Most archeologists will admit that a healthy dose of
luck is often a crucial part of tracking down historical objects. In
fact, many of the world’s greatest treasures were only discovered when
nonprofessionals stumbled upon them by accident. Some of these
serendipitous finds had been sought after for centuries, but others were
previously unknown and helped lead to radical reinterpretations of
history. Below, get the stories behind seven chance encounters that led
to the discovery of priceless historical relics.
Lascaux Cave
Credit: Lionel Bonaventure/AFP/Getty Images
In September 1940, four French teenagers were roaming the forests
near Montignac when their dog began sniffing around a mysterious hole in
the ground. After shimmying down a stone shaft, the boys encountered a
vast underground cavern whose walls were adorned with some 2,000 ancient
paintings and engravings. The astonished teens initially agreed to
explore the grotto in secret, but they later sent word of the find to
their schoolteacher, who persuaded a cave expert to verify its
authenticity. Before long, word of the Lascaux cave’s exquisite
collection of animal drawings and abstract symbols had spread across
Europe, and it became known as the “Sistine Chapel of Prehistoric Art.”
Historians later placed the age of its paintings at around 15,000-17,000
years old, and many believe the cave was once the site of religious and
hunting rites among Upper Paleolithic peoples.
The Xian Terra Cotta Army
Credit: Zhang Peng/LightRocket via Getty Images
In 1974, a group of Chinese farmers chanced upon the discovery of a
lifetime: the tomb of the first emperor of the Qin Dynasty. The
seven-man team was digging a well near the city of Xian when one of
their shovels struck the head of a buried statue. The men initially
thought they had discovered a bronze bust or an ancient Buddha
sculpture, but when archeologists conducted further excavations, they
found it was one of some 8,000 life-sized terra cotta soldiers, horses
and chariots constructed to guard the 3rd century B.C. Emperor Qin Shi
Huang in the afterlife. The tomb and its highly detailed soldiers—each
has its own unique face—are now regarded as some of the most important
archeological treasures in all of China.
The Venus de Milo
Credit: DEA / G. Dagli Orti/De Agostini/Getty Images
Before it became one of world’s most beloved sculptures, the Venus de
Milo spent several centuries buried on the Greek island of Melos. The
armless statue was only recovered in 1820, when a peasant named Yorgos
Kentrotas accidentally discovered its top half while trying to salvage
marble building blocks from a pile of ancient ruins. The find
immediately caught the attention of Olivier Voutier, a French naval
officer who happened to be digging for antiquities nearby. After bribing
Kentrotas to help him, Voutier unearthed the bottom half containing the
Venus’s draped legs. He later persuaded the French ambassador to the
Ottoman Empire to purchase the statue, and in 1821 it was presented to
King Louis XVIII and donated to the Louvre. Art historians have since
speculated that the Venus is meant to represent the Greek goddess
Aphrodite, yet to this day they remain uncertain about what it may have
once held in its missing arms.
Derinkuyu Underground City
Credit: ralucaphotography/Getty Images
The rocky landscape of Turkey’s Cappadocia region is home to dozens
of underground cities that were once hand-carved from volcanic ash by
their ancient inhabitants. One of the most elaborate of these
subterranean metropolises is Derinkuyu, which contains 18 stories and
enough space to house some 20,000 people. Amazingly, the site was only
discovered as recently as 1963, when a local man knocked down a wall
while renovating his home and uncovered a passageway leading to a vast
network of stone tunnels and chambers. Experts are still unsure who
built Derinkuyu or when, but excavations have found that it once housed
its own meeting halls, shops, freshwater wells, stables and even heavy
stone doors to protect its residents from danger.
The Rosetta Stone
Replica of the Rosetta Stone on display in Spain. (Credit: Juan Naharro Gimenez/Getty Images)
When he launched his doomed Egyptian campaign in the late 18th
century, Napoleon Bonaparte brought along a special unit of scientists
and historians tasked with collecting relics and studying the country’s
history. This so-called “Institute of Egypt” proved particularly useful
in 1799, when soldiers led by Pierre-Francois Bouchard stumbled upon a
large basalt slab while knocking down ancient walls to make improvements
to a French fort near the town of Rosetta. The Institute quickly dated
the stone to the 2nd century B.C. and determined that it was inscribed
with an ancient decree written in three different languages: Greek,
demotic and hieroglyphics. Led by Jean-Francois Champollion and Thomas
Young, language experts would spend the next 20 years using the Greek
passages to crack the code of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, which had
been lost to history for millennia. Once deciphered, the glyphs provided
scholars with the tools they needed to begin the first in depth studies
of ancient Egyptian language and literature.
The Dead Sea Scrolls
A
part of the Isaiah Scroll, one of the Dead Sea Scrolls, is seen inside
the vault of the Shrine of the Book building at the Israel Museum.
(Credit: Lior Mizrahi/Getty Images)
The Dead Sea Scrolls contain some of the earliest known pieces of the
Bible, but they might never have been found if not for a group of Arab
teenagers. In 1947, a band of young Bedouin goat and sheepherders were
tending their flock near the ancient city of Jericho. While looking for a
lost goat, one of the boys tossed a stone into a nearby cave and was
shocked to hear what sounded like a shattering clay pot. When he went in
the cave to investigate, he found several jars containing a collection
of ancient papyrus scrolls. Tiny scraps of the scrolls would later sell
for millions, but the Bedouins were unaware of their value and sold the
entire lot to a Bethlehem antiquities dealer for less than $50. Scholars
eventually confirmed the texts’ importance, sparking a frenzy of relic
hunting that led to the recovery of several thousand other bits of
papyrus from nearby caves. Taken together, these artifacts are now
considered to be among the most significant archeological discoveries of
the 20th century.
Uluburun Shipwreck
Wooden model of the ship found at Uluburun.
In 1982, sponge diver Mehmet Çakir was swimming in the Mediterranean
Sea off Turkey’s Uluburun coast when he found himself face to face with
the ruins of a 50-foot-long sunken ship. The ancient wreck had been at
the bottom of the sea for so long that much of its cedar hull had
disappeared, but Çakir spotted several ceramic jars as well as hundreds
of glass, copper and tin ingots. Underwater archeologists later spent 10
years studying the Uluburun wreck. Over the course of more than 20,000
dives, they recovered a treasure trove of Late Bronze Age relics ranging
from elephant tusks and hippopotamus teeth to jewelry and even a scarab
inscribed with the name of the Egyptian Queen Nefertiti. While dating
from a piece of firewood confirmed that the ship was some 3,300 years
old—one of the oldest wrecks ever discovered—historians are still
uncertain of its origins. Its cargo of copper was traced Cyprus, but
archeologists also found Mycenaean, Assyrian, Canaanite and Egyptian
artifacts, leading many to conclude that the ship was a merchant vessel
manned by an international crew.
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