These Regular People Uncovered These Ancient Sites

When experts pull off a remarkable feat at what they’re good at, people often go: “Well, that’s their specialty, isn’t it?” However, it becomes a historic moment when a rookie achieves something similar.

Lucy Muir and Joseph Botting are a married couple who both have a doctorate in paleontology. However, they have minimal experience in the field. So, during the COVID-19 lockdown, they decided to keep busy by getting down in the dirt.

That quarry in Llandrindod, Wales, turned out to be the dream of any paleontologist. The finds were very rare and diverse in nature.

The fossils discovered at the Llandrindod quarry have been found to be from a time in Earth’s history called the Middle Ordovician period. This will definitely answer questions about the nature and types of life forms that populated the earth millions of years ago.

In 2006, Fred Johnson, a farmer in Staffordshire Hoard, UK, had just finished plowing his field. He was preparing for another planting season when Terry Herbert approached him for a favor. Herbert was one of those hobbyists that hunted treasures with a metal detector and asked permission to scour the freshly plowed field.

The French forces found a peculiar stone slab during the 1799 invasion of Egypt. The officer in charge of the regiment noticed the stone sported inscriptions written in Demotic, Hieroglyphics, and Greek.

In 1824, the village of Banwell in Somerset watched their local school fall into disrepair and linger on the verge of closure. So, to raise some funds, they decided to open a stalactites cave discovered by miners to the public.

A tourist couple—Herika and Helmut Simon—were visiting the Austrian Ötztal Alps from Germany. During their hike, they found a body frozen in the snow and notified the authorities.

Two Chinese brothers were digging a communal well in 1974 when they found fragments of a clay soldier. When information got out, archaeologists descended on the area and eventually relocated the entire village.

In 1963, a Turkish man didn’t know what to make of his chickens disappearing one after the other. It turns out they had been escaping through a hole exposed during renovations at his house. After breaking down the wall, it unveiled a deep underground tunnel carved into the rock.

Edith Perry was a British widow who was lonely and somewhat depressed after her husband passed. So, she decided to get busy by exploring some strange mounds on her Suffolk property.

Around 2004, the influx of tourists into Sofia, Bulgaria, made it necessary to construct a new hotel. However, an ancient Roman ruin was discovered during the excavations for the foundation. It turned out to be an amphitheater from a 4th-century Roman town called Serdica.

It is said that the finding of the dead sea scrolls was facilitated by a shepherd in 1947. Frustrated by the loss of a sheep, the shepherd had thrown a stone into one of the holes leading into the Qumran Caves of the West Bank. Subsequently, he heard the sound of breaking ceramics and decided to investigate.

The discovery of the Lascaux Cave, France, can be safely credited to a canine investigator. When 18-year-old Marcel Ravidat and some friends were horsing around the Montaigne countryside, his dog suddenly trailed off.

In 1952, a Danish man started digging a pit in the Jutland area. However, Tage Busk Sørensen’s digging ended abruptly when he noticed a human head sticking out of the pit deposit.

Yorgos Kentrotas was an occupant of the Milos, a Greek Island, in the 19th century. He was a peasant farmer and made the most of whatever resources he could lay his hands upon. So, when he needed a new building, Kentrotas decided to salvage some stones from an ancient ruin nearby.

At the time, Olivier Voutier, a French Naval officer, was manning Milos and heard about the discovered statue. After visiting the site himself, he could immediately tell the potential value of the status. It is a female figure that was believed to be a carving of Aphrodite.

Mehmet Çakir, a Turkish man who loved to sponge dive in the Mediterranean’s Bay of Antalya, made a notable find in 1982. During one of such dives, he found pieces of a metal slab that he was convinced had ancient significance. So, he alerted local archaeologists.

In the 18th century, a bridge was built over a steep Scottish valley located in Edinburgh. Soon after, locals built vaults under the arches of the bridge. Unfortunately, the vaults would end up breeding urchins and misfits, so locals decided to fill it in.

A catastrophic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD left the Italian city of Pompeii completely buried in lava and ash. The city was largely forgotten until 1592, when Domenico Fontana discovered the ruins while building an aqueduct through the area. Due to poor logistics and support for the excavations, he eventually reburied the portions that had been dug up.