Bizarre Things Discovered Inside Pyramids

As a whole, the human race thinks it's pretty darn cool, partially because we build all kinds of incredible things, from tall buildings to super, high-tech ones. But in all fairness, we also have a huge amount of help when it comes to doing the actual heavy lifting. Machines do all that for us now, but the pyramids scattered across the world are a reminder of those who came before us and who didn't have the help we take for granted today. Those pyramids — and the secrets we're still unlocking — are also a reminder that we're not nearly as cool as our ancestors were. We're all equally weird, though.

You've seen the Kukulkan pyramid at Chichen Itza, even if you don't know the name of it. It's the most famous Mayan ruin, but we barely know anything about it. It was only in 2016 that researchers announced they had discovered something bizarre inside: another pyramid. Even weirder, this was the second pyramid found inside the iconic outer shell.

According to CNN, excavations in 1930 revealed Kukulkan (or El Castillo) was built over another pyramid. That pyramid was found to contain a red jaguar throne decorated with jade, but it was almost another century before we figured out that pyramid had itself been built over a pre-existing pyramid. We haven't gotten a good look at the newly discovered third one, but based on thermal imaging we're pretty sure it was outfitted with at least a small staircase and an altar of some kind.

Archaeologists have some rough guesses at when these nesting-doll style pyramids were built, and say the outer shell we're all familiar with only dates back to the end of the Maya-Tolteca period, about 1,000 years ago. The second shell dates back to between the years 800 to 1000, and the innermost pyramid is old enough that it's likely in the "pure Maya" style. Given that we don't actually know too much about the Maya, that'd be pretty darn cool.

You expect to find ancient things in a pyramid, and while the 20th century is now officially "old," it's by no means ancient. In 2017, the Peruvian Ministry of Culture announced a strange find (via Reuters): the remains of 16 Chinese laborers, buried on the top of a pre-Colombian adobe pyramid called a huaca. The pyramids were built by an ancient people called the Ichma, who thrived around 1,000 years ago until their assimilation by the Inca and ultimate destruction at the hands of the Spanish conquistadors.

The story of how the Chinese remains got there was pieced together from a bit of history you probably didn't cover in school. According to researchers from Brown University (via The Smithsonian), around 100,000 Chinese immigrants were lured to Peru under false pretenses (or just outright kidnapped) toward the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. It started after Peru outlawed slavery and plantations needed another way to get the cheap labor they needed. Immigrants were forced to work in place of slaves, but conditions weren't much better.

Which brings us to the question of how these 16 ended up buried atop an ancient pyramid. The Chinese community was — for the most part — not allowed to bury their dead in Peru's Catholic cemeteries. They had to look elsewhere, and this particular group looked to the past.

Pyramids are incredibly impressive burial places for incredibly impressive people, and Science Alert says there are a few ways we know this, despite what certain "politicians" and nutty conspiracy theorists might think. One giveaway is the presence of burial chambers and, well, burials. It's a pretty good giveaway at that, but it makes the complete lack of any burial chambers in the pyramids of southern Egypt a little problematic.

According to LiveScience, a 2014 excavation found the 4,600-year-old step pyramid of Edfu had no burial chamber whatsoever. The Edfu pyramid is actually one of a set of seven pyramids scattered across southern Egypt. Six — including Edfu — are weirdly identical, and before you go all conspiracy theory on us, archaeologists think it's simply proof there was a widespread, sprawling construction plan. Since they weren't used for burials, they clearly had some other purpose that made it worth the hassle of building, and excavations found a few other clues, like food offerings and child burials.

It's now believed these smaller provincial pyramids were essentially monuments built to remind people they lived under the watchful eye of the pharaoh. The food offerings were left to him but the child burials came later, as the building of Khufu's Great Pyramid seemed to render these obsolete. That happened only about 50 years after they were completed, which must have peeved the heck out of the builders.

There's plenty we don't know about our ancient ancestors, and it's easy to turn them into distant, enigmatic figures. But deep down, they were people just like us.

According to Nova, Egyptologists have found traces left behind by the builders of the pyramid at Giza in the form of ancient graffiti. It's a very human thing to want to leave your name somewhere prominent, to make your little mark on the world. This ancient writing was left in red paint and included the names that pyramid work crews gave themselves. Names like "The Friends of Khufu Gang" and "The Drunkards of Menkaure" were scrawled on some of the giant stone blocks, which doesn't really mesh with the idea that slaves were forced to labor away on the pyramids.

Other graffiti has been found etched into the pyramids, too, and most of it dates from Imperial Rome. According to Slate, the Romans viewed the pyramids as a sort of guestbook they needed to sign while on holiday. Our favorite piece of wisdom came from a Roman tourist scrawling a bit of ancient pop culture onto one of the Great Wonders of the World. He or she etched, "I looked, I investigated, I arrived, I marveled."

Anyone who went through that phase of wanting to be an archaeologist because of Indiana Jones was probably reminded — on countless occasions — that it's not really like that at all. But sometimes, it totally is.

When Khufu's Great Pyramid was built, the architects knew it was going to be a target for tomb raiders. So, they built what Egyptologist Mark Lehner calls (via LiveScience) "a very primitive machine" to act as a sort of security system. After Khufu's remains were placed in his burial chamber, the chamber could be secured with the release of three giants slabs of rock that would slide down carved grooves and block the entrance to the chamber. Then, they could release three more giant stone blocks that would block the entrance to the tunnel, preventing access to the inner sanctum and Khufu himself.

Did it work? Actually, no one knows. When the King's Chamber was excavated, archaeologists found a red granite sarcophagus. It was empty, though, so maybe the security system didn't work. Some think the sarcophagus was just another part of the security system: a decoy. If Khufu's remains are still in the pyramid, they must be quite well secured. All right, Indy. Archaeology is awesome.

The Egyptians' infatuation with cats is legendary: The old joke goes that cats have never forgotten their sacred status. (But hopefully they've forgotten they used to be born, bred, and strangled by priests solely for mummification — probably, says National Geographic.) But other animals have been found, too.

National Geographic reports archaeologists have recovered mummified rams and gazelles, shrews, ibises, dogs, entire bulls, and even scarab beetles with their own little dung balls. Kings and queens were often buried with their most cherished pets, which were likely killed for this purpose if their owner died. Now that science has made some major advances with scanning technology, the BBC says they've been able to peek inside some of the mummies. Crocodiles in particular have been found wrapped with tiny crocodile babies, which would be adorable if it weren't so dark.

Egyptian pyramids aren't the only ones that have yielded animal remains. According to IFL Science, big carnivores like wolves and pumas have been uncovered in the Moon and Sun pyramids in Mexico. Many of the bones bore signs of abuse, and when scientists examined those bones to see what they were being fed, they concluded the animals were probably being fed dogs and people. So there's another time and place future time travelers should just skip.