15 Ancient History Facts You Definitely Didn’t Learn In School part 1
From China and Egypt to Rome and Greece, these ancient history facts are too raunchy, outrageous, and weird for any textbook you've ever read.
1. Ancient Romans used urine as mouthwash. Urine contains ammonia, which is one of the best natural cleaning agents on the planet.
2. There are more pyramids in one small area of Sudan than in all of Egypt. The Meroë pyramids of the Sudanese desert were also built for royalty — between 2,700 and 2,300 years ago — for the Nubian kings of Kush. The empire of these pharaohs stretched from the Mediterranean Sea to present-day Khartoum.
3. The ancient Sword Of Goujian — despite being buried for over two millennia — is almost completely preserved. Found in a damp tomb in Hubei, China in 1965, the sword (thought to belong to King of Yue) is still razor sharp.
4. An unknown ancient civilization brought stones 150 miles to help build Stonehenge. An early European people known only as the Bell-Beaker civilization likely moved the bluestones which each weigh four tons to the Wiltshire, England monument sometime between 2600 and 1600 B.C. Experts aren’t sure why they would do this but theorize that the stones could have been used for their healing powers.
5. The Ancient Egyptians invented toothpaste. It was made of rock salt, pepper, mint, and dried iris flowers.
6. The ancient Indian practice of “sati” entails a widow being burned alive on her late husband's funeral pyre. This was a Hindu custom in which a dutiful wife would follow her husband into the afterlife. This supposedly “voluntary” ritual existed from 320 A.D. to 1829 — with many accounts of women who were drugged or thrown into the fire against their will. It even still happens today on rare occasions, though it has been outlawed.
7. Ancient South Americans, not Egyptians, invented the mummification process. The Chinchorro people of Chile’s Atacama Desert had been mummifying their dead for 2,000 years prior to the Egyptians. They peeled back the corpse’s skin, removed the muscles and organs, and filled the body with plants before sewing the skin back on and placing a mask over the face.
8. According to the ancient biographer Suetonius, the Roman Emperor Tiberius was a depraved pedophile. The biographer insists that Tiberius arranged for secret orgies with deviant sex experts at his palace (which also boasted an erotic library) and had underage children perform fellatio on him while he bathed.
9. Romans spread their own feces in their gardens. Known as “night soil,” the fertilizer they made from excrement did nourish plants, but also aided in the spread of disease.
10. Ancient Roman women used a natural contraceptive: the herb called Silphium. They used the Silphium plant so much, in fact, that it went extinct.
11. This man survived the first wave of Pompeii's destruction in 79 A.D., only to have a boulder fall on his head. On May 29, 2018 archaeologists at the Pompeii excavation site uncovered the skeleton of the world’s unluckiest man.
12.This is the world's oldest surviving beer receipt. This Sumerian (modern-day Iraq) tablet created in 2050 B.C. confirms that a scribe named Ur-Amma “... acknowledges receiving from his brewer, Alulu, 5 sila (about 4 1/2 liters) of the 'best' beer." The process now recognized as beer brewing began in Mesopotamia (modern-day Iran) between 3500 - 3100 B.C. — but fermented beverages were being made as early as 7000 B.C. in China.
13. There are giant, 2,000 year-old hieroglyphics etched into the ground in Peru and nobody knows what they mean. The Nazca Lines can only be seen in their entirety when viewed from above. More glyphs have been discovered as recently as 2018 by low-altitude drones in the adjacent province of Palpa.
14. If a Mesopotamian bride failed to become pregnant on her wedding night, the groom could “return” the flawed merchandise to her family. The marriage could also be invalidated by the lack of a feast at the ceremony.
15. Ancient Mayans forced their kids' heads to look like ears of corn. They bound their infant’s heads to achieve the pointy shape. The Mayans were obsessed with corn, as they believed humans were actually made from it.
10. Ancient Roman women used a natural contraceptive: the herb called Silphium. They used the Silphium plant so much, in fact, that it went extinct.
11. This man survived the first wave of Pompeii's destruction in 79 A.D., only to have a boulder fall on his head. On May 29, 2018 archaeologists at the Pompeii excavation site uncovered the skeleton of the world’s unluckiest man.
12.This is the world's oldest surviving beer receipt. This Sumerian (modern-day Iraq) tablet created in 2050 B.C. confirms that a scribe named Ur-Amma “... acknowledges receiving from his brewer, Alulu, 5 sila (about 4 1/2 liters) of the 'best' beer." The process now recognized as beer brewing began in Mesopotamia (modern-day Iran) between 3500 - 3100 B.C. — but fermented beverages were being made as early as 7000 B.C. in China.
13. There are giant, 2,000 year-old hieroglyphics etched into the ground in Peru and nobody knows what they mean. The Nazca Lines can only be seen in their entirety when viewed from above. More glyphs have been discovered as recently as 2018 by low-altitude drones in the adjacent province of Palpa.
14. If a Mesopotamian bride failed to become pregnant on her wedding night, the groom could “return” the flawed merchandise to her family. The marriage could also be invalidated by the lack of a feast at the ceremony.
15. Ancient Mayans forced their kids' heads to look like ears of corn. They bound their infant’s heads to achieve the pointy shape. The Mayans were obsessed with corn, as they believed humans were actually made from it.
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