10) Rongorongo
Considered the other "Easter Island mystery," Rongorongo is the hieroglyphic script used by the region's early inhabitants. While no other neighboring oceanic people possessed a written language, Rongorongo appeared mysteriously in the 1700s. However, the language was lost--along with the best hopes for deciphering it--after early European colonizers banned it because of ties to the islanders' pagan roots.
9)Lost City of Helike
Greek writer Pausanias gave an account of how, in one night, an earthquake destroyed the city of Helike. Moments later, a tsunami swept away what remained of the once-flourishing metropolis, which had been a worship center devoted to earth shaker and God of the sea, Poseidon. No trace of the legendary society existed outside of ancient Greek texts until 1861 when an archaeologist found Helike loot--a bronze coin with the unmistakable head of Poseidon. In 2001, a pair of archaeologists located the ruins of Helike beneath coastal mud and gravel and are now working to unearth what some consider the "real" Atlantis.
The Bog Bodies
Even CSI's best efforts wouldn't go very far in solving the mystery of the bog bodies. Hundreds of these ancient corpses have been discovered buried around the northern wetlands of Europe. Researchers who inspected the remains have reported tell-tale signs of torture and medieval foul play. Such gruesome clues have some suspecting that the dead were the victims of ritual sacrifice.
7)Fall of the Minoans
While many historians have figuring out what caused the collapse of the Roman Empire pretty high up on their to-do lists, the fall of the Minoan empire has proved just as puzzling. Three and a half millenniums ago, life on the island of Crete--which boasted a mythical King and his man-eating beast--was disrupted by a volcanic eruption at neighboring Thera Island. Clay tablets unearthed by archaeologists revealed that, instead of folding, Minoans carried on for another 50 years before finally packing it in. Theories of what finally did them in include a scenario in which subsequent volcanic ash cover devastated harvests and one where a weakened society was left vulnerable to an eventual Greek takeover.
6) The Carnac Stones
If erecting Stonehenge seemed to have been a tremendous groan, think about how backbreaking it must have been for builders of the Carnac stones. On the coast of Brittany in northwestern France are over 3,000 megalithic standing stones arranged in perfect lines and spread out over 12 kilometers. The local myth is that a Roman legion was on the march when the wizard Merlin turned them into stone. A more rational stab at an explanation by a researcher who studied the stones purported that the stones may likely be an elaborate earthquake detector. The identity of the Neolithic people who built them is unknown.
