There is practically no one that doesn’t enjoy history. Every once in a while, archaeologists come across some truly remarkable bizarre discoveries. Sometimes, the finding is so surprising that they cannot explain what they’ve found or how it came into existence. This is a list of such unexplained artifacts -artifacts of which we have no satisfying explanation.

How were these lines drawn?

The Nazca drawings (or lines) have something bizarre about them. Discovered in 1930, they cover 450 square km, and some measure more than 200m in length. They depict lines and figures we haven’t entirely figured out yet (maybe constellations).

Whether made for the gods or something else, it’s obvious that they were meant to be seen from the sky. Scientists have had trouble figuring out how they could have been designed and created without somebody directing the work from above. 

How did they get there?

Around 800 B.C.E., the ancient Iranian city of Hasanlu was destroyed by fire. However, the most fascinating find of the city’s ruins is undoubtedly the “Hasanlu Lovers,” two intertwined skeletons found in a bin of plaster-covered mudbrick in 1972. 

But now, scholars believe they may not have been lovers at all. Scientists confirmed that one skeleton is male, and while the other is still up for debate, it appears to “lean male” as well. The skeletons are at the Penn Museum in Philadelphia.

The cup you wouldn’t want to see

This cup, made out of a human skull, discovered at Gough’s Cave in Somerset, England, dates back nearly 15,000 years. Scientists believe they know its origin: The object appears to be something made and used by a group of cannibals.

What’s unclear is exactly why and how said cannibalism took place. The best guess? It was part of some sort of spiritual ritual. The Natural History Museum in London is the current home of this pretty scary, bizarre human skull cup.

The wedge that existed before its time

In 1974, archaeologists in Aiud, Romania, discovered a wedge-shaped object buried approximately 35 feet underground alongside two mastodon bones. The fact that it was discovered alongside mastodon bones would make the artifact around 11,000 years old–which is weird.

Aluminum wasn’t discovered until the early 19th century. The exact origins and age of the object remain unknown, and scholars have no clue how it ended up near bones from thousands of years before aluminum was discovered.

This shroud is like none other

The Shroud of Turin was believed to have been used in the burial of Jesus Christ. Others see the cloth and image of a bearded man’s face on it as a fake from medieval times. This makes it a huge mystery.

There have been countless tests on the shroud to confirm its origins, but none have been completely conclusive or universally accepted. In 2022, researchers used X-ray technology to date the shroud and determined it to be about 2,000 years old.