What do you think about this?
In 1936, a German archaeologist named Wilhelm Konig was working at a museum in Baghdad when he found something in the basement collection that did not belong to any catalogued period of Mesopotamian history.
It was a clay jar, about five inches tall, sealed with bitumen. Inside the jar was a hollow copper cylinder. Inside the cylinder was an iron rod, suspended so it never touched the copper walls. Traces of acidic residue, possibly vinegar or wine, lined the inside of the jar.
Drop an acid into that arrangement and you have a galvanic cell. A battery. The same basic design Alessandro Volta is credited with inventing in 1800, almost two thousand years later.
The jar was dated to the Parthian period, somewhere between 250 BC and 224 AD.
When the design was reconstructed by modern engineers, including at MIT and on multiple television programs, it produced between half a volt and a full volt. Enough to electroplate small objects in gold or silver. Some researchers have pointed out that ancient Iraqi silversmiths produced gilded pieces that look, under a microscope, exactly like electroplated work.
Mainstream archaeologists have proposed it was a scroll storage vessel. They have not, in ninety years, explained the copper cylinder, the suspended iron rod, the bitumen seal, or the acid traces.
The original jar was looted from the Baghdad Museum in the chaos of 2003 and has never been recovered.
What if a working battery existed in the ancient Near East two thousand years before our textbooks say it did, and the knowledge of how to make it was simply lost?
What do you think about this? In 1715 a hurricane sank eleven Spanish treasure ships off Florida. In 2015 divers pulled up $4.5 million in gold coins from just 15 feet of water. The Queen’s jewels have never been found. Gone forever, or waiting for the right storm?
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What do you think about this? Scans of Gunung Padang in Indonesia show hidden chambers deep inside the hill, and one team dated its oldest layers to 25,000 years ago. The study was retracted in 2024. The chambers have never been opened. Natural hill, or the oldest pyramid on Earth?
What do you think about this? Edgar Cayce gave over 14,000 trance readings, all written down and still on file. He said proof of Atlantis would rise near Bimini in 1968. That year divers found a half mile road of giant stone blocks there. True seer, or lucky guess?
What do you think about this? Waverly Hills Sanatorium in Kentucky built a 500 foot tunnel just to move its dead out of sight of the living. It closed in 1961. Visitors still report a boy rolling a ball across empty floors. Restless spirits, or a dark building playing tricks on the mind?
What do you think about this? In 1891, a poor French priest named Bérenger Saunière began tearing up his church floor, then spent the next two decades funding lavish buildings on a stipend that should not have covered it. Real treasure, or a secret about how he ran his church?
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