Arthur C Clarke, wrote of the device in ‘Technology and the Limits of Knowledge’ in ‘The View from Serendip’, "Looking at this extraordinary relic is a most disturbing experience. Few activities are more futile than the ‘what if....’ type of speculation, yet the mechanism positively compels such thinking. Though it is over two thousand years old, it represents a level which our technology did not reach until the eighteenth century…If the insight of the Greeks had matched their ingenuity, the industrial revolution might have begun a thousand years before Columbus. By this time we would not merely be pottering around on the Moon, we would have reached the nearer stars.’" (7) Check out the video for more information here. Other artefacts have been discovered that further illustrate that our ancestors enjoyed a degree of technology that should have been unavailable to them. One of the most intriguing of these artefacts has been called the Baghdad Battery. In the late 1930’s Dr. Wilhelm König, a German archaeologist employed by the State Museum in Baghdad was examining a consignment of finds from a settlement that had once been occupied by the Parthians. König wrote "something rather peculiar was found, and, after it had passed through several hands, it was brought to me. A vase like vessel of light yellow clay, whose neck had been removed, contained a copper cylinder, which was held firmly by asphalt. "The vase was about 15 centimetres high; the sheet-copper "The question as to what this might be received the most surprising answer. After all the parts had been brought together and then examined in their separate parts, it became evident that it could only have been an electrical element. It was only necessary to add an acid or an alkaline liquid to complete the element. (8)" The Baghdad Battery, was constructed between 248BCE and 266AD making it around two thousand years old.
The Baghdad Battery was not a ‘one-off’ with four similar clay pots containing copper cylinders being unearthed in a hut near Baghdad. In these pots were thin iron and copper rods which may have been used to connect themselves together to deliver a higher voltage. Ten other cells were also uncovered at Ktesiphon by Professor E. Kuhnel of the Staatliches Museum in Berlin. Check out the video here.
Of course this may simply be an account which to modern ears sounds remarkably like atomic fall-out but isn’t, yet there is residual supporting physical evidence. For example the surface of the Gobi Desert near Lob Nor lake is covered with vitreous sand - the result of China’s atomic testing - but the desert had other areas of glassy sand which have been present for many thousands of years. The source of this intense heat in pre-history remain as unknown. There are also ancient burnt stones and boulders in the Sinai desert that have not been adequately explained. It is difficult to believe that mankind itself possessed atomic technology however there is evidence to suggest that he may have possessed more mundane, but nevertheless still forbidden (time-wise), weaponry. The source of these claims stems from this apparently unremarkable several thousand-year-old skull of an aurochs, a type of bison now extinct at the Russian Paleontological Museum in Moscow. What is remarkable, however, is that in the forehead of the animal there is a small round hole. A hole with an almost polished appearance - and without radial cracks. It has been suggested that the hole could only have been created by a projectile travelling at a very high speed, and the only natural phenomena that could account for the size and speed would be a small meteorite. Yet such a meteorite would have burnt up long before hitting the ground. Logically therefore, whatever caused the hole must have been artificial in construction. Given our accepted world history, it is impossible that something artificial could have breached the animal’s skull several thousands of years ago. Therefore, there must be a third explanation and the only one would appear to be that, for whatever reason, the skull of the now extinct animal was discovered and injured within last few hundred years. However, this explanation, however bizarre, cannot be true either, for there is no doubt that the aurochs was alive when its skull was breached; the calcification around the aperture is evidence of that. Indeed, the animal survived the wound and died years later from other causes, leaving a significant puzzle. This discovery of hole in the extinct aurochs is similar to that found in the skull of a 40,000-year-old Neanderthal discovered near Broken Hill in Rhodesia in 1921. On the left of the skull is a perfectly round hole. There are no radial cracks that would have resulted had the hole been caused by a weapon such as an arrow or a spear. Again, only a high-speed projectile such as a bullet could have caused the aperture. Indeed, further evidence of the bullet theory comes from the fact that the skull area directly opposite the hole is shattered, having been blown out from the inside. No projectile slower than a bullet could have produced either the neat hole or the shattering effect and a German forensic scientist from Berlin has confirmed that the cranial damage to the skull could not have been caused by anything but a bullet. It could be argued, that someone, for some reason, decided to shoot the skeleton leaving behind only a minor mystery, or, as opposed to the aurochs (which is known to be extinct), the skull is not as old as it is claimed to be. Neanderthal man's skull, however, cannot be easily mistaken for modern man's style, and this skull in particular, has been exhibited at the Museum of Natural History in London, were a mistake is unlikely to have been made. The skeleton was also found 60 feet below the surface; only a period of several thousand years could account for the accumulation of such a deposit.
Four thousand years ago wealthy Koreans had Spring Rooms warmed by hot air, which circulated in vents under the floors, and the Romans used a similar design. (Recent central heating was only invented towards the end of the 17th Century by Bonnemain and perfected by Duvoir.)
A Not only did the infrastructure of some buildings compare favourably with modern day equivalents, but also their furnishings: The prehistoric city of Catal Huyuk in Turkey is over 8,500 years old, yet pieces of carpet have been found in the ruins that could compete well with the best woven carpets available today. Such skills were equally evident in a discovery made by Professor Luther S. Cressman of the University of Oregon who came across two hundred pairs of skilfully made woven-fibre sandals in Lamos Cave in east Nevada. When a carbon-14 test was made, the sandals were found to be well over 9000 years old (13). TAGS: Ancient Chinese Inventions, Review Ancient Chinese Inventions, Ancient Technological Inventions, Antikythera Mechanism, Baghdad Battery, Violations of Accepted World History
|
In 1900, on the
day before Easter Sunday, a team of divers discovered a shipwreck off Antikythera (left whilst attempting to find sponges.
The sunken ship’s hull was full of bronze statues and other ancient artefacts
that were later retrieved and delivered to the National Archaeological Museum in
Athens for cleaning and restoration. It was not until 17th May 1902
that a leading archaeologist examined the artefacts and recognised the outline
of cogwheels in one of the lumps of bronze and wood. The writing on the case
confirmed that the item had been made in 80 BCE. 
Confirmation of the artefact as an electric cell came from
Dr. Arne Eggebrecht (left), an Egyptologist from Hildesheim in Germany and from
science historian, Willy Ley, working with of the General Electric High Voltage
Laboratory in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Ley constructed a duplicate model of
the artefact and discovered that when copper sulphate, acetic acid or citric
acid were added, the cells produced between 1.5 and 2 volts of electricity.
Generation of electric current by the same means was not achieved by our modern
civilisation until the early 19th century. 
This can be demonstrated in many ways and should actually
come as no surprise for many of the problems we face in organising our lives and
society are timeless; they were as pertinent thousands of years ago as they are
today. For example, the ancient Romans would change their street arteries to one
way during peak traffic hours, and the city of Pompeii (left) used arm-waving
traffic policemen to cope with the congestion. Street signs were used in Babylon
more than two and a half thousand years before the present, with catchy names
such as ‘The Street On Which No Enemy Ever Tread’.
de Huantar high in
the Peruvian Andes, dating to 500 BCE. At its peak, Chavin de Huantar (right)
covered 105 acres and its population numbered around 3000, an unusually large
size for Peru at the time (10).
t the same time in history private toilets with a central
system of stone drains and ceramic pipes were common in the city of Knossos,
Crete (left). Similarly the rooms of the Palace of Minos were ventilated through
air-shafts. With its air-conditioned chambers, excellent bathrooms and toilets,
the palace was not only modern in the way it was equipped, but also very large;
similar in size to Buckingham Palace. Pipes for hot and cold water have also
been found in tiled bathrooms at Chan Chan in South America a time when such
comforts were unheard of in Europe.
