Articles
Evidence-first articles by Chris Montes, researched by the Enigmas Research Team.
Ancient Wonders
The great monuments of the ancient world, and what survives of them today.
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The Pyramids of Giza
Why can't we find the ramp?
Aksum's Stelae
A 520-ton stone carved like a thirteen-story house.
Angkor Wat
A temple built to the sky.
Borobudur
A temple with a buried foot.
Chavín de Huántar
Passages run for kilometers inside the walls, and researchers are still working out why.
Hampi
Ask the sources how it ended and the answers differ.
Hegra's Unfinished Tomb
The top is carved and the lower third is still rough.
Hōryū-ji's Pagoda
The pillar at its center was cut before the fire of 670.
Lalibela
Eleven churches, cut down out of red rock.
Nemrut Dağ
A king said his body would rest here. The mound has not given it up.
Persepolis
The Apadana reliefs show the empire as its court wanted it seen.
Petra's Treasury
A treasure legend gave it the name, and nobody agrees on the job.
Rani-ki-Vav
The river buried it, and the silt kept it safe.
Rapa Nui's Moai
Did the stones really walk?
Seokguram
The grotto was taken apart and put back together.
Sigiriya's Lion Rock
Only the paws survive, and the stories fill in the rest.
Somapura Mahavihara
The plan has no ancestors, and the top is gone.
Taputapuātea
The big standing stones began as living coral.
Teotihuacan
The city the Aztecs found already in ruins
The Great Stupa at Sanchi
A brick mound that people kept adding to for centuries.
The Ishtar Gate
Most of the blue gate in Berlin is brick laid in the 1920s around ancient animals.
The Minaret of Jam
Sixty-five meters of brick, and a capital that left almost nothing.
The Pyramids of Meroe
Hundreds of pyramids in the Sudan desert, and a lot we still can't read.
The Temple of Apollo at Didyma
The plans are still on the wall.
Uxmal's Pyramid of the Soothsayer
Five temples are stacked inside one rounded hill.
Lost Civilizations
Cities and cultures we know from their ruins, records and roads.
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Tikal
Most of the city never made the photograph.
Ancient Merv
Nobody agrees how many people lived there.
Cahokia's Monks Mound
Most Americans have never heard of it.
Caral
Who built pyramids before pottery?
Chan Chan's Nik An
The walls you see were built by the Chimú and repaired by many hands since.
Dholavira
A walled city on a desert island, and a sign nobody can read.
Gedi
A rich stone town in a Kenyan forest, six kilometers from the sea.
Great Zimbabwe
Who built it is settled. Almost everything else is still being argued.
Hattusa's Lion Gate
Archaeologists still argue about when the wall behind the lions went up.
Knossos
Some of it is Bronze Age stone and some of it is concrete.
Koh Ker
For a short time the Khmer court ruled from this forest.
Kuk
Early farmers in the New Guinea highlands left mud and stake holes, and the diggers still argue about them.
Loropéni
Walls six meters high and a lot of questions nobody has answered.
Mapungubwe Hill
Was it the first kingdom, and when did it end?
Mohenjo-daro's Great Bath
A bath is what we can see. A ritual is what we assume.
Nan Madol
How do you move a column across the water?
Paquimé
An adobe city with three different birthdays
Pueblo Bonito
Six hundred rooms and no agreement on who lived in them
Puma Punku
The facts are strange enough without the embellishment.
Sarazm
Nobody has finished measuring the town.
Shahr-i Sokhta
Everybody calls it the Burnt City. The specialists still argue over how it ended.
Songo Mnara
A planned stone town on a small island, lived in for about 150 years.
Tak'alik Ab'aj
One carved column turned up in pieces, in three different buildings.
The Great Mosque of Kilwa
A mosque on a small island in Tanzania, built and rebuilt more than once.
The Pyu Ancient Cities
Three cities and a timeline nobody has pinned down.
Thimlich Ohinga
Rough stone, no mortar, and a date that will not sit still.
Tiwanaku
Can the sun put a date on a temple?
Archaeological Discoveries
Finds that changed what we thought we knew, and the people who made them.
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Göbekli Tepe
Why would you bury a temple?
A Nimrud Ivory Panel
One worn plaque from a stack of ivory chairs.
A Pompeii Wall Painting
Before you read the picture, find the wall it hung on.
An Igbo-Ukwu Bowl
A bronze with no workshop in sight.
Calakmul's Royal Belt
A king's jade belt, put back together twice.
Pakal's Jade Mask
The green face in the museum has been put together more than once.
Sanxingdui
Nobody has found the foundry.
Sutton Hoo's Great Gold Buckle
Nearly a pound of gold, and it still had to work.
Sutton Hoo's Helmet
Hundreds of rusted pieces and one very famous face.
The \"Bactrian Princess\
The label says princess and the museum record says goddess.
The Antikythera Mechanism
A box of gears went down with a Roman ship. Only a third of it came back up.
The Great Lyre's Bull Head
The wood is gone, so what do we hear when a replica plays?
The Kazahari Dogū
Someone glued it back together with natural asphalt.
The Lockington Gold Armlet
Two gold bands and a dagger in a pit with no body.
The Mapungubwe Gold Rhinoceros
It fits in your hand, and its date is still argued.
The Nebra Sky Disc
Found by looters, reworked by its makers, argued over ever since.
The Rosetta Stone
Who could read it, who forgot, and who gets to keep it.
The Royal Game of Ur
Nobody wrote down the rules until the game was already two thousand years old.
The Standard of Ur
It got its name from where it lay, and nobody knows what it was for.
The Terracotta Army
Nobody has opened the tomb.
Tutankhamun's Mask
The most photographed face in Egypt, and an argument about whose it was.
Ancient Maps
How people pictured their world before modern surveying.
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The Babylonian Map of the World
The scribe drew the edge of the world and wrote that nobody knew what was inside.
Al-Idrisi's World
The map you see online is a late copy or a modern rebuild.
Al-Istakhri's Gotha Manuscript
The book is from the tenth century. This copy was made in 1173.
Battista Agnese's 1544 Atlas
Seventy atlases survive, and very little else about the man who made them.
Burgo de Osma Beatus
A copy of a map nobody has seen
Codex Quetzalecatzin
Many hands have worked on this one sheet.
Fernão Vaz Dourado's Atlas
He drew the world from Goa, and little is known for sure about him.
Fra Mauro's World Map
He mapped the way around Africa before the Portuguese sailed it.
Jaume Olives's Chart
He signed it in Marseille, and the specialists still argue over who it was for.
Juan de la Cosa's Chart
Who gave him the Atlantic?
Kunstmann II
Portuguese, Italian or Spanish, depending on who you read.
Matteo Ricci's 1602 World Map
It was pirated across China. Six complete copies survive.
The Albi Mappa Mundi
A world on one sheet of parchment, and a model nobody has found.
The Book of Curiosities
A world map with a scale bar that does not work.
The Carte Pisane
The oldest sea chart we have, and a date that will not hold still.
The Catalan Atlas
Half sea chart, half traveler's report, and nobody signed it.
The Caverio Planisphere
A famous copy, and an argument over what it was copied from.
The Cotton Tiberius Map
A copy of a bigger map that nobody has found.
The Dunhuang Star Atlas
A paper scroll sat in a sealed cave for nearly a thousand years.
The Gough Map
The oldest sheet map of Britain still has no known maker.
The Guang yu tu
A Ming atlas built on a map that was lost.
The Hereford Mappa Mundi
The maker signed it, and scholars still cannot place him.
The Kangnido Map
A Korean world map from 1402, and nobody has the original.
The Map Psalter
A prayer book with the whole world on one leaf.
The Marshallese Rebbelib
A chart that stayed on shore.
The Miller Atlas
A missing map of Africa, a blank far side and an argument over who it was for.
The Nuremberg Plan of Tenochtitlan
Europe's first picture of the Aztec capital came out of a print shop in Germany.
The Oztoticpac Lands Map
A lawsuit drawn on bark paper.
The Piri Reis Map
What is the land at the bottom?
The Saint-Sever Beatus
A Gascon abbey drew the whole world and found room for itself
The Selden Map of China
Nobody signed it, and nobody can say where it was drawn.
The Sigüenza Map
One sheet of bark paper, about forty place signs and a trail of footprints.
The Tabula Peutingeriana
Scholars date the first version across more than a thousand years.
The Turin Papyrus Map
The colors on the scroll still match the valley, and the next geological map we know of is almost 3,000 years later.
The Uppsala Map
Nobody agrees on who painted Mexico City on this parchment, or when.
The Yochudo Atlas
A round Korean world on page ten, and nobody can say when it began.
Waldseemüller's 1507 Map
It named America. It also drew an ocean Europeans had not yet reached.
Historical Mysteries
Puzzles from the past, with the evidence laid out.
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The Nazca Lines
Who were they drawing for?
Aberlemno I
The back of the stone is probably older than the front.
Carnac
Who lined up the stones?
Norrie's Law
Most of the silver was melted down before anyone wrote an inventory.
Roman Dodecahedra
Over a hundred bronze objects and no ancient text that names them.
Rongorongo
Fewer than thirty carved objects and no reading anyone has agreed on.
Silbury Hill
It started as a knee-high pile of gravel.
The Diquís Spheres
Two rows of stone balls, and the people trying to read them.
The Enkomi Tablet
Nobody can read the script, and nobody agrees if it is one script or three.
The Indus Seal
Is it writing, or something else?
The Longyou Caves
Twenty-four chambers cut by hand, and no record of who cut them.
The Phaistos Disc
Forty-five different signs, one clay disc, and no second text to check them against.
The Plain of Jars
Nobody has pinned down when the jars were set in place.
The Rhinoceros Seal
Why a rhinoceros, and what do the signs say?
The Susa Tablet
We can count the numbers on it, and the signs beside them are still a puzzle.
The Towie Ball
It fits in one hand and nobody agrees what it was for.
The Voynich Manuscript
Every few years someone says it is solved.
Tiya's Carved Stones
Swords over the graves, and signs that are hard to read.
Big Questions
The ideas people ask about most, checked against the record.
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The Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis
Did the sky fall 12,800 years ago?
Flood Stories
Do they all remember the same water?
Forbidden Archaeology
Who decides what gets tested?
Ley Lines
Did someone lay out the lines?
Sacred Geometry
The same circles turn up on five continents.
The Great Reset
A break in the story, and where you would look for it
The Oregon Sri Yantra
What does a drawing in the desert tell us?
The Sumerian King List
The prism that starts in heaven