Out-of-place artifacts

[Shinova]

Link to site


Just a little interesting bits I read on one forum, then on Wiki, and then on that site.

The ninth one is most definetly a hoax. I read that some guy admitted it was a hoax to keep selling them or something.

What about the rest?


More info on those spheroid things, with pictures

[DPDarkPrimus]

From the website of a nutter magazine? Gee, what do you think, Space Cadet?

[Shinova]

Okay, one, no duh it's no a credible site, or magazine, or whatever. Obviously it's amateur and not very credible. That's not what I'm asking for.

I want to know if anyone knows anything about these supposed "artifacts" themselves.

Again, not the website, but the things themselves. As fairly intelligent gentlebeings I'm sure we try to go straight for the source when possible, so that's what I'm hoping someone could enlighten a little bit in respects to.

So please, before you break out the 'put Shinova back in his box' stick and prod, try to read the whole OP (it's not real hard guys, it's only four sentences in three lines).

[Master of Ossus]

Of the ones that I recognize, the battery is probably legit, and was probably used in medical treatments of the time. It's really not entirely surprising, since the people using it almost certainly did not understand the underlying principles.

The Antikythera Mechanism is almost certainly legit, and was actually the product of several generations of refinements on similar mechanisms, but to date is the most complicated and capable such device known.

The glider from Egypt is probably legit, but unsurprising. The conclusion the guy attempts to draw is ludicrous. A small wooden glider should not be assumed to be a model of a full-sized aircraft. The Aztecs had toys with axels that could roll around the ground when pushed or pulled, but never expanded the concept to develop the wheel for widespread application in transportation. It is therefore absurd to conclude from a small glider constitutes evidence of flight.

As for the jet, this is the modern Hebrew alphabet. Anyone think that one of those letters could've been duplicated by chance? I'm inclined to agree with them. As for the claim that it's a jet... rofl. The object described is an angular, gold artifact. Only by modern wishful thinking can anyone conclude it's a jet. And before you write of the psychological connections people draw, this is just one of the hundreds of natural and mundane objects in which people have seen an image of the Virgin Mary.

The Crystal Skull actually seems to be legitimately mysterious, although it was found in very suspicious circumstances.

I'm guessing from the description of the Neanderthal skull that scientists have come to a reasonable conclusion that the guy doesn't want to listen to. I'm unfamiliar with the others, but I'd be very surprised if he is both reporting and interpreting them correctly.

[Imperial Overlord]

The crystal skull is real, weird, and famous. Why it was made is unknown and it probably involved a lot of time by skilled artisans. It could have (and probably was) been made by the people of the region although why it was made and what it signified is up in the air the last time I heard. It is also the origin of the crystal moose femur joke made by a few archaeologists.

The batteries are also real. They were probably invented by accident and became a curiousity.

[Edi]

The batteries are also real. They were probably invented by accident and became a curiousity.

They've been used in electroplating metal objects with a thin, even layer of some other metal. If you've read the Winter of the World trilogy, by Michael Scott Rohan, he talks about this procedure and its ancient origins at length in the afterword of the second novel. That they discovered batteries is pretty amazing, but they are no mystery as such and not just an idle curiosity.

Edi

[Imperial Overlord]

The batteries are also real. They were probably invented by accident and became a curiousity.

They've been used in electroplating metal objects with a thin, even layer of some other metal. If you've read the Winter of the World trilogy, by Michael Scott Rohan, he talks about this procedure and its ancient origins at length in the afterword of the second novel. That they discovered batteries is pretty amazing, but they are no mystery as such and not just an idle curiosity.

Edi

I have, although some time ago. Interesting that they do have a practical use, which I don't recall although its been a long time since I read about the batteries. As for Rohan, take anything he writes with a more than a few grains of salt.

[TheBlackCat]

All crystal skulls that have been investigated are hoaxes, made in modern times using modern techniques.

The egyptian "airplane" is not necessarily an airplane at all, it very well might be a bird figure or even a weathervane of some sort.

The "spheroids" violate the laws of thermodynamics, so I would need a bit more than simply this guy's claims that they have the proprties specified.

The Ica stones are well-known hoaxes made solely for commercial gain (much like the crystal skulls, although far less sophisticated).

The "gunshot wound" neanderthal man does not necessarily have a gunshot wound. The damage to the skull could easily represent two different wounds or one could represent damage to the skull after death. There is no reason to assume it must be a gunshot wound.

The computer, battery, and pillar could easily be made with the knowledge and resources at the time.

The pillar has passive corrosion resistance due to a thin layer of corroded material on the surface. This is the same principle by which stainless steal, aluminum, titanium, and many other corrosion resistant metals operate. This may have been entirely accidental or it may have been intentional, but figuring this out is in no way beyond the grasp of the people at the time.

I am not sure, but if I remember correctly the Incan "aircraft" is nothing more than a simple geometric design.

[Imperial Overlord]

All crystal skulls that have been investigated are hoaxes, made in modern times using modern techniques.

Certainly many of the claims about the skull are bogus, but I haven't seen any evidence that the skull itself was fabricated. Do you have a source for that?

[Agemegos]

I know a bit about a couple of these things.

1. The 'battery' is a real object, though it is at most a wet cell, not a battery, and the statement 'comparable to the best modern solder' is misleading: that would not be remarkable if true.

3. The Ashoka pillars are real, but not as wonderful as they make out. In the first place, Asoka's grandfather Chandra Gupta fought against Alexander the Great, so the date is wrong. The accepted dates are that Asoka reigned from 273-232 BC. Making a pillar or that size was not beyond the capabilities of Indian smiths of that time (who were excellent). The pillars have not rusted because they contain high levels of phosphorus, which occurs as a natural contaminant in some iron ores. Phosporus is difficult to remove from iron ore, and it makes teh steel brittle. So the Indian smiths won't have used phosphoric iron to make rust-free weapons and tools and armour. But it is just the shot for an exterior pillar.

By the way, the pillar in Delhi was originally raised at Meerut, was broken in a magazine explosion in the early 18th Century, and was re-erected by the British in the middle of the 19th century.

4. The 'computer' is real too, but it is not very impressive either. It is a simple gadget using a couple of gears to estimate the cycle of the moon. Teh necessary mathematics were known in Greece three centuries before teh wreck, and Greeks at Alexandria had been making gadgets using gears for at least a hundred years before the wreck. Some were much more impressive that the 'computer', for example an odometer that was robust and accurate enough to measure the lengths of roads hundreds of miles long.

7. The Mitchell-Hedges Crystal Skull was found in Belize. In fact, I think there might be a couple from around there. The description in this text is grossly inaccurate. The skull is very pretty, but it is no more anatomically accurate than you would expect an artist to produce--in fact its proportions are distinctly off in some respects. There is a photo of it here. Judge for yourself whether it is especially detailed. The stuff about it taking centuries to make is pure bollocks. A block of rock crystal count have been chipped roughly to shape and then polished using successively finer grades of an abrasive such as emery. It is a large object, and would have take a lot of work by comparision with smaller rock crystal ornaments, but weeks or months, not centuries.

[Mange]

All crystal skulls that have been investigated are hoaxes, made in modern times using modern techniques.

Certainly many of the claims about the skull are bogus, but I haven't seen any evidence that the skull itself was fabricated. Do you have a source for that?

There's a crystal skull in the possession of the British museum and Arthur C. Clarke's A-Z of Mysteries cites a Post Office Research Laboratory report from the 1950s. I can't quote verbatim as I only have a Swedish translation, but an expert on crystals made the assessment that the crystal skull was made from inferior Brazilian quartz crystal. The same has been said about the Mitchell-Hedges skull (other experts points in the same direction and this would mean that they're quite recent). The skull were discovered during an expedition to search for Atlantis, and Mitchell-Hedges believed it originated from there.

[Imperial Overlord]

<information>

Thank you.

[Agemegos]

Certainly many of the claims about the skull are bogus, but I haven't seen any evidence that the skull itself was fabricated. Do you have a source for that?

Here is one: http://skepdic.com/crystalskull.html.

Not only is the skull as remarkable as teh site inteh OP claimed, but it is a fraud. The man who claimed to have found it in 1924 or 1927 in fact bought it at an auction at Sotheby's in 1943, and the girl who claimed to have found the articulated jaw was never in Belize at all.

[Agemegos]

Not only is the skull as remarkable as teh site inteh OP claimed

Oops.

I meant "Not only is the skull not as remarkable as the site in teh OP claimed…".

[Imperial Overlord]

Not only is the skull as remarkable as teh site inteh OP claimed, but it is a fraud. The man who claimed to have found it in 1924 or 1927 in fact bought it at an auction at Sotheby's in 1943, and the girl who claimed to have found the articulated jaw was never in Belize at all.

Yeah, I'm aware of the skull duggery and B.S. around it, but that link doesn't prove the skull is a fake. The guy they bought it from claims to dug it up Belize (and was actually there), so it may be an actual artifact. Their BS claims, as has already been mentioned, have long been discredited.

[Broomstick]

BAFFLING BATTERIES OF BABYLON
In 1938, Dr. Wilhelm Kong, an Austrian archaeologist rummaging through the basement of the museum made a find that was to drastically alter all concepts of ancient science. A 6-inch-high pot of bright yellow clay dating back two millennia contained a cylinder of sheet-copper 5 inches by 1.5 inches. The edge of the copper cylinder was soldered with a 60-40 lead-tin alloy comparable to today's best solder. The bottom of the cylinder was capped with a crimped-in copper disk and sealed with bitumen or asphalt. Another insulating layer of asphalt sealed the top and also held in place an iron rod suspended into the center of the copper cylinder. The rod showed evidence of having been corroded with acid. With a background in mechanics, Dr. Konig recognized this configuration was not a chance arrangement, but that the clay pot was nothing less than an ancient electric battery.

The ancient battery in the Baghdad Museum as well as those others which were unearthed in Iraq all date from the Parthian Persian occupation between 248 B.C. and A.D. 226. However, Konig found copper vases plated with silver in the Baghdad Museum excavated from Sumerian remains in southern Iraq dating back to at least 2500 B.C. When the vases were lightly tapped a blue patina or film separated from the surfaces, characteristic of silver electroplated to copper. It would appear then that the Persians inherited their batteries from the earliest known civilization in the Middle East.

It's actually insulting to the Persians to say they couldn't come up with this on their own. Yes, it's a battery. The gang on Mythbusters recently made their own to the same recipe. The last paragraph probably holds the key - they were used for electroplating. Electroplating makes copper objects more valuable by coating them with something like silver - at that time, almost as good as real alchemy. There's sone evidence that the Inca and the Eyptians both stumbled onto this technique, too.

It's possible this might have had some medicinal use - I mean, people wear magnets and copper bracelets to treat their arthritis even today, right? But I'm holding out for electroplating.

THE STRANGE ELECTRON TUBES FROM DENDERA
....snip...
In one chamber, No. 17, the topmost panel, depicts Egyptian priests operating what look like oblong tubes, performing various specific tasks. Each tube has a serpent extending its full length inside. Swedish engineer Henry Kjellson, in his book Forvunen Teknik (Disappeared Technology), noted that in the hieroglyphs these serpents are translated as seref, which means to glow, and believes it refers to some form of electrical current. In the scene, to the extreme right appears a box on top where sits an image of the Egyptian god Atum-Ra, which identifies the box as the energy source. Attached to the box is a braided cable which electromagnetics engineer Alfred D. Bielek identified as virtually an exact copy of engineering illustrations used today for representing a bundle of conducting electrical wires. The cable runs from the box the full length of the floor of the picture, and terminates at both the ends and at the bases of the tube objects. These objects each rest on a pillar called a djed, which Bielek identified as a high-voltage insulator.

This is seeing pictures in cloud formations. And speaking of pictures, why doesn't he have one of the hieroglyphics in question? At least the "helicopter hieroglyph" story had pictures. Without a picture it's impossible to say whether this description bears and relationship to reality.

THE ENIGMA OF THE ASHOKA PILLAR
A testimony to ancient metallurgical skills in Delhi, India is called the Ashoka Pillar. Standing over 23 feet, it averages 16 inches in diameter and weighs about 6 tons. The solid wrought-iron shaft is made up of expertly welded discs. An inscription on the base is an epitaph to King Chandra Gupta II, who died in A.D. 413.

Despite being well over a millennium and a half in age, the Pillar's constitution is remarkably preserved. The smooth surface is like polished brass with only occasional instances of pock-marks and weathering. The mystery is that any equivalent mass of iron, subjected to the Indian monsoon rains, winds and temperatures for 1,600 years or more would have been reduced to rust long ago.

Production of the iron and the techniques of preservation are far beyond 5th century abilities. It is probably far older, maybe several thousand years. Who were the mysterious metallurgists who made this wonder, and what happened to their civilization?

Questions about dating - are we sure we know when this was made? Just because there's an inscription to a king on it doesn't mean it was made in the king's reign.

Also, the smiths of the time were quite skilled. The point about phosphorus contamination mentioned in another post is instructive. Ancient metalworkers frequently hit interesting alloys by chance and either couldn't reproduce them, couldn't do so economically, or the alloys had "flaws" such as brittleness that restricted their use.

AN OUT-OF-PLACE COMPUTER FROM ANTIKYTHERA
....snip....

In 1958 Dr. Derek J. de Solla Price successfully reconstructed the machine's appearance and use. The gearing system calculated the annual movements of the sun and moon. The arrangement shows that the gears could be moved forward and backward with ease at any speed. The device was thus not a clock but more like a calculator that could show the positions of the heavens past, present and future.

It's not a computer. It's an orrery. A mechanical model showing the motions of the heavenly bodies. It's not mysterious at all - thousands, if not tens of thousands, of these have been built over the ages in various parts of Asia, Europe, and North Africa.. It's complete bullshit that the Greeks of the time in question weren't capable of building it - c'mon, these guys had figured out the Earth was round, knew the length of the year, and made some pretty good guesses on the size of the planet. They weren't dummies. Again, it's insulting to them to say they couldn't have come up with this.

FLIGHT IN ANCIENT EGYPT
....snip....
Seventy years later, Dr. Kahlil Messiha, an Egyptologist and archaeologist, was examining a Museum display labeled bird figurines. While most of the display were indeed bird sculptures, the Saqqara artifact was certainly not. It possessed characteristics never found on birds, yet which are part of modern aircraft design. Dr. Messiha, a former model plane enthusiast, immediately recognized the aircraft features and persuaded the Egyptian Ministry of Culture to investigate.
Made of very light sycamore the craft weighs 0.5 oz. with straight and aerodynamically shaped wings, spanning about 7 inches. A separate slotted piece fits onto the tail precisely like the back tail wing on a modern plane.
A full-scale version could have flown carrying heavy loads, but at low speeds, between 45 and 65 miles per hour. What is not known, however, is what the power source was. The model makes a perfect glider as it is. Even though over 2,000 years old, it will soar a considerable distance with only a slight jerk of the hand. Fully restored balsa replicas travel even farther.
Messiha notes that the ancient Egyptians often built scale models of everything familiar in their daily lives and placed them in their tombs, temples, ships, chariots, servants, animals and so forth. Now that we have found a model plane, Messiha wonders if perhaps somewhere under the desert sands there may yet be unearthed the remains of life-sized gliders.

Leonardo da Vinci made scale-model gliders and even rotors - doesn't mean he ever built a working airplane or helicopter. The anicent Chinese kites large enough to carry men aloft (they used them to observe enemy armies) but that doesn't mean they ever built a working airplane. LOTS of people have figured out how to make working gliders, especially toy-sized ones, but powered flight had to wait until our era.

A glider does not an airplane make. Scaling up to man-size is not so easy as simply doubling the size of everything. Either wings have to increase faster than weight, or the power has to increase faster than weight, or both. It was a problem that bedeviled would-be pilots throughout the late 19th Century.

COULD the Egyptians have built hang-gliders capable of carrying men? Yeah, actually they could have. The materials used by Lilienthal and the Wright Brothers - light, strong wood and cotton cloth - were readily available. The Egyptians even had access to suitable launch points like cliffs and tall monuments. Problem is - they never did it. I mean, there is NO written record of it, no oral history, no reports from other people. C'mon - the myth of Daedelus and Icarus is still around, you think tales of flying Egyptians would have gotten totally lost?

The other problem with the"airplane" theory is that, prior to the late 1800's there were no suitable powerplants with which to power aircraft. You need something small, lightweight, and capable of putting out multiple horsepower to get aloft. No one had that before the internal combustion engine. The Gossamer aircraft and the modern Daedalus, which are human-powered, are possible only with very light, very strong synthetics utilizing carbon fiber and mylar films. There is no evidence whatsoever any prior civilization had anything of the sort, and indeed, not all countries on the Earth today have the manufacturing capability to make the raw materials.

They found a toy, nothing more.

A JET FROM SOUTH AMERICA
...snip...
Approximately 2 inches long the object was worn as a pendant on a neck chain. It was classified as Sinu, a pre-Inca culture from A.D. 500 to 800. Both Sanderson and Dr. Arthur Poyslee of the Aeronautical Institute of New York concluded it did not represent any known winged animal. In fact, the little artifact appears more mechanical than biological. For example, the front wings are delta-shaped and rigidly straight edged, very un-animal-like.

The rudder is perhaps the most un-animal but airplane-like item. It is right-triangle, flat-surfaced, and rigidly perpendicular to the wings. Only fish have upright tail fins, but none have exclusively an upright flange without a counter-balancing lower one. Adding to the mystery, an insignia appears on the left face of the rudder, precisely where ID marks appear on many airplanes today. The insignia is perhaps as out-of place as the gold model itself, for it has been identified as the Aramaic or early Hebrew letter beth or B. This may indicate that the original plane did not come from Colombia, but was the product of a very early people inhabiting the Middle East who knew the secret of flying.

Another description without a picture. Sounds like a stylized flying fish to me. Maybe the lower bit of the tail fin broke off, maybe it was left off so the pendant would lie better on the wearer. Sure, some airplanes have ID marks on the left of the rudder - and some have them on the sides of the fuselage and some even have them on the wings. This "proves"... what? Random damage can create marks that appear to be letters - hell, I've got a scratch on my car right now that looks like a "Z", but it's purely accident, nothing deliberate. And the reference to "Hebrew or Aramaic" resembles bullshit that's been circulating for years trying to attribute the sophisticated civilizations of Central and South America to anyone and anything but the actual natives - God forbid those natives might actually be intelligent! Then it wouldn't be right to subdue and ensalve them!

CRYSTAL SKULL FROM ATLANTIS
Without doubt the most famous and enigmatic ancient crystal is the skull, discovered in 1927 by F.A. Mitchell-Hedges atop a ruined temple at the ancient Mayan city of Lubaantum, in British Honduras, now Belize.

So it's not really from Atlantis, is it? But "Crystal Skull from Belize" just doesn't have the same catchy bite, to it, does it?

The skull was made from a single block of clear quartz, 5 inches high, 7 inches long and 5 inches wide. It is about the size of a small human cranium, with near perfect detail.

Bullshit. I've seen pictures and video of that skull. I was making better and more detailed anatomical drawings my second year of college. "Near perfect" my ass. It's good, but it's also stylized.

The skull had been carved with total disregard to the natural crystal axis, a process unheard-of in modern crystallography. No metal tools were used. Dorland was unable to find any tell-tale scratch marks. Indeed, most metals would have been ineffectual. A modern penknife cannot mark it. From tiny patterns near the carved surfaces, Dorland determined it was first chiseled into rough form, probably using diamonds. The finer shaping, grinding and polishing, Dorland believes, was done with innumerable applications of water and silicon-crystal sand. If true, it would have taken 300 years of continuous labor. We must accept this almost unimaginable feat, or admit to the use of some form of lost technology.

You know, this is sort of like saying those primative folks on Easter Island couldn't possibly have made all those statues, much less put them in place. Never mind that the natives had an oral tradition of how it was done, and both they and anthropologists have demonstrated carving techniques with the tools at hand, dragged statues from place to place using only manpower, and re-erected such monolithic structures both on Easter and in other places using one or another of several techniques.

I suspect people who throw out phrases like "couldn't be done" and "would take 300 years" know jackshit about actual sculpting and manufacturing techniques. It also totally ignores evidence than ancient people were able and willing to undertake multigenerational projects, just as Medieval Europeans would undertake cathedral construction that they knew, going in, would take two or three generations to complete.

It is virtually impossible today, in the time when men have climbed mountains on the moon, to duplicate this achievement.

1) While we have been to the moon, no one has done any mountain climbing there.
2) Moon launches have fuck-all to do with carving crystal skulls.

WHO SHOT NEANDERTHAL MAN?
The Museum of Natural History in London displays an early Paleolithic skull, dated at 38,000 years old, and excavated in 1921 in modern Zambia. On the left side of the skull is a perfectly round hole nearly a third of an inch in diameter. Curiously, there are no radial split-lines around the hole or other marks that should have been left by a cold weapon, such as an arrow or spear. Opposite the hole, the cranium is shattered, and reconstruction of the fragments show the skull was blown from the inside out, as from a rifle shot. In fact, any slower a projectile would have produced neither the neat hole nor the shattering effect. Forensic experts who have examined the skull agree the cranial damage could not have been caused by anything but a high-speed projectile, purposely fired at the prehistoric victim, with intent to kill.

One word: slingshot.

Small, fast, round projectile. They're actually quite nasty little weapons, which is why in Biblical times they were used in warfare. Remember the story of David and Goliath?

THE INCREDIBLE STONE OF DR. CABRERA
...snip....
Most material employed is a gray andesite, an extremely hard granitic semi-crystalline matrix, that is very difficult to carve.

So? People have been carving "difficult" stones for thousands of years.

The stone portraits show very sophisticated surgery skills and medical knowledge, in some cases as advanced, and even more advanced, than today. There are scenes of Caesarean sections, blood transfusions, the use of acupuncture needles as an anesthetic (which only gained use in the West since the late 1970s), delicate operations on the lungs and kidneys, and removal of cancerous tumors. There are likewise detailed images of open heart and open brain surgery, as well as 20 stones showing a step-by-step heart transplant procedure.

Uh... yeah. Look, there is incontrovertible evidence that the Incas performed trephaning, a type of brain surgery, a long long time ago. Cesearan sections pre-date Cesear - the concept of cutting the belly of a woman who died in labor in an attempt to save the baby is one that has occured in multiple times and places and is nothing mysterious (just really icky). Open heart surgery? Um... more likely human sacrifice. The Ancient Americans in Peru were just as bloodthirsty as their brethren up north. So it's entirely conceivable that, yes, they could practice surgery or depict things that look like surgery to us but were more akin to what we'd call vivisection.

That's leaving aside the question of whether the carvings are authentic, or just recent forgeries.

MANUFACTURED METALS MILLIONS OF YEARS OLD
...snip...
The metallic spheroids look like flattened globes, averaging 1 to 4 inches in diameter, and their exteriors usually are colored steel blue with a reddish reflection, and embedded in the metal are tiny flecks of white fibers. They are made of a nickel-steel alloy which does not occur naturally, and is of a composition that rules them out, being of meteoric origin. Some have only a thin shell about a quarter of an inch thick, and when broken open are found filled with a strange spongy material that disintegrated into dust on contact with the air.
What makes all this very remarkable is that the spheroids were mined out of a layer of pyrophyllite rock, dated both geologically and by the various radio-isotope dating techniques as being at least 2.8 to 3 billion years old.

Oddly enough, these might, indeed, have a biological origin, even if no intelligence is involved.

More and more evidence is mounting of ore deposits and mineral formations created by bacteria. Iron pryrite, aka "fool's gold", is an iron compound formed by bacterial action and deposited in the earth. The "iron band" formations in Michigan's upper peninsula are also believed to be the result of bacterial action. Most of this metal-ore resulting activity seems to have taken place 3-4 billion years ago, which would fit the time frame here, in the days when oxygen metabolism hadn't come to dominate the planet yet.

The fact these are only a thin shell would allow for chemical depositing of the metal as a bacterial waste product, with the "strange, spongy stuff" being the remains of what created it in the first place. Sort of like a geode type formation.

Unless, of course, they're fakes. Because this is an extraordinary claim, which requires extraordinary proof.

Adding mystery to mystery, Roelf Marx, curator of the South African Klerksdorp Museum, has discovered that the spheroid he has on exhibit slowly rotates on its axis by its own power, while locked in its display case and free of outside vibrations. There may thus be an energy extant within these spheroids still operating after three eons of time

Uh, yeah - like pyramid power, right?

Unless the energy is detectable I call bullshit on this claim.

[Agemegos]

BAFFLING BATTERIES OF BABYLON

It's actually insulting to the Persians to say they couldn't come up with this on their own. Yes, it's a battery.

Well, this is a quibble, but actually it's a cell, not a battery.

THE ENIGMA OF THE ASHOKA PILLAR

Questions about dating - are we sure we know when this was made? Just because there's an inscription to a king on it doesn't mean it was made in the king's reign.

I was confusing my Guptas earlier, and confusing the iron pillar with sandstone pillars erected by Asoka in the 3rd century BC.

This object has to be later than the death of Chandragupta II because it has an epitaph to him on it. So it can't date before 414 AD.

On the other hand, it has to have been made before it was moved from Meerut to Delhi, which is recorded as having been about 1400. And since it has an inscription dedicating it to Vishnu, it was very likely made before northern Indian was conquered by muslims, which was before 1200. So it is between 1,600 and 800 years old.

There are three somewhat similar pillars. This one, which is in Delhi, one in Dhar, and a third, rather smaller, in "Kodachadri village in a remote forest area of the Western Ghats in Karnataka". A small piece of this third pillar has been examined by a metallurgist (T. R. Anantharaman), who writes:

"It is obvious from these preliminary investigations that the Kodachadri iron pillar is not a product of modern iron making processes. The composition of the material of the pillar, viz. less than 0.05% carbon in what looks like almost pure iron, without the usual silicon, manganese and sulphur contents one associates with modern iron and steel, and with inclusions of only iron oxide and silicate, strongly suggests age-old indigenous methods for making the so-called Adi-vasi (tribal) iron with pure iron ore and wood charcoal."

[Edi]

They've been used in electroplating metal objects with a thin, even layer of some other metal. If you've read the Winter of the World trilogy, by Michael Scott Rohan, he talks about this procedure and its ancient origins at length in the afterword of the second novel. That they discovered batteries is pretty amazing, but they are no mystery as such and not just an idle curiosity.

Edi

I have, although some time ago. Interesting that they do have a practical use, which I don't recall although its been a long time since I read about the batteries. As for Rohan, take anything he writes with a more than a few grains of salt.

What's with this? His writing was good enough, and I was referring to what he said in the afterword where he discussed some of the smithing stuff from the premise of known facts and specifically the archaeological evidence of electroplating being used in ancient Sumeria/Babylon. I was not taking the narrative descriptions as historical fact but adaptations of such for storytelling purposes. Much like his depiction of the Finnish mythology isn't anywhere close to the real thing, but a very interesting adaptation nonetheless.

Edi

[Imperial Overlord]

I was not taking the narrative descriptions as historical fact but adaptations of such for storytelling purposes. Much like his depiction of the Finnish mythology isn't anywhere close to the real thing, but a very interesting adaptation nonetheless.

Edi

As fiction he's pretty good and I wasn't thinking you were taking his writing as historical fact. He may have gotten the electroplating right, but he gets some of his stuff wrong. The comparison of plate and mail armour in the third book (where mail is alleged to be superior to plate because it grants superior freedom of movement) is the example that stands out the most in my mind.

[Mange]

BAFFLING BATTERIES OF BABYLON
In 1938, Dr. Wilhelm Kong, an Austrian archaeologist rummaging through the basement of the museum made a find that was to drastically alter all concepts of ancient science. A 6-inch-high pot of bright yellow clay dating back two millennia contained a cylinder of sheet-copper 5 inches by 1.5 inches. The edge of the copper cylinder was soldered with a 60-40 lead-tin alloy comparable to today's best solder. The bottom of the cylinder was capped with a crimped-in copper disk and sealed with bitumen or asphalt. Another insulating layer of asphalt sealed the top and also held in place an iron rod suspended into the center of the copper cylinder. The rod showed evidence of having been corroded with acid. With a background in mechanics, Dr. Konig recognized this configuration was not a chance arrangement, but that the clay pot was nothing less than an ancient electric battery.

The ancient battery in the Baghdad Museum as well as those others which were unearthed in Iraq all date from the Parthian Persian occupation between 248 B.C. and A.D. 226. However, Konig found copper vases plated with silver in the Baghdad Museum excavated from Sumerian remains in southern Iraq dating back to at least 2500 B.C. When the vases were lightly tapped a blue patina or film separated from the surfaces, characteristic of silver electroplated to copper. It would appear then that the Persians inherited their batteries from the earliest known civilization in the Middle East.

It's actually insulting to the Persians to say they couldn't come up with this on their own. Yes, it's a battery. The gang on Mythbusters recently made their own to the same recipe. The last paragraph probably holds the key - they were used for electroplating. Electroplating makes copper objects more valuable by coating them with something like silver - at that time, almost as good as real alchemy. There's sone evidence that the Inca and the Eyptians both stumbled onto this technique, too.

It's possible this might have had some medicinal use - I mean, people wear magnets and copper bracelets to treat their arthritis even today, right? But I'm holding out for electroplating.

THE STRANGE ELECTRON TUBES FROM DENDERA
....snip...
In one chamber, No. 17, the topmost panel, depicts Egyptian priests operating what look like oblong tubes, performing various specific tasks. Each tube has a serpent extending its full length inside. Swedish engineer Henry Kjellson, in his book Forvunen Teknik (Disappeared Technology), noted that in the hieroglyphs these serpents are translated as seref, which means to glow, and believes it refers to some form of electrical current. In the scene, to the extreme right appears a box on top where sits an image of the Egyptian god Atum-Ra, which identifies the box as the energy source. Attached to the box is a braided cable which electromagnetics engineer Alfred D. Bielek identified as virtually an exact copy of engineering illustrations used today for representing a bundle of conducting electrical wires. The cable runs from the box the full length of the floor of the picture, and terminates at both the ends and at the bases of the tube objects. These objects each rest on a pillar called a djed, which Bielek identified as a high-voltage insulator.

This is seeing pictures in cloud formations. And speaking of pictures, why doesn't he have one of the hieroglyphics in question? At least the "helicopter hieroglyph" story had pictures. Without a picture it's impossible to say whether this description bears and relationship to reality.

THE ENIGMA OF THE ASHOKA PILLAR
A testimony to ancient metallurgical skills in Delhi, India is called the Ashoka Pillar. Standing over 23 feet, it averages 16 inches in diameter and weighs about 6 tons. The solid wrought-iron shaft is made up of expertly welded discs. An inscription on the base is an epitaph to King Chandra Gupta II, who died in A.D. 413.

Despite being well over a millennium and a half in age, the Pillar's constitution is remarkably preserved. The smooth surface is like polished brass with only occasional instances of pock-marks and weathering. The mystery is that any equivalent mass of iron, subjected to the Indian monsoon rains, winds and temperatures for 1,600 years or more would have been reduced to rust long ago.

Production of the iron and the techniques of preservation are far beyond 5th century abilities. It is probably far older, maybe several thousand years. Who were the mysterious metallurgists who made this wonder, and what happened to their civilization?

Questions about dating - are we sure we know when this was made? Just because there's an inscription to a king on it doesn't mean it was made in the king's reign.

Also, the smiths of the time were quite skilled. The point about phosphorus contamination mentioned in another post is instructive. Ancient metalworkers frequently hit interesting alloys by chance and either couldn't reproduce them, couldn't do so economically, or the alloys had "flaws" such as brittleness that restricted their use.

AN OUT-OF-PLACE COMPUTER FROM ANTIKYTHERA
....snip....

In 1958 Dr. Derek J. de Solla Price successfully reconstructed the machine's appearance and use. The gearing system calculated the annual movements of the sun and moon. The arrangement shows that the gears could be moved forward and backward with ease at any speed. The device was thus not a clock but more like a calculator that could show the positions of the heavens past, present and future.

It's not a computer. It's an orrery. A mechanical model showing the motions of the heavenly bodies. It's not mysterious at all - thousands, if not tens of thousands, of these have been built over the ages in various parts of Asia, Europe, and North Africa.. It's complete bullshit that the Greeks of the time in question weren't capable of building it - c'mon, these guys had figured out the Earth was round, knew the length of the year, and made some pretty good guesses on the size of the planet. They weren't dummies. Again, it's insulting to them to say they couldn't have come up with this.

FLIGHT IN ANCIENT EGYPT
....snip....
Seventy years later, Dr. Kahlil Messiha, an Egyptologist and archaeologist, was examining a Museum display labeled bird figurines. While most of the display were indeed bird sculptures, the Saqqara artifact was certainly not. It possessed characteristics never found on birds, yet which are part of modern aircraft design. Dr. Messiha, a former model plane enthusiast, immediately recognized the aircraft features and persuaded the Egyptian Ministry of Culture to investigate.
Made of very light sycamore the craft weighs 0.5 oz. with straight and aerodynamically shaped wings, spanning about 7 inches. A separate slotted piece fits onto the tail precisely like the back tail wing on a modern plane.
A full-scale version could have flown carrying heavy loads, but at low speeds, between 45 and 65 miles per hour. What is not known, however, is what the power source was. The model makes a perfect glider as it is. Even though over 2,000 years old, it will soar a considerable distance with only a slight jerk of the hand. Fully restored balsa replicas travel even farther.
Messiha notes that the ancient Egyptians often built scale models of everything familiar in their daily lives and placed them in their tombs, temples, ships, chariots, servants, animals and so forth. Now that we have found a model plane, Messiha wonders if perhaps somewhere under the desert sands there may yet be unearthed the remains of life-sized gliders.

Leonardo da Vinci made scale-model gliders and even rotors - doesn't mean he ever built a working airplane or helicopter. The anicent Chinese kites large enough to carry men aloft (they used them to observe enemy armies) but that doesn't mean they ever built a working airplane. LOTS of people have figured out how to make working gliders, especially toy-sized ones, but powered flight had to wait until our era.

A glider does not an airplane make. Scaling up to man-size is not so easy as simply doubling the size of everything. Either wings have to increase faster than weight, or the power has to increase faster than weight, or both. It was a problem that bedeviled would-be pilots throughout the late 19th Century.

COULD the Egyptians have built hang-gliders capable of carrying men? Yeah, actually they could have. The materials used by Lilienthal and the Wright Brothers - light, strong wood and cotton cloth - were readily available. The Egyptians even had access to suitable launch points like cliffs and tall monuments. Problem is - they never did it. I mean, there is NO written record of it, no oral history, no reports from other people. C'mon - the myth of Daedelus and Icarus is still around, you think tales of flying Egyptians would have gotten totally lost?

The other problem with the"airplane" theory is that, prior to the late 1800's there were no suitable powerplants with which to power aircraft. You need something small, lightweight, and capable of putting out multiple horsepower to get aloft. No one had that before the internal combustion engine. The Gossamer aircraft and the modern Daedalus, which are human-powered, are possible only with very light, very strong synthetics utilizing carbon fiber and mylar films. There is no evidence whatsoever any prior civilization had anything of the sort, and indeed, not all countries on the Earth today have the manufacturing capability to make the raw materials.

They found a toy, nothing more.

A JET FROM SOUTH AMERICA
...snip...
Approximately 2 inches long the object was worn as a pendant on a neck chain. It was classified as Sinu, a pre-Inca culture from A.D. 500 to 800. Both Sanderson and Dr. Arthur Poyslee of the Aeronautical Institute of New York concluded it did not represent any known winged animal. In fact, the little artifact appears more mechanical than biological. For example, the front wings are delta-shaped and rigidly straight edged, very un-animal-like.

The rudder is perhaps the most un-animal but airplane-like item. It is right-triangle, flat-surfaced, and rigidly perpendicular to the wings. Only fish have upright tail fins, but none have exclusively an upright flange without a counter-balancing lower one. Adding to the mystery, an insignia appears on the left face of the rudder, precisely where ID marks appear on many airplanes today. The insignia is perhaps as out-of place as the gold model itself, for it has been identified as the Aramaic or early Hebrew letter beth or B. This may indicate that the original plane did not come from Colombia, but was the product of a very early people inhabiting the Middle East who knew the secret of flying.

Another description without a picture. Sounds like a stylized flying fish to me. Maybe the lower bit of the tail fin broke off, maybe it was left off so the pendant would lie better on the wearer. Sure, some airplanes have ID marks on the left of the rudder - and some have them on the sides of the fuselage and some even have them on the wings. This "proves"... what? Random damage can create marks that appear to be letters - hell, I've got a scratch on my car right now that looks like a "Z", but it's purely accident, nothing deliberate. And the reference to "Hebrew or Aramaic" resembles bullshit that's been circulating for years trying to attribute the sophisticated civilizations of Central and South America to anyone and anything but the actual natives - God forbid those natives might actually be intelligent! Then it wouldn't be right to subdue and ensalve them!

CRYSTAL SKULL FROM ATLANTIS
Without doubt the most famous and enigmatic ancient crystal is the skull, discovered in 1927 by F.A. Mitchell-Hedges atop a ruined temple at the ancient Mayan city of Lubaantum, in British Honduras, now Belize.

So it's not really from Atlantis, is it? But "Crystal Skull from Belize" just doesn't have the same catchy bite, to it, does it?

The skull was made from a single block of clear quartz, 5 inches high, 7 inches long and 5 inches wide. It is about the size of a small human cranium, with near perfect detail.

Bullshit. I've seen pictures and video of that skull. I was making better and more detailed anatomical drawings my second year of college. "Near perfect" my ass. It's good, but it's also stylized.

The skull had been carved with total disregard to the natural crystal axis, a process unheard-of in modern crystallography. No metal tools were used. Dorland was unable to find any tell-tale scratch marks. Indeed, most metals would have been ineffectual. A modern penknife cannot mark it. From tiny patterns near the carved surfaces, Dorland determined it was first chiseled into rough form, probably using diamonds. The finer shaping, grinding and polishing, Dorland believes, was done with innumerable applications of water and silicon-crystal sand. If true, it would have taken 300 years of continuous labor. We must accept this almost unimaginable feat, or admit to the use of some form of lost technology.

You know, this is sort of like saying those primative folks on Easter Island couldn't possibly have made all those statues, much less put them in place. Never mind that the natives had an oral tradition of how it was done, and both they and anthropologists have demonstrated carving techniques with the tools at hand, dragged statues from place to place using only manpower, and re-erected such monolithic structures both on Easter and in other places using one or another of several techniques.

I suspect people who throw out phrases like "couldn't be done" and "would take 300 years" know jackshit about actual sculpting and manufacturing techniques. It also totally ignores evidence than ancient people were able and willing to undertake multigenerational projects, just as Medieval Europeans would undertake cathedral construction that they knew, going in, would take two or three generations to complete.

It is virtually impossible today, in the time when men have climbed mountains on the moon, to duplicate this achievement.

1) While we have been to the moon, no one has done any mountain climbing there.
2) Moon launches have fuck-all to do with carving crystal skulls.

WHO SHOT NEANDERTHAL MAN?
The Museum of Natural History in London displays an early Paleolithic skull, dated at 38,000 years old, and excavated in 1921 in modern Zambia. On the left side of the skull is a perfectly round hole nearly a third of an inch in diameter. Curiously, there are no radial split-lines around the hole or other marks that should have been left by a cold weapon, such as an arrow or spear. Opposite the hole, the cranium is shattered, and reconstruction of the fragments show the skull was blown from the inside out, as from a rifle shot. In fact, any slower a projectile would have produced neither the neat hole nor the shattering effect. Forensic experts who have examined the skull agree the cranial damage could not have been caused by anything but a high-speed projectile, purposely fired at the prehistoric victim, with intent to kill.

One word: slingshot.

Small, fast, round projectile. They're actually quite nasty little weapons, which is why in Biblical times they were used in warfare. Remember the story of David and Goliath?

THE INCREDIBLE STONE OF DR. CABRERA
...snip....
Most material employed is a gray andesite, an extremely hard granitic semi-crystalline matrix, that is very difficult to carve.

So? People have been carving "difficult" stones for thousands of years.

The stone portraits show very sophisticated surgery skills and medical knowledge, in some cases as advanced, and even more advanced, than today. There are scenes of Caesarean sections, blood transfusions, the use of acupuncture needles as an anesthetic (which only gained use in the West since the late 1970s), delicate operations on the lungs and kidneys, and removal of cancerous tumors. There are likewise detailed images of open heart and open brain surgery, as well as 20 stones showing a step-by-step heart transplant procedure.

Uh... yeah. Look, there is incontrovertible evidence that the Incas performed trephaning, a type of brain surgery, a long long time ago. Cesearan sections pre-date Cesear - the concept of cutting the belly of a woman who died in labor in an attempt to save the baby is one that has occured in multiple times and places and is nothing mysterious (just really icky). Open heart surgery? Um... more likely human sacrifice. The Ancient Americans in Peru were just as bloodthirsty as their brethren up north. So it's entirely conceivable that, yes, they could practice surgery or depict things that look like surgery to us but were more akin to what we'd call vivisection.

That's leaving aside the question of whether the carvings are authentic, or just recent forgeries.

MANUFACTURED METALS MILLIONS OF YEARS OLD
...snip...
The metallic spheroids look like flattened globes, averaging 1 to 4 inches in diameter, and their exteriors usually are colored steel blue with a reddish reflection, and embedded in the metal are tiny flecks of white fibers. They are made of a nickel-steel alloy which does not occur naturally, and is of a composition that rules them out, being of meteoric origin. Some have only a thin shell about a quarter of an inch thick, and when broken open are found filled with a strange spongy material that disintegrated into dust on contact with the air.
What makes all this very remarkable is that the spheroids were mined out of a layer of pyrophyllite rock, dated both geologically and by the various radio-isotope dating techniques as being at least 2.8 to 3 billion years old.

Oddly enough, these might, indeed, have a biological origin, even if no intelligence is involved.

More and more evidence is mounting of ore deposits and mineral formations created by bacteria. Iron pryrite, aka "fool's gold", is an iron compound formed by bacterial action and deposited in the earth. The "iron band" formations in Michigan's upper peninsula are also believed to be the result of bacterial action. Most of this metal-ore resulting activity seems to have taken place 3-4 billion years ago, which would fit the time frame here, in the days when oxygen metabolism hadn't come to dominate the planet yet.

The fact these are only a thin shell would allow for chemical depositing of the metal as a bacterial waste product, with the "strange, spongy stuff" being the remains of what created it in the first place. Sort of like a geode type formation.

Unless, of course, they're fakes. Because this is an extraordinary claim, which requires extraordinary proof.

Adding mystery to mystery, Roelf Marx, curator of the South African Klerksdorp Museum, has discovered that the spheroid he has on exhibit slowly rotates on its axis by its own power, while locked in its display case and free of outside vibrations. There may thus be an energy extant within these spheroids still operating after three eons of time

Uh, yeah - like pyramid power, right?

Unless the energy is detectable I call bullshit on this claim.

One thing about the Mythbusters. I noticed when I watched the show that they used zinc, but metallic zinc wasn't discovered before the 18th Century iirc.

[Frank Hipper]

My favorite explanation for the crystal skull is that it's an 18th century memento mori, made in China for the European market, and then lied about by Mitchell-Hedges.

[Azazal]

Even though it looks to haver been beaten to death here, I'll throw in this link for an extra 2 cents - James Randi Skeptics Forum

Thread from 03 that goes in and debunks the 10 artifacts with some pretty indepth info on them.

[TheBlackCat]

Certainly many of the claims about the skull are bogus, but I haven't seen any evidence that the skull itself was fabricated. Do you have a source for that?

From The Smithsonian Museum of Natural History Website: Anthronotes : Museum Of Natural History Publication For Educators, Vol 26, No 1, Spring 2005

My museum research into museum collections also has involved studying pre-Columbian artifacts to determine authenticity. My initial studies focused on rock crystal skulls; two of the most famous skulls in museum collections were, in fact, sold by Eugene Boban. Using a variety of scientific testing at the British Museum, my colleagues there, Margaret Sax, Ian Freestone, and Elizabeth Carmichael and I determined that all of the crystal skulls, including the one in the Smithsonian's collection, were modern manufactures.

[TheBlackCat]

One word: slingshot.

Small, fast, round projectile. They're actually quite nasty little weapons, which is why in Biblical times they were used in warfare. Remember the story of David and Goliath?

You are mixing up sling and slingshot. They have similar names, and both operate by launching a stone or metal projectile at significant speed, but their modes of operation are completely different. Slingshot use elastic material, while a sling swings the projectile in a circle at high speed and then launches it in the desired direction. David used a sling to kill Goliath, not a slingshot. The idea that he used a slingshot is a modern misconception.

Slings have been used extensively in warfare for thousands, maybe even tens of thousands, of years. They are one of the simplest and most basic projectile weapons known (along with the spear/atlatl combination). I have never heard of a significant use of slingshots in real combat. Altough slingshots might have been used in warfare they were never a fundamental weapon like slings were.

[CaptainChewbacca]

I think he meant 'sling-shot' in the same context as 'cannon-shot'.

As for the crystal skull, everyone knows that was an alien artifact found by Daniel Jackson's grandfather Nick Ballard.