The biggest 9/11 conspiracy theories debunked

It’s hard to ignore the increased occurrences of extreme weather as climate change continues wreaking havoc on the planet. Nonetheless, many natural disasters — like earthquakes, floods and volcanic eruptions — have helped archaeologists to make major breakthroughs, as new series Discovered By Disaster reveals. The show starts Monday, 2nd June at 10pm on Sky HISTORY.

Here are just four instances where Mother Earth’s destructive power has unraveled long-lingering historical mysteries.

1. Hurricane uncovers American Civil War shipwreck

It’s easy to overlook that the American Civil War of the 1860s wasn’t fought entirely on land. Some of the battles actually took place at sea.

At the same time, not all ships in the war were battleships. One good case in point is the Mary Celestia, a ‘blockade runner’. The Confederacy states used blockade runners to help maintain their Bermuda supply lines after the Union states imposed a naval blockade undermining the Confederacy.

The Mary Celestia was only about two years old when it sank in 1864, after striking a reef off the Bermudan coast. Today, the shipwreck site is often hit by hurricanes and storms.

In 2009, Hurricane Bill swept away sands previously concealing many deep-sea remnants of the Mary Celestia. Pieces rescued from the ship since then include wine bottles and a bottle of perfume from the now-defunct London brand Piesse & Lubin.

2. Drought exposes ancient city in Iraq

Climate change has exacerbated drought, with the Middle Eastern country of Iraq especially vulnerable. There has, though, been a silver lining for archaeologists, as drought was responsible for exposing a long-lost ancient city in northern Iraq.

In 2018, authorities alleviated perilously dry conditions by releasing water from the Mosul Dam. This move led an ancient palace to emerge from the Iraqi reservoir.

A team of German and Kurdish archaeologists didn’t wait to take advantage. Together, they came across several rooms and clay tablets. One of these tablets was inscribed with cuneiform writing indicating that the palace site dated to about 1800 BC.

But that’s not all! Ivana Puljiz of the Tübingen Institute for Ancient Near Eastern Studies explained: ‘We have also found remains of wall paintings in bright shades of red and blue.

‘In the second millennium (BC), murals were probably a typical feature of palaces in the Ancient Near East, but we rarely find them preserved.’

3. Medieval body unearthed by storms in Ireland

The small Irish town of Collooney in County Sligo doesn’t tend to see many earth-shaking developments. However, in the mid-2010s, storms gave locals a morbid surprise by uprooting not only a tree but also half of a medieval skeleton with it.

The beech tree had originally been planted just over two centuries prior. Whoever did plant it apparently didn’t realise that a corpse had been buried in a shallow grave on the same site about 800 years earlier.

When the tree was uprooted and fell on its side, the upper part of the skeleton was left tangled in the exposed roots. Meanwhile, the lower section — including leg bones — remained in the ground. Not that they stayed there for long.

Ireland’s National Monuments Service tasked the private consultancy Sligo-Leitrim Archaeological Services (SLAS) with excavating and analyzing the bones. The skeleton turned out to belong to a young man likely aged between 17 and 25 at the time of his death.

Radiocarbon analysis established that the body was buried at some point between 1030 and 1200 AD, a notoriously violent age. This revelation, combined with markings on the bones, suggested that the man was stabbed to death, in battle or a personal quarrel.

4. Old tribal village discovered in US after storm

The Makah are a tribe indigenous to the northwestern tip of the contiguous United States. However, the Makah people’s habitats have slightly shifted over the years.

For millennia, the Makah occupied the coastal village of Ozette in what is now Washington state. It is thought that at some point between about 1500 and 1700, a mudslide engulfed six of the village’s longhouses and their contents. In 1970, a storm triggered coastal erosion which, in turn, exposed much of the long-lost Ozette site.

This development sparked an ambitious archeological project aimed at uncovering centuries-old artefacts from the site. Today, hundreds of the subsequently unearthed pieces are on display at the Makah Cultural and Research Center in Neah Bay.

Even long before climate change became a mainstream concern, the weather has swayed many events that changed the course of history. By subscribing to the Sky HISTORY Newsletter, you can more easily discern the fascinating ‘domino effect’ of how one historical event leads to another.