1.Long-Lost Cultures

The ancient Egyptians had their pyramids, the Greeks, their sculptures and temples. And everybody knows about the Maya and their famous calendar.
But other ancient peoples get short shrift in world history. Here are a handful of long-lost cultures that don't get the name recognition they deserve.[
2.The Land of Punt[\b]



Some cultures are known mostly through the records of other cultures. That's the case with the mysterious land of Punt, a kingdom somewhere in Africa that traded with the ancient Egyptians. The two kingdoms were exchanging goods from at least the 26th century B.C., during the reign of the pharaoh Khufu (the builder of the Great Pyramid of Giza).

Strangely, no one really knows where Punt was located. The Egyptians left plenty of descriptions of the goods they got from Punt (gold, ebony, myrrh) and the seafaring expeditions they sent to the lost kingdom. However, the Egyptians are frustratingly mum on where all these voyages were headed. Scholars have suggested that Punt may have been in Arabia, or on the Horn of Africa, or maybe down the Nile River at the border of modern-day South Sudan and Ethiopia.
[b]3.The Etruscans

The Etruscans had a thriving society in northern Italy from about 700 B.C. to about 500 B.C., when they began to be absorbed by the Roman Republic. They developed a unique written language and left behind luxurious family tombs, including one belonging to a prince that was first excavated in 2013.

Etruscan society was a theocracy, and their artifacts suggest that religious ritual was a part of daily life. The oldest depiction of childbirth in Western art — a goddess squatting to give birth — was found at the Etruscan sanctuary of Poggio Colla. At the same site, archaeologists found a 4-foot by 2-foot (1.2 by 0.6 meters) sandstone slab containing rare engravings in the Etruscanlanguage. Few examples of written Etruscan survive. Another Etruscan site, Poggio Civitate, was a square complex surrounding a courtyard. It was the largest building in the Mediterranean at its time, said archaeologists who have excavated more than 25,000 artifacts from the site.
4. The Nok.

The mysterious and little-known Nok culture
lasted from around 1000 B.C. to A.D. 300 in
what is today northern Nigeria. Evidence of
the Nok was discovered by chance during a
tin-mining operation in 1943, according to
the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New
York. Miners uncovered a terra-cotta head,
hinting at a rich sculptural tradition. Since
then, other elaborate terra-cotta sculptures
have emerged, including depictions of people
wearing elaborate jewelry and carrying
batons and flails — symbols of authority also
seen in ancient Egyptian art, according to
the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Other
sculptures show people with diseases such
as elephantiasis , the Met said .
Contributing to the mystery surrounding the
Nok, the artifacts have often been removed
from their context without archaeological
analysis. In 2012, the United States returned
a cache of Nok figurines to Nigeria after
they were stolen from Nigeria's national
museum and smuggled into the U.S.

5.The Sanxingdui


The Sanxingdui were a Bronze Age culture
that thrived in what is now China's Sichuan
Province. A farmer first discovered artifacts
from the Sanxingdui in 1929; excavations in
the area in 1986 revealed complex jade
carvings and bronze sculptures 8 feet (2.4
meters) tall.
But who were the Sanxingdui? Despite the
evidence of the culture's artistic abilities, no
one really knows. They were prolific makers
of painted bronze-and-gold-foil masks that
some archaeologists believe may have
represented gods or ancestors, according to
the Sanxingdui Museum in China. The
Sanxingdui site shows evidence of
abandonment about 2,800 or 3,000 years
ago, and another ancient city, Jinsha,
discovered nearby, shows evidence that
maybe the Sanxingdui moved there. In 2014,
researchers at the annual meeting of the
American Geophysical Union argued that at
around this time, a major earthquake and
landslide redirected the Minjiang River ,
which would have cut Sanxingdui off from
water and forced a relocation.

6.The Indus
Credit: suronin / Shutterstock.com
The Indus is the largest-known ancient urban
culture, with the people's land stretching
from the Indus River in modern-day Pakistan
to the Arabian Sea and the Ganges in India.
The Indus civilization persisted for thousands
of years, emerging around 3300 B.C. and
declining by about 1600 B.C.
The Indus, also known as the Harappans,
developed sewage and drainage systems for
their cities, built impressive walls and
granaries, and produced artifacts like pottery
and glazed beads. They even had dental
care: Scientists found 11 drilled molars from
adults who lived between 7,500 to 9,000
years ago in the Indus Valley, according to a
study published in 2006 in the journal
Nature. A 2012 study suggested that
climatic change weakened monsoonal rains
and dried up much of the Harappan territory,
forcing the civilization to gradually disband
and migrate to wetter climes.

7.The Silla
The Silla Kingdom was one of the longest-
standing royal dynasties ever. It ruled most
of the Korean Peninsula between 57 B.C.
and A.D. 935, but left few burials behind for
archaeologists to study.
One recent Silla discovery gave researchers
a little insight, however. The intact bones of
a woman who lived to be in her late 30s was
found in 2013 near the historic capital of the
Silla (Gyeongju). An analysis of the woman's
bones revealed that she was likely a
vegetarian who ate a diet heavy in rice,
potatoes or wheat . She also had an
elongated skull.
Silla was founded by the monarch Bak
Hyeokgeose. Legend held that he was
hatched from a mysterious egg in the forest
and married a queen born from the ribs of a
dragon. Over time, the Silla culture
developed into a centralized, hierarchical
society with a wealthy aristocratic class.
Though human remains from the Silla people
are rare, archaeologists have unearthed a
variety of luxurious goods made by this
culture, from a gold-and-garnet dagger to a
cast-iron Buddha to jade jewelry, among
other examples held at the Gyeongju
National Museum in South Korea. [See
Images of the Long-Headed Woman's Facial
Reconstruction]
[