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Unexplained Mysteries Discussion Forums > Unexplained Mysteries > Metaphysics, Psychology & Psychic Phenomena
emmy
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.

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.
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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.

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.

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, 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.


Axle13
I don't have links but I believe the first three were shown to be modern-day hoaxes. I'm not postive if any of the others were, but I wouldn't be surprised. I actually read that article a few months ago and did some research on many of the items because I thought they were amazing discoveries. I was disappointed to find out that a lot of them just aren't what they claim to be.
mleahy
The was a documentary on the Giant Stone Spheres of Costa Rica on Disocvery a while back. THey concluded that they were made by the indigenous people of the region. They also concluded that the precision was attained by lots of hard work.

It was really quite interesting, they had the researches actually make one of the spheres themselves, using only rocks.

I don't believe they concluded why they were made though. Most of the stone spheres are no longer in their original places, so if there was any pattern intended, it has been lost throughout the years.

Here's something about the Coso Artifact too:

Apparently, it actually was just a sparkplug.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/coso.html

*edit* oops, forgot the link.
TooFarGone
Nice mysteries
AuroraintheDesert
OMG! I heard about the plane and battery in my Christian magazine I get each month. Omg those things are so interested. It just proves that the men and women from the time B.C. were more intelligent than us.
Diebytheflyguy
QUOTE(AuroraintheDesert @ Oct 14 2004, 05:18 PM)
OMG! I heard about the plane and battery in my Christian magazine I get each month. Omg those things are so interested. It just proves that the men and women from the time B.C. were more intelligent than us.
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Or were they just as intelligent as us?...
AuroraintheDesert
Far more. Look at the percison in the pryrimds for example
Diebytheflyguy
We can built a pyramid too...
Gabriel
humans are older than everyone beleves i beleve that our current time table for history is off by a lot
aquatus1
The Pyramid isn't that precise. It has its errors and corrections. like any other construction. We could build a far more precise one today, were we willing to spend the money to do so.

The Grooved Spheres, the Dropa Stones, and the Ica Stones are well known to be hoaxes (particularly the latter, as many of the dinosaurs on them have been traced to that era's comic books). The Antykhera mechanism and the Baghdad battery are absolutely remarkable examples of ingenuity and application, but while rare, time-keeping devices are not at all unknown for the era, nor is the electrical phenomena undocumented (althoug it was usually sourced as mystical, rather than chemical). Neither required any sort of unobtainable specialized knowledged. The Coso artifact is indeed a sparkplug; it has been positively identified as such by several manufacturers as a circa 1920 Champion model.

I could go on, but ultimately, OOPART tend to be such only because the people romanticizing them fail to do proper research on them.
LucidElement
i dont think all these are all that interesting, the ica stones are fascinating as well as the Grooved spheres... thanx for the others though... i dont really understand them all that well... but ill reaserch them!
AuroraintheDesert
I agree with gabrial *sp* I am a Christian and I believe the Bible on a whole however I think our time table of the Bible *standing 3,000 years* is off by alot. Somehow in the grand sceam of things we lost track of time.
Diebytheflyguy
QUOTE(AuroraintheDesert @ Oct 17 2004, 10:22 AM)
I agree with gabrial *sp* I am a Christian and I believe the Bible on a whole however I think our time table of the Bible *standing 3,000 years* is off by alot. Somehow in the grand sceam of things we lost track of time.
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Yes, well this simply shows the bible is wrong. The oldest human was found to be 160,000 year old, which were portions of a human skull found in Africa. So yes, humans have been around alot longer than 3,000 years!
Tess
Maybe...just maybe...man gets so technologically advanced that he destroys himself and it all starts over.....and that explains the ancient mysteries.Maybe someday man will find something of ours too and not be able to understand it.
PolkaTulk
thumbsup.gif yeah that is a good possible explination for it
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