Megalithic Marvels - 4 New Discoveries Archaeologists Can’t Fully Explain

Episode Date: August 24, 2026

Ancient history just got stranger. Archaeologists have uncovered evidence of a mysterious forgotten Roman goddess, a possible human ritual offering beneath an ancient pyramid in Peru, new clues that may reveal the location of the lost Egyptian city of Mesen, and a 4,000-year-old tablet covered in symbols no one can confidently decipher.Who was the mysterious “Lady” worshipped deep underground? Why was a human body placed near an ancient Peruvian pyramid? Has a city connected to Ramesses II finally been identified? And could mysterious Bronze Age symbols represent a forgotten system of communication?Join us as we investigate four incredible new archaeological discoveries—and the mysteries they’ve brought back to life.JOIN ME ON A TOUR

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We dive into what's moving markets with timely analysis, trends, and answers to ETF questions you've actually been thinking about. Hit play on the upside ticker talk and elevate your ETF investing IQ. An unknown goddess worshipped deep inside a Spanish cave. A skeleton unearthed beneath an ancient Peruvian pyramid. A lost Egyptian city potentially identified by an inscription from the time of Ramsey's 2nd. And a mysterious 4,000-year-old tablet in Italy covered with symbols that no one can confidently explain. These are four archaeological stories making headlines right now, and each one leaves us with a mystery.

Because the deeper archaeologist dig into our past, the clear way. one thing becomes. There is an enormous amount about the ancient world that we still do not understand. And before we dive into these four exciting new discoveries, I want to take just a quick minute to invite you to consider joining me on one of my upcoming tours. In fact, my next one starts September 5th, and it's in Bolivia and southern Peru. It's going to be amazing. We've had two last minute cancellations, so that means there's two openings, if Anybody wants those tickets. It's going to be an incredible tour.

You can go to Megalithicmarvels.com slash tours to lock in those two spots. I've also got tours to Egypt coming early December to Anchorwat in Cambodia in January of 2007. And then I just launched my annual Peru tour in May and my annual Easter Island trip at the end of May. And through the end of this month, August 31st, you can lock in some huge. mega deals on these tours so go to megalithic marvels.com slash tours or click the link in the show notes below. All right, let's talk about the unknown goddess inside the mysterious cave. Let's begin underground in Spain where archaeologists have discovered evidence of a mysterious Roman goddess seemingly forgotten by history. Near Valencia, Spain lies a place known as Cova de Les Dons or the Cave

of the woman. And hundreds of feet deep inside this cave, archaeologists have documented something extraordinary. More than 120 ancient Latin inscriptions. And researchers say this represents the largest known collection of Roman Latin inscriptions discovered inside a cave anywhere inside the former empire. Now, five of these inscriptions are very strange. for they appear to refer to a female deity simply called Domina, translated as the lady. So who was she? Researchers aren't sure. Archaeologists believe Romans were using this cave as a sanctuary during approximately the first and second centuries AD.

But getting there wasn't easy, and the inscriptions are located more than 650 feet, deep inside the cave. So imagine entering this place nearly 2,000 years ago. No electric lights, no modern walkways, only darkness, rock, water, and the flickering light of lamps and torches. Why travel so deep underground to worship? Well, the location may provide us with a clue. Natural pools exist inside this cave. And researchers suspect water may have played an important role in rituals performed inside this cave. Archaeologists have also discovered ceramic vessels, jewelry, and other objects, suggesting that women may have participated predominantly in these rituals.

But the mystery goes much deeper because Romans weren't the first. people to consider this cave important. Evidence of human activity inside this cave stretches back tens of thousands of years, according to archaeologists. And the cave contains prehistoric artwork. So let's think about that. Different cultures separated by thousands upon thousands of years repeatedly entered the same dark underground environment. Could this? Could this? be because caves naturally inspire curiosity in a ritual behavior, or was there something special about the water? Or did legends concerning this location somehow survive across generations? And most intriguing, how does a goddess worshipped by the Romans simply disappear from history?

Okay, number two on our list. Let's talk about a possible human saccharacterious. beneath a Peruvian pyramid. Now we travel from Spain across the Atlantic to Lima, Peru, where today modern buildings surround an enormous ancient adobe pyramid known as Waka Paklana. And seeing this the first time years ago blew my mind because Lima is such a massive city. And other places like Kusko in the Sacred Valley of Peru are the locations people usually think of when they think of ancient ruins in Peru. Not many people think of downtown Lima, but sure enough, there is this massive Adobe pyramid. And it was an important ceremonial and administrative center of the ancient Lima culture before the rise of the Inc. Empire. An archaeologist have just revealed a possibly disturbing discovery near the base of this Adobe Pyramid.

Deep inside an ancient ceremonial canal, as they described, but they found this skeleton of an adult male dating to approximately 1,400 years ago. Now, this does not appear to have been an ordinary burial. The man had been placed on his left side, and his skull was deliberately oriented toward two, interesting features of the landscape, one, the pyramid itself, and two, the Pacific Ocean. And so archaeologists believe the body may have been deposited around AD 650 during the ceremonial closing of this specific water channel. So in other words, he may have been an offering. Now, whether he was actually killed specifically for the ceremony remains under investigation. but human sacrifice itself would not have been unprecedented at Huaca Paklana.

Previous excavations have uncovered the human remains associated with ritual activity at the site. And that raises another fascinating question. Why would closing a water channel require a human offering? Well, for ancient cultures living here along Peru's extremely dry Pacific coast, water wasn't simply useful, it meant survival. Controlling water meant controlling agriculture, settlements, and potentially political power itself. So perhaps this channel wasn't viewed merely as infrastructure. Now there's another fascinating detail, and that is that archaeologists also discovered a ceramic serpent head nearby.

Two and five Canadians will hear the words. you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21

kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca. And as you're watching this video on YouTube or Spotify, might also see some footage of some of the artifacts discovered inside this pyramid and around it

from this mysterious Lima culture. And across the ancient Andes, we know that serpents could carry powerful symbolic associations with water, fertility, the earth, and supernatural forces. So does the serpent at this site have anything to do with this ceremony? Maybe so. But imagine the final ritual approximately 1,400 years ago. A ceremonial canal is about to be closed. A human body is placed inside. His head faces the great pyramid and the ocean. And then the channel disappears beneath the earth. Was this man sacrificed? Was he already dead and selected as an offering? Or was the ritual intended to communicate with a deity? Or was the ritual intended to communicate with a deity? Or were the people of Huaca Paklana symbolically returning something to the forces they believed controlled water in life?

For now, the skeleton isn't giving up all its secrets. Okan, our third new archaeological discovery takes us to ancient Egypt and asks the question, has Egypt's lost city of Mesen finally been found? So at a site known as Till Abu Safi near the eastern edge of the Nile Delta and the approaches to Sinai, archaeologists have uncovered a new evidence from a site positioned along one of ancient Egypt's most important strategic routes. This was the region of the ancient Horus military road, the route connecting Egypt with the Sinai and the lands farthest east. And here, archaeologists have uncovered fortifications, roads, storage areas, temple structures, and evidence of military activities spanning different periods.

But one artifact may completely change our understanding of this site. A large sandstone lintel bears royal titles belonging to one of Egypt's most famous pharaohs, Ramsey's the Second. He was a pharaoh of the 19th dynasty between 1279 BC to 1213 BC, and he is often called Ramsey's the Great. And this inscription about him contains a crucial reference. It says, quote, Horace, Lord of Messon, end quote. And this matters because Messon was the name of an ancient Egyptian city whose exact location has long been debated. And now archaeologists are asking, could tell Abu Safi actually be the lost city of Messon?

The evidence is tantalizing, and the location makes strategic sense. Now we know that one inscription doesn't magically answer every archaeological question, but still imagine what we could be looking at here. A city once occupied an incredibly important gateway between Egypt, Egypt and Asia. Soldiers marched through this region. Merchants transported goods through it. Temples operated here. Pharaohs invested resources in controlling it. In over thousands of years, its identity was lost. Now there is even a biblical connection here that has generated some discussion. The Horace military road ran toward the region of ancient Canaan, which paralleled the coastal corridor later associated with the biblical way of the land of the Philistines.

So this gives us a remarkable glimpse into a geographical world described by ancient Egyptian and even biblical traditions. And it raises a larger question. How many ancient cities mentioned in surviving texts are still unidentified beneath the sand? Because sometimes an ancient civilization isn't completely lost. Its buildings remain, its roads remain, its temples remain. What disappears is its name. And one inscription can potentially give that name back. And lastly, number four on our list has us traveling to northern Italy. Near Lake Garda lies a prehistoric settlement where the ancients lived during the Bronze Age approximately 4,000 years ago. An archaeologists have just discovered a small artifact that poses a surprisingly

large question. It's an almost completely intact clay tablet. Across its surface are carefully arranged geometric markings. Dots, lines, patterns, symbols. The obvious question here is what do they mean? And archaeologists don't have a definitive answer. Even stranger. This isn't the first one of these clay tablets that has been found. Numerous of these enigmatic tablets have been discovered across northern Italy and parts of central Europe. And in this area near this Lake Garda, it's produced the largest known concentration of these mysterious tablets at a single site. That means these objects weren't random doodles made by one person. people were carefully creating them, deliberately creating them, again and again.

So what information weren't they recording? One theory proposes that the pattern may have identified individuals, families, or groups. Another possibility is that they were associated with trade. Perhaps they represented goods or quantities. Others have wondered whether they had a ritual or symbolic meaning. but there's an even more provocative possibility. Could these objects represent some kind of proto-writing or information storage system?

Unfortunately, there is no Bronze Age dictionary allowing us to translate them. But that almost makes the mystery more fascinating because someone 4,000 years ago understood exactly what these markings meant. Imagine a Bronze Age person holding this object. To them, those symbols may have communicated something immediately recognizable. A person's identity, a transaction, a place, a religious concept, a calendar, or something we haven't even considered. And 4,000 years later, we can still see their message. We just can't read it.

Now when you put these four discoveries together, something fascinating emerges. A goddess whose identity disappeared. A human body being placed inside a sacred pyramid for reasons we don't completely understand. A lost Egyptian city whose name we may finally have rediscovered. And a 4,000-year-old symbolic system whose meaning has vanished. All four represent different versions of the same problem. Human beings forget. Civilizations rise, religions disappear, language dies, cities are abandoned, symbols lose their meaning, and eventually even the gods can be forgotten.

How many ancient cities mentioned in old texts are still waiting beneath our feet? How many systems of writings and languages had been recognized before being lost? And perhaps most importantly, how much of human history has disappeared without leaving any record at all. And if four mysteries such as these can emerge almost simultaneously, what is still down there waiting to completely change the story of our past? I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, please subscribe to my channels from wherever you watch or listen. And I will see you next time. Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer.

That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca.ca.