Strange Universe: Out-of-Place Artifacts

An Out-of-Place Artifact (OOPart) is a curious find upsetting the normal balance and understanding of our past. As the wikipedia list of alleged OOParts reveals, these archaeological oddities are very diverse--comprising a range of items from maps, to metal blocks, to recognizable tools like lamps, batteries, and calculators. Upon dating the items, however, it becomes clear that something is dreadfully wrong: electric tools known to the modern eye shouldn't exist two thousand years ago, Egyptian tombs shouldn't hide models of flying machines, and mine shafts especially shouldn't hide bizarre metal shapes made millions of years before human evolution. These latter anachronisms are fittingly Lovecraftian. While the Kingoodie Hammer or the Klerksdorp Spheres may not be as exciting as full fledged city ruins found in "The Shadow Out of Time," they are nevertheless real life mysteries of a temporal paradox.

The sheer diversity of what the OOParts might imply about our history is evident just by a brief sampling of different items. One of the less stunning, but actually validated and (seemingly) explained OOParts is the famous Maine Penny. This 11th century Scandinavian coin haunted Western scholars since its discovery in 1957 at the remains of an American Indian settlement in Maine. After decades of study, it appears the penny's authenticity is widely accepted, as is its role as a symbol of more extensive contact than previously thought between North American natives and Vikings, nearly 500 years before Colombus. More improbable, but still hinting at vast departures in current historical understanding, are OOParts like the Fuente Manga--a Bolivian bowl with Sumerian-like cuneiform text.

Other OOParts imply not just possible alternative routes in historical interactions between peoples, but also radically different, earlier understandings of science and technology. One of the best cases of this is the Baghdad Battery, a queer set of devices seemingly aimed at generating electrical energy and dating from about 250 BCE to 250 CE. It's possible this contraption was used for electrically covering plates with fine coats of gold, or even medicinally, as an early type of electro-acupuncture. Here, however, critics argue that even if these were the functions, it implies little understanding of electric phenomena among ancients. Another more notable OOPart involving earlier possession of high technology is the Piri Reis map detailing a world that includes the terrain of Antarctica. Created in the 16th century by Ottoman Turks, this map is not only impressive for showing an undiscovered continent, but incredibly, may reveal Antarctic features under the ice unknown until modern times. Admiral Piri Reis, the map's drawer, said he used a number of other 16th century maps of recent explorations, as well as several ancient ones produced by Greeks and Arabs. Additionally, the Saqqara Bird of Ptolemaic Egypt is claimed by some to be a model of a larger flying machine. If true, it would be amazing proof of human flight millenia before the first hot air balloons.

The great enduring difficulty with OOParts is the inability to verify their function or purpose in most cases. Not surprisingly, this leads many experts to shrug off their study altogether, leaving OOParts to the confines of pseudoscience. This further degrades examination, since they are left to those seeking to place them in a worldview supporting time travellers, Biblical Creationism, or civilizations like Atlantis. Perhaps because of this strange place in scholarship, anachronistic artifacts will continue to generate interest in shadowy mysteries of the past. This will sustain their existence as a topic of weird speculation online, and in texts like the controversial, but encyclopedic book, Forbidden Archaeology.

-Grim Blogger