# 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.

*By YPB Team · Published September 29, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/the-20-most-mysterious-ancient-sites-in-the-world*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **Great Zimbabwe** — score 1000/1000
   Medieval stone city of dry-stacked granite walls in southern Africa.
2. **Puma Punku** — score 990/1000
   Precisely cut andesite blocks at Tiwanaku in the Bolivian highlands.
3. **Derinkuyu** — score 920/1000
   Multi-level underground city cut into the soft rock of Cappadocia.
4. **Plain of Jars** — score 920/1000
   Thousands of stone jars scattered across the uplands of Laos.
5. **Nazca Lines** — score 726/1000
   Giant figures and lines scraped into the Peruvian desert, best seen from the air.
6. **Carnac Stones** — score 726/1000
   Rows of thousands of standing stones in Brittany whose purpose nobody can settle.
7. **Hypogeum of Ħal Saflieni** — score 629/1000
   Prehistoric underground burial complex carved into rock in Malta.
8. **Nabta Playa** — score 629/1000
   Stone circle and alignments in the Egyptian Sahara, thousands of years older than the pyramids.
9. **Sacsayhuamán** — score 629/1000
   Inca walls above Cusco made of huge stones fitted without mortar.
10. **Pyramids of Giza** — score 515/1000
   Egypt's great royal tombs, where exactly how the blocks were raised is still debated.
11. **Skara Brae** — score 515/1000
   Neolithic village on Orkney with stone beds and dressers, uncovered by a storm in 1850.
12. **Nan Madol** — score 515/1000
   Ruined city of basalt islets built on a coral reef off Pohnpei in Micronesia.
13. **Stone of the Pregnant Woman** — score 515/1000
   Roman-era monolith of about 1,000 tonnes left lying in a quarry at Baalbek.
14. **Göbekli Tepe** — score 515/1000
   Carved stone enclosures in Turkey built by hunter-gatherers some 11,000 years ago.
15. **Moai of Rano Raraku** — score 515/1000
   Volcanic quarry on Easter Island where hundreds of moai still stand half-buried.
16. **Mohenjo-daro** — score 378/1000
   Indus Valley city with planned streets and drains, whose script is still undeciphered.
17. **Yonaguni Monument** — score 378/1000
   Underwater rock terraces off Japan that most geologists read as a natural formation.
18. **Great Serpent Mound** — score 378/1000
   Quarter-mile earthwork in the shape of a snake on a ridge in Ohio.
19. **Stonehenge** — score 378/1000
   Wiltshire stone circle whose builders left no writing, so its purpose is still argued over.
20. **Longyou Caves** — score 0/1000
   Vast man-made sandstone caverns in eastern China with no record of who dug them.

Tags: travel, landmarks, mystery, archaeology