5 More Ancient Mysteries We Still Haven't Solved

I'd be interested to see the flip side of this - the long-standing mysteries, the theories that came up, and the more recent accepted facts explaining what actually happened. What crazy ideas were believed before a modern answer was found? ... and do those facts then influence how we look at unsolved mysteries?

I love how much Simon has loosened up over the years and really lets his personality shine now.

In reading about the Mary Celeste, I really like Channel 5's experiment. Alcohol CAN burn without actually burning anything around it, and if some fumes went up in an explosion, it's easy to imagine the crew being scared out of their minds and flying into a panic, not knowing they're not actually in real danger since those fumes burn off instantly. All they know is that they hear a huge THOOM sound or whatever, and see a wave of fire, and they run for the lifeboat.

0:55 - Chapter 1 - The death of cyrus the great 4:00 - Chapter 2 - The disappearance of abu bakr II 6:30 - Chapter 3 - The voynich manuscript 8:50 - Chapter 4 - The olmec colossal heads 11:10 - Chapter 5 - The mary celeste

Arrived so fast I had to help put out chairs for everyone.

Gibberish or not, the monk that made it did an exceptional job. The penmanship is beautiful, as are the illustrations.

The theory I heard about the Mary Celeste is that you're supposed to open the cargo hatches regularly when carrying denatured alcohol, to prevent the fumes from building up. But the weather had been so bad during the voyage that they had to keep all the hatches closed to prevent the rain from flooding the ship, so when they finally had the chance to air out the hold, the fumes were so bad that the crew was having a hard time breathing. So they decided to pile into the life boat, and hang out at the end of the tow line until the fumes cleared out, but then either the line broke or the life boat capsized, and they all drowned.

Glad to see you, Simon. It's been a couple of hours. I was worried something had happened you.

Simon in most channels: "Second part because you liked the first one" Simon in BusinessBlaze: "Second part because I like moneyy" Well... Both statements are honest, I guess.

In my imagination, the Colossus of Rhodes had to-scale, pendulous nads which helped sailors denote the direction of the wind. My imagination is fun.

A recent book on Mary Celeste: “The topsails were up”. That clue there, Solves it. The other sails stowed but not the top sails because it was found several caskes were empty and some broken-they were not empty As the alcohol had evaporated. The fumes went up, Thea lightheaded and too lightheaded to risk going to remove the topsails. They got in the lifeboat with one line securing to wait out the evaporation but the line broke. Bad luck. They could never catch up with the topsails still up.

When the cargo of the Mary celest was examined there was one empty barrel, which means that it was leaking. By the time it had drifted to Gibraltar, all the alcohol had evaporated, but you can imagine the powerful stench of alcohol on the ship at the time of its leaking, combined with the fact that it was packed amongst many other alcohol fired barrels, the crew wouldn't have known how many were leaking and would have been terrified that the slightest spark, which is very common, could have caused an explosion. It can be reasonably deduced that the crew decided to leave the main boat given the alcohol leak and the very high risk of fire /explosion. I also think I read that there was a rope attached to the ship trailing behind as if they'd meant to tether themselves on but got detached somehow.

"What were these heads carved for?" to insult children as they try to assemble a silver puzzle monkey before a large man in a weird costume catches them

The manuscript has always made me chuckle. Awhile back I worked as an Instructor’s Aide in a special needs classroom. There was one student who would do these elaborate drawings and then write his own made up texts talking about his drawing. I could see one maybe someone copying ones creations into a nice looking book as a gift.

I have done some calculations. I input the number of YouTube channels that Simon Whistler hosts, multiplied by the amount of time each video runs, added the number of hours each video takes to prepare, subtracted rehearsal time (because Simon obviously reads his copy cold on camera), and compared the results to the number of hours in a day and came to the conclusion that the only way Mr. Whistler can produce that much content is by using a Time Turner.

The trouble with the story of the Mary Celeste is that 12 years after the incident a, then unknown, author by the name of Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a short story called "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement" about finding an abandoned ship called the Marie Celeste. Most of the modern legend/mystery is actually from the short story and not from what actually happened.

Hello Simon and Team. Here is an idea: large artworks or large collections of art lost to history. Not sure if you can find enough to make a Side Project of this topic, but I have been fascinated by the stories of lost art. Big lost art in some cases. In current times we've lost the Buddhas of Bamiyan in 2001. If you include collections and heritage sites, ISIL rampaged across their occupied territory in the Middle East destroying whole heritage sites and looting collections . Another fabled lost piece is a collection, the Amber Room, of 1716. It was stolen by Nazis in WWII and disappeared. Not a panel has been found. Is it somewhere in a vault? 6 tonnes of Amber plus gold leaf and mirrors...got to be somewhere, right? More curiously though is what happened to the last of Rembrandt's works. After his death he was still technically bankrupt and creditors were allowed to possess the contents of his art studio. There were dozens of unfinished paintings, many very large, and no one could make out what they were about. Descriptions make them sound like early attempts at abstract art! And none survive. Presumably the canvases were sold to other artists to be scraped off, cut apart and reused. But are there amateur and professional works from that era that have a ghostly image under them that are Rembrandt's last creative output? Or even on the back, which was the easy way to reuse a canvas, just take out the tacks and flip it around? And then there is the case of John Banvard, the American moving-panorama painter. His painting of the Mississippi river valley was 12 feet high and at least half a mile long. (Yes, 1/2 a MILE). He had a building put up just so he could make it. When he was done touring it all over the States, it was cut into much smaller pieces and sold, and not a single scrap exists today! That we know of. But what happened to the canvas pieces? Were some reused by artists? Is there a roll of canvas in someone's attic that's a chunk of this marvel? In square feet, "Mississippi" was 31,680 which substantially eclipses Sacha Jafri's current (2020) "The Journey of Humanity" of 17,000 sq ft or three basketball courts. Guinness book of records 'certifies' "Journey" as the world's largest painting but I protest. Largest extant painting perhaps. Another travesty is Plymouth Rock. Not artwork, but heritage. Most of it was chipped away by tourists and hucksters and now it's just a small boulder, a fraction of its original size! Not sure if there is other huge art lost to antiquity or stupidity... but you might be able to find more!

2:50 had me cracking up for some reason. Dunno why. Love how Simon can be so composed and sophisticated one second and then the next he can shout and act really well. Love it

"When life gives you boulders, make giant heads" -Simon Whistler, 2021

I heard Cyrus died when his mullet got caught in a ceiling fan. But then again, I might have been thinking about Billy Ray Cyrus.