In June of 1968, a platoon of soldiers was sent to carve a bomb shelter into the slopes of Mount Lingshan in China. They were not archaeologists. They were not looking for anything but solid rock to dig into. But as they broke through a massive stone wall, they found themselves staring into an ancient burial chamber.
It was intact. It was untouched. And it would turn out to be one of the most important archaeological discoveries in Chinese history. Word of the find reached Beijing quickly.
An emergency team from the Academy of Sciences was dispatched to the site, and they confirmed what the soldiers had stumbled upon. This was a tomb from the Han Dynasty—an imperial family tomb. A second burial chamber was soon found nearby. The tombs belonged to Liu Sheng, Prince of Zhongshan, and his wife, Dou Wan.
They had been sealed for more than two thousand years. This was a discovery that seemed almost impossible. The tombs had survived grave robbers, which was rare for any elite burial from the Han Dynasty. Most had been looted long ago.
But these tombs, cut deep into the eastern slope of the mountain, had been hidden so effectively that they remained untouched. By the end of the summer, the excavation was complete, and the Mancheng Han tombs became a symbol of China’s cultural achievements. The discovery came during the Cultural Revolution, a violent campaign launched by Mao Zedong against the intellectuals he called bourgeois elements. It was a dark era.
But Mao allowed the archaeological work to continue, because it made for excellent propaganda. Inside the tombs, the archaeologists found a subterranean palace. The chambers were designed to mirror the earthly home of the prince and his wife. This reflected a belief held by the Han elite: the tomb was an eternal residence, and it needed to be comfortable.
It needed to be filled with treasures. The tombs held a wealth of artifacts from the second century BC. There were bronze ritual vessels, silver objects, wooden carvings, and figurines meant to recreate the pleasures of earthly life in the afterlife. But the most stunning items were the jade burial suits.
Jade had long been associated with immortality and the heavens in Chinese culture. It was used in funerary rites long before the emperors. The Han rulers, having seen their predecessors die from drinking mercury potions in pursuit of eternal life, placed their faith in jade instead. They believed the stone had a mystical power to stop decay and fix the soul in place forever.
Historians and archaeologists had known about these suits from ancient texts, but no one had ever found a real one. Not until the Mancheng discovery. Liu Sheng’s suit was made of 2,498 individual pieces of jade, stitched together with more than two pounds of pure gold wire. It took an estimated ten years of master craftsmanship to complete.
It was a full suit of armor designed to protect the prince in the afterlife and prevent his body from decaying. But time won in the end. When archaeologists opened the suit after more than two thousand years, Liu Sheng’s body had long since turned to dust. All that remained was his gleaming jade armor.
In 1952, archaeologists in Mexico broke into an ancient tomb and found a lost king in perfect condition. It had taken four full years to clear the rubble from the stairway leading to the tomb of Pacal the Great. Technically, Alberto Ruz Lhuillier had discovered the resting place of the great Mayan ruler in 1948, but he could not actually reach the burial chamber until 1952. When Alberto entered the inner room, he was stunned.
In the center of the chamber was a massive stone sarcophagus, something out of an adventure film. Inside that enormous coffin was a skeleton still wearing a traditional funerary mask of jade. It was also covered with beaded necklaces and surrounded by carvings and inscriptions, most of which showed Pacal ascending from a mortal man to a divine figure. This king believed he would become a god after death.
This was K’inich Janaab Pakal I, the Ajaw of the city of Palenque. Everyone likes to call him King Pacal the Great, but the truth is that king was not his title. He was an Ajaw, which means lord in the Mayan language. He ruled Palenque, but he was not a king of the Maya.
This was an important distinction. Every city, from Palenque to Chichen Itza, had its own ruler. The Maya operated as independent states that attacked their neighbors. Pacal was born during a very tense period in Palenque’s history.
The city, located in the jungles of present-day Chiapas, had recently been invaded and sacked by the more powerful Mayan city of Calakmul. Four years before Pacal was born, Palenque suffered a disastrous attack, followed by another attack during Pacal’s childhood in 611. These attacks were orchestrated by the Ajaw of Calakmul, known only as Scroll Serpent. During this turbulent period, Palenque’s leader was killed along with his heir.
These two deaths led to a succession crisis, which eventually resulted in Pacal taking the throne at the age of twelve, in July of 615. From an early age, Pacal had an expansionist mentality. He expanded Palenque’s power by reaching into neighboring territories. In 628, when one of his officials was captured, Pacal retaliated by kidnapping the Ajaw of Santa Elena and bringing him to Palenque, then making Santa Elena a tributary of Palenque.
Mayan civilization was like a high-stakes game of risk, with territory endlessly taken and lost. He married a woman from the ruling lineage of the nearby settlement of Uxte’k’uh, bringing more neighbors under his sway. During their marriage, Pacal and his wife, Lady Tz’akbu Ajaw, had at least two sons, and possibly a third. Pacal was expansionist, but he was also a patron of the fine arts.
He began a building program in the capital that produced some of the finest art and architecture in the entire kingdom. By turning Palenque into a center of arts and culture, he elevated his city’s status and made it a shining jewel in Maya life. He would go on to rule for 68 years, the fifth longest reign of any monarch in human history, and the longest of any ruler in the Americas. The four longer-reigning monarchs were Louis XIV of France, who reigned for 72 years; Queen Elizabeth II, who reigned for 70 years and 214 days; Rama IX of Thailand, 70 years and 126 days; and Johann II, Prince of Liechtenstein, 70 years and 91 days.
Pacal the Great held the throne for 68 years and 33 days. Near the end of his life, his loved ones began to die around him, one by one. His wife, with whom he had lived for 47 years, died in November of 672. Eight years later, his third son died.
Then, in August of 683, at the age of eighty, Pacal followed his wife and sons to the afterlife. He had sat on the throne for so long that he was already a god-king to the people of Palenque. He must have seemed nearly immortal, living more than three-quarters of a century while most people barely reached the age of thirty-five. Naturally, he was deified after his death.
Pacal was consecrated and buried in a massive stone sarcophagus deep within the city’s largest pyramid, known as the House of the Nine Sharpened Spears. Archaeologists today call it the Temple of Inscriptions. In the early twentieth century, archaeologists began digging into the ruins of Palenque. They knew the great ruler was buried somewhere in the city, but they could not find the secret entrance to his tomb.
They did not realize it was closed off by a massive stone slab, with the stairway completely blocked by rubble. After Alberto Ruz Lhuillier’s miraculous discovery of the secret entrance, followed by four years of clearing debris, the world finally got its first look at the divine king of Palenque. Based on the bones, scientists estimated Pacal’s height at about 5 feet 2 inches, average for a Mesoamerican man from 1,400 years ago. The most interesting aspect was his skull, which showed clear cranial deformation—elongated and tilted backward.
As an infant, Pacal had undergone head-binding techniques, with his head pressed between cloth and wooden boards to completely reshape his cranium. The result of this modification was that his face grew forward and outward, almost like a dog’s. It pushed his facial features outward, making him look somewhat frightening, at least to modern eyes. With his filed teeth and flat incisors, he would have looked rather beastly.
But behind that fierce appearance, Pacal was not a tyrant. By all historical accounts, he was actually one of the most stable and effective Mayan leaders ever. He ruled peacefully alongside his wife for nearly 50 years, ushering in a golden age of art and prosperity. For years after his death, Pacal remained a beloved figure in Palenque society.
They continued to make works of art depicting him decades after his burial. Today, the only real mystery still surrounding Pacal is his carved sarcophagus lid, which has become a subject of great controversy. The massive stone coffin lid is a unique piece of Maya art. Around the edges of the lid is a frame of cosmic symbols.
Those large borders, with all their seemingly random geometric shapes, are actually signs for the sun, the moon, and various stars. Each rectangular section has its own distinct meaning. But it is the central image that gets everyone talking. In 1968, when ancient astronaut theorist Erich von Däniken published his book Chariots of the Gods, he pointed to this lid.
He claimed the central image shows Pacal piloting a spacecraft. Von Däniken argued that the sarcophagus lid shows Pacal sitting inside a rocket-powered vehicle, with Mayan symbols surrounding the ruler representing technological components. Pacal’s hands were allegedly on controls, with a breathing apparatus near his face. According to the archaeologists and historians who have devoted their lives to studying Maya history and culture, none of that is accurate.
The symbols represent cosmic signs. The central image is not a spacecraft. It is a cross-shaped World Tree. Beneath Pacal is one of the heads of a celestial double-headed serpent.
The Ajaw and the serpent head are framed within the open jaws of a massive funerary serpent, indicating the entrance to the underworld. Pacal’s strange posture inside the serpent’s mouth is a representation of resurrection. Looking at the image closely, noticing all these small details, it becomes clear it could not be a spaceship. It is simply not realistic.
Furthermore, Pacal was an eighty-year-old man when he died. If he had plans to move to a new world, would he not have done it a little earlier? On the other side of the world, rulers in ancient China were buried in full suits of jade, as if locked inside an iron jade coffin. For years, jade burial suits were just a rumor, an interesting legend that Chinese archaeologists dreamed of.
Then in 1968, soldiers accidentally found the imperial family tombs of a prince and princess of the Han Dynasty. More than 2,000 years ago, a small army of builders began carving into the rock of the eastern slope of the mountain. After removing thousands of tons of rock, workers dug out a complex of tombs dedicated to preserving the remains of Liu Sheng and Dou Wan. Liu Sheng was the Prince of Zhongshan, and Dou Wan was his wife.
His father was Jing Di, the sixth emperor of the Han Dynasty. The Han Dynasty was the second dynasty of the empire, after the legendary Qin Shi Huang, the ruler who first unified China under the Qin. The Han ruled from 206 BC to 220 AD. When a major rebellion broke out in 154 BC, Emperor Jing sent his son Liu Sheng to take control of Zhongshan, a border region known for its instability in the fledgling empire.
Historians suspect construction of the tombs began shortly after Liu Sheng took power. They were so massive that they took decades to complete, requiring a colossal number of workers who labored without pause. It would have been a devastating financial burden. But when you are a prince, you get to choose how to spend your money.
By the time of Liu Sheng’s death in 113 BC, and then his wife’s death in 104 BC, their tombs were complete and filled with a variety of funerary goods. Once the lady was buried with the goods inside the tomb, both tunnels leading to the tombs were sealed with brick walls, filled with cast iron, and hidden. While many other elite Han Dynasty tombs were looted by grave robbers, the sealing measures of the Mancheng tombs proved surprisingly effective. It took the brutal force of dictator Mao Zedong to force the mountain to reveal its treasures.
In Sardinia, a giant’s tomb was found by chance. It is so massive that hardly anyone believes it was built 4,000 years ago. This tomb is not entirely unique in Sardinia. Researchers who found it claim it is part of a much larger group of mysterious funerary complexes called Giants’ Tombs.
The reason for the name is self-evident. The tombs are large enough to hold the bodies of giants, and who knows, perhaps some of them really did. The tomb was discovered when two surveyors were digging at a completely different archaeological site in the same location. They moved some vegetation and suddenly found themselves in front of the weathered stone of a massive grave.
The grave had simply been hidden by some overgrown weeds. Although there are many Giants’ Tombs, researchers are very excited about this one because it appears to be of strategic importance. The Italian science team suspects, due to its position on the southern slope of Monte Cresia with a wide view over the Macomer plain down to the Gulf of Oristano, that a figure of great importance was buried here. The most prominent features are a pair of large stone platforms, a sacred well, a residential quarter, and a vast burial area.
That is a lot of features for a tomb built shortly after the construction of Stonehenge. Unfortunately, someone appears to have already excavated the tomb illegally. A large part of the structure is damaged, not just by time and weather. It seems someone found the tomb and dug into it, probably to loot valuables.
All the team found inside were ceramic remains that were perhaps not important enough to steal. This massive tomb was built by the Nuragic civilization. These people dominated the island of Sardinia from the Bronze Age through the Iron Age. Not much is known about them today.
Unlike the Egyptians or Sumerians, the Nuragic people left no written records. What they left behind are 7,000 nuraghi towers and many other stone tombs. The towers are undoubtedly the most famous Nuragic structures. Although 7,000 towers remain, archaeologists believe there may have been up to 30,000 before the civilization disappeared.
Each tower is round in shape with a flat, truncated top. The tower has a cylindrical interior with a diameter of up to about 40 feet. The oldest known examples date to the 18th century BC. The problem is that no one knows what these towers were used for.
Some nuraghi reach heights of 90 feet, while others are only a few feet high. Some have complex dwellings inside, while others house wells or storage areas. The purpose of these structures is one of the most debated topics in archaeology today. Were they grain silos?
Defensive forts? Astronomical observatories or temples? Artifacts found inside the towers suggest they were homes. Archaeologists have found stone tools, cooking pots, and hearths inside these towers—everything needed for a prehistoric home.
But since thousands of stone houses have also been found in Sardinia, usually surrounding the famous stone towers, they were not homes for everyone. Perhaps they were for the elite. The Giants’ Tombs are scattered across Sardinia almost as much as the towers, though often found in the center of the island and usually filled with dozens or hundreds of bodies. Archaeologists believe the Nuragic people cared a great deal not only about burying their dead respectfully, but also about keeping them close to their villages.
Perhaps there was some kind of ancestor worship, with the Nuragic people believing in some form of afterlife. But they left no written records, so there is no way to know what they thought happened specifically after death. After centuries in Sardinia without much competition or external threats, Carthage began its conquest. The Carthaginians spread from North Africa to dominate the Balearic Islands, Malta, Iberia, and Sardinia.
By the time Rome defeated Carthage a few centuries later, the Nuragic civilization had virtually died out. The Epic of Gilgamesh predates almost everything known in ancient literature. Written in the cradle of ancient Mesopotamia thousands of years before the Greeks appeared on the map, it is the first recorded epic in the world, following the most ambitious legendary ruler in history. He was the king of Uruk, two-thirds god and one-third human, named Gilgamesh.
The epic takes the reader on Gilgamesh’s great journey in search of immortality and meaning. The story has endured for nearly 5,000 years because Gilgamesh sought the same thing we all seek in our lives: meaning. Historians today argue about whether Odysseus, the hero of the Odyssey, was a real king of Ithaca, just as they argue about whether Gilgamesh really ruled the city of Uruk in Mesopotamia. In 2003, archaeologists may have found his tomb.
Twenty-three years earlier—that is, in 2003—an announcement of a groundbreaking discovery shocked the archaeological community. A team of German scientists was excavating near the ruins of Uruk in southern Iraq. During their work, they found a massive funerary complex. This site was unlike any burial complex ever found before.
It was huge, with an imposing entrance, multi-layered chambers, and a massive tomb fit for a demigod. Experts in Mesopotamian literature were quick to notice the similarities between the tomb discovered in Iraq and the one described in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Could this actually be the tomb of the legendary ruler? When the news first spread, there was excitement and denial.
Some archaeologists hailed it as the greatest discovery in Iraqi history. Others argued there was not enough evidence to link the tomb to Gilgamesh. There were no inscriptions bearing Gilgamesh’s name, no artifacts associated with his reign, no information about who was buried there. The tomb was fit for a king, but if it was for Gilgamesh, there was no definitive proof.
However, there was some compelling evidence hinting at a possible link. The location of the tomb, found on an ancient channel of the Euphrates River, matches exactly the description of Gilgamesh’s burial in the epic. According to the ancient tale, believed to have been written about 4,200 years ago, Gilgamesh was buried under the Euphrates. The story says the people of Uruk grieved Gilgamesh’s death so much that they diverted the course of the Euphrates to build his tomb in the riverbed.
That was one way to protect the tomb from looters. They diverted the river, built the tomb, placed Gilgamesh inside, then allowed the river to return to its course over the burial chamber, sealing it forever—or at least until the river dried up. The Euphrates is no longer the great river it once was. The river’s flow has decreased by more than 60% over the past hundred years.
Severe drought and climate change have made it a sad stream compared to the life-giving flow of the past. This is why, in 2003, archaeologists found the tomb in the heart of the site where the river once flowed. Perhaps someone else was buried under the Euphrates, but who could that be? Looking at the list of ancient kings of Uruk, there is no one else said to have been buried beneath that river.
Gilgamesh was the only one worth diverting the river’s waters for. It was a massive project rivaling the building of the Great Pyramid. Another piece of evidence that the tomb belonged to Gilgamesh was the architecture, which reflected the lavish palaces and stepped pyramids associated with the ancient kings of Uruk. The style, design, and architecture were what archaeologists would expect from Gilgamesh’s tomb.
This put archaeologists at a crossroads. There was no real evidence inside the tomb, but the situation was too similar to the ancient epic to ignore. The artifacts found inside the tomb made things even more complicated. There were clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform telling stories of epic deeds and legendary journeys, but without any explicit mention of Gilgamesh.
Perhaps these clay tablets were similar to the hieroglyphic inscriptions found inside Egyptian royal tombs, which describe the titles and deeds of the deceased. This meant that whoever was buried in this massive tomb was boasting of adventures similar to those in the Epic of Gilgamesh. The broken clay tablets were enough to keep the mystery alive. That mystery persists to this day, with no modern archaeologists willing to accept that the tomb belonged to Gilgamesh.
Despite the striking coincidence of its location, the tomb of Gilgamesh seems to have been hidden and ignored.
