Ancient Mysteries and the Art of Timeless Inspiration

 

There’s something intoxicating about the unsolved. The unanswered. The ancient. Whether it’s a weatherworn monument, a forgotten artifact, or a half-scorched scroll that no one can decipher, there’s a whisper of eternity behind every mystery the past has left us. And if you’re a writer—especially one prone to the delicious intoxication of story—those whispers are gold.

You see, most stories are built around questions. What if? Who did it? How could this be? What happens next? But sometimes, the best stories begin with a question no one has answered in real life. That’s where ancient mysteries come in. They’re like little narrative time bombs, ticking in the background of history, waiting for the right writer to come along and say, “I’ve got it. I know what really happened.”

Take the Baghdad Battery, for instance. Discovered in modern-day Iraq, this humble clay jar—housing a copper tube and an iron rod—dates back over two thousand years. Add vinegar or lemon juice, and presto: a mild electric current. Was it ancient electroplating technology? Some long-lost scientific experiment? Or just a fluke of construction mistaken for something more advanced? No one knows. But imagine the possibilities. A secret guild of Parthian engineers. An underground civilization with rudimentary electricity. Or maybe a lone inventor who stumbled onto something powerful—and paid the price. The beauty is, the real world doesn’t give us the answer. You, as the writer, get to decide what the truth might have been.

Then there's the Phaistos Disc, dug up on Crete in 1908. It’s a round clay tablet covered in mysterious symbols that no one has ever translated. Scholars have tried for over a century to decode it—some say it’s a prayer, others claim it’s a board game, or even a hoax. But to a fiction writer, it’s a portal. What if it’s a warning? A spell? Instructions to a weapon or device buried deep beneath the Aegean? Suddenly, the disc isn't a historical curiosity—it’s a plot driver. The kind of thing that turns up in Chapter Two and sends your protagonist on a race across Europe to stop an ancient horror from awakening.

What makes these real-life mysteries so compelling for writers is that they offer a perfect blend of grounding and freedom. They’re rooted in truth—or at least fact. There was a disc. There is a jar that produces electricity. Readers love this sort of stuff because it adds authenticity to your fiction. But the beauty is, since the truth remains elusive, you get to fill in the blanks. You get to be both archaeologist and dreamer.

I always say: if you’re ever stuck for an idea, pick a mystery from history and stare at it long enough. It’ll start to whisper back.

The Antikythera Mechanism is a classic. Salvaged from a sunken Greek shipwreck, this intricate clockwork device is over two thousand years old—and it’s an astronomical calculator so advanced, we didn’t build anything like it again for at least a millennium. No one’s entirely sure who made it, why it was on the ship, or how ancient minds could have conceived of such mechanical sophistication. Now, imagine a story where a modern-day engineer reconstructs it—and accidentally triggers a countdown. Or where it turns out the machine wasn’t designed for astronomy at all, but for navigating something far more dangerous—like a breach between worlds.

And we haven’t even touched lost cities yet. Atlantis, of course, is the poster child. But it’s not the only one. There’s Shambhala, hidden in the Himalayas. There’s Ubar, the “Atlantis of the Sands,” swallowed by the Arabian desert. And what about Nan Madol—an eerie city built on coral reefs off the coast of Micronesia, with massive stone structures no one can explain? These are ready-made settings for thrillers, horror, sci-fi, fantasy—whatever your heart desires. Writers from Lovecraft to Indiana Jones screenwriters have mined these places for their narrative power.

Because at the heart of it, we’re wired to respond to the unknowable. Ancient mysteries stir something primal in us. A fear of time, a fascination with the past, a deep-seated curiosity about what our ancestors knew—and what they maybe weren’t supposed to know.

Good fiction takes that curiosity and runs with it. It doesn’t need to be historically accurate. It just needs to feel possible. That’s why Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code worked so well. He took real art, real places, and real theological debates—and spun them into a modern thriller with ancient roots. Readers ate it up because it played on something real, then twisted it into a game of “what if?”

My own Heresy novel is based on the idea that the Christian resurrection could have been a stunt staged by the ancient Essenes, asking the question: if that was so, what does that mean today? Who might benefit from that knowledge?

But you don’t have to write thrillers to use this technique. Even literary fiction can benefit. Imagine a character obsessed with an unsolved historical enigma. Their journey to uncover it becomes a mirror of their own emotional arc. Or picture a romantic subplot blooming during a joint research expedition to a Mayan ruin with a cursed calendar. Ancient mystery, when done right, doesn’t box you in—it opens doors.

If you want to get started, just dive into the weird corners of history. Pick one mystery and go down the rabbit hole. Read the fringe theories. The skeptical takes. The archaeological reports. Then forget them all and ask: “What if the craziest version was the truth?” That’s where story lives.

Personally, I think the more outrageous the better. I once outlined a story where the Nazca Lines in Peru weren’t just ritual art—but a signal system built to control ancient bio-engineered monsters buried under the Andes. Did I write it? Not yet. But it lives in my idea vault, right next to the theory that Stonehenge is a harmonic amplifier for psychic energy.

Because here’s the thing: fiction is our way of answering the unanswerable. Of saying, “Maybe this is how it happened.” And when you base that fiction on an ancient mystery, you’re not just telling a story—you’re reclaiming a piece of history for your imagination. You’re breathing life back into questions the world gave up on.

So the next time your plot feels thin, or your characters uninspired, go looking for a mystery older than time. Chances are, it’s already been waiting for you.

And you’ll know when it starts to whisper.