The ideal hiding spot for odd things in nature is a desert. Few people will risk dying after a few hours of exposure since the environment might be so dangerous in the quest for something good. Because some deserts lack even the most fundamental life forms, like bacteria, strange and unusual artefacts can be kept for a longer period of time and more frequently than usual.
Ancient Egyptian Burial Boat
For ancient Egyptians, it was fairly common practice to include a vehicle of some kind in the tomb. The famous tomb of King Tut had six chariots in it. Others favoured putting boats in theirs, and this was hardly restricted to the elites. Even the peasant class would put cheap but affordable reed boats in their graves with them. But one that was discovered in the Saharan desert after 4,500 years in the sands of the Abusir Necropolis was quite baffling.
Desert Graveyard for Sea Mammals
Speaking of graveyards, the mystery boat is hardly alone in terms of finding surprising burial sites in the sands. In the Atacama Desert in Chile, there’s a hill called Cerro Ballena (“Whale Hill”) forty meters above sea level that, during roadwork in 2010, was found to contain fossils of forty whales along with a collection of other marine mammals such as dolphins and seals, not to mention some fish related to swordfish.
Chinese Desert Patterns
Google Earth users discovered items in 2011 that were so mundane-looking compared to purportedly paranormal crop circles in the Gobi Desert regions of China’s Xinjiang and Gansu provinces. However, the more intriguing and somewhat carelessly formed groups of white lines carved into the earth defied any easy explanation and appeared more suspicious given that they were located in rural places.
Works of the Old Men
They were first observed from the air by British pilot Percy Maitland in 1927, but these enigmatic structures in Iraq haven’t really captured the public imagination the way they deserve. In Central-Eastern Jordan, near the Azraq Oasis, there are hundreds of wheel structures more than eighty feet wide, some as many as two hundred feet wide, and their use is lost to history.
The Unexplained Gigantic Marree Man
This 4 kilometre tall white etching near Adelaide in South Australia of an indigenous hunter about to throw a stick was discovered in 1998. The most likely person was Bardius Goldberg, but all that was known about it was he said he’d wanted to make something like it and had paid to have one designed. But there was no info about specifics such as equipment or people hired, and he died in 2002 before he was reached for an interview that could reveal whether or not he was the one who supervised its creation.
