Buddha’s teeth
After Gautama Buddha died (around 500 years BCE) he was cremated and his ashes divided up and distributed to stupas across northern India. But some relics purportedly survived, including a surprising number of teeth.
Category: Ancient history
From the beginning of written history until 500 CE
Medieval cat poetry
Pangur Bán was an Irish monk’s cat in 9th century Germany; we know this cat’s name because the monk wrote a poem about him. Even though this poem was written more than a thousand years ago, Pangur Bán was not the first named cat in history.
Mythical Indian Ocean continent
Before we knew about plate tectonics, a zoologist proposed a lost continent connecting Madagascar and India across the Indian Ocean. That hypothesis, now debunked, was nevertheless picked up by Theosophists and Tamil revivalists.
Pig toilet
The pig toilet was once a key sanitation building in rural China, Korea, and India. It was ruthlessly efficient, combining a toilet for people with a sty for pigs.
Saint Pontius Pilate
The Ethiopian and Coptic Orthodox Churches hold that Pontius Pilate, the governor who condemned Jesus Christ to death, later converted to Christianity himself, and they revere Pilate as a saint.
Solved by walking (Part 1)
How do you solve Zeno’s paradoxes of motion? If you’re Diogenes the Cynic, you walk it off. [1 of 2]
Animal helmets
The Vikings may not have worn horned helmets, but the ancient Greeks had helmets covered in boar tusks and the Dayak of Borneo had helmets covered in fish or pangolin scales.
Unseen regalia
The Imperial Regalia of Japan consists of a legendary sword, mirror, and jewel. They are brought out at every imperial enthronement, but only a few priests and the emperor himself are ever allowed to see them.
Walls within walls within walls
Julius Caesar won the Siege of Alesia with a military tactic known as investment: build walls around the besieged settlement’s own walls, and and then build another layer of walls around those ones.
Goddess of the sewers
The Cloaca Maxima in Rome is one of the world’s first sewer systems. It still works today, and with good reason: it has its own goddess.
Death of the pyramid
The pyramid of Amanishakheto stood for nearly two thousand years, until an Italian looter blew it up.
Dragon blood island
Socotra, the alien island wedged between the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Aden, is home to the dragon blood tree: a source of dye, paint, medicine, varnish, and magic.
Triple clarinet
The Sardinian launeddas, also known as a triplepipe, sounds like someone playing three clarinets at the same time.
Death by immortality potion
Poisoned potions of immortality caused the death of up to seven Chinese emperors – the last less than three centuries ago.
The doubters and the oracle bones
The Doubting Antiquity School were sceptics of ancient Chinese texts’ historical veracity… until the oracle bones were deciphered.
Salt men
Most accidental mummies are preserved by heat, cold, or peat bogs. But in the Chehrabad mines in Iran, the bodies of ancient miners were buried in salt.
The Generalist Academy 