# The greatest archaeological discoveries ever

From the Rosetta Stone to the tomb of Tutankhamun, from Lucy to Ötzi the Iceman: the finds that rewrote what we know about the past. Which one fascinates you most?

- 9 votes · 25 items
- Mar 1, 2026 · carlo.qc
- https://even.best/en/l/2423/the-greatest-archaeological-discoveries-ever

## Top 25

1. **The tomb of Tutankhamun** (2 · ▲2 ▼0) — Howard Carter found it almost intact in 1922.
2. **Lucy** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — The 3.2-million-year-old skeleton found in Ethiopia in 1974.
3. **The Terracotta Army** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Thousands of clay soldiers guarding China's first emperor, found in 1974.
4. **The Cave of Altamira** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Prehistoric paintings of bison in Cantabria, Spain.
5. **Olduvai Gorge** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — The Tanzanian gorge full of our earliest ancestors.
6. **The Antikythera mechanism** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — An ancient Greek "computer" pulled from a shipwreck.
7. **The Staffordshire Hoard** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — The largest Anglo-Saxon gold hoard ever found, in 2009.
8. **Petra** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — The rose-red city of the Nabataeans in Jordan.
9. **The Rosetta Stone** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Found in 1799, it was the key to reading hieroglyphs.
10. **The Library of Ashurbanipal** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Thousands of clay tablets from Nineveh, including the Epic of Gilgamesh.
11. **Pompeii** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — A Roman city frozen in time by Vesuvius in AD 79.
12. **The Dead Sea Scrolls** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Found by a shepherd in the caves of Qumran in 1947.
13. **Sutton Hoo** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — An Anglo-Saxon ship burial full of treasure, found in 1939.
14. **Troy** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Homer's city, identified in Turkey in the 19th century.
15. **Mohenjo-daro** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — A planned city of the Indus civilisation.
16. **Ötzi the Iceman** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — A 5,000-year-old man found in an Alpine glacier in 1991.
17. **Knossos** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — The great Minoan palace of Crete.
18. **The grave of Richard III** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Found under a car park in Leicester in 2012.
19. **Göbekli Tepe** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Stone pillars older than Stonehenge and the pyramids.
20. **The Aztec Calendar Stone** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — The Sun Stone, dug up in Mexico City in 1790.
21. **Derinkuyu** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — An underground city in Cappadocia that could shelter thousands.
22. **Homo naledi** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — A new human species found in South Africa's Rising Star cave.
23. **The Sanxingdui gold mask** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Spectacular Bronze Age finds in Sichuan.
24. **Skara Brae** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — A Neolithic village in Orkney uncovered by a storm.
25. **Akrotiri** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — The "Minoan Pompeii" on Santorini.

How is this ranking ordered? By people's votes: each ▲ adds a point and each ▼ takes one away. Anyone can vote and add what is missing.