One Hour of Obscure Ancient Mysteries

hey how's it going guys it's Nate here and here are four of my favorite historical mysteries starting off we have a bit of an ancient Egyptian or I suppose Bronze Age moment in True Crime as we investigate the very mysterious circumstances surrounding The Disappearance of an ancient Prince known as zanza you see in the 1320s BC at the sunset of the late Bronze Age the ancient Egyptians were going through something of a dynastic crisis the great Pharaoh tunen kamoon or King Tut as he's often known in the west has just died at

(00:44) the age of 18 with no air apparent the Pharaoh is confirmed to have fathered at least two children but sadly both appear to have passed away prematurely and now the Pharaoh leaves behind a leaderless Egypt as his widowed wife/ sister anen Amon who seems to have been at least a few years younger than he was is left to pick up the pieces and navigate these new challenges while the Egyptians had been willing to accept queens before anaam moon was simply too young and too inexperienced for her to have been able

(01:22) to rule alone and thus as soon as her huz brother passed away she would have been faced with an enormous pressure to hurry up and Remar so a new Pharaoh could be declared and this is where things start to get kind of weird you see Egyptian royal families were famous for their stubborn endogamy or in breeding they saw themselves as literal incarnations of divinity and marriage outside of their existing family was thought to dilute the Royal Blood and could lead to potential Challengers to the throne and just general chaos if it

(02:02) made it to the wrong place alas the Egyptians don't seem to have quite understood the enormous dangers posed by such a tradition and as a consequence we know of several pharaohs and Nobles who seem to have suffered from a series of genetic malformities indeed the mummified remains of King Tut show evidence for such unfortunate conditions and those conditions may be part of the reason why he didn't live to 20 regardless all of this is to say that the widowed Queen anaam Moon would have been expected to marry someone

(02:39) familiarly close to her but instead she appears to have gotten her own very unorthodox idea Within the Ruins of husa the capital of the ancient hitti empire which ruled over much of modern-day turkey and Syria as Egypt was going through this dynastic struggle archaeologists discovered a clay tablet which they call the Deeds of sepil liuma I man I hope I pronounced that properly which tell the story of the many Deeds of the hitti king sailu liuma who was the Empire's ruler at the time King Tut died according to this tablet shortly

(03:23) after the pharaoh's Death anaam Moon whom they don't actually name they simply call her dunu which literally just means the king's wife sent a delegation to the hitti Royal Court with a letter allegedly written by her informing the hitti of her husband's passing and requesting that King sailu liuma send one of his sons to Egypt to become her new husband the hitti tablet which gives us the story features a copy of the letter allegedly sent by anaam Moon which reads as follows quote my husband is dead I have no son but they say that

(04:13) you have many sons if you would give me one of your sons he would become my husband I will never take a servant of mine and make him my husband end quote remember at this point the widowed Queen is very likely a teenage girl whoever she ends up marrying is going to be the new pharaoh and is obviously going to be the senior partner in the relationship so she's offering the hitti king an insanely good deal and initially sepil lulum and his advisers just couldn't believe what they were reading and what

(04:55) the Egyptian ambassadors were telling them thus the response the hitti sent back was was essentially a letter asking are you are you serious right now are we reading this right you want to marry one of the king's Sons what's the catch to which the queen seemed annoyed and sent back another letter stating quote had I a son would I have written about my own and my country's shame to a foreign land you did not believe me and you even spoke thus to me he who was my husband is dead I have no son never shall I take

(05:35) a servant of mine and make him my husband I have written to no other country only to you have I written they say you have many sons so give me one son of yours to me he will be husband in Egypt he will be king end quote at this point King suil lulum decided that when life gives you lemons you make lemonade so he dispatched one of his several Sons a prince known as zanza to make the Trek to the Egyptian Capital to marry his bride to be and assume the title of pharaoh this probably came as quite the shock to the prince we have little

(06:20) record of zanza beyond the Deeds of suil luma tablet and he doesn't seem to have been first in line for the hitti throne so imagine his shock when after spending his whole life expecting to live as a rather obscure middle child and was suddenly informed that instead he was Now set to be ruling the largest Nation on Earth indeed at this point in history Egypt may very well have been the most powerful Nation on the globe so this Prince had a lot coming to him alas whatever zanza was expecting it was not meant to be and shortly after beginning

(07:00) his Trek to Egypt he simply vanishes from history and is never heard from Again by the time the hitti had realized that their prince was missing and managed to get a new delegation to go to Egypt and figure out what was happening a new Pharaoh known to us as a very simple name much easier to pronounce than the other ones my God had already been declared a was an elderly man who is believed to have been some kind of advisor or grand viser to King Tut evidently the old man was able to convince or pressure the widowed Queen

(07:40) into marrying him in the absence of zanza given that this new Pharaoh a clearly had the most to gain the hitti accused him of being responsible for The Disappearance and death of zanza an accusation he firmly denied but also couldn't disprove and thus an enraged suil lulum declared war on Egypt and its new pharaoh to avenge his son and restore his honor after such a terrible bait and switch we don't quite know all of the details about the conflict that followed but it seems that the hitti raided a number of Egyptian

(08:21) territories along their border and got the better of at least some Egyptian forces but when several thousand Egyptian C captives were brought back to husa the hitti capital they brought some kind of plague with them the eventual outbreak of which killed King suil lulum and devastated the Empire seemingly also bringing a close to the brief war such was the strange story of what's become known to historians as the zanza affair ultimately whatever drove the widowed Egyptian Queen to seek out a foreign husband and the fate of the poor hitti

(09:05) prince who was selected to be that foreign husband are two of my favorite Bronze Age Era Mysteries Prince zanza was almost certainly ambushed and killed on his way to Egypt but by who is entirely unknown while the future Pharaoh a clearly stood the most to gain from removing the hitti prince from the equation there's no real evidence implicating him and the Bronze Age near East was a famously dangerous place to travel with Bandits and Raiders being a real challenge furthermore a royal marriage between the hitti and Egyptians

(09:48) would have threatened a lot more than just the native Egyptian aristocracy plenty of neighboring countries would have had a lot to fear from a United hitti Egyptian front and many of both those nations's vassals seeking Independence and autonomy would have had a lot to gain by provoking a war between the powers so the true as salent for zanza is far fromn and plenty of parties would have had motives and hey technically we're not even totally sure if he died maybe he didn't want to be Pharaoh at all and decided to just I

(10:26) don't know start start a farm or something in the future I actually think it would be a lot of fun to do like a a full 2hour true Crim like video on this subject as there's a lot that could be said about the political state of the Bronze Age near East at this time and all of the interested parties but that that would take a couple of hours so for now just know that the zanza affair was quite a strange moment in the history of global diplomacy we'll get to our second mystery in just a second but all of this

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(12:15) lateran claiming to be him in the year 582 ad a man by the name of Maurice or mikos as he would have called himself ascended to the throne of the Roman Empire and within a year of taking on the purple his wife constantina gave birth to the couple's first son and presumptive heir to the Roman Empire a boy who they named flavius theodosius young theodosius would have grown up receiving the best education money could buy and early on he seemed poised to inherit a very prosperous and stable Empire when the time came his

(12:57) father by most accounts was a competent Emperor and talented Diplomat having successfully defeated the Persians to the East and when said Persians collapsed into Civil War following their defeat Maurice bet on the young rightful King kro II and helped the boy take his throne back so not only had Rome's greatest adversary and threat been subdued during Maurice's Reign but their new king very much owed his crown to Roman support court and would behave accordingly in the early 590s mikos elevated the now 7-year-old theodosius

(13:38) to the rank of Augustus and co-emperor and while it's unlikely that the boy had any serious official duties at this point it did set the stage for an eventual stable transfer of power to top it all off Emperor Maurice also legally adopted King kazero as his son making the Persian sha theodosius brother by right and further ensuring that relations between the two superpowers would be as smooth as possible when the time came for Theo to rule in his own right alas that time would never come in 603 ad when theodosius was around 20 years old and

(14:25) his father 63 one of the Empire's largest armies upset about out pay cuts and recent orders to Winter north of the danu led by a rogue officer named focos mutinied and began to march on the capital Maurice and his whole family including theodosius fled across the Bosphorus to the nearby city of nikam media and here's where things start to get weird Maurice supposedly sent theodosius to go east and to seek the aid of his brother kazero while the senior Emperor and the rest of the family remained put and

(15:05) tried to get a grip on the situation meanwhile back in the capital the rebel General focas entered the city and had himself hailed as Emperor before dispatching forces to track down Maurice and theodosius to have them killed we know for a fact that focus's forces got to Maurice and most of his sons ordering them all executed however there is disagreement amongst our sources from the time about whether or not they got to theodosius who had apparently already been on his way to seek the aid of the Persians and any Eastern armies several

(15:45) of our sources particularly the ones favorable to focos claimed that theodosius hadn't left for his mission in time or was recalled shortly after beginning it and was captured along with his father the usurper fogos for his part paraded a pair of heads around the capital which he claimed were those of Maurice and theodosius but in a matter of weeks an eastern general who was still loyal to Maurice's family named naris produced a 20s something yearold man who he claimed was theodosius and brought the guy to

(16:25) Tesson the Persian Capital where kro welcomed him as his brother and hailed him as the rightful emperor of Rome the Persian king then rallied an army which he led into Roman territory with this theodosius in tow vowing to restore the young man to his throne just as Maurice had done for him a couple of decades earlier in his 2023 book Rome and Persia the 700-year Rivalry historian Adrien goldsworthy writes quote as his regime was collapsing around him Maurice had reached out for support to Kazo II the son he had helped back to Power after he

(17:10) had fled from a similar rising in the cenan Empire one of Mor's actual sons theodosius was sent with a delegation to travel to the King of Kings it is unclear how far they got focus's regime maintained that theodosius and all the other key figures among the envoys were caught and killed as had long been normal the new emperor sent his own ambassador to announce his coronation to the cenan ruler and present suitable gifts as a mark of Goodwill and respect the Roman Embassy reached Tesson in 603 where all the well-established protocols

(17:53) were broken kro II sent back an angry reply making clear that he did not accept focos as a legitimate Emperor and complaining of the murder of the true Emperor Maurice focus's Envoy was imprisoned and public mourning declared for Maurice if it was not already underway as the Roman had once offered him sanctuary and then sent soldiers to restore him to power the King of Kings announced that he would seek Vengeance from the new regime through War a youth was produced and declared to be Theodosia the legitimate heir to the Imperial

(18:32) purple no one knows whether he was an impostor which most Scholars assume or whether Maurice's son had somehow escaped but it helped to present the sesanian armies as liberators rather than Invaders end quote now as goldsworthy is Keen to emphasize most modern academics do not believe that the man kro and general naris were claiming to be theodosius was actually flavus theodosius Augustus it's usually assumed that this man was just an excuse for kro to make war on the Romans it may just be Persian propaganda

(19:15) you see having essentially owed his throne to Roman support King cazro likely spent much of his reign with a giant chip on his shoulder Persian Nobles and army officers knew that the only only reason this guy was king at all was because of Roman intervention so when Emperor Maurice was killed and the Roman State fell into disarray this was krow's chance to prove to his people and to the world that he was no puppet and so the survival of theodosius was concocted as a poetic excuse as is often made by rulers during

(19:55) this time period to make war on the Romans however not every expert takes this View and in fact many byzantinists people who actually specialize in this moment of History are often very open to the idea that we're dealing with the real theodosius or at least that King casero believed he was dealing with the real theodosius in his 2021 book The Last Great War of antiquity Oxford Byzantine historian Dr James Howard Johnston points out a series of flaws in the story of theodosius execution and is much more sympathetic to tales of the

(20:39) young man's survival quote a gruesome display of the severed heads of Maurice and his five Sons posted up on the military parade ground in the HEB Doan suburb conveyed vividly and unequivocally the news that the old regime had fallen to the Army to the population of the the capital and through them to the World At Large one head though was missing that of theodosius Maurice's eldest son speculation grew that he had been sent to get help from the cenan King kro II and that he had succeeded in escaping official Roman sources which

(21:22) are as usual reflected in the chronicon alexandrium account reported that he too had been caught and executed together with Constantine lardis who was accompanying him the place of their execution was named diomo where they had been put ashore but uncharacteristically the chronicler was unable to supply a precise date this suggests that it was not given in the bulletin which he was using this official version failed to quell rumors that theodosius was alive and later that he had reached Persian territory and

(22:02) gained the support of the Sha and sha for his claim to the Imperial Throne within the East Roman Empire any suggestion that the son of the deposed and executed Emperor was still alive and seeking to recover his throne was likely to increase disaffection at a time when the new regime was at its most vulnerable focus's government denied categorically that theodosius had escaped the original version of his death was amended and elaborated theodosius had journeyed as far as NAIA when he received an urgent summons to turn back from Maurice

(22:41) authenticated by a ring brought by the messenger dutifully he went back to face execution which was now said to have taken place at the Saint autonomus at the hands of Alexander one of focus's two senior Military Allies the official account is is unlikely to have become more convincing with the addition of these rather implausible circumstantial details a new and completely different version was also in circulation it was admitted that theodosius got away had reached the Black Sea and had taken a ship to lazika

(23:20) planning to continue his journey over land but it was claimed that he died long before reaching Persian territory either drowning during the voyage or collapsing as he traveled through the desolate country Beyond alaza end quote now Johnston goes on to admit that whether or not theodosius survived kro had too good of an opportunity to miss the Roman Empire Persia's ancient adversary was in a unique position of weakness his own kingdom was strong and this was the chance the Sha needed to prove he was his own man flavius theodosius or not

(24:05) this man claiming to be the rightful emperor of the Romans in Persian custody would significantly undermine krow's new enemies and perhaps convince much of the Eastern Roman army to stand down and pave the way for easy early military gains Johnston later describes theodosius as entrance into the city of adessa which seems to have thrown open its gates to the man they believed to be their Emperor and a subsequent coronation ceremony they held for him the Byzantine historian also notes that at least one other Roman city

(24:44) theodosopoulos also opened their gates to the Persian army after a group of the city's Nobles met with theodosius and were sufficiently convinced of his legitimacy finally even theodosius is own mother and sisters who were initially spared execution when Focus came to power also appeared to have believed that their son and brother was still alive and attempted to hatch a plot that would get him back on the throne something they paid for with their lives quote the main gate of the city adessa was opened when he arrived this

(25:24) was the first Roman city entered by the Persians in the course of the war it provided the setting for the assertion of the claims of The Pretender theodosius before a Roman audience a full coronation ceremony was laid on it was carefully stag managed to maximize its impact on those present and public opinion elsewhere the leading role was assigned to naris the general who had demonstrated his Devotion to Maurice and his family by his open opposition to the new regime after the young man who wore Imperial robes was

(25:59) crowned naris formally placed him under the protection of the Sha and sha asking him to show the same compassion as he had been shown by Maurice the ceremony made a considerable impression despite strenuous efforts by focus's government to discredit The Pretender and portray the whole event as nar's idea whatever the truth the coronation and formal public appeal for Persian Aid issued by narcis had the desired effect there can be little doubt that it undermined to a significant extent the will to resist of

(26:35) the frontier provinces and thus helped the Persians to break through the forward defenses and reach the Euphrates by 610 clear direct evidence of this came a few years later in 607 at theodosopoulos on the edge of the Roman sector of Armenia the city capitulated promptly after a deputation met theodosius and was convinced of his identity in Constantinople the key surviving members of theodosius family his mother Three Sisters wife and father-in-law germanus are reported to have believed that he was The Pretender

(27:16) sponsored by kro and to have taken part in a broad-based but unsuccessful conspiracy to Dethrone focos in 604 to 605 for for this they paid with their lives end quote flavius theodosius Augustus or not shortly after the Persian invasion of the East and the capitulation of theodosopoulos the fate of the man claiming to be Maurice's surviving son suddenly becomes very mysterious and he just kind of Fades from the historical record now quoting goldsworthy quote kaz's Success spoke for itself while his unwillingness to

(28:03) seek a negotiated piece makes clear that he wanted to achieve more just how much more is impossible to say perhaps he wished for Rome's eradication although there is no clear evidence for this nor is the fate of theodosius known for he simply vanishes from the record he may have died apart from all the risks of life in the ancient world there were fresh outbreaks of plague some of them severe whatever happened to theodosius after the early years kro II did not make any great effort to establish his Protege as the Roman

(28:44) Empire's ruler in stark contrast to Maurice's military aid for him all those years before end quote such is the mysterious end of our supposed right ful Roman Emperor was this man truly the son of Maurice or just a convenient Pretender who had people Bamboozled what ultimately happened to him did he die of the plague was he assassinated or just sidelined and forgotten Midway through the war we likely never know the answers to any of these questions hence I think this mystery is very deserving of its spot

(29:29) in this video now just for the sake of tying up Loose Ends allow me to spare a couple of minutes to tell you how this war wraps up because I think many of you might be invested in it by now feel free to skip ahead using the time codes in the description and on screen now if you're not anyway about 8 years into his Reign and the war with Persia fogos who was by now extremely unpopular with both the general public and Aristocrats alike for his cruel reputation and inability to stop the Persians was himself deposed by a

(30:05) general and African exarch named heraclius who had focos executed before crowning himself imperator the new emperor hercus tried to convince the Persians that Maurice had now been Avenged and thus there was no reason to continue the war but Kazo had none of it and maintained his invasion the Persians were eventually able to take over 2/3 of Roman territory subjugating all of Armenia Syria Palestine and even Egypt and it seems as though kazero may have been planning to completely conquer all that was left of the Roman

(30:49) Empire but alas as fate would have it the Sha became a victim of his own success you see as the Persians captured city after City and Province after Province they kept needing to peel men off from their main armies to Garrison and maintain order in their new territories and by 628 ad 25 years into the War when hercus was finally able to get a single strong Army together rather than take back his Empire piece by piece you know lay exhausting Siege after exhaust in Siege and slowly get it back he simply marched this Army straight to

(31:34) the undefended and unprepared Persian Capital as there was no serious Persian field Army in the way at least not a field Army serious enough to stop him hercus didn't even need to begin a Siege of Tesson the panicked Persian nobility was whipped into a terrified frenzy and they just just took care of cazro themselves the new government then agreed to return all Roman territory that Persia had occupied in the last 25 years and just like that the war was over and the status quo was restored assuming he was still alive at this

(32:19) point which is highly unlikely theodosius would have been in his mid 40s by now and probably would have met end along with his Patron kro he either would have been killed with the SHA by the Persian nobility or handed over to heraclius at the end of the war who would have executed theodosius as a rival claimant to the throne or maybe if he's super generous just sent him away to a monastery or something and thus Rome and Persia's cure Century long war came to an end and despite both sides being utterly exhausted and destabilized

(33:00) from the fighting both of them basically bankrupt their armies entirely depleted their borders ended up being virtually unchanged though it wouldn't be long before both Empires now Gravely weakened were fighting for their lives once again a storm was brewing in Arabia but that's a story for another video popular ation why so in our previous historical mysteries video we talked a bit about how recent archaeological developments in the Amazon rainforest have led to the discovery of several ancient Proto City

(33:42) ruins buried benath the jungle's vegetation and how these finds are leading to something of a paradigm shift in our understanding of what life in this region looked like in the days before Columbus's arrival well today I'd like to share another recent and remarkable breakthrough This Time by geneticists that may similarly reshape what we thought we knew about the original inhabitants of South America as well as raise several new questions meet population why in 2015 a team of researchers studying the DNA of

(34:23) indigenous communities across the Amazon hoping to learn more about their genomic relationship with other groups in the area accidentally stumbled upon more than they bargained for in their letter published in nature titled genetic evidence for two founding populations of the Americas pontis scogland at all revealed that their team had discovered quote some Amazonian Native Americans descend partly from a Native American founding population that carried ancestry more close closely related to indigenous Australians new guineans and

(35:03) Andaman Islanders than to any present-day eurasians or Native Americans essentially the researchers found that certain indigenous peoples in the Amazon share about 1 to 2% of their ancestry with modern-day Aboriginal Australians new guineans and Andaman Islanders or austral Asians the theory being that long ago a ghost population which no longer exists who the researchers call population Y and who possessed a large number of genetic signals now mostly found in the South Pacific and oenia somehow made it to South America where they intermixed with

(35:48) other groups and left those austronesian genetic signals behind upon the publication of their work back in 2015 the conclusions of scogland at all were initially met with skepticism even by the papers authors themselves but in the last decade dozens of more studies on this topic have been published and the team's results have since been replicated and Vindicated over and over again as of 2024 the existence of population Y and its genetic contributions to certain indigenous groups in Amazonia is no longer in

(36:27) serious dispute as a matter of fact far from just in the Amazon communities all over South America have been found to carry population wide genetic signals and some papers have even suggested that certain individuals may share up to 4% of their genome with modern austral Asians furthermore more recently at an archaeological site known as lapad do Santo in South Central East Brazil which is believed to have been occupied by humans between 10 and 8,000 BC the remains of over 55 individual humans have been found and examined by

(37:06) geneticists and while 54 of the remains showed no evidence no trace of population y ancestry a single individual was found to carry about 2% australasian ancester this conclusion was a bombshell for a few reasons one it seems to suggest that the ghost population which brought this ancestry to the Americas must have come earlier than 8,000 BC two the individual found has 2% population y ancestry which is roughly about as much as certain indigenous peoples in South America carry today given that ancestry signals dissipate

(37:54) with time you wouldn't expect to find someone so so long ago who carried about as much of that ancestry as people do now finally this signal from lapo do Santo is the only ancient Native American who has ever tested for population y ancestry you know geneticists have examined hundreds thousands of prehistoric indigenous remains across the Americas and this is the only one who has ever been shown to have powa ancestry we found it there were people with this ancestry running around back then in the Americas

(38:32) but why is it so rare in the ancient record part of this reason is while there are indigenous people alive today who carry population y ancestry all over South America the signals are most commonly found in modern Amazonian populations and the Amazon is famously good at decomposing human remains it's insanely wet and moisture over the the course of thousands of years may as well be acid to human bones and Remains Not to mention the insane density of micro and macro organisms in the soil that will eat anything and the rivers are

(39:10) constantly changing course new tributaries are forming and disappearing all the time and finally the whole place is very sparsely populated and much of it Still Remains unexplored as a consequence we don't exactly have a huge wealth of ancient Amazonian human remains to P the bones at lapo do Santo are an anomaly because they're so far away from the Amazon where perhaps the real nucleus of the ancestry was and were well preserved thanks to them being found in a dry cave moreover moving away from lapo do Santo but to this point

(39:46) while aasian DNA has been found among at this point dozens maybe hundreds of indigenous people alive today across South America it has never been found at all in North America no full blooded quote unquote indigenous North Americans have ever showed evidence of population why ancestry at all which is very bizarre for reasons that should be obvious all of this is to say that while modern genetics has proven the existence of these australasian genetic signals in indigenous South Americans both ancient and modern there are still some big

(40:24) questions that need to be addressed most important how did it get here how did the people carrying these australasian genetic signals make it all the way to South America in prehistoric near Ice Age times and as far as we can tell leave no Trace in the other America well I think the most exciting idea that pops into all of our heads is that sometime before 8000 BC before this signal first pops up in the record probably right around the end of the last ice age some people made an Epic Journey from Southern Asia and

(41:05) Oceania that took them across the Pacific Ocean and into South America where their DNA mixed with that of the locals and was eventually diluted into the broader pool now while this theory is tons of fun and you know technically not impossible it is very unlikely and not under ious consideration by many scholars at the moment well we know of at least one pre-industrial population that did successfully navigate much of the Pacific Ocean and cross thousands of nautical miles to settle islands all over that vast sea those were the

(41:46) Polynesians a culture and genetic cluster that doesn't really emerge until much later in the record we're dealing with Ostrom melanesians furthermore the Polynesians don't seem to have really started embarking on their grand voyages until well after 1,000 ad at least not their voyages that took them deep into the Pacific there's there's evidence they were running around new calonia and and Fiji quite a bit earlier maybe as early as the like the 1200s BC but it would be a very long while before they

(42:20) start pushing deep into the Pacific Ocean getting to uh to the pit Karan Islands Tahiti that sort of thing population wide ancestry shows up in South America in 8,000 BC so we'd be talking about a people crossing the Pacific Ocean 9,000 years before the Polynesians made it to Hawaii and having done so without leaving any trace of themselves in any of the islands in between without a wealth of supporting evidence this just isn't the type of conclusion that wins over experts so if not that what do the experts think happened well

(43:02) there are two major competing theories both revolving around our more traditional understanding of how the Americas were populated but one being much more radical than the other you see population why and some other anomalies not withstanding we may talk about those some other time it's pretty well accepted that the first humans who entered the Americas did so sometime time towards the end of the last ice age somewhere between 16,000 and 13,000 BC by exploiting a large now submerged land mass that then linked Alaska with

(43:41) Siberia known as beringia which was exposed thanks to lower sea levels all of the water was trapped in glaciers so the oceans were lower at this point humans either in a single massive migration or series of smaller migrations over a longer period of time poured into the Americas while melting ice and rising sea levels eventually submerged beringia by the 9000s BC effectively locking the door behind them and sealing them in their genes in the new world now as I keep trying to stress there's a lot of nuance and debate

(44:17) surrounding the beringia hypothesis was it a single migration several migrations could they have happened a little earlier you'll encounter a number of variations but suffice it to say this is roughly the current academic consensus about how and when humans made it to America so where does population y fit into this well the first theory about its entrance is that it migrated into the Americas along with everyone else that when humans first started making the Trek across beringia an Ostrom melanesian related population

(44:58) was among them given the extreme sparsity of population y signals in the Americas today these osto melanesian relatives would have to have already been quite intermixed with the local Siberians and their austronesian components would probably only comprise a minority of their ancestry by now but it would have been prevalent enough in enough people to leave the faint imprint we find today in South America this theory is in it of it self pretty cool because it was previously assumed that the first Americans as we like to call

(45:33) them were relatively genetically homogeneous paleo Siberians who themselves were mostly of ancient North Asian and North Eurasian ancestry but if true this idea would suggest an entirely new second population stream made it into the Siberian Far East which was otherwise unexpected how did austron Asian relatives make it so far north though well here's how geneticist RB Khan answered that question in a recent substack post quote how would an Ostrom melanesian related population get to Siberia in the first place well first of

(46:16) all we need to take into account that the planet's Human Geography during the PTO was radically different today the genetic and cultural boundary between ostr melanesians and other East Eurasian peoples Falls across East Central Indonesia with a transition zone on islands like timour but during the Pline the line lay much further north and west until about 4,000 years ago the dominant archaeological tradition of Southeast Asia was the hinan culture and the people who practiced it were genetically similar to today's Andaman Islanders

(46:56) hinan people and their close relatives were also present in southern China before 2000 BC and the most ancient layer of modern Tibetan ancestry is derived from a quinian population of foragers who arrived in the highlands tens of thousands of years ago and mixed with Dennis sovans it is not implausible then that as we go further back in time the neat division between northern and southern Eastern eurasians breaks down if foragers genetically closer to hinan and thus to ostr melanesians entered the Siberian Plateau it is not implausible

(47:38) that some might have continued migrating as far as Siberia itself end quote what Khan is saying is that while today Ostrom melanesian ancestry and culture is mostly found in the far south of Asia near Asia tens of thousands of years ago it existed much further north and was spread across a much larger geography influencing a plethora of related genetic clusters and cultures it's entirely possible that genetic signals from groups or tribes from these regions carrying such ancestry could have pushed into Siberia admixing with

(48:21) others along the way and once they got there so this is Theory one behind population wise emergence in the Americas and it currently seems to be the leading hypothesis it's especially beloved among modern Scholars because it explains this australasian DNA in the Americas without seriously disrupting any of our previous models or assumptions about the peopling of the new world it fits with all of our existing presumptions perfectly however as many experts have also pointed out this theory is far from perfect in it of itself if population y

(49:03) came with all the other beringians then why are their signals entirely constrained to isolated pockets in South America mostly clustered within and around the Amazon surely its first carriers would have had to have traversed through North America to get to the rainforest could they really have done so could they really have made that enormous journey and then left no genetic evidence this inequitable distribution is certainly a bit anomalous and it's led to the emergence of a second much more radical hypothesis Theory number two argues that

(49:41) population y did come to the Americas along the same beringia route everyone else took or at least approximately the same route but that it made the journey early perhaps tens of thousands of years before the main wave of beringian migrants crossed the idea being that while the main stream of paleos Siberian beringian migration occurred around 13,000 is BC sometime way earlier maybe as early as even the 30,000 BC or as late as around 22,000 a small group of australasian relatives made the journey first and eventually spread across the

(50:26) americaas as far south as modern-day Argentina before they were replaced by the main much larger wave of paleo Siberians that came at the end of the Ice Age over the next few thousand years these paleo Siberians would have wiped out either through competition for resources disease or outright violence the hypothetical original population y carriers in all but a few isolated pockets of the Jungle where they were able to to hold out explaining the inequity of australasian signals in modern times once again quoting Raze

(51:05) Khan who does not himself necessarily endorse this Theory but takes it seriously quote the most likely one is that population y traversed the same general route as the beringians along the North Pacific since this was the only contiguous portion spanning the old world and the new they simply would have done so sooner beringians and population y could also have arrived simultanously over the prehistoric land bridge or its Fringe but the absence of population y results from the ancient DNA set and its low frequency in Geographic restriction to a

(51:47) northern band across South America today argues against this An Elegant explanation is that though population y arrived earlier in most locals they were subsequently replaced by a tidal wave of beringians starting in around 13,000 BC end quote now of course this is a pretty radical Theory and while they're actually is growing evidence for human habitation in the Americas before 14,000 BC there's a set of footprints in White Sands National Park New Mexico that has been pretty solidly dated to the 20,000 BC and some sites in Mexico

(52:29) that less solidly May date to the 30,000 without any remains for us to examine it's a huge stretch to suggest that these early Americans had any association with population Y and it's entirely possible that these quote unquote pre- beringian super early Americans belong to the same genetic family as the ones who followed in the main wave whatever the case whatever the origins of this genetic signal whether it came with the main wave of beringian migrants who apparently may have been more diverse than we previously thought

(53:06) or whether population why beat the supposed original beringians to the new world or hey whether they may have somehow crossed the Pacific in one of the wildest and most unlikely events in history for now these all remain somewhat open questions but as researchers make new discoveries perhaps finding more human remains belonging to population y whose DNA can be examined will likely learn more and more about this mysterious population As Time ticks on by and hopefully in the coming decades we'll be able to put this

(53:42) little mystery to rest and finally last on our list we have a very serious mystery pun intended okay so the brightest star in our night sky is is known to us as serious its brightness is seconded only to the International Space Station a couple of planets which only appear occasionally and the moon itself for much of this section's b-roll I literally just went outside and pointed my phone at the star it's pretty easy to find belonging to the constellation Canis Major near oion but to make things simple you'll find it forming a triangle

(54:24) with its neighbors Beetlejuice and pron anyway as one can see with their plain eye and as astronomers have confirmed using Advanced telescopes Sirius clearly glows a bluish white color when I zoom in with my camera sometimes it looks a little green but ignore that that's that's anti-s serious propaganda oddly enough however for some reason a rather large number of ancient astronomers and historical accounts describe this star as being un Ambiguously red in color in the 100s ad Claudius tmy A Very well-renowned Greco

(55:05) Egyptian astronomer mathematician and geographer produced an astronomical text known to us as the almagest which essentially documented what he saw as the Motions of the Stars the alest is a pretty exhaustive work and would end up serving as the book on astronomy for the next Thousand Years within this work is a catalog of over 1,000 stars in the night sky and their rough coordinates as well as the magnitudes of each star's brightness toy only describes the coloration of a few stars all of which are accurately observed today save for

(55:47) serious to which he says quote the star is on the mouth brightest called the dog and redish end quote note that Sirius belonging to the constellation Kanis major has historically been called the dog star in Western societies and the Wolf by certain Chinese astronomers clearly Tommy was describing Sirius he gets the coordinates right but why does he say that it's red despite to's credentials this wouldn't really be that big of a deal if he were the only person to have made this mistake but he's far from it writing in the 50s or

(56:33) 60s BC the Roman Statesman and author Cicero describes the dog Star as reddish in passing and roughly half a century later the Roman general and Son of Emperor Tiberius germanicus employed the same description writing between the 40s and 60s ad the Roman stoic senca described Sirius as quote glowing a deeper red than the planet Mars finally in the mid 500s ad Gregory of Tours a Catholic bishop who would later go on to be canonized as a saint would write the deu stellarum ratio which was essentially a manual on how

(57:15) people in monasteries could use the Stars to determine the time of certain nighttime players and in this work he describes Sirius as red there's also a number of sources in our record which describe the Stars color as ambiguous in a way that can be perceived is read like Homer does this a few times in The Iliad and the Odyssey and there's a certain Han Chinese historical texts which suggests that the Wolf star may change color sometimes and that such a change May signal the emergence of Bandits and Raiders suffice it to say red serus

(57:54) appears enough time in our historical record from credible enough sources that modern historians and astronomers alike take these accounts seriously no pun intended notably however our ancient sources are far from unanimous in their attestations of a red serus and plenty of ancient Works accurately describe it as glowing a whitish blue the term C blue regularly appears in Roman poems and Chinese accounts so what's going on here why were a select number of ancient authors seemingly convinced that Sirius was red well this is a debate that's

(58:37) been unfolding among historians and astronomers alike since the 1700s and several theories have emerged in the wake of the discussion one that enjoyed quite a bit of currency in the 19th and early 20th centuries is that Sirius appears to glow red when a certain level of volcanic dust is present in the atmosphere we know that in the 500s ad when Gregory of Tours produced his account of a red serus Europe and much of the world was entering a period of dramatic cooling known as the late Antiquity little Ice Age which saw

(59:14) temperatures plummet and resulted in a series of successive poor harvests that have partially been blamed for the collapse of the Roman and Persian Empires during this period well we know the late Antiquity little Ice Age happened the temperature shift is obvious in the archaeobotanical record we're not entirely sure what caused it the leading theory is that it was the result of a cluster of volcanic eruptions beginning in the 530s which produced a large enough amount of Ash so as to effectively dim the sun's rays and

(59:49) reduce temperatures for several decades the theory therefore goes that perhaps this ash in the atmosphere spere which wouldn't always be visible to the naked eye was responsible for turning sirius's glow red in Gregory of tours's accounts and perhaps a similar phenomenon is responsible for our other discrepancies in the record it's a pretty fun and romantic idea you know ancient people would see the brightest star in the night sky turn red and then it would suddenly get cold and bad things would

(1:00:23) start happening talk about an omen however fun this idea might be or you know at least fun for us we have no record for similar volcanic winter events occurring in Europe between 50 BC and 200 ad where most of our red serious accounts come from so this Theory doesn't really enjoy the same support that it used to in his 2007 book Sirius The Brightest Diamond in the night sky physicist PhD and astronomer Jay Holberg dedicates a chapter to the question of a red serus in history which serves as my primary source for this part of the

(1:00:58) video and he proposes some more modern hypothesises hypotheses theories quote one modern explanation for the possible reddish appearance of Sirius involves not the star itself but Interstellar dust the rening of Starlight by grains of Interstellar dust is a well-known and carefully studied astronomical phenomenon grains of Interstellar dust smaller than .

(1:01:30) 1 microns and composed of carbon silicon and oxygen are formed in the outer atmospheres of red giant stars and dispersed into Interstellar space as these Stars shred their outer envelopes when the line of sight to a star contains enough Interstellar grains they can perceptibly dim and red in the Starlight by preferentially scattering blue light over the last 25 years a number of astronomers have suggested that 2,000 years ago Sirius was obscured by a small dense cloud of Interstellar dust that caused it to appear red but which has since moved out of the line of

(1:02:09) sight end quote so rather than volcanic dust in our own atmosphere perhaps a cloud of space dust moved between the Earth and sirrius in ancient times sufficiently reading its Hue for a period but has since moved on before the Advent of more modern astronomical instruments the problem with this Theory as Holberg points out is that for a cloud of Interstellar dust to be sufficiently dense enough to change our perception of sirius's color it would necessarily need to dim the star greatly to the point that it probably wouldn't

(1:02:47) be the brightest in the night sky anymore which conflicts with most of our red serious testimonies furthermore no evidence of such such a cloud has been found by modern astronomers the conclusion Holberg seems to throw most of his support behind though doesn't wholeheartedly endorse is that perhaps the Ancients were typically observing Sirius during its helical rising or the time of year when it appears at Sunset before the full Advent of night when you can kind of see it on the horizon in daytime and thus it may have appeared a

(1:03:22) much deeper red Hue it is well known that when the sun is on the horizon at sunset or Sunrise it appears both dimmer and redder this also applies to Bright Stars such as Sirius near The Horizon the effect of the scattering of Light by the molecules in the Earth's atmosphere acts to both shift the color balance of the light from a star and to extinguish the light unlike Interstellar dust however atmospheric reing is relatively much stronger so the amount of atmosphere required to make Sirius appear as red as Arcturus or Beetle

(1:04:00) Juice will only dim the brightness of Sirius by about an entire magnitude or a factor of 2.5 this occurs within 5° of the Horizon at which point Sirius is still one of the brightest stars in the sky and its reddish color can be perceived by the human eye given the Ancients were primarily concerned with observing Sirius at helical Rising when it would appear much more more reddish than when it is higher in the sky then perhaps it is understandable how the color red might have become associated with Sirius later in the year when the summer heat

(1:04:37) diminished the common appearance of Sirius high in the night sky was bright blue white and was not as remarkable end quote so perhaps natural atmospheric reading is to blame which seems to be the simplest explanation though Holberg adits that he's never been able to witness a red serus described by ancient authors with his own uned eye only one time when he was looking with binoculars does he claim the star looked kind of red to him so even this more terrestrial explanation is far from invaluable whatever the case whether due to

(1:05:15) volcanic ash in the atmosphere moving clouds of Interstellar dust in the cosmos or just natural sunsets making it look a little red or maybe some combination of these variables or maybe ancient authors just trolling the mystery of red serus continues to frustrate experts and enthusiasts alike and with that ladies and gentlemen we are going to wrap up an an hour and some change of historical mysteries that hopefully you haven't heard before um right right now I know historical icebergs and and videos of that nature

(1:05:54) that list interesting Oddities and history are kind of in on YouTube and there's a lot of content saturating this market so I tried to aim for stuff that hasn't made it into the pop culture Zeitgeist yet so hopefully um you you were impressed by by most if not all of these now mind you I am a Skyrim YouTuber by trade I am no historian nothing even approximating it I talk about Wizards and Dragons for a living so these early foray into historical content are bound to be littered with all sorts of accuracies here or there

(1:06:27) like for instance just going back after editing this thing in post I realized I called them the hit ties instead of the hit tights they're the hit tights there's a there's another T in there that there's no excuse for that I've been reading about the Bronze Age for like 10 years now and I I I don't I don't know what to tell you but you know stuff like that um I'm no historian I'm not a doctor I hold no PhD don't even don't even have an education higher than an associates degree so if someone's

(1:06:54) smarter than me someone with credentials contradicts anything I say here probably best to just go with them but uh but you know to to counteract my lack of any formal historical training I cited a bunch of people who did have that training so hopefully that makes up for it but anyway guys thanks so much for stopping by I uh I hope you enjoyed let me know your thoughts if you have any suggestions or potential criticisms let me know in the comments section down below and I hope to catch you all in my next video peace out everyone thanks

(1:07:22) again to our sponsor download Game of Thrones Legends by clicking the link Link in the description or scan the QR code and get 50 gold 3,000 food and a daily summon token to start your journey

Part 1: Hierarchical Outline

I. The Disappearance of Prince Zanza * A. Setting: Egypt's Dynastic Crisis in 1320s BC * 1. King Tut's death with no heir. * 2. Young widow Queen Ankhsenamun faces pressure to remarry. * 3. Egyptian royal tradition of endogamy to preserve "Royal Blood." * B. The Unorthodox Proposal to the Hittites * 1. Ankhsenamun seeks a husband from Hittite King Suppiluliuma I. * 2. Hittites' disbelief at the Queen's request. * 3. Ankhsenamun's insistent plea for a Hittite prince. * C. The Vanishing of Prince Zannanza * 1. Suppiluliuma I sends his son Zannanza to Egypt. * 2. Zannanza disappears en route to Egypt. * 3. Ay, a former advisor to King Tut, becomes Pharaoh. * 4. Hittites accuse Ay of killing Zannanza. * D. War and Plague * 1. Suppiluliuma I declares war on Egypt. * 2. Hittites gain initial advantage but bring back a plague. * 3. Plague kills Suppiluliuma I and devastates the Hittite Empire. * E. Unanswered Questions * 1. Motives behind Ankhsenamun's actions. * 2. Zannanza's true fate. * 3. Possible involvement of various parties.

II. The Mystery of Pseudo-Theodosius * A. The Rise of Emperor Maurice * 1. Maurice becomes Roman Emperor in 582 AD. * 2. Theodosius, Maurice's son, is born the following year. * 3. Theodosius is groomed to be the heir. * 4. Maurice adopts Persian King Khosrow II, making him Theodosius' brother. * B. The Military Mutiny * 1. Army mutinies in 602 AD. * 2. Maurice and his family flee to Nikomedia. * 3. Theodosius is sent east to seek Khosrow II's help. * 4. Maurice and his remaining sons are executed. * C. Conflicting Accounts of Theodosius' Fate * 1. Official sources claim Theodosius was captured and killed. * 2. Rumors persist that Theodosius survived. * 3. General Narses presents a man claiming to be Theodosius to Khosrow II. * D. The Persian Invasion * 1. Khosrow II uses "Theodosius" as a pretext for war. * 2. "Theodosius" gains support in some Roman cities. * 3. Maurice's family believes "Theodosius" is real. * E. The Disappearance of "Theodosius" * 1. "Theodosius" vanishes from historical record. * 2. Possible fates: death, assassination, or being sidelined.

III. Population Y: The Ghost Population of South America * A. The Accidental Discovery * 1. Researchers studying Amazonian indigenous DNA find unexpected links to Australasians. * 2. 1-2% of Amazonian indigenous DNA is shared with Aboriginal Australians, New Guineans, and Andaman Islanders. * 3. This suggests a "ghost population" (Population Y) contributed to South American ancestry. * B. Further Evidence * 1. Population Y signals found in indigenous communities throughout South America. * 2. Lapa do Santo: 8,000 BC remains with 2% Australasian ancestry. * 3. No evidence of Population Y in North America. * C. Competing Theories * 1. Theory 1: Population Y migrated with other Beringians. * 2. Theory 2: Population Y arrived much earlier and was mostly replaced. * D. Unresolved Questions * 1. How did Population Y reach South America? * 2. Why is their genetic signal absent in North America? * 3. More research and discoveries needed.

IV. The Enigma of Red Sirius * A. The Discrepancy * 1. Sirius, the brightest star, is bluish-white. * 2. Ancient astronomers like Ptolemy described it as red. * 3. Multiple historical accounts support the red Sirius observation. * B. Proposed Explanations * 1. Volcanic dust in the atmosphere. * 2. Interstellar dust clouds. * 3. Atmospheric reddening during helical rising. * C. The Ongoing Debate * 1. No conclusive explanation. * 2. Each theory has its limitations. * 3. Further research and observations needed.

Part 2: Appendix of Obscure and Abstract Facts

• Zannanza Affair:
  • Endogamy: Egyptian royals' practice of marrying within the family to preserve "divine" bloodline.
  • Hittite disbelief: Initial shock and skepticism at Ankhsenamun's proposal.
  • Plague as a war-ender: The unexpected turn of events that ended the Hittite-Egyptian conflict.
• Pseudo-Theodosius:
  • Adoption as a political tool: Maurice's adoption of Khosrow II to strengthen ties.
  • Conflicting historical accounts: Disagreement on Theodosius' fate.
  • Persian propaganda: The possibility of "Theodosius" being a fabrication for war.
• Population Y:
  • Ghost population: A group that no longer exists but left genetic traces.
  • Lapa do Santo: A key archaeological site with evidence of early Population Y presence.
  • Absence in North America: A puzzling aspect of Population Y's distribution.
• Red Sirius:
  • Almagest: Ptolemy's influential astronomical text.
  • Late Antiquity Little Ice Age: A possible link to volcanic dust and red Sirius observations.
  • Heliacal rising: A potential explanation for the perceived red color.

Part 3: Top 10 Points of Interest

1. An Egyptian queen's desperate plea for a foreign husband.
2. The mysterious disappearance of a Hittite prince.
3. A war triggered by a broken royal marriage proposal.
4. A plague that ended a war and killed a king.
5. Conflicting accounts of a Roman heir's execution.
6. A Persian king's quest for vengeance and legitimacy.
7. The enigmatic disappearance of a potential Roman emperor.
8. The accidental discovery of a "ghost population" in South America.
9. The debate over how and when Population Y reached the Americas.
10. The persistent mystery of why ancient astronomers saw Sirius as red.

Part 4: Conclusion - Overall Extensive Summary in Essay Form

This video delves into four captivating historical mysteries that continue to intrigue and baffle researchers. The first mystery revolves around the disappearance of Prince Zannanza, a Hittite prince sent to marry the widowed Egyptian Queen Ankhsenamun. Zannanza's vanishing act led to war and plague, leaving his fate shrouded in uncertainty.

The second mystery explores the conflicting accounts surrounding the execution of Theodosius, the heir to the Roman Empire. The emergence of a man claiming to be Theodosius and the subsequent Persian invasion raise questions about his true identity and ultimate fate.

The third mystery focuses on Population Y, a "ghost population" whose genetic traces have been found in indigenous South American communities. The origin and journey of this population remain a subject of ongoing research and debate.

Finally, the video examines the enigma of red Sirius, where ancient astronomers described the star as red despite its current bluish-white appearance. Various theories, including atmospheric and interstellar phenomena, have been proposed to explain this discrepancy.

These historical mysteries highlight the gaps in our understanding of the past and the enduring power of unanswered questions. As researchers continue to uncover new evidence and explore innovative theories, we may one day unravel these enigmas and gain a deeper appreciation for the complexities of human history and the vastness of the cosmos.

expand extensively on all points of outline

An Hour of Obscure Ancient Mysteries: A Deep Dive into Historical Enigmas

This extensive summary delves deeper into the four historical mysteries presented in the video, expanding on the key points outlined previously.

I. The Disappearance of Prince Zannanza: A Bronze Age Cold Case

• Egypt's Dynastic Crisis: The mystery unfolds against the backdrop of a power vacuum in ancient Egypt. The young Pharaoh Tutankhamun's untimely death without a clear successor plunged the kingdom into uncertainty. His widow, the teenage Queen Ankhsenamun, found herself in a precarious position, pressured to remarry swiftly to ensure the continuation of the royal lineage.

• An Unconventional Alliance: In a surprising move, Ankhsenamun reached out to the Hittite King Suppiluliuma I, a powerful ruler in what is now Turkey, requesting one of his sons as her husband. This unprecedented proposal was met with disbelief by the Hittites, who questioned the queen's motives. However, Ankhsenamun's insistence and the lure of ruling Egypt eventually convinced Suppiluliuma I to send his son, Prince Zannanza, to fulfill her request.

• The Vanishing Prince: Zannanza's journey to Egypt was tragically cut short. He disappeared without a trace, leaving behind a trail of unanswered questions. The Hittites accused the newly crowned Pharaoh Ay, a former advisor to Tutankhamun, of orchestrating Zannanza's demise. Ay vehemently denied the accusations, but the lack of concrete evidence made it impossible to prove his innocence.

• War and its Unforeseen Consequences: The disappearance of Zannanza ignited a conflict between the Hittites and Egyptians. The Hittites, seeking revenge and to restore their honor, launched attacks on Egyptian territories, initially gaining the upper hand. However, the tide of the war turned unexpectedly when a plague brought back from captured Egyptians ravaged the Hittite Empire, claiming the life of King Suppiluliuma I and bringing the conflict to an abrupt end.

• Lingering Questions: The Zannanza Affair continues to puzzle historians. What motivated Ankhsenamun to seek a foreign husband? Was it a desperate attempt to maintain her power, or did she have other, more personal reasons? What truly happened to Prince Zannanza? Was he assassinated by Ay, or did he fall victim to bandits or other unforeseen circumstances? The truth may never be fully known, but the mystery serves as a reminder of the complex political landscape and the fragility of alliances in the ancient world.

II. The Mystery of Pseudo-Theodosius: A Roman Heir Lost and Found?

• The Rise and Fall of Emperor Maurice: The mystery begins with the ascension of Maurice to the Roman throne in 582 AD. His reign was marked by stability and diplomatic success, particularly in his dealings with the Persian Empire. Maurice's son, Theodosius, was groomed from a young age to inherit the throne, and his future seemed secure. However, a military mutiny in 602 AD shattered this illusion of stability.

• A Family's Desperate Flight: As the rebels marched on Constantinople, Maurice and his family fled the capital. Theodosius was reportedly sent east to seek help from the Persian King Khosrow II, who had been adopted by Maurice and considered Theodosius his brother. The rest of the family was captured and executed, but Theodosius' fate remained uncertain.

• Conflicting Accounts and a Persian Pretender: While official sources claimed that Theodosius was also killed, rumors persisted that he had survived. Adding to the confusion, a man claiming to be Theodosius appeared in Persia, supported by General Narses and welcomed by Khosrow II. The Persian king seized this opportunity to invade the Roman Empire, using the "rescue" of Theodosius as a pretext for war.

• The Vanishing Act: The man claiming to be Theodosius gained some support within the Roman Empire, but his story ultimately ended in mystery. He disappeared from historical records, leaving historians to speculate about his true identity and fate. Was he truly the Roman heir, or was he a pawn in Khosrow II's political game? Did he die during the war, or was he quietly sidelined once he had served his purpose?

• The Legacy of the Persian War: The Persian invasion plunged the Roman Empire into a prolonged and devastating conflict. The war ultimately ended with the overthrow of both Khosrow II and the usurper Phocas, but it left both empires severely weakened and vulnerable to future threats. The mystery of Pseudo-Theodosius remains a fascinating footnote in this tumultuous period of history, reminding us of the power of political intrigue and the lengths to which rulers would go to justify their ambitions.

III. Population Y: Unraveling the Genetic Enigma of South America

• An Unexpected Discovery: The mystery of Population Y began with an accidental finding. Researchers studying the DNA of indigenous Amazonian communities stumbled upon genetic links to Australasian populations, a connection that had never been previously suspected. This discovery hinted at the existence of a "ghost population" that had contributed to the ancestry of South Americans but had since vanished from the historical record.

• Expanding the Genetic Map: Further research revealed that Population Y's genetic signals were not limited to the Amazon. Indigenous communities across South America, from the rainforest to the Andes, carried traces of this enigmatic ancestry. The discovery of ancient remains at the Lapa do Santo site in Brazil, dating back to 8,000 BC, provided concrete evidence of Population Y's presence in the Americas long before previously thought.

• Competing Theories: The origin and journey of Population Y remain a subject of intense debate among scientists. One theory proposes that they migrated alongside other Beringians, crossing the land bridge connecting Asia and North America during the last Ice Age. Another, more radical theory suggests that Population Y arrived much earlier, perhaps tens of thousands of years before the main wave of Beringian migrants, and were subsequently replaced or absorbed by later arrivals.

• Unanswered Questions: While the existence of Population Y is no longer in doubt, many questions remain unanswered. How did they reach South America? Why are their genetic signals absent in North America? Did they cross the Pacific Ocean, or did they take a more circuitous route? As researchers continue to analyze ancient DNA and explore archaeological sites, we may one day piece together the story of this mysterious population and their contribution to the rich tapestry of South American ancestry.

IV. The Enigma of Red Sirius: A Stellar Mystery Across Time

• A Celestial Discrepancy: Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, shines with a brilliant bluish-white light. However, ancient astronomers, including the renowned Ptolemy, described it as red. This discrepancy has puzzled scientists and historians for centuries, leading to a variety of theories and explanations.

• Possible Explanations: One theory suggests that volcanic dust in the atmosphere during periods of heightened volcanic activity could have caused Sirius to appear red. Another proposes that clouds of interstellar dust might have temporarily obscured the star's true color. A third theory points to the phenomenon of atmospheric reddening, where the Earth's atmosphere scatters blue light more than red light, causing celestial objects near the horizon to appear redder than they actually are.

• An Ongoing Debate: Despite these proposed explanations, the mystery of red Sirius remains unsolved. Each theory has its limitations and none can fully account for all the historical observations. The lack of conclusive evidence keeps the debate alive, fueling further research and speculation. Perhaps future astronomical observations or the discovery of new historical texts will shed light on this celestial enigma.

Conclusion

These four historical mysteries, spanning from the Bronze Age to the early medieval period and even touching upon the genetic history of South America and the mysteries of the cosmos, showcase the enduring allure of the unknown. They remind us that our understanding of the past is constantly evolving and that new discoveries can challenge long-held assumptions. As researchers continue to explore these enigmas, we can look forward to a deeper appreciation of the complexities of human history and the wonders of the natural world.