The 20 Most Mysterious Ancient Sites in the World

Archaeologists have half-solved some of these puzzles, and at least one was probably never a puzzle at all.

1. 1
   Great Zimbabwe

   Medieval stone city of dry-stacked granite walls in southern Africa.
   1000pts
2. 2
   Puma Punku

   Precisely cut andesite blocks at Tiwanaku in the Bolivian highlands.
   990pts
3. 3
   Derinkuyu

   Multi-level underground city cut into the soft rock of Cappadocia.
   920pts
4. 4
   Plain of Jars

   Thousands of stone jars scattered across the uplands of Laos.
   920pts
5. 5
   Nazca Lines

   Giant figures and lines scraped into the Peruvian desert, best seen from the air.
   726pts
6. 6
   Carnac Stones

   Rows of thousands of standing stones in Brittany whose purpose nobody can settle.
   726pts
7. 7
   Hypogeum of Ħal Saflieni

   Prehistoric underground burial complex carved into rock in Malta.
   629pts
8. 8
   Nabta Playa

   Stone circle and alignments in the Egyptian Sahara, thousands of years older than the pyramids.
   629pts
9. 9
   Sacsayhuamán

   Inca walls above Cusco made of huge stones fitted without mortar.
   629pts
10. 10
    Pyramids of Giza

    Egypt's great royal tombs, where exactly how the blocks were raised is still debated.
    515pts
11. 11
    Skara Brae

    Neolithic village on Orkney with stone beds and dressers, uncovered by a storm in 1850.
    515pts
12. 12
    Nan Madol

    Ruined city of basalt islets built on a coral reef off Pohnpei in Micronesia.
    515pts
13. 13
    Stone of the Pregnant Woman

    Roman-era monolith of about 1,000 tonnes left lying in a quarry at Baalbek.
    515pts
14. 14
    Göbekli Tepe

    Carved stone enclosures in Turkey built by hunter-gatherers some 11,000 years ago.
    515pts
15. 15
    Moai of Rano Raraku

    Volcanic quarry on Easter Island where hundreds of moai still stand half-buried.
    515pts
16. 16
    Mohenjo-daro

    Indus Valley city with planned streets and drains, whose script is still undeciphered.
    378pts
17. 17
    Yonaguni Monument

    Underwater rock terraces off Japan that most geologists read as a natural formation.
    378pts
18. 18
    Great Serpent Mound

    Quarter-mile earthwork in the shape of a snake on a ridge in Ohio.
    378pts
19. 19
    Stonehenge

    Wiltshire stone circle whose builders left no writing, so its purpose is still argued over.
    378pts
20. 20
    Longyou Caves

    Vast man-made sandstone caverns in eastern China with no record of who dug them.
    0pts

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