Amazing Amber Room

Amazing Amber Room

Amazing Amber Room

What do we love more than pirate treasure? How about Nazi gold? In 1716, the king of Prussia presented the Amber Room to Russian Czar Peter the Great. Later Catherine the Great commissioned craftsmen to embellish the room and moved it from the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg to her summer home in Tsarskoye Selo. It was finished in 1770 and was illuminated by 565 candles whose light was reflected in the warm gold surface of the amber and sparkled in the mirrors, gilt, and mosaics. Then the Nazis stole during WW2. Pieces keep turning up here and there, but there is little hope of ever recovering the entire room.

Rongorongo

Rongorongo

Considered the other “Easter Island mystery,” Rongorongo is the hieroglyphic script used by early inhabitants of the island. While no none of the neighboring peoples had a written language (of course Easter Island was a long long way away from anything else), Rongorongo appeared from no where in the 1700s. Early colonists banned the language, its meaning lost forever. Just looking at the tablet below you will see what appears to be body parts and people. This strengthens our hypothesis that this was a menu of some sort.

The Cliff Dwellings of the Anasazi

The Cliff Dwellings of the Anasazi

Little is known about why the Anasazi Indians began building these cliff dwellings. One thought is that they were being cannibalized by native Mexican tribes and subjugated. Another is that they were eating each other. Regardless of their peaceful existence (on the outside at least), as a predominantly agricultural culture established around 1200 BC, it is obvious that strife came to these peoples. The Mystery has been what kind of strife and to what extent. Nearly 700 years ago, they completely disappeared, and not in the usual way of a steady decline. There is evidence that their possessions were left behind, bodies were simply left in their dwelling to mummify and the entire culture simply vanished. Theories ranging from war, famine, drought and alien abduction have plagued this mystery for decades.

The Stone Spheres of Costa Rica

The Stone Spheres of Costa Rica

Hundreds of stone balls have turned up in the delta of the Térraba River, also known as the Sierpe, Diquís, and General River as well as near the towns of Palmar Sur and Palmar Norte. Balls are known from as far north as the Estrella Valley and as far south as the mouth of the Coto Colorado River. That’s a lot of territory to cover. What they were used for no one knows, but they range in size from roughly the size of a softball to as large as a Volkswagen. Who made them exactly is a mystery. How they were made has been open to much speculation since their discovery in the 1940s.