I loooove those unexplained tales myself, but my all time favorite has always been the Money Pit.
Assuming it’s not a gigantic hoax (which it very well may be), not only does it beg the question of how anyone could have dug out such an elaborate trap with 17th century means (and no one babbling about it, either), but also how they planned on retrieving the supposed treasure afterwards.
And that’s even without going into “why bury one’s treasure so elaborately in the first place, instead of a simple secret hole or cave ?”.
I confess the first thought that crossed my mind when I happened upon it was "Woaaa Greek-punk ! "
I recently learned about The Dyatlov Pass Incident, a creepy story about the mysterious deaths of nine Russian cross-country skiers in 1959. Wikipedia has an interesting article.
It apparently was a “branch” of the civilization that became the Hopi, but the mainstream vanished. An analogy would be if the British ceased to exist after the American Revolution.
For real. I had been reading it since the early '90s. Then, about 4 years ago, I went into the bookstore to buy it, didn’t look at the price, and when the clerk said “That’ll be $11.50” (or however much), I would’ve done a spit-take if I were drinking. I declined to purchase, and haven’t bought an issue since.
Eh? I wouldn’t say we know “nothing” about the Minoans. Sure, we don’t know a whole lot. But it’s not nothing, not by a long shot.
Those interested in the Bloop et. al. should check out VLF (Very Low Frequency) websites (such as here or here). Our earth is a noisy planet. I like weird noises in general; I wish I could find my old .wav of a recreation of a hadrosaur calling. That one was fun to play with.
Some of it is, but (for example) the large gear is spoked in pretty much Victorian fashion - It didn’t have to be. There’s apparently evidence of a dial engraved with graduated marks ticked off between two engraved concentric circles - just like the outer ring of a clock face (although maybe this detail is a direct descendant through the sundial).
Form does indeed follow function - so the gears are circular and toothed. It’s not those details I find disturbing - it’s the style of construction and ornamentation.
I think that one has been overplayed quite a bit. They probably just died in a an avalanche or something. Note they weren’t dicoverd for several weeks.
I was going to add Oak Isalnd in Nova Scota, but kobal2 already mentioned it.
There was a book in the late 1970s, by Robert Charroux, about all sorts of ancient mysteries* centered mostly around the idea of alien visitation in the remote past. Usually I find that stuff to be amusing for its entertainment value, but otherwise a waste of paper and ink. But this book just seemed to be more interesting than the others, and described things I haven’t seen mentioned anywhere else (no doubt for good reason), like a couple of light bulbs in the Amazon forest that have been burning since time immemorial. That’s about all I can remember anymore, since it’s been thirty years or so since I read the book.
*I think the title of the book was, simply, Ancient Mysteries, and IIRC was originally written in French.
After moving to the southwest I developed an interest in this as well. Having hiked in these areas (southern Utah mainly but NM and northern AZ as well) extensively here’s my guess. While some of their civilization reached high order such as Mesa Verde for example, the biggest part of the culture lived in 5 to 10 family groupings. A city the size of Mesa Verde could burn (or cut) up all of the wood in the surrounding area rather rapidly (I’ve heard estimates of 15 years or so).
Hiking in the desert wilderness, I’ve come across hundreds of smaller ‘cities’, none larger than 20 or so units. I feel that they were just hanging on in the best of times. It wouldn’t have taken much to tip the scales. It’s not very sexy, but a few years drought could have done it.
Heh, this mentions the (supposed) ‘Black Knight’ satellite in its introduction; I’ve been wondering whether there was something about that, but every story I read about it offers little beyond a ‘radar blip’ and Long Delayed Echoes as objective facts, and then devolves into Philip K. Dick receiving communications from crab-like aliens on Fomalhaut. Still, I’d like to see if there’s actually something beyond somebody seeing something strange on a radar screen and ham operators sometimes receiving echoes of radio transmissions at a delay time not in line with classically known delays (which is probably explainable by ionospheric weirdness of some sort). If there isn’t, this is probably one of the most overblown stories ever.
