The 10 Most Puzzling Ancient Artifacts

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The 10 Most Puzzling Ancient Artifacts

Over the last few hundred years, many perplexing artifacts have been unearthed that do not fit the currently excepted theories of geology and the history of man.

The Bible tells us that God created Adam and Eve just a few thousand years ago, by some fundamentalist interpretations. Science informs us that this is mere fiction and that man is a few million years old, and that civilization just tens of thousands of years old. Could it be, however, that conventional science is just as mistaken as the Bible stories? There is a great deal of archeological evidence that the history of life on earth might be far different than what current geological and anthropological texts tell us. Consider these astonishing finds:

The Grooved Spheres
Over the last few decades, miners in South Africa have been digging up mysterious metal spheres. Origin unknown, these spheres measure approximately an inch or so in diameter, and some are etched with three parallel grooves running around the equator. Two types of spheres have been found: one is composed of a solid bluish metal with flecks of white; the other is hollowed out and filled with a spongy white substance. The kicker is that the rock in which they where found is Precambrian - and dated to 2.8 billion years old! Who made them and for what purpose is unknown.

The Dropa Stones
In 1938, an archeological expedition led by Dr. Chi Pu Tei into the Baian-Kara-Ula mountains of China made an astonishing discovery in some caves that had apparently been occupied by some ancient culture. Buried in the dust of ages on the cave floor were hundreds of stone disks. Measuring about nine inches in diameter, each had a circle cut into the center and was etched with a spiral groove, making it look for all the world like some ancient phonograph record some 10,000 to 12,000 years old. The spiral groove, it turns out, is actually composed of tiny hieroglyphics that tell the incredible story of spaceships from some distant world that crash-landed in the mountains. The ships were piloted by people who called themselves the Dropa, and the remains of whose descendents, possibly, were found in the cave.

In 1938, Chinese archaeologists discover strange stone disks in a remote mountain cave, and they may contain an incredible message.

Two of the disks. The gray overcast sky hung low in the isolated valley on the cool autumn afternoon. The surrounding mountain peaks had been masked by the heavy clouds for days. A deep rumble shook the ground, sending animals scurrying and startling birds from their roosts in the trees. The thunder-like rumbling from above the clouds grew louder. The valley had never heard thunder like this. The rumbling intensified to a heavy roar. A small group of hunters stalking deer cast their eyes to the sky, expecting the clouds to break open from the deafening thunder with a torrent of rain. But this wasn't thunder at all. A bright flash burst forth from the ceiling of clouds. The hunters realized this was not lightning. They had never seen anything like this before. A glowing orb streaked through the sky above their heads as they watched in dazed disbelief. The orb wobbled and veered as it fell, as if it were trying to fight gravity and keep itself from smashing into the ground. The hunters readied their weapons, not knowing what threat this mystery from the sky might present. Suddenly the thundering roar stopped, and the orb made one final veer and a slight upward turn before slamming into the earth. The hunters were nearly knocked off their feet from the shockwave. The thing - whatever it was - hit the ground just beyond a line of trees, perhaps an hour's walk away, the hunters estimated. A cloud of dirt and leaves rose above the tree line. The hunters debated whether or not they should investigate. Each of them was afraid, but none was willing to admit it. Tightly gripping their weapons, they headed in the direction of the great thing from the clouds. They'd have to hurry; evening was drawing near. The sun had already set behind the mountains by the time they made their way through the sparse growth of trees. Then there it was before them. An indescribable thing, half as high as the trees and reflecting the remaining light of the day like a huge, wet, shiny rock. The hunters couldn't find the words to speak of what this thing might be - a shape completely alien to their experience. They stared at it, hesitant to move closer. Then ... a hole appeared in the side of the great shiny thing ... and something was moving inside. The year, by our calendar, was about 10,000 B.C. Obviously, I have fictionalized the details of this story, but if the interpretation of an exciting discovery made in 1938 is correct, this is a true story. The story of the Dropa.

What the Professor Found

The story of the Dropa for us begins in the same place, but the year is 1938. The mountains are the Baian-Kara-Ula mountains on the border that divides China and Tibet. An archaeological expedition, led by Chi Pu Tei, has trudged into the barely accessible mountain range, and has happened upon some caves that had obviously been occupied by a primitive people long ago. But what he and his team find in these remote caves is something highly unusual and, if verified, could change everything we know about our distant past.Not all of the facts of this case are clear and, as you'll understand later, difficult to verify. Some of the details are contradictory, fuzzy, or may have been sensationalized by imaginative writers. But even if part of this story is true, it represents one of the greatest discoveries of our age.Chi Pu Tei, a professor of archaeology at Beijing University, was leading some his students on an expedition to survey a series of interlinking caves in the Himalayan mountains. According to one account, the caves may have been artificially carved, and were more like a complex system of tunnels and underground storerooms. The walls were squared and glazed, as if cut into the mountain with a source of extreme heat. Inside the caves were several ancient, but neatly arranged burial sites, and in them the skeletal remains of a strange people. The skeletons, measuring a little more than four feet tall, were frail and spindly with disproportionately large skulls. At first. it was suggested by a member of the team that these might be the remains of an unknown species of mountain gorilla. Professor Chi Pu Tei is reputed to have responded, "Who ever heard of apes burying one another?" Yet, what kind of human was this? More discoveries made further in the caves all but ruled out the idea that these were apes. On the walls were carved pictograms of the heavens: the sun, the moon, the stars, and the Earth with lines of dots connecting them. Then the team made the most incredible discovery of all. Half-buried in the dirt floor of the cave was an odd stone disk, obviously fashioned by the hand of an intelligent creature. The disk was approximately nine inches in diameter and three-quarters of an inch thick. In the exact center was a perfectly round, 3/4" hole, and etched in its face was a fine groove spiraling out from the center to the rim, making the disk look for all the world like some kind of primitive phonograph record. This one plate, dated to be between 10,000 and 12,000 years old - older by far than the great pyramids of Egypt- was fantastic enough, but the wonder was multiplied manyfold. In all, 716 such plates were found. And each held an incredible secret. The groove, upon further inspection, was not a groove at all, but a continuous line of strange carved hieroglyphics - writing! The tiny, almost microscopic characters were in a language never encountered before. It wasn't until 1962 that another Chinese scientist was able to decode the message of the stone plates - a message so incredible and earth-shattering that the Prehistory Department of the Beijing Academy prohibited its translation to be published. Eventually, the message was published, and what is says will astound you.

The Ica Stones
Beginning in the 1930s, the father of Dr. Javier Cabrera, Cultural Anthropologist for Ica, Peru, discovered many hundreds of ceremonial burial stones in the tombs of the ancient Incas. Dr. Cabrera, carrying on his father's work, has collected more than 1,100 of these andesite stones, which are estimated to be between 500 and 1,500 years old and have become known collectively as the Ica Stones. The stones bear etchings, many of which are sexually graphic (which was common to the culture), some picture idols and others depict such practices as open-heart surgery and brain transplants. The most astonishing etchings, however, clearly represent dinosaurs - brontosaurs, triceratops (see photo), stegosaurus and pterosaurs. While skeptics consider the Ica Stones a hoax their authenticity has neither been proved or disproved.

The Antikythera Mechanism
A perplexing artifact was recovered by sponge-divers from a shipwreck in 1900 off the coast of Antikythera, a small island that lies northwest of Crete. The divers brought up from the wreck a great many marble and and bronze statues that had apparently been the ship's cargo. Among the findings was a hunk of corroded bronze that contained some kind of mechanism composed of many gears and wheels. Writing on the case indicated that it was made in 80 B.C., and many experts at first thought it was an astrolabe, an astronomer's tool. An x-ray of the mechanism, however, revealed it to be far more complex, containing a sophisticated system of differential gears. Gearing of this complexity was not known to exist until 1575! It is still unknown who constructed this amazing instrument 2,000 years ago or how the technology was lost.

The Baghdad Battery
Today batteries can be found in any grocery, drug, convenience and department store you come across. Well, here's a battery that's 2,000 years old! Known as the Baghdad Battery, this curiosity was found in the ruins of a Parthian village believed to date back to between 248 B.C. and 226 A.D. The device consists of a 5-1/2-inch high clay vessel inside of which was a copper cylinder held in place by asphalt, and inside of that was an oxidized iron rod. Experts who examined it concluded that the device needed only to be filled with an acid or alkaline liquid to produce an electric charge. It is believed that this ancient battery might have been used for electroplating objects with gold. If so, how was this technology lost... and the battery not rediscovered for another 1,800 years?

The Coso Artifact
While mineral hunting in the mountains of California near Olancha during the winter of 1961, Wallace Lane, Virginia Maxey and Mike Mikesell found a rock, among many others, that they thought was a geode - a good addition for their gem shop. Upon cutting it open, however, Mikesell found an object inside that seemed to be made of white porcelain. In the center was a shaft of shiny metal. Experts estimated that it should have taken about 500,000 years for this fossil-encrusted nodule to form, yet the object inside was obviously of sophisticated human manufacture. Further investigation revealed that the porcelain was surround by a hexagonal casing, and an x-ray revealed a tiny spring at one end. Some who have examined the evidence say it looks very much like a modern-day spark plug. How did it get inside a 500,000-year-old rock?

Ancient Model Aircraft
There are artifacts belonging to ancient Egyptian and Central American cultures that look amazingly like modern day aircraft. The Egyptian artifact, found in a tomb at Saqquara, Egypt in 1898, is a six-inch wooden object that strongly resembles a model airplane, with fuselage, wings and tail. Experts believe the object is so aerodynamic that it is actually able to glide. The small object discovered in Central America (shown at right), and estimated to be 1,000 years old, is made of gold and could easily be mistaken for a model of a delta-wing aircraft - or even the Space Shuttle. It even features what looks like a pilot's seat.

Models of airplanes thousands of years old... vast works of art that can only be seen from the air... ancient texts that describe aerial battles. Are they proof that ancient civilizations mastered powered flight?

Flight has been the dream of humankind since they watched in awe as birds soared effortlessly through the sky. But, according to accepted history, it wasn't until the 1780s that two Frenchmen achieved lighter-than-air flight when they were lifted into the air in a hot air balloon near Paris. Then powered, heavier-than-air flight became the goal. And although it was theorized that heavier-than-air flight was possible as early as the 13th century, and in the 16th century Leonardo da Vinci designed winged aircraft and a crude kind of helicopter, it wasn't until the Wright brothers made their first successful flights at Kitty Hawk in 1903 that powered flight became a reality. That's the widely accepted history. Some researchers and a few rogue scientists believe there's evidence to suggest that humans achieved flight earlier in history - much earlier... so early, they say, that the knowledge of this technology has been lost and ancient stories that recount adventures of human flight have been relegated only to myth. Is it possible that humans developed the technology to fly in early civilizations - or in civilizations that are now lost to history? Let's take a look at what some call the evidence - intriguing artifacts, carvings, inscriptions and legends - that they say point to the true record human of flight.

The Egyptian Airplane: In 1898, a peculiar six-inch wooden object was found in a tomb at Saqquara, Egypt that dated back to about 200 BCE. The object had a body or fuselage, seven-inch wings that curved downward slightly, a fixed rudder and a tail. It looked very much like a modern airplane or glider. But since airplanes had not yet been invented in 1898 (never mind ancient Egypt), it was labeled as a model of bird and stored away in the basement of the Cairo museum. The object was rediscovered many years later by Dr. Khalil Messiha, an authority on ancient models. According to Messiha and others who have studied the object, it has characteristics of very advanced aerodynamics, much like modern pusher-gliders that require very little power to stay aloft. The curved wings are today known as reverse dihedral wings, which can attain great amounts of lift. A similar design is employed on the supersonic Concorde aircraft. Was this just a child's toy? Or was it a scale model of an aircraft the Egyptians planned to build... or did build. If they did build a full-scale version of the aircraft, no evidence exists for it. No full-size airplanes have been found in any pharaoh's tomb to fly him to the land of the dead.

The Carvings at Abydos (left):

Although no airplanes or airplane parts have ever been found from the ruins of ancient Egypt, is there corroborating evidence that they constructed aircraft? Even more controversial than the model airplane are the enigmatic carvings found in the temple of Abydos, Egypt by Dr. Ruth Hover. Hover photographed a wall panel which had been revealed when a newer overlaying panel crumbled and fell off. The older panel beneath contained embossed images that resemble modern aircraft as seen in profile. One bears a striking resemblance to a modern helicopter, while others could be interpreted as aircraft, hovercraft or even flying saucers. When the photos of these carvings first surfaced, it was assumed that they had been digitally altered to create a sensational hoax. And indeed some of them had been retouched to more clearly show aircraft-like features. But even unaltered photos seemed to show the very modern-looking figures. Perhaps looks are deceiving, however. The official take from archaeologists is that the strange carvings are palimpsests - the result of two or more overlapping carvings that combine to look like something else. The "aircraft," they say, are merely combinations of overlapping hieroglyphics.

Central and South American Shuttle: Egypt's isn't the only ancient civilization that has produced puzzling artifacts. A remarkable gold trinket estimated to be at least 1,000 years old - dating perhaps to between 500 and 800 AD - was found in Central America and along coastal areas of South America. If you weren't aware of its age, you might guess that it was a child's model of the Space Shuttle or a delta wing fighter aircraft. When the artifact was discovered, archaeologists called it a zoomorph, or animal-shaped object. It resembles no known flying animal, however. It looks distinctly mechanical with its delta-shaped wings, stabilizer fins and rudder. It even has what looks like a pilot's seat in the right place. Experts in aerodynamics, however, contend that the wings are too far back for the object's center of gravity, and that the nose is not aerodynamically sound. Whatever this object is supposed to be or represent, its remarkable resemblance to a modern aircraft or spacecraft is uncanny. Nazca - A Reason to Fly? Spread over a 37 by 15 mile plateau near Nazca, Peru are huge works of art "drawn" on the ground by people of the Paracas and Nasca cultures. The figures, called geoglyphs, are stylized portraits of a 18 different kinds of birds, a curly-tailed monkey as big as a football field, a killer whale, a 150-foot spider, a lizard, human forms and other strange objects. Although the civilizations that created the figures flourished between 200 BC and 600 AD, no one knows for certain when the geoglyphs were made... or why. But since they were discovered, archaeologists have wondered by these people would create such monumental works of art that could not be appreciated from the ground. The figures can only be distinguished when viewed from a great height. In fact, they were discovered in recent times only when an explorer noticed them when flying over them in an airplane. Since there are no nearby mountains or other elevated areas nearby from which to look down on the Nazca lines, how were they ever seen? Because of Nazca's large grids of crisscrossing paths, that seem to go nowhere (some extending as long as six miles), authors such as Erich Von Daniken have suggested (with only this as "evidence") that Nazca is a ancient spaceport. The paths, he contends, are runways for aircraft, and that their pilots and passengers were those privileged to view the large-scale figures. Less sensationalistic is the suggestion that this ancient civilization constructed hot-air balloons in which to take passengers aloft to view the symbols. In 1974, Julian Nott and Jim Woodman tested this theory by building a balloon made of materials available to the Nazca natives. They constructed a gondola of totora reeds and stitched-together sheets of cotton cloth that they filled with the hot air from wood smoke. Their balloon, dubbed Condor I, quickly rose to over 300 feet, proving that it was at least possible for the South American natives of this region to have achieved lighter-than-air flight long before Europeans did.

The Vaimanika-sastra: Although the Chinese are credited with inventing rocketry, some people believe that an ancient text from India describes sophisticated air flight by human pilots. Written by Maharishi Bharadwaja in the 4th century BC (allegedly dictated while he was in a trance), the Vaimanika-sastra seems to talk about piloting some kind of aircraft - a vimana - with some astonishing capabilities. Sounding like a manual for aerial battle (or instructions to a video game), the text claims to reveal 32 secrets of piloting a vimana, including:

Goodha - permits the pilot to make his vimana invisible to his enemies.
Paroksha - enables the pilot to paralyze other vimanas and put them out of action.
Pralaya - pushes an electrical force through the "five-limbed aerial tube" so that the pilot may "destroy everything as in a cataclysm."
Taara - provides the pilot with another means of avoiding contact with an enemy or hiding from observers: "By mixing with ethereal force 10 parts of air force, 7 parts of water force, and 16 parts of solar glow, and projecting it by means of the star-faced mirror through the frontal tube of the vimana, the appearance of a star-spangled sky is created."
Jalada roopa - instructs the pilot in the correct proportions of certain chemicals which will envelop the vimana and give it "the appearance of a cloud."

Was the Vaimanika-sastra simply imaginative writing, rich with symbolism and religious meaning? Or was it a description of ancient yet advanced technology that humankind was not to rediscover until the 20th century?

Giant Stone Balls of Costa Rica
Workmen hacking and burning their way through the dense jungle of Costa Rica to clear an area for banana plantations in the 1930s stumbled upon some incredible objects: dozens of stone balls, many of which were perfectly spherical. They varied in size from as small as a tennis ball to an astonishing 8 feet in diameter and weighing 16 tons! Although the great stone balls are clearly man-made, it is unknown who made them, for what purpose and, most puzzling, how they achieved such spherical precision.

Impossible Fossils
Fossils, as we learned in grade school, appear in rocks that were formed many thousands of years ago. Yet there are a number of fossils that just don't make geological or historical sense. A fossil of a human handprint, for example, was found in limestone estimated to be 110 million years old. What appears to be a fossilized human finger found in the Canadian Arctic also dates back 100 to 110 million years ago. And what appears to be the fossil of a human footprint, possibly wearing a sandal, was found near Delta, Utah in a shale deposit estimated to be 300 million to 600 million years old.

Fossilized Human Finger: A stunning new discovery with the potential to overthrow all of modern evolutionary thought was recently found in old collections of fossils from Axel Heiberg Island in the Canadian Arctic, far above the arctic circle. It appears to be a "fossil finger", not unlike ones previously recorded from Creataceous age strata in Texas by Dr. Carl Baugh of the Creataceous Evidences Museum .The new fossil dates from about 100 to 110 million years ago, also from the geologic time evolutionists call the "Creataceous Period". The specimen is known by the rather innocuous designation "DM93-083".The side view shows dark areas that are interpreted as the interior parts of the bones and bone marrow. These areas have less density than the surrounding stones, and therefore more easily pass X-rays, causing darkening of the image

Photo: Fossilized human finger.

Out-of-Place Metal Objects
Humans were not even around 65 million years ago, never mind people who could work metal. So then how does science explain semi-ovoid metallic tubes dug out of 65-million-year-old Cretaceous chalk in France? In 1885, a block of coal was broken open to find a metal cube obviously worked by intelligent hands. In 1912, employees at an electric plant broke apart a large chunk of coal out of which fell an iron pot! A nail was found embedded in a sandstone block from the Mesozoic Era. And there are many more such anomalies. What are we to make of these finds? There are several possibilities: Intelligent humans date back much, much further than we realize. Other intelligent beings and civilizations existed on earth far beyond our recorded history. Our dating methods are completely inaccurate, and that stone, coal and fossils form much more rapidly than we now estimate.

In any case, these examples - and there are many more - should prompt any curious and open-minded scientist to reexamine and rethink the true history of life on earth.