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People

625 people in 95 mysteries

Researchers, witnesses, makers and the missing: everyone the mysteries' records name, with what they did in each.

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All A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V WXY Z#

M 57

M. C. A. MacdonaldEpigrapher (Oxford); classification of Arabian scripts

M. K. StalinChief Minister of Tamil Nadu; announced the prize

Magen BroshiCo-author of the 1990s radiocarbon series

Dead Sea Scrolls: dating, scribes and provenance

Magnus KällströmRunologist, Swedish National Heritage Board · born 1964

Kensington Runestone

Manfred KrebernikJena Assyriologist and the leading editor of Early Dynastic literary and incantation texts from Fara, Ebla and Abu Salabikh. · born 1953

Unread cuneiform: half a million tablets and the limits of Sumerian

Manuel Borraz AymerichCo-author of the 2020 FOTOCAT re-analysis of Bunnell's photographs; made its maps and simulations

Manuel Gómez-MorenoDeciphered the Palaeohispanic semi-syllabaries

Iberian language and Palaeohispanic scripts

Manuel MedranoSanta Valley decipherment; corpus-wide data science

Inka khipus: the knotted-cord records

Manuel MolinaCSIC Assyriologist who built and edits the Database of Neo-Sumerian Texts, the census of the Ur III corpus.

Unread cuneiform: half a million tablets and the limits of Sumerian

Marcelle Duchesne-GuilleminBelgian musicologist who proposed a melodic reading of h.6 (1975, 1980, 1984) and explained its repeated syllables by the tablet's spiral la

Hurrian songs of Ugarit

Marcia AscherMathematician; recorded and analysed khipus with Robert Ascher

Inka khipus: the knotted-cord records

Marco MerliniItalian researcher (Prehistory Knowledge Project, Institute of Archaeomythology) who built the DatDas databank of Danube script signs and re

Marco MicheliESA astronomer; led the measurement of the non-gravitational acceleration · born 1983

Marcus WannerSolver in the 2012 round, interviewed by Rolling Stone

Margherita GuarducciEpigraphist; editor of Inscriptiones Creticae, including the Praisos texts · 1902–1999

Maria ReicheMathematician; documented and protected the lines, proposed the calendar reading · 1903–1998

Marija GimbutasLithuanian-American archaeologist who proposed the "Old European script" as the sacred writing of a goddess-centred Neolithic Europe · 1921–

Mario RennerOne of the two looters

Mark BosloughAirburst physicist; co-author of the refutation and PubPeer critic of the 2025 papers

Younger Dryas impact hypothesis

Mark HortonBritish archaeologist; leads the Hatteras excavations

Lost Colony of Roanoke

Mark LehnerField director of the ARCE Sphinx Project; author of the 1991 dissertation

Great Sphinx of Giza

Mark LehnerDirector, Ancient Egypt Research Associates

How the Great Pyramid was built

Markus EgetmeyerLinguist (Sorbonne); grammar of Cypriot Greek, co-editor of IG XV, the "Golgian" proposal

Marq EvansDirector of the documentary Capturing Bigfoot

Patterson-Gimlin film

Martin Litchfield WestBritish classicist whose 1994 article read the Hurrian texts as melody on a descending scale. · 1937–2015

Hurrian songs of Ugarit

Maruf A. DhaliBuilt the Enoch handwriting model

Dead Sea Scrolls: dating, scribes and provenance

Marvin W. RoweChemist at Texas A&M; developed plasma-oxidation dating of rock paint

White Shaman Mural

María Martinón-TorresPalaeoanthropologist, CENIEH; lead author of the main critique

Homo naledi and the Rising Star burial claims

María del Carmen Rodríguez MartínezINAH archaeologist; registered and published the block

Cascajal block and Isthmian writing

Masato SakaiArchaeologist, Yamagata University; leads the Nasca geoglyph survey

Massimo PallottinoEtruscologist; editor of TLE and champion of the combinatory method · 1909–1995

Etruscan: the readable language that cannot be fully translated

Massimo TeodoraniAstrophysicist; at the CNR Institute of Radio Astronomy during the EMBLA expeditions · born 1956

Hessdalen lights

Mather Byles DesBrisayCounty historian

Oak Island money pit

Matteo LeonePhysicist (University of Bari at the time); author of the EMBLA 2002 rebuttal

Hessdalen lights

Maurice DunandFrench archaeologist who directed the excavation of Byblos from 1924 to 1975, found the pseudo-hieroglyphic inscriptions in 1928 to 1932, an

MererInspector leading a boat crew · fl. Year 26 of Khufu

How the Great Pyramid was built

Metoro Tau'a UreRapanui informant who chanted over tablets for Jaussen

Michael D. CoeMesoamericanist (Yale); co-author of the 2006 paper; critic of the Isthmian decipherment · 1929–2019

Cascajal block and Isthmian writing

Michael GuggenbergerClassical archaeologist; catalogued the dodecahedra

Gallo-Roman dodecahedra

Michael HippkeLead author of the critique of plate photometry

Tabby's star (KIC 8462852)

Michael J. MorwoodArchaeologist; co-director of the Liang Bua excavations

Homo floresiensis, the origin of the Flores "hobbits"

Michael MäderSemitist (Bern); OCLEI corpus

Proto-Elamite and Linear Elamite

Michael MäderSwiss linguist (University of Bern; Gesellschaft für die Entzifferung antiker Schriftsysteme) who transcribed the Byblos corpus into Unicode

Michael ShermerPublisher of Skeptic; argued the pattern is "patternicity" and base-rate neglect

America's missing scientists, 2021–2026

Michael WitzelCo-author of the non-script argument

Michael ZeilikAstronomer; critic of the calendrical and lunar readings

Great houses of Chaco Canyon

Michail I. PetaevGeochemist, Harvard; reported the GISP2 platinum anomaly

Younger Dryas impact hypothesis

Michel JébrakGeologist, Université du Québec à Montréal; co-author of the alkaline-complex model

Eye of the Sahara and Atlantis

Mick WestScience writer and debunker; published the base-rate case against a pattern in April 2026

America's missing scientists, 2021–2026

Mick WestSceptical analyst of the videos

2004 Nimitz encounter and the Navy videos

Miguel ValérioLinguist; signary and proposed values

Mike KrzystonFilmed the 10 pm lights

Phoenix Lights, 13 March 1997

Mike Parker PearsonArchaeologist, UCL; director of the Stonehenge Riverside Project and the Preseli excavations · born 1957

Miloje VasićSerbian archaeologist who excavated Vinča-Belo Brdo from 1908 and published Preistorijska Vinča · 1869–1956

Mitch StanleyAmateur astronomer who saw the formation through a telescope

Phoenix Lights, 13 March 1997

Mladen PopovićLead author of the 2021 and 2025 studies, University of Groningen

Dead Sea Scrolls: dating, scribes and provenance

Moritz KinzelBuilding archaeologist, DAI Istanbul