25 Most Incredible Archaeological Finds

[00:00:00]When an ancient discovery is made, it can make headlines all over the world.

[00:00:04]People love to find out more about the past, and there's certainly no shortage of fantastic things to find. Some discoveries are more worthy of our attention than others, though.

[00:00:18]We begin in the East Jordan Desert, [music] where what's been described as a perfect pre-pottery Neolithic shrine was discovered in February 2022.

[00:00:29]The combined team of French and Jordanian archaeologists who found and identified the shrine say it's in a remarkable state of preservation, and believe it may have been the centerpiece of a prehistoric hunting campsite. Based on the evidence at the scene, they think the shrine is around 9,000 years old.

[00:00:49]The giveaway that this is a hunting site is the presence of enormous gazelle traps nearby.

[00:00:55]The structures are known as desert kites, and were used to cattle gazelles into an enclosed space so they could be easily slaughtered for their meat.

[00:01:05]Two of the large standing stones at the shrine are carved with anthropomorphic figures, one of which is decorated with a delicately [music] etched depiction of a desert kite.

[00:01:15]The team also found the shrine's altar, hearth, and a few painted seashells. The significance of the anthropomorphic figures is unknown, but it's one of only a handful of examples of artistic expression from such a distant point in history that have survived into the modern age in this part of the [music] world.

[00:01:37]Now we head to London, England, where a team of experts from the Museum of London Archaeology have uncovered a fabulous ancient Roman mosaic right in the heart of the city.

[00:01:49]This is the largest preserved mosaic to be found in London for more than half a century, and it was discovered in February 2022.

[00:01:58]London reached its Roman peak during the early 2nd century with a population of around 60,000 people enjoying access to a large Roman forum [music] and an enormous basilica, which was one of the biggest in the entire Roman Empire at the time. The mosaic was found during excavations at a site close to the famous Shard building where preparations are being made for new offices and homes to be built.

[00:02:24]It's split into two decorated panels made from tiny colored tiles set into a tessellated red [music] floor. The archaeologists think the mosaic might have been the floor of a dining room within a large Roman mansio, not to be confused with a mansion. This would have been the ancient Roman equivalent of an upmarket hotel offering stabling, dining, and accommodation for state officials traveling to and from London from Rome and other important cities in the empire.

[00:02:56]While we're in England, let's talk about the Huxley Hoard. This incredible collection of Viking jewelry is so named because it was found buried in the town of Huxley, Cheshire in 2004.

[00:03:09]Scientists and archaeologists have been able to date the artifacts that make up the hoard to the early 10th century.

[00:03:16]There are 21 silver bracelets in the collection along with 39 lead artifacts and a single silver ingot. It's likely that it was crafted by Norse settlers in Dublin, Ireland and then exported to England. Having made it to Cheshire, the most likely reason for it to be later buried is for protection and safekeeping. It was very rare for people to have safes or vaults back then. So, burying your most valuable goods was the most practical way to protect them from thieves. The bracelets are elaborately decorated with different symbols and motifs stamped onto each piece. [music] Some have crosses in their center, while others feature chevrons and zigzags. One of them even has an hourglass like stamp around its edges, the meaning of which is unknown. Rather than being part of the jewelry collection, the lead fragments might actually be all that's left of a container that the valuables were buried in.

[00:04:16]Because of the dangers in the Gaza Strip, archaeologists have a tough time working there. But they do occasionally unearth amazing discoveries. They discovered a 2,000-year-old cemetery established and used by the ancient Romans at the beginning of February 2022. [music] The cemetery, which is located near the region's shoreline, has at least 20 sets of human remains. The artistically decorated style of the graves shows that access to the cemetery was restricted to only the most regal, noble, or [music] elite of the era. The find has been dubbed the most significant archaeological find in Gaza in the last decade. Gaza is a historically significant region of the world. It was a vital commercial post for the Philistines and Egyptians, and the Romans utilized it for the same purpose.

[00:05:09]It has once been besieged by Alexander the Great, and it was also invaded by the Mongols. All of these historical events have left their imprint on the earth here. This archaeological project will last until 2022 because it is predicted that perhaps another 60 tombs will be uncovered and excavated at the site.

[00:05:31]>> [music] >> We've already heard about one fabulous treasure hoard in this video, but there's always room for one more.

[00:05:39]This is the story of a lucky treasure finder in Denmark from September 2021.

[00:05:44]Our tale takes place in Vindelev, where an amateur metal detectorist discovered a cache of 1,500-year-old golden artifacts in the countryside.

[00:05:54]The majority of the findings are gold coins from the Roman Empire, but medallions and bracteates are also included. These ornamental pieces were usually sewed into clothes to be worn as ornaments.

[00:06:07]We'd call them accessories in today's modern parlance.

[00:06:10]One of the bracteates is carved with ancient Norse writing that translates to the high, suggesting that its previous owner was a local monarch.

[00:06:19]It could also be a reference to Odin, the most powerful of the Norse gods.

[00:06:24]Archaeologists believe the reason for the burying of these golden objects is the same as the reason for the burying of the last set of treasures we looked at. It was an attempt to keep them safe.

[00:06:36]There was a huge volcanic eruption in Iceland in 536, which caused chaos in this part of the world, so that may have had something to do with the burial, too.

[00:06:49]The excavation of the ancient theater of Epidaurus in Argolis, Greece, is a very long job. It's such a long job, in fact, that it started in 1879, and it's still ongoing.

[00:07:01]The massive theater was built around 2,400 years ago and dedicated to Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine.

[00:07:09]Experts in ancient Greek history consider it to be the most perfect of all the Greek theaters in terms of both aesthetics and acoustic design.

[00:07:18]We know that construction work began here in the 4th century BCE because of the writings of Pausanias, who credits Polykleitos the Younger as the architect of the project. The massive theater has a capacity of around 14,000 and would regularly have hosted music, opera, and sporting games, all of which were somehow connected to the worship of Asclepius.

[00:07:42]The Greeks believed that watching concerts and plays could improve people's physical and mental health. So, it's possible that at least some of the people in the crowd would have attended in the hope of being healed of their ailments.

[00:07:54]Very occasionally, the theater is still used today for the performance of ancient drama plays like the tragedy of Electra by Sophocles.

[00:08:02]>> [music] >> Augsburg Cathedral in Bavaria, Germany is one of the oldest Roman Catholic churches in the world. It's also home to some of the world's oldest murals and frescoes. As if all that weren't enough, scientists now think that it might also be home to the world's oldest stained glass windows.

[00:08:23]It was once commonly thought that the windows were 13th century additions to the 11th century cathedral, but recent tests have shown [music] that they're more likely to have been in situ since the cathedral itself was consecrated in the year 1065.

[00:08:38]Of all the stained glass windows in the cathedral, those in its southern clerestory are thought to be the oldest.

[00:08:44]They're representations of the five prophets Hosea, Moses, Jonah, Daniel, and David. It's likely that there were other prophets here, too, at one time, but those windows were either broken or replaced as the cathedral was repeatedly damaged, repaired, and modernized over the passing centuries.

[00:09:03]The worst of the damage was done during the Second World War when the cathedral was directly hit by a bomb, but the stained glass windows escaped unharmed.

[00:09:12]Perhaps we can think of it as a miracle.

[00:09:17]If you enjoy the occasional beer and were to come upon a collection of 600 beer bottles stashed beneath a staircase, you could be tempted to drink them all.

[00:09:27]With this collection here, we don't advocate attempting that.

[00:09:30]It's a shipment of 600 bottles of Victorian era beer discovered beneath the stairwell in the cellar of an old brewery [music] in Leeds, England in March 2020. And every drop of the contents is poisonous.

[00:09:44]Local water was used to make the beer, which was filtered through old lead pipes.

[00:09:48]>> [music] >> It was hazardous at the time, and it's much worse now that more than 100 years have passed. It's amazing that anyone walked away with their lives intact after drinking here, but they did.

[00:10:00]Indeed, they did so for hundreds of years.

[00:10:03]>> [music] >> The brewery was most recently owned by Tetley, but it had been previously known as the Scarborough Castle Inn and had a history dating back to the Middle Ages.

[00:10:13]The stamps on the labels of these bottles, on the other hand, date them to the 1880s. They were brewed by J.E.

[00:10:20]Richardson of Leeds and had a 3% alcohol level. The concentration of lead, on the other hand, was 0.13 mg per liter, which is 13 times higher than the World Health Organization's upper limit.

[00:10:36]Since we're all here, let's see if we can solve an ancient mystery together.

[00:10:41]>> [music] >> The Venus de Milo is one of the most famous ancient sculptures in the world.

[00:10:45]But what happened to its arms?

[00:10:48]The sculpture was discovered in its armless state in 1820 on the Aegean island of Milos by an ensign from the French Navy, killing time while on shore leave.

[00:10:58]Most experts believe the sculpture to be a representation of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, sexuality, and beauty.

[00:11:05]The ensign bought the statue from the farmer who owned the land it was found on for a nominal fee and took it home to France, where it remains on display today inside the Louvre. Modern-day experts think it's around 2,100 years old, which would make it a product of the Hellenistic era.

[00:11:22]We know the sculptor responsible for the piece was called Alexandros of Antioch, but we know very little about his life or his other works.

[00:11:30]For many years, there was a legend that the arms of the statue were ripped off during a scuffle between the French navy and Turkish sailors who wanted it for themselves. But, this is now widely thought to be a myth.

[00:11:42]That means we can't solve the mystery.

[00:11:45]The truth about the arms will probably never be known. Sorry about that.

[00:11:52]The ancient port city of Parion in Turkey has been the subject of an extended archaeological survey in recent years. And in August 2021, that survey came up trumps with the discovery of a 1,900-year-old grave stele. The stele comes from a site known simply as Mausoleum Tomb 6, which was badly damaged by accident during the construction of a primary school in 2004.

[00:12:17]While the damage to the tomb was serious and extensive, the stele appears to have escaped unharmed. Experts think that the scene depicted on the stele is a representation of the tomb's occupant.

[00:12:28]She's in a reclined [music] pose to the left of the scene, while her maid, servants, horse, and belongings are depicted on the right.

[00:12:36]A Latin inscription on the bottom part of the artifact reads Lucius Fernius Lesbonax, who was freed by Lucius, had this tomb built for himself and his wife Fernia Septima Ursa. These names are Greek rather than Latin. So, from this and the content of the inscription, we can deduce that Lucius and Fernia were enslaved when the Romans first came to the city, but were later freed, and that after being freed, Lucius appears to have prospered.

[00:13:06]>> [music] >> Around 1,800 years ago, the residents of the ancient Turkish city of Blaundus started burying their dead in a series of elaborately decorated rock-cut tombs inside a canyon.

[00:13:19]In October 2021, those rock-cut tombs were finally rediscovered by archaeologists.

[00:13:26]The beauty of the tombs is striking.

[00:13:29]They're covered in images of flowers, vines, mythological figures, and mysterious geometric patterns.

[00:13:36]There are around 400 tombs in total, all of which date back to the time of Roman occupation.

[00:13:42]The tombs are arranged around an open space, which was most likely used for communal funeral ceremonies, after which the entrance was sealed with a large marble door until the time came to lay somebody else to rest.

[00:13:56]This is one of the largest burial sites of its kind in the entire world.

[00:14:00]Archaeologists first noted that there was something hidden in the rocks here more than 150 years ago.

[00:14:07]But the remote hilltop location is so difficult to access that a formal excavation project didn't commence until 2018.

[00:14:16]There's evidence that at some point, most likely around 400 years after the last of the burials, shepherds came and used the tombs as makeshift animal shelters, doing extensive damage to them in the process by lighting fires within the enclosed spaces and covering the tombs in layers of thick black soot.

[00:14:37]Cleaning the soot away is a process that's going to take several years.

[00:14:44]There are only two types of people who are likely to be interested in mass graves, police officers or those with an interest in archaeology.

[00:14:52]In November 2021, a remarkable mass grave was discovered in the ancient Peruvian city of Chan Chan.

[00:14:59]The remains of 25 individuals were found clustered closely together within a space that measures less than 30 square feet.

[00:15:08]This was once the capital of the Chimú Empire, and the deceased would have been Chimú people.

[00:15:14]The empire was a major power in this part of South America for hundreds of years before being overthrown by the Incas during the 15th century.

[00:15:23]Chan Chan itself was the largest mud citadel on the continent. All of the people buried at this site were female, and none of them lived to see the age of 30.

[00:15:33]There's no evidence that they were victims of human sacrifice though, and some experts at the scene think they might even have been members of the ruling elite.

[00:15:43]They were buried in a seated position, dressed in several layers of what would have been expensive fabric for the time.

[00:15:49]After which, they were surrounded by ceramics.

[00:15:52]The cause of death has not been identified.

[00:15:58]Before the establishment of the world's major religions, our ancestors worshipped all manner of things, from the sun to the mountains and many animals to go with them.

[00:16:08]In 2012, we found out that these primitive ritual behaviors go [music] back a lot further than we once thought they did.

[00:16:16]An archaeological discovery in Botswana suggests that the people who lived there 70,000 years ago worshipped pythons.

[00:16:25]That's 30,000 years earlier than the first evidence of ritual behavior in Europe, and further strengthens [music] Africa's claim to be the cradle of humanity.

[00:16:34]The discovery came during an extended study of the San people of Ungamelaland in northwestern Botswana. There's a cave there in the Tsodilo Hills, and in the cave is a rock that's been crudely carved to resemble a python.

[00:16:49]There are 400 indentations in the rock that could only have been made by human hands.

[00:16:55]The stone tools that created the python rock were found in a pit directly beneath [music] it. 13,000 of them in total. We might never know what it was about the python that made it worthy of such adulation, but it's a glimpse of humanity's earliest organized belief systems.

[00:17:14]Archaeologists got a helping hand with working out humanity's earliest evolutionary secrets in February 2021.

[00:17:22]And we really do mean hand.

[00:17:24]Experts from Texas A&M University found a 4.4 million-year-old skeletal hand in Ethiopia belonging to a species called Ardipithecus ramidus. They've nicknamed it Ardi. By comparing the hand to the hands of modern-day humans, monkeys, and apes, they can compare locomotor behavior and learn new things about how and when early humans began to walk upright. To be more specific, Ardi belongs to a common ancestor from which both humans and chimpanzees later evolved.

[00:17:56]The hand anatomy of Ardi coincides with the earliest known evidence of human-like species losing their grasping big toe >> [music] >> and beginning to use their better developed hands to make stone tools.

[00:18:08]That's not to say that Ardi was capable of designing and building tools. He almost certainly wasn't. But the beginnings of changes that would eventually allow our evolutionary ancestors to do so are visible in this long-lost limb.

[00:18:22]Scientists are still dealing with a wide window of time in which the change happened, but discoveries like this one help to narrow [music] it down.

[00:18:33]Our next discovery is a piece of cave art called the Higgs bison. [music] Please note that we say Higgs bison, not Higgs boson. [music] We found some incredible things painted on the walls of caves, but finding a Higgs boson particle painted thousands of years ago would turn science as we know it on its head.

[00:18:51]>> [music] >> Researchers have long felt that some sections of the genomes of the ancient steppe bison are out of place as if they belonged to a different species.

[00:19:01]We now [music] think that this forgotten species is the animal painted on this wall in the Lascaux and Chauvet caves of France.

[00:19:09]The art is between 18,000 and 22,000 years old. It shows [music] step bison with long horns, robust forequarters, and enormous girth.

[00:19:20]Paintings from 5,000 years later show bison with thinner horns and more balanced body proportions. If the cave artists were accurate with their depictions, [music] it would mean that a larger species of bison lived in Europe's grasslands 20,000 years ago. And it's from this species that the seemingly rogue genetic data comes from.

[00:19:40]>> [music] >> It's also likely that the modern European bison came from this previously undocumented species.

[00:19:47]>> [music] >> In 2021, archaeologists and scientists confirmed something that we've all suspected for a long time. The first Europeans to reach North America were the Vikings.

[00:20:01]They got there five centuries before Christopher Columbus and created a small settlement in Canada at L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland.

[00:20:09]They arrived there no later than the year 1021.

[00:20:13]The fact has been proven beyond all reasonable doubt by the discovery of wooden artifacts at the site [music] that are Norse in origin. The wood has clearly been marked with metal tools, and the native people of North America at the time didn't have tools made of metal.

[00:20:27]>> [music] >> Identifying when the wood was cut was made easier by our knowledge of an enormous solar storm that [music] happened in the year 992.

[00:20:36]The storm created an uplift in radiocarbon production, and that uplift is visible [music] in the rings of ancient trees. The rings are there in these ancient Viking tools, as easy to identify as a fingerprint. Other archaeological evidence at the site suggests that the Vikings stuck around in Canada for approximately 13 years before dismantling their settlement and heading back to Greenland.

[00:20:59]>> [music] >> We don't know why the Vikings left.

[00:21:02]Imagine how different American history would be if they hadn't.

[00:21:06]>> [music] >> Could a few blocks of stone rewrite the entire history of Black Sea sailing?

[00:21:12]That was the opinion of the archaeologists who came across these next discoveries in September 2011.

[00:21:19]The stone blocks are actually enormous and ancient stone anchors and were recovered from the seabed close to the Bulgarian coastal town of Sozopol.

[00:21:28]Each block has a pair of holes in it.

[00:21:30]One of them is apparently for the anchor rope and the other housed a wooden stick.

[00:21:35]They would be used to anchor ships weighing between 150 and 200 tons that would have been laden with wheat, salted fish, timber, and metal to be exported from Bulgaria to neighboring territories.

[00:21:48]The shape of the anchors is consistent with the design used by Carian and Phoenician sailors, but these artifacts are far older than the anchors that have been found in the past. [music] The oldest of them was made and used about 3,600 years ago.

[00:22:03]That destroys the claim that the Greeks were the first to sail on the Black Sea 3,200 years ago.

[00:22:10]>> [music] >> According to some historians, the existence of the anchors backs up a theory that the Trojan Wars began because of excise duties imposed by the Trojans on the Dardanelles.

[00:22:25]Back to North America now where the history of human settlement on the continent was pushed backwards by the discovery of ancient weapons in October 2018.

[00:22:35]Before the weapons were discovered, archaeologists thought that the first [music] human settlers arrived in North America about 13,000 years ago. However, >> [music] >> these artifacts are thought to be spearheads made and used by hunters about 15,500 years ago. [music] They're of a size and shape that would be perfect for hunting game and are clearly of artificial origin.

[00:22:59]The discovery was especially significant because it's the first time that spear points [music] have been found at a pre-Clovis site.

[00:23:08]Hunting is thought to have been the activity that drove and guided humans into new areas of the Americas as they went in search of food.

[00:23:15]Finding these weapons means that we now know that our ancestors were in America 2,500 years earlier than we thought them to be. But there are still unanswered questions.

[00:23:27]Were they made by a large group of hunters or was it just a small band of individuals who'd broken off from their group and forged their own path?

[00:23:36]Where did they come from? Where did they go when they left this area?

[00:23:39]Hopefully, the answers are still buried in the ground somewhere.

[00:23:44]>> [music] >> The further back we go in time, the less certainty we have about the order and nature of events that happened on planet Earth.

[00:23:53]This fossil discovery from Germany could turn our whole perception of extinction theory on its [music] head.

[00:23:59]The fossil is that of an ichthyosaur and it comes from Lower Saxony.

[00:24:04]It was a dolphin-like creature and based on the fossil, it died around 65 million years ago.

[00:24:11]That would be within the Earth's Cretaceous period. Prior to the fossil discovery, ichthyosaurs were thought to have become extinct during the Jurassic period. That's 50 million years earlier.

[00:24:22]Not only is that a remarkable change in the timeline of the species, but it also means that the species survived a mass biological crisis at the boundary of Jurassic and Cretaceous eras, which saw almost every other species of marine reptile become extinct. How did the ichthyosaur survive? What were the physical and genetic traits that allowed it to see out the cataclysm when so many other species around it perished? If we're very lucky, the answers [music] to those questions might be preserved inside this fossil.

[00:24:56]In 2015, researchers found a copy of the Quran in the library of the University of Birmingham, England.

[00:25:02]>> [music] >> That might not sound especially unusual, but this Quran is ancient. It's so old that only fragments of it remain, written on parchment made of either goat or sheepskin.

[00:25:13]>> [music] >> Tests carried out on the parchment have allowed scientists to date it to the year 568.

[00:25:20]That's a sensational finding in the context of Islam because it's thought [music] that the Prophet Muhammad lived between 570 and 632.

[00:25:30]If all of these dates are correct, it means that the Birmingham Quran was written before the Prophet Muhammad was even born. It's the equivalent of finding pieces of the New Testament written before the time of Christ.

[00:25:42]The Salafist [music] branch of Islam contends that the traditional account of the origins of Islam is correct, >> [music] >> and any attempt to challenge it would be heresy. And yet here's evidence that challenges it.

[00:25:54]The idea [music] that we can say anything about the origins of the Quran with any degree of certainty has now gone out of the window.

[00:26:01]The findings of the scientists have been roundly denounced by many Muslim leaders in the United Kingdom.

[00:26:10]The ancient city of Pergamon in Turkey is well known to archaeologists and is a world-renowned historical site.

[00:26:18]In July 2020, we found out that the history of human settlement in Pergamon goes back even further in time than we always imagined.

[00:26:27]Excavations carried out there that month found perfume bottles and fibulas dating back to 2,700 years ago within the lower city region. We've known for years that the Romans built and developed this part of the city extensively, but never before suspected that there were people here 700 years earlier than that. The discovery means that the lower city has [music] a history that can be traced back to the Archaic period, just as the upper city. When new developments were added during the well-documented Hellenistic and Roman periods, they were built directly [music] atop the ruins of a civilization that was there before they arrived. Unfortunately, we don't yet know anything about who these people were or where they came from. These artifacts are the only trace of their existence we've ever found. Judging by the face on the perfume bottle, it seems that they had a lot to smile about.

[00:27:21]>> [music] >> We keep going back to North America, but it's hard not to when there are so many amazing discoveries to look at.

[00:27:29]>> [music] >> In early 2017, archaeologists found butchered animal bones in the Bluefish Caves of Yukon, Canada.

[00:27:37]>> [music] >> They're 24,000 years old.

[00:27:40]As you'll remember if you were paying attention earlier, >> [music] >> this means that the bones were butchered long before the Clovis people arrived in North America. It's almost 10,000 years earlier than the spearheads we looked at were created. [music] Astonishingly, it seems that we have to push back the history of human habitation [music] in North America yet again. And this time, we have to push it back massively.

[00:28:05]The bones are from a wide range of animals, horses, bison, bears, lions, mammoths, [music] and fish, but are all clustered in one place and show telltale signs of butchering marks created by stone tools.

[00:28:19]One possible theory is that the people who lived here were isolated in a Beringian refuge after being cut off during the Last Glacial Maximum and were never able to travel south into the rest of North America. That's just a theory, though, >> [music] >> and the truth is we have no idea who these people were or where they came from.

[00:28:38]>> [music] >> Mount Vesuvius erupted in the year 79 and destroyed [music] the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum in Italy.

[00:28:48]That's an established historical fact and isn't up for debate.

[00:28:52]The month in which it happened, however, is very much up for debate.

[00:28:57]In late 2018, [music] scrolled graffiti was found on a wall in Pompeii written in charcoal.

[00:29:02]>> [music] >> The content of the inscription suggests that the catastrophe happened in October [music] 79.

[00:29:09]That's 2 months later than had previously been thought.

[00:29:13]The controversial inscription is on the wall of an interior room in the Regio 5 district of Pompeii within a house that was in the middle of refurbishments when the volcano [music] struck.

[00:29:24]It contains a date. The 16th day prior to the Kalends of November.

[00:29:30]That would be October 17th.

[00:29:32]Traditionally, the date of the eruption has always been given as August 24th.

[00:29:37]The inscription certainly wasn't added after the eruption, >> [music] >> so we must have volcano day wrong in our diaries.

[00:29:45]Archaeologists have also found autumnal fruit and harvest food in other parts of the city. So, the evidence that the eruption happened in late October [music] is now mounting.

[00:29:57]Way back in the year 1900, a Bronze Age stone slab was unearthed by archaeologists in France.

[00:30:05]Not much was thought of it at the time save for the fact that it had an interesting pattern on it. And nobody paid it any real attention until more than a century later.

[00:30:15]The experts of the past appear to have been missing something important because that humble chunk of rock is now known as the Saint-Bélec Slab >> [music] >> and is believed to be the oldest map in Europe. The lines on the slab are thought to be a cartographical representation of territory, perhaps marking the limits of a political power that existed 3,000 years ago.

[00:30:37]It's fortunate that the slab was even still around to be studied again because after its discovery, it was briefly stored in a niche inside a castle moat and then turned up in the cellar of that same castle in 2014.

[00:30:51]The topography of the map seems to represent the valley of the river Odet [music] with lines stemming away from it representing its network of tributaries.

[00:31:00]The rock was deliberately broken before it was buried, which might have been a symbolic act representing the conquering of this unknown territory and [music] its map making leader.