Man Browsing Google Earth Spots A Suspicious Sight Before Quickly Alerting Authorities
A number of incredible historical discoveries were made completely by accident. The beep of a metal detector or the unexpected clink from a shovel hitting soil has unraveled more truth about our ancestors than some of the most well-researched books. An Italian man named Luca Mori used a different type of tool to uncover the past.
He was scanning satellite images of his small hometown when he came across something on the map he had no way of explaining. After he called in the experts, the whole team was shocked at the unlikely findings: had Google Maps just shined light on a classic historic mystery?
View From the Top
Before there was Google Maps, there was just, well, maps. Get 'em from a hotel, the DMV, the grocery store, or wherever, but they didn't show you Earth in every minute detail. Google literally changed the way we see the world.
From Every Angle
And that was not always a great thing. While Google Earth has provided images of nearly every surface on the planet, often catching some strange sights like people in bird masks, below, the now-common software was quite controversial. And for good reason.
Security Concerns
The main worry with Google Earth was security. Many national officials and public interest groups expressed concerns that Google Earth was exposing images of sensitive sites. This, they argued, could lead to a breach in national security.
Maintaining Privacy
In fact, in 2007 the software was blocked by Morocco, Sudan, and Iran. Still, organizations can simply request to have certain areas — such as nuclear facilities or military bases — blurred to maintain privacy. Google Earth managed to cause incidents in the past.
Helping Criminals
Multiple criminals, including the surviving gunman of the 2008 Mumbai attacks, and Michael Finton, who planned to bomb a federal building in 2009, used Google Earth to plan their attacks. But experts know the tech has been used for good, too.
Educational Uses
The program can be helpful for something as simple as viewing neighborhoods to consider when moving to a new city, or broader, more educational concerns, like viewing stars in the night sky. Of course, people have made world-changing discoveries with the tech, too.
Map of Italy
When italian computer programmer Luca Mori was studying maps of the Parma region of Italy, he wasn't expecting to make some incredible discovery. It's hard to believe that anything captured by Google Earth would be something novel.
Something New
As he scanned the satellite images, he noticed something that stuck out: As a lifelong resident of the area, he thought he knew everything about this corner of Italy. But, he stumbled upon something he couldn't quite place.
Never Before Seen
"At first I thought it was a stain on the photograph," said 47-year-old Mori. "But when I zoomed in, I saw that there was something under the earth." He'd picked up on something no one else knew about.
Shadows on the Map
What he saw was a dark oval that was, according to the map, more than 1,640 feet long, as well as shaded rectangular shapes nearby. Mori wasn't sure what to do, short of going out to the site himself to investigate.
Experts Investigate
Instead, he reached out to the National Archaeological Museum in Parma about his find. The experts made their way to where the shadows were on the map and couldn't have been more surprised by what they came across.
Ruins from the Past
The area appeared to contain ruins from antiquity. Unsure of what they were looking at, the experts excavated a few pieces of ceramic from the never-before-seen site. They were dealing with something completely unknown to the public.
Roman Villa
"At first they thought the site might be Bronze Age but a closer inspection turned up ceramic and stone pieces that showed it was a Roman villa built some time just before the birth of Christ," explained Mori. Experts knew how unlikely this find was.
Tourist Traps
While many of the most famous Roman ruins in Italy have become huge tourist attractions frequented by millions of visitors a year, a new site is a massive deal. Researchers and scientists learned so much about this society from ruins.
More to Discover
There's a high chance this site might never have been discovered if it wasn't for Google Earth and Luca Mori's sharp eye. While the few pieces they uncovered proved to be promising, there was still a lot of work to be done.
The Whole Picture
The experts and Mori hoped to participate in a full archeological dig of the site, pending approval from local authorities to do so. For all they knew, the site could prove to hold a bevy of ancient artifacts or treasure.
More Like It
"Mori's research is interesting in its approach," says Manuela Catarsi Dall'Aglio, an archaeologist at the National Archaeological Museum of Parma. At the time of the discovery, Manuela was processing a similar finding in south of Italy. It was also found by accident, during construction of a high-speed railroad.
Science First
"Only a scientific, archeological dig will tell," Manuela concluded. Because of the impressive reach and impact of the Romans, they make up a large amount of the artifacts unearthed across Europe. Like Mori's find on Google Earth, you never know where you could locate something super valuable.
Daily Chores
For most people, doing yard work is a monotonous chore that just has to be done. But for one East London resident, his weekend "to do" list lead him to a strange discovery. It all began with a shovel in Brian Campbell's backyard.
Digging Up The Yard
It was 1987 when Campbell went to work. He had recently had a tree stump removed from his lawn, and the gaping hole it left was an eyesore. So, he grabbed his shovel and got to work filling the hole with dirt.
A Strange Object
It wasn't long before the tip of his shovel struck an object. He stopped digging when he heard the sound of his metal shovel hitting something hard. Campbell reached into the hole and felt a small, misshapen thing.
No Explanation
The strange finding was unlike anything Campbell had ever seen. It was smaller than a tennis ball and made of a heavy material. Mud caked the outside of the object, making it difficult to know what exactly it was. However, even when he rinsed it off he couldn't recognize it.
A Simple Trinket
“My first impressions," explained Campbell, "were it was beautifully and skillfully made … probably by a blacksmith as a measuring tool of sorts.” At that conclusion, he set the mysterious figurine on his windowsill among his other trinkets where it sat for around ten years.
Shocking Museum Find
It wasn't until Campbell made a trip to a Roman fort in Saalburg, Germany that he realized the true importance of the object he had stumbled across. Much to his surprise, he saw the very same 12-sided object in a glass display case during his visit.
Learning the Truth
The finding had hardly seemed worthy of a display case, as he had relegated his to his window sill for the last ten years. The label under the case read "Roman dodecahedron." Because of its position in a museum, Campbell assumed this would be his chance to learn about his find.
Historical Mystery
He turned out to be wrong. In fact, he realized that the people studying this object were just as confused about it as him. Dodecahedrons have confounded experts for centuries. Despite their fairly common presence, no one knows exactly what they are.
300 Years of Questions
Almost 300 years ago, the first Roman dodecahedron was found in a field in the English countryside with some roman currency. "A piece of mixed metal consisting of 12 equal sides," read the description of the object when it was presented to the Society of Antiquaries in London in 1739.
Irregular Sides
Part of what made the trinket so hard to understand was the composition of the 12 faces. All the faces had tiny holes of all different sizes. Plus, each of the 12 faces had a knob or ball attached to the end of it. The fine and detailed craftsmanship only confused scholars more.
Maddening Mystery
Since then, over three hundred dodecahedrons have been found. Some are as big as a baseball, other are similar in size to the one Campbell found in his garden. The hollow objects all mimic the same curious construction. There is one thing that drives historians mad about these little objects.
No Paper Trail
Unlike most of the artifacts found from history, the 12-sized figures have no recorded mentions whatsoever. Historians rely on written records to gather most of their knowledge about the past. Without any information about these dodecahedrons, they are forced to fill in their own blanks.
High Quality Work
Because of the high quality craftsmanship on the dodecahedrons, many researchers believe they were quite valuable. The debate is over where exactly they brought value. The theories over these things vary significantly.
Weapon of Choice
During the 19th century, a popular theory revolved around dodecahedrons being used as a weapon of some kind. Possibly like a bullet for a slingshot, but there is a huge flaw with that opinion. Why would they craft such an intricate design for a run of the mill weapon?
A Flaw in the Theory
Historian Tibor Grüll of the University of Pécs in Hungary also points out than no dodecahedrons are the same size, nor do they have any numerical markings on them. “The practical function of this object can be excluded because none of the items have any inscriptions or signs on [them],” Grüll explained.
All Play and No Work
On the opposite end of the spectrum, some believe it may have been used not as a weapon, but as a toy. Dodecahedrons resemble the french cup-and-ball game and dice, but there is another idea about their use that is a little more fanciful.
Mystical Implications
The object was found in the 4th-century grave of a woman in the Netherlands, along with the remains of a bone staff. That dodecahedron was mounted on the staff like a scepter, and "probably ascribed with magical powers, bestowing religious power and prestige on its owner," as explained by the Gallo-Roman Museum.
Tool of the Zodiac
If not mystical, there is another possibility for cultural significance. The twelve sides could have a link to the astrological zodiac, or fortune-telling which was quite common in ancient times. Other theories still persist.
Still A Mystery
From weapons to toys to artistic statements, the ancient mystery of the dodecahedron persists. While this particular part of Roman history remains a secret, there is a lot we do know about the ancient Romans. Including some disturbing hygiene practices and odd eating patterns that don't fit in with such a refined society.
Diaries kept by a passionate Roman foodie name Apicius detailed some of the utterly bonkers recipes that were considered the best eats across the Empire. It reads more like magic potion ingredients than a cookbook.
There were meals that sounded particularly witchy, like spayed sow's womb, paunch of a suckling pig, and stuffed dormouse casserole. But the Romans experimented with eating pretty much any animal you can think of: parrots, peacocks, dolphins, and giraffes.
On recovered Roman shipwrecks, archaeologists found jars of a popular condiment called garum. This sun-fermented fish sauce was often sopped up with bread but was also loaded with parasitic tapeworm eggs. No thanks!
Etiquette standards were nonexistent in Ancient Rome. Dinner party guests simply disposed of their cleaned animal bones by tossing them willy nilly onto the floor. Later, slaves were ordered to clean the mulch of food scraps that had collected.
Since sitting down for lunch was gambling with parasites and bacteria, it follows suit that Roman medicinal practices were not even close to as sterile as contemporary medicine. Animal and human excrement were used topically and orally for cures and holistic treatments.
Roman medicine shifted the medical standard from largely supernatural to focused on balancing the four humors of the body: blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm. Bloodletting was popular just for the heck of restoring equilibrium.
Studying fossilized Roman fecal matter revealed a wide variety of infections and parasites commonly borne out of poor hygiene and sanitary conditions, dysentery and roundworm among them, which experts say has something to do with a common farming practice of the time.
The filthiness of human waste just wasn’t a blip on ancient Roman radar. They viewed excrement as a natural resource, spreading it as fertilizer for crops, fulfilling a toxic and nightmarish cycle when they tucked in to eat their yield.
Urine proved useful as laundry detergent. It was the job of a fuller to leave out and collect jugs of urine on the street to wash clothes in it since the ammonia worked to remove stains.
Toilet paper shortages were a non-issue back in Ancient Rome. To clean their keisters, they reached for a sponge on a stick called a xylospongium. Bathrooms consisted of a bench with holes, reminiscent of an outhouse.
There’s an obvious red flag to this scenario. A sponge on a stick probably worked well enough, sure. Until you factor in the fact that xylospongium were shared amongst many people, and who can say if they were cleaned.
Nobody gave ancient Romans the memo that public nudity was lewd. They treated stone walls of public spaces like personal Craigslist ads. People carved out sexually explicit images and propositions as jokes, and also because they was supposed to boost virility.
On an ethical note, many Roman practices were indisputably messed up. Marriage, for example, was forced on girls as young as 12 years old, and that was the age restriction imposed by law.
Of course, it wasn’t much easier for Roman boys. The raucous lifestyles of emperors are fairly well known, and the grim tone of their parties revolved around using minors as their sexual tools.
Charges of incest reached all the way to the top, most famously with Emperor Caligula. He was accused of having affairs with several of his sisters, and later publicly claimed his mother Agrippina was born of an incestuous relationship.
Committing a crime in ancient Rome was risking the most gruesome punishment imaginable. Their torture was creative — they fed the guilty to wild animals and buried alive disgraced Vestal Virgins — but the worst was saved for people who committed the most heinous acts.
Sinister minds developed what they felt was an appropriate punishment for people who murdered their fathers, which involved putting the convicted in a bag with a reactive animal like a snake, rooster, or monkey, and tossing them into the Tiber River.
Life for the average ancient Roman was regularly anticipating brutality. No one was safe from the wrath of the soldiers conquering cities; innocent civilians, women, and children — all were slaughtered by the thousands. Entire cities burned to ash.
While they definitely took a major leap forward with public health initiatives like aqueducts and bathhouses, none of these would pass the most lenient of health inspections. The olive oil they slathered on every bather, as well as their dead skin scrapers, were perpetually reused.
After thousands of years of modernization, development, and societal growth, we still had miles to go in terms of proper hygiene. Looking back at the health habits of the American colonists, it’s shocking how much cleanliness standards changed in only a few hundred years.
Though keeping oneself clean is common practice in our day, hygiene was a somewhat controversial topic in the 18th century. Some doctors actually advocated against bathing regularly, as they believed the body's oils were essential to good health.
Religion and cleanliness also went hand in hand, as filth and dirt were often equated with sin and the devil. Morality came into play as well, as those who were clean were looked at as less likely to commit wrongdoings.
While most rinsed their hands and faces each morning, full-body baths were uncommon among most men, women, and children. Infants, however, were bathed regularly, though this was more so in an effort to "harden" them than to clean them.
In some cases, women actually preferred not to bathe and used their uncleanliness as a means of self defense. Using their body odor, they hoped to repel the unwanted advances of overly persistent men.
Another deterrent to bathing was the size of most wash basins, as only the extraordinarily wealthy could afford bathtubs large enough to hold an adult. Freshwater bodies like lakes served as basins of a sort for lower-class men, yet soap was rarely brought along.
This was because lye soap — made from a mixture of animal fat, lye, and ash — was difficult to make and incredibly harsh on skin. Instead, this soap was used to wash clothing and dishes.
Yet not all clothes were washed equally, as the process of drawing water, heating it, cleaning the clothes, and wringing them out to dry was a strenuous one. Therefore, only the dirtiest clothes — aprons, underwear, diapers, and the like — were cleaned.
Unfortunately, this meant that most blankets and bedsheets went unwashed, leading to frequent bug infestations. Fleas, cockroaches, and mosquitos were prevalent, and some even resorted to sleeping beside campfires to keep the bugs at bay.
Lice were also a frequent nuisance, especially when it came to the powdered wigs that most upper-class colonists wore. Despite most men and women shaving their heads to prevent the bugs from nesting, their wigs served as the perfect place for lice to settle in.
Washing the wigs did little to rid them of infestation, leading colonists to coat them in bergamot, bay leaves, and other repellents to keep the bugs away. Unfortunately, the rich pomades used to style the wigs only served as a magnet for hungry lice.
George Washington wrote often about his experiences with such "vermin" and mandated that soldiers wash their shirts weekly and their hands and face daily during wartime. Close-quarter camps served as breeding grounds for parasites and disease, especially the deadly smallpox.
To keep camps in order, "camp followers" traveled alongside the military and tended to their sanitary needs. These individuals — who were mostly women and slaves — ensured that the soldiers' meals were properly prepared and washed their uniforms as needed.
When a man needed a shave he visited a barber, who was typically a highly skilled man of color. Women, on the other hand, didn't shave at all, as common conventions dictated that they show very little skin.
For those women that did seek to remove hair, plucking was a standard option (Eyebrows won't tweeze themselves!). Eighteenth-century medical journals suggest that depilatory creams — some of which utilized limestone and arsenic — were also used.
Dental care was also somewhat of a mismanaged science, as most people had little concern for the health of their mouth. When toothaches did arise, remedies like chamomile, alcohol, and opium were used to dull the pain.
In most cases an extraction was required, though taking a trip to the dentist wasn't an option back then. Instead, sufferers visited their local surgeon, apothecary, barber, or even blacksmith to have a tooth pulled.
For those that were conscious of their oral health, metal tooth pickers were available for purchase. Unfortunately, these instruments were also used for a variety of other unsavory tasks, including picking the nails and scooping wax from the ears.
On another level of unsavory, outhouses — or, more specifically, covered holes in the ground — served as bathrooms for most colonists. Chamberpots were also used, their contents simply dumped out the window once full.
Not only were these practices unsanitary, but they also posed serious health risks. Feces and other contaminants would typically seep into the groundwater or runoff into streams and lakes, leading to high levels of contamination.
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