00:00In February 1961, three adventurous rock lovers were searching for geodes near Oloncha, California.
00:07They took one of their findings home and studied it because it looked pretty unusual.
00:12They managed to cut through the matrix and discovered something unexpected inside.
00:18Instead of the usual mineral formations, it had a cylindrical object resembling porcelain
00:23inside.
00:24There was a metal shaft at its center, and around it, a hexagonal sheath made of copper
00:28and some unidentified substance.
00:31Its discoverers were hoping they had found an example of some unknown technology from
00:36500,000 years ago.
00:38It could be proof that there was a hyper-advanced ancient civilization like Atlantis or that
00:43time travel was real.
00:46Maybe someone came all the way from the future and accidentally dropped the item.
00:50Or maybe some intelligent extraterrestrial beings brought it when visiting Earth.
00:55If any of these theories were true, it would mean that scientists have to completely rewrite
00:59all human history as we know it.
01:02But not everyone shared the excitement, and truth-seekers and alternative archaeology
01:06circles were trying to solve the mystery of the so-called Koso Artifact until the late
01:1190s with theories and debates.
01:14Then a group of skeptics took images and x-rays of the discovery and showed them to spark
01:19plug collectors.
01:20They have identified the artifact as a spark plug with corroded metal components from the
01:251920s and not ancient technology at all.
01:29Almost 20 years later, one of the co-discoverers of the artifact agreed to take it for inspection
01:34at the University of Washington.
01:36They officially confirmed it was a 1920s-era champion spark plug.
01:41And the stone matrix containing the artifact wasn't a geode but a concretion.
01:46Those can form because of natural processes over decades or years, but not millennia.
01:52The Koso Artifact is a good example of an out-of-place artifact, which is a thing in
01:57pseudo-archaeology.
01:58It's something found in a place or time where it shouldn't logically be.
02:03These artifacts seem too advanced for the time period they're found in.
02:06They could also mean human activity existed when humans weren't supposed to be around.
02:12The Baghdad Battery is another example of such an artifact.
02:17It was found in the 1930s by a German archaeologist and consists of a clay jar, a copper cylinder,
02:24and an iron rod going through the jar's stopper.
02:27Its top, which was broken off, probably had been sealed with asphalt.
02:31Its discoverer noticed that it had two different metals and possibly an electrolyte, which
02:36are key components of a battery.
02:38There are no ancient writings to support this theory, but when scientists ran tests and
02:43filled it with an ionic solution like vinegar or wine, it showed that it could conduct electricity.
02:49If it really was a battery from 2,000 years ago, it might have been used in ancient medical
02:54practices, or even embedded in statues to make it look like they were buzzing to impress
02:59people.
03:00Koenig, who found it, believed it was used for electroplating, a process for coating
03:05metals.
03:06Even if it was used as a battery, the Baghdad Artifact could only produce a small amount
03:11of energy, around one volt of electricity.
03:14So, some people believe it was used as a storage container for sacred scrolls.
03:20Back in the 1930s, a couple stumbled upon something strange while walking along Red
03:24Creek in London, Texas.
03:26It was a piece of wood sticking out of what looked like an ancient rock formation.
03:31Around a decade later, their son, who was really curious to find out its secret, decided
03:36to crack open the rock and found a surprisingly modern hammer inside.
03:41This discovery caught the attention of Karl Bau, a young earth creationist who claimed
03:46the rock surrounding the hammer dated back to the Cretaceous period.
03:50He saw it as evidence against evolutionary theory.
03:54After some investigation, scientists proved that the rock was not as ancient as it seemed.
03:59Geological processes have just encased the modern hammer over time, so it wasn't evidence
04:04of humans coexisting with dinosaurs like the Flintstones, as some hoped.
04:08It was just a case of a miner dropping his hammer centuries ago, and nature doing its
04:13thing.
04:14A Chinese archaeologist supposedly stumbled upon some caves that seemed to serve as a
04:19burial ground for small beings with big, oval heads.
04:24Alongside these remains, there was rock art depicting figures with round helmets, the
04:29sun, the moon, the earth, and stars connected by groups of pea-sized dots.
04:35They also found over 700 mysterious stone disks etched with spiral grooves.
04:41Things got even weirder when these disks were sent to a Chinese professor who claimed the
04:45grooves were actually written characters.
04:48According to his translation, the disks told the tale of Dropa visitors from another planet
04:53who had crashed their spaceship on Earth about 12,000 years ago and had tried to live among
04:58us until they were hunted down by locals.
05:01But there's no concrete evidence that any of this actually happened.
05:05The story was first published back in the 1960s in a couple of articles, but it all
05:09seemed a bit fishy.
05:11None of the people involved, the archaeologist, the professor, or even the university they
05:15supposedly worked at, seem to have left any trace in the records.
05:19And while there is a group in Tibet called the Dropka, they're fully human, not extraterrestrial
05:25visitors.
05:26And there's no solid proof that the Dropa stones exist at all.
05:30In a remote part of China, there are some bizarre pipe-like formations known as the
05:34Beigon Pipes.
05:36A local explorer found them back in 1996, protruding from Mount Beigon and along the
05:42shores of Toson Lake nearby.
05:44Some people thought they were the work of ancient guests from other planets.
05:48When samples of the pipe material were tested, they contained mostly common minerals, but
05:53there was a mysterious 8% of unknown stuff.
05:57Special testing revealed that these pipes had been there before humans.
06:01Chinese geologists later visited the site and suggested that these pipes were formed
06:05naturally over time.
06:07It could be sediment piling up in the fissures in the earth, or even fossilized tree roots
06:12from the area's lush past, but it's not certain.
06:16There's a mysterious terracotta head in Mexico with a hard-to-pronounce name, discovered
06:22back in the 1930s during a burial excavation.
06:25This head looked a lot like fancy Roman statues, so it wasn't clear what it was doing in
06:30Mexico.
06:31For some reason, the discoverer kept it secret for several decades.
06:35The head was found in a pyramid with three floors about 40 miles from Mexico City, alongside
06:40gold, copper, and pottery.
06:43Some argue that if this head really is many centuries old, it could mean the Romans or
06:48some other civilization had made it to Mesoamerica before Columbus did.
06:52There are also drift voyage theories mentioning a shipwreck after which some artifacts and
06:57survivors made it ashore.
07:00Some suggest that this figurine head was a little souvenir brought over by the Vikings,
07:05but there's no solid archaeological proof of the Vikings meeting the folks in Mesoamerica.
07:10There are some artifacts floating around, but none of them have been stamped as undeniable
07:14evidence of pre-Columbian contact.
07:16So the mystery of how this head ended up where it did remains unsolved.
07:22While digging a trench along a river in Romania, workers found a wedge, which is now famous
07:27as the Aluminum Wedge of Ajd, or the Object of Ajd.
07:32Right next to it, there were some mastodon bones.
07:35Those distant relatives of elephants lived 11,000 years ago, so the wedge is probably
07:40of the same age.
07:42The cool part is that it's made of aluminum, a metal not even discovered until the 1800s.
07:47This material requires serious heat to produce.
07:50The wedge is also covered in a thick layer of oxide that's been sitting there for hundreds
07:55of years.
07:56Some folks believe this wedge must have crash-landed here on a spacecraft from some other planet.
08:02Some scientists think it's all a hoax, and others suppose it might be a human-made object
08:07with an unknown purpose.
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