10 Ancient Places That Dropped Surprising New Finds

Human history is pockmarked with missing information, and that’s what makes new discoveries so valuable: they plug the gaps and provide a more complete timeline. Such finds should be rarer at well-studied sites. And yet, famous monuments are still dropping revelations that change the way we see them.

In recent years, new finds showed that Stonehenge is nearly pure crystal, that post-eruption Pompeii became a lawless squatters’ camp, and that Angkor Wat owes its existence to a major disaster, among many more!

Related: Top 10 Mysterious Archaeological Discoveries That Still Baffle Scientists

10 Peru’s Ancient Stone Circles

Callacpuma is an ancient habitation site located in the Peruvian Andes. It may not be as famous as the Great Pyramids of Egypt, but the Andean ruins have something that rivals this archaeological heavyweight.

Roughly 60 years ago, a circular plaza was discovered at Callacpuma. It was constructed with a building technique that had never been seen before in the area. The builders arranged free-standing megalithic stones into walls of concentric circles, resembling the ripples of a pond. Another interesting discovery followed decades later.

In 2024, radiocarbon dating suggested that the Callacpuma plaza was 4,750 years old. This means it was built around the same time as Stonehenge and a century before the pyramids. The stones’ age also makes it one of the oldest megalithic monuments in the Americas.

The plaza, which measures 60 feet (18 m) across, was probably a ceremonial space. Researchers believe it might have been used from 1800 B.C. to 200 B.C. as a periodic gathering place for some of the earliest inhabitants of the Cajamarca Valley.^[1]

9 Tombs Beneath the Treasury

The city of Petra is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the New Seven Wonders of the World. It’s not hard to see why. Located in Jordan, Petra was carved from pink mountains with such precision and craftsmanship that the architecture looks almost 3-D printed.

Among the most famous buildings is the so-called Treasury. Countless tourists visit the site, unaware of what lies beneath their feet. But archaeologists had an inkling of what the Treasury might be hiding. In 2003, two tombs with partial human remains were found on the left side of the site, hinting at a secret graveyard.

In 2024, researchers excavated beneath the Treasury again and reportedly found another hidden chamber. It contained the complete skeletons of 12 individuals and grave goods buried 2,000 years ago. The discovery could reveal more about the early history and culture of the mysterious Nabatean people, who built Petra as their capital around the fourth century B.C. At the very least, it supports the popular notion that the Treasury is a mausoleum.^[2]

8 Emperor’s Unusual Ride

Emperor Qin Shi Huang ruled China from 221 to 210 BC. He is remembered as China’s first emperor and for his massive mausoleum that spreads across 10 square miles (26 sq km) in northwestern China. The site also contains the famous Terracotta Army, a collection of 8,000 life-size statues of Huang’s soldiers and their horses.

In 2023, the news broke of an extremely rare discovery. In the western tomb of the mausoleum, archaeologists found the bones of six sheep. The skeletons wore equipment designed to pull a chariot, even though no wagon was present. However, the passage of 2,000 years could have rotted the structure into oblivion.

Chinese history and mythology also speak of sheep-drawn chariots, even ones used by royalty. As such, it makes sense that Emperor Qin Shi Huang had his own sheep-drawn chariot, even though it might sound a little strange.^[3]

7 Wind Before Pharaohs

The idea that nature played a role in the creation of Egypt’s Great Sphinx is not new. Decades ago, scientists suggested that flowing water and rain carved a sphinx-like shape from limestone, and when the Egyptians found the formation, it reminded them of a resting feline, so they modified it into a sphinx.

A 2023 study from New York University begs to differ. According to the researchers, the first “artist” wasn’t water. It was the wind. Ironically, the project used water in lab experiments to simulate how wind erosion would shape rock. They submerged chunks of clay in rapidly flowing streams (standing in for wind) and then studied the shapes that emerged.

Once removed from the water, the clay resembled yardangs. These large stones are found in many deserts, sandblasted by the wind into strange forms. Curiously, some desert yardangs look like animals in sitting or prone positions, supporting the theory that a combination of wind angle, strength, and frequency carved the basic shape of the Sphinx.^[4]

6 DNA Tells Another Story

Rapa Nui, or Easter Island, is a remote dot in the Pacific. It’s famous for two mysteries—the giant stone statues called Moai and what happened to its ancient human population. Most researchers seem to agree that the islanders destroyed their own paradise (and population) in the 1600s, mainly through deforestation, depleting local resources, and war.

In 2024, a study cast doubt on this blame. Scientists performed DNA tests on 15 skeletons from the island, dating back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries. If the self-destruction theory were true, the samples would have shown a low genetic diversity after the 1600s.

The results showed the exact opposite. Rapa Nui’s population actually increased until the 1860s. At this point, a third of the island’s people were decimated or abducted by Peruvian slave raids. The DNA analysis also concluded that the Rapa Nui civilization likely never exceeded 3,000 people at any given time. This was roughly the same number recorded by the first colonizers—and a far cry from the previous guess of 15,000 islanders.^[5]

5 The Roman Blue

Roman Emperor Nero was infamous for his cruelty and hedonism. In fact, he threw legendary parties at his grand palace, the Domus Aurea. Located near the Colosseum in Rome, the residence was built in AD 64 and featured many decorated rooms, bathrooms, and banquet halls.

In recent excavations, archaeologists found bowls holding paint pigments of three colors that might have been used to give the palace its vibrant interior. Mere dust specks remained of the red and yellow ochre powder, but the third pigment, a stunning blue, was an ingot the size of a small melon.

But this was no ordinary blue. It was the world’s oldest synthetic pigment—a product called pure Egyptian blue. The Domus Aurea clump was roughly 2,000 years old, but the first mention of Egyptian blue goes all the way back to the mid-third millennium B.C. in Egypt and Mesopotamia. The pigment was sought after by ancient rulers for its brilliant color and versatile uses, and Nero, as it seems, was no different.^[6]

4 Collapse at Koh Ker

Angkor Wat is arguably Cambodia’s greatest archaeological site. Built by the Khmer Empire, the site didn’t start out great. Things changed in AD 994, however, when a new king decided to move the capital from the city of Koh Ker to Angkor. In the centuries that followed, several kings added their own temples to Angkor Wat, and it grew into a complex unlike any other.

A 2020 study showed the move to Angkor didn’t happen on a whim. When researchers combed through scans of both sites, they noticed something disturbing. A water reservoir near Koh Ker had suffered a catastrophic failure, likely after a heavy rain season overburdened the system. The collapse occurred around the time when royal power moved back to Angkor, supporting the idea that the disaster had forced the king to abandon Koh Ker.

But Angkor was to suffer the same fate as Koh Ker. The city’s engineers built an impressive water management infrastructure to handle the monsoons, but they couldn’t keep up with the cycles of severe droughts and floods that ultimately triggered several failures across the city’s water system.^[7]

3 Pharaoh’s Hidden Words

Around 190 years ago, Egypt gifted France a 3,300-year-old obelisk. The stone needle was installed in Place de la Concorde, in Paris. Since then, the Luxor Obelisk has been photographed and studied by countless tourists and experts alike. Despite this, nobody noticed the secret scribbles at the monument’s top.

In 2021, renovators placed scaffolding around the obelisk, and a researcher, Jean-Guillaume Olette-Pelletier, used the opportunity to visit the higher parts of the structure. While examining the gilded tip, he stumbled upon the inscriptions.

Olette-Pelletier recognized them as cryptographic hieroglyphs—forms of hidden writing the Egyptians embedded within standard hieroglyphs. Further research, which considered the pillar’s original position outside Egypt’s Luxor Temple, revealed that the messages could be seen by looking up at a 45-degree angle while standing on a boat in the middle of the Nile.

According to Olette-Pelletier, the only people who would have been able to see it were nobles arriving at the temple for the yearly Opet festival. So, what did the messages say? Elites got an eyeful of how wonderful Ramses II was, and they were also reminded to give offerings to the gods to avoid celestial wrath.^[8]

2 The Quartz Secret

In 2018, Stonehenge researchers received a lump of stone, and Christmas couldn’t have made them happier. The rock had gone missing in 1958 when a restoration project took (and eventually misplaced) several stone core samples. This particular core came from Stone 58, one of the massive sarsen pillars at Stonehenge.

It wasn’t the rediscovery of the long-lost piece that brought so much joy. Stonehenge has protected status, a rule that forbids researchers from taking new samples to study. However, no law prevents you from testing a chunk removed from Stonehenge 60 years ago. The team finally had something they could analyze to their hearts’ delight.

A slice under the microscope revealed the stone was 99.7 percent quartz. Curiously, the crystals interlock to form a “cement” that makes the rock durable and strong. It may be why the builders chose this type of material, because they knew the monument would endure for millennia. Considering that the site has 52 sarsen stones, Stonehenge might truly be more crystal than stone.^[9]

1 From Ruins to Slum

In AD 79, Mount Vesuvius erupted and destroyed the nearby cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Pompeii, in particular, became famous for meticulously preserved buildings and countless human bodies frozen in terrifying death poses.

To modern historians, the story seemed straightforward. The volcano rained down ash and pyroclastic flows on the city, prompting some people to evacuate, while others stayed and died in their homes or in the streets. After the disaster, the city didn’t see another living human being until it was rediscovered in the 16th century.

In 2025, that narrative changed. Archaeologists found evidence that people returned to the devastated ruins shortly after the eruption. They might have been survivors with nowhere else to go, or opportunists who saw a chance to loot and live in the now-abandoned city.

This new population lived in the upper floors of houses and used the lower floors as cellars with mills and ovens. But the settlement was far from a hopeful new start. The archaeological data showed that the glorious city had become a poor settlement without any services or infrastructure. Interestingly, Pompeii remained occupied in this degraded state until it was abandoned in the fifth century, almost 400 years after the disaster.^[10]