It's a 400 year old mystery.

So it's also Australia's greatest cold case.

Welcome to watch mojo and today we're counting down our picks for the top 10 scariest archaeological discoveries was very common to put a sickle over the neck of the person who could be a vampire for this list will be looking at the most terrifying and disturbing archaeological finds ever made.

Which of these freaks you out the most let us know in the comments number 10 the pit of bones.

In 1987 researchers in the Atapuerca Mountains in Spain discovered a cave housing the skeletal remains of at least 28 people.

Anyone digging here is almost should make an interesting find.

The bones were dated around 430,000 Bc and after a years long effort, researchers discovered that one of the deceased had been murdered.

They painstakingly pieced the skull back together and found two head wounds.

The age and sex of the victim were unclear.

But what could be determined was that they had been repeatedly hit with a blunt object such as a spear or stone ax.

Paleoanthropologists have managed to reconstruct the partial skulls of at least 20 hominids from the, and most of them appear to have suffered and survived bone breaking blows to the head.

It's eerie to think that this crime may have gone undiscovered for hundreds of thousands of years.

Now archaeologists are looking forward to developing the knowledge of how early humans came lived and settled in Western europe number nine.

The knife armed man in 2018, archaeologists in northern Italy discovered some interesting remains at a mass burial site dating back to somewhere between the 6th and 8th centuries C.

E.

One of the deceased was a middle aged man whose arm had been amputated below the elbow and replaced with a knife.

Upon further examination the researchers found evidence that he had worn the weapon as a prosthesis, the side kinds of extreme wear on his teeth and an unusual bone ridge in his shoulder.

All suggested that he had held the knife with straps that he frequently tightened with his mouth.

They also found a buckle and some decomposed material thought to be leather near the pointy prosthesis, serious medieval badass or terrifying old timey serial killer.

You decide number eight.

The Scottish Frankenstein mummies.

The inexplicable is often creepy, as is the case here.

In 2001 excavation at a Bronze Age settlement in Scotland uncovered two skeletons that of a man and a woman.

The skeletons were approximately 3000 years old and had been intentionally mummified in this case preserved in peat bogs to slow down decomposition here that we discovered the very first evidence for mummification anywhere in Britain.

Well, in fact for that matter, anywhere in prehistoric europe.

Upon closer inspection however, researchers found something unsettling.

The skeletons were composed of parts from a number of bodies.

The woman was made up of a male skull, female torso and an unidentified arm.

This was a woman's body with a man's head, probably at least 100 years older than her body and in her hands she was holding two of his teeth.

The man was actually comprised of bones from three separate males, essentially a human skeleton.

Jigsaw puzzle with no explanation.

Number seven.

A prison for which is the introduction of Scotland's witchcraft laws in the 16th century led to a series of sensationalized nationwide trials.

Known as the great Scottish witch hunt.

This is a society where people really believe in magic and supernatural beings.

You could meet the devil walking down a street in 15 97 there were 31 cases in Aberdeen alone.

So what's such a town to do do with all these suspected witches.

If you guessed locked them up in the one place which might be afraid of entering, then you'd be right.

According to research carried out by historians.

It was discovered that ST mary's chapel, a local church on the outskirts of Aberdeen served as a detainment facility for the suspects.

The building still possesses a two inch iron ring embedded in the wall, which archives have shown was used in chaining up the accused really feared witches.

You know, they could kill them, they could harm them, they could harm their animals, they could make the crops fail, they could drown them, you know, they could kill their Children.

Number six.

Ancient chemical warfare in 2009.

During an excavation of the ancient roman city of Dura Europa's in modern day Syria, archaeologists found evidence of one of the oldest instances of chemical warfare.

During the siege of Dura Europa's in 2 56 C.

E.

The resident romans tunneled into shaft mines dug by their Persian Attackers.

20 romans were killed not from swords or spears, but a lethal cloud of sulfur dioxide, created from burning sulfur and pitch.

Once inhaled, the smoke turned to acid in the soldiers lungs and killed them.

Though chemical warfare may seem to be a more modern technique, its origin clearly dates back a long way.

Number five Franklin's lost expedition in 18 45 2 ships, the H.

M.

S.

Erebus and the H.

M.

S.

Terror, set off from England on an expedition helmed by Sir John Franklin, Franklin was a seasoned explorer who wished to travel across the Canadian arctic.

In an exploration of the Northwest Passage, a seasoned explorer had mapped 2000 miles of arctic coastline.

Early in his career.

A close encounter with starvation had earned him public fame as the man who ate his boots.

The two vessels which carried 129 crewmen in total, soon became trapped in the ice and were never heard from again and there was nothing around them but the pack ice, just a wilderness of white, empty pack eyes.

There was no going forward.

There was no going back.

The sailors on board were exposed to terrible conditions and began dying of various causes, including lead poisoning and hypothermia.

Most died of starvation after they abandoned their ships and tried to walk south.

Later expeditions made some truly gory discoveries among the wreckage that seemed to suggest that some of the sailors may have turned to cannibalism when they ran out of food.

Number four vampire graves.

This grave has really awakened the interests of everyone.

Upon excavating 1/17 century cemetery in droves go Poland.

Researchers discovered a few odd graves.

Some of the deceased had been buried with heavy stones or sickles placed on their necks.

It's thought that these measures were to prevent any posthumous mischief.

We found a female skeleton with an iron sickle around her neck and a padlock on her toe.

When new broke headlines described the shocking find as a female vampire.

Traditional Slavic cultures were known to cremate their dead as they believed only this process would release their souls.

But sometime between the 7th and 9th centuries after missionaries converted them to Christianity, they began burying them Instead.

This new practice seemed to have provoked certain fears, prompting their attempts to prevent the dead from rising as vampires until the 19th century.

People, I believe that vampires are one of the most active demonic creatures.

Number three gallons unwanted babies.

Ashkelon and southern Israel was the site of an unfortunate discovery in 1988 beneath a bathhouse in a sewer dating back to the late roman early Byzantine era, archaeologists found the skeletal remains of almost 100 newborns.

It's a bit grisly.

Don't you think it is grizzly?

Because of that.

We spent a lot of time and effort in trying to find out the whys and wherefores the skeletons showed no signs of injury or trauma.

An examination of their teeth indicated they lived for less than three days.

It was initially believed that the discarded infants would be female consistent with sadly widespread practices at the time.

However, researchers later determined that the remains found in the sewer had come from both sexes.

One possible explanation is that the baby were discarded by sex workers who made their living in the bathhouse.

Well, I think we conclude from this that the babies were unwanted and that they were disposed of so that the mothers could get back to work as quickly as possible number to the sacrificial pits of Shimao.

Many assumed it was the remains of the great wall of china.

But with excavations, it turned out to be something quite different.

Shimao, a site along the great wall of china is a large fortified bronze age settlement covered with a stepped pyramid.

Under the pyramid, archaeologists discovered at least six pits that were filled with numerous human skulls.

The skulls belongs to 80 young girls and are widely believed to have been the result of human sacrifices, not dumped but carefully placed, meaning they could have been ritual decapitations turns out that in ancient china sacrifices were a common Practice for a number of reasons.

In some cases, they were made as offerings to the river God.

In others, they were carried out as funeral rites in which slaves were buried with their owners or concubines with their lords.

However, it is still unclear why exactly these 80 girls were sacrificed.

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Number one, Australia's Murder island.

It's a hard story to get your head around and it doesn't fit with kind of those great stories.

You know, the Captain Cook's and explorers and all of that stuff.

As if Australia didn't already have enough scary things.

There's also a place dubbed Murder Island, officially named Beacon Island.

The site got its alias because of the events of 16 29 that year, a dutch vessel called the Batavia embarked on its maiden voyage carrying soldiers, sailors, and civilians.

To what is now Indonesia.

A failed mutiny attempt on board caused a shipwreck and dozens drowned.

A few 100 survivors were left stranded on nearby Beacon Island, mutineers went on a rampage, murdering 125 of the survivors.

No less than 100 and 25 men, women and Children died on this tiny island in just three months To this day, it remains Australia's first and biggest mass murder.

Almost 400 years after the unfortunate events, scientists were still unearthing the remains of the murder victims and others who managed to escape the massacre.

It just turned the world upside down.

Real life lord of the flies stuff, totally lord of the flies.

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