Some discoveries shed more light on the events of the past, while some others baffle scientists and raise new questions about the history of humankind.

Here are five of the most puzzling and unsolved enigmas in the world. Yet, recent studies have provided a plausible explanation for some of these mysteries.

1. The Bimini Road

In 1968, dozens of huge flat rocks of limestone were discovered under the seabed, close to the coast of Bimini in the Bahamas islands. At first glance, there was nothing surprising.

However, scientists were troubled because these stones formed a perfectly straight boulevard one km long that appeared unlikely to be created by nature.

Many said that those were the ruins of ancient world civilization, others were convinced that it was a unique natural phenomenon. However, none of them can ignore a prophecy made in the early decades of the twentieth century.

A famous prophet and healer of that time, Edgar Cayce, made the following prediction in 1938:

A part of the ruins of the Lost Atlantis will be discovered in the sea around the islands of Bimini… “.

There were others who claimed to have seen pyramids and ruins of buildings on the seafloor near Bimini, but the only confirmed discovery is the Bimini Road, whose origin has troubled scientists for decades.

To this day, there is no conclusive evidence to confirm the authenticity of the Bimini road, so it remains one of the unsolved enigmas out there. In fact, most archeologists believe that it’s probably a natural formation and not a man-created construction.

2. The Voynich Manuscript

The Voynich Manuscript was named after Polish antiquarian Wilfried M. Voynich, who found it in an Italian monastery in 1912. Perhaps, it is the most mysterious book in world history. This is a book of mysterious pictorial content written in an incomprehensible language.

Scientists estimate that it was written centuries ago (approximately 400 to 800 years ago) by an anonymous author who used an unknown writing code

From its pages, it is possible to understand only that it probably served as a pharmacy book (it appears to describe certain aspects of medieval and early medicine), as well as an astronomical and cosmological map. Even stranger than the writing language are the images of unknown plants, cosmological charts, and strange pictures of naked women in a green liquid.

Voynich Manuscript

Dozens of cryptanalysts have tried to translate it but no one managed to. Many came to the conclusion that it was, in fact, an elaborate hoax, and the encrypted words were random and had no meaning, while the images belonged exclusively to the realm of fantasy.

Today, the Voynich Manuscript is kept in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, and nobody has managed to decipher a word so far. Maybe this is because there is no hidden meaning behind this mysterious book after all? In any case,  the Voynich manuscript remains one of humanity’s unsolved enigmas.

3. The Piri Reis Map

The Piri Reis map was accidentally discovered in 1929 in a Turkish museum, and since then, no logical explanation for its illustrations has been found.

In 1513, Turkish admiral Piri Reis designed the map of the world which included Portugal, Spain, West Africa, Central and South Atlantic, the Caribbean, the eastern half of South America, and a part of Antarctica.

It is believed that there were also North America and the rest of the eastern half of the world in the pieces of the map that were probably destroyed over the years.

Piri Reis Map

It was long believed that this map was incredibly accurate in detail, so researchers were puzzled by a question: how could an admiral of the 16th century make a map of the entire Earth without the possibility of aerial observation?

How is it possible to separate the continents and coasts in their correct distances without the knowledge of the method of Azimuthal projection or spherical trigonometry required for mapping? And how did he design the Antarctic that had not been officially discovered at that time?

However, a later analysis showed that the map is not as accurate as it seemed.

“The Piri Reis map is not the most accurate map of the sixteenth century, as has been claimed, there being many, many world maps produced in the remaining eighty-seven years of that century that far surpass it in accuracy”, researcher Gregory C. McIntosh.

4. The Nazca Lines

The geoglyphs of the Nazca culture located in Peru are among the world’s biggest mysteries both because of the manner and for the reason for their creation. These are approximately 13,000 lines forming 800 designs covering an area of 450 square kilometers.

They were created approximately between 500 BC and 500 AD and look as if they had been designed by a giant hand.

nazca lines spider
PsamatheM / CC BY-SA

These lines depict shapes, animals, plants, and geometric designs and the strange thing is that they virtually have no actual construction purpose, since they are visible only from the sky. Scientists estimate that perhaps the Nazca had in possession a large hot air balloon or kite that helped them design.

Many say that this is an airstrip built for aliens. Others go even further, saying that the lines were designed by aliens. A more popular (and more plausible) explanation is that the Nazca people made these designs for religious purposes, devoting them to their gods in the sky. This is the most realistic theory most scholars agree with.

5. The Shroud of Turin

Although the Vatican has affirmed that it is not authentic, the Holy Shroud remains an unsolved mystery for humanity. It is a shroud with an imprinted image of a bearded male adult on it. Throughout the fabric, there are signs of blood, which shows that this man was probably crucified and then his body was covered with this piece of cloth.

shroud of turin

Understandably, many believe it is the burial cloth of Jesus Christ which covered his body after the Crucifixion, as the weave of the fabric refers to the epoch he lived in and the signs of blood confirm the death in the same manner as that of Christ.

Some other scientists believe that the shroud was created much later, between the 13th and the 14th centuries. Now, a later study shows that it might be totally fake. Using advanced forensic techniques, scientists studied the bloodstains on the shroud and came to the conclusion that they were probably intentionally added to the cloth and didn’t come from a crucified human body.

“You realize these cannot be real bloodstains from a person who was crucified and then put into a grave, but actually handmade by the artist that created the shroud,” study author Matteo Borrini revealed in an interview with LiveScience.

As you can see, some of these unsolved enigmas have already been debunked. Modern technologies and scientific methods provide new opportunities to make sense of these kinds of mysteries. Who knows, maybe in the following years, we will see more puzzling enigmas being solved.


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This Post Has 24 Comments

  1. Cezar Su Xin

    About number 5: the Shroud.

    How is it a 33 year old man? That is impossible to determine. Not sure about the weave of the cloth remark as well. Definitely dated later than it was originally thought to have been made or created; definitely a fake. And an original shroud? Probably never existed. The Jesus character may have been another man who followers and adherent’s deified by plagiarizing older religions, in particular, Mithraism. And if Jesus did exist, there is a high probability that he did not die on the cross and that he was just as human as Noah, Abraham, Moses and Muhammad and you or I. No real mysteries there, sorry.

  2. ned morlef

    As a reader of the bible i say the shroud is a clear fake. The bible [Isaiah] describes Jesus as having no particular features that would stand out and make us notice him. That he was “weak and spindly”. He wasn’t this stud looking character in all of our paintings. The guy in the shroud is clearly a large man with bold features. NOT Jesus.

    1. yeah...

      Yes, because the Bible is trustworthy…… *sigh*

  3. bakeca Lodi

    this is very interesting article

  4. StandardToaster

    The Shroud of Turin is a fake, and it’s been scientifically proven. The cloth material was carbon dated to be from around 1200-1300 AD, the stuff that makes up the negative image was tested and is basically a form of paint from the 1300’s, AND the shroud does not in any way reflect the Jewish burial rituals of that time– bodies were cleaned and then wrapped in strips of cloth with the face covered by a small square piece (this is actually mentioned in the Bible as well). All this research was done by reputable scientists and anthropologists, and it was concluded that the Shroud was fabricated around 1300 AD as a way to bring people to a certain church (I can’t remember the name of it, but they even found documentation of the church being told, by the pope of the time, to explain that it was an artistic rendering of the real Shroud, but no one really paid attention to this). So, really, the Shroud of Turin shouldn’t be on this list.
    The rest of them sound pretty interesting though 🙂

  5. Bakeca Udine

    nice post I like the article

  6. Trevor

    On number 5.

    1. What makes them think that the man is 33?

    2. Having blood on it does NOT prove that the man was crucified. Human beings don’t bleed exclusively when nailed to a cross, there are other scenarios that could have caused the blood.

    4. Weave patterns aren’t evidence of when it came from, at least in my eyes. Is it physically impossible to weave that same pattern today? If not, it proves nothing.

    3. “…what has become of the real shroud that covered his body after the Crucifixion?”
    Spoiler Alert… There probably isn’t a real shroud, because there probably isn’t a real Jesus. You’d be better off trying to find Excalibur or the Holy Grail.

  7. Michael Lawton

    Can i just make one point about the map that seems to have been over looked ..The map shows the coastline of Antarctica perfectly even though it is covered by (in some places) over a mile of ice.Something that couldn’t be replicated until the age of satellites and infra red imaging..Mmmmm makes you think doesn’t it

  8. jonathan dickson

    you know, some of you guys think youre so smart, when really you base your opinions off of one of dozens of other opinions and tests. Well, for one, jesus WAS just another man, just like moses and abraham. and thats exactly how we need to see him. A man. who, by the will of god, sought to teach man how to live properly, instead of living under the tom-foolery in which the roman pagans were instituting. jesus became a godly man, and god looked upon him with great pride and dignity, and seeing as though, no other man at the time was as innocent and humble as him, he was used as the great sacrifice for your sins.. so you can go ahead and drink and party and live a secular life and believe there’s no life after death. but id rather believe and find out there isnt, then not believe and find out there is..

  9. jonathan dickson

    Annd, referring to my comment above, the paintings of Jesus that we see now, are all forgeries. The thin-haired, slim-faced, Caucasian man we see, is actually a man named Cesare Borgia, the second son of pope Alexander. when he took his title in Italy as a supreme commander a number of troops, he forced all the painting of the REAL Jesus into the likeness of him. which of course did not upset the closely related pope, mainly because the papacy and Catholicism was literally introduced to sway christian from the real scriptures, so anything dealing with getting away from the real scriptures, satan made happen.

  10. Kenbo

    Can none of you read? The first line of number 5 ” the Vatican has affirmed that it is not authentic”.
    And jonathan dickson, look up the definition of “forgery”. They may not be paintings of the real Jesus, (of course they’re not. The artists that painted them had no idea what he really looked like) but, they are not forgeries.

  11. Roger Wauters

    The figure on the Shroud of Turin look very much like a figure on a memory tombstone not far from where i live in Flanders, Belgium. That stone is on the outside wall of a church and portrait a knight in the mid ages who lived there. His arms are bended in the same way, he also has a beard and look the same. So yes althou i am a Katholic i believe this Shroud is from the mid ages and from West Europe, probably the Flemish region.

  12. Matthew

    The shroud of Turin isn’t disputed, it under went carbon dating under permission of the church and was proved (and it is not contended) to be from the 13-14th century. And signs of blood in no way proves that the man (if it was a man) does not prove a Crucifixion.

  13. Sophia

    The Voynich Manuscript really isn’t as elusive as all that. It’s probably just a language that had not been written down before, and has since died out or transferred to a modern script, such as a Latinized or Arabic one, as explained in this wonderful video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpZD_3D8_WQ

  14. Mike

    No. 5 is false. The Vatican has not “affirmed it is not authentic” (while they haven’t affirmed it IS authentic, either). In fact, the Catholic Church is the owner of the shroud and puts it on display for veneration every few years. Furthermore, the carbon dating purporting to show the shroud is from the Middle Ages was shown to have been done on a piece of the fabric that was added as a patch after the shroud was damaged in a fire around the 13th century. After this mistake was realized, the shroud was dated again and shown to indeed be from the 1st century.

    1. George Woelfel

      The image on the shroud is not Jesus. The man in this shroud is over 7ft. tall. The blood on the fabric is actually paint from the Middle ages and blood does not stay red after 500 to 700 years, it turns black. The hair stands tall like the person is standing instead of laying down dead. the weave is of herringbone design which was not used till the middle ages. It goes on and on…stop reading the apologists that inundated the internet with lies…if you look harder you’ll find the truth and don’t you owe it to GOD to seek his truth other than relying on liars trying to profit.

  15. MarvelSlots

    another interesting thing I read about the Piri Reis map is that it shows the precise shape of landmass underneath the Antarctic ice which was impossible to known until recent years. It was measures by advanced technology, seismic and radar tech from satellites. Yet the map already shown is correct. Wow!

  16. mad sad

    but why is unsolved? with so much technology?

  17. Logan

    Look at all these comments from all these experts

  18. Annette

    Why does everyone get so rabid about the Shroud? This article was a list of enigmas…mysterious things….and I would say the Shroud fits. There are certainly a lot of unanswered questions about it, even if it was made 1200 years AD. Someone perpetuated a damn good hoax that still gets people arguing. I’d like to know who did it, how, why, etc. Wouldn’t you?

  19. Fredrick

    It may depend on your frame of mind while viewing the Shroud of Turin as to what each individual sees. A quick glance could seem to show a tall alien and some UFO’s in various stages of flight. Guessing does not answers bring forth.

  20. ymaont

    The Nazca Lines and Bimini Road are truly an enigma, so also is the Voynich manuscript. Any cryptanalyst here??? !!!

  21. victor

    Good writing. And some new content I’d never seen. I didn’t know the bit about Edgar Cayce predicting or being tied to that wall thing.

  22. Viking

    What about the Loch Ness Monster?

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