Teotihuac'n



In AD 600 Teotihuac'n in Mexico was the sixth largest city in the world and about 200,000 people lived there. Just 150 years later, Teotihuac'n was almost deserted, and plants had begun to grow over the city's huge pyramids. Nobody knows why Teotihuac'n was abandoned, but a huge fire may have devastated it in AD 650.

The Nazca Lines

The Nazca Lines are enormous drawings on the ground (called geoglyphs) that stretch across the Nazca Desert in southern Peru. They show more than 300 geometric patterns, spirals and animals. The lines are so vast (one extends 65km) that they can only be seen properly from a height of about 300m. The lines were first noticed when commercial areoplanes began to fly over Peru in the 1920s. Most experts agree that they were made by the Nazca Indians who lives in the regions between 300 BC and AD 800, but there are many questions yet to be answered about them. For example, why were the pictures made and how are they so precise if their makers had no means to view them from the sky?

Stonehenge

Stonehenge is a circle of 17 upright stones called sarsens which stand on Salisbury Plain in southwest England. The stones weigh up to 50 tonnes and have other stones, called lintels, laid across the top. There is also an inner circle of smaller bluestones weighing up to four tones each. Stonehenge is the only stone circle in the world with lintels across the top of the stones, and experts think it was completed in about 1500 BC. They believe that the sarsens stones were transported from 32km away and the bluestones came from an incredible 250km away. At least 600 men would have been needed to move each sarsen stone on some of the steepest arts of the journey. Nobody knows exactly why Stonehenge was built, but it may have been a druids? temple or even a kind of astronomical calendar.

The Bermuda Triangle

The Bermuda Triangle is an area of the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Florida. It is famous for being the supposed site of many unexplained disappearances. The three points of the triangle are Miami, Bermuda and San Juan in Puerto Rico. In the 15th century, Christopher Columbus claimed to have seen a ?great flame of fire? falling into the ocean in area. The mystery of the Bermuda Triangle first began to attract attention in 1945, when Flight 19, a training mission of five US bombers, vanished off the Florida coast. The Plane that was sent to find them also disappeared, and around 100 boats and aircraft have also been lost there. Explanations include magnetic fields, sea monsters and abduction by aliens, but most experts agree the disappearances are caused by bad navigation and/or extreme weather conditions.

Easter Island

Easter Island (or Rapa Nui) lies in the South Pacific between Chile and Tahiti, and is one of the most isolated islands in the world. By the 16th century, Easter Island had nearly had nearly 10,000 inhabitants, who made huge statues known as moai. The 887 moai were carved from the island's volcanic rock and have long, angular faces. Some have eyes make from coral. The average moai was about 4m tall and weighed over 14 tonnes, so they would have been extremely difficult for the islanders to transport. Archaeologists believe that the statues symbolize the sprits of Easter Island's most important inhabitants.

Crop circles

Crop circles are complicated geometric patterns, usually in wheat fields. Some people believe that the patterns are left by the imprint of an extra-terrestrial craft, or that they are a message from extra-terrestrials themselves. Another theory is that natural forces such as tornadoes, heat of strong winds create the patterns by flattening the crops, but the regular shapes of most crop circles makes this unlikely.

The most likely explanation is that the circles are made by people as a hoax. They gradually build up a design by flattening the wheat, using very basic equipment such as rope and planks of wood.

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