Occam's Trowel, Sifting archaeological fringe to get to archaeological fact.
And so we have made it to the final entry in the 10 Most Puzzling Ancient Artifacts list. We finish with the second of our two catch-all categories, the first being where we learned about OOParts. In this final entry we are looking at Impossible Fossils, which pretty much live up to their name. We've been over this before in an earlier post on the... Continue Reading →
Here perhaps is the only true puzzler on the list. Probably not for the reasons you think, but it does give me a moment to explain why Context is so important in archaeology. Lets start with what we do know about the Balls. The earliest reports of the Balls began in the late 1800's, but... Continue Reading →
This appears to be more of a category than an individual artifact, it seems to cover a couple of different artifacts that share the common thread of vaguely looking like flying objects. Or at lest that's what you're supposed to think. Two major items stand out in this category, The Saqqara Bird and the Tolima Artifacts,... Continue Reading →
As we move though The 10 Most Puzzling Ancient Artifacts list, we come to a couple "catch-all" categories. The first is Out-Of-Place Metal Objects, which is a subcategory of what are called OOPArts, or Out-Of-Place Artifacts. This really is a huge catch-all and includes many objects that are both real (in that they exist, but are not necessarily what... Continue Reading →
The next item on the 10 Most Puzzling Ancient Artifacts list is the Coso Artifact...or as it should be more correctly named; The 1920's era Spark Plug that got confused for a Geode. Which if you know anything about how metal corrodes, debunks this entirely. It also takes all the fun out of writing a big'ol... Continue Reading →
Ah the Baghdad Battery, such a simple, yet confounding object...or is it? Let's start at the beginning...or should I say beginnings? The story starts with one German artist/archaeologist Wilhelm Konig who either unearthed the vessel during an excavation in Khujut Rabu [2], or found the object in the basement of the Baghdad Museum when he took over as curator [6].... Continue Reading →
Before we can fully appreciate the Antikythera Mechanism, I first have to point out that clockwork and steam powered mechanisms were well known and in use in Ancient Greece, Egypt, India, and China. Things such as mechanical clocks, Automa, and various forms of calendars were in use. Two and a half millennia before the Mechanism, India used gears to drive doors and lift water (Dunning 2009).... Continue Reading →
As we move on down the line of the 10 most not-so-puzzling ancient artifacts, we come to the Ica Stones. These are perhaps the most perplexing to me, since I don't understand how anyone can look at these and think they are real. These little gems range in size from cobbles to boulders, and depict a wide variety of images... Continue Reading →
The Dropa Stones are puzzling artifact #2 on the 10 Most Puzzling Ancient Artifacts list. These are "The" Dropa Stone images.What are the Dropa Stones? The Story of how the stones were found is kinda up in the air. The major story states that a Chinese archaeologist named Chu Pu Tei, found the stones in 1938/37 while he... Continue Reading →
I've seen this article several times now, and I meant to address it the first time, but then I got distracted by something shinny...er I mean work? Either way, the biggest reason I let it go was that I wasn't terribly concerned about it. I mean, these things are so obviously geofacts or frauds, who in their right mind would believe them? Then I saw this same... Continue Reading →
Archaeological Fantasies 