Plausibility of ancient extraterrestrials

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Batteries imply a technically knowledgeable infrastructure. They don't just float around doing nothing on something.

Not really.   It only imply knowledgeable infrastructure if its principle of operation is known well enough for it to be adapted to multiple uses requiring different currents and voltage.

They would be making the damn things for a reason.

Otherwise it could simply be an accidental and superficial discovery resulting in a curious artifact that does not form, nor imply the existence of, any foundation that could be built upon to anything significantly more.

Yep, dropped from a flying saucer, no context allowed.

[Anomalocaris]

Not really.   It only imply knowledgeable infrastructure if its principle of operation is known well enough for it to be adapted to multiple uses requiring different currents and voltage.

They would be making the damn things for a reason.

Otherwise it could simply be an accidental and superficial discovery resulting in a curious artifact that does not form, nor imply the existence of, any foundation that could be built upon to anything significantly more.

Yep, dropped from a flying saucer, no context allowed.

 there is no strong indication, much less proof that they actually made it to be batteries.  also unlike the proverbial watch, or the 747, the bagdad “battery” could have been made by accident, by, for example, dropping to do similar metal into a little pot of lime juice.  Just because chance occurrence arranged three different substances into a formation that could function as a battery does not the device was used as a battery or was know to be useable as a battery.  Simple electrolytic cells like the supposed Baghdad batteries have far lower voltage than required for the electrical potential to be readily noticed by anyone touching the two metals.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

That's what I've been saying.

[The Grand Nudger]

It's a point I think we all agree on in principle.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

These ancient 'batteries' give every indication that the ancients (the human kind) dumped various rubbish in an unused pot and saw something interesting, like a bit of metal changing colour or getting a little shinier. If aliens were responsible, it seems like (as GS said) we should be finding the remains of things batteries were used for. 

Why didn't the aliens go full bore and create today's level of technological sophistication in ancient Sumer? Where are the remains of Sumerian digital computers, mobile phones, and exercise bicycles?

And where are the aliens right now and why aren't they helping out with things like, 'Do this and the cancer will go away' or 'Here's how to suck the carbon out of your atmosphere'?

They were so revved up millennia ago with helping the human species develop. Why did they stop?

Boru

[The Grand Nudger]

Maybe their civilization was based on clay batteries...and they went the way of the dodo. The whole thing is ludicrous, and the aliens aren't even the biggest stretch. Just like the bible, really. It's not the big in your face narrative miracles, it's the small hidden miracles nestled all over the story that -really- beggar belief. The sun is stopped in the sky - not miraculous. That the soldiers didn't immediately fly off the face of the earth - there's the head scratcher. Aliens came here and lifted us up...okay.....and all we got were these clay jars...?

*wanted to stress again that, at least in the case of the hindu battery, it's not even random rubbish - it's an antimicrobial and pesticide treatment still used today. There could have been a shitload of jars with that stuff in it at the time. Not all of the alleged/proposed/misidentified batteries are made that way, so it's not a full explanation..but the fact that they're all different might also suggest that they aren't even from any singular -human- knowledge tradition or for the same purpose as each other. At some point, though, it become clear that people realized that they did function as batteries - and that they could be put in series...because they wrote about it Maybe that was in the 600s to the 1200s...but that would still predate the official date that this was discovered.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Maybe their civilization was based on clay batteries...and they went the way of the dodo.  The whole thing is ludicrous, and the aliens aren't even the biggest stretch.  Just like the bible, really.  It's not the big in your face narrative miracles, it's the small hidden miracles nestled all over the story that -really- beggar belief.  The sun is stopped in the sky - not miraculous.  That the soldiers didn't immediately fly off the face of the earth - there's the head scratcher.  Aliens came here and lifted us up...okay.....and all we got were these clay jars...?

*wanted to stress again that, at least in the case of the hindu battery, it's not even random rubbish - it's an antimicrobial treatment still used today.

The biggest head scratcher (for this topic ) is that grown people - allowed to drive cars, go on dates, and have bank accounts - will point to a 3000 year old pot and proudly proclaim, ‘See? Aliens!’ and expect to be believed.

Boru

[The Grand Nudger]

-and that's a sticking point for some hindus and alot of indian nationalists... how people can often feel as though the west steals everything, including credit for discoveries..denying the mere possibility that some vedic hermit somewhere somewhen figured anything out...even as we're more than willing to yap on about guys like Hero of Alex.

[Anomalocaris]

I think it is much less innocent and far more fraudulent than being merely a honest reaction to a honest (if totally unsupported) perception that the west may have stole their idea.

Rather it is calculated move to serve the interests of people in the Indian society who had customarily felt themselves made secure, or justified some privileged position, by claiming special association with some ancient mystical wisdom, which are fraudulent as any mysticism fundamentally are. When the ancient wisdom proved manifestly impotent next to western inventions, and the methods and the social progress that made these inventions possible, these people would lose their privileged position to others who might rightly seek to sideline these fraudulent mysticism and seek to adopt western progress instead. So this bullshit about ancient achievement is concocted to whitewash the fraudulence of the basis of these people’s social privilege.

This is the same with biblical literalists in the west, the champion of traditional qi and medicine in China, and all sorts of people who uses a fraudulently misrepresented past or tradition to try to steal the thunder from the genuinely knowledge and invention made possible by the rise of true science in the west.

[GrandizerII]

The Bible also mentions the very same omnidirectional flying machines.

Nah, "glory of God" doesn't have anything to do with flying machines, lol.

Will anyone really fight me on the point that there are documents belonging to Hindu scripture that gave detailed instructions on how to build an electric battery and how to use an electric battery to split water into its constituent gasses? It's like the very first thing that comes up when you google search "Agastya Samhita"

“Place a well-cleaned copper plate in an earthenware vessel. Cover it first by copper sulfate and then by moist sawdust. After that, put a mercury-amalgamated zinc sheet on top of the sawdust to avoid polarization. The contact will produce an energy known by the twin name of Mitra-Varuna. Water will be split by this current into Pranavayu and Udanavayu. A chain of one hundred jars is said to give a very effective force. (p. 422)”

I am very, very skeptical of the source of this quote. Is this really in Hindu scriptures, or is it more like someone fairly modern claims to have grabbed this quote from there? Without needing to provide any link, could you provide further details on which section and which verse to look for instead of just the page number? The copy I've found through google doesn't even get to that many pages ...

People make a lot of fascinating claims online, and a lot of the time, these fascinating claims turn out to be false. We shouldn't hastily believe anything we read online.