posted June 05, 2008 04:27 AM         

History's Most Overlooked Mysteries -Tuan C. Nguyen
source: Live Science

Though many of life's great mysteries remain unsolved, there are some lesser known ones that also have stumped researchers for centuries. While grand enigmas such as Egypt's great pyramids, Stonehenge, the Shroud of Turin and the downfall of Rome have garnered widespread interest, here are some perennial riddles that remain just as puzzling.

Rongorongo

Considered the other "Easter Island mystery," Rongorongo is the hieroglyphic script used by the region's early inhabitants. While no other neighboring oceanic people possessed a written language, Rongorongo appeared mysteriously in the 1700s. However, the language was lost--along with the best hopes for deciphering it--after early European colonizers banned it because of ties to the islanders' pagan roots.

Lost City of Helike

Greek writer Pausanias gave an account of how, in one night, an earthquake destroyed the city of Helike. Moments later, a tsunami swept away what remained of the once-flourishing metropolis, which had been a worship center devoted to earth shaker and God of the sea, Poseidon. No trace of the legendary society existed outside of ancient Greek texts until 1861 when an archaeologist found Helike loot--a bronze coin with the unmistakable head of Poseidon. In 2001, a pair of archaeologists located the ruins of Helike beneath coastal mud and gravel and are now working to unearth what some consider the "real" Atlantis.

The Bog Bodies

Even CSI's best efforts wouldn't go very far in solving the mystery of the bog bodies. Hundreds of these ancient corpses have been discovered buried around the northern wetlands of Europe. Researchers who inspected the remains have reported tell-tale signs of torture and medieval foul play. Such gruesome clues have some suspecting that the dead were the victims of ritual sacrifice.

posted June 05, 2008 04:35 AM         

The Carnac Stones

If erecting Stonehenge seemed to have been a tremendous groan, think about how backbreaking it must have been for builders of the Carnac stones. On the coast of Brittany in northwestern France are over 3,000 megalithic standing stones arranged in perfect lines and spread out over 12 kilometers. The local myth is that a Roman legion was on the march when the wizard Merlin turned them into stone. A more rational stab at an explanation by a researcher who studied the stones purported that the stones may likely be an elaborate earthquake detector. The identity of the Neolithic people who built them is unknown.

posted June 05, 2008 04:37 AM         

The Voynich Manuscript

The Voynich manuscript might be the most unreadable book in the world. The 500-year-old relic, which was found in 1912 at a library in Rome, consists of 240 pages of illustrations and writing in a language not known to anyone. Deciphering the text has eluded even the best cryptographers, leading some to dismiss the book as an entertaining but lengthy hoax. But a statistical analysis of the writing shows that the manuscript does seem to follow the basic structure and laws of a working language.

The Tarim Mummies

During an excavation beneath the Tarim Basin of western China, archaeologists were surprised to discover more than 100 mummified corpses that dated back 2000 years. But Victor Mair, a college professor, was downright stupefied when he came skull-to-skull with some of the blonde-haired and long nosed Tarim mummies that were later displayed at a museum. So in 1993, Mair returned to collect DNA samples and test results validated his hunch that the bodies were of European genetic stock. While Ancient Chinese texts from as early as the first millennium BC do describe groups of far-east dwelling Caucasian people, there is no mention of how or why these people ended up there.