An atlas that shows its evidence.

There are two kinds of books about ancient mysteries. One prints every legend as fact. The other leaves out anything that has not been settled. Both are unsatisfying, because the interesting part is precisely the gap: the thing that was built, the thing we can measure, and the thing nobody can yet explain.

So each entry here carries three layers. What is documented — coordinates, period, culture, excavation status, dimensions, UNESCO inscription. What is open — the questions archaeologists still argue about. And what people claim — including claims the field has rejected, kept in the atlas and labeled as such rather than quietly deleted.

Around that record sits an atlas you can actually use: a live map of every place, filters by kind, country, period and confidence, and a community that keeps lists, writes reviews from the ground, and argues about interpretations in the open.

The catalogue is built from MysteriaData, an open dataset of archaeological and contested sites compiled from published excavation reports, museum and national heritage registers, the UNESCO World Heritage List, and the peer-reviewed literature cited on each page. It is released under CC BY-SA 4.0 — you may reuse it, including commercially, if you credit Mysteria and share your derivative under the same licence.

4,496

Places catalogued

10,680

Mapped sub-features

3,479

Credited photographs

13,543

References & sources

How a record is kept current

Imports are idempotent. Every place has a permanent internal id, so re-importing the dataset updates the record in place rather than creating a second one; renamed entries keep their old URLs as aliases, and anything an editor has corrected by hand survives the next import. Near-identical entries within two kilometres of each other are merged, with the weaker record redirected to the stronger one. Places removed upstream are marked rather than deleted.

Records vary in depth. A full entry has a long description, sourced history and photographs; a stub is a real place we have little to say about yet. Both are labeled, and nothing is padded with invented detail.

Every place carries a seal — on its card, its map pin and its page — describing how strongly the evidence supports what is claimed about it. The seal is about the claim, not about how interesting the place is. A stone circle whose date is settled and a submerged formation whose very artificiality is disputed both belong here; they simply carry different seals.

1. ✓

   Verified

   4,121 places

   Peer-reviewed consensus: inscribed, extensively excavated, dating corroborated.

2. ≈

   Widely accepted

   192 places

   Broad scholarly acceptance with minor debate on details.

3. ?

   Contested

   43 places

   Active scholarly dispute on authenticity, date, or interpretation.

4. ◌

   Hypothetical

   74 places

   Plausible but insufficient published evidence; often known from remote sensing or legend.

5. ·

   Unverified

   0 places

   Claimed but lacking peer-reviewed field verification.

6. ✕

   Pseudoarchaeology

   66 places

   Claims rejected by the scholarly community; included and labeled, never hidden.

Seals are assigned from the state of the published literature and reviewed by editors, not by vote. When a place moves between levels — as excavation, dating or a new survey settles a question — the change is recorded in its history. If you think a seal is wrong, say so on the place’s discussion tab with the citation that proves it.

Mysteria is assembled from open material, and every layer keeps its own licence. The short version: the record is share-alike, the photographs belong to the people who took them, and the map belongs to OpenStreetMap.

Are you the rights-holder of a photograph you would rather not see here? Tell us and it comes down the same day — see below.

This atlas is wrong somewhere right now — a date, a coordinate, a seal, a photograph of the wrong hill. Corrections are the most useful thing you can send.

• A specific place is wrong

  Open its page and use the discussion tab, or flag the entry. Include the source that settles it.

  Find the place

• You have a source we are missing

  Submit a paper, book, documentary or news story and we will attach it to the places it covers.

  Submit a resource

• Licensing, takedowns, press

  Email hello@mysteria.co. Rights-holder requests are handled first.

  Email us