What do you think about this?
In 1900, Greek sponge divers off the coast of Antikythera surfaced with what they thought was a corpse. It turned out to be a bronze statue, part of a Roman shipwreck dating to roughly 60 BC.
Over the next year they pulled up coins, jewelry, pottery, and a misshapen, corroded lump of bronze and wood that nobody could identify. It sat in a museum drawer in Athens for 50 years, ignored, while researchers cataloged the more obvious treasures.
Then in 1951, a British science historian started taking the lump seriously.
X-rays revealed at least 30 interlocking gears inside, machined to a precision that would not be matched in Europe for another 1,400 years. The teeth were cut at angles that allowed differential rotation. The whole thing was a clockwork model of the cosmos.
It predicted lunar and solar eclipses. It mapped the cycles of the moon, the wandering of the five known planets, even the four-year cycle of the Olympic Games. It could account for the elliptical, non-uniform orbit of the moon long before Kepler.
Built around 100 BC.
We do not know who designed it. We do not know how many existed. We do not know how the knowledge was lost.
Whoever built the Antikythera mechanism understood mathematics, astronomy, and mechanical engineering at a level we did not credit to them.
Could it be we have been underestimating the ancient world this whole time?
What do you think about this? The Dropa Stones, 716 grooved stone discs said to be found in Chinese caves in 1938 beside small bodied skeletons, telling of a crash 12,000 years ago. The 1978 book that spread the story was admitted to be a hoax. Pure fiction, or a truth wrapped in lies?
What do you think about this? The Paiute of Nevada told of red haired giants they trapped in a cave and burned, written down in 1883. In 1911 miners near Lovelock opened a cave and found red haired mummies and a layer of ash. Legend that matched a cave, or memory of real enemies?
What do you think about this? In 1987 a Wisconsin family bought a used bunk bed. Within weeks their kids were sick, a radio changed stations by itself, and a chair rocked with no one in it. They fled in the night in 1988 and burned the bed. Old house, or something that came with it?
What do you think about this? In 1904 an American dredged the Sacred Cenote at Chichén Itzá and pulled up gold disks, jade, wooden idols and the bones of more than 200 people, many of them children. The Maya called such wells doorways to the underworld. Prayers for rain, or an open door?
What do you think about this? Norse settlers lived in Greenland for nearly 500 years, with farms, a cathedral and a bishop. The last record is a wedding at Hvalsey church on Sept 16, 1408. Then nothing. The church still stands, roofless and empty. Starved out, or walked away?
What do you think about this? In 1615 a Spanish pearl ship is said to have sailed into an inland sea that then dried up. In 1870 a Los Angeles paper reported its hull found in the desert near the Salton Sea. Every searcher since has lost it to the sand. Mirage, or a galleon in the dunes?
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