Unsolved natural mysteries of the world. Top 10 unsolved mysteries in the world

We all know about the inexplicable wonders that the world is full of: the Bermuda Triangle, Stonehenge, the mysterious popularity of Justin Bieber. But there are hundreds of interesting mysteries that most have not even heard of.

Mysterious fires in Sicily

Residents of the small Sicilian town of Canneto di Caronia have been suffering for decades from an inexplicable phenomenon that scientists cannot explain. All over the city, electrical appliances suddenly burst into flames - toasters, refrigerators, even mobile phones. Even some items that are completely unrelated to electricity (for example, mattresses) light up on their own, for some inexplicable reason. Due to the frequency and extent of the fires, the township police had to drop the arson theory. Authorities blame the fires either on aliens or some supernatural forces. And yet no one knows the truth.

Pascagoula's ghost hairdresser

The small town of Pascagoula, Mississippi is literally teeming with unexplained phenomena, from the strange noise of the Pascagoula River to the arrival of flying saucers in the area in 1973. But the city's most famous legend is the still unsolved mystery of the Ghost Hairdresser. It all started in 1942: a mysterious man broke into the convent of the Virgin Mary and cut off the hair of two sleeping girls. Over the next few months, the ghost appeared regularly on Mondays and Fridays, cutting the curtains with a knife, using chloroform to put the victims to sleep, and cutting off their hair. In the end, a certain William Dolan was arrested on suspicion of atrocities, but he passed a polygraph test and was soon released. Who the Ghost Hairdresser really was remains unknown.

Man from Taured

In 1954, an airplane landed at Tokyo's Haneda Airport. One of the passengers presented at the inspection a passport issued by the state of Taured, located on the border between France and Spain. Of course, the country of Taured does not exist - and never existed. However, the mysterious traveler's passport was riddled with marks from previous trips. The police, not knowing what to do with the man, put him up for the night in a hotel. And the next morning, both the mysterious resident of a non-existent country and all his luggage disappeared without a trace.

The Disappearance of Sarah Jo

With the ocean - boundless, cruel and mysterious - many mysteries are connected, and one of the most curious is the story of Sarah Jo. In 1979, Scott Moorman and four friends took a boat out of the port of Hana on the island of Maui. The weather was cloudless and heralded excellent fishing, but a storm suddenly broke out, blowing the fragile ship into the ocean. When the storm ended, the boat with the crew simply disappeared. No one managed to find any trace of Sarah Jo and the five men for the next ten years. And only a decade later, a group of marine biologists discovered a boat on a small island - Taongi Atoll. There was a grave on the island, marked with a crude wooden cross, and in it were the remains of Scott Moorman. But what happened to the other four and who buried Murman? It looks like it will remain a mystery forever.

Water Demon Methuen

Ghosts in a house are usually just a figment of an overexcited imagination, but a strange story that happened in the town of Methuen (US Massachusetts) is not so easy to brush aside. In October 1963, a certain Francis Martin discovered a damp spot on the wall of his attic. As soon as Martin decided to take a closer look at the stain, a stream of icy water began to beat from the wall - and after a few seconds it disappeared. Over the next few weeks, the phenomenon repeated itself repeatedly throughout the house, which is why Francis and his family had to leave the house and temporarily move in with his mother-in-law. However, this did not help - the same thing began to happen in the new house. As a result, the Martins returned home, and after some time the phenomenon stopped on its own - no one could give a reasonable explanation to this riddle.

Ayuda aluminum detail

Every year, thousands of unusual finds are discovered in the world, which fans of conspiracy theories immediately declare as evidence of anything. But the aluminum part, discovered in Ayud (Romania) in 1974, cannot be logically explained. This oddly shaped detail was found in the same soil layer as several mastodon bones, making it at least 11,000 years old. But the fact is that up until 1808, at least, humanity was not able to either obtain aluminum or make something from it. Some believe the mysterious piece served as the tip of some primitive hunting weapon, but no one really knows what it was for.

Self-closing hoses

This may seem like absolute nonsense, but for several decades now no one has been able to explain why in 1955, quite suddenly, all over the United States, ordinary garden hoses began to “burrow” underground on their own. One of the first such incidents occurred in the town of Downey, California, at the home of a certain George di Peso. Di Peso's daughter was watering the garden and, turning off the water, she suddenly saw how the hose began to burrow into the ground! He managed to "burrow" almost 6 meters before George, running out of the house, cut the hose to stop his movement. Similar cases occurred in other states - Florida, Kansas, New York, Michigan. Some scientists, trying to explain what happened, suggested that the pressure of the water created a vacuum, due to which the hose was "pulled" into moist, rarefied soil. However, scientists could not repeat this.

Dayton Rock

One of the most unusual finds in the United States has been attracting the attention of curious people since the 17th century. Dayton Rock, once discovered in the Taunton River, is a 40-ton boulder engraved with mysterious characters unlike any language that exists or has existed on Earth. To whom scientists did not attribute these mysterious inscriptions - someone claimed that they were engraved by wandering Vikings, others were sure that these petroglyphs were of Phoenician origin, and recently a version was put forward that the signs were left by a Chinese expedition. Of course, the origin of the inscriptions in the end could not be established.

Green Children of Woolpit

Long ago, back in the 12th century, in the village of Woolpit, in the county of Suffolk, in England, peasants discovered twin children, a brother and a sister, in a field. The most surprising thing was that their skin was distinguished by a sickly green color. The children did not speak English, were dressed in some strange clothes, and refused any food except green beans, which they ate greedily. Over time, the children's skin lost its greenish tint, and they began to eat normal food, but where they came from remains a mystery.

Yellow balloons from Cuba

During the Cold War, many strange events took place on both sides of the Iron Curtain, but perhaps the most mysterious was the discovery in June 1967, off the coast of Florida, of a wooden box with the inscription "Property of the USSR." Without thinking twice, the Florida Coast Guard fished the box out of the ocean waters and opened it. In a box addressed to the "Institute of Mineral Resources of Cuba" there were exactly 7 yellow balloons filled with some unknown gas. Scientists, having examined the contents of the balls, came to the conclusion that this is the most ordinary air. Decades passed, but no one was able to explain what kind of strange package it was.

Human civilization has existed on Earth for a very long time, and the Earth has existed for millions of years. So it is not surprising that there are secrets left by ancient civilizations that modern man is unable to understand and explain.
Here are 12 mysterious and strange discoveries made in the field of archeology. Science still cannot fully explain them.
1) Baltic Sea Anomaly: A crew of Swedish divers have discovered a large, disk-shaped object at the bottom of the Baltic Sea. No one is sure of the origin of this object.

2) Baghdad batteries: These terracotta pots were created in Mesopotamia and are regarded as ancient galvanic cells, created 2000 years before the birth of their inventor Alessandro Volta.

Our world is full of secrets and mysterious events. Some of them yesterday seemed mysterious and mystical, and today their secrets have been unraveled by scientists. We invite you to learn the secrets of some mysterious objects and phenomena that have not been scientifically explained for a long time.

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1. Moving stones of the Valley of death

death valley- this is nothing more than the bottom of the dried-up Lake Racetrack Playa in the United States. And it is known for a very interesting phenomenon - its moving stones. As if an unknown force moves these stones from place to place from time to time, leaving only small grooves on the dried mud. The sizes of stones can be different, from several kilograms to hundreds of kilograms ( up to a maximum of 300kg.) No one saw these stones in motion, but it was obvious that the stones moved without the help of people or animals.

This phenomenon gave rise to many speculations about its nature. Almost all explanations of the phenomenon of moving stones were reduced to the influence of supernatural forces.

From the middle of the 20th century moving stones representatives of science began to actively study. Many scientific explanations for this movement have been proposed, but most of them have not been supported by anything. Thus, the only correct answer to the question " what or who sets these stones in motion? The scientists didn't.

The only more reasonable explanations were that the stones could be set in motion by the force of the wind under certain weather conditions, such as moisture on the ground's surface. But it was hard to imagine how the wind could move a 300 kg block.

In the 70s of the last century, a theory began to take shape, according to which the stones were set in motion by a wind load, and a thin layer of ice, which could form from moisture during the rainy season, helped them slide. This theory has been more and more confirmed by scientific calculations and research.

In 2011, a group of young American researchers decided to investigate the moving rocks in Death Valley, they set up a time-lapse camera, a weather station to measure wind gusts, and installed GPS beacons on 15 different rocks in Death Valley.

The hardest part was the wait. No one could know exactly when the stones would move. It is known that stones can stand for years without moving. But they were lucky. In December 2013, the stones "floated" and their mystery was completely solved.

The reason for the movement of stones was heavy rain and snow, which left behind a 7-cm water column at the bottom of the lake. This water froze at night, turning into layers of ice, which, under the midday sun, broke up into large floating patches of ice.

In turn, the stones, doused with rain, formed a small crust of ice on their surface during the night, which significantly reduced the coefficient of friction with the surface. Thus, ice floating on the surface, icy rocks and a light wind turned out to be those rare ideal conditions for the drift of stone blocks. The rocks left footprints in the mud below the icy surface. After a few months, these marks dried up, leaving only small grooves on the surface.

Many scientists have spent decades trying to unravel the mysteries of the past by putting the pieces of the puzzle together. But there are such artifacts and historical moments that are still shrouded in secrets.

1. Geoglyphs of Nazca

A geoglyph is a drawing on the surface of the earth. In Nazca, similar images are made in the form of geometric figures or animals. One gets the feeling that they were carved on a hard surface.

To a person on the ground, they seem to be a plexus of yellow lines. Only once in the air, you can see full-fledged figures: fifty-meter monkeys and spiders, condors 120 meters wide or lizards one and a half times longer.

How old are the geoglyphs - no one can say for sure. They lend themselves only to approximate dating. It is proved that all this was created at different times. The first of them appeared in the VI century. BC e. And the last - in the 1st century AD. e.

2. Mummies from the swamps of Europe

As early as the 17th century, references appeared that human mummies were found in the peat bogs of Denmark, Germany, Ireland and neighboring countries, which were perfectly preserved. Some even look worthy to be displayed in museums.

Each found body was carefully studied by many experts. All showed signs of violent death: a slashed throat, affected areas from strangulation and blows, broken main bones, a pierced head. Sometimes all at once.

So, for example, "the man from Lindow" lost his life because of an ax that ended up in the skull. The "Elling Woman" died because of the letter V, which was found deep in the back of her head. The "teenager from Kayhausen", who was no more than 15 years old, was found bound so tightly that he could not even move.

Until now, many experts argue what exactly it was: execution or sacrifice. After all, each of those found was dealt with cruelly.

3. Statues of Easter Island

It is known that graceful stone creatures are the remains of an ancient civilization. They are markedly different from those seen in other parts of the Pacific.

For the first time, the structures were noticed by the Dutch traveler Jacob Roggeveen, who ended up on the island on Easter day.

In 1955, Thor Heyerdahl, with the help of local residents, was able to put one such statue upright in two weeks. They, using the bars, lifted a block a few meters and placed large stones under it. This was repeated until the sculpture was in the right position. But how exactly the hats of several tons ended up on their heads is not yet known.

4. Popess Joanna

Medieval biographers report that Popess Jonna was born in 882. She loved to study since childhood and as a teenager she went to Athens to obtain the necessary knowledge. Then any education related to religion was not available for the fair half. So she decided to impersonate the young man John the English.

When the girl was in Rome, they drew attention to her thanks to her learning, beauty and piety. After some time, she managed to become a cardinal. And after Pope Leo IV was appointed successor. From the outside, no one knew about the catch. But during the next festive procession, Joanna suddenly gave birth to a child right in front of everyone. She died soon after.

After that, starting from the 1000s and for five centuries, an obligatory ceremony was held, during which the gender of the chosen one to the throne was checked.

This story was believed to be true as early as the 13th century. Already in the 15th century, it was decided to challenge it. In the XVI - historians had little doubt that this was all fiction. It was believed that the legend appeared as a result of someone's joke, when women dominated the court of the Pope - 920-965.

Similar phenomena were noted at the end of the 16th century, when Alexander VI Borgia appointed his mistress as a "medieval accountant". At the same time, her brother, at the age of 25, without having the appropriate dignity, became the cardinal-treasurer and bishop of three dioceses. After that, he took the throne under the name Paul III.

It is also known that during the military campaign of Alexander VI, according to his own appointment, the youngest daughter was on the throne.

5. Tomb of Genghis Khan

Until now, the best minds in the world have not been able to figure out exactly where the grave of the famous Genghis Khan is located. This place attracts many. It has a unique historical value. In addition, according to legend, incredible riches are hidden in the ground along with the deceased. According to some estimates, two billion dollars worth of precious stones, weapons and gold can be found in the grave.

After death, the body of Genghis Khan was returned to his birthplace. Now it is Khentii aimag. It is assumed that the great commander is buried next to the river Onon. Along the way, everyone who met the funeral escort was killed. The slaves who performed the burial were massacred. And then the executioners who staged the execution also died.

There are several legends that explain why the searchers fail to find the grave. According to one of them, adherents of Genghis Khan laid the riverbed directly above the burial. According to another, a thousand horses were driven over the dug-up ground, and then trees were planted on top.

6. Origin of the Basques

The Basques are considered one of the most incredible historical mysteries. At one time they occupied a small part of modern Spain and France. The first thing that is noted is that this people had a unique language that did not intersect with others present in neighboring regions. Also, geneticists managed to establish that these are people who had the highest percentage of the Rh factor in their blood - 25. The difference between this people and others living in the neighborhood stands out noticeably.

Most scientists believe that the Basques can be safely called the indigenous people of Europe. They came from the Cro-Magnons, who appeared in these places 35 thousand years ago. Presumably, this people no longer decided to change their location, since so far no evidence has been found to refute this, until the arrival of the Romans.

7. Time Travelers

Scientists have recently become more and more confident that time travel is possible. And there are many facts to back it up.

For example, this photo shows the opening of the South Fork Bridge in British Columbia in 1941. In the frame you can see a person who clearly stands out from the rest.

He has short hair, tinted glasses, a sweater over a T-shirt, and is holding a modern camera.

Such an image can often be found today. But for the 40s, it seemed strange. Specialists conducted their own investigation, during which they managed to find a person who participated in those events. But, unfortunately, he did not remember the "strange" stranger.

The authenticity of the photo has been proven several times with the help of various analyses.

8 Ancient Swiss Watches

This small item was found in a tomb from the Ming Dynasty. The tomb was opened in 2008 when a documentary was filmed. To the surprise of the operator and archaeologists, a Swiss watch was found inside.

The former head of the Guangxi Museum, who was on the expedition at the time, shared, “We were removing soil from the surface of the lid when a small piece of rock suddenly bounced off and fell to the floor with a metallic sound. The item looked like a ring. But when we cleaned it of dust, we found a miniature dial.”

At the same time, we even managed to see the Swiss inscription inside. The Ming dynasty ruled China until 1644. In those days, they did not even guess that such technologies would someday become a reality. At the same time, experts say that this tomb has been closed for the last 400 years and there has never been anyone in it.

9 Ancient Computer

In Kamchatka, a few hundred kilometers from the village of Tigil, St. Petersburg University of Archeology found inexplicable fossilized remains.

According to the head of the excavation, this discovery surprised scientists, but could completely change history. A special analysis showed that initially these were metal parts that form a mechanism that is not yet clear. The most surprising thing is that the find dates back 400 million years.

10. Voynich Manuscript

The Voynich Manuscript is a mysterious 15th-century book that no one has yet been able to decipher. It was written between 1404 and 1438 by an unknown author. In addition, the words inside have still not been translated. They are made up of a strange alphabet that no one knows about either.

Book size: 23.5 × 16.2 × 5 cm. It has about 240 pages. The manuscript has been repeatedly studied by many cryptographers, archaeologists and historians. No one could even come close to deciphering even a single word.

After futile attempts, some experts came to the conclusion that the pages contain random characters that are not related to each other. Others adhere to the theory that not only information is printed on paper that tells in detail about that time, but also data about the future.

11. Jack the Ripper

Jack the Ripper is a serial killer (or killers) who committed several high-profile crimes in London in 1888. All of his victims are girls of easy virtue from the poorest neighborhoods. The maniac cut their throats, after which they opened the abdominal cavity. He took some organs. It is believed that the killer had a good knowledge of anatomy.

Only recently, a collector who purchased a shawl allegedly belonging to one of the victims handed it over to specialists. With the help of careful analyzes, they isolated the DNA of the alleged maniac. It turned out to be the Pole Aaron Kosminsky, who came to England to work as a hairdresser. Despite this, many have criticized this method, as it does not accurately prove the immigrant's involvement in the murders.

12. Crystal skulls

Many experts have been trying to solve the mystery of the origin of crystal skulls for a long time. No one knows yet who could create them and how?


Scientists talk about 13 rock crystal heads. All of them are kept in museums or private collections. Artifacts have been found in Tibet and Central America. The exact time of their production has not yet been established. In addition, there are no known tools that can be used to do this.

13. Ancient aircraft

The Incas, Aztecs and other peoples living on the territory of pre-Columbian America are known not only for amazing pyramids and strange rituals. They also left behind many small statuettes. One of them turned out to be the so-called "ancient aircraft", which, by similar elements, resemble modern aircraft.

Initially, experts believed that these were simply figurines of insects or birds. However, it turned out that they have details that are more similar to modern aircraft: stabilizers, landing gear, and so on. Large aircraft of that time could not be found. What the ancient tribes wanted to show by this is not yet known.

14. Phaistos Disc

The Phaistos Disc is a small clay circular tablet that was found in 1908 in the Minoan Palace in Italy. Her secret still remains unsolved.

The plate bears various unknown symbols. It is believed that this language was created in II c. BC. Some people think that the drawings resemble the hieroglyphs of Crete. However, they cannot find the decryption key. This disc is one of the most famous mysteries of archeology today.

15. Taman Shud case

So far, the best inspectors have failed to solve the Taman Shud case. It has also been called "The Case of the Mystery Man from Somerton".

The case was opened when at half past six in the morning in Australia in the city of Adelaide they found the body of a man. He was on Somerton Beach. Who the deceased was has never been established. Then the experts found out that the death occurred as a result of poisoning with medicines.

In addition, a piece of paper found in a secret trouser pocket caused a resonance. Only two words were written on it - "Taman Shud". These were torn words from a rare book by Omar Khayyam.

The police still managed to find the right copy, which was missing the last page. On the back, several words resembling a cipher were applied in pencil. What exactly was written there, it was not possible to find out.

Until now, this case remains one of the most confusing and mysterious.

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Despite the fact that scientists tirelessly unravel and discover, in the history of mankind, secrets, as if, do not decrease. Many mysteries and unsolved mysteries remain in the history of our civilization.

Science is applying more and more modern methods and technologies, history is gradually opening its curtains, but even billions of research budgets and brilliant researchers still cannot answer some very interesting questions, cannot explain the origin of a people or where an entire state has disappeared.

1. Was there Atlantis?

Atlantis is the most famous of the legendary continents of the Ancient World. Plato wrote about it in detail. She was mentioned in their writings by Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, Posidonius, Strabo and Proclus. According to Plato, the island was located to the west of the Pillars of Hercules, opposite the mountains of Atlanta. During a strong earthquake, he went under water in one day. It happened around 9500 BC.

Atlantis has been searched all over the world, from Gibraltar to Peru and Brazil, but to date there is not a single scientifically based theory of its location.

2. Was there a global flood?

The Flood is mentioned not only in the canonical books of the Bible, but also in the later apocrypha. For example, in the Book of Enoch. There is a story about the flood in other books, in the Jewish Haggadah and Midrash Tanchuma, as well as in the Sumerian myth of Ziusudra. The first Sumerian flood poems that have come down to us date back to the 18th century BC.

There are references to the transgressions of the sea in the myths of all cultures, but was there really a flood? Historians cannot yet give a definite answer. However, it is known, for example, that around 5600 BC. in the Mediterranean there was a real flood, when due to earthquakes the level of the Black Sea rose by 140 meters, it increased by 1.5 times, the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov appeared. Perhaps, for the inhabitants of those places, this was the “global flood”.

3. Who built the pyramids?

No matter how modern reenactors and scientists struggle to solve the riddle of the construction of the pyramids, convincing versions of the way they were built have not yet been found. Some experts say that the pyramids were built from ready-made blocks hewn in the rock, others (Joseph Davilowitz) say that the blocks were already made at the construction site from a mixture of stone chips and “geopolymer concrete” based on limestone. The incredible complexity of the process casts doubt on all hypotheses. The question of who built the pyramids, slaves or civilian workers, and how many there were, also remains open.

4. Where did the Maya go?

The Mayan civilization was one of the most developed, but by the time the conquistadors arrived, only scattered forest tribes remained from the Mayans, underdeveloped and not representing a serious force. They lived in huts and did not build majestic temples with palaces. Where did the Maya go? The mystery is still unsolved. There are many versions, from epidemic and war to alien intervention, but none of them is proven.

5. Who were the Sumerians?

The world community learned about the Sumerians only in the middle of the 19th century, when scientists proved that there was a state in Mesopotamia, whose age reaches 6000 years. It was from him that Babylon and Assyria inherited their culture.

It is still unknown where the Sumerians came to Mesopotamia. It is assumed that this was a mountainous region, since the words "country" and "mountain" are spelled the same in the Sumerian language. It also had to be an area with advanced technology - the Sumerians were pioneers in many fields of knowledge, from astronomy to physics. Presumably, but not yet proven, that this could be the south of India.

6. Did the Vikings discover America?

The Norman version of the discovery of America is being voiced more and more often, but the Columbus version is still the official one. What is interesting about both of them is that both times America was discovered by mistake (a Scandinavian merchant named Bjarni Herjulfsson was thrown off course due to a storm, and Columbus sailed to India).

There is much less material on the Norman version than on the Columbus one, and not all of them are considered authentic, which greatly undermines its credibility.

7. Who were the Hyksos?

They are called "shepherd kings". It was during their reign that a two-wheeled war chariot appeared in Egypt, which changed the tactics of warfare. Little is known about them. The Hyksos are nomadic tribes, "rulers of the desert highlands", who invaded Egypt around 1700. BC e. They ruled it for over 100 years and even founded a whole dynasty of Hyksos kings. The Hyksos were expelled from Egypt only by the founder of the XVIII dynasty Ahmose I in 1587 BC. e. The question of who exactly the Hyksos were, where they came from and where they disappeared remains open.

8. Why did the Neanderthals die out?

The human and Neanderthal genomes are approximately 99.5% identical, but this does not mean that we are descended from Neanderthals. With monkeys, we have a genome similarity of 98%.

Contrary to popular belief that Neanderthals were semi-wild, they were not. It was a fairly advanced evolutionary branch, they even knew how to make musical instruments. Versions of their disappearance are as follows: 1) Assimilation; 2) Cro-Magnon genocide; 3) The Ice Age, which they did not survive because they did not know how to make clothes as unnecessary.

None of these versions is yet scientifically validated.

9. Where did the Scythians disappear to?

It is believed that Scythia was the first state to disappear as a result of the Great Migration of Nations. The Scythians fought with the Sarmatians, Philip and Alexander the Great, with the Goths and Huns. It is believed that after the defeat by the latter, most of the Scythians died, while many became part of the victorious army. In history, because of this, there is a lot of confusion with the late definition of the Scythians. Some historians rank Chechens and Ossetians among the descendants of the Scythians.

10. What did Alexander the Great die from?

We still do not know where Alexander the Great is buried. This significantly reduces the chances of finding out the main mystery - why he died in the prime of his life, at 32. The Persians, whom he mercilessly defeated, claimed that the commander was punished by heaven for desecrating the grave of King Cyrus. The Macedonians who returned home said that the great commander died of drunkenness and debauchery (sources brought us information about his 360 concubines). Roman historians believed that he was poisoned with some kind of Asian slow-acting poison. According to the most common version, Alexander died of malaria. She does not explain why she delivered such a "single blow".

11. Did King Arthur exist?

Almost all of us know King Arthur from childhood. The Arthurian cycle was a bestseller in the Middle Ages, and in our time has become one of the cult phenomena of mass culture. Some critics argue that all fantasy literature came out of Arthuriana. However, the reliability of the existence of Arthur as a separate historical figure has not yet been proven. Probably, the real prototype of Arthur had a different name, or it is a collective image of several prototypes.

12. Why did the plague "mow down" Europe?

In the history of the European plague pandemic, which literally “mowed down” Europe in the Middle Ages, there is a lot of incomprehensible. So, wild rodents, known as such, whose ranges would also extend so far to the north, could not be established. There is no answer to the question of why the Black Death pandemic struck Europe in the same sequence and over the same territories, and at the same time as the first pandemic - the Plague of Justinian (531-589)? How did its centers flare up synchronously over very extended territories of Europe, for example, plague epidemics in Moscow and London in the middle of the 17th century?

13. Where did the gold of the royal family go?

By the beginning of the First World War, the Russian Empire had the largest gold reserves in the world, which was estimated at 1 billion 695 million rubles (1311 tons of gold, more than 60 billion dollars at the rate of the 2000s).

The fate of most of the gold reserves of tsarist Russia is still unknown ("Kolchak's gold"). This was approximately 490 tons of pure gold in bars and coins worth 650 million. According to one version, the Czechoslovak corps stole it, according to another, it was hidden on the orders of Kolchak himself, according to the third, the funds settled in European banks.

14. Where did the Templar gold go?

The countless treasures of the Templars are still legendary. According to the historian Lozinsky, the chief treasurer of the order was the chief treasurer of France, and the king of France Philip IV the Handsome was the largest debtor of the order.

After the trial of the Templars, he discovered that there were not so many jewels and gold in the treasuries. Where the Templar gold went is a mystery. It is known that the surviving Templars transported part of the accumulated treasures on ships, but it is not known for certain where. According to the legends, the Templar gold ended up in Nova Scotia - the territory of modern Canada. Some of it is believed to have been transported to Canada's Oak Island, where the descendants of the Knights of the Temple hid it in a trap-filled cache.

15. Where did the 10 tribes of Israel go?

At the end of the 8th century BC, five-sixths of the Jews completely disappeared - 10 out of 12 ethno-forming genera. They have been searched for for 2500 years, and are sometimes found in the most unexpected places - from India to Europe. Even Japan claims to be related to the Lost Tribes. There is a religious movement Makuya, whose representatives claim that the imperial title "mikado" itself comes from the Jewish mi gadol (great). None of the versions to date is not official.

16. Who built Stonehenge?

The mystery of the megalithic complex Stonehenge has not been solved so far. According to one version, it was built by the Druids, according to another - by the Celts, according to the third - by the ancient Britons, according to the fourth - by Merlin himself. There are those who claim that Stonehenge is a hoax and was built in modern times.

It is also unknown how exactly Stonehenge was built. During the restoration of the complex, which began in 1901 and was completed only in 1964, the stones were moved using cranes, but in the Middle Ages there was no such technique.

17. How were the monuments built on Easter Island?

Among researchers, the most widely accepted theory is that moai on Easter Island were erected by settlers from the Polynesian islands in the 11th century. How they did it is still unknown. Thor Heyerdahl's experiments were only partially successful. His method of transportation was not suitable for multi-meter colossi weighing 50 tons or more. The Norwegian scientist also failed to explain how caps weighing up to two tons were put on the Maoi.

18. Where was the "cradle" of the Indo-Europeans?

This question is still open. It used to be believed that the "cradle" of the Indo-Europeans was in India, but linguistic analysis refutes this. As a rule, in the region of origin of any language family there are many different languages ​​and dialects of the same family, and in India there is only one Indo-Aryan branch of languages. In Central and Eastern Europe, by contrast, there are hundreds of varieties of Indo-European languages.

The most reliable, although not proven, is the version that the ancestral home of the Indo-Europeans was the Volga and Black Sea lands, where archaeologists have recorded the Yamnaya culture.

19. What caused the Great Migration of Europe?

The Great Migration destroyed the ancient world, building the Middle Ages on its ruins. Despite many versions, it is still not clear what was the main reason for the movement of the barbarians. As is usually the case in such cases, scientists talk about the sum of the factors. Firstly, about overpopulation in Scandinavia, secondly, about changing climatic conditions (cooling and increasing humidity), and finally, about a shift in social strata - the tribal elite that came to power was interested in profit. The best target was the Roman Empire.

20. Who sponsored the Bolsheviks?

The question of who financed the revolution in Russia is still debatable. For a long time, the main version was that the German General Staff played the first role in financing, but today more and more historians are inclined to believe that there was support from both England and Wall Street, and even from the Old Believers, who had close business contacts with British industrialists.