While Indiana Jones made it look glamorous, real archeology involves a lot of sitting outside and carefully picking at bits of dirt. But don’t let that fool you, it’s still a job where one is as likely to find bits of pottery as human and animal remains.

So people from across the internet shared archeological finds that they thought were particularly dark or disturbing. A word of warning, some of these are a bit gruesome. Get comfortable as you scroll through, check if you’re not on some ancient, holy burial ground, upvote your favorites and be sure to share your own thoughts in the comments below.

#1

Evidence of a second extinction event level meteor impact.

It kind of means that extinction event meteors not only have happened, but are not all that rare of a thing when you take the age of the Earth into consideration.

© Photo: SternCoats

#2

That there was an entire civilization living in the Amazon Basin that was destroyed by European diseases without Europeans making contact or becoming aware of it, and the Amazon rainforest is a gigantic, overgrown garden.

© Photo: Melenduwir

#3

There was the huge recent human sacrifice temple in Mexico they recently unearthed that had hug pillar that were decorated with human skulls all the way up to the ceiling.

© Photo: Much_Committee_9355

#4

Göbekli Tepe

the sheer magnitude and age of the site are itself mind-boggling. A civilization without writing and apparently lacking proper settlements or agriculture continued to develop thus temple complex for thousands of years since 10.000 BCE. Some monoliths might require up to hundred of people to bring and erect them. How did they pass the meaning of this endless project through generations?

and the disturbing part: this huge complex was deliberately buried (and thus well preserved) under hundreds cubic tons of dirt around 8000 BCE.

Imagine deliberately burying Louvre Museum or Vatican. What sort of horrible apprehension or presentiment about the future made them to abandon and inter a work of many generations?

This thought gave me goosebumps as I stand there looking at the part uncovered by archeologists (they mean only of 5% of the complex was uncovered yet). I highly recommend visiting the site and the museum of Urfa.

© Photo: bureau44

#5

Vikings’ burial sites are pretty disturbing. They were often buried with their wives, slaves and horses.

The way Ötzi the Iceman died was pretty gruesome too.

Also, all of the mass graves of the past plagues. I live in a city where a couple of years ago a mass grave of hundreds of 19th century cholera victims was discovered. We knew they were there somewhere, we’ve been finding bones in the ground for years, the discovery was still a shock for people who basically live now on this graveyard…

© Photo: Southern-Toe5605

#6

Homo Erectus mining gold. What was the purpose? Why would a “primitive” man(two or three species away from sapians) dig 20ft deep holes for a few ounces of metal?

© Photo: Just_Discussion6287

#7

India’s Lake of Skeletons has to rank up there…

© Photo: anon

#8

The first King of Hawai’i, Kamehameha the Great, united the islands via conquest, and on Oahu he defeated the main force opposing him by trapping them on a cliff (the Pali) and essentially shoving them off. In the 1960’s when they began building a highway through the mountains, they at one point were doing construction in the area where the battle was fought, and the construction unearthed hundreds of skulls and human remains. To this day no one camps or hikes in the valley beneath the Pali because of several supernatural incidents many believe are linked to the fact hundreds fell to their death in the valley.

© Photo: Rodby

#9

Lead coffins….

In 18th century Paris, the graveyards where becoming so full that bodies where not getting the time they needed to decompose before the area of the graveyard was being used to intern more people.

Usually with the earlier graveyards they would work round in a circle using the spaces to bury people. In about 100 years or more they would get back to the start and no one would remember who was buried there and they would reuse the space. Body has had plenty of time to decompose so no problem.

Skip forward to mass urban expansion in the 17-18th century where bad living conditions and a short life span was leading to over use of the now city’s graveyards. The normal practice of working around the graveyard to intern people was still being done. Only now it was only taking 4 years or so to have done a full round. The ground level was getting higher and higher and they where so full that the wasn’t enough soil around the bodies for them to fully decompose. The place was a mess and bodies where just not decomposing properly before they where being disturbed for more burials.

So to combat this, those that could afford it started using lead coffins which were sealed.

These coffins get recovered by archaeologists and because once they are sealed they become airtight the bodies inside can be perfectly preserved.

One had a girl in it that was so well preserved that her clothes were prefect, her hair was still plated and brown. She was so well preserved that her blue eye colour could still be seen.

Others that have been found have cracks in the coffin and this means that the rate of decay within them can be very varied.

This can vary from there being nothing left, to everything else gone but say just a hat remaining, to half a very well preserved body to a horrible jelly like goo (putrefaction) and every level in between.

Those that have worked on these sites and opened these coffins have been offered psychological counselling afterwards because of how disturbing the remains have been found to be.

© Photo: Dry_Entertainer4448

#10

Archaeology student here. Here’s one I learned in class. A pueblo village went through a horrible drought and famine. A dwelling was found with the remains of a family that had died violently and had several cut marks all over their body. They also found a human coprolite (ancient p**p). It is common practice to run chemical analyses of coprolites to figure out a person’s last meal. It was human flesh. The DNA of the flesh particles matched the DNA of the family. Somebody m******d and ate the family, then pooped in the house.

© Photo: youburyitidigitup

#11

In 2016/2017, they unearthed something like 900+ remains of babies who died or were k****d by nuns in Tuam (two-um) Galway, Ireland. It was the septic tank of an old site where a laundry used to be.

This is a place you were sent if you’d a baby out of wedlock or your family cared too much about how the neighbours thought of them. You washed clothes until you have birth and your baby went to an orphanage. Wealthy Irish, British and American couples came to help the poor babies who’s mother was well and alive in the laundry. Obviously sadly some babies never made it to the orphanage.

I always say it. Priests are now known to have done horrific things but the nuns are worse. They hide things and do things like Tuam.

© Photo: isaidyothnkubttrgo

#12

The battle of Changping during the warring states period in China when the Qin defeated the Zhao kingdom. It’s said the Qin k****d over 450,000 and buried their soldiers alive. That region of China continues to find mass graves from that event to this day.

© Photo: SquilliamFancySon95

#13

It’s not really a single discovery, more of raw human nature exposed through repeated actions. Fetal skeletal remains are often found in privies near brothels.

© Photo: DoctorNerdly

#14

Then infants that were burried wearing a slightly older toddler’s skullcap as a hat.

© Photo: anon

#15

Probably the graves at the Catholic “Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home” in Tuam, Ireland, where in 2017 the bodies of over 800 children were dug up on the former homes grounds.

The average age of the victims was between 35 weeks and 3 years old and in its day, the care home served as a place of residence for orphans and abandoned children and as a location where unwed mothers (typically teenagers) gave birth. The overwhelming majority of the children had died from malnutrition, illness and general neglect and the consensus now, is that most were k****d (or allowed to die) as a result of feelings fostered by the patriarchal, ultra-conservative religious culture that ran the institution, which largely viewed the infants as worthless creatures that were the product of sin, poverty and immoral s****l conduct. The children’s bodies were disposed of in an unmarked burial ground on the site (said to be a cess pit) and of the 800+ bodies that were dug up, only 2 of the deaths had ever been officially recorded by the institution.

The care home ran from 1921 to 1961 and the culture of the time was that unwed mothers (especially teen mothers) were treated as social pariahs and punished by their families and local communities severely (potentially for life), which often meant that the mothers had little option but to go to a place where they could give birth in secret and then have the baby removed. The midwife’s at these institutions (which were not hospitals) could be very a*****e and denial of things like painkillers during childbirth was often enforced as the pain of childbirth was seen as part of the punishment for the mothers “sinful” s****l conduct. The baby would then often be taken away from the mother (whether she begged to keep it or not), where the institution then typically listed the child as “Abandoned” or “Orphaned” on it’s record systems. (Officially), these taken children would then be raised by the institutions until they were adopted by someone.

Meanwhile, the biological mothers would not only be prevented from ever having contact with their child again, but even from knowing a shred of information about their childs eventual fate. After giving birth, it was also common practice at the care home for the teen mother to be sent to work in the Magdalene Laundries, which was a notorious work house style system with heavy religious undertones in Ireland that punished girls like them in a moral character “reform through prayer & hard labour” attitude type approach.
On the outside, the Magdalene Laundries was perceived by some to be a noble and charitable institution that offered women from the bottom dregs of society (unwed mothers, mothers who had left a*****e husbands, runaway girls, mothers who had had their children taken away due to poverty, etc) a 2nd chance in society to reform themselves and get a job, but most people were aware of the reality of the institution, which was that it was a place where endless girls & women were subjected terrible working conditions, verbal and physical a***e, and where many were maimed (or even k****d!) because of the terrible work conditions (some women there also suffered s****l a***e, for which there was obviously no justice). But most people socially tolerated the institutions place in society for the hatred & disdain towards the nature of the girls and women there was so widespread, that nobody had any issues knowing that they suffered such a***e & neglect as it was viewed as further (morally justifiable) punishment for the females “sins”.

The people who ran these institutions were extremely well-connected within the church and very powerful in their local communities and they effectively ruled as untouchable Gods over the lives of the children “born out of sin”, who conversely had no power nor status in their communities. The care homes were often run like prisons (with the children being almost never let outside the grounds) and due to the secretive nature of the births & record keeping, often the local communities had no idea that many of the children even individually existed. Nobody listened to the mothers pleas nor concerns for decades but even after very serious alarm bells started being rung in the 1970s after the Tuam care home was closed down (for example, when some workers discovered bags of children’s bones in the basement, rumours in the communities of mass graves at the site abounded) the problem was the people who ran the former institution were still alive, influential and active members of the church and in their communities (and effectively used their connections and influence to cancel or discourage any formal investigations into the matter).

It took years of campaigning by various individuals before any excavations at the site took place. A part of what finally broke the barrier, was the discovery of 222 children’s remains at a different but similar former care home. But an even bigger part of why a lot of these excavations took so long to take place is simply because the people who once ran these institutions have now largely died off (and with them not only their influence, but also a great deal of the accountability that the broader church has over these institutions of cruelty).

And if 100s of dead children was not bad enough…There are ongoing investigations at the moment that over 1000 children may have been human trafficked from the care home, to God knows what fate…And the scale of this problem (the m****r, s****l a***e and trafficking of children etc) does appear to be massive, affecting many more former religious run care homes and similar institutions across not just Catholic Ireland, but the broader UK.

Beyond a handful of verbal apologies, there has never been any real justice over this terrible slaughter and a***e of 1000s babies, women and kids by the Catholic Church.

© Photo: Creative_Recover

#16

If I had ever pursued anthropology beyond the undergraduate level, I had intended to focus on cannibalism for my Master’s Degree and human sacrifice for my PhD. The behaviors appear aberrant to the casual observer, but when you look at it in terms of survival, among other reasons, cannibalism is actually a pretty logical decision to make.

In terms of cannibalism, I think the most disturbing find is not a find at all – yet. I’ve been reading up on survival cannibalism in China during the Cultural Revolution, and as archives are opening up for study, Chinese historians have been able to gauge how common cannibalism was during that period. What’s shocking is how common it was. Cannibalism also occurred during the 1990s famine in North Korea and that doesn’t surprise me at all, but the *breadth* of cannibalism and the number of recorded cases in China is far higher than I was expecting. I really just didn’t think the records would be there to demonstrate it, but they are.

So it’s not necessarily an archaeological discovery that *has* happened, it’s the one that’s *going to* happen when future archaeologists open up Chinese gravesites from that period.

© Photo: anon

#17

Infant Sacrifices in ancient Carthage. This is sort of debated because we don’t have direct evidence of child sacrifice, the is no big bloody alter labeled “burn babies here”. But what we do have is Roman accounts of child sacrifice in Carthage. On its own that isn’t super damming, the Roman’s accused everyone they didn’t like of doing human sacrifices. The part that’s disturbing is the remains of infant cremations mixed in with cremated animal remains. This may have just been a Carthaginian burial tradition, an animal sacrifice accompanying a lost child. However the odd thing is that the infant/animal cremations are found separate from other burials which suggests that these infant cremations were somehow different.

© Photo: CaptainChats

#18

When I was visiting Savanah I did a kayak tour through Ebenezer Creek. Hundreds of freed slaves followed the Union amy on Sherman’s March to the sea. The union army was being sporadically shelled by in the rear by the confederates.

The union army built a bridge over the marshy, alligator infested Ebenezer Creek and told the freed people at the rear they could cross once his 14,000 troops had crossed first. Deciding that the freed people had become a burden however, he ordered the bridge to be cut, abandoning 600-1000 freed slaves on the western bank. The freed slaves had only death or re-enslavement behind them. Panicked, they opted for near certain death in the waters. Most of the men, women and children died attempting to cross. A few made it and tried to make rafts to help the others. Davis had no remorse for his actions and was defended by Sherman.

Some amount of bones have been brought up, but mosty the Creek remains a watery grave.

© Photo: PleasantSalad

#19

The finding of bodies from mass executions.

© Photo: dhill9696_

#20

Not really archeological in the sense of having been dug up from ancient times but the fully preserved dead bodies on Everest and other mountains. The fact that some are/were actually used as landmarks to mark paths and distances is super creepy to me.

© Photo: anon

#21

Advent of farming made those who practiced it physically weaker, shorter, less healthy, and reduced lifespans overall. Up until recently it was assumed the opposite was true.

© Photo: anon

#22

That lake at the bottom of the ocean that was so dense the submarine bounced off.

© Photo: SecretPersonality178

#23

Going through the journals of conquistadors, there’s evidence Mesoamerica had philosophical schools the equal of “Western/Eastern” traditions, but completely unique.

As you might imagine, eradicating all traces of it was one of the Church’s biggest priorities.

Give the book ‘1491’ a read, it includes a HEARTBREAKING transcript of a philosophical/theological debate between Aztec and Spanish priests.

© Photo: Creme_Bru-Doggs

#24

Everytime they unearth a Woolly Mammoth they skip the part about how there are ancient viruses down there too and that they are only unearthing such great specimens due to climate change accelerated permafrost melting, which at some point will ramp up exponentially since melting releases so much CO2…….

© Photo: naturalispossessio

#25

The discovery of the bodies at Pompeii and what happened there always get to me. An entire city wiped out and bodies mummified where they fell.

Edit – I’m aware it’s not mummification just wasn’t sure how else to describe it honestly.

#26

Well since the rivers dried up around the world due to the heatwave a fair amount of bodies hidden in containers were found at the bottom…

#27

There is a hypothesized group of people called the sea peoples that may have raided and destroyed many villages. There were a LOT of towns near the Mediterranean sea in BCE that burned down. The origins of the Sea Peoples are undocumented but may have originated from a number of different locations, such as western Asia Minor, the Aegean, the Mediterranean islands, and Southern Europe. I only first heard about this mysterious group of people when i was a freshman in college.

#28

It’s not one particular thing, but essentially the millennia of brain drain. We’ve discovered a lot of instances of things that are exceptionally advanced. Successful brain surgeries, buildings with architecture such that they can sound like birds calling back to you, precision mapping techniques, etc. etc. And these are just the big ones that have made news or viral internet fame.

And through mankind’s assorted upheavals due to war, famine, jealousy, politics, etc. we’ve managed to erase the knowledge that was poured into these advances. The most recent iteration of this, of course, is European colonization and the ongoing mythos around white supremacy, so much so that we have people who actually try to chalk these incredible advances up to aliens. Right, because surely in the 100,000 years of our species, only white Europeans ever made significant strides in technology, medicine, architecture, etc. These same a******s whose doctors protested at washing their hands before operating on patients.

We only see a fraction of the past. And there are entire empires and civilizations we can’t even begin to learn about cause we have mere scraps of what used to exist of them. How far could mankind have gotten, really, if we didn’t have to keep warring over resources or destroying one another’s civilizations and culture? What kinds of insane butterfly effects have driven rampant ignorance and death because even one potential inventor/doctor/architect’s life was snuffed out? The enormity of human potential never achieved looms large in my mind. I fear the reason we don’t hear anything out there that might be aliens is because The Great Filter explanation of Fermi’s paradox is a constant; that all civilizations are doomed to only dream of their potential before animalistic cruelty, rampant consumption, and war ultimately reduce then to nothing. And there’s only so many times civilization can fall before humanity can’t rise from the ashes again.

#29

The unmarked graves of the indigenous children in Canada, literally terrifying and the fact that they stopped talking about it so quickly.

#30

King Tuts tomb. I saw a picture of the seal that was on the tomb entrance before it was opened and idk why but it made me feel so sad and disturbed that it was opened. I know it was a great discovery and taught us a lot about ancient Egypt but it’s still sad. I wish a little that their tombs wouldn’t be disturbed and would last for thousands of years more without being discovered.

#31

The plague that wiped native Americans before the arrival of colonists.

The antikathera mechanism. How the hell is it so complex?

#32

Not maybe as old as other discoveries, but I’m consistently disturbed by all of the children they are finding buried at old residential schools across Canada and the United States. Thousands and Thousands of children. Buried and hidden from history until now.

#33

I’m less disturbed by what has been found and more so what hasn’t. I don’t remember the exact percentage (don’t smite me) but basically all fossilized organisms only make up 1 to 10% of all life that was once on earth. It’s horrifying to think of just how many things or creatures were here before us that will forever be lost to time without any way of possibly knowing anything about them other than the fact we will never know.

#34

Sure there’s many hidden ones away from public view…. But imo the one for me would be gobekli tepe.. a very old archaeological site. Approx 10k years. It’s pretty advanced stoneworkmanship. Almost on par with the pyramids. And the fact this site was deliberately covered up for some unknown reason. Can’t remember how big the site is. But yeah the site was not covered up by any natural means or over time. Usual drawings of beings with handbag that are practically everywhere.

#35

The Aztec death whistle. It was used to mimic the cries of a human by the Aztec possibly during rituals or in the battlefield, and it worked a little too well. It is very unsettling to hear.

#36

Mayan temples where remnants of blood flowed down after a heart was taken out of the chest of someone who was sacrificed.

#37

The fact that we’ve had 5 extinction events, and that the 6th and largest is staring us in the face and we are still arguing over politics, borders and most people think god(s) going to appear any minute now and bestow eternal bliss as a reward. I find it hard not to panic about that sometimes.

#38

It’s not exactly archaeological but it’s somewhat adjacent. In my hometown area in Massachusetts there’s a manmade reservoir called the Quabbin, several towns were eminent domained and forced to move to create a water supply for Boston. As part of the process they had to demolish houses and dig up graveyards. More than a few bodies had to be moved into new coffins and they discovered more than a few people had been mistakenly buried alive. How did they know? They found scratches on the lids of the coffins and lining material under their nails.

#39

There was an ancient predecessor to the American Bison found frozen and perfectly preserved for tens of thousands of years. Naturally, the researchers took a piece of the flesh, cooked it, then ate it.

#40

The body that was accidentally dug up while making a new parking lot that turns out to be the true king of England.

#41

The Silurian hypothesis! Long and short is it ponders the question of what if we’re not the first industrialized species on this planet? How so? Our species has been industrialized since let’s say 1800. So only 200 years of meaningful tech, and been around for 10,000 years tops as some form of society. Imagine in 4.5 billion years, how many times could this exact scenario have happened? Even in 100 million years it’s enough time to rise as a species and die and most everything would be gone, and given enough time anything left could even be consumed by tectonic plates. The interesting thing is, the most obvious sign of industrialized civilization that we know of, spikes in carbon dioxide, have been discovered, most recently to us is 56 million years ago, but there are 6 or 7 total that have been identified throughout history. It’s kind of ominous to think an entire sources could have be born, rise to greatness, and disappear completely without a trace, multiple times. We may very well be just the 8th iteration of this happening without even knowing it.

#42

Göbleki Tepe. That site has no reason to be there but it’s existence has the potential to rewrite history as we know it.

#43

Bog bodies. Being able to see the final pained facial expression of a m******d/sacrificed person, as well as the extraordinarily well-preserved details of the wounds that ended their life, after hundreds or even thousands of years… it’s almost hard to fathom what you’re looking at.

I mean, to understand the length of time this dude’s skin and meat has survived more or less intact requires some serious meditation on the matter. It’s like a time machine that lets you see what a man’s recent corpse would have looked like millennia ago.

And he was just there, in that patch of bog that has remained a bog for all that time, fully-clothed in both garments and flesh, sometimes with a garrotte still attached to his throat, waiting for someone to discover him. His killers long dead and forgotten, his family long dead and forgotten, all turned to dust and scattered to the winds. And he’s just chilling in there, with his face and bones and toenails just where they were all those thousands of years ago.

Empires have risen and fallen continuously since he entered that bog, and the greatest emperors have all been ground to nothing by the pestle of time, yet there he is, still fully-formed and still rockin’ some sweet threads.

Creepy.

#44

Not sure if this counts but the Dyatlov Pass Incident, hikers found with horrific injuries. Two found in there underwear, one was found without eyes or a tongue.

#45

The Aztec Skull wall:

Turns out the stories about mass sacrifices for the gods were not stories at all, despite what the deniers said. The Spaniards that documented that back in the day were not doing colonialist PR.

#46

Hippo Skull. Shows that we suck at determining how something looked alive be that all dinosaurs looked a lot more fuller rather than all bony.

#47

Maybe more sad than frightening, but the mummies of children sacrificed in capacocha ceremonies in Incan Peru. Kids between 5-15 d*****d, taken to the top of a mountain, and then either violently k****d or abandoned to succumb to the elements. Because of the environmental conditions on the mountaintops, some of the mummies are really well preserved, especially their posture—other than the clothes, they look just like kids that have curled up to take a nap.

Interestingly, since being sacrificed was something of an honor, the quality of life of the kids between being selected for sacrifice and actually being k****d was pretty high.

#48

I’m going to go with something that is scary because it was apparently mundane. When I took an intro to archeology course for medievalists the instructor who had many years of medieval digs under her belt said that they were used to digging up cemeteries, and not usually much affected by it, but that you would occasionally find people who by their poses had apparently been buried alive and woken up and struggled before dying for real. This was common enough that it was not totally surprising, though it could never be common enough for you to get used to it.

#49

Pompeii – I was weirdly obsessed with the idea of time being frozen as a child.

#50

The minoans in Crete, it’s scary to think that such an important culture could be forgotten about for over 3000 years.

#51

Microbes in the permafrost probably.

#52

Finding black plague bacteria in the dental pulp of plague victims.

#53

Im actually shocked this hasn’t been mentioned yet, but the opening tomb of Timur/Tamerlane by Soviet archaeologists in June of 1941.

A descendant of Genghis Khan, Timur was one of the most bloodthirsty conquerors in recorded history. He swept south from the steppes of central Asia and conquered Persia, known for massacring whole cities and constructing buildings from their skeletons; most notably, at Isfahan, where he ordered a mass e*******n of 200,000 people who revolted against him and constructed towers with their heads. His exploits stretched from China to the Levant.

Legend has it that In his tomb was an inscription: “Whomsoever [sic] opens my tomb shall unleash an invader more terrible than I.”

Two days later N**i Germany began Operation Barbarossa and invaded the Soviet Union.

#54

Not so much frightening. But for me one of the most haunting things I’ve seen is pictures of Titanic’s debris field and all the pairs of shoes, which provides evidence that a body lay there.

#55

Sometimes it’s not the archaeology that’s frightening but what it’s buried in. In several cases digs had to be curtailed because such things as arsenic, cadmium or mercury were discovered in the soils or coating artifacts.

These were modern digs with pretty good h&s, imagine the outcomes of earlier Edwardian or Victorian digs without such monitoring.

#56

Abundant evidence of multiple advanced civilizations collapsing throughout history due to climate change or over-exploitation of natural resources.

Examples off the top of my head: Vikings in Greenland, Chaco culture, Maya Civilization, Akkadian Empire.

© Photo: ANameForTheUser

#57

OK so here’s my time to show some very interesting info. It’s very recent and that’s the scary part. There have been found ,,vampire graves” in Carpathian Mountains ,,deep” countryside (Slovakia, Poland, Romania, Ukraine, Hungary, Serbia) which means graves of people who were beheaded, their heads put between their legs, teeth knocked out with wooden stakes, and bodies staked to the ground by limbs forming a cross. So basically people believed to have been vampires. The scary part: are they medieval or victorian era tombs? No, they are from the 1930’s.

#58

I’m surprised nobody said this, but the Nor’ Loch of Edinburgh (what is today the Princes Street Gardens) was a place used for many atrocities for centuries, such as witch ducking, drowning defeated enemies, smuggling and apparently was also a common place for s*****e attemps.

When it was drained during the 19th Century the amount of bodies that appeared was way larger than expected. To think that so many lives were taken over the span of so many years in a place where people go nowadays to do shopping or picnic is actually haunting.

#59

Catacombs under Paris.

#60

Robert Pickton is a serial killer in British Columbia. He created a charity run on his pig farm called “Piggy’s Palace Good Times Society” where he entertained marginalized and transient people – including women and indigenous people – from Vancouvers downtown east side. Women had been going missing in large numbers for about 20 years. The police largely ignored concerns that people were going missing due to who they were. He m******d between 26-49 women and buried them on his pig farm.
Once the pieces were put together, his farm was thoroughly searched. Archaeology students were brought in to help with the work of identifying body parts. It might not be the most frightening thing discovered, but the quantity and, well, the horrific circumstances must have been difficult for those students to deal with.

#61

The child sacrifice temples in south and/or Central America.

#62

Skeleton lake. When I last looked into it, the theory was that a large group of pilgrims died in a hail storm up in the Himalayans. New genetic and dietary studies show that it seems to be 3 different groups of people from 3 different time periods – one from the Mediterranean. Only a few individuals show damage consistent with a hail storm. So that might explain one group? Very bizarre.

#63

I worked on a cemetery rescue dig in Coventry, UK where we excavated the skeleton of someone who had clearly woken up after burial, and died terrified. It’s engraved on the inside of my eyelids.

#64

Pithouse excavation in the four corners region of the US. The central hearth had a single skull set on it, like it had been severed. Under it was a massive coprolite. Seemed like several people took a dump in the hearth then put the severed head on top of it. Then they burned the roof so it collapsed. Really weird.

#65

Xipe Totec, a mesoamerican god known as “the flayed one.” Very gruesome stuff. Priests would wear the skins of sacrificed victims for weeks. Nahua sources from the colonial era give testament to this most horrible of practices. Archeological digs have found many figurines depicting the practice as well. When I visited Mexico earlier this year, the most numerous figurines exhibited in the museums (depicting a deity) were of the rain god. The second most numerous belonged to Xipe Totec.

#66

White Sands trackways, together with more varied testing of their dating, unsettles Clovis First theory of New World settlement like no other challenge to the theory.

#67

The mass graves of indigenous children found outside of Catholic etc. schools they were forced to attend, away from their families. In BC, Canada.

Most were nameless.

#68

A group of 12 Neanderthals including 6 children, all eaten by cannibals.

#69

Hopefully, one of the more knowledgeable folk here will elaborate but, I read of an archaeological dig that uncovered clear evidence, not only of cannibalism, but that people were held, like cattle, for this purpose.

This truly disturbed me. I had read ‘The Road’ by Cormac McCarthy at around d the same time and, between the two, the mix of fact and fiction really messed with my head.

Intrusive thoughts, nightmares, anxiety attacks, the works. I still have huge bags of rice and pasta in the attic, because I became so unhinged that I literally started ‘prepping’.

My family thinks it’s funny (now) but, honestly, reading about that dig was a huge triggering event for me. I have nothing but the deepest of respect for anyone (archaeologists, policemen, soldiers, doctors) who can look into the abyss of the human heart and walk away unscathed.

#70

Ramses II, considered by many the greatest Pharaoh ever, died from a tooth abscess. It struck me that one of the most powerful people in the world at one time was taken down in his prime thousands of years ago by something many people take for granted today: dental health. People still die from dental abscesses today, they don’t know how dangerous it is.

#71

The Antikythera mechanism. Imagine if that technology survived, and was advanced and built upon.

#72

The Syracuse actually had steam cannons in the Siege of Syracuse. They were attacked by the Romans.. and Archimedes delivered defensive siege weapons.

#73

The most disturbing and saddening archaeological find for me was the discovery of seventeen bodies found in a well in Norwich in 2004. Carbon dated to between 1161 and 1216, some of the victims were found to be related to one other and contained genetic markers that suggested they were Ashkenazi Jews. They were likely victims of the Pogrom in 1190.

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