Original subtitles

Researchers working in northeastern Siberia

make a grim discovery.

They unearth the partial skeleton of a man buried in a grave

no more than 14 inches deep.

They found several arrowheads, a decayed bow,

and pottery fragments.

The careful arrangement of everything with the body

indicates this wasn't a common burial.

This was someone important to the community. But who was he?

And why was he so special?

A team of archaeologists excavating a cave

in Australia's Blue Mountains uncover a remarkable find.

Embedded in the sediment, they uncover fragments of claystone

and quartz, with shapes and edges too precise to be natural.

These appear to be the signs of ancient tool making.

And then on the back wall, they notice faded rock art.

There are also child-sized hand stencils and two forearm prints.

All of these findings point to human presence.

But for what purpose? And what was this place?

A catastrophic landslide is triggered high in the Swiss Alps.

Ice, mud, and debris came hurling down the mountain,

burying the village.

The village that stood for centuries was gone in an instant.

It was a disaster on a scale no one had ever seen before.

So what happened?

How could a village that survived for centuries

be obliterated so quickly?

These are the strangest mysteries

trapped in the coldest places.

Lost relics.

Forgotten treasures.

Dark secrets.

Locked in their icy tombs for ages.

But now, as ice melts around the world,

their stories will finally be exposed.

In northeast Siberia, the Sakha Republic,

also known as Yakutia,

stretches across nearly 1.2 million square miles of frozen wilderness.

Just over 80 miles east of its capital, Yakutsk,

lies the remote Kerdugan region.

This is one of the coldest inhabited places on Earth.

Winter temperatures here can plunge below -50 degrees fahrenheit.

The land is mostly tundra and low hills,

underlain by ground that remains frozen year-round.

Since Neolithic times, nomadic hunters and reindeer herders

like the Evenki people have roamed through this frigid wilderness.

Between the 9th and 16th centuries, Turkic-speaking people

came from Lake Baikal.

They joined with some of the Evenki and other local groups

to form the Sakha, or the Yakuts.

They're now the largest indigenous group in the region.

Historically, this area was sparsely populated.

It mainly served as a seasonal route for nomadic hunters

and herders who followed migrating wildlife and thawing rivers.

Even though people had lived and travelled here

for thousands of years,

the region received little archaeological attention

until the early 2000s.

In the summer of 2004,

a team of researchers arrives to conduct a field survey

of the area and discovers something unusual.

They unearthed the partial skeleton of a man

buried in a grave no more than 14 inches deep.

The frozen ground halted decay,

keeping the remains in excellent condition.

Alongside the skeleton, they found several arrowheads,

a decayed bow, and pottery fragments.

They also found animal bowed plates, possibly from elk,

lying directly on top of the remains.

The plates appear to be shaped for a specific purpose,

perhaps even armour, but it's difficult to say for certain.

The presence of grave goods and the careful arrangement

of everything with the body indicate this wasn't a common burial.

This was someone important to the community. But who was he?

And why was he so special?

As the excavation continues,

the archaeologists make a surprising discovery.

Whoever this man is, he wasn't buried here alone.

Inside the shallow grave,

the remains of another individual were found.

While it might seem strange to us,

ancient double burials were not uncommon in this part of the world.

Perhaps they were related. Maybe even husband and wife.

In 2006,

approximately 1,700 miles west in the Novosibirsk region,

researchers uncovered more than 600 Bronze Age tombs,

many linked to the Andronova culture,

a group that lived across southern Siberia and Central Asia

during the second millennium BCE.

The Andronovo were mobile herders;

their burials often included carts,

livestock, and weapons as signs of status.

Some graves contained two adults buried facing each other,

and a few even had their hands clasped together.

It's believed that these pairs could be husbands and wives.

But the burial at Kerdugan doesn't follow this same pattern.

One skeleton appears to be

respectfully positioned and honoured.

The other is a pile of jumbled bones,

almost as if the individual was discarded.

This is likely not a loving couple buried together for eternity.

Radiocarbon dating places the burial at about 2000 BCE,

during the late Neolithic period.

From around 2200 to 1300 BCE,

nomadic groups like the Ymyyakhtakh people

flourished across Siberia.

This mystery man almost certainly belonged to one of them.

The Ymyyakhtakh were masters of survival

in the extreme Siberian climate.

Long before the introduction of agriculture to the region,

they roamed expansive landscapes, hunting reindeer,

fishing in icy waters, and engaging in trade with other cultures.

Their toolkits were impressive.

They included bone and stone tools along with harpoons.

The Ymyyakhtakh also made pottery with waffle-like patterns.

Their skill and adaptability helped them endure

in one of the world's toughest places to survive.

The Ymyyakhtakh were connected to extensive trade networks

that spanned across Siberia,

with evidence pointing to interactions as far away

as what we now know today to be Scandinavia.

Tests confirmed that the bone plates from the grave

were made from elk, most likely Altai Wapiti,

a subspecies native to the region.

In ancient hunting and herding cultures such as the Ymyyakhtakh,

elk were seen as spiritual protectors

and symbols of transformation.

Their bones were often used in rituals.

So maybe the bone plates weren't for protective armour,

but part of something ceremonial.

In 2014, over 2,000 miles to the southwest,

near the city of Omsk, Siberia,

archaeologists found a complete suit of bone armour

dating back about 3,900 years.

It was buried in the ground by itself,

and there was no person or object anywhere near it,

which made it a very strange find, and the reason remains unclear,

although some believe it could have been a ritual offering.

Whether the plates at the Kerdugan site were for protection,

decoration, or part of a ritual is open for debate at this point.

But this discovery near Omsk certainly lends credence

to the idea that they were ceremonial.

As the archaeologists re-examine the Kerdugan burial,

they noticed something strange.

There is charring and evidence of a fire underneath

the first man's skull,

as if a fire had been lit directly beneath his head.

In traditional Siberian shamanism,

the head was believed to hold the soul,

so burning the head could release their spirit

and send it safely to the next world.

Shamans were believed to hold powerful roles

in early Siberian cultures;

they guided rituals, communicated with spirits,

and were highly respected by their communities.

So could the main individual in this grave have been a shaman

or a spiritual leader?

And if so, maybe the pile of bones beside him

was a sacrifice companion buried with him to serve in the afterlife,

and there is precedent for this kind of burial ritual.

To the south of Kerdugan,

approximately 1,300 miles away in Tuva, Siberia,

archaeologists uncovered a 2,800-year-old grave

that held a high-status individual

buried with horses and at least one sacrificed human.

This grave contains 18 horses arranged in a ceremonial formation

alongside the remains of a woman who was likely sacrificed.

Some of the artifacts found include decorated horse gear,

a bronze knife, and arrowheads,

highlighting the elite status of whoever was buried here.

The burial mound, or Kurgan, is located in an area

known as the "Siberian Valley of the Kings."

It's a valley filled with thousands of similar mounds,

many of which are full of treasures thought to belong to royalty.

The key difference is that the grave at Kerdugan is solitary,

with nothing else around it.

Since most burials from this period show some link

to a group or community,

you have to wonder what that says about the level of honour

the man in the grave really had or if he had any at all.

This shallow grave might even suggest something darker.

Perhaps it indicates a quick burial for someone dangerous,

like a rival chief or outlaw

buried with his accomplice or devoted follower.

But this theory doesn't quite hold up.

Someone took remarkable care with his burial

and with the placement of the bone plates.

If it were an individual who had been cast out,

his possessions wouldn't have been placed in the grave with him.

Through further analysis of the bones,

the archaeologists gain more insight

into the man in the grave's identity.

He was between 40 and 50 years old when he died,

which is remarkable for the late Stone Age,

since many didn't make it past 30.

He also had several heeled fractures in his forearm and leg,

and there was noticeable wear in the shoulder and elbow

from repeated use.

Given these injuries, which were probably from battle,

and the presence of a bow, arrowheads, and possible armour

in the form of the bone plates,

maybe he was a skilled and respected warrior.

When archaeologists examine the evidence more closely,

they discover startling new information

that may confirm this theory.

There are fragments of arrowheads lodged in six of the bone plates.

This was significant; it proves the plates weren't ceremonial,

but part of a shield that had been battle-tested

and protected its wearer from attack.

The analysis also reveals the details of his shield.

It was massive, built from more than a hundred individual plates,

forming a nearly impenetrable barrier.

Based on all the evidence,

the most likely conclusion is that the man in the shallow grave

was an important and respected warrior.

But that still doesn't tell us who the other person was.

Bone analysis shows the second skeleton is also male,

and radiocarbon dating confirms the two were buried

around the same time.

If the first individual was a prominent warrior,

could the second man have been an enemy, or perhaps his victim?

That's unlikely because in ancient Siberia,

it was unheard of to bury a respected person with their foe.

People believed an unwelcome spirit nearby could interfere

with the soul's journey to the afterlife,

it just wasn't something they did.

The most probable scenario is that he was a servant

who was dismembered after death as part of a burial ritual

to serve his warrior master in the afterlife.

In 2023, researchers applied cutting-edge forensic

and modelling techniques to the Kerdugan warrior.

Two years later, the team unveiled a remarkable reconstruction,

allowing us to see an honoured Ymyyakhtakh warrior

from 4,000 years ago as he once was.

In the southwest of Switzerland lies Valais,

a stunning region in the Alps, covering over 2,000 square miles.

This area is home to some of the country's tallest peaks,

including the iconic Matterhorn.

It's also home to the largest concentration of glaciers

found anywhere in the Alps,

and it's like that because the slopes are so steep.

That means that more avalanches happen and that packs

the snow into ice.

There's also the high elevation that keeps things cold,

and tons of precipitation from November to April.

So this place is basically a glacier factory.

The remote Lichental Valley sits at over 5,000 feet,

tucked away in this landscape.

A network of glaciers, including the Birch Glacier,

stretches above a series of small villages that dot the mountainsides.

One of these villages is called Blatten.

With only 300 residents,

it has a long alpine farming heritage,

especially in cattle and cheese production.

The community is known for its distinctive wooden houses,

and tourism here is on the rise,

attracting visitors with scenic trails and quiet charm.

In May 2025,

life in this tight-neck community had been moving ahead

peacefully as always,

when suddenly, everything changes...

A roaring avalanche of ice, mud, and debris came hurling down

the mountain, burying the village.

Homes, churches, schools,

almost all reduced to rubble.

The residents and their livestock made it out safely,

but the village that stood for centuries was gone in an instant.

Debris from the Birch glacier quickly blocked the Lonza River.

That created a dam.

Water started building up behind it,

flooding what was left of the village,

and threatening nearby communities.

Large landslides and avalanches are common in the Alps.

They usually follow predictable paths down the mountains,

and the trajectories are mapped to help Alpine communities

understand the risks.

Blatten was considered safe because it wasn't in a high-danger zone.

But this event was completely different;

nine to ten million tons of rock and ice came crashing down

with staggering force,

it was a disaster on a scale no one had ever seen before.

So what happened?

How could a village that survived for centuries

be obliterated so quickly?

Scientists immediately start searching for answers,

beginning with the most likely possibility.

The Valais region is Switzerland's most seismically active area.

It sits on active fault lines

where African and European tectonic plates are slowly colliding,

and earthquakes are always a concern.

Seismologists here record about 270 minor quakes every year

and anticipate a major earthquake roughly once a century.

Earthquakes are notorious for triggering landslides

in mountainous regions.

The sudden shaking of the ground can destabilise rock formations

and ice, weakening the bonds between them.

Two weeks before the disaster,

researchers detected unusual seismic signatures

around Klein Nesthorn;

that's this towering peak right beside the glacier.

Now the whole area was showing signs of instability,

and that got the authorities worried enough that they evacuated Blatten

just as a precaution.

So could seismic activity have played a role in this landslide?

In October of 2016,

a series of earthquakes struck central Italy

between the Marche and Umbria regions.

The third quake on October 30th was the largest to hit Italy

since the 1980 Irpinia earthquake, 36 years earlier.

Like the Valais region in Switzerland,

Italy lies on the collision border of the Eurasian Tectonic Plate

and the African Tectonic Plate,

plus, two major fault lines run through the country.

You've got a north-south fault and you've got an east-west fault.

And so the land is just being pulled and pushed in a whole bunch

of different directions and that causes pressure to build up

along those fault lines.

And when that's released, it causes earthquakes,

which, in turn, can trigger these highly destructive landslides.

The October 2016 earthquakes in central Italy

caused over 1,300 landslides,

which blocked roads and hindered rescue efforts,

primarily in mountainous areas.

A significant slide in the Nera river gorge

blocked a major road and dammed the river,

creating a temporary lake.

Similar to what happened when the debris

from the Birch glacier blocked the Lonza River.

As scientists analyse seismic data from the region,

something catches their attention.

Around the time leading up to the glacier avalanche,

seismometers detected some tremor activity

with readings from as far as 62 miles away.

And then on May 28th, the day of the disaster,

at exactly 3:24 p.m.,

seismic monitoring stations recorded an earthquake

with a magnitude of 3.1.

Initially, this seemed to support the idea that a quake or tremor

could have led to the glacier avalanche,

the timing lined up perfectly.

But the seismic wave started at the surface,

not deep underground like they do for a normal earthquake.

The massive impact of 9-10 million tons of rock and ice

smashing into the valley floor

was enough to register as seismic activity

on monitoring stations all across Switzerland.

So instead of an earthquake causing a disaster,

this was kind of the other way around.

It was a landslide that caused an earthquake.

With an earthquake no longer a possibility,

researchers still have a mystery on their hands.

A look into Europe's turbulent past may provide some answers.

During World War II, Switzerland was surrounded by danger.

Fearing a Nazi invasion,

the armed forces built a secret network of bunkers

and underground depots in the Alps for ammunition and defence.

If the Nazis attacked, Swiss soldiers would retreat

to mountain hideaways, where they would be armed and ready.

One of these munitions depots was built inside the cliffs

above Mitholz,

a small village about 18 miles from Blatten.

And in 1947, a series of explosions tore through the depot.

The blast levelled the village and killed nine people.

After rebuilding, thousands of tons of ammunition stayed buried

deep in the mountain above Mitholz.

So could a hidden explosion have set off the Birch glacier collapse?

That seems unlikely.

The Swiss Defence Ministry keeps a constant watch

on the munitions depot and the mountains around it.

The government is preparing to clear out all the munitions

by 2030, and safety is a priority.

If anything unusual had happened at the stockpile or nearby,

it would have been detected immediately.

There must be another explanation.

In July 2022,

Italy's Marmoloda glacier suddenly broke apart,

killing 11 mountaineers.

The collapse sent 64,000 tons of ice, water, and rock debris

down the mountain in seconds.

Throughout that spring,

warm temperatures caused large amounts of meltwater

to accumulate in deep crevices with nowhere to drain.

On July 3rd, the pressure built up until 70,000 cubic metres of ice

essentially exploded, registering seismic activity

equivalent to a small 0.6-magnitude quake.

Maybe an event like this caused the disaster at Blatten?

It's possible. The Birch glacier was expanding,

not shrinking like most other glaciers,

so it might have been building up internal water pockets

for melting ice that had no way to drain out.

Maybe a rock fall hit the ice, punctured it, and then boom,

you just had this massive explosive release all at once,

sending tons of ice and rock and water and debris

hurtling into the valley.

But the ground surveys of the Birch glacier

found no sign of any large internal chambers,

and there's just no evidence that a water pocket exploded.

Trying to solve the mystery,

scientists began combing through a combination of satellite imagery,

drone footage, and field reports

from the days leading up to the collapse.

What they discovered is unsettled.

For years, something had been happening on Kleines Nesthorn,

the mountain right next to Birch glacier.

This unique peak has always had unstable rock layers.

But as the permafrost holding these rocks together

has started melting in recent years,

everything has become much more dangerous.

In the weeks before the disaster,

there was a whole series of large rockfalls from Klein Nesthorn.

Those showered the glacier in debris.

It was up to 260 feet thick in some places,

building up and building up.

And then finally, on May 28th, at 3:24 p.m.,

the glacier gave way.

This huge chunk broke off the mountain

and just came tumbling straight into the valley below.

It blotted out Blatten Village and it blocked the Lonza River.

It's known as a cascading disaster.

The mountain's geological instability,

accelerated by permafrost melting,

led to rockfalls which overloaded the glacier,

triggering the collapse.

The debris field stretched almost a mile and a quarter

and was nearly 330 feet thick.

The river blockage created a new lake

that's still rising today,

and the whole valley landscape has been permanently changed.

After what happened at Blatten,

scientists are now watching other glaciers across the region,

looking for the same warning signs.

Because the question isn't if another collapse will happen,

but where and when.

Just two hours outside of Sydney, Australia,

the dramatic Blue Mountains rise to nearly 4,000 feet.

The soaring sandstone cliffs and vast eucalyptus forests

create a stunning and mysterious landscape.

The region is home to several Aboriginal communities,

including the Gundungurra and Dharug peoples.

Each has its own distinct language, rich culture,

and deep ancestral ties to the land.

The Blue Mountains are a World Heritage Site

recognised for their natural beauty and biodiversity.

But winters at the higher elevations can be quite cold.

Temperatures often drop below freezing, snow piles up,

and winds are known to howl at over 60 miles an hour.

Through the ages, a powerful combination of water and ice

and intense weather has shaped this whole area,

carving deep valleys and grooves right into the mountains.

And among those is a remote cave set into a sandstone cliff

at 3,500 feet, it's called "Dargan Shelter."

The shelter itself is massive.

It extends back over 60 feet.

The walls rise more than 80 feet high and stretch 72 feet wide.

It looks almost like a natural amphitheatre,

large enough to hold hundreds of people.

In 2022,

a joint team of archaeologists and First Nations community members

are excavating a cave when they make a stunning discovery.

Embedded in the sediment,

they uncover fragments of claystone and quartz,

with shapes and edges too precise to be natural.

These stone flakes appear to be the signs of ancient toolmaking.

And then on the back wall they notice faded rock art,

mostly markings with lines and dots.

There are also child-sized hand stencils

and two forearm prints created with red ochre pigment.

They can't be certain exactly when they were made,

but it seems the art dates back to ancient times.

All of these findings point to human presence, but for what purpose?

And what was this place?

Roughly 55 miles southeast of Dargan Shelter,

tucked into a jagged cliff face near Glenbrook,

lies another rock shelter called "Red Hands Cave."

In the early 1900s, archaeologists uncovered

more than 40 handprints here,

outlined in vivid red, white, and yellow ochre.

These were made by the Dharug people between 500 and 1,600 years ago.

They created them using a mixture of ochre pigment and water,

or animal fat, then blowing over hands pressed against the rock.

Many are child-sized handprints alongside those of adults.

This site is believed to have been a place for ceremonial

rites of passage where young people interacted with elders.

So maybe that's what Dargan was as well.

A special sacred site where children and elders left their marks

during important religious or spiritual rituals.

But if that was its main purpose,

we'd expect to find more ritual features.

There would be more sacred objects or defined spaces for ceremony.

But those things aren't found here.

Still searching for answers,

the team continues to carefully examine the shelter.

Throughout the cave, they find ancient hearths,

some still holding charcoal and ash.

Just clear evidence of fire use, probably for warmth and cooking.

They also uncover a strange sandstone slab,

roughly the size of a dinner plate.

It has deep parallel grooves running through the length of its surface.

Marks like these are made from repeatedly sharpening bone or wood

into pointed objects like needles, cutting blades, or even spears.

The location itself makes sense for hunting.

The Blue Mountains have always been rich with wildlife;

wallabies, wombats, and echidnas.

A shelter this high on the slope would offer protection

from the wind and cold and a clear view down into the valleys.

From up here, people could track animal movements from miles away.

So maybe Dargan Shelter was once a hunting base

where ancient humans prepared for the hunt and processed their kills?

In 2006,

approximately 30 miles west of Prague in the Czech Republic,

archaeologists began excavating a significant Ice Age site

known as "Lubna VI."

Over the years, it has been the focus of several excavations,

but in 2018, one dig revealed some surprising finds.

They found hundreds of stone tool fragments and two hearths,

similar to the discoveries at Dargan Shelter.

There were animal bones too from at least seven reindeer

and a bunch of other species.

And radiocarbon dating confirmed that this site was used

around 27,000 years ago.

When they looked at the tools,

they found materials that had been sourced from at least 90 miles away,

which suggests people were traveling here

probably seasonally

and they were using their weapons and tools to process meat and hides.

But Dargan doesn't match this pattern;

there are no animal bones or butchery debris,

and the tools don't really point to hunting as the main activity.

So there has to be another explanation.

When the radiocarbon dating and stone sourcing results

come in from the site, they reveal something remarkable.

People were using Dargan shelter from around 20,000 years ago

right up until about 400 years ago.

That makes it one of the oldest known sites

of continuous human activity in the Blue Mountains.

The soil layers also show that the highest concentration

of tools and hearths was between 16 to 18,000 years ago,

that's the middle of the ice age.

Temperatures then were frigid with fewer trees

and a much drier climate,

meaning that people had to be incredibly resourceful

to survive in these mountains.

As the team looks again through the layers of sediment,

one object catches their attention.

They find a basalt anvil;

it's made from a split river pebble

and the surface shows a distinct subcircular patch with impact marks.

That kind of wear matches what we see when people cracked

hard woody nut and seed shells.

So this suggests that they were processing food,

maybe people were living here permanently,

but the question is, why here?

Maybe the cave provided a temporary refuge

for people who want to get away from more difficult conditions elsewhere.

There could have been social reasons like increased population,

resulting in competition for resources

with other groups or regional conflicts.

Or there could have been environmental concerns,

making the shelter a more stable,

predictable alternative place to live, even if only temporarily.

In 2019, a team from

the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing,

discovered a site on the southern Tibetan Plateau

in the Yarlung Tsangpo River Valley,

over 12,000 feet above sea level,

where numerous artifacts showing human habitation were unearthed.

Radiocarbon dating of the bones and the charcoal from that site

reveal three different periods where humans live there.

They span about 29,000 to 23,000 years ago,

but two of those periods coincide with the last glacial maximum,

that is the harshest phase of the late Pleistocene Ice Age.

That is a time when most of the Earth's surface

was covered in ice.

The Tibetan Plateau was previously thought to be uninhabitable

during the last glacial maximum,

but this discovery proved otherwise.

It's thought that the river valley had more moisture than elsewhere

during the dry ice age in Tibet,

and this allowed cold-tolerant plants and herbivores to persist.

So people may have migrated to more viable microclimates,

even in high-altitude regions as refuges

from even more extreme conditions.

Maybe this also happened at the Dargan Shelter.

The thing is, there's no direct archaeological evidence

that environmental pressures would have made anyone have to retreat.

Also, how could conditions elsewhere have been any worse

than this treeless, high-altitude, glacial landscape?

It just sort of doesn't add up.

Closer analysis of the stone tools

shows something unexpected.

While most of the stone flakes and tools were crafted from local rock,

others came from far away.

Some of the tools came from the "Hunter Valley"

90 miles to the north,

others trace to the Jenolan Caves about 30 miles south.

So this means people were carrying these materials over long distances

across tough ice age terrain.

With this final piece of evidence, I think we can be pretty confident

that Dargan Shelter served as a reliable and secure waypoint

along high mountain routes for the ancient people

who once called Australia home.

For years it was assumed these high mountain zones

were just too harsh and too extreme for human survival during that time.

But people were coming here repeatedly

and using the site successfully for thousands of years.

For local First Nations communities,

the archaeological findings confirm what their oral traditions

have always described.

That their ancestors gathered in these mountains

for thousands and thousands of years.

They're now working to protect Dargan Shelter

for future generations.

A thousand miles northeast of New York City,

perched above the frigid waters of the Atlantic Ocean,

sits the province of Newfoundland, Canada.

Tucked away along the rugged coastline of the province,

Placentia Bay is a quaint and peaceful area

known for its natural beauty.

The region is home to stunning public beaches

and charming coastal communities like Ship Harbor,

Gooseberry Cove, and Patrick's Cove,

popular destinations for both locals and tourists.

Offshore, the waters are bustling with industrial activity.

Placentia Bay is just north of major transatlantic shipping lanes

that link North America to Europe.

The maritime coast is also home to significant infrastructure

for the province's oil and gas industry.

But make no mistake, it is cold out there on the water.

You can see giant icebergs from the shore in late spring,

even early summer,

and that freezing cold water hovers around freezing

for most of the year and then warms up all the way

to like 50 degrees fahrenheit in the summer.

It's still way too cold.

In the fall of 2024,

residents of Placentia Bay noticed something unusual

washing up along the shore.

Strange white masses were spotted on the beach

that were described as lumpy gelatinous goop.

They were a white or off-white colour,

the exterior was slimy and dented,

while the inside was firm, squishy, and rubbery.

Some characterised them as looking like an overworked ball

of bread dough or "a blob of glue."

But the most common comparison was to "toutons,"

a traditional Newfoundland pan-fried dough.

And just like the popular breakfast dish,

the "blobs" weren't uniform in size.

Samples were collected,

and it was determined that the material was solid

and didn't have any pores.

But they were covered in sand, pebbles, and seaweed,

and some had strands of algae firmly embedded within the structure.

What's weird is that some of these have impressions

of the seabed on the bottom,

which suggests that this substance was in a liquid state

when it settled on the ocean floor, and then it solidified,

picking up a bunch of debris when it did that.

That's super weird. What are these things?

In November of 1990,

almost 3,500 miles away on the other side of the continent,

something quite puzzling was discovered on the coastlines

of the Pacific Ocean.

Reports surfaced of shoes washing ashore in northern Washington State.

And we're not talking about a single shoe or even a pair:

200 sneakers were discovered, and it doesn't end there.

A few months later, beachcombers in Canada discovered

hundreds more just north of Vancouver Island.

Six months earlier, a container ship was en route

from Korea to the United States

when it was hit by a storm just south of the Alaska Peninsula.

As a result, 21 40-foot containers were swept overboard,

five of which were carrying 60,000 Nike shoes.

And even a year later, shoes were still being discovered

in South Oregon thanks to the changing ocean tides.

Placentia Bay is located just north of a major shipping route,

so could the Newfoundland blobs also be the result

of some kind of container ship spill?

And if it were a spill, what exactly fell off the ship?

As word of the Newfoundland blobs began to spread,

a cleanup crew in the neighbouring province of Nova Scotia

reported finding intact bags of instant biscuit mix

washed up on the beach.

Yes, that's the powdery substance that turns into biscuits

when you just add water.

Remember, these blobs were originally compared

to the texture of dough.

So maybe a shipping container full of biscuit mix

could have fallen overboard somewhere close by.

I mean it does sound ridiculous, but could have happened.

This theory was put to the test with a very scientific experiment,

they dumped baking mix into the ocean

to see if similar white blobs formed.

The results of the test were never released to the public,

but I would hazard a guess that the Atlantic Ocean

didn't produce "Blob biscuits."

This rather strange theory was further refuted

when analysis found no evidence of plant material in the blobs.

These aren't the first blobs

to wash ashore in Newfoundland.

Less than a hundred miles away on the other side of the peninsula

in Fortune Bay, another blob was discovered in 2001,

but it was much bigger.

A mysterious, foul-smelling, large white mass,

measuring about 18 feet long, washed up on the beach,

and locals dubbed it the "Blobster."

As for what it might be, residents immediately jumped

to the conclusion that it's a sea monster of some kind.

When they looked more closely, the surface of the "Blobster"

appeared to be rough with material that kind of looked like hair.

And it turned out that it was worn-out animal tissues

mixed with seaweed and sand.

There were no bones, but there were seven or eight cuts on one side,

and there was some cartilage.

DNA tests proved unsurprisingly

that the "Blobster" wasn't a sea monster.

It was the remnants of a decomposed sperm whale,

which are common in the waters off the southern shore of Newfoundland.

So is it possible that the white blobs littering the shore

in Newfoundland are parts of a decomposed whale

or another sea creature?

That's not likely because the blobs don't appear to be made

of biological material.

However, they do have a very strong odour

that was described as "plasticky" or a solvent-like scent.

It's a strange observation for something coming from the ocean.

In 2017, just over 3,000 miles away on the coast of Italy,

mysterious yellow, lumpy masses started washing ashore

in the Liguria and Corsica regions.

It turns out the Ligurian Sea was littered with them.

Over 700 pounds were recovered from the water,

and as much as double that amount was recovered along

over 100 miles of coastline in Tuscany.

The material was identified as microcrystalline wax.

That's a petroleum product that's used in products like candles.

Every year, large amounts of it are transported

all around the world on cargo ships.

And most of the time, it's shipped in liquid form,

so it needs to be kept above its melting point.

And to keep it at the right temperature,

the vessel's cargo holds have heating coils installed.

But after unloading the wax, some of it can remain at the bottom

of cargo tanks and crystallize.

It's believed the lumps found in Italy were from manually

washing out the cargo tanks while at sea.

So is it possible that something similar happened

off the coast of Newfoundland?

Samples of the blobs are sent for lab analysis

in the hopes of putting the mystery to rest.

They're identified as a butylene rubber PVA composite,

a substance most commonly found in adhesives like glue

and certain nail polish coatings.

But it's also used to clear seawater out of oil pipelines

and offshore rigs before they get filled with oil.

The pipe cleaner is actually affectionately known as

"Seal Pup" because of its white blob-like appearance.

The academic consensus is that the white blobs are a form of

industrial pollution from the oil and gas industry.

While the focus of the problem has been on the beaches,

who knows how much of it is still out there

in the frigid vastness of the North Atlantic.

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