RE: Plausibility of ancient extraterrestrials
July 17, 2023 at 10:22 am
(This post was last modified: July 17, 2023 at 10:30 am by The Grand Nudger.)
The baghdad battery is probably the most famous, yeah. Mostly because of ancient aliens nutters I suspect - but it's not the only one. Personally, I think the later dates are more credible. I don't think we were making them 6k or 4k years ago....but they're so simple as you note and as I've also said...that it wouldn't be entirely surprising to me if we were.
I do think the "just scroll jar" explanation is the most fun....that's the "didn't know what they had" version. You know, even if the person who made it did know what they had, I bet they still would have ended up in the hands of people who stuffed receipts in them. I can point to contemporary examples, ofc. I think the weakness of the explanation is that we've never found any scrolls in them, even when there was material that could have been used as a scroll..it was blank. If the absence of any evidence to the effect is why we shouldn't believe they were (intentional) batteries...then it's also a good reason why we shouldn't believe they were for holding scrolls. The alternative safe explanation is that they were religious or cult objects.
Hence my suggestion of toys and curio. We're no more or less creative or brilliant or curious today than we were at least 50k years ago. If someone handed ancient me a "scroll holder" constructed this way, I like to think I'd have noticed it's then-weirdness, and had fun with it. Maybe they were built for licking?
I do think the "just scroll jar" explanation is the most fun....that's the "didn't know what they had" version. You know, even if the person who made it did know what they had, I bet they still would have ended up in the hands of people who stuffed receipts in them. I can point to contemporary examples, ofc. I think the weakness of the explanation is that we've never found any scrolls in them, even when there was material that could have been used as a scroll..it was blank. If the absence of any evidence to the effect is why we shouldn't believe they were (intentional) batteries...then it's also a good reason why we shouldn't believe they were for holding scrolls. The alternative safe explanation is that they were religious or cult objects.
Hence my suggestion of toys and curio. We're no more or less creative or brilliant or curious today than we were at least 50k years ago. If someone handed ancient me a "scroll holder" constructed this way, I like to think I'd have noticed it's then-weirdness, and had fun with it. Maybe they were built for licking?
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