Plausibility of ancient extraterrestrials

[The Grand Nudger]

It actually is a weird one, because we don't just have descriptions of these artifacts, we've found quite a few of them intact. This is where it gets wonky.

The safe explanation is that they held scrolls..despite the fact that we've never found scrolls in any of them. There were a few with the rods rolled in fiber, but there wasn't any writing on it. Were not sure when any of them were made, either. Could have been as late as 600ad - but that would still predate the acknowledged and well attributed discovery of the type of battery cell proposed by 1200 years. The really interesting thing, is that it does work, and some of them could have plated small objects. Very small. As in, things that would fit in the jars, since there doesn't appear to be any exterior connections to set them up in series (except for one, with no partner artifacts found). Additionally, only some of them could have done it, because you need a decent bath - that's the main issue for plating larger objects too..they'd need to run them in series into a bath. Most of the jars with substances in them could have charged, but couldn't plate. There are no known plated objects from the time period - but it's not clear that there would be even if they were used this way. It would have been inefficient and time consuming, and mercury based plating was already a thing. That leads people to posit other possible novel uses. Charging acupuncture needles, creating electromagnets, etc. They can/could have done a number of things.

It's either an example of people failing/refusing to credit their predecessors with discovering a technology - or an example of one of the most consequential let downs in all of tinkering history - supposing they weren't intended for any such use. The world might have been a different place, in this telling, had they realized what they'd built. Part of that, I think, goes back to the peacocks neck. People who played with this sort of shit tended to treat it like their own personal state secret. The knowledge, if we want to call it that, wasn't distributed and tested and out there in the world for people who might not have a mind to tinker, but have a mind for application, to be deployed. In this, I actually don't find it very surprising that we generally attribute tech to people that came after we organized the systematic and public discovery engine we call science now. Alchemists were more like snake oil salesmen, and if they said they could turn lead into gold it's more likely they plated that shit for the rubes (using the mercury method or at least hypothetically, electroplating) if they ever demonstrated it at all.

Here's what that baffles me. Ancient aliens types would like to place these artifacts around 2kbce, on the notion that an earlier date makes them somehow more miraculous or mysterious? Thing is, most of them could have been constructed as early as 8kbce...and at no point between 8kbce and 600ace are they really a marvel of technology. Even if they were batteries, they were extremely simple and very limited, and we've known how to make all the consituent parts for about 10k years. That's why I keep asking what they're doing for the alien story. They're not really the kind of thing you need aliens to explain..and, arguably, would make the aliens seem a little more far fetched. They crossed the galaxy to show us how to make...this? I hope they didn't meander their way to our rock with tech like that...though, if they did, it might explain why we never find any of them left alive.