read of grapes so large.’

Further on, he mentions traversing a strange sea full of columns that looked like glass or crystal. Eventually, the party came to a heaven-like paradise they called the Promised Land of the Saints:

When they had disembarked, they saw a land, extensive and thickly set with trees, laden with fruits, as in autumn. All the time they were traversing that land, during their stay in it, no night was there, but a light always shone, like the light of the sun in the meridian.

They came to a large river flowing towards the middle of the land, which they could not cross.

Where did they go?

Some details of the story seem to support the theory that they arrived on the North American continent. Some believe that St. Brendan was taking a similar route to the Vikings, who sailed from the British Isles to Iceland (where they might have seen a volcano erupt), then Greenland, and onto North America.

The Island of Sheep and Paradise of Birds could refer to the Shetland and Faroe Islands, respectively. Sheep have dwelled in the Shetland Islands since the Iron Age, and over 300 bird species live on the Faroe Islands.

In 2021, scientists found ancient sheep DNA in the Faroe Islands dating to the 400s or 500s. This suggests humans (most likely Celtic shepherds) visited the island before the Vikings settled there in the 9th century. It is possible that sheep were wandering the islands by the time St. Brendan passed through.

The Island of Grapes will sound familiar if you have read the Norse sagas. Leif Eriksson named a section of North America Vinland because he found wild grapes and fertile land.

Next, St. Brendan traversed a sea of columns, which could be Greenland icebergs. Finally, they arrived in a fertile and abundant land where "the sun did not set," and a river prevented them from continuing. Historians think that St. Brendan may have encountered the St Lawrence River.

Tim Severin's recreation

In 1976, British explorer Tim Severin attempted to recreate St. Brendan's voyage. He constructed an 11-meter boat following the details mentioned in the Navigatio, using wood and animal hides in the construction.

Severin left Count Kerry and sailed for 13 months to Peckford Island, Newfoundland. He traced St. Brendan's possible route, going from Ireland to the Scottish Islands, then the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland, and finally to Canada.

The journey was difficult. He almost capsized and faced extremely rough waters, but he showed that St. Brendan's voyage was at least possible.

In Australia, when they say "you’ve got Buckley’s chance," it means you have little to no chance. This is ironic, considering that ex-convict William Buckley managed the impossible: Buckley escaped from a prison sentence, survived the Australian wilderness, integrated with an Aboriginal tribe, and received an official pardon for his crimes. 

Background

Buckley was born in 1776 into a farming family in Cheshire, England. The details of his early life are not known, except that he was sent to live with his grandfather at a young age. This was probably an economic decision because his grandfather was able to provide him with a decent education and an apprenticeship. 

Buckley grew to a burly 6 feet 5 inches tall with bushy hair and eyebrows. Many considered him ugly due to a brief run-in with smallpox. At 15, he learned bricklaying, but seeking more adventure, he soon joined the military, first in the local Cheshire militia and then with the 4th (King's Own) Regiment of Foot, which fought during the Napoleonic Wars.

According to some sources, authorities then caught Buckley stealing a bunch of cloth, though Buckley insisted he was carrying it for a lady. In 1803, the court sent Buckley to serve a 14-year-to-life sentence in the one place every Englishman dreaded: Australia. Since the American Revolution, Britain’s prisons had become overcrowded, and the newly settled continent needed a labor force.

Not dying here

The convicts and British officers sailed for the Pacific in the spring of 1803 on HMS Calcutta. Several convicts died on the way, but most of the 500 souls arrived safely in Sullivan Bay in southern Victoria in October. Convicts were now laborers who lived in huts and worked long hours in the sweltering heat. Not only did they have a very poor supply of fresh water and food, but they were also unable to construct decent houses. The trees were unsuitable building material, and the soil was inadequate. This wasn’t a life; it was a death sentence. 

Buckley and a group of five convicts decided that escaping was their only chance to survive. They planned to go north to Sydney (then called Port Jackson). In December, the group took their chance during a deluge. They took what little food, water, and weapons they could find.

They kept to the coastline and ate shellfish, but their main problem was finding fresh water. During their journey, the thrill of freedom soon turned to desperation and doubt. Food ran out, and they were weak and delirious. Two men were recaptured, others perished or turned back, but Buckley was determined. For weeks, he hugged the coastline, scavenging for food and fresh water. 

Finally, his luck turned when a group of curious Aboriginals found him and offered him a meal and shelter for the night. Buckley didn’t stay with them for long, probably out of distrust. He continued until he found a spear in a burial mound. He took the spear to use as a walking stick, which proved vital to his survival. 

Time with the Aboriginals

Later, the Wallarranga tribe found him hunched over, starving, and exhausted. Because of his white skin, they believed him to be a spirit. Specifically, they thought he was the spirit of a tribal chief who had passed away. The spear Buckley carried belonged to this deceased chief. The tribe believed that the chief had lost his memory from his journey through the afterlife. They gave Buckley food, shelter, and a new name: Muuranong. This was the Chief's name. 

For Buckley, these people were strange. The English considered the Aboriginals barbaric, but Buckley inevitably became attached to this surrogate family, which treated him with dignity, respect, and kindness -- far better than his own countrymen had. When the tribes fought, often over disputes over hunting rights, land, or women, the tribesmen made Buckley hide inside a hut with the women for safety. 

Buckley recalled:

During 30 years' residence among the natives, I had become so reconciled to my singular lot that, although opportunities offered, and I sometimes thought of going with the Europeans I had heard were in Western Port, I never could make up my mind to leave the party to whom I had become attached.

Adapting

Over time, Buckley adapted to their way of life. They taught him their language, traditions, and survival techniques such as hunting, fishing, skinning kangaroos, and roasting opossums. He lived among them for more than three decades, and he forgot most of the English language.

He adopted the Aboriginal style of clothing, wearing animal skins. Eventually, he became deeply respected as both a hunter and a mediator within their society. He was given a wife, and it was said he had a daughter with this woman. 

This new life among the Wallarranga was a dream for Buckley, but it came with consequences. Tribal warfare was unavoidable, and sudden death was a reality with which he had to live. Friends and members of his family died in conflicts with other tribes. These losses broke Buckley's heart, and he headed back into the wilderness. He settled in the Breamlea area near a river and fished to survive. Eventually, some tribesmen found him and stayed with him for companionship. 

Reuniting with the English

Until 1835, Buckley had no contact with Europeans. When some tribesmen told him of their plan to kill white men arriving on a ship, he convinced them not to attack. Instead, Buckley approached the Englishmen who had made camp on shore and tried to speak to them in his now broken English. The group was startled to see this wild white man with long hair wearing animal rags. After some tension, they managed to coax him into sitting down and telling his story.

Buckley’s story was so incredible that it earned him a pardon from Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur. Buckley then began a career as an interpreter and diplomat for the British government, while also advocating for peaceful relations and fair treatment of Aboriginals. His new life took him away from his hunter-gatherer lifestyle, but when he returned, the tribe would rejoice.

Joseph Gellibrand, one of the men who encountered him at their camp on the shore, recalled:

Buckley had dismounted, and they were all clinging around him and tears of joy and delight running down their cheeks. It was truly an affecting sight and proved the affection which these people entertained for Buckley.

Buckley eventually moved to Hobart in Tasmania and remarried. William Goodall, a local superintendent, described a gut-wrenching parting between Buckley and the Aboriginals:

When [Buckley] was taken away on the ship, the natives were much distressed at losing him, and when, some time after, they received a letter informing them of his marriage in Hobart town, they lost all hope of his return to them and grieved accordingly.

Buckley died in Hobart in 1856 after falling from a horse-drawn carriage. 

Walking along the boundaries of her farm in the Bavarian countryside, Beate Greithanner was shocked when one of her cows fell through a gaping hole in the earth. Hidden under thick shrubs and bushes, a series of strange tunnels ran through her land. Extremely narrow, with odd features, these so-called erdstall tunnels continue to baffle scientists. 

Erdstall is German for "earth stable" or "earth place." Other sources give the tunnels a mystical bent, calling them mandrake caves, goblin holes, or dwarven holes. The tunnels are extremely tight, one meter high and 60cm wide, with little oxygen. There is only one way in and out, no back doors or exits.

There are vertical or horizontal holes called schlupfs, which are slip-out passages measuring 30 to 40cm wide and 40 to 50cm tall. The schlupfs connect various levels of the tunnels, which can go on for 50m. There are also stair-like and bench-like features.

There are four main categories of these tunnels. Type A is long and horizontal, with a couple of slipouts and gentle downward slopes. Type Bs are more complex, with a multi-layered system, vertical slip passages, nooks, and possible seating areas. Type C are more spacious and have horizontal slipouts. Type D tunnels contain larger interconnected chambers.

There are 2,000 erdstalls in central Europe, including 700 in Bavaria and 500 in Austria. Typically, they are located in rural areas near historic settlements, often adjacent to old churches, cemeteries, and forests with gentle slopes or minor hills. Though many European countries have underground tunnel systems with their own unique stories, they look nothing like the erdstalls.

Discovery 

In 1878, a Benedictine priest named Lambert Karner heard rumors about tunnels scattered through Lower Austria. Some farmers had found the entrances while plowing their fields.

Near Guglitz, Karner explored his first erdstall. Over the next 30 years, he studied over 400 in the region. He surveyed and documented each by candlelight, describing them as "strange winding passages where one can often only force oneself like a worm."

Karner wrote a comprehensive work on the tunnels and their potential purpose, titled Artificial Caves in Old Times (1903). The work does not have an English translation, and so the erdstalls remain little known.

Few written sources mention erdstalls, and those that do fail to describe their purpose. A 13th-century Austrian poet named Seifried Helbling called the secret tunnels a sloufluoc, which refers to a hiding place for families during raids.

Research

In the 2000s, erdstalls made the news when dairy farmer Beate Greithanner found one on her property.

"The cow was grazing. Suddenly she fell in, up to her hips," Greithanner told the press.

She called for her husband, Rudi, who decided to crawl into the claustrophobic space, hoping to find treasure. He found no treasure, only darkness and thin air.

They invited a team of geologists to the site, some of whom were members of a niche research group called the Working Group for Erdstall Research, led by Dieter Ahlborn. Dieter and a colleague went into the tunnel, which was only 70cm high. Dieter's colleague, Andreas, cut his journey short due to a lack of oxygen, while Dieter continued until he found a piece of wood. Radiocarbon dating placed the wood between 950 CE and 1100 CE.

Exploration of more erdstalls in the region brought forth bits of charcoal or ceramic shards of the same age. However, investigators found most tunnels "swept clean" of any human presence. 

A hideout?

Because of their proximity to human settlements, some people believe erdstalls were refuges for villagers during times of war or escape routes from villages.

Erdstall researcher Josef Weichenberger supported this theory and believed the tunnels were constructed as a temporary hiding place. The 11th to 13th centuries were called the "clearing period." Bavarian farmers traveled down the Danube to find farmland further east, where they encountered Hungarian tribes. Weichenberger thinks they dug the tunnels as temporary hiding spaces during Hungarian raids.

He tested his theory by staying in an erdstall for 48 hours. The lack of oxygen eventually started to affect him and a colleague, but when they moved to a different section of the tunnel that was more spacious, they could breathe more easily.

However, in an online article from Der Spiegel, spelunker Edith Bednarik challenged this theory. Bednarik says the tunnels don't have proper ventilation and are too small to house groups of people. The slip passages can barely fit an average-sized adult. There's also no back end and just one entrance/exit. A fire or flood would be fatal.

If it wasn't a hiding place, perhaps it was used for food storage? The erdstalls are perfect for keeping food fresh and cold; perhaps medieval people turned them into ice houses, placing big blocks of ice into the depths. Yet, researchers have found no remnants of food or animal products.

Older than we think?

Dr. Heinrich Kusch, an archaeologist from Germany, does not think these tunnels were medieval at all. He thinks they are much older. He believes that people built the tunnels during the Neolithic period. He states:

Across Europe, there were thousands of these tunnels-from the north in Scotland down to the Mediterranean. They are interspersed with nooks; at some places it’s larger, and there is seating, or storage chambers and rooms. They do not all link up, but taken together, it is a massive underground network.

Of course, any weird phenomenon draws believers in the supernatural, and some think that goblins or dwarves carved the tunnels, hence their small size.

Some anthropologists wonder if the tunnels were a burial ground or a physical interpretation of purgatory, a realm where souls are purified before entering Heaven.

Paleo-burrows?

Some Redditors and YouTubers believe the tunnels are paleo-burrows, underground shelters created by mega-fauna in the Pleistocene Epoch (2.6 million to 11,700 years ago). They think animals like giant sloths and armadillos dug these tunnels. However, though paleo-burrows do exist in South America, they are much wider (up to two meters in diameter) and usually feature claw marks and animal bones.

Visiting an erdstall

Erdstalls are not usually open to the public as they pose a hazard. Inexperienced cave explorers can get stuck, suffocate, or drown when the tunnels flood during the winter. However, innkeeper Vinzenz Wosner in northern Austria takes tourists on a "guided crawl" through the erdstalls on his land. 

General Tomoyuki Yamashita, also known as the Tiger of Malaya for his brutal military campaigns in Southeast Asia, commanded the Japanese Imperial Army in the Philippines toward the end of World War II. As the Japanese forces began to retreat in 1944-45, they took vast amounts of treasure from occupied territories in Asia, including the Philippines, Burma (Myanmar), and Malaysia, in a large-scale looting operation called Golden Lily, ordered by Emperor Hirohito's brother, Prince Chichibu.

This treasure included money from bank vaults, gold bullion, silver, jewels, rare books, art, and ancient and religious artifacts. They came from 12 Asian nations and several Western countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom. Many of the Asian countries went bankrupt. Estimated at $100 billion, treasure hunters have searched high and low for it, even at the risk of incurring the wrath of a dictator decades later.

Transport to Japan

After the looting was complete, the Japanese Army melted the gold down into ingots for easy transport and concealment, making it difficult for investigators to trace the gold. Their original plan was to smuggle it back to Japan from the Philippines by boat. However, the game-changing Battle of Midway made the crossing too dangerous.

To prevent the treasure falling into Allied hands, it was rumored to be buried in jungles, caves, and tunnels throughout the Philippines -- 175 sites in all. Yamashita also set elaborate traps for would-be robbers, including bombs and pressurized gas.

The plan was to hide it until the war was over, so the gold could help rebuild Japan. Yamashita created coded maps written in an almost extinct ancient Japanese dialect. To further conceal the location, diggers were shot.

With the Allies closing in, Yamashita had to hide the gold quickly. Legend states that he sealed the last treasure vault with workers still inside. He was eventually arrested by American forces in 1945 after the fall of the Philippines, tried for war crimes, and hanged. However, no substantial evidence linked him to the treasure’s burial, leaving the very question of its existence unresolved.

Possible locations

In the years following the war, treasure hunters began scouring the northern regions of Luzon. Here was the source of legends regarding Yamashita's slaves and prisoners of war digging tunnels, after which they were sealed inside with the treasure.

Some also cite Manila, Corregidor Island, Cavite Peninsula, and Hinatuan Enchanted River as possibilities.

According to treasure-hunting blogger Adam Cochrane:

Numerous Golden Lily vaults were allegedly found by Edward Lansdale and Severino Garcia Diaz Santa Romana in caves north of Manila after Santa Romana (Santy) tortured Yamashita’s driver – Major Kojima Kashi -- to obtain the probable locations of the loot. Using the treasure that was found by Seagraves and Santa Romana, the ‘M-Fund’ (176 “black gold” banking accounts in 42 countries created to support future United States military operations) was established.

Despite the rich detail, such reports are unofficial and have never been confirmed.

Enter Roger Roxas

A very poor but driven locksmith and amateur treasure hunter named Roger Roxas began looking for Yamashita's gold from an early age. The gold consumed every aspect of his life, including his life savings. Eventually, he came into possession of a map from a Japanese soldier that contained the aforementioned code and ancient Japanese script with images of a tunnel system. However, it would be many years until another clue turned up.

A man named Okubo, a former interpreter for the Japanese, told him that he witnessed gold being carried in boxes in the town of Baguio in the Cordillera Mountain Range. Before he could move forward with his search, Roxas ran into another problem: Ferdinand Marcos.

A dictator steps in

Marcos was the infamous Filipino dictator known for his brutality, greed, his very expensive wife, Imelda, and his ridiculous wealth. No one truly knows where and how he amassed such a fortune. Marcos himself searched for Yamashita's gold during his time in power.

Even though Roxas tried to abide by the government rule of applying for a treasure-hunting license, this did not stop the dictator from targeting him to ensure he would get first dibs on the gold.

In 1971, Roxas made an actual discovery: boxes of gold bullion, a meter-tall Buddha statue filled with diamonds and 24 gold bars. The dictator heard of the discovery and had him imprisoned and tortured to reveal the location.

Eventually freed, Roxas filed a lawsuit against Marcos from Hawaii. Sadly, Roxas died of tuberculosis right before the trial, leading many to conclude that Marcos had him killed. This was further backed up by the refusal of officials to do an autopsy. But all was not lost: Roxas’s family got $6 million.

Yamashita's gold still lies in jungles and inaccessible spots throughout the Philippines. But at least, we know it exists.

In wartime, even losing soldiers and politicians always make a last-ditch effort to outsmart the enemy. In the 19th and 20th centuries, we see this when it comes to securing and hiding wealth. The American Civil War and Second World War abound in crazy tales of lost treasures. This week, we look at three famous fortunes that are still out there. Today, Lost Civil War Gold.

Nearly eight years ago, in March 2018, residents of Dent’s Run, Pennsylvania, woke up to metallic banging, loud voices, and jackhammers. A full-scale hillside excavation was underway. Men and women in FBI jackets were supervising. What were they looking for?

The dig caused a nationwide scandal, with local treasure hunters accusing the FBI of stealing and covering up one of the most important finds in American history: lost Civil War gold.

What was it? All armies need funds for their war effort. Apart from the gold in the Confederate states’ bank reserves, they also received donations from Confederate supporters. Women donated items like gold necklaces, rings, earrings, bracelets, brooches, and precious jewels. There was also a considerable amount of paper currency, as well as gold and silver coins. Today, that treasure is allegedly worth over $100 million. 

An army fast approaching...

The story begins during the last days of the Civil War. The Confederate army was in desperate straits. After four bloody years of conflict and the deaths of 620,000 soldiers, the last Confederate stronghold -- its capital, Richmond, Virginia -- was about to fall to the Union army.

It was so bad that General Robert E. Lee told Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States of America, that he and his cabinet needed to flee Richmond immediately. Wasting no time, Davis loaded two trains, one with his troops, family, top-secret documents, and cabinet members, and the other with the entire Confederate treasury. Confederate leaders then developed several plans to hide or relocate their wealth to prevent Union forces from seizing it.

Where did it go?

In the Georgia Historical Quarterly, dated September 1918, writer Otis Ashmore gives us an interesting detail. He says:

As late as 1881, so distinguished a man as General Joseph E. Johnston, in an interview in the Philadelphia Press, strongly intimated that much of this treasure had been misappropriated by the Confederate officials, and cast grave reflections upon the integrity of President Davis himself...

It is necessary to bear in mind that there were two separate and distinct funds which were brought away from Richmond under the same guard and on the same train. One was the public fund of the Confederate Government, and the other the private property of certain Virginia banks, whose officers decided to seek safety and protection for their funds under the same military escort provided for the Confederate funds…

President Davis hoped to meet with supporters in Florida but was captured by Union soldiers in Irwinville, Georgia, on May 10, 1865, supposedly wearing women’s clothes. They found no treasure on him except a “couple of bucks” in his pockets.

Some rumors suggest that before his capture, Davis sent the funds southward to establish a Confederate stronghold elsewhere. Richmond bank reserves were also deposited into a vault in Washington, Georgia. Treasury funds were then transported to Abbeville in South Carolina so that Davis could distribute them among the military.

Robbers in Georgia stole the Richmond bank reserves. Since it was too much to carry, they buried their booty in the mountains. Supposedly, Davis also gave $86,000 worth of treasure to two Navy men to escort to England. However, they stole it.

Historians believe that the treasury was simply divided up to pay Confederate Army wages, while Union troops appropriated some of it.

Is it in Lake Michigan?

In 1921, a Michigan banker named George Alexander Abbott was on his deathbed when he told his loved ones that he had stolen Confederate gold, which now lay at the bottom of Lake Michigan. According to this account, which had been handed down from generation to generation, a boxcar stuffed with Confederate treasure was pushed or accidentally fell off a boat in Lake Michigan one stormy evening.

Colonel Robert Horatio George Minty, the man in charge of the unit that arrested Davis, might have been responsible. Minty happened to be Abbott's brother-in-law. According to documents, he was wrongfully court-martialed by the Union Army.

Disgraced, he then worked on the railroad. Two treasure hunters and divers, Frederick J. Monroe and Kevin Dykstra, believe that he may have used his knowledge of the railroad networks to smuggle the gold from Georgia, where it was purportedly buried, to Michigan, where he lived.

Furthermore, they believe his destination was Michigan's Upper Peninsula. So, during a storm, the boxcar on the boat with the gold would have been pushed off -- a regular practice for sailors transporting heavy boxcars, to avoid a capsize in rough seas.

Several years ago, during a dive in Lake Michigan, Monroe and Dykstra found a boxcar. Alas, it only contained coal, but they were optimistic that the gold remained somewhere on the lake bed. The popular History Channel TV show, The Curse of Civil War Gold, documented their quest. However, there has been no recent evidence.

The Feds

Fast forward to 2018. The FBI went to Dent's Run, Pennsylvania, after one of its special agents, Jacob B. Archer, supposedly discovered a "cultural heritage site containing gold belonging to the United States Government," according to an FBI report. Eyewitness accounts describe seeing several FBI agents, heavy excavation equipment, and armored cars.

One even reported seeing an armored car riding very low to the ground, as if weighed down by something heavy. The dig occurred at night.

Two treasure hunters, Dennis Parada and his son, have been working to get the FBI to release all the information on the site. They believe the organization cheated them out of a hefty finder's fee, presumably claiming they discovered this Civil War-era gold. The FBI did admit that it was trying to find gold in that area.

According to a report on CBS, "Local lore says an 1863 shipment of Union gold disappeared on its way to the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia." Although in this instance it was Union rather than Confederate gold, it suggests that there may be more than one potential cache of Civil War treasure to be found.

In wartime, even losing soldiers and politicians always make a last-ditch effort to outsmart the enemy. In the 19th and 20th centuries, we see this when it comes to securing and hiding wealth. The American Civil War and Second World War abound in crazy tales of lost treasures. This week, we look at three famous fortunes that are still out there. First, Rommel's Treasure.

We've featured the legend of other World War II loot, the famous Nazi Gold Train, before. Rommel's Treasure is another old tale that refuses to go away. Named after the tactically brilliant German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the so-called Desert Fox of North Africa, the gold is believed to be treasure looted during the war by Rommel's forces.

The treasure consists of stolen gold, valuable artifacts, and other riches taken from European banks, governments, and, of course, the Jews. Rommel or his forces supposedly hid this bounty as they retreated from the Allies in North Africa and Europe. Some say Rommel himself was not directly responsible for the looting.

Locations

The spoils went from North Africa to Germany, first stopping in Corsica. However, the ship supposedly sank. No one knows if this was a deliberate move so the Germans could recover it after the war or simply an accident. Nevertheless, the vast Mediterranean could house such a fortune. According to an article from Vox Albania:

This plan was discovered a few years later by the Czech Peter Flyg, who in 1945 was sent to the city of Bastia, Corsica, as a diver on a secret mission. There, along with four other officers, according to Flyg, they judged [moving the gold] to Germany to be dangerous. So they decided to sink it in the sea and retrieve it at a later stage, when military operations allowed.

Flyg was a salvager, engineer, and diver stationed in Italy when he received these orders to go to Corsica. The top-secret operation could have no paper trail. In Corsica, he, a captain, and lieutenants had to escort six crates of gold to Adolf Hitler directly.

They were supposed to rendezvous with a convoy, which, however, did not show up. Their only alternative was to sink the gold and find it later. They sunk it all a few kilometers offshore. The men then went to La Spezia in northwestern Italy. Here, the SS arrested them and found them guilty of treason for stealing from the regime. Were they trying to steal it? We do not know.

The four officers were shot, but Flyg somehow survived. Eventually, he returned to Corsica with a team of hunters. No luck. Flyg was then imprisoned in Corsica after getting drunk and fighting with locals.

When he was released two months later, he went incognito to Germany, where he lived under a false identity. He re-emerged in the 1960s when a treasure hunter enlisted his help. They went back to Corsica but could not find the treasure.

Other theories

One of the most widely discussed theories is that Rommel hid his treasure in the Sahara of North Africa, specifically in Egypt or Libya. This notion came from the fact that Rommel’s Afrika Korps, after suffering defeats in battles such as El Alamein, retreated through that vast desert. According to the theory, Rommel buried the gold in secret locations in the desert to prevent its capture by the Allies. The extreme conditions of the desert, with its shifting sands and confusing landscapes, would have been an ideal hiding place.

Sadly, few have sought out this treasure, which is far less well-known than the sensational Nazi Gold Train.

In the dead of night on Mount Elgon in Kenya, species large and small gather in an uneasy truce. They’re not looking to socialize. Their eyes are on the prize. For thousands of years, animals have gone deep into this darkness of a mountain cave in search of minerals they need to survive. However, this spot, teeming with biodiversity, also teems with something extremely deadly.

Background

Kitum Cave is one of five caves on Mount Elgon, an extinct shield volcano on the border between Kenya and Uganda. It formed over 20 million years ago during the Miocene, a period marked by significant tectonic upheavals. During this era, rivers of basaltic lava created an exceptionally high dome that became Elgon. It was once the highest mountain in Africa, surpassing Mount Kilimanjaro, before erosion and weathering completely changed its shape and height. However, it still has the largest volcanic base in the world, covering over 4,000 square kilometers. 

When erosion and weathering occurred, exposing the insides of the mountain and creating caves, something peculiar started to happen. Herds of bush elephants hiked up its slopes, as if drawn to it by an invisible force. Eventually, local people realized that the elephants had found a large salt lick. The animals consume the highly concentrated minerals to gain essential nutrients. Kitum Cave’s walls are lathered with sodium, calcium, magnesium, and phosphates -- remnants of that old lava. 

These elephants that ventured into the cave used their tusks to scrape the minerals off the walls. This made the cave expand over time. The elephants taught this behavior to the calves accompanying them. Other animals like buffaloes, bushbucks, and hyenas followed.

Usually, the species are solely focused on getting those minerals and don’t bother each other. However, the elephants' effects are the most significant. Tusk marks cover the walls, scraped by these unwitting “geological engineers.”

Today, the cave goes 213m deep and is riddled with dangerous crevasses through which baby elephants and other animals have fallen. Human visitors must go with a guide. But the usual dangers in caves are not the only reason why you shouldn’t venture off on your own. 

An unseen peril

The problem really started in the 1980s. Author Richard Preston, in his book The Hot Zone, investigated Kitum Cave and the mysterious deaths that had occurred there. He told the story of a Frenchman and self-taught naturalist named Charles Monet (a pseudonym), who came to the cave because of his love of animals and curiosity about Kenya’s natural attractions. However, this led to his death. As Preston described it:

They crossed a platform covered with powdery dry elephant dung, their feet kicking up puffs of dust as they advanced…On the seventh day after his New Year's visit to Kitum Cave – January 8, 1980 – Monet felt a throbbing pain behind his eyeballs.

…Then, on the third day after his headache started, he became nauseated, spiked a fever, and began to vomit. His vomiting grew intense and turned into dry heaves. At the same time, he became strangely passive. His face lost all appearance of life and set itself into an expressionless mask, with the eyeballs fixed, paralytic, and staring. The eyelids were slightly droopy, which gave him a peculiar appearance, as if his eyes were popping out of his head and half-closed at the same time.

Scared for his life

Monet, scared for his life, took a plane to Nairobi to get to a large hospital. He vomited the whole way, and his vomit started to turn black. He threw up all over the doctor and eventually, he slipped into a coma from which he would not awaken. Monet died on January 15, 1980.

Upon performing an autopsy, doctors found his organs destroyed. His liver had turned a startling yellow, his intestines were full of blood, and everything was essentially sludge. It wasn’t long until the doctor at the hospital caught whatever Monet had, but remarkably, he survived. He was treated by a foreign doctor, who sent a sample of his blood abroad for testing. This led to a shocking revelation: The doctor had contracted the Marburg virus. 

Marburg is an extremely deadly cousin of Ebola. Its first known outbreak was in 1967, when lab workers in Marburg and Frankfurt, Germany, and Belgrade, Serbia, became ill with a severe and violent hemorrhagic fever. The outbreaks were traced to the African green monkeys from Uganda that were in the labs. However, the animals were just carriers. No one knew where the monkeys got the disease. Marburg virus has an 88% fatality rate. 

Unknown origin

The question remained: What was the origin of this disease? Preston stated:

After erupting in Charles Monet and [his doctor], Marburg dropped out of sight, and no one could say where it had gone. It seemed to vanish off the face of the earth, but viruses never go away, they only hide, and Marburg continued to cycle in some reservoir of animals or insects in Africa.

A few years later, in 1987, a young Danish boy ended up dying after his visit to Kitum Cave. Peter Cardinal (also a pseudonym) had visited the cave during a family vacation. The symptoms were similar: uncontrolled internal bleeding and destruction of organs. Richard Preston described the gruesome death as “slowly torn apart by an invisible predator.”

American virologist Gene Johnson enlisted the help of the U.S. Military to find the virus’s vector species. They tested large groups of animals, including those of an Egyptian fruit bat colony living on the cave roof. However, the expedition came away empty-handed. It wasn’t until 2007 that scientists had a breakthrough at Kitaka Mine in Uganda when miners fell ill. They found the virus in an Egyptian fruit bat, indicating that these were, in fact, the reservoir host.

According to Preston, the Cardinal family spoke of Peter’s love for geology and that he wanted to dig in the cave for crystals. With a hammer, he scraped and broke off pieces of the rock wall. There is the hypothesis that Peter probably had a minor cut on his hands where his blood came into contact with bat feces or urine. But how did the bats get it? We still don’t know.

Conclusion

Kitum Cave was briefly closed to the public while researchers collected their data. However, authorities eventually reopened it. Tourists can go, but only with a guide. So, if you dare to get close to one of the deadliest viruses on the planet, you do so at your own risk. 

The Crusades had been raging for over a century, and Christian forces were exhausted, with morale at an all-time low. Byzantine Emperor Kemnenos was at his wits' end, facing deteriorating relations with the West and a failed foreign policy. Then, a mysterious letter appeared. Its writer, an enigmatic figure from a distant land, is the answer to Christian prayers. Prester John, a Christian monarch of immense power, wealth, and military might, introduces himself as the savior of the Christian world. But who was he, and where was he?

A mysterious arrival

In the early or mid-1100s, an unexpected visitor from the outskirts of Christendom arrived in Rome to meet Pope Callixtus II. He claimed he was the archbishop of India.

According to German chronicler Otto of Freising, this man was called Prester John. He was a priest-king who claimed descent from the Magi (the three kings present at Christ's birth) and claimed to have defeated various Muslim strongholds with a great army. He was Nestorian, of a branch of Christianity considered theologically heretical.

No one believed this story, and it was dismissed until 1165 when his letter arrived with Emperor Manuel I Komnenos.

The letter

The 12th century also had its flamboyant self-marketers, and in his address to the Byzantine emperor in 1165, Prester John did not shy away from bold boasts. He elevates his status above all other kings:

Believe without hesitation that I, Prester John, am lord of lords and surpass, in all riches which are under the heaven, in virtue and in power, all the kings of the wide world…Seventy-two kings are tributaries to us. I am a devout Christian, and everywhere do we defend poor Christians, whom the empire of our clemency rules, and we sustain them with alms.

He goes on to refer to the Byzantine emperor as "governor of the Romans" and the Byzantines as "little Greeks." He claims that his land is rich with exotic animals and that its people are sinless and almost immortal. Eagles supposedly brought special gems to the land that could restore eyesight, plants could cure people possessed by demons, sacred springs extended one’s life, and special charms could turn people invisible.

Prester John claimed to possess a magical mirror that allowed him to monitor all his citizens and foresee attacks from enemies. He boasted that his army numbered over 100,000:

When we proceed to war against our enemies, we have carried before our front line, in separate wagons, thirteen great and very tall crosses made of gold and precious stones in place of banners, and each one of these is followed by 10,000 mounted soldiers and 100,000 foot soldiers.

He vowed to storm the Holy Land and eradicate its enemies for Christendom.

Though we do not have reports of the Byzantine emperor's reaction to the letter, the tale of Prester John spread rapidly across Europe. Other rulers, such as Frederick Barbarossa, also received letters. Pope Alexander III allegedly sent a letter to Prester John in 1177, requesting a meeting.

Location

Where did Prester John claim to rule? His empire allegedly consisted of "three Indies" comprising 72 provinces, whose kings and princes paid him homage as head of all rulers. He described his empire in the letters thus:

Our magnificence dominates the three Indies, and our land extends from farthest India, where the body of St. Thomas the Apostle rests, to the place where the sun rises, and returns by slopes to the Babylonian desert near the tower of Babel. Four months in one direction, indeed, in the other direction, no one knows how far our kingdom extends. If you can count the stars in heaven and the sand of the sea, then you can calculate the extent of our kingdom and our power.

Drawing heavily on some medieval bestiary, he also lists the country's animals:

In our country are born and raised elephants, griffins, tigers, lamias, hyenas, wild oxen, archers, wild men, horned men, fauns, satyrs and women of the same kind, pigmies, dog-headed men, giants whose height is forty cubits, one-eyed men, cyclopes, and a bird, which is called the phoenix, and almost all kinds of animals that are under heaven.

In medieval times, knowledge of the world was limited. If a place lay beyond the borders of the known world, writers tended to supplement the lack of information with tales of pagan religions, great beasts, and half-human creatures. The letter depicts Prester John as master over all, both holy and pagan.

At the time, the term "Indies" usually referred not just to India but to Asia as a whole. But further in the letter, he mentions Mount Olympus as within his kingdom. Mount Olympus is in Greece, part of the Byzantine Empire.

There is also a theory that Prester John was from Abyssinia, modern-day Ethiopia and Eritrea. In the 1500s, when Europeans established diplomatic relations with Lebna Dengel, ruler of Ethiopia, they referred to him as Prester John.

A propaganda tool?

During the Crusades, there was much anti-Byzantine sentiment in Europe. The West thought itself superior, and crusaders often accused the Byzantines of not supporting the cause and secretly aiding Muslims. This put Emperor Kemnenos at odds with the West.

The Byzantines had a major problem with crusaders passing through their cities, behaving badly, and generally causing chaos. Therefore, historian Karl F. Helleiner believes the letter was a work of anti-Byzantine propaganda by political opponents, meant to undermine the Empire.

In the late 1200s, Marco Polo wrote about Prester John, claiming that Genghis Khan wanted to marry Prester John's daughter. When Prester John refused, Genghis Khan invaded his country and killed him. However, Polo did not say Prester John was a Christian monarch but rather a king of the Keraites, also called the Nestorians.

Helleiner believes that the story of Prester John came from a king named Yeh-lü Ta-shih, who defeated the Seljuk Turks in a battle in 1141. To boost the morale of Christian crusaders, someone used the story and changed the king's identity to serve their purpose.

When you Google L’Oiseau Blanc (The White Bird), the first thing that comes up is a two-star Michelin restaurant with views of the Eiffel Tower. But L’Oiseau Blanc was also a plane, and part of a legendary aviation mystery. In 1927, a Levasseur PL.8 biplane was modified to carry two aviators on a daring non-stop transatlantic flight from Paris to New York. The men took off into the cloudy skies, prepared to tackle whatever came their way. However, they never reached their destination, disappearing somewhere over the Atlantic.

A highly coveted prize

From the early to mid-1900s, Raymond Orteig climbed the ranks of the hotel industry in New York. His ambition and work ethic transformed him from a waiter to a hotel owner. But he was also enthralled by the tales of aviators who stayed at his hotel and the technological advancements driven by the Great War.

In 1919, British aviators John Alcock and Arthur Brown completed the world’s first transatlantic flight. Their journey, from St John’s, Newfoundland, to Ireland, heralded a new age for travel. Their flight took under 72 hours, and the achievement won them a £10,000 prize. The news spurred Orteig to push aviation a step further, to try a non-stop transatlantic flight from Paris to New York.

Orteig took his idea to the Aero Club of America for approval, offering a monetary reward of $25,000 to the aviators who could make it happen. It was a daunting challenge. A journey from Paris to New York would cover 5,793km, and weather conditions over the Atlantic were highly unpredictable.

An unlikely team

During World War I, pilot Charles Nungesser made a name for himself. He claimed 21 aerial victories, held 30 citations, showed extreme bravery (often borderline recklessness), despised authority, and had a reputation as a Lothario. He often got into trouble and was placed under house arrest several times.

Nungesser caught the eye of Francois Coli. Coli was an aviator with an impressive track record in the French Air Service. He was described as a good leader, steady, level-headed, and an excellent navigator.

When the war ended, Coli did not want to give up flying. Sensing that the world was on the cusp of an aviation revolution, Coli began to experiment with long-distance flights. In January 1919, he achieved the first double crossing of the Mediterranean with his colleague, Henri Roget. He achieved another record by flying from Paris to Morocco a few months later.

Coli heard about the Orteig prize, and he decided it could be done. He intended to fly from Paris to New York with his friend Paul Tarascon. However, Tarascon was badly burnt in an accident, forcing him to withdraw from the project.

Coli needed another partner and approached Nungesser, who couldn’t refuse the chance of glory. Strangely, their very different personalities did not hinder their ability to work together. They balanced each other well, respected each other’s skills, and trusted each other. 

The White Bird

They chose a Levasseur PL.8 biplane. It had an open cockpit where the pilots could sit side by side, floats attached to the undercarriage so they could land at sea, fixed landing gear, and it contained two big fuel tanks to hold over 4,000 liters of gas. The plane measured 9.75m in length, had a 15m wingspan, and weighed 5,000kg. It was capable of reaching just under 200km per hour, 7,000m altitude, and could fly for 40 hours nonstop. 

The frame was made of wood, and the cover was linen canvas. Painted white, the pair added personal touches: Nungesser added his army insignia of a skull and crossbones, coffin, and candles, and Coli painted the French flag. 

To reduce weight, the plane had no radio, an extremely risky move.

An ill-fated journey

On May 8, 1927, Nungesser and Coli were greeted by a large crowd at the Le Bourget Airfield outside Paris. They planned to fly across the English Channel, over southwest England, up to Ireland, across the Atlantic to Newfoundland, and then continue south to New York. They hoped to land in the water next to the Statue of Liberty. 

At roughly 5 am, they departed, barely getting the plane airborne due to its weight. They received an escort from the French Air Force, who last saw them flying over Étretat. Later, the British Navy saw them flying over southern England. There was a possible sighting in Ireland, but then reports stopped.

Coli and Nungesser did not arrive in New York 40 hours later, and hours turned into days with no news. 

A frantic search began, bringing together naval forces from around the world. French, American, and Canadian forces scoured areas along the predetermined route but found nothing. The effort included aerial and ground searches in Newfoundland, Labrador, New England, and New York. The search was overshadowed by the bittersweet news of Charles Lindbergh’s successful New York to Paris transatlantic flight, earning him the Orteig prize.

Theories

Locals reported spotting a white biplane in Newfoundland on May 9. Twelve residents of Harbour Grace spotted a plane flying in a sea of fog. Witnesses heard a plane sputtering over Harbour Grace and St Mary’s, and some claimed to see it trailing smoke. One woman remembered hearing three explosions, while someone else found a strange metal object stuck in a pond, believing it was a piece of the plane.  

In the 1980s, American author Gunnar Hansen investigated what happened to the men. His research led him to Maine, where local legends told of a plane crash deep in the woods near Round Lake. He became acquainted with a man named Anson Berry, who claimed to have heard the plane crash. 

In his article for The Yankee, Hansen recalls Berry’s description:

The engine sounded erratic. Moments later, it stopped, and Berry heard what he described years later as a faint, ripping crash. The afternoon was wearing on, and the always unsteady spring weather was worsening; already rain was beginning to fall. Perhaps because he did not trust the weather to hold, Berry did not investigate what he heard.

Hansen also described the weather conditions through which the men would have had to fly:

The next day, rain squalls covered Newfoundland, and light snow was falling at Cape Race. Fog shrouded the northeastern U.S coast, and those who waited in New York wondered how the Frenchman would be able to find the harbour, even if they did reach it.

William Nungesser, a relative of Charles, also searched Maine but found nothing. In the 1990s, the National Underwater Marine Agency (NUMA) launched Project Midnight Ghost, with divers searching for a plane at the bottom of the Great Gull Pond in Newfoundland. However, like W. Nungesser and Hansen, they left empty-handed.

The consensus is that Coli and Nungesser met their end somewhere on the continent. As to what happened before the crash, perhaps wind and fog conditions reduced the pair’s visibility. Historians agree that the weight of the plane would have made it difficult to control.

Lost but not forgotten

Some people still hope to find L’Oiseau Blanc. The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), founded by Richard Gillespie, keeps an eye out for any information that could help the search. Gillespie searched St Mary's in Newfoundland and believes that "the pilots might have tried to put the plane down somewhere, hit a hidden boulder beneath the surface, and crashed."

In the 1990s, Art Bell’s Coast to Coast AM was the radio’s answer to Unsolved Mysteries. The late-night talk show discussed aliens from outer space, Sasquatches, haunted houses, and cattle mutilations. He covered everything; it didn't matter if it was true. In 1997, Mel Waters contacted Bell's show. Waters, hailing from a remote town in Washington State, made outlandish claims about a large hole on his property that seemingly had no end. 

"Mel’s Hole" became an extremely entertaining urban legend. While this story is not so much a mystery but rather a look at how far people are willing to go for attention (or simply to tell a good story), Mel’s Hole still has some believers.

A phone call

In September 1997, paranormal enthusiast Art Bell was at the height of his career as the Joe Rogan of the 1990s. His program boasted millions of listeners, and many callers shared their stories of the weird and unexplained. One listener was Mel Waters, who faxed in a story from his home in Ellensburg, Washington. Waters' story led to an invitation onto the show for a live interview.

Waters claimed he was a former soldier, fisherman, metalworker, and alternative medicine researcher. He claimed to own a piece of land just outside of Ellensburg on Manastash Ridge that featured a strange hole.

Waters supposedly inherited this hole from a previous owner who explained that the hole had been there as long as he could remember. The hole was the community’s dumping ground. Locals would come to the hole to dispose of anything they wanted, from old tires and refrigerators to dead animals. However, the hole never filled up, and there was no noise or other indication that objects had hit the bottom. Everything just vanished into the void. 

Fascinated by the hole, Waters decided to investigate, hoping to determine its depth. Attaching a one-pound lead weight to the end of a fishing line, he lowered it into the hole. His lead weight never touched the bottom. He used another spool of line and kept repeating this process until he eventually gave up. There was no bottom. He claimed he used 24,000m worth of line. This meant the hole was several times deeper than Mount Everest was above sea level.

Other strange effects

Waters' dogs refused to go near the hole. His radio would turn to static when he approached it, except for once when he managed to capture 1960s baseball commentary and vintage music. A neighbor claimed he tossed his dead dog into the hole, only for it to come strolling home days later.

Bell asked if local law enforcement or researchers had examined the hole, but Waters only said that his wife worked at the local university and was trying to persuade her colleagues to launch an investigation.

A developing story

Waters' story did not end there. Between 1997 to 2002, he made several calls to Bell with updates on the hole. According to Waters, the hole was stormed by government officials, who sealed off the area, claiming a plane had crashed. He said they tried to bribe him, offering $3 million a year to lease the land.

Waters dreamed of moving to Australia to research alternative medicine, and he claimed to have terminal cancer, so he accepted the money. However, he still wanted to find out the truth about his hole.

He claims he returned to the U.S. to check out his property but woke up in San Francisco with no back teeth and needle marks in his arms, missing 12 days from his memory. His hefty government payout vanished from his bank account. The hole also seemed to disappear, at least from satellite images.

From there, the story got even wilder: a Native American tribe reached out to Waters with news of another hole. He traveled to meet them, and they teamed up to conduct experiments. Their hole was metal-rimmed, electrically charged, and warm to the touch.

They lowered a bucket of ice into it, which didn’t melt but instead transformed into a weird salt-like substance. They also dropped a sheep into the pit in a crate, which came back up cooked from the inside with a wriggling black tumor inside. Waters claimed this was the fetus of an aquatic-human hybrid creature and that contact with it cured him of cancer.

After one last call in 2002, Waters stopped getting in touch.

A good prank

Of course, Waters' story had more holes than the ones he encountered.

After listening to six hours of Waters' calls, I noticed a few things. He started as a mild-mannered, down-to-earth man with a mysterious hole on his land, but as the calls went on, the more outlandish his claims became.

During one of his calls, he stated:

You know, I thought this might be like Guinness World Book of Records type hole here.

Did he just want publicity? Though he kept claiming he didn't want attention, he kept calling in. He even spoke about starting a website, a relatively new idea in the 1900s.

Waters stuttered when pressed on specifics, and when Bell asked for contact details so people could get in touch with him or assist him, he demurred.

Then, there's the obvious lack of evidence. There is no record of Mel Waters from the Ellensburg area. There was no record of his wife, either. No neighbors or locals emerged to corroborate the story. Bell claimed to have sent out a media crew to the town to investigate. They never met Waters, nor did they find the hole. However, they did note an increased military presence. 

Suspending belief

Let us suspend belief for a moment. Is a bottomless pit leading to the center of the Earth even remotely possible?

Writer Ethan Siegel with Forbes Magazine explored this in an article. He said the further you go down:

The temperatures and pressures begin to increase fantastically. The Earth’s outer core becomes liquid and molten, and the inner core is highly radioactive, with temperatures in excess of 4,000°F [2,200°C]. This is so spectacularly hot that it would literally melt, boil, or sublimate practically any known materials...It’s only a matter of time (and, surprisingly, a few dozen kilometers) before you find that you’ve smashed into the wall of your cylindrical tube, since the Earth is still rotating.

Conclusion

Bell’s Coast to Coast AM show allowed all kinds of eccentric characters and storytellers to entertain audiences. Bell said that Coast to Coast was "purely entertainment," and for a few years, Waters certainly entertained.

In China’s largest province, Qinghai, there’s something a little out of place. A set of modern-looking, metallic pipes protrudes from a mountainside, accompanied by a monument dedicated to the extraterrestrials who supposedly placed them there. Hardly. But what kind of natural phenomenon are these strange Baigong Pipes?

Ad usual with anything both intriguing and difficult to explain, the internet is awash with AI pictures of the Baigong Pipes, blurry photos from the 1990s, and inconsistent stories and "facts." Some sources claim that the pipes were discovered by a local journalist, while others report that a group of American scientists found them while searching for dinosaur bones. A few sources state that the pipes are in a pyramid-like structure, while others say they are in a cave. Real images of the pipes are hard to verify.

Characteristics

So, what do we know? The Baigong Pipes are located approximately 40 kilomters from the nearest town -- Delingha City -- in Qinghai. This is part of the wider Haixi Mongolian and Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture. It's a remote area with no residents or modern industry.

Chinese news outlet Xinhuanet described the unusual pipes in an article from June 2002:

This cave is about 6m in depth. Inside, there is a half pipe about 40cm in diameter, tilting from the top to the inner end of the cave. Another pipe of the same diameter goes into the earth with only its top visible above the ground. Above the cave are a dozen pipes of various diameters that run into the mountain. All the pipes are red-brownish, the same color as that of the surrounding rocks.

One version of the pipes' discovery story involves a Chinese author named Bai Yu, who found them while exploring the caves at Mount Baigong in 1996. He believed that one of the caves looked like humans had carved it out. Upon entering its triangular archway, he found rusty-looking pipes sticking out from the floor and the walls. Outside the cave was a salt lake, which also had these pipes sticking out from the sand on the shore. 

Bai Yu sent physical samples of the pipes to China’s Ministry of Metallurgical Industry (which no longer exists) for analysis. What they found was extraordinary; The pipes were 92% calcium oxide, silicon dioxide, and ferric oxide, while the remaining 8% was inconclusive or unknown. 

Later on, the Beijing Institute of Geology determined the possible age of the pipes using thermo-luminescence dating. This method can determine the age of crystalline minerals by exposing them to sunlight or heat. They found that the sample was approximately 150,000 years old. Because the pipes were high in iron and other metals, and human activity in the area dates back only 30,000 years, some people have suggested that the pipes could be of extraterrestrial origin. The government hurriedly turned the Baigong Pipes into a tourist attraction. If you’re driving along the highway, you’ll find an alien monument pointing the way. 

Search for the truth

Follow-up investigations by Chinese researchers aimed to debunk the ET theory. There had to be a natural explanation.

One natural theory involves tectonic activity. The Qinghai Province sits on the Tibetan Plateau, a vast region with a tumultuous geological history where the Indo-Australian Plate and Eurasian Plates collide. This created the mountain ranges we know today, as well as deep chasms that trapped iron-rich magma. When solidified, the magma can appear like rusty iron tubes. 

A variant of this theory suggests not volcanism but flooding. Because the Tibetan Plateau possesses high concentrations of iron and iron oxides in the soil, the iron may mix with other substances to create a thick "pipe" in cracks in the ground.

Fossilized plants? 

A Chinese news outlet called the Xinmin Weekly published an updated story on the Baigong Pipes in 2003. They quoted scientists who confirmed the presence of plant material in the pipes. When cut open, the pipes exhibited features resembling tree rings.

This suggests the pipes were simply petrified trees. These form when sediment or volcanic ash buries a tree, cutting off the tree’s oxygen and slowing decay. Over millions of years, groundwater enriched by minerals such as silica, calcite, or pyrite seeps through the wood’s pores. As the organic material slowly decomposes, these minerals creep in to replace the wood’s cells. Eventually, the minerals turn to stone. 

Another theory is that the pipes are sediment that has turned into rock in a process called diagenesis. Diagenesis occurs when layers of sediment build up, squeezing out water, and the weight of the material above compacts it. At the same time, cementation occurs when minerals like silica, calcite, or iron oxides dissolve in groundwater and bind the sediment particles together. The result is iron-rich rocks resembling iron pipes. 

A winner

So which theory is most likely to be correct? We may finally have an answer, thanks to a study conducted by the American researchers Joann Mossa and B. A. Schumacher. They studied similar pipes found in southern Louisiana.

"We studied the morphology, mineralogy, and physical and chemical properties of the cylinders...The cylinders are inferred to be tap-root casts of fossil trees in which sediments replaced wood, and pedagogic and diagenetic processes caused the external form of the tree root to be preserved while the internal structure was lost," Mossa and Schumacher concluded.

Driving through a tunnel of darkness with nothing but our high beams to guide us, I could see why some people find the Pine Barrens scary. Here, cell reception is mostly dead, deer seem eager to cause car accidents, and the Jersey Devil stalks the woods. At least, that’s what locals tell their kids whenever they want them to behave.

I've spent considerable time in New Jersey over the last couple of years, and have often heard people mention the Jersey Devil. In South Jersey, the Jersey Devil is not just a popular folk tale to scare children; it is an unofficial mascot and part of their cultural heritage.

Those who claim to have seen the Jersey Devil describe it as a monstrous, grotesque creature reminiscent of a science experiment gone wrong. It is a mishmash of different animals, with the head of a horse or goat, wings like a bat, long hands with claws, horse’s hooves, and the forked tail of the devil.

The Pine Barrens

The Pine Barrens is an extensive forested region in southern New Jersey, encompassing over a million acres. Culturally, it was the scene of one of the most popular episodes of The Sopranos TV series, which was set in New Jersey. Pine trees dominate the landscape. Human activity dates back approximately 10,000 years, with the arrival of the indigenous Lenape people. In the 1600s, Swedish and Dutch settlers arrived in the Pine Barrens and used the forest to establish settlements. In the Colonial and post-Revolution eras, the Pine Barrens became an epicenter for commerce, particularly iron mining. 

It was during the Colonial period that stories of the Jersey Devil first emerged. 

Origin of the myth

As with all legends, there are several variations of then origin story. Most of them connect the Jersey Devil to Leeds Point in Atlantic County or the Leeds family from that area. Some stories begin with a woman called Mother Leeds, who was pregnant with her 13th child. When she gave birth to a son, she supposedly cried out: "Let the child be the devil!" And the Devil delivered.

The child soon took on a demonic form, sprouting wings, a goat’s head, hooves, and a tail. He escaped through the chimney and into the pines. 

Another variation explains that Mother Leeds, living near Mays Landing, gave birth to a child she did not want. She wished it were a devil so she could get rid of it. The baby thus transformed, flying away into the forest but occasionally trying to return to its mother. 

Some stories say that Mother Leeds was a witch who mated with the devil. The Atlantic Monthly published an article on the beast in 1859:

"There lived, in the year 1735, in the township of Burlington, a woman. Her name was Leeds, and she was shrewdly suspected of a little amateur witchcraft. Be that as it may, it is well-established that, one stormy, gusty night, when the wind was howling in turret and tree, Mother Leeds gave birth to a son, whose father could have been no other than the Prince of Darkness. No sooner did he see the light than he assumed the form of a fiend, with a horse’s head, wings of a bat, and a serpent’s tail."

The article goes on to explain that the beast escaped from its birthplace and terrorized the neighborhood. It also discovered an appetite for small children. 

Another variation of the myth describes a young, naive girl from Leeds Point who became pregnant after sleeping with a British soldier during the Revolution. Her countrymen ostracized her, called her a traitor, and cursed her, which resulted in the Jersey Devil. 

Sightings

Stephen Decatur, a commodore in the Continental Navy during the American Revolution, reportedly saw the Jersey Devil and unsuccessfully tried to kill it with his cannons.

Joseph Bonaparte, brother of Napoleon Bonaparte, and former king of Naples and Spain, claimed to have seen it during a hunt. He was living on his estate in Bordentown, Burlington County. 

The 19th and 20th centuries saw many more sightings. In the 1920s and 30s, people blamed the beast for the death of their livestock, with one witness describing its red eyes. Several towns reported incidents where the creature attacked groups of people in broad daylight. People also reported encounters next door in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland. 

Locals organized hunts, and the Philadelphia Zoo offered a reward of $10,000 for the creature. 

Today, people still report seeing the Jersey Devil while driving through the Pine Barrens. Others don't see anything, but claim to hear an otherworldly screeching in the dead of night.

Theories

Historical records confirm there was a Leeds family who lived at Leeds Point. Records from the 1730s show that a woman named Deborah Leeds had 12 children with her husband, Japhet Leeds. However, a 13th child is not mentioned. In all these stories, the common denominator is an unwanted or unexpected pregnancy.

Historian Brian Regal found that there was another Leeds family, famous for their eccentric beliefs. Daniel Leeds was a publisher, producing an almanac mixing astrology and Christian faith. Leeds was considered a troublemaker and a heretic, and he fell out badly with the local Quakers. The Quakers called him "Satan’s Harbinger."

Daniel Leeds even caught the attention of the great Benjamin Franklin. Franklin produced his own almanac, and the two men became rivals. The men had a petty back-and-forth, and the dislike continued even after Daniel died and his son, Titan, took over.

The Leeds family embraced their weird reputation, using their family crest on their publications, which depicted a creature resembling the Jersey Devil. However, it could have been a dragon, which is not all that unusual for esteemed families with a long history.

If there is a creature in the Pine Barrens, what could it be? Some imaginative people have proposed an undiscovered species, a hybrid, or a type of dinosaur. Others suggest a large species of bat. However, North America does not have such mega-bats. No explanation has been satisfactory enough to put the legend to bed. 

Conclusion

Though beautiful in their way, the Pine Barrens were a social purgatory. Outcasts from all walks of life settled there, from criminals to artists. People called them "pineys" or "pine rats" and often made up stories to keep them isolated. Perhaps one of these stories took off, growing over time to become a key part of local folklore. 

In Hawaiian mythology, a fearsome and unpredictable goddess created the islands. If she’s near and stirring up trouble, you’ll find long, tangled strands of golden, hair-like material piled up along cliffsides and roads. These golden strands, called Pele’s hair, are actually a rare type of volcanic glass. 

Background

Kīlauea is one of the most active volcanoes in the world. The landscape around it shifts constantly because of the regular eruptions. The volcano creates new lakes, reshapes the coastline, and produces volcanic glass. 

When Titus Coan, a 19th-century missionary from New England, watched volcanic activity form Pele’s Hair, he floridly described its hellish birth:

Awful seething and roaring, striking this mural barrier with fury, and with such force that its sanguinary jets are thrown back like a repulsed charge upon a battlefield, or tossed into the air fifty to a hundred feet high, to fall upon the upper rim of the pit in a hailstorm of fire.

Pele’s Hair forms under very specific conditions. It occurs when low viscosity or runny basaltic lava is violently ejected into the air from lava fountains or lakes. Then, high winds and explosive pressure from the eruption tear the blobs apart mid-air. This stretches the lava into long, thin strands of glass when rapidly cooled to the right temperature. Geologist Katryn Wiese compares the process to how glassblowing works, when hot air is blown into the glass to stretch it out, albeit not in such a dramatic fashion. 

When the volcanic craziness dies down, Pele's hair appears on the ground as fragile golden strands, which are light and sharp. They can be up to two meters long but only a millimeter thick. In the wind, they accumulate, forming small clumps, tumbleweeds, or carpets. It is not uncommon to find the strands gathering on telephone poles and antennas many kilometers from the volcano. 

But Pele’s hair is not the only peculiar volcanic material in Hawaii. Pele’s tears are droplets of volcanic glass formed during an eruption. The tears undergo the same process, with small lava blobs solidifying under the same conditions. However, these lava blobs are not stretched out.

Look but don’t touch

National park authorities have issued countless warnings to the public about the hair. "The fragile hairs easily break into tiny pieces, and no one wants glass splinters in their eyes or skin that keep breaking when you try to pull them out. So, leave the hairs be if you find them," the U.S Geological Survey advises.

Many people compare the hair to fiberglass, which can cause respiratory and skin problems when mishandled. Weather stations routinely include the appearance of Pele’s hair in their forecasts, particularly when there are high winds. Locals need to secure their water supplies because the hairs can contaminate them.

Though Pele’s hair is mostly associated with Hawaiian volcanoes, volcanoes in Nicaragua, Iceland, Ethiopia, and Italy sometimes produce the same phenomenon. In Iceland, Pele’s hair is called witches’ hair. In 2024, hair formed by the eruption of a volcano in southern Iceland rained onto the town of Reykjanesbær. The hairs caused minor injuries to some people.

Where geology and mythology collide

To understand the significance of Pele’s hair in Hawaii, we must acknowledge that for many locals, geology and mythology go hand in hand. Here, all volcanic activity has to do with Pele. Known as "she who shapes the sacred land," Pele is a revered goddess. She is passionate and hot-tempered, creating the islands with her vast power as she searched for a home.

However, she is also a great destroyer who uses her powers to wreak havoc. She is said to dwell in Halemaʻumaʻu, the great crater at the summit of Kīlauea, where her spirit dances in the lava lake. Pele’s hair is the goddess's hair. 

Another missionary named William Ellis spoke about the natives offering sacrifices to the goddess, including their hair:

Numerous offerings were presented, and many hogs, thrown alive into the stream, to appease the anger of the gods, by whom they supposed it was directed, and to stay its devastating course. All seemed unavailing, until one day, the king Tamehameha (Kamehameha), as the most valuable offering he could make, cut off part of his own hair, which was always considered sacred, and threw it into the torrent.

Many years later, the king's great-granddaughter, Princess Ruth Keʻelikōlani, offered the great lava flow of 1880 a lock of her hair to save the local towns. In Hawaiian culture, hair had divine power and was a symbol of social status.

Hawaiians adhere to ancient rules that prevent them from messing with Pele's hair. Local legends state that anyone removing lava from the islands will suffer great misfortune, or "Pele’s curse."

Various stories online detail ignorant tourists attempting to take pieces of Hawaii home. One woman, for example, pinched a lava rock while on a tour. When her tour bus driver kicked her off, she threw the rock, only for it to ricochet back and hit her in the head, leading to a trip to the hospital.

"It’s sad, one minute you're making the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs, the next you're at the bottom of the Baltic Sea." This YouTube comment about a hyperspace Star Wars route made me laugh, and it succinctly sums up how people felt about an enigmatic sonar image that took the internet by storm in 2011. The grainy image of a broken circular structure at the bottom of the Baltic Sea resembled the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars, but what was it really?

Background

Peter Lindberg, Dennis Asberg, and their OceanX team first detected the Baltic Sea anomaly while hunting for treasure in the summer of 2011. The team was searching the Gulf of Bothnia, the northernmost section of the Baltic Sea, for shipwrecks when suddenly, their sonar showed a formation that stood out because of its symmetrical circular appearance.

The images revealed an unusual, possibly artificial shape, prompting comparisons to UFOs, a sunken city, the Millennium Falcon, and a massive piece of machinery.

The hunt

Curiosity piqued, the team spent the next several months planning a second expedition with extra equipment and divers.

At first, they struggled to find the anomaly again. They launched several machines into the water, including remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) and cameras, to try and zero in on the anomaly's location.

Lindberg swore his team to secrecy, believing that the anomaly might draw the interest of nearby nation-states. They took the necessary precautions: turned off cell phones, GPS, radios, and anything else that could be tracked. However, they were not able to stay incognito for long.

The team was startled when an ominous-looking black ship arrived. It was a Swedish military vessel, but it made no effort to communicate. According to Lindberg, the Swedish military had no business there because the expedition was in international waters. Nevertheless, the team continued their work, and the military vessel eventually left. 

Soon after, the team detected a strange signal.

We turned off all instruments, and everyone on board turned off their cellphones. Then we found a signal, 40 megahertz strong, coming from nearby. But the nearest land, a lighthouse, where you might find such a signal, is 20 nautical miles (37km) away. And our equipment can only measure two, maybe three, kilometers away.

The expedition spent a day looking for the site by sonar, but their equipment mysteriously started to malfunction.

After searching for several hours with frustrated crew members trying to get the equipment back online, they finally found the anomaly.

What did they find?

Two divers braved the cold, murky waters. They descended 90 meters without incident and were stunned by the size of the object. It measured 60 meters wide, 210 meters long, and 4 meters tall. Ridges and symmetrical lines covered its flat surface, and it had straight edges with some sections bearing sharp right angles.

The diving team dusted sediment from the object and found that the surface was black. One diver said it looked burnt. Here is a picture from the OceanX website:

"If you look at the picture, you see a triangle with a hole. Hard to see, so I have a picture with a red line as well," Lindberg said. "You can see that the plate is covered with sediment as well, and below, you see burnt organic material. The picture was taken on the side of the object."

The footage from the dive also shows rings of rocks that appear to have been arranged. "Fairy circles?" one of the team members suggested. 

The divers collected a couple of black stones from the structure. When the team delivered the rock samples to geologist Volker Bruchert at Stockholm University, he believed that the rock was likely volcanic.

Of volcanic origin?

The Baltic Sea does not have volcanic activity. Compared to most seas, it is relatively young, only 8,000 years old. The most significant event in the formation of the Baltic Sea was the Ice Ages. During these periods, massive ice sheets covered much of Northern Europe, including the area that would become the Baltic Sea.

As the glaciers advanced and retreated, they repeatedly carved up the region. When they finally melted around 10,000 years ago, lifting the tremendous weight of the ice from the land, it began to rise from post-glacial rebound. This continued for thousands of years, causing the shorelines of the Baltic to shift. The melting glaciers helped fill the basin with water, forming the sea we know today. 

One way to explain volcanic rock is that glaciers carried the rock down to the sea. However, the sonar images show straight edges, which makes this unlikely. However, volcanic rock can occur on the surface or underwater, and the Baltic Sea does occasionally experience earthquakes. It is possible that earthquakes caused the rock to fracture at right angles and that erosion from ocean currents could have further shaped it. 

Glacial deposit?

As glaciers move, they pick up rocks, dirt, and other debris from the landscape. When the glacier melts or retreats, it deposits this material in various forms. The Baltic Sea is of glacial origin, and the team detected a temperature drop just above the object's surface, so this could make sense.

Could humans be responsible?

Underwater archaeologist Andreas Olsson believes the object is man-made. For Olsson, the object appeared cut or molded. This theory is not so far-fetched. In 2024, archaeologists discovered Europe’s oldest man-made megastructure in the Bay of Mecklenburg in the Baltic Sea. This megastructure was a kilometer-long wall of 1,500 granite stones submerged at a depth of 21 meters. Supposedly, a Palaeolithic community built it approximately 11,000 years ago. 

A hoax?

Tabloids and internet trolls have not been kind to OceanX. A scathing blog post from 2019 suggested that Lindberg was letting his imagination run wild or pursuing his own opportunistic agenda. To me, this does not seem the case. OceanX has a solid reputation, state-of-the-art equipment, and seasoned professionals running its expeditions for over two decades. The shipwrecks they have found earned them the respect of the shipwreck-hunting community.

OceanX's specialty is finding shipwrecks in the Baltic Sea. They have discovered wrecks ranging in age from the 1600s to World War I. One of their most famous discoveries was the wreck of the "Travelling Man" (or Reesande Mannen), a warship from the 1600s that carried a golden chariot, 60,000 ducats, silver, and jewels in its cargo.

They also discovered a Swedish steamer off the Aland Islands with over 1,000 bottles of cognac from 1917. They found three other wrecks dating back to the Russian Revolution, from which they salvaged a few thousand bottles of champagne as well as three Fabergé eggs worth a total of $84 million. It seems unlikely they'd risk their reputation on something they didn't believe in.

Conclusion

The world should not be so quick to give up on the Baltic Sea anomaly. There is much we still don't know, and further dives might clear up some of the many questions.

The Leatherman was a man of few words. He roamed from town to town in the mid-1800s, in a continuous circuit from the Connecticut River to the Hudson, carrying nothing but a backpack and an incredible stock of tobacco. Haggard-looking and clad entirely in leather, the Leatherman was an enigma.

A vagabond existence

Some sources suggest the Leatherman started to roam Connecticut in 1857, just before the American Civil War. At the time, itinerant vagabonds were not uncommon. They passed through towns, begging for money or food. But the Leatherman was different.

The Leatherman traveled a 580km loop in roughly 34 days, before starting again. He followed this route for 30 years, accumulating over 160,000km.

Locals described him as punctual because they could predict the day and time of his arrival, often within half an hour. Schoolhouses would have a Leatherman Day, in which teachers selected students to present the Leatherman with gifts and food as he passed. Though the Leatherman never conversed with the curious residents (he only grunted, gestured, or spoke a few monosyllabic words in English or some French), the towns along the circuit grew fond of him. He was peaceful, despite his intimidating appearance. 

His most distinctive feature was his eccentric fashion. Everything from his hat to his shoes was made of leather patches; the outfit weighed 27kg.

"His coat was made of pieces of leather, each about eight by 10 inches, stitched together with thongs similar to heavy boat laces," The New York Times wrote. "His trousers were made of the same types of patches, as was his hat."

Adopted by communities

Communities pitched in to make sure the Leatherman was fed. However, when they tried to give him medical care or money, he refused. Yet somehow, he always had funds to purchase small items such as tobacco (of which he was very fond), sardines, bread, coffee, brandy, and pie. He carried his supplies to makeshift homes deep in the woods. These were often caves or stone shelters that he built. He stayed warm in extreme weather and kept his dwelling space orderly.

The Leatherman was so beloved that he was exempted from persecution under the Connecticut Tramp Law of 1879, which criminalized vagrants.

A correspondent with the Port Chester Journal, Jonathan Tillotson, wrote about the Leatherman in 1870. Tillotson says he was a Frenchman in his mid-30s and lived in the woods under a rock shelter, with a well for water and a garden for growing food. However, the soil was poor, and he often went into town for a decent meal.

Theories

Although the Leatherman became familiar to those along his route, no one knew anything about his background, history, or personal life.

Those who managed short conversations with him found that he responded more to French than English, leading them to believe he came from France. There was a rumor that the Leatherman had revealed to a reporter that his real name was Rudolph Mossey. Born in the town of Rouen, he was a married shoemaker. When his wife ran off to America with another man, Mossey followed, hoping to find the man who stole her.

But by the time he arrived, he found out that she had been traveling around the countryside and sleeping with men before eventually passing away from an unknown cause. Mossey was heartbroken and proceeded to travel to all the towns his wife visited in remembrance of her. However, after a local paper published this story, they soon retracted it.

The Waterbury Daily American, a local newspaper, claimed the Leatherman’s real name was Jules Bourglay. Bourglay was a woodcutter from France who fell in love with the daughter of a leather merchant. To prove himself, Bourglay convinced her wealthy father to let him work in the leather factory. Things were going well until the value of leather declined, and the merchant lost his business. The merchant’s daughter would never marry Bourglay, leading to a deep depression and his life as a vagabond.

James F. Rodgers snapped a rare photo of the Leatherman. After getting him comfortable enough for some questions, Rodgers asked for his name. "It is E-zek," the Leatherman said.

During their conversation, the Leatherman stated that he was from France, never wanted to go back, and was 68 years old. He was a Roman Catholic who carried a French prayer book and rosary. It is possible that "E-zek" was his French pronunciation of the name Isaac.

His death and burial

In 1888, the Leatherman’s health declined rapidly. He had survived one of the most severe blizzards in American history, but had bad frostbite on his nose and some fingers, and a growth inside his throat and on his lips. He refused medical treatment, and eventually the authorities had to "arrest" him to save his life.

The Waterbury Daily American reported on attempts to treat him:

He was apprehended at the instance of the Connecticut Humane Society and taken to a hospital in Hartford, where it was hoped something authentic concerning the life and history of the mysterious, eccentric pedestrian might be learned. The old fellow has been failing rapidly since his exposure in the blizzard of last March, but his wandering, restless spirit has not been curbed, for two nights ago, he escaped from the hospital and resumed the lonely circuitous tour of wandering in Connecticut and Eastern New York which he has followed for the past 25 years by night and by day.

Not long after, a couple was taking a stroll in the Saw Mill Woods and happened upon the Leatherman’s cave. There, they found him lying face down, his face bloated. The Leatherman was dead.

After examining him, doctors concluded that "The immediate cause of his death is blood poisoning. It resulted from lupus, which had made frightful ravages in his mouth, almost destroying the lower jaw."

The Leatherman was buried in an unmarked grave in Ossining, New York's Sparta Cemetery. Eventually, in the 1950s, an official headstone with the name Jules Bourglay was placed there.

In 2011, despite local opposition, a group of researchers decided to exhume the Leatherman's body and test his DNA to find out more about him. However, when they exhumed the grave, they found that the body was missing. All that remained were some rusty nails. They reburied the nails with a headstone bearing the inscription, "The Leatherman." 

What happened to the body?

One can speculate that locals who opposed the exhumation might have stolen the body, but there is no evidence of this. Researchers believe that vibrations from a nearby road may have disintegrated the body or that the grave marker was not placed in the correct location.

Shortly after his death, the Globe Dime Museum, attempting to compete with popular freak shows, bought the Leatherman's leather suit and paid an actor to wear it. They promoted him as the original Leatherman and claimed he was 200 years old. 

On a night of torrential rain in County Antrim, Northern Ireland in 1898, Colonel John McNeill made a decision that would cost him his life. McNeill and his coachman spurred their horses through a shallow part of a lake, only for them to be swept away into the depths.

Years later, a young man on his way to deliver bread during a blizzard was also swept into the water. These are just two of many incidents involving Loughareema, famously known as the Vanishing Lake. Loughareema is an unpredictable body of water that can drain and fill up within hours. As a result, many people have run into trouble. 

A brief history

Incidents with the lake led locals to believe the area must be riddled with spirits and bad luck. Writer Stephen O’Hara explained:

At times, people have claimed that they can hear the thrashing of hooves in muddy turmoil as they fight to escape the deep water, and that the cries of horses and men can be heard all around the unwary traveler.

The name Loughareema derives from the Irish Gaelic term "loc an rith amach," which means "the lake that runs out." On days when the lake is relatively empty, save a couple of meters of water, you can see three separate, meandering streams that feed it. Yet, there’s no outflow or exit.

Every week, the water in the lake rises and falls rapidly, sometimes within hours. When there’s no rain and the weather is drier, the lake remains empty for several hours. When it’s the other way around, the lake fills up in half a day. So where does all the water go if there’s no outflow?

Superstitious locals believe that the lake is home to a mythical shape-shifter called a kelpie, which changes from a horse into a human whenever it pleases. People claim to have seen the kelpie on the shoreline when the lake is full, waiting for unsuspecting visitors. Others say the ghosts of McNeill and his horses can be seen running at high speed, crying out and trying to escape.

Unfortunately for the irrationalists, there is nothing supernatural about the lake's unusual behavior. The explanation is simple: a hole in the ground. Yes, the lake has its own plumbing. 

How does it work?

Loughareema sits in a natural depression on impermeable clay, and the hole in the ground is a sinkhole. Scientists know very little about what lies beneath the lake, but they do know it is a complex system through which the water passes. It is suggested that a nearby river and a spring are part of this mysterious network.

When hydrologists studied the lake, they found that it fills up because debris such as peat, silt, twigs, logs, and other bulky objects forms a plug that clogs the drainage hole. When the pressure becomes too much, the drain unclogs and water flows freely underground again. This explains the cycle of the lake.

Loughareema is not as singular as you’d expect. Scientists have compared it to Medicine Lake in Jasper National Park in Canada, which drains regularly in a similar way.

Medicine Lake is on a grander scale. Fed each summer by glacial melt from the Maligne River, it swells into an expansive lake before slowly draining away through one of the world’s largest known underground river systems. Scientists used dye to see how far the subterranean rivers go and found that the water re-emerges many miles downstream. In the case of Loughareema, the murky water makes a similar test impossible. Both lakes are examples of karst hydrology.

Spotting the lake vanish

Visitors often plan trips to set up time-lapse cameras to see the rise or fall of the water. However, there is no set forecast for when the lake changes form. It is best to wait for days of prolonged rain, then, if you’re lucky, you’ll see the lake about to burst. Be patient and wait for that pressure to build, and you might see the lake disappear into the ground. 

On Aug. 20, 2007, on Jedediah Island, just north of Vancouver, a 12-year-old girl was enjoying a casual stroll on the beach when she spotted a sneaker on the shore. In a split second, her curiosity turned to horror. The shoe was not empty; inside, there was a decaying human foot.

Disturbingly, the discovery was not a one-off. Communities near the Salish Sea have made more of these grisly discoveries: the total stands at 21 disembodied feet and counting. 

Feet begin to appear

After the girl discovered that first human foot, her mother quickly alerted the authorities, which took the foot for DNA testing. Six days later, a second foot — also in a sneaker — turned up on Gabriola Island, about 50km away. By early 2008, more feet were discovered along the shores of Valdes Island and Kirkland Island, all just off British Columbia.

The discoveries continued through 2009 and 2010, with additional feet found near Richmond, British Columbia, and Tacoma, Washington. The Tacoma discovery marked the first confirmed case on the U.S. side of the Salish Sea.

Forensic analysis identified some of the remains, linking them to people reported missing years earlier. In 2008, investigators also found that two of the feet belonged to the same individual. 

Throughout the 2010s, the discoveries continued sporadically. In 2016, a foot was found in Port Renfrew, British Columbia, and in 2018, a sneaker containing a human foot was discovered on Gabriola Island. This was the same island where someone had discovered a foot over a decade earlier.

Below is a complete map showing where the feet washed up. The locations are: Jedediah Island, Vancouver Island, Valdes Island, Kirkland Island, Westham Island, Pyscht, Gabriola Island, Sasamat Lake, False Creek, Port Renfrew, Whidbey Island, Jetty Island, Tacoma, Seattle, and Richmond. 

Police found two "feet," which turned out to be animal paws and raw meat. However, discoveries of human feet continued, with the latest shoe found in July 2023.

The feet mostly belonged to men, and the shoes were usually brand-name running sneakers like Nike, Reebok, and New Balance. There were also a couple of workmen’s boots. DNA testing has identified most of the victims. 

Theories

What is your first thought? Many people would assume this was the work of a serial killer. Could leaving the feet and disposing of a body be a calling card?

A second theory is mob activity. Major cities like Seattle and Vancouver are home to several gangs involved in drug and human trafficking. The Salish Sea could be a dumping ground for bodies, and perhaps severed feet could be a way to instill fear or a form of torture. However, authorities don't know of any gangs in the area that do this.

Brian Dunning of Skeptoid suggested that the feet might belong to trafficked migrants moved in shipping containers. 

Three years before the first foot showed up, a 9.2 magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami in the Indian Ocean claimed the lives of over 227,000 people. Hundreds of victims are still unaccounted for. Dunning also hypothesized that the feet could have belonged to bodies that drifted into the Pacific. 

Coincidence

However, the feet did not suddenly start appearing in 2007. Feet have been washing up in the area since 1887. One incident, for example, occurred in 1914, when someone found an entire leg. These two discoveries were believed to be from men who had drowned nearby. These early discoveries seem to rule out a serial killer.

Authorities determined that the feet found from 2007 on belonged to missing persons. Some of thom committed suicide, some died in accidents, and some deaths involved foul play. One pair of feet belonged to a woman who jumped to her death from a nearby bridge. Another came from a drowned fisherman. 

When these people’s bodies ended up in the sea, they decomposed, and the feet separated from the body first. Gail Anderson, a forensic expert, explained that crustaceans and other critters would start to feast on the ankles first because the skin and bones are not as tough there. The feet would then detach and float to the surface. The buoyancy of modern sneakers would allow the foot to float and eventually wash ashore.

Other experts suggest that the 2000s saw a change in the way shoes were made. Modern shoes are more buoyant and float easily; people who died in the past and had their feet detached might have had heavier shoes. Those feet would have sunk into the depths. 

Unique geography

The region's geography is also important. The Salish Sea is a vast network of waterways, islands, wetlands, and rivers. It is not entirely enclosed, with narrow connections to the Pacific Ocean. As a result, the currents are dynamic and complex, leading to objects becoming trapped and circulating for extended periods. In an interview with Vox, Parker MacCready, a professor of oceanography, stated that the west-to-east winds almost always blow objects to shore.

Do you want the secret to all knowledge? Look no further than the mysterious, elusive Emerald Tablet of Alchemy. This object, said to be made out of solid emerald or jade, contains the solutions to alchemy’s most pressing problems: the creation of the philosopher’s stone, the elixir of life, and the transmutation of metals into gold.

Once upon a time, in a cave...

Understanding the Emerald Tablet isn't easy. Be prepared for an onslaught of its creator's confusing pseudonyms, confusion over how and when it was discovered, and appropriations by modern-day occultists. It’s a lot to take in.

We start at the beginning, when a young man ventures into a cave in Tyana, Central Anatolia. The Kitab sirr al-haliqi, the Book of the Secret of Creation and the Art of Nature, is an Arabic text dating to the 8th century BCE. It tells the story of Balinas, who happened upon a cave housing a mysterious tomb.

Inside the tomb was a statue of a man, and text (supposedly written in Syriac, an ancient Semitic language) on a column accompanying the statue reads: "Behold! I am Hermes Trismegistus, he who is threefold in wisdom. I once placed these marvelous signs openly before all eyes, but now I have veiled them by my wisdom, so that none should attain them unless he becomes a sage like myself."

There are variations of the discovery myth. In another text called Secretum Secretorum (most likely, a fake letter from Aristotle to Alexander the Great), Aristotle spoke to his famed student about alchemy and magic. This text led writer Dennis William Hauck -- who published his research on the tablet in The Emerald Tablet: Alchemy for Personal Transformation -- to propose that Alexander the Great had something to do with the tablet. He argued that Alexander discovered a tomb in Siwa Oasis while on an expedition in Egypt. Finding the tomb laden with treasure and the Emerald Tablet, he took its contents with him. To protect the sacred objects during a time of unrest, he buried them in the tomb Balinas later found.

Hauck claims the tablet was on display in Egypt, and a traveler described it:

It is a precious stone, like an emerald, whereon these characters are represented in bas-relief, not engraved. It is esteemed above 2,000 years old. The matter of this emerald had once been in a fluid state like melted glass, and had been cast in a mold, and to this flux the artist had given the hardness of the natural and genuine emerald by his art.

At this point, it's important to point out that this so-called Emerald Tablet has been lost for at least 1,200 years, if it ever existed. The intiguing green photo above is an imagining. However, the tablet's supposed contents have survived, in translations and retranslations from Arabic into Latin. Details have likely been misinterpreted and lost over the years.

What did it say?

Isaac Newton, Roger Bacon, Athanasius Kircher, and John Dee all researched the Emerald Tablet. Opinions vary, with some believing it holds the key to unlocking alchemical processes, while others think it is a hoax.

Around the early modern period, the Emerald Tablet took on a more symbolic or allegorical nature.

Let's look at the most popular and common translation, known as the Vulgate version.

True it is, without falsehood, certain and most true.

That which is above is like to that which is below, and

That which is below is like to that which is above,

To accomplish the miracles of one thing…

"As above, so below" is the most famous phrase on the tablet, referring to how the macrocosm (the universe) and microcosm (an individual’s interior world) reflect each other. We see these beliefs today in the New Age movement. Helena Blavatsky, founder of Theosophy (a 19th-century religion popular with some intellectuals of the period), drew heavily on these principles. She believed people could awaken their souls and enter a new state of being.

The tablet continues:

The sun is its father, the moon its mother, the wind hath carried it in its belly, the earth is its nurse. The father of all perfection in the whole world is here. Its force or power is entire if it be converted into earth. Separate thou the earth from the fire, the subtle from the gross sweetly with great industry...for this reason I am called Hermes Trismegistus, because I hold three parts of the wisdom of the whole world.

Hermes Trismegistus

But who is Hermes Trismegistus? During Hellenized Egypt (350 BCE to 30 BCE), the Greek and Egyptian pantheons were combined. Hermes is the Greek god of travelers and thieves. He guides souls to the underworld and is also the herald of the gods. Some allocate language, communication, and messages to Hermes.

Egyptians saw similarities between him and Thoth, the god of learning, writing, and communication. Trismegistus means "Thrice Great" in Greek and refers to one of Thoth's titles. Essentially, Hermes Trismegistus means Hermes-Thoth.

Hermes Trismegistus is said to be the father of hermeticism, a religious and philosophical movement rooted in esoteric beliefs. It combines occult, ancient Greek, Egyptian, Jewish, Christian, and Islamic mystic traditions to unite the individual with the divine. This belief system had many texts, supposedly including The Emerald Tablet. Hermeticism continued well into the early modern period. 

We don’t have precise details of what the statue of Hermes Trismegistus looked like, but later artwork depicts him not as a Greek or Egyptian god but as an old, wise man with a pointed, turban-like crown. 

Later, Christians believed that Hermes Trismegistus was a pagan sage, while some Jewish scholars believed that Adam and Eve’s younger son, Seth, wrote the tablet. Supposedly, the tablet was kept safe by Noah during the Great Flood and hidden in a cave before its discovery by Abraham and his wife. However, these stories have no written sources.

Connection to the Book of Thoth

The story of the Emerald Tablet is not unique. If you browse online, you’ll find articles and AI-generated posts about the "Book of Thoth."

Thoth is usually depicted as a man with the head of an ibis and a symbol of the moon hovering above him. Egyptians attributed sacred texts, philosophies, spells, rituals, and other vital aspects of their culture to him. 

The Book of Thoth contained powerful spells and the "secrets of the universe." It supposedly granted the reader special abilities, such as understanding animals. However, Thoth would inflict his wrath upon anyone who looked upon the book.

That did not stop an ambitious prince named Neferkaptah. Neferkaptah dove to the bottom of the Nile to retrieve the book, which was guarded by serpents. Upon hearing of the theft, Thoth punished Neferkaptah by killing his wife and child. The prince subsequently took his own life and was buried in a tomb with the book. 

There are some similarities between the stories about the Book of Thoth and the Emerald Tablet. Both were found in tombs and hold the so-called secret to the universe, and Hermes and Thoth were essentially interchangeable.

Was the author a deified official?

Egyptian tradition sometimes deifies regular individuals. For example, Cleopatra and the Ptolemies were considered living gods and goddesses. The high-ranking official Imhotep, who served the Egyptian king Djoser, was sometimes referred to as Thoth because he was exceptionally wise and learned. Therefore, some people believe Hermes Trismegistus was Imhotep.

It seems possible that the story of the Emerald Tablet has its origins in the legend of the Book of Thoth, with elements of the story distorting over time.

Belief in the Emerald Tablet continues

The story of the Emerald Tablet lives on in the New Age movement and the secret rituals and beliefs of societies like the Freemasons.

In the late 1940s, cult leader Maurice Doreal published Emerald Tablets of Thoth the Atlantean. Doreal claimed he discovered emerald tablets, written by Thoth, in Giza in the 1920s. Bizarrely, Doreal believed Thoth was not a god but an immortal being from the lost city of Atlantis. After the city sank beneath the waves, Thoth escaped and settled in Egypt, teaching the population wisdom.

As a teen, road trips to Dorset meant three things: Moores biscuits, swimming at the Durdle Door arch, and fossil hunting. We visited the seaside towns of Lyme Regis and Charmouth for exquisite fish and chips and then long walks among the fossils dotting the shoreline. 

From Exmouth in Dorset to Studland Bay in Devon, the rugged coastline exposes millions of years of rock from the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods. For amateur paleontologists or curious visitors, it is a fossil-hunting goldmine. 

Where it all began

Mary Anning combed the beaches with her trusty spaniel, Tray, in the 1800s. Anning grew up in Lyme Regis, the daughter of a carpenter. Money was tight, not just in the Anning household but throughout the community. Locals knew the beaches were replete with interesting objects: large teeth, bones, spiralling shells embedded in rock, and other remnants of the area’s ancient past. Many locals sold these finds, claiming they had magical properties. 

Anning's family would go to the beach and collect fossils to sell. Anning taught herself about dinosaurs and other extinct species. At just 12, she found the first-ever skeleton of an ichthyosaur, which she sold to nobleman Henry Hoste Henley for £23. Ichthyosaurs were large reptiles that roamed our oceans during the Mesozoic Era. With long snouts, fins, and a tail, they resembled dolphins. 

Word got out that the Anning family business provided fine fossil specimens. But despite their newfound fame, the family couldn’t pay the bills consistently. Soon after, when Anning’s father passed away, things looked increasingly dire. Anning was forced to take over the family business, but she continued to find skeletons, including plesiosaurs and a pterosaur.

Though now well-known, Anning was never officially recognized for her contributions to paleontology. London's scientific establishment refused to acknowledge her. 

In the words of Lady Harriet Silvester, who met Anning during a visit to Lyme Regis in 1824:

The extraordinary thing in this young woman is that she has made herself so thoroughly acquainted with the science that the moment she finds any bones, she knows to what tribe they belong. She fixes the bones on a frame with cement and then makes drawings and has them engraved...It is certainly a wonderful instance of divine favor that this poor, ignorant girl should be so blessed, for by reading and application she has arrived to that degree of knowledge as to be in the habit of writing and talking with professors and other clever men on the subject, and they all acknowledge that she understands more of the science than anyone else in this kingdom.

Types of fossils

There are two main categories of fossils:

Category I fossils include new species (or specimens that may represent new species) and fossils that display exceptional preservation. These fossils are extremely rare, such as the Charmouth dinosaur Scelidosaurus.

Category II fossils include partial or complete vertebrates such as reptiles and fish. Nautiloids and certain ammonites are also included here.

From ammonites to ichthyosaurs

Along the Jurassic Coast, most fossils are of aquatic creatures. The most common and abundant fossils are ammonites. In the medieval period, ammonites were nicknamed "snakestones" after people mistook them for fossilized snake coils, which supposedly had healing powers. Rather, they are spiral-shelled cephalopods, distant relatives of modern squid and octopuses. You can find them inside or on top of shale rocks, which you can easily chip off with a hammer and chisel. If you don’t have a hammer on hand, you can use another rock to get the job done. 

Belemnites are the second most common fossils along the Jurassic Coast. These are tube-shaped fossils nicknamed "devil’s fingers." They resemble bullets and are the shells of an extinct species of squid. People used to grind them up as a rheumatism cure. Brachiopods and bivalves are also abundant and look similar to regular seashells. 

Ichthyosaurs left behind their skeletons, most commonly their vertebrae. These can be tricky to identify: they look like thick, disk-shaped rocks. 

Shark teeth are sharp, pointed, and often triangular. They are dark in color (black, brown, or grey) because of mineralization over millions of years. 

Fossilised sea sponges and urchins are also very common. Identifying them is easy, as they have not changed from the ones we know today. The same goes for plant fossils, which were once ferns and cycads. As for fish, you’d be extremely lucky to find the elusive and rare dapedium, a broad, discoidal fish fossil.

Protocol and equipment

As a hobby, fossil hunting doesn’t require much beyond a keen eye and maybe a hammer. The rest is luck.

The good news is that fossils collected on the Jurassic Coast are free for the taking. There’s no limit to how many you can collect, though you cannot collect from protected scientific sites (Sites of Special Scientific Interest) without permission. Heavy machinery is forbidden, and only small hand tools are allowed.

Safety is important; the Jurassic Coast features eroding cliffs that are prone to landslides. Fossil hunters should steer clear of the cliffs and stay on the foreshore and shoreline. Mary Anning’s dog, which died during a landslide, is a cautionary example of the risk.

Strong winds, thunderstorms, and rough seas make the coastline dangerous. It is important to read the weather and tidal reports. The waves make the fossil forests slippery and sweep most of the fossils into the sea. 

Category I specimens should be reported to academics, and a museum may make an offer to buy them from the collector. Here’s what the official Lyme Regis fossil hunting website says:

Any fossil found on the beach is yours to keep. The fossils found on the shore do not last. The next storm or the crashing sea can destroy them. If an interesting or rare specimen is found, then I would encourage you to take the fossil to the Lyme Regis Museum, where the fossil will be photographed and recorded. In exceptional cases, the details are forwarded to the Natural History Museum in London. Many such finds have been donated to the local and national collections.

For decades in the 19th and even early 20th centuries, sea serpent sightings were commonplace. Most famously, the crew of HMS Daedalus supposedly watched one for more than 20 minutes in 1848. 

The sighting

HMS Daedalus was a 19-gun Royal Navy frigate. It had seen action in the American and French Revolutions and was stationed in the East Indies for a time. Now it was bound for Britain, requiring a stop in St. Helena to resupply and deliver dispatches en route.

Not long after leaving the Cape of Good Hope, the crew spotted a storm brewing in the distance, a barrage of dark clouds on the horizon. Suddenly, their storm preparations were interrupted by a mysterious visitor in the water below. The Daedalus’s captain, Captain McQuahae, gave a detailed report of the exact moment he spotted the serpent.

A sea-serpent of extraordinary dimensions having been seen from Her Majesty’s Ship Daedalus, under my command, in her passage from the East Indies. I have the honour to acquaint you, for the information of my Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, that at 5 pm, on August 6 last, in latitude 24°44′S and longitude 9°22′E, the weather dark and cloudy, wind fresh from the NW, with a long ocean swell from the SW, the ship on the port tack, heading NE by N, something very unusual was seen by Mr. Satoris. It was discovered to be an enormous serpent, with head and shoulders kept about 4ft constantly above the surface of the sea. There was at the very least 60ft of the animal.

The crew saw the serpent swimming around their vessel for over 20 minutes. It was partially covered in seaweed, had a mane, and was dark in color, except for yellow around the throat. It did not seem hostile, but curious. 

Many witnesses

It wasn’t just the captain who spotted the creature; the entire crew did. None of them had previously seen anything like it. Crewman E.A. Drummond, whose written accounts were discovered many years later, further confirmed the sighting with descriptions and sketches:

The appearance of its head, which, with the back fin, was the only portion of the animal visible, was long, pointed, and flattened at the top, perhaps ten feet in length, the upper jaw projecting considerably. The fin was perhaps twenty feet in the rear of the head, and visible occasionally. It pursued a steady undeviating course, keeping its head horizontal with the surface of the water, and in rather a raised position, disappearing occasionally beneath a wave for a very brief interval, and not apparently for purposes of respiration.,

The crewmen swore this was a sea serpent of myth and legend. The Royal Navy was officially neutral, and surprisingly did not attempt to suppress or discredit the account since McQuhae was a respected captain.

Captain McQuahae published his report and a sworn statement in The Times of London. Victorian Britain was obsessed with the supernatural, and the article -- accompanied by several illustrations of the ship and a large eel-like creature -- gained notoriety.

More sailors came forward with sightings. In 1857 and 1860, other sightings off St. Helena and Bermuda featured similar details. Some readers were convinced. Others, not so much.

Opposition

Two figures sought to discredit Captain McQuahae's story: Richard Owens, a renowned naturalist, and Charles Darwin. According to historian Brian Regal, Prince Albert, the husband of Queen Victoria, wrote an excited letter to Owens seeking his opinion on the sea serpent. He did not get the answer he was looking for.

Owens believed it was a sea lion, thus earning him the nickname "the sea-serpent killer." Owens emphasized that his skepticism came from a lack of physical remains to study. Meanwhile, Darwin mocked the sighting. Captain McQuahae did not retract his statement, despite the criticism. 

Theories

Did the sailors see an extinct species? What about an optical illusion? On calm seas, heat and light can distort shapes. Though the weather was about to get rough, the seas were calm. 

Perhaps the crew saw an oarfish, also known as the doomsday fish. Oarfish are the world’s longest bony fish, capable of growing to 11m or more. Their long bodies resemble ribbons and undulate as they swim, creating motion reminiscent of a sea snake. The oarfish has a prominent dorsal fin that runs the length of its body, and some species feature elongated red filaments on their heads. The fin might have been mistaken for the "mane" in the 1848 account. 

Scientists first described oarfish in the late 1770s, but they are rare and not well known. The oarfish is a deep-sea species, only rising to the surface when sick, injured, or dying. Given that 19th-century sailors had no familiarity with such a fish, it’s reasonable to assume that an oarfish would seem otherworldly to them.

Another theory comes from writer Gary J. Galbreath with the Skeptical Inquirer, who proposed it was a feeding sei whale. When a sei whale feeds, its yellow baleen plates show, which could account for the yellow the sailors noted. He also argues that the sailors might have been confused by the low, flat dorsal fin as opposed to the "stereotypical cetacean dorsal fin."

The takeaway

Greek, Norse, Mesopotamian, and many other ancient cultures spoke of encounters between vicious serpents and heroes or ordinary sailors. Sailors routinely encountered strange sights — breaching whales, giant squids, bizarre carcasses, bioluminescence — which they interpreted with limited biological understanding. These experiences were often dramatized in taverns and port cities, giving rise to larger-than-life stories that became maritime folklore.

However, historians conclude that these stories were either founded on sightings of unfamiliar species or were symbolic stories connected to their religious beliefs. In the case of the HMS Daedalus, the sea serpent could well have been an oarfish or a type of whale. 

Steven Spielberg's portrayal of the Nazis in the Indiana Jones movies is surprisingly accurate. The fictional Nazi villains' attempts to secure the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail were based on real people with the oddest ambition: to weaponize archaeology. 

A disturbed mind

In the early 1900s, a curious boy grew up in an ordinary family in Munich. At age 10, he already buried himself in books about politics and religion. A bright future beckoned, before his life took a dark turn. His parents were unable to financially support his academic endeavors, and he later failed to join the military. Angry with the world, he started to form dangerous ideas. This boy was Heinrich Himmler. 

In the aftermath of World War I, Himmler consumed fringe literature that focused on the occult, antisemitism, and the racial superiority of the "Nordic" race. After joining the Nazi Party and climbing the ranks to sit at Hitler’s side, he saw an opportunity to manipulate academia. 

Himmler eventually became the head of the Schutzstaffel (the SS, an elite paramilitary wing of the Nazi party) in 1929. This allowed him to indulge his occultist beliefs and wild theories. In 1935, he established a special "scientific" department called Ahnenerbe, which translates as "something inherited from the forefathers." Later, it was renamed the Research and Teaching Community in Ancestral Heritage.

Promoting Nazi ideology

The department's primary aim was to promote Nazi ideology through the reinterpretation of ancient history, focusing on the supposed superiority of the Germanic race. The Ahnenerbe tried to find archaeological and anthropological evidence of Germanic civilizations to legitimize Germany's territorial expansion.

Hitler claimed that the German people descended from a pseudoscientific superior race called the Aryans. The term was originally used to describe Indo-Iranian groups in Asia, but was appropriated by 19th-century writers and philosophers like Arthur de Gobineau and Houston Stewart Chamberlain to describe a proto-Indo-European race superior to all others. These ideas formed the basis for Nazi ideology.

The Nazis believed the Aryans were a Nordic people, flaxen-haired, white, physically strong, and the founders of civilization. The hypothesis was that the Aryans/Germanic people built the Northern European culture, from music, art, and religion to value systems and forms of politics. 

Hitler admired Nordic and Greco-Roman cultures, which he claimed emerged from a single Germanic Aryan race.

Ahnenerbe conducted pseudoscientific research, ranging from archaeology to anthropology, to support Nazi racial theories.

Himmler himself stated:

The one and only thing that matters to us, and the thing these people are paid for by the State, is to have ideas of history that strengthen our people in their necessary national pride. In all this troublesome business, we are only interested in one thing -- to project into the dim and distant past the picture of our nation as we envisage it for the future. Every bit of Tacitus in his Germania is tendentious stuff. Our teaching of German origins has depended for centuries on a falsification. We are entitled to impose one of our own at any time.

Himmler hoped to use this "science" to create a new religion. As time went by, what was originally propaganda became fact in Himmler's mind. He started to believe his lies.

Pseudoarchaeology

With considerable funding, the Ahnenerbe started digging. Ambitious young archaeologists saw this as an opportunity to launch their careers. Assien Bohmers, an eager Dutch archaeologist, got a job excavating Palaeolithic sites. Bohmer participated in a dig in Mauern, Bavaria, that unearthed the remains of a Cro-Magnon female who bore "similar" features to German women. The Nazi archaeologists claimed that "the excavations at Mauern have revealed that the Cro-Magnon race must have developed in greater Germany."

Discoveries such as these stirred up excitement in Germany. Writer Bettina Arnold gives an example of a flyer that promoted the importance of archaeology:

Every single find is important because it represents a document of our ancestors! Keep your eyes open, for every Volksgenosse [fellow German] can contribute to this important national project! Do not assume that a ceramic vessel is useless because it falls apart during excavation. Carefully preserve even the smallest fragment!

'Responsibility with respect to our indigenous prehistory must again fill every German with pride!'

Other sites, such as Externsteine and Biskupin, were also used by the propaganda machine.

Externsteine is a series of striking sandstone rock formations in northern Germany, which gained symbolic importance to the Nazis because of their association with ancient Germanic and pagan traditions. The Nazis viewed the site as a symbol of Germany's pre-Christian, "pure," past, which they believed was rooted in a spiritual connection to nature and ancestral heritage. It became the site of Nazi cult rituals.

Excavations in Biskupin, Poland, supposedly showed that the local populations were conquered by the Aryans. Hitler used this as part of his justification for the invasion.

The search for the Holy Grail

Just like in Indiana Jones, the Nazis tried searching for the Holy Grail. This brings us to the bizarre tale of Otto Rahn. Rahn was holed up in a little apartment writing about his greatest passion: Arthurian legend and the Holy Grail. He spent what little money he had trying to track down the Holy Grail, even traveling around France to learn about the Grail from oral tradition.

German folktales state that the Grail was a stone, not a chalice, and Rahn read of a heretical Christian sect called the Cathars who received a stone from heaven. He believed this was the Grail. However, he ran out of money before he could proceed any further with his research. Then came the answer to his prayers.

Himmler also wanted to find the Grail; according to legend, it could provide eternal life. Himmler also wanted to prove that Christ was not a Jew but an Aryan. So, he offered Rahn a job with a handsome salary to search for the Grail. Rahn could not refuse, but his new work came at a cost. The Nazis tampered with his writing, inserting passages about Jews destroying culture. Rahn was also asked to prove his ethnic purity. He was gay, and paranoia that the Nazis would discover this eventually led him to commit suicide.

Himmler had lost an archaeologist but continued the search. In Spain, an obscure monastery in Montserrat featured a local legend that the monks held the Holy Grail in the mountain. Himmler visited the monastery, but returned to Germany empty-handed.

Aryans in Tibet

Perhaps one of the oddest Ahnenerbe expeditions was to Tibet. In 1938, a team led by Ernst Schaefer, a zoologist and SS officer, traveled to Tibet under the guise of scientific research. While the team studied the local flora and fauna, they also searched for archaeological evidence that could prove Nazi theories about the Aryan "race." They believed Tibet could have been the Aryan homeland. They measured and studied the physical features of locals and observed local customs.

South America

Even before the establishment of Ahnenerbe, SS officers and archaeologists were trying their best to find evidence of German superiority. Edmund Kiss was obsessed with the idea that Aryans were descended from survivors of Atlantis. Kiss believed these survivors spread across the globe and built civilizations.

One of the largest archaeological sites on the South American continent is near Lake Titicaca in Bolivia. The site was used for astronomy, contained impressive carvings, monoliths, subterranean temples, and high walls. Kiss refused to believe a pre-Columbian culture had built the complex site. Instead, he believed that a Nordic Aryan race that migrated to South America constructed it. He based these claims on the supposed resemblance between carved humanoid figures and Aryans.

A fitting end

After the fall of Nazi Germany in 1945, the Ahnenerbe was disbanded, and many of its members faced prosecution for their roles in Nazi crimes.

It is 1764, and France is licking its wounds after the Seven Years’ War. The kingdom has exhausted itself financially and lost territory abroad. To make matters worse, intense panic has erupted in the southern countryside, with peasants suggesting a demonic, monstrous creature is attacking people in the fields. 

A string of attacks

The first attack occurred in June 1764, when a large, unknown animal attacked a young woman tending cattle near Langogne. She survived only because the bulls in her herd drove the creature away.

A few weeks later, villagers came across the mutilated body of shepherd Jeanne Boulet near a small village in the Lozène region. Boulet's throat was torn to pieces, but her livestock was unharmed. In July, another teenage victim died in the arms of villagers, but was able to give a brief description of the beast before succumbing to her wounds.

Jacques Portefaix and his friends were also tending cattle outside their village when the creature attacked. By some miracle, the boys fended it off. A large group of people seemed to intimidate it.

The story of the beast spread through France and even reached the ears of King Louis XV, who provided Portefaix and his friends with financial support. 

Perhaps the most famous incident took place in August 1765. Marie Jeanne Valet was walking across a bridge with her baby sister when the beast charged them. According to legend, Valet stabbed the monster with a knife, and the girls escaped. The incident earned Valet a fierce reputation and the title of the "Maid of Gévaudan."

There were more attacks, and within a year, the death toll was around 113, with a further 49 injuries.

The beast

Posters at the time described the monster as:

Reddish brown with a dark, ridged stripe down the back. Resembles a wolf/hyena but as big as a donkey. Long gaping jaw, six claws, pointy upright ears, and a supple furry tail, mobile like a cat's, and can knock you over. Cry: more like a horse neighing than a wolf howling.

Historian Jay M. Smith claimed that the creature "could walk on its hind feet, its hide could repel bullets, it had fire in its eyes, it came back from the dead more than once, and it had amazing leaping ability."

This so-called beast had surprisingly selective tastes. Rather than attacking any living creature, as one might expect from a rampaging predator, it ignored livestock in favor of human prey. Most incidents involved women and children.

The beast was not nocturnal; attacks could occur at any time of day. It had an almost human-like intelligence and avoided traps.

The king intervenes

King Louis sent teams of soldiers and hunters to the region. He enlisted the services of a veteran called Jean-Baptiste Duhamel. Duhamel was an educated and pragmatic man, skeptical of superstitious exaggeration and aware of the need to calm the population.

He decided to recruit local peasants, hunters, and soldiers to form hunting parties. These were extensive, well-coordinated efforts, involving beaters, gunmen, and bait. Duhamel even tried using decoys, dressing men up as women to lure the beast out.

Duhamel's campaign killed many wolves, but none were definitively the Beast of Gévaudan. The attacks continued, and Duhamel's failure eventually caused him to be sent away in disgrace.

Frustrated, the king sent hunters Jean Charles Marc Antoine Vaumele d'Enneval and Jean-François to kill the beast. This father-son duo released bloodhounds to sniff out the monster. The bloodhounds killed more wolves but not the beast.

Plenty of wolves, but was any of them 'The Beast'?

Next, the king dispatched his gunbearer, François Antoine. Antoine killed a large male wolf, stuffed it, and sent it back to the king. Later, he also killed a female and her cubs. He said:

We declare by the present report signed from our hand, we never saw a big wolf that could be compared to this one. Hence, we believe this could be the fearsome beast that caused so much damage.

The attacks continued, but the court, thinking they had solved the problem, dismissed new reports. Locals were left to fend for themselves.

Jean Chastel, who was serving time for refusing to help with previous hunts, was both a skilled marksman and devoutly religious. Allegedly, he finally killed the beast with a silver-tipped bullet and special prayers. The Beast's head was cut off and stuffed, but it began to rot and was eventually thrown away.

Theories

This was not the first time France had suffered wolf/werewolf hysteria. During the 1500s and 1600s, the French countryside was plagued by disappearances, prompting parliament-sanctioned werewolf hunts. These hunts often targeted social outcasts and loners, and frequently resulted in dubious convictions. These bouts of hysteria often coincided with times of great strife.

A study led by researcher John D. C Linnell suggested that most of the attacks were likely wolves or dogs:

From our point of view, it is impossible to be 100% certain. However, even if some of the cases may have been due to other agents rather than a wolf, historians who have examined the case believe there is a very high chance that a wolf or wolves were involved in many of the deaths.

It is also highly possible that several attacks attributed to wolves could be due to domestic or feral dogs, wolf-dog hybrids, or similar species.

It is also possible that newspapers sensationalized the beast, either to attack the King or to attract readers. The newspaper Courrier d’Avignon published a whopping 98 stories about it.

There could also be a religious element to the story. Gévaudan was a Protestant region, so when news of the attacks circulated, Catholics believed God was punishing the Protestants for their heretical beliefs. 

Another possibility is that the beast was a human serial killer dressed up in animal skins. This would explain why it never attacked livestock. However, there is no hard evidence for this theory.

Conclusion

The most likely explanation is that wolves and dogs were responsible for most attacks. When combined with local superstitions, general discontent, and a period of strife, perhaps the legend of the Beast of Gévaudan was born.

On Aug. 7, 1994, the quaint town of Oakville, Washington, with a population of just a few hundred, experienced some odd weather. Rain with a chance of disease-inducing blobs of goo hammered down. Nearly 30 years later, the mystery of the Oakville Blobs remains unsolved. 

When the heavens opened at 3 am that night, most of the residents of Oakville were asleep. The few who happened to be out realized that the water droplets were not water at all. Instead, their windscreen wipers were smearing an odd, gooey, gelatinous substance over the glass. Witnesses described the rain as having a jelly-like consistency. The blobs were translucent and as small as a grain of rice.

When dawn came and the town woke up, they found their lawns, roads, and roofs covered in the tiny blobs. The curious townsfolk picked them up to investigate and sent samples to private labs. But soon after touching them, dozens of people fell ill. Resident Dotty Hearn got an ear infection, vertigo, and a bad stomach ache. Others suffered flu-like symptoms.

Around town, animals started to die. Some reports described dead animals frothing at the mouth, which usually happens in cases of contact with poisonous substances, severe stress, or rabies.

Exploding jellyfish, meteorites, and plane waste

Local medical authorities got to work immediately. Researcher Mike McDowell found that the blobs contained two species of bacteria, Pseudomonas fluorescens and Enterobacter cloacae, which are common in humans and animals. They aren’t too harmful, causing minor inconveniences such as skin or urinary tract infections. They are not usually a cause for concern if treated. However, the bacteria should not make people violently ill, to the point of hospitalization. 

Visually, the blobs resemble a gelatinous substance called star jelly. Star jelly is a natural, though mysterious, occurrence that scientists still don't understand.

A popular theory is that star jelly comes from meteorites falling to Earth, and that little pieces form gelatinous substances as they fall through the atmosphere. Star jelly has also been attributed to frog spawn, algae, and slime molds.

One theory posited that the blobs were remnants of jellyfish dispersed into the atmosphere. Some speculated that military bombing exercises in the Pacific Ocean could have destroyed jellyfish populations and lifted their remains into the air. However, aside from how ridiculous the theory sounds, the Oakville Blobs allegedly contained cells without nuclei, which is inconsistent with the structure of jellyfish cells.

According to a newspaper article from the Palm Beach Post dated Aug. 21, 1994:

The jellyfish theory began when townsfolk learned the Air Force was dropping live bombs into the Pacific Ocean about 10 to 20 miles off the coast of Washington. The idea was that jellyfish remains might have been blown up into the clouds, where they were later dispersed in rainfall.

Oakville residents reported encountering strange men in suits frequenting local establishments and asking questions. This encouraged the notion that they were government officials covering up the incident.

One theory maintained that the blobs came from passing planes. The Palm Beach Post says:

Another suggestion was that the blobs were a form of waste from aircraft toilets, sometimes referred to as 'blue ice.'

No conclusive evidence has been found to support any of these theories, and there are no preserved blob samples to study.

Conclusion

The people of Oakville did not panic, but ultimately looked on the event as a potential tourism bonanza. Residents wanted to:

start a jellyfish festival where they shoot jellyfish into town with a cannon...the town's tavern is also concocting a new drink, 'the jellyfish' made of vodka, gelatine, and juice.

The hype eventually died down until April 2025, when The Chronicle, a newspaper based in Centralia, Washington, reported that residents of Rochester, just 16km from Oakville, reported blobs falling from the sky. This time, the townsfolk reported no illnesses. 

Christian Spain was under assault. In 711 AD, invading Muslim forces defeated Roderic, the last of the Visigothic kings, at the Battle of Guadalete. Amid the chaos, several bishops and their followers traversed the perilous Atlantic in search of a new home. Antillia began to appear on nautical maps, beckoning explorers to a rich, Christian utopia whose inhabitants wanted for nothing. 

What’s in a name?

The very name Antillia breeds confusion. The word "Antilles" refers to the Caribbean Islands. To the north are the Greater Antilles (Cuba, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico), and to the south are the Lesser Antilles (from the Virgin Islands to Trinidad and Tobago). Antilles may have originated from Antillia, and over the centuries, the spelling of the name changed.

Antillia first appeared in 1367 on a nautical chart created by Venetian brothers Domenico and Francesco Pizzigano. The chart was advanced for its time, providing some measure of accuracy for sailors. The map did not focus on the interior of discovered lands, but rather on their locations. Ironically, the map depicted several imaginary Atlantic islands such as the Isles of the Blessed, Hy-Brasil, Mayda, and Saint Brendan’s Island. Though Antillia is not pinpointed on the map, the text mentions it: "statues on the shores of Atuilla."

In 1424, Zuane Pizzigano, a relative of the Pizzigano brothers, produced a chart and placed Antillia slightly beyond the Azores. The island looks rectangular and is accompanied by other islands called Satanzes, Ymana, and Saya, forming an archipelago. 

The mysterious island eventually appeared on Martin Behaim’s 1492 Erdapfel, the world’s oldest surviving globe. As we know, Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas in 1492. However, his discoveries were not reported until 1493, and the Americas were not included on the globe. Yet there are several phantom islands, including Antillia.

Historical backing

According to legend, Antillia was a Christian haven during a time of upheaval. In the 8th century, the reign of the Visigothic kings in Spain was coming to an end. The Umayyad Caliphate struck the heart of Visigothic rule in Toledo, and the surrounding Christian kingdoms fell like dominoes.

On Martin Behaim's 1492 Nuremberg globe, it states:

In the year 734 of Christ, when the world of Spain had been won by the heathen Moors of Africa, the above island Antillia, called Septe Citade, was inhabited by an archbishop from Porto in Portugal, with six other bishops, and other Christians, men and women, who had fled thither from Spain, by ship, together with their cattle, belongings and goods.

In the 16th century, Spanish cartographer Pedro de Medina elaborated:

There are on Antillia people who speak the language of Spain, that of the king Don Rodrigo, last of the Gothic kings of Spain. When the barbarians entered Spain, it is believed that to this island he fled. This island has an Archbishop and six bishops, each one has his own city, because of so many, it was called the island of Seven Cities.

The island supposedly featured seven settlements led by seven bishops, which were Aira, Ansalli, Antuab, Ansesseli, Ansodi, Ansoll, and Con. 

Writer Jerald Fritzinger, author of Pre-Columbian Trans-Oceanic Contact, suggests a possible connection between the Antillia myth and a real Visigothic figure named Sacaru. According to Fritzinger, Sacaru took his fleet and other refugees to the Canary Islands after a Muslim attack. We can find evidence for this in the writings of the 17th-century Portuguese historian and poet Manuel de Faria e Sousa. The Portuguese historian claimed Sacaru found an Atlantic island "populated by Portuguese, which has seven cities."

Historian George E. Buker, who wrote The Search for the Seven Cities and Early American Exploration, detailed a variation of the story that describes a bishop ordering the burning of the ships after settling on Antillia.

Theories

Despite these references, there are no accounts of explorers setting foot on Antillia's shores, and details of the story change between accounts. During the Age of Discovery, explorers often used mythical cities to convince Christian monarchs to fund their expeditions. But it wasn't long before the legend of Antillia and its seven cities moved to the New World.

There seems to be an overlap between the myths of the Seven Cities of Antilia and the Seven Cities of Cíbola. Cíbola is the name given to one of the legendary Seven Cities of Gold, a Spanish obsession in the 16th century. Cíbola was supposedly a fabulously wealthy city somewhere in the unexplored lands north of New Spain (modern-day Mexico). 

Rumors of other golden cities sprang up across the Caribbean and South America. Eventually, explorers began to call the Caribbean islands the Antilles, perhaps to persuade their benefactors in Europe to fund further exploration in the hope of finding gold. 

Another theory is that Antillia could refer to the Azores and Madeira. Yet, on the 1424 chart and subsequent maps, Antillia was separate from the Azores.

The Savage Islands

There is another candidate. The Savage Islands are an archipelago 280km south of Madeira and 165km north of the Canaries. These islands have been mostly uninhabited since their discovery by explorer Diogo Gomes de Sintra in 1438. Settlement began in the 15th century. However, is it possible that a small group of people fleeing the Moors found refuge here? If so, they left no archaeological evidence.

A final theory points out the similarities between the shape of Antillia on early maps and the shape of Portugal. They are both rectangular, and their people speak Portuguese. Some medieval historians believed the New World reflected the Old World, the concept of "Harmonia Mundi." Therefore, Antillia might have represented an extension of Portugal, a made-up island to inspire hope that a part of Christian Portugal had not fallen to the Moors. Or perhaps it was an invention to persuade faithful Christians to abandon Moorish Iberia. 

We’ve all heard of El Dorado. The fabled lost city in South America, built of solid gold and ruled by a king so rich that he was covered head to toe in gold dust, has burrowed itself into the mind of many explorers since the 16th century. Ship captains, conquistadors, soldiers, and mapmakers dared the treacherous jungles in search of it, but to no avail. In the late 1500s, treasure hunters turned their attention to a mythical body of water, supposedly near El Dorado or even the lake upon which it was built, Lake Parime became their next fixation. 

Deconstructing the myth

Before we get to Lake Parime, let us deconstruct the El Dorado myth. Where did the story come from? The name El Dorado did not originally refer to a city; the name comes from Spanish explorers and translates into "the golden one." The golden one was supposedly a man completely covered in gold, obscenely rich, or a powerful leader. 

Rumours of gold had been circulating amongst explorers since at least 1529. The early expeditions of German conquistadors Ambrosius Dalfinger and Nikolaus Federmann recorded their encounters with tribes in the interiors of Venezuela who possessed plenty of gold and precious jewels. In 1534, Spanish conquistador Sebastián de Belalcázar mentioned an encounter with a mysterious man dressed in gold ornaments or armour. He called him "el indio dorado" or "golden Indian."

However, most historians trace the story of El Dorado to 1541, when a Spanish chronicler and soldier named Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés wrote about a king who conducted a sacred ritual in a lake near Quito, Ecuador. Oviedo said:

They tell me that what they have learned from the Indians is that a great lord or prince goes about continually covered in gold dust as fine as ground salt. He feels that it would be less beautiful to wear any other ornament...he washes away at night what he puts on each morning, so that it is discarded and lost, and he does this every day of the year.

Further information came from the writings of Juan de Castellanos, a conquistador who became a priest. In the 1570s, he wrote Elegías de varones ilustres de Indias, and identified the king as a cacique or zipa (leader) of the Muisca, a culture that resided in the Altiplano Cundiboyacense region of the Colombian Andes. Castellanos said that the lake in which this leader cleansed himself was Lake Guatavitá, 57km northeast of Bogotá. 

The king cleansed himself in the sacred waters, and the villagefolk would toss in an array of gold pieces, jewels, and other treasures as an additional offering to their gods. Today, a depiction of the ceremony is captured in the Muisca Raft, an intricate golden object that the Muisca cast between 1295 and 1410 AD, which now resides in the Museum of Gold in Bogotá, Colombia.

As the Spanish continued to descend upon the continent, it was not long before they caught wind of this incredible story. Conquistadors searched the lake but only found a handful of gold pieces. In 1541, Gonzalo Pizarro (brother of famed conquistador Francisco Pizarro) set out with a large expeditionary force of 4,000 natives and over 300 conquistadors in search of El Dorado. However, he failed miserably, and they returned empty-handed.

Over time, El Dorado was used interchangeably to describe a city, a king, or the lake.

Sir Walter Raleigh and Lake Parime

Sir Walter Raleigh searched for El Dorado up the Orinoco River in the 1590s. He had heard about El Dorado from the former governor of Trinidad, Antonio de Berrío, whom he captured when he landed on the island. Berrío had searched for El Dorado but failed.

According to Raleigh, during his exploration of Guiana, he heard about the city of Manoa and natives laden with gold:

I have been assured by such of the Spaniards as have seen Manoa, the imperial city of Guiana, which the Spaniards call El Dorado, that for the greatness, for the riches, and for the excellent seat, it far exceeded any of the world, at least of so much of the world as is known to the Spanish nation. It is founded upon a lake of salt water of 200 leagues long, like unto Mare Caspium.

I asked the manner how the Epuremei wrought those plates of gold, and how they could melt it out of the stone; he told me that the most of the gold which they made in plates and images was not seuered from the stone, but that on the lake of Manoa, and in a multitude of other rivers they gathered it in grains of perfect gold and in pieces as big as small stones.

One of Raleigh's colleagues, Lawrence Kemys, was the first to write about Lake Parime:

...afterwards they return for their canoes, and bear them likewise to the side of a lake, which the Iaos call Roponowini, the Charibes, Parime: which is of such bigness, that they know no difference between it and the main sea.

Kemys placed Lake Parime near the Essequibo River. As a result of these writings, some cartographers placed El Dorado and Lake Parime in Guyana. In the 17th century, English cartographer Robert Morden published Geography rectified; or, a description of the world, stating that:

The country about the Lake Parime, in the middle of Guyana, acknowledge, by report, a successor of Guainacapa of the House of Incas of Peru, and compose the true Kingdom of the Golden King.

Theories

Expeditions in subsequent years began to shed light on why explorers couldn’t pin down the lake’s location. An expedition led by Alexander von Humboldt found that no such lake exists, leading him to believe the "lake" was the result of the Rupununi Savannah flooding during the rainy season. The Rupununi floods every year from May to August. English naturalist Charles Waterton supported this explanation after natives told him that Lake Parime did not exist. 

Fast forward to the 1970s, and explorer Roland Stevenson hoped to put the matter to rest. His travels took him to Roraima rather than Rupununi. He learned of a sacred road called "Nhamini-u" that featured numerous Inca petroglyphs and artefacts. His exploration of the road led him to the supposed water line of an ancient lake. He believed the lake disappeared and drained into the larger Rio Branco because of tectonic activity in the area. Scientists determined that it was possible that a lake formed there during the Paleozoic era. 

It seems likely that early explorers, after witnessing local rituals, overestimated how much gold the native cultures possessed. Additionally, locals may have led the conquistadors on a wild goose chase, mixing fact and fiction. 

Do you believe that the Pacific Islanders simply drifted until they found land? Over the last hundred years, most scholars believed that the Polynesians let the winds and weather push their boats wherever they may. But recently, the narrative has shifted, and many historians think that the Polynesians navigated the vast Pacific Ocean by reading the world around them. They observed the behaviour of birds, clouds, and ocean swells. But they also relied on an odd phenomenon that they couldn’t explain: a mysterious underwater light source that pointed them toward reefs, and inevitably, land. 

A mysterious light

This light is called te lapa, which translates as "flashing light," or "darts." Though we have no photographic evidence, eyewitness testimony and historical sources say it has a consistent white colour, with some modern-day witnesses comparing it to the beam of a flashlight underwater.

Pacific islanders believe it originates from islands and travels through the ocean. According to writer Jeff Evans in his 2011 book Polynesian Navigation and the Discovery of New Zealand, te lapa can appear as far as 130km from shore and occurs 45cm to 1.8m under the ocean's surface. Depending on your distance from an island, te lapa's intensity varies.

The flashes are said to be visible just beneath the surface of the water or skimming the surface at night, appearing as faint but fast-moving beams of light that point in the direction of the nearest island. Unlike atmospheric phenomena, te lapa acts as a pilot signal whose appearance doesn’t depend on whether it’s raining, cloudy, or clear. It is not affected by surface waves.

What is it?

Explanations for the phenomenon are scant. Evans equates it with phosphorescence. However, in his book We, The Navigators (1972), writer and researcher David Lewis disagrees:

Te lapa has nothing in common with ordinary surface or subsurface phosphorescence. It comprises streaks, flashes, and momentarily glowing plaques of light, all well beneath the surface. Exactly like lightning, it flickers and darts and is in constant motion. It occurs a good deal deeper than common luminescence, at anything from a foot or two to more than a fathom.

Te lapa, dynamic, transient, and deep in the water, is in all these respects quite distinct from ordinary phosphorescence…common phosphorescence is most profuse within a mile or so of reefs and coasts, whereas te lapa does not begin until 8 or 9 miles offshore.

Lewis believed that he could trace te lapa's formation to "deep swell movement, perhaps to ground swell or backwash waves reflected from land or reefs."

Other scientists have chalked it up to bioluminescent marine organisms responding to subtle energy disturbances. Some organisms, such as plankton, emit a glowing light when disturbed. This can take on a green, blue, or white colour. Underwater currents or waves hitting underwater structures near islands might cause trails of light to appear. This could create the illusion of a directional flash moving through the water. However, critics of this theory argue that bioluminescence is generally scattered and does not form in straight lines. 

Another theory involves electrical or tectonic forces. Some scientists speculate that underwater volcanic islands might generate natural electrical discharges because of tectonic or geothermal activity. Latent activity can cause materials like quartz to generate electricity or light under stress. In theory, these discharges could be visible as quick, flashing lines. However, this remains speculative, with no hard evidence.

Some researchers propose that te lapa could be light refracting or reflecting underwater. Possibly influenced by the interaction of moonlight, ocean swells, and sea floor topography, this theory suggests that the flashes are nothing more than an optical illusion, where light is channelled or bent through temperature layers in the water.

Richard Feinberg, a professor at Kent State University, searched for te lapa between 2007 and 2008. However, he did not witness it.

"[My] attempt to document te lapa ended in frustration. I even noted in my journal feeling as if I had been searching for the abominable snowman," Feinberg wrote.

What does a Polynesian navigator say?

Marianne George has been studying te lapa for several decades, and does not believe it is bioluminescence. She ruled out several natural phenomena, claiming:

I was already very familiar with a lot of lights one sees at sea: bioluminescence and luminescence that appear in the glowing wake of a vessel in both inland seas and offshore, St Elmo’s fire in the rigging, shooting stars, satellites, comets, the green flash, and strange lights and colors that occur at sunset.

George states that te lapa does not resemble any of these phenomena, and behaves very differently.

In the 1990s, she visited Taumako in the Solomon Islands and befriended a local legend, an experienced Polynesian navigator named Te Aliki Koloso Kahia Kaveia. The two of them frequently went out on the water and claimed to have experienced te lapa. George saw that the lights were sometimes skirting on the water’s surface and sometimes below. Kaveia insisted te lapa was above the surface.

George and Kaveia believe te lapa may be the result of ocean swells bouncing off the islands, the resulting waves meeting each other at certain points, and reflecting light caused by tectonic activity on the ocean floor. 

"Te lapa may be the result of magnetic or electrical fields that are caused by the same tectonic energy emissions manifesting atmospheric light and color effects in the atmosphere as well as piezoelectric emissions prior to earthquakes," George says.

Conclusion

Polynesian navigators believe te lapa is a guardian force that looks out for seafarers, appearing when a person is most in need of its assistance. They say that experiencing te lapa is a sacred gift and has played a key role in the story of the voyagers who made the Pacific islands their home. Te lapa and other unconventional navigation tools might encourage sailors to develop a crucial skill: intuition.

My tour guide and I were in the middle of a lava field, with nothing but hills and heaps of solidified black lava flanking both sides of the highway. He pointed to an inconspicuous hole in the ground and said, "I have a cool tunnel to show you." 

Half-afraid I was about to be murdered, I gathered my courage and climbed into the blackness. Stumbling along with nothing to help me except my phone flashlight, I began my exploration of one of the many lava tubes hidden beneath the rolling lava fields of Lanzarote, half an hour outside Arrecife. The air inside was close, which did not help the claustrophobic feeling. Nevertheless, we emerged safely back into the light a few minutes later through another hole.

A fortunate isle

Lanzarote is one of the oldest and the first to be settled of the Canary Islands. The Guanches made their home here around 1000 BCE, most likely from North Africa. The islands, though small, were interesting enough for Romans, Carthaginians, Numidians, and Phoenicians to visit. If you enjoy reading about mythical or lost islands, the Canaries are a possible location for the Fortunate Isles or Isles of the Blessed.

Classical writers like Pliny the Elder and Plutarch described the Fortunate Isles as “winterless” and a paradise. Even today, the Canaries are known as the islands of eternal spring because of their year-round mild weather and sun.

Volcanic chaos

The volcanic history of the Canary Islands is messy, complicated, and still highly debatable. Geologists and volcanologists believe that a hotspot formed this archipelago off the coast of northwestern Africa. A hotspot is a location in the Earth's mantle where a plume of magma rises toward the surface.

What makes hotspots unique is that they do not need to form on the boundaries of tectonic plates. Rather, they can emerge within a plate, thus creating volcanic chains. Here, the Canary Hotspot lies on the African Plate, which created the archipelago around 60 to 70 million years ago. 

I started off my journey with an early-morning wakeup and a half-hour drive from the capital of Arrecife to a small fishing village called El Golfo. As I got out of the car, my eyes were trying hard to adjust to the many contrasting colors. I was standing on red lava rocks and soil, the bright blue waves of the ocean were on my immediate right, and a striking green lake was on my left. 

“El Lago Verde,” my guide told me. The Green Lake.

The lake formed during a series of eruptions in the 18th century. Its green color comes from algae mixed with its sulfuric surroundings. This was quite the start to my journey through this otherworldly island. 

Desert island

Lanzarote is the easternmost of the Canary Islands. Unlike its siblings, it is an outlier with a much wilder landscape. Its raw volcanic aspect and otherworldly color suggest the surface of Mars. While Tenerife boasts lush laurel forests and quaint historic towns, Lanzarote is a classical “desert” island — arid, rocky, and replete with volcanic cones, fissures, and bowls of black, red, brown, and ochre volcanic rock and soil.

Though Lanzarote is called The Island of 1,000 Volcanoes, there is only one active volcano on the entire island. It's called Timanfaya, also the name of the national park in which it sits. Despite the volcanoes, Lanzarote is not as mountainous as some other islands in the Canaries, with a high point of only 670m. 

Though things seem quiet on Lanzarote, don’t take it for granted. Since the eruption of Cumbre Vieja in 2021 forced the evacuation of 7,000 residents elsewhere in the Canaries, it is important to be vigilant. From 1730 to 1736, Lanzarote experienced continuous volcanic eruptions, creating 32 volcanoes and burying 11 villages. In 1824, the volcano stirred again. The lava fields and volcanoes popular with hikers all resulted from these eruptions. 

Amid the destruction, one miraculous story of a community's survival emerged. When the flowing lava threatened a village called Tinajo, they placed a cross in its path. The flow miraculously halted, so they say. They attributed the flow's sudden pause to divine intervention.

Volcanoes restricted in park

As for the other dormant or extinct volcanoes on the island (only 25 lie within Timanfaya National Park), you are free to climb and hike them. Within Timanfaya, the volcanoes are restricted as you are not free to roam without supervision…and you must pay for guided tours. However, the volcanoes in nearby Los Volcanes Natural Park usually have very accessible paths. The trails wind around on a gentle incline, so the hikes are not particularly strenuous.

Popular hikes include Volcán de la Corona, Montaña Blanca, and Montaña Colorado. Guided tours to the Montañas del Fuego in Timanfaya are available. Here, you will get demonstrations of setting off geysers and eat some unusual restaurant food that uses volcanic heat for cooking. 

Taming the land

Lanzarote has great hikes and scenery and extensive lava tunnels and tubes below the surface. The island features the world’s largest underwater volcanic tunnel, appropriately crowned the Tunnel of Atlantis, which is over 1.5 km long. This tunnel is part of a wider network called the Cueva de los Verdes, which is six kilometers long. Occasionally, it also acts as a concert hall for live entertainment. 

Like most deserts, Lanzarote is by no means barren. Its soil is some of the most fertile out there. La Geria is a protected area where farmers create unique vineyards in small craters in the black soil. They line half of the crater’s rim with stones to protect crops, usually grapes or figs, from the wind. The landscape is pockmarked as far as the eye can see. 

The European Space Agency found Lanzarote to be the perfect laboratory for training and simulating missions to the Moon and Mars. They call the program PANGAEA -- Planetary ANalogue Geological and Astrobiological Exercise for Astronauts.

The takeaway

So, if you wish to see an alien world but you’re not an eccentric billionaire with a spaceship, Lanzarote awaits. 

“Listen! Listen! Talk to me! I am hot!…oxygen…oxygen…am I going to crash?” For several decades, these chilling words, which screeched through a makeshift radio in the 1960s, have refused to fade. A choppy, distorted, and panicked voice of a woman in trouble was one of the many recordings which gave rise to one of the most persistent urban legends of the Space Age: the lost cosmonauts. 

Believers in the lost cosmonauts reject Yuri Gagarin’s title as the first man in space. Their theory insists that the Soviets were secretly launching humans into space before Gagarin made his pioneering flight aboard Vostok I in 1961. The cosmonauts on these supposed earlier flights had all died.  

The bond of brothers

It is four years after World War II. Italian brothers Achille and Giovanni Battista Judica-Cordiglia had a vested interest in radio technology. They spent their adolescence saving up to buy parts to make radio antennas. Along with other pieces of radio equipment that they bought from American soldiers, they built an enormous antenna, which they mounted on the roof of their apartment.

For fun, they enjoyed tuning into frequencies from around the world. However, one moment changed everything for them. When Russia successfully sent Sputnik I into orbit in 1957, it also launched the space race. In 1958, the United States followed with Explorer I. The brothers managed to capture the frequencies of both missions.

Achille and Giovanni wanted in on this space race in their own way, by eavesdropping. In a repurposed World War II German bunker just outside of Turin, where their parents had moved the family, they continued their radio work. Eagerly, they set up an experimental listening station, with their homemade radios tuned into happenings in the night sky. 

A deadly discovery

For months, the brothers worked tirelessly to perfect their system to track all Soviet missions. One night, they held their breath as faint beeping started to come through their headphones. Morse code. More accurately, an SOS. They believed it must have been a manned launch that went wrong. However, at this time, only dogs were used on space flights. 

The next odd occurrence was the sound of a human heartbeat accompanied by heavy breathing, most likely coming from a male in distress. After that, panicked transmissions from a team of three people (two men and one woman) said, “Conditions growing worse. Why don’t you answer?...Remember us to the Motherland! We are lost! We are lost!”

Over the years, such dire transmissions continued and further fueled the rumors that the Soviets were regularly losing their cosmonauts. 

News outlets caught wind of the story, but it wasn’t the first of its kind. In 1959, an article from the Continentale in Italy claimed that a Czechoslovakian official gave a list of the names of cosmonauts who died during their missions: Alexei Ledovsky, Andrei Mitkov, Sergei Shiborin, and Maria Gromova.

Test pilots?

In a Soviet periodical called Ogoniok, Pyotr Dolgov and Ivan Kachur were declared dead, not during a clandestine mission to space, but after conducting a parachute test at high altitude. No one was able to confirm and clarify these details. This begs the question: Were these "cosmonauts" actually high-altitude test pilots or parachutists?

Achille and Giovanni’s discoveries did not escape notice. Soon enough, there was an ominous knock at their door from none other than the KGB. Writer Micah Hanks at The Debrief wrote that years later, a journalist named Kris Hollington tracked down a KGB visitor in 2008, who admitted:

“Of course, we were interested in the Judica-Cordiglia brothers; they were hacking into our commun­ications. Imagine that today, a pair of amateur kids taking apart the Russian space program like it was a toy…”

To their surprise, the man let them off with a warning. Nonetheless, the visit itself was ominous and made them question whether or not the Soviets were trying to cover up or silence any interested parties.

The brothers' work earned them a well-received visit to NASA headquarters, where scientists and communications specialists praised them for their inventions and self-taught knowledge. They also recorded John Glenn's communications during his mission in 1962. Seeing their value, NASA and the brothers exchanged information, with NASA trading American mission frequencies for Russian frequencies. Achille and Giovanni established the Zeus Network, which allowed radio enthusiasts around the world to tap into spaceflights. This lasted until at least the 1969 moon landing.

Theories

Did the brothers actually overhear dying cosmonauts crying out to the ether for help? The many cryptic and terrifying jumbled cacophonies suggested a failing Soviet space program that could leave America the victor of this highly politicized race.

Some believe the brothers lied or exaggerated to gain notoriety. According to writer and science scholar Maria Rosa Menzio, the brothers received two kinds of translations from the mostly indiscernible recordings they intercepted. When they sent them to native Russian speakers, the translations made little sense. However, when they took the recordings to a German teacher who spoke Russian, the teacher only gave them what she thought she heard or was able to make out. Therefore, skeptics find the brothers to be an unreliable source.

Space historian James E. Oberg provided his own take on the lost cosmonauts. Digging into some of the names, he claims to have clarified the story of one of the victims mentioned in Ogoniok. He said:

Dolgov, an experienced test pilot and stratospheric parachutist, really did disappear under mysterious circumstances about that time. More than two years later the Russians announced that he had just died in a high-altitude jump in November 1962.

He also quoted Dr. Charles Sheldon, a Washington expert on the Soviet space program, who said:

Those who would believe in these purported Soviet orbital deaths must think there is a second and independent Soviet manned program. In contrast to the open program which always brought the man back until 1967, the secret program always failed. Why the Russians would want to run a secret failure program parallel to their open success program is not clear.

Many real accidents

It is no secret that the Soviet space program had its share of bad luck. There were many accidents, probably more than we know, which were never made public. But most importantly, one of the main reasons why many people believe in the lost cosmonauts is the highly secretive and authoritarian character of the Soviet Union. Media, higher education, culture, and even thought were under heavy state control and censorship. No one truly knew what was going on. From assassinations and undercover operations to mysterious disappearances, it was always tempting to lean toward the theory of a big cover-up. 

The behavior of Soviet leaders fomented further suspicion. Sometimes, Nikita Khrushchev teased at upcoming launches that they were ready to send men into space. Then nothing would happen, which made people believe the launches occurred but failed.

This brings us to another strange story. In the newspaper The Daily Worker, journalist Dennis Ogden wrote about a cosmonaut named Vladimir Ilyushin who was supposedly the first man in space. He launched two days before Yuri Gagarin’s flight, but his flight crashed in China, and he suffered severe brain damage. Officials claim Ilyushin was the victim of a car accident, while others say this was an excuse to explain away Ilyushin's injuries.

The takeaway

The Cold War was a battle between the West and the East, but also a fight between what was real and what wasn’t. Truth and propaganda came head to head. It's hard to get to the bottom of propaganda.

Oberg says:

The only safe answer still is that no one outside a small coterie in the USSR can know. We can say, however, that there is no hard evidence available to indicate that any such fatal secret missions ever took place…

As we examine the evidence, it is possible that the "lost cosmonauts" could have been a group of ill-fated high-altitude test pilots or parachutists who might have been destined to go into space one day. Unfortunately for them, they didn't make it. In the craze of one of the world’s most intense periods, truth was sometimes mixed with fiction. 

Imagine you are a child in the 1980s and 1990s. You are driving home from school one day, and you and your family get stuck in afternoon traffic. This is a normal routine…until it’s not. What is usually an hour or so turns into several. Urgent car horns start piercing the air, and drivers get impatient. On investigation, they find the culprit: a black sticky substance emerging from the road with a mind of its own.

Background

La Mancha Negra's place in Venezuelan collective memory is debatable. While some remember it as the source of a nationwide panic alongside the growing political and social ills, others can't recall such an event taking place at all. Whatever the origin, La Mancha Negra began to dominate local and foreign newspapers.

The Spanish words, La Mancha Negra, translate to “the black stain." It began appearing in 1986 on the Autopista Caracas-La Guaira, a major highway linking the capital to the coast in northern Venezuela, and continued to show up throughout the 1990s and early 2000s.

The goo’s texture is described as thick, greasy, and gummy, which turns "slick as ice" in certain conditions. When the temperature was very hot, the goo turned very slippery. When it cooled down, the goo became harder and manageable. Regardless, it was enough to do serious damage.

1,800 deaths??

What seemed like an isolated case of oil spillage 50m long quickly grew into something much more troubling. The substance spread rapidly, covering over 12 kilometers of highway. La Mancha was oozing from underground, moving and growing like it was alive, the more people drove on the roads. Reports claimed 1,800 people died as a result of the mysterious goo. Over time, La Mancha Negra expanded into other highways around Caracas, with reports of accidents increasing wherever the stain appeared. 

The government, hearing its citizens cry for an explanation and solution, boasted to have spent millions of dollars on scientific studies and cleaning efforts. Supposedly, European, American, and Canadian governments provided equipment and expertise, attempting to remove it. Detergents, high-pressure hoses, and even resurfacing the roads proved largely ineffective. The goo just kept seeping through the ground. One strategy that seemed to work temporarily was covering the goo with pulverized limestone. The substance dried up...until the limestone dust made the city's breathing quality unbearable. To make matters worse, the patches reappeared and got bigger. Answers were nowhere near being solved. 

Composition

According to the "studies," the substance consisted of dust, oil from cars, and other organic material. This theory proposed that poor-quality asphalt, combined with tropical humidity and heat, caused the road to deteriorate and leach out oily byproducts. 

Author Ana Elena Azpurua, who compiled reports and chronicles about the highway, stated that the Ministry of Transport hypothesized:

It is a black stain caused by the interaction of spilled oil with "fresh" asphalt, which, because it was recently laid, is highly susceptible to temperature and has not aged or oxidized. This asphalt was laid in 1990, when the section from Pariata and Viaduct No. 3 to Catia was repaved.

A Wall Street Journal article from 1996 reported:

...due to the cheap gasoline prices in the country, Venezuelans would drive dated gas guzzlers, stating 'Locals call the highway "la mancha negra," or the black stain, because it literally shines with the oil drippings of thousands of big cars that labor up an incline into the city each day.

Explanations

Let us consider Venezuela's geography for a second. Venezuela lies on a fault line between the South American Plate and the Caribbean Plate. This fault line results in earthquakes and makes Venezuela a hotspot for hydrocarbon reserves of oil, gas, petroleum, and natural asphalt.

Like its neighbor, Trinidad, Venezuela has an asphalt lake called Lake Bermudez. Though Lake Bermudez is quite far from the capital, it shows that Venezuela as a whole sits on a bed of hydrocarbons. Petroleum and oil seeps are quite common in these areas.

In the case of La Mancha Negra, it probably began to penetrate the asphalt. Why? Because the roads were poorly paved from the very start. Some suspected underground water seepage was mixing with road materials and automotive waste to create the greasy sludge. The fact that the goo reappeared showed that the underlying problem, particularly underground, was not dealt with. 

Geologist K.H. James in his study, The Venezuelan Hydrocarbon Habitat, wrote:

Venezuela forms part of an important hydrocarbon province, defined by the presence of prolific Cretaceous source rocks, which extends across northern South America. By early 1997, the country had produced 53 billion barrels of oil. Reserves are estimated to total 73 billion barrels of oil and 146 TCF of gas with 250 billion barrels recoverable in the Heavy Oil Belt.

Conspiracy theories

Even before La Mancha, it was public knowledge that the roads were neglected, poorly constructed, and posed a public safety issue. The asphalt cracked and broke away in several areas, leading to rushed and rudimentary patches along the highway. It is very possible that oil seeped through the cracks. Unfortunately, government corruption mismanaged basic infrastructure.

That should have put the matter to rest, right? Sadly, it is not as simple. Due to the unstable political situation, news about La Mancha Negra was heavily influenced by media bias and conspiracy theories. 

Why were the "studies" not made public? Did they even happen? Why is most information so scarce? If they knew what the substance was, why was the incident left so open-ended?

La Mancha Negra as a political tool

La Mancha appeared at a rather precarious time in the country’s political history. More conspiratorial ideas have included sabotage by political enemies or criminal organizations attempting to destabilize Caracas traffic or even reduce voter turnout during election seasons by making travel more dangerous.

The two presidents of Venezuela at the time of La Mancha Negra were Jaime Lusinchi and Carlos Andres Perez. Both were accused of corruption. Perez himself made allegations that La Mancha was a ploy by his political opponents to discredit him and blame him for mismanagement.

In 1992, Hugo Chavez, who eventually became president, attempted a coup to overthrow him. Supposedly, the opposition hired homeless people to spread the goo all over the roads under the cover of darkness. This was most likely a lie. The La Mancha Negra story died eventually, even to the point where people forgot it existed or believed it was an urban legend.

Conclusion

La Mancha Negra became more than just a public safety issue — it was a symbol of infrastructural and political decay in Venezuela. As the country faced mounting unrest, inflation, and corruption scandals from its leaders, La Mancha Negra stood as a visible and dangerous reminder of neglect.

“Now from the North Of Norumbega, and the Samoed shoar, Bursting thir brazen Dungeon, armd with ice And snow and haile and stormie gust and flaw…”

When I read this in college, I was lost, as you probably are. After all, these lines came from John Milton’s Paradise Lost, one of the most complicated literary works out there. For starters, the name Norumbega went straight over my head until much later.

Norumbega was supposedly a lost land somewhere on the east coast of the United States. According to maps and the fevered writings of explorers and sailors during the Age of Discovery, it was a city whose buildings were made of quartz crystals and precious jewels, and whose inhabitants wanted for nothing. Sounds pretty sweet. Also sounds pretty unrealistic.

Maps, maps, and more maps

This lost land first appeared on the 1529 map of Italian cartographer Giovanni da Verrazano. Verrazano's patron, King Francois I of France, wanted him to find a western passage to Cathay (China), but after a storm almost obliterated his expedition, he was unable to stick to the original plan. Instead, he opted for an impromptu two-year jaunt (1522-1524) from New Brunswick to Florida.

He visited Arcadia (north of Virginia) and New York Harbor. Most notably, he discovered a "Refugio" of friendly, beautiful natives, fertile land, and pure bliss. This Refugio supposedly lay in what is now Rhode Island. But when he drew his map, he added a curious little land called Norumbega just above the Refugio.

It did not have the name “Norumbega” right away. Rather, it was called Oranbega. Academic sources suggest that the name may have roots in the Algonquian language, where it means “quiet stretch of water.” Some sources suggest that it was a play on the Spanish word oro, meaning gold, because of its subsequent reputation as a gold-laden, indigenous utopia. Years later, the exact location of Norumbega remains a subject of great speculation.

A year after Verrazano’s expedition, Portuguese explorer Estevao Gomes explored Nova Scotia down to Maine and encountered a unique native community in what is now Penobscot Bay. He wrote that the people were:

...great archers, and wear skins of wild beasts and others. The country contains excellent martens of the sable kind, and other fine fur-bearing animals . . .They have silver and copper, as they gave to understand by signs. They worship the Sun and Moon, and share the other idolatries and errors of the natives on the continent.

A German connection?

Based on Gomes's reports, cartographer Diogo Ribeiro drew his world map. Scholars linked Gomes's encounter to Verrazano's. This is rather strange, as Verrazano never highlighted Norumbega as a particularly special place. In his letters to the French monarch, he doesn't mention it at all. Rather, he was preoccupied with the Refugio. How did Norumbega evolve into such a mythical place?

Giacomo Gastaldi included Norumbega in his 1548 New World map but spelled it "Nurumberg." Why this Germanic name? Nuremberg was a shining example of a wealthy European civilization of the time. Perhaps he wanted to pay homage to this great city.

From the 1570s to the 1590s, several world maps came out, all mentioning Norumbega. One even located it roughly in Virginia. Apparently, the famed John Smith believed Norumbega stretched from Virginia to New England. However, the maps depicted it as different things: a small town, a metropolis, a country. No one could make up their mind. Yet, they zeroed in on the New England area. 

The rumor mill

The myth of Norumbega’s riches comes from an English sailor, David Ingram, who claimed to have walked from Mexico to Nova Scotia in 1568. During his trek, he supposedly visited Norumbega and wrote about the inhabitants' immense wealth but vicious nature.

“There were precious stones," he enthused. "Turquoise and onyx and garnet…pillars of quartz crystal and columns of wood wrapped with thin sheets of silver and even of gold…”

He added that the natives were cannibalistic. Unsurprisingly, historians have questioned Ingram’s exaggerated account.

A couple of decades earlier, a man named Jean Allefonsce presented a more realistic view. Writes historian Joe McAlhany: “[Allefonsce] identified a Riviere de Norenbegue that was clearly the same river called Norombegue, which was populated by a noble tribe clearly modeled on the inhabitants of Verrazano’s Refugio…"

During a colonizing mission to Canada in 1542, Allefonsce wrote of the "clever inhabitants" of this Riviere de Norenbegue, who:

...trade in furs of all sorts; the town folk are dressed in furs, wearing sable…the people use many words which sound like Latin. They worship the sun. They are tall and handsome in form…

In this case, he proposes that it’s a trading hub, which fits the narrative of a wealthy community. 

Baking powder and Vikings

One man claimed to have all the answers about Norumbega. An eccentric professor of agricultural chemistry, Eben Horsford was a man of many interests. Best known for inventing baking powder, he had a secret obsession: Vikings. We're not sure when or why he became interested in such a niche topic, but he staunchly believed that Norumbega was the fabled Vinland of Leif Erikson. (This was well before the discovery of L'Anse Aux Meadows in Newfoundland in the 1960s, which was not Vinland, either.)

In 1890, Horsford announced the discovery of Leif Erikson's dwelling place, conveniently close to his own Cambridge, Massachusetts home. He supposedly dug nearby and discovered...something. He wrote to a local judge, stating:

It is now nearly five years since I discovered on the banks of the Charles River the site of Fort Norumbega, occupied for a time by the Bretons some four hundred years ago, and as many years earlier still built and occupied as the seat of extensive fisheries and a settlement by the Northmen.

The judge seemed to take it well and wrote back to congratulate him. Horsford commemorated his contribution by installing a plaque and Norumbega Tower, a 12m tall stone pillar. Thereafter, the surrounding areas started to name their local landmarks after Norumbega, imprinting it on the regional culture. In the 19th century, Bangor, Maine, embraced the myth by naming its municipal building Norumbega Hall. Newton has Norumbega Park, and Cambridge carries Norumbega Street. Though there is no physical evidence whatsoever of Norumbega's existence, New England just rolled with it and celebrated an interesting piece of history...or non-history.

Wacky linguistics

Horsford cited linguistic evidence to those who doubted. He said:

Many hundred years ago, the country we call Norway was called Norbegia and Norbega which are the same philologically -– as we have just seen -– as Noruega or Norvega, or Norwegs; the b is the equivalent of u, or v, or w.”

Hosford then went further to point out that Native American names were actually Norse in origin.

Writer Katie C. Berry with the Harvard Crimson brings up an interesting point. She proposed that these crazy ideas came from a rivalry between Protestants and Catholics. Catholics laid claim to the land's Catholic heritage with Columbus's discovery. On the other hand, Protestants wanted something else to emulate, in this case, the Vikings.

Conclusion

By the time John Milton came out with those cryptic lines in Paradise Lost in 1667, the myth of Norumbega was well-established. The place may well have existed, although not in the way we think. Lost cities rarely meet our expectations of advanced and spectacularly rich metropolises. Norumbega might have just been a regular indigenous trading hub, whose name and character got misconstrued in the chaos of discovery and hype of New World riches.

As for how Norumbega became associated with a mythical utopia, the world maps produced around the same time as each other might have just copied each other's place names. Or there may have been several indigenous communities along the coast that later became one singular Norumbega. Certainly, early maps were not the sober, reliable documents, produced from air photos, that we're familiar with today. Imagination and rumor figured largely in these early charts. If it wasn't dragons, it was mythical places like Norumbega.

It is the place “between the spaces” — a purgatory. At least, the locals on the island of Pohnpei in Micronesia seem to think so. For centuries, restless spirits of dead Pohnpeians have lingered here and vowed to harm any disrespectful visitors. The lost city of Nan Madol is half-submerged and half-taken over by the twisting spines of mangroves.

But first impressions can be deceiving. It is one of the very few places in the world which continues to perplex archaeologists. How and why it was built, and by whom?

Sophisticated construction

Nan Madol is an ancient city in a lagoon dotted with small artificial islands linked by canals. Basalt columns form the base of these constructions; some may be simply fallen pillars.

The origins of Nan Madol have one foot in fiction and the other in history. The locals of Pohnpei Island simply accept the stories of their ancestors as fact. Their culture dates to the 1200s, but human activity goes back even further, to at least 500 CE.

The islanders most likely came from a New Caledonian group called the Lapita. Originally from the Philippines, the Lapita traveled to Micronesia and mixed with local populations. Among the evidence, patterns on pottery shards here match those of the Lapita. Near Nan Madol is a rock art gallery with carvings that are almost identical to those in New Caledonia, 3,000km away. Yet the Lapita were not known for their advanced technology or sophisticated building techniques.

Venice of the Pacific

Nan Madol is often referred to as the Venice of the Pacific because of its canals. The site is 1.5 kilometers by .5 kilometers and encompasses a sea wall, 92 islets, canals, an irrigation system, ceremonial and residential sections, tombs, and even a prison. The entire city complex sits upon a coral reef, and the islets upon which the basalt structures lie are man-made. The boulders and logs are naturally hexagonal and made of volcanic basalt. In total, the complex weighs over 750,000 tons. The walls are 7.5 meters high, and the logs are 5.5 meters long. According to UNESCO, its construction involved

...small island populations in the mining, moving, and maneuvering of an estimated 2,000 tons of volcanic rock every year for at least three to four centuries without the benefit of pulleys, levels, metal tools, or wheels.

Archaeologists and historians find this site hard to believe. How could these simple islanders build such a city, let alone stack megaton logs of basalt on top of each other 7.5 meters high? Micronesian societies were not this advanced. This suggests that its builders were not from around here...

An impressed visitor

In 1836, a British vessel called the Lambton sailed to Micronesia. On board was a curious surgeon named Dr. Campbell, who had been thoroughly impressed by the region’s incredible beauty. As they sailed, they came across a unique structure not seen on the other islands. From a place he had come to know as simple, with modest boats, crafts and tools, the presence of a stone complex that took over an entire reef astounded him. When he asked the native population about it, the language barrier left him incredibly frustrated. He concluded that it was

...the work of a race of men far surpassing the present generation, over whose memory many ages have rolled, and whose history oblivion has shaded forever, whose greatness and whose power can only now be traced from the scattered remains of the structures they have reared, which now wave with evergreens over the ashes of their departed glory, leaving to posterity the pleasure of speculation and conjecture.

As word spread of Nan Madol, other travelers came to see it for themselves. In 1873, Polish naturalist John Stanislaw Kubary visited Nan Madol while traveling through the Marshall and Caroline Islands. He acquired 23 crates worth of materials for museums before losing them in a shipwreck.

In the 1970s and 1980s, archaeologists conducted underwater surveys and found basalt pillars on the seafloor, which meant the complex went deeper than originally thought.

But who built it? It turns out Nan Madol has an odd past, which started with an unexpected arrival on this idyllic island. Let us take a look at Pohnpeian oral tradition.

Unexpected invaders

Locals tell a story of foreigners who came to Pohnpei. It goes like this.

Once upon a time, two charismatic brothers from a distant land came to the native Pohnpeian people and claimed to be sorcerers. Olisihpa and Olosohpa were described as strong giants who were divine intermediaries, controlling both the earthly and spiritual realms. They were said to harness supernatural powers. Some claimed they could control the weather or even communicate with the gods.

Though the locals did not know where they came from, they welcomed these wise men with open arms. A group of foreign men and women in large canoes accompanied Olisihpa and Olosohpa, wanting to establish a settlement. Oral tradition states they had the power to make the basalt columns float and stack on top of each other.

However, the goodwill did not last long. The brothers quickly secured an iron grip on the humble society, forcing the citizens to pay tribute, do hard labor, and bring them food and water. No one moved without them knowing. No one breathed without them allowing it. They even promoted cannibalism. This carried on for centuries. The brothers founded the island's Saudeleur dynasty, which reigned until 1628.

Eventual rebellion

From 1200 to 1700, Nan Madol was a cultural and spiritual hub, thanks to the Saudeleurs. At the same time, their grip on power grew tyrannical, and the disillusioned people of Pohnpei eventually rebelled against their rulers’ heavy-handedness. Many Pohnpeians died and were buried within the walls.

The story gets more complicated. Oral tradition says that the Saudeleurs worshipped the god of thunder, Nahnsapwe. They made the locals sacrifice their most sacred animal, the turtle, to a moray eel, which represented him. Nahnsapwe saw all this chaos and decided to intervene. He and a female relative had a demigod son named Isokelekel, who defeated the tyrants in the 1500s. By now, this was not an ancient story but rather a semi-modern one.

Isokelekel brought peace to Pohnpei and established a system of chiefdoms instead of absolute rule. This system is used today on the island.

Eventually, Isokelekel died, and he was buried on a nearby island called Pehi en Kitel. Supposedly, to disturb his remains is to risk dying suddenly and terribly. Nan Madol was slowly abandoned and left to the infringing waves.

While this provides some background, and oral tradition is a valuable tool for historians, it does not paint a complete picture. 

What's real?

First, the Sadeleurs and the subsequent kings might have been real. In 1907, the bones of Isokelekel were supposedly discovered by the island's German governor, Victor Berg. The bones were much larger than the average human's. In 1928, the Japanese excavated his tomb and found more giant remains. The bones supposedly are still there, guarded and venerated by the local people. Victor Berg died soon after discovering the tomb.

As for the construction of Nan Madol, scientists have a hypothesis other than magic and floating rocks. On the island, there is a near-vertical hill of basalt. According to writer William S. Aryes of Archaeology magazine,

Initially, local inhabitants transported massive basalt boulders to the reef, forming foundations upon which wood and thatch structures were erected. They then stacked finely fitted basalt columns horizontally around the crude boulder foundations to buttress coral rubble used to level the islet surfaces. Islanders tell us that the columns were quarried by heating large clusters of naturally formed basalt columns with fire and then breaking them apart along natural fissure lines with cold water...

...probably transported by raft at high tide; maneuvering even a small craft at low tide would have been impossible.

There is no evidence that the islanders possessed the technology to carry such great weights. It is most likely that the kings forced the conquered to build it. But how? Some have suggested ropes, but stacking the boulders on top of each other is hard to believe. As of now, archaeologists have no idea how this could have been done.

Connection to the lost continent of Mu

As mentioned in a previous article on the lost continent of Lemuria and Mu, another explanation for Nan Madol’s construction has long focused on an ancient race that was advanced in technology and engineering, and which supposedly originated in Mu. Two men were responsible for pushing the Mu theory. First was Augustus Le Plongeon. In his studies of the Yucatan Peninsula and the Maya, he argued that they came from a lost continent, based on his translations of the Popol Vuh and Madrid Codex. In his book, Queen Moo & The Egyptian Sphinx, he said:

In our journey westward across the Atlantic, we shall pass in sight of that spot where once existed the pride and life of the ocean, the Land of Mu, which, at the epoch that we have been considering, had not yet been visited by the wrath of Human, that lord of volcanic fires to whose fury it afterward fell a victim. The description of that land given to Solon by Sonchis, priest at Sais; its destruction by earthquakes, and submergence, recorded by Plato in his Timaeus, have been told and retold so many times that it is useless to encumber these pages with a repetition of it...

Disaster strikes

The people of Mu were purportedly advanced in engineering, writing, and city planning. However, a series of natural disasters, such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, caused it to sink beneath the Pacific like Atlantis.

British explorer and mystic James Churchward also supported this theory. Churchward believed that Mu was a vast continent situated in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and stretched from Hawaii to the enigmatic Easter Island. He suggested that Nan Madol was a remnant of Mu, and the people residing there were the survivors. 

Needless to say, such explanations have been dismissed as pseudoscience.

Visiting today

Getting there is a challenge even today, but not because of the rugged landscape and thick jungle. It requires extraordinary permission from Pohnpei's current king in a special ceremony with the local elders and a semi-psychedelic drink that will make you unsteady on your feet for a bit. You have to ask for their approval, promise to be respectful, and receive spiritual protection. More visitors have come as popular National Geographic documentaries and the infamous Ancient Aliens TV series have led curious minds to this far corner of the world.

Conclusion

Strangely, archaeology has largely neglected Nan Madol. Few studies have been done, and many questions remain. We are not sure if it's due to cultural sensitivity and the heritage of the Pohnpeian people, who believe these stories to be real, or the dismissal of anything pseudoscientific.

Long before Spanish colonization, the indigenous people of Peru kept track of important dates and numbers, and perhaps even stories, using a mysterious coding system of strings and knots called a quipu.

When the Spanish invaded, they decided these bundles of strings and knots were idolatrous and pagan, in opposition to the Catholic Church. They burned them, hoping to quell any thought of resistance.

How does it work?

Quipu means knot in Quechua, the dominant indigenous language in the region.

You might mistake a quipu for a brightly colored necklace or headdress, but it is a communication device. Unlike their Mayan and Aztec counterparts, the Incas had no written language. They used quipu instead.

Quipus consist of a series of colored, knotted cords made from cotton, wool, or other animal fibers. The knots and their placement on the cords represented numerical values. In some cases, it carried other information, such as dates or records of events. The use of the quipu dates back to 2500 BCE, long before the Inca Empire emerged. We still don't know how it originated. 

Deciphering quipus is tough. Its purpose and meaning can change depending on the length of the cord, the number of knots, the color, the way the cords are twisted and woven, the material, and the arrangement. While some historians think they were used almost exclusively to communicate numbers, others believe they were capable of storytelling and poetry.

Certainly, the main purpose of the quipu was to track and manage the data of populations, goods, resources, and taxes. It was the administrative tool of the empire. Each knot on the cord had a specific value depending on its position, with different knot types (such as single knots, long knots, or figure-eight knots) representing different values. The Incas used the decimal system and knots to record 1s, 10s, 100s, 1000s, and so on.

The colors of the cords could indicate categories like resources, people, or geographical locations. For example, red represented warriors or war, white represented silver, and yellow symbolized gold.

Record keepers

The quipus were managed by quipucamayocs, which means "quipu authority." These administrators were the record keepers, accountants, bookkeepers, mathematicians, census takers, and historians of the empire. The smooth running of the empire rested almost entirely on their shoulders.

The Incas had a complex road network called the Qhapaq Ñan. All these roads led to the capital of Cusco. Endurance runners called chasquis transported quipus along these roads, resting or passing them to other runners in supply stations called tambos posted every few kilometers. Messengers could quickly carry news of an Incan victory, the death of an emperor, or details of an enemy attack from province to province.

Quipu as a weapon

After smallpox had killed the ruler Huayna Capac, his sons, Atahualpa and Huascar, battled for the throne. Atahualpa triumphed and killed his brother. To further legitimize his ascension, Atahualpa had all records destroyed. This meant burning quipus that recorded anything to do with his brother.

Atahualpa even killed the quipucamayocs. "[It was] a total renewal, what the Incas called a pachakuti or a turning over of time and space," historian Mark Cartwright wrote.

Later, a Spanish governor of Peru, Vaca de Castro, tried to find quipucamayocs to teach him about the land. Eventually, he came across two who had survived the purge. "They found them wandering in the mountains, terrorized by the tyrants of the past," according to historian John A. Yeakel.

Spanish response

Though the Spanish destroyed many quipus, some chose to study them. Inca Garcilaso de la Vega was the son of a conquistador and an Incan prince, and acted as an intermediary between the two peoples. He learned about the quipu as part of his upbringing and wrote extensively about them:

When my father's Indians came to town on Midsummer's Day to pay their tribute, they brought me the quipus; and the curacas [local leaders] asked my mother to take note of their stories, for they mistrusted the Spaniards, and feared that they would not understand them. I was able to reassure them by re-reading what I had noted down under their dictation.

Likewise, a rogue Jesuit priest named Blas Valera advocated for learning from the quipus. Also half Spanish and half Inca, Valera proclaimed that the Incas were the real rulers of Peru. He died under house arrest in 1597.

Threads of a story

In 2015, anthropologist Sabine Hyland got a call from the remote Andean village of San Juan de Collata. This little village held some of the last remaining quipus.

Villagers granted Hyland access to two quipus from the 18th century. They told her that for years, guarding the quipus was a coming-of-age ritual for local adolescent boys. After seeing one of Hyland's documentaries, the village elders had reached out, hoping she would visit.

"Over the next couple days, we would learn that these multicolored quipus, each of which is just over two feet long, were narrative epistles created by local chiefs during a time of war in the 18th century," Hyland wrote.

The elders recounted the story of a failed rebellion against the Spanish. A leader, betrayed by his associates, was imprisoned and eventually executed. He had used the quipu to tell his countrymen that he was the ruling Inca Emperor.

Not far from the village of San Juan de Collata, Hyland was invited by a local schoolteacher to examine a hybrid quipu. The hybrid was set on a wooden board containing a ledger of names and multicolored quipu threads.

"The board bears the names of villagers, while the quipu cord associated with each name indicates the contribution of labor and/or goods that the individual was expected to provide in a community ceremony," Hyland wrote.

Much to Hyland's astonishment, quipus were used in the village until the 1940s for communal, administrative, and record-keeping purposes.

Tenerife, an island off the coast of Morocco, was not on my radar before 2023, when I found myself teaching English there for seven months. After three flights, four airports, and 23 hours of flight time, I made it to the largest of the Canary Islands in one piece. As I settled in, I began to research the island's history and soon discovered the fascinating history of the Guanches.

Who were they?

My home base on Tenerife was La Orotava, a village on the slopes of Spain’s highest peak, El Teide. The volcano’s summit greeted me every time I stepped outside my door, and its presence was a quintessential part of day-to-day life on the island. Using my somewhat okay Spanish, I asked the locals about the volcano and its history. One word kept popping up: Guanches.

The Guanches were the island's original inhabitants. They were described as blonde, tall, strong, light-skinned, and speaking an unknown language. Anthropologists are unsure how they arrived on the island and how their civilization developed in isolation. Evidence suggests that the Guanches were not a seafaring people. Excavations have found no evidence of boats, rafts, or sails. When the Spanish invaded, it seemed that these mysterious people were always just…there.

The lack of information has prompted a few theories, including that they were former Roman prisoners or a Berber sub-group. DNA analysis has confirmed a North African origin.

Though we know little about them, the legacy of the Guanches can be found in every nook and cranny on the island, from the top of El Teide to the sweeping coastline. Let’s start at the top.

El Teide

Originally, the Guanches called the volcano Echeyde, but over time, it evolved into Teide. Linguists think it might mean "mountain of evil" or "hell," and the locals feared it. In their mythology, the volcano was home to a demon called Guayota, the great adversary of the sky god Achamán.

To prevent this malevolent being -- who usually appeared in the form of a vicious black dog -- from causing havoc, the Guanches climbed El Teide during eruptions to light bonfires and scare him away. Achamán eventually defeated Guayota and imprisoned him inside the volcano. Since this battle, the Guanches used El Teide as a place of worship, leaving offerings scattered throughout El Teide National Park.

The transition from the coast to the top of the peak is not as obvious as you’d think. I was surprised that I had not noticed how the city had fallen away before the scorched pines and snow began. But I was driving. If you’re looking for the easiest way to a great view, the drive along winding roads is fantastic. Alternatively, do it the traditional way and hike.

The 040 route

Tour guides usually take hikers from Santa Cruz, the capital, to the hike’s starting point on the edge of the national park. However, if you want the authentic Guanche experience, you need to do the coast-to-summit trek, known as the 040 route. This trail is over 27km long and takes you to an altitude of 3,600m. It's a tough trek, and you should not take the rapid altitude change lightly. 

The starting point is Playa Del Socorro in Los Realojos in northern Tenerife. You’ll go through rural areas, farmland, and along remote roads. Eventually, you will stumble upon Las Cañadas del Teide, an area the Guanches used to store water, herd their livestock, and make tools out of volcanic glass. 

As you approach the summit -- depending on the time of day you arrive -- you’re going to need a permit. Nighttime or early morning does not usually require a permit, but past eight or nine in the morning, you will need to purchase one. You can apply online, and it’s only a few euros. 

Anaga

Anaga was one of nine Guanche kingdoms (menceyatos) in Tenerife. Guanches were cave dwellers, and Anaga’s dense, ancient laurel forests and jagged mountains provided the perfect place to hide from the Spanish. Beneharo, one of the sons of Tinerfe (after whom the island is named), was a king of Anaga who tried to make peace with the Spanish. 

In Anaga, I found a labyrinth of twisting, moss-covered tree branches and dense foliage. The thick canopy blocked most of the sunlight, casting the forest in an eerie dark green hue. The Guanches hid in these parts for good reason.

An ancient forest

Calling this laurel forest old is an understatement. It is approximately nine million years old and contains the most endemic plant species in Europe. Anaga's rugged terrain, shaped by volcanic activity, consists of ravines, sharp ridges, and coastal cliffs that have helped isolate and preserve a high level of biodiversity. 

Among the most popular treks is the Sendero de los Sentidos (Path of the Senses). This part of the forest encourages hikers to engage their senses. The humidity casts the forest in a constant mist, the trees are so close together, and you can’t help but hear yourself think. Another favorite is the Chamorga to Roque Bermejo trail, with its panoramic views and ancient hamlets. Hikers can also take the Cruz del Carmen to Punta del Hidalgo trail, a descent from the heart of the forest to the coast. 

The Anaga region encompasses 26 local villages and parts of the Santa Cruz de Tenerife, La Laguna, and Tegueste areas. In a small village called Afur, locals found a volcanic stele containing Guanche engravings, which are now in a local museum. The Guanches used the stone for mummification and funerary rituals, and it may have links to a Carthaginian deity, linking the Guanches to North Africa.

Cueva de Achbinico

I almost did not make it to Candelaria, but after several wrong turns, I drove down to the Plaza de la Patrona de Canarias. There, nine bronze statues stand on volcanic rocks as if guarding the town against the roaring Atlantic waves. Each sentinel is the likeness of a Guanche king and faces the Basilica of Candelaria.

According to legend, before the Spanish conquest, two Guanche shepherds found a statue of the Virgin Mary floating in the water off a beach called Chimisay. They brought it to their king, who placed it in a cave to be worshipped as their goddess. 

When the Spanish came, they found the statue, and eventually the town was named after its patron saint, the Virgin of Candelaria. A replica of the statue is located in the cave adjacent to the Basilica.

Pyramids of Güímar

Here’s where the Guanche story gets a little strange. The Pyramids of Güímar are six structures built from lava stone without mortar. They're not particularly high or even that impressive. However, this pyramid complex has sown division in the archaeological community.

Initially dismissed as simple agricultural terraces or piles of rocks cleared by 19th-century farmers, further investigation revealed their deliberate construction and possible ceremonial or calendrical functions. For believers, the pyramids are aligned with astronomical events such as the summer and winter solstices.

The debate about the pyramid's history started when an already controversial figure read about them in a newspaper article in the 1990s. Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl made a name for himself thanks to unconventional ideas that he promoted through interesting nautical journeys in primitive boats. His Kon-Tiki expedition was not just revolutionary in demonstrating that ancient cultures and civilizations may have interacted, but also brought Tenerife into the international spotlight by noting potential links between the Canary Islands, Egypt, and pre-Columbian America. Heyerdahl thought the Guanches built the pyramids after interacting with people from Mesoamerica or Egypt.

Other archaeologists do not support this theory and attribute the structures to relatively recent agricultural activity in the 18th or 19th century. Despite this, Heyerdahl’s work led to the creation of the ethnographic Parque Etnográfico Pirámides de Güímar, a museum and cultural center that presents his theories alongside other information about pyramid-building cultures worldwide.

Cueva del Viento

If you get claustrophobic or easily spooked by the dark, the Cave of the Winds is not for you. The Cueva del Viento is one of the largest volcanic tube systems in the world and is located in Icod de los Vinos, below El Teide.

Formed by lava flows from the Pico Viejo volcano, the second-highest peak on the island next to El Teide, the cave extends over 17km. It features a complex labyrinth of passages and is known for its unique geological formations, including lava stalactites, terraces, and lava lakes.

The Guanches used these tunnels, and excavations uncovered artifacts and remains.

Archaeologists and paleontologists have found fossils of extinct animals, such as the giant lizard (Gallotia goliath) and giant rat (Canariomys bravoi) in the Cave of the Winds, providing insight into the island's prehistoric ecosystem.

Beyond the beaches and resorts of the Bahamas, Andros Island is the country’s best-kept secret. A hidden world of blue and black holes pockmarks the coastline and interior.

Andros has 200 blue holes, the highest concentration in the world. Blue holes typically occur around limestone. In the Caribbean, about 2.6 million to 11,700 years ago, sea levels were up to 120m lower than today. This exposed large areas of limestone bedrock to weathering and erosion. Slightly acidic rainwater seeped into the ground and slowly ate away the limestone, forming underground cave systems.

Some of these caves collapsed and formed vertical sinkholes. When the last ice age ended and glaciers melted, sea levels rose and flooded the sinkholes, creating deep, water-filled vertical shafts with a distinctive dark blue color. Some holes are even black; the color varies with the type of bacteria in the water, the amount of oxygen, levels of light absorption, and other factors. 

Weathering and erosion created complex limestone formations and carved out underground tunnels that stretch for many kilometers. Divers flock to Andros to explore these labyrinths, with their stalactites and stalagmites, and dark, vertical shafts penetrating hundreds of meters. 

Though it's the largest island in the Bahamas, Andros is the least developed. Sometimes, the holes hide in plain sight, off dirt roads and among mangroves. Access is not heavily regulated and is managed by the Bahamas National Trust. No fees or bookings needed. All you need is bravery and scuba equipment. 

Some of the more famous blue holes include: Cousteau’s Blue Hole (named after Jacques Cousteau), Stargate Hole, Captain Bill’s Blue Hole, Uncle Charlie’s Blue Hole, Benjamin’s Blue Hole, and Rat Cay Blue Hole. They vary in depth but range from 30m to 60m. 

Cultural connections

Historically, Andros was home to the Lucayan Indians, who lived there for centuries before Christopher Columbus arrived in the Bahamas in 1492. The Lucayans left traces of their civilization, including ceremonial sites and artifacts. These ancient remnants are part of the island’s spiritual connection with the earth and sea.

In the 1970s and '80s, legendary British diver Rob Palmer and his wife Stephanie conducted scientific dives in Andros's blue holes, stumbling upon Lucayan remains and a Lucayan canoe at the bottom of Stargate Blue Hole. Sadly, the canoe later disappeared from the site.

Centuries after Columbus, the transatlantic slave trade brought Africans to the Caribbean. They developed new legends about the blue holes, combining them with traditional African beliefs.

Writer Noelle Nicolls with Caribbean Beat explains that according to Yoruba elders, blue holes represent an ancient African water spirit known as Oshun Ololodi. While locals mostly associate Oshun with rivers and freshwater ponds, she is also the spirit of dams and reservoirs -- and thus indirectly, the blue holes in the Bahamas.

What's at the bottom of a blue hole? 

Some locals believe that the Lusca, the Caribbean’s answer to the kraken, lies in wait for unassuming divers. The Lusca is a half-shark, half-octopus creature, though some accounts depict it as a giant cuttlefish, octopus, or squid. This cryptid is supposedly 20 meters long and can drag humans and even ships into the depths.

The first sighting of the Andros Island blue hole's monster was in 1836. An American captain told journalist Benedict-Henry Revoil that a kraken violently dragged two of his sailors into the ocean. One of the men chopped off an arm of the creature, which they presented to Barnum’s American Museum. Curators doubted its authenticity. 

In 2011, a body with tentacles and a portion of a head reportedly washed ashore on Grand Bahama Island. However, this might have been just a rumor or tale; there was no evidence of this occurrence.

Explorer Josh Gates interviewed a local fisherman who saw the Lusca.

"We were fishing for dorado, and we happened to come across this strange animal," the fisherman told him. "I thought it was a whale shark, but getting within fifty feet of it, I found out it was a strange animal with tentacles and the head of a shark. The head was kind of similar to a mako shark, with a pointed nose. The tentacles were the last thing we saw."

It seems likely this folktale developed from sailors trying to explain deaths around the blue holes. The Lusca remains a popular tale in Caribbean culture and even inspired the cheesy sci-fi film Sharktopus.

In 1980, 19-year-old Peter Lambert was working aboard the MV Derbyshire, one of Britain's largest ships, transporting several thousand tons of iron ore from Japan. It was supposed to be his final trip on the high seas. He was already thinking about his life after this voyage, preparing for another job and planning to marry his childhood sweetheart.

Instead, the ship disappeared in a treacherous body of water called the Devil's Sea.

Local fishermen and the Japanese government call it ma no umi, meaning "the sea of troubles." For centuries, those who don’t respect it have risked catastrophe.

Off the Pacific coast of Japan, roughly 1,000km south of Tokyo, the Devil's Sea is close to the island of Miyake in the Philippine Sea.

When you try researching this area, there is scant information. The Devil’s Sea is significantly less well-known than its counterparts, such as the Bermuda Triangle, the Alaska Triangle, and the Bennington Triangle.

The sea that saved Japan

The Devil’s Sea was key to one of Japan’s most significant battles. Between 1274 and 1281, Kublai Khan (grandson of Genghis Khan) sought to expand the Mongolian Empire and conquer Japan. Japan was rich in gold and had great trading power in East Asia. Kublai Khan was also a prideful man who felt slighted when Japan rejected Mongolian ambassadors. After conquering much of China and Korea, he wanted to add Japan to his collection. 

But a sudden burst of devastating weather, which the Japanese call "divine winds," destroyed Kublai Khan's invasion force.

The defeat went down in Japanese history as a work of divine intervention. The typhoon appeared suddenly and was powerful enough to sink over half of Kublai Khan's fleet. The failed invasion force had been sailing along the western edge of the Devil's Sea.

The Japanese were not the only ones who believed that something dangerous and supernatural lurked in the water here. Chinese mythology speaks of dragons at the bottom of the Devil's Sea. Supposedly, these dragons stirred up unusual storms, waterspouts, violent currents, whirlpools, and rogue waves.

Over the centuries, fishermen reported glowing lights and water bubbling and spewing wildly. They claimed to see serpent-like creatures the size of boats. In the 1800s, sailors claimed to see a woman sailing a ghost ship.

More disappearances

In 1944, pilot Toshiaki Lang saw odd shapes over the water during a battle. Lang claimed to see a serpent with a long, winged body that poked from the water.

Between 1952 and 1954, five vessels went missing in the Devil's Sea. The Japanese government designated the area a danger zone.

One of the most famous incidents occurred in 1952. Japanese research ship Kaiyo Maru No. 5, carrying 31 crew, was completing oceanographic studies in the area when it disappeared without a trace. An extensive search turned up no wreckage, and the ship did not send any distress signals. As a result, Japanese authorities further limited ship traffic in this area.

An unofficial (and unconfirmed) statistic from paranormal writer Charles Berlitz claims that the Devil's Sea killed 700 people between 1952 and 1954.

On March 22, 1957, a U.S. flight left Micronesia for Tokyo with 67 military personnel on board. The nine-hour flight was routine, with clear weather and extra fuel onboard. For the first eight hours, everything proceeded as planned, but the aircraft never arrived.

In 1980, the MV Derbyshire met its end in the Devil's Sea while sailing from Canada to Japan. A powerful typhoon had developed off the coast of Japan, and although the ship was well-equipped to handle severe weather, the Derbyshire sent a final distress signal and then vanished.

Authorities searched unsuccessfully for six days. Eventually, the 44 crew members were given up for dead.

In 1994, the wreckage was located at the bottom of the Pacific by shipwreck hunter David Mearns and his team. Their inspection revealed that the ship had likely sunk after a catastrophic structural failure caused by the violent storm. The tragedy led to significant changes in maritime safety regulations, particularly concerning ship design.

Explanations

A Nov. 11, 1952 newspaper report from The Canberra Times reported on one of the 1950s incidents:

United States Navy hydrophones on the California coast recorded the eruption of a Japanese volcano so clearly that scientists believe they know when it destroyed the Japanese hydrographic vessel, the Kaiyo Maru. The Kaiyo Maru was dispatched to study the Myojin Island eruption. It vanished with 31 people on board on September 24. The hydrophone graphs of sound waves carried through the ocean showed that at 12:20 pm, there was a tremendous explosion. 

The Kaiyo Maru was investigating a newly formed volcanic island. By the time it arrived, the island had disappeared. The area was still tectonically active, and an underwater eruption likely destroyed the vessel.

The Devil's Sea lies within the Pacific Ring of Fire, a hotbed for volcanic activity, and a volcanic eruption can create powerful shock waves that can damage or destabilize a ship. Underwater eruptions, especially those involving the collapse of volcanic material or large explosions, generate massive waves or tsunamis. These waves can be large enough to overwhelm ships, capsize them, or cause severe damage.

Methane hydrates may have also played a role. Methane hydrates are crystalline compounds in which methane gas is trapped inside a lattice of water ice. These hydrates typically occur on the ocean floor, especially in areas of high pressure and low temperature, such as deep-sea environments. Methane hydrates are stable only under certain pressures and temperatures. If seismic activity changes these conditions rapidly, released methane can lead to rapid changes in water density and buoyancy. It can also cause turbulent currents that ships can't escape.

Vile vortices

"Vile vortices" is a pseudoscientific term referring to areas where strange or unexplained phenomena are said to occur. The term was coined by biologist Ivan T. Sanderson. He speculated that these areas were mysterious/paranormal places where unusual weather patterns or magnetic anomalies occur. Sanderson believed there are 12 vile vortices on Earth. These included the Bermuda Triangle, the Devil's Sea, and the Great Pyramid of Giza.

Magnetic anomalies could explain navigational difficulties reported by sailors.

Conclusion

Writer Larry Kushe, who wrote extensively about the Bermuda Triangle, had this to say about the Devil's Sea:

The story is based on nothing more than the loss of a few fishing boats 20 years ago in a 750-mile [1,200km] stretch of ocean over a period of five years. The tale has been reported so many times that it has come to be accepted as fact.

The most simple explanations are usually the correct ones. A combination of bad luck and volatile geography is most likely to blame for the fearsome reputation of the Devil's Sea.

On April 1, amateur metal detectorists Katarzyna Herdzik and Jacek Ukowski made a stunning discovery on a Polish beach. Their scanners led them to an ornate 24cm dagger covered in stars and crescent moons, approximately 2,800 years old. A few months earlier, outside  Warsaw, a father and son came across a trove of rare 17th-century coins. These are just two of the many, many metal detector success stories out there.

Metal detecting is now a serious pastime for a growing number of people. Some great archaeological finds and treasures were turned up by those curious enough to poke around beaches, fields, and even waste lots. If you're one of these, this is your ultimate guide.

History

Metal detecting began in the 1840s, when Henrich Wilhelm Dove invented the differential inductor. Its four coils, glass tubes, and copper wiring generated an electric shock when near metal.

Years later, in 1881, Alexander Graham Bell used a more developed version of the inductor to try to locate a bullet lodged in President James Garfield's chest after he was shot by the deluded lawyer Charles J. Guiteau. Sadly, Bell was unable to find the bullet because of the metal bedsprings in Garfield's bed. Garfield died of infection before Bell could figure out why his device did not work. 

It wasn’t until the 1920s that  Gerhard Fischer and Shirl Herr, working independently, created their versions of the hand-held electronic metal detector around the same time. Fischer, who received the patent first, initially created an aircraft radio direction finder. But when metal objects started to affect a pilot's bearings, his focus shifted to finding the metals themselves. Fischer's version used radio frequencies to determine the direction in which certain metals were. Meanwhile, Herr sought to find objects through the "production of sound waves effected by the distortion of a magnetic field."

Herr’s version eventually made its way into the hands of the military, assisting Mussolini in recovering ancient artifacts. Richard Byrd also used it during his 1933 Antarctic expedition.

Fischer established a research lab bearing his name where he and his colleagues created the metallascope, a metal detector that became quite commonplace at archaeological sites, on the battlefield, and in construction to detect buried pipes.

How does it work?

In simple terms, a metal detector's coil generates an electromagnetic field. When a metal object is nearby, it reacts to the field and gives off a current. When this current distorts the field, the receiver coil (another coil in the detector) alerts the user with either a sound or a visual cue.

Some metal detectors today often have a discrimination setting, allowing the user to distinguish between metals, as well as a setting for the type of soil nearby. The most advanced models include GPS, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth.

There are several types of detectors. If you're starting out, try a VLF (Very Low-Frequency) detector, which is the most common. These have a simple setup with two coils: one for sending signals and one for receiving them. With them, you can easily discriminate between metals, and you’ll have decent luck finding coins and jewelry. However, be prepared for an onslaught of bottle caps and unreliable results in highly mineralized or saline environments. You will need to adjust your settings accordingly.

More experienced searchers prefer a PI (Pulse Induction) detector. This uses pulse signals to penetrate the ground for deeper searches, even in mineralized and saline environments. If you're searching for old relics, this is the detector for you. Keep in mind that PI detectors may be more powerful than VLF detectors but do not discriminate between metals.

If you're looking for something specific, like searching for gold, a high-quality gold detector is your best option. Gold detectors can go deeper and withstand mineralization, but the cost can be challenging. In general, the price for metal detectors ranges from $250 to $2,000.

According to Metaldetector.com, some of the best on the market today are the Garrett ACE 400 ($339) for beginners, the Fisher F22 ($229) for all-weather conditions, and the Minelab GOLD Monster 1000 ($849) for gold. The XP Deus II ($1,449) ranks as the best all-around metal detector.

How to play by the rules

As with any hobby, there's a certain etiquette involved. Most countries have instituted rules for metal detectorists now that real treasure is commonly discovered. By law, you can't just waltz off with a hoard of priceless metals and historical artifacts. Please read the local or national laws before proceeding.

For example, the National Council For Metal Detecting in the UK states:

You must have the landowner's permission to detect on any land. This includes parks, public spaces, woods, common land and public footpaths! Permission must be from the landowner (and the tenant if the land is leased)....

...Never, ever detect on protected sites. Important historical sites are scheduled, giving them legal protection. It’s a criminal offense to detect on them and you will be prosecuted if caught. Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) are also protected because of nesting birds, protected wildlife or rare fauna and flora...

...In England, Wales and NI, the landowner owns any non-treasure item found on their land unless they agree otherwise...

The UK has the Treasure Act of 1996, which states specific criteria for what treasure is and the protocol for when it is discovered. The finder must report the treasure to the local coroner. Once it is analyzed and declared treasure by the Treasure Valuation Committee, the finder and/or landowner receives a reward that depends on the value of the treasure.

In Ireland, metal detecting is under strict control. According to the National Museum of Ireland:

The unregulated and inappropriate use of detection devices causes serious damage to Ireland’s archaeological heritage and is subject to severe penalties under the National Monuments Acts 1930 to 2014...

... It is illegal:

• • to be in possession of a detection device at monuments and sites protected under the National Monuments Acts.
  • to use a detection device to search for archaeological objects anywhere within the State or its territorial seas; without the prior written consent of the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht.

In the United States, metal detecting is allowed, depending on state and local laws. For example, some state parks allow it, while others don't. All activities fall under the Archaeological Resources Protection Act, which states:

No person may excavate, remove, damage, or otherwise alter or deface or attempt to excavate, remove, damage or otherwise alter or deface any archaeological resources located on public lands or Indian lands unless such activity is pursuant to a permit...

In general, depending on the country, metal detectorists get a finder’s fee, which is either the total value of the treasure or a percentage of it. To preserve the artifacts for public viewing or archaeological study, they don't get to keep the treasure itself.

Success stories

Many of the greatest historical finds today have come thanks to metal detectors. The so-called "world’s greatest treasure hunter,” Mel Fisher, grew up obsessed with finding treasure. He and his family spent the greatest part of their lives searching for the shipwrecks of the famed 1622 Treasure Fleet, in which all 11 ships sank during a hurricane off the southeastern coast of Florida. Fisher and a friend developed a metal detector that was retrofitted from a World War II submarine detection device. He also created a "mailbox" contraption that was able to poke holes in the seafloor and scoop up anything that may be hiding beneath the sand.

He found over a thousand gold coins during one haul after almost a year. Though he acquired quite a bit of money from finding the gold, the money dried up fast as his obsession with treasure-hunting took him and his family beyond their financial means. However, the hard work eventually paid off. 

In the early 2000s, he and a company called Aquasurvey created a large-scale metal detector/sled that scoured the ocean floor. It was around 540kg and managed to find silver bars, anchors, cannons, and other submerged relics. Fisher also found the treasure ships Nuestra Señora de Atocha and Santa Margarita. When Fisher and his team found the Atocha, they received 75% of $450 million after a lengthy court battle with the state. The remaining 25% went to the State of Florida. 

The Staffordshire Hoard

In the UK, a metal detectorist named Terry Herbert found the famed Staffordshire Hoard, which contains 4,600 gold and silver objects and precious stones, while combing a field in Hammerwich. After reporting his find to the coroner, authorities excavated. The excavations took over three years to find all these pieces, which were worth $4.3 million.

The largest gold nugget ever found in the Western Hemisphere is the Boot of Cortez. An amateur metal detectorist found it in Mexico's Sonoran Desert. Resembling a boot and measuring more than 25cm high, the Boot of Cortez initially sold for a mere $30,000 because its discoverer did not recognize its true worth. It later sold at auction for $1.5 million.

At the height of the Great Depression, a crazy story had the city of Los Angeles abuzz. Three men with a digging permit, an odd invention, an old map, and an insane hypothesis effectively destroyed a historic hillside. They believed that beneath Los Angeles’s streets, there was a vast network of tunnels built by an advanced civilization of lizard people who’d been dwelling there in the depths for 5,000 years. 

Background

Our story begins not in the City of Angels but rather in Middletown, Ohio. George Warren Shufelt grew up in a hard-working family of manual laborers. Choosing not to follow the same path, he chose a corporate job as a salesman in Indianapolis. But, though his career was stable, he yearned for more. He was passionate about inventions and had a keen interest in gold.

During the Great Depression, Los Angeles became a hotspot for those seeking fame and riches. Shufelt left for LA in 1933. 

A radio X-ray and a failed hunt

Shufelt's obsession with gold prompted him to build a device that could supposedly detect gold and other minerals deep in the ground. He called it his "radio X-ray." This machine was a metal radio attached to a long glass cylinder containing a copper wire. Shufelt claimed he could tune into the frequency of the mineral, and the wire acted like a dowsing rod that pointed the way.

Treasure hunters Ray Martinez and Rex Irving believed in his invention and invited Shufelt to join them. Shufelt accepted, and the trio set out to acquire funding and a digging permit.

Martinez and Irving possessed an old map of dubious origin that supposedly showed the location of a treasure hoard from the Mexican-American War that was buried somewhere on Fort Moore Hill. The trio offered the board of county supervisors a cut of the treasure if they found it. After obtaining their permit, they began to bore holes into the hill.

They created a 15-meter shaft, but the radio X-ray was a bust. Eventually, excavations stopped indefinitely. But Shufelt refused to give up. 

A rebrand

In 1934, he approached the county supervisors, attempting to rebrand his project. He claimed to have met a mysterious Native American chief named Little Chief Greenleaf (or L. Macklin) in Arizona. Supposedly, this chief told Shufelt the story of an advanced Native American civilization of lizard people who fled a devastating meteor strike and retreated underground. They built a subterranean city below modern-day Los Angeles. Shufelt claimed the lizard people used a chemical to carve out the tunnels and that their city held a thousand families, with hundreds of rooms laden with gold and precious stones.

Miraculously, this story convinced the board to give Shufelt another chance.

Journalist Jean Bosquet picked up the story, publishing an article titled Lizard People’s Catacomb City Hunted: Engineer Sinks Shaft Under Fort Moore Hill to Find Maze of Tunnels and Priceless Treasures of Legendary Inhabitants.

"Busy Los Angeles, although little realizing it in the hustle and bustle of modern existence, stands above a lost city of catacombs filled with incalculable treasure and imperishable records of a race of humans further advanced intellectually and scientifically than even the highest type of present-day peoples," Bosquet wrote.

Dead end

Shufelt returned to work and drilled to 75 meters. Soon, he claimed to have mapped the entire city, which looked like a big lizard, sprawling from Dodger Stadium to the Central Library. He also claimed to have detected massive golden tablets. 

"All records were kept on gold tablets four feet long and fourteen inches wide," Bosquet wrote. "On these tablets of gold...will be found the recorded history of the Mayans, and on one particular tablet, the southwest corner of which will be missing, is to be found the record of the origin of the human race."

"[I have picked up] tunnels and rooms, which are subsurface voids, and of gold pictures with perfect corners...scientific proof of their existence," Shufelt said.

Shufelt and his team kept digging until they encountered mud and boulders that prevented them from continuing. With their funds drying up, Shufelt gave up in disgrace and abandoned the project.

He died in 1957. 

No such legend

There is no record of a Native American legend about lizard people or of a Little Chief Greenleaf or L. Macklin. But the idea of an underground city in Los Angeles isn’t completely crazy. Los Angeles is home to hundreds of tunnels. During prohibition in the 1920s, these were used to smuggle alcohol.

Lizards were important symbols in some Native American cultures, so the story could have referred to an ancient people who followed a religious cult whose symbol was the lizard. However, it is far more likely that the story was fabricated entirely as an excuse to continue digging for gold. 

As for advanced civilizations in California, Mount Shasta has a similar story. According to local legends, Mount Shasta is home to the survivors of Atlantis or Mu (another legend of a lost continent). Some people believed that Mount Shasta was also home to lizard people. Could Shufelt have taken inspiration from this story?

Lizard people run the world?

This story led to a larger conspiracy theory: that lizard people secretly run the world. According to David Icke, a British conspiracy theorist, the world's elite are shapeshifting reptilian-human creatures who control governments and economies. He believes figures like the British Royal Family, the Bushes, and the Rothschilds are reptiles. Many of Icke’s followers point to Shufelt’s story as evidence. 

Conclusion

The legend of the LA Lizard City stems from Shufelt's desire for fame and fortune. Caught up in the Great Depression, people went to extremes to survive. For Shufelt, this meant inventions and tall tales. We have to hand it to him: It's quite the story.

By 1979, the Cold War had dragged on for 32 years. The nuclear ambitions of major world powers were held at bay by a treaty that banned atomic weapon tests in the atmosphere and underwater. Yet, in the wee hours on September 22, satellites picked up an exceedingly bright double flash in the South Atlantic.

Background

The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki introduced a new weapon that could decimate life on Earth. For years after, the Cold War and the threat of annihilation hung in the air as countries scrambled for military supremacy.

Displays of power through nuclear tests like those of Castle Bravo or Tsar Bomba were both impressive and terrifying.

The Cold War featured secrecy, espionage, close calls, and intense fear. Thankfully, world leaders pulled back from the brink and placed restrictions on nuclear testing in the hope of curbing nuclear proliferation. In 1963, the United States, the United Kingdom, the USSR, and 100 others signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty.

The U.S. launched the Vela Hotel satellites to ensure that everyone complied with the rules. Their job was to detect nuclear detonations by scanning for x-rays, gamma rays, neutrons, and light. Together with satellites developed by the Defense Support Program (DSP), they scanned for nuclear activity.

The incident

Just before 1 am on Sept. 22, 1979, Vela 6911 detected a double flash, characteristic of a nuclear blast. The initial flash peaked in luminosity before declining with the shock wave. Then, it peaked a second time before declining again, all within a matter of milliseconds. The data determined the explosion was around three kilotons.

The point of origin was within a 5,000-kilometer radius between the Prince Edward and Marion Islands off the coast of South Africa, and the Crozet Islands in the sub-Antarctic, some of the most remote islands in the world. No one lives on these islands, but they sometimes host researchers.

There were no recorded eyewitnesses, and no one claimed responsibility.

The situation was puzzling. Vela 6911 was the only satellite to pick up the blast, and though the flash had most of the characteristics of a nuclear blast, it did not possess one crucial marker. There was no nuclear fallout or radioactive debris.

"The DSP satellites recorded no flash, and no radioactive debris was found. [However] a researcher at Arecibo recorded an ionospheric wave traveling in an anomalous direction that could have resulted from a nuclear test," Leonard Weiss, a researcher in International Security at Stanford University, explained.

The U.S. investigated, but aerial reconnaissance found no sign of fallout. The Naval Research Laboratory analyzed ocean data using hydroacoustic sensors designed to detect sound waves traveling underwater. Though the sensors are particularly important for detecting underwater detonations, they can also capture the acoustic effects of atmospheric nuclear tests if the explosion is powerful enough.

"The most probable test location was above shallow waters close to the remote South African Prince Edward Islands, some 2,200km southeast of Cape Town," Weiss wrote. "The satellite detection information remained secret for about one month before ABC reported it on Oct. 25, 1979."

Theories

U.S. President Jimmy Carter's administration was unpopular. Many Americans thought him weak both domestically and in foreign policy. Carter faced Soviet aggression overseas, tension in the Middle East, an ongoing energy crisis at home, and stagflation of the American economy. His 1980 reelection bid was looking bleak.

Evidence of a nuclear blast panicked Carter and the State Department. They hoped to deal with the issue secretly, but someone leaked it to the press soon after.

"There was indication of a nuclear test explosion in the region of South Africa, either South Africa [or] Israel using a ship at sea...At the foreign affairs breakfast, we went over the nuclear explosion. We still don’t know who did it," Carter wrote in his diary.

Then in February 1980, he wrote: "We have a growing belief among our scientists that the Israelis did indeed conduct a nuclear test explosion."

An Israeli test?

Was Israel responsible? The CIA believed that, by 1974, Israel possessed around 20 nuclear weapons.

The most widely accepted theory about the Vela Incident is that Israel and South Africa were co-responsible for the nuclear explosion. During the Cold War, both countries were isolated for different reasons. Israel was concerned about regional security and the Arab-Israel Conflict. South Africa, under apartheid rule, considered nuclear weapons a means of securing its political position on the world stage.

South Africa had been developing its nuclear program in secret since the 1960s. There are eight major uranium deposits in South Africa, and the country made a deal with Israel: they would provide uranium while Israel assisted with research and construction.

Commodore Dieter Gerdhart, a high-ranking official in the South African navy (who was also moonlighting as a Soviet spy), claimed to have witnessed multiple clandestine military exercises between South Africa and Israel. In 1994, he told the Johannesburg City Press that the Vela incident was part of a secret operation between the two countries called Operation Phoenix.

However, experts deemed Gerdhart an unreliable source because he was both a spy and unable to back up his claims with evidence.

Ultimately, no country was blamed for the Vela incident. Carter and other leaders simply turned the other way, hoping the problem would disappear.

Alternative theories

Some classify the Vela Incident as a "zoo event." A zoo event is a false signal or mimic of a nuclear explosion. Natural phenomena like micrometeoroid impacts or even something as trivial as sunlight reflecting off the satellite can cause zoo events. Micrometeroids are not uncommon, but the probability of them hitting one of the satellites is one in a billion. If it was sunlight, why wasn't the phenomenon replicated afterward?

In May 1980, Jack Ruina of MIT brought together a team of eight scientists to try and explain the incident.

"We consider the alternative explanation of the September 22 signal as light reflected from debris ejected from the spacecraft as reasonable, but we do not maintain that this particular explanation is necessarily correct," Runia said.

There is also the possibility that the satellite malfunctioned. Vela satellites had a short shelf life of approximately seven years, and the U.S. launched the DSP satellites to replace them.

In 1967, the Vela satellites documented the world's first evidence of gamma-ray bursts. Gamma radiation is part of the nuclear explosion process, so perhaps events occurring in deep space were mistaken for a nuclear explosion on Earth.

Vela incident proved by sheep?

There was a breakthrough in the case in 2017. Professor Lester Van Middlesworth found that sheep in southeastern Australia carried the nuclear fallout marker iodine-131, dated just days after the Vela incident.

Van Middlesworth found Iodine-131 in the sheeps' thyroids. The blast may have been a low-level detonation that did not create enough fallout for a satellite to detect from orbit, but just enough to show up in these sheep.

By 2003, the U.S. National Security Council was confident enough to state with "high confidence" that the Vela incident was a nuclear explosion.

All these years later, no country has claimed responsibility.

I'm a severe claustrophobe. After getting trapped in a slide in my local McDonald's at five years old, I swore off all tight and dark spaces forever. So it's not entirely surprising that I couldn't get the images of rushing, rising water and tunnels almost impossible to squeeze out of my mind when reading about an expedition to Veryovkina Cave in National Geographic.

This dramatic escape from death took place in September 2018. A Russian expedition, accompanied by two British cave photographers, descended into the depths of one of the world's deepest caves in the remote Gagra Mountains of Abkhazia in the Caucasus. What was meant to be an exciting venture to further map and determine the cave's depth and to evaluate life in extreme conditions turned almost fatal when a dangerous flood threatened to drown the explorers. Because of this, many believe it is one of the most dangerous caves in the world.

Background

Veryovkina Cave is located in the Arabika Massif, which is part of the Greater Caucasus Mountain Range and extends across several countries, including Russia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan. The Caucasus Mountains were formed primarily due to the collision between two tectonic plates, the Eurasian Plate and the Arabian Plate.

The Arabika Massif itself formed during the Miocene Epoch when the Eurasian Plate moved south and pushed against the Arabian and African Plates. The rock that was being folded, uplighted, and faulted was predominantly limestone.

Over millions of years, rainwater, slightly acidic due to dissolved carbon dioxide, has slowly eroded the limestone of the Arabika Massif, forming an extensive karst landscape containing some incredibly complex and deep cave systems, sinkholes, and long underground rivers. The Arabika Massif has four of the world's deepest caves: Krubera-Voronja, Veryovkina, Sarma, and Snezhnaja. 

It wasn't until 2018 that the cave really started to make waves in the spelunking community. Why was this?

Though Veryovkina Cave is the second deepest at a whopping 2,212m, its discovery was a complete accident. Let's begin at its entrance: a rather small and unassuming hole in the ground.

The slow descent

The exploration of Veryovkina Cave proceeded slowly. It took over 50 years and 30 expeditions to fully determine its depth. In 1968, cavers from Krasnoyarsk, Russia, found the cave's entrance, a tiny cross-section measuring three by four meters. Though they managed to descend to 115m, they had absolutely no idea how far this subterranean monster went. Almost two decades later, from 1982 to 1986, members of Moscow's Perovo Speleoclub made several expeditions and slowly but surely pushed to a depth of 440m. Then came the fall of the Soviet Union and all the turmoil as people tried to survive hyperinflation and their new reality. It wasn't until 2000 that expeditions started back up again.

From 2000 to 2016, the Perovo teams continued to do small expeditions, finding new shafts and new passages and eventually pushed to a depth of 1,350m. In 2017, they got to 2,151m and happened upon 17km of horizontal tunnels and passages.

Because of the extreme depth and to make exploration easier and safer, a permanent multi-camp system has been set up, much like how it is on Everest each spring. Camp One is on the surface, Camp Two is at 600m, Camp Three at 1,000m, Camp Four at 1,350m, Camp Five at 1,900m, and Camp Six at 2,100m. There is also a cable system for communication. At the bottom, there is a turquoise lake 28m deep. To reach it takes roughly four days and eight hours between each camp.

Exploring Veryovkina Cave is a perilous undertaking due to its extreme depth, narrow passages, and unpredictable conditions. Temperatures drop below freezing, and humidity is 100%.

2018 to 2021

The cave gained international notoriety from 2018 to 2021, when two major incidents occurred. In September 2018, the Russian Perovo Speleo cavers returned there. Its members were Pavel Demidov, Petr Lyubimov, Konstantin Zverev, Andrey Shuvalov, Evgeniy Rybka, Andrey Zyznikov, Roman Zverev and Natalia Sizikova. Also tagging along were well-known cave photographers Robbie Shone and Jeff Wade. Though the photographers were not as experienced with a cave of this magnitude, they knew how to hold their own.

The expedition went according to plan. On day seven, they were making breakfast. Two members, Roman and Natalia, had to leave early to get to the airport for a flight. However, everything took a dark turn. The team noticed water starting to pour into the cave because of a storm on the surface.

This wasn't just a trickle, it was a flood pulse. A flood pulse refers to a temporary increase in the flow of water within a cave system, typically caused by heavy rainfall, snowmelt, or upstream flooding in a connected underground river or stream. This pulse of water can lead to the temporary flooding of passages, chambers, and subterranean water features within the cave. Alarmed, they sent a message to the team below via their cable system. The flood pulse would take 30 minutes to reach the bottom.

At first, the Russians seemed unbothered by the waterfall starting to form, although the sound of its approach shook the cave and was like thunder. However, they'd experienced similar flood pulses many times, and they do not usually last long or turn deadly. Their camp was a decent distance from the water, anyway. However, this calm demeanor changed to terror within a couple of minutes.

'His white face said it all'

In Robbie Shone's article for BASE Magazine, he described what happened next:

The water rose so fast it was impossible to tell how quickly it was rising. Petr checked the hole once again, and as he turned around his white face said it all. The three-meter-deep hole was now full of surging, rising water...

...the most enormous torrent of white water appeared out of this hole, and I just stood opened-mouthed at the sight of this huge white wall of water entering out little home.

The water table was rising so fast that they had little time to pack their gear and hurry to the vertical ropes.

“One must have an extremely high level of physical endurance to ensure a sufficient margin of safety. When something goes wrong in a very deep cave like Veryovkina, you need to act fast. It’s crucial that you haven’t used all your reserves up just getting to the bottom of the cave. In mountaineering, the most dangerous part of the climb can be the descent, and in a big cave the most challenging part can be getting out again.”

They took only essential equipment and had no choice but to leave expensive, heavy equipment behind. The passages, chambers, and bridges they crossed previously were now underwater. Robbie Shone and Jeff Wade climbed up the vertical shaft first. The whitewater poured over their heads and they were barely able to breathe. They ascended agonizingly slowly but managed to get to an outcrop beside the flow of water. Thankfully, the Russian team met up with them, and the expedition made it out alive.

A 2020 victim

Veryovkina did not claim anyone's life that day but eventually did in 2020. In November, hikers found a rope and personal effects at the cave's entrance. Entering the cave without permission is not allowed. Suspecting someone was down there, a group of cavers contacted the authorities, then descended to investigate. They found a decomposed body hanging from the rope at around 915m.

In August 2021, they recovered and identified the body as Sergei Kozeev, an adventurer from Russia. An avid outdoorsman, Kozeev had said goodbye to his family to go on an expedition. As usual, he did not tell them where he was going. Then one day, he didn't come home. A missing person's report was filed, and even after the body was found, it took months for authorities to make out what had happened. They determined that he ran into difficulties, could not move, and eventually died of hypothermia.

Note that Veryovkina is not the deepest cave in this challenging system. Its sister cave, the Krubera-Voronja, is deeper still, at 2,256m.

I've long been a big fan of Greek mythology and all the wondrous beasts that tested, and sometimes bested, mythical heroes. One such creature was the chimera, a grotesque hybrid of a lion, goat, and snake. But chimeras are not only fairy tales or figments of an overactive ancient Greek imagination.

A chimera is an organism with two different genetic materials or DNA, often resulting in unusual physical characteristics and genetic mutations. Scientists can create chimeras, or they can occur naturally. 

Chimerism in humans

Though rare, chimerism in humans can emerge as early as conception. While pregnant, a mother and baby exchange DNA, making them "microchimeras."

Chimerism also occurs when two embryos fuse. This is called twin chimerism or the "vanishing twin phenomenon." The resulting individual takes on cells from both embryos, resulting in a mixed genetic makeup. The baby that's born usually displays one or more of the following: different-colored eyes, mixed skin tones or birthmarks, patches of hair with different textures, or both male and female genitalia.

Sometimes, twin chimerism can make DNA testing difficult, particularly paternity and maternity tests. If a father or mother is a chimera, there is a chance that the DNA of his or her vanished twin could pass to a child.

Chimerism can also save lives. If someone has a blood transfusion or an organ transplant, they take on some of the DNA of the donor. The same goes for bone marrow transplants. If the transplant is successful, the donor's stem cells migrate to the recipient's bone marrow, where they produce blood cells. As a result, their cells and blood type will change.

Chimerism is not always obvious, and many people pass through life not knowing that they are an anomaly.

Human-ape hybrids?

In the 1920s, Soviet biologist Ilya Ivanov created a stronger and more resilient horse using artificial insemination. He aimed to increase agricultural production. He also created animal hybrids, like the zeedonk (zebra-donkey) and zubron (bison-cow).

After these successes, Ivanov turned his attention to creating a race of human-ape hybrids. Ivanov appealed to the Soviet government and received a grant of $10,000 to prove Darwin's theory of evolution. He took his venture to French Guinea, where he inseminated local women with chimpanzee sperm without their knowledge. He led the women to believe it was a medical exam.

His horrific experiments did not work, and he was disgraced. Eventually, the Soviets exiled him to Kazakhstan, where he died in the early 1930s.

Allegedly, another set of chimera experiments occurred in China in the 1960s. Unconfirmed reports from the Wenhui Bao newspaper stated that Chinese scientists succeeded in impregnating a female chimp with human sperm. According to a scientist quoted in the paper, the authorities arrested the scientists during the Cultural Revolution, and the chimp died of neglect.

Other human-animal hybrids

In the 1980s, Stanford University scientists injected mice with human stem cells to try to develop a human immune system in them.

In 2020, scientists at the State University of New York at Buffalo and Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center successfully implanted human stem cells into a mouse embryo. The mouse had 4% human cells, the highest percentage ever achieved. Over two weeks, the embryo developed human eye cells and red blood cells. Scientists hope to treat diseases with the cells.

In 2003, scientists in China created a hybrid embryo using human and rabbit cells. The purpose of the experiment was for the rabbit to grow human organs, cells, or tissue to harvest for transplants. They also inserted human cells into pig embryos, hoping that the pigs' kidneys would have human cells.

Most recently, experiments by Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte and his team at the Salk Institute created a human-monkey chimera embryo. It took four years, and the embryo successfully grew for a few days before the team destroyed it. His team also produced a rat-mouse hybrid by injecting stem cells from rats into mouse embryos.

Ethical concerns

Researchers believe that hybrids can provide us with organs for transplants. Others think they could hold the key to curing diseases like AIDS, Parkinson's Disease, Hepatitis, or neurodegenerative diseases.

By introducing human stem cells into developing ape embryos, scientists hope to investigate the similarities and differences between species. This could help unlock breakthroughs in regenerative medicine, organ transplantation, and the evolution of certain traits.

Rats and mice are often used in genetic research because they have surprising similarities to humans in immune system structure, genetic makeup, and physiology.

Transplant waiting lists can be extremely long. It can take many years before a prospective patient reaches the top of the list. So, for many, the natural reaction to chimera experimentation is favorable.

However, bioengineering also raises ethical concerns. If scientists created a successful human-animal hybrid, would it be entitled to human rights? Does "playing God" with chimera experiments carry unforeseen consequences? The topic is controversial, and most governments place restrictions on chimera experimentation.

Conclusion

Most governments don't allow scientists to inject animal cells into a human or human embryo to respect the dignity of human life. However, scientists are permitted to inject human cells into animal embryos. These embryos are not carried to term and are usually destroyed after the experiment is finished. Because these experiments are controversial, researchers usually do not have access to public funding.

I first encountered the word “Thule” in college while pouring over beyond-old world maps in class. I thought nothing of it for the next few years until I stumbled across the word again, this time in an obscure mythology page on Facebook. Whether it was a happy accident, coincidence or divine intervention, it is a story wanting to be told.

As a mythical place, Thule is less known than its other Greco-Roman counterparts like Atlantis, Hyperborea, or Lemuria. However, that has not stopped it from forever cementing its place in the minds of classical navigators and today's arctic aficionados. 

An accidental discovery 

Our voyage begins around 330 BC with a tale of a man who ventured beyond the known world and into a land of frigid cold, strange seas and even stranger people. His name was Pytheas, and he decided to explore beyond his native Massalia (modern-day Marseilles in France).

Pytheas was a scientist, astronomer, and navigator with a unique mission: to search for amber, tin, and gold. Amber was an extremely valuable substance used in medicines, religious practices, jewelry, and most importantly, trade. Tin and gold served many purposes, including weapons. As a Greek colony and trading hub, Massalia served the western Mediterranean, so finding priceless items like these was a priority.

After leaving Massalia, Pytheas sailed through the Pillars of Hercules (Gibraltar) and into the perilous Atlantic to the north, hugging the Atlantic coast of Europe. Then, he discovered a new, cold land with a very rugged coastline measuring over 40,000 stadia (over 7,200km).

This was Britain, and he was the first Greek to set foot on its shores. He was the first Greek to sail to Northern Europe at all. Pytheas took the opportunity to traverse the land itself on foot, witnessing the tin mining activities of the natives on the Cornish coast and traveled as far as the Orkney Islands. After Britain, he continued north for six days, looking for more of these lands. Little did he know that things would take a strange turn. He says:

Neither earth, water, nor air exist separately, but are a sort of concretion of all these, resembling a sea-lung in which the earth, the sea, and all things were suspended...

...there are no nights during the solstice when the sun is passing through the sign of Cancer and also no days during the winter solstice...

'Congealed' sea

For someone from the Mediterranean, this was a never-before-seen, alien phenomenon. Not only was the sea "congealed", but it was immensely cold and full of mist. However, when he came out of the fogbank, he saw it was a land of "endless splendor" as he further observed that the sun hung in the sky perpetually.

The people who lived there were very tall, strong, pale, blond-haired, and wise. They survived on fish, possibly seals, herbs, fruits, and millet and even had a popular drink made of grain and honey. They had technologies like tools and boats.

After this groundbreaking discovery and subsequent expeditions by Greeks and Romans alike, the land became known on maps as "Thule," meaning beyond the borders of the known world. The Romans took it a step further by calling it Ultima Thule, which further exaggerated its remoteness.

There is a lot to unpack here and lots of substantial clues as to where this mysterious island could be. Pytheas originally documented his voyage in a work called On the Ocean. However, it is long gone. It fell victim to the fires that engulfed the Library of Alexandria. His writings are forever lost, so we would have to settle with the bits and pieces found scattered in the works of his contemporaries and writers thereafter. This became a problem.

A 'falsifier'?

Not everyone in the classical world believed Pytheas found an idyllic northernmost land. Some contemporaries who relayed Pytheas's story just didn't buy it. In fact, they conveyed outright hostility and defamed Pytheas as a "falsifier" and opportunist. His main critics, Strabo and Polybius, did not believe that Pytheas even went to Britain. In a commentary from Strabo, he says:

Pytheas, by whom many have been misled; for after asserting that he traveled over the whole of Britain that was accessible, Pytheas reported that the coastline of the island was more than forty thousand stadia, and added his story about Thule...

...For not only has the man who tells about Thule, Pytheas, been found, upon scrutiny, to be an arch-falsifier, but the men who have been to Britain and lerne [Ireland] do not mention Thule. . . . However, any man who has told such great falsehoods about the known regions would hardly, I imagine, be able to tell the truth about places that are not known to anybody...

'Impossible,' said critics

Strabo refused to acknowledge that such a sea existed, let alone a people who could grow food in such a climate. Polybius believed Pytheas made geographical errors and that sailing along the northern European coastline was virtually impossible. This is most likely because no one ever thought a Greek could reach so far.

But despite the controversy, Thule was a reality. In the 2nd century AD, Dionysus visited Thule and experienced the same perpetual sunlight that Pytheas had described. Roman figures seemed to be more forgiving than the Greeks, further bolstering Pytheas's claims.

The Roman historian Tacitus (56–120 AD) mentioned Thule in his work Germania, where he describes it as a land of great cold and darkness beyond the reach of Roman authority. He said the crew sighted it somewhere beyond the Orkney Islands.

In Pliny the Elder's Natural History, he catalogs Thule as lying six days north of Britain and a land of "no nights at all." In the 3rd century AD, historian Gaius Julius Solinus stated that Thule was "fruitful and abundant in the lasting yield of its crops." After him came Servius in the fourth century, who said Thule was just after the Orkney Islands. Roman poets Claudius and Celius Cetalicus spoke about its strange inhabitants being painted blue. The poet Virgil famously stated:

There will come an epoch late in time when Ocean will loosen the bonds of the world and the earth lie open in its vastness, when Tethys will disclose new worlds and Thule not be the farthest of lands.

The list goes on, and Thule had its place in the world. It even became interchangeable with the very similar myth of Hyperborea. The question that remained was, where exactly is it?

Theories

In later centuries, especially during the Middle Ages, Thule became only a symbol of the unknown north. Some scholars believe Pytheas may have been referring to Iceland, given the description of a land north of Britain that experiences long summer days. Others suggest that Thule could refer to Scandinavia in general. Our biggest clue is that the land has no nights, which narrows us down to Norway, Sweden, and Iceland.

The "congealed sea" resembling a "sea-lung" also gives us an idea. A sea-lung was an ancient term for jellyfish. A type of substance that looks like a jellyfish would be either new sea ice or pumice. Both exist in the Arctic Circle near Iceland, with its many volcanoes.

Classicist H.J.W. Wijsman at the University of Amsterdam suggested that Thule was the Shetland Islands, which lie halfway between Orkney and Norway. They experience long days of sunlight and pancake ice. However, the Shetlands are too close to Britain to be six days north. Six days suggests either Norway or Iceland.

That should solve it, right? Wrong. There's another piece to the puzzle: the inhabitants.

Slain Scots

In his writings, the poet Claudius said:

Thule was warm with the blood of Picts; ice-bound Hibernia [Ireland] wept for the heaps of slain Scots.

This detail has made many believe that Thule was actually Scotland since the Picts were its native inhabitants. Celius Cetalicus claimed the natives were painted blue, which the Picts infamously did. We do not know much about what eventually happened to the Picts. They seemed to have vanished completely except for a few archaeological remnants here and there.

Historians do not even know their origin story. Did the Picts originate from Thule and migrate to the British Isles? A clue from Eustathius of Thessalonica could help. He wrote that the inhabitants of Thule were at war with dwarves living in the inner earth. Therefore, they had to flee to nearby lands in the region. This oral tradition continued in the writings of another scholar, Geoffrey of Monmouth, who suggested that dwarves invaded the British Isles in the distant past. 

Some offer a more straightforward hypothesis than a dwarf invasion from the center of the Earth. Because Thule seems likely to have been either Scandinavia or Iceland, the blond-haired, tall inhabitants might be Vikings. A Byzantine Greek princess and historian named Anna Komnene explicitly wrote that the Vikings came from Thule. They seem to fit the descriptions, and the Vikings were seafarers, after all. This brings us to our next chapter in the story: the island of Smøla.

Smøla

At first glance, there isn't much here. The Norwegian island of Smøla has a population of just over 2,000 people and a handful of modest wooden houses surrounded by frigid waters. But tourism is bustling since it is being marketed as the lost island of Thule.

In a study done by the Technical University of Berlin, researchers used ancient Greek and Roman maps to determine Thule's location. Taking into account the ancient world's tendency to over or under-estimate distances, they somehow managed to zero in on this small island. One of the researchers told a local Smøla journalist:

About this old information, there cannot be an doubt anymore…You live on the mystic island of Thule.

Local politicians and leaders in the community agreed.

A dubious symbol

Thule became an important symbol for explorers and even some evil characters. Thule played a central role in Nazi Germany’s occultist beliefs. During the early 20th century, a group of German occultists and nationalists formed the Thule Society. It believed that Thule was a lost homeland of the Aryan race. The society was influential in the early stages of the Nazi Party. Although it did not find any physical evidence of Thule, its name became associated with esoteric ideas and racial myths.

Modern scientific expeditions, such as those focusing on Greenland and the Arctic Ocean, continue to push the boundaries of our understanding of the Earth’s polar regions. The Thule Air Base in Greenland (now officially called the Pituffik Space Base), operated by the United States Air Force, is a symbol of the real-world presence of human activity in the remote Arctic, once thought to be beyond civilization’s reach.

Its name carried on to places like Thule Island in the South Sandwich Islands and the Thule people (ancestors of the modern Inuit). However, they have nothing to do with the actual myth.

One thing is certain: more attention must be paid to the inhabitants, particularly the Picts. There is a clear gap in their story and the very random mention of them by Roman scholars. If the Picts originated from Thule, this would unlock a vital part of Scottish history that we did not know existed.

It is a cheesy B-movie, an iconic X-Files episode, and possibly the best-known World War II legend alongside the Nazi Gold Train. From coded letters and strange deaths to teleportation, the Philadelphia Experiment bursts with mystery and intrigue.

Mysterious letters

Our story begins in 1955. Morris K. Jessup was a jack of all trades -- an astrophysicist, mathematician, professor, car parts salesman, photographer, archaeologist, and ufologist. Despite some wild ideas, he was highly respected. His magnum opus, The Case for the UFO, proved popular and drew the attention of readers from all walks of life, including the U.S. government. 

In January of 1955, Jessup received some odd letters from a mysterious man named Carl Allen. The unsolicited letters detailed a peculiar incident in the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard involving a ship called the USS Eldridge.

The letters were exceedingly strange. They included multiple errors, randomly underlined text, haphazardly capitalized words, and variations of Carl Allen's name (sometimes referring to himself as Carlos Miguel Allende). Additionally, the letters included a random grouping of letters and numbers with no context. There was a return address:

Road No.1

Box 223

New Kensington

Pennsylvania

Allen closed his letters, rather rudely, "Disrespectfully yours…"

The details

Supposedly, in October 1943, Allen was working on a ship called the SS Andrew Furuseth when he and several others witnessed a strange green glowing fog. The fog enveloped the USS Eldridge and the ship disappeared and reappeared within a span of a few minutes.

Allen wrote that the vessel was rendered invisible and teleported to Norfolk, Virginia (some 480km away) by the U.S. Navy. According to Allen, when the Eldridge disappeared, it looked like something was still floating on the surface of the water. The green glowing fog around the vessel was supposedly a force field that caused it to disappear.

Allen believed that the U.S. government had solved the "unified field theory" and put it into practice. Albert Einstein worked unsuccessfully on the unified field theory for much of his career after the relativity breakthrough. The unified field theory sought to reconcile the four fundamental forces of nature (gravitational force, electromagnetic force, strong nuclear force, and weak nuclear force) into one theoretical framework.

Einstein theorized that if you could reconcile these forces, humanity would be able to achieve things we consider science fiction. We'd be able to control matter, control gravity, create wormholes, and manipulate time and space. According to Allen, the U.S. government had achieved this and successfully teleported the ship.

But Allen also heard screams. When he boarded the ship, he discovered many of the crew members had suffered horrific deaths. Others were violently ill, had limbs fused with the ship, or had gone crazy.

Allen claimed this was part of a top-secret experiment called Project Rainbow. However, when Jessup tried to contact Allen for further details, there was no reply. 

Another surprise

Later, the Office of Naval Research (ONR) also received a mysterious package from Allen with a note attached saying "Happy Easter." The package included Jessup’s book The Case for the UFO, cryptic notes, and scribbled math and physics equations.

Unable to track Allen down, the ONR decided to enlist Jessup's help to solve the mystery since his book was at the center of the case. Jessup and the ONR confirmed that the handwriting from Allen's letters to Jessup and the package note were a match. But the return address found on Jessup's letters was a dead end. All the ONR found was an abandoned house.

Yet, for conspiracy theorists, this is evidence that something strange happened in Philadelphia. If the ONR were pursuing this, it had to suggest there was some truth to the story. If it wasn’t true, wouldn’t the Navy have ignored the package?

The U.S. government denies the entire story.

Jessup's death

Jessup died suddenly in 1959. He was found in his car, having died from inhaling toxic fumes from a hose connected to the car’s exhaust pipe. He was in financial trouble, with his books failing commercially, and his wife had left him. Though relatives and friends deemed him suicidal in his last days, others thought differently.

Some sources state that he was not yet dead when police found him. He was not taken to a hospital, and no official autopsy was performed. His death was ruled a suicide. However, there was no suicide note, prompting conspiracy theorists to suggest he was killed.

A cover-up?

The Philadelphia Experiment story refused to go away. Conspiracy theorists insisted for decades that the U.S. military covered it up. There was enough interest that the ONR published an official report/information sheet in 1996 on the scientific impossibility of what some claimed this unified field theory enabled them to do.

The ONR also stated that the Eldridge was never in Philadelphia and that "the archives has a letter from Lieutenant Junior Grade William S. Dodge, the Master of the Andrew Furuseth in 1943, denying that he or his crew observed any unusual event while in Norfolk."

The ONR did admit to investigating the package but explained that the investigation was led by two officers who found the case fascinating. 

The Eldridge's logs say it remained in the New York harbor until November 1, and it was part of a larger convoy. On November 2, it entered the Naval Operating Base in Norfolk. It sailed between Norfolk and New York Harbor until December 31. While it was briefly in Norfolk, it did not teleport there and did not arrive there in October. As for the Andrew Furuseth, it traveled from Norfolk to various locations in October. 

If there was any experimentation going on, it might have been the Navy testing a new technology that could cloak or render a vessel invisible to radar. This is called degaussing, which refers to the process used to reduce or eliminate unwanted magnetic fields. With a ship or submarine, degaussing helps mask its presence.

As for the green glowing fog, this could be a case of St Elmo’s Fire (a common occurrence on ships) or green lightning.

The real Carl Allen

Carl Allen was a real person. An article in Fate Magazine by Robert A. Goermen, an investigative writer on the weird and unexplained, revealed that he lived in New Kensington, Pennsylvania (Allen's return address).

Goermen tracked Allen's latest address to New Mexico and interviewed relatives who described him as a "master leg-puller." Allen was a known prankster with a flair for the theatrical. A relative stated that Allen was "a drifter, he reads continually but the information gets all twisted somehow."

Allen might have had mental problems that could have stemmed from his service in the U.S. Navy during WWII. He was in the Marines but was dismissed in less than a year. In his letters, the random sequence of numbers and letters next to his name turned out to be his ID. He did work for the Navy as a merchant mariner.

Eventually, Allen did make himself known to authors and interviewers. He had a bizarre habit of showing up and relaying the story with conviction before retracting it and declaring it a hoax. He did this several times. According to author Konstantinos Delimpasis with e-telescope.gr, he provided information about the experiment to paranormal authors Ivan Sanderson and Brad Steiger for their books Uninvited Visitors and The Allende Letters, respectively.

However, he later approached the Aerial Phenomena Research Office in Tuscon, Arizona and admitted he had made the story up. He also allowed authors William Moore and Charles Berlitz to interview him in 1979 for their book The Philadelphia Experiment and retracted his confession.

It seems likely that he was wasting everyone's time. Either Allen wanted attention or had legitimate mental problems.

Robert Eggers' film Nosferatu has renewed interest in vampires. Folklore about them abounds, and their presence -- or preventing their presence -- used to be a real concern. Some archaeologists refer to mysterious graves around Europe and North America as "anti-vampire" burials. These feature iron stakes through hearts, decapitations, sickles placed on necks, and bricks in mouths.

A common practice

Many graves show human remains that people have desecrated, rearranged, and interred with "preventive measures" to ensure the dead didn’t return as vampires.

Sometimes, people buried the deceased on their side or with the skull face down. They stuffed stones or bricks in the skull's jaw to prevent the corpse from chewing through wrappings. Other times, they chained or nailed the body down or even decapitated the corpse.

The Mercy Brown case

Vampires didn't just occur in Transylvania. In 1892, in Exeter, Rhode Island, several members of the Brown family were suffering from tuberculosis. As they wasted away, they looked like living corpses, with sunken eyes and extremely pale skin. Mary Brown and one of her daughters, Mary Olive, died of the affliction. This left George Brown, his son Edwin, and his daughter Mercy Lena.

Then Edwin fell ill. After taking advice from local doctors, he escaped to another state with better weather. There, his health improved a little.

Mercy was also ill, but her case was unusual. She was almost asymptomatic, and minor symptoms that did arise came and went for years. Yet she died at 19 in 1892.

The deaths prompted rumor and speculation.

A local newspaper article from 1892 stated:

During the few weeks past, Mr. Brown has been besieged on all sides by several people who expressed implicit faith in the old theory that -- by some unexplained and unreasonable way -- in some part of the deceased relative’s body, live flesh and blood might be found, which is supposed to feed upon the living who are in feeble health.

People believed the deaths were supernatural, and the panicked townsfolk pleaded with George Brown to exhume the bodies of his family. A neighbor suggested that Mercy might have caused Edwin’s condition and the deaths of her family. He thought Mercy’s corpse could rise from the grave as a vampire.

In response to this local paranoia, the Brown family consulted a local doctor. The doctor believed that exhuming the bodies might provide some answers.

Mercy’s body, unlike those of her mother and sister, appeared remarkably well-preserved. Despite nearly two months in the ground, she had a ruddy, reddish complexion, and her mouth was slightly open. Locals took this as a sign that she was feeding on the blood of the living.

They removed her heart and liver, reportedly still in a "bloody" state. This was considered another telltale sign she was responsible for the deaths in her family. They cremated her heart and liver, mixed her ashes into tea, and fed it to her sickly brother Edwin. Whatever they hoped this would accomplish, it didn't work. He died some months later. 

New England's Vampire Panic

A similar story occurred decades earlier. The Ray family from Jewett City, Connecticut, also suffered from a disease now suspected to be tuberculosis. The father and his two sons died, and another son fell ill soon after.

The bodies of the deceased sons were exhumed and burned. They became widely known as the Jewett City Vampires.

Jewett City became a hotspot for grave desecration. Smithsonian Magazine writer Abigail Tucker recounts another eerie discovery from the 1990s.

A group of children found human remains near a mine. Experts dated the bones to the 1840s, and subsequent archaeological excavations found 29 more skeletons. One stood out.

J.B. (as shown on his tombstone) was decapitated, and his ribs shattered. His coffin was also smashed. Either someone hated him, or he was a "vampire."

The discovery led to hysteria and paranoia. Historians called this madness the New England Vampire Panic. Just as witch hysteria in the 1600s made people fear the living, so this prompted widespread fear of the dead.

Michael E. Bell, a prominent figure in the New England folklore community, spent his life collecting stories of the region's vampires. His blog, Vampires Grasp, delves into oral and family histories. His most famous work, Food of the Dead, contains interviews with the descendants of these so-called vampires. He spoke with Mercy Brown's descendant, Everett, who told him that the vampire panic did not stop with Mercy's death and exhumation:

Everett was angry and sad as he described some of the negative attention that Mercy's grave attracts. People were taking chips from the stone as mementos, and some were even placing tape recorders in her grave.

In 1996, someone stole her gravestone. Our morbid fascination with the unexplained remains unchanged.

Were vampires simply outcasts?

Europe also experienced vampire panic.

On the Greek island of Lesbos, archaeologist Hector Williams uncovered a male skeleton whose corpse was nailed down by iron spikes. The spikes went through his ankles, pelvis, and neck.

We’re used to tales of Count Dracula and Vlad the Impaler from the wilds of Romania, but Poland is perhaps where the vampire myth is strongest. Apotropaic Practices and the Undead: A Biogeochemical Assessment of Deviant Burials in Post-Medieval Poland by a research team led by Lesley A. Gregoricka investigated anti-vampire or "deviant" burials in Poland. They looked for links to immigrant communities or other marginalized groups.

The study examined local cultural practices during the medieval period:

Individuals ostracized during life for their strange physical features, those born out of wedlock or who remained unbaptized, and anyone whose death was unusual in some way -- untimely, violent, the result of suicide, or even as the first to die in an infectious disease outbreak -- all were considered vulnerable to reanimation after death.

[...] Of these six individuals, five were interred with a sickle placed across the throat or abdomen, intended to remove the head or open the gut should they attempt to rise from the grave.

Two individuals also had large stones positioned beneath their chins, likely as a preventative measure to keep the individual from biting others or to block the throat so that the individual was unable to feed on the living.

The study also provides evidence that these individuals were from other parts of Europe. Could this suggest a link between vampires and migrants? Perhaps deeming someone a vampire was a form of prejudice.

A scapegoat for the unexplained

Vampire stories feature common themes, such as fear of disease. At the time, people did not understand germs and bacteria, and tuberculosis and infection could easily acquire supernatural portents. People also believed diseases were God's punishment, not a natural part of life. Unexplained deaths easily led to supernatural rumors and, occasionally, to vampire panics.

Picture a land free of politics and persecution. The working man, no longer under the heavy thumb of diabolical kings, oppressive governments, and unjust nobility, can live in peace and plenty.

Cultures across the globe all have their version of a mythical utopia: the Garden of Eden, Elysium, Shambhala. In the heart of Eurasia, people believed in Belovodye, a paradise on Earth sought by the Russian peasantry, religious figures, and esoteric thinkers since the 1000s. 

In Russian folklore, it goes by several names: Belovodye, Oponskoye, Oponia, the Land of Chud. Belovodye means “Land of White Water.” But where did this myth begin?

Oral tradition

In the late 900s, a monk named Sergius traveled from Greece to Kyiv. He met with Prince Vladimir the Great and spoke of a mythical land in the East where there was no war, crime, or injustice. Rivers flowed with milk, their banks made of honey and jelly. There was vast wealth, and peasants were happy and unburdened with work. The Prince, either a man of great faith or extreme gullibility, sent the monk off in search of this utopia. But the monk’s expedition disappeared.

Over 50 years later, a man came to Kyiv claiming to be Sergius. He explained that wild animals, disease, and starvation killed his men but that he survived deep in the mountains of Asia. There, he obtained secret knowledge and did not grow old. Supposedly, the main commandment of this secret place is that every century, six -- and only six -- people may visit. One of the six must stay behind while the others return home. The man claiming to be Sergius called the place Shambhala.

This story became the basis of a centuries-old struggle by a group of Russian Orthodox Christians fighting to keep their culture and faith alive. 

Russian Orthodox legend

In the 17th century, the Russian Orthodox Church underwent a controversial reform. Patriarch Nikon of Moscow made major changes in rituals and texts to align Russian Orthodoxy with Greek Orthodoxy. He also had close ties with the Russian government, whose power and influence he used to suppress practitioners of the previous rites. The people who adhered to the original rites were called Old Believers.

Old Believers passed down the improbable story of an earthly paradise from generation to generation, replacing the name Shambhala with Belovodye. They said that Belovodye was a refuge for Orthodox Christians to live in peace away from persecution and where they were safe from the spirit of the Antichrist. Belovodye was said to be ruled by a White Tsar at the edge of the flat Earth. 

The myth continued into the 18th and 19th centuries. According to writer Georgy Manaev with Russia Beyond, a 19th-century monk from the Topozersky monastery in the city of Arkhangelsk claimed to have visited Belovodye. He said it was founded not by Old Believers but by Assyrian Christians. The monk said that one must be baptized twice to return home and that the city contained over 170 Assyrian churches.

He wrote in his account about "a route by the Chinese realm, requiring 44 days across the Guban, then to the Kingdom of Oponia. There, the inhabitants have a home in the confines of the ocean called Byelovodiye."

Slavicist and translator Clarence Augustus Manning believed "Guban" might have meant the Gobi desert. 

Theosophist perspective

In the 1920s, theosophist Nicholas Roerich and his wife Helena embarked on a five-year expedition through Asia. He searched for Shambhala and also mentions Belovodye in his writings.

"If, despite all the dangers, your spirit is ready…the people of Belovodye will greet you. Should they find that you are worthy, they may even permit you to remain with them," Roerich wrote.

He claimed that Shambhala and Belovodye are two separate places.

Roerich met with some Old Believers in the Altai Mountains who told him that Belovodye was somewhere among those peaks. However, they said that only those spiritually in tune and full of belief could enter its borders. These stories inspired Roerich to paint his 1933 work, Pilgrim of the Radiant City, our Featured Image above.

Expeditions

The search for Belovodye has been chaotic and full of scams.

Georgy Manaev from Russia Beyond wrote about a peasant who scammed police in 1807, running off with a handsome reward after promising to lead an expedition to Belovodye. A man claiming to be an archbishop from Belovodye also hoodwinked some Old Believers.

In 2015, German travel journalist Jens Muhling journeyed through Russia and heard the Belovodye legend while spending time with a woman named Agafya living in the Taiga. Agafya came from a family of Old Believers who had been oppressed by the Bolsheviks. With their livelihoods taken by the state (their produce was seized and redistributed), her family fled to the Altai Mountains. She told Muhling how her ancestors went searching for Belovodye.

"They knew that true Christians lived in Belovodye. And that there were churches and priests. Even bishops. They wanted to live in Belovodye," she said.

Her family got into contact with a "bishop" claiming to be from Belovodye, but this was also a scam. The family continued to search along the Arctic Coast, the Chinese border, and the Altai before giving up.

Geographical location?

Perhaps Belovodye was not a specific geographic location. Old Believers were oppressed under the Tsar, the Bolsheviks, and the reformed Orthodox Church. Persecutions, including torture and murder, forced Old Believers to flee to extremely remote areas.

Believers ventured deep into Siberia and the Altai Mountains. Some lived simply but happily. The state caught up to others, annexed their land, and enforced brutal double taxation and other restrictions. So, it could be said that these remote areas represented Belovodye, a temporary utopia, at least for a time. 

Today, people often refer to Mount Belukha, the Bukhtarma, or the Uimon Valley in the Altai as Belovodye. The Uimon Valley certainly featured Old Believer villages. Additionally, the Altai Mountains lie at the intersection of Russia, China, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan, an intersection of cultures and myths.

Legacy

There are only a few hundred thousand Old Believers left. Since the schism, Old Believers have scattered to several countries, including the U.S., Canada, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Estonia, and Australia.

Recently, the Russian government has used Belovodye to try and persuade Old Believers to repopulate Siberia. Siberia's population is declining. In 2011, the Russian government established special programs for new settlers. Old Believers, used to living in remote areas, began to return to Siberia to revitalize communities. 

Conclusion

Going back to the original myth from the 900s, the monk said he visited Shambhala. It is possible that he visited areas in Asia where this myth was alive and popular. Bringing back the myth to Kyiv, it could then have spread to Russia. There, Old Believers could have integrated the myth into their beliefs. Shambhala and Belovodvye share many similarities: They are both mythical utopias of peace, justice, and divinity.

Interestingly, Belovodye is not the only mythical city Old Believers swore existed. They also had their version of Atlantis. Kitzeh was a town that saved itself from a Mongol onslaught by sinking into the sea.

I am prepared to risk it all by admitting that I enjoyed Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. There it is. The 2008 film didn’t get the best reception because of its overdone CGI and unlikeable characters. But the storyline -- centered on a mysterious, elongated skull from Peru -- grabbed me.

Crystal skulls are some of the most fascinating, strange mysteries out there. They arrived on the archaeological scene in the 19th century, most without stories or context attached. For many years, no one knew who made them or why. But in the early 2000s, they were proven to be fakes, so why do museums still bother to display them? 

Where it all began

Our story begins in January 1924. The sound of cutting, cracking and enthusiastic voices interrupted the stillness of the jungle in British Honduras (now Belize). A group of local Mayan descendants, a teenage girl and her dear Papa were searching for something. The father, Frederick Mitchell-Hedges, was on a mission to fulfill his dream of becoming a world-renowned archaeologist after leaving his Wall Street job. And Anna, his protege and adopted daughter, wanted to make a name for herself in the field as well.

Somewhere in the bush was a lost city called Lubaantun, or “the place of fallen stones” in ancient Yucatek Maya. The site was occupied from 730 to 890 AD. At first, it did not look like much, with stones scattered everywhere and the ruins of pyramids. But it would become the epicenter of a phenomenon that took the world by storm. 

On finding the ruins, young Anna took this chance to explore for herself without the supervision of her father. While peering through a crack in a sunken temple, she saw a small shiny object glistening in the sliver of sunlight. Risking the unstable ruins, she ventured into the dark and uncovered a skull. Not just any skull. Rather, it was a life-size skull of pure, clear quartz (13cm high, 18cm long, and 13cm wide.) This was her ticket to fame, and the skull soon became known as the Mitchell-Hedges skull.

A supernatural object?

The discovery overjoyed their Mayan guides. Supposedly, it had been missing for centuries and was a big part of their heritage. According to local legends, the skull was a crystallized likeness of a beloved and powerful high priest. To preserve his powers, they crafted the skull after him, believing that his essence could be transferred into the skull. Those in possession of the skull could will death on his enemies.

The most important rule was, don’t look into its eyes. It will drive you mad or even kill you. Curiously, the locals gifted Frederick and Anna the skull as a thank-you. Since then, the skull has been credited by New Agers, shamans, and UFO enthusiasts as the key to hidden knowledge and unlocked psychic abilities. They nicknamed it the Skull of Doom.

Skulls were not uncommon in Mesoamerican cultures. They played a big role in the religious, social, and artistic lives of the Maya and Aztecs. It symbolized both life and death and was mostly associated with human sacrifice, rebirth, and appeasing the gods. Skulls continue to be a major symbol of Mexican cultural practices.

An art restorer named Frank Dorland studied the skull to estimate its value. He determined it was thousands of years old, even older than the site itself. He believed it was carved out of a chunk of quartz, rubbed together, shaped, sanded down, and polished with diamonds for 150-300 years, the time it would take to make it so clear.

Where it gets weird

You would think that such a discovery would have made Anna and Frederick famous as soon as they got back to civilization. Wrong. It wasn't until the 1940s that the skull went public. So why wait? Unless the pair was hiding something.

After her father died in 1959, Anna went into full-on marketing mode. She began to promote events in which patrons could -- for $5 admission -- view the skull, feel its power, and hear about that life-changing find in the jungles of Belize. First red flag! The 1960s and 1970s were the perfect time to start such a venture, as spirituality and New Age exploration were at their peak.

If you check out Frederick's autobiography titled Danger My Ally, you'll see that it does not mention Anna's discovery at all. You’d think that Frederick would have raved about the skull or at least made its discovery public. Rather, there is only mention of acquiring a skull, saying:

It is at least 3,600 years old and according to legend was used by the High Priest of the Maya when performing esoteric rights. When the High Priest willed death, with the help of the skull, death inevitably followed. It has been described as the embodiment of evil. I do not wish to try and explain this phenomenon....

No mention

Why is there no mention of Anna and her find?

Let's look at Frederick Mitchell-Hedges. He was a restless man working in the finance sector, trying to build wealth for himself in London and Wall Street in New York City. Deep down, however, he yearned to be an archaeologist, particularly one who was well respected in the academic community.

Mitchell-Hedges left his well-paying job after saving up £4000 and became a full-time explorer. He had somewhat of a reputation, getting into relationships with wealthy women so he had access to funding for his expeditions. He even claimed that he found artifacts from Atlantis. Surely, such a person would have spoken about this crystal skull.

However, records from the Sotheby's, published in the British journal Man, show a skull -- reputedly an artifact from Mexico -- went up for auction in 1936. The buyer was none other than Mitchell-Hodges. It seemed that he bought the skull, and the whole story of its serendipitous discovery was apocryphal.

The truth comes out

When Anna was confronted with this information, she stated that her father ran into financial trouble and received a loan from an art dealer named Sydney Burney after Mitchell-Hedges gave him the skull as collateral. However, Burney double-crossed him and put it up for auction.

Yet in a letter to his brother in 1943, Mitchell-Hedges suggests that the crystal skull was, in fact, a purchase:

The "Collection" grows and grows and grows. You possibly saw in the papers that I acquired that amazing Crystal Skull that was formerly in the "Sydney Burney Collection." It is fashioned from a single block of transparent rock crystal, exactly life-size; scientists put the date at pre-1800 BC, and they estimate it took five generations passing from father to son, to complete. It is anthropologically perfect in every detail, a superb piece of craftsmanship. There is only one other in the world known like it, which is in the British Museum and it is acknowledged to be not so fine as this.

The matter was eventually put to rest in the 1970s when curious researchers from Hewlett-Packard's laboratories took up Dorland's suggestion to analyze it. Though the lab's technology could not determine its age, it did find signs of metal drills used on its teeth. Anna did not hesitate to take the skull back and refuse any more scrutiny.

Anna's later years

Anna married a man named Bill Homman and they toured with the skull until she died in 2007. Homman became its owner and he took the skull to the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. for analysis. However, it did not have the answers he was looking for.

Jane Walsh, the main researcher behind the tests, found some interesting details. X-ray and electron microscope scans revealed polishing and tool marks consistent with 19th and 20th-century techniques, particularly those associated with rotary tools and abrasives, most likely with a diamond head. Therefore, this was most likely made in the 1930s.

Ancient civilizations, including the Maya and Aztecs, lacked the technology to carve such precise and smooth shapes from hard quartz. The fact that some skulls displayed features like perfectly symmetrical teeth suggested they were produced much more recently than claimed. Yet...this skull is on display for its expert craftsmanship rather than its historical accuracy.

It's now apparent that the elaborate tale of Anne finding the skull deep in a cave in a jungle in Belize was made up from start to finish. The inconsistencies in her story, conveniently bending the details of her father’s purchase of the skull from an art dealer in London in the 1940s and the lack of records of having been in Belize in 1924 in the first place all point to an elaborate con job. 

Other skulls turn up

The Mitchell-Hedges Skull is not the first such quasi-treasure. They've been around since the 1800s. The British Museum’s crystal skull, often referred to as the Mittler Skull, was acquired in 1897 from a collector named Eugene Boban.

A French antiquities dealer, Boban claimed that it had been discovered in Mexico. Most likely, he lied about its age to get more sales. He said it was found in an ancient Aztec or Mayan tomb. Others linked it to the broader lore surrounding pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures. However, the lack of solid provenance and the skull's highly polished surface has led many researchers to question its authenticity as a genuine artifact.

When Dr Jane Walsh received another skull in an anonymous package, she couldn't help but analyze it. This one was not life-size but very large, around 31 pounds. It was not an accurate human skull but had more decorative embellishments. She enlisted the help of British Museum scientist Margaret Sax to help her compare the two skulls.

After rigorous tests, she said:

British Museum scientist Margaret Sax and I examined the British Museum and Smithsonian skulls under light and scanning electron microscope and conclusively determined that they were carved with relatively modern lapidary equipment which were unavailable to pre-Columbian Mesoamerican carvers...

The British Museum skull was worked with hard abrasives such as corundum or diamond, whereas X-ray diffraction revealed traces of carborundum (SiC), a hard modern synthetic abrasive, on the Smithsonian skull. Investigation of fluid and solid inclusions in the quartz of the British Museum skull, using microscopy and Raman spectroscopy, shows that the material formed in a mesothermal metamorphic environment equivalent to greenschist facies. This suggests that the quartz was obtained from Brazil or Madagascar, areas far outside pre-Columbian trade networks.

Conclusion

So, where does this leave us? They're fake, yes. But you can't help but admire the craftsmanship and beauty of the pieces. In a way, its creators got what they wanted: fame of a sort.

My grandfather and I had a daily ritual when I came home from school. I breezed through my homework so we could watch National Geographic, the History Channel, or the Discovery Channel. I called it the Educational Trinity. Those afternoons shaped my fascination with all the strange things in our world.

Glued to the TV one day, I came across a program about UFOs. One particular story stuck with me. In 1998, a photograph was taken from the International Space Station. It was of a black, oddly shaped object hovering in the eerie, pale glow of Earth’s orbit. What was this object? Was it watching us? Where did it come from? Years later, I may finally have answers.

What happened in 1998?

In December 1998, the Space Shuttle Endeavour flew to the International Space Station. The STS-88 mission was critical for the expansion of the ISS, and the astronauts were supposed to connect the first American module (Node 1) to the station.

While some astronauts worked outside, those inside took photos of Earth. To their surprise, a mysterious object was floating a short distance away. When NASA released the images, the object became a topic of debate on Earth.

Some people assumed it was a UFO monitoring our planet. The dark, angular object was unlike any human-made satellite. It lacked the usual circular or cylindrical shape with panels at the sides. Rather, this one had odd edges, curves, and no identifiers like flags or model numbers. In certain images, the object appeared to change shape.

The object became known as the Black Knight Satellite. Some conspiracy theorists believe it dates back to Nikola Tesla's experiments with electricity and radio signals.

Nikola Tesla

Black Knight conspiracy theorists link the object to 1899 when Nikola Tesla conducted experiments in Colorado Springs. Tesla built the Tesla Experimental Station, where he aimed to study electricity, wireless telegraphy, and the role of air pressure. While conducting these tests, his receiver picked up on some peculiar signals. In 1899, he reported:

We’re getting messages from the clouds one hundred miles away, possibly many times that distance…

Later on, in 1935, he stated:

In 1899, while experimenting with a wireless receiver of extraordinary sensitivity, I detected faint signals from Mars, our brother planet. I could not interpret the signals, but they seemed to suggest a numerical code, one–two–three–four.

As interesting as these signals sounded, Tesla ran into financial trouble and did not pursue the matter further.

Decades later, in 1927, Norwegian amateur radio operator Jorgen Hals was playing around with his radio equipment. Upon turning the radio to a certain frequency, the signals bounced back slower than usual (15 seconds as opposed to one-seventh of a second). Why the delay? Had Hals picked up on something lurking above the Earth? This odd phenomenon is cited as early evidence of the satellite's existence.

The UFO craze

In the 1950s and 1960s, reports of a satellite of unknown origin circulated. In a 1954 newspaper report titled Artificial Satellites Circling Earth Now, says Ex-Marine, ufologist and former Marine Donald Keyhoe said there were:

At least one, and possibly two, artificial satellites circling the earth.

Another report stated that unusual radio signals had been detected in Earth's ionosphere. Supposedly, the signals didn’t match patterns from human-made transmissions.

The U.S. military initially attributed the signals to the Soviet Union or natural space phenomena. However, the Soviets only launched Sputnik 1, their first satellite, in 1957. This led some researchers to suggest an alien satellite was responsible. 

In 1958, amateur astronomer Steven Slayton spotted an anomaly close to the Moon. Through his telescope, Slayton saw a fast-moving dark object that he estimated was 10m long and 1,000km from Earth. He saw this object more than once during his night sky observations.

In the 1960s, when the Space Race heated up, reports of strange objects increased. Astronaut John Glenn's account of three spacecraft following his ship during his first orbital flight is well documented.

In March 1960, several newspapers reported strange activity in Earth's polar orbit; again, an object of unknown origin. Years later, this was revealed to be a U.S. satellite designed to spy on the Russians.

Observing Earth for 13,000 years

It wasn't until the 1970s that the object finally got its name. 'Black Knight' comes from a novel by Russian author Alexander Kazantsev. In his book, The Destruction of Faena, an alien civilization sent a satellite to observe the human race. The satellite had the code name, Black Prince.

One of the most prominent figures associated with the Black Knight theory is Duncan Lunan, a Scottish researcher and writer. In 1973, Lunan published an article in the Fortean Times, a magazine dedicated to anomalous phenomena. In this article, Lunan analyzed radio signals recorded in 1928 and 1950.

Lunan theorized that the signals were not random. Rather, they were a coded message sent from a satellite orbiting Earth. He suggested that the signals could be of extraterrestrial origin, although he was careful to point out that they might not necessarily be linked to the Black Knight. In fact, Lunan distanced himself from the Black Knight conspiracy, saying it had "nothing to do with me." 

Lunan studied Long Delayed Echoes (LDEs) and believed they created "star charts and diagrams," according to an article published by Armagh Observatory and Planetarium. On his website, Lunan states:

When I tried graphing the signals to see if that would work, to my astonishment I found what appeared to be a readable message, giving Epsilon Boötis (Izar) as the origin star of the spacecraft, and its arrival date as 11,000 BC.

Let's debunk

Circling back to Tesla and Hals, there could be a natural explanation for their mysterious findings. They could have picked up signals coming from deep-space pulsars. Pulsars are a type of neutron star, remnants of massive stars that have exploded as supernovas. A pulsar rotates rapidly, often several times per second, and its strong magnetic field generates beams of electromagnetic radiation (radio waves, X-rays, or gamma rays) which we can pick up from Earth. Astronomers did not discover pulsars until the late 1960s.

As for the STS-88 mission, as anticlimactic as it sounds, NASA’s official classification of the mystery object is a runaway thermal blanket or piece of space debris. Space debris in low orbit is common, and objects can appear irregular or even resemble artificial structures, especially from a distance.

Respected space journalist James Oberg provided substantial evidence that the object was debris. He points out that the crew on the STS-88 mission were installing a Node, which required a blanket to protect it from the sun. 

In their communications with each other on the spacewalk and from inside the space station, the astronauts even state that they lost a thermal blanket. Here is an official transcript between Commander Robert Cabana and Mission Specialist Jerry Ross:

Cabana: Jerry, one of the thermal covers got away from you.

Ross: How did it do that?

Cabana: Jim saw a tether, I’ll guarantee you. Where did it go?

Ross thought the Black Knight theory preposterous and later said:

If we see something up there, we will be the first ones to ask questions and to tell people we saw something we didn’t understand. Conspiracy theories are fun for those working on them, but a waste of valuable brain power.

So, with all this evidence, why hasn't the story died?

Reemergence in 2017

The conspiracy theory reemerged fairly recently because of an article by writer Daisy Dunne for the MailOnline. The website shared video footage that supposedly showed someone shooting down the Black Knight satellite.

The footage shows a bright white ball of debris falling from the sky. It took the internet by storm. 

Who shot it down? "A secret Illuminati warplane," according to online conspiracy theorists.

And so, though thoroughly debunked, the Black Knight Satellite continues to fuel wild theories. We must admit, it makes for a great story. 

Petroglyphs are hard puzzles to decipher. Despite a wealth of knowledge, historians and archaeologists can’t always put the whole picture together. The mysterious Dighton Rock is a classic example.

Weird inscriptions

Reverend John Danforth discovered Dighton Rock in 1680. For roughly 20 hours each day, the rock was hidden by the tides of the Taunton River in Massachusetts. The rock weighs 40 tons, is 10 to 11 feet long, and is five feet high. Its greyish-brown sandstone is carved with weird inscriptions, whose origins and meanings continue to elude explanation. Some are intelligible: triangles, infinity symbols, human figures, and animals. The rest look like random scribbles.

To preserve the rock, it was moved in 1963. It now resides in a small museum called the Dighton Rock Museum.

Danforth believed the rock had Native American origins. He speculated that the Wampanoag, Narragansett, or Algonquian peoples might have carved the petroglyphs -- most likely, the Wampanoag, he concluded. He thought that the etchings depicted a great battle and a shipwreck.

Danforth sketched the rock, and his drawings are on display in the British Museum.

Ten years after Danforth's discovery, a famous Puritan reverend named Cotton Mather came across it.

"Among the other curiosities of New England, one is...a mighty rock...there are very deeply engraved [drawings], no man alive knows how or when,” Mather wrote in his book The Wonderful Works of God Commemorated. He believed the symbols were Satanic. 

Native Americans?

Native American petroglyphs turn up all over New England. Common motifs include geometric patterns, human figures, animals, astronomical features like the sun and moon, and abstract symbols that likely held symbolic significance for hunting rituals, cosmology, tribal histories, and spiritual beliefs. Petroglyphs are also a form of communication, storytelling, and ceremonial expression. They convey important messages about the natural world, ancestral connections, and the spiritual realm. Some people interpret the Dighton Rock petroglyphs as a hunting scene.

Dighton Rock drew enough attention that even George Washington took an interest. He had experience with Native American petroglyphs and agreed with Danforth.

Phoenicians?

Theologian Ezra Stiles, one of the founders of Brown University, extensively researched Native American history and culture in the 1760s. In particular, he focused on the New England area. He visited the petroglyphs and landed on a rather controversial theory. Stiles believed the Phoenicians were responsible.

"I take [the petroglyphs] to be in Phoenician letters and 3,000 years old," Stiles wrote. "Or Punic or Carthaginian characters."

He mentioned his hypothesis in lectures and sermons. For example: "...not to mention the visit of still greater antiquity by the Phoenicians, who charged the Dighton Rock and other rocks in Narragansett Bay with Punic inscriptions."

Historian Cora E. Lutz states that many academics considered Stiles "the American authority on Dighton Rock." 

Despite his expertise in Native American petroglyphs, Stiles's Phoenician theory is way out there. It touches on the cross-cultural contact theory, whose supporters argue that the Phoenicians influenced American civilizations. But there is no hard evidence for this, merely conjecture. Just because some drawings resemble Phoenician characters does not make them Phoenician without further evidence. 

Norse?

Some people believe that the etchings resemble Viking runes.

In the 1830s, Danish historian Carl Christian Rafn thought he could link the petroglyphs with Viking sagas. Today, historians agree that the Vikings settled briefly in Canada, specifically at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland. Could Dighton Rock show Viking settlement much further south?

Rafn’s Viking theory was never substantiated. 

Portuguese?

In the 1920s, Edmund Delabarre of Brown University suggested that the seafaring Portuguese might have carved the rock.

In the early 1500s, Portuguese explorer Miguel Corte-Real explored the Newfoundland coast and vanished without a trace. Delabarre thought that Corte-Real got as far as Massachusetts. Delabarre argues that the glyphs spell out a message: "I, Miguel Cortereal, 1511. In this place, by the will of God, I became a chief of the Indians."

He also claims to see Corte-Real’s coat of arms on the rock. He dates the glyphs to the 1500s. 

Chinese?

Some other wild theories include Chinese or Japanese script. A former submarine lieutenant commander named Gavin Menzies has championed the China theory. He wrote books investigating Chinese exploration of the Americas and proposed that explorer Zheng He discovered America before Columbus.

There is no evidence to support Menzies's theory, and academics regard his work as pseudohistory.

Verification problems

Why can’t we determine when the Dighton Rock inscriptions were made? Unfortunately, weathering of the rock's surface has affected the quality of samples. Additionally, because petroglyphs are carved into the rock, they collect mineral crusts. This prevents scientists from extracting accurate samples.

Radiocarbon dating is also impossible. It requires organic material like charcoal, plant material, bone, or fossils to determine age. Petroglyphs carved into rock don't usually contain organic material.

It is also possible that the carvings are a hoax or the work of bored locals sometime before Danforth discovered the rock in 1680.

Conclusion

Most scholars lean toward Native American origins. If Norse explorers or another foreign group created the petroglyphs, it would challenge the conventional narrative of European discovery and settlement in the Americas, already a controversial debate in academia. For now, without a means of verifying the date of the petroglyphs, we are still only able to guess their origins.

In the early 1800s, a Russian naval officer pored over his maps. A pesky question plagued him: Why was Russia no longer a leading exploratory power?

Adam Johann von Krusenstern set out to change things. Because of his persistence and determination, he expanded Russia’s reach in the Pacific and earned the respect of its naval rivals in the West.

Background

Of course, Russian exploration did not begin with Krusenstern. In 1787, Catherine the Great was keen on launching an expedition to the Pacific via the Cape of Good Hope to claim territory. She chose Captain Grigory Ivanovich Mulovsky to lead the expedition. However, the expedition was abruptly canceled when the Russo-Turkish War broke out.

Years later, Krusenstern decided to see the plan through.

After James Cook's world-changing expeditions between 1768 and 1779, European powers vied to explore the uncharted Pacific Ocean. Explorers searched for resources, trade routes, and potential colony locations. But compared with other major maritime powers, such as Britain and France, Russia lagged behind.

Enter Krusenstern

Born in 1770 in what is now Estonia but was then part of the Russian Empire, Krusenstern came from a noble family with a military background. He received a good education, particularly in the sciences. This would serve him well.

Inspired by James Cook, Krusenstern entered the Russian Imperial Navy at 15 and quickly rose through the ranks.

Krusenstern's early experiences serving on the Mediterranean and Baltic fleets exposed him to naval tactics, international trade, and politics. With the navy, he visited America, China, and India, setting the stage for his career as an explorer.

His role also brought important connections. Count Nikolay Petrovich Rumyantsev of the Russian-American Company later became his main patron. He even met Tsar Alexander I.

Krusenstern presented his plans for an expedition to the Pacific to Alexander I. Charismatic, well-spoken, and knowledgeable, Krusenstern convinced the Tsar, who approved the ambitious journey.

Krusenstern believed that the discoveries of the Kamchatka Peninsula in 1696 and the Aleutian Islands (Alaska) in 1741 were two of the greatest achievements in Russian history. Those expeditions opened the door to the Pacific, and Krusenstern hoped to build on their work.

The expedition was organized hurriedly, as the Russian aristocracy was eager for him to begin.

"However flattering the enthusiasm with which the nation looked forward to this expedition, I was still not a little surprised to find that I was expected to set sail that same year,” Krusenstern wrote in a book about his voyages. Eventually, his departure was delayed by a year. 

Krusenstern had a multidisciplinary mission in mind. Though establishing Russian relations with Japan and China was a top priority, he wanted to further scientific research in Alaska, the Aleutian Islands, and Oceania. He planned to take an anthropological approach, documenting the lives and cultures of native people along the way.

Preparations begin

He scurried to find the perfect ships for the mission, settling on two British merchant vessels. He named them Nadezhda (Hope) and Neva. Neva was originally called Thames, after the river. In keeping with the tradition, he renamed it Neva, after a river in northwestern Russia. 

To pilot the Neva, Krusenstern chose Captain Yuri Lisyansky, a veteran of the Russo-Swedish War who had sailed around the world with the British. 

Anchors aweigh

The expedition set off from St. Petersburg on Aug. 7, 1803. They sailed to Copenhagen and then Falmouth, England. From Europe, Krusenstern recruited scientists, navigators, and diplomats for the journey.

They stopped in Tenerife before crossing the Atlantic to Brazil. The two ships sailed around Cape Horn to enter the Pacific. This is where the expedition split up to tackle different objectives. Krusenstern and the Nadezhda sailed to the Marquesas Islands and Nukahiva Island, while the Neva sailed for Easter Island.

They rendezvoused in the Hawaiian (formerly Sandwich) Islands before separating again, with the Nadezhda heading to Kamchatka and Japan to establish diplomatic relations while the Neva went to southern Alaska.

While in Alaska, the Neva was pressed into military duty. It fought at the Battle of Sitka for the Russians against native Alaskans.

After, the ships met up again to sail to Macao and Canton, hoping to establish trade relations. However, this proved unfruitful despite offerings of bear skins and walrus bones. They returned to St Petersburg via the Cape of Good Hope, arriving in August 1806, almost exactly three years after they left. 

Legacy

Though the expedition went down in Russian history as a great success, it failed in its objective: Neither Japan nor China were interested in pursuing a relationship with Russia.

Nevertheless, Krusenstern returned with a trove of information regarding resources, ethnic groups, marine life, oceanography, and botany. Krusenstern drew maps that aided later explorers, including his Atlas of the South Sea.

Krusenstern was also responsible for naming the Cook Islands. When James Cook visited in the 1770s, he called them the Hervey Islands. But in his atlas, Krusenstern called them the Cook Islands in the British explorer's honor. The name stuck.

Krusenstern is commemorated in various ways. He lent his name to the Krusenstern Strait (which lies between the Russian mainland and Kamchatka), the Krusenstern Glacier in Antarctica, Mount Kruzenshstern in the Novaya Zemlya archipelago, and Cape Krusenstern in Alaska. The Moon even has a Krusenstern Crater.

Later, his son Paul Theodor and his nephew Otto von Krusenstern continued exploring, venturing further into Oceania and Western North America.

Imagine kayaking on a river with your friends. It’s warm, the sun is out, and the Siberian scenery is stunning. Then suddenly, a blood-curdling scream comes from the shoreline. A hysterical teenage girl covered in blood, mumbling incoherently, runs toward you for help.

This is exactly what happened in August 1993. A few kayakers had their idyllic trip completely shaken up as they rescued the sole survivor of a gruesome tragedy known as the Khamar Daban Incident. 

Background

The story begins on August 2, 1993, in the Khamar Daban mountains of southern Siberia. A group of students visiting from Petropavl in Kazakhstan planned to hike from the shores of Lake Baikal and summit Kang-Ula.

The seven hikers were Aleksander Kyrsin, 23; Tatyana Filipenko, 24; Denis Shvachkin, 19; Valentina Utochenko, 17; Viktoriya Zalesova, 16; Timur Bapanov, 15; and leader Lyudmila Korovina, 41. They were reportedly a tight-knit bunch of good friends. 

The group had done difficult hikes before, and all were physically fit. They also had a hiking legend in their midst. Lyudmila Korovina was a well-known survivalist with a strong will and excellent problem-solving skills. She even had the nickname of Master among those she led on expeditions. 

The party set off with ample food, equipment, and clothing. Korovina called the local weather station, and the forecast was for sunny, pleasant weather. They were also not alone. Korovina’s daughter Natalia was leading a second group nearby. They planned to rendezvous at a certain point a few days later. Lyudmila Korovina’s group planned to cover 220km and climb up to 2,371m.

They set off on August 4 from Murino, near Lake Baikal. The trek started well, but the forecast proved wrong. Rain pelted down, and high winds raked the slopes. The group started to slow down and complained of cold, since temperatures had dropped below freezing. They camped and were not able to start a fire until morning. Then they successfully summited the peak. Their descent would be the last thing they’d ever do. 

Trip gone awry

Seventeen-year-old Valentina Utochenko, the sole survivor, described hearing Aleksander screaming. He was frothing from the mouth and blood was pouring out from his eyes, ears, and nose. Korovina ran to assist him but soon suffered from the same symptoms.

When Tatyana Filipenko went to help her, she started to claw at her neck as if choking and proceeded to bash her head onto a nearby rock. The others ran for their lives, but they too collapsed and died on the spot.

Alone by now, Utochenko ran down the mountain to treeline, where she stayed put and waited for her fate. But nothing happened. Eventually, she returned to the scene to see if any of her friends survived. They had not. She then collected leftover supplies and followed the power lines for four days until the kayakers rescued her. They took her to the police station, and she told them what happened. 

The autopsy

The bodies were recovered two weeks later, and autopsies were performed. Korovina, apparently, had died of cardiac arrest. The others showed signs of protein deficiencies in muscles that suggested starvation -- dubious on a short trip. Meanwhile, fluid buildup in the lungs indicated hypothermia. Nevertheless, doctors ruled these two conditions as the likely causes of death. However, this does not explain why they died within minutes after presenting no prior signs. 

A case of whodunit

Valentina Utochenko, the sole survivor, then vanished from the spotlight until a curious reporter tracked her down in 2018. Even 25 years later, Utochenko’s initial behavior toward the reporter was rather hostile. She asked the reporter why she was bringing up this nightmare again. She could have suffered from PTSD, as she had kept the incident a secret even from her husband. But eventually, Utochenko calmed down and allowed the reporter to interview her.

There are notable spots in Utochenko’s story that could have been mistranslation from Russian sources or trauma, making her forget important details. It is well-known that people can lose pieces of their memory about a stressful event.

For example, she said there was no blood when, in her initial report, there was. She also changed her story, saying there were no screams. Some have speculated whether her reaction suggests she might have been responsible for her friends' deaths, but that is highly unlikely. She had no motive. The group often went on hikes together, and exactly how does a 17-year-old girl murder six colleagues?

Investigations briefly suspected Korovina. She was apparently quite driven when it came to trekking and sometimes pushed her troops too hard. Could she have driven them into exhaustion and hypothermia?

Korovina may have had an intense personality, but she was not unprofessional, power-hungry, or negligent. Valentina Utochenko even stated that Korovina cared for the group, even to the end. 

Russian versus English sources

In dissecting this story, the popular YouTube channel The Lore Lodge pointed out that there’s a Russian version and an English version. They differ in significant ways, including even the mountain on which they died. Some sources say it was Kang-Ula, while Utochenko and Russian sources call it Retranslyator Peak. The two peaks lie some distance apart.

Some sources quote different dates for Utochenko’s rescue. Some say she emerged from the trees covered in blood and screaming, while others have her staring into space and unresponsive. It does not help that her initial 1993 police report and her 2018 interview likewise differ in key details.

Nerve agent?

How did the hikers die so quickly and violently? The most common theory remains that they fell victim to a nerve agent. It’s not an outlandish proposition. Frothing at the mouth and bleeding from the eyes, ears, and nose supposedly preceded their deaths. Siberia was the Soviet Union’s playground when it came to weapons testing. The ultimate favorite of the KGB, Novichok, was supposedly tested around here. A nerve agent can linger in an environment for months or make its way into the groundwater.

If this was the case, the nerve agent tests must have occurred months or weeks earlier. It would have stayed there until the rain and wind pushed it toward the group. Since Utochenko was apparently the farthest away from them, she might have escaped the effects.

Resemblance to Dyatlov Pass mystery

For some, this bizarre tale bears a striking resemblance to the infamous Dyatlov Pass Incident of 1959. Nine student hikers from the Ural Polytechnic Institute were found dead in Russia’s Ural Mountains. Their bodies were scattered about in various states of dress or undress. Some were barefoot and had inexplicable injuries.

One of the hikers had no eyes and tongue, another bit his knuckle off, one’s neck was twisted, and another had a fractured skull. One hiker, who left the expedition early on due to illness, survived. The placement of their belongings did not match up with their deaths. Everything was well organized except for a tent that was cut from the inside. Though this cold case remains unsolved, conspiracy theories out there point to nerve agents and government testing as well. Research published in 2019 suggests a more prosaic explanation -- avalanches and katabatic winds.

Katabatic winds can start suddenly as cold air flows down a mountain and can bring on hypothermia quickly. In the Khamar Daban incident, Utochenko verified that they battled high winds for a couple of days. Another possibility is infrasound, a silent killer. These are sound waves at frequencies undetectable to the human ear. Some natural sources of infrasound include volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. High winds are also a common cause of infrasound. Although inaudible, infrasound can do a lot of physiological damage, leading to disorientation, panic, hysteria, hallucinations, cardiac arrest, organ rupture, and even death.

This could explain Korovina's heart attack and Filipenko's violent, self-inflicted head injuries. A study by Ryan Chaban et al. from the University Hospital of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany, states that even one hour of infrasound may do serious damage.

Conclusion

It's likely the group either suffered a nerve agent attack or an extreme weather event, perhaps involving infrasound. Due to the chaos and disorientation from the cold and from seeing her friends die, Valentina Utochenko probably confused many details to the point where we can’t know what really happened. 

Belgian adventurer Jelle Veyt has been attempting to tackle the Seven Summits under his own power since 2013, by rowing, skiing, cycling, walking, and climbing. It hasn't always worked out. In 2021, he aborted his row from Portugal to Miami because of chronic seasickness. It has prompted him to sail rather than row the oceans for the rest of the project.

After three years of setbacks, he successfully cycled from the Lower 48 to Alaska and climbed Denali this past May. AFter spending a few months with family, he is now heading to 6,961m Aconcagua. This would be his sixth summit, leaving only Antarctica's Vinson to go.

Aconcagua

The highest mountain in South America lies in Argentina's Mendoza province. In September, Veyt announced the expedition's route:

I'll be kayaking from Panama to Colombia, since there are no roads through the Darien Gap. It's much safer to take this coastal kayaking route than to cross the jungle. This part of the journey will take me about two to three weeks. Afterwards, I'll be cycling all the way from Colombia to Argentina. The plan? To climb Aconcagua by December 2025...

He arrived in Panama in mid-October and started kayaking. He dealt with thunderstorms, the intense tropical sun, and stretches of coastline with few places to land. But the scariest part, he told ExplorersWeb, was a run-in with a group of narcos just 40km before his kayaking leg ended. They questioned him for three hours before letting him go.

As the expedition has stretched into 11 years and counting, Veyt has become a little looser about only using his own power. For example, he recently took a bus to drop off his kayak and pick up his bike. Still, he has put in a lot of distance on his own.

Currently, he is in Colombia and about to begin cycling 8,000km to Aconcagua.

Fifteenth-century China was a maritime powerhouse that explored new lands and opened trade routes. It was also the best-connected political entity in the world, with a presence in Asia, Africa, and Arabia. A man named Zheng He led the charge.

A complex, multi-talented character, Zheng He rose from slave to top naval commander, diplomat, and world explorer.

Background

Born into a Chinese Muslim family in Yunnan, Zheng He's birth name was Ma He.

His father was descended from Persians and worked for the Mongol Empire. This became a problem, as Chinese animosity toward the Mongolians was growing. The two nations were at war by the time Ma He was a toddler.

The rise to power

By the time Ma He was 10, his parents had died, and he was a prisoner of the Ming Dynasty's army. As was common practice, Ma He was castrated and sent for military training.

Now a eunuch, he worked at court and became an impressive warrior. Eunuchs were valued members of Chinese society, given key positions in foreign relations, national security, the military, and in court. Chinese leaders did not view eunuchs as potential rivals and did not fear disloyalty.

As horrible as Ma He's early life sounds, he experienced social mobility and became increasingly important in the Emperor's court. He became a trusted confidant of Zhu Di, the Prince of Yan and future Yongle Emperor. He gained new titles and responsibilities, eventually running the Emperor's household. Ma He became Zheng He and also the commander of Nanjing.

"Zheng He’s eclectic religious attitude and broadened cultural horizons made him a good candidate for the armada’s commander," writes Yang Wei of the Association for Asian Studies.

Expeditions

China was already the dominant trading power in the region, but the Emperor wished to extend its influence. But China's goal was not to conquer and colonize. Writer Geoff Wade argues that their aim was globalization.

"Zheng He did not occupy a single piece of land, establish any fortress, or seize wealth from other countries," Wade wrote in his article, The Zheng He Voyages: A Reassessment.

Zheng He undertook seven epic voyages from 1405 to 1433. He sailed with monstrous vessels called "treasure ships." These boats were supposedly the size of football fields, with multiple decks and hundreds of sailors. Writers Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta both mention these treasure ships, but they likely exaggerated their size for dramatic effect.

The ships carried wealth and weaponry and could transport ambassadors and dignitaries back to China. Gold, silver, porcelain, and fine silks facilitated trade and foreign relations.

Force only when necessary

Sometimes, Zheng He needed to exercise force. On one expedition, the king of Sri Lanka thought he could steal from the fleet. Zheng He sent 2,000 troops to take the Sri Lankan capital and capture the royal family. The Chinese Emperor eventually pardoned the Sri Lankan king.

Each of Zheng He's voyages had different needs and goals. The first expedition involved 120 ships and over 27,000 men. They traveled west and met with rulers from India, Sri Lanka, Java, and Champa. His second voyage involved 249 ships as they expected conflict. War had broken out between parts of Java and Ming China.

Zheng He was a charismatic diplomat and a skilled navigator who set foot in what is now India, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Maldives, Somalia, Yemen, Zanzibar, Kenya, and Oman. He brought back exotic animals and foreign dignitaries.

On his last voyage, Zheng He died. We don't know how and where he died, only that his remains are at the bottom of the ocean. During this final expedition, we know that he sailed to Java and India before breaking off from the main fleet to journey to Mecca.

Conclusion

Some people believe that Zheng He's voyages were a form of "proto-colonialism." That may be so, but facilitating this early form of globalization proved highly beneficial to China. It also benefitted Zheng He, who overcame a traumatic childhood to become one of the most influential characters in Chinese history.

Interestingly, there are still echoes of these ancient voyages in places like Kenya. On Lamu Island and Pate Island, a handful of individuals claim descent from Zheng He's sailors. According to local stories, one of Zheng He's ships wrecked on Lamu Island.

A few hundred Chinese sailors assimilated into the local population, converting to Islam and having children with Kenyan women. DNA analysis and archaeological excavations, which revealed fragments of Chinese porcelain from Zheng He's treasure ships, confirm these stories.

During the violence and instability of 17th-century Europe, monarchies and religions struggled for dominance. Constant conflict drove thousands of refugees to distant lands. Jean Baptiste Tavernier emerged from this instability to pioneer trade in the Far East.

Background

Tavernier hailed from a Protestant family of engravers and geographers based in Paris. He grew up during a time of great upheaval in Europe. Catholicism and Protestantism struggled for dominance, and Tavernier’s family traveled back and forth between France and Belgium, depending on the situation for Protestants in each. 

Despite the instability in his youth, Tavernier busied himself learning engraving and cartography. His father's travel tales enraptured him. Once he was old enough, he worked in royal courts and with the military.

Through his work, he visited England, Italy, Switzerland, Hungary, Germany, and the Netherlands. He also snagged an important position as controller of the household of the Duke of Orleans. But despite his stable occupation, Europe was not enough for him. He longed to explore the East.

Tavernier heard that a few men were going to travel to the Levant, and he decided to tag along. On his first trip, he traveled through Constantinople, Anatolia, Armenia, Persia, Iraq, Syria, and Malta.

The King of France requested that Tavernier write about his travels to inspire people to trade in the East and discover new routes. Tavernier went on five further voyages and wrote about them (with the help of a biographer) in The Six Voyages of Jean-Baptiste Tavernier.

In this travelogue, he illuminates court politics, royal family dramas, and common people's feelings toward their sovereigns. The first volume details the route from Isfahan, Iran to Agra, India.

Tavernier also wrote about customs laws and the transport of precious metals and jewels. For example, in Surat, he says: "As soon as the merchandise is landed at Surat, it has to be taken to the customs house, which adjoins the fort. The officers are very strict and search persons with great care. Private individuals pay as much as four and five percent duty on all their goods."

Gem dealing

Tavernier's greatest journey was in 1638. He went to India and spent five years making the right connections with emperors and court officials. At the time, the Kingdom of Golconda was the center of India's diamond trade. Here, he discovered his vocation as a gem merchant.

He arrived in Golconda in 1642. Golconda's diamonds came from the Kollur Mine and became world famous. They included the Daria-i-Noor (one of the Iranian Crown Jewels), the Nizam Diamond (which belonged to the Nizam of Hyderabad), the Dresden Green Diamond (which belonged to King Augustus III of Poland), and the Great Mogul Diamond (which belonged to the fifth Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan). However, one particular Golconda gem stood above all others.

In 1666, Tavernier came upon a raw, uncut diamond of 115 carats. It was unlike any gem he had ever seen. The diamond was described as violet-colored. After cutting and other aesthetic touches, it was called the French Blue, and then eventually the Hope Diamond. 

The Hope Diamond underwent three phases. In its rawest form, it was called the Tavernier Diamond and was 115 carats when extracted from the mine. Then, it was cut to 69 carats and renamed the French Blue Diamond after it was sold to the King of France, Louis XIV. In 1792, someone stole it during the French Revolution. It was cut again, becoming the Hope Diamond. It was now approximately 45 carats.

After vanishing during the French Revolution, it re-emerged in London in 1812. After several private owners, the Smithsonian Museum bought the diamond. Though cut three times, it is still the largest diamond in the world and is worth approximately 350 million dollars.

As a gem merchant, Tavernier formed close relationships with his customers, particularly royalty. He made acquaintances in India, Persia, and Java. Over decades of travel, he earned a reputation as the top gem merchant in Asia.

A cursed diamond?

The Hope Diamond is said to be cursed. The details surrounding Tavernier's procurement of the diamond are not just fantastical and defamatory but what started the legend. After he obtained the diamond, rumors began circulating in jewel trade circles. One popular tale involved Tavernier murdering someone and stealing the diamond from the head of a sacred statue of Sita, a Hindu goddess who is the consort of the god Rama.

Those who believe in the curse claim that wild animals killed Tavernier. However, historical records don't support this. We know that he died in Moscow, most likely from natural causes.

But some owners of the Hope Diamond indeed suffered financial ruin, illness, or death. One early example is Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, who were executed during the French Revolution. In 1910, a Greek jewel merchant named Simon Maocharides owned the diamond for a time. He died after driving his car off a cliff.

In the late 1950s, mailman James Todd carried the diamond to the Smithsonian Museum. Todd then suffered an onslaught of bad luck. First, he suffered a car accident that crushed his leg. Then, his wife died. Next, his dog. Finally, his house burned down. It is hard not to see a trend.

Some researchers believe that the diamond was cut several times to disguise its identity and prevent the French government from repossessing it after it was stolen during the French Revolution. So, other pieces of the diamond could be out there. If so, they could be in European crown jewel collections. The Russians claim to have a piece of the diamond among the Russian Crown Jewels. However, experts have not confirmed this.

Other possible "sister" diamonds (cut from the same stone) include the Brunswick Blue. The Brunswick Blue supposedly belonged to Charles II, Duke of Brunswick. According to Lang Antiques, the Brunswick Blue disappeared from public view after the Duke's estate was auctioned off in 1873.

Legacy

Tavernier was so influential that a diamond's worth is calculated using Tavernier’s Law. The worth is determined by the carat weight squared, multiplied by the basic price of the stone.

Tavernier has been the subject of films, including The Diamond Queen (1953) and a series of documentaries.

Author Richard Wise published The French Blue, which dealt with the events leading up to the diamond's final incarnation as the Hope Diamond. The beauty of the Hope Diamond also inspired the Heart of the Ocean necklace from the film Titanic. However, the Hope Diamond isn't a brilliant blue sapphire but rather a greyish blue. 

“July 11th. At 4 am, the Flying Dutchman crossed our bows. A strange red light as of a phantom ship all aglow…”

While sailing off the coast of Australia, Prince George, son of King Edward VII and future king of England, spotted the legendary vessel in 1881. Thirteen other crew members backed up his claim. Curiously, one man even fell off the fore-topmast and died. After this, the fear of ghost ships seized mariners everywhere. In their minds, seeing a ghost ship meant that you too would soon become a ghost.

Ghost ships are abandoned vessels without crew or passengers, drifting aimlessly on the world's oceans. Sometimes, there is little or no explanation about what happened to the souls on board. Some pegged their presence to supernatural causes.

These ships are often damaged, keeling over to one side, and simply drifting with the currents and winds. Cargo, possessions, and instruments are often intact. Sometimes, lifeboats are missing.

In other ExplorersWeb articles, we have covered maritime mysteries such as the Mary Celeste, MV Joyita, and SS Baychimo -- ghost ships all. Their crews were missing, lifeboats gone, and the whereabouts of survivors, if any, were unknown. Passengers could abandon ships for many reasons: mutinies, technical problems, life-threatening situations, etc. 

Phantom vessels

However, some ghost ships are based on folklore and crazy stories. These ships might not have existed at all, yet their myth has lodged permanently in the minds of believers. These are the so-called "phantom vessels."

So there are two types of ghost ships: real vessels whose crews have disappeared or died, and fictional ones. Here, we'll consider both types.

Because of their eerie and terrifying nature, ghost ships somehow got sucked into the realm of folklore. The unsolved mystery of what happened to their passengers is part of the allure. Sometimes, stories muddle together into chilling nautical tales. 

Runaways

Take the story of the SS Baychimo. It sailed during the First World War and into the 1930s. At that time, it became trapped in Arctic ice near Barrow, Alaska. Perhaps prematurely, its crew abandoned ship. When a blizzard hit, they tried to return to Baychimo, only to find it gone. It disappeared and reappeared throughout the 1930s, drifting with the ice. It was last seen as late as 1969. After that, it most likely succumbed to the elements and sank somewhere in the Arctic. 

In 2010, a Russian-owned cruise ship called the Lyubov Orlova was seized in St. John's, Newfoundland because it no longer met maritime standards. It was being towed back to Europe for scrap metal in 2013 when the chain connecting it to the towing vessel snapped in rough seas. It was abandoned to its fate and drifted for a few years in the North Atlantic -- occupied, so the tabloid story went, only by "cannibal rats" -- until it emitted an automated signal indicating that it had sunk. This ship had less creepy circumstances but proves that not all ghost ships have suspicious origins. 

The Flying Dutchman

Now, we get to the good part. One cannot speak of ghost ships without mentioning the Flying Dutchman. The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise won't let us forget it. Stories of the Dutchman date back to the 1700s. Many sailors swore they’d seen it. Those who did suffered misfortune and death. Supposedly, the Flying Dutchman is doomed to sail the seas forever, unable to make port.

During the heyday of the Dutch East India Company, the Flying Dutchman was sailing treacherous waters when its captain, so the tale goes, unknowingly made a deal with the Devil. if he survived the storm, he agreed to sail it until Judgement Day. Other sources state the captain was working with the Devil and defying God from the very beginning. Nevertheless, the ship and its crew were doomed to roam the seas forever.

As we mentioned earlier, the future King of England supposedly saw it when he served with the Royal Navy in the 1800s. There was also a famous account from a Captain George Barrington in 1795. While sailing around the Cape of Good Hope in the company of a second ship, he spotted the Dutchman nearby during a storm. The second vessel sank, leading the sailors to believe the Dutchman was responsible. Sightings continued until the 1940s.

One incident noted big crowds of people witnessing the Dutchman approaching the shore. Before it made port, it vanished. Even a Nazi submarine supposedly spotted it in Egypt's Suez Canal.

'I die'

Another legendary ship is the SS Ourang Medan, a ghost ship that supposedly wandered the Strait of Malacca. According to reports, in the 1940s, the Dutch freighter sent out a distress message, claiming all crew members were dead and their bodies scattered around the ship.

“All officers including captain are dead, lying in chartroom and bridge. Possibly whole crew dead,” it went, ending with a final, creepy, “I die.”

This story was published in a Dutch-Indonesian newspaper between February and March 1948. The article reads that the ship was boarded by a rescue party to find the deceased crew members with faces distorted into a rictus of horror. Besides the article, records and sightings of SS Ourang Medan are nowhere to be found. Nowadays, most impartial sources believe that the ship never existed. 

Likewise, the Jenny supposedly became trapped in ice near Antarctica's Drake Passage during the 1820s. A whaling ship came across it a decade or two later. When the crew boarded, they found a grotesque scene in which its crew members were frozen and almost alive-looking.

The Palantine Light concerns another Flying Dutchman-esque ghost ship. This time, however, it is at least based on a real event. A ship called the Princess Augusta was carrying a couple hundred German Palatine passengers from the Netherlands to Philadelphia in 1738. Sadly, disease, horrendous weather, and starvation took its toll on those aboard. After the captain died, the first mate took command, but the ship ran aground on an island. Despite records of the shipwreck, no physical remains were ever found. 

Theories

One of the distinct characteristics of these stories is a ship’s ability to appear and disappear in the blink of an eye. Fabled ghost ships like the Flying Dutchman could be a result of a Fata Morgana, a type of mirage common at sea and in cold regions. Warm air above and cold air near the water refract light and uplift and sometimes invert distant objects. This phenomenon has been responsible for some vanishing islands. So why not ships?

Many Fata Morganas have been reported in the polar regions and other areas with cold seas. Additionally, scholars have suggested that tricks of the light during storms might have caused sailors to seemingly witness a nearby ship, menacing and aglow.

The more outlandish tales could involve someone trying to make money or get their 15 minutes of fame. For example, British tabloids circulated stories of the Lyubov Orlova's cannibal rats and claimed the vessel was off California when it was another ship. Unsubstantiated and anonymously published stories, if well-told, trigger lasting rumors. The high seas have always offered room for the imagination to run wild. 

Several legends emerged during times of maritime rivalry. It is possible that stories served as propaganda to deter sailors from rival countries or ships from venturing into certain areas. Sailors have always been a superstitious lot, after all.

Modern ghost ships

Some recent examples of ghost ships have more to do with criminal activities like piracy, illegal fishing, and espionage. Every year, North Korean and Chinese ghost ships appear off the shores of Japan and sometimes Russia. Derelict and sometimes with decomposing human bodies, the ships are very outdated and lack basic technologies. Authorities presume the passengers were fleeing their oppressive home countries and died from disease or starvation.

In the last couple of years, after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Russia has used ships to transport supplies to its military. They try to avoid detection by turning off their AIS (Automatic Identification System). Bellingcat and other citizen sleuths have exposed some of these suspicious vessels.

While turning off the AIS can turn a vessel into a ghost ship, sometimes the AIS malfunction is genuine. It shows the ship thousands of kilometers from its real location or even going in circles. This could even be due to deliberate interference. This occurred with some ships off the California coast in 2020, leading to suspicions of a new kind of cyber attack.

Conclusion

Most ghost ships have rational explanations. The ocean can be a dangerous place, and some ships simply came to grief. Others are mirages or complete fabrications. But rational or not, these mysterious entities have terrified generations of seafarers.

In 1919, Peter Tessem could not bear his chronic headache and insomnia any longer. The Maud expedition was stuck in thick ice, with little hope of continuing for quite some time. Tessem, accompanied by Paul Knutsen, made the bold decision to venture out into the white nothing. They were never seen again.

Background

The pair’s disappearance had nothing to do with incompetence. They possessed key skills for an arctic expedition. Tessem was a carpenter and Knutsen was an engineer and an adept seaman. The former was part of the 1903-1905 Ziegler Polar Expedition and his companion participated in expeditions to the Kara Sea with Norwegian explorer Otto Sverdrup.

In 1918, the two men embarked on the Maud expedition with legendary Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen. 

But the expedition took a rough turn when thick ice trapped the ship. It might take months before they could move on. Tessem refused to stay on the boat and decided to take his leave of the company. Amundsen did not want him to go alone and initially asked expedition cook Emanuel Tonnesen to accompany him. Later, he instead chose Knutsen because of his expertise and knowledge of the area from previous expeditions.

On Oct. 15, 1919, the pair set out for a telegraph station on Russia's Dikson Island with the following supplies: a tent, a sledge, five dogs, food, fuel, weapons, scientific records, mail, and navigation instruments. Their 800km journey was meant to take a month.

The disappearance

When the two men did not show up at their destination in March 1920, preparations for a search-and-rescue mission began.

Otto Sverdrup attempted a search but encountered too much ice. Ship captain Lars Jakobsen also failed to find the men. Two years later, a Soviet search team managed to find a few clues. 

They came across a letter written in mid-November 1919, which confirmed the two were doing well and traveling past Mys Vil’da, about halfway to Dikson. This gave the rescue team some hope that they might find Tessem and Knutsen alive. However, those hopes were dashed when they found the pair’s sledge. The search later turned up a burned skull, bones, and personal effects. But we are not sure if this was Knutsen or Tessem. 

Other expeditions in 1922 found skis, a corpse buried with a makeshift cross, a watch bearing Tessem’s name, a wedding ring with Tessem’s wife’s name, and other small artifacts. The mail, records, and other equipment were discovered near Dikson Island and by the Uboynaya River. Only one body turned up. The other is still missing.

Theories

According to Canadian historian William Barr, who produced a thorough analysis of the pair’s last days, Knutsen died first, followed by Tessem. He believes they first found difficulty after leaving Mys Vil’da when they somehow lost their dogs.

Weather conditions could have worsened, forcing them to abandon their sledges and continue on foot. Barr thinks this could explain their scattered belongings. 

The first charred body is unlikely to be either of the men. He carried French paraphernalia, which were unlikely items for two Norwegian men. This body could be from the ill-fated 1912 Rusanov Expedition.

The second body, found close to Dikson Island, was almost certainly Tessem because of the watch and wedding ring. This suggests Knutsen buried him. The location of Knutsen’s body remains unknown.

But how did the pair perish so close to their goal? Perhaps there was a freak accident. Some have suggested a struggle between the two men, resulting in the death of one and the other dying from natural causes later. However, considering the personalities of the men, who were both considered honorable team players, this seems farfetched. 

You don’t need to be an astronaut or a billionaire to visit other planets. Why? Because they're right here on Earth. Deep in the Libyan Desert is an obscure valley called Wan Tikofi -- the Valley of the Planets. It houses hundreds of planetary-looking rock formations that still confuse scientists today.

Varying in size and shape, these unusual rocks do not just resemble celestial bodies.  In some ways, they seem to be alive…

Background

There is very little information on the Valley of the Planets, apart from a few photos circulating on Facebook groups and Reddit threads. These photos capture gigantic spherical and disk-like structures that desert wanderers stroll past on a hot day. The valley stretches for 30km, and the mysterious rocks are scattered throughout. 

Those inhabiting this area are nomadic herders called the Tuareg or "blue men." The Tuareg have been around since the 4th century AD, roaming the deserts of Libya, Algeria, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, and Burkina Faso. While known for their remarkable adaptation to the harsh desert, the Tuareg have a special relationship with the stars and planets above. They used the constellations and planets to navigate because they traveled mostly by night to avoid the heat. 

Anthropologists believe that the stars and planets were a significant part of their religious mythology in the pre-Islamic era. However, the information is lost to us with the introduction of Islam and the lack of written documentation of their practices. In their oral tradition, the Tuareg simply refer to the rocks as Kawakeb, which means "planets."

Trovants

These rocks may look like planets, but they are actually a result of some complex geological processes. This only takes place in a handful of locations around the world. The rocks, called "trovants," are compacted mixtures of sand, clay, and calcium carbonate. They take on various shapes and sizes, from huge spheres to flattish disks with a sphere in the center. Some rocks sit atop towering pillars and are 10m in diameter.

One of the quirks of these rocks is their ability to grow four to five centimeters every 1,000 years. 

These "living stones" not only increase in size. They move and even "give birth" to pebbles. When you break one open, the rock has a series of rings, much like a tree does.

Previously, scientists thought the rocks were concretions. These refer to a hard, compact mass of sedimentary rock that forms by accumulating mineral matter around a nucleus through a process called cementation.

Concretions can take on various shapes, especially spheres and ellipses. They form from the precipitation of minerals from groundwater. They often appear in sedimentary rock, such as sandstone and shale, and can contain organic matter like fossils. But though similar in appearance to concretions, trovants are different. 

Mechanics

These trovants date to the Middle Miocene (16 million to 11 million years ago), a chaotic period that featured frequent earthquakes. Scientists believe that this may have contributed to their origins. 

But how do they grow? The answer is moisture. According to writer Jennifer Walker-Journey of HowStuffWorks, when rainwater contacts the rock, a reaction takes place between the chemicals and minerals, which causes the rock to gradually expand in size. The reaction creates a type of calcium carbonate "cement." The more rain penetrates the rock, the more pressure builds up, and the rock "grows."

Erosion shapes the trovants into spheres. For millions of years, rain, heat, and wind shaped the rocks, creating smooth surfaces of spheres, disks, or imperfect bulbous formations.

Romanian counterparts

The Valley of the Planets has counterparts in Romania. Near the village of Costesti and in the Buzau Mountains, trovants have become a part of the local folklore. Villagers believe they possess magical powers and sometimes keep them as good luck charms in their homes.

Since they grow, the villagers believe the rocks will also help crops prosper. Other variants of the story say giants created them when they once roamed the earth. The rocks' iconic status has earned them special government protection.

In a village called Ulmet, locals refer to the stones as Babele de la Ulmet, which translates as "Old Women of Ulmet."

In 1934, an archaeologist was digging in the Timna Valley in the sweltering heat of southern Israel. He was trying to prove that King Solomon's Mines was no mere 19th-century fantasy adventure. He believed it was real.

Background

The fascination with biblical archaeology traces back to the Victorian era. With the Industrial Revolution came excavations and the discovery of long-buried sites like Troy, Mycenae, and Nineveh. Some of these discoveries even confirmed tales of Greek mythology and the Bible. The excitement permeated Victorian culture and led to the emergence of adventure fiction. 

Enter H. Rider Haggard

The story of King Solomon’s Mines originated in H. Rider Haggard's novel of the same name. This son of a barrister could not figure out what he wanted to do in life. After failed attempts to get into both the army and the British Foreign Office, his father shipped him off to South Africa to work as a personal assistant to a celebrated diplomat. Thus, his love affair with adventure began. Africa and its ancient legends fascinated him. He published King Solomon’s Mines in 1885, and it was an instant hit. 

In the novel, he introduced Allan Quatermain, an Indiana Jones-like character who also featured in subsequent novels. Here, a man named Sir Henry Curtis enlists Quatermain for his hunting skills and knowledge of a dangerous region to help find his lost brother.

Curtis’s brother disappeared while trying to find the fabled diamond mines of King Solomon. After narrowly escaping death from hostile tribes, they discover the mines, take some diamonds home, and recover Curtis’s brother. It is worth noting that Haggard placed these mines in South Africa. 

Though this is a work of fiction, there might be some truth to the story. The Bible does not explicitly say that Solomon owned mines but does speak about his wealth and his access to raw materials, which he used to create riches for the First Temple. Was Haggard onto something? 

Biblical analysis

King Solomon is perhaps the most iconic king in all the Abrahamic religions. He reigned sometime between 975-926 BC. The son of King David and Bathsheba, he was famous for the wisdom given to him by God, for his military prowess and diplomatic skills, for his hundreds of wives, and for his wealth. Supposedly, it “surpassed all the kings of the earth in riches.”

He built this fortune by receiving regular tributes from local and foreign figures as well as through heavy taxation. He used this money to build the First Temple.

The Bible speaks of his wealth extensively in 2 Chronicles 9:13-29:

The weight of the gold that Solomon received each year amounted to six hundred and sixty-six talents of gold, in addition to the tolls levied on merchants and what was collected from foreign trade. All the kings of Arabia and the governors of the provinces also brought gold and silver to Solomon…

King Solomon also made a large ivory throne, which he overlaid with pure gold. The throne had six steps, and a footstool of gold was fastened to it. There were armrests on each side of the seat, with two lions standing beside the arms, while twelve lions stood on either side of the six steps. Nothing like it had ever been made in any other kingdom.

Silver not good enough

He also had around 4,000 stalls for 12,000 horses and chariots and drank only from gold cups -- rejecting silver as not good enough. Much of the wealth went into Solomon’s Temple, also known as the First Temple.

But when Solomon’s reign ended, what happened to his treasure?

Because of Solomon’s excesses and sins, God punished him. New enemies appeared, and the tribes of Israel rejected Solomon and his successors. His kingdom split into two entities: the Kingdom of Israel to the north and the Kingdom of Judah to the south. Israel was ruled by Jeroboam, one of Solomon's former servants, while Solomon’s notoriously ineffectual son Rehoboam presided over Judah.

Both kingdoms suffered a devastating blow when an Egyptian pharaoh named Shoshenq removed all of Solomon’s wealth from his palace and the First Temple. 

1 Kings 14:25–26 says:

In the fifth year of Rehoboam, Shishak, king of Egypt, attacked Jerusalem. He carried off the treasures of the Temple of the Lord and the treasures of the royal palace. He took everything, including all the gold shields Solomon had made.

Egyptians took it all

A temple pillar at Tell Basta, just north of Cairo, confirms the conquest. It states that Solomon's treasures were used as offerings to the Egyptian gods. 

Throughout all these passages, there is no mention of Solomon's mines. But 1 Kings 7 explores the construction of the Temple and the materials he sourced. He cast two bronze pillars, 10 bronze carts, and four bronze wheels and axles. Solomon supposedly cast these objects "...in the plain of the Jordan, in the clay ground that lie between Succoth and Zarethan.”

This led historians and archaeologists to believe that Solomon might have used mining to sustain his wealth and maintain the Temple. So, perhaps the idea is not that far-fetched.

Archaeological evidence

James D. Muhly, a professor of Ancient Near East History at the University of Pennsylvania, states that there is “biblical silence” on the mines. However, numerous books on biblical archaeology do mention them, particularly Solomon’s focus on copper smelting. Solomon even bore the nickname, the Copper King. 

The archaeological search for the mines began with the theories of Rabbi Nelson Glueck in 1934. He found large copper smelting slags in the Timna Valley, in the southern part of the Negev in modern-day Israel. Glueck also cited evidence of miners’ quarters.

A few years later, he excavated a mysterious mound in Tell-el Kheleifeh, between Israel’s southernmost city of Eilat and Aqaba in Jordan. This mound hid a large building complex which had a series of peculiar holes throughout the walls. Glueck believed that the building was a refinery and smelter, and the holes allowed wind to keep flames going.

He concluded that Tell-el Kheleifeh was the ancient port city of Ezion-Geber from the Bible. Here, Solomon sent ships to fetch treasures and metals.

The theory falls short

It did not take Glueck’s opponents long to poke holes in the theory. His main critic was a photographer and archaeologist named Beno Rothenberg. Rothenberg claimed that the holes in the walls were simply remnants of where beams were. Plus, mud plaster ringed the holes -- not the type of material that would survive smelting. 

Rothenberg did his own investigations in the Timna Valley over the years. Though he found copper mines in the area, they dated before Solomon’s reign by a century and a half. They were also under Egyptian control, as confirmed by hieroglyphs in a temple at Hathor. 

In 2013, archaeologists from Tel Aviv University excavated an area in the valley called Slave’s Hill. They found smelting camps containing pieces of clothing, food, broken pottery, and furnaces dating to Solomon’s time. However, they believe the camps belonged to the Edomites -- enemies of Solomon and Israel who lived in the Timna Valley at the same time. 

Conclusion

Though the pieces seemed to go together well, the evidence suggests that King Solomon did not have copper mines, from which he cast his treasures, but likely sourced the materials elsewhere. If he did have mines, the Bible would have said so since it details all his other activities and sources of wealth. The legend of King Solomon’s Mines will likely remain a great work of adventure fiction. But this does not mean that other biblical treasures do not exist out there.

Can a continent disappear? Many cultures have stories of vanishing islands or cities swept away by tidal waves. But is there truth to any of these legends?

Our continents have undergone tumultuous periods of shifting, converging, diverging, and subducting. With these geological processes, continents broke apart. Occasionally, we find remnants of ancient continents. Scientists have been searching for one of these, called Argoland, for decades. They might have finally found it.

Paleocontinents

When we talk about submerged continents or lands, we refer to continental crust in our oceans. These landmasses could be the source of "lost land" stories in numerous cultures, such as Atlantis, Lemuria, and Thule.

Landmasses from Earth’s distant past are split into cratons, supercratons, microcontinents, continents, and supercontinents. Gondwana, Laurentia, Pangea, and Rodinia were supercontinents. Broken apart by plate tectonics, they became continents, which sometimes broke into smaller microcontinents.

We have found microcontinents and cratons around the globe. Scientists identified Madagascar and Seychelles as microcontinents of the Gondwana supercontinent. Other islands, like the Azores and Socotra in Yemen, are pieces of Pangea.

Some of Earth's early landmasses were gradually submerged, others subducted -- slipped below -- into the Earth's mantle. Others pushed up to form islands and mountains.

What is Argoland?

Argoland was a continent that purportedly split from northwestern Australia before drifting northwest toward Southeast Asia. Its disappearance left a void in the ocean off the northwestern coast of Australia. No one definitely knew where it went. In theory, it could have settled under Indonesia and Myanmar. Argoland existed during the reign of the dinosaurs and was supposedly 4,800km long and the width of the United States.

Normally, when a landmass moves, it leaves behind a sort of signature. This signature is usually underwater mountain ranges, fossilized wildlife, and other large areas of land underwater. But Argoland did not leave obvious clues.

The search for Argoland

Eldert Advokaat and Douwe van Hinsbergen from the University of Utrecht are key figures in the search for Argoland. They believe that the continent split, creating an oceanic basin called the North Australian Basin or Argo Abyssal Plain. It is 5,730m deep and possesses some magnetic anomalies. For Advokaat and van Hinsbergen, this indicated that something once occupied this space. They launched their search in 2017.

Van Hinsbergen discovered Greater Adria in 2019. This continent broke off from North Africa, splintered into multiple pieces, and settled in the Mediterranean. Pieces can be found all over Europe, including the Balkans, Alps, Anatolia, and Iberia.

Meanwhile, Advokaat had been documenting rocks on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, believing it held the key to unlocking a missing part of our geological history.

They believe Argoland began to break away some 300 million years ago when Gondwana was still a supercontinent. It finally broke away from northwestern Australia 155 million years ago during the Late Jurassic Period.

Far-flung fragments

Remnants of Argoland lie in Southwest Borneo, Greater Paternoster, East Java, West Burma, and Mount Victoria Land. Advokaat and his team excavated these areas.

Advokaat and van Hinsbergen realized that bits and pieces of Argoland were hiding in layers of rock that differed in age, making it hard to distinguish. They had expected to find a single buried landmass. Instead, rock from different ages was muddled together.

In their study, Advokaat and van Hinsbergen argue that Southeast Asia includes relics of a major continent. As plate tectonics shifted, upheaved, and subducted pieces of the Earth's crust, the process created a deformed, long-lived belt of the Earth's crust called an orogen. This orogen formed during a long, chaotic period of 100 million years.

By evaluating the western and northwestern Australian margins and formations throughout Myanmar, Indonesia and Malaysia, the team managed reconstruct the tectonic movements of Argoland. This reconstruction showed Argoland's trajectory for Southeast Asia as the Northwest Australia Margin was subjected to an eons-long period of ocean spreading, continental extension, and then subduction. As a result, pieces of land were uplifted and lie within those Southeast Asian islands.

Chaotic and messy

Not all continents which separate make such a clean break from South America and Africa, says science writer Cassidy Ward. In the case of Argoland, things got chaotic and messy. Therefore, Argoland was not a large, solid landmass but a chain of islands, an archipelago. The pair have affectionately named it "Argopelago." This archipelago formed as the bigger landmass was breaking off of Australia.

The continent of Great Adria suffered a similar fate. It fragmented so much that you can find pieces all the way from the Iberian Peninsula and the Mediterranean to Western Asia! The painstaking search for remnants lasted more than a decade. Greater Adria supposedly spun and collided into other landmasses, sending a thick chunk of the Earth's crust into the mantle. The rest you can find in strips in the Pyrenees, Occitania, the Alps, Anatolia, and the Caucasus. It was supposedly the size of Greenland at one point.

More continents await

The search for ancient continents never stops. In 2017, scientists discovered a lost continent called Mauritia beneath the surface of Mauritius. It lay between India and Madagascar on Gondwana before the supercontinent split up. After the separation, Mauritia broke into even smaller pieces which can be found in Mauritius, Réunion and the Saya de Malha Bank. Researchers detected it by analyzing the zircon crystal deposits in Mauritius, indicating that they originated from continental crust. There was also a gravitational anomaly which usually signals a much larger, hidden landmass.

As of 2023, geologists completed mapping Zealandia, a land that broke off of Gondwana over 80 million years ago. Most of it is underwater. New Zealand is part of this massive landmass.

Conclusion

After the discoveries of Argoland, Greater Adria, Zealandia, Mauritia and other ancient continents, it is most likely that others remain hidden. These studies have given us leads for a more thorough search. We have better indicators now, like the zircon crystals and magnetic and gravitational anomalies. We also have a firmer understanding of the land's movements.

Many submerged lands turned out to be more fragmented and ribbon-like than predicted. Therefore, scientists need to put aside their preconceived notions of what the Earth used to look like in order to find more of our geological past.

Frozen in time, abandoned for 4,500 years, and under threat from an eroding coastline, Scotland’s "Pompeii" is the best-preserved Neolithic settlement in Western Europe. But despite Skara Brae's immaculate preservation, researchers still don't know why it was abandoned.

Storm reveals a forgotten village

Before its discovery, Skara Brae was nothing more than a sandy, grassy mound in the Orkney Islands off the coast of Scotland. In 1850, a powerful storm stripped the sand away, revealing bits of a small village.

One of the locals who stumbled upon the ruins was an amateur archaeologist named William Watt. Watt and his colleague, George Petrie, excavated the site and uncovered four houses. After Watt died in 1866, Petrie did not continue their work but did present his findings to the academic community.

The site was largely left alone until 1913 when, over a single weekend, someone plundered the site for artifacts. Soon after, another storm revealed more of the village.

In 1925, officials constructed a seawall to protect the ruins from the ocean. Then in 1927, researchers finally decided to investigate the site properly when the government granted access to archaeologist V. Gordon Childe from the University of Edinburgh. 

Because of waterlogging and protection from the sand, the site was impressively well-preserved. The researchers found ten flagstone houses built deep into the ground. Each house has Stone Age furniture, including beds, a fireplace, and a Neolithic drainage system. Artifacts included animal bones, tools, jewelry, and pots, as well as a series of carved stone balls with rune-like symbols. Linguists have yet to crack what the runes mean. 

Radiocarbon dating suggests most of the discoveries are from around 3180 BC. Around 2500 BC, village life died out. The village shows no sign of advancing further into the Bronze Age, and personal belongings were left behind.

What happened that caused the residents to abandon their homes? 

Who lived there?

Archaeologists determined that less than 50 people lived in Skara Brae. The residents were most likely farmers and hunters. Researchers call them the "Grooved Ware People," after some of the distinctive objects they used. They left traces of their existence at other Neolithic sites in Orkney, including the Ring of Brodgar and the Standing Stones of Stenness. 

So why did the small community leave? Some historians believe Skara Brae suffered a catastrophe akin to Pompeii. The area is prone to bad weather, and a particularly dreadful storm could have forced the residents to flee. The site was surrounded by dunes, so powerful winds could have blown sand into the village and buried the site.

Another theory is that natural erosion of the coastline threatened the village crops.

However, the site was most likely abandoned for several reasons. The transition from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age saw drastic social changes. The Bronze Age brought more sophisticated weaponry, more complex architecture, and the emergence of chiefdoms and hierarchies. Villages grew in size, and migration and trade increased. Perhaps the older residents of Skara Brae died off while the youngest moved on, looking for easier lives.

Skara Brae's abandonment was probably gradual. Straddling two time periods, it succumbed to the tides of change.

Still springing surprises

Recently, Dan Hicks of the University of Oxford tweeted several black-and-white photos from the 1929 Skara Brae excavation, setting off a group of "internet sleuths." The photos contained four women who people had long believed to be tourists. They were actually archaeologists. The internet sleuths embarked on a mission to uncover their identities.

Eventually, they found their names: Margaret Simpson, Margaret Mitchell, Dame Margaret Cole, and Mary Kennedy. All were students of Professor Childe’s. All but one became professional archaeologists. (Cole pursued a writing career.) The women were trailblazers, with female archaeologists exceedingly rare at the time.

As the Chinese proverb goes, "When the winds of change blow, some build walls, others build windmills." In the case of several remote villages in Iran and Afghanistan, this could not be more true. For centuries, these villages have suffered harsh wind storms that sweep down the plains.

Their answer? Odd-looking structures made from clay and wood. They may not look like much, but they house ingenious mechanical designs. These are the world’s oldest windmills, called "asbads."

Though asbads have slowly been replaced by more advanced designs, some locals strive to maintain them. They are one of the world's first renewable energy prototypes.

The creator of the first windmill

Abu Lu’lu’a Firuz was a Persian slave who lived in the mid-seventh century AD. He was a non-Muslim and may have originally been a Zoroastrian priest.

Non-Muslims were banned from entering and living in the region's Rashidun Caliphate, the empire that immediately succeeded the prophet Muhammad. But because of his exceptional engineering skills, Firuz was allowed access to the capital in Medina alongside his master.

Firuz specialized in machines that could harness the wind and attract the caliph's attention. According to the History of al-Tabari, a chronicle written in 915AD, the caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab said, "I heard you make windmills. Make one for me as well."

"By God, I will build this windmill of which the world will talk," Firuz replied. 

This seemed like a good set-up for political favor but it did not turn out that way. Umar established a harsh tax which Firuz refused to pay. Firuz then assassinated Umar while the caliph was leading prayers in a mosque. We are not sure what happened to Firuz after.

However, we know that his invention stood the test of time and still functions today. He created a type of windmill referred to as a panemone. This is a windmill with a vertical axis. Only a handful of them still stand.

Harnessing the wind

After taking the Muslim world by storm, windmills made their way to other parts of Asia and Europe in the 12th century. After invading Iran, the Mongols found them so impressive that they sought to kidnap windmill engineers.

Windmills started popping up in China, Africa, and Europe. Inventors modified them into different shapes, sizes, and designs. But it was only centuries later in Northern and Western Europe that windmills started to take on a horizontal axis. Eventually, horizontal-axis windmills became the most widely used design (as they are today).

A panemone windmill possesses a rotating axis positioned at 90° in the direction of the wind, while the wind-catching blades move parallel to the wind. It is a drag-type turbine. Drag refers to an aerodynamic force that acts opposite to an object's motion through the air. Drag results in less energy and poor efficiency. In Iran and Afghanistan, the panemone windmill is encased in something called an 'asbad'.

An asbad is a two-story adobe, mud, or clay structure. They are typically 20m tall and situated on a hill overlooking a village. The ground floor held millstones to grind grain or machinery to pump water. The top story had a long wall with chambers, each chamber contained six or eight wooden sails dressed with cloth or straw on a vertical axle.

The asbad takes the brunt of strong winds, converting them into useful kinetic energy. As the wind blows through the chambers, it rotates the wheels and vanes to kickstart the grinding or pumping processes below. Harnessing the wind could process a bag of over 100kg of wheat.

The ancient Persians utilized these windmills for two main reasons: to grind wheat and pump water. For the time, asbads were revolutionary and made life much easier. According to historian Robert Forbes, asbads could also chop sugarcane and other crops.

Fighting 120-day winds

The best place to find well-preserved asbads is in the village of Nashtifan in northeastern Iran. Of the 30 windmills there, five are in working order. There are also a few standing in Sistan to the south.

Since the days of the caliphate, the asbads have helped combat the region’s infamous 120-day 'Sistan Winds'. These wind storms occur from May to September and make life difficult for the villagers. They cause intense droughts and can blow at up to 100kmph. In 1991 these winds carried so much dust along the Iran-Afghanistan border that it dried up Lake Hamun. As a result, nearby villages were abandoned and people had to migrate elsewhere. 

The Sistan Winds result from the interaction between seasonal winds and the landscape. Their intensity gave rise to the village's name, which translates as "storm's sting."

Heritage

While they seem obsolete compared to modern technology, the asbads play a vital role in the lives of Nashtifan villagers. They draw tourists and are a key part of the villagers' cultural heritage.

In 2002, the Iranian Government recognized the windmills as part of the country's heritage. Unfortunately, maintenance is quite difficult. In Nashtifan, Mohammed Etebari is on a mission to preserve these ancient prototypes. He meticulously cares and cleans them every day. Let's hope that someone steps up to look after these historical treasures when he is gone.

While horizontal-axis windmills are still the norm, some see the benefits of vertical-axis turbines. William Walker of Stress Engineering Services believes that vertical windmills are easier to maintain, would work better for farms, can withstand very high winds, and can reduce production costs. They cause less harm to the environment, less noise pollution, and can generate enough electricity for small-scale operations.

So, could these ancient windmills compete with modern wind turbines? According to National Geographic, an asbad could not even power a lightbulb. Whether useful for generating energy or not, it would be a great shame to let these historic windmills disappear forever.

Today we have advanced submersibles and ocean mapping technologies, yet the ocean remains a dark, mysterious place. For explorers in the 20th century, exploration of the deep sea was limited to rudimentary armored suits and submarines that could not go below 160m. It was exciting, dangerous work.

William Beebe and Otis Barton were early pioneers. The pair were responsible for giving the world its first glimpses of incredible deep sea creatures in a revolutionary craft they designed.

The Azoic Hypothesis

In 1843, Scottish naturalist Edward Forbes stated that life was not viable below 1,800ft (549m). This was called the Azoic Hypothesis and doubtless put off some early adventurers.

However, there were soon signs that deep-sea life existed. In 1860, a telegraph cable 520m below the surface running between Sicily and Algeria snapped. When engineers pulled the cable to the surface they found deep-sea organisms attached.

In the 1870s, the British ship HMS Challenger found deep-sea organisms while dredging and trawling. 

The area between 1,000m and 4,000m is called the Bathypelagic or Midnight Zone. This refers to its blue-black color. Sunlight is almost non-existent at this depth, making photosynthesis impossible. A lack of movement from the currents above results in little oxygen, and pressures of over 5,850 pounds per square inch.

With no safe way to descend that far, scientists had no idea what was down there.

Enter William Beebe

William Beebe was a dreamer. His life's pursuit was the depths of the ocean.

Growing up, he enjoyed taxidermy and collecting wildlife samples. He worked in the Bronx Zoo and later in the Galapagos in the 1920s. Eventually, he established a research station on Nonsuch Island in Bermuda. From there he began publishing his deep sea plans in magazines, which eventually caught the eye of Otis Barton.

Barton, an engineering graduate from Columbia University, saw Beebe’s designs and reached out with his ideas for a submarine craft.

Beebe was a brilliant man but was private and skeptical of others. Initially, Beebe turned Barton down, fearing it was a scam. Fortunately, a mutual friend stepped in to set up a meeting where Barton showcased his spherical designs. The meeting was a success and the two men agreed to split the costs of an expedition. Meanwhile, Barton foot the bill for the $11,000 craft. 

The Bathysphere

They called their vessel the Bathysphere, a Greek word meaning 'deep sphere.' The craft was made of steel and its three windows were of fused quartz, three inches thick. Inside, there was a small light, a couple of fans, cables, pans of calcium chloride and soda lime, oxygen tanks, and a telephone. The latch alone weighed 400 pounds. In total, the Bathysphere weighed 2.25 tons and was four feet and nine inches in diameter. 

The first test dives were rocky. On May 27, 1930, the Bathysphere descended unmanned to 14m. However, the second descent resulted in some concerning tangling of vital electrical cables. This prevented operations from moving forward for some time.

Eventually, the pair felt confident enough to go down themselves. They reached a depth of approximately 244m without incident. Through the quartz-fused windows, they noted unusual species with bioluminescent characteristics.

Their main goal was to reach half a mile below the surface, which they achieved on Aug. 15, 1934. The journey was documented in Beebe’s most popular work Half a Mile Down. 

There were always occupational hazards with dives in the Bathysphere. The steel ball had a condensation problem and a window cracked, leading the men to replace the quartz pane with a steel plug. Because of the stuffy conditions and close quarters, the men often suffered from motion sickness. 

Sadly, their dives dried up during the 1930s. The Great Depression meant people were more concerned with putting food on the table rather than exploring the deep. But Beebe started writing about his adventures, which managed to keep his program afloat for a little longer.

The research team

Instrumental to Beebe’s and Barton’s success were research assistants Jocelyn Crane and Gloria Hollister. Crane was a carcinologist and researched tropical marine species. In the 1930s, she joined Beebe’s research team in Bermuda straight out of college. She helped to identify, catalog, and determine characteristics of new species.

Hollister was a zoology graduate and worked on transcribing telephone communications between the Bermuda station and the Bathysphere. She provided Beebe and Barton with vital information on weather patterns and their depth, which the Bathysphere was not capable of reading. Hollister even dived to 368m as a birthday wish.

Beebe, Barton, Crane, and Hollister's research played a vital role in opening the door for women in oceanography and biology.

Observations

Some of the species the team discovered include bathysphaera intacta (giant dragonfish), a six-foot-long barracuda-like fish with blue bioluminescence along its body, and the three-starred anglerfish.

"While we hung in mid-ocean at our lowest level…a fish poised just to the left of my window, its elongated outline distinct and its dark sides lighted from sources quite concealed from me," Beebe wrote.

On a dive in 1932, Beebe noted that "although my eyes were perfectly dark-adapted, I could detect not the faintest glimmer of light from 1,700ft (518m) down…from 1,700ft down, animal light is the only external source of illumination."

He described both wildlife and the violet and blue hues of the water. "Blacker than blackest midnight, yet brilliant," he wrote in one journal entry. The dives were brought to life in the illustrations of artist Else Bostelmann for the National Geographic Society.

Legacy

After 1934, the Bathysphere was no longer used for expeditions. But during World War II, it was briefly recommissioned by the U.S. Navy for underwater explosion tests.

By then the Bathysphere had a new and improved successor called the Benthoscope. Barton designed and operated it and was able to go down to 3,000m (10,000ft). 

Beebe and Barton’s work laid the groundwork for later explorers, like Jacques Piccard. In 1960, Piccard descended in his vessel, the Bathyscaphe, and reached a depth of 11,000m in the Marianna Trench. His vessel was not a ball but rather a cylindrical self-propelled design. It could go deeper than a submarine.

It is 1820 and Peru is in chaos. Disaffection with the Spanish colonial authorities has reached a breaking point. The citizens of Lima took to the streets armed with weapons and rage, inspired by revolutionaries Simon Bolivar and Jose de San Martin. Amid the commotion, a secret plan was hatched to smuggle some precious cargo out of the city. This cargo? One of South America's greatest treasure hoards.

Chests filled with gold, silver, precious jewels, and relics were loaded onto a ship bound for Mexico. However, the treasure vanished somewhere along the route, never to be seen again. To this day, no one knows where this great South American treasure hoard lies.

Background

The story of the Treasure of Lima starts several decades before its disappearance in 1820.

From 1805 to 1814, Napoleon Bonaparte waged war across Europe. His invasion of the Iberian Peninsular in 1807 proved a crushing blow to the Spanish monarchy.

News of the Spanish defeat, and the subsequent weakening of Spanish authority, soon reached the ears of unsatisfied citizens in South America. Creoles in South America felt ignored. The Spanish limited who they could trade with (Spain alone) and they could not participate politically. Previously, Spanish viceroyalties kept everyone in check. But, eventually, enough was enough.

In 1820, the Argentinian revolutionary Jose de San Martin formed the Liberating Expedition of Peru. He sought to invade and liberate the country from its Spanish oppressors. Upon hearing of San Martin's march to Lima, Lima's Spanish viceroy panicked.

Espionage and betrayal

The viceroy compiled a hoard of treasure from Lima to be sent to Mexico. According to a document in a museum in Caracas, Venezuela, the Treasure of Lima included:

• One chest containing altar trimmings, coated with gemstones of up to 1,244 pieces.
• One chest with two gold relic containers, with 624 topaz/carnelians/emeralds, and 12 diamonds.
• One chest containing three relic containers of cast metal, with 860 rubies and 19 diamonds.
• One chest containing 4,000 doubloons, 124 swords, 5,000 crowns of Mexican Gold, 64 daggers, 120 shoulder belts, and 28 round shields.
• One chest containing eight caskets of cedar wood and silver, with 3,840 cut stones and 4,265 uncut stones.
• Seven chests with 22 candelabra in gold and silver.
• One seven-foot solid gold statue of the Virgin Mary with baby Jesus, adorned with 1,684 jewels.

Today, the treasure would be worth an estimated one billion dollars. The viceroy thought it was a good idea to enlist an English captain to transport the haul, as the English had no ties with the revolutionaries. He chose Captain William Thompson, a well-known English captain of the ship the Mary Dear.

The viceroy sent a military guard and a company of Catholic priests to escort the hoard. Unfortunately, Thompson was less than honorable, despite the viceroy paying him handsomely.

Supposedly, Thompson asked his crew: "We can work as we please the rest of our lives, boys, and not all of us together can ever produce for ourselves as much wealth as there is in one of those big boxes. The fellows who hired us to haul this cargo for them are thieves. They stole all this gold. Let’s take it from them and put it to good use! What is the will of the crew?"

The answer seems to have been decisive. Thompson chucked the military men and priests overboard and they chartered a new course to Cocos Island off the coast of Costa Rica.

Treasure Island

Cocos Island is nicknamed "Treasure Island" for a reason. During the 1800s it was a refuge for pirates and a popular hiding spot for their loot. The waters around the island are rough and it has uneven, rugged terrain.

In later years, the island became so notorious among treasure hunters that the Costa Rican government had to ban treasure-hunting activities entirely in 1994 to protect the ecologically significant environment there. While visitors are permitted, only 1,000 or so are allowed per year.

The hunt

Thompson buried the treasure on Cocos Island for safekeeping, but authorities soon caught up with the mutineers. The Spanish hung the entire crew, except for Thompson and his first mate James Forbes. The authorities let them live so that they could reveal the treasure’s location.

However, inept handling of the case meant that Thompson and Forbes escaped into the jungle. The former eventually got onto a ship bound for Canada and the latter made it to California. Thompson passed away without returning to the island and Forbes built a comfortable life for himself in California, passing on tales of the treasure to his family. Forbes wrote down the details of the location and contents, which he passed on to his son. But, attempts at finding it proved futile.

In the 1840s, Thompson revealed the treasure's location to a man named John Keating, a fellow seaman with whom he became close. Keating visited Cocos Island and found some bits and bobs possibly linked to the Treasure of Lima, such as gold pieces and some jewels. But the vast majority of the hoard was still missing.

German treasure hunter August Gissler became obsessed with finding the Treasure of Lima. Gissler was so committed that he moved to the island from 1889 to 1908. His primary target was the seven-foot golden statue of the Virgin Mary with infant Jesus, laden with precious stones.

The Costa Rican government granted Gissler the position of governor and permission to start a German colony. The colony failed and so did his search. He dug an extensive network of tunnels beneath the island but his excavations led nowhere.

In 1908, he left Cocos for New York, completely heartbroken.

One of Forbes' descendants attempted to find the treasure using information passed down through the family. An article from the Bakersfield Californian newspaper dated Jan. 19, 1949, stated that James Forbes IV went on five expeditions to Cocos Island. At the time of the article, his latest expedition included 50 crewmen and Hollywood movie equipment.

Forbes found some potential clues, such as the "many shreds of canvas believed to have been sails of the ill-fated English merchantman, 'Mary Dear'," but his expeditions were ultimately unsuccessful.

Though the Costa Rican government banned treasure hunting in the 1990s, one man convinced them to give him a chance. After a grueling 18 months of meetings and negotiations, Shaun Whitehead was granted a short permit to explore the island.

Whitehead has an extraordinary resume, from designing Mars landers to exploring the depths of Egyptian tombs. In 2012, he embarked on a 10-day expedition that used radar, 3D mapping, and aerial imaging with helicopters.

But despite all the technology, Whitehead's search came up empty.

Some notable historical figures also took a crack at finding the treasure. Errol Flynn, gangster Bugsy Siegel, and Franklin Roosevelt all looked into the mystery. In total, there have been 300 expeditions to the island. All have failed to find the Treasure of Lima.

What now?

It is possible that stories of treasure on Cocos Island were a ploy to trick naval authorities and throw them off the pirates' trail.

Yet, the presence of coins does suggest some pirate activity. If the Costa Rican government ever permits longer expeditions, hunters might just find something worthwhile.

Before Marco Polo and the great medieval travelers, a humble merchant went on an odyssey to find himself and his people. This unassuming man was not only one of the first medieval travelers but also a pioneer in cultural anthropology and ethnography. Both disciplines barely existed in that era.

Background

Benjamin of Tudela was a 12th-century Jewish merchant from northern Spain. This learned man spoke several languages and had an affinity for foreign cultures. He specialized in coral and gem trading and had a keen eye for investments and business opportunities. We don’t know much about his early life except that his great journey probably started around 1160. He may or may not have been a rabbi, as some Jewish sources claim.

After leaving Tudela, he explored his home country, then France, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, the Holy Land, Damascus, and Iraq. In his later travel book, he lays out how long it takes to get from point A to point B. He also provides the reader with the first non-Arab mention of the Druze culture in literature.

Benjamin spent long periods in Christian strongholds like Rome and Constantinople. He was particularly impressed by Constantinople's wealth but felt uneasy by its treatment of its Jewish population.

Marcus N. Adler, a rabbi in the British Empire and one of Benjamin's translators, stated that he was one of the few medieval writers to mention Prester John, the legendary Christian monarch who might or might not have existed. 

There is some doubt as to whether or not he traveled beyond Iraq. He reports on Persia, China and even Tibet, but some details of these far-flung lands are sketchy. Elsewhere, everything had been accurate. Persia notoriously oppressed the Jews so it was unsafe for him.

Benjamin also made one of the first mentions of China by name. It is possible that he filled in the gaps with information from other travelers. At the end of his journey, he returned to Spain by boat, passing through Egypt.

His travelogue

Thanks to his travelogue, The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tedula, he is considered one of the best and most accurate sources of medieval life and the relations between religious groups in Europe and the Middle East.

Benjamin seemed to feel more comfortable with Muslims than with Christians and emphasized the decent relations between Jews and Muslims at the time. He was very honest about conflicts in Judaism, pointing out the hostile relations between warring sects of the Rabbanities and the Karasites. 

In his unofficial census of the Jewish population in Europe and the Middle East, he noted the numbers, occupations, learned men, synagogues, and practices. For example, he says, "Pisa is a very great city…[with] about twenty Jews." In the city of Lucca, he likewise counted about 40 Jews. In all, he documented around 300 cities.

Through the Itinerary, historians witness first-hand the great shifts occurring in Europe between Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Many transformative events characterized the 12th century: the Crusades, the early Renaissance, the emergence of nation-states, the rise of vernacular literature and translation, diversification in trade, and more.

Why?

Historians are unsure why he traveled, but some believe he had religious or commercial intentions. Throughout the text, he described his faith at play in different countries. The fact that he so thoroughly documented Jewish experiences, sites, and practices could indicate that his journey was a sort of religious quest. 

Was he on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land? His tone and content indicate that he was a devout Jew. He tracked populations of his people and visited sites from the Old Testament. Once he commented, "The closer I get to Jerusalem, the more Jews are heretics.” However, if it was mainly about religion, he would likely have written more about the spiritual aspects of his trip. 

Lost Tribes

Another possibility is that he was searching for the Lost Tribes of Israel. He and other travelers like him were trying to locate the Lost Tribes -- exiled after an ancient conflict -- as a means of maintaining their heritage. For centuries, the Jews had already scattered across the globe. Writer Alanna Cooper says in the AJS Review that while Benjamin mentions finding the tribes of Dan, Zevulun, Asher, and Naphtali, he does so in passing. His casual tone doesn’t indicate urgency or excitement. Most likely, then, he wasn’t searching for them.

Jewish theologian and Rabbi Michael Signer believes Benjamin’s travelogue was a “consolation for the Jewish people,” a way of uniting them. The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela was most likely a passion project for him to tap into his identity or present a map of the Jewish diaspora to potential migrants. In the wake of the Crusades, Jews had been persecuted and driven out of their original dwelling places.

Finally, he may have simply been scouting for trade routes between the Jewish communities. He often mentioned whether those he met were merchants, jewelers, glass workers, silk weavers, or dyers. 

Legacy

An urban art project called Street Talk launched in Jerusalem in 2017, dedicated to Benjamin. It reimagined him as a 21st-century backpacker named Benny, exploring Europe and the Middle East.

He makes his way through Jerusalem, encountering historic figures from Jewish history, and receiving advice on where and how to travel. It was partly an educational project highlighting how the Jewish people have been scattered for so long, trying to make their way home. 

A medieval geography project called Mapping the Jewish Communities of the Byzantine Empire by Nicholas de Lange at the University of Cambridge used GIS to map Jewish communities in the Byzantine Empire. Benjamin of Tudela was the main data source.

Tudela may not be as famous as Marco Polo or even Ibn Battuta, but his travels are considered on a par with theirs. And his work is crucial in Hebrew medieval literature.

In 1481, a mysterious figure emerged from the desert in Benghazi. The man, exhausted and delirious after having survived a monstrous sandstorm, demanded to speak to the local emir. Intrigued, the emir allowed him to relay the incredible tale of his survival and how he managed to escape the swallowing sands that every desert traveler feared.

The stranger had been driving camels from the Nile to the oases of Dakhla and Kharga. Then he met a series of misfortunes until Providence put him on the path to an unknown oasis in the Sahara, the Oasis of Little Birds, also called Zerzura. 

A tall tale?

Hamid Kiela, the man who found Zerzura, was traveling with a caravan west of the Nile when a sandstorm hit. The rest of the company suffocated, but Hamid sought shelter underneath a dead camel and survived.

After the storm had passed, Hamid had more problems to worry about -- mainly food and water. He began to wander the desert in a daze, preparing himself for the inevitable. He passed out, but not long after, a group of strange-looking good Samaritans offered their assistance. They weren’t olive-skinned with dark eyes like everyone else but rather fair-skinned and blue-eyed. 

They brought him to a gate with a bird at the top. Inside was an incredible city of white buildings. Significantly for the time, people were not wearing Islamic dress, and there were no mosques. Giants guarded the oasis, and the king and queen were in an enchanted sleep. The guardians of the city were huge birdmen hybrids or jinn.

Zerzura means "bird" or "starling". Thus, it became known as the Oasis of Little Birds. 

Asked by the emir why he didn’t stay in this idyllic oasis, Hamid admits that he left of his own accord. Eventually, Hamid showed the emir a regal-looking ruby ring, implying that he had stolen it. The emir punished him but still sent out search parties to find the oasis, to no avail. 

Interestingly, local legend says that the stolen ring, supposedly from Zerzura, sat on the finger of King Idris of Libya. 

Book of Treasures

Our tale begins with an Arabic manuscript dating to the 15th century, now lost to us. It was called the Kitab al Kanuz, the "Book of Treasures" or "Book of Hidden Pearls". It was a codex of over 400 treasure sites in Egypt, had a general compendium of fables and Arabic myths, and included magic spells for various purposes.

One of the stories in this Book of Treasures involved Zerzura. Fragments of this text emerged in 1904 when pieces showed up in an English newspaper based in Cairo called the Egyptian Gazette:

Account of a city and the road to it, which lies east of the Qala'a es Suri, where you will find palms and vines and flowing wells. Follow the valley till you meet another valley opening to the west between two hills. In it, you will find a road. Follow it. It will lead you to the City of Zerzura.

You will find its gate closed. It is a white city, like a dove. By the gate, you will find a bird sculptured. Stretch up your hand to its beak and take from it a key. Open the gate with it and enter the city. You will find much wealth and the king and queen in their palace, sleeping the sleep of enchantment. Do not go near them. Take the treasure and that is all.

European interest

The first mention of Zerzura by a European was in 1835 by Gardiner Wilkinson, the father of British Egyptology. He met a man who had lost his camel in the desert. The man claimed to have survived after finding a miraculous oasis five days west of the Farafra-Bahariya caravan route. He called it Wadi Zerzura and said it contained shady palms, refreshing springs, and some peculiar ruins.

For several years, the Book of Treasures was allegedly in the possession of a member of the Royal Geographic Society named E.A. Johnson Pasha. When the explorer William Joseph King Harding was trying to pinpoint the origin of the Zerzura story, he met with Johnson Pasha. Pasha told him that he possessed the only copy of a manuscript with the routes to Zerzura and other legendary locations, such as the mines of the great Persian king Cambyses. Harding searched for the city in 1909 and 1911 but found nothing.

The Royal Geographic Society published a series of papers and expedition reports related to Zerzura. They described the lost city as a "problem" that needed solving, not just because they did not know its whereabouts but because they believed it played a key role in an ancient expedition.

Richard A. Bermann, in a paper from 1934, explained their thinking. "The famous expedition of King Cambyses’s army against the oasis of Jupiter Ammon could hardly have been planned if the existence of water somewhere in the middle of the desert had not been known. Throughout the Middle Ages, Arab writers had told about a hidden oasis, the name of Zerzura," he wrote.

Local legends

Harding also heard from locals who claimed to have seen the giant men and animals who hailed from Zerzura or had met residents who emigrated from there. But he heard conflicting reports about the state of the oasis city. Rather than the flourishing, rich city from the Book of Treasures, he often heard of an abandoned oasis. He started to believe that there were dozens of these through the desert. 

The Zerzura mystery even inspired the formation of a Zerzura Club. Founded in 1930 by British explorer Ralph Bagnold (famous for crossing the Libyan Desert from east to west), the club had 13 members dedicated to finding the city. It lasted till at least 1935.

A separate group tried to find the city in 1932. Laszlo Almasy, Robert Clayton, pilot H.W.G.J. Penderel, and surveyor Patrick Clayton used planes to scout the desert. They came across lush valleys in southeast Libya containing prehistoric art. Some locals even suggested that the valley belonged to Zerzura.

Theories

There is precious little information about Zerzura, even compared to other mythical places. Take Iram of the Pillars. It was built by a king named Shaddad for the people of Ad. The city was an opulent paradise that grew too greedy, leading to its destruction. 

Zerzura does not seem to be an allegory; there is no obvious moral lesson. We have no archaeological evidence to work with either, merely the fanciful words of a story. 

The details about the lack of Islam in the city are peculiar. Was it a sort of commune of non-believers? Was that why the location was such a secret?

Or perhaps it was not ancient or Islamic at all. Travelers passing through might have established the oasis. Many non-Muslims traveled through the Sahara, particularly in the medieval period. It could have been a foreign group living in this oasis that did not adhere to Islamic customs. Additionally, they were fair-skinned and blue-eyed, which indicates a European background. The Crusades lasted until 1291. Were these Crusaders that settled in the desert? The mystery endures.