© Reuters/Shutterstock

Dead Sea Scrolls -

The Dead Sea Scrolls are ancient Jewish and Hebrew religious manuscripts of leather, papyrus, and copper that were discovered between 1947 and 1956 in 11 caves near Khirbet Qumran, on the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea. They are approximately 2,000 years old.

© Getty Images 

Terracotta Army -

In 1974, a group of peasants digging a well near the Qin Shi Huang Emperor's tomb mound at Mount Li near Xi'an in China's Shaanxi Province made one of the most celebrated archaeological discoveries in history, the 8,000-strong terracotta army created to protect the emperor in his afterlife. The figures include warriors, chariots, and horses, all interned for over 2,000 years.

© Shutterstock 

Tutankhamun's tomb -

One of the most significant archaeological finds of the 20th century took place on November 4, 1922, when a team headed by British Egyptologist Howard Carter (1874–1939) discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings. The young pharaoh's golden mask was uncovered later, in 1925. It is one of the best-known works of art in the world.

© Getty Images 

Rosetta Stone -

Unearthed in 1799 by a French soldier during Napoleon Bonaparte's Egyptian campaign, the Rosetta Stone is a slab of granitoid stone featuring three versions of a written decree issued in 196 BCE by a group of Egyptian clergy. The top and middle texts are in Ancient Egyptian using hieroglyphic and Demotic scripts (a script derived from hieratic) respectively, while the bottom is in Ancient Greek. This ensemble helped scholars finally crack the code of hieroglyphics.

© Getty Images 

Pompeii -

A cataclysmic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE buried the ancient Roman city of Pompeii under volcanic ash and rock. The site was first excavated as far back as 1592, but it was only in the 1920s that organized archaeological digs started to uncover the astonishingly well-preserved ruins and the treasures buried therein.

© Shutterstock 

Cave of Altamira -

A cave complex discovered in 1868 near the historic town of Santillana del Mar in Cantabria, Spain, revealed an astonishing set of prehistoric rock art featuring charcoal drawings and polychrome paintings of contemporary local fauna and human hands, the earliest of which are dated back 36,000 years.

© Shutterstock 

Staffordshire Hoard -

The largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver metalwork ever found was discovered in 2009 by a metal detectorist in a field near the village of Hammerwich, near Lichfield, in Staffordshire, England. Archaeologists believe the over 4,000 items, including this folded cross, had lain hidden since 700 BCE.

© Getty Images 

Stonehenge -

Arguably the world's most famous prehistoric stone circle—and certainly the most architecturally sophisticated—Stonehenge has puzzled historians and archaeologists for centuries. The first known excavation at Stonehenge was undertaken in the 1620s by the Duke of Buckingham. The first real archaeological investigation of the site, however, took place in the late 1660s when the antiquary John Aubrey (1626–1697) surveyed the mysterious monument.

© Shutterstock 

Varna Necropolis -

Discovered by archaeologists in 1974, the Varna Necropolis in Bulgaria is internationally considered one of the key archaeological sites in world prehistory. Dubbed the wealthiest grave of the 5th millennium BCE, the numerous gold artifacts unearthed were subsequently dated back to 4560-4450 BCE, making them the oldest processed gold in the world.

© Getty Images 

Tombs of pyramid builders in Egypt -

The pyramids of Giza rank among the greatest archaeological treasures found on Earth. It's long been speculated that they were built using slave labor. However, a 2010 discovery of ancient tombs, reported to be more than 4,000 years old, casts doubt on this assumption. Archaeologists believe the tombs belong to the workers who built the pyramids of Khufu and Khafre. As free individuals, they were given the honor of being buried within the shadow of the sacred pyramids they worked on.

© Getty Images 

Sutton Hoo -

Sutton Hoo is the site of two early medieval cemeteries dating from the 6th to 7th centuries near Woodbridge, in Suffolk, England. In 1939, amateur archaeologist Basil Brown (1888–1977) discovered a spectacular funerary long ship brimming with dazzling riches, among them four complete Anglo-Saxon helmets.

© Getty Images 

Machu Picchu -

When the American explorer Hiram Bingham III (1875–1956) encountered Machu Picchu in Peru in 1911, he was looking for a different city, known as Vilcabamba. He stumbled across the Inca citadel with the guidance of local indigenous farmers.

© Getty Images 

Ötzi -

The well-preserved natural mummy of a man who scientists believe lived some time between 3350 and 3105 BCE was discovered in September 1991 frozen in a glacier in the Ötztal Alps on the border between Austria and Italy. Dubbed Ötzi, or the Iceman, his discovery ranks as another great archaeological find of the 20th century.

© Getty Images 

Indonesian rock art -

Indonesia harbors some of the oldest known surviving cave art. In November 2018, a 40,000-year-old animal-shaped painting was discovered in caves hidden in a remote mountainous area on the Sangkulirang-Mangkalihat Peninsula, in East Kalimantan. Part of a hunting scene, it's currently the oldest pictorial record of storytelling and the earliest figurative artwork in the world.

© Getty Images 

Knossos -

The center of Minoan civilization and capital of Minoan Crete, Knossos is the location of the largest Bronze Age archaeological site on the island and has been called Europe's oldest city. Excavations were begun at Knossos under British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans (1851–1941) in 1900. As well as revealing the ruins of a palace, the dig unearthed a series of page-shaped tablets inscribed with an ancient Cretan writing system known as Linear B, a syllabic script that was used for writing Mycenaean Greek, the earliest attested form of Greek.

© Getty Images

King Richard III gravesite -

In 2012, the remains of King Richard III (1452–1485) were unearthed under a car park in Leicester, England. The former monarch—the last king of the House of York and the last of the Plantagenet dynasty—was reburied in Leicester Cathedral in 2015. The location of his original grave has been given protected status and is part of a visitor's center.

© Getty Images 

Easter Island Moai -

The Easter Island heads are known as Moai by the Rapa Nui people who carved nearly 1,000 towering figures of deified ancestors from volcanic tuff rock between 1250 and 1500 CE. The statues were first sighted by Europeans when they visited the islands in 1722.

© Getty Images 

Borobudur -

The Borobudur Temple in Central Java, Indonesia, is the world's largest Buddhist temple. Dating back to the 8th and 9th centuries CE, the huge complex was rediscovered in the 19th century.

© Shutterstock 

Göbekli Tepe -

Göbekli Tepe (or "Potbelly Hill") is a Neolithic archaeological site near the city of Şanlıurfa in Turkey distinguished for containing the oldest-known megaliths in the world. Dated back to between c. 9500 and 8000 BCE, the massive stone pillars number more than 200. The archeological site was first surveyed in 1963.

© Getty Images 

Nazca Lines -

Etched into Peru's Nazca Desert and visible only from the air, the Nazca Lines are huge geoglyphs that resemble animals and plants. They were created between 500 BCE and 500 CE and vary in complexity. American scientist and historian Paul Kosok (1896–1959) is credited as the first serious researcher of the Nazca Lines, the purpose of which is still a mystery. Investigators using drones have recently discovered between 80 and 100 new figures.

© Getty Images 

Petra -

One of the world's most famous archaeological sites, Petra, in Jordan, is known for its rock-cut architecture, especially the elaborate Al-Khazneh temple (pictured is the Ad Deir monastery). Built possibly as early as the 5th century BCE, Petra remained "lost" until Swiss explorer Jean-Louis Burckhardt (1784–1817) stumbled upon the ruins in 1812.

© Getty Images 

Olduvai Gorge -

The remote Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania is one of the most important paleoanthropological sites in the world. It was here that British-Kenyan paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey (1903–1972) and his wife, Mary (1913–1996), also a paleoanthropologist, established and developed the excavation and research programs that led them to discover fossils of ancient hominines and the earliest hominins. Mary discovered the robust Zinjanthropus skull at Olduvai Gorge in 1959.

© Shutterstock 

Chichén Itzá -

Chichén Itzá is one of the most visited archeological sites in Mexico, with the Temple of Kukulcán (El Castillo) dominating the center of the ancient city. Once lost to the jungle, the site was rediscovered in 1841 by American explorer John L. Stephens (1805–1852), a pivotal figure in the rediscovery of Maya civilization.

© Getty Images 

Skara Brae -

The Neolithic village of Skara Brae on the west coast of Mainland, the largest island in the Orkney archipelago of Scotland, was discovered in the winter of 1850 after being exposed by a fierce storm. One of the most perfectly preserved Stone Age villages in Europe, Skara Brae was inhabited from about 3200 to 2200 BCE.

© Getty Images 

The Acropolis of Athens -

The Acropolis of Athens is the most striking and complete ancient Greek monumental complex still existing in our times. Built during the second half of the 5th century BCE, the citadel is crowned by the magnificent Parthenon. Researchers began restoring and preserving the site around the turn of the 20th century.

© Shutterstock 

Tikal -

The ruins of Tikal, an ancient pre-Columbian Maya city found deep in the rain forests of what today is Guatemala, were only excavated in 1956, by a team of archaeologists from the University of Pennsylvania.

© Getty Images 

Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum -

Discovered accidently in 1902 by a construction team cutting cisterns for a new housing development, Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum in Paola, Malta, is a Neolithic subterranean structure dating to the Saflieni phase (3300– 3000 BCE) in Maltese prehistory.

© Getty Images 

Angkor Wat -

The enormous 12th-century Buddhist temple complex located in northern Cambodia known as Angkor Wat was rediscovered in the 1840s by the French explorer Henri Mouhot (1826–1861).

© Shutterstock 

Homo luzonensis -

In 2019, the unearthing of a previously unknown species of human that lived on an island in today's Philippines some 50,000 years ago effectively meant the human family tree acquired a new branch. The species, dubbed Homo luzonensis after the island of Luzon, where it was found, is not a direct ancestor of modern-day humans, but rather a distant ancient relative. This picture shows the fossils and teeth of the early ancestor.

© Getty Images 

Serra da Capivara National Park -

Established in 1979, Serra da Capivara National Park in Brazil bears exceptional testimony to one of the oldest populations to inhabit South America. Scattered throughout the rock shelters that stud the park are numerous cave paintings, some of which date back 25,000 years. In fact, the Serra da Capivara area has the largest and oldest concentration of prehistoric sites in the Americas.

© Getty Images 

Akrotiri -

Situated on the Greek island of Santorini, the Minoan Bronze Age Akrotiri archaeological site is one of the most important of its kind in the Aegean. Destroyed in the Theran eruption sometime in the 16th century BCE and buried under ash, the site was rediscovered in the mid-1960s and excavated since 1967.

© Shutterstock 

The Great Pyramid of Giza -

The pyramids of Egypt are some of the most impressive archaeological sites in the world. We still don't know exactly how they managed to build these monumental structures so many thousands of years ago. The Great Pyramid of Giza, for example, is made up of more than 2 million huge limestone and granite blocks and was the tallest manmade structure in the world until the Eiffel Tower was built in 1889. The 4,500-year-old pyramid is one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

In 2015, Egyptian antiquities officials began a project called Scan Pyramids to explore the pyramids further using non-invasive methods like infrared thermography, 3D simulations, and cosmic-ray imaging. On March 2, 2023, it was announced that a major discovery had been made at the Great Pyramid of Giza. Scans revealed a 30-foot (nine-meter) corridor hidden inside the pyramid near the main entrance. Archaeologists believe this incredible finding may bring us closer to understanding how the pyramids were built, and may uncover previously hidden treasures. The researchers first found the tunnel using cosmic-ray muon radiography and were then able to capture images by feeding a tiny endoscope through a joint in the stone. They'll continue scanning the surrounding areas in the hopes of finding more clues about the tunnel's purpose. 

Sources: (Smithsonian Magazine) (History) (English Heritage) (NBC News) (National Trust) (Live Science) (Nature.com) (Historic UK) (The Guardian) (Biography) (Britannica) (National Geographic) 

© Reuters/Shutterstock