Get Premium
Dark mode theme is available exclusively for premium users. Learn more about the benefits of subscribing.
No fees, cancel anytime.
Dark Mode 
No fees, cancel anytime 
“The First Leper”: 25 Times Archaeologists Dug Up Something Straight Out Of A Nightmare
When I was a teen and the time came to decide what my career should be, I wanted to be an archaeologist for a while. If I had kept that dream, I could've become one of the 7,720 professional archaeologists in the U.S.
You might think that we already dug up the most significant historical artifacts that there are, but archaeology is a path that keeps on giving. For example, a national gas distributor in Lima, Peru claims that they have been responsible for around 2,200 discoveries in the past 20 years.
But this time, we would like to dedicate a post to the most disturbing and scary archaeological finds. Courtesy of the history and archaeology professionals who shared their knowledge in two Quora threads, Bored Panda brings you the times they dug up something that maybe would've been better off buried.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
Mount Owen Moa. An expedition was digging deeper into the cave system of Mount Owen in New Zealand when it came across a huge claw. it was determined that the claw belonged to an Upland Moa, a huge prehistoric bird that apparently came with a nasty set of claws
RELATED:
#2
The two most frightening things ever discovered by me, personally, while on a dig are:
1 The human remains on site may have died of cholera. That's one of those “OK, yeah, boss. Do you suppose that maybe you could have mentioned that before I started collecting? And maybe offered us face masks? Or at least told me to buy my own?”
2 The Forest Service put us up in barracks. Once we were all settled in, and started cooking, we found mouse and rat droppings under the kitchen sink. When we reported that to the GS-12, she said “Oh yeah, watch out for symptoms of hantavirus, it has been pretty prevelant around here lately, and there have also been a few cases of bubonic plague in the area.”
Nothing I have found from the past is as terrifying as what I have found in the present!
#3
The Knife-Armed Man
While excavating a 1200- to 1400-year-old necropolis in northern Italy, archaeologists found the remains of a man with a knife blade prosthetic arm. Analysis of the man’s bones revealed that his arm had been removed through blunt-force trauma below the elbow, and that he lived for some time afterward with the knife blade prosthesis in place of a hand.
#4
A calcified mass that would turn out to be a tumor was discovered in the pelvis of the Roman woman's corpse.
Alisha Brun 1 hour ago
Hey there was a woman in India who has a calcified fetus in her abdomen. Thats terrifying.
#5
The 1000 year old body of Buddist monk was dscovered inside an ancient statue of Buddha. A statue of a sitting Buddha that made its way from a temple in China to a market in the Netherlands revealed an extraordinary secret -- a 1,000-year-old mummified monk.
The mummy was discovered, encased in a cavity in the statue, when a private buyer brought it to an expert for restoration. It's unclear when or how the statue was removed from China.
Kira Okah 7 hours ago (edited)
There was apparently a court case over this mummy. It was apparently stolen from a village shrine in 1995 and illegally sold to a Dutch collector and exported. Supposedly, according to this court case, he is the Zhanggong Patriarch, a Song Dynasty monk mummified post mortem. From what I can find, though there has been an order of return, and he claims to have returned it, it's not been seen since 2015, with claims that he traded it to another collector whose identity is unknown.
#6
When archaeologists were excavating a dry prehistoric lake bed in Motala, Sweden in 2009, they stumbled upon one of the most peculiar archaeological discoveries the world had seen – the so-called ‘Tomb of the Sunkenoffering or Sunken Skulls’, a collection of skulls dating back 8,000 years, which had been mounted on stakes.
#7
In many ancient cultures, elongated heads appeared as a result of cranial deformation, and arguably the most famous examples are those coming from the Paracas culture.
Norm Gilmore 16 hours ago
Nah. I've seen the documentary from Indiana Jones. It's Aliens!! :-)
#8
The Elder Cheese: While the world was still mourning over not being allowed to drink the sarcophagus juice, archaeologists in Saqqara, Egypt uncovered another ancient (and equally inedible) find: the world’s oldest known solid cheese. Protein analysis showed that the 3,300-year-old powdery white substance was likely a mixture of cow and either goat or sheep milk, made into a cheese, which was left in the tomb of an official who served the pharaoh. Scientists warned that the cheese might actually be “cursed” with live bacteria that could sicken anyone who dared to taste it.
Lee451 Henderson 18 hours ago
The 2,000-year-old "sarcophagus juice" found in Alexandria in 2018 is actually a mixture of sewage water and decomposing remains, not a magical elixir, according to Business Insider. Despite over 30,000 people signing a viral Change.org petition to drink it, the substance is hazardous, and consumption would likely cause severe illness.
#9
Headless Vikings. Headless vikings were found in Dorset, the archaeologists said maybe some villagers had survived a raid and exacted their revenge. However, it still Brutal way to kill someone
#10
True love was forever for Louise de Quengo, the Lady of Brefeillac. The widow died in 1656 and was interred with a rather alarming trinket: the heart of her husband.
Toussaint Perrien, Knight of Brefeillac, died in 1649. As was sometimes done at the time, his heart was removed, embalmed and put into a lead urn.
"It was common during that time period to be buried with the heart of a husband or wife," Fatima-Zohra Mokrane, a radiologist at Rangueil Hospital at the University Hospital of Toulouse in France, said "It's a very romantic aspect to the burials."
Norfolk and good 1 hour ago (edited)
After his e*******n, Sir Walter Raleigh's wife, Elizabeth Throckmorton, carried his head around in a bag for the rest of her life.
#11
The First Leper. Leprosy is hard disease which infects humans; leprosy was common in the Medieval period, like king Baldwin of Jerusalem. The first leper man ever was 4000 years before, and this is his skull which was saved through the centuries .
persephone134 17 hours ago (edited)
Very poorly written. To call a person a leper is also not very PC.
#12
Iron sickles were discovered around the necks of two adult females, buried in Poland! Some researchers believed that the curved knives were placed around the skeletons out of a fear of vampirism. However, a new study suggests that unusual burials are “evidence of anti-demonic funerary practice”. This ritual began to prevent the dead from rising and terrorizing the living.
Additionally, those who passed away abruptly without a smooth transition from life to death, were believed to be at risk of becoming demons
#13
About 2,200 years ago, an aristocratic young Celt was brutally slain and thrown into a bog near what is now Manchester, England. His body, almost perfectly preserved and condition of the body and the manner of the man's death, moreover, suggest that he may have much in common with similar bodies found in peat bogs in Denmark during the 1950's.
The current burst of research and scholarship started at an ancient bog near the Manchester airport, where sphagnum peat moss has been growing for thousands of years. The peat, once commonly used as fuel, is now harvested mainly as a medium for cultivating plants.
On Aug. 1, 1984, a day many archeologists now regard as a milestone, a commercial peat cutter named Andy Mould was about to throw a load of peat into a shredding machine when some of the crumbling moss fell away, revealing a human foot.
Archeologists and other experts subsequently recovered the torso, head and arms of one of the most perfectly preserved ancient bodies ever found. The leathery flesh was stained deep brown and had been distorted by long burial in the wet, iron-rich peat, but facial features, skin texture, physique and even stomach contents were intact.
A flood of discoveries followed, and it soon became evident that ''Lindow Man,'' named for Lindow Moss, the locality where the corpse was found, had been no ordinary Celt. Several pieces of evidence, including the serene expression of the man's face, reconstructed from analysis of muscles and skin, suggested that he had gone willingly to his horrible death. His executioners had cut his throat, crushed his windpipe with a thong, bludgeoned his head and held his face under water.
#14
Girolamo Segato was an early medical science eccentric. Inspired by the preservation techniques of ancient civilizations, he invented a strange new way of preserving human remains. He injected an unknown mixture of chemicals into a body directly after death to make this eerie transformation.
#15
The Greenland Mummies: the dying remnants of the Vikings in Greenland at the outset of the ‘Little Ice Age’
#16
The most frightening thing I have found was the most extreme case of coffin yawn I’d seen anywhere. Coffin yawn is pretty much what you imagine it to be. When a person dies their muscles eventually relax, and this means the jaw will loll open. It is for this reason that, historically, bodies were buried with a cloth binding the chin shut (as with Marley in A Christmas Carol ), or, in the modern day; the jaw wired shut.
#17
A Creepy Tiny Hand. At the Roman fort of Vindolanda near Hadrian’s Wall in England, archaeologists found a creepy, lifelike, miniature bronze hand. The hand may be associated with the worship of Jupiter Dolichenus, a mystery cult whose practices were shrouded in secrecy, which was very popular in the Roman army of the early 3rd century CE. The hand was likely left as an offering after a major invasion of Scotland in which a huge number of people may have been killed.
#18
The Most Unlucky Man
At Pompeii, the site of Mt. Vesuvius’ disastrous eruption that killed the entire town in 79 CE, a man was found who was thought to have been crushed to death by a massive falling stone. Although archaeologists later found that the man’s head and upper torso were intact, they initially hypothesized that the rock had landed on him as he attempted to flee, hindered by an infection in his leg.
The_Nicest_Misanthrope 16 hours ago (edited)
One of the few situations where being k****d by a flying boulder is your best hope💀
#19
The discovery of a mass baby grave under Roman bathhouse in Ashkelon, Israel
Along the shores of Israel's Mediterranean coast, in the ancient seaport of Ashkelon, archaeologist Ross Voss made a gruesome find. While exploring one of the city’s sewers, he discovered a large number of small bones. Initially, the bones were believed to be chicken bones. However, it was later discovered that the bones were actually human –infant bones from the Roman era. With the remains amounting to more than 100 babies, it was the largest discovery of infant remains to date.
David 16 hours ago
100 male infants, and it was the early Byzantine period (technically "Roman") and all were infants less than a week old. There are many theories as to why, but the general assumption is there were natural infant deaths, though there is an alternative theory that since the bathhouse was also a brothel, they infants may have been born to the prostitutes and k****d after birth, but its a theory without evidence. Also Leon Levy led the dig, Voss one of of a dozen archaeologists on the site.
#20
Ninety-four years later, archaeologists would uncover their perfectly preserved bodies as well as various other odds and ends during a dig at the Alsatian town of Carspach
#21
Vampire of Venice. Among the corpses of medieval plague victims was one very curious find: a skull with a brick shoved so forcefully between its jaws, they were broken. The technique was used on suspected vampires in Europe during this time, especially when natural biological processes after death resulted in dark blood-like liquid streaming from the mouth. Researchers have determined that not only was this elderly woman feared a vampire after her death, she may have been accused of witchcraft before she met her end. Most people didn’t live to be her age, estimated at 60-71 years, and many medieval Europeans believed that the devil gave the elderly powers to cheat death. Older women were particularly suspect because it was assumed that they had little to live for, and were vulnerable to offers of power.
Svenne O'Lotta 14 hours ago
Lol this is such būllshit 😆 lots and lots of people lived to be well above 70, even in the mythical "olden days". A super high infant mortality rate skewed the average age of death and a healthy 65 year old woman would not be considered as having one leg in the grave. "Researchers determined ... she may have been accused of witchcraft" so researchers determined nothing, you mean. Medieval peasants believed all sorts of shït, they didn't have the internet to look up how science worked, and then there's also the whole being high off their áss and hallucinating harder than ChatGPT because of bad grain storage.
#22
Skulls Used as Cups. Three human skulls found in Gough’s Cave, Somerset, England were careful worked into the shape of bowls, indicating that they were used to drink from. At 14,700 years old, these are the oldest skull cups ever discovered, and they were surrounded by other human remains that had been snapped to get to the marrow inside, suggesting cannibalism.
persephone134 18 hours ago
The picture is bollocks. There's a picture on Wikipedia which looks nothing like this one.
#23
The Black Sarcophagus
The discovery of a massive, 2000-year-old sealed black granite sarcophagus in Alexandria, Egypt in July 2018 prompted speculation that opening it would unleash a world-ending curse. When opened, the sarcophagus was found to contain only the remains of three Egyptian army officers and a reddish-brown sewage liquid, spawning the #sarcophagusjuice meme.
Multa Nocte (she/her/86 47) 17 hours ago
OMG, these are terribly written. I'm not sure I am going to make it through this list.
#24
The Underground Labyrinth of Death
Using tiny remote-operated robots, archaeologists working at Chavin de Huantar in Peru have discovered a network of 35 interlocking underground tunnels, which contained the remains of at least three individuals that may have been sacrificed in “rituals [involving] drugs, noise and light manipulation.”
#25
THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS
Found in 1948 on the shores of the Dead SEA. The scrolls are dated 1400 years older than any other biblical manuscript. 350 years before Christ.
Before this skeptics would claim the book of Daniel and Isaiah were written after Jesus came because both books prophecy so factually and extensively about Christ. THE GREAT ISAIAH SCROLL was part of what was found and Is a complete copy of the book of Isaiah that is word for word what you have in your Bible! There is Parts of every book in the Hebrew Bible found in the scrolls save Ezra.
2WheelTravlr 17 hours ago
It is amazing, but it's not a complete copy of the book of Isaiah and unless your bible is written in ancient Hebrew and includes the variants in these scrolls, it's not a "word for word" copy.
What do you think ?
2WheelTravlr 17 hours ago
This post is a frustrating jumble of real and interesting finds smashed together with goofy interpretations that have no basis in reality.
Multa Nocte (she/her/86 47) 17 hours ago
I have to admit this is probably one of the worst article I have read in 7 years on BP.
persephone134 43 minutes ago
One should think that AI at least knows correct grammar.
Load More Replies... 2WheelTravlr 17 hours ago
This post is a frustrating jumble of real and interesting finds smashed together with goofy interpretations that have no basis in reality.
Multa Nocte (she/her/86 47) 17 hours ago
I have to admit this is probably one of the worst article I have read in 7 years on BP.
persephone134 43 minutes ago
One should think that AI at least knows correct grammar.
Load More Replies... You May Like 90 Extraordinary Artifacts That Have Surprised People For Centuries And Still Do Today (New Pics) This FB Page Shares Interesting Facts And Pics And These 69 Are Truly Interesting 60 Weird Jobs Nobody Knows About, As Shared By People In This Online Thread
Mantas Kačerauskas
Gabija Palšytė
Justina Čiapaitė
Related on Bored Panda
